Socratic is straight-up, shameless piano pop from the early 2000s. They came up at the tail end of Drive-Thru Records’s era of prosperity, which, as we all know, was also the beginning of the pop-punk label’s monstrous downfall. “I Haven’t Seen You In Years” appeared as the second track on the band’s Just Turn EP that nobody bought, which followed the 2005 LP, Lunch For The Sky, that nobody bought. Socratic’s melodic hooks were just a little bit too clever for the average dumbass music consumer, but not quite interesting enough to convince anyone who has a shit to give to give one. Unfortunately for Socratic, unless you’re name rhymes with Shmuce Shmingsteen, you can only write the same song so many times and expect anyone not to forget about you real quick.
The first single to introduce Iron & Wine‘s upcoming album, Kiss Each Other Clean, does exactly what a well-timed lead single is commissioned to do: it reminds you just how damn good Iron & Wine is. It reminds you how much you couldn’t wait for the band’s next release before Sam Beam all but fell off the flat plane of the Earth about two years ago. 2007′s The Shepherd’s Dog was a reinvention for beam, a venture into the realm of the full band, where Beam’s leafy whisper complimented the band’s unfettered sonic scape, and not the other way around. Around The Well provided a subtle reminder in 2009, but even a whole double-LP’s worth of unreleased material was not enough to quell the anticipation for Beam’s next re-imagination of Iron & Wine.
“Walking Far From Home” turns the Shepherd’s Dog-era form inside-out without sacrificing any of the values Beam has transferred throughout his evolution as a musician and songwriter. He is still a master of melody, quarterbacking his words around pleasantly calculable chord changes to baffle listers who wonder why no one else has thought of something so poignant in the 60-some-odd-year history of rock’n'roll songwriting. The song would work well as a classic Beam-and-guitar bonfire singalong, but it boasts exquisitely superfluous piano and vocal frills where a simple rest would seem to do. The subtleties of the ethereal keys turn on a dime into an overbearing wall of synth that is as tactful as it is confounding. This is a new Iron & Wine, in ways more refined and in other ways much wilder than the previous chapter in Beam’s illustrious career.
And if you’re not convinced, take even a quick brush at the accompanying single “Biting Your Tail”, where Beam’s vocals are the only sound recognizable in nature. The song is almost entirely electronic, which is about as colossal a step outside Iron & Wine’s comfort zone as Beam could have taken. Like “Walking Far From Home,” the melody and chord progression might have fared well as an acoustic number, but several listens should reveal that they breath far better in the rainforest of distorted electronic bells Iron & Wine built around them.
I would be very interested to hear Beam’s demos of these songs…perhaps we’ll see an unofficial release in lieu of the “Fall 2007″ demos from The Shepherd’s Dog sessions?
Kiss Each Other Clean comes out January 25th on Warner Bros.
Every day (or so) (starting today), I put my iTunes on shuffle. Whatever song comes on, whether it’s an old favorite, current gem, or something straight out of left field, will be the subject of my as-of-now obligatory daily blog post.
Of all Thrice’s albums, I’ve always felt Vheissu has the most to offer and stands up better than any of the others. It’s still pretty much the only one I go back to every now and then. “Stand And Feel Your Worth” fairly represents each element of Vheissu‘s core: it creeps into actuality from a smokey ether and detonates promptly into a barrier of steely guitars punctuated by Dustin Kensrue’s catlike whisper-to-scream vocals. It comes up for air with a subdued Wurly solo just before Kensrue’s dynamite stick of a growl wills the equally burdensome guitars to blow the rubble out of physical existence. That’s Vheissu in a nutshell.
To me, Vheissu is the penultimate to the end-all-be-all of what hardcore has become (call it “post-hardcore,” if it makes you feel better). The Receiving End of Sirens’s Between The Heart and the Synapse takes it about as far into the philosophy sphere as it can go without breaking, but Vheissu gives it a vital boost in that direction. As far as music that strives to be as overwhelming as possible, Vheissu is the cream of the crop (in the interest of immediacy, I’ve neglected to edit this post for cliches. My Music Journalism professor would be peeved).
Enjoy “Stand And Feel Your Worth” to a Final Fantasy montage. If I can, I’ll dive into the coding to minimize the picture as much as possible. But no guarantees.
