HPV, or the human papillomavirus, has long been considered a woman’s worry, with advocates going so far as to text message young women aged 18-26 to remind them about getting all their vaccinations. Not that it is impossible for males to contract the virus, but the biggest danger with HPV is getting cervical cancer, right?
Wrong. HPV, as it turns out, is a gender-neutral offender. In fact, “while women are able to naturally fight the virus, men are not as inherently able.” Because we’ve largely ignored HPV’s impact on men, we’ve let it infect them at alarming rates.
How alarming? Half of all men are thought to have HPV. Yup, that’s one out of two men. In the world. And that might be lowballing it: “some scientists say privately the actual figure is more like 100 percent.” Emphasis added, because what the fuck. A hundred goddamn percent! Scientists are never 100% sure of their findings; hell, I’m only 98% sure I’m wearing pants right now. But how many men have HPV? A hundred percent of them. That means if you are a man, you have HPV. I AM 100% CERTAIN OF THIS FACT, BECAUSE SCIENCE.
DoW Update: As pointed out by by Booboo, “There are over 150 subtypes of HPV. 2 of them are strongly associated with cervical and anal cancer. These are the 2 that the vaccine affects. There are a half dozen or so that may cause warts, a few that may cause non-cancerous changes in cervical tissue. The rest are extremely common but benign. Do you have HPV? Probably. Is it one of the virulent cancer-causing strains? Far less likely. However, cancer is a bitch and if you are in the appropriate age group you should seriously consider the vaccine.”
(Note: This is an article about some sexually explicit topics, so both this post and any sites to which I link may be considered textually NSFW.)
In the midst of the latest round of congressional attempts to criminalize abortion, the “right to choose” question has once again interjected itself into the national conversation. Does a woman have the right to choose what to do with her own pregnancy in her own body?
I’d wager that most of us here on Crosstalk would argue for a woman’s right to choose. As with the gay marriage debate, it would seem that many of us are uncomfortable with the idea of legislating morality, especially as it relates to sexuality (ironically, a classically Republican mindset ). But the “right to choose” question extends beyond the issue of abortion; for those in the poz (HIV-positive) community, a debate is raging over the ways they have sex and the necessity of “safe sex” measures.*
See, barebacking has made a comeback in the gay porn industry. Barebacking refers to sexual penetration–usually anal–without the use of a condom.” Barebacking was long a staple of gay sex, but when the AIDS crisis his America, the practice lost its glamor. Only recently has it come back into vogue, the latest thrill to seek for the most sexually adventurous (some would say careless) people. The gay community is split over whether this is a good or bad thing for the LGBT community at large. Many activists wish to require porn studios to include condom use in their feature films; after all, the best way to encourage safe sex and minimize the risk of STI transmission is by using a condom, and it’s irresponsible of some porn studios to continue to promote and profit off of bareback sex. On the other hand, proponents and producers of bareback pornography argue that porn is fantasy, not reality, and viewers understand the difference between the fantastical world that porn depicts and the realities of gay sex.
Along with the most recent rise in barebacking’s popularity has been the increasing prevalence of serosorting–sex between partners with the same STD status. A (relatively) high-profile example of this is Atlanta’s monthly Poz4Play parties, in which HIV-positive men congregate and have unregulated sex with each other. Condoms are offered, but not required; while patrons have to keep their clothes on in the space’s lobby and hallways, several private rooms are available for private, unmonitored sexual activity.
Serosorting isn’t just limited to those in the poz community, however; dating websites for people with specific STIs (such as herpes, HPV, and chlamydia) are growing increasingly popular with gay and straight singles looking to avoid the awkwardness and embarrassment that often comes with admitting one’s STD status to a disease-free partner. As you might imagine, some–but not all–of the couples matched up by these disease-specific sites eschew condom use. And for those who feel stigmatized by their STIs, it’s nice to meet people who share these problems and experiences; the burden of shame, at least between partners matched through these disease-specific websites, is lifted, and that fact alone makes the sex all the better. (A common acronym in poz personal ads is “UB2,” which stands for “you be too”–as in, “respondents must share my STI status.”)
