second heliocentric revolution, indeed.
too many fools, though.
Friday, February 28, 2014
the last rap news (22) was especially awesome
the copernicus section is something else.
second heliocentric revolution, indeed.
too many fools, though.
second heliocentric revolution, indeed.
too many fools, though.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
i'm not suggesting that giraffes would be smart enough to do this, if they had the physical ability to. i think this would be very hard for a giraffe to do, with the funky neck and awkward legs and stuff. maybe not - just a guess.
but it got me thinking about it.
i mean, if a few okapi-like giraffe ancestors could figure something like that out then it may have been intelligence that would have been selected for rather than something physical.
it just goes back to the idea that there's so much randomness inherent in evolution that very specific tests are required to figure out what's actually being selected for.
elephants are fucking brilliant by the way, if you don't know that.
but it got me thinking about it.
i mean, if a few okapi-like giraffe ancestors could figure something like that out then it may have been intelligence that would have been selected for rather than something physical.
it just goes back to the idea that there's so much randomness inherent in evolution that very specific tests are required to figure out what's actually being selected for.
elephants are fucking brilliant by the way, if you don't know that.
well, i found a reasonable workaround.
$1/month.
$0.01/minute.
free voicemail-to-text.
no expiry.
almost free.
but now i have to wait ten or fifteen days for paypal to fail to convince me to give them a credit card number. sometimes it feels like the whole world failed economics 101. incentives? what is it, 1853?
in the long run, i'll hook a broken laptop into a router, install the scary software there and find some kind of budget ip phone on kijiji to hook up to it. for now, i'm happy with the email option.
...and i'm still thinking that i should be able to rout that to an android phone if i ever get one, too. that might make more sense than the broken laptop thing.
$1/month.
$0.01/minute.
free voicemail-to-text.
no expiry.
almost free.
but now i have to wait ten or fifteen days for paypal to fail to convince me to give them a credit card number. sometimes it feels like the whole world failed economics 101. incentives? what is it, 1853?
in the long run, i'll hook a broken laptop into a router, install the scary software there and find some kind of budget ip phone on kijiji to hook up to it. for now, i'm happy with the email option.
...and i'm still thinking that i should be able to rout that to an android phone if i ever get one, too. that might make more sense than the broken laptop thing.
you know, all i really want is a local phone number (it has to be local because the primary reason i need the phone in the first place is for the border fascists....this is apparently an impossible process without a phone number....) that routs to a voice mail box and routs those messages to email. that way, i could walk down to a pay phone and call somebody back, if necessary. or respond via email. that's what i always did in the past; somebody would leave me a message, and i'd send them an email.
the system could be fully automated. there's no real justification to pay for it.
google voice can do that, but not in canada. which sort of makes me want to launch a string of terrorist attacks against the communications oligopoly. i know that won't solve anything. but, fuck them. there's ways around it, but not with a local area code. i can't give the border fascists a wyoming area number, they'll think i'm running coke back and forth. so i'm stuck with the whole voip rigmarole, which i'm dreading going through with.
in the end, i'll probably just buy the voip mailbox and never actually go through the process of getting an ip phone or installing the software. then i'll forget to buy minutes and lose my number...
how does it make sense to ask for verification by phone when somebody is signing up for a phone number?
ugh.
the system could be fully automated. there's no real justification to pay for it.
google voice can do that, but not in canada. which sort of makes me want to launch a string of terrorist attacks against the communications oligopoly. i know that won't solve anything. but, fuck them. there's ways around it, but not with a local area code. i can't give the border fascists a wyoming area number, they'll think i'm running coke back and forth. so i'm stuck with the whole voip rigmarole, which i'm dreading going through with.
in the end, i'll probably just buy the voip mailbox and never actually go through the process of getting an ip phone or installing the software. then i'll forget to buy minutes and lose my number...
how does it make sense to ask for verification by phone when somebody is signing up for a phone number?
ugh.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
richard price - observations on the nature of civil liberty, the principles of government, and the justice and policy of the war with america
"overall? this is a short text, but it took me a long time to get through it because i found it very difficult to put it into context. i suspect that that difficulty placing it into context may be why it's not often cited today. whatever it's value as a liberalizing document in it's own time, it reads off today as a manifesto of the type of social conservatism that is often found on the religious right. yet, price was a major opponent of no less a conservative icon than edmund burke himself. when the lines are this blurry, it's no wonder that he's been left unclaimed in the second half of the twentieth century. however, that doesn't negate the text's historical value. it may not have a direct successor today, but it may perhaps be traced forwards in time as an influential text on the socially conservative aspect of the progressive movement of the late nineteenth century."
that was also painful. i had this idea i could do fifty pages of reading in the morning and record all night, but i found myself getting through a few paragraphs of this thing per day. i have to admit i was hugely distracted by youtube, as you may have noticed.
i'm not giving up on the idea yet, but i'm thinking song/book alternation may be a better idea.
derp
i was tangentially blown off course to this text when attempting to get in between the ideological debate carried out by burke and paine over the revolution in france. i seem to have gotten some wires crossed (i'm going to guess it was complications from a google search) in thinking that the editor of my copy of burke's reflections on the revolution in france claimed that his text was in response to this one. rather, the claim was that burke was replying to a sermon given by rev./dr. price in 1789. this text is claimed by some, however, to have had a strong influence on certain american revolutionaries, so i've decided to give it a read through for historical purposes.
price splits his text into two sections. the first states a few assumptions about liberty and is likewise split into three sections: liberty in general, civil liberties as they relate to government and what could vaguely be called sovereignty in the context of empire. price cites locke in his preface and, without having read much locke directly, i'm willing to take him at face value in his claim that he's merely stating lockean principles. the second section discusses the possibility of a war with the american colonies and is really the crux of the text. as the first section is merely a statement of principles, deconstructing it in too much detail is to largely miss the point of his argument about the possible upcoming war against the colonies. however, there are a few curiosities that are worth pointing out to more broadly understand what 'liberty' meant, as a concept, amongst liberals (including proto-anarchists and proto-socialists) of the time period.
price specifies four different types of liberty: physical, religious, civil and moral. the first three are intuitive; the last references the liberty to not be controlled by 'contrary principles'. today, most people would acknowledge that intellectual liberty (the liberty to define our own principles) is a key type of liberty and contrast it directly against this idea of 'moral liberty' that price is asserting. i think it's worthwhile to try and understand this a little bit better in case i see it jump up elsewhere.
would it not be easy to derive the idea of defining our own principles from not being controlled by those of others? sure, and this is the intuitive connection between moral and intellectual liberty. however, price is being far too specific to allow that derivation. to price, "contrary principles" means "principles contrary to christian principles". specifically, he claims that those who are "controlled by passions" have lost their moral liberty and those without moral liberty are "wicked and detestable". again, it's easy to claim this can be converted into modern language by talking about various types of sexual oppression, but he speaks not of this but of "licentiousness", which no doubt referred to any kind of sexuality that was not properly puritan. he takes it a step further than this in comparing licentiousness to a type of despotism. while he's not explicit, it's clear that he means to state that the despot is satan. his concept of moral freedom is consequently one of freedom from enslavement to satanic principles and, while this is maybe an easily understood relic of classical thinking, it is not at all consistent with intellectual liberty. rather, it reduces the parliament to a rubber stamp for the church and threatens to oppress all those who do not conform to the doctrine dictated by the church-state; "moral freedom" is the so-called "freedom" to not be exposed to ideas that differ from the state's (and church's) official pronunciations. this is 1776, not 1984.
it's not entirely clear how far price would enforce his right to "moral freedom" in an attempt to suppress "intellectual freedom" and emancipate those whom he considers to be enslaved to their corrupt desires. he does suggest that licentiousness should be restricted by laws, but he's also careful to point out that despotism is the greater threat than licentiousness. on the other hand, he makes it clear that he believes that people have the "right" to "protect" themselves from influences that may lead them away from the church. he also seems to reject the idea of a written constitution - specifically because it may restrict government in punishing "licentiousness". i'm really not able to develop a cogent thought from that seemingly contradictory mess of ideas, other than to derive the somewhat outlandish view that price believed that restricting "licentiousness" was a valid act of communitarian democracy, in the sense that it protects the majority from harm (as he sees it). that is, he seems to be arguing in favour of the tyranny of the majority and specifically when it comes to sexuality. such thinking seems better suited to the spanish inquisition than to british liberalism, and yet here it is in an important revolutionary document. i cannot make further sense of it, other than to applaud jefferson's insistence on the lockean notion of separating church and state in an environment where not doing so could have been truly catastrophic.
i also want to take note of how haphazardly price glosses over the problems of corruption that are endemic in government. it does not seem as though price is interested in the kinds of objections that an ancient philosopher like socrates may have provided against democracy. nor does he provide arguments for his claims, but this is to be forgiven due to the nature of the first section as a statement of principles rather than an exposition of them. it is somewhat annoying, though, that, even while arguing against authority, he asserts his arguments in the form of sometimes inane assertions. it may indeed be obvious that pure democracy becomes less and less reasonable as population size increases, but it in no way follows that "a free government may be established in the largest state" by setting up a decentralized representative democracy. while price correctly points out that money is a possible corrupting influence in representative democracies, centralized or not, he does not present any kind of argument as to why his proposals will not lead to that kind of corruption or why "in these circumstances," of decentralized representative democracy, "each separate state would be secure against the interference of sovereign power in its private concerns, and, therefore, would possess liberty". could the corrupting forces not merely simultaneously co-opt several states? i'm not saying they must or can't, i'm just pointing out that there's no argument at all and that reduces price to some kind of cheap mystical guru, pumping out oracular nonsense that seems almost precious in hindsight.
he closes the first section by arguing (i use that word lightly) that empires are impossible to maintain and always eventually result in dissolution. the empire must demand certain things of it's client states, which it's client states will see as rightfully theirs, leading to a conflict developing between positions of imperial authority (which are illegitimate) and expressions of popular rule. the imperial state will need to assert itself by force, which will produce a violent reaction. this is a much easier set of statements to take at face value, although it's perhaps no longer reasonable in our world to think a popular movement can offer any kind of violent resistance to a centralized state. of course, he's setting himself up for a discussion of the situation in america, which he turns to in his second section.
while price provides moral and constitutional arguments, and these form an important part of his perspective, what he's really suggesting is that it is not in britain's self-interest to try and suppress the colonies by force. price is by no means a revolutionary himself. rather, his main concern is the strength of the empire and how to maintain america within it in a way that both grants the colonists a higher level of autonomy and maintains the cohesion of a greater, trans-oceanic british civilization. the real core of his opposition to military action consequently reduces to his perception that such a conflict is unwinnable, from the british perspective; that is to say that the crux of his essay is to suggest that the crown ought to have been using more enlightened tactics than they were using in order to maintain the empire.
was the probability of success really so remote? well, it depended entirely on how many people could be convinced to fight, and price realized that. his calculation assumed that the british empire could not gather any recruits from russia, india or canada (a clear underestimation) and also assumed that every single colonist would fight against the empire (a clear exaggeration that, as a canadian, is especially absurd to me). he consequently derives a force of 40,000 imperial british soldiers vs. 500,000 american colonists. in reality, the loyalists in america actually outnumbered the revolutionaries; the empire had a large numerical advantage in the war. price continues by suggesting that blockading the colonies could not truly harm them because they were entirely self-sufficient. he once again becomes incoherent here, in suggesting that the blockade he opposes would be an act of providence to deliver the colonists from the temptation of foreign luxuries.
throughout his arguments, price persistently returns to this romanticized conception of the american colonists as a pious, pure entity that understands and practices an undiluted, true kind of liberty and continually contrasts them against his perception of the british as corrupted by earthly desires. it's maybe easy to forget at this point that the puritan founding myth was as much of a british invention as an american one and that the historical roots of it carried on in britain for at least as long as it did in america. that is to say that price was producing british stereotypes of america while speaking to a british audience. ulterior motives that price may have had aside, one gets the impression that the british would have generally taken this entirely outlandish, romanticized idealization at face value. the following passage illustrates this:
In this hour of tremendous danger it would become us to turn our thoughts to Heaven. This is what our brethren in the Colonies are doing. From one end of North-America to the other they are fasting and praying. But what are we doing? We are ridiculing them as fanatics, and scoffing at religion, We are running wild after pleasure and forgetting every thing serious and decent at masquerades. We are trafficking for boroughs, perjuring ourselves at elections, and selling ourselves for places. Which side then is Providence likely to favour?
price even ends the text (somewhat hilariously) by comparing america to jesus: he asks the colonists to forgive the empire for it's oppression, as it knows not what it is doing.
on the brighter side of things, it should be noted that price had a fairly refreshing view of indigenous concerns, relative to the period. while he ultimately puts the question aside, seemingly due to the perception that it is an argument he can't win, his articulation both of british massacres in india and of native american sovereignty demonstrate that these were not unknown moral concerns at the time:
If sailing along a coast can give a right to a country, then might the people of Japan become, as soon as they please, the proprietors of Britain. Nothing can be more chimerical than property founded on such a reason. If the land on which the colonies first settled had any proprietors, they were the natives.
indeed, they were.
another thing that price seems abstractly (if not explicitly) aware of is the revolution as a process of recentering the empire in washington, rather than one of an independent entity breaking off and starting a new nation. while he upholds the constitutional principle of "no taxation without representation", he also makes it clear that he doesn't really see the colonists as representing a new national identity that in any way transcends their inherent britishness. he demonstrates this by projecting a possible future where the hanoverian kings (or some other aristocratic family of continental despots) have reduced britain to an authoritarian monarchy, consequently creating a situation where the colonists are the remaining descendants of traditional concepts of british liberty. such a future is one where the colonies would be drastically more populous, have a much larger economy, be more intellectually advanced and command a much stronger military. out of this, price is able to project a fantasy where america is both morally and realistically superior to britain. he dares not suggest that britain would be forced into submission, but the implication is between the lines. he then uses this projection to argue for reconciliation with the colonists out of british self-interest.
overall? this is a short text, but it took me a long time to get through it because i found it very difficult to put it into context. i suspect that that difficulty placing it into context may be why it's not often cited today. whatever it's value as a liberalizing document in it's own time, it reads off today as a manifesto of the type of social conservatism that is often found on the religious right. yet, price was a major opponent of no less a conservative icon than edmund burke himself. when the lines are this blurry, it's no wonder that he's been left unclaimed in the second half of the twentieth century. however, that doesn't negate the text's historical value. it may not have a direct successor today, but it may perhaps be traced forwards in time as an influential text on the socially conservative aspect of the progressive movement of the late nineteenth century.
