Year Shit

Tonight Quality New Music took a trip to the movies (friend of a girlfriend had a free ticket to Transformers that mysteriously turned into a free ticket to Year One upon arrival, which admittedly isn't that much of an excuse, but one would figure an hour and a half of free explosions can't possibly be that bad) Entering the theater I really did hope that the movie would be a pleasant little gem in the summer blockbuster lineup. I mean Micheal Cera and David Cross, those guys where once in a good show together. Jack Black has made me laugh a few times and hey, he's sort of a rock comedy icon at this point. Even the premise is sort of solid, a few guys unwittingly experience biblical events and not without quirky little twists, maybe this will turn out to be a pleasant throwback to Monty Python's Life of Brian.

Upon leaving the theater, not only had my hopes of Year One being an "okay" movie sadly dissipated, they had been crucified, ripped from the calm and peaceful place hidden in the deepest most sacred and unspoiled parts of my mind and cast into the public to be brutally beaten and tortured until inevitably they were given the mercy of death. Something I so dearly wish would one day happen to the "comedic style" shared by Year One and its counterparts.

I'm not really going to pretend that this post is a review, mainly because I won't pretend that Year One qualifies as a proper piece of cinema, instead I will consider the following a rant and will start said rant with insulting all of those who enjoyed the movie in the audience. You people are idiots. To some extent it is actually you're fault this movie ended up as such a steaming pile of shit. I'm sure somewhere in Los Angeles there was a script writer who started out striving to make a some what intelligent parody of biblical events, but two minutes into brainstorming for the "movie" he too realized most people, being the idiots that people are, wouldn't actually recognize the events (Cain and Able, Abraham, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc) thus wouldn't appreciate any actual attempt at a decent joke and would make a lot more money by filling the damn thing with fart jokes and Micheal Cera. Another interesting realization i made occurred during one scene where Abraham first introduced the idea of circumcision, which was boiled down to "cutting off the tip of your dick". The audience was grossed out and had a great laugh at how ridiculous this whole circumcision business was as Jack Black uncomfortably snuck his way out of the whole ordeal with his member and the its tip. "OMG who would want to cut off the tip of their dick, that's so gross" I'm sure the woman with an oddly pronounced cackle as well as the few teen boys a few rows back surely must have been thinking. Someday they may realize that they too probably "had the tips of their dicks cut off" and they are idiots for ever paying to see the movie (and hopefully go kill themselves). The former statements perfectly exemplify the essential humor behind the movie. If you say Dick and use your "one fuck per PG-13 movie" correctly, people will for some reason laugh. Not that the idea, or even the joke itself was funny, but who would ever expect them to actually say Dick? A twelve year old could have written this movie after attending an afternoon at bible camp only to be driven home by Daddy and his colorful rush hour frustrated language.

To be honest though, all of the above I pretty much expected from Jack Black and especially Micheal Cera being such mainstream actors, but David Cross? Really? The man appearing in a movie that is targeted towards the very general public he so often berates? I guess it has happened before though, He has made appearances in She's the Man and Alvin and the Chipmunks. The only thing I can gather is that he does them for the money, indie comedians must eat too. It's also safe to assume he is deaply ashamed by this fact when you consider he is essentially unrecognizable behind is wig and beard that only his voice will out him from the second rate comedy closet.

The night, however, was not a total bust. My girlfriend did tell me after leaving the theater that she didn't find the movie very funny. That must be worth something.

Animal Crap Box

Overwhelmed with excitement was I to learn that Quality New Music favorite Animal Collective would be releasing a record compilation of live recordings from early in their career. Thankful we are to be able to peer back into the career of such a prolific artist especially when it provides such a stunning contrast from the poppy electronic beats AC presented us in their most recent outing, Merriweather Post Pavilion. Arguable pioneers, if not founders in the genre of freak folk it would have seemed fair to get giddy like a school girl in preparations for what should be hours of moans, screams, droning instrumentals, and strategic silence.

Sadly, this is not quite the case. The vinyl started off rather nicely with a glistening of prickly guitar fuzz and scattered drum beats only to have the experience virtually shattered by the introduction of lyrics just shy of the two minute mark! Sure what little lyrics the first song "Jimmy Raven" are completely buried under the moans of the guitar and the incoherent drum hits peppered about seemingly randomly, but that can't be quite enough for any one truly wishing to experience the true spirit of the genre. In fact never at one point does the compilation does a track divert into a 20 minute plus cloud of noise, nor is any single track recorded onto the vinyl backwards.

