Of country music and sincerity

by Curl on 2006年03月14日 05:18 PM

@ Home / Reviews / BDLive (edit, history)

1.  Baby Amoebae Goes South

1.1 Country Music Comes to Town: Did anyone in New York care?

…This “representing” usually takes the form of compressed narratives, often divided into three separate “scenes”—listen to a song called “She’s In Love With the Boy,” sung by Trisha Yearwood—often making clever use of sentiment and clichés. In order to like it, you must see yourself to some extent as a cliché—and you are a cliché. We all are. Your broken heart may feel special and unique, but it’s also like every other heart that has ever been broken. You have your own reasons for drinking more than you should, but in some ways they closely resemble the desperations of others. If you’ve ever teared up at a wedding or on hearing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” then you have to admit to at least some psychological vulgarity—in its root sense of commonness.

1.2 sincerity in rock and roll #1

Sincerity, you see, is animal. It is a lion muzzle-nuzzling its cub; it is a koala cleaning his teeth with his gums. It is something done to a point. It is never exaggerated. It is never unwanted. It doesn’t, and can’t, cause a nuisance to anybody who can have a nuisance caused to them. Words can’t be sincere, on the most basic level, for the same reason objects can’t be sincere. Objects don’t see dreams; neither do words. Words can only describe them. Find a needle in a record groove, as the turntable spins, as the sound scratches and skips, sincere, consider it love, and though you’ll be closer to human than the girls who screamed at Ed Sullivan’s sentence fragment and then quieted down once “All My Loving” started, you will still be a few steps from understanding that sincere words are only words that are written on the fringe of the shadow of the truth. Ed Sullivan presented The Beatles to a screaming audience; yet, how sure was he that they were “The Beatles”? It was a name they had given themselves. Semantically, it’s all downhill from there.

1.3 The Sexual Politics of “Twee Pop”

You mentioned the question of “authenticity,” which is a huge and complicated subject. I think you’re right to suggest that the postpunks largely abandoned the hippie singer-songwriter idea of confessional storytelling. People as varied as David Byrne and Gang of Four weren’t necessarily drawing from personal experience. But in another sense there was a great earnestness and passion about postpunk, a seriousness of intent. They meant it, maaaaan. Which is one of the things that attracted me to the period: the lack of irony. There’s never that sense of wry disengagement from their own music you get with so many modern bands. Ian Penman, an NME writer and an associate member of the Scritti Politti collective, singled out the quality of the era as “sincerity—everyone was brittle with it.” People like Scritti main man Green Gartside were racked with doubt about what they were doing; every decision seems to have had an impossible weight to it. This stemmed from the idea that rock had a renewed power to change things, and therefore a lot was at stake in terms of deciding how to use that power. I can imagine it might seem bizarre, even silly, to younger people—”Why were they getting so worked up? Did they really think pop music could matter this much?” Well, you know what: They really did. We really did.

1.4 Marxy - Who Needs An Answer (Parts I and II)♪

Every emotion that you’d like to think is yours
has been felt at least a million times,
by everyone,
who’s ever lived.
Who needs an answer that was spoken ages ago,
by someone you don’t know,
who has none of the problems that you worry about today?
And it’s a hoax just to believe that someone else’s words
somehow speak to you,
when no one but the writer
knows exactly what they mean.
By the time they get to you,
they’re nothing but a shell
of what they used to be.

1.5 1998 interview of Buffalo Daughter

Interviewer: When I first heard your name, I thought, “This must be a country band.”

[Laughing.]

Yumiko: That’s right.

[Laughing.]

Interviewer: Why the name?

SuGar: Why the name? Actually, we like the American culture, like American, um, in the American countryside, and when we started the band we all liked the TV show Twin Peaks, which was, you know, something happened in the American countryside. Something, a weird thing happened. And we are all interested in those crazy, weird, distorted American countryside image, and so we named it “Buffalo,” the band. And there were three girls in the band when we started, so we named it something that means Buffalo, uh no no no, girls in the band, “Daughter.” And also we like the sound of “B-uffalo D-aughter.” It sounds like much wilder and it’s kind of a… 何だろう？

Yumiko: Strong image…

SuGar: And weird in someway.

Interviewer: You say you were inspired by American culture, but you don’t copy it.

