Wednesday, April 30, 2003

The Onion Comes Through Again





My main beef against the music industry is hilariously put here. RIAA has no one but themselves to blame for their situation. And I have a sneaking suspicion that their attempts to control the Napster clones will ultimately prove futile. At any rate, they have no right to be doing what they're doing, invading private computers, shutting down private rights to trade data. If making a friend a mix tape isn't illegal, why is downloading a song from Kazaa? The only thing that's different is the technology and the scale on which it can be done. No one's profiting by it, so how can it be a copyright violation?





If the industry had embraced MP3 technology when it was new, then they could have found a way to profit from it by now (and Steve Jobs may have just come up with a way for them yet). Instead, they went on the defensive, standing against technological change, which history shows to be unwise in the long term. If they're unable to deal with new formats, that's they're problem. They can go the way of the dodo like other companies who refused to grow with the times. Why the Republicans in Congress are paying any attention to the industry they constantly accuse (not entirely inaccurately) of demeaning American culture is beyond me. Perhaps the real pressure's coming from the Democrats, who can generally count on RIAA for campaign contributions.



Tuesday, April 29, 2003

Seven Nation Army





I remember a few years ago, when music seemed to irredeemably suck. Between the rap-rock that was short of the good elements of either to the indistinguishable BET acts to the plastic people that teenagers are always willing to buy, there was nothing current that I wanted to listen to. Now I've reached the point where I can hardly contain my excitement for the New Rock. Yes, I know it's trendy, yes, I know it's working grooves that have been worked before. I don't care. I have the new White Stripes album, and it explodes across the eardrums like a ripe orange. Snoogens.

Monday, April 28, 2003

Just as a Teaser...





I know this has been hashed and rehashed in a lot of places, but the Dixie Chicks and the Robbins/Sarandons/Sheens of the world really need to unclench. Yes, they have the right to speak their views. And the rest of us have the right to tell them to shut their pie-holes. That isn't expecially polite of us, and maybe, just maybe, if we engaged them in dialogue we might find a common ground, and walk out in the garden of a new tommorrow. But them telling us we're a bunch of reactionary, racist, un-nuanced pigs strikes me as being more likely.





Lemme make sure I am clear. I have the right to not buy Madonna's new album because I find her Che Guevera wannabe routine offensive (as anyone who knows a bit about what Shining Path has actually accomplished in Peru should). I have the right to not see Robbins and Sarandon movies, to not watch the West Wing, to write vitriolic letters to the editor about how the Dixie Chicks are the reason to be ashamed of Texas, not President Bush. Anyone who thinks free speech comes with the right to be listened to, or even to be patiently endured, is missing the point. Anyone who speaks may be criticized. Deal.



I Was Detained. I Swear.





I honestly and truly meant to blog at some point between Thursday and Sunday. But I was running up and down the Eastern Seaboard visiting folk and had rehearsals and shows and all kinds of impedimenta. It's a lame excuse, but I'm sticking with it. Who I am, Parts 3 and 4 are slated for this week, whenever I can scrape together the time. Probably at work (HA ha!).

Wednesday, April 23, 2003

Who I am, Part 2: Gabba Gabba Hey!





Moving on from the cosmological definition of me, we proceed to the aesthetic. As the song might go, Andrew is a punk rocker. At least, he might be. He's a bit suburban, a bit un-nihilistic, a bit old to be a full part of the tribe. That's leaving aside how he manages to fit liking such a deliberately obnoxious, not to say Luciferean, musical genre and the admiration of the serene yet imperious mysteries of the Catholic Church together in the same head.





And to those who demand ideological purity, I'm sure it's something of a problem. Those who can use the phrase "true punk" without irony think religion is bad because it like, restricts your mind and stuff. And if many christians think Rock n' Roll is the devil's music, then punk is probably the hymns sang backwards and upside-down in the Ninth Concentric Circle while Satan is getting a deep-tissue massage from Stalin and Judas. Believe me, I've been through all this.





More to the point, just how relevant is punk today? I rented 24 Hour Party People a few weekends ago, and I was struck by how the advent of a band like the Sex Pistols in Britain could inspire a scene (that of Manchester) which would yield "the beatification of the beat," as the film's narrator puts it. The Beat is most definitely what rules pop music nowadays, be it hip-hop or shiny teen pop or even country (at least, going by Shania Twain, who is less than country in some circles). It's getting so bad for reg'lar rock bands that any stylistic throwback to the Glory Days of Alternative Music will be hailed by the critics as the Dawn of the New Age, whether they actually sell any records or not. In this our multicultural world, can the Aryan strains of grooveless distortion really matter?