The justification for bareback serosorting is that since both partners are already infected with a given disease, the supposed “risk” of infecting each other is rendered moot. And if people are going to bareback anyway–it’s common wisdom in the gay community that condom-free sex simply feels better, and it’s assumed that many sexually active members of the community actively search out opportunities for barebacking–then they might as well do it with those who share their disease status, so as to minimize risk to the broader (disease-free) gay community. Many “poz party” promoters emphasize this health-conscious aspect of their decision to promote serosorting:
For decades, the issue of HIV Status Disclosure was one of silence, confusion and doubt mainly created on the fear of hate, rejection and in some cases DEATH (murder or suicide) – that was in the 20th Century. Today, the 21st Century has opened the doors of opportunity, acceptance, communication, awareness and HOPE as HIV+ people (gay, straight, man, women, young or old) openly and willfully disclose their HIV Status to family, friends, loved ones, co workers and sex partners. Since the mid 1990’s, HIV Status Disclosure for both HIV+ and HIV-negative people continues to be an acceptable behavioral change that global society has understood to be vital in stopping the spread of HIV in it’s tracks. Without HIV testing and HIV Status Disclosure mankind can NOT physically break the cycle of new HIV transmissions – Serosort (HIV+ only) or Safe Sex Serosort ;(HIV+ 4 HIV+ or HIV- 4 HIV-).
So we can see how the issues of serosorting and barebacking are fraught with tension and disagreement over the limits of sexual freedom; should barebacking and HIV-positive pornography be legal? Who would be responsible for policing, say, mandatory condom use on gay porn sets? How could such requirements even be enforced in the first place? Would the policing of these kinds of sexual activities only push them underground, into dangerously unregulated situations? And is it right that, say, “bareback porn is given away as prizes at benefits for AIDS and other organizations”?
Add one more question to that unnerving list: what to do about “bug chasers“?
Bugchasing is a slang term for the practice of pursuing sex with HIV infected individuals in order to contract HIV. Bugchasers may seek HIV infection for a variety of reasons Bugchasers seek sexual partners who are HIV positive for the purpose of having unprotected sex and becoming HIV positive; giftgivers are HIV positive individuals who comply with the bugchaser’s efforts to become infected with HIV.
It’s difficult to avoid condemning the practice of bugchasing as reckless, dangerous, and just plain stupid. But should it be banned? Defenders of the practice argue that sexual activity between consenting adults should not and cannot be legislated. Moreover, some argue, it’s hypocritical to on the one hand protect gay men’s right to engage in sodomy and a woman’s right to choose whether or not she undergoes an abortion, and on the other hand seek to criminalize other consensual sexual behavior–namely, bugchasing and barebacking.
It’s a tricky question, and I’m not going to editorialize; in truth, I myself am still trying to figure out where I stand on the issue. But even though practices like serosorting and bugchasing may only affect a small percentage of the population, the questions they raise about sexual freedom and the legislation of sexual health seem more pertinent to the national conversation than ever.
*Okay, so it seems as though some readers have taken issue with my comparing the decision to terminate an unwanted pregnancy with the choice to bareback or “bug chase.” I’m not attempting to equate the two at all. For one thing, I don’t think anyone ever “wants” to get an abortion; it’s an incredibly difficult and painful decision that many people (myself included) believe is up to the pregnant woman, as opposed to a bunch of politicians in Congress. But while some young gay men feel the need to “bug chase” in order to find shelter and/or community, many testimonies from “bug chasers” I’ve found online imply that the decision to do so is voluntary and in the pursuit of what they view as erotic pleasure.
Rather, I think both abortions and activities like “bug chasing”–and the legal debates that surround them–center around the same question: “Who is in charge of <i>my</i> body?” In other words, the question as to whether it’s justified for the government to intervene in people’s personal and/or sexual decisions is common to both of these “issues.” Now, you might make the argument that whereas an abortion is a solely personal decision, activities like “bug chasing” pose a potential social health hazard. I don’t think this viewpoint is invalid. Just because I think these two things both center around the same question doesn’t mean they must have the same answer.
