Friday, April 29, 2005 1:46 PM | Matthew Jeanes Do you ever get that feeling that Nine Inch Nails would be one of your favorite bands if it had a different person writing and singing the words? I do. {0} Comments 11:36 AM | Matthew Jeanes The picture below might seem to speak for itself, but after you've had a chance to gaze on it for a second, stick with me: What we have here is an image that's bound to wind up on the Daily Show and become the butt of many jokes about how the US Government is turning to costumed super heroes to fight the war on terror. In reality, what this image represents is a little more insidious than that, I think. I'm not one for flag waving as I think it's too simplistic of a gesture that is too easily misinterpreted as "love it or leave it." That sort of ultimatum usually assumes that you love it unconditionally, that you don't question or subvert or try to improve "it," and as should be apparent, I'm not down with that. So what we have here is a company (Marvel Comics) using the DoD's "America Supports You" campaign to get a little press and spread some rah-rah patriotism to the troops. I don't have a problem with that. Comics have been given out to troops going all the way back to WWII, and comics have often dealt with wars and current events in real time, whether it was Captain America fighting Nazis or Spider-Man reacting to the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center. Keeping comics topical is a good thing. What disappoints me and ultimately makes this a lose-win situation is that Marvel is using it for publicity, and so the motives become tainted. Marvel is, after all, a corporation that's out to make a profit. Hell, I have a share of Marvel stock framed up on my wall (it was a gift), and the dividends on the splits in the stock are well on their way to paying for the framing! The thing is, I'd like to see companies like Marvel doing this without being asked, without turning it into a photo op, and without making any money from the deal. Marvel isn't selling these books to troops, but they are no doubt reaping a reward for having Captain America's picture taken with Rumsfeld. Parents will see this, educators will see this, and kids will see this, and all of them are being bombarded by Marvel Comics from a hundred different directions. Since comics are still aimed largely at kids (though that rarely seems to be who buys them,) this whole thing gets very confusing and troublesome. Is a picture of Captain America and Spider-Man with Rumsfeld an endorsement of the current administration's practices? Even though a lot of the Marvel books lean pretty far left, that's what the photo op will become. By associating a beloved figure like Spider-Man with Rumsfeld, the whole thing winds up being a spit and polish job for a man who's entirely undeserving of it. Not only that, but the book itself is all chest-thumping patriotism with a huge American flag on the cover that even Wolverine (a Canadian) is saluting! It all looks very petty, even if some of it is rooted in a noble idea. {0} Comments Thursday, April 28, 2005 11:35 AM | Matthew Jeanes There's a relatively new system out on the market called ClearPlay that is designed to filter out offensive content from movies so that puritan-leaning parents can watch things like Goodfellas with their 8 year olds. The phenomenon is disturbing a lot of people, but I think mainly for the wrong reasons. The studios are trying to sue over copyright, creators of movies are understandably distressed about their work being misrepresented for sanitized home viewing, and movie fans are up-in-arms about creator rights and artistic vision. To me, the problem is not about copyright and ownership at all. We all want to have some modicum of control over our environment and our lives. I've bitched about not being able to get a sandwich made the way I like it at a deli, and that's just a minor example of the same thing that folks with the ClearPlay system are doing. They want to see the world in their own way: to restructure and filter everything about the world that doesn't fit in with their existing worldview. Evolution in school textbooks?--not for my kids! Dirty words in popular music?--I'll take the clean version (available at Wal-Mart) please. Too much sex and violence in movies?--now there's ClearPlay to fix that! People have taken the simple urge to shape their surroundings into something more pleasant and palpable and mutated it into a set of cultural blinders that reject or ignore that the world isn't really a PG place. We need violence in movies sometimes. We need to see graphic sex sometimes. There IS a difference between saying "FUCK THIS JOB" and "dang this job!" I understand not wanting to sit through the profanity-fest that is "Glengarry, Glen Ross" but then, I don't understand why anyone would want to see what's left of the movie when you cut out all of the swearing! I think people ought to have the right to re-edit movies at home, or filter movies for their families if they really want to. It's depressing that there are enough people out there with this worldview that a product like ClearPlay is viable, but I respect people's right to use it. Unfortunately, the end result of this can't be anything good. If parents don't want their kids to see Scream 3, the solution is to not allow them to see it, not to show them a neutered, edited version and pretend that it was a PG film all along. The world outside of these ClearPlay DVD players is not edited for content, or formatted to fit your screen. Let's hope people growing up in these households are ready for that. {0} Comments Monday, April 18, 2005 10:50 AM | Matthew Jeanes How to Rock a Live Show