RIFF MARKET

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This concludes the Year In Riffs. Thanks for reading. --NBS

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YEAR IN RIFFS: ZACH BARON
By Any Measure

There have probably been publishing slaughterhouses as gruesome as killing floors that were the 2006 Village Voice, but I'm only 24 and haven't seen em. I don't ever hope to.

Worse, though the Voice casualties emerged out of markedly different circumstances, the moral of all three (to one relatively unscathed bystander, anyway) seemed depressingly, essentially the same: You could have a good, decent, honest idea, push too hard and too far, and lose your job. You could be among the best in your profession, a founding figure, and lose your job. You could surpass every professional milestone associated with the work, rise unequivocally to the top rank and by consensus deserve to stay there, and lose your job. You could, in short, have success by any measure and succeed beyond all standards by which you might be judged; this success would be the guarantee of exactly nothing.

91 YEAR-END RIFFS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2006

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Throughout this week and probably next, Riff Market is proud to publish some friends' remarks on Music 2006, with the emphasis on riffs. Each contributor was asked to spend only 35 minutes on his piece, though there were no particulars given topic-wise. Check back mid-day for the next one. Thanks for reading. --NBS

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YEAR IN RIFFS: SEAN BOYLAND
The Thermals had a new album this year.

I don't listen to as much music as I used to - age has crippled my sense of fun and wonder - so I don't know too much about what "happened" this year in music. It doesn't matter, though, it certainly wasn't illegal to listen to music predating the year 2006. So if you're a young person or something, you can also go out and get a Joni Mitchell album or Hot Rocks or something, which is probably a good idea.

I don't know all the music that came out this year - I know that Kanye West had an album last year and everybody got a bit too excited about that - it was good, but it wasn't that good. I think Smile also came out last year? Exact same case. Anyways, whatever.

The Thermals had a new album this year. I still like those guys, but I started liking them because their songs were all really short and repetitive and simplistic, but in a good way, a way that I liked. Then they started this political stuff and they hate the President, and they refused to license a song to Hummer, and now I guess they hate Jesus or something, too, although I feel that they may be projecting a bit of their anger towards the President onto Jesus. Anyways, that album was pretty good, one song is about a pillar of salt and it has a lot of pep. You should probably get it.

Joanna Newsom is also pretty good, but her new album is kind of ~. It's good, but the strings and orchestration and so forth are pretty schmaltzy. It's like a fan-score for one of the Lord of the Rings movies except 40 minutes of score for one mundane non-action scene, where they buy new rope in town or something. Anyways, I guess it's not her fault? I saw her play a show at Webster Hall; she played two songs, the entirety of her new album - in order, which was a terrible idea, it got mad boring - and then like two more songs. Everything was fine and whatever but the performance was super sterile and the show was totally the opposite of rock. Although at one point, I saw a girl emerge from the heart of the crowd with the news that her companion had fainted. A security guard waded over to grab him just as the music got to the most exciting part. It was - and you must understand if you are not familiar with this particular brand of Lisa Frank crystal arranging music that I am not making this up - the part where the monkey and the bear go swimming at the beach.

I also saw good concerts this year. I saw the Grates twice. So much fun! Totally rocks! I don't know if I can unconditionally recommend their album unless you've seen their show. Sorry! I also saw Final Fantasy, except only once. He named his new album "He Poos Clouds"? What? What an idiot! I also almost saw a bunch of awesome shows that I wish I had scene except a series of mishaps prevented me - stood up for date; was sick; Union Hall, which everyone thinks is sooo cute, doesn't know how to sell tickets to people who aren't unemployed bums who live around the corner from them; got lazy; became overcome with laziness; forgot... But if I were better at forming and following plans, I would have seen all kinds of sick shows by extremely hip people like Sparrow House and some other jerks.

I didn't get the Tom Waits album - too expensive. I don't know what year Love Is All and Gnarls Barkley and Silversun Pickups count as. I got an edited version of the new Panda Bear song, but I only listened to it once, and that was at work. I guess that Arcade Fire released "Intervention" which is a really great song, except since I'm really popular and a huge mover and shaker, I got it off the Internet like two years ago.

Anyways, let's cut the shit. Time Magazine released a list of their "All-Time Greatest Albums" (Get it? TIME.) and it was pretty much for crap. It was like a dummy went through the Rolling Stone 200 from like 1996 and purged all the better albums. There are a lot of problems with the list, but let's get to the heart of it. They include Time Out Of Mind but not Blood on the Tracks or Desire. What? Say what? Shut up, Time Magazine! Anyways, you should get Modern Times, it's really nice for like a car trip or if you're cooking dinner or if you have a rocking chair on your porch or some shit, but maybe you should make sure you already have Desire? I didn't say Blood on the Tracks, because if you just have Blood on the Tracks, you don't count. There are also a lot of other nice albums to get, like get some Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, and pretty much anything you like.

Anyways, my favorite album of the year was Taiga by OOIOO and my favorite song was "UMO" on the same. It has SO MUCH pep. I'm pretty sure despite my initial skepticism that I heard other new music this year that I liked, but I forget what. Hey, nice job being totally unmemorable, music.

PS: I don't know what NBS means by "riffing" in reference to writing, but if it means not editing except for any spelling errors I caught while I was typing, then riffed I have.

91 YEAR-END RIFFS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2006

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Throughout this week and probably next, Riff Market is proud to publish some friends' remarks on Music 2006, with the emphasis on riffs. Each contributor was asked to spend only 35 minutes on his piece, though there were no particulars given topic-wise. Check back mid-day for the next one. Thanks for reading. --NBS

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YEAR IN RIFFS: DANNY CHUN
Ever Gracious

I am at Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's sold-out show at the El Rey, but my interview subject is not a member of the band. I'm told he is backstage, though, so I head there. My eyes not yet adjusted, I nearly collide with Mark "Cobrasnake" Hunter, who is telling friends about how his new mustache once belonged to the face of Confederate Officer and KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest.

