Actually, I used to cringe and laugh whenever K-Tel music came on in the 70s and I was in a pretentious music phase, but now I just love the retro warmth and nostalgic glow.
In no specific order, with no animal repeats!
1. Boris the Spider (The Who) 2. Elephant Talk (King Crimson)
3. Rooster (Alice in Chains)
4. Monkey Man (The Specials)
5. Pony (Tom Waits)
6. Rock Lobster (B52s)
7. Pigs (Pink Floyd)
8. Blackbird (Beatles)
9. Cat People (David Bowie)
10. Atomic Dog (George Clinton)
Who said a modern band had to be guitar, bass and drums with the occasional keyboard player thrown in? Let's diversify and throw together instrument combinations that would be able to challenge the establishment. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of mainstream music.
My Instrumash Band would include: Theremin, Conch, Tubular Bell and Timpani - I'm ready to ROCK!
What's your best instrumash? Plug in below. And just in case you think it can't sound good while being weird, check this out.
via youtube.com
For years I always accepted New Year's Day by U2 as the generic New Year's anthem for any of us who were teens in the 80s. In the 90s, I tried to replace U2 with Alive by Pearl Jam because, while it had nothing to do with New Year's, it satisfied my "angsty" needs more than U2. Now that a couple of decades have passed, and I'm far less "angsty" I've decided that while I may have the urge to listen to U2 and Pearl Jam at some point in the night, Ohbijou may have become a more accurate soundtrack to NYE festivities.
First, they're Canadian. Second, I just love the layers. Third, it's just such a damn cool video that I will want to watch it after a few beverages on the celebratory night in question. Don't worry U2 and Pearl Jam fans, I have not forsaken you, merely engaged in an evolutionary fork down Chill Avenue.
via youtube.com
While really good Christmas songs are few and far between, I really think this a valiant effort. These groovy cats in Wizzard are the last people you'd probably wanting popping into your house during the holidays. That being said, they're all a few decades older now... perhaps that makes the concept even creepier. I think this band may have their look inspired by Narnia characters.
And if you don't think these guys are creepy enough, check out Slade's take on Christmas. (This is the band that Quiet Riot ripped off for years.) Slade looks creepy without costumes. If one of these guys said: "How'd you like to find me in your stockings?" to anyone close to me, I'd probably bash them in the head with a bottle of rum and then pour egg nog on them just to make sure.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a big content guy.
What I mean is that I believe content is king, but I'm starting to parse out a fine line that exists between content and concept in consuming information.
I've always been a firm believer in the idea of style over substance IF one can start to see the style as substance in itself. I'm also a firm believer that both are borne on a dual-purposed concept of creator and consumer.
I know. I'm talking in circles. Give me an paragraph or two to explain myself.
There are relatively few basic themes in literature as compared to the plots, characters, and settings that inhabit them. I always taught my English students that at the very root, a literary theme had to have two things: subject and slant.
It's not enough to say that "love" is a theme. By combining that subject with the creator's bias on it, however, a simple theme can be derived. For the J. Geils Band Love Stinks. And based on this simple syntax we can develop themes from the obvious to the arcane in arts and media. There have been countless writers, artists, musicians and thinkers who have all ruminated on the simple idea that love stinks. No matter how high the numbers creep, we still keep coming back for more.
Many Shakespearean characters have inhabited the love stinks theme, and without fail I find their stories more interesting than the one told by the J. Geils Band, although admittedly not as rockin'. And here's where the worm starts to turn. We often think of style v. substance and form v. function, but both of those equations miss the mark in terms of the importance of pre-existing concept.
You may watch Ophelia ass up in an Elsinore pond and ruminate "well, it sucks to be her", or you may find it to be a tragedy of frailty undone by all-consuming spurned devotion. Your choice will NOT depend on the words of Hamlet, as most folio versions are relatively the same, but instead on the direction, acting, execution of those performing, and the mindset you bring to the scene.
Regardless of which feeling you choose to embody after viewing the unfortunate non-swim, a curious venn has erupted from your sensibilities that you are probably unaware of: 1) Shakespeare understood how love can stink, 2) he also had to pen the words to fuel the character on how love could stink, 3) the actor must embody the belief that love stinks, 4) the director must set the scene to persuade you that love stinks, and 5) if you had a slice of luncheon meat on the verge of turning for lunch, steps 1-4 won't mean shit to you as much as how to find the nearest restroom.