This is a speech I gave to my Argument & Advocacy class this morning. I hope I did a good job of explaining the basic ins and outs of basketball for my class of sports-shy Emersonians, many of which have probably never seen all 48 minutes of a basketball game.
When I played youth basketball as a kid, we played under strict rules; every critical utterance toward a referee resulted in a technical foul: two free throws for the other team’s best shooter, a stern chastising from the coach, and usually a few extra minutes on the bench.
These rules were in place to make sure we spent that precious hour-and-a-half a week learning the game of basketball, and not inflating our young but rampant basketball egos. If there was too much passion, there was no room for fundamentals. The game, for us, was about developing our skills, having mutual fun, and fair, healthy, educational competition. It was about the kids playing, not the crowd of parents watching.
The NBA, on the other hand, is about watching the best basketball players in the world compete for a coveted NBA championship…not to mention a pretty gigantic bonus check. It’s about giving the fans what they want to see, and they want to see their favorite superstars go at it against their favorite rivals with fire in their eyes. The players have had the fundamentals of basketball down pat for years, and the egos are what the fans want to see.
When you’re playing against the world’s best basketball players, having all the skills just isn’t enough…The great players have to have an unwavering, unstoppable desire to win at all costs. Sometimes this desire translates to arguing with the referees after an unfavorable call, whether that means getting in the ref’s face and yelling at him or walking over during a timeout to have a calm back-and-forth.
This transaction is vital to balancing the control of the game between the three teams: the home team, the away team, and the referees. Unlike a youth basketball game, an NBA game has a lot at stake, and the players are under pressure to perform well and to entertain the paying audience. However, under the NBA’s new technical foul rules, the NBA players are subject to the same patronizing restrictions during basketball games as 11-year-old children.
The official NBA rulebook defines a technical foul as “conduct which, in the opinion of an official, is detrimental to the game.” When a technical foul is called against a player, the opposing team gets to choose their best shooter to take two uncontested free throws, and then the opposing team gets to take the ball out of bounds. A player can be ejected from a game for just one technical foul, and MUST be ejected for his second.
According to ESPN, under the NEW RULES, NBA referees are instructed to call technical fouls for:
Players making aggressive gestures, such as air punches, anywhere on the court.
Demonstrative disagreement, such as when a player incredulously raises his hands, or smacks his own arm to demonstrate how he was fouled.
Running directly at an official to complain about a call.
Excessive inquiries about a call, even in a civilized tone.
Using body language to question or demonstrate displeasure
Taking the long path to the official; walking across the court to talk to a referee
The so-called “Respect-for-the-Game” rules are coming on the heels of a 2010 NBA postseason that saw the Celtics’ starting and backup centers, Kendrick Perkins and Rasheed Wallace, in major foul trouble throughout the spring. They both had six technicals early in the playoffs, and seven results in a one-game suspension (and an additional game for each technical after that). Such suspensions can singlehandedly change the outcome of a high-stakes playoff series, and even the threat of a suspension make players reluctant to play at the high energy level fans pay to see.
Many of Perkins’ and Wallace’s technical fouls were decidedly unfair calls, based on the two players’ reputations for scowling at the referees. The referees’ calls were as rooted in heat-of-the-moment impulses as the players’ sometimes heated, but often mild displays of emotion. But instead of instating rules to balance the conversation between refs and players, the NBA gave the refs totalitarian power to forbid any kind of conversation whatsoever.
NBA Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations Stu Jackson said, “complaining has never changed a non-call to a call, or a call to a non-call.” But to forbid the players and coaches from having even civilized conversations with referees is to give the referees an opportunity to put their fingerprints on the game and control its outcome. It prevents players from approaching officials to ask why a foul was called so that they may be sure not to commit the violation again. Instead, it’s a juvenile “what I say, goes” mentality.
Surely the referees are sick of letting players berate them with curse words and unconstructive criticism. Eliminating this unsportsmanlike practice would do much more to restore the respect for the game. But the refs and NBA commissioner David Stern must realize that the officials are a part of the game as well, and need to show respect to the players in the same way the players must respect them. There has to be a balance of respect, with neither side feeling a sense of inflated self-importance or authority.
The more opportunities a ref has to stop the game clock with a technical, double technical, or ejection, the more opportunities he has to see his face on SportsCenter the next morning.
