stevengharms.com

I know ‘e’ll dump your skinny arse for me
break
’cos mum taught me ’ow to make a proper cup ’ah tea

Lady Sovereign or Lilly Allen, call me.

Much hay has been made of late about Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” ( no link to your site from my page, you singer of evil odes ).¹

First, is there anyone who doesn’t see this as cynical posturing? Could it be anything but a display to rankle the Conservative Establishment (tm) as a means to guaranteed exposure and sales? After the faux-lesbianism that was t.A.t.U, after the question was explored by Tina Fey and even Roseanne Barr, I can’t believe there’s enough moral outrage left in this issue to squeeze out into that nectar most irresistible to the profit-pollenating bees of controversy. But even when you run out of Christian conservatives, you still have at least two huge sects wherein this sort of thing is haraam-enough to generate sales.

The song is evil because it celebrates using people.

Opines “Perry”:

I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry chap stick
I kissed a girl just to try it
I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it
It felt so wrong
It felt so right
Don’t mean I’m in love tonight
I kissed a girl and I liked it
I liked it

No, I don’t even know your name
It doesn’t matter,
You’re my experimental game

Kissing is a special activity whether your proclivities bend to the gay or straight ( whatever those terms really mean ). In said act the kissed feels special, magical, and the kisser feels a different, but equally important magic.

But for “Perry” this act, described supra, has no magic. Showing absolute disregard for the basis of Kantian-Christian ethics, her experience categorizes her “other” as a thing, a tool, a means to an end and not a person per se.

If we changed the words “a girl” and made the singer a man would any of these formulations be tolerated?

• I kissed a fat chick … she’s [you’re] my experimental game
• I kissed a black chick … she’s [you’re] my experimental game
• I kissed a married guy … he’s [you’re] my experimental game
• I kissed a deaf / blind / retarded girl … he’s [you’re] my experimental game

No, they wouldn’t and damn right; they celebrate a selfish paragon of arrant douchebaggery. Close your eyes and imagine the “churlish frat daddy on Spring break” singing the first one and then high-fiving his ’bro as the “fat chick”, heart full of the “ohmygod he actually thought I was the cute one this time”, came up behind the conversation just in time to get her fragile emotional vessel crushed.² Gets your dander up, no?

Yet because of the cultural infatuation with the Sapphic taboo — especially if they’re young, nubile, and have silky hair like Portia de RossiGeneres — we let unbounded selfishness get a pass. This is wrong.

“The girl” in question was a person and this song completely ignores that. She might have been in the midst of a sexual identity crisis as well and that kiss was meaningful to her, now it’s a cheap game for some self-centered, meretricious, attention-whore.

Selfish bitch.

As if celebrating using people wasn’t evil enough, the song furthers a pernicious form of misogyny: the misogyny perpetrated by the female upon female for the titillation of the heterosexual, male, buying public. The song is celebrating using people to make yourself rich.

Can you even fathom the outrage of a Toofer-from-“30 Rock”-type singing a song about how he wheedled a black woman in the ’hood into a cutthroat loan so he could make his bonus target and get a trip to Tahiti? We’d not stand for it under those conditions, why now?

“I wheedled a hood mom her mortgage / Love the bling on my pinky … What? How dare you judge me

What’s next?

I kicked an old man down the stairs
His medicare check will buy me Prada

I’m put in mind of the stories of the slaves on the ol’ plantation who would rat out slaves planning escape to ’massa as a means for advancement. Cozying-up to ’massa netted succor but did so at the expense of perpetuating a morally reprehensible institution and at the expense of a fellow victim subjugated by said evil institution.

I recall Liz Phair once being called the proponent of “do-me feminism” ( i.e. “women have the right to be sexually active and not be judged differently for the act than men” ). “Perry” is the proponent of fuck-you feminism: “the movement’s dead, I’m looking out for number one, and i’ll put my stiletto heels in the back of as many sisters as I need until I get my ducets — hey sister, at least one of us is advancing.”

Selfish sell-out.

