This picture appears in the fresh issue of The New Yorker. It’s Maurice Sendak in his backyard wearing a bathrobe, taken by Mariana Cook in 2005. I assume she’d be cool with me sharing it, just as I’m relatively sure the magazine’s owners might not be. So let’s willfully misread copyright law for a second here to emphasize feeling over legal regimes, k? (And, uh, using a bit of Napsterlogic, maybe it’s okay if I tell you to subscribe?)

Anyway, accompanying the photo was a touching interview excerpt in which he expresses some extreme self-knowledge. It’s somehow not strange at all that the best obituary on Sendak was written by himself. None of that nostalgic lost childhood bullshit that we (?) have been posting to our Facebook pages & Twitter feeds. Which goes to prove: speed is overrated, and there is no way to better understand a person than by spending an extended period of time not online but in one’s own head.

I am in my bathrobe in the front with my dog, Herman, who is a German shepard of unknowable age, because I refused to ever find out. I don’t want to know. I wish I didn’t know how old I was. This is far more than I expected, far more than I need, far more than I desire. I didn’t think I’d live this long…

I have serious flaws. And I think they come from a time of one’s life when one is very young and they stick to you like glue. And then things change when you get older. You’re doing what you want to do. You’re very lucky. Oh, the books, the books, the books, the books; the prizes, the prizes, the prizes, the prizes. It doesn’t matter that you’ve done a hundred books. It doesn’t mean anything when people say, “I read your book. I like it so much.” Pople do say awfully nice things, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re a stinky person by nature…

It’s hard to be happy. Some people have the gift of pulling themselves up and out and saying there is more to life than just tragedy. And then there are those who can’t, and I’m one of them. Do you believe it when people say they’re happy?

There’s more to it than that. So I’ve provided a subscribe link above & I’m sure the internet has connived some method by which you can get it for free if that’s your thing.

John Cage. Carlos Castaneda. The effects of recorded music. These are things I think about. And apparently, these are things that author and professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was thinking about in 1990 when he published his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. i.e.

Some people argue that technological advances have greatly improved the quality of life by making music so easily available. Transistor radios, laser disks, tape decks blare the latest music twenty-four hours a day in crystal-clear recordings. This continuous access to good music is supposed to make our lives much richer. But this kind of argument suffers from the usual confusion between behavior and experience. Listening to recorded music for days on end may or may not be more enjoyable than hearing an hour-long live concert that one had been looking forward to for weeks. It is not the hearing that improves life, it is the listening. We hear Muzak, but we rarely listen to it, and few could have ever been in flow as a result of it.

As with anything else, to enjoy music one must pay attention to it. To the extent that recording technology makes music too accessible, and there fore taken for granted, it can reduce our ability to derive enjoyment from it. Before the advent of sound recording, a live musical performance retained some of the awe that music engendered when it was still entirely immersed in religious rituals. Even a village dance band, let alone a symphonic orchestra, was a visible reminder of the mysterious skill involved in producing harmonious sounds. One approached the event with heightened expectations, with the awareness that one had to pay close attention because the performance was unique and not to be repeated again.

The audiences at today’s live performances, such as rock concerts, continue to partake in some degree in these ritual elements; there are few other occasions at which large numbers of people witness the same event together, think and feel the same things, and process the same information. Such joint participation produces in an audience the condition Emilie Durkheim called “collective effervescence,” or the sense that one belongs to a group with a concrete, real existence. This feeling, Durkheim believed, was at the roots of religious experience. The very conditions of live performance help focus attention on the music, and therefore make it more likely that flow will result at a concert than when one is listening to reproduced sound.

But to argue that live music is innately more enjoyable than recorded music would be just as invalid as arguing the opposite. Any sound can be a source of enjoyment if attended to properly. In fact, as the Yaqui sorcerer taught the anthropologist, even the intervals of silence between sounds, if listened to closely, can be exhilarating.

So this happened. In a spiritual sense it was a very unimportant thing. From the point of view of things with meaning, it had little. But often such things are what makes the world go round.

