Denny's is now promoting bands with special menu items and free downoads on their website. And all the bands get free breakfast when they're touring. What a deal!

Luc Sante makes up for a dirth of blogging by posting a few illustrations from one of my favorite books, Nize Baby, by Milt Gross. Written in the twenties as a newspaper column, it purports to be the overheard conversations of the residents of a lower east side tenament, but all the talk jumbles together, and it quickly turns into one of the most bizarre and hilarious exercises in dialect humor you will ever read. Much of it retells classic fairy tales, and at times the dialect gets so thick it becomes a Yiddish Finnegans Wake, only funnier. Long out of print (that's a hint, Fantagraphics), but if you come by my place I'll let you look at the less valuable of my two copies.

<satire>
As a critic--that is to say, as one whose expertise, knowledge, and taste have placed one in the position of setting standards for the seething masses of society to follow--I find it unsettling, not to say offensive, when artistes regarding whom I have already expressed my contempt dare, in defiance of all that is holy, to concoct musical endeavors which, it must be admitted, possess a certifiable, if infinitesimal, allowance of aesthetic value. Such base effrontery is barely to be born. And yet, this is precisely what not one, but two, such artistes have had the audacity to lay before your humble servant in this past week; against all odds they have conjured from thin air, as if in consort with the devil himself, not only music of undeniable quality, but have also contrived, and here I discern even more strongly Lucifer's guiding hand, to have these endeavors make their initial public appearance in the hallowed ranks of the top fifteen itself! Chris Brown's effort I can accept with partial equanimity--having enjoyed a goodly number of popular successes in the recent past, he can well afford the hire of skilled professionals in compensation of his woeful shortcomings--but Jesse McCartney? The man who must take partial responsibility for the soul scouring "Bleeding Love"? The man whose previous endeavors so overflowed with affectation and imposture of sincerity as to beggar adequate description? The man I hoped had vanished for all eternity in the capsizing of the WB Network? How can such audaciousness be tolerated? My only possible compensation for this woeful breach of decorum, though I may say without undue temerity that this happens only on rare occasions, if ever, is that my first impression might indeed be mistaken, and that both of these articles of musical expression may prove to be more dismal than presently appears. One must always hold out hope of some sort.
</satire>

Having got all that out of my system (you never know when the mood for producing poorly parodied 19th century prose will strike), I need to admit that, like all satire, most of the above is true. Both McCartney's and (especially) Brown's records are of surprisingly high quality, and both debut this week in the top fifteen. And, yes, it does bug me, because I had written both of these guys off. Admittedly, they had a lot of help--from Polow Da Don in Brown's case, from Chris Stewart and The Dream and The Neptunes in McCartney's (did it really take all of them to make him sound good?)--but whatever the case, they make a pair of wonderful records. A good thing, too, because it looks like they'll both be around for awhile.

In anticipation of summer, perhaps, the Hot 100 is full of interesting debuts (though not a single country record--maybe Nashville is on spring break). Aside from Brown and McCartney, there's new Weezer and Weezy, both sub-par (Lil Wayne has apparently decided to release the oft-delayed Tha Carter III in dribs and drabs until further notice), the US debut of UK star Duffy (a slightly more electronic, brassier, and blonde Amy Winehouse), and V.I.C.'s (with help from Mr. Collipark and Soulja Boy) "Get Silly", a record that lives up to its name and then some. Plus remixed Usher, lame G-Unit, and power ballad Ashlee Simpson. Finally, there's The Dream, who for the third time releases the wrong single from his album. Can't some enterprising program manager step up and put "Livin' A Lie" on the air and show this guy how it's done?

It's far too late to add anything new to the endless analog vs. digital debate, but this snippet from The New Yorker's recent article on Dust To Digital Records and the difficulties involved in transferring analog sources to digital confirms something I've believed for a long time: it isn't vinyl's supposed sonic superiority that people love about it, but its imperfections.

A few years ago, audio engineers played two versions of the same song for a panel of listeners. The first was free of noise. The second was the same recording, only with some random noise dubbed onto it. In almost every case, the listeners preferred the noisy version.

Scratches, hiss, even the occasional skip, people love that stuff, most likely because it equates much more with a live listening experience, where there is always extraneous noise flitting about. As for that quality of "warmth" vinyl aficionados like to go on about, claiming that only analog can reproduce enough of the original sound to create that feeling, I always figured that was turntable rumble, though I doubt you'd ever get an audiophile to admit as much.

