Daft Punk's Random Access Memories

xpost Yeah I agree with that comparison but EJ and EC can't oscillate their vocals so they end up sounding really linear( just singing at full power ALL the time) and over the top where as a really great vocalist (and I'm thinking of Todd Rundgren and Paul Williams on 'Touch') get the balance right and make it sound really beautifully bittersweet...

will need to slice off the first 2 min of 'giorgio by moroder'

i don't want to hear an old bloke talking for ages every time i play this album

Xgau liked the new Knife!

Ps why wasn't Todd Rundgren rather than Todd Edwards on this...

Discovery [Virgin, 2001]
These guys are so French I want to force-feed them and cut out their livers. Young moderns who've made the Detroit-Berlin adjustment may find their squelchy synth sounds humanistic; young moderns whose asses sport parallel ports may dance till they crash. But Yank fun is much less spirituel, so that God bless America, "One More Time" is merely an annoying novelty stateside. The way our butts plug in, there are better beats on the damn Jadakiss CD. C+

Romantic Warrior [Columbia, 1976]
Right on schedule, two or three years behind John McLaughlin, Chick Corea tries to eat the fusion cyclotron. Where McLaughlin fell for a few silly orchestral trappings, Corea essays pompous, ersatz-classical compositions--while continuing to display Al DiMeola, Stanley Clarke, and Lenny White in all their dazzling vacuity. Jazz-rock's answer to Emerson, Lake & Palmer--the worst of both worlds. D+

Giorgio Moroder: As a solo artist he was the Ross Bagdasarian of his time, but without Alvin Chipmunk who could care?

Xgau liked the new Knife!

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, May 14, 2013 3:25 PM (6 seconds ago)

yeah, but that's the polar opposite of RAM

Giorgio Moroder: As a solo artist he was the Ross Bagdasarian of his time, but without Alvin Chipmunk who could care?

this is literally the dumbest thing anyone has ever said

Discovery review otoh is primo Xgau (and I don't even really like Xgau but it is sort of a wonder to behold when all his succinct little witticisms come together)

I love the totally non-hipness of the hippest band in the world. It's anti-hip.

but i think this is part of a dynamic that's been a major part of popular music for a few decades. the way that bands of unquestioned "now"-ness and critical respect can make a project of "rehabilitating" (a fancy way of saying, making people take another look at) styles and genres and musicians that were not so much obscure as simply beneath the critical radar (or beneath critical contempt). think about, again, the way stereolab and others revived interest in (of all things) the free design. or serge gainsbourg. or stuff like perrey-kingsley. or the whole italo-disco revival. or the love mariah carey seems to be getting from hipper quarters lately. on a more rootsy/rock tip someone like will oldham has performed this sort of service.

i'm not saying that nobody "hip" carried the torch for these folks, or that many of them weren't popular--and certainly something like euro-disco just kind of mutated into Hi-NRG and a million other things and is still popular. the context is key, and it's a narrow one (albeit one that many folks on ILX are quite familiar with). the streisand mentions on this thread are interesting, since she's a performer who as-yet gets almost no love from "serious" (read: indie/rock-centric) music criticism. she is still sort of beyond the pale for a lot of folks, although I see her body of work creeping over the hipster horizon. my very very un-hip uncle and aunt (who i guarantee have never heard of 99.9% of the musicians/bands mentioned on this thread) have a big streisand collection, as do many other folks, but within the narrower critical context we're dealing with it would probably take a "vanguard" artists of unimpeachable coolness to get all the brooklynites and portland type folk to start pulling those innumerable streisand records out of the 50-cent bins.

these days the whole process seems inevitable and oddly systematic. i think the internet (and free downloading) has given people the ability to cultivate ever more catholic (small "c") tastes and build up little communities of like-minded folk. and as result there's this kind of 24-hour trawling of the bargain bins and the "exposure" of more and more genres and subgenres to tastemaker approval.

xxxxxx...post

i def. like christgau quite a bit (at least, as rock critics go, he's pretty damn good, but anyone who knows me knows that is praise w/ def. limits) but i was just kind of acknowledging that daft punk, and many of the artists they pay tribute to on this new album, are kind of far outside his "zone."

that said he adores chic, as he should.

i feel like maybe this issue deserves its own thread but i don't have the time/energy to contribute to it really....

there's an interesting discussion to be had re: Streisand (aero to thread). having sorted through a really thorough collection of her stuff recently I can say I unreservedly hate 99% of her catalog, I'm not sure what angle she would be approached from that would rehabilitate her rep with fans of other genres. but it's an interesting question.

yeah, she does seem like total dreck to me. i heard an interview on NPR. she has an interesting story and seems like a smart lady so I listened to the whole thing but egads the excerpts from her music.

but-- there seems to be this almost impersonal (even if in its particulars it often is very very personal) process of canon expansion such that her inclusion seems almost inevitable. again, for my uncle/aunt she's already canonized, but w/ in a markedly different taste culture--they're of an early-baby-boomer generation that isn't even really into rock music at all.

