advertisement
follow us
Newsletter signup
Get a little Crawdaddy! right in the inbox once a week:
Straight to Video
Rock Art Rock
The Decemberists
September 19, 2009
Terminal 5, New York, NY
By Amanda Hatfield "The Decemberists played a special one night 'lottery show,' where the songs played were picked at random by a master of ceremonies, played by John Wesley Harding..."
Ra Ra Riot
April 4, 2009
Webster Hall, New York City, NY
By Amanda Hatfield "This show was, at the time, the biggest one Ra Ra Riot had sold out as headliners, and it was clear to me after watching it that the band is destined for even bigger and better things..."
Florence and the Machine
October 28, 2009
Bowery Ballroom, New York City, NY
By Amanda Hatfield "Florence Welsh and her backing band delighted and mesmerized a sold-out crowd at Bowery in her first official NY headlining show..."
Dirty Projectors
July 19, 2009
Williamsburg Waterfront (Brooklyn, NY)
By Amanda Hatfield "I was skeptical about how well Dirty Projectors' gorgeous, complex vocal harmonies would carry over outdoors, standing under hot sunshine..."
See more in the Rock Art Rock gallery.
Most Read Articles
- The Smoke-Filled Room: Music and a Woman’s Right to Choose
- What Goes On: Liam Gallagher Reveals Post-Oasis Plans, and Other News
- My Life Is the Road: Clarence White and Jim Morrison Stretch on a 747
- It Shows, What Goes On: Live Show Review: Devo at the Regency Ballroom, San Francisco
- What Goes On: This Just In: Steven Tyler Is the Rainbow
- Reviews: Weezer: Raditude
- Introducing: His Name Is John Michael Rouchell
polls
Loading ...-
Search results for: industry giants
Superdrag
Superdrag
Industry Giants
(Superdrag Sound Laboratories, 2009)
Lesson one: Never call it a comeback. When I gushed to a fellow critic about the new Superdrag album “transporting me back to 1994,” he riposted:
“You were, what, eight in 1994?”
Of Wonder Bread and X-Boxes: Can Tropicália Happen Again?
In our endless search for substance or significance in the arts, radio-friendly pop music is not typically the first place we look. It’s certainly nowhere on our list of stops in the quest to preserve the originality, uniqueness, and independence of any indigenous culture; not in this post-Michael Jackson, post-Madonna era of U2, Celine Dion, and the “extensive world tour” through which we cultivate music markets abroad. Yet to anyone who thinks pop music is and has always been intrinsically meaningless, one need only say, “Hey—not always,” and point to Tropicália.
In the late 1960s, not long after a military coup seized Brazil’s conflicted society into a tense, stifling dictatorship, the popular arts there were essentially polarized into opposing political factions. While Brazil’s burgeoning music industry attempted to capitalize on the divide, in the midst of it all there united an incredibly colorful wave of independent cultural resistance—to the dictatorship, yes, but also to the leftist protester extreme. Film, poetry, music, and the plastic arts were all represented in the groundbreaking populist movement, which took its name from an interactive sculpture installation by the artist Hélio Oiticica, and both defied and embraced various prevailing conventions of its time. Through innovative, collaborative form, metaphor, satire, and attitude, the Tropicalistas conveyed complex progressive and subversive ideas in accessible, downright catchy ways. They rejected the politics of extremism while asserting a desire for a new kind of egalitarian artistic freedom, one that embraced international influences in order to enhance its own unique Brazilian-ness.
The music of Tropicália (also called Tropicalismo) was an ingenious pop sensation by design, incorporating stylistic and philosophical elements that could either attract or offend sects from either side of Brazil’s ideological coin, while capturing the imagination of those caught, frustrated, in between. It was criticized from the left for incorporating too much commercial American influence, yet criticized by the right for its transgressive implications. It attempted to avoid the latter by never being overtly political, and overcame the former by sheer stint of awesomeness, for even if electric rock tended to symbolize the USA, it was at that point a symbol of what was great about the USA and its then-relevant cultural revolution. This amalgam of different influences itself sent a message of desire for freedom, innovation, and tolerance. It incorporated and celebrated the beauty of native Brazilian culture, magnifying elements of it for appreciation on the world stage, while also appreciating and incorporating the cultural differences, freedoms, and achievements of foreign contemporaries.
