Music

I just recalled a drunk conversation I had with Jonny Tunnell of the Never. It was about music's ability to influence and affect moods.

I said, loosely quoting here, mind you, "A musician has an easy time writing a song that makes the listeners angry or makes them feel lonely, but it's a true talent to, through music, give a sense of hope or togetherness."

I sometimes say really poignant things under the influence. Not often, by any means, but occassionally. Anyways, it's the absolute truth. That's what my tastes in music are guided by. I find that more and more, the bands I listen to aren't enraged and writhing against a machine or screaming about how futile the human experience is. The best bands, or rather, the ones I listen to most frequently are the ones that commiserate with my situation and offer some kind of hopeful resolution.

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In other news: I'm excellent and terrible at Scattergories. I get double and triple word scores, assuming I'm on the right list and using the right letter. Which is quite rare. Yeah, I know, I'm awesome. So, I'm sitting outside and I can feel my back scorching... I'm going inside. 'Til next time...

Wine Tasting

Official People I Hate List, 2009

Bear in mind this list is subject to change at anytime. Last year, there were only two people on the list : Dane Cook and Jeff Dunham. They remain in the number one and two spots, respectively. However, Beth introduced me to a new person to hate.

His name is Jeffree Star. Jeffree Star is a transvestite. Jeffree Star wants you to know that he's a transvestite. That is what Jeffree Star does. He constantly, unflinchingly shakes it in your face that he's actually a dude but really likes dick. So much so, he's undergone surgery. This makes him funny, I guess? I don't know if he's funny or... what the intended reaction here is supposed to be. I react with ire and rage.



It's not that I care that he's a transvestite. That doesn't bother me in the slightest. In fact, it's quite the opposite of bothering me, I'm fine with it. The problem I have is that if I went around saying, "I'm so heterosexual" and "I would really like to have sex with a woman" it wouldn't be funny. The comedy is that he's gay. He's not just gay, he's REALLY gay. Is that what makes it funny? That he's in your face, obnoxiously gay?

HOLD THE PHONE! In your face, obnoxiously gay!!??

That's what it is... he plays to the Dane Cook/Jeff Dunham crowd of sensationalist, loudmouthed motherfuckers. It is funny that he's so gay because gay people are sooooo weird! lolz! America makes me sick. Also, as a wildcard, I throw Glenn Beck on my list just because he's a douchebag.

The Official 2009 People I Hate List (So Far)

1. Dane Cook
2. Jeff Dunham
3. Jeffree Star
4. Glenn Beck

The Greatest G-20 Ever!

I was going to write something about my vacation.

But, to hell with that! The world's exploding man.
Everybody's pissed and it rocks.

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Honestly, it's one of those days that makes you proud as hell to be a member of the
human race and I hope everyone else is beaming with pride, as well.
We're shaking shit up, man, and it rocks so hard I can't even begin to explain it.

For those of you not in the know: the upcoming G-20 Economic Summit has met with some
significant protest. The crowds gathered this morning and have been a pretty noisy group.
I'm sure more pictures will roll in as events progress, but I've snagged a few below:



Even Sarkozy and the French are pissed off at the whole ordeal.
Sarkozy demands some real progress at the summit or he'll straight
straight up walk out of the bullshit or, as the article said, "be otherwise disruptive."
The world's on the cusp of being fed a a shit sandwich and finally people are standing up and proclaiming, "I wanted turkey breast and mayo, motherfucker."

So, what are we doing in America to voice our contempt?

Eating really big hamburgers and playing videogames.
On what looks like a Playstation. Hello, old school.
Anyways...

We're lazy and content. We did all the protesting we could
muster back in the 60's. Women got their rights and Vietnam ended
and now, it seems, all is right with the world
and there is nothing left to fight for or about.
I sometimes am disgraced for a country founded on
protest, disobedience and freedom that
now sits idly by and nods our heads
while we gently nap to another History Channel special
about Nazis or Cavemen as our McDonald's Quarter-Pounder
with cheese rests on our ever-widening stomachs.

