That advice is identical to the 10,000 Hours rule, though as a child it was a lot easier to grasp a giant stack of papers.
Monday, April 8, 2013
Larry Marder on practice
At some point in the mid-90s, Nickelodean (or maybe it was the Disney Channel) showed a brief interview with Beanworld creator Larry Marder. I think he was being interviewed by a kid, who asked him how to get good at making comics. Larry held his hand about 2 feet above the desk he was sitting at and said something to the effect of "start with a stack of paper this high, and draw on every sheet. When you get done with that stack, get another stack and draw on every sheet. The only way to get better at drawing is to do it over and over."
Monday, March 11, 2013
San Antonio
Google Maps has new, higher-quality street level pics of the house I lived in 88-95 in San Antonio. As with most adults looking back at childhood homes, the biggest surprise is scale.
- I thought we had a huge front yard, but judging by the pictures, I could cross it in about 4 steps.
- The walk to the corner to catch the school bus always seemed like an eternity. It's 3 houses away.
- The house on the corner used to have giant bushes blocking the view of the pool. Apparently the new owners aren't as concerned with privacy.
- There used to be a huge tree in the middle of our front lawn, but it's long gone.
- The house across the street was an incongruous split-level in a plat of mostly ranch houses.
- The day we moved in I got lost trying to walk back from a house that was about 100 yards away from ours. I managed to mix up left from right and my Mom called the cops.
- All I remember about the neighbor on the right is that a handyman broke into his house after doing some remodeling for him, and the dog was so used to him that he didn't bark. I don't remember a thing about the people on the left except a tornado knocked down a panel of our shared fence.
- Whoever lives there now has installed a canopy that covers the backyard deck (which ran across the entire back of the house). That's a good idea but imagine the cost of installing a canopy that covers half of your backyard.
- There was gang activity in the surrounding area, and occasional gang tags on fences, but I never felt unsafe. However, I notice most of the houses have metal security doors that they didn't used to.
Monday, February 4, 2013
Joel RL Phelps / The Downer Trio
In 1999 I was going to high school in Dayton, Ohio, a town where even in the boom of the late '90s had seen its best days pass by. There was a record store in the city's designated "hipster" neighborhood, a couple blocks of cobblestone roads called the Oregon District. Gem City Records had overpriced new CDs, a couple shelves of vinyl, and an enviable used-CD selection. In fact there was a mini economy of used CDs in the Dayton area, evidenced by the now-defunct chain CD Connection. I later learned that the supply was partially fed by teens who realized the anti-theft detectors at Hot Topic were in fact just cardboard.
My favorite part about Gem City Records was that they seemed to carry every music magazine published in the known universe, though they never seemed to sell any. I'd flip through issues of The Wire and Alternative Press to get an idea of what was cool, then buy the CD at Best Buy for $9.99 (I wasn't about to drop $15 on a CD I just read about just because it was sold at an indie record store full of surly clerks). This was the late '90s, so Best Buy still had a pretty big CD section, though today it's usually no more than a couple aisles of Taylor Swift records.
I was flipping through one magazine (or maybe it was just a free saddle-stitched flyer) and read a 2- or 3- page article about a band whose singer I was vaguely familiar with, The Downer Trio. Joel RL Phelps had previously been in indie stalwarts Silkworm, which he left in 1994 after the release of their album Libertine. I had heard of Silkworm through my subscription to Guitar World, which right before the nu-metal explosion had given the editors free reign, resulting in records like Neurosis' Through Silver in Blood and Silkworm's Firewater being named some of their Records of the Year.
The article was either to promote their second full-length (but third release, depending on how you count), 3, or their forthcoming record Blackbird; they were released within a year of each other. The writer focused on how quiet the band was, and as a recent discoverer of Low, I was intrigued. But it was the description of Phelps voice that made me want to track his records down. Here was generally quiet, folk-based music, but over it was something akin to Jeff Mangum, who had just released In the Aeroplane Over the Sea the year before. However, the nascent internet was no help (we still had AOL and the actual internet was a Big Scary Place), and the multiple ways the records were credited made searching for them difficult.
