Who the hell is Arcade Fire?: The Aftermath

For those of us who like the band, Arcade Fire's Grammy win the other night was quite a treat--an unexpected bit of recognition for a good album.  But, like many people, I was struck by the meta-story that quickly supplanted the good news: the story that there are lots of people out there who had no idea that Arcade Fire even existed.

This is related to my previous post about the new NYT bestseller list, which makes a distinction--an arbitrary one, I think--between physical and virtual books.  Both items call attention to the weird divide between those people who get most of their information by reading it online, and those people who don't. That is, the divide between people for whom the virtual is not any less real than any other reality.

For people whose cultural knowledge comes from the internet, Arcade Fire is a famous band--indeed, for some of us, they're an overexposed band we're sick of hearing about.  (Not me, btw, I still like 'em.)  If you buy music on iTunes (or steal it from Mediafire, for that matter), learn about new music from YouTube, or read music blogs, you know Arcade Fire.  For those who consume music in the more traditional ways--listening to the radio and buying CD's at record stores--you probably don't.

It's the former people, I think, who have also digested the idea that the ebook is roughly equivalent to the physical book (at least by quantitative, if not aesthetic, standards), and don't really get why the Times should separate the two.  This isn't necessarily an age divide, or a political one, or even an educational one.  It's cultural.

We've reached the point at which hip obscureness is large enough to no longer be hip or obscure--indeed, it's a new, parallel mainstream, one that Rosie O'Donnell didn't appear to know about.  And was offended not to have been informed of.  That she expressed this emotion via Twitter is an added complication I don't think I have the mental energy to even contemplate.

Shake it like you just don't care

I spent a lovely afternoon walking home from the office listening to The Dukes of Stratosphear's 1987 CD Chips From The Chocolate Fireball.  This album combines the band's two releases, the EP 25 O'Clock and the album Psonic Psunspot, both pastiches of psychedelic rock in the style of, say, the Zombies or Jefferson Airplane, and both actually the work of the British new wave rock band XTC.

I don't know what XTC fans generally think of these records, but for my money, they're the best thing XTC has ever done.  They are funny, inventive, catchy, and utterly lack self-importance, which, when XTC isn't so hot, is often the way they are not so hot.  They employ all the familiar tricks and tropes of the era, including phased and modulated vocals, thick harmonies, combo organs, fake Indian chord progressions, acid-trip lyrics, hard panning of instruments, tape hiss, backwards guitar solos, and copious amounts of echo.  Indeed, they court cliché, they toe the line so hard.

So why do they sound so inalienably like everything that is great about XTC?  In part it's because this kind of music inspired the band in the first place.  But mostly, I think, it's that this music was freeing for them--under a false name, and under the sway of artificial constraints, they didn't have to worry about making an XTC record.  They just had to worry about having a good time.

When I think about which of my novels and stories and other things I like the best, and I try to remember what it was like to write them (as I often do when I don't like what I'm writing), I generally come to the conclusion that, at the time, I didn't care how it came out, and I assumed it would never be published.  Mailman is a good example--it's my favorite of my books, and the whole time I was writing it I kept thinking, "Nobody is ever going to publish this thing.  So why not write whatever the hell I want?"

Of course I was lying to myself, even then.  Secretly, I very badly wanted those things to be published.  But I somehow managed to lie to myself about lying to myself long enough to accomplish something.

It's not that I dislike the work that is the product of intense cogitation and self-conscious effort.  Indeed, I've often said, here and elsewhere, that I don't believe in--or, more to the point, don't trust--inspiration.  And the freewheeling stuff is always subject to multiple revisions, executed in a soberer mood, much later.

But I do think we're often our best selves when we forget ourselves.  Perhaps this is why genre fiction so often appeals to literary writers--or metafiction, for that matter, or pastiche, or parody.  We're such sniveling, self-pitying bastards; it's nice to step away from the mirror and be somebody else for a change.

Bill Evans on creativity and simplicity

Interesting bit of video here--an interview with jazz piano legend Bill Evans that addresses the notions of simplicity and straightforwardness I have been thinking about lately. I've been obsessed with spare prose, and with the perils of overwriting. But of course some writers are very good at working in a dense, complicated mode--are they overwriting?

No, they're not--they are working efficiently within a framework where they know they can achieve clarity. Evans illustrates this on the piano--he demonstrates the "overwritten" version of a complex passage. A pretty neat illustration!

