thetaphouse

[thetaphouse]

I’ve said this elsewhere, but more than a month ago, an older guy came into the record shop and after meandering around for a few minutes came to the counter, struck up a conversation and told me to “check out Greta Van Fleet...they’re saving rock n roll,” he said. He was pleasant. He did not buy any records.  

The last month was the renaissance of the “bad review” and I welcomed it. I had missed its heyday. More objectively, the music world needs them. The GVF P4K review was entertaining, but it also had a thesis — a world dominated by tech cretins will result in more mediocre bands owing their big break to the algorithm and in turn, the algorithm spitting out more bands whose only redeeming quality is that they kinda sorta sounded like that other band made popular by the algorithm. In general, streaming recommendations and autoplay algorithms make us all less adventurous listeners. Post Malone also got slammed for his lack of originality, substance, and basically for his general unthinking disposition and worldview (to say he even holds a coherent one is generous). It was first exhilarating, then exhausting to defend the reviews themselves and sometimes the existence or purpose of the negative review at all. People are so unnerved by criticism, even when its deserved. I’m sympathetic to the attitude that our time is better spent writing about, reading about, and turning people onto something we love, as opposed to devoting so much to acts who have given us so little. But ignoring the existence of “Posty Fest” and the thousands of people who apparently WEREN’T dragged there against their will and PAID to attend, does not make it all disappear. 

[Almost indefensible non sequitur incoming, but stick with me here] Stories about Christianity in American culture (and Christian rock specifically), both appearing in the New Yorker a month apart had me reevaluating, or at least contemplating the criteria by which I judge music against. 

Kelefa Sanneh’s “True Believers,” with its subhead “The Unlikely endurance of Christian Rock,” pried into the history of the genre to try and tease out how a brand that’s endured (and continues to endure) ridicule from within the church and also pop culture at large, has been able to thrive. The piece begins with an anecdote about Martin Luther King Jr.’s public approval of gospel music and disdain for rock. Sanneh quotes a column from King: “the former seems to lift men’s souls to higher levels of reality, and therefore to God ... the latter so often plunges men’s minds into degrading and immoral depths.” [I get it...but it’s funny to read an interpretation of rock music as being at odds with salvation after having heard so many people in my life shameless pronounce that “rock n roll saved me.” You can also tell how dated King’s comments are — clearly this was prior to the inception of jam bands, as anyone whose ever loved a jam band can attest they have absolutely been lifted to a higher level of human reality maaannnn at countless rock shows]. Gospel leaves no room for theological ambiguity, as Sanneh writes, because form and content are joined. With guitar rock, the meaning can be muddled. Several prominent evangelists are quoted as being wary of the rhythms of rock music because they may arouse “fleshy lusts.” Ironically, it’s the contemporary performers of christian rock who do not see their music as holding such power. For them, the sonics are secondary to the words... “it’s the words that make a song sacred.” 

I used to approach music similarly. I was partial to a certain sound and aesthetic appeal — but where I was won over was in the liner notes and lyrics sheets I used to devour. Here’s the problem: 

“The focus on lyrics exacted a cost, because it encouraged listeners and musicians alike to view music as a meaningless delivery system for meaningful words.” 

This is the part that seems insidious — allowing the sounds to be a tactical choice, a calculation about the most effective conduit for propagating a specific message. That said, while I am sure these are conversations marketing people have, I don’t want to attribute this kind of thinking to most musicians. In most instances, they’re just producing the songs they feel inspired to create. Christian musicians who took to the sounds of punk, metal, or anything vaguely “alternative,” would argue the emphasis on lyrics was freeing — bands weren’t confined to a specific sound. All that mattered was the inclusion of joyful lyrics. 

Lyrics with clear messaging and their doctrinal rules is a frequent criticism of christian rock, although it’s pointed out in the article this very thing also plagues countless protest songs in rock history. It’s the simplicity in sound or messaging — that fervent believe in uncomplicated answers that eschews the complicated mental state most of us find ourselves in. Simplicity can be great — some tunes don’t need to hit on more than one note. Protest songs have their place too. But a catalogue defined by the aforementioned is one i’m not sure is sufficiently dealing with what it’s like to be alive and strikes me as patently uninteresting as a result [whether it’s a christian rock band or youth of today]. 

