you show up at a “lounge” in soho where the door guy is actually friendly, and then you get in an elevator that goes to a basement-level corridor lined with scented candles and racks of wine, and the coat-check girl–who looks pretty in her head wrap–tells you that actually, it’s complimentary, and when you get through the door the room has just a creepy amount of mirrors, and whatever isn’t mirror is brick (except for this one wall that basically is covered in barbecue skewers sticking out from the wall, like some torture pit turned sideways, and these hot women keep going up to touch it just to see if it’s real but they just end up looking like they’re on ecstasy), and then in the back room dam funk is holding a cordless microphone trying to dance up on a chubby girl and saying “gonna kill this motherfucker today“– and on today, makes his own echo, just by repeating the “ay ay ay” at decreasing volume. now that is life. enjoy it.

major downsides

“By attaching a series of electrodes to a human brain, researchers can feed neural impulses from the brain into a computer to allow the direct control of robotic devices. One major downside, of course, is that the electrodes through which the subject controls these robotic devices have to be placed directly on the brain.” (Seed)

it also works as a hat and a napkin.

cluck cluck. last night, with my desk lamp wedged in an open window over my reading chair, i finished a book called how to wreck a nice beach by an author named dave tompkins. it is a history of the vocoder, which i think most people think of as “the robot voice thing,” or t-pain’s uncle or, if you are a military-type person, the room-sized computer developed as a voice modulation tool for the compression and manipulation of voices while transmitting classified information over the phone.

the book is not out yet, but when it comes out, you should read it. and you should read it because it is full of words that have been nurtured and loved. i mean that. and what i mean by “it is full of words that have been nurtured and loved” is that tompkins — who has written about hip-hop for wire and the believer and lots of other places — is a deep-sea diver who appears to have no ability to quash his own excitement for what he writes about. the research is there to support the enthusiasm, but it’s the enthusiasm that turned a big bright light on my dim march. or, as my friend LMK says, “disco siren.”

plus now i’m just hanging out listening to the works of michael jonzun, who was born “michael johnson” but decided, rightfully, that he deserved a name that was almost like something people had seen before, but not, like a black dude from miami wearing a powdered wig and making robot music about “looking out for the OVC,” which was a gigantic machine that is now rotting in the woods in massachusettes. music about space! foot-oriented head music. flex it. flex!

get on your camel and ride

i have a thought about guys like stevie wonder.

hey!

oh hey! i don’t think that mic is on.

that’s okay!

thierry, can you fix stevie wonder’s mic? this is embarrassing.

[sound of hemp-soled shoes running across brushed concrete]

okay. one second.

–

so the thought is actually less about stevie wonder and more about how i listen to him. growing up in the 1990s — in the era of nevermind — i had a kind of physiological repulsion the musical gods of the 70s. basically, anything that won– or was even nominated– for a grammy was probably filled with poison, and i stayed away from it. even now, i’m more likely to explore the minor works of ebenezer obey than actually listen to a thin lizzy record front-to-back (which, as a side note, means i hadn’t heard “little girl in bloom” until november, when someone put it on a mix for me). all the music i’d rejected as ubiquitous was actually anonymous to me.

so here comes stevie wonder –

still here!

– crashing through the fragile gates of my spirit with all this music filled with softball platitudes and bad syntatx and idealism – idealism so thick and delusional that i think god went into stevie wonder’s room while he slept and shaved off a little part of his brain. i mean, how else can you explain all the smiley nonsense?

but stevie wonder is not all smiley nonsense. [cue low drone, thierry.] part of what makes him brilliant is that he plays the fool so well, and then, just when you think it’s all deep fool, he hits you with songs about what a nasty, circular mess life is, like “living for the city” or “village ghetto land.” (in the latter, he sings in an english accent about homeless people eating trash. mean!)