If we're really as proud and as free as
our bumper stickers and hats and shirts
and flip flops and beach towels and car-antennae-balls
and binders and coats and tattoos say we are
then why in the fuck aren't we doing anything about anything?
We're just letting it happen.
A proud and free nation does not "let it happen"
This nation MAKES it happen.
Unfortunately, we've been making all the wrong things happen.
We made it criminal, we made it unintellectual, we made it fat,
we made it lazy, we made it greedy, we made it corrupt
and now, lo:
We've destroyed the world economy.
And only through our action, or at the very least,
swift and strong REaction, can we hope
to restore this nation to best on the planet.

Comeback Kings

This will be one of my last posts before I take my vacation to Tanglwood Resorts in Hawley, PA. For the next few posts, it'll be mostly things I think are awesome.

The recipe did not go over well.
Anyways, this is some music that I think is awesome.
It is also all impressive comebacks from really lackluster albums.
Behold:

The Killers ~ Day & Age

After the indisputably painful Sam's Town, where but for two songs, the band lost nearly all credibility in my eyes, I never thought to see or hear of the Killers again. Their bubble, in my mind, had burst and they would slowly fade into obscurity while tweens with plastic guitars and acne pumped their fists to While You Were Young as their friend shredded the chorus on Guitar Hero in the basement. I was wrong. Day & Age completely reinvents the band, taking the highpoints of Sam's Town, the 80's retro-jam-vibe of Hot Fuss and mixes in a bit of maturity and a definite world music bend to craft some perfect tunage. Brandon Flowers also sounds almost completely different on this album. I'll chalk it up to the generally mature feel of the album. He manages not to speak-sing like on Bones and Mr. Brightside of yore rather all songs are belted directly from the diaphragm. Beautiful. I've actually spent a good deal of time just now trying to find a song to criticize, but I genuinely can't. I was going to give it a 4 1/2, just to be a hard ass. I can't, it's unfair. I absolutely love this album.

The Killers ~ Day & Age (5/5)

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Franz Ferdinand ~ TonightWhen I first heard Do You Want To from Franz Ferdinand's 2005 release, You Could Have It So Much Better, I was excited. This was going to be another great album from one of my favorite bands of '04. They blew my mind with their self-titled debut and Do You Want To sounded like their followup was going to be just as indie-rock-dancy-awesome. I was wrong. You Could Have It So Much Better sort of hurt to listen to, while not being anywhere as shit-tastic as the Killers' sophomore effort. Franz Ferdinand, to my surprise and delight, pulled their heads out of their asses and made an awesome album, Tonight. The album was so awesome, they talked about it on CNN! Robin Meade actually mentioned how great the album was, and they played Ulysses as their bumps all morning show. It was incredible. The album itself cannot be judged on it's level of press however. The music itself is the indie-rock-dancy-incredible that tinged their first album with a little more volume and a lot more guitar. Still a very saavy album I am proud to own. It's not as universally infallible as their first album, but a thousand percent better than that shit they pumped out two years ago.

Franz Ferdinand ~ Tonight (4.5/5)

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The Decemberists ~ The Hazards Of Love

