Screaming at the Moon
 

In my second attempt at living forever I promise to cover a smaller number of topics with less coherent thought than I had prior.

Eventually this will become cave drawings, but genius cave drawing none-the-less.

I say in advance with all due confidence, you're welcome.

-Big3

Tom Waits once said his favorite portion of the symphony was the seconds before the tap of the conductors stick, when the instruments of all stripes are in their own worlds without care to the sounds they or their siblings are making. This big mess of noise was what he loved most.

I can’t say I share that passion but I do share its sentiment. Years ago in some music appreciation class I’d be better off forgetting about, we discussed the possibility that there was music made not to be heard. Made to be made, or made for the self. If it could be made, then why would it? And what purpose would that music serve on the whole. I had no idea, and the clever answers given about some eastern religion and a flute never really impressed me.

The answer I would find years later is that music should be played by itself because (and this is going to blow your mind here) because you think it sounds good there. Generally this worms its way into acceptance. That spasm of music Waits enjoys has been implemented and used in his music for years – maybe not exactly the same but influenced enough- and many the novice ear would agree it’s a big snapshot of noise in every song he’s made. Music is best to me when it’s a slathering of crap that only sounds correct because I’ve heard this song before. And few bands do it quite like Modest Mouse.

Before I get into examples of why I like their approach I’d like to discuss what I don’t like. The art crowd loves to take this idea in concept and apply it mathematically to places it sounds good if you want to pretend you’re interesting; Fischerspooner, Mindless Self-Indulgence, Whirlwind Heat.

For every idiot with a dream of making their lack of effort into a million dollars, these three horrid examples serve as the vision of the dream realized. The difference here is intent. If the good examples sounds like the city streets; a bustling and busy kaleidoscope of noise, then these second-rate hacks sound like the screeching wheels of the subway cars beneath those Metro streets. If you suppose intent is too hard to determine, lets put it this way. There’s sloppy which implies a cultural dissonance, and then there’s the noises that make babies cry and adults crouch into battle stance. These are the differences I’m addressing here. Its really a battle of which sounds better, Godzilla or your High School Marching Band at the start of the school year.

Why Modest mouse does this best, and why any band does this well, is because these sounds have roles, they play characters and they very much add the right plot devices that are necessary to the performance that is the song you’re hearing. The crashing of broken accordions in pirate songs, the piercing lone howl of distant wolves that are eerily squeezed from bended guitar strings, the drunken frat-rat trumpets of renegade whales out on the hunt.

And the latter much more so, because the b-side scrap book released earlier this year has the outtakes in which those lone trumpets are met by an Issac Brock only prepared for the dry-run laughing on track saying “I love this ****.”

Don’t we all?

Men of Music and Messes tend to have a grander vision for their music of their impulses they are putting to music, and this is personified as it comes on the heels of a musical landscape that was immediate and thoughtless. Where red-faced screams are not the placeholders of real emotion, they are considered the real emotion. But like the empty calories of hamburgers at drive-thru’s these nuggets of music could neither sustain itself or the needs of its listening base.

Like conspiracy theories screamed in the streets of old Rome by snake-oil salesmen and mad priests, those looking for a more challenging challenge have looked to the masquerade of human engagement that is, for all intents and purposes, going on in the indie theaters and nowhere else.

While Brock continues to employee actors rather than musicians, the mess and its understanding are starting to recede, even if the assumption is that the music is becoming messier. But perhaps this won’t end as I assume, my expectations of Shakespearian scripts will devolve into the primal act of children jumping into a pile of autumn leaves. But if the end should be nothing more than the eruption of dead vegetation, crackling underfoot while children cackle then we should settle our minds upon the truth that intent however misdirected is best when it is honest.

Uh..yeah, I like Modest Mouse too.

Anyway, I look forward to more of your bizarre phrasing.
Here is my favorite part..

I sort of assumed it didn't make sense, but thanks for the words either way.

They won't all be this...odd.

Could a band be made with the following instruments: guitar, tambourine, harmonica.

