Eurotrash or Eurotreasure?

King Pigeon @ Plan B - Saturday Nights

2012-01-03T07:35:00.001-08:00

France's Armenian Genocide Bill

2011-12-23T05:09:00.000-08:00

Here's an op-ed piece I wrote for Ianyan Magazine.

Christmas Eve Party in Zagreb

2011-12-22T11:52:00.001-08:00

I am DJ'ing Plan B Bar's Christmas Eve party. Here is the flyer I cooked up for that.

Downloadable version of flyer here.

17 December: Zagreb, Plan B - Eurotrashin' and Eurotreasurin'

2011-12-15T10:22:00.000-08:00

Link to full-sized flyer.

Common Birds at Sljeme, Croatia/Hrvatska | 12 December 2011

2011-12-13T15:12:00.001-08:00

No endangered species here, just some common birds. I stuck the camera in a bird feeder along the trail to Sljeme, the highest peak in the Zagreb region. These are edited highlights; the activity took place over 6 minutes. Camera falls over at end because a Marsh Tit gave it a good karate kick. :-D

Visitors are:

Eurasian Nuthatch | Brgljez | Sitta europaea

Marsh Tit | Crnoglava sjenica | Poecile palustris (the camera is close enough to show details of the bill, considered the most reliable way to differentiate it from the ultra-similar Willow Tit, so this is the first time I could add it to my life list)

Great Tit | Velika sjenica | Parus major (Why must all these birds be saddled with embarrassing English names? Just needed a woodpecker to make this list complete.)

Last bird is a King Pigeon ;-)

"Eurotrash or Eurotreasure?" @ Plan B, Zagreb

2011-12-01T14:36:00.001-08:00

Till the Money Runs Out: October 2011

2011-11-27T09:10:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, 15 October, I awoke on a friend's sofa in a panic. I had surfaced from a terrible nightmare in which I had announced to my supervisor that I was quitting my job and flying off to Croatia. I had no plan, no idea what I was doing. I had lost my mind.

As I got my bearings, I calmed down. OK, I told myself, I'm in Atlanta, Georgia, lying on Bryan and Laura's sofa, and everything is fine. Just fine. Then, I was thunderstruck by a shocking realization:

That was no fucking dream!

My heart raced, and the fuzzy cloud of my hangover rapidly assumed a sharper reality. The day before, during a jog with my supervisor, I had announced my departure plans. I had given the organization a little over two weeks to deal with my impending exit. In two weeks I was flying to Croatia. The goal was simple: to reboot my life. I hoped to find work in Europe as a writer and a DJ. I had no job prospects. I could barely speak a few phrases of the Croatian language. I had enough money to last me maybe six months, but probably not.

The last several weeks had felt as if I were taking a step out of an airplane, and the parachute on my back was of dubious quality. A nervous knot lay in the pit of my stomach during all my sober moments, so I tried not to have too many of those. I regularly awoke between 3 and 5 AM flooded with fear. If I was able to get back to sleep at all, I slept fitfully until the alarm summoned me.

The sleeplessness, in conjunction with the weight of my odd, self-inflicted situation, left me in a constant dream state. I floated down the streets of Atlanta in search of my usual morning Diet Coke, afternoon Moe's burrito, and evening pints of Stella at the Midtown Vortex. All around me, people drifted by like plankton.

I'm doing something extraordinary, I sometimes smugly told myself. But the late night terrors always wiped the smugness off my face.

On the morning of 5 October I awoke at 3 AM, right on schedule. I decided then to write down everything that was keeping me up at night. I entitled the document: "Reasons you will fail."

The document began with the statement: "You haven't any evidence that you have the talent to succeed as a DJ and a writer—and ample evidence that you don't."

After presenting a depressing stack of evidence, I concluded: "If you went to Europe, you would most likely be spending money without earning money, and you would eventually run out of cash."

And yet, I continued to move incrementally forward toward my goal of flying to Croatia and living there. I was proud that I was doing this despite my many opportunities to balk. I could have balked at buying the plane ticket. I could have balked in telling my supervisor of my plans. But scared as I was, I kept moving forward. I told myself that that was what courage was, being scared shitless to do something but doing it anyway.

Now seemed a good time to go insane. The whole world had gone insane. The Eurozone was in ruins. In the United States, Occupy Wall Street was chugging into its second month. (As an illustration of our interconnected worlds, David Brooks unsettlingly noted in a New York Times opinion piece that U.S. President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election prospects are tied to the decisions being made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.) An Arab spring continued to dramatically reshape the Middle East. If the world was going crazy, now was a good time for me to do the same.

During the first half of October I spent a week visiting my mom. I couldn't tell her my travel plans right away because I feared she'd react badly to the news. Besides, the plans were more hypothetical at that stage. At that time I had not yet bought the plane ticket, nor had I told my office about my impending departure. I hate burdening people with hypotheticals.

I spent that week doing all that I could for her. I cut down a dead tree, moved a heavy desk and some armchairs to the curb for trash collection, helped her select a new laptop and printer to replace the slowest computer on earth, and set her up with Skype. The last two items I craftily forced through; although I wasn't saying anything yet, I wanted to be sure she had a way to communicate with me once I headed to Europe.

But my week at home wasn't all work. We visited the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial on Roosevelt Island, Washington, D.C. I had recently read and much enjoyed Edmund Morris's three-volume Roosevelt biography, so I wanted to pay a bit of homage. We crossed a wooden footbridge, under which men fished, and found our way to the larger-than-life statue of Roosevelt, who stood before a number of marble slabs containing choice quotes from his writings. One quote read:

"A man's usefulness depends upon his living up to his ideals in so far as he can. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune, make for a finer and nobler type of manhood. Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die. And none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life."

While home, I went through my dad's history books seeking inspiration from stories of people who had left the familiar for new lives elsewhere. I read about the pioneers on the Oregon Trail, people who had gathered all their possessions and their family and headed west with, at best, only a vague idea of what awaited them there. Some succeeded; some became cannibals. What had compelled them to take such risks? Was it that the lives they had left behind were so awful? Or were they merely delusional, foolishly pursuing a truly impossible dream?

My mother and I visited some former neighbors who now lived in the Goodwin House, an upscale retirement community in a condo. The visit reminded me of my own mortality. Time is running out, memento mori, all that stuff.

The final two weeks of October flew by.

On Monday, 17 October it appeared I would be able to work half-time for six months, with all my health benefits. This would be of considerable aid to me in transitioning into a new life. That same day, the director of the organization warned me to check with our Office of Human Resources to be sure that working 50% time would be enough to qualify me for health coverage down the road; he had heard rumor of a change to the rules that might demand an employee work at least 75% of the time in order to hold onto his or her benefits.

On Wednesday, the 19th, my future with the organization was considerably different. Now three months would be the limit, and my health benefits would be cut off on 1 January because yes, the change the director warned me about was going into effect then.

On Saturday the 22nd, at an Asian restaurant in Canton, I received a fortune cookie with no fortune inside of it. "What does this mean?" I asked the waiter.

"No fortune is good! It means you make your own fortune!" he said.

That same Saturday I drove from Canton to Helen, Georgia, to enjoy the spectacle that is their version of Oktoberfest.

On Sunday, the 23rd of October, while sitting at a Decatur bar listening to Deerhunter, I learned that a wait person with proper connections can buy a bottle of wine at the bar despite Georgia's ban on alcohol sales on Sunday. However, this realization was rapidly rendered of historical interest only, as a few weeks later Georgians voted overwhelmingly to repeal this ban.

On Saturday, the 29th of October, I enjoyed a farewell party at the Highlander bar with friends. As it was Halloween weekend, we were served by young women who wore plush Chippendale outfits. I'm not gay, but those Chippendales were hot.

I spent part of Sunday, the 30th of October, hanging out at the Brick Store bar with friends Amy and Nathan. I had been living at Nathan's for a few weeks in order to save money and to escape from the miseries of motel life. Amy smartly reassured me that, no matter how stressful things might get in Croatia, "there's always beer."

Amy had flown in from New York City. Since Nathan's weekly business flight was due to depart around the same time as hers, they left the house together. Maybe I was just hung-over and exhausted, but I admit that during our goodbyes there were some tears. And so I was left alone at Nathan's house for a few more days.

Later that day I write: "Phoenix. Resurgens. I am killing myself over the next few days, but I will be reborn into something more powerful afterward." This expressed Obi-Wan optimism was almost certainly beer-derived. I added, "So nervous to say it, but it's true; I want to begin this adventure."

Monday, the 31st of October saw me bid farewell to my co-workers. I find farewell luncheons to be an awkward chore, so I made sure to let people know that if they could not join me I certainly wouldn't be offended.

That night, trick or treaters dropped by Nathan's house. I handed them the Tootsie Roll lollipops Nathan had thoughtfully purchased for them. Not since the end of my college days had I felt so suburban.

"I could live at Nathan's forever and be happy," I wrote. "But this is not my house, not my place."

The 1st and 2nd of November were "Twensday," the longest day of the year. That was the day I woke up in Atlanta and went to sleep in Zagreb.

Zagreb, Saturday, 19 November: King Pigeon @ Plan B

2011-11-18T05:04:00.000-08:00

If you're in Zagreb, come on out for some boom-boom and bam-bam.

Saturday Night in Zagreb - Aquarius and Faces Clubs

2011-11-13T17:24:00.000-08:00

Here is how I rang in my birthday this weekend in Zagreb, at the legendary Jarun Lake club complex. :-)

A Year and a Half in the Motel Hell

2011-11-04T08:55:00.000-07:00

Considering living in a motel for a year and a half? Here is everything you need to know.

It was not my intention to spend a year and a half living in an extended stay (i.e., a motel) across the street from the Swinging Richards strip club, but life has a funny way of working out, or not.

The Atlanta, Georgia Northside Drive InTown Suites currently enjoys a composite 2.5 out of 5 stars after five Google reviews. Three Yelp reviewers bestowed a less generous 1.5 out of 5 stars. A few choice quotes from the Yelp reviews:

"This is, undoubtedly, the shadiest place I've ever stayed."

"the $40 cleaning deposit was not returned in full even though the promised house keeping never made an appearance during out [sic] entire stay."

"A guy got murdered while we were there, and the staff lied to us about it, even though there was caution tape, police officers, and blood stained furniture removed from the room and thrown into the dumpster."

(To be fair, as any long-term InTown Suites resident knows, caution tape, police, and bloodstained furniture does not always indicate a murder.)

The Google reviews were a little less interesting, but they had a ring of truth to them. "Bed sheets were dirty and stained and smelled bad," wrote one customer, and I can corroborate the observation as apparent blood stains and cigarette burns appeared on my "fresh" white sheets more than a few times during my stay.

The official web page for the Suites' "Atlanta Central (ZAG)" location features a flattering photograph of the three-story building taken on a cheerful, sunny day. Indeed, in the daytime, InTown Suites looks sturdy and inviting. It resembles a decent budget hotel.

For the most part, it looks like one on the inside, too. Neatly-framed abstract art prints hang on the walls. The floor is carpeted with a dark green material, similar in texture to a pool table top. If you're in a single, a square table and two metal chairs are your only furniture; no sofa could fit in there. Although housekeeping sometimes failed to appear on some weeks, as the Yelp reviewer noted, on most weeks they did, and the powerful smell of their cleaning detergent was reassuring. There were regular insect fumigations (I only saw one roach during my stay, and after bug-bombing my room I never saw another one). The full-sized fridge and two-burner range (one burner of which worked) were handy. There was basic cable on the flat-screen TV mounted on the wall.

I also presume there were semen stains throughout, but you can’t avoid semen stains. Consider that amazing footnote in the official Recommendation for Dismissal for the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case regarding the ritzy Sofitel hotel. In addition to the semen stains found in Strauss-Kahn’s room that were proven to be his, "Three other stains on the carpet contained the semen and DNA of three different unknown males, and one other stain contained amylase and a mixture of DNA from three additional unknown individuals. The stain on the wallpaper contained the semen and DNA of a fourth unknown male." If the high-class Sofitel is filled with semen stains, I would have to assume that InTown Suites has a remarkable DNA collection of its own—and probably exceeds the Sofitel for quantities of other bodily fluids.

(Of course, I contributed my own semen stains. If you find that nauseating, then I am deeply offended.)

Its being next door to the Northside Drive Liquor Store is either sketchy or convenient depending upon your fondness for alcohol (the staff at the liquor store was very friendly, and a cool employee there named Natalie enjoyed my nickname for the establishment—"Sin"—since every vice [except sex] was catered to there [and the rumored prostitutes nearby even took care of the sex]).

Across the street from the Northside InTown Suites is Swinging Richard's, a gay male strip club. People who are suspicious of my middle-aged bachelorhood may be surprised by what I’m about to say, but I have never been in there. I did see one particularly buff neighbor of mine crossing the street one evening on his way over there, presumably reporting to work. It makes sense that Northside's InTown Suites would be the top place for a male stripper to stay during a weeklong engagement at Swinging Richard's.

I wound up at InTown Suites after I had returned from a three month European adventure. In order to travel for three months in 2010 in the first place, I broke the lease at my previous apartment, and so I had no place to return to. I wasn't eager to rent again, because the experience of breaking that lease was like being force-fed a log of dog shit. Which reminds me: I also learned from my apartment days that your dog is too damn loud, and you’re never going to do anything about it, even after I complain. No dogs are allowed at InTown Suites.

My original goal was to spend a few months at the Suites, and then return to Europe in order to continue pursuing my writing career (which had been working out a little bit during my 2010 odyssey) and my DJ'ing career (which hadn't worked out so well, so encourage me by listening to my Euro sets here). Unfortunately, due to money issues, six months turned into a year and a half.

The weekly rate is currently $209.99 (a bit more with tax, but the tax is dropped after a few months, at which point you are seen in the eyes of the law as a resident). This rate might seem high for a place where—it is rumored—prostitutes work their magic in the rooms around you, and where—it appears from my admittedly limited powers of observation—drugs are obviously being sold in the parking lot, but consider that the price includes all utilities, cable and wireless internet, and the aforementioned somewhat reliable cleaning service. OK, the Internet speed was the slowest I've experienced since 1995, but it usually worked. When I did the math, I concluded that I was saving a few hundred bucks each month by living there.

But problems with InTown Suites became apparent after a few months. The floors are flimsy, and so if you wind up living underneath an upstairs neighbor, which of course happens often, you are fated to hear every footstep, every drunken stumble, every body slam. I imagined that one of my upstairs neighbors had only one leg, and that she literally rolled out of bed every morning onto the floor with a crash before beginning an interminable series of hops to move about the place (she never left her room, presumably because the stairs were too dangerous for her to navigate). The walls are thin and hollow, so when an overturned dresser hits the floor of the room above during some domestic dispute, the crash literally shakes everything in the room below: ceiling, walls, floor. Because the bed’s backboard is attached to the wall, reading there forces you to concentrate while attempting to ignore a sensation like that of a child striking the back of your head repeatedly with a mallet. Thus, it’s not just the noise that keeps you awake at night (earplugs and noise reduction headphones can shield some of that); it’s the earthquake shocks that rattle your body. Some people are active by day, and others by night, and if your schedules don't overlap then you are fated to experience at least one week of poor sleep. Even if you and your neighbors are synchronized, there is no relief from the constant noise during literally every waking moment spent in the room. It’s awful.

One couple I lived under smashed things until 3 AM on most nights. I know they were fighting, because one time I stood outside their room and listened to their angry voices. I would have said something to them then if they hadn’t already been engaged in a violent, drunken rampage.

So I waited a few nights, then knocked on their door, fearful that I might be shot in the face, because—hey, it’s the InTown Suites, the place where a Yelp reviewer thinks a guy got murdered.

The door opened a crack, and an eye regarded me suspiciously.

"Hello?" a young, sinewy black guy said to me.

"Hey," this middle-aged, beer-gutted white guy replied. "I'm your downstairs neighbor, and I'm really sorry to complain, but there's a lot of noise coming from your room, and I know you probably don't even realize you're making it, because you wouldn't know that unless somebody actually told you. So here I am, and I’m telling you, and I just wondered if you could keep it down a little bit?”

He looked warily around him. His girlfriend, a young woman whose large girth implied guilt in the noise-making, lay on the bed behind him. She regarded me with vague amusement.

"Are you sure it's us?" the fellow said.

"Yeah, pretty sure. I mean, the ceiling is vibrating right over me. I actually put my hands on the ceiling, like this [I raised my arms into the air with palms facing the heavens], and, like, I can feel the ceiling shaking.”

"I don't think it's us. I think it must be the guy living behind us."

This was going nowhere, so I apologized for wasting his time and returned to my room.

A few minutes later there was knocking on my door. I looked through the peephole. It was the guy and his girlfriend. Do I open the door? Then I wondered, do black people shoot white people anymore?

"Hey," I said, opening the door.

"That thing about the noise,” the fellow said, shaking his head. “I’m just…confused. Are you sure it's us? Because I don’t think it is."

"Well, I'm not sure-sure. I'm pretty sure, but—"

"I don't think it's us."

"It probably isn't you. The floors here are thin, acoustics do weird things. Sorry to bother you."

“Did you hear the sounds two days ago?”

I couldn’t remember if I had or hadn’t, but I said, “I think I did.”

“Well, then, it can’t be us, because I wasn’t here two nights ago. I was working.”

“Oh, OK,” I said.

Unfortunately, as the weeks rolled by, it became obvious that the smashing and crashing was indeed coming from the couple upstairs. The truth came out one night when a dramatic fight between them spilled out of their room, down the stairs adjacent to my room, and concluded right outside my door, where I carefully observed their yelling match through the peephole.

They moved out eventually. But I didn't. I stayed on.

When times were good, I referred to the Suites as the “Motel Paradise.” When they were bad, I referred to them as the “Motel Hell.” As the months crawled on, the words “Motel Hell” fell more and more frequently from my lips.

Sure, many residents were benign. I think of the foreign families that stayed for a few weeks at a time (I was told some were probably the families of fresh professors transitioning to Atlanta's universities). Sometimes, a group of Mexican laborers would crash in a few rooms; I'd see them hopping into their trucks en masse, presumably toward some construction job. And there were the Lenox cab drivers who have adopted the Suites as their sleeping headquarters. (Never did I see a Checker Cab parked there overnight. I wonder if Checker Cab has its own turf? Also, if a Checker Cab cabbie dared to sleep at InTown Suites Northside, would angry Lenox cabbies destroy his car with hammers?)

But more and more I grew afraid of my neighbors. One time I heard a guy on his cell phone outside my room roaring, "Ain't no way I'm gonna plead guilty to those charges!" And there was the time a woman screamed to a hastily departing man, “Don’t you ever fucking touch my kids again!”

Several residents had a habit of leaning over the railing outside their room, where they surveyed the parking lot for what seemed like hours at a time, no matter how hot the summer day and despite the fact that air conditioning was included in the price of their room. What were they doing? Were they keeping track of who was leaving his room unattended? Hopes of my own blending in were trounced by my vehicle of choice: a black SmartCar with a Romanian license plate affixed to the front. My watchful neighbors always knew when I was in or out. It made me paranoid.

And then there was the night I heard a floor-shaking crash, and when I went outside to look and see what had happened I saw three men stroll into a room—one of them slinging a battering ram. Uh, do you have a license to do that? Is that…normal? Is someone going to use a battering ram on my door tonight?

Every night, in the parking lot, men sat in cars with their engines idling. A Yelp writer says he has been told these are the men who deliver prostitutes to the rooms. I have no way of safely verifying this, but…yeah…why are you idling in the InTown Suites parking lot, sirs?

And good God, after sharing all this, what must readers think about me? What is Andrew up to in those InTown Suites? Is he fucking hookers? Is he doing heroin?

(It should be said that InTown Suites has an impressive security camera network, but all that did was guarantee that my murder would become a potential future viral video.)

Some of the residents were simply crazy. One day I stood in the laundry room near a scruffy, salt and pepper-haired man. I had to unload somebody else's too-long abandoned clothes from a washing machine in order to put mine in. As I plucked out such items as oversized black and green zebra-patterned thongs, I muttered, "Man, I wish people would be a little more considerate about moving their laundry along.”

"SOME FUCKING BLACK BITCH WELFARE QUEEN WITH FIFTEEN FUCKING KIDS PROBABLY LEFT THAT!” roared the man. “TOTALLY DOESN'T GIVE A SHIT AND THINKS THE GOVERNMENT IS GOING TO TAKE CARE OF HER!"

Gee!

Random horror film observation: The awful ring of the room’s telephone sounded even worse when it went off in the middle of the night. Upon my answering it, the person on the other end always hung up, leaving me with only the sound of the dial tone to keep me company. I unplugged the phone after my first week.

And then there was the ice cream truck, with its creepy carnival music regularly cut off by the canned, tinny recorded sounds of laughing children, which drifted eerily through the parking lot seeking under-aged customers. Make the driver of that truck a circus clown and you’d have a movie rated Too Scary for Anyone.

More and more I slept at my office, or at a friend's place. I began to drink more, reckoning that by being drunk I might be able to tune out my horrible reality and get a decent night of sleep despite the banging, the shrieking, the crying of babies, the shouts of warring couples. But getting drunk only meant I felt worse when I was awakened at 3 AM by some sickening thud, and so I found myself in sorrier and sorrier shape sitting in my office cubicle the next day. I was irritable with co-workers. I frequently trembled with rage and terror. I was falling apart.

Here is how I celebrated my 39th birthday at InTown Suites. While preparing to go to bed, I was startled by a thunderous BANG-BANG-BANG! on my door, followed by another BANG-BANG-BANG! on my window, followed by the sounds of somebody running away. This was followed by another BANG-BANG-BANG! on my window, and another BANG-BANG-BANG! on my door, and more running away. It went on a while.

When the mysterious knocker finally held still long enough outside my door, I opened it.

"Hello," I said.

The woman standing before me was young. She looked like a college girl, with nice clothes and hair. There was nothing "off" about her. She was black. There’s nothing wrong with being black. If you’re black and you’re reading this, sure, there might be something wrong with you (there’s something wrong with everyone who reads my blog), but it has nothing to do with your being black. My name is Andrew, I’m white, and I have lots of problems. That's why I lived at InTown Suites for 1.5 years. It’s nice to meet you. Next time you’re in Zagreb, we should have a beer. Where was I?

"Oh, sorry, I got the wrong room," she said. Then she ran away.

I shrugged, crawled into bed, and went to sleep.

4 AM. BANG-BANG-BANG! on the window! BANG-BANG-BANG! on the door! And then, a strange whining sound outside, a pleading, "Help me! Please let me in!"

I stumbled in the darkness over to the door and peered through the peephole. The young woman stood there, an eerie silhouette against the harsh backlighting of InTown Suite's bright exterior lights, her face hovering a few inches from the peephole. She had what appeared to be a dark trash bag slung over her shoulder.

"What do you want?" I shouted through the door.

"Please let me in!"

"What do you want?"

"I need to use your telephone!"

"No!" I said.

She made another whining sound to signal her disappointment, and then ran off.

The next morning I dropped by the front desk of the InTown Suites. Two employees in their regulation uniforms of Navy blue InTown Suite polo shirts greeted me. (I would like to take a moment to compliment the InTown Suites staff. They were courteous, responsible, responsive, and surprisingly good-natured considering the weirdness and dysfunctionality they must endure at their jobs every day.)

"Last night this chick was banging on my doors and windows," I said to them. Which sounds vaguely sexual.

"She was arrested."

"Ah," I said.

"Anything else?"

"No. That's it. Thanks."

In truth, the InTown Suites are a good concept. There is a growing need for more affordable, no-strings-attached housing, not just because of our troubled economic climate, but also because of our increasingly mobile lifestyles. If InTown Suites could guarantee a good night of sleep (which would require a substantial architectural re-think), and keep rates around their current $200 a week, business travelers who work multiple days in a location far from home might be more tempted to become regulars, holding onto their rooms for half the price of, say, four nights in a hotel—and enjoying the ability to stock their refrigerators in order to create a place that feels a little more like home.

Since you pay each week in advance, you can leave the Suites whenever you'd like. You don’t even have to tell anyone. No one will call you after your departure to complain that you didn't clean the oven to their specifications. Considering that it's the sort of place where a body with a heroin needle dangling from an arm must occasionally be disposed of, a ketchup stain in the refrigerator is always forgiven. Breaking off relations with InTown Suites is as simple as parting with a prostitute after a night at…InTown Suites. It's an ideal arrangement.

And so I spent last week gathering all my possessions from my home for the last 1.5 years.

I have headed off to Zagreb, Croatia, which is why I invited all my black readers to join me there earlier in this narrative. It’s a crazy venture. I’ll be pursuing that writing and DJ'ing thing. It's a big move. Yeah, it might sound like a scary gamble, but for some reason I'm not so terrified by the thought of living there.

Death

2011-11-03T08:48:00.000-07:00

The end is nearer than you think. Unless we achieve the singularity soon, it's likely that anyone and everyone around you will be dead in a hundred years. (The average human lifespan may be increasing, but the maximum life-span isn't). Why don't we feel this reality more? Why aren't we more motivated by it?

Death is not what it used to be. More than half of Europe's population may have been wiped out by the Black Death around 1350; plague memorials remind the living today. Lynching, a form of real-life torture porn that was watched by men, women, and children with blithe amusement, claimed between 100 and 200 lives a year during the 1890s in the United States, and continued into recent decades. The first half of the 20th century saw wars that killed millions of people; today, by contrast, America blanches when fewer than 5,000 soldiers die in combat in Iraq (the slaughter of over 60 million people during World War II, including over 400,000 Americans, was during a time when both the U.S. and the world populations were 1/3 what they are today)

On a more pastoral note, in small towns like Spring Valley, Minnesota (a real life "Lake Wobegon" where my mom grew up) everybody knew everyone, and so every passing was discussed and deconstructed. Today, in a world where we don't know the people living two doors down, death usually drifts unnoticed through our communities.

The old used to die in their own homes. Today's seniors move to retirement condos like Goodwin House, an upscale apartment complex I recently visited in Northern Virginia. It's a self-contained community with a fitness center, a library, and conversation parlors. But Goodwin House also represents the recession of the awareness of death for the rest of us; the sons and daughters of its residents are now most likely to learn about the end of a parent's life via a telephone call or an email. I imagine that soon it will be a "Last Tweet" that notifies us of the passing of a parent, auto-sent when a bracelet worn by the departed fails to detect a pulse. One could customize the Last Tweet months in advance, when of sounder mind and body, allowing one to publicly bid farewell with a cheery, "I'm outta here!" designed to elicit a smile and inspire us, the living, with positivism about how said parent faced the end ("She was so inspiring!").

There was a time when people who died during a bitter winter were laid in sheds for burial after the spring thaw. Today, we have the technology to put bodies into the ground in any weather, rushing them that much more rapidly out of sight and mind.

The casket is open if the mortician can do something; it's closed if he or she cannot, and so whenever we see a closed casket we momentarily shiver and wonder in what horrible physical state the deceased must have been. A man who dies peacefully in his sleep gets an open casket; a woman whose body was ravaged by cancer gets a closed one. The decision to open or close the casket is essentially based on whether or not the deceased makes effective propaganda for the peacefulness of death.

In the 1800s, the dead were sometimes photographed dressed and sitting up in arranged settings—sometimes with other family members.

The pioneers who traveled the Oregon Trail knew that their quest for a better life might instead result in an early death. A makeshift gravesite alongside the trail served as a chilly warning to the next family who passed by.

We have never been more sheltered from death than we are today. We don't think we're immortal, but neither do we seem to absorb the ultimate and inescapable reality, that motivational memento mori that used to fascinate writers and philosophers who noted, as Samuel Johnson did, that "Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent"; or, as Laurence Sterne wrote in The Life and Adventures of Tristram Shandy, Gentlemen, "Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen; the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return..." Where has the urgency gone?

Cancer, which seems to be prominently featured in a New York Times article every day, has become death's leading bogeyman in the American imagination. It is popularly treated as a bully and a thing to be defeated, which fits our fighting spirit. Facebook friends post cut-and-pasted status updates imploring us to "write a letter to cancer," and thousands participate in breast cancer awareness marches. Diseases that seem more preventable get less sympathy in America. While breast cancer marches are commonplace, lung cancer marches are non-existent, though lung cancer kills four times as many people in the United States. In all of this we see an avoidance of the understanding of our imminent mortality; we try and "beat" cancer, but we talk as if in doing so we will certainly live forever. The fact is, as a disembodied voice explains to us on Pink Floyd's "Great Gig in the Sky," "We all have to go sometime."

"Our country calls not for the life of ease, but for the life of strenuous endeavor," said Theodore Roosevelt. "The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease, and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests which men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all that they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by and will win for themselves the domination of the world."

America seems to have become a land of "swollen, slothful ease," averse to any hazarding of life. The world faced by the pioneers on the Oregon Trail has been replaced by our race to be the first on Facebook to post a status update announcing acquisition of the latest iPhone. The idea of literally risking life in order to advance (whether via the silliness of a duel or a cause more noble) has become quaint. Death, which, amidst the world's growing population operates within increasingly closer proximity, recedes further from our minds. With that recession, we have lost much of our motivation. We no longer imagine, as our ancestors once did, that terrible skeleton charging towards us on an emasculated steed, scythe raised in the air, the Great Equalizer. Memento mori.