In any rate, if you disagree with the analogy, then you can ignore it. It’s not central to my post; I suppose I simply felt the need to “justify” the inclusion of this topic on Crasstalk, as ridiculous as that might sound, and was therefore attempting to tie serosorting and “bug chasing” to other things that have been discussed on this blog. The rather “anything-goes” nature of Crasstalk where most any topic is welcome without attempting to justify its relevancy to the blog’s audience is still a bit new to me.
The first two cassettes that I owned, having paid for them with my paltry allowance money, were singles: Tom Cochrane’s 1991 one hit wonder Life Is A Highway and U2’s Mysterious Ways. Coupled with my first CD–Jagged Little Pill, which still holds up as a chick-rock masterpiece–the “alt rock” genre holds a sentimental, un-ironic place in my heart. Listening to “the best of the 80s, 90s, and today” over the loudspeaker while swimming at the local water park; watching and re-watching early-morning broadcasts of VH1’s Top 20 video countdown; noodling with an acoustic guitar of my own, determined to give Toad The Wet Sprocket a run for their money and failing giddily–alternative rock music of the adult-contemporary variety may be a maligned genre, but it’s an important genre to me all the same.
Here then are a few of my favorites to which I apply the label of “guilty pleasure” somewhat reluctantly, but I’d rather we all have a good laugh about them than attempt to introduce them into any serious musical discourse. But no, I’m not ashamed to like any of these.
Fastball – “The Way” (1998)
The changing-the-dial intro is appropriate, as this song was a massive radio hit. Its ubiquity was a bit unexpected; after all, this is an ode to parental abandonment and “eternal summer slacking” with none of the commercialized sentimentality of, say, Everclear’s “Father Of Mine.” Nope, this is a jaunty, piano-driven tune that’s more than happy to rhyme “day” with “the way” several times. Maybe it’s the spaghetti-western-meets-Dirty–Harry guitar outro that made this such a pleasure to listen to in the car, hoping to cruise down the freeway but actually just getting stuck in rush-hour traffic, crawling past the second McDonald’s in ten minutes while wondering if there’s anything more to life than Best Buys and Top 40 radio, secretly fantasizing about giving it all up and running off to some unidentified tropical paradise where the women are well-endowed and the drinks are always strong. My dad loved this song, and while I’m hesitant to pin a failed marriage on a throwaway pop-rock 90s track, sometimes it simply “is what it is,” and all we can do is drink up the wine and ponder the necessity of getting a larger suitcase into which we may stuff our wares on that fateful cloudy afternoon we decide that we need to start over. Oh Fastball, I wasn’t planning on waxing philosophical but you couldn’t resist, could you?
Smash Mouth – “Walkin’ On The Sun” (1997)
That’s “walkin'” with an n-and-apostrophe, thank you very much. The grammar is crucial; it explains so much. The unabashed go-go organs, the Austin Powers guitar, the fifties-commercial jingle-jangle chorus, Steve Harwell’s generous (and Coke-aping) offer to “buy the world a toke,” the follow-along-with-the-Monkees bass line: these things don’t waste their time walking. There’s walkin’. With an apostrophe. You can keep your “All Star” and your fucking Shrek soundtrack; I’ll take this delicious slice of late-90s alternative pie with a side of NBA Jam-sanctioned “boom-shaka-laka,” thank you very much. In a twist of synesthetic serendipity, hearing this song evokes within me the smell of new furniture. We’d just moved into a new house when this song got popular; leather couches and ficus not yet damaged by the hands (and juice spills) of curious children, I’ll forever associate Smash Mouth with the sight of perfectly arranged throw pillows and sparkling-white kitchen counters. Walkin’ through Jennifer Convertibles, buyin’ stuff for our family’s new abode; some of my most vivid childhood memories feature me helpin’ my parents with new-house-decoratin’. I hope there’s a Smash Mouth equivalent when I go furniture shoppin’ with my kids in twenty or thirty years.
