Lost Grooves

It's hard to believe that things have changed so much, and yet at the same time, not enough. Below is a story about Paul Mawhinney, a former record store owner who is trying to part with his record collection, spanning decades of collecting. The collection, valued at $50 million US, is being offered for $3 million, and has no takers. Surely some univeristy, like Bowling Green, home to prestigious popular studies programme would be interested.

Suburbs are bad, m'okay.

We've long held that suburbs are bad, poorly designed, wasteful, and divisive, but now it seems that the suburbs will make you fat to boot.

More two cents worth

Other albums from the 1990s that might deserve a space somewhere would be Becks "Mellow Gold" or perhaps "Odelay". To a lesser extent, Stereolab's "Emperor Tomato Ketchup Soup".

And of course, hard to beleive, but it was so of the 1990s, Pavement's "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain".

A Few More Candidates

Here's some more candidates for our list of Top Ten albums:

R.E.M.: Automatic For the People
Beck: Take your pick, Mellow Gold or Odelay (though everyone wants to say One Foot In The Grave)
My Bloody Valentine: Loveless - this one perhaps shows the difficulty of picking such a list, phenomenally popular in the early 1990s, it signaled the end of My Bloody Valentine, and one has to wonder whether "shoegazing" had any lasting impact. Putting this one on such a list could be like putting Frampton Comes Alive on a similar list of bygone era - sure it sold a lot of records, but did it go anywhere (other than crashing into a tree, high on coke)?

An interesting point was raised regarding the debate on which Red Hot Chilli Peppers album would be more deserving: Blood Sugar Sex Magic for sheer shock and funk, a kind of harbinger of what the 1990s might have been, or Californication as an album that mourned the reality of what the 1990s actually were and convinced a whole new generation of fans to lament something (that hazy period circa 1982 - 1992) that they never knew they had lost.

Flotsam and Jetsam on the Web

Here's a little something that we found on YouTube last night, a duet with Beck and Jane Birkin, perhaps for French TV. Beck is charming and appears happy to be there, even though it is clear he doesn't know all the French lyrics.



Watching Jane Birkin made us realize how much we missed her partner in crime, Serge Gainsbourg, so if you're wondering what all the fuss was about, here you go:

Top Ten Albums of the 1990s

The Olympics are being projected on a wall in the other room and several of us are taking a break and having a break. Allan Parker, the latest addition to our fold, has just finished reading Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, the film version of which is something of an annual kino classic. Parker, in honour of Hornby, has challenged us to come up with a Top Ten list of the best albums of the 1990s. We're not even sure such a thing can be done, but Parker argues that it's almost been twenty years, surely allowing enough time to have past.

So, at any rate, in no particular order, we assembled a list of albums that would challenge for a position on such a list:

1. Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
2. Ok Computer - Radiohead
3. Twice Removed - Sloan
4. Trouble in the Henhouse - Tragically Hip
5. The Lonesome Crowded West - Modest Mouse
6. Fear of a Black Planet - Public Enemy
7. Blue Lines - Massive Attack
8. Repeater - Fugazi
9. Post - Bjork
10. Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic/Californication - Red Hot Chilli Peppers (vicious argument over which gets the nod)
11. (Something) - Blur
12. O.G. Original Gangster - Ice T (though really, we want to suggest 1989's Iceberg)
13. Blow Your Headphones - The Herbaliser

This conversation sort of grounded out in the realization that no one in the room could credibly talk about the development of post-NWA hiphop or pre-Chemical Brothers dance music.

Sad.

Suggestions?

Reality Still Bites

The problem with taking a holiday is that there is often lots of things to catch up on when you come back. For example, we are trying to find the time go see The Wackness, a coming of age story set in 1994's New York, with Ben Kingsley in a supporting role (who we recently enjoyed as an alcoholic hitman attempting to dry out in You Kill Me). As something of a hold over, we did re-visist 1993's Ben Stiller flick, Reality Bites. At the time, we felt the movie was a little too-cliched (or perhaps that the cliches struck a little too close to home). However, fifteen years has given us enough perspective to look past some of those cliches, such as the GAP working alterna-girl, the angst-ridden indie rock slacker, etc.

So this time around, what strikes us is the prevalence of divorce, and it was something that other movies, such as the phenomenal The Squid and The Whale have also done, as well as, surprisingly, Bobby. Details' columnist Jeff Gordiner has recently suggested that the Baby Boomers have done Gen X'ers much wrong in his book X Saves The World. If Tom Brokaw and company can affectionately refer to a "Greatest Generation" one is tempted to subtitle the Baby Boomers as "The Most Self-Absorbed Generation". Tempting. What other generation has proen to be so afraid of growing old that they invented Viagra?

