contemplative muse's Radio Weblog

Thu, 12 Dec 2002 19:27:25 GMT

Sir Winston Churchill. "It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations." [Quotes of the Day]

Thu, 12 Dec 2002 19:25:27 GMT

If only Axl Rose weren’t such a maniacal over-obsessive control freak, I would have been at the GN’R show at the MCI Center Monday night. Why was the tour cancelled? Did Axl finally realize that his voice just isn’t what it was ten years ago when he could reach the notes on Welcome to the Jungle and belt them with a sneer? That the only people who bought tickets to the show were fans from 10 years ago who were wondering what ever happened to the infamous singer who dropped from public view? That no one really cares about the new album as a Guns N’ Roses project unless it sounds like classic GN’R (which it most definitely does not)?

I think Axl probably realized that he couldn’t live up to expectations and caved. At the MTV music video awards he appeared to be winded from running around the stage after singing a five minute medley of songs, had beefed up quite a bit (his body and his hair), and his voice could not hit the high notes with the precision or the tone he used to have. Even though I was disappointed with their performance, I bought a ticket to the D.C. show based on the nostalgia evoked by the name and the music.

Madison Square Garden was the last show they played. Such a pivotal show because NYC is THE east coast city that matters. Perhaps they weren’t well received or perhaps the other band members decided they couldn’t put up with Axl’s antics any longer. That’s the reason why the old members left. Slash even tried to see a GN’R show in Nevada after he left the band, but when Axl found out about this he told security to not allow him in.

Last night I heard part of the yet to be release Chinese Democracy album. A DJ at the local college station had a friend who dropped by with an album he had burned…I guess it had leaked onto the net yesterday morning…Chinese Democracy Part 3, the song I heard, did not sound remotely like any GN’R song I had heard before. It made me wonder why Axl even keeps the name. It basically had a dialogue of voices speaking in Chinese offset by some guitar and drums and vocals (which I could not make out )in the background. Was it experimental? yes. Was it odd? yes. With the unprecedented amount of time they’ve spent recording and perfecting the album I would have expected something more instrumentally intensive with more of a dependence on the musical talent in the band. I don’t know buckethead (and find it very disturbing that this guy wears a KFC chicken bucket on head accompanied by a porcelain mask), but according to friends of mine he’s an amazing guitarist. The song played may not be representative of the album as a whole. Of course, if the album goes the way of the tour, no one’s going to hear it anytime soon. Maybe it’s for the best.

Tue, 19 Nov 2002 16:09:16 GMT

coruscate: Dictionary.com Word of the Day. coruscate [Dictionary.com Word of the Day]...what a great word...

Mon, 18 Nov 2002 22:17:48 GMT

It’s almost time for the holidays. Even if you want to ignore it, the barrage of catalogues, gift guides, and Christmas tunes force you to be quite aware of its advent. Call me a scrooge, but by December 24th each year I detest the sound of the Salvation Army bell and the ubiquitous Christmas carols that have played nonstop for over a month. They become synonymous with the mountains of toys and home appliances stacked to the ceilings, the red and green displays, the tinsel, the endless lines and the not-to-be-found parking spaces. My disgust may in part result from my short attention span. These displays target the easily distracted who, like me, take it all in, buy on impulse, become befuddled by the endless varieties of features, on say a toaster, and end up buying one of each because it’s easier than choosing the right one.

At work this weekend my co-worker began playing an array of Christmas carols on the stereo. And once he began playing it, he left the room while I sat and listened until I could no longer bear it. I’m not even sure why someone who is not Christian and who didn’t grow up listening to them would own a mix CD of Christmas tunes. Tonight I might just pop in one of my Dischord Records 20th anniversary discs to liven things up. I’m sure that the people I work with (most in their mid 40s and 50s, conservative, & immigrants) would just look at me funny and turn it down until its barely audible.