In a book review about the role of atheism and its uneasy place in American society, the author asks readers to consider an “apophatic theology” that rejects “a creator God” in favor of a God who is conceived as “an eternal substance in all creation.” Readers are tasked with considering the common thread between what seem like diametrically opposed outlooks: that God does not exist and that we cannot comprehend God’s existence (and believe explicitly because the notion of God is inherently something that is beyond human comprehension). 

“In both cases, the material world may be characterized by limited understanding and limitless wonder.” 

To be vague about it — it’s wonder, not certainty, that I find most compelling in a song. The willingness to sit and wrestle with the questions is a quality I’m attracted to. In a world where so much is unknown, I sometimes find it silly to want to make art that reinforces what’s already known. 

[thetaphouse]

Friday: Maroon 

Taught classes, worked shift 

Saturday: Blue

Worked shift. Looked at apt with Dan, took the application to the bar. Watched my friends compose their halloween costumes. Drove to Beacon to play board games, eat pizza, watch mediocre horror videos and debate the intricacies of diarrhea v. vomit. 

Sunday: Pink

Another record slinging shift. Left early to catch the Breeders and Screamales outside Albany. The latter played a set full of early material — what a treat. There was a moment during their set when a kid turned to who was likely his father and asked “what is this music?” to which he responded “why, it’s metal” — cementing the evolution of that band. The Breeders were like fun parents on stage — deeply humanizing and not a smidge of pretension (the inverse has plagued plenty of their label mates). The encore: John Carpenter’s “Halloween Theme” and GBV’s “Shocker in Gloomtown.” Back at Martins, we laid down on the floor and shared ideas about a short film we’re trying to put together about the pathetic life of an extremely popular comedian who only plays well in Albany, NY. 

Monday: Purple 

Woke up and talked about the absurdity of a stereogum article about the public engagement of two broke musicians in their 20s. Trekked back home for a couple hours to meet with a professor. Hit the road again to visit jersey for the night and return a car. Made a midnight run to the drugstore down Bloomfield ave and caught Blinded by the Light on fuv. On the way back, I discovered an industrial / dark wave show on wnyu. 

Tuesday: Green 

Dropped off at 7:30am at the bus stop on 17. There were four others already aboard and they were all asleep, most of them with huge backpacks in the seats next to them. Listened to the new Swearin’ album and looked out at the fall leaves. 

[thetaphouse]

Today is my seven year “friendaversary” with Katie. I seldom check facebook (where I assume the word originated), but she texted me to let me know. More noteworthy than the anniversary of our friendship was that all the photos and videos facebook had selected as proof of our friendship featured only me and a former girlfriend from several years ago. Instead of an exhibition of my and Katie’s friendship, what the site pulled ended up being more indicative of who I was in the handful of years I was most active on that site — who I was spending all my time with and who was documenting it (that would be Katie, who was taking all those photos). 

Facebook must work under the assumption (or hope) that most of its users are and have remained active on the site for long periods of time. If I was still regularly using the site — had I been updating my profile for the better part of those seven years, what would have showed up in our friendaversary post would’ve served as an accurate representation of our friendship. It would have been a retrospective, chronicling the evolution of our time spent together. Instead, it served mostly as a snapshot — a time capsule. I don’t think that’s bad. It’s certainly more interesting. It made me consider and interrogate the past in a way I doubt I would have had their friendaversary video achieved its purported aims. 

A few evenings ago, I spent the night at my dad’s place — sorting through old family photographs in anticipation for a sad day. We opened several different boxes, each brimming with black and white photographs. We attempted to decipher “who was who?” We’d look for context clues: the approximate date it was taken, a couple recognizable faces in a sea of otherwise unknown ones. The backdrop and the look of the houses behind the people posing. Putting it together wasn’t easy, but at least all the pieces were there in front of us. This is a luxury we won’t be afford in ensuing years. To first make sense of, and then communicate our lives, others will have to jump from website to website — and take it as a given that many of these platforms will be completely erased sooner than later anyway. 