The only people who ever listen to music in a completely quiet environment are people who are making records. Music perfectly played and flawlessly recorded, no matter how beautiful it may be, and no matter how high the sampling rate, is always going to sound antiseptic, as if the listener were sitting in an operating room. And just like an operating room, sonic purity scares us a little, makes us uneasy. People like a bit of mess. It reminds us of our lives.

From Google News--still a few bugs in the ol' algorithm there.

Obama's take on last night's debate:

Update: Now it's being suggested that there's a Jay-Z reference in there. But I'm a middle-aged white guy, so I went with the Stones.

The second week in a row with no new songs, though the top ten is bopping around like crazy. With Leona Lewis's album coming out last week, I expected her to retake number one, but who would have expected Mariah Carey not only to drop to number five but to lose her bullet in the process, bested by Lil' Wayne and Jordin Sparks? This is beginning to look like the early days of digital influence on the charts, when records bounced up and down, seemingly on a whim, first within the top ten, and then on the chart as a whole. Which means in another three months or so Billboard will need to change its rules again to keep radio and the major labels happy.

Not yet, though, because the current rules are still strong enough to keep Daughtry's Idol Gives Back performance out of the top ten (it debuts at 18 and will probably drop next week). Compare this to last year, when Carrie Underwood's version of "I'll Stand By You" debuted in the top ten on the strength of nothing but Itunes sales, confirming the overwhelming power that online sales now wield in the marketplace.

Idol Gives Back, by the way, provides half of the debuts in the Hot 100 this week, all uniformly mediocre except for Annie Lennox's version of "Many Rivers to Cross", which is shockingly awful (I'd swear she knew how to sing once). The rest is mid-level country, except for Rihanna's next likely top ten entry, the hilarious "Take A Bow", a Stargate/Ne-Yo penned follow-up to "Irreplaceable". After three albums they've finally discovered some emotions Rihanna can express without sounding like a machine: sarcasm and disgust (choice line: "You're so ugly when you cry"). It's a start, anyway.

Since I mentioned it specifically before the conference, I should throw in my impressions of Robert Christgau's presentation on John Mayer's "Waiting On the World to Change". It was good, it was funny, it was committed, it was, as always, skillfully and wittily written, and it didn't change my mind a bit. Though I'm willing to accept the idea of "Waiting..." being more ambiguous and thoughtful than it first appears, it still strikes me as politically and intellectually lazy. It gives the impression of someone throwing their hands in the air and saying "What can we do?" without taking a closer look at the possibilities open to them. You might make the case that the song is about waiting for someone else to come and point out the right direction for everyone to march, but there's nothing in Mayer's flatfooted lyrics that makes that suggestion.

Still, Christgau might have convinced me if not for one thing: his apparent misreading of the song most people highlight as Mayer's musical inspiration, The Impressions's "People Get Ready". If Mayer did take that song as inspiration, Christgau suggested, it was easy to understand why he appeared to support the idea of political non-action, since Mayfield's original did the same. Christgau must have a blind spot when it comes to Pentecostal religion (nothing to be ashamed of--many people do); otherwise it's hard to see how he could mistake a song that stresses the strength of character and faith required to attain personal salvation as an endorsement of political inaction.

Besides, when I listen to "Waiting On the World to Change" I don't hear "People Get Ready". The chord changes may be the same, but Mayer's tempo is faster, and Mayfield used those changes in a lot of songs. What I hear, instead, is "Keep On Pushing", a song whose message is as far from Mayer's as possible, and a lot closer to "People Get Ready" than Christgau seems to realize.

I'm more than willing to believe that Mayer's heart is in the right place, and certainly Christgau's is, but I think Christgau is too willing to read political opinions into the song that Mayer may very well hold, but doesn't come close to getting across. And he never once addressed how Mayer's fans may be taking the song. Will this expression of political frustration cause them to turn towards Obama (if they lean left) or John McCain (if not)? Or will it serve only as justification for a deeper political apathy? I hope for the former, but I lean toward the latter. And though I don't think Christgau is right about this, wouldn't it be nice if he was?

