Race Music

January 24, 2007... A recent post on Vinyl Mine is devoted to 1980s and 1990s shock punker Tesco Vee and his band, the Meatmen, and ends with by asking, "Any good Tesco stories to share?" Well, I'm not sure it's good, but I am sure it's a story...

As a teenager, I thought the Meatmen were a hoot. With songs celebrating bodily function and denigrating homosexuals, the disabled, women, Asians and rastafarians, there were a lot more scared cows than sacred cows when the Meatmen were on the scene.

To me, though, the Meatmen's real target seemed to be the humourless, holier-than-thou segment of the punk scene that claimed to be anti-racist, anti-sexist and anti-homophobia, but sure seemed to hate straight, white, males. I suspect these are the kinds of people Eet uw Smakelijk was referring to when it described the mid-to-late 1980s hardcore punk scene as "boring self-righteous goody-two-shoes stuff."

At the time, I was 76% certain the Meatmen weren't racist, sexist or homophobic--at least no more so than the average bunch of young, white men. Then, a few years later, I had a Eureka moment, after which I was 99% certain.

The Meatmen - Orgy of One

Listening to Thelonius in Action one day, I was struck by how grotty some of the sax playing in "Evidence" sounded. I listened to it again and was struck by how familiar it sounded, too.

Thelonious Monk Quartet with Johnny Griffin - Evidence (excerpt)

To me, the grotty guitar solo at the 2:00 mark of the Meatmen song "Orgy of One" sounded like it was inspired by the grotty sax playing in Monk's "Evidence." And no white cat who digs black cat Monk enough to draw inspiration from his records, I thought, could be a racist, sexist or homophobe--at least no more so than the average white cat...

All these years later, I rarely feel the urge to put on my copy of We're the Meatmen ... and You Suck, with its "lovely, coconut-oil" coloured vinyl. The world today is a better place than it was during the 1980s. There's less need to be defensive, so there's less need to be offensive. Mind you, these things can always change.

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Best of 2006 - The Matrix^TM Redux

January 7, 2007... If you've been reading Afterbirth of the Cool since the beginning, you've already have been introduced to the concept of The Matrix^TM. For those of you who ain't been reading Afterbirth since the beginning, though, The Matrix^TM is a spreadsheet I prepare every January based on the year-end best-of lists of new music from various publications.

I started preparing The Matrix^TM because I wasn't able to hear to a lot of new music in my day-to-day existence and needed a way to pick the new releases I would gamble my money on, sound unheard. My rationale was that if the reviewers at Exclaim, Pitchfork, Mojo, Spin, Now and Eye all liked the same release, it was probably worth a gamble. Sure, I took the reviewers' descriptions of the music into consideration, too, but the numbers had to be right first.

In the intervening years, due to the rise of websites like Insound and Better Propaganda, later due to the rise of MP3 blogs, my ability to sample new releases has increased exponentially. The Matrix^TM still serves a purpose, though: now I use it^TM to decide what to download, and what I download, in turn, to decide what to buy^TM.

The Pipettes - Your Kisses are Wasted on Me

In the 2006 edition of The Matrix^TM, different weights have been assigned to each source's rankings. With Pitchfork's and Spin's rankings, this was quite simple to do. The number one release in Pitchfork's Top 50 got 50 points, and the 50th release got 1 point. Similarly, the number one release in Spin's Top 40 got 40 points, and the 40th release got 1 point. Etcetera, etcetera. Because I trust Spin's judgement less than Pitchfork's, the weight of Spin's rankings is discounted.

The best-ofs from Exclaim! gave me trouble because there was more than one list to grapple with. Rather than lumping all new releases together, Exclaim! groups them into eight different genres, so there were eight number ones, eight number twos, etc. I'll spare you the gory details about how I ranked and weighted these fuckers other than to assure you the process was all scientifical-like.

Best-ofs from Mojo were not included in The Matrix^TM this year because the British just don't seem to "get" this whole "rock" thing.

Bardo Pond - Lost Word

So, what is to be learned from all of this? Well, for one thing, statistics can be used to prove anything. Based on the numbers, Hot Chip and The Hold Steady are better than Herbert and The Thermals. Based on the songs, though, it just ain't so. Likewise, while neither The Pipettes nor Bardo Pond made it into The Matrix^TM, I'd rather listen to the songs I've posted by them than almost anything by anyone on the list. Thank G_d for MP3 blogs!

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