#but this is my blog and my specific preoccupations so fuck you I do what I want. ANYWAY.

[werewolfpdfs]

im curious about hanya yanagihara

[ms-demeanor]

Are you saying the fatwa on Salman Rushdie is part of cancel culture or did he do something?

It’s about the fatwa but I’m going to jump off of this ask to have a rant.

What this boils down to, at least to me, is a preoccupation with an assumed right to be adored, no matter what. It’s an attempt to allow public figures with bruised egos to intellectualise their way out of understanding a very simple idea: when you – particularly the famous – do things to perpetuate or legitimise ideas or actions that contribute to further harming others, you are not entitled to remain liked by some members of the public.

The added suggestion that individual consequences for specific misdeeds are a sign that things have gone too far is just as absurd. Like the “forces of illiberalism” discredited in this letter, many of those who’ve added their signatures in support of it simply wish to remain steadfast in their beliefs without having to engage in exactly the kind of discussions this letter suggests should happen. That’s the thing with glossing over the ugly or difficult issues to bolster your argument – shards of them inevitably push through the cracks.

Salman Rushdie signed the letter on justice and open debate that everyone has decided is about cancel culture because JK signed it.

We’ve got a baby/bathwater situation here. You’ve got a bunch of people who have faced death threats and political consequences and serious shit for what they’ve written (Atwood is on that list, Chomsky is on that list. Atwood’s books have been banned in a ton of places; Chomsky was monitored by the CIA for years because of his political philophy. Rushdie is on that list and people have tried to kill him for his writing) signing a letter saying “uhhhhhhhh fuck censorship” but because Jo also signed it the same week she decided to go mask off with the trans exclusion people are going “these things are the same” and “Uhhhh, it’s not cancel culture, your actions just have consequences” (that pullquote is from an article about this list; saying “it’s absurd to suggest that individual consequences for specific misdeeds are a sign that things have gone too far” is a HELL OF A THING to say about a list that includes people who have survived bombing attempts.

So yeah, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to simply call the letter a condemnation of cancel culture but it’s kind of a joke that people on tumblr are cancelled for having wrong opinions about Stephen Universe but then you see people who have actually lost their jobs because someone made a fake page calling them a possum fucker, or people who are getting called out as pedophiles for shipping two adults, well. Yeah. You know what, I think it’s probably a good idea to have a conversation about why cancel culture CAN be a thing and CAN be a bad thing and how to recognize it and avoid participating it.

Cancel culture *isn’t* just “your actions having consequences” and there IS a totally new mobbing culture that’s exploded in the last twenty years and it is misaimed CONSTANTLY and it does make people less likely to participate in discourse and an open exchange of ideas.

Like, fuck, a bunch of the tumblr “Abolish the police” crew is also the tumblr “kill all pedophiles” crew and trying to talk about intervention and science-based prevention tactics and compassionate treatment gets you labelled a pedophile sympathizer and there is a giant mob of people who don’t want to talk about any of that, they just want to tell you to kill yourself until you decide it’s not worth while to talk about anything controversial.

(My inbox, for example, is full of people who came by to tell me that they were glad I talked about atheism but the response that I got is exactly why they don’t talk about atheism here).

The every-other-week “Cancel Argumate” campaigns are another example of this. Argumate says something pretty clumsy about indigenous people, clarifies a position, makes a good faith argument, and is labelled a colonialist, cancel Argumate. Argumate makes a post about atheism, is challenged on that post by Jewish atheists, clarifies that the post wasn’t about that, continues to clarify that, is frustrated that people keep coming to make the same point in opposition to a point that was never in the post in the first place, is labelled as antisemitic, cancel argumate. Argumate makes a post criticizing US capitalism, is labelled a marxist, cancel Argumate. Argumate makes a post somewhat sympathetically discussing landlords, is labelled an anarchocapitalist, cancel Argumate. Argumate makes a post criticizing landlords for cutting corners and endangering tenants, is labelled an anarchist, cancel Argumate. Like. A bunch of Argumate’s individual posts are glib as fuck but all of the long conversations on that blog are really fucking nuanced and that’s coming from someone who got to know Argumate after initially going “Argumate’s an MRA, cancel Argumate” before then having a long, nuanced conversation about radical feminism.