A certain strand of eighties R&B balladry -- Stephanie Mills, Freddie Jackson, Rene & Angela, Maze ft. Frank Beverly -- still gets little mention outside adult R&B stations, but let's not kid ourselves: "indie," like the NRA, is not as potent as we like to pretend.

I'm still waiting for the Alexander O'Neal revival!

her virtuosity would probably allow her to be slotted into a Whitney/Mariah/etc pantheon of female vocal acrobats. except that she does not come from an R&B/soul lineage, like, at all.

xp

René & Angela and Maze are old news in beardo circles fyi

whew that's a relief. I can stop recommending "Golden Time of Day."

No need for a revival in my house...I listen to 'The Lovers','Hearsay' and 'Fake' about once a week...

René & Angela and Maze are old news in beardo circles fyi

looool was just gonna

The first Regina Belle needs some love tho...

ha! i love how "beardo" is this slightly less "sticky" or problematic version of "hipster."

there's a strong sense in which many people wait for the "OK" to start digging into a certain artist/genre. i don't place myself "above" this by any means

shakey mo: but go back to the 1980s/1990s and see how many folks writing for rolling stone or even working in hipper record stores etc. were making a case for whitney/mariah. the whole "vocal acrobatics" observation was still--hell, IS still-- more a term of critical approbation than approval. it's changing slowly, though.

i guess i would like folks' opinions on whether seen from a distance this really is a kind of quasi-inevitable, impersonal process endemic to whatever stage of technological reproduction/capitalism/etc. we're in.

My beard will only allow me to like "Baby Come to Me," and it ain't Patti Austin's.

She is the best-selling female artist on the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Top Selling Album Artists list, the only female recording artist in the top ten, and the only artist outside of the rock and roll genre

Barbra's wiki entry needs to be updated - I don't think a single claim in the above sentence is true...?

might have been true in 1977 or something

most beardos are hipsters but not all hipsters are beardos

I was watching the vid for You've Been Around, wondering who Bowie's channeling there. I think it might've been Alexander O'Neal?

Sorry, Daft Punk, as much as many of my generation love "Rainbow Connection," there will not be a Paul WIlliams revival. And Nile and Moroder did not need your help. Nice try, though.

Half the tracks on this seem like they should be the hidden bonus track on some other album.

ha! i love how "beardo" is this slightly less "sticky" or problematic version of "hipster."

ennh

amateurist what do you think of tumblr tags, are they an acceptable way of organizing the chaos?

(btw for all the talk about rehabilitation etc i find phantom of the paradise totally unwatchable, like 90% of brian de palma's movies)

xpost what chaos?

beardos tend to be a bit more 'digger' if you know what i mean

(p.s. for all this discussion i kind of feel like this album is maybe... not that great?)

Line drawing is a function of age. Just today a kid at the radio station remarked that the new Low is suitable for Starbucks play, and it was an insult. Given my experience at the local Starbucks he's right! But he still believes that tastes require a suitable place to consume the product -- a reactionary idea given how balkanized our tastes have become (and a variant on the ridiculous theory that Sade = wine bars, therefore bleh).

Plenty of us liked Carey and Houston in the nineties! The problem is, we had to wait for that generation of rock critics to retire or die before we could take over. Now we can remind everyone that Hall & Oates were always good, thank you.

(btw for all the talk about rehabilitation etc i find phantom of the paradise totally unwatchable,

I like lots more De Palma than you but otm

true story: one time i was spinning the betty botox* bootleg edit of rené & angela's "i love you more" and dj harvey came up to the booth and asked me what it was. that was prob the coolest i've ever felt in my whole life.

