Monday, September 28th, 2009 // Paperhouse
You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t feel like writing about music today. It’s a cold and rainy Saturday morning, about the usual I would expect from a Pittsburgh fall, but in light of the past few days’ events, I can’t help but feel uneasy. Sure, there’s been that overwhelming sense of doom since all the helicopters, barricades, and “less lethal” weaponry started arriving, but now it’s that calm period, that waiting to see when it’s all going to be over and we can have our city back. A little while ago, I was reading David Foster Wallace’s essay published in the early ’90s about the then-new David Lynch film Lost Highway. As he discusses various reasons why this film is (going to be) awesome, he mentions an aspect of why Lynch’s films are also really unpleasant to watch. “We need to believe,” he writes, “that our own hideousness and darknesses are secret.”
We’ve all had that experience reading a book or watching a movie and suddenly it’s over and you feel absolutely miserable and hopeless about this whole “being a human” business. I had this reaction most strongly while watching the latest Batman installment, The Dark Knight. I saw this movie three times in the theater, and unlike other movies where once you know how it ends you become less responsive, I became increasingly more upset each time I saw it. Part of what was frustrating about this experience was not being able to put my finger on what exactly it was that troubled me so much. A good friend of mine went with me every time to see the movie and had a similar reaction. For months, neither of us could figure out what it was about The Dark Knight that was so upsetting. At different points along the way, we made small progresses — something about the capacity and affinity in all of us to be violent and destructive, the mirror between Batman and the role of the United States, the idea of there being nowhere safe and no one to trust — but for the most part, the only thing we were ever really certain of was that the movie seemed to pull something together for us, even though we weren’t sure what that thing was.
So all week I’ve been thinking about The Dark Knight, and I have that same feeling I did each time I left the theater, taking the long road home, lying in bed and thinking about how quickly everything can be turned on its head. We know that something big has happened; that something has been set into motion that cannot be taken back. And maybe I’m being melodramatic about this; maybe by the time you are reading this Monday morning, Pittsburgh will have returned to its regularly scheduled programming. But my guess is that something’s changed, even if, like The Dark Knight, it’s going to take me a while to realize what exactly that means.
-M. Callen
Monday, September 14th, 2009 // Paperhouse
The Steelers’ opening night victory brought much celebration in Pittsburgh. Since it was also the opening game of the NFL season, the spectacle was almost as big as the game, and country star Tim McGraw headlined a free concert for Steelers fans before the game. With all the talk about “America’s Favorite Sport” — and the debate over whether it’s baseball or football — I figured I’d give a little history on “America’s Favorite Music.”
According to a radio survey, more than 77 million American adults listen to country music on the radio every week. It is undoubtedly American, a part of the stereotypical American image here at home and overseas, and it has become “as American as apple pie,” despite the fact that the dessert has its origins in Europe. So how did it get this way? We owe a lot to one man: Ralph Peer.
In 1927, in Bristol, Tenn., Peer set up a recording studio in a barn and started running ads in newspapers and flyers looking for artists. Some people who had already recorded with or knew of Peer came first, then more people came as they began to hear about the kind of royalties his artists were getting ($3600 a year). Among the musicians who recorded were the famous Carter Family, the “First Family of Country,” and Jimmie Rodgers, the “Blue Yodeler.” Both acts found huge success, with Rodgers selling over half a million copies of his song “T is for Texas.” While so-called “hillbilly” recordings had sold fairly well earlier in the decade, these latest recordings were something new altogether. Blending secular ballads and gospel music with blues and a hint of jazz, along with a few good-time party and comedy songs, the music took off. The themes resounded even more during the Great Depression, and while most businessmen were out of luck and money on Wall Street, Peer continued to make large amounts of money simply from royalties.
The legacy of the Bristol recording sessions is beyond measure. Besides the debuts of two of the biggest country music stars, they gave country a new sound. Where before what was labeled country was a mixture of hick tunes and old ballads, the recordings gave old folk songs and gospel hymns a cleaner, more refined sound. Country became more successful and began to speak to a wider audience. This paved the way for stars like Hank Williams and Johnny Cash.
So the next time you listen to any kind of country music, whether old or new, you can think back to a little barn in Bristol, Tenn., where it all got started.
-Tyler Alderson
Monday, August 31st, 2009 // Paperhouse
I know I’ve only made it through the first week of classes, but I am already exhausted. Every day by about three o’clock, I am ready to take a nap. For those of you well-acquainted with the all-important ritual of napping, you know that it is a very serious practice, and its success hinges on any number of variables like blanket choice, general atmosphere, and, of course, music.
There have to be a million songs written about sleep (after all, don’t we spend about a third of our life doing this? Can someone please give me an update on this statistic?). In the last week I’ve been rediscovering The Smiths’ song “Asleep.”
I can remember first stumbling on this song in middle school, those formative years of anxiety and woe, characterized by many of us through the mix tapes we listened to, the basements we smoked in, the beat literature we read. But unlike the rest of the nonsense that littered my middle school experience, The Smiths’ still retains its uncanny sadness.
Morrissey himself has a knack for melancholy — even in his most up-tempo, danceable tracks, there is a pervasive gloom about the condition of being alive. The effects of this can be disastrous.
My friend Jen is least immune to Morrissey’s angst and has been known, on more than several occasions, to break down in the middle of doing anything and weep to the croon of Moz’s voice.
Hell, sometimes she would just break down at the thought of him old and sweaty, playing the Celebrity Showcase in Reno, Nev., changing his soggy T-shirts every 30 minutes and riding long black limousines for 200-foot stretches, realizing that no one would ever put up with that kind of shit from her.
No one would put up with that shit from me, either, which might make listening to The Smiths after a laborious first week of class even worse. There seems to be a sort of unfairness at play, but if poor Moz wasn’t always famous, at least he was always sad.
So if you’re feeling a bit worn and torn after a rough first week, I suggest you take comfort, curl up, revisit your old sad songs, and hope that you too will find great success in your wallowing.
-M. Callen
