If You're Listening To Music Right Now III

youtu.be/JoxuYDvHbqs

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfqq2Jkv64c[/youtube]

happy birthday, uhmerica

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6u_bVcemiQ[/youtube]

Poofter’s Froth, Wyoming
March Eleven Sixty-Seven
Take a letter,
Ms. Abetter,
An’ our pigeons
Will be homing
To our jobbers in Dakota
And to Merwyn, Minnesota
This is merely just a note about
Performance to our quota
Well, we’ve all come out
To show dem,
An’ the Elks have helped us
Load 'em . . .
Little packets full of jackets
Little rackets, little rackets
Little Poofter-Cloth Appointments
Little Poofter’s Froth Anointments
Little hoods, little goods
Little doo-dads from the woods
The entire stock is shipping
(Oh, our shod is hardly slipping!)
To our markets of the world
Our wrinkled pennants are unfurled!
T-shirt racks, rubber snacks,
Poster rolls with matching tacks,
Yes, a special beer for sports,
And paper cups that hold two quarts!
Everything a nation needs
For making hoopla while it feeds
The trash compactors, small reactors,
Mowers, blowers, throwers & the glowers
This is Buy-Cent-Any-All Salute (HYULK!)
Two hundred years have gone ka-poot!
(Ah but we have been astute!)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHadziRRY3c[/youtube]

for anyone interested in learning how to mangle a traditional tango with jazz be-bop, the following demonstration will be useful…

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUyyALDnOzU[/youtube]

For all those who are thought not to understand
youtu.be/LVADXEvxdiM

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ29lZtSzAQ[/youtube]

these were the best years of frank’s soloing. well i should say 69, from ‘hot rats’ forward, he stopped playing clean and started to dig in his gibson SG, pushing that sucker to its limits. in this solo (2:22) you can literally hear the pick-ups getting confused and overwhelmed by his vibrato bar use, muting and false harmonics. burn, muthafucker.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksnwEsPKO5s[/youtube]

Flash

AAAA-AHH!!

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXZDJwoYloI[/youtube]

remember this part? this track pwned every science fiction/action movie theme song of the whole 80s decade. you will rock… and don’t you ever forget it.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JmRM4LB3yc[/youtube]

‘oh well… who wants to live forever. hahahahaha… diiiiiive!!!

youtu.be/nvq4OnhMEO4

youtu.be/LjgndGuy77o

youtu.be/FyUNbrgLezI

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F7b4skyUy4[/youtube]

^ at first I was like ‘okay this is gonna be more of that corny anglo-saxon metal that all the angry and misunderstood white kids listen to’, but then she started growling and I was like 'holy fucking christ balls’.

What’s a smart fellow like yourself doing listening to that crap, gloom?

I’m listening to it because it’s creative, talented music.
It’s super catchy, colorful, spirited and unique.
Never heard anything quite like it.
I mean how many times can you listen to traditional metal, classic rock or some cheap, refried, watered down regurgitation of it?

  • it’s hilarious, when she did the death growl over the violin riff I burst into laughter.

for me, the idea of something like this - blending some traditonal music style into an element of metal - is usually ruined through/by the production of it… because it’s always contrived and overdone in the video. i can’t stand thematic videos, especially ones like that. they’re standing out in a field in europe somewhere dressed like eleventh century barbarians. all that’s missing are the battle axes. it’s one of those corny situations where a modern band tries to be patriotic by paying creative tribute to their heritage and history, and yet off stage they’d be indistinguishable from anyone else concerning their life styles such that what they really are is actually an effacement to what they pretend to hold sacred. this is the tremendous danger involved in artistic reproduction and symbolism; the depreciation of the object of art through the artist’s idiosyncracies. i just lost more respect for european culture because of that corny-ass video, gloom. thanks alot.

but yes, i understand your concern with wanting to find new forms of metal, especially today when just about every possible formula has already been tried and then reproduced into the ground. for me, the next logical step to be made is into the ‘djent’ genre. this is where standard styles of metal are forced to make significant compositional changes in order to remain creative. this had to be done to save metal, gloom. it is where metal meets fusion, the saving grace and energy for a style that has been dying since the 90s.