If You Search for and Replace These Words, Your Writing Will Improve by 200%

2011-10-31T14:36:00.001-07:00

The following is a list of words and phrases you probably don't need to use. If you search for these words and phrases, and then delete them outright (or, in a few of the examples below, replace them with other words), your writing will improve. I have only recently compiled this list, so don't be surprised if, in my earlier blog entries, I didn't practice what I'm preaching. ;-D

Of course, all of these words and phrases have their time and place. The best writers know not only to avoid most of these words most of the time, but also when to use them. But if your goal is more modest—to go from being a bad writer to a fair one—you probably won't go wrong just banishing these phrases outright. Hey, it's a start. :-)

immediately - "I immediately noticed…" would be better as "I noticed," unless, of course, the timing of your noticing something is important to the narrative.

extremely - "I am extremely happy." "I am happy" is snappier. This word falls under a category I call "Quantifying the unquantifiable." What is the difference between "extremely happy" and "happy"? If you cannot distinguish between those gradations of happiness, best to drop the word that expresses the amount of happiness.

very - Another quantifier that's usually lazily applied. "I was very impressed." How much more impressed is that than "impressed"?

somewhat - "I was somewhat amused." Before you write that, ask yourself, "Really? Or was I amused?" The word does work in some instances (a "somewhat reliable" employee is not the same as a "reliable" one), but often it seems to be appended as if by bad habit. In addition to quantifying the unquantifiable, it also falls under the category of hedging terms—those that suggest a strange reluctance on the part of the speaker to emotionally commit. It's as if the writer is afraid to admit that he or she is amused and finds it cooler to profess being only "somewhat amused."

"a bit" is another sort of hedger. "I disagree a bit with this guy." Do you disagree or don't you?

rather - Ever since I heard a comedian say, "I think I'm rather smart—because I use words like 'rather,'" I search for this word in my writing and almost always delete it.

quite - Similar to the previous. "I was quite pleased." Usually unnecessary.

really - "I was really amazed," as opposed to being "figuratively amazed." Just say, "I was amazed." This is one of several "stating that the real is real" words.

"actually" is another one of those. You actually don't actually have to use the word "actually" as often as you actually seem to actually think you do.

truly - Same deal. You wouldn't tell me something "untruly." "Untruly, I loved the potato salad."

incredibly - "I was incredibly amused." Just, "I was amused," please. This one is even worse than the others because "incredibly" has a meaning that, in this context, makes no sense (the incredible is that which is not readily credible; by that definition "incredibly amused" is nonsense).

Related to "incredibly," we find people turning nearly any "strong" word into an emphasis word. For example:

shockingly entertaining - Unless one is being entertained by electric shocks, or by, more metaphorically, a horror movie that uses "shock" effects to entertain, one should not use the word "shockingly" here. There is really no end to this list of corrupted words used as emphasizers ("Amazingly profound," "Ridiculously good," etc.). Find your own bad habits and then search and replace them.

the opportunity to... - "This learning camp gives students the opportunity to explore biofuels." - Rewrite as: "In this camp, students explore biofuels." "the opportunity to" is usually wasteful language because "the opportunity" is self-evident if (as in this example) the students are doing that thing.

I found myself - "I found myself reading a book" "I found myself at the movies." "I found myself talking to a learned man." The phrase "I found myself" usually indicates a startling moment of self-awareness, an awakening to a reality that one had overlooked previously (see the lyrics to Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime," which correctly captures this bewilderment). But to use it all the time recalls a senile person staggering semi-lucidly through life. "I found myself at the movies," for example, suggests that the individual might have "come to" while in a movie theater. You expect a serial abuser of this phrase to excitedly wonder, "I keep finding myself in interesting places! I wonder where I will find myself next?" It's silly.

Usually, you can replace "did become" or "had become" with "became." There are many other such phrases one could search for in this same vein; find the ones you abuse the most and then add them to the list.

It is apparent that… - when this phrase is used to indicate something that is obvious, delete it.

specific - "I asked a specific question." "We had specific goals." Sometimes a necessary word, but often inserted out of laziness and reflex.

What are some other words or phrases that, if deleted, would result in crisper writing?

"Eurotrash or Eurotreasure?": How It Began

2011-10-30T14:43:00.000-07:00

Here are the 14 Euro tunes that began my love affair with European pop and dance music (as I originally reviewed here). Cheesy? Very. But I love them. It's been over 10 years since those days. On 1 November I head back to Croatia to begin a multi-month odyssey immersed once again in Europe's wonderful/crazy music scene. This is how my interest in all that began. Thanks to all YouTubers who post these trash-treasures, thereby allowing this crazy music to survive. :-)

BONUS

Posterity Letter: 19 October 2011

2011-10-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

When Theodore Roosevelt wrote a letter to an individual which, in tone, clearly and amusingly betrayed his own awareness that said letter would likely enter the public record one day, his friends and family jokingly referred to it as a "posterity letter." Here is my posterity letter to my mother and sister.

Greetings, Kathy and Mom. I would have discussed this with you in person a week ago, but I was still working on the many details, and I hate to waste people's time with hypothetical chit-chat. Also, there are far too many specifics to address than I possibly can in an already too-long email, so I send this to you knowing full well that I haven't addressed all your likely questions and concerns.

I will be heading off to Croatia on November 1, and once again have successfully made arrangements to continue to work for my organization for a three-month period while I am over there, with the condition being that the organization and I will re-evaluate the situation at the end of that time in order to determine 1) whether to continue with that arrangement (unlikely), 2) whether I need to return to Atlanta in order to stay continuously employed, or 3) whether I apply for a leave of absence. It is worth noting that the cost of living in Croatia will be lower than that in Atlanta; I have also saved up a good amount of money to cushion me.

The point is to make a concerted drive to transition into another career as a journalist. There is no guarantee of success; perhaps there is a greater likelihood of failure. But I don't think that the words carved in stone at the Theodore Roosevelt memorial reading, "It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed," express a mere platitude. Nor was Steve Jobs trying to craft a hollow bumper-sticker slogan when he said, "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life." The fact is, with 40 looming large I ever more acutely realize that this is the only life I'll ever have, and it would be tragic to waste it frozen into my cowardly inaction over my current employment situation by a struggling economy that shows no sign of improvement in the near future.

The other, more positive fact is that in Europe I feel invigorated, energized, and driven. The positive energy I feel over there is why I am taking this sort of a gamble, and why I think there is at least some chance of success. It's a risk--if success were guaranteed, then obviously it wouldn't be a risk--but one I must attempt.

I know you will worry, and let me assure you that you have company there. I've been waking up every night between 3 and 5 AM contemplating these enormous questions for several weeks. (Incidentally, magnesium supplements are good for treating the symptoms of stress, my doctor friends told me after I described my ordeal with worry-induced insomnia. Just a tip.) On the positive side, the fears and paranoia I entertain are also motivators to keep me moving forward. Obviously, I don't want to fail, so I will be working harder than I have my whole life to find success. This email is a contract to you pledging the application of such vigorous energy. This will not be a vacation.

I have already arranged what appears to be a nice apartment in Zagreb for three months which has an internet connection, so we can Skype and stay in touch, including over the holidays. I have been warned that in Zagreb winter is "cruel and sharp," which, as a veteran of Kiev in January, sounds intriguing.

We can discuss all this soon (I will be busy tonight cleaning out my extended stay room, so tomorrow night might be a good time to chat).

I am always glad to be of service in giving you things to talk about. Be good, don't worry, and take care!

Andrew

Mom's reaction? Positive!

A Congregation of Creatures Great and Small

2011-10-01T16:23:00.000-07:00

Another non-Euro blog entry. I'll be back on theme soon enough, but for now, enjoy another report from Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

"During my sermon I ask that there be no talking or barking," joked Pastor Jeff Meyers to an audience of about 50 humans seated on folding chairs, who in turn were surrounded by about 30 dogs (plus at least one cat and a stunningly colorful parrot named "Hector"). All had gathered that Saturday morning on the North Avenue Presbyterian Church parking deck for the Blessing of the Pets, an activity that will also take place Sunday in many other churches here in Atlanta and across the country.

The sight of a pastor crouched on the ground as he pets and prays for dog after dog might strike some as unusual, but the pastors exuded a self-aware cheeriness that prevented the scene from inviting any "Daily Show"-type irreverence. And it's a scene that may become increasingly normal to witness; the Blessing of the Pets has been growing rapidly in popularity, says Pastor Meyers.

The origins of the event extend back to the activities of a 13th century friar and animal lover, St. Francis of Assisi, explained Tim Rogers-Martin, Executive Associate Pastor for Equipping Ministries, who chatted while he cradled his own dog, "Sunday," a stray who had been found at a church on that day of the week over 15 years ago. St. Francis's feast day falls on October 4, and so the first weekend of that month is a natural time to celebrate the value of animals.

Explained Pastor Meyers, "These services developed out of Roman Catholic tradition, especially the Anglican and the Episcopalian tradition…Four or five years ago we started doing our own at North Avenue."

In the five years that Pastor Meyers has been employed at North Avenue, he has seen attendance at the blessings swell. "I think it was All Saints [Episcopal] that first did the blessing of the animals [in Midtown Atlanta]," he says, gesturing in the direction of that church. "Then, we started doing it, and then the Lutheran church down the street started doing it. A lot of different churches are doing it--not only for the congregation members, but for the community. And in five years…that's a lot of blessing of the animals!"

Some animals in attendance could use a little hope. Scott and Solange Han-Barthelemy arrived with their "torby" (part tabby, part tortoiseshell) cat, Penny, in a carrier. Penny is 12 years old and faces surgery for cancer in the coming days.

The sermon began with Psalm 148, which makes much mention of animals as part of the creation, including "Creeping things and flying birds." Pastor Meyers then said, "We have caused the animal kingdom needless suffering."

In an interview afterward, he expatiated on that theme. "I wouldn't say this as an employee at North Avenue," he explained, "but for me, personally, I'm a vegetarian. I believe people need to take into consideration the sentience of animals--the fact that animals can feel suffering." He explains that as animals are a part of God's creation, and that our treatment of the natural world comes back around to impact us, essentially a "Blessing of the Animals" is a blessing for all of creation.

The issue of whether or not animals have souls, and therefore whether or not pets and their human owners will be reunited in Heaven, is one that has been debated for centuries. Does the bestowing of blessings on pets suggest belief in an afterlife for Fido?

"God has not given us access to these answers," Pastor Meyers says. "We do know that in the eschatological vision of the end of all things, there seem to be animals there symbolizing peace. Now is that just metaphorical, or is that literal? I don't know. But I know that it's there, and that God does care about animals a lot. They are part of his creation. I am more concerned about the ethical treatment of animals here, and I leave the questions of the afterlife to faith."

Faith has already guided Charlotte Carmichael to an answer. While her border collie, Sada, played energetically around her feet, she said, "I believe all dogs go to heaven. And cats. All of them." She paused. "Except maybe snakes," she concluded with a laugh.

Troy Davis / View from the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison

2011-09-22T08:21:00.000-07:00

It seems appropriate that the county in Georgia that hosts the state's death row is saddled with an undignified name like "Butts." There I was, two hours before the scheduled execution of Troy Davis, a man whose murder conviction was certainly not a case of "reasonable doubt." The holes were tidily summarized in a September 21 editorial in the New York Times:

"The Savannah police contaminated the memories of four witnesses by re-enacting the crime with them present so that their individual perceptions were turned into a group one. The police showed some of the witnesses Mr. Davis’s photograph even before the lineup. His lineup picture was set apart by a different background. The lineup was also administered by a police officer involved in the investigation, increasing the potential for influencing the witnesses…

"Seven of nine witnesses against Mr. Davis recanted after trial. Six said the police threatened them if they did not identify Mr. Davis. The man who first told the police that Mr. Davis was the shooter later confessed to the crime."

I estimate that the assembled crowd at Jackson's Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison (one of the most convoluted names one could imagine for a death row prison) was about two-thirds African American--a group with bitter, first-hand familiarity with a justice system that incarcerates a disproportionate percentage of blacks. The strains of "We Shall Overcome" were heard more than a couple times, connecting the day's protests to the Civil Rights era the older African Americans in the crowd vividly recall (a possible sign of a generational divide became apparent when it seemed many of the younger people in attendance did not know the words to that anthem, although maybe they were just shy about singing).

There were also numerous white faces--maybe about a third of the crowd. Among the whites were many men sporting pony tails (I was in that number), and men and women with wiry gray hairs. Many exuded that unmistakeable hippie/baby-boomer vibe that one would expect to find at such an event. Several--for want of a better phrase--masculine-looking women with tattoos and close cropped hair were also in attendance, the marginalized fringes of society who could swiftly identify with a black man perceived to have been railroaded at least in part by prejudice. A group of Emory students arrived, including a sari-wearing young woman who had a white, three-legged poodle with the fighting spirit of a wolf. Some other students who looked young enough to be high school-aged were also on hand. A woman wearing a hijab held one corner of a banner. I heard some Spanish spoken around me. An impromptu drum circle beat time, a woman played a fiddle, and as night fell the crowd's chants assumed a tribal quality.

Lots of white text on blue "I Am Troy Davis" Amnesty International T-shirts were visible, and the NAACP's posters of Troy Davis were probably the most common images held aloft by the protestors.

From 5 PM until about 6:30 the protest had an organized quality to it, with the crowd cheerleaders sometimes bossily instructing people on how to chant. One woman, clearly unhappy with many of us, shouted in obvious frustration to the crowd, "We don't want Troy Davis to die! If you're standing here and not saying anything, then you might as well not be here!" This struck me as unnecessarily divisive and insensitive; I'm not a chanter by nature. I'm usually repelled, in fact, by any sort of "groupthink" activities, no matter how noble the cause. I don't think that makes my presence at the prison as unimportant as the complete and total non-involvement of some couch potato sitting in his living room half an hour away. This realization was multiplied when, in the middle of last night, ABC News contacted me in order to request the use of footage I shot of the protest. Is it true that "I might as well not be here" considering I was able to contribute that? C'mon, people, we all protest in our own ways, and we are best when we stick to our individual strengths.

An attempt by one group to lead a cheer ending with the word "Bullshit!" was met with a few disapproving stares; there were children here after all. That effort died out quickly.

I made the drive down from Atlanta because I knew that whatever Troy Davis's ultimate fate, that day would mark an important chapter in the history of capital punishment. There's a history of injustice here; Georgia was the state that in 1915 saw a group of Marietta men break into a prison (with suspiciously little difficulty), seize one Leo Frank (a Jewish man who was almost certainly innocent of the murder of which he was accused), drive him out into a forest, and hang him. Back then the lynch mob happily posed for pictures in front of their handiwork, as was the style at the time; today many of the descendents of those same eager-to-take-credit individuals hide their shame and family's culpability.

One hundred years ago, in 1901, 130 people were lynched in the United States, most of them black and most in the south. Lynchings continued at least into the 1960s. Thus, it's no surprise that signs comparing Mr. Davis's situation to a lynching were numerous--lynch mob rule in the south is still modern history.

As I said, I have a stubborn psychological aversion to crowd behavior. I found myself enjoying some aspects of protest at one moment, but finding something to criticize the next.

I was not able to go so far as to identify with the "Free Troy Davis!" chants, as they presume Mr. Davis's innocence, when it seems the primary issue here is one of the death penality and reasonable doubt. It's one thing to note the many holes in the Davis case and to segue from that frustration to objections over the death penality, but it's quite another to say the man should walk free. One step at a time, please. However, considering the fresh wounds much of America experienced over the Casey Anthony trial, where a woman who seemed to have far more evidence stacked against her regarding the death of her child nonetheless walked free, perhaps the zealousness of the crowd can be forgiven. For sure, people are genuinely bewildered by how justice works in America.

Some signs read "Innocent until proven guilty," but Mr. Davis has had the misfortune of already being "proven" guilty via various miscarriages of justice, and so now the justice system has reversed that idealism; he is now guilty until proven innocent.

Law enforcement was friendly during the early part of the evening, instructing the protestors on where they could stand (i.e., what was public property and what was private property). There was cheery banter and even laughter exchanged between protestors and officers. However, as the sky began to darken, a menacing line of officers in riot gear (deemed "Storm Troopers" by some in the crowd) marched in lockstep formation into position, blocking the entrance to the prison. One officer leaned against a rail fence, his binoculars trained on the protestors.

At 5 PM I estimated only a hundred people at the event, but by 7 PM, the slated time of execution, the number of protestors was certainly in the several hundreds. The air between the protestors and the riot police on the ground, and a hovering police helicopter high in the air, was traversed by dozens of enormous, darting dragonflies, hunting against what was turning out to be actually a very pretty evening sky of pastel pink clouds against cerulean blue.

A bewildered shirtless jogger, perhaps about 60 years old, shuffled past between the two standing factions, a comical moment amidst the seriousness of the event.

A man broke through the police tape accompanied by a roar from the crowd; he was promptly apprehended and marched off by officers. Later, a few other men walked across the street and were apprehended and arrested without any drama. Each arrest was met with applause from the protestors.

Jackson is a big trucking center; getting off the exit ramp my car was in the minority amongst the big rigs. Throughout the protest, truckers rolled by blowing their horns in solidarity. Numerous drivers passing by honked their car horns in support as well. Sometimes the crowd responded to these drive-by acknowledgments with a cheer, but other times, as the hours dragged on, the protestors seemed too tired to respond. After hours of standing and sitting and standing and sitting, getting little clear news on how events were unfolding inside the prison, it looked too easy to drive by honking a horn. Like the woman complaining about our poor chanting skills earlier, I found myself criticizing the drivers' mode of protest.

Here are some things that occurred to me about organized protest in general. Once one agrees to all the protest rules established by "the system" one is protesting (e.g., obeying rules on where to stand, how loud one can be, the time of day one will be present), one has already lost the battle. The protest has been castrated under the terms of those who hold political power. During the George W. Bush presidency, crowds protested the Iraq War in generally peaceful, law-abiding ways, and look where that got us. I feel increasingly that whatever form it takes, protest must always be novel and, to some degree, startling. What worked during the biggest years of the Civil Rights era probably no longer works today.

I also don't relate to the concept of using children in protest. One African-American toddler had a sign taped to his back: "Am I Next?" That seemed a bit much. After a handful of peaceful arrests of protestors who literally crossed the line over to the officers' side of the road, two white kids, probably around 11 years old, went over with signs; they were simply turned back by the officers--obviously they wouldn't arrest kids. As an atheist, I find the religious indoctrination of children to be offensive; I felt similarly watching children at the protests. But then again, all parents are indoctrinators; I suppose that's their job, their nature, the inevitable way parenting works. If I ever have kids, I'll no doubt indoctrinate them into a philosophy of anti-indoctrination. Which is confusing, so let me return to protest.

If protest does not in some way disturb, it fails to draw attention to its cause. Consider that the utterly misguided looters of the London Riots nonetheless triggered passionate debate about the divide between rich and poor, whereas in London thousands marched against the Iraq war, seemingly without effect.

Since rioting is not a sensible mode of protest (consider how promptly villainized the London rioters were), it seems the most interesting protests these day occur online, in the actions of Wikileaks and hacktivist groups like Anonymous. While we are rightly cynical about the efficacy of creating a Facebook page for a cause, since it's too easy to click "Like" and be done forever with that, stupidly satisfied that one has made one's voice heard, the online information war hijinks promote more interesting, attention-grabbing debate.

The execution was delayed, and darkness fell. Evidently anticipating the potential for trouble, around 8:20 PM a fifteen police car-long procession roared down the street, sirens blaring and lights flashing, an obvious show of force impressed upon a crowd of men, women, and children in varying degrees of passion and boredom. Another line of police cars arrived in similarly dramatic fashion around 20 minutes later. The amassed forces facing off against the protestors numbered around a hundred individuals. There was much fussing from the crowd about the unnecessary show of force, and worried murmurings about the possibility of violence. One Emory student instructed us to lock arms and sit on the ground if the officers should charge us.

Then…nothing. The two lines faced one another, but there were no fireworks. By 9:15 the crowd had become visibly bored. Who knew, I said, turning to a protestor beside me, that standing before a line-up of a hundred guys with batons and shields could be so dull? She laughed heartily (perhaps out of bottled-up nervousness) in agreement.

Standing outside the prison, one is affected by the incredible realization that not far away a man is contemplating what may be the final moments of his life. By coincidence, I had listened to Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison the day before, and I recalled the literal gallows humor of the Shel Silverstein-penned "25 Minutes," wherein a man on death row counts down the minutes to his execution:

"I can see the mountains I can see the skies with 3 more minutes to go
"And it's too dern pretty for a man that don't wanna die 2 more minutes to go"

It's a strange feeling, knowing that not far away a man is alive, and very soon he might not be. My father died of cancer in 2002, but I was not present when his final moments came and went. My first death watch was for Troy Davis.

Despite the numerous smart phones and tablets, information seemed hard to come by, and sometimes one wondered if one was hearing rumor or truth. Around the time of the scheduled execution at 7 PM, a rumor that Mr. Davis had been granted a stay of execution rolled through the crowd with a mighty roar of joy. Strangers hugged one another and people openly wept. However, moments later, the crowd was informed that this was only a delay, not a stay of execution, and that Mr. Davis might still be executed later in the night. This reminded me of the Sago Mine disaster of 2006, where joyfully received misinformation about the number of survivors was turned into a horrible, inside-out reality. After that, a rumor that "Obama called Clarence Thomas" rolled through, but without any supporting context or explanation of what that even meant. By 10:00 PM we were told the Supreme Court was actively debating the case, and that Mr. Davis was lying on a gurney awaiting its decision.

At 10 PM, with tiredness setting in and no certainty when the Supreme Court would end its deliberations, I rose and left the thinning crowd of protestors and the hundred men in riot gear who were likely more bored than we were. I read later that the crowd dwindled to about 50 at that time. Sometime after my depature the Supreme Court announced that the execution would continue. At 11:08 PM Troy Davis was dead.

How It Looked from Over Here: Cool Britannia as Seen from American Shores (Part 3)

2011-07-27T15:29:00.000-07:00

In October 1995 I stepped into Atlanta's Masquerade club to see a UK dance music act called The Chemical Brothers perform. As I enjoyed a beer at the bar before the show, I turned and saw Ed Simons, half of that mighty duo, standing beside me. I was surprised a mob hadn't surrounded him, but probably few folks recognized him. The duo had not appeared on the album covers of any of their releases, nor on the covers of American music magazines, and if music videos for their singles had been released back then, we hadn't seen them.

I was a bit intimidated by Ed. He was tall, for one thing, and looked quite serious, and he was half of what I considered at the time to be the most exciting thing going on in dance music. But I mustered the courage to turn to him, extend my hand, and, as we shook, say, "Thank you for making dance music fun again."

A couple of hours later I was one in a mass of hundreds bouncing sweatily along to the pounding sounds of "Chemical Beats."

This was Atlanta, Georgia, the Deep South, a region where Confederate flag T-shirt sales remain brisk. And yet, a dance music group from the UK had found a critical mass of enthusiastic fans to cheer them on that night in the middle of the 1990s.

In 1991 I had many friends who enjoyed various styles of so-called alternative music, but not a single one listened to hardcore techno. The failure of dance music to take off in America disenfranchised an important aspect of U.K. culture, and that in turn contributed to the long-lasting U.S./U.K. pop music divide.

America has never been completely dance-averse; but we were a little dance-shy. Every charting dance track that made it into the top 40 seemed more of a novelty than an accepted member of real U.S. music culture--"Oh, here's that dumb Dee-lite dance song we can jump around to before we slow dance to Vanessa Williams's 'Save the Best for Last'!"

Sure, in 1990 "Groove is the Heart" was a big dance hit, and so was DNA feat. Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner"; in 1991 the KLF's "3 a.m. Eternal" reached number 5 on the U.S. pop chart, EMF's "Unbelievable" topped the charts, and Jesus Jones's "Right Here Right Now" reached number two.

But these songs sound hammy when put up against the surrealistic fury of, say, T99's hardcore anthem "Anasthasia." Jesus Jones was classified as "dance rock," which the music journalist Simon Reynolds noted in a review of one of the band's later albums meant that "you can't dance to it, and it doesn't rock." And while the more aggressive sounds of Eurodance would be heard in the U.S., Culture Beat's "Mr. Vain," while enjoying number 1 hit status in several European countries, had to settle for a peak position of #17 in the U.S.

It seemed America always cut off its flirtation with dance music just before things got hot and heavy, seemingly out of some latent sense of Puritanical guilt. And there may be something to that theory: one factor that held dance music back in the United States was likely its "gayness" factor. Dance music had evolved out of the counter-cultural revolution of disco and, later, house--genres with heavy ties to the gay club underground. Those gay associations were still strong in the minds of many (think Village People). (I babble on about all that here.) By the early 1990s, acid house and hardcore techno had turned the UK dance music scene into a surreal, aggressive, and indeed sometimes testosterone-driven culture that transcended gender, class, and race; but ask an American frat boy in 1992 why he didn't like dance music and he'd likely launch into a crude impression of the fey-voiced singer of "Unbelievable."

If the "dance" element of dance music was such a turn-off to Americans, perhaps there was another way for the electronic sounds dominating the UK to infiltrate these shores.

Electronic music between 1988 and 1992 reminds me of the Cambrian explosion, a period in our earth's history back in the day when all life lived in the seas--you remember--and when all sorts of fantastical creatures popped up. We're still not sure what some of the distinctive anatomical characteristics of these organisms were for--fucking, swimming, eating, all of the above? Electronic music had gone through a similar burst of punctuated equilibrium, to use the fancy evolutionary term, and the great advantage that such diversity conferred was an opportunity for dance rhythms to invade several different American cultures and markets simultaneously.

Consider stoner culture. The Orb had been serving up something referred to as "ambient dub" since 1989. Trippy, spacey, and certainly, as one would expect from the label, very, very dubby, The Orb's sonic collages were further livened up with a sense of humor pleasingly familiar to any American geek who had grown up reading the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or watching reruns of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" on PBS. No floppy-armed dancing here; these tracks demanded only a simple stoned nodding of the head to the chugging beats, and the occasional wry smile at the understanding of an obscure joke floating through the haze (e.g., that "Would you tell him that Marcus Garvey phoned?" bit on "Towers of Dub").

Meanwhile, as Brian Eno had written Music for Airports, the Aphex Twin offered, at least conceptually, Music for an Ambitious IT Start-Up. British artists like Aphex Twin and Autechre effectively wrote the soundtrack for the development of the Internet.

Warp! records termed their brand of music "electronic listening music," emphasizing its more introspective nature, but later, the music would assume the stunningly pretentious label of "Intelligent Dance Music" (IDM), despite the fact that you couldn't really dance to it. In fact, from the IDM perspective, it was time for dance music to shove off. Leave us alone, dance music! We just want to sit in front of our computers, log onto websites via our fancy dial-up modems, tear open a bag of Doritos, and download hentai to the sounds of Aphex Twin, Plone, and Plaid! Yeah, baby!!! This is how I intelligently dance to Danish porn!!!!!

Boom-boom beats, once the music of choice for a music underground in the know, became increasingly marginalized. To survive, the purveyors of 1990 and 1991 techno had to intellectualize their sound, as The Prodigy did in Music for a Jilted Generation, which saw the replacing of their cartoon samples with socio-political statements; and as Orbital did in crafting musically-adventurous journeys that straddled the line between art and dance in breathtaking ways. Other artists reacted to the shifting culture change by creating increasingly obtuse records (e.g., Plastikman's "Spastik"), while on the other extreme Eurodance amplified the sugary melodic elements of the dance sound to a level best appreciated by a furiously masturbating chimp.*

My friends The Chemical Brothers, and I can call them that because I shook Ed Simons's hand, attacked American culture from another front, tapping into the aesthetics of the rock crowd by melding the sound of crunching electric guitars to acid house 303s in a style that eventually was christened Big Beat. In post-grunge America, this hybrid could not have hit at a better time. And it helped that these guys didn't look like dance music producers; they looked like students you'd find hanging out at the local pub--or Atlanta's Masquerade--hovering over a pint.

A year after I saw them, they released "Setting Sun," an annoying cacophony unworthy of mention except that it featured the vocal contributions of Oasis's Noel Gallagher. This was the same year Oasis had toured the United States, riding on the wave of support for "Wonderwall." The dance/rock divide had been bridged, the UK music magazines crowed, thanks to this really shitty song.

But, as more American rock fans found themselves drawn to the likes of DJ dance acts like, say, The Crystal Method, one was tempted to believe them. An all-out assault from multiple fronts--dub, electronic listening/IDM, big beat, Eurodance--had ensured that, even if a group like Underworld wasn't likely to have a number one album in America, the sound of boom-boom-boom had at last become entrenched in American culture.

* Intelligently dancing.

