What is a Hipster?

For those of you who frequently check in with the inhuman ones, I apologize for my recent lack of content. I could spend the next 50 words griping about why I am unable to get anything up on this blog right now, but I will save you the pathetic self-pity.

Last week, I read a book that is being sold out all over in New York City titled "What Was the Hipster?" The book is a follow-up to a panel/academic conference held at The New School in April 2009 and was coedited by Professor Mark Greif. Mark is an amazing cat--he did his undergrad in literature and history at Harvard, Master's at Oxford, and got his Ph.D. in literature from Yale.

I sat down with Mark to interview him on hipster culture and we had a very interesting conversation. The book is so good, it inspired me to abandon one of my research topics here in my final semester to take up trying to answer the following question that has puzzled me about hipsters: "Why is this the one (or at least, first) subcultural movements of which its members wish to deny being a part of?"

Being called a "hipster" is an insult to most. The Onion captured it best in a witty article heading; "Two Hipsters Angrily Call Each Other 'Hipster'." Hipster culture is a fascinating topic to me and this week's Book Talk on BreakThru Radio was the best show yet.

I implore you all to take some time (the show is 60 minutes in length) and listen to Mark discuss what he and his co-researchers have discovered about hipsters in 2010 (especially if you deny being in the category yourself--this means you and all your hipster friends Eugenia). And, if you like what you hear, go and buy his book ("What Was the Hipster?").

Click HERE for the show.

Facebook Privacy: The Canary In The Coal Mine

For anyone who uses Facebook (in other words, all of you), you should really check this article and 3-minute video done by one of our staff who also works for The Huffington Post.

This shizzle is real; and scary as hell!

Facebook Privacy: The Canary In The Coal Mine

If There’s No Father to His Style, Call Him ‘Bastard’

“To the public he was known as Ol’ Dirty Bastard but to me he was known as Rusty. The kindest, most generous soul on earth."

Cherry Jones, mother of ODB

This past Saturday (November 13) marks the sixth-year anniversary of the death of Russell Tyrone Jones, the rapper more famously known as Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Strangely enough, on this past Monday (November 15) he would have been 42.

It is a daunting task to try and write a thousand-word obituary on a man one hardly knows anything about. Sure, I remember playing basketball to Wu Tang Clan tracks when I was in high school; but that was only as a result of high pressure and a lot of persistence from a very close friend of mine who demanded his hip-hop CDs get as much play time as my overdone, and inappropriate in comparison, classic rock repertoire. It was not long before I began to recognize my own closeted affection for the Staten Island collective. Soon thereafter, and much to the surprise of my good pal Chris, I was requesting the Clan each time we got into his truck to head off to football practice, drink rye and gingers at a bush party, or cruise the ‘dangerous’ redneck streets of my hometown. What was this kung-fu stuff? I didn’t have a clue, and I didn't really much care.

What I did know was narrowed down to two indisputable certainties: 1) I had no idea what this guy was rapping about, and couldn’t relate to any of it. And 2) It didn’t matter, because "oh baby," I too, “like it raw.”

The thing about a guy who comes onto the scene under the moniker ‘Ol’ Dirty Bastard’, and backed by a group called ‘The Wu Tang Clan’, you would assume presents an immediate problem to his listeners. And while for a while, I felt guilty for once thinking this way, the more I learn about ODB, the less guilt I feel. Shock was his modus operandi--the idea that people didn't understand him, but stopped to look and listen anyhow, was exactly the entertainment value he was trying to achieve. It was a style that would separate him from just about all of his contemporaries. I speculate that the reaction I got from his music was the very response he was looking for. He wanted his audience to hear his music and watch his performances in a “what the fuck just happened” state of disbelief.