Matchbox 20 – “3AM” (1997)
WellIcan’thelpbutbescaredof itallllllsometimes. Yes, that’s all one word, LyricsFreak be damned. Within this breathless admission of quarterlife ennui (Rob Thomas was 25 when this song was released) lies the secret to the magic of 90s alt rock: the world–specifically, Kosovo and Cuba and the Middle East and Oklahoma City–was sincerely fucked up, so all we could do was strap on our guitars like musical shields and make love to the mic until we forgot where we were and why we felt so anxious about the imminent new millennium. Matchbox 20 was one of the last great dependable bands; you knew what you were getting when you bought one of their albums, and you could count on their style to happily refrain from evolving, because hey, why fix it if it ain’t broke, right? Some bands can explore many genres with equal aplomb, while others only did one sound but did it well. Matchbox 20 did this particular, indelible strain of post-grunge rock music exceedingly well, so much so that two years later Thomas would paste this inoffensively rockabilly style onto Carlos Santana’s smooth guitar pickings, to massive commercial success. Convincing a guitar legend to adopt your musical style? If that’s not a sign of cultural influence, I don’t know what is.
Tracy Bonham – “Mother Mother” (1996)
“Yeah, I’m working, making money / I’m just starting to build a name,” Bonham spits, voicing the post-collegiate frustrations of a generation of slackers who constantly claimed they were “really trying, man, but it’s tough” as they headed to Western Union to get their parents’ latest money wiring. The screaming chorus might suggest some kind of emocore, but really, this song transcends that Hot Topic genre; this ain’t the sort of single you listen to at the mall. No, this was the song your older sister would play on her shitty sedan’s cassette deck as she dropped you off at soccer practice before her weekly poetry session (or whatever it was that she did on Tuesday afternoons). Yes, Tracy, you’re “freezing,” “starving,” “bleeding to death,” but tell us how you really feel. If brevity is the soul of wit, then it’s also the soul of twenty-something angst, a rallying cry against the placating soma of Mad About You and Miller Lite. During the second verse, the video for this song shows Tracy playing a violin, but I always thought it was an oboe. I don’t know, there’s just something quirky and fascinating about reed instruments in rock songs; a violin just seems so easy, doesn’t it? Come on, Tracy, what would your creative writing teacher say about turning to such a cliched melodramatic instrument? Give us our oboe, and everything will indeed be “fiiiiiiiiiine.”
Alanis Morissette – “Thank U” (1998)
Yes, yes, the nude video. I couldn’t find a version of the official video that allowed embedding, so you’ll just have to recall the sight of Alanis’s digitally censored vagina hangin’ out in the supermarket in your head. Or Google it, whatever.
So yes, as I mentioned earlier, I will stand by Jagged Little Pill as one of the nineties’ crowning artistic achievements. But the followup album, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie? Eh, not so much. Even the title is pretentious, the kind of thing you might expect to see scrawled atop a high school drama nerd’s marble notebook in neon pink highlighter. And were it not for the crunchy guitars and angry guitars during the song’s climax, I’d be hard-pressed to call this a “rock song” at all. But here it is, and in weaker moments it makes me cry, and I’ll be happy to keep on crying for Alanis’s musical dangling carrots as long as she keeps on writing melodies this irresistible. New age schlock? Hardly. This is the stuff of real teenage dreams, and it’s cheesy but also tragically beautiful, like a porcelain angel figurine with one wing broken off.
So internet hacktivist group Anonymous has made the Westboro Baptist Church its latest target. Westboro tweeted (!) back, calling Anonymous a group of “cowards” who will only succeed in further promoting the Church’s messages. Meanwhile, everyone else is once again getting up in arms about the evils of the Phelps clan, weighing the Church’s right to free speech versus the right to tragedy victims’ privacy.