(To be continued)

How It Looked from Over Here: Cool Britannia as Seen from American Shores (Part 2)

2011-07-26T20:33:00.001-07:00

Def Leppard's Hysteria, one of the rare British albums Americans were tapping their feet to in 1988, featured a song called "Gods of War," also known as "The Song on Hysteria I Usually Skip." This heavy-handed anti-war tune ended with samples of the then-leaders of the English-speaking free world, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, wrapped in the song's unflattering context. I remembered thinking, "That's so cute, how they put dear-old Maggie in there, as if she were an equal in fuck-headedness to our president."*

Thatcher presided over the UK during the entirety of the 1980s. She was a titanic conservative force, but during the last years of her reign a drug-fueled counter-cultural revolution swept the country. Ecstasy and LSD propelled a new dance music scene and a psychedelic rock scene. In 1990, a trippy indie dance group called The Times sang on their rave scene celebration song "Aurore Boréale" "It's the morning after the 1970s," as if purging the memory of the "Iron Lady's" decade in a burst of ecstasy bliss. The song ended with a voice intoning atop a psychedelic roar of sound, "This…is…LONDON."

John Major succeeded Thatcher in late 1990. Britain entered a recession that year from which it would not recover until 1993. As I traveled around Britain in 1992 I met some of the unemployed youth who complained about the Major government's role in their unhappy predicaments. I was also around for Black Wednesday on 16 September, when the British government suffered the embarrassment of having to pull its currency from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (since I'm no economist, it's better that I link to piece about that here).

Dance, shoegazer, and other British music scenes continued to evolve in relative isolation. Meanwhile, America experienced another internal music revolution that, along with rap and R&B, would guarantee that our attention would remain focused on ourselves for a while longer. Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" roared up the charts in late 1991, and in 1992 a year of grunge commenced.

Without the widespread availability of the Internet to join our two nations, America's exposure to UK culture came largely from the nightly news, music, and film. In American cinema, the early 90s saw a parade of crafty villains speaking in sinister British accents (real and fake); titles included Silence of the Lambs, Sneakers, Cliffhanger, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Oh sure, it makes sense that the Sheriff of Nottingham would speak in an English accent, but one must remember that the titular hero of Robin Hood: POT was played by the American Kevin Costner--with an American accent.

This would suggest a certain level of Anglophobia in the U.S. But we also had our Anglophiles. A few U.S. bands even had a sort of English manner about them. In 1991, Chicago's Material Issue sported moddish hair cuts, and the fonts on the album cover to their debut International Pop Overthrow seemed to mimic the druggy imagery associated with Britain's drug scene. That same year, The Ocean Blue, a group long fond of covering British tunes, released Cerulean, which sported the sorts of abstract, dreamy song titles indie UK fans associated with Britain's shoegazer scene (e.g., "Marigold," "Mercury").

But to American audiences, these bands' efforts seemed to emphasize the divide rather than bridge the gap. "Oh, they're trying to sound English," many of us said dismissively. The fact that these groups also drew inspiration from such American cult bands as Big Star was lost on us. We were ignorant and mean. Maybe that goes some way toward explaining why Material Issue's frontman committed suicide in 1996.

In 1992, the election of Bill Clinton was met with rapture in the U.K. The American flag was hoisted over Oxford because our president had not inhaled there. Compared to saxophone-playing Clinton, Major must have looked especially stuffy to his own younger subjects--essentially, he embodied the worst stereotypes of staid, conservative Britishness, the sort that had been mocked for decades in films like Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. Along with news that Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson were splitting in the spring, followed by more bad news of Charles and Diana parting ways in December, recession-era Britain must have felt that, generally speaking, and by all measures, things were going horribly wrong with the old order.

Somehow, from all this mess, came the warning shot of impending Cool Britannia: Blur's 1994 Brit-centric masterpiece Parklife. The album was not a success in the United States, nor was it expected to be (it even featured an uncomfortably bitter anti-American song called "Magic America"), but its explosive impact in the UK was a critical moment in the aligning of elements that would bring Britainization to the United States a few years later.

Parklife was a varied affair musically, a mish-mash of styles and sounds held together by its intensely self-aware Britishness, right down to a tune entitled "Clover Over Dover" and a lyric about the Queen leaping off Land's End (the powerful "This is a Low"). If Suede had been crushed by the disappointment they encountered while touring the U.S., Blur's reaction seemed to be to abandon ideas of American conquest altogether and to seek satisfaction in exploring and celebrating the world that they knew best. It was nationalism, but a peculiar brand of it, at times affectionate, but at others weary and ironic. If there could be such a thing as sad nationalism, Parklife had it.

This examination of Britishness had been anticipated in Blur's previous album, Modern Life is Rubbish, and it also informed the personality of two excellent St. Etienne releases. Parklife felt like the final, triumphant words of a great thesis. But while Britain raved, and students in T-shirts emblazened with RAF bullseyes roared the lyrics to "Girls and Boys," there must have been an awareness that this display of British spirit was not going to break Blur in the U.S.

Parklife was released in April 1994 as Oasis finished up recording their debut album, Definitely Maybe. The Oasis record shot straight to number 1 on the British charts a few months later. Where Parklife had been an eccentric pastiche of musical styles and poetic musings, Definitely Maybe was a rock album, musically unified, confident, and a tad prickish. There was nothing John Major about Oasis. Perhaps, British critics said, Oasis might be the British band to break America.

In fact, right around that time, a British band did break America, but the British media was reluctant to say much about that because most UK music journalists felt that the group's music was crap. The London group Bush had formed during the grunge year of 1992, and they sounded like a perfect clone of the bands in the Seattle scene. Their debut album, Sixteen Stone, sold briskly in the U.S. during 1995. They were, effectively, the Ocean Blue of Britain, and their act of cultural treason earned them a mulitplatinum album and the fetching Gwen Stefani, who married the band's frontman.

With two wildly popular bands (neither of which were Bush) now ruling the UK, one group representing British middle-class values and a certain intellectual cockiness (Blur), the other working-class rock and roll swagger with some appealing meatheadedness (Oasis), a slugfest was inevitable. In 1995, dueling singles from the two groups were released on the same day, with Blur's incredibly irritating "Country House" somehow coming out on top. But it was Oasis's album that triumphed in the album sales competition that followed. And then, in October 1995, came "Wonderwall."

"Wonderwall" did it. The third single from the Oasis album climbed into the top 10 of the United States singles chart. Select, a UK music magazine, breathlessly celebrated. At last, after a multi-year absence, a British rock band had successfully scaled the dizzying heights of the unforgiving, xenophobic U.S. music charts. Oh yes, there had also been Bush. And Jesus Jones--did I forget them? Hey, don't ask me why they don't count; ask a 1990s UK music journalist!

In November, Pierce Brosnan made his first outing as James Bond in GoldenEye. The film opened at number one that weekend, and remained in the top ten for four more weekends, going on to earn over a hundred million dollars at the U.S. box office. Perhaps the villains-with-English-accents trend in American cinema would finally abate.

* In fact, some have argued she was worse.

(To be continued)

How It Looked from Over Here: Cool Britannia as Seen from American Shores (Part 1)

2011-07-26T08:30:00.000-07:00

In 1993, my sister, a friend, and I had the pleasure of seeing the UK rock group Suede play at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. It was the band's first U.S. performance. While Suede were not as big in the United States as they were in their native Britain, the crowd's enthusiasm was certainly palpable. I remembered thinking how lucky we were to be Suede fans in the United States, since we could see this much-hyped group in a smaller, more intimate setting than their British fans likely were able to. Everyone in the crowd was stretching their arms out toward pretty-boy singer Brett Anderson, my 21 year-old self's arm included, and Anderson reached back, clutching hands with each and every one of us. We were worshipful. We were blessed. How lucky we were to be seeing the beginning of a new era in British pop here on American shores!

The tour would go on to become a disaster for the group. By its end, guitarist Bernard Butler and Anderson were barely on speaking terms. The second part of their travels through America saw The Cranberries as their opening act; that Irish group had achieved massive U.S. success with "Linger," "Dreams," and "Zombie," whereas Suede remained virtual unknowns. Thus, Suede suffered the humiliation of being upstaged by their opening act; they watched as venues emptied just as they took the stage. Nothing was ever quite so good for Suede again.

This was the era when British music magazines moaned about how the UK had "lost" America. In the early 1980s, we Americans sang along to Dexy's Midnight Runners, Thompson Twins, the Human League, and at least a dozen Duran Duran songs. In the mid-1980s, Britain's 70s rock dinosaurs successfully reinvented themselves: a Roger Water-less Pink Floyd enjoyed enormous U.S. success with A Momentary Lapse of Reason, Genesis's Invisible Touch lobbed five songs into the U.S. top five, and Robert Plant's solo album Now and Zen sold well.

The late 80s became less kind to "outsiders." America's music scene became more insular; we started to focus on rap, R&B, and metal. Although Def Leppard rode the U.S. metal wave with their massive album Hysteria, Britain's chart dominance had begun to fade.

The two countries' paths diverged further when Britain's 1988 acid house dance revolution made little to no impact in the United States (ironic considering that so much of the sound of that scene had been developed by underground dance music producers in the states). While teenagers on ecstasy danced all night in warehouse raves in the UK, the top albums during the summer of 1988 in the United States came by way of Van Halen (OU812), Def Leppard (Hysteria), Guns N' Roses (Appetite for Destruction), and Steve Winwood (Roll With It). Clearly, we had become a rock-obsessed nation. In the UK, by contrast, Now That's What I Call Music 12 spent five weeks roosting at number one, featuring a variety of tunes, including The Timelords' "Doctorin' the Tardis" (which also topped the UK singles charts in June), S-Express's acid house anthem "Theme from S-Express" (a number one UK single in April) and Morrissey's "Everyday is Like Sunday."

As the 1980s became the 1990s, Britain's best rock bands frequently were marketed as "alternative bands" in the United States. With America spending so much time listening to its own music scenes, to listen to any outside voices at all was a rebellious act. (Long gone were the days when Nena's German-language "99 Luftballoons" was a U.S. hit.) Happy Mondays, Charlatans, Blur, Ride; these groups wore the "alternative" label around their necks, which immediately offset them as something "weird" to the American record-buying public. (As for the still burgeoning UK dance scene, nobody in America seemed to know what to do with breakbeat techno groups like The Prodigy; I don't remember seeing the massive UK rave anthem "Charly" charting anywhere at all, though perhaps it sneaked onto a little-publicized U.S. dance chart somewhere.)

I spent a few months in the U.K. in the fall of 1992, and was dazzled by the energy of their pop music scene. Felix's "Don't You Want Me (Hooj Mix)" was blasted in the clubs (my right ear was a little dinged by that experience), the somewhat ridiculous Shamen tune "Ebeneezer Goode" was huge, and the Eurodance anthem "Rhythm is a Dancer" by Snap! ruled the dancefloor. On the other extreme, the indie UK sound was still alive and well, featuring introspective groups like Earwig and Moonshake. Of course, Nirvana was also popular. And the fall of 1992 saw the rebirth of ABBA's "Dancing Queen," which had been re-released as a single in anticipation of the ABBA Gold compilation. A good variety of ideas were battling it out in the U.K., and the U.S. scene seemed depressingly dull by comparison.

Suede were the new darlings of British music while I was over there. They had released two strong EPs ("The Drowners" and "Metal Mickey"). And that was the first time I heard firsthand British people whispering, "Can they break America?"

By 1994, America had broken Suede. An American lounge singer using the same name sued them, and so they reluctantly became "The London Suede" in the U.S. markets. Guitarist Bernard Butler left the group. The band would spend the next several years struggling to re-establish their identity while simultaneously competing with a rising flood of other British rock bands.

(To be continued)

Thoughts on the Evolution of Popular Music

2011-05-30T15:12:00.001-07:00

One thing that troubles any music addict is the possibility that, despite diligently casting his net into the vast sea of European pop and dance music day after day, he might still have missed some choice fish. This worry prompted me to perform a more thorough analysis of the European pop and dance charts from years gone by.

I began my research by compiling a few dozen European countries’ pop charts from the year 2000 (in some cases pulling data from every pop chart from every single week of that year—pretty arduous). I selected 2000 because that was the year I first fell in love with Europop music. Back when I actually mucked around in 2000, I got most of my relevant music education from one Romanian radio station on the internet. Certainly, I reckoned, there were many songs that had not only had escaped my net; they had swum in entirely different oceans. So I collated my chart data and then jumped onto YouTube, which houses an impressively large percentage of those songs.

My 2000 Excel spreadsheet wound up with 1084 unique songs on it. That might seem like a lot, but in fact it’s a low number. In a typical year of combing today’s charts I usually hear about 5000 songs. The 4000 song gap is explained by the fact that many countries today produce and publish weekly top 40 charts, but they don't archive these, so digging a decade into the past is a bit of a challenge. I should add that I continue to uncover interesting chart archives, and so the 2000 experiment remains one in progress—with plenty more adds to come. But even if 1084 is a relatively low number, it's still quite a lot of tunes to get through; I spent months digging through them, in fact.

Anyway, I got through that, and then I moved on to the music of 2001. After that, somewhat confusingly, I went backwards, tackling 1999, which I figured would be more interesting to me than moving forward to 2002 since 1999 was the year before I had fallen in love with the Euro sound, and thus I figured it would yield more surprises.

So here I was—and still am—listening to thousands and thousands of pop songs from these years, and with more years to follow. Considering this insane level of diligence, naturally, some friends asked me, perhaps hopefully, if I had learned anything interesting at all. I answered lamely that I hadn’t really gone into this with the intent to learn anything; I was just looking for good songs. I admit I also enjoyed wallowing in the nostalgia (watching old music videos is a pretty trippy time-travel experience).

Now, thick in the throes of 1999 music, I feel I am beginning to see an emerging picture of pop. This essay is an attempt to crystalize my current impressions, which will undoubtedly change next week. But let’s start a conversation.

We’ll start that conversation with a hypothetical question from you. You might ask me, “How much has music changed, on a scale of 1 to 10, over the last 15 years, with 1 being ‘no change at all’ and 10 being ‘completely fucking different music’?”

“Five!” I might once have barked back, because "five" is always the answer when one is asked to rank something on a scale of 1 to 10, unless that something is the attractiveness of your significant other. But now I would say that the question itself is flawed in this instance. That’s because it implies an assumption, which is that music evolves in a steady, progressive way, linearly transforming at a slower or faster rate (our 1 to 10 scale indicating the speed of that transformation). But in fact, while gradual evolution in music is certainly real (consider how changes in recording technology have changed the sound of pop), and ideas are sometimes exchanged between genres which reinforces the impression of a chronology of change, this is only part of the story, and might even be the less important part.

I wrote “music evolves in a steady, progressive way” because I wanted to highlight a popular misconception about the theory of evolution, and this is important to our understanding change in popular music. Evolution is, generally, not progressive. It’s simply a mechanism for change in organisms. The thing that makes change possible on the genetic level is mutation. We often imagine dramatic X-Men levels of transformation via mutations—mutations which bestow either super-beneficial advantages to the recipient or, on the other hand, fatal hindrances. In other words, mutations that greatly help or greatly hinder one’s competitiveness in the battle to be “naturally selected" to fuck and make babies which carry our genes onward—currently our only bid for biological immortality.

But most mutations are neither helpful nor harmful. They’re just random. Maybe I carry a gene that can metabolize the pint of Guinness I am enjoying right now at Meehan’s in Vinings, Georgia 0.5% more efficiently than the average person. So what?

The dinosaurs were as well-evolved as any group of animals living today, and they might still be here had it not been for a random cataclysm (a 6-mile wide asteroid) that, to be honest, most of modern life would not survive, either. If one could clone a dinosaur, Jurassic Park-style, the animal might very well outcompete today’s species. The dinosaurs did not become extinct because “something better” came along to shove them out of the way, or “progress” occurred in mammals and the dinosaurs “failed to innovate.” It was, in fact, quite a cosmic joke: the mammals survived the asteroid impact precisely because they had been out-competed by the dinosaurs, and thus were tiny, scurrying things that, thanks to their tiny size, were capable of subsisting on vastly smaller amounts of food than a 177-foot long Diplodocus.

My point is that music evolution is similarly non-progressive. Rather than picturing popular music as something evolving steadily in a continuum, becoming more advanced year by year—whatever that means, music being “advanced”—music is really more accurately thought of as a series of overlapping, random fads. Most of these fads have about a three or four year lifespan. There is the year of build-up, perhaps punctuated by one good idea that catches fire. This is followed by a year where the imitators step in and the sound becomes inescapable. Then, there is the dying-off, a two-year period of steadily waning interest. An interesting thing is that these fads generally seem to be independent of one another, and they are not especially dependent on particular technological innovations either, which means that each of these fads could effectively be exchanged with any other fads from different years. Thus, chronological dependency is destroyed. Any sort of progressive evolution in pop music is illusory.

I will start with smaller examples and build up to bigger ones.

In 1999 and 2000, pop songs were filled with Spanish guitars. Whether this was a result of Carlos Santana’s remarkable career second-act with his single “Smooth,” or whether he was buoyed by a pre-existing Spanish guitar trend I do not know, but Spanish guitars were de rigueur in Y2K-era pop music (Kaci’s “Paradise,” is one example, so is Christina Aguilera’s and Ricky Martin’s “Nobody Wants to Be Lonely,” and the list goes on, probably by the hundreds). Today you hardly ever hear Spanish guitars in pop music. In fact, peddlers of the Spanish pop sound from 2000 (consider Enrique Iglesias) were themselves fully enveloped in the arms of electro-pop by 2011 (“Tonight [I'm F**kin' You]”).

1999 is known by dance aficionados as the Year of Trance, the energy of which was perhaps best captured by the mix compilations Gatecrasher: Red and Gatecrasher: Wet (so called because they were tie-ins to Sheffield’s Gatecrasher club). 1998’s Energy 52 “Café Del Mar” remixes were a significant warning shot of the Year of Trance that was to follow. In 1999 we had it, and by 2000 trance was also infecting popular European pop music (e.g., Alice DeeJay’s 2000 single “The Lonely One” which is effectively a poppier version of Agnelli & Nelson’s 1999 trance monster “Everyday”).

But the dying-off period for trance came quickly. People grow tired of any genre, and at some point will move on to just about anything else new and novel. Benny Benassi’s delightfully screwy electro hit “Satisfaction” in 2003 was one of the biggest of those trance killers; after its success a flood of pop dance tunes were released with those distinctive buzzing sounds (usually roughly appended to sampled 60s, 70s, 80, and 90s pop standards—Royal Gigolos’ “California Dreamin’” is a perfect example). It’s worth noting that the Benassi-esque fad, like trance before it, also lasted about three years.

And finally, we get to boy bands (a silly aside, but I can't contain myself: I never understood why they were called “bands,” since the fellows in them only provided the vocals; alliteration evidently trumped common sense). In conducting my currently ongoing research into the year 1999 I have had to listen to five treacly love ballads from the band Boyzone, which was a miserable experience because I am not a 13-year old girl from 1999. N-sync, Backstreet Boys, Westlife, and Five are but four examples of boy bands putting out singles in that one year—and those are just the English-language groups. They were wildly popular. Clearly, they made a lot of money for somebody. But in 2010 you couldn’t find a single boy band. No money in it anymore. The extinction event seems to have occurred sometime around 2002.

The Spanish guitars, the boy bands, the sound of melodic trance—all of these pop cultural indicators seem so far away, now. We hear these elements and think to ourselves, "How old the music seems!"

But why couldn’t the year of trance have been 2009, with the music sounding exactly the same? For that matter, today’s electro-house/hip-hop could have been created in 1999—the technology existed then. And why aren’t we just coming into the boy band phase now?

I realized then that we were not seeing progressive evolution, but a series of fads. The fads and the associated memories we hang on the years during which those fads were in progress are generally the source of our impressions of old music sounding, well, old. The fads seldom cross-pollinate in any significant sort of way; they seem to be started by random ideas generated by people working in relative isolation.

I can tell you why fads die out—boredom. There are only so many boy-bands, trance songs, and Spanish guitars one can take before one pines for the next new thing. And I can even tell you that you can expect each fad to last around three years. What I can’t tell you is what the next trend will be.

Anyway, that’s what I think about the evolution of pop music right now.

Armenia, Azerbaijan, Eurovision, and Strategy

2011-05-18T06:21:00.000-07:00

Azerbaijan's Eurovision 2011 win means that country will be hosting Eurovision 2012 on its own turf. The problem is that Azerbaijan is at war with another country that regularly sends Eurovision delegations: Armenia. The war is often described as a "frozen conflict"; the two countries are sort of like struggling arm-wrestlers, neither of whom can overcome the other one. The fuss is over a territory in Azerbaijan called the Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR), which is occupied by ethnic Armenians and that operates as a de facto country, although it technically exists on Azerbaijani soil (naturally, in playing the public-relations game the NKR presents itself as a country). Flare-ups regularly occur around the NKR border, with casualties from time to time.

The consequence is that neither Armenian nationals, nor people in other countries who are of Armenian descent, and nobody at all whose passport shows signs of its owner having made a visit to the NKR (excepting diplomatic work), are allowed entry into Azerbaijan. This presents a fascinating political dilemma when it comes to Azerbaijan hosting Eurovision 2012. How can Azerbaijan bar an Armenian delegation from competing at Eurovision, a contest whose peace-and-love-trumps-politics idealism is captured by its heart-shaped logo?

Rumors have started to circulate that Armenia might boycott Eurovision 2012. It's interesting that one of the people advancing these rumors is Ismayil Omarov, general director of Azerbaijan's Public TV & Radio Broadcasting Company, who stated in a press conference on Tuesday, "As regards the involvement of Armenian representatives in this contest, I have been informed that the Armenians said they would not participate in the contest when asked about it. If this is really so, then I regret it..."

That's a pretty fishy thing to put out there; a rumor that even Mr. Omarov confesses is hearsay. It's like a right-wing radio host saying, "I hear that Barack Obama boils and eats babies. If this is really so, then I regret it."

No doubt, Mr. Omarov's rumor is the product of wishful thinking on his end. The best thing that could happen for Azerbaijan is for Armenia to boycott Eurovision 2012. Then, Azerbaijan can conduct business-as-usual, no longer forced to confront the complicated issue of permitting travel for Armenians into Azerbaijan. Armenia will imagine that it is making a big statement, when in fact few will really notice their absence.

(To the rest of the world, an Armenian boycott would only affirm what we already know, which is that Armenia and Azerbaijan do not get along. So what is the value of making that obvious statement? Also, you can be the elephant in the room so long as you remain in it, but once you walk out, how quickly you are forgotten.)

So may I make a suggestion? From the Armenian perspective, the best thing to do right now is wait and think. While doing so, Armenia holds all the cards, whereas to boycott is to fold one's hand. There is plenty of time to make a decision (for example, I see that Hungary did not announce their intention to participate in 2011 until December 2010).

But when the time for action comes, it seems the most sensible thing for Armenia to do is to announce their intention to participate in Eurovision 2012.

From the Azerbaijani perspective, the negatives would include, obviously, a headache regarding the method for allowing Armenians into their country (if at all; though a refusal would be a public-relations nightmare for Azerbaijan). And one scenario likely to keep Azerbaijanis awake at night is the potential for Armenian would-be terrorists to make a violent statement on the international stage that is Eurovision. The security challenges would include not only the need to assure the safety of Baku's people, but to also guarantee the safety of the Armenian delegation (Azerbaijan would not want its Eurovision to go down in the history books like Munich's Olympic games of 1972).

But nothing worth doing is ever easy, and if all goes well at Eurovision 2012 it might be a positive sign that progress can be made in peacefully settling these countries' differences. A successful Eurovision 2012, with Armenia's participation, could be the start of a thaw, ever so tepid though it might be.

Something has to give in that region eventually; why not use a cheery song contest as the vehicle for releasing some of the pressure? Of course, doing so might also trigger an all-out earthquake. It's certainly a gamble, but seeing that the only alternative is a conflict seemingly frozen for perpetuity, it seems one worth making.

Mr. Lava Reports - Summary of I SO TOTALLY CALLED EUROVISION 2011!!!!!!

2011-05-15T09:34:00.000-07:00

The official Eurovision site roars: tonight is “The Grand Final!” of Eurovision Song Contest Düsseldorf 2011!!!! In addition to learning which song will win, we will also learn the identity of the next country to host Eurovision, since the competition moves to the winner’s home turf the following year.

38 countries fought for a chance to be in tonight’s final, with 20 surviving this week’s battles. Five other countries lamely automatically advanced—the so-called “Big Five,” (France, Italy, Spain, the UK, and Germany; though Germany would have been afforded this courtesy anyway, since they won last year, and last year’s winner also earns that privilege).

The BIG FIVE are not big because of their talent (please), or their track record at winning Eurovisions (pretty terrible), or even the sizes of their dicks (teensy dicks), but rather because of their large potential television audiences and the dollars they in turn invest into the contest. I explained all this in a blog entry that Blogger deleted due to a catastrophic IT error on their end earlier this week; they say one day that entry might get restored.

If you’ve seen the semi-finals you're in for some deja-vu. The choreography and camera angles and costumes and, of course, the songs themselves are all the same—with the exception of those five cut-to-the-front-of-the-line SUPER DUPER FIVE qualifiers. Fuckers.

The audience, led by some unseen male cheerleader, sings the Eurovision theme. There are no lyrics, so we hear a spirited roar of "Da-da-das."

Here we go!

Tradition dictates that last year’s winning song opens the competition. Cleverly, host Stefan Raab launches into a performance of Lena’s 2010 winning-tune “Satellite"—reinterpreted as a high-energy big-band number. Stefan may be a comedian, but he has musical talent as well (check out his amusing “Wadde Hadde Dudde Da” from several years ago to see what I mean). Co-hosts Anke and Judith prove to be capable doo-woppers. And then Lena herself joins in! It's brilliant.

“Lena! Lena!” the crowd chants! Lena will be back on stage later, as a real competitor for Germany once more.

The streaming webcast suffers from a noticeable split-second delay between audio and picture.

A 90 second time-compressed film showing the transformation of Düsseldorf's arena from football stadium to Eurovision venue follows. Then the voting process is explained: it's a 50/50 split between the popular televote from the great unwashed (like on all those "Idol" shows) and each country’s mysterious Star Chamber jury of supposed music experts.

Let's go let's go let's go!

As in the semis, every artist is introduced by a short clip showing a random "everyday" person from the representative country experiencing some aspect of Germany. We learn, for example, that in Germany, Moldovans are employed as window-washers, and that Romanians deface walls with graffiti.

Finland's too-sweetly earnest “let’s save the environment” songster takes the stage. As occurred during his semi-final performance, when the giant planet earth rises behind him on a massive video screen, the crowd roars their approval. “EARTH!!!!!” they cry, weeping ecstatically.

Dino Merlin got saddled with the dreaded opening slot in Thursday’s semi-final, but luckily was remembered all the way to the end of the show. So here he is again—tackling the number two spot. He's the oldest performer in the contest, which generates instant sympathy for him. But he earns his respect, too. He is a terrific showman.

On Thursday, the audience clapped enthusiastically along to his tune, which was a nice sentiment, but the arena's acoustics led to a delay which threatened to throw off Dino’s timing. The Eurovision web site announces that the problem has been solved; instead of wearing the usual one "in-ear" playback earpiece, he will wear two—in the same ear. No, sillies!—one in each ear, to drown out the over-enthusiastic but less-musically gifted audience. This proves a good call; as he starts to play, the audience clapping delay becomes a noticeable problem once more, but he marches through. It’s a fine performance. This crazy old coot has something going on.

During the next country intro clip, the audio-visual synchronization issues are resolved. Now we’re rockin’!

Denmark takes the stage with their “surprise hair” lead singer, whose locks are combed straight up in the air Jedward-style (more on Jedward later) and frozen in place by at least two cans of hairspray. Song sounds perfectly polished. Lyrics are about saving the world. Here's an interesting fact about this song: it’s crap.

There is not a single BIG HUGE MEGA FIVE country among the first ten, meaning loyal Eurovision viewers will have to endure at least 40 minutes of performances they’ve seen before.

Lithuania is next of those, with their Andrew Lloyd Webberish song, complete with the singer’s sign-language interpretive gestures. No kidding; when she breaks out the sign-language, approving applause erupts from the audience—presumably from all the deaf people who were, until that moment, contemplating a refund for their ill-advised investment.

Hungary is up next with its disco torch song, “What About My Dreams?” Well, what about them? Singer is a needy woman for sure. Enthusiastic crowd starts clapping along, off-time. I hope she's wearing two in-ear pieces like Dino. Song is big and gay. And damn catchy! Energy level in the arena rises.

And then comes Jedward! Wait-wait-wait Eurovision. SLOW DOWN. Are we going to use up all our high-energy performances before the halfway point? We face a potential premature ejaculation.

As Jedward, those skinny identical twins from Ireland with their own "surprise hair," spring and bounce about the stage, we begin to realize, oddly enough, that they are actually…pretty talented? Jedward begin to acquire an underdog appeal, further augmented by the appearance of the next act.