"I paid out the butt for it but getting it grafted onto my face didn't hurt at all."

"Very nice," borats his friend. "Sexy time." Peals of laughter erupt from Cobrasnake's girlfriend, 9-year-old scenester princess Cory Kennedy, who is practically swimming in her magenta "CLIT HAPPENS" t-shirt. She is pinged in the cheek by a stray piece of bell pepper, launched from the knife of Benihana heir/DJ Steve Aoki. He is holding court, dicing meat and vegetables with amazing speed.

"You could say that Benihana is the original mash-up," says Aoki to his audience of passed-out party girls. "With music, it's Scissor Sisters meets George Michael. With Benihana, it's Dinner meets Show."

But it's not these LA hipster icons I'm here to find either. The man I seek is off by himself in a corner, clearly intoxicated -- not with alcohol, but with music. So with a reverent wave, I approach Zach Braff. He holds up a finger to silence me as he listens to his iPod. After 20 seconds of what can only be described as intense grooving, he removes the headphones.

"Sorry -- I was just listening to this great new artist called Cat Power. I discovered her out of nowhere when she did a 40-minute set on KCRW followed by 2 Amoeba in-stores. But pretty soon she won't be just my little secret anymore." He is referring to Cat Power's inclusion on his soundtrack to Staring At Nothing, his latest movie, which stars Braff, Scarlett Johannson, Jessica Biel, Keira Knightley, Jessica Alba, Anne Hathaway, and Dustin Hoffman.

"It's about how strange this thing we call life can be," explains Braff. "Like in one scene my character meets a guy who walks around covered in bees. And there's a guy who only talks in Pig Latin. And a guy whose guts are all on the outside of his body. And a guy who lives in a trash can like Oscar the Grouch. And -- spoiler alert -- the ending is that my character meets a guy who walks around with chopsticks up his nose. That's when he learns that sometimes love is just a four-letter bed where your heart sleeps."

But what about the music? "Lots of indie bands like Coldplay and Gavin DeGraw. Then some really obscure bands like the Flaming Lips and Bright Eyes. And then a couple bands that are so obscure they don't even exist, like Camera Obscura and the Arcade Fire. The Arcade Fire comes on in this really dramatic scene where I am laying on the hood of a car as it goes through a car wash, and I don't even get off or put on a poncho because I'm so sad that who cares. And the Bright Eyes song comes on at this part where we turn off the film and just play the song in the theater. I was really proud when I wrote that part."

For the rest of the night I get the privilege of hearing Braff's thoughts on music ("it's the air that I breathe"), film ("you can't beat the classics"), MTV ("they hardly even play music videos anymore"), his new restaurant venture ("we're going for an Old Hollywood type vibe") and comedy ("Jon Stewart for President!"). Throughout this, Braff is constantly hounded by fans whose lives he changed. Ever gracious, he takes pains to fuck each and every one of them.

Eventually I lose track of Braff. I finally find him teaching Paul Haggis how to skateboard. "This is what us young guys are all about," braffs Braff with a smile, motioning to himself and a teenage boy whose dad Braff used to babysit.

A few seconds later Braff is given a MacArthur genius grant and I get slapped in the face by a homeless man's dick.

91 YEAR-END RIFFS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2006

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Throughout this week and probably next, Riff Market is proud to publish some friends' remarks on Music 2006, with the emphasis on riffs. Each contributor was asked to spend only 35 minutes on his piece, though there were no particulars given topic-wise. Check back mid-day for the next one. Thanks for reading. --NBS

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YEAR IN RIFFS: CHRIS RYAN (ASSMAN)
Don't ever eat mushrooms before you go to the Electric Factory. (Reprint)



91 YEAR-END RIFFS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2006

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Throughout this week and probably next, Riff Market is proud to publish some friends' remarks on Music 2006, with the emphasis on riffs. Each contributor was asked to spend only 35 minutes on his piece, though there were no particulars given topic-wise. Check back mid-day for the next one. Thanks for reading. --NBS

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YEAR IN RIFFS: CHRIS RYAN (ASSMAN)
What's Been Going On In 2006

Maryland - Lacrosse suburbs are not doing anybody any good.
South Dakota - Everyone who happens to turn out cool moves to another state.
Oregon - Way more Jesus and meth than you'd think, but still pretty rad.
Oklahoma - Missionary sex with covers pulled up to the shoulder blades.
Wisconsin - Pop punk
Mississippi - 25 percent of all T-shirts in this state have at least one area code printed on them.
Colorado - Lots of weed around
North Dakota - Well-meaning rural folks are shooting off pistols to warn off big animals.
Montana - Fat Libertarian dorks are firing off sniper rifles at pictures of black people.
Ohio - Classic rock radio says business is excellent.
Idaho - Too bored to have missionary sex
Massachusetts - Foxwoods is sinister.
Wyoming - Missionary sex, but only with a Bible and a sheaf of blessed wheat in the room.
Texas - Everyone sucks, except the very respectable rebellious kids and some rad Mexicans.
Michigan - ICP territory
North Carolina - Shitty Republicans play golf on the beach, but nobody likes them.
Connecticut - Fuck snotty suburbs.
Arkansas - Missionary sex while feeling guilty about voting for Bill Clinton.
Rhode Island - Probably some lacrosse or something
Virginia - Bureaucratic white people still aren't doing anything you care about.
New Mexico - Mexicans get pretty rad here, too.
New Hampshire - I have absolutely no idea.
Missouri - Missionary sex on a bed of warm Cinnabons in the back of a pickup truck.
Hawaii - Excellent Brazilian jiu-jitsu
Georgia - Shocking number of guns hoarded by everyone
Louisiana - (exempt)
Delaware - You can buy a Mac tax-free.
Iowa - Wrestlers have to have missionary sex or else their opponent gets points.
Arizona - Weathered, vigorous, cool old people are staring daggers at fat old Republicans with diabetes.
Washington - Aloof white people wish to be taken very seriously.
Kansas - Missionary sex with overrated basketball players
Pennsylvania - Philadelphia is winning; Jesus and malls are on the run.
Illinois - David Yow could run for mayor and win.
Tennessee - They still listen to good country music.
Indiana - At least they try to be rad, but they still have a lot of missionary sex with Jeff Gordon.
Florida - White dorks and Spanish-speaking thugs hold peelout contests in planned communities.
South Carolina - You must admit that patrician "plantation manners" are quaintly charming.
Vermont - On the other hand, you must admit that hippies are way better than aggressive Republican dickheads.
West Virginia - Toothless mountain man sex. Naw, just kidding, I hear West Virginians are nice.
Minnesota - I wish I had neighbors from Canada.
Maine - You can own a boat without being an asshole, but only in Maine.
Nevada - Maxim readers' idea of a good time wears more desparately thin with each passing year.
Utah - Almost everyone is going to heaven.
Alabama - They love to shop at malls and have missionary sex.
New York - Costs as much as San Diego, laughed at by San Diego; women read books.
Alaska - All kinds of sex
California - The raddest state, but the cokeheads still make retarded announcements.
D.C. - Philadelphia surpassed you in radness two years ago.
Kentucky - Missionary sex while the kids practice mandolins in the living room.

