The Best Christmas Rock-N-Roll Song of 2011: A Goodbye to Borders Books and Music

Somebody asked me recently to describe why this video marks a new level of awful in the history of recorded anything. It's some guy's cheesy Christmas song, with a pretty bad original accompanying music video. Check it out for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xsg1Wo36hY

From the opening sequence, the plastic keys and the lead guy’s three stretched fingers that form a C chord are a bad omen of the mediocre effort to come. The synthetic jingle bells give way to a sourly compressed beat that includes a digital conga, and the hero appears: squinting in the sun outside of his trailer, wearing a hand-painted psychedelic helmet that makes one think he’s about to engage in a risk, perhaps fall off of something. No such luck. His head bobs as he scowls through typical holiday sentiments: “a Merry Christmas/let’s have a party,” and “come on you people/embrace the good not the evil.” If he—the musician, lead singer, and main actor—can’t look anything but disconcerted, maybe even embarrassed that he’s wearing a necklace of those gaudy fake holiday lights, sitting before a stuffed Santa and three drugstore ornaments on a fake pine, how are we, the viewer supposed to feel? There’s a Beatlesesque music break at 0:33, but any redeeming musical structure is overshadowed by the lead guy’s directorial debut: in a different shot, framed by two wall sconces and a fake wreath, the hero tries to get it on holiday-style with a woman who looks like his sister, baiting her with his muscles, mistletoe, and a small and pathetic version of the twist before appearing with his shirt off. After two choruses there’s nothing to do but a dramatic spoken verse before another fake tree in which his babble earns him the right to kiss her on the cheek. She grins and pulls away; back to another disturbing headbobbing chorus. The music gets overmodulated as keyboards increase in size and number, pulling out all the stops (or at least all the presets) on the keyboard, really the only instrument. Yeah, it's bad; what does it mean for the way we Eat Art these days, when just about anybody can come up with a song that sounds like a synthetic Traveling Wilburys rip-off with Christmas lyric, and put themselves out there as eternally ridiculous?

There’s already something hideous and huge and new about YouTube, and the way it enables the creative Everyman to busy themselves, creating content for their portals, channels, and feeds. But with every new platform comes new challenges, and guidelines to be broken—and here we’re talking YouTube, where the picture-worth-one-thousand-words has morphed into minutes of synchronized audio and video, using equipment one –tenth the size (or smaller) of the post-VHS behemoths of even a dozen years ago. The act of “getting on TV,” no matter what you were doing, meant a lot more in the 1980s than it does at present; for those that create content, the act of getting recognized is not only a goal, but one performed automatically, qualitatively assessed through site analytics. Google is happy to keep track of who’s watching, even if the creator doesn’t care (though one should). There’s lots of schlock out there on YouTube--why torment some guy with a trailer and a keyboard, whose holiday wish, however egotistical, is that everyone should take their shirts off and make out? YouTube is ripe with human banality, stupidity, and ego; is this guy’s C-chord song really so bothersome? Maybe; maybe not (3 likes/5 dislikes as of this writing).