That would be traditional pretty-boy Eric Saade, here to sing his miserable—yet Eurovision-perfect—song "Popular." He wails about his desire to become popular and tells us that his body "wants you, girl." We breathe a sigh of relief when we realize that this will be the last time we will ever have to see this performance again. Oh no—unless he wins! *Shudder.*

Estonia is up next with their cutesy/strange dollhouse-come-to-life performance. It’s a weird song, but shouldn’t we appreciate an unorthodox effort? Singer Getter Jaani is cool enough in my book to do whatever she likes. But will Europe agree?

I am surprised that Greece survived the semi-finals. Here they are again. A grunting, snorting rapper stomps out on stage. Then he is joined by a handsome but dour big-voiced singer. They are “Loucas Yiorkas featuring Stereo Mike.” I am going to take a wild guess and assume that “Stereo Mike” is the rapper. What a ponderous piece of shit. Is this some sort of modern art lament over Greece’s collapsed economy?

This is followed by the other “they really shouldn't be here” country, which is Russia, who offer a baby-faced version of James Dean. The singer's name is "Alexey," a point driven home with the subtlety of a falling anvil when the background dancers turn around revealing letters attached to their backs which spell out “ALEX.” Should I be excited? Apparently we have a Russian star in our midst! Note: all the Moscow journalists who heroically pointed out how terrible Russia’s entry is are now dead.

At last, something new: a BIG HUGE FUCKING FIVE country! France is tipped by some to win, says the Wall Street Journal. I said “no way” when I read that article on Friday night—after having consumed several Harp lagers, which made me even more opinionated and belligerent. The WSJ reports that it's great that he's singing opera, and that he sings in the Corsican language. I say opera sucks, and (besides the Corsicans) who in Europe gives a fuck that he sings in the Corsican language?

And who does this guy’s hair? It looks as disheveled as mine! Except that I’m not performing in front of 100 million people right now!

Another so-called BIG MASSIVE SUPER DUPER FIVE COUNTRY!!!!—Italy—is next. Their tune is sophisticated because it’s jazzy. It sounds like a thousand other sophisticated, jazzy tunes you’ve heard from several dozen well-groomed jazzy-pop dudes. In other words, Italy, like France, has tried too hard, and will not win Eurovision this year. I don’t think they’ll even crack the top 10.

Let’s go backstage and meet the performers! Dino Merlin stumbles through an interview with Judith, revealing his obviously limited English, and explains that, as a returning performer to Eurovision, everything is “in rewind.” We love the guy even more. The happy feeling Dino's interview leaves us with is then trampled when we learn that A Friend in London’s lead singer is wearing half a shirt.

Switzerland’s “oh that was nice, I guess” song is next. The Twitter feed scrolling alongside the streaming video is revealing: a couple of people exclaim she has forgotten the words to the song! I don’t think many people noticed. If you are the Swiss delegation and you are reading this right now, let me assure you: you didn’t lose because you forgot the lyrics.

And now, it's Blue, representing the LET US SAY "HALLELUJAH" TO ANOTHER BIG! FIVE! COUNTRY! known as the United Kingdom. Ten years ago this man group was the even more boring version of Westlife and 5ive. Fortunately, this is the most up-tempo song Blue has ever performed. But—whoa—major pitch problems right before the chorus! We cringe.

What’s funny about Blue’s performance is that English speakers often laugh at other countries' campy Eurovision performances, but if you dubbed Dutch on top of what we just saw we would be witnessing exactly the same kind of silliness.

Oh no, it's time for Moldova's Zdob şi Zdub, whose manic performance is to Eurovision what Robin Williams is to comedy. I'm too exhausted to say any more.

And then it's Germany's Lena!!!!! We brace ourselves for a big roar from host country Germany! And there it is!

Cleverly, for the intro clip, they use Anke, Stefan, Judith, and Eurovision's behind-the-scenes crew as the representatives for Germany.

Lena takes the stage. The song is slinky, with appropriately slinky choreography. This song is too cool to win. But we make a startling observation. Tons of sexy singers have flaunted their long, long legs during the competition, but Lena is the first performer who actually acts sexy. She flashes come-hither glances into the camera, captured in extreme close up. We readjust ourselves. Ohhhhhh, Lena.

Romania is up next. It is foarte boring!

As a whole, the show is making impressive time. We are 80 minutes deep, and 16 out of 25 performances have taken place. Every Eurovision song clocks in at nearly exactly three minutes, there are no commercial breaks, and there is a minimum of host interruptions.

Leggy Austria is up next. Song is a gospel pop ballad thing, which might sound boring when I put it that way, but it’s actually pretty impressive thanks to the abundant vocal talents of singer Nadine Beiler.

Azerbaijan, my pick to win the competition, perform another rendition of the world’s greatest high school slow dance song.

I'm running I'm scared tonight!
I'm running I'm scared of life!
I'm running I'm scared of breathing!
Coz I adore you!

There is no greater paean to true love in Eurovision 2011 than this song. I'm tearing up at the memory of it. But their voices sound ragged! Will that cost Azerbaijan?

In a semi-final recap I said that Georgia's lead singer was as talented as her band’s song was terrible. Similarly, Slovenia’s singer is as hot as her song is boring. “There’s no reason I should cry-eee-yaiiii!” the Slovenian woman wails. "O yeah, I’m never gonna let CHEW! No one will ever treat CHEW right!"

More backstage interviews, this time with cute Eric Saade, who says he has to pee—awwwww, he’s just like us, for we, too, pee! Then, we learn that the whole competition is staged, because they have already manufactured the official DVDs for Eurovsion 2011—for sale right now on the Eurovision.tv website!

Iceland return! So cute and full of smile! Maybe they win? You never know! ;-)

The last HUGE ASS FUCKING FIVE country takes the stage: Spain. Their lead singer has the biggest eyes of anyone in the competition—you can see her blink from the back of the arena. She also has the biggest mouth. That’s a compliment! In true stereotypical Spanish fashion we are served a happy fiesta of a song, performed with that mile-wide smile. Well all right—I guess that was fun, thanks!

Ukraine returns with the sand animation woman. There is also a singer singing something in front of her!

Serbia is up with their 1960s "Laugh In" performance that needs only Goldie Hawn in go-go boots to be complete. “Sock it to me!”

Time for the last act of the night. It’s Georgia’s nu nu metal group. It’s terrible, but only because the whole nu metal genre is. But for what it is, the performance goes very well. Until—whoa!!!!! Singer chick goes way off time during the microphone distortion part. A literal poor note to end on.

So that means there have been three overt mistakes in this competition (as far as I can tell): UK’s Blue guy going way pitchy before the first chorus, Switzerland reportedly forgetting the words, and this. Live TV, folks!

Time to recap the performances. They show snippets of all 25 songs. For Switzerland’s they choose to extract the “Nanananananananaanananana” part, maybe because the singer had forgotten her..well, forgettable... lyrics?

To pass the time before voting results are revealed, they show, as host Stefan Raab says, “Music that you don’t have to vote for." It's a live music performance from a German guy! The world collectively rises from their chairs and heads for the bathroom.

But then Hamburg singer Jan Delay takes the stage. Most journalists at this point would just make a comment about the funny German man running around in a plaid suit, blue tie, and fedora. But you’ve landed in more experienced hands. Jan has had a huge number of hit singles in Germany, some of which are catchy in any language. He opens with “Oh Jonny,” a raucous 2009 song (the video for which is a fun homage to The Blues Brothers). Then he rips through the even-better “Klar," delivered with more energy than the already excellent original. Jan Delay rocks! He makes passing the time before the results a pleasure.

Hosts Anke, Stefan, and Judith, who also hosted the semi-finals, seem to have found their groove at last. Stefan carries Anke over his shoulder up some steps on the stage. Facing the backdrop behind the stage, he roars “Tear down this wall!” (for you younger readers, that's a cutesy Berlin Wall-reference). The wall behind the stage divides into two and dramatically parts, revealing the pod-like rooms containing the excited Eurovision competitors behind it.

And with that, it's time to tabulate the votes. 43 nations voted (each of the nations that sent delegations to the competition). Each of the voting countries is represented by somebody who pops up on a video feed and reveals how that country's votes were distributed. A country cannot vote for itself. One country gets 1 point, another 2, then it goes 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and then the big points: 8, 10, and 12 . So 12 points is the maximum. It’s alternative voting—and it makes sense! Well, not everyone agrees, but I approve!

“Feel Your Heart Beat!” is the official slogan of the competition, and seriously, the tabulation of the votes gets the heart racing. I want to take a moment to say that everyone who fought their way here through the semi-finals should go home feeling like a winner. Which obviously does not include "The Big Five."

One by one the countries reveal their votes, each set of results changing the rank order of competitors. One country pulls ahead, then another. In text I can only summarize the larger picture:

Many Western European countries are sore about Eastern European, Balkan, and Caucasus counties “bloc voting” for their neighbors. So, during this round of voting, we see the affirmation:

1) Slovenia gives 10 points to Serbia and their maximum of 12 to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
2) Serbia gives 10 points to Slovenia and 12 to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
3) Bosnia and Herzegovina gives 12 points to Slovenia.
4) Croatia gives 8 points to Bosnia and Herzegovina and 12 points to Slovenia.

Former Yugoslavia hasn’t been this unified since Tito! Brotherhood and unity! Also:

5) Cyprus gives 12 points to Greece.
6) Turkey gives 12 points to Azerbaijan.
7) Romania gives 12 points to Moldova, and…
8) …Moldova says “right back atcha, Romania."

Yeah, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus totally bloc vote! Fuckers!

Except, the open-minded notice other things:

1) Norway gives 10 points to Sweden and 12 points to Finland (It's worth noting that Norway’s votes were cheered, while several of the above were booed).
2) Germany gives 12 points to German-speaking neighbor Austria.
3) San Marino gives 12 points to Italy, the country that surrounds them.
4) The UK gives 12 points to Ireland.
5) Portugal gives 12 points to Spain.

Some voting points of interest:

1) As the results come in, Ireland rises up to third place at one point. I remember when Ireland cynically sent--I'm not kidding--a puppet one year and failed to make it to the finals. Jedward are nearly as nuts as that, but the response this time around has been much more positive. Real people trump puppets, I suppose.
2) Ukraine offers 8 points for Russia, but 12 for Georgia (a country Russia partially occupies). Former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko made a big deal about sticking by Georgia during the Russian/Georgian conflict a few years ago.
3) Armenia gives 10 points to neighbor Georgia and 12 to Georgia-supporting Ukraine.
4) Belarus doesn’t offer their 8, 10, or 12 points to Russia, maybe a reflection of recent tensions between the two traditional allies? We wonder if the Belarusians even got to watch an uncensored version of the competition? Over there they probably think Belarus made it to the finals and won. Belarus gives their 10 points to Ukraine and 12 to Georgia.
5) Oh, and Albania gives 12 points to their neighbor and drug trafficking partner across the Adriatic, Italy.

The Eurovision glory that once was Russia's now fades.

Miscellaneous:

1) When Poland pops up to announce their country's voting results, the presenter tries to be funny by taking deliberate, interminable pauses between the scores. The joke flops and rightly outrages the audience; even host Anke looks steamed.
2) Jedward’s performance scores several top marks, including 12 points from Denmark, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
3) Bulgaria’s 10 points to Greece and 12 for the UK make me think, “Bulgaria is a country I might not visit soon.”
4) Israel's results announcer touchingly pays lip-service to "our greatest Diva," Dana International.
5) Azerbaijan’s vote presenter, singer Safura, is va-va-VOOM!

By the time 21 of the 43 countries have voted, it is a horserace between Azerbaijan and Sweden, with Sweden looking the strongest. But Norway, Denmark, and Finland have now all voted, and so the bloc voting potential is exhausted for Sweden. Azerbaijan, on the other hand, has Turkey’s inevitable 12 points to look forward to.

The 22nd country to vote is Turkey, and—surprise!—Azerbaijan gets 12 points.

Azerbaijan also receives 12 points from Russia and Malta. San Marino gives 10 points to Azerbaijan and 12 to Italy—which of course does not help Sweden.

The Azerbaijani lead grows, and singers Ell and Nikki get increasingly excited and teary-eyed. Sometimes Azerbaijan gets only 8 points, but then the 10 and 12 points are awarded to distantly-lagging countries, which does not affect the top standings. Sometimes, close competitor Sweden gets 12 points, but in the same round Azerbaijan claims another 8 or 10, minimizing the impact. And at some foggy point—it’s not certain when while the events are unfolding; it will have to be all picked apart later—but at some point it becomes clear that Azerbaijan has accumulated an insurmountable lead. When only two countries’ votes are left it is absolutely clear even to the most mathematically-challenged that Azerbaijan has won.

Interestingly, Italy springs forward near the end (I was very wrong when I predicted they wouldn’t make the top 10, though the revisionist historian in me now calls it a pity vote in acknowledgement of their sulky 13-year absence). The consequence of Italy's surge is that Sweden’s “Popular” becomes less so, landing in third. Sand animation woman (with a singer) from Ukraine settles into fourth, Denmark’s “surprise hair” rock band is in fifth, sly old Dino is sixth for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece is in seventh for some incomprehensible reason, and the Jedwards are in eighth—a fine finish for Ireland. Georgia’s nu nu metal efforts lands in ninth. Defending champions Germany take tenth.

Estonia winds up next to last—poor Getter. And Switzerland’s pleasantly boring tune takes the dreaded bottom of the barrel position. The Swiss singer is cute; I’ll give her a shoulder to cry on. Just as long as she promises not to sing. "Nanananananananaannaananananaanananananananananaanananananana!"

***

So Azerbaijan won it all.

Judith led the ecstatic Ell and Nikki (Elbar and Nigar in their less-Anglicized forms) from the waiting room to the stage to sing their song once more. John Williams’s Olympic music played during their walk, linking the good-will spirit behind the Olympic games to the shared idealism of Eurovision. As the two pretty singers performed their song one more time, we realized they were hoarse, no doubt from screaming with joy for the last forty or so minutes. Funny; those voices, run-ragged by the adrenaline of the previous hour, made their performance even more touching.

The best song won! I'm tearing up again! Forgive me!

I’m really just a hack over here, writing strings of jokey observations about the competition. The real story comes from my friend Liana, who runs the excellent IANYAN Magazine, which focuses on Armenian affairs. She noted, as the closing credits scrolled past, that tweets had already begun surfacing from Armenians calling for a boycott of Eurovision 2012.

Azerbaijan and Armenia are locked in a “frozen conflict.” When the USSR collapsed, new borders were drawn, and various people wound up on opposite sides of those borders. An ethnic-Armenian group in Azerbaijan secured a territory, now known as the Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR). They occupy it to this day. The NKR has its own government buildings, embassies, currency, and post offices. Its border is heavily mined, and people are shot and killed around it every year. The conflict is "frozen" now, but something must give eventually.

Armenians, who have failed to gain acknowledgement from Turkey for a Turkish-perpetrated genocide against Armenians that the vast majority of historians (and a pre-Presidential Barack Obama) agree occurred, and who are also embroiled in the aforementioned dispute with Azerbaijan, are, naturally, unhappy.

But why end a Eurovision article with gloom? Most commentators, including Armenian ones, are admitting that Azerbaijan’s song was the worthy winner. A boycott is likely the worst Armenia will do (though I'm sure Eurovision's security detail must be worriedly contemplating the terrorism potential in 2012). As for Azerbaijan, any military action to take back the NKR would be poorly timed just before hosting Eurovision.

If Armenia does not boycott Eurovision 2012, Azerbaijan will have to figure out what to do regarding issuing travel visas to Armenians. Currently, Armenians are barred entry to Azerbaijan.

Yes, the next year could be very interesting indeed.

Mr. Lava Reports - Summary of Semi-Final 2

2011-05-13T09:47:00.000-07:00

So what's on tap for tonight's Eurovision Semi-Final 2? Belarus's nationalistic dance anthem, a beloved transsexual Eurovision legend from Israel, and probably the first semi-final featuring two sets of identical twins.

Our webcast is preceded by an endlessly cycling advertisement for Schwarzkopf! The official beauty partner of Eurovision! It occurs to me about the twelfth time around that "Schwarzkopf" literally means "blackhead."

Showtime!

Yesterday's hosts, Anke, Stefan, and Judith, are back. Will controversy-averse Eurovision un-muffle them enough so that they might make one—just ONE—joke about Belarus?

We learn that the 10 advancing countries from last night's semi-final (plus the "Big Five"--more on them below) are seated together at the front of the stage, which means most of Tuesday night's winners are being rewarded for their success with a long, lonely, conversationless night, since their neighbors are unlikely to speak their language. Serbia's Edie Sedgwick-channeling Nina, who is singing her tune in Serbian, looks particularly long-faced.

After the short, introductory clip, featuring those sooper-coolo tilt-shift camera lens opening shots (see Tuesday's report, if Blogger hasn't deleted that already), Bosnia & Herzegovina take the stage. The gray-haired guy with the guitar is Dino Merlin, who has had a decades-long history in music—he was performing back when the bulk of the Balkans were called "Yugoslavia." He's probably the most senior of the competitors in the contest. Sure, I like looking at all those leggy woman singers, but after a hundred of them strutted their stuff in Semi-Final 1 it's refreshing to see him up there. He proves that with age comes experience, and he whips the crowd up with his catchy little tune. He looks like an underdog, but also a sly old dog. We love him; we want him in the final.

In 2007 Austria left Eurovision after loudly complaining about bloc voting, which is what they call it when countries vote in knee-jerk fashion for their neighbors (Eastern European ones were most harshly accused of this, though Scandinavia did this a lot too). Now that their fellow German-speaking next-door neighbors have won a Eurovision and are hosting this year's contest, guess who has returned?

True to Eurovision form, Austria offers us, yes, a leggy singer: Nadine Beiler, sporting a smart bob. It becomes obvious that the audience is punchier than they were on Tuesday night. They were enthusiastically clapping along to Dino's tune, and now they roar approval during Nadine's a cappella opening, doing a sort of, "SING IT, SISTER!" thing, if Europeans actually say stuff like that. It's a bluesy ballad, probably good enough to advance.

Europe's largest Muslim nation, The Netherlands, now take the stage. Through some bizarre warp in the time-space continuum, it appears that Evil Bryan Ferry circa 1974 has been catapulted into modern-day Düsseldorf to perform this drammatical piece of crap.

Belgium offers an a cappella group, complete with requisite beat-boxing. It's quirky, but in a conventional sort of way. You know, like how some people think they're quirky because they like Björk, but everybody listens to Björk. The group is talented, but an a cappella tune could never be A Song for Europe. However, it's a shame they probably won't get to face off against the UK's Blue on Saturday, to show how talentless that man group is by comparison.

The first of our two sets of twins take the stage tonight, and this (once again) leggy pair are called…"TWiiNS"!

:-|

They have had a number of successful singles in their native Slovakia ("Compromise" being my personal fave). But this is a bland ballad. Think back to Azerbaijan's goosebump-good "Running Scared" from Tuesday night and you realize just how plain this is by comparison.

Speaking of Azerbaijan, we join host Judith in the Tuesday-night winners section, where she interviews Ell and Nikki, the Azerbaijani darlings of Tuesday night's show. When singer Ell takes the microphone to charm the audience with his fluent German, he effectively seals his country's destiny to win this year's contest. Incidentally, their song, "Running Scared," listed under the duo's non-Anglicized names of Eldar and Nigar, has appeared on Slovakia's pop chart this week (though, loyally, not as high as TWiiNS's song).

Ukraine takes the stage with a bland tune, but who cares? They have that awesome sand-animation woman, who won "Ukraine's Got Talent" a few years back, doing the background visuals! Remember her? The video was blogged and emailed and tweeted and farted all over the place! So here she is being awesome again. Meanwhile, cute singer Mika stands in the foreground singing some sort of song. Ukraine is guaranteed a spot.

At some point, during those intro clips where they show natives from each of the competing countries exploring Germany, you expect that they are going to get stuck with a country with no German representation. What will they do, then? Actually, could that country be Belarus?

Moldova's Zdob și Zdub take the stage! They're crazy! See their tall, pointy hats? As you watch this frenzied performance, you begin to think that they need only one more thing, and that's a girl in a fairy dress riding a unicycle. Then a girl in a fairy dress on a unicycle comes riding out, and you throw your hands in the air and say, "ENOUGH!" The band has had a respectable history making pop tunes that have rocked both Moldova and Romania, but this song is a mess, with so much banging on the kettle that it renders the viewer senseless. It's the noisiest song you will ever nod off to. (Check out "Everybody in the Casa Mare" for some better Zdob și Zdub.)

We beat up Sweden's song already.

Cyprus sends out some humorless guys dressed in black, a sort of Bauhaus boy band, and they tilt at absurd angles in unison—slowly...slooooooowly!—from one side to the other, and me getting SLEEPY! Just as my double chin hits my chest, enter the screaming woman whirling a lamp like a bola over her head. This literal rude awakening is punctuated by chunky nu metal guitars borrowed from Tuesday night's Georgia performance. Perhaps I was wrong the other day when I said that Georgia's nu metal sound seems dated; Cyprus is confirming a slowly-dawning and all too terrible truth: that there might be a nu metal revival in the works--nu nu metal! Fuck me!

Host Anke recycles the postcard joke I mentioned after Semi-Final 1.

A Turkish friend told me that after her country's defeat in Semi-Final 1 a long-running debate was re-ignited over whether Turkish Eurovision groups should sing in English or in Turkish. In fact, this same general conversation is held by almost every Eurovision delegation. I think about this as I watch Bulgaria take the stage. Singer Poli Genova opts to sing in Bulgarian, and in fact her song is a perfectly catchy piece of toe-tapping pop rock with some fist-pumping anthemic flair. But will the rest of Europe support a Bulgarian-language song?

The dilemma regarding singing in English vs. one's native language is this: some feel that it is better to sing good, non-English lyrics than to subject an audience to terrible, trite English-language ones garnished by thick accents. However, if no other country's voters can understand your lyrics, of what benefit is it to sing in your own language? It's a toughie.

Up next, a Macedonian guy (singing in his own language) performs an homage to a Russian woman. "Rusinka" is rhymed with "Vodka" and "musica." There's a jumping accordion player. It is the first—but maybe not the last—song this evening to feature a performer shouting into his microphone…through a megaphone. Not sure what the fuck is going on. Scared.

Only at Eurovision could one write that the emotional highlight of the night may have been offered by a transsexual Israeli singer. Dana International, whose song "Diva" won the contest in 1998, is back, and the audience roars with respect. Unfortunately, Dana's Eurodancey tune sounds like it could actually have been written in 1998. In 2009's Moscow Eurovision contest, LGBT rights activists were beaten by police; that would not have been a good one for her to come back to. Nice to see Dana having her moment in Düsseldorf. No chance in hell of this advancing, though, and Dana's parting words, suggesting a sort of closure, seem to acknowledge this.

Then it's back to business as usual: Slovenia offers another leggy singer. She's a super cutie. She wears thigh-high boots and a short dress well. But the song is ponderous. Then it becomes interminable. And it's only been going on for a minute.

One tranquilizing performance deserves another, so Romania's Hotel FM oblige with a forgettable tune laced with platitudes about changing the world and how we need to work together to—hey, is this Finland's song from Tuesday night?

Hosts Stefan and Anke appear on tape performing a medley of Eurovision hits. The joke is that they get progressively more violent with one another as they perform. The comic punching sound effects don't work, though showing the two of them bloodying one another up and spitting out teeth at the end is a bit gutsy. Maybe the comedy will get more risqué? Are Belarus jokes coming?

Estonia takes the stage. I‘m biased; I love singer Getter Jaani, whose "Parim pave" and "Saladus" are superb. This English-language tune, on the other hand, is bloody awful. But she does a nice little magic trick with a handkerchief turning into a cane, and she is fascinating to watch as she runs around a set of shoulder-high buildings like a toy doll come to life, blinking exaggeratedly and gesticulating wildly—she turns in a real performance. Might just be puzzling enough to get through.

And now, at last, the moment we've been waiting for: Belarus!!!!!

Oh, wait—right. Before the performance comes the intro bumper clip. So are there any Belarusians in Germany? Well, turns out they found some at a hockey game! And considering that yesterday European lawmakers were demanding that the International Ice Hockey Federation ditch the 2014 championship in Belarus to protest human rights abuses and political fraud over there, the timing is a bit sad.

Well, here goes nothing! The music begins, and we think, sure, we already know that Belarus's flag-waving "I Love Belarus" is doomed. But when Anastasiya Vinnikova opens her mouth, an even greater problem becomes apparent: she is a terrible singer.

Europe watches this bizarre, nationalistic orgy through splayed fingers. Then, a strange thing occurs—an emerging sense of sympathy. Everybody hates this song, and everybody hates the Belarusian government and its autocratic president, but why take it out on this poor singer? Sure, she has assumed the mantle of Belarusian ambassador with ten times the zeal of Leni Riefenstahl, but surely she's misunderstood?

Then Anastasiya's skin splits in half, peels off, and slides slowly to the floor like two shed halves of a long leather coat. Standing in her place is none other than Belarusian President Lukashenko himself, with glowing red eyes and a flashing torrent of blue sparks cascading from his mouth. Actually, that didn't happen, but it's an effective metaphor for what we are witnessing.

With a wave and a smile, it's all over. Wow. Belarus. Am I really going to…miss you?

That should be an easy act to follow! But Latvia is up next, and they offer a pop-rock-dance-rap hybrid that predictably fails as pop, rock, dance, and rap.

Denmark's A Friend in London takes the stage, and their lead singer has evidently taken hair-styling pointers from soon-to-emerge Jedward: his locks are combed straight up into the air like a surprised cartoon character's. The song is a torturously languid piece of schmaltz. All we can think is, "Send out Jedward! Send out Jedward!"

And then it's Jedward! I mean it's Ireland, represented by Jedward!

To the uninitiated, Jedward can be described as identical twin versions of Pee Wee Herman crossed with Animaniacs and topped with two feet of hair combed straight up into the air—like that guy's from A Friend in London.

They open with one of the twins singing while his brother lies down on the stage directly in front of him, shoe to shoe, mimicking him like a living shadow. That's cool. This is followed by a great deal of jumping and running around, reminding me of their memorable interpretation of "Ghostbusters" on "The X-Factor," the show on which they were discovered.

It is stupid great. But compared to these super-caffeinated Jedwards, the Eurovision crowd looks unusually still, or are they stunned? Please, please, please vote this through! It will be the perfect antidote to just about everything we will have to endure on Saturday.

Now co-host Judith sits down with the contestants on stage, flanked by Jedward, who through their hyperactive babbling and mugging just might blow their chances. Shut up, Jedward, shut up! There's still fifteen minutes of voting left!

Hosts Anke and Stefan do a little skit to fill some of that time. "Name two things that do not go together," Anke asks Stefan. To which Stefan replies, "England and penalty shootouts. " Boos erupt throughout the arena. It's the first moment of real comedic edginess thus far! Is this a positive sign that they have been saving their best material for the finals? In any case, I'm pleased that Anke and Stefan finally got a reaction from the crowd.

Vote tabulation time. For our entertainment, breakdancing group Flying Steps from Berlin perform their "street smart" "moves" to some "Bach" on "piano." I am tired of the whole "Let's mix classical culture with urban culture and shift everybody's paradigm!" thing. Now the piano stops, which means the inevitable techno-fied Bach will soon come in, which it then does. Oh no! A ballerina enters. You know it's working. Viewers are right now saying, "I never thought of ballet in this context before!" or "I never saw breakdancing in this light before!" You chumps!

I'm too cynical to be a Eurovision dance choreographer.

Co-host Judith talks with Lena, who sits in the "Big Five" section of the audience. The "Big Five" are the five Eurovision countries that advance automatically to the finals, because they have large populations and invest more money into the competition. Yes, it's completely unfair. Lena is the singer of last year's winning entry, and she is competing once again for Germany on Saturday. Lena excitedly explains that we have just watched Eurovision. Judith says hello to the other performers seated around her. The UK's Blue, a man group, but not the Blue Man Group—I'm getting confused—anyway!—Blue are yucking it up behind Lena, while Britain watches Blue yuck it up on BBC 1 2 maybe it's on 3.

The results are in!

A brag. I picked 8 out of 10 correctly. How sad is that? My 8 correct predictions:

Austria, the leggy woman with the bob one—THROUGH!
Bosnia & Herzegovina, the with age comes experience one—THROUGH!
Denmark, the "I copied Jedward's hair" one—THROUGH!
Estonia, the singing doll one—THROUGH!
Ireland, the Jedward one—THROUGH!
Romania, the boring OK one—THROUGH!
Sweden, the most terrible thing you'll ever see but it's completely perfect for Eurovision one—THROUGH!
Ukraine, the sand animation woman with some singer in the foreground one—THROUGH!

The two I got wrong:

Macedonia, the homage to "Rusinkas" one—THROUGH!
and finally
Slovenia, the cutest of all the leggy singers but with the worst song one—THROUGH!

Farewell to my picks Bulgaria (Bulgarian-language curse) and Latvia (four failed genres in a single tune).

