Not so GaGa
Filed Under Dale Cooper, Music | 1 Comment
Hiya. I’m Special Agent Dale Cooper, intrepid FBI agent and pop culture commentator. I’m new to Porch Dog – hope to be popping up here regularly going forward. Now let’s get down to business.
Every so often we get a Lady GaGa. That is to say, we get a self-aggrandizing little pop twerp with a giant head and pretensions toward being an artiste. Lady GaGa types aren’t content with riding high on the Billboard charts and annoying the shit out of me while I’m enjoying my weekly lunch in the Mexican district around 79th and Michigan (explanation: “Poker Face” is currently enjoying great popularity on Mexican pop radio, and there’s a lot of that playing in certain of Indianapolis’s many taquerias.) No, they also have to claim to be contributing something of large and lasting value to the world, in the form of capital-A Art.
Pardon me while I cough up some stomach lining. …There, that’s better.
Lady GaGa makes dance music. It’s reasonably OK pop fluff, but it doesn’t really aspire to be anything more, not even SUPERIOR fluff. Her sound is equal parts Britney factory hits like “Toxic,” and Cher revival tunes such as the vocoder-reviving, briefly ubiquitous “Believe.” There’s a throbbing disco beat, some buzzingly overdriven synth lines playing snaky minor key melodies, and of course the Lady herself singing nonsense about bluffin’ with her muffin… whatever that means. This song and dance isn’t new, and the craft behind it isn’t anything astonishing. I cop to the fact that I am a more-than-ordinarily cynical musician and a jaded consumer of prodigious amounts of music; so I suppose that I am admitting to being exactly the kind of person that Lady GaGa isn’t making music for. But I like my funk. I like a little bit of disco. I think “Toxic” is a very well-written song (naturally Britney had nothing to do with it; she barely sung the damn thing) and “Believe” isn’t ear-gougingly bad. I believe I’m qualified to call GaGa out on her subterfuge.
So that I am not accused of setting up a pantsless strawman, let me supply a few relevant GaGaisms:
“Right now the only thing that I am concerned with in my life is being an artist.”
“You can say the philosophy of GaGa is fashion-music-technology-performance art. It’s an interactive experience for the audience, I design everything together and New York is the nexus of my inspiration. I was born and raised in New York City. I am inspired by street fashion and the attitude. Andy Warhol is a huge inspiration of mine and I have a lot of Pop Art elements in the show. I am so passionate about my music.”
“If somebody said to me, ‘What you do isn’t art,’ I would say, They’re right. Yes it is, no it isn’t, absolutely, perhaps, it’s irrelevant, it’s important…that’s what this is all about, really. For me, more than anything, I want to do something important. It’s gotta be important.
If it’s coming out of my mouth, if it’s going on my body, if it’s going on TV, it better be important.” (Wha..?)
“GaGa is the greatest creative journey of my life.” (Gag.)
What is GaGa, in reality? Musically, GaGa is catchy trash. This version of “Poker Face” was making the rounds on the internet, impressing people left and right with its “musicality.” What this actually is: 1. barely a version of “Poker Face,” since the chord progressions and melodies through the majority of this performance bear no resemblance to the hit song of the same name; 2. incoherent, overcooked lounge hoo-ha; and distant number 3. reasonably but not amazingly well-played and well-sung. The main thing this performance does is preserve the icy, sexless legal separation between verse and chorus in the original dance version of the song. GaGa isn’t a good songwriter, at least not based on this example. She’s a good PERFORMER. Not the same thing.
Visually, GaGa is David Bowie (the face painting) mixed with Madonna (the pantlessness and much of the other accoutrements) mixed with various other pop art icons, finished off with a splash of good old-fashioned burlesque show. As a visual artist, she crushes the musical version of herself. I give her that. But none of it is strikingly original. It brands her as a quintessential post-modern fashion artist, making something “new” from recombinant DNA. In our post-hip hop, post-Danger Mouse world we are perhaps as well-primed to accept this form of creativity as we will ever be. I am no exception to that – my CD racks are filled with sampling-based albums, and my iTunes library has at least a few mash-ups in it. Hell, I was responsible for one. So even though I see a dearth of truly new ideas in the clothes and stage show wrapped around the GaGa burrito, I can appreciate what she’s up to.
But ultimately it amounts to smoke and mirrors. Our Lady isn’t selling clothes (at least not as her principal gig) or putting on blazing stage spectacles in Vegas unto eternity. Her primary product is music. The thing she talks the most about in interviews is music. And while she has produced a few nagging earworms, thus far she hasn’t produced any art that demands more than a passing glance. Nor do I expect her to, on the evidence of everything I’ve heard so far.
It failed to surprise me when in a recent Rolling Stone piece it was revealed that she has somehow aligned herself with Marilyn Manson. Manson is a perfect GaGa predecessor. His music was shoplifted and threadbare Trent Reznor with little to recommend it, but he got over with imagery and “attitude” and a generally well-designed package. He, like GaGa, knew how to sell the sizzle and not the gristle-choked, over-aged steak. And where is Manson today? Slobbering after Lady GaGa (seriously – at least if Rolling Stone is to be believed) and being forgotten by the rest of the world. On a good day, I can remember one Marilyn Manson song – his shitty, thuddingly obvious, embarrassingly “evil” rendition of the Eurythmics hit “Sweet Dreams.” His most memorable song is a bad cover. He is further fading into the twilight of irrelevance even as I type this sentence.
