I was found out last night in studio when I didn’t recognize Nine Inch Nail’s “Closer“—my elderly studiomates latched on but I was just “huh?”
Tag Archive for 'Music'
So, iTunes was joyfully shuffling my music when Philip Glass’s “Pruit Igoe” (Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack) comes on… and I realize, holy shit, that’s the awesome music behind Grand Theft Auto IV’s trailer! It’s been on my hard drive since ‘03, but I never really liked it until I associated it with an exceptionally violent and gory video game with a cool Liberty City *cough*New York*cough* fast-forward clip sequence. (Come to think of it, that trailer totally ripped-off Koyaanisqatsi.)
By the way, Pruitt-Igoe was a huge, horrible housing project in St. Louis, famous for being demolished. The 1972 demolition of Pruitt-Igoe was the symbolic death of the Heroic Age of Architecture, a gleaming time when wrinkly horn-rimmed architects sought to mold neighborhoods, cities, entire countries with the cleansing might of tabula rasa Modernism. Architects learned their place, and the Age of Wallpaper* began.
Everyone, country music doesn’t suck that much! Some of it’s actually pretty good!
Yes yes, I know, it’s crazy talk, but the thing is, country’s really just rap for white people. Instead of blunts, 40s, and bitches, you’ve got Christ, brandy, and bitches. Rappers talk about growing up in da ‘hood, cheating girls, religion, loss, money, and the nation. Country singers talk about growing up on da’ farm, cheating wives, religion, loss, money, and the nation. “I wish I’d been there when my mama died. I miss my husband in Iraq. Babies and old people rule. If I die, take care of my kids for me.” (Willman) There’s lots of bad rap, and there’s lots of bad country, but for both there are diamonds in the rough.
And, it’s not like you have to be a Bush-stroking Bible-thumpin’ trailer jockey to like country. I mean, I like hip-hop and I’m not black. I like J-Rock but I’m not Japanese. I like My Chemical Romance but I haven’t slit my wrists. I like classical but I’m not a 19th-century Austrian. I like electronica but I’m not on Ecstasy. I like indie pop but I’m not a hipster… oh, hmm.
Anyway, once you get over the chipper guitar strumming and… that twang thing… it grows on you. It’s simple and honest. For everyone constantly trying to get a new music fix, well, look, it’s the last [obvious*] damn frontier! It’s either country or some weird Gaelic shit.
I suggest Begonias (Caitlin Cary And Thad Cockrell).
*Kunal notes that, in fact, there are other musical frontiers to be imperialized and subsequently exploited for their rich glittering veins of obscure and bizarre.
I went to ZoukOut Saturday night (morning?), an 8-to-8 four-stage “music festival”-slash-beach-rave on Sentosa Island. We got there around 10:30 PM and left around 5:45 AM; I got home at about 7 and fell asleep despite imbibing a mysterious Redbull/vodka combination supplied by wealthier mates. There were four stages, the House/Techno “Main” Stage, the Bad 80s/90s Dance Stage, the Second Tier Live Bands Stage, and some other stage I don’t really remember. We spent most of the night at the Main Stage, which was like a club except with sand. I think some guy named David Crawford (?) was spinning for a few hours. At one point I almost repeated the infamous Stanford Incident, but I muscled it back down.
It was a strangely meaningless experience. There’s the careless clubbing attitude, the inhibition-losing memory-fogging alcohol, the huge dark masses of people, the flashing lights, the clouds of smoke, and the music itself—thick visceral beats and ornamental words, drowning everything in earshot. So much of it was about forgetting everything and remembering nothing. At the end I felt like I was wandering a hazy dream, minutes from waking up. I had a pretty good time, but why.
*Photos by Jean-Marc
The new Zune commercials are shit. (The Zune is Microsoft’s coming iPod rip-off.)
Why are the Zune commercials quite the crappy? Most of them look like a bunch of random “youth” stock footage. Sometimes, at the end, there’s a brief bit about the Zune’s features. The two parts are totally unconnected, but still jammed together, like the balding managers at Microsoft were hoping that the Zune would benefit from the footage’s residual coolness.
The iPod Ads, by comparison, constantly but unintrusively show the product being used. The “silhouette” dancers are brilliant because they make it easy to see yourself as one of them, the energetically cool. Both the iPod and the “cool” are highlighted and combined, with everything else blanked out, so that you form a strong association between the two. That is, “buy an iPod and this’ll be you.” That’s what the best advertising does: it makes you feel incomplete and inferior unless you buy whatever’s being advertised.
In other words, the Zune ads are awkward and clueless—Microsoft getting lost trying to imitate some sort of vaguely indie generic casualness. Apple’s ads actually advertise the iPod.
Recent Comments