Debating Pop pt. 2

I tried to figure out the appeal of the widely celebrated Antony & the Johnsons, who sounds as contrived to me, as Tom Waits, Dave Matthews and anybody who ever played in the Velvet Underground. If you really dig for similarities you might end up with Meat Loaf for the art house set (referring to his operatic pathos, not his size). Still there’s some deeply embedded pop cultural feedback loop that makes it work. It’s not just his Billie Holiday timbre. Nina Simone came to mind, but her main force was raw anger, while Antony is more larmoyant. Although sometimes he does manage to muster some of this sorrow that comes from heartbreak way beyond disappointed love.

Which brought me back to Esther Phillips whose timbre might be the true crosslink between Lady Day and Antony. Her catalogue is dominated by this heart wrenching pessimism. She even managed to take the outrage over the failing civil rights movement in Gil Scott-Heron’s "Home Is Where The Hatred Is" to new levels of pain. Of course she could also be very diva, as she proves with her interpretation of Odyssey’s disco classic „Native New Yorker“. But I guess that comes with the territory.

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Watch Anthony & the Johnsons

Floodwater Running Through My Veins

The New Orleans legends and contenders for "most sampled band ever" The Meters played New York last night. There was some announcement how New Yorkers truly understand, what the people in New Orleans are going through, because somehow Katrina was like 911, which didn’t really make sense, but didn’t matter either, because they jumped right into one of their legendary grooves. Not that they ignored the anger and frustration of their hometown. Art Neville inserted some new lyrics into their old songs, it was hard to understand, but there was definitely something about CNN and rising tides and „Fire on the Bayou“ featured the new line „There is floodwater running through my veins“.

It’s easy to forget that The Meters are not just New Orleans legends and raw material for beats by everybody from the Beastie Boys and A Tribe Called Quest to Ice Cube and Public Enemy. For quite a while they were the blueprint for everything Rock music wanted to be. After all it was New Orleans that was the ultimate destination of Dennis Hopper’s and Peter Fonda’s quest for the American soul in „Easy Rider“. You can hear Meters inspired songs on countless albums by people like the Allman Brothers, The Band and especially Little Feat. Robert Palmer didn't even try himself and hired The Meters to play on his '74 album. The following year Paul McCartney cut a Mardi Gras track with the Meters that closes „Venus & Mars“. When they played at a party he gave on the Queen Mary, the Stones were there and immediately hired them as their support act for their next tour. But only the Feat’s Lowell George was invited to play on a track of an actual Meters album.

Last night they proved to be still true to form. Only the venue was a downer. They call it the Nokia Theater and this strange fear permeates these large rooms with those towering logs of all these sponsors. Goons man all the strategic points of the subterranean complex, there are color coded lines, wristbands and the drinks are rationed - one per wristband only, if you want to get your company one too, you have to give up your place in the actual theater and bring them. It's as if they are afraid of the very culture they're hosting here. Well, just to satisfy my prepubescent problems with authority I just ended my longstanding brand loyalty and exchanged my Nokia for a nifty looking Samsung fliphone.

Arnold in Rio

This is the film Governor Schwarzenegger didn't want you to see - Carnival in Rio, which he shot in 1983 on the heels of his success as Conan the Barbarian for the Playboy Channel. But the Internet's memory is merciless and somebody generously keeps on donating bandwidth so we can watch a carefully edited clip of highlights from this cinematic gem. See Arnold dance, see Arnold grope, see Arnold make his Portuguese teacher simulate oral sex on condiments! Arnold's best line comes during his musings on the erotic supremacy of Brazilian mulata women while observing some scantily clad Samba dancers at Club Oba Oba: „You know something, after watching the mulatas shake it, I can absolutely understand why Brazil is totally devoted to my favorite body part: the ass."

During the recall election campaign the publisher American Media (home of the National Inquirer, Weekly World News and Muscle & Fitness) supposedly tried to suppress the video and even paid somebody $ 2,000.- for a copy. Originally American Media had pursued Schwarzenegger's sex life with a string of scandalous stories, but Schwarzenegger made them an offer they couldn't refuse. For a mere million Dollars he would have come on board as a consultant to the publisher and thus give their fitness publications his bodybuilding legend stamp of approval. Consequently AMI's publications backed him all the way, only to have him back out of the deal after all.