According to SportsGrid.com, over 100 technicals were called through the first six games of the season. That’s an average of 2.3 per game, a 50% increase from last season.
Ron Johnson, the NBA’s senior vice president of referee operations, said, “Our players are more personally connected to fans than any other sports…People expect hockey players to be fighting. They expect baseball managers to be kicking dirt on umpires. But that’s not our game. That’s not what our fans want. They tell us in many many ways and I think we have to adjust to meet the needs of our league and our fans. It’s a business.”
However, NBA basketball is driven by the organization’s superstars; fans pay to see their favorite players dominate and compete with other superstars. If a referee gets frustrated with one of these players, he has the power to throw him out of the arena at the drop of a hat.
Brett Stone suggested in The Bleacher Report that players should be forced to spend a small amount of time on the bench for the first technical offense. “Anything to avoid the stars of the best game in the world being relegated to the locker room,” he wrote. Stone was referring to an early season Celtics-Knicks name in which Kevin Garnett was ejected for talking to a referee after a technical was called on his teammate Jermaine O’Neal.
Another call for which the NBA officials have garnered widespread media criticism occurred in a Chicago Bulls game early this season in which forward Kyle Korver gently tapped his elbow after a play to suggest he was fouled. Korver was not looking toward a referee; he was simply running back to the other side of the court to play defense. If the refs had let that small, virtually unnoticeable gesture go, the game would have played on. Instead, they insisted on calling attention to it and stopping the game clock for several minutes. That is NOT respect for the game.
Los Angeles Lakers forward Lamar Odom said he’s all for referees trying to control the integrity of the game, but that the new rules pit the referees even more against the players. “It’s hard to determine what’s detrimental to the game,” Odom said. “If you drop an ‘F’bomb while you raise your hand, then I can understand. If you try to intimidate with body language, I can understand. Or if you go a little crazy using your body, I can understand…But if you’re making a gesture that’s not pointed at anyone, then how could a ref off the ball or on the play call a tech? I think it’s pretty tough.”
So since my career is probably going to be based around keeping the fuck up with my blogs, I probably should have taken myself seriously when I told myself to keep the fuck up with my blog. School has been demanding, along with my new internship, trying to start a band back up, and doing my best to somehow enjoy my last semester and a half of college in Boston from the redundant comfort of my parents’ house in the suburbs. But I’m going to give this thing another go, with a new approach, and hopefully get my few readers (I know you’re there…I’m still getting 20-some-odd hits a day even when I don’t update for months) to comment, criticize, and contribute to the discussion like they did in the beginning.
Now that I’m taking a music journalism course and a bunch of other music classes, my schoolwork is starting to coincide with my blogging interest. On the heels of the best class I’ve ever attended in my academic career, an entire modular on The Band, I’ve posted the first draft of my essay on “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” The piece delves into just how a Canadian songwriter was so capable, perhaps even moreso than an American, of composing one of the greatest Southern American anthems of the twentieth century. I also jive a bit on Robbie Robertson’s guitar playing and assert just how damn important Levon Helm’s Southern drawl is to the delivery of the song (suck it, Joan Baez).
It’s a rough edit, and I have edited a few things since. I’ll be thrilled if anyone would like to edit it, point out something that doesn’t make sense, etc. I’d be even more thrilled if peoples’ edits end up being the same as mine. Either way, please remind me that I’m not as good a writer as I think. Seriously, I’d appreciate the help.
“You know, Robbie, one of these days the South is going to rise again.” Robbie Robertson, Toronto-born songwriter and guitarist of The Band, turned Nell Helm’s half-jovial, half-browbeaten mantra into a Southern anthem that might have brought even Ulysses S. Grant to tears had it been written a century earlier. Nell was the father of Levon Helm, drummer, co-lead vocalist, and lone American in The Band, who brought Robertson to a library in Arkansas to research the Civil War before he sat down to write the gut-wringing lyrics to “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” Helm’s cadenced southern burr made the doleful story of Robertson’s fictional narrator, Rebel soldier Virgil Caine, authentic enough to bring The Band’s late-1960s audience to the basest state of unexplained nostalgia for a period in America’s history of which almost no one could speak. More importantly, the interplay between Richard Manuel’s bulky piano, Rick Danko’s affectionate bass, Garth Hudson’s unmistakable stream-of-consciousness organ style, and Helm’s expressive drumming makes “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” a staple to reintroduce The Band to today’s generation.