And if it could, what limitations would be set upon them, and what new freedoms might they find. There outta be a contest. 2 weeks to get your act together, and the first band to raise $2,000 wins.

Theres a value in driving toward minimalism. Phil Spector has gone to jail and he ought to take his “wall of sound” with him. I have to imagine (and I’ve read nothing on the subject) but spector was emulating the big bands through the kaleidoscope vision of the psycedelic 60’s. It was familiar, it was fresh, it was innovative. But its not anymore, and the idea that bombast equated to value is outdated and old. Let its final death knell be rung by the echo effect on the guitar of Edge. In fact let him please be the last acceptable notion and lets write these Nu-metal clowns off for good.

We go small, and we go simple because at some atomic level all noise has to have some meaning. As long as friction will exist, so too will sound. There’s almost an innate natural element to sound. You can tell when a belt on a car needs to be adjusted from across a parking lot because rubber and metal have a sound. Minimalism in music is primarily the idea that sounds to create noise is missing the point, that no noise is irrelevant, and that all noise can move together, as if forged, to create something. I’ve italicized that simply because I’m personifying sound. Sound cannot remain sound it must become an element of something larger.

If you’ve read my ramblings before, I always talk about musical instruments becoming characters as if in a play. The noise of an instrument becomes a character. In this regard, Phil Spector choose to ignore Shakespeare and embrace Stomp or Blue Man group; all visual bombast, the audio equivalent of the 4th of July, but without the culture, the flags, or Arthur Fielder.

The instruments selected above are for the most part played by hacks, or at least they can be played by hacks. They rise up, not in musty basements from the well watered soil of scale-training, or musical theory but of the gritty street corner notions of money, populism, and what sells. The street musician can tell when sounds great simply by the jingle of loose change in his instruments case, laid open on the sidewalk like a etherized patient.*

What comes from the roots of history and theory seem good, and what comes from money seems corrupted, but the technical always gives way to the techno: that mechanized autometry that sounds soulless. While its corporate origins seem bad, there is to be said in capitalism and music a very human element, as is most things in entertainment. Selling products can be about a fiscal bottom line, selling entertainment (services) is always about the emotion in people.

Their origins are simple and driven by fame and attention but they also make due with the tools at their disposal. Like survivalists in the woods, the novice musician will make a home from tinder wood, and a masterpiece from three notes. They also come to embrace a very technical element, counterpuntal interplay, as if through osmosis or telepathy. The musician that learns in a basement does so through a source of authority, with the implication being that the instructor is inherently correct. Learning to play with an instructor only serves to reinforce this notion when experiencing the styles of musicians out in the world.

But this argument isn’t new. This is the practical versus the academic. Can books beat experience, or tradition over innovation. While the notions discovered in the past aren’t overturned, the very premise of its application to music may begin a new trend not in droll theory but in how we perceive the noises and sounds people put to use. What was once background filler, let be political statement on most conducive theories to the brilliance of actors built from sounds.

*All due credit to T.S. Elliot

Amazing. An intellectual tour de force that is both thought-provoking and finished with farm-raised dry wit demi-glaze. A feel good thread the whole family can enjoy. Who wants some fiddle-faddle?

I can't tell if you're being a douche or not.

No douchiness, just fun.

Oh alright. But still, not as "intellectual" as you first mentioned.

I always worry I get lost in thought and become to confusing.

your thread needed a blurb. I gave it one.

ha, thanks pal!

What the **** is up with Christmas Music?

One of the biggest abhorences in the last 50 years of music was the late 80's/early 90's because for one reason or another the managed to achieve without calling it that, post-soul.Post-punk was all the lack of talent with the absence of energy. Post-soul, is all the movements without the actual soul. This frankenstein of a movement was perpetuated by the likes of Vanessa Williams, Luther Vandross, and Babyface.This is is always overproduced and marked by two distinct features; some synthetic version of strings or a choir, and a bass guitar that likely doesn't have notation to read, its some improv jazz guy who needed a paycheck and they had him come in to "freestyle."Its a disguesting show of form over feel, but we know that. What I want to know is - who listens to this ****?