And there, God willing, will go GaGa.
And Here We Go Again!
Filed Under Dale Cooper, Entertainment, MetaBlogging, Porchy | 3 Comments
I’ll do yesterday’s weekly jumpstart later today but unfortunately I have to get some things done and since those things are revenue-enhancing and Porch Dog is not, they take precedence.
In other news, I’m happy to introduce the second of our two new regular blog writers.
Have you, like me, long thought that Porch Dog was short on thoughtful analysis of the racist implications of Scandinavian black metal, rants on Hollywood’s severe lack of good judgment and new ideas, and lists of stuff? I know you have!
Special Agent Dale Cooper, as his name implies to those who remember his fictional namesake, is a slightly offbeat intellectual tough guy. He’s the kind of guy who likes a good piece of pie, long bouts of hanging upside down, and learning about things by throwing rocks at them. He’s also everything you want out of a pop cultural blogger and occasional social critic. And also football. Yeah, football. It’s not the most coherent introduction, but if you need more, you should check out his back catalog at his Wordpress blog.
I haven’t read his first post which should be up later today but if he wasn’t misleading me it should be a gray lament at the existence of Lady Gaga.
Thanks to SADC for joining the site.
What would MJ (the pop star) have looked like without the plastic surgery?
Filed Under Entertainment, In the News, Music, Porchy, The Arts | 4 Comments
Of course there’s no telling how accurate this is, but the juxtaposition of the reality vs the dream (you can pick which is which) is almost too much to bear:
Beer Friday: Remembering Michael Jackson
Filed Under Beer, Porchy | 1 Comment
No offense intended to the Michael Jackson that died yesterday, I loved his music including about half the songs on Bad (and maybe even a song or two after that). He was the phenom that put the idea of The Phenom to bed once and for all. All the Svengalis that have come along since Michael first waggled his ankle and spun in time have laid in bed at night hoping that they’ve found the next Michael Jackson. But they never will. His talent is the Holy Grail of contemporary pop culture–it was even to the later Michael Jackson. You can never go home again.
But he was a freak and most likely a child molester and while I generally try to separate the man from his art, in Jackson’s case it’s very hard. I can’t explain why. As a result, I’m finding it hard to reconcile the sadness I feel for the death of the man who made Thriller and Off the Wall and the apathy I feel for the guy who was multiply accused of sexually assaulting prepubescent boys.
I leave that personal struggle personal.
And as a result for today’s Beer Friday I give you Sam Calagione–rockstar president and owner of Dogfish Head remembering the late Michael Jackson–not the pop star, but the notorious Beer Hunter. If you’re a beer fan, you know who I’m talking about.
The story that Sam remembers here is also told here from Michael Jackson’s viewpoint.
The Gov, His Ladies, The State, and Them Sexy Emails
Filed Under In the News, Politics, Porchy | 3 Comments
Bloggers like Michael Tomasky have been just very slightly critical of The State having held back on publishing the sexy emails between Gov. Sanford and his Querida Maria. According to Tomasky and a few others, the local newspaper, The State, may have been holding back publishing the letters in deference to their all powerful idiot governor. Tomasky thinks they should have ran the story six months ago.
According to The State they received the email anonymously back in December, put a smattering of effort into verifying them and came up empty handed, thus sat on them until the affair could be verified, which it was with the governor’s mysterious absence followed by his return from Argentina and his subsequent admission of an affair.
It seems to me that if The State had run with the email (verified or not) back in December they would have been accused of kowing the pressures of an increasingly tabloid-hungry populous. Moreover they would have been inundated with complaints of “why should we care?” much as follows any one of these stories. Indeed, adulterous politicians (and especially adulterous Republicans) is old hat by now. The only reason we should care about this particular affair more than the others is that this one included a week long absence by the state’s chief executive–a flagrant dereliction of duty.
It’s not that I think The State had great intentions in sitting on the emails, Tomasky is probably right that they did so so as not to stir the pot over what may have been an instance of small potatoes, especially back in December what with the economy falling to pieces and all those ads they had to run to help out the tanking retail sector at the height of the holidays (”Christmas.” Sorry SC Christians). But since I would really like it if American political discourse just began to accept the fact that politicians like to have sex with people other than their spouse and started caring more about substantive issues, I’m totally OK with the fact that they sat on the story. I would be more than happy if the only affairs that were reported were on politicians that have specifically voted or spoke out in favor of traditional family values or the dignity of the institution of marriage–but even then only because they should be shamed for their hypocrisy and their willingness to deprive others by law of that which they indulge themselves.
It would of course ease my conscious a little if there was some evidence that the South Carolina periodical would extend the same deference via apathy if the politician in question was a liberal. I guess we’ll see….one day.
On a related note–people keep asking how secret this was and how effectively The State kept it quiet and whether or not the paper received the emails as part of move to embarass or blackmail the governor. Am I the only who can count all the fingers of one whole hand? Is it mere coincidence that The State received these emails in December and Sanford’s wife admits to knowing about the affair “for the last five months?” It seems to me that someone had malicious intent in mind and their motivations and followthrough are at the heart of this whole saga. At the very least the governor somehow found out that gig was up.
My question is not “If” but “Who?” That’s the real story as far as I’m concerned and it should be The State’s major concern too, because whoever it is shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the levers of power in South Carolina. It’s one thing to out the governor in his affair, even if to score political points. It’s another thing entirely if there was a blackmail attempt along the way.
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