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I’m just abjectly horrified today, for reasons many others have given lots of space to and that I could do no better in explaining. I will say that I feel completely helpless to stop the sale of what is one of the few remaining gems on the Rice University campus where I spent my four years. Here’s my plea, then, to anyone reading:
Listen to your local radio station. Listening to KTRU was the only way I ever discovered anything outside of my roommate’s significant Deep Purple CD collection. Listening to KTRU was the only way I ever got past the Steve Miller Band blasting in the quad. Listening to KTRU was the only way I ever learned to appreciate music being created outside of a business setting, music being created for the sake of music. People do it all the time, and it comes out unpolished and delicious, and you can only hear that on KTRU or WMPG or WBOR or WRBC or other local community radio stations.
It makes me sick that Houston and Rice University would lose the best, most diverse radio station in the area. Because that means Houstonians and Rice students have one less way to discover the rich musical underbelly that is teeming well below the Lady Gaga/Katy Perry surface. Surely discovery has to count for something. Right?
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Discovery and rediscovery happen constantly for me, with my music collection on shuffle more frequently these days, so let me post something I rediscovered from my dark Houston past and something I newly discovered that, I hope, will be part of the brightening Portland future.
03 Steambathcity
Matt and the gang make me wistful for a more innocent time.
04 Harvard Street Actor (Demo)
Aubin has an unhinged sense of harmony. Not sure where it comes from but I like it.
Hello fellow Coogs,
The news of The Rice administration’s unethical attempted sale of KTRU has largely dominated discussion here in Houston. For myself, a University of Houston graduate, this leaves me with a particular sense of responsibility as it is my University who is the intended recipient of KTRU’s license. The University of Houston, as many of you know, owns the license on behalf of KUHF who broadcasts a mix of classical music and NPR programming. KUHF, though is not a college station in the truest sense as many have asserted because it is not run by the students, operated by the university, nor is it funded by the university. This is not to say anything bad about KUHF. It is an important part of the community and serves a great need but to expand its broadcasting by silencing KTRU is unconscionable and the fact that my university is allowing this sale to go through under the current circumstances leaves me feeling culpable.
An article in Texas Watchdog makes some excellent points about the dubious nature of the deal.
1) The Rice Administration, contrary to normal operating procedure, purposely tried to keep things as secret as possible.
2) The Rice Administration purposefully downplayed KTRU’s value in the Rice and Houston community to the University of Houston.
3) The University of Houston Regents agenda was too vague. Nowhere is KTRU mentioned in the listing which states, “Approval is requested to delegate authority to the Chancellor to negotiate and execute an asset purchase agreement and a management agreement, up to $10 million, related to the purchase of a radio station for use by KUHF – University of Houston.”
This third point is where there is hope. First contrary to how it has been categorized – this is not a done deal. Secondly, because the meeting notes left out the critical detail that the generic “asset purchase” was KTRU, this appears to be a violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act. Now, I am not suggesting that The UH Board of Regents did this to be secretive – it is quite likely that, given the fact that Rice University “has pushed on as if KTRU is on its last legs” they may have seen this as immaterial – but oversight or not, this is why the law exists: to assure that controversial issues are not handled under the table.
A violation of this act could be something handled by the courts which could void the results of the vote. But there is a simpler way to handle this which I’m sure the Board of Regents would appreciate and that is simply for a call to have this original vote voided and to take this issue up again at its next meeting. The University of Houston has always thrived by being open and transparent and this is not time to change that course.
Therefore, I am asking my fellow University of Houston Alumni and Students to send yr respectful objection to our Board and President requesting the president not approve the sale at this time and that the board take up this item with a proper Agenda Item Listing that would inform the public as to the content. Additionally, as that you implore the board to not approve the sale without the Rice University adopting the open and transparent standards that we enjoy and take pride in at our university.
Details of who and how to contact the board and President Khator can be found at SaveKTRU.org . You can also join UH for KTRU on Facebook.
Thank You
Ramon Medina
Class of 2000
Or, Danny Blows His Stack, Part 3
Dear Mr. Leebron;
My name is Daniel Mee. I graduated from Rice with a Bachelor of Arts in 2002. My parents, who met and married while they were both undergraduates at Rice, are also alumni. After I graduated, I was a Rice staff member for three and a half years, and I now work for a company founded by Rice graduates that has employed at least four other Rice alumni. I currently play in a band founded by two other Rice alumni and a child of a Rice professor.