In 2000 I was at college in Bowling Green, Ohio, with a T1 line at my disposal to dig through the waning days of Napster. I finally found two MP3 by Joel RL Phelps: "Apologies Accepted", though the file cut off after a minute and a half, and "Now You Are Found", which was harrowing even before I knew it was about the death of his drug-addicted sister.
However most Napster or internet searches brought back nearly equally obscure Americana musician Kelly Joe Phelps, though the combination of RL/R.L. and the terminology that seemed to equate him equally as a solo artist and part of his own backing band usually only resulted in a (now-dead) fan page, and later his own (also dead) personal homepage.
I can't even find the old fan page on the Internet Wayback Machine; suffice it to say it was sparse, though it did have MP3s of an acoustic session on KEXP the band had done years ago. A burned copy of that session and the Blackbird CD-R I made in the campus radio station accompanied me on the semester I spent at art school in Italy, surrounded by surly locals and the uniformly sociopath rich white students that seem to be attracted to study abroad programs. This was 2003, when the iPod was still in its infancy; I saw a student with one and I thought it was a tape player. It shows the quality of those CDs (2 of only a dozen I could bring) that I can still listen to them without that exhausting feeling you get when you've listened to a record too much.
The website had some song lyrics, but those (and some guitar tabs) were removed by the site owner because he thought they ruined people's interpretations. I agree: the one thing all of my favorite records have in common is a lack of a lyric sheet.
////
By 2002 I had made a couple friends who were DJs at the campus radio station. It was a small room full of stale air in one of the buildings I never had a class in, but the walls were lined with the station's CD library. Me and my friends would cram ourselves into what amounted to a closet to hang out during someone's shift, trying to figure out how to use the high-end CD replicator that sat in the equipment rack. The most recent acquisitions were stored next to the DJ's chair, but in the far corner were dusty relics not touched since the days Pizzicato Five were popular. Scanning the spines I see one that looks like a handwritten CD-R liner, though someone was thoughtful enough to use a sharpie to write Downer Trio Blackbird on the front of the jewel case. It sounds so cheesy, but I literally had to catch my breath when I saw that. There was no way it could hold up to what I thought it sounded like in my head, but I managed to figure out the CD replicator and made a copy that night.
Side note: This practice of CD copying was generally accepted in moderation, though if you're a fan of one man band Juffage, you should know he pretty much camped out in the radio station for days on end and ripped most of their CDs to his laptop.
Blackbird sounded exactly how I envisioned it. After years of that article rattling around in my head, I could finally see if my thoughts would match up with the concrete reality of a band barely written about and almost impossible to find. If it had sucked, I guess I wouldn't be able to go back to that mysterious pocket of memories as I transitioned into adulthood. But instead everything sounded perfect: the band was so in sync that the songs seemed to nearly topple over before righting themselves at the last moment. Despite the initial three-song blast, the rest of the album was exactly as quiet and forlorn as the sound in my head that the article had planted.
////
In 2004 I had an off-campus studio apartment 100 yards from the railroad tracks when I heard there was a new album on the way. I eventually found the one-page website of Moneyshot records, a name the owner must have been sure would return mostly porn if you Googled it. The single page had a release date and instructions for ordering direct, so I sent a check to an apartment in Washington State and hoped for the best.
A couple weeks later the CD arrived: 2 CD set with two bonus CD-Rs for ordering direct: a radio show (in WMV to thwart piracy) and some MPEGs of a show from 2000. Here's the only one I can find online.
Unlike the recorded version, which rests on a throbbing beat and palm-muted guitars, this rendition of "Kelly Grand Forks" ditches percussion altogether and replaces distorted chords with fingerpicking and slide guitar. Whether this is an embryonic version or just what they decided to do that night, I'm always happy when a band tries out a different arrangement live. Bands complaining they can't do a song live need to remember that The Who used to do Tommy with just bass/drums/guitar/voice.
