music

Pitchfork’s Top Track of the 1990s

What? You were expect­ing “Sum­mer Babe?”

I spent the bet­ter part of the day talk­ing about how fun­ny it’d be if the top 20 of their list were just crammed with tracks like this. The mem­o­ries came flood­ing back. Remem­ber Dish­wal­la? Could “Tubthump­ing” make the top 20?

For my mon­ey, it’s a shame that they won’t. If noth­ing else, the ’90s were a won­der­ful­ly eclec­tic decade musi­cal­ly. Sure, every­one remem­bers the boy band tyran­ny that book­end­ed the decade and the post-grunge void in between, but some real­ly nut­ty music cracked the main­stream. Would Crash Test Dum­mies even be pos­si­ble today?

Part of me wish­es this would top the list. The song was freakin’ inescapable! (I’m aware that that’s not a tes­ta­ment to its cul­tur­al val­ue, but it’s unde­ni­ably more a part of Amer­i­ca’s cul­tur­al mem­o­ry than most of the songs on that list.)

My First Indie Rock Album

Lest you think I’m a total wee­nie for admit­ting that I liked some maudlin tunes, my first indie rock album was Codeine’s The White Birch. I bought it at Repo Records after run­ning two miles from Haver­ford Col­lege in the mid­dle of a track meet. I ran four miles round trip to buy a Sub Pop album. You don’t know how easy you have it today!

That album led me to write the band. Would you believe they wrote me back and told me to check out Gas­tr del Sol? That’s how my life­long addic­tion to music began.

My first indie rock LP? That’s easy. Bought Jon Spencer Blues Explo­sion’s Orange at Young Ones in Kutz­town. I did­n’t even have a prop­er turntable at the time! Fell in love with this record so much. Still can’t get enough of it.

The Matter of David Grasso’s New Club

Two local blogs I fol­low dogged­ly now are Plan Philly and Brown­ston­er’s Philly branch. I real­ly got into the for­mer when I start­ed notic­ing bylines from my online bud­dy Bri­an James Kirk. I noticed that the site real­ly picked up steam and was on top of all the cool devel­op­ment issues and the not-so-cool ones, too. Same for Brown­ston­er. They do the thank­less work that green reporters do: attend zon­ing hear­ings and watch real estate trans­ac­tions to see who’s buy­ing what and why. I’m real­iz­ing in this moment that this is why I love Foo­booz’s restau­rant death­watch so much.

As I’ve said like 1,000 times before, I got a degree in urban polit­i­cal econ­o­my before I found myself get­ting a steady pay­check for know­ing things about folks like Bey­once and Rihan­na. Stuff like this, bor­ing as it may seem, real­ly excites me. And some­times those worlds collide!

Such is the case with talk of a new music venue not so far from my home here in Port Fish­ing­ton or Olde Rich­mond as our sil­ly neigh­bor­hood asso­ci­a­tion likes to call it. It strikes me as a com­plete non-starter, not only because that stretch of road is some of the most des­o­late with­in walk­ing dis­tance, but also because why in the hell does Philadel­phia need anoth­er music venue that size? Do they know the live music busi­ness is cra­ter­ing all around us? Is Live Nation real­ly that des­per­ate to find a new and cre­ative way to lose mon­ey in a mar­ket they already lost?

Aes­thet­i­cal­ly, Gras­so’s design looks like World Cafe Live! on steroids, which is to say, a venue I don’t vis­it often on steroids. (For the record, I’ve been to World Cafe Live! twice and I’ve nev­er paid.) I’ll grant that there’s an off chance it suc­ceeds if artists like Rihan­na, et. al. feel like the Bor­ga­ta is insuf­fi­cient to their “pre­mi­um expe­ri­ence” demands. But I have a hard time believ­ing that the hard luck crowd hit­ting Sug­ar­House is going to schlep up Rich­mond for a big bucks con­cert lat­er in the evening.

It’s inter­est­ing to read David Gras­so’s own com­ment on Philebri­ty, where I’m sure many folks hip to the scene heard of this for the first time. Gras­so address­es the gaunt­let he alleged­ly threw down at the Elec­tric Fac­to­ry, the venue most like­ly affect­ed should his new project go for­ward. You can read his defense here.

I’ve been in Philadel­phia and on the music scene for a sol­id sev­en years. I’ve seen the rise and fall of great music venues, includ­ing the North Star and the Khy­ber. I’ve seen the res­ur­rec­tion of the Tow­er. I’ve watched as Clear Chan­nel strug­gled once they lost their monop­oly on the mar­ket. I’m hon­est­ly sur­prised to see Sean Agnew hav­ing the suc­cess he has, and I’m hap­py for him. Does that mean that Gras­so deserves to build a music empo­ri­um that would direct­ly com­pete with a venue like the Elec­tric Fac­to­ry? Hardly.

I know lots of folks think that the only solu­tion to “save” the Philadel­phia water­front is to devel­op it as intense­ly as pos­si­ble, with­out care for sus­tain­abil­i­ty. I strong­ly dis­agree. I think that if there are areas worth pre­serv­ing, or even reclaim­ing, as pub­lic space, then that should be the rule, rather than arbi­trar­i­ly auc­tion­ing tracts of land to devel­op­ers who don’t seem to under­stand the future of their busi­ness. I’d hate to see this become the fan­ci­est dol­lar store in Port Rich­mond in five years.

Some Musical Notes

Sim­ply amaz­ing. Still in heavy rotation. 

I’ve become the sort of crit­ic who likes spring releas­es. Give them time to mar­i­nate, I say. That new Liars album is still reveal­ing new things to me.

Ready for a stun­ning admis­sion? I still haven’t heard the new Arcade Fire album! I’m still aghast that Spoon opened for them.

What’s even cool any­more? I’m so old I remem­ber when an 8.1 on Pitch­fork meant you hit the big time.

The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite

Had this song stuck in my head on Tues­day morn­ing. Odd, because I learned that the man respon­si­ble for writ­ing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” George David Weiss, had died the night before.

As I thought about it, I looked up Matt Per­pet­u­a’s exhaus­tive Pop Songs ’07-’08 and found this entry for the song. So maybe that’s not the most illu­mi­nat­ing piece ever writ­ten about an R.E.M. song, but it remind­ed me that Auto­mat­ic for the Peo­ple was such a down­er of a record.

I know I’ve said it before else­where, but I can’t even try to lis­ten to this absolute pill of a record any­more. Maybe it puts me back in a weird spot, remem­ber­ing all the awk­ward moments it sound­tracked while I was a gawky teen, but it’s so one note that even tracks like “Sidewinder” and “Ignore­land” can’t shake me from my sleep. Going back to that place is one weird trip, let me tell you.

This album is to me what I think an album like Lucin­da Williams’ Car Wheels on a Grav­el Road would be just six years lat­er: a sol­id adult con­tem­po­rary record that lulled peo­ple into a false sense of sophis­ti­ca­tion. (How I avoid­ed buy­ing that Williams record I may nev­er know.) As much as I used to think Auto­mat­ic was a pro­found med­i­ta­tion on death, I real­ize today that that had every­thing to do with me know­ing noth­ing about the sub­ject mat­ter. It’s the muzak disc Stipe cursed the Bea­t­les for mak­ing. How he can even sing “Every­body Hurts” with a straight face at this point in his career is beyond me.