What is more interesting is what’s changed in the way we consume media: whether we report in via Facebook or Twitter, and whether or not we let widgets hand us data across our desktops, whether or not we are In On It and have let Google or some other database merge our contact lists and profiles, our streams, feeds, favorites and preferences—wherever we choose stand on the spectrum of Digital Identity, we are in a new world where content providers’ bravery may not be over- or underestimated. Osi’s contribution stands alongside clips from Hollywood blockbusters, uploaded America’s funniest injuries, and endless hours of dancing or comically-staggering animals. The new ways to Get Published—YouTube among them—might help make sense of the collapse of Borders Books and Music: bookstores were conceived at a time when out-of-work creative maniacs may have written furious letters to publishers, and musicians composed thoughtfully, planning for recording sessions and revising. Bookstores were at their heyday before the hard drive, and many creative kooks used lots of postage to get themselves noticed back then (Wikipedia says Borders hadn't made a profit since 2006). Some kooks got contracts and got published, and some showed up on the shelves of places like Borders-- who, after a sluggish holiday rush, ended last year by holding off on paying back publishers for books that were already on the shelves. Today those shelves are emptying out of unwanted bestsellers and “How-To” libraries, of philosophy and gardening, of jazz manuals and historical biographies: all one may want to know is likely downloadable. There is little need for the trip to the store to bring in content, and less postage needed to send it out: a rudimentary knowledge of graphic design will build a functional, efficient site, workable enough to host creative content, whether you’re Osi the musician or Danielle Steele. This digital frontier is closing in; the general disappearance of print materials marks something like the Louisiana Purchase in magnitude in this ongoing content-hosting virtual land grab. We consume without driving to the store—we don’t buy CDs or books—don’t have use for either (and no space here in the trailer anyway).

So we control, critique, vet, assess, and evaluate what media we choose to let into the house; the infinite number of channels available to flip through has morphed into YouTube nonsense, including Osi’s contribution. Maybe we won’t be surfing the web for long—a year or two more—before the way we follow suggestions or links may itself turn our heads toward What We Like to See. Social bookmarking and search-keyword-codes are being worked together on this likely as you read this, that our browsing may become more fully our own, and knowable, our trends assessed, themselves to be bought and sold. This wasn’t the case browsing the emptying shelves of a liquidating Borders in central Massachusetts-- one of the remaining 399, each of which will close by the end of next month--where I bought Moleskin journals and a five-pound bag of organic Mexican coffee, and browsed tall rows of disappearing print (the travel section, including racks of maps, was virtually untouched). In the corner of the coffee shop, a PA system—two mic stands, speakers, mixer, an amp, and all the cords—flashed me back to happier, social times of youth. Like many stores, the Borders Books and Music in northern Delaware hosted local singer-songwriters on Wednesday evenings; this was a frequent stop on my crowd’s adolescent cavalcades through the summer. Though the music wasn’t usually very good, the ability of individuals to perform in a coffee-shop corner of a corporate bookshop located in a strip mall for forty-five minutes to a crowd built of more-or-less their peers sought a far different notion of community and music than Osi’s “Best Christmas Rock-N-Roll Song of 2011,” or many other YouTube attempts at reaching out and touching someone, via music video sensibilities. Maybe if that corporate creative outlet was still in artists’ common creative consciousness—a shooting for human notice and widespread local success face-to-face, with homespun CDs for sale besides—aspiring folks like Osi may cut down some on their keyboard overdubs, learn more chords, or forget about focusing on any shtick that involves him taking his shirt off, and making public via YouTube a song about how he got laid at Christmas. Borders CEO Mike Edwards, in his July 21, 2011 farewell email: "For decades, Borders stores have been destinations within communities--places where people have sought knowledge, entertainment and enlightenment and connected with others who share their passions." I wish I could be in the small café corner of a Borders Books and Music tonight, to see Osi perform his best and most original through a small PA—pressured, as we the audience get caffeinated and impatient. It’s asking for a whole different ethic, but one that improves one’s oversight of the less-useful, frivolous artistic splurges—the ones creative maniacs like Osi have a propensity towards. And people would browse others’ creative endeavors, fiction and non-, captivated by something other than the live drone of performance emanating from the far corner of the carpeted, cavernous store. People choose from long waist-high racks one alphabetized CD over another, as amplified original human music—a voice, a guitar, a C chord—carries itself over the shopping audience. Goodbye, Borders Books and Music; hello, Your Best Songs of 2011. We listen and watch, more overtaken and alien than ever, edging ever deeply towards becoming our own reflective vee-jays, our heads bobbing along to our own self-importance, in costumes only we care about, carrying ourselves along virtual, frameable, irresolute digital windows around the world, piped in like we own the place.