Of course Moneyshot Records seems to have disappeared not long after this album came out. I wish someone like Merge would step up to the plate and reissue all of his stuff; then again, there's probably not too many people clamoring for it.
////
In 2006 I had a full time job and enough money to foolishly label some of it as "discretionary", so instead of trying to find new copies of the rest of his catalog, I just bought them used on Amazon. A previous attempt to buy new copies resulted in Forced Exposure sending me one that I already owned (they were really nice about giving me a refund though). A week later and I had the rest of his discography. No more waiting, no more thinking about a sound for years before I can hear it. The resulting binge was nice, but I can't help but think I would have savored each one more if I'd had to wait a couple years in between.
////
So late last year I'm listening to an interview with Karl Hendricks on Low Times. Curious to read more about the Karl Hendricks Trio, I went to one of his labels site. The first news listing was that they had a couple vinyl copies of 3 ready to ship. I'm normally not a completest in that sense, but it was only like $10 and besides, if nothing else the art would look really good in the 12" format.
When I first listened to it I noticed a LOT of high-end crackle; whether it's the mastering or my stereo, it was kind of a bummer, but I still have the CD.
My favorite part about Gem City Records was that they seemed to carry every music magazine published in the known universe, though they never seemed to sell any. I'd flip through issues of The Wire and Alternative Press to get an idea of what was cool, then buy the CD at Best Buy for $9.99 (I wasn't about to drop $15 on a CD I just read about just because it was sold at an indie record store full of surly clerks). This was the late '90s, so Best Buy still had a pretty big CD section, though today it's usually no more than a couple aisles of Taylor Swift records.
I was flipping through one magazine (or maybe it was just a free saddle-stitched flyer) and read a 2- or 3- page article about a band whose singer I was vaguely familiar with, The Downer Trio. Joel RL Phelps had previously been in indie stalwarts Silkworm, which he left in 1994 after the release of their album Libertine. I had heard of Silkworm through my subscription to Guitar World, which right before the nu-metal explosion had given the editors free reign, resulting in records like Neurosis' Through Silver in Blood and Silkworm's Firewater being named some of their Records of the Year.
The article was either to promote their second full-length (but third release, depending on how you count), 3, or their forthcoming record Blackbird; they were released within a year of each other. The writer focused on how quiet the band was, and as a recent discoverer of Low, I was intrigued. But it was the description of Phelps voice that made me want to track his records down. Here was generally quiet, folk-based music, but over it was something akin to Jeff Mangum, who had just released In the Aeroplane Over the Sea the year before. However, the nascent internet was no help (we still had AOL and the actual internet was a Big Scary Place), and the multiple ways the records were credited made searching for them difficult.
- Warm Springs Night is technically a Joel RL Phleps solo record, as is the Alita Aleta 7"
- The Downer Trio EP is credited to The Downer Trio
- 3 is credited to Joel RL Phelps : The Downer Trio, though I suspect the colon is a relic of the time it was in the hipster toolkit of graphic designers.
- Blackbird has its credits written in illegible handwriting, so attribution depends on the mood of whoever entered it into CDDB.
- Inland Empires EP is by Joel RL Phelps ≈ The Downer Trio, where the designer discovered the glyphs window
- Customs' cover just smashes it all together, though Joel RL Phelps and The Downer Trio are on separate lines.
////
In 2000 I was at college in Bowling Green, Ohio, with a T1 line at my disposal to dig through the waning days of Napster. I finally found two MP3 by Joel RL Phelps: "Apologies Accepted", though the file cut off after a minute and a half, and "Now You Are Found", which was harrowing even before I knew it was about the death of his drug-addicted sister.
However most Napster or internet searches brought back nearly equally obscure Americana musician Kelly Joe Phelps, though the combination of RL/R.L. and the terminology that seemed to equate him equally as a solo artist and part of his own backing band usually only resulted in a (now-dead) fan page, and later his own (also dead) personal homepage.
