Words: Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop

Bob Stanley's Yeah Yeah Yeah is an ambitious work, setting to out cover no less than the entire history of pop music from just before the beginning of the rock & roll era (specifically, the publication of Britain's first weekly pop chart with the advent of the 45 rpm single as the primary medium of distribution) until the onset of the digital age with the arrival of mp3s and file-sharing.  Stanley looks at pop and all of it's many strains through the decades, including rock, soul, folk, electronica, hip-hop, disco and others, and endeavors to show how the origins, influences, and evolutions of each were threads in a wider, ever-changing tapestry of popular music as a whole.  The book forms its narrative by looking at the monthly and yearly pop charts chronologically, examining what was popular, then using the charts as a framework to zoom in on key songs, people, record labels, and events to illuminate his points. 

Stanley aims to follow two broad themes here.  The first has to do with the fact that, unlike many pop or rock history books, "Yeah Yeah Yeah" is not another appraisal of the established "canon" that has been built up by critics over the years.  Volumes have been written about what critics think is important, but Stanley is much less concerned with asking "What is the critical consensus" than with "What were people actually listening to?"  The book emphasizes the "popular" component of "pop" music.

The second overarching theme is the relationship between different genres under the broad umbrella of "pop", and their influence on each other over the decades.  Whether it's dance, rock, reggae, hip-hip, punk, or electronica, no genre exists in a vacuum.  Stanley endeavors to show not only how the different styles of pop music developed, but how they developed in relation to each other, drawing influence from what came before (or concurrently) and setting the stage for what came later.

Even with close to 900 pages to work with, fitting everything in is still a daunting task.  Stanley helps to sketch in the big picture by focusing in on little details here and there.  He excels at brief, thumbnail descriptions: Chuck Berry had the "look of a card sharp blessed with luck" whose songs "sounded like the tail fins on Cadillacs".  Johnny Cash had "a wood-carved face and a look of resolute danger; when he sang his voice could go deeper than a coal mine".  Sly Stone's early records had the "feel of a Sunday-school riot", while the harmonies of CSN sounded "like the first rays of dawn".  The book is peppered with illuminating anecdotes and observations that serve to illustrate the larger points, such as a suitably apocalyptic description of Altamont, or a charming account of a Christmas Day charity show played by the Sex Pistols.

There are a couple of things to be aware of.  The author is British, so the book takes a very British point of view in many respects.  The British charts are used as the primary reference, and there are entire chapters devoted to things that were never as big in the States as they were in England.  Thus, Elvis and the Beatles obviously get their own chapters, but there are entire chapters devoted to glam (as well as a whole separate chapter on Marc Bolan and David Bowie), chapters on the post-punk of Depeche Mode and New Order, and chapters on British pastoral folk-rock (think Fairport Convention).  Not that any of this should be a problem; readers used to an America-centric outlook will simply have to recalibrate their point of view. 

Second, rather than providing a strictly detached outlook, Stanley frequently takes the opportunity to express his personal tastes and opinions.  On the one hand, this allows his passion to shine through, giving a fervent eloquence to his writing when talking about those things that he feels strongest about, both positively and negatively.  On the other hand, some of his opinions are bound to meet some resistance with different readers.  This is especially true for those whose tastes run more towards rock (as mine tends to when push comes to shove), as Stanley can be quite disdainful of the post-sixties rock canon.  

Specifically, Stanley cites 1967 and the Monterey Pop Fest as the demarcation line when rock became self-serious, pretentious, and “heavy”, as he puts it, purposely isolating itself from the more populist, lighter fare of “pop”.  The book tends to sniff at most rock after that, especially what he decries as the insular and arbitrary “classic rock canon”.  There are exceptions, notably the watershed 70's punk revolution and it's early 80s descendant post-punk, which were by their very nature, a repudiation of rock’s perceived self-absorption.

Stanley gives his reasons (which do have a point, though he tosses around the dreaded term "rockist" on more than one occasion), but for me personally it was a bit much to swallow to hear him champion, say, Sweet over Led Zeppelin or Donovan over Bob Dylan.  Still, there is an astute chapter on early 80s FM rock and another very insightful chapter on heavy metal and it's seemingly endless appeal and ability to weather cultural shifts that have snuffed out many other genres.

