The Plague of Musical Mediocrity

01.24.06

What follows is the result of a non-alcoholic evening at home spent writing music reviews......

They say one perk of working in the music industry is free CDs, but what they forget to add is that 99% of them are neither mind-blowing nor truly awful, but just stuck in musical purgatory aka mediocrity, a problem far more insidious than we'd like to believe. Why? Because mediocrity can fool you—it can fake it, put up a front for awhile, act like it's a great pop record when its foundation is baseless, hollow, devoid of any heart and soul. The old music tricks have been well perfected by nearly everyone currently playing in a band, so for most it's easy to dream up a few seemingly well-written pop songs to fool everyone into believing it's the real thing. And by the time the fakes are exposed, no one even cares. They've moved onto to the next mediocre catch of the week.
Accepting mediocrity is accepting the dumbing down of music to the lowest common denominator. If most current music averages at about a C, then a B- record is going to be heralded as a friggin' masterpiece just because it's not a C! The grading curve should NEVER be applied to art. It encourages laziness and unoriginality, which is exactly what plagues music today.
Knowing music's potential- those Brill Building songwriters, the Beatles, the girl groups, ABBA, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones (and I HATE the Rolling Stones!, which is good thing because at least they give me something to react to, unlike most artists today), the Bee Gees, and even more recent favorites like My Bloody Valentine, the Cardigans, the Pixies—I just don't have the means to accept anything that doesn't strive to be up there with the greats. Everyone should strive for greatness, because that's the only way one will ever come close to achieving it. Striving to be great and just ripping off the greats are two different things. My advice to those groups who are so uninspired as to rip off the Beatles or the Beach Boys or whoever so blatantly (and without adding anything new to the musical equation) is to stop. There are WAAAY too many of you, and it's getting mighty crowded.
It might seem unfair to hold every new band up against Lennon and McCartney, but I think at this point—with the music industry so over-saturated with mediocre bands—we need to do just that. We need to re-marginalize music! Give it back to the fringe of society. Take it away from the mainstream, where picking up a guitar has become as acceptable as playing football.

Damn the punk movement for declaring that anyone can play music! What an outrageously false statement!!!!

I await the day music journalists, fed up with having to write a 400-word review of an album that just requires two words: THIS SUCKS, will revolt against this mediocrity, and fill the back pages of music mags with 1 star and 0 star reviews, so that we can eradicate this musical plague. Music is just too special to be wasted on non-talents, fakes. We need to make space for the masters—the one's whose words and music add real value to our lives. We need to give them room to step forward and be recognized because in this enormous pool of mediocrity, even they are drowning, and that's a loss for us all.

Goodnight.

Sheila

Posted by Sheila at 12:45 AM

Shop Right

01.20.06

Ooohh...I feel terrible for not remembering her name, but this girl is AWESOME. Collecting soul + funk records at 23. I run into her at every record fair.

The art of record breaking

I'm notoriously late with new trends, hence my very tardy joining of MySpace. I finally yielded to the pressure, and now that Cha Cha Charming has its very own page, I need you readers as my friends. So please join, and I promise to update with girl-pop and more stories of bar hopping-induced muscle pains.

Cha Cha Charming @ My Space: www.myspace.com/chachacharming

I spent Tuesday evening with a glass of red wine in one hand and a stack of beautiful soul records in the other. Miss Shakey, New York's blondest and I'd say, most prolific DJ, masterminded the BRILLIANT Night Owl Record Fair, a drink, dance, and buy tons of 45s event at APT. The 21 DJs, each spinning for 20 minutes each, included soul sister Lynne K., Urusula 1000, Spanish girls expert Lex Marsh, and this CRAAAZY dude who hacks up his records, glues them back together, and spins the snaps, crackles, and pops into a most bizarre beat mix. Check out the vinyl works of art in the photo above.

Finally got my hands on a vinyl copy of Bee Gees First, which took forever to locate. I'll be studying it over the weekend, and promise a full report on Monday. Found a copy of Sharon Tandy's ultra-strident version of the Bee Gees' "World" at the Night Owl fair. And also the Donays' "Devil In His Heart," which I've heard is quite hard to locate.

So no Barry Gibb at my doorstep, proving that you just might have to get naked to receive gifts in the mail. Ah well..... it was worth a shot.

Sheila

Posted by Sheila at 07:16 PM

Wishlist

01.10.06

Sheila, Amylu, Jaime, + Layla @ Smashed! Blocked!

Today I learned that the Suicide Girls—who publicize their wishlists along with their soft porn photos— actually get their wishes fulfilled by random voyeurs. They get free computers, music, clothing, booze, ipods. Totally unfair! Is spreading the love of music a service deserving of an answered wish list or is flashing flesh always required? Well, in my old fanzine Plume, I once wrote that rainbow sprinkles and raw meat were two of my favorite foods, only to receive a huge box of sprinkles and an apology for not being able to send raw animal products through the mail. Nice. But that was over ten years ago, so let's try this again....

Sheila's wishlist:

1. Valerie & Her Week of Wonders DVD
2. Connie Stevens: Tick-Tock / Keep Growing Strong (1970 Warner Bros)
3. Barry Gibb
4. Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock 'N' Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N' Roll by Lester Bangs
5. Dorothy Berry: You’re so fine/ Crying on my pillow (1963 Challenge 59221)
6. ABBA: The Complete Recordings Box Set
7. Jacki Bond: He Say/ Why Can't I Love Him (1966 Strike 320 -UK)
8. A Blythe Doll
9. A bottle of Tantakatan
10. Two Shure M44-7 Standard DJ needles

Cha Cha Charming HQ
284 Lafayette Street, 5D
New York, NY 10012

I know, this is all very cheeky, but what the hell.

Sheila

Posted by Sheila at 09:27 PM

Happy New Year Baby

01.01.06

I'd say that was just about the best New Year's Eve ever. A Persian feast. Dancing to Ray Charles. Drunky Brewster. Swedish boys in Oliver Twist shorts and high socks. Sparks to keep me high and happy until six. Siwat's sweet present. A drunken, dreamy phone call. My two best friends lip-locked on the dance floor. And news that I just might be interviewing a certain object of desire (oh yeah).

2005 turned my life upside down in the scariest, best ways possible. 2006 is gonna be even more thrilling.

Cheers to a magical 2006 everyone!

Sheila

BUST girls on Bud and Sparks

My mom's homemade persian delights

Glass dildo percussion-ettes Drunky Brewster

Callie does Laura Ashley right!

Showing off the tats

Two Drunky Brewsters, ten costume changes

The Countdown!

While all of us were bed-ridden, nursing hangovers, Mike ventured out to Coney Island to participate in the famous Polar Bear club event, where he joined other sane folks in freezing water immersion.

Mike Simmonds: Man of the year

Posted by Sheila at 04:42 PM