Sunset Boulevard: The Metal Years
Many books come out each year deconstructing rock music: The musicians, their albums, their songs, their showering habits, and their other habits. It’s here where we’ll take an excerpt of a book for you to check out before you make the purchase. As of now these will exclusively feature the venerable 33 1/3 series, which picks apart an album by a band or musician. In the future, we hope to include more rock books of all varieties.
Welcome to the season of the blockbuster. On August 12, 1991, Metallica released Metallica, their Bob Rock–produced sell-in, with “Enter Sandman” detonating the MTV Video Music Awards. On November 26, Michael Jackson bought number one for Dangerous with the soon circumcised final section of the “Black or White” video. In between, a scad of once and future giants of pop music released albums in time for Christmas. Pearl Jam’s Ten (August 27) and Nirvana’s Nevermind (September 24) portended grunge. Garth Brooks’s Ropin’ the Wind (September 10) proved, thanks to the newly installed SoundScan, which measured actual sales rather than the rock-weighted guesses of store clerks, that country music was its own behemoth. MC Hammer’s pop-rap Too Legit to Quit (October 21), successor to the 10 million–selling Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ’Em, sold a quick three million and then not a copy more after people actually heard it. Mariah Carey’s Emotions (September 17) was indifferent for her (three million at first, five in all), huge for anyone else. And U2 cemented their status as the most enduringly beloved band of rock’s second generation with an album whose title seemed like a media stunt: Achtung Baby.
But the weirdest blockbuster of them all that fall was Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion I and II, released on September 17, a pair of 75-minute CDs with virtually the same cover sold separately in an act of almost colossal arrogance. GN’R had a right, though. Their first album, 1987’s Appetite for Destruction, had been certified eight times platinum in 1991, on its way to an eventual fifteen. Rock was still the biggest musical genre, hard rock was still the biggest kind of rock, and GN’R were the biggest hard rock band of their day. The first single from Use, “You Could Be Mine”, appeared first on the Terminator 2 soundtrack, and the video featured the movie’s unstoppable machine men. Consumers were supposed to be equally unable to avoid Use Your Illusion, which like all post-Thriller blockbusters of that time was planned to play out over several years, relived in multiple single releases and videos, tours, spinoff products, and press provocations. And on one level, it worked: The albums instantly claimed the top two chart positions, ultimately sold seven million copies apiece in the US alone, and spawned videos as leviathan as “November Rain.”
A Banner Year for the Music Industry
So I have a confession to make: when the ever-so-patient editors at Crawdaddy! asked me to write a year-end column summing the events of the year I said, “Sure, no problem.” No sooner had I agreed then I wondered, “Wait, what do I have to say that matters, and who really cares?” It dawned on me that the only things I ever write about here are rants on the state of the music business. It had never really occurred to me before that I’ve been focusing exclusively on such a narrow subject.
I realized my raison d’etre here may be to provide quick insights with carefully metered usage of the word fuck throughout so as to seem above the fray. Being the smart-ass in discussing the demise of an industry that was responsible (more than any other industry) for bridging youth culture from around the world (pop culture in its original connotation), was never really my intention. The topics are interesting to me, for sure, and the players involved are easy enough to take a jab at—but the subject matter is actually pretty serious.
Music Books of the Last Six Months: Summer Edition
by: The C! Team
Well, it’s that time of year again where we all collectively attempt to slow down the pace of our roundabout lives, and for good reason. Shit, we all need to partake in some summertime activity, like some going to the beach or pool, or some eating of some hot dogs and drinking of some beers at a baseball game, or, you know, in some being especially lazy. Let the summer breeze blow through the jasmine of your mind, as it were. Record releases come to a proverbial halt, so we’re following their lead, however inanimate they are. What we’re trying to say is that we aren’t publishing for the next week, due to a twice-a-year necessity to hit the reset button and come back refreshed and ready for more rollickin’ rock journalism. The good news is that we’re keeping up the tradition of our bi-annual book review! This summertime edition features music-related books that have come out in the last six months. You should pick up a few and add them to your summer reading list, and really, really focus on taking things down a notch. Enjoy!
Photographs and text by Lauren Dukoff
(Chronicle Books)
read more
by: The C! Team
published: July 1, 2009 in column: Book Reviews
1 comment