Why do I keep listening to Daft Punk’s boring new album?

I usually try to write about things other than myself, but when it comes to anything Daft Punk-related, I’m unabashedly entangled. And so, what follows is a somewhat sheepish, autobiographical impression of the album.

Of Random Access Memories, Sasha Frere-Jones asks, “Does good music need to be good?” I’m struggling with a similar concern. But before I continue, I hope you’ll afford me a personal aside:

Daft Punk’s music formed a significant portion of my identity as a teenager and young adult. “Around the World” was the first MP3 I ever discovered on a search engine. Discovery consumed all of my developing aesthetic sensibilities (around the same time I was buying turntables and learning to DJ), and I had an essentially religious experience watching Daft Punk live at Coachella in 2006. They inspired me to like robots again, and made my love of disco and 80′s pop seem far less marginal.

Back to the conundrum: Random Access Memories is over-understated. I don’t dislike it, but the album essentially provides no raucous, shiny hook to hang my satisfaction upon. Discovery has succulent, perfectly filtered samples; Human After All has relentless robot bombast, Random Access Memories has… exceptionally tight session guitar licks? In years prior this would be a huge problem, but unlike my 16-year-old self, I already have an identity that I’m pretty happy with. Feeling somewhat ambivalent about Random Access Memories doesn’t cause me debilitating existential angst.

Still, over-understated is basically a euphemism for “boring,” and I don’t often listen to boring music. And yet others (and I) seem to be returning to the album pretty relentlessly, and I kind of want to accuse them (and myself) of being a slavish and narrow victim of the hype machine.1

But what nags is a sensation that there is something sublime about Random Access Memories. The more I hear about Daft Punk’s approach—that they sought to integrate the same human craftsmanship that went into the albums they’ve sampled for years—the more I get the sense that they are truly working artists, pursing authentic themes that they find inspiring and fulfilling to create. Even if a number of tracks are uncharacteristically beige at a distance, there’s a just-buried pop sensibility that begs to be uncovered. Moreover, I’m finding it hard to dismiss the album because it’s not sellout work. A sellout’s album would have sounded like the kind of liquid, robot dance music that Daft Punk has already mastered. And so I keep coming back to listen.

It’s exciting to imagine that the duo is ahead of the curve, using Random Access Memories to give the public access to a nascent aesthetic that we’ll grow to appreciate, just as they did with Homework in 1997.2

But here’s a final, overarching doubt: maybe this is a bad album, and I’m just fetishizing Daft Punk. I’m a card-carrying member of the Daft Club (this is nearly literal), and so perhaps I’m papering over the blandness with my own manufactured enthusiasm. After all, millions went into marketing this thing, and I fully accept that I’m ordinary enough to be the bullseye for some marketer’s demographic engagement cannonry.

Luckily, I don’t really have much time nowadays to wallow in this roiling self-analysis. And that’s a part of this story too—my recent endeavors would probably seem screamingly humdrum to my younger self, just as Random Access Memories would probably disappoint the hell out of the 17-year-old me. And yet, I feel like I’m carrying a more meaningful payload of intellect, experience, and drive than ever before in my life, and Random Access Memories seems like it’s full of work and substance in a similar way.

Amidst all of this tortured ambivalence I have about Random Access Memories, I find it unassailably satisfying that Daft Punk’s music might continue to provide a sense of aesthetic and emotional companionship; that Random Access Memories is a gentle education to the adult me, just as Discovery was a rhapsodic one to the teenaged me. I’ve not looked to music for this in a long time—it’s mostly a mood-altering service for me nowadays—but Random Access Memories grants an orthogonal satisfaction. The album scratches an itch I didn’t even know was there.

