Hotline Bling

As I wrote in my review of Courtney Barnett for The Rumpus last summer, I’m not really up on the new music, the hip things the kids are listening to these days. They ought, quite honestly, get off my lawn, if I had a lawn, which I don't, as I'm part of a dying middle class that will likely never own a home or land. Anyways, to be fair, I wasn’t up on what was new when I was 16 either (and still became a Radiohead fan somehow) so it’s not like I’m doing anything new here in my early 30s. For the record, Matchbox 20 still seems lame to me, though some artists I used to dislike are better than others. When I was 16, it should be said, I was getting into Dylan and whatever stuff was already old at that point so really I’ve always been behind, always uninterested in what is being produced at the moment. This is not the case for poetry for some reason, where I do gravitate towards "new," probably out of some concern for generally falling behind in an industry where I have never been the hippest guy around and probably won't be as my career moves, dare I say it, "forward."

I was behind, speaking of, on the fairly recent...whatever...about Drake’s Hotline Bling video. I don’t know Drake. I mean, I know of Drake, in that I had heard of him before, but I don’t know his music. I’m not against Drake, you understand, or even against whatever genre of music he’s making (maybe we don't even need to define it beyond saying it's what's happening—or maybe it's not what's happening now and I really have no idea what's going on in contemporary music), I just don’t know anything about it or him. I don't know what he was famous for before I heard Hotline Bling, for example, and until someone tells me, I'll live in ignorance. In fact, when someone does tell me, I'll likely react with a "huh." Regardless, Jenn sent me whatever cut up thing people do wherein it looks like President Obama is singing Drake’s song (well more like Sprechgesang with autotune):

This led me down the inevitable path of watching Drake’s video for Hotline Bling. It’s kind of an interesting video, though I did hear that some people were kind of upset about the video, specifically Drake’s dancing and the usage of lights and spaces.

Falling asleep the other night (where this blog post idea came from and was promised to Jenn), I felt that the song was about the singer feeling boxed in and the video represents that. But it’s more than that: the video represents the modern relationship, something simultaneously attempting to exist without definition but also suffering from a lack of boundaries thanks to modern technology. Space that would have previous defined a less serious relationship is now replaced with the ability to text and call quickly. There is no “space,” per say, while at the same time the lack of a definition has led to the seemingly ubiquitous term “hooking up.”

The singer here is trapped between these two understandings, a paradox of sorts: their relationship is not a real thing because there is no true intimacy but their relationship is real because they are able to contact one another and be in rapid touch regardless of distance or time, things that traditionally did keep relationships defined by certain parameters.

I don’t really know much about dance but I almost feel like Drake is moving around like a marionette, guided by strings to do the things he is supposed to do within the confines of the boxes he must remain inside of. I am still perplexed by the stairs, but I might come back to them at some point.

The song has marginally grown on me though not in the same other things have in 2015. Indeed, I am more bothered by other’s feeling Drake has been in a bad video than I am intrigued by the song itself. I think there’s a lot more going on in the video than immediately catches one. Or maybe I’m just reading into it too much but I hope not.

Permutational Aesthetics and The Kinks' "Come Dancing"

Previous posts on permutational aesthetics:

Permutational Aesthetics and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive

Dreams of an Ideal Life
Dwelling, Regret and Permutational Art

In the first post on permutational aesthetics, a sort of definition was given:

Fiction that derives from the biographical has the amazing opportunity to correct the moments in our lives that we might regret, or that didn't go the way we were planning. Writing allows for a kind of consummation that life does not.

This correction, of course, is the permutation, the redesign of a moment or series of moments into a new moment in a work of art. Art, of course, is a socially acceptable space in which to create a permutation, lest anyone end up like Scottie Ferguson in Vertigo, manipulating Judy into changing everything about herself in order to re-create what is, unknown to him at the time, a sort of  play for his benefit that was designed to cover up a murder. Of course, Scottie's re-creation goes horribly wrong, with Judy, finally made into Madeleine, falling to her death.

Naturally, permutation and trauma are interconnected: it is often a trauma which leads to the recreation of a situation in art that cannot be made to occur in real life. And while previous posts have focused on poets, fiction writers and filmmakers, there has been an exclusion which is obvious: the world of music. Music, with its necessary abstraction of sound, is not always a place for permutational work, in that it is primarily the lyrics which function as a re-creation and not the music itself.