And farewell to Belarus's Anastasiya Vinnikova, who begins the long, lonely walk home—literally, since she cannot afford public transportation—to a country that will likely not host the 2014 international hockey championships. If you see her, can you give her a ride to the EU border?

Mr. Lava Reports - Looking Ahead to Semi-Final Two

2011-05-11T22:40:00.000-07:00

Blogger finally restored this entry on 18 May. It was originally posted on 11 May, then deleted about 24 hours later during a catastrophic Blogger failure. I have backdated this entry to its original post date.

In light of various performance catastrophes (e.g., “Boom Boom [Chucka Chucka]),” nine Eurovision competitors were kicked off the field this Tuesday. In theory, that means nine countries worth of people are not going to tune into the finals on Saturday. After Thursday night's second and last semi-final, a further nine countries worth of people will be doing something else Saturday night. Every country that fails to watch the final is, directly or indirectly, lost revenue for the Eurovision Song Contest, but of course, with varying degrees of financial power and a wide range of populations amongst them, some countries are more profitable to “lose” than others. So, by measurement of population alone, Turkey’s departure on Tuesday was the most disastrous. On the other hand, San Marino and Malta will be little missed.

This cruelly Randian financial logic is effectively why we have “The Big Five” countries, which are given an utterly unfair free pass to the Eurovision Finals on Saturday in order to guarantee viewership and reward associated investment. The Big Five are France, Germany (which would have gotten a pass anyway this year, since the previous year’s contest winner also automatically advances), Italy (undoubtedly seeking placation after a sulky 13 year absence from the contest), Spain, and the United Kingdom. These countries contain the overwhelming majority of Europe’s people and have decent to strong economies, which translates to more viewers and more dollars that ultimately wind their way back to the competition. In other words, the demands of the free market drive greedy/sensible Eurovision to adopt an unfair, non-competitive tack when it comes to dealing with the five biggest backers of Eurovision. This sort of paradoxical logic, where capitalism smoothly blurs into Animal Farm “more equal than others” non-competitive favoritism, is the sort of stuff that drove the trust-busting Republican Theodore Roosevelt nuts.

Speaking of curtailed democracy, one can make a compelling argument that this conundrum is why the jury system was reintroduced into the contest in the last couple of years (the official reason was to counter supposed “bloc-voting,” a phenomenon Big Five countries especially harped upon where countries vote in a knee-jerk manner for their neighbors). So, a chunk of the votes are cast by the people of Europe, and another chunk come from mysterious panels of supposed music experts based in each country, which I will henceforth call “Star Chambers.”

But we can boo and hiss the jury system and the Big Five on Saturday! I just wanted to offer you a little foreshadowing. Thursday night is all about selecting another ten delegations to send to the finals, an activity which, from Eurovision’s bean-counting perspective, also amounts to learning which nine countries’ TVs will be dark on Saturday. I’ll be watching, and will offer a complete synopsis afterward. I’ll also come clean about how well my own predictions went. I'm not feeling so confident about those, considering all the aforementioned weird forces at work!

Mr. Lava Reports - Loving Belarus

2011-05-11T12:37:00.000-07:00

Evidence suggests that Belarus invented a face-saving story to spin the reason for why their original Eurovision Song Contest 2011 submission, “Born in Byelorussia,” had to be scuttled.

Belarusian singer Anastasiya Vinnikova takes the stage Thursday night at Eurovision Semi-Final Two singing “I Love Belarus,” and it will likely be your only chance to see this gawk-worthy disaster in the making, since the song hasn’t a prayer of advancing to the final (though voting it through might be a worthwhile prank).

Belarus’s original Eurovision 2011 song offering was called “Born In Byelorussia,” a celebration of life in the good old days of communism—which for Belarus continue! The lyrics to that earlier effort included: "Born in Byelorussia! USSR time! Byelorussia! Crazy and so fine!"

Sensing controversy, something image-hypersensitive Eurovision does not want any of, on 3 March 2011 the event organizers pressed for a lyric change, tactfully noting in a press release that “questions and doubts have come up regarding the lyrics of the Belarusian entry,” and further explaining that
“The song quoted memories from Soviet Union times as well as the historical name of Byelorussia, which is not officially used anymore these days.”

But a different story is told in a video posted to YouTube on the following day, 4 March 2011. The channel, which says it originates from Russia, with an associated website that includes specialized looks at Belarus's and Russia's Eurovision history, reports that the song was performed before last year’s cut-off date, and was therefore disqualified for non-political reasons.

Either way, the result was a complete overhaul for the song, which brings us to “I Love Belarus.”

Can you think of one good reason not to love Belarus? Except the police brutality, mysterious “suicides” of investigative journalists, and the arresting of opposition leaders? Well, I could think of several. Like how President Lukashenko, elected in 1994, now appears to be their president for life. And how the government announced plans to ship jailed opposition leaders’ kids to orphanages. Or the nagging suspicion that the president himself was behind a recent subway bombing (the government is trying to pin the blame on, once again, those mysterious, omnipresent “opposition figures").

But who cares what reasons I might have for not loving Belarus? I'm just a fake Eurotrash DJ! Let’s take an objective survey of today’s newspaper headlines instead:

The Wall Street Journal: “Russia Refuses to Bail Out Belarus”
Reuters: “Russia refuses to bail out wayward ally Belarus”
AFT: “Belarus opposition journalist goes to trial”
Monsters and Critics: “EU lawmakers call for a suspension of Belarus hockey championship”
Index on Censorship: “Five former presidential candidates now on trial in Belarus”
New York Times: “Belarus Currency Plunges After Rule Change”

But perhaps today was just a bad day. Or maybe everything you’ve just read is suspect, because…

Kyiv Post: “Lukashenko: Information war unleashed against Belarus.”

See? I’m just part of the conspiracy!

Mr. Lava Reports - Predictions for Eurovision Song Contest Semi-Final Two

2011-05-11T07:17:00.000-07:00

Mr. Lava Reports - Summary of Semi-Final 1

2011-05-10T18:56:00.000-07:00

When you listen to the Eurovision Song Contest 2011 entries as separate entities, the one thing that strikes you immediately is their crapness. But there’s something about seeing those songs performed in the context of the competition itself that, well, sometimes actually enhances that crapness--but that at other times elevates the tunes that happen to be the one-eyed in the kingdom of the blind. Semi-Final One offers us this opportunity to reassess half the Eurovision field. So live, from Düsseldorf, Germany, let the show begin!

Tonight's hosts, Anke Engelke, Stefan Raab, and Judith Raakers, two-thirds of whom are comedians, fail to find the funny, which is miserable considering that they are obligated to make us laugh for only five minutes of the two-hour-plus show. Most of the humor consists of them ribbing one another over their ability or inability to speak other languages.

In their defense, I know from past Eurotrash experience that Stefan Raab is a funny guy. Perhaps being funny in English is more awkward to him than being funny in his native tongue. But the more likely culprit is Eurovision itself. It is clear when one visits the Eurovision official web site that the organizers maintain a very carefully-managed image that strives to avoid all controversy. They take their Euro peace and love vibe (right down to the heart-shaped logo) extremely seriously. This renders the best comic material off-limits.

Every performance is preceded by footage of Germany as experienced through the eyes of (apparently actual) visitors from each of the represented countries. Each short clip begins with that cool tilt-shift camera technique which renders the city as if it were a living, model village; and concludes with the person or persons exclaiming something in their native tongue.

And now...the performances!

The first slot in any semi-final is a thankless one; you are quickly forgotten. This semi-final's sacrificial lamb is Poland’s leggy, raven-haired Magdalena Tul, who belts her song as if clubbing a baby harp seal. She has some pipes on her, and I like the fact that she sings in her own language instead of reaching awkwardly for the less-comfortable universal language of English. But first slot + Polish language lyrics = doomed.

Norway offers a curious, African-influenced tune with quirky/irritating lyrics about things the singer’s grandmother supposedly told her:

"When as a little girl my grandma told me
That I could be just anything that I wanted to"

(which is followed by)

"When as a little girl my grandma told me
That I could be just anything that I wanted to"

Good to have singer Stella Mwangi there, though; she’s one of the only non-white faces at Eurovision 2011 this year, plus she’s quite the leggy looker. But she doesn’t hit the low notes very well. She mentions later in the show that she sang once for Nelson Mandela, but she left out the part of the story where Nelson rose from his chair, hands clasped over his ears, yelling “Shut up shut up SHUT UP!”

Albania’s tune is too much more and not enough less. “ThankyouTHANKYOU!” Scary Woman Singer bellows afterward, with a lunge.

Armenians were already depressed about their chances when “Boom Boom (Chucka Chucka)” was selected as this year’s Eurovision entry. The delegation choreographed a boxing-themed thing, in honor of an Armenian boxer who, one imagines, must have beat the crap out of a Turkish one recently in order to garner such adulation. Two autographed boxing gloves from said boxer were given to Emmy, and the fetching singer explained in a pre-show interview that she would probably toss one out to the audience tonight and save the other for some lucky audience member in Saturday's finals.

So I knew Emmy would bring the boxing gloves, but I didn’t know she’d be sitting in a giant one. The choreography is quite cute, actually. However, the song remains bloody awful--nothing can save it. Emmy yelling out “Armenia!!!!” afterward, as opposed to the usual thanking of the crowd, seems a bit low-class, too, but of course Thursday will see Belarus's none-more-nationalistic "I Love Belarus" performed, so...OK.

Turkey, that perpetual rival of Armenia's, is on next. The country offers a boring rock song featuring lyrics telling us to "live It up" because "life is beautiful."

A segment then follows where Stefan Raab and Anke Engelke lead various Eurovision singers in a sing-a-long of that old German standard “The Happy Wanderer” ("Der fröhliche Wanderer"). Once again, comedy and Eurovision don’t mix.

One of my favorite contenders, Serbia, takes the stage next. Singer Nina is all Edie Sedgwick tonight; think of the women in the Austin Powers movies if you don’t know who Edie Sedgwick was. Song is likable 60s retro-pop befitting that look.

Russia offers a terrible song sung by a chisel-faced guy channeling a less-compelling James Dean. An assisted somersault performed by the backup dancers earns a mighty cheer from the audience.

In case you got too excited watching the somersault, Switzerland hands out Ambien with an inconsequential piece of fluff. IANYAN Magazine's Twitter feed reports that apparently there is a 30 minute rewind capability in the live streaming video. Nobody will be rewinding to this.

Georgia brings back bad memories of Y2K-era nu-metal, with a fetching female singer capably belting the tune against hard rock music before this guy cuts in and starts yelling into his microphone, which creates the unfortunate impression that the country of Georgia is about a decade behind current pop music trends. However, I am impressed that at one point the singer deliberately creates vocal distortion by wrapping her hand around the mic while singing into it. She is as talented as the song is terrible.

“Unfortunately you cannot vote by telegram and we do not accept postcards,” co-host Anke informs the viewers in another failed attempt to be funny. Damn you, Eurovision.

Next up is Finland’s “Da Da Dam.” Title suggests that it will be a horror like “Boom Boom (Chucka Chucka)," but it immediately becomes evident that this guy's lyrics are significantly richer and more earnest than the ones most Eurovision fans feel comfortable listening to. It's an easily, and perhaps deservedly, mocked sentimental tale of a budding environmentalist who expresses a desire to save the earth, but compared to what came before it it sounds like pure poetry. Big roar for this guy at the end. But the rapidly scrolling Twitter feed beside the video screen displays only contempt!

Malta offers a perfectly decent, if forgettable, dance pop tune, complete with divo.

San Marino’s tune is classy, but inescapably dull. That's good; it would be a disaster if San Marino won, because it would bankrupt the tiny country if it had to host the competition in 2012.

Croatia’s leggy blonde singer (how many "leggys" can I use in a single blog entry?) can't hit the low notes, but in a weird way that's a pleasure to me, because it demonstrates how Eurovision nobly continues to eschew auto-tuning. It is the first bona-fide dance song of the night, but it’s not a scorcher. The weird Slash look-alike does not help things. Singer Daria Kinzer does one of those magic dress transformation tricks--a wardrobe change that occurs in the blink of an eye. Now that’s what the rewind feature is for. Song even has a little dubstep breakdown—let history show that dubstep debuted at Eurovision 2011 in the bridge to this song. But a shrug of a tune.

Awww, see quirky Icelanders! Icelanders always so cute! Why look at them! They no fear volcano! They kiss one another and look like Kingston Trio, except more than three!

Hungary serves up the big disco diva anthem that Croatia wanted theirs to be. I like the Hungarian-language second verse. Beat production is solid. A big gay dance song that works.

Oh Portugal always cute too! Like Iceland! Look at them in their bright, colorful clothes, colorful like a children’s book!

Andrew Lloyd Webber apparently defected to Lithuania to write that country's tune, and at one point singer Evelina Sašenko uses sign-language in order to reach out to the hearing impaired--aka, the most fortunate of Eurovision viewers.

When the schmaltzy notes to Azerbaijan’s love ballad begin, we all curl up into a defensive crouch position. And then...

The song is stunning! Beautiful!The production is completely “now,” the beats are chunky enough to keep one alert, and the synths climb dramatically behind the wonderful vocals! Azerbaijan has sent adorable, non-threatening Muslims to the contest! Big win!!!

The high bar set by Azerbaijan puts Greece in an unenviable position. Greek columns appear on stage to remind us of the glory that once was--long, long ago--Greece. A guy stomps out on stage and barks some rap thing. Then, some dude with a big operatic voice takes over. It's like one of those modern art performances where you walk out shaking your head saying, “What the fuck was that?”

We're done! But unlike all those other reality competition shows, the performance and the results show are in one package, so we will soon learn who advances to the finals on Saturday. It’s sad to think that almost half of them have to go home tonight, as opposed to most.

While the votes are tabulated, Cold Steel Drumline are sent out to remind Eurovision fans what black men look like. These guys are American--so what are they doing here? Apparently they played on one of popular German performer Peter Fox’s albums. Drumlines, are of course, awesome. But maybe not for ten minutes. A guy runs across some drums at the end--that's pretty cool.

Before the results there’s the awkward “There are some countries that have already qualified for the final…” statement, which always must ignore the obvious and perpetual problem with "the big five" who do that, which is that they earn their automatic ticket to the final due to their being the biggest financial investors in the competition. That's sort of like if the U.S., with all its lucrative Olympic Games advertising revenue, were able to bribe the International Olympic Committee to have its athletes bypass all the qualifying heats for the final races.

Results are in, announced in random order (presumably to avoid creating voter bias for the finals). The Top 10 that will advance to Saturday's final are:

Serbia, the Edie Sedgwick one!
Lithuania, the Andrew Lloyd Webber one!
Greece, the piece of shit one!
Azerbaijan, the best one one!
Georgia, the Y2K nu-metal one!
Switzerland, the nice sweet boring one!
Hungary, the blonde dance diva tune that’s better than Croatia’s one!
Finland, the guy whose song is too lyrically rich to be in Eurovision one!
Russia, the other piece of shit one!
Adorable Iceland, the Kingston Trio plus another trio one!

Which means Armenia's Emmy gets to keep the second souvenir autographed boxing glove for herself.

Mysteriously, despite the seemingly important emphasis on the random order announcement, the Eurovision web site later declares that Azerbaijan were the "Semi-Final One Winners." We kinda already guessed.

And with that, after two hours and 13 minutes of nonstop sound and fury, the web stream falls dead silent, and I am left listening to the sound of my typing.

The million dollar question is: “What will Jedward do?” The answer comes on Thursday!

Mr. Lava Reports - I'm Dreaming of a White Eurovision

2011-05-09T12:53:00.000-07:00

Like garrulous seagulls lured by crackers, a flock of shrieking white people has descended upon Düsseldorf for the Eurovision Song Contest 2011 (the first semi-final is held tomorrow). While it's true that three countries' delegations did not get the memo and sent unusually dark faces (these offenders are Norway, San Marino, and the UK--the last country having sent a man-group with one black dude in it), the remainder of the 43 competitors are wondrously light-complexioned!

This is great news for disgruntled Germans whose Aryan causes have been severely curtailed by anti-discrimination laws for decades. At last, an unabashed celebration of white culture will be held on German soil!

Human snowflakes of goodwill are settling on the Altstadt under the auspices of the towering stuffed remains of Knut the Polar Bear, a snow-white martyr for the Aryan culture that transformed Germany into the leading European power that it is today (it must be said, though, that Knut's looking a little ragged on account of being picked apart by souvenir hunters--couldn't the city have sprung for extra security?).

White though this Euroworld may be, it is not intolerant, for even Israel's Jews have been warmly welcomed on Düsseldorf's soil. That's because today there is an even greater enemy to confront: the Muslim masses that threaten to overthrow Europe and force the burqa upon us all. Do you want to wear a burqa? Fuck no!

(Muslims, it should be said, are also represented at Eurovision. They look pretty white, don't they?)

A whiter celebration--and a whiter collection of tunes--you will never find than at Eurovision 2011! Why, three nations from the Caucasus will perform in tomorrow's semi-final! Slovenia's song entry is actually called "Vanilija"!

While Europe's Top 40 is filled with the likes of American and British R&B performers of dark complexion (Rihanna, Tinchy Stryder, Snoop Dogg, Puff Diddly-Do-Good), Eurovision remains white white white! And so, standing here in the Altstadt today, I feel like one among millions of Caspers--as in the friendly ghosts--drifting like pale plankton through a pasty white sea of Eurolove!

Mr. Lava Reports - Eurovision Performers Arrive

2011-04-28T08:51:00.000-07:00

I am in Düsseldorf ("Dull Village") to cover the Eurovision Song Contest 2011. The Eurovison Press Centre opens on Saturday, an event seen by many as the unofficial start of the Eurovision Song Contest. Rehearsals begin the following day.

So the first Eurovision performers are arriving! I spent an amusing half-hour watching the unpacking of Eric Saade (Sweden) from his crate. Even with a few loose packing peanuts stuck in his hair he looks more life-like than Madame Tussaud's best work. His blank stare is unsettling, but once he is animated by the talented Euro Disney Imagineers he will "come to life" and thrill an estimated 125 million people around the world.

I wanted to take the Maja Keuc animatronic out to the Günnewig Rheinturm Restaurant. She is a simulation of an 18 year-old Slovenian female (though in fact she has been in development since the Tito era). She is abundantly attractive and, the Eurovision site says, programmed to be "a self-critical girl, with both feet on the ground and a firm belief in the good in this world."

Sadly, Belarus's crate, which contained Anastasiya Vinnikova, arrived damaged, and rats appear to have gnawed off one-third of Ms. Vinnikova's "living skin," revealing the Terminator-like hydraulics underneath. While it is doubtful she will look herself during the first round of rehearsals, Belarus believes the biologically-engineered flesh-like substance will grow back in time for the semi-finals. More worrying than these cosmetic issues, however, is the damage done to her singing voice, which is now a deep, metallic gonging sound. A new voice-box will arrive from Minsk soon.

Mr. Lava Reports - Eurovision - Pause for Reflection

2011-04-26T06:22:00.000-07:00

The stories that the "Mythbusters" TV show investigates are all-too-vivid reminders of the deaths of my own friends and family members. "Killer Tissue Box," "Exploding Breast Implant," "Jeans of Fire"--these and countless other tragedies have deleted loved ones from my life. (Confession: I never wear jeans.)

As I sip a cappuccino and gaze hazily upon Düsseldorf's Altstadt exactly two weeks before Eurovision, I find myself in a pensive mood.

I replay the last moments of my father's life. He is coked-up and having the time of his life as he barrels down the ski run. He playfully moons other skiers as he passes them by. And there's the arctic fox, frightened out of her den, streaking white on white across the landscape, impossible to see or avoid. A surprised yelp from both parties.

Contact. Chaos. Catastrophe.

My father sailing off a cliff, his pants around his ankles, and the terrified fox wrapped around his head like a living ushanka, their separate screams blending into one.

Impact.

My server mops off my table. I seem to have knocked over my cappuccino during the flashback. "Is OK, is ok," the server grunts for the third time this morning. He is an old Polish man who no doubt came to Düsseldorf seeking a better life. Aren't we all looking for something?

I consider leaving him a tip for his trouble, but think better of that when I remember the cost of my hotel room. How do the Eurovision delegations from less well-off countries (and considering Germany is the EU financial leader these days, that would be everyone) manage to cover their boarding costs? I think a good journalist should investigate that. Then I remember that I am supposed to be a journalist. Then I sigh with relief, remembering that I am writing only for a blog, and I can leave the tough stuff (read: boring) for the professionals.

Cheered by my newly-realized lack of responsibility, I stride out into perfect weather: sunny skies and temperatures at a perfect 20°C, enough to distract me from the receding yells of my angry server. I remind myself that my father is disco dancing in heaven with Marie-France Pisier. An arctic fox frolics at their feet.

Dance, little fox, dance! :'-)

Mr. Lava Reports - The History of the Vatican at Eurovision

2011-04-24T06:01:00.001-07:00

I spent my morning listening to the Bach Cantatas for Easter Sunday (BWV 4 and BWV 31, under the direction of John Eliot Gardiner), which put me in a reflective mood.

I considered the history of the Vatican at Eurovision. The Vatican is located in Rome, a city which, due to its location; its considerable commercial power; and its glorious, multi-millennia history, is known by many as "The Crossroads of Europe."

Vatican City proper is either a sovereign country or not, depending upon mood and necessity. For example, when asked to pick sides in a military conflict, the Vatican refuses because it is not a country. When asked to extradite bishops to testify in pedophile priest trials, the Vatican refuses because they are a sovereign country.

We all remember that Pope John Paul II was the last pontiff to send a delegation to Eurovison (1988, Dublin). In what was interpreted as a troubling sign of growing irreligiousness in Europe, the song, "Adoramus Te, Christe, et benedicimus Tibi, Quia per sanctam crucem Tuam redemisti mundum," placed last. More humiliation followed when it was revealed that, although the song's house music melodies were original (courtesy of one Frankie Knuckles), the lyrics were not, having been written a thousand years earlier. A red-faced Vatican had its appearance annulled. With that bold stroke the Vatican's Eurovision record was stricken from all official histories of the contest.

A campaign was launched in late 2008 to encourage a Vatican return to Eurovision (see illustration above), but this failed to gain traction. However, if Italy is back in the 2011 contest after a 13-year absence, could the Vatican be far behind? Popular opinion says, "Probably."

[An Easter aside: Italians have expressed outrage this week over Lady Gaga's latest single, "Judas," and they have shown their displeasure by allowing the song to ascend only to number 5 on their pop music charts. Pope Benedict XVI's complaint: "The song as a whole sounds like a desperate knock-off of last year's 'Bad Romance.' " Amen, Popey, amen!]

Mr. Lava Reports - Measles March on Eurovision

2011-04-22T05:55:00.000-07:00

Mr. Lava has volunteered to send dispatches from Eurovision Song Contest 2011 in my stead. Here is his second report:

Autism, in combination with rampant paranoia and under-informed parenting, has given Europe, and probably soon the entire world, a bad case of the measles. Writes Huffington Post:

"To prevent measles outbreaks, officials need to vaccinate about 90 percent of the population. But vaccination rates across Europe have been patchy in recent years and have never fully recovered from a discredited 1998 British study linking the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella to autism. Parents abandoned the vaccine in droves and vaccination rates for parts of the U.K. dropped to about 50 percent."

Ground zero seems to be France, which has already seen almost as many measles cases in 2011 as it did in all of 2010. Paris (which, due to its location, its financial power, and its considerable cultural contributions to the world, is often referred to as "The Crossroads of Europe") has begun executing the infected (and, as a precautionary measure, the non-infected) living in that city's suburbs.

Now measles has its sights set on Eurovision. It would be a dolorous competition indeed if we had to endure the sight of the beautiful Mika Newton's porcelain features speckled with contagion. Fortunately, the heavily-fortified Fortuna Düsseldorf arena, where the contest will be held in May, is serving as a Decameron-style hideaway for the uninfected. Your correspondent, sadly, is not one of the privileged few who will get to pass the next few weeks swapping tales with Moldova's Zdob şi Zdub. So I and thousands of others are pawing mindlessly at the arena gates, moaning piteously in the desperate hope that we will be allowed entry into the safety zone.

If only I were "Popular," like Sweden's Eric Saade, who recently explained that "the word 'popular' is just an expression for wanting to be the best." This is so true; popularity and high achievement often go hand-in-hand. One need only look at the facts: Charles Darwin developed the grand unifying theory of biology called "evolution," and over 150 years later he remains popular in America's Deep South.

Mr. Lava Reports - Eurovision 2011: An Introduction

2011-04-20T07:00:00.001-07:00

I had hoped to receive press accreditation to cover the Eurovision Song Contest in 2011, but I was denied. Fortunately, Mr. Lava, a DJ of international renown, already lives on the continent. He has agreed to write a series of articles following the build-up to May's Eurovision showdown.

Because of its proximity to the Dutch and Belgian borders, its easy access to the Rhine, and its sterling reputation as an international business and financial center, the German city of Düsseldorf is often referred to by its residents as "The Crossroads of Europe." But this May the city will live up to that slogan more than ever before, as Düsseldorf's half million residents will soon be joined by hundreds of enthusiastic Eurovision Song Contest fans.

Germany is celebrated for its financial savvy and its bratwurst, but in recent years the country has perhaps become best known for its carnaval des animaux. Thus, the rising tide of tourists arriving in Düsseldorf's market square are now greeted by the stuffed remains of Knut the Polar Bear, who dramatically rears up on his hind legs with a face frozen in a perpetual roar of victory. Spirited zoo-keepers last week euthanized and stuffed Heidi the Cross-Eyed Opossum so that she might join her big brother; opossums are famous for hanging by their tails, and so Heidi now dangles stiffly from Knut's burly neck like a grotesque necktie. Paul the Octopus had once been a part of this tableau mort, but the mason jar containing his remains has gone missing--rumored to have been mistakenly sold as fruit preserves in one of Düsseldorf's outdoor markets.

Eurovision! Like the Olympics, the song contest is a bastion for peace and international good-will. Consider that today Italy talks about leaving the European Union, but in 2011--after a 13 year absence from the song contest--it will compete in Eurovision. Croatians have no interest in joining the EU at all, but they are determined to take home this year's trophy. Even staid Finland has lately shown more pride in Lordi's 2006 Eurovision victory than interest in the EU. Eurovision unites, whereas the EU divides!

One need only look at the facts. Before 1956, the year of the contest's inception, Europe knew only war. After 1956 a peaceful Europe came into being, although a fear of total nuclear annihilation hung over the continent like a raincloud over Charlie Brown's head (Cold War paranoia survives today in the form of that country-sized U.S.S.R. museum called "Belarus," the world's wilting hopes for Ukraine, and a general terror of Georgia-occupying Russia). Of course, one cannot also forget the wars that shredded the Balkans during the 1990s. And there is also Armenia's and Azerbaijan's "frozen conflict" regarding the disputed territory of the NKR which, due to complex loyalties in the region, plus gas pipeline transit issues, will probably lead to World War III. Besides these few things, Europe has never known such peace.

I am Mr. Lava, and I have come to Düsseldorf to suck all this in and blow it back out to you in a series of dispatches that have not been fact-checked, because this is only a blog. I look forward to sharing my impressions with you between now and the final day of competition. I am a Eurovision believer, and I will goddamn make you into one, too.

Eurovision, I have never felt more alive!

The Difficult Artist

2011-03-17T13:32:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty good at ruining friendships, and a lot of other people who indulge in creative activities (like, say, writing multi-paragraph analytical essays on artists and social dysfunctionality) are pretty good at that too. So I wondered why artists and other performers (e.g, Charlie Sheen) are such fuck-ups when it comes to their interpersonal relationships? This might make for a dubious premise; perhaps creative sorts are no more prone to meltdowns or wildly erratic behavior than any other groups of people you could invent. But since "the difficult artist" label seems to have become a generally-accepted cliché, and since I've been in a meltdown mode of my own for the past couple of months--and yet at this stage still luckily find myself lucid enough to express myself in writing--I thought I'd take the opportunity to gather my thoughts.

A lot of things go into making an artist, but two personality characteristics that are essential and most relevant to my argument are vanity and delusion. You will find these traits in most artists, both the successful and un-successful ones. Vanity and delusion are generally regarded negatively, but in fact both are essential for the artist, as these bolster an artist's spirit and self-confidence, without which one cannot create.

Vanity is essentially self-love, and since art reflects oneself and is an extension of oneself, vanity can also be thought of as pride in one's creative output. This is what compels an artist to create in the first place; if you hated your work, your output--effectively yourself, then why would you ever put in the time to create new things?

Delusion gives the artist the strength to labor through the tough times that most artists must go through (and many never emerge from). For many people, religion is that life-affirming delusion, an irrational belief in a heavenly reward to compensate for the pain of life. For the artist, delusion offers strength through the conviction that he or she is talented, a genius, a creator of things that will emotionally transform and better all others who bear witness to them.

