Issue 47

Hamilhop: A Revolution | 10

But I’m Not A Rapper | 34

Boston

Opera House

northeastern students on music

Unpaid Music Internships | 40

From Cultural Icon to Northeastern Dorm

No 47

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E-Board

The Team

President David McDevitt

Staff Writers Emily Arntsen Kendall Avenia Allison Bako Spencer Bateman Joseph Bondi Justine Cowan Joey Dussault Reid Flynn Nikolas Greenwald Helen Hennessey Quinton Hubbell Zac Kerwin Sarah Kotowski Jason Levy Raquel Massoud John McGill Joanna Moore Emmett Neidhart Liam Numrich Taylor Piepenbrink Jonas Polin Seth Queeney Matt Schüler Tanvi Sehgal Craig Short Kelly Subin Christian Triunfo Alex Trzaskowski Jonathan Vayness Alex Wetzel

Editor in Chief Terence Cawley Art Directors Colleen Curtis Madisen Hackley Promotions Director Rami McCarthy

Staff Features Editor Christopher Miller Reviews Editors Tim DiFazio Peter Giunta Interviews Editor Mayeesha Galiba Web Curator Anu Gulati Photo Director Nola Chen Social Media Directors Hannah Crotty Sarah Keneipp

Promotions Stacy Andryshak Ingrid Angulo Jacob Aubertine Sofia Benitez Julia Boll Scott Breece Dash Dell’Imperio Nikita Goyal Emily Grinberg Emily Harris Helen Hennessey Erin Hensley Jae Lee Evelyn Liu Navin Mani Isabella Miele Patrick Milne Taylor Poehlman Kylie Ponce Jake Poulios Jane Slaughter

Photography Tajwar Ahad Emily Arntsen Amanda Barr Jason Crouse Hannah Drabin Madisen Hackley Jordon Halteman Sebastian Herforth Art & Design Abigail Manos Allison Bako Elice Ongko Brooke Dunahugh Rio Asch Phoenix Vanessa Gregorchik Shannon Pires Jenny Kang Derek Schuster Cammy Kuo Lauren Scornavacca Dan Mondschein Nicole Service Bianca Rabbie McKenna Shuster McKenna Shuster Lydia Tavera Anna Smith Sara Trosky Grace Woodward Carolyn Zhao

Meet the Staff

About Justine Cowan Position Staff Writer Major Marketing Graduating May 2019 Favorite Venue The Orpheum, Tampa, FL Tastemaker Since Spring 2016

Emmett Neidhart Position Staff Writer Major Architecture Graduating 2020 Favorite venue Palace Theater, Albany, NY Tastemaker Since Spring 2016

Nikolas Greenwald Position Staff Writer Major Chemical Engineering Graduating 2021 Favorite venue Terminal 5, Manhattan, NY Tastemaker Since Fall 2016

McKenna Shuster Position Designer Major Interaction Design Graduating Spring 2018 Favorite Venue Mohawk, Austin, TX Tastemaker Since Spring 2015

Listening to

Angel Olsen “Those Were the Days” Have Heart Songs to Scream at the Sun Slaughter Beach, Dog “Politics of Grooming”

Sampha Process

Quote

“I’d like to petition for ‘love handles’ to be included in the next Mad Lib”

“I’m Emmett”

Ariel Pink, Weyes Blood Myths 002 D.R.A.M. “Cha Cha”

Mykki Blanco “I’m in a Mood”

“I’m not Emmett”

FKA Twigs M3LL155X Terror Jr. “Heartbreaks”

Pinegrove Cardinal The Internet Ego Death Pedro the Lion Control

“I can fix that”

Kevin Devine, Royale

Photo by Amanda Barr (Criminal Justice/Psychology)

Table of Contents Cover Story

Editorial

29

08

The House on Huntington Avenue The history behind the Boston Opera House

43

Show Reviews Cloud Nothings, Lithic, Red Hot Chili Peppers

10 22

Not Your Older Brother’s Emo Band

Local Talent

36

32 34

The Michael Character The band, the myth, the legend

What makes Hamilton a Broadway musical unlike any other

Haven’t listened to emo since the 2000s? Now might be a good time to check back in with the genre

Album Reviews Migos, The xx, Julie Byrne, Japandroids

Sometimes making your greatest album is enough to break a band apart

Hamilhop: A Revolution

Reviews

27

The Carnage of Creativity

38

15

Calendar Local Photos

12

Radio Imperialists: How the Pop Music Industry Colonized Latin American Music Is modern pop’s relationship with reggaetón/dancehall exploitative?

19

The Impenetrable Gates of North America’s Latin Music Market A look at the compromises the American music industry demands of Latin artists

24

A Distant Revolution: The Cold Facts of Rodriguez’s Success

Luaka Bop Searching for an explanation for how the “Sugar Man” became a South African phenomenon while anonymous in his home country

David Byrne’s label and the process of rediscovering lost classics

But I’m Not A Rapper Why an increasing number of rappers would prefer you not call them that anymore

A Listener’s Guide to Music Podcasts Some suggestions for perfectly pleasant podcast programming

06

Features

40

Unpaid Internships Firsthand accounts of this controversial music industry practice

Etcetera

46

Discography

50

In Defense Of

From Something Corporate to Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness and everything in between, Mayeesha Galiba tells you everything you need to know about the music of Andrew McMahon

System Of A Down’s Mezmerize

Calendar January March Su

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Sa

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14

5 2

6 3

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Sun Drifter O’Brien’s Pub

Title Fight The Sinclair

MC Lars Beastle Blue Hill Great Scott Bank Pavilion

Leon Trout Anvil Thunder Road Great Scott

Ariana Big Thief Grande Brighton TD Garden Music Hall

Sarah Blacker Club Passim

Squirrel Nut Zippers The Sinclair

8 5

9 6

10 7

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12 9

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Save Ferris Jonathan Biss & Miriam Fried Brighton Music Hall Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Vanessa Carlton The Sinclair

Meg Baird The Center for Arts at the Armory

ReginaLab Atlast Spektor The MiddleTheatre Orpheum East Downstairs

Every Survive Circa Time I Die and mewithoutYou The Middle East House of Blues Downstairs Forth Wanderers and Half Waif Great Scott

Foxingof Leon & Kings Deerhunter Brighton Music Hall TD Garden

Los Campesinos!

Guster Paradise Rock Paradise RockClub Club

15 12

16 13

Devandra Reel Big Fish, Banhart Anti-Flag , Royale and Ballyhoo!

House of Blues

Perturbator ONCE Ballroom

17 14

18 15

19 16

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Josh Lekas The Middle East Downstairs

Deafhaven Paradise Rock Club

LeAnn Rimes Plaid The Sinclair Sinclair

House of Cherry Glazerr Pain The Middle East Royale Downstairs

Nada & Bash Surf Popand and The So So Juliana Hatfield Glos Great Scott Paradise Rock Club

Public Access T.V Great Scott

Caspian Royale

22 19

23 20

24 21

25 22

26 23

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Senses Rye Pines, FailFont Han and BilgeRock Paradise Rat Club O’Briens’s Pub

TV Girl The Middle East Downstairs

Adam Ant Wilbur Theatre

Fishbone Tokyo Police Club and Sinclair The Charly Bliss The Sinclair

Basecamp and Lauv Great Scott

Phox and Cuddle Magic Brighton Music Hall

At the Drive-In Warren Haynes and Michael House ofMcDonald Blues Orpheum Theatre

29 26

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Minus the Bear and Beach Slang Royale

Bastille Isaiah Rashad The Sinclair Agganis Arena

Lambchop Cloud Nothings Paradise Rock Brighton MusicClub Hall

Newfound Glory Paradise Rock Club

Rockommends

Deafhaven Meg Baird MarchJanuary 15 @ Paradise 10 @ The Rock Center Clubfor Arts at the Armory

Nada Surf Phox and Juliana Hatfield March 18 January @ Paradise 27 @ Rock Brighton Club Music Hall

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By Peter Bateman Giunta(Computer (Biology) Science/Music) Surf, Belly, Bill Janovitz), is one way you can help.

Terence Cawley (Biology)

February April

you can view the calendar online at: http://tastemakersmag.com/calendar

Su

Sa

5 2

6 3

Pile The Sinclair

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Great Good Fine Ok Brighton Music Hall

P. O. S The Sinclair

White Lies The Middle East Downstairs

The Menzingers Priests and and Halfsour Jeff Rosenstock Great Scott Royale

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8 5

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Red Hot Chili Peppers TD Garden

Red Hot Chili Peppers TD Garden

Son Volt Truckers Drive-By Royale Rock Club Paradise

LionelLamb Lady Ritchie The Sinclair and Mariah Carey TD Garden

Diet Cig Noam Pikelny and Anais Mitchell Brighton Music Hall GWELL-O

Radiator Hospital Great Scott

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John Mayer TD Garden

Sanders Theatre

The Middle East Upstairs

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Biffy Clyro Lemuria, Mikey Erg and Cayetana Paradise Rock Club The Sinclair

Laura Mvula The Sinclair

Roomful Less ThanofJake Teeth and Pepper Sanders Theatre House of Blues

WHY? and Cecile McLorin Salvant and Aaron Eskimeaux Diehl The Sinclair

The Magnetic Frank Turner & Fields The Sleeping Souls Agganis BerkleeArena Performance Rick Astley Center

Berklee Performance Center

House of Blues

19 16

20 27

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25 22

Tove Lo and Phoebe Ryan House of Blues

Parachute Japandroids Royale The Sinclair

John Mark McMillan

SurferDuchovny David Blood WilburScott Great Theatre

Chairlift Hill Ms.Lauryn Wang Theatre Brighton Music Hall

gnash R un The Jewels House of Blues Paradise Rock Club

George Clinto & ParliamentFunkadelic House of Blues

Wilbur Theatre

Black Joe Lewish & The Honeybears The Middle East Downstairs

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The Griswolds The Sinclair JoJo Royale

Lydia Ainsworth Colony House The Sinclair Great Scott

You Blew It!, All Get Out, and Free Throw The Sinclair

Pinegrove The Sinclair

Steve Winwood Orpheum Theatre

The Maine Royale

30

Rose Cousins Club Passim

29

At theLamb Lady Drive-In February March 2510 @@ House The Sinclair of Blues

Roomful of Teeth Japandroids February April 13 @20 Sanders @ Royale Theatre

Post-hardcore Lady Lamb, thelegacies lovelornAt storytelling the Drive-In powerhouse are crashing project into House of Maine-native of Blues after Aly canceling Spaltro, aisperformance going on a living in back room Junetour dueintosupport frontman of her Cedric newBixlerEP: /Tender Warriors Zavala losing Club/. hisFortunately voice. For those for you, who her had Boston been date isn’t in aforward looking living room to hearing – it’s attracks The Sinclair! off the visceral So twist your hips, crane Relationship of Command your neck,last andsummer, be thankful you’re youin don’tJudging luck. have to sit by on thesomeone’s recently released weird couch.

“Governed byBy Contagions,” Reid Flynn (Accounting) their first new song in 16 years, the band hasn’t lost its edge. Brace yourself for impact.

Pulitzer Prize that Japandroids, winners dynamic Roomful duoof ofTeeth combustible push the Canadians, human voice to its have finally limits with Tuvan awoken throat fromsinging, their three-year yodeling, slumber, belting, Korean and they p’ansori return and Sardinian to the touring cantu alife tenore. bearing Youthe can gift sitofaround a new watching album, young /Nearwomen white to the Wild whisper Heart over of Life/. crinkled If the candy title wrappers track is any for the third indication, night in a row, thatornew youalbum’s can head going on up to to beCambridge as chock-full forofguaranteed explosive head tingles rock straight glory as from thethe firstsource. two were, Theand choice you’re is yours. not gonna want to miss the opportunity to hear those songs in their Allison intended Bako setting: (Animation) a dark club full of sweaty believers.

Opening is the man who almost single-handedly put the rock back in indie rock, Craig Finn, with his new band The Uptown Controllers.

Justine Cowan (Marketing)

Terence Cawley (Biology)

A R A N COF CREATIVITYGE THE

Editorial

THE POST-SUCCESS BREAKUP IS AN OBSERVABLY common phenomenon. After a band releases the highlight of their career, something causes them to throw in the towel and the members to move on to something else.

While it seems counterintuitive to stop production right as the product seems to be catching on, releasing an acclaimed album can present a band with a very real and difficult set of challenges. Sometimes increased success and recognition are too much for band members to handle, but it’s not always about success. The socalled best album of an artist’s career is seldom recognized as such immediately, and there are a variety of reasons that a band might call it quits: in-fighting, creative disagreements, label troubles, and above all, the sheer emotional strain of creating great art. Let’s look at some examples.

Spring 2017

8

BIG STAR G.L.O.S.S.

(GIRLS LIVING OUTSIDE SOCIETY’S SHIT) THIS BAND ROSE TO FAME ON THE STRENGTH of its blistering hardcore punk and aggressive lyrics that chronicled the struggle of being queer, trans, or any other gender identity that modern society has not yet learned to embrace. Their progressive and often violent message struck a chord with many people, and they received critical acclaim from several major online publications with the release of their 2016 EP Trans Day of Revenge. However, just a few short months later, G.L.O.S.S. broke up, writing a long message to fans about why they chose to end the project.

Lead singer Sadie Switchblade cited the band’s increasing presence in the spotlight and heavy touring schedule as huge sources of stress for its members, saying that “operating at this high level of visibility often [felt] like too much.” Beyond that, the success of the band was starting to detract from its message. Their brand of punk was founded on helping people find themselves, letting their personalities and human elements shine through. The band members feared that their success would turn them into “one-dimensional cartoons.”

And so, right as they seemed poised to take the punk scene by the hair and swing it in new directions, G.L.O.S.S. said goodbye.

