More to come... remember, we knew him when.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
What are they watching...Episode I
The Clarion Content is inaugurating a new feature in the Pop Culture section this week called, "What are they watching?" The they in questions refers to the adults of the future, young folks, under seventeen. YouTube is the venue of choice, and we are relying on input from our public to generate this column. We hope to feature a new video weekly. And as always, we appreciate your feedback.
This week we bring you, "A Word with Nathan..." from DesandNate of Sandpoint, Idaho.
This week we bring you, "A Word with Nathan..." from DesandNate of Sandpoint, Idaho.
Is Oasis breaking up?
The BBC reports that Noel Gallagher has quit the Manchester U.K. rock band Oasis. Brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher have had a long history of feuding. According to the BBC, "The brothers have always had a fractious relationship, and a string of tours have fallen apart over the past 15 years." This is however, the first time either brother has officially quit the group.
Noel was quoted, "It's with some sadness and great relief to tell you that I quit Oasis tonight. People will write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer. Apologies to all the people who bought tickets for the shows in Paris, Konstanz and Milan."
Oasis has reportedly sold over 50 million albums since 1993.
Bummer. Read the whole story here.
Noel was quoted, "It's with some sadness and great relief to tell you that I quit Oasis tonight. People will write and say what they like, but I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer. Apologies to all the people who bought tickets for the shows in Paris, Konstanz and Milan."
Oasis has reportedly sold over 50 million albums since 1993.
Bummer. Read the whole story here.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Greetings from Boulder
Getting ready this morning to head to the Reggae on the Rocks Festival at the legendary Red Rocks Ampitheatre in Morrison, CO. Your friends and mine GPGDS are opening the show, playing at their biggest venue (both in terms of prestige and audience) yet. We caught up with bassist extraordinaire Jamie/James last night and hit the Boulder nightlife. Also ran into other members of the GPGDS ensemble:
and had some yummy, fruity pebbles encrusted frozen yogurt. Looking forward to a great bunch of shows today; Lee "Scratch" Perry, Fishbone, and The English Beat (or "Mirror in the Bathroom" fame) are all playing after Giant Panda, along with some other legends of reggae. Good times ahead; of course, first we must go have brunch with Beck's internet friends. Don't ask. Regardless, it's quite nice to be enjoying highs of 78 in these mountains as opposed to the Valley-ish alternative.
More posting to come - I am predictably mired in the start of a hectic ASU semester - but in the meantime, check out who ran into one another at Chautauqua earlier this week!
Alright, on to the tunes! And fear not, haven't forgotten about myriad promised reviews. We saw the quite excellent Inglourious Basterds last weekend, too, so yeah, much to write in addition to theses prospecti. Ugh.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Australian Fossil Field
In the northern Australian state of Queensland, near the town of Eromanga, an area that once used to be a vast inland sea, is yielding a bumper crop fossils. According to the BBC, Australian scientists discovered a nearly complete fossil of a new species of dinosaur, a large plant-eating sauropod.
The scientists have nicknamed the fossil Zac. Zac, like other sauropods, had a very long neck, a small head and blunt teeth, and a long tail to counter-balance the weight of the neck. The remains are estimated to be 97 million years old. According to the Australian scientists the area, now a sheep farm, will yield many more fascinating fossil finds in the coming years.
Read more here.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Funny or Pathetic?
Ostensibly these are the winners of an International Pun Contest (unedited). They hold those? Really?
This man represents the average age of people who found these funny.
9. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The Stewardess
looks at him and says, ‘I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per
passenger.
8. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says,
‘Dam!’
7. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the
craft. Unsurprisingly, it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your
kayak and heat it, too.
6. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, ‘I’ve lost my electron.’ The other
says, ‘Are you sure?’ The first replies, ‘Yes, I’m positive.’
5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.
4. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in
the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour,
the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. But why they asked, as they moved off. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘I can’t stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer.’
3. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named Ahmal. The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him Juan. Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, ‘They’re twins! If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Ahmal.’
2. A group of friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened a
small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from
the men of god, a rival florist across town thought the competition was
unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to ‘persuade’ them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he’d be back if they didn’t close up shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.
1. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which
produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little,
which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad
breath. This made him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.
Oy vey!
This man represents the average age of people who found these funny.
9. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The Stewardess
looks at him and says, ‘I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per
passenger.
8. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says,
‘Dam!’
7. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the
craft. Unsurprisingly, it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your
kayak and heat it, too.
6. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, ‘I’ve lost my electron.’ The other
says, ‘Are you sure?’ The first replies, ‘Yes, I’m positive.’
5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.
4. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in
the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour,
the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. But why they asked, as they moved off. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘I can’t stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer.’
3. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named Ahmal. The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him Juan. Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, ‘They’re twins! If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Ahmal.’
2. A group of friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened a
small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from
the men of god, a rival florist across town thought the competition was
unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to ‘persuade’ them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he’d be back if they didn’t close up shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.
1. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which
produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little,
which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad
breath. This made him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.
Oy vey!
Sunday, August 23, 2009
AR: Head Hunters
Herbie Hancock - Head Hunters (1973)
Easily the quintessence of funk-jazz - or, um, jazz-funk, depending on your point of view - Herbie Hancock's 1973 monster-of-an-album Head Hunters effectively tore the roof off the sucka and married jazz and r&b/funk-soul into one of those old-school, traditional style marriages, you know, the kinds that don't quit no matter how bad things get*. Without going into too much of a history - you can certainly glean that from other corners of the internet - the album was a gigantic commercial success, attracting a vastly wider-than-jazz audience and selling well over a million copies. Hancock's virtuoso playing on electric organ and synths and phasers /photon blasters / iPhones and whatever else the hell he had over funky drumming in the style of Sly & Marvin hit all kinds of right vibes, and this super accessible, dance-groove music found many a home on American stereos. This caused all kinds of predictable hand-wringing from particular circles - is it *really* jazz? what's with all those electronics? won't anyone think of the children? - but there's really no denying 1, the fantastic technical playing on this disc or 2, the indelible imprint it left on jazz, rock, funk, hip-hop, and let's be honest, TV show themes**.
* - This is not HH or HH's fault, but yeah, jazz/funk fusion, with its underlying "hey rock/funk kid, let's stretch this out" invitation, (arguably) brought jazz to a creative halt. It's also probably responsible for, among other things, at least part of the Phish aesthetic, too, so it's not all bad. But no contest on the general sentiment that liscenses to jazz noodle should only have been allowed to be issued to the most capable hands, and they were not. This is a long way of saying that popularity is a double-edged sword.
** - It's unbelievable how many times Bull, Mac, Harry Anderson, Dan Fielding, and that nighttime picture of the courthouse pop into my head in reaction to certain riffs on this disc. Testimony to how aped this sound was through the late '70s / early '80s.
The leadoff track is an all-time BEAST of a bassline riff / jazz number, the indomitable "Chameleon." You know this even if you don't. Chugging along at fifteen minutes (!!)(and this was the most popular track!), this is pretty much the stretched out groove based improv vehicle that sold a thousand Casios. I have no idea if that's historically accurate, but it's an amazing display; the drum and bass backbone is impeccable, and the jam coming from keyboards (and later a sax) is the benchmark for all similar music. Differing textures and rhythms, the leads are enthralling throughout. What's even cooler is that you may tend to remember this as just an on-and-on jam that sits on that opening riff, but it's got a classic AABA structure - around the halfway point, there's an extended space/ambient softer jam that refreshes the song and makes the outro that much better. What else to say about this one; it's THE signature funk-jazz and more than worth the poa. I also defy you to hear that opening riff and not at least subconsciously, real Cool Chester Cheetah style, mutter, "Baaaadass..."
Even weirder is that the next track is arguably funkier. "Watermelon" is a rearrangement of a HH song fron the '60s and is famous for its blow-over-a-beer bottle vocal opening. That opening superbly coalesces into a laid-back, loose breezy summer jam, perfectly merging a great halting bassline, silky sax and sparse guitar. The syncopation of the various instruments in establishing the funk feel of the track out of the somewhat tribal intro is fantastic. Chester actually managed to get a bit Cooler here, quite unbelievably. Another bangup track.
After those two tracks, it would be near impossible for the rest of the album to measure up, and while it doesn't, it's still damn fine stuff. "Sly" is an homage to he of "& the Family Stone" fame, and it starts with another laid back, sentimental slow groove that builds into a frenetic solo workout. This more than the other tracks sounds like "jazz fusion" to me, more of a workout virtuoso display than a real tuneful exercise. Don't get me wrong, it's awesome, it just sits more in the "for those who like crazy all over the map solos" bin. The sax in particular is played alien communications style - allaboutjazz.com describes this as a "free-for-all," and that's spot on. The closer "Vein Melter" is a waaaaaay slowed down atmospheric ballad (especially after the breakneck of the previous track) that serves as the after-after-after party soundtrack and soothes appropriately. It's beautiful and backed by an almost dirge-steady rhythm section of snare / tambourine. Good, but very, very spacey.
And that's it - 42 minutes of primo keyboard-led jams, and a (sub)genre was born. It's a fantastic album, top to bottom and back again great, and again, I'd recommend it emphatically had it just been Chameloen as a single. I personally don't care (as should be obvious given my other in-Ph-atuations) about the "it's not *real* jazz angle that is occasionally taken w/r/t HH; in my mind the word "jazz" does not imply its instrumentation. This move just added an exciting dimension to the genre, followers be damned. And really, the genre melting just means it's essential as a jazz album AND a funk album. And that's cool.
Status: Desert Island Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "Chameleon"
AR: Once Soundtrack
Primarily Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova - Once: Music From the Motion Picture (2007)
In the arsenal of every acoustic guitar-wielding balladeer is the *Emote Dynamic*, usually accomplished by beginning with contemplative/plaintive whisper-singing and soft-strumming and then cresceNDOING the everloving hell out of it to POWER STRUMS and SCREAMS. It's a weapon that is effective in small doses, though some listeners seemingly can't get enough of it. It certainly divides the indie crowds into camps, or really just divides me - I *love* In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, which could be said to use the dynamic at times, but for the most part can't stomach the same sorts of antics when they come from, e.g., Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes fame. Per usual w/r/t my taste in music, it can boil down to some analysis-defying aspect of the person's voice - though I'm guessing it has something to do with degree of high / piercing /shrill that the singing achieves. But it's also just an unsubtle technique - screaming about one's pain, "emo" or no, is not exactly original, and it can strike me as a cheap way to get a point across.
As far as Once (is concerned): Oh! The Emoting! Glen Hansard goes to the well way too many times on this album for my tastes. I hate for it to be the first thing I mention, but it's grating and stands out. I'm talking about the tracks "Lies," "Leave," the end of "Once," and GOOD LORD, the closing track "Say it to Me." It even pops up a little bit on the entirely lovely Oscar-winning track "Falling Slowly;" for contrast, it's used pretty effectively (meaning in a more natural non-"look at me EMOTE" way) on another good track, "When Your Mind's Made Up." The problem is that once you've heard that voice lose its bounds, you start to anticipate it even when it doesn't AND get irritated by it in places it otherwise would be appropriate; i.e. you too strongly associate the offensive technique with his voice in general. So he, not just the tic, puts you on guard, which is especially unfortunate because he absolutely does not need to do it: check out the lovely and vocally unaffected "All the Way Down" where his restraint manages to convey just as much emotion.
That, really, is just the thing: the explosions* are unnecessary, because this disc overfloweth with beautiful moments. The entire work is an intimate late-night affair, and is way beyond charming if you don't mind the tics. The Oscar-winner, as mentioned, is lovely, as are all of the other songs that feature Marketa Irglova - "If You Want Me" is a flat out spooky, enchanting French/Gypsy-tinged ballad, and her plain piano and strings solo piece "The Hill" wins, too. I really enjoy the synth-driven "Fallen From the Sky," though from there out the back half of the disc sags a bit (this disc is definitely top-heavy, as the first four tracks are pretty easily the most memorable tunes from the film).