All of this is to say, I have very strong ties to Rice University. Additionally, I have strong ties to regional music and media communities—I am currently a freelance music writer for one of the Houston Chronicle’s online outlets, and have been a regular contributor to the print editions of the Houston Press and Austin Chronicle.
My introduction to the music and media communities came through KTRU-FM, where I was a DJ for seven years. Many of the closest connections I’ve maintained from my undergraduate years were formed at KTRU with my fellow DJs. As someone who values the unique and vital contributions of this radio station to Rice and the surrounding community, and feels strongly invested in both, I am deeply ashamed of the manner in which the Board of Trustees and the administration of Rice University have treated KTRU.
I was horrified to learn on Monday evening from the Houston Chronicle that Rice University was one day away from finalizing an agreement to sell the license and transmitter that are currently in use for the Rice student radio station. Not only were the students, faculty and staff of Rice not consulted about this plan, but the staff of the radio station were not even informed of it—they had to find out about it from the Chronicle’s website.
Later that evening, Mr. Leebron, I received an e-mail from you in which you outlined the reasons the University had decided to liquidate the student radio station. Among other things, you claimed that KTRU is a “vastly underutilized resource that is not essential to providing our students the wide range of opportunities they need,” citing that “[a] recent Arbitron report showed that KTRU’s audience was so small that it did not even register in the ratings.” You note that “KTRU will continue to serve its campus and external audience with student-managed programming via www.ktru.org.”
The ability to stream student programming over the internet is not a replacement for a radio broadcast for the simple fact that it cannot be heard on a radio. If KTRU-FM is liquidated, many listeners will no longer have access to KTRU programming. But the Arbitron report that you cite deals with this point neatly, does it not? The terrestrial listening audience is “so small that it did not even register in the ratings.”
It’s true that KTRU does not show up in Arbitron data, at least not in the most recent Arbitron report that I was able to access*, but here is a brief list of other stations that do not appear: KTSU, KACC, KPFT, and KUHF, the University of Houston NPR affiliate that claims to have 300,000 daily listeners. Based on this data, one might conclude either that KUHF is also “not essential,” or that Arbitron ratings provide no useful data by which to judge the value of a noncommercial radio station.
Even assuming that the terrestrial broadcast of KTRU has a small audience, it is not at all clear to me that it follows that the station ought to be terminated. Most Rice students, alumni, faculty and staff probably have not contemplated that “underutilized resources” on campus are eligible for liquidation. Surely there are other assets that are ripe for divestiture. How many people visit the Rice Art Gallery on an average day? What about the Rice Media Center— is that still around? How many of Fondren library’s 2.6 million print volumes are consulted on a regular basis, now that most of the information contained therein is now available on the internet?
Perhaps we should start by demolishing the proportionally least-utilized resource in Rice history, the football stadium, which according to legend could not be filled even if every Rice alum, living or dead, were occupying a seat simultaneously. Clearly, it seems that the best course of action would be to demolish the stadium and use the space to alleviate Rice’s perpetual parking shortage, and simultaneously generate income through parking permit sales. Or, if the University really is desperate for cash, perhaps that portion of the campus can be partitioned off and sold.
Of course, we all know this idea would be untenable to the Board of Trustees. In 2004, a Rice-commissioned study by McKinsey Consulting recommended that Rice drop its division 1A athletics program, which was losing $10 million dollars per year, in favor of any of four less costly programs. After seeing this report, the Rice Board of Trustees chose to ignore this recommendation, thereby rendering the report a boondoggle in its own right.
But let’s back up a bit to the Rice athletics program losing $10 million per year. TEN MILLION DOLLARS. PER YEAR. This is more than the entire proceeds of the proposed sale of KTRU-FM. If only we had more radio stations to sell, we could subsidize athletics for years to come.
How dare you insult our intelligence by informing us that, in the name of university advancement, we must liquidate an educational resource to which hundreds of students have devoted thousands upon thousands of hours of volunteer labor to build and maintain over the course of 40 years, when the sale price doesn’t even match a fifth of the fortune that the athletics program lost in the last decade?
According to your e-mail, the proceeds from the sale are to be put in large part toward the construction of a new East Servery near Will Rice. While I’m sure that this will benefit the 400 or so students who are members of those colleges, I’m having difficulty seeing the need for this building. Undergraduate enrollment at Rice University has increased only 7% since I matriculated in 1998**, and yet, since that time, Rice has added three new residential colleges and two new serveries. As I recall, I had no problem getting enough to eat when I was a freshman living on campus. Why is the construction of another servery so urgent that educational assets must be sold off to pay for it?