Really, I’m sick of reading about Fred Phelps. I shouldn’t even have to make this post, but people haven’t learned their lesson yet so here I am, stating what I assumed was the obvious but apparently is not obvious at all. For the umpteenth time it seems that the news-consuming masses need to register their outrage at this tiny, inbred religious cult; news outlets, for their part, trip over themselves to cover the Church’s doings, as though it’s still newsworthy that Westboro hates gay people and likes to protest soldiers’ funerals. Then people get outraged, and then the media gives more attention to the Church, and it becomes a vicious attention-grabbing cycle that just gets people pissed off for no good reason.
Indeed, there’s no justifiable reason to continue to give the Church’s actions any modicum of attention. The Phelpses are only newsworthy because media outlets make them newsworthy; it’s the journalistic equivalent of dropping whatever you’re doing to placate a tantrum-throwing toddler every time the toddler gets fidgety. As any parents will tell you, toddlers have a tendency to cry about any and every possible inconvenience; like the Westboro Baptist Church, babies lack the communicative skills to more eloquently express their frustrations. Parents sometimes have to be taught that they can’t run into their child’s room every time he or she starts bawling in the middle of the night. The media could use a similar lesson about Westboro; there’s no reason to make a headline out of each of the Church’s picketing efforts, other than the hope of drumming up outraged page views and angry, buzz-increasing comments.
So I’m going to ask you all nicely, one more time: please stop talking about the Westboro Baptist Church. Nothing the church members do is “news” anymore, and there’s nothing to be gained from once again summarizing Fred Phelps’s stance on societal “evils” like homosexuality and, um, everything else. What is there left to say about the Church at this point? The Phelpses has been on their picketing grind for years now, yet every time they announce their next target for protest, media outlets pick up the “story” and give the Church the attention it so desperately seeks. There’s no point to the media coverage anymore.
The best way to “deal with” a group like Westboro Baptist is not to publicize that group’s actions; rather, it’s to ignore the group and all its proclamations. The Phelpses aren’t stupid; they know most people hate what they do. But still, they get a captive audience every time–so why should they stop? As long as people care, they’ll continue to preach their hate. So let’s stop caring, for real this time.
So Thom Yorke and company have finally released the new Radiohead album. Depending on who you ask, The King of Limbs is either “an understated masterpiece” or “the biggest turd since Pablo Honey.”Also, fans and critics alike have already rushed to make judgments and pronouncements about the album, despite the fact that it’s only been available for public consumption for about 24 hours now.
I’m not going to “review” the album here, because taste is subjective and I truthfully don’t know quite what I think of it yet. The King of Limbs is good, don’t get me wrong, but whereas In Rainbows was an amalgamation of the band’s manifold strengths–pulsating electronic beats, undulating guitars, soaring synths, lonely piano, tightly-constructed songs containing seemingly elements that fit together naturally and strangely like soggy puzzle pieces–this album seems to be hiding underneath the covers, shouting muffled ambient noises at a darkened, empty room. The King of Limbs the most abstract thing the band has done since Amnesiac, and as someone who loves Amnesiac, I’m intrigued by its mysteries.
That said, the timing of this release was inevitably going to be unfavorable, which is why I suspect the band announced its imminent release swiftly and suddenly. See, just about every music publication made a “Best of the 2000s” list back in 2010, and Kid A was pretty unanimously selected as the greatest album of the decade. Listeners were reminded of Radiohead’s peak levels of greatness; all that talk about its “masterful combination of rock and electronica” and “uneasy relationship with the technology that would define the following ten years” raised the cult of expectations for the next Radiohead album to obviously unrealistic heights.
The musical landscape onto which Kid A appeared is all but extinct in 2011. There will never be an album–by Radiohead or otherwise–with the same kind of techno-industrial impact; nothing will sound as new and menacing as “Everything In Its Right Place,” because we no longer live in a world where the Rise Of The Machines peeks above the distant horizon–that Rise has risen, and we’re now fully immersed in the kind of world where, thanks to the internet, we are “allowed everything all of the time,” as Yorke predicted on “Idioteque.” Twitter and Tumblr are our “unborn chicken voices,” shooting across cyberspace “at a thousand feet per second.”
