The Rockaliser 30: Hawkwind, Warrior on the Edge of Time (1975)

[Welcome To the Rockaliser 30, a month-long series devoted to classic albums that have been eclipsed, forgotten, misheard, or otherwise not given their propers. This is Day One. Archive here.] 

In 1972, the prolific science fiction writer Michael Moorcock published a semi-autobiographical book called Breakfast In the Ruins: A Novel of Inhumanity, which included a note claiming that the author had recently died of lung cancer. This was meant to be a joke, but in the pre-Internet age, fans were distraught at the news, with no immediate way of telling whether that part of the book was meant to be speculative or serious. Author Neil Gaiman, a fan of Moorcock's since childhood, would later write a short essay and comic “One Life Furnished in Early Moorcock,” which amusingly quotes Moorcock in a 1976 interview, commenting on the response to his Breakfast In The Ruins joke:

That fucking biography. Shortly after it came out I was at a Hawkwind gig, stoned out of my brain, and these people kept coming up to me, and I thought I was dead. They kept saying, "You’re dead, you’re dead." Later I realized what they were saying, "But we thought you were dead."

There's something about this surreal scenario, of a British author being told "you're dead, you're dead" by random passersby to the soundtrack of one of Hawkwind's legendary 70s live shows, which is typical of the diabolically reflexive creative synergy between this particular writer and band, which is like nothing else in rock history (Robert Hunter and the Grateful Dead do not come close). Between them, they shared a love of grand, epic world-building, but they were also pranksters at heart, and they didn’t mind if some of their high concepts struck listeners as nonsensical or silly. Hawkwind’s third studio album, 1972’s Doremi Fasol Latido, featured the David Brock-written “Space Is Deep,” which contained elements of Moorcock’s “Black Corridor” poem, appearing again as the song “Black Corridor” on the live album Space Ritual. Moorcock wrote a few other songs for the group in this period, and sometimes joined the band onstage, often whenever main vocalist Robert Calvert was hallucinating too intensely to perform. Their collaborative process would reach fruition with Warrior on the Edge of Time, the culmination of Hawkwind’s staggering five-album run of early 70s masterpieces and an eerily powerful science-fiction concept album.

Admittedly, as with most concept albums, the storyline is barely coherent. I consider Moorcock to be one of the best science fiction authors, but his often alienating prose style did not always translate into compelling theme or character, even with memorable lyrical buzzwords like “the sands of time,” “corridors of flame,” and references to the mythologies of iconic Moorcock characters like Elric of Melniboné being bandied about. Spacey, psychedelic lyrics were always part of the Hawkwind sound, but that was usually a byproduct of the music itself, along with its sludgy Krautrock grooves, backwards vocal effects, wild bits of free jazz violin, and impenetrably murky production. With Warrior on the Edge of Time, the band built the music around Moorcock’s concepts, rather than any particular storyline, and the transitions between the conventional rock tunes, epic space jams and spoken-word sound collages (read by Moorcock himself) are much smoother as a result. One very notable transition is found in the opening double KO of “Assault & Battery/”The Golden Void,” two of Hawkwind’s most epic and mind-blowing compositions, which reinforce each other seamlessly. The same is also true of the final two songs, the speedy rockers “Kings of Speed” and “Motorhead”--the latter, of course, was bassist Lemmy’s mid-70s statement of purpose and last contribution to the group.

Moorcock’s lyrical strategy was not to write a linear fantasy tale, but to apply his facility for arresting high concept imagery in a manner that reinforces the strangeness of the music. With the possible exceptions of Philip K. Dick and J.G. Ballard, he was probably the only sci-fi thinker at the time good enough to pull off something this weird. With its surreal sense of dramatics and unpredictable pacing, Warrior on the Edge of Time is the ideal conceptual intersection between writer and band, two of the twentieth century's most endearingly unrestrained creative forces.

            

The Rockaliser 30 Begins

We at Rockaliser haven’t written much lately, but prepare for an onslaught of new material starting tomorrow. Welcome, old and new readers, curious bystanders, and hopelessly lost googlers, to a month-long celebration of awesome music we are calling the Rockaliser 30.

Over the course of July, my colleague Aaron Mendelson and I will be nominating an album each day that we believe ranks among the best music ever made. The process for getting an album into the 30 was simple: we each drew up a list of albums we felt deserved further scrutiny or recognition, and then narrowed our lists down to fifteen entrants each. Between the two of us, that adds up to thirty albums total. Simple math, simple methodology.

The original pitch for this was something along the lines of “mini 33 1/3 books about albums that despite being really good are not very well known, are perceived as too niche-y or eccentric, are not an artist’s most beloved, or have a miniscule cult audience.” This is emphatically not a list of “most underrated” albums, or anything to that effect. These are albums that have been eclipsed, forgotten, misheard, or otherwise not given their propers. Music listeners in 2012 have short attention spans, and these records seem like they’ve slipped through the cracks in our conversations.

Yes, this is another music list, although it’s not in any particular order, and it’s not comprehensive, diverse, or an “edgy” alternative to a Rolling Stone list or anything else. Again, this is purely about what offers aural pleasure in its most concentrated form. Over the course of these next four weeks, expect to see entries that run the gamut from 70’s jazz fusion to twee grunge to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal to the most unlikely of Neil Young LPs (or one of the most unlikely). No matter how these albums are rated in the public mind, in our estimation they deserve to occupy spots next to revered classics London Calling, Exile On Main St., 154, Illmatic etc. The Rockaliser 30 is about recognizing the forgotten albums that are as good as those masterpieces. Call it “Left of the Canon,” to bastardize something the young Paul Westerberg said.

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Happily, that's not even the end of the July festivities. Stay tuned at the end of the month, when we’ll share some major news about upcoming projects from your Rockaliser scribes. Although those who pay attention to our Twitter account may already have an inkling of what I’m talking about…anyway check back for that.

And start checking Rockaliser.com, which is this exact same blog at a slightly different and much more memorable URL.

Elsewhere on the web you can find us on This Is My Jam, where you can see what songs we are currently obsessing over, and Formspring, where you can ask us questions, about the Rockaliser 30 or anything beyond—we shall try to answer even the most rambling of queries, and that’s another Rockaliser guarantee.

One more bit of news: we got a big spike in traffic (in Rockaliser terms) when my esteemed colleague’s piece on Eric Clapton’s history of racist invective was linked to in passing by the gossip site Gawker, in Mobutu Sese Seko’s article “Kid Rock Is Soul-Fucking America.” We are of course honored to be included even tangentially in Gawker’s brave ongoing battle against “hipster racism,” whatever that means. That aside, check out the Clapton piece--it holds up.