it’s not that i thought stevie wonder was dumb, just uncomplicated. part of this is marketing. part of it’s self-presentation, i guess. i was telling a friend the other day that i’m predisposed to secrecy and emotionally predisposed to paranoia, so it’s easy for me to imagine stevie wonder as the mastermind of a sustained plan to manipulate the hearts and feet of black and white america while never really saying what’s on his mind, which might just be “i’m hungry” or “man, people are a drag.” i don’t know what’s behind those sunglasses, and i don’t have to. my point, i guess, is that i hear all this ambiguity in his music that i never heard before, and it makes him deep to me. i hug the showbiz shit like “ebony eyes,” especially when he shouts out for a saxohpone solo. i love when he plays his own worst enemy by singing ten different vocal lines. it’s better than the fall. it’s better than schizophrenia.

the funk is good too. i’ve been listening to a lot of dance music lately. dance music is visceral by nature but lends itself to transcendent, blank-brained states. the dirt and the heavens and nothing in between. this is a sticking point for me. the lyrics of “higher ground” — the english stuff he lets out of his mouth — are not the words worth focusing on. the words worth focusing on are in the syncopations and the way that the clavinet sounds bow and break. they are sentences and metaphors. they say “zig and strut your way to peace.” or “sir duke.” horn sections speak louder than words.

the range of emotions in these songs doesn’t just appeal to me, it circumscribes me. there are days that i wake up and can’t make it to lunch without kneeling to the beauty of the world enough to get a cramp, and during these days i stupidly believe that anything really is possible, even love, and i put words in all the wrong order just because the spirit scrambles them up. then there are other days that i think i’m capable of punching babies in the face.

alright, alright. theirry, you done diddling back there?

thierry: give me a minute.

[one minute passes]

alright!

stevie wonder: the atlanta interview (which, for legal purposes, i should disclose has taken place entirely in my head)

a: have you really been to saturn?

sw: i just got back, actually. it’s my favorite place to fly helicopters.

a: okay, so… is “have a talk with god” at all sarcastic? are you sort of mocking how weak people lean on religion? because if not… well, i just find it so hard to believe that having faith in god could make life so easy. it’s such an insanely beautiful sentiment that i almost just want to sell off everything i own and work on that kibbutz, or make that baby, and just accept that everything will work out. i mean, do you really think it’s okay to accept your own weaknesses?

sw. no.

a: wait, “no” to which question?

…

a: i think i like “if it’s magic” more than almost anything, even though it’s so corny. i mean, it’s high, high corn.

sw: sure, but i love that harp playing.

a: do you really think in syntax like “then with it why aren’t we as careful”?

sw: at times i have been given to placing, oddly, the words i sing.

a: what were you thinking about when you wrote it?

sw: i mean, i put all my thoughts there, front and center. if it’s special, then with it why aren’t we as careful as making sure we dress in style? posing pictures with a smile? you know? we sit around talking about how precious life is, and then we rush through it like bandits. we eat like we’re starving. we talk about the big truck that could hit us at any moment but we don’t even look both ways when crossing the street.

…

sw: are you crying?

a: you can see that?

sw: got a feeling, that’s all.

decoro ipsum sano blogum

blogging is like ice skating to me: i haven’t done it in a while but it’s fun!

this blog will mostly be about music. i anticipate that it’ll take the form of a listening diary, with excited forays into discussion of things i know very little about, like the sichuan pepper, plosive consonants, and dog breeding.

it’s named in honor of a conversation i had with the composer robert ashley, which can be read at the end of this article, which i wrote a few years ago.

my old blogs can be read here, here, and here. my other current music writing can be read at pitchfork and the village voice. let’s start. i have only myself to fear.

yours,

mp

the running list of superlative 2010 music (with links where available!)

//SONGS//

james blake, “the bells sketch”

untold, “bad girls”

gorillaz, “on melancholy hill”

slugabed, “ultra heat treated”

//THINGS THAT ARE LONGER THAN SONGS//

joanna newsom, “have one on me”

vampire weekend, “contra”

//MUSIC THAT IS NOT HOT, FRESH AND NEW//

aphex twin, “donkey rhubarb”

holger czukay, “fragrance”

the jonzun crew, “ground control”