All these years, and this is still the best Hanukkah can do in the home entertainment market

Happy Channu-Hannu-xhannu- Hanukkah to all you … what’s the opposite of goyim? Whatever that is, celebrate! And for all our druish friends who felt left out of all the world-conquering Christmas cheer over the years, take some solace: had Christmas cheer been successful in implanting itself in your brain like the lancet fluke, you would now be trampling over your fellow Christians to get to the Wal-Mart flat screen HD FaceNumber3000 model at 4:30 in the morning in the name of Jesus.

In honor of the holidays, please enjoy this hilarious soundclip from noted Jew Barry Schwartz, who last year sat his mother down and expressed his desire for some of the coveted Christmas cheer and other goyim nachas enjoyed by his neighbors. The opening line: “I’m sorry you were born a Jew.”

Send that boy some lights!

Bonus:  Barry on why Mariah Carey’s Christmas album may be the defining work of her career (via Stylus, RIP)

DISCO VIETNAM RETURNS TO BROOKLYN

Perhaps you saw them in town last summer, where the brothers Schwartz and their raucous melodic pop power shook the tiny fragile walls of Hank’s Saloon so much that Yelp reviews of the venue were immediately edited the following morning to update the status as “Vietconged.”

Now, the Schwartzes and the rest of the gang will load their equipment into the band’s standard AH-64 Apache helicopter at their Long Island lair and descend via rock grappling hooks and beat-making belay wires in their air-raid return to Socialist Republic of Brooklyn on Wednesday, with landing expected at Bar Matchless at 7 p.m.

DISCO VIETNAM

Bar Matchless (Greenpoint/’burg)

7 p.m. doors, 10 pm show, Wednesday 10-6-2010

(also appearing:  The Roof Walkers, Delta Hotel, Subject of the Question and Gift Exchange).

Are you unfamiliar with Disco Vietnam? What the hell? What have you been doing this whole time? Why not sample some tracks from their new EP “Totally Awesome Decisions” over on MyFace. Or download their latest single, Little Infinity, right now, put it in your SpacePhone to listen to on the train. It’s music that’s a guaranteed cure for a case of this.

[Special guest appearances also scheduled, though they are mostly relevant only to people who attended the University of Maryland between 2002-2007. But if this includes you, grab your snakehead fish and scream "OKAY!"]

On the occasion of Father’s Day, which also syncs up with the season that is most suitable for long humid nights of Springsteen on the speakers, which also happens to kick off the time of year we lost Dad a few summers ago, I get to thinking about this piece written by good friend and frequent Inverted Soapbox dropped-name Barry Schwartz three years back. The piece first ran in the now-defunct Stylus, a densely talented, scrappily vibrant but under-appreciated web music mag that was tragically truncated well before its energies had run out, where Barry was writing about  Born in the USA for a regular Stylus feature looking at the “why” behind albums that sold 10 million+.

Not only is this one of the best things Barry has ever written (disposing of passive-aggressiveness here to say: BARRY SHOULD STILL WRITE MORE), it’s one of the best things I can ever remember reading about fathers and sons; something that hits the rare balance of poignancy and anthropology. It kinda rips me up a little bit.

I’m guessing I can run the whole thing here since Stylus is now just a rotting husk (original link here) on the interwebs not even relegated to a proper 404 burial. Thanks to Barry for this one and the implied consent to republish here. And thanks to Dad, for all his great Vietnam stories, and for being the kind of guy Springsteen wrote about, just trying to do right by his family. Happy Father’s Day:

_________________________

The Diamond is an apt name for albums certified for 10 million + sales by the Recording Industry Association of America. Each entry in this series will pose the question: why should we separate art from commerce?

Most likely I don’t know your father, but the laws of average suggest he’s probably a lot like mine. Mine’s named Mark; he’s from Syosset, Long Island; married his high school sweetheart when he was 20; commuted to the city everyday until he was 40, owning and operating a bridal gown business with his father on 38th and Broadway. In the early ’90s the garment industry went completely to hell so now he sells Toyotas.

Of the 100 albums that have been certified “Diamond” by the RIAA (roughly 10 bajillion copies) my father owns 50 of them. That’s obscene. He doesn’t know how to buy songs off iTunes, let alone download illegally, but he just bought his first iPod. As of press time its library looks kind of like this:

Bruce Springsteen…
Bruce Springsteen…
Bruce Springsteen…
Bruce Springsteen…
Bruce Springsteen…
Bruce Springsteen…

I’d say on any given day since 1975 my father has listened to “Thunder Road” at least once. It’s his theme song. There are always 5 CDs in his truck. Three are Bruce Springsteen. The other two are Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and something by Boz Scaggs. Needless to say my father and I are very, very different people (when we aren’t exactly the same), still, I can’t help but feel he probably knows something I don’t.

