Frank Kogan

"A bunch of insanely catchy hooks refusing to play together nicely, but they've been corralled against their will onto the same track anyway." If that had been my review of a Ke$ha single it would surely have been high praise, song meriting an 8 or 9 or higher. Three days ago when listening to Enrique Iglesias ft. Pitbull on "I Like It" those same words added up to a borderline pan (5 points, or 6 at the most). Then yesterday I decided that all that spurting cool whip and root beer frosting mess brought "I Like It" up to a 7 or even an 8, so "bunch of insanely catchy hooks refusing to play together nicely" etc. were now praise words rather than an explanation of failure (even if Iglesias does sound inexplicably disengaged in the track's first section). Now I'm backtracking and by tomorrow I may well hate the thing, for how the track's damn overload sabotages the catchiness of the individual hooks.

As every schoolkid knows, the Boney-Joan Rule states that "any reason I give for liking a performer will also be a reason I give for disliking some other performer." The Iglesias-Pitbull corollary says that "any reason I give on a particular day for disliking 'I Like It' will be a reason I give on some other day for liking 'I Like It.'" (Surely someday I will come to see Enrique's early disengagement as a virtue that helps the tunefulness seep through - and then I'll change my mind.)

Half a year ago I was in a state of grumbles about the Latter-Day Dance-Pop Mess, Amalgamated, while now I think we're in a fascinating time for music, though the music itself is pretty much the same. "Blah Blah Blah" is what turned me.

Sometimes the 'Net is a great place. I received this email the other day from someone who'd found her way to my old Las Vegas Weekly column about the Boney Joan Rule:

Email from Diana from NYC:

Dear Frank,

I came across your amusing article about the Boney Joan rule by chance on the 'net.

Maybe you dislike Joan Baez's singing not because of your parents but - because she's the WORST SINGER EVER?

My two cents.

Truly, I have never heard such bad singing, ever. And I've heard a lot of singing. She doesn't sing the song - she sings her voice. Every goddam song it's the same thing: "listen to my gorgeous voice! Listen to my amazing vibrato!!"

Well her voice isn't gorgeous and her vibrato sounds like Tiny Tim on acid. I have no idea what anyone "heard" in this voice.

My suspicion is that she came along at the right time and the right place and had the right look. She was very beautiful when young women were sick of teasing and spraying their hair. In that her impact was exactly the same as Mary Travers, another bad singer. But the flowing blond natural hair was gorgeous.

Regards,
Diana from NYC

( Boney Joan: The Conversation Continues )

Here are links to my Rules Of The Game columns in chronological order, the column running in the Las Vegas Weekly from June 2007 to March 2008, with December off.

( Links to The Rules Of The Game )

petronia (The last of the questionnaires):

I've always thought dancing about architecture would be a particularly interesting exercise, because whatever you could effectively demonstrate about architectural structures using choreographed human bodies would probably be immensely complex to convey in any other guise. So complex that it would be dismissed as truism, perhaps...

This reminded me that I'd once answered a question in regard to dancing about architecture when Scott Butki interviewed me by email in 2006 for Blogcritics Magazine. He ended up not using the dancing-about-architecture bit, so here it is:

( Kogan dances about I-Beams and wall hangings )

You all can once again read my old Rules Of The Game columns, since The Las Vegas Weekly has finally transferred them to its new server. Here are links to all but three (search results for "Rules of the Game"* so you get a few non-Frank links as well), though so far the link to #28, "Dresses Are My Weakness, Seriously," doesn't link to anything.

Links for the other three (which for some reason didn't get "The Rules Of The Game" in their titles), are:

The Rules Of The Game #4: Britney Shows Brain
The Rules Of The Game #5: What's Wrong With Pretty Girls?
The Rules Of The Game #8: Which Social Class Sounds Better?

Another oddity: the stories are now credited to "Las Vegas Weekly Staff" rather than to me. I'll see if I can get that corrected.

EDIT July 25: Without my asking, they've now added my name to all but two of these, so obviously the transfer is a work in progress. Still no functioning link for "Dresses Are My Weakness, Seriously."

EDIT Many moons later: Link for "Dresses Are My Weakness, Seriously" now works.

EDIT '09: I've now put all the links in one place in chronological order, so this is where to go.

*And don't forget to click "Next page" at the bottom of the page.

Here's the latest column, once again about antirockism.

The Rules Of The Game #32: Where The Real Wild Things Are

I agonized for about ten seconds as to whether I was being fair in the sentence "the antirockists put defeating an enemy ahead of trying to understand him, so in effect were seeking stupidity in others rather than trying to strengthen their own comprehension." Then I figured if I was being unfair, you'd tell me. It doesn't seem to me that those of you who used the word on ilX weren't trying to understand Patrick Hould or Dave Q or Sundar Subramanian or Glenn McDonald or Alex In NYC, but then I don't think the first three had anything to do with "rockism" as you guys seemed to be using it (though I think that Patrick was confused enough by your usage to think he might be a "rockist") or that your use of the term had anything to do with your actual attempts to interact with and understand these guys.

( Was rockism valid in the '60s? )

( Links to my other Rules Of The Game columns )

I talk about Willie Nelson and once again about Miranda Lambert:

The Rules Of The Game #30: Life Ain't Hard But It's Too Long

( Hot Babe )

( Links to my other Rules Of The Game columns )

( The Rules Of The Game #28 )

But my friend Elizabeth says she wouldn't be caught dead in this:


Bella as Taylor Swift

( Links to my other Rules Of The Game columns )

I'M BACK! Well, I was always here, but my column is back, dealing with an issue that has stirred the hearts and shaken the minds of many a poptimist: what is the nature of legacy and continuity in country music; or, if my mother blows her house to pieces, does that mean I have to blow my house to pieces too when I grow up?

The Rules Of The Game #26: Because Of You I Am Afraid

( Links to my other Rules Of The Game columns )

Remember when we all used to listen to Conway Twitty?

( Buncha questions about whether culture really is getting more fragmented )