We got a nice shout out in the New Yorker, and are a “Critic’s Pick” this week in Time Out New York. Also Diego made this sick ass trailer for it:

The song is called “Recess” by Hunter, one of the bands playing for us that night. Speaking of Hunter, they just released a newly recorded version of “Recess” from their upcoming EP. Download it on their bandcamp page (and throw them a few bones if you can).

Speaking of bandcamp, while you’re there take a look at Little Victory’s page as well. They’ve got FOUR sweet tracks for ya. Oh and download some PAPS at YAWMA and Baby Alpaca on itunes, and you’ll be all set for Birdsong Benefit Superfandom!!!!!!!!

That sounded a lot less corny in my head. See you Friday

NOT TO BE A HUGE JERK, but there’s This Pop Singer Who Is Really Famous Right Now and kind of bumming me out. I don’t want to shit-talk cause it’s a total waste of time, but it’s gotten to the point in my life where when people mention how much they love this singer, I feel deep pangs of personal guilt, because it means that the person I’m talking to and I are fundamentally disagreeing on some things. It’s like how in the early 00s (‘member?) sometimes you’d be at a soccer game or the supermarket or a PTA meeting and someone would say nonchalantly that they had voted for Bush, and it would just send up a red flag? It feels like that.

The thing that bugs me about This Pop Singer Who Is Really Famous Right Now is that she purports to be something of a Performance Artist. Now, I’m not going to say that Pop Music and Performance Art are mutually exclusive, but I will say that the kind of Pop Music this singer is making is absolutely antithetical to the goals of performance art. According not only to my, but in fact anybody’s definition of performance art. Performance Art necessarily means something that is expressed / transmitted via (you guessed it!) PERFORMANCE. This Singer’s work is almost always mediated through studio magick, the radio, MTV, YouTube, Fashion Photography, Twitter, etc. It’s deliberately a kind of Art that doesn’t need to be performed live, since it’s readily accessible. Just saying. So when I am getting bugged out about this I figure I can either rage against the dying of the light (incorrect use whatever) or I can offer some alternative to This Pop Singer Who Is Really Famous Right Now. So let’s do that.

So, first: ROISIN MURPHY.

Maybe you already know about her. The thing with This Pop Singer Who Is Really Famous Right Now is that she often claims that the biggest misconception about her is that she’s fake, that she’s artificial, and she wants you to know that she is Always Glamorous, Always In Drag, and very Real. OK I’ll bite: BULLSHIT. This video for the title track from Murphy’s second solo album Overpowered plays with a similar idea, in a much more interesting way (I think). The premise of the video is that Murphy’s stage persona never comes off, that she wears her ultra-bizarre high fashion outfit (Courtesy of Gareth Pugh– Murphy was wearing Pugh long before Kylie, Rihanna, Beyoncé, and the Pop Singer In Question) in cafes, on the bus, etc. as a way of juxtaposing the artificial with the real. It makes an interesting comment on the nature of celebrity culture and beauty. Oh also, this came out in 2007.

KYLIE.

HAD TO GO THERE. The thing about Kylie Minogue is that she’s world-famous everywhere except for the USA. In most of Europe, she’s more famous than Madonna. Madonna has, for those Europhiles (and American Fags) who have been keeping track, been ripping off Kylie for decades. SO while This Pop Singer Nowadays rips off Madonna, she’s actually not even citing the Minogue sources. The almost-Goth, sort of vaguely “dark” aesthetic that This Pop Singer employs was much better used, again in 2007, by Kylie in the video for “2 Hearts”. Other than the fact that this song and video are excellent, the fact that the shiny skull is a reference to Alexander McQueen, the skull itself was actually a symbol of triumph. When this video came out, it was the lead single from Kylie’s “comeback” album X. Comeback, I mean, from breast cancer. Kylie has an authentic right to glamorize the macabre because unlike the Pop Singer Nowadays, who’s whole shtick is utterly devoid of anything involving “the real world” or “obscurity”, when Kylie released this video, singing into a skull microphone, she has just beaten Death. Top that.

GRACE JONES. In your FACE BONES.

It’s no secret that I love Grace Jones. I listen her every single day and she is a totally guiding force in my life. It is with no small amount of disappointment that I continually see This Pop Singer referencing her work. Grace Jones’ eccentricity is best exemplified by the video above (total. personal. anthem.) Unlike the current Pop Singer, who equates randomness and embellishment with intellectual weight, this video shows Grace in what appears to be her natural habitat, running from Keith Haring’s studio to the wardrobe closet to the chiropractor. The message here is that even with this totally unsustainable, unreal level of glamour, she is able to look directly to the camera and sing a love song. The layers of artifice serve to create a distance which the song’s message ostensibly crosses, rather than simply mask the singer’s face. Grace wants you to know that you and her are meant to be.