IT WAS TOO LITTLE SUCCESS THAT MADE THE seminal 70’s rock band break up after releasing two stellar (hehe) albums that are now cult favorites. The group, especially lead songwriter Alex Chilton, had aspirations of success from the start (their first album was called #1 Record, and the name Big Star was a desired endpoint more than anything). They took great inspiration from the Beatles, seeking to put an American spin on the highly successful British rock scene of the time. #1 Record, released in 1972, received excellent reviews from major publications including Rolling Stone, but unfortunately the band’s label, Stax Records, proved completely inept at advertising and distributing the record, and sales were pitifully small. The band’s frustration led to physical altercations and some malicious smashing of instruments. They began to fall into depression and drug use, and broke up briefly before coming back together to record Radio City (another title that spoke to their thirst for success). The album was received as positively as their debut, but they had the same marketing problems as before, and sales were modest at best. They broke up shortly afterward, and though a third album featuring only two original members was in the works, it has never been released in a way that Chilton considered finished, and is sometimes said not to be intended as a Big Star album at all.

SLINT

WILCO

AFTER SEVERAL ALBUMS THAT FLIRTED WITH deep experimentation that would take their alt-country/Americana sound to new heights, Wilco decided to go all-in and create Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which combined charming hooks with fractured song structures and carefully arranged layers of whirring ambience, jarring synths, and just plain noise.

It was a radical break from their previous styles, and it ended up tearing the band apart from the inside. After kicking out their drummer in 2001 for his uninventive playing, primary songwriters Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett began to grate on one another’s nerves. The band faced pressure from their label to produce a hit, and the two argued over how accessible their next album should be, each having widely different visions of the finished product. The band already had a history of recording parts behind each other’s backs, so Tweedy went ahead and recorded and mixed a large part of the album without Bennett’s help. To this day there is disagreement over what each member contributed to the album. Tensions increased when Warner Brothers refused to release the album, calling it a career ender, and negotiated an exit deal for the band. Tweedy was forced to buy the rights to the recording and take them to another, more accepting label. Bennet was removed from the band after the album’s release for reasons that are shadowy but can probably be ascribed to creative and personal differences. He died in 2009 of a painkiller overdose.

Wilco was not destroyed by Yankee Hotel Foxtrot per se, but they have never been the same band since. They lost more than a few members, including a principle songwriter, and have never made a record of the same scope and brilliance as the one that brought them to their lowest point.

THERE’S VERY LITTLE INFORMATION OUT THERE on this mild-mannered group of Louisville teenagers. We know that their music was stunningly grim. Dark guitar grooves loped along in odd time signatures, alternating between clean, leaden riffs and blinding walls of distortion. The vocals were similarly two-faced, never anywhere between a mumble and a scream, telling fragmented fables about loneliness and isolation. Slint’s music sounds like the product of a dark brotherhood of deranged men with tortured pasts, but the reality is much less exciting: they were a bunch of normal American teenagers with happy families (every track on their debut album Tweez is named after one of the band members’ parents). That a group of geeks fresh out of high school should record a record as disturbing and seminal as 1991’s Spiderland, often called one of the foundational works of post-rock, is a head scratcher, and you have to wonder how they pulled it off. The truth is that the album took its toll on Slint. Lead singer Brian McMahan made himself physically ill trying to scream over the instrumentals while recording the album’s closer. After just four days of recording, multiple members supposedly checked themselves in mental institutions.

Nobody knows exactly what happened.

The band’s producer says he simply sat back and let the band play what they needed to play. None of the members have spoken explicitly about what happened in the studio. They just hint at how “stressful” and “intense” it all was, and it seems more tactful to just leave it at that.

The band broke up a few months later, with little warning. The official story is that they didn’t work well together and wanted to move on to other things. They even put out an open advertisement on the cover of Spiderland asking for a female vocalist, but nothing ever came of it. Their dissolution was not very dramatic. They just ended. It seems like the very act of producing such an explosive and brutal work of art was too much for the band, and you can’t blame them for not wanting to go through that process again.

IT’S HARD TO DRAW A CONCRETE CONCLUSION from all this, other than that making art is difficult. Maybe creating something real and vulnerable and risky is inevitably difficult, and creation is destined to cause pain. Maybe it’s the opposite: maybe the pain and conflict that go into the creation of such albums are precisely what make them great, injecting them with real emotion and sincerity. It could be both. That being said, there have been plenty of great albums that didn’t end in heartbreak. If you’re looking to get into the rock’n’roll hall of fame, tearing your band apart might not be the best way to do it. Still… there’s something to be said for conflict as a catalyst for art. As G.L.O.S.S. would say, “let’s give violence a chance!”

• Craig Short (Music Industry)

9

Editorial

hop HAMIL A REVOLUTION

by anika krause, english

Spring 2017

10

Hamilton: love it or hate it, you’ve definitely heard of it and could probably recognize a song or two. This hip-hop reflection on one of our founding fathers has grown into a box-office breaking hit, revolutionizing Broadway by bringing a previously disrespected genre to the forefront of high theatre. But Hamilton reflects on more than our foundational past. It also explores the revolutionary founding fathers of modern rap, hip-hop and R&B.

If you listen closely, you’ll happen upon lines and melodies you’ve heard before. Of course, Slate beat us to it and has taken the time to catalogue every reference in a recent article. Their track-bytrack exploration leads to endless astounding discoveries of hidden references. For example, in “My Shot,” Hamilton claims that he’s “only 19 but my mind is older.” This line is directly poached from Mobb Deep’s “Shook Ones Part II,” the hit single off their ‘95 album The Infamous.

How about the repeated titular phrase at the end of “Meet Me Inside?” This comes from DMX’s party classic “Party Up (Up in Here),” which ends in a repetition of “meet me outside,” complete with the whistles and sirens. Aaron Burr and Hamilton yelling “ladies” in “A Winter’s Ball?” Plucked from the Beastie Boys ‘89 banger “Hey Ladies.” And, of course, “Ten Duel Commandments” references Biggie’s equally salacious “Ten Crack Commandments.” This just

““ In fact, Hamilton is all about parallels and the process of referencing the rap and hip hop that came before it.”

scratches the surface of the references used; Beyoncé, Brandy, A Tribe Called Quest, Eminem, and more are directly referenced in Lin Manuel Miranda’s magnum opus.

The usage of allusions in Hamilton speaks to the nature of rap as an inherently referential genre. Most, if not all, of the songs discussed above have been borrowed and sampled from by countless successful rappers. Even these referenced songs and artists borrow from those before. Artists in the world of rap and hip-hop engage in a constant process of building on what exists and one-upping it.

But while this technique is crucial to rap, reference, for the most part, stays out of Broadway. Viewers enter the hallowed theaters in search of either a beloved classic or something utterly new. Most praise for Hamilton falls into the second category, with critics lauding Hamilton as a work that is absolutely without parallel. Yet, Miranda himself explicitly exposes his work’s inspiration in the playbill, textually tying Broadway and Biggie. Yes, Hamilton is innovative, and in some ways new to Broadway, but it most certainly is not unparalleled. In fact, Hamilton is all about parallels and the process of referencing the rap and hip-hop that came before it, as well as earlier theatrical productions like South Pacific and the works of Shakespeare.

The significance of this signifying is multifold. In terms of theatrical tradition, the act of openly acknowledging the references in the show flouts ideas of classic musicals as autonomous and individual entities. One could argue that such a perception of any type of media is ludicrous anyway, as all art is based on what comes before it. By including his inspiration in the front matter of his musical, Miranda not only boldly breaks with

tradition, but celebrates this act of borrowing as a nod to the hip-hop world.

Then, there’s genre. Rap is a frequently vilified genre, especially in high-brow circles, which many Broadway aficionados occupy.

Hip-hop and Broadway were two terms that were never found in the same sentence until Miranda’s first hit show In the Heights, which follows the experience of a young immigrant living in Washington Heights. But Hamilton takes the work of the much tamer In the Heights one step further. Unlike the cleaned up, Broadway-safe verses Usnavi delivers in In the Heights, Hamilton’s lyrics are unapologetically harsh and frequently vulgar. While this certainly isn’t the first time Broadway stages have been graced with crudeness, the use of crude material from a vilified genre is a bold and radical action in the world of high theatre. In doing this, it seems that Miranda aims to stake a claim for the value of rap across sociocultural barriers, and the show’s smashing success certainly seems to attest to that value.

Hamilton is, of course, an historic musical that tells the story of pivotal figures in American history: Washington, Jefferson, and, you guessed it, Alexander Hamilton.

Their words are referenced in the musical as well; Washington’s emotional farewell address is sung in “One Last Time,” and Jefferson’s famed phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” from the Declaration of Independence is worked into an incredible diss in “Cabinet Battle #1.”

Interwoven with these historically significant words are the language of hip-hop.

At first, imagining a link between DMX and President Washington seems ludicrous and even irreverent, but dig deeper and you will find similarities, and inherent Americanness, in the ideals that figures mentioned

represent. Many iconic hip-hop stars like DMX rose to success through struggle, and catalogue that struggle in their works. They fulfill the American ideal of the self-made man, as a 21st century extrapolation on Jefferson’s ideal of American “yeoman farmers.” Miranda certainly saw the parallels between the hip-hop star’s rise and Hamilton’s successful ability to rise up as a poor immigrant from the Caribbean. This is a quintessential American story, one that we return to again and again as inspiration.

Further, we celebrate rappers for their eloquence, as we do Hamilton, Jefferson, and Washington for theirs. Rap is also a genre frequently rooted in justice and is a space where social commentary blossoms. Sure, the language sounds different, but themes of fighting for what you want against impossible odds are both echoed in The Declaration of Independence and Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” the inspiration for “My Shot.” By paralleling the foundational figures of American society and the founding mothers and fathers of hip hop, rap, and R&B, Miranda highlights shared American ideals across generations in the face of very different struggles, and emphasizes the impact of the messages of our modern hip-hop heroes.

The references in Hamilton and the show’s smashing success work to elevate a frequently vilified genre that is too often treated as something without intellectual worth. But perhaps a more powerful, if more local, move that Miranda makes is taking the words of Biggie and putting them into the mouth of Alexander Hamilton. By doing this, he makes a bold claim: that the work of iconic rappers and R&B stars is in many ways as essentially American as the products of the founding fathers. So, if you don’t know, now you know.

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Feature

Radio Imperialists: How the Pop Music Industry Colonized Latin American Music

We’ve all heard the staggered eighth note reggaetón rhythm with which 2016 became obsessed. Artists from Justin Bieber to Meghan Trainor to Sia have used it to create some of the most popular songs of the past year-and-a-half or so, but to what extent is it these artists’ business to be making products (and profits) out of these Caribbean-inspired beats? Categorically none of these artists’ characteristic genres incorporate this style, nor have any of them been a part of the culture from which it originates. So why did they end up creating these songs? Since the end of 2015, we’ve gradually witnessed a trend in pop music that has become more and more pronounced, that being the appropriation of Latin American music into our own musical culture. Although this practice of exploitation has been around for hundreds of years, the most recent musical releases of pop artists provide a framework for analyzing how cultural appropriation can exist within the very composition of the music we listen to.

The phrase “cultural appropriation” typically conjures the image of a celebrity tactlessly wearing a valuable or symbolically significant piece of clothing from another culture simply to make a fashion statement on the red carpet. This type of action nowadays is pretty widely considered insensitive and will usually instigate backlash from fans and mainstream media, almost always resulting in an apology from the Spring 2017

12

perpetrator. But what about the cases that aren’t so obvious, the thefts that are made without a backlash? Although fashion is a particularly easy realm in which to point out examples of cultural appropriation, it would be naïve to assume that those are the only aspects of culture that are exploited. Musical appropriation has existed for hundreds of years, since the days of the Romantic composers. During those times, the practice was dressed up with the term exoticism, wherein composers like Dvorak and Debussy would arrange their pieces to evoke the music of another culture (coincidentally ones that were being colonized, fought over or economically imposed upon by their home countries).

Now the point of this is not at all to suggest that musicians should stay away from exploring new styles or to suggest that any music is the sole property of one group of people. After all, music by its very construction is an art of imitation and building upon the groundwork that previous composers have set forth. However, there’s a fine line between cultural diffusion and exploitation. We can’t ignore that music, as much of an art form as it is, is just as much a commercial entity in the modern age.

Artists, especially those with the monetary value of modern American pop stars, hold great financial stakes in the music they choose to perform and brand themselves with. Thus, when we see them step outside of their typical style to “borrow” the music of another culture, we need to understand that this attempt to “diversify” their sonic character has fiscal implications. Although

artists like Popcaan and Ce’ Cile have been recording dancehall for years, they fail to get a quarter of the views or recognition that Meghan Trainor has gotten for “Better.”

Reggaetón artists have been using dembow riddim-based accompaniments in their songs for decades, but many of them will never see the payout that “Cheap Thrills” got for Sia. So, is that right on a moral level? Why should American artists be the ones to experience the glory of music that they were not the ones to come up with?

Another question that comes to mind is why we don’t see more Latin American and Caribbean artists entering our charts since their music has gotten so popular here. Therein lies another problem created by the utilization of other cultures’ music by our pop stars. Is it not peculiar that we don’t see more artists originating from Latin America in our musical ecosystem? Isn’t it curious that J Balvin or Farruko haven’t become household names in the States?

This, of course, is not a question that has gone unaddressed; however, the criticism usually goes unheard. The Chilean music blog Pousta blasted “Sorry” as a “tutorial

by Skrillex on how to make reggaetón for white people,” going on to explain how Latin American culture is viewed more as a commercial opportunity than a culture by the imperialistic American music industry.

Why should American artists be the ones to experience the glory of music that they were not the ones to come up with?

Such a claim holds some merit when looking at the music videos of the songs in question.