A case in point (his most famous case, to be exact):

During the fortieth Grammy award ceremonies (1998) in Rockefeller Plaza, Dirty jumped onto the stage to interrupt the “song of the year” recipient speech in a state of full- consciousness of what he was doing. His intention became his desired result. You see, in 1998 the Grammy’s had still not recognized the rap-portion of the show as a television worthy event; and this pissed Dirty off. Frustrated that the awards for hip-hop artists were handed out a day earlier, during a non-televised ceremony, ODB took advantage of this moment to share with the rest of the country his sentiments for the injustices of a biased music industry. While many viewers saw it as a form of “distaste,” others applauded Dirty for his stance against racial prejudices in a country and industry that is supposed to be a leader in the disintegration of exactly that. In 1998, were organizers and leaders in the American Music Academy really that much in the dark about a genre of music that was over two-decades old and, by then, deeply immersed in American culture? If so, Dirty sure rattled them to attention.

A lot can be said about the life of Russell Tyrone Jackson that this article does not have the time nor space for. (As a side not, if you are interested I suggest Digging for Dirt: The Life and Death of ODB by Jaime Lowe, which was the primary research source for this article). I could have spent much of my time filling you in on all of his sexual escapades that led to fatherless and unsupported children. I could have gone into detail over his trouble with the law, time spent in and out of US’s notorious and discriminatory prison system, and the somewhat lengthy criminal record he managed to acquire over his thirty-five years in this world. Finally, I could have discussed his personal battle with drug and alcohol abuse, supposed and much disputed mental instability, and the official cause of his death: “Accidental overdose from a lethal combination of Tramadol [a painkiller] and cocaine.” But none of this gets down to the core of the man known as Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

Time is the ultimate equalizer. The further we move away from nineties hip-hop, the more we come to recognize it as a major player to a much greater subversive trend. What we often fall guilty of when thinking about these acts of subversion is that it is individual ‘people’ who make the parts to these cultural shifts; they don't just happen on themselves. Ol’ Dirty Bastard was one of those people. In other words, while our language is mostly predicated on the idea that ‘hip-hop’ now stands alone as a viable, sustainable American culture, independent from other subcultures like country, punk, indie, metal, etc., we should be thinking about the people that made it this way. It wasn’t some anomaly born out of thin air. It was a culture built on the character and styles of artists and performers like Russell Jackson.

Alas, forget my self-prescribed verbose haughtiness. It is said much better in the vernacular of the culture:

“What’s the world without Dirt? Just a bunch of fuckin’ water.” Rhymefest

Inverted Ballet

I am not sure how many of you are aware, but there is a new ballet running in San Francisco that is choreographed entirely to music by The Shins. It has been playing for about five weeks now and has received some fairly strong reviews. This is precisely the cross-fertilization of traditional music genres I am glad to see these days. Despite my personal disdain for ballet, I admire anytime musicians and choreographers seek to remove the limits of what is expected in separated music mediums.

As for me, my interest in this particular crossover can be tied to the fact that it involves: a) a band I happen to like very much; and b) a form of musical representation in which I really have no time for. So I wonder which of the two will dominate my subjectivity to taste? I also wonder: Why The Shins? Or more specifically: Why Oh, Inverted World (the Shins album to which the dance is performed), and why ballet?

To place the performance in context for those who enjoy details, the world premiere of Oh, Inverted World – the ballet, is choreographed by Trey McIntyre as part of San Francisco's Smuin Ballet’s fall/winter program that runs October 1, 2010 through February 27, 2011. This isn’t the first time that McIntyre has flirted with pushing the boundaries of Smuin’s bill. According to one reviewer, “McIntyre has proven time and again that he can create innovative work set to any music.” Just this past summer, “McIntyre followed Felix Mendelssohn’s Wedding March with Queen at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. His company also performed Wild Sweet Love, choreographed to a medley that featured The Partridge Family, Lou Reed and Roberta Flack. McIntyre is as comfortable with Beethoven as he is with Beck and The Beatles, or in this case, The Shins.”