Perhaps it took a Canadian’s perspective to make a Confederate anthem seem timely over a century after the Civil War and just a year after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. Unlike most non-Southern Americans, Robertson’s love affair with the South was neither fleeting nor conditional; his enthusiasm for rock’n’roll, blues, and R&B strengthened his connection to the Southern atmosphere, its history, social traditions, and rhythmic dialect, not the other way around. His romantic attitude toward the South allowed him to illustrate its admirable qualities without emphasizing its troublesome history. Instead, Robertson focuses on the sense of community, importance of family, and unwavering work ethic that bred the music he loved in the South.
The song begins with the lines, “Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train / Till Stoneman’s cavalry came and tore up the tracks again.” With the opening lyrics, Robertson establishes a theme of blameless loss; while Caine acknowledges that the loss of the rail road, and later his fellow soldiers and his brother, come by the bayonets of the Union army, he expresses no ill will toward the North. He comes closest in the second verse with the lines, “You take what you can and you leave the rest / But they should never have taken the very best,” but the loss of “the very best” does more to communicate the chaos and tragic turmoil of the Civil War itself than to dishonor the Union army. Even the line, “He was just eighteen, proud and brave / But a Yankee laid him in his grave” from the third verse leaves politics alone. Robertson, a native of a land even more northern than the North, sought to highlight the South’s heartrending defeat without taking a side. The lyrics express the laments of an individual who suffered losses on a personal and familial level, and Robertson recognizes that the sum of thousands of such personal tragedies comprises the South’s overall sadness. In other words, the lyrics convey pro-South sentiments without imposing anti-North propaganda.
But despite Robertson’s profound understanding of the South’s pervading grief, his words would have sounded disingenuous, if not ridiculous, if sung by any of his Band-mates but Helm. His conditioned Southern drawl stretches words like “honnnngray,” and “tiiiiiiiiiime” to punctuate and compliment the historical context like only a born-and-raised Southerner could. His voice communicates reflective, soulful sorrow that neither Manuel’s thunderous baritone nor Danko’s loving croon could express. In the third verse, Helm’s voice cracks as he sings “Like my brother above me, I took a Rebel’s stand,” conveying the deepest sense of loss his character could have experienced as a result of the war: the passing of his brother in battle “when a Yankee laid him in his grave.”
On “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” the anchor and third track on The Band, they restrain their trademark chaotic sound; Manuel bounces up and down on the piano to the root notes methodically while Helm and Danko keep a steady beat on drums and bass respectively. Virtuoso keyboardist Garth Hudson improvises through the second and third verses with a harmonica-esque tone to emphasize the more passionate of Helm’s vocal lines. But Helm’s expressive drumming style might rival his vocals as the most emotional factor of the song if the two didn’t work so closely together. When he sings “But a Yankee laid him in his grave,” he switches to double-time for just four beats, an ironic energy kick for one of the most downtrodden lyrics in the song.
The Band’s best music thrives on the interaction between instruments and individual players and singers. They demonstrate their proclivity for three-part vocal harmony more effectively on The Band than on any of their succeeding albums, and the chorus of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” highlights the oneness of Helm’s, Manuel’s, and Danko’s harmonies as well as classic Band track. In fact, the somber unity of the Southern people could not have been better symbolized than by the Band’s three singers crooning “Na na na na na na na…” at the end of each chorus.
Instrumentally, all five Band members take turns injecting their respective personalities through musical subtleties. Manuel’s rolling piano line that opens the song gets progressively choppier as the choruses pass. Hudson’s harmonica-organ whines through the latter two verses with a gumption that, if not for its impeccably tasteful placement in the song, might overtake the vocals and lyrical substance. The divine connection between Helm’s uniquely dramatic drumming and Danko’s round bass, collectively a tragically unsung element of The Band’s instrumentation throughout their discography, plods the track along with faultlessly simple poise. Robertson, whose guitar playing often makes or breaks any given Band track (see “King Harvest” and the Last Waltz version of “Makes No Difference,” respectively), restricts his playing to acoustic chords that mimick the piano. However, his vivid strumming pattern hangs in the background to add light, twangy layers to the weighty overtones of the song.