After all, Mr. Leebron, as you note in your e-mail, “the economic downturn which began two years ago has forced Rice . . . to make hard choices to prioritize spending and maximize the use of our resources.” Why wasn’t one of these “hard choices” to not build another new building until you have the cash on hand to pay for it? For the last fifteen years, the university has been spending like a drunken sailor, adding building after building, and now that we’re in a recession, rather than regroup, your strategy is to sell things off to raise capital.
I’m sure you are aware that, due to the recession, many state governments have been reduced to selling state property, such as public parks, to private corporations in order to balance their budgets as tax revenues decline (perhaps you are even aware that the state of Arizona has taken the bizarre measure of selling and then leasing back its own state capitol!). This state of affairs is generally considered to be a disgraceful indication of governmental breakdown, in which an abject failure of political courage has necessitated drastic, unsustainable and irreversible steps merely to stave off disaster.
Is this an indication that Rice is experiencing a similar crisis of political courage? You told the Houston Chronicle only six months ago that Rice might “need” to build a new football stadium soon, even as negotiations for the liquidation of an irreplaceable university resource were carried out behind the backs of faculty and students. How are we to interpret this?
In short, it strikes me that this sale is so unnecessary as to be perverse, and the reasoning proffered to justify it is hogwash. At least when, ten years ago, Rice last attempted a hostile takeover of KTRU-FM, it did so because it valued the opportunities availed to students and the community by FM radio, even though it completely overlooked the value of a student organization and a community voice unlike any other. In 2000, President Malcolm Gillis even told the Rice Thresher that he would not consider selling KTRU-FM. Today, by contrast, you deem KTRU-FM to be “not essential.” If you had consulted any of the dozens of the students who are KTRU DJs, or any of the 500+ alumni who are former KTRU DJs, or any of KTRU’s audience, or indeed anyone at the University at all, I believe you would have come to a different conclusion.
The administration of Rice University has an obligation, as a trustee of its students, faculty and alumni, to value our contributions and opinions just as concretely as it does a new building. Not only have you and the Board of Trustees failed to do so, you have made crucial and irreversible decisions about an invaluable part of this university in secret, without consulting or informing the people for whose benefit the institution ostensibly exists. This is a breach of trust and a violation of the mores of liberal education.
It is unethical.
When I was merely a prospective student, my parents, and the university itself, portrayed the school as an idealistic institution that valued the individual and often idiosyncratic contributions of students more highly than the money they paid for tuition. KTRU-FM, a radio station founded in a dorm room, managed almost exclusively by students and grown to national renown as one of the most adventurous and unusual college radio stations in the country, is a shining example of those contributions, and an essential part of the institution that I decided to attend. If KTRU is liquidated in the manner you have proposed, for me and many others, that institution will be severely and permanently damaged.
I know I speak not only for those members of the Rice community who have been involved with the radio station, but for those like my mother (Jones ‘80), who was never involved with KTRU but who, upon hearing of its impending sale, described it as “sickening.”
I would like to think that, when I have college-age children, I could recommend Rice to them in the same way my parents recommended it to me. Despite my lifelong connection to Rice, if you proceed with the sale of KTRU-FM, I most certainly will not be able to do so, nor could I in good conscience donate a red cent to an institution that places so little value on the contributions of those it purports to serve. Not that I imagine it matters, since the appalling practice of selling off bits and pieces of Rice’s legacy should be more than sufficient to finance the University’s continued improvement.
Sincerely,
Daniel Mee
Baker ’02
Many thanks to Angela Lee, Esq. (UT-Austin ’99, UH Law ’06) for editorial assistance.
[Edit 4/22 11:41 PM]
* See comment below by Charles for information about more recent Arbitron data.
** Another sharp-eyed alum pointed out that this number is a couple of years out of date and no longer accurate. The 7% figure came from the 2008 enrollment report, while the 2010 report shows a 17% increase between 1998 and 2009. Contributing to this difference are (A) 270 students added between 2007 and 2009 and (B) a revision upward of the numbers in every other year on the chart. This significantly larger growth figure still represents a much smaller number than the residential capacity added during this period.
This is what bath time at my house is like these days. Although I do refrain (with difficulty) from singing about poop. Also, I’ve exchanged the acoustic guitar for a four string Irish tenor banjar which is tuned like a mandolin or a violin — so it’s a helpful configuration for its multitudednessocity.
