Ice Cream and the Ice Creams ft. Ice Cream "Ice Cream" (Singles First Quarter 2015)

[koganbot]

Missed most of February (and most of everything else). Ash-B is the great discovery here, a strong and throaty rapper like Choi Sam but with a tone that's more supple and subtle. Will say more when I post my 2014 albums list. "The Song Of Love" is a low-rent slow dance from Core Contents Media (yeah, it's not Core Contents Media anymore, but in my

Comments

[skyecaptain]

I have a really crappy list of contenders so far, and I can't tell if it's me or the contenders. (Imagine it's a little of both

[koganbot]

Strangely, unexpectedly, the recent (not so recent) Important Album that struck me as a tasteful/pleasantish wash was 1989. This judgment comes (still) after only one listen to most of it, and paying almost no attention to the words. And there are three or four exceptions to the t/p washiness, incl. the first single. Maybe there'll be more exceptions, when I get back to the record.

[koganbot]

Btw, I still think my "PBS" metaphor is (i) important, (ii) half-assed and problematic, (iii) never likely to coalesce into something that isn't half-assed and problematic, and (iv) important nonetheless. Something to remember - two things to remember - is that the metaphor really had two parts, the parts not clearly delineated or conceptualized in my initial WMS writeups:

(1) Postpunk (etc.) as a cultural corner (or something): so the metaphor "PBS" wasn't particularly saying that this band or that performer had broccoli-like "good for you" tendencies.* Rather, the metaphor vaguely referred to a whole constellation of opinions and interests and attitudes that turned a broad and contentious (towards each other as well as towards the outside) group of people into an "Us" that believed itself better than a mainstream "Them." But what made (and makes?) the metaphor potent and shocking isn't that it fingered Talking Heads for being tasteful or the Clash for being socially progressive but that it also included stuff that the real PBS

[skyecaptain]

Yeah, I'm often hesitant to project PBS onto music itself because most of the time I'm saying to myself something along the lines of "Remember, *I* am, in part, PBS-or-whatever and that is not entirely a bad thing but can make things lame, my very being here and doing this will have some impact on the thing that may also kill the thing, though hopefully it will make it better..." (which is a longwinded to say usually I use it as a tool for thinking about my /"our" relationship to something less than the thing itself

[koganbot]

A few different thoughts, not necessarily coherent:

The preservative effect: well, Shakespeare and Austen, Plato and Nietzsche, Mozart and Verdi all have a living presence in current culture, but for this to have happened there had to be people willing to preserve and in some cases go back and appreciate and resurrect them. Nietzsche might be the most relevant to this discussion, in that he gets to be broccoli by being "subversive," and academic "PBS" types who read him as such get to think of themselves as subversive - or at least as raising provocative questions. More penetrating but prosaic thinkers - Kuhn, Wittgenstein* - can't be twisted so easily into this role, though there've sure been attempts. In any event, Nietzsche's being used now for what he can do now ("he"), for what we can do now with him, by types who do what they think they want or need to do using him. Which is as it should be, the problem often being with the types, not Nietzsche.

We do it to ourselves: Well, remember, I'm thinking both of the whole culture ("

[koganbot]

In the previous post, when I said "punk critics" I meant "critics who were called 'punks,'" not "critics of punk."

Broader culture gives impetus and support to the margins

[koganbot]

In any event, the "broader culture," which is full of multiple currents and countercurrents and conflicts, the conflicts being as defining as the common values, including even the conflicts over which conflicts should be defining, and including "us," the subculture that you and I belong to that I'm occasionally calling a marginal musical intelligentsia (MMI)* and that I socked with my "PBS for the youth" metaphor back in 1987 (not that you, Dave, and me, Frank, are "PBS" or MMI in all of our aspects)... the "broader culture" can give impetus and support to various movements that move outward and away from a supposed mainstream: so, to survivalist movements, radical right, evangelical, progressive left, feminist, freak, punk, nihilist, and so forth. By "support" I mean that even before this or that "out" group is a presence, someone can be seeded with the romanticism that either propels her out herself or encourages her to give respect to and/or feel intimidated and awed by the person who does go out. This is the question I was asking

Go For Broke

[koganbot]

So...

When because of the weather we have inside recess, some kids go to the gym and get to run amok while others go to the auditorium where a feature film is projected, always a kids' film like the Croods, and just like in the old days of double features you enter whether the film is beginning or in the middle, and when your recess is finished you leave even though the film isn't over.

Also, first thing in the day, there's an early "recess" which isn't literally a recess but it's when the kids arriving early or the kids who are already there for Extended Day go to the playground, but when early recess is inside they all go to the auditorium and what they usually see is Angry Bird Toons or excerpts from Despicable MeLet's classify the midday recess feature films as "Broader Culture," with lots of comedy but also broad positive social messages

Connecting The Dots

[koganbot]

To connect the dots between the two "recesses," the midday Broader Culture feature-length cartoons have a hodge-podge of positive messages some of which push "out": push one towards being oneself and empowering oneself and taking risks and taking on authority and leaping and soaring, flying, etc. etc. etc.