Frankly, I could care less. Taste is a very personal thing, and musical taste a growing and evolving personal thing, if it is to have any legs. I call myself a punk, but I could just as well be called a jazzman or a blues-funkster or a yo-boy or a mod or a rocker, if liking any particular genre of music was enough for membership. I go with calling myself a punk because it is the largest category in my collection, and because I deliberately support the underground elements of it as an act of minor threat against the music industry which is a grotesque overflowing septic tank of lame. That attitude plus a fairly apt Sid Vicious impression ought to be sufficient credential.





Besides, the purpose of punk was never really to conquer and destroy rock music as it was to simultaneously ground it in its primal roots and enlarge its possibilities. Punk's aggression was the cool despair of blues driven outward, to the logical extreme, exploding like a hand grenade that never leaves your hand. It's message was simple: anyone can do it, any image can be used, any sound can be embroidered into the vibe. To an intellectual such as myself, this is a fascinating tradition, even when it trespasses against my moral compass. The political and sociological screeds that accompany the more self-important bands are to a large degree empty oppositionality, weren't invented by punk (Country Joe and the Fish, anyone?) and continues today in non-punk forms (Rage Against the Machine, anyone?). They can and should be safely ignored. Revolution? You better free your mind instead.





Besides, the songs are short, so I can indulge my attention span. 'Nuff said.

Tuesday, April 22, 2003

Who I am, Part 1: Dominus Vobiscum





We start with the cosmological. I am, by birth, bearing, and constant choice, a Catholic. I say "constant choice" because I'm not always completely happy about it. Being a Catholic, in this day and age, can suck fish guts sometimes. To begin with, there's the litany of annoyances practicing Catholics are required to put up with: proselytizing evangelicals who know Scripture but not much else, whining lapsed Catholics with their ever-topical nuns-with-rulers routines, condescending atheists and humanists, the C&E crowd who crowd the churches twice a year to recharge their hypocrisy, self-righteous neo-pagans, pederast jokes, and worst of all, those knuckleheads who bolt from Mass as soon as communion is handed out. I mean, really. Where are you people in such a rush to get to? It's SUNDAY!!!





Yet even if all of those were to be dispensed with (and in truth, I've exaggerated the true level of discord any of them causes. Different strokes for different folks, as they say), being a Catholic would still not be a walk through the park with a pair of bikini models, if you receive my meaning. We're talking about a faith whose central event is the nailing of it's central figure to two pieces of wood, by a disinterested authority at the behest of the very people he had been sent to enlighten. The story of Christ's Passion is such a typically menschlich tale of petty jealousy, mindless tribalism, and amoral politicking that one would laugh if one wasn't constantly confronted with the image of a man who'd committed no wrong dying that gruesome, painful death for public entertainment, with a witless piece of mockery above his head just to apotheosize the hatefulness. And we're asked to do what he did. To smile in the face of humanity's cruel stupidity, to patiently endure the banal interations of tyranny and vandalism that constitute human history, to keep walking down the good road even as the tollbooth operators step out and kick us in the bits and pieces.





Is being a Catholic demanding? Sometimes frustrating? Yes, and yes. Is it better to laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints? Seems that way quite a lot of the time.





So why do it?





For one thing, I've never heard anyone able to truly refute the Marquis de Sade's dictum: that if there is no God, everything is permissible. Without a universal value, all values are ephemeral, and thus doomed to be undone by the next big thing. We are stuck with a meaningless universe as described by the dragon in Grendel: nothing coming from nothing leading to nothing. One of two things is true: either death is eternal, or life is eternal. If life is eternal, death does not matter. If death is eternal, life does not matter.





All of which gives one reason to grasp at Eternity and hope that Eternity breathes, but why Catholocism? There are plenty of other faiths out there, some stretching back well beyond the time of Yeshua bar Joseph. Why dance with the one that brung ya? It's not like there's an Inquisition that's going to punish me if I break ranks.





I like Catholocism for a lot of reasons, the most immediate being their aesthetic. Stained-glass windows, incense, organs, these things remind me of my earliest memories of church. The low sonorous melodies of Gregorian chant, the veneration of the Eucharist, genuflecting, holy water, tithes, all of these give me a sense of participation in something ancient and deep, and are enought to make me put up with the occasional dull homily or unmelodic hymn.