Sweet Jane On The Radio

These days, traditional American music--the blues, gospel, jazz--has nearly disappeared from guitar rock. A couple of creaky, cranky foreigners are the last guys standing. Spiritualized's Jason Pierce and Nick Cave are united by their original vision for the music that inspired rock and roll in the first place. Like Cave, Pierce bends blues and gospel idioms to his thematic interests. That Pierce goes by J Spaceman should give you some indication of what his treatment of these genres sounds like--spaced-out meditations on love, loss and drug use.

Spaceman's music--going back to his first band, Spacemen 3--has been consistently brilliant since the mid-80's. I may have been in a minority, but I thought his last album, 2008's Songs In A&E, was that year's best release (although Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds' fearsome Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! is a damn fine album itself). So of course I was excited that Pierce released an album this April. Was I right to be? Here's a track-by-track breakdown:

1. "Huh? (Intro)"

This brief intro eases listeners into Sweet Heart Sweet Light. Recalls the Harmony sketches on Songs in A&E, but the swelling strings make for a fuller sound. 

2. "Hey Jane"
Kicking off with one chord shot, the nine minute "Hey Jane" is classic Spiritualized: an immersive, lengthy jam that rushes forward, picking up instrumentation as it goes. The key line references the Velvets: Pierce has never been shy about his debts to the VU, here fitting the sweetness of "Sweet Jane" into "Sister Ray"'s mold. The breakdown around 2:50 doesn't entirely work, but it gives "Hey Jane" a second chance to build itself up, this time starting with a bass line and keyboard drone that sounds beamed in from The Perfect Prescription. The lead guitar is another wonder--unhurriedly climbing and falling against the rhythm, and inserted into the song with clinical precision. It's a reminder that this band (whose lineup has been relatively stable for a decade now) and its backup singers are a mighty unit. 5/5

3. "Little Girl"
Buoyed by a Wall of Strings, "Little Girl" brings to mind the lush style of 2001's Let It Come Down. Not that Songs in A&E was particularly raw, but this is on the baroque end of the spectrum. Most tellingly, the raggedness that crept into Pierce's voice on the last album has been banished. But his affectless vocals make a fine counterpoint to the swirling pop here, with its lovely little dance before the chorus. Bonus points for the melodic guitar solo, indebted to George Harrison, another of rock's spiritual hedonists. 4.5/5

4. "Get What You Deserve"
"Get What You Deserve" is driven by a two-chord drone. It sounds like something Spaceman would have done a quarter century ago with Spacemen 3, but it's played far faster here than that band ever would have done it. The vocal doesn't deliver any venom--the lyrics and delivery are weak points. At seven minutes it's longer than the material really justifies. But the keyboard, backwards noises and searching strings create a pleasant enough headspace. 3.5/5

5. "Too Late"
A piano ballad, basically, whose sweeping chorus is framed by verses about motherly wisdom. The transition from one to the other is abrupt at first, but sounds more and more natural. The lyrics are again a weak point, but the Pierce sells the vocal, which helps "Too Late" fall on the right side of the line between sweet and sentimental. 4/5

6. "Headin' for the Top Now"
The thunderstorming guitar is an abrasive palate cleanser after the last three tunes. No attempt is really made to corral it into tunefulness, and "Headin' for the Top Now" is a better and more ominous song for that. Another long tune, at over eight minutes, it hammers away at its groove until it sounds like a mantra. The vocals (and bass) are buried here, but I'm intrigued by the addition of the backing vocals at the end. The song grinds to a halt just as the female vox establish themselves--I wish Pierce would have seen how high they could take his groove, rather than letting them stomp it out. 4/5

7. "Freedom"

J Spacemen doesn't have a voice for country, but as "Freedom" attests, he can write it. That makes sense--country's themes aren't so far removed from the blues lyrics that Pierce endlessly reconfigures. Spiritualized's twang is narcoleptic, naturally, on this C&W kiss off. "Freedom" is an album track--I can assure you this will not be the next single--but the gentleness of the goodbye is special. The grandeur's in the simplicity. 3.5/5

8. "I Am What I Am"

I've never been a fan of "Cop Shoot Cop," the Dr. John-featuring album closer on Ladies And Gentlemen. So I was not especially excited by the appearance of a second Spiritualized song co-written with the Night Tripper (Pierce seems like more of a day tripper, as these things go). But this barroom stomp has an evil glint--it sounds a bit like the sky looks, all green or yellow or purple, before a tornado hits. The skronky horns are the fetid frosting on this dirty blues. 4.5/5

9. "Mary"
"Mary" follows naturally from "I Am What I Am"--a Stonesy snarl on which even the string section glares. Halfway through the song, Pierce does some rare adlibs, and stops singing. The band takes over, and their deliberate lurch is almost blues-rock--it's space blues played straight. This is a band that has always interpreted American gospel and blues, but "I Am What I Am" and "Mary" find them cutting records closer to that source material than ever before. 4/5

10. "Life Is a Problem"

There is a thin line between spiritual longing and chemical dependency in Spiritualized--a blurring together of spiritual and recreational ecstasy. This song's narrator pines for Christ to alter his psychology. The lyric doesn't quite work--lines like "Jesus please be my aeroplane" abound--but the string-driven track is nearly innocent enough to pull it off. One to give to Daniel Johnston? 3/5

11. "So Long You Pretty Thing"
You can feel it coming on before it happens, at 4:15, but the lift off that "So Long You Pretty Thing" achieves outpaces nearly anything in Spiritualized's catalog. Horns arrive from nowhere, clearing space for Pierce's archetypal riff to cut through in a no-bullshit moment of clarity. The celestial rock and roll of "So Long You Pretty Thing"'s final section is a revelation, a rare moment of affirmation in the Spiritualized catalog. It's an answer to the song's first two movements--one of them a duet between Pierce and his eleven year-old daughter--which pose loneliness as the deepest of all spiritual longings. The second movement finds a weary Pierce looking for help from above, and some unexpected banjo.