So, in one of the midday recesses I saw approximately 35 minutes of Frozen, from Hans to up the mountain and Olaf and the storm, if you've seen it. It contained "Let It Go" in context, where it was kind of thrilling (hadn't previously liked it and still don't usually enjoy hearing it). A couple months later Amanda, the Kinder teacher I work for, read a short picture-book version of Frozen to the class, so the plot's been spoilerated for me. Since I haven't seen it whole, I can't say one way or another whether the flick would work for me. But I suspect it would. As I was watching it, I assumed Disney had seen its task as making a princess movie that was also at least somewhat feminist, about female self-actualization and self-

Let It Go (SPOILERS)

[koganbot]

SPOILER. DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE.

Elsa's no punk, she's not a Mick Jagger or an Eminem. But like Jagger and Eminem, she's an artist who's afraid of her art, of its power. And in the world of the movie, she's slated to ascend to actual political (read "cultural") power but she's afraid to wield her power, that her various powers will sabotage and destroy everything. And, according to Jennifer Lee, there's at least something of a subtext that, in moving from princess to queen, Elsa is potentially moving to full-blown sexual expression. (I don't remember The Lion King very well, but there seem to be parallels.) Anyway, Anna still understands little of this, so her journey to find her sister is also a journey to discover who Elsa is. Meanwhile, Elsa has decided that the only way she can be her powerful self is to be alone, to divorce power from command. Which of course means it's not full power, since the condition of letting herself go is that she - it - her art, her power, her self, her authority - doesn't go

[koganbot]

In its manifestation in the broader culture, PBSification is a movement outward, which is both good for you (socially progressive if you're on the left, radically preservative and even apocalyptic if you're on the right) and bad for you (so touts bad girls and wildness and recalcitrance), and being bad is good for you because it challenges the mainstream's idea of goodness, even if it's the mainstream that generates this challenge to its goodness. And my complaint is that once we know or think we know this significance of the good-bad stuff [i.e., the "bad" stuff that we've decided is therefore good], once we realize that it actually does have cultural value and impact, we let the symbol, capital-S Significance, stand in for actual significance - but prior to our really comprehending the significance, the good-bad stuff was walled-off into entertainment, so was like Elsa isolated with her "power." So I'm sorta saying that Angry Bird Toons, prior to being lionized and crowned king or queen by PBS/MMI types like me, is like Elsa on her

[skyecaptain]

I have seen Frozen (so spoilers ahead) -- twice now, plus lots of 5-20-minute snatches overseen/heard when nephews and nieces are watching -- and what I like and dislike about it are pretty much the same thing, and something that I was surprised, in retrospect (well, maybe not surprised, but pleased?) that kids picked up on, which is that it really is Elsa's story even though Elsa barely features in huge hunks of the movie, much to its detriment

[skyecaptain]

Y'know, I'm really struggling to actually remember how "Frozen" ends! If I recall it correctly, which I may not, Elsa learns how to use her powers in moderation, but...

[checks]

OK, right (spoilers!) Elsa is *kidnapped* from her castle -- this is after her attempted icicle murder -- and imprisoned in her frozen hometown, but she breaks free and hoofs it back to the castle, leading to a series of things I don't remember well even reading the Wiki description, yada yada, Anna expresses true love by offering herself in sacrifice, love is the key to controlling her powers.

I remember the ending (the "solution") being nearly as interesting or convincing as the set-up (the "problem").

[koganbot]

As interesting or not as interesting? Not that I myself have an opinion one way or another, since I haven't seen, as opposed to read a synopsis of, the ending. Just that the way you worded the sentence seemed like it might want a "not."

Btw, I gather that from the producer's and writer's(s') p.o.v., with Anna still in their mind as protagonist, the deliberate double misdirection and switchup as to what constitutes the act of true love that will save Anna was what they were fundamentally working towards, and was what motivated Del Vecho to make the movie in the first place: there's a kind of meta going on where the characters are searching (twice) for the man who will provide the act of true love that saves Anna - as the genre might make us expect - whereas what the story actually gives us is Anna sacrificing herself to save Elsa, this being the unexpected act of true love that ends up saving Anna as well as Elsa.

(If you haven't yet read the Jennifer Lee interview, I reiterate my recommendation.)

[skyecaptain]

Woops, NOT as interesting

[skyecaptain]

Now I'm disagreeing with myself -- of course the thing that's supposed to be at the heart of the movie is how Elsa slowly but completely shuts herself away from her sister, and the idea is that the sister's love melts her heart. I mean, I get it!

I'm just addicted to the ice castle impulse, which to me isn't necessarily yoked to the sibling love. I just feel at the end like there's no reason Elsa shouldn't feel, in some way, like she wants to go back to her castle, maybe. That the castle is always there, even if you have lots of love to keep you away from it. Maybe not very Disney...