Don't make "statements." Make art.

AS FOR NEW YORKER critic Peter Schjeldahl's characterization of Chicago as a "receptor city" (Chicago Reader, November 29), what else is new? It was a New Yorker essayist, A.J. Liebling, who in the '50s penned a famously snotty work titled "Chicago: The Second City," painting this city as a dull, boorish backwater forever doomed to orbit the Sun of culture situated on the Hudson. I put it down to egomania coastalis  -- a curious delusion of many NYCers and LAngelinos that everybody wants to be them. If Chicago's greatest export is talent, surely New York's greatest export is hype about New York. Maybe we should cede the "Windy City" moniker to them?

But enough beating up on them. Schjeldahl was right about this: "The major product coming out of art schools is artists' statements." After seeing one conceptual installation show several months ago I was moved to write that "art needing lengthy explanation probably isn’t good art. ...Perhaps some of these folks should focus on writing statements full-time."

I say this from the perspective of a self-schooled artist (now "retired") and musician who taught myself drawing and piano and singing and composition because I loved doing those things and I wanted to be really good at them. Back when I was really into drawing, I did it purely from the love of creating. Want to make statements? Start a blog. Write letters to the editor.

Too much emphasis on theory, "concepts," and self-referential-statement-making at the expense of actual craft or substance, turns art into onanistic self-parody, the so-self-serious butt of jokes by regular folks who, despite their lack of sophistication, have a point. Kudos to Schjeldahl for reminding the emperor to cover up before he catches cold.

Dead beats, or the death of melodies and chords

ON A RECENT NIGHT I pulled into a Borders parking lot and the radio was playing that classic house anthem "The Music's Got Me," with that "ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh" refrain, and it reminded me of how I once hated house music.

It was the late '80s, my freshman or sophomore year in high school, when house exploded. While I grew up appreciating lots of different types of music (pop, classic rock, hip-hop, R & B, easy listening, classical, and on it goes), I didn't like this house stuff for several reasons:

1. I was on the tail end of my Beatles/Zeppelin phase.

2. It was also a clique/conformity thing: You see, I was a bougie. My family were like the Huxtables, okay? I was well-educated and "proper"-speaking and spent most of my life around white and Asian kids. I was also kind of Urkel-esque to boot. I didn't fit in with the "real black people." And as they were all into house, I had to be against it.

3. At our football games, the househeads would bring out a big-ass boom box on the sidelines and form a dance circle and start jackin' all over the place. At the time, I thought that was ghetto. It embarrassed me.

4. I couldn't dance. Since house is made for the express purpose of dancing, I didn't see the point.

5. Frankly -- especially when it came to the less melodic stuff -- I thought it sounded like jungle music.

Now eventually, in a couple years' time, I got into the house. I made more black friends. I got in with the clique a little more. I started learning some dance moves. Hey, this is fun! I came to be a househead too.

But back to Borders. After "The Music Got Me" goes off, I head into the store. Lo and behold, there's a book on pop songwriting by one of the masters, Jimmy Webb. (Title: Tunesmith.) And in that book Webb quotes Dick Bradley on the black influence in rock music, and practices that served to create "the abandoning of the tradition of melody which had characterized earlier light and popular musics in Europe and America."

Bradley, sadly, is right to some extent. It's not that the African-American tradition didn't add lots of value to American music at the same time: where would we be without syncopated rhythm, without funk, without crunk, without call-and-response, without blues, without soul, without hip-hop, without house? But just as European music was in a way incomplete without the African input, music from the other extreme -- all rhythm, no melody or harmony -- is equally incomplete. And that's what we are approaching in pop, R&B and hip-hop today (save for those songs which sample the melodies composed by better musicians in a better age such as the '80s or '70s). It's time for notes to stage a return and share the stage with beats. Unfortunately, using notes intelligently and effectively isn't nearly as easy or cheap as making a drum loop on a computer.

Awesomely bad music

ALL THE BAD '80s ballads VH1 can muster up have got nothing on this Aussie, a member of a songwriters message board I belong to. He's an awesomely bad music factory. Although not totally lacking in melodic flair, he tends to blur the line between "artistic" and "autistic," bringing to mind a geriatric Australian Wesley Willis with a fetish for blues, overdramatic vocals and 19th-century poetry. Some of his latest hits: "Thanks to Bagpipes and Poverty," "Death Watch Cat Blues" (about the nursing home cat that knows which patients will die), and of course, "Prostate Blues."

