Recently in music Category

I am in paperwork hell and therefore desperate for fun things to talk about. Therefore I am not going to talk about the 2008 election. Not that it's not fun - it's enormously fun, and at times sadly funny - but it's too much a blood pressure point for me and apparently a lot of the people who read this page. Long and short of my thoughts on the matter: it's all going to work out. Everyone breathe.

Instead, I want to talk about [title of show], which Cheryl and I treated ourselves to after a day of canvassing for Obama in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. You can read Cheryl's post about that here.

I did not know, going into this show, that I was entering a Fan Zone. Pieces of culture that have Fan Zones are different than others, though the circle is growing wider every day: it may not be the most popular movie, television show or play out there, but there is a strong band of devotees, who will show up every night and scream, post about it on their Facebooks, urge their friends and family to watch/read/listen, etc. I know about this kind of fan because I am one. One thing I truly love about a show will sell me on it for life. This is not usually because the show/movie/etc. deserves it more or is inherently better, but because it has struck the nerd nerve: if only one thing about it is one of the best things they've ever heard, they're sold. Of course, there's usually well more than one thing - but there's one moment that always piques the experience. It's Free Love on the Free Love Highway during the British version of The Office. It's "Seasons of Love" in Rent. It's Defying Gravity in Wicked. It's the fashion show on Project Runway, "Suddenly Seymour" in Little Shop of Horrors, the entire first season of Heroes, the end of season one/beginning of season two of The West Wing, the slide down the pole in Bridget Jones (the book), the what-will-she-wear-now game of Sex and the City.

(One doesn't immediately jump to mind with Harry, but that's really because the first book is full of all those truly imaginative twists on reality that it's like a series of wave peaks throughout.)

And, being one of these fans, and being familiar with the accoutrements of intense fandom, you know exactly when you're walking into a Fan Zone. If it's a live event, it's usually accompanied by a lot of screaming. This happened when we saw [title of show], a fabulous little musical about making a musical. I knew only that it was an "inside" ("meta") play, going into it; I wasn't even sure it was a musical. But as the lights went down and the roar deafened (it was the show's last week on Broadway) I groaned internally. The Fan Zone is almost unanimously a good thing for the material that is the object of the fans' obsession, but to newcomers it can make it hard to understand and enjoy that material. I wasn't sure I wanted to be part of a few hours of incomprehensible screaming that made me think I was a year too old to be a New Kids on the Block fan, and at one of their concerts. (Which I am only allowed to say years and years after being part of the screaming, and years and years after realizing how it can be completely obnoxious to those outside the Zone.)

Thank goodness, that's not how it played out. The show was, sincerely, one of the best things I've seen in a long while, and that happened well before the middle, when the real Fan Moment happened. Because for all the potential annoying character of a Fan Zone, it can be really useful. I was enjoying this charming show - self-aware, unadorned, a hilarious little reflection on creativity that played itself with honesty and no trace of pretension - when I knew we were about to get to The Moment. Why? The screaming went THROUGH THE ROOF. Cheryl and I looked at each other, eyebrows raised, because the woman onstage had just said, "Die, Vampire, Die," and she hadn't said it while simultaneously twirling flaming batons, juggling three apples and a live grenade, and shooting fireworks out of her sleeves, so why was everyone going crazy? Because they knew what was coming, and luckily this pre-emptive hype wasn't enough to spoil the moment.

The song is Die, Vampire, Die, and it's the best exploration of the ridiculous inner monologue that goes on while you are writing that I've ever heard. It's not all Finishing the Hat, it's not all sweet, melodic elixirs of endorphins caused by creation. No. Sometimes there are ugly gnomes playing twstie-tie with your confidence, inside your head, and it's annoying and petty and feels small. What did I call this phenomenon awhile back? Ahhh... Grogsnot! I had nearly forgotten about him. Yes, this is a song about Grogsnot!

Listen to this (it's the audio track set to a picture of the show's playbill, you don't have to watch), if you want to know just how silly, sad, funny, stupid, elating, and unglamorous creation really can be:

All right, first things first:

Jennifer Hudson is on the FRONT PAGE OF VOGUE. Why am I so excited? Because she is a beautiful black woman with big boobs and wide hips who is being celebrated for her freaking TALENT. I saw this at the grocery stand and bought it for the first time ever in my life. A 600-page magazine! A 600-page FASHION magazine! I hate those! But she looks incredible, like she's having the time of her life - and even like she's finding the whole cover-of-Vogue thing hilarious, too.

