TheBig3

I'm trying to figure out what you're angry about. Because I call certain music terrible, and you want to say all music is good if someone likes it?

If thats not what you're saying please elaborate, but if it is what you're saying then I didn't create a journal to talk about how great life is.

****ting on stage does have less to do with music than the whirlwind heat. But only by a hair. I'm using hyperbole to prove a point, that we continue down the "its ok to make noises with something on stage" route and we end up with that loose definition of art that starts to break things down to a bunch of fame-seeking morons.

I'll ask this question, if the Whirlwind Heat can open for a national act on a national tour and have the talent of the 13 year old who just got guitar lessons, who can't go on a national tour and open for a national act?

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Engine

I'm not angry and, no, I certainly don't want to say that all music is good if somebody likes it. However, I am reserving the right to call music that I like good. It seems that you are the one who takes issue..

So you want a tight definition of art? That seems odd. As for fame-seeking morons: good luck getting rid of those - talented and untalented alike.

Um..I guess 'nobody' is the answer you're looking for? But I dunno - I don't have an answer. I don't really care who opens for national acts. In, I think, 1992, I saw some crappy new fame-seeking band open for RHCP. They were called Pearl Jam. From your description of Whirlwind Heat, I think I would have preferred seeing them. So much for tight definitions, eh?

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TheBig3

I think we're done here.

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TheBig3

Let's call a spade, a spade, musicbanter. I'm always trying to sell tickets, put people in seats. however you might "win" here, I'm trying to do it. One thing I've realized is, reviewing single songs does not sell tickets, but today I can't help myself.

My girlfriend has been playing the new Alicia Keys albums non-stop and while its a very good album, I need my fix. I was an angry, angry 16 year old once and while he's not me any longer, he still wants his cut of furious viking music. That being said, flipping through a bunch of old mix CD's I stumbled upon one of the truely lost gems of the early 1990's.

Soundgarden's "Birth Ritual"...holy ****.

Do you know what would happen if Led Zeppelin had sex with cheesy power metal? This song would happen, and it would rise up to overthrow the anti-christ. Its that ****ing good. But lets not talk in words of abstract, lets carve this ****ing beast up.

First of all it sounds like the Racontours "blue veins" when it starts off, so this is a grade A track to mess with the cultural elite on. Nothings going to piss them off more than thinking this was a french named, reto-fit blues act, only to have the shirtless shrieks of Chris Cornell channeling Kiss come playing through the speakers with a riff that may or may not have inspired Machine Head's career.

Secondly, i defy you to accurately figure out the opening line of this song (without googling). Everyone I know swears he's says "I AM MAGNETO." Now obviously folks, he doesn't say "i am magneto" but lets be truthful withoutselves and lie. Whatever he's saying is never going to be as cool as "I AM MAGNETO" so quit being nerds and just listen to the god damn song.

Third and most importantly is the ferociously falsetto notes of the word "ritual." this comes in two pieces. For those unfamiliar with Soundgarden, they're one of the most interesting bands to come out in years and years. You might, depending on the song, mistake them for prog, metal, pop, folk, or avant-garde. They are none of the above because they are all of the above. The Alpha and Omega of the late 80's/ early 90's.

There are two "rituals" in this song. the first and most common which comes fairly rapid fire. Its a fairly evenly spaced "ri-tu-al" and when you first hear it, you think two things:

a. they haven't hit a note like that since "Slaves and Bulldozers. Awesome!"

and

b. Christ that was awesome, now someone help my find my eyebrows.

While these are correct, they are also a novice opinion because the longer held "ritual"

"riiii-tuuu-aaaaaal"

that comes later in the song will skull**** your kittens if you're not careful, so its best to remove them from the room.

long story short this song ought to come with a warning label. Since SG refused, their corporate overlords did the only thing they could with a song this earthshattering, they stuck it on the soundtrack for Singles from 1992. A pearl jam influenced movie that has long since fallen out of favor by the advent of Creed and Korn. While the corporate overlords were smart to bury for as long as they did, the time of the Soundgarden is about to come again, and leading the charge will be its rebirth ritual.