There are a lot of reasons for why I like Bruce Springsteen, but really, I like Bruce Springsteen because my dad really likes him. Bruce is what we share. As a result, his music has evolved into the prism through which I understand and relate to my father. Simple as that.

But why does he like it?

Musically, Born in the USA is among Springsteen’s poorer records; only three songs truly stand out: the anthemic “Bobby Jean,” “No Surrender” and, of course, “Dancing in the Dark,” all three of which are still desperately gasping for air beneath layers and layers of horrifyingly awful ’80s production values.

But absolutely none of that matters.

Born in the USA has sold 15 million copies. My father owns two of those. Two years after its release in 1984 Columbia released Live/1975-85, a 5-disc box set, which has since gone on to sell 13 million units. There are 12 songs on Born in the USA; more than half of them are singles. He wasn’t just playing sold-out arenas; he was and continues to play sold-out stadiums traditionally dedicated to the sport of professional football for weeks at a time. We know that too.

But how in the hell does that happen?

If Born to Run is about a choice (submission or transcendence, flannel suits or electric guitars), Born in the USA is its sequel. It’s nine years later. 1984. Conservatism. Reaganomics. Star Wars (the movie and the strategic missile defense program). The Cold War. The Butter Battle Book. This is its context.

But Born in the USA is, at its essence, a record about fathers and sons. Once again we’ve been faced with a choice: Do we repeat the sins of our fathers? Maybe we’ve chosen the same path, but that doesn’t mean we have to make the same mistakes that almost destroyed his generation: “A lot of guys went and a lot of guys didn’t come back. And the lot that came back weren’t the same anymore.”

Perhaps it’s worth noting that most people have more important things to do than blog, let alone write, let alone write songs. The majority of Bruce Springsteen’s audience, the people he writes about, people like my father, rely on Bruce to be the creative one—not just to entertain them but to share their story. At the height of the 1980s these people are in remarkable abundance.

In the years following Born to Run Springsteen dedicated the thematic concerns of his music to the stories of those who didn’t make the choice he made. Darkness on the Edge of Town, The River, Nebraska: all of these records are about those who stayed behind, those who went to war, those who chose the path-most-traveled. But that’s what the troubadour is. The griot. Great artists don’t just tell their story, they tell your story.

Born in the USA speaks directly to the nobility of those people, the courage it took to not make the decision Springsteen made. In this way, despite what his astronomical sales figures would seem to indicate, the record doesn’t pander to these people, it’s openly and honestly respectful of them. That’s why it has become everyone’s masterpiece despite being Springsteen’s 7th best album.

Springsteen’s music, for better or worse, has always been concerned with those fundamental ideas that simply don’t change; no matter how our environment changes or culture accelerates the ideas of family and parenthood, sacrifice, temptation and forgiveness will always be worth exploring. Because of that it has the potential to endure through generations. People never seem to get sick of it. It endures. At beaches and barbeques, classic rock stations blaring from stadium parking lots and suburban basements. Bruce Springsteen could do next to nothing for the next 20 years, suddenly announce an extensive world tour, and as many nights as he plans to play Giants Stadium or Madison Square Garden that’s how many sold-out shows there will be. That’s what’s basically happened!

Bu if I really want to understand and write about why everyone in the world purchased Born in the USA and why it still matters, I simply have to figure out why my Dad bought it. So fuck it, I interviewed him. What resulted was probably the most honest conversation I’ve ever had with my father. Here’s some of it:

(Oh, and full disclosure: my dad is my dad)

Why did Born in the USA sell 15 million copies?

Because he blew up.

Yeah, but why?

Commercialism.

OK, sure, yes, but why?

Because his music started touching more people.

HOW?!!

More people started getting it.

WHY!?!!

I don’t know!!!

Of course you do! You have to! You’ve been there since the beginning! Why the hell did you like him in the first place?

I’ve always been moved by lyrics. The first Bruce Springsteen album I ever heard was The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle. There’s a line in the song “Incident on 57th Street” where he sings, “Hey little heroes, summer’s long but I guess it ain’t very sweet around here anymore.” It just hit me immediately; it’s the sage trying to impart his wisdom. The neighborhood was changing from a typical peaceful quiet neighborhood to a gang-controlled neighborhood. This idea reaches its culmination in “Jungleland.”