I can't even find the old fan page on the Internet Wayback Machine; suffice it to say it was sparse, though it did have MP3s of an acoustic session on KEXP the band had done years ago. A burned copy of that session and the Blackbird CD-R I made in the campus radio station accompanied me on the semester I spent at art school in Italy, surrounded by surly locals and the uniformly sociopath rich white students that seem to be attracted to study abroad programs. This was 2003, when the iPod was still in its infancy; I saw a student with one and I thought it was a tape player. It shows the quality of those CDs (2 of only a dozen I could bring) that I can still listen to them without that exhausting feeling you get when you've listened to a record too much.
The website had some song lyrics, but those (and some guitar tabs) were removed by the site owner because he thought they ruined people's interpretations. I agree: the one thing all of my favorite records have in common is a lack of a lyric sheet.
////
By 2002 I had made a couple friends who were DJs at the campus radio station. It was a small room full of stale air in one of the buildings I never had a class in, but the walls were lined with the station's CD library. Me and my friends would cram ourselves into what amounted to a closet to hang out during someone's shift, trying to figure out how to use the high-end CD replicator that sat in the equipment rack. The most recent acquisitions were stored next to the DJ's chair, but in the far corner were dusty relics not touched since the days Pizzicato Five were popular. Scanning the spines I see one that looks like a handwritten CD-R liner, though someone was thoughtful enough to use a sharpie to write Downer Trio Blackbird on the front of the jewel case. It sounds so cheesy, but I literally had to catch my breath when I saw that. There was no way it could hold up to what I thought it sounded like in my head, but I managed to figure out the CD replicator and made a copy that night.
Side note: This practice of CD copying was generally accepted in moderation, though if you're a fan of one man band Juffage, you should know he pretty much camped out in the radio station for days on end and ripped most of their CDs to his laptop.
Blackbird sounded exactly how I envisioned it. After years of that article rattling around in my head, I could finally see if my thoughts would match up with the concrete reality of a band barely written about and almost impossible to find. If it had sucked, I guess I wouldn't be able to go back to that mysterious pocket of memories as I transitioned into adulthood. But instead everything sounded perfect: the band was so in sync that the songs seemed to nearly topple over before righting themselves at the last moment. Despite the initial three-song blast, the rest of the album was exactly as quiet and forlorn as the sound in my head that the article had planted.
////
In 2004 I had an off-campus studio apartment 100 yards from the railroad tracks when I heard there was a new album on the way. I eventually found the one-page website of Moneyshot records, a name the owner must have been sure would return mostly porn if you Googled it. The single page had a release date and instructions for ordering direct, so I sent a check to an apartment in Washington State and hoped for the best.
A couple weeks later the CD arrived: 2 CD set with two bonus CD-Rs for ordering direct: a radio show (in WMV to thwart piracy) and some MPEGs of a show from 2000. Here's the only one I can find online.
Unlike the recorded version, which rests on a throbbing beat and palm-muted guitars, this rendition of "Kelly Grand Forks" ditches percussion altogether and replaces distorted chords with fingerpicking and slide guitar. Whether this is an embryonic version or just what they decided to do that night, I'm always happy when a band tries out a different arrangement live. Bands complaining they can't do a song live need to remember that The Who used to do Tommy with just bass/drums/guitar/voice.
Of course Moneyshot Records seems to have disappeared not long after this album came out. I wish someone like Merge would step up to the plate and reissue all of his stuff; then again, there's probably not too many people clamoring for it.
////
In 2006 I had a full time job and enough money to foolishly label some of it as "discretionary", so instead of trying to find new copies of the rest of his catalog, I just bought them used on Amazon. A previous attempt to buy new copies resulted in Forced Exposure sending me one that I already owned (they were really nice about giving me a refund though). A week later and I had the rest of his discography. No more waiting, no more thinking about a sound for years before I can hear it. The resulting binge was nice, but I can't help but think I would have savored each one more if I'd had to wait a couple years in between.
