The Imitation European

Aunt Jody: Hey, I just found a nickel under this thing!Me:...

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 16:27:27 +0200

Aunt Jody: Hey, I just found a nickel under this thing!
Me: There’s always money in the banana stand!

Claire Marie, Berlinerin in training, modeling a handmade...

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 22:33:03 +0200

Claire Marie, Berlinerin in training, modeling a handmade Fernsehturm rattle from the Mauerpark Flohmarkt.

Berlinostalgia at my brother’s graduation party.

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 19:43:55 +0200

Berlinostalgia at my brother’s graduation party.

UnBerlin Bingo

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 05:27:58 +0200

Today I saw:

A play whose curtain call ended after one individual and two ensemble rounds of bowing. Toto, we’re not in Europe anymore.

It's so surreal to me that I used to know this person.

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:34:07 +0200

It's so surreal to me that I used to know this person.:

I just listened to the new album, and it’s pretty excellent. As a big fan of both Michael Angelakos the musician and the guy named Mike I graduated high school with, I sincerely hope he’s able to get control of his mental health.

“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no...

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 17:55:23 +0200

“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain,” sang Bob Marley once.

Another good thing about music? Sometimes it hits you and it hurts like hell.

Dear Music Industry: We Are Not the Enemy

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:44:11 +0200

Hey, Tumblr, long time no rant! This time the lucky recipient of my ire is one David Lowery, who recently wrote this post about ethical consumption of music on the internet as a response to this post about not paying for music by Emily White, an intern at NPR All Songs Considered, which is in turn a response to this post by Bob Boilen about entrusting all his music to the cloud. Obviously, one more blog response is just what this controversy needs, so even though I’m late to the party, here I am putting my hands on Mr. Lowery’s shoulders and seeing where this crazy conga line takes me.

I should say up front that I’m not going to give Mr. Lowery the full Joel Stein treatment, because unlike Mr. Stein, he does not seem to be an ignorant fool and/or troll, but rather just a guy who doesn’t realize that he’s having the wrong conversation. If I sound testy, it’s because I really hate when my generation (I’m using the word “my” loosely, by the way—just this afternoon I googled “What is a YOLO,” which I’m pretty sure automatically disqualifies me from membership in Generation Lazy or Generation Entitled, or whatever it is Generation Condescending is calling it these days) gets maligned as somehow morally deficient, when our only real crime is having been born just in time for the digital age to descend. Grown-ups like Mr. Lowery love invoking the issue of music sharing in order to take a moral high ground that doesn’t belong to them, tacitly giving themselves credit for resisting a temptation they never had to face when they were young and broke and foolish. As if their teenaged selves, when offered a perfect, perfectly free duplicate of the latest Beatles album by one of their friends, would have clutched at their pearls and gasped, “Goodness, no! Paul McCartney might go bankrupt and kill himself, and it would be all my fault! Absolutely keep that free music away from me!”

Of course, Mr. Lowery does have a good point. Illegal piracy is wrong, it’s a problem, and it needs to be addressed. It’s just that it is neither as black and white an issue as he seems to think it is, nor is it an issue that can be resolved by lecturing us into ignoring the conveniences of the digital revolution. Conveniences which, by the way, go both ways.

Mr. Lowery names two musicians who committed suicide amid financial hardship in order to shame us, I guess, for not giving them our money while they were still alive. Okay, but it’s still my sense that the internet has helped make more careers than it has broken. As long as we’re using anecdotal evidence to back up our statements: Within this past year alone, internet cover-darlings Karmin scored a gig on SNL; an extremely overcrowded guitar forced everyone to figure out how to pronounce “Gotye”; and Lana del Rey, who debuted her superior wall-leaning skills on YouTube, became the new girl everyone loves to hate to love faster than a Google search of “Paz de la Huerta” will turn up evidence of a hot mess.

