On the latest analog indie-pop gem from singer-guitarist Jason Quever, it’s as if the sun is always cutting through an early-morning mist. Or reflecting through stained glass, since Quever is so fixated on mortality and gazing skyward. Foregrounding vintage organ tones, You Can Have What You Want floats dusty folk-rock melodies in thick echo, giving the vocals an otherworldly cast. “Future Primitive” swings with a girl-group backbeat and cascading melodies, while “Jet Plane” exudes a Mazzy Star warmth.
Author: Michael Lewis
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
Number of Pages: 352 Pages
Cover Type: Hard Cover
Populist anger may be boiling over against Wall Street and its recently chastised traders. But when they’re inflating our own nest eggs and driving up our own investment returns, we don’t mind a few Gordon Geckos at the helm. It’s a cycle of love and hate, of boom and bust, and naked self-interest that mirrors the market gyrations profiled in writer Michael Lewis’ new compilation Panic, a collection of articles about the last two decades’ worth of financial downturns. “The same herd instinct that fueled the boom fueled the bust,” Lewis writes about the Internet bubble. That statement can apply to any of the crises Panic covers—from Black Monday in 1987 to the current sub-prime mortgage collapse.
Financial journalism, like the increasingly complex subject it covers, can often be specialized and mystifying. But the working details of and personalities behind the system are fleshed out in the broad range of articles, insider accounts and post-mortems supplied by the book’s contributors. There are plenty of nostalgic details in articles from the 1980s; traders, beaming at the Dow’s then record high of just over 2500, receive stock quotes via handheld radios. But as the book progresses through pieces profiling damage wrought by the Asian financial crisis and the manic, misplaced faith in Internet stocks, the story arcs of each crash seem eerily similar. And the small details—commodities brokers flocking to a pawn shop near the Chicago Board of Trade, heads of now-defunct online companies waxing poetic about wasteful Super Bowl ad buys—make these pieces about much more than numbers and balance sheets.
Lewis’ own journalistic work also appears in each section. His wry and knowing voice, recognizable from books like Liar’s Poker and a recent string of insightful articles about our current economic funk, is enjoyable—like that of an omniscient narrator relishing the cast of characters and their foibles. One of the main points Lewis makes in his introduction is that misplaced faith in complex financial instruments has led to people underestimating risk and undertaking risky behavior. Hubris, one might say. Lewis has gathered writing that, above all, never forgets the human element behind the market’s tumbles.
New York has no shortage of concept restaurants, culinary experts, and celebrity chefs. But how many of those Michelin-star chasers will invite you into their house and cook you a healthy vegetarian meal? DJ and musician Sal Principato, percussionist and vocalist of the famed No Wave group Liquid Liquid, extends that kind of courtesy to anyone looking for a vegetarian or vegan cooking class, a home-cooked meal, and company.
“It’s social—a relaxation technique and a healing technique in a way,” says Principato about preparing a good meal. “I kind of look at food as a way to counteract all the other wear and tear you put on your body.”
Principato started hosting these informal events, called Go Gather, this past winter. Guests pay $15 a head to learn some of Principato’s kitchen secrets, including how to make Nigerian bean cake and vegetarian pizza. The latter is made with almond cheese, and Sal claims it’s so good that it stacks up to a slice of NY-style street pizza. He’ll guide visitors through a few steps and often broaden the context of the lesson, explaining where he purchased certain ingredients and why he uses them. He’ll have some wine, perhaps make an espresso, and wax poetic about food. “I believe, to a certain extent, that music and food are the highest extensions of a culture,” says the 30-year vegetarian. “Ultimately, cooking is more like an art in a way, and if you have a feel for it, you’ll be good at it,” he says. “I could take a tin can and cover it in animal fat and salt and make it taste good. But to make vegetables and legumes taste good and sing, that’s an art.”