ROBYN.

Look, one of the things that I don’t understand about This Pop Singer, is how she simultaneously seems to be singing about her “feelings” while denying any trace of actual human emotion. She is bloodless. Does pop music have to be this way? Not if Robyn has anything to say about it. The marriage of a human heart and a dance beat may sound strange on paper, but with Robyn it makes perfect sense.

DIAMOND RINGS

Thought it’d be nice to have a non-girl, non-superstar in the mix. Toronto’s Diamond Rings proves that you can do really cool interesting pop music without a multimillion dollar budget. Look, even Kathleen Hanna is a fan. That ought to be enough. This video is really cool and proves that really, real people can and do succeed at aspiring to glamour and art. Who needs a custom haute couture outfit? Just put a sexy kid in a Karl Lagerfeld t-shirt. Signify, baby. This is what postmodernism ACTUALLY looks like.

So whatever. These are some things you can listen to and watch instead. Check them out.

Stay dry, America. Stay motherfucking dry.

Anyway TODAY’S THEMES ARE RAIN and then also WHATEVER  ELSE I FEEL LIKE:

So first things first. Let’s start with The Rain. I actually like it when it rains because it reminds me of growing up in picturesque, culturally-vampiric Northern California. You could even say that I am happiest when it rains. You could even hazard to describe my mood with the following sensation:

Look, I know we all know the song and have seen the video but I think it’s worth revisiting. Shirley Manson is generally the coolest thing ever. Although, y’know what? Fuck Garbage. I mean, fuck Garbage, to an extent. It took me forever to find a version of this video that would allow embedding. WTF? What the Fuck, Butch Vig? Are you not making enough royalties off of Nevermind and you’re worried that by me reposting this video from fifteen fucking years ago that it’s going to somehow leave you destitute? Sorry to be snooty, I haven’t had my coffee yet. REGARDLESS: Shirley’s pink skirt in this video is enough to make anyone smile, regardless of the weather. (NOTE: there’s not actually any rain in this video).

OK sorry you know what? I’m still pissed at Garbage. When their first record came out, I was too busy with Puberty (still not done, btw, I am seriously getting chest hair at age 25 and I am having mixed feelings about it but secretly into it) to be paying much attention to the Music Press. But from what I understand, there was a mini-hubub about the fact that basically Garbage stole their sound from Curve. Here’s Curve’s video:

Toni Halliday, the Curve frontwoman, was and is pretty ace too, right? Also for the record Curve seem to have made their peace with modernity and allow for embedding of their music videos. So, you know, now who has the last laugh, Butch Vig? I hope you read this. I hope you compulsively google yourself. Anyways if you are reading this: I think yr rad but get with the times, man!

SO anyways speaking of the rain, and ripping off British culture:

Who doesn’t love the Melvins? I mean, who doesn’t love the Melvins and still wants to be my friend? These work in tandem. This guy knows what I’m talking about:

You guys I seriously listen to this record every fucking day. I’m not kidding. At some point in my day, I’ll be really stressed out and just need some ‘me’ time and I’ll put this record on my iPod and walk around chelsea and just… really feel it. You know? I know I just said the Melvins are my friends and they are (not personally but philosophically, like Lindsay Lohan or Sharon Stone or something. Lindsay / Sharon / the Melvins / Max Steele… you get it), but if you want this record and you don’t have any money to buy music with, you can download this awesome album here. I highly recommend it. I mean, I recommend it for when you’re high. Sasslay. But if you do have money, spend it, or something.

What was I saying? Oh yes, the rain. I love the rain so hard. One of my all-time favorite activities is puddle-splashing. This might be my idea of a ‘dream date’ (HINT to the motherfucking HINT).

OK two things: a) if that kid were in an MIA video she’d fucking kill it, and b) I made those images both be 420 pixels wide. Just to brag. OK another thing c) this kid is pissing me off, just from looking at it. I’m jealous that the kid gets to puddle splash when I have to work and I’m also jealous that the kid is younger than me and has rad purple galoshes and is more androgynous than I am. You guys also: I am starting to get chest hair. At age 25. How fucked is that? Like HI YOU WOULD HAVE REALLY HELPED TEN YEARS AGO but now that I’ve realized that men / maleness and it’s attendant aesthetics are stupid WHAT GOOD ARE YOU? Ugh. NOW I’M ANGRY. J/K I’m just hungry (these are the same feeling). SPEAKING OF PUDDLE SPLASHING AND DREAM DATES here’s me:

I’m going to make no secret of the fact that I happen to love the Wendy Williams show.