Mr. Lowery advocates for fair compensation but fails to mention the fact that when musicians use the internet for its free publicity, “fair” becomes hard to define. For instance, all the free music I listen to? Some Nights, the latest album from the band who call themselves “fun.” because they like making stringent grammarists like me die inside, is still streaming for free on the band’s website, where it has been since the day it was released in late February. Frank Ocean’s much anticipated debut album, Channel Orange, has a stranglehold on the number one slot after its surprise early release on iTunes, but that didn’t stop him from posting a free streaming version to his blog as well. And my new favorite group, Pentatonix, keeps throwing more free content at me than I know what to do with. Not only do they steadily update their YouTube channel with new material, but they also offered their fans a free download of their first studio recording, a free bonus track for pre-ordering their debut EP, and my favorite track yet, probably the one I’ll give the most listens, was mine just for signing up for their mailing list. It isn’t that Mr. Lowery’s point about fair compensation isn’t valid; it’s just that the concept of fair compensation is in a state of flux right now. It no longer means paying money for each and every song we listen to.

Now, I don’t know much about capitalist market dynamics (so little, in fact, that I’m sure that’s nowhere close to the correct term for what I’m talking about), but I suspect that certain artists offering their music for free is bad news for other artists hoping to be paid for theirs. With each free download and streaming feed, musicians are reaching more listeners, but they’re also training us to devalue their product. So what’s an ethical listener like me supposed to do? How am I supposed to give them my money if they’re not asking for it? By linking to artist-provided free music on my blog, am I promoting the artists I love or contributing to the idea that music is not worth paying for? Am I part of the solution or the problem? I can’t say for sure yet, but one thing’s certain: With so many artists more desperate to get into our headphones than our wallets, it’s hard for Mr. Lowery’s words about paying fairly to fall on anything other than deaf ears.

Of course, not all of those ears are deafened by free music acquired fairly or legally, and it is with those ears that Mr. Lowery, rightly, has a beef. His focus is on the ample, dangerous convenience the internet offers music consumers, but it’s clear he doesn’t quite grasp what all that entails. He assumes, wrongly, that the convenience is just about money. An honest mistake, to be sure, but the real convenience is about freedom—freedom not just from paying, but also from risk. I’d like to ask Mr. Lowery to think back to the days when he was first developing his own musical tastes. How much easier would that exploration have been, how much more music could he have experienced and loved, if he hadn’t had to save up his allowance money, if he hadn’t had to make the trip to the record store, if he hadn’t had to choose just one album to purchase at a time, if he hadn’t had to fear wasting his ten bucks on music it would turn out he didn’t love? Right or wrong, those were the freedoms my generation grew up with, and believe it or not, it’s not all bad news for the music industry. Digital file sharing does give us the convenience of free music, but it also gives us the freedom to explore and take risks on new music, music we’re not sure we’re going to like, without the fear of losing money in the transaction. And unencumbered access to music breeds enthusiasm for music.

Throughout his post, Mr. Lowery goes out of his way to admonish Emily White for not paying for most of her large music library, particularly because she is—as an intern at NPR—someone who obviously has a great love for and investment in music. What he fails to note is the clear causational relationship at play there. He helpfully provides Ms. White with a calculation of the money she owes to artists for her 11,000 unpurchased songs: $2,139.50, a conservative estimate by his own admission. He goes on to say that this can be broken down into a small monthly payment: only $17.82/month over the ten years since Ms. White presumably started consuming music (5th Grade). My first question is, what fifth grader has $17.82/month to spend on music? (Keep in mind, the sum Mr. Lowery calculated was only for the percentage she owed the artists, not what it would have actually cost her to purchase CDs/iTunes tracks.) My other question is, would Ms. White be the same music lover she is today if not for digital file sharing? Would she have ended up purchasing that “15 gigs of Big Star, The Velvet Underground, and Yo La Tengo” if her prom date hadn’t loaded it onto her iPod? Mr. Lowery assumes, again wrongly, that the choice young people face is between underpaying for music and paying fairly for music. For most of us, the choice is between underpaying for music and not listening to music at all. So he has to ask himself, which would he prefer? As an ethical listener, I don’t pirate music (anymore; full disclosure, I—like everyone—spent several years of my life as a young, broke, foolish person), but I also don’t buy much music. What shape would the music industry be in if everyone were more like me?