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Watch Arnold in Rio

Cruise

I’m not a particular fan of the South Park series, but their recent episode with the Church of Scientology and Tom Cruise coming to town was a riot. When South Park’s Stan gets tested on the Church’s E-meter, he registers as an instant "Operational Tetan 9", which is the highest stage of enlightenment you can reach in their belief system. Stan is considered the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard. Subsequently Cruise comes to South Park to talk to the ‚prophet’ and asks Stan what he thinks of his work. The boy replies "You're O.K. I mean you're not Leonardo DiCaprio or Napoleon Dynamite or anything." Cruise is devastated, whines: "I'm a failure in the eyes of the Prophet!" and subsequently locks himself into Stan's bedroom closet. Everybody comes together in Stan’s bedroom and begs: „Come out of the Closet, Tom.“
Later John Travolta, Nicole Kidman and R. Kelly try to help, with Travolta and Kelly getting locked up in the closet as well. Noticeably absent was the character of Chef in this episode, whose voice of course is provided by Isaac Hayes, himself a staunch follower of Scientology. No news yet, how Scientology and Cruise reacted, but if you missed the show, you can see it on the ScienTomogy website, which also features hilarious clips of Tom Cruise promoting Scientology and vilifiying psychology on various TV shows this summer.

Weekend in Kentucky

Went down to Louisville, Kentucky for the weekend to attend the opening festivities of the Muhammad Ali Center, which is somewhat like a presidential library for the Champ. Funny town. They’re proud of having a view of the nation’s second largest clock above the Colgate plant across the river in Indiana and of having the world’s largest chandelier on one of them five casino boats on the Ohio River. The windowless bar of the local Hyatt with its pool tables and Formica paneling had all the charm of a state sponsored Romanian youth club. The bartenders swapped stories about the last funeral directors’ convention, while they served me snifters of so-called „sipping Bourbon“, which is the local effort to compete with expensive single malts, although it still tastes like kerosene. I guess the flight on that tiny Delta jet had already been a strong hint that I was leaving cosmopolitan America behind, with that faint odor of manure wafting through the cabin courtesy of a non-working bathroom door and seats encrusted with old chewing gums and the remnants of countless crackers (no pun intended).

Ali's museum wasn’t quite finished yet, but I really liked the place. It sits on a prime spot by the river overlooking the 2nd Street bridge, from which Ali supposedly threw his Olympic gold medal in 1960, because some segregated diner on Main Street had refused him service, even though he had entered with the medal around his neck.
The museum features plenty of footage with Ali clobbering opponents and getting talk-show hosts off-kilter with blunt statements about race and politics. There are some nice virtual reality installations, like a heavy bag attached to some mechanism that simulates the punch of a heavy-weight, and a ring where you can spar with a projected image of Ali's daughter Laila. To continue Ali's humanitarian work, it will also serve as a center for conflict resolution on a rather ambitious scale. They already sponsored a round of informal Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Ali had never seen the finished place, so yesterday he toured the exhibition halls with the help of his wife Lonnie and his buddies Kris Kristofferson and Howard Bingham. He seemed quite overwhelmed, seeing a whole modern museum dedicated to his life, but it’s hard to tell what he thinks these days. He still does his friendly shadowboxing moves, but can’t talk much right now. On top of the Parkinson increasingly getting a hold on his motor skills he's had neck surgery a couple of weeks ago and his gate looks like he’s wading through knee-deep cotton candy. But his charisma is still intact, getting grown men to feel like teenage girls meeting their crooner idol. In one of the Center’s showreels Billy Crystal puts it best: „...and in this quiet now he is almost louder than when he was ranting and raving.“

The Singaporization of New York

Last night the Country Music Association Awards were held in New York. Now why would you wanna do something like that? There must go a lot of careful planning into forcing a whole bunch of people who hate New York to come here, where nobody wants them in the first place. The same kind of planning that went into holding the Republican National Convention in Manhattan. It all fits rather well into Bloomberg's ongoing Singaporization of New York that brought us the Time Warner Mall, Christo's merchandising bonanza The Gates, plus a law and order policy that seems to be steeped in Chinese traditions rather than Western society. Make no mistake, he goes way beyond Giuliani. I never had so many friends my age spending a night in jail for some minor offense that used to get you a scolding when you were a kid. And I’m way past the age where you are prone to run into trouble with the law.

Now I do enjoy Country music (somehow Country has always been a big thing in Germany, Johnny Cash even recorded a German album with local twanger Gunter Gabriel). New Year’s eve 2003 we danced to the Jimmy Nations Combo at Lillie’s in Red Hook until about five in the morning. Brooklyn of all places is actually the one part of New York City where you can hear some of the most outstanding Country Music. Hank’s Saloon on Atlantic Avenue is a great Honkytonk and those aren’t out-of-towners playin’ there. The website Brooklyn Country lists over 40 local performers and groups like the Gowanus Corral and the Cobble Hillbillies.

But the CMAs sure weren’t about down home bohemian Americana. The show was hosted by patriot faves Brooks & Dunn, some of the award winning artists and honorees were ultra-redstaters like Toby Keith, Alabama and the hosts themselves. Ain’t no room for the Steve Earles and Willie Nelsons on this roster, no Siree. Don’t they have the rest of the country to hang out in? Well, at least they made the premiere of „Walk The Line“ part of the festivities, which I’m rather curious to see, because Johnny Cash had been an icon of mine long before Rick Rubin stripped him down to his bare voice and guitar.

