“Now we've seen what happens when tens of millions of choices are thrown in the air and land on the floor.”

This has been the dreamt-of shape of things to come. Digital music is supposed to break format and form, dissolving binds and allowing for more fluid audio consumption. It rewards quantities of quality over multitudinous shit yoked to a couple workhorse tracks. This is the saviour of the music; with the demise of the head, that strange oligarchy of predestined hitmakers, the utopian tail takes over. It's like playing on the floor in front of the stage. Power transfers from Empire Records' "The Man" to Radiohead, Brian Eno, and the little guys, from big-britched Sub Pop to Brooklyn bedroom operations. Diltettantism finds a charitable end.


Too bad that's what the tail actually looks like for digital music, maligned into resembling the exact same shape as, guess what, the brick-and-mortar industry dinosaur's sales curve. Turns out they're not that different. And what do you expect? Instead of non-purchases, you have "theft." Sampling, laziness, righteous indignation, general indifference, or maybe even just a different consumption paradigm motivate the savvy music downloader, while the people buying digital music are probably the same inclined to shop at Tower or Best Buy. Effectively, there's no real difference, just a different arena.

That's not to say that the long tail doesn't have its purposes, or even its truths. I think it just requires a different consideration of what the "industry" is, and how artists can support themselves. Trying to convert the historic model of superstardom and name recognition into a scalable middle class model doesn't work, because the tail doesn't necessarily pertain to economics. What it does pertain to, however, is the idea that the cottage industry can have a much bigger, albeit still relatively small, splash in a much bigger pond. I've said it before, but this is the Era of the Amateur. A return to multidisciplinarianism. The reintegration of music into everyday life as an art, a hobby, an honest-to-God passion.

The fallacy of the digital medium's vestigial tail speaks to the importance of both permanence and physicality that music now possesses. If you want that party jam, just because, you're still not going to pay for it. CD death doesn't necessarily mean that iTunes will be able to sculpt a phoenix out of the ashes. A real patron will still buy the record, with mp3 download now included. So keep on pressin' and rippin'. I'm buying in.

On individuals who get back up when they haven't even fallen...

I feel like most people write off Kanye more than...well, let's just leave it at that. According to the man he was getting hated on before he even released "The College Dropout." The underdog mentality: start at the bottom even when you're at the top. It's the American way.

So yeah, album one, classic Kanye production and some green jollity. What's not to like? The new guy at the table, he's alright. Let him on in. So Kanye got his inch, and went beyond taking the mile. I mean, he's past the horizon at this point. He took himself from victim through the wire straight to martyr. Critics say if he ran his mouth on his records like he did to the media, maybe there wouldn't be so much to complain about.

So yeah, album two, and Kanye's mixin' it up. The honeymoon period over, but there's some definite growth in delivery. But the strength comes, again, on the beats. Keep it interesting, and when you have to call in the artillery, do it. Who thought AAA format could be integrated like that? No wonder Michel Gondry loves him.

So what, album three? Dude is starting to leave orbit for I don't know what. But that piano? The live instrumentation? Gone. Who needs that? It's the 21st century, motherfuckers. Get with the synth. Daft Punk, "Flashing Lights," and some real hyperkinetic album art mark this strange beast lumbering towards God knows what. It's got the Mark of Wayne, too; Kanye's coming out on the other side of the weird. It's beyond hip-hop now, it's art. The Artist would agree with this, I'm sure.

So after searching for a Britney meltdown from the 2008 Video MusicAwards and only getting a letdown of normaled proportions, I find a real notable: Kanye came back to MTV (going against his VMA snobbery due to repeated Moon-Man snubbery). This is what I got:



We've officially lost contact. Kanye's "Love Lockdown" premiere has the same kind of identity-shifting grandeur as when Jonathan Rhys-Meyers' folk-turned-glam 70's conglomeration passes beyond conventional rock star into extraterrestrial in "Velvet Goldmine." It's the same root as Prince losing his name, or Ziggy Stardust losing David Bowie. Self-conscious artist syndrome lifted beyond normal realms of consciousness. We're left with the artist as art.

It's a modernist pose, and a damn good one at that. Kanye references everyone from Ray Charles to Bowie to Kanye. The medium is the message. The words don't count, but the sound certainly does. Vocal delivery was "eh" live, but the beat and the look got me to the single. Now I'm hatin' on the fact that I can't keep hatin' for much longer.

On "Groovy Hate Fuck" and the blueprint for western decline...

It's funny that Pussy Galore blew up (as in dissolved) and then The Message got out. Black Flag's "Damaged" is obviously the cornerstone for a hardcore of nihilism (PG was wont to cover their fair share of the Rollins era) but Jon Spencer and Julia Cafritz kept that rolling. Then came the inevitable break-up, the establishment of new projects that continued on to great renown (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Free Kitten), and the recognition of what was hiding in plain sight all along. I feel like so much nihilistic, dystopian rock music really speaks to the idea of prophecy in the American voice as outlined by Greil Marcus in "The Shape of Things to Come." So many of these musicians are far from outcasts, often integrated into broader culture but also the seedy underbelly. Perhaps it's a more holistic awareness combined with a certain cynicism that leads to this kind of sound; if you could take what you saw and extrapolated it out twenty years down the line, how would you feel?

All this comes from a really great interview of Julia Cafritz, relevant due to Free Kitten's recent resurrection. If you were wondering the new album "Inherit" is worth checking out, especially since it's a major shift stylistically. Cafritz admits that sonically it takes a turn for the worse, especially poignant considering she says "Free Kitten is an opportunity to express more dark as we live lightly." Life and art are imitable, but they're at their best when in discourse with each other.

What caught my eye, though, was the lead quote, which turned out to be the most poignant segment of the entire interview. Some of that old-fashioned prophesying is still at work, both in Free Kitten and Cafritz's life, continuous with a lot of ideas that came out in the days after punk got broken. What's it like to see a future and then watch it dissolve? What takes its place? Cafritz has this to say, and I'm still thinking on it:

New York was going to get taller, there would be sex clubs in buildings that catered to hospital fetishes. And there would be freeze-dried drinks at bars. In reality, because of 9/11, it's a run for comfort. It's the proliferation of cupcake shops. New York has tried to recast itself to look like the rest of America. Instead of rising like a phoenix, it retreated into itself.