Red Mosquito

cutuphalfdead wrote:McParadigm understands Riot Act better than anyone alive today.

Seconded. Fucking great work, sir.

Lament wrote:

cutuphalfdead wrote:McParadigm understands Riot Act better than anyone alive today.

Seconded. Fucking great work, sir.

Look, Chud's post was fine and all, but you should probably be directing that at McParadigm.

I do think McP's take on Riot Act is a little bit too grim though, or the wrong kind of grim--a bit too depoliticized. It's basically impossible to overstate how much the Bush presidency/9-11 combo lead to a really powerful spiritual crisis--a moment of existenstial desolation--among elements of the American left, especially the part of the left that Eddie was ensconced in. There's that, plsu the guilt no doubt felt by supporting Nader in 2000. It turns out that, despite Nader's protestations to the contrary, that there really may be a difference between George Bush and Al Gore after all. You're left with a blasted world and a bleak future that you, in some way, helped author, where whatever forward momentum you thought history had has become completely derailed, and there is just NO idea how to pick up the pieces and move forward. It's too early, the enemy too powerful.

So I don't think it's suicidal in the way that McP is describing. Because even suicide has a sense of purpose and certainty--a direction--attached to it that just isn't present. Riot Act is more like trying to remember what it feels like to be warm while you're freezing to death. But it is an album that, even if not always explicitly political, is a personal reaction to the implosion of a larger political context.

I'd be interested in some McP on the Doors musings.

stip wrote:Look, Chud's post was fine and all, but you should probably be directing that at McParadigm.

It's never a bad thing to direct praise towards chud.

I need it, I'm pretty fucking insecure.

cutuphalfdead wrote:I need it, I'm pretty fucking insecure.

Don't be silly, there are no insecure people in this message board.

The other day someone said to me "I don't even remember who won the World Series last year" and I said to him "chud did."

Winning the World Series was awesome.

Your performance was pretty remarkable. I almost want to have children just so someday I can have grandchildren and tell them about it.

i think they wanted to do a big album with Riot Act, they just didnt quite know how. They did more promotion with this one than with Binaural and it was the first time i heard an approach to pop melodies.
The part in the pj20 with eddie and the story of Stipe telling him to write a "great" album kinda makes sense with this.

For me, it could..or it should, have been a great album, a top 3 record...but its not.

I really can't hear riot act without thinking of Devils and Dust and Around the Sun. I think all three artists are responding to the exact same crisis.

stip wrote:I really can't hear riot act without thinking of Devils and Dust and Around the Sun. I think all three artists are responding to the exact same crisis.

Good post. Around the sun is a very similar album, havent thought about it.

Is there an equivalent to Black Market Avocado for Backspacer?

VinylGuy wrote:i think they wanted to do a big album with Riot Act, they just didnt quite know how. They did more promotion with this one than with Binaural and it was the first time i heard an approach to pop melodies.
The part in the pj20 with eddie and the story of Stipe telling him to write a "great" album kinda makes sense with this.

For me, it could..or it should, have been a great album, a top 3 record...but its not.

The songs on RA that Ed wrote are ok.

stip wrote:I really can't hear riot act without thinking of Devils and Dust and Around the Sun. I think all three artists are responding to the exact same crisis.

The problem with this isn't just that you're framing a Pearl Jam record in terms of other people's music, but that you're also in at least one of those cases way off.

The majority of Devils and Dust is made up of songs that date back as far as 1995 (even the title track is a Rising outtake), a lot of them written evenings after he finished a Tom Joad show. In interviews at the album's time of release, Bruce seems particularly fixated on the experience of those shows, and of wanting to do that again. He also says a few very telling things....it's been no secret that, while he brought E-Street back into the fold in the late 90's, it was never the same relationship. Danny had already made comments about their contracts being more like those of a hired backing band than a collaborating force, and at this time Bruce made several comments to the effect of "you value what someone else can bring to your art, but nobody wants their art defined by other people's contributions." So the thing about Devils is....

...he wasn't inspired by any idea, feeling, or goal to produce new songs
...he clearly wanted to do something that would be non offensive to his audience (probably something with precedence is safest) to remind the world that it was Bruce, not Bruce And
...all he wanted to talk about in interviews is how great it was doing the Joad tour (which is maybe a nostalgically adjusted statement on his part), and how he wanted to do that again.

I see it as, Bruce had some good songs of a particular ilk, he wanted a reason to do a solo tour and remind everyone that he wasn't just "the singer for the E-Street Band," and he knew that the solo acoustic thing had a precedence of critical and fan appreciation, so it wouldn't ruffle any feathers.

