In some backchannel action, Felizitas/Jane Dark/Joshua Clover made it clear to me what I wasn’t reading right - or rather set me straight, otherwise known as handing me my ass in a sling, and fair enough. I’m usually down with the density of JC’s prose, but must have been nodding when I was reading his introductory post (with the clever unspoken-parallel making de Kooning illustration) on The Five Propositions. No idea why my brain went so spongiform. Considering the unresolved-bedwetting-issues obnoxiousness of my first post, I thought he told me to fuck off pretty politely (and I hope he won’t mind my quoting him here):

“You seem to have misunderstood my fundamental inquiry (quite explicit in the first post) which is not toward suggesting that social acts like misogyny become formalized after awhile ó duh! ó but wondering why, given all the bullshit that happens in [mainstream] hip-hop lyrics, thatís where the great sonic inventors continue to appear and work? Or to put it another way, what do we do about the fact that itís more pleasurable and interesting and intense to listen to Jay-Z and Snoop than Slug or dead prez (much less politically righteous indie rock)?

“What Iím up to [...] is trying to get past ‘itís good because itís funky’ or ‘itís bad because itís misogynistic’ ó and even trying to get past throwing oneís hands up at the difficulty of these two facts coexisting ó to WONDER if there might be a connection between the two facts.”

[He then challenged me to tell him if this question was already answered, and mos' def, the answer is No.]

The reflex reaction is that it’s the sonic form, and social context rather than content, that attracts the innovators to hip-hop - and the paycheques and the fame that attracts them to the mainstream rather than the undie/backpack side. But that doesn’t explain why Public Enemy was once at the forefront of both sonics and politics, and in the past decade those two haven’t coincided. One hypothesis of mine in response is that the violation of social codes always attracts wild creators, and sexism is actually enough of a public taboo that openly breaking it (rather than codedly, like yer average politician) signifies as liberation (like being gay, doing drugs and having lots of sex were to various bohemias and rock’n'roll in the past), even though that’s tangled up with male backlash etc. etc., and this kind of social lawlessness attracts those who have an appetite for aesthetic lawlessness. You also have to factor in the move of hip-hop from minority to near-majority taste in the same time period and the market-driven elimination of other kinds of rebellion, a story well-told by Jeff Chang a year ago. (Is misogyny a really complicated stand-in for social militancy?) And then there’s the question of displacement of hostility toward the (abandoning) father toward the (present) mother, and the question of the availability of political options and discourse, and lots of really really messy sociological issues

But those are only first rubbing-my-eyes waking-up reactions to what Joshua is suggesting and obviously require more thought. Wish I’d started here rather than in Watchoo Talkin’ About mode.

Also: Anyone else have thoughts about the new Nas album? It seems really engaged in the middle of this shitstorm and yet all I’ve gotten to read are slams for weak beats, defenses for flow, praise that his dad’s on it, criticism for sexism - nothing that stands back. When I first heard it I was in love but I don’t know if that is lasting now. One issue: It decidedly needs condensing, but is there a better hip-hop double album (counting OutKast as a lashed-together set of two albums)? Second issue: There’s still gender-dodgy stuff here but there’s also the newly-enfianced homeboy’s efforts at anti-sexism - and both seem kind of weak. Still, mixed down to a single, this is an incredibly vibrant and outspoken disc, with more than clever nonsequiturs and pure sound to go on - if we’re going to talk social content within the mainstream, is there anywhere else to turn?

Like Ukraine, maybe?

Aaron Wherry presents the outcome of the first-ever Canadian bloggers’ Canadian music poll. Bet you can’t guess who won, eh? Uh, or maybe you can (look up, way up, past the drawbridge).

If you missed it: Here’s Zoilus’s ballot. I listed a dozen (plus 26 honourable mentions) but only the Top 5 counted. And I still haven’t heard a few things that show up on the poll. And I forgot Sixtoo was Canadian!

No time to comment much on the outcome except to say that given the international impact of Canadian music this year, it’s a list worth reading. End-of-year lists like this one, which deal with a particular genre, region or other limited set are so much better than big sloppy “best of everything” lists. Restrictions create meaning. For more on why, listen to John Darnielle preach it.