All of which is not to say that The King of Limbs is “devoid of messages about society” or “navel-gazing instead of outward-looking.” This is Radiohead; they always have something to say about all of us. But when you listen to this new album, resist the temptation to “expect something grandiloquent.” I’ve only given the record a couple spins so far, but it’s clear that this is meant to be an immersive, not instructive, listening experience.
Oh ladies, it has just been been one of those weeks for me, you know? And it’s only Wednesday! I need pop music. And not just any pop music–no, I need the best of the best. Or the worst. I can’t tell which, and frankly, I don’t care.
These songs have a certain magic to them, a timeless uplift that transcends ironic appreciation and nostalgic memory. Paradoxically, one is both reluctant to public admit enjoying these songs and compelled to sing along with them whenever they play on the bar jukebox, emphatic shouts betraying an ingrained love for these decidedly unhip bursts of melody and enthusiasm, pop cultural gift cards charged straight at the soul whose sonic brethren we claim to loathe as they come on the pharmaceutical Muzak radio stations played at CVS and the dentist’s waiting room–yet we inevitably remind ourselves to let curiosity get the best of ourselves and listen to these tunes on YouTube when we get home later, just for old time’s sake. But these rusted old culture-junkie antiques? These are even better than that. You can’t judge me, for as guilty pleasures are concerned, we are all one.
Phil Collins – “You’ll Be In My Heart” (1999)
Starting off your playlist with a Phil Collins song says many things: “I am sufficiently emotionally fragile so as to allow a hackneyed series of chord changes to noticeably lighten my mood,” “I spend a lot of time wearing sweatpants,” and most of all, “I really don’t care what you have to say about my playlist, because I’m too busy being vocally spooned by the lead vocalist of Genesis.”
Just admit it, this is beautiful. “Don’t listen to them, ’cause what do they know,” he assures us during a particularly soaring bridge. “Don’t let soulless detractors diminish your fervent enjoyment of the best male-pop-star-christened Disney song of the 90s.” They’ll see in time. Alone, they’ll be comparing wine cooler prices at Duane Reade one day in the sad future when–just as the hourly announcement touting the benefits of opening a FlexRewards account today are wrapping up–this song starts to play and it soars through the air like Tarzan himself.
Stars on 54 – “If You Could Read My Mind” (Gordon Lightfood cover; 1998)
Here are some of the wonderful couplets this song’s lyrics bequeath to you: With chains upon my feet / You know that ghost is me; What a tale my thoughts would tell / Just like a paperback novel, the kind that drugstores sell; What a tale my thoughts would tell / Just like an old time movie ’bout a ghost from a wishing well,” the latter two establishing a wishing-well motif that sticks with the viewer sticks with a child stuck to the gooey shame of being trapped down said wishing well. And why was that kid even playing by a well in first place? Where are we, fucking Narnia? No, bitches, listen up. This is Jocelyn, Amber, and UltraNaté’s world–we’re just getting our nails done with our moms in it.
Michael Jackson – “You Rock My World” (2001)
No, it’s not the next “Thriller.” There will never be another “Thriller,” something I think even Michael figured out by the late nineties. So despite the overblown music video that all but throws a veil over Jackson’s supposedly spooky visage and his most nonsensical lyrics since “Your butt is mine,” it’s a testament to how solid the song is, the grooving bass line mingling with mid-90s R&B piano in the smoky bar of Jackson’s psyche, that I’m so readily willing to accept it as MJ canon. But since it came out during the awkward dozen years between Michael’s molestation trials, any potential coolness the song might have offered present-day listeners was forever lost in the black hole of public resentment that only recently–and, unfortunately, posthumously–fell out of favor. And that’s a shame, because Michael’s smoothness here is on par with Frank Sinatra’s. Now, if only the video showed us his face at all so that we could actually watch him sensually lip-sync.