Don’t fret, though. To help you through the holiday rut, pitchforkmedia has posted the first fifty albums in its list of the top 100 albums of the eighties – a list that’s dedicated to proving that good music was in fact created in that decade. I was happily surprised that the list included GN’R’s Appetite for Destruction (and forgive me for I was merely a child in the 80s). I nostaligcally remember smuggling the tape into my parents’ house and then clandestinely listening to it for hours on end on my Walkman in the basement, marking the beginnings of my childhood rebellion.

Fri, 15 Nov 2002 04:53:19 GMT

Last night I trekked out to see Mclusky play at the Velvet Lounge. The name is deceiving – for the smattering of purple velvet cushions lining the front bench and the red velvet sheet draped behind the stage are the only visible pieces of plush décor in the building. Despite its minimal appearance, and even because of it, I love this place. It’s an authentic little hole in the wall with a floor upstairs that shakes when the crowd gets into the music. By authentic I mean that it’s not a super-posh joint just looking to make money, that it’s instead a smaller venue owned by someone who wants to help lesser known bands get a start, that it’s a place that embraces the blood and the gore, that’s unkempt and interesting.

Mclusky’s set was one of the most notable and satisfying that I’ve seen performed by a band that I’ve barely known in a long time. They harness a raucous energy and infuse it into music that’s delivered as a siege of disciplined chaos. A three-man band from Wales, they purportedly “swam across the ocean” to play some quality punk rock with a genuine sex-drugs- and-rock n’roll mentality. I doubt these guys will be unkown for much longer – they just released an album that was recorded with the prodigious indie-rock producer, Steve Albini.

Links:

- review of Mclusky's album "Mclusky Do Dallas"

- NPR recently aired a six-part series on the evolution

of recording and the impact that it has had on the production of music.

Steve Albini comments in a few of thesegments. The series is called

TechnoPop: The Secret History of Technology and Pop Music.

Wed, 13 Nov 2002 17:46:34 GMT

William Dement. "Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives." [Quotes of the Day]

Wed, 13 Nov 2002 08:33:45 GMT

In my French class today, we were practicing our rudimentary skills by trying to form sentences about the stereotypes associated with different countries. Such as – did you know that Finland has one of the highest suicide rates? Of course, I didn’t know much about Finland to begin with. We ended by talking about the things associated with American culture, which were the prominence of SUVs, the abundance of guns, and our geniality. But then the conversation drifted to American stupidity (or rather, our disregard for knowledge). It ended with the Spanish woman and the French woman (the teacher) debating whether most Europeans think Americans are stupid. And I began to wonder if I could blame those that do.

The paucity of opposition to the war-hungry Republicans in politics and the media is frightening. I think that regardless of how you feel about the prospect of war, it needs to be debated thoroughly before we mount an attack. Although liberal publications are overflowing with skepticism, its almost ignored in the most accessible papers. And most Americans (or at least the ones who voted) have no problem with the idea of war with Iraq – or else the Democrats would have won more seats in Congress. I don’t claim to be an expert on military matters, but I don’t think we’ve thought long enough about the repercussions of a war with Iraq, if it were to happen. The South Atlantic Quarterly is publishing an issue dedicated to voicing the arguments opposed to the way the American government is dealing with terrorism and Iraq. It might be worth checking out.

Fri, 08 Nov 2002 02:41:22 GMT

The cult of celebrity strikes me as such an odd notion. I’ve thought many times about what it is that drives us to expose every inch of their lives. Like with Winona’s cleptomania or Kurt Cobain’s diaries, we want to expose them, their humanity and their faults. We want in some sick way to devour these people, their power over us, their lives.

Reading Coriolanus really made me start thinking about society’s obsession with celebrity terms of consumption, of devouring and devotion. Coriolanus, a heroic Roman warrior, refuses to speak to the common citizens, to dine with them, to entertain them. The citizens want him to acknowledge them by speaking to them, and when he doesn’t they want to destroy him. The citizens desire to make him one of them; when he doesn't comply they want to tear him down. A citizen speaks of this in terms of their consuming his body, “For if he show us his words and tell us his deeds, we are to put our tongues into these wounds and speak for them.” Coriolanus, though, does not want to share his battle wounds or his words with the common people, he doesn’t want to play the role of the politician. He just wants to keep to himself.