full text:
http://www.constitution.org/price/price_3.htm
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/books/congress/E/211.P930.1776b/index.html
that was also painful. i had this idea i could do fifty pages of reading in the morning and record all night, but i found myself getting through a few paragraphs of this thing per day. i have to admit i was hugely distracted by youtube, as you may have noticed.
i'm not giving up on the idea yet, but i'm thinking song/book alternation may be a better idea.
derp
i was tangentially blown off course to this text when attempting to get in between the ideological debate carried out by burke and paine over the revolution in france. i seem to have gotten some wires crossed (i'm going to guess it was complications from a google search) in thinking that the editor of my copy of burke's reflections on the revolution in france claimed that his text was in response to this one. rather, the claim was that burke was replying to a sermon given by rev./dr. price in 1789. this text is claimed by some, however, to have had a strong influence on certain american revolutionaries, so i've decided to give it a read through for historical purposes.
price splits his text into two sections. the first states a few assumptions about liberty and is likewise split into three sections: liberty in general, civil liberties as they relate to government and what could vaguely be called sovereignty in the context of empire. price cites locke in his preface and, without having read much locke directly, i'm willing to take him at face value in his claim that he's merely stating lockean principles. the second section discusses the possibility of a war with the american colonies and is really the crux of the text. as the first section is merely a statement of principles, deconstructing it in too much detail is to largely miss the point of his argument about the possible upcoming war against the colonies. however, there are a few curiosities that are worth pointing out to more broadly understand what 'liberty' meant, as a concept, amongst liberals (including proto-anarchists and proto-socialists) of the time period.
price specifies four different types of liberty: physical, religious, civil and moral. the first three are intuitive; the last references the liberty to not be controlled by 'contrary principles'. today, most people would acknowledge that intellectual liberty (the liberty to define our own principles) is a key type of liberty and contrast it directly against this idea of 'moral liberty' that price is asserting. i think it's worthwhile to try and understand this a little bit better in case i see it jump up elsewhere.
would it not be easy to derive the idea of defining our own principles from not being controlled by those of others? sure, and this is the intuitive connection between moral and intellectual liberty. however, price is being far too specific to allow that derivation. to price, "contrary principles" means "principles contrary to christian principles". specifically, he claims that those who are "controlled by passions" have lost their moral liberty and those without moral liberty are "wicked and detestable". again, it's easy to claim this can be converted into modern language by talking about various types of sexual oppression, but he speaks not of this but of "licentiousness", which no doubt referred to any kind of sexuality that was not properly puritan. he takes it a step further than this in comparing licentiousness to a type of despotism. while he's not explicit, it's clear that he means to state that the despot is satan. his concept of moral freedom is consequently one of freedom from enslavement to satanic principles and, while this is maybe an easily understood relic of classical thinking, it is not at all consistent with intellectual liberty. rather, it reduces the parliament to a rubber stamp for the church and threatens to oppress all those who do not conform to the doctrine dictated by the church-state; "moral freedom" is the so-called "freedom" to not be exposed to ideas that differ from the state's (and church's) official pronunciations. this is 1776, not 1984.
it's not entirely clear how far price would enforce his right to "moral freedom" in an attempt to suppress "intellectual freedom" and emancipate those whom he considers to be enslaved to their corrupt desires. he does suggest that licentiousness should be restricted by laws, but he's also careful to point out that despotism is the greater threat than licentiousness. on the other hand, he makes it clear that he believes that people have the "right" to "protect" themselves from influences that may lead them away from the church. he also seems to reject the idea of a written constitution - specifically because it may restrict government in punishing "licentiousness". i'm really not able to develop a cogent thought from that seemingly contradictory mess of ideas, other than to derive the somewhat outlandish view that price believed that restricting "licentiousness" was a valid act of communitarian democracy, in the sense that it protects the majority from harm (as he sees it). that is, he seems to be arguing in favour of the tyranny of the majority and specifically when it comes to sexuality. such thinking seems better suited to the spanish inquisition than to british liberalism, and yet here it is in an important revolutionary document. i cannot make further sense of it, other than to applaud jefferson's insistence on the lockean notion of separating church and state in an environment where not doing so could have been truly catastrophic.
i also want to take note of how haphazardly price glosses over the problems of corruption that are endemic in government. it does not seem as though price is interested in the kinds of objections that an ancient philosopher like socrates may have provided against democracy. nor does he provide arguments for his claims, but this is to be forgiven due to the nature of the first section as a statement of principles rather than an exposition of them. it is somewhat annoying, though, that, even while arguing against authority, he asserts his arguments in the form of sometimes inane assertions. it may indeed be obvious that pure democracy becomes less and less reasonable as population size increases, but it in no way follows that "a free government may be established in the largest state" by setting up a decentralized representative democracy. while price correctly points out that money is a possible corrupting influence in representative democracies, centralized or not, he does not present any kind of argument as to why his proposals will not lead to that kind of corruption or why "in these circumstances," of decentralized representative democracy, "each separate state would be secure against the interference of sovereign power in its private concerns, and, therefore, would possess liberty". could the corrupting forces not merely simultaneously co-opt several states? i'm not saying they must or can't, i'm just pointing out that there's no argument at all and that reduces price to some kind of cheap mystical guru, pumping out oracular nonsense that seems almost precious in hindsight.
he closes the first section by arguing (i use that word lightly) that empires are impossible to maintain and always eventually result in dissolution. the empire must demand certain things of it's client states, which it's client states will see as rightfully theirs, leading to a conflict developing between positions of imperial authority (which are illegitimate) and expressions of popular rule. the imperial state will need to assert itself by force, which will produce a violent reaction. this is a much easier set of statements to take at face value, although it's perhaps no longer reasonable in our world to think a popular movement can offer any kind of violent resistance to a centralized state. of course, he's setting himself up for a discussion of the situation in america, which he turns to in his second section.
while price provides moral and constitutional arguments, and these form an important part of his perspective, what he's really suggesting is that it is not in britain's self-interest to try and suppress the colonies by force. price is by no means a revolutionary himself. rather, his main concern is the strength of the empire and how to maintain america within it in a way that both grants the colonists a higher level of autonomy and maintains the cohesion of a greater, trans-oceanic british civilization. the real core of his opposition to military action consequently reduces to his perception that such a conflict is unwinnable, from the british perspective; that is to say that the crux of his essay is to suggest that the crown ought to have been using more enlightened tactics than they were using in order to maintain the empire.
was the probability of success really so remote? well, it depended entirely on how many people could be convinced to fight, and price realized that. his calculation assumed that the british empire could not gather any recruits from russia, india or canada (a clear underestimation) and also assumed that every single colonist would fight against the empire (a clear exaggeration that, as a canadian, is especially absurd to me). he consequently derives a force of 40,000 imperial british soldiers vs. 500,000 american colonists. in reality, the loyalists in america actually outnumbered the revolutionaries; the empire had a large numerical advantage in the war. price continues by suggesting that blockading the colonies could not truly harm them because they were entirely self-sufficient. he once again becomes incoherent here, in suggesting that the blockade he opposes would be an act of providence to deliver the colonists from the temptation of foreign luxuries.
throughout his arguments, price persistently returns to this romanticized conception of the american colonists as a pious, pure entity that understands and practices an undiluted, true kind of liberty and continually contrasts them against his perception of the british as corrupted by earthly desires. it's maybe easy to forget at this point that the puritan founding myth was as much of a british invention as an american one and that the historical roots of it carried on in britain for at least as long as it did in america. that is to say that price was producing british stereotypes of america while speaking to a british audience. ulterior motives that price may have had aside, one gets the impression that the british would have generally taken this entirely outlandish, romanticized idealization at face value. the following passage illustrates this:
In this hour of tremendous danger it would become us to turn our thoughts to Heaven. This is what our brethren in the Colonies are doing. From one end of North-America to the other they are fasting and praying. But what are we doing? We are ridiculing them as fanatics, and scoffing at religion, We are running wild after pleasure and forgetting every thing serious and decent at masquerades. We are trafficking for boroughs, perjuring ourselves at elections, and selling ourselves for places. Which side then is Providence likely to favour?
price even ends the text (somewhat hilariously) by comparing america to jesus: he asks the colonists to forgive the empire for it's oppression, as it knows not what it is doing.
on the brighter side of things, it should be noted that price had a fairly refreshing view of indigenous concerns, relative to the period. while he ultimately puts the question aside, seemingly due to the perception that it is an argument he can't win, his articulation both of british massacres in india and of native american sovereignty demonstrate that these were not unknown moral concerns at the time:
If sailing along a coast can give a right to a country, then might the people of Japan become, as soon as they please, the proprietors of Britain. Nothing can be more chimerical than property founded on such a reason. If the land on which the colonies first settled had any proprietors, they were the natives.
indeed, they were.
another thing that price seems abstractly (if not explicitly) aware of is the revolution as a process of recentering the empire in washington, rather than one of an independent entity breaking off and starting a new nation. while he upholds the constitutional principle of "no taxation without representation", he also makes it clear that he doesn't really see the colonists as representing a new national identity that in any way transcends their inherent britishness. he demonstrates this by projecting a possible future where the hanoverian kings (or some other aristocratic family of continental despots) have reduced britain to an authoritarian monarchy, consequently creating a situation where the colonists are the remaining descendants of traditional concepts of british liberty. such a future is one where the colonies would be drastically more populous, have a much larger economy, be more intellectually advanced and command a much stronger military. out of this, price is able to project a fantasy where america is both morally and realistically superior to britain. he dares not suggest that britain would be forced into submission, but the implication is between the lines. he then uses this projection to argue for reconciliation with the colonists out of british self-interest.
overall? this is a short text, but it took me a long time to get through it because i found it very difficult to put it into context. i suspect that that difficulty placing it into context may be why it's not often cited today. whatever it's value as a liberalizing document in it's own time, it reads off today as a manifesto of the type of social conservatism that is often found on the religious right. yet, price was a major opponent of no less a conservative icon than edmund burke himself. when the lines are this blurry, it's no wonder that he's been left unclaimed in the second half of the twentieth century. however, that doesn't negate the text's historical value. it may not have a direct successor today, but it may perhaps be traced forwards in time as an influential text on the socially conservative aspect of the progressive movement of the late nineteenth century.
full text:
http://www.constitution.org/price/price_3.htm
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/books/congress/E/211.P930.1776b/index.html
how did that fucking idiot jimmy fallon manage to steal conan's job, anyways?
conan's been awesomely hilarious since i was in jr. high school.
fallon's been an annoying and very unfunny nincompoop for just about as long.
this is ultimately merely another piece of evidence in the staggering case against american culture.
note that my adult life has essentially been free of television altogether. i've never paid for cable. and i don't watch the free channels, either - if they even exist. i'm really 100% computer and 0% tv and have been since they shut down the x-files.
so, i'm just pointing out the obvious, really.
conan's been awesomely hilarious since i was in jr. high school.
fallon's been an annoying and very unfunny nincompoop for just about as long.
this is ultimately merely another piece of evidence in the staggering case against american culture.
note that my adult life has essentially been free of television altogether. i've never paid for cable. and i don't watch the free channels, either - if they even exist. i'm really 100% computer and 0% tv and have been since they shut down the x-files.
so, i'm just pointing out the obvious, really.
immediate reaction to the new st vincent record
deathtokoalas
i'm not really willing to point any fingers at david byrne. my perception of what was going on there was that byrne essentially hired her to write songs for him. she seemed to be the dominant artist in the arrangement. by far. it's sort of annoying that byrne's inflated sense of importance got a refill from this.
rather, it seems like she's been listening to a lot of tuneyards and is trying to integrate more of an idm/electronic sound into her style. it's a good idea on paper. certainly, radiohead could have delved a lot deeper into the warp records catalog than they actually did. but what i'm getting on the first few listens is that it's come with a trade-off in a lesser amount of attention paid to the arrangements. well, sometimes we just want to clear our heads.
there's some goodness, no doubt. but it sounds like a transition album to me.
Anon Woll
Except she has said before it was a 50/50 process when it came to the songwriting. He came up with the big band idea and they went from there.
deathtokoalas
well, conceptually, maybe, but i think that's being extremely generous insofar as the idea of songwriting is concerned. i really don't think that david byrne has the slightest idea how to write those kinds of horn parts. insofar as what she's saying is true, that sounds like byrne vaguely describing an idea and annie actually writing it out - which is a process that used to be called "commissioning a composer".
something else that crossed my mind repeatedly was "wow. annie clark is really a big upgrade over adrian belew.". and i'm actually a substantial belew fan.
the point is simply that this "hanging around with david byrne too much" stuff is really backwards. and maybe even a little sexist.
Anon Woll
I think that you got my words twisted. He proposed the idea of making the record with a horn section and touring with it and she went "that sounds fun, let's do it", then they both composed and wrote lyrics on the album, like a near 50/50 split.
I am not totally defending David Byrne or anything or gonna be part of the "WOW pffft look what she picked up from him" crowd because this actually reminded me a bit of "Marrow" more than a "Love This Giant" song, with that kind of constant staccato and almost march-y kind of feel in all of the non-chorus parts. I just am saying he deserves slightly more credit than "dude who hired St. Vincent to write songs for him". She is her own artist and has been developing her stage and studio craft for years and years now. And yeah, it is backwards and most likely sexist. Sucks but whatever. Looks like she may be the most successful with this record so haters can eat it.
BubbaZen10
I think David could handle those horn parts. And while i'm actually impressed with her playing, putting her on a par with Adrian Belew? REALLY? Maybe i haven't seen enough of her playing, but that sure seems like a stretch. I really am liking it a lot though. Been a while since some new(er) music grabbed my attention like this.
And btw, wtf did koalas ever do to you??!! ;)
William Sanders
I'm mostly sure that talk of a Byrne influence stems from her change in appearance, an added vibe of eccentricity that includes her use of choreographed dancing/movements during her live show. Byrne implemented the dancing on the Love This Giant tour and she liked the added dynamic, so she's doing it on her own now. That seems like influence to me.
