007: Man of the Left

Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above

"Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above," said Noam Chomsky last week. "They come out of struggles from below. And the answer to what's next depends on people like you. Nobody else can answer it."

In Haiti and Bolivia, Chomsky went on to say, popular movement swept unlikely presidents to power in recent decades, and they didn't stop there.

I've already posted my opinion that Obama voters should step up their game rather than relax, and won't belabor the point. But I bring up Chomsky's speech because Haiti and Bolivia both figure heavily in the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. And Bond comes down on the side of the political left.

Maybe you have to have loved secret agent 007 and hated what his real-life counterparts do in the world for as long as I have to appreciate the explosiveness of a people's Bond. I went to the film last week after coming across Juan Cole's brilliant essay about it, and walked out exhilarated.

Cole's right, but that doesn't entirely explain the exhilaration. Bond and Bond girls are wrapped up in my childhood sexual awakening: I saw 1979's Moonraker when I was 9. The same year, I saw The War at Home, the documentary about Vietnam War-era protest, and my political adolescence kept pace. Cognitive dissonance isn't the term: In my imagination, cool violence in the name of Western empire is inexplicably sexy, while nonviolence for the people just can't compete.

Bond is sexy for reasons that predate him by millennia: The British intelligence agent is an erotic archetype because sex for its own sake, isolated from love or overwhelming it, is the definition of hot. Righteous killing requires strength and cool detachment, in theory, traits that are masculinity incarnate.

The books used Bond's allure as a way into their author's worldview. Thumb back to 007's debut, in Ian Fleming's 1953 novel Casino Royale, and you find a work of almost intoxicated focus about steeling one's self for the Cold War. Fleming's fetishism in sensual and consumer detail is almost Story of O-like, and as vivid from the famous opening line: "The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning." Much as O passes through the contortions of mental resistance to what she will become, Bond questions his nature and the rightness of his purpose:

"[T]his country-right-or-wrong business is getting a little out of date. Today we are fighting communism. Okay. If I'd been alive fifty years ago, the brand of conservatism we have today would have been damn near called communism, and we should have been told to go and fight that. History is moving pretty quickly these days, and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts."

Bond says these things to Rene Mathis, his trusted friend in the French Deuxieme Bureau, while sitting in bed recovering from torture to his genitals inflicted by a Communist spy. Mathis tells Bond to get himself a family:

"Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles."

[Mathis] laughed. "But don't let me down and become human yourself. We would lose such a wonderful machine."

Bond ignores that last bit of advice, and pays dearly for his lapse of moral certitude. He pays with chunks of his heart, chunks he later decides he's better off without. Coming to his senses, he sees the "Russian machine" as a clear expansionist threat in the last pages: "For them it was always safer to advance than to retreat."

The last line of the book carries the thud of finality: "The bitch is dead now." And Bond's callous misogyny is no accident: Softness on communism coincides in dear James with softness in general, with femininity, and 007 comes to regard this two-way door as one to be shut forever.



You don't have to be psychotic

You don't have to be psychotic, which Bond surely is, to find an ideal in Fleming's hysteria: Anyone getting up in the morning and dressing for work might enjoy thinking of himself and herself as ruthless or sleek. Bond is the eros of efficiency. And there's nothing in the 20 Bond-series films before 2006's Casino Royale, not even the one where he gets married, to suggest that there's anything wanting in this outlook.

Fleming's Bond, who went to doctors to receive shock therapy, became a gentlemanly sensualist in the film series, and you can mark our social progress by the subtle shift in charm from playful condescension to mutual utilitarianism. By 1995's GoldenEye, Bond had a stern female boss (Judi Dench), with whom he now has increasing sexual chemistry, and endured empty barbs about his status as a Cold War relic.

But 2006's Casino Royale is the first true anti-Bond in the series. And to understand Quantum of Solace, take a second look at its superior prequel. The movie Casino Royale pointedly includes the "bitch is dead" line from the book, yet extends a fourth act to undermine it. It's both the most Fleming Bond and the most anti-Fleming one, breaking from all previous continuity to start over, and for once get inside Bond's head. But it's a different head: Director Martin Campbell (who did GoldenEye), working from a script by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (who wrote 1991's Let Him Have It), and a revised version by Paul Haggis (Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima), seems to understand Fleming for the first time, the better to utterly subvert him. Love in Casino Royale isn't a softening, but a hardening (puns with Bond are inevitable). It's a gamble with higher stakes than any mere playboy, emphasis on boy, would risk.

Bond isn't just a man now, but a working-class man. The Fleming Bond's obsession with the finer things has become modern Bond's amusement at the props and costumes of rich people. Did the filmmakers read Alexander Cockburn in 1987 before casting Daniel Craig in the role?

There was something a bit common... in all this insistence on the very best, as though Bond knew that in the end he was, as the elegant Dr No put it in [Richard] Maibaum's line in the movie, "nothing but a stupid policeman," on hire to the ruling class. Hence the great scene in From Russia With Love, when the class imposter Bond, played by a working-class boy from Edinburgh with a Scots burr in his voice, comes up against the other class impostor and psychopath Red Grant, played by Robert Shaw. "Red wine with fish," says [Sean] Connery, "I should have known." "I may take red wing with fish," Shaw hisses viciously, "But you're the one on your knees now."

Now, when a bartender asks Bond if he prefers his vodka martini shaken or stirred, Daniel Craig's 007 responds, "Do I look like I give a damn?"

This revisionism extends to a new physicality in the parkour-chase opening, empathy for the Third World that Bond always chases through, and a sobered treatment of international relations and law, not to mention fresh verve and texture in the filmmaking itself--who knew Campbell and company had it in them? Even the music dispenses with the Bond theme, John Barry's cherished surf-guitar riff, though there's at least one Bond-theme moment: 007's clean return to the poker table after a near-deadly attempt to keep him away, his smirk showing the pleasure of rivalry for its own sake. Craig's boyish glint registers the kind of liftoff usually achieved, in previous films, with outrageous action.

Bond films had always been about themselves, with each kink of the formula since 1964's Goldfinger replaying against audience expectations--the fetishism of Fleming turned into an international in-joke. Producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman kept the franchise in-house (at EON Productions at Pinewood Studios in England), passing Bond along as a family business to Broccoli's daughter, Barbara, and stepson Michael G. Wilson. Despite corporate concentration above (United Artists folding into MGM folding into Sony, and Pinewood into Shepperton), Bond remained a reliable product: No Bond film is all that much worse than another, though classics and embarrassments emerge. Product sameness offered Casino Royale an opportunity: The film isn't just revisionism, but a comedy of revisionism. It renounces each touchstone with a wink and a checklist.