To set up a group class with Sal Principato in New York, email him. Read more…
“We face the same problems that the Latino community faces, like people being deported or mistreated,” says Kasia Tarczynska, 27, a full-time student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “But nobody wants to talk about it.” One incident, the case of Polish-born immigrant Tony Wasilewski, inspired Tarczynska, Monika Starczuk and Paulina Marek to form the Young Polish Initiative in 2007. Wasilewski was three months from getting his green card when his Polish wife, Janina, was deported. He has been fighting to get her back ever since and even testified before Congress in 2007.
The YPI, now seven members strong, regularly meets around the red wooden tables at CafeYA (4801 N Milwaukee Ave, 773-205-7300), where the neon-green jukebox plays rock and synth-pop above the chatter of conversations in Polish. A cozy Jefferson Park bar and café strewn with magazines, it serves up coffee, cake and Lech beer. Located around the corner from Polish community mainstay the Copernicus Center and across the street from a taqueria, it stands at a symbolic intersection in the city’s Northwest Side. Poles are still Chicago’s second-largest ethnic minority (after Mexicans), but they aren’t voting as often or in as concentrated blocs, so they aren’t politically represented relative to their size. As generations of Poles assimilate, their communities and political voice become less unified. “Neighborhoods like Ukrainian Village or Bucktown were totally Polish,” says YPI member Monika Tietz. “Yeah, we made those neighborhoods cool,” Starczuk jokes. “Then we moved out.”
Tarczynska, a small, quietly confident woman peering out from underneath brown bangs, exemplifies a new generation of Polish immigration. She was born in Lublin, Poland, on December 13, 1981, the day the government declared martial law in response to the Solidarity movement—her mother, a member, was arrested a few days later. But she says her contemporaries don’t know much about the history surrounding her birthday. While older generations of Poles came to escape communism or World War II, by the time Tarczynska entered the United States in 2002, to study at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania, immigration was about opportunity. “My generation, we don’t really remember communism,” she says. “I was raised in capitalist times. We look more to the future, how to get good jobs and careers.”
When Tarczynska returned to Poland for a year in 2007, she noticed changes in her homeland. Since Poland joined the European Union in 2004, the economy has improved and a new avenue for legal immigration to European countries has opened. Many Poles now forgo a move to the U.S., a decision reinforced by our economic slump. “I was uncertain about [if I could be successful in] Poland when I went back,” she says. “But then I saw how there are good opportunities [there] if you work hard.”
As they sip glass mugs of tea, the group members discuss the changes they want to see for Poles in the U.S., including immigration laws that give illegals a path to citizenship. Tarczynska will be in a limbo of her own in 2010, when she will earn her master’s degree in urban planning and lose her student visa. In order to legally stay here, she could find an employer to sponsor her or she could get married. The last point draws friendly laughter from her colleagues. But it’s a serious issue, since her avenues to stay legally and put together a postgraduation life in the States all depend, in some part, on other people. Still, the upswing in the Polish economy and Poles’ new freedom to move around the European Union allow Tarczynska to take the instability in stride. “My future isn’t as simple as I’d like it to be,” she says. “I might go to Poland or even somewhere else in the EU. But I’m more relaxed about my future now.”
The career of Argentinean actress-turned-singer Juana Molina has followed an unusual trajectory. Star of the comedy series Juana Y Sus Hermanas (Juana And Her Sisters), a smash-hit in the Spanish-speaking world, Molina’s turn as a singer and producer of lush, looping electronic music was a bit of a curveball; think Julia-Louis Dreyfus suddenly becoming Björk. But this isn’t a vanity project. Music was her first love, and she actually started acting to pay for music lessons. Her latest, Un Dia (One Day), is another set of inviting, hypnotic coils of sound. Set to play Morse Theater Feb. 22 on her first U.S. tour with a band, Juana Molina spoke with Decider about noise receptors, foreign sounds, and musical embryos.