Issues raised: Foxwoods is in Connecticut, as I just found out. Maybe you can help me, I can't think of anything good for Mass.

91 YEAR-END RIFFS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2006

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Throughout this week and probably next, Riff Market is proud to publish some friends' remarks on Music 2006, with the emphasis on riffs. Each contributor was asked to spend only 35 minutes on his piece, though there were no particulars given topic-wise. Check back mid-day for the next one. Thanks for reading. --NBS

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YEAR IN RIFFS: MATT LEMAY
The Idea Of Ideas

2006: The year indie rock sinks so far into self-clowning that the American Apparel store should start carrying red noses and floppy shoes. Why does every overblown one-sheet read like an instant backlash kit? Why are we pretending that so many debut albums are so much better than they are? Why are pop singers getting serious consideration as career artists, while independent bands are getting skewered for not “living up to their hype” by the very people who generated that hype? I think we’ve hit the horrible flipside of participatory media – suddenly EVERBODY is interested not (just) in music, but in what it means to the culture at large. Indie rock record reviewers now self-identify as “cultural critics.” Dudes with internet journals argue very, very seriously about who liked a band first. And somehow, the onus is always always always on the musicians, not to explain their art or develop their sound, but to justify their position in a vague and ephemeral cultural construct. When did Colin Meloy really claim to be an authentic anything-other-than-a-creative-writing-major?

2006: The year that indie rock reduces itself to aesthetics in the broadest sense, big and vague gestures that loudly announce some kind of readily discernible difference. Suddenly, all the people who got excited about Beirut because it didn’t sound like that same old indie rock are pissed off because Zach Condon isn’t an “authentic” Middle-Eastern Balkan European Gypsy Or Whatever. (Incidentally, the band’s new song “Elephant Gun” reminds me of “authentic” Out Of Time-era REM, in the very best possible way.) The joy of thinking about music musically – of burrowing as deep as you can into something, losing yourself to it, making sense of it – has been replaced by an endless and joyless process of systematic skimming and incorporation, fitting the broadest outlines of a record into a social self-image or a broad cultural “idea.”

Pop and hip-hop artists have always been WAY more conscious of their place in the aforementioned construct, more willing to incorporate and exploit it. Which is not to say that these forms are bad, or corrupt, or anything even remotely like that. But I wonder if we’ve fallen too hard for the idea of ideas, at the expense of paying attention to how they’re expressed. A lot of great indie rock has stubbornly insisted on the personal over the cultural, on transcendence and transmission, on being that one disc in that one weird guy’s discman, and I’m not ready to give that up.

91 YEAR-END RIFFS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2006

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Throughout this week and probably next, Riff Market is proud to publish some friends' remarks on Music 2006, with the emphasis on riffs. Each contributor was asked to spend only 35 minutes on his piece, though there were no particulars given topic-wise. Check back mid-day for the next one. Thanks for reading. --NBS

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YEAR IN RIFFS: JORDAN DAVIS
The Year in Walk-On Music

In 2006 I finally spent time with London Calling. Somewhere I got the idea the Clash were for people too earnest to admit they like pop music but who aren’t quite punk. What changed me was Aaron Heilman. Aaron Heilman is the pitcher Willie Randolph had an idea about, a competent right handed starter forced into the role of set-up man. The set-up man is the reliever they bring in the seventh or eighth inning after the early reliever stops throwing strikes. Not the closer, the reliever who comes in top of the ninth to help the other team keep it interesting. Historically the closers are the guys who sell antacids, wear expensive mustaches, beget country singers. Aaron Heilman is not one of them. Nevermind what happened in the NLCS, he is competent. He wants to pitch. He throws strikes. His walk-on music: “London Calling.” And because he’s walking from right field, you get to hear a lot of the song.

One foregone game in August we moved from under the overhang down to the mezzanine box. Around the seventh, two guys came and sat down behind us. Guillermo Mota came in, the reliever the Mets picked up mid-year, who would go on to blow game two against the Cardinals, be suspended for the first 50 games of 2007 for testing positive for ‘roids. He just got $5 million for two years. That all hadn’t happened yet. The bigger of the guys behind us says “Who’s this guy, and what does Willie have against Heilman?” I defend Mota, Mota gets them out of a jam, we get to talking. “Girl, to be with you is my favorite thing,” comes blasting from the juiced PA, Paul LoDuca’s walk-on music. Involuntarily I turn and cheer for Captain Red Ass, a philandering gambler with a teenage bookie in every city. What, he’s the most consistent hitter on the team. The guy behind us says, “You know, he really ought to say something to management about that song. He can totally have it changed.” I wait a beat. “I thought the players chose their songs.” Guy Behind Us says some do. He waits a beat. “I used to work the scoreboard.”