And nothing in Casino Royale departs more dramatically from previous Bonds than its central love story. There's a lot of humor in the banter here between equals, but also a serious critique of Bondism: Where love and mission come into conflict here, the film sides with love. And Bond rises to the occasion of tenderness. Craig's 007 is a quiet rebuke of how Bond hollowed out the male ideal in the years when many American and British men were taking up the true mission of the Cold War: to repress hope in the Third World.

Not that Bond was ever political in the movies: 007 saved himself for escapist posterity with humor and by staying out of the conflicts people actually worried about. So Fleming's war on the International Communist Conspiracy was abandoned in favor of detente-era missions against private third parties, presaging the War on Terror. As Dr. Evil-style super-villains fell away, Bond stuck with consensus bogies of the post-Cold War era: drug kings, North Koreans, post-Soviet strongmen.



The real 007s, meanwhile, went underground

The real 007s, meanwhile, went underground: John F. Kennedy, who counted 1957's From Russian With Love among his Top Ten favorite books, launched his war on Cuba, including Bond-like attempts at assassination by cigar, in secret. By the time these and other crimes were made public in the 1975 Church Committee hearings, Fleming's worldview was in retreat. Bond kept returning unscathed by reality, and 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me (with frivolous Roger Moore coming into his own), is one of the finest entertainments in the series. Yet Bond had already been eclipsed by anti-spies such as Warren Beatty in 1974's The Parallax View and Robert Redford in 1975's Three Days of the Condor, 007s for an era of CIA defectors.

Quantum of Solace owes a particular debt to The Bourne Identity, less the 1980 Robert Ludlum anti-spy novel than the 2002 film directed by Doug Liman, which dispenses with the book's conceit that Jason Bourne is innocent. Matt Damon's Bourne is a U.S. government assassin whose mind has been wiped clean by amnesia--a deeply evocative premise for Americans. One day he wakes up with only his muscle-memory intact. He's forgotten his mission, his employer, even his name. Without a past, he discovers that he is a conscientious person, albeit one with the apparent ability to kill people with his bare hands.

Bourne has lost his memory as a result of an incident in which he was unwilling to cross the line into utter depravity. In other words, he was already at least human enough that he put heart above mission. And fate rewards his choice, where it punished the 1953 Bond. Bourne gains his innocence. And he meets and falls in love with a woman with whom he has little in common besides the fact that she's obviously a good person. For Jason, that's enough.

Over and over, Bourne tosses away the guns he takes from his attackers. He keeps starting from scratch without violence, a riff that reaches its apex during the classic U.S. embassy sequence. Jason Bourne is the United States every few years, forgetting what we've done, and to whom, awaking once again amazed at our own power to do harm, rattled that anyone would wish harm on us, and yet somehow expecting it. We are edgy and plagued by nightmares, and believe we can use our power put things right.

Compared to Bourne, even the new emo Bond is a stupid policeman. But then, Bourne loses focus as he beds his good woman like a good Bond, without any hint of curiosity about whether this, too, is programmed muscle memory. Action and revenge propel a final act and two sequels, where The Bourne Identity began with so much more.

In a similar way, Quantum of Solace reminds us of what happened in Casino Royale without exactly reminding us of why it matters. The emotional thread is there for you to notice now and understand on DVD, when you'll want to watch that amazing motorcycle stunt again. There's been carping about Quantum's plot leaps, humorlessness, incomprehensible action, and even the title (from an Ian Fleming short story). But it easily tracks and entertains better than most Bonds, from the scaffolding fight to that short trench coat on Gemma Arterton. If director Marc Forster loses Bond in his Bond film (a mild disaster compared to Monster's Ball), at least there's a character to lose.



Quantum of Solace is the first Bond to doubt his place in the world

Quantum of Solace is the first Bond to doubt his place in the world, as he did in Ian Fleming's book Casino Royale. Bond goes rogue, goes native, goes off the reservation, and goes off the deep end because he wants the bad guys worse than his bosses do. Like Bourne, he's moved by love, then revenge. And yet the lapse this time isn't his, but his bosses': Her Majesty's secret service has been compromised by economic interest, and so have Bond's old allies, the Americans.

In one key scene, the bad guy (Mathieu Amalric of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) boasts of usurping democracy in Haiti for U.S. corporations, who wanted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide out because he raised the minimum wage to a dollar. In another scene, Bond dresses down CIA bro Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright, who once played Martin Luther King) for helping the North carve up Latin America in the name of coke and anticommunism. Look who's talking, says Felix, one policeman to another.

The story, hatched by Bond producer Michael G. Wilson (with a script by the Casino Royale team and Joshua Zetumer), has Bond joining forces with the villain's lover, played by Ukrainian actress Olga Kurylenko, the first Bond girl from the former Soviet Union. As Juan Cole writes,

Kurylenko, who grew up in a poor family headed by her mother, plays a Bolivian girl whose family was destroyed (and her mother and sister raped) by the haughty General Medrano. She is so organically a figure of the left that no distinction can be made between her private quest for vengeance on Medrano and the salvation of the pro-peasantry government of Bolivia.

The premise and players would be pleasure enough without the surprise gift of real-life condemnation from a Russian communist group (calling Kurylenko a traitor) and the more banal dismissal of a National Review provoked to run the following amazing sentence: "[T]he idea--and it is a hoary one--that the CIA is in the business of creating evil, right-wing dictatorships in Latin America is just laughable." (The link is my addition.)

The Bond theme now plays for Bolivians fighting against the privatization of water. It plays for Haiti, New Orleans's badly abused cousin. It plays for Latin America, where people don't laugh about U.S.-backed coups.

Most telling of all, Quantum of Solace treats the subject of rape without the playful overtones of Goldfinger or the erotic ones of 1989's License to Kill. The movie doesn't just crash the corporate-military party: It stands against violence in general, turning what Harry Saltzman called "sadism for the family" on its head. So when Bond turns death-machine at a performance of Tosca, there's no glee, and he soon learns that a British undercover was among his targets. When the big revenge scenes come, the movie doesn't revel in them, and the characters feel just as empty afterward.

So let the movie sell guns to people who'd buy them anyway. This is the first Bond to suggest that there's not much use for them.


Coda:



A classic scene from the 1966 Bond parody Our Man Flint.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at November 26, 2008 4:50 PM | Comments (0)

 

Don't celebrate, organize

This year a former City Pages writer won an Oscar and a former community organizer from the South Side of Chicago got elected President. In the months in between, I've seen far-flung friends and family playing a larger role in public life. I met half my neighbors face to face, and saw people who wouldn't have considered themselves "political" ten years ago getting involved. A few days ago, the phenomenally unpopular sitting president went on television to defend capitalism itself, something I'd never thought he'd need to do.