* - All of this commentary, of course, may speak less to the aesthetic qualities of the music and more to my own discomfort with sleeve-worn raw emotion, but I really don't think so. I just don't like getting screamed at in an acoustic guitar context. :)
That is another great thing about the disc - it does quickly call the quirky beauty of the movie to mind, so if you liked the film as much as I did, you can't help but feel a little bit of viewer nostalgia for the songs that centered it. In that respect, it's a great film soundtrack, and even if I'm not entirely on board with this sort of music's delivery, I do thoroughly enjoy re-hearing these highlights.
Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "If You Want Me"
Saturday, August 22, 2009
AR: In Rainbows
Radiohead - In Rainbows (2007)
"Boring," "inaccessible," and "soundscape-laden" are the words that describe Hail to the Thief, but now the terms have changed: lush, immediate, full, vibrant, and gorgeous are the kinds of words, after just a few listens, to describe In Rainbows. And even those feel somehow cheap; this disc appears to operate on the psyche in more ineffable terms. It's an album drenched in perfect reverb that has moved its melodies to the forefront. Slow for the most part but never plodding, and enough face-rocking / mid-tempo numbers for varied pace. While it's a far cry from a hook-based pop spinner - and while Thom Yorke's wailings are still sometimes garbled as to be only decipherable* by googled lyrics pages - it's definitely a move to visceral, gripping art rock. For lack of a better metaphor, the piano-hall reverberation of strings, guitars, vocals, and, yeah, pianos washes over the listener. I'm tempted to type "aural baptism" here, but that's probably taking it too far. :) This, put simply, is rich music.
* - Note that "decipherable" here does not necessarily mean "able to be made sense of." I refuse to take semantic responsibility for Yorke's interior metaphoric landscape. That is all.
Electronic experimentation has (for the most part) been supplanted by lush grandiosity, and in one way of thinking, this is a call-back, organic counter to the dystopian epic-scale of OK Computer. Both are huge, echo-y orchestrations, this one not so clinically detached. Not that the message is upbeat - what you can understand from the lips of Yorke is undoubtedly despairing and uncertain, still - but permeating this album, even its bleakest talk of infrastructure collapsing, is a lived-in, almost romantic quality. "Used to be alright / what happened?" feels like a heartfelt question this time around, not detached commentary.
This album generated all kinds of press for its original distribution, a download-only straight-up mp3 format from a name-your-price website run by the band with no label involved. That alone would have made IR a historic document, but the album also grabbed the top spot of numerous indie-and-otherwise end-of-year lists. And rightly so - though Radiohead probably carries a disproportionate amount of cool cachet (evidenced by that ridiculous PF rating for HttT), this really is a top-to-bottom great album with little-to-no low points. If pressed to find faults, I'd say that "All I Need" is merely a solid song that fits its mood and placement on the album but would probably not be great as a standalone. I also could have used a little more from the closer "Videotape" - it's too much of a bare bones, unfulfilling number to properly wrap up the piece (though I do appreciate both the RGB metaphor, and that its fade into electronic drums serves to bookend the album; more on that below). But really, these complaints are very minor; the album's pretty damn seamless, and whatever is un-catchy or "just a spruced up acoustic ballad" sits so well on the album that it doesn't matter. The thing works wonders on a holistic level. "Everything in Its Right Place," to unoriginally abuse an RH allusion.
Because this review is in constant danger of degenerating into the words "lush" and "gorgeous typed again and again, I'll cap this with some bullet point style thoughts on the highlights:
- I *love* the weird polyrhythmic electronic handclap like something off an M.I.A. track that starts off the album / "15 Steps." What a great opener - it's a soul-dancer, and that almost jazz-guitar riff that drives the middle section is fantastic. And the return with kid screams to end it... nice.
- The hardest rocker award goes to "Bodysnatchers," whose guitar rock fuzz insanity frankly makes Muse look quite silly in the apings. "Paranoid Android" from OK Computer will forever be one of my favorite songs, and while this one doesn't touch it, its frenetic essence makes me think someone forgot the android this time around.
- Most of the "indescribably gorgeous" sentiments stem from the crystalline guitar / bass /vocals combo on "Nude," "WeirdFishes/Arpeggi" and "Reckoner," the latter pushing it over the top with strings. Beautiful timbre, and it's not the limit of what's happening in those tunes.
- The acoustic guitar + strings sound of "Faust Arp" gets called "Beatles-esque" a lot in the reviews. This is largely due to the, um, "Prudent" descending bass notes and "Rigy"-ish strings. But 1, the tune really reminds me more of an Elliot Smith as backed by a symphony orchestra, and 2, maybe the most Beatles-esque thing about it is the Brit-inflected "1,2,3,4" that starts the track and makes you think you're about to hear the slowest version of "Taxman" ever.
- Dios mio, "House of Cards" is a great song. Like someone took U2's "All I Want is You," made it simultaneously prettier and more emotionally complex, introduced an overwhelming, sensuous texture, and then tacked on some serious ambiguity with regards to sentimental / ironic intent. "I don't want to be your friend / I just want to be your lover" might look trite in print, but it aches the heart when heard. This song also plays with tension quite a bit such that you yearn for the right note to come before you've heard the melody once. I gush; this one won a Grammy (I think), and it's the highlight of the album to my ears.
- Speaking of "PA," "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" alludes well but does not just reiterate the original. Nice spice to round out the disc before the too cold closer.
Status: Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "House of Cards"
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Album Rating System
I mentioned this in a footnote here, but sure, I'll clarify my reviewing system.
I used to have a numerical scale from 0-100 for rating albums that was down-skewed relative to most scales. I only review albums that I have (and therefore probably like to some degree), after all, not everything that gets released, so it made no sense to use a standard a/b/c/d/f type scale and end up rating everything 70 or above. So the scale looked like this:
100: Perfect, and probably nothing should get this.
90: Excellent
80: Great
70: Very Good
60: Good
50: Solid
40: Fair
30: Okay
20: Just passing.
0-19: Varying degrees of failure
In other words, an album that got a 55, failing by most scales, was still somewhere between a solid and a good album on my scale. And an album could go as low as 35 or so and still be a pretty decent disc. A slew of albums that I actively like and have affection for got 65s. You get the idea.
At some point I realized that this level of detail induced a sort of OCD in me, and I would obsess over whether albums belonged in the 65 or 70 category (I had to make it in five point steps to avoid complete insanity; another lesson learned along the way). I would try to do this by comparing the albums very superficially (do I like album X as much as album Y that got a 65 or album Z that got a 70?), and the whole thing turned out to be pretty unreliable. Either due to my slightly changing tastes over the course of a year or just different moods on different sittings, I got really confused as to why certain albums had been placed in certain slots. I mean, I was never going to confuse a 30 with a 70, but sometimes on a particular day it would seem that a 55 should have been a 65, or vice versa.
Eventually I also realized that this focus on the numerical score also took my attention away from the albums - that I started trying to digitize the album rather than think about it as an experience. Plus, I realized all the getting hung up over numbers was silly, as when push comes to shove, these were works of art, and the ordinal scale by which you could compare them was really sort of an abstract fabrication that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Really it only serves for a later effort of putting the albums in a sort of top X list (100, 500, whatever), and that's sort of an artificial construct, too*. I've come to think the only things that matter are 1, would I recommend this to someone, and 2, is it one of my favorite albums.
* - I do, though, really appreciate the artificial constructs that come out at the end of every year or decade from Pitchfork and the like. There's just too much music out there for me to parse without such aids, so while it's a little silly to assert that such and such was the best album of 200x, it at least gives me a good starting point.
So these reviews are intended to be more about the description and recording feelings about and associations with I have for the particular album. The recommendation is a much broader place holder in my mind. "Not recommended" means there's something about the disc that makes it not really worth the time, money or effort to get to know, relative to other albums. "Recommended" means it's an unqualified recommendation, a sort of "yes, you should definitely check this out." "Recommended (solid)" means there's some sort of qualification to the recommendation, like it's for a particular mood or toward a particular purpose, or it just generally doesn't make me viscerally say "YES, that is a good/great/awesome album." So it's a kind of catch-all category for albums that I like, that are good, but that don't elicit a ringing endorsement from me. The last category, "Desert Island Recommended," should be pretty self-evident.
If you really pressed me, I'd say 0-30 = Not Recommended, 30-65 = Recommended (solid), 65-90 = Recommended, and 90-100 = Desert Island Rec. But those are fuzzy borders and I don't know if they'll really hold. E.g., Lies was a qualified recommendation because of the trainwreck song that ends it, but that originally got a 70 from me as a (otherwise) very good album; The B-52s originally got a 65 from me, but it's such a seminal dance album from that period that despite its relatively lackluster back half (relative to the front), I'd still recommend everyone have it, so it gets the unqualified Recommended. There you have it.
Again, I wouldn't pay too much attention to that - that whole effort to categorize the album by number sometimes caused me to rush through albums in an effort to quickly get a number out, whereas the point of these reviews is 1, to take some time to really sit down with a disc and let it sink in (if it hasn't done so in the past), and 2, let people know what the listening experience is, so they can evaluate whether they'd like to check it out. Part of that is the little tag on recommendation at the end.
Just for posterity, here's the old system and some of my more general thoughts on what makes for a good album experience (from the old website):
SOME would say that it's pointless and a gigantic waste of time to attempt to catalog and rate all of your music. They clearly do not get it. I completely agree that this is pointless, but just as pointless as, say, eating and sleeping. Either way it successfully passes/wastes the time, and I don't often find myself dancing to a plate of spaghetti (non audiospaghetti anyways). Keeps me off the streets, etc. It occurs to me that defending my heroin-esque music addiction against an unanswering audience is somewhat neurotic, so I'll just skip ahead to the explanation. Just know that this qualifies as a hobby/passion, and at least I don't leave weekends at a time to play paintball. Frisbee, yeah, but not paintball. So I've got that going for me.
It's a fairly simple system. Songs are 1-5 stars, confined by the reality that is iTunes. But I don't buy that Tim McGraw stance (like it, love it, want some more of it) on the various star totals, so I have my own take:
1 - bad to okay, or something that is hyper-ambient and/or spoken
2 - decent to solid, but wouldn't be on a mix
3 - good song, this and above could make it onto a mix
4 - great song
5 - transcendant song
Note that a 5-star rating has more to do with evoking a feeling (for me, and me only) than any objective quality of the song, and also does not entirely depend upon how much I like the song. For example, the song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is a five star song by Nirvana because of, well, its awesomeness, but also because of all its connotations: ushering in the grunge era, great atmosphere of depression / alienation / angst, the fact that it came out when I was 13. But the 4-star song "In Bloom" is actually my favorite song off the album Nevermind, and I can't really explain that very well - "SLTS" is a better song, evokes that je ne sais quois, whatever, and I fully realize it's better, but I just like "In Bloom" better. If I were, say, making a top 1000 list of songs, "In Bloom" would not come above "SLTS." So, there's basically no rationality going on here whatsoever.
Albums are a little more involved: (See above)
All of that is based on numerous factors:
Raw Numbers: The number of four and five star songs. The Beatles album Revolver clocks in with 7, which you'll just have to trust is a high number.
Album Graph: Woe unto the album that dips badly. I vastly prefer consistent albums that are solid throughout to albums with incredible parts and terrible parts. Singles do not make an album in my book. That's just me. A classic example is The Police album Synchronicity, which features gems like "Every Breath You Take" but then comes crashing to a halt with that god-awful song "Mother."
Flow / Gestalt: This refers to the cohesiveness of an album: is sitting down and listening to it a collective experience, or does it feel like a collection of singles that were lumped together? The Who album Tommy and the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon set the standard here.
Transcendant Patchwork: Maybe the opposite of F/G, sometimes a collection of songs in widely varied styles comes together with an anti-flow flow like a great narrative. The Beatles album known as The White Album serves as a great example: songs written independently, styles ranging from folk to proto-metal to surf-music to experimental tape loop crap and yet it comes together. Weird. Don't question it.
Intimacy: Sometimes albums have a feel like you stumbled into the studio and witnessed a moment. The Pixies album Surfer Rosa, complete with studio banter, pulls this off very well, as does The Rolling Stones album Exile on Main Street.
Mystique / Intangibles: I just really need a category like this so I can fudge things if I want to.