Edited to add: The poll seems to indicate that Canadian critics are still mostly listening to Rock: File Under Indie. Aside from shoo-ins Junior Boys and K-os, at No. 4 and 5 (below Stars), you have to look way down to Nos. 19 and 26 to find non-rock-based winners. That reflects the reality of Canada to an extent, but also the makeup of the voting constituency. Not Aaron’s fault - I’m sure it was just a matter of response, but…

Some Canadian bloggers I wish had voted in the PopWherry poll: Ghetto Postage, Autonomic for the People, Lovecstasycrime, Greg Clow, and Three Two Warzawa. That contingent really would have changed the outcome.

Failing that, I kind of wish my ballot had read: 1. Tim Hecker; 2. Venetian Snares; 3. Solvent; 4. Jake Fairley; 5. tie: McEnroe & Birdapres/Terri Clark.

John Campbell, a close friend of Alex Soria (above right, in a circa-1984 pic from Sugar Diet zine; Alex’s death was reported on Zoilus last week) writes to note that I was a little off on Nils history - Alex’s brother Carlos did not join the band until 1984. From its formation in 1978, through its first show in 1980, until (I gather) Carlos stepped in, the bassist was Guy Caron (aka Chico Fit).

In other news, a wake was held for Soria last night at the Green Room in Montreal; a memorial concert is planned for the New Year; and Montreal campus-community station CKUT is doing a tribute this afternoon, starting right about now, from 3-5 p.m., with interviews with label laureate Woody Whelan and zine machine Jack Rabid, consummate Nils fans and friends.

Further reading on Alex & the Nils: A long moving thread on the Montreal board of 20hz.ca; the Rock and Roll Report recalls jamming with the Nils; a quite lovely obit from the Ottawa Sun (Patrick Pentland of Sloan: “”The Nils were one of the reasons I kept banging away on the guitar when everyone else in my life was talking about 9-to-5 and what size suit jacket I would have to wear. They were Canadian punk with intelligence and melody, truly inspirational and exciting and heartbreaking all at the same time”; Jim Bryson, singer songwriter and ex-vocalist of Nils-influenced Punchbuggy: “You knew when Alex sang that he’d lived every line of heartbreak”); a Nils Remembered feature from the Montreal Mirror six years ago.

Whoa, back away from the seasonal crankiness, Wilson. First of all Clover does not equal Klosterman, so lumping them both into yesterday’s episode of Critical Writing That Is Bugging Me Today may have misled some readers. Clover usually has something valuable to say, and it began to dawn on me maybe I’m not working my end hard enough. So, step one, I retract “inflated bloviation.” Probably permanently. I mean, at least Clover is trying to bring an original form of analysis to the long and disheartening conversation around woman-bashing MCs.

Here are Clover’s propositions, apart from their loosy-bendy girders of support, to see just how they add up: 1. As long as it can get one person to say “Fuck rap, you can have it back” a genre is still vital. 2. Vital genres move forward amidst a perpetual drama between sonic form and social content. 3. Over time, social content becomes sonic form. 4. It can be difficult to distinguish social content from sonic form. 5. Given that social content is always turning into sonic formalism, a genre ó to stay vital ó needs to find cunning ways to maintain a wealth of social content.

As Franklin has said, the trouble with No. 3 is obvious, that it talks as though the process of evolution or entropy in art’s socio-aesthetic character only goes one way. This is not quite corrected by no. 5 - which deals with new social content being introduced or generated but not with the possibility that sonic form also, automatically in a vital genre, continually turns into social content. Which surely is what the “bitch”-trashing-trash-talk haters are bitching about.

I also wonder about the marriage of the words Content and Form to Social and Sonic. I think these two nutty couples are headed for some rocky times. Surely if any genre also has Sonic Content and Social Form, hip-hop would be it.

That said, if Felizitas (about which pseudonym, by the way, I was also over-grumpy earlier) can apply the thesis now to the problem at hand, and when the wrapping’s pulled off we actually see new aspects of the monster in the box, the exercise will have been plenty worthwhile.

I thought the above phrase would make a good movie title, but what I’m on about is: Chuck Klosterman, belle of the pop-cultcha-writing ball in the past year or two, is such a gifted punchline maker and not such a good essayist. Case in point, his current Spin column: “The Ten Most Accurately Rated Artists in Rock History.” As a jape about the ubiquity and tiresomeness of the “over/under-rated” trope in rock talk, it’s super, smashing, fucking brill. As a whole article to read, well, it’s a little snoozey, using the concept as an excuse to talk dully about dull subjects such as Blue Oyster Cult or My Bloody Valentine. (Not that MBV made dull music but as a subject of music discussion it is Yawn City.) Plus there’s stuff like the Beatles coming in at No. 4, saying everybody thinks they’re the best and they are, which I can tell you is far from a universal consensus.