If the story’s good, I’m a credulous guy. Ask the pirate I met at Rudy’s. Anyway, this information threw me. No idea what to make of the possibility that the disastrous Kaz Matsui’s disastrous choice of tinkly pentatonic JAPANESE-SOUNDING-MUSIC-GET-IT might not be his own, or that every time he comes to the plate, Cliff Floyd might not actually be psyched to hear Quincy Jones’s “The Street Beater” aka the Sanford and Son theme. Reggaeton for Carlos Delgado and Jose Valentin, Beltran’s salsa, even Chris Woodward’s brokebat Dire Straits and Shawn Green’s spacey guitar solo – those choices all make a basic marketing kind of sense whether they were chosen by the front office or the player. David Wright’s song, the Beasties’ “Brass Monkey,” came out when he was four; given that the 3B’s typical fan wears a misses’ size 6 “Mrs. Wright” shirt, though, I get the group choice to go white party-boy. These are good stories for the twelve to twenty seconds it takes the batter to get to the box. They’re mainly not risky choices. Speaking of which, very little current music makes the walk-on playlist. I have the idea that somebody used “Bring ‘Em Out,” Reyes maybe? couldn’t hear over the cheering, or the spontaneous “Jose, Jose Jose Jose, Jose, Jose” chants that the repulsive Cardinals mocked when they took game seven. Xavier Nady had “Ridin’” and they unloaded him to Pittsburgh when reliever Duaner Sanchez separated his shoulder in a Miami cab accident.

So, this being a riff, it’s time to wind it up. Did you know the Mets’ bullpen phone rings loud enough to reach the upper deck behind home plate? Or that only two Mets pitchers get their own music for the walk from the pen. One is Heilman, the other is Billy Wagner, the very expensive closer the Mets picked up from Philadelphia. Wagner doesn’t just get walk in music, he gets a special cartoon on the scoreboard with a long haired metal singer and spinning flaming baseballs (potential Desenex sponsorship?). They CRANK the PA, film the dude in scratchy sepia, and 47,352 drunk 41-year-olds all chant “Enter Sandman.” Apparently it helps everyone forget how terrifying it was the last time Wagner pitched. When Heilman comes in, the line about “phony Beatlemania” always seems to echo the longest.

Long story short, now every time we get in the car, Kool and the Gang, the White Stripes, even Fall Out Boy – they’re all dead to my son. Now the playlist is strictly “Rudy Can’t Fail” through “Lost in the Supermarket.” I don’t hold that home run to Yadier Molina against Heilman.

91 YEAR-END RIFFS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2006

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Throughout this week and probably next, Riff Market is proud to publish some friends' remarks on Music 2006, with the emphasis on riffs. Each contributor was asked to spend only 35 minutes on his piece, though there were no particulars given topic-wise. Check back mid-day for the next one. Thanks for reading. --NBS

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YEAR IN RIFFS: ZACH KANIN AND MATT PODOLSKY
2006

Matt: So, it’s been a long time since we’ve worked collaboratively.

Zach: I know, what ever happened with that?

Matt: Life. Life happened with that.

Zach: Seriously.

Matt: Should we do this?

Zach: Let’s.

…

Matt: Quick, best album of the year:

Zach: Changes, by Fleetwood Mac.

Matt: Garden State Soundtrack. Hands down.

…

Zach: Let’s try this again. Best album of the year.

Matt: Jazz, by the Lawyers.

Zach: The Caption Contest Soundtrack, by Mario Batali.

Matt: The Beatles do Hanukkah, by Gawker Stalker

Zach: craigslist.com, by a desert metal band.

Matt: A Very Beatles Hanukkah, by Fergie.

Zach: A Hanukkah Beatles Hanukkah, by Fergie.

Matt: Hannah and Her Beatle Friends, the Beatles, by Fergie.

Zach: Kid A, by the Kids.

…

Matt: Whew. I think that about covers it.

Zach: How are law school exams going?

Matt: So stressfully.

Zach: I hear that.

(high-five)

Matt: So… I should probably get back to studying.

Zach: Yeah. I should probably finish drinking this water.

Matt: Peace out, Zach.

Zach: (Nods and raises eyebrows while drinking.)

91 YEAR-END RIFFS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2006

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Throughout this week and probably next, Riff Market is proud to publish some friends' remarks on Music 2006, with the emphasis on riffs. Each contributor was asked to spend only 35 minutes on his piece, though there were no particulars given topic-wise. Check back mid-day for the next one. Thanks for reading. --NBS

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YEAR IN RIFFS: ERIK KENWARD
Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards

So after Nick emailed me about writing something for this I sat down like a putz to hash out my top ten albums in 2006 – something I've done on a semi-formal basis for a few years now, something which for the last couple of years has seemed like a purely formal exercise. Thousands if not trillions of words have been expended on the post-file sharing death of The Album. The hack music critical think piece observation of the last minute or so seems to be that, 'Kids don't even think of albums as objects anymore, man. Can you believe that shit?' Sometimes if we're sitting around drunk or in the middle of a very long car ride or both, my girlfriend and I will talk about how people in our very specific micro-generational cohort (we both turned thirty this summer) may be the last folks to have direct, first-time-around relationships with all the major physical commercial music formats. (First 45, Frank Mills "Musicbox Dancer"; first LP, Weird Al In 3D; first tape, Mr. Mister Welcome To The Real World; first 'cool' tape, REM's Document and Love & Rockets' Earth, Sun, Moon (in a blow-out birthday two-fer); first cd, The Stone Roses – and this all within seven or eight years.) I suppose this is all catching up with me on a visceral level this year because I'm in the process of being driven out of my own home by my cds, a common affliction of my micro-generational cohort if the internets are to be believed. What else? Tower Records went out of business I guess.