The first two parts of this song would be lovely by themselves, but it's the transition to that churning riff, gospel choir, and proud horns--it's like sailing forward inside a sunbeam. The lyrics here don't particularly answer the dilemma Pierce sets out. But the music does, as it ascends up and up, higher with each iteration, responding to Pierce's dilemma with its body-seizing catharsis. This is a song whose power and danger stem from its empathy--for its reveal that the guy hiding behind his sunglasses is an optimist. 5/5

Levon Helm (1940-2012): Tribute to a Peerless Singing Drummer

Levon Helm, former drummer and vocalist for the Band, has died at the age of 71. This news has been greeted in various quarters as "impossibly sad" and "hard to even read," and it is easy to see why. Though the Band quit the game decades ago, and not a lot of new rock groups these days cite them as an influence, Levon Helm is still fairly well-considered one of the last true good guys in rock. Anyone who has ever seen Martin Scorsese's documentary The Last Waltz will automatically attest to his preternatural musicianship, his powerful voice, his handsome-yet-grizzly mug, and yet those were but a handful of his virtues. Many people, including myself, were first introduced to Lev and the Band through The Last Waltz, and even though I played guitar, I found myself drawn more to Levon's playing than Robbie Robertson's (not that it was a contest). Unique even among that rarefied sub-class of musician, the Singing Drummer, Levon Helm had a ragged, easygoing lope to his playing style that kids today would probably identify as "swag."

Prior to their split, the Band was notable for their unique approach to songwriting and performing. Each of the group's five members had his own particular skill set, either as a songwriter, singer or multi-instrumentalist, and when their talents combined every contribution was given equal weight--their distinctive styles paid dividends in the form of incredibly ambitious, authentically virtuoso rock tunes. For a brief while, they were one of those rare groups with no frontman. After splitting from Bob Dylan in 1968 (following a decade honing their skills on the road with Ronnie Hawkins), the Band carved a niche, first with Music From Big Pink in 1968 and then The Band in 1969, as one of the most democratic groups in rock history. Yes, Robbie Robertson was clearly the leader--he wrote the majority of the music and played guitar (magnificently, usually)--but onstage he played that instrument and nothing more. Garth Hudson, the group's organist and other non-singing member, was rarely credited as a songwriter, yet he more than made up for that as the group's amateur musicologist and instrumental savant (if you haven't heard Hudson ripping it at the beginning of "Chest Fever," do yourself a favor).

Meanwhile, the Band also had the greatest tripartite of vocalists in the history of rock, namely bassist Rick Danko, pianist Richard Manuel, and Levon Helm. Generally, Robertson delineated singing duties in the following fashion: Danko sang the folksy, conversational tunes, Manuel claimed the multi-octave ballads, and Levon was the power-belter. All of them have their great moments, but Levon was an especially soulful presence on record. It's fitting that his first notable vocal performance on record is on a song where all three vocalists (plus maybe Robbie?) share harmonies: "The Weight." Lev opens the tune with the famous lines "I pulled into Nazareth/was feeling about half-past dead," probably cementing his status right there as the Band's most beloved vocalist. To my listening ears, the dopest part of the song is the final verse, which Lev and Rick Danko sing in tandem. Listen to how they reinforce each other's wistful exhortations at the part where they sing "To get back to Miss Annie/you know she's the only one." It's a devastating, ear-popping moment, which Danko and Helm somehow manage to top in The Last Waltz, with an assist from the Staples Singers.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to talk about Levon Helm in the context of the Band now without acknowledging how poorly he was treated, by Robbie Robertson and his various business handlers, in the three decades following The Last Waltz and the Band's dissolution. I don't see a reason to rehash the details, but you can read about some of it here and in the book This Wheel's On Fire (which, though far from balanced, paints an undeniably damning portrait of Robertson's rock star antics). On the Band's first four albums, Levon was a steady if occasional songwriting presence, cowriting the songs "Jemima Surrender," "Strawberry Wine" and "Life Is A Carnival." After 1971's Cahoots, Robertson started writing music without the other members' input, and tensions within the band escalated quickly--somehow, the greatest band democracy in history had devolved into yet another disappointingly petty clash of egos, and their music no longer had that same sense of telepathic connection. In Robertson's defense, it wasn't exactly fair of Levon to blame Robbie for refusing to reunite with the Band in the 80s, despite being shut out of songwriting royalties, either. Their mutual bad faith accumulated exponentially: By the time they appear together in The Last Waltz, you can tell that the Band's guitarist and drummer are hardly on speaking terms.

The Last Waltz is great for what it is, a well-directed documentary of an undoubtedly epic concert, but the Band stopped functioning as a band (lower case b) around the time of Cahoots, or maybe their covers album Moondog Matinee. The late 60s/early 70s albums are the Band at their most pure: for my money, no Levon performance will ever beat "The Rumor," from the Band's third album Stage Fright. I have a theory that the song is a sequel-of-sorts to "The Weight," not only regarding its similar rhythm and Danko-Helm tag-team vocal arrangements, but also because of parallel thematic undercurrents, especially in respect to what Greil Marcus calls the "rootless wanderer", a common Robertson protagonist:

Danko gets the first part of the first vocal, his good-natured bellow complementing the upbeat melody, and then, on a dime, the tune descends into a sadder register, and Helm responds to him in turn. The two continue trading lines in this fashion, alternating between jaunty and plaintive, coming together in time for the bridge, which Helm takes solo: "Close your eyes/hang down your head/until the fog rolls away." If you doubt rock music's capacity to take benign and/or meaningless statements and elevate them to the level of tearjerking, gobsmacking art, click above. And somehow, he's nailing the drum part at the same time.

In retrospect, it strikes me as more surprising than tragic that Robertson would so severely undervalue Levon's contributions to the Band's elemental dynamic. Simply as a drummer, he was one of the best. As a soulful white rock singer, he was basically without peer. And when it came to the greatest of human challenges, singing and drumming at the same time, no one made it look more effortless, or incidental to his skills as a performer.* Though a lifetime of cigarette smoking eventually took its toll on his vocal cords, he kept performing for grateful audiences up to the end--his laconic shuffle backbeat never waned in its power, even as it went out of fashion for succeeding generations of power drummers. Whether with the Band or with other groups of musicians, he played with a style that was redolent of his personal history: the lone Southerner in a group full of Canadians, a product of decades on the road as a traveling musician, mastering the trade. He lived the life, he honed his skills, he became one of the best through sheer principle, ambition and hard work. Nothing, not even death or Robbie Robertson, will diminish that accomplishment.

Levon Helm will always be the soul of the Band, but for a while he was part of something even greater: a group steeped as much in the communitarian, Emersonian ideal of transcendental American individualism as it was in the blues, gospel and rock music they fused so effortlessly. We probably won't see its like again.

*Also: a decent guitarist and mandolin player. Not a bad actor, either--check out Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.