As for the notion of sexism, you're forgetting the stark contrast in legendary status between the two songwriter/performers. Byrne has been a legend longer than Annie has been playing guitar. You can "think" whatever you'd like about who came up with what arrangements, or you can "think" Byrne's not capable of creating those kinds of horn parts, but since you don't actually know any of this, you come off as less than intelligent.
deathtokoalas
her appearance hasn't changed at all, and you're not doing a very good job at comprehending what i wrote. the obvious truth is that david byrne is not a musician in any sense, let alone the kind of trained musician that clearly wrote those parts. he blatantly has absolutely no idea whatsoever how to sing in key, let alone how to write those kinds of horn parts. in a situation where you have a very capable and educated person on one side and what is basically a lucky opportunistic hack on the other it's not difficult to figure who is doing all of the actual labour.
again, if you'd try a little harder to understand the dynamics involved, you'd realize that byrne has no claim to "legendary status" at all. what he's done throughout his career is piggy back on other people's ideas. the idea that there's some kind of hierarchical difference is precisely the sexist bullshit that i'm calling out: she's a musician and he isn't. you're only claiming otherwise due to a perceived gender misbalance. so, it would do you some good to try and understand the situation properly in terms of balances of power and media interpretation before you start accusing other people of deficits of intelligence.
the foolish thing to think in this situation is that byrne was anything other than the lucky recipient of an eccentric woman fawning over somebody she had a crush on in her teenage years. so, i'll state it in easier to understand terms for you: the idea that byrne is a legend and st. vincent is not is precisely the sexist bullshit that needs to be called out. rather, annie clark is one of the most talented and interesting musicians of our era, and david byrne is a has been that was never more than an overrated hack that took credit for other people's ideas when he was something to begin with.
is that easier for you to understand?
BubbaZen10
Longer than she's been playing guitar?? Hell man, how old is that gal? Try longer than she's been alive! ;)
The "people turn your tv on and throw it out the window" part definitely reminds me a bit of "Burnin' Down the House." (that descending part is similar) She's working with the guy, and is probably a fan of his music, so i'm sure there's an influence there, but i definitely hear a lot of other influences coming from her that maybe people don't pick up on. I really see and hear some Cabaret Voltaire in both the video and some of the sounds.
deathtokoalas
yeah.
i think annie's a huge nin fan, personally.
to put it another way, if we were talking about an eno/byrne collaboration, or a byrne/belew collaboration, it would be all about how byrne was hanging out while they did all the work. but when it's a young, attractive woman? it's his superior legendary essence that's managed to rub off a little on the lucky gal.
and that's bullshit.
William Sanders
I stopped reading after "her appearance hasn't changed at all".
I did catch a little of your ramble not far from where I type. Annie Clark will be a legend, she's as talented or more so than Byrne, but she's still young and working towards it. There's a difference, unlike yourself I'm not hellbent on making this an issue of sexism. I won't be supplying the false sense of vindication for you today. Take care.
deathtokoalas
too many words for you, william? not used to reading that much at the same time?
there's no need to get your boxers all unironed about it, either. it's just the way the world works.
BubbaZen10
Man, let me make this clear; i can see a few influences from Byrne's old days, but since i just recently got into this gal and this band, i have looked at other videos on here, and i personally think that, musically, Annie wipes the floor with David Byrne. This is one talented person. (but David IS a better musician than you are giving him credit for here, most certainly)
For real man, NIN definitely in there! I hear a lot of different things coming from her. She's sharp, and has obviously absorbed a lot, like a good musician would. I get how some fans on here are baggin' on this song, and i get why. It's never fun when a band you love goes a little pop or mainsteam to attract new people (like me) but this is just a good damn song, period.
Now, about her being better than Adrian Belew? BULLSHIT!! I saw him with King Crimson in the 80's. She's good. VERY good. She is not at that level yet! ;)
Btw, The Cabs are who Trent ripped off!!!!!! ;)
I think you'll appreciate this song. Look up Sensoria by Cabaret Voltaire. You'll hear it a little i think. She does a backing vocal line that reminds me of that song.
That is the REAL shit man. Where a lot that you probably like came from. Music-wise, and video-wise. That video was in the MomA. Groundbreaking stuff.
deathtokoalas
trent took a bit from cabaret voltaire in his earliest incarnation, as well as a lot from ministry, bits from coil and foetus and neubauten and a substantial amount from bowie - and he's trying to look like ogre from skinny puppy. i had my industrial phase in the mid to late 90s. and you can hear a bit of that in her sequencing.
but the bit that reznor added himself was this sort of quirkiness. well, it was expanded on in some of the remixes as well. i can really hear that in her writing at points, especially her guitar playing, and it's very much his idiosyncrasy. i guess there's a continuity there in belew.
i mean, we all have influences. i don't deny that byrne probably was one on annie. she's definitely electro-pop in the broad sense that runs from lundgren through to bowie, byrne, anderson, reznor and beyond. it's just the way the argument is being thrown out that is difficult to stomach.
rather, i hope byrne is able to take something away from his time working with annie.
BubbaZen10
Oh, i have no doubt she has reinvigorated him!
The fact you knew who the Cabs were gets you many internet points!
William Sanders
You're too emotionally biased in your assessments, that's why you say so many absurd things. I have no time for that.
BubbaZen10
Absurd things said are like, MY FAVORITE THINGS!!
I have no time for the too serious shit myself.
I have time koala killer, or whatever the fuck your name is, but make it quick, i have an appointment at 3. TICK TOCK!
deathtokoalas
that was the perfectly sexist remark, william. i'm sort of proud of you, actually.
William Sanders
Of course it was, everything is to you.
BubbaZen10
Ok, how much more will you put into this? How far will you push a feminist?
She's made valid points. Anyone who says this chick is riding on Byrne's coattails needs to look into her more. This is one very talented person, and Koalahater might be right that it's actually HIM riding HER coattails at this point.
deathtokoalas
i missed a couple of posts.
i actually think her playing is really underrated. i don't want to do this "on par with" thing. i'm going to state though that i'm an abstract guitarist myself (i have some stuff up on my page if you'd like to click through), and it's a big part of my interest in st. vincent's work. she has progressive streaks, but she's more in a post-punk tradition, and that generally means toning done the excesses. but she did go to berkeley, and her instrument was guitar, and it does come out fairly clearly. she runs off her riffs in a kind of effortless, not flashy way, though - which is definitely not "belewish". she's kind of more of a blues/metal guitarist by instinct. i know that sounds bizarre initially, but if you deconstruct it carefully it comes out pretty clearly. that's more in the sabbath or maiden side of things.
in a broad sense, though, her effects heavy approach has it's origins in the belew and fripp school of guitar. it sounds to me like it's been through a few steps on the way there. there's one specific thing she does often that is very belew and it's this kind of glissando trick through heavy distortion. it's leaning towards the kind of effects belew is known for. and, it comes out in a stylistic sense as well: belew was the guitarist on a lot of the music that preceded this and sounds similar to it: bowie, talking heads, laurie anderson, nine inch nails. and, yeah, a bit of crimson, too. when we're talking about byrne specifically? it's a comparison that's hard to ignore, given how much belew added to byrne's work.
it does sort of intersect with the sexism, though. it's still a little unsettling to see an attractive woman play like annie does. as much as i might like carrie brownstein, and as many heads as pj harvey may have turned, that level of playing wasn't really there. in the end, i think normalizing female shredding is something that's going to be a part of her legacy. there's a clip from a few years ago where she runs off the riffs to surgeon that's worth watching and demonstrates what i'm getting at. as much as it's distracting from the music, and as much as she's clearly trying to avoid that, i'm not aware of any kind of precedent.
i lost my own train of thought, though. by "upgrade", i meant in terms of general musicality and depth of musical knowledge. there's no use in comparing them directly and ranking one higher than the other. there's a similarity in the way they approach the instrument, but they're pretty different in terms of writing.
part of me does kind of want to hear her do a really flashy guitar record, though.
William Sanders
I thought I was done, people keep bringing me back in. Saying Clark is riding Byrne's coattails is absurd, just as saying Byrne basically hired Clark as the songwriter for their collaboration is absurd, or insinuating that Byrne can't create melodies with horns based on nothing more than a gut-induced hunch is absurd. We can celebrate both artists without shitting on one of them, koalas should give it a try.
deathtokoalas
byrne was involved with some interesting records in the 80s, but he doesn't deserve a lot of credit for them - as bowie doesn't deserve much credit for the second half of low (he wasn't even in the recording studio when it was created) and neither mccartney nor lennon can really honestly take credit for george martin's work. it would be time consuming to develop this argument here, but people that are familiar with the other works of eno, belew, harrison and weymouth can hear where the genius really originated
augusts1
You should brush up on Byrne's discography. He composed the score for Twyla Tharp's ballet 'The Catherine Wheel' in '81 & a classical instrumental album called 'The Forest' in '91(both of which I own). He also collaborated w/Ryuichi Sakamoto for the amazing soundtrack to Bertolucci's The Last Emperor in '87. And those 3 are just the tip of the iceberg for his creations apart from his regular albums. He's done plenty of other film work too.
So your assertion that Byrne is a hack & using Clark for his own sexist gain since he has no talent of his own holds no water. at. all. Btw, check his Wiki page to find more of his work referenced there. And I'm a recent convert to Clark mainly because of her involvement w/Byrne.
deathtokoalas
again, if you look at the credits on those records, and you listen to the other work by the artists that did most of the work, it's easy to hear that byrne was not responsible for very much of the interesting components. guitar, vocals & the odd simplistic fill on another instrument. the rest of it is handled by the production teams, which (like bowie) he had a bit of an ear for.
well, and the gigolo dancing. byrne is EXCELLENT at gigolo dancing...
LicoriceLain
Or maybe they simply have very similar musical sensibilities...
grubbymanz
idk i think she is really influenced by byrne and could not say who really arranged what. if you listen to an album like feelings like maybe wicked little doll, and some of the other more synth funky things there is nothing on their collab album that couldn't have been on that album, before she was even putting out music. Also her neurotic pop thing, i bet she was really influenced by byrne and t heads and would not be so quick to consider arrangements on their joint album to be hers based on her recent output,when her style is informed so much by the person she was collaborating with.
i'm not really willing to point any fingers at david byrne. my perception of what was going on there was that byrne essentially hired her to write songs for him. she seemed to be the dominant artist in the arrangement. by far. it's sort of annoying that byrne's inflated sense of importance got a refill from this.
rather, it seems like she's been listening to a lot of tuneyards and is trying to integrate more of an idm/electronic sound into her style. it's a good idea on paper. certainly, radiohead could have delved a lot deeper into the warp records catalog than they actually did. but what i'm getting on the first few listens is that it's come with a trade-off in a lesser amount of attention paid to the arrangements. well, sometimes we just want to clear our heads.
there's some goodness, no doubt. but it sounds like a transition album to me.
Anon Woll
Except she has said before it was a 50/50 process when it came to the songwriting. He came up with the big band idea and they went from there.
deathtokoalas
well, conceptually, maybe, but i think that's being extremely generous insofar as the idea of songwriting is concerned. i really don't think that david byrne has the slightest idea how to write those kinds of horn parts. insofar as what she's saying is true, that sounds like byrne vaguely describing an idea and annie actually writing it out - which is a process that used to be called "commissioning a composer".
something else that crossed my mind repeatedly was "wow. annie clark is really a big upgrade over adrian belew.". and i'm actually a substantial belew fan.
the point is simply that this "hanging around with david byrne too much" stuff is really backwards. and maybe even a little sexist.
Anon Woll
I think that you got my words twisted. He proposed the idea of making the record with a horn section and touring with it and she went "that sounds fun, let's do it", then they both composed and wrote lyrics on the album, like a near 50/50 split.
I am not totally defending David Byrne or anything or gonna be part of the "WOW pffft look what she picked up from him" crowd because this actually reminded me a bit of "Marrow" more than a "Love This Giant" song, with that kind of constant staccato and almost march-y kind of feel in all of the non-chorus parts. I just am saying he deserves slightly more credit than "dude who hired St. Vincent to write songs for him". She is her own artist and has been developing her stage and studio craft for years and years now. And yeah, it is backwards and most likely sexist. Sucks but whatever. Looks like she may be the most successful with this record so haters can eat it.
BubbaZen10
I think David could handle those horn parts. And while i'm actually impressed with her playing, putting her on a par with Adrian Belew? REALLY? Maybe i haven't seen enough of her playing, but that sure seems like a stretch. I really am liking it a lot though. Been a while since some new(er) music grabbed my attention like this.
And btw, wtf did koalas ever do to you??!! ;)
William Sanders
I'm mostly sure that talk of a Byrne influence stems from her change in appearance, an added vibe of eccentricity that includes her use of choreographed dancing/movements during her live show. Byrne implemented the dancing on the Love This Giant tour and she liked the added dynamic, so she's doing it on her own now. That seems like influence to me.
As for the notion of sexism, you're forgetting the stark contrast in legendary status between the two songwriter/performers. Byrne has been a legend longer than Annie has been playing guitar. You can "think" whatever you'd like about who came up with what arrangements, or you can "think" Byrne's not capable of creating those kinds of horn parts, but since you don't actually know any of this, you come off as less than intelligent.
deathtokoalas
her appearance hasn't changed at all, and you're not doing a very good job at comprehending what i wrote. the obvious truth is that david byrne is not a musician in any sense, let alone the kind of trained musician that clearly wrote those parts. he blatantly has absolutely no idea whatsoever how to sing in key, let alone how to write those kinds of horn parts. in a situation where you have a very capable and educated person on one side and what is basically a lucky opportunistic hack on the other it's not difficult to figure who is doing all of the actual labour.
again, if you'd try a little harder to understand the dynamics involved, you'd realize that byrne has no claim to "legendary status" at all. what he's done throughout his career is piggy back on other people's ideas. the idea that there's some kind of hierarchical difference is precisely the sexist bullshit that i'm calling out: she's a musician and he isn't. you're only claiming otherwise due to a perceived gender misbalance. so, it would do you some good to try and understand the situation properly in terms of balances of power and media interpretation before you start accusing other people of deficits of intelligence.
the foolish thing to think in this situation is that byrne was anything other than the lucky recipient of an eccentric woman fawning over somebody she had a crush on in her teenage years. so, i'll state it in easier to understand terms for you: the idea that byrne is a legend and st. vincent is not is precisely the sexist bullshit that needs to be called out. rather, annie clark is one of the most talented and interesting musicians of our era, and david byrne is a has been that was never more than an overrated hack that took credit for other people's ideas when he was something to begin with.
is that easier for you to understand?