We digress.

In many ways, the United States is still dealing with the repercussions of the 1960s and the sky-high divorce rates of the 1980s are perhaps indicative of this. The scene from Bobby that gives us pause, is the one in which the audience discovers that Lindsay Lohan and Elijah Wood are getting married, not because they are in love, but rather because she likes him enough to not want him to get killed in Vietnam. What happens to these marriages down the road, as these people realizes that fear of Vietnam is not enough to build a marriage around?

More Mountain Goats

One of the things our sojourn in the Rockies allowed us to do was catch up on some music. Despite being released months ago (February), and highly recommended by many of our friends, we finally got around to giving the new Mountain Goats album a spin. Heretic Pride is full of lush instrumentation, cellos and violins, coupled with guitairs and such - it's a wonderful sound, and the songs are filled with complex, literate lyrics (really, how else could you describe a song about H.P. Lovecraft's experience living in Brooklyn?), it's unfortunate that John Darnielle's vocal's aren't up to the challenge. Instead he's distinctly at odds with the music, whose depth makes his voice sound quite nasal and flat.

All of Our Problems Should Be So Sweet

From mountain retreat to shore leave, all of our problems should be so sweet.

An aunt of one of our office mates recently dropped off a package of Kimbo coffee for us to consume. It's an intriguing package, as it is all silver, without the usual Kimbo branding. There's an Italian note the coffee is not for individual sale, which as some wondering if it is industrial (commercial) coffee, but the package is just average size so others consider it a part of some corporate offer.

Regardless, we are all eager to have some (Kimbo being a summer favourite around these parts). However, we've yet to finish our delightful Kicking Horse Coffee, and everyone knows it's bad form to open to packs of coffee at a time (since they'll both start to lose their freshness). What to do? Drink more coffee.

Thus, it is late in the evening at we are at the office goofing around and drinking coffee. Some are watching The Mummy in the main room, while offers our surfing YouTube with the overhead LCD hooked up. Fan favourite so far: clips from Zidane: 21st Century Portrait, with Mogwai providing the soundtrack, something we've meant to order online for some time now.

Espresso Fuel

As if to squeeze every last ounce of pun, simile, allegory, and metaphor out of our sojourn in the Rockies, the last few weeks we have been especially enjoying local (well, Invermere, BC anyways) Fair-Trade roasters Kicking Horse Coffee's Cliffhanger Espresso beans. Curiously mellow for espresso, without any of the chocolately hints that we sometimes find.

Mountain Battles For Mountain Goats

We've been listening to a lot of music over the last month, and one of our favourites (perhaps befitting our mountainous retreat) has been The Breeders' Mountain Battles. At first we were a little apprehensive, afraid that Kim Deal was just participating in a little lifestyle maintenance. We admit that this was based on our understanding of her reluctance to re-join the Pixies, as reported in Josh Frank's Pixies biography, Fool The World, and Frank's insinuation that she had no financial need for such a tour. The Twitter comments proved otherwise though, and we found ourselves in agreement as sound as the album hit the stereo.


Happily, Mountain Battles is no attempt to relive the fanciful magic of Last Splash, and certainly doesn't have the same eclectic pop whimsy but it does stand head and shoulders above Pod. The childish innocence of "Istanbul" or the seductive ease of "Regalame Esta Noche" perhaps hearkening back to the early days of the Deal sisters' genre-spanning home-recording (again as noted in Fool The World). Yes, songs like "Walk It Off" or "We're Gonna Rise" re-capture the tension of Last Splash, but without the screaming guitars. In fact, despite it's title, Mountain Battles is an album full of mature restraint, as if Kim Deal wasn't trying to one up Frank Black or The Pixies.

Wimbledon And A Whole New Ballgame?

A warm welcome to all of our friends who have checked in with us since Wimbledon and have been disappointed to see the lack of updates. We have been out in our secluded mountain retreat, communing with nature and crunchy little insects, armed only with our cellphones - one of which includes a shiny new iPhone, but none of which is capable of posting to blogger. Anyways, we hope to make up for our seemingly lacklustre July, with a more fulfilling and robust (some might say august) month ahead.

As for Wimbledon itself, as much as we enjoyed watching Safin and Federer go head to head, hope that this bodes well for Safin in his return to New York next month, the Federer v. Nadal final was everything that one could hope for - Sports Illustrated and many tennis commentators seem inclined to agree that it was perhaps the greatest match of all time, certainly of the last ten years. What is even more fascinating to us, is the potential of what is to come, and frankly, we are surprised that more commentators have not picked up on this yet. With Federer losing in the opening round of Toronto last week, and Nadal winning the tournement, it is increasing looking like Nadal will win the overall No.1 spot by the end of the year, regardless of who wins the U.S. Open.