You can say, guy, that the twelve song-ish, 40 minute album is an arbitrary outgrowth of market forces – manufacturing constraints, the greater margin in bulk sales. But, not to be all Mojo Dad rockist or anything, I'm still a huge 'sides' guy and organize my playlists accordingly. If we lazily posit the album as a narrative analogue to the novel, it seems like something you could say is that one of the most significant interpretive shifts of the last century with regards to the novel – the post-structuralist prioritization of the reader over the author – is repeated in the present moment's technologically-abetted prioritization of the consumer over the album maker (i.e. album vs. playlist.) I know, straight out my own b-hole, but I guess what I'm saying I guess is that any engagement with the narrative of the album is increasingly both an act of will and a reactionary gesture.

I feel like we're still more or less on the front edge of getting comfortable with all this new lack of corporeality. According to The Wire (not that The Wire), ghosts are the new wolves so that's something. Another thing is that thinginess -- being something – is more than ever a punk rock move in and of itself, which is why there's Hospital Records and ebay. There's also list making. There's always been a lot of list making sure, but now the list's the thing. One thing Hitler was right about is that people like structure but I think we're less big on sequence these days. Which is to say that I guess maybe the other reason I'm so big-picture on all this stuff is that new Tom Waits' album Orphans. 'Cause I think it's about what happens to the album after file-sharing. The label calls it an album, but it's really a b-side collection. It's not a box set, but it's a little too big to listen to in one sitting. And two of the discs are basically too same-y to make for truly satisfying start-to-finish listens. It more or less forces you to dump the whole thing into a playlist and hit shuffle, in which case you get an infinite number of the best twelve song-ish, 40 minute Tom Waits albums ever. Which is kind of genius. I could also say something about how it collapses twenty years worth of material into an eternal present/not-present (just like the Internet!), but I don't know, maybe you don't like Tom Waits. Also, there's that super-useful taxonomy so fuck a top ten list for now. Off the top of my head:

Brawlers
Ghostface Killah – Fishscale
Joanna Newsom – Ys
Agalloch – Ashes Against The Grain
Wolf Eyes – Human Animal
Mastodon – Blood Mountain
Nachtmystium – Instinct: Decay

Bawlers
Clipse – Hell Hath No Fury
Current 93 – Black Ships Ate The Sky
Celestiial – Desolate North
Burial – Burial
Tim Hecker – Harmony In Ultraviolet
Belong – October Language

Bastards
TV On The Radio – Return To Cookie Mountain
Tom Waits – Orphans
Phoenix – It's Never Been Like That
The Knife – Silent Shout
The Hold Steady – Boys And Girls In America
MV & EE with The Bummer Road – Mother Of Thousands
Girl Talk – Night Ripper
Michael Mayer – Immer 2
Lindstrøm – It's A Feedelity Affair
Sunn O))) & Boris – Altar

I think I might already disagree with what I just wrote but I'm not changing it 'cause time's a-wasting. As far as the counter-intuitives go, Ys is totally a Brawler because even if it has strings and harps and poetry it whips that gauntlet pretty hard and Hell Hath No Fury? C'mon that’s gotta to be one of the saddest albums of the year. What else? The Phoenix album. It's Never Been Like might be one of my favorite albums of the year and I think I'm cool with that. Total hair-salon-lobby-magazine rock, but great hair-salon-lobby-magazine rock. I don't know if all the record's Strokes-isms and Franz Ferdinand-ities are cynical or lazy or worse, but they flip 'em and re-use them better than their originators. Which I think makes them sound like they should be more foreign that merely French. Sort of like if first-wave eurorock dudes had gotten a hold of a stack of 2004 Blenders instead of Axis: Bold As Love.

And, apropos of nothing in particular, I'm going to go way out on a limb here and say that The Wire was the single best thing I was aware of this year.

91 YEAR-END RIFFS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2006

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Throughout this week and probably next, Riff Market is proud to publish some friends' remarks on Music 2006, with the emphasis on riffs. Each contributor was asked to spend only 35 minutes on his piece, though there were no particulars given topic-wise. Check back mid-day for the next one. Thanks for reading. --NBS

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YEAR IN RIFFS: PETE L'OFFICIAL
Apology Accepted

Nick,

Please accept my apologies on 1) being late to your Riffmarket Year-End Closeout Sale; and 2) not actually writing anything for you. Please accept this instead, from the younger brother of a student.

Well, be well --
Pete

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: EliotFP
Date: Dec 13, 2006 12:19 AM
Subject: riff music
To: Pete L'Official

Dear Rick Sylvester,

Hi my name is Eliot and Mr. L'O told me that I should write to you because you like music this year. He also told me that you wrote something about kissing girls but didn't kiss any girls but that you were a nice man who likes laughing\ and that everybody should meet you one day and I think I would like to be there for that.

My brother really likes rap music and I guess I like it too and I know Mr. L'O does a lot. One time, Mr. L'O took my brother to buy rap CDs from this guy on the street and he bought five for only twenty dollars. I wanted to go and buy some too but my brother told me he wouldn't take me because he said it smells like they make drugs in there. I'm not sure what drugs smell like or if they make a sound too but one time I listened to this Black Snowman CD when my brother wasn't home and I think they might sound like that. Anyway I don't remember all of the rappers that my brother likes but I do remember Mr. L'O kept talking to him about Killers Season and I don't even know who raps that but I guess it never came or maybe it did and we all just missed it. I think I would like to hear another CD of Lil Wayne because he rapped about a goblin once and I love goblins. Also he wrote a song about Sportscenter and I watch that all the time. Only I hope he doesn't really have tattoos on his eyeballs because that was a scary drawing. My brother wanted to get a tattoo of Zidane's face on his face after the World Cup. I told him that he could get Ghostface's face tattooed on his face that way he could just say that he had the tattoo but wouldn't have to get anything drawn on his face and then he slapped me. We fought after that. Anyway, Lil Wayne I think I like, that T.I. guy, and I guess some other people from the South. And obviously Peedi Crakk. Mr. L'O told me to say that.

