I was home sick from school the day of that first Major League Baseball session in congress discussing steroids. Maybe you remember; it was the one where Mark McGuire kept saying he wanted to “talk about the future” since talking about the past would mean admitting he was juiced out of his mind for his record-breaking ’98 season. Anyway, all the big channels were covering it, so I watched. At the end of the hour or so, absolutely nothing had been accomplished. Nobody had admitted any wrongdoing, nobody had presented any plans for moving forward. There had been no rational discussion of the facts at hand. Everybody knew steroids were rampant in the league and the problem had to be addressed, but congress’s session was nothing more than a bunch of name-calling, finger-pointing and question-evading. Ugh. I hate politics.

No, I mean I really hate politics. I hate everything about them (except, of course, really good political cartoons). I hate how politics is boring and vulgar. I hate how it’s damn near impossible to get anything done (proof: recent health care bill). I hate politicians themselves; they’re generally sleazy and dishonest. Everyone says whatever he or she needs to get votes rather than trying to solve problems. None of these adultery/bribery scandals surprise me any more. I’ve got a ridiculously cynical view of everything even remotely political (and I’m only twenty-one!). So it should come as no surprise that one of my least favorite things is—you guessed it—when musicians get political.

First, I hate when musicians voice their political opinions off-stage. Musical talent doesn’t warrant your preaching ideals. Just because you can play guitar doesn’t mean you’re allowed  to tell us who to vote for. And it drives me crazy that some people might actually be swayed by what musicians/actors/entertainers think. Still, all that talking-head and sound byte garbage can be forgiven or ignored–just listen to the music and forget the people who made it. What  I hate even more is when politics affects the music.

I’ve always disagreed with the idea that music can/should be used as a political tool. I know, I know—art can inspire revolution or challenge authority and all that stuff. I’ve heard the story about how the Rite of Spring caused a riot. Still, please keep politics out of it. That’s not why I listen to music. I have my own political opinions, but I don’t derive them from my favorite songs or lyrics. I read books and newspapers; I deal with facts and statistics and sound arguments. Music can make us feel a range of emotions, but level-headed debate and logic are the only way to run a country. Political lyrics drive me crazy. I like rap songs about money and cars and expensive clothes. Who cares what Young Jeezy thinks about the the economy? Keep writing rhymes about your Maybach.

Besides, musicians who “raise awareness” through their songs aren’t really doing much. They’re largely singing to people who already know about the problems we face. And it’s hard to argue that singing a song about how we need to cure cancer is more useful than spending the same amount of mental energy in the laboratory. Maybe that song can capture a specific emotion and make us vicariously feel the pain of cancer, but it won’t make any progress in curing the disease or getting more government funding. Music is aurally pleasing. That’s it.

One of the many reasons I love electronic music is that the genre has nothing to do with politics. It’s “all about the music, man.” Many electronic songs don’t have lyrics. Or maybe they have “lyrics,” usually just a looped sample with the same phrases repeating and stuttering for an entire track. But those phrases aren’t about the income tax or farm subsidies, they’re about partying or sex or having fun. I can’t name a dance song that has politically-driven lyrics. And that’s a good thing. When I’m dancing, the last thing I wanna think about is who to vote for.

Keep in mind that this is just one music lover’s opinion. People listen to music for different reasons, and I understand that. I know a lot of people who strongly disagree with everything I’ve just written. (Many of them play acoustic guitar in the park by my house and aren’t particularly talented.) Seriously though, I think music should be an escape from the mundane, ugly world of politics. It shouldn’t be contaminated. Music doesn’t and shouldn’t tell us how to live our lives or what to think about the mid-term elections.

And now that I think of it, readers of this blog probably don’t give a shit about my political views either. So let’s keep music blogs and politics separate, too. Deal? Here’s a song that won’t tell you what to think about global warming. But it sounds damn good. And that’s all that really matters, right?

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Fred Falke – Back to Stay

What’s the name for the kind of music video that’s just a bunch of crazy shit all thrown together? I love that style– lots of colors and flashing lights and shapes you never learned about in geometry class; ridiculous costumes and even more ridiculous haircuts, vaguely sexual dancing and so many effects that little kids might get seizures by watching. I don’t know what to call the avante-garde, experimental, postmodern (post-postmodern?), surrealist, Dadaist style that’s become so popular in the last few years. So let’s just use the word “clusterfuck.”

The video below is a perfect example of clusterfuck-ism. I actually had no idea what I was  going to post today until I checked my inbox and saw this thing. It’s the music video for Sidney Samson’s new track “Shut Up & Let it Go” featuring Lady Bee. It reminds me of Major Lazer’s Pon De Floor video, last year’s best example of the clusterfuck style.

The song itself is a monster, and it’s going to be big at WMC in a few weeks. But I couldn’t get clearance from the label to post the track itself (it doesn’t come out until April 25th). I wish I could spread it all over the world because I’ve been listening to it on repeat all morning. The video below will have to tide you over for the time being.

My birthday is coming up on March 30th. I’m turning 22. This pillow shaped like a Roland TR-808 drum machine is what I want. Seriously.

I declare August 8th official “808 Day” (get it?). Let’s start building a playlist now. Here’s an old classic that uses the famous drum machine for the rhythm section. Remeber when this sound was cool until Kanye ruined it?

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Afrika Bambaataa – Looking For The Perfect Beat

The above graphic is the cover for MGMT’s forthcoming sophomore album Congratulations (April 23rd, Sony/Columbia). I’ve heard MGMT’s first CD dozens of times and I have no idea what the cover looks like. Not a clue. In fact, I can’t identify the artwork that decorates a lot of CDs I enjoy. When pressed to identify my favorite album covers from the last five years or so, I can only name a handful. Am I the only one? When and why did I stop caring about album art?