“The poets down here don’t write nothing at all. They just stand back and let it all be.”

Exactly. So he’s taken the responsibility.

Bruce is only seven years older than me so his music was immediately hitting my generation. You listen to him paint this picture: you can hear the screen door slam, you can see a pretty young girl with ponytails from your high school running toward your car. That’s what people my age were all about: cars, the night, the conquest—all that. I had long hair. I liked Zeppelin. I drove a Firebird.

And this was all around the time I was dating and falling in love with your mother. In her family she was kind of the rebel because, even though she was young, only 17 years old, she was dating someone very seriously who was unlike anyone in her family of Holocaust surviving German Jewish immigrants. I was the Anti-European. I was the American Long Island boy here to take your daughter away and corrupt her. So Bruce was kind of telling my story for me. He’s telling everyone’s story. And those songs evoke all those incredible emotions and I can recall them perfectly almost every time I listen to them, which is basically why I listen to them so often.

Now Springsteen made this choice to be the artist, to get out. You love Born to Run but you didn’t really make that decision. Is there a piece of you that wishes you’d made the decision Springsteen made?

Not really. I didn’t have a gift to be able to say, “I don’t want to go into my father’s business, I want to do this instead.” And most people don’t have that. It wasn’t like there was a plan for me to go into the family business; I loved numbers and management and stuff like that but the only thing I really thought about was just finishing high school.

Well, do you have aspirations you feel you’ve never been able to achieve?

I still haven’t bowled a perfect game.

I mean with your life’s work, silly!

No, because I never really had that kind of passion. I thought I would just wind up going to some college, getting some accounting degree or something and going into business. That’s the way it was. That’s the way it still is. Obviously, people like Bruce Springsteen are the exception to the rule.

So this whole time you’ve been growing and maturing with Springsteen and his music.

Born to Run came out as I was graduating high school in 1975 and The River was released in 1980. By this time I’m already a married man, commuting to work everyday on the same train with the same people, successfully running my own business. Soon I’ll be a father.

The River maintained his popularity from the people he picked up from Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town; “Hungry Heart” was his first top-10 hit so he’d established a loyal audience he knew was always going to be there, so now was the time for him to reach out for even more people.

Truthfully, Born in the USA was specifically produced to attract people who said they couldn’t stand Bruce Springsteen. It’s obvious. You can hear it on “Dancing in the Dark.” Born in the USA was intended for people between my age group and my parents; people who were in their late 20s when I started listening to Bruce; people like my older sister who listen to a song because of the beat and not the words. You need to give those people a beat for them to be able to say, “Hey, that’s good,” and that draws them in to hopefully find out what he’s all about. Born in the USA was a compromise, but it had a point. That point was to connect with more people, not necessarily to sell more albums, which sounds like the same thing but it isn’t if you really think about it.

So let’s get back to the original point. Why does Born in the USA sell 15 million copies? Why does Live/1975-85 sell 13. Why did you buy it and why do you still listen to it?

What made the experience of seeing him live back then so great was the concerts were just limitless. They could go on for four or five hours because he would tell these long personal stories as preludes to his songs. That story he tells before “The River” on the live box set is like the key to understanding Born in the USA. It’s just this devastatingly beautiful story about the strained relationship he had with his father. You think I work a lot? My father was never home. And when he was home on Sundays he would be working at the table. Then he’d go take a nap. Maybe we shared Astroboy and Speed Racer but that was it. We never really had a thing. I taught myself how to play baseball.

So you mentioned this idea of repeating the mistakes of our fathers. Well, this was my contribution. I wanted something I could hopefully share with my children so I introduced you to the music of Bruce Springsteen. That’s what we share and I’ve been talking to you about Springsteen since you were a baby. You’ve seen Springsteen live seven times and every single time I’ve been there, right? I took my sons to see Bruce Springsteen and they loved it. One day hopefully you’ll get to take your children. I bet they’ll love it, too.