Something we get asked a lot is "how do you guys perform?" and it's a question that's not only about the technical side of things, but about the way to keep two guys (or one guy) with laptops from looking like a college computer lab in the dark. I think when we're on, we have a pretty good live show. I'm not always confident about mixes and about recording stuff, and I'm not going to say we have the best designs or the coolest website or anything, but I think when it comes time to rock a show, we do pretty well. So, with that in mind, here are the things I keep in mind about live shows. This only relates to me and to what I like to see, so obviously, this list is only as useful to you as your experiences are similar to mine, but here goes: Get the right tools. Rock bands don't seem to have as much of a problem understanding this, but the instrument you play determines a lot about how you will come off onstage. A lot of folks are boiling everything down to just a laptop which is what we do, but in doing that, you have to treat whatever program it is you are using like your instrument. You need to be skilled, not just competent with it. If you were playing guitar with only a rudimentary understanding of how the guitar worked, you'd come off as amateurish. It's the same with software. Just learn whatever tool it is you want to use, and get used to performing with it, not just composing with it. Throw away your mouse. A mouse is not an adequate interface for an instrument 90% of the time. Pointing and clicking and dragging all takes fairly precise, deliberate movement. That's not condusive to any sort of physicality in a performance, so lose the mouse. Get a midi controler with knobs or sliders or touch pads, or a mixer, or build your own box that interfaces with something, or get a bunch of pedals and stomp on them, but don't expect anyone to want to watch you running a mouse pointer along on the screen. It just ain't sexy. Practice. I've heard from people time and again "we just wrote this song today" or "we just hooked up midi for the first time 10 minutes ago." That's fine if you want to fly by the seat of your pants and hope that it all works. Really seasoned performers can improv like that and if you work with someone else for long enough, it's sometimes easier to anticipate things and do it on the fly. But the one thing I think a lot of folks forget is that you need to practice. This doesn't mean remixing and recomposing tracks over and over until you have a live version, or playing around with something for 45 minutes high on weed and fascinated by everything. It means figuring out your setlist or what you want to accomplish live, then doing it over and over again with no one watching until you know you can do it. It will honestly take some of the spontenaiety and risk out of your live performance, but if you are confident in your ability to pull of the set, you can experiment live. It's one of those "know the rules before you break the rules" kinds of things. Your music needs to groove. (Keep in mind that I said that this is just my take on things, based on what I like.) For the most part, watching a guy who's written some home-grown software to process streaming mic feeds into shards of digital sound, no matter how cerebrally interesting, does not make for a good show. You can't engage an audience with any energy if you aren't producing some energy yourself. Drone ambient sets are cool, and can have their place, but 90% of the people I see are trying to play some sort of beats live. If you can't get that shit to groove, people won't know how to move to it. Groove is a subjective thing, but as fractured and intricate as Richard Devine's music is, it still grooves. Autechre, though impossible to count off, still grooves. You can have really chaotic beats that groove, the key is just maintaining a rhythm that relates to people. Leave the really experimental and ambient stuff at home if you want an audience to get pumped up during your set. Move Sucka! It's all starting to congeal, isn't it? If you have practiced to where you know your set backwards and forwards, and if you have the right tools to allow you to be expressive, and if you write or at least select the right tunes that have a groove, you can pull it all together and get into it live. Usually, the stoic laptop screen face comes from people who are too involved in some minutae in their software, or too worried that something will fuck up, or are trying to compose live on the spot with a mouse, to be able to react to the music in real time. If you are slamming beats, your body needs to show some semblance of a reaction. A head nod is fine, jumping up and down wildly is great, but something for the audience to key off of is a must. I love Cocteau Twins, but their live set is boring and terrible because it's a bunch of guys staring at the ceiling struming guitars, motionless. It's not fun to watch, it sounds beautiful, but so do the records. You should probably be sweating at the end of a good show, or at least moving around. No sitting. We all sit every day in front of a computer. It's boring. It encourages a lethargic, office-worker-like physical presence. Most people aren't used to rocking out in a chair, so the moment you sit down, the chair automatically pulls your energy level down. We've tried chairs and it never works. I always kick the chair out after a minute or two because it feels like a prison. Don't do too much. Performing is not composing. For people who use generative software or high intensity processing plugins and stuff, this can be hard to work out, but the goal of your live show doesn't have to be 'create an album of material in real time.' There' a