////
So late last year I'm listening to an interview with Karl Hendricks on Low Times. Curious to read more about the Karl Hendricks Trio, I went to one of his labels site. The first news listing was that they had a couple vinyl copies of 3 ready to ship. I'm normally not a completest in that sense, but it was only like $10 and besides, if nothing else the art would look really good in the 12" format.
When I first listened to it I noticed a LOT of high-end crackle; whether it's the mastering or my stereo, it was kind of a bummer, but I still have the CD.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Amanda Palmer
Nobody got hurt when Amanda Palmer made $1 million on her Kickstarter. Personally I think her popularity is a closed loop: Everyone who planned on buying her album has already given to her Kickstarter, and the kind of music she writes is unlikely to hit in a mainstream way. Most of the hate came from people who don't like her music. I don't like her music. But making music that doesn't appeal to me doesn't hurt anyone.
But then she asked fans to perform with her on her tour in exchange for... what exactly? Beer, hi-fives and hugs? The chance to say you performed with Amanda Palmer? Performing for Amanda Palmer for free doesn't prove anything about your talents as a musician. It just proves you'd play with Amanda Palmer for free. With that announcement, she is now hurting people. There are thousands of talented horn and string players in America who are teaching music or working some other day job to pay the bills. Considering the influence musicals and big band have had on her music, many of them are probably fans of Amanda Palmer. They might even be willing to tour with her for a reduced scale wage. But I guarantee right now there's dozens of A- and B-level singer songwriters and their managers waiting to see if this amateur volunteer orchestra will work so they can try it themselves.
But then she asked fans to perform with her on her tour in exchange for... what exactly? Beer, hi-fives and hugs? The chance to say you performed with Amanda Palmer? Performing for Amanda Palmer for free doesn't prove anything about your talents as a musician. It just proves you'd play with Amanda Palmer for free. With that announcement, she is now hurting people. There are thousands of talented horn and string players in America who are teaching music or working some other day job to pay the bills. Considering the influence musicals and big band have had on her music, many of them are probably fans of Amanda Palmer. They might even be willing to tour with her for a reduced scale wage. But I guarantee right now there's dozens of A- and B-level singer songwriters and their managers waiting to see if this amateur volunteer orchestra will work so they can try it themselves.
Here's what I think happened: Amanda Palmer saw her Kickstarter grow bigger and much quicker than she anticipated, got even more ambitious, and really upped the ante on how she was going to use the money. The album packaging became more elaborate, only the best materials would be used. Then, maybe while choosing what texture of paper to line the limited edition vinyl case, someone showed her how much this would really cost. Careful planning would have kept her from seemingly getting in over her head. $1 million is a lot of money, a seemingly limitless amount. But as she said in her blog post, the breakdown of cost per unit adds up quickly. I think she was intoxicated by the generosity of her fans, and perhaps thought that if they think she's special enough to warrant $1 million, they would give her their talents as musicians so she wouldn't have to skimp on her (incredibly elaborate) product. But be clear: She is asking for volunteers because she ran out of money. She had more than a million dollars and she ran out.
Bon Iver's backing band is a small army of incredibly talented musicians (many of whom are popular in their own right) and he's been touring across the plant for the better part of a year. He's getting support from Jagjaguwar and potentially 4AD, neither of whom are known for blockbuster album sales. He's most likely losing a fortune on it, but at least he respects musicians enough to develop a band and pay them (I can only hope) a decent wage .
It sounds crass to say, but this comes down to money and how it's used. Her public persona does nothing to dispel the notion that she's a real-life Manic Pixie Dream Girl, lost in her own imagination and probably annoyed when her managers attempt to discuss budgeting with her. It's not fun to make budgets and plan how to spend your money wisely, but $1 million is a lot of money, and careful planning could have led to her hiring a really great group of string and horn players to accompany her on tour, instead of potentially setting a bad precedent for working musicians.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Predictions on the next batch of 33 1/3 books
Andrew WK: I Get Wet, by Phillip Crandall
I can see this covering the album's media push, AWK's irony-free funtime persona, the subsequent flop and his ability to remain in the public eye.
