Inaugural Aesthetics

I'm yet to read/hear the Elizabeth Alexander inaugural poem because I'm avoiding it on purpose. The mere thought that it could be as terrible as it is reported is too much for me to deal with. This is not even criticism- I cant believe how incredibly weak the cultural production around this inauguration is. Obama's speech was far form his best- far less inspiring than what he said in Oakland during a campaign visit more than a year ago. Aretha sounded good, but slightly tired. The Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman shtick was just that, shtick. What a fucking let down.

Later on that night, there was a Pepsi-presents-made-for-TV party featuring all the musicians TV executives could name. I caught Alicia Keys, Stevie Wonder and Sting before going to bed. Alicia Keys was so horrible singing a song I kind of like, "No One". She's part of an entire generation of 'singers' who can't perform without pitch-sync technology. She's also not at all comfortable in the size dress, way-too-small, her designer picked out for her. Exactly what about that gig was supposed to be sexy? She probably is a real musician, somewhere under that dress, but she has been distracted by everything but making music since her record dropped. I honestly feel bad for her, having been preened by the industry to be this plasticized yellow-skin pin-up and then having to all of sudden be an artist and play music at an important event and sounding like bad karaoke of her own album (cued in the background by a digital track, of course).

To his eternal credit, Stevie wrote a song for the event, not memorable enough for me to hum any of it right now, but a solid Stevie Wonder composition. He too sounded shaky to begin with, but he at least has the musicianship to work that shit out and find some way to groove with what looked like the fucking Airforce Jazz Band behind him. The distance between what he does and what Ms. Keys does makes the use of the word "musician" to describe both more than a little strange. I think that's actually what this post is about: how weird it is to be a musican in the last 10 years or so. The vast majority of what gets mass-marketed, and thus what stands in for shared or common culture, has nothing at all to do with what the vast majority of people whose job description is "musician" do. Yet there are people so ignorant as to think that the best-selling "musicians" of the day are actually excelling at what we all do every day, thus earning their accolades. As though Alicia Keys, at 27, is actually measurably better (measurable in market share) than your local choir soloist, who has to be in tune and hit all the notes without any pitch-syncing or live-mixing (the technology wherein the live signal coming from the singers microphone is blended with the pre-recorded track to mask pitch variation and cue the singer). Give me a fucking break. It's a shame that Obama had to become the first African American President at just the moment when we've lost our collective grip on the relation of celebrity to reality so thoroughly that we are unable to actually discern the bullshit we are being fed.

Our only hope is that economic depression wakes us so fed up with our corporate culture that, like the working-poor audiences Stevie cut his chops on, we throw tomoatoes or shoes at motherfuckers who aren't delivering the goods.