Decider: You started acting to fund your music lessons. Were you a good student? Juana Molina: I was a very good student for a few years. I’d spend six hours a day or more playing, learning new things. In the middle of the studying process, I would always get an idea that would lead me to a song, a new little thing I would record on a tape recorder. I ended up with many cassettes, with beginnings, embryos of songs. I called them invento, inventions, because they weren’t really anything finished. For my first three records, I came back to those cassettes and took some ideas from them.
D: How important is it for you to make mistakes when you’re recording? JM: It depends on the mistake. Some of them become the greatest things in the song. The only way to make mistakes is just to let yourself go and do whatever comes to mind. That’s one of the main reasons I like to work on my own. There are no witnesses to all the crap I can do.
D: How much of the sounds of your immediate environment in Argentina are in your music? In previous interviews, you talked about how the elevator going up to your grandmother’s apartment made some very influential noise. JM: I’ve always thought we have some kind of reflectors in our bodies that are sensitive to certain sounds, and we all have different ones. Everything that comes from the outside just awakens these receptors. Different things are awakened according to the influences you’re exposed to. My sister is a musician as well. We grew up listening to the same music and what we do now is completely different. As far as that elevator, I think there was always something about drones and very steady rhythms, rhythms that make you move. Even if it’s just the tip of your finger, that’s enough for me.
D: Do you find there’s a big difference between Americans and Argentines when it comes to jokes and their respective senses of humor? JM: When most people in the States tell a joke, they then tell people they’re kidding or it’s a joke. What is a joke if you have to explain it? It’s weird. There’s some kind of extra politeness going on. That wouldn’t happen in Argentina. They would get it or not, but you wouldn’t say you’re joking. The sense of humor is the last thing you catch when learning a language. It’s deeper than the language itself.
The Eternals perform “Billions Of People” at the Empty Bottle in 2007.
While Chicago attracts its fair share of touring acts, it’s not exactly a reggae hotbed. Our cold Midwestern metropolis with frozen streets are better suited for caribou than Caribbean music. But if you look in the right places, plenty of venues, performers, and club nights exude positive vibrations. For instance, Bob Marley’s backing band The Wailers performs its classic 1977 Exodus album in its entirety at the House Of Blues on Jan. 23. In preparation, Decider shines a light on where reggae shines in Chicago.
WHERE TO SEE IT
The Wild Hare
With its reverent shine of Marley posters, thatched roof bars, and DJ Booth, Wrigleyville’s The Wild Hare might seem a bit cheesy, but its recent renovations have modeled the venue after a speaker-filled truck from an original Jamaican soundsystem. The roots of this club, which boasts a slick stage set-up, run deep. Zeleke Gessesse, an Ethiopian refugee who played in the band Dallol and toured with Ziggy Marley & The Melody Makers, founded this pillar of the city’s reggae scene in 1986, originally calling it the Wild Hare & Singing Armadillo Frog Sanctuary. It currently plays host to solid local groups like Indika, Gizzae, and Dub Dis and touring acts like Capleton, Toots And The Maytals, and Burning Spear.
WHO TO WATCH
Papa G
A hardworking DJ with residencies around the city, George “Papa G” Olivos flies the reggae flag with pride, literally in his case—he hangs a red, green, and gold Lion Of Judah flag behind him at every gig. “It’s a powerful, unifying symbol,” he says, “one of the symbols that attracted me to reggae.” Other imagery played a part, as well: As a teenager growing up in Chicago, he was drawn to the music after dropping acid and watching the Bob Marley documentary Time Will Tell. When he performs at clubs like Subterranean, Evil Olive, Sonotheque, and Butterfly Social Club, he spins sets that stroll through reggae’s many sub-genres, from slow-burning roots reggae and lover’s rock to more frenzied modern dancehall.