This is pretty new for me. I came across her show a few weeks ago and I am hooked. Of course, the newest iteration of her show is not her first foray into Television, and she has been on radio since the late 1980s. She is brash, loud, hilarious and witty. And I am smitten.

I want to point out, though, that the only reason I even know about Wendy Williams as anything other than someone that’s on TV (like, the only reason I thought she might be something super cool) is because America’s Next Top Artist Sam McKinniss was blogging about her when she was first on TV, in 2006. I want to give credit for when someone turns me on to something cool. Thanks Sam! I figured that Wendy must be on to something. Sam is a certifiable genius, and I knew that his appreciation of Wendy Williams was not just another case of “white faggots fawning over black women for their access to ‘realness’”, which, you know, is a hazard. Sam is too smart for that– his appreciation of Wendy is too heartfelt, sincere and serious. He’s not ironic and Wendy isn’t either.

Her show is really surreal. She’s fabulous, of course, incisive and cutting with media shitheads, and generous and understanding with really nice people. She defends folks just as much as she tears other folks down. She is not, as is sometimes written about her, a “shock jock” personality. What you get when Wendy is reading her “hot topics” from the tabloid headlines is just that– reading. You are watching someone process the same news you can process. What we’re watching here is not the latest Ashlee Simpson debacle, what we’re focusing on here is how Wendy uses it. This is a TV show about how to watch TV.

And Wendy is fucking fabulous. She always looks good and is hilarious. And if she isn’t hilarious (if a guest is too serious or something) she’s charming. She’s a fucking star. In addition to the charisma which we demand of our (especially female) celebrities, there’s another certain quality that Wendy has. She’s so self-conscious that it’s disarming. She refers to herself as the “Queen of All Media”. In fact, she’s made a biopic of her life under that title, starring Robin Givens, to be released this year. Her title is of course Howard Stern’s, repurposed. Her catchphrase, “How you doin’?” will be familiar to fans of the 1990s sitcom Friends as Joey’s favorite pick-up line. Wendy addresses this in one clip, acknowledging the pop-culture catchphrase heist and through said acknowledgment neutralizing theft. By admitting the similarity, she recasts her own use of the phrase as a tactic of postmodernism. Not like how Joey does it. It’s different when Wendy does it, because Wendy’s doing it. That’s why it’s different. Are you starting to get me? There’s a kind of “because I say so” rationale at work with Wendy. And this is important.

Last night I tuned in to her show. During her “Ask Wendy” segment, in which Wendy ventures out into the audience so her audience can ask her advice on various matters, something amazing happened. A woman named Diana told Wendy that she was struggling with her weight and that her family wasn’t being very understanding. She said that her weight had been a constant struggle and she didn’t know what to do at large family gatherings, which she describes as “food fests”. Wendy flickers for a second, then launches into a staid piece of weight-loss advice; eating off of smaller plates. As she’s describing what Diana needs to do to lose weight (“Guzzle water. Not like you’re thirsty, but like you have a problem!”), the advice sounds insincere, it falls flat. Diana sees this, and it seems to occur to Wendy as well. Wendy then acknowledges how hard it is for Diana. It gets awkward for a minute. Wendy moves on to the next audience member. No sooner can she ask the next girl her name, then Wendy starts bawling. She runs back over to Diana and commiserates about how hard it is to lose weight. How it is a constant struggle. We find Diana hugging Wendy, the audience cooing and trying to make their star feel better. It is real emotion and it is magnificent to see it on television.

Wendy intimates something to Diana, her studio audience, and the viewers at home. Growing up, she said, she was always “taller, fatter, blacker”. The the glamorous vixen we see prancing before us is a creation. The twirling, Wendy says “is new to me”. You cat watch a clip of this here.

And as soon as she says it, we realize it’s true. It all becomes clear.

There is a promotional clip of Wendy dancing around her sound-stage as confetti drops. She dances slowly, in circles, pumping one fist in the air. Though she is smiling, she is not convincing. It’s an unnerving image, and they show it every time her show goes to commercial. She does not dance with the inbred authority and entitlement of the young and beautiful.

Wendy often alludes to the work she’s had done. She is as equally candid about her plastic surgery, liposuction, breast implants and miscarriages as she is about her problems with her husband and former cocaine addiction. This is a conscious effort on her part to remove the taboo of these subjects, but this also serves another function. Wendy knows that her body is a public one, her physical features speak to numerous discourses (about beauty, gender, race, class). Wendy often alludes to her fake hair, sometimes commenting on the fake hair of studio audience members. Demystifying the weave. Wendy even pulls her own hair to show us that it is entirely a wig. On one hand, this is funny. On another hand, it is scary. It is “realness” pursued to the nth degree. On the other other hand: it is inspiring.

