Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand
by krisis
wow, i just saw a sickeningly self-righteous commercial funded by the major american weapons manufacturers claiming that they’ve been irresponsibly persecuted by the goverment because the government can’t keep crime under control. their website is here. i support a certain amount of rights for gun owners, but i also support responsibility, and the manufacturers need to take some. people kill people, but they do it with guns. i will step down off my pedestal now. thank you.
by krisis
teevee for me is like crack cocaine… something that i abstain from despite that fact that it’s highly addictive. i typically watch a total of two hours of teevee in a week, if even that. i was thinking about watching friends this year as well as will and grace, but i just don’t have the time on weekend nites. so, it looks like i’m back to just x-files and the practice, as i was last year. whoo-boy.
by krisis
Having just tiraded about music for a while, here are the discs that are looking to appear on my 2000top10 list. Keep in mind Pj Harvey is releasing a disc next week, and that last year’s favourite came out November 16th. Here we go, in a slightly biased order… Peter Mulvey the trouble with poets, Aimee Mann Bachelor No.2, Victoria Williams Water To Drink, Veruca Salt Resolver, Juliana Hatfield Beautiful Creature, Elastica The Menace, Tracy Bonham Down Here, Madonna Music, …. and i’m sure i’ll be adding a few more in the weeks to come as i pick up the discs i missed. If you know that i totally skipped over something worthy, point it out, by all means. I mean, i would have never bought Beautiful Creature (it was a donation to my collection from the promo bin at the phila. weekly) and it is definitely going to make my list, so i obviously could have missed out on some other good discs. And, no, i didn’t really like Belle & Sebastian’s. And, yes, i still have to buy Elliot Smith’s. Okay.
by krisis
People who review music are interesting creatures. Do we listen to them because they offer us unique and informed insight into artists we both love and have never heard of? Or, do we enjoy their outrageous opinions and biases? Obviously the answer is a little of both. Some reviewers are so immersed in a love of music that they cannot give a bad review. Should any true musical effort get a bad review? Here i’m obviously differentiating between thoughtless or overly-produced music that one often finds on the radio and the totally opposite effortless or carefully assembled music that most people would consider as art. As much as i hate the new Radiohead, and though i might give it less than two stars if i were to review it for the paper, the review itself would doubtlessly offer many positives about the album so that people who liked those facets of it would know to buy it.
That, of course, is why album ratings are arbitrary; are they personal opinion or objective rankings? I found myself battling over such thoughts earlier while i was commenting on Nelly Furtado. While there are only a few tracks on her disc that i enjoy, a quick read through Amazon.com‘s reviews pointed out to me the many aspects of her disc that my ears weren’t open to. After several revisions, my review sounds like it should be nearly four stars, but i plan to submit it as a two star review on monday. Obviously i intend for people to glance at the rating and then read the article, because the rating is probably only applicable if they share an overwhelming overlap in musical taste with me. And, god help them if they do…
by krisis
Dave Matthews Band sucks. Really. They are surely decent enough, but the amount of hype they are prone to receive makes me want to hate them all the more. After having listened to some of Before These Crowded Streets last night for the first time in a while, i was simply struck by the fact that i listen to easily a dozen bands that are more dynamic than DMB. Matthews is all about abstract storytelling and thinly veiled sexual metaphor while the band totally obscures Dave’s dynamic guitar playing. On some songs like the uniquely executed “Stay” i love every second of it, but otherwise i am left reminiscing about when “Ants Marching” first came out and i could never discern between DMB and Blues Traveller.
I know that DMB are all talented musicians, and i know they’re a band and not a backup for a solo act, but jesus, why does every drunk frat boy and arty college girl love them so much? The only argument in their favour comes from the blue Luther College set that features Dave Matthews and his sideman Tim Reynolds all alone. Here we can see that Dave goes way beyond his empty bombastic vocals and prolific undifferentiated songs to prove himself as one of the premier singer-songwriters in our generation. Of course, afterwards he went back on tour with his DMB, which lets me easily forget why i found any reason to like him at all. But, i do have those blue discs…