More about Borders Books and Music liquidation, including-- probably for only a short time longer-- interesting "Executive Biographies" at http://www.borders.com/online/store/BGIView_mediaexecutivebios

More content from Osi—full name “Kevin Shawn Sparrowhawk OSI Thorton Osgood”—may be found at http://www.time-and-death-will-end.com/

Keep Austin Surreal

If Philadelphia has as its recreational counterpoint in the Jersey Shore, and New York has always had its run of New England for its good times—from the Poconos northward, and east—Texas deserves to always hold Austin at its heart. Surrounded by semi-greenish hill country and otherwise very little, the city of Austin hangs its hat on a far different hook than the rest of the big-oil-rich/piss-poor-migrant state. Don’t dare assume it’s all about the music, either: it takes much more to Keep Austin Weird (unofficial motto; variations include “Keep South Austin Weirder” and “Keep Austin Thirsty”). It is the home of South By Southwest, the gaggle of post-pop punks and outa town bands who invade the city for two weeks in the spring: and if that’s a “festival” in central Texas, then I can assure you, there’s a festival happening right now on West 6^th St., one that comes replete with all the rights, privileges, recklessness, art, music and bombast therein.

Austin—downtown, but also out across the range of the tasteful-to-almost decrepit communities—has a distinct and personal vibe: like Boston in its transitory (or not) collegiate populations, and there’s smart people doing techy things most anywhere you look. But Austin is also like some artistic communities farther backwoods in New England: one may promote themselves as a musician, artist, seer, knower and do-er, however appropriately on the sidewalk, and, because there's such a populace of these types, there's a sense of critique unique to that hot central Texas town. The Austin Motel, a wonderfully chintzy treasure on South Congress Street, is a good example of this: take a vintage motel, complete with 1950s-green-and-pink bathroom fixtures, and extend the artsy, thrift-store décor farther than any contemporary may expect, including a wealth of ornamental lawn sculpture to discover around the pool, carefully selected wall art to ponder inside, and, importantly, massive venetian blinds to keep out the sun in the morning—because it comes, in Austin, and may be the biggest reason that people change their behaviors (start or stop drinking, for one). And of course, the room air conditioners at the Austin Motel are new, and can run full-blast cold, something the compressors of the 1950s likely couldn’t keep up with (and may not have had to).

One refab’d motel doth not an arts scene make (Breezewood Pennsylvania represent!), however. What’s next door, down the street? The Snackbar: the kind of diner you’d want if you were taking your grandparents to lunch, or auditioning a blind date before plunking down big bucks another time. Across the street: more food, a blues club (I missed Junior Brown, and at least 500 other acts, over my 72-hour, family-wedding-based tear); up the street, a vinyl record store that forgot to open, a shop featuring a fanatical diversity of nifty and reasonably-priced Latin and South American imports, arranged carefully on absolutely overpriced furniture: true antiques, imports, weathered by its travels, expensive charm in its oxidized hinges and hardware. What else? More food, being sold out of Airstreams and Winnebagos (“ah, they’re set up for summer,” you may saw, if it wasn’t always summer): small-batch ice cream, fried pickles, all manner of barbecue, and selected brave vegans discovering new ways to involve setain and rice noodles into their on-the-go fare. What else? A cleverly-disguised antique cooperative, where many booths featured deer, goat, and cat skulls, bleached by the Texas sun; I bought a scrapbook containing someone else’s religious fanaticism, a collection of newspaper clippings about tent revivals from Kansas to Texas, a pair of copper ashtrays shaped like natives’ canoes, and a Turbo Iced at Jo’s, a lovely little establishment built with the expressed purpose of sitting around and getting wired, beneath the quaint and colorful corrugated metal roofing of the shop’s sitting area. South Congress Street—on the other side of the river—may be one of the few places on the earth where the domesticated meets the non-local, and those lines of identity come to not matter at all: someone had spray-painted “I Love You So Much” on the side of Jo’s, in big, red cursive letters. I was stopped by some locals—he was from somewhere rural in Texas, and she was a Massachusetts transplant—and asked if I’d snap their photo in front of the newly painted message.