It’s just frustrating that everything is presented as so black and white. “Oh, this letter is from JK, this must mean she’s whining about how we hate that she’s a terf” and way to go, buds, you just (oh god am I really going to do this) Spoke Over A Man Of Color Who Has Faced Institutional Violence As A Result Of His Writings.

Or, to put it another way: “I REALLY WISH THESE CONVERSATIONS COULD BE HAD WITH A DEGREE OF NUANCE BECAUSE PUTTING SOMEONE SURVEILLED BY THE CIA FOR DECADES FOR HIS ANTIWAR WRITING AND SOMEONE WHO SURVIVED A BOMBING ATTEMPT BECAUSE OF HIS FICTION IN THE SAME CATEGORY OF ‘BUTTHURT BECAUSE OF MEANIES ON TWITTER’ AS JK ROWLING IS LUDICROUS.”

[theboykingofhell]

8, 9, 27, 43?

8 : What author would you be most excited to be compared to?

,,, OH GEEZ do i even have a favorite author anymore??? omg. UHH.

well, when it comes to style, maggie stienvefhajfg of the raven cycle, because when i read her stuff i see our writing styles as reading the same way, like we enjoy the same sort of aesthetic patterns in how we formulate sentences so it’d be nice to have that sentiment validated in someone else who isn’t me but like! HMM IDK! tbh anyone who has published shit out would be fun/interesting to hear

9 : What do you struggle most with as a writer?

I’VE MENTIONED THIS BEFORE... I SUCK! SUCK AT SETTINGS!!! where is this story taking place? in a void. a. a white. void. it’s hilarious considering how into worldbuilding i am, like, i can tell you everything about the planet, the language, the culture, but the specific room these complex characters are standing in? no idea.

also i’m terrible at writing happy things and there seems to be no reprieve from that ANY TIME SOON. enjoy the mountainloads of angst, readers

27 : Where do you get inspiration from?

the best BEST writing advice i’ve gotten in the last ten years (fuck it, maybe even 15) is to make yourself an inspiration blog. OR SEVERAL (in my case). and that. my god. THAT is where my inspiration comes from. i update my insp blogs literally daily. it’s so fun and omfg, it’s interesting just what kind of ideas spring up from random aesthetics!!! so i’d say it comes from my dashboard but also largely just kinda popping up from myself after seeing a lil thing just SET it off, it’s so fun

43 : Do you tend to write protagonists like yourself or unlike yourself?

UHH! like myself, i would say. at the moment, my main stories do have a lil speific protag duo in that there’s a main character and there’s a slightly-less-main character that generally narrates what the main charater is doing.. one of the characters in that duo tends to be like me, or, at the very least, have a trait that is very MAJORLY based off something from myself

a lot (if not all) of my stories are in responses to things in my life that i decided to focus on, like red is in response to my psychotic break and getting institutionalized in college, rachel is in response to my abuse in high school and how i dealt with it (poorly) and the characters tend to just. spiral off into their own that way. so i think it’s very telling if a ricky protag has a very.... Angry (sometimes appropriately, usually not) disposition, if they’re obsessed with revenge or have some sort of monsterous theme to themselves or just a preoccupation with violence. those kind of things just LOVE sticking themselves onto my protags omg

[leoxrobertson]

How to be a man? (1/3)

Seriously, I’m asking. For a friend. That friend is you.

Only on occasion do I ever hear men alluding to “what makes someone more or less of a man” or what they consider a threat to their masculinity etc. But just because I don’t hear it often, doesn’t mean it isn’t a more widespread consideration.

Quite the opposite, I’d guess. A preoccupation that is kept secret because the vulnerability of admitting it is a threat to masculinity.

