September 13th, 2010 / 6:57 pm
Power Quote

avant-gagarde

Camille Paglia says:

Gaga is in way over her head with her avant-garde pretensions… She wants to have it both ways – to be hip and avant-garde and yet popular and universal, a practitioner of gung-ho “show biz”.

If avant-garde is advanced guard, or vanguard, is Lady Gaga indeed avant-garde?

Tags: , ,

339 Comments

  1. Matthew Simmons

      “Lady Gaga is the first major star of the digital age.”

      Absurd. It’s 2010. The “digital age” has been here for a while now. And there have been plenty of major stars of said age.

      Honestly can’t get past the first sentence. Paglia has become a cartoon.

  2. mimi

      Gaga came off as very human and real last night on the VMAs. Loved everything except the meat dress.
      And Cher was….is……always will be……..she held the meat purse.

  3. Janey Smith

      Lady Gaga, no. Ariana Reines, yes.

  4. deadgod

      to be hip and avant-garde and yet popular and universal

      Doesn’t that describe Paglia’s embarrassingly remote ambition to a ‘t’, Matthew? Her dingbatty flailing was always far inferior to a good cartoon to me.

  5. Blake Butler

      dressing up a fart is as aged as anything.

  6. Blake Butler

      by that i mean her music. i’m sure she’s a fine lady.

  7. Stephen

      pretty much sums up exactly how i feel. fuck gaga.

  8. t bone

      Stop the digital presses. The site that champions the Tao Lin et al set of smoke and mirrors small fish small pond publishing disproves of GaGa’s baseless posturing? Poor form! I ca-ca-can read your poker face.

  9. mts

      Well said.

  10. Lily Hoang

      i confess: i get pretty excited when pokerface or bad romance come on the radio. i’m not anti-gaga at all. nor am i anti-tao lin. nor do i see a connection.

  11. jereme

      people should destroy their media appliances.

      who the fuck cares.

  12. Lily Hoang

      Also, this site has many different contributors with many different povs and aesthetics. that is, we don’t all like or dislike the same thing.

  13. Matthew Simmons

      I still think I found some useful ways of looking at the world in Sexual Personae. But, man oh man, Paglia has emptied herself out entirely in the years since.

  14. Owen Kaelin

      Well, the peace tattoo says it all, I think.

  15. Owen Kaelin

      I like the Moody Blues. So there.

  16. d

      Great pop/dance music artist, but I don’t think she is a big cultural shift or something.

  17. A. Alvarez

      If it was 1976 she would be avant-garde. Maybe.

      I think Ida No is far more interesting. Glass Candy kicks the shite out of Gaga.

  18. Steven Augustine

      avant garde? Klaus Nomi just vomited in his mouth… and it poured out of the back of his skull

  19. MFBomb

      Camille Paglia is a joke. No one (with a brain) takes her seriously.

  20. Dreezer

      Gaga is a repackaging of Madonna with an emphasis on absurdist fashion. It’s kinda fun and some of the songs are catchy, but mostly: been there done that. If she’s smart like Madonna, she’ll reinvent herself every few years to stay current, or perhaps even a bit ahead of the game.

  21. Salvatore Pane

      Last Halloween, my ex-girlfriend dressed up in this Lady Gaga outfit with the dumb triangle. I went as Super Mario. We got drunk, and later, while making out to “Bad Romance”, she drunkenly head butted me in the face.

      Super Mario > Lady Gaga

  22. Justin

      I saw a lady gaga imposter fall down an entire flight of stairs last halloween. it’s bad luck.

      also, i can’t read the entire article, but the gist of it is that gaga isn’t madonna, and she’s not sexy, so you know, obviously, you know…

  23. Trey

      one of my facebook friends linked this yesterday or something and I had the same thought about the opening line.

  24. Alec Niedenthal

      I don’t see how an avant-garde is anything but a “culturally retroactive” activity or whatever, an act of memory or re-invention… So maybe it’s shitty that Lady Gaga is trying to invoke or arrogate to herself an avant-garde that isn’t even there…

  25. Alec Niedenthal

      But she might be doing something legitimately groundbreaking – she’s mixing Warhol, Lynch, Madonna, and something new, namely herself. So who knows. An advanced guard must be looked at retrospectively, right?

  26. Lily Hoang

      woah!

  27. Alec Niedenthal

      Also, interesting anecdote from Wikipedia: In April 1973, Paglia attended a Susan Sontag lecture at Dartmouth College and later invited her to Bennington to speak there on October 4. The event proved controversial because Sontag read a short story instead of giving the expected cultural lecture. Paglia later commented, “I was stunned because I thought she was going to be a major intellectual”, later writing at length about their meeting in an essay entitled “Sontag, Bloody Sontag”, published in Vamps & Tramps. Susan Sontag said of Paglia, “We used to think Norman Mailer was bad, but she makes Norman Mailer look like Jane Austen.”

  28. chris r

      She isn’t doing anything new so I wouldn’t consider avant garde at all. Her music, from the small amount I’ve heard, seems to always be rehashed, bad, 90s era, european electronic shit. Her lyrics are pointless and boring and as far as her visual aesthetic, she just seems to be trying to “one up” what madonna did in the 80’s. So, in my opinion, she’s more cliche, which is like the exact opposite of avante garde. She reeks of trying too hard which is more embarrassing than anything.

      That being said, I really can’t differentiate her from any other pop star from this decade or the one before it. She is a fad and soon there will be another one.

  29. Lincoln

      If making the blandest music possible while wearing drama club outfits is avant-garde then just shoot western civilization in the face.

  30. PHC

      thanks for the ‘my opinion on the matter is absolutely meaningless’ qualifier at the end there.

  31. Owen Kaelin

      Hah!

  32. Alec Niedenthal

      I dunno… I feel like she’s (accidentally I’m sure) taking a certain – admittedly and for the most part stupid – style and sensibility to its limit, by sort of positing it as the absolute last incarnation this sensibility can ever take, its death and its clearest form. Like, there’s nothing more to be done in this style, it’s over, time has passed it. Jesus, there’s an immanent critique hiding in, like, about every outfit she wears – not to mention a heavy-handed critique of the dork who’d read that into her image.

  33. mimi

      To Gaga’s demographic target Madonna is a middle-aged rocker mom.
      Alec, you make some interesting points – “there’s an immanent critique hiding in, like, about every outfit she wears”

  34. Owen Kaelin

      Does this mean there’s hope for the future?

  35. Pemulis

      Better question:

      Why can’t young intellectuals just enjoy shitty pop music without insisting upon its apres-garde-ness, or believing it must ‘interrogate’ this or that before they can dance to it? It’s ridiculous. Google around, you’ll find all manner of grad school nonsense. (Ex: Lady Gaga wears razor blade sunglasses. Ooh, a wounding mechanism is now used as a shielding mechanism! Lady Gaga operates in the liminal space! Look, she’s wearing a religious hat. She’s a cultural transvestite!).

      I don’t remember all this hoo-ha applied to Madonna, who is the thief Gaga steals from the most…

  36. Matthew Simmons

      “Lady Gaga is the first major star of the digital age.”

      Absurd. It’s 2010. The “digital age” has been here for a while now. And there have been plenty of major stars of said age.

      Honestly can’t get past the first sentence. Paglia has become a cartoon.

  37. Trey

      I don’t think it’s that good to dance to. Went dancing the other night and Bad Romance came on and it was a disaster.

  38. shaun

      Anything lady gaga wears was already worn by karin andersson or grace jones
      she is entirely non-new

  39. chris r

      Hahaha…

      I really like that. Maybe by exhausting all possibilities of that posturing “style” the only place to go will be real music/art or something. I think my head is going to explode.

  40. Alec Niedenthal

      Yeah, at the same time, despite what I posted, I agree with this assessment, a lot of vapid theorizing goes on, but I don’t think there’s really a way to “just enjoy it,” because even the people you think of as just enjoying it in fact aren’t – people, no matter what their orientation toward it, are going to reflect on a cultural phenomenon, it’s just what happens. The reactions will always range from “Lady Gaga is awesome, I got shit in high school” to “Lady Gaga is a deterritorializing cultural grab-bag” to Paglia’s white hypersexual feminist screed. I think it’s kind of cool when so many different ways of talking are talking about the same thing.

  41. mimi

      Gaga came off as very human and real last night on the VMAs. Loved everything except the meat dress.
      And Cher was….is……always will be……..she held the meat purse.

  42. mimi

      Grace Jones was born in 1948.
      Madonna was born in 1958.

      Lady Gaga was born in 1986.
      She’s the latest incarnation to reach this level of fame.

  43. Janey Smith

      Lady Gaga, no. Ariana Reines, yes.

  44. deadgod

      to be hip and avant-garde and yet popular and universal

      Doesn’t that describe Paglia’s embarrassingly remote ambition to a ‘t’, Matthew? Her dingbatty flailing was always far inferior to a good cartoon to me.

  45. Blake Butler

      dressing up a fart is as aged as anything.

  46. zusya

      totally

  47. zusya

      wake me when the next Tool album is released

  48. Blake Butler

      by that i mean her music. i’m sure she’s a fine lady.

  49. Blake Butler

      win

  50. Blake Butler

      win

  51. Stephen

      pretty much sums up exactly how i feel. fuck gaga.

  52. mts

      Well said.

  53. Pemulis

      I do too, I just prefer it to be meaningful.

      (Cue my roommate: what *iiiiiiis…* meaningful conversation? Boom: decentered!)

  54. Pemulis

      I do too, I just prefer it to be meaningful.

      (Cue my roommate: what *iiiiiiis…* meaningful conversation? Boom: decentered!)

  55. lily hoang

      i confess: i get pretty excited when pokerface or bad romance come on the radio. i’m not anti-gaga at all. nor am i anti-tao lin. nor do i see a connection.

  56. jereme

      people should destroy their media appliances.

      who the fuck cares.

  57. lily hoang

      Also, this site has many different contributors with many different povs and aesthetics. that is, we don’t all like or dislike the same thing.

  58. Matthew Simmons

      I still think I found some useful ways of looking at the world in Sexual Personae. But, man oh man, Paglia has emptied herself out entirely in the years since.

  59. Owen Kaelin

      Well, the peace tattoo says it all, I think.

  60. Owen Kaelin

      I like the Moody Blues. So there.

  61. d

      Great pop/dance music artist, but I don’t think she is a big cultural shift or something.

  62. A. Alvarez

      If it was 1976 she would be avant-garde. Maybe.

      I think Ida No is far more interesting. Glass Candy kicks the shite out of Gaga.

  63. Steven Augustine

      avant garde? Klaus Nomi just vomited in his mouth… and it poured out of the back of his skull

  64. Guest

      Camille Paglia is a joke. No one (with a brain) takes her seriously.

  65. Dreezer

      Gaga is a repackaging of Madonna with an emphasis on absurdist fashion. It’s kinda fun and some of the songs are catchy, but mostly: been there done that. If she’s smart like Madonna, she’ll reinvent herself every few years to stay current, or perhaps even a bit ahead of the game.