BubbaZen10
Longer than she's been playing guitar?? Hell man, how old is that gal? Try longer than she's been alive! ;)
The "people turn your tv on and throw it out the window" part definitely reminds me a bit of "Burnin' Down the House." (that descending part is similar) She's working with the guy, and is probably a fan of his music, so i'm sure there's an influence there, but i definitely hear a lot of other influences coming from her that maybe people don't pick up on. I really see and hear some Cabaret Voltaire in both the video and some of the sounds.
yeah.
i think annie's a huge nin fan, personally.
to put it another way, if we were talking about an eno/byrne collaboration, or a byrne/belew collaboration, it would be all about how byrne was hanging out while they did all the work. but when it's a young, attractive woman? it's his superior legendary essence that's managed to rub off a little on the lucky gal.
and that's bullshit.
William Sanders
I stopped reading after "her appearance hasn't changed at all".
I did catch a little of your ramble not far from where I type. Annie Clark will be a legend, she's as talented or more so than Byrne, but she's still young and working towards it. There's a difference, unlike yourself I'm not hellbent on making this an issue of sexism. I won't be supplying the false sense of vindication for you today. Take care.
deathtokoalas
too many words for you, william? not used to reading that much at the same time?
there's no need to get your boxers all unironed about it, either. it's just the way the world works.
BubbaZen10
Man, let me make this clear; i can see a few influences from Byrne's old days, but since i just recently got into this gal and this band, i have looked at other videos on here, and i personally think that, musically, Annie wipes the floor with David Byrne. This is one talented person. (but David IS a better musician than you are giving him credit for here, most certainly)
For real man, NIN definitely in there! I hear a lot of different things coming from her. She's sharp, and has obviously absorbed a lot, like a good musician would. I get how some fans on here are baggin' on this song, and i get why. It's never fun when a band you love goes a little pop or mainsteam to attract new people (like me) but this is just a good damn song, period.
Now, about her being better than Adrian Belew? BULLSHIT!! I saw him with King Crimson in the 80's. She's good. VERY good. She is not at that level yet! ;)
Btw, The Cabs are who Trent ripped off!!!!!! ;)
I think you'll appreciate this song. Look up Sensoria by Cabaret Voltaire. You'll hear it a little i think. She does a backing vocal line that reminds me of that song.
That is the REAL shit man. Where a lot that you probably like came from. Music-wise, and video-wise. That video was in the MomA. Groundbreaking stuff.
deathtokoalas
trent took a bit from cabaret voltaire in his earliest incarnation, as well as a lot from ministry, bits from coil and foetus and neubauten and a substantial amount from bowie - and he's trying to look like ogre from skinny puppy. i had my industrial phase in the mid to late 90s. and you can hear a bit of that in her sequencing.
but the bit that reznor added himself was this sort of quirkiness. well, it was expanded on in some of the remixes as well. i can really hear that in her writing at points, especially her guitar playing, and it's very much his idiosyncrasy. i guess there's a continuity there in belew.
i mean, we all have influences. i don't deny that byrne probably was one on annie. she's definitely electro-pop in the broad sense that runs from lundgren through to bowie, byrne, anderson, reznor and beyond. it's just the way the argument is being thrown out that is difficult to stomach.
rather, i hope byrne is able to take something away from his time working with annie.
BubbaZen10
Oh, i have no doubt she has reinvigorated him!
The fact you knew who the Cabs were gets you many internet points!
William Sanders
You're too emotionally biased in your assessments, that's why you say so many absurd things. I have no time for that.
BubbaZen10
Absurd things said are like, MY FAVORITE THINGS!!
I have no time for the too serious shit myself.
I have time koala killer, or whatever the fuck your name is, but make it quick, i have an appointment at 3. TICK TOCK!
deathtokoalas
that was the perfectly sexist remark, william. i'm sort of proud of you, actually.
William Sanders
Of course it was, everything is to you.
BubbaZen10
Ok, how much more will you put into this? How far will you push a feminist?
She's made valid points. Anyone who says this chick is riding on Byrne's coattails needs to look into her more. This is one very talented person, and Koalahater might be right that it's actually HIM riding HER coattails at this point.
deathtokoalas
i missed a couple of posts.
i actually think her playing is really underrated. i don't want to do this "on par with" thing. i'm going to state though that i'm an abstract guitarist myself (i have some stuff up on my page if you'd like to click through), and it's a big part of my interest in st. vincent's work. she has progressive streaks, but she's more in a post-punk tradition, and that generally means toning done the excesses. but she did go to berkeley, and her instrument was guitar, and it does come out fairly clearly. she runs off her riffs in a kind of effortless, not flashy way, though - which is definitely not "belewish". she's kind of more of a blues/metal guitarist by instinct. i know that sounds bizarre initially, but if you deconstruct it carefully it comes out pretty clearly. that's more in the sabbath or maiden side of things.
in a broad sense, though, her effects heavy approach has it's origins in the belew and fripp school of guitar. it sounds to me like it's been through a few steps on the way there. there's one specific thing she does often that is very belew and it's this kind of glissando trick through heavy distortion. it's leaning towards the kind of effects belew is known for. and, it comes out in a stylistic sense as well: belew was the guitarist on a lot of the music that preceded this and sounds similar to it: bowie, talking heads, laurie anderson, nine inch nails. and, yeah, a bit of crimson, too. when we're talking about byrne specifically? it's a comparison that's hard to ignore, given how much belew added to byrne's work.
it does sort of intersect with the sexism, though. it's still a little unsettling to see an attractive woman play like annie does. as much as i might like carrie brownstein, and as many heads as pj harvey may have turned, that level of playing wasn't really there. in the end, i think normalizing female shredding is something that's going to be a part of her legacy. there's a clip from a few years ago where she runs off the riffs to surgeon that's worth watching and demonstrates what i'm getting at. as much as it's distracting from the music, and as much as she's clearly trying to avoid that, i'm not aware of any kind of precedent.
i lost my own train of thought, though. by "upgrade", i meant in terms of general musicality and depth of musical knowledge. there's no use in comparing them directly and ranking one higher than the other. there's a similarity in the way they approach the instrument, but they're pretty different in terms of writing.
part of me does kind of want to hear her do a really flashy guitar record, though.
William Sanders
I thought I was done, people keep bringing me back in. Saying Clark is riding Byrne's coattails is absurd, just as saying Byrne basically hired Clark as the songwriter for their collaboration is absurd, or insinuating that Byrne can't create melodies with horns based on nothing more than a gut-induced hunch is absurd. We can celebrate both artists without shitting on one of them, koalas should give it a try.
deathtokoalas
byrne was involved with some interesting records in the 80s, but he doesn't deserve a lot of credit for them - as bowie doesn't deserve much credit for the second half of low (he wasn't even in the recording studio when it was created) and neither mccartney nor lennon can really honestly take credit for george martin's work. it would be time consuming to develop this argument here, but people that are familiar with the other works of eno, belew, harrison and weymouth can hear where the genius really originated
augusts1
You should brush up on Byrne's discography. He composed the score for Twyla Tharp's ballet 'The Catherine Wheel' in '81 & a classical instrumental album called 'The Forest' in '91(both of which I own). He also collaborated w/Ryuichi Sakamoto for the amazing soundtrack to Bertolucci's The Last Emperor in '87. And those 3 are just the tip of the iceberg for his creations apart from his regular albums. He's done plenty of other film work too.
So your assertion that Byrne is a hack & using Clark for his own sexist gain since he has no talent of his own holds no water. at. all. Btw, check his Wiki page to find more of his work referenced there. And I'm a recent convert to Clark mainly because of her involvement w/Byrne.
deathtokoalas
again, if you look at the credits on those records, and you listen to the other work by the artists that did most of the work, it's easy to hear that byrne was not responsible for very much of the interesting components. guitar, vocals & the odd simplistic fill on another instrument. the rest of it is handled by the production teams, which (like bowie) he had a bit of an ear for.
well, and the gigolo dancing. byrne is EXCELLENT at gigolo dancing...
LicoriceLain
Or maybe they simply have very similar musical sensibilities...
grubbymanz
idk i think she is really influenced by byrne and could not say who really arranged what. if you listen to an album like feelings like maybe wicked little doll, and some of the other more synth funky things there is nothing on their collab album that couldn't have been on that album, before she was even putting out music. Also her neurotic pop thing, i bet she was really influenced by byrne and t heads and would not be so quick to consider arrangements on their joint album to be hers based on her recent output,when her style is informed so much by the person she was collaborating with.
deathtokoalas
wow. now he's quoting thatcher.
THEY really did a job on him.
Sean Walsh
You can quote something, but twist it's meaning to suit your own. People do it with the Bible all the time. Charles Manson did that with The Beatles' White album. It's all context and how you want to interpret it.
deathtokoalas
it's all very true, but when you're hanging out at the g8 on monday, saying things like "only capitalism can eliminate poverty" on tuesday and then quoting thatcher on wednesday it follows that people are going to start connecting the dots on thursday and wonder wtf happened to you over the last week.
dude's joined the dark side.
wow. now he's quoting thatcher.
THEY really did a job on him.
Sean Walsh
You can quote something, but twist it's meaning to suit your own. People do it with the Bible all the time. Charles Manson did that with The Beatles' White album. It's all context and how you want to interpret it.
deathtokoalas
it's all very true, but when you're hanging out at the g8 on monday, saying things like "only capitalism can eliminate poverty" on tuesday and then quoting thatcher on wednesday it follows that people are going to start connecting the dots on thursday and wonder wtf happened to you over the last week.
dude's joined the dark side.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
deathtokoalas
kramer = nato.
newman = putin.
ukrainian = protesters.
in the end, kramer and newman will make a deal to trick the big oaf into servitude. but, for right now, this is a perfect analogy to explain what's happening in the region.
Tonite
silly witch... Everyone knows that Russia could walk over Ukraine in 24h. if they really wanted to.
deathtokoalas
ukraine by itself, sure. it's not that easy, though. you'll note that ukraine is really just watching the game, as it's being played by external forces.
Kuripo Hirusama
you = the chick from the Shining.
deathtokoalas
you know, i'm not entirely sure what that means.
Rottooth
I think he's saying you look like Shelley Duvall, who starred in the movie, The Shining.
deathtokoalas
i could see it a tad in the shot (which was picked for obvious effect), but overall, not really. i'm an unusually mixed up mutt, so i look startlingly different depending on things like hair colour. i can look very norse with blond hair, very italian with a tan or very finnish if you get my eyes right. on an average day, it's probably closer to kristen stewart. she's actually sort of androgynous looking...
i'm suspecting it has something to do with the shower scene, though, and still not quite sure i get the crux of it.
Kuripo Hirusama
Was she related to Robert Duvall?
El Perro Loco
Brillant take on this man.
Robert Freid (ComradeDimitri101)
Everyone should read this article then-heh:
http://godfatherpolitics.com/14764/putin-get-idea-invade-ukraine-seinfeld-episode/
kramer = nato.
newman = putin.
ukrainian = protesters.
in the end, kramer and newman will make a deal to trick the big oaf into servitude. but, for right now, this is a perfect analogy to explain what's happening in the region.
Tonite
silly witch... Everyone knows that Russia could walk over Ukraine in 24h. if they really wanted to.
deathtokoalas
ukraine by itself, sure. it's not that easy, though. you'll note that ukraine is really just watching the game, as it's being played by external forces.
Kuripo Hirusama
you = the chick from the Shining.
deathtokoalas
you know, i'm not entirely sure what that means.
Rottooth
I think he's saying you look like Shelley Duvall, who starred in the movie, The Shining.
deathtokoalas
i could see it a tad in the shot (which was picked for obvious effect), but overall, not really. i'm an unusually mixed up mutt, so i look startlingly different depending on things like hair colour. i can look very norse with blond hair, very italian with a tan or very finnish if you get my eyes right. on an average day, it's probably closer to kristen stewart. she's actually sort of androgynous looking...
i'm suspecting it has something to do with the shower scene, though, and still not quite sure i get the crux of it.
Kuripo Hirusama
Was she related to Robert Duvall?
El Perro Loco
Brillant take on this man.
Robert Freid (ComradeDimitri101)
Everyone should read this article then-heh:
http://godfatherpolitics.com/14764/putin-get-idea-invade-ukraine-seinfeld-episode/
continuing the discussion with sennheiser
jessica
hi.
sorry to bring up a ghost thread, but i'm a little concerned about the cord that got here. it arrived when it did back in december, and i've been ecstatic about it since. but i've been noticing for the last several weeks that the left side of the cord again comes in and out.
i've swapped the inputs on the phones a few times and am convinced it's the cord, rather than the phones. the red/right in is flawless regardless of which phone it's plugged into, but the black/left one slowly fades over long periods regardless of which phone it's plugged into. often, merely touching it is enough to reset it.
i ultimately think it's a contact issue. that is to say that i think that the metal on the cord is sort of falling out. maybe it's a hundredth of a mm smaller in diameter. and i'd actually be willing to believe it's a production thing if you told me that. it's very obvious that there's not a short in the cord. but it's also obvious that if i keep messing with it one will develop.
i'm just wondering if you have any information that might be of interest. would you be able to verify that there is a small difference in the size of the metal plug going into the phones, over all these decades? is it possible i got a mild defect that's a tad small?
phones:
sennheiser 440-II (ireland)
cord:
069427
Cable steel 3m jack3.5/jack6.3
sennheiser
Hi Jessica,
No problems, please don't apologise!
I am rather surprised that a cable so new could be defective, but it's not unheard of. That's why you've got a 3 month warranty. Before we get into the whole rigomorol surrounding replacement, I'm bound to ask if the cable polarity has always been respected, you'll notice one pin is fatter than the other. If the cable has been forced in backwards, then the problem may not actually be the cable!
Just asking!
Please let me know about that, and we'll proceed from there!
Cheers,
jessica
i've definitely been careful about polarity - letters always on the outside. i'm certain it's not that. and, as mentioned, it does it with both phones on the black side, and only on the black side.
the entire idea of a warranty completely slipped my mind. it's getting to the end of the three months. so, how does that process work?