And while the misogyny and the using make the song evil, it doesn’t make it bad. No, that comes courtesy of the internally inconsistent messages within the song itself. While “Perry” is contemplating how nice it has been to baselessly use another human being, later she has the temerity to sing:

Us girls we are so magical
Soft skin, red lips, so kissable
Hard to resist so touchable
Too good to deny it
Ain’t no big deal, it’s innocent

Now while it’s certainly not Shelley, the sentiment here is something that most sexes can recognize as part of the beauty of the feminine form. And “Perry”, I am so with you the first 5 lines of your bridge, but the last one, double negative aside, says that “your game” is “innocent”.

I do not think that word means what you think it means

No, it’s anything but innocent! It’s tawdry and mean. Here’s the worst I’ll say about it, it’s as mean as “In the Company of Men” and that’s about as mean as it gets.

Lastly, Perry’s look is impinging on Zooey Deschanel territory and I don’t like any singers of such hateful material approximating the sweet look of my dear, sweet, blue saucer-eye Zooey - HULK SMASH!

Original: Talented singer and actor Zooey Deschanel

Bad Copy: Possible misogynist and misanthrope “Perry”

I mean really, the look, it’s Zooey’s, stop copying just stop it, stop it, stop it.

In any case, the song is pure evil, and it’s bad, and it, of course, is a hit.³

UPDATE: I left a comment at YouTube under Perry’s video giving a precis of these points and it appears to have been removed. I suppose the clip owner “CapitolRecords” likes controversy about gay or not or tolerant or not, but can’t brook an actual criticism. “Is it OK to be a lesbian” they like being asked, but “is it OK to be a douche of a human being” is too hot to handle, or too inconvenient when you’re making mad money selling the controversy.

Footnotes

1. I say “Perry” because I don’t know if this is actually Ms. Perry’s thought, or if this is the results of some calculated wordsmith who realized that cheap lesbian titillation would sell records. Thus this is the Perry as portrayed by the factual Perry singing the song, versus the factual Perry herself, who may well be a perfectly lovely person — although her taste in material is suspect in either case. “Perry” refers to the singer of the song and Perry refers to actual singer and human. Back

2. Just a quick note, I have only known 2 people in my life in fraternities in any intimate way. One was is my friend who is a thoroughly decent gentleman in Dallas. The other was a guy who was on a project with me my senior year who was kinda flakey. I admit, I’m playing to stereotype here. On the other hand, I’ve heard enough Spring Break stories to think there’s a germ of truth lurking about. Back

3. A culture as bankrupt as this deserves George W. Bush for a president. Back

Ubi sunt qui nos ad civitatem virtutis ducere possunt? O tempora, O mores!

Lauren and I just finished watching the turn–of–the–decade camp–comedy “But I’m a Cheerleader” starring Natasha Lyonne and featuring roles by RuPaul ( as a man ) and Bud Cort ( aka “Harold” ).

The opening song is April March’s “Chick Habit”:

Lacking a canonical video, I’m going for the one with the “Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! footage

This song is an amusing interpretation of Gainsbourg’s “Laisse tomber les filles” (literally, Allow the girls to drop or “Quit the girls” - so an excellent translation by March ) as recorded by yé-yé chanteuse France Gall:

The bass–line is infectious and definitely writhes like Jack Marshall’s “Munsters Theme”. It just screams out “go–go boots, 20–year–old ingenues and two–count–step.”

“Laisse tomber les filles” was written by Gallic naughty–fellow Serge Gainsbourg ( what, in the ’60’s in France wasn’t? ). Serge’s prolific work ranges from an early herald of “world music”, a great horns arranger, and a writer of not–so–thinly–veiled entendre for ever–so–corruptible girls—most “scandalously” his own daughter, Charlotte.

Next time Ms. March is in the area I’mma goin’.

For some reason I can’t explain
I know I’ll hear this song all day
Never a heart-felt word
But this song will rule the world

Previously

…and they have the temerity to call the album Viva La Vida?

Bowie: ‘One day in Berlin, Eno came running in and said “I’ve heard the sound of the future” and I said “Come on, we’re supposed to be doing it right now”. He said “No listen to this”, and he puts on I Feel Love by Donna Summer. Eno had gone bonkers over it, absolutely bonkers. He said “This is it, look no further. This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next fifteen years” which was more or less right’.