An unlikely inspiration

OK, file this is under extra-literary. Last night, when the family sat down to dinner, I went scrolling through the iPod looking for some decent music to listen to while we ate. And I came across an old favorite, an album I have been listening to for ten years with absolute pleasure and have never gotten sick of, an album I find inspiring, amusing, and moving every time I hear it.

Obviously you want to know what it is. I must warn you, knowing is not likely to be of much help. It's called "Home And Abroad," and it's by Howard Skempton, a British avant-garde composer, and it consists of 32 pieces for solo accordion. It's not on Amazon, it's not anywhere (NOTE: I just noticed, there seems to be a used copy at Amazon.co.uk). I can barely find any evidence the thing exists. But I love the hell out of it.

In 1996, I was working at the Missoula Art Museum as a receptionist and, since there were only seven of us, I ended up hanging shows, doing lighting, and (one grueling month) stripping wood floors. That year, we commissioned a piece by Hamish Fulton, a self-described "walking artist" whose pieces consist of him taking a really long walk in the middle of nowhere, then returning several weeks later looking like a homeless man, and spending another week or so filling a gallery space with conceptual work based on his walk--mostly wall paintings, texts, sculptures, etc. His stuff is great, and we really hit it off, so well in fact that a couple of years later we hauled our then-one-year-old son Owen to Canterbury, England, to visit him and his wife.

Hamish and Nancy Fulton are great people, and their cottage outside of town has since served as a model for us on how to live our lives--a book- and art-filled house, idiosyncratically decorated, and filled with a lot of smart, funny conversation. In any event, they picked us up at the train station, and when we walked into their house, this album was playing.

It's hard to describe. Sometimes it sounds like folk music, sometimes modern classical, usually both. It's rhythmically odd, the melodies are sinuous; the playing is rife with good humor. Think...think....of Eric Satie crossed with Weird Al Yankovic. In any event, I immediately asked what it was, characterizing it as being like "an alcoholic circus," and Hamish promised that he would get me a copy.

Well. Our visit was wonderful, and we went home. Time went by. I thought about the album daily--I really wanted it. (This was before it was easy to rip CD's, let alone upload them to your ftp.) Eventually a package arrived from Hamish, but he mustn't have been able to find me a copy, because the one he sent had a little sticker attached to it that read "Fulton." He'd given me his own.

Is it a stretch to say this record has influenced my work? Maybe. More likely, it has served as a reminder of what I like in the world. Simplicity mixed with surprise. Mournful humor. Brevity. This music presumes nothing, and gives everything. It's weird and quietly powerful. Every time I listen to it, it's like listening for the first time. I don't think I can name a book that makes me feel that way.

Rhian will think I'm nuts for posting this, but I just love this album. It's one of the only things I've ever been able to write while listening to--instead of pushing my concentration away, it goes with the flow. It isn't just the music, either--it's the strange journey that I had to take to reach it, a journey that Hamish's walk was a part of. And I love the fact that things still exist that are hard to find.

Shauna's Playlist

Hey, look: it's W6 chum Shauna Seliy, posting over on Largehearted Boy. We posted about Shauna last month when her terrific book When We Get There came out, and now she's offering up a short essay about the music she listened to while writing the book, complete with playlist. A sample:

In movies, there’s often a single defining moment when a character seems to be asked, “Are you going to give up?” Maybe in a hard driving rain on an obstacle course, late at night, and the character lets loose a kind of primal shout at the dark sky. No! we understand, no he won’t give up! If the thing you are trying to do is write a book, and if you’re accompanied by the kind of bloodthirsty self-doubt that beset me throughout that process, the question presents itself more on the order of every few minutes. And you are more likely sitting in a crowded coffee shop wondering if your computer will get stolen while you’re in the bathroom. Or thinking, taking a look at a nearby homeless man writing messages on napkins, that the only thing that separates you from him is your laptop. Or maybe the question will present itself to you in the form of roiling night sweats caused by the deep tissue knowledge of your credit card balance that your body seems to have acquired. Or it’s possible that you read a little Alice Munro the night before, maybe a few lines of Chekhov. In the clear light of day, you know you’re screwed. They’ve done it all, and done it better than you ever could even if you were to stay at the coffee shop 24 hours a day for the rest of your life.

Read the post, listen to the music, buy the novel.