(pause)
i'm just a little concerned because you were always previously quick to apply.
i have to say that i don't want to send this cord back. it seems like there's something wrong, but it's a minor adjustment and i know now i can replace the cord when i need to.
but if it is under warranty, i kind of feel entitled to it.
again: if i have to send it back, then forget it. it's not worth the trouble.
also, do you have any information about possible manufacturing mismatches?
sennheiser
Hi Jessica,
My apologies for the delay in response! I was out on holidays.
If you'd be so kind, please provide your address (to save time trying to find it in the computer...) and parts will send you out a new one. No need to return the other, just toss it.
hi.
sorry to bring up a ghost thread, but i'm a little concerned about the cord that got here. it arrived when it did back in december, and i've been ecstatic about it since. but i've been noticing for the last several weeks that the left side of the cord again comes in and out.
i've swapped the inputs on the phones a few times and am convinced it's the cord, rather than the phones. the red/right in is flawless regardless of which phone it's plugged into, but the black/left one slowly fades over long periods regardless of which phone it's plugged into. often, merely touching it is enough to reset it.
i ultimately think it's a contact issue. that is to say that i think that the metal on the cord is sort of falling out. maybe it's a hundredth of a mm smaller in diameter. and i'd actually be willing to believe it's a production thing if you told me that. it's very obvious that there's not a short in the cord. but it's also obvious that if i keep messing with it one will develop.
i'm just wondering if you have any information that might be of interest. would you be able to verify that there is a small difference in the size of the metal plug going into the phones, over all these decades? is it possible i got a mild defect that's a tad small?
phones:
sennheiser 440-II (ireland)
cord:
069427
Cable steel 3m jack3.5/jack6.3
sennheiser
Hi Jessica,
No problems, please don't apologise!
I am rather surprised that a cable so new could be defective, but it's not unheard of. That's why you've got a 3 month warranty. Before we get into the whole rigomorol surrounding replacement, I'm bound to ask if the cable polarity has always been respected, you'll notice one pin is fatter than the other. If the cable has been forced in backwards, then the problem may not actually be the cable!
Just asking!
Please let me know about that, and we'll proceed from there!
Cheers,
jessica
i've definitely been careful about polarity - letters always on the outside. i'm certain it's not that. and, as mentioned, it does it with both phones on the black side, and only on the black side.
the entire idea of a warranty completely slipped my mind. it's getting to the end of the three months. so, how does that process work?
(pause)
i'm just a little concerned because you were always previously quick to apply.
i have to say that i don't want to send this cord back. it seems like there's something wrong, but it's a minor adjustment and i know now i can replace the cord when i need to.
but if it is under warranty, i kind of feel entitled to it.
again: if i have to send it back, then forget it. it's not worth the trouble.
also, do you have any information about possible manufacturing mismatches?
sennheiser
Hi Jessica,
My apologies for the delay in response! I was out on holidays.
If you'd be so kind, please provide your address (to save time trying to find it in the computer...) and parts will send you out a new one. No need to return the other, just toss it.
i am so remarkably bad with my hands. it makes me laugh to think i wanted to be a brain surgeon when i was a kid, although to be fair to myself what i *meant* was a mad scientist that hooks up brains to computers rather than somebody that goes in and physically carves up the mind.
there's currently crazy glue *everywhere*.
and i feel kinda funny. aha. ahahaha. ahahahahahahahahah...\
there's currently crazy glue *everywhere*.
and i feel kinda funny. aha. ahahaha. ahahahahahahahahah...\
adrian belew - twang bar king
should have been an ep
this is the first in a string of pop-oriented belew discs that contain some hidden gems but are largely full of filler and watered down bowie and talking heads tunes. throughout this phase in his career, belew demonstrates that he has something unique to add to the genre but doesn't do so nearly often enough to fill up an entire record.
stringing all the hidden gems together creates something pretty solid, though, so that suggests that a compilation of the best tracks would be worthwhile. when island took his first three records out of print, they actually did create a compilation out of them. the compilation is called desire of the rhino king, which is a combination of titles from those discs. frustratingly, the disc throws away some of the best material and keeps some of the worst. rather than solve the problem, it compounds it. what that means is that there's no way to get the best stuff on this record except to download it.
there's a certain bipolar nature to this that falls flat on it's face. belew seems to want to do raw rock and roll, progressive jazz and dramatic pop all on the same record but never all at the same time. the result is that few of the ideas are fully explored. it comes off sounding overly generic and entirely half-assed.
regarding the raw rock tracks, the introductory beatles cover is as bad as the title track. taking it a step further, fish head sounds like bowie fronting the pixies at their most generic. while that may sound sort of visionary considering the date this was released (1983), the track is actually pretty boring - as one really ought to expect from the description of bowie fronting the pixies at their most generic. the ideal woman features spoken word samples and drum loops in that peculiarly byrne-eno way. this in itself would be much less of an error if the topic wasn't so trivial. paint the road is a simplistic horn jam that shouldn't even have been considered as filler. it sounds like a sound check, really. the rail song is a horrific trivialization of heroes, which was no doubt already approaching the status of a classic at the time. we can ride the trains for just one day? singing f#-a# forever, maybe?
see, it's the unrealized potential that's as annoying as anything else about it. the remaining tracks literally sound like king crimson outtakes, but they comprise the best part of the disc - ironically. the second and third tracks sound like they're good enough to be crimson to me, but i have to suspect that they were pieces that fripp couldn't quite work with. perhaps he didn't like the lyrical subject matter of them. the twelfth is all frippertronics. it's not the most developed example of the technique, but it functions as a realization of it's description. the ninth has more of a george harrison vibe. it really excels in it's layered vocal melodies, which seem to strongly foreshadow bjork.
what the record really needed was just a bit more love. it's easy to speculate that belew had his hands full, but the natural question is "why bother?". why not put it aside and wait until there's enough time to work on it? we think of runaway egos as the scourge of young men, but the truth is that they often follow those young men well into middle age. i can imagine a slightly bruised adrian taking his rejected songs and going home with them. which is fine, a couple of them are actually really good, but he really ought to have polished them up rather than releasing them in a near demo state out of pure spite at his master. that extra care would have probably reintroduced the playful, zappaesque aesthetic that the first disc showcases and this one sorely lacks.
so, the assessment of this is that the completed tracks (2,3,9,12) comprise what could have been a very good ep, or the core of a very strong record. however, it's just hopelessly bogged down with painfully bad, unoriginal and half-assed filler. it's years out of print anyways.
stream:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0D_kZ-o484Pbjt81N5OVRZgPqu0v-kaa
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/music/artists/AdrianBelew/1983-TwangBarKing/index.html
Monday, February 24, 2014
adrian belew - lone rhino
strong effort
the thing i always notice about adrian belew's first record is that i always walk away from it weirded out if i listen to it once, but if it ends up on rotation then it makes more and more sense on each listen. that makes it not just a grower but a record that you need to let grow on you every time you put it on. i think that's less of a commentary on the record's abstraction and more a reflection of it's stylistic explorations, which have a certain affinity with gen y indie rock but are, overall, going to be largely alien to just about anybody that didn't live through the late 70s. at points, the record sounds very dated; ironically, though, it's the song structures that sound dated, rather than the technology, which has largely aged quite well. so, the record packs this sort of initial "disco cringe" that weakens on successive listens, when the songs become more and more familiar. in the end, the disc flows well as a cohesive whole.
my connection to the progressive rock of the 1970s and 1980s is largely through sorting through my father's cd collection, and it's a happy coincidence that he happened to have an interest in guitar players, but this isn't a record that was ever in his collection. rather, it's something i've only ever interacted with through mp3. this is true of all of the early belew material, up to the guitar as orchestra. i recall some offhand remarks that his solo work was largely forgettable, which acted as a strong disincentive for further exploration until as late a date as the mid 00s and only after connecting fairly strongly with sides one and two. rather, he had a cd called "sleepless: the concise king crimson" that acted as my early teenage introduction to both belew and robert fripp. unfortunately, my father was one of the people that made the error (and the economics of the situation were no doubt relevant) of selling his sizable record collection at the dawn of the cd era. it's something he slowly rebuilt, but he deeply regretted that decision for the rest of his life. it seemed to have large consequences on his general interest in music, as limited funds that would have previously been dedicated to buying new music became dedicated to replacing old music. the result was that he basically skipped the 90s, only catching up by sorting through my cd collection. i have to wonder how widespread this phenomenon was. anyways, that means that the greatest hits disc was related to the slow, expensive and time consuming task of replacing lost vinyl. 70s and 80s crimson discs came in periodically (and i think he prioritized them because he noticed that i was reacting particularly well to them), but there was never a solo belew disc amongst them.
i think my dad's analysis of belew's solo work was generally correct, but this first disc very much stands out relative to the other pop discs. at the time, belew was coming fresh out of working with five of the most important musicians of the twentieth century: frank zappa, david bowie, brian eno, robert fripp and david byrne. they all show their influence on the record in different ways. see, this is the record's tragic flaw, though: it pulls ideas from a lot of different places into a highly competent combination but it doesn't really present any ideas of it's own. belew would continue this general formula for many years, with varying results but generally not with as much of an attempt to form a synthesis and certainly not as much of an influence from zappa. it's that latter aspect that both makes the disc more interesting than his other solo material (which largely exists as an anachronistic bridge between bowie's berlin period and the talking heads) and essential in the context of belew's substantial body of work.
if i'm suggesting a record from 1982 as essential then, surely, it must be a classic? as noted, the record has a really dated sound and is more of an interesting collection of existing ideas than any kind of statement of it's own. beyond that, there is a juvenile sense of humour on display that just comes off today as totally lame. if there's a debate around whether zappa was an asshole or a comedian, there's little debate over whether he was offensive; belew is carrying on similar themes, but seems generally interested in humour rather than offense and consequently waters his misogyny down to a sort of clownishness that couldn't legitimately offend much of anybody. the record also contains lengthy tributes to the cat and the rhinoceros, which is just not the topical content of classic records. sorry.
despite it's substantial flaws, it is a well produced and interestingly written record from start to finish that happens to wear it's influences on it's sleeves but still stands up as better than average and is fully worth exploring - especially if you're a fan of more than one of the five aforementioned artists.
stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqotFbF6sEE
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/music/artists/AdrianBelew/1982-LoneRhino/index.html
independent cd stores. i love what they do for the community, but sometimes i wonder.
i went in to get the new mt. zion disc. i haven't been buying a lot of cds lately, but i try and keep up with those guys. and i've been "saving" a lot of money from not smoking, so i've actually put aside a small amount for a monthly budget. i used to collect those little round discs before real life came around and started demanding i start paying into it. it gave me great enjoyment, so i'd like to get back to doing it. i'm going to be kind of working around my reviews to fill in holes in the collection.
so i thought i'd check to see if there's any belew. they had some of the ones i have and a bunch of the ones i don't really want, as well as one that i have a sort of high-end bootleg of. it was a gift from a friend of my father. my uncle used to do the same thing. so, i have a stack of this stuff - mostly prog-related. i've never really considered them as 'part of the collection'. rather, i've always thought of them more as try-before-you-buy type things, but i'm treating them as though they are for the review site. in actuality, a lot of them are out of print, so those boots are the closest i'm ever going to get. that's the case for this one.
so: $10 for an out of print disc i don't have - collectors jump on that shit. bring it up to the cash...
"geez, this is an old disc."
"yeah."
"i'll mark it down to $6."
"swell."
it's $184, new, on amazon. and i'd be surprised if the disc i got was ever actually played. the insert doesn't look like it's been unraveled before. crisp.
now, that says more about amazon taking advantage of dwindling supply than anything else. it's kind of an asshole price. but, still.
if you collect cds, you have stories like this - and you're glad the indie stores don't do these sorts of rigorous checks. there's not much chance somebody's going to walk into a cd store in windsor and hand over $200 for a decades old out of print adrian belew cd. sure. but, it could conceivably be auctioned for more than $6.
so, i'm happy about this, but i have to wonder....
i went in to get the new mt. zion disc. i haven't been buying a lot of cds lately, but i try and keep up with those guys. and i've been "saving" a lot of money from not smoking, so i've actually put aside a small amount for a monthly budget. i used to collect those little round discs before real life came around and started demanding i start paying into it. it gave me great enjoyment, so i'd like to get back to doing it. i'm going to be kind of working around my reviews to fill in holes in the collection.
so i thought i'd check to see if there's any belew. they had some of the ones i have and a bunch of the ones i don't really want, as well as one that i have a sort of high-end bootleg of. it was a gift from a friend of my father. my uncle used to do the same thing. so, i have a stack of this stuff - mostly prog-related. i've never really considered them as 'part of the collection'. rather, i've always thought of them more as try-before-you-buy type things, but i'm treating them as though they are for the review site. in actuality, a lot of them are out of print, so those boots are the closest i'm ever going to get. that's the case for this one.
so: $10 for an out of print disc i don't have - collectors jump on that shit. bring it up to the cash...
"geez, this is an old disc."
"yeah."
"i'll mark it down to $6."
"swell."
it's $184, new, on amazon. and i'd be surprised if the disc i got was ever actually played. the insert doesn't look like it's been unraveled before. crisp.
now, that says more about amazon taking advantage of dwindling supply than anything else. it's kind of an asshole price. but, still.
if you collect cds, you have stories like this - and you're glad the indie stores don't do these sorts of rigorous checks. there's not much chance somebody's going to walk into a cd store in windsor and hand over $200 for a decades old out of print adrian belew cd. sure. but, it could conceivably be auctioned for more than $6.
so, i'm happy about this, but i have to wonder....