  66. Salvatore Pane

      Last Halloween, my ex-girlfriend dressed up in this Lady Gaga outfit with the dumb triangle. I went as Super Mario. We got drunk, and later, while making out to “Bad Romance”, she drunkenly head butted me in the face.

      Super Mario > Lady Gaga

  67. darby

      she’s avant-garde sort of. but everything is, really. its not a binary classification, its a matter of degrees. the ? needs a comparison, like is lady gaga more or less avant-garde than madonna or cher or obama or the teletubbies. i think she’s fairly avant-garde though, comparable to madonna’s and etcetera’s. she’s got all us retards commenting all over the internet about her anyway.

  68. darby

      she’s avant-garde sort of. but everything is, really. its not a binary classification, its a matter of degrees. the ? needs a comparison, like is lady gaga more or less avant-garde than madonna or cher or obama or the teletubbies. i think she’s fairly avant-garde though, comparable to madonna’s and etcetera’s. she’s got all us retards commenting all over the internet about her anyway.

  69. darby

      i think what they mean is the first star influenced by the digital age, or the digitalness of the digital age.

  70. darby

      i think what they mean is the first star influenced by the digital age, or the digitalness of the digital age.

  71. Justin

      I saw a lady gaga imposter fall down an entire flight of stairs last halloween. it’s bad luck.

      also, i can’t read the entire article, but the gist of it is that gaga isn’t madonna, and she’s not sexy, so you know, obviously, you know…

  72. darby

      also, there are so many definitions of avant-garde, she’s bound to fit one of them.

  73. darby

      also, there are so many definitions of avant-garde, she’s bound to fit one of them.

  74. carrie
  75. carrie
  76. Trey

      one of my facebook friends linked this yesterday or something and I had the same thought about the opening line.

  77. Alec Niedenthal

      I don’t see how an avant-garde is anything but a “culturally retroactive” activity or whatever, an act of memory or re-invention… So maybe it’s shitty that Lady Gaga is trying to invoke or arrogate to herself an avant-garde that isn’t even there…

  78. Pemulis

      Haha. Exactly the kind of shit I’m talking about… It reduces Theory to a joke.

      Matching outfits? Nah. *Beyonce as Gaga; Mirror play!*

      (I want to make a movie about the blog gaze…I’d call it: Never Mind the Biologists: Here’s the (T)ext Pistols).

      Woo!

  79. Pemulis

      Haha. Exactly the kind of shit I’m talking about… It reduces Theory to a joke.

      Matching outfits? Nah. *Beyonce as Gaga; Mirror play!*

      (I want to make a movie about the blog gaze…I’d call it: Never Mind the Biologists: Here’s the (T)ext Pistols).

      Woo!

  80. Alec Niedenthal

      But she might be doing something legitimately groundbreaking – she’s mixing Warhol, Lynch, Madonna, and something new, namely herself. So who knows. An advanced guard must be looked at retrospectively, right?

  81. lily hoang

      woah!

  82. Alec Niedenthal

      Yeah, idiotic. As soon as I see “gaze theory” I’m done. Jesus.

  83. Alec Niedenthal

      Yeah, idiotic. As soon as I see “gaze theory” I’m done. Jesus.

  84. Alec Niedenthal

      Also, interesting anecdote from Wikipedia: In April 1973, Paglia attended a Susan Sontag lecture at Dartmouth College and later invited her to Bennington to speak there on October 4. The event proved controversial because Sontag read a short story instead of giving the expected cultural lecture. Paglia later commented, “I was stunned because I thought she was going to be a major intellectual”, later writing at length about their meeting in an essay entitled “Sontag, Bloody Sontag”, published in Vamps & Tramps. Susan Sontag said of Paglia, “We used to think Norman Mailer was bad, but she makes Norman Mailer look like Jane Austen.”

  85. chris r

      She isn’t doing anything new so I wouldn’t consider avant garde at all. Her music, from the small amount I’ve heard, seems to always be rehashed, bad, 90s era, european electronic shit. Her lyrics are pointless and boring and as far as her visual aesthetic, she just seems to be trying to “one up” what madonna did in the 80’s. So, in my opinion, she’s more cliche, which is like the exact opposite of avante garde. She reeks of trying too hard which is more embarrassing than anything.

      That being said, I really can’t differentiate her from any other pop star from this decade or the one before it. She is a fad and soon there will be another one.

  86. Lincoln

      If making the blandest music possible while wearing drama club outfits is avant-garde then just shoot western civilization in the face.

  87. PHC

      thanks for the ‘my opinion on the matter is absolutely meaningless’ qualifier at the end there.

  88. Owen Kaelin

      Hah!

  89. Alec Niedenthal

      I dunno… I feel like she’s (accidentally I’m sure) taking a certain – admittedly and for the most part stupid – style and sensibility to its limit, by sort of positing it as the absolute last incarnation this sensibility can ever take, its death and its clearest form. Like, there’s nothing more to be done in this style, it’s over, time has passed it. Jesus, there’s an immanent critique hiding in, like, about every outfit she wears – not to mention a heavy-handed critique of the dork who’d read that into her image.

  90. Corey

      Exactly, Alec. I’m not sure why people keep bringing up that subject of over-thinking, over-analysing, or over-critiquing something. These people declare pleasure in a void. If this were the case, then no one would care one bit about Gaga’s outfits, or at least wouldn’t have the language to say, “that’s weird”, or “that’s avant-garde”. When we interrogate a cultural text like Gaga pleasure figures, pleasure of thought, pleasure of meaning. Gaga is avant-garde as a visual text, but her identity politics are pretty familiar for the pop music scene. The avant-garde proposes itself as an event, and as such, if the rules have been demonstrably changed in a particular field or concept, then it is avant-garde. She’s effectively making couture popular for a certain audience, though I’m as yet unaware of the teenagers who love her imitating her styles.

  91. Corey

      Exactly, Alec. I’m not sure why people keep bringing up that subject of over-thinking, over-analysing, or over-critiquing something. These people declare pleasure in a void. If this were the case, then no one would care one bit about Gaga’s outfits, or at least wouldn’t have the language to say, “that’s weird”, or “that’s avant-garde”. When we interrogate a cultural text like Gaga pleasure figures, pleasure of thought, pleasure of meaning. Gaga is avant-garde as a visual text, but her identity politics are pretty familiar for the pop music scene. The avant-garde proposes itself as an event, and as such, if the rules have been demonstrably changed in a particular field or concept, then it is avant-garde. She’s effectively making couture popular for a certain audience, though I’m as yet unaware of the teenagers who love her imitating her styles.

  92. JWG

      i liked that one song of hers where she’s on a battleship and she’s like, ‘if i could turn back time’, and then a bunch of sailors jerk off on her

      this one
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEszTzdUMcY

      I thought she was dead but whatever.

  93. JWG

      i liked that one song of hers where she’s on a battleship and she’s like, ‘if i could turn back time’, and then a bunch of sailors jerk off on her

      this one
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEszTzdUMcY

      I thought she was dead but whatever.

  94. mimi

      To Gaga’s demographic target Madonna is a middle-aged rocker mom.
      Alec, you make some interesting points – “there’s an immanent critique hiding in, like, about every outfit she wears”

  95. Owen Kaelin

      Does this mean there’s hope for the future?

  96. Pemulis

      Better question:

      Why can’t young intellectuals just enjoy shitty pop music without insisting upon its apres-garde-ness, or believing it must ‘interrogate’ this or that before they can dance to it? It’s ridiculous. Google around, you’ll find all manner of grad school nonsense. (Ex: Lady Gaga wears razor blade sunglasses. Ooh, a wounding mechanism is now used as a shielding mechanism! Lady Gaga operates in the liminal space! Look, she’s wearing a religious hat. She’s a cultural transvestite!).

      I don’t remember all this hoo-ha applied to Madonna, who is the thief Gaga steals from the most…

  97. Trey

      I don’t think it’s that good to dance to. Went dancing the other night and Bad Romance came on and it was a disaster.

  98. efferny jomes

      Anything lady gaga wears was already worn by karin andersson or grace jones
      she is entirely non-new

  99. chris r

      Hahaha…

      I really like that. Maybe by exhausting all possibilities of that posturing “style” the only place to go will be real music/art or something. I think my head is going to explode.

  100. Alec Niedenthal

      Yeah, at the same time, despite what I posted, I agree with this assessment, a lot of vapid theorizing goes on, but I don’t think there’s really a way to “just enjoy it,” because even the people you think of as just enjoying it in fact aren’t – people, no matter what their orientation toward it, are going to reflect on a cultural phenomenon, it’s just what happens. The reactions will always range from “Lady Gaga is awesome, I got shit in high school” to “Lady Gaga is a deterritorializing cultural grab-bag” to Paglia’s white hypersexual feminist screed. I think it’s kind of cool when so many different ways of talking are talking about the same thing.

  101. mimi

      Grace Jones was born in 1948.
      Madonna was born in 1958.

      Lady Gaga was born in 1986.
      She’s the latest incarnation to reach this level of fame.

  102. Blake Butler

      win

  103. reynard

      she has a peace tattoo on her wrist

  104. reynard

      she has a peace tattoo on her wrist

  105. Pemulis

      I do too, I just prefer it to be meaningful.

      (Cue my roommate: what *iiiiiiis…* meaningful conversation? Boom: decentered!)

  106. Henry Vauban

      If avant-garde has an opposite, it must be a platinum selling pop music.

      Is Gaga trying to dress avant-garde? Seems so.

      Is Gaga what tweens consider to be avant-garde? Probably. Someone ask a tween and get back to me on this pls.

  107. henry

      If avant-garde has an opposite, it must be a platinum selling pop music.

      Is Gaga trying to dress avant-garde? Seems so.

      Is Gaga what tweens consider to be avant-garde? Probably. Someone ask a tween and get back to me on this pls.

  108. Henry Vauban

      Peace is the new black metal.

  109. H. Vauban

      Peace is the new black metal.

  110. darby

      she’s avant-garde sort of. but everything is, really. its not a binary classification, its a matter of degrees. the ? needs a comparison, like is lady gaga more or less avant-garde than madonna or cher or obama or the teletubbies. i think she’s fairly avant-garde though, comparable to madonna’s and etcetera’s. she’s got all us retards commenting all over the internet about her anyway.

  111. darby

      i think what they mean is the first star influenced by the digital age, or the digitalness of the digital age.

  112. darby

      also, there are so many definitions of avant-garde, she’s bound to fit one of them.

  113. carrie
  114. Pemulis

      Haha. Exactly the kind of shit I’m talking about… It reduces Theory to a joke.

      Matching outfits? Nah. *Beyonce as Gaga; Mirror play!*

      (I want to make a movie about the blog gaze…I’d call it: Never Mind the Biologists: Here’s the (T)ext Pistols).

      Woo!

  115. Alec Niedenthal

      Yeah, idiotic. As soon as I see “gaze theory” I’m done. Jesus.