Opener / Closer: Most great albums have an incredible intro, and if you want to maintain great status with me you have to leave the album with some kind of grand conclusion and/or encore. There are scores of examples, but the Pearl Jam album Ten pulls it off and then some - the album creep crawls through some ambient, almost machine rain sounding bits and then explodes with "Why Go" for the opener, and its closer "Release" goes out on a theatrical high note before fading into a mesmerizing ambient drum and bass piece that devolves into... the same ambient rain sound from the albums opener. Bookends are not exactly the most original framework for any work of art, but this has a nice effect - if the album is on repeat, the last track fades into the first and the album starts anew. Gives the album a very circular vibe, and if pulled off, is pretty great. Similar effects: the Pink Floyd album Animals and the Phish album Story of the Ghost.
Rock Peaked in 1974: Or in my case, the early 1990's. Or the late 60's. Basically, if I have some kind of nostalgic connection to a record, it gets a big boost.
So there it is. My ratings are purely based on my experience of the album, so you and I invariably will disagree. That's cool.
I used to have a numerical scale from 0-100 for rating albums that was down-skewed relative to most scales. I only review albums that I have (and therefore probably like to some degree), after all, not everything that gets released, so it made no sense to use a standard a/b/c/d/f type scale and end up rating everything 70 or above. So the scale looked like this:
100: Perfect, and probably nothing should get this.
90: Excellent
80: Great
70: Very Good
60: Good
50: Solid
40: Fair
30: Okay
20: Just passing.
0-19: Varying degrees of failure
In other words, an album that got a 55, failing by most scales, was still somewhere between a solid and a good album on my scale. And an album could go as low as 35 or so and still be a pretty decent disc. A slew of albums that I actively like and have affection for got 65s. You get the idea.
At some point I realized that this level of detail induced a sort of OCD in me, and I would obsess over whether albums belonged in the 65 or 70 category (I had to make it in five point steps to avoid complete insanity; another lesson learned along the way). I would try to do this by comparing the albums very superficially (do I like album X as much as album Y that got a 65 or album Z that got a 70?), and the whole thing turned out to be pretty unreliable. Either due to my slightly changing tastes over the course of a year or just different moods on different sittings, I got really confused as to why certain albums had been placed in certain slots. I mean, I was never going to confuse a 30 with a 70, but sometimes on a particular day it would seem that a 55 should have been a 65, or vice versa.
Eventually I also realized that this focus on the numerical score also took my attention away from the albums - that I started trying to digitize the album rather than think about it as an experience. Plus, I realized all the getting hung up over numbers was silly, as when push comes to shove, these were works of art, and the ordinal scale by which you could compare them was really sort of an abstract fabrication that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Really it only serves for a later effort of putting the albums in a sort of top X list (100, 500, whatever), and that's sort of an artificial construct, too*. I've come to think the only things that matter are 1, would I recommend this to someone, and 2, is it one of my favorite albums.
* - I do, though, really appreciate the artificial constructs that come out at the end of every year or decade from Pitchfork and the like. There's just too much music out there for me to parse without such aids, so while it's a little silly to assert that such and such was the best album of 200x, it at least gives me a good starting point.
So these reviews are intended to be more about the description and recording feelings about and associations with I have for the particular album. The recommendation is a much broader place holder in my mind. "Not recommended" means there's something about the disc that makes it not really worth the time, money or effort to get to know, relative to other albums. "Recommended" means it's an unqualified recommendation, a sort of "yes, you should definitely check this out." "Recommended (solid)" means there's some sort of qualification to the recommendation, like it's for a particular mood or toward a particular purpose, or it just generally doesn't make me viscerally say "YES, that is a good/great/awesome album." So it's a kind of catch-all category for albums that I like, that are good, but that don't elicit a ringing endorsement from me. The last category, "Desert Island Recommended," should be pretty self-evident.
If you really pressed me, I'd say 0-30 = Not Recommended, 30-65 = Recommended (solid), 65-90 = Recommended, and 90-100 = Desert Island Rec. But those are fuzzy borders and I don't know if they'll really hold. E.g., Lies was a qualified recommendation because of the trainwreck song that ends it, but that originally got a 70 from me as a (otherwise) very good album; The B-52s originally got a 65 from me, but it's such a seminal dance album from that period that despite its relatively lackluster back half (relative to the front), I'd still recommend everyone have it, so it gets the unqualified Recommended. There you have it.
Again, I wouldn't pay too much attention to that - that whole effort to categorize the album by number sometimes caused me to rush through albums in an effort to quickly get a number out, whereas the point of these reviews is 1, to take some time to really sit down with a disc and let it sink in (if it hasn't done so in the past), and 2, let people know what the listening experience is, so they can evaluate whether they'd like to check it out. Part of that is the little tag on recommendation at the end.
Just for posterity, here's the old system and some of my more general thoughts on what makes for a good album experience (from the old website):
Muzak: A Ratings Explanation
SOME would say that it's pointless and a gigantic waste of time to attempt to catalog and rate all of your music. They clearly do not get it. I completely agree that this is pointless, but just as pointless as, say, eating and sleeping. Either way it successfully passes/wastes the time, and I don't often find myself dancing to a plate of spaghetti (non audiospaghetti anyways). Keeps me off the streets, etc. It occurs to me that defending my heroin-esque music addiction against an unanswering audience is somewhat neurotic, so I'll just skip ahead to the explanation. Just know that this qualifies as a hobby/passion, and at least I don't leave weekends at a time to play paintball. Frisbee, yeah, but not paintball. So I've got that going for me.
It's a fairly simple system. Songs are 1-5 stars, confined by the reality that is iTunes. But I don't buy that Tim McGraw stance (like it, love it, want some more of it) on the various star totals, so I have my own take:
1 - bad to okay, or something that is hyper-ambient and/or spoken
2 - decent to solid, but wouldn't be on a mix
3 - good song, this and above could make it onto a mix
4 - great song
5 - transcendant song
Note that a 5-star rating has more to do with evoking a feeling (for me, and me only) than any objective quality of the song, and also does not entirely depend upon how much I like the song. For example, the song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is a five star song by Nirvana because of, well, its awesomeness, but also because of all its connotations: ushering in the grunge era, great atmosphere of depression / alienation / angst, the fact that it came out when I was 13. But the 4-star song "In Bloom" is actually my favorite song off the album Nevermind, and I can't really explain that very well - "SLTS" is a better song, evokes that je ne sais quois, whatever, and I fully realize it's better, but I just like "In Bloom" better. If I were, say, making a top 1000 list of songs, "In Bloom" would not come above "SLTS." So, there's basically no rationality going on here whatsoever.
Albums are a little more involved: (See above)
All of that is based on numerous factors:
Raw Numbers: The number of four and five star songs. The Beatles album Revolver clocks in with 7, which you'll just have to trust is a high number.
Album Graph: Woe unto the album that dips badly. I vastly prefer consistent albums that are solid throughout to albums with incredible parts and terrible parts. Singles do not make an album in my book. That's just me. A classic example is The Police album Synchronicity, which features gems like "Every Breath You Take" but then comes crashing to a halt with that god-awful song "Mother."
Flow / Gestalt: This refers to the cohesiveness of an album: is sitting down and listening to it a collective experience, or does it feel like a collection of singles that were lumped together? The Who album Tommy and the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon set the standard here.
Transcendant Patchwork: Maybe the opposite of F/G, sometimes a collection of songs in widely varied styles comes together with an anti-flow flow like a great narrative. The Beatles album known as The White Album serves as a great example: songs written independently, styles ranging from folk to proto-metal to surf-music to experimental tape loop crap and yet it comes together. Weird. Don't question it.
Intimacy: Sometimes albums have a feel like you stumbled into the studio and witnessed a moment. The Pixies album Surfer Rosa, complete with studio banter, pulls this off very well, as does The Rolling Stones album Exile on Main Street.
Mystique / Intangibles: I just really need a category like this so I can fudge things if I want to.
Opener / Closer: Most great albums have an incredible intro, and if you want to maintain great status with me you have to leave the album with some kind of grand conclusion and/or encore. There are scores of examples, but the Pearl Jam album Ten pulls it off and then some - the album creep crawls through some ambient, almost machine rain sounding bits and then explodes with "Why Go" for the opener, and its closer "Release" goes out on a theatrical high note before fading into a mesmerizing ambient drum and bass piece that devolves into... the same ambient rain sound from the albums opener. Bookends are not exactly the most original framework for any work of art, but this has a nice effect - if the album is on repeat, the last track fades into the first and the album starts anew. Gives the album a very circular vibe, and if pulled off, is pretty great. Similar effects: the Pink Floyd album Animals and the Phish album Story of the Ghost.
Rock Peaked in 1974: Or in my case, the early 1990's. Or the late 60's. Basically, if I have some kind of nostalgic connection to a record, it gets a big boost.
So there it is. My ratings are purely based on my experience of the album, so you and I invariably will disagree. That's cool.
AR: Jagged Little Pill
Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill (1995)
Ah, Alanis, you whose last name has been adverbitized to mean "having a poor grasp on a 10th grade concept" ... yes, yes, I still have this album, if for no other reason that to have a convenient vehicle for instant transportation back to high school days. There's something about the pop-sheen that graces this otherwise primarily aggressive, hell-hath-no-fury-inspired album that has always been a huge turn-off for me. It's probably the big mismatch between the borderline obnoxious, torn-at-its-fringes vocals and the reined-in, clean (and entirely standard guitar-bass-drums, with an occasional harmoinica) instruments. Not that she *really* comes close, but that sort of Janis-inspired caterwaul needs some grime behind it, and without, it largely comes off as unskilled whining. (Read: I don't care for her voice, particularly those raspy inflections that end her phrases and let the note slide where it may. Yeck). It's terribly uneven, too - everytime I start toe-tapping a little bit to a song here or there, it's followed by some god-awful sap-ballad.
It's not all bad, not at all - "You Oughta Know" is a great lead single (clearly- it more than worked) of broken-relationship aftermath RAGE. It's the one place on the album where the sparse backing works for me. Not subtle, but such bitterness generally isn't. The lead track, "All I Really Want,"a psychedelic-y wah-wah work out, contains one of those excellent meta-lyrics about silence - it's not Cohen in "Hallelujah" calling out chord changes, but it makes me grin in the middle of a nice opener. "You Learn" is a pleasant enough nineties pop song, and "Head Over Feet" is a simple but oddly effective, sincere love song.
Oh, but the rest. I'm not even going to mention*that song* that so offends semantic sensibilities, even if it does sort of encapsulate the badness of the album. And the other tracks all feature that grating wail that just fails to endear me to her, even if she is exorcising some of the same earnest emotions that I find compelling on other albums. I'm clearly in the minority here, as this disc sold a billion copies and spawned five gigantic hits. But I'm not trying to pull off the too-cool-for-pop angle. There are some songs I'll fully admit under oath to enjoying, but on the others I can't listen to her comfortably. I've got that gene for her cilantro soap-flavor, I guess. So take my take with a grain - this is a pretty good window into what a lot of nineties pop rock / almost adult contemporary music sounds like, but this is one singer and one set of emotions that come off as gripes that I haven't ever been able to fully appreciate.
Status: Not Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "You Oughta Know"
Shoutout: Kind of Bloop
So, normally I would save this for an epic link post (that is coming someday, I swear), but I really dug the above graphic and found the project enthralling. Some 8-bit music artists / jazz enthusiasts have blasphemed and created a bare-bones electronic version of Miles Davis's Kind of Blue. It's called, cleverly, Kind of Bloop, and you can listen to samples at that link. It really is an inventive step, not just a cheesy muzak / elevator music excursion, and while I won't be listening to it in the original's stead, it's cool to feel what hearing seminal music filtered through a disparate medium does to you. Check it.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Album Review Suggestions
Hey, a special offer from The Ballad: comment or e-mail me with albums that you'd like me to review, and I'll pop them into the increasingly poorly-algorithmed queue. Frank's already asked for a take on Radiohead's In Rainbows and the Nyetmom wants to hear about Once, so I'll get to those two as soon as I clear out what's currently on the playlist. But seriously, anybody who wants a review of something he/she thinks I own, give a holler, and I'll honor all requests in a reasonable timeframe*.
* - Given that at this rate of 0.6 albums per day or whatever I'm currently hitting, and given that means that the "review my collection" project is scheduled to end in two-thousand-never, a reasonable time may be subject to odd conceptions of resaonableness. You've been warned.