Okay, feel free to scratch devils and dust then. I always thought the sound and feel of those records was similar, but I'll defer to you on that, as you clearly know the history. Having said that, I'm not framing pearl jam in terms of other peoples music. My argument is that you see several artists (pj and rem at least) with similar politics (and for whom politics is an important part of their identity) responding to a cataclysmic external event through their music in pretty much the same way. Feeling lost, powerless, certain of their convictions, but uncertain that there is a place for those convictions in the world any longer, wanting to try and understand why, and feeling more and more demoralized with everything they discover.

McParadigm wrote:

stip wrote:I really can't hear riot act without thinking of Devils and Dust and Around the Sun. I think all three artists are responding to the exact same crisis.

The problem with this isn't just that you're framing a Pearl Jam record in terms of other people's music, but that you're also in at least one of those cases way off.

The majority of Devils and Dust is made up of songs that date back as far as 1995 (even the title track is a Rising outtake), a lot of them written evenings after he finished a Tom Joad show. In interviews at the album's time of release, Bruce seems particularly fixated on the experience of those shows, and of wanting to do that again. He also says a few very telling things....it's been no secret that, while he brought E-Street back into the fold in the late 90's, it was never the same relationship. Danny had already made comments about their contracts being more like those of a hired backing band than a collaborating force, and at this time Bruce made several comments to the effect of "you value what someone else can bring to your art, but nobody wants their art defined by other people's contributions." So the thing about Devils is....

...he wasn't inspired by any idea, feeling, or goal to produce new songs
...he clearly wanted to do something that would be non offensive to his audience (probably something with precedence is safest) to remind the world that it was Bruce, not Bruce And
...all he wanted to talk about in interviews is how great it was doing the Joad tour (which is maybe a nostalgically adjusted statement on his part), and how he wanted to do that again.

I see it as, Bruce had some good songs of a particular ilk, he wanted a reason to do a solo tour and remind everyone that he wasn't just "the singer for the E-Street Band," and he knew that the solo acoustic thing had a precedence of critical and fan appreciation, so it wouldn't ruffle any feathers.

I will say that even older songs can be reinterpreted in light of a new context, and that even if he wasn't setting out to specifically make a post 9-11 album the music he did produce during that time could (and I suspect was, given the artist) impacted by that.

stip wrote:I will say that even older songs can be reinterpreted in light of a new context, and that even if he wasn't setting out to specifically make a post 9-11 album the music he did produce during that time could (and I suspect was, given the artist) impacted by that.

I would be way more inclined to believe that politics was the overriding (or even just focusing) motivator to Riot Act if the album had come out after the Vote for Change tour failed. Hell, even if it just hadn't been recorded a mere 5 months or so into the Bush administration's response to 9-11 and more than a year before Iraq happened (what a great phrase that is, eh? Like, it just happened man, I don't know. I wasn't involved).

But just given the time frame of things, it's hard for me to believe that any group of people, let alone an exposed nerve-ending like Ed, could watch people die right in front of them in a horrific accident (one that was only able to occur because they were on stage, by the way, which seems way heavier to me on the guilt-carrying scale than "I voted for Nader") and suffer through an emotional divorce, and then sit down like 18 months later and go "I need to write some songs to fix this whole president thing." I also don't believe that the timeline favors their system of writing.

In addition to that skepticism, all of their politicking at that point...all the onstage rants and interview stuff...focuses on the potential to FIX things. It isn't until after Vote for Change ends up being such a pebble to the pond that there seems to be a level of disillusionment that matches what this album sounds like.

I guess it comes down to, when you go to make a political record about change, yeah....it will often trend dark. But the whole point is still the change, which means there's usually some quality to it all or a cataclysmic moment that is a call to arms, a vision of a possible future, etc. If you're some other writer, maybe not, but if you're a Neil Young or an Eddie Vedder, or even a Springsteen, you're just too caught up in that belief to step far enough outside of it to produce anything else (ahh, Whipping, what a subtle, subtle bit of commentary). So if Riot Act was seen as a political record first when the band was working in February 2002, and not as a statement that was simultaneously larger than that and infinitely more personal, then there would have been no reason for songs like Undone and Down to be left off…two of the most political songs the sessions produced. And, I might add, ones that the band felt the need to put out there in some way afterwards, when they hadn't felt the urge to share any of the "almost included" Binaural tracks and wouldn't be much inclined to share outtakes in the future at all. If the album is about something internal, that's causing a reflection on life, then it's 2002 and international politics almost has to be involved on some level, but not in an actionable or even reflective way...more like a shiver, or just another brick in the wall. In which case the album has exactly the right amount of that infused in it.

Yeah, yeah, I know, the leftovers don't fit the mood of the record. But that, again, is not a mood conducive to "let's make a difference" or even just basic outward gazing. And this band doesn't have a great track record for keeping songs off because they don't fit the central mood of the record, either, so I kind of flinch at that argument. Like one eye twitching in slow mo. That kind of flinch. There, see? I just did it.