Where else are the locals, the college students, and the visitors alike? Floating in Barton Springs, the sixty-eight degree spring-fed body of water that beckons relief from the heat: slipping down an embankment over paying the two bucks to use the public access area, plunging into the cool water fully, and standing up refreshed, as the flow is mostly only waist deep. The natives sought refuge in Barton Springs, believing the water to have healing powers; after a record number of days of temperatures over 100, the magic still feels alive. On Sunday afternoons, the “Electric Circus” is a reasonable drum circle, as if there wasn’t reason enough to lie in the shade and keep cool after splashing around—the sound of the drums was haunting, so don’t forget to bring yours.

I had more than one resident of Austin describe how their economy has so far appeared “recession-proof”—there has been no bubble, no implosions of foreclosure or fallout from others’ bad economic decisions. Without having much knowledge of Texas’ unique tax structures and small business incentives, nothing seems too pricey in Austin: from the coffee cups at St. Vincent De Paul thrift shop on South Congress, to the fried mac-and-cheese sold out of an Airstream two blocks away. On 6^th Street, a host of bars—not unlike Beale Street in Memphis, or Burlington’s Church Street—offered a reason to keep moving while one drinks. Because there’s a band in each front window, and they’re all trying hard for your attention (easily transferred, after only a few Shiner Bock or Blond beers, or something made of Tito’s, an extravagantly good vodka—both made in Austin). Each bar has its characteristics and décor; the best way for a band to get to play in any bar is to spend time there, making friends with the bartenders and staff. Band merch was always present, in some corner of the drinking parlor; one guy passed out Camel Lights to the dozen or so left in the Red River Street club. I’m sure there is a restaurant that averages $100 per entrée in Austin, but I didn’t find it: not that I was looking, but even downtown’s fanciest joint, The Driskill Hotel, had a sidewalk sandwich board advertising their drink specials, where the opulence was free, but shut down early. The city-wide 2 AM closing time brought a team of Austin Police on horseback wandering down the pedestrian streets; sitting on the sidewalk leaning on a tree, some guy in a Hawaiian shirt strummed his acoustic and made up a song about The Police, as if it was Sting’s band patrolling the after-hours grid of downtown. Five minutes later, over the ownership and possession of a backpack that had been abandoned on the floor of the bar hours earlier, a yelling match nearly got physical, but enough drunk people stumbled around and between the pair.

So it’s worth asking: is Austin really for real? I mean, is this live music mecca actually where it ALL happens, from a hip art scene to a barbecue-based city-wide culinary fascination, to as many drum/bass/guitar-or-keyboard combos as one can stomach. Late one night at Headhunters (720 Red River Street), an acoustic guitar player and percussionist were making a racket—the finest racket one might desire from the unusual and fascinating pairing. Hoards of bats emerge nightly from the biggest bridge in town; why they took up residence there may or may not be obvious, but one can assume they’re keen on helping keep Austin weird. Many folks told me the wristbands visitors purchase during SXSW aren’t hardly necessary; others suggested I hit some of the alternative-to-the-Alternative scenes, or to come any other time of the year. Or, to catch the Film Festival that precedes SXSW by one week, and see the city gearing up. But perhaps they always are, geared up and motivated, if only for another cold beer or a one-dollar Irish Car Bomb. There's a lot of neon in that town, and it's still lit. What keeps Austin weird—and as real as it’ll ever be-- has as much to do with the Locals Knowing How to Party as much as the Party Staying Local: there’s miles of hot, vacant Texas surrounding the streets and bars and buildings. Those who hang together in the southern heat do not hang separately, but gather in shade and with celebration, across many degrees of revelry, not limited to poetry, music and tattoos.