* - Given that at this rate of 0.6 albums per day or whatever I'm currently hitting, and given that means that the "review my collection" project is scheduled to end in two-thousand-never, a reasonable time may be subject to odd conceptions of resaonableness. You've been warned.
Sebuah Perjalanan Baru (Lagi)
Sepertinya ungkapan bahwa hanya keledai yang jatuh kedalam lubang yang sama untuk kedua kalinya berlaku juga untuk saya. Bukan hanya dua kali, tetapi berkali-kali saya terjerembab di permasalahan yang sama. Permasalahan klasik yang sudah sering sekali mendera. Saya kehilangan identitas diri dan tidak tahu bagaimana hidup saya sebenarnya.Sebuah pernyataan sombong dari dalam diri bahwa hanya saya yang paling mengetahui apa yang saya inginkan, bagaimana diri ini menjalani hidup, rupanya sekarang menjadi bumerang yang balik menyerang titik terdalam. Eksistensi saya sebenarnya dimana? Apa yang menjadi tujuan saya? Kemana perjalanan ini akan berakhir?
I guess i just got lost
Bein' someone else
I tried to kill the pain
Nothin ever helped
I left myself behind
Somewhere along the way
Hopin to come back around
To find myself someday
(3 Doors Down - Let Me Be My Self)
Bein' someone else
I tried to kill the pain
Nothin ever helped
I left myself behind
Somewhere along the way
Hopin to come back around
To find myself someday
(3 Doors Down - Let Me Be My Self)
Saya terjebak kembali pada pola permainan lama yang telah lama saya tinggalkan. Berusaha terlihat baik dan sempurna di depan semua orang. Berusaha untuk ada bagi semua orang. Menyediakan telinga untuk berkeluh kesah. Menyediakan punggung untuk bersandar. Menyediakan bahu untuk menangis. Saya lupa, saya juga manusia yang mempunyai emosi. Semua cerita itu mencapai puncaknya minggu lalu. Ketika saya tidak bisa membedakan lagi, apakah semua cerita-cerita itu milik saya atau bukan. Semuanya meraja di dalam kepala. Tanpa bisa membedakan ini harus disimpan dan ini yang harus dicerna atau ini harus dibuang.
Saya teringat dengan percakapan intens dengan beberapa orang berbeda dengan masalah mereka masing-masing. Semuanya terlalui dalam hitungan jam saja. Saya yang begitu bodoh. Merasa diri ini begitu penting. Merasa dunia ini akan berhenti berputar ketika saya berhenti untuk peduli Bukannya orang-orang ini atau cerita mereka tidak penting, tapi bahkan otak dan perasaan ini memiliki kapasitas juga. Saya bukan orang suci atau santa yang bisa menerima semua cerita itu tanpa dampak yang nyata. Saya pikir saya bisa menghandle semunya. Ternyata saya salah. Semua cerita itu, ditambah sedikit drama dalam hidup saya sendiri perlahan-lahan menggerogoti diri saya dari dalam. Pelan-pelan saya merasa kehilangan diri. Puncaknya ketika saya ingin berteriak untuk melepaskan semua suara-suara yang saling bersahutan di dalam kepala.
When you're broken
In a Million little pieces
And your tryin'
But you can't hold on any more
Every tear falls down for a reason
Don't you stop believin' in your self
When you're broken
(Lindsey Haun - Broken)
In a Million little pieces
And your tryin'
But you can't hold on any more
Every tear falls down for a reason
Don't you stop believin' in your self
When you're broken
(Lindsey Haun - Broken)
Apa yang salah? Tidak ada. Hanya saya saja yang kehilangan aturan untuk diri sendiri. Kehilangan waktu bahkan untuk sekedar bertanya, ”apa yang terjadi dengan dirimu?, ”apakah kau senang dengan keadaan ini?” semua fokus itu hilang dan tergantikan sesuatu yang tidak penting. Sesuatu yang terus saya cari. Saya pikir saya bisa mendapatkan ketenangan dari dunia itu, tapi saya salah. Justru itulah kehilangan terbesar. Ketika saya menginginkan semua dunia melihat saya sebagai seseorang yang sempurna. Pelan-pelan saya membohongi diri sendiri. Menciptakan skenario. Dan mempercayai jalan ceritanya. Semua itu bagaikan sebuah mimpi buruk. Saya baru terbangun sekarang!
Saya selalu terjebak di batas keinginan dua arah. Saling berlawanan. Saling berkebalikan. Tanpa bisa memilih dan selalu terangan-angan. Apa jadinya? Saya tidak menikmati kedua-duanya. Saya berada disini, tapi hati saya berada disitu. Hati ini berkata ini, mulut saya berbicara itu. bahkan saya sudah munafik dan membohongi diri sendiri. Berkata inilah yang saya inginkan. Padahal saya sendiri tidak nyaman didalamnya. Untuk apa saya melakukan semua itu? untuk membuat semua orang terkesan dengan saya. Itulah jawabannya. Dan disinilah saya. Terjatuh lagi.
Rupanya Tuhan masih sayang dengan saya. Masih terngiang-ngiang dengan jelas perkataan pongah itu. ”Saya bingung, Tuhan sebenarnya menyangi saya atau justru sangat membenci saya?” saya lupa. Dia selalu memberi pelajaran dengan caranya sendiri. Dia menunjukkan sayangNya dengan jalannya sendiri. Saya selalu lupa bersyukur. Ada banyak nikmat yang telah diberikan dan saya masih ingkar akan kehadiranNya. Kombinasi yang sangat bagus bukan? Seseorang yang lupa diri ditambah keraguan terhadap kehadiran sang pencipta. Itulah yang menyebabkan kejatuhan saya kali ini semakin parah.
Dua hari ini saya banyak berbincang dengan diri sendiri. Bertanya kepada hati, bertanya kepada pikiran dan bertanya kepada eksistensi saya sendiri. Akan dibawa kemana kaki ini akan melangkah keesokan hari? Akan dibawa kemana mata ini keesokan hari? Ternyata Allah sangat sayang kepada saya. Saya masih diberi kemampuan untuk memikirkan akan dikemanakan hidup ini. Bagaimana hidup ini akan terjalani keesokan hari. Bagaimana prioritas itu satu persatu akan berusaha diselesaikan. Dengan berusaha membuang dan memangkas semua bagian buruk didalam hati. Karena kegelapan itu ternyata semakin memekat dan menguasai diri saya. Setidaknya kali ini saya merasakan semuanya kosong kembali. Perasaan, mimpi, keinginan yang harus dipetakan kembali. Dengan berusaha untuk menjadi diri sendiri. Apa adanya.
Karena bagaimanapun juga, saya tidak diciptakan untuk membahagiakan semua orang.
The Longest Way 'Round is the Sweetest Way Home
Argh. Back in the swing of things here, ASU-wise, and I can already feel the blog getting crunched by other writerly commitments. Sadness, but ah, well, so it goes. Things are busy - putting the final touches on organizing part of a course from the TA end for the fall semester, working with a fellow student on mouse-models and schizophrenia, trying to do my own reading for long-range thesis-type goals. The usual, and hopefully nothing I can't handle. I have a lecture to give in a couple of weeks for a big (250 or so) lecture course, so that should be exciting. I'll keep you in the loop.
In more body-related news, Ultimate / softball / exercise in general have come to a grinding halt, courtesy of my still-inflamed knee. I've missed a tournament, several practices, and a full night of softball thus far, and I still can't seem to do anything resembling running without extreme discomfort and that fluid-in-the-joint feeling. I saw a sports-med doc (who was great) today on campus, and the good news is that it doesn't seem to be anything ACL-ish or otherwise serious*. I had X-rays taken, and there are calcium deposits in the surgical canal and along the articular cartilage and some signs of arthritis, all of which was expected, but otherwise good joint-spacing and no obvious damage. My physical exam was also normal, but we all know how that can turn out**. So the rule is more rest, ice, and some PT exercises. In the grand scheme it's good news, but I don't know if I'll be able to play wtih Sprawl this year or be ready for the beginning of the VOTS season. Bummer, but I'll survive.
* - Just FTR, I was resigned to retirement if this had turned out to be another ACL injury. This falls under the general category of beating one's head against a wall at this point, plus I really don't want to put the Beck (or myself) through a surgical recovery again. It was an interesting sensation - that clear moment of "well, okay, I'll just ride a bike for exercise from now on" - and I think I was emotionally committed***, even if I was never *really* tested on it. I don't know if I should include some sort of quasi-Buddhist and/or Heat-based sentiments about being able to drop something in 30 seconds, but I achieved, at least in principle, a willingness to let it all go. The actual experience of doing that is probably different from the act of anticipatorally resigning to it, though, so I suppose I shouldn't puff my chest out too far. Still, i think I'm down with the notion that like Lisa's bracelet, athletic endeavors are fleeting.
** - Once upon a time, your hero tore his ACL, only didn't realize it, so he kept running in severe pain for the next month. In that time, his hamstrings got really strong and good at preventing forces from pulling the tibia out of joint. When it all got to be too much, he went in to an orthopedist, full or worry at the prospects of his athletic career. A resident saw him, performed the requisite drawer tests, and concluded that everything was good. At worst it was a meniscus tear, hero should not worry about anything, just relax, he (the resident) not realizing that now power-hammed hero was preventing his (the resident's) feeble arms from eliciting a positive drawer test through sheer protective, unintentional will. The head surgeon waltzed in half an hour later, did the more sensitive and more painful pivot test, revealing that indeed, that tibia was a-floppin' in the breeze, and the leg was acl-less. Lesser men would forever distrust medical science; hero merely had his soul crushed and bemoaned his hopes having been gotten up. The moral of the story is to not always trust a negative drawer sign, but today I managed to completely relax my hammies, and all was good - there was nothing to protect it seemed, so I was not guarding. Huzzah.
*** - Yeah, ha ha, I should be emotionally committed. You're all very clever.
Beck and I have been partaking of the entertainment* of late; I'm a little tired at this juncture and will try to post some reviews later, but we say Funny People, went to a comedy club, and saw District 9 with D&C, all within the last week or so. We also saw the final few (disappointing) episodes of Battlestar Galactica, another show I'll let run through my head a bit more before commenting further upon. This paragraph was half the point of posting tonight, but really, these 5 AM wake-ups are catching up with me.
* - Speaking of partaking of The Entertainment, I should clarify that my post of quotes from the last two weeks of pleasure reading was entirely taken from David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which I reread over the last two weeks. I thought the references to Hal and Orin and the AFR would make that obvious, or at least prompt you to google them, but I admit that was pretty presumptuous of me. Sorry. That's gonna get a big hairy review / commentary in the near future, but in the interim, just know that I continue to recommend this book above all others. Let me put that another way - when I think about my loved ones who have not read this book, it makes my inner child's soul ache. I know it's a huge commitment, I know the writing can be taken as unneccessarily showy, I know the structure all but requires you to read 200 pages before you have half of a clue what's going on, but please, please reconsider your past shortcomings. For me. Many props to Infinite Summer for inspiring the reread. And yes, I will continue to browbeat and guilt you into reading this book. I am unoriginal in this respect.
Alright, big plans for tomorrow. Gotta write. Gotta be coherent. Gotta get to bed now in service of that. Hasta la pasta.
In more body-related news, Ultimate / softball / exercise in general have come to a grinding halt, courtesy of my still-inflamed knee. I've missed a tournament, several practices, and a full night of softball thus far, and I still can't seem to do anything resembling running without extreme discomfort and that fluid-in-the-joint feeling. I saw a sports-med doc (who was great) today on campus, and the good news is that it doesn't seem to be anything ACL-ish or otherwise serious*. I had X-rays taken, and there are calcium deposits in the surgical canal and along the articular cartilage and some signs of arthritis, all of which was expected, but otherwise good joint-spacing and no obvious damage. My physical exam was also normal, but we all know how that can turn out**. So the rule is more rest, ice, and some PT exercises. In the grand scheme it's good news, but I don't know if I'll be able to play wtih Sprawl this year or be ready for the beginning of the VOTS season. Bummer, but I'll survive.