“I really like Public Enemy, and I think that Donna Summer’s `I Feel Love’ is one of the best songs of the last ten years. It has a mechanical, Teutonic beat with that luxurious voice. Other people wouldn’t think of putting such opposites together. They’d make something that sounds like Depeche Mode.”

Eno Source

Yes, that title is from a Radiohead song, which is meant to say that I saw their brilliant performance last week at the (mouthful) Cynthia Mitchell Woods Pavilion in Houston. I should write at length on the matter, but really, what is there to say about the act? You can find the setlist at ateaseweb.

1. They were punctual
2. They played two encores, which, is light of point #1, supra seems a bit indulgent
3. They were professional
4. They are English
5. They did not engage in mindless banter (“Hello HOUSTON, we’re Radiohead from the UK!”)
6. They did have a very well put together light show.
7. They are, in my estimation, likely to be the band, who like the Beatles, retains an interest in the hearts of the next generation

Come to think of it, those last two points are worth discussing.

The light show was terrific with a wide screen divided into 5 sections. In each section was a camera filming a band member or an activity. During certain songs, other light effects were overlain on the screen. They reminded me of some of the more experimental drawn-on-film animation that emerged in the early 20th century as part of the futurist or modernsist movements. Around and before the band hung tubing that contained lights that would vibrate with light in tune with the music.

SMercury98 on Flickr

The most powerful moment is when Thom sat at the piano and mugged it up, lazy-eyed and proud of it, while performing “You and What Army”: “Come on, Come on / Holy Roman empire”

inourhands on Flickr

About the time I discovered that my parents’ generation had some stunning achievements in Music, I realized that thanks to the technology and fidelity of music technology of their day, and all days subsequent, music is now able to last, effectively forever. unlike acetone or wax recordings that degrade exponentially, the LP and the CD and now the MP3 are all, effectively indelible. Therefore generations of the future will be able to evaluate the musical tastes of the preceding generations in a way that has never before been seen.

I ask myself, what is the music that they will like of my generation. I can say that I think few songs are as sweet as the Allmans’ “Melissa” and there is the de rigeur appreciation of the Beatles and the Stones. So the question again returns, what if mine is worth paying attention to. I had always suspected that it was Nirvana that would make it across the inter-generational void, but now I don’t think so. I think that Nirvana will remain perpetually stuck in a formaldehyde bath ( I’m looking at you 101X ), and, to be fair, it just doesn’t seem as relevant now. In the sense that every band today owes their life to Nirvana, yes they seem relevant, but whose mood, whose words, whose lyrics are timeless?

In the years since I heard “The Bends” and “OK, Computer” their messages have grown more potent. I think, now, Radiohead will be the ones that transcend. I remember one day walking down a street in Holland and I checked out the newsstand and saw that some British music press mag asserted in their list of the top 50 British albums ever that Radiohead’s “OK, Computer” was atop the White Album, “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”, T. Rex’s “The Slider” and I thought it was pure anathema. Well, I’m still not sure if it’s #1, but it’s definitely in the top 5. I hope that some day I’ll be able to say…

Me: “Wow, huh, that was from Radiohead’s “In Ranbows” right? Funny thing, that was a record they released on the internet first.”
Disbelieving Kids: First compared to what?
Me: Uh, nevermind. Yeah, we went and saw them live.
Disbelieving Kids: You (you tragic old dinosaur) saw Radiohead…live?

When I went to see The Pipettes earlier this year, the opening act was the incomprable Nicole Atkins who channels the best of many things I love in singers.

Reverb: Why I love Neko Case ( and Brandi Carlile ) as well.

Mystery: Why I love Patsy Cline as well.

Girl Groups: Why I love Ronnie Spector / The Pipettes

And some associated words: Robert Johnson, Mississippi, San Francisco, rainswept streets, Nashville water, postcards, coney island baby, lou reed, cassocks and lace, revolvers, The Bible, motel rooms with suspicious stains, serial killers, crossroads, the lights on line-runner trucks.

At the end of it all, allow me to summarize: Nicole Atkins

http://donoramusic.com/

Check out their track “Ssh”, it was used by PostSecret for their Valentine’s video presentation.