SuGar: Mmm, no. We are not interested in copying something. We are always looking for something new and original.

2. Li303ve

2.1 Dubdubdub dahdah dubdubdubdoo

Is Buffalo Daughter country? Is kiiiiiii haiku?

I was at a concert, and I thought, “I hope this music gives you cancer, because I want to die of it.”

I thought, this is how you imagine sex as a lonely fifteen year old—building up more and more, drawing out and longer, and more intense, and closer, closer, closer to the climax, and you want it to come, and you’re aching for it, but you don’t want it, because you know that means it’ll be over, so want just another few minutes, and don’t stop, keeping going stronger and more until, until at last the hook, the hook, the hook. And release. The room spins. L - I - 3 - O - 3 - V - E.

At the time, the worst part of the concert was knowing that it would end. Now, the worst part is knowing that memories are a) incomplete and b) unable to provide the same kind of pleasure as the experience itself and c) fading day by day.

2.2 Well made for town and country wear

Buffalo Daughter named themselves. They inserted themselves into the American landscape. I can’t say if it was their place to do it, but they did. They invented their own existence. Like the Beatles, ex nihilo, the man on a flaming pie.

In an RPG, the first step is creating a name for yourself. This is a very strange thing, if you think about it. There’s no need for it. You could just start playing, and the protagonist’s name is the protagonist’s name. However, somehow, a convention has been created that the player is given a chance to enter a name before the game starts. The most people use their own name or some variant like “Thrillho’.” The idea is that by putting your name on the character, you’re identifying with the hero. The hero becomes your avatar in a new world. You don’t just control the movements of the hero; the hero is called by your name.

It works the other way too though. You put a name on a band with the idea of creating an aura or essence for the group. In high school, I once started keeping a list of good band names.

• Musical Coffee
• Robotic Dream
• Smelly Socks & Underwear
• The Sell Outs
• The Dawn of Funk
• Sonic Euphoria
• Irrational Exuberance
• Transfinite Joy
• Two Star Cacophony, The
• Frozen Grapes
• Heart Shrapnel
• Flamingly Hip
• Trendy Radio Music
• Feedback Inhibition
• Reaction Formation
• Slow Motion and the Clash
• And on and on…

We would sit in the cafeteria and dream up names, and then try to guess what genre of music it is that the band must play. Every name contains the seeds of some genre, and the group ultimately must grow to meet its name. A name implies and creates the essence of who you are.

2.3 Ahhhhhh Ohhhhhh Ohhhh Ahhhhh Ahhhh

I took the night train to Tokyo after an end of year office party. Standing on the train platform, the weather was cold and wet. I was glad to leave town. When I got to Tokyo at six in the morning, everything was still closed. I went to Akihabara, the nerd district, to look around a little bit, then got on a loop line train to play Mario Kart DS. At the same time, I told my iPod to start playing every single song I had by Buffalo Daughter or one of their side projects. The train circled clockwise around the Imperial Palace as I raced around the track. Back to Akihabara.

This is a total rip-off! I totally didn’t invent playing portable games on Yamanote Line. I only did it because Tim Rogers made it look cool. I’m not developing my own unique identity! I’m just copying someone else’s own unique identity! I’m a robot!!

I’ve for a while been of the conviction that the quest for authenticity most people have is itself inauthentic. Everybody’s trying to do their own thing, but on a theoretical level, you can’t really even hope to succeed at the quest, since you’re living in society and not running away to the Arctic, which actually the Eskimos already did anyway. On top of that, as a practical matter, man is a social animal. Monkey see; monkey do. And what’s wrong with that when the monkey is doing cool stuff like playing games on the Yamanote Line?

For the purposes of the trip, I decided that I would only ride on the Yamanote Line, and I would only ride it clockwise. I like to add these kinds of meaningless rituals to my life. I had a train pass that made the Yamanote Line free for the weekend, but that was only an encouragement for the decision, not a real impetus. The impetus was, I like making arbitrary rules to enstrangen myself.

One night, I felt a burningly enraged sense of self-pity, following rejection from a girl. I listed some of the ways that I had been making myself weird. My hats, my plaids, my flashing of peace signs, my penchants for typewriters, my covering my mouth, my lab coats, my camo pants, my yo-yo’s, my altoids tins, my seasonal haircuts, and on and on. All these ways of differentiating myself that make no difference. I was fairly upset at the time. I wrote.