It reminds me of this book Practicing I once read and put down halfway through where they were discussing the authors experience in a class on Microtonal Elements. Where in young asipiring composers are asked to write something like a conversation. In the book he chastises them to some effect such as...

"I told you to write like conversaitons! Conversations do not go da-de da-de da-de da-de."

Supposedly students dropped out because they lost their ear for music, they been upable to keep perfect pitch and learn keys by ear. I don't think I need to tell you folks this, but music does go da-de da-de da-de. What I read in that book, and what I heard in my youth from thesesoul-killing, one-foot-int-the-Disney-payroll abominations is the same without being the same. Kids out there, like the author himself, get a good running start, they start to spread their wings and they take off to some far and distant satelite with no relation to other people, just an eyes closed headlong charge once more into the breach. If I'm feeling my arrogant oats, I'm inclined to say its the same mentiality that leads people to believe their smarter than people they hate. Those who were never cool hide in the dark recesses of scholarly research. And while Music can mimic Math in many ways, we should pay close attention to the Nasa scientists who, with all their astronomical knowledge can't figure out how to hitch a boat to a trailor. Both employe discoveries in Math, but one is so far removed from a practicality that all their hard earned knowledge is wasted.

But Vanessa Williams will likely never be accused of being too well versed in either Math or Music theory. What she is, is an artistic vaccum. Theres no one holding the reigns on the a record like heres, theres just someone at the Record Company gates denying the world an album until they feel its worth the investment. At no point will she challenge their rejection.

What we have with these albums is a series of interested parties. Invested people who backe it financially, producers who want it to conincide with a film, and for whatever reason an endless abundane of ****ing Christmas Music which cannot be murdered to death quite a bit. For all the attack the Christians in America claim to be under you'd think they'd ask for these renditions to cease. If theres one thing thats likely going to stop east coast lefties from potentially joining the under nation under god, its a Carrie Underwood remake of a Vanessa Williams's "I"m Dreaming of a White Christmas" with some extra twang thrown in to grab some hillbillies.

But the problem with this system of creation is that it assumes people are going to fight for their piece of the pie. Everyone in this scenario likely should, except for the studio musicians who as I've surmised earlier, are likely cowering under their scales and stacato notations telling each other how their all morons. And this is where the worold suffers.

If your assertion is that the bass meandering about under the slicked up glaze of synths is irrelvent because its so low on the spectrum no one will even notice, then the jokes on the unfortunate saps, like us, who are forced to listen to this swill at the office or the mall.

Christmas music has a lot of different meaning to a lot of different people. I for one think the modern songs are best, only rivaled by older songs that were unapologetically relvelent for their time. "Holly Jolly Christmas" for example sounds like Wally Cleaver wrote it, and it should remain there forever. But this genocide towards old standards only happens here. Rare is the cover of a Cole Porter song because its good. In fact he's most often covered by the snarky fringe to show how educated they are, and of course because vintage/retro is "in."

Like so many of my posts in this second incarnation of a journal I don't really have a point to make here. I'm just rambling with the intent of debate and a goal to get people writing. I heard some ****cake of a song on the radio and was irritated enough to write like an eye tearing at the presentation of a foreign body. I'm always reaction, no solution. But I hope you found something in here to feed on. If this journal was to have one sub-line maybe its just that; If my entries are ****, the may I be read by the flies.

Merry Christmas,
Big3

Its not terribly counter-culture to say you like Norman Rockwell. I don't know where that leaves me but I think he's as close to a novelist as any painter can get. And though he speaks for the rural folk, I feel as if he captures humanity (at least American humanity) in its raw and unaffected state. The paintings are the skeletal frame of how society is made. Some of the scenes are less fancy than some of us are used to, but we can only build upon the scenes he saw between the 30's and 50's. The photo above is some of the essence of what makes music, for me, brilliant.

Music today, at least what I'm hearing coming out is contrived. Not totally but its thought about, as any profession will get you, enough that image matters. And while I agree with Tom Waits in believing all artists are bad imitations of their idols, when your idols are too contrived, their philosophy and yours moves more toward a synthetic concoction.