So, the internet is good for artists, and it’s good for listeners. What it’s not good at, yet, is transferring money, reliably and fairly, from the latter to the former. But we’re getting there. Mr. Lowery disparages Spotify, and while I admit it’s not a perfect solution, it’s clearly a step in the right direction. How do I know? Because it’s getting people to turn away from the illegal services. The fact is, illegal file sharing isn’t just a nuisance to the music industry, it’s competition. It’s not fair, but it’s reality. A reality, by the way, that some artists have already recognized and been able to harness to their benefit. Radiohead’s 2008 album In Rainbows, leaked as a pay-what-you-want download through the band’s website, ended up netting them their highest profit ever. Amanda Palmer recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $100,000 for the manufacture and distribution of her new album, offering a digital download to anyone pledging $1 or more (as well as many other, crazier prizes). Her fans rewarded her with almost $1.2 million. Obviously, this old music business ain’t what she used to be. I’m not sure why Mr. Lowery is so set on convincing us otherwise.

Legal music services are now having to ask themselves the question any company in a highly competitive field must answer in order to succeed: What can I offer that the other guy can’t? The first thing is a no-brainer: legality. Despite what Mr. Lowery and others may think, most in my generation don’t relish being criminals. When faced with two similar or identical services, one legal and one not, we will make the ethical choice. The next thing to come will be fair compensation to artists. Again, despite Mr. Lowery’s sneering about this being the first generation to “rebel by unsticking it to the man,” we have no great love for corporations. When faced with two similar or identical services, one that gives money to major record labels (as Spotify does) and one that gives the musicians we love their fair share, the choice will be simple.

The trick to competing with illegal services, though, is that you have to offer something similar or identical to what they’re offering. At some point in his post, Mr. Lowery asks what makes iTunes inconvenient. I know he feels like he’s missing something, and he is. The Spotify model is succeeding because someone over there saw what Mr. Lowery didn’t when it comes to the conveniences of the internet—namely, the appeal of the no-risk environment. For the record, I don’t use Spotify, but I do subscribe to one of its competitors, Rdio. For 10€/month (for a free user, the cost is putting up with advertising, just like TV), I can explore the comprehensive library any way I want. I can listen to music I used to own but have since misplaced; I can listen to music from an artist I used to love but since lost track of; I can listen to music from an artist I’ve never heard of. If I like it, I can put it on my iPod and listen to it whenever I want. If I don’t, well, at least I’m not out any extra money, and—here’s the best part—that band still gets a slice of revenue from my listen. If I’d sampled it on iTunes and decided against buying it, they would have gotten nothing. Admittedly, the slice of revenue is unfairly small at this point, but that’s where there’s room for improvement. And when that improvement comes along in the form of a fair-pay service (and I’m convinced it will, since if I’ve noticed this gaping hole in the market, I assume there’s no way more entrepreneurial eyes than mine have missed it) it will be precisely because of the way my generation invested in the imperfect Spotify model, not despite it.

Since signing up for Rdio last year, I would estimate my time spent listening to music has increased five-fold, and I’ve discovered several new artists I never would have known about otherwise. I’ve become a markedly more active, knowledgeable, and appreciative music listener than I was before. Not to mention, I don’t own any copyable files of my music. Once everyone starts streaming, suddenly the kind of friend-to-friend file sharing through which Ms. White amassed her library, taking profits right out of the hands of the artists she loves, will be a thing of the past. Tell me again how this is bad for the music industry?

This is what we mean, Mr. Lowery, when we tell you you’re on the wrong side of progress. I know you think it’s just code for “Don’t tell me I can’t have free stuff, old man!” but it’s actually code for “We’re on our way to a solution that’s best for everyone, good sir, and you standing there wagging your finger at us isn’t doing anything to help get us there.” A more ethical internet is certainly a worthy goal, but should it have to come at the price of a more efficient internet? My generation doesn’t think so.

Do not use elevator to shelter yourself from the giant slug...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 16:17:53 +0200

Do not use elevator to shelter yourself from the giant slug invasion.

No more alcohol allowed on the trams?! That’s it....

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 16:14:02 +0200

No more alcohol allowed on the trams?!

That’s it. I’m going back to the States.

The opening of the new airport may have been postponed...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 16:08:26 +0200

The opening of the new airport may have been postponed indefinitely, but it’s good to know someone was at least on top of getting the partition ribbons out on time.