I never gave much thought to album art until I started buying vinyl. I was probably about fourteen years old at the time. Until then, the only album covers I’d seen were framed beneath hard plastic CD cases that gave even the most beautiful artwork an awkward packaged feel. At the store, those cases were wrapped in cellophane and loaded with annoying little stickers (“featuring the hit single!”); I couldn’t view an album cover without the constant reminder that I was a consumer buying a product.

But I can’t blame the record store. Even if I owned the album I’d probably read the liner notes once before struggling to slide the booklet back in without denting the corners. The cover of an album was an afterthought. It served as an easy way to recognize a CD without having to read the spine, but it didn’t have much inherent beauty. I liked good album covers (who doesn’t?). Still, I’m not sure I would’ve ever called the cover of an album “beautiful.” (Actually, at fourteen I don’t know if I would’ve ever called anything “beautiful,” but that’s beside the point.)

When I started buying vinyl I started paying attention to album art. The covers felt so much more substantial and, well, beautiful. The covers themselves were works of art rather than simply part of some machine-processed, shrink-wrapped package. Maybe the difference was that vinyl covers were so much bigger. Or maybe it was because buying vinyl meant flipping through hundreds of records and looking at each cover one-at-a-time instead of scanning a wall of CDs and seeing multiple covers simultaneously. Maybe it was just a coincidence. I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I fell in love with album art.

It’s important to remember that music wasn’t always accompanied by artwork. Cavemen in a drum circle (why do I always picture this as the “birth of music?”) just had their banging. Mozart never had an album cover. In fact, there was no such thing as album art until the vinyl album. Album art was just a way of decorating the thick cardboard packaging needed to protect delicate records. Then it decorated CD cases. Now it “decorates” the screen of an iPhone. Album artwork has been grandfathered in from an earlier time when a cover was big and glossy.

There’s room for debate about whether music sounds better on vinyl. But album art always looks its best on a big vinyl sleeve. Sure, it’s the same picture you find on the CD or on your iPod screen. But the vinyl cover feels like it has more artistic merit. Don’t think so? Consider this: hanging some vinyl-sized album covers on your wall is a trendy/retro-chic way to decorate your apartment. But hang six CD booklets on your wall and you’ll be laughed at. It looks totally ridiculous, one step above hanging a bunch of videogame instruction manuals.

But here’s the problem: people don’t buy vinyl albums anymore. Downloaded music often comes with album art, but even a fantastic high-resolution cover is reduced to a desktop thumbnail or sequestered to the bottom left corner in iTunes. I don’t intend to come off as some old geezer complaining about how album art is “too damn small these days.” But album art just doesn’t look as good on anything but a big vinyl sleeve. It doesn’t matter how awesome the graphic is, it’s going to look bad when it’s put on an electronic device that fits in my pocket. Hence, I don’t know a lot of modern album covers because I listen to music on my computer or on an iPod and the artwork is shrunk down so much that I essentially ignore it.

(As an aside, I think dance music stands out as a genre with a lot of singles rather than complete albums. Many singles have artwork, but a fair amount of bootlegs and remixes never get a “proper” release and float around as art-less MP3s.)

Here’s an optimistic prediction: album art will change to take advantage of new technology. It’s not implausible, since this is exactly how album art developed in the first place. There’s plenty of room for album art to evolve. It just hasn’t happened yet.

If you know your album cover is going to be viewed primarily on iPods, why not get creative? How about animated album art. Animated .gifs are a cinch to make. There could be an album cover that changes colors every day of the week. Or a photograph that rotates seasonally. What if the cover changed every day like the Google homepage? Album art that moved to the beat of the music? Something interactive that I can play with rather than look at? “Album art” could be any number of things. The transition from vinyl to MP3 doesn’t necessarily mean the end of album art. It might simply mean the end of traditional album art and the rise of, for lack of a better term, non-traditional album art.

I don’t know if those ideas are cool or not. Maybe they work better in theory than in practice. I recently went to an exhibit at New York’s Museum of Modern Art that featured digital and interactive artwork. Sounds kinda cool, right? I thought so. But I found it all a little gimmicky. None of the pieces had the same warmth of, say, a painting. The iphone-app-as-album-art idea might not work for the same reason. Then again, some art critics panned the use of the silkscreen when it was first invented, and history’s been deservedly kind to that Warhol guy.

A bigger issue is the computer science behind all these ideas. I’ve never written code for an iPhone and I have no idea how iTunes processes album artwork. Maybe it can’t display anything more than a static image. I hope that’s not the case. But even if it is, it probably won’t be that way forever. Imagine what iTunes version 20 is going to be like. All it takes is one album to get things going. And if a big artist like John Mayer wants his album cover to dance, Apple will probably make it happen.

Album art isn’t dead. But it’s stale because we’re looking at it on tiny little screens instead of the big vinyl sleeves for which it was originally intended. Everything else in the music world is has changed in the last fifty years. Why should album art be the one exception?

This song has nothing to do with what I wrote about above. I just wanted to post it because it’s so damn good. Remember the opening scene of Boogie Nights that’s three minutes long and filmed in one uncut crane-to-Steadicam take? This song is what plays in the background. Whenever someone tells me “I don’t like disco,” I make them listen to this. If it doesn’t change their mind, nothing will.

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The Emotions – Best Of My Love

Here’s a more club-friendly version that beatmaps the original to a steady drumbeat (and includes a relatively simple intro and outro). If you’re a DJ, you’ll want to grab this second MP3 to use in a set.

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The Emotions – Best of My Love (Dance Edit)