Katie reminded me that our actual meeting predates our “friendaversary” by several weeks. I approached her at a general interest meeting for the college radio station, of which she served as assistant music director, and I meekly told her that I liked her radio show. 

[thetaphouse]

Whenever I receive a compliment on a band shirt, I think about the time when a member of a semi-notable indie rock band told Martin he “liked” his Lemuria shirt. “Oh yeah, thanks — they’re great.” To which the band member replied, “I mean, I don’t like that band, but it’s a cool shirt.” 

I dole out a lot of t-shirt compliments and most of the time they have nothing to do with how much I like the band or even the graphic displayed on the shirt. It’s mostly a conceited practice meant to make the other person aware of my tastes or my general awareness of a scene. 

The other day, someone complimented my Pagans shirt and I’m almost positive they’re unfamiliar with the band. Sometimes, when people say “nice shirt,” they mean it. 

[thetaphouse]

The last few days may turn out to be some of the hottest of the year and they have successfully flushed out (through perspiration, I suppose) any of my lingering, fatuous ideas about summer fun. With a few exceptions, I have a tough time recalling past summers, visualizing them with the clarity I see other months of the year. My memories of other seasons are tethered to significant events and social gatherings. Summers are hazy — typified by a floating feeling that comes when the notion that anything (but especially the unexpected) can (and will) happen during the summertime, but often never does. It’s a lot of time spent waiting — waiting for people to come around, waiting for just the right time to make a plan that rarely comes to fruition. 

I once told someone my favorite thing about summer is that if I walk around town long enough, I’ll eventually run into someone. It’s true — that’s a luxury we’re not afforded in the winter months, and I had plenty of serendipitous hangs this summer. But the idea of kicking around and being passive seems at odds with the idealized version of summer we hold in our minds — where we’re doing and actively pursuing (you remember those PSA’s dontcha?) I recall making promises to myself and others at the onset of summer that this year we’ll go on trips, be productive, see every show. Of course, work schedules never quite line up and enthusiasm dwindles once it’s brutally hot. Summer can never live up to the ways we’ve hyped it (this is far from a novel thought). There’s no way I can stomach listening to that Undertones song during the summer months — it induces panic more than excitement — here it comes! It’s here! This will need a fact check, but I think in all the great summer songs, the narrator is looking forward (sometimes backward) but is never in the thick, humid midst of it. 

After a summer like most and some demoralizing personal news to boot, I was delighted to open this newsletter by my friend Katie. It’s ostensibly about astrology — a topic i’ve publicly poked fun at in the past, but only because I am ignorant and the “guy making fun of something he doesn’t know shit about” is an archetype I recognize and slither into for fear of humbly accepting my lack of knowledge (as ugly as that sounds). In this issue of the newsletter, she writes about “virgo season,” how the impending autumn season allows us to begin anew and to: “remember the version of you that was fuckin' thrilled by your color-coded new notebooks, the ones that you swore would set you on the right path and fueled the illusion/delusion of an annual fresh start after summer so thoroughly atrophied your brain.” The notion that something beyond mankind’s control (and destructive abilities), something natural and inherent can be responsible for or influence our experiences is obviously alluring. I’m learning that virgo season wants us to reflect and to genuinely try, which is exactly where I’m finding myself, presently. Subscribe to her thing, it’s very good. 

[thetaphouse]

Friday, April 27, 2012 in New Paltz, NY @ the house which briefly went by the moniker “Mosh Depot,” although it had previously, and has since, gone through various appellations. 

Was never quite sure if the zonked out kid vibin out all over the flyer was supposed to be a clueless hardcore kid in an SSD shirt or a hippie in what’s supposed to be an SSDP shirt. I always figured the latter, given all the context clues (ask a punk ((one of the few)), not a hippie (((everyone else!))) Even though the hippie is the butt of the joke here, this was the first honest to goodness hardcore show I saw in New Paltz — I had no prior inkling of this kind of scene. Six bands, locals and nonnatives, started on time, no bullshit, and people turned up. There’s a sheen to the shows I remember in this brief window. They never capitulated to college show-party conventions and didn’t care for those who didn’t care to show up for the right reasons.  