  116. Caca Coup

      Exactly, Alec. I’m not sure why people keep bringing up that subject of over-thinking, over-analysing, or over-critiquing something. These people declare pleasure in a void. If this were the case, then no one would care one bit about Gaga’s outfits, or at least wouldn’t have the language to say, “that’s weird”, or “that’s avant-garde”. When we interrogate a cultural text like Gaga pleasure figures, pleasure of thought, pleasure of meaning. Gaga is avant-garde as a visual text, but her identity politics are pretty familiar for the pop music scene. The avant-garde proposes itself as an event, and as such, if the rules have been demonstrably changed in a particular field or concept, then it is avant-garde. She’s effectively making couture popular for a certain audience, though I’m as yet unaware of the teenagers who love her imitating her styles.

  117. JWG

      i liked that one song of hers where she’s on a battleship and she’s like, ‘if i could turn back time’, and then a bunch of sailors jerk off on her

      this one
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEszTzdUMcY

      I thought she was dead but whatever.

  118. Kevin O'Neill

      For anyone still confused about how to read the full-text, the Times is now behind a paywall.

      I hope Lady Gaga’s next outfit is a paywall.

  119. Kevin O'Neill

      For anyone still confused about how to read the full-text, the Times is now behind a paywall.

      I hope Lady Gaga’s next outfit is a paywall.

  120. reynard

      she has a peace tattoo on her wrist

  121. Lily Hoang

      You can read the whole article by clicking on the quote. I’ve linked it.

  122. Lily Hoang

      You can read the whole article by clicking on the quote. I’ve linked it.

  123. Guest

      If avant-garde has an opposite, it must be a platinum selling pop music.

      Is Gaga trying to dress avant-garde? Seems so.

      Is Gaga what tweens consider to be avant-garde? Probably. Someone ask a tween and get back to me on this pls.

  124. Guest

      Peace is the new black metal.

  125. magick mike

      i think most things would become clearly if we had a “tween correspondent”

  126. magick mike

      and by “clearly” i mean “clearer” or “more clear”

      augh

  127. magick mike

      i think most things would become clearly if we had a “tween correspondent”

  128. magick mike

      and by “clearly” i mean “clearer” or “more clear”

      augh

  129. chris r

      Yeah the meat dress bothered me. Wearing any kind of animal bothers me though. The fact that this meat was probably thrown out as soon as she took it off is even more off putting. What was actually funny though, was that it was supposed to represent some grand statement about rights or something.

  130. chris r

      Yeah the meat dress bothered me. Wearing any kind of animal bothers me though. The fact that this meat was probably thrown out as soon as she took it off is even more off putting. What was actually funny though, was that it was supposed to represent some grand statement about rights or something.

  131. chris r

      and “born to kill” written on her helmet

  132. chris r

      and “born to kill” written on her helmet

  133. Steven Augustine

      Yeah, that Bjork fucked up. By actually making some semi-avant garde music to go with her nutty closet. If Bjork were recycling 80’s pop hooks with a karaoke voice, we’d be comparing *her* to Lynch and Warhol now. Whoa: Bjork-management-fail.

      Q: But if The Beatles were super-hyped to distract us from the murder of JFK, what is GaGa distracting us from?

      A: Justin Bieber

      PS I read in People magazine that GaGa’s meat dress was made from Iraqis

  134. Steven Augustine

      Yeah, that Bjork fucked up. By actually making some semi-avant garde music to go with her nutty closet. If Bjork were recycling 80’s pop hooks with a karaoke voice, we’d be comparing *her* to Lynch and Warhol now. Whoa: Bjork-management-fail.

      Q: But if The Beatles were super-hyped to distract us from the murder of JFK, what is GaGa distracting us from?

      A: Justin Bieber

      PS I read in People magazine that GaGa’s meat dress was made from Iraqis

  135. Steven Augustine

      Life is behind a paywall

  136. Steven Augustine

      Life is behind a paywall

  137. Jordan

      The Beatles were super-hyped to cash in on the baby boom’s leverage over family disposable income. But conspiracy theories are good distractions too

  138. Jordan

      The Beatles were super-hyped to cash in on the baby boom’s leverage over family disposable income. But conspiracy theories are good distractions too

  139. Steven Augustine

      have you heard the conspiracy theory about the break-in over at the Watergate hotel? crazy shit!

  140. Steven Augustine

      have you heard the conspiracy theory about the break-in over at the Watergate hotel? crazy shit!

  141. Jordan

      Shit, man. And speaking of the man, keep on sticking it, Steven.

  142. Jordan

      Shit, man. And speaking of the man, keep on sticking it, Steven.

  143. Margaret

      This. People need to realize it’s okay to listen to pop music. And that’s what Gaga is – pop music. And that’s okay. I sort of feel like a lot of people (particularly artists/poets) see Gaga as their key to liberation – they always wanted to listen to pop-y music, and now that someone’s doing it in a meat dress/covered in Kermits/with a silver lobster they finally feel like it’s okay for them to like pop music. In a way, it makes me sad that we’ve gotten to the point where we’re all that insecure about such things.

  144. Margaret

      This. People need to realize it’s okay to listen to pop music. And that’s what Gaga is – pop music. And that’s okay. I sort of feel like a lot of people (particularly artists/poets) see Gaga as their key to liberation – they always wanted to listen to pop-y music, and now that someone’s doing it in a meat dress/covered in Kermits/with a silver lobster they finally feel like it’s okay for them to like pop music. In a way, it makes me sad that we’ve gotten to the point where we’re all that insecure about such things.

  145. Steven Augustine

      the man is an hermaphrodite is what i hear

  146. Steven Augustine

      the man is an hermaphrodite is what i hear

  147. Steven Augustine

      when did The People ever *stop* listening to pop? What’s *not* pop?

  148. Steven Augustine

      when did The People ever *stop* listening to pop? What’s *not* pop?

  149. Sam Walker

      In a way, Lady Gaga has kind of created a pop genre of Avant-garde which is a simple, static representation of progressive fashion/art from the past decade. It isn’t Avant-garde in the original meaning of the word, but it reminds us of our impression of Avant-garde works from the past.

      It is similar to how indie music has an associated lo-fi aesthetic or stressed style of singing. It has nothing to do with how ‘independent’ it is, an aesthetic has become associated with the word.

  150. Sam Walker

      In a way, Lady Gaga has kind of created a pop genre of Avant-garde which is a simple, static representation of progressive fashion/art from the past decade. It isn’t Avant-garde in the original meaning of the word, but it reminds us of our impression of Avant-garde works from the past.

      It is similar to how indie music has an associated lo-fi aesthetic or stressed style of singing. It has nothing to do with how ‘independent’ it is, an aesthetic has become associated with the word.

  151. Kevin O'Neill

      For anyone still confused about how to read the full-text, the Times is now behind a paywall.

      I hope Lady Gaga’s next outfit is a paywall.

  152. mimi

      if you’re talking about gaga, i thought the telephone vid closed the file on that one

  153. mimi

      if you’re talking about gaga, i thought the telephone vid closed the file on that one

  154. mimi

      i support this idea

  155. mimi

      i support this idea

  156. Steven Augustine

      talkin’ ’bout THE MAN

  157. Steven Augustine

      talkin’ ’bout THE MAN

  158. mimi

      got it now

  159. mimi

      got it now

  160. Steven Augustine

      This is the proper way to read almost any “conspiracy theory” which doesn’t involve extraterrestrials: pretend that the setting is Russia or the Third World! Suddenly, it will seem so much more *plausible*!

  161. Steven Augustine

      This is the proper way to read almost any “conspiracy theory” which doesn’t involve extraterrestrials: pretend that the setting is Russia or the Third World! Suddenly, it will seem so much more *plausible*!

  162. lily hoang

      You can read the whole article by clicking on the quote. I’ve linked it.

  163. Jordan

      Ok, Steven. There there. It’ll be ok.

      Incidentally, and speaking of Russia, wouldn’t the more plausible event-driven account of the Beatles’ success have at least as much to do with the Cuban missile crisis as with the assassination of JFK?

  164. Jak Cardini

      doodz. 10,000 Days was total trash and you know it. Sad but true.

  165. Jordan

      Ok, Steven. There there. It’ll be ok.

      Incidentally, and speaking of Russia, wouldn’t the more plausible event-driven account of the Beatles’ success have at least as much to do with the Cuban missile crisis as with the assassination of JFK?

  166. Jak Cardini

      doodz. 10,000 Days was total trash and you know it. Sad but true.

  167. Steven Augustine

      As long as discussions of that nature aren’t pooh-poohed by Normative Default, I’m there, Agent Jordan!

  168. Steven Augustine

      As long as discussions of that nature aren’t pooh-poohed by Normative Default, I’m there, Agent Jordan!

  169. Matthew Simmons

      But how can even that be true? It’s taken this long to create the first star influenced by the digital age? Really?

  170. Matthew Simmons

      But how can even that be true? It’s taken this long to create the first star influenced by the digital age? Really?

  171. Blake Butler

      i was taking his comment as tool is just as googy as gaga.

  172. Blake Butler

      i was taking his comment as tool is just as googy as gaga.

  173. Steven Augustine

      O, how quickly the Tay Zonday is forgotten…

  174. Steven Augustine

      O, how quickly the Tay Zonday is forgotten…

  175. magick mike

      i think most things would become clearly if we had a “tween correspondent”

  176. magick mike

      and by “clearly” i mean “clearer” or “more clear”

      augh

  177. chris r

      Yeah the meat dress bothered me. Wearing any kind of animal bothers me though. The fact that this meat was probably thrown out as soon as she took it off is even more off putting. What was actually funny though, was that it was supposed to represent some grand statement about rights or something.

  178. chris r

      and “born to kill” written on her helmet

  179. zusya

      10,000 days took at least 1,000 to grow on me, but i’ll admit there are some seriously weak moments on that album.

      blake: the F is a googy?

  180. zusya

      nice, s.a.

  181. zusya

      i support it if said tween isn’t copy edited for typos, grammar, growth pains.

  182. Blake Butler

      they just seem like a mainstream band that incorporates avant garde in the attempt of seeming edgy, when the music is really pretty standard weird heavy music. not the worst, and definitely not as blank as gaga, but still: they use their image heavily to weigh off what lacks. it seems just as funny to me.

  183. Blake Butler

      they just seem like a mainstream band that incorporates avant garde in the attempt of seeming edgy, when the music is really pretty standard weird heavy music. not the worst, and definitely not as blank as gaga, but still: they use their image heavily to weigh off what lacks. it seems just as funny to me.

  184. Blake Butler

      i imagine that when gaga gains some weight and gets married, her stock will go down too. if she didnt look like she does, with that commodity, that cheese pap music wouldn’t be so palatable to so many people, costumes or no.

      there’s also more fetish exposure these days i think: bjork clearly slays in the realm, but has become backwashed for a lot. i guess her music also is less interesting now.

      what about fuckin missy elliott

  185. Blake Butler

      i imagine that when gaga gains some weight and gets married, her stock will go down too. if she didnt look like she does, with that commodity, that cheese pap music wouldn’t be so palatable to so many people, costumes or no.

      there’s also more fetish exposure these days i think: bjork clearly slays in the realm, but has become backwashed for a lot. i guess her music also is less interesting now.

      what about fuckin missy elliott

  186. zusya
  187. zusya

      so… wake me when the next fantômas is released. first time i saw them live, they were opening for tool.

      personally, i can’t say i agree with your characterization of their music. one of my friends has told me pretty much the same thing, and the only way i could get him to see my point was to explain their sound as heavy metal with classical music structures.

      i dunno, would you call pink floyd a mainstream band?