Aphex Twin: Selected Ambient Works Vol II, by Marc Weidenbaum
This is a classic but it was made by 1 guy in his bedroom and he rarely gives interviews and absolutely refuses to discuss his working methods. Perhaps it investigates how a double album of untitled ambient techno pieces has remained relevant after almost 20 years. Anything would be better than a first person narrative of the author's relationship to the album.
Edit: Luckily, I discovered that one of my favorite electronic music bloggers,
Beach Boys: Smile, by Luis Sanchez
This one's pretty obvious, but I can't help but feel like it'll just be a condensed version of any of the hundreds of Beach Boys biographies already available.
Bjork: Biophilia, by Nicola Dibben
This came out in 2011, c'mon now.
Bobbie Gentry: Ode to Billie Joe, by Tara Murtha
There's always an outlier in the usual indie-centric (or at least indie-precursor) albums the series covers (see Facing Future), but the mystery surrounding the title track, and it's author's subsequent success and retirement, could make for an interesting book.
Danger Mouse: The Grey Album, by Charles Fairchild
This one will probably need to be subtitled titled Birth of the Mash-Up, even though it's really not.
Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, by Mike Foley
Like Slint, the lack of many Dead Kennedys biographies will probably result in this being a mini-overview of the band, Alternative Tentacles, and California punk in general.
Devo: Freedom of Choice, by Evie Nagy
There's a lot to mine in a song-by-song breakdown of this album, so hopefully it's just not a glorified biography.
Gang of Four: Entertainment! by Kevin Dettmar
This is the post-punk album that more people know of than have actually heard, but focusing on the band's politics and how it influenced their music (and vice versa) could make for an interesting look into working class 80s Britain.
Hole: Live Through This, by Anwyn Crawford
I can't see this being anything other than voyeuristic considering the mess that is Courtney Love, but the mainstream explosion of female-fronted punk bands (and Hole's early noise releases) is fertile ground.
J Dilla: Donuts, by Jordan Ferguson
I kind of wish Weingarten had written this after his pretty much perfect volume on ...It takes a Nation.
Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, by Kirk Walker Graves
While the album is an undeniable classic, it's hard to put Kanye into perspective without the benefit of hindsight.
Michael Jackson: Dangerous, by Susan Fast
Or, 1991: The Year Pop was Broken. Topics it could touch on: The rumor that kids returned Dangerous to buy Nevermind, Jackson's problems with fame, and the Emperor's New Clothes style of a record company just saying that an album is good and assuming everyone is going to buy it.
Oasis: Definitely Maybe, by Alex Niven
The mainstreaming of Brit pop (aka it finally hit in the states), the band embracing rock n roll excess in the face of grunge's misery, the Blur thing.
Richard Hell and the Voidoids: Blank Generation, by Pete Astor
Expect cameos by most of NY punk's Class of 77.
Serge Gainsbourg: Histoire de Melody Nelson, by Darran Anderson
Hopefully it won't just focus on Gainsbourg's lecherous persona, but that would be better than a first person account of the author's sex life in relation to the album.
Sigur Ros: ( ), by Ethan Hayden
Jeez is this album already a decade old? A post rock album sung in a made up language by a bunch of polite Icelanders sounds like the recipe for a book where the author tells you about how the album changed his life (aka Boring)
They Might Be Giants: Flood, by Alex Reed and Philip Sandifer
FINALLY.
I can see this covering the album's media push, AWK's irony-free funtime persona, the subsequent flop and his ability to remain in the public eye.
Aphex Twin: Selected Ambient Works Vol II, by Marc Weidenbaum
This is a classic but it was made by 1 guy in his bedroom and he rarely gives interviews and absolutely refuses to discuss his working methods. Perhaps it investigates how a double album of untitled ambient techno pieces has remained relevant after almost 20 years. Anything would be better than a first person narrative of the author's relationship to the album.
Edit: Luckily, I discovered that one of my favorite electronic music bloggers,
Beach Boys: Smile, by Luis Sanchez
This one's pretty obvious, but I can't help but feel like it'll just be a condensed version of any of the hundreds of Beach Boys biographies already available.