My studio mate downloaded this software for the studio. We’ve been using it instead of Cubase for the past month or so. Works pretty good and its design a little sleeker than Cubase. The price can’t be beat since you can download it for free and volunteer to pay for the truly affordable license (60 bucks –Cubase will set you back five hundred bucks or so). Reaper also has a strong developer community, almost open source. I like that a lot.
I’m a freelance software developer. As a freelancer I bounce around a lot between different software platforms. I spend a lot of time on licensed platforms like Microsoft’s asp.net. But I also spend a lot of time with open source projects using php-based stuff like Joomla. You’ll pull your hair out figuring out some puzzles no matter which platform you use. And you’ll likely find your answer trolling some forum either way. But the zeal and communitynessocity of the open source stuff adds a layer of feelgoodednessesity which is important.
This all leads me to ponder the entrance of a new sort of record label –an open source initiative where all the unsigned artists on the label have complete access to each others’ stuff and so forth; the way my daughter takes my bathroom songs and makes them her own.
Thinking about verbalizing music on a weekly basis is something I find incredibly challenging. It goes a long way towards explaining how I found my way out of the NAP on my first go-round. Yes, I also have a propensity for shitting on the parade, as it goes, and I don’t disregard the effect my approach has on the way other people do or don’t enjoy things. I can be a prick, and worse, I can be unpleasant, boorish, and overwrought. That’s not a big crowd pleaser. So, yes, attitude plays a big role. But still, having to come up with something — and a written something at that — once weekly, is daunting.
But why should it be?
Well, there’s a number of reasons.
It’s not like I’m a stranger to the world of music. I’ve been fortunate to be around the stuff for as long as I can remember. Music was in our household as I grew up, even it wasn’t a focal point so to speak. I became a musician my own damn self over thirty years ago. I have logged countless thousands of hours enjoying and thinking about music. I’ve had a small amount of luck being paid to write about music. I’ve met some amazing and very influential musicians.
But writing about music is a different animal.
What is it I want to convey? Well, it changes.
There’s trying to explain or share the experience of listening to a certain piece of music. Danny has touched on this last week. I commented on some of the difficulties I have playing the guy charged with introducing you, the potential listener, to a hunk of work. Part of my problem with writing reviews is that I don’t feel entirely comfortable being the guy who holds the key to the door. And that is because to be totally honest, I don’t hold the key. You do.
That’s why whenever I am relaying the experience of listening to a certain album to a nebulous audience of strangers I find myself more interested in imagining what it would be like to read the review rather than listen to the record. That, I leave up to you.
Then there’s the whole “personal” bit of the equation. I have been criticized by some here in the NAP and others as well for being too personal of a writer. As a reaction, I’ve defended my writing (which was never really being challenged in the first place), but to be perfectly honest, it’s a fair point (Justin). Why would a total stranger want to come to another blog in a near universe of blogs and read the ramblings of some shut-out asshole? They wouldn’t.
Which isn’t to say I am at a point which sees me keeping the personal out of my NAP posts. Obviously, since I’m still doing it right now.
So, I recognize and fully admit that I want other people to read the stuff I write in here as well as the stuff the rest of these folks write.
Also, I have found that once you touch on the formative experiences in your musical life, and once you tell some colorful stories, and once you create some fictional tales, and once you pick a few fights, it begins to seem as though you might be running the danger of making the same decisions over and over again.
So, what then?
Well, that draws me to this.
Yes, I love the discipline of writing a weekly post. Especially considering that hopefully some of at least the NAP people are reading. And ultimately it boils down to this –
Music itself, at least to me, is a form of communication. It is perhaps a form of language, or more precisely, music utilizes a highly socialized form of language. So maybe it would be best to use an example of something I have been thinking about a lot lately.
I have played in a number of bands in my life. Most of them were usually pretty terrible in the scheme of things. Not to say I didn’t enjoy myself, or that nothing was any good. And within all those hours and hours of playing, of bouncing ideas around, of working and so on . . . through all of it, a very tiny number of those moments were well within the boundaries of what I consider peak experience.
This would be certain moments of Mike Gunn shows, as well as certain moments in practice. We certainly had our shortcomings and it would be tedious to venture there. But, when it worked, the few times when all the pieces fell together — that, was fucking unreal. And 12 years later, at our reunion show, and sorry to go too personal, but as my entire life took on a paradigm shift from which I am still reeling, I got to have a night, on a tiny stage, that was like a dream. I am not shitting you.