Life inside the artist's head is often surprisingly cheerful; illusions are pleasant things. Where problems occur is when reality rudely collides with the delusion. For example, one might create 20 amazing paintings for an upcoming art opening under the delusional conviction that the opening will be a huge success, but when the doors open only two or three people arrive, and they came for the beer. Perhaps the delusion is that several of one's photographs hanging prominently on a wall in a popular café will sell, but no buyers materialize, and all the joy spent under that happy illusion--mounting those images and preparing the labels--is washed away by this unhappy fact.

But what's worse is that most artists, myself included, are not particularly or even slightly successful by any compelling measurement. This is what creates the bipolar mania of the artist; laboring happily and passionately (if exhaustingly and sometimes worriedly) on a project, followed by the deep dip that occurs when the delusion gives way to the rude awakening: nobody is interested. The impact of reality on delusion then roughly demolishes the vanity, the depression sets in, and the low ebb of the manic cycle is reached.

For many artists, even success fails to deliver real happiness, because the artist is always failing to measure up to a delusional yardstick that never corresponds to the metrics used by others.

And if that describes the artist's relation to his or her art, why would it be any different with his or her interpersonal relations? The artist lives in a strange world that oscillates between a keen ability to see things as they really are vs. a world that is twisted to suit the artist's particular vision. It follows that artists sometimes see the people around them more accurately than those people see themselves (this has its own drawbacks). However, they also sometimes err severely. In a sense, the artist, in viewing a person, captures the reality of the individual in order to render that thing in a recognizeable fashion; but the artist also creates a personal impressionistic portrait of that individual which says more about the artist than the person rendered in his or her mind.

When the delusional, false image of the person collides with reality, there is then a tempestuous explosion, like Mr. Sheen's towards "Two and a Half Men" executive producer Chuck Lorre (I know this is perhaps a funny example, but these are real guys and they're in the news and they make my point). Sheen's expectations were based once-again on unreasonable yardsticks. There is a meltdown, a blow-up that serves to rupture the relationship perhaps forever, and then the stunned reaction of us onlookers asking, "What happened?"

A footnote: artists are also often associated with drug addiction and alcoholism, which makes sense since drugs and alcohol provide a distance from self which affords a useful perspective on what one is creating. Artists are also prone to working manically on their projects at the cost of sleep. All these aspects also serve to make the artist vulnerable to interpersonal meltdowns.

So, I think you will, unfortunately have to get used to the "difficult artist," and the difficult artist will have to get used to losing friends. But have I actually only described the nature of all of us?

Sweden's "Popular" Worst Song of Eurovision 2011

2011-03-15T02:42:00.001-07:00

I've heard 'em all, and the worst Eurovision 2011 competitor is not Armenia's "Boom Boom," though there has been some debate. No, it's Sweden's "Popular." And lest there be any momentum building behind this song, any at all (Pop Justice seems to like it), it's time to bring down the hammer.

"Popular" is performed by 20 year-old Eric Saade. The gist of the song is that our protagonist fervently wishes to be popular so that he might impress some chick. He expresses this desire with the grace and subtlety of a Columbine High School shooter. "I will be POP-ular! I will be POP-ular!" he hisses.

Problems with the song are evident in its opening lines. "STOP! DON'T SAY THAT IT'S IMPOSS-IBLE!" Mr. Saade begins, "'CUZ I KNOW! IT'S POSS-IBLE!" every syllable enunciated with the zeal of a serial killer repeatedly stabbing his victim. Rhyming "impossible" with "it's possible" is pretty amazing, but there's also something jarring about starting a song with the word "STOP!"

"Sorry, Eric, but the thought of you actually getting that chick to notice you is just impossi—"

"STOP!"

"?"

"DON'T SAY THAT IT'S IMPOSSIBLE!"

"Well, how do you know it isn't impossible?"

"'CUZ I KNOW! IT'S POSS-IBLE!"

Then comes the chorus, which is ripped off of this very-80s tune from fellow Swedes Lili & Susie. Note that underneath the Lili and Susie video the top-rated comment (163 thumbs-up and rising) is "Hörde precis Eric Saade sjunga den här låten i melodifestivalen 2011..." Which translates to: "Just heard Eric Saade sing this song in Melodifestivalen 2011."

But one should not be surprised by the derivative nature of the tune, considering that the author of "Popular" is Fredrick Kempe, who ripped off "Nessun Dorma" when he penned "La Voix," Sweden's Eurovision 2009 entry. Lest you think that was only a coincidence, one need only recall that Mr. Kempe gave us a thoroughly trashed-up version of "Nessun Dorma" himself back in 2002. Anyway, this appropriating spirit is befitting the land of the Pirate Bay.

Not much else going on in "Popular" lyrically, though "My body wants you girl" is worth a mention.

All this is delivered with the bluster of hurricane whirling round and round as it charts a random course farther and farther out to sea. The lights are flashing, the dancers gyrating, Eric is spitting "I will be POP-ular!" And then, at 2:30, there is shattering glass.

To be fair, there is one other Eurovision 2011 competitor that arguably is worse than "Popular," and that is Belarus's bizarre, ultra-nationalistic entry, which comes on the heels of yet another rigged election and violent crackdown on peaceful protesters in that country. The current entry, "I Love Belarus," features a young woman repeatedly telling us that she loves Belarus. But the country's original song submission, pulled because of a lyrics dispute with the Eurovision organizers, was called "Born In Byelorussia," and waxed nostalgic on the good old USSR days. ("Born in Byelorussia! USSR time! Byelorussia! Crazy and so fine!")

But the audacious, gawk-worthiness of Belarus's Eurovision antics are at least somewhat interesting. "Popular" is just incredibly irritating.

Goodbye, Eric! See you around! Hope you become POP-ular! Jeez...

Set 33 is Finished

2011-02-09T13:33:00.000-08:00

You can visit the King Pigeon site to snag a torrent or listen to a streaming version.

It almost didn't happen! Had a big crisis in the middle of the day with seemingly insurmountable audio issues, and even wrote and briefly posted an apology on this blog saying it would be delayed once again. (For your enjoyment, I reproduce that earlier blog post in italics below.) But yes, it's done, and at last I am free to contemplate other things. :-)))

Another Delay for the Set

So, a big :-( No Set 33 on 10 February. And no more announced release dates until it's finished (this is turning into "DJ King Pigeon: Turn Off the Dark"). The artistry behind this set is magnificent--easily my best work. But the post-production has been disastrous, and I'm sort of stunned right now regarding what I'm going to do about it. Need a couple of drinks and some rest--and most of all several more days to review and repair (if that's possible).

So there you have it--the biggest problem with a 3.5 hour set. There are literally not enough hours in the day to deal with any major issues.

Set 33 - Progress Report

2011-02-09T06:27:00.000-08:00

Guess what I'm listening to for around the 20th time in two weeks? That's right--Set 33! I'm in Hell!!!! ;-D No! Scratch that! NO winkie face! I'M IN HELL!!!!!

The last 48 hours are the worst. One day everything sounds fantastic, the next everything sounds wrong. Monday night was all fantastic--Tuesday night was all wrong, this due to reviewing the set on my "bassy" headphones and finding the levels not as perfect as they were on by "trebly" headphones. And I have only until around midnight tonight to get it all straightened out. Schedule is to finish listening this morning, make a round of volume edits during lunch (each such edit a terrifying experience since these have the potential to ruin the set), and then listen again in the afternoon. Then I head back to the motel, pay for my next week there, shower, pack a change of clothes, and come back to the office to edit and listen once again. If all goes well I will post the set by 10 PM. Then I'll have to check the downloads to make sure they are working, give a download another listen (though most likely I'll spot check it), and then announce it to the world around midnight--that is, 7 AM in Romania, 6 AM in Paris, 5 AM in London.

One thing is certain: the transitions sound remarkable--recording is now DONE. Nothing needs re-recording.

The problems at this stage always lie with the sound levels, and for reasons I've written about on this blog before...well...the bottom line is that one is doomed to fail. Either the set starts off too soft, or it winds up distorting. All I can do is accept that on a technical level the set cannot ever sound as good as I dreamed it would, and to hope that the listener enjoys the DJ'ing on display. So if the first hour is too soft, get an amplifier! If it's distorted in spots, consider it an "underground" touch. ;-)

While there is always a sense of disappointment in the final result due to the aforementioned, I always find that when I return to the set a week or two later I am quite happy with how it sounds. I'm a bit myopic right now, hearing only the trouble spots, and unable to enjoy all the fireworks on display. Like, hahaha, this transition I'm listening to right now, where a trance song suddenly turns into the perfect banjo-pickin' accompaniment to a rockabilly tune (who knew?). Lots of good stuff here, and I need to keep reminding myself of that during these tough final hours.

Rotten People

2011-02-07T20:48:00.001-08:00

There are two classes of rotten people. One class see themselves always as undeserving victims; another class see themselves always as deserving winners.

I'm in both classes, because I'm depressed and delusional. ;-D

Drum & Bass

2011-02-07T18:55:00.000-08:00

It never fails to fascinate me how drum & bass went from being the most po-faced genre of dance music in the 90s to the most reliable celebration of tear-the-room apart joy today.

Set 33 - Progress Report

2011-02-07T06:58:00.000-08:00

Monday begins the final week, or more accurately, half-week of work on Set 33 before it is unleashed on you poor unwitting victims. This is the crazy time, where sleep becomes only a pretty concept.

I'll be spending lunch today making edits per notes made over the weekend, and then I will listen to the set twice on two different heaphones, which will take a total of 7 hours to get through, which means I'll be up until around 2 AM. I may spend the night here in my "studio," an empty office down the hall where three plush chairs in a row plus a snug sleeping bag and two pillows make for a surprisingly decent bed.

Then, I will wake up for a regular day of work tomorrow, spend my lunch break making edits per the previous night's listening experiences, and then drive the set again after work a couple of times until 2 AM or so.

On Wednesday I will make edits again at lunch, and then will likely post the set sometime in the evening--but without announcing the set's presence publicly. This gives me a chance to listen to it once again to make sure that nothing got lost in translation during the posting phase. I'll probably fret about something or other, and so then make another (hopefully small) round of edits and repost. Probably around 2 AM or so (9 AM Eastern European Time, 8 AM Central European Time, 7 AM Greenwich Mean Time) I will officially announce the set's presence, and that will be that.

It's exhausting to think about all this right now on this dreary and bleary Monday morning in Atlanta, but as I get closer to the goal (and see a light at the end of the tunnel), I know I'll find the strength to carry me through. :-)

All Songwriters Fall Into One of These Three Classes

2011-02-05T18:47:00.001-08:00

1) Hacks
2) Craftsmen/Craftswomen
3) Artists

(artists further subdivided as:)

a. artists with craftsmen/craftswomen ability
b. artists without craftsmen/craftswomen ability

The hacks aspire to be craftsmen/craftswomen, but fail to understand and replicate the emotional connection between song and a typical listener.

The craftsmen/craftswomen understand how to create an emotional connection between song and listener, but lack the special madness that transforms music from passable to great.

The artists possess that special madness lacking in the craftsmen/craftswomen.

The artists with craftsmen/women ability are the best songwriters, as they exhibit the lunacy that makes a song unique and memorable without losing their ability to communicate and connect with the average listener. They are both visionaries and communicators.

The artists who lack the communication ability are the ones lost in outer space (although they may find an admiring niche audience whose psychologies coincidentally overlap with those artists' psychologies).

DJ King Pigeon - Set 33: The First 20 Minutes

2011-02-04T15:44:00.001-08:00

Digital Music Sales and Piracy

2011-01-31T08:13:00.001-08:00

Some in the music industry wonder if digital music sales have reached their apex.

Some old fashioned music promotion tricks that need to end:

1) Releasing songs on different dates in different countries.
2) Making songs unavailable for purchase outside of certain countries.
3) Releasing songs to the radio months before they are available for purchase.
4) Album-only tracks on iTunes--always a guaranteed deal-breaker for me (shades of unscrupulous record label tricks from a decade ago, in this case the "single for which there is not actually a single available, so you have to buy the full-length in order to get the song").

I think the first three all fall into the same general category: each of these practices encourages people who have been "shut out" or who are anxious to acquire a song to go looking for a pirated version online. We live in an age of on-demand gratification; if I know a song is out there, I should be able to buy it. If I can't buy it, I'll steal it, since it's quite possible the song I am enjoying will NEVER be legally released in my country anyway.

Regarding releasing songs to the radio well in advance: this "whetting the appetite" theory seems a bad one. The longer you "whet the appetite" without offering the song for sale, the more likely people will lose patience and steal a good quality digital radio-rip. I imagine radio stations are direct sources of many leaks, also.

It would be interesting to see a study tracking the spread of a particular MP3 around the world. I recall that the Atlantic magazine once did something like this, where they tracked a pirated movie.

Set 33 release pushed back to 10 February

2011-01-29T13:38:00.001-08:00

Set 33 Update - For DJs Only

2011-01-28T20:11:00.000-08:00

This blog entry is on a subject that will be, for most, even duller than my usual topics, so unless you're really interested in how I record a DJ set you should skip this. :-D

The set 33 flyer is finished, ~~a bad comedy promo video~~ has been produced, and so at last I can focus on what matters most: the set itself.

The WAV version of Set 33 is too enormous to be saved as a single file in Sony Sound Forge (this happened with Set 32 also); it hits its limit around the 3 hour mark. So, work must be done on two separate files which, after conversion into smaller file-size 320 kbps mp3s, are then joined as one. Since one wants to make all changes to the superior WAV file versions, the clunky process in the final days is: work in WAV, convert to MP3s, join the MP3s, listen to the whole thing, note problems, go back to the WAVs to fix, and repeat.

The process of sound equalization is a bit like sharpening focus on a particularly blurry image. The first adjustments are the most drastic, and subsequent ones get finer with each go. Volume levels are the toughest part of any DJ set, and are particularly tough with long ones because of the tendency for the volume to creep into distortion territory over the set's course (this is because one prefers to err on the side of having a transition come in slightly loud rather than slightly soft, and those slightly loud entries accumulate as the set progresses, nudging the overall volume up more and more).

Some transitions will have to be re-recorded. Re-records usually go quite smoothly, because I know what I have to, in essence, "beat"; and I've been through the experience once already.

A 3.5 hour set obviously is very time-consuming to review, and listening to the set in its entirety on different types of headphones (ranging from great to crappy) is the only way to gauge whether things are flowing right with the levels. During the work week I have time to listen to the set only once per day, and then make adjustments.

This is the price you pay for making epics; the time is never there to get everything perfect.

But as some French guy once said, Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien, and this set will, in the end, be très bien--maybe even chouette. (@v@)

[UPDATE - Bad comedy video deleted, because 1) it was bad, and 2) the release date for the set has now been pushed back, in part due to issues described above--there is not enough time for me to fix everything that needs fixing by Thursday.]

Industrial Music

2011-01-23T09:11:00.001-08:00

Industrial music was the girl I dated before I married techno.

Techno and I have both been through many changes ever since, but our relationship remains strong.

Grammar, Language, and Discogs

2011-01-20T10:16:00.000-08:00

An old man sort of gripe, but somebody has to do it, or else the Idiocracy would become even more firmly entrenched.

Discogs is awesome; an unsurpassed source of information for music releases. I visit the site multiple times every day.

What is not so awesome are some of the site's editorial policies. I used to enter stuff into the Discogs database, but after an endless fight with one editor over one particular entry, I abandoned that hobby.

The source of our disagreement regarded the capitalization of song titles. The specific entry we fought over was Alizée's "Gourmandises Remixées."

In some languages it is customary for song titles to be written with only the first letter in the title capitalized (proper nouns excepted). To capitalize those uncapitalized letters in, say, French would be as silly as lower-casing their equivalents in English. That's just not the way the French write their song titles.

On the "Gourmandises" single, I insisted that capitalization be followed as it was (correctly) done on the CD itself. Thus: "Loup Y Es-tu?" should be written "Loup y es-tu?"

(Paradoxically, "Les Baisers Dance Remix" is apparently correct. I think the logic was that "Les Baisers" was being used as a proper noun, perhaps as another alias for the remixer, and so it was capitalized. In any event, that's how it was written on the CD, and since the other stuff checks out in the logic department I give the record label the benefit of the doubt.)

But a more senior editor insisted I was wrong. Even after I explained that in French song titles are written differently, he brushed me off saying, "But that is incorrect punctuation," deaf to my point. I finally gave up trying to convince him and never submitted to Discogs again.

So you can see for yourself where things go wrong. Here is the back of the fetching Alizée's second album, with song titles...

...and here is how Discogs writes it out, with rampant capitalization.

This might seem a silly point, but I am tired of seeing the forced Anglicization of other languages. It's strange that Discogs, so (admirably) anal retentive about its listings, would be so very wrong on this point. I hope they soon acknowledge the error of their ways and adjust their editorial policy.

If they do, maybe then I'll go back to submitting information into their database. :-D

Set 33 Progress

2011-01-19T06:26:00.001-08:00

Recording a DJ set is like breaking a stallion. It fights, it kicks, it resists, and then it rides like the wind. By the time you hear Set 33 in its final form it should be a disciplined racehorse (but no doubt some wild spirit will remain).

It will likely be about as epic as Set 32 (I recently posted that one to Soundcloud if you missed it the first time around). However, I am hoping that even tighter transitions and crazier amounts of overlap will make for a shorter set while also showcasing more tunes.

I posted a teaser flyer on this page. Yesterday my laptop crashed while I was working on the design for the final flyer in Photoshop, and then it crashed again an hour later while I was recording. The laptop seems OK now. I have been backing up my work regularly on a terabyte external hard drive, which provides a great deal of comfort in light of such woes.

Anyway, after losing an hour of recording time fussing with the unruly laptop, I got back into things--only to become frustrated that one of the tunes was just not working out. I showed it the door. Unfortunately, losing that song also meant losing some much needed momentum, and it also messed up the flow of the set. This disappointing evening/night of work concluded with me failing (after a very long and arduous hour) to get a particular transition to work.

I woke today at 5:30 AM and began thinking about other transition tunes. My particular trouble spot was a disco strings song, so I thought to myself, "Well, I just need to find a few other disco strings songs that are around 138 BPM." I came up with some good ideas, and these proved so tempting that I climbed out of bed at 6:30 AM and tried them out.

They worked beautifully. The set's momentum was actually improved and the flow was salvaged. We usually say "two steps forward, one step back"; but in the bipolar heat of recording a DJ set it feels more often like ten steps back, twenty steps forward.

So what does it sound like? Well, just as one might be reasonably successful predicting tomorrow's weather by guessing that it will probably be much like today's, yes, Set 33 features more of the same multi-national, multi-era, multi-genre spirit "EorE?" visitors are accustomed to, with the usual emotional gamut running from the deeply dumb to the oddly affecting. This is the first set I have mixed using my Pioneer CDJ turntables (after years of working with Numarks), and these have been wonderful tools (I have gotten over my earlier lament about their inability to work with extremely large thumb drives).

The set begins with some quirky "forgotten" classics from the late 80s, showcases some 90s classics alongside newer tunes, and then gallops full-throttle into the newer trash stuff. Finale is a battlefield of beats, with drum 'n' bass slugging it out with various other genres. Who will be left standing? And what will be left of them? :-D

200+ Songs That I Particularly Enjoyed in 2010

2010-12-19T22:47:00.000-08:00

Make a single music recommendation and odds are your audience won't approve, but make a few hundred and the likelihood of success increases dramatically. Just as I enjoy going through other people's lists of songs, perhaps somebody will enjoy going through this one.

The following 200+ tracks received my "green light" rating as I went through my weekly ritual of checking several European music charts every week in 2010. They were selected from what ultimately became a pool of over 5000 songs.

Many (perhaps most) big tunes from 2010 are nowhere to be found on this list (not even club smashes like Duck Sauce's "Barbra Streisand," Swedish House Mafia's "One," or Yolanda Be Cool's "We No Speak Americano," though I enjoyed those, too). There are not many American acts here, either, which should come as no surprise considering, uh, everything I do. These tracks simply stood out, one way or another, on the particular week I happened to encounter them.

Format:

Artist - Song / Chart I first found the song on (song could appear on several charts) / Date (usually a day from the week I encountered the tune)

2Sunny - Piligrim / Пилигрим / Ukraine / 2010 12 26
69 Danguje - Aš pasirašau / Lithuania / 2010 04 02
A Silent Express - I Never Saw This Coming / Netherlands / 2010 10 24
Adrian Lux - Teenage Crime (Axwell Remix) / France / 2010 07 18
Alanas Chošnau - Radio FM (Su džinglu) / Lithuania / 2009 10 08
Alba Wings - Say Goodbye For Yesterday / Romania / 2010 10 28
Alex Roots - Don't Stop Looking / Bulgaria / 2010 01 24
Alexandra Burke - All Night Long (Cahill Edit) / Bulgaria / 2010 04 02
Alexis Jordan - Happiness / Bulgaria / 2010 07 25
Alistair Griffin - Just Drive / UK / 2010 11 28
Aloe Blacc - I Need A Dollar / France / 2010 06 07
Alphabeat - DJ / Denmark / 2010 01 24
Alphabeat - Heat Wave / Denmark / 2010 08 16
Alphaville - I Die For You Today / Slovakia / 2010 11 07
Andy White - Stereophony (Original) / DJ Download / 2010 08 06
Angel - Candy Cane (Awesome 3 Remix) / DJ Download / 2010 08 06
Ania Wyszkoni - Wiem, ze jesteś tam / Poland / 2010 10 28
Anna-Maria Zimmermann - Hurra wir leben noch / Germany / 2010 01 24
Atlanta - Mergaitės nori mylėt / Lithuania / 2010 02 21
Baby Alice - Pina Colada Boy / Euro / 2010 07 11
Baron Massilia - Lolita (R2D2 & Chris Di Tenda Remix) / France / 2010 07 04
Basslovers United - Ghetto Supastar / Euro Club / 2010 11 07
Bassmonkeys & Bianca Lindgren - Get Busy / DJ Lorix (Italy) / 2009 12 25 to 2010 05 25
Beatbullyz - Skills / UK Dance / 2010 06 06
Bellamy Brothers & Gölä - Let Your Love Flow / Switzerland / 2010 09 12
Ben Dj - Smile / DJ Lorix (Italy) / 2009 12 25 to 2010 05 25
Berto Mene - Los Brujos (Original) / DJ Download / 2010 08 06
Billy Barman - Cigánska / Slovakia / 2010 11 07
Bonaparte - Boycott Everything / Latvia / 2010 12 12
Boom Jinx & Jaytech - Milano (Original) / DJ Download / 2010 05 09
Branka Delić – Samo Ljubav / Croatia / 2010 08 24
Buddy feat. Meri - Sommer lass mich nicht allein / Germany / 2010 12 12
Bumcello - 3 Bandits / France / 2010 06 13
Buraka Som Sistema - Kalemba (Wegue Wegue) / Portugal / 2010 01 08
Camo and Krooked - September (Remix For Future Prophecies) / DJ Download / 2009 02 23
Carla Belovari – Sretan broj / Croatia / 2010 10 10
Cassius - I <3 U So / France / 2010 11 14
Chase and Status feat. Liam Bailey - Blind Faith / Euro Club / 2010 12 19
Cheek - Jippikayjei / Finland / 2010 08 24
Chicane - Hiding All the Stars / Belgium Flanders / 2010 04 23
Clara Sofie & Rune RK - Når tiden går baglæns / Denmark / 2010 07 18
Clea In Kim - Petek / Slovenia / 2010 05 31
Clokx - Catch Your Fall / Netherlands / 2010 10 17
Daisy Dares You and Chipmunk - Number One Enemy / Denmark / 2010 03 20
Daniel Adams-Ray - Gubben I lådan / Sweden / 2010 10 10
Danny Byrd - Ill Behaviour (feat. I-Kay) / UK Dance / 2010 10 10
David Guetta feat. Makeba - If We Ever / Bulgaria / 2010 01 24
De Hobbyisten - Wij gaan door! / Netherlands / 2010 06 07
Dennis Ferrer - Hey Hey / Netherlands / 2010 01 24
Deolinda - Um contra o outro / Portugal / 2010 06 20
Dezil' - Danser sur la plage / France / 2010 07 11
Dido - Everything To Lose / France / 2010 08 16
Die Jungen Zillertaler - So a schöner tag (Fliegerlied) / Austria / 2010 01 15
Diggy Dex feat. Wudstik, Big2 & Skiggy Rapz - Links, rechts / Netherlands / 2010 10 24
Dj Defkline / Red Polo - Oh Why (Original) / DJ Download / 2010 05 09
Dj Defkline / Red Polo vs. Dustin Hulton - Cars That Go Boom (Original) / DJ Download / 2010 05 09
Dj Fresh - Gold Dust / UK Dance / 2010 08 16
Dover - Dannayá / Euro / 2010 10 03
Dred & Doris - Soha ne félj / Hungarian Dance / 2010 12 05
Due Di Picche - Fare a meno di te / Euro / 2010 09 26
Ed Drewett - Champagne Lemonade / Euro Club / 2010 09 26
Edalam - Helicopta / France / 2010 01 01
Editors - Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool / Latvia / 2010 11 07
Erick Morillo / Harry Romero / Jose Nunez / Jessica Eve - Dancin (Manufactured Superstars vs. Dj Franke 2010 Re-Edit) / DJ Download / 2010 09 26
Erik Hassle - Hurtful / Euro 100 / 2009 05 21
Eteson vs. Octagen - We Are Alone (Octagen Remix) / DJ Download - Trance / 2010 11 18
Fabienne Louves - Samschtig / Switzerland / 2010 07 04
Faithless - Not Going Home / Netherlands / 2010 05 08
Faithless - Tweak Your Nipple / UK / 2010 06 27
Fat Les - Vindaloo / UK / 2010 06 20
Féfé - VPC (Vilain Petit Canard) / France / 2010 06 27
Ferhat Gocer / Ferhat Göçer - Üzüm / Euro / 2010 05 31
Fettes Brot - Jein / Germany / 2010 02 28
Fred Worx - Softly (Rudy Rudy Dog Remix) / DJ Download / 2010 01 01
Frida Gold - Zeig mir wie Du tanzt / Austria / 2010 12 05
Gabriella Cilmi - Hearts Don't Lie / Slovenia / 2010 06 13
Gabriella Cilmi - On A Mission / Slovakia / 2010 03 13
Getter Jaani - Parim päev / Estonia / 2010 06
Getter Jaani - Saladus / Estonia / 2010 06
Goin’ Through feat. Isoropistis - Boro Ki Ego / Μπορώ Κι Eγώ / Euro / 2010 07 04
Gorillaz Feat Bobby Womack and Mos Def - Stylo / Netherlands / 2010 02 07
Graffiti6 - Annie You Save Me / Netherlands / 2010 09 05
Groove Armada - Paper Romance (Urchins Remix) / DJ Download / 2009 02 23
Gurrumul - Wukun (Loverush UK! Radio Edit) / Euro Club / 2010 10 10
Handsome Poets - Blinded / Netherlands / 2010 08 16
Hans Zimmer - Time / Switzerland / 2010 08 16
Hex - Nekonečný príbeh / Slovakia / 2010 06 13
Hey - Faza Delta / Poland / 2010 07 11
Holdviola - Bánat utca / Hungarian Dance / 2010 07 04
How To Destroy Angels - A Drowning / Latvia / 2010 07 25
HU? & Kare Kauks - Miks mõni asi on nii hea / Estonia / 2010 05 08
Hudson Mohawke - Fuse / France / 2010 06 07
Hydro Aquatic and Vir2l Vision - Vigor (Cold Blue Remix) / DJ Download - Trance / 2010 12
Illitheas - Perfect Day (Original Mix) / DJ Download - Trance / 2010 12 18
Jaa9 & Onklp - Partysvenske / Norway / 2010 11 07
Jamie Matrix - Gold Rush (Original) / DJ Download / 2009 02 23
Jana Hermann - Saules grieži ("Sun Times") / Latvia / 2010 12 12
Jana Kirschner - Keby si bol môj / Slovakia / 2010 05 31
Jay C/Felix Baumgartner - Souk (Original Mix) / DJ Download / 2010 08 06
Jedward Feat Vanilla Ice - Under Pressure (Ice Ice Baby) / Armenia / 2010 02 28
Jenifer - Je danse / France / 2010 09 26
Jenni Vartiainen - En haluu kuolla tänä yönä / Finland / 2010 03 06
Jeremy Hills - Friday Night / French / 2010 11 07
Jitka Charvátová (aka "JI") - Real Life / Czech Republic / 2010 01 24
John Dahlback feat. Elodie - Bingo (Extended Original Mix) / DJ Download / 2010 04 20
Johnossi - Dead End / Sweden / 2010 10 24
JoJo - In the Dark / UK - NME / 2010 09 11
Josefine - Allt jag vill ha / Sweden (not on chart) / 2010 10 17
Josh Gabriel Presents Winter Kills - Deep Down (Original Mix) / DJ Download / 2010 03 09
Jurk! - Zou zo graag / Netherlands / 2010 01 15
Kamon - Brunyetka / Камон – Брюнетка / Estonia Russian / 2010 08 01
Kasia Kowalska - Baby Blues / Poland / 2010 04 16
Katerine (Avgoustaki) - Enjoy the Day / Belgium Flanders / 2010 02 28
Katka Knechtová - Slovensko na nohy / Slovakia / 2010 06 20
Keen'v - Le son qui bam bam / France / 2010 04
Kelis - Acapella / Slovakia / 2010 04 17
Kelly Kelekidou - Teleutaia Fora / Κελλυ Κελεκιδου - Τελευταια Φορα / Κέλλυ Κελεκίδου - Τελευταία Φορά / Greece / 2010 12 19
Kid Kenobi - Breakers Revenge 2010 (Drumattic Twins Remix) / DJ Download / 2010 07 11
Kite - Jonny Boy / Sweden / 2010 10 03
K-Liber 4 Life feat. Nikita - Drop Die Beat / Netherlands / 2010 06 27
Kontrust - Bomba / Netherlands / 2010 02 07
La Fuente feat. Rosenberg Trio - Guitarra / Netherlands / 2010 07 11
Lady Gaga - Alejandro / Croatia / 2010 04
Lady Gaga - Dance In the Dark / France / 2010 08 29
Las Balkanieras - Moje plave oči / Croatia / 2010
Lenna Kuurmaa - Rapunzel / Estonia / 2010 02 21
Les Jumo feat. Willy William - C Show / France / 2010 06 07
Lindstrøm & Christabelle - Lovesick / Netherlands / 2010 03 13
Lisa Miskovsky - Lover / Sweden / 2010 10 10
Lolita - Joli Garçon / Euro Club / 2010 10 28
Maciej Maleńczuk - Jak to dziewczyna / Poland / 2010 01 24
Magnetic Man - I Need Air (feat. Angela Hunte) / UK Dance / 2010 08 08
Maïka - Embrasse-moi / France / 2010 02 14
Maïka - Sensualité / France / 2010 05 01
Marc De Simon Feat Antonia B - Rainbow Sky (2009 Remix) / DJ Download / 2010 01 01
Marco V - Inconsistent Talk (Extended) / DJ Download / 2010 01 01
Marina and the Diamonds - Hollywood / Croatia / 2010 03 13
Mark Ronson & the Business Intl feat. Q-Tip - Bang Bang Bang / Netherlands / 2010 07 11
Mark Ronson & the Business Intl feat. Ghostface Killah - Lose It (In the End) / France / 2010 06 13
Markus Becker | Mallorca Cowboys - Das rote Pferd / Germany / 2010 01 15
Massive Attack - Atlas Air / UK Dance / 2010 12 05
Minilogue - Leloo (Original) / DJ Download / 2010 01 01
Ministry Of Funk - Sax Life (Original) / DJ Download / 2010 09 26
Misha - Ako dlho sa to dá / Slovakia / 2010 10 24
Missing Andy - Sing For the Deaf / UK / 2010 09 26
Molella Feat Alessia D'Andrea - Paradise / DJ Lorix - Italian Dance / 2010 07 02
Moonbootica - Men Of the Future (Kris Menace Remix) / DJ Download / 2009 02 23
Morgan & Bland - Bongo Congo / DJ Lorix (Italy) / 2009 12 25 to 2010 05 25
MVSEVM - French Jeans (Dada Life Remix) / DJ Download / 2009 02 23
My Chemical Romance - Nanana / Sweden / 2010 10 10
N.E.R.D. feat. Nelly Furtado - Hot N Fun / France / 2010 06 07
Nice7 - Elisa (Pirupa Remix) / DJ Download / 2010 01 01
Nick Rowland - Galactica (Original) / DJ Download / 2010 03 09
N-Trance - Is This Love / Euro Club / 2010 10 28
Nyusha - Chudo / Нюша - Чудо / Niusha - Chudo (Miracle) / Euro / 2010 09 19
One Night Only - Say You Don't Want It / UK / 2010 08 29
Ozan Doğulu feat. Sıla - Alain Delon / Ozan Dogulu feat. Sila - Alain Delon / Turkey / 2010 07 04
Petri Nygard & Mokoma - Sarvet Esiin / Finland / 2010 11 28
Petter - En tuff brud i lyxförpackning / Sweden / 2010 11 28
Potap and Vera Brezhneva - Потап И Вера Брежнева – Пронто / Estonia Russian / 2010 10 10
Professor Green - I Need You Tonight / Czech Republic / 2010 04 06
Renaud - Incendie / France / 2010 06 07
RlP and Barbara Tucker - R.E.S.P.E.C.T / France / 2010 12 05
Rob Ronalds - Hela hola! (Tut hola) / Netherlands / 2010 01 24
Robert Plant - Angel Dance / Poland / 2010 10 03
Ruda Z Ostravy feat. Pártlová Martina - Ostrava / Czech Republic / 2010 06 20
Sakis Rouvas - Parafora / Σακης Ρουβας - Παραφορa / Greece / 2010 12 19
Sel - Parašyk man laišką iš paryžiaus (Remix) / Lithuania / 2010 01 01
September- Kärlekens tunga / Sweden / 2010 12 12
Sertab Erener - Rengarenk / Turkey / 2010 08 24
Shout For England - Shout (feat. Dizzee & James Corden) / UK / 2010 06 20
Sia - You've Changed / Netherlands / 2010 09 12
Sigma - Baltimore (Original) / DJ Download / 2010 08 06
Sivert Høyem - Prisoner of the Road / Norway / 2010 10 17
Spankers - Chupa Rico (Nicola Fasano & Steve Forest Remix) / Czech Republic / 2010 07 11
Stas Michailov - Zhdi / Стас Михайлов - Ты Только Жди / Lithuania / 2010 10 28
Stereo Palma - Andale (Nicola Fasano & Steve Forest Mix) / Hungary / 2010 05 31
Stromae - Silence / Belgium Wallonia / 2010 06 27
Stunt - Fade Like the Sun / Bulgaria / 2010 05 24
Style - Love Killer / Sweden / 2010 07 18
Sunloverz / Rosette - Fire (Vocal Extended Mix) / DJ Download / 2010 12 18
Supershake - Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) (Alex Twister 2010 Extended Mix) / DJ Download / 2010 01 01
Superstars Feat the Supremes - You Keep Me Hangin' On / Norway / 2010 01 15
Tā Tā Tā - Domino / Latvia / 2010 11 07
Tempered Djs - the Greenhouse (Original Mix) / DJ Download / 2010 08 06
Tensnake - Coma Cat / UK Dance / 2010 09 12
The Dee feat. Shugga - Tick Tock 2 D Beat / France / 2010 10 28
The Gift - Facil De Entender / Portugal / 2010 01 15
The Pretty Reckless - Miss Nothing / UK / 2010 09 05
Tim Berg - Bromance (Avicii's Arena Mix) / Netherlands / 2010 06 13
Tim Berg - Seek Bromance / Euro Club / 2010 10 24
Tim Davison - Patrol (Original) / DJ Download / 2010 11 18
Timoteij - Högt över ängarna / Sweden / 2010 07 11
Tinchy Stryder feat. Taio Cruz - Second Chance / Euro Club / 2010 11 07
Tom Pulse - Cuando (Floresca El Chuno) / Sweden / 2010 02 07
Tommy Vee Feat Mr V - Bang Bang / DJ Lorix - Italian Dance / 2010 10 08
Traffic - Elekter / Estonia / 2010 08 16
Tydi / Tania Zygar - Half Light (Max Graham Remix) / DJ Download / 2010 11 18
Uffie - Difficult / France / 2010 12 19
Uffie - MCs Can Kiss / France / 2010 02 28
UNKLE feat. the Black Angel - Natural Selection / Latvia / 2010 05 17
VanVelzen - Take Me In / Netherlands / 2010 12 12
Venke Knutson - Jealous 'Cause I Love You / Norway / 2010 02 07
Venuto - Love (Original) / DJ Download / 2010 08 06
Vicky Devine - Starfire (Sean Tyas Remix) / DJ Download - Trance / 2010 07 11
Vinni & the Vagabonds feat. Timbuktu - Let the Monkey Out / Norway / 2010 10 03
Voe (Emilie "Voe" Nereng) - Don't Talk To Me / Norway / 2010 06 27
Waldeck - Get Up Carmen / Austria / 2010 04
Willem Barth - Bella bella signorina / Netherlands / 2010 01 15
Wilson, Smallwood and Ingram - Perfect Sunrise (Vocal Club Mix) / DJ Download / 2009 02 23
Wolfgang Gartner - Illmerica (Extended Mix) / DJ Download / 2010 11 18
Yann Solo / Just 1 Side - the India Girl (Original) / DJ Download / 2009 02 23
Yer Man - Talk Dirty 2 Me (Original) / DJ Download / 2010 12 18
Zlatko - Recejisa / Slovenia / 2010 12 26