But what I love about this painting is that its just a bunch of old guys, sitting around in the backroom, cramped and in dining room chairs of someones business, late into the night for no other reason that to jam. Maybe they wouldn't use that term, but that's what they are doing. What I like about the roots music that's depicted here is its coming from the soul of labor. These guys aren't paid to make music, their paid to cut hair, and sweep floors. They make rent by laying brick, and growing crops.

Today many sounds we hear are either from two schools, techinical tampering or imitating these guys, who played with what they had and if that was out of tune, they worked with what they had. This is the same reason I hate American Idol. Mistakes are taken out of anything the contestants do if they ever make an album, guys in a back room roll with it. In fact the world owes more to bad instruments than anyone else for our drive toward new sounds, and how we manipulate them.



Part of my love has one foot in paranoia. I've always said of life, I'd rather sleep in the mud than in the Penthouse because when you sleep in the mud they can't take anything from you. With guys holding instruments in a room, they never can't play music, theres no amps, theres no microphones, instruments get new roles so they aren't buried. It might be why I stopped playing piano, but this year my girlfriends mother gave us her deceased fathers accordion because of the sound I heard coming from Johnny Cash's Wayfaring Stranger.

When I leave any place, in this case MB, I should hope that I've inspired at least one person to get out there and get their hands dirty, to play until their clothes are soaked in some dingy room where you play because its the best you've ever felt. And if nothing else, that those demands are put on other people. God Bless the Dirt Farmers.

good music just rumbles below the cool molten crag of the surface, moving red hot and undiscovered. Its music though, it isn't this kinks, lets-slash-the-amps **** that puts quality in bad music like ripped jeans at Urban Outfitters.

I can't stand the bad=quality **** that stinks up the emo/hardcore/punk/nuwave forums here. Music is still music, I don't care how much your father was an *******, play your ****ing instrument.

This is an offshoot of my overarching philosphy that the 60's was a giant nuke that hit culture and killed anything that was ever good. Now I have to look at religious statues covered in excrement and call it art. Or bad political poetry someone scrawls on a napkin and debate its insight.

There was a thread started by swim I think in the Folk forum, and it talked about what your favorite folk standard was. I loved it and it was gravely unfortunate no one else did, but to me thats the sort of thing that defines a guy. Take this old battled standard, likely sung before people played golf on St. Andrews, and make it new, and fresh, and breath taking.

If Neko Case's "Wayfaring Stranger" doesn't slay people, if Tracy Chapman's "house of the rising son" doesn't make you flip out, or if Springsteen's "Eyes on the Prize" doesn't take your unborn children outback behind the wood shed and teach them what manners are then you're listening to music for the wrong reasons, and frankly, on behalf of all the dead musicians, my ancestry, and my pet goat Victor - go **** yourself.

Sometimes a good song can make me feel like I'm praying, and sometimes a good song can make me feel one with the entire universe - all its suffering and all its glory - and if when you listen to music you've got an agenda, well, as they say in WoW, "you're doing it wrong." its not all old men on their front porch with an acoustic singing broken-hearted dirges 6 shots in on a bottle of Wild Turkey.

I'll never forget how I felt the first time I heard the solo in Joe Natho's moms car when i was 12 for Enter Sandman. Or sitting 40 rows back at the Aggains Arena two summers ago when the White Stripes took everyone to the Church of old fuzz and made pissy 16 year olds feel a part of something for the first time in their lives. The deep and personal is equal to the brutal passions and fire or wild men on electric axes who can burn stadiums to the ground with well placed arrangements.

[Ending, To Be Ended]

You don't have to have a degree in English to write a book so you shouldn't have to be a great musician to make music and that's the reason why music does work. It's something we all feel that we can aspire to and if it wasn't for half of these guys then music would still be stagnating in ****ty jukeboxes boring the world to death.

I like melody, structure and order in music if it appeals. I also like disharmony, chaos and energy in my music. All music forms are valid to the listener and if someone can get an emotional link to as many different genres then you are all the more richer for it. But then I could have completely misread your posts because of your unique writing style.

