Dr. Frank's What's-it

The new album is rotating here, and i'm already raiding the secret site with my gushes of praise. It took about four record stores to find. "Real" shopping is such a pain these days...

Got mine today too! I love the artwork (and stole the wallpaper on the MTX site to use on my desktop), and hope to be able to have a proper listen to the thing soon. The lyrics are "talking to me," though, oh yes.

I am pissed. I couldn't find the new MTX cd anywhere in town. Now I am going to have to order it. I so wanted to listen to it today.

Should I wait for your appearance here in LA to grace my presence wth the new record and withhold some record store profit? Can I wait that long? Fuck no. Why do you have to be so good?

Damn fine review. I only hope I can find the CD this weekend at one of the local stores!

I'll hold out until Sunday at Chain Reaction

Semi-intentional, under-their-breath "reviews" from record store clerks can be hilarious. My phone conversation today:

Me: So, you've got some in stock?
Him: Oh yeah, a bunch of 'em.
Me: Oh, ok, I guess I don't need you to set one aside, then.
Him: No, no, these aren't going anywhere.

I guess I hope he's wrong. Anyway, I just picked it up and am trying to get a few listens in before it implants itself in my girlfriend's car CD player for the next few weeks. Sounds good so far, though.

Here's the Cleveland version:

http://www.cleveland.com/newslogs/musicreviews/index.ssf?/mtlogs/cleve_musicreviews/archives/2004_01.html#012770

Cleveland rocks!

Yeah, real shopping is a pain. I tried to pick up a copy after school and ended up driving around Lansing for two hours. I gave up and headed to Grand Rapids (which is a pretty long drive). I was determined to score a copy on the day of release. Luckily my determination paid off. It's like some sort of great release, I've been hearing these song titles for months without any songs to go with them.

Just wanted to offer my thanks for making a great record.

I couldn't find Yesterday Rules in Ann Arbor.

Let me say this up front: Mr. T Experience rocks. I haven't heard the new record yet, but glowing reviews are flowing in from the various critical tributaries, so I'm presuming it ably holds its own against the formidable MTX catalog. Mr. T Experience is a real band, with a real legacy, and deserves the attention.

But I'm a little curious about this whole "Corvids" thing. I've heard the MP3s. The stuff is OK. It is, to be precise, passable. But it's "OK" and "passable" in the sense of Wednesday-Night-Bar-Band-On-Any-Street-In-Any-Town-USA.

Ken Layne's written prose is great -- actually, pretty damned fine -- and his wit on paper/pixels is sharp as a knife. But on record, his warbly vocals sound like those of the standard goofball at the karaoke bar trying to nail "Angie" to impress his drunken date. The songs themselves are utterly nondescript, lacking anything close to distinctive melody or original riffing/rhythm/arrangements. So what's all the fuss about -- are we supposed to be closely scrutinizing The Creative Lyrics or something? If that's the case, I'll stick with Layne's blog, where I can read words and paragraphs real quick without having to hear them slide in and out of key.

I'm sorry to dis the thing so hard -- I normally wouldn't bother to blast an amateur album, and I adore the written work of Layne and Matt Welch -- but this Corvids deal is landing ridiculously high praise from various corners of the blogosphere. Glenn Reynolds calls the album "an 'Exile on Main Street' for the 21st Century" --- ? I mean, come on ... we all know that's simply ridiculous. I understand that Instapundit fancies himself to be a music connoisseur. He IS an "electronic-music producer," after all, a studio expert who -- in addition to teaching law and writing academic books and editing video and reading lots of blogs -- knows how to navigate his mouse around the little icons on Acid 2.0.

But surely I'm not the only one who gets the sense that all this Corvids sloppy-wet-kissing is merely a big blogger-back-patting session, pardon the mixed body metaphors.

And that leads to my real beef: So many bloggers love to rail on Big Media and all its purported flaws. They love to tout the looming power of bloggerdom and its superiority to the lousy, corrupt professional journalism that plagues the world. In fact, Instapundit, it so happens, heads up this fanatical blogger-boosterism campaign.

Yet with this Corvids affair, we have a perfect example of the insularity that's endemic to the world of blogs. Here we have a half-baked, amateur album that's scoring gushing reviews simply because it was created by a couple of fellow bloggers.