In these blog posts, the type of masculinity I’m interested in isn’t one I consider “toxic.” If I have anything to comment on that at all, it’s not here. Anyway!

Masculinity isn’t something I have ever thought about. To grow up gay was, to me, to be something so outside the traditional notion of masculinity that I felt completely disqualified from the competition. Though honestly, I probably just didn’t even notice that it was going on!

Is it that I don’t care about my masculinity, or is it that I’m comfortable with it therefore I don’t notice it at all? I don’t know.

I do know that it remains common for straight men to tease each other for being gay because it implies, “I respect your masculinity, which I will show by pretending you are something less masculine: a gay.”

You hear it in their company sometimes because they assume you’re straight until proven otherwise. Again, for better or worse, that’s something I’m used to. “Why wouldn’t they assume? Most people are.”

The joke itself doesn’t really insult me. It’s like an alien language. It’s a joke amongst heterosexual men: I don’t think it’s that it necessarily insults gay men, we just don’t even compute in that specific language. The joke contains no real gay people, just imagined gay versions of people who are definitely straight. It’s not the cleverest joke, sure. It’s the “talking about sports” of jokes.

Is this what they call internalized homophobia? Maybe.

In that case, here’s an associated problem I have. I’m a weirdo. Almost everything I do say and think makes perfect sense to me, and almost everyone I meet seems like a complete weirdo to me, but they don’t seem like weirdos to each other. That makes me the weird one!

(It also means weirdos are my favourite people. When we meet each other, we sigh the relief of having carried a weight most people can’t even see. And because they never acknowledged it, we began to deny it ourselves. We were just like, “Hahaha, I’m genuinely having fun in this bar and my chest hurts for some reason!”)

That makes me think two things:

I wouldn’t have it any other way but weird—but is that only because I’ve become accustomed to the way things are?

When people relate to you as poorly as others relate to me and vice versa, you have to choose the boats you want to rock very carefully if you want to make a change, or they won’t consider you worth the effort at all. Again, maybe that’s unfortunate, but that’s just how I perceive it.

Just so you know what bias is at work, here, before I go on: I’m a master accepter. Come to me if you need help with accepting something, and we’ll accept the fuck out of it! The world needs many other types, but I’m good at accepting things—so I accept that too!

If you’re gay and someone has assumed you aren’t, you can wait until it arises in conversation that you are, and pay close attention to how they react. I have to say, I’ve yet to have someone who makes “haha you’re gay” jokes treat me differently. So, whether or not it’s insulting, the people I’ve met that do it didn’t mean it that way.

I was once at a party and this guy asked me and my husband how we knew each other. When we told him, I saw the look on his face and I think I was like, “We’re gonna go round the room and make sure we say hi to, uh, other people.”

I cringe when I think about that look even now because I feel bad for that guy that he had to meet us!

“Sorry for my gayness” syndrome seems very close to internalized homophobia. However, there’s no non-gay version of myself to compare myself to, but if one existed, I kinda imagine he’d find something else to feel equally bad about.

Mine was just a gay-flavoured shame void. I almost completely left it behind at 23 when I moved to London for a year. London may or may not be a homocracy, but I acted as if it was, and now whenever I meet new people I assume they’re okay with the gay unless informed otherwise. Almost everyone has been—or silently became okay with it. Whatever prejudices remain seem like background noise to me.

That’s why I think it’s so important to represent yourself honestly. It’s like passive grassroots activism: your honest existence is how you stand for what you believe in.

Anyway, wasn’t I talking about masculinity? We’ll get back to that next time when I explain why masculinity, or any property others value but that we dismiss, is still important to understand.

[chrismaverickdotcom]

Princess Agile Girl and Mr. Strength Man

If you pay attention to me at all, you might have picked up that I have kind of a preoccupation with sex and gender in comic books and superhero movies. Did you miss that? It’s kind of subtle maybe? Oh it’s not? I talk about it all the fucking time? Huh….