“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” demonstrates one of the many elements of The Band’s playing style that separated them from their peers: they were one big rhythm section. Robertson built the song around a simple chord progression and a lyrical topic, and The Band expresses it within the wiggle room of their respective instruments without overshadowing any aspect of the song. All five instruments work together as a whole to emphasize the essence of the song while certain instruments work in smaller groups at certain times. For example, Helm hits on the first and third beats to keep a subtle, slow tempo throughout the song, but Manuel plays on all four beats. This interplay creates a somewhat conflicting rhythm that accepts defeat but does not wallow in it, mirroring the sentiment of Robertson’s narrator.
The track plays relatively linearly; it has a constant tempo and the chord progression only varies between the verses and chorus. However, Hudson’s keyboard soundscapes hover over the rest of the band halfway through the second verse and throughout the third to raise the energy level. Robertson arranges the lyrics so that the most moving lines appear toward the end of the song. The first verse provides a setting,, the second verse explains the first trickles of Southern woe on a wide scale, and the third brings the grief home as Caine laments at his brother’s death in battle. The short bridge after the third verse ascends upward as Manuel hammers his piano and Helm unleashes his inherent Southern passion in a front line-style drum roll. Although the build-up appears to foreshadow a grand finale, the final chorus fades out before the band hits its closing notes.
The Band recorded their self-titled second album live with minimal overdubbing and no distinguishable effects (apart from Hudson’s signature keyboard channels). “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” carries itself without much studio interference, and The Band’s organic chemistry and dynamics keep the energy level high throughout the recorded track. However, they fail to capitalize on the energy that climaxes during the bridge by fading out the final chorus. On the Last Waltz version, The Band plays the final chorus in its entirety to a screaming audience with a triumphant horn section, providing a much more satisfying sense of closure.
Still, the original recording of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” that appears as the third track on The Band stands as a blueprint. It sets guidelines for how the song should be played, sung, and experienced. It leaves a small amount of room for The Band, and only The Band, to surpass it live by injecting impulsive energy and spontaneous vocal bursts. However, other artists who cover the song, many of them The Band’s contemporaries, fail to produce The Band’s organic, base energy by botching the lyrics or ignoring the subtleties that accentuate the song’s power. When Joan Baez performed “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” (and, subsequently, several country artists who billed it as a Joan Baez cover), she sped up the tempo and changed the chord progression slightly. For example, she played a straight F chord instead of the commanding C/E. Such substitutions prevent the chord progression from going where The Band brings it: to the sense of melancholy hope they express in the chorus.
“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” relies as heavily on each element of the song as The Band does on each individual member; neither can survive in its purest, most effective form without any one of its parts. The music would bore without Robertson’s insightful lyrics, and the words would sound shallow without Helm’s soulful, throaty pipes behind them. Four of the five members of The Band hail from Canada, but their collective understanding of American culture oozes through their music like a permanent marker through toilet paper.
The first single to introduce 
“Walking Far From Home” turns the Shepherd’s Dog-era form inside-out without sacrificing any of the values Beam has transferred throughout his evolution as a musician and songwriter. He is still a master of melody, quarterbacking his words around pleasantly calculable chord changes to baffle listers who wonder why no one else has thought of something so poignant in the 60-some-odd-year history of rock’n'roll songwriting. The song would work well as a classic Beam-and-guitar bonfire singalong, but it boasts exquisitely superfluous piano and vocal frills where a simple rest would seem to do. The subtleties of the ethereal keys turn on a dime into an overbearing wall of synth that is as tactful as it is confounding. This is a new Iron & Wine, in ways more refined and in other ways much wilder than the previous chapter in Beam’s illustrious career.
This transaction is vital to balancing the control of the game between the three teams: the home team, the away team, and the referees. Unlike a youth basketball game, an NBA game has a lot at stake, and the players are under pressure to perform well and to entertain the paying audience. However, under the NBA’s new technical foul rules, the NBA players are subject to the same patronizing restrictions during basketball games as 11-year-old children.
Surely the referees are sick of letting players berate them with curse words and unconstructive criticism. Eliminating this unsportsmanlike practice would do much more to restore the respect for the game. But the refs and NBA commissioner David Stern must realize that the officials are a part of the game as well, and need to show respect to the players in the same way the players must respect them. There has to be a balance of respect, with neither side feeling a sense of inflated self-importance or authority.
