Miley showed us her young "ten-year-old boy" ass on MTV’s Video Award Show, and nobody asked the question “Why does MTV still have a video award show?”
Will her current album be remembered in 10 years? Not likely, but she got paid so what does she care. The thing that stood out to me about all of this is the unbelievable effort it has taken to make us notice her. While Wrecking Ball is not a bad song, it’s not really that good. Yet it took five of today’s top songwriters (none of them Cyrus) to pen that bitch. In addition to Dr. Luke, this team included two of today’s top piano composers. Knowing that, I feel obligated to repeat myself, it’s not bad, but it’s not really that good. So pulling all the stops in an effort to be so big it can’t be ignored, Miley behaves like a knucklehead.
In the late 1980’s people believed punk was dead because the punk performers were out of our sight, touring the world instead of constantly releasing new albums. In the early 90’s ex-Black Flag singer Henry Rollins said he remembered being in Europe doing a show, and hearing that, with grunge, punk was back. It shocked him because he didn’t realize it ever went away. Along the same lines, I remember last year being surprised when I saw footage of Miley Cyrus doing a show in Brazil. I didn’t realize she was still working in the music industry.
We are a fast food culture demanding instant entertainment, and disposable music. There are no classic-rap stations, or bands doing rap cover songs. Despite their popularity, and the fact that they won a Billboard award, and were nominated for a Grammy, nobody is listening to SWV (Sisters With Voices). We churn through pop music like a lawn mower going over grass, spitting it out the side. There was a time when the charts reflected society. Today, just because a song charts doesn’t mean it is truly culturally significant. Sixty percent or more of the music-loving world will never hear Wrecking Ball. The song is only significant to a very small group of people that happen to be the number one group (13 – 17 year old girls) that buy more music than all other group combined. The real way this song reflects our culture is in how much effort Cyrus had to go through to force us to pay attention.
I recently looked at a list of all the songs published in 1924. It consisted of 93 songs total. Comparably, today I received 76 album submissions for review consideration. If we assume there are ten songs on each submission that is 760 new songs to consider today. Tomorrow there will be a fresh batch approximately the same size. Without knowing the title of each of the 93 songs, we know that they are all culturally significant, because they represent the few songs released that year. The same can’t be said about a song released today. Today’s music is a drop that will inevitably be lost in the ocean.
So if you are a band working today, trying to get your music heard, what can you do about all of this? You can constantly put out new music, releasing an album a year, fight against the current, and not likely succeed anyway, or you can say fuck it and just make music on your own terms. The latter is the approach of the New York band Makar. Formed eleven years ago, this band has two releases to date. Their most recent album Funeral Genius was released in 2011.
Considerably more interesting than a Destiny Hope Cyrus album, Funeral Genius is a well written menagerie of influences delivered in a pop-rock-punk format.
Via email conversation, Mark Makar and I recently discussed the future, the past, and life after the Funeral.
[ME] Why so long between albums?
[Mark] We like to take our time, write the songs then rehearse them for a while, really live with them to make sure we’re happy with them. Once we are we take our time with the recording process as well until we are completely happy with what we’ve done. Our past two albums, 99 Cent Dreams (our debut) and Funeral Genius each took 3 years to record, but the first was done mostly in a studio and the latter was done almost completely at home. Once we’re done recording we take a few years to promote each album during which time we typically write songs for the next album. Unlike major label bands who have full systems go once their album is recorded, we do all the promotion ourselves. We send out CDs to colleges, independent radio, reviewers etc. and all of that takes time and money. Recently we have been greatly aided by our Publicist, Gina Sigillito, who lives in Austin Texas. She submitted Funeral Genius to the Deli Magazine and we’ve been on their top NY bands list under indie pop/guitar pop for the past 16 months with the likes of MGMT, Vampire Weekend, Fun. and Santigold. We’re definitely honing the Makar marketing machine, but it still takes a long time when you have to do everything yourself.
[ME]Do you find it difficult to maintain fans interest at the current speed / time between albums?
[Mark] Music is so accessible today and there are so many bands coming out with new music all the time. We do our thing, then the next minute someone else does their thing and so forth and so on, but everything is flying by at light speed. To retain fans at that speed let alone the molecular composition of our bodies is next to impossible. We’re pretty laid back about it, which is probably not the best way to retain fans, but the creative process comes before all else no matter how long that takes. I think each album connects with a new batch of fans and we’re very thankful for anyone who enjoys our music or might enjoy it again in the future. Bands and artists should always be on guard for oversaturation of their work. We definitely are and so spacing out the creative process allows us all to breath, live life, then come back together again in the future to celebrate a new musical creation.
[ME] What do the two main members do full time?
[Mark] By day we’re mild mannered executive assistants at a corporate lawfirm in Midtown, the last place on earth any artist should be. By night we’re indie rocking freaks with our hair on fire cooking up new musical concoctions in our kitchen rehearsal/recording studio with the help of protools! One job pays the bills, the other feeds the soul. We’re also both working on finishing our first fictional novels (which should be done this year!). Andrea’s writing a coming of age, sci-fi, murder mystery, love story with a red leather booted killer called “Pushed” set in the wilds of Oberlin and New York and I’m writing a coming of age love story called “Little Owen Way” set in the wilds of Marthas Vineyard and New York. Andrea has had many short stories and poems published so we’re hoping that writing could become our day jobs and help fund a life where we could create all the time and go on musical tours.