For me personally, the first 2/3 of the book were the most interesting, as I am much more familiar with (and tend to be a fan of) the mainstream pop and rock from the eras Stanley writes about.  Once the chronicle reached the mid-80s/early 90s development and rise of electronica/house/techno/etc., it was difficult to maintain the same interest level (though the quality of writing seemed just as good).  I listen to a reasonably wide swath of music, but the vast bulk of those styles really do not appeal to me at all.  I was able to read and enjoy the earlier chapters on hip-hop even though I don;t really listen to that either, but for whatever reason I found myself really skimming through the last couple of chapters.

Whether or not you agree with Stanley’s personal opinions, his passion is undeniable.  When describing the music that has really moved him, be it a Beach Boys song, a Motown track, a punk anthem, a pioneering techno track, or a 70s bubblegum pop song, his eloquence and unabashed enthusiasm are infectious, drawing the reader in.  Stanley is both professional critic and professional musician,  but he is also at times simply a fan, eager to share his discovery of joy with others.  One might not agree with Stanley's personal opinions, but any music fan knows the giddy rush that only comes when getting lost in a favorite song.  No matter your musical preference, that is a universal feeling that this book ultimately seeks to celebrate,  and in that it does a remarkable job.

One more thing: It’s handy to have access to YouTube or an internet radio account while reading this, as listening to the songs he’s writing about adds a whole new dimension.

Words: The Pale King

The Pale King is the “unfinished novel” that David Foster Wallace had been working on for several years by the time of his death in 2008, and then put together by his editor according to voluminous notes that Wallace had left behind. It is certainly unfinished in the traditional narrative sense in that after 540-odd pages the plot has barely begun to coalesce. However, even his finished works were never strong on plot, and anyone who has read his previous novels (particularly Infinite Jest) will understand that with Wallace, the plot is secondary to the themes and ideas being explored, the asides and digressions, the effortless mastery of language and bold authorial voice…the experience itself of reading Wallace.

The book centers around a group of entry-level tax examiners working at an IRS center in Peoria, Illinois in 1985, and if that sounds like an unbelievably boring subject for a novel, that’s kind of the point. Boredom is presented as a symptom of a larger issue, masking much deeper, darker fears. The excruciating tedium these characters face and the ways they find to cope with it serves as a launchpad for Wallace to explore a myriad number of themes, including loneliness, self-image and the search for identity and purpose, and how what we choose to focus our attention on can shape or lives.

The story is set at the dawn of the information age, which Wallace posits as the time of a great societal and cultural paradigm change, when public institutions seem to shift from being driven by public virtue to becoming exemplars of pure capitalism. Wallace uses the impersonal bureaucratic ecosystem the characters must navigate, with its own customs, arcane language, and history, as a microcosm of society at large to explore the ideas of civic and moral responsibility, and the ramifications of how those ideas change over time.

The writing here is tighter and a bit more focused than in his previous long-form works, as Wallace has dialed back some of his more egregious post-modern tics. There are still numerous asides and digressions (some of them quite lengthy), but these sections are what carry the thematic weight of the book. Wallace’s command of his craft is amply demonstrated even in the novel’s raw form: the incisive observations, the vivid and evocative descriptions, the dark humor, the rich yet precise language. There are still moments of audaciousness; there’s a pages-long single-sentence paragraph describing one character’s commuter flight, anxious and excruciatingly mundane at the same time, while another character engages in a hundred-page monologue detailing the life path that brought him to the IRS. There are some astonishing setpieces where Wallace is in full virtuosic form, among these the tale of a high school shop class accident and its effects on those who witnessed it, the story of a seemingly doomed poverty-stricken young girl from the trailer park, and an encounter with a very unsettling infant

Even in an uncompleted state, there is a raw kind of greatness here, the potential for something amazing and epic found in the margins and asides that build the overall theme. You can see the plot threads start to take shape, although it never coalesces into anything concrete. It’s like making out the outlines of something huge in the fog – the shape is there, but indistinct and seemingly half-formed yet. There is a sadness lurking around the thematic edges, and this is underscored by the knowledge that the novel will never be truly finished, that indeed this singular voice has been silenced forever. This is the last major work we will get from David Foster Wallace, and that is a great shame.

It's Aliiiive.....

        

....Kind of.  So, I'm gonna try out this blog thing.  No guarantees.  I'm thinking that this will mostly have posts about stuff I've read, listened to, or watched, and it's basically going to be about stuff that I find interesting enough to babble on about.  Not sure if anyone is actually going to want to read this or not, so in that case I guess it's like 99% of all the other blogs out there.  If there's a dozen posts here by the end of the year, I'll be pleasantly surprised.  Anyway, make yourself at home...put your feet up, grab a beverage, maybe take your pants off...we're pretty informal around here.