That's all I have to say,
Eliot Percifal

P.S. Mr. L'O told me I shouldn't tell you my middle initial because then you would make some joke about how it stood for something dirty like "Balls" or something, but that doesn't make any sense. So guess.

91 YEAR-END RIFFS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2006

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Throughout this week and probably next, Riff Market is proud to publish some friends' remarks on Music 2006, with the emphasis on riffs. Each contributor was asked to spend only 35 minutes on his piece, though there were no particulars given topic-wise. Check back mid-day for the next one. Thanks for reading. --NBS

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YEAR IN RIFFS: FARLEY KATZ
Kanye and Drudge

Kanye and Drudge: A daily comic strip about Kanye West and Matt Drudge who were accidentally married and now live together in Matt's condo in Miami.











91 YEAR-END RIFFS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2006

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Throughout this week and probably next, Riff Market is proud to publish some friends' remarks on Music 2006, with the emphasis on riffs. Each contributor was asked to spend only 35 minutes on his piece, though there were no particulars given topic-wise. Check back mid-day for the next one. Thanks for reading. --NBS

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YEAR IN RIFFS: NICK SYLVESTER
Each One Teach One

For whatever reason, I'm convinced the seven Sylvesters have this weird thing with insomnia, these weird alternating bouts of unrest. They never happen at the same time, so it's just that cosmically speaking, or maybe just statistically speaking, one of us seven just can't get to bed. When I realized this, I consciously tried to shift the burden to the non-Barry part of the fam, since we all pretty much agree that guy, the dad, has to get at least some shut-eye. Professionally speaking, he is a food prostitute. He goes to construction sites, lifts up his doors, sells his meatball sandwiches to burly-type men who have like ten different kinds of hammers on their belts, then blows out of there before any HI rolls up on him. I've seen a lot of these burly-type men eat meatball sandwiches and can assure you, without a doubt, my dad desperately needs his sleep.

That's more or less how we deal with things though, my family. We have these little mental tricks to keep us going psychically--20% aphorismatic, 80% witchdoctor--though most of them boil down to common sense taken ad absurdum. There's the "if you're upset about something, you must have time on your hands, which means you must not be working hard enough" trick for offsetting depression, the "when God closes a door he opens a window" tough love mixed with undying optimism bit, the "nobody pick up the phone, things will figure themselves out" school of avoiding credit card debt collectors, etc. What's tough is we all know they're tricks, so there's some cognitive dissonance involved, which means we're way too ganglionic over way too imaginary stuff. Like god forbid I'm two minutes late for a dinner reservation, I might miss my window--I might have to settle for a different window, one of those dorm ones with the jumper locks.

But the one trick I want to talk about, the no-sleep trick, the trick is this: When you're trying really hard to fall asleep but you can't, most times you'll notice that your butt cheeks are really tightly clenched--like, seriously pursed up. If you've never noticed this, do notice; it will blow your mind. Anyway, said clench is keeping you from sleep. So the only thing you have to do, if you want to fall asleep, is tell your butt to relax. Sometimes I like to whisper, inexplicably, "Shut up, Butt," but obviously this gets uncomfortable for anybody who may be in bed with you. And dangerous. I mean, who knows, her butt might not be ready to shut up. You might be screwing everything up for that butt.

Imagine my surprise this January then, when after 20 straight years of commanding my butt to shut up nightly, it started being disobedient.

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My current room is about 7'x7', i.e. one Status Ain't Hood by one Status Ain't Hood, i.e. one square SAH. The floor is covered with unplush dust-prone industrial-wear carpet, very similar dust-wise and durability-wise to floormats into the city's classier bodegas. The room is painted in cheery, floral colors that have reminded more than a few visitors of their mothers' kitchen wallpaper prints. There is a window facing 7th Street, and the building is close enough to First Avenue that I get a good dose of that action, with next to zero strain. A twin bed mattress I drove from Montgomeryville, the same mattress that caused fellow I-95ers no little unease since the thing wanted off my cartop, like it was kidnapped or something--the mattress takes up half the room, and spent most of this year boxspringless, right on the floor. The other half of the room, with about a foot of space between the bed and itself, is my stereo: a Marantz 2230 receiver, a/k/a the bluelight special, a Sony 5-disc tray, a Bang & Olufson turntable, Bose 601s despite everybody's vehement protests.

Also of note: Atop one of those open-faced Ikea closets at my bed's foot is a sizable vegetable box filled with dirty laundry; on the side of the box are the letters "AMC," which one visitor said stood for "All My Clothes." I'd disagree with her but sometimes there's like a pants leg hanging out the box, and it pretty much stares at you if you get the angles right, and I try to laugh and turn away but I can't, just can't.

Anyway all this is important because, long story short, I spent a lot of time in this room this year. I listened to a lot of music with my back against the wall, facing The System, lots of really old records I'm supposed to just know but not necessarily supposed to enjoy real-time, Modern Lovers, Velvet Underground, Future Days, T-Rex, Sonic Youth, Enter The 36 Chambers, the Breeders, Magnetic Fields, Pale Saints, Wayne Shorter (for Freddie), etc. Usually I listened to those first four VU albums in a row, as a package deal, paying them about as much attention as they me, not really studying them, just letting them sink in. Then I'd go to the gym, where I listened pretty exclusively to new mixtapes and Swell Maps and Daft Punk, and realized, fine yeah you were right, Homework is their best. I played restaurant for one summer minute, and that exact minute is when I gave up all resistance to Lenny Kravitz, the Jamiroquai of classic rock. I swear to whoever, whenever "Are You Gonna Go My Way?" came on the speakers, I sold way more $22 Kobe burgers than anybody wearing black pants as tight as mine should have sold.