  188. Steven Augustine

      Yeah, that Bjork fucked up. By actually making some semi-avant garde music to go with her nutty closet. If Bjork were recycling 80’s pop hooks with a karaoke voice, we’d be comparing *her* to Lynch and Warhol now. Whoa: Bjork-management-fail.

      Q: But if The Beatles were super-hyped to distract us from the murder of JFK, what is GaGa distracting us from?

      A: Justin Bieber

      PS I read in People magazine that GaGa’s meat dress was made from Iraqis

  189. Steven Augustine

      Life is behind a paywall

  190. Steven Augustine

      The Aliens are using Photoshop 6.0. Sad.

  191. Steven Augustine

      The Aliens are using Photoshop 6.0. Sad.

  192. Jordan

      The Beatles were super-hyped to cash in on the baby boom’s leverage over family disposable income. But conspiracy theories are good distractions too

  193. jereme

      i want to party with missy elliot. she makes me horny.

  194. jereme

      i want to party with missy elliot. she makes me horny.

  195. Steven Augustine

      have you heard the conspiracy theory about the break-in over at the Watergate hotel? crazy shit!

  196. stephen

      i like missy elliot

  197. stephen

      elliott

  198. stephen

      i like missy elliot

  199. stephen

      elliott

  200. Jordan

      Shit, man. And speaking of the man, keep on sticking it, Steven.

  201. Steven Augustine

      Pink Floyd c. Wish You Were Here = the formalized sound of the final death of the hippie; Pink Floyd c. Dark Side of The Moon = Dire Straits + British accent (yes I know where Mark Knopfler is from); Pink Floyd post-RW = Phil Collins; Pink Floyd c. Animals = not-really-what-you’d-call-mainstream-at-all-really-and-fucking-good-too.

  202. Steven Augustine

      Pink Floyd c. Wish You Were Here = the formalized sound of the final death of the hippie; Pink Floyd c. Dark Side of The Moon = Dire Straits + British accent (yes I know where Mark Knopfler is from); Pink Floyd post-RW = Phil Collins; Pink Floyd c. Animals = not-really-what-you’d-call-mainstream-at-all-really-and-fucking-good-too.

  203. Margaret

      This. People need to realize it’s okay to listen to pop music. And that’s what Gaga is – pop music. And that’s okay. I sort of feel like a lot of people (particularly artists/poets) see Gaga as their key to liberation – they always wanted to listen to pop-y music, and now that someone’s doing it in a meat dress/covered in Kermits/with a silver lobster they finally feel like it’s okay for them to like pop music. In a way, it makes me sad that we’ve gotten to the point where we’re all that insecure about such things.

  204. Steven Augustine

      the man is an hermaphrodite is what i hear

  205. Tony O'Neill

      I have to say that Tool – in a tangential way – provided me with one of my favorite concert experiences ever.

      I was at the All Points West festival to see My Bloody Valentine, and they were playing immediately before Tool. When MBV came on there was a huge contingent of die-hard Tool fans in the audience. MBV played so painfully fucking loud that I actually saw one girl in a Tool T-shirt crying. When they played “I Made You Realize” there was a twenty minute or so section of pure white noise, which resulted in the Tool fans screaming abuse at the stage and giving the band the finger. Then a rain of bottles descended on the Tool fans.

      It was a beautiful thing.

      In fact I just found footage of it on youtube, beautiful. This footage cannot do justice to how amazing abrasive this sounded, though

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F77wD4XAAYw

  206. Tony O'Neill

      I have to say that Tool – in a tangential way – provided me with one of my favorite concert experiences ever.

      I was at the All Points West festival to see My Bloody Valentine, and they were playing immediately before Tool. When MBV came on there was a huge contingent of die-hard Tool fans in the audience. MBV played so painfully fucking loud that I actually saw one girl in a Tool T-shirt crying. When they played “I Made You Realize” there was a twenty minute or so section of pure white noise, which resulted in the Tool fans screaming abuse at the stage and giving the band the finger. Then a rain of bottles descended on the Tool fans.

      It was a beautiful thing.

      In fact I just found footage of it on youtube, beautiful. This footage cannot do justice to how amazing abrasive this sounded, though

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F77wD4XAAYw

  207. Steven Augustine

      when did The People ever *stop* listening to pop? What’s *not* pop?

  208. Tony O'Neill

      @ SteveAugustine

      *TOTALLY OFF TOPIC PINK FLOYD COMMENT ALERT*

      Nothing that Pink Floyd did approached the greatness of the 2 Syd Barrett solo albums…

  209. Tony O'Neill

      @ SteveAugustine

      *TOTALLY OFF TOPIC PINK FLOYD COMMENT ALERT*

      Nothing that Pink Floyd did approached the greatness of the 2 Syd Barrett solo albums…

  210. Sam Walker

      In a way, Lady Gaga has kind of created a pop genre of Avant-garde which is a simple, static representation of progressive fashion/art from the past decade. It isn’t Avant-garde in the original meaning of the word, but it reminds us of our impression of Avant-garde works from the past.

      It is similar to how indie music has an associated lo-fi aesthetic or stressed style of singing. It has nothing to do with how ‘independent’ it is, an aesthetic has become associated with the word.

  211. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      It requires stilettos.

  212. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      It requires stilettos.

  213. mimi

      if you’re talking about gaga, i thought the telephone vid closed the file on that one

  214. mimi

      i support this idea

  215. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      Avant garde is probably not the right term. If anything, it’s a repackaging of “underground” or cult artists, whether that’s Karin Anderson or Roisin Murphy or Peaches or Bjork or Grace Jones or whoever for a mass, mainstream audience. The contradictions Paglia is trying to use to discredit her are what make her interesting. Feel like Paglia is also willfully refusing to acknowledge that the unsexiness of Gaga’s sexuality might be deliberate (as in duh, Camille Paglia, unsexy is kinda the point), because Paglia has made a career out of romanticizing, reinforcing and essentializing traditional patriarchal gender constructions, and Gaga is all abt a garish, de-essentializing hyper-performativity of same. Paglia has spent years publicly abhorring the so-called “postmodern” feminist scholarship that draws a lot of academic folks to Gaga’s performance of gender and sexuality, so her critique of Gaga as “unsexy” doesn’t really come as a surprise.

  216. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      Avant garde is probably not the right term. If anything, it’s a repackaging of “underground” or cult artists, whether that’s Karin Anderson or Roisin Murphy or Peaches or Bjork or Grace Jones or whoever for a mass, mainstream audience. The contradictions Paglia is trying to use to discredit her are what make her interesting. Feel like Paglia is also willfully refusing to acknowledge that the unsexiness of Gaga’s sexuality might be deliberate (as in duh, Camille Paglia, unsexy is kinda the point), because Paglia has made a career out of romanticizing, reinforcing and essentializing traditional patriarchal gender constructions, and Gaga is all abt a garish, de-essentializing hyper-performativity of same. Paglia has spent years publicly abhorring the so-called “postmodern” feminist scholarship that draws a lot of academic folks to Gaga’s performance of gender and sexuality, so her critique of Gaga as “unsexy” doesn’t really come as a surprise.

  217. d

      I was so excited when 10,000 Days came out, but it wasn’t very good. Basically Lateralus b-sides.

      They were my favorite band in middle and high school, and I still listen to them loudly 2-5 weekends a year.

  218. d

      I was so excited when 10,000 Days came out, but it wasn’t very good. Basically Lateralus b-sides.

      They were my favorite band in middle and high school, and I still listen to them loudly 2-5 weekends a year.

  219. Steven Augustine

      Yeah, Tone, Syd could be cool (in a hippie-ish way) but “Animals” makes Syd’s stuff look a little fey in comparison.

      I like this well enough when I’m in the mood (which isn’t often, admittedly):

      What’d you ever say today when you’re in the milky way

      oh tell me please
      if I met you – I told you what to do
      seems a while
      since I could smile the way you do…

      how many times, if I try, if I may,
      when you’re in the milky way

      half of your time -beside me only atmosphere
      since I could smile the way you do…

      What can anyone mean to you
      standing in the milky way

      take life easy
      Why so empty…?
      I told you – I can tell you
      what to do – when I hold you
      and I tell you “I love you”
      I feel that I’m way you do…

      Give a grasp of life today
      when you’re in the milky way
      oh, try to please! Knock on wood of the trees
      glad you, mold you, mold you and hold you
      means five miles
      and everyway for you…:

      *****

      But THIS is what I consider a truly moving ballad:

      Pigs (Three Different Ones) (Waters) 11:26

      Big man, pig man, ha ha charade you are.
      You well heeled big wheel, ha ha charade you are.
      And when your hand is on your heart,
      You’re nearly a good laugh,
      Almost a joker,
      With your head down in the pig bin,
      Saying “Keep on digging.”
      Pig stain on your fat chin.
      What do you hope to find.
      When you’re down in the pig mine.
      You’re nearly a laugh,
      You’re nearly a laugh
      But you’re really a cry.

      Bus stop rat bag, ha ha charade you are.
      You fucked up old hag, ha ha charade you are.
      You radiate cold shafts of broken glass.
      You’re nearly a good laugh,
      Almost worth a quick grin.
      You like the feel of steel,
      You’re hot stuff with a hatpin,
      And good fun with a hand gun.
      You’re nearly a laugh,
      You’re nearly a laugh
      But you’re really a cry.

      Hey you, Whitehouse,
      Ha ha charade you are.
      You house proud town mouse,
      Ha ha charade you are
      You’re trying to keep our feelings off the street.
      You’re nearly a real treat,
      All tight lips and cold feet
      And do you feel abused?
      …..! …..! …..! …..!
      You gotta stem the evil tide,
      And keep it all on the inside.
      Mary you’re nearly a treat,
      Mary you’re nearly a treat
      But you’re really a cry.

  220. Steven Augustine

      Yeah, Tone, Syd could be cool (in a hippie-ish way) but “Animals” makes Syd’s stuff look a little fey in comparison.

      I like this well enough when I’m in the mood (which isn’t often, admittedly):

      What’d you ever say today when you’re in the milky way

      oh tell me please
      if I met you – I told you what to do
      seems a while
      since I could smile the way you do…

      how many times, if I try, if I may,
      when you’re in the milky way

      half of your time -beside me only atmosphere
      since I could smile the way you do…

      What can anyone mean to you
      standing in the milky way

      take life easy
      Why so empty…?
      I told you – I can tell you
      what to do – when I hold you
      and I tell you “I love you”
      I feel that I’m way you do…

      Give a grasp of life today
      when you’re in the milky way
      oh, try to please! Knock on wood of the trees
      glad you, mold you, mold you and hold you
      means five miles
      and everyway for you…:

      *****

      But THIS is what I consider a truly moving ballad:

      Pigs (Three Different Ones) (Waters) 11:26

      Big man, pig man, ha ha charade you are.
      You well heeled big wheel, ha ha charade you are.
      And when your hand is on your heart,
      You’re nearly a good laugh,
      Almost a joker,
      With your head down in the pig bin,
      Saying “Keep on digging.”
      Pig stain on your fat chin.
      What do you hope to find.
      When you’re down in the pig mine.
      You’re nearly a laugh,
      You’re nearly a laugh
      But you’re really a cry.