Anyway, here’s something weird about doing a dissertation. The way you get into a PhD program is that you become such a huge geek on a single specific topic that you not only want to make it your life’s work, but when you take “breaks” from working on it, for fun, you literally do the exact same shit. Not on purpose or anything… you’re just a huge fucking nerd and you don’t know any better.

Anyway, I’ve been working on my dissertation today… and after banging out a few pages of stuff that I’m sure I’ll rewrite a dozen more times and the actual words that I’ve typed will not be even remotely recognizable from their current draft, I decided to take a break and see what was interesting on Facebook. One of the things that really caught my eye was an article my friend and colleague Nicole Freim found and shared. The title was interesting and I decided to save it for later. I even made a comment to Nicole that I would read it later because it seemed cool but I had to get back to… “dissertationing… ”

Who the fuck was I trying to kid?

So yeah, I failed my saving throw vs. internet and immediately got engaged by the article, “Analyzing the Gender Representation of 34,476 Comic Book Characters” by Amanda Shendruk. I often get really annoyed with both academic articles and popular articles on the intersection of feminist or racial criticism and popular culture. Mostly because they often ignore each other. A lot of internet blogs just sort of spout what is essentially memes rather than valid cultural theory and while well intentioned sort of misses little nuances that makes what they’re saying invalid. At the same time, a lot academic types just discount everything in the popular sphere because “those people don’t have letters after their name. So what can they know?” Both of these things are wrong. Good ideas come from everywhere and to really understand something you have to look everywhere.

So I’m glad I read it… because Amanda Shendruk clearly fucking rocks!

So in her article she analyzes the phenomenon of gendering powers and names in superhero comics. This sort of relates to some research I posted about doing a year ago, when I was reading up on gendering of powers in Mike Madrid’s book, The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines. Shendruk has taken it even farther though. She related the powers to the diminutizing  of female superhero names… the fact that female heroes are less likely to be called “woman” and more likely to be called “girl” than males are with “man” and “boy.” But even better than just saying it, she did a study. She actually went and counted and tabulated her data by using Comic Vine (a website that coincidentally I cited in my dissertation like an hour before I read it) and she even explained her methodology. She did statistical analysis and everything. It’s an honest to goodness academic study, done in a non-academic setting. And it’s a good one!

She even has charts! Fucking charts!!! I love charts! Almost no one doing academic research on comics ever does data tabulation and it’s super rare to visualize it on a chart. Hell, I went through all the trouble of tabulated data, doing statistical analysis and making a chart last year and I never even used it in the paper. And hers are better because she went all digital humanities and make them interactive and stuff! Amanda Shendruk is my fucking hero!

Seriously, I even bookmarked her article because I may end up referring to it in the dissertation.

Anyway, on the specifics of what she’s saying, I think its fascinating. She figures out the exact percentage of gendering names overall in the Comic Vine database and then discovers the percentage difference between certain gendered terms: 5.7% of female-gendered-named characters have “woman” in their name compared to 30% of male-gendered-names characters with “man.” 12.6% of female-gendered-named characters have “girl” in the name compared to 5.1% of male-gendered-named characters with “boy.”

She even has some random anecdotal data that surprises me. Like, in DC and Marvel, 62.4% of male characters and 62.8% of female characters have powers. Somehow I expected it to be less. It might be skewed slightly by supporting and non-superpowered characters being less likely to be represented in the fan-contributed database. For instance, there are pages for characters like Lois Lane and Mary Jane, but most of the characters from Patsy Walker don’t have pages, unless they also appeared later in Hellcat and all four issues of the original Night Nurse list only one character “Night Nurse” as being in the book, despite the fact that there were actually three protagonists and a wealth of other supporting characters. Still, the fact that these characters are ignored by the contributing fans, probably says as much about the points Shendruk is making as anything else and it’s probably worth continued study. I’m also interested in what the overall percentages are from her data (how likely is a female character to be gender-named at all, vs. a male character) and I’m interested in the regression of likelihood of gendered powers and naming to intermix. Seriously, how is this woman not doing a PhD right now? She should at least be at PCA next year.