Almost none of them celebrate or even give a nod to the cultures that they musically incorporate. Essentially, the music has been stripped of its cultural identity, and thus artists who have that cultural identity don’t have the same doorway to success here.

As 2016 progressed, it seemed like every American pop artist and their aunt had at least one reggaetón or dancehall-inspired song, either as a lead single or filler track on their albums. The genres themselves became ways to “spruce up” or “add a little kick” to an artist’s palette and get more people enticed, lacking any cultural ties or meaning beyond that. Just recently Ed Sheeran, acclaimed for his downtempo ballads, came out with the dancehall-inspired “Shape of You” as the lead single for his highly anticipated new album.

Sheeran stated in an interview on BBC’s Radio 1 Breakfast Show that Rihanna’s music inspired the piece to some degree. The song

received positive reviews, some of which even cited and praised the Caribbean inspiration for the song despite its showing no other relationship to the culture it borrowed beyond composition. This comes in stark contrast to the criticism Rihanna herself faced after the release of her dancehall song “Work,” whose much more mixed reviews not only criticized Rihanna’s return to the genre but also claimed her use of patois to be gibberish.

This double standard that punishes artists for celebrating their culture but praises white artists who capitalize on that same culture puts Latin American artists in a double bind: either sterilize their music of identity and cultural relevance or come under fire for celebrating their origins.

So, what does this mean for our pop artists? Should they just quit making this style of music? Although the trend of Latin American-inspired music has only been around for a little over a year, it does appear that it may already be integrated into our culture to a point beyond being retractable.

What it does mean, however, is that artists

should be more mindful of the music they create or choose to perform. Demonstrating a knowledge or appreciation for the culture they choose to incorporate is a good starting point. Even better would be talking about or promoting artists who inspired the styles they have chosen to adopt. Best would be collaborating with artists who are part of the cultures they incorporate beyond the few that are already popular here (shoutout to Sean Paul). It also means that we, as listeners and even music critics, need to start paying more attention to the cultural implications of music. In this way, not only would a respect be established for other cultures’ music and their musicians, but also a less superficially multicultural music industry could be achieved.

• Nikolas Greenwald (Chemical Engineering)

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music by its very construction is an art of imitation and building upon the groundwork that previous composers have set forth.

However, there’s a fine line between cultural diffusion and exploitation.

Local Photos

LoCash, House of Blues

Photo by Lauren Scornavacca (Engineering)

LoCash, House of Blues

Photo by Lauren Scornavacca (Engineering)

Paradise Fears, The Studio at Webster Hall

Photo by Lydia Tavera (Music Industry)

Isaiah Rashad, The Sinclair

Photo by Rio Asch Phoenix (Media Arts)

The

Impenetrable Gates of

North America’s

Latin Music Market “Local artists either remain local, or they must become an international phenomenon; there is no in-between.”

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In Alexander Dinelaris’ jukebox musical “On Your Feet!,” the audience is expected to sing along and dance to Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine’s greatest hits. But, amid the flashy dance numbers and exaggerated vocals, there is a poignant scene that addresses an issue with the movement of Latin culture into the United States.

Having been recognized locally as a success, an American record label turns down Gloria and her husband Emilio after noting that their music was entirely sung in Spanish. There is a momentary loss of hope in the narrative as the actors realize that their culture will always be cast to the side as minorities of the nation they call home. The perception of immigrants as workers and not humans is highlighted in this scene, and in what may be a game-changer for the progression of Latin music, Gloria Estefan and The Miami Sound Machine march back into the record label with their first English-language song and global success, 1984’s “Dr. Beat.” The same year the single was released, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences awarded the first Grammy for Best Tropical Latin Album to Tito Puente and the first Grammy for Best Latin Pop Album to Jose Feliciano. As time went on, the music of Latin America became an essential part of North American culture, to both great benefit and many costs. Alongside the newfound success for many Latin artists, there has also been a branding of the genre, limiting new, more unknown and especially controversial artists.

Increasing poverty and emerging authoritarian regimes throughout Latin America made the 1980s a time of increased immigration to the U.S. In 1986, Ronald

“Alongside the newfound success for many Latin artists, there has also been a branding of the genre, limiting new, more unknown and especially controversial artists.”

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Reagan passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which was one of the most ambitious pieces of immigration legislation passed in the States, granting legal status to millions. Although citizens of each of these nations had already founded smaller émigré populations in the U.S. well before the 1970s, the turmoil of the 1980s resulted in an unprecedented wave of Latinos. By 1990, there was an aggregate Central American population of 1.324 million in the U.S., making what once was a marginal component of a minority a very present and important part of the U.S. population.

With the first Grammys being awarded to Latino artists, other institutions began to reflect interest in Latino media as well. 1987 marked the year that Univision Holdings Inc. formed, validating and branding Univision as a major Spanish language television network. The next decade would mark the start of the new age of Latin music. U.S.born Latin artists began emerging, including icons like Marc Anthony. Foreign musicians began changing their style, singing and collaborating with English-language musicians. Gilberto Santa Rosa, now known

as “the gentleman of salsa,” kicked off his career in 1986 with Good Vibrations, an album that, despite being entirely performed in Spanish, had an English title. Menudo, a Puerto Rican pop group which would launch the career of Ricky Martin, released their first English-language album in 1987. Paulina Rubio began collaborating with American artists and singing in English, while Juan Luis Guerra had an album that went platinum in the U.S. in the ‘90s. In 1993, La Mega, New York’s largest tropical music station, rebranded itself and began broadcasting the genres it is known for today, and hundreds of Latino radio stations emerged across the country. Celia Cruz began approaching more U.S. collaborations with her album Duets in 1997. That same year, the Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences was instituted,

“Foreign musicians began changing their style, singing and collaborating with English-language musicians.” and the first Latin Grammys premiered in the year 2000. The 2000s also brought new and changed genres in the Latin American community. Groups like Xtreme, Wisin & Yandel and Daddy Yankee changed the sound of and pioneered genres like bachata and reggaeton, defining them as something more than Latin music. North America was no longer a location of distribution, but of production as well.

Most recently, Colombian artist Juan Luis Lodoño Arias — who goes by the stage name Maluma — has emerged as one of the new and youngest faces of reggaeton in the United States. He started his career nearly seven years ago at the age of 16 and was a local success. Eventually, he signed with Sony Colombia and began to spread his music to new markets. Comparing the titles of his two studio releases is enough to demonstrate the influence of the North American market. His first album, primarily performed in Spanish, is titled Magia (Magic) and is entirely different in production, style and approach to his most recent project, titled Pretty Boy, Dirty Boy. Apart from having more developed instrumentation and a matured sound, Maluma explores genres that have higher rates of interest in North America, like electronica and dance-pop. Apart from this, he caters to the most popular sounds of North American Latin music radio stations.

Particularly focused on tropical music, Maluma begins introducing songs that engage the sounds of modern merengue and bachata.

Colombia is no stranger to artists that have been entirely rejected by the North American market. La Mambanegra is a group that combines elements of hardcore salsa, funk, hip-hop, reggae and ska. The group has reached new heights of experimentation in Latin music, and yet they have been consistently denied nominations in any pertinent Latin music award ceremony, all of which are hosted or funded by the U.S. market. Similarly, Puerto Rican group Calle 13 felt a similar struggle entering the North American market, despite being from Puerto Rico. Their politically charged lyrics have been shunned by radio stations, and the group even addressed their constant flirtation with failure due to record labels threatening to or actively dropping the group. In their 2010 album Entren Los Que Quieran, the group has a parodic intro that recounts, “Durante estos últimos años, Calle 13 ha recibido muchas amenazas de muerte,

“politically charged lyrics have been shunned by radio stations”

doce Grammys, y nos han censurado en la radio.” This translates to, “During these last few years, Calle 13 has received many death threats, 12 Grammys, and we have been excluded and censored on the radio.”

The intro also relates that this album might have been the last, due to contractual issues with their record label. The group has been lauded for breaking boundaries in their genre of reggaeton, for speaking their minds and for giving many marginalized communities a voice in the North American market.

Calle 13’s existence is a testament to the exclusivity and inevitably destructive force of the Americanized Latin music market.

Latin artists claim that it is necessary to be successful in the U.S. to be successful in general. Local artists either remain local, or they must become an international phenomenon; there is no in-between. The crux of the Latin American music market is that although many artists have flipped their styles and succumbed to the demands of a melted pot, there is now a pertinent market that serves the modern Latino immigrant culture of the U.S. As necessary as this may be, the market still has room to open and let new artists in without as many restraints as there are now.

• Christian Triunfo (English/Journalism)

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Editorial

Not Your Older Brother’s Emo Band

Recently a coworker asked me, apropos of nothing, “Wait, are you emo?” Which is sort of like asking a dude listening to Drake, “Are you hip hop?” Or like asking an Insane Clown Posse fan, “Are you awful?” The semantics of how to use adjectives aside, there seems to be a very real disconnect between how the genre of emo music was viewed in the collective cultural mindset ten years ago, and how it ought to be viewed today. If you’ll allow me, this merits correcting.

For those of you who stopped paying attention during the Bush administration, you may remember emo music as a series of laughable clichés. Clichés you clung tight to because Pete Wentz understood you better than your parents. There were painted nails and trips in the family mini-van to Hot Topic.

You probably knew every palm-muted power chord and put more effort into coordinating which of your friends sang which part of the Taking Back Sunday harmony than you did into lying about your science fair results. Did you have to sweep your bangs aside to see all the My Chemical Romance songs in your LimeWire feed? Yeah, like, same.

So, I’m sure as you got older you laughed it off as a phase (hey, at least it wasn’t ska, right?) and tore the All Time Low poster down from your wall. Now let’s kickflip into 2017,

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shall we? I want you to suspend the belief that this is how emo music must be. The operatic harmonies, chorus after chorus of breakups and bitter ex’s, the self-loathing sing-alongs.

There’s so much more going on in emo music today. There’s music of substance being made. Music that can seem so important, beating your journal entries to the punch, even after your prefrontal cortex has fully developed.

There’s so much more going on in emo music today.

There’s music of substance being

made.

I suppose the biggest bridge between your older brother’s emo bands and today’s is that they both present ideas that are often spoken about in hushed tones — mental health, addiction, feelings — with an intensity and openness unmatched elsewhere in guitar music. Today though, there’s less glam to the presentation of it, and more emphasis on the articulation. Take last year’s standout, Pinegrove, for example, who aptly bill themselves tongue-in-cheekily as “music for the promotion of introspective partying.” If you need songs that make you want to write lyrics on your battered Converse, look no further than them.

Gut-punch lines like “One day I won’t need your love / One day I won’t define myself by the one I’m thinking of,” stand alone, leaving no need for flashy guitars or glossy studio harmonies.

And today there’s a lot more variety to what constitutes an emo band, so much so that you’ll say, “Wow, that’s a lot of varieties of emo bands.” Say you miss that Blink-182-inspired pop-punk sound?

Modern Baseball and Sorority Noise have got you covered. Need a little screaming thrown in there to get the adrenaline flowing? Try The Hotelier. Just wanna feel things that you didn’t know were in you? Give The World is a Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die a shot.

Ever thought, “Hey, what if there was also a banjo in this song?” So has Pinegrove.

And every single one of them has something important to say.

There’s a common trope about emo music that it’s all just sad guys whining about girls (albeit with killer choruses). I would argue that while heartbreak is universally felt and thus expressed in every genre in music to some degree, emo bands today write songs focused on a much greater range of topics.

There’s a common trope about emo music that it’s all just sad guys whining about girls (albeit with killer choruses).

Songs that take the mundanity of a cup of coffee, a conversation on the porch outside of a party or a drive through the suburbs past the touchstones of your childhood, and attach a narrative experienced individually, but expressed with the utmost relatability. The perfection with which these bands capture reflective moments is astounding, and never nearly as trite as their predecessors.

There’s brilliant lines about every subject.

On mental health: “What the fuck do I know? / I had a chance to construct something beautiful / And I choked” (from The Hotelier’s “An Introduction to the Album”). On partying: “You were drunker than high school / selfconscious and sweet” (from Joyce Manor’s “Constant Headache”).

On unrequited love: “It’s been three whole years of me thinking about you every day / Sometimes for hours, sometimes in passing” (from Modern Baseball’s “Your Graduation”). On platonic

love: “I should call my parents when I think of them / Should tell my friends when I love them” (from Pinegrove’s “Old Friends”).

And the earnestness with which these stories are told far surpasses that of their forbearers. I don’t know if Gerard Way actually fears teenagers, but I sure as hell believe every goddamn word coming out of these guys’ mouths.

The perfection with which these bands capture reflective moments is astounding, and never nearly as trite as their predecessors.

deserves to be taken more seriously. Because of the stigma of how we perceive emo bands, most of today’s bands I’ve mentioned prefer not to even be lumped in with the genre at all. I would bet none of them even own one of those skater beanies with the brim on the side of it. Should we even be calling what we listened to as angsty teenagers by the same name as what we listen to as angsty adults? Maybe? I don’t know, I don’t make the rules, I just make snide remarks about them.

But I encourage you, if you threw out your Dashboard Confessional CDs with your Silly Bandz, to check back in and see if emo can make you feel things again.

• Reid Flynn (Accounting)

Now I don’t mean to disparage the likes of Four Year Strong, A Day to Remember or whatever you had a deep emotional connection to growing up. If it was important to you, then good! But the genre never went away, it just morphed into something that

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Feature

A Distant Revolutio The Cold Facts of Rodriguez’s Success Different cultures have their own definitions of popular music, but rarely does an artist from one culture so heavily penetrate a cross-cultural market while buried in obscurity in his home country.

By a show of hands, how many of you are familiar with the 1970s singer/songwriter Rodriguez? Now, most of you likely kept those hands pinned right to your side (metaphorically of course, unless you actually decided to raise your hand, in which case well done, I guess). Until the 2012 documentary Searching for Sugar Man properly got his name out, there was a simple reason that the majority of Americans had never (and still have not) heard of Rodriguez, and that’s because his debut album, Cold Fact, was a critical and commercial flop immediately after it was released in 1970.