here’s one that rekindled my faith in metal… one that magnus ‘andy’ anderson turned me on to a couple years ago. now i had already known that there were plenty of polyrhythmic mathmetal bands out there… i just hadn’t been actively looking for them. once i listened to this i experienced a shortlived renaissance and began looking around again. bands like ‘plini’ and ‘polyphia’, for instance, are two that i found. but here’s the one that blew me away at a time when i was fast losing hope for metal. you’ll see here that there’s no need to dress up like barbarians and start growling into the microphone. the music tells the story (‘shut up and play your guitar’ - zappa)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmfzWpp0hMc[/youtube]

ah, but that’s the thing though. you weren’t supposed to laugh, and because you did, a critical disconnect happened between the artist and audience. what was intended to be taken seriously instead produced an undesired comic effect, and in that moment the artist becomes the accidental buffoon. the fine line that band walks is in trying to give depth and intensity to something that can go terribly wrong on account of the difficulty in expressing it. what is intended to deliver through force something that’s incredibly serious to the artist becomes silly and obnoxious because of that difficulty. when she started growling like an idiot, an unintentional anticlimax occurred. now you’re laughing while you should be psyched and preparing your horse for battle. see what i mean?

This is the opposite kind of metal I like.
It was cold, bland, lifeless, soulless, like a machine.
It was basically just the band wanking off, trying to show how technically proficient they were, and falling short of even that.
Wasn’t catchy at all, didn’t elicit an emotional response from me one way or another.
Wasn’t connected with anything relatable, or even human.

I listen to all kinds of rock and metal, sometimes I like more down to earth stuff, sometimes I like more fantastic stuff.
Sometimes I like weird, psychotic even.

I don’t see why music can’t be fantastic, I mean we go to the theater to watch historical epics and fantasy, so why not listen to historically epic music?
And why not celebrate one’s heritage?
It may have not much to do with where we are today, but it is where we came from, and still speaks to us on some level.

But I don’t take music all that seriously, for me it’s mainly about aesthetics, emotions, moods, or entertainment, something weird and interesting.
Music is something I do when my left brain needs a break from the world, or from research and writing about philosophy, society and current events, and my right brain takes over completely.
I would never intellectualize, or analyze it too critically.

And I don’t think you could lose any more respect for European culture, because you already have none, I suspect you’d prefer to snuff it out completely.

I’d be a bit surprised if they didn’t find some humor in this, but either way I don’t care, I had fun listening to the music and watching the video, that’s all that matters to me.
I didn’t have any fun listening to the metal you posted.
It was boring, instantly forgettable.

oh come on. europe brought the whole world out of the dark ages and was the father of every revolution conceivable; scientific, intellectual, philosophical, economic, industrial. anybody who does not recognize and appreciate this is an ass ranger. what turns me off is the unwarranted ethnocentricity concentrated around the outmoded and outdated sympathy for culture and nationalism that the european countries feel. two hundred years ago, sure, but grow the fuck up already, stop playing the bagpipes, and get with program. imaginary lines drawn in the dirt are steadily disappearing and one day the very concept of a ‘country’ will be obsolete. instead of fighting against this inevitability, those countries with any modicum of strength should be concerned with holding power over this future in the political and economic arena. battling for control over cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism and globalism rather than trying to prevent it, is the logical thing to do. you can’t stop it, so give it direction, make it useful, turn it into a tool.

lol i had this same conversation with the pedrosaurus months ago. you guys are so desensitized by all the posturing and posing on MTV, you automatically suspect that any technically skilled musician appearing in a video HAS to be showing off. not these guys, man. with that level of skill you aren’t concerned with impressing anyone, and you play for the love of the craft. clue number one is it’s instrumental nature. no need to write some stupid lyrics to fill a void created by your inability to play something interesting. there is poetry and story everywhere throughout this music, and not a single word need be said to hear it.

i see. okay, try this. recorded with the london symphony orchestra back when music was real. introducing… [pause for effect]… the mahavishnu orchestra!!

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0mlDKhn6Vo[/youtube]

note: everyone you see in that photo except mclaughlin is not playing on the apocalypse album. this one is with a whole nuther line-up.

just wait for the break at 3:01. don’t frickin’ stop the tape, dude.