I’ll spoil the surprise for you - #1 most accurately rated band of all time? Van Halen: “This band should have been the biggest arena act of the early 1980s, and they were. They had the greatest guitar player of the 1980s, and everyone (except possibly Yngwie Malmsteen) seems to agree. They switched singers and became semi-crappy, and nobody aggressively disputes that fact.”

Amusing. But Klosterman’s constant claim, as in the title of this piece (”Give Me Centrism or Give Me Death”) to be some kind of brave battler for the middlebrow against forces of pretension and … oh there’s nothing he’s fighting on the other side, is there? So Klosterman’s “middle” is actually an extreme, and its name is anti-intellectualism, and in that way he’s the perfect pop critic for our era, the most Red State rock writer ever. Fargo Rock City is a brilliant book, but I’m afraid I’m seeing the best minds of our generation become one-man mid-afternoon chat-show versions of themselves.

Speaking of criticism on high suck alert: I like Joshua Clover’s poetry and respect him a lot, but what the hell is he on about over at S/FJ? Why does he keep giving himself feminine pseudonyms (first Jane Dark and now Felizitas)? Does he really think we don’t know that genres have social content and sonic form and that these interrelate in complex ways, that the sonic is social and the social sonic? Does he think that those hip-hop fans who are pissed off about misogyny in hip-hop are not aware that it’s as much a kind of genre convention as it is any kind of thought-out statement of intent to rape/beat/pimp/hate women? And does he think that if we all were made aware of the structural nature of misogyny in hip-hop, that this would make the misogyny okay and prevent it from having any adverse effects on how boys see girls (and how girls see girls)? Weren’t, say, the signifiers of racism also a formal, sonic convention in minstrelsy - which dominated 19th-century pop culture the way hip-hop does now - and therefore was the racism of minstrelsy okay? None of this stuff seems to me to solve the female listener’s problem listening to Snoop, should she have that problem; it is just “lie back and think of Pharrell.”

The “proposition” suggesting that a sign of vitality in any genre is that its “ownership” is still mobile and in dispute was worthy; the rest is inflated bloviation in the first degree. I’m not actually upset about that, but I think it’s kind of odd, the way he trumpeted he really had a contribution to make to the discussion and then… just…. didn’t. Perhaps he’ll still turn around and pull it out: He says he’s got one more post to come.

Aaron Wherry kindly requested my participation in PopWherry’s first-ever-Canadian-blog-year-end-music-poll, the subject of which is Bestest Canadian Albums of 2004. He requested five, so of course I came up with a dozen. Just to show you what kind of year in music it has been in this country, I will follow that dozen with two baker’s dozens more. First in preferential order, then alphabet-style. Three, two, GO!

ZOILUS’ FAVOURITE CANADIAN ALBUMS OF 2004

1. Destroyer - Your Blues
2. Junior Boys - Last Exit
3. Les Mouches - You Mean More to Me Than 1,000 Christians
4. The Hidden Cameras - Mississauga Goddam
5. Frog Eyes - Ego Scriptor (not to slight The Folded Palm)
6. Fred Eaglesmith - Dusty
7. Black Ox Orkestar - Der Tanz
8. Eric Chenaux/Michelle McAdorey - Love Don’t Change
9. Veda Hille/Christof Migone - Escape Songs
10. Wax Mannequin - The Price
11. Blocks Recording Club - Toronto Is Great! compilation
12. The Arcade Fire - Funeral

