All posts by Stephen Macaulay

Articles

A Word About Zevon: Mesothelioma

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One of these days, not so very long from now, we’ll be reading of the death of Warren Zevon, who has been diagnosed with mesothelioma. When you see words like mesothelioma, you know it’s bad. What is mesothelioma? Cancer. From his lungs to his liver. Maybe he’ll kick it. Maybe.

I first saw Zevon perform in the early ’80s. In Rockford, Illinois. Home of Cheap Trick. It was at the 10,000-seat Metro Centre. You’ve got to watch it when places spell words like center as though they are, what?—Canadians? The Metro Centre was one of Rockford’s moves to revitalize the city center. The slab-sided structure hard on the banks of the Sinnissippi River is an aluminum siding salesman’s wet dream. The wonders of urban renewal. When Zevon took the stage, the place was damn near empty. Maybe the potential audience didn’t get the word about the renewal. “ROCKford! ROCKford! How can you miss with a name like ROCKford!?!” Zevon shouted. The man is nothing if not ironic. Which probably explains a lot of things. Like the empty seats.

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Articles

For What It’s Worth

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The Sunday New York Times for November 3 ran a front-page story—below the fold, but still on the front page—on rap music that was undoubtedly assigned as a result of the murder of Jam Master Jay the preceding week. What is striking about the story is that the first person quoted is Bert Padell, “an accountant whose clients include Madonna, Run DMC and others.” While this may seem to be somewhat unusual, it should be noted that the subject of the article, which is headlined “In Rap Industry, Rivalries as Marketing Tool,” states, “Now with rap album sales even more depressed than the music industry as a whole, these rivalries”—as in the East Coast vs. the West Coast, for example—”may hold a key to its turnaround.” Great. People rhymin’ against one another, people shootin’ one another… All for a turnaround.

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Notes from the Overground: Califone and Wilco in Ann Arbor

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Wilco and Califone at the Michigan Theater, October 25, 2002

Having never heard Califone, and knowing that GloNo‘s Derek Phillips had interviewed the band’s Tim Rutili, before going to Ann Arbor to see the show, I asked him what I should expect. He replied, “slow, blues-based weirdness. Strange melodies and lyrics.” I checked out the Califone web presence, I saw that the band is described as playing “a series of gorgeous and personal hymnals delivered with the electro-rustic vocabulary of one of america’s most original bands.” When I saw Jim Becker pick up a banjo, I thought to myself, “Uh-oh, we’re entering the land of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.” Now, I don’t have anything against the banjo. But I wasn’t in the mood to listen to something that would smack of a soundtrack to Ken Burns’s “The Civil War” or the like. I should have paid more attention to the teen queen stickers affixed to the front of Rutili’s electric piano to know that this was not going to be anything like that.

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The Renaissance, Freud, & jackass: the movie

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Whether or not there is music in jackass: the movie is completely irrelevant. There probably is. But I doubt that this MTV/Paramount production (let’s not give too much credence to the “MTV” portion as both firms are owned by Viacom, so the fact that MTV provides some level of cred to the film is really irrelevant: it is nothing more than a certain type of conduit through which the wares of the firm that owns things including CBS, Showtime, Comedy Central, Infinity Broadcasting, Blockbuster, etc., etc., etc. are marketed) is something that people come away from humming a tune. That’s because, by and large, sound is irrelevant to jackass: the movie. In fact, it could be a completely silent film, one done, in effect in pantomime.

While certain people will undoubtedly decry the film is being moronic, filthy, puerile, and otherwise disgusting—which it is—what many people undoubtedly overlook is the fact that the exploits of Johnny Knoxville and his crew of post-juvenile delinquents are actually fundamentals of historic performance and psychology.

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Articles

NAKED WOMEN & FREE BEER

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I am troubled. I’m not sure that this is worth it. Writing this, that is.

I’ve just read that Playboy is in trouble. No, not because of some scandalous, provocative pose of a has-been actress who is hoping that by showing her surgical enhancements in contorted poses she’ll be able to get work beyond dinner theater in Dubuque. Nor is it because there is a remarkable revelation in one of the magazine’s legendary interviews. (Has anyone noticed that they’re “legendary” in the sense of being from a long time ago, almost in a galaxy far away—that either what’s being said to the interviews isn’t particularly noteworthy, or that “Entertainment Tonight” scoops it?)

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Johnny Winter’s Revenge

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Several years ago, I saw what was arguably the most bizarre concert lineup this side of something that was shown back in the day by NBC on a Friday night, when it figured it would cash in more on people interested in music than Doc Severinsin and the Tonight Orchestra could provide. This arena event had Three Dog Night as its headline. (Unfortunately, the guy who had the car wanted to see them, so I couldn’t leave.) The opening acts were Johnny Winter and Rod Stewart. Realize that this was Rod when he still, well, rocked and wasn’t in a rocking chair. It was just after he’d left the Faces. The Rod Stewart Album was fresh. (An album that has what is arguably one of the best covers of all time: a version of “Street Fighting Man.”)

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Articles

Just Listen

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I

Generally, we write about music here on GloNo, as many people tend to do. And while one might think that writing about music takes music as its direct subject, the preposition really works more in the context of location. That is, when I write about music, generally speaking it is in the vicinity of the object, rather than about the thing in itself. Writing about music in this sense deals with the context, the surroundings. The reception. The economics. The politics. The performance vis-à-vis something else. The personality.

Writing about music is completely extrinsic. It’s not about the music. Whether it can be—in any but the most superficial sense—remains to be seen. Or written.

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The Decline & Fall of the Music Industry Empire

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Is it possible that the music industry as we know it—as an industry—may cease to exist? Don’t be entirely surprised if that, indeed, comes to pass. Why, you may wonder, what could bring this industry to its knees, and beyond? Well, it’s like this: the recording industry is in the proverbial tank financially, and it seems as though it is continuing in that container, in part due to its own heavy-handedness.

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Articles

The End

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While I had the good fortune not to have to go to war in Southeast Asia during my teens, some of my friends were not so lucky. (Luck, it should be noted, was involved because there was a lottery system enacted, but in its case, the “prize” wasn’t exactly the same as striking it rich via the Big Game or Powerball.) Many of the stories they came back with were too grotesque to contemplate—Coppola’s Apocalypse Now wasn’t an exaggeration or caricature, it seems. One of the things that invariably came up in their stories was the music in the bars.

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