balance between playing mp3s from your hard drive and acting like you are doing something, and trying to produce every sound on the spot with two hands. Make your set a jounrey. Playing live should be about more than throwing some songs together to fill 45 minutes of time and space. I like shows best when they are themselves a journey with a definied beginning and ending. When someone finishes a set and I can't tell if it's over or if it's just stopped for a moment, that's bad. I don't obsess over set lists, but I do plan them out so that the music takes you from point A to B to C in a deliberate way. It's always good to go out with a bang, too. Never wear out your welcome. I've been asked to play 60 and 90 minute sets and I usually back that down to 45 minutes at most. somewhere between 30-45 minutes is optimal for me. I always think you need to leave people wanting more rather than leave them feeling like "the first 30 minutes was cool, but..." Know when to stop. In the weird and rare event of an encore, be ready to do something fun, but it's much better to be done, to walk out, and to leave people so amped that they just have to buy some merch. :) Of course, knowing when and where to break those rules is the key, too. Laptop/computer performance is still in its infancy. For every Cex or Otto von Shirach, there's a hundred bald dudes who look like they could be updating their stock portfolio to a beat. The main thing I always keep in mind is that while writing and recording music may be a very personal thing, something that as an artist I do for myself, performing live is for an audience. If you aren't engaging and communicating with an audience in real time, your live show is pointless. If you are going to plink and plonk with some generative synth toys, make sure you've booked the right venue for it, and don't expect people in a dance or rock club to get too excited over your technically marvellous science fair-dub. {0} Comments Friday, April 15, 2005 12:00 AM | Matthew Jeanes Just a few quick observations about NBC. When a show like "Revelations" is a "mini-series," is it really possible for the show to have a "guest star"? Doesn't the "guest" in "guest star" indicate that the person is not a part of the regular day to day cast, and if the show is a mini-series, isn't there NOT a day to day cast? Also on the Revelations tip, any show that puts Bill Haverchuck back on the air is a must-see event for me. Check this out for more details on the always amazing Martin Starr You Suck, Dallas Rules! There used to be a site called haverchuck.org but it's gone now. :( Lastly, Stone Phillips is now better at doing Rob Lowe doing Stone Phillips than he is at being himself. Seriously. {0} Comments Monday, April 11, 2005 4:44 PM | Matthew Jeanes At an office party the other day, someone was filling up drinks for everyone and asking each person what he/she wanted. We had two kinds of Sprite, regular and "Aruba Jam Remix" flavor. I wanted to try the "Aruba Jam" just because it was new and what the hey. (It's okay, but not as good as the Berry Clear Remix or whatver it's called.) The next guy behind me also wanted to try this, so when he asked for his drink, he said "Sprite Remix" and I was just like "whoa, that's wrong!" This seemed like a weird overreaction to me, so I thought about it some. I've always thought the idea of calling these new fruit-flavored Sprites "Remixes" was one of the great examples of the Coca-Cola Company trying too hard to be street and to sell sugar water to urban kids and people who drive Scions. In fact, Coke is so up their own ass with the street marketing and wannabe hip ad campaigns for its soda brands, I almost forgot that these Sprites were called "Remixes" and just resigned myself to the fact that no matter what I say or do, the knobs at Coke will keep on pushing this down kids throats until "Remix" isn't cool anymore. If they thought they could get away with Bling Coke, I'm sure they would. But I guess to me, in my head, I always think of these new Sprites as eith "Tropical This" or "Berry That," taking "Remix" out of the equation to preserve my own sanity. When I heard someone actually utter the words "Sprite Remix," I was horrified. And this is where the problem really kicks off: it's the commercialization of culture that turns something once interesting or unique into a commodity and a sales pitch. It's what happens when you have DJs selling candy because Twix bars supposedly "Mix two great flavors." It's what results from Coke paying illegal ad placement companies to plaster up Coke viral banners and ads all over the urban landscape. It's the cool hunters, the young ad execs hired and promoted because they have their finger on the youth market, the graphitti artists selling their work for jeans and shoe ads, street artists exhibiting at museums, sponsored by Sprite and Scion... you get a vibrant and expressive culture (in this case, hip hop) distilled into a brand. Call it the Hip Hop Lifestyle Brand, and suddenly, it's just Martha Stewart for young people with baggy pants. And when the street fights back, the new kids don't buy the hype anymore, and people are tired of their rebellion, their expression, and their own, self-defined identity being used by corporate hacks, the hacks go and repackage their youth product lines to incoporate that new angst. "We're with you man, we hate the suits as much as you!" Eventually, kids get too old to care, start worrying about car and house payments and jobs and laundry and lawn care and suddenly, the fight's been taken out of everyone by reducing the tools for fighting to bubble gum wrappers and soda cans. A Sprite Remix doesn't lead to a global meltdown