As well as:
Apostle Of Hustle - Folkloric Feel; Edgar Breau - Canadian Primitive; Creeping Nobodies - Stop Movement Stop Loss; Deep Dark United - Ancient; Julie Doiron - Goodnight Nobody; Jake Fairley - Touch Not the Cat; Feist - Feist; Nick Fraser/Justin Haynes - Are Faking It; Fucked Up - Epics in Minutes; Gentleman Reg - Darby & Joan; Good Grooming for Girls compilation; Jim Guthrie - Now More Than Ever; Tim Hecker - Mirages; Hitz Exprezz - Playin Da Harsez; LAL - Warm Belly High Power; Peggy Lee/Dylan van der Schyff/Dave Douglas/Louis Sclavis - Bow River Falls; Harris Newman - Non-Sequiturs ; Royal City - Little Heart’s Ease; The Sadies - Favourite Colours; The Silt - Earlier Ways to Wander; Smash & Teeny feat. John Butcher - Gathering; Solvent - Apples and Synthesizers; Stars - Set Yourself On Fire; Tangiers - Never Bring You Pleasure; Chad Vangaalen - Infiniheart; Venetian Snares - Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfolding. (I could do another dozen, but lines must be drawn.)

Best (as-yet-unfinished) Canadian albums of 2005: Shawn Hewitt;
Final Fantasy; Frog Eyes/Destroyer collaboration.

If I’d been making this list a few hours later, I think one of the items from the bottom double-dozen would have replaced Arcade Fire at No. 12. Below the top 6 everything starts to go soft-focus. The obvious gap is hip-hop, but I wasn’t feeling the maple-leaf rap this year; what am I missing?

A couple of the artists on the above list are playing Toronto this weekend: Montreal’s Stars are at the Mod Club tomorrow and Sunday, and on Sunday, Calgary’s Chad Vangaalen is opening for them. I like Stars as much as the next guy but I love, love, love Chad Vangaalen - he rules so hard, lo-fi style.

Also of major note in Toronto this weekend: The mighty Masia One presents Ladybug Mecca of (the reunited) Digable Planets fame (learn where she’s been meanwhile from Ms. Denise Benson in Eye this week) as part of Masia’s M1 Academy series - this Saturday it’s the “All B-Girls School” edition, also with Tara Chase, Zaki Ibrahim, DJs SiVuPlay and Mel Boogie, artists EGR and Stef Casino, dancers Lady Noyz and Eclipse, all at the El Mocambo, $14.

Masia did an amazing set at the last Tin Tin Tin with avant-pop/improv group Deep Dark United, who happen to be in the long list above, and also happen to be playing Wavelength this Sunday night. For further extraordinary coincidences and eerie tales, check the Zoilus gig guide. [...]

(more…)

And now more from the horrible-news beat: Alex Soria, guitarist and songwriter of The Nils, one of Canada’s most crucial post-punk bands, is reported dead at 39 in Montreal, apparently after being hit by a train. Alex and his brother Carlos started playing music together in 1978 - when Alex was 12, began playing live shows in 1980, and put out their first EP Sell Out Young! in 1985. The Nils have been called “the Replacements of Montreal” and “the Big Star of punk rock,” both for their influence on other bands and the sheer quality of Alex’s hard-pop songwriting, cited by the likes of Bob Mould (Husker Du). There’s a tribute record called Scratches and Needles that includes contributions by Down by Law and Punchbuggy. But their biggest impact was on their fellow musicians in Montreal, because Nils were never able to get it quite together enough to reach a larger audience, and the band lasted, in increasingly exhausted form, till the early 1990s, when weariness and drug problems sidelined them.

Alex was off the scene for several years but in the late ’90s formed the fine melodic-punk band Chino. The Nils had a brief reunion last year, which led some of us to hope that like other eighties heroes, the Nils would get their due a couple of decades later. It’s tragically in line with the Nils’ long history of bum luck that now that can never be.

On the Montreal board of 20hz.ca, Rick Trembles (best known as a member of Montreal band American Devices and truly disturbing cartoonist) wrote, “I went to high school with his older bro Carlos & once when I came over (circa late 70ís) he told me Alex was making a punk band. We went to their basement & there he was happily strumming away. I showed him my Electric Vomit riffs & to my surprise he picked them up in seconds (I was still struggling with them). … I remember after one early scorching gig the pick-guard on his guitar was covered in blood & I wondered what happened. He said itís because he was playing so hard the strings kinda opened up his fingers but he wasnít gonna stop playing just because of that. He just sort of shrugged his shoulders like it was a bit of a badge of honor. I wish I took a picture of that blood encrusted pick-guard.”

Respect is due Woody Whelan of Mag Wheel Records for keeping the Nils light burning through the years. Woody coordinated the tribute disc, put out the Green Fields in Daylight collection several years ago as well as Chino’s disc, and has been at work on a rarities collection. Heartfelt condolences to him and of course to the Soria family and Alex’s other family and friends.