All of this makes me really want to get on the podcast idea I had a while back and that I keep discussing with Wayne Wise. I want there to be a show that has a rotating panel consisting of both pop culture scholars and opinionated fans. Every week there would be a different topic of something in popular media (say the Wonder Woman movie, or the Game of Thrones TV show, or any number of new books, comics, music, or video games…  or even just something like say the Super Bowl). Then two academic types and two fans would each write four short critical articles about the media/text and post them to the podcasts blog for each other to read over, as well as solicit audience opinions. This wouldn’t necessarily be just “this is good” or “this is bad” critiques, thought those are ok. I’m actually more interested in analytical articles like I often do with my reviews, or even as in-depth as what Shendruk has here. And at the end of the week, there’d be a show with a roundtable discussion by those four panelists where they address each others thoughts and maybe even audience comments.

Also, I’d probably be drinking during it.

If we ever did that, Shendruk is exactly the kind of person I’d want to invite to be a panelist for a week. The problem is that both Wayne and I are entirely too lazy to have gotten this together. Maybe someday.

Anyway, I’m interested in both people’s thoughts on her article and whether or not you think the podcast idea would be good. Thoughts?

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Princess Agile Girl and Mr. Strength Man was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom

[edibleflowerseu]

SOUNDS

DIIV / Oshin (2012) [Captured Tracks]

“And at its best, Oshin can feel like an ingenious distillation of the sonorous instrumental passages that took Disintegration’s “Fascination Street” and “Pictures of You” toward arena-rock grandeur. The album is mostly parceled out in lines of three-to-five descending notes that become self-descriptive adjectives: “(Druun)” wordlessly projects resolution, confidence; “Past Lives”, wistful acceptance; “Oshin (Subsume)”, a kind of dead-eyed stoicism; “Doused”, white-knuckle tension. Oshin gives you hints and direction, but never tells you exactly how to feel” (—)

…

Diiv is a band that is so ~in~ it literally hurts. Or maybe, that’s how things felt from 2012 to 2016. I’ve attended a handful of parties and house shows sponsored by one particular pocket of artists here in Providence that is high-key obsessed with Diiv. I have a distinct memory of one of the dudes insisting I look exactly like the frontman (Zachary Cole Smith), and then we proceeded to drunkenly dance, arms locked and substituting gibberish fake guitar noises for the actual music of the band. Damn those dudes love Diiv.

And I think unless you are a self-styled hater, what’s not to love? What’s not fun about jumping around a room, pretending to be a guitar? Waving ur arms around? Is this album fun or is it transcendental? I hear the lead singer is a piece of shit. He’s as if not more famous than his music. Google image him and try not to smirk at his fashion sense. But all that really doesn’t deter me from music lately. Lead singers and their band being overhyped and shitty people is kinda what music is about. It comes with the territory, at least.

I have a good time listening to this and sometimes u can feel urself floating pleasantly downstream, or on top of air, or within the ocean. But only if u let urself feel that way.

Not sure what the consensus is on the new album, Is The Is Are. Pitchfork dude Ian Cohen digs it but thinks its a hair too self-indulgent and into its own sound and vibe, while Sam Goldner writes for Tiny Mix Tapes that the album:

“…is hopelessness disguised as chilling out, self-defeat disguised as complex darkness. I tried to find poetry in its sounds and found myself just wanting a way out. Even now as I write this, I feel stalled in my tracks, attempting to make sense of my malaise. Though it may promise comfort, Is the Is Are is a false sanctuary. For my own sake, I need to move on.” (—)

The same can be said about the band, if u choose to feel that way. Is being a slacker cool af or the dumbest shit ever? Diiv is def fake-deep but does everything u consume and feel some type of way about gotta be real-deep? deep diiv, vibes vibes.

