Houston Press

Tender Kurt. Kind of creepy.

​Yesterday, our sister (brother?) androgynous sibling publication the Houston Press laid down some pretty spot-on (or at least stereotypical and chuckle-worthy) scenarios that outline Kurt Cobain's post-suicide-attempt life.

Accroding to HP blogger Craig Hlavaty, Cobain, who would have turned 45 this year, might have found himself mixing house versions of Nirvana standards along side Skrillex; playing the grizzled, indie(and Pearl Jam)-critical metal warrior (one would assume along side Tad Doyle); hosting a folksy barnyard concert series as a reclusive, enigmatic singer/songwriter; or meeting a pseudo-Axl Rose fate as the lone original member in an increasingly unrecognizable band.

Touché, Houston, touché. Check it out here.

You can't tell, but tie-dyed dude is playing a mandolin.

​1. Let's just get this out of the way now: In 2012, you can't not see Portland through the lens of Portlandia. This moment to them--and it's funny how long this has been coming; slightly lower profile media like Burn Collector were musing about Portland's irrevocable hipsterization as far back as like 2000--well, it must be what grunge felt like for Seattle: a distortion, a caricature based on truths that nonetheless comes to replace those truths in people's perceptions. The city has become like the "Most Photographed Barn in America" from Don Delilo's White Noise: it's become impossible to see it for itself, unmediated. (Oh, you *haven't read* White Noise?)

So, when you're out on a brewery tour and every stop sounds like the Bard's College from Skyrim, whether via live band or piped in madrigals on the PA, it's "The Dream of the 1890s." When one of your buddies almost ditches home for the weekend because his allergies are flaring up, it's the "Allergy Pride Parade." Probably the self-parody-parodying "time becomes a loop" moment of this was driving around actually listening to Washed Out on our host's car stereo (his car, his tunes)--it was, sadly, not as quirky as I thought it'd be.

So anyway, if everything else on this list reads like pitches for new sketches it's because our mental environments are totally corrupted by media. (Oh, you *don't read* Adbusters?) And because of course, I'm available to write for the show, or even just run for coffee or whatever. Okay, here we go. Sorry in advance.

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​The Pitfalls of Grammy Fame
On Bon Iver and the perils of Alternative/Best New Artist adoration
By Kluck Chosterman

Bon Iver was just named Best New Artist and Bon Iver, Bon Iver Best Alternative Music Album of the year by National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences voters in the 2011 Grammy Awards.

I'm guessing this doesn't mean much to more than (maybe) 10,000 people in the entire country. In fact, if you effortlessly understood 100 percent of this article's opening sentence, you can probably skip the rest of the piece. But there's something about this situation that I find pretty fascinating, even though it's speculative and only partially related to music. When (and if) you listen to Bon Iver, Bon Iver by Bon Iver, you are listening to two things: a record that's very good, and/or a record that will someday seem way worse than it actually is. And logic suggests the latter is more likely than the former, even though that's no reflection on the value of the artist.

I'm not really in a position to argue for (or against) the merits of Bon Iver, simply because I've barely listened to Bon Iver, Bon Iver. Had it not won the Grammy Awards, I might not have listened to it at all. It's been on my iTunes since whenever it came out, I know my wife loved it, and I had no problem with it ideologically. I just never got around to playing it. Somehow, the single story I'd read about Bon Iver was about a cabin, so I wasn't even sure what genre of music it was supposed to exist alongside. The only thing I knew was that the words Bon Iver were pronounced "Bone Eevair," which seemed like reason enough to ignore it (not a good reason, but a reason nonetheless). But then it was voted Best New Artist and Best Alternative Music Album in this awards show, which made me think, I should at least know what it is. So I started playing it, totally uninformed and with no motive beside sincere curiosity. This being the Internet, you can listen to it yourself. If you don't feel like listening to it, here's enough information to pretend like you did:

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​Some of these tweets are from Wilco's Jeff Tweedy (Playing tonight at the Paramount Theater) and some are from someone who tweets as "Not Jeff Tweedy". Can you tell which is which?

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"A lot of people's girlfriends are in there." -the New Yorker

​Look at these guys! You don't have to be Sasha Frere-Jones to know that these dudes party hard, have a sweet van (I've partied in it--it's awesome!), and score mad groupie love from Vashon Island to the 9th Ward. Look at that skull! And those shades! And the cowboy hat! Ladies, try to compose yourselves.

And! But! So! The Pharmacy's infamous road doggin' ways have in fact landed them in no less highbrow a publication than The New Yorker's "Goings On About Town," along with personal skuzz pop punk faves Japanther. To wit (emphasis mine):

The Pharmacy is an off-kilter ensemble from Seattle that has gained notoriety in warehouses and house parties across the country. Their music is frank, party-oriented garage rock, but it's mostly an excuse to get the trio out on the road; you'd be hard pressed to find another group as firmly committed to rock and roll as a way of life, and they boast a transnational faction of female devotees to prove it.