Hall Of Fame Hate, Groupthink and Skapegoating Rockists

Everybody knows the rap against the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The nominating process is screwy, the 25-year eligibility requirement is arbitrary, the selection process is about as transparent as a lead box full of tinted windows, and the list of influential bands who have not been nominated to the Hall is longer than the past two decades' worth of inductees. Nevertheless, the Hall of Fame has perpetuated its brand for a quarter century now, and its I.M. Pei-designed waterfront museum remains one of Cleveland's most popular tourist destinations. Tonight, the Hall of Fame will induct the 2012 class, which includes Laura Nyro, Guns 'n Roses, the Beastie Boys, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and (in an attempt to split the ticket Parliament/Funkadelic style) the Small Faces/Faces. The ceremony will be held in Cleveland rather than its normal home base Madison Square Garden, and HBO is set to televise the ceremony in early May.

Though overall the Hall of Fame occupies a very small niche in everyday musical discourse, rock critics around this time of year will suddenly, unilaterally take great umbrage at the list of nominees. The subjective formulation of "how can they choose to honor X, when Y isn't nominated?" is basically the skeleton of this approach; Other think pieces will also characterize the Hall's lack of black artists as emblematic of their secret racism, the lack of disco artists as demonstrative of secret racism and homophobia, etc., basically whatever scores the easiest political points against an already unfashionable institution. What do all these pieces have in common with the Rock Hall nomination process itself? A curious lack of self-consciousness when it comes to asserting the primacy of a particular set of politico-critical standards against another. In other words, fairly boilerplate hypocritical taste-bashing disguised as insightful political commentary.

I have surveyed a number of Hall of Fame articles, all variations on the "Why X and not Y" school, taking note of all the unexplained and incredible assumptions made by and about purported rock fans. It is perhaps not surprising that those who most strongly assert the Hall of Fame's irrelevance are also the ones most inordinately offended when certain artists don't make it into the nominating process. On the other hand, it does surprise me me that more people don't acknowledge that, with only a half-dozen inductees or so per year, of course there are still vast areas of musical history that have been ignored. Even if, for the past 25 years, they did somehow choose artists that all happened to be your favorite bands, and were all properly "diverse" and respective of every single popular music genre ever, there would still be many, many great musicians, many more than one can name, that deserve to be nominated but never will. If Rush, Chic, the Cars etc. were inducted tomorrow, a dozen more bands would take their place. This is a good thing. Where did this idea come from that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame must be comprehensive survey of everything? I will attempt to explore some of these assumptions below.

Craig Marks, "The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Is Out of Touch," The Wrap

In order to demonstrate that the HOF continually ignores the wishes of the common man, Craig Marks reaches for the oldest trick in the anti-rockist playbook: snobbery, masquerading as reverse-snobbery. Marks is an editor of Popdust, which this year began its own tradition, the "Popdust Hall of Fame," voted on by Robyn, ?uestlove and Sasha-Frere Jones among others. Their list of nominees range from the obvious (Kraftwerk) to the curious ("Weird Al" Yankovic) to the inexcusably terrible (Journey). But it's not a bad list, and I hope Popdust keeps it up, if only so that 25 years from now I can complain about Rush's inevitable exclusion. Turnabout, fair play, etc.

Unfortunately, Marks couldn't stop himself from armchair-diagnosing the pathologies of Jann Wenner and his ilk. I yield to no one in my dislike of Jann Wenner and the Rolling Stone cultural aesthetic, but dumb, ignorant assumptions are dumb, ignorant assumptions. For Marks, the likes of Hall and Oates, Bon Jovi, Whitney Houston, etc. represent "genres that are or were considered disreputable: hip-hop, disco, pop, hair-metal, whatever it is that 'Weird Al' does." Yes, this is a common criticism of the HOF: it doesn't properly acknowledge music outside the narrowly-defined "rock" aegis (never heard anyone complain about the Hip-Hop Hall of Fame honoring only rap artists), except, of course, when it does. Notice the recursive rhetorical play here? Rock 'n Roll fails to acknowledge the diversity in its midst, but when it does, it is no longer rock music, because rock music is only beloved by cranky white boomers obsessed with arbitrary notions of instrumental authenticity. Says Marks:

They often don't write their own songs or play guitars (or any instrument at all, in the case of DJs). They're nakedly commercial acts, or performed by audiences typically held in low esteem by the rock cognoscenti (women, gays, people of color, whoever it is who goes to "Weird Al" shows). They dress funny. They're "fake" or "for girls," or, worst all, "sellouts."

Hey, there's my other favorite rhetorical standby, the implication that the straw men with whom you disagree with are also secret racists and homophobes. Conversation won! Too bad their motives for listening to music can never be pure, unlike populist Craig Marks. He continues:

But for the dogmatic baby boomers who dominate the Rock Hall nomination process, rock has been on a steady decline since the Beatles broke up. (And they still blame Yoko). Punk, rap, synth-pop, poodle rock: all junk food, bad influences, false idols. Pop music flourished in the 80s, but as MTV made image transcendent and hip-hop rendered the guitar unnecessary, a divide opened between the old critical guard and the new that has never been fully bridged.

Jesus. "Hip-hop rendered the guitar unnecessary"? My blood pressure goes through the roof when I read things like this, which are demonstrably untrue. Everyone at the Rock Hall hates Yoko? I wonder if they mentioned that to her when she accepted John Lennon's nomination in 1994. It is also rich that Marks writes so warmly of MTV, an institution that was explicitly and provably racist, even if that history has today been whitewashed by the same people who chide rockists for their lack of fidelity to the pop charts.

These are all niggling points, though. The main problem here is that Marks fails to see the irony in casting Rock Hall voters as narrow-minded purveyors of arbitrary taste. "Hip-hop rendered the guitar unnecessary"? Does one have the right to judge anyone's genre preference after a statement as totally, ineluctably asinine as that one? It continues to surprise me that rock fans get this rap as being fanatically intolerant, when the most consistently small-minded, dismissive commentary I see on the Internet often comes from critics who exult the superiority of Beyonce over "indie" artists that collectively have a fraction of her wealth and influence. It doesn't strike them as possible that I would dislike Bon Jovi because I genuinely find his music revolting: I must be jealous of his success, insufficiently deferential toward popular radio, unreceptive to the "transcendent images" on MTV, or whatever. This is what I mean by snobbery masquerading as reverse-snobbery. "Rock fans are so pretentious and judgmental"--anyone who utters words to this effect must realize that they are immediately guilty of the same crimes as their straw men. Poptimist, deflate thyself.

