A fun look at how entertainment shapes the world, things
that are awesome, and other developments that might just suck. Because awesome things and sucky things do make the world go round.
It's been nearly a decade since the advent of the first iPods and culture has never truly been the same since. Apple Computers was quickly revitalized by the success of this mp3 player that notably stored more than the average CD and had less bulk than say a Walkman CD player. And naturally, it changed the culture of radio broadcasting. Podcasts went from small endeavors to shows that got picked up by public radio stations and all kinds of hooplah came out of that. People wondered if the iPod destroyed radio for good, which yeah, it probably did.
However, it created a sort of new age of wanting to hear about other people's opinions, views, or ideas in such a personal way. I mean, even blogs don't entirely have the personal nature of conversation, as much as I love to think that I've personally endeared myself to the populace who reads these entries. Plus, you can fall asleep listening to podcasts. If you fall asleep reading a blog or a book, you're probably way too tired to have any focus whatsoever.
So it was very easy to see how I could fall into addiction with podcasts, and I have around 40 currently on my lovely computer. 40 podcasts are actually probably way too many to have saved on my computer. It's not like the ones that I have (and that I shall showcase to you shortly) are short deals. For every five minute alert of the week's events in whatever, there are podcasts -- and in turn, conversations -- that go on for hours. And yet I find a way to listen to every single one of them on a weekly basis. So now that I revealed myself to be the exact stereotype of every blogger on earth, let me reveal favorites and reasons why.
ESPN Around The Horn Podcast: This one is completely easy to justify. I love talking about sports. I love mindless arguments about whether or not the New York Yankees are going to suck next season. I love Woody Paige managing one moment of amazing silliness an episode. Thus, this is completely perfect for me.
Scene Unseen: This is probably the most conversational of all of the lovely podcasts I enjoy. It's a simple premise: one guy sees a movie, the other doesn't. Then, they simply talk out what they enjoy about the movie. I have followed this one long enough, though, to see a nice evolution in their sound. They often veer away from the topic of the film, which when they are reviewing such films as Madagascar 2 and Eagle Eye, it's a welcome change.
SModCast: It's Kevin Smith. It's Scott Mosier. It's funny. The end.
Sound Opinions: A podcast is doing something right whenever I can be completely agreeing with its hosts' opinions one week, and then completely disagree with them the next. Sound Opinions has that fun little thing of making me consider my own opinions versus its two hosts, and even though I don't always agree, when I do dislike their views, it's a pretty healthy dislike. It's not vitriolic or the type of hatred I elicit for say, Blender Magazine.
Broken Pixels: While a lot of 1UP's long material tends to bore me, as I remember that I am so impoverished by still playing my year old Playstation 2 and my two-year-old sports games, I love this particular podcast because it's really easy to mock bad video games. Actually, I had never heard of 90% of these games before they were on Broken Pixels, but watching them get torn to shreds by three men who probably are drinking as this mockery occurs is a complete joy to watch. Oh, and don't do it yourself. They are grown-up magazine writers.
Okay, let's get things out of the way first. I send my holiday greetings, a nice Happy Holidays so as not to offend anyone. And so with formalities out of the way, let's get to the truth. It doesn't feel quite like Christmas this year. Mind you, I have made no formal studies in the differences in Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or even Festivus, so I don't know if it feels incredibly different by comparison, but Christmas itself feels kind of like another day. I mean, other than the presents, and me being happy that I got a few things I didn't need to save up to buy, it's a very conventional day.
Even Mother Nature last night didn't really care what day it was. In Tuscaloosa, there were high gusts of wind and lots of rain. Also, the temperature was 60 degrees at the lowest. This is not even typical December weather, much less Christmas Eve weather.
And of course, many elements play a part in the mediocrity Christmas has sort of become to me.
The first thing is obvious, I'm not exactly a kid anymore. When I ask for Christmas presents now, I basically just go online, order it, they send it in a week or so and I get it. And it's not even like toys or games or anything. My big present this year was that I got three Chuck Klosterman books and a few T-shirts I had wanted for quite a while. And these things are awesome, but they don't have the instant gratification factor, really. The benefit of shirts is to wear in public, and no sane person is out in public on Christmas Day. And book reading is always great, but most great books are a sort of marathon where you read a good little bit at a time and enjoy the book's structure, words, and whatnot. I never thought I would focus on the future and nice things to wear around from January to May, but that's basically what's happened.
The second thing, though, I can blame on television. With so many television channels running round-the-clock programming, there is no way that everyone wants to cover something about Christmas. While there are the traditional holiday standards like the classic It's A Wonderful Life, television still more or less moves on. Repeats rarely seem to cover the subject, and don't get me started on how little of a damn I care about Nancy Grace and her spending five days a week on a missing toddler when hundreds go missing without a trace of press. Of course, I don't think she spent her Eve show talking about said toddler, instead it's to the just as soul-crushing subject of kids with cancer.
On the television point, it doesn't help that there's crap all for specials these days. I mean, Rudolph, Frosty, and Charlie Brown don't stop being great. But Jeff Dunham? Are you seriously going to tell me that a guy with a mildly offensive Arabic stereotype puppet and who is at most mildly hilarious is supposed to send me some real Christmas funny? Thank God that A Colbert Christmas was on this year, at least.
And finally, I think I see the season through rose colored glasses. There has never been snow on Christmas Eve in the many years I've had Christmas in Tuscaloosa. At least, I don't think there has. But anyways, there never was that much to remember about the season. I think I got a Sega Genesis video game system one year, and that made my life for like five years or so. There was one year where the electricity was out, but that wasn't even here in Tuscaloosa. That was in my former home of Louisiana, and nothing about that year was particularly memorable except for the lack of electricity caused by a nice ice storm.
So I guess I'm the Scrooge of this season. Which is kind of not true in the sense that I still enjoy Christmas and getting free gifts, but I'm on that sort of downslide. There's not much time left to enjoy the getting, so I sort of shrug my way through those years. Or maybe my views on Christmas would've been changed if they just shown It's A Wonderful Life without commercials this year. Get on that next year, NBC.
So, it's late December. Late December means watching mediocre college football teams battling it out for who truly deserves a bowl of poinsettias, or a bowl representing the website of a pizza joint. I mean, sure, there's Christmas, but everyone knows about that. There is a pure adoration for Christmas already. Everyone loves Christmas, even if they don't love Christ or Santa or any other figure that impedes into this ritualistic gift-giving time of year.
That said, the best thing I possibly did this weekend, other than watching a few movies I wanted to see, was to immerse myself into the positive effects that professional wrestling can have on soldiers. And how simplistic men (and women) in tights doing fake fighting make a good impact on the armed forces of America.
Yes, I watched WWE's Tribute to the Troops in lieu of the hardcore war between South Florida and...that team South Florida beat in football.
Now mind you, I have an odd fascination with WWE's product. I am talking about a company whose last major storyline involved a seven-foot-tall, 300 pound monster whining about what he and a blonde chick with the same first and last name had together as a couple. The answer, of course, is nothing, but over two hours, we were led to essentially who the blonde was having sex with. This is a product that I cannot justify in the fact that it is pure campiness and upright stupidity. This same company has a Playboy model finding feelings for a man that is functionally retarded excluding when a ring bell is rung. This is hardly the nexus of anything thought-provoking on television.
And yet, that loon Vince McMahon does something that no one else probably will. He's made a tradition ever since the war in Iraq broke out to send his group of superstars to Iraq to entertain the soldiers. Even now, when the celebritocracy avoids Iraq like the plague on the basis of the war being unjustified, WWE spends a random time in December actually giving their moral support to the soldiers. It's not a pro-war sentiment, either. It's merely a pro-soldier sentiment.
I didn't even think I could stand a show in which an address by George W. Bush opened the telecast, but the show is impartial. It merely states the situation, and that WWE helps the soldiers' morale. And then there are good guys versus bad guys and the good guys always have to win. It's a feel good special, except replacing the overbearing Christmas sentiment with American sentiment. And it's a time where something ironic and great happens, in that the "fake sport" brings a sentiment that's very much genuine and stunningly respectful. Maybe something even more genuine than a football team fighting for the Meineke Car Care Bowl.
As you've noticed, there's sadly not as much writing in the past few days from myself because, well, it's the holidays and everything seems to completely shut down as far as news goes. My favorite sport of football (college and pro) is busy dashing my dreams and running itself out of town after a few more weeks, all of the fascinating music from 2008 has already been released, and all of the great awards-season fare is either getting released in limited release or on Christmas Day, so it's not like I can find a way to watch said movies without using the ole' hitchhiker's thumb.
So instead, I'll find another way to bring those three great things into something else, and that's to bring up what I'm tired of hearing from the media (and I guess people, too, but mostly the media).
- Stop hating the idea of "playoffs system" people hating the idea of the BCS in college football.