Lonestar – “Amazed” (1999)
The rare song that succeeds not because it attempts to break any new ground but because it does precisely the opposite; it never breaches the perimeters set by the most well-known genre signifiers, but it looks mighty good staying in one place. All of the elements in this song–from the lyrics and the structure to the Chinese-restaurant piano cascades and the piercing high-pitched organ during the grand finale–have been done many, many times before, but Lonestar do all of them really well here. The quickly disappearing mainstream-country market never looked quite as sweet or lucrative as it did back in the late 90s, and “Amazed” lacks the self-conscious ironic detachment it would surely be required to possess in order to achieve mainstream success today. This is also the rare prom ballad that could, once upon a time, be played at any high school gymnasium in the country and receive an equally warm reaction by the couples in attendance.
Céline Dion – “That’s The Way It Is” (1999)
Céline was only a young thirty-something when she released this self-empowered victory lap of a track to accompany her greatest hits release All the Way…A Decade of Song, but boy does she sound wise as she belts out musical epigrams about love and accepting fate and punctuates every other line with a warbling “yeah.” Another song relegated to the pits of the bargain bin because of its singer’s decidedly uncool (at least to young people) status, this is one of the few songs I can play while I work out that distracts me from wondering why the fuck I decided to give these treadmills another try because I just know that I’m gonna get leg cramps tomorrow and you watch, the subway will be running late too, because when it rains it pours, right? Right, and Céline is raining down buckets of gooey, feel-good sentimentality with such flair, such gloire, as though God Almighty were spilling pancake syrup all over my very soul.
So these songs are amazing, but five is never enough. Sare your favorites with the rest of the class, and remember that you get no bonus points for feigned shame.
I hate the Grammy Awards and usually ignore them, but I’m crashing at a friend’s place tonight and she hosted a little Grammys party so I had to sit through the whole thing…and it wasn’t bad! That’s not to say there weren’t plenty of boring and/or awkward moments to be had–and Katy Perry’s wedding-video montage was just the most mawkish thing–but they also got some things right this year, which was definitely a pleasant surprise. Here are some examples:
Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs wasn’t necessarily the best album of the year, but it was certainly better than the other nominees. And before you object, “But what about Gaga!” please remember that she was nominated for an 8-track EP, which was very enjoyable but hardly “long-playing.” Speaking of which…
…Lady Gaga’s red carpet entrance was phenomenally bizarre, but “Born This Way” is–at best–a mediocre dance-floor anthem and certainly not the stunning first single we were expecting from her new album. She’s a great singer and it shows in her live performances, but once hers was over the night was refreshingly non-Gaga-centric. For all the Gaga hype with which CBS surrounded the Grammys (i.e. the one-hour Anderson Cooper interview that aired before the show), she didn’t dominate the evening. Not to sound petty, but this was a relief. Girl’s talented, but backlash doesn’t discriminate.
About forty minutes into the show, there had been one award presented and four performances. This was pretty silly–it’s an awards show, after all–but frankly, I’d rather watch a string of engaging performances than a string of self-congratulatory acceptance speeches. Jagger was spry, Bruno Mars and company had me enjoying their music for the first time, and Usher’s dancing during “OMG” was top-notch. Like all awards shows, the Grammys started to drag by the final half hour, but this year’s ceremony wasn’t nearly as excruciating as in previous years.
Older artists didn’t seem totally irrelevant this year! I already mentioned Jagger, but two other performances from industry veterans are worth noting: Babs and Bob. Barbara Streisand doesn’t need a “reason” to perform at the Grammys, and when she got on stage, I imagine that gays and Long Island soccer moms alike paid attention. She started off a bit wobbly but really hit some of her notes beautifully through the majority of “Evergreen.” And while Bob Dylan’s pretty unintelligible these days, he seemed surprisingly charismatic during his performance and his mere presence was clearly a huge moment for all the younger musicians on stage.
I feel really bad for Aretha Franklin. Something tells me she didn’t stay home simply because she’s “getting better.” I obviously hope she can beat this pancreatic cancer, but it’s not an easy thing to do. The tribute was rockin’, though; each of the ladies on stage sounded great. And after her little national anthem bungle at the Super Bowl, it was nice to see Christina Aguilera remind everyone why she got famous in the first place–that voice!