* - Just FTR, I was resigned to retirement if this had turned out to be another ACL injury. This falls under the general category of beating one's head against a wall at this point, plus I really don't want to put the Beck (or myself) through a surgical recovery again. It was an interesting sensation - that clear moment of "well, okay, I'll just ride a bike for exercise from now on" - and I think I was emotionally committed***, even if I was never *really* tested on it. I don't know if I should include some sort of quasi-Buddhist and/or Heat-based sentiments about being able to drop something in 30 seconds, but I achieved, at least in principle, a willingness to let it all go. The actual experience of doing that is probably different from the act of anticipatorally resigning to it, though, so I suppose I shouldn't puff my chest out too far. Still, i think I'm down with the notion that like Lisa's bracelet, athletic endeavors are fleeting.
** - Once upon a time, your hero tore his ACL, only didn't realize it, so he kept running in severe pain for the next month. In that time, his hamstrings got really strong and good at preventing forces from pulling the tibia out of joint. When it all got to be too much, he went in to an orthopedist, full or worry at the prospects of his athletic career. A resident saw him, performed the requisite drawer tests, and concluded that everything was good. At worst it was a meniscus tear, hero should not worry about anything, just relax, he (the resident) not realizing that now power-hammed hero was preventing his (the resident's) feeble arms from eliciting a positive drawer test through sheer protective, unintentional will. The head surgeon waltzed in half an hour later, did the more sensitive and more painful pivot test, revealing that indeed, that tibia was a-floppin' in the breeze, and the leg was acl-less. Lesser men would forever distrust medical science; hero merely had his soul crushed and bemoaned his hopes having been gotten up. The moral of the story is to not always trust a negative drawer sign, but today I managed to completely relax my hammies, and all was good - there was nothing to protect it seemed, so I was not guarding. Huzzah.
*** - Yeah, ha ha, I should be emotionally committed. You're all very clever.
Beck and I have been partaking of the entertainment* of late; I'm a little tired at this juncture and will try to post some reviews later, but we say Funny People, went to a comedy club, and saw District 9 with D&C, all within the last week or so. We also saw the final few (disappointing) episodes of Battlestar Galactica, another show I'll let run through my head a bit more before commenting further upon. This paragraph was half the point of posting tonight, but really, these 5 AM wake-ups are catching up with me.
* - Speaking of partaking of The Entertainment, I should clarify that my post of quotes from the last two weeks of pleasure reading was entirely taken from David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which I reread over the last two weeks. I thought the references to Hal and Orin and the AFR would make that obvious, or at least prompt you to google them, but I admit that was pretty presumptuous of me. Sorry. That's gonna get a big hairy review / commentary in the near future, but in the interim, just know that I continue to recommend this book above all others. Let me put that another way - when I think about my loved ones who have not read this book, it makes my inner child's soul ache. I know it's a huge commitment, I know the writing can be taken as unneccessarily showy, I know the structure all but requires you to read 200 pages before you have half of a clue what's going on, but please, please reconsider your past shortcomings. For me. Many props to Infinite Summer for inspiring the reread. And yes, I will continue to browbeat and guilt you into reading this book. I am unoriginal in this respect.
Alright, big plans for tomorrow. Gotta write. Gotta be coherent. Gotta get to bed now in service of that. Hasta la pasta.
AR: I Am a Bird Now
Antony & The Johnsons - I Am a Bird Now (2005)A rich piano, multiple guests and a choral (strings, bass) arrangement back a voice from an alien/angel: true, it would be idiotic to mention this music without first noting the wide-ranging (and wide-range) vibrato vocals supplied by Antony. He sounds like a spectral mix of Bowie / Bryan Ferry (of Roxy Music), but not in a derivative way; those are just the closest referents that capture his otherworldly sounds. There's a strange cabaret / after-hours post-jazz vibe to the music, and so add this to the list of albums to drink alone in the dark to. I've read that the lounge singer from Blue Velvet was a major influence on his artistry, and that is not exactly in doubt on this disc.
The album sticks to this vibe throughout, and the emotion - whether prompted by struggle or hope - is earnest and gripping throughout. The music is permeated with Antony's transgendered themes, and both his weariness and gospel-esque anthems carry a wealth of feeling. It's unsubtle, sure - there's the lovely duet "You Are My Sister" with Boy George, "For Today I Am a Boy" and "My Lady Story," all of which wear their pain/transcendence on the outside - but it's far from cheesy.
Case in point: the overwhelming gospel blues of "Fistful of Love," far away the stand up and cry highlight. It starts with a Loaded-style poetry doo-wop intro from, yep, Lou Reed, and launches into a progressively crescendo-ing diva workout. Guttural sax solos scream "No Irony Zone," and the hipster dies with a triumphant cheer for the emotional crooner. It's great.
The only potential fault of this album is its sameness throughout - it's a lot of downer-music, to be frank, and as such sits in a pretty limited range on the in-the-mood-for spectrum. It also unfortunately fades quite a bit toward the back end - not to badness, but to less stand-out material. The highs on it are exquisite, and on those particular late nights, you'll be thankful to have it, but that's not *quite* enough for me to give it an unqualified recommendation (read: this one's right on the border).
Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "Fistful of Love"
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
AR: Hail to the Thief
Radiohead - Hail to the Thief (The Gloaming) (2003)
I was joking about some album with Aaron sometime recently, and I finished the assessment with, "but really, after you listen to it for the 37th time, it really starts to sink in." There's something bizarre to that assessment (right?), the idea that you have to invest more than a day's worth of hours in some piece of music before it starts to become frankly listenable. I only have so many hours on earth, man. I have the sneaking suspicion that you could listen to almost anything 37 times and it would start to sink in, something like "oh, here comes the part where the third castrated cat joins the grinding gears in subtle off-by-1/8th-tone harmonies, juxtaposed nicely by Yoko Ono and Bjork's falsetto beat-boxing. I'm starting to appreciate it." You know, Metal Machine Music notwithstanding.
This is not the album that I was talking about, but it was for a long while entirely off-putting and did require some investment. Thom Yorke's vocals seem far off in a tired way - repeating the inaccessibility of Amnesiac, this album pretty much struck me initially as an exercise in here we go again, off-putting experimentation for its own sake, droning, whoosh-whoosh sound-effect drenched, melody-backdropped music that does not entirely pay off. Hookless. Unintelligible lyrics that give the same impression of dread that RH has churned out since OK Computer, with varying degrees of, er, impression. On listens 1-36 (not in a row), I couldn't get into it.
Far be it from me, die-hard rereader of limit-less jokes, to shy from inaccessibility, though. There's pay-off in the struggle. The main thing I realized, though, on spin 37 (yes, I'm exaggerating), is that this, even moreso than previous RH albums, is just not driving or walking or doing anything else music. It's sit in the dark along and let it wash over you music. Probably shouldn't have taken so long for that to sink in, but there you have it; sometimes I am not hipster enough to catch on. I hate it when reviews focus solely on how inaccessible or difficult something is, btw, but I feel it's 1, fair warning in this case, and 2, worth noting 'cause I'm not stopping there, not simply ha-haing at the heft of the book.* The particular inaccessibility lies in its lack of pace and rare punchy moments; it's all similar and droney enough that piercing the songs for their particularities really requires undivided, accepting attention. And further, it's not that on listen 37 I was awestruck; it's a highly imperfect album with some music that doesn't even attract on iteration i, but if you want to get anything out, you'd better close your eyes and lock in. There's a ton of good stuff here, but its enjoyment hinges on you being in the just-right darnk mood, so you'd better create it as best you can
* - I mean, really, come on, EW.
The highlights: the opener, "2+2=5," is great in both its guitar-plug scratchy opening and its 1984/Notes From dread. "Go to Sleep" is the best Radiohead retread/rip-off of the bunch, and "There There" and "Myxomatosis" are the beating signs that all the experimentation is going somewhere. "Punch-up" is my favorite moment on the album, a piano-driven drone groove that's just straight-forward enough. And the dirge-clapping - sorry to ape Pitchfork's description, but the dirge of that slow-clap beat is self-evident - of "We Suck Young Blood" crushes.
Those are standouts of relative normality amongst an album filled with borderline boring sound effect shimmer. It's very moody and effective if you are locked right into it, but otherwise it melts into a sameness that does not inspire. Even WHEN you take the requisite steps to make this music capture the night, there are still a few clunkers - "Sail to the Moon," "Where I End" and "The Gloaming" - that rely entirely on effects that just aren't that enthralling. Sine waves in absentia do not exciting experimentation make.
I feel I am cheating a bit, describing Radiohead in terms of their Radioheadness. Fair enough; a more accurate description is that it's dark, keyboard- and effect- laden music with a falsetto, dramatic vocalist who does not articulate his sentiments particularly effectively. The album's at its best when it mixes in the remnants of rock this band will still stoop to with the far off clinical hypothesis-driven theories on what 21st century music should sound like. The apocalypse is evident in the overall presentation, but in a way that is starting to get tired for me. Don't get me wrong; it's "interesting sounding" in a way that only these guys can be, but for me it's something like the reverse career development of Sonic Youth in the early '80s - to succeed, the experiment must occur over the chasm between melody and noise, and this one treads to noise-side for my tastes. "Noise" isn't right; it's really more "texture" with an over-buried melodic forefront. While repeated listens will reward with a atmospheric spook-lonely meditation, this just isn't the best set of "songs" they have to offer. I don't know whether some of Radiohead's tricks have gone stale - there are a number of songs on this album that call to mind better versions of the same motifs / techniques - but apparently I am not hearing quite the same consistency of exciting experimentalism that others are.
Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "A Punch-Up At The Wedding (No No No No No No No No)"
P.S. And as some kind of proof that I'm not entirely a Pitchforkian drone - what is up with the 9.3 this album got? The review notes the multiple low points of the album, the same-ishness, the running in place, even acknowledges that this will "fade into their catalog as a slight placeholder," and then awards a rarefied 9.3? Makes no sense!!!
Album Review: G N' R Lies*
* - Lest you think The Ballad is slowly turning into a Guns N' Roses fansite, this is the album that came up next via the algorithm, I swear. Pure coincidence.
Basically a stopgap EP between Appetite and the Illusion albums, G N' R Lies pulled off a neat trick in being both good and controversial enough to keep G N' R in the, er tabloids. The method of stretching this past an EP release into a barely qualifying 33 minute LPer was to reuse some old music to turn it into a short form, double (concept?) album. Side A consists entirely of late '80s L.A. club footage of the band at their sneering rawestness: it was lifted from the EP Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide, features a couple of covers and does a great job of capturing the band in their sleazy barband youth. This is probably the kind of live G N' R (playing Appetite songs, natch) that people were looking for but didn't get from the Live Era album that would come out much later. All of the songs are solid, though the cover of Aerosmith's "Mama Kin," imho, improves on the original (though Aerosmith notoriously tore that up in concert in '70s, too). All of this generally gets lost / forgotten because of Side B, though.
The second half of Lies is a mostly all-acoustic affair. Bold move for what at the time was essentially a (albeit a nasty version) hair/metal band, they didn't just churn out a melodramatic power ballad with concert-hall reverberating solos (q.v. "Without You" by Motley Crüe or "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" by Poison), they *completely* unplugged and recorded, among other things, one of the best late-night hotel room ballads, um, ever. Featuring whistling and whispers, if you insist on qualifiers. It gives the second half of the album that oh-so-intimate campfire feel, and even though two of the songs were a throwaway and a self-cover, it was apparently enough to tide over their fans until the Illusion double release in 1991.
Oh, let's be honest; "Patience" was enough to tide over their fans. That song by itself carries the album; it's the aforementioned ballad featuring a saccharine Axl crooning over lush interlocking guitar arpeggios and earnest strumming. The song also features some fantastic acoustic soling from guitar-god Slash and a impassioned falsetto outro that one can't help but Axl-dance to ("one" being Nyet). This is a legitimately beautiful song, and additionally has that "aw, see, bad boys *can* be good!" Nice Boys don't play rock n' roll, but maybe just maybe they play last night anthemic panty-dropping ballads, maybe? This song was huge at the time, the video basically took over MTV for a while, and it undoubtedly made Lies the success it was.