The country has changed. And the shift is one of expectations, a sense of possibility, and--what's the word I'm looking for?--hope. "None of us truly dared to believe that we would see it happen in our lifetime," writes Irma McClaurin about the election of our first African American president--or, as the woman videotaping at Howard on election night put it, "This is unbelievable!" Obama supporters danced in the streets of Minneapolis, while in Madison, Wisconsin, warm weather left half the city's windows open to hear the roar at the announcement. Multiply those scenes by the blue and dark purple in the map below, and imagine the combined tear-flow, text-message data, and joyful-cry decibels.

Yet even before Brian Williams announced, "There will be young children in the White House for the first time since the Kennedy generation," I'd begun to take Barack Obama at his word that this election was about us rather than him. Not just those who sacrificed so that something like this might happen, as John McCain movingly acknowledged, or those who made Obama's campaign itself a kind of movement ("All of this happened because of you," he wrote volunteers that night). And not just McCain voters, for whom Sarah Palin represents progress against the double standard and a point from which there's no going back.

The purple nation above behaved for once as if we lived in a democracy. And I have to admit, I'd begun to lose heart. The apparent effects of global warming, the destruction of New Orleans, and the corporatization of nearly everything left me shell-shocked, wondering how these threats could pass into fact in my lifetime without any accompanying change in the country's political pitch. The trauma of 9/11 and the rapid defeat of the Taliban left me doubting my feelings about empire. I opposed the Iraq war, but with less vigor than I should have. I lost faith with the American left, who turned out to be right.

I teach in schools, advocate in my writing, keep up, and vote, but that's not quite the same thing as believing that humanity can save itself. I opened up an Erich Fromm book in high school, and socialist humanism has been my starting point ever since. Yet I only truly believe in rock and roll.

Obama is a rock and roll culmination, though he looks more like a rude boy or somebody on the cover of a Blue Note record. He'll be the first president to know who Jay-Z is, or count The Wire as his favorite television show (favorite character: Omar, the gay ghetto folk hero who robs drug dealers). Obama's blackness is natural and assumed in a modern way, as with so many kids from "mixed" families, something the Rhymesayers can understand. And his identity isn't just an idea or political bullshit about narratives: Being black affects how he speaks to us and how he thinks about politics. You can wonder idly if Obama takes The Wire to heart on education, the drug war, or counterinsurgency (he may yet become the Lyndon Johnson of Afghanistan). But it's reassuring to observe that he could teach The Wire's characters a thing or two about gamesmanship, overnight learning, and leading by talking.

Obama is a winner, and he calculated long ago that he would not win on New Orleans, despite fate serving up the issue on a silver platter. Nor would he win on justice for the Palestinians (leaving others to counter the shameful smear of Rashid Khalidi or point out that there's nothing wrong with being Arab or Muslim). Obama further decided he would not win by taking on Wall Street or big insurance, and that nothing good could come of revisiting the issue of the Vietnam War, though most Americans still believe it was morally wrong, not just a mistake. He has selected Rahm Emanuel, a rejectionist on Israel who pushed through NAFTA under Bill Clinton, for his chief of staff (more here). Yet I find it significant that Obama has also decided he won't insult us.

"I will be your president too," he said to those who didn't vote for him. And there's ample reason to believe Obama will persuade. (He was the Denzel Washington to McCain's Gene Hackman in Crimson Tide, below.) But I also know that in Washington, compromise can be a euphemism for splitting the difference between power and the powerless, money and those without, the wisdom of pod people and good sense.

The only way to tip the balance is organization, as Obama knows. His finest moment in the campaign came when he answered Wolf Blitzer's inane debate question about why the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, if he were alive, would endorse Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, or Barack Obama:

"Well, I don't think Dr. King would endorse any of us. I think what he would call upon the American people to do is to hold us accountable, and this goes to the core differences, I think, in this campaign.

"I believe change does not happen from the top down. It happens from the bottom up. Dr. King understood that.

"It was those women who were willing to walk instead of ride the bus, union workers who are willing to take on violence and intimidation to get the right to organize. It was women who decided, 'I'm as smart as my husband. I'd better get the right to vote.'

"Them arguing, mobilizing, agitating, and ultimately forcing elected officials to be accountable, I think that's the key.

"So that has been a hallmark of my career, transparency and accountability, getting the American people involved. That's how we're going to bring about change. That's why I want to be president of the United States, to respect the power of the American people to bring about change."

This was his message to us: that the election of Barack Obama would only be the start. That it could only be the start. Obama is not Martin Luther King, and he is not King's dream. Obama is not a moral leader, and he doesn't pretend to be one. King would have condemned the rhetoric of "taking out" bin Laden, though that kind of talk helped get Obama elected. A moral leader risks being unpopular, as King became in the last years of his life. A moral leader does not become president. He pressures the president.

That's what we need to do, in greater numbers than ever. If you've ever considered becoming politically active, now is the time to step up your game. Only massive street demonstrations moved FDR to introduce the New Deal, while those who've spent a lifetime dismantling it don't need protests, only money. Many who took Bill Clinton's victory as an excuse to sleep remember getting NAFTA, the Telecom Act, and the exploding prison industrial complex as a result. Now we have the advantage of optimism, the internet, and sheer numbers, all despite an economic downturn.

Don't celebrate, organize.

Coda:

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at November 16, 2008 7:32 PM | Comments (0)

 

Charge Max Hardcore's prosecutors with obscenity

Following up on "Free Max Hardcore" below, I argue over at womensspace that by the same logic applying to this case, the judge, prosecutors, and defense attorneys should all be brought up on obscenity charges for showing Max Hardcore videos to a Tampa, Florida, jury:

If a prosecutor shot a juror with a gun to demonstrate how a murder took place, he’d be arrested and charged with murder. If she handed out cocaine to a jury and urged jurors to sniff, she’d be thrown out or worse. By allowing Max Hardcore videos to be shown in court, as evidence of themselves (and not of, say, a criminal act being depicted), the judge demonstrated that they are speech. They communicate, demonstrate, and illustrate. Nothing in the mechanics of offering, showing, and viewing the video in that courtroom was any different than when somebody in Florida pops a Max Hardcore DVD onto the player at home...