Since I’m a little bleary-eyed from a long night out + wrapped up with work, let me offer you some sonic distractions from current contentlessness. We still believe in text here at Zoilus and aren’t jumping on the “every blog an MP3 blog” meme, but from time to time it’s good to rest the eyes and work the earholes. So:

1. It’s not the first best single of 2005 but it’s worth an ear. Trevor, the new publicist at Paper Bag Records, woos me with offers of “exclusive” MP3 action for Zoilus, beginning with Cheap Linguistics, a B-side coming in February by Magneta Lane, the Runaways-meets-VU-meets-Blondie-meets-name-a-2002-Brooklyn-band, school-skippin’, ass-kickin’ female-teen trio that’s been all the chatter of Hogtown this fall. The track hits the pavement with a nice skid but goes in a few too many circles coming down the back stretch. But this is a band that only picked up instruments a year ago, so it’s more interesting to observe them in development than to kvetch. If this actually were an MP3 blog I wouldn’t accept audio swag but since the contract around here does not read “I will select my favourite music for you to listen to, dear reader” but “I will blather, you will perhaps tolerate,” I’ve got no ethical qualms: I find the syllables “cheap linguistics” in themselves irresistible and have yet another excuse to fill this page with pretty pictures. (Lifted from Photojunkie. Magneta Lane, by the way, plays the Rivoli on New Year’s Eve.) Still if it came down to it, I would have to choose Girls Aloud.

[Edited to add: 2 a.m. Usually I don't feel I have to explain jokes, but after walking away from the computer this afternoon I had a sinking feeling about that last one. Rather than implying all groups composed of women share one cookie-cutter (imagery deliberate) "girl band" category, even ones as musically opposite as M.L. and G.A., the joke was (as jokes often are) the reverse. It's especially absurd the way M.L.'s femaleness is made its point considering that we're in Toronto, where all-guy bands are in no way a mandatory default. As Owen Pallett put it on 20hz earlier this year, "Stating that toronto is like a boy's club is retarded, there are more girls making music in toronto than anywhere except 'girl island'." So why are people talking about Magneta Lane in this novelty-band way? Which is not to say that Girls Aloud are not awesome.]

2. The evil twins of the Chromewaves empire, Chromewaves and My Mean Magpie each list off their top discs of the year and supply you with sample songs as persuasion. Magpie’s is especially full of unexpectednesses - Half-Cousin (singing “Mrs. Pilling and the Pig Boy” in a heavy brogue)? Smoosh? - while Frank’s is super-freakin’-consistent, just like Chromewaves itself. Neither of them chose The Nein, but since those North Carolinians are playing the Horseshoe free tonight (9:30 pm), here’s what they sound like.

3. Are you still not sure what grime is, aside from “stuff kinda like Dizzee Rascal”? Luca has a really cool British FM radio tape up featuring the Nasty Crew and Roll Deep around late 2002 to give ya some edgrimication.

4. Pere Ubu got the picture way back in 1989, even before everybody was making music on their computers in their bedrooms: “There’s too much music in the land/ You hear it everywhere, everybody’s in a band/ They can’t get enough of it/ Brother Jimmy, cousin Ray/ Mom and Dad on bass & drums/ Someone here’s just gotta quit.” Pere Ubu’s Ice Cream Truck, courtesy of Artificial Radio Weblog. Watch for Zoilus’ review of the new David Thomas joint, 18 Monkeys on a Dead Man’s Chest, coming licketysplit.

5. And finally, Disques Hushhush’s audio archive outta Montreal is bursting at the seams to serve all your broody experimental electronica needs. The label proclaims: “Unlike most other electronic labels from the MontrÈal area, we are not really releasing any dance floor oriented material. Off course, you are always free to dance on our stuff.” So cruise over there and dance all over the likes of Mick Harris, Xingu Hill and Mark Spybey.

If you’re in Montreal, Hushush is also co-hosting a movie night at the Goethe-Institut on Sherbrooke, screening a documentary about the recently disbanded sly Argentine conceptualists Reynols (the only known band fronted by a singer with Down’s Syndrome) and another about the Nihilist Spasm Band, about whom you’ve heard much around here lately.