About that "nice boys" thing, though: this is also the album that featured a tongue-in-cheek sing-along "I Used to Love Her (But I Had to Kill Her)." And a killer acoustic take on "You're Crazy*" from Appetite; a great song, no doubt (one of my favorites, I'll readily admit), but one where Axl repeatedly berates a lover. I don't know if that qualifies as misogynist or just bitter-at-a-lover Dylan-style sans eloquence. And then the last track, which drew the ire of EVERYONE. I specifically remember a 60 Minutes piece on Axl's vitriol poem; the media had a field day lambasting the song's homo/xeno/authori?-phobic lyrics, and it seemed like the un-nice boys had finally stepped too far. Which is strange in and of itself, given that the media-attitude pretty blatantly implies that gender-based hatred from rockers is A-Okay, but don't you ever use the n-word.
* - I'm really underselling this here - it's an excellent acoustic jam AND it features Axl scatting. My favorite part of the album.
I had real trouble with this at the time - in my youth I really did listen right through lyrics to the guitars, and wow did I love this band's music. "One in a Million," though, has such prominent vocals and such a ho-hum guitar line that it was difficult to reconcile my love with that much hatred. Further complicating the situation is that the chorus is so pleading and heartfelt; I still don't really see how it relates to the verses. Those bad-word lyrics also woke me up to the fact that the other songs in the catalogue were not exactly nice to the fairer sex. It made it tough to tell what was some sort of artistic statement and what was a straight-forwardly expressed opinion from a guy who certainly sounded like a racist asshole. I still have no idea what the explanation was, but given other image-based theatrics - fight with Vince Neil, anyone? - I would hardly be surprised if it wasn't just offense for its own sake. Which brings it back to a performance, not a real attitude. That's actually been my take ever since with the monstrosity of Axl and G N' R - it's basically a show and a grandiose (and great) performance*, and I can comfortably separate the art from the artists*. For the special case of "OiaM," though, I pretty much just don't listen to it - it's a stupid song, musically and lyrically, and whatever hate-spewing there is is a sort of name-check third grade sentiment. It's got some historical significance, I suppose, but I really think it was a mistake to tack it on to the album.
* - I covered this in my Appetite review - the gist is that the music overrides the inanity of the misogynist lyrical content, and I can respect the spectacle of their presentation without buying into its ideology. I could be accused of moral reprehensibility in that I'm sort of ignoring the widespread effects my acceptance of such lyrics on any basis can have on the more malleable members of society, but I guess I'm just in the free-speech-and-art-have-their-costs camp on that one.
** - It should be duly noted that Slash et al. basically disowned this song. It's an Axl-only composition, his first for the band.
So, Lies clearly suffers from its tailspin into hate, and that knocks it down several pegs. But it is a musically good rock album that sits in the formative years of my youth, and the baggage it carries w/r/t misogyny v. calculated spectacle almost makes it more interesting. I'd recommend channeling your inner eleven year-old Nyet, being a little, um, patient with Axl's stupidity, and listening through those lyrics to the guitar; they're what keep this album worth it.
Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "You're Crazy"
Guns N' Roses - G N' R Lies (1989)
Basically a stopgap EP between Appetite and the Illusion albums, G N' R Lies pulled off a neat trick in being both good and controversial enough to keep G N' R in the, er tabloids. The method of stretching this past an EP release into a barely qualifying 33 minute LPer was to reuse some old music to turn it into a short form, double (concept?) album. Side A consists entirely of late '80s L.A. club footage of the band at their sneering rawestness: it was lifted from the EP Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide, features a couple of covers and does a great job of capturing the band in their sleazy barband youth. This is probably the kind of live G N' R (playing Appetite songs, natch) that people were looking for but didn't get from the Live Era album that would come out much later. All of the songs are solid, though the cover of Aerosmith's "Mama Kin," imho, improves on the original (though Aerosmith notoriously tore that up in concert in '70s, too). All of this generally gets lost / forgotten because of Side B, though.
The second half of Lies is a mostly all-acoustic affair. Bold move for what at the time was essentially a (albeit a nasty version) hair/metal band, they didn't just churn out a melodramatic power ballad with concert-hall reverberating solos (q.v. "Without You" by Motley Crüe or "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" by Poison), they *completely* unplugged and recorded, among other things, one of the best late-night hotel room ballads, um, ever. Featuring whistling and whispers, if you insist on qualifiers. It gives the second half of the album that oh-so-intimate campfire feel, and even though two of the songs were a throwaway and a self-cover, it was apparently enough to tide over their fans until the Illusion double release in 1991.
Oh, let's be honest; "Patience" was enough to tide over their fans. That song by itself carries the album; it's the aforementioned ballad featuring a saccharine Axl crooning over lush interlocking guitar arpeggios and earnest strumming. The song also features some fantastic acoustic soling from guitar-god Slash and a impassioned falsetto outro that one can't help but Axl-dance to ("one" being Nyet). This is a legitimately beautiful song, and additionally has that "aw, see, bad boys *can* be good!" Nice Boys don't play rock n' roll, but maybe just maybe they play last night anthemic panty-dropping ballads, maybe? This song was huge at the time, the video basically took over MTV for a while, and it undoubtedly made Lies the success it was.
About that "nice boys" thing, though: this is also the album that featured a tongue-in-cheek sing-along "I Used to Love Her (But I Had to Kill Her)." And a killer acoustic take on "You're Crazy*" from Appetite; a great song, no doubt (one of my favorites, I'll readily admit), but one where Axl repeatedly berates a lover. I don't know if that qualifies as misogynist or just bitter-at-a-lover Dylan-style sans eloquence. And then the last track, which drew the ire of EVERYONE. I specifically remember a 60 Minutes piece on Axl's vitriol poem; the media had a field day lambasting the song's homo/xeno/authori?-phobic lyrics, and it seemed like the un-nice boys had finally stepped too far. Which is strange in and of itself, given that the media-attitude pretty blatantly implies that gender-based hatred from rockers is A-Okay, but don't you ever use the n-word.
* - I'm really underselling this here - it's an excellent acoustic jam AND it features Axl scatting. My favorite part of the album.
I had real trouble with this at the time - in my youth I really did listen right through lyrics to the guitars, and wow did I love this band's music. "One in a Million," though, has such prominent vocals and such a ho-hum guitar line that it was difficult to reconcile my love with that much hatred. Further complicating the situation is that the chorus is so pleading and heartfelt; I still don't really see how it relates to the verses. Those bad-word lyrics also woke me up to the fact that the other songs in the catalogue were not exactly nice to the fairer sex. It made it tough to tell what was some sort of artistic statement and what was a straight-forwardly expressed opinion from a guy who certainly sounded like a racist asshole. I still have no idea what the explanation was, but given other image-based theatrics - fight with Vince Neil, anyone? - I would hardly be surprised if it wasn't just offense for its own sake. Which brings it back to a performance, not a real attitude. That's actually been my take ever since with the monstrosity of Axl and G N' R - it's basically a show and a grandiose (and great) performance*, and I can comfortably separate the art from the artists*. For the special case of "OiaM," though, I pretty much just don't listen to it - it's a stupid song, musically and lyrically, and whatever hate-spewing there is is a sort of name-check third grade sentiment. It's got some historical significance, I suppose, but I really think it was a mistake to tack it on to the album.
* - I covered this in my Appetite review - the gist is that the music overrides the inanity of the misogynist lyrical content, and I can respect the spectacle of their presentation without buying into its ideology. I could be accused of moral reprehensibility in that I'm sort of ignoring the widespread effects my acceptance of such lyrics on any basis can have on the more malleable members of society, but I guess I'm just in the free-speech-and-art-have-their-costs camp on that one.
** - It should be duly noted that Slash et al. basically disowned this song. It's an Axl-only composition, his first for the band.
So, Lies clearly suffers from its tailspin into hate, and that knocks it down several pegs. But it is a musically good rock album that sits in the formative years of my youth, and the baggage it carries w/r/t misogyny v. calculated spectacle almost makes it more interesting. I'd recommend channeling your inner eleven year-old Nyet, being a little, um, patient with Axl's stupidity, and listening through those lyrics to the guitar; they're what keep this album worth it.
Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "You're Crazy"
Friday, August 14, 2009
Selected Lines From the Last Two-Plus Weeks' Pleasure Reading*
* - This is the first part of what should probably, for the sake of meeting copyright technicalities, be considered a book review.
She was the kind of fatally pretty and nubile wraithlike figure who glides through the sweaty junior-high corridors of every nocturnal emitter's dreamscape... A vision in a sundress and silly shoes. Mildred L. Bonk.
And the other point is I started to fall even before I started to hear him reply, standing there: Yes, But He'll Never Be Great...It was a religious moment. I learned what it means to be a body, Jim, just meat wrapped in a sort of flimsy nylon stocking, son, as I fell kneeling and slid toward the stretched net, myself seen by me, frame by frame, torn open...It's a pivotal, it's a seminal, religious day when you get to both hear and feel your destiny at the same moment, Jim.
'And Lo, for the Earth was empty of form, and void/And Darkness was all over the Face of the Deep/And We said:/Look at that fucker Dance.'
...the party music's now some horrible collection of mollified rock classics with all soft rock's grim dental associations...
'As we'd later reconstructed the scene, he'd used a wide-bit drill and small hacksaw to make a head-sized hole in the over door, then when he'd gotten his head in he'd carefully packed the extra space around his neck with wadded-up aluminum foil.'
'Sounds kind of ad hoc and jerry-rigged and haphazard.'
'Everybody's a critic. This wasn't an aesthetic endeavor.'
The real football reason, in all its inevitable real-reason banality, was that, over the course of weeks of dawns of watching the autosprinklers and the Pep Squad practices, Orin had developed a horrible schoolboy-grade crush, complete with dilated pupils and weak knees, for a certain big-haired sophomore baton-twirler he watched twirl and strut from a distance through the diffracted spectrum of the plumed sprinklers, all the way across the field's dewy turf, a twirler who'd attended a few of the All-Athletic-Team mixers Orin and his strabismic B.U. doubles partner had gone to, and who danced the same way she twirled and invoked mass Pep, which is to say in a way that seemed to turn everything solid in Orin's body watery and distant and oddly refracted...The schoolboy epithet they'd made up to refer to Orin's twirler was the P.G.O.A.T., for the Prettiest Girl Of All Time...this was the kind of hideously attractive girl you just knew in advance did not associate with normal collegiate human males, and clearly attended B.U.-Athletic social functions out of a sort of bland scientific interest...When she danced, at dances, it was with other cheerleaders and twirlers and Pep Squad Terrierettes, because no male had the grit or spit to ask her...The big hair was red-gold and the skin peachy-tinged pale and arms freckled and zygomatics indescribable and her eyes an extra-natural HD green.
How do trite things get to be trite? Why is the truth usually not just un- but anti-interesting? Because every one of the seminal little mini-epiphanies you have in early AA is always polyesterishly banal...
She's finding it especially hard to take when these earnest ravaged folks at the lectern say they're 'Here But For the Grace of God," ... but that her trouble with it is that 'But For the Grace of God' is a subjunctive, a counterfactual, she says, and can make sense only when introducing a conditional clause, like e.g. 'But For the Grace of God I would have died on Molly Notkin's bathroom floor,' so that an indicative transposition like 'I'm here But For the Grace of God' is, she says, literally senseless, and regardless of whether she hears it or not it's meaningless, and that the foamy enthusiasm with which these folks can say what in fact means nothing at all makes her want to put her head in a Radarange at the thought that the Substances have brought her to the sort of pass where this is the sort of language she has to have Blind Faith in.
Storrow 500: Local argot for Storrow Drive, which runs along the Charles from the Back Bay out to Alewife, with multiple lanes and Escherian signs and On- and Off-ramps within car-lengths of each other and no speed limit and sudden forks and the overall driving experience so forehead-drenching it's in the metro Police Union's contract they don't have to go anywhere near it.
...looking due southeast up Prospect, Lucien can see the variegated glints of passing low-chassis headlights off a whole long single-file column of polished metal wheels stolidly turning, being turned by swarthy hands in fingerless wheelchair-gloves. 'Squeak.' 'Squeak.' ... Wheelchair Assassins ... Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents, A.F.R.s, the ones who come always in the twilight, implacably squeaking, and cannot be reasoned with or bargained with, feel no pity or remorse, or fear (except a rumored fear of steep hills), and now they're all in here all over the shoproom like faceless rates, the devil's own hamsters ... Lucien bursts almost falling through the curtains, bug-eyed and corded and webbed in thread ... only to horrifically see the shop's rear service door standing agape in a gritty breeze and Bertraund ... sitting, squinting piratically straight ahead, with a railroad spike in his eye.