I also express my depression over the fact that a pro-obscenity-law element (however minor) still persists among active anti-sexists:

To me, it’s as if a small but surprisingly influential faction of the anti-war crowd had siphoned human energy into opposing pro-war films, then gloated when a pro-war director got sentenced to years in prison for making one. To me it’s worse than wrongheaded or beside the point: It’s vocally siding with the forces of repression that encourage violence in the first place.

One thing President Obama could do to reverse this hugely wasteful diversion of government energy would be to encourage the justice department to drop anything from the "Obscenity" portion of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, thus freeing up more staff and resources to prosecute child pornography. I wonder if DOJ employees wouldn't secretly rejoice at such as shift in priorities, especially after watching God-knows-how-much Max Hardcore as part of their homework.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at November 10, 2008 4:13 PM | Comments (0)

 

Vote on Tuesday, and bring friends

Democracy: Practice makes perfect. Find your polling place in any state at www.voteforchange.com. It's easier than even pollfinder.sos.state.mn.us for Minnesotans, and Republicans can ignore the Obama logo (though I imagine the neighbors it suggests bringing to polls are Democrats). See Mapquest for directions and Metrotransit for Minneapolis/St. Paul bus schedules and maps. If you want to vote Monday Nov. 3, use an absentee ballot in person at your county election office, which you can locate in Minnesota here. View your complete ballot in Minnesota at Startribune.com/politics (click "all of the candidates," top left), and visit the League of Women Voters Minnesota for more. Elections are Tuesday, November 4, from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Get in line by 8:00 p.m. and you should be able to vote no matter how long it takes. In Minnesota, you can register to vote the same day as the election. To register, you have three options: 1.) Bring ID with your current address (Minnesota driver’s license, MN learner’s permit, state ID card, tribal photo ID with your signature, or notice of late registration sent to you), 2.) Bring ID with old address (any of the above ID, or a tribal ID without an address, a U.S. passport, a U.S. military ID, or a MN student ID) plus a utility bill with your current address (anything due in the past 30 days, including gas, electric, waste, water, sewer, phone, TV, internet, rent statement, or current student fee statement), or 3.) Bring a person to vouch for you, someone else registered in your precinct who can swear that you live there.

In Minnesota, ex-felons can vote. You can vote in Minnesota if you are a U.S. citizen, at least 18 years old, and have lived in Minnesota for at least 20 days. Call the Election Protection Hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE if you have any questions about registration, voting rights, or what's happening at the polls. The line is answered in Somali, Hmong, Spanish, and English. See also the Election Protection Wiki. Hat tip to Insight News and www.voteforchange.com for the info.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at November 3, 2008 9:14 AM | Comments (0)

 

One trick-or-treater so far

With Sonic Youth's Evol, Madvillain's Madvillainy, the Misfits box, and Between Heaven & Earth: Traditional Gamelan Music of Bali (because it sounds like skeletons) on the stereo, the original Cat People on the DVD player, a fire in the fire place, Indian take-out, and a plastic pumpkin full of candy, we're being boring for the holiday, though we're planning to be The Birds tomorrow (with me as Alfred Hitchcock) with family and friends. Happy Halloween!

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at October 31, 2008 8:18 PM | Comments (0)

 

Free Max Hardcore

On October 3, a Florida judge sentenced California-based pornographer Paul Little to three years and ten months in a federal penitentiary for selling obscene materials over the internet and mailing them to Tampa. A jury there convicted Little on 20 counts of obscenity after watching eight-plus hours of his videos--it probably didn't help that the notorious producer-director, a.k.a. Max Hardcore, stars in all of them.

Defense of liberty is no vice, and I'll take my vice and my liberty separate, thanks: This is no occasion to evaluate the worth or toxicity of Max Hardcore's pornography, as I did in City Pages ten years ago (and as Susannah Breslin does here). Whatever you think of him, Little has not been convicted of harming anyone: He's going to prison for selling videos of consenting adults to consenting adults, having been charged under the novel rationale that Central Florida "community standards" apply to any material made available online.

If you forgot that federal obscenity statutes still exist in the internet era, you're probably not alone: They were barely enforced under Clinton, in the years when porn powered the developing web, and while prosecutions were stepped up after 9/11 (with some flak caught by Bush's politicized Department of Justice for skewed priorities), they were carried out selectively. Three years ago, the Third Circuit court ruled in the case of U.S. v. Extreme Associates that these statutes are constitutional until the Supreme Court says they aren't, overturning a lower-court ruling that struck them down, and paving the way for this latest case. But it's tough to imagine Max Hardcore riding a First Amendment test up to the high court after Extreme's married-couple defendants were denied an audience. (A new trial for them begins in district court next year.)

U.S. prosecutors chose carefully when singling out Paul F. Little, whose Max Hardcore website now leads to a DOJ press release. A household name in the industry, he's not well-loved even there, with barely a murmur of protest rippling out from the case into the media, though news accounts cluck about the supposed irony of a female judge handing down the sentence. Never mind that most of what you can Google using a few bad words violates somebody's "community standards" somewhere, including a lot of pornography made by and for women.

Again, the issue is not whether you or I find what happens in Paul Little's movies, or on his sets, reprehensible. That's what criticism and organized labor are for, and I encourage more of both: The screen guilds' spurning of porn performers is one of the true Hollywood scandals we never hear about.

But as I wrote in 1998, "anyone tempted to use this de Sade in cowboy boots as a poster boy for driving porn back into the pre-Behind the Green Door underground runs the risk of smothering the medium just as its gender politics are getting interesting." The subsequent era of freedom arguably improved the larger culture, even if it was a mixed bag (freedom always is). And either way, is there any going back?

The Bush justice department clearly hopes so: Putting Max Hardcore in prison is a warning to pornographers who test the limits of taste, and thus freedom. "It becomes a race to the bottom, fueled by the vastness, the speed and the anonymity of the Internet," said assistant U.S. attorney Edward J. McAndrew in the St. Petersburg Times.

But whose bottom? (Puns are inevitable.) And isn't the anonymity he's describing just the ultimate movie theater? That the screen would yield to the terrible power of the crowd's imagination has always been the promise of movies, a promise as American as strongly held opinions, and as perilous to suppress.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at October 30, 2008 5:31 PM | Comments (0)

 

Sonic Youth and other movies: Sound Unseen

Sonic Youth: Sleeping Nights Awake (Trailer)

I just saw this incredible band last night. They're called Sonic Youth. At least I felt as if I were seeing and hearing them for the first time, though now that I think about it, it's been 23 yeras since I first noticed the cover of Bad Moon Rising through the plate glass of Paradise Records in Madison, not long before they played the Wil-Mar Center (a roar you could hear down the block).