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Saturday, February 22, 2014
acid mothers temple - nam myo ho ren ge kyo
Meh
the attraction to this is supposedly that it's an updated rendition of a very old, traditional buddhist chant. what do buddhists think about people in canada listening to sacred music without even realizing that it's sacred music? because i didn't realize it was sacred for some time - not when i saw it live nor while i was listening to it, not until i read something that explained the significance of it. to be blunt, the religious significance of the record means absolutely nothing to me and i have absolutely no interest in exploring it further. had it been marketed as religious music, i would have actually almost certainly chosen not to attend the show (which actually would have been a shame because i was introduced to the awesomely rocking mammatus at the gig).
i could consequently accuse the band of cultural appropriation in just about the worst way possible, but that's not a line of condemnation i walk down often and not one i really want to press in too much detail right now. i'd rather just be a punk and call them pretentious.
pretentious, indeed, is the best way to describe this. there are a few sections of more intricate detail, but it's mostly really just a simple, prodding riff repeating over and over, accompanied by sounds that seem to come from nowhere rational at all. within that accompaniment, there's a lot of atonal chanting that a westerner may conceive of as gregorian; this is interspersed with some kind of shamanistic chanting that really stresses japan's ancient siberian heritage. westerners may immediately interpret it as "native american sounding", but by doing that they're confusing a very old shared heritage.
what's really pretentious about it, though, is it's nature as "channeled music". i mean, what do you say to people that think they're channeling spirits into a theremin? is it worth saying anything at all, or is that one of those situations where it's better not to bother wasting your time? so, excluding those sparse patterns that repeat as motifs, the disc is completely aimless by conscious design. i could point out that the record lacks structure and cogency, or point out that it lacks a human element in the improvisation, but who am i to argue with the gods?
where the divinely channeled improv is particularly awful is the guitar playing, which can't have made religious authorities throughout asia particularly happy, i should add. i'm not likely to agree with them in exact terms, but i will agree with anybody that claims that it's in particularly bad taste to load up sacred music with entirely self-indulgent and overly masturbatory guitar work. i might not understand all of this, but i do understand that, and it is weak.
in the end, i can't help but feel that the best audience for this (outside of the stereotypical pothead stuck with the necessity of looking beyond western culture to connect with any kind of spirituality) is anthropologists. there's something fascinating about this on the level of it modernizing something that seems destined for cultural death. but, that's a very analytical application that goes well beyond the level of pure listening, and i simply can't recommend the disc - or the band, for that matter - at all on that level.
stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysWbGhvfcWU
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/music/artists/AcidMothersTemple/2007-Nam/index.html
thee silver mt. zion memorial orchestra & tra-la-la band - 13 blues for thirteen moons
Symphonic Benchmark
this is a record that happened in a very different phase of my life; i have to admit that i was actually extremely surprised to connect to this disc at all, let alone as deeply as i did. as it is, it might be my favourite record of the 00s - and a special disc it is, too.
my life in 2008 was virtually unrecognizable from my life in 2005. i'd lost touch with, rejected or been rejected by virtually everybody i had been in contact with; i was spending virtually all of my time outside of work entirely by myself, and largely enjoying it. while i would eventually go back at least twice, it seemed like i was out of school permanently - and without any serious employment opportunities. i was bouncing around from call centre to call centre (repeatedly fired, and unable to care) in an attempt to pay rent, bills and student loan interest payments. the pressures were very different, but, in a very real way, this was a return to the conditions that i first connected with this band in the first place. into that reality of aimlessly drifting through forced meaningless labour, and through whatever alignment that the universe provided, mt. zion managed to yet again produce a record that explored precisely what i was living through and hit me in exactly the way i needed at exactly the time i needed it.
i've long interpreted the disc as a concept record, but i don't pretend that the band meant for it to be one. it just seemed to intersect so much with what i was feeling and thinking that i intuitively constructed a narrative out of it. in this interpretative fantasy, the record follows an honest musician through the horrors of modern existence. it explores the vapid nature of indie culture, constructs villains out of evil bankers enforcing wage slavery to demand loan payments and ultimately ends with an affirmation of pure fucking honesty in the most powerful way possible. in absolute terms, the climax of the record is so precious as to nearly be trite but that's exactly why it's so amazingly powerful. you mean there really are some hearts that are true in this world? really? why are they so hard to find? in the midst of the extreme doubt i was experiencing, i definitely needed somebody to tell me exactly that at that exact point.
it's not just the conceptual aspect that drives this thing, either. in completely unhyphenated terms, it's just a fucking sold rock album full of messy, no wave stomps and flat-out kickass riffs. see, the kind of indictment of popular culture that the record lays out requires a very angry delivery and the band really delivers on it. the strings are very much pulled back to a more traditional "rock accompaniment", but it's actually an asset, in context. it's one thing to tear down the shit culture we're stuck with, it's another to show everybody how it should be done in terms that the masses can connect to. this had to be a takedown of popular rock music to get it's point across properly; it wouldn't have packed the same punch as a bunch of bartok variations.
it's not often that i will suggest an album is flawless, but i can't find a flaw here. what i will say is that the record is heavy. if things are going well for you right now and you're feeling pretty good about yourself, you probably won't want to hear a record full of rants that question your integrity, your intelligence and your basic decency for merely carrying through with the life that the system created for you to live. that might be exactly why you actually should listen to this very carefully. you might need an anvil across the fucking forehead to get you to behave like a decent person. unfortunately, if that's the case, you're probably more likely to get defensive about it, or run off words by some asshole philosopher that is so lost in meaningless abstraction that they can't see the basic use of being nice to people. that will restrict this record's most passionate audience to people with a conscience - and especially people with a conscience that are just getting bludgeoned down by a society that lacks one.
unfortunately, that means that most people won't really get this. for those that will get it, though, it's really a treat. highly, highly recommended.
stream:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnpQFjefXCRMZAGkNSy2DD7gcSPhsGgZ0
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/music/artists/ASilverMtZion/2008-13BluesForThirteenMoons/index.html
Friday, February 21, 2014
the responses here are interesting. especially the "this isn't post-rock" responses. the mt zions have been trying very hard for many years to distance themselves from post-rock...
...and i don't blame them. post-rock, nowadays, is probably the most boring, formulaic genre out there. these people always wanted to stir shit up, not create a market for the most dour, yawny shit ever. it's nice to hear that they're still mutating and evolving, unlike most of their peers from the 90s.
what i'll say to people that react badly on first listen is that you need to listen to it a few times before it clicks, and also that the sound quality on this youtube video is noticeably poor. if you're not the type of person that likes to get into a record and peel back dozens of layers then it's probably not for you. don't fret, though, as there's a lot of predictable post-rock out there for you to go for.
personally? i've noticed that the mt zions go back and forth pretty regularly between brilliant and mediocre, going all the way back to the first disc. 13 blues was brilliant, kollaps was mediocre. so, this ought to be brilliant. but is it? i'm thinking it might be, it sort of seems like it, but i'm not entirely sure yet...
...and i don't blame them. post-rock, nowadays, is probably the most boring, formulaic genre out there. these people always wanted to stir shit up, not create a market for the most dour, yawny shit ever. it's nice to hear that they're still mutating and evolving, unlike most of their peers from the 90s.
what i'll say to people that react badly on first listen is that you need to listen to it a few times before it clicks, and also that the sound quality on this youtube video is noticeably poor. if you're not the type of person that likes to get into a record and peel back dozens of layers then it's probably not for you. don't fret, though, as there's a lot of predictable post-rock out there for you to go for.
personally? i've noticed that the mt zions go back and forth pretty regularly between brilliant and mediocre, going all the way back to the first disc. 13 blues was brilliant, kollaps was mediocre. so, this ought to be brilliant. but is it? i'm thinking it might be, it sort of seems like it, but i'm not entirely sure yet...
deathtokoalas
if i wrote some historical music essays that described live as emo - and presented an argument for it - what would the reaction be? i mean, i know it's not a common designation. i think it's the correct one, but i know i'm going to get some emo people yelling at me. overall, though, i'm just curious as to how people that listened to live would react.
i mean, live never really fit as alt. rock. do they fit better as emo? what do their fans think?
i loved live up to the distance to here, but it was more of a continuity related to growing up listening to rem and u2. i remember checking life's rich pageant and green out of the public library when i was about seven or eight, and getting my uncle to dub me copies of u2's discography at roughly the same age. i was a precocious child. so, i connected to live like that - as an extension of my precocious, jangle rock childhood (which also included genesis, the bangles and the b-52s). i was a teenager through the 90s, so, naturally, i was mostly into harder edged music: industrial and punk, mostly. so, excluding getting into sdre through radiohead, i was mostly oblivious to the existence of that whole quiet math emo thing. further, by the time i'd grown up enough to expand my tastes, post-rock was the go to: mogwai, gybe, tortoise. it's something i skipped over.
(looking back, i honestly don't think i missed much)
how about the rest of you? did you listen to what was called emo in the 90s? to be clear, i'm talking about stuff like mineral, not stuff like drive like jehu.
i mean, to be a little bit more clear...
i don't think emo is a valid genre. you give me something labeled emo, i'll put it in a different category. but, if it's not going to go away, we should at least be consistent and systematic about it.
i couldn't imagine anybody listening to grunge also listening to live. it's night and day. well, except me, but, as i mentioned, i connected live with the 80s music i grew up with. that can't have been the norm.
it sort of makes sense to me to think that live fans would also be into music that is roughly like sunny day real estate. there's large overlaps, musically and thematically. so, now i'm testing this by asking it's fan base - did you listen to much 90s emo?
Matt M.
I wouldn't consider LIVE as being emo. Now something like blue october and manson were what the emo kids in my high school listened too. but that was late 90's early 2000's
John Garcia
honestly this could be emo...the time frame is different tho i do not really remember any bands being labled as emo in the 90's...but if you listen to these songs and listen to some of the emo music of today they are kinda the same
deathtokoalas
yeah, the term emo is notoriously vague. i think it's gone through three phases. it was a hardcore term in the 80s, a term that meant roughly "softcore apolitical punk with pretentious vocals" in the 90s (which kind of describes live well) and something roughly similar to "hot topic mall goth" in the 00s. these three sounds and styles really have little in common with each other....although the 00s usage is actually much closer to it's initial usage.
i have to be honest that i never heard the term in the 90s, either - even though i listened to a bunch of what was supposedly labeled it. but it apparently was used to identify bands that i would mostly think of as "quiet math rock with introspective vocals". it's roughly synonymous with"slowcore". i cited mineral and sunny day real estate as two of the better known acts. another is american football.
so, i need to be clear that peter isn't using the word the same way i am. i know live weren't goth. that's blatantly obvious. but i'm still curious if any live fans listened to those kinds of things...
i suppose that if you did, you'll know what i mean.
Matt M.
i understand completely.
Alfredo Rodriguez
I think I am to old to understand Emo. I like Live, have been listening to them off and on throughout my life. To me, Alt. Rock was Emo, before there was an Emo. But like I said, I don't think I understand the Emo scene.
David Herring
live does not constitute as emo, and yes, there was emo in the 90's. better then ezra, sunny day real estate, as afore mentioned, and promise ring. as well as others. they don't fit. srry not emo
deathtokoalas
well, i think there's a really big problem with putting better than ezra, sunny day real estate and promise ring in the same genre. i agree that there's not a whole lot of overlap between live and better than ezra. but is there much overlap between sunny day real estate and promise ring? to me, promise ring sound more like green day and better than ezra were just radio pop. i've never heard the better than ezra as emo thing before, btw, but that helps me understand this a bit more.
let me pull radiohead into the discussion because they're another act that i think might be better categorized as emo. certainly, they drew a lot on that math/post sound around ok computer. at the time, live and radiohead would have been easily lumped together. they both had a background through the talking heads (jerry harrison produced the best live records, radiohead got their name from a talking heads song). they were both generally thought of as '90s college rock' in the sense that they drew big influences from rem and u2. in a sense, 90s emo was also 90s 'college rock'. i think we can put live and radiohead in the same genre (whatever it is) without a lot of fuss.
i'd claim, though, that sunny day real estate should be historically classed with radiohead rather than with jawbreaker and weezer. i have very fond memories of lp2. but it was introduced to me on the rhml. for years, everybody that i met that like radiohead also liked sdre. there's a lot of stylistic similarities. so, those bands very much go together.
what we're left with is a set of at least three bands that fit together well through stylistic similarity: {radiohead, live, sunny day real estate}.
this is just alt rock, right? well, no. i wouldn't put the seattle grunge stuff in there. they don't really have much in common with those acts. nor would i put in the no wave (sonic youth) stuff or the la rock scene (rhcp) stuff or the dc punk (fugazi) stuff or the boston rock (dinosaur jr) stuff or the minneapolis punk (husker du) stuff. there's something different and unique there that builds up it's own category. and if you look at the characteristics, they're "emo": non-standard songwriting, math rock influences, strong vocal melodies, introspective vocals, emotional content.
now, as mentioned, i can build a conceptual unity between sdre and radiohead, and between radiohead and live. but i'm missing first hand evidence of live fans actually listening to 'emo'.
i realize the language may be alienating. let's strip it out. how many people in here were sunny day real estate fans in the mid to late 90s?
David Herring
right here.
Stacy Musacchia
I never heard the word "emo" associated with any form of entertainment until late 2000s. If If Live put out Lightning Crashes today it wouldn't even get radio play.
Shroom Masta
I guess you would have to listen to Good Charlotte or red jumpsuit then listen to this then after that listen to Bush see which one it sounds like more :S Then you have your answer :S
deathtokoalas
it doesn't sound like either, really. but, i do think razorblade suitcase was a huge influence on what was called emo in the 00s.
i mean, i'm not one to stand up for bush. i think they were pretty unfairly ripped apart by the british press for sounding "too american" at the height of the brit-pop craze. how fair of a criticism is that, really? in actuality, sixteen stone is really more of an edgy brit-pop disc than anything from seattle, new york or boston. it sounds more like blur than nirvana.
but the truth is that a band like thursday could only hope to get as "emotional" as this:
you can hear a big bush influence in a lot of the "emo" bands that came out after about '05, probably because they grew up listening to them when they were kids.
but that's not what i'm getting at. good charlotte sounds like a watered down green day. i'm talking about the sdre sound.
Joe law
you guys got me totally lost which means I'm frickin old.!!! Music these days seems to have too many sub categories to keep up with. Don't laugh but the first music I remember hearing was The Beatles, Rolling Stones and a whole slew of bands that were around in the 60's and early 70' cuz that's what my Dad listened to. As I got older I moved on to bands like Rush , Led Zeppelin..etc. Back then there was Rock, country, classical etc. No such thing as Classic Rock. Then in the mid to late 70's to early 80's bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, etc sprung up which is where I started to hear the term Heavy Metal. Then because of Quiet Riots album Metal Health the term Headbanger music . After that I didn't bother keeping up with all those sub categories. When Nirvana and Alice In Chains came out there was no Grunge as far as I knew. But I liked the mix of heavy metal and a brief mellow verse then back to heavy metal. If you ask me...grunge..emo..headbanger..heavy metal...alternative,,,,,it's all Rock and Roll to me. It all has overpowering guitar which I think defines the Rock and Roll sound. Does Brittany Spears or Lady Gaga even have a guitar playing in their music? I've only heard part of a song or two but they don't have that guitar jamming in their songs...I'm so confused now...Anyway I am 50 yrs old and listened to the classic rock when it was current...then moved to bands like Nirvana, AIC and listened to Live and what is considered alternative. I listen to anything that has a screaming guitar and singer, Live is a little mellower but They still fall into that sound of music that I like.
deathtokoalas
yeah. the way i'm using the term emo refers to the mellower, more country-oriented side of live. like everything else, it ultimately traces back to the beatles. think of a track like julia, or michelle.