Preoccupations / Viet Cong (2015) [Jagjaguwar]

“Viet Cong are just a band that’s unusually obsessed with the mechanics and process of their given trade. While their ashen sonics and rigid demeanor is liable to have them labeled as post-punk, they’re also industrial in a literal sense. Flegel’s vocals are those of a foreman, authoritative, commanding and prodding. Guitars often sound dissolved in caustic chemicals; instruments contort themselves and interlock to achieve forward momentum. It’s music that works very, very hard to express a perverse hometown pride you often see used to sell spring water or thermal outerwear —you might not want to brave Calgary’s bleak winters, but the way Viet Cong captures its forbidding chill and placid, sprawling beauty sure make it seem like a good place to be a post-punk band.” (—)

___

“This is also a record of conflict and contrast, in particular, a winter war. The sensations of Viet Cong are specific to being bundled up in the arctic, where one’s body feels suffocating warmth and blistering cold all at once.” (—)

…

Another blog-hype band, but I think I like em more than Diiv. Blog hype ain’t the art-killer everyone hypes it up to be. I think shit I’m being told is good is good, and who gives a flying ole flip.

The difference between the band-formerly-known-as-Viet-Cong is they had bad hype that in many ways eclipsed the previous good hype with which they were showered.

Let’s talk music first tho. Sonically, I’m very into what this band is doing. Its intentional, textured, carefully positioned. It just sounds good. Anything remotely post-punk gets me going, and the quotes above that frame the band and their music in terms of the environment they come from gets me even more going. I love when art is described as a reflection of the land its made on. Calgary winters.

Politically might be where the band, as most post-punk bands, kinda weakens. The mood on the album is cold, paranoia, vaguely political. I’m into that. But, think its a bad place to mine for meaning as a listener. All bands and artists engage in some form of world-building: sonically, lyrically, emotionally, other-shit-ly. I think if u probe a band too forcefully on that level, ur bound to be disappointed. Like, this is a fun album to listen to but I’m not sure how much you can consistently get out of it in terms of your own life, if u get me.

But to the shit everyone talks about: the name. Naming ur band Viet Cong in what was then 2015 is a red flag of a bad idea for anyone with internet connection. After a shit ton of pressure from the alt music community, the band apologized changed their name from Viet Cong to Preoccupations. Whether or not the Vietnamese community as a whole felt personally disgusted or it was mostly white college kids, the point remains that it was the morally right move. But in a review of the first album released under the new Preoccupations name that I just found out existed like ten minutes ago, and in one of the most succinct call-outs I’ve read in a long ass while, Simon Chandler here points out, it was also in many ways an existentially dumb move:

“It’s bad because, with this apparent confirmation, the new album can’t help but appear within a frame of interpretation that casts it as shallow. It’s bad because, having let go of a name that self-avowedly meant very little to them, the Lovely Boys can’t help but come across as a band that means very little. It’s bad because, in bowing to umbrage and displeasure, they have effectively repositioned themselves less as an artistic enterprise and more as a commercial one. They strive to keep potential and actual customers happy, rather than striving to provoke them.

“This isn’t to say that the band were wrong to apologize for the hurt they caused and to change their name as part of their apology. Rather, it’s simply to say that the switch confirmed the original name’s emptiness and thereby highlighted the possibility that, contrary to appearances, their whole shtick was nothing more than an “edgy” posture. Given that this shtick involved evoking the kind of political paranoia and cynicism mined by no less a band than This Heat, it was therefore a bit of a letdown to learn that, in actual fact, the band weren’t trying to say anything important about today’s unstable world with their name (and perhaps also their music).

“It’s because they didn’t mean anything by their much-maligned former name that its replacement wasn’t actually a defeat for artistic expression, since there was no expression whatsoever that ended up being effaced in honor of offended parties (or the thought police, depending on your perspective). However, it nonetheless leaves us at a dead-end when it comes to unpacking the Lovely Boys’ sophomore record, in that it suggests that there isn’t all that much to unpack. Yes, there’s that familiarly vague sense of unease and disquiet, those serrated guitars, and those industrial-tinged synths and beats, yet everything seems less urgent and consequential, much to the album’s detriment.” (—)

Still like the band, tho.