What made Sonic Youth new for me again was watching Sleeping Nights Awake, which screened last night as part of the ninth annual Minneapolis-St. Paul-only Sound Unseen festival (amazing that this thing hasn't gone national--more here). The digital-video concert documentary, which screens again tonight at St. Anthony Main, was made by a bunch of teenagers in Reno who ask the band the kinds of things, and shoot the kinds of things, that a hipper or more wised-up director might skip.

The result is entirely fresh and exciting: There's pretty much zero history or background to clutter the portrait of Sonic Youth as a continuing, if seasoned, experiment in self-discovery and in repaying the life-favor of punk rock. Against the surreal backdrop of a casino setting (the band plays basketball around a jet airliner from a magic show), the musicians talk about what it's like to play this music now, and perform in the kind of handheld footage that made U2's Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky (see page 18 of that link) an enduringly immediate document where Rattle and Hum dates as something more "cinematic." The DV video footage here is in black and white, which works surprisingly well for the medium.

Three things help immensely: 1.) the fact that Sonic Youth are still such a great band, 2.) Lee Renaldo's remastering job of the sound-board recording--the music sounds so good ("Kool Thing" is better than the studio version), it should be released as a live album--and 3.) young editors apparently with film sense way beyond their years. The documentary has a rhythm as intuitively changeable and tight as the band's, though in true Sonic Youth fashion, the coda goes on a bit.

Check the full Sound Unseen schedule for other parties, shows, screenings, and happenings--this is one of the reasons to live here.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at October 24, 2008 2:39 PM | Comments (0)

 

New Orleans and the smearing of ACORN

(Food Circle market on North Claiborne in New Orleans in September, 2005; February, 2006; and October, 2008)

I used to shop at the Food Circle Store back when I lived in New Orleans in 1994 and 1995. Dirty and overpriced, it was the only supermarket in the area, and I remember thinking it was an example of what inner city residents had to put up with. (Now another memory kicks in: The bank that owned all the cash machines in the city would allow you to overdraft through its ATMs rather than tell you you had "insufficient funds," charging a penalty when you did.)

Still, the fact that the store hasn't reopened since Katrina is distressingly symbolic. Driving around the city last weekend (after my friend Machelle's wedding in City Park), I found New Orleans still eerily quiet and empty two and a half years after my last visit, even in tourist spots. There are signs of progress and rebuilding in the Upper and Lower Ninth Ward. For starters, the stoplights work, and there are no houses in the middle of the street. But there are the same ravaged buildings beside newly painted ones. And keep in mind, this was a federal disaster.

Two years from now, most people won't remember last week's absurd smear campaign against ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which I watched on CNN and Fox News from my hotel room in the French Quarter. At a moment when the international financial collapse had the surreal quality of the sun dying in the sky, the noise on TV had the comforting merit of being untrue. I trust you to know already that the voter registration fraud in question was committed against ACORN, not by it (and that the organization itself identified the problems). You might even know that ACORN is one of the good guys when it comes to New Orleans and the related problems at the heart of our deepening economic crisis: buying homes and fighting blight.

The big and small lies will fade, but I hope people remember John McCain's part in spreading them, and his performance at the final presidential debate Wednesday, during which he said ACORN was "on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy"--a statement so fantastic, and so provably disingenuous (McCain was an ally of ACORN), that any benefit of the doubt I gave the old man went out the window. Even if his image is entirely cultivated and wafer-thin, McCain is still the most likable Republican presidential candidate in my lifetime, coming across humbled by flaws in a way Ronald Reagan faked being. You can imagine McCain hating the lies he rehearses and hating those calling him on it even more, which might be why his head looked like it was about to explode when, during the debate, he had to endure even a few seconds of comparison to cynical '60s segregationists--racists of opportunity who played to the fascist wings he now needs. McCain has been careful to alert this fringe without once crossing the line into time-honored racial code: How dare anyone suggest he hasn't!

I was going to write that in another era, ACORN would have been called Communist and various racist terms of abuse--except that they're actually being called those things right now, in a fevered campaign that resembles the "protests" greeting the Florida recount (subject of an excellent HBO film I just saw), and with the same goal. Why on earth would McCain turn off that faucet? The anti-American thing is just gravy. (See Exiled on our state as a center of wackdom.)

This is something more than sore-losing in advance or taking your enemy down with you. As Jeff Chang puts it:

Voter registration fraud doesn't mean that Mickey Mouse will show up and try to vote on November 4th. Voter suppression, however, is an active Republican strategy that's been in place since the 1964 Voting Rights Act expanded enfranchisement. Is there any wonder why election protection groups feel they need to be in communities of color, working-class people, immigrants, and not in, say, Salt Lake City?

Coda:

On a happier note, new murals are going up over the reopened Mother-in-Law Lounge of the late "Emperor of the Universe" Ernie K-Doe, just a couple blocks from the Food Circle.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at October 20, 2008 6:55 AM | Comments (0)

 

Scholteses in the news

My father and stepmother were in the local news in Madison recently, my dad in the Wisconsin State Journal ("Know your Madisonian: Peter Scholtes"), my stepmom Peg Scholtes on Channel 15 ("Hot Trends: Political Apparel"). They're both so well spoken in public, a trait I did not inherit. I don't have visuals, but above is a youtube of Will Bradley's "Celery Stalks at Midnight," which my dad cites as his favorite song. Peg's store with my sister Jenna Hansen is Capitol Kids on the square.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at October 18, 2008 12:20 PM | Comments (0)

 

Set the Smith Q&A

Set the Smith, whom I wrote about in City Pages this week, performs a CD-release show on Saturday at the Dinkytowner for his excellent new The Smithsonian Album, on Chill Records. Both the show and CD feature local legends, and shouldn't be missed.

The rapper (a.k.a. Upset the Locksmith, a.k.a. Charles C. Lockhart III) sat down with me over coffee and a cigar last month at Dunn Brothers in Uptown to talk about his early days as a child-MC in the 1980s, back when his father managed the I.R.M. Crew, one of the first popular local rap groups. We also talked about his career since then, and a more recent controversy--this is his first time going on the record about his role in the case of an erroneously sent government check for $2.6 million, which he says the media has distorted.

Listen to Set's new music at his MySpace page, and his last album, The Example Part One, at CDBaby. He'll be appearing tomorrow night on RSE Radio, which you can stream here.

You mentioned that you speak to your father every day. What do you talk about?

Sometimes he calls me just to say what's up and philosophize about life and what the future holds, and my life and what I really want. And sometimes it's all about music and what the next mission is. Me and him, we've always been real close. We're kind of cut the same. He's like my best friend. My father is my best friend.