  1. This feeling was exacerbated last week by the experience of hearing a trio of trying-hard-to-be-hip yuppie types on BART talking about how excited they were about the album. I departed the train with deep, murky clouds of shark jumpy feelings, although those kinds of things are far less visceral nowadays thanks to the identity stability discussed above.
  2. I’m willing to accept that perhaps that’s just wishful thinking on my part; me wanting to be part of the vanguard of something new and groundbreaking.
Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

The astronomical cost of parking

A friend from USC, @brucecha, posted a link to Between the Lines this deliciously expansive feature in Los Angeles Magazine about parking. The blurb that caught my attention explained one dimension of the difference between LA’s many soulless public spaces and San Francisco’s many vibrant ones:

 “L.A.,” says Shoup, “required 50 times more parking under Disney Hall than San Francisco would allow at their own hall.” Downtown already had an oversupply of garages and lots where music fans could leave their cars. “After a concert in San Francisco,” says Shoup, “the streets are full of people walking to their cars, eating in restaurants, stopping into bars and bookstores. In L.A.? The bar next door at Patina is a ghost town.” 1

But the mind-boggling basic facts and figures in the story steal the show:

Parking spaces can be amazingly expensive to fabricate. In aboveground structures they cost as much as $40,000 apiece. Belowground, all that excavating and shoring may run a developer $140,000 per space. The debt on Disney Hall’s garage would have to be paid off for decades to come, and as it turned out, a minimum schedule of 128 annual shows would be enough to cover the bill. The figure “128” was even written into the L.A. Philharmonic’s lease. [...] [C]oncertgoers—who lay out $9 to enter the garage—have steadily funded performances that exist to cover the true price of their parking.

Read more: http://www.lamag.com/features/2011/12/01/between-the-lines

  1. Commenters have noted that Patina has since become very popular.
Posted in Paraphernalia | Comments closed

How bad is Glee’s behavior around Coulton’s “Baby Got Back”?

The TV show Glee recently aired an episode featuring a group singing a cover of “Baby Got Back.” The cover has largely been identified as the creative work of Jonathan Coulton, though Glee hasn’t publicly acknowledged his role. Fox is also openly selling the Glee version of the song on iTunes. Coulton’s fans (me included!) feel irritated-to-indignant about this.

In response, Coulton has reposted the cheekily named ”Baby Got Back (In the Style of Glee)” for sale and it’s identical to the version he originally released in 2005. Because Coulton is awesome, he’s promised to donate all proceeds through February to charity.

Coulton has paraphrased Fox’s thoughts on the matter thusly: “[Fox] also got in touch with my peeps to basically say that they’re within their legal rights to do this, and that I should be happy for the exposure (even though they do not credit me, and have not even publicly acknowledged that it’s my version – so you know, it’s kind of SECRET exposure).” I added the emphasis there, because I’m curious about something:

What if Coulton is indeed “better off” with his song being used in Glee? 1 2

It’s an effects-focused thought experiment that could highlight (a) what exactly we should be mad about and (b) what’s the most productive course of action if you’re an artist who gets Glee’d (or if you’re a fan of an artist who gets Glee’d). Promotion certainly has value if it results in conversions — people becoming customers or fans.

Here are some of the more detailed figures I’d love to know:

How much does Coulton make if Glee uses his song but also finds a way to acknowledge him? In other words, what is attribution’s role in turning mass exposure into a meaningful relationship? As it stands, the melodic “Baby Got Back” version aired on Glee has reached some millions of people, and in theory, some of the lucky, more curious viewers probably discovered Jonathan Coulton as a result. But how much stronger would that discovery effect have been if the relationship were made more explicit in he show itself?

There’s a huge range of potentially attributive behavior to consider. Glee could have mentioned Coulton somehow in the credits (a “weak” attribution), or they could have invited him to make a cameo in the episode itself (a “strong” attribution).

How much does Coulton make if Glee uses his song, but he doesn’t get a bunch of press as a result? This question is primarily concerned with the effects of self-promotion. Coulton has an engaged, connected fan base and they’ve been able to organically generate additional attention out of this David and Goliath story. As of this writing, Coulton’s single on the iTunes top singles chart is number 95, so it seems fair to say that Coulton has been able to catalyze this attention into something productive.

iTunes chart screenshot

See, I told you his single is in the Top 100.