When I write about music, all of my passion for what I hear in those funny sounds is something I try to channel into you, the reader. If I can have just a couple more of those moments in the process of giving my words to music (or vice versa), then all the doubt is worth it.
I am glad to be writing again for the NAP. Now, how do we get more of you to read? Any ideas? Let’s hear them.
Rice University, you are dead to me.
First, read the rumor. Next, read the news story. Read how Rice is violating its own supposed vision. Join the Facebook group. Save KTRU!
We’ve heard a similar tune before. Will there be a similar reaction this time by the students and the community, and will it matter? I don’t want to believe there’s no hope, but it’s hard to feel any right now.
There are no words. So much of my identity was tied up in KTRU for so long, I feel as though I’m floating above my body, watching as a thug I thought was my friend is about to stab me to death. For 9.5 million dollars. Money which they apparently need a committee to figure out how to spend. I know, how about use it to buy a visionary radio station, a unique cultural institution created and run by your own students, broadening receptive minds for miles around in every direction? One broadcasting to anyone with a car radio, anyone riding in a taxi, anyone with a boombox. One whose unpredictable and challenging programming gives unmeasurable benefits reaching far into the future, opening the minds of kids stuck in the suburbs, making everyone’s life a little more magical, a little more beautiful. One which shows that the strange and the wonderful are possible even in a redneck oil-ruled cockroach-infested swamp like Houston. Even in a place where any trace of history or character seems to invite demolition rather than appreciation. Miracles are possible, and KTRU was proof.
Well, Rice, you have managed to perform a miracle in reverse. Congratulations on your conquest. You have finally shown your true self, and your heart is apparently run through with the cold blood of a killer. Those looking for a recipe how to eviscerate the soul of a university and of a community need look no further. I mourn for both.
UPDATE: KTRU Emergency meeting at Sammy’s in the RMC (Rice Memorial Center) at 7PM tonight [Tuesday 8/17]. FOX, ABC, and CBS will be there, so look sharp and behave. The public is welcome.
Win Butler and his brother Will grew up in the Woodlands, Texas. It is a relatively new and “master planned” community about half an hour north of Houston. The planners behind the Woodlands didn’t invent the suburbs, but in 1974 founder George Mitchell perfected them. It’s nearly 25 square miles of perfect tree-lined streets. Behind the tall pines are hidden the houses and McMansions, schools, shops, stores, Fortune 500 companies, and one of the largest shopping malls in the country. The Woodlands covers everything with a thin layer of forest to disguise the necessary structures and veins every other community leaves to decay right out in the open.
And now these two brothers are in the Arcade Fire, a famous (and reportedly Canadian) rock band whose debut and sophomore records have sold nearly 500,000 copies. Each. Their third album debuted at #1 in both the US and the UK. It’s called The Suburbs. I was eager to hear the record, not only because I enjoyed the first two Arcade Fire records. But also because, like the Butlers, I’m a 30-something musician who grew up in the suburbs of North Houston. And I’m about to put out my third record. And I’ve also written several songs about or inspired by the Suburbs, which for whatever reason, are not often counted as complex subjects for important-sounding rock musics like mine. And Win Butler’s.
I kid, but not really. I mean, I really have written a bunch of songs about what the Suburbs did to me and what I did to them. And very simply, I celebrate the Arcade Fire because they make the kind of music I would like to make. That, in some ways, I’ve been trying to make and have been making for years. A different me might have been bored and offended at their obvious lyrics. Their bombastic hymns. Their portentious subject matter. The pretentious orchestral flourishes. Their earnest attempts to make serious music that unironically borrows its tropes from the conservative side of classic arena rock.
But unlike most of my local scenester pals, consumed with Noise and Smoke as they are, Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs is precisely the kind of music I would strive to make with an equivalent amount of talent and money (and to be clear, I come up well short on both fronts). So yeah, it would be hard to take a stand against a band for writing a bunch of mid-tempo, piano-infused ballads about hopeless kids roaming the darkened suburbs. When my own “Summer Kids”, which I wrote in the 90s, basically takes on the same instrumentation and themes. And I have probably 15 to 20 more songs covering similar ground (note: fellow NAP-er Josh plays bass and piano on this).