Over the career of this band we have come to expect certain things. One of which is for their music to be confused for nonsense or broken pieces of machinery. Listening to it is ever to easy to decipher lyrics, pick up on beats, and even identify instruments being used. I did not scalp a copy of this compilation off Ebay for $700 so my parents could think i was going through another musical phase, i purchased this to act as a piece of pretension, a curio, something that when showed to visitors to my home they will question as to why I was so inclined to drop the cash on some vinyl that sounded a tad warped, if not melted. Silly are the minds of such people to not be able to truly appreciate such compilations on such a high level as I. To say the least AC did manage to make the two tracks from the more decipherable Sung Tungs into the sort of hazy non-melodic chants that we have come to expect from the band.

Techno isn't dead...

... it just moved out of its parents house, started wearing less makeup, stopped getting with any one who made eye contact with it, got a real job, and changed its name to electronic. Although the excessive levels of ecstasy may still be lingering around, the artist who wishes to use infectious drum machine beats and layers of synths and nonsense now has a much more respectable medium in which to express themselves. Maybe i have jumped the gun with this post though. Sure techno is only dead to the same extent that hip hop is, just with less black people. Techno or dance or what ever you'd like to call it will always have its place on the dance floors around the world just as it will always be enjoyed in more or less ironic ways in more or less inappropriate situations. However, as far as a genre to actually listen to on your off time it is generally reserved for people you wander whether or not you actually have friends or just chose to live your fictional club life through the comfort of headphones with maxed out volume while others give them uncomfortable stares. Also to be fair, electronica has had plenty of time to exist as a genre and as much as I'd like to believe so, did not surface the moment I chose to give attention to it.

Again, for the most part techno and electronic music share the same elements; a beat driven nonsensical sound, with such subtle distinctions as whether or not the music sucks. I must say that my previous description of electronic music may not quite be fair given that electronic music can range from much moodier spectrums such as artists like Fujiya and Miyagi to again the crazier, dancier Daft Punks. It is the expandability beyond the dance floors of our drug addled youths that allows electronic music to be much more then just a toxic stew of generic beats and choruses generally containing some usage of the word "dance".

Yet there seems to be something so oddly alluring about the word techno itself. For example when trying to introduce a friend to oh lets say Dan Deacon and you chose to use the word electronic instead of techno, but are only greeted by the same sort of befuddled stare you usually receive after berating said friend for his/her musical incompetence (which I can only assume you did briefly before trying to introduce him/her to Dan Deacon, probably as a response to him/her telling you about this awesome and "way trippy" techno band Infirmed Mushroom). Is one supposed to resort to saying Dan Deacon is a mere "techno" artist? Wouldn't it just be so much easier to describe his twelve minute Wham City as some sort of "techno" ballad? With all of his beats, samples, and chipmunk voices, isn't "techno" just such a convenient term to use? Yet after listening to his albums, his music is clearly not techno. One will surely find that behind the barrage of highly danceable music and electronically manipulated sounds there is a man with various degrees in music, depth and playability, and an actual artist.

Quality New Music

Today is another day in the ever continuing year which is a part of the ever long infinity of the space time in which we exist. Yet today is the day I introduce the general review section of teh interblag. But what is a review other then a thought on a thought with the simply intention of berating one another's ideas for nothing more than the sake of pretension. More often than not, a "review" is simply an overwrought essay rephrasing the same preconception about what ever is being scrutinized, except the review done after the fact. For this reason I will not waste any more of our time then is necessary and all reviews will rephrase my preconceptions in little over or one sentence long. Reviews are also tagged with numerical ratings based on arbitrary scales. Scales and numbers can be seen every where, they are in our banks, they are in our laboratories, and they are on our bathroom floors. Yet can one really rate music? Even though some opinions are essentially much more valid than others (especially when considering my opinions) opinions come from taste and to some poor individuals with atrocious tastes, garbage may be falsely considered treasure.Because of this I will not assign albums numbers, but instead arbitrary ratings without any recognizable or real scale. That way the morons of today may misinterpret an awful rating assigned by me to be just as good as they see the awful "music" in which I have reviewed. So here we go;