I have not seen the ballet as it is only being performed on the West coast and I live on the East. Therefore, despite the look of its nature, this week’s Liner Notes is not a review of musical performance. Rather, my focus here is to comment on how popular music (or indie music, or rock and roll, or whatever you want to call it) fits into traditional bourgeoisie musical representation. What is San Francisco’s Smuin Ballet Company trying to tell its audience by performing a ballet to music recorded nine years ago by a very well known indie band from Albuquerque, New Mexico? Or conversely, what are The Shins saying to their fans by allowing Smuin to go ahead with the project? Perhaps they are trying to say nothing, and academic analysts like me look way too long and hard at this sort of stuff. But I doubt it. What’s the point of musical performance if there is no artistic message?

My initial reaction to reading this piece of ‘noteworthy popular music news’ was to try and avoid, “the endless opportunity for cliché” (a phrase I stole, it should be mentioned, from Stav Ziv--the ballet and dance reviewer for The Stanford Daily who wrote a very good review of the performance). I too, like Ziv, often “cringe” at these crossovers between rock/pop and traditional European dance performance. To be completely honest with you, I am not a giant musical/dance supporter in any form, and the mixture of rock in theater usually leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth (for example, American Idiot by Green Day. Ugh, “shudder”). But the reviews of Oh, Inverted World have me second-guessing my own musical snobbery. The Smuin Ballet Company, it is reported, has “distinguished itself with energetic, playful and accessible choreography.” Ziv goes on with his praise: “The program is worth a trip … even if you’re not a bunhead yourself” (I had to turn to the urban dictionary for this one. A “bunhead” is a term for a ballet dancer, either affectionately or used to imply a degree of snobbery).

The Shins

I feel that indie meeting ballet (ahem) dances with the line of the contrivable. Is this Smuin’s attempt to tap into the youth market currently caught up in today’s reality trash television programs like So You Think You Can Dance? and Dancing With The Stars? Or is it an honest attempt by choreographer Trey McIntyre to express an indie album in fluid, body movement? Perhaps it is a bit of both (although I am sure McIntyre nor Smuin would ever admit to the former, even if it were true).

Regardless of whether I ever see the ballet performance or not, now knowing that the music has been put to a ballet, and watching a snippet of the performance on YouTube, I don’t think I will ever hear the album Oh, Inverted World the same way again. It does not surprise me at all that a band like The Shins would agree to the idea. After all, this is the band who lent a large chunk of the soundtrack to Zach Braff’s risky, and yet quite successful, endeavor Garden State back in 2004 when very few mainstream people had ever heard of them. But ballet just isn’t what I think of when I think ‘The Shins.’ And The Shins just aren’t what I picture when I see tights and pointe shoes. At least, not before Smuin.

Oh, what an inverted world!

Sad Eyed Lady

Why is no one in New York City reporting on the recent real estate listing of The Chelsea Hotel?

Okay, so it’s not “no one”, but it does seem rather odd that other cities are taking a greater interest in this blasphemy than New York itself. In doing some research for this article, I typed "Chelsea Hotel for sale" into the Google search engine and page one listed the top-ten articles discussing the horror of the recession's most recent victim. Among the sources named were ABC News, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, WalesOnline, Victoria Times Colonist, BBC News, The Boston Globe, The Kansas City Star, and Telegraph UK. Do no New York papers or magazines want to report on the death and demise of one of our most cherished music buildings? Where is The New York Times; The New Yorker; New York 1; The Daily News?

Built in 1883, "Hotel Chelsea" (her official name) has housed some of music's most iconic figures from the last seventy years. She stands in obscure beauty, nestled between 6th and 7th Avenues in New York City's eponymous Chelsea District. Her look is a stunning 12-floor, 250-room redbrick exterior complete with wrought iron balconies overseeing 23rd Street. She is an architectural siren for all those dissolute rogues who have dared to try and make it in New York as an artist, and it’s as if you can still see Greek cherubs beckoning wandering degenerates to stay for just one night.

"Who among them, do you think, could resist you?"