You gotta hear it to believe it.

Max von Bush: New World Order

ANOTHER INGENIOUS VIDEO mashup from Tim Jones, loaded with subversive truths. Check it out.



(DISCLAIMER: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS CERTAIN "911 TRUTH" MEMES I DO NOT NECESSARILY SUBSCRIBE TO, SUCH AS THE NOTION -- VERY CONTROVERSIAL WITHIN THE MOVEMENT -- THAT WORLD TRADE CENTER LARRY SILVERSTEIN WAS "IN ON THE PLOT" AND EVEN WENT SO FAR AS TO ADMIT I T ON NATIONAL TELEVISION. I, FOR ONE, DON'T THINK THAT THAT'S WHAT SILVERSTEIN MEANT WHEN HE SAID HE GAVE ORDERS TO "PULL" BUILDING 7. I DO, HOWEVER, THINK IT'S QUITE OBVIOUS THAT MODERN STEEL SKYSCRAPERS, SUCH AS BUILDING 7, DON'T JUST FALL DOWN -- AND THAT WE ARE STILL OWED A REAL EXPLANATION OF WHAT REALLY HAPPENED ON THAT DAY.)

"Live"? "Active"?

YEAH, DUH -- I REALIZE the name "Live Active Culture" doesn't fit this blog. Originally I'd intended this blog to preview/review events happening around the city that I'd been to, or planned to go to. Of course, I strayed from that purpose very early on, finding it easier to just do pop-culture commentary. I've been looking for a new name, but so far on Blogger, all the names I want are taken by do-nothing blog-squatters. (Yeah, I know that sounds like a fictional Roald Dahl creature...) I'd rather stay here on Blogger than pull up stakes altogether. I'll come up with something soon.

Party like a mock star

WHO'D'VE THUNK THAT a stupid rap song would engender such controversy -- and not about promotion of drugs, or violence, or sex, but because it transgresses some imagined boundary between the "real" and the "poseurs"?

On message boards like this and blogs like this a lot of black punk-rock kids vented their indignation that a bunch of crunk-rappers would dare rip off, and thus cheapen, their social signifiers and costumes without understanding the profound meaning behind it all!

On a blog at "Unofficially Afropunk," Chachalila gripes:

"I just hate the fact that the same style that I really love is now being viewed as some crappy fashion fad."

Cinnamon_girl complains that because of this trend:

"What's the noticible difference between me and the average 'rockstar partying' hoodrat these days? Pretty much just my double 0s til I open my mouth."

BLACK*STAR*LINE says:

"F@$K posers and the Hot topic they came out of!"


It's amusing how 20-year-old kids are yelling about how “the mainstream” is going to “destroy our culture”! To a Gen-X-cusper like myself, this is the same hair-tearing that was going on back in the early ‘90s over the mainstream "taking over" “alternative culture.”

The funny thing (to an ancient 33-year-old such as myself) is the tremendous importance youngsters put on music and fashion choices: for all intents and purposes it takes on religious significance. Might I suggest that these folks are lacking something that bands and costumery can’t supply?

This is not to denigrate rock, or punk rock, or the afropunk community -- heck, I'm at least an associate member: I listen to punk rock, I've been to an Afropunk party, I joined the Afropunk message board. That's why I know about these sites to begin with. But this highlights the difference between people who view music as entertainment, and those who view it as identity.


BY THE WAY. As for the actual song  "Party Like a Rock Star," well, I know one shouldn't expect too much artistically from crunk rap. But still, I can't be the only one to notice the half-assed way they try to signify "okay, now we're doing rock" by pasting a single looping electric guitar riff over an otherwise standard crunk beat. But the riff is one of those minor key, faux-classical things that have been R&B/rap cliche for the last ten years. In other words: the kids making this music are all mixed up; as one might expect in this subgenre, their musical vocabulary is trapped around preschool level; and they don't even know what rock 'n' roll sounds like -- they're just aping the sound everyone else in the rap game is putting out. They wouldn't know a blues scale from a coke scale. (Which might be appropriate, actually.) If you asked them, they'd probably tell you rock 'n' roll is a white music form and always has been.