Over the past few years, everyone and their mother has preached about the good of a playoff system in college football. It would make controversy mostly impossible, because at least unbeaten mid-majors would prove if they're actually good or not, and all that jazz. So it's an awesome system that totally makes sense. It makes so much sense that every year when a team is left out in the cold, all college pundits talk about is the playoff system. Which naturally annoys people tired of hearing about playoffs as much as they tire of hearing the name Tim Tebow during every ESPN college football show ever. Which gets the topic off of the table, and leaves out the point that the BCS isn't working and that my favorite sport of college football has a worse system than my not so favorite sport of college basketball, which still sways me to watch during Final Four time because they have an awesome playoff system that's easy to fill out in a bracket. - When a famous person goes crazy or fails once, don't immediately herald their next project as their mega comeback.
Obviously, we saw this in 2008 with Britney Spears' Circus, which came out like a year after her last record and yet everyone heralded Circus as the comeback record. And guess what? Both records are about the same in quality. (As in, it's well-made dispensable pop.) And guess what? Both sold close to a half a million in one week, which is about the same. Mmmm, isn't media hype crazy?
- Is "crunk" really a relevant phrase to anyone, regardless of what they like?
I mean, come on. It really bottomed up in terms of any sort of ironic luster it had probably right after Dave Chappelle portrayed Lil' Jon, and then right after the man purposefully tried to market another "genre" called "hyphy" that sounded about the same, but didn't have a word that was oversaturated by being used by a bunch of kids thinking it's super ironic. When the man himself is tired of the phrase, you know it's pretty played out.
And then there's some other tired things that I'd save for a nice rainy day, but I felt a need to quench any drought of fine material here in this fine blog. I'll probably only be posting if I see one of those awesome awards season-bait movies in the near future, but other than that, you'll just have to miss me.
When Auburn fired head coach Tommy Tuberville roughly two weeks ago, everyone thought it was a misguided decision, but in the topsy-turvy world of NCAA coaching, putting out the old and bringing in the new is the new thing. When any coach, especially one helming a Southeastern Conference team, messes up badly, the impulse decision is to change things. But presumably, you have to have a clear plan of what you want to head a team. Right?
Now let me put myself into the perspective of an Auburn athletic director or Bobby Jindal or whatever, which you'll notice in that handy quotes box below. I have many, many options for a replacement...
Turner Gill's done amazing work in Buffalo and made the team go from a laughing stock of Division 1-A football to a conference champion. And on the way to that conference title, they beat a top 25-ranked undefeated team in the process. He seems perfect for the project of rebuilding the Tigers. But eh, he's probably wanting to be stuck in the Northwest or Northeast or wherever Buffalo is. And clearly the MAC's not a legitimate conference. It's not even a big six conference! So, no to him.
Brian Kelly has made Cincinnati into a Big East powerhouse. He is in a big six conference, even if this conference happens to have the least prestige out of all of them. And his team is playing in a Big Four bowl this year (the Orange Bowl), unlike us. He's also had a long trend of turning teams good or keeping the teams on track. Thus, he's an amazing choice. But he doesn't see a problem at being paid $825,000 a year to live in a cold city in Ohio, which is strange but I guess it take him out of the picture.
Boise State's Chris Peterson's much the same. He loves the blue turf a lot. Oh, and 12-0 records. So he's also out.
And I'm too lazy to wait for a pro coach to get fired, like Rod Marinelli of the Detroit Lions or Romeo Crennel of the Browns, despite the fact that lame duck pro football coaches with a clear head have a great history of winning in college. See: Nick Saban, Pete Carroll.
And I don't want a guy who would be brand new to coaching. So even though a guy with a solid pedigree in coaching (Mississippi State's Sly Croom) just got let go, I don't want him. He clearly can't play in our conference, so why on earth would I need a guy who led a mediocre team to a bowl game last season and only lost to my team by one point this year?
So that leaves only one choice left. We need someone from a big conference, but not a big school. This guy should come from the Big 12 North, not the Big 12 South where that Texas Tech guy Mike Leach is. He'll probably just stay in Lubbock and be third in his conference (with a 7-1 conference record) forever. And I don't think Mack Brown of Texas or Bob Stoops will jump out of their posts. And...I guess there's other teams in the South, but why would I care? I want the North.
Missouri's head signed a mega extension, so he's out, despite his winning record. Uhm...Kansas head coach Mark Mangino looks too much like Andy Reid. This clearly is important to my decision, so he's also out. Nebraska's got a fresh coach with an 8-4 record, but he clearly won't leave for a nice plum SEC job. Plus, Nebraska's got some legacy to it.
So that leaves Colorado's head and Iowa State's head. (Kansas State's coach signed a ridiculous $1.8 million per season deal to continue to be 5-7. They'd kill for an Auburn-esque season.) Colorado finished 5-7 this season, too, but we don't want to be reminded of the past. Now what we need is a defensive genius! But I've got Iowa State left, so I guess I'll hire that guy. Oh! Gene Chizik! The man who coached Auburn's amazing 2004 defense! This was a good choice after all. Wait, what's that? His head coaching record is 5-19? Oh, what does it matter?
So, let's recap. I shunned the mid-major guys, despite the fact that the head coach of this year's SEC champion cut his teeth in mid-major jobs. I shunned any recently fired guys like Sly Croom, despite the fact that a team coached by a guy fired last year by an SEC team was the only team this season to beat the SEC champion. I totally forgot about the pros, despite the fact that pro experience and great defensive strategy from a Romeo Crennel is exactly what Auburn needs. I totally forgot that a horrible team like Kansas State even has a coach that's more winning than the coach from the very specific conference I hired from.
Awake on my airplane. Awake on my airplane. My skin is bare, my skin is theirs.
The following was the first four lines from Filter's "Take A Picture", another one of those "classic" 90s rock radio songs that everyone remembers and no one likes now. Right?
Well, I like it because it's one of the finest songs from the 1990s era of rock music. In fact, it's a lot better than a ton of the traditionally great songs, quite simply. Furthermore, Filter is an amazing rock band that gets saddled with the image of post-grunge rock radio. Basically, they're something solid in an era of crap, and when anything solid is purely surrounded by crap and doesn't have the ironic distance of a Radiohead or Yo La Tengo or Spoon, they "become" the crap they're around.
But this band is amazingly sensible and hilarious despite being ridiculously accessible. The aforementioned "Take a Picture" is a sprawling six-minute epic that is basically vocalist Richard Patrick getting drunk on an airplane, stripping down to his boxers, and fighting with someone. Oh, and asking someone to take a picture because he won't remember what happens during his alcohol-infused blackout. Which given the song's reputation of being a sprawling epic about something not that drunken, it kind of shatters the song's illusion of being beautiful. However, it makes the song inherently beautiful by proxy of being realistic. Richard Patrick basically is telling the world that he's flawed and that when he drinks, he really does stupid things. Which, in fairness, isn't a bold statement by any means.
And yet the true humanity sort of seeps out four and a half minutes into the song with Patrick's sing-shout of "Hey Dad, what do you think about your son now?" Patrick reveals a whole another side of himself: the one with daddy issues. It doesn't seem like he hates his dad, but every man deals with the shadow of his father. It doesn't matter whether it's subtle or plainly obvious, every man has had to look up to his old man and may not have always liked the result. And Patrick probably didn't always have the approval of dad, especially when his older brother was the frickin' T-1000.
And the decision to make the song a peaceful ballad out of the situation is inspired. It's exactly the opposite of what is expected. You expect Filter's most kicking and dark song to be about the drunken incident, not their most peaceful effort. Not to mention that despite their accessibility (hipster translation: their success), this is the same band that didn't agree with but sympathized with people who commit suicide on the single "Hey Man Nice Shot". They aren't Yo La Tengo, but they are unorthodox. Hell, they named an album Title of Record, which is actually kind of funny, sort of in the same way that REM naming an album Eponymous was.
I was going to mention "Take a Picture" in the same breath as great 1990s songs like Radiohead's "Airbag", Neutral Milk Hotel's "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea", or Oasis' "Don't Look Back in Anger", and I truly believe this song stands the test of time. Because "Take a Picture" had something that even those great songs might not have had, and that's pure honesty.
Yes, this is the time of year where everyone gives you a list, and you usually disagree with it because none of your favorite bands (or movies or TV shows or whatever) are on it. This is my version of that list.
10. Beck - Modern Guilt
Can an album be considered a disappointment, the most lackadaisical record in an artist's catalogue, and still worthy of being heard? I don't entirely believe everything I just said about Beck's downright amazing Modern Guilt, though, Beck did seem bored with this record extremely quickly, as instead of the hour-long length of The Information, he barely gets to 33 minutes on Modern Guilt. On one hand, it feels like Beck wanted to be freed from a major label contract, which in comparison to final major-label swansongs like Mos Def's Geffen Records departure record True Magic, this seems like an insult. On the other, it's Beck and Beck always is intriguing just by the nature of being himself.
