Underwhelmed eh you ol' goat? I'd definitely give it another shot one of these days. This here might prove educational too. :P



P.S. - I am very much looking forward to Metal Week!

I'll mention one for the moment.

Linkin Park - Meteora
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi.../MeteoraLP.jpg

I'm pretty happy to see that somebody else mentioned a Linkin Park album on this thread. Anyway, this album is one of the main reasons why I got into music in the first place, since it was also one of the first actual music albums I bought on my own. I remember knowing it existed and I also remember saving up all the money I could just to get to a CD shop and buy it. Unfortunately, when I finally found it, I still didn't have enough since it was a little bit more than I had. The best thing was when my dad decided to help me pay for the rest because he knew how much I wanted it. So that night, I listened to it and fell in love with it and got to my favorite song Breaking The Habit. I'm sure that's everybody favorite off the album since MTV showed that music video a lot back then. Anyway, i'm rambling a lot here, but this album was a huge step forward in what I think of music now, and it helped me get into many other genres and artist.

I think that's such a cool story! Like your dad knew you weren't just asking him to pay for it; you'd saved and saved and then when you hadn't enough he helped you out. That's real love! It would have been horrible if, after all that scrimping and saving (I'm assuming you were pretty young if you had to save for a single CD) you had to leave the shop and come back when you'd scraped together the difference.

I have a story related to why Faint was my favorite song off of that album. In the lyrics for that song it says "I won't be ignored" being screamed by Chester. I ended up using that as my motto when I ran a mafia in The Sims Online. Yes, you could run a mafia in The Sims but that's a super long story so I won't get into how those worked too much. I used to have my "spies/hitmen" leave "LP7" on the tile work after they completed a job. LP7 stood for track 7 off of Meteora. I don't think anyone ever picked up on it but I didn't care. It was my sign and associated with a mafia. They didn't know which one because I kept my mafia pretty incognito as opposed to the other mafias that would take credit for things and put their name all over stuff.

I adopted the "I won't be ignored" motto to my lifestyle as well because I feel like even if I'm having a disagreement with someone. I feel like we should be adults and find out where the miscommunication happened. Talk out about our gripes and see if we can come to an understanding or agree to disagree. If you place me on ignore or just passively ignore me then there won't be any resolution and I feel like that's the worst thing to just have conflicts not be resolved in some capacity.

Take a look at my journal now.... ;)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._The_Opera.png
Queen - A Night at the Opera

This is one of the main reasons I get all defensive when anyone mentions Queen. I discovered Bohemian Rhapsody trough Disney Channel (I know), a muppet "parody". A week later or so, me and my dad went out to buy this album. It was my first own CD (or Bruce Springsteen - The River, whatever, I don't know), and it led to me becoming a Queen fan, which I've been for the last, maybe four years or so.

I'll go with this one as I reckon I can describe it the best. You guys are much better reviewers and writers than I am though.

http://wearesme.co.uk/wp-content/upl..._da_corner.jpg

Dizzee Rascal - Boy In Da Corner

Back when this came out, I was a Hip-Hop fan and only really listened to the mainstream Americans. I was familiar with the Garage thing happening in the UK at the time (particularly Oxide & Neutrino and So Solid) and I even liked some of it and bought the music but it was quite one dimensional and to be honest the MC's were shit, people were still spitting with American accents around this time, that's all there really was then. And then Dizzee came along with his high pitched, chirpy Cockney accent.

A mate had sent me I Luv U over MSN that summer and I remember thinking 'WTF is this?'. It was being labeled as Garage but sounded nothing like it, or anything I'd heard before (or since actually.) The content was fresh and real, as opposed to the predictable shit that you'd already heard on Garage a thousand times over (clubs, champagne, girls, etc.) Dizzee was rawer than everyone else before him. And it was hard. It was a track that exploded out of nowhere, everybody rated it, it didn't get to number 1 but it was played everywhere. I think it's comparable to something like Anarchy In The UK in the way that it crossed over because of how shocking and abrasive it was.

This album's content is pretty much the polar opposite to the sort of thing that Garage MC's had done up until then. Tracks like Jezebel and Brand New Day... when you're a teenager at that time it's easy to relate to these tracks, it was the ugly side to the same culture Garage music encapsulated. We all knew a girl in the ends like the one in Jezebel and Dizzee's self expression on Brand New Day was concise and emotive; anyone who has been in a similar position will have felt like that at some point when you're growing up, it was a representation of you. 'Big shout to the boy who thinks he's a don, you're looking at your Avirex thinking you're a don' is a perfect description of how cocky and confrontational you can be at this point and how pointless a lot of teenage squabbling is when you're in school or in the ends. When I listen to the lyrics on this a lot of it reminds me of the people around me and myself, being a dickhead on the back of the bus, nicking phones and a load of other shit. That's exactly what was going on then and Dizzee is talking about it.

Everything on the album is composed and produced by a 16-17 year old Dizzee. The beats are all his with the exception of Fix Up, Look Sharp and Jus' A Rascal which were both co-produced. The production is completely unique, it's raw (I've had Americans tell me it sounds half finished) but it is meant to be that way, it's not supposed to sound polished, it's Grime music. There are no complex rhyming schemes on here or pretentious fast flows because he doesn't need to do it (other than on the last verse of Jus' A Rascal), he is succinct and he does not waste a word.

And it was actually Grime. In a time where the term 'Grime' has been used as a blanket term for any British rapping and the genre has lost it's identity, this production with it's warped bass, 'pots and pans' kicks and snares and Nokia 3310-esque melodies is the epitome of the Grime sound. Since then, it's all watered down and merged with Hip-Hop, artists now attempt to crossover to achieve the success Dizzee achieved with this album, success he achieved by being particularly aggressive and creative.

So that's my opinion on Boy In Da Corner, the undisputed peak of a genre and a genuine gem in a scene full of utter shit and creatively bankrupt dickheads. Regardless of your opinion on Grime (it's shit btw) this is an album I think anyone can appreciate.

Cheers.

Wow! If that's what you call not being able to write, CB, then you should definitely start a journal. Great review, although that's nowhere near my taste in music, but great, evocative writing that's from the heart! :clap:

Cheers TH, that took me a fair bit of time, it was hard thinking of how to say what I wanted to say. Honestly don't feel knowledgeable in music which is why I don't post in the music forums as much as everyone else.

that's the thing about having your own journal though, just write about how certain tracks make you feel or any memories related to certain songs. Express yourself the way that you feel comfortable. You don't need to be the most knowledgeable person in music to do that.