Debating Pop

Debating Pop is a great way to hone your rhetorical skills. When you’re a teenager. After a certain age there’s something pitiful about this debate, but it seems that nobody gets more serious about it, like middle-aged Europeans. Being one of those I recently found myself at Milano’s Bar on Houston defending Neil Diamond against the very adament arguments of a novel-writing PEN Club member who’s ten years my senior and kept on praising the Smashing Pumpkins. What a sad sight we must’ve been, but it did rekindle the thrill of debating for the sake of debating. It also illustrated a fundamental generational difference - the earnest pathos of Rock against the frivolous nonchalance of Pop.

A good topic to continue an intergenerational discourse might be the current glorification of Kate Bush by the European Pop intelligentsia. I dutifully listened to her celebrated comeback album and found myself rather worried. Does any self-respecting disciple of Pop dare to even own this? Let's grant the target group of Waldorf-school-students, crystal healers and Hobbit-fanclubs it's own music, but isn't this a sign of the long-dreaded comeback of Progrock? Is Lester Bangs rotating in his grave right now? And where is Nick Hornby, when we need him?

Burn Baby Burn

It’s day 11 of the French riots and there is no end in sight. Quite the contrary. Rioting supposedly spread to 300 towns. Today a 61-year old man who had been beaten into a coma by one of the rioters was the first confirmed death. Last night the first cars went up in flames in the German cities of Berlin and Bremen. The politicians are at a loss. No wonder. '68 won’t work as a political reference. 1992 is more like it – the year of the Los Angeles riots, because it isn't a riot with a political aim. It’s not even fueled by some jihadist fervor, which would be as irrational as the current rage, but at least fit into some known political coordinates. It's true that being muslim has isolated many of the rioters from mainstream society, it's also true that islamic fundamentalists used that very frustration to recruit, but right now it’s pure nihilism sweeping throught the street of Europe.

The stories are quite similar. The LA riots might have been triggered by the acquittal of the four cops who had beaten up Rodney King. The true anger that had simmered in the city for months had been the killing of Latasha Harlin though, a black teenager who had been shot by a Korean grocer, who was only sentenced to a fine of $ 500.-.

In the US riots have been started by violence against minority youth again and again. In Paris the riots were triggered by the death of 15 year old Banou Traorés and 17 year old Ziad Benna in the banlieue of Chlichy-sous-bois. The two teenagers had been electrocuted in a transformer station, supposedly after they had been chased by police.
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If you speak French, there are quite a few websites that give you some insight from the streets:

Friends of Banou and Ziad started a condolence website that has hundreds of heated comments.

There is some debate on the rap-blog 9.3 Ghetto Star.

Other sites with lots of commentaries from the street are Chlichy Sous Bombesand les K1-FRY.The blog Violances Urbaines was closed by Skyblog, because of inciting commentaries.
There is some reporting from the streets on Indymedia Paris.
Three bloggers were arrested and charged with inciting riots on blogs they ran on the website of the radio station Skyrock

Paris Is Burning

Listen to their music - you don’t have to speak French to get the gist. Today on the ninth day the riots in the banlieues of Paris made page one of the New York Times above the fold. Like most English language reports the Times used the rather misleading translation of the word banlieue as suburb. Those are no suburbs. Those are massive Soviet style housing projects that the government erected for the mostly immigrant poor on the outskirts of town, so mainstream society woudn’t have to deal with what the French interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday called ‘scum’ and ‘troublemakers'.

In France the riots are seen as the worst civil unrest since 1968. The comparison doesn't quite work though. German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung called it a bit more poignantly an ‘intifada at the city gates’. Back in '68 it was the youth of a new middle class demanding their fair share of society in the form of education reform. Right now the rioters are the new members of European society who were never meant to be or stay there in the first place venting their frustration with the purest form of nihilism - burning down their own neighborhoods.

The riots didn’t come as a surprise though. In France the tensions of the banlieues are already so deeply embedded in the country’s fabric that they already rose to the very top of pop culture. Last year Luc Besson of 'Femme Nikita'-'Fifth Element'-'Transporter' fame produced the film 'Banlieue 13', which tells the story of gangs in a future, when the French government has erected walls between the ghetto projects and the communities of the affluent and rich. Being a Besson movie it's as authentic as if Joel Silver had produced a three-digit action movie about the L.A. riots, which is why the film is more ‚Escape From New York’ than ‚Boyz ‘n the Hood’. Still the soundtrack features some of the preeminent Hip Hop artists that came ouf of the banlieues and the song titles speak for themselves.

The so far best film about life in the banlieues came out ten years ago. Mathieu Kassovitz's ‚La Haine’ (The Hate) told the story of a skinhead, an Arab street kid and an African boxer trying to pursue some form of happiness in the projects near Paris, when a riot breaks out. It's not easy to track down the film, but the trailer gives a good glimpse of the atmosphere that lead to the events of last week.
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Film Trailer - Banlieue 13

Film Trailer - La Haine