Released in the fall of 1982 in the U.K. (spring of 1983 in the U.S.), The Kinks' "Come Dancing" is a charming song about nostalgia for a bygone era in which the "big bands used to come and play" at a local Palais, or dance hall. The nostalgia in the song, of course, is not only for the era, but for the singer's sister, who would frequent the Palais with a date who would "end up blowing all his wages for the week/all for a cuddle and a peck on the cheek." The nostalgia here leans towards a young man's sexual awakening, the realization that the men who dated his sister were interested in sex and that his sister was seemingly only interested in going out and having a good time while having her expenses paid for the evening. The singer realizes, as an adult perhaps, that it was these moments that he remembers when thinking of his sister, of understanding the dynamics involved in the relationship between her, the date and the Palais. The sexual element plays out in the singer's voyeurism, a curiosity about very simple sexual practices which, to the singer, seem foreign and from which he must hide himself despite his desire to continue watching.

For Ray Davies, the lead singer and, in this case, the songwriter of "Come Dancing," the nostalgia here stems from a trauma which leads to the song being not only a tribute but ultimately an act of permutational re-creation. Thomas Kitts, in his 2008 critical biography of Davies, writes that Davies' older sister, Rene, suffered a fatal heart attack at the Lyceum ballroom on the songwriter's 13th birthday, for which she had purchased a Spanish guitar as a present. These two events, for Davies, must be inextricably linked: music, of course, became his way of entering the world but only through the tragedy of his sister's untimely death at the age of 31.¹

The sister of Davies' song, however, lives a happier life: she has not only grown older but has daughters of her own for whom she, in continuation of an earlier theme about their mother, must now wait up until they return home at all hours of the night. This is, of course, the very nature of permutation: giving life to one who has not had the opportunity to enjoy it and giving to them, through art, a sort of gift. In Davies' case, it is hard to deny that this is a sort of ideal he imagines not only for her but for himself, a sister who, for the simple asking, would be willing to go dancing with him, which of course further plays upon the sexual fantasies of the singer and his voyeuristic viewing of his sister with your would-be lover "by the garden gate." Perhaps in Davies' case, dancing could be seen as a stand-in for his musical career, which his sister allowed him to begin, but which she never saw.

For the singer in the song, his childhood dies "the day they knocked down the Palais," though in considering the formative age at which he not only received the instrument he has spent his life with but also the trauma he has suffered with his sister's sudden death, it seems very likely this moment for Davies not only marked the end of his childhood but also the metaphorical death of the Palais and the era of big band music. Of course, for the singer, and for Davies, the death of the Palais and the death of his sister, respectively, has given direction to his life as he has "grown up and [is] playing in a band." The town, too, has moved on and leaves the listener with similar feelings for locations long gone. For Davies, however, the pain is deeper and the song allows him the space to process these emotions, however complex, into a new moment.

---

1 Kitts, Thomas M. Not Like Everybody Else. Routledge, 2008.

The Rolling Stones' Brussels Affair

OK, so I don't update the blog. Maybe I have just been looking for the right  thing to write about.

I've been listening to The Rolling Stones' Brussels Affair, a live album recorded during their 1973 European tour. The album captures the middle of my favorite era of the Stones: the one that has Mick Taylor in it. Taylor is awesome. He's a great guitarist and his playing really pushes up the rest of the band's playing with him. This nothing against Ronnie Wood, who is talented in his own way, it's just that Mick is Mick and far superior to most guitarists.

The only thing I can say about Brussels Affair is that it's sweaty. It's the tour for the Stones' most decadent album, Goats Head Soup, and the album feels that way too. It's hot on stage. Keith is a little pale because he's been inside shooting up and Mick's been practicing his dance moves. Who cares what they are doing: the excess is just right and it comes through on stage. When Keith sings "Happy," it's tarnished with their decadence and he hardly sounds happy but it's so good you kind of don't care what it's doing to his body or if he's going to get arrested or die or anything else. Heck, not caring is taken to a new level during this period and the Stones are the embodiment of that in your headphones.

The song choice is great but of course there are songs they could have picked (I feel like "Bitch" or "Can You Hear Me Knockin'" from Sticky Fingers would have fit). The songs they did pick are the ones where you can see in your mind Mick strutting across stage and bending down to belt the lyrics right into the face of some kid who's there to hear "Satisfaction." Well, there is no satisfaction here because there is never enough, which is what decadence is all about: never getting enough of feeling this good. In Mick's case, it seems like it was his looks. He can't get enough of himself.  Keith couldn't get enough of the needle, but that's ok because he managed to not become a casualty. Keith danced with Mr. D and lived to tell the tale. Rare, certainly.