Jesse Jarnow, "10 No-Brainer Rock Legends Never Nominated For The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame," The Village Voice

Tom Breihan, "The 11 Biggest Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Snubs," Stereogum

Most of these anti-Rock Hall articles take the form of lists, which makes for convenient reading, even if the outrage against each particular omission is, as ever, selective. Breihan's list is the more conventional, featuring perennial non-inductees Chic, Rush and KISS. The problem with Breihan's writing is that he chides the Hall of Fame for ignoring artists he otherwise never pays attention to. Or maybe Google is broken and I've missed Stereogum's breathless coverage of Rush's upcoming nineteenth album Clockwork Angels, out in June. Even Breihan seems unconvinced about his own argument for Rush's inclusion:

This Canadian trio's virtuosic showiness has inspired decades of musicians to absolutely master their instruments before committing anything to tape, and there's always something to be said for that.

"...And there's always something to be said for that." Powerful words. Of course, you could also say the exact same thing about Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, the Moody Blues, Steely Dan--the point is a lot of different bands inspired a lot of different proficient instrumentalists. Meanwhile, here's his argument for KISS:

This band's gonzo all-out version of theatrical spectacle has resonated through the years; artists from Gaga to GWAR have taken something out of it. Look, nobody wants to see Gene Simmons act all creepy at the podium, but the band's place in history cannot be denied.

Can't it, though? Just because the band was a famous and successful example of stadium rock, does that mean I must acknowledge them as any good? For Breihan, this seems like an irrelevant consideration. Again, KISS, Devo, and Nick Drake only serve a purpose insofar as they demonstrate the number of major acts the RHOF has not yet inducted. The message is "look at the kind of music we like, that the Rock Hall of Fame is clearly ignorant of," not, "these are worthy bands deserving of inclusion." On the other hand, at least Breihan acknowledges that some of this music (such as Roxy Music) "holds up well," and he spares the reader any immediate judgments about rock fans and their hateful taste in music.

Jesse Jarnow's Village Voice piece is much better in this regard. Jarnow limits his list to artists that have never been nominated, which saves him the trouble of going through Chic and Rush for the millionth time. All he says about the RHOF induction process is that it has "symbolic importance for all that is hilarious about itself," which is a great way of putting it. Unlike Breihan and Marks, Jarnow's article is meant to be more thoughtful and suggestive than corrective, and even if I disagree with his reasoning for, say, G.G. Allin, it doesn't appear that he is asserting a superior standard of musical taste. It is possible to acknowledge the silliness of the RHOF without demonizing a set of people who overall are more guilty of obsequiously catering to mass opinion than ignoring it, contra what Marks alleges.

Jamie Reno, "The Rock Hall of Fame Sucks!," The Daily Beast.

Easily the most entertaining Anti-RHOF piece was this one, written by a self-described "singer-songwriter-guitarist who's recorded five albums and will never be considered for entry." The screwiness of this article is apparent early and doesn't let up. Check out this early attack on rock critics:

And, yes, I’ve always had a problem with music critics who can’t sing or play a note but who pass judgment on others who can. These are the same dweebs who got picked last for the teams in gym class and simultaneously discovered an ability to write a clever, mean phrase about the music their classmates liked. And now they’re grown up and trying to prove who’s boss by denying rock deities like Peter Frampton, Hall & Oates, and Yes their due. But I digress.

Yeah judgmental people are the worst, huh? Especially nerds! Of course, there is also the matter of calling Frampton, Hall & Oates and Yes "rock deities," which, IMO, is an insult to deities, but we will get to that later.

You'll notice that Reno's piece is just as spiteful as Marks', only it takes a defiantly anti-poptimist position. Whereas for Marks the Hall of Fame had too narrow a definition of rock, which excluded genres like hip-hop and pop, Reno feels that the RHOF goes too far the other way: "The way I see it, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame voting committee is a cabal that too often honors performers who are edgy, brainy, pretentious or sometimes not even 'rock' at all." Reno, another guy who clearly fancies himself a populist, is perhaps the closest thing to Marks' mythical rock snob, and yet he criticizes the Hall of Fame for roughly the same reasons as Marks: the voting committee is clannish, insular, and unconcerned with what is broadly "popular." Just substitute Whitney Houston for the Eagles and you get roughly the same article. These authors are always convinced that their tastes are reflected by broad popular support, whether it's MTV pablum on the one hand or 70s stadium rock on the other. There is no possible way that the Rock Hall of Fame can satisfy both these parameters. How can they not be considered out of touch, even if Wenner's bunch were the hippest cats in selection committee history?

Reno's article is also deeply, deeply hilarious in its contempt for "edgy" music like hip-hop and punk and in its charmingly unfashionable defense of bland 70s FM staples like John Denver and Three Dog Night. Here, word for word, is the most hilarious paragraph of all:

Arguably the most glaring omission of them all is Chicago, which besides the Beach Boys is the most popular and enduring American rock band of all time. Chicago, which is celebrating its 45th year and still selling records and concert tickets worldwide, was once considered progressive, innovative and musically subversive. In the beginning, they couldn’t even get AM airplay, only FM album stations would touch them. But the band, whose early integration of horns into rock music was certainly influential, is evidently being punished by the RRHOF overlords because the hard-driving R&B and jazz-rock of its early days was replaced to a large degree by a more polished, middle-of-the-road (some would say middle-aged) sound. They still knock your socks off in concert, by the way.

I started laughing uncontrollably reading that: the most glaring omission, of them all, in all of recorded human history, is Chicago. And apparently the rebellious, unpredictable firebrands that make up the RHOF voting committee can't stand the idea of such "middle-of-the-road" sounds making their way into the induction ceremony. I wish. It certainly is a unique perspective. So is his opinion on the Beastie Boys, which seems lifted straight out of 1986:

Meanwhile, while Chicago is left out, the Beastie Boys, a “band” comprised of three knuckleheads who started in hip-hop then dabbled in hardcore punk and funk, is in. Entertaining if in small doses, the Beasties have given us such obnoxious paeans to stupidity as “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party).” OK, I partied to that song in college in the 80s, too. But are these guys really music Hall of Famers? Not in my book.