I don't think you misread anything - what you quoted is 100% self-righteous bull****. And presumptuous. My childhood has nothing to do with why I like music that Big3 has deemed bad. I would never have the gall to say that Big3 only likes easily digestible music because he had a nice daddy (I really have no idea why he likes what he likes). Yeah, music is music - but only if Big3 approves of the instrumentation? Bull****

Really enjoy reading your journal! But I love what you wrote here ^ most. Very well put, and I completely agree with you. I don't know if this will interest you, but a country singer named Johnny Lee said something similar in one of his songs called Cherokee Fiddle. Heres a bit of the lyrics that relate to what you said:

Quote:

And when he'd smell the smoke and the cinders He'd slick back his hair, and open up his case He'd play the Cherokee Fiddle, he'd play it for the whiskey Cause good whiskey never let him lose his place He was always there, playing for the miners The Devil's Dream was a song they understood And then he'd go out to Oklahoma But he'd wait till the trains were running and the weather was good Now the Indians are dressing up like cowboys And the cowboys are putting leather and turquoise on And the music is sold by lawyers And the fools who fiddled in the middle of the stations are gone Some folks say they'll never miss him That old fiddle squealed like the engines brakes The Cherokee Fiddle is gone forever Like the music of the whistle that the old locomotives made

There's a lot of good old school soul singers around and they're all not over the age of 60. Bettye LaVette is one of the older singers was ignored during golden age of soul and she's making some of the best music of her life right now. Sharon Jones' music sounds like it's straight out of the old Stax studio in South Memphis. Sharon Jones and and a collective of old school soul singers record on the Daptone label, an artist owned label based in Brooklyn NY. This most exciting soul singer I've heard in the past couple of years is a 32 year old Canadian soul singer name Jully Black. Jully has yet to find a big audience in the USA or Europe but this 2007 version of Seven Day Fool is sublime. Check out the Jully video below for evidence that real soul music is alive and well.



I'm at a loss to explain the Vanderossation of soul music in the 80s. Some things are beyond all rational explanation. I used to wonder how Billy Joel sold millions and millions of albums yet I've never met a single solitary person who had a Billy Joel record in their music collection. Who are these people? Are they also the invisible cabal responsible for the success of Lady Gaga, John Mayer and Michael Bublé? Maybe they've put something in the drinking water that lulls people into purchasing hideously banal music. I'm baffled.

I'm a big fan of your style of writting. Only the brave or the foolish express themselves the kind of unflinching honesty you've shown in your journal so far. Those who champion integrity are usually rewarded with a crown of thorns and a big wooden cross to lug to their own crucifixion.

Generally stated; I don't know that I've ever been taken so incorrectly, as is displayed with the three different responses seen below.

Yeah I think so. My intent isn't to sound overproduced and slicked up, it was just a general call to pull away from the marketing sensibilities that come with convention, so what I'm avoiding or saying people ought to avoid is the general iPod music that is often times knockoffs of new and popular music.

I actually love garage music, and the guys in the south on front porches trading music lessons for vegetables and what not, what I'm saying here actually matches up with what you're saying fairly closely. I didn't call out Luther Vandross because I love the music he makes.

While the "my will is law" post is coming and appropriate, thats not what I'm saying. I once went to see a show where the Whirlwind Heat played. They were either manufactured or stupid and heres why:

Lead singer couldn't play a guitar despite having one, and this was "edgy" because he used it to make noises. What that was supposed to symbolize I have no idea. What I can tell you is that it didn't have a god damn thing to do with music. this is a nut shell is my point. Once one gets into the rebellion rut, they continue down that track in every aspect. What I'm saying is, I don't give a **** how much you hate your father, all authority isn't your father, "rules" aren't your father, shut the **** up and play something. Stop ****ting on stage with your mouth duct taped shut and call it art.

At first I think you took me wrong but I think you're picking up what i'm putting down here at the end. And while I wouldn't put those 4 artists in the same category, I get your point.

Thanks for the kind words. I think they only hang the ones they know they can get away with.