Bjork: Biophilia, by Nicola Dibben
This came out in 2011, c'mon now.
Bobbie Gentry: Ode to Billie Joe, by Tara Murtha
There's always an outlier in the usual indie-centric (or at least indie-precursor) albums the series covers (see Facing Future), but the mystery surrounding the title track, and it's author's subsequent success and retirement, could make for an interesting book.
Danger Mouse: The Grey Album, by Charles Fairchild
This one will probably need to be subtitled titled Birth of the Mash-Up, even though it's really not.
Dead Kennedys: Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, by Mike Foley
Like Slint, the lack of many Dead Kennedys biographies will probably result in this being a mini-overview of the band, Alternative Tentacles, and California punk in general.
Devo: Freedom of Choice, by Evie Nagy
There's a lot to mine in a song-by-song breakdown of this album, so hopefully it's just not a glorified biography.
Gang of Four: Entertainment! by Kevin Dettmar
This is the post-punk album that more people know of than have actually heard, but focusing on the band's politics and how it influenced their music (and vice versa) could make for an interesting look into working class 80s Britain.
Hole: Live Through This, by Anwyn Crawford
I can't see this being anything other than voyeuristic considering the mess that is Courtney Love, but the mainstream explosion of female-fronted punk bands (and Hole's early noise releases) is fertile ground.
J Dilla: Donuts, by Jordan Ferguson
I kind of wish Weingarten had written this after his pretty much perfect volume on ...It takes a Nation.
Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, by Kirk Walker Graves
While the album is an undeniable classic, it's hard to put Kanye into perspective without the benefit of hindsight.
Michael Jackson: Dangerous, by Susan Fast
Or, 1991: The Year Pop was Broken. Topics it could touch on: The rumor that kids returned Dangerous to buy Nevermind, Jackson's problems with fame, and the Emperor's New Clothes style of a record company just saying that an album is good and assuming everyone is going to buy it.
Oasis: Definitely Maybe, by Alex Niven
The mainstreaming of Brit pop (aka it finally hit in the states), the band embracing rock n roll excess in the face of grunge's misery, the Blur thing.
Richard Hell and the Voidoids: Blank Generation, by Pete Astor
Expect cameos by most of NY punk's Class of 77.
Serge Gainsbourg: Histoire de Melody Nelson, by Darran Anderson
Hopefully it won't just focus on Gainsbourg's lecherous persona, but that would be better than a first person account of the author's sex life in relation to the album.
Sigur Ros: ( ), by Ethan Hayden
Jeez is this album already a decade old? A post rock album sung in a made up language by a bunch of polite Icelanders sounds like the recipe for a book where the author tells you about how the album changed his life (aka Boring)
They Might Be Giants: Flood, by Alex Reed and Philip Sandifer
FINALLY.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Prometheus review
1.Why would a trillion dollar space mission not have all of the crew get to know each other before they leave for an alien world (and possibly never come back)? I guess if the orbit of the Earth was such that they had to leave ASAP in order to not waste fuel, it kind of makes sense, but with a state of the art spaceship, what's a couple light years?
2. David can watch the dreams of the sleeping crew (and even communicate with a sleeping Weylan), but nothing really comes of it. The video of the girl playing violin (presumably Shaw) kept popping up: David tries to send the video of the girl in a message (to Earth?) and gets no response. After the crew is awakened he tries again, with Shaw and Holloway present, so it wasn't a sneaky move on David's part. At the end, when Shaw enters the damaged lifeboat, the same video is playing on the giant screen in the main room.
3. How the hell did Fifeld and Millburn get lost anyways? Couldn't they have asked the ship to triangulate their position with the pups so at least they were close to the exit when the storm passed? Wouldn't any place be better than the weird room where a bunch of Engineers died?
4. Janek has a pretty laid back attitude considering two of his crew is lost in a giant dome where something violent happened. Any space mission would have something similar to a black box, so even though Janek was conveniently banging Vickers, he should have been interested on what happened while the bridge was empty. Also, why was the bridge empty?