MC Zulu
With his deep, accented voice and rhythmic flow, Panamanian-born Dominique Rowland, who goes by MC Zulu, has the cadence and presence of a classic dancehall vocalist. But he aims to be anything but standard issue. Calling his style “electro-reggae,” Zulu adds his gruff voice to the work of genre-crossing producers like Montreal’s Ghislain Poirier, who blends bass-heavy rhythms into forward-thinking club burners. “Reggae is open source music open to interpretation by many people,” says Zulu. In that spirit, he has collaborated with artists ranging from Ghislain Poirier to Chicagoan DJ C and the frentic, glitchy Mochipet.
The Drastics
“Someone has a voodoo doll of us, I’m sure,” says drummer Anthony Abbinanti, of the live dub band The Drastics. He’s not referring to the group’s Caribbean heritage (they formed in 2004 through a Chicago Reader ad), but rather the strange string of accidents that has put two of the band’s members in the emergency room in the past six months (five have been injured in the past two years). That hasn’t prevented them from refining their experimental dub sound, normally a studio creation that they recreate on stage with delay and reverb. Solid, slack rhythms and the occasional bright blast of horns feature heavily on albums like Waiting and Chicago Massive. Plus, their 2006 song “Ransom The Senator” may have predicted this whole Blagojevich mess.
The Eternals
From the British DJ Don Letts to Bad Brains, punk and reggae have always shared a certain rebelliousness and political message. That relationship forms the core of The Eternals, which weaves dub and punk into its sinister, singular, and captivating musical hybrid. “Reggae is a huge influence over what we do,” says Damon Locks, the group’s frontman. “We stretch in a lot of different directions, but a lot of the building blocks of what we do have roots in Jamaican culture.” Locks’ claustrophobic, edgy vocals sit well with the band’s textured, twisting grooves.
WHERE TO BUY IT
Dusty Groove
The economic realities shuttering records stores have done a number on specialty reggae shops, but a few spots remain. In addition to Reckless Records on Milwaukee, which has a good vinyl selection, Dusty Groove has a decent reggae stockpile, especially if you’re searching for some of the recent reissue compilations issued by labels like Soul Jazz.
While the mantle of punk rock elder can be uncomfortable and ultimately a bit awkward, the members of the Buzzcocks have managed to maintain their dignity and humility three decades into their career. Perhaps it’s because, even with solo careers and a shifting lineup, the Manchester band keeps churning out new music, including 2006’s Flat-Pack Philosophy, that doesn’t distract from its late-1970s legacy, a string of classic singles and albums that were honest, energetic, and direct.
Recently, that legacy has been revisited and celebrated. Deluxe reissues of the group’s first three albums, Another Music In a Different Kitchen, Love Bites, and A Different Kind of Tension, filled with unreleased tracks and demos, were released by EMI UK in October, and the band just kicked off the Another Bites Tour, featuring performances of their first two albums front to back, this month. And in a true exercise in rock star canonization, guitarist and vocalist Pete Shelley’s signature mangled red Starway guitar– a hefty chuck broke off when he threw it onto the floor during rehearsal– was reissued in a limited-edition series by Eastwood.
According to Shelley, the missing chunk of the original guitar is in the hands of Howard Devoto, an original member of the Buzzcocks who left the band after just a few singles and formed his own group, Magazine, which is also reformed and riding the touring circuit. In back-to-back phone calls, the two core members of the Buzzcocks, Pete Shelley and guitarist/vocalist Steve Diggle, spoke candidly about the legacy of punk, Who-style destruction and Steve’s super-human strength onstage.
Pitchfork: When did the idea for the Another Bites tour occur? Pete Shelley: It’s been around for a while. I suppose Brian Wilson is doing the whole concept with Pet Sounds, performing an album the way it was meant to be heard. It’s not something people do these days. I sit around and cherry-pick tracks and put my MP3 player on shuffle and find things I never thought I owned. We also got word from EMI that they were doing deluxe versions of the re-releases, more of a reason to do the shows. They’ll be out by the time we tour. We’re still waiting to hear from our agent to determine which ones to perform in the States.
Pitchfork: So there’s a chance this tour will come to the States? PS: Yeah, the plan is to play in April and May in the States.