The EMP Conference wasn't as bad as I feared it would be, but I wouldn't say that it was as good as it might have been, either. Attendance was higher, according to the organizers--500 registrants as opposed to 350 last year--but what those new registrants added to the conference is hard to say. I suspect many of them came from academia rather than journalism, as the academic weight fell heavily on the conference this year. Many of the presentations sounded more like dissertations fueled by a need to publish rather than any true fondness for or interest in the subject, which resulted, on at least one occasion (which I won't be impolite enough to name), in glaring errors of fact and understanding.

Though I was happy to find that those presentations that touched on the trickiest subjects of race and identity resisted the urge to stridency and preachiness, academic distance didn't exactly make them riveting, either. There was a sense, in fact, that almost everybody, both among the presenters and in the audience, was trying to avoid confrontation as much as possible. The one exception was Joshua Clover, who, on his panel, kept encouraging people to engage in some healthy controversy. He was overjoyed when someone badmouthed the Clash's reggae covers, but no one else in the audience rose to the bait.

This hesitancy to embrace the conference's theme in real life didn't seem to be based on a fear of things getting out of hand so much as a sense of politeness. Nobody was going to back off of their positions, but no one was being rude or insulting about it, either. Maybe it's the Obama effect. If his example can keep a bunch of pop music geeks from raising their voices while discussing some of the most divisive issues they ever deal with, he must be even more influential than I thought. Then again, after years of wrangling, maybe it's just a cooling zeitgeist applying its mighty hand.

The oddest moment to result from this aura of polite conciliation came at the end of the panel on "Racial Ambivalence", which focused largely on various forms of "minstrelsy", from Al Jolson (the real thing) to Amy Winehouse (not so sure about that). At the end of the question and answer period, as a kind of signing off, the moderator, Kandia Crazy Horse, said something along the lines of: "Of course, if everything were equal, none of this would matter." I think I understand what she meant, but it begs the question: if we lived in a completely equal society, how would that change her take on minstrelsy? Would she consider it nothing more than a blip in racial history? Would she like the music more, or be more forgiving of those who aped black styles to further their careers? Or would she even care about it at all, despite its obvious historical importance--and if everything was equal, would that importance disappear? Whatever the truth may be, why this odd concession? Could it be she just loves the music, despite her reservations? And am I out of line to doubt it in the first place?

So, despite the urging of the overall theme of conflict, a fairly low key, non-confrontational weekend (especially compared to last year). Maybe a touch too subdued and lacking in adventure, but it's always nice to see so many people in love with the same subject in the same building (in the case of the conference itself), or even the same small, hot room (in the case of Michaelangelo's party). I even got a chance to tell Carl Wilson how great his Celine Dion book is. Not as cool as Obama reading it, I suppose, but he seemed to appreciate it nonetheless.

It's been a while since I've read anything of Greil Marcus's, but this piece in The Threepenny Review, with it's riveting family history and reflection on memory, is one of the best things he's ever done.

Despite the entry of five new songs into the top ten over the last three weeks, and the promise of a couple more next week, the overall stagnation on the chart continues. This week, the top seven hasn't moved at all, and the only change in the rest of the chart is the disappearance of "Independent" and the arrival of "Bleeding Love" (which will be number one next week if Oprah has her way--and when doesn't she?). For those who are counting, "Apologize" has now been in the top ten for 24 bloody weeks (a period of time roughly equivalent to six goddamn months or half a fucking year). It's at number nine, though, so this may be its last week. I wouldn't look for it to drop out of the top forty until around September, though.

Not much to get excited about in this week's debuts: bad country (Rascal Flatts); mid-level country (Brad Paisley, scraping what I assume is the final single off the bottom of his latest album, and sounding a lil' homophobic at the end there); and mediocre hip-hop (Ryan Leslie). There are, however, two curiosities. The first is Danity Kane's "Damaged", which has the weirdest opening line of any song so far this year: "Do you got a first aid kit handy?" The second is Lil' Wayne's "Lollipop", its broken, staggering, blunted sound begging the question: how can you possibly have sex when you're that stoned?

All the cons, and a few of the pros, neatly summed up in a single Idolator comments thread. Yet still nobody makes the obvious Ricky Nelson comparison.

I've been tossing back and forth the last few days, trying to decide if it's worth commenting on this year's EMP Pop Conference schedule. I had already heard that most of the presentations this year would be about politics--the official theme is "Conflict", but the group who chose the speakers obviously decided that the only real conflict in pop music, or at least the only one worth talking about in an election year, was political conflict. That's a decision, even though it irritates me in the narrowness of its vision, I could live with, if it wasn't that so many of the panels, judging by a quick survey of the schedule, threaten to be not only political, but dusty, dry, and retro-political to boot.