OK, let me level with you.

Hipster pretense, “being into Bret Michaels-reality-show-star versus Bret Michaels sensitive tattooed rocker who realized after needin’ “Nothin’ but a Good Time” that “Every Rose Has its Thorn” …

…hipster ‘Best Week Ever’” artifice aside the truth is this: Van Halen Totally Rocks.

Shut up Hipsters

I mean Van Halen rocks in that “filling up a stadium with nubile dishwater blondes in tube-tops” way. It’s old school rock - something that, I’m sorry to say, the emo-castrati of our age (it’s not their fault ), post Blink-182-Queen-esque ( lookin’ atchu “Chemical Romance” ) teens of this age are simply unfamiliar with. I’m talking about rocking hard minus ennui ( Tool ); Rocking hard minus nonsensical Marxist blather ( Rage Against the Machine ); I’m talking about a Dionysian, graspy, pure pro-libido, pro-beer, pro-“hooray it’s five freaking o’clock on Friday let’s hit the Regal Begal” sense of rock.

Quien es mas macho?

Uh, nevermind

It’s strange, anyone born after 1985 simply doesn’t know the dream: LA, Sunset Strip, Limo with a hot tub in it with several groupies in bikinis,

loud music with way-too-many guitar notes.

The emperor thinks “Eruption” has a few too many notes”

It was the testosterone-fueled dream of 13 year olds of my era and all the eras before. Instead for the fili castrati of today, their pale ghost of a dream is nsparayshun432’s blurry headshot from the ‘turned-on-self’ digital camera on Facebook. How utterly sad.

I had thought for sure a Republican president committed to trickle-down economics and purging “evildoers” from the world would quicken the return of rock of this type ( cf. Mötley Crüe, Ratt, Cinderella, WASP ) or my own personal favorite mix of gasoline, death, sex, and Les Paul (from Bush I’s era): Guns ‘n Roses, but alas, that appears not to have happened. Maybe we don’t have it in us to rage, rage against the dying of the light, same with Rome, judging by the Silver Age.

Given that the young don’t know how to rock, it’s unsurprising that, in the postmodern age, the age of youth extension to your 70’s, the Baby Boomer concert promoters would go back to the Kilimanjaro preserve for rare and endangered masters of arena rock and haul them back out for our narcissistic look in the mirror before the kids start having discussions that include phrases like “long-term managed care”.

In the post-modern age we resurrect our icons or extend their life with fresh infusions of yoga and unicorn blood forever because we’ve lost our damned cojones and creativity ( shades of Baudrillard’s “Tasaday” essay from Simulacra & Simulation ), we went to Serengeti national park and pulled out the icons of that time when bands could rock, shamelessly, proudly, with some fucking showmanship.

That’s right, we went to the motherlode of feel good, guitar-shredding, put-a-goddamed-smile-on-your-face-you-mopey-bastard rock royalty of dare I say 1976-1983, the musical guests at Spicloli’s party: Van Halen.

“Whoa dude, I blew all my reward money on getting Van Halen to play graduation, bro!”

And what can I say but after 30 years of musicianship, you can’t help but deliver a great show with great music. During this show I realized some essential things about the Van Halen sound. If I were to use any particular scientific term s an adjective to describe their sound I would call it massively phase shifted. I don’t know how I never caught this years before, but everything they do has massive phase shift on it. During Alex’s stunning drum solo I realized that a sea of metallic cymbal, when washed in the Van Halen phase shift turns into a magnetic, roaring, metallic cascade of tin-tasting metal. When the guitar explosion that is Eddie van Halen’s guitar virtuosity ruptures into that ocean it’s like a supermassive gravitational body pulling the metallic seas of a neighboring planet this way and that in a shearing display of tidal friction.

Something should be said about young Wolfgang van Halen who, at his very early age appears to be exceedingly proficient at the bass ( as was his father before him ). I had to give a laugh at the fact that his bass was a modification of the famous Eddie van Halen “5150” Kramer guitar electrical tape theme. I remarked to my buddy that it was almost like the tartan pattern of his clan - a birthright, those hap-hazard stripes. And, I suppose I noticed the filial pride that must have infused the original tartan specifications of the highlands centuries ago.