The first step is, make up little rules to follow, at all time. Tomorrow is wear a suit day. Don’t forget to say, “Cookie of destiny,” or, “one less shave before I die.” Practice those yo-yo tricks. Alternate T-shirt colors. Stand in the hall at the right times. Let everything and nothing consume your thoughts. Then spend the night pondering the source of existential ennui. Fall “in love” over and over and over. Be numbed by all slights, imagined or actual. Watch as no one else watches. Cut everything off and live in post-ironic no-think. Surf a rosary of websites. Let only the external regulate the internal. Under no circumstances feel anything but self-pity or the gentle vibration of a built-in rumble pack. Live in a language you can’t speak. Form more Tolkienesque distraction from the fundamental insecurity of relational existence. Bossa nova slow death jazz rhythm.

“Talk to me! Say something! Birds can’t talk! Talk to me!”

I was feeling a bit down. I wondered if I might be all kabuki and no guts.

2.4 Chaaaangeees

At the show, nisen’nen mondai was in its usual form, destroying the world via guitar. The girls came out on stage with veils over their heads. I thought, “They hate us so much they can’t even bear to let us see their faces.” It’s also possible that they were making a statement about Islam and global politics. However, hating the audience fits more with their MO. I thought, “We couldn’t possibly have done enough to deserve their hate like this!” Ignoring me, Himeno beat her drum as to stab the Other enemy, while the others gave sonic room for her revery of loathing. It was brutalising. Stab. Stab. Stab. Stab. The silence, and the next song. As time went on though, the arhythms music loosened and softened them. Eventually, they threw down their hoods, though they kept their backs to us. Their song (mov) sounded a bit like “Super Blooper” lost in sound.

Since meeting Frangie and eating cake with them, I have advanced the thesis that a certain kind of rock’n’roll needs to be evil to be good. They asked me to meet them at the Hankyu station in downtown Kyoto, and at first I was a bit concerned. Hankyu is the archrival of Keihan. How could I love a band that was evil?

In time though, I figured out that evil and rock’n’roll were meant for each other. They just go together. If you’re not evil, you won’t have the iron will to rock out non-stop, can’t stop, won’t stop. So now I’m less worried when I disagree with the political opinions of a band or something. These kinds of things happen, but one must remember that the confused politics and intricate harmonies of an artist are powered by the same source.

Terry Mattingly says, “the secret to country music’s appeal is that it can deal with what happens on Sunday morning as well as Saturday night.” He means that country is a kind of music that believes in folk Christianity and its notion of sin, so it’s a kind of music that can deal with redemption as well as excess.

You don’t hear many cheating songs on MTV because cheating songs imply that there is something holy called marriage to cheat against.

I think country music is the waka of American music. Nevermind that people are always calling enka the country music of Japan. Waka had a goal: right expression of universal sentiments. Country has basically the same goal. We all feel the three dusks, and we all feel for Johnny’s daddy taking him fishing. These are sentiments about which Saigyô would say, “Even a person free of passion/ would be moved/ to sadness:/ autumn evening/ her two-timing husband leaves the trailer.”

Country differs from waka in that it believes in a moral essence to the universe, but waka believes that essence is held by the natural world. In waka, the natural world is the supernatural world. There is no distinction, only differing levels of mindfulness of this truth. In country, life is inherently sinful, but sin can be redeemed either internally through tearful confession or externally through violence.

As a kid, I went through a period of imposed country listening. My sister controlled her radio, and I just had to put up with it. At first I grumbled, but overtime, I got into it. Then I eventually got control of my own radio, and my tastes wandered off. My favorite country groups now are Beck, Rilo Kiley, Wilco, and the White Stripes. Which is to say, not country. I still like old country, but I think that new country for the most part lacks authenticity. It’s made by secret Canadians looking for crossover hits, and others whose only claim to talent is a mild twang. They don’t really enjoy genre for what is, they just repave old tropes.