Chasmatic – Summer Kids
But I will not limit the comparison to myself. Arcade Fire are actually a lot better than most bands working today. Certainly they are better than the multitude of “indie” bands who are currently trying to do the same thing Arcade Fire does. That includes unlistenable crap like Frightened Rabbit, Okkervil River, and The Gaslight Anthem. But it also includes bands I’ve respected and enjoyed for years: The National. The New Pornographers. More recent records by Spoon and Wilco and the Hold Steady. I can understand not liking Arcade Fire if you’re heavy into rap or dancepop or noise or psych. But if you occasionally make time for any of NPR’s stable of whiteboy adult contemporary heroes, you can’t do much better than Arcade Fire. They didn’t invent mild-mannered indie rock or dad rock. But they’ve perfected it. And if you can’t get into it, you’re probably like Danny: you’re not wasting a lot of time on any of the Fire-bands or the lesser brands of indie-lite. Again, it’s hard for me to get away with that, since writing classic-rock-derived white-boy indie musics is what I do and have always done.
I had planned to write a long review of the new record, but this has been ably done elsewhere. I agree with broad portions of the Pitchfork and New York Times pieces I read. Instead, I think I’ll just share a few bits about why I like the band and the record so much.
Direct lyrics, and songs that are about things and feelings. This is not to say the lyrics aren’t poetic and multi-layered and writerly. They are pretty damned clever a lot of the time. Sometimes they cross over into being pretentious and precious. But Arcade Fire songs aren’t like Spoon or Pavement or Guided By Voices. These songs aren’t impressionistic tone pieces built on one or two killer lines and protected by obscurity. Arcade Fire songs have narrative and thematic cohesion, which they typically sustain over an entire record. And you know—everyone knows—what they’re singing about. That’s why its possible to say that Funeral is about Death, Neon Bible is about Religion and The Suburbs is about…well, you know.
Musicianship that’s smarter and more complex than it sounds. The new record dials it back a bit on the anthems and grandeur for which Arcade Fire is known. The music has become both flatter and more conventional to match its titular subject matter. And yet, they don’t just pound out the chords in 4/4. The songs sound catchy and simple, but there’s an awful lot of interesting crap going on. The first single, “Ready to Start” is a good example, as the band introduces three different guitar hooks in the first few seconds that all join up to ground the verse. And “Modern Man” has already become well known for the confusion its Rick Springfield riff has caused because the people clapping at the show get confused by the odd shift in time. By the time they figure it out the song has already resolved itself. Nearly half the songs features similar shifts in time and texture, and most are seamless. I’d do a better job here if I knew how to technically describe the cool tricks Arcade Fire regularly insert into their pop songs. But it’s in there. Maybe Josh can explain.
Craft. I’ve seen the “Modern Man” story enough that it was probably included in the press kit (which I’ve not seen). But here’s something none of the reviews pointed out. Butler chose a hiccupping riff and weird time shift in the same song where he sings “something don’t feel right / like a record that’s skipping / I’m a Modern Man … in line for a number / but you don’t understand.” Later, in “We Used to Wait”, he there’s a tension between the rushed repetition in the dual bridges and the longer instrumental breaks that lead into and out of the chorus. And I love the way Rococo’s spooky chorus embodies the cultural group think of the sophisticated alterna-teens he’s mocking. The music is listening to the lyrics and vice versa. Your mileage may vary, but Arcade Fire puts a showtunes level of craft and thought into their work. Pretentious? Certainly. But they work their asses off to earn it.
Great synths. Most bands today use synths to add fake strings and horns or emulate piano and organ. If they use them at all. Sometimes there’s a one-dimensional attempt to reference disco or new-wave. Arcade Fire use multiple layers of synths the way that Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen, and Talking Heads did. The synth hooks are central to the songs, woven into the guitars and bass and drums like an equal partner. And the strings are real (supplied by bad ass Owen Pallet along with two multi-instrumentalist Arcade Fire members).
A firm rejection of niches and genres and brands in favor of being a BIG ROCK BAND. I said I’d tell you what I thought the Suburbs was about. First, I agree with many of the reviews that bluntly state The Suburbs is about what Win Butler says its about: His journey back to Houston to revisit the place where he grew up, and his rapidly fading/changing memories of it. I also agree that the portrait is more complex than you’d expect, with Butler not trying to condemn the place, so much as convey it. I listen to it, and I’m there again, walking alone like Ray Bradbury’s Pedestrian among the drones and uniform houses lit with flickering screens. But the suburbs in the summer meant kids were also venturing through the darkness together. Looking for something to do and to drink. And Butler wistfully remembers the contradictions of feeling so safe and so empty, yet adventurous and cinematic. He rails against The Sprawl but then thinks about raising his own future daughter there so she can share in its “beauty.”