Sure, I suppose I could give the benefit of the doubt: Maybe Glenn Reynolds and these other folks REALLY DO listen to a ton of music, and they REALLY DO grasp the bigger cultural context, and they REALLY DO think "the Corvids" are the Rolling Stones incarnate. But one can't help suspect -- given the blogosphere's giddy crusade to position itself above That Other Media -- that this is just another instance of obvious and clumsily executed blogger-self-interest in action.

Of course, in addition to his credentials as Law-Professor-Political-Pundit-Digital-Photographer-Video-Editor-Music-Producer, Reynolds is also an author. He often talks about a book he once wrote about ethics and conflicts of interest. I think the book's basic premise is that conflicts of interest are overrated. So maybe this Corvids frenzy isn't so problematic after all. Odd, though, that while the old Big Media remains fair game for disputes over ethics and conflicts of interest, the new Little Media apparently doesn't need to fret about it at all. If you're bloggy pals with somebody who makes a record, you can rave to your heart's content.

At least that seems to be the game as it stands right now. But then, maybe I need to actually read the book AND hear the entire Corvids disc before rambling on and on.

[Suggested logical rebuttal for subsequent commenters: I've heard neither album in full, yet instinctively lent credence to MTX reviews while reflexively discrediting Corvids reviews. This rhetorical hole is begging to be exploited. Have at it.]

Picked it up after work tonight. It's an excellent disc. I really enjoyed it. Great lyrics as always. Especially loved "She's not a flower", "Shining", and "Everybody knows you're crying". I'll be plugging this one to people all year. See you guys in Hamden next month!

Guttermouth is awesome. I like you guys and my band.

Oh my God, I just put the CD in my computer and...freaking cool! I had no idea.

Mark, I feel the same way. But that description of that song is utterly retarded. I think he probably just read the title without listening to it.

Well now, Nice Mr. Mustard, in fairness, I don't think Professor Reynolds meant the Exile on Main Street reference to be taken quite as literally as all that. Some people strongly dislike my records or are indifferent to their alleged charms, but some of those who do like them (family, close friends, people in bands that we play with, as well as "kids") will occasionally shoot some extravagant praise my way. Now when someone tells me that Our Bodies Our Selves is the single most significant piece of music composed in the 20th century, and that, consequently, I am a "god," I half-suspect they may be exaggerating. Just a bit. But where I come from, people plugging their friends' records isn't unusual. The fact that these folks are bloggers as well as aspiring amateur musicians doesn't necessarily mean they should behave any differently than any other aspiring amateur musicians. What kind of Amazon reviews do you write of your friends' bands?

Sure, to be perfectly honest, none of our records will ever properly belong on the true list of The Greatest Albums of All Time. (Though it must be said, that's true of many albums that do end up on actual, published "big media" lists of that type: I think I saw the Offspring and Tripping Daisy on one of those lists once. And they were higher than Trout Mask Replica. In every possible sense of that phrase.) And maybe, probably-- okay, certainly-- Yesterday Rules won't actually turn out to be, literally, the Album of the Year in any real sense. But I will defend to the death the right all my friends to say it is. "The Highwayman" from the Groovie Ghoulies' Travels with my Amp was my official Greatest Song of This or Any Year when it came out. Sue me.

It's fair to critique the blogosphere's critique of Big Media. But, that aside, Big Media doesn't tend to review things like the Corvids, nor even, usually, the MTX. That's why fanzines exist. That's why you put on your own half-assed shows, or put out your own half-assed records, and why you rally around your buddies when they're trying to make their own tiny dent in popular culture's more or less impregnable hull. It's largely an exercise in futility, but you appreciate all the help you can get in such situations. And I can't see the harm in it.

I haven't heard the actual finished, mastered Corvids album yet, but when I listened to rough mixes at a drunken patio party a few months back, I thought it sounded really cool. (That's right: the patio was drinking, not us.) And I think Layne is quite a good songwriter, which is not something I say lightly. Anyway, many an album has been hailed as the poor man's Exile on Main Street over the years. You have more fun listening to them if you don't let that bother you.

Anyway, thanks for the intriguing comment, and for the kind words about my own dumb little band. Cheers.