Dudes, Wallace Shawn's dad basically just called you mega-studs! Inconceivable! I hope that Pharmacy stocks BIRTH CONTROL. Etc.

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In the past month, I've heard reports from two crossover-ready LOLchillwave shows--Memory Tapes at Chop Suey in July and Pictureplane last night at the Sunset--of overwhelmingly douchey crowds. A text message from the Memory Tapes pit: "the most unchillwave chillwave show I've ever seen...a bro in front of me is trying to simultaneously do the jerk and throw up the devil horns." And from Pictureplane last night: "Douchiest crowd but really fun sets so far...For serious though, who are any of these people? A ton of Bellevue girls and flat-brimmed hat'd goofy sweater motherfuckers."

Now, this is not a swipe at Bellevue girls (I'm an old Bellevue girl myself) or hats or devil horns, it's merely the observation that any trend goes through some pretty distinct phases of popularity, expanding in concentric circles from brand new thing to underground scene to blogged-about trend to shows packed with bros. That's just what success looks like: There aren't enough elitist snobs in the city to entirely fill the Showbox SoDo, so you're gonna have to appeal beyond that demographic eventually. (And, you know, these crowds probably aren't ANY different than at any rock show; it's just that perhaps the inherent irony and trash '80s aesthetics of chillwave, combined with white guys trying to dance, makes them seem douchier.) Of course, that success is also the moment that those previous circles start to fall away--the underground and the blogs move onto something else, let the Chads have chillwave or witch house or whatever. Which brings me to the point: Is chillwave finally mainstreamed? Two years from inside-joke genre to bro-fest? Are we done here? (And do you guys wanna take "witch house" next? I'll throw in a Deftone!)

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Get into it . . . while it's still cool:

​(Update: Right, so, the inspiration for this meme is comedy gold in itself: "Titled "Pitchfork," it's a dramatic thriller about the middle-aged mother of an indie rocker who, after her son is killed in a car accident, seeks vengeance on an online blogger who had peddled snark about her son (on the music site Pitchfork, hence one of the title's entendres)." This thing could be our generation's Vibrations!)

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YOU

DON'T

SAY!

(via The Seattle Times.)

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Basically, they're the Spice Girls.

​So, the day after Friday night's Pains of Being Pure at Heart Show, I bumped into PoBPaH frontman Kip Berman at Cairo Gallery, where he insisted he was there to see fellow Slumberland Records band Brilliant Colors, who were performing with Olympia's deadpan dispensers of fine riffs, Gun Outfit. Clearly, he was really there for market research, a little cool-hunting to see what "the kids" were into these days (hint: cheap artificially lime-flavored beer and dolphin tank tops). Anyway, I cornered him and confronted him about the Pains/Pitchfork cabal's conspiracy to whitewash indie rock. Here's what he had to say for himself:

"[Collapse Board] is probably just jealous that they weren't invited to the market-testing sessions. We would be behind one-way glass, and we played two versions of the songs for a cross-section of middle Americans, using Maroon 5 as a control."

So there you have it straight from the source: market-tested, Pitchfork-approved.

(Stay tuned for our next investigation, in which we get to the bottom of what really happened on 9/11, with the guys from Vampire Weekend.)

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Note Bangs' prototypical use of the "chillwave triangle."

​You get the following, in which the similarities are almost as telling as the differences*. (Bangs' original essay "I Saw God and/or Tangerine Dream" can be found in the absolutely essential collection Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung):

I decided it would be a real fun idea to get fucked up on drugs and go see Beat Connection/USF with Laserium. So I drank two bottles of cough syrup and bussed up to the Pacific Science Center for a night I'll never forget. For one thing, emerging from the bus in this slick esthete's Elysium is like crawling out of a ditch into Jackie Onassis' iris--a mind-expanding experience in itself. A woman there told me that the management had quite soured on chillwave clientele, and it was easy to see why: here's this cornersteel of cultural corporations, and what staggers into it but the zit-pocked lumpen of Healthy Times Fun Club. And when worlds collide, someone has to take the slide.

What kind of person goes to see a Beat Connection/USF concert? Here's a group with three or maybe even four synthesizers, no vocals, no rhythm section; they sound like silt seeping on the ocean floor--and this place is sold out. Freebies are rife, yet I don't think that kid in front of me wiped out in his seat got in for nothing. So I ask some of the Beat Connection/USF's fans what they find in this music, and get a lot of cosmic, Todd Rundgren mulch-mouth. I tell one guy I think they're just a bunch of shit, a poor man's Fripp and Eno, and he looks me over and says: "Well, you gotta have imagination . . . "

*Also replaced:
Avery Fisher Hall = Pacific Science Center
rock = chillwave
Madison Square Garden = Healthy Times Fun Club
Zeit = Surf Noir
Alpha Centauri = Jamaica Plains
CBS = 230 Publicity
14th Street = Pine Street.
Everything else is as God/Bangs intended.

More after the jump!

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