Concept, content, and consumption bleed into each other with compunction. There is no real separation of the three. So when I say I don't care what you say, but I love the way you say it, I'm really not trying to be two dimensional or glib. There are simply very few times I'm looking for raw data in everyday life. I want the story, the interpretation, and the presentation.
Why do people care which newscaster they listen to when 90% of the stories are the same after being pumped out by a wire service? Why do people care which podcasts they listen to for daily tech or entertainment news when 90% of the stories will be the same. Why do people read 1000 poems about the trials of love or 1000 novels about horrors of war or listen to 1000 songs about the righteousness of the oppressed? It's all about the presentation.
If one stands up in a drunken bellow on Speaker's Corner and decries oppression through burps, belches, and bromides, any concept and content will be lost. But if I sit back after 40 years and watch Richie Havens repetitively sing "Freedom" over an acoustic guitar and congas on YouTube, my heart reaches for the sky.
When I hear people actively engaged in conversation, when I see musicians smiling at each other and having fun on stage through the miscues and wrong notes, when I listen to or read someone who can use words to make content triumphant over concept and careless of consumption, I concede. I want connection over perfection and my substance will be redefined by a meshing of style and interpretation.
I would rather read T.S. Eliot waxing poetic about a used Kleenex or listen to Tom Waits reminisce about the "piss yellow gypsy cab" that went by than read 99% of journalists blather about world affairs. In this distinction, old media will continue its death spiral.
The concepts at the root of both sides are always universal. Old media used to have authority over content, but the venn has bled. Consumers beckon for style, originality and voice... not simply bias, but voice. Such is the domain of a thinker, an entertainer, an artist, but rarely, and decreasingly so, a reporter. And while old media has tens of thousands of reporters worldwide, the web has hundreds of millions of thinkers, entertainers, and artists.
Move over J. Geils; you've lost your byline.
Is the 3D experience really any better than the 2D - hell no! Sure it's different, but if 3D was the "shit", why they hell wouldn't all films go there? At one point the 3D film was a fad, and a production company could bank on a certain percentage of box office just because the film was in 3D. Now it's de rigeur. And your brain may get tricked for the first five minutes into believing that Dr. Tongue's 3D House of Pancakes is really a blast of syrupy goodness, but your brain quickly works out the effect and soon it's pretty much nullified.
There is only one reason to push the 3D experiment to redundancy in film and soon in television: piracy. While 3D certainly won't stop piracy, it may give pause to a certain percentage of the movie-going public that want to have the full experience of seeing a film. I know this is going to sound ironic because if someone wanted a full "film experience" why would they download a pirated copy anyway? Quite simply the growth of the home television screen, and the balance of having to deal with the general idiocy of the public, starts to balance out the fan that is willing to watch the leaked DVD screener of a new film versus going to see a 2D version of it.
If, however, you've convinced yourself that the film just HAS to be seen in 3D, you're pretty much SOL in terms of a pirated copy you can watch on your home system. The movie industry is moving towards 3D not out of any artistic sensibility, but instead out of plain protectionism. And I suppose I don't blame them, but they are sticking themselves between the Scylla and Charybdis. They know that if they release a film ONLY in 3D, box office will suffer. On the other hand, if they release a 2D version, the odds of piracy go way up.
If you've somehow convinced yourself that 3D is truly a better experience than 2D, you've been led astray. I'm not saying it's worse; I'm just saying it's different. Your brain does an amazing job of filling in the gaps and your imagination will overcome flaws in production, environment and often even direction. There are plenty of people in this world who still own black and white televisions or whose color TVs have 14 inch screens. Are they necessarily missing out on an "ideal" experience? Can't I enjoy content whether on my iPod screen or my 67" LCD DLP?