There is, of course, a legitimate point to be made about the RHOF's lack of respect for jazz rock (although I would go for Mahavishnu Orchestra, Weather Report, Return To Forever, or dozens of other fusion groups before settling on, snicker, Chicago). There is also a legitimate point to be made about the lack of hardcore punk bands, the lack of psychedelic 60s bands, the lack of experimental math rock, the lack of country, ad infinitum. But asserting this does not a salient, complete argument make. It makes you another purveyor of conventional wisdom on the Internet, selectively outraged about something, conveniently ignoring arguments to the contrary, just like everyone else.

Do I agree that Frampton and Yes are rock deities? No. But I have plenty of favorite bands that are not only never nominated, but will probably remain so indefinitely. For instance, I dig Leslie West and Mountain, and they seem to me very much of the Rolling Stone-Wenner-RHOF aesthetic, but it's doubtful they will ever be inducted, no matter their Woodstock cred. But on the other hand, why would I choose to care in that particular instance? If you have very little use for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in general, it makes sense to ignore the ceremony whether you approve of the nominees are otherwise.

Overall, I dislike the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and its narrow, parochial view of rock history, and I spent almost a day in the museum proper. Why then, devote all this space to defending such an unworthy organization? Because, in today's world of auto-Twittered groupthink, where the hype cycle, its attendant backlash and the resultant anti-backlash make the idea of earnest, thoughtful opinion almost irrelevant, it is more worthwhile to find faults in those statements you agree with than those you can easily pick apart. In Craig Marks and Jamie Reno, you have two writers who are diametrically opposed in many ways, but they both choose to let their tastes dictate their argument, rather than the other way around. This is where uncritical groupthink takes root.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame sucks, yes. This has been stated infinity times over. Apparently, once an opinion is disseminated and popularized enough on the Internet, one need not bother explaining why anymore (call it the "Star Wars prequel rule"--I hated it, so everybody hated it, so everyone must hate it). There are good and bad reasons for criticizing the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and just because everyone on the hate train is giving you the "OK" signal doesn't mean you are suddenly licensed to make things up.

Rock & Taxes: A Treasury of the Whiny Rich

The tax man's taken all my dough,
And left me in my stately home,
Lazing on a sunny afternoon.
And I can't sail my yacht,
He's taken everything I've got,
All I've got's this sunny afternoon. 

So sang The Kinks' Ray Davies in 1966, in "Sunny Afternoon." That was the same year that George Harrison kvetched about the taxman taking 95% of his income. There was quite a bit of artistic license in these gripes from newly wealthy rock stars.

It turns out Davies and Harrison weren't the only classic rock legends with money on their mind. Indeed, nearly every British classic rock band of the 60's and 70's has tussled with taxes in song or in their lives. It's astounding, actually, the lengths to which these groups--all of these groups--went to complain about paying taxes and protect their assets.

For a genre that reveled in revolutions in consciousness, politics and sex, it was an unusually conservative stance. In more ways than one, these guys had regressive attitudes towards tax policy.

Many of these acts were happy to take on the mantle of the working man. They just didn't want to help pay for his health care, his children's education, or his public transit. And why would they, when there were mansions to buy. So who were these tax-averse Brits?

• The Beatles--George Harrison's "Taxman" has become an iconic song to American conservatives, and not for its richeous Paul McCartney guitar solo. Bob Dole used it in his 1996 campaign, and online you can find organizations like Americans for Tax Reform claiming that taxes broke up the Beatles. Harrison and Ringo Starr both chose to leave the UK in the 1970s as "tax exiles."
• The Rolling Stones--The Stones fled England in the early 70's, penniless, to escape onerous british taxes. That's the story Mick and Keith tell about how the Stones wound up recording their 1973 classic Exile On Main Street in a French Chateau. But, if the Stones ever had real problems with taxes, those days are long behind them. Between 1986 and 2006 they paid just 1.6 percent in tax on hundreds of millions of pounds in income.
• Rod Stewart--Probably the second most famous tax exile on this list. Stewart's "Atlantic crossing" to Los Angeles came as his solo success eclipsed The Faces' profile. According to Stewart, taxes had made it "not worth living in England any more." 
• Pink Floyd--The Floyd spent the entirety of 1978 abroad, for tax purposes. This seems to have been a more important concern than visiting Syd Barrett. Roger Waters has changed his tune on taxation since, and is currently promoting himself as a pro-Occupy musician.
• Led Zeppelin--Taking their accountants' advice, Led Zep left the UK for 1975 as tax exiles. During this time, Jimmy Page would screen his answers to questions in interviews, to make sure they didn't jepordize his tax status. And Robert Plant was whisked out of the country shortly after a serious car accident, so that Led Zep's tax status wasn't affected.
• The Who--The quartet went on their own 1970s tax exile. Bassist John Entwistle's song "Success Story" contained the lyrics: "Away for the weekend/I've gotta play some one-night stands/Six for the tax man and one for the band." Sounding a different note, Roger Daltry recently criticized U2's efforts to dodge taxes in Ireland.
• David Bowie--Bowie kicked off his "Berlin period" by moving to Switzerland--a decision motivated, in part, by the desire to avoid British tax rates.

This is hardly a complete list. The next generation, including Sting, Phil Collins, Ozzy Osbourne and Queen, carried on the tradition of tax-dodging. More recently, Adele claimed her tax bill made her want to "go and buy a gun and randomly open fire."

So what is it with Brits and taxes? American musicians haven't made a similar stink about taxes, and anti-tax sentiment is far higher in the US.* Of course, British tax rates are somewhat higher. But structuring your life to avoid paying taxes--as all the above artists have done--is about the least rock and roll thing you can do. Seriously, even Drake is cooler on the subject of taxes than Jagger, Bowie or Page.

In a definitive article on this subject, Simon Firth chides tax exiles for not taking advantage of a great number of options for reducing their tax bills in the UK. He also makes the point that taxes apparently don't pose a threat to artistic innovation, as free market fetishists might claim.

And let's talk about that term--tax exile. Exile is a strong word. Musicians have been exiles before: Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil had to leave their native Brazil for England, to escape political persecuption. Arnold Schoenberg was driven from Germany by the Nazis. These are not remotely similar to the situation that Led Zeppelin faced. Tax exile is a histrionic turn of phrase for millionaires who want to keep more money to themselves. These wealthy Brits haven't been persecuted or exiled out of principle. They were just greedy.

*American musicians do complain, sometimes. Take Big Boi's verse in "Gasoline Dreams," where he complains that even though he has the key to the city, "I still got to pay my taxes and they give us no pity."