      Bus stop rat bag, ha ha charade you are.
      You fucked up old hag, ha ha charade you are.
      You radiate cold shafts of broken glass.
      You’re nearly a good laugh,
      Almost worth a quick grin.
      You like the feel of steel,
      You’re hot stuff with a hatpin,
      And good fun with a hand gun.
      You’re nearly a laugh,
      You’re nearly a laugh
      But you’re really a cry.

      Hey you, Whitehouse,
      Ha ha charade you are.
      You house proud town mouse,
      Ha ha charade you are
      You’re trying to keep our feelings off the street.
      You’re nearly a real treat,
      All tight lips and cold feet
      And do you feel abused?
      …..! …..! …..! …..!
      You gotta stem the evil tide,
      And keep it all on the inside.
      Mary you’re nearly a treat,
      Mary you’re nearly a treat
      But you’re really a cry.

  221. darby

      yes. it took the advent of youtube, sort of. there is a new kind of entertainment that flourishes on youtube, and that’s that whatever is the oddest or most outrageous thing gets the most hits and becomes “good” entertainment. it leaves a door open for a kind of entertainment that crosses a few more lines to penetrate the masses. i dont think lady gaga would exist without the internet and youtube. she’s the first person to gain madonna-level success with it.

  222. darby

      yes. it took the advent of youtube, sort of. there is a new kind of entertainment that flourishes on youtube, and that’s that whatever is the oddest or most outrageous thing gets the most hits and becomes “good” entertainment. it leaves a door open for a kind of entertainment that crosses a few more lines to penetrate the masses. i dont think lady gaga would exist without the internet and youtube. she’s the first person to gain madonna-level success with it.

  223. Steven Augustine

      talkin’ ’bout THE MAN

  224. darby

      okay, i’m never commenting on htmlgiant again. how come every comment i post i feel completely disgusted by it?

  225. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      I think also this “first major star of the digital age” narrative is abt the collapse of the record industry and fracturing and niche-ing of audience. Not sure how accurate it is, but they talk abt Gaga as accomplishing record sales nobody thought possible at this point in the game, and also becoming a mass, mainstream, iconic (I think this part is important — her iconography and the sort-of mega-artist thing I think is part of what differentiates her from anybody else to emerge post-2000, it’s almost more old-school rock star in that way) personality (in part by using the tools of the time) across communities in a way folks didn’t really think was possible anymore.

  226. darby

      okay, i’m never commenting on htmlgiant again. how come every comment i post i feel completely disgusted by it?

  227. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      I think also this “first major star of the digital age” narrative is abt the collapse of the record industry and fracturing and niche-ing of audience. Not sure how accurate it is, but they talk abt Gaga as accomplishing record sales nobody thought possible at this point in the game, and also becoming a mass, mainstream, iconic (I think this part is important — her iconography and the sort-of mega-artist thing I think is part of what differentiates her from anybody else to emerge post-2000, it’s almost more old-school rock star in that way) personality (in part by using the tools of the time) across communities in a way folks didn’t really think was possible anymore.

  228. Pemulis

      Biology’s not a social construction, though. Gravity’s not a social construction. If I was, I’d stop talking about it and make every nervous grad student float to the stars…

      (Also, take a look at her last Rolling Stone cover before launching into this un-sexiness nonsense).

  229. Pemulis

      Biology’s not a social construction, though. Gravity’s not a social construction. If I was, I’d stop talking about it and make every nervous grad student float to the stars…

      (Also, take a look at her last Rolling Stone cover before launching into this un-sexiness nonsense).

  230. mimi

      got it now

  231. Steven Augustine

      This is the proper way to read almost any “conspiracy theory” which doesn’t involve extraterrestrials: pretend that the setting is Russia or the Third World! Suddenly, it will seem so much more *plausible*!

  232. Steven Augustine

      GaGa is the Ziggy “Hercules” Middler of the nostalgic-for-the-bathhouse-days-crowd; that’s her club “cred” (a la the Ciccone-phony) and that’s the only “edge” that makes her seem anything other than MOR pop. Meanwhile, too many “thinkers” have already warmed to GaGa for Paglia to profit from jumping on the bandwagon now, therefore the “contrarian” diss. Paglia’s MO is to epater-the-academoisie by championing anathematized demi-mondains like Anna Nicole Smith.

  233. Steven Augustine

      GaGa is the Ziggy “Hercules” Middler of the nostalgic-for-the-bathhouse-days-crowd; that’s her club “cred” (a la the Ciccone-phony) and that’s the only “edge” that makes her seem anything other than MOR pop. Meanwhile, too many “thinkers” have already warmed to GaGa for Paglia to profit from jumping on the bandwagon now, therefore the “contrarian” diss. Paglia’s MO is to epater-the-academoisie by championing anathematized demi-mondains like Anna Nicole Smith.

  234. Jordan

      Ok, Steven. There there. It’ll be ok.

      Incidentally, and speaking of Russia, wouldn’t the more plausible event-driven account of the Beatles’ success have at least as much to do with the Cuban missile crisis as with the assassination of JFK?

  235. Jak Cardini

      doodz. 10,000 Days was total trash and you know it. Sad but true.

  236. Tony O'Neill

      *FEELING LIKE A MUSIC SNOB COMMENT PART 2*

      i never really thought of barrett as hippyish, which i know is a bit strange as that’s how he’s generally perceived. i dont think peace and love was really a part of his agenda.

      there was a really disconcerting vibe about a lot of syd’s solo stuff, especially how it veered between jaunty folky songs about gnomes and shit, to stuff like this:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flboqPwpCvw&feature=related

      did you ever hear skip spences’ album, “oar’? that was another good one, fueled by too many drugs and much mental instability…

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ZOjZztGzs

      but yeah, ive heard animals but nothing much that pink floyd did after piper at the gates of dawn really spoke to me. too produced and musical for my tastes. i will say that their albums had their moments though. i used to live in the shadow of that power station on the cover of animals.

  237. Tony O'Neill

      *FEELING LIKE A MUSIC SNOB COMMENT PART 2*

      i never really thought of barrett as hippyish, which i know is a bit strange as that’s how he’s generally perceived. i dont think peace and love was really a part of his agenda.

      there was a really disconcerting vibe about a lot of syd’s solo stuff, especially how it veered between jaunty folky songs about gnomes and shit, to stuff like this:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flboqPwpCvw&feature=related

      did you ever hear skip spences’ album, “oar’? that was another good one, fueled by too many drugs and much mental instability…

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ZOjZztGzs

      but yeah, ive heard animals but nothing much that pink floyd did after piper at the gates of dawn really spoke to me. too produced and musical for my tastes. i will say that their albums had their moments though. i used to live in the shadow of that power station on the cover of animals.

  238. Steven Augustine

      As long as discussions of that nature aren’t pooh-poohed by Normative Default, I’m there, Agent Jordan!

  239. Steven Augustine

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6pTdzt7BiI

      This is *my* musical obsession which survives from that general era (1969); nothing beats it in the category of mind-bending, imo (and I owned a couple of vinyl copies of Metal Machine Music)… listen to this while staring at a photo of Zoe Lund and I guarantee you nirvana.

      Will check out “Oar” (rings a bell); when I was going through my LSD phase I was more of a Trout Mask Replica/ Residents fan

  240. Steven Augustine

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6pTdzt7BiI

      This is *my* musical obsession which survives from that general era (1969); nothing beats it in the category of mind-bending, imo (and I owned a couple of vinyl copies of Metal Machine Music)… listen to this while staring at a photo of Zoe Lund and I guarantee you nirvana.

      Will check out “Oar” (rings a bell); when I was going through my LSD phase I was more of a Trout Mask Replica/ Residents fan

  241. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      yeah, that rolling stone cover is totally boring.

      Biology is maybe not social construction (but I think there is a lot of social construction in and around how we talk abt and make sense of biology), but generally speaking, I think masculinity and femininity are, which don’t think means that there isn’t some relationship between the social construct of gender and biology, just that whatever “meaning” bodies have is very much shaped by culture and ideology and language, etc. I feel like that is as much a historically accurate statement as a theoretical one, because of how much terms like “man” and “woman” and what they are understood to contain, and their relationship to bodies, have shifted at various points historically.

      The dominant framework & terminology academically has been sex = biology, gender = social construct, sexuality as identity = social construct (with desire arguably biological), yet even these distinctions are sometimes called into question as missing the overlap and messiness of how we actually experience these things in context.

      Also, I feel like even most scientists would agree that, like biological research itself describes a material reality that is organic (um, like literally, right?) and fluid, and that what knowledge we have or are developing about that reality is sometimes contested, yet what makes its way into the culture reduces biology and biological research findings into something far more fixed and authoritative than most of those scientists would probably claim, no?

  242. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      yeah, that rolling stone cover is totally boring.

      Biology is maybe not social construction (but I think there is a lot of social construction in and around how we talk abt and make sense of biology), but generally speaking, I think masculinity and femininity are, which don’t think means that there isn’t some relationship between the social construct of gender and biology, just that whatever “meaning” bodies have is very much shaped by culture and ideology and language, etc. I feel like that is as much a historically accurate statement as a theoretical one, because of how much terms like “man” and “woman” and what they are understood to contain, and their relationship to bodies, have shifted at various points historically.

      The dominant framework & terminology academically has been sex = biology, gender = social construct, sexuality as identity = social construct (with desire arguably biological), yet even these distinctions are sometimes called into question as missing the overlap and messiness of how we actually experience these things in context.

      Also, I feel like even most scientists would agree that, like biological research itself describes a material reality that is organic (um, like literally, right?) and fluid, and that what knowledge we have or are developing about that reality is sometimes contested, yet what makes its way into the culture reduces biology and biological research findings into something far more fixed and authoritative than most of those scientists would probably claim, no?

  243. Matthew Simmons

      But how can even that be true? It’s taken this long to create the first star influenced by the digital age? Really?

  244. Blake Butler

      i was taking his comment as tool is just as googy as gaga.

  245. Steven Augustine

      O, how quickly the Tay Zonday is forgotten…

  246. Tony O'Neill

      wow, 1969. sounds very ahead of its time, never heard of this one before. i’ll have to check it out.

      lester bangs’ review of metal machine music is one of my favorite pieces of rock journalism of all time.

      (not hard, because most rock journalism is shit. but its a good piece.)

  247. Tony O'Neill

      wow, 1969. sounds very ahead of its time, never heard of this one before. i’ll have to check it out.

      lester bangs’ review of metal machine music is one of my favorite pieces of rock journalism of all time.

      (not hard, because most rock journalism is shit. but its a good piece.)

  248. Steven Augustine

      well shit the “Oar” link is “not available in [my] country”. Sony bastards.

  249. Steven Augustine

      well shit the “Oar” link is “not available in [my] country”. Sony bastards.

  250. Matthew Simmons

      Love Oar.

  251. Matthew Simmons

      Love Oar.