2.5 The king of spain!

Pace the existential calvinist, but my current thinking is that haiku is largely Platonic in that they sought to find the 本音 hon’ne, the real essence of a verse, by rearranging the old verses. They took an old verse, hacked into a kind of a joke, and then tried to cough up the truth about the matter. The existential Calvinist is right though that, “the ‘language of haiku’ is not just the Japanese language per se, but all of Japanese culture as well.” They had a thousand years of culture before them, and they wanted to dig it all up and find its roots. The Edo period was into orthopraxy, meaning they wanted to do things the right way in order to give the perfect tea ceremony or the perfect Noh performance or the perfect rakugo monologue. They believed in an authentic essence of a work and aimed to deliver it.

Kiiiiiii are a lot like haiku in that they’re always taking the pop world and stir frying it†, but they’re different in that they don’t seem to believe that it means anything. They cut up “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” (mov) and “We are the World” and “Captain Eo”, but they’re not trying to find something. They’re trying to please us. They’re love in. Seeing kiiiiiii on stage, I thought, “Much as we can’t have done anything worthy of nisen’nen mondai’s hate, kiiiiiii love us in a way that we’re totally unworthy of.” Kiiiiiii is gloriously, embarrassingly desperate for love. And I’m increasingly convinced that they will be famous. I suppose one who posts on a blog called “The Hello World Project” has no business criticizing the sheer love of fame shown by kiiiiiii. I wish them the best in their glorious quest.

† Unnecessary invocation of asian exoticism by association.

Kiiiiiii’s love of fame and enjoyment of hilarious juxtaposition isn’t really a unique, Japanese thing. The entire genre of rap works off the same premise. There’s a guy. He wants to be famous. He makes rhymes that rework pop culture into boasts about his greatness, over a hook made from looping old songs. Rap is similarly centerless, in that it has no goal outside of fame. There is no perfect rap song that all rap songs are working towards in the way that there is a perfect haiku that every poet is working towards delivering on his death bed. (Not that rap doesn’t have its share of verses predicting the coming of the long sleep.) Rap is different from kiiiiiii in that they believe in realness. Above all else, a rapper keeps it real.

Real means doing real crimes and going to real jail where you might get real raped. That’s what authentic means in rap — getting doing what it takes to make cream, life or death. Rap is basically the music of pirates.

2.6 We’re walking right up our, uh

After the show, I saw nisen’nen mondai standing around chatting and laughing and selling swag. (I bought their EP.) They were so relaxed and happy. I wondered, who are the real Year 2000 Problem? The girls pouring out black bile on stage or the girls smiling and covering their faces?

There are some band that it’s OK for them to be insincere. It’s all right if The Beatles don’t really want to hold my hand. Further, one desperately hopes that Jack White is not sincere in his various madness schemes. On the other hand, if Miho Hatori or Mia Doi Todd were found to be insincere, it would be devastating. Heartbreaking. I still like Hootie & the Blowfish, coolness be damned, because they were really true about who they were. So far as I can tell, they never pretended to be anything other than a college band out of USC. If they weren’t being authentic about “Hannah Jane” and disliking the rebel flag, I’m not sure what authenticity even is.

After the first Metalchicks concert I saw, there was a lot of chatter on the internet about whether they were authentically metal or not. I still can’t really presume to say, since I haven’t read much about them in the vernacular, but I think they are as authentic as they can be given the circumstances. Well, I did see one page that describes them as ôsentikku na dansu myûjikku (authentic dance music), but that’s about all. A lot of the importance of authenticity hangs on the earnestness of the message. The metalchicks message is 女だってメタル (Women are metal). Since their work seems to affirm this message, the authenticity question is apparently resolved.

At the show, the Metalchicks did their usual thing. SuGar asked the booth to move the volume up a little more, and Yuka had some trouble getting everything set just so with the drum kit, but they still managed to rock it out. I learned that “Dead Loss Angeles” is by the Stranglers originally. The Metalchicks are really good creating an air groove of pure steel to grind hypnotically over the earth leave crunching spikes of metal behind. It’s hard to think that one could create a sonic field such as they do as a joke. They seem earnest in their desire to let the audience feast in Valhalla. Of course, metal is a field ripe for parody, as Spïnal Tap shows. However, the Metalchicks are geisha compared to kiiiiiii’s over-earnest teenager lovers. The Metalchicks want to draw you into their world of courtly elegance. Kiiiiiii want to make out in the back seat of your car.