If "shiftless" is bad,

The n"shifty" must be good. Right?
And how come you never describe a really kind, altruistic person as ruthful? Or a really responsible person as feckful? How come you never hear of someone getting in low dudgeon?

Name every guy would love to have:

Dick Bangham

And as far as faux-bluesman stage names go, Root Boy Slim ain't bad. Neither is his music. ("Dare to Be Fat"?)

siamese band names

YOU KNOW -- TAKE names of famous bands or musicians and combine them for hours of fun! A few examples I came up with (most are doubles but some are triples -- and one of these I managed to cram together five artists):

Kool Keith & the Gang

Little Cliff Richard

Johnny Cash & Eddie Money

Mos Def Leppard

Notorious B.I.G. & Rich

Ice-T. Rex

Teena Marie Turner

Vanilla Ice Cube

Johann Sebastian Bacharach

Hal David Hasselhoff

Olivia Elton-John Oates

Ziggy Stardusty Springfield

The White Stryper

Ne-Yo Yo Ma

Danzig Sig Sputnik

New Mint Condition Edition

Diana VandRoss

Rick James Taylor

Widespread Panic! At the Disco

Modest Mouse on Mars Volta

Stray Cat Stevens

Boy George Michael W. Jackson Browne

B.B. King Crimson

Pink Pink Floyd

MCJanHammer5

Lil Wayne Kramer

Gang of Four Tops

Right Said Freddie Jackson

ABC/DC

Master P.eabo Bryson

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Yeah Yeah

TV on the Radiohead

Smokey Robinson & the Miracle Cure

Living Colour Me Badd

Henry & Sonny Rollins Band

Talib Kweller

Broken Social Distortion

Roger "Muddy Crystal" Waters

Velvet Underground Revolver

The English Beatles

The OK Go! Team

Loretta Lenny Kravitz

Right Said Freddie Mercury

New York Dolly Parton

LL DeBarge J

AC/dc Talk

Madonna Summer

Swing Out Sister Sledge

Blood, Sweat & Tears For Fears

Weird Al Jarreau

Kill Hannah Montana

Go ahead ... Create your own!

Screwed up people make great art

If that's true -- and I don't doubt it is -- the members of Groovelily must be real screwed up. The name might conjure up the girl in the peasant dress doing the twirl dance in the parking lot at the Phish show, but they’re anything but that. They are just a high-quality pop band fronted by a girl who's a great singer/violinist (and who also happens to be a hot redhead), who make incredibly musical music without a lot of artifice, without trying to be arty. They take their art seriously, but not so much so that they forget that it's also fun. I discovered their site a few years ago while searching, I think, for the name of a long-lost friend. I don't know why I've not written about them until now.

While we're at it, here's some more violin rock to piss off rock purists.

Damn, that's cold

FOR SOMEONE WHO hails from such icy climes, Inuit throat-singer Tanya Tagaq is pretty hot. She has the "exotic"-culture thing going for her too, which in the abstract, seems like an irresistible combination. But her actual singing, as presented at her website, leaves me cold. It reminds me of a collision between a pack of wild dogs and an army of angry dwarves on a really hot day. What a shame. I really wanted to like her.

"I don't know why we make art"

AYA IS THE beautiful, fragile, lost soul who writes the column "Home Far Away" for Lumpen Magazine. She's actually living in the Netherlands now. Back when she was still around town, I met her at a Lumpen shindig, but I had to leave early so we never really got to know each other. Anyway, her diary-style column in the mag sometimes contain unexpected gems of existential insight.

Late afternoon, after all the students tucked their black portfolio folders away, their chins pointed this way, curious to see what this big-mouthed Asian girl with an American accent has to show. I looked at my hands. "...I don't mean to be difficult." Then continued, "but I have nothing to show you. I left my works." And went on, "I am not an artist, and I don't know why we make art. For decoration? To sell? For the class? To make ourselves happy? To change the world? What does it mean?"

After a brief pause, someone asked, "Then why are you at an art academy?"

