DISC-O-Graphy part 5
I have to admit as a fan of music, and a collector of it as well, I kinda dropped the ball along the way. I never became a fan of Rage Against the Machine (I did play hockey on a team called Rage Against the Zamboni however!). Rage to me was a metal rap band – I love almost all kids of music but this just never appealed to me. A while ago I read about this guy named Tom Morello, the guitarist in Rage who was releasing an acoustic CD under his alter ego name the Nightwatchman. It wasn’t his first, and probably won’t be his last. The disc was given to me as “something you might like” and I promptly place it among my 5000 other artists in my iPod and forgot about it. The disc came out in September of 2008 and it’s 6 months later when I discover the disc. Ooooops, my bad as they say
Really, I don’t know what to make of The Nightwatchman’s The Fabled City. Firstly Morello encompasses a ton of style and sound that appeals to me. Think Dylan and Warren Zevon teaming up and singing with Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. Think way outside the box on this one and then put it on and stop thinking. The lyrics are very intense, well scribed and very different, the mood is somber, but unlike most of Len Cohen’s somber music, this one didn’t make me feel like killing myself!
The lyrics are thin at one end and deep at the other, with biblical references throughout as he pleads with politicians and the entire autocratic society that this universe needs change from it’s greedy ways, in the next verse he’s commenting on the one legged bird knocking on your window - somehow, as off as it seems and sounds, it actually works and is very cool.
It’s not a perfect record (but there are few of those around), but I’m glad I listened to it finally, it’s certainly one I will include in my rotation!
Springsteen’s latest number “Working on a Dream” is his third record this decade with the E Street Band and his 5th this decade over all. As a monster fan of the New Jersey god, I am having a tough time coming to grips that the Boss isn’t really in charge anymore. His early style involved writing, ripping, destroying, re-writing, touring, destroying, writing and maybe recording. His new image embodies a man who seems to have given into the temptations of mediocrity. It seems that when Bruce is hungry he calls the boys (I know...and the girls now) and they head into a studio, spend a few days, maybe a week together and presto, a new album is born. Working on a Dream was mostly made from songs he wrote while putting Magic together last year in fact, and for me the preparation for mediocrity was well underway when that story broke. What resulted in the releasing of Working on a Dream isn't mediocre though. Working on a Dream is the only E street band that he’s released in a while that captured my ears and made me realize that the Boss is still the man.
The CD begins with Outlaw Pete, which surely is another Pete Seeger classic that he’s covering, but the liners state it as being written by Bruce, it’s quite simply a neat little ditty that would feel at home on this album or the Seeger Sessions disc. We continue through the CD with songs that captivate the bluest collar within and he even takes us to the supermarket in what can only be a song that he wrote in the early seventies (Wild, Innocent and the E Street Shuffle cast off perhaps). Supermarket offers Springsteen’s first “f” bomb in a song, which now means to me the F word will be in the Oxford dictionary any day now! Overall I didn’t love the effort, but I liked it enough to listen a few times, and in the end it’s probably my favourite E Street effort since 1984’s Born in the USA and quite possibly my fave Springsteen effort since then as well.
On another note, I am careful to not overplay my love of Springsteen in talking with friends, however I have to say that if you didn’t catch his halftime performance at this year’s Super Bowl, then you missed what can only be described as the best halftime show ever!
U2 – I’ve listened to this new CD a grand total of once. While it’s not fair to criticize or praise anything based on a cursory listen, I have to say that this is a pretty cool sounding disc at first blush. What I liked most about it was the fact the catchy pop-ridden ditty that is the first single, Put on your boots, isn’t even the best or most popular sounding song on the record. Don’t get me wrong, Boots works as a first single, because it’s fun, it’s hip and it’s good, but by the time you get to it on the CD (track 6) you are already caught up in two or three other tunes, and that’s something that for me sets the great CD’s apart from the good ones. I need to listen to it a few more times, however I so far have no problem telling U2 fans around the globe, it’s a pretty good record, I think it’s worth the 15 bucks!
Other Stuff to listen to:
The Airborne Toxic Event (40 listens and it’s still my fave)
Bon Iver – Blood Bank (cool and different, mellow stuff)
Glasvegas – Glasvegas (from my fave city, great sound, well written, hard rock at times)
Lily Allen – It’s not me, it’s you (It’s an interesting piece, still not convinced that it’s great tho)
I suck at this....
I guess as blogger's go, I kind of suck.
Most bloggers that I read write their material very regularly, appeasing their readers with a daily commentary, maybe a weekly piece or in the very least a bi-weekly number. Add to that that bloggers are famous for referencing other bloggers and constantly promoting each other – which I don't do either, I seem to be exceptional at one thing in the world of blog – I'm a non-conformer with bad manners.
You still reading? Well that's cool, because to the folks that gave up on me – I'm about to give my credit where credit is due to a blogger. Well actually he's not a blogger, he's a writer for Esquire Magazine, or at least he was – no clue if he still is – Scott Raab has written a number of pieces for Esquire over the years and he's really got some great names to open up to him. Over the weekend as I prepared for the Oscars at home (no I don't watch them, I merely prepare for them) I happened upon an interview between Bill Murray and Scott Raab that took place almost 5 years ago. It was a great interview, captivating in fact and in particular, it wasn't a cookie-cutter (See Barbara Walters interviewing anyone for definition of cookie-cutter interviews). Scott Raab released a book a while back and it's a collection of his interview material called Real Hollywood Stories, and the material in there is priceless as well. He's a genius, this guy a really great writer, and just an average guy at that. Here's the Murray interview for you to read
http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ1204-DEC_MURRAY_rev_
Now go away and NEVER say I don't share things in my blog!