We've forsaken music and still claim to enjoy it. We used to listen to scratchy ceramic cones with no fidelity and eventually grew through vinyl, 8 track, cassette, and compact disc to a level of fidelity that became consistently better and clearer. Yet now we choose 128kb mp3 files that sound like crap compared to a CD or wav file because it sounds "good enough". It's the same reason some people have no trouble downloading films, because to watch even an inferior copy is "good enough". And it's the reason that 3D is really unnecessary from an artistic perspective as the mind's eye can create far richer and vaster conceptions that ever a pair of 3D glasses will be able to construct.
When will Hollywood realize that content is king? When will the focus be put back onto plot and character development with original dialog and concepts that weren't even dated to Shakespeare? I'd rather watch The Godfather on a Casio Wristwatch than watch My Bloody Valentine 3D in an IMAX arena. You don't remember a 3D film or 2D film any differently. Sure you may recall a "cool" scene or two, but is that what a director should be going for - to shock you out of your disbelief for the purposes of thinking "dude that was cool". I loved the film Up, but I don't think back on it in 3D. I simply think back to the story.
If 3D doesn't really add another dimension to films, and does little to improve my memory of them, I suppose the only real value is negative in the cost of an extra 3Dollars out of my pocket to get plastic Chinese factory glasses so that I look like Buddy Holly or Elvis Costello - what a DDDeal!
From the quick pace of Rufus to the infectious chorus of Conjunction Junction. From the kickass funky deep groove of Verb and I Got Six to the slow bluesy jam of Naughty Number Nine. Let the grooviness do the talkin'. If you think I missed one, please share in the comments:
1. Rufus Xavier Sarsapirilla2. Conjunction Junction
3. Verb
4. I Got Six
5. Naughty Number Nine
A long-winded impromptu ramble on topics including:
- the impending holiday season,
- the music associated with the holiday season,
- being thankful for not having to awake for weekend work,
- the front yard attached to the holiday season,
- the good faith of neighbours,
- the proliferation of driveway garbage bin rentals,
- on the habit of collecting and purging, downloading via Bit Torrent,
- the ridiculous legal remedies being suggested by music publishers,
- the impact of big business and lobbyists on government and citizens,
- the obfuscation tool that is H1N1,
- the Harmonized Sales Tax in Ontario,
- the waste of taxpayer money on H1N1,
- the reflection on the process of this podcast.
via youtube.com
A couple of days late for Remembrance Day, but I was busy celebrating a birthday after a moment of silence at 11am. Every November 11th, I think of Pink Floyd for this three minute song: a stirring indictment of a young boy who blames the powerbrokers for taking his dad into the service during WWII.
"The song sets up the story premise for The Wall movie, set over footage recreating the British contribution to the Anzio campaign's Operation Shingle, where Allied forces landed on the beaches near Anzio, Italy with the goal of eventually liberating Rome from German control. These forces included C Company of the Royal Fusiliers, in which Waters' father Eric served. As Waters tells it, the forward commander had asked to withdraw his forces from a German Tiger I tank assault, but the generals refused, and "the Anzio bridgehead was held for the price / Of a few hundred ordinary lives" as the Tigers eventually broke through the British defence, killing all of C Company, including Eric Waters.
In the second verse of the song (which makes up the reprise later in The Wall film), Waters describes how he found a letter of condolence from the British government, described as a note from King George in the form of a gold leaf scroll which "His Majesty signed / In his own rubber stamp." Waters' resentment then explodes in the final line "And that's how the High Command took my Daddy from me". - Wikipedia
When the Tigers Broke Free
(Roger Waters)
It was just before dawn
One miserable morning in black 'forty four.
When the forward commander
Was told to sit tight
When he asked that his men be withdrawn.
And the Generals gave thanks
As the other ranks held back
The enemy tanks for a while.
And the Anzio bridgehead
Was held for the price
Of a few hundred ordinary lives.
And kind old King George
Sent Mother a note
When he heard that father was gone.
It was, I recall,
In the form of a scroll,
With gold leaf and all.
And I found it one day
In a drawer of old photographs, hidden away.
And my eyes still grow damp to remember
His Majesty signed
With his own rubber stamp.
It was dark all around.
There was frost in the ground
When the tigers broke free.
And no one survived
From the Royal Fusiliers Company C.
They were all left behind,
Most of them dead,
The rest of them dying.
And that's how the High Command
Took my daddy from me.