An accident no longer waiting to happen

GOD, I HATE to sound like I’m ghoulishly gleeful about this, because I’m not – but wasn’t it inevitable that stupid news coverage of a stupid police chase would lead to a tragic news chopper crash? It was just a matter of time.

Beautiful music matters -- beautiful singers don't

POP MUSIC, POPTIMISM, and finding a way to enjoy and champion good music without getting wrapped up in overwrought politics and class warfare -- those things have been on my mind a lot lately. (There could even be a book in there somewhere?) Thus, my recent comment to this blog post in which Las Vegas Weekly columnist Frank Kogan sticks up for vapid pop music by pretty people.

I agree with you that the Backstreet Boys shouldn’t be ruled out because they’re good-looking or mainstream. But they’ve “got a better beat”? Than who? Than Axwell? J Dilla? Kennedy even?

Musically, I’m about as as poptimistic a populist as there can be, but by that I don't mean jettisoning standards; I mean the standard should be "is the music well-crafted, creative and enjoyable?" rather than getting all sidetracked in image and social signifying. So I dislike the Backstreet Boys and the like, not because of their image but because the quality of their music is closer to recycled plastic than platinum.

I’m the most passionate defender of “beautiful” music there is – whether it’s Debussy, or Bacharach/David and their contemporary disciples, show tunes, phenomenal R & B and disco and soulful pop by white boys, whatever. Body-moving polyrhythmic beats -- certainly beautiful. But the plink-plunk Backstreet Boys crap, and most of the other product of the Swedish assembly line that could be produced by any five-year-old in possession of a Casio keyboard, or the hot “minimalist” (i.e. lazy) producers of the moment -- the Timbalands, the crunkists -- I just find irritatingly vapid.

Pretty does not automatically mean dumb. Jewel is a pretty girl, I think we’ll all agree, but also possesses astronomical talent and integrity and writes her own stuff. Feist is another pretty girl who makes beautiful music, including covering the Bee Gees. Miho Hatori, okay, she's a bit more of an acquired taste, but she's pretty but also fun and – how often do we hear this quality in mainstream pop? -- unpredictable.

Britney, in contrast, makes crap and thus has to give us a million dancers and pyro and fog and peekaboos of her junk in order to make up for her lack of – perhaps not talent, but judgment as to how to use it.

As for Kelly Clarkson, she's not only hot (though I liked her better when she was a little chubby), but vocalwise she can blow away most female pop singers. If she keeps on honing her writing chops she'll have my respect 100%.

What not to watch

EVER SEEN THAT TLC show “What Not to Wear”? I have had the misfortune to view it a few times. Yeah, I know, I’m sorry. I’ve been between jobs (again) lately and I’ve had time to kill. Anyway, it’s one of those shows I love to hate. In addition to being fashionazis, style snobs, champions of narcissism and unrelenting cheerleaders for craven conformity and needless consumption, the Jewish-American Princess and
fashion-queen co-hosts of this show are woman-hating, slash-happy hair vampires. All they ever want to do to women with long, beautiful hair is lop it off. What is it with the “Fashion” universe's fear of feminine women? 


Long hair is one of a woman’s most beautiful attributes -- especially for those not especially gifted of face or figure. They are proud of their flowing locks. You'd be hard pressed to find a heterosexual male, at least, who doesn’t like long hair on a woman -- even long and plain.

And then they have to ruin your face. Even for women whose real faces are beautiful, the show’s default position is that every woman must be painted up to look like a generic store
mannequin rather than just be their naturally beautiful selves. The one redeeming fact about Stacey and Clinton is they are not sizeists; even they have the sense to not totally alienate  their audience, which is composed of real women (and men who like real women).

Today’s victim, Lynn, got nicely dressed up (although all the Paris Hilton-worthy gear was totally inappropriate for her job, which is nannying) but the foundation they slapped on washed out her face. Happily, she had the cojones to say no, firmly and repeatedly, to the hairslasher.

“I took a stand,” she told the camera proudly. “I’ve always considered myself to be a unique individual ... at the end of the day, this is who I am.”

Well you go girl. Who knows. One day this being-who-you-are thing might actually become ... fashionable?

And the crunkest!