So, also: There’s a big art fair in New York this weekend. Here are some coherent thoughts about it. Sadly, for those of you who are into clarity, by way of contrast I’m just gonna quote some young Marxist who quotes the original Marxist, all of which is framed within the younger Marxist’s 2010 Artforum review of a book (in translation) by a lady of Germanic origin who I had not previously heard of, but who was apparently photographed once by Thomas Ruff once.

I like Thomas Ruff.

*deep breath*

Anyway, if you haven’t given up on this BLOG already you may enjoy the rest of the post but, yeah, it’s pretty meta.

Brand Identity: On Isabelle Graw’s High Price: Art Between the Market and Celebrity Culture trans. by Nicolas Grindell (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2009)
by Julian Stallabrass
(Artforum, Summer 2010)

…The art market, she argues, has become modernized — meaning rationalized and globalized, franchised and branded. Old loyalties have eroded on both sides, as successful artists defect to more prominent galleries while the economic protection once offered by the gallery has almost vanished., Just as Warhol’s obsession with fashion and celebrity chasing damanged his reputation in days past but now seems standard behavior, Larry Gagosian, whose aggressive business practices were formerly the subject of disdain, is now “universally respected and admired.”

In an extraordinary passage from the Grundrisse, Marx points to a model of work set against the extraction of surplus value:

“The Times of November 1857 contains an utterly delightful cry of outrage on the par tof a West Indian plantation owner. The advocate analyses with great moral indignation — as a plea for the re-introduction of Negro slavery — how the Quashees (the free blacks of Jamaica) content themselves with producing only what is strictly necessary for their own consumption, and, alongside this “use value,” regard loafing (indulgence and idleness) as the real luxury good; how they do not care a damn for the sugar and the fixed capital invested in the plantations, but rather observe the planters’ impending bankruptcy with an ironic grin of malicious pleasure…”

An ironic grin may also greet the realization that what Marx is describing is also an ideal model of the artist’s labor, which should be free, self-fulfilling, and self-determined, a glimpse of the utopia that awaits all mankind after the final synthesis. Graw revealingly describes the demands made on artists by dealers (for example, to more regularly produce new work for art fairs), for which surplus in the Marixst sense may be an apposite term after all.

If you found that boring, well, here’s a picture of Macaulay Culkin.

So what’s the point of all this? Well, art is hard, money is complicated, celebrity is real & sometimes I suspect it’s more useful getting used to it and using all of it rather than putting up a fuss. I mean, get a load of this guy!

I will end with a story: A few years ago I went to a screening of an Alec Soth documentary at the New School. (I like him for reasons besides the obvious.) Right there next to me I saw what looked like Macaulay Culkin sitting next to Natalie Portman. And here’s the thing: it was Macaulay Culkin sitting next to Natalie Portman.

Was that a story or an anecdote. Not sure. But, sorry, that’s all I got.

Today Levon Helm died. Some of my friends have been Twittering about it. Multiple times.

This is big news. He was the integral member of The Band, the only true American citizen in it, and the only one whose latter-day career hewed most closely to their greatness. The Band were a huge deal; their recorded legacy will remain a huge deal for anyone in the 21st century looking to get a handle on what made the popular music of the 20th century so great. To my mind, outside of Fugazi, the were the quintissential American band — even though 4/5ths of the Band were Canadian! Maybe in a post-Arcade Fire, post-Joni Mitchell, post-Neil Young universe we should just admit we have more in common with Canadians than we’d like to admit, and start thinking in terms of great North American music rather than holding tight to some uniquely American tradition.

Anyway, I digress…

Almost exactly 10 years ago, I wrote this tribute to The Band for the LA Weekly. Though its flights of poesy are more than I’d indulge in circa now, I stand by every word & now feels like a good moment to dust it off.

UP A CREEK: THE BAND THAT RINGS LIKE A BELL
originally published in LA Weekly, April 25, 2002

We want things to fit, like square pegs in square holes. But there are no square holes. There are stones in shoes, bumps in roads, clouds in skies. It rains and pours, and each drop triggers a drum, a fretless bass, a guitar hero, a fiddle, a tuba, a brass band, otherworldly organs, three singers so earnest they sound as if they’re pleading for their lives. It‘s like a Disneyland treatment of Deliverance — three hicks singing “It’s a small world after all” in such a way that you can‘t tell when one member of the trio lets off and the next one starts.