In some instances though, who wins the Open is immaterial provided both Nadal and Federer make it to the same approximate stages, the excitement comes in what happens next. If Nadal proves that he can at least equal Federer on hard court, then the Australian Open will witness perhaps the greatest race in all of sport: the quest for the tennis' Grand Slam. It is hard to imagine an athletic feat as rare to accomplish, simultaneously being pursued by two players, both with equal chances to pull it off.

Something the Web Brought Up

Surfing the web has its uses: here's a little something we discovered via twitter user cafexperiment. You can visit their website at www.cafexperiment.com where they post daily collections of photos taken in cafes. Quite stunning for us espressoheads. Subscribe to their twitterfeeds for regular updates.

Safin to the Semis!

Marat "I Don't Like Wimbledon" Safin, is about to enter the semi-finals of the famed grass court tennis competition on Friday, facing down the sublime Roger Federer. For all the anticipation over yet another showdown between Federer and Rafael Nadal, this particular meeting of Safin and Federer is looking to be one of the most long-awaited match-ups in recent tennis history. As we write, Nadal is up two sets on Andy Murray, and really ought to be able to close out his match, setting himself up for a next round match against Clement or Schuettler, two opponents ranked around 140th on tour and not likely to offer a healthy Nadal much of a challenge.

Which brings us back to Safin. For all of the greatness of Federer, it was once fairly commonplace to hear Federer referred to as "the most talented male tennis player outside of Marat Safin", or "the only person with a forehand better than Roger Federer is Marat Safin". Of course, Safin's inconsistency has allowed Federer to take an 8-2 career lead over the Russian, including a third round dismissal at Wimbledon last year. What's different this year, is the composure that Safin is showing, much more reminiscent of when he beat Federer in the Australian Open semi-finals en route to his second Grand Slam.

Should Safin beat Federer, then a final featuring Safin and Nadal will be extremely exciting, as it truly will be anyone's game.

Sometimes Safin Is Like A Box Of Chocolates

Today was the opening day at Wimbledon and Safin's opening round match against Fognini did not disappoint. After going up an easy two sets, Safin suddenly found himself face-to-face against his own inner demons, allowing Fognini to extend the third set all the way to a tie-break. Once again, we are fascinated with Safin, the troubled perfectionist. Safin, who plays some of his best tennis against the toughest opponents, and some of his worst when he only has to play against himself, exhibits all of the hallmarks of the classically gifted student who is not challenged often enough to develop his or her full potential. What Safin really needs at this point, is not a better coach, really, but more likely a sports psychologist who can help him "let go".



Darren Cahill made an intereting comment about an episode in which Safin came to have dinner with Andre Agassi. Safin, fresh from defeat, was hoping to hear some words of wisdom from the older tennis champion. Unfortunately, as Cahill recalls Agassi stating afterwards, the two grand slam winners spent the evening talking past each other. This is sounds fairly reasonable, as Agassi was brought up with a rather mechanistic approach to tennis (right down to the memorization of how many steps it was from one point on the court to another), that allowed him to develop a strategy based on returning balls, making high percentage plays, and outlasting the competition. Safin on the otherhand, was encouraged to make something out of every shot, and early on in his career, had the talent to pull it off. Agassi was taught to defend, Safin attack. No wonder the two couldn't understand each other.

In two days, Safin meets Novak Djokovic, and both are at the opposite ends of their career spectrums and promises to be highly entertaining. It only remains to be seen which Safin shows up . . .

Half-Nelson

Half-Nelson was featured in our afternoon Kino session about a week ago, and it prompted some of the following discussion, but first a brief synopsis for anyone not familiar with the premise: The film stars Ryan Gosling as an inner city teacher who befriends Drey, one of his students (played by Shareeka Epps). Gosling is also the school's girl's basketball coach, an aspiring author, and drug addict. In fact, the moment of "befriending" occurs when Gosling's student catches him smoking crack in the locker room. It turns out that the girl, who's father is gone and mother works all the time, actually knows Gosling's connection, who was responsible for Drey's brother being jailed and is now taking an active interest in the welfare of the family.

Having known many teachers through our friendship with Sean Marchetto, over at www.explodingbeakers.blogspot.com , we found Gosling's portrayl of a young, idealistic, teacher quite true-to-life, despite his seemingly fantastical crack-habit (which we are afraid to wonder just how pervasive such things might be), in a way that is very akin to Richard Burton in Look Back In Anger, as suggested by Lucy, from the knitting site www.goodgrieflucy.blogspot.com.

