I love Who's Next and like Quadrophenia. But Tommy is a mess. "Pinball Wizard" is apparently glued together out of spare riffs -- the strummy bits during the verses and the power chords during the chorus sound like they belong to different songs. "I'm Free" is supposed to be some hippie Jesus thing that now just sounds ridiculous like the rest of the hippie Jesus subgenre. "See Me, Feel Me" has a monotonous opening and an equally monotonous chorus repeating the ridiculous idea that anyone would want to follow this guy. And so on. I understand that it's supposed to be half-joke, half-fantastic, but the fantastic part is pretty pedestrian, and the joke part just falls flat.
I agree it's worth questioning the profit = worth model when it comes to indie music and many other things where the market fails in one way or another. Here, the failure is in the music market -- i.e., people being able to steal music easily, and maybe also prices not reflecting positive externalities to the public (e.g., popular stuff being influenced by indie stuff, goodwill to America from music-loving foreigners, etc.). We used to try to fix those market failures with the indirect subsidy that is copyright law, but obviously that doesn't work so well anymore, so the question is what subsidy replaces it.
Maybe the answer to the narrow problem here (i.e., making overseas record mailing affordable) is to have a targeted mail subsidy for American cultural works that are mailed abroad by not-so-profitable folks? Sort of like a Fulbright Scholarship, but for records? You'd have to work a bit to get the statutory language right, but doing that seems doable. With this approach, we'd be subsidizing the things we like (indie music going overseas) rather than spending money doing less socially beneficial stuff like helping companies that advertise through the mail.
According to the USPS, even before factoring in that unfair accounting rule enacted in 2006, it hasn't made a profit for fiscal years 2009-2011, and isn't likely to make an annual profit anytime soon unless some serious changes are made (besides changing that unfair accounting rule). See slide 3 of this business plan: http://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2012/pr12_0217profitability.pdf. According to this business plan, it's going to be operating at loss (regardless of the accounting rule) unless it raises prices (among other things). See slide 13 under "Revenue Management" -- in particular, see the part where it says "Targeted price increases -- Historically inelastic single-piece First-Class Mail." That means the postal service wants to raise prices on shipments of stuff like records regardless of the unfair accounting rule enacted in 2006.
But you're right, USPS has been doing better than I thought.
Wait, didn't we invent the internet? Am I missing something here?
Yes, I know some people prefer records. But if people are willing and able to spend the extra money to buy records in the first place, they're probably also willing and able to pay for a little extra postage. This De Broux fellow is quoted here saying that "[m]y customers are foreign, not rich," but it's immaterial whether they're rich -- the material issue here is whether the foreign customers who have been buying records in the past are willing and able to pay for extra postage to continue buying those records. That appears likely given that they'll already pay a premium for records.
As for the USPS, I love welfare and don't mind the higher taxes, but isn't it just ridiculous to keep pumping money into the dying snail mail business model as a form of indirect, ineffective welfare? If we feel sorry for the postal workers, we should just give them the business along with the monopoly on delivering mail that USPS currently has -- that way, they'll get some sort of payout in the form of stock, and we won't have to keep on throwing good money at bad.
I'm just happy he put Clouds Taste Metallic at #1. Not sure I even agree with that, but it's an album that deserves having *someone* say it's the best.
I'm guessing Ryan had to change his mind about "Discovery" -- there's no way that "Discovery" could have gotten to #3 on any P4k list without the tacit approval of the head guy. I take it there's some sort of voting process in making these lists, but somewhere in the process things can get massaged or vetoed. In any event, the point is: don't take lists/reviews too seriously (duh).
Daft Punk’s “Discovery” is really a case in point. The site's founder pans it in the most uncharitable way possible when it comes out, but then at the other end of the decade it's like #3 of the site's best-of-the-00s list. P4K on "Discovery": "It's HORRIBLE! No, uh, wait, I mean it's THE BEST EVER!" There's no substitute for independent judgment.