What are your earliest memories of your father and local rap?

My father's raised me with my mother, so he's always been around. But one thing that sticks out in my head was when I was three or four years old. I was walking around the edge of the sandbox, and I lost my balance and fell on my chin. I busted my chin open, and my dad came and picked me up and brought me to the hospital, and I got stitches and all that. Afterwords he was real proud of me for not crying through getting the stitches, so he took me to McDonald's. That was my first time knowing my body could even bleed like that, and I think a big reason why I didn't bug out was he was there. He kept me calm through that situation.

I have a whole lot of memories of my father as far as hip hop goes. Before hip hop, he was involved in rock and roll with my uncle. He had a band called Banther, and my dad was managing his band for a moment. And then my brother [Gage] came to him and said, "Yo, you need to get into hip hop," in about '85. So that's when he started getting involved in hip hop. My father used to bring me to studio spots and everything.

My biggest memory was a show that he did at the Capri. The show was sold-out, and that's when gang-banging was pretty big over north, and it'd just hit the city, so it was like Vice Lords and GDs around. There was a whole lot of people outside who wanted to get in, and there wasn't a lot of hip-hop shows back then, so if you couldn't get in to a Charlie Chill show then you weren't going to get to see no live hip hop. So people got upset, and they ended up shooting up the show. It was the I.R.M. Crew [a.k.a. Immortal Rap Masters, a.k.a. IRM Crew] performing. It was on the news and all of that. My dad kept us all safe.

MCs were always at the crib. They ended up staying with us at one point in time. Hip hop and my father go hand in hand with the memories that I have of my life. A very small part of my life was not involved in hip hop, and that was probably around the time when I broke my chin open.

(I.R.M. Crew in the studio, 1987, clockwise from top: Devastatin' D, TLC, Kel C, Michael Mack, B Fresh [now Truthmaze], and manager Charles C. Lockhart II, Set the Smith's father. Photo courtesy of Charles C. Lockhart II.)

Do you remember the first time you beatboxed?

The first time I beatboxed I was around Truthmaze. He was just phenomenal. I remember listening to him on the radio battling another beatboxer on KMOJ, just eating cats up all over the city. Nobody could touch him. So I began beatboxing around 5 or 6, strictly because of him, looking up to the people he looked up to, like Doug E. Fresh. But B Fresh was so dope, and that was his [Truthmaze's] name back then, he was so dope that he was in the same league as Doug E. Fresh and all of them because he could do all the combinations.

Do you remember your first rap?

I remember the first rap that I wrote, I rapped it in front of TLC. TLC was Tender Loving Care in the I.R.M. Crew. He was more so the battle rapper, and Kel C [also of IRM] was more of a freestyling thinker, the type of cat that would save a show spontaneous. TLC would write some shit to rip your head off. He lived with us for a second. So I started rhyming when I was 6, 7. And my first name was Baby Beat. I was the baby who would beatbox.

Do you remember anything about that rap?

I remember the first line. "Baby Beat is a name you will never forget/Baby Beat is rocking/Baby Beat is it."

And you were recording by 7-years-old, with producer Kelley Kelley.

Kelley Kelley was working with a cat named Sweet Success, and that's who my father was working with after the I.R.M. Crew. I would come to the studio sessions just to check out what they were doing. I always wanted to be a rapper, and I thought I had skills, so I would spit flows and think I could battle Sweet Success at that young age. I would come there and just listen to Sweet Success and admire what he was doing, and try to get Kelley Kelley to stop their session and hear what I was about. I was just getting in the way back then.

Was there anybody else that young doing it back then?

Not that I knew of. I was just around all the older cats. I think I was really fortunate about the circle of people that were around me. It was like a hip-hop family spread all the way across the city. My father was like the father of hip hop in Minnesota, and they were his children, and he took care of them like his children too. Any time they needed something, my dad was there for them. They were all like my older brothers.

By 14, you'd released your first album. Was there any point where you decided this was something you wanted to do, not just for fun?

Actually, at 12 I was on my first CD. My dad was dealing with some cats out of Chicago and they were putting together a compilation CD on Bridge City Records. I had written a song called "Warning," and LST produced the song. I sounded like a little girl because my voice hadn't changed yet. I was working with LST back then, and then I was working with my man Headake tha Chosen, who's on my album now. So I pulled him into the fold, and we had a song called "Black on Black Crime." Even back then when we were kids, we were rapping about stuff that was tangible and had meaning to what was going on. And plus my dad was always about the message, bro. He instilled that in me early on, that when you rhyme, just not to rhyme to rhyme, but rhyme about something.

When I interviewed your dad for the local hip-hop oral history in City Pages, he was pretty open about transferring a lot of his dreams from the IRM Crew to you. Is that a lot of weight on your shoulders?

Actually, I thrive in that field. Because I used to spit rhymes to my dad. He would be working with other people, and he would come home, and I would be like, "Yo, Dad, check this out," and I would rhyme some shit over an instrumental. And finally my mom was like, "You should work with your son." And he wanted to work with me. So we began working together, and I think It was a mutual thing. I loved it.

What was that early-'90s scene like here when you were getting in the mix?

That's when messages started coming through in songs, when the Micranots was more so not just rhyming about being dope, but rhyming about things that were going on. I think it was pretty much a gang of urban kids trying to really convey a message to a larger audience about what they were going through and what they were seeing coming up. That's what the scene was around my way, cats like the Micranots and Phull Surkle.

Who were your favorite rappers then?

Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Special Ed, Redhead Kingpin. OC was dope. L.L. Cool J definitely influenced me a whole lot.

Where'd you go to high school?

I went to South High. Zach from Kanser, New MC, he was around there back then. We still talk, he's still my dude. I would battle MCs all day at South, that's what it was all about. Cats like Omar, he was like a master freestyler back in the early '90s. Even though he was older, I would always go at the head honcho, because I was young and I was hungry. The only way to get attention was to go at the person who was getting all the attention.

You worked with Rek the Heavyweight, a.k.a. Spawn from Atmosphere. Was that in the mid-'90s?

Yeah, '97-'98 was when me and Rek got together. It was my first album, Final Notice, that I recorded under the name Upset the Locksmith. Rek was working with Atmosphere at that time. I really needed a producer, and my brother Gage knew Rek, and he was like, "Yo, you two need to work together," because Rek at the time was making beats that he wanted everybody to hear, and he wasn't really getting the opportunity for people to hear his beats. So me and him, you know. Steel sharpens steel. I'm really happy he stepped outside of himself to work with me at that time. Before then, I didn't know anything about writing a full album, we were just about making good songs.