Slow Change, Sudden Change, Art, Passion, Vocation

2010-12-01T19:16:00.000-08:00

There is a very good quote about John James Audubon by his granddaughter Maria:

"Waiting times are long, longest to those who do not understand the silent, inner growth which goes on and on, yet makes no outward sign for months and even years, as in the case of Audubon."

Audubon trudged into his 30s doing stuff he wasn't all that interested in (mismanaging a few businesses, which landed him in jail for debt [he had a wife and two kids on the outside at the time--hardcore]). But in the back of his mind an idea was forming, which ultimately manifested itself in an ambition to capture in vibrant colors, fluid lines, and at life-size the likenesses of all the birds in the United States. When he announced his intention to realize this he must have seemed to others suddenly mad, but in fact the idea had long been in development. And fortunately for Audubon, not to mention all who enjoy his wonderful art, it all worked out.

His story reminds me of evolutionary theory, where you have gradualism (the slow change of organisms over time), and punctuated equilibrium (wherein we see a rapid rate of morphological change over a short period of time). Punctuated equilibrium is often associated with cataclysms--a meteor hits the earth, kills the dinosaurs, and suddenly a whole bunch of niches (think of them as job positions) open up, which are rapidly filled by other critters (giant birds, giant sloths, giant mammoths, other giants) that rise to the occasion.

So for years Audubon was a gradualist, and as such his mind was slowly evolving towards his goal. But after spending time in jail I suspect he entered his period of punctuated equilibrium (i.e., "I've got to make some changes fast"). Gradualistic thinking had prepared him to seize the opportunity that punctuated equilibrium thrust upon him.

One Audubon biography I read stated (and I have to paraphrase, since the book is not accessible to me in my motel room ;-D) that Audubon was not certain what he would do after his release from jail--but the one thing he knew was that he was through with business. As he returned penniless to a wife and two children, everything we know and love Audubon for today lay ahead of the then-34-year-old man.

UK Music Scene Insularity and Xenophobia

2010-11-29T07:56:00.000-08:00

One aspect of the UK music scene that amuses me is the frequent British accusation that other countries' music scenes are insular, when in fact the UK music scene is about the most non-inclusive of all of Europe's. This article on the new French Radio London highlights the wanton ignorance the British have of a music scene that lies just 22 miles south of the English coast. While the British chuckle at the fact that France mandates that a certain percentage of the songs played on French radio be in the French language (oh that silly French pride!), for years (forever?) one has always been able to hear plenty of English on French radio, whereas the UK seldom returns such linguistical favors with its own radio programming.

French Radio London is addressing a French-speaking audience, which would seem to invite some obvious questions about the changing demographics of London, though the article fails to raise any. Why is a French-language station being offered now? I am left to guess, and mine is that it is in response to the recent influx of immigration not so much from "traditional" French people as the mighty wave of French-speaking African immigrants. The French Afro-pop sound, championed by such bands as the classic Magic System and the more recent Congolese artist Les Jumo, has long been a staple on the French pop charts. While the news media rightly reports on the ethnic tensions in France, one has to admire the French pop charts for their inclusiveness (something I can relate to as an American, since in the U.S., despite our oft-discussed Mexican immigration issues, we cheerily consume Spanish-language pop music). This interesting angle is left entirely out of the written article (it is barely touched upon in the included video); the focus instead being how funny French pop music has been over the years, with the most egregiously goofy examples rolled out to "prove" the point. But as Sturgeon's Law crystalized several decades ago, by cherry-picking the worst examples of music from any genre, one can always create the impression that the genre as a whole is a failure; 90% of any genre is crap, after all, with no exceptions.

The haughtiness of certain vociferous segments of the UK music scene was on display again recently when DJ Mag published its annual Top 100 DJs poll, leading to much hand-wringing over the fact that dubstep (90% of which is crap) was almost or entirely absent from the list, alongside much moaning that nobody listens to trance anymore despite many of the top DJs being champions of this form of music. Regarding dubstep, perhaps it is unreasonable to expect that joyless, dance-unfriendly music with English-language lyrics will play well in Romania*. And regarding trance, clearly the Dutch (who, it should be added, live in a country only a couple hundred miles away from the UK) are rightly pleased with their own DJ countrymen and the trance music that those guys play.

To the BBC article's credit, the quotes from Stuart Maconie, presenter of BBC 6 Music's Freak Zone, get everything right. But no sooner does Mr. Maconie finish speaking than the author pours on the snark again.

For the UK music scene the thought of anybody singing a pop song in a language other than English seems to be a terrifying prospect (thank goodness Daft Punk offer their lyrics in English). Fortunately, the demographics of the UK are changing and an ever more vibrant, multi-cultural society is emerging. The music will get even more colorful, and dreck like this BBC piece will come to be seen for what it was: a xenophobic curio from another age.

* Actually, I like some dubstep stuff, and some, like Chase & Status, can exhibit some joy, but let me have my moment of argumentation here. ;-)

Inna Gaga Divina - "Tiptoe"

2010-11-19T11:51:00.000-08:00

All DJs Are 80s Teen Sex Comedy Characters

2010-11-16T18:47:00.000-08:00

All DJs can be divided into four basic categories. These categories mirror the major players in American 1980s teen sex comedies.

(Note: female DJs are in the extreme minority in the DJ world; similarly, female characters in 80s teen sex comedies were usually ciphers. So, just as 80s teen sex comedies did, we focus on the guys.)

1) Jock DJs

In 80s teen sex comedies, the jocks rule the roost. They have ascended to this rank due to a fortunate mix of genes and testosterone. In these movies, they are also the least-interesting characters, due to a complete lack of taste, intellect, and individuality.

In the DJ world, these are the folks who spin the Rihanna remix followed by the latest Black Eyed Peas tune followed by Katy Perry. Their extroverted nature enables them to confidently hustle their skills, and clubs that are run by similarly-minded people hire them to entertain their patrons. These DJs make a good day-to-day living. Nobody who cares about music respects them, but it is impossible for these hyper-extroverts to notice or to care.

2) Nerd DJs

In 80s teen sex comedies, the nerds pursue sex under the misguided notion that women will be impressed by their extensive knowledge of computer languages and comic books. The women are not (except for that quirky female character who sees and appreciates the nerd for who he is, but is fated to be the perpetual "girl friend" instead of "girlfriend" as said nerd misdirects his energies toward bedding the head cheerleader).

In the DJ world, these are the DJs who focus on underappreciated genres--IDM in the 90s and early 2000s; dubstep today. They express frustration over their genre's lack of commercial acceptance (despite the fact that singles from that genre regularly appear on the UK dance charts). They emphasize how real their scene is.

3) Preppy DJs

In 80s teen sex comedies, preppies are generally well-adjusted, fashionable smart-alecs with all the right moves. Often, they are also enviously clever assholes. Like jocks, they are conformists, but they substitute intellect for the former's testosterone-fueled aggression.

The vast majority of DJs on DJ Magazine's Top 100 list are preppy DJs. They know what is in fashion, what is "right" in respectable dance music circles, and they always do the right thing to promote themselves. Yet their robotic nature (demonstrated by their perfect clothes, perfect hair, perfect photo-shoots, and perfectly large bank accounts) can be alienating. Jock DJs beware: a preppy DJ is most likely to fuck your girlfriend.

4) Slob DJs

In 80s teen sex comedies, the slobs pick their noses sans embarrassment and shrug when they pass gas. Their redeeming feature is their interest in partying at any cost, and their willingness to sacrifice themselves, their bodies, and their reputations selflessly in the pursuit of a good time. They are always in the moment, yet never "all there."

Hailing from the Fatboy Slim school of thought, the slob DJs spin whatever they want whenever they want, so long as the music generates some sort of a buzz. Why not combine 80s rap with Viking metal? This ADHD attitude can result in a jarring listening experience for the audience. The slob DJ is most likely to train-wreck, but so what?--that's just the nature of the beast. Note: slob DJs are the best DJs.

Rock

2010-11-15T12:42:00.000-08:00

The bloody, tattered testicles of rock are being held aloft in two clenched fists, one of which belongs to "Idol," and the other of which belongs to "Dancing With the Stars."

EorE? Cinema: Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, Or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes (1965)

2010-11-12T10:11:00.000-08:00

The most famous comically-rambling movie title of the mid-60s was probably Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, but if you've seen that one already, then here's a really great/dumb movie with a similarly unwieldy title that you probably haven't seen--and should.

"Stereotype" is a word steeped in negative connotations, and usually rightly so, but an odd thing about stereotypes is that we sometimes perpetuate them in celebration of what we most admire about another culture. Consider the plain-talkin' American cowboy, the ever-wooing Frenchman, the detail-oriented German. Rather than being negative, each of these clichéd characteristics can also be viewed in an appealing light. We like romantic Parisians, the precision of German automotive engineering, and the blindly optimistic never-give-up American spirit. Stereotypes unfairly paint the disparate members of any society as the same, but cultural differences are also a reality, and those observable differences make the world a more interesting place.

Perhaps "satire" could be defined as the wielding of stereotypes to illustrate a greater truth. It's a highly delicate operation that the filmmakers behind TMMITFM understood (as did Stanley Kubrick). While TMMITFM perpetuates nationalistic clichés (including those of the British filmmakers' own countrymen), it does so affectionately. Besides, that's the whole point, for once one steps back from the cartoon character details one finds that those broad brush-strokes form a wonderful satirical portrait of pre-World War Europe.

The film is set in 1910, a time when "Britannia may rule the waves, but it does not yet rule the air." So a British newspaper magnate sponsors an international air race across the English Channel. Of course, the Brits are not above a little cheating in order to tip things in Britannia's favor; after all, Britain wishes to impress the rest of the world with a win, and it is determined to secure victory at any cost.

Pilots arrive from various countries in order to compete (most of these countries are European ones; a modern remake would likely cast a wider international net). Each pilot is an embodiment of the stereotypes associated with his country of origin. Having a cast of British actors play each of these international representatives would likely have resulted in an unwatchable and nasty movie, but here is where the film delivers its master stroke: all the leads are actually from the countries of the characters they portray in the film.

The much-respected French actor Vincent Cassell's dad is in it; Jean-Pierre Cassell plays an affable and (of course) perpetually love-struck Frenchman. Italian actor Alberto Sordi plays a pilot who discovers the perfect time and place to captitalize on anti-Protestant leanings. German-born actor Gert Fröbe, coming off of playing the title character in Goldfinger, proves an excellent comic actor as he sends up German stereotypes (he wears a Pickelhaube throughout). And in the film's cutest twist, Japanese-born Yûjirô Ishihara plays a pilot who baffles his hosts because he speaks perfect King's English (when you remember how the Caucasian Mickey Rooney cringingly played a Japanese man in Breakfast at Tiffany's four years earlier you really appreciate the higher-order comedy on display, here).

Benny Hill is in it, but don't let that be a deterrant; while his eponymous show and this film may share a few "screwball" qualities (including one sped-up-film chase scene), the comedy in TMMITFM soars in loftier realms. In addition to Hill, an odd foreshadowing of the future of British comedy can be experienced when one notices a familiar melody played by the band on the day of the big race: ah yes, that's the Sousa march that would later be used as the theme music for "Monty Python's Flying Circus."

After an enjoyable first hour getting to know the likable--and likably unlikable--characters, things shift to the big race. The comic tone remains consistent during this section, but with the change of focus also comes a new sense of wonder and adventure. The cast is wonderful, but the faithfully-reconstructed vintage airplanes are stars on an equal par--so historically accurate that one of them hangs in a museum today.

After 1910, Europe went to pieces, a serious point to reflect on while enjoying this comedy. But the film is really a celebration dance for the much-relieved and happier post-World War Western Europe of the 50s and 60s. An infectious joie de vivre permeates this endearingly silly movie, and so it is guaranteed to make you very happy.

Pioneer CDJ-400 Amendment

2010-11-05T20:07:00.000-07:00

From Pioneer's CDJ-400 manual:

"The CDJ-400 may not support playback with all USB memory devices or provide sufficient electrical power...Erratic performance may result when a USB hub is used."

As one who has experienced the frustration of getting the CDJ-400 to recognize my USB memory device; and who has, since clearing that hurdle, experienced PLENTY of erratic performance, may I suggest a rewording of the CDJ-400 manual:

"We at Pioneer created a USB hub that we don't feel confident will work in any way at all, which is why we make no guarantees of any sort. In fact, we advise you not to use the USB hub we provided."

11 November 2010 ADDENDUM - Played with MP3s burned to CD-ROMs (as data) today; this went extremely well. I also enjoyed success with an 8 GB thumb drive. So, not all that I hoped for, but still an improvement over my Numarks.

Ode to a New Backpack

2010-11-05T10:42:00.000-07:00

Getting accustomed to a new backpack is like moving into a new apartment. One empties the old backpack and then, finding that the new one is not laid-out in the same fashion, determines how best to fit items into the latest version. Kindle in this pocket, external hard drive in that, each pocket carefully selected based on considerations of ease of access and security.

I have now finished moving into my new backpack. It feels terrific when I wear it; it's a great improvement over the beaten and ripped version I used to tote around. Worth every penny. Here's to life's small pleasures!

Ke$ha

2010-10-30T13:55:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I worry that Ke$ha will release a good song, because then I'd have to rethink my assessment of her as America's Least Talented Pop Star. I enjoy having my paradigm shifted on most things, but on Ke$ha I remain stubborn. If Ke$ha ever succeeds, then the skies will turn black as a plague of stinging locusts rain down from the heavens. These locusts will gnaw our flesh into a gelatinous pulp, leaving only bare bones behind.

Fortunately, her new song sucks.

How Much Three Months in Eastern and Balkan Europe Costs

2010-10-29T07:22:00.001-07:00

As part of my plotting to return to Europe, I studied for the first time my finances from the last trip. Of course I had eyeballed the separate accounts periodically to make sure nothing weird was going on, but I hadn't diligently crunched the numbers to come up with figures regarding the overall expense of the trip.

So how much did it cost me to travel for three months in Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and a day in Austria? (Drumroll please)

$6649.20

or

$2216.40 per month

or

$554.10 per week

Individual results may vary.

Colors

2010-10-28T12:10:00.000-07:00

When did the LGBT community surrender the color pink to the breast cancer lobby? Was this a prisoner exchange for purple, now used by those expressing solidarity for bullied gay students? Is the garment industry behind this? Is American Apparel trying to move more pink and purple products? Is there a color conspiracy? Are lobbies haggling for colors on Capitol Hill in shady backroom deals? Has an activist been found lying in a puddle of blood, rain pelting her lifeless body, after a disagreement over the future of teal? My God! What's going on? I NEED ANSWERS!!!!!!!! B-| <--man in black <--that's "Black™," the Official Color of the Goth, Emo, and Metal Lobby!

$#*! My King Pigeon Says

2010-10-27T09:40:00.000-07:00

It is absolutely not a wonder why society's best, brightest, and most ethical seldom go into politics. What I do wonder (and worry) about is how that pyschologically affects a country in general. If it is politically unwise for members of either party to publicly support the theory of evolution or climate change, how will politicians ever fix education? When the best-educated are branded "elitists," how does that foster a desire in others to achieve excellence? When politicians offer non-apology apologies for clear ethical lapses, what moral message does that convey to the rest of us?

Here's a test: If the recent racy GQ spread of 24 year-old "Glee" actors is causing you more consternation than what I wrote in the preceding few sentences, then I think your priorities are messed-up.

The Blueprint of This Observation Can Be Applied to Many Things in Life

2010-10-16T22:48:00.000-07:00

A fan of 1977 Genesis might dislike the music of 1977 Wire, whose fans in turn might dislike 1977 ABBA; these determinations of dislike based on tangibles (such as a comparison of complexity of melody and the dexterity demonstrated in the playing of the instruments; or, in the lyrics, the proportion of flighty imagination to the level of confessional nakedness on display, further pitted against the presence [or lack thereof] of socio-political observations; or the rawness of one group's sound versus the polished gloss of another's), all of which blind each band’s committed followers to the one extraordinary quality that these artists had in common: their excellence.

For American nu Italo Disco Fans, Past and Future

2010-10-12T12:02:00.000-07:00

American iTunes has recently acquired an astonishing collection of nu Italo disco releases from a decade ago. These songs were my favorites to spin during the early "Eurotrash or Eurotreasure?" days, so my jaw literally dropped, like this --> :-O when I saw the incredible collection of singles (with ALL THE REMIXES) now available. I used to pay a small fortune for imports of this stuff (when I could get my hands on the releases at all; more often than not I couldn't). Italy had terrible international music distribution at that time. Adding to the obscurity factor, I never met an Italian who was aware of the tremendous dance music scene going on within their country's borders.

Some favorites of mine that are now available on American iTunes:

Danijay (feat. Hellen) - Il gioco dell'amore (Extended Smat Mix)
Big boom-boom tune that perfectly captures that romantic/bombastic nu Italo disco spirit.

Quiki (feat. Lisa) - Together (Extended Mix) (the first of the unlabeled mixes offered here)
One of the coolest, sexiest dance songs I have ever heard.

Banshis - Day By Day (Banshiskipedia album version)
Not disco, but an especially gorgeous song from a group that had previously kicked out some dancefloor pumpers, vastly superior in its full running time and in the group's native Italian to the previously available shortened English-language version.

T42 feat. Sharp - Find Time (Fargetta Mix) (first of the unlabeled mixes on offer here)
My favorite feel-good nu Italo song from that era.

Supasonic - Love Again (Love Mix)
Emotional, romantic yearning appealingly hitched to the boom-boom sound.

Carolina Marquez - Pleasure Ground (Original Pleasure Extended)
This is my favorite of Ms. Marquez's catchy/trashy tunes because it sounds genuinely eerie, then turns weirdly beautiful at around the four minute mark. Only the Italians made songs that sounded anything like this--NOBODY ELSE. What a wonderfully weird fucked-up thing this is. The entire back catalog of the Colombian-born Italian seems to be available.

2 People - Holiday Ride (Piparo'S Main Mix)
Slighter than the other recommendations, but nonetheless an extremely cute and appealing representative of the nu Italo sound.

Prezioso feat. Marvin - Let Me Stay
Sort of silly sounding, but the melody of the sweeping-arm-gestures chorus is a killer. It looks like the entire Prezioso catalog is now available.

Levy 9 - I'm Not Scared (Hard Tunes Mix
Trash cover of an obscure 80s tune with huge synth riffs and boom boom beats.

Datura - Will Be One (Todo en Todos Extended)
A very theatrical tune.

Neja - Time Flies (Original Mix) (third of the mixes listed here)
I happily paid $20 for the CD single, but now you can have it for much less. ;-)

And a non-Italian bonus:

Jazmine - Makes Me Go (Mmm...) (Radio)
Sugar-overload track that acquired near-mythic status in the underground trash circles due to its scarcity. The whole single is now available.

You have to admire the nu Italo disco scene for its uniqueness. I feel it demonstrated greater originality and ambition than that displayed in most of the more fashonable dance music of the time. Now is a good time to find that out for yourself.

Weed Patches

2010-09-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

Every day I like to go up on top of the GA Tech/Technology Square parking deck in order to gaze at the city skyline and survey the traffic on the interstate below. This gives my eyes a break from long periods spent staring at a computer screen.

Today I found myself gazing down at a GA Tech facilities guy cutting back weeds. These weeds have grown almost as tall as a person, and they have swallowed up the trunks of the ornamental trees planted in a row between the building and the sidewalk.

The guy used a hedge trimmer to carve the weeds back from the sidewalk they had been partially blocking, much as one might carve topiary. His actions resulted in a smooth, five foot high wall of weed by the sidewalk.

This was ridiculous, because the weeds obviously should have been pulled outright long ago. But somehow the opportunity for doing that had slipped by, and one day it was decided to simply trim them back. It struck me as being akin to using a laser to carve a malignant tumor into a beautiful, miniature Venus de Milo while leaving the tumor in place.

Since my mind runs away with itself very easily, the actions of the Facilities guy struck me a metaphor for the way society deals with many problems. Rather than pulling the weeds at the start, it seems to be human nature to let them grow until the problem cannot be ignored--when the sidewalk becomes impassable. By then the effort required to completely solve the problem is too much to contemplate, so we simply cut the weeds back.

Since this is (purportedly) a European-themed blog, in order to justify this musing I'll add a metaphor offered to me by my Slovakian former roommate Luboš to describe how America deals with its problems:

"America began its history like a quilt. But then the quilt got torn. So you sewed patches on the tears. And then the patches get tears. So you sewed patches on patches. And soon the entire quilt became patches on patches on patches..."