  252. Steven Augustine

      Okay, just found “Land of the Sun” and I must admit you’re onto something…

  253. Steven Augustine

      Okay, just found “Land of the Sun” and I must admit you’re onto something…

  254. Blake Butler

      they just seem like a mainstream band that incorporates avant garde in the attempt of seeming edgy, when the music is really pretty standard weird heavy music. not the worst, and definitely not as blank as gaga, but still: they use their image heavily to weigh off what lacks. it seems just as funny to me.

  255. Blake Butler

      i imagine that when gaga gains some weight and gets married, her stock will go down too. if she didnt look like she does, with that commodity, that cheese pap music wouldn’t be so palatable to so many people, costumes or no.

      there’s also more fetish exposure these days i think: bjork clearly slays in the realm, but has become backwashed for a lot. i guess her music also is less interesting now.

      what about fuckin missy elliott

  256. Janey Smith

      Lady Gaga, no. Tim Jones-Yelvington, yes.

  257. Janey Smith

      Lady Gaga, no. Tim Jones-Yelvington, yes.

  258. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      Let’s make out.

  259. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      Let’s make out.

  260. Matthew Simmons

      Hmm. You guys are starting to convince me, actually.

  261. Matthew Simmons

      Hmm. You guys are starting to convince me, actually.

  262. stephen

      i think artists like lady gaga, lil wayne, nicki minaj, kanye, etc. demonstrate that if you are “compelling”/actually “doing your own thing,” people respond to it. there are always ppl who will be like “but omg, like this other person did something in this other decade,” mostly in reaction to journalists having to use adjectives or whatever, but that is irrelevant in terms of the excitement ppl feel/get from those artists.

  263. stephen

      i think artists like lady gaga, lil wayne, nicki minaj, kanye, etc. demonstrate that if you are “compelling”/actually “doing your own thing,” people respond to it. there are always ppl who will be like “but omg, like this other person did something in this other decade,” mostly in reaction to journalists having to use adjectives or whatever, but that is irrelevant in terms of the excitement ppl feel/get from those artists.

  264. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      …and the other thing, I think abt “major star of the digital age” is compression of timeline, so she’s disseminated what in the past might have been 5 or six album’s worth of hit singles on one and a half full-lengths, and undergone what for others might have been five or ten years worth of image transformations in two.

  265. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      …and the other thing, I think abt “major star of the digital age” is compression of timeline, so she’s disseminated what in the past might have been 5 or six album’s worth of hit singles on one and a half full-lengths, and undergone what for others might have been five or ten years worth of image transformations in two.

  266. Steven Augustine

      The Aliens are using Photoshop 6.0. Sad.

  267. Blake Butler

      agreed

  268. Blake Butler

      agreed

  269. stephen

      of course there are lots of contributing factors (sex appeal/subject matter/co-sign from existing artists/and on and on), but yeah… lil wayne released lots of free music and he is weird/has funny/clever lyrics. and lady gaga does strange things, even if they are not new strange things (which, what is new exactly, and what does it “mean”/why is it “important” exactly, apart from writing an article/graduate thesis) (do ppl construct the impossible dream pop artist in their minds, the Savior Christ Pop Star for People Who Hate Everything? would be interesting/strange if there was a popstar who someone miraculously shut everyone up). kanye incorporates a lot of influences and doesn’t give a fuck what anyone thinks (or he cares so so incredibly much). also he is increasingly emo/self-lacerating, which is unusual for a rapper. also he makes interesting/appealing sounds, imho, even tho yes, he is an awkward rapper, some/all of the time. that’s appealing to me too, tho. nicki minaj seems to have like inspired a lot of girls/other people. maybe because of how strong she seems/acts? her lyrics seem to be the most interesting by a mainstream female rapper since missy. her outfits? that is my pop “analysis.” i like things that are compelling, esp. if the person seems to want to be compelling, as if they’re like gifting me/lots of ppl with being less bored temporarily.

  270. stephen

      of course there are lots of contributing factors (sex appeal/subject matter/co-sign from existing artists/and on and on), but yeah… lil wayne released lots of free music and he is weird/has funny/clever lyrics. and lady gaga does strange things, even if they are not new strange things (which, what is new exactly, and what does it “mean”/why is it “important” exactly, apart from writing an article/graduate thesis) (do ppl construct the impossible dream pop artist in their minds, the Savior Christ Pop Star for People Who Hate Everything? would be interesting/strange if there was a popstar who someone miraculously shut everyone up). kanye incorporates a lot of influences and doesn’t give a fuck what anyone thinks (or he cares so so incredibly much). also he is increasingly emo/self-lacerating, which is unusual for a rapper. also he makes interesting/appealing sounds, imho, even tho yes, he is an awkward rapper, some/all of the time. that’s appealing to me too, tho. nicki minaj seems to have like inspired a lot of girls/other people. maybe because of how strong she seems/acts? her lyrics seem to be the most interesting by a mainstream female rapper since missy. her outfits? that is my pop “analysis.” i like things that are compelling, esp. if the person seems to want to be compelling, as if they’re like gifting me/lots of ppl with being less bored temporarily.

  271. jereme

      i want to party with missy elliot. she makes me horny.

  272. stephen

      i heard a rumor TJY is appearing “live in person” at quickies tonight in chicago. just sayin’

  273. stephen

      i heard a rumor TJY is appearing “live in person” at quickies tonight in chicago. just sayin’

  274. stephen

      i like missy elliot

  275. stephen

      elliott

  276. Steven Augustine

      Pink Floyd c. Wish You Were Here = the formalized sound of the final death of the hippie; Pink Floyd c. Dark Side of The Moon = Dire Straits + British accent (yes I know where Mark Knopfler is from); Pink Floyd post-RW = Phil Collins; Pink Floyd c. Animals = not-really-what-you’d-call-mainstream-at-all-really-and-fucking-good-too.

  277. Tony O'Neill

      I have to say that Tool – in a tangential way – provided me with one of my favorite concert experiences ever.

      I was at the All Points West festival to see My Bloody Valentine, and they were playing immediately before Tool. When MBV came on there was a huge contingent of die-hard Tool fans in the audience. MBV played so painfully fucking loud that I actually saw one girl in a Tool T-shirt crying. When they played “I Made You Realize” there was a twenty minute or so section of pure white noise, which resulted in the Tool fans screaming abuse at the stage and giving the band the finger. Then a rain of bottles descended on the Tool fans.

      It was a beautiful thing.

      In fact I just found footage of it on youtube, beautiful. This footage cannot do justice to how amazing abrasive this sounded, though

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F77wD4XAAYw

  278. Tony O'Neill

      @ SteveAugustine

      *TOTALLY OFF TOPIC PINK FLOYD COMMENT ALERT*

      Nothing that Pink Floyd did approached the greatness of the 2 Syd Barrett solo albums…

  279. Pemulis

      Thanks for not being offended by my (unintentionally) harsh use of ‘nonsense’.

      I wouldn’t say scientists believe reality itself to be ‘fluid’ (more of a humanities term, no?) Sure, our understanding of the world, our fleshing out of theories, is always under construction, but that’s very different than claiming a fluid reality. As far as what popular culture believes about science, I get the feeling it’s issue specific. Like take evolution: people like to misrepresent and stretch the hell out of the word ‘theory’ whenever something challenges their religious beliefs. But when it comes to gas, energy, and the engines that make our cars go zoom, it’s pretty much a lock. Even the relativists need to get to work (and are not floating up to the sky when they interrogate our political notions of oil).

      Anyhoo. Even though the gender stuff mostly comes from a good, heartwarming place, it’s grounded entirely in wish-fulfillment, not empirical reality. And the end result is just ludicrous. Example: browsing for some good amateur pr0n the other night, I came across this hokum: a fun, androgynous, gender-bending social constructivist couple who do believe in fluid sexuality, fluid identity, ‘sexuality as identity = social construct’. There was a dude who ID’d as a gay woman, and a woman who ID’d as a transgendered straight man. Or something. But in the end, they’re still just straight people fucking straight people of the opposite sex. Just like Judith Butler, who was born a lesbian, is having sex with women, and will never have sex with men, despite all the talk of social construction.

      Further, I think these fantasy claims of sexuality do more harm than good: they are essentially the same arguments the religious right uses to debase gays / inter their own gays into straight boot camps. (!)

      I guess what I’m trying to say is there is no substitute for good old-fashioned activism. Screw the obscurantist essays no one reads. March. Phone your representative. Do whatever.

      And for godssake, stop rationalizing Lady Gaga!

  280. Pemulis

      Thanks for not being offended by my (unintentionally) harsh use of ‘nonsense’.

      I wouldn’t say scientists believe reality itself to be ‘fluid’ (more of a humanities term, no?) Sure, our understanding of the world, our fleshing out of theories, is always under construction, but that’s very different than claiming a fluid reality. As far as what popular culture believes about science, I get the feeling it’s issue specific. Like take evolution: people like to misrepresent and stretch the hell out of the word ‘theory’ whenever something challenges their religious beliefs. But when it comes to gas, energy, and the engines that make our cars go zoom, it’s pretty much a lock. Even the relativists need to get to work (and are not floating up to the sky when they interrogate our political notions of oil).

      Anyhoo. Even though the gender stuff mostly comes from a good, heartwarming place, it’s grounded entirely in wish-fulfillment, not empirical reality. And the end result is just ludicrous. Example: browsing for some good amateur pr0n the other night, I came across this hokum: a fun, androgynous, gender-bending social constructivist couple who do believe in fluid sexuality, fluid identity, ‘sexuality as identity = social construct’. There was a dude who ID’d as a gay woman, and a woman who ID’d as a transgendered straight man. Or something. But in the end, they’re still just straight people fucking straight people of the opposite sex. Just like Judith Butler, who was born a lesbian, is having sex with women, and will never have sex with men, despite all the talk of social construction.

      Further, I think these fantasy claims of sexuality do more harm than good: they are essentially the same arguments the religious right uses to debase gays / inter their own gays into straight boot camps. (!)

      I guess what I’m trying to say is there is no substitute for good old-fashioned activism. Screw the obscurantist essays no one reads. March. Phone your representative. Do whatever.

      And for godssake, stop rationalizing Lady Gaga!

  281. Jordan

      I just think it’s great that theater nerds are winning.

  282. Jordan

      I just think it’s great that theater nerds are winning.

  283. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      It requires stilettos.

  284. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      Avant garde is probably not the right term. If anything, it’s a repackaging of “underground” or cult artists, whether that’s Karin Anderson or Roisin Murphy or Peaches or Bjork or Grace Jones or whoever for a mass, mainstream audience. The contradictions Paglia is trying to use to discredit her are what make her interesting. Feel like Paglia is also willfully refusing to acknowledge that the unsexiness of Gaga’s sexuality might be deliberate (as in duh, Camille Paglia, unsexy is kinda the point), because Paglia has made a career out of romanticizing, reinforcing and essentializing traditional patriarchal gender constructions, and Gaga is all abt a garish, de-essentializing hyper-performativity of same. Paglia has spent years publicly abhorring the so-called “postmodern” feminist scholarship that draws a lot of academic folks to Gaga’s performance of gender and sexuality, so her critique of Gaga as “unsexy” doesn’t really come as a surprise.

