borntohula

i just got mermaid avenue and it's fucking badass.

well played. agreed. ;) i think you should write the ending to "the young and the bored"

its out already? wow, talk about under-advertised.

david cross. eugene mirman. lenny bruce. black, showalter and wain, aka stella. john stewart. if you people are including conan o' brian, then i'll have to add david letterman.

remember, i was talking about my own personal criteria. i never strayed from the fact that what i was saying is my opinion and isn't an absolute. next time ill start each sentence with "i think" "i believe" or "in my opinion" to get that across a little better. all i was saying is that i'm tired of arguments about music and how lyrics are always brought up first. in the same vein, im tired of lead singers being the focal points of a group.

to my limited knowledge, nikola tesla wasn't half russian, half scottish. bowie had one of the worst accents ever. almost beats angelina jolie.

i thought i knew what i looked for but after putting a lot of thought into what i would say, i've discoverred that it's hard to be objective in this instance. it's difficult to break down what i practice versus what i preach. so i might sound hypocritical on occasion, but im trying my best not to. essentially, what i'm saying is: my criteria are fluid... i'll never be able to break it down to a proper formula for music listenning. warning: sometimes i resort to name dropping below. i acknowledge that i'm doing this, and i'm doing it to serve a higher purpose than to stroke my ego. trust me? as far as contemporary music is concerned, im usually looking for individuals whom i believe to be doing something that is vastly different from everyone else. i like to be surprised, even if it sounds awful. i enjoy music because of the range of emotions that it can make a person feel, so if something makes me want to vomit, that's equally as good as something that makes me want to dance. if we don't listen to stuff we hate, we cant learn why it makes us feel that way. sometimes the things we hate eventually turn out to be things we love anyways. if a song makes you feel uncomfortable, it's best to know why, so that you don't avoid something just because it doesn't meet your pre-concieved notions of what good music consists of."bad" music will either reinforce, or topple our ideas and conventions concerning music. by the word "bad" i mean bad as in music that we don't consider pleasant (john cage, wolf eyes), not music that's strongly believed by many to be shit (ie my chemical romance). that said, i have soft spots for shoegaze music, baroque pop and the occasional soul/funk song. my enjoying of these genres/sounds will often skew my ability to look at a band critically. recently i've come to the realization that lyrical content is very low on the scale of important criteria that i evaluate when trying to understand whether or not i like an artist. a large part of this understanding came from my participating on this very board. when people argue about music, one of the first things they argue about is lyrical content. if you like a band, you parade their lyrics around constantly, using it as ineffable proof of the band's superiority, and when you're on the opposite end of things, you use lyrics to deconstruct a band, pointing out flaws in their logic or sayings that make absoultely no sense. a perfect example of this would be when people are trying to voice why they dislike the mars volta: "the lyrics make no sense, they're utter jibberish". such examples are boring rhetoric and hardly work to support an arguement. if anything lyrics should be icing on the cake for the listenner. i don't think i'm the only person here who likes to listen to music sung in other languages... french, spanish, italian...i can't understand any of them, but that doesnt stop me from enjoying a song. they could be singing about raping children and putting cats in blenders but it comes off as pure beauty to me. or take sigur ros for instance. aside from singing in icelandic, they've made up their own language and sung in that as well. what does one do in that situation? here's another example: slayer. i know EXACTLY what they're singing about. melting faces and the holocaust. do i care? hells no, because their music is fucking badass. end of story. that mentionned, i think it's required that a band i listen to have a sense of humor about themselves. slayer obviously being one of those bands. whether that comes out in their music or interviews i've seen/read/heard. people who take themselves too seriously are missing the point. this means you, "the killers". there's no genre or artist that i like unconditionally, but given previous efforts by bands, i'm more likely to continue buying their records if they've had a strong past. tool being a good example. however more likely it is that i will buy their new albums, it doesnt necessarily mean i'll like it. i enjoy consistency; not in terms of sound but in terms of quality. however, it's important not to rely on a certain act. just as my emotions change, so can my opinions change in regards to bands, or music in general. for instance, i really liked death from above 1979 when i first heard them, but then a friend introduced me to lightning bolt, a band with roughly the same concept as DFA 1979 but who've been around for a lot longer. lightning bolt's sound is a lot more relentless than DFA1979's and i liked that quality to their music, and subsequently began to view DFA1979 in a more negative light than initially. this turned out way longer than i had planned. congrats if you've made it this far. i've lost my train of thought. feel free to cut me up and argue.

darn tootin' but in regards to steve albini projects, im more looking forward to his work on the new neurosis album.

HOWD YOU GET THAT PICTURE?!?! ;)

haha. i've been saying that for years.

so influence is far superior to shitty voice and the fact that he hasn't written a good album in god-knows-how-long? i like bob dylan's songs coverred by other people. same goes for leonard cohen.

he might be cool in person but he sure knows how to butcher an artist, like everyone else has mentionned. but at the same time, the onus isnt all on him, like everyone else has been saying. its not like he fucked with OLP's sound and they hate the records he makes with them. they have just as bad a taste in music and music production as he does. or else they wouldnt fucking bring the guy back for another album. so bob rock didnt kill OLP. OLP fucking sucked to begin with. same goes for metallica. eat shit.

shit. i was just in guelph. i should've gone to their vet training facility or whatever the proper name for the place is.

it has potential, but it's been a helluva long time.

did you dine on turtle soup? that's an old shredder line. that's what my mom always says when she discusses their death ITS ALMOST AS IF YOUR MOM AND I ARE THE SAME PERSON dun dun dunnnnnnn have you ever seen us in the same room together? there's some food-for-thought.

google maps can't find your house. strange. OH EM GEE TEN PAGES

how do you evaluate music, or art for that matter? theres so much of it out there that one has to pick and choose what constitutes "good" art, and what constitutes "bad". not only that but fundamentally, art is criticism and therefore should be looked at with a critical eye. so, what do YOU do to evaluate a piece of work? what criteria do you have? is it set, or is it fluid? how do you justify to yourself (i dont care about other people here) buying the latest killers album as opposed to... ravi shankar or harry belafonte? i have my own criteria but i'll post it after the discussion gets going. this may or may not be presumptuous of me because there are times when no one reads/responds to my threads. huzzah.

gish isn't artistic? i'm not following you here.

burnt hair, teeth, and nails all smell the same. gross.

I used to have 2 turtles. One was called Junior and the other one was Ginger-Ale. aw mine died 'cause the thing that regulates the tank temperature broke, so they got cooked up real nice. did you dine on turtle soup? that's an old shredder line. i have two dogs named sandy and pepper. woot.

but we all have to find our way to your house right? i'll be there friday. i promise.

ditto. it was the best show ever.

don't even liiiiiie.

done and done.

why does everyone always praise siamese dream? gish is clearly the only smashing pumpkins album worth rubbing all over your naked body. seriously. props to you dear missus jesus.