It is not the sort of reverent place that jumps out at you the same way St. Paul's Cathedral in London or Notre Dame in Paris might. Just this past summer I took an old pal of mine there as part of an organic tour of Manhattan. Being an informed Bob Dylan fan (whose own lyrics apprise "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" was written in Room 211 of the hotel in 1966), my friend was quite familiar with Lady Chelsea's muse-like allure. His reaction upon meeting her was as Dylan'esque as I could have hoped for. Standing on the large self-titled mat lying outside her lobby door, Sal (my friend) nodded and grinned in silence as if meeting a longtime lover for the first time. He looked into her windows the way a lost sailor looks into the eyes of a prostitute--so much misplaced hope, so much gracefully aged beauty, so much heart-ached wisdom. I could hear Sal’s thoughts as he debated entry outside her lobby doors:

"My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums. Should I leave them by your gate? Or sad-eyed lady, should I wait?"

The legend of Chelsea exceeds just American rock music lore. This also happens to be the hotel where many of the Titanic survivors stayed after the Carpathia arrived at New York's Pier 54 on April 18th, 1914. Poet Dylan Thomas died in Room 205 on November 9, 1953 after drinking "eighteen straight whiskeys" at the nearby Whitehorse Tavern on 8th Avenue and Sir Arthur C. Clarke penned 2001: A Space Odyssey in Room 328 in 1968. Other famous literary residents include many of the founding fathers of the Beat Generation: Herbert Huncke, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, who wrote his famous Naked Lunch while in residence, to name a few. Mark Twain, Thomas Wolfe, Arthur Miller and Leonard Cohen also all lived, at one point or another, inside the walls of the Chelsea Hotel. The hallways are penned with genius; the corridors scribed with the suffering only a writer knows.

“Who among them can think he can outguess you?”

The music-list almost supersedes the literary one. Bob Dylan was not the only sixties icon to have lived there. The list also includes Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, and Canned Heat. In the seventies it was Patti Smith, Dee Dee Ramone, Alice Cooper, Rufus Wainwright, and Tom Waits. More recently, Madonna shot her infamous pictorial essay book Sex in Room 822 (1992) and indie rocker Ryan Adams wrote and recorded his album Love Is Hell while living there in 2004. Without doubt, the most famous music legend to come from the bowels of Hotel Chelsea is that of Nancy Spungen, who was found stabbed to death in the bathroom of Room 110 on October 12, 1978. Boyfriend and Sex Pistols front man Sid Vicious was charged with the murder, but conspiracy theories still roam on whether he committed the act or not. In a semi-conscious coma of heroin and hydromorphone, Vicious wavered back and forth from confession to exoneration about the events that night; sometimes blaming himself and other times blaming a coke dealer. He committed suicide before his trial for murder began and to this day punk diehards sneak into the hotel to leave needles, roaches, dime bags, and bottles outside where Room 110 would be if it remained in tact (management had the room destroyed and split in two sometime in the eighties in an attempt to end the unwanted shrine).

“But why did they pick you to sympathize with their side?”

It pains me to see Lady Chelsea up for sale. A prostitute she has always been; but never a whore. I find some sort of romantic nobility in the classy working girl playing matron-host to subterranean denizens. Lady Chelsea has existed for over a century now as a den mother to the rejected souls this city eats up and spits out. Few have gone on to make it; most have died in the gutter. But none of her vagrants ever compromised their will or amputated their spirit in exchange for wealth. As Chelsea is forced to list herself in Real Estate magazines where only the Hilton’s, Sheraton’s and W’s shop, I can’t help but feel saddened for this once anti-glamorous factory girl. It’s like watching the paragon of sub-society be forced to serve up Appletinis and host corporate conventions for mutual fund managers and investment bankers. You can already see the defeat in her eyes. The lobby that once inspired the Velvet Underground to write, “Her perfect loves don’t last / Her future died in someone’s past / Here they come now / See them run now / Here they come now / Chelsea Girls” risks being leased out for an on-location episode of The Real Housewives of New York City. It makes me fucking vomit.

“Oh, who among them do you think could destroy you?”