Coming Attractions

I wanted to let you all know that, despite the lack of a recent post, there will hopefully be two very fun and semi-exclusive posts coming up soon. Here's a sneak preview!

On Thursday, I'm going to an advanced screening of Shortbus, John Cameron Mitchell's new film, which is sure to be full of interesting queer and postmodern ideas. Mitchell's last film, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, was juiced up with some of the most brilliant constructions of gender and national identity since The Crying Game. The screening will feature a Q&A with Mitchell after the film, so I'll report on what the audience reaction is to the film and Mitchell's thoughts.

On Friday, I'm going to the brand-spanking new musical version of High Fidelity, which is having its world premiere in Boston of all places. I am hoping that a city whose musicals are mostly limited to risk-averse and time-worn productions of big budget Broadway will, for once, see a new musical with national promise... or at least a good soundtrack. I'm hoping they've kept the movie's setting in my beloved Chicago, although I can't complain if it's changed since the original Nick Hornby novel was set in England. Can't wait to see what they did with Jack Black's character. I'll post my thoughts this weekend.

To tide you over in the meantime, everyone loves ripping on the record industry.

Your Mom In A Box...

...Should Come With Me

The first week of October's going to be chock full of cool music stuff for you to go to. On Wednesday, October 4th there's my gig at Kennedy's Midtown, but the day before that there's a "town hall meeting" that Pandora is hosting. There have been several print and online articles written about Pandora -- too many to link to here -- but for those not in the know, it's a streaming music service that is totally free and customizable, playing songs based on recommendations that you give it. I've written to the Pandora developers before, and they're very good with responding to user inquiries and suggestions (a hell of a lot better than Blogger's tech support!), and they employ dozens of actual musicians to provide the "search engine" for Pandora, so to speak.

All of which leads me to believe this is going to be a very interesting discussion of technology and musicology. Email me if you'd like to come with. (If it sucks, there's always Middlesex down the street.)

Here's the original invite from Pandora:

WHAT: PANDORA AND THE FUTURE OF MUSIC
WHEN: Tuesday, October 3rd at 6 pm
WHERE: MIT Campus: Building 26, Room 100
General campus address is 77 Massachusetts Avenue, access to Building 26 is via 60 Vassar Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
http://dbm.pandora.com/t?r=927&ctl=14057DC:2433E532BCB6416373D2BAB91AFDBA0D050542759970026E
RSVP: Reply to this email [ tour@pandora.com]

Among the questions we hope to tackle:
-How is technology changing the nature of radio?
-How important are community and peers when it comes to discovering music online? What's the best way to foster community?
-Can services like Pandora help create a larger middle class of artists who aren't superstars, but have enough of an audience to support themselves through their music? Do music lovers want more music discovery?

...And please feel free to comment here about Pandora in general if you've already tried it. I've noticed people tend to have very strong opinions about it for some reason, which is another reason I'm going to the forum.

Much Taboo About Nothing

In Newsweekly provides this write-up of Big Taboo, a gay men's music festival that happened in Provincetown last weekend while I was handing out Gatorade (for a good cause). The article raises some of the same red flags that I've noted previously with artists who identify strongly with a gay niche market. The festival's organizer, Peter Donnelly, feeds a common stereotype: "it's definitely been a big taboo for gay men to come forward as out in music, whereas women have found audiences more easily." The stereotype I'm addressing isn't that lesbians love guitar-toting folkies singing about tea and vaginas (even the str8 ones like Dar Williams), but that of gay male performers having a harder time in the music industry -- or at least in what Donnelly refers to as the "folk" or "acoustic" fields, which I thought we all agreed we could just call the "singer/songwriter" genre because we like how redundant and flaky it sounds.

The danger with that whole stereotype is that the singer/songwriter/folk/acoustic amalgamation is itself one with a limited and difficult market. There is no easily identifiable trend in the artists who have successfully entered the mainstream from this genre. (Can anyone explain Lisa Loeb's success to me? Please?) So the argument that gay men have it especially bad just sounds self-victimizing and belittling. If we as gay men have our own music festival, I would like the aim to be a collaborative exploration of how far the queer perspective can push the music envelope -- not to claim we're being left behind.

True, queer musicians still suffer from audience homophobia, but not to the dramatic extent the article contends. In News' claims that mainstream gay musicians "have the luxury of being able to remain detached from the gay world." If you've ever been to one of the many Ben Folds/Rufus Wainwright tours, the Folds frat boys who sit through Rufus' set usually act like a Red Sox fan at the Gardner museum: you're confused about how they wound up there and they're just angry because the beer is too far away. It's clear that Rufus hasn't exactly left Gay World for good. Still, the last time I saw him, he was playing the Bank of America Pavillion, so it would be a hard sell to convince me Rufus is feeling the homophobia where it hurts (the bank account).