The Beatles and R&B

It's not news that the Beatles began their recording career heavily indebted to black American music. Early rock and roll, R&B and the blues were all important ingredients of their sound, as Anglicized as it was (the Beatles were probably less shameless in their appropriation of these genres than most of their peers). Anyways, a quick listen to their earlier recordings, or glance at the covers they recorded, reveals that R&B had made an impact in Liverpool.

However, as I've been immersing myself in R&B this past year, I've been surprised by the extent to which the influence was mutual--the Beatles' influence is clearly felt in R&B. Not in cover versions, although legends like Ray Charles, Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin all covered Lennon/McCartney tunes during the 1960s.

The Beatles weren't influencing R&B during the early 60's--when they themselves were aping the genre. It was only after the band left behind their early, more insistently rhythmic music that the influence filtered back. It was the studio-based, baroque and psychedelic Beatles--the Beatles of "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Strawberry Fields Forever"--whose music altered American R&B.

It was connecting a couple anecdotes that led me to recognize R&B's embrace of the Beatles. The first was about Otis Redding. In the months before his death, Redding became obsessed with Sgt. Pepper's. He had previously covered the Beatles,* but this was different. He channeled Pepper's psychedelic sounds in writing "(Sittin' On) The Dock Of A Bay"--a song whose pensive beauty resembles "Strawberry Fields Forever." "Dock Of A Bay" was drastically different from anything Redding had previously written. Different enough that Stax was reluctant to release it at all. Otis, of course, knew better: he predicted the song was a number one hit, although he didn't live long enough to see that come true himself.

A couple years later at Stax, Booker T found himself so inspired by Abbey Road that he and the MG's recorded an entire album of Abbey Road covers. They called it McLemore Avenue--where the Stax studio was--and that's the album cover, at the top of the post.

The second anecdote is about Richard Pegue, a Chicago DJ who ran the Nickel and Penny record labels. The wonderful work of Pegue's labels was recently excavated by the Numero Group. In that release's liner notes, it mentions that Pegue's record collection featured lots of British Pop, including several Beatles LPs. The influence is clear on some of the later cuts on the reissue, when Pegue began using colorful production techniques in his R&B.

This was more broadly true of R&B acts. Stevie Wonder--who hit number one with a cover of "We Can Work It Out" in 1970--took the studio-as-instrument and synthesizer to astounding places. These were sounds that the Beatles and producer George Martin helped introduce into the pop vocabulary. Stevie's Motown colleague  Norman Whitfield, in his work with the Temptations and the Undisputed Truth, was transforming R&B into something as psychedelic as anything from Magical Mystery Tour.

By the early 70's studio experimentation had taken firmly taken hold in R&B. So had the album format, as opposed to the barrage of singles. Credit to that goes to Isaac Hayes more than the Beatles. But it's clear that Hayes was listening to the Beatles--he does a ten-minute version of "Something" on the brilliant Isaac Hayes Movement, and his sophisticated arrangements and multipart songs recall Abbey Road's medley.

I don't want to overstate this case. Psychedelic ideas were in the air. The Beatles were a gateway to those sounds for music fans like Richard Pegue, others in the R&B world. But they weren't the only one (Sly & the Family Stone were another crucial gateway group). And the Beatles were hardly the main influence on late 60's and early 70's R&B. That'd be James Brown, who flipped the Fab Four's trajectory on its head and placed all his emphasis on the rhythm.

But it's a story with a nice circularity. That the Beatles, the world's biggest and most revered rock band, were able to inspire a few new sounds in a genre from which they took so much.


*The Beatles, for their part, had shown their admiration by sending limos to pick up Otis and other Stax performers from the airport during a British tour. And--though this seems ridiculous and it's hard to find documentation for this--Wikipedia and other sites report that the Beatles bowed and kissed the ring of Stax guitarist Steve Cropper.

Come Back Nicki, Come Back

About a week ago, I had an argument with some friends about Nicki Minaj and her relative quality as a musician. Most of them thought little of Ms. Minaj's work, particularly the type of self-consciously vacuous pop music she currently seems most interested in purveying, in the manner of 2010's Pink Friday and its upcoming sequel Roman Reloaded. I maintained that, despite Pink Friday's rather feeble attempts at inoffensive pop-rap ("pap") crossovers, Nicki Minaj was once a rapper of great promise. Scratch that: at one point a few years ago she was a rapper of insane promise, poised to become listed among the best emcees on popular radio. Of course much has already been said about Nicki's chameleonic rapping style, how it encompasses a range of different personality and sexuality types, what it says about gender in hip-hop, etc. I wasn't particularly interested in rehashing any of that material, but I did want to make the point that Ms. Minaj once possessed devastating rhyming skill, even if her MO had been compromised ever since she started releasing albums proper. A few days later, one of my friends emailed me, asking to recommend a specific Minaj mixtape, since I had evangelized her early mixtape appearances so stridently. I replied and sent: check out Beam Me Up Scotty. My friend, never predisposed toward liking Nicki before, loved it, and immediately asked for further suggestions. He had no idea, from what he had seen on TV and heard on the radio, that Nicki Minaj could actually rap.

Of course, there are legions of Nicki fans, hip-hop heads and music critics (especially those who self-describe as "poptimist") who disagree. Maura Johnston maintains that Pink Friday holds up better than Kanye's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The platinum success of Friday and its attendant "controversial" Grammy performance and multiple nominations prove that there are obviously a lot of people who love the modern Nicki of "Super Bass" and "Right Thru Me." In this year's Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll, "Super Bass" was voted the third best single of 2011. Pink Friday was culturally significant to the point where non-music writers got on the Minaj train: check out this piece from The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf, where he calls Pink Friday "catchy" and expresses his love of the song's "poppy hook, the pleasing cadence of the rap."* Of course there are things to admire about Nicki's persona, her relatively lucid (for hip-hop) stance against gay-bashing, her forthrightness in calling out her abusive father, etc. I wouldn't deny any of that. But this still doesn't change anything about her music post-Friday, which is the sound of compelling artistry and wordplay being focus-grouped to oblivion.