@ Flower Child in regards to the previous post. Thanks for reading. I like this quote you've left me. I'll dig a little deeper on that vein.

Well, I don't know Whirlwind Heat so I won't defend them. I do see your point - I just probably won't agree with you 100% on which music is stupid.

You already made the exact same statement. Since I already know I won't agree with you about which music is stupid and, in fact, which music "doesn't have anything to do with music" - I will probably also disagree with you on the reasons why something is or isn't stupid, etc. And what's with the repeated references to 'edgy' performance art? ****ting on stage certainly has much less to do with music than Whirlwind Heat, no?

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?

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?

I think we're done here.

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.

Lonely on Cookie Mountain
 

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.

And I was thinking about you
 

"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.

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

And what is this one giving away?

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!

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

well PM me then, friend-o.

Why must hipsters kill everything?

I read someone that questioned what they'd be remembered for. That you couldn't be remembered for remembering (a retro dig). But remembering is unfortunately what they do.

I'm pissed tonight about this new blackberry commercial...


There are multiple things going horribly wrong here and I want to just throw **** against the wall here, but lets start with the choice.

The Beatles "All you need is love" is somewhat offensive. I'm not actually offended but the concept of the song is slightly different than the idea of "all you need is a Blackberry." At this point in their lives I'm sure Ringo and Paul are letting it slide, but I'd like a little of the fury we saw when Michael Jackson allowed Nike to use Revolution to hock (sp?) shoes.

But even if we forgive the terrible connection drawn between love and constant communication, I can't forgive, and this is the point on which most of my ire is focused, is the selection of the Beatles and having them being sung like the love child of James Mercer and Beck Hansen. Its weak, its intentionally sloppy, its skeletal and frail, woefully fragile, and sung as if it was his very bared and open soul.

HOW COULD YOU NOT LOVE HIM...AND BUY A BLACKBERRY?!?!?!?!?!?!

This commercial was aimed like a big fat nuke at hipster urbanite trash so concerned with being counter-culture that they don't see corporate america whispering in their ears like some Kanye-shaded, skinny-jeaned, Devil-wears-Diesel Jeans Lucifer telling them that iPod, Blackberry, and Timbuktwo messanger bags know them, understand them, and are the only salvation. I can see Ana Marie Cox declaring it a godsend.

What you ought to be really concerned with here is how calculated corporate america is, and how on the money they were with this one. If you do any amount of research, and by that I mean the first page of a google search you'll find this...


Esteban

The cover is sung by Grayson Mathews its an ad song company based out of canada.
Oct 31 2009, 02:52pm

(from: Link)

Well thanks Esteban. If what our Ecuadorian* friend is telling us is correct then that means this song wasn't even selected by corporate america, it was designed by them.

And lets be direct about here, this isn't a psychedelic movement driving toward something so culturally unacceptable it can't be co-opted. This isn't punk which was co-opted so well that its been eating its own children for the last 40 years with the death-rattle screams of "that isn't real punk." These are nerds, based in intelligence, culturally disciplined to be counter-culture and for so long reigned as impregnable to the gray suits in the boardroom.

Whats most scary is that the gray suits don't give up, and what this tells me is that Corporate had to create, avatar-like, some form of lab-hipster born to seduce the city-transit dwelling race far beyond their Claw-Machine reach to their wallets. Let this entry not be grouped with my traditionally pissy rants, full of harrumph and temper tantrum.

No my friends, let this be grouped with the fire in the pulpit warning, a Jonathan Edwards "Sinners" speech, a prophecy of the terrible events to come. There are sleeper cells amongst us. Grip your duct-taped wallets tightly, keep your "fixie" locked up inside, and remember to wear the safe color if you leave the house...gray.


*I have no idea where Esteban is from.

