I went to a concert the other day – The Two Funerals – and the lead singer introduced the most of the songs in this fashion:

“This song’s about how fucked up racism and sexism is.” *feedback* *feedback* *powerchord* *scream*

I feel… elated.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Their online videos sound decent, but not incredible, and the album is processed enough that you might question whether they could pull it off live. Besides, even really excellent bands with years and years of experience often sound less than perfect live. It’s just the nature of rock music.

Not to worry – I was completely blown away.

Live, Sick of Sarah sounds every bit as good as on the album, plus all the additional energy you expect from a live performance. It was practically note perfect, but still managed to be spontaneous and plenty indie rockish (not overly glitzy, etc.) The crowd ate up every word, despite being utterly tiny (100ish). Which is why I’m writing this – I don’t know what kind of draw they get elsewhere, but they deserved a much bigger crowd than that! So if you’re considering going to one of their shows, but haven’t decided to yet, here’s five reasons you definitely, absolutely should (slight gush alert!):

• First, there’s Katie: Not just the rhythm guitar, as she’s sometimes listed. (In fact, she seems to play about half the lead parts – you wouldn’t guess it from the album) She’s got an impressive ear for everything she plays, and rocks out in all the appropriate places. Most of all she blends and trades off with Jessie perfectly. I’ve been a huge fan of the ‘two equal guitars’ concept ever since I fell in love with Sleater-Kinney, and they pull it off here while still including a bass. Which brings me to…
• Jamie – she’s so… stoic? serious? Something. Whatever it is, it complements Abisha’s crazy and Jessie’s silly perfectly. I think what I’m trying to say is that she’s a ’statuesque’ bass player. Or something. It looks awesome in any case. And sounds great too.
• Jessica, on the other hand is a much a whirlwind as she looks in the videos, and her drumming is every bit as powerful as you could want (she’s a step up, power-wise, from Brooke), and nuanced enough to make it work live (I’ll be interested to hear how she sounds on the new album).
• Jessie is a consummate rock guitarist. She’s got the hair, the attitude, and the on-stage pose to pull it off. And when she digs into a tricky guitar riff, feet set, fingers flying, it’s something to behold (especially from five feet away!). Not to mention, she’s laid-back, even downright goofy the rest of the time (which also rocks).
• But Jessie’s goofiness is nothing next to Abisha, who I’ve decided is completely insane (in the most positive of ways). She somehow managed to pull off her ‘water spout’ trick, dance all over the stage (and down in the audience), constantly manipulate a reverb unit, and down a remarkably large number of shots, all while hardly missing a note. Not to mention letting a couple of (very inebriated) fans feel her up in the middle of the song, randomly steal one of said fans’ cap (I was a bit confused by that – aren’t baseball caps a big no-no at indie rock shows?) and throwing it across the room. And last but not least, she climbed up on the kick drum, sang through to the climax of the song, and finished by jumping off and doing a 360 degree turn – without getting tangled up in her mic cord. Did I mention she sounds just as awesome live as she does on the record? Incredible.

And that’s why you should go see Sick of Sarah.

(Killola, by the way, was pretty decent too – although Lisa’s own attempt at kick drum climbing was a bit, ummm, shaky and unimpressive. If you ever see them, though, you really should bring ear plugs – I can tolerate some pretty loud music (I was a couple feet in front of a PA speaker for all of Sick of Sarah’s set) – but Killola made my head hurt from the back of the room. I would have enjoyed it a good deal more if my hearing hadn’t been deadened by the first song!)

I listened to a bunch of older country this weekend while digitizing some vinyl (and wrote a FWF post about one song), and I think I’m learning to enjoy it, just a little. I’m concerned though – the songs I like best are the most ‘rock’ like and the most ‘folk’ like. I still can’t stand the stereotypes. And I still think that modern country is unbearably whiny! Perhaps it’s just not my aesthetic. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it… Then again, I have noticed that the ‘bored’ aspect of country heightens the impact of some songs (think calm and soothing), so maybe I just need to listen until I get understand the ‘whiny’ aspect too.

On to electronica – I actually like electronic music as a whole, I really do. It’s just one particular aspect that’s driving me nuts: the highly altered voices. It’s those effects that sound rather like a voice is being used to set the pitch for another instrument, together with just enough of the original voice to still form words. I assume it’s done with some kind of complex comb filter, etc., but it sounds to me like somebody’s being tortured! Which is not a nice musical sound. At all.

Gah. I’m getting the shivers just thinking about it. Maybe I’ll never learn to like it. Maybe that’s okay…

My Fourth Wave Feminism post which discusses this blues, among others, is here.

Cold In Hand Blues:

I’ve got a hard workin’ man
The way he treats me I can’t understand

He works hard every day
And on Sat’day throws away his pay

Now I don’t want want that man
because he’s done gone cold in hand

Now I’ve tried hard to treat him kind
Now I’ve tried hard to treat him kind
But it seems to me his love is gone blind

The man I’ve got must have lost his mind
The man I’ve got must have lost his mind
The way he treats me I can’t understand

I’m gonna find myself another man
I’m gonna find myself another man
Because the one I’ve got has done gone cold in hand

Then some smart person invented the wax cylinder record and the wire recorder (like a tape recorder, only with a wire). They sounded terrible. Really terrible. From a modern perspective, they are rather hard to listen to.Here are some halfway decent pre-1910, as an example.