5. Nobody cares that Shaw was impregnated with an alien and removed it herself. She manages to get into the lifeboat and use the state of the art surgical robot with nobody noticing, and when she stumbles upon Weylan, nobody questions her appearance or the fact that she's in her underwear and covered in blood. And what was with her diaper-style panties and bra? Did she forget to pack her own undies?
6. Janek, Ravel and Chance decided to sacrifice everyone in order to destroy the Engineer's ship, as if none of the other crew matter. Speaking of the rest of the crew, with all those extras there's way more than 18 people on the ship (including Weylan).
7. There are earthworms in the alien temple, probably for no other reason than Ridley Scott thought that looked cool.
8. At no point in the movie do any of the characters express surprise that a) they discovered alien life and b) there is a real android in the crew. The former is simply bizarre, but the latter has precedent in Alien. When the crew discovers Ash is an android, they say that it's not normal WY protocol to put an android on the ship.
9. When Ash and Bishop's heads were removed, they died soon after. When David's head is removed, he can not only survive but pilot a ship.
10. There was literally no reason for the Vicker's character to exist in the movie. The only thing of consequence she did was kill Holloway with the flamethrower, which could have been done by any of the other anonymous crew members.
11. There were at least 3 other domes behind the one they entered, each with a C-ship under it. How do David and Shaw know the one they took at the end doesn't also have a giant cargo load of alien goo? How is Shaw going to survive on the ship with a cryo tube made for a creature 3x bigger than her, with no food or water?
2. David can watch the dreams of the sleeping crew (and even communicate with a sleeping Weylan), but nothing really comes of it. The video of the girl playing violin (presumably Shaw) kept popping up: David tries to send the video of the girl in a message (to Earth?) and gets no response. After the crew is awakened he tries again, with Shaw and Holloway present, so it wasn't a sneaky move on David's part. At the end, when Shaw enters the damaged lifeboat, the same video is playing on the giant screen in the main room.
3. How the hell did Fifeld and Millburn get lost anyways? Couldn't they have asked the ship to triangulate their position with the pups so at least they were close to the exit when the storm passed? Wouldn't any place be better than the weird room where a bunch of Engineers died?
4. Janek has a pretty laid back attitude considering two of his crew is lost in a giant dome where something violent happened. Any space mission would have something similar to a black box, so even though Janek was conveniently banging Vickers, he should have been interested on what happened while the bridge was empty. Also, why was the bridge empty?
5. Nobody cares that Shaw was impregnated with an alien and removed it herself. She manages to get into the lifeboat and use the state of the art surgical robot with nobody noticing, and when she stumbles upon Weylan, nobody questions her appearance or the fact that she's in her underwear and covered in blood. And what was with her diaper-style panties and bra? Did she forget to pack her own undies?
6. Janek, Ravel and Chance decided to sacrifice everyone in order to destroy the Engineer's ship, as if none of the other crew matter. Speaking of the rest of the crew, with all those extras there's way more than 18 people on the ship (including Weylan).
7. There are earthworms in the alien temple, probably for no other reason than Ridley Scott thought that looked cool.
8. At no point in the movie do any of the characters express surprise that a) they discovered alien life and b) there is a real android in the crew. The former is simply bizarre, but the latter has precedent in Alien. When the crew discovers Ash is an android, they say that it's not normal WY protocol to put an android on the ship.
9. When Ash and Bishop's heads were removed, they died soon after. When David's head is removed, he can not only survive but pilot a ship.
10. There was literally no reason for the Vicker's character to exist in the movie. The only thing of consequence she did was kill Holloway with the flamethrower, which could have been done by any of the other anonymous crew members.
11. There were at least 3 other domes behind the one they entered, each with a C-ship under it. How do David and Shaw know the one they took at the end doesn't also have a giant cargo load of alien goo? How is Shaw going to survive on the ship with a cryo tube made for a creature 3x bigger than her, with no food or water?
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