Father

Son, with Diamond Dave

The set list:

• “You Really Got Me”
• “I’m the One”
• “Runnin’ With the Devil”
• “Romeo Delight”
• “Magic Bus”
• “Somebody Get Me a Doctor”
• “Beautiful Girls”
• “Dance the Night Away”
• “Atomic Punk”
• “Everybody Wants Some!!”
• “So This Is Love?”
• “Mean Street”
• “Oh, Pretty Woman”
• “Unchained”
• “I’ll Wait”
• “And the Cradle Will Rock …”
• “Hot For Teacher”
• “Little Dreamer”
• “Little Guitars”
• “Jamie’s Cryin’”
• “Ice Cream Man”
• “Panama”
• “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love”
• “Jump”

Here’s a few comments on specific songs.

“Runnin’ With the Devil”

The phase shifted brown sound of the brothers Van Halen par excellance.

“Everybody Wants Some!!”:

I hope I wasn’t the only one thinking of the claymation scene from Better Off Dead here.

“Unchained”

Un-Chained
<phase_shift>ch-ch-chu-chu-chunk-chunk</phase_shift>
Nothing Stays the Same
Un-Chained!

Hell, yes.

Icing on the cake: Young Wolfgang doing the post-guitar-solo cut-up ( on the album too )

Dave: [to some dude in the audience, in the “pit”, who is being broadcast on the huge screen]…you’ll get some leg tonight for sure. Tell us how you do!”
Wolf: “C’mon Dave, gimme a break..”
Dave: “One Break…comin’ up…..ungh”
Chorus

“Ice Cream Man”

This was the biggest surprise of the night to me. The stage went black and you heard some very impressive acoustic guitar playing, just noodlin’ as we with an axe say. And up came none other than David Lee Roth who proceeded to recount a story about growing up in Pasadena, CA. He told of the vast suburban boredom experience and that his town was the kind of place where they rip up the trees, put in new streets, and name the streets after the trees you ripped out. Whodathunk it, David Lee Roth, smart growth advocate.

But in recounting the story of growing up in Pasadena he told of a friend of his who had taken a job as an actual Ice Cream man, which led him into doing a great a capella version of the song which, at the end of the verse had Alex’s giant tom-tom’s come in like a tsunami with Ed’s frenetic guitar descent ride us into the second verse. Hell yes David Lee Roth, you are totally badass, still.

And no joke, Dave had an 8 pack, the high kicks that could have taken young grasshopper’s head off in a furious roundhouse kick and during the stellar finale of “1984” demonstrated mad staff twirling skills by twirling a shiny metal staff with such fury I was in mortal terror that he would lose it and impale someone in the mezzanine.

I did have to feel for Dave, thinking about him singing these songs, historically those folks right below the stage must have been nubile young ladies, instead of guys in their 50’s with enough cash to pay the astronomical price required to be in the most-wealthy room only pit.

Like: “Oh hell, more beer gut bald dudes, where the hotties at? MORE TROPHY WIVES!”

But, let that not dissuade anyone from this fact: You can continue loving the Halen all your days, so to you old dudes, rock on, to you women who should not be wearing that tube top anymore, rock on, to the kids with their dads ( Ed and Wolf; The guys in the audience ) rock on, to Alex and Dave, rock on.

In short, let me say this

Whooooooooo!

That flat Russian “a”,
wide and flat as a steppe,
open and deep as the seas near Murmansk,
and vast and wide as the wind.

Regina Spektor, you say it in “Après Moi (2 minutes, 32 seconds)” and I want hear it on the banks of the Neva in spring. I’ve always had a bit of a thing for St. Petersburg after I read Rand’s “We The Living” ( her best or second best story in my book, like Stephen King, she does well under the 200 page mark ).

Strange, I wrote those snippets without knowing the English translation of this section. It’s apparently a poem by Pasternak:

February. Get ink, shed tears.
Write of it, sob your heart out, sing,
While torrential slush that roars
Burns in the blackness of the spring.

I guessed the right season. BTW. If you’re in a Russian sort of mood might I recommend Cronenberg’s latest “Eastern Promises” — so freaking good I can barely contain myself.