  285. d

      I was so excited when 10,000 Days came out, but it wasn’t very good. Basically Lateralus b-sides.

      They were my favorite band in middle and high school, and I still listen to them loudly 2-5 weekends a year.

  286. Steven Augustine

      Yeah, Tone, Syd could be cool (in a hippie-ish way) but “Animals” makes Syd’s stuff look a little fey in comparison.

      I like this well enough when I’m in the mood (which isn’t often, admittedly):

      What’d you ever say today when you’re in the milky way

      oh tell me please
      if I met you – I told you what to do
      seems a while
      since I could smile the way you do…

      how many times, if I try, if I may,
      when you’re in the milky way

      half of your time -beside me only atmosphere
      since I could smile the way you do…

      What can anyone mean to you
      standing in the milky way

      take life easy
      Why so empty…?
      I told you – I can tell you
      what to do – when I hold you
      and I tell you “I love you”
      I feel that I’m way you do…

      Give a grasp of life today
      when you’re in the milky way
      oh, try to please! Knock on wood of the trees
      glad you, mold you, mold you and hold you
      means five miles
      and everyway for you…:

      *****

      But THIS is what I consider a truly moving ballad:

      Pigs (Three Different Ones) (Waters) 11:26

      Big man, pig man, ha ha charade you are.
      You well heeled big wheel, ha ha charade you are.
      And when your hand is on your heart,
      You’re nearly a good laugh,
      Almost a joker,
      With your head down in the pig bin,
      Saying “Keep on digging.”
      Pig stain on your fat chin.
      What do you hope to find.
      When you’re down in the pig mine.
      You’re nearly a laugh,
      You’re nearly a laugh
      But you’re really a cry.

      Bus stop rat bag, ha ha charade you are.
      You fucked up old hag, ha ha charade you are.
      You radiate cold shafts of broken glass.
      You’re nearly a good laugh,
      Almost worth a quick grin.
      You like the feel of steel,
      You’re hot stuff with a hatpin,
      And good fun with a hand gun.
      You’re nearly a laugh,
      You’re nearly a laugh
      But you’re really a cry.

      Hey you, Whitehouse,
      Ha ha charade you are.
      You house proud town mouse,
      Ha ha charade you are
      You’re trying to keep our feelings off the street.
      You’re nearly a real treat,
      All tight lips and cold feet
      And do you feel abused?
      …..! …..! …..! …..!
      You gotta stem the evil tide,
      And keep it all on the inside.
      Mary you’re nearly a treat,
      Mary you’re nearly a treat
      But you’re really a cry.

  287. darby

      yes. it took the advent of youtube, sort of. there is a new kind of entertainment that flourishes on youtube, and that’s that whatever is the oddest or most outrageous thing gets the most hits and becomes “good” entertainment. it leaves a door open for a kind of entertainment that crosses a few more lines to penetrate the masses. i dont think lady gaga would exist without the internet and youtube. she’s the first person to gain madonna-level success with it.

  288. deadgod

      [O]ur understanding of the world, our fleshing out of theories, is always under construction, but that’s very different than claiming a fluid reality.

      That’s an excellent point, Pemulis. Commitment to an understanding of a partly-knowable reality external to oneself – a metaphysical understanding – is not the same as commitment to a complete, error-less, and non-trivial epistemology.

      [Two cavils: “fluid” is very much a term of physical science! (It’s the humanities which use it metaphorically.) And there are consistent philosophies that are committed to a “fluid reality” – Heraclitan stoichiometrical ontology and Nietzsche’s anti-metaphysics of becoming – but they’re rare and the frequency of their being misunderstood has everything to do with the epistemic difficulties they pose.]

      The point gender constructivists make – the ones who are limited relativists – is that: whatever the raw material – the biological foundation – of gender is, that raw material – those biological processes that materially impinge on our preconceptions – is still not apparent except through those culturally determined preconceptions. – So, whatever you’re convinced that “biology” is, it’s not possible to sift your cultural anticipations apart from your concepts or practices of biological science.

      A useful counter to a relativistic insistence on either perfect knowledge of reality or slack commitment to the ‘knowledge’ one purports to have might be pragmatic attention both to intractable material impingement and to one’s moral and social priorities.

  289. deadgod

      [O]ur understanding of the world, our fleshing out of theories, is always under construction, but that’s very different than claiming a fluid reality.

      That’s an excellent point, Pemulis. Commitment to an understanding of a partly-knowable reality external to oneself – a metaphysical understanding – is not the same as commitment to a complete, error-less, and non-trivial epistemology.

      [Two cavils: “fluid” is very much a term of physical science! (It’s the humanities which use it metaphorically.) And there are consistent philosophies that are committed to a “fluid reality” – Heraclitan stoichiometrical ontology and Nietzsche’s anti-metaphysics of becoming – but they’re rare and the frequency of their being misunderstood has everything to do with the epistemic difficulties they pose.]

      The point gender constructivists make – the ones who are limited relativists – is that: whatever the raw material – the biological foundation – of gender is, that raw material – those biological processes that materially impinge on our preconceptions – is still not apparent except through those culturally determined preconceptions. – So, whatever you’re convinced that “biology” is, it’s not possible to sift your cultural anticipations apart from your concepts or practices of biological science.

      A useful counter to a relativistic insistence on either perfect knowledge of reality or slack commitment to the ‘knowledge’ one purports to have might be pragmatic attention both to intractable material impingement and to one’s moral and social priorities.

  290. darby

      okay, i’m never commenting on htmlgiant again. how come every comment i post i feel completely disgusted by it?

  291. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      I think also this “first major star of the digital age” narrative is abt the collapse of the record industry and fracturing and niche-ing of audience. Not sure how accurate it is, but they talk abt Gaga as accomplishing record sales nobody thought possible at this point in the game, and also becoming a mass, mainstream, iconic (I think this part is important — her iconography and the sort-of mega-artist thing I think is part of what differentiates her from anybody else to emerge post-2000, it’s almost more old-school rock star in that way) personality (in part by using the tools of the time) across communities in a way folks didn’t really think was possible anymore.

  292. Pemulis

      Biology’s not a social construction, though. Gravity’s not a social construction. If I was, I’d stop talking about it and make every nervous grad student float to the stars…

      (Also, take a look at her last Rolling Stone cover before launching into this un-sexiness nonsense).

  293. Matthew Simmons

      Speaking of the spectrum of mental illness and songwriting genius, I am just now for the first time listening to Big Star guitarist/songwriter Chris Bell’s I Am the Cosmos and am really loving it.

  294. Matthew Simmons

      Speaking of the spectrum of mental illness and songwriting genius, I am just now for the first time listening to Big Star guitarist/songwriter Chris Bell’s I Am the Cosmos and am really loving it.

  295. Steven Augustine

      GaGa is the Ziggy “Hercules” Middler of the nostalgic-for-the-bathhouse-days-crowd; that’s her club “cred” (a la the Ciccone-phony) and that’s the only “edge” that makes her seem anything other than MOR pop. Meanwhile, too many “thinkers” have already warmed to GaGa for Paglia to profit from jumping on the bandwagon now, therefore the “contrarian” diss. Paglia’s MO is to epater-the-academoisie by championing anathematized demi-mondains like Anna Nicole Smith.

  296. Tony O'Neill

      *FEELING LIKE A MUSIC SNOB COMMENT PART 2*

      i never really thought of barrett as hippyish, which i know is a bit strange as that’s how he’s generally perceived. i dont think peace and love was really a part of his agenda.

      there was a really disconcerting vibe about a lot of syd’s solo stuff, especially how it veered between jaunty folky songs about gnomes and shit, to stuff like this:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flboqPwpCvw&feature=related

      did you ever hear skip spences’ album, “oar’? that was another good one, fueled by too many drugs and much mental instability…

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ZOjZztGzs

      but yeah, ive heard animals but nothing much that pink floyd did after piper at the gates of dawn really spoke to me. too produced and musical for my tastes. i will say that their albums had their moments though. i used to live in the shadow of that power station on the cover of animals.

  297. Steven Augustine

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6pTdzt7BiI

      This is *my* musical obsession which survives from that general era (1969); nothing beats it in the category of mind-bending, imo (and I owned a couple of vinyl copies of Metal Machine Music)… listen to this while staring at a photo of Zoe Lund and I guarantee you nirvana.

      Will check out “Oar” (rings a bell); when I was going through my LSD phase I was more of a Trout Mask Replica/ Residents fan

  298. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      yeah, that rolling stone cover is totally boring.

      Biology is maybe not social construction (but I think there is a lot of social construction in and around how we talk abt and make sense of biology), but generally speaking, I think masculinity and femininity are, which don’t think means that there isn’t some relationship between the social construct of gender and biology, just that whatever “meaning” bodies have is very much shaped by culture and ideology and language, etc. I feel like that is as much a historically accurate statement as a theoretical one, because of how much terms like “man” and “woman” and what they are understood to contain, and their relationship to bodies, have shifted at various points historically.

      The dominant framework & terminology academically has been sex = biology, gender = social construct, sexuality as identity = social construct (with desire arguably biological), yet even these distinctions are sometimes called into question as missing the overlap and messiness of how we actually experience these things in context.

      Also, I feel like even most scientists would agree that, like biological research itself describes a material reality that is organic (um, like literally, right?) and fluid, and that what knowledge we have or are developing about that reality is sometimes contested, yet what makes its way into the culture reduces biology and biological research findings into something far more fixed and authoritative than most of those scientists would probably claim, no?

  299. Tony O'Neill

      wow, 1969. sounds very ahead of its time, never heard of this one before. i’ll have to check it out.

      lester bangs’ review of metal machine music is one of my favorite pieces of rock journalism of all time.

      (not hard, because most rock journalism is shit. but its a good piece.)

  300. Steven Augustine

      well shit the “Oar” link is “not available in [my] country”. Sony bastards.

  301. Matthew Simmons

      Love Oar.

  302. Steven Augustine

      Okay, just found “Land of the Sun” and I must admit you’re onto something…

  303. Janey Smith

      Lady Gaga, no. Tim Jones-Yelvington, yes.

  304. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      Let’s make out.

  305. Matthew Simmons

      Hmm. You guys are starting to convince me, actually.

  306. stephen

      i think artists like lady gaga, lil wayne, nicki minaj, kanye, etc. demonstrate that if you are “compelling”/actually “doing your own thing,” people respond to it. there are always ppl who will be like “but omg, like this other person did something in this other decade,” mostly in reaction to journalists having to use adjectives or whatever, but that is irrelevant in terms of the excitement ppl feel/get from those artists.

  307. Tim Jones-Yelvington

      …and the other thing, I think abt “major star of the digital age” is compression of timeline, so she’s disseminated what in the past might have been 5 or six album’s worth of hit singles on one and a half full-lengths, and undergone what for others might have been five or ten years worth of image transformations in two.