But the Suburbs could also be about rock music and where it’s gone. Namely, it’s scattered everywhere into a sprawl of genres. Chill waves. Scenes. Cores. Lyrically, there’s a metaphorical war all over The Suburbs, with the kids (or bands) dividing themselves into neighborhoods and brand affiliations. All competing for the same privileged, fickle, college-aged twentysomethings, their allegiance, and whatever disposable cash they’ve wrangled from their folks and their student loans. The lyrics don’t always work for me, but I think I see what they’re getting at.
The Suburbs can be read as a rumination on how difficult it is today to sustain a career in today’s fragmented, cash-poor, digital-driven, ADD-addled music industry. Now we live in the “shadows of songs”. We’re not listening to great rock bands anymore. We don’t even hear bands trying to be great. Bands are hoping to put their content-free ringtone-length bits into the NPR breaks or commercials. Or they’re becoming ever more “experimental”, a word which rock ‘n’ roll bands should probably stop using.
I hear The Suburbs as coming from a band whose turn toward more conservative/traditional-sounding classic rock isn’t as safe a move as it seems. This band isn’t just referencing The Boss and U2 and Peter Gabriel and The Talking Heads as pastiche. In their wry, updated disco version of “Road to Nowhere” (“Sprawl II”, the album’s best track), they’re recalling a time when ambitious bands didn’t concede the pop charts, and didn’t concede whole genres of music to other bands. They’re trying to be the same size as those bands when the realities of the industry suggests it can’t be done. And they’re doing it without the goofy modesty of Coldplay.
One review compared it to “Heart of Glass”. Sounds an awful lot like “Road To Nowhere,” to me.
Arcade Fire don’t want to be in a genre. They want contain genres. They freaking want to be huge. And in this way they aren’t unlike Radiohead or Kanye West. I think that’s why I like them. When I was a kid I wanted to be a rock star. I didn’t daydream about trying to play SXSW nine times and sleeping on the floor after driving all day in van. But that’s the reality for most bands. And that’s a reality I’ve not been willing to take on for myself. But Arcade Fire fought through that phase leading up to Funeral. And they blasted past it. Driving themselves around the country wasn’t their goal. They just played a two-night stint at Madison Square Garden, and had Terry Gilliam direct a live performance film. They dream big and play big. And unlike most bands, they worked their asses off getting both the content and performance to the level where it needed to be to make that happen.
So many bands/kids are presenting ironic/self-aware/deconstructed commentary as actual music. I like the Arcade Fire because they have the courage to construct something huge and ambitious and classic and unironic and to expect an audience for their troubles. I have quibbles with the execution sometimes, but I respect them because, well, they’ve pulled it off.
In this space I will not be writing about Arcade Fire.
Ryan Chavez was kind enough to drop a topic in my lap by posting this brief rant on the Hands Up board:
http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/2010/08/how_was_your_saturday_we.php
This is starting to really piss me off. This person spent how long at the HPMA’s and couldn’t find one thing to constructively criticize? Where’s the balance here?
It seems like every time a music writer in Houston has the chance to become a critic, they lose their backbone and talk about the fucking weather. I’m tired of almost everything being a biased cheerleading piece that tiptoes around criticism. I’m sure laying in to the Arcade Fire is a breeze when you know you’re not going to run in to them at the bars you hang out at.
We have plenty of music writers and journalists here… I would love to see Houston find critics soon.
Ryan’s complaint raises a number of what I think are interesting points about music criticism and why local releases don’t receive what he might consider to be critical scrutiny.
1. Synergy. As a number of people pointed out, this particular piece is an article in the Houston Press about an event sponsored by the Houston Press. Similarly, Free Press Houston sponsors events, such as Summerfest, where a significant portion of the bands that they might have occasion to review are asked to perform. Indie Houston also does a lot of concerts. This does seem to create a conflict of interest, where these publications aren’t going to go out of their way, or even bother, to criticize bands with which they have a professional relationship.
On the other hand, Austin is home to ginormous music festival that hosts tons of local bands- and that festival is owned by the same individuals that own the Austin Chronicle, which is not known for refusing to spike local records. I worked there for a while, and I can tell you that negative reviews were by no means discouraged.