Okay, it's a little unfair to lump these folks in with the "Comeback Kings." They really haven't released a bad album. Their last release, however, The Crane Wife, they sort of abandoned their roots and their fans and made an attempt at a pop album. O Valencia! worked very well. 20-something college girls loved The Decemberists because "they, like, are talking, like, all about love n' stuff". But, a large part of the fan base was turned off. Myself included. I was still spinning Castaways And Cut-Outs and the in-fucking-credible Picaresque while everyone was jamming to The Crane Wife. In any case, I hope those bitches that know absolute jackshit about music pick up The Hazards of Love. I hope they fucking hate every beat of it. The Hazards of Love is an indie-rock-opera-fairy-tale about poor Margaret, ravaged and impregnated in the woods by a shape-shifting demon, wonton rakes and forest queens. Not to mention guest stars ala Jim James from My Morning Jacket (also one of my jams), Becky Stark form Lavender Diamond and My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden who provide the vocals for several different roles. The album is all over the place, musically, it starts with a gothic organ intro, goes to some folk style picking and crooning, moves to over the top guitar metal crunch, and moves back to heavely, etheral female vocals. So, I hope the gum-chewing scenester queens shit their pants with the crunchy guitar and heavy bass rattle of The Bower Scene and Won't Want for Love and I want their heads to blow the fuck up when it gets calm again and they experience some emotion in their otherwise vapid existence. Though they can probably appreciate being knocked up by a one night stand in the woods, I think that this album strays from the demographic that superficially likes them and returns the band to it's original fanbase of people with IQs above room temperature.

The Decemberists ~ The Hazards Of Love

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So, that's all for now. See... it's the Killer's and Franz Ferdinand's 3rd album, so I reviewed 3 albums... in honor of it also being march. Making three sets of threes. It's okay... I know... I fucking rock so hard, thanks.

[[ED. Updated at 2:18pm, Last.fm player & 3Hive link added. Fixed junky html in link box. Added linkage to the LP versions of all albums on Amazon. Play records, bitches.]]

After...

After more than a month of silence on the blog, I bring only the following information:

I hope you are all aware, but in case not, Coheed and Cambria brings on some tasty jams. I'm listening to In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth:3, and I realized (short of waking my parents up) I had to tell somebody how fucking AWESOME it is.
Pretty much some of the best music ever written, and I haven't even read the graphic novels, Armory Wars, that Claudio (the lead writer/singer/guitarist from C&C) wrote. Supposedly (and I only say supposedly because I haven't read the novels), the novels are about Coheed and his love, Cambria, hence the change of the band's name from Shabutie to Coheed and Cambria. Fair warning: clicking the image below will redirect to the Amazon.com page to buy all 5 issues of the Armory Wars...


In any case... IKSOSE:3 has gotten me through two tough spots in life, the second of which was greatly aided by Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV: Volume I, From Fear Through The Eyes of Madness. Namely, the track titled "Welcome Home" featuring the following lyrics:

"You could have been all I wanted But you weren't honest now rot in the ground You choked off the surest of favors But if you really loved me you would have endured my reign Well if you're just as I presumed You're whore in sheep's clothing fucking up all I do
And if so here we stop then never again Will you see this in your life "

Those are some bad ass lyrics, I don't care who you are. I would like to thank Ian, however, because without his awesome self, I would never have been turned on to GA,IBS4:VIFFTTEOM, which I think is nearly as long to abbreviate as it is to spell out. Regardless, I was still spinning In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth:3, because the songs were so god damn catchy and so emotional and heavy hitting, it was a 1-2-3-punch of intensity that I couldn't get over it until Ian burnt me a copy of Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV: Volume I, From Fear Through The Eyes of Madness and I realized that they only continued to mature as artists and STILL managed to rock the fucking house with some catchy, emotional material such as "Welcome Home" and "Ten Speed (Of God's Blood and Burial)" which are exactly the grade-a material expected from Claudio & crew....
That's a pretty intense cover, correct? That mangled looking roman numeral. Well, fuck all that, the best album art is from Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV: Volume II, No World For Tomorrow. Which, though I haven't listened to it, will probably be fully of catchy, prog-rock jams and other shit to make me feel completely inadequate as a musician:
So, I urge you, as a friend, to go check out Coheed and Cambria. They're worth everything you own, but only ask a modest fee to get their albums!!! In conclusion, I say:

"Did somebody take your tongue?
In worries of the words that you couldn't say,
If they could've saved them from.
But I don't wanna sleep without.
So I bid to you goodnight,
Tonight, sleep tight, my love."