Lock up your women, children, riches, and sheep. The track has been played and the vikings are coming.

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TheBig3

I think what bothers people most about a lack of music bubbling up is akin to loneliness. This might account for that avril lavigne madness about how music could be your boyfriend.

Whatever you think of a statement like that, its snapple-cap version of a fairly intelligent point. While I don't advocate anyone beging to get their morale superiority on by declaring their monogamous patronage to music, how we walk through life is very much a product of music. At least for the junkies that frequent these boards.

If you're anything like me, songs aren't heard so much as their ingested. I will download a song and play that ****er until it would have been destroyed on lesser mediums like records or CD's. Even at such an advanced state it still manages to screw up my iPod when I keep repeating songs and small sections of songs.

I can recall nearly an entire summer of listening to TV on the Radio's "Blues from down here" and if you were on the boards at the time you've probably seen me try and jam that down your throat. Or ears. Or whatever.

I haven't really thought about this much before now, so to the nerdy wallflower out there who's rolling out their scrolls on how advaned your theories are - my apologies. But it seems to me how cathartic some of our favorite things can be. Not because we're hearing them but maybe because we feel like lyrics or music is us speaking out loud.

Its mind boggling to imagine how this might look otherwise. As if you had an out of body experience and the metaphysical you mumbled senselessly to the you it just left....yeah I don't know either.

What I do know is this. When TVotR says a line like:

With my wet hair, I wipe the blood off of your feet
Carry me through these shark infested waters
Well you spared me from slaughter for sure,
but these sharks are equally in need of a martyr

its the subconscious equivalent of reading cave paintings with hieroglyphic subtitles. You don't exactly get what their saying, you couldn't exactly fix the grammar for them, but emotionally you get the gist. For me, that summer, having had my heart ripped clean out by a 5'1 blonde from Jersey, the only think keeping my brain in my head was some duct tape and Return to Cookie Mountain.

Don't get me wrong. I still think Avril Lavigne needs a sandwich and a swift kick in her gerbil fangs but all I'm saying is...I don't know, maybe she was on to something.

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TheBig3

"he wants you to know it's a hullabaloo drinking and shouting at satellites" - Blender

I don't know what about that quote struck me as amazing as I read through a cursory review of Waits's discography (that sucked) but it seemed to lurk in the bushes and slap my in the face when I rounded the corner.

I just get the image that all of those characters, the third shift A-list was in one worn in bar, dancing and singing to jug-stomp music, laying on the roof in their down time yelling dreams up to the stars. I'm sure they meant satellite as in the moon, but there is a weird anti-romantic asthetic to distant communication technology. That radio tower that they build out of the way in the stretch of abandoned woods on the side of local highways, blinking silently in the middle of the freezing cold winter nights. It carries all the thinly veilded words of someone aching for the person to which their speaking to return half of the sentiment. It has a way of reminding you of the fast paced, inpersonal speed of everyday life as you sit under a clear sky under a lone tree in the middle of June. It makes you happy you're in such a remote place and can watch the chaos from a distance.

I dream of all the heartache there in the air, traveling great distances full of emotion there on passing invisible waves, and sometimes if I lose myself enough I put my hand up and I try to feel them between my fingers. I catch myself and play it off as me doing something else, but I'm still thinking and I can see a beatup working class man sitting in the bar room halls that are 10 steps from removed from the fast paced sidewalks of the big city. Masked by 3 days of absence from his razor, his thoughts travel to a land 10,000 miles away and a woman he aches to hear echo any sentiment that would even look look in his direction. He wipes his face with pride and looks away, out the window to hide his shame onto the slow moving boats that send long stacks of clouds into the early evening sky.

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Arya Stark

I love the way you write.
Gives a lot away about you. :3

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TheBig3

And what is this one giving away?

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Fast Frankie

Awesome review, it's refreshing to read something entertaining. Thank you for not being in a box!

With that said, I'm going to now put my mexican wrestler mask on and blow up some mailboxes, loving this track!

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Arya Stark

Hahaha, I'd rather not psychoanalyze you outloud. =P

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