1. Gosling, with his focus on Hegelian dialectics and their Marxist connotations, reveals himself in as a believer in the possibility for social change. This seems reinforced by his parents, aging hippies, who constantly remind him of their efforts to change the system. As we said, we know many contemporaries who found themselves questioning the system in the early 1990s and rather than going for more overt politcal agitation, ended up in the teaching profession as a way to affect change.

2. However, the school system demonstrates that it is not as open to immediate change as one might think. To begin with, there is the official curriculum, which is a legally binding document and a teacher who does not follow and fulfill the curriculum can face official sanctions. Second, the school is an institution with a life of its own, one that seeks to subsume it's constituent parts. Many of Gosling's co-workers have long since abandoned their outward activist stance, and have settled into something of a humdrum ease.

3. The days are long. When Gosling is done teaching, we see him coaching girl's basketball. A coffee-break conversation with a co-worker leads to the revelation that Gosling is a long way from his dreams of teaching by day, and working on his novel by night. As a way of consoling him, his colleague offers, "There's always summer".

4. One of the initial comments on Gosling's characters' drug use associated it with perhaps his frustration at his lack of writing prowess. The image of the author or artist who needs a little "help" with "inspiration" is fairly typical and so the thought was that day-to-day teaching was so draining that Gosling turned to drugs to perhaps fire himself up for writing. However, we soon learn that Gosling's character has a history with drugs, leading to the comparisons with Burton's self-destructive angry young man from the 1950s. Again, we can infer from Gosling's classroom talk that he does not believe that political change is possible without a social change occurring first, a process that can take decades. Later in the movie he makes the statement to the effect that "A man acting alone is nothing", which leaves him in a rather frustrating position, that of a man acting alone in front of classroom trying to deal with social forces much larger than himself, and knowing full well the futility of his actions. No wonder he's on drugs.

Of course, there's a huge effort to redeem himself and demonstrate what one man can do acting alone in his relationship with Drey that provides the bulk of movie's plot. We chose not to comment on that aspect, as it is covered in most reviews of the movie, but rather to focus on an aspect of teaching that we don't usually see.

Cognitive Surplus

This just floated our way via the web, and gives us a different spin on or theories of the consumption of university education. Below, Clay Shirky is speaking of television watching as a way of dealing with a "cognitive surplus", or as he admits, the surplus of time that post-WWII workers experienced when they were finished working for the day. You can almost hear Adorno whispering in the background . . .

On the Study of Popular Culture

As a further clarification, where we find value in the study of popular culture, is in the act and intent in it's creation. Our preference is to treat an article of popular culture in terms of the ideas or values that it was intended to convey or reflect. As a secondary area of research, we are interested in how various audiences have expressed their reaction to these items, however, we find that these expressions are all too often limited to mere consumption, and these consumption patterns are of considerable less interest than the acts of creation themselves.

Before advancing further, for us, the study of popular culture is decidedly different than the study of mass culture or commercial culture. Our roots are in the so-called counterculture, based on political dissent and acts of artistic creations. We recognize that any material study of the counterculture in terms of the intellectual development and value-expression is difficult because of how quickly the counter-culture became subsumed in a mass, commercial culture (think especially of "grunge"). However, it must be noted than in going back to the fundamental roots of bohemian, beat, hippie, and punk cultures, the emphasis was on being first, identity and material culture second. A study of punk makes this most dramatic and highlights the problems and confusion. The early drama of punk was about performing, not recording, and this became evident in some of the notable problems that several groups had in translating their performance into the recording studio.

The advent of industrial production methods of objects of art and folk culture, leading to the development of mass objects of consumption (mass culture), devoid of individual craft identity, has led to individual workers looking for emotional and artistic expression outside of their normal work routines. We want to juxtapose these countercultural goods made for private expression, with those goods made for public consumption. In fact, part of the problem with studying a counterculture that has become commodified (as happens to almost all of them) is the blurring that occurs between these public and private roles.

The Consumption of Post-Secondary Education

The last few evenings Sean Marchetto has been hanging around our office, clearly agitated (one might say consumed) by an idea that has generated some interesting ideas. They're not completely thought out, or fully developed by any stretch of the imagination, but we simply want to capture them here. This is also cross-posted to Marchetto's own Exploding Beakers blog.