In The Band’s music, it is a small world: You hear bar-band rock & roll steeped in crotchety American folksongs, but you also hear authentic soul — voices joining, musicians who just plain care. It‘s the best beer-commercial music of all time.

Last year, Capitol reissued The Band’s eight albums for the label. The Last Waltz, a 1978 album and film documenting their star-studded farewell concert, has just been re-released. When The Band‘s debut, Music From Big Pink, emerged late in 1968, it was already clear they had invented something unique. It was a vibe record in the guise of rock music — a warm-sounding pastiche in which “feel” and songwriting were taken equally into account. At the same time, they are one of the most potent precursors of Americana, a broadly defined catch-all genre coming into prominence today. Only now does The Band’s music make sense, so let‘s explore their sound.

***

Too excited to keep time, Levon Helm, the drummer-vocalist, injects speed into the group, but he also plays mandolin, bass, guitar… (The Band mix things up a lot.) His Arkansas accent comes out as yelps, growls, a gravelly thing. He sounds like the last Civil War soldier, one who has wandered too far north. There he entertains with old tales like this one:

“In the winter of ’65
We were hungry, just barely alive
By May the 10th Richmond had fell
It‘s a time I remember oh so well
The night they drove old Dixie down and the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down and the people were singing
They went la la-la-la-la la-laaah-la-laaah…”

Two more singers join in. Bassist Rick Danko’s high whine is mellow, quiet, kind of blank. His efforts ground the group in midtempo rock, but you‘ll be glad someone’s holding this ship together as the rest of the group skirts more dangerous seas. Such as Richard Manuel‘s voice. A sad man with dark eyes and a hollow face, he has a soulful sound he rides deep:

“I’m a thief and I dig it!”

“Oh, you don‘t know the shape I’m in.”

“The storm has passed
There is peace at last
I‘ll spend my whole life sleeping.”

Occasionally he has his way with the drums in an awkward, clip-cloppity Clydesdale style. (Where Helm always got ahead of himself, Manuel was always trying to catch up. They provide The Band’s loose yet locked-in rhythms and subrhythms — rhythms that break up space in untoward ways.) On the early records, Manuel contributed many songs — longing ballads composed on piano — but by the third album, Stage Fright, he‘d stopped writing, and you can’t help but think it‘s because, goddammit, that song was never good enough, this life is never good enough. (He hanged himself in a hotel room on a reunion tour in ’86.)

Garth Hudson looks as if he walked off a mountaintop or slunk out from under a bridge. His bearded head is big and round like a lawn dwarf‘s or an M.I. Hummel figurine’s. Classically trained, and a bit older than his bandmates, he takes turns playing accordion, Clavinet, slide trumpet and sax. He is also a keyboard explorer who masters texture and leaves the songs…

…to Robbie Robertson, both the star and the silent one. Eventually he went Hollywood with his publishing money and cinema dreams. (In the ‘80s he concentrated on soundtracks; to quote a press release, he currently works at DreamWorks as a “creative plenipotentiary.”) Robertson was constantly discovering another piece of his multifaceted heritage so he could write songs about it. “Smoke Signals” deals with his Native American blood. “Rag & Bone” was inspired by his Jewish relatives from the Old Country, such as his grandfather. To quote Robbie: “He was an intellectual, but he made his living in Toronto as a rag man.” Robertson could have been describing himself.

An inimitable and prolific songwriter, Robertson was also a high school dropout who often distanced himself from music, perhaps bothered by the lack of credit musicians are given for their minds. In interviews Robertson comes off as a guy uncomfortable with his own unique genius, reminiscent of the kind of grown men who’ve learned all they know from throwing the I Ching, watching arty movies and reading Aldous Huxley books. He speaks glowingly of the religio-psychedelic writings of Carlos Castaneda and filmmakers such as Francois Truffaut, Akira Kurosawa and Luis Buñuel. Martin Scorsese, the young director in charge of The Last Waltz, became a close friend.