For the uninitiated, Sixto Rodriguez, to call him by his given name, was a lowerechelon man living in Detroit who made extra money in the evenings by performing his original Dylan-inspired tunes at dive

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on bars. He was a strange man, or at least very shy. He would croon his heart out, strum his guitar and project his exceptionally unique voice with his back turned to the rowdy crowd. Even though frequenters of the bar seldom saw his face, his simple folk tunes and the mystery of his persona were intriguing enough to score him a record deal with Sussex Records. In a matter of months, he had a full-length LP, Cold Fact, recorded, mastered and released. Sussex was so confident in his music, with its dreamy, confrontational lyrics and campfire vibe, that they assumed he’d be an instant hit. And then, as the documentary laments, “it went nowhere.” The album sold abysmally in the US, and after giving him a futile second chance in the form of 1971 effort Coming from Reality, Sussex dropped the budding artist.

Defeated, Rodriguez bought an auctioned government-owned home for $50 and went back to life as a construction worker. Fast-forward one year later: a bootlegged copy of Cold Fact somehow made its way to the coast of South Africa, where

it began to circulate among local record stores and garnered a decent word-of-mouth following. But it didn’t stop there like in the States; Cold Fact took the nation by absolute storm, with hits like “I Wonder” shaping the childhoods and youths of thousands of South Africans (two of which are my parents) to this day. Within a couple of years, sales of Rodriguez’s music had outnumbered those of Elvis Presley. Rodriguez was the most famous entertainer in South Africa, and he had no idea. Because of the lack of information on the vinyl packaging, as well as the inconsistencies of Rodriguez’s name in print, it took the creators of Searching for Sugar Man over 25 years to locate the singer.

After receiving the shock of his life about his overseas fame, Rodriguez went on a modest six-date tour of South Africa to sold-out crowds of thousands upon thousands of fans. But just what made Rodriguez such an icon in South Africa while in his native America his name was not even known outside of his hometown? What about Cold Fact transformed a humble construction worker into the voice of an entire generation halfway across the globe?

As a business student, my first instinct when answering this conundrum was to immediately research the marketing

efforts behind the record, and discover what promotional measures were taken to push the artist. But before I could even type “Rodriguez Cold Fact Marketing” into Google, I realized that

“

Rodriguez was the most famous entertainer in South Africa, and he had no idea.

“

this quandary was completely irrelevant. If a single bootlegged copy of Cold Fact could stir up the buzz that it did in South Africa, then there had to infinitely more behind that success than a good marketing campaign. I needed to go deeper.

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Feature

It could be that Rodriguez’s style of music at the time of release was simply outdated. 1970 may seem early for an artist to be considered “past their time,” but Rodriguez was undeniably a product of iconic predecessors such as Cat Stevens, the Guthries and the aforementioned Bob Dylan.

It is very possible that American audiences saw Rodriguez as nothing more than a copycat aiming to ape previous folk successes, with nothing more than a few synth effects to differentiate himself. This is unlikely, but a possibility nonetheless.

There is much more mileage in discussing the impact of the album’s lyrics and subject matter. What America was lyrically fairly used to, but South Africa was not (in the mainstream at least), was the surprising bluntness of Cold Fact’s messages. The previously mentioned megahit “I Wonder” comes to mind. In the third line of the tune, Rodriguez sings “I wonder how many times you had sex.” While the

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Cold Fact was at the center of it all: a beautiful message of defiance that united the revolution in song.

“

line may not seem like much now, to 1970’s South African culture, it was essentially their version of Nine Inch Nails’ “I wanna fuck you like an animal.” The subject matter of Rodriguez’s songs also leave little to the imagination. On the opening track, “Sugar Man,” Rodriguez pleads to the titular man, “For a blue coin won’t you bring back all those colors to my dreams/ Silver magic ships you carry /Jumpers, coke, sweet Mary Jane.” The verse is hardly euphemistic, and is sung over a track full of psychedelic effects and soundscapes. While drugs in music were nothing new, never had South Africans been exposed to the taboo of it so unabashedly (the closest I can think of is “Purple Haze”). That, finally, is where the politics come into play.

In the 1970s, South Africa was still in the heat of apartheid. But just like the ‘60s and ‘70s in America, a counter-culture was brewing in the mainstream. The difference was that the censorship hammer came down significantly harder in South Africa than in the States, and something like Woodstock would never fly overseas. While none of Rodriguez’s songs were about the racist culture of South Africa, many songs had a strong undertone of revolution and callsto-arms that, coupled with the lyrics, got the album banned in the country. To young activists, a song with the line “I wonder, will this hatred ever end / I wonder, and worry my friend” was a perfect microcosm of the

apartheid struggle. That’s just what that song, among other Cold Fact cuts, became: a glorious anti-discrimination anthem. Many anti-apartheid advocates romanticized a brutal “us vs. them” story for other racism protesters to get behind, and Cold Fact was at the center of it all: a beautiful message of defiance that united the revolution in song.

Between a couple short tours of the formerly apartheid nation from 1998 onwards, Rodriguez would always travel back home to his government housing in Detroit, working day in and day out as a demolition man. He never made a cent in royalties from South African sales until he discovered his international fame. The humblest of men, Rodriguez was and remains the voice of a generation of united activists and an entire political movement- all from the comfort of his hometown, thousands of miles away.

• Jason Levy (Marketing)

Show Reviews Cloud Nothings January 31 @ Paradise Rock Club As I navigated through a modest crowd at the Paradise — it was a Tuesday night, after all — I brought a certain bias of expectation along with me. LVL UP, those DIY veteransturned- Sub Pop signees, have been on the up.

Cloud Nothings, by comparison, are five years and two albums past their best work (2012’s Steve Albini-engineered Attack on Memory), though critics are slowly warming to this year’s Life Without Sound.

LVL UP, for their part, did meet those Pet Shop Boys expectations.

Passing over fan favorites Terence like “DBTS,” Cawley “Soft (Biology) Power,” and “Hidden Driver,” the band played a healthy mix of old and new cuts: Bassist/vocalist Nick Corbo led a particularly incisive version of Space

Brothers jam “Third Eye,” and guitarist Mike Caridi was showcased prominently for his songwriting contributions to Return to Love.

Endlessly self-referential, the band also worked in bits of Elliott Smith’s “Roman Candle,” whose lyrics are sampled in “Pain” and whose title is sampled on the Space Brothers album opener “Roman Candle.”

Perhaps owing to newly-realized psych influences, these songs took on a new form: jammier, and crushingly heavy.

But if LVL UP were the hammer, Cloud Nothings were the sword. Their brand of jagged, blistering indie rock belied both the relative quiet of their recorded material — my left ear, unfortunately positioned

toward a front-of- house speaker, was totally shot — and the indie bros who, apparently, mainly showed up to mosh to “Now Hear In.” Grimier versions of “I’m Not Part of Me” and “Enter Entirely” were sprinkled throughout, punctuated only by the brief mutterings of chief songwriter Dylan Baldi. Surprisingly, the band wedged Attack-era staples like “Stay Useless” in the middle of their set, saving the encore for 20 minutes of extended jams and gratuitous drum solos. This seemingly innocuous choice felt like a slap to me and my preconceived notions: Cloud Nothings are looking decidedly forward, not back.

Joey Dussault (Journalism)

Lithic January 28 @ Allston House Show I first heard of Lithic a few months ago from a friend of a friend, with the only description being, “There’s this really great band from Berklee that everyone there is talking about.

You gotta see ‘em live!” I saw them perform the following week and I was nothing short of blown away by their stage presence.

When I entered the venue, four other bands had already played, but a stream of people kept coming in. When Lithic was about to go on, the room was literally packed with expectant fans. Addressing the growing crowd, guitarist Jack Dinger yelled out, “Where’s my guitar?” The audience responded by crowd surfing his guitar to him.

With no intention to disappoint, they kicked off their set with a rendition of “I

Want You (She’s So Heavy)” by The Beatles that they somehow made all their own, with a harder sound and a scatting solo thrown in for good measure. After a wave of applause, they promptly started going into their own catalog, consisting of melodic pieces from Dinger, wild riffs from Stone Panunzio, infectious rhythms from drummer Marvin Buessau and intricate lines from bassist Juan Peña.

Each song somehow found a perfect combination of dark, heavy rock and groovy, upbeat vibes. On the funky track “Fill the Void,” Marvin took an unexpected solo that took on a life of its own, showing off his prowess with the sticks. After a song that sounded like a mash-up between The Grateful Dead and Rage Against the Machine, The

Check out our interview with Lithic on tastemakersmag.com!

crowd started chanting for their big track “I Don’t Know.” Obviously, the band wanted to save the song for the grand finale, but a look was shared on stage, and they put on a show for the people with Stone and Jack trading off guitar solos effortlessly and Juan pulling off bass tricks I didn’t even know were possible.

Without a defined finish, the band then showed off their versatility by creatively coming up with a set list finish. Donning a sombrero found among the crowd, Stone led the band into the next track “Use Your Voice.”

With a chanting crowd in front of them, Lithic then closed out with a straight up jam, with every member taking a turn soloing. By the end of the set, every single person in the venue was jumping around and going wild to Lithic like they had just seen a legendary band at work.

Quinton Hubbell (Engineering)

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Red Hot Chili Peppers Rio Asch Phoenix (Media Arts)

Reviews

Red Hot Chili Peppers February 7 @ TD Garden What do people want to see from the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2017? The band is at this point a radio-rock institution and a formative influence on quite a few young music fans (this writer included), but the question remains. The Peppers have worn many hats (and socks), so I went into this show at TD Garden wondering whether they would shut up and play the hits, prioritize new material, or meet somewhere in the middle.

The show began with an opening set by Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue, which featured a trumpet solo amazing enough to whip the entire stadium into a frenzy and get everyone ready to lose their minds.

Eventually, the Chilis walked out to a series of beautiful saxophone runs. The noise in the Garden was deafening as the band took to their instruments. Frontman Anthony Kiedis was nowhere to be found, and the three band members launched into it, playing a manic, bluesy jam that slowly racheted up in intensity until they were all pounding out a rising series of notes. The lead singer walked out in the middle of this, and suddenly those rising notes became the pump-up intro to “Can’t Stop,” a song that sounded right at home booming across a stadium.

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After “Can’t Stop,” the Peppers’ drummer Chad Smith took a second to showcase how fast he could drum, and the rest of the band played along with him at a breakneck pace.

Just when it seemed that the jam was petering out, they launched into “Dani California,” another surefire hit, which prompted the couple in front of me to do air-guitar windmills. The song ended on an interesting note as well, with a spooky feeling and slow, screaming guitar. This was the point where it appeared that the Chilis might be trying to do something more than just play the hits.

Next, the band played a deeper cut, the sunny tropical pop of “The Zephyr Song,” and followed it up with “Dark Necessities,” a standout from their most recent record.

Then they surprised me, launching into “Hey,” a less-known song. The crowd seemed lost trying to sing along, but the people who recognized the deeper cut (myself included) really enjoyed it.

The more muted reaction to “Hey” didn’t stop them. The band followed it with a few songs from their newer albums (“Go Robot” and “Look Around”), one of which featured two bass guitarists, giving bass god Flea a chance to show off a little.

The band threw a hit to the crowd with “Californication,” whose themes of media

overreach sounded even more poignant in 2017 with a reality star-president. The band kept pushing boundaries after — covering a punk song by The Stooges and playing fan favorites “Suck My Kiss,” and “I Could Have Lied.” Both songs drew raves from the crowd, who shout-rapped along with Kiedis to “Suck My Kiss.”

The band finished with “By The Way,” a sing-along. They came out quickly for an encore, though, and guitarist Josh Kinghoffer performed a solo cover of the theme from “Cheers.” The band ended the encore with the funky, rap-rock “Give it Away,” which brought the house down.

The end result was a show that made the case for the Peppers as the best kind of stadium rock, able to select the right parts of their legacy to appeal to anyone and sound great doing it. They’re a goofy band with big goofy hits who still go shirtless on stage, but they can still pull it off, and the end result reminded me why I always loved them.

Seth Queeney (Political Communications)

The House on Huntington Avenue • Peter Giunta (Biology)

The early 1900s gave rise to the “Big Three” structures of an austere Boston landscape, each seemingly more ambitious than the last. Symphony Hall rose first in 1900, with a looming Beethoven inscription supplying the ethos to the acoustic titan. The hall’s modest trappings have withstood weekly assaults by countertenors for a century, which amounted to a single concert floor replacement in 2006. The Museum of Fine Arts was moved from its brick-and-terracotta Copley Square building in 1909, and since 2008, its ability to fundraise and expand has been near limitless.

“N

ortheastern’s Speare Hall sits atop some of the original foundation, paying its ever so silent homage on Opera Place.”

So it’s of little surprise that when Eben D. Jordan, the son of local retail giant Jordan Marsh, poured 700,000 dollars into opening the Boston Opera House in 1908, he said he took solace in the fact that “the boston opera company [would] be supported not alone by the public spirit and labors of its founders, but by the enthusiasm of a public which takes pride in securing permanent opera of the highest order for its own city.”

Despite the two cultural icons in close proximity, the Boston Opera House was swaddled by ambitious patrons that met investment requirements for the space almost immediately.

The building echoed the same kind of confidence that Jordan had in Boston Opera and its patronage. Its cornerstone was placed to grand public ceremony in November

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Cover Story 1908, filled with newspaper clippings and a prospectus that touted the “establishment of grand opera in this country upon the principles which have made it so potent a factor in the musical life of foreign cities.”