I guess the words "out of nowhere surprise" apply to this record, because the third most interesting member of the Strokes -- drummer Fab Moretti -- has made easily the most interesting side project out of the bunch. There wasn't much hype for the record, to the point that I remember fellow Strokes member Albert Hammond's two solo records earning more hype. And yet, it is a perfect mix of chilled out Strokes sound, and nice tropical elements. The only qualm here is that this is a perfect summer record, which of course means that it has to be released in November.
Video for "Next Time Around":
8. Portishead - Third
I feel really bad that it took me until this year to properly discover the pioneering trip-hop (read: electronic music) group Portishead, but they kind of made it hard for me not to. Third is the British collective's first release in 11 years of time, and yet there's nothing here that shows any rust between releases. Third opens with an amazing, haunting, and even depressing opening track called "Silence". Merging Beth Gibbons' beautiful voice with the sexy but scary background is exactly the perfect tone for Third. Third's not an easy listen. Those who want happy electronica with noises, beeps, and bloops should look elsewhere, but Third's an amazing music record, as in you'll be amazed by its quality and craftsmanship.
Video for "Machine Gun":
7. Sons and Daughters - This Gift
Sons and Daughters is probably the exact opposite of Portishead, in that instead of Portishead's slow, creepy rhythms, Sons and Daughters is insanely fast, rather peppy, and very catchy. And on This Gift, they create a collection of fine songs, all that accomplish the achievement of being catchy and damn near unskippable. I have ranted on the joys of this CD before, so look back through the blogs for why this record is so joyous. Just a needed catchy blast of indie rock.
Video for "Darling":
6. Be Your Own Pet - Get Awkward
This is my honorary "it sucks that this band is broken up now" album pick, though Get Awkward is a great album in its own right. Something clicks about three semi-long haired guys and a cute blonde recording songs about dull life, murder, and zombie movie references. And doing this all in a quickie punk style totally works. Admittedly, vocalist Jemina Abegg happens to sound a lot like Paramore vocalist Hayley Williams, but Abegg's so much more ironic with her vocal style and subject matter. Both bands go through "high school stories", but Be Your Own Pet does it with the right amount of truthful snark about it. These guys didn't care about high school, either, nor did they care about popularity or anything of the sort. Hell, they talk about killing a student in a song, and yet it's done in a tone that says "just kidding, guys". (That being the song "Becky", which actually didn't make the US version of the album but probably can still be found on BYOP's MySpace page or something.)
So yes, maybe I'm ultimately saying that it sucks that Be Your Own Pet is broken up, while Paramore is still together.
Video for "Becky":
5. The Bronx - The Bronx (III)
For the longest time, punk rock's simply tried too hard to be punk. While I've been wowed by efforts from bands like The Gaslight Anthem -- who would so be 11th on this list -- I feel like that punk has something missing. While groups like Andrew Jackson Jihad earn their punk following by stripping down the music into a hard acoustic rhythm, there's not enough of the rock in punk rock. The Bronx totally has that covered.
This record sounds exactly like the first two eponymous records from The Bronx, and that is exactly why it is good. While change is great for most bands, change is exactly what would ruin The Bronx's sound. They have such an ability to write concise three-minute or so punk songs that are pure blasts of sound that I cannot imagine them doing anything else, even though their next record is a mariachi-based record. And on The Bronx (III), they simply create eleven kicking songs that are a perfect companion to the first Bronx record (the second's not as kicking). And thus, by simplicity and keeping with the formula, they create another fine release.
(By the way, the video is for a song from The Bronx's first record, but it's far too awesome to pass up putting in a blog, and plus it has the same sort of sound that everything on the third record does.)
Video for "False Alarm":
4. Kanye West - 808s and Heartbreak
While change isn't always good, I'm not against change. Though, in fairness, Kanye West has always leaned towards change in every single album he's created. He created a nice, slice-of-life hip-hop record with College Dropout, and then he found the musical charms of Shirley Bassey to be the perfect pick for a sample on Late Registration. Graduation saw him evolve into taking samples from Steely Dan, Can, and Daft Punk among others, but 808s and Heartbreak might just be his most evolved release.
A lot of criticism was layered immediately on Kanye for his use of auto-tune throughout the whole entirety of the record, and he got compared strangely to Britney Spears as far as having a lack of "musical integrity", despite that integrity means nothing in the era of Amy Winehouse. However, this record's a dissection of a man that's an egotist, that's selfish, and that's cocky. This man is also human, flawed, and lonely all the same. Just by the nature of 808s and Heartbreak being as revealing as it is, it is Kanye's most human release, ultimately proving that a man that once said he wanted to be put in the Bible might be as oddly human as the rest of us after all.
Nas is a true elder statesman of hip-hop. This you already know.
He's also a man with a lot of controversial viewpoints. This you would know if you realized the original title for this record was going to be the N-word.
On Untitled, Nas dissects the unjust justification of racism, his own role in trying to unify the people, and in analyzing the meaning of one word. And he also tells white people that even if they like him, they wouldn't "ride" with him. And he's totally right. As much as white suburbia loves hip-hop, they wouldn't dare actually hang out with the people who write these songs. I mean, they would if it's a nice club. But in their day-to-day life, they'd be scared half to death.
Which is why I am a white suburban kid who likes Nas. Because I know what he's saying is right, and I know that he's willing to challenge his listeners, which is exactly what a good statesman does.
Video for "Make The World Go Round". (I'd love to link to the video for "Sly Fox", but I'll just tell you to look it up on YouTube. It's a great video, but a bit too controversial for ye olde blog.)
2. Metallica - Death Magnetic
Seventeen years ago, Metallica released The Black Album on the heels of an amazing song called "Enter Sandman". You might have heard of it. This album wasn't the best album in the group's catalogue (Master of Puppets or And Justice For All are the proper answers.), but this record was easily the catchiest metal album that I had ever listened to. Mind you, when I finally heard this record in its entirety, I still thought Creed and Limp Bizkit were awesome, so to hear a band with a slight bit of craftsmanship was a shocking change.
Since that album's release, Metallica has tried and failed to capture the spirit that made them such an intriguing band. While millions bought Load, Reload, and St. Anger, all three were met with a wave of disappointment from fans. And it's pretty understandable why a band famous for its hard luck metal would get shunned for going in a country-sounding direction (or whatever they were trying on St. Anger, I don't think anyone figured that out yet).
So seventeen years later, the band releases Death Magnetic, over an hour of pure thrash. And it's really awesome. It has been brought up before that the main criticism this record gets is that James Hetfield is not an angry young man any more. Which seems silly because Death still rolls with the stories. There's no political criticism or criticism of war akin to the amazing "Disposable Heroes", though, the video for "The Day That Never Comes" leans in this direction. However, this is an hour of rock that brings back everything that fans didn't hate about Metallica. And if I hear one more person say that Rob Trujillo is not Cliff Burton, I'll slap them in the face. Because that's totally obvious, and because Trujillo doesn't actually suck here.
And after seventeen long years, I can say that once again Metallica made an album that didn't suck.
Video for "All Nightmare Long":
1. TV on the Radio - Dear Science
When I originally listened to this record back in late September, I thought it was a pretty solid record. Obviously nothing compared to Return to Cookie Mountain is what I thought to myself while glancing through the tracks. I mean, I really liked "Dancing Choose" and "Halfway Home", but I didn't see much hope in the rest of the CD. So for a couple of months, I kind of slept on it. I liked it, but I didn't like it like I had the others.
But then one day, I turned on my iPod and listened to the song after "Halfway Home" called "Crying". And effectively, my mind was blown. "Crying" is such an infectious song that it got played a million times on my iPod shortly after that day. This same process happened with "Stork and Owl", "Family Tree", "Love Dog", "Golden Age", and the album's best track, "DLZ". And this is how purely amazing Dear Science is as an album. All of the album's songs may not be tracks that stick with you on first listen, but oh my, they are amazing by the 40th listen, and this amazing record easily takes the cake as best of the year.
And to close this out, here's some honorable mentions!
Deerhunter - Microcastle The Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple Islands - Arm's Way Ladytron - Velocifero Pendulum - In Silico Q-Tip - The Renaissance Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman - The Fabled City
I'm not going to get into some elaborate thoughts on anything as I'm winding towards finals week, but I will go into listing my ten favorite CDs of the year some time in the next week. I might make more than one list (i.e. I might do it by genre), but there will definitely be a ten best overall list done. I might throw in movies, but my list is boring and way too mainstream for its own good. And I'm not doing TV, since the best thing I've watched this year was technically from last year. (That being season two of Dexter.)
Anyways, keep a look for that, my clearly loyal following. Happy finals week, and hope you don't fail.
So in "this just in" news, Alabama has been chosen (as expected) to play in the Sugar Bowl on January 2nd.
And their opponents are the Utah Utes.
Let that sink in for a second.
