HateSong - "Jump" by Van Halen

Let me first say that my hatred of "Jump" by Van Halen has little to do with the song itself. It's a wacky, if competent, ode to... something. This is Roth in total Life Coach mode, showing how awesome life can be if you just toss off some vague shackles and embrace your inner superhero. I used to hate David Lee Roth, viewing him as a goofy, show-boating wannabe superstar when tortured, angst ridden geniuses were more my thing. In the years since, I've come to accept and even enjoy his brand of showbiz lunacy, which has resulted in more than a few hilarious interviews. His music still doesn't really speak to me, though Eat 'Em & Smile, if the vocals were removed, would be a classic in complex, prog-tinged, algebraically dense math rock.

Instead, my issue is with Eddie Van Halen's guitar tone. It never much occurred to me why anyone would be a fanatic for a musician simply because of their virtuosity. The player can be highly skilled, but you still have to listen to their songs. With "Eruption", Van Halen managed to take a solo electric guitar piece and couch it in ways the Heavy Metal Parking Lot crowd could dig: his considerable skill is on display, but in a form that has the kind of melodic structure to keep the listener interested.

The problem is, trying to balance a virtuoso performance with the other elements of a full-band song does a disservice to both. The final result is truly a mix: if the vocals are all over the place, they reduce the rest of the instruments to a bland backing track; if the drums are front-and-center, it may as well not have any harmonic content. Van Halen tried to have it both ways, trying to cram a solo guitar part into a standard song. They did this by recording the guitars "hot", that is, the sound wave just grazes into the territory where it becomes a blurry, distorted mess. Its all peaks and no valleys; the frequencies normally mixed lower are raised up, eliminating their support roles and making every sound across the audio spectrum have the same level of importance. For a solo guitar track, this is fine, if a little exhausting to listen to. The audience gets a peek into every facet of the guitars tone (all at once!) and the guitar commands all of the attention.

The thing is, there are 3 other guys in Van Halen vying for space in the mix. Michael Anthony's bass was always workmanlike and rarely showy, but Alex Van Halen's drum kit included so many pieces that only a Guitar Center employee could identify them all. Not to mention David Lee Roth's vocals, which, as most humans, resides in the same neighborhood of the spectrum as a guitar.

In order to make the vocals fit, but without losing any definition in the guitar tone, the guitar track was fed through another series of compressors and equalizers to surgically remove it from the frequencies that Roth's vocals, which would be much more noticeably altered with a lot of processing. The result is a guitar tone that is somehow bright yet flat, like when someone overuses the Dust & Scratches tool in Photoshop and the result makes the person look like a mannequin. It's oppressive, a fuck-you to the idea of anyone wanting to hear anything other than a coked out rock star's guitar. When it comes on the radio, I immediately change the station.

A Better Ending to True Detective

SPOILERS ABOUND

Instead of the green paint leading the detectives to Childress, they instead follow a trail of missing documents and family birth records that hint at a connection between long-established families in Louisiana. Carcosa is on a property that pops up in enough records to point them in that direction.

Cohle and Hart not only find Childress in Carcosa, but undeniable proof that the cult is a vast conspiracy with ties to the highest levels of political office all along the Gulf. They are an ancient pagan cult that thrived in secret following the Civil War. Childress kills both of the detectives, continuing the pessimistic view of humanity that the show had already followed. Everything Rust & Cohle accomplished was for naught: the cult survived, Childress claimed 3 more victims, and the murders continue. The show is called True Detective, not True Justice.

NASA

In 1988 I was living in San Antonio, Texas. My elementary school had a science club, and in hopes of scoring some points during show & tell, my Dad had a friend who worked at NASA mail me a packet of promotional sheets of planned NASA projects, like Space Station Freedom (whose plans were later turned into the International Space Station), a lunar base, and getting man to Mars by 2019 (!). The late '80s were a heady time for planned space exploration; Reagan's Star Wars program and the Cold War put a fire under NASA's seat, but a combination of budget restrictions, accidents (the Challenger tragedy was barely 3 years old), fall of the Berlin Wall and the USSR becoming the Russian Federation put a stop to most of them. I can't remember if anyone was impressed by my paintings (one of which is currently for sale on Allposters). Besides a pair of Mickey Mouse ears from my childhood, I think this are the oldest possessions I still have.

Alan B. Chinchar was an illustrator and ad executive who painted some of the most recognizable NASA space art. His website is still active, though hasn't been updated since 2008.

The booms extending from the solar array are the Canadarm system, used to move items around the outside of the station & payload from a supply vessel (later fitted with a camera to inspect the shuttle for damage). Judging by the back of this promo sheet, it is one of the few planned components of Space Station Freedom that was actually used in the ISS. 

All I can find about Harold Smelcer is that he probably illustrated a children's book called Christopher's Little Airplane.

From what I know about life on the actual ISS, that is way too many people in 1 module, and the entire inside gets covered in bacteria before too long. In short, space stations are like living in a petri dish. 

At least Harold didn't pull a Gravity and had the long hair look like it's in microgravity too. From what I've seen of the actual ISS, there is not enough crap floating around in this artist's rendition. 

This is essentially a hodgepodge of potential living situations in a proposed lunar base. The thermal radiator looks a lot like a giant volleyball net. 

Astronauts performing experiments on Mars while a freaking dust storm approaches. None of these promotional materials make any reference to sending a robot to Mars; y'know, the thing we actually ended up doing. From the back: President Bush set a goal for such a landing for the year 2019.

Jim Yoshii Pile-Up "Silver Sparkler"

While a good percentage of rock music dwells on depression, it rarely manages to zero in on the myriad problems it causes. The usual stock lyric is Me vs. Them and They Just Don’t Get Me. That’s self loathing, which tends to be more of a character flaw than a diagnosed problem. Think the world doesn't understand you? Great. Join the rest of the world in realizing you aren't a snowflake, all we have to do in life is live then die, etc  etc. Actual depression is like a tidal wave you see coming but can’t do anything about. You’re under the waves, but still breathing, and with any luck you can make it to the surface. With simple, unadorned language, The Jim Yoshii Pile-Up encapsulated depression (and specifically bipolar disorder) in their 2005 track “Silver Sparklers”.

Jim Yoshii Pile-Up were around from 1997 til 2006; singer Paul Gozenbach regularly releases similar-sounding records on his bandcamp as a solo artist. Their records didn't make much of a dent outside indie rock circles in their lifetime, and not much has changed since then. They got a little bit of ink when indie music online retailer Insound released a split of them and Xiu Xiu as part of the Tour Support Series. I would never have even heard the band if Insound hadn’t incorrectly linked an MP3 of a Glenn Branca track I had tried to download, instead getting their track "Seattle, WA". Already a fan of Xiu Xiu, I dug deeper and found a handful of MP3s, including “Silver Sparkler”. Their record label, Absolutely Kosher, has gone on hiatus. While MP3s of all their albums are easily available, they seem to be out of print physically.

The title possibly refers to one of the side effects of Lithium, the mood stabilizing drug that can cause hallucinations, among a whole host of other side effects. The narrator seems to be looking back on his life before psychiatric medication, when a fraught relationship threatened to cause irreparable harm. Despite being under heavy medication, a bit of bitterness bubbles to the surface,

They say rats flee sinking ships / I think that you could learn something from rats / ask them in your traps

But maybe that’s just the scars of old bitterness. The song ends with a coda of apologies, taking stock of mistakes and realizing their toll. The old tidal wave is back. Would you rather feel everything or feel  nothing?