I'd write more, but you don't write anything. So heres the whiplash-listing of the best things to happen to your ears last decade:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi.../b6/Lovage.jpg

1. Music to make love to your old lady by - Lovage

Its not the concept or the experimentation - its the music. Haunting, well researched characters, not serious enough for the goth kids, too serious for the frat kids. If you don't like it go **** yourself.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...te_Stripes.png

2. Elephant - The White Stripes

The sound of unrepentant thunder. If you don't like it, it will **** you.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi.../Cookiemtn.jpg

3. Return to Cookie Mountain - TV on the Radio

This is what it sounds like when cyborgs have nightmares. Hipster nation channels its inner Hitch**** and scares the bejesus out of mainstream radio.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_VZN1v4y6WP...hs+-+Is+Is.jpg

4. Is Is - Yeah Yeah Yeah's

Songs that may as well be sea chantys. Stay on the shore, Y x3 releases the Kraken on a power packed EP.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...-blueprint.jpg

5. The Blueprint - Jay-Z

Even your mother gets dissed on this one. If you don't like it, Jay-Z tells you to go **** yourself on track 2.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...r_the_Deaf.jpg

6. Songs for the Deaf - Queens of the Stone Age

Apt title. "A million dollars" jumps from the bushes and punches you in the ear. The other 12 tracks jump in like Southie kids on a saturday night.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._Stankonia.JPG

7. Stankonia - Outkast Truth be told, even my Senior English teacher chimed in on the chorus to "Miss Jackson" when the late kid would walk in singing it. This albums so good Miss Jacksons daughter got ****ed.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...fort_Eagle.jpg

8. Comfort Eagle - Cake The greatest band that ever played eletro-funkabilly Mariacountry.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Cold_roses.jpg

9. Cold Roses - Ryan Adams

He's an eccentric douche that gives you the best deal in concert, but he makes on hell of a double-disc.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...28album%29.jpg

10. Pretty Little Head - Nelly McKay

One of the more bizzare albums listed, but its earned its spot for ****s sake.

The day will come where, for the betterment of everything we hold sacred, I'll have to stand against and slaughter armies of the ignorant. When that day comes I will skull**** my enemies to this song...

That version and everything? xDD

:yeah:

yes. after the insults levied, its the only suitable indignity I'd be willing to suffer unto the lot of you ****s.

I was reading an interview some years back with Maynard on the then forthcoming Emotive, A Perfect Circles cover album, released on the U.S. Election day 2004. They were talking about some of the song selections and why he'd chosen to rearrange the songs they way he did, which was one of the strong features to the project (rearrangements).

They'd asked, because its all but obligatory, what songs they'd not chosen and one of the songs he really focused on was Elton John's Border Song. To finish my point with the interview, he said the arrangement was so ingrained with the song he found it pretty difficult to "make the song his own" (whatever that means). But beyond that, it made me go dig up the song and since that first listen its never been a song I've been too far away from.

If you've not heard it, its nothing ostensibly amazing. It sounds like it was written in the 1970's (it was) and its political position isn't something you haven't read on the bumper of the car in front of you, but I think what makes it so great to me, and this isn't far removed from Maynard's point, is that John knows how to make an arrangement fit with a song. More directly, the song tends to be a perfect unit where notes are neither wasted nor movements lacking full musical expression.

Now if you're only mildly familiar with Elton's work, you're probably aware of what i'm getting at here, but whats most phenomenal with this song is that it isn't one of the more enduring works he's produced, and yet 40 years after it was introduced to the major markets its enduring. Its ware shows its years, but its beauty still exists, like a classical piece that remains timeless because it was perfect for its period.

I'm always trying to understand music in a way that allows me to know it from all angles. There was a time, for example, that I saw songs as some sort of video game code you didn't so much as learn as you did memorize. While I've come along was from that point, songs like Border Song still hold tremendous power for me, because their simplicity will always remind me of what skeleton works best for these musical frameworks; saying it directly, and playing only what supports that simplicity, and just seeing where you come out on the other end.

Chris Cornell was asked once what song he wished he'd written, and he said at the time (around the inception of Audioslave) that it was Karma Police, because it was so simple we all should have thought of it. (that's a heavy paraphrase). With simple songs, they don't sound amazing, they just sound like they've always been. As if it was pulled from the collective conscious and reintroduced to a forgetful public.