And yeah, I get it, she's being exploited for exactly all those reasons. You know what? HELL YEAH! Let the voluptuous women be exploited just like the skinny ones. Let them use us for our softness and sexy roundness. Hell YEAH. She's on the front cover because she'll sell more issues - and if that's the reason they also put skinny women on the cover, then that's even closer to equality. Jennifer makes it allllll sexy, and Vogue is using her just like they use Kate Moss. Hell yeah. Do it, girl. Do it with cleavage.

Anyway, the real point of this post: I've been acquiring a lot of music lately, legally of course, and am sort of bored with all the new stuff - or, rather, my workout is bored. And if the workout is bored, the workout is bad. I need stuff with real driving beats, music that makes you feel like you're dancing your way up Mt. Everest. Can't really work out well without it. Can't dance on the treadmill to Easy Listening. So, suggestions?

Also, I'm looking for writing music. This should be a hella lot more mellow, either lyrically sparse or instrumental, cool and smooth, music that can run in the background and not interrupt my thought process. Overly complicated jazz never does it (no Charlie Parker), but a lot of jazz does.

And, what the hell, throw in suggestions for music you like, too. Anything. Throw it at me. I'm in a music sponge sort of way right now. If you feel like sharing the kind of music that makes you excited, helps you work out, helps you mellow out, helps you write, helps you anything, you'll be helping me much. Please, please, suggest away! Maybe I'll post my own track listings later, too, not to be miserly with my own suggestions.

It really has to be said, and it's going to make me sound like more of a gay man than I already am (but that's all right, because my roommate is a straight "gay man" too, so we make a fine pair), but Audra McDonald is a goddess.

That is all. I'm listening to her right now. "Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home." I literally danced in my kitchen to this song, all by myself. Yes I'm a big fat dork. But...man. MAN. Where did she COME from?

Okay, that's all from the gay man in me. Now the journalist is going to return to doing the story she's put off all week.

I love the new Britney Spears album. And I am not ashamed.

It's infectious. It's empowered. My sister passed it on to me and I immediately had it for my car. The sound of it - full of rhythm and experimental beats and willing to change direction and feeling on a thin nickel - keeps me interested. Some will say it's overproduced. I will say slightly, but not too much. It's Britney Spears coming to terms with who she is: a performer, a sex object, an okay singer who entertains on a much more encompassing level than simply having a pleasing voice. And it's just the right time to confirm that her "virgin" image is as old as her relationship with the NSYNC kid.

I love that this all comes across in the music. If she is maturing, growing layers and complications, so is her music and her willingness to take risks. The joint with Madonna ("Me Against the Music") is as close to a perfect dance song as humanly possible: there is no better embodiment of 'music' over the past few decades than Madonna, who samples influences on all points of the spectrum and has the career longevity of the Rock of Gibraltor. If Britney is battling her it's only natural - she's often been compared to Madonna, portrayed as something other than a musician, than an artist, and this "she's only a sexpot" attitude has crossed over into comparisons with Madonna's talent for reinvention and experimentation.

Now I see Britney experimenting just as much. This album is constantly pleasing and surprising, especially considering the quality of her first effort, the syrupy stuff of which Teen Beat is made. The Britney of today does not resemble the Britney of back then, and that's right. Artists should always grow and change, and bring that growth and change into their work. The way Britney once insisted on her virgin-mary image would lead one to believe she'd stick with it, and that she's finally accepted who she is and who she's become makes me believe a lot more of what comes out of her mouth.

There's also an eighties feel to this album; it has the good-natured reciprocity in the beats, the full-circle sound that makes you feel satisfied at the end of a song. There's even a quasi-electronica song thrown in that could easily be heard at the Culture Club today.

But it's eighties with an edge, with the lessons of the last 20 or so years of music - technology and hip-hop and a deep, low rhythm - underneath the music.

Britney just pushes the cart along. She's not the entirety of her music anymore. She's the voice on top that threads it together, but her art is now collaboration and entertainment; I have no interest at all anymore in the quality of her voice, just the quality of the song. That's change - that takes her away from Christina comparisons, and takes her away from the other girl singers making it today.

Britney is a production now, and she gives the idea that she's an integral part of her product. It's made not only for a listenable album, but a respect I never thought I'd have for the bubblegum princess.