What in the world does “digestion helpers for...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 16:03:10 +0200

What in the world does “digestion helpers for ‘strong guys’ without car!” mean? Something tells me I’d rather not know.

That awkward moment when you realize there’s a chicken...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 16:01:55 +0200

That awkward moment when you realize there’s a chicken coming out of your butt.

More than a month later, all my visitors are gone, and less than...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:55:18 +0200

More than a month later, all my visitors are gone, and less than a month from now, I will be too.

I don’t want to talk about it.

I’m going to post a bunch of funny pictures, instead.

PTX Volume 1: A Cappella (and Electro-Pop) Like You've Never Heard It Before

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 20:01:01 +0200

It was only a matter of time until this post. I would have gotten it out earlier—the debut EP from Sing-Off Season Three champions Pentatonix has been out for almost two weeks, after all—but I was too swamped with visitors and fun to give it my immediate attention. Then last weekend I was able to dedicate a good chunk of a 12-hour round trip train ride (less fun) to the seven tracks contained in PTX Volume 1, and I pretty much haven’t stopped listening since. My headphones are in grave danger of fusing to my head. I may need an intervention soon, and it may need to be surgical.

So what’s got me so hooked? The same stuff that gets everyone else hooked on mainstream pop music, I imagine, only better. At a time when the chart toppers have reached an all time high in terms of vapidity*, along comes a group like Pentatonix, who can take a hollowed out shell of a pop song, fill it to the brim with musicality, and transform it into something just as fun, at least twice as listenable, and five times as impressive. Because did I mention the part about the instruments? Spoiler: there aren’t any.

I know it might seem weird to praise a group for their originality when over 2/3 of their album is covers, but the fact is that the best parts of those tracks didn’t appear in the original arrangements. If the phrase “make it your own” ever had meaning in the first place, it’s just been redefined. Take the opening track, a cover of Nicki Minaj’s “Starships,” which is available for listening on YouTube. (Warning: The music video was sponsored by a teeth whitening service, and is exactly as cheesy as you would expect a music video sponsored by a teeth whitening service to be. But the track itself is well worth the listen. For the full effect, turn the quality up to HD and wear headphones.) The song cycles through about twelve different harmonic, dynamic, and rhythmic shifts before it’s through—including two distinct breakdowns and a five-part choral arrangement—and comes out all the catchier for it. And come on, what club song wouldn’t be improved by adding a little overtone/Tuvan throat singing, am I right?

Coincidentally, someone just posted this meme to Facebook while I was writing this post:

Don’t despair, guy! Pentatonix are here to save you!

The EP is jam packed with an impressive array of ear candy, and while the song choices themselves aren’t very diverse in genre, the arrangements contain elements of everything from jazz to salsa to dubstep. The one thing you won’t find is a lot of is intellectual or emotional depth, but nor will you particularly miss it. Coming closest is their internet-famous cover of Gotye’s ubiquitous, understated shrug of a breakup song, “Somebody That I Used To Know,” which they’ve taken and twisted into something dark and desperate. It’s the only cover here that doesn’t quite best the original version (only because it’s already just about as perfect as songs get, in my opinion) but it is an interesting take. The two original tracks, anti-love song “The Baddest Girl” and dancehall anthem “Show You How To Love,” are nothing special—aside from the fact that there’s nothing else out there like them. From a song-writing standpoint, it’s listenability before substance, just like your average club music, but the brilliance of the execution means that I don’t care. This is party music made to challenge your ears, not your brain; it’s guilty pleasure music, now with no guilt, because you know there’s actual human talent (and lots of it) to thank for what you’re hearing, not a production team.

Of course, there is production on these tracks, but not as much as you might think. Don’t be fooled into believing the best parts—the vocal blend, the crisp transitions, the stuff that sounds exactly like synth effects—are the result of studio wizardry. Check out one of the live covers on the Pentatonix YouTube channel, like this slick Justin Bieber/Katy Perry mashup, and you’ll hear something closer to actual wizardry at work. For those of you skeptical about digitally modified vocal music qualifying as a cappella (shout out to my sister!), or concerned that this EP has written a check their stage show can’t possibly cash (shout out to my past self!), rest assured. I’ve done the requisite, uh… “research” on YouTube (Sidenote: Another reason this post took me so long to write is that I have this problem where every time I think about Pentatonix, I have to go listen to Pentatonix. It’s like this weird drinking game where a cappella takes the place of alcohol.), and they can absolutely do each and every one of these songs justice live. Even the breakneck, intricately textured cover of Imogen Heap’s “Aha!” sounds incredible, if incredibly exhausting.