[ME] In addition to the next album possibly being acoustic, what else can we expect from the next project?
[Mark] Our third album is called “Fancy Hercules” and it’s going to be an eleven to twelve song album that combines every style from punk to rock to folk to pop with strange theatrical stylings on some songs. We’ve put drums and bass on our last two albums, but have been playing out just the two of us recently and really like the sound of that. However, we’re going to record everything in time so that if we want to go back and put drums and bass on we can, but also, maybe even try some sequencing and take Makar into the 21st century. Our last drummer has been asking to try it so we may let him or learn how to do it ourselves. And here you can see why albums can take a while to bake. If we need to learn how to do something lord knows how long it will take to finish the album. However, we would probably put out the acoustic album then put out the sequenced album later if we were going down that long and winding road. We wouldn’t want to push the release date back any longer than we normally do.
[ME] Will you record the next album yourself, or will you go into a studio and work with a producer?
[Mark] We’ll record Fancy Hercules completely at home. No fancy pants producer for Fancy Hercules. He’s fancy enough bare bones with no outside coat needed to clothe him. The drum and bass tracks for Funeral Genius were recorded in one day at Seaside studios in Park Slope and then the guitar, piano and vocals were all recorded at home on our protools digi 001. 99 Cent Dreams was recorded almost 100% in a studio, so this will be the first time we don’t even go into a studio.
[ME] In what ways do you think your song writing has changed over time?
[Mark] Our song writing process has been evolving along with our playing and singing. We’re much more confident as musicians and singers now than when we started and our songs sound looser and less structured. We’re trying to do more improvisational playing using scales and arpeggios, so definitely look out for Andrea to cut loose with some guitar solos on Fancy Hercules.
We used the pentatonic scale on our song “America Where Are You” on Funeral Genius, which as you know is the scale most often used in movies and country music to lend that expansive feel of the American West. We wanted that pioneer vibe added to America’s lyrics, which are about the search for America’s soul during the dark years of the Bush administration.
Mainly there’s a languidness to our writing style now. Andrea and I continue to collaborate on every song and having been in a relationship for 16 years there’s an ease to creating each song that just gets better with time. If Andrea writes something it will trigger ideas from me, which trigger more ideas from her and so forth and so on until a fully formed song has been birthed. We’ve birthed so many songs as married musicians that it may be time for us to get down to the real business of birthing tiny Makars.
[ME] Do you think you will ever do a national tour?
[Mark] We’ve thrown around the idea of touring several times, with several incarnations of Makar, but it always comes back to money and time. Now that it’s just the two of us we can travel around much more easily and wherever we go we can bring our instruments and play. So not only is it possible now to have a national tour, but even an international one could happen. And by tour it would be at most a week of dates at a time, such as this London gig we’re going to be doing next July with our friend Alistair, who’s in a great band called Battles of Winter. He’s putting on a little music festival of sorts that we’re going to take part in and are very excited about.
[ME] New York hasn't generated that many memorable rock bands. Other than Sonic Youth, The Strokes, The Ramones, and The Velvet Underground most of New York’s rock bands have disappeared in the journals of history. Sense New York is the city that never sleeps, and there is sooooo much going on there, why do you think it hasn't created more legendary rock bands?
[Mark} Wow, you’ve certainly thrown down the gauntlet with that one my friend. But let’s not forget some very important New York artists/bands and musical movements such as the whole Greenwich Village folk scene that produced Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, et al., the rap/rock visionaries the Beastie Boys, the punk scene that gave us Patti Smith, The New York Dolls, Talking Heads, Television, Blondie, GG Allin, the rap scene that gave us Run DMC, Notorious B.I.G., LL Cool J and Jazzy Jeff, the indie rock scene that gave us the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, Le Tigre, Santigold, Moby, Vampire Weekend, Grizzly Bear, Sharon Van Etten, The National, Nous Non Plus and a whole slew of other amazing acts. And then of course the early days of Jazz on 57th street with greats such as Miles, Charles Mingus, Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker. And of course the Duke himself, Duke Ellington, before all of that!!! Come on pal, New York is and always has been the epicenter of the music world. If you can make it here you can make it anywhere. There might be a Seattle scene here and there, but New York is and always will be where it’s at. Period, end of story! Not that we’re biased or anything. :)
[ME] Right on, it’s cool to be proud of where you are from. I would never deny that the town’s Hip Hop scene is booming. But rock has never been New York’s grass roots, home grown gig. Also I would point out that from Bob Dylan, to Patti Smith, to Duke Ellington most of the people you mentioned by name, are not native New Yorkers. I guess what I am really curious about is why the city doesn’t have more of a rock community that grew up together, with an endless list of amazing musicians that all used to play in each other’s bands, and that support one another: similar to Athens Georgia in the early 80’s, Los Angeles in the late 80’s, or Seattle in the early 90’s. I don’t mean it in a negative way. It’s just an observation. When it comes to rock music, New York has never had it’s own sound.
If you haven’t yet, check out Makar’s latest album Funeral Genius:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/makar3
Visit their homepage:
http://www.makarmusic.com/
And be watching for new music from them in the future.
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