I think this list basically does what a year-end list should do: be a victory lap for the obviously great songs ("Pyramids," "House That Heaven Built," etc.), but also make you take a second listen to songs that you enjoyed but didn't necessarily consider great ("Oblivion," "Climax," etc.), possibly because those songs didn't come in "greatness" packaging.
How exactly do they determine if the "song" is good apart from the "record"? I mean, do the voters sit down with some sheet music and plunk out the song on a piano?
I have two suggestions that have worked well for me: (1) press "stop" before "Compton" comes on; and (2) pretend "Compton" is not on the album (or at least pretend it's some sort of CD-era "hidden song" that doesn't really count).
This is actually a pretty accurate list, especially with the top 3. I've always felt that the band was great at creating this feeling of weirdly cheerful anxiety while being remarkably light-footed and even funny about the depressive bits. It always reminded me of Charlie Parker in that way, even though the comparison is obviously remote.
Did Death Grips ever explain their rationale for releasing that album for free? Was it because they thought Epic wouldn't release it fast enough or something?
On a totally different subject: Kanye West has always weirdly reminded me of Paul Westerberg, on some really deep level. Both confessional, both fuck ups, both basically midwestern and earnest, both kinda underdogs, both with the same sort of smart aleck kid-in-the-back-of-class sense of humor, both super sensitive, etc.
Let It Be is ***OBVIOUSLY*** the best Replacements album. I mean, seriously, Pleased to Meet Me has the two filler songs "Shooting Dirty Pool" and "Red Red Wine" that should disqualify it immediately (in contrast, "Black Diamond" is weirdly compelling, and "Tommy Get His Tonsils Out" is actually funny). Plus I've always thought "The Ledge" was a bit overwrought, and "I Don't Know" wasn't terribly funny (ha ha, Replacements be fuck up, etc.). As for Tim, if any album (other than Raw Power) has ever desperately been in need of remastering, Tim is it. In its current state, it's really just impossible to tell if it's theoretically better than Let it Be if it just had better production. Regardless, it feels much more burned out than Let it Be, and on that basis alone I think Let It Be is preferable. Let It Be is, weirdly, just an album that's brimming with infinite life.
I find it amusing that first it's said, "they all sound the same," and then to explain what "the same" means, the author throws out a bunch of heterogeneous descriptions: "retro garage"; "soul music"; "glockenspiels and choirs." Because those things all sound the same!
Dig Me Out came out at the precise moment when I really needed Sleater-Kinney in my life (I was 16 years old and closeted in a very conservative town). In contrast, One Beat came out at a time when I was an stupidly sophisticated college senior and, well, I wasn't really vibing to them much anymore (sort of like Prisstina, frankly). Regardless, in hindsight, One Beat is clearly the better record -- for all the reasons the article describes.
This whole radio theme is reminding me how, soon after Merriweather Post Pavilion came out, when I was doing a super long drive through Michigan, I picked up some radio station (college radio I guess) that was just playing Merriweather Post Pavilion from beginning to end, without interruption. I think I first noticed it was happening as they played during "Also Frightened" and it was about half static by the time "Brother Sport" came on. It was done totally without explanation. A truly weird experience: I feel like I may have just hallucinated it.
A Ghost is Born should be considered as part of the canonical run of "classic Wilco," even if Bennett wasn't involved (though his absence is so palpable that he's a presence of a sort). Those four albums are like the stages of a plot and belong together: Being There sets the stage, Summerteeth is the rising action, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is the climax, and A Ghost is Born is the conflicted, hard-earned resolution.
I really liked "5 Seconds," but kinda feel underwhelmed by the rest of the album. I kinda wish he would drop the whole 80s thing and just go ahead and become his own private version of TV on the Radio.
Does anyone else suddenly feel like "Novacane" from Nostalgia, Ultra is pretty obviously about a gay guy (at least in terms of who he falls in love with) who's loved by a girl he realizes is perfect (goes to Berkeley, earns tuition doing porn, wants to be a dentist -- what's not to love?), and who he wants to love back, but he just can't, even though he appreciates how amazing her love is and really wants to love her back for her own sake? Plus ummm tons of drugs???
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