Now that it has, let me reveal a few things about myself. In my egotistical quest for life to be fair, grass to be green, and the world to be fair and just, my favorite conferences in college football to follow are the mid-majors. I have a cousin who goes to Louisiana-Monroe, who play in the Sunbelt Conference and who we had a little bit of an unfortunate encounter with during Homecoming last season. Now, the Sunbelt statistically is the worst conference of the nation, no doubt. After all, the Idaho Vandals infamously had a streak of horrible football seasons in the Sunbelt and actually upgraded to the Western American Conference (the WAC) a few years back. And sadly, yes, they have the only team from Alabama holding a conference title in 1-A college ball this season. (Troy won the title on the heels of a strong 6-1 conference run and an 8-4 overall record. Plus, they almost beat LSU, which would've been the greatest laugh ever had they held on in the fourth quarter.)
Now in the past few years, the mid-major conferences have finally come out with guns blazing in terms of their athletic ability being competitive versus...well, everyone else. Teams like Utah, Boise State, and East Carolina have started to have a history of being very dominating in their own conference, and then putting up a fight versus their BCS-approved opponents. Boise State has a famous bowl win versus Oklahoma back in 2006, and the last time Utah finished 12-0 back in the 2004-2005 season, they beat their bowl opponent. (Mind you, said opponent was then 8-4 Pittsburgh, who lucked in based on winning a shambled Big East.)
Simply put, they've been exciting to watch. Seeing a team that has been mostly unproven versus bigger competition is extremely fascinating because no one ever truly knows how good the squad is. In fact, because they've barely been under the microscope, no one knows much about the team at all. In reference to the Utes, the only thing I could tell you about them is that their coaches appear to simply head to better shores and win national titles in one of the big six conferences. (As in, Urban Meyer was the coach of the 2004 team...and...and I don't need to tell you any more about him.)
Utah and Boise State have almost become my second teams (i.e. the team you cheer for when your favorite team is not playing). Utah's ability to keep producing great football teams because they have a great team spirit about them is an inspiring story. I couldn't tell you a single athlete currently on the Utes football team, and I doubt a cocky ESPN analyst probably could not do it off of the top of his head, either. However, they play consistent football and build and re-build and have gotten back to peaks under coach Kyle Whittingham that they haven't reached since that one guy who coached before Whittingham's appointment during the 2005-2006 season.
As for Boise, they continue to be consistent and shadowy. They usually have to take a Humanitarian Bowl bid, which kind of works since the Humanitarian Bowl is home to their awesome blue turf. In fact, the turf's more recognizable to me than any player in recent Boise State football history. (Yes, even the one who made the cover of NCAA Football 08.) And yet, under coach Chris Peterson, they're always likely the WAC conference champs, always finish with a near-unbeaten (if not unbeaten) record, and always bring on a high-powered offense. I mean, any team that puts 61 points on Fresno State (who doesn't actually suck) is an awe-inspiring mid-major powerhouse. That said, they played no one major and will settle for a home game for their bowl. Kind of disappointing, but they'll probably put up 60 against the unfortunate soul that dares to play on the blue.
So I'm left with a little disappointment. This isn't sadness by any means. I'm not going to kill myself over having to see the young unknown battle the big powerhouse, with the case being that we're the big bad BCS-approved guys. I'm not hurt by cheering the more established program versus the scrappy young guys. Still, I do have a tinge of regret. Honestly BCS, couldn't you let Texas and Utah scrap it out? I'd pay to see some red jersey hit Colt McCoy a few times.
Roll Tide, and sorry Utes. I'm sure you'll be 12-0 next year and I'll just have to cheer for you then.
About a few weeks back, I had a lot of venom about this band from Las Vegas called The Killers who have just so happened to sell a few million records. And for reasons notwithstanding (i.e. the single "Human"), I cared nothing about listening to Day and Age, the third record from this band that went from new wave imitators to poor arena rock imitators to now even poorer dance rock creators. And they have in vocalist in Brandon Flowers who is just a much a poor lyricist. Other than composing "Human", Flowers composed perhaps the single worst song in the history of my existence on earth.
This song is track four on the Day and Age CD and it is called "Joy Ride". Now for the first thirty-eight seconds or so, the song is fine and tolerable. The lyrics are horrible, as Flowers strains to make a cliche story about a stuffy man letting his hair down in Vegas seem original and fails massively, but this doesn't affect the riff of the song. At least not yet.
Because right at second 39, there is a sudden move to change this song into a direction that makes no sense and fails horribly. The song adds a saxophone to the mix. And it's sad, because groups like TV on the Radio and any ska band in history have made succinct and successful use of the sax, but here, it is ghastly beyond belief because it's incredibly cheesy. And worse yet, it doesn't seem to hold a legitimate reason for being in the song other than Flowers thinking, "Let's just throw in a sax. We'll be edgy and experimental like that." Except nothing about this band has any hint of experimentation other than mining material that was at least intriguing and creating overwrought lyrics and dull songs out of the fold.
So the first question I'm sure you're going to ask is "How did I hear this song?" (Though, I doubt you've read that far before deciding that I'm incorrect in my assumption that this song is the worst thing in our lifetime and that you actually want to read more of this diatribe.) But anyways, to answer the question, I was listening to one of my personal favorite music podcasts, the Sound Opinions podcast. And it came to an immediate shock to me when I found out they were reviewing Day and Age on the show. And they played a snippet of the aforementioned "Joy Ride", purposefully remembering to keep the taut part with the sax line and the brilliant chorus of "When your chips are down/When your highs are low/Joy ride (JOY RIDE)". And I realized how bad the sax playing was. And then the reviewers said that they thought the sax playing was bad. And then they went on some spiel about how "Human" was based around a book from a famous author (I kind of tune out on what "inspires" Mr. Flowers' works).
But nonetheless, they were right. They were totally right about how insanely bad the saxophone line was, but it's not the only bad thing about this song. A dull bit of guitar work, crappy sax playing, worse lyrics. Wow, Brandon Flowers suddenly made "Are we human or are we dancer" seem like a brilliant observation by comparison.
Warning: Entry contains a lot of Kevin Smith movie spoilers. Be warned.
I'm not going to lie, I'm a Kevin Smith obsessive. I've seen every one of the flicks, watched 2 1/2 of the Evening with Kevin Smith DVDs, and listened to nearly all of his podcast with producer Scott Mosier entitled SModCast. I love this man, in a totally hetero way. Thus, I immediately had to see his latest, Zack and Miri Make A Porno, and it didn't disappoint, though, there were a couple of dangerous trends that seem consistent with Smith.
The first is that his films never ever gross more than $30 million domestically at the box office. This isn't bad if it's a movie like 2006's Clerks II where the project revels in being awesomely low-budget, despite its more mainstream approach. However, on a project like Zack and Miri or Jersey Girl, there is decidedly more being banked on because of the star power of Ben Affleck or Seth Rogen. Admittedly, this is very unfair to point out as a problem on Smith, because he makes the content he wants to and almost all of the features have earned their money back in then some on DVD. Not to mention, Zack and Miri was released on Halloween, one week before another R-rated comedy in Role Models as well as the same night that young adults really don't want to see movies. This would undoubtedly lead to a rant about the idiocy of the Weinstein Company, but I'll avoid that rant for now.
The second, however, is a more legit criticism. Smith's efforts to hamfist a love story into all of his works is becoming pretty ridiculous. The brilliant thing about the first Clerks movie was the fact that at the end of the day, the lead protagonist Dante still had his troubles and still had to decide between the woman that loves him and the woman he inexplicably loves. However, in Clerks II and Zack and Miri, the lead character is inexplicably in love with a character and their response is to be in love back with him. Both do attempt to handle it in some way that says that great friendship could always lead to great love, but in both films it feels forced and it's often the weakest part of the story. It also wrongly accuses that friends who have random acts of sex at points during their friendship are totally in love and set for perfect matrimony. I'm not a humbug for love or anything of the sort and I enjoy both movies immensely despite my dislike for the ending, but Smith trying to be overly sentimental isn't as cool with me.
Of course, Zack and Miri is a pile of laughs regardless. That aspect of the films hasn't changed, really. Smith writing dirty jokes for funny people to say still works. And Smith is making a capable movie in a different universe than the New Jersey flicks and succeeded for the most part with the content. The acting's all pretty solid, as even real porn stars such as Katie Morgan and Traci Lords are not wooden in the film and that's a perfectly fine achievement for any filmmaker to make. (Well, as fine an achievement as that Boondock Saints guy getting a hilariously odd performance out of Ron Jeremy.)
The characters show enough of Smith's trademark wit without it entirely being a situation where every character is essentially Kevin Smith. This doesn't have problems of a movie like say Mallrats where both leads are thinner, sexier version of Smith's thoughts essentially. Sure, there's a lot of times where the Zack character is Kevin Smith as portrayed by Seth Rogen, but Rogen's comedic sensibilities are already a nice match to Smith's writing. And even in comparison to Rogen's work in Judd Apatow's features, the straight-laced female here is at least given a chance to be reasonably funny here.
Nonetheless, I think I'm just going on and on at this point. I think that since this is about four weeks out from the release of the movie, you're not likely to find it in any theatrical screens anywhere near you, but check it out on DVD. However, if you already can't stand Smith's increasingly mainstream sensibilities (which, in fairness, he's had in basically every feature since Clerks) you probably won't dig this. Oh, and if you don't like the subject matter, you won't like it, either. But if you're a Smith fan, well, you probably already saw it. And you probably loved it.