Nighttime was different. Location location location has a negative, which is that it's really really loud at all times of the day, with no shortage of people saying, literally, "location location location." There's a constant stream of traffic and uptown-going trucks, and they all have good reason to honk their horns at each other I'm sure, plus there are all the trash trucks. I guess it was 2001 or so, New York City filled up the Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island, leaving the city no option but to privatize trash removal. So every building in the city, more or less, hires trash trucks from as far as Virginia and PA and New Jersey obviously to come pick up its trash. There are all these tariffs that the city has to pay too, it's all pretty fascinating reading at 3am, when you're trying to figure out why every thirty seconds there's another fucking trash truck blowing by your window, kicking up dirt, unshutupping a previously shut-up buttsky.

Plus there's a lot going on inside my apartment anyway. Every night my one roommate cycles through the channels starting at around 11:30pm, catching every Seinfeld and Simpsons and (I think) Mama's Family rerun he can before he totters off to bed around 1, 1:30. My roomwalls are just drywall, not actual walls, so I hear it all--I was sick of Kramer before you were. Another roommate just started dating a guy in a rock band that she says sounds like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and about two weeks ago the band's impromptu after-afterparty was at our apartment, started around 4am, and involved several hours of "Under the Bridge" on repeat. I always thought bands who sound so much like other bands would be embarrassed to publicly jam out to whichever band they're so obviously aping, but I was wrong, and I have the bloodshot eyes to prove it. My other roommate doesn't stay at the place too often anymore, but when he did, he would fall asleep on the couch pretty early in the night, and there would be two bottles of Stella on the coffee table beside him, and now I understand why. Even right now as I write, there's this infuriating click, I don't know where it's coming from, possibly the metal pipe that's connected to the radiator, and I imagine whatever is clicking in the pipe will soon click there, and then the room will get so hot I'll have to open the window.

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There's this guy named Brando, an older legend-type grad who liked the weird stuff. To a college kid with Potter glasses and a pair of tickets to see the French Kicks "before they get huge, really fucking huge I'm telling you," i.e me, Brando was daunting, infuriating, infatuating--a handless man rolling his own cigarettes, then lighting them with one of those $500 lasers everybody's talking about now. At the time I met him, pre-asshole Jared Leto was in vogue post-Requiem, and I happened to be pretty fond of both the look and the performance in general, to say nothing of the soundtrack. Anyway Brando also sorta looked like Leto to me, only in good ways.

Also and this isn't a dis on anybody I knew and loved in school but there was something very post-grad to me about Brando that seemed attractive to me, living the life in this self-assigning curriculum sort of way, a reading list that moved facilely from Debord to (Ted) DeBiase, levels of media consumption hitherto unimaginable. He consumed video and art and music and words and synthesized them all, to the point that he could ask a question like "What is your favorite product?" and you took him seriously, and you told him your favorite product, and if your favorite product was something really straightforward like "nylon" he would say something like "nylon is a good product," and then start talking about nylon for twenty minutes.

From afar I thought this was what it was like to be too young, too smart, in Manhattan, this well-known place though with plenty of secrets in the cracks, where people just consumed and created and kept abreast during the day, backreading during the night. The fantasy was that everybody was in the process of understanding everything. They understood culture in broader strokes, assimilated all media, but self-policing and self-conscious worrying over dilettantism forced this neurotic TYTS crew past the feeling of being overwhelmed until they had handles on Everything. The fantasy was that six or seven years ago, a TYTSer would not only know and do about everything TYTS, but was expected to know and do everything. Otherwise what the point of being there?

Two Brando stories. The first involves Brando getting into Cambridge one night around 1, playing Oneida's Each One Teach One disc 01 track 01, which is this way-loud 20-minute one-measure rock vamp, at police action-inducing volumes, collapsing on this nasty fake-leather couch sticky with liquor, then falling asleep like it was nothing--maybe even because it was nothing. The guy was post-silence.

The second Brando story involves a holiday party in New York, and somebody saying something to the extent of "sauerkraut rocks!", Brando mishearing it as "krautrock!" and Brando regaling us with stories of krautrock one-offs and side projects. I downloaded most if not all the albums he mentioned and thought most if not all of them were pretty fucking awful. The music was there but just barely, and I was at the point in life where you like Faust IV, but only after track 1.

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I think it was for a spacerock mix I made a lady last December, but I needed some sort of transition track, something pretty cloudy that could handle the beat from Psychic Ills' "January Rain" underneath. I was home, where many CDs stay on shelves, so this worked out, plus when I go home I like to go up to my room anyway and go through all my belongings just to make sure for example my dad didn't sell any of my books on ebay or my youngest brother didn't turn my childhood bear into his boy-school afterhours cumbag. Sorry, I just really loved that bear.

Pre-FireWire, I burned a lot of mp3 discs with impossibly completist archival-type intent, like for whenever I needed a track off the Amps' Pacer or "Persistence of Memory" from the Fulton Pyser LP. I found a stack of these discs in my room and made my way through them and I stumbled on all that Brando music. I listened to it all for several hours, straight through, even that terrible Ash Ra Tempel Tim Leary collabo, looking for the transition. I ended up picking "Kekse" from Harmonia's Deluxe. It's this pretty chintzy piano/synth semi-blues at first, but the track outroduces itself into this bucolic, piano by the pond routine that worked perfectly.

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Harmonia were Michael Rother of Neu! and Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius of Cluster. They made two albums in the 70s, Musik Von Harmonia in 1973 and Deluxe in 1975. Apparently Eno collaborated with them a year later but I haven't heard that material. Some combination of synthetics and synthesizers birthed this barely-there yet extremely gritty ambient music, threaded with simple seven- or eight-note melodies that take an entire track just to articulate themselves once. They sound exactly like a band called Harmonia would sound like. When Musik doesn't chug along triumphantly like a train pulling into the last subway stop, it feels like a semi-safe hiding place, somewhere with about a ten-minute catch-yr-breath expiration date before it's discovered and you're discovered and now you're back on the run.