The reason I called it Final Notice is because when you get a final notice bill, shit's about to cut off. [laughs] That was my final notice to MCs that I was coming.

And there were two other albums before The Example Part One, right?

My second album was 3179: The Legend of Upset, which came out in 2001, and that's when I pulled Cue Dangerous into the fold. I saw him live at a show, and I thought his lyrics was real dope. From that point on we started working together. That album was produced by Rek the Heavyweight and Cue Dangerous, and it did pretty well in town.

After that album, I released another one in 2003 called No Pain. Cue Dangerous produced about 70 percent of that record, and Rek produced about 30 percent. And then you got hold of The Example album that came out in 2005, and once again Rek and Cue Dangerous produced that record. And now the newest album, The Smithsonian Album in 2008, that album I produced like 80 percent of, and Cue Dangerous produced a couple tracks on there, his production company produced, as well as 84 Caprice, he produced one song, and a new young cat, Kel C's nephew, his name is J-Hard, he's about 20 years old and his beats are ridiculous, so I took a beat from him, and that's the song "Fresh for Sure."

He's a workaholic with the beats, and when I see him, it reminds me of what I used to be. Those are the people that I really take interest in, the young lions coming up, because they will be the voice for Minneapolis tomorrow.

That's funny you say that, beacuse you're not even 30 yet, right?

I'm not, and I'm not ready to be. [laughs] So let's not push the envelope.

You seem to have a multi-generational operation.

I'm spinning off as many people as I possibly can, and I want to give opportunities to younger individuals who are coming up who take this music seriously. Because there's so many different things you can do with you're life when you're young and you're coming up in Minneapolis, you can veer off in so many different directions. I think music really kept me grounded through everything that I was involved with in life. I have a lot of different friends form a lot of different walks of life, and I think that without music I would probably be dead or in jail.

I saw the stories in the papers about the charges against you, dropped in exchange for your cooperation. What's your side of the story?

There was nothing to cooperate about. Whatever the paper wrote, they talked to the prosecutor. And the prosecutor was pretty upset that they couldn't tag me with anything and my lawyer stood by me.

So what happened exactly?

The state erroneously sent a check to an individual and put their name on it and their social security on it, and made a huge mistake--and then got mad and wanted to blame anybody who was near the situation, and wanted to charge anybody with anything that they could possibly charge them with, to cover up the mistake that they had made.

The young lady that I supposedly cooperated against, me and her still deal with each other today. Her side of the story will come out sooner or later as well, and people will understand a clearer picture of the situation.

But the paper never interviewed me. All they give a damn about is what's the most interesting thing to read. And being that I'm known so well in town, and everybody knows how I'm cut, I wasn't worried about that. I haven't had an individual yet come up to me and think that I'm cut like that. Because before this, I've had other situations with the law that would be able to judge my character. And I've always taken my own weight, and I always will. In this situation there was no weight to take, and they had to swallow that.

You've watched local hip hop grow for nearly 25 years. Do you ever come across an artist today starting out as young as you did in the '80s?

My son, Romel. He's more of a singer than an MC, and I'm producing a lot of his music right now. He's ten years old.

So it really is a multi-generational operation.

Yeah, definitely. And my thing is to pass on whatever I build to him, to let him carry it, and help people out the way I would like to help people out.

When you've experienced the things that I've experienced, you end up looking at life in a different way. I know damn well that money doesn't make you happy. I know that the greatest joy in life is helping other people. You get a feeling within you that is unlike any other feeling. And that just makes me believe in God even more, because he created humans like that. And, I mean, you could buy the flyest whip, buy the flyest clothes and jewelry, but it'll never give you the satisfaction as it would if you would help somebody do something that they'd never thought was possible without your help.

Any more news you want to share from the artists in your circle?

Headake tha Chosen is coming out with a record pretty soon, and you can check him out on hurryupandbuy.biz. He's a totally different MC than me, street-orientated to the fullest, but that's what I love about him. We're all so different. Also check out Cue Dangerous, a.k.a. Oldboy. Rek the Heavyweight's got an album on Chill Records, Timeless. Kel C's on my record, he's working on a new album right now, and his stuff is coming out ridiculous. B-Down produced the song we did on the record, and he's got a new album with Young Pluky [a.k.a. Young Plukey], and Young Pluky's in my video.

I got some hard-hitters on that October 18 show. What I want to convey through doing that show is how far Minneapolis has come, and what Minneapolis hip hop is about to me, what it is about to the older b-boys in town who remember where it came from.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at October 17, 2008 9:15 PM | Comments (1)

 

Pettibon junction: the art of SST

This deserves its own new post: My SST eMusic Dozen also happens to coincide with a Los Angeles exhibit of '70s and '80s work by Greg Ginn's brother Raymond Pettibon at Regen Projects. Pettibon drew the Black Flag cover sleeve below, along with many other iconic SST album covers and posters, and designed the band's four-bar, rippling-flag logo, which all these years later still inexplicably signifies danger. The exhibit runs through October 18. I wonder if the two brothers still haven't spoken since the mid-'80s.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at October 8, 2008 4:06 PM | Comments (0)

 

Sarah Palin's favorite records

(Caption: "NOBODY KNOWS MORE THAN I THAT THE LESS GIRLS KNOW THE BETTER THEY ARE LIKELY TO BE." Cover drawing by Raymond Pettibon from Black Flag's Slip It In, SST, 1984.)

My eMusic Dozen for SST Records is live, coinciding with a rare national tour by SST founder Greg Ginn in his various bands, including the striking Jambang (he always was a Deadhead first), none coming to Minneapolis/St. Paul as yet. Each has a new album on SST available (via The Orchard) for download at eMusic. I've written about the label's peak years in American punk rock more personally before, but doing the dozen was a chance to affirm in my viscera that loving this music has nothing to do with nostalgia. (Actually, I'd forgotten how much Black Flag's '85 Madison show bummed me out until I reread Get in the Van and remembered the car accident outside Turner Hall.)

Joe Carducci's beautifully written 2007 memoir/biography Enter Naomi: SST, L.A. and All That... brought the entire period alive for me again, but in a way that was almost completely outside (though parallel to) my own experience, a reinvigorating of admiration I'm now experiencing with Repo Man in Alex Cox's book X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker. (Fun spoiler: Tom Cruise visited the set, and might have gotten a part if Harry Dean Stanton weren't miffed about their competing affections for the same actress.)