Coriolanus refuses to stoop to the common people and so they want to tear him down. Celebrity today, it seems, is not much different. We place the select few – the rich, the wealthy, and the powerful – on a pedestal where they become the focus of all eyes. We watch them on television, we read about them in magazines, we know the intimate details of their love lives, yet we don’t know them at all. Our desire to know about J.Lo’s new beau or George Clooney’s performance in bed, or what REALLY happened between Justin and Britney is really just our attempt to make these people human, to convince ourselves that they really are just like us.

The impulse to worship celebrities paradoxically makes us want to become iconoclasts, to reveal their darkest secrets, to expose their most intimate moments. We attempt to expose their faults, to understand them or to despise them – because we can’t stand the idea of a higher echelon of human life where the commoners aren't welcome. Thus the seemingly contradictory, yet entirely natural, impulse towards both idolization and iconoclasty.

Sat, 19 Oct 2002 21:45:15 GMT

I'm glad that The Washington Post dedicated a front page article to the lives that have been taken in the D.C. area in the past two weeks by hands (and gunshots) other than the sniper's. Eighteen people have been killed in the violence that permeates the city on an ongoing basis. These murders generally don't garner more attention than a few sentences in the daily paper. Most occur in areas where violence is rife and so they don't cause such waves of panic and alarm. I asked a guy at work who lives in Southeast what he thought of the sniper attacks. His response was, "It's nothing new where I'm from. That kind of thing happens all the time." It's just a way of life and life must go on. In the county I live in alone, there were 6 unrelated murders in the past two weeks. I even think I went to elementary school with one of the people who was found dead in the woods in a county next to mine. Although the sniper attacks are terrifying, the community and the country acts as though these lives are the only ones which have been tragically taken. And that we're at greater risk of dying by a bullet from the sniper's gun than the bullet of another gun during a robbery, carjacking, etc.

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Last night I decided to venture into the realm of anime and watched Blood: The Last Vampire on DVD. From the outer packaging the film looked as though it had the potential- the reviews said the animation was brilliant. It summarized the plot as a young Japanese woman works with a group of undercover agents to kill the vampires who have infiltrated an American air base just before the Vietnam war.

My motivation to see this movie came from the fact the protagonist is a goth female vampire. She caries a samuri sword and destroys the other vampires ( though the movie never explains why she's the "last original," unlike the other bloodsucking, human-hunting, blood-thirsty vampires who she kills). I love the way that Asian films portray women in powerful roles like these - a la Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Where American films generally reserve this role for men, Asian films, especially the anime I've seen, have no problem with making their woman both physically and mentally powerful. Blood remarks on this to some degree within the film. The human American nurse is the biggest coward in the movie. While the "last original" fights it out with a demonic vampire on top of her, the American nurse holds a gun to her head and says she can't take it anymore. The girl tells her to put the gun down and to take action - to drive the jeep out of the burning hangar.

The movie, which is barely that with a 45 mintue playing time, isn't worth watching. There are gaping holes left in the plot development. Like why does the "last original" work with the undercover agents to kill the other vampires? The only point in the movie where she shows compassion is when she has killed a vampire and she stands over him, as blood drips from her wounds onto his dying corpse.

The only way the film makes sense is to read it as an extremly anti-American allegory. When the Japanese girls meets an American school girl on the base, the American asks, first in English and then in Japanese, "Are you Japanese?" The Japanese girls responds "Leave me alone." She also tells the nurse that the only reason why she's defending her is because she "can't kill humans." The "last original" shows a tacit antagonsim towards all the other characters, who are American. She seems to represent the dilemma of the Japanese people at that point in time (1966) - she sees the actions of others like her (the other vampires) as monstrous for their crimes for humanity, yet they are very much like her. She feels more compassion for those who she kills, and she is also unable to escape being associated with the other beasts in the Western mind. She aids the Americans, not because she likes them, but because she must (according to her beliefs or because of coercion, but that isn't explained either).