To an extent, such studies damaged Robertson‘s considerable inborn talent. While his later songs dwelt concretely upon legends, forced migration and mystic history — “Daniel and the Sacred Harp,” “Acadian Driftwood,” “The Saga of Pepote Rouge” — he was best when his cloudy myths were viewed through cloudy eyes and effortlessly tapped the magic illogic of rock. What are “Rag Mama Rag” and “The Weight” about, anyway? In “When You Awake,” a kid sits on his grandfather’s knee and Papa explains:

“When you awake you will remember ev‘rything
You will be hangin’ on a string from your…
When you believe, you will relieve the only soul
That you were born with to grow old and never know.”

The Band were a bunch of Canadian hayseeds (save for Helm, a Southern hayseed). They drifted together in Toronto under the aegis of an obscure rockabilly performer, Ronnie Hawkins. Joining one by one, they were all in his band, the Hawks, as of 1961, but they left him in 1964. (Other names they recorded under or considered include the Canadian Squires, the Honkies and the Crackers.) Used to playing fraternity parties and dark, bloody bars, they were plucked from obscurity in the fall of 1965 when Bob Dylan chose them to back him on his electric folk-rock world tour. (Again, save for Helm: Sick of the booing that greeted his first few dates with Dylan, he quit and moved back to Arkansas for the span of the tour.) Documented on innumerable bootlegs and 1998‘s Live 1966, the Hawks were electric Dylan’s wild mercury sound.

The tour‘s final show was in May 1966; Dylan’s legendary motorcycle accident happened in July. To recover, he retreated to Woodstock, and The Band joined him. There they recorded collaborative demos (which later emerged as The Basement Tapes) off and on throughout 1967 at Big Pink, the group‘s gathering place. After helping Dylan define rock on tour, they now explored folk music’s outer edges, drawing out new shapes and sounds, weaving in strands of ‘50s and ’60s R&B.

When their debut came out in 1968, they faced a barren field. If only by virtue of others‘ exhaustion, the group had beaten out the competition. The Beatles had retired from live performance in August 1966; mired in fame, the Rolling Stones were in the midst of a two-year concert hiatus; Dylan would perform in public only five times over the following six and a half years, three of those backed by or accompanying The Band.

No other musicians had a better claim to being The Band, the word, an archetypal form. In The Last Waltz, Manuel recalls how they came upon it: “It was right in the middle of that whole psychedelic era. Chocolate Subway and Marshmallow Overcoat. Those kind of names, you know?” The world was still fascinated by psychedelic musings and free love; The Band posed in old-timey clothes more 19th century than 1960, and their first album featured a center-spread photograph with the group surrounded by four generations of family and the headline “Next of Kin.”

The Band were the last great rock band before the music began to eat itself and mock its own conventions, before the Ramones and Led Zeppelin, before the genre needed prefixes such as “punk” or “classic.” Dylan had combined folk and rock to create an electrified amalgam — savage and hot. The Band cooled off that molten sound and conceived of a new music combining all that we had heard before. Dylan turned poetry into pop music; The Band found the poetry inherent in pop music’s sound. On their albums you hear pure rock spouting out in a howl as loud and clear as that which Robert Johnson gave to the blues.

Explaining my affection for The Band is like describing the rain or answering the dumbest of questions: What is love like? Is the heart a vessel or a bell? Is it a thing that starts out empty and needs to be filled, or a sympathetic tone you hit by chance? Insofar as that‘s concerned, The Band are of two minds.

The vessel: When pressed, I might tell you the only Band record worth having is the self-titled sophomore album (usually known as the Brown One, after the cover’s color). It‘s rollicking, warbling, snarling and smooth, like listening to all the best singles of the ’50s, ‘60s and ’70s at the same time while you barrel up and down the slopes of a rickety roller coaster. And here it is, from “Up on Cripple Creek,” The Band‘s sole Top 30 single:

“Up on Cripple Creek, she sends me
If I spring a leak, she mends me
I don’t have to speak, she defends me
A drunkard‘s dream, if I ever did see one.”

Love is a vessel. Keep me filled or set me loose.