I'm sure that it's pretty obvious to anyone around the Capstone who hasn't fallen into a vat of acid in the past few weeks that there's this little football game called the SEC Championship game going on this week between our fine Capstone crusaders and the Florida Gators. I'm also sure that the same people who didn't fall in a vat of acid also realize that Florida's really insanely good at football, and at running up scoreboards unnecessarily other than to show that they are insanely good in theory. And then, add to the fact that there's a Heisman Trophy winning quarterback in Tim Tebow and an epic defense like the Tide and it's almost a dream clash.
And of course, everyone will undoubtedly compare the runs of the Tide's stoic leader Nick Saban and the similar journeyman success of Florida's head honcho Urban Meyer. In fact, Meyer is essentially the younger Saban in terms of ability to win. Meyer became famous for turning the Utah Utes into a surprise national powerhouse. Nick Saban turned around the bad fortunes of the Michigan State Spartans and famously upset a #1 Ohio State Buckeyes team in 1998. Both even have a national title to their name.
But Meyer's something a little bit more intriguing and scary. He's brash, a little cocky, and youthful. The guy's not even 45 years old and has a national title on the mantle of Florida, and he's running with an offense that scores a lot of points. So that would make him Bob Stoops, right? Well, Bob Stoops is 48, and even under the context of similar age and national prowess, I say yes and no. Meyer's currently going all out to show that he's impressive. Oklahoma's been so impressive that it's been boring as all mess for the past 5 to 10 years, although they have the tendency to overcompensate for the fact that they suck at the big dance. Florida had one amazing national title year in 2006 followed by an 8-4 dip in 2007 that Gators fans conveniently forgot when that Tebow character became the Heisman winner.
So when Meyer's Florida team happened to stumble upon losing by one point to a surging Ole Miss team that surprisingly didn't suck, he reacted with the smarts of a man who won a national title, but with the anger of a teenage boy whose school crush went to his bitter enemy. He had to go all out to prove his worth, even if it meant jacking up the score so unnecessarily. Cue highlights like the 56-6 domination of South Carolina, and the hilariously silly 70-19 game against the Division 1-AA stalwarts The Citadel. (And yes, Bob Stoops did much the same after being beaten by Texas, but Stoops continues to have the anger of a teenage boy in his system.) One stat that I'm sure the sports media will pick up on relates to the number 50. Alabama has not scored 50 points in one game this season. Florida has reached that mark five times.
But that's where Meyer's angry young man might be the worst approach to the game. Saban's team, even in the midst of near defeat, has stayed calm and collected through all of it. Saban himself might not, if him yelling at punter P.J. Fitzgerald late in the third quarter during the Iron Bowl (when the Tide was up 29-0 no less) was any indication.
But the team themselves never seems to lose focus, as rocky as it gets. John Parker Wilson's become a great team quarterback, which is to say that he makes roughly 50% of his passes and doesn't throw a pick. He's not a Heisman-type guy, but he doesn't need to be. He's a team player and knows when to step into the background. Alabama's filled with players that serve a direct purpose. And while Tim Tebow's become more of a team player this year, he still has the stardom of being Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow. He's still famous for being Florida's stats page to the point that even in games like the epic battle with The Citadel, he had to play, even if there's risk involved like getting injured.
Meyer has to make his team impress that mythological girl called the Bowl Championship Series, the same BCS that knows that Alabama made all the right moves and didn't do with flash, just with enough cool confidence to win. Now sure, like all stereotypical macho cliches, a fight decides who wins the girl and a fight with (probably) Oklahoma in Miami. But will Florida beat Alabama by a minimum of four touchdowns, the famous minimum margin of victory they have had since that Ole Miss loss? No, they're not. I know saying something will not happen often means that the event does happen and it's worse (or better) than you could have ever thought, but Bama's too cool for a four touchdown defeat. They're too cool for Meyer's pure desperation to appease this dame.
And plus, do you really want to see a Florida/Oklahoma title game? If I wanted to see two teams battle it out nervously for a trophy they don't really deserve (See: Texas beating Oklahoma 45-35), I'd go to a bar, perhaps the Houndstooth here in beautiful Tuscaloosa, and I'd wait until the very end of the night to watch the last attractive single girl in the club be approached by two separate guys who both want her, and she doesn't really want either one of them. What I'm saying is that Florida's desperation is a pretty valid way to lose, and that frankly, I don't want to be bored by a title game this year. Nuh-uh, I want a Crimson War.
In the first nine years of the 21st century, we as humans have been surrounded by many things and mostly responded to what our fellow man has made popular. In around 2001, as America more or less became a nation that needed the solace of someone else, there was one band that so daftly answered all the fears Americans needed to quell. Almost ironically, that band was from Canada. Their lead singer kind of looked like the typical portrait of Jesus Christ, which makes even little sense seeing that this man seemed to have a more schizophrenic songwriting style of writing about sex and then writing about caring. And unless we're going by the Last Temptation of Christ depiction of Jesus, this is nowhere near the beliefs of a savior.
Yet in the sales sense, Nickelback kind of did become a savior to rock radio and its incessant need to play one "hit song" an hour. Since Coldplay wasn't there to annoy the nation quite yet (Parachutes was a minor success, their annoyance didn't crank in until A Rush of Blood to the Head and its double shot of annoyance in "Clocks" and "The Scientist".), it had to be this mediocre post-grunge band from the Great White North instead. It also saved Roadrunner Records, which had roughly one band with any sales before 2000 in some nine-piece group with masks called Slipknot.
Then of course, the backlash came. And there was an understandable reason for this backlash. After all, "Someday" sounds exactly like "How You Remind Me" and "Photograph" is a half written song about memories on an album where the lead singer often raves about silly sex. The band was so intent on sounding macho for the men with songs about mad sex that means nothing and has no consequences other than fun and then doing tender ballads that are to show your average middle aged housewife that these men aren't as perverted as they seem. They were the perfect music mogul's band. And they appealed to people that secretly hate music that speaks to roughly one person.
In seven years, Nickelback has become the one band on earth that being a fan or a hater of was almost a show of what you wanted to represent as a person. If you enjoyed the band, you clearly represented the class of the "unintelligible" people, which apparently represents around however many people bought 16 million albums, piracy not withstanding. And if you hated this band, you represented the cultured people that find enjoyment in things, mostly talking about how much they hate Nickelback.
I'll get this out of the way, I hate Nickelback. I don't find any pleasure in the music at all, though this is more out of personal dislike. Before, I thought it was related to their music sounding the same, until I realized that many amazing rock acts are guilty of sounding the same. Famously in the mid 1980s, John Fogerty of the classic band Creedence Clearwater Revival was sued because his own "The Old Man Down The Road" sounded a lot like "Run Through The Jungle". And you know what? Both songs are still amazingly awesome in their own right. Did Fogerty get criticism for basically doing what he does best? No. Mind you, I'm hardly comparing the talents of Nickelback to CCR or Fogerty because Fogerty was truly biting about his generation, about warfare, and about just writing great American stories through song. Nickelback wrote a number that asked "Why doesn't everyone in the world make peace?" after just saying that they'd punch out any guy who thought their girlfriend was sexy and that they wanted to put a bullet into the guy who killed Dimebag Darrell.
And yet, any tired criticisms have often to do with the fact that their songs sound the same, are about things like sex (which rock music has never ever talked about, not never), and that Chad Kroeger writes like he's working on 7th grade poetry. The third claim is sort of accurate, but the first two are constants in rock music anyway. And as much as fans of any sort hate to admit it, whenever a band sounds different, that's when the fans stray away quickly.
This is even a guilt association in indie music, as I remember Death Cab for Cutie fans hating that "I Will Possess Your Heart" lasted nine minutes, complete with a four and a half-minute bass solo presumably because vocalist Ben Gibbard's supposed to say something profound throughout all of their songs, despite the fact that the music behind Gibbard is oftentimes much better than anything he's actually saying. (Anybody that needs a good example for this should remember that it was The Postal Service's version of "Such Great Heights" that people find incredible, partly for the message but mostly for the fact that the musical accompaniment is awesome.)
But I digress, this is about the silliness of hating Nickelback in the trendy "I hate the mainstream" sense. I'm always curious why there's so much vitriol for this band from Canada. I've even been totally guilty of it a lot of the time, although, I never really figured out why I hated them so much other than maybe hearing my family play their music constantly. But there's no irony to hating Nickelback anymore. Maybe around 2002 after "How You Remind Me" became the most played song of ever, there was some bite to people being like "this music really sucks". But in 2008, when YouTube fans have posted tons of videos on their personal dislike for Nickelback and any person who digs into a little bit of any genre of music hates them, where is the irony in saying that you hate Nickelback? There's more fresh bite in people saying they hate Katy Perry for being a tease, and there's not nearly enough people giving that massive piece of insight to anyone. The point is that saying you hate Nickelback is about like saying you hate Pepsi or Dr. Pepper. It's a common causality of living in America at this point.