In fact, each of these arrangements is so relentlessly detailed and high energy, I’m pretty sure it constitutes an entire anaerobic workout unto itself. And I don’t know about you, but I find it refreshing to hear someone working hard performing pop music for a change. On too many stages these days, the performance of music has become an afterthought to the performance of being a pop star. The only reason Katy Perry bothers recording music, it seems to me, is so she doesn’t have to shimmy across the stage in her candy colored hair and whipped cream-rocket bra in silence. But in a genre that has come to privilege “entertainers” over singers and musicians, these five are unequivocally singers, if not instruments unto themselves.

The EP features two primary lead vocalists: Scott Hoying, whose R&B tones strike the perfect balance between grit and polish on “The Baddest Girl”; and Mitch Grassi, whose clear and dextrous lyric tenor gets put through its paces in the aforementioned “Aha!” The leads alone are pretty great, but everyone here does his or her best work—if you’ll forgive a hockey metaphor—off the puck. The background and filler vocals are where you’ll find the real surprises and nuggets of goodness, all of which defies description so I’m not even going to try. Suffice to say, synergy is the real star here, and the rest of the work generally gets divvied up as follows: Kirstin Maldonado glues the harmonies together with her warm, open alto; beatboxer Kevin Olusola strategically regurgitates that Foley artist’s library he apparently swallowed; and vocal bass Avi Kaplan stretches his range to both thump on the low end and jump up into the upper harmonies—sometimes both at once (did I mention the whole overtone singing thing?). By the by, if Mr. Kaplan ever needs some extra cash, he should consider leasing his larynx out for office space. Sounds roomy in there, is all I’m saying.

So far, though, there’s no reason to think he’ll have to resort to that. As I type this, PTX Volume 1 is sitting in the 13th slot on the iTunes Pop Chart and is number 14 on the Billboard Hot 200. For the third-season winners of a freshly-cancelled televised singing competition, that’s impressive enough; but take into account the group’s median age of 21 and the fact that they’ve only been making music together for a little over a year, and there’s no reason to think they won’t outdo themselves when it comes time for Volume 2. For now, Volume 1 is everything pop music never even knew it needed: a summertime album that will both introduce tween consumers to musicianship beyond the scope of One Direction, and convince middle aged cynics that there is still innovation in young people’s music.

*Guys, don’t even get me started on “Call Me Maybe.” It’s a song with about four chords and five words, narrating the “story” of some chick giving some dude her number, presented in the same verse-refrain-verse-refrain-bridge-refrain structure that’s been around for centuries. It would put me to sleep if I weren’t too busy weeping for the state of music.

Me: What were you guys just talking about?

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 00:30:03 +0200

Me: What were you guys just talking about?
Andrew: You know, life. The universe. The whole ball of wax.
Me: "The whole ball of wax"? What a strange phrase. I don't think I've ever even seen a... Wait a second, what am I saying? I'm a Waldorf graduate, of course I've seen a ball of wax.

For some reason Student Universe decided to list Andrew’s...

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 09:05:04 +0200

For some reason Student Universe decided to list Andrew’s month-long stay in Berlin as a 692-hour layover. Best overnight layover ever.

Okay, June. Let’s do this.

Tue, 29 May 2012 22:50:26 +0200

Okay, June. Let’s do this.

Call me old-fashioned, but I wish all Top 40 remixes featured...

Tue, 29 May 2012 15:57:42 +0200

Call me old-fashioned, but I wish all Top 40 remixes featured this much raw human talent (check out the range on that bass singer!) instead of a bunch of digital effects.

Also, get off my lawn.

The Mauerpark was the perfect place to listen to the latest...

Mon, 28 May 2012 15:50:22 +0200

The Mauerpark was the perfect place to listen to the latest Radiolab podcast called “Colors.”

Euro 2012… It’s coming.

Sun, 27 May 2012 15:59:51 +0200

Euro 2012… It’s coming.