Yearly Archives: 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.

Sandbanks '04

Thumbnail: Sandbanks '04 LeSabre Custom
Thumbnail: Sandbanks '04 Chill
Thumbnail: Sandbanks '04 Kate
Thumbnail: Sandbanks '04 Strawberries

Went to Sandbanks on the week­end. The weath­er was good, but danced from one extreme to the oth­er along the course of the day. It was Trolley, Tomacini, Kate, Adam, and Eric on one site, Aaron, Karen, Nick, Alison, and me on anoth­er about 20 paces away. It was quite a dif­fer­ent crew from the one I’m used to, but def­i­nite­ly the one I was most com­fort­able around. These are the peo­ple who nev­er ask for mon­ey, who talk to you like you’re fam­i­ly, whom you can depend on to find some orange juice if you’re hav­ing a bad trip. We only got in trou­ble one night, but we were admit­ted­ly loud. Our attempts to thwart such prob­lems by intro­duc­ing our­selves to neigh­bour­ing camp­sites proved fruit­less, as we were informed that the noise we were pro­duc­ing was being heard in a larg­er radius than expect­ed. I took up posi­tion as the token Asian guy (keepin it cool) and Adam resumed his usu­al role as the token homo­sex­u­al (keepin it fresh). The week­end went by quick­ly.

Thumbnail: Sandbanks '04 Campfire 1
Thumbnail: Sandbanks '04 Campfire 2

Aside from steak, the best part of camp­ing is the camp­fire. When the decid­u­ous trees flick­er orange and the stars nor­mal­ly hid­den by the city light show them­selves against the navy blue sky. There’s some­thing about the heat and the atmos­phere that puts the mind at ease. Nobody cares if one speaks too much or too lit­tle, puts on some head­phones and lis­tens to music, intox­i­cates, or pulls out a book and reads. It’s where every­one can do their own thing, togeth­er.

Thumbnail: Sandbanks '04 beach 1
Thumbnail: Sandbanks '04 beach 2
Thumbnail: Sandbanks '04 beach 3
Thumbnail: Sandbanks '04 beach 4

Sandbanks has an amaz­ing beach with large sand dunes, which makes it one of the most pop­u­lar camp­grounds, as well as one of the hard­est to reserve a site on (Trolley and I had this week­end booked since January). The sand is extreme­ly soft and smooth, and the beach end­ed up being the only refuge for a loud group, espe­cial­ly at night. It’s also where Adam was paid to mar­ket Gatorade to the homo­sex­u­al pop­u­la­tion (and the fun­ny thing is, Adam did his absolute best not to look gay in the pho­to­graph, but suc­ceeds only in the doing the exact oppo­site.) The cap­tion for the mag­a­zines would be, “ALL I DID WAS DRINK THIS GATORADE AND HOT GUYS STARTED LICKING STUFF OFF MY LEGS!”.

Aaron made his con­tri­bu­tion to the Ministry of Silly Walks.

Thumbnail: Sandbanks '04 plant saga 1
Thumbnail: Sandbanks '04 plant saga 2
Thumbnail: Sandbanks '04 plant saga 3
Thumbnail: Sandbanks '04 plant saga 4

At one point, Aaron and I had to steal some fire­wood from the oth­er site. We decide to give them some flow­ers in return as a joke. Aaron just hap­pened to pass by a bunch of daisies, and plucked them from the stem as we were leav­ing our area. Unfortunately, the entire plant became unroot­ed with almost no effort, from the flow­ers to the roots. After a quick twig-splint used to fix a man­gled stem, we plant­ed the daisies in the mid­dle of the oth­er camp­site. They stood out con­sid­er­ably, since they were over four feet in height, with noth­ing else around but grav­el and dirt. In return, Adam plant­ed a lit­tle vod­ka gar­den out­side our tents.