To throw in an indie example, if I said I hated the Arcade Fire for being too ridiculously showy in its performance style by throwing tons of instruments that probably show have no place in the songs, openly admitting making mistakes in instrumentation in the performance of their music, and growing in their attempts to "be deep" in terms of a lyrical message. Now I love the Arcade Fire, so this isn't me saying these things to get a "he's trying to be cool by hating everything else that's cool" reaction. This is a mere example that there would be a sense of the "divisive cool" that people think they get by admitting hating Nickelback and a dig on the fact that to be ironic, people will even hate the trendy bands of the indie scene. Case in point, the sudden dislike of Canadian supergroup The New Pornographers, specifically their 2007 album Challengers, and the inexplicable liking of electronic vomit like Flying Lotus. (I'm only using Pitchfork Media-based examples here.)
Two things rule us these days, and that is inexplicable love (like a lot of people tend to get any time Lil' Wayne craps out a mix tape some Sunday afternoon in June) and inexplicable hate (like the fact that people will outright hate The Hills, hate MTV, hate Nickelback, and hate mainstream media, despite how much of it they still consume). I kind of rest on some sort of chain of apathy, honestly, even though I border the line of inexplicable hate. I dislike a lot of things, but unless they're horrible actions that attempt to destroy humanity (i.e. not anything entertainment-related), I don't wish them dead. I don't really have an interest in The Hills or Heidi Montag's singing career or Kristen Cavalleri's attempts to act. But at the same time, the show doesn't affect me for the worse. I wouldn't be affected if the cast suddenly died, but I wouldn't dance on their graves while singing "Glory Glory Hallelujah" either.
Of course, I'm not going to act like I'm not repulsed by the Jonas Brothers, in which that's a perfect example of inexplicable hate. I hate these three brothers because they make music I don't like and in turn are everywhere on my television, despite the fact that I have ownership of a remote control and can tune these three kids out of my life. So I'm not saying that inexplicable hate still won't happen. I'm just noticing it a bit too much. And everyone's guilty of that moment. I hate Brett Favre for the fact that he turned into a diva for the past few seasons. He's a great quarterback, but I don't ever think the Jets or the Raiders or whatever team gets him next season after he fakes another retirement will ever be a solid team solely because I don't like him. This is completely inexplicable, almost as inexplicable as hating Tom Cruise movies because he's kind of freaky, or Michael Jackson's music because...same reason, or Neil Patrick Harris' acting because he's gay. It's all inexplicable, and I think we should stop that sort of silly judgment, even though, we never really quite will because we're moralistic.
To drag this back to Nickelback, we as the "cultured people" hate them because of what they represent. And ostensibly, it's that a severe lack of human accomplishment has bred success. This is why "cultured people", especially people who idealize themselves as music enthusiasts, can't stand Nickelback. They don't accomplish the musical feats of The Arcade Fire or the experimentalism of Radiohead or even the slight bit of irony of Sufjan Stevens. With a straight face, Nickelback plays music they essentially already made, write songs about things they already love, and never talk about anything different unless a famous rock guitarist gets shot during a performance. They are the exact depiction of the conventional rock band. They're always consistent in the fact that they sound the same. And guess what? Their last album sold seven million copies in the United States, even when all three of those groups combined can't do half of those numbers, And that's including Radiohead's whole pay-if-you-want model for In Rainbows, which kind of proves the point that they couldn't sell seven million copies without charging nothing for it.
And yet Nickelback has not only found success, but they're one of the only major musical groups whose sales have actually grown during the file-sharing era. While people would big up groups like The Shins as for groups that have grown in sales during the file-sharing era, The Shins basically only got this success from Natalie Portman claiming their music would change everyone's life. Nickelback got it from doing the same general thing for seven years, and people somehow keep enjoying it.
So ultimately, I still don't like Nickelback. However, like all inexplicable hate (like people hating people who like Beverly Hills Chihuahua and Wild Hogs and Norbit) I'll try to keep that more closed in next time because this ultimately affects nothing in my life. When someone likes Jeff Dunham or North Face jackets or Ace of Base, my real reaction should be "That's cool, want some soda?" or something like that. Taste is supposed to affect the populace's view of themselves, but really, it's a distance creating device. One that I won't stop with, of course, but one that maybe a tad bit more tolerance is something I should operate with next time.
That is, unless you just like crap inexplicably.
(Writer's Note: I'll be back on Tuesday, but I'm probably not doing the Overrated, Correctly Rated thing after all because...come on, it's Dead Week. I gotta study sometime or another.)
There is a bit of a format shift that's going to happen with this fine blog space. While music is still playing a big part to this fine blog, I feel like there are some topics that I want to explore that are kind of hard to under the umbrella of a music blog. This will not suddenly become the Trey's Life And Uhh...Oh Yeah, Other Stuff Blog, but it will be more like my diversion not too long ago about True Life where I talk about TV and things of that sort. I'm also a heavy film geek, so that will play a lot into it. Expect a slight name change as well to accompany the "not music" subjects, and more wordiness because it's not like I have enough wordiness already.
So yeah, if you're one of the devout readers (and who isn't, obviously), don't be jarred by a name change and etc. Have a good Thanksgiving, find some good deals on some CDs and movies on Black Friday. Peace.
If you haven't lived under a rock, or had the power to your computer cut off in the last couple of months, you should already know about Kanye West's latest incredibly awesome single "Love Lockdown" which is leading to a new album called 808's and Heartbreak. You likely appreciated "Love Lockdown" as both a dance song and a song about men hating women that are too clingy or that they just don't love as much for whatever reason. Maybe you enjoyed "Heartless" for its use of the phrase "How could you be so Dr. Evil?" Or maybe you quickly casted it off for those exact reasons. Clearly he's just making a minimalist dance record about his lost love, right? And clearly this auto-tune thing is the most godawful annoying thing to happen to hip-hop since people sued for sampling, correct?
Technically, both of the answers to that are yes. 808s and Heartbreak is easily described by its title, and all of it is based around the problems that ruin relationships. Which immediately makes it a tad bit more thematic than say T.I.'s new album Paper Trail being based around the rapper actually *gasp* writing his songs. What a new concept to hip-hop. And fans of Kanye's production don't really get much to chew on, as Kanye strips down songs to a tribal beat and a few occasional beeps and whistles, only busting out an orchestra for a song like "Robocop" that desperately needs musical direction.
And one thing is amazingly clear on 808s and Heartbreak as well: Kanye is as flawed of a person as the unnamed female (probably an ex-fiancee, but probably better off as unnamed) he loves, misses, derides for her craziness, and eventually leaves. This is probably the most vulnerable a rapper has exposed himself to be and as experimental as a rapper has been since Common's Electric Circus. But whereas Common incorporates love and romance between adults in his music nearly all the time, Kanye never has been forthcoming on his romantic peril in any of his music before this, excluding maybe "Flashing Lights" from last year's Graduation. And even then, he hasn't revealed to this degree that maybe he doesn't love his dream girl quite the way that he had wanted to. That even with everything that he has and a woman that he adores, he isn't really happy.
The entire album sort of speaks in a timeline. You could get that "Say You Will" is about a breakup, leading to "Welcome to Heartbreak" in which West overthinks about the idealized romance of his friends and their inherent happiness over having children and living "the dream". Which makes total sense, since West is 31. In theory, his biological clock is ticking down and he's left with a brief amount of time to find that romance he wants. He's not saying anything particularly new persay, but for a rap artist to admit that his life basically sucks and he needs a woman probably more badly than they need him is a stunning sentiment.
Songs like "Heartless" and "Love Lockdown" are less dreary, and they fit the pacing of the album because of it. There's a sense of anger on these tracks, but it's anger under the context of romance, and so the chords are a little happier and Kanye has a little bit of his traditional swagger. They also make the second act of a three part act. Act 1 is the loneliness of "Welcome to Heartbreak". Act 2 is the more divine "relationship" songs of "Heartless" to "Robocop". Act 3 meanwhile, fits the more crushing tragic aspect, from admitting that a traditional relationship with him is designed for failure on "Street Lights", to the breakup of "Bad News" and the even more soul-crushing "Coldest Winter" based around the passing of West's mom Donda.
And Kanye seems to feel like crap because he views all of his achievements under a mere word: amazing. That's it. There's seemingly no more pleasure he gets out of his lifestyle, one that's tearing the relationship apart but one he has to do because he grasps for the scope of achievement. He wants to be seen as even more than what he is, and yet on "Amazing", it's drearier than that. As much as he enjoys success, he feels numb. He's already sold millions of albums and said things that are ridiculous and gotten tons of awards for his work. And yet he's not happy. And even with some perceived love, he isn't happy. This isn't a ballad about all of the riches in world not being enough compared to love. It's about the riches being there, and the perceived love being there, and yet there's no pure happiness about it.