'Under what presidential administration was this room last deep-cleaned, I'm standing here prompted to fucking muse out loud,' my father said.
Two homemade pom-poms of shredded paper and what looked like the amputated handles of wooden tennis rackets were on the seminar table, which was otherwise bare. John Wayne wore a football helmet and light shoulder pads and a Russell athletic supporter and socks and shoes and nothing else. He was down in the classic three-point stance of U.S. football. Inc's incredibly tall and well-preserved mother Dr. Avril Incandenza wore a little green-and-white cheerleader's outfit and had one of deLint's big brass whistles hanging around her neck. She was blowing on the whistle, which appeared to be minus the little inside pellet because no whistling sound resulted. She was about two meters from Wayne, facing him, doing near-splits on the heavy shag, one arm up and pretending to blow the whistle while Wayne produced the classic low-register growling sounds of U.S. football. Pemulis made rather a show of pushing the bumpkin-billed yachting hat back to scratch his head, blinking. Mrs. Inc was the only one looking at him.
'I probably won't even waste everybody's time asking if I'm interrupting,' Pemulis said.
The kid's still obsessed with her approval. He lives for applause from exactly two hands.
(This is why, maybe, one Subject is never enough, why hand after hand must descend to pull him back from the endless fall. For were there for him just one, one, special and only, the One would not be he or she but what was between them, the obliterating trinity of You and I into We. Orin felt that once and has never recovered, and will never again.)
... carpal neuralgia, gluteal hyperadiposity, lumbar stressae. Half of all metro Bostonians now work at home via some digital link. 50% of all public education disseminated through accredited encoded pulses ... One third of those 50% of metro Bostonians who still leave home to work could work at home if they wished. And (get this) 94% of all O.N.A.N.ite paid entertainment now absorbed at home ... Saying this is bad is like saying traffic is bad, or health-care surtaxes, or the hazards of annular fusion: nobody but Ludditic granola-crunching freaks would call bad what no one can imagine being without.
The kids did somewhat better during periods of nuptial strife, when a stony-faced Mr. Stice slammed the kitchen door and went off daily to sell crop insurance while Mrs. Stice - whom both Mr. Stice and The Darkness called 'The Bride' - while The Bride spent all day and evening cooking intricate multicourse meals she'd feed bits of to The Brood (Stice refers to both himself and his six siblings as 'The Brood') and then keep warm in quietly rattling-lidded pots and then hurl at the kitchen walls when Mr. Stice came home smelling of gin and of cigarette-brands and toilet-eau not The Bride's own.
... Struck, canted slightly in his desk-chair from the over-development of his body's right side, is also trying to carve up each of this diarrheatic G.T. Day, M.S. guy's clauses into less-long self-contained sentences that sound more earnest and pubescent, like somebody earnestly struggling toward truth instead of flecking your forehead with spittle as he ranted grandiosely ...
Was amateurish the right word? More like the work of a brilliant optician and technician who was an amateur at any kind of real communication. Technically gorgeous, the Work, with lighting and angles planned out to the frame. But oddly hollow, empty, no sense of dramatic towardness, no narrative movement toward a real story; no emotional involvement toward an audience. Like conversing with a prisoner through that plastic screen using phones ... Joelle thought them more like a very smart person conversing with himself.
Joelle'd felt half-crazed. She could detect nothing fake about the lady's grace and cheer toward her, the goodwill. And at the same time felt sure in her guts' pit that the woman could have sat there and cut out Joelle's pancreas and thymus and minced them and prepared sweetbreads and eaten them chilled and patted her mouth without batting an eye. And unremarked by all who leaned her way.
'You remember my hideous phobic thing about monsters, as a kid?'
'Boy do I ever.'
'Boo, I think I no longer believe in monsters as faces in the floor or feral infants or vampires or whatever. I think at seventeen now I believe the only real monsters might be the type of liar where there's simply no way to tell. The ones who give nothing away.'
'But then how do you know they're monsters, then?'
''That's the monstrosity right there, Boo, I'm starting to think.'
'Golly Ned.'
'That they walk among us. Teach our children. Inscrutable. Brass-faced.'
One reason Pemulis was cautiously unassertive about Wayne's unauthorized presence in the room was the leaflet, which given a certain office-incident it wasn't impossible Wayne might choose to suspect seeing Pemulis's hand in the Olde-English-fonted leaflet up at various boards and inserted on the E.T.A. TP's communal e-board for 11/14 announcing a joint John Wayne/Dr. Avril Incandenza arithmetic presentation to the pre-quadrivial 14-and-Unders on how 17 can actually go into 56 way more than 3.294 times.
So Hal's most vivid full-color memory of the non-anti-Substance Meeting he drove fifty oversalivated clicks to by mistake will become that of his older brother's doubles partner's older brother down on all fours on a Dacronyl rug, crawling, hampered because one arm was holding his bear to his chest, so he sort dipped and rose as he crawled on three limbs toward Hal and the needs-meeter behind him, Bain's knees leaving twin pale tracks in the carpet and his head up on a wobbly neck and looking up and past Hal, his face unspeakable.
My whole descent into somewhat-heavier-than-normal drinking may have been some instinctive attempt to bury third-grade feelings of despicability, submerge them in an amber sea.
'You stepped in against six armed Hawaiians, I hear. Marshall Plan. Captain Courageous. God's personal Shane ... Glenny Kubitz calls me and describes the thing blow by blowjob. Says I should see the other guys. Says about breaking a Hawaiian's nose, shoving the bits up into the brain. The old chop-and-stiff-arm he says. Big Don G.'s a Satanically tough motherfuck: this was his assessment.'
The resentment, fear and self-pity are almost narcotizing. Way beyond anything he'd felt whn the hapless Canadians punched or shot him. This was a sudden total bitter impotent Job-type rage that always sends any sober addict falling back up and inside himself, like vapor up a chimney. Diehl and McDade were backing away from him. As well they fucking might.
It now lately sometimes seemed like a kind of black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately - the object seemed incidental to this will to give oneself away, utterly. To games or needles, to some other person. Something pathetic about it. A flight-from in the form of a plunging-into.
He was always kind of a boys' boy. He had a jolly ferocity about him that scared girls. And he had no idea how to deal with girls except to try and impress them by letting them watch somebody do something to his head. He was never what you'd call a ladies' man. At parties he was always at the center of the crowd that drank instead of dancing.
The condescension with which Prissburger insets that hemoptysis means something called 'percussive hemmorhage,' like Kathy the R.N. wasn't enough of a pro not to have to insert little technical explanations for, makes Gately sad for the guy - it's obvious the guy pathetically thinks this kind of limp condescending shit will impress her. Gately's got to admit he would have tried to impress her, too, though, if she hadn't met him by holding a kidney-shaped pan under his working anus.
The door's got a big poster of R. Limbaugh on it, from before the assassination.
I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies ... And when he came back to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out.1
1 Alternatively: I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies ... 388. Talwin-NX - © Sanofi Winthrop U.S.a
aDoubly alternatively: I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies ... And when he came back to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out. / 1. Methamphetamine hydrochloride, a.k.a. crystal meth ... 388. Talwin-NX - © Sanofi Winthrop U.S.
She was the kind of fatally pretty and nubile wraithlike figure who glides through the sweaty junior-high corridors of every nocturnal emitter's dreamscape... A vision in a sundress and silly shoes. Mildred L. Bonk.
And the other point is I started to fall even before I started to hear him reply, standing there: Yes, But He'll Never Be Great...It was a religious moment. I learned what it means to be a body, Jim, just meat wrapped in a sort of flimsy nylon stocking, son, as I fell kneeling and slid toward the stretched net, myself seen by me, frame by frame, torn open...It's a pivotal, it's a seminal, religious day when you get to both hear and feel your destiny at the same moment, Jim.
'And Lo, for the Earth was empty of form, and void/And Darkness was all over the Face of the Deep/And We said:/Look at that fucker Dance.'
...the party music's now some horrible collection of mollified rock classics with all soft rock's grim dental associations...
'As we'd later reconstructed the scene, he'd used a wide-bit drill and small hacksaw to make a head-sized hole in the over door, then when he'd gotten his head in he'd carefully packed the extra space around his neck with wadded-up aluminum foil.'
'Sounds kind of ad hoc and jerry-rigged and haphazard.'
'Everybody's a critic. This wasn't an aesthetic endeavor.'
The real football reason, in all its inevitable real-reason banality, was that, over the course of weeks of dawns of watching the autosprinklers and the Pep Squad practices, Orin had developed a horrible schoolboy-grade crush, complete with dilated pupils and weak knees, for a certain big-haired sophomore baton-twirler he watched twirl and strut from a distance through the diffracted spectrum of the plumed sprinklers, all the way across the field's dewy turf, a twirler who'd attended a few of the All-Athletic-Team mixers Orin and his strabismic B.U. doubles partner had gone to, and who danced the same way she twirled and invoked mass Pep, which is to say in a way that seemed to turn everything solid in Orin's body watery and distant and oddly refracted...The schoolboy epithet they'd made up to refer to Orin's twirler was the P.G.O.A.T., for the Prettiest Girl Of All Time...this was the kind of hideously attractive girl you just knew in advance did not associate with normal collegiate human males, and clearly attended B.U.-Athletic social functions out of a sort of bland scientific interest...When she danced, at dances, it was with other cheerleaders and twirlers and Pep Squad Terrierettes, because no male had the grit or spit to ask her...The big hair was red-gold and the skin peachy-tinged pale and arms freckled and zygomatics indescribable and her eyes an extra-natural HD green.
How do trite things get to be trite? Why is the truth usually not just un- but anti-interesting? Because every one of the seminal little mini-epiphanies you have in early AA is always polyesterishly banal...
She's finding it especially hard to take when these earnest ravaged folks at the lectern say they're 'Here But For the Grace of God," ... but that her trouble with it is that 'But For the Grace of God' is a subjunctive, a counterfactual, she says, and can make sense only when introducing a conditional clause, like e.g. 'But For the Grace of God I would have died on Molly Notkin's bathroom floor,' so that an indicative transposition like 'I'm here But For the Grace of God' is, she says, literally senseless, and regardless of whether she hears it or not it's meaningless, and that the foamy enthusiasm with which these folks can say what in fact means nothing at all makes her want to put her head in a Radarange at the thought that the Substances have brought her to the sort of pass where this is the sort of language she has to have Blind Faith in.
Storrow 500: Local argot for Storrow Drive, which runs along the Charles from the Back Bay out to Alewife, with multiple lanes and Escherian signs and On- and Off-ramps within car-lengths of each other and no speed limit and sudden forks and the overall driving experience so forehead-drenching it's in the metro Police Union's contract they don't have to go anywhere near it.
...looking due southeast up Prospect, Lucien can see the variegated glints of passing low-chassis headlights off a whole long single-file column of polished metal wheels stolidly turning, being turned by swarthy hands in fingerless wheelchair-gloves. 'Squeak.' 'Squeak.' ... Wheelchair Assassins ... Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents, A.F.R.s, the ones who come always in the twilight, implacably squeaking, and cannot be reasoned with or bargained with, feel no pity or remorse, or fear (except a rumored fear of steep hills), and now they're all in here all over the shoproom like faceless rates, the devil's own hamsters ... Lucien bursts almost falling through the curtains, bug-eyed and corded and webbed in thread ... only to horrifically see the shop's rear service door standing agape in a gritty breeze and Bertraund ... sitting, squinting piratically straight ahead, with a railroad spike in his eye.
'Under what presidential administration was this room last deep-cleaned, I'm standing here prompted to fucking muse out loud,' my father said.
Two homemade pom-poms of shredded paper and what looked like the amputated handles of wooden tennis rackets were on the seminar table, which was otherwise bare. John Wayne wore a football helmet and light shoulder pads and a Russell athletic supporter and socks and shoes and nothing else. He was down in the classic three-point stance of U.S. football. Inc's incredibly tall and well-preserved mother Dr. Avril Incandenza wore a little green-and-white cheerleader's outfit and had one of deLint's big brass whistles hanging around her neck. She was blowing on the whistle, which appeared to be minus the little inside pellet because no whistling sound resulted. She was about two meters from Wayne, facing him, doing near-splits on the heavy shag, one arm up and pretending to blow the whistle while Wayne produced the classic low-register growling sounds of U.S. football. Pemulis made rather a show of pushing the bumpkin-billed yachting hat back to scratch his head, blinking. Mrs. Inc was the only one looking at him.