Are there better live albums? Yeah, Dylan's Live '66 is pretty amazing, but it is amazing for the same reason this is: that was Dylan at his height, at the point where his performing and recording were at their very best. Brussels Affair is the Stones at their absolutely pinnacle, the years in which they became the best band in the world. There's a moment that had to be captured in the life of this band and the album gets it perfectly. I'd do nearly anything to go back in time and see this show live in my tight pants with my hair long and matted from sweat.

I'll Be In My Basement Room...

Before I could post about the Rolling Stones' "Dead Flowers," Johannes beat me to it on Montevidayo. It seems we've both been obsessed with the song of late. My iTunes tells me I've listened to it 43 times since I purchased Sticky Fingers a few weeks back. That's a lot.

The beauty to me of the song is how, like the album as a whole and the one after it, Exile on Main St, take something considered socially "vile" and turn it into something sexy. There's no surprise that Keith Richards, here at the height of writing his best songs, I think, was also in the middle of his heroin addiction.

Of course, it's wrong to glamorize drug use and all that D.A.R.E. crap, but the songs do the work in "Dead Flowers," even though the song is ostensibly against the use of the drug. Don't you just feel aroused when Mick looks at you when he sings it!

He does it with the next line too, nearly avoiding eye contact, but just barely making it. It's incredible and creates the headspace of the whole song in those moments of the video above (you can watch the whole thing here).

Johannes' post focuses on the first line of the song, discussing the "upholstered chair." I think it would be great to think of the parallel of "upholstered" to "rose pink," both signs of indulgence, certainly.

The indulgence of the song is purposely contrasted to sort of dirty degeneration of the second set of lines in each verse:

Well I hope you won't see me in my ragged company

You know I could never be alone

and

I'll be in my basement room with a needle and a spoon

And another girl to take my pain away

Both couplets make me think of drug use: the company one keeps of other users, certainly. Smokers who quit say that one of the things they miss is the people they meet.

How can a line about taking heroin be both classy and dirty at the same time? At once the line gives us a "basement room" away from the main floors and seemingly isolated and a needle and spoon and no doubt a dirty belt to tie the arm off. However, rather than giving us any colloquialisms referring to heroin, Richards and Jagger give us what I consider a classy allusion. This isn't Requiem For A Dream's traumatic sex scenes: it's Trainspotting's discussions on life and living.

Johannes' post has a great number of interesting points, including a section on Townes Van Zandt's cover.

The Gold Party

My old friend Benji Barton's band, The Gold Party:

Again, In Absence of a Real Post

Michael Penn's solo album March is quite fantastic. The main single off of it, "No Myth" was a pretty decent hit for Sean Penn's brother and it's a shame he's never quite had the same level of success again. "No Myth" though, has that excellent pop sensibility and a fantastic hook.

I admit the song is a bit schmaltzy, but I don't feel like it has aged much. In fact, a lot of the alternative movement of the 90s seems to be in this vein. And he's playing a 12 string. Can't beat it.

Lily Allen

Jennifer said this song/video reminded her of my poems.

Thanks, I think?

The Main Article on Wikipedia Today

The Music of Athens, Georgia

Jennifer and I are just to the right of the photographer in this photo of Pylon in 2005. Fantastic show. I was wearing a "University Exploratory Forces" shirt Jennifer made me- mostly to make Gilbert, my awesome boss at the UGA Hargrett Library laugh. I believe he did.

I had this dream when I went to Athens that my "music career," which had just started performance-wise in January of 2001, would pick up because Athens was where you went to become a musician, especially if you grew up in the SouthEast. (I was 18- cut me some slack). Maybe you go to New York if you're from Watertown, MA, but Athens was it for us. Besides, I realized I had trouble working with others on creative projects- one of the many reasons why I stopped collecting poems in a notebook and started working on them, almost a full-time gig at this point.





I've thought many times and even outlined a story- turning Athens into Joyce's Dublin- kind of. But perhaps I'm not removed enough yet. While Athens is easy to romanticize for me, it hasn't yet reached the point of an abstraction. Perhaps as the specific memories of this beloved place fade, I'll be able to write about it.

Also, my attention span doesn't work with a narrative/story format. You can blame that on Athens as well.

Speaking of Neil Young

There had been some discussion about Neil Young over on Johannes' blog in the last few days.

Out of nowhere, I found this today:

http://wildmercury.blogspot.com/2008/12/transformer-man.html

Just had to share.