But things got better very quickly. Microphones improved dramatically, magnetic tape and vinyl records were invented, all the way to 24 bit DVD audio and $10,000 sound systems. And here’s where it all gets stupid.

Now, recording engineers are obsessed with headroom, with avoiding distortion, with getting the cleanest, ‘hottest’ recording at all costs (it is their job, but still…). Audiophiles, when they’re not buying the latest gadget, are debating the benefits of 24 bit vs 16 bit vs vinyl. And musicians (who were the actual inspiration for this post!) are obsessed with being recorded properly, with getting just the right equipment, and on and on and on.

I’d like to offer a simple solution. It doesn’t matter! Listen to this recording. And this one. Yes, there’s clipping, noise, distortion. Yes, Armstrong’s trumpet sounds strange and muted, significantly different from the true sound. Yes, the tape hiss on the Heifetz is almost as loud as the music at times. But they both are wonderful performances! Would it really make a difference if the recordings were better? Really? Sure, I might listen to the better one if I had it (or not! I’d have to hear it first – I’ve been known to prefer live versions of e.g. the Indigo Girls over studio versions.), but would I enjoy it more? I somehow doubt it.

Maybe all that really matters in music, is, well, the music.

Just a thought.

This ends today’s impassioned rant.

For that price, you get:

Signed CD/DVD, digital download, T-shirt, signed drum from the 2008 Nine Inch Nails tour; he’ll take you miniature golfing and give you a tour of his favorite haunts in Long Beach. You’ll get the foot or back massage, a private drum lesson and any three items from Josh’s closet.

and

Most of the above, plus you can go on tour with Josh for a few days. He’ll also write, record and release a five-song EP about you and your life story. You can take home any of his drum sets, go drinking and play with him on his Ouija board. Also enjoy a trip with Josh to Tijuana, take a flying-trapeze lesson and then join him for lasagna.

Yeah.

The massage, the flying-trapeze, and the closet items seem a bit silly. But the lunch and private drum lesson is a good idea. It’s rather like Radioheads ‘the album is worth what you want to pay for it’ experiment. Except, this capitalizes on the high end of the market instead of the low end.

Curious.

Never mind about that. I do have something to say about all of the films:

There was too much music!

I never thought I’d hear myself say that – I am a semi-professional musician, after all! How can there be too much music? Especially if it is good music – and most of the music in these films was at least fairly good. Music makes everything better, right? (A la Jackie Primrose Monahan…)

Nope, it certainly doesn’t.

Problem #1 with music: Using it to create artificial emotion.

The writing and acting in a film must be able to create emotion on its own. The music is only useful for heightening existing emotion, not creating it! Girl Talk was the worst in this regard: I don’t know these people, I’m not identifying with them, and indie rock music isn’t going to make me care if they’re kissing! Simply having them kiss in silence would have improved it tremendously, mostly because:

Problem #2: Good music makes your average film look awful!

I used to play in a small youth orchestra. It was an informal group, and the director was more of an organizer than a musician. I was always having to convince her that having a pianist accompany the orchestra was a bad, bad idea. Why? Because the piano always sounds good! It’s always in tune, it has a good tone, and it’s usually play by an extremely competent player. In comparison, the orchestra, while quite good by itself, suddenly sounded out of tune, error prone, and generally made up of absolute beginners. It almost sounded as if we needed the piano to keep us together! Of course, if an orchestra is sufficiently talented, a piano can be a good addition – but as a member of the group, not as accompaniment.

The same thing happens with these films. Look – nobody expects them to be wonderful, but adding goodish music makes them seem worthless by contrast. In some of the worst cases, I found myself completely ignoring the picture and just listening to the music.

Perhaps I’m just in a Anyone But Me is the greatest web show ever – partly due to its economy with music – induced haze. Still, I can’t help but think that all of these films abused music. Even having no music at all would have been a great improvement.

Apparently, they recorded a few more song than were on the EP, and Carrie just released them on her blog. According to Carrie, they were just sitting around so, “…why not?”

I suppose this means that The Spells will never release an album now, but I’m certainly not going to complain. Four songs is infinitely better than nothing! And the songs are pretty darn cool, so go and listen now – they’re only available for two weeks.

Thoughts on the individual tracks:

Bat Vs. Bird
Punk rock style riffs plus a really beautiful melody plus sound effects! Timony has a very unique singing style, moving through the odd intervals in the opening easily. The hissing s’s are a nice touch, and the ‘fall’ (for lack of a better word) at the end of the chorus “listen to the birds… as they call”

The song is delicate, almost a ’springtime’ song, with just a touch of sadness. Being chased by a vampire bat never sounded more appealing!