In some ways, this is a question about the repeatability of Fox’s claim that they’re doing Coulton a favor—if they did the same thing to a more obscure artist, would it be more helpful or more exploitative, and to what degree?

How much does Coulton make if Glee just pays for the song somehow? Copyright heavyweights can go into greater detail, but this is my handwavy attempt to characterize a theoretical figure representative of a one-off payment to Colton, whether for licensing, or a contract for services, etc.

Finally, this might be considered the “control”: How much does Coulton make if Glee just features a different song entirely and none of this happens? This figure could help establish a baseline for comparison. Ideally, with all these figures, one could make an attempt to generalize, like, “When Glee attributed a song, there’s a bump of X above the norm; when Glee doesn’t attribute, there’s a smaller bump of Y instead; therefore, to be a better creative citizen, Glee should attribute when inspired by artists.”

I’m not sure how to ballpark these numbers in a meaningful way, but it feels good to spitball.

Like other fans, I reacted to the news with indignation, because it feels like Glee is exploiting the work of an artist I appreciate without “giving back” to that artist or the creative community. But I’m increasingly inclined to step back and apply other lenses to such events—especially if they move me emotionally—in the effort to uncover a nugget of unconventional wisdom or innovation.

  1. Note that the most concrete way to answer this question probably requires us to focus on money, while simultaneously ignoring the impact of otherwise vital human being stuff. For example, having a creative work has been likened to having a child, and Coulton’s clearly gone through some distress as a result of this conflict.
  2. We may also have to pretend that Coulton isn’t giving the majority of proceeds to charity. The Twitter conversation that inspired this inquiry took place before I knew what Coulton was doing with the sales of the single.
Posted in Paraphernalia | Comments closed

Jaipur is a good board game for two players

jaipur game box

I’m commonly asked to give recommendations of a good tabletop game for two players, and I’ve found that Jaipur is one of the best. Here’s an answer I posted to Quora explaining the game’s mechanics:

Jaipur is an elegantly designed hand-building/trading game for 2 players. Cards represent different trade materials, like spices and textiles, and there’s a common pool of cards in the center representing the market. Players try to collect combinations of cards in order to trade for tokens, which score the game.

Little tweaks to the core gameplay cause interesting conflicts to develop between the two players. For example, some materials yield higher-scoring tokens than others (rubies vs. spices, for example), but players also receive a bonus for big trades (and it’s easier to assemble a big trade of 5 silks cards versus rubies cards). The cards you choose to take from the market can be a signal to the other player of your strategy, which invites intriguing mind games. But the game doesn’t drag out.

I seek out excessive depth in my gaming experiences, which usually calls for a long-style strategic game. But my partner isn’t as fond of that, and Jaipur manages to really satisfy both of our gaming styles.

Posted in Board Games, Contributions, Quora | Comments closed

Blizzard publishes opening cinematic to the second iteration of StarCraft II

StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm Opening Cinematic – YouTube.

The second game in the series focuses on Kerrigan, a hero whose tragic betrayal transforms her into one of gaming’s most memorable, ruthless, and sympathetic villains.

From Wikipedia, with edits for clarity:

Sarah Kerrigan is the Queen of Blades — the leader of the insect-like alien race called Zerg. [...] Kerrigan is the predominant antagonist of the StarCraft series.

Originally a celebrated human “ghost” special agent working for the rebel Arcturus Mengsk, she is betrayed in his quest for power and abandoned to the Zerg, who transform her into a Terran/Zerg hybrid with vast psionic powers. Following the death of the dominant Zerg hive mind, Kerrigan asserts her independence, striking out at those who betrayed her and who seek to contain her, eventually taking control of the entire Zerg Swarm.

Posted in Paraphernalia | Tagged , , | Comments closed