McParadigm wrote:

stip wrote:I will say that even older songs can be reinterpreted in light of a new context, and that even if he wasn't setting out to specifically make a post 9-11 album the music he did produce during that time could (and I suspect was, given the artist) impacted by that.

I would be way more inclined to believe that politics was the overriding (or even just focusing) motivator to Riot Act if the album had come out after the Vote for Change tour failed. Hell, even if it just hadn't been recorded a mere 5 months or so into the Bush administration's response to 9-11 and more than a year before Iraq happened (what a great phrase that is, eh? Like, it just happened man, I don't know. I wasn't involved).

That was a LONG five months. It really (for many people) felt like the United States was just about to turn into a police state in the interest of fighting terrorism, and that we were going to cheer it into existence. In hindsight a touch melodramatic perhaps, but it felt that way at the time, especially if you were reading the stuff Eddie was probably reading (given the intellectual influences he has cited before). There's no chink in the armor yet either--no gap you can turn into a way out, nor any larger indication that the nation would care enough to try

McParadigm wrote: But just given the time frame of things, it's hard for me to believe that any group of people, let alone an exposed nerve-ending like Ed, could watch people die right in front of them in a horrific accident (one that was only able to occur because they were on stage, by the way, which seems way heavier to me on the guilt-carrying scale than "I voted for Nader") and suffer through an emotional divorce, and then sit down like 18 months later and go "I need to write some songs to fix this whole president thing." I also don't believe that the timeline favors their system of writing.

I think given what we know about Ed and what we've seen in his writing, this personal state and the larger social/political state are going to really end up mutually reinforcing each other. A sense of personal bleakness to match a world that is crumbling away outside you.

The personal songs on Riot Act are touched by the politics, and the politics are refracted through his emotional state in a much more intense way than they are on S/T which, despite that often being more explicitly political and featuring mostly narrative storytelling

McParadigm wrote: In addition to that skepticism, all of their politicking at that point...all the onstage rants and interview stuff...focuses on the potential to FIX things. It isn't until after Vote for Change ends up being such a pebble to the pond that there seems to be a level of disillusionment that matches what this album sounds like.

Yeah, but the on stage stuff is also after the album is recorded, and given what they're like I have no doubt that the experience of touring, playing in front of tens of thousands of people who are cheering for you, and being able to lecture at them and have them usually cheer back, will leave you feeling pretty marvelously empowered. Vote for Change and the 04 election are the first real empirical test whether or not that voice made a difference. But even then you have the reality of the 04 election offset by the fact that Bush starts to crumble so quickly in term two. At any rate, the fact that the election was close, that the aura had largely faded, is enough to dispel the sense of apathetic hopelessness on Riot Act (where you know you SHOULD be resisting but have trouble finding the energy to do so). Now it's easy to get fired up because when you tell the world this guy is an asshole much of it will believe you.

And so, not surprisingly, S/T and Accelerate (and magic if you still want to run with the Bruce thing) are a lot more engaged and judgmental--because the capacity to judge, and the belief that this judgement matters, is restored. the somewhat childish namecalling and obscure images that you have in Bushleaguer turn into the generally much more forceful and direct stuff you'll get from World Wide Suicide (or Army Reserve or Marker or Unemployable).

McParadigm wrote: I guess it comes down to, when you go to make a political record about change, yeah....it will often trend dark. But the whole point is still the change, which means there's usually some quality to it all or a cataclysmic moment that is a call to arms, a vision of a possible future, etc. If you're some other writer, maybe not, but if you're a Neil Young or an Eddie Vedder, or even a Springsteen, you're just too caught up in that belief to step far enough outside of it to produce anything else (ahh, Whipping, what a subtle, subtle bit of commentary). So if Riot Act was seen as a political record first when the band was working in February 2002, and not as a statement that was simultaneously larger than that and infinitely more personal, then there would have been no reason for songs like Undone and Down to be left off…two of the most political songs the sessions produced

Well I'd argue that Riot Act is a political record--that's not the same thing as a record about change. Again, they did keep the title Riot Act, and used the really depressing cover art (see what good reading the riot act did)--but there's no call for arms on the record (and what little bit there is buried in the first half of the record). Instead it's mostly just acknowledging what happened, casting about for someone to blame, and wondering why to even bother. It's an intellectual exercise more than an emotional one, which is not surprising given the way the personal would be reinforcing the political.

I'm not sure it makes sense to necessarily try and figure out whether the personal or the political is dominant. They're just hopelessly intertwined and reinforcing (again, as opposed to S/T, which is telling stories about people who aren't Ed). Songs like Can't Keep, All or None, Save you, Ghost, Cropduster, even I am Mine and LBC, can probably cut both ways, and Help Help, Bushleaguer, 1/2 Full, Green Disease are definitely primarily political. Even Thumbing My Way, which is an intensely personal story is still about feeling lost with no where to go, in a geographic sense as much as an emotional/mental one.