What I mean by retro-political is that most of the panels (though certainly not all) revolve around identity-politics, an idea that has its place and has resulted in great things in the past--particularly the 70s--but that, for the moment at least, has run its course, and does nothing now but add to the political and cultural divisiveness from which we so desperately need to break free. I have nothing against focusing on the cultural aspects of different forms of music and the way it serves and helps define those cultures, but to observe this process solely through the framework of identity politics not only warps the reality of the music, but diminishes and sometimes demeans it. Music is too broad in its cultural ramifications to be pinned down in such a narrow fashion.

Besides, the most important thing about music in political terms isn't the way it defines community, but the way it expands the limits of community, breaks its bounds, and overlaps from one community to another. An imprecise and somewhat weighted term for this is "musical miscegenation", a process that identity politics not only decries, but actively seeks to prevent (an undertaking roughly equivalent to trying to bail out the ocean with a five gallon bucket: first, it's impossible, and second, why would you want to?).

When I first saw the schedule I seriously considering skipping the conference this year (though I quickly decided that calling it a personal boycott would be both meaningless and pretentious), but the fact is that there are still presentations I want to see. I'm specifically interested in Robert Christgau's take on John Mayer's "Waiting On the World to Change", a song I have always hated, both for its apparent rationalization of political apathy and it's incorporation of changes borrowed from, of all people, The Impressions to make its point. Christgau seems much more sympathetic, and after seeing the reaction this winter to the Obama campaign, I'm beginning to feel the same way. Maybe what Mayer meant is that he was waiting for a leader, or a galvanizing moment.

At any rate, I'm interested in what Christgau has to say about it, and I'm hoping that some of the other presentations won't be as bad as I fear they'll be (there are also a few things that I will definitely avoid, but I don't see much point in bringing them up here--especially since some involve people I have a good deal of respect for, no matter how mistaken I think they are in this instance). Perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised. But I suspect that overall I'll continue to be disappointed, frustrated, and occasionally enraged, by what goes on.

In the top ten update I forgot to mention the arrival in the Hot 100 of the Oscar-winning "Falling Slowly" by Glen Hansard and Markita Irglova. Not as surprising as Three 6 Mafia's win, but a surprise nonetheless. Still, the song's right up the academy's alley: so sugary you could make syrup out of it, but modern sounding, unlike those old-fashioned songs from Enchanted (any one of which, I bet, is better than this). Just what the indie world needs: official recognition of the scene as a safe stomping ground for sentimental buffoons. Of course, unofficially, we've known that for a long time.

And after 18 holes, we can discuss the collapse of late-state capitalism in the clubhouse.

Ten weeks into the new year and we finally have a new number one (yay!). But it's kind of lame (oh!). And there are still 4 songs from last year in the top ten (gee!). One of which is "Apologize", which has now been in the top ten for 22 weeks (oh my god!). Another of which is "No One", which has put in 20 weeks (is there no justice in the world?).

OK, I'll stop now.

(thank you)

As for debuts, the interesting stuff includes Erykah Badu's "Honey" and Raheem DeVaughn's "Woman", both steeped in 70s soul, but each coming from a totally different direction; another Britney Spear's single, this one not about Spears vs. the paparazzi (or BS vs BS), and hence not very interesting, and a bad country power ballad from a group whose only interest is their name: Lady Antebellum. Does that mean they long for the glorious trouble-free days of the pre-civil war south, complete with slavery? And you thought Toby Keith was a throwback.

Can I just say, at the risk of alienating the few readers I have here, that with all the excitement that's been building about the new Portishead album, I gave the first two records a relisten last week and found them, um, laughable? Did these shabbily pieced together hunks of melodrama actually impress people? Do they still? If I had to describe them in one sentence, I'd say they sound like a James Bond soundtrack played at 16 rpm, and Beth Gibbons sounds like Shirley Bassey on ludes. A My Bloody Valentine or a Breeders reunion I can get behind. But this?

Another week of stagnation: except for minor shifting, the top ten remains the same, while places 11 to 15 fill up with contenders cooling their heels and waiting for something to break (or for radio to decide that it's tired of playing "Apologize" already). For those who are sick of seeing Flo Rida at number one, don't turn around, because the Timbaland-produced follow-up, "Elevator", jumped from 100 to 28 this week, and should be in the top ten by the middle of March.