A bell: After the Brown One came The Band’s quick descent into Malibu, heroin, solo turns at the mike, and pablum — five increasingly disappointing full-lengths on Capitol and three double live albums. (The latter two are middling — Before the Flood with Dylan; the indulgent Last Waltz — but the first one, Rock of Ages, is great.) Yet if this is the sound of your heart, you never want that ringing to stop, and it won‘t if you pay heed to the proper frequencies. The fifth song on Northern Cross–Southern Lights tells me this. First there’s an insistent bass line and a couple of clinking synth fills; next there‘s a call from the guitar, a response from some horns. Up comes the chorus, and all three voices pull together as they hadn’t since the Brown One:

“Ring your bell
Change your number
Run like hell
You can‘t hide from thunder
Oh no.”

Hold off the rain. Love is a bell.

There are many risks to a life in the arts. The one that bothers me most is how entertainment can become work. It’s a very different experience to go to a concert hoping to take flight, and to merely attend a concert with an eye toward networking, and a sense that the machinery behind the live show (the soundman, the seller of merch, the collection of money) is your responsibility to troubleshoot. The latter requires a level of heightened attention that wards off states of ecstasy and grace. Last week returned me to first principles at least twice — I went to a Pulp show as a civilian and saw my cousin Max lead a mosh pit in Times Square. Yes, I was backstage for the latter show — but as a proud relative, not as a scheming puller of strings. It’s different. Since I often claim that my music businesses involvements are more about family than commerce, I hope I can cling to these feelings.

PS – The photo at top is not by me. The bottom photo is.

Awhile back I read Tracy Kidder’s excellent Mountains Beyond Mountains, an inspiring portrait of physician Paul Farmer’s work in the area of public health, specifically the pioneering work he’s done in Haiti. FYI, I was not inspired to read it by the Arcade Fire’s charitable giving to the cause, though it’s easy to see, in this book, why they, in turn, were inspired to give so generously of their time, resources and fan attention.

This particularly beautiful passage gives an account of what it’s like to have what they call “a calling” to be driven by that peculiarly human kind of passion, in all of its illogic. When one has “a calling” how it is is, often, just how it has to be. And don’t let my use of the word “beautiful” give you the wrong ideas. The passage is actually rather dry, delivered in the matter-of-fact manner in which, I imagine, Dr. Farmer works & thinks. The beauty is in a person hovering above the mundane efficiencies of 20th century management thinking, who knows that the way to get things done is, sometimes, to just move inexorably toward a goal with a force & intensity that others are simply incapable of maintaining.

[The former dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, Howard] Hiatt seemed to say, [Paul Farmer] should be solely engaged in the battle against those scourges, and at a level commensurate with their size. “The six months a year that Paul’s looking after patients one-on-one in Haiti, if that time were converted to a major program for treating prisoners with TB in Russia and other eastern European countries, or malaria around the world, or AIDS in southern Africa–it doesn’t matter where or what because you know he’ll do important things. Because look at what he’s done with only part of his time on MDR. Look what he’s done with his skills and his political acumen! I have been urging him to take the role of consultant in Haiti and spend most of his time on worldwide projects.”

Farmer was forty now, and he had the credentials to operate in the way Hiatt envisioned, on a purely executive level. In academic circles his reputation had grown. He was about to become a tenured Harvard professor. He was near the head of the line for the big prizes in medical anthropology; some of his peers were now saying that he’d “redefined” the field. As for his standing in clinical medicine, he’d become one of the doctors whom medical schools, in Europe as well as in the United States, invite to their campuses to deliver the lectures known as grand rounds. At the Brigham the surgeons had recently asked that he lecture to them, a signal honor not often granted to a mere medical doctor. He also sat on a number of councils in international health, and he’d made his views heard. But he didn’t seem disposed to abandon any side of his work, including seeing patients one-on-one in Haiti.

It wasn’t as though Farmer didn’t want to do all he could to cure the world of poverty and disease. He just had his own ideas on how to go about it. Actually, he seemed to be the only person who understood the plan fully. A young assistant of his once said to him, in exasperation, that he had no priorities. That wasn’t true, he replied. Patients came first, prisoners second, and students third. But you could see how the assistant might have felt lost in the details.

