Posts tagged with "music"

Interpol and Cat Power

I gasped when I found out that Interpol was com­ing out with a new album. Then I threw up a lit­tle in my mouth when I heard the first sin­gle.

Why, Interpol, why? What hap­pened to the min­i­mal­ist, sparse gui­tar riffs? Why did you have to sell out with lighter, more acces­si­ble music?

Turn On The Bright Lights remains one of the most mys­te­ri­ous­ly affect­ing albums of my life. Antics was crap. Our Love To Admire is worse. Interpol needs a return to form.

Oh yes, and I’m in love with Cat Power. Not from her new stuff, which I find pret­ty bor­ing (her mate­r­i­al was a lot more inter­est­ing when she was a drunk), but from the way she dances in the Cross Bones Style video.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXWvjkX446A 480 380]

And while it does­n’t exact­ly make me go out and buy Kleenex at Costco, it does make me rub against the cor­ners of walls and door frames in a felo­nious man­ner.

Don’t wor­ry, Mel der Maur, no one will ever replace you.

Misery is a Missing a Blonde Redhead Concert (and a Butterfly)

There’s a Blonde Redhead con­cert tonight. I was going to head to Toronto to see it with Darren and we would have made it a week­end togeth­er, but the wed­ding rehearsal has tak­en pri­or­i­ty. I’ve been going through 23 since it came out last month, and it still feels a lit­tle for­eign. The songs don’t hit you in the gut or give you the same sense of lyser­gic bliss like ones from Misery is a Butterfly, but over­all it’s a decent album. Ironically, the lat­ter album is what I lis­ten to cheer myself up, but now it only serves as a reminder of what I’m miss­ing. I would have giv­en any­thing to be there.

My heart is in Toronto today.

Musical Context

For years, I lis­tened to music based on my mood. Playlists were well suit­ed for this. I had one full of sad songs for my sad days, days that would last months at a time. I had one with only quick-paced, aggres­sive gui­tar riffs and lung-spit­ting screams, for the pock­ets of rage I’d encounter every now and then. One that was most­ly elec­tron­ic inspi­ra­tion — songs that would move me when I need­ed to move. One for the par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult days, con­sist­ing of sto­ic melodies that could fill me with grit deter­mi­na­tion. There was even one for the bit­ter­sweet moments, per­fect for a post-show buzz. Every song served a par­tic­u­lar pur­pose.

This mot­ley group­ing of sin­gle tracks may have been the result of the way I dis­cov­ered new music. Tenaciously, with ears always open, I would record as much as I could that caught my fan­cy, jot­ting down any dis­cernible lyrics I could use as a basis for a search, and nev­er stop­ping until I could find the song. Hysteria, by Muse, is just one exam­ple, which I hap­pened to dis­cov­er while watch­ing an awards show. For a long time, it remained a song I’ve enjoyed on my for it’s sub­tle build-up, and ener­getic, near­ly chaot­ic, synth-inspired bass lines.

Things changed when I lived with Trolley. He exposed me to bands of dif­fer­ent gen­res, and being a musi­cal col­lec­tor, this expo­sure took the form of com­plete albums. One of them hap­pened to be Absolution.

Now that I have the entire album, Hysteria is known to me as track 7, com­ing after the pen­sive Interlude, but before the gen­tle, ethe­re­al, Blackout. In this con­text, pre­ced­ed and suc­ceed­ed by two equal­ly sig­nif­i­cant tracks, the song does­n’t sound the same.

Eventually, none of my playlists were appro­pri­ate for what I was feel­ing. At first, I thought that this was the result of increas­ing­ly sub­tle or com­plex emo­tions, but I’ve come to real­ize that it’s sim­ply because I’ve matured, and as a result, my emo­tions have evened out. With the wis­dom and seren­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with grow­ing old­er, came the loss of emo­tion­al highs and lows that would inspire me.

Now it’s become dif­fi­cult to lis­ten to a song in a playlist. Every album has an order. Every track has its place. Listening to a song out of its musi­cal con­text may be hard, but lis­ten­ing to music with­out the rush of inspi­ra­tion is hard­er.

And this has become my musi­cal con­text.