2.7 You know what?

I spent the rest of my time in Tokyo traveling clockwise, looking for Christmas presents to take back to America. I thought about the budget of my trip versus my present budget and felt bad. With family, a lot of times it can seem like you’re playing a role, where you pretend like you never make out in the back seat of cars or whatever. My worry though is that this kind of role playing is not an exception to ordinary life. Authenticity means one’s insides are the same as one’s outside. However, this presupposes the existence of an inside. If we are radically empty, what the Buddhists call anatman, then there is no fixed self, just a collection of impermanent waves crashing on the shore. Every action causes a series of reactions that cascade for a while then fizzle out, washed over by other more powerful tides. We suppose that we’re the same person because the changes to us are spread out over time, but I think the theory of identity still hasn’t really been nailed down. How I see it is that there are subjective teloses, but that’s about it. Being defined in a goal oriented manner. Some kinds of definitions are absolutely wrong, because they don’t achieve their goal. But other times there are a thousand different definitions, but none can be ruled out, because they all basically work.

The goal is living a meaningful life. The being is, I am a single person. The goal is, understanding experience. The being is, I am a thousand new people everyday. Under the masks are only more masks. The risk of post-irony is that if ends are so obfuscated that even the self cannot know them, then the self is no more, because the self exists to an end.

2.8 Ahhh Ahhhh Ohhh Ahhhhhhh

Yet there is a realness, isn’t there?

Li303ve is real.

Buffalo Daughter played a bunch of songs, old (super blooper mov) and new (peace mov). Some of their songs were new that I was shocked. It sounded as though they were playing country, or at least southern rock, which is about the same thing. MoOog, who never speaks in English language interviews, sang. How can Buffalo Daughter be Buffalo Daughter playing southern rock with singing moOog?

Yet, they were Buffalo Daughter, with a realness that can be extrapolated only from the transcendentally overwhelming pleasure from their sound. Let a rapper be real if he is shot. Buffalo Daughter is real if their rock erases east and west! (虛空無背面、鳥道絕東西。”In the vast inane there is no back or front ; the path of the bird annihilates East and West.”)

The pre-encore last song was Li303ve. I knew they had to play it. It’s their favorite song. It’s what they once called brain wash music. It bubbles over and leaves nothing behind it. I’ve collected nine different versions of it, though Buffalo Daughter is not a popular band. Before, when I heard the version of it on Pshychic, I never quite understood it. The intro was too long. However, seeing it live erased all that. The intro is necessary to rest. It sets up what’s to come. During the intro, you long for order in the universe. All is chaos. Then, it comes, creeping slowly at first. The 303 line. You know what it is. You feel it. (Literally.) You know why the rhythm has come, and what it will do. First, it just meanders in. Other sounds occasionally step on the sides, meaning no harm. Soon they grow, and grow, until they’ve buried the rhythm. Nothing is left. Or so it seems. Then, the voices of Yumiko and SuGar ring out in harmony, washing everything else away. The 303 returns triumphant! This happens again, the noise creeps in, destroys everything and is itself washed away by the girl and order returns. Once more, chaos returns, destroying everything, overturning all, shattering into a silence. A silence that somehow, grows, spreads, breathes, fills its lungs again, exhales, and…

The 303 returns, no longer fighting the chaos, but one with it! Throwing kiiiiiii’s 7″ on the turntable, moOog mixes the beginning of the night into the flowing havoc end. Together the chaos and the 303 merge into one dynamic form, bringing all to crescendo and ecstatic catharsis!

…

I knew there would be another song after the last song, because they didn’t turn on the lights. I’m not sure why it’s a tradition that the audience must always beg for its one last song. I suppose its the whole point though. The band has pleaded for our love throughout their show, and now that they have it, they turn the tables on us. We become the band and they us.

3. Vapour Action Forever

Is Buffalo Daughter country? Is kiiiiiii haiku? Am I an authentic human being?

Authenticity is when the insides of a thing match the outside. Country is when music finds a universal in even the mundane motions of human beings. Haiku is when we take everything we know and jumble it around until we find an essence of no-essence. Everything is country and haiku and authentic if we let it be. Simply let yourself flower.

The room spins. L - I - 3 - O - 3 - V - E.