…and, for once, that’s all I have to say about that.

These days people believe anything you dream is possible right now — that niche audiences deserve to be served — and that what can be done should be done. I’m reminded of the quote from Brion Gysin: “I could easily blast so much keef night and day I become a bouhali; a real-gone crazy, a holy untouchable madman unto whom everything is permitted, nothing is true.”

But here’s the thing transgression used to be the thing on the edges; now it is the center of our reality.

I’d call the prospect of a building like the one depicted up above to be quite futuristic but here’s the thing, that video is from 2008. Initially it was claimed that this Dynamic Tower would be built by 2010. If it were so, this blog post would probably be more reportage than speculation. But the Wikipedia entry on the building shows that the dreams of the project’s architect, David Fisher, take after the internet in more ways than one:

In 2008, the designer of the Dynamic Tower said that he expected it to be completed in 2010. In 2009 Fisher claimed to finish construction late 2011. However, construction has not started yet, and there has been no official announcement of the building site. Fisher did not “say where the tower would be built, [...] because he wanted to keep it a surprise.”

Fisher distributed a biography which said he received an honorary doctorate from “The Prodeo Institute at Columbia University in New York”. No such institution exists, and Columbia said it had never awarded Fisher an honorary degree. Fisher acknowledges that he is not well known, has never built a skyscraper before and hasn’t practiced architecture regularly in decades.

Anyway, my favorite section of the project’s official website is this one, wherein there are excellent half-baked ruminations on “the concept of time” and “history and the fourth dimension.” If you are a regular reader of this here blog, you will know I am a great fan of half-baked ruminations.

Then again, reality is often just as surprising as people’s babbling fictions.

Don’t believe me?

Well, a former colleague recently reminded me of the time I did work for these people:

Headquarters of The Longaberger Company (exterior view)

Headquarters of The Longaberger Company (interior view)

This building borrows its the shape from the company’s best-selling product, the “Medium Market Basket.”

Indeed.

Optimism about such blue-sky futures varies from person-to-person. For example, the innovator of the basket-shaped building did not find as much enthusiasm for his dreams among his heirs.

The basket handles weigh almost 150 tons and can be heated during cold weather to prevent ice damage. Originally, [founder] Dave Longaberger wanted all of the Longaberger buildings to be shaped like baskets, but only the headquarters was completed at the time of his death. After his death, further basket-shaped buildings were vetoed by his daughters.

In summation, I have mixed feelings about these kinds of buildings. I mean, the Dynamic Tower strikes me as the Lamborghini of the architectural world — you should know what I mean by that — but I hope all freakish heart beats strong for a long, long time.

Hell, maybe the internet deserves an even madder Max.

We live in a world which (if the consistently apocalyptic tone of most media reports are to be believed) is quite redolent of Mel Gibson’s breakthrough film — out-of-gas, out-of-hope, ready to abandon our fading settlement upon rumor of a brighter kingdom just past the next ridge. The internet is a perfectly ephemeral medium for this kind of world. By contrast, I remember when I fancied myself more of a proper writer, rather than someone merely capable of writing well & conveying stories and feelings. I treated each word on a screen like letters etched on marble tablets — each one carefully placed, every publication a monument to some kind of pretension. On the ‘net, however, I’ve come to realize words are more like water or, better, something sweeter. Nowadays, I see each new web platform as a honeycomb to be sucked dry until there’s only a husk to leave behind.

And so I’d like to point you toward my latest internet property alechanleybemis.tumblr.com where I’ve gone practically wordless, choosing instead to focus on concerts & photographs. I like to think I’ve opened an online museum to ephemeral feelings, a museum that may close without warning, at any time. But one that’s devoted to featuring some of the more elevating & tipsy-making aspects of our world. Contrast Mad Max with the wild dancing that happens on the edges of darkness.

Two shining examples of the exhibits on display after the jump. Follow me or don’t. If you agree with Drake it’s probably not for you; but if you understand David Foster Wallace’s wiser words, it will make sense to you.