Thanks to Matos for recommending the Cox book (and me to eMusic), Michael Azerrad for Our Band Could Be Your Life (with a collaborative Bob Mould autobiography on the way), Douglas Wolk's own eMusic SST appreciation, Dave Lang's "SST Records Story," ilx, We Jam Econo (much better than I remembered--I love the early Minutemen show, included on the DVD in its entirety, where at least one young doorknob sits onstage facing away from the band throughout), Michael T. Fournier for uncovering George Hurley's uncredited authorship of the lyrics on "Anxious Mo-Fo," Joel Paterson, Paradise Records, Pete Rabid, Paul Hansen, and the Tar Babies, whose 1987 album Fried Milk is among SST's lost classics--all upchuck Hendrix, spry JB, and punk-soul Bobcat Goldthwait gurgle (clears the sinuses just thinking about it). I hear I missed a Killdozer reunion in Madison, but bring back the original Tar Babies lineup and I'll quit all my jobs. P.S. Somewhere my stepmom is still telling me to put this awful album cover away. (Okay, some nostalgia.)

10/8 update: The dozen also happens to coincide with a Los Angeles exhibit of '70s and '80s work by Greg Ginn's brother Raymond Pettibon, who drew the above Black Flag cover sleeve and designed the band's four-bar, rippling-flag logo, which still inexplicably signifies danger all these years later. The exhibit runs through October 18 at Regen Projects. More here.

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at October 3, 2008 12:41 PM | Comments (0)

 

Picked to Click winners so far: 1991-2008

Picked to Click Winners 1991-2008:

1991

Walt Mink (31)
The Loose Rails (24)
God's Favorite Band (19)
The Willie Wisely Trio (16), the Mighty Mofos (tie)
Draghounds (14)
Monster Zero (13), Rifle Sport (13)
Snapperhead (12)
T.V.B.C. (11)
Arcwelder (10), Cows (tie)
Mother's Day (9)
Jonestown, Pseudonymphs, the Mings, Dylan Hicks & Three Pesos, Dutch Oven, Superball '63, Vertigo (8)

1992

Hammerhead (38)
The Carpetbaggers (37)
Muskellunge (34)
Gneissmaker (18)
Mickey Finn (17)
Salbando, Cows (13)
The Pidgeonholes, Superball '63, the Loose Rails, Jonestown (12)
Walt Mink, Skeleton Ed (11)
Mint Condition, the Sycamores (10)

1993

Guzzard (27)
Rex Daisy (24)
The Spectors (21)
Balloon Guy, John's Black Dirt (16)
Saucer (15)
Hovercraft (13)
Dogfight (12)
Tim O'Reagan and Jim/Dave Boquist, Somethin' Smooth, Ten Cent Fun, Andromeda Strain (9)

1994

Lily Liver (41.5)
Low (26)
Smattering (19.5)
John Casey and the Old Pussums, Lefty Lucy (19)
Pleasure, Small Engine City (17)
Balloon Guy (16)
Bean Girl (14)
Hot Date (12.5)
Karen Therese and Jai Cafe (12)
Fauna (11.5)
Delilahs, Grows Like Topsy, the Sea, Venison, Vibro Champs (10)

1995

Tribe of Millions (36)
Polara (31.5)
Phull Surkle and Casino Royale (22)
February (19)
Honeydogs, National Dynamite (16.5)
Strawdogs (14)
Rhea Valentine, Push on Junior (13)
John Ewing (12)
Vena Cava (11)
T.H.R.U.S.H. (10)
Dust Bunnies, Run Westy Run, Speedway, Interstate Judy (9)
Flipp (8.5)
Freddie Fresh [a.k.a. Freddy Fresh], G.I.V.E., Beangirl [a.k.a. Bean Girl], The Blue Up? (8)
Better off Airport (7.5)
[Other low-ranking 1995 notables: Deformo (7) and Abstract Pack (7)]

1996

12 Rods (43)
Semisonic (23.5)
National Dynamite (16)
Who Are Those Guys, Hot Karl (15)
The Kelley Deal 6000, Medium (13)
The Joint Chiefs [a.k.a. the Sensational Joint Chiefs], the Pins, Superman Curl (11)
Detroit (10.5)
Ether Bunny, Mountain Singers (9)
Dwindle (8.5)

1997

Brother Sun Sister Moon (49)
Sukpatch (30)
The Beatifics (25)
The Sensational Joint Chiefs (23)
Happy Apple (17)
Druel, Wheelo (14)
Accident Clearinghouse, The Short Fuses (13)
Mike Merz & the Can o' Worms (12.5)
Lifter Puller, Ninotchka, Magnatone (12)
Vaz (11)
Think Tank (10)
Dave King (et al.), Plain Jane (9)
The Sandwiches (8.5)
The Big Wu, The Buck-Fifty Boys (8)
Baby Grant Johnson, MMF (7)
Atmosphere, DJ Jesus Juice (Henry Mhoon), Terry Eason, Freedom Fighters,
The Great Depression, Lady & the Katz, The Siren Six (6)

1998

The Odd (20)
Love-cars (19)
So-So (18)
American Paint (17.5)
Ana Voog, The Autumn Leaves, Ousia (16)
The Minx (15)
Autonomous, Mary Nail (13)
Brits Out of America, Lunar 9, Rhyme Sayers Collective (12)
Florida (10)
Bobby Llama, Freedom Fighters (9)

1999

The Mason Jennings Band (57)
Selby Tigers (33)
Plastic Constellations (29)
Jake Mandell (27)
Abstract Pack (23)
Bellwether, UberScenester (21)
Mark Mallman (and the Heat) (20)
Sixth Sense (18 1/3)
Tangletown (18)
Indigenous (16)
Hawaii (15 1/2)
Moveable Feast, Ouija Radio (14)
Walter Kong and the Dangermakers, American Head Charge (12)
Radar Threat, The Misfires (11)
The Hot (10 1/2)
The Dames, Escape Mechanism (10)
Landing Gear (9 1/3)
Lunar 9 (8 1/2)
Arkology, Fizzy Lifter, Truth Maze (8)
Bobby Llama, Prosthetica, Debi 7, Sliver, Dixie and the Cannibals, Salamander (7)
DJ Ts, Ninian Hawick, Drunk Drivers (6)
Olo (5 1/2)

2000

Astronaut Wife (44)
decembers architects (38)
The Busy Signals, Tulip Sweet & Her Trail of Tears (29)
Valet (26)
Jan (25)
Triangle (tie)
Sean Na Na/Har Mar Superstar (23)
Hidden Chord, Manplanet (16)
Capital! Capital (15)
Iffy (14)
Raw Villa, Smattering (12)
The Sure Shot Brothers, Touchy Feely (9)
Flapjack, Kaos (8)
Katie Spoden, Dred I Dre