Pitchfork: A lot of your lyrics discuss romance, alienation, and anxiety. Have those feelings changed over the years? PS: I suppose it’s mellowed. The songs, a lot of them, I wrote as circumstances demanded. They’re putting forward a point of view that I don’t necessarily believe in. It’s almost like the history of philosophy, where you study ideas which are not necessarily right, but by finding out why they’re not right, you can go on to find out new ideas. Does that make sense? Read more…
Instant access is something today’s music fans expect. Now, a number of companies are tapping into mobile technology to simplify collaborations between artists. Along with Websites offering new tools for musicians and music fans that crossbreed social networking and online recording applications, it’s becoming easier to share and edit songs before they’re finished.
Indaba Music (www.indabamusic.com) allows users to integrate the work of numerous musicians into sessions with its in-browser editing console. The site recently introduced IndabaVox, allowing musicians to record vocals or melodies on their phone or mobile device and instantly integrate them into a session. The feature also lets users set up conference calls with other participants.
MixMatchMusic (www.mixmatchmusic.com) wants to build up a community based on the free exchange of musical ideas while making money for artists. Users make and upload songs or “stems,” which can be combined by other users via the site’s online sequencer to create a song. When these songs are purchased, $0.85 of every dollar goes to the artists, with a $0.15-cut for MixMatchMusic.
MyCypher (www.mycypher.com) aims to expand cross-cultural collaboration and awareness in hip-hop via a social-media setup. Users can call a toll-free number and record their lyrics, which are then posted on their profile, where they can build up a library of freestyles.
While bandwidth issues and technological limitations mean these programs lack many of the features of in-studio technology, they still can engage artists and fans and become catalysts for new types of interaction. While recording its latest album, Third Eye Blind posted parts of unfinished tracks on Indaba, inviting feedback throughout the recording process. Other artists, including Mariah Carey and The Roots, have held remix contests on Indaba. And MixMatchMusic created a Remix Wizard, a customizable widget that allows artists to open up their songs to remix contests.
Music Review
Remix
January 2009
3.5 out of 5 Stars Link
Franz Ferdinand hasn’t lost its propulsive pace on Tonight, but like the Greek hero alluded to on lead single “Ulysses,” the group is searching for something. There’s plenty of swagger out of the gate. The dark, slinky “Ulysses” boils over with crunchy synths. “No You Girls Never Know” doesn’t diverge from the formula that served the group well so far, unfurling streamlined riffs and witty lyrics that build into a boisterous chorus. But Tonight experiments with a variety of new guitar sounds and synths, and more often than not tightly folds them into the group’s muscular pulse. “Send Him Away” rolls forward with ribbon-like, African-inspired guitar lines. “Live Alone” kicks off with a wash of noise and bright digital disco pulse; “What She Came For” ends with a bluesy ruckus; and “Bite Hard” morphs from a piano balled into a floor-stomping groove. The album sticks to tight, three-minute songs except “Lucid Dreams,” a comparatively epic eight minutes that attaches a slowly unfolding patchwork of grinding guitars and fat synths to the end of a slightly unhinged Franz song. While some odd turns mean it’s not as consistent and catchy as earlier discs, this album proves the stylish band still deserves the marquee-worthy title.
Music Review
Remix
January 2009
3.5 out of 5 Stars Link
Multifaceted musician Andrew Bird doesn’t let his big vocabulary—lyrically or musically—spoil his refined chamber pop. On Noble Beast, Bird incorporates tasteful flourishes into his polymath approach, sounding more breezy and stripped down than he did on Armchair Apocrypha. “Anonanimal” and “Effigy” open with crisp, clipped guitars, while “Not a Robot, But a Ghost” shuffles by with a fuzzy backbeat. The bookish songwriter blogged about the making of this album for The New York Times, and while his prose is clear, it can’t compare to his lyrics, which are as brainy and mysterious as his music.