Ponchielli’s La Gioconda was presented on opening night, with Boston’s own superstars Lillian Nordica and Louise Homer breathing life into the Italian libretto. While the production may not have anticipated the ambitious schedule that the Boston Opera Company would ultimately keep, the towering 3,000-seat house floored student and socialite alike. Plush red seats, white marble and a horseshoe of ornate boxes to congratulate glittering investors filled the complex space and interplayed with top-

“I

n our apathy we’ll probably settle for the songs mermaids sing off Boston Light.”

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of-the-line stage production. The operative word that day was “fireproof”: the brick-andcolumn monolith could quell Verdi Requiems for centuries over.

That’s why it’s always been shocking to watch headlines devolve in the late 1950s when the final curtain fell upon the old Opera House, in step with the wrecking ball that laid waste to its already unstable rafters.

Limousines, full-length mirrors, Tosca and a dusty champagne bar were all distilled into a single red brick stored in the Northeastern University Archives. Its only other traces are the contents of a cornerstone box excavated about 150 years too early, before its silver trowel ever had the chance to tarnish.

Northeastern’s Speare Hall sits atop some of the original foundation, paying its ever so silent homage on Opera Place.

Nonetheless, the unanswered question stems from the grand disparity between Eben Jordan’s vision for Opera in Boston

and its subsequent disuse. Cyrus Durgin of the Boston Globe coined the trite phrase “Operapathy on-the-Charles” to describe its demise, citing “apathy, plain apathy, and, upon the part of certain interests formerly concerned, a complete lack of public responsibility.” Durgin’s fervor echoed that of loyal patrons with unanswered questions about Opera’s future here, with the Boston Garden, Prudential, Loews and Metropolitan theaters each rife with compromise.

The reaction to the Opera House closure was predictably visceral and reflected swells of belief and disbelief that would punctuate Boston opera throughout its lifespan. The Boston Opera Company dissolved just six years after its inception, due as much to the passing of Eben Jordan as the onset of World War I. The Opera Company of Boston

was borne from the ashes of the old Opera House, founded by innovative conductor Sarah Caldwell. Despite 32 seasons of internationally acclaimed opera, the company closed in 1990 due to the repair costs of renovating the B. F. Keith Memorial Theater on Washington St.

In 2011, less than a year after hosting Opera America’s annual conference, Opera Boston closed, and with it Boston’s far more adventurous counterpart to the Lyric. The steadily growing company boasted a 2.5 million dollar budget and a Pulitzer Prize since it’s inception in 2003. About a third of the board members were not present for the vote that would ultimately disband the organization. It is in this latest blow to Boston Opera that general director Carole Charnow finally articulated Cyrus Durgin’s disdain from 60 years prior, saying Boston is “simply not an Opera town.” Even Boston’s Lyric Opera has expressed difficulty in garnering support from individuals, and that the number of supportive foundations is woefully inadequate.

Boston will always have a patronage passionate enough to mourn the loss of the avant-garde. However, it seems opera may never occupy enough of Boston’s collective conscience to earn its own home again, especially after the Lyric was recently beaten out by a British production company for use of Emerson’s Colonial Theater. If that’s true, Cyrus Durgin’s prediction was right, and “in our apathy we’ll probably settle for the songs the mermaids sing off Boston Light.”

“T

he reaction to the Opera House closure was predicatbly visceral and reflected swells of belief and disbelief that would punctuate Boston opera throughout its lifespan.”

31

Editorial

Without Luaka Bop, Onyeabor, and many other artists like him, would have remained dusty hidden gems in the back of local stores...

Now their works are influencing a new generation of talent.

In the middle of 2015, Talking Heads frontman David Byrne appeared on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” in a cover band that featured Pat Mahoney of LCD Soundsystem and Money Mark of the Beastie Boys, among others. Although they would appear to be a creative supergroup on paper, they only came together to play the music of one man: William Onyeabor, a mysterious Nigerian funk pioneer who reached his peak amidst the post-independence turmoil of a young Nigeria. In 2017, the primary reason that the name William Onyeabor is spoken of within music communities outside of Nigeria is the work of Luaka Bop, a unique and worldly record label founded by Byrne in 1988 during the height of Talking Heads.

Onyeabor recorded nine albums between 1977 and 1985. Each one was self-produced in his own studio and self-released without the aid of any of the major labels that were entering the fledgling Nigerian Afro-rock scene at the time, such as Island and Decca Records. He never performed at nightclubs or on television, and he refused all interview

Spring 2017

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offers that came his way. He found modest success commercially, predictably hampered by his lack of public presence, and essentially faded into dusty flea market record bins.

After his ninth album, Onyeabor became a born again Christian, abandoned all aspects of his life as a musician, became a successful businessman in his home state of Enugu and eventually rose to be named a chief.

Onyeabor’s musical style lends an additional level of mystery. He was one of the first Nigerian musicians to use synthesizers and drum machines, during an era of musical modernization dominated by British-style rock and roll blending with the traditions of jùjú music and the invasion of highlife music from areas such as Ghana and Cameroon.

Not only did he utilize instruments unfamiliar to Nigerian listeners, ones that were quickly finding their way into the center of Western pop music, he immersed himself in them.

Onyeabor’s album covers frequently pictured him in his studio, sometimes with up to seven synthesizers surrounding him and microphones hanging from each corner of the frame. Synthesizers at the time in Nigeria were extremely expensive, impractical and

nearly impossible to find even if you could afford one. With little information about his education, his youth or even his source of income, Onyeabor appeared to have come from nowhere and then faded into nothing less than a decade later.

Why was his music suddenly being played on late night television three decades after his last album? Byrne and his fellow bandmates were taking Onyeabor’s music on tour, with a band which included members of Hot Chip, Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz fame and even Dev Hynes of Blood Orange. Beyond the touring group, many musicians have praised Onyeabor’s work. Both Dan Snaith of Caribou and Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs have heralded his work. Will Toledo, in the middle of a track on Car Seat Headrest’s major label debut Teens of Denial, even conversationally mentions Onyeabor’s work. “His name is William Onyeabor/He’s from the ‘70s” in the middle of “Not What I Needed,” like two guys talking about their favorite flea market finds at a party.

Onyeabor’s story is atypical for a late bloomer; nobody owns the rights to his catalog besides him, and he has essentially closed himself off from his past life as a musician. Luckily, legacy, or a lack thereof, is not set in stone. History is filled with artists who did not see critical or commercial success during their lifetime, yet went on to have incredible success well afterwards.

However, many late blooming success stories, like The Velvet Underground and Nick Drake, share common advantages in positioning, with resources such as larger record companies and accessibility in major cultural hubs like New York City available to make capitalizing on any additional attention the work received that much easier.

Enter Luaka Bop. Founded by David Byrne in 1988, it began as a vehicle for producing Brazilian music compilations, and has since put out 98 compilations, reissues, EPs and even live albums from active artists the world over. From a statement by Byrne on the history of Luaka Bop: “It just so happened that I’d assembled these compilations of my Brazilian faves for myself, from my own vinyl collection, and I realized that it sounded pretty good, and I didn’t get tired of it, and

more importantly I guess, I realized that there wasn’t a compilation of this stuff out there.

Sure, there were bossa nova collections in existence, but I felt that that was, however wonderful, only an inkling of the vast music riches that this country has produced. “ Beginning with a series of four Brazilian music compilations, Byrne and label president Yale Evelev expanded into AfroCuban music and East African rock and pop.

Their catalog boasts the works of many artists from around the world who have found a second wind of critical acclaim and commercial success with the reintroduction of their work to new communities, such as Os Mutantes, Shuggie Otis and Onyeabor himself. Separating themselves from a typical reissues pipeline, reintroducing classic musicians from around the world requires a bit of repackaging to take root.

These records are designed not to appeal to ethnomusicologists, but to casual listeners.

From Byrne’s statement: “Overall, we think of the music we work with as contemporary pop music, and we try to present it as such. . .

The CD covers go a long way, in my opinion, to creating this attitude. We don’t do covers that look like folkloric records or like academic records of obscure material of interest only to

musicologists and a few weird fringe types... we work with the designers to come up with a graphic statement that says ‘this music is a relevant to your life and is as contemporary as Prodigy, Fiona Apple, or Cornershop.’”

William Onyeabor probably would not have been able to find his way into 21st-century record stores without the proper push.

Without Luaka Bop, Onyeabor, and many other artists like him, would have remained dusty hidden gems in the back of local stores, occasionally stumbled upon by a browsing customer or nostalgically heralded by an old fan, without much hope of reaching the ears of most listeners. Now their works are influencing a new generation of talent who can draw from not only the classics of their own communities, but from around the world as well. An outstanding side effect of the recent hyper-connectivity of the planet, rediscovery of local legends far from the cities that spawned them is possible with the work of Luaka Bop. • David McDevitt (International Affairs/ Economics)

33

BUT I'M NOT Editorial

A RAPPER...

The viral YouTube comedy video featuring the character Supa Hot Fire, which emerged in 2013, may have been more prophetic than comedic when it popularized the phrase, “But I’m not a rapper.” It’s natural for artists of all crafts and genres to reject any form of categorization, as applying a single term to encompass the scope of an artist’s abilities may seem misrepresentative and confining.

In a genre like hip hop where identity crises and braggadocio are commonplace, this trend is even more pronounced. Because of this, there seems to be a disproportionate number of artists making the claim, “I’m not a rapper,” when objectively speaking, that’s precisely what they are.

Some of the biggest up-and-coming names in rap in 2016 claim they don’t see themselves as rappers. After a shaky freestyle on the notable hip hop radio station Hot

97, XXL Freshman Lil Yachty offered the explanation that he was not, in fact, a rapper.

On the same radio show just a few months earlier, Lil Uzi Vert, another 2016 Freshman, was offered the opportunity to lay down a freestyle. When the beat to “Mass Appeal,” a 1994 hip hop song produced by DJ Premier, came on, Uzi physically recoiled and said that he wouldn’t rap over it. Saying “I’m too young,” and that the beat was drums “and nothing else,” Lil Uzi Vert showed his distaste not only for the famed beat, but for what many consider to be the “Golden Age” of hip hop.

In Childish Gambino’s case, the shift away from rap happened much more literally.

The release of “Awaken, My Love!” last year shocked the hip hop community by excluding rap for its entire 49-minute duration.

However, this seemingly abrupt change of genres was not without foreshadowing. Just three years after the release of his mixtapes “I am Just a Rapper” and “I am Just a Rapper 2” in 2010, Childish Gambino claimed “I don’t consider myself a rapper” on the Arsenio Hall show. Gambino went on to speak for

the other artists around him who shared a similar sentiment. “Rappers don’t want to be rappers,” he said. “They’re usually artists who want to do a bunch of stuff. I don’t think any rapper wants to be just a rapper.”

Gambino also cites Kanye West’s assertion of the glass ceilings above rappers: once someone is labeled as one, the creativity of that person in the eyes of the public is relegated to rhyming and wordplay. West himself has expressed frustration with other industries (namely fashion) that don’t take him seriously because he is seen first and foremost as a rapper. Desiigner, who broke out in 2016 with the hit song “Panda” and signed to West’s label GOOD Music, like West and Gambino, feels that rapping is just an attribute of his, and he would rather settle for the catch-all term of artist.

It isn’t clear whether there are new negative connotations associated with hip hop that would make artists hesitant to accept such a categorization, but the shift can be seen in their musical influences.

Traditionally, rappers double as hip hop historians who sample, allude to, and namedrop their predecessors of influence.

I thought I already told you characters, I’m not a rapper” Spring 2017

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I don’t think any rapper wants to be just a rapper.”

However, scholarly knowledge of rap history is no longer a prerequisite to rapping. In an interview, Lil Yachty stated he couldn’t name five songs by Biggie Smalls or Tupac — a statement which garnered severe backlash, most notably from Anderson .Paak who indirectly tweeted “real artists are students of the game first.” Yachty, the nineteen-yearold self-proclaimed bubblegum trap artist, retorted, “I think it’s funny how people feel like you have to like something just cause everybody else does.” Though he is often categorized as juvenile and superficial in his lyricism, Yachty’s reply was a pithy truism that is relevant to all art, and especially hip hop. Vince Staples expanded on a similar sentiment in a 2015 interview with Time Magazine. He began by calling 90’s rap overrated and explained why he doesn’t see the decade as authoritative: “If something’s never been done before then there’s no replacement for it. There’s no replacement for the Rolling Stones, there’s no replacement for Aerosmith. In hip hop we have a habit of copying each other, we pretend to be something that we’re not.” To Staples, hip hop’s progression was, for a long time, linear.

Great rappers only emerged by defying the status quo in place for their authenticity, and as Staples highlighted, this wasn’t the first mainstream musical movement to thrive off of rebellion.

For the many hip hop artists who don’t want to abandon categorization altogether, there is a title that is becoming an increasingly hot commodity: rock star. In a

characteristically self-aggrandizing interview in 2013, Kanye West told Zane Lowe that rap is the new rock and roll, and that rappers are the new rock stars. In some cases, this statement holds literal meaning. Rappers are drawing influence directly and indirectly from rock and roll artists of previous decades.

West was expressing a cultural shift that is being articulated more and more by his fellow rappers. In the song “Leatherhead,” Tyler the Creator calls himself the “modern day Ian Curtis,” the lead singer of the legendary band Joy Division. Kanye West has collaborated with the graphic designer who made the album art for Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures. Danny Brown’s latest album Atrocity Exhibition shares its name with a song also by Joy Division. Furthermore, Brown has shared his numerous punk and rock and roll influences, and they are evident in the sampling for his beats and his aggressive delivery. In the work of Death Grips, postpunk intensity is manifested in gritty guitar riffs and jarring lyricism that allow them to single-handedly push the bounds of hip hop.

More importantly than incorporating rock elements directly into their music, rappers identify with the rebellious personas and social influence wielded by rockers. Lil Uzi Vert has often referred to himself as a rock star, citing Marilyn Manson and GG Allin as his biggest influences, admiring them for their apathetic and shocking attitudes.