Wendy Williams identifies with and as ‘drag’. I can’t pull up every quote the woman’s ever said, but I know I’ve heard her describe herself using that term. While she loves the gay fellas, I would venture to say that she means “drag” as removed from its classically queer context. Wendy is “drag” in the sense of being a creation. The Wendy Williams experience owes as much to her inborn intelligence as it does to her brilliant sense of aesthetics. She is simultaneously well-designed (by god) and brilliantly executed (by herself and team of stylists).

When Wendy shows us her wig, she tells us that it is okay to wear a wig. When she talks about struggling to love her body she gives us permission to admit our own struggles with ours. When Wendy reveasls herself as a drag queen with self-esteem issues, stealing catchphrases, she is doing another kind of inspiring. To watch her crying with Diana, clearly struggling with the same problems, is freaky: the only difference is that Wendy has a TV show and Diana doesn’t. Wendy is holding herself together by sheer force of will. She dances hesitantly because she has not been encouraged to dance a different way. And by taking that risk and willing her (admittedly fabulous) upon us, she shows us that not only is it possible for us to triumph over ourselves, but entirely necessary.

There’s been much ink spilled (not sure if that phrase applies to the internet, but still) about Former President Bill Clinton’s dashing and heroic mission to North Korea to rescue two US journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee.

The two were thankfully transported back to the USA this morning. A number of people helped make this possible: Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, My BFF (and fellow Leo) Barack, and of course Big Daddy Bill Clinton.

Now, here at Birdsong Micropress HQ we simply don’t have the means to compete with the diplomatic mechanisms of the US Government. We don’t have the manpower. However, we did send our own envoy to Southeast Asia to rescue Ling and Lee, in the form of Birdsong Undercover Spy Reporter Danielle May Rosa. We recently shipped her off to Seoul to begin her expedition. She had been fighting a cold up until her departure, but we insisted that she move forward with her assigned mission. She has been temporarily delayed by her illness, and we don’t have the heart to tell her that Agent Clinton has already been to Pyongyang and rescued the US Citizens– it’d be bad for Agent Danielle’s morale, so we’ll just keep her in the dark. Here are her dispatches from her trip.

AUGUST 3^RD

Hey My Bobo Sister,

Korea is great but I am sick and a little worse here is why:

The first day I got here I meet up with Secret Agents MM and XXX at the airport and MM told XXX I love to get loose and we can drink in the streets here (and the Korean drinking motto is DRINK TILL YOU DIE) so we begin drinking beers and got to a palace and see where the king used to live and drink more beers. Oh best part is my favorite beer is called Max and its motto is “Delicious Idea”. And then we keep drinking and get this liquor called soju and then I meet lots of people and end up puking. I BEGIN A SERIES OF FALLING ASLEEP at places and cabs and finally get back to Agent MMM’s to puke one more time then pass out. I wake up the nest morning to more puking and dry heaving till I finally pass out one more time. So now my sickness is exacerbated to the point where I almost thought I had a fever yesterday and the whole country is scared of swine flu. They even tested my temperature getting off the plane and I lied on a form that asks is you had any cough or runny nose. But I’m still sick. Hopefully I’ll get better the more spicy food I eat and rest I take. But I wanna go out and live the life it sucks. The only thing we can watch is the Golden Girls since Secret Agent MM’s DVD player broke. Also I am like a celebrity here because I am white and everyone looks at me like I’m awesome. Crazy translations, cool bars, orderly and humid as fuck.

Love,

Your girlfriend,

Danielle

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AUGUST 4^TH:

Hello Baby Bo,

So I went to the hospital yesterday to make with a fun Korean adventure. I was feeling too sick after basically sleeping all day and all night the day before. We had a nice translator woman come with us who basically threatened me to not confess that I have swine flu because I’ll get quarantined for a week. But I got diagnosed with the common cold and given 3 days of strong medicine. Hospital and medicine costing me around 20 bucks. Crazy right? So then we went out to meet up with other people because I was finally feeling better and walking around was helping looked at some old villages and went down different alleyways and looked at a hidden temple in an old part of Seoul. Oh and then we met up with more people and snuck up to a helicopter pad of a new Seoul building. Today we’re going down south of Seoul to a village called Suwon that has an old wall/fortress and we’re going to check that out. Next week we’re going to the south of the country and going to this nighttime fish market that has sea creatures and stuff. It’ll be so scary! I hope my taste comes back soon. Gonna watch more golden girls and take my meds. I slept like a baby yesterday.

WUB NU,

BOBO