[thetaphouse]

A page from GA MUTT FANZINE #3 

[thetaphouse]

Yo La Tengo @ Rhino Records, New Paltz NY 1991 

Setlist:

Something to DoPlay Video

Sloop John B([traditional] cover)Play Video

Farmer's Daughter(The Beach Boys cover)Play Video

Yellow Sarong(The Scene Is Now cover)Play Video

The Cone of SilencePlay Video

Whole Wide World(Wreckless Eric cover)Play Video

Scissors(Barbara Manning cover)Play Video

Drug TestPlay Video

By the Time It Gets Dark(Sandy Denny cover)Play Video

Sex(Urinals cover)Play Video

Adult Books(X cover)Play Video

Let's Get Rid of New York(Randoms cover)

[thetaphouse]

Make Your Home Among Them

We sauntered down a brick road guiding us toward the giant gates at 116th street and out of Columbia University's campus. Thousands of jubilant alumni to our backs — the classes of '08 and '13 were just beginning to celebrate as we walked toward the sunset, unhurried. I pointed to some signage advertising a “center for student life.” My dad laughed. If it weren't for me, he wouldn't have even put in an appearance at his reunion — I'm the only person who knew he went. I had driven to New Jersey at around 3 p.m. that afternoon to pick up a computer charger and found him on the couch, contemplating aloud whether or not to attend that afternoon. By the time we arrived, we had missed any event celebrating the class of '78, which almost felt by design. We weren't at the reunion, so much as we were around it — circling well-groomed men and women humming underneath wine and cheese tents in what looked like a geriatric passion pit from atop the library steps.

We rendered ourselves to the periphery of the partying and stepped into sparsely occupied buildings. We trekked up a set of narrow library stairs and I paused to look out a modest window overlooking campus. He crouched beside me, his brow furrowed and nose wrinkled. Squinting, he pointed to a chapel at the edge of campus — where he and his first wife were married. We visited the dorm where he spent his first year and I tried to imagine the people he lived with for that one year. I tried to see him surrounded by people he used to know, who used to know him, watching Stark Trek reruns in the lounge. We proceeded to visit each apartment building he ever resided in, in that neighborhood during his twenties. It was fun — it made me feel a closeness that felt new in the context of our relationship. The feeling was more akin to something i've felt while undertaking research projects or after hours spent crate digging — the discovery of a past I hadn't known existed. But it also wasn't a detached feeling — this is where he had lived, the places he called home to people who knew him well, but most of whom i'll never meet.

Where is home? I contended with this question in the context of a seminar course in recent American history this past semester. It was a new point of historical inquiry for me. I had studied histories of the home before —  analysis of how a home or family structure were integral to a society's collective identity or to the creation and consciousness of a middle class. But I hadn't given much thought to the idea of home and its relationship to physical location. What's the relationship between home and identity? To what extent does a location impact our sense of self? What about the people we surround ourselves with? And what happens when we move someplace else? In exploring themes of home and identity, and how actors in both our past and present leveraged these ideas to help construct a usable past, our professor asked us to consider the tensions between history and memory.

I asked my dad, “do you recognize yourself?” He doesn't conceptualize his life in quite that way. He looks back on his life to this point and sees nodes — not necessarily a whole. He isn't hung up on continuity or making sense of all the nodes and the varied people or experiences encapsulated in each.

The control we have on the future is limited. With so many people and so much technology, a great deal seems out of individual control. But the past is something we do have some power over. Although we are products of our past, our past is not necessarily inalterable. We animate and construct our pasts all the time to better serve our present. Our ability to reach back into our history and conceive a place and people to have been our home — no matter how brief the time or severed from previous or ensuing experiences, is remarkable and good.  

I have also accumulated enough years — enough disparate experiences surrounded by dissimilar people to begin conceiving of my life as a series of nodes. That said, I'd be lying if I didn't ponder whether this was completely delusional, which makes this story in September's issue of the Atlantic that asks “are we hardwired to delude ourselves?” incredibly well-timed. The piece runs through a series of what researchers have deemed to be our most impactful cognitive biases and considers whether it's possible to combat them. Predictably, the expert opinions vary. Present bias, the bias most pertinent to these topics, seems immovable from our brains. The story goes on to quote a marketing professor at UCLA whose research presumes “that we are estranged from our future selves.”