Now back to the Oscars….About three hours ago, my wife, lovely, talented and beautiful as she may be, asked me to turn the Oscars on the telly. But it's only 6:00pm, they don't start for another 2 or 3 hours….oh no the pre-show is on now!
So onto the pre-show we go….Wait, which one? There's about 300 of them. There's the Ryan Seacrest one which is really hideous, there's the Ben Mulroney one which is actually worse than the Seacrest one, but only slightly better than the other one, which is hosted by some guy I have never heard about. Then comes the Barbara Walters special, then some more red-carpet garbage then the show comes on. I suppose now that this is how my wife (lovely, talented and beautiful still) feels on the weekend of a big game when the pre-game starts with some wahoo Texan talking about the offensive lineman's hobby of knitting baby booties about 17 hours before the big game! My god we have sunken to new lows when the world watches as some fashionista sits in his or her rented Classy Formal wear crap and criticizes stars who wear outfits that cost more than the Gross National Product of most island nations! Bottom line is: The only people that care about this are….wait I better not go further lest someone reading this be offended! Anyways, let's move on to the Bawbwa Wawa interviews. I stomached the first and watched the second, but couldn't watch the third. Bawbwa is dead isn't she? Someone needs to tell the network. She's in the same category as Larry King, Dan Rather and Dick Clark – Dead with a pulse. She REALLLY wanted Mickey Rourke (complete with his shiny beige sockless loafer look – ewwwwww) to spills his guts on being suicidal – and in a show of who can be more out of quack, Mickey fought back the tears to tell her he wasn't. This type of television drama has been missing from my life for at least a year (since the last BawBwa interviews). Sadly, I felt it necessary to go to my bedroom and watch three episodes of the Simpson's instead of facing the third interview with….o I have no clue, but I'm fairly certain it was schlockly!
The funny thing is that I enjoy interviews, I enjoy Hollywood celebs and sadly I actually DO care who wins these kinds of awards, but realistically I might rather watch a Leaf's game on TV than to be subjected to the tripe that disguises itself as entertainment!
Aging....Gracefully?
I’ve always wondered when the transition would take place. I knew that it would be different for me, because of who I am and what I like, but nonetheless the transition has occurred and it’s far worse than I expected!
I can’t relate to the Grammy’s – and in general I’ve lost touch with today’s music.
The transition from child, to adult to old fart has happened.
I know that it’s different, because my parents REALLY hated my music, and I only “don’t like” my kids music. I know that it’s different because mom liked Sinatra and I love the Clash, AC/DC and Springsteen and even went as far as to introduce my kids to Black Sabbath at a young age ( I really wish I had a camera to film a 3 year old Jake in the back seat of my car banging his head on his seat restraint to Iron Man!). So I love some of the greatest bands in history, and am really in tune with the current crop of pop artists. There are two music genres that I don’t like, Opera and Crap. Crap is basically where my kids have laid their hats. Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake, Jonas Brothers, Lady Ga Ga. With the exception of Justin, there is a good chance that none of the artist’s will make it out of the 00’s!
Watching last night’s Grammy awards was intriguing to say the least. Highlights included Smokey and Jamie singing with the last living member of the Four Tops. Neil Diamond proving that he really is schlocky, that’s not just his style, it’s who he is! But to top it off, an inventor of heavy metal won the biggest awards of the night for his collaboration with a country and western fiddler from Illinois. Robert Plant, formerly of some English band called Led Zeppelin has sold 125 million albums worldwide. In the 1970’s Led Zeppelin spent about 5 years at the top of the charts, at one point earning the distinction of “greatest rock n roll band” (the stones were doing Disco – no one knew any better!). In his career prior to last night, Robert Plant had earned precisely two Grammys. One for the same album a year ago and one for a special get together duet with Jimmy Page in 1999. Allison Krauss, on the other hand, had previously won 20 Grammy’s – you figure it out. In accepting Artist or Album of the year, their fifth of the night, Plant’s comment was fairly precise – “In the old days this was called selling out, now this is called a nice way to spend a Sunday night!” really that’s what it comes down to. Was the Plant – Krauss duet the “best album” of 2008? Well I liked it a lot, but listed it 4th among the five nominees. Hey I like Ne-yo, what can I say! Radiohead could never win this award because they turned their back on NARAS by omitting a record company – GASP! In fact another great thing about the Grammy’s was that Radiohead won the Indie award which is called the Alternative Award, because the academy is really against the concept of Indie bands. In fact the academy nominated a grand total of one Indie band out of five nominees that were actually really Indie acts. Radiohead is the only record without label distribution. If one were able to computer Indie sales and put them against the numbers that the record companies report, Radiohead’s In Rainbow’s might have been the number one selling CD of 2008 – So sad that the world downplays downloading as a viable option of earning money for one’s intellectual properties!
Overall I actually think that the Grammy’s were a fairly decent show, but God I can’t stand the bubblegum pop that is being disguised as music these days – Run away and don’t come back if you are a boy band, girl band or anyone who has dated anyone in one of those bands. And pull up your damn pants Lil’ Wayne.