David Herring
lol. okay so i think i just need to figure out exactly what emo is i think. see emo as i am using it has little to do with the sound and more to do with song stucture and lyrical context. as i consider this genre, it started as punk, minor threat being the genre starters, fugazi also would fit into the emo scene. however, theres no sadness in LIVE as a band. writing a few love songs like lightning crashes, i alone, and dolphins cry don't work. after all if you look at a statement like "stop being so emo", you don't usually hear that as people are happy in love, but Sdre break up songs, as well as better then ezra. it's all break up songs. in those days though, my days in the 90's i mean, it wasn't like emo now of i'm sad so i'mma kill myself, it was you broke my heart, now burn bitch! kinda stuff. so after all that long winded explaination of what we were calling emo then, my original question would be, how do you classify emo?? because emo today, doesn't fit into my 90's emo genre or the original 80's emo genre either.
deathtokoalas
i don't think the relationship aspect applied to emo as a 90s phenomenon in much totality. it was a small aspect of it, but the idea was more about an exaggerated "emotional" vocal style (as opposed to the guttural screams of 90s rock, or the disinterested narrative beatnik-alternative-punk style) and became attached to a certain type of pretension that live really perfectly embody.
90s emo seems to be mostly synonymous with what they called "college rock" in the 80s and appealed to the same demographic of college kids that thought they were smarter than everybody else.
also, minor threat were a political punk act. "emotive hardcore" (which i've been very clear is not what i'm discussing here, or how history will remember the term "emo") is what happened a little bit later when ian mackaye decided to sell out and release a bunch of bon jovi shit.
Michael Richardson
Not Emo. Alternative, sure... But Emo is whiny annoying music for the most part, this is some of the best music of the 90's, and definitely not Emo sorry.
deathtokolas
please, people.
stick with the definitions i've provided or don't bother. changing the definition adds nothing to the debate.
David Herring
True. With all said the question was could you make a plausible arguement with said defined definitions, i would say yes.
Justin Kiser
Im just going to interrupt by saying that is it bloody refreshing to see a mature musical discussion in the comments section, very refreshing I am quite pleased to see it
Jackie Stein
Maybe there is hope for society yet.
sweatshirt029
this is from the same era as emo, but id say emo is more like sunny day real estate, the dismemberment plan, stuff like that.
deathtokoalas
but isn't this really a lot like that?
certainly, it's at least considerably more like that than it is like something like, say, jane's addiction, or the smashing pumpkins - "alternative rock" of the same period.
(although the pumpkins are awkward, because they dabbled heavily in emo-like styles and came out of a convergent path from it. they even brought in brad wood for one disc. i mostly mean pre-mcis pumpkins. but even that's a bit ambiguous.)
and, actually, is it not obvious that jeremy enigk's biggest influence is perry farrell? forget jane's and the pumpkins...
is it not certainly a lot closer to sdre than it is to pearl jam or soundgarden? i was trying to avoid grunge and focus on alt rock by getting out of seattle...
what i'm getting at is that you have to either acknowledge that emo and alt. rock are basically the same thing, or you need to split off a lot of the post-grunge acts as emo rather than alt rock and then define alt rock more carefully. if emo is a set of characteristics, a huge amount of alt rock arguably fits those characteristics better than what was labelled emo actually does. but, there's a lot of alt rock that doesn't really fit into alt rock, as a movement, as well.
i was just trying to find out how big the crossover between live and sdre is. i think i've found some, but it's still inconclusive for me...
the one association i'm rock solid on is radiohead. whatever these acts are, they're in the same genre. i'm not budging on that one.
if i wrote some historical music essays that described live as emo - and presented an argument for it - what would the reaction be? i mean, i know it's not a common designation. i think it's the correct one, but i know i'm going to get some emo people yelling at me. overall, though, i'm just curious as to how people that listened to live would react.
i mean, live never really fit as alt. rock. do they fit better as emo? what do their fans think?
i loved live up to the distance to here, but it was more of a continuity related to growing up listening to rem and u2. i remember checking life's rich pageant and green out of the public library when i was about seven or eight, and getting my uncle to dub me copies of u2's discography at roughly the same age. i was a precocious child. so, i connected to live like that - as an extension of my precocious, jangle rock childhood (which also included genesis, the bangles and the b-52s). i was a teenager through the 90s, so, naturally, i was mostly into harder edged music: industrial and punk, mostly. so, excluding getting into sdre through radiohead, i was mostly oblivious to the existence of that whole quiet math emo thing. further, by the time i'd grown up enough to expand my tastes, post-rock was the go to: mogwai, gybe, tortoise. it's something i skipped over.
(looking back, i honestly don't think i missed much)
how about the rest of you? did you listen to what was called emo in the 90s? to be clear, i'm talking about stuff like mineral, not stuff like drive like jehu.
i mean, to be a little bit more clear...
i don't think emo is a valid genre. you give me something labeled emo, i'll put it in a different category. but, if it's not going to go away, we should at least be consistent and systematic about it.
i couldn't imagine anybody listening to grunge also listening to live. it's night and day. well, except me, but, as i mentioned, i connected live with the 80s music i grew up with. that can't have been the norm.
it sort of makes sense to me to think that live fans would also be into music that is roughly like sunny day real estate. there's large overlaps, musically and thematically. so, now i'm testing this by asking it's fan base - did you listen to much 90s emo?
Matt M.
I wouldn't consider LIVE as being emo. Now something like blue october and manson were what the emo kids in my high school listened too. but that was late 90's early 2000's
John Garcia
honestly this could be emo...the time frame is different tho i do not really remember any bands being labled as emo in the 90's...but if you listen to these songs and listen to some of the emo music of today they are kinda the same
deathtokoalas
yeah, the term emo is notoriously vague. i think it's gone through three phases. it was a hardcore term in the 80s, a term that meant roughly "softcore apolitical punk with pretentious vocals" in the 90s (which kind of describes live well) and something roughly similar to "hot topic mall goth" in the 00s. these three sounds and styles really have little in common with each other....although the 00s usage is actually much closer to it's initial usage.
i have to be honest that i never heard the term in the 90s, either - even though i listened to a bunch of what was supposedly labeled it. but it apparently was used to identify bands that i would mostly think of as "quiet math rock with introspective vocals". it's roughly synonymous with"slowcore". i cited mineral and sunny day real estate as two of the better known acts. another is american football.
so, i need to be clear that peter isn't using the word the same way i am. i know live weren't goth. that's blatantly obvious. but i'm still curious if any live fans listened to those kinds of things...
i suppose that if you did, you'll know what i mean.
Matt M.
i understand completely.
Alfredo Rodriguez
I think I am to old to understand Emo. I like Live, have been listening to them off and on throughout my life. To me, Alt. Rock was Emo, before there was an Emo. But like I said, I don't think I understand the Emo scene.
David Herring
live does not constitute as emo, and yes, there was emo in the 90's. better then ezra, sunny day real estate, as afore mentioned, and promise ring. as well as others. they don't fit. srry not emo
deathtokoalas
well, i think there's a really big problem with putting better than ezra, sunny day real estate and promise ring in the same genre. i agree that there's not a whole lot of overlap between live and better than ezra. but is there much overlap between sunny day real estate and promise ring? to me, promise ring sound more like green day and better than ezra were just radio pop. i've never heard the better than ezra as emo thing before, btw, but that helps me understand this a bit more.
let me pull radiohead into the discussion because they're another act that i think might be better categorized as emo. certainly, they drew a lot on that math/post sound around ok computer. at the time, live and radiohead would have been easily lumped together. they both had a background through the talking heads (jerry harrison produced the best live records, radiohead got their name from a talking heads song). they were both generally thought of as '90s college rock' in the sense that they drew big influences from rem and u2. in a sense, 90s emo was also 90s 'college rock'. i think we can put live and radiohead in the same genre (whatever it is) without a lot of fuss.
i'd claim, though, that sunny day real estate should be historically classed with radiohead rather than with jawbreaker and weezer. i have very fond memories of lp2. but it was introduced to me on the rhml. for years, everybody that i met that like radiohead also liked sdre. there's a lot of stylistic similarities. so, those bands very much go together.
what we're left with is a set of at least three bands that fit together well through stylistic similarity: {radiohead, live, sunny day real estate}.
this is just alt rock, right? well, no. i wouldn't put the seattle grunge stuff in there. they don't really have much in common with those acts. nor would i put in the no wave (sonic youth) stuff or the la rock scene (rhcp) stuff or the dc punk (fugazi) stuff or the boston rock (dinosaur jr) stuff or the minneapolis punk (husker du) stuff. there's something different and unique there that builds up it's own category. and if you look at the characteristics, they're "emo": non-standard songwriting, math rock influences, strong vocal melodies, introspective vocals, emotional content.
now, as mentioned, i can build a conceptual unity between sdre and radiohead, and between radiohead and live. but i'm missing first hand evidence of live fans actually listening to 'emo'.
i realize the language may be alienating. let's strip it out. how many people in here were sunny day real estate fans in the mid to late 90s?
David Herring
right here.
Stacy Musacchia
I never heard the word "emo" associated with any form of entertainment until late 2000s. If If Live put out Lightning Crashes today it wouldn't even get radio play.
Shroom Masta
I guess you would have to listen to Good Charlotte or red jumpsuit then listen to this then after that listen to Bush see which one it sounds like more :S Then you have your answer :S
deathtokoalas
it doesn't sound like either, really. but, i do think razorblade suitcase was a huge influence on what was called emo in the 00s.
i mean, i'm not one to stand up for bush. i think they were pretty unfairly ripped apart by the british press for sounding "too american" at the height of the brit-pop craze. how fair of a criticism is that, really? in actuality, sixteen stone is really more of an edgy brit-pop disc than anything from seattle, new york or boston. it sounds more like blur than nirvana.
but the truth is that a band like thursday could only hope to get as "emotional" as this:
you can hear a big bush influence in a lot of the "emo" bands that came out after about '05, probably because they grew up listening to them when they were kids.
but that's not what i'm getting at. good charlotte sounds like a watered down green day. i'm talking about the sdre sound.
Joe law
you guys got me totally lost which means I'm frickin old.!!! Music these days seems to have too many sub categories to keep up with. Don't laugh but the first music I remember hearing was The Beatles, Rolling Stones and a whole slew of bands that were around in the 60's and early 70' cuz that's what my Dad listened to. As I got older I moved on to bands like Rush , Led Zeppelin..etc. Back then there was Rock, country, classical etc. No such thing as Classic Rock. Then in the mid to late 70's to early 80's bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, etc sprung up which is where I started to hear the term Heavy Metal. Then because of Quiet Riots album Metal Health the term Headbanger music . After that I didn't bother keeping up with all those sub categories. When Nirvana and Alice In Chains came out there was no Grunge as far as I knew. But I liked the mix of heavy metal and a brief mellow verse then back to heavy metal. If you ask me...grunge..emo..headbanger..heavy metal...alternative,,,,,it's all Rock and Roll to me. It all has overpowering guitar which I think defines the Rock and Roll sound. Does Brittany Spears or Lady Gaga even have a guitar playing in their music? I've only heard part of a song or two but they don't have that guitar jamming in their songs...I'm so confused now...Anyway I am 50 yrs old and listened to the classic rock when it was current...then moved to bands like Nirvana, AIC and listened to Live and what is considered alternative. I listen to anything that has a screaming guitar and singer, Live is a little mellower but They still fall into that sound of music that I like.
deathtokoalas
yeah. the way i'm using the term emo refers to the mellower, more country-oriented side of live. like everything else, it ultimately traces back to the beatles. think of a track like julia, or michelle.
David Herring
lol. okay so i think i just need to figure out exactly what emo is i think. see emo as i am using it has little to do with the sound and more to do with song stucture and lyrical context. as i consider this genre, it started as punk, minor threat being the genre starters, fugazi also would fit into the emo scene. however, theres no sadness in LIVE as a band. writing a few love songs like lightning crashes, i alone, and dolphins cry don't work. after all if you look at a statement like "stop being so emo", you don't usually hear that as people are happy in love, but Sdre break up songs, as well as better then ezra. it's all break up songs. in those days though, my days in the 90's i mean, it wasn't like emo now of i'm sad so i'mma kill myself, it was you broke my heart, now burn bitch! kinda stuff. so after all that long winded explaination of what we were calling emo then, my original question would be, how do you classify emo?? because emo today, doesn't fit into my 90's emo genre or the original 80's emo genre either.
deathtokoalas
i don't think the relationship aspect applied to emo as a 90s phenomenon in much totality. it was a small aspect of it, but the idea was more about an exaggerated "emotional" vocal style (as opposed to the guttural screams of 90s rock, or the disinterested narrative beatnik-alternative-punk style) and became attached to a certain type of pretension that live really perfectly embody.
90s emo seems to be mostly synonymous with what they called "college rock" in the 80s and appealed to the same demographic of college kids that thought they were smarter than everybody else.
also, minor threat were a political punk act. "emotive hardcore" (which i've been very clear is not what i'm discussing here, or how history will remember the term "emo") is what happened a little bit later when ian mackaye decided to sell out and release a bunch of bon jovi shit.
Michael Richardson
Not Emo. Alternative, sure... But Emo is whiny annoying music for the most part, this is some of the best music of the 90's, and definitely not Emo sorry.
deathtokolas
please, people.
stick with the definitions i've provided or don't bother. changing the definition adds nothing to the debate.
David Herring
True. With all said the question was could you make a plausible arguement with said defined definitions, i would say yes.
Justin Kiser
Im just going to interrupt by saying that is it bloody refreshing to see a mature musical discussion in the comments section, very refreshing I am quite pleased to see it
Jackie Stein
Maybe there is hope for society yet.
sweatshirt029
this is from the same era as emo, but id say emo is more like sunny day real estate, the dismemberment plan, stuff like that.
deathtokoalas
but isn't this really a lot like that?
certainly, it's at least considerably more like that than it is like something like, say, jane's addiction, or the smashing pumpkins - "alternative rock" of the same period.