Okay, it’s worth mentioning again. ARCADE FIRE WON ALBUM OF THE YEAR. My friend put it well: “When you first listened to <i>Funeral</i>, could you ever imagine them winning the top Grammy award?” While a band that sells out Madison Square Garden and appears on the cover of TIME is definitely not “underground,” Arcade Fire is still an indie band, and it was awesome to see the Grammys finally recognize the nebulous but notoriously overlooked category of “indie music.”
What did you all think? Who on earth is Esperanza Spalding, and why have I never heard of her? Could Justin Bieber have looked more ridiculous in his lil’ white tuxedo?
To quote the inimitable Dan Hopper over at the Best Week Ever blog (where I first saw this gem), “Even if you brace yourself for the locallest commercial that ever localled, you’re still not expecting this ad for Staten Island’s Empire State Gold Buyers. You’re not prepared for Randomly Singing Mom. You’re just not.”
I’m not being facetious when I say that I need to see more of this woman on my television, right now.
So this article is from a South African publication, but its statistics were compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the attitudes expressed in it are indicative of those opposed to piracy. It also exemplifies the contradictory arguments made by those who champion big labels’ rights to continue overcharging for obsolete media formats.
The piece shows its hand in the first line: “Digital piracy is inhibiting the growth in the legitimate digital market in SA.” You’d expect that the article would attempt to prove this thesis with corroborative facts and figures, right?
PWC also points out that, while the digital market is still very young, growth is expected to continue over the same forecast period.
“Digital has been increasing and spending will more than triple from R130 million in 2009 to R425 million in 2014, with an average compound annual growth of 26.7%,” PWC says.
Ah yes, piracy is killing the “legitimate” digital music market so much that the market is expected to “more than triple” over the next five years. The article then goes on to mention that sales of physical CDs will continue to decline, and it doesn’t event attempt to pin this on piracy. In fact, it ends with a quote from an industry executive who admits that “prices for digital formats are significantly lower than that for physical formats and this will result in a shift in the consumption between the two.”
Meanwhile, CrunchGear reports that the Hot New Rumor is that “music piracy has all but disappeared.” It’s true that music is no longer the most pirated file type–that distinction goes to movies and porn–but then the author ends his post with a bit of editorializing:
Not that this means anything, but I genuinely don’t know anybody who still downloads anything from public BitTorrent trackers. You’d be a fool to do so in 2011. That’s not to say that private BitTorrent sites aren’t still popular—they are, and they’re generally of a very high quality—but the days of the public BitTorrent tracker being the “go-to” place to grab your “stuff” surely has fallen out of favor within my sphere of influence.
And this seems to be the source of recent confidence in music piracy’s demise. But, um, I only use BitTorrent trackers for live audio rips, out-of-print releases, and hi-fidelity versions of music I already own. Where do the kids get most of their music these days?
They get it from Google. All they have to do is Google the name of the album they want and follow it with “Mediafire” or “Rapidshare” or even just “zip” or “rar.” The RIAA and MPAA have been catching on as of late–the MPAA recently sued Hotfile, for example–but this is a losing battle, because file hosting services themselves aren’t illegal. It’s the proliferation of “pirated” files on these services that rankles the industry. Any attempt to shut down a service like Mediafire will probably fail, for one of several reasons:
There are, believe it or not, legitimate uses for file-hosting services like Hotfile and Mediafire, and banning these services outright would be seen as an unfair attack on their legal users.
Moving your servers outside the U.S. makes it much more difficult for groups like the MPAA to sue you.
It’s not Mediafire’s fault that people illegally upload copyrighted material to its site; it may or may not be their responsibility, depending on your perspective, but all shutting down Mediafire (or whatever site the industry’s attacking) will accomplish is getting someone somewhere to launch a new Mediafire. Ultimately, it’s end users’ responsibility to not illegally transfer files, and the RIAA stopped focusing on individual users back in 2008.
What can we learn from all this? Well, for one thing, industry leaders seem to be oblivious to the changing realities of online file sharing. Also, music piracy isn’t killing the industry as much as lawmakers and industry lobbyists would have you believe; according to Nielsen, digital album sales in the United States went up 13% in 2010.
So 