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The first time it happened I was pretty embarrassed, me falling asleep to music I like. Pride is one factor. I don't like to think I own any music that puts me to sleep, plus I tend to dislike the abusive 'music as emotional crutch' types, because it's only a step away from 'music as fashion accessory' types, which is only a step away from the h-word. Is my reasoning. I fell asleep at a Rhymefest show earlier this year and I still feel pretty awful about that, and I don't even like Rhymefest, to give you an idea.

Verse number two, and I guess this is related to verse number one, the worst thing that's happened to rock criticism, more than mp3 blogs or fewer inches or the Xgau/Voice divorce, is the increasing laxness w/r/t the word "boring." I don't know when it started but I remember meeting this city's 100-word hustlers one-by-one like 03 04 05, and was amazed at how excitedly they dismissed music they didn't like as, merely, "boring." They listened to something once, and if it didn't catch their ear the first time, they moved on to the next, at least until Ryan dropped BNM on a record they overlooked, then of course they listened to the album, as if only to poke holes in the enthusiasm, or to figure out a way to pitch Chuck so as to poke holes in the enthusiasm.

I understand the word as very PC, "boring," and appreciate it as a colloquialism, i.e. something you say to a publicist to get him off your back. But without naming names or pieces I see the word and the sentiment creeping into printed matter. I know I'm probably guilty of it myself. But "boring" is not criticism; it's an excuse not to engage a work. It's an excuse to write around the record, not about it. "Boring" says more about the writer and the record in most cases, "been there done that" the reason American Internet Writers will sooner pretend to like Lily Allen's shitsmoker of a fake reggae record or go on a one-man crusade to make metal indie's new rap than even begin to let the utterly straightforward Sonic Youth album reveal its many complexities. That takes time though, and most lancers don't have that or the heart or the balls, and if there's one person to pity this year, it's the critic who's trying so hard to Stay On Stop, Shock And Awe, Get That Paper, he's forgotten how to listen, and why he did in the first place.

The writing is abysmal.

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Musik Von Harmonia is a pretty boring record, is the thing. It just exists. The sounds are interesting, maybe. "Ohrwurm" has those woozy drones that remind me of the sounds from whatever PBS special there was about bears accidentally ingesting hallucinogenic mushrooms, and in an urban setting the song's a dead ringer for traffic in slo-mo, skrung owt. But there's nothing structurally fascinating per se about "Ohrwurm", same with "Ahoi!", whose lullaby just phases in and out while other things just happen to cut across the mix. As usual, the songs with motorik are interesting insofar as I can say "motorik!" in my loud a-ha Watson get my pipe voice, but it's a safe observation to make, one signifying nada.

As I near the 5-minute mark here, only 30 minutes left, I should mention I've tried sleeping with headphones on. I tried with my semi-expensive in-ears, Shure e3cs. Have you ever tried that? Hearing nothing at all? Just the weird sounds your saliva glands make in your mouth? It's terrifying. I need baseline decibels--a steady click, a vacuum cleaner hum, something, anything, just not nothing, and not the Buddha Box. I'm pretty sure I saw an FM3 guy on a panel at Mutek 2005, and somebody asked him how you replace the battery in the Buddha Box, and I'm pretty sure the answer was that you don't, that the deterioration of the Buddha Box was part of the idea, a nod to its own materiality, to Art. Well OK. If anybody has the Buddha Box mp3s, send them here.

But at some point, whenever it happened, maybe March or April or so, Musik Von Harmonia became my baseline. The best explanation I have involves another pair of headphones, the Sennheiser PXC-250 noise-cancellers. I've milked these babies for all their metaphorical milk, metaphorically speaking, so apologies for yet another life lesson involving the physics of sound: If the trashtrucks and ambulances and NYU kids and the roommates and the general hum of this city, the sound the buildings make when you walk on Wall Street and the buildings just hum, if all that sound comprises one fat ugly sinewave, Musik contains its exact cosine (I think it's cosine), 90 degrees out of phase, canceling out the fat ugly frequencies and leaving a pleasurable and eventually unnoticeable white noise in its wake. Is what this aphorismatic witchdoctor says.

[This brings up the extremely fair question of, if this album is basically a noise-canceling headphone substitute, like a poorman's noise-canceling headphone, why not just go for the real deal? Especially if this is just about canceling out the right frequencies and not clogging up the Frequencies That Matter, e.g. fire alarms, regular alarms. Well I just don't know.]

As of December 16, 2006, when everything around headphoneless me is in nasal-drippingly copasetic order--when everything has reached its cliche of a zenith, or vice versa--it sounds like Musik. I turn off the light, put a few towels in front of the door crack to make sure no rats get inside, try to remember whether I'll get sleep apnea from sleeping on my stomach or sleeping on my back, then I'm out.

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Some things I forgot: Brando lived down First Ave five blocks away from me, until this Spring, when he moved to Arizona, or New Mexico, I forget. I'd see him on my way to Mr. Freshbread for overpriced bagels. Mr. Freshbread is now called Cafe Blu, but it's the same management. The office where I currently work has these two extremely small dogs that like to frolic under my desk and pee on my floor, and the owners have to come in and mop up the pee, and everybody in the office thought all this was hilarious until one of the dogs got stepped on. If you're absolutely dead-set on noise-canceling headphones, the PXCs aren't too bad, just make sure you wear them while exercising. When you get water in those guys, the headphones, they emit this hellacious shriek that's like their breaking point--as if this business of ingesting all your noise the last few years has really been wearing on them, and now they're going to let it out all at once.

91 YEAR-END RIFFS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2006