So what’s the difference? Well, for one thing, the Chronicle has, as far as I can tell, done a really good job of building walls between the editorial and festival sections of their business. While the Chronicle does cover the hell out of SXSW, it does so as a local paper, not as a sponsor of the event, even though it is one. Part of the reason this is possible is that SXSW is large enough to have its own organization- the paper plays no part at all in putting on the festival, and really any negative reviews it might run have no significant effect at all on the festival. By contrast, the small events in Houston are in part (HPMA) or wholly (Summerfest) organized/promoted by the staff of the paper. These events just aren’t big enough to have their own gravity outside the paper.
Which sort of brings me to my next point.
2. Maturity. The music scene in Houston is just getting to the point where publications/ people on the internet are interested in talking about it at all. Right now, the scene is at a point where the only people talking about it are the people who are excited enough about the prospect of being part of something that they’re willing to write a blog about it just because they think it’s neat. The scene just isn’t really mature enough for anyone to take an interest solely as a music geek and not as a participant in the scene, which is what’s necessary for tough, negative music criticism.
This isn’t to say that someone who’s involved can’t write reviews at all. I obviously do, so does Ramon, and, conspicuously, Jeremy Hart has been doing so for a very long time. But in all these cases, our reviews are informed by the fact that we feel really positively about what’s going on in Houston, because that’s why we’re writing about it in the first place. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, this gives us, I believe, a valuable ability to understand what local artists are doing, but on the flipside, it does tend to generate a lot of positive reviews. Jeremy, in particular, is almost relentlessly positive. And I don’t think this is a result of bias; it’s because he cares about music, understands musicians, feels connected to the local scene, and generally is a very positive and happy guy who tends to look for the good parts of things. There’s nothing wrong with that, but again, it tends to produce positive, though genuine, thoughts.
3. Talent. Remember that old saw “dancing about architecture?” Writing about music is hard. Writing a good review of a record you like is the second-easiest task of a music critic, and it’s still pretty hard. Now, it’s often been said (he asserted without support) that writing a bad review is easier than writing a good review. And that’s true- if you don’t care about being fair to the music. Slagging a record is the first-easiest task a music critic can give himself. And sure enough, critics in Houston are well-acquainted with this strategy. Sorry John. (By the way, Village Voice Galactic Empire, your archive search feature sucks! Still!!!) It’s pretty easy to slam a record without communicating any understanding of what the record is.
By contrast, understanding a record you don’t like, communicating that understanding, and constructing a convincing explanation for why you don’t like the record is one of the most difficult things a critic can try to do. Writing a negative review, or even a mixed review, that takes the music seriously and doesn’t slip into glibness, cliche or simple dismissal takes a lot of thought and skill- attributes that are rare in any kind of periodical writing, but especially in pop music criticism, which someone- Frank Zappa?- described as “people who can’t write talking about people who can’t sing for people who can’t read.”
I’m inclined to chalk this up less to an innate inferiority in music critics than to the fact that being a music critic is not a very well-compensated job, so people don’t take it very seriously. Which brings me to my next point:
4. Capital. Ben Murphy hilariously responded to Ryan’s post that music publications should “hire” him. If only.
I didn’t get paid a lot of money when I used to write for the print editions of the Press and the Chronicle, but I made about twice as much as I do writing for the web. I frequently spend more buying local records to review than I make from writing the reviews. But I guess I’m lucky, because I could be writing for a successful website like PopMatters, who graciously inform potential freelancers that:
we are unable to pay you monetarily at this time. But you would not go uncompensated in some form; your ‘pay’, as it were, is the privilege of publishing with this reputable magazine, wherein you are rewarded with this platform to broaden your readership, currently over 1 million unique readers per month, and counting.
Wow, publishing in a “reputable magazine.” Funny, I would consider paying your workers to be a necessary condition for having a “reputation.” They used to boast that their writers got interviewed on NPR or something, guess that doesn’t happen anymore.
When I read that for the first time, I pretty much gave up on ever writing for a living, because I figured if a website this size doesn’t have the money to pay writers, the money just isn’t there to be had.
But generally, readers get what the publications they read are able to pay for. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, they aren’t able to pay for much, so readers don’t get much. Eventually, as the Houston scene matures, it’s possible some quixotic soul may decide he wants to give an “honest” negative opinion of some stuff. But nobody will “hire” him. If they ever did, music critics today don’t have jobs. They have addictions.
And may I say, I really miss working at the Chronicle.
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