*post of missing, etc. ;_;

there's a strong sense in which many people wait for the "OK" to start digging into a certain artist/genre. i don't place myself "above" this by any means

I'm not sure it's quite this - more like, in the absence of a groundswell of rehabilitative sentiment, where's the motivation to devote the time and energy (albeit no longer money)? Basically everyone has a tonne of music that they haven't explored, and a great deal of that is against an incessant whispery background of people (likeminded or otherwise) saying "check it out, it's really great" versus the stuff that has no such white noise accompaniment - which are you gonna prioritise?

hipsters are nothing if not reactionary!

ok that's too broad but certainly most college rock kids are way conservative, totally obsessed with drawing boundaries of taste and casting out offenders etc. i speak from experience!

there's a strong sense in which many people wait for the "OK" to start digging into a certain artist/genre. i don't place myself "above" this by any means

I'm not sure it's quite this - more like, in the absence of a groundswell of rehabilitative sentiment, where's the motivation to devote the time and energy (albeit no longer money)? Basically everyone has a tonne of music that they haven't explored, and a great deal of that is against an incessant whispery background of people (likeminded or otherwise) saying "check it out, it's really great" versus the stuff that has no such white noise accompaniment - which are you gonna prioritise?

― Tim F, Tuesday, May 14, 2013 6:01 PM (59 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think we are maybe saying something very similar?

the question is by what process does something move from the 50-cent bin of forgotten/overlooked/benighted music to the deluxxxe 180g reissue on the record-store wall (or at least the bid-up-to-$30-on-eBay circle)?

jaxon's opening post on his west coast country folk thread is vv otm:

one of the funnest things about having a music addiction is getting bored with everything i've ever listened to before and forcing myself to open up and listen to music that i thought i'd never listen to (country, commercial hip hop & pop, disco, soft rock) or stuff that i've always known about but skimmed over.

Get a gig at Pitchfork or SPIN.

xpost

I like Phantom of the Paradise a lot, just on a visual level, but it is amazing how shitty all the music is

xxxp

i think its more about clusters of associations collapsing into one another rather than lines of rehabilitation or w/e, i mean you must recognize how embarrassing the concept is you put it in quotation marks yrself, but i think theres a kind reinvention by association as things are kinda venn diagramming themselves into and out of existence

but i dont really understand who you are even talking about here in terms of like, 'are daft punk making paul williams cool' or w/e - hes already actually p cool cuz of that de palma movie, most of the stuff they're referencing that i can see is/was p cool already or hip or w/e

and I am a big Paul Williams stan

xp

Hall and Oates were always awesome. Mariah and Whitney not so much.

Anyway, lets take our heads out of our posteriors for a moment to talk about how fucking weird and nonsensical some of this sounds. Has anyone who is talking about what a "big hit" this record is destined to be for the kids and Boomers at dinner parties realized that the third track has some dude with a German accent rambling about click tracks and 24-tracks over it in a decidedly non-musical way?

i think we are maybe saying something very similar?

in broad terms yes, but your formulation implies people are concerned to know the answer to the question "is it okay to like this", whereas I think that's only the case sometimes.

Lamp's "clusters of associations collapsing into one another" is a good description. Much of what motivates people to check out X is saying it referred to in connection with Y which they already like. It goes from being off the radar to on, rather than from the bad books to the good books.

seeing it referred to in connection with Y, I mean.

so. many. xposts.

have to say that my tastes were formed in part by noting what genres of music sold for cheaper (hence, weren't that popular among hipsters) in the 1990s/2000s.... classical music, country, a lot of african music before that stuff got huge in american beardo circles.... all very cheap at reckless records in chicago. hence i bought it. during college i often felt that i was kind of step ahead of these revivals b/c I would just buy stuff that looked intriguing/was cheap. i'm sure this is a pretty common dynamic and i wouldn't doubt it drives some of the trends i'm suggesting here.

lamp: re. paul williams yeah there's been a phantom/paradise revival over last few years. but i'm guessing the daft punk record will expose him/it to more people than are attending revival screenings at the cinefamily or whatever.

xpost

yeah the paul williams track is nothing if not deeply weird

wait i need to revise that. i just meant to imply that if reckless was pricing certain genres way down it's because they didn't sell as well or as dependably. but i think the word "hipster" just confuses things here. there are going to be people who come into reckless to buy the hot new indie record and those who may pick that up but may also buy a bunch of cheap LPs and CDs. or people (like me) who just do the latter. i don't think "hipster" adequately distinguishes between (or encompasses) these categories.

"is it okay to like this" is kind of answered by the whole venn diagram stuff, though, no? i don't mean that people are explicitly asking that question, just that often something that is already kind of _around_ gets picked up with enthusiasm because it is not just congruent with but explicitly called out by some band or magazine or something that already meets with general approval in whatever taste culture you are part of.