A second reason, less apparent but more compelling, is the deep subset of rationalism in Catholic theology. Catholocism is perhaps the only major world religion that accepts human reason as a means of determining Truth. Not that other faiths are specifically anti-rational, but their cosmologies are solely dependent on revelation, not logic. The Catholic insistence on Tradition as well as Revealed Truth gives humanity and human reason a part to play in the ongoing Creation. In what other theological body could both Thomas Aquinas and Francis of Assissi co-exist, even admire each other?





Finally, we have Catholocism's essential maturity. No institution has been as assaulted, as undermined, as consistently thwarted in so many of its goals as the Catholic Church. From the brutal persecutions of the Romans to the destructive savagery of the Germanic tribes to the Arab conquests, the institutionalized corruption of feudalism, the high-handedness of kings and emperors, the implosion of the Protestant Reformation, the acidic disdain of the so-called Enlightenment and its post-modern heirs, it amazes that the hierarchy has survived. Yet it has. It's even grown and learned from its mistakes, to the point of apologizing for it's historic errors. The Pope still intones in Latin upon the bones of Peter. The sacraments are still performed, promising a fusion of the human and divine. The poor are still given alms and care. The Lord's Prayer is still spoken. Crusades have foundered, Inquisitions have run out of control, but the gates of hell have not prevailed against the Church.





All of which doesn't make this journey any easier. There are days when I'd love to just kick back, dope up, get a girl and use her badly, throw aside all responsibility, all sense of connection to a world beyond me. I'd be good at it. I wouldn't be alone, either. And if Pascal's wager lands tails, it won't matter anyway, right?





But I am constantly reminded in such moments of the Jewish scholar who said that a God who doesn't try to order your finances and tell you what to do with your privates isn't worth having. I'm no saint. I've done my share of selfish things and will likely do more. But I know what runway I'm aiming for, and that keeps me going.





Thank you, drive through...

Monday, April 21, 2003

The Plan...





It occurs to me that I should let you, the reader, know a bit about me before I can even dream of you taking me seriously. So I plan to spend this coming week engaging in an apologias, explaining who I am and what I am about. That will enable you to have the proper filters with which to process all that I throw down. Far be it from me to deny you your stereotypes. This will begin tommorrow, as soon as I have enough time for my brain to organize the thoughts. Thursday I'll probably skip a day, from travelling. You know how it goes...

Friday, April 18, 2003

Good Friday to you...





On a day away from my computer, a day spent quietly marveling at the vastness and variety of goods available at a single Target, a day spent building bookcases, I have little of the essential, hot data to report. The only source of information pertaining to a world beyond the trees was the radio, pumping in commentary rather than new revelations. I expect we're in another of those down times, when the punditocracy will snipe at each other over their own versions of established facts. Reason enough to spend a day accomplishing something, eh?

Thursday, April 17, 2003

The 'Net





According to a Pew Internet Project Report, 42% of Americans are still not online. Drudge apparently thinks this is big news. The write-up of the report expresses great marvel at the fact that those over 50 and those lacking in income are not online. Such is their privelege. I am more surprised by the fact that the number of Americans using the net regularly seems to have grown from 49% to 58% between April 2000 and October 2002 (I could be reading that statement wrong; it says that 49% of Americans "had access" in 2000 while 58% "reported using the internet" two years later). Given that the economy has been sluggish of late, that's rather impressive.





Other interesting stats: a mere 28% of users admit to using the 'net to swap music files. One begins to wonder what exactly the record industry is so upset about...

The Sublimity of Beauty





I just witnessed a girl do a liturgical dance to an R&B version of "Amazing Grace" as part of the Holy Thursday Prayer Service at school. Despite the fact that the young miss was comely indeed, I was struck by her elegance, to the point where I even felt tears welling up. It is difficult to be serious on a subject like this, given the pervasivness with which we believe that all motivations are sexual, but I find myself believing that beauty reflects something else, something older and deeper.





Ah, well. Perhaps I'm just a sucker for "Amazing Grace". I'll have to listen to the Dropkick Murphy's version when I get home today.

Wednesday, April 16, 2003

Damn you, Lore!





No sooner do I add the Brunching Shuttlecocks to my links, but I discover that Lore and company have added An Apathetic Online Journal Generator to mock my good hopes. Naturally it's funny. I am officially part of a mocked trend. I feel so icky.

Welcome and Whatnot.





Greetings. This site has been an idea on my backburner for some time, so I imagine there will be a bit of a learning curve vis a vis other, more experienced bloggers. It will take some time and some work for me to get things just as I would like them.



I hope that you will like what you read, once it's here, and that this here new-fangled blogosphere trend won't belly-up on me like the last few free web publishing sites I've participated in. Such are the chances you take. Share and enjoy.