museless aiming
- 6 items tagged 1979
- 1 item tagged cloud
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- 10 items tagged film
- 4 items tagged git
- 1 item tagged hifi
- 1 item tagged linux
- 4 items tagged literature
- 26 items tagged music
- 4 items tagged musing
- 2 items tagged novels
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26 items tagged music
Gimme Shelter
Gimme Shelter is a beautifully edited glimpse of late 60s life. It chronicles the (lack of) planning and execution of the free concert at Altamont in December 1969. The focus is naturally on the Rolling Stones, but it goes beyond the formulaic concert footage that one expects and receives from it.
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Gang of Four
Last night I saw Gang of Four perform songs from their 1979 album, Entertainment! I love the album, but the show was even better than I was expecting.
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Trust
Of his 1981 album Trust, Costello writes:
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Meat Puppets Concert
Oddly exactly one year after my last article on the Meat Puppets, I write about them again. I saw them on Monday at Scala.
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Thinking about Syd Barrett
Tonight, listening to a vinyl rip of Loveless and Harvest, I started reading about Kevin Shields, then Brian Wilson, then Syd Barrett.
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A romantic allusion in Doggystyle
So to write this post I have to admit that I was listening to Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle tonight, but if you have it, listen to track 5, 'Tha Shiznit'. Sound familiar? The bassline, hook, and guy making noises are all Grieg's 'Hall of the Mountain King'. I wonder if he was watching Fritz Lang's M when he came up with it.
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Bob Dylan
Here starts the obligatory article about Dylan.
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PJ Harvey
My obsession with PJ Harvey has ebbed of late, but I was extremely excited by listening to To Bring You My Love just now, because there's such a clear reference in "I Think I'm a Mother" to Captain Beefheart's "Dropout Boogie" (from Safe as Milk).
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The Decline of the Album
Singles are up, but albums are down. Can't say it's very surprising, as this has been a decline that's forty years in the making. Digital music has simply sealed the albums' fate, not radically changed its direction.
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Nine Inch Nails
So, I've been listening to Year Zero or Zero Year or Zero Wing or whatever it's called, and even though it's (musically) standard NIN fare, it's (topically) starting to get sort of annoying. Artistically I don't think Reznor will ever top The Fragile (1999) but his last two have been decent by today's standards. It's just that he's changing little, and most of his developments are for the worse. Not that Pretty Hate Machine (1989) didn't have its catchy political pretensions ('God money nail me up against the wall' etc.), but somehow it wasn't as annoying. The sex/money/God mix with an occasional ounce of politics just isn't doing it for me anymore.
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Buzzcocks
Enjoying Another Music in a different Kitchen (1978). They're like the Sex Pistols, but more talented, less annoying, and they sing love songs.
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Leonard Cohen
First experience with 'Chelsea Hotel' was very painfully different from many listens to Songs from a Room. That's all, I don't even think of you that often... very Boss.
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1979
By way of explanation of the 1979 tag, my pet theory of the moment is that 1979 was the best year in all of music history. Don't get me wrong -- I love music from gregorian chants to stuff from 2007. I'm just saying that I think humanity may have passed its peak, and its peak was in 1979.
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Musical desire
This has been inspired first by a critic (I forget which) who wrote that 'Robert Smith sings "never" the way Joey Ramone sings "wanna";--that little word implies an entire philosophy of being', followed by subsequent listening and a few conversations. I'm just interested in what various song writers want.
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Stupid Rhymes
So I don't have time for a full diatribe, but I thought I'd start this page off with some stupid rhymes. Only requirement is that the band have decent rhymes normaly; obviously I'm not going to get into current pop or hip-hop, where it would be the fruitless endeavour of a lifetime to make a page of non-stupid rhymes. But I'll start with the Beatles, 'She's a Woman', which I haven't heard recently but it was suddenly on my mind:
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Talking Heads
Absolute trust keeps me going in the right direction
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Soft Cell
Soft Cell is a band whose reputation has fallen by the wayside. Everyone knows their cover of Gloria Jones' 'Tainted Love', and probably the fact that an oft-played version of that track is itself tainted by its remix with another of their covers (of the Supremes' 'Where Did Our Love Go?') has destroyed the image that their downright masterpiece Nonstop Erotic Cabaret should have given them.
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The Smiths
It was too sedate for many months but now occasionally haunts me. I really don't know and I really don't care.
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Echo & the Bunnymen
Their first album, Crocodiles (1980) is growing on me. I had started with Ocean Rain (1984), which is of course great, but I actually think their best album (of the ones I know) is Porcupine despite what allmusic has to say about the matter. Shocked by how different What Are You Going to Do with Your Life? (1999) sounds but perhaps I shouldn't be, fifteen years is a while.
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The Kinks
'She was so jealous of her sister...'
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Meat Puppets
While Up on the Sun (1985) isn't nearly as good as Meat Puppets II (1984), the opening line is growing on me: 'A long time ago, I turned to myself and said, "You, you are my daughter"'.
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Madness
So despite its incredibly stupid intro, Madness' One Step Beyond (1979) is a pretty good album. Reminds me of The Specials' self-titled, and both are a clear influence on early Sublime.
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Of Montreal
Thanks to Tommy for introducing me to Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (2007). I've been listening to that and The Gay Parade (1999) recently. I think the former is a great album, in the vein of Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Lou Reed's Berlin, maybe Springsteen's The River. If it's not quite as universal of those more masterful relationship-breakdown albums, it's more present.
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Blondie
So yeah, Blondie. So far? Started with Parallel Lines which is typically regarded as their best, although I've been getting into their other stuff. Some random thoughts follow.
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New York Dolls
The New York Dolls' Too Much Too Soon is relatively good for running. The NY Dolls are bombastic, somehow reckless-sounding, funny. It's a great album despite its being difficult to praise. Catchy but not particularly substantive, the experience is more like watching a ridiculous character in a movie than hearing music. Not that I don't recommend them, but if someone were to seriously ask me to defend my taste I don't think I could do it. Still it's somehow great in its own way. Exciting, fun music, not my standard fare. 'Just like puss in boots...'
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Pop nihilism
The best is, of course, Peggy Lee's 'Is That All There Is?' That was my only thought when starting this article, but I may have to expand it. Was that all there was?
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