West even admits that this is his fault in a way on "Robocop". He admits that he's into "crazy" women. He admits that his life is this way because of his own decisions and thus, even in the context of a song where he's coyly laughing about his girl's precedence to spy into his life, he sees this as all his own fault.
All of this sounds like it is scarily hard to listen to and it arguably is at times, but there's something much more intriguing about West's psychological treatment via music. The auto-tune technique isn't really distracting in any way, and it fits the broken nature of 808s and Heartbreak. The production tends to get more intriguing as the album goes on, so anyone scared off by "Love Lockdown" might find songs like "Paranoid" as up their alley.
If a hip-hop record can get an award for "going out on a limb and doing something no one expects", 808s and Heartbreak would take that award hands down. It is ambitious and mostly accomplished, which means that it's pretty intimate and scary all the same. Still, it's nice to see someone in hip-hop go out on that limb because...wow. There could be some interesting results.
This isn't really going to be a defense column no more than a "why didn't anyone buy this record" column. Of course, I'm sure that a decent deal of the music I listen to goes through the same quandary of not many people buying the record, but Beck's 2006 album The Information seems like a weird surprise non-success in terms of its commercial aspirations. After earning the third-highest sales of his career with 2005's Guero, Beck was revitalized in the mainstream and also buoyed by the success of the anthemic "E-Pro" and the cute "Girl".
So for a new album, Beck did what he always does best: he made it his own way. After creating probably the most accessible album of his career (excluding Odelay), Beck decided to make an hour-long record that's mostly electronic-based. Using producer Nigel Godrich -- he of producing Radiohead's OK Computer fame -- Beck creates a sound that's completely different than his usual material, and yet is still unmistakably Beck.
And yet, there's a more nervously human side of the man on this record. In amidst songs about dancing alone and elevator music, there's a track called "Think I'm In Love," which is about when an awkward guy falls in love either for the first time or even for the millionth time. Who the person or thing he's in love with is not really the issue. The issue there's so much more meaning in Beck's nervousness. Not that Beck never shifts his personality to his human self, he talked about his summer girl (probably) Marissa Ribisi on Guero and pined away for lost love for the entirety of 2002's Sea Change. But whether it's a true example of the man or not, there's something that Beck never seems to show. Not him as a character or as a guy spouting off about "mouthwash jukebox gasoline." And it goes a long way to leave a lasting impression for this monster of a record.
The Information runs sixty-one minutes and twenty-nine seconds, and for the most part, is completely worth the length. The sixty-one minutes is a bit of a misnomer, as ten and a half are thrown onto the intriguing if not necessarily great or even really necessary outro "The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton." Still, there's a spectacular amount of noise on this record. All of the tracks feel like they're spinning on from the rhythms of past Beck songs, but don't feel derivative. "Strange Apparition" kind of sounds like Odelay's "Jack-ss" and "Where's It At," but is good enough in its own right to be awesome. Plus, if there's any artist who's surely running out of material to not rip off, it's a man with twelve full-length albums. Beck can be cut a little slack.
The entire album is just so fluid. No song is particularly unlistenable (even the aforementioned outro), and that's quite an accomplishment for any record to achieve. Interesting diversions like "Dark Star" use its orchestral background to near-perfection, while "1000 bpm" plays with electronic conventions. "Nausea" is the perfectly suitable lead single while "Soldier Jane" is an ethereal experience. All of the songs on the album either have a purpose, or are so interesting to listen to that any sort of purpose doesn't matter.
So in short, Beck's The Information isn't really a record that is being defended because it was considered mediocre, when it should be considered great. No, The Information just deserves to be heard. Period.
There are a lot of things in this world that shape it. All kinds of music, film, and even television. And what's the most decrepit influence on our society right now? Clearly MTV, right? Actually, not so much. I can't lie, I don't mind being an apologist for MTV's campy programming, because it's all terrible in the cognitive sense. They focus on the vapid. Place people on high pedestals that hardly deserve it. But wait, isn't that life's general path anyway? Look around you at the popular kids, the sorority queens, and the frat guys. What have they all achieved? The success of being attractive to a general audience of people with mostly no other redeeming qualities otherwise. That's exactly MTV for you, and yes, this immediately makes it a repellent. And yes, it's the perfect ideology of why people hate MTV. They hate it because it represents the people they equally can't stand and yet are forced to see on a daily basis. They maybe are even friends with "those people" despite their actual apprehension against them.
Of course, this leads to True Life, which weirdly is not entirely vapid in some instances. The stories tend to be engrossing because there's usually an example of relatibility in at least one of the stories involved. The episode I saw had to do with embarrassing parents with the point being to over-exaggerate the parents, the embarrassment they cause their kids, and the rift between kid and parent that ultimately humanizes the parents at the end.
We are shown a portrait of two girls, one a reserved teen girl who's more or less trying to find normalcy in her life and another who's craving desperately for individualism and to kind of sort of get away from the shadow of her bimbo-esque mother.
The more reserved girl's parents are clowns who work at a circus and have a house with tons of memorabilia. They're also crazy and stunned whenever she decides to go out on a date with a kid nicknamed Squirrel (I kid you not). Of course, they also demand that this date be at the circus and that of course, they watch from a faraway glance. But this brings on a nice bit of idealism. We get the idea that the reserved girl is pretty average, in the good sort of way. She has the friend with the Jack Skellington jacket and the slightly gothy overtones, but they're all normal, and even by the episode's climax of the parents bringing their clown buddies over to "embarrass" the child, you find out that it's all in good fun and that embracing eccentricities over fighting them ultimately is more rewarding.
Yes, such a universal message of unity came from a frickin' MTV show. I'm as amazed as you.
The other story is more vapid, but as similar to a point. It's more of an examination that first digs into the idea of the "cool parent" and why kids are going to be embarrassed regardless by that type of parent, because that's of course the job of a teenager to rebel. But then it digs into something that is more involving and gripping, dealing with the issue of parents who never let their kids truly be themselves by influencing their decisions with an iron fist and taking away their individualism. This reaches its climax over the 14-year-old girl asking her mother for a lip ring. Her mother vehemently rejects the idea at first, but after a series of events including a party in which the mother turns into your typical Los Angeles bimbo in the process of a night, the idea is questioned.
The reason this is gripping to the viewer is not the lip ring at all. For all we know, the war could be over anything such as trying out for the volleyball team or the school production of Hansel and Gretel or whatever. The fact that it's about a lip ring is completely useless to the point. The war itself is just about some sense of individualism. If the mother is allowed to "be herself" by dressing in Pamela Anderson-esque clothes, then why doesn't the kid try to show what she feels she needs to be herself? And yet, she's still a kid who's going to playfully mock her mother after the mother agrees with this decision, because that's normal. That's teenage rebellion.
True Life is not always nearly as engrossing, but there's a lot of intriguing morals to get out of any episode. And for any show on MTV of all things to emphasize the themes of being yourself and having fun with the people you're around and the experiences you get to share, it's an accomplishment.
Not that the other shows on the channel aren't gripping in that "oh, this is ironically awesome" sort of way, of course.
(Writer's Note: I know this has nothing at all to do with music, despite the fact that it involves a show on a channel that has music in the name. I also know that I could make a tired joke about that channel no longer playing music, but that's far too painfully obvious, so I'm not. I also realize that this could read as "In Defense Of...MTV" but it's not really. I don't watch enough of it to defend it successfully, really.
The final edition of In Defense Of shall be up on the weekend. Thank you for reading.)
In the remnants of the much-beloved, if extremely angry, Rage Against The Machine came a lot of hype for three of the band members' new project called Audioslave. This was to be the perfect merger of the 1990s two core rock sounds: the angry sound of Rage Against The Machine's music and the...uhh...angry sound of Chris Cornell's Soundgarden. In 2002, when their self-titled album was released on the hype of an amazing rock song called "Cochise", everyone expected that Cornell's introspective vocals with the Rage sound would lead to such amazing rock. Instead, they got a record that brought a ton of introspective content and only has a slight semblance to Rage.
I'll readily admit first off that I'd rather listen to Cornell's solo material or the Soundgarden material over Audioslave, and the same goes for Rage in comparison to Audioslave as well. Still, I'd argue that the first Audioslave album contains a nice balance of the hard rock material mixed in with the type of songs that Cornell felt represented his songwriting style. "Cochise" opens up the album with the musical equivalent of a sonic boom in that it's blistering and exhilarating. "Show Me How to Live" is more controlled in its noise, but it exposes the positives of Cornell versus former Rage vocalist Zach de la Rocha in that a "chill out" song never has to be uninteresting. Cornell is a more pure talent than de la Rocha, and a song like "Show Me How to Live" proves it.