Beatles Books

Rhian can attest to my inexplicable and undying affection for rock and roll documentaries--I've made her sit through about half a dozen. It's not the music that gets me--though I often like it--but the spectacle of (usually) four (always) arrogant (traditionally) men, desperately trying to get along with one another for years on end. As a portrait of group creativity and its pitfalls, these movies are instructive indeed.

It's amazing the Beatles lasted as long as they did, but because they did, we can spend our entire lives reading books about them, if we wish. Two recent ones are standouts, though--Geoff Emerick's Here, There, and Everywhere, and Recording the Beatles, by Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew.

The former is an as-told-to memoir by the head engineer on the late Beatles sessions; Emerick started in at EMI Studios (now Abbey Road) when he was 16, and found himself behind the mixing board, recording Revolver, before he was out of his teens. Emerick is responsible for a lot of the now commonplace, but then highly innovative, sound experiments that characterize the last few Beatles records; he invented many of the effects recording musicians take for granted today. The book is a very fast read--it's told in a direct, engaging style, and is packed with entertaining anecdotes. Emerick comes off as a regular bloke who happens to be brilliant at one specific thing, and it's this thing that makes him a witness to, and maker of, musical history. He doesn't have a lot of tolerance for moodiness--he loves Paul and never cared much for George--but he's otherwise a pleasure to be with for a few hundred pages.

The latter book, Recording the Beatles, is for geeks only. It explains, in exhaustive detail, every piece of equipment used on every Beatles recording, and offers up some major eye candy as well, in the form of glorious photographs, diagrams, and maps. The book is superbly written, is perhaps the best book about recording music, ever. Most surprising is the authors' meticulous examination of the culture of EMI--the heirarchy of its employees, what rules were broken (often by Emerick), and why. It's a unique portrait of a particular time and place.

Even as a physical artifact, Recording the Beatles is an amazing achievement--it's enormous, printed on heavy stock, and comes in a clever cardboard slipcase that mimics the boxes that used to house EMI's analog tape. It'll also run you a benjamin and, if you prop it open on your lap for more than an hour, you'll soon be writing checks to your urologist. It's worth it, though, if you're as big a dork as I am.

Indie Meets Lit

I recently got my hands on a galley of Jonathan Lethem's forthcoming novel. (This post isn't a review of it, but for the record, I don't think it's his best stuff. Like all of his books, however, it's an enjoyable read, very smart and funny, and if you liked the style of As She Climbed Across The Table and Girl In Landscape, you'll dig it.) The book is about the short life of a nineties rock band, and at one point there's a brief quotation from a song by the New-Zealand-based indie group The Verlaines.

I have to confess that this moment kind of broke my heart, and there are many others like it. Indeed, one character has a mix tape of New Zealand bands stuck in the cassette deck of his car, and though Lethem never names those bands, I can promise you that I know every single one of them (The Clean, The Bats, Look Blue Go Purple, etc.) Why did these references drive me to despair? It isn't Lethem's fault. It's indie-rock's fault.

When I'm not writing or teaching, I have a hobby on the side, writing and recording music, for fun. And while I like all kinds of music now, I came of age as a musician in the late eighties indie scene, and listened to this music almost exclusively at the time. I still like it pretty well, but it meant something particular then; it was the soundtrack to white, middle-class alienation, an expression of interiority and a rejection of mass culture. It was insidery and cool to listen to.

But more importantly, indie turned the pop model inside out. Whereas pop made you feel like some little part of the world understood you at last, indie made you feel like you were the only person in the world who understood it. Part of its charm was the way it allowed you to think, while listening to it, that all the other people who had never heard of it were idiots. Never was this more bluntly expressed than in Kurt Cobain's liner notes to Incesticide:

At this point I have a request for our fans. if any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us - leave us the fuck alone! Don't come to our shows and don't buy our records.

Oh no! The idiots have discovered us! Run for your lives!

I don't think many people, reading a piece of contemporary literature, would cringe upon encountering a reference to, say, Bob Dylan. Dylan, by his very nature, belongs to everyone. He rose to fame during an era in which the most popular music was often the most accomplished; the counterculture Dylan helped create eventually became a part of mass culture. Not so with indie rock. You can't start a revolution by looking at your navel, shapely as your navel may be. The bands that survived the era have evolved, become art-rock mainstays, are no longer "indie"; indie itself is basically dead.

The weird thing about Lethem's book is that, unlike books that use sixties counterculture as their setting, it works better if you don't know anything about its cultural context, and instead treat it as a self-contained world, like the one in Girl In Landscape. For my part, though, alas: I know too much.