Let us begin by acknowledging that the following rests somewhat on the ideas of Thorstein Veblen, Theodor Adorno, and Max Weber. You would also be correct to guess that the conversation revolves around "class", ie. "working-class", "middle-class", and "upper-class", though such labels bring to mind specific occupations and our talk deals more with social outlooks, values, or beliefs, independent of specific occupation.


To begin with, we believe in the value of studying popular culture. We believe that popular culture is an important vehicle for the exchange of ideas. We subscribe to the Journal of Popular Culture, although we are increasingly disappointed with the approach that the journal is taking to the study of popular culture. For years though, we have been unable to describe just what it is that makes us unsatisfied with it. Perhaps now we are a little closer.


Thorstein Veblen is noted for his ideas about the consumption pattern of social classes, specifically that people tend to follow their social betters. For example, in the nineteenth century, the houses of the rich had large rooms for receiving guest, while middle-class homes developed the parlour. Working class structures attempted to mimic this to the best of their abilities, given their often cramped floor space. Or, take kitchenware. The upper classes, it is assumed, eat meals off of expensive plates, and many families (of middle and working-class status) have special dinnerware (china) that they save for "fancy" occassions, where family members are dressed up, and elaborate, and sometimes expensive, food is served.


There is a crucial difference in the consumption trends between the social classes though, and that is the degree to which each class is able to make their wealth "work", that is, function as capital. For working-class families, much of the wealth is tied up in the family home, and generally not available as ready capital. Middle-class families tend to be to convert some of their wealth into capital in the form of stocks, bonds, etc., while the upper-class is assumed to have ready supplies of capital on hand not just for stocks, bonds, but also for business start-ups and such.


According to Theodor Adorno, there is also a difference in the relationship of these groups to popular culture. If we allow the division of popular culture into so-called "high-brow", tending to carry with it moral messages, or intellectual overtones, and "low-brow", popular culture that tends to satisfy emotional needs, it is generally assumed that the upper-classes favour popular culture that is "high-brow" and working classes favour "low brow", with the middle-classes enjoying a spectrum of both. Adorno was also one of the first to articulate the belief that popular culture (or what we might term "mass commercial culture" as opposed to "folk culture" both of which tend to be wrapped up in "popular culture"), could also function as a method of pacifying the working classes. Later writers on consumption, such as Conquest of Cool author Thomas Frank, and even in his own way, John Leland, author of Hip: The History, have suggested that richess of popular culture's emotional experience and the desire of novelty on the part of the working-classes, are effective ways of bleeding off wealth from that same class.


At it's heart, this kind of argument rests on the same sort of self-denial premise that Max Weber put forth. The so-called middle-class thrives under capitalism because capitalism reward self-denial in favour of disciplined investment. The working-class on the otherhand, fails to "get ahead" because it is too interested in self-pleasure. This is also typically the premise behind many of our rags-to-riches stories.


So, our question becomes, do these two social groups have different viewpoints on the purpose of post-secondary education? We would argue that there are (at least) two different social groups present in post-secondary institutions, those who view it in terms of self-denial and self-investment, and those who do not. To reference Veblen, for this second group, post-secondary education is not seen as a utility, but as a social goal attained by higher social classes. The proliferation of courses dealing with topics of popular culture, that treat it as an area of relativistic meanings and interpretations (a sort of atomizing of the audience) and not as the basis of praxis, enable post-secondary education to be consumed as novelty items and effectively bleeding off the wealth of students and student families.

Thus, the attainment of post-secondary education has generally been seen as one of the most effectives of social mobility, but we are increasinly wondering whether or not this remains the case, and whether more and more courses about popular culture are in fact undermining this effectiveness?

Salt Spring Island Coffee Company

When is a coffee company more than just about the coffee? Typically when it's a megabrand like Starbucks or Tim Horton's where it's as much about the image as the coffee. However, for the past week or so we've been enjoying British Columbia's Salt Spring Island Coffee - Sumatra Dark Roast. Like many micro-roasters, Salt Spring is trading as much on their coffee as they are information about their coffee - 100% Organic, 100% Fair Trade, and they claim, Carbon Neutral. However, what has really intrigued us (almost as much as their coffee), is the company's website and the range of interactive spaces it provides, from an official blog to a carbon neutral quiz.

The coffee itself has proven to be surprising mellow. We've talked about the distinctive flavour of certain other brands that we've enjoyed, such as Moak, Kimbo, and particularly Illy. The Salt Spring though was by far one of the most subtle beans we've experienced. As an espresso shot, it had none of the aggressiveness that we typically look for, much more suited to lattes and cappuccinos (which tend to be much more muted by the presence of milk). A refreshing and welcome change of pace.