Abandoning the term rapper for rock star isn’t self-loathing or a denial of one’s musical roots; rock and roll represents the ability of a subculture to impose immense influence on the current zeitgeist. It represents a young generation of provocateurs and visionaries

who defy the status quo in place for their own self-imposed values. In recent years, no genre has been as impactful to culture as hip hop. What the Beatles influenced in hairstyles and drug culture Kanye West and Drake influenced in fashion, lingo and viral fads. Fittingly, this year Tupac Shakur will become the first solo rap artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Whenever rappers have been inducted in the past it has sparked controversy, and last year Ice Cube (inducted with NWA) offered what he sees as qualification for induction: “It’s a spirit, and it’s been going since before they called it rock and roll.”

• Emmett Neidhart (Architecture)

35

Local Talent

The Michael Character Local Talent

members

James Ikeda sounds like

Bomb the Music Industry!

Ramshackle Glory The Taxpayers r eco m m e n d e d t rac ks

Accountability Photo by Kelly Dickinson

Don’t Call Me Your Asian Friend Hardly Punk. Not Ashamed. albums

Wheelie?

Do Your Work Pinky Swear ...And There Goes the Convoy ...Is This Part of the Art? FUNemployed!

Put it in the Pizza!

So Punk Rock. upcoming shows

February 11 @ The Knee c h ec k o u t t h e m i c h a e l c h a ract e r

themichaelcharacter.bandcamp.com Spring 2017

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Photo by Derek Schuster (Computer Science)

< all photos by Ben Stas (English/Journalism)

Photo by Derek Schuster (Computer Science)

To those embedded in Boston’s DIY community, The Michael Character is a familiar name. The blistering folk punk outlet of James Ikeda — who also happens to be co-founder of The Bummer City Historical Society, a collective of organizers and artists designed to promote safer spaces and inclusive shows — has graced the area for seven years now. But you may be surprised to learn that The Michael Character’s origins trace back to a basement in Trenton, NJ — not Allston.

Tellingly, Ikeda remembers the band’s first show in remarkable detail: “It was June 7th, 2010” he tells me, “and I’m wearing this Boy Scout uniform with Bomb the Music Industry! patches on it.”

The motley crew of musicians backing him — each one came from a different background, from hard bop to hardcore — would tour every summer in those early years. But while most of the original members have since settled elsewhere in the country, Ikeda continues to perform under the old moniker… only he’s traded in his scout shirt for a hachimaki.

Back in Boston, Ikeda is known for his prolific songwriting.

The Michael Character has released a new album every year since 2010, and each one is available as a pay-what-you-want download.

Both call to mind the musical career of Jeff Rosenstock (exArrogant Sons of Bitches, Bomb the Music Industry!), who happens to be one of Ikeda’s biggest influences.

“I came up in the ska scene, and I was always going to shows in churches and bowling alleys,” Ikeda recalls. “To me, that was music.

So when I got into Bomb, I was hardcore DIY all the way. Part of it was an ethic, and part of it was that I sucked.”

But the comparison falls apart there: Rosenstock ruminates about his inability to grow up, while Ikeda is the clean-cut history teacher at a Quincy high school. But being a teacher and a punk singer isn’t a contradiction, he tells me — it’s actually the perfect combination. As The Michael Character, Ikeda works basements like classrooms. And the social critique present in songs like “Radical Folk Singer” and “Accountability” are reinforced by his own confessional voice.

“I try to tackle issues that affect other people through my own experience,” Ikeda says. “The strategy there is, if I’m completely self-focused in the way the narrative is constructed, it’s more honest. Could there be anything in the world worse than somebody trying to sing a preachy song where they don’t address their position in it? That’s a horrible way to write songs. If you’re a man singing a song about misogyny, there’s a responsibility there. You’ve got to own the truth.”

“When I write, I try to get to the nugget of truth,” Ikeda adds.

“What’s the absolute most honest thing I can say about this at this moment? And I haven’t written a song in a couple of years now that I’ve looked back on and said, ‘That was wrong, I don’t like that.’”

Joey Dussault (Journalism)

37

Feature

“Got any good podcast suggestions?”

A Listener’s Guide to Music Podcasts

By Emily Arntsen (English) and Terence Cawley (Biology)

“Yeah, have you heard of Serial?”

For a lot of people, Serial, albeit a great podcast, is the furthest they’ll venture into the realm of podcasts. This is a sad reality because there are so many other stories to hear and ideas to ponder!

Unfortunately, testing out new podcast channels can be boring and time-consuming. We’ll admit, there are a lot of duds out there, which is exactly why we did all the dirty work for you! Whether you have an affinity for, an inclination toward or even just an inkling of interest in music, these podcasts will surely satisfy you.

Celebration Rock

By Steven Hyden

Tiny Desk Concerts

By NPR’s Bob Boilen

NPR radio host Bob Boilen, famous for his music-focused radio show All Songs Considered, takes intimate acoustic sets to the next level with his other NPR show and love project, Tiny Desk Concerts. Boilen invites musicians to play in the NPR office at his (tiny) desk where videographers and sound technicians record the performances.

Listeners and viewers have the pleasure of hearing and seeing musicians completely stripped of studio enhancement, stage theatrics or any other filters that would mask imperfections in the performance. Boilen also has excellent taste in who he invites on the show, often opting for more obscure musicians who he believes could and should benefit from some NPR endorsement. Musicians range from rappers to string quartets — there’s something for everyone. Noteworthy episodes include performances by Margaret Glaspy, Gallant and Anderson .Paak.

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With last year’s excellent book on music rivalries, “Your Favorite Band is Killing Me,” and his deeply insightful writing for sites like UPROXX and Grantland (R.I.P.), Steven Hyden seems to be angling for the title of best rock critic in the game. In that case, consider Celebration Rock yet another notch in the win column for Hyden. Half of the episodes are musician interviews, with Hyden corralling both the hottest names in modern rock (Courtney Barnett, Car Seat Headrest’s Will Toledo) and the occasional classic rock icon (Rick Nielsen, David Crosby) into sitting down and discussing their work. The other half feature Hyden and one of his high-caliber music writer peers (Chuck Klosterman, Amanda Petrusich) chatting about the sort of topics those inclined to spend too much time thinking about rock music can never stop debating — how would you fix the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Is the future of rock as dire as everyone keeps predicting? Why do people hate Coldplay so much? You’ve probably had conversations like these before, but they probably weren’t as intelligent and thought-provoking as they are on Celebration Rock. Unless you happen to be friends with Steven Hyden.

Song Exploder

Analyze Phish

By Harris Wittels and Scott Aukerman

By Hrishikesh Hirway

A piece of music truly succeeds when listeners can appreciate both the musicality and the underlying meaning of a song.

Usually we’re just content with a good beat or an impressive voice, but wouldn’t knowing the origin of that peculiar noise or the story behind those abstruse lyrics make the song even better? Song Exploder, a music podcast edited and hosted by Hrishikesh Hirway, does exactly what its title implies — it pulls music apart and pieces it back together one lyric, guitar riff or synth cycle at a time. Hirway invites artists to his studio in L.A., where they pick apart their songs both sonically and lyrically, offering listeners a special insight into their intentions. Hirway chooses artists ranging in genre from Grimes to U2. Some interesting episodes to listen to are The Lumineers’ “Ophelia,” tUnE-yArDs’ “Water Fountain” and Sylvan Esso’s “Coffee.”

Beyond Yacht Rock

By JD Ryznar, David B. Lyons, “Hollywood” Steve Huey, and Hunter Stair

The mid-2000s web series Yacht Rock wasn’t merely a gleefully inaccurate imagining of the scenarios behind the creation of pop hits by the likes of Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins; it also gave a name to the unbelievably smooth jazz-laced sound which took over radio playlists from 1976-84. Rather than coast on their legacy, however, four of the series’ key players reunited in 2016 for Beyond Yacht Rock, where they devote every episode to the invention, definition and counting down of 10 songs from a new made-up genre. The resulting podcast is the auditory equivalent of hanging out with the four smartest, funniest music nerds at the bar as they crack wise, make obscure pop culture references, insult each other, talk way too much about Toto and push our irrational compulsion to categorize everything we hear into the farthest reaches of absurdity and idiot-savant genius.

Scott Aukerman is an established comedy legend for his role in creating both Comedy Bang! Bang! and Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis. Less well known is his extensive musical background — one of his old band’s drummers even ended up joining No Doubt. While Aukerman’s taste runs more towards punk and post-punk (he and Parks and Recreation’s Adam Scott have a hilarious podcast called U Talkin’ U2 To Me?), Harris Wittels, the gifted comedy writer who coined the term “humblebrag,” had a passion for the notoriously inaccessible yet cultishly beloved jam band Phish. In Analyze Phish, which ran from 2011–14, Wittels tried to convert Aukerman to the dark side (or the Page Side Rage Side, to make a Phish reference I only get because of this podcast).

Analyze Phish is a mere 10 episodes long, and the specter of Wittels’ fatal 2015 heroin overdose hangs over the proceedings — the only thing harder than hearing him candidly discussing his demons is hearing how happy and full of life he sounds joking with his friends about this silly band he loves that none of them can tolerate. But to fixate on the tragic epilogue would only serve to obscure the raucous hilarity of this deep dive into Phish fandom. The episodes where Wittels and Aukerman dissect their chaotic misadventures at Phish concerts brilliantly mix guerilla documentary-style recordings with amusingly bemused commentary, while Wittels’ devotion to his quixotic mission will resonate with anyone who’s ever driven themselves crazy evangelizing on behalf of a beloved musical artist. Like the Freaks and Geeks of podcasts, Analyze Phish may not have been long for this world, but in its brief run it achieved something like perfection.

Not only are podcasts entertaining, but they’re also a guilt-free way to procrastinate!

Allowing your brain to believe it’s being productive by learning something about, let’s say, the voyeurism that inspired Courtney Barnett to write “Depreston,” among other necessary facts, is an excellent way to avoid your homework or justify your snail-paced Green Line commute. All podcasts mentioned above can be streamed via iTunes or their respective domains.

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Feature

What'$

Your Worth?

A Critical look At unpaid music industry internships The popular image of an intern is a twenty-something year old, privileged kid, whose parents got them a summer job to put on their resume. While these people definitely exist, the internship market is no joke.

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), the number of college graduates that held an internship position rose from less than 10% to over 80% from 1980 to the mid 2000â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s obviously a massive jump in just over twenty years, and it was helped in part by colleges facilitating those internships while students are still in school.

Fall 2012 2017 Spring

40 40

The millennial generation is graduating into a competitive job market that demands experience for even entry level positions. This demand has increased the pressure for universities to provide some of that experience before graduation. Many schools have reacted by instating internship programs for course credit. This solution makes sense; it gives students the opportunity to try out different careers, and it makes graduates of the school more marketable to the workforce.

However, there is a big downside to college-sponsored internships. Schools offering credit for work experience has opened the door to the “payment in experience” trend. This is obviously negative for everyone currently graduating from college with thousands of dollars in debt, who are now expected to work for free.

The music industry is rampant with unpaid positions. In music, who you know and what is on your resume is far more important than grades or a degree. For many, a music industry internship is a dream come true that opens doors to full time employment in a field they are passionate about, but for others it can be a time of exploitation.

The first issue that must be brought up when talking about these kinds of internships is that by virtue of the positions being unpaid the applicant base is unfairly restricted. People that can afford to take a full time job without pay have a certain amount of privilege.

People that can afford to take a full time job without pay have a certain amount of privilege.

This is not meant to be derogatory toward those who take the positions or to undermine the work they have done, but the reality is that anyone taking these jobs is either relatively well off, or able to work another full time job in addition to the internship. One current Northeastern University student, who we’ll call Sam, was faced with this reality. Sam applied to a coveted intern position at Sony Legacy Records in New York City and was accepted only to have to turn it down. “It killed me not to accept it,” Sam said, “but I couldn’t find a way to justify taking an unpaid, part time position, that would require me to move to another city, only to have to find a second job.”

Sam’s situation is not uncommon; students that are accepted to unpaid positions have to decide whether to drain their bank accounts for what may be six months of coffee fetching, or forgo the opportunity in favor of one that will compensate them for their time.

Before moving on from this point I want to emphasize that students are essentially paying to work for multibillion dollar companies. They are not dedicating free time to a hobby: they are going to work four to five days a week for record companies that represent artists like Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan and Adele.

I want to emphasize that students are essentially paying to work for multibillion dollar companies.

The other concern for music industry interns is the vagueness of the positions. When Sam spoke about their decision to turn down Sony they commented that “there’s a lot of ambiguity around these positions...I really liked the people in the department that I talked to, and it seemed like I’d be doing genuine work that contributed to the company, but there’s always the risk that it could be all coffee runs and copy-making.” Sam’s concern was not unfounded: in fact, another past Northeastern student had genuine horror stories from her time interning at Glassnote.

This student, who also wanted her identity protected and will be referred to as Max, said she applied to the position at Glassnote because she saw it as an opportunity to work at a company she had been a fan of. What seemed like a dream job quickly proved to be toxic. “Daniel Glass fostered an environment of fear,” Max explained.

“Everyone was constantly afraid of being yelled at, and everyone was quick to blame other people for their mistakes. I and the other interns were usually ignored unless we were being given tasks to complete or being berated for making a mistake.”

The Department of Labor has six rules in regards to unpaid internships. These rules outline the standards an internship program has to meet in order to not pay their employees. The first rule states that “The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment.” It is fair to say that the environment of

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Feature

What'$ Your Worth? Continued

...

fear described by Max is far from an educational environment. Being ignored until someone feels the need to ridicule you is probably the least educational experience possible.