of all subversive culture, but sometimes, it feels like it might. There's a new McDonald's commercial on TV where a fast food drone tries to convince his skeptical friend that McDonalds ISN'T an evil, conniving black ops agency trying to brainwash people into eating Chicken Strips. His spooked buddy even calls an old lady who likes the chicken "a plant," which is an internet anti-corporate, anti-viral marketing rallying cry if ever there was one. And we've been assimilated once again. Keep fighting the good fight. {0} Comments Thursday, April 07, 2005 3:54 PM | Matthew Jeanes Goofy auctions are fun. Someone needs to be compiling a book or writing a movie about all the weird stuff that goes down on ebay. I remember looking at haunted painting auctions years ago and marvelling at the time people put into the stories they concocted about stupid paintings they bought at garage sales. People have auctioned off souls (their own and, famously, Moby's), their internal organs, babies, half-eaten sandwiches, and boxes of useless junk. I wish ebay would archive these things longer because there's a rich history of comedy there. The latest craze is auctioning off naming rights to things. People are getting tattoos for casinos, or naming their babies after websites, or auctioning off the naming rights for buildings, cars, and other crap. Naming things, I learned in the non-profit world, is a way you can make money out of nothing. Putting a name above something is an awareness opportunity for companies who's marketing plan calls for them to barrage people with the company name over and over, but it's not much else. So what's that worth to you? What's it worth to name the concession stand at an 80-seat indie movie theater that has not yet opened and is struggling to make the needed repairs so that they can open? That's the question we can all answer by watching this auction for the next 10 days. It's one more in a string of auction/publicity stunts, but it's one from a young couple trying to open a movie theater, so it's kind of interesting for a change. Bryan tipped me off to the Moxie Blog quite some time ago and now it's come to this. Will someone bid this thing through the roof? Will GoldenCasino.com name the concession stand? Would it sell for more if it were haunted? Only time will tell. {0} Comments Monday, April 04, 2005 3:04 PM | Matthew Jeanes There are a great many things about the end of the Pope that are disturbing to me, but an 84 year old man dying is least among them. This brings to mind how I find sympathy over the deaths of people I don't know hard to come by. Sure, I feel the tragedy of death and loss just as much as anyone, but it's difficult to know what to say or how to react when someone you only know through other people or from the tv has passed on. Evidence that I am not alone in this is everywhere, as people weep hysterically, talk about what a shame it is to lose the Pope, and generally recount how important and wonderful of a man he was. Firstly, the man was 84 years old, past the normal life expectancy, and certainly past it for anyone who's survived an attempted assassination! Anyone who's heard the Pope speaking in the last two years or so knows that he's been growing more feeble and unintelligible with his advanced age and health problems. That he is finally at rest should be a comforting thought, not a sad one. He honestly had little left to offer the world, he had more than done his share of good here, and each and every one of us is going to have our ticket called at some point. It's not a shame that he died, it's the natural conclusion to a long life, well-spent. If we consider it a shame, it means to suggest that we would have liked him to live longer, probably indefinitely. For what? Next, the man was no doubt a wonderful guy and he's always been a strong leader of his people in that very non-binding way that the Catholic chruch is set up. He's always held a firm stance on moral issues and he's been a high profile moral compass for a lot of folks who don't want to look for answers but like them handed down from an authority. That said, the man was adhering to a strictly conservative Biblical worldview that didn't jive or provide much relevant guidance in the modern world. No birth control? No women as priests? No homosexuals? If the Pope had been a Senator from Alabama, he would have been villified and people would have cheered his death like the end of the old guard. But he's the Pope, and he is given near-instant saint-dom in the eyes of so many people who see him as a peaceful, loving older man. I'm sure he was that, but he wasn't a voice for tremendous social common sense. Finally, the very public display of his dead body seems a bit crass and full of the kind of idolitry that the Catholic church is always bordering on. The Bible doesn't provide for lavish chruches, huge beauracracies, public worship of a man of the church like JP, and all the other materialistic and sensationalist things they have and do there in Vatican City. Nevertheless, people look past all of that and see wonders in the Pope, they treat him like a religious rock star and just fall over themselves to see him wave from a bullet-proof car. I just don't get it. There's a great line from a Public Enemy song that asks "where Christ is in all this crisis?" and while I don't have much at stake in the question personally, I find it apt to describe this situation. John Paul seemed like a nice man, certainly. He was a good communicator and the kind of guy that I would imagine I'd aspire to be like if I were Catholic. But that to me, seems like it's missing the point. {1} Comments

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