Charles Dana Gibson, Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr., Evelyn Nesbit, and "The Eternal Question"

2010-09-22T12:47:00.000-07:00

[September 27, 2010 - Changes made to this blog entry per ADDENDUM below]

This is a "Eurotrash or Eurotreasure?" departure, but since it's become my blog in general, and I've used plenty of Gibson girls to illustrate my Eurodance DJ set flyers, I feel I can indulge myself this one time.

Charles Dana Gibson's "The Eternal Question" [link] has long been believed to be a portrait of Evelyn Nesbit, the chorus girl and model who, a few years after Gibson's drawing was completed, found herself the center of a crime of passion that led to what is generally regarded as the first "Trial of the [20th] Century."

I think I have made a discovery. Last night, while looking through the Corbis website, a 1901/1902 image of Evelyn Nesbit jumped out at me [link]. I believe Gibson used this image as the basis for "The Eternal Question." I present my analysis below. No proportions were altered in any of the photographic images.

The eyelid is the most startling clue; the lighting and fold lines are nearly identical in the two images.

The interior of the ear forms a distinctive key-shape.

The lips and chin are nearly identical.

The two photos above are identically sized and angled. Increasing the size of Nesbit's hairdo along with the changed tilt of her head would have been changes made in order to emphasize Gibson's question mark. Although apparently doubled in size, that amazing sea of hair retains the same proportions and forms throughout.

The photos in the image above are also identically sized and angled. The facial features generally line up; there is a slight waver for the eyebrow and eye in my sizings (perhaps with more care I could align even those), but all else is a perfect match.

I think that the idea of Gibson working from a photo makes him an even better artist. He would have had stunning artistic insight to look at the photo, see that question mark potential there, and then fully realize that vision in his drawing. This is far more interesting to me than if he had sat Nesbit down in front of him and said, "OK, now make your hair into a question mark." :-D

So am I only the latest person to see this, or is this a new piece of insight into "The Eternal Question"?

ADDENDUM - September 27 - Paula Uruburu, who literally wrote the book on Evelyn Nesbit (the excellent American Eve [link]), kindly wrote back to me on this issue and offered something I could not bring to the table: real scholarship. :-D

First off, she informed me that the photograph was taken by Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr. Eickemeyer took most of Nesbit's most famous shots, including "Tired Butterfly." [link]

Second, she agrees that Gibson must have seen this particular Eickemeyer photo, and complimented me on my "brilliant detective work." (I blush. Thank you, Paula!)

Third, there are not many profile shots of Nesbit to (literally) draw from.

But she also noted that Nesbit had also sat for Gibson in the flesh (thus I have deleted the lines in this blog entry where I had expressed doubts about this).

So, at this stage it seems to me that it went down like this: having been acquainted with her already, Nesbit came readily to Gibson's mind as he conceived of "The Eternal Question," and at some point in the creation of that drawing he turned to the Eickemeyer photograph to help fill in the details.

Amazon.com Widgets

Buggles Sample Ruins Two Songs in One Summer

2010-09-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

Orbital were one of the leading electronic music groups of the 1990s. Then they lost their way, and after that they threw in the towel.

In June 2010 they came back from the dead with a new single, called "Don't Stop Me," which featured a sample of a chick from the Buggles' song "Video Killed the Radio Star." It's quite irritating.*

A couple weeks ago, will.i.am rolled out a tune with Nicki Minaj called "Check It Out." It features that same Buggles sample, but this time it's run into the ground, making "Check It Out" one of the most unlistenable pop songs of the last several years. Lyrics consist of performers boasting about their awesomeness and an oft-repeated plea to "check it out."** Orbital's take is not sounding so bad now, is it?

Of course, it's unlikely that the sample's reappearance on "Check It Out" only a couple of months after Orbital's tune came out was a coincidence. But why steal an idea that was bad to begin with and turn it into something so much worse?

The original Buggles song:

* Their "The Gun is Good" is better.
** The reason these sorts of lyrics reappear like roaches is suggested in the verse:

Step up in the party like my name was that bitch
All these haters mad because I'm so established
They know I'm a beast yeah I'm a fucking fab bitch
Haters you can kill yourself

...which suggests that any complaints about the tiresomeness of hearing such clichéd lyrics (which would no doubt come from "haters") will fall on deaf ears.

Life Goes On

2010-09-15T13:45:00.000-07:00

In the same way one might worry that no phone call or email for a few weeks from one's elderly father might mean elderly father is lying injured at the bottom of a flight of stairs, his cell phone inches out of reach, perhaps readers sometimes worry that my failure to update this blog means I have met some similarly unhappy fate.

The lack of updates simply comes down to this: this blog focuses on Europe, with an emphasis on my own direct interactions with that continent. Since I haven't been in Europe for many months, updates have been few.

For regular updates on European music, I encourage you to join my lately bouncing "Eurotrash or Eurotreasure?" Facebook group, which I have been posting to several times each week.

For more thoroughly digested music matters, please visit ye olde Kingpigeon.com website, where one will find DJ sets, music reviews, and other fine items.

When I find myself preparing to depart for Europe again, this blog will spring back to life. There's no need to call the paramedics at this time. ;-)

Prison Break Season 2: Sequel

2010-08-26T11:26:00.001-07:00

I offer another personal blog entry, since the personal will impact the future, less-personal reportage you'll find here.

My mind is in two places. It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, if anybody really does*, that neither of those places is Atlanta, the city where my body shuffles around while its owner drifts along in a perpetual dream state.

One place I find my mind is in the past--way in the past--researching the 1890-1910 period of American history. I might make some sort of a book out of all that research one day, or maybe not, but I'm smitten by the period and am trying to absorb everything I can about it.

The second place I find my mind is the future, contemplating and laying a tentative foundation for a return to Europe, which may or may not happen (in case anyone from my office is worrying about making a contingency plan). This will, by extension, mean a return to the sorts of blog entries you read here from January to April, which was really what this blog was all about in the first place. As I strove to do on that earlier trip, I hope to keep the "travel blog" tone to a minimum and focus more on reporting specifically on the things I see, particularly as related to the European pop and dance music scenes.

The most appealing plan so far looks to be the Baltic states first, followed by a dive down through Belarus, then Ukraine, then Romania, then Bulgaria, then Turkey, then up and around to Georgia (since the Armenian-Turkish border remains closed), and then down to Armenia. Fortunately, I have contacts in many of these places. But I also want to visit friends in the Balkans, which is the one drawback to this currently Balkanless plan, so it will likely be revised (of course, some revision will occur at the spur of the moment).

As for the present, I'm just a body earning money at his job right now. If I return to Europe I will have to quit the job, which is why earning money now is of paramount importance. Not that I'm quitting my job. Just saying these are all the angles I am looking at right now.

* You don't.

Epically Flawed Analogies

2010-08-20T08:05:00.000-07:00

For the benefit of those not living in the United States, I will explain that there is a proposal to build a Muslim cultural center two blocks from the "Ground Zero" site of the 11 September attacks. Those opposed to the center say that it is insensitive to build anything related to Islam near Ground Zero. Others argue that opposition to the construction of the center demonstrates an abandonment of our constitutional values.

It's worth writing about on this blog, since many of the analogies used by opponents to the plan focus on events that transpired in recent European history.

In making their arguments, opponents of the so-called "mosque" (actually, it sounds more like a mall) often talk about the "misappropriating" of a tragic historical event, but then misappropriate other historic tragedies to draw analogies to support their position.

I have noticed that all the analogies brought up by opponents to the plan fail on exactly the same point. Here are some the comparisons that have been made and why they all fail in the same way.

1) "Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington." -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich
Analogy: Muslims = Nazis, NYC = Holocaust Museum.
Fail: Nazis as a political entity planned and orchestrated the slaughter of Jews, whereas Muslims as a whole did not plan and orchestrate the 9/11 attacks.

2) "We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor." -- Newt Gingrich, again
Analogy: Muslims = Japan, NYC = Pearl Harbor.
Fail: Japan as a political entity planned and orchestrated the attack on Pearl Harbor, whereas Muslims as a whole did not plan and orchestrate the 9/11 attacks.

3) "The Atlantic's Michael Kinsley was typical in arguing that the only possible grounds for opposing the Ground Zero mosque are bigotry or demagoguery. Well then, what about Pope John Paul II's ordering the closing of the Carmelite convent just outside Auschwitz? (Surely there can be no one more innocent of that crime than those devout nuns.)" -- Charles Krauthammer, conservative columnist
Analogy: Muslims = The Catholic Church, NYC = Auschwitz.
Fail: The Catholic Church (a religious and, effectively, a political entity [both in method of operation and in the Vatican's sovereignty]), was complicit in the destruction of the Jews during World War II, whereas Muslims as a whole did not plan and orchestrate the 9/11 attacks.

4) “9/11 mosque=act of fitna, “equivalent to bldg Serbian Orthodox church@Srebrenica killing fields where Muslims were slaughtered” -- Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and former Republican vice presidential candidate
Analogy: Muslims = Serbian Orthodox Church, NYC = Srebrenica.
Fail: The Serbian Orthodox church as a religious entity prominently and directly supported the Serbian government's actions during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, whereas Muslims as a whole did not plan and orchestrate the 9/11 attacks.

To me, reasonable hatred (e.g., our feelings toward the 9/11 plotters and executors) evolves into unforgivable racism when one impresses one's negative impressions about a few individuals upon a much larger number of people (I suppose this is a wordy way of describing negative stereotyping). The analogies above all attempt to pull off this trick, attempting in each instance to equate 1.5 billion Muslim people to various political and religious entities who, either generally or, in the cases of the specific injustices cited, are worthy of censure. This is why the Atlantic writer Mr. Krauthammer attempts to refute was right all along: "the only possible grounds for opposing the Ground Zero mosque are bigotry or demagoguery."

Europe and America

2010-08-18T11:53:00.001-07:00

Began writing this five months ago somewhere between visiting Croatia and Slovenia. Tweaked it a few times since. It probably isn't going to get any better, so I am giving up, posting it, and walking away! :-D

Europe, a continent the size of the United States, boasts myriad languages, faiths, and cultures. Some countries there were fighting wars with one another as recently as the 1990s, and other forms of cultural wars continue to divide Europeans today. Thus, it would be silly to generalize about Europeans as a whole. But I'm silly, so let's do it!

Europeans seem to be more pragmatic and susceptible to logic than Americans, perhaps to a fault, as pragmatism sometimes leads to pessimism, and pessimism leads to inaction ("The odds are I will fail, so I will not attempt"). But I can relate better to this form of logic than to American optimism, and the longer this economy drags the more American realists I think there will be.

Europe contends with a Babel effect; even with English as a fallback business language there is a large, disenfranchised portion of the population that cannot so easily participate in the international market. America is fortunate in that its citizens by and large speak the same language.

The Muslim issue seems to be roiling Europe, whereas America's analogous Mexican immigrant issue is not so big a deal (the U.S. immigration debate does not represent an all-out "culture war" on a par with Europe's Muslim one; and regarding our own recent Muslim issue, the "Ground Zero" "Mosque" [both terms need to be scare-quoted], this appears to be a trifle compared to the all-out European cultural battle).

Europe has a deserved reputation for paying more attention to detail, and generally is known to produce a higher quality of product (from clothes to furniture to cars to women*) than Americans, though sometimes at unreasonable cost.

Even if we are to trust the gloomy international standardized test scores, the United States' 300 million-strong population guarantees that a large number of smart and clever people will continue to drive the markets and innovation. Lack of hyper-pragmatism means greater ingenuity and innovation--the best entrepreneurs expect to fail sometimes and are not easily dissuaded by failure. That means we sometimes fail epically, but we also enjoy epic success (McDonald's, Microsoft, etc.).

All that said, I often think I would rather live in Europe. I identify more with its culture and lifestyle. America can become great, but if my life isn't, then why stick around cheerleading the richest 1%? There are plenty of European democracies I could choose to live in. And did I mention the girls?

* ;-D

Something iTunes Does That is Probably Illegal

2010-08-09T09:12:00.001-07:00

For years iTunes begs me to update it, and afterward, if I see any change at all, it seems all I can do is flip through my album covers in some new way. More substantive, logical suggestions for improving iTunes have been ignored for years, so today it's still too easy to accidentally delete a playlist, the program cannot automatically find de-linked songs, and (despite there being simple freeware programs that can do it with mp3s) no BPM calculator has been installed.

But that's nothing compared to iTunes' most glaring flaw, which probably breaks the law. iTunes needs to introduce an option to view album covers and liner notes in greater detail.

Last Friday, my friend Goce Alice recommended a 1969 musical starring Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood. I said, "a musical starring Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood." It's called Paint Your Wagon, and those tough guys, God bless them, did their own singing. How awesome is that?

Goce steered me to this YouTube clip, which features a marvelous rendition of the song "Wan'drin' Star" by Lee Marvin (whose deep and gravely voice recalls Leonard Cohen's).

I rushed to iTunes in order to buy the song, but a few Paint Your Wagon soundtracks exist on iTunes, all of them suspect. I tried to study the fine print in order to pick out the correct one, but there was no reading of fine print. That's because iTunes doesn't allow one to study the album sleeves closely. Album covers are reproduced at a size of about 175 x 175 pixels, which is pretty tiny. Clicking such an image does not take you to a larger version.

I settled on an album that read, "Music from the Paramount Motion Picture." I am shrewd enough to know that this might have just been a very lawyerly way of saying that, while the record featured performances of songs "from the movie," the songs in fact were not the original movie versions, but rather versions by "sound alike" artists. But really, would the people behind this be such pricks?* It did not escape my notice that iTunes credited the singing to the "Rita Williams Singers." But maybe the Rita Williams Singers did the majority of the movie performances, and Lee and Clint stepped in now and then to accompany them. Who knows? It was the best I could come up with.

I bought "Wand'rin' Star" played it, and sure enough I'd been had. I felt stupid and ashamed, like you do when a con man successfully extracts a dollar from you. In fact, the original movie soundtrack version is not available on iTunes at all. Once again, they wonder why we file share.

Had I been more patient, I might have gone to Amazon.com and found this much larger version of the album cover, which made it clear via the absence of Lee Marvin's and Clint Eastwood's names that this was a "Countdown Singers" sort of affair. Oh well.

We all know it's ethically wrong to do shit like this. Nobody wants a sound-alike cover of an original song, and nobody who buys the version of "Wand'rin' Star" that I did does so for any reason other than having been tricked. Nobody. Adding the words "Music from the Paramount Motion Picture" to the album cover deliberately creates this confusion.

There is a special place in hell for the geniuses behind this. But the practice is not illegal. No doubt, the lawyers signed off on everything and Paramount was happy to collect licensing fees.

Where I think iTunes is breaking a law, however, returns us to the issue of the album cover. Back when the lawyers signed off on the original Paint Your Wagon arrangements, nobody at Paramount would have actually wanted somebody to hand money over to the sound-alike band instead of spending that money on Paramount's own "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" version. It would be logical to assume that the lawyers for Paramount therefore demanded that information be present on the copy-cat's album cover in order to make it clear to the consumer that the record in hand was not the real version.

But in the iTunes world I cannot hold that record in hand and study its fine print. Not only is the cover shrunk down to an unreadable size, but no back cover is provided at all. This cannot have been what the lawyers for Paramount intended.

Even more amazing is the lack of data provided on iTunes m4a music files regarding engineers' names, session musicians, and producer credits. How would one know about David Gilmour's backing vocals on Kate Bush's "Pull Out the Pin"? What of Kate Bush's backing vocals on Peter Gabriel's "No Self Control"? What of Peter Gabriel's lead vocals for Lamb Lies Down on Broadway-era Genesis? Do we get any of that information from iTunes? It does not appear so, judging from what little I find when I click the "Get Info" option on my iTunes m4as. You wouldn't be able to learn from an iTunes m4a that Robert Plant and Jimmy Page were in Led Zeppelin; that John Lennon once sang for a band called The Beatles; that--good God--Justin Timberlake was once in 'N-sync!

Is this why so many hip-hop producers are nowadays into the irritating habit of yelling out their names throughout the songs they produce, like paranoid dogs marking their territory? In light of this, it seems they have a point; so forgive me, Jay-Z and Timbaland, for criticizing you for employing this practice. In the future, perhaps all the session musicians will get to do a self-promotional shout-out on every track as well. Songs can just be shouted out lists of names.

So keep your stagecoach clear of them sound-alike varmints, aided and abetted by iTunes' current policies. In the United States the only place you can hear Lee Marvin croaking the original version of "Wand'rin' Star" (outside of renting the poorly-reviewed movie) is by moseying on over to that YouTube clip--at least until Paramount's lawyers have it taken down, which will probably be soon. Then we'll all forget that Lee Marvin's unusual performance ever happened. That's 21st century entertainment law for you.

* Oh God why do I even ask anymore?

Gay or Eurotrash: Thoughts on Disco After the Proposition 8 Overturn

2010-08-04T07:05:00.000-07:00

Here in the United States, the ban on gay marriage has been ruled unconstitutional once again, and so the long debate continues--astonishingly, since the arguments against gay marriage are among the most irrational, illogical, and (despite arguers' insistence to the contrary) obviously bigoted I have ever seen in print.

Of course, there has been a long and sorry tradition of homophobia in America. One aspect of that worth exploring is the relationship between gay and dance music culture.

Over the last year or two, the BPMs of American R&B have risen. This might be the result of a larger cycle; R&B and hip-hop beats were faster in the mid-to-late 1980s, then slowed down to appropriately dirge-like rhythms during the depressing 1990s when MCs were getting killed left and right. Lady Gaga's success with her Euro-influenced pop-dance sound deserves some credit for encouraging Americans to hit the dancefloor, but the growth of U.S. Latin culture over the last decade is perhaps of more significance (Hispanics became America's largest minority in 2003, and faster dance beats have long been a part of Latin pop music tradition).

Whatever the causes, it seems we are becoming a dance nation at last. Our new-found fondness for the 130 BPM song is the latest in a long line of Euro-pop-culture injections that (like the reality TV shows we have cloned from Dutch, Swedish, and UK ones) have taken hold of America over the last decade.

It's about time. After all, Americans invented disco, house, and techno music. But as soon as disco took off we crowned a European champion: Giorgio Moroder, the "Munich Machine" who produced all of Donna Summer's 1970s hits. Ever since, dance music has traditionally enjoyed a far higher level of popularity in Europe, both chart-wise and culturally, than it has in the United States.

Why? Well, you know why, because you know I began this essay with the subject of homophobia.

Disco music emerged from America's gay club scene. "During the late 1960s various male counterculture groups, most notably gay, but also heterosexual black and Latino, created an alternative to rock'n'roll, which was dominated by white — and presumably heterosexual — men. This alternative was disco," states Kelly Boyer Sager's in her general treatment of The 1970s. And so in its very conception disco was associated with sexual, as well as ethnic, minorities. And while a perhaps overly self-aware straightness prevailed over the popular 1977 movie hit Saturday Night Fever, that film explored a minority scene of its own--New York City's Italian-American culture, as the New York magazine article the film was inspired by demonstrates.

So despite its general popularity, disco remained a scene strongly associated with gays (Village People), gay blacks (Sylvester), Italian-Americans (Saturday Night Fever), and other American minority groups.

In 1979, a "Disco Demolition Night" was hosted by a radio station at Chicago's Comiskey Park during a baseball game. The publicity stunt called for disgruntled rock fans to bring disco records to the stadium; the records were to be blown up on the field. A crowd chant of "disco sucks" led up to the explosion. Afterward, rock fans took to the field and a surreal riot (of sorts; no one was injured) followed.

Wrote the New York Times in a reflective piece, "[Chicago DJ Steve Dahl] and his followers resented how disco threatened rock ’n’ roll." That thought is left undeveloped. How did disco in any way threaten rock 'n' roll? How does any genre of music threaten another? Craig Werner, in his book A Change is Gonna Come (as quoted in this Independent article) summed it up: "The Anti-disco movement represented an unholy alliance of funkateers and feminists, progressives and puritans, rockers and reactionaries. None the less, the attacks on disco gave respectable voice to the ugliest kinds of unacknowledged racism, sexism and homophobia."

In other words, disco was logically as much a threat to rock 'n' roll as gay marriage is a threat to the institution of marriage.

Disco remained popular for a few more years in Europe before it gave way to other sub genres of electronic dance music. But in America, the stigma of disco as a gay- and other minority-based counter-cultural movement warped and distorted white America's perception of the club sound for three decades. While America's gay scene rallied around house music, and more underground-minded sorts sniffed out warehouse raves, average Americans missed out on a lot of the fun enjoyed in the UK--no acid house summers of love, no sight of worried television reporters bemoaning the dangers of the drug-infused hardcore techno rave scene, no Gatecrasher style Euro-trance explosion in 1999. But if the latest crop of U.S. dance pop singles are any indication, perhaps we are finally putting that bigotry behind us. Put on your dancing shoes, America.

Vote for DJ King Pigeon

2010-08-03T07:10:00.000-07:00

Voting has opened for the DJ Magazine top DJs poll. Please vote for me, DJ King Pigeon.

I certainly need more help than DJ "I'm not Dead" Tiësto does. But neediness is not a good enough reason to solicit your support, so let me do something novel and list my qualifications:

1) Ambitious mixes like this one, which promote the whole of the European music scene (and beyond).

2) Articles written to draw attention to music acts that rarely receive English-language promotion, such as this one and this one.

3) A decade-long history of supporting and spreading the word about under-represented music scenes through blogs, parties, and social networking websites.

4) I'm kinda cute. I mean, check out my beautiful red eyes in the picture above.

I don't have the impeccable fashion sense, the globe-trotting lifestyle, or the fancy cars enjoyed by the top DJs, but isn't that really the point in voting for me? It's time to upset the status quo!

Vote for DJ King Pigeon. :-)

Selena Gomez

2010-07-10T08:36:00.001-07:00

Another item to add onto the long list of things Selena Gomez and I have in common: we've both been to Budapest.

Mark Ronson & The Business Intl feat. Q-Tip - Bang Bang Bang

2010-07-10T07:57:00.001-07:00

This is the second Mark Ronson song I've heard in the last few weeks that I like, and it's my favorite of the two. Plus, a terrific video to go with.

Set 32: From Midnight to 3:30 AM

2010-07-09T12:30:00.001-07:00

At long last, my latest DJ set featuring songs representing many different voices in Europe (and some other places) is finished. You can download it from here.

I began to write an essay about what goes into making such a set, but several paragraphs later I abandoned the effort, largely because the more I went on about my "philosophy of dj'ing" the more I sounded like a total twat.

Bottom line: 66 songs in 3 hours 40 minutes, enough to keep a party moving from, as the title says, midnight to 3:30 am--and then a little bit more, because I always love to give just a little bit more.

Edward Maya's "Stereo Love" Gets a Second (At Least) Cover Treatment

2010-07-02T08:32:00.001-07:00

Edward Maya's "Stereo Love" (feat. Vika Jigulina) appeared on the Romanian charts in May 2009. When I visited Kiev, Ukraine in January 2010 the song was blasted everywhere. The tune steadily conquered dance charts throughout Western Europe (for more on the Romanian roll-out strategy, check out this interesting recent Reuters article). Now it's being covered for at least the second time.

Here is the original version:

Dancelovers (feat. Dominika) released a version which I first heard in April 2010. It is a nearly note-for-note clone of the original, but performed in the Hungarian language. It sort of makes sense to redo it in another language if one imagines that there is an audience that would appreciate that.

But this week, on the Radio One charts, I find this useless remake charting. It's done in the same style as the original, and in the English language, also like the original. The English is stronger and more front-and-center, and I will always have a spot in my heart for Velvet ever since hearing her trashtastic take on "Rock Down To (Electric Avenue)," but this is just not worth the effort, in my opinion.

If you know of more covers of "Stereo Love," please post links in the comments area.

Eurodancehits.com is Closed

2010-07-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

25 July 2010 -- The website, which seems to have nine lives, has been restored.

As I was preparing to add (another) link to the website from my own, I discovered that Eurodancehits.com had closed in June. I don't know the details; the most I have read about the subject came from this bulletin board. The poster, who had worked extensively on the Eurodancehits.com site, advances the idea that the site's webmaster, Kris, was exhausted and disheartened after battling a barrage of homophobic comments posted to the discussion forums (a lot of HiNRG compilations were promoted on the site, including the unabashedly gay-marketed Let's Hear it for the Boy comps).

On other forums, some suggested that the site had simply withered away, rendered increasingly irrelevant as sites such as MySpace and YouTube emerged. Kris's message reads "It is time to move forward," perhaps an acknowledgement that the web site had become mired in the past. I can only speculate.

What I do know is that it was a great website. I discovered Eurodancehits.com for myself back in 2001, shortly after I had become addicted to streaming Romanian top 40 radio on the internet (which had been the gateway into my whole Euro music fixation). I was delighted by the massive body of reviews and music samples the site provided for a sound that was, at the time, brand new and extremely exciting to me.

After finding the site, I spent a giddy and extraordinarily happy couple of weeks digging through its archives. It was then that I was introduced to some of my all-time favorite songs, such as Mauro Picotto's "Like This Like That" and Angelic's "It's My Turn." It was where I first heard Scooter, those gleefully unapologetic village-idiots of hardcore dance whose music continues to damage my eardrums today. It also gave me my first taste of Infernal (the song was "Sunrise," a big trance tune quite unlike the more Eurodancy stuff that would follow from them). The site also taught me about pop obscurities of dubious talent such as fem@le, whose cover of J. Geils Band's "Centerfold" is...something else. The music video archives gave one a then-rare opportunity to see how European dance music was being marketed to its overseas audience. I still have several of those Real Media files burned to DVD.

I don't know him, but Kris was clearly a very accommodating person. When in 2003 I wrote in to inform him (just because I thought, hey, he might be interested) that one Scooter song on a recently-reviewed album was a reworking of Liquid's "Liquid is Liquid," he swiftly inserted my comment into the review and thanked me by name.

My favorite aspect of the site was its reviews of singles, but as time went on fewer and fewer of these were posted, until eventually, sometime in the mid-2000s I believe, the singles section ceased to be updated. This struck me as odd because dance music is a singles-driven market. That was the first time I worried about the site's future and wondered what was going on behind the scenes.

Review focus by 2006 had shifted towards compilations, and generally things there were limited to a few series: the aforementioned Let's Hear it for the Boy HiNRG series, which, to be honest, was often a little too, well, gay for my tastes, but clearly served its audience well, as shown by the series' many, many volumes. And then there were reviews of some epic Euro-trance comps. These appealed to me more. It was here, for example, that I was exposed to such awesome tracks as Dynni's "City Of Moving Waters (Robert Gitelman Remix)."

For many, the discussion forums were the site's biggest draw, but for me, after the singles reviews ceased, my favorite reason for visiting became the Euro mini mixes, which I greatly looked forward to each month. Sometimes the mixes featured classics, and other times they featured a ton of new acts I had never heard of before. The obscurity of some acts could be frustrating for a music fan; it was extremely difficult to find some of these tunes. On the other hand, successfully tracking down a Human Athletic Dance CD single after having heard it on Eurodancehits.com was, as they say, priceless.

The mixes were frantic, with songs blazing past after a couple of minutes apiece, often laced with a barrage of original samples (usually of the motivational shouted variety). This was the sort of place where (and I can't remember if it was actually featured, but it may as well have been) one would hear Dancing DJs' fantastic reworking of Roxette's "Like a Flower." That is to say (if you're not already looking for that song on YouTube), each mix was a sugar rush of pure pounding joy.

Admittedly, I found myself visiting less and less. I spent more time listening to streaming internet radio and checking the pop charts against YouTube video postings. The emergence of Web 2.0 took a toll on the site. Consider Eurodancehits.com's once-mesmerizing video archives of pixely Real Media files. These were abruptly marginalized by the rise of YouTube--a whole section of the site rendered obsolete in a single blow! As television and movie production houses are discovering, the world's attention is becoming increasingly divided. But every few months, right up until today when I found the site closed, I continued to check in on what was going on there, because the site was that important.

It's a huge loss.

I am hoping that Mr. Davis, the poster I linked to above, is not correct, that an entire website of such great musicological value (and dumb fun, which is a compliment) would be shuttered because of a single homophobe's comments.

So I would like to say, Kris, your work as both music archivist and promoter seems too important to be derailed by one hater's (or even a few haters') stupidity.

But if you have moved on because it just wasn't fun anymore, I hear you and I support that. Maybe that's our loss, but you have to live your own life for yourself. And hopefully your gain will become ours as well, if music continues to lead your heart to an even bigger and bolder venture.

In any case, huge, huge thanks for what you gave the world. The passing of Eurodancehits.com is something I will mourn like the passing of a friend. Haha, my friends will probably shudder at that! But no kidding. The site is irreplaceable.

Thanks to everyone who worked on Eurodancehits.com for a great ride.

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An interesting addendum, worth pondering if the site really is finished: CubeStat.com values Eurodancehits.com at $20,896.98. So, for any doubters out there, the site possesses more than mere sentimental value!