'I probably won't even waste everybody's time asking if I'm interrupting,' Pemulis said.
The kid's still obsessed with her approval. He lives for applause from exactly two hands.
(This is why, maybe, one Subject is never enough, why hand after hand must descend to pull him back from the endless fall. For were there for him just one, one, special and only, the One would not be he or she but what was between them, the obliterating trinity of You and I into We. Orin felt that once and has never recovered, and will never again.)
... carpal neuralgia, gluteal hyperadiposity, lumbar stressae. Half of all metro Bostonians now work at home via some digital link. 50% of all public education disseminated through accredited encoded pulses ... One third of those 50% of metro Bostonians who still leave home to work could work at home if they wished. And (get this) 94% of all O.N.A.N.ite paid entertainment now absorbed at home ... Saying this is bad is like saying traffic is bad, or health-care surtaxes, or the hazards of annular fusion: nobody but Ludditic granola-crunching freaks would call bad what no one can imagine being without.
The kids did somewhat better during periods of nuptial strife, when a stony-faced Mr. Stice slammed the kitchen door and went off daily to sell crop insurance while Mrs. Stice - whom both Mr. Stice and The Darkness called 'The Bride' - while The Bride spent all day and evening cooking intricate multicourse meals she'd feed bits of to The Brood (Stice refers to both himself and his six siblings as 'The Brood') and then keep warm in quietly rattling-lidded pots and then hurl at the kitchen walls when Mr. Stice came home smelling of gin and of cigarette-brands and toilet-eau not The Bride's own.
... Struck, canted slightly in his desk-chair from the over-development of his body's right side, is also trying to carve up each of this diarrheatic G.T. Day, M.S. guy's clauses into less-long self-contained sentences that sound more earnest and pubescent, like somebody earnestly struggling toward truth instead of flecking your forehead with spittle as he ranted grandiosely ...
Was amateurish the right word? More like the work of a brilliant optician and technician who was an amateur at any kind of real communication. Technically gorgeous, the Work, with lighting and angles planned out to the frame. But oddly hollow, empty, no sense of dramatic towardness, no narrative movement toward a real story; no emotional involvement toward an audience. Like conversing with a prisoner through that plastic screen using phones ... Joelle thought them more like a very smart person conversing with himself.
Joelle'd felt half-crazed. She could detect nothing fake about the lady's grace and cheer toward her, the goodwill. And at the same time felt sure in her guts' pit that the woman could have sat there and cut out Joelle's pancreas and thymus and minced them and prepared sweetbreads and eaten them chilled and patted her mouth without batting an eye. And unremarked by all who leaned her way.
'You remember my hideous phobic thing about monsters, as a kid?'
'Boy do I ever.'
'Boo, I think I no longer believe in monsters as faces in the floor or feral infants or vampires or whatever. I think at seventeen now I believe the only real monsters might be the type of liar where there's simply no way to tell. The ones who give nothing away.'
'But then how do you know they're monsters, then?'
''That's the monstrosity right there, Boo, I'm starting to think.'
'Golly Ned.'
'That they walk among us. Teach our children. Inscrutable. Brass-faced.'
One reason Pemulis was cautiously unassertive about Wayne's unauthorized presence in the room was the leaflet, which given a certain office-incident it wasn't impossible Wayne might choose to suspect seeing Pemulis's hand in the Olde-English-fonted leaflet up at various boards and inserted on the E.T.A. TP's communal e-board for 11/14 announcing a joint John Wayne/Dr. Avril Incandenza arithmetic presentation to the pre-quadrivial 14-and-Unders on how 17 can actually go into 56 way more than 3.294 times.
So Hal's most vivid full-color memory of the non-anti-Substance Meeting he drove fifty oversalivated clicks to by mistake will become that of his older brother's doubles partner's older brother down on all fours on a Dacronyl rug, crawling, hampered because one arm was holding his bear to his chest, so he sort dipped and rose as he crawled on three limbs toward Hal and the needs-meeter behind him, Bain's knees leaving twin pale tracks in the carpet and his head up on a wobbly neck and looking up and past Hal, his face unspeakable.
My whole descent into somewhat-heavier-than-normal drinking may have been some instinctive attempt to bury third-grade feelings of despicability, submerge them in an amber sea.
'You stepped in against six armed Hawaiians, I hear. Marshall Plan. Captain Courageous. God's personal Shane ... Glenny Kubitz calls me and describes the thing blow by blowjob. Says I should see the other guys. Says about breaking a Hawaiian's nose, shoving the bits up into the brain. The old chop-and-stiff-arm he says. Big Don G.'s a Satanically tough motherfuck: this was his assessment.'
The resentment, fear and self-pity are almost narcotizing. Way beyond anything he'd felt whn the hapless Canadians punched or shot him. This was a sudden total bitter impotent Job-type rage that always sends any sober addict falling back up and inside himself, like vapor up a chimney. Diehl and McDade were backing away from him. As well they fucking might.
It now lately sometimes seemed like a kind of black miracle to me that people could actually care deeply about a subject or pursuit, and could go on caring this way for years on end. Could dedicate their entire lives to it. It seemed admirable and at the same time pathetic. We are dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately - the object seemed incidental to this will to give oneself away, utterly. To games or needles, to some other person. Something pathetic about it. A flight-from in the form of a plunging-into.
He was always kind of a boys' boy. He had a jolly ferocity about him that scared girls. And he had no idea how to deal with girls except to try and impress them by letting them watch somebody do something to his head. He was never what you'd call a ladies' man. At parties he was always at the center of the crowd that drank instead of dancing.
The condescension with which Prissburger insets that hemoptysis means something called 'percussive hemmorhage,' like Kathy the R.N. wasn't enough of a pro not to have to insert little technical explanations for, makes Gately sad for the guy - it's obvious the guy pathetically thinks this kind of limp condescending shit will impress her. Gately's got to admit he would have tried to impress her, too, though, if she hadn't met him by holding a kidney-shaped pan under his working anus.
The door's got a big poster of R. Limbaugh on it, from before the assassination.
I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies ... And when he came back to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out.1
1 Alternatively: I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies ... 388. Talwin-NX - © Sanofi Winthrop U.S.a
aDoubly alternatively: I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies ... And when he came back to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out. / 1. Methamphetamine hydrochloride, a.k.a. crystal meth ... 388. Talwin-NX - © Sanofi Winthrop U.S.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Album Review: The Fabulous Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet - The Fabulous Sidney Bechet (1958)
This "Old School" jazz recording is quite cool; the crystal sound of 1950s recording technology combined with an exuberant Dixieland / New Orleans style makes for a great party when you're in that spritely, no-looking-back, good-times mood evinced by the Quarter. Bechet's clarinet is powerful and piercing without being shrill, and the rest of the soloists - trumpet, piano, trombone - nail their festive riffs, too. The disc features a good mix of very energetic upbeat numbers and barroom ballads. It also contains a bunch of standards , including great takes on "Sweet Georgia Brown," "All of Me" and "Ballin' the Jack." This admittedly isn't my favorite jazz style, but I mean that in the quite literal isn't my *favorite* sense - it's still damn good, evokes a very particular mood and setting, and makes for great music to, say, kick back with a dense novel on a lonesome Wednesday night to.
Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "Sweet Georgia Brown" (aka the basketball jazz song)
The Marines Ban Social Networking
The United States Marine Corps banned its members from using social networking websites while on military networks in an order issued earlier this month from Washington, D.C. The Marines are not the only organization to proceed down this path. The Miami Dolphins of the National Football League recently banned attendees of the team's practices from Twittering. Despite rumors to the contrary, the NFL is not preventing its athletes from Twittering. The Marine Corps ban while apparently draconian does not extend to members of the Corps whom are off-duty and/or on their own computers. Of course, this then brings into question the ultimate utility or futility of the order.
Read more here. And here.
Musical Communion
This one comes to us courtesy of our northern most New Jersey reader. As she so succinctly summed it up, Bobby McFerrin Hacks Your Brain with the Pentatonic Scale.
Album Review: Earphoria
Smashing Pumpkins - Earphoria (1994/2002)
Flashback to 04.01-03.1994: in what is historically considered one of Nyet Jones's exemplary candidates for shortlist inclusion for the "Best Weekends Ever" award, I spent a Friday evening at a hormonally-charged birthday party with my superb friend Marisa, Saturday night at my first ever got-to-go-by-myself-concert at the Sunken Garden Amiptheatre in San Antonio w/ Smashing Pumpkins*, and Sunday night at the AlamoDome checking out the superstaged theatrics of Division Bell-era Pink Floyd. And with all apologies to Marisa and the flying pigs, the Smashing Pumpkins concert was the highlight of the weekend. They hit us with the following setlist:
* - note that the band is named after the activity of pumpkin-smashing, not like they are a group of attractive gourds i.e. *The* Smashing Pumpkins. I think this may have been changed at some later date, but I've always liked the idea of bands named after activities or phenomena (Talking Heads, anyone?) as opposed to, say, Article Verbing Nouns.
4.02.94 - Sunken Garden Theatre, San Antonio, TX
Soma, Rocket, Geek U.S.A., Disarm, Today, I Am One*, Drown, Hummer, Luna, Siva, Cherub Rock, Starla, Dancing in the Moonlight**, Silverfuck***, Sweet Sweet
* - With, I';m told, standard bitch-fest rant from one B. Corgan
** - Thin Lizzy cover
*** - w/ "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" vocal bridge add-on
Anyways, that Soma opening, with the subdued concert opening awash in blue lights and the explosion into distortion, established a marrow-level lust for the band. The concert sizzled, and I spent many years looking for some live SP. That year, the band had released Earphoria, the soundtrack to a live documentary/concert footage VHS tape, in extremely limited press - only 1000 copies were available nationwide. With my limited access to all-things-indie via the San Antonio suburban music scene, I never got the copy for which I longed. I spent much of the ensuing years with SP as a favorite band, deeply digging the excesses of Mellon Collie, the amelodic industry of the Ransom soundtrack and their later moves into less-good album areas. I even begged for the single / B-side box set The Aeroplane Flies High...: I was big-timed hooked, and as has been said, selling depression to teenagers is like selling depression to me.
I was all set to drive to a concert in Austin sometime in the mid-nineties when a touring keyboardist died and the drummer was all but kicked out of the band. That was a good of a marker as any for when the "SP can do no wrong" sentiment died in me; their later albums just didn't kick as much, and Corgan's indulgences got past whatever threshold I found tolerable. I still loved (and still love) the early discs, though, so when I stumbled upon a copy of Earphoria in a used album bin in 2004 - the disc having been re-released and pressed in mass in 2002 - I put down those seven dollars with gusto.
Um... yeah. I figured out some time ago that what you hear in concert does not often match what was actually played in concert - it's pretty easy to get caught up in the energy and not notice the sloppiness with which you're being aurally assaulted. The energy is still there in a big way, but it's at the cost of sludgery, screeched vocals and angsty silly vocal improvisations. Muddy is the adjective that comes to mind. Positive reviews harp on the energy and the difference in sound between the live show and the (over)-produced albums, and I get that; I just don't think the added energy and uniqueness of the experience quite compensates for the upfront impression of slop I get when I hear these cuts. Throw on the top that an already whiney-in-style Corgan comes across as raspy and shrill in concert, and you've got something to which I am not tempted to listen in lieu of the original album tracks.
It's not all bad, and notably, the good cuts of the album are crisp acoustic takes on songs that 1, dramatically differ from the original and are thus worthwhile in an alternative-to-studio-cut sense, and 2, don't suffer the muddiness of overdrive and fuzzed out amps. Both "Mayonaise" and "Cherub Rock" get the unplugged treatment, with the latter - one of my favorite SP songs - being a welcome addition to the catalog. Still, it's not enough to save a really, really die-hards only disc, and as highly as I thought of this band back in the day - and considered myself a die-hard - this ten year awaited disc certainly disappointed.
Status: Not Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "Cherub Rock"
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