Beyond the general stressful environment, the tasks that Max was asked to perform were questionable at best. These included running personal errands for Daniel Glass such as buying pizza for his 15 year-old son, wrapping and delivering Christmas gifts and picking out an anniversary card for his wife. This is obviously not educational in the slightest, and are actually tasks Glass should be paying a personal assistant to do.

One of the other extremely questionable aspects of the unpaid internship positions at big labels is how they get around number four on the Department of Labor’s list, which states “The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern.” As we have already seen, Max was performing many tasks that had nothing to do with the music business, but even when she was doing real work how could she not be providing her employer with “immediate advantage?”

It seems that at places like Glassnote they get around this rule by simply taking credit for their interns’ work. “We signed a new roster artist,” Max recalled. “I was told to create the album art for the score.

I created three or four options and sent them to the creative director.

A day later the artist himself came in and the creative director pulled him aside and said ‘look at all these album art options I created for you.’ She took credit for my work right in front of me. To this day I have not received any credit, or any compensation, for that artwork.” Not only is this simply immoral, but it is potentially illegal. The creative director took credit for work she did not do, never compensated Max for her work and blatantly violated the Department of Labor’s rules for unpaid internships.

Music is a hard place for women. I personally have been jeered at while working at music venues and underestimated by many men in the field, but I am lucky to have a very supportive company behind me that has always taken my safety and comfort into account at work. It therefore came as a personal blow to me when Max said that after bringing a cup of tea to Glass he “called [her] fat (in a roundabout manner) and made comments about [her] body” in front of an important music executive. This can be called nothing less than sexual harassment, and it is indicative of a culture that treats women

as objects rather than hardworking professionals. It’s unprofessional, immoral, cowardly and grounds for interns never to be provided to Glassnote again.

Clearly Max’s experience at Glassnote and Sam’s experience with the application process shows the massive potential for music internships to go wrong, but there are circumstances in which they can be extremely beneficial.

After graduating high school, I took a position at the 9:30 Club in Washington D.C. I worked two days a week in their marketing office where I learned the ins and outs of local marketing strategies.

My bosses were approachable, constantly giving me feedback and thanking me for the work I did. Less than three months after I started as an intern I was offered an additional paid position in the box office, where I still work two and a half years later. I consider my coworkers at the 9:30 Club to be my family, and it’s all thanks to my initial unpaid position there.

Another student, Alicia Hoole, had a similarly positive experience when she interned at the Boston based label Topshelf. Although the internship did not lead to immediate employment, Alicia said she “would recommend it to anyone who really has a passion for the industry...even the more mundane tasks can be exciting when you think about the legacy you're contributing to.”

This article was not written to be a call to arms against unpaid internships, but I do hope it starts a conversation about them. We all have to be more critical of the internship market. Universities that boast of their experience-based learning opportunities need to be more vigilant about the companies their students are contributing to, and advocate for pay when it is appropriate.

Finally, I want to emphasize that there is no correct way to get into the music business. Music should be a labor of love, and the great thing about it is that there are an unlimited number of ways to be involved. You could take an internship, or you could start a band, or manage your friend’s bands, or learn to how to do production or security work. You can make it your full time job, or you can keep it as more of a hobby. Never let anyone tell you there is only one path to, or definition of, success; your passion should not be exploited, it should be on your terms and above all else it should make you happy.

By Helen Hennessey (Political Science) Spring 2017

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Album Reviews Migos Culture Release Date January 27 Label Quality Control Genre Hip Hop, Tap Tasty Tracks “T-Shirt,” “Bad and Boujee,” “Get Right Witcha” American novelist Thomas Wolfe once wrote that “Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs.” Around the same time, Austrian satirist and author of “The Last Days of Mankind” Karl Kraus wrote that “Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence.” Quavo, Takeoff and Offset may not have had these words in mind when recording their most recent album, Culture, but it is very clear that since 2009, Migos has established itself as a titular act in hip-hop and pop culture. Among their cultural feats are the trio’s unique and terse flow, calling for many rappers to collaborate or mimic the group.

Their innovative adlibs have had tremendous influence, and most notably, the trio has been consistently releasing chart toppers and establishing trends that have managed to become universally beloved and reviled, like the dab. Most recently, after a series of memes and a shout out from Donald Glover at the Golden Globes, Migos’ single “Bad and Boujee” hit number one on the charts and has kept its position for over ten weeks straight.

With the release of the album, there has been an unspoken consensus that this is the trio’s opus. DJ Khaled sums it up well in the opening and title track, where he aggressively asks, “How the fuck you fuckboys ain’t gon’ act like Migos ain’t reppin’ the culture?” This is precisely what Migos has done and continues to do so well.

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Featuring production and collaboration from the likes of Metro Boomin, Zaytoven, Murda Beatz, Gucci Mane and Travis Scott, the album is an apt representation of newfound rap and trap culture. Songs like “T-Shirt” and “Brown Paper Bag” remind listeners that Migos is sticking to its roots, making simple bangers that are meant to indulge the fun and recklessness that Trap music entertains. On the other hand, tracks like “Get Right Witcha” and “What The Price” approach a new sound and demonstrate Migos’ versatility to move beyond the limited niche of their genre. This versatility can occasionally get the best of them with tracks like “Kelly Price” which features Travis Scott and sounds like a weak imitation of a B-side on Scott’s latest album Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight. The album has no narrative, no cohesion and no specific order, precisely because it doesn’t need one. Culture is an album full of bravado, confident that each song can survive on its own. The title track

includes a lyric in the refrain that states, “Culture album comin’ soon,” yet the song was never released as a single, and was revealed alongside the album itself. Such a decision to leave a song that teases the album out of its singles denotes that the trio is confident in each song as its own entity, such as their past endeavors with hits like “Versace,” “Pipe It Up” and “Hannah Montana.” With Culture, Migos have released an album that is incredibly self-aware, conscious of its power and scale of influence, and yet does not fail to have fun and indulge itself in the basics of its genre.

Christian Triunfo (English/Journalism)

We publish album reviews online too! tastemakersmag.com 43

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The xx I See You Release Date January 13 Label Young Turks Genre Alternative/Indie Tasty Tracks “On Hold,” “Brave For You” There are two equally inviting ways to listen to The xx. After three albums, it’s still tempting to step back from the London trio’s fluid compositions and soak in their atmosphere: the haunting reverb on Romy Madley Croft’s guitar, underpinning the intimate caress of her soft vocals; the aching pathos in Oliver Sim’s voice, floating above his shadowy bass lines; and, like a warm tide engulfing the pair, the pulsating beats of producer Jamie xx.

And yet, it’s proportionately hard to ignore the allure of looking deeper into their arrangements, searching harder for the heat of the blood pumping away beneath layers of ice.

To put it another way, listening to The xx can often feel like gazing out over the opaque veneer of a quicksilver stream. You can stand on the shore, watching it flow, or — straining to sense more human undercurrents — dive in.

That duality is still very much in play across I See You, the trio’s third and most playful record to date — even if opener “Dangerous,” an invigorating blast of horns, synth, and funk-influenced guitar, brings their more spirited, sensual side bubbling to the surface. The disc, which bears the mark of a Jamie xx fresh off the vibrant solo album In Colour, is without a doubt The xx’s bravest, Spring 2017

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boldest foray outside of their once-blackand-white echo chamber to date.

With that said, the mesmerizing aesthetic mixtures and bedroom-talk lyrics on which the trio have long thrived remain fully intact. “Say Something Loving” coasts on rising waves of synth breaking above lusty lyrics, and “Lips” skews tropical in its sensuous ode to a particularly intoxicating tryst.

As the album progresses, it finds ways to honor the xx sound of old. “Performance” is a classic track for the trio, both in terms of naked vulnerability and beautifully spare instrumentation. “Replica” sounds like a Coexist track wrapped in a more honeyed transformation of Sim’s rich, full vocals.

“Brave For You,” meanwhile, dives deep into the aftermath of a tragedy too finely textured to be fabricated (it’s not–the song marks Madley Croft’s first foray into writing about her parents’ deaths). It’s one of The xx’s best, most tenderly moving songs.

From there, the trio reaffirm that, even with one appreciative eye to the past, they’re still facing forward. Euphoric lead single “On Hold” finds each band member firing on all cylinders; with its skittering percussion, an oddly effective Hall & Oates sample, and Sim and Madley Croft engaging in a breathless duel of a duet, the track is a headlong rush of sonic oversaturation from an act renowned for restraint. “I Dare You” further melds the trio into a lilting, liquefied back-and-forth.

If there’s a weak link in this bracing cascade of an album, it might be closer “Test Me,” which gives the record over entirely to Jamie xx’s mesmerizing, melancholy production without incorporating his two bandmates in a way befitting an album concerned with the elating, unifying rush of mutual maturation. But even on that track, there are lyrical depths inviting exploration, and animate veins barely perceptible beneath a cavernous soundscape. And even taken at arm’s length, it’s a glimmering, gossamer mystery of a fade-out, as eerie and elegant as one would expect from a band that, three records in, is more in command of its craft than ever–and all the more adventurous for it. .

Isaac Feldberg (Journalism)

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Julie Byrne Not Even Happiness Release Date January 13 Label Ba Da Bing!

Genre Folk Tasty Tracks “Follow My Voice,” “I Live Now as a Singer” In the 3 years since Julie Byrne’s 2014 Rooms With Walls and Windows, it appears the radiance of her voice has begun to grace the visible spectrum. The debut employed the faint, often haunting vocals reminiscent of Grouper’s most paper-thin melodies. Coupled with considerable fuzz and warped pianos, the album painted an exact half-portrait of heartbreak, the true nature of which was always kept deftly at arm’s-length.

Byrne’s latest album Not Even Happiness sheds this claustrophobia with a vocal style that boasts a blindingly selfassured, often spellbinding melodic ease.

The portraiture is exacting in its own right, detailing the deepest and most unreachable parts of herself. Consider the opener “Follow my Voice,” in which she invokes “passing clouds” as the inflection point in her home city of New York, a near-constant source of absolution from the personal hell inherent in the metropolitan. As a park ranger in Central park, she paints a soul that was “made for the green / made to belong.” Byrne is so tapped into the sparse natural elements of the city, and maintains a poetic optimism about their ability to floor its inhabitants.

The phrase “your eyes are breeding love” conveys the sentiment perfectly, calling upon a belief in the human ability to connect and be understood even in times of severe pain.

Not Even Happiness journals almost four years of Byrne’s wandering throughout the country, yet each track is heavily thematized in the battle between resolution and formlessness. On “Melting Grid,” she sings “beetles crushed that dye the carmine/ I exist to be dreaming still,” in reference to her time spent in the Pacific Northwest. The image underscores just how expertly she’s able to make sense of her most devastating moments on a grander, almost spiritual scale. Coupled with the question of, “would you ask my permission / the next time you absorb me?” the lyrics here become microcosmic for Byrne’s poetic intuition.

Imagery ebbs from razor sharp to downright incorporeal, constantly searching for a grounding force in her transient lifestyle.

While Byrne’s voice drives her poetic license, the fingerpicking and loose orchestral arrangements on tracks like “Sleepwalker” and “Natural Blue” are a nod to the folk traditions of artists like Vashti Bunyan and Leonard Cohen. The intro guitar melody on “All the Land Glimmered” is as skillful as it is natural, and indicative of a deep emotional investment at the heart of Byrne’s songwriting. But even the more timeless folk elements on Not Even Happiness are contorted to her thematic whims. The guitar on “Glimmered” filtering into the dusky synths on “I live now as a singer” propels the listener from familiar to unknown in seconds flat, all while Byrne sings at the apex of her resolution. “The nod beneath the universe you walk with me” is a mandate from someone who has achieved a deep sense of self, irrespective of city and space.

Peter Giunta (Biology)

Japandroids

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Near to the Wild Heart of Life

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Release Date January 27 Label ANTI-Records Genre Rock Tasty tracks “Near to the Wild Heart of Life”, “North South East West”, “No Known Drink or Drug” The key to the modern alt-rock success story lies in finding a balance between simplicity and uniqueness. Canadian garage rock duo Japandroids have been in the business of making tight, hard-hitting projects for nearly a decade. Their most recent venture, Near to the Wild Heart of Life, however, finds the duo moving away from their rapid, drum led punk tracks in favor of catchier, pop-rock infused anthems. For long time fans of the band, there is still enough of their old spirit to feel familiar, yet the drop in energy may leave the listener wanting something more.

This audial shift is manifested in the opener and title track of the album, “Near to the Wild Heart of Life.” Vocalist Bryan King and drummer David Prowse condemn their vice-fueled, loveless city life in Toronto in favor of their simpler past. Though they worry their old home in Vancouver may have escaped them, the song falls flat in conveying this fear: “So I left my home and all I had / I used to be good but now I’m bad.” Despite this uncharacteristic lyrical blandness, the track is one of the more enthralling pieces on the album musically, with King’s guitar prowess displayed at full mast. Wild Heart follows up with another highlight in the Springsteen-esque, acoustic driven “North South East West.” Thematically, it’s a similar track to the first, yet it feels much more complete in practice. As it fades out in a rich blend of steel strings and “Whoa-ohs!”, the album hits a wall with a trio of slow burning songs about lost loves just begging for some sort of explosive coda to blast the pain away.

Unfortunately, these embers just seem to fizzle out along with King’s former flames.

The seven-and-a-half-minute “epic” “Arc of

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Bar” drags on several minutes too long with no real bite to balance out the 36 minute runtime of the album.

All hope is not lost though. The album finds its footing again somewhere in the 25 odd repetitions of “Bring me back home to you” during “Midnight to Morning”. Rescued by an enticingly infectious guitar melody, King finally pulls us out of the past and into a steamy newfound romance in a mash of riffs and professions of love in “No Known Drink or Drug,” a power ballad reminiscent of 2009’s Post-Nothing. Easily the climax of the album, King’s lyrics, backed by a blistering drum line from Prowse, could light a spark of romantic fervor in a heart made of rock: “A slow–burning sermon to have and hold her / but ever since she started sleeping over / oh lord, I’m living like a holy roller.”

