52 PIGS (#47 OF 52): POP PIG CULTURE

This week’s pig: Pop-Pig, from Hong Kong character design studio V-2 Studio.



Dress you up,

This is dF

JUST WHAT WE NEED, ANOTHER END-OF-YEAR LIST 2007: THE MUSIC

Sorry, but it's tradition.

Whether 2007 was a good year for music is always a tricky question – especially when (1) you’ve got a limited budget, and (2) selections are subject to availability in yr region. Age doesn’t help matters – science tells us that as you get older, it’s harder for new music to really impress you because by the time you get to be, say, my age, you’ve heard most of the old stuff that new bands are borrowing from.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Odds are, all the bands you like from 20 years ago were doing the same thing. And the argument that you might as well listen to the “authentic” originals rather than the new wannabes is a dead end, because ultimately it leads to hipsters insisting that anything after Gregorian chants is a derivative ripoff. Which would be silly.

Anyway, that may be why I spent a good chunk of the year rediscovering artists I hadn’t heard from in ages, like Rickie Lee Jones and They Might Be Giants – both of whom never went away, but were sufficiently under the radar enough to prevent me from knowing whether their new albums were any good or not (this was in the days before MySpace and YouTube, children).

And perhaps by no coincidence, the majority of music I bought this year was from familiar faces rather than anything truly new – but even some of that was a little too familiar. I liked the new records from Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Ry Cooder, The Detroit Cobras and local artist The Pancakes, but I wouldn’t call them standouts either. Then there’s The Donnas, whose latest LP is a big improvement on the previous album in terms of energy, but I’m not sure a Vixen revival is what the world needs right now. One more album like that, and they’ll have to legally give Desmond Child a default songwriting credit.

It’s also telling that most of the debut CDs (or new discoveries) – Calvin Harris, The Aliens, New Young Pony Club, Jackie Leven, The Epoxies, and !!! (Chk Chk Chk) – are seriously cribbing from readily identifiable sources. And the rest are Nick Cave side projects.

Interestingly, perhaps the one band that offered something kind of different was a local indie act called PixelToy – and even they did a cover of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (albeit with some Chinese instruments thrown in).

So all up, nothing really revolutionary this year, but I suspect that’s going to be less likely every year anyhow. Maybe it’s all recycling from here on in. Still, consider that 2007 was the year a lot of young kids discovered Led Zeppelin for the first time. What might they do with that knowledge? And what might they do with other music they don’t know about but can find with a simple Google search string? Imitate it? Mash it? Reinterpret it? Deconstruct the blueprint?

We’ll see. Meanwhile, I’m keeping my White Stripes CDs, thanks.

DISCLAIMER: Based on music I actually bought in 2007, and therefore a useless metric for everyone else. Also, I spent enough time on this without having to get all the links for these albums, so for more information, just Google whatever interests you, cos that's what I would have done.

TFI’S DEF 20 NEW LPs/EPs OF 2007

1. Bloc Party, A Weekend In The City (Wichita)
2. Turbonegro, Retox (Cooking Vinyl/SLR)
3. Blonde Redhead, 23 (4AD)
4. Rickie Lee Jones, The Sermon On Exposition Boulevard (New West)
5. The White Stripes, Icky Thump (Third Man/Warner Bros)
6. Grinderman, Grinderman (Mute)
7. They Might Be Giants, The Else (Idlewild Recordings/Zoë Records)
8. Kristin Hersh, Learn To Sing Like A Star (4AD)
9. Steve Earle, Washington Square Serenade (New West)
10. The Hives, The Black And White Album (A&M/Octone)
11. New Young Pony Club, Fantastic Playroom (Modular Records)
12. The Aliens, Astronomy For Dogs (Pet Rock/EMI)
13. The Raveonettes, Lust Lust Lust (Fierce Panda)
14. PixelToy, O-oh (People Mountain People Sea)
15. Calvin Harris, I Created Disco (Fly Eye/Columbia)
16. !!!, Myth Takes (Warp)
17. Gogol Bordello, Super Taranta! (Side One Dummy)
18. The Epoxies, My New World (Metropolis)
19. Neil Young, Chrome Dreams II (Reprise)
20. Love Psychedelico, Golden Grapefruit (JVC)

BEST COMPILATION

They Might Be Giants, Cast Your Pod To The Wind (Idlewild Recordings/Zoë Records)

BEST SOUNDTRACK

Various, Death Proof OST (A Band Apart/Maverick/Warner Bros)

BEST DOWNLOAD

Asa Bailey, “My Blog’s Bigger Than Yours”

BEST GUILTY PLEASURE

Yui, Can't Buy My Love (Sony)

( Extended mix behind this cut! )

Okay. Official illegal compilation coming shortly.

Shut up and play yr guitar,

This is dF