sly stone, calhoun

nobody's fandom outweighs anybody else's, and the mere fact of "i like this" doesn't by itself persuade anybody of anything.

that said, it's been really interesting this week, re-reading lester bangs' psychotic reactions and carburetor dung (bought a new copy to replace one i lent to a friend whom i know will never read it) and listening to sly and the family stone's there's a riot goin' on. doing these two activities concurrently reminds me of how much people used to care about and invest in music, what now seems like a very antique preoccupation to me (and prolly even more so to you). it's hard to believe now what a stir there's a riot goin' on caused in the rockcrit community when it was released, way back in '71. creem magazine, which i'd just started reading, reviewed it _three times_, assigning it to different staffers, panning it one month and praising it to the skies the next. rawk writers used to do that -- display in public their internal struggles coming to terms with a piece of work by a respected artist. lester his own self did it with the stooges 'n' mc5 (if nothing else, to keep from getting his californian ass kicked by his housemates in walled lake, michigan). it's funny, because now, in the fullness of time, this rekkid sounds _inevitable_ (perhaps because of the historical impact it's had). sly had already turned what usedta be called soul music on its ear with a series of hits and an orgiastic gospel-driven exorcism at woodstock that, um, cleared the way for what we now knows as funk acceptable to white folks, not to mention setting the stage for a full-on revolution in black music. dig: evabody but evabody -- from the fonky meters to james brown to miles davis -- was influenced by sly's innovation; just at motown, f'rinstance, the late-'60s masterwork of norman whitfield with the temptations woulda been unthinkable without sly, to say nothing of stevie wonder and marvin gaye's early '70s apotheosis, the whole careers of george clinton and prince, etc., etc., etc. but there's a riot goin' on, at the time at least, sounded like something entahrly other -- a retreat, perhaps, or even a downright admission of defeat. (if that doesn't make sense, read the social history of the united states between 1954 and 1970.) "where are the hooks?" de yoof wanted to know. "where's the non-stop party fun?" sly had taken the bouncy groove of his greatest hit, "thank you (falettinme be mice elf again)" (which, i suppose, is responsible for the whole trend of prince and the collected hip-hoppers of the world not being able 2 spel gud) and slowed it down to a crawl, so that it sounded less like the sound of a party than that of a junkie nodding off in an opiated haze. sly made it possible (indeed, necessary) to depict, as graphically as possible, a certain type of urban reality. curtis mayfield was listening. i'll bet the geto boys were listening, too, a little later on. so there's a riot goin' on was maybe the first r&b rekkid to be designed less as a collection of hooks and danceable grooves and more as a total sonic environment, a movie for your ears, a bath in which you have to immerse yourself. and in that, it operates in much the same way as all the music i dig the most: the stooges' funhouse and van morrison's astral weeks and miles davis' in a silent way and the beach boys' pet sounds (which i've come, over the years, to think of more as a soundscape than as a collection of songs).

but then again, you might think it's boring.

these days, you can count the number of "artists that matter" (e.g., those whose new releases people anxiously await and spend hours / days / weeks figuring out how to incorporate into their lives) on a few digits: in rock, say, the flaming lips, wilco, radiohead, then who? there isn't the _consensus_ there was back in the day because there isn't a single unified audience (or at least the illusion of one) and maybe that's a good thing -- segmentation of the marketplace through mass media and techno advances has opened up all kinds of interesting interstices for "unsigned" artists (which is like 90% of the people who make music) to market themselves and find listeners, down the street or around the globe. maybe i had that wrong -- maybe the number of "artists that matter" has grown geometrically; the thing is, each listener has their own set.

one of mine lives just around the corner from me. when tim locke finished the new calhoun record (which is apparently entitled finis; i don't know song titles, either, because all i've got's a cd-r and tim's songs are _never_ called what i think they are), he told me, "it's done. i hate it. last week, i loved it." i came home one night last week to find my sweetie diggin' the copy he'd left in our mailbox. after listening, i e-mailed him, "dude, you went and made a wilco record...a big surprise, in the best possible way." meant it, too. it's been quite a journey, following tim's career the last five years or so. with each new set of recordings, he's redefined himself in the same way sly did with there's a riot goin' on: from the extreme-close-up intimacy of 2001's love songs for the very low; to the overly-rich, everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink approach of calhoun's 2003 debut the year that never was; to the still-unreleased sides he cut with a west coast producer called "the count" that totally reimagined tim's songs and gave them a glossy sheen which somewhat eclipsed the performer's personality; to the surprisingly hard-edged rawk of coma rally; to the stripped-down sound of the 18 songs he demo'ed early last year, which i took as an indication of the way this record would sound. wrong! instead, finis borrows the best elements from all of the above to create something entahrly new -- a tweaked, modern sound that's stripped down at times and hyper-real at others, almost a "dub" version of tim's music. a lot of credit for the changes has to go to tim's newest collaborator, jordan roberts, formerly the big brain behind / most interesting thing about the audiophiles. he's filled the tracks with surprising colors and textures, including lotsa electronic drums which, who'd a thunk it, don't grate and detract from the feel of the music they way they can. the songs i've been hearing acoustically for years are completely transformed, and the unfamiliar ones all reveal new facets on each hearing. it's going to take awhile to digest all of this, but it'll be a fun ride. "easy listening" is for squares, after all.