Despite the numerous peaks in the project, Wild Heart is dampened by King and Prowse’s constant reminders that there is no place like home. Though hindered by far too many longing memories of life in a simpler time, the duo do prove that they still have talent, and can utilize more than their usual arsenal of drunk, wild rock. When their best pieces fall into place, they succeed.

Matt Schuler (Environmental Science)

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he’s the

[mc]mahon:

Etcetera

An Andrew McMahon Discography

By Mayeesha Galiba (Political Science/Journalism)

Andrew McMahon has been a pillar

in alternative/emo music from the early 2000s through today. Under various projects and monikers, McMahon has found success in big and small ways, developing from a garage-band punk from Southern California to an alternative-pop radio hitmaker.

McMahon has had devastating points in his life, but has always found a way to make the kind of music that transcends generations.

His fans could be 13 or 35, but he has music for them all. For the tortured high schooler wrangling with love and growing up, as well as for those quickly approaching adulthood and struggling with long-term relationships and the mundanity of life, he provides solace, comfort and a musical outlet. When I was 15, a nervous young music journalist bumbling through a God-given interview with my hero, he showed me the sort of kindness that only comes in daydreams. The asterisk, a recurring symbol in the Jack’s Mannequin fanbase, expresses the lines of everyone’s lives connecting at a center point, then spreading out to the greater universe. McMahon’s music is a symbol of that. Here are the highlights from his career, separated by project.

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Ready...Break Tried and true Something Corporate fans hold this as the band’s best release, not the everpopular Leaving Through the Window that saw commercial success. This was Something Corporate’s first public collection of songs, which was not released commercially but rather distributed demo-style at Southern California shows. The band was attempting to find their sound and footing in the pop-punk world, resulting in songs that were harsh and catchy like “Drunk Girl” and soft and reflective like “Cavanaugh Park.”

This record also saw the first sighting of (in my humble opinion) the best nine minutes of my (and your) life – “Konstantine.” Good God. If “Konstantine” could have a page of its own. This is the ballad that kills all other ballads, long and slow, with rises and falls. You see the story in your mind as the song goes on, combining lyrically intricate verses with long stretches of instrumental. The first time I saw Andrew McMahon live was both my first and last time hearing this song live. He now only plays it once a year, on 11/11 at the Annual Dear Jack Benefit as a nod to the song’s lyric, “I catch the clock, it’s 11:11.” This song is dream-like at first, before taking on a tone of agitation halfway through and ending on a note of resignation.

If you could start with any song in McMahon’s career, I would start with this one — you see both his early inspirations and influences, and the bubbling of his solo potential for the future.

Audioboxer A six-song EP and the band’s “official” first release. Some of Something Corporate’s songs, especially early on, were written by guitarist Josh Partington, like the song “(Hurricane) The Formal Weather Pattern.” When performing solo, regardless of how much fans beg for it, McMahon refuses to play songs that he himself did not write. “If U C Jordan” is harsh and fun, with a chorus and bridge that elicits major audience call-and-response.

SOMETHING CORPORATE Leaving Through the Window By far the most popular Something Corporate album, with notables from their Audioboxer EP included and re-recordings of a few songs from Ready...Break. Arguably, Something Corporate has gotten a bit less angsty at this point — now songs are becoming more sing-along, encompassing the feelings of touring across the country like in “I Woke Up in a Car.” This was the band’s first record on a major label (DriveThru Records and MCA), and the resulting songs were almost denser than their previous work.

North Something Corporate’s third and last studio album, encompassing both their growth and their roots. “She Paints Me Blue” is a song with a sweetness not unlike “Konstantine,” though much shorter and to the point. “You are my reason/for breathing” is basically the thesis to the song. North holds some of the pop-punk of early SoCo, with “21 and Invincible” and “Down” the quintessential songs about youth, but is heavily focused in their new experiences in music and songwriting.

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Jack’s mannequin Everything In Transit

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The first Jack’s Mannequin record and arguably my favorite album of all time. Transit is California and it’s reckless, from the song titles (“Miss California”) to the lyrics (“Uh oh, California in the summer”) to the palm tree-laden beach scene album art. Jack’s Mannequin’s most popular song is hosted on this album — there probably isn’t an early 2000s music listener that hasn’t heard of “Dark Blue.”

The anger underneath the album is masked by the bright packaging and relatively upbeat instrumental — there’s a very apparent “fuck you” theme to all the songs, with little hope for future love. McMahon’s piano begins to take a role that it hadn’t in Something Corporate, and this thread will be pulled through his other projects. McMahon’s lyrics are coated in imagery (“We were boxing the stars,” “As I’m swimming through the stereo I conduct a symphony of sounds.”)

As he finished recording this album, McMahon was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia. What resulted was an uphill battle, a stem cell donation from his sister and a resolve to use his influence to bring awareness to adolescents with cancer. He created the Dear Jack Foundation, which helps support initiatives and provides programming for adolescents and young adults diagnosed with cancer.

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This album took a far more somber tone, as McMahon came to terms with surviving a traumatic illness and tried to find a footing for his feelings in his music. One of his most personal songs, “Caves,” is seven minutes of McMahon singing about how he feels the walls are caving in on him — a simple metaphor to describe his anxieties. There are words of hope, however, in the song “Swim,” which is a call to “seek brighter days, despite the absence of sun” and “just keep your head above.”

Dear Jack EP The music box version of “Swim” has probably one of the most beautiful instrumentals to have ever graced my ears. McMahon took the already powerful ballad and added the twinkly familiarity of a music box. It’s a wonderful reprise that augmented the meaning of the song without taking away any of its already existing magic.

McMahon founded The Dear Jack foundation in 2006 after his battle with cancer. This EP only has a handful of songs, as was released along with a documentary, full of raw footage McMahon took with a handheld camera while hospitalized.

The song “There, There Katie” is both a thank you and an apology to his sister Katie, who was his donor and life-saver. Though short, this EP was likely some of the most personal music McMahon has put out there.

People and Things The final album from Jack’s Mannequin, released three years after The Glass Passenger.

This album is reflective — McMahon looks at the relationships in his life and the intersecting lines between himself and others, and writes a clean and clear album that leaves behind some of the freshness of earlier Jack’s and instead starts toeing the line of true adulthood. He seems to be attempting to bring back some of the energy that was exhibited in Everything in Transit, but following the rawness of The Glass Passenger is not easy to do, and the album falls flat at times.

McMahon shows off his vocal range in songs like “Amy, I” and “Release Me,” while retaining some cynicism in, “Hey, Hey, Hey (We’re All Gonna Die).” Though overall still a solid album, you can tell the spirit of Jack’s Mannequin is beginning to waver. Later, McMahon revealed how difficult of a process recording this album was, exacerbated by label drama.

Andrew mcmahon Pop Underground Andrew disappeared, and with him went Jack’s Mannequin. After a period of silence, and an emotional blog post that summarized the band’s need to break up, McMahon made the decision to retire the name. He felt that although once Jack’s Mannequin was an escape for him, a name with freedom attached, it now was intertwined with a darkness in his life that he wanted, no, needed, to shake off. And then suddenly came Pop Underground, the almost tentative four-song EP that held no moniker. No more Something Corporate, no more Jack’s Mannequin — just Andrew McMahon, his piano and the strange but interesting introduction of synth-pop. The first single off this EP was “Synesthesia,” named after a neurological phenomenon that causes people to cross-associate their senses — music can become colors, numbers can become tastes. This was both a terrifying and exhilarating time in McMahon’s career — now there was nothing shielding him from the world, but the positive reception from old and new fans alike could keep him going.

Zombies on Broadway What’s next for Andrew McMahon? His album Zombies on Broadway was just released on February 10, and he will be heading out on the Zombies in America tour in March. The man, literally, never stops.

Andrew mcmahon and the wilderness Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness Still bravely presenting himself to the world under his new name, he brought into his public image the inspiration for his first post-Jack’s full album — nature. McMahon kept himself in a secluded cabin, writing and recording vigorously for days and hours, going home on the weekends to see his pregnant wife and then driving back into the woods to write and record some more.

You see the change in subject matter in his selftitled album: we no longer hear the drunken (but somehow beautiful) ramblings of a young adult, but rather the mature storytelling of someone who is established in their life and career. He sings of hope for his future family, dreams of his daughter, worries about his parents and nostalgia about the past through the lens of someone that has lived it. The song named after his daughter, “Cecilia and the Satellite,” broke the Billboard Hot 100 and received extensive radio play. Even my friends who had never heard another Andrew McMahon song in their lives could be found humming along to “Cecilia” when it came on inside a store.

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In Defense Of

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System of a Down’s Mezmerize For better or worse, who else sounds like System of a Down? Serj Tankian’s freaky new wave shouts and melodies, juxtaposed against Daron Malakian’s sharp, riff-heavy guitar playing, created a sound that had never been heard before and will likely never be heard again. After all, much of their sound and fanbase is inseparably tied to the hypermasculine, classicist hellhole that was mid2000s radio rock. And herein lies the problem: to lump System of a Down in with the likes of Disturbed, Shinedown and Five Finger Death Punch would be to discredit one of the most important art bands of our generation.

Even a cursory look at what SOAD represents should be enough to lift them beyond nu-metal, metalcore or whatever disreputable subgenre their detractors wish to call them. Their style would be more accurately described as Oingo Boingo meets Type O-Negative, as Serj’s vocal caricatures are placed over such a rapid hodgepodge of guitar styles that whiplash stops being a side effect and becomes an artistic goal. This styling is entirely evident in the group’s biggest singles, “Chop Suey!” and “B.Y.O.B.” The latter begins with a tight riff straight out of a Slipknot song, but the moment Serj opens his mouth it becomes clear that this is a different beast entirely.

After a high-pitched, slurred scream

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(“WHYDOTHEYALWAYSSENDTHEPOOR?”), the already breakneck riff picks up even more speed and Serj begins singing in absurd character voices, with alveolar trills underscoring his ridiculous impression of the figureheads that dominated life in his era. The song is a pointed, blatant satire of the Iraq war, and it is anything but subtle. “Dancing in the desert / blowing up the sunshine” can be easily understood by the adolescent males that comprised the band’s core fanbase, and this is not a bad thing.

By the time SOAD put out Mesmerize, they had a full understanding of who their fans were; to those who don’t like them, it could therefore be taken as one of their most annoying releases. The goofy screams and catchy bridges are taken to the extreme, and the lyrics drift between the pseudointellectual (“When we, when we go / do we DIE?”) and the vulgar (“MY COCK IS MUCH BIGGER THAN YOUUURS!”). But this is carried out to appeal to the setting in which they existed. In an era where Buckcherry’s “Crazy Bitch” sat next to Korn’s “Coming Undone” on the rock charts, lyrics like this were simply what it took to reach a mainstream rock audience. And to focus on that aspect of their songwriting would be to discredit how extensively System of a Down had honed their craft. “This Cocaine Makes Me Feel Like I’m On This Song” is inimitable in its sheer energy levels and musicianship, and

I have yet to meet the person who couldn’t at least admit that it’s a fun song.

Mezmerize, however, goes far beyond the concept of “fun.” Taken out of context, their music can seem brainless, but for every “Cigaro” there is a “Violent Pornography” to contextualize it; “Cigaro” is explicitly meant to be a parody of the media that SOAD felt existed to distract people from the Bush era’s disastrous foreign policy. And this isn’t simple signifying either. Serj Tankian is an incredibly outspoken advocate for human rights and social justice. SOAD even starred in Screamers, a documentary about genocide in the modern era. In fact, his activism has always framed his entire public persona to such an extent that any serious SOAD fan was aware of it. And since he appealed to such an immature fanbase, he was providing one of the most productive possible outlets for preteen rage. Thanks to System of a Down, a generation of adolescent males spent their time yelling at each other over the government’s lack of recognition of the Armenian genocide. And even if you can’t handle the eccentricities of their music, that merits respect.

• Tim DiFazio (English)

WHO ARE YOU WEARING?

Jane Father John Misty

Katie Beach Weather

“I bought this shirt when I saw FJM in Boston last April. His lyrics are really interesting and funny but I alsoW feel like he’s making fun of me at the same time. I love him regardless.”

Suki Pink Floyd

“Beach Weather is a newer band. The lead singer is from Braintree. They’re part of an independent label called 8123 that was started by a band called The Maine. I’ve met some of my best friends through 8123.”

“I bought this shirt last summer in a thrift shop in my hometown, I grew up listening to Pink Floyd and they’ve always been one of my favorite bands”

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST We’ve compiled a playlist with songs from each article. See if you can guess which songs correspond to each article!

Find the playlist at: sptfy.com/1npJ

1. “Intro” — Calle 13 2. “Depreston” — Courtney Barnett 3. “Shook Ones Part II” — Mobb Depp 4. “Depreston” — Courtney Barnett 5. “My Shot” — Hamilton Cast 6. “Cheap Thrills” — Sia feat. Sean Paul 7. “Work” — Rihanna feat. Drake 8. “Dr. Beat” — Gloria Estefan 9. “The Mixed Tape” — Jack’s Mannequin 10. “Sugar Man” — Rodriguez 11. “Atomic Bomb” — William Onyeabor

FIND KANYE

12. “Intern” — Angel Olsen 13. “Violent Pornography” — System of a Down 14. “Konstantine” — Something Corporate 15. “Cecilia and the Satellite” — Andrew McMahon and the Wilderness 16. “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” — Wilco 17. “Washer” — Slint 18. “The Opera House” — Olivia Tremor Control 19. “Leatherheard” — Tyler the Creator 20. “An Introduction to the Album” — The Hotelier

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