The love for "Super Bass" particularly rankles me. As someone with a deep, abiding love for awesome bass tones, "Super" fails to measure up. The song's chintzy synth claps and pretuned chorus register with no impact, like the opposite of bass. The song is pure air syrup, and has about as much content as that implies--to me, its sonic architecture is the opposite of what hip-hop is supposed to be about. Pink Friday is rife with tracks like that, though--some where Nicki opts to sing autotuned pop hooks, others where she opts to rap, but poorly, and always about the same vacuous nonsense in that stunted, self-conscious style that Kanye made very popular. Call me an old man, but I just wasn't onboard with all the artistics concessions major label Nicki seemed willing, even eager to make, and Roman Reloaded looks to be more of the same:

"Stupid Hoe" is getting the usual good-to-great reviews from pop critics, which puzzles me: how can anyone look at this and say that Nicki has grown at all, as an artist or a rapper? There are the bottom-feeding lyrics--celebrity-baiting fluff about how "I'm Angelina, you Jennifer," rhyming "Roman Zolanski" with "Roman Polanski," etc. The beat, meanwhile, is more or less a slight variation on "Itty Bitty Piggy"from Beam Me Up Scotty, except with extra bloops and more goofy voices. Everything in this song has been done a hundred times by better artists, including Nicki herself.

When Nicki Minaj first came on the scene, she sounded smart and vital. I likely first heard her on "Can't Stop Won't Stop," a track from Lil Wayne's 2007 mixtape-opus Da Drought 3. Her rapping is serviceable on that track--she must have been really, really young at that point--but I didn't pay much attention then. I hate to admit this, but she didn't seem like anything worth paying attention to, other than as one of Young Money's token female rappers (the other one at the time was Shanell). It wasn't until Wayne's 2009 mixtape No Ceilings that I was really taken with one of her verses, via Weezy's take on Beyonce's "Sweet Dreams." Everyone speaks highly of Minaj's mammoth verse in "Monster," a strong example of how her voice sort of mutates from a hard bark to coy, youthful innocence and back in a manner of seconds. But Nicki was already doing that sort of thing very well in 2009:

Nicki's verse in "Sweet Dreams" is arguably superior to "Monster." Or at least it is longer, heavier on actual content, more dense and allusive in its wordplay, etc. The "balloon boy" line might elicit a groan now but back then it seemed insanely well-placed--No Ceilings came out literally a week at most after that "balloon boy" incident happened.

The Nicki Minaj of No Ceilings and Beam Me Up Scotty was thoughtful, inventive and quick-witted. She wasn't concerned with pandering to a global audience or prettying up her message with autotune pop hooks. No, she wasn't a perfect rapper: even then, she fell in the unfortunate trap that is constant beefing with female emcees (as if there can only be one, like Highlander), and like David Bowie she falsely claimed to be bisexual as a way of generating attention. And some of her other mixtapes, like Playtime Is Over, are obviously highly-influenced by the likes of Biggie, but of course that is a path many great rappers start on. The point is, or was rather, that Nicki's personality was once incidental to her skill as a performer. Nowadays, things are quite different. Nicki has less in common with Weezy and more in common with Lady Gaga, who pioneered her own brand of innocuously familiar goo-goo synth music that merely backgrounds the main parts of her show, which are, in descending order of importance, the absurd outfits and creepy, slightly refracted takes on celebrity diva behavior. By that same token, Nicki Minaj is now enough of a marquee player to merit her own brightly-colored Hype Williams videos with absurd costumes, and the focus is now Nicki's mugging for the camera, all those bleeps and bloops, and the epic amounts of cash that are generated thereof. Call this as un-poptimist as you want, but that's not hip-hop to me, and it doesn't yield interesting music, only focused-group commodity bundles disguised under the banner of a "musical experience." The whole enterprise stinks of a business culture superimposed on our own that cares nothing for music qua music.

Unfortunately, this issue is larger than Nicki Minaj, and it speaks to larger trends in sanitized pop radio. Nicki's Young Money-mate Drake is another example of an artist who shows promise at first, puts out a few pretty-good mixtapes, then becomes simultaneously famous, signed to a major label, and no longer interesting musically. Drake's rapping gets a bad rep in some places, but I find it hard to deny a mixtape like So Far Gone, which has a really dynamic, warm sound courtesy his collaborator Boi-1da. But his two major label releases, Thank Me Later and Take Care, are somehow two of the most boring hip-hop albums ever released. Something happened when he made the switch. All over the pop radio board, rappers are choosing to go in this direction. These type of sonic concessions to a broad, unnecessary standard of pablum extend all the way to, if you will, the top--count me as among those perplexed and disheartened by Watch the Throne's unchallenged success.

This is why, as is often the case, the best hip-hop being made these days seems to be coming from everywhere except the pop radio spectrum, broad as that is. There isn't anything wrong with making music that sounds big and universal and popular, but this is music made without the courage of its convictions--it hopes to be popular through bland familiarity, through repetition of the same dumb phrases. People rag on the likes of Odd Future for violating basic decency and proper rap decorum, in part of course because there's no subjects music critics like rehashing every few years more than the propriety of certain hip-hop (and always hip-hop) lyrics. But I would honestly listen to Odd Future at their worst (Goblin, say) than sit through the large majority of Watch the Throne, which is an album that seems possessed by little more than the empty moneymaking qua moneymaking ambitions of its two kingmakers. At least I will be liable to hear something new, a snatch of unexpected gnarly noise, maybe, or a motif that weaves in unexpected directions. A skillful flow means nothing when it is wedded to the same tired words and an overfamiliar beat. There are a lot of rappers right now on the fringes of stardom who are making music in their bedrooms that sounds nothing like what came before. The question is, when they in turn become popular celebrities, will they be subordinated into the system as well? I'd rather have a heinous, rape-n-murder obsessed Tyler, the Creator than a Tyler, the Creator motivated by radio dictates. No matter how unkind it might sometimes sound to our ears, it's better than not noticing we are listening at all.

I worry about the insurgent rappers and their impending success, and wonder if yet another possibly transformative moment in popular music will be co-opted by MTV and robbed of its capacity for political change, like punk and grunge. I wonder, for instance, about A$AP Rocky, whose mixtape was on my Top 10 last year, and who has lately been the subject of an insane $3 million bidding war, which landed him at Sony/RCA. Hopefully his major label debut won't sound like Pink Friday, a repurposed set of already overfamiliar autotuned dross, but like a continuation of the expansive cosmic beats and laconic delivery that made LiveLoveA$AP so enjoyable. Honestly, though, the odds aren't looking amazingly good. Is there any way for alternative rap cultures to make their way into the mainstream without sacrificing at least part of what made their music interesting in the first place? In theory, they should be able to do this easily. So what, or who, is stopping them? And what must we do in turn to stop them?

*Usually I am an admirer of Conor's lucid, rational reporting, but he lost me at that point.

UPDATE: This recently unearthed early video is a good example of how different (and better) Nicki Minaj used to be, pre-fame and goofy voices: