Vampire Weekend

If you've been reading Pitchfork, watching Saturday Night Live, or listening to satellite radio, you've probably by now become aware of Vampire Weekend, indie rock's current darling "it" band. The review of their self-titled debut LP on Pitchfork is probably the most fawning piece of journalism I've read in some time, and I will admit that when I first heard "Mansard Roof," the first single, on Sirius, I thought it was fun and pretty enjoyable. And then I got home and found out who these guys were: a bunch of prep-school white boys from Columbia University. For an indie pop band, this is not entirely surprising, but from a musical standpoint, I find their ubiquitousness kind of troubling. Why? Because they're doing Afro-pop. When I first heard them, I thought they were a legitimate pop band from Africa.
Now, there is a long history of American musicians taking influences, instrumentation, and general sound from world music: David Byrne and Paul Simon (in his Graceland days) have both borrowed extensively from music of cultures not their own, each to outstanding effect. But what these two have in common (and Vampire Weekend lack) is a strong sense of self in their music. For all of its imported percussion and whistles, Graceland does not sound like anyone but Paul Simon. Likewise, David Byrne cannot change the fact that he is David Byrne and whether he is performing with the Talking Heads or doing his country songs as a solo act, his voice is unmistakably his. Not so with Vampire Weekend.
I recently read an essay in the New Yorker about Amy Winehouse, in which Sasha Frere-Jones referenced a review that called her music "aural blackface." The essay dismissed this review in part because Winehouse's backing band, the Dap Kings, are a soul band backing a soul singer. There isn't much of a disconnect between the music and the individuals performing it. I would use that term, however, to describe Vampire Weekend. I just think there's something inherently racist about what this band is doing, or something at least condescending toward Afro-pop artists who will probably never explode in America in the same way: they're putting a white face on African music and getting the approval and encouragement of their establishment. If you read interviews with these guys, they come off as the most pretentious, self-satisfied pricks to ever record a record, so I'm forced to believe that they think themselves precious and ironic for presenting the musical equivalent of...well, I don't know. Let's say the musical equivalent of if I got onstage and performed a Richard Pryor routine verbatim.

Narrow Escapes

It's been a long week, but I'm glad to say 2008 is looking better than 2007.
On Tuesday, I was driving to work and a woman had spun out and come to a stop in the middle of the road at the bottom of a hill about a quarter-mile from my house. I was driving a big white van, and I started to brake as I crested the hill, so I wouldn't hit her. As soon as I braked, the van started skidding right, and I had a choice: I could hit a large pile of rocks, or a telephone pole. I chose (correctly, I think) to hit the rocks, because:
1. They would have more stopping power, right? And,
2. They were not attached to several live wires.
So we hit the rocks, but not fast enough to deploy the airbags, and my brother was sitting on a box between the two seats, so he didn't have a seat belt. He grabbed my arm in what I can only describe as a death grip, and he held on, which was smart because right at that moment, the van started to tip down a ravine.
I had never been in an upside-down vehicle before Tuesday morning, and I'd prefer if I didn't have to repeat the experience: it gives you so much time to think. I thought, "This is how I die," and then I had time to get angry that I was going to die on my way to work, a block from my house, on a Tuesday. And then I had even more time to register Nick still holding onto my arm, and the windows breaking, and glass just everywhere, and tools flying through the air. And then there was more time to think about how up wasn't up, and when we came to a stop, back on our wheels, I didn't know if we were right-side up, or if I was alive, or what direction we were pointed. But then everyone in the van, my brother, myself, and my coworker William, all started asking, "Are you okay?" and odd as it was, just the fact that we were all terrified and asking that was comforting, because if you can ask that, you're at least somewhat whole. Nick hit his head and his legs got a little beat up, and when we climbed out of the passenger door (the driver's side was completely destroyed), he laid down in the snow for a few seconds just to have solid ground underneath him. We got to the top of the ravine and began to survey the damage, and for some idiotic reason, I said, "I forgot to turn the headlights off."
So why, because of the totaled van, with its torn-off roof rack (our ladder was impaled by the telephone pole's guide wires and twisted the rack clean off) and shattered windows, does this year look better than last year? We all lived, and really we walked away from that with pretty minor cuts and bruises. If that same accident had occurred in 2007, we would have been maimed or killed, the van would have landed upside-down or worse, on its passenger door. Last year was bad luck, and this year, I guess, is near-misses. I'm okay with that, if that's the kind of progress we're going to make.

Currently Reading: The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

Currently Working on: "Pinball Wizards," a two-act play about Tesla, Edison, Pinball Machines, and Death Rays.

Stephen King Should Get Some Respect

Well, let's try this again, shall we?
For my first post in quite some time, here's something directly related to writing. Disclaimer: I don't think Stephen King is a hack, not now anyway. Maybe in the 80s when he was doing mountains of coke (I have to imagine him face-down in the pile like in "Scarface," but with some stuck to his glasses in a really, well, endearing kind of way) and having interns more or less write his books, but now since shortly before the being-hit-by-a-van incident and especially after, he's turned into an interesting middle-aged writer with a lot of insight. I think he's an interesting pick for editor of this year's "Best American Short Stories," and it'll probably cause some trash-talking from people who think of him only as a genre writer, but regardless, read his article.

Thanks to Tayari Jones for this link.

Low-Key like Low-Key

I think there's something to be said for living the way I'm living right now, which is, specifically: rent-free, in a borrowed room filled with a painter's detritus and my own sprawling mess of belongings (which I am trying, actively, to pare down at this point before I leave the city, but sometimes I see books or movies and I just can't help myself and so they get added to my backpack or added to the box), stealing wireless Internet where and when I can, waking up early for work, getting home before noon from that same job (coffee shop where I got winked at just today) napping a bit, and then spending the afternoon reading on the little balcony at the top of the church stairs, getting a bit of a farmer's tan. It's not exactly inactive, because I'm working and therefore have income, but it's certainly not active, and at this point it's perfect for me. I'm reading The Fortress of Solitude right now, and I'm not exactly sure how I feel about it: it has its moments for sure, but I don't know that it's exactly coherent as a whole. The first chapter of the third part was pretty bad, but we'll see. There are still a lot of pages left. Has anyone read it? Does anyone have opinions on it?

I went last night to Finn and Annie's and sat in their backyard, trying to light the barbecue, dousing the briquettes in lighter fluid to very little avail, and it was pretty much the most stressed I've felt in the past few weeks, which I think says something about my relative stress-vs-comfort level of late. Our struggle was rewarded with veggie kabobs. Annie found a potential apartment in Boston, and she and Finn are making a trip this weekend to look at prospective places to live. I think I'll try to keep up this current low-stress, peaceful existence.

P.S. I keep saying I'm going to post stories and I will, next time I can steal some Internet. For now, I guess I'm signing off like I'm on pirate radio. "Tune in next week for the continued adventures of the Post-College Slacker."

What "Jungleland" and "Magnolia" Have in Common

I was on my way back from seeing Modest Mouse in Philadelphia and the song "Jungleland" by Bruce Springsteen came on shuffle. Now, it took me a long time to come around to Springsteen, because I thought he was just a New Jersey moron with a band who had a couple of pop hits, but then I listened to Nebraska and realized he's a damn good musician, and then he started getting his almost-inexplicable indie cred when The Hold Steady's third album was released and had a piano part ripped from Born to Run on its first track and the Arcade Fire included several musical nods to "the Boss" on their second album, so he's now offically an artist I listen to. And so, "Jungleland" came on, and the lyrics are great ("and the kids out there live just like shadows/always quiet, holding hands/from the churches to the jails") but then, there's that saxophone. Now, saxophone is fine sometimes, but I just don't like it in rock music. It seems out of place, like someone is trying to force Jazz on the music that stole from Blues. But I was sitting there, hating the saxophone, but still liking the song for everything in it that exists next to the very annoying solo ("Born to Run" has one of these, too, by the way) and I think that it's just a fact that as much as you may like something, there can always be a part of it that annoys the shit out of you, and it could be that this is a part of actively liking something: taking that part that just completely doesn't belong there, breaks up the experience for you, and ignoring it completely.