(although the pumpkins are awkward, because they dabbled heavily in emo-like styles and came out of a convergent path from it. they even brought in brad wood for one disc. i mostly mean pre-mcis pumpkins. but even that's a bit ambiguous.)
and, actually, is it not obvious that jeremy enigk's biggest influence is perry farrell? forget jane's and the pumpkins...
is it not certainly a lot closer to sdre than it is to pearl jam or soundgarden? i was trying to avoid grunge and focus on alt rock by getting out of seattle...
what i'm getting at is that you have to either acknowledge that emo and alt. rock are basically the same thing, or you need to split off a lot of the post-grunge acts as emo rather than alt rock and then define alt rock more carefully. if emo is a set of characteristics, a huge amount of alt rock arguably fits those characteristics better than what was labelled emo actually does. but, there's a lot of alt rock that doesn't really fit into alt rock, as a movement, as well.
i was just trying to find out how big the crossover between live and sdre is. i think i've found some, but it's still inconclusive for me...
the one association i'm rock solid on is radiohead. whatever these acts are, they're in the same genre. i'm not budging on that one.
death to adrev
these guys are pissing me off.
they're trying to get me on this (at youtube, not bandcamp), which is a sample art collage in the style of something like art of noise or negativland, but with video game samples.
it's largely silly. i was 16. and i was using primitive tools. but it is still interesting on some level.
i could maybe bend a little if the claim was at least accurate. there's a lot of samples from civ2 and doom II. but that's not what i'm getting. the claim i'm getting is that the sample starts at 0:05. yet, no sample starts at 0:05.
so, it seems like it's more like somebody there said "this sounds like it might have one of our samples somewhere, so we're going to put an ad on it".
ugh.
ads are the scourge of the internet. if it weren't for ad block, i'd probably cancel my internet. i'm not joking.
so, i've sent them a simple either/or. i won't let the video sit with an ad on it. that's not in the set of possible outcomes. if they're not going to remove the bullshit claim (and the claim *is* bullshit), i'm going to take the video down, remove the first section and re-upload it. they can either be jerks or not be jerks...
i'm not holding my breath. but maybe i'll get lucky.
they're trying to get me on this (at youtube, not bandcamp), which is a sample art collage in the style of something like art of noise or negativland, but with video game samples.
it's largely silly. i was 16. and i was using primitive tools. but it is still interesting on some level.
i could maybe bend a little if the claim was at least accurate. there's a lot of samples from civ2 and doom II. but that's not what i'm getting. the claim i'm getting is that the sample starts at 0:05. yet, no sample starts at 0:05.
so, it seems like it's more like somebody there said "this sounds like it might have one of our samples somewhere, so we're going to put an ad on it".
ugh.
ads are the scourge of the internet. if it weren't for ad block, i'd probably cancel my internet. i'm not joking.
so, i've sent them a simple either/or. i won't let the video sit with an ad on it. that's not in the set of possible outcomes. if they're not going to remove the bullshit claim (and the claim *is* bullshit), i'm going to take the video down, remove the first section and re-upload it. they can either be jerks or not be jerks...
i'm not holding my breath. but maybe i'll get lucky.
still reading that silly puritan revolutionary nonsense. well, my head's just been throbbing....slept for something like 90 of the last 100 hours...i'm awake now, finally. hope to be done by the end of the night.
live just randomly struck me as the proper soundtrack for this stuff, 'cause it intersects properly into that area of christianity that i have a lot of respect for. be nice to people. have some fucking integrity. well, i'm an open socialist - on a basic definitional and historical level that largely means i like the morals and reject the theology. engels informs us of the difference between historically utopian (religious) socialism and his new brand of scientific (marxist) socialism. i digress. but i don't think that jesus would have been a hippie, really. he would have been more of a punk, out to smash the corporate state.
this record has a lot of errors. it's more of a guilty pleasure, really. i've grown to love it's flaws (funny how that happens, sometimes), but roughly half of it is admittedly undefendably awful. and this is certainly the last record they did before the singer got too preachy to listen to.
...but i've got a really weird soft spot for this disc, explicitly *as* the christian rock it is.
well, i think another reason they went downhill after this is that they stopped working with jerry harrison. that's probably not a widely understood narrative.
also, i'm again confused as to what the difference is between this and emo, other than that this is better than essentially all 90s emo i've heard - on their own basis of "emotional songwriting", "introspective lyrics" and "developed vocal melodies".
yeah. i'm doing far too many things at once. there's still that music history site i want to do, and here's the thing: i don't think we should have a thing called emo at all, dumb marketing, but if we're going to, and people are going to write this history, then this isn't just it but is some of the best of it. even if nobody realized it. *i'm* realizing it and will have to write it in.
live just randomly struck me as the proper soundtrack for this stuff, 'cause it intersects properly into that area of christianity that i have a lot of respect for. be nice to people. have some fucking integrity. well, i'm an open socialist - on a basic definitional and historical level that largely means i like the morals and reject the theology. engels informs us of the difference between historically utopian (religious) socialism and his new brand of scientific (marxist) socialism. i digress. but i don't think that jesus would have been a hippie, really. he would have been more of a punk, out to smash the corporate state.
this record has a lot of errors. it's more of a guilty pleasure, really. i've grown to love it's flaws (funny how that happens, sometimes), but roughly half of it is admittedly undefendably awful. and this is certainly the last record they did before the singer got too preachy to listen to.
...but i've got a really weird soft spot for this disc, explicitly *as* the christian rock it is.
also, i'm again confused as to what the difference is between this and emo, other than that this is better than essentially all 90s emo i've heard - on their own basis of "emotional songwriting", "introspective lyrics" and "developed vocal melodies".
yeah. i'm doing far too many things at once. there's still that music history site i want to do, and here's the thing: i don't think we should have a thing called emo at all, dumb marketing, but if we're going to, and people are going to write this history, then this isn't just it but is some of the best of it. even if nobody realized it. *i'm* realizing it and will have to write it in.
Thursday, February 20, 2014
geez. this person is stuck in the 80s. that's why this sucks.
1) strats, jaguars and jazzmasters were integral to alt. rock, which is what people nowadays are going to go looking to them for. green day, billy corgan, john frusciante. tom morello also used a strat. they're good PUNK guitars BECAUSE they aren't muddy with full chord riffs.
2) you need an ibanez entry for the nu metal, emo and post-hardcore kids: tone that sounds like a corporate robot vomiting out cockroaches through autotune vocoders, while screaming FEED ME.
3) why pick angus young of all people (gross) as an sg player, when you've got zappa and thayil amongst others to choose from? worse is that it's again years out of date: hi gain sgs created that mall punk sound. i bought my sg due to thayil, but the high gain mall punk thing is why kids go for sgs today. i bet a high school survey would conclude that well over 90% of people under 20 have never even heard of either angus young or ac/dc (that's not dad music anymore, it's grandpa music, and grandpa grew out of it many years ago, if he didn't overdose on something (possibly cheese) before kid got to know him).
4) if you want that mevins/boris sound, you probably want to go with a paul - while realizing the sound is mostly in the amp.
(link apparently lost)
1) strats, jaguars and jazzmasters were integral to alt. rock, which is what people nowadays are going to go looking to them for. green day, billy corgan, john frusciante. tom morello also used a strat. they're good PUNK guitars BECAUSE they aren't muddy with full chord riffs.
2) you need an ibanez entry for the nu metal, emo and post-hardcore kids: tone that sounds like a corporate robot vomiting out cockroaches through autotune vocoders, while screaming FEED ME.
3) why pick angus young of all people (gross) as an sg player, when you've got zappa and thayil amongst others to choose from? worse is that it's again years out of date: hi gain sgs created that mall punk sound. i bought my sg due to thayil, but the high gain mall punk thing is why kids go for sgs today. i bet a high school survey would conclude that well over 90% of people under 20 have never even heard of either angus young or ac/dc (that's not dad music anymore, it's grandpa music, and grandpa grew out of it many years ago, if he didn't overdose on something (possibly cheese) before kid got to know him).
4) if you want that mevins/boris sound, you probably want to go with a paul - while realizing the sound is mostly in the amp.
(link apparently lost)
in the end, i think the most important thing i'm going to get out of my little foray into trying to find listenable screamo is a reminder of just how fucking awesome drive like jehu were. i've largely resigned myself to the conclusion that the obscure screamo i'm looking for doesn't exist and i'm instead picking up an influence from one of the least obscure records of the period - ok computer. i'm going to keep looking, but that's the likely reality: today's arty hardcore kids grew up listening to radiohead like everybody else.
but back to drive like jehu...
i always thought of them as alt. rock that was heavily influenced by sonic youth (well, what from the period wasn't?) and had a strong affinity with the artier side of the genre: jane's addiction, smashing pumpkins, i mother earth, primus, chili peppers, stuff like that. in hindsight, i can hear a ton of meat puppets. you could even make the argument that they sound like a prog rock nirvana. there didn't really seem to be a reason, to me, to be more specific than that. it's just some of the best alt. rock of the period.
i mean, snaking through, i can hear an influence. i'm not sure it's entirely necessary, but it's real. that is to say that these more obscure acts i'm pulling out were definitely listening to dlj, but, if they weren't, they could have just as easily synthesized what they were doing from fugazi and sonic youth - albeit not at the same level of quality that dlj did (and these guys couldn't touch dlj, anyways).
it might be a function of the media i was exposed to at the time, but i never heard anybody call them emo, either - just like i never heard the term applied to sdre or weezer. so was i an emo kid and just didn't know it? no. those categories piss me off. i tend to take the best acts out of each genre and discard the generic; i wouldn't have had any more of an interest in a thousand generic emo bands than i did in a thousand generic grunge acts...
i've remarked repeatedly, though, that it's funny that i was listening to almost all of the most creative emo acts all the way through the 90s, and yet never heard the term used until something like 2005.
anyways, this is a legitimately awesome rock 'n' roll album that you should check out if you missed it. if asked to present an objective argument, i'd have to say the other one is equally as good, but i like this one better. it's just a bit weirder.
but back to drive like jehu...
i always thought of them as alt. rock that was heavily influenced by sonic youth (well, what from the period wasn't?) and had a strong affinity with the artier side of the genre: jane's addiction, smashing pumpkins, i mother earth, primus, chili peppers, stuff like that. in hindsight, i can hear a ton of meat puppets. you could even make the argument that they sound like a prog rock nirvana. there didn't really seem to be a reason, to me, to be more specific than that. it's just some of the best alt. rock of the period.
i mean, snaking through, i can hear an influence. i'm not sure it's entirely necessary, but it's real. that is to say that these more obscure acts i'm pulling out were definitely listening to dlj, but, if they weren't, they could have just as easily synthesized what they were doing from fugazi and sonic youth - albeit not at the same level of quality that dlj did (and these guys couldn't touch dlj, anyways).
it might be a function of the media i was exposed to at the time, but i never heard anybody call them emo, either - just like i never heard the term applied to sdre or weezer. so was i an emo kid and just didn't know it? no. those categories piss me off. i tend to take the best acts out of each genre and discard the generic; i wouldn't have had any more of an interest in a thousand generic emo bands than i did in a thousand generic grunge acts...
i've remarked repeatedly, though, that it's funny that i was listening to almost all of the most creative emo acts all the way through the 90s, and yet never heard the term used until something like 2005.
anyways, this is a legitimately awesome rock 'n' roll album that you should check out if you missed it. if asked to present an objective argument, i'd have to say the other one is equally as good, but i like this one better. it's just a bit weirder.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
biblical rainfall amounts.
but, goddy, you promised!
http://s2.twnmm.com/images/12/Activewxwarning-12912.png
phil collins warning:
but, goddy, you promised!
http://s2.twnmm.com/images/12/Activewxwarning-12912.png
phil collins warning:
Monday, February 17, 2014
people seem to think i care about genres. if i were to place my own music in one, it wouldn't otherwise exist. i call it "blender rock" in that it takes in influences from all over the place and melds it all together. it's a concept that roughly encapsulates the idea of "progressive rock", but explicitly rejects attempts to stabilize progressive music as having a defined sound. other artists i'd place in this genre would be zappa, beatles (66-69), hendrix, floyd, genesis (gabriel), can, elo, mahavishnu, crimson, bowie, queen, oldfield, cardiacs, cure, u2, swans, sonic youth, coil, foetus, neubauten, flaming lips, key/goettel, mbv, nirvana, nin, pumpkins, tool, tori, tortoise, mr. bungle, squarepusher, radiohead (-01), bjork, asmz, 65dos, keneally, mars volta, lightning bolt, spiral beach, man man, fuck buttons, genghis tron, battles, ssris, indricothere, st. vincent, pepepiano and la dispute. all are influences.
i'm interested in hearing about further examples of blender rock.
i'm interested in hearing about further examples of blender rock.
TAKE THAT YOUTUBE HIPSTERS.
man, i'm telling you. a hundred ad exec brains just exploded. there's no way to place this in a demographic.
i'm basically convinced at this point that youtube is swarming with "suits" that are going around ensuring that their products don't get bad advertising.
so, i'm trolling them. well the idea is to draw attention to myself in hopes that people might click through and listen to my own, but i find what i'm *actually* doing is arguing with ad execs that are trying to maintain the sanctity of their ads (which is what youtube is to a marketing douche - it's a way to upload advertisements for their records/products) while i convincingly insult their products.
of course, they need to find creative ways to defend their ads. so, they go looking through my shit looking for a way to create a caricature of me.
i'm on to you, fuckers.
man, i'm telling you. a hundred ad exec brains just exploded. there's no way to place this in a demographic.
i'm basically convinced at this point that youtube is swarming with "suits" that are going around ensuring that their products don't get bad advertising.
so, i'm trolling them. well the idea is to draw attention to myself in hopes that people might click through and listen to my own, but i find what i'm *actually* doing is arguing with ad execs that are trying to maintain the sanctity of their ads (which is what youtube is to a marketing douche - it's a way to upload advertisements for their records/products) while i convincingly insult their products.
of course, they need to find creative ways to defend their ads. so, they go looking through my shit looking for a way to create a caricature of me.
i'm on to you, fuckers.
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