Filed under: soapbox friends Tagged: barry schwartz, dad, soapbox friends, springsteen, stylus ]]> http://invertedsoapbox.com/2010/06/20/a-long-gone-daddy-in-the-u-s-a/feed/ 0 Tim D. born_in_the_usa dad boardwalk http://invertedsoapbox.com/2009/09/18/friday-happy-a-state-street-of-mind/ http://invertedsoapbox.com/2009/09/18/friday-happy-a-state-street-of-mind/#comments Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:18:50 +0000 Tim Donnelly http://invertedsoapbox.com/?p=1090 Continue reading →]]> Barry Schwartz has a mortal, inexplicable fear of Brooklyn. Barry, a former music writer, once had a Facebook status slagging off the county of Kings, and I responded, “But Brooklyn, we go hard. Or didn’t you hear?”

His response, in an attempt to demean me and associate us with that stroller-laden bastion of yuppiedom nearby, was: “I’m sure Jay Z wasn’t talking about Park fucking Slope.”

ORLY? From NY Mag’s Vulture

560 Stash Street

We Check Out Jay-Z’s Old ‘Stash Box’
via Vulture by Martin Mulkeen on 9/16/09

Jay-Z’s latest single, The Blueprint 3’s “Empire State of Mind,” has been blaring from plenty of cars of late, and while the soaring, cinematic tour of Jay’s rise to success, fame, and his subsequent enjoyment of the most sought-after seats at local sporting events (“I could trip a referee”) hasn’t turned rap on its head, the rapper does do something unique: He drops an actual address in among the self-aggrandizement and neighborhood shout-outs.

I used to cop in Harlem, all of my Dominicanos
Right there up on Broadway, pull me back to that McDonald’s
Took it to my stash box, 560 State Street
Catch me in the kitchen like a Simmons with them pastries.

The whole world knows Jigga grew up in the Marcy Projects in Bedford-Stuyvesant. So why is he bigging up Boerum Hill? What exactly is at 560 State Street? Vulture investigated.

“I guess after Reasonable Doubt, it was time [for Jay-Z] to move somewhere else,” says Morgan Lieberthal, a resident of 560 State Street since 1997 (who also saw Jay-Z in concert at Madison Square Garden last week). According to him and other residents who have been there since the mid-nineties, Jay moved into apartment 10B sometime in late 1996 or early 1997.

Allowing for the obvious narrative liberties a rapper might take, the 500 block of Brooklyn’s State Street would seem to be an ideal location for a stash box. Sheltered from the roaring intersection of Flatbush, Atlantic, and Fourth Avenue, this serene, verdant brownstone block is hidden in plain sight. It’s just steps from the busiest intersection in Brooklyn, and yet the only consistent noise is the five-times-daily call to prayer from a mosque across the block on Atlantic Avenue.

Did it seem like Jay-Z was engaged in anything shady? “That was just so not the vibe,” says Stephanie Jones, a writer and performer living in 9A since 1993. She remembers the apartment complex as an enclave for black artists at the time, including Lord Jamar of the rap group Brand Nubian and later of HBO’s Oz. She recalls a building populated with filmmakers and musicians. And Jay was, by all accounts, a cordial and respectful neighbor. “He would nod his head to you in the hallway. He’d open the door for you,” says Jones’s husband, Nathan Dudley, a Brooklyn school principal who moved into the building in 1998. “He always had a group of people with him, but not many going in and out.”

Dudley says that over the past few days he has seen kids in front of the building, awestruck and pointing, and employees at the Radio Shack around the corner, arguing over Jay-Z’s connection to the address. At the time he lived there, “he wasn’t mainstream or commercial yet,” says Jones. “He worked out of his apartment. Everyone here did. It was just a normal thing.”

For reference, here is the rough location of our apartment (B) in relation to Jay’s stash box (A). The Google Map isn’t exact and I’m workin on editing it. But as roommate Brittany put it “me and jay-z. roughing it in boerum hill, on state street, together. forever.”

View Larger Map
so it is only appropriate that we devote today’s Friday Happy to our coulda-been neighbor, Mr. Brooklyn himself, JMZ Carter, with this song from the live MSG performance of “Empire State of Mind” last week (a song off the more or less underwhelming Blueprint 3. Sorry buddy, but beers are on us on the roof of our crash box down the street this weekend. Assuming you aren’t hanging out with another neigbhor):

A divergence today from this blog’s usual focus (ha!) to bring you an important announcement: Disco Vietnam is coming to Brooklyn!

When: 10 p.m. Thursday 7/30

Where: Hank’s Saloon, corner of 3rd Ave and Atlantic. It’s the divest bar that ever dived, and we (well, some of us) love it. It has flames painted on the side and it can get rowdy. Hank’s has cheap PBRs and a Walgreens nearby if you need Febreeze yourself once you leave.