Alastair Galbraith: “Huxley” (1991)

“To me, my musical career is not as important as my life itself, and that was something I’ve found very difficult about touring. I am always ‘Alastair Galbraith: The Musician,’ and it’s hard to feel like you’re still a painter, or a person who likes walking around picking up driftwood or whatever else you may be.” (via KILLED in CARS)

St. Vincent: “Your Lips Are Red” (2009)

UPDATED MARCH 26, 2012: In response to a commentator who took this post to be rather darker & more pessimistic than I intended it to be, I’ve re-written much of the above. Indeed, words on the internet are like water.

In short: Too much sales pitch. — Not enough context.

That said, they’re usually inspiring — and we live in a world where inspiration is sometimes in short supply. So, without further adieu, an example of how music makes things possible and how it is, indeed, the universal language.

Need proof?
Viz the massive success then enjoyed by Bruce Hornsby and his Range, probably Bon Iver’s most oft-cited influence.

Well, eventually “perfect sound forever” (that sales slogan was used to convince people of the necessity of the compact disc) met “Perfect Sound Forever” — and the (supposedly ascendent) indie rock aesthetic was born…

But that’s an entirely different blog rant.

What I’m here to talk about right now is how/why Bon Iver as a live proposition is such a different sounding thing than he is on record. I mean fuuuuuuuuck, look at this:

“Perth”

Whoa!
What do we think of this band?
Uh, here’s a hint: We think a whole lot of this band!
Actually let’s break the narrative for a second and realize that the above didn’t even feature Justin Vernon’s band — rather it was a collaboration with The Roots — and let’s furthermore call a spade a spade. None of these people playing behind him are a band; in each case, what they are, is his band.

(Oh, geez, no pun intended with that phrase — this kind of thing will get you in trouble these days:

End parenthetical.)

Point being the records by the “band” Bon Iver are masterminded by Justin Vernon & then re-created by a very capable (emphasis on the VERY) live band. The major falsehood of these albums is the band concept. Even the game show Jeopardy is on to this ruse:

But perhaps the falsity is what he’s going for?

Let’s consider the vehicle of a band as one more way that Vernon is able to plot out creative space for himself. It’s allowed him to dabble freely in groups such as Gayngs without the high stakes expectation for his Bon Iver records; and, eventually, it will allow for the inevitable solo albums which will follow when/if a backlash against Bon Iver sets in, or when boredom (his own, his fanbase’s) sets in. (That process may begin this very weekend if he happens to win a Grammy on Sunday night…)

(There is plenty of precedent for this. If Tom Petty & Bruce Springsteen & Palace Music (aka Will Oldham) can go solo even though everyone already thought they were solo artists, so can Vernon. Hell, to extend the rock-historical lineage into speculative history, maybe it would have made more aesthetic sense if some of Neil’s albums were credited to just plain Crazy Horse.

Songs like that are more than Neil Young, alone. End parenthetical.)

Anyway, I’m rambling again! It’s my blog and I can do that if I want to, but I know it gets kinda snoozy & hard to follow, so let’s take another awesome music break:

“Holocene”

Basically, what I want everyone to consider while reading this post is the notion of authenticity. Does such a thing even exist in the performing arts? I’d argue it does not. There are just different depths of falsehood.

Some related admissions: I kind of liked Madonna on last weekend’s Super Bowl halftime show. (She seems to be simultaneously stealing MNDR’s thunder, quoting Toni Basil & engaging in the deeply self-referential self-promotional hijinx of hip-hop.) And I don’t get why people are so pissed about Lana Del Rey. (It’s kind of like being angry about blue Gatorade. Everyone can agree that in the right mood it can taste pretty delicious. But did anyone really ever think it was natural?)

To summarize: real vs. fake = whatever!
Good vs. bad = priceless.

Good music always wins out in the end. And, right now, think what you will about the records he makes as Bon Iver, Justin Vernon in the live sphere is operating at a place of goodness so far beyond his indie rocking contemporaries, ya’ gotta just let your tongue hang out & your drool pool where it may.

“Beth/Rest”

Note: That song wasn’t as good as the other two of his that I posted. Sorry not to end on the highest note.

Happy now?