Why Some Bands Suck - or - Space Management

Lately I've had the opportunity to listen halfheartedly to a good deal of new independent rock and roll music, which in itself, is a pretty funny idea. Maybe as little as ten years ago the term "indie rock" meant something to someone, but by this point I'm not convinced it should mean anything to anyone anymore. I even heard from a reputable source that the Killers released a gaping arena rock song about how great indie rock is. I think that's both amazing and indicative of how useless the term is to describe anything that's been released since Sebadoh.

Anyway, I've listened recently to a bunch of music ranging from [Fernando Rodney right here throws the ball over Placido Polanco's head, ceding the tying run to the Cardinals in game 4 of the World Series] the boring ambience of Peter and the Wolf and Christopher Willits to the boring sort of pop-punk of Grey Does Matter, and it's all indie rock. And anyway, without getting too bogged down in semantics, the reason most of it sucks has a lot to do with space.

Bands in category a (the aforementioned PandW and C-Willits as well as people as revered as Grizzly Bear) basically exist in order to create an idea of vastness with instrumentation. Lots of reverb, not a whole lot going on in musical terms, openness - or I mean, at least that's what they're trying for. And failing. Most of it sucks and is as boring as it sounds. Like a good man once said, it is hard to imagine that nothing at all could be so exciting, or could be any fun at all.

Category b bands (Grey Does Matter, pretty much most guitar drum bass bands you've never heard of) are more fun, but in many ways no less bad. They don't generally give a shit about space at all. Wether they want to rock out, write a catchy ditty, whatever, they aren't concerned about space. They do their thing, and I understand that people like it, whatever, whatever. Whatever.

I listened to Paranoid by Black Sabbath this week for the first time in probably like 8 years. These guys had it right. There is space in this album of a nature that no new band I've heard in a while is capable of creating or has even attempted to create. The tension created by the 15 beats between instrumental hits during the opening of "War Pigs" is something people need to study. I know I already wrote about this in the Wolf Eyes thing, but it bears repeating. Good music is nothing more than tension and it is very difficult to create tension when you're just noodling or trying to be clever.

Maybe I'm not being coherent, but mainly my beef is with these bands that are, I think, all trying to be Animal Collective - folksy and completely nuts at the same time, acoustic guitar drones, whoopy tribe style vocals, you know the thing. They're going about things all wrong, because they heard Animal Collective was good, listened to songs like "Mouth Wooed Her" and that one from Here Comes the Indian that has the word "Ships" in the title, didn't realize the cool songs were the ones like "Slippi", "We Tigers" and "Who Could Win a Rabbit", and tried to imitate the wrong thing. Which isn't completely wrong. Animal Collective is good, and I wouldn't mind hearing more bands that actually sounded like them, but you can't have it only one way.

And this is getting more and more incoherent. I apologize. I can't watch my Tigers die like this.

Dirt -or- Pine Tar

Yeah, let's address all of that.

I've pretty much talked to only one person about the incident [Kenny Roger's alleged application of pine tar to his hand during the first inning of last night's baseball game], but he pretty much agreed with me. Rogers was probably using pine tar. And the fact that he was was a) not surprising b) not really a big deal c) characteristic and d) kind of awesome.

More than anyone the Tigers have signed in the past few years, I've really come around on Kenny Rogers. I never liked him. I thought him old, ornery, hard to pin down (baseballwise I mean: I still can't figure out why people have so much trouble hitting him sometimes). Then I realized: shit! Those are pretty much my favorite characteristics in a human being!

So now I love Kenny. And he was totally cheating. And the fact that he'll get away with it, I mean, as much as you can say that - he washed his hands after one inning - it isn't really like he got away with anything, the fact that he'll get away with it is proof positive of why baseball is so great. Cheating is an unspoken part of a lot of sports, except of course for cricket as we all learned this summer. But most sports have their share of shady behind the scenes business. The thing is, in most sports what you could call cheating is so behind the scenes that you don't really see it. In baseball, this should not be the case. Cheating has always been a visible part of baseball.

And here, this, is why the whole steroid issue is such a big deal. These guys, McGuire, Sosa, Bonds, whoever, they broke the rule that if you were cheating, you had to do it in the open. You had to give the other team a chance to see what you were doing, check their detective work and awareness. It's like, what would you think of a substance that made cork invisible once it was inserted into a bat? Cheating methods in baseball were supposed to be archaic, unscientific and strategic. What are the chances they'll check my bat, what are the chances they'll steal this sign/catch me stealing this sign. Steroids brought cheating into the 21 century in a sport where it had previously been in the 17th.

So kudos for Kenny. Doin it the old fashioned way - putting sticky shit on your hand so the ball spins more. A lesson for all the kids out there learning wrong from right - that's how you cheat.

ALCS -or- Bust

As a child I was never a strong supporter of my local sports franchises. The Red Wings were less than stellar in the early nineties, the Pistons were, admittedly, great, and I suppose I liked them quite a bit, the Lions were, despite Barry's best efforts, in the shitter, and the Tigers were the Tigers. What a lot of people have left out of the commentary on this season's Tigers team, I think, is the fact that, like the 1992 team, which went 75 and 82, finishing second to last in the American League East, and the 2003 team, which went 43 and 119, this year's team is still, quintessentially, archtypically, a Tigers team.

Just, as much, exactly as much, as the 2003 team was. They were fucking terrible. The ace of their staff, as you may already know, was 25 year old Mike Maroth, who went on to lose more games that season than any pitcher in over 20 years. Our lineup was anchored by the immortal Bobby Higginson, who boasted an extremely impressive arm from right field and batted .230 with 14 home runs in 130 games.

But these guys were amazing. Maroth was in his first full year out of triple a, and he was expected to head a pitching squad at the major league level. The guy did an incredible job. He went out, everyday and lost. And he didn't complain too much, he didn't ask for anything he wasn't getting, he was happy to be playing in Detroit, and, fuck, he didn't have any help on offense, that's for damn sure. It's hard to find a better rags to riches story in recent baseball memory, really. If he hadn't been hurt for so long this year, he could have won 21 games. The guy is a pro, and a Tiger if there ever was one.

As for Higginson, Christ, the guy was such a great punching bag. If there were to be an effigy of the 2003 Tigers for the city to collectively burn after this season, an idea which may very well come to pass, it would be in the laughably common image of Robert Higginson. Never an all-star, he was still the face of the ball club. He, like Maroth, represented the soul of the team: longsuffring, quiet, patient, static. Of course, Dmitri Young got the credit for anything that happened postively on the offensive end of the ball that year, which wasn't much, Higginson was the guy that took the heat, which, on a team that comes within games of losing a record-breaking number of games, is really what matters.

Those guys ought to be the heroes of this year's team, and the heroes of anyone who admires or supports this team, because it is upon the corpses of those such as Carlos Pena, Gay Knotts, and, as of very recently, Dmitri Young, that this team has been built. What I would really, really, love to see, come October, is Mike Maroth hoisting the World Series MVP trophy and proclaiming to the gathered masses of Detroiters, huddling under streetlights around radios at Michigan and Trumbull in the shadow of the old and useless Tigers Stadium, "I dedicate this achievement to me, Mike Maroth, 2003."