Who: The Brothers Schwartz (pictured below) make up the nucleus of the band. Barry you may recognize as a frequent contributor/critic on this site,  and he’s also an excellent songwriter. Kenny is a New School grad and is (rightly) feared by drum sets the world over.

The recent addition of Nicki Nevermann is their secret weapon, because, as

DV's keyboardist threatens you with musical violence

you probably well know by now, the magic ingredient to success in any indie band is the Chick Keyboardist. She is a damn fine keyboard player, and a member of the Long Island Philharmonic. And she owns a pink gun, apparently.

They play unapologetically catchy indie pop, with powerful melodies that shake like Ted Leo and pre-apocalyptic riffs that soar like Muse.

This is their first-ever Brooklyn show after trolling far too long in the lonely salt mines of the Long Island music scene. Let’s show them a good time, so you can say you knew them when.

Click the link at the bottom for their hit (at least it sounds like a hit) song, “The NP,” which is named after Natalie Portman, but not about her at all. The last time I saw the band play in Huntington, Natalie Portman’s parents walked by the bar with their dog. This is a good omen for things to come.

They are currently finishing recording their first full-length album, Totally Awesome Decisions, with a street date sometime in the next few months.

Their first EP, Get At Me Corruption, was inspired by one of my away messages (hey, remember away messages?), and the new album name is my initials (TAD). I am still debating the Freudian ramifications of this.

But for realz, I don’t blow this blog space hyping up just any of my friends’ bands, so I wouldn’t waste your time here if I didn’t actually think they were a talented bunch with something worth checking out. Plus, Natalie loves them:

Listen: Disco Vietnam – The NP

Posted in brooklyn, mp3, music, soapbox friends Tagged: barry schwartz, disco vietnam, hank's saloon, live music, natalie Portman ]]> http://invertedsoapbox.com/2009/07/28/disco-vietnam-to-invade-brooklyn/feed/ 2 Tim D. DV Nicki schwartz np http://invertedsoapbox.com/2009/04/06/a-brief-treatise-on-the-standards-and-practices-for-a-facebook-friend-purge/ http://invertedsoapbox.com/2009/04/06/a-brief-treatise-on-the-standards-and-practices-for-a-facebook-friend-purge/#comments Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:42:58 +0000 Tim Donnelly http://invertedsoapbox.com/?p=562 Continue reading →]]> as told by Barry Schwartz, formerly of (the former) Stylus, presently of Disco Vietnam, over Facebook chat, naturally

10:08am Barry: what do u do if u get a friend request from a chick you used to work with in high school that u had a crush on but she’s married

10:08am Me: ah this happened to me last week. the answer: accept the friend request and realize how unattractive she’s become and how much better than her you probably are now

10:09am Barry: no she’s super cute. but i deleted 20 friends last night

10:10amMe: depends on also the chances of ever seeing her in person

10:10am Barry: well we live in the same neighborhood but i hardly ever see her. probably because shes with her husband

10:11am Me: you can always become friends just to look at pictures of her

10:12am Barry: im going to accept but put her on a 2 month probationary period. if after 2 months our facebook friendship yields no interactions i will delete her.

I was leaving Friday’s with Kenny [Schwartz, the other Schwartz brother] the other night and i saw two girls I’m Facebook friends with saying goodbye to each other in the parking lot. I didn’t say hi to them because i didn’t want to and drove past them. i turned to Kenny and said, “I’m Facebook friends with both those girls and we didn’t say hi to each other in real life”

deleted them as soon as i got home

10:14am Me: that story is all the better by the fact that you and [that girl] becoming friends just showed up in the chat window

10:15am Barry: she’ll be deleted in two months I’m sure

__________________________

So the lesson here is: if you aren’t friends with someone in a Friday’s (or any good-time after-work appetizer chain restaurant, I’m sure) parking lot, than you don’t deserve to be friends online. In a world where virtual friendships threaten to supersede real ones, Barry has decided to fight back.

I haven’t done a purge yet, but there are plenty of ex girlfriends of people I haven’t talked to in years in my rolls who find the need to keep informing me which character on LOST they are or which minor league baseball team mascot they most likely would be based on a handful of survey questions. I can probably do without this information in my life, though it would be a good conversation starter in a parking lot that smells like potato skins.

Related: Cover story from this week’s New York Magazine on Facebook. “Do You Own Facebook? Or Does Facebook Own You?”