Joni Mitchell / Blue (1971) [Reprise]

“Joni Mitchell once called fame “a glamorous misunderstanding.” As America’s finest living Canadian songwriter (tied with Neil Young), few musicians have understood its nature so well. In the 1960s and 70s, Mitchell was Mary Magdalene to Dylan’s folk-rock messiah, making music that was bittersweet and relatable, carrying what Dylan begat even further. Her work helped birth a new idiom that was personal and poetic, creating a new space for songs that made artistic statements, unbound by cliché and tradition. Such was the strength of her music that Mitchell’s lyrics didn’t have to make sense. But they did, particularly to women.” (—)

___

“1971’s Blue is possibly the most gutting break-up album ever made. After Mitchell’s relationship with Nash dissolved, she headed to Europe to lose the tether of her fame, eventually taking exile in a cave on the Greek island Crete. The trip would inspire the how-Joni-got-her-groove-back ditties “Carey” and “California”. The album is suffused with melancholy for all that is missing: her daughter (“Little Green”), innocence (“The Last Time I Saw Richard”), and connection (“All I Want”). Mitchell bleeds diffidence and highlights it with spare notes plucked out on her Appalachian dulcimer. While her pals Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, and Laura Nyro were also pushing the singer-songwriter genre forward, none of them managed to stride the distance that Mitchell did here in a single album.” (—)

…

Anyway, exiting the blogosphere, let’s talk about how Joni Mitchell is the single best singer-songwriter of the 1960s and 1970s. Period.

Yes, I love Neil Young. I love Leonard Cohen. I love Bob Dylan. But, likely because she’s a woman and woman are never allowed to stop thinking about how they will age, she has kept consistently growing and pushing herself personally and stylistically in ways none of her male contemporaries can match. Neil Young made a bunch of shitty genre albums, Bob Dylan got fucking ridiculous sounding, and Leonard Cohen actually aged hella well but he sorta has his own thing he rarely detours from so he DOESN’T COUNT.

And while she’s by no means perfect (we’ll do our best to ignore her brief infatuation with blackface), I don’t think anyone conveys the entire emotional landscape of relationships, from love to heartbreak to emptiness to smirking worthlessness as well as Mitchell. And what’s more, she doesn’t let herself dwell only in the genre of love and heartbreak, and some of her best songwriting comes later as she explores jazz and womanly life-after-30. An artists stubbornly following their muse can be frustrating for fans, and I’m sure those who fell in love with the Big Yellow Taxi hippie soft folk of early Mitchell have less-than-kind words to say about her sonic experiments with Brazilian music and songs about French people. But fuck it, if u want the same old shit over and over again then u a dang dumb chump.

As for Blue itself, the album fucking rules, is the exact right length, and brings you through all the steps, missteps, ups, downs, and emotional turns to make a satisfying journey. And the guitars sounds sick af.

I feel there are hella dudes who can’t relate to Joni Mitchell’s songs since they are so distinctly about the experiences of women. But fuck those dudes. Like, how can u not be touched by this? This is the realest shit and all u Mitchell-hating dudes are fake deep babies.

James Cleveland w/ the Angelic Choir / I Stood on the Banks of the Jordan (1964) [Savoy]

And when I saw it, I said, Lord I got my ticket, please don’t leave me down here

You took my Father You came back and got my Mother, You took everything to me that was so dear

And all I can do, is stand there on the banks of Jordan. Mother was going home ‘to see the ship go sailing over.’”

…

Fell into a Youtube rabbit hole and ended up watching hella What’s In Your Bag clips. Found the one with James Blake (who I have barely listened to full disclosure) and he name-dropped James Cleveland as some good shit so I checked it out.

It is good shit. Like really good shit. I wanna listen to more gospel cause its one of those genres I never took seriously growing up, far removed was I a white child in New Hampshire. But dang can u feel the emotion running through this. And the dude has more albums! This is what I want, what I need.

