Monthly Archives: July 2004

Going Backwards For Bands

I’ve been giv­ing Down and Superjoint Ritual a chance, and it’s weird to be lis­ten­ing to Phil Anselmo’s vocals against a sound that’s not quite Pantera. In the song Beautifully Depressed, he actu­al­ly sings with vibra­to. It’s a res­onat­ing vibra­to, but very grad­ual and deep, sort of like Mandy Patinkin with a shot of val­i­um and an injec­tion of testos­terone. The fact that he does a decent job of it com­plete­ly throws me off. The fact that quite a few SJR songs have punk­ish roots caus­es fur­ther con­fu­sion, just like Ministry’s punk­ish con­tri­bu­tion to the Rock Against Bush album. It’s like lis­ten­ing to the lat­est No Motiv album and then real­iz­ing that the bassist is now the drum­mer. On top of that, he’s Asian and bet­ter than the old drum­mer.

Speaking of which, going through No Motiv’s ear­li­er albums has been a fair­ly enjoy­able task. They’re com­prised of songs which aren’t as com­plex as Daylight Breaking, but they’re catchy nonethe­less. Unfortunately, It has­n’t been the same with Thrice, espe­cial­ly with their first album Identity Crisis. I can tell that they had some great tech­ni­cal ideas, but when actu­al­ly putting pen to paper and record­ing it in the stu­dio, the sound is rough, almost exper­i­men­tal.

It’s hard going back­wards for bands. I’m glad I dis­cov­ered Dreamtheater as soon as Scenes From A Memory came out. I don’t like much of what they did before that (aside from Space Dye Vest, which is one of my favourite songs of theirs), so it’s scary to think of what more I would­n’t like if I dis­cov­ered them even lat­er. I thought that Scenes From A Memory was going to be their best work, but some­how they man­aged to improve in every sin­gle pro­gres­sive (no pun intend­ed) album. Thrice does­n’t fare so well, of course, as I’ve been spoiled by their lat­est, excel­lent­ly pro­duced album, The Artist In The Ambulance. It’s makes their ear­li­er stuff sound untest­ed and lazy.

The Appreciative Insomniac

I can’t fall back asleep. I’m still on hol­i­day sched­ule, which is all about stay­ing up late and tak­ing naps, not being in bed by ten then wak­ing up halfway through the night. Six fresh mos­qui­to bites don’t help the sleep­ing process either.

Anyway, what I meant to say is that I’m grate­ful to have this when life proves to be a lit­tle too over­whelm­ing and I prove to be all too human. When there’s no one else to turn to for some rea­son or anoth­er. When Beth’s vocals or orches­tral pop noir roman­tique don’t help, or help enough.

It’s good to know that I have some­thing, and some­times I have to remind myself of that.

Hit Or Miss Wardrobe

I just real­ized that years of wear­ing school uni­forms, and the asso­ci­at­ed free­dom from hav­ing to decide what to wear, has made me fash­ion chal­lenged. Anything I wear is hit or miss, and I always have a hard time dis­tin­guish­ing between the two. There are tons of things I just can’t pull off, but not being able to actu­al­ly see that actu­al­ly makes such a fact impor­tant.

Former Or Latter

I final­ly have some time to catch up on my blogroll. The hia­tus has giv­en me a fresh per­spec­tive on the blogs that I read, and I’m start­ing to under­stand why I actu­al­ly read them in the first place. Most authors are just plain inter­est­ing, and their blogs offer a glimpse into the lives of peo­ple with dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ties. The most inter­est­ing ones are by intel­li­gent peo­ple with lifestyles I’ve nev­er been through. However, there’s a fair share of authors whose lives are so sad that they’re amus­ing, and their blogs are so pathet­ic that they’re humor­ous. These are the peo­ple who write because they think they’re impor­tant, and fill their entries with the most trite, sequa­cious crap.

And it’s made me won­der, espe­cial­ly after hav­ing reached an aver­age of 200 dai­ly vis­its last month, which of the two types this blog fits into for oth­er peo­ple when they read.