Cover Thyself, Indie Kids!

In what will probably be the only other time my music aspirations converge with my familiarity in health care, I noticed this news article on Pitchfork about a nonprofit organization offering resources for connecting musicians to health care. The org is the Future of Music Coalition (with an enviable domain name!), and they're not offering health care plans or coops (the kind one would find through an artists' union, for example), but they are running an info line that should ultimately encourage more musicians to get health insurance for themselves, since so many of them are part of the roughly 16% of the country that do not have basic insurance. Ironically, I've currently working on a grant proposal to fund health care access for the uninsured, so the article struck me as timely (and also struck a more personal chord). Berklee School of Music is right across the street from our health center, so musicians do, in fact, make up a good portion of our clients, although thankfully the ones who don't drop out of Berklee presumably have some form of student insurance.

FMC's executive director, Jenny Toomey, speaks articulately in the Pitchfork article about what are essentially issues of health literacy (without using this term), more directly about the same (mis)conceptions about health care that affect health coverage among young adults everywhere. In Massachusetts, the 19-34 age group makes up a full 17% of the uninsured, many of whom view being uninsured as a reasonable risk to assume when you're young and healthy. Toomey has this to say on the "live fast, die young" musician stereotype, talking about people leaving the music biz when they realize they need health insurance:

I think that musicians have more to say, understand more about the world, understand more about art, the longer they make music. And if what we're saying is you can only afford to do it when you're dumb and young, then it's really [going to] impact the kind of music people are going to make in this country...

...which is an interesting way to look at the problem of health coverage, postulating that musicians leave a life of self-employment when they reach a certain level of maturity or responsibility that connotes having things like health insurance. (Which assumes that musicians will easily find employers who will provide this benefit, which is another issue...) But I wonder if her theory's correct, and if it's at work in other fields, too. (Thoughts?)

Massachusetts is in the process of creating high-deductible, low-premium plans for folks in their twenties as part of this year's sweeping health care reform act. It would be interesting, if such plans succeed in encouraging more young artists to get coverage, to see if more musicians will have greater longevity -- and as Toomey implies, greater artistic maturity -- by having health insurance, and a better quality of life.

Click here for more information on the Future of Music Coalition's health insurance resources for musicians.

Everywhere I'm Not

My favorite radio station, KEXP from Seattle, is broadcasting remotely this week from my favorite city, Chicago. I think this is what it feels like when you have these two friends, both of whom you're infatuated with, and they start seeing each other, and not even behind your back, as if they have no shame. No shame!

Just wanted to alert ya'll to Chicago's cool status, for you East Coasters who doubt the third coast. (Is anyone living in Chicago reading this?) You can listen to KEXP online at their website (link above).

...And Then Came the iCaterer and the iJOP

[Brief Site Update: The calendar has been updated with my next show on October 4th.]

So I was noticing that the reason I haven't posted in over a week is because I've been spending a lot of time looking for a DJ for my wedding in May. But as I was about to continue some thoughts on Second Life (spurred by Jesse's post here), I realized there's a lot to unpack behind hiring a DJ these days.

As a serious music fan and a musician, a lot of my friends told me to go the iPod route, that they trusted my taste in music and knew I would benevolently spare them from my Bjork collection. (Well, except "Big Time Sensuality".) I had read up on the topic; most articles I read tended to side with the thrifty iCouples, while DJs expressed some understandable fear, while (putting the equipment considerations aside) still defended their trade as a skill. Learning how to "read" a crowd and respond to it dynamically is irreplaceable. Despite the chunk it takes out of my wedding budget, I agree with them.

Have you ever been to a house party where an iPod has suffered a hostile (drunken) takeover? Have you done this yourself? Assuming the answer to both questions is yes, you've proven that the "Dance Mix" playlist we all have on our iPods (oh, don't lie to me, I know you have one) actually sucks at making people dance.

Consider that outside of the wedding industry, DJs are typically considered artists themselves -- even the ones who are essentially only playing other people's music (as opposed to sampling and remixing). The style of a particular DJ is born out of a musical pastiche, and the actual act of combining other people's music becomes linked to a central DJ personality. In the queer male community, they even receive minor celebrity status -- just pick up the nightlife section of In Newsweekly any given week. The ability to make everyone in a room want to dance is a valued skill; yet even I was starting to be convinced by various wedding tips on indiebride.com that iPods have, in a short time, unlocked the inner DJ in all of us.

Why is it that iPods have made people forget that finding the right mix of music is a skill? It's hard to admit to myself that even though the practical barriers to creating the Ultimate Five Hour Dance Mix have been removed (i.e. carting around lots of vinyl or CDs), less tangible barriers exist. And that's a pretty disappointing conclusion to this post, because I still think my dance mix is the shit, and it's going to make me and my iPod the life of this party.