Which brings me to "Magnolia." It's a movie I've always had a hard time with, because the first time I saw it, I loved it, and the second time I saw it I hated it, and have proceeded to waver back and forth between these extremes on subsequent viewings and probably always will. But I think I essentially like the movie: the opening is perfect and sets the tone for the whole movie, and the interweaving plot lines (before "Crash" and "Babel" ran that concept into the ground) revolve around my two favorite actors (John C. Reilly and Philip Seymour Hoffman) trying to keep the variously disturbed and unbalanced characters around them from falling into complete chaos. If I remember correctly the two never meet although their jobs as a police officer and a nurse link them to the same characters, and the whole movie does a great job of letting you believe that this is all possible, because, according to the opening sequence, "These things do not just happen" and chance and probability work in funny ways. But then, pretty far into the movie (or maybe not too far, it's a long film), everyone starts singing the same song in a montage of shots, and every time I see it I want to throw my hands up and walk away. I never do, because I love to see William H. Macy's total breakdown (and I don't even mind the frogs, I'll even buy that) but it just seems to destroy the illusion for me that the film creates. I hate the scene. So now, when I watch "Magnolia," I use that scene to go to the kitchen and make some popcorn, knowing that I can return when it's over, watch the ending, and still like the movie. It's just like muting the sound for the whole saxophone solo in "Jungleland": if I can just ignore that one thing, it's perfect.

An Exercise in Procrastination

I'm reading Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem right now, and it's a clever riff on the detective novel, with the notable twist being that the main character suffers from Tourette's, which makes him bark, touch strangers, and say things like, "Eat me Bailey!" without intending to. As you can probably guess, this makes investigating the death of his mentor/boss relatively difficult. It kind of reminds me of Brick, since it's done with so much love for the genre and its conventions, but there's something completely unique about the way it's approached. My favorite part of the whole thing so far was a scene in which the book's protagonist nervously leads a homicide detective into a corner store, where he begins to tic...only he's trying to pronounce the unpronouncable glyph that stood in while Prince was "The Artist Formerly Known As."

I finally got around to reading Black Hole, by Charles Burns (who illustrates the covers of The Believer) which took a grand total of two days and creeped me out like nothing else. I hope the film adaptation keeps the same atmosphere of weird mutations (there's a girl who sheds her skin, and a boy with a mouth in his chest) mixed with the horror of high school. The graphic novel was done in a 1970's horror movie style, lots of extreme shading, people have sex and things start to go wrong, etc. The director slated to work on the movie is responsible for Haute Tension, which was your standard homicidal-escaped-mental-patient-attacks-resourceful-lesbian-but-there's-a-twist-ending film, and Neil Gaiman is slated to write the screenplay, so I have high hopes.

Finally, everyone should buy the new Wilco album. It's different, and much quieter, and it may take a few times through to grow on you, but then you'll love it. It's called Sky Blue Sky and comes out on May 15.

You'll Always Be My Hero, Even if I Never See You Again

Saturday night, everything came full circle and I found myself, two weeks before finishing college, watching the band whose farewell show I attended the night before I started freshman year. It's only appropriate that I should start and end my DC school career with The Dismemberment Plan, one of the best bands to ever hail from Washington. The crowd at the show was fantastic, and there was this sense of community; there were a few people there who were at the last show and who I have known all through college, and I loved the feeling of everyone being together for the event. It seems almost more important than graduation. There was a girl there who I used to be friends with, who I actually went to that last show with. We had a falling out and don't really speak anymore, but I saw her outside and felt really glad that she was there: I kind of forgot we don't talk, so I said, "Hey! How are you?" It just seemed trivial to not say hello, because damn it, isn't it great that everyone was there? I got up onstage during The Ice of Boston, just like in 2003, and when I hopped down, I said, "College is done."

I'm not the kind of person who takes down setlists, and this is not a review as much as it's some thoughts, but I will say that it was one of my favorite shows I've ever been to, and they played everything I wanted them to.

This weekend, Pitwinkle Productions put up "Antony and Cleopatra," and it was everything I've come to expect from Michael Finnerty and Annie Gilsdorf: full of wildly anachronistic but completely appropriate music, bloody as hell, and impeccably presented. I'm glad it turned out as great as it did, and also glad that Finn and Annie might finally get some sleep. Also, they decided to keep the snake. Congratulations to the cast and crew, you guys did a hell of a job and you're all wonderful.