Songs of Shame~Woods: I cannot quite determine how I feel about this act. Their name is Woods yet their latest releases' sound is not. Is this an ironic view of an ironic sound? Is the woodsy sound in underground music already considered ironic? How exactly is one supposed to handle double irony?
Rating: Your dad drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon

Merridweaether Post Pavillion~Animal Collective: Imagine listening to the Beach Boys. Now imagine listening to the Beach Boys underwater
Rating: Brian Wilson at your pool party

Asleep in the Bread Aisle~Asher Roth: Writing a mediocre song about a frat party is just as cool as drinking yourself to sleep before your elementary education exam
Rating: Waking up with a hangover and realizing you have no actual friends

Art Brut vs. Satan: Better then their second, but not as good as their first
Rating: Every other just good band ever.

Noble Beasts~Andrew Bird: Plucking the strings on a violin and whistling while not remembering if you're actually enjoying what you're listening to.
Rating: Three heath bars and a bowl of frozen yogurt

The Crying Light~Antony and the Johnsons: Anotony's elegance and style makes every song on this album is totally amazing and by amazing I mean gay, and by totally I mean gay.
Rating: A community theater production and a copy of Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head

Reissues; Pablo Honey, The Bends, Ok Computer~Radiohead: Should I be happy about Radiohead reissuing their 90s career or mad that Capitol is just trying to score some more easy cash from the band?
Rating: Baby Thom York crying

Dark Horse~Nickelback: Listening to Nickleback is kind of like having some one piss on your face, the only difference I would only pay for one of those two things
Rating: A steaming pile of shit covered in baby Thom Yorke's tears

TV on the Radiohead

I'm sorry to disappoint, but this post is not a mash up. Or maybe it is of sorts, a mash up of feelings and thoughts, this and that, and all the pertains to life in our modern society. The intersection of music and what generates stronger feelings in our selves is the mash up in which I speak. The other day i found myself at such a fork in the road except this was no road, it was a a tube, a series of tubes. Certainly it should have occurred to you it is not the tubes themselves which so impressed me as much as what I found there. An album, a bootleg album.

TV on the Radio's Ok Calculator is truly a stunning record. The manifesto of a band with no disc burner, the child of an bootleggers, the father of a band. In the bastardization of what we call a society, the pace of life has become to fast, we do not simply enjoy or partake, but we indulge. Never appreciating our $5 mocha, but just consuming, depleting, destroying. Disposable is our culture just as our lives and who can really be bothered to listen to albums anymore. Well certainly not I. I guess you could say I've never actually listened to Ok Calculator, or any other TvotR album, but that is hardly a situation that will prevent me from commenting on them.

What tells us that TvotR had struck gold with Ok Calculator is that it is not just a mere album but a tribute, a tribute amoung tributes, a tribute to the tribute, a tribute to Radiohead. Hardly is a group lucky enough to be worthy of tributing such a band; TvotR's Ok Calculator proves this point. Symbolism has embedded itself in our psyches and we shall embrace it. The Calculator, a humble machine of computing, is TvotR's way of humbling themselves to Radiohead. When we think of the simplicity of a calculator compared to the greatness of the computer ( referring to Radiohead's Ok Computer you simpleton) is outstanding. Computers are every where, we are both in front of a computer at this very moment, yet our calculators have been shunned to the dark drawers and the compact pouches of our satchels. The computer has the power of a calculator many several times over and so does its importance. In fact, it is the same as comparing TvotR or any band for that matter to Radiohead and it is this acknowledgment that informs TvotR's listeners that in their ineptitude, they are worthy and have created something brilliant.

It is only a shame that the band has taken such a down turn since the semi-formal release of Ok Calculator. Their sophomore attempt Journey to Cookie Mound seemingly does not even have a Radiohead reference in it. Could it be referring to Thom Yorke's struggle to release his second album, The Bends, with the knowledge that the public will only pervert his genius into another one song pony of an album? I doubt it. And there most recent release Dear Science? Who do they think they are? It seems as though they are going about writing a love letter to the very root of the mainstream media. Is it not science that has delivered us the auto pitch voice correction box and the studio magic that is the bane of decency in a modern studio? Maybe Dear Science was simply meant to recreate the satire in Radiohead's Ok Computer. At any rate, who do they think they are, Radiohead?

Final word
Ok Calculator:7.8
Who Stole the Cookie Mountain: 5
Dear Science: 4.5
Ok Computer: 10