Nguzunguzu / Perfect Lullaby Mix (2011) [no label]

“To say that they are “party-starters” is both clichéd and not quite right—because the best time to hear Nguzu DJ is in the middle of the party, when their thick and luscious mixes add a level of sinuous intensity to the club.” (—)

…

I know Nguzunguzu primarily as producers, or remixers. They mix pop songs from the now and 90s with vaguely tropical sounds. Hang drums, African and Latin beats, “juicy synths”. It’s a lot of fun. I think this might be the first in a series of like 3 mixes? They also release other shit. Their sound when they first came out was super influential on outsider club and R&B, and like it might still be? I don’t really follow this shit tbh.

I thought it was one dude but its actually a dude and a woman.

Skepta / Konnichiwa (2016) [Boy Better Know]

“Skepta’s flow and vocal delivery are a lot easier on the ears than most of his peers, rapping with a brash Brit urgency and chanting in a singsongy, catchy Jamaican patois reminiscent of dancehall greats. … Skepta’s groovy 10-ton bass lines, eerie open-ended synth lines, and hard-hitting snares crush anything Metro Boomin could come up with on FL Studio. This is grime suitable for both late night hooliganism with the gang and drunkenly stomping it out in the club.” (—)

___

“Skepta’s album arrives as a breath of fresh air in the scene, finding the perfect balance in retaining the trademark grime sound and seemingly higher marketability across the Atlantic and elsewhere. Like the best, most colorful rappers in the States, Konnichiwa confidently struts and showcases the emcee’s vibrant, exciting personality traits perhaps more than pretty much anyone else in Britain, grime or otherwise.” (—)

…

I don’t know shit about grime. Its the UK answer to rap that’s been poised to blow up for like 13 years now? It’s a history and culture I’m trying to familiarize myself with more, and the journey is a quite a treat.

Ok so as far as I understand it, grime was a big underground thing that had the potential the blow up following Dizzee Rascal’s Boy in da Corner in 2003. It fuses the electronic music of UK garage and drum n’ bass with rowdy Brit-dialect rap. Dizzee made some noise across the pond but with the exception of maybe like Lady Sovereign and The Streets and Jamie T (who are all white and all are more coy British hip hop than grime proper), shit just didn’t stick. Meanwhile, names like Skepta and Wiley and a host of others kept on keeping on. And while it didn’t pick up as globally as it should have, that didn’t stop corporations in the UK from pushing it into the mainstream.

I dunno how effective the push was, but it seems to have become a watered down and sold out version of itself. Huge but not that huge? Skepta and others were groomed for mainstream success and sold the soul of grime. Now every grime MC is in their like early 30s and fed up with what they had to endure. As such, Skepta’s Konnichiwa is anti-corporate and anti-fake grime. He’s angry but he’s charming bout it.

There’s also stylistic differences between South London grime and East London grime. Tho Skepta is from North London and fuses both styles together. Also, it’s not an album-based genre, but one defined by “singles, loosies, hotly pressed riddims, and pirate radio broadcasts.”

Also Drake loves grime and Kanye’s into it to. Why it hasn’t blown up despite 10+ years of glorious existence is due in part to racism, I’m sure. Ya, the beats are abrasive and bassy, and the club culture in the US is nowhere near as intricate as that of the UK, but bros still loved dubstep for a long minute. Also, people love Doctor fucking Who and Sherlock. People love pip pip cheerio and hot British dudes and tea and the queen in the US. Anglophilia runs amok on Tumblr. So why can’t white people in the US fucking listen to grime? What’s wrong with u uncultured fucks?

Other shit:

Everly Brothers / Walk Right Back

Brood Ma / Daze

Kelela / CUT 4 ME

Max Richter / 24 Postcards in Full Colour

Beastie Boys / Paul’s Boutique (this might become one of my fav album)

Yasutaka Nakata / “Crazy Crazy” (ft. Charli XCX & Kyary Pamyu Pamyu)