  308. Blake Butler

      agreed

  309. stephen

      of course there are lots of contributing factors (sex appeal/subject matter/co-sign from existing artists/and on and on), but yeah… lil wayne released lots of free music and he is weird/has funny/clever lyrics. and lady gaga does strange things, even if they are not new strange things (which, what is new exactly, and what does it “mean”/why is it “important” exactly, apart from writing an article/graduate thesis) (do ppl construct the impossible dream pop artist in their minds, the Savior Christ Pop Star for People Who Hate Everything? would be interesting/strange if there was a popstar who someone miraculously shut everyone up). kanye incorporates a lot of influences and doesn’t give a fuck what anyone thinks (or he cares so so incredibly much). also he is increasingly emo/self-lacerating, which is unusual for a rapper. also he makes interesting/appealing sounds, imho, even tho yes, he is an awkward rapper, some/all of the time. that’s appealing to me too, tho. nicki minaj seems to have like inspired a lot of girls/other people. maybe because of how strong she seems/acts? her lyrics seem to be the most interesting by a mainstream female rapper since missy. her outfits? that is my pop “analysis.” i like things that are compelling, esp. if the person seems to want to be compelling, as if they’re like gifting me/lots of ppl with being less bored temporarily.

  310. stephen

      i heard a rumor TJY is appearing “live in person” at quickies tonight in chicago. just sayin’

  311. Pemulis

      Thanks for not being offended by my (unintentionally) harsh use of ‘nonsense’.

      I wouldn’t say scientists believe reality itself to be ‘fluid’ (more of a humanities term, no?) Sure, our understanding of the world, our fleshing out of theories, is always under construction, but that’s very different than claiming a fluid reality. As far as what popular culture believes about science, I get the feeling it’s issue specific. Like take evolution: people like to misrepresent and stretch the hell out of the word ‘theory’ whenever something challenges their religious beliefs. But when it comes to gas, energy, and the engines that make our cars go zoom, it’s pretty much a lock. Even the relativists need to get to work (and are not floating up to the sky when they interrogate our political notions of oil).

      Anyhoo. Even though the gender stuff mostly comes from a good, heartwarming place, it’s grounded entirely in wish-fulfillment, not empirical reality. And the end result is just ludicrous. Example: browsing for some good amateur pr0n the other night, I came across this hokum: a fun, androgynous, gender-bending social constructivist couple who do believe in fluid sexuality, fluid identity, ‘sexuality as identity = social construct’. There was a dude who ID’d as a gay woman, and a woman who ID’d as a transgendered straight man. Or something. But in the end, they’re still just straight people fucking straight people of the opposite sex. Just like Judith Butler, who was born a lesbian, is having sex with women, and will never have sex with men, despite all the talk of social construction.

      Further, I think these fantasy claims of sexuality do more harm than good: they are essentially the same arguments the religious right uses to debase gays / inter their own gays into straight boot camps. (!)

      I guess what I’m trying to say is there is no substitute for good old-fashioned activism. Screw the obscurantist essays no one reads. March. Phone your representative. Do whatever.

      And for godssake, stop rationalizing Lady Gaga!

  312. Jordan

      I just think it’s great that theater nerds are winning.

  313. deadgod

      [O]ur understanding of the world, our fleshing out of theories, is always under construction, but that’s very different than claiming a fluid reality.

      That’s an excellent point, Pemulis. Commitment to an understanding of a partly-knowable reality external to oneself – a metaphysical understanding – is not the same as commitment to a complete, error-less, and non-trivial epistemology.

      [Two cavils: “fluid” is very much a term of physical science! (It’s the humanities which use it metaphorically.) And there are consistent philosophies that are committed to a “fluid reality” – Heraclitan stoichiometrical ontology and Nietzsche’s anti-metaphysics of becoming – but they’re rare and the frequency of their being misunderstood has everything to do with the epistemic difficulties they pose.]

      The point gender constructivists make – the ones who are limited relativists – is that: whatever the raw material – the biological foundation – of gender is, that raw material – those biological processes that materially impinge on our preconceptions – is still not apparent except through those culturally determined preconceptions. – So, whatever you’re convinced that “biology” is, it’s not possible to sift your cultural anticipations apart from your concepts or practices of biological science.

      A useful counter to a relativistic insistence on either perfect knowledge of reality or slack commitment to the ‘knowledge’ one purports to have might be pragmatic attention both to intractable material impingement and to one’s moral and social priorities.

  314. Matthew Simmons

      Speaking of the spectrum of mental illness and songwriting genius, I am just now for the first time listening to Big Star guitarist/songwriter Chris Bell’s I Am the Cosmos and am really loving it.

  315. Owen Kaelin

      Tony: Thanks for that MBV clip, though I wish it were longer. I’ve always been a huge MBV fan.

      …Along with Slowdive, Flying Saucer Attack, Ride, Chapterhouse…. . And the list goes on and on into last year. Shoegaze endures even as it changes form.

      …But nothing beats Jessamine and Mahogany (neither of them shoegaze).

      Any Bardo Pond fans, here?

  316. Owen Kaelin

      Tony: Thanks for that MBV clip, though I wish it were longer. I’ve always been a huge MBV fan.

      …Along with Slowdive, Flying Saucer Attack, Ride, Chapterhouse…. . And the list goes on and on into last year. Shoegaze endures even as it changes form.

      …But nothing beats Jessamine and Mahogany (neither of them shoegaze).

      Any Bardo Pond fans, here?

  317. Owen Kaelin

      Tony: Thanks for that MBV clip, though I wish it were longer. I’ve always been a huge MBV fan.

      …Along with Slowdive, Flying Saucer Attack, Ride, Chapterhouse…. . And the list goes on and on into last year. Shoegaze endures even as it changes form.

      …But nothing beats Jessamine and Mahogany (neither of them shoegaze).

      Any Bardo Pond fans, here?

  318. zusya

      looks like i’ve been relegated towards going ‘full tool’ in this thread..

      @Tony O’Neill

      my fav tool-related concert experience: seeing them perform like less than a week after 9/11 in DC.

      at end of a song early in the set, a bunch of the more meat-head-inclined persons down in the moshing area took it upon themselves to start aggressively chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” while just about everyone else there (90% of at least 5,000 or more people, including the band) stared back at them, more or less completely horrified.

      they kept chanting for like a minute until they realized they were in the extreme minority; their chant began losing momentum, and eventually trailed off, dying a slow entropic death. the auditorium – the cavernous MCI Center – became silent for a good 30 seconds.

      the band says nothing, then launches into the next song.

      @ blake

      i just re-examined this phrasing: “really pretty standard weird heavy music”

      that’s kind of why i like this band: standard+weird+heavy

      i’d argue good writing should be the same way

      exploiting what’s ‘standard’ — or put another way: exploiting cliches (the monads constituting pop culture) — is a great way to get your message out to wider audience, especially if what you’re after is getting people to digest the ‘weird’

      end with ‘heavy’ and you’re golden

      / never go ‘full tool’…

  319. Pemulis

      I guess I never got the memo.

      (This definitely isn’t a Nashville party).

  320. Pemulis

      I guess I never got the memo.

      (This definitely isn’t a Nashville party).

  321. Owen Kaelin

      I think Tim means we aren’t invited.

      It’s a Gaga thing. We were never meant to get it.

  322. Owen Kaelin

      I think Tim means we aren’t invited.

      It’s a Gaga thing. We were never meant to get it.

  323. Owen Kaelin

      Zusya: That’s a cool-ass Tool story. Made me laugh. Thanks.

      I’ve been avoiding going into any sort of Tool mode because, well, despite the fact I’ve always liked them: the band has just too many highly-vocal fans.

  324. Owen Kaelin

      Zusya: That’s a cool-ass Tool story. Made me laugh. Thanks.

      I’ve been avoiding going into any sort of Tool mode because, well, despite the fact I’ve always liked them: the band has just too many highly-vocal fans.

  325. Janey Smith

      Tim: You are the only reason I’d want to live in Chicago–although, I’m sure you could provide me with many more. I’m listening.

  326. Janey Smith

      Tim: You are the only reason I’d want to live in Chicago–although, I’m sure you could provide me with many more. I’m listening.

  327. Janey Smith

      Blake: If we could somehow sew Atlanta, Chicago, and San Francisco together, we could have really easy three-ways. Just sayin’.

  328. Janey Smith

      Blake: If we could somehow sew Atlanta, Chicago, and San Francisco together, we could have really easy three-ways. Just sayin’.

  329. Pemulis

      I guess I never got the memo.

      (This definitely isn’t a Nashville party).

  330. Owen Kaelin

      I think Tim means we aren’t invited.

      It’s a Gaga thing. We were never meant to get it.

  331. Owen Kaelin

      Zusya: That’s a cool-ass Tool story. Made me laugh. Thanks.

      I’ve been avoiding going into any sort of Tool mode because, well, despite the fact I’ve always liked them: the band has just too many highly-vocal fans.

  332. Janey Smith

      Tim: You are the only reason I’d want to live in Chicago–although, I’m sure you could provide me with many more. I’m listening.

  333. Janey Smith

      Blake: If we could somehow sew Atlanta, Chicago, and San Francisco together, we could have really easy three-ways. Just sayin’.

  334. zusya

      Owen: i know what you mean. maybe we can change gears and start talking about Merzbow or Philip Glass and really put everyone else to rights. Abba is good, so is Godspeed You Black Emperor; Voodoo Kungfu anyone? Ólafur Arnalds? right now i’m really digging some of the leaked tracks off the Tron 2 soundtrack.

  335. Justin

      While I don’t think there’s anything that hasn’t already been done in the videophone video (that is what you’re talking about, right?), it is a pretty obvious attempt by someone in creative control of gaga and beyonce to throw in some theory. The guns being wielded provocatively, the camera heads, and more stuff I can’t remember now, sorry, but I do recall watching the video and feeling like it had a lot more substance than any other video I had seen in recent years. Not to say it was anything artful or even good, but there’s definitely a clear attempt at symbolism, loaded imagery.

  336. Justin

      While I don’t think there’s anything that hasn’t already been done in the videophone video (that is what you’re talking about, right?), it is a pretty obvious attempt by someone in creative control of gaga and beyonce to throw in some theory. The guns being wielded provocatively, the camera heads, and more stuff I can’t remember now, sorry, but I do recall watching the video and feeling like it had a lot more substance than any other video I had seen in recent years. Not to say it was anything artful or even good, but there’s definitely a clear attempt at symbolism, loaded imagery.

  337. Justin

      While I don’t think there’s anything that hasn’t already been done in the videophone video (that is what you’re talking about, right?), it is a pretty obvious attempt by someone in creative control of gaga and beyonce to throw in some theory. The guns being wielded provocatively, the camera heads, and more stuff I can’t remember now, sorry, but I do recall watching the video and feeling like it had a lot more substance than any other video I had seen in recent years. Not to say it was anything artful or even good, but there’s definitely a clear attempt at symbolism, loaded imagery.

  338. steev hise

      the avant-garde doesn’t really exist any more. what (some) people are doing now is filling in the gaps left by the advance of the avant-garde – years, or in some cases, decades ago… the territory skipped over as the avant-garde marched toward the extreme edges of the cultural universe.

  339. Rebecca Loudon

      She kissed Oprah’s ass and compared her to Gandhi. I think that pretty much says it all.