AROUND MIDNIGHT ON SATURDAY, and I've just left this opening at the Flat Iron Building, where I've been hanging out with the phenomarific painter and musician * Kevin Moeller and co. Before heading home, I stop to roll up a cig with some of the street guys outside the quickie mart. Then I go to my car and just sit there awhile listening to the radio and smoking and people-watching. I'm on North just east of Milwaukee, and of course, the traffic is jacked up like crazy since drunk pedestrians are spilling out of clubs and restaurants and everyone's hailing cabs and whatnot.

And on the other side of the street creepin' my way is this black Toyota something-or-other, and inside is this white chick with ghetto-braided hair and those oversized bug-eye sunglasses -- you know, the ones that make you look like a giant fly.

And she's got her system boomin' away to some Unk or something like that, and she's jukin' like crazy in her seat. And she sees me lookin at her and she hollers at me: "I'm the illest white girl you eva seen!"


I just smile.


"The illest!" she shouts again. "And the crunkest!"


The light turns green and she drives away and I laugh like a maniac.


* See 1:04 on Kevin's video ... hilarious.

Garry's back

GARRY MEIER'S RETURNED to the Chicago airwaves recently, and after listening to him on and off the last couple months, I think he's still got the mojo. With more time to do his own thing in his own style (rather than play second banana to Roe Conn), you can see what this town has been missing for the last three years. His cohost, though -- well, I'm sure he'll grow on me, but right now he just sounds like a slightly smarter version of former Mancow sidekick Turd.

2010 UPDATE: Garry's new home is WGN, weekdays from 3-7 (when not pre-empted by a Cubs game). Still smart as a whip. Check him out.

Sweet Wonderful wha - ?

WHOSE SICK JOKE was it to make panties for barely-teenage girls with a picture of a cute feline on the, er, bottom front panel, with the caption: 

Found: 

Sweet Wonderful Kitty 

This is not being sold to grown women. This is all done in kid style, all cute in bright colors. Apparently some designer thought this would be funny. I'm not laughing, because my 12-year-old niece is wearing these. (Reason I would know: she visited and used my washing machine.)

Bring the noise

ALTHOUGH SIMON REYNOLDS has been doing pop music criticism for almost as long as I've been living, I only discovered his writing late last year via this blog -- (I think while I was Googling Style Council or one of those groups, or perhaps the term "postpunk.") He has not only encyclopedic knowledge, but lots of profound insights about music and pop culture. And he has a new book out too.

For all artsy homo sapiens, it’s a pleasure to introduce you to

MULLIGAN STEW.
I have never laughed so hard at a rap song. (The link is to the mp3.)

This is not new stuff, but SoCal's Soup The Chemist is still an atypical cat, still unknown and still deserving of his due. Probably because for much of his career he was rockin' the mic at churches instead of clubs. But as a true artist and a seminal figure in Christian rap, he raised the bar of a formerly very wack genre to a whole new level.

Born Chris Cooper, his original rap name as the frontman of SFC was "Super C." That mutated into "Sup the Chemist" and then its present form. The last several years of his career (he's "retired" from the rap game now, and I think started a catering business), he moved more toward positive hip-hop on a backpack tip. A lot of underground cats West and East peeped his style and I’m sure it has influenced some of the guys out there whom you’d least expect.

Soup's old website is down, but he just got a Myspace going, with only a couple of tracks so far. Check back for more. Meanwhile, there are some Soup gems hidden all over the Web.

Here. (I like the THC reference in this one)

This is by an artist named Immortal, where Soup guested

Also one here

This is Soup guesting on a Future Shock cut “Waxing Philosophical”

This is a guest appearance on Mark J “Headbobbers”

Wewetalktalkininechoesechoes. Soup guests on a Peace 586 joint from a few years back.

More samples with Soup guesting on this page (if they move for any reason you can go to Soundclick main and search “Soup the Chemist”).

But corny, simpleminded people will never have a clue on how to enjoy this cat's flow.


* 2010 UPDATE: Full Soup album downloads, 100 percent free:

Eargasmic Arrangements

Dust (2000)

Microphone Theology (1994: one Soup track)

Phase III (with SFC, 1992)
and Illumination (1994)

Thanks to Po'Safe!