Sound Check — Geoff Carter: A musical decline these days? It ain’t necessarily so

Friday, Aug. 20, 1999 | 5:57 a.m.

Geoff Carter's music column appears Fridays. Reach him at carter@ vegas.com

I was listening to (Internet radio station) Spinner.com just now, and Echo and The Bunnymen's 'The Cutter,' " wrote my friend, James, a few weeks back, "when I had a moment of clarity: The 1990s really did suck. Until techno came along."

James, like myself, is in his early 30s. We came of age in the 1980s, when there were more privately-owned radio stations on the dial than corporately-owned; when punk was still fresh enough to scare the living hell out of most anyone over 30; when musicians were only as popular as the vertical clearance of their hairdos. A lot of strong and influential artists made their best music during that period -- X, Simple Minds, Thomas Dolby, Madness, The Specials, Fishbone, Scritti Politti, New Order, U2, The Smiths, Echo and the Bunnymen.

We entered the 1990s swinging, and to my memory, the pickings were pretty robust: Public Enemy revolutionized hip-hop, Nirvana brought punk to the masses, the Beastie Boys got good and Ministry cast metal into a new and much more exciting light. Pearl Jam and Soundgarden restored intelligence to Regular Joe rock; Rage Against The Machine and Consolidated melded hip-hop's streetwise politics to stunt guitars; De La Soul and Massive Attack twisted hip-hop into strange and beautiful new forms.

I knew what James meant to say. The late '90s have proven to be a breeding ground for one-hit wonders -- unless you honestly believe Harvey Danger and Orbit are going to amount to anything. The creative margin has narrowed to a slit -- shrunk to the point that reunion tours by Jane's Addiction and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are considered nostalgia. Members of groups such as Limp Bizkit and Korn willfully admit in interviews that their influences are not only still performing -- they have become competitors. (The sad fact of the matter: More people will pay to see Orgy covering "Blue Monday" than would come to see New Order perform its own song -- on this side of the Atlantic, anyway). But are times that much different? I've heard some brilliant records these past couple of years, from artists of every stripe: alt.country (Wilco, Whiskeytown), Britpop (Mani c Street Preachers, Blur), hip-hop (The Roots, Mos Def), techno (Moby, Orbital), metal (Sevendust, Rob Zombie), R&B (Lauryn Hill, Maxwell) and some that ar

e delightfully unclassifiable (Soul Coughing, Fatboy Slim, Beck). Musicians from radically different genres hop into bed together without hesitation -- hearing a Foo Fighters remix of Puff Daddy isn't such a shock -- and there's a million-odd mad geniuses, from the Magnetic Fields to Boom Boom Satellites, waiting just off the beaten path.

Popular music isn't dead. It isn't even sick. Like everything else that grows to triple its own size, we need some distance from it. I can easily imagine two thirtysomething men batting this issue around 10 years from today: "You just don't hear anybody as good as Korn any more." They will, of course, be in the wrong. Just as we are, James.

Stereo Dynamics

They Might Be Giants, "Long Tall Weekend," MP3-only release (available at www.goodnoise.com)

They Might Be Giants believed in the notion of downloadable music before there was any place to download it. With its "Dial-A-Song" service (just a phone call to Brooklyn at (718) 387-6962, or visit www.dialasong.com), the duo of John Linnell and John Flansburgh have been delivering unreleased material to fans for the better part of a decade. It wasn't always the best the band had to offer -- "The Smoking Gun," the latest song featured, is a Zappa-style romp that clocks in well under 30 seconds -- but hey, what do you want for nothing?

Now that everybody and his brother are wising up to the song-on-demand racket, it's only natural that They Might be Giants would be the group to up the ante. "Long Dark Weekend," an entire album of unreleased material delivered in the hot (and hotly contested) MP3 format, is yours for $8.99 from www.goodnoise.com. (A $40 monthly cable web connection won't hurt, either.)

It's a brilliant effort, in principle: Fans can get an album of new TMBG material for half of what they would pay for a disc. In practice, however, "Long Tall Weekend" is wanting -- composed of wildly uneven material drawn from the "Dial-A-Song" vaults. Only hardcore fans could appreciate "On Earth My Nina," an a capella track that plays as if it were recorded backwards, and "She Thinks She's Edith Head," a new-wave number that's too long at two minutes.

Fortunately, there's a way to support TMBG in this endeavor: Goodnoise allows you to download select songs at 99 cents apiece -- and the best song in the set, "Older," is free. Just like the old days.

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