Viola
Starts out with… a violin? I can’t really tell, but something just doesn’t sound right with the opening! That’s just a minor difficulty, though. The guitar playing is excellent, and the singing is absolutely haunting. I have a real weakness for women singing in a low register!

Very good, though not as good as Bat vs. Bird.

Champion Vampire
Almost sounds like an early Sleater-Kinney song! They both sing simultaneously throughout, and due to my inability to understand lyrics easily, the only time I can tell what they are singing is the unison “You’re the best thing I never had!” (Let me know if you can make out the rest, would you?)

This song sounds cool, in the most specific sense of the word.

Antarctica
Begins with generic angry background noise, almost like a Pink Floyd song. I’m not crazy about the singing on this one – and I still can’t understand the words! The ‘oo hoo’ sound is a bit silly, and overall the song is rather boring – just like Antarctica, I guess! I do like the guitar vibrato at the end of the phrases.

So, Bat vs. Bird is the best, Antarctica is the worst, and my primary reaction is, “YAY! Something new(ish) from Carrie!”

She should do a solo project, or something.

I’ve spent a lot of time on allmusic lately, reading about bands, trying to find new music, etc. It’s a pretty good site, if the reviews are only of variable quality (the editors subscribe to the ‘popularity is directly proportional to quality’ school of reviewing’) The information seems very accurate, and the sheer amount of material included is quite overwhelming.

So, if anybody should know about music genres, what they are, and what define them, it should be allmusic, right?

Not so much.

Their rock genre page alone has some 300 genres listed. The other broad genre pages aren’t quite so bad – and the classical page is sadly deficient – but my overall impression has been “big mess”.

So why do I even care, you ask?

Back when I was younger, and a classical music snob who hated popular music, I heard people talk about ‘acid punk’ and ‘death metal’, etc. and wondered what on earth those terms meant. When I listened to the music in question, it all sounded relatively the same to me – guitars, drums, and singing. Later, as I started to become more interested in popular music, my first question was always, what do I call this type of music, and how do I tell that that is what it is? Nobody seemed to know the answer.

Classical music, you see, has a relatively simple classification system. The basic genres are: Pre-Baroque, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern. Classical music is divided by time period, and within each period the music is fairly consistent. The are, of course, arguments as to what piece goes where; opera also complicates things somewhat, and the “Modern period” of music is almost as big of a mess a popular music is. Someone should probably make a better genre system for Modern period music, but mostly Modern composers are seen purely as individuals – their music is usually so unique that it isn’t really like any other. (Unless is is, in which case the are grouped under the name of the most famous\first composer in that style) So it’s pretty easy to at least get an overview of the genres in classical music.

The reason for this is, of course, is that: 1. Classical music was only systematized decades, or even centuries, after it was written, and 2. we tend to only listen to a few composers from each period, both because there weren’t as many composers then, and because the ‘poorer’ ones are ignored. (‘poorer’ being a relative term…) It’s just not that hard.

Back to pop music. Popular music genres are much, much different. Firstly, bands frequently label themselves in some fashion, insisting that they are ‘electro-acid-punk’ or some such. They are often incorrect, or else they make up unnecessary genre names. Secondly, individual bands often change styles, causing even more confusion. Thirdly, people are just plain confused, and marketing considerations, just wanting the next buzzword, don’t help anything. People end up just liking ‘X’ band, and those bands like ‘X’ – and so we get Pandora, which tries to describe music by a list of adjectives. This is unfortunate, I think, if only because people miss out on things that they might really like.

But there is some consistency in the genre system. I thought I could understand it for a long time. At first, I thought it was just a matter of listening to enough music – but even finding out what genre a given band play proved to be difficult, and I just became more confused. Than I looked for a clear explanation, or a chart/diagram. Still no luck. There is a ‘metal’ chart floating around out there, but it’s not really informational. I also found an alt music genre site, which is mostly just inconsistent and confusing. And, after looking through allmusic, it seems obvious that understanding existing genres fully is a futile task. Even professional critics do not understand them.

So here’s what I’m going to do: Make a classification system based primarily on sound, and then on lyrics to a lesser extant. Non-musical aspects of economics (indie vs. mainstream), and philosophy (fancy stage shows vs. just music) will be ignored whenever possible. It’s not that those things aren’t important – they are – I’m just trying to simplify things.

I’ll try to place existing genres within the system, and make a note where bands are incompatible. My goal is to create something that will allow people (and myself!), to fully appreciate and understand the amazing range of expression available in modern popular music, without becoming bogged down in fan/critic arguments and misleading names.

If anybody has suggestions, let me know.

Then I saw the ‘Daisies’ video, and I thought I’d give them another shot. The last day or so, they’ve really been growing on me. I’m not really sure why – but I think it’s the melodies. The songs are clever, but not genius, the instrumentals are just average, but the melodies are interesting.

The constant use of triplets is unusual for pop music, and the occasional meter changes combined with the sharpness and snappiness of the lead singer’s voice create a kind of ‘off balance’ effect that forces you to listen.

Or something like that. I’ll review the album after I listen to it a few more times.