[thetaphouse]

(My Bloody Valentine @ Hammerstein Ballroom, 8.1.18) 

It seems like most prominent publications have abandoned concert reviews. I suppose a detailed account of any show’s songs and sights seem needless given the ubiquity of video on social media. Reviews that are still published tend to be aggregations of other people’s pictures and videos embedded, plus a setlist. If the only form show reviews were capable of taking was just a straightforward retelling of events, then of course, they’re rote and should be rendered irrelevant. I just don’t think that’s the case. Concerts captured through phone cameras brings viewers footage of something that was probably cool — although the poor quality images (half of the band, half of other people’s cellphones), and garbled sound presented in 20 second increments certainly doesn’t bare that out. At best, it’s evidence that you were where you said you were. At worst, they cheapen an experience by replacing unique memories with uninspired footage. 

I could keep going, but a polemic on the stupidity of concert cellphone videos seems as boring as one of those videos (not to mention, longer). That said, I am a fraud and took several different videos last week when I saw My Bloody Valentine, so maybe indulge me for a moment. I don’t know why I did it — I suppose because I can, and so I did. Sidebar the universal acceptance that nothing captured by iphone camera is ever how it truly appeared in-person, it seems odd we’re so inclined to take videos at concerts — especially large theater shows typified by trite conventions. Take encores, for instance. Far from a unique take, but...they’re lame. They’re an inorganic attempt to imitate something that, if happened naturally (a set being so incredible that the audience felt compelled to cheer until the band, to everyone’s surprise, came back on stage to play one more song), would be a moment worth fiddling with your phone and capturing on camera. 

MBV played two new songs last week — I didn’t take out my phone camera for either of them. I wasn’t sure if it was worth taking a video of something I hadn’t heard, maybe it would distract me from really listening. But the hits, the ones that hit me hardest, the songs that I profess to be deeply a part of me — I opted to watch those songs through my camera phone. 

When I take a picture of an event or a candid photo, what I think I’m doing is trying to capture a fleeting moment, helping to commit it to memory. It rarely works that way. Maybe it’s because there are 2,314 other short videos and photos currently logged in my phone — sitting there collecting digital dust. The greater the number, the less important any individual one seems to be. Those kind of videos do a poor job of conveying a feeling, despite it all being right in front of you. 

In my own listening habits, my interest in music once skewed more toward lyrics than sound. When I was introduced to MBV, I was presented with music as a feeling and it introduced me to a new conception of how to listen to and appreciate music. I credit my discovering them for leading me down more adventurous sonic avenues. 

I want to read show reviews that do not include any pictures or video. I don’t even particularly care to read about the performance of individual songs. I want the context. I want a show-goer’s perspective —what happened just before the gig, how it altered what they saw or felt — how the show troubled earlier notions. This I just need more of the personal, more of the subjective. Eschewing objective accounts of what happened on-stage in favor of individual audience perspectives would be in the best interest of fandom, to say nothing of more interesting writing. 

I met my step-mom at the gig about a quarter of the way through MBV’s set. I got out of work at 7 and caught an 8pm bus. I thought doors were at 8, but at 8 J. Mascis’ band Heavy Blanket promptly took the stage. I received the electronic scene report from my step-mom while on the trailways bus: 

Security didn’t even scan my ticket. They ran out of ear plugs at the door. I was mesmerized for the next hour — overwhelmed by noise and the relative easy with which the band produced such abrasive, delicate sound. I was overwhelmed by the diversity of the audience’s age and by the creative, disparate interpretative dancing abound. I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of sweaty people who flooded midtown manhattan when the Smashing Pumpkins show (just a block away at MSG) also ended. It seemed important that those two bands played on the same night and at those venues. I walked up eighth avenue in oppressive humidity, between gigantic buildings that led me back to port authority and tried to make sense of all of these things. I felt grateful that my first trip back to nyc in many months hadn’t failed to completely engulf me. The band did not play an encore.