Thanks, And No Thanks

I’ve offi­cial­ly switched from Movable Type to WordPress, the lat­ter of which I’ve decid­ed is a far supe­ri­or plat­form. This involved man­u­al­ly copy­ing con­tent from the old data­base, includ­ing every entry, com­ment, time­stamp, and ip address logged. Even though it took me near­ly a month, I was able to go through my old entries and make the thumb­nails, links, quotes, and for­mat­ting con­sis­tent.

Thanks to the expe­ri­ences of every day life, for the peo­ple I hate, the peo­ple I love, the ones I respect, and the ones who inspire me to do more. It’s these that make sure I nev­er run out of things to say.

Thanks to Trolley, who reminds me with his com­ments that I always have at least one read­er.

Thanks to Aaron and Pat, for show­ing me that they care when they tell me that they keep up-to-date with my life through this.

Thanks to Bronwen, with whom I’m the per­son I’ve always want­ed to be.

Thanks to Number18, for giv­ing me hope with her dai­ly life, and her über cool input jacks.

Thanks to Tina and Aurora, for their enig­mat­ic entries that inspire me to write bet­ter.

Thanks to Winston and Barb, for let­ting me know that I, in turn, could inspire some­one to start writ­ing for them­selves.

Thanks to Sikander for being the guy who shares music with me, even though we’ve nev­er met in real life.

Thanks to Sophia, for intro­duc­ing me to music like CocoRosie, and quot­ing my own old archived entries back to me.

Thanks to Dru, a design artist I’ve admired for years, for unof­fi­cial­ly steal­ing from me, an unspo­ken com­pli­ment I hold dear to my heart.

No thanks to the stalk­ers, who say they’ll nev­er vis­it, yet con­tin­ue to read on a dai­ly basis. The ones who hide behind ser­vices like Anonymouse, naive­ly believ­ing that all their http requests are masked. The self pro­claimed hyp­ocrites, who have the FUCKING AUDACITY to tell me about the vices of blog­ging, yet blog them­selves. The exact rea­son why I nev­er answer my phone any­more.

No thanks to the sequa­cious com­men­tors who say stuff but don’t say any­thing, or those who com­ment for the sake of per­son­al adver­tise­ment.

No thanks to the hotlink­ers, who con­tin­ue to steal my images, and in turn, my band­width and mon­ey.

When I was con­vert­ing my data­base and going through the old entries, I could recall each and every emo­tion that drove them. My writ­ing has become less ram­bling, less depress­ing, less cryp­tic since I start­ed back in 2002. As time goes on and the entries become more recent, there seems to be a sub­tle, bur­geon­ing hope, a reflec­tion of the expe­ri­ences I’ve gone through and a chang­ing world­view.

And from the begin­ning of this blog to the entries I write now, the most impor­tant thing is that I always have more peo­ple to thank.

Thrice = Love: Far From The End

The con­cert was quite amaz­ing. The set last­ed just over an hour and a half. Nothing was per­formed off the first album, which makes me think that Thrice actu­al­ly knows how weak an LP it was. They did two encores, one of which was Dustin play­ing an acoustic ver­sion of Staring At The Sun, and the oth­er which was a short lit­tle piece from the mid­dle of The Abolition Of Man, where Dustin actu­al­ly hands off his gui­tar to a guy who comes on stage with a grey hood­ie, and walks into the crowd to scream the last few bars. Unfortunately, my mem­o­ry card ran out of space dur­ing the LAST WORD, ulti­mate­ly ruin­ing the clip.

It was good to see that peo­ple knew all the words to Artist In The Ambulance, and Deadbolt (which they did­n’t play until every­one was yelling it in cho­rus).

Thumbnail: Crowd
Thumbnail: Dustin with acoustic guitar
Thumbnail: Stage

On his celebri­ty, Dustin once said, “It’s pret­ty awe­some. A lot of peo­ple throw under­wear at bands, but our kids bring us books”. If I ever had the chance, I’d give him Huis-Clos by Jean-Paul Sartre.

There’s more that can be said, but I think I’ll put this to rest for now.

Thrice is Love.

The Thrice = Love Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Journey
  3. As The Crucible
  4. Rock It
  5. The Rush
  6. Far From The End