And as misguided as the Cornell/Morello/Commerford/Wilk pairing showed itself to be on the mostly disappointing Out of Exile and Revelations, on the first record, they seemed to click from the onset. The album's first four tracks were the perfect blend of hard rock and tender vocals. The boys seemed made to actually last longer than five years and three albums. And even more "soft" ballads like "I Am The Highway" and "Shadow on the Sun" had their place, and was a better example of where the group truly could have worked than say "Doesn't Remind Me" from Out of Exile, a track where Cornell boasts that he stares at a lot of things because he's not reminded of anything at all. In turn, we're supposed to feel he's happy about not being depressed by his surroundings, but really...you get the point long before the four minutes are up. Whereas, "I Am The Highway" is more motivating about its message of not being used and doesn't march to an obvious point seconds into the song.
Not all of this album is great, of course. No modern rock record should ever go past one hour in length, and Audioslave reaches 65 minutes. Not to mention that I can barely point out anything of worth on the second half of Audioslave. Still, I find that this record doesn't try to bend to either direction of the spectrum. Cornell doesn't act like he's de la Rocha nor does he get into silly didactic politics, and the Rage guys realize that they don't have to go all out for every song. The tricks of Tom Morello had their place, but with no de la Rocha or the aforementioned didactic political content, neither he nor the rest of the band needed to sound exactly like their previous work. (To ramble on Morello, that's one thing that I appreciate about his stuff. Rage doesn't really sound like Audioslave and certainly neither of them sound like The Nightwatchman. But that point on Morello can be saved for another time.)
While yes, Audioslave did hit a brick wall in terms of direction and commercial success, the band at least has the good charm of that first album, a first album that maybe just deserves that second look.
Okay, let's get this out right off the bat. I can't stand Pete Wentz. Wentz is the embodiment of everything that's wrong with celebrity culture today. He's exploitative, overly demanding, and has almost megalomaniacal control over his band despite the fact that he's in the position that (theoretically) holds the least effect on their sound in that he's the band's bassist. Of course, he's also the band's key songwriter but this is besides the point. The point is that I really just don't like Mr. Wentz.
And yet I thoroughly enjoy his band, including the one that's earned them the most heat for its alleged "sellout" nature, 2007's Infinity on High. Infinity on High is essentially FOB's catchy melodies plastered onto a refined soulful sound with more emphasis on producer Babyface's sense of rhythm than the traditional pop-punk sound. But for pop-punk fans, that serves to be a problem. They don't want any remote change to their sound, thus why a band like Paramore, which arguably sounds like a coughed up copy of FOB (who in themselves were a coughed up version of Take Off Your Pants and Jacket-era blink-182 and Lifetime) replaced with an attractive redhead vocalist as opposed to a man with a funny hat, suddenly becomes huge with the same audiences that embraced 2005's From Under The Cork Tree.
Of course, it's not entirely the change in tone and altering of sound that fans hate, but it seems to harbor the most dislike for the record. And ultimately the record is a perfectly fine pop record that hits the right notes on all cylinders. Especially on singles like "The Take Over, The Break's Over" and "This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race", there is a nice containment of commentary on the modern music industry and Wentz *gasp* gets in a few clever well-written jabs.
Wentz gets the idea of the pop hook, something that nearly every song on Infinity on High has, and yet finds a way to change Fall Out Boy's trajectory. This isn't a sellout move, in all honesty. Well...technically, it is. But none of the tracks on Infinity are nearly as annoying as most of Cork Tree. And it's not like this band never had ridiculous pop tendencies to begin with. "Grand Theft Autumn" is amazingly poppy, almost moreso than any of their famous tracks like "Sugar, We're Going Down" or "Dance, Dance".
Video for "Grand Theft Autumn".
This isn't to say that Infinity on High is the best record ever, though. Just the best of Fall Out Boy's catalog so far. I still can't really like "Hum Hallelujah" as it's related to that coughing up part I brought up from later. (As in, it's reusing a line from "Hallelujah" due to Pete being inspired by Jeff Buckley who covered Leonard Cohen.) And that it seems kind of silly to write about how depressive and suicidal you are in the confines of a pleasant song, even if it's been brought up before as a cool ironic archetype from the 90s.
Still, I like FOB for their simplicity at the end of the day. People shouldn't apologize for making pop, and at the very least, Wentz and his group aren't full-on teases with zero sense for how to write like most pop artists of their time(that's meant in a musical sense, not in the "showing your privates" sense). They're not anything legendary, but neither is a group like the Foo Fighters, who do the same poppy hook formula and people like them all the same.
If you've been remotely alive in the 21st century, you'll know that two modern crests of singer-songwriter pop are two artists simply known as Jack Johnson and John Mayer.
Jack Johnson seems like the type of guy who never had one bad day in his life. His dog, his wife, and his pet guinea pig could all die at the same time, but if there's a beach nearby, his sorrow would just wash away. And then he'd get high and write songs for a movie version of Curious George.
John Mayer seems like the guy that would be more vapid and uncaring about his work. In between making albums, (and clearly having a resemblance to this blog writer) he has had a relationship with pretty much every famous person you've ever wanted to...meet. Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Love-Hewitt, and etc. prove that the guy's basically proven that his music and personality is so charming that he's everything women love and that men frickin' despise. His songs get passed off as cornball -- which they are if we're referring to songs like the ridiculously idealistic "No Such Thing" -- but he gets shunned for having no musical depth or discernible talent, which isn't really true at all.
Mayer is a pop idealist. He has progressed to writing songs that know fullwell that they are intended for mainstream audiences, but never over-simplifies his lyrics and adds a nice pastiche of influences to his sound. This is probably most evident on his 2006 album Continuum, which actually has some nice strumming and a pretty good cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Bold as Love". And anybody that can do a Hendrix cover that doesn't disgrace Hendrix's music, they deserve to be honored.
I'm not going to act like Mayer's a great artist by any stretch of the imagination. He overemphasizes themes of love in his music, but he has a nice interest in the human condition. On another Continuum track, "Waiting on the World to Change", he dives into why people his age -- i.e. the 20somethings crowd -- are so apathetic about the shape of the world and that maybe a sense of optimism could help rile the people. It's an effortless pop song that is done with a ton of effort. Happy chords drown out any sense of negativity you could find, and while most cynics would hate it for Mayer's idealism, the song works as pop and as a well-written message song. Mayer doesn't beat the audience over the head, despite the simple message. He isn't commanding his audience to blame something on somebody else, but rather BE the change however you see it. It's a cheesy idea, but I'd rather have Mayer's simplicity than a band like Green Day droning on about how much they hate the President without even thinking about the changes they would do to make things better.
His style of playing has evolved. He's dug more into artists such as the legendary Curtis Mayfield to get a sort of old-school R&B sound to mix in with the acoustic nature of his works. He's had less of the cornball lyrics with each successive album that he has made, and even got into a fight with Columbia Records over the release of Continuum. He even made a stirring cover of Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'" that, as per usual, a lot of girls love and not many guys have even heard it.
So yeah, even if he's basically living a fantasy life, I like the guy. Plus, he's pretty funny from time to time actually. So that clearly has to mean the guy's not as grating as your average singer-songwriter. Right?
Prior to the writing of this entry, I listened to a song released in 1998 from Shawn Mullins called "Lullaby." This is a song that no one remembers in the slightest unless you heard the chorus with its comfortable inflection of "rock-a-bye", despite the fact the song's called "Lullaby". "Lullaby" is a wretched horrible song, but it's great at the same time because I remember it from when I was a kid. The same would go for the Verve Pipe's "The Freshman" and New Radicals' "You Only Get What You Give".
Now when I define 90s rock, I don't really mean stuff like Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Rage Against The Machine, etc. that became beloved music that also was popular. No, I mean the era in the late 1990s where Bush's "Glycerine" and "Machinehead" ruled rock radio. And yet no one talks about how great of a band Bush is. Which...they're really not. But they made simply great songs, and "Glycerine" even stands the test of time as a simple, well-composed pop song that I'd gladly play in amongst (PRETENTIOUSNESS WARNING) my playlist of Sonic Youth, Caribou, St. Vincent, and The Shins.
In fairness, these songs are products of their time. There was a small time in the 1990s where pop music could contain depressing content as long as the song had a happy sound at the end of the day. After all one of my favorite songs from the era was Third Eye Blind's "Semi Charmed Life". And about 2% (at most) who listened to that song got that it was talking about continued drug use building up to an overdose. I'm guessing slightly more people figured out their later hit "Jumper" was about talking down a potential suicide case.
Now, I'll gladly reminisce a song like "Semi Charmed Life" but I mostly can't stand popular radio, and the reason is pretty obvious. These songs are comfortable because they were the music you heard as a kid. The great advantage to being a kid is that most kids would listen to anything they had put in front of them. I even *gasp* bought a Backstreet Boys cassette tape when I was around 10. Oh, the things I'll shamefully admit on the internet to an audience of 2.
So, did I like these crappy songs because they had a safe radio sound when I denounce music today for having that same sound? Yeah, pretty much. But there is a perfectly fine place for nostalgia. Just because you hate rock radio's mix of Hinder, Nickelback, and Three Days Grace doesn't mean you have to throw away that long lost Lemonheads record (though, the Lemonheads are legitimately solid all the same), and listen to it. Nostalgia has its place. After all, people still ironically love hair metal.
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