Once again the best debut comes from Missy Elliott: "Shake Your Pom Pom" from the Step Up 2 the Streets soundtrack. More straightforward rhythmically than "Ching-A-Ling", and less interesting, but decent enough (though it doesn't sound as if Missy put much effort into it). As for the rest, if you really want a Paula Abdul comeback record, or to wallow in various forms of country sentiment (youth, love and family, God, etc.), or hear T-Pain and Chris Brown lend some help to Lil Mama, who really doesn't need any, you're welcome to it.

This is the sort of week in the top ten that tends to send me spiraling into depression. It's bad enough that after nearly two full months only seven new songs have made the top ten. What's even worse is that the top five has barely moved at all in that time, and over half of the new songs have been truly awful. This week, if it hadn't been for the sudden collapse of Yael Naim's "New Soul"--after debuting in the top ten two weeks ago and moving up another step last week, it's now dropped completely out of the top forty--there would have been nothing new at all. Not that that would have been a bad thing, since it would have saved me the pain of writing a review of "Independent".

Best new debut: Taylor Swift's "Picture To Burn", a teenage version of "Before He Cheats", except instead of trashing her ex's car, she threatens to go out with all his best friends and tell everybody he's gay. Chuck Eddy says that Swift's album is better than Miranda Lambert's, and judging from the singles I've heard, I'm beginning to believe it.

Most unbelievably awful record you're likely to hear all year: Celine Dion and Josh Groban's "The Prayer" (recorded live, so you can vicariously wallow in the audience's adulation). Compared to Dion, Groban's voice sounds impossibly weak, and she kicks his ass all over the stage. At the end, they introduce each other, and Groban calls her the "brilliant, brilliant Celine Dion". Compared to him, she is.

Update: How depressed was I about the top ten this week? So depressed that I put it all together, wrote and posted an update, and then forgot to put the new list up. Now it's there. It's been that kind of week.

I don't want this blog to become all anti-T-bone all the time, but this piece by Terry Teachout in the Wall Street Journal (HT Michaelangelo), provides the perfect word to describe the infection that Burnett has been spreading for the last 20 years: importantitus. It's not just that Burnett suffers from the disease himself, but that he's passed it on to so many others. Elvis Costello, bathed in self-consciousness already, hardly needed the help, but T-Bone provided it anyway; Los Lobos, though I'm willing to make an exception for the first Latin Playboys album, were pretty much ruined by it; Marshall Crenshaw, who needed something bright and direct to boost his career after the commercial (though not artistic--it's my favorite Crenshaw album) misstep of Field Day, instead wallowed in the lugubrious atmospherics of Downtown and watched his fan base, and his label support, slide right down the drain. And so it goes, one career after another rendered impotent through the curse of self-importance and the belief that one achieves greatness not only by reaching for the brass ring every time out, but that slowing the carousel to a crawl and cranking up the fog machines somehow makes it easier.

Latest case in point is this clip of Robert Plant and Allison Krause (backed by Burnett and Marc Ribot) applying the Burnett philosophy to Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog". Don't get me wrong; unlike some, I hold nothing that Zep produced as sacred (if someone whipped out a 25 minute kazoo version of "Kashmir", I'd be all for it), and as much as I dislike Burnett's production I admit there are some pretty good things on Raising Sand (largely because Plant, thank god, is too much of a rocker, and probably too much of a shallow asshole, to go for Burnett's guff for long). But this is a horrible mistake. Forget, for a moment, the alt-country pretentiousness of playing the riff on a banjo, and just consider how out of place the song's lyrics, which are nothing more than a bunch of old blues tropes about sex and lust strung together, sound in this context. Zep's original is a masterpiece because they brilliantly and flagrantly raunched it up past the breaking point; it's outrageous, but as an example of a young man's unrestrained lust it makes perfect sense. This Burnett influenced version makes no sense at all. It isn't even dirty, or, if it is, it's school-yard dirty: look at all the rude things we can get away with saying if we're nice and sweet about it. There's something grotesque, in fact, about the way Plant and Krause smile at each other while sweetly crooning lines like "A big-legged woman ain't got no soul". Plant isn't a young man any more, and he should be more careful: Burnett has made him sound like some old pervert who whispers rude suggestions to young women whenever he gets close to them. Somehow I don't think that's the image he's wants to convey.