( 12:05 PM )
Wednesday, November 27, 1PM, Music Currently Playing: Audioslave
There has been some email discussion between the writers here about the relative quality of the demos some of us have received, and I have been thinking about this quite a bit. The general consensus is that while there are occasion bits of exceptional sound, the majority of the stuff is mediocre.
After some consideration I have come to the possible conclusion that the submissions aren't really mediocre, the problem lies with our tastes, which are exceptional. Kurt Vonnegut mentions the idea in one of his books (Player Piano, I think) that mass media has destroyed the human potential for widespread creative fullfillment by giving us instant and nearly omnipresent access to the best and brightest. The argument is that in a society where there is no radio, television, and even news media, communities exist where each creative person can realistically fulfill the role of storyteller, musician, or artist, and compared to the rest of the community, those people truly are exceptional in their talent and craft. The community is fulfilled by the product of these creators and the creators are fulfilled by recieiving the glory and praise they are due. In a society where mass media exists, communities direct their attention the the most exceptional creators shown to them and in comparison, the creators in their own community appear mediocre.
The only argument against this is the amount of garbage that does seem to get the majority of the limelight. People like Avril Livigne and Britney Spears and Enrique Iglesias are given lots and lots of airtime and in comparison to that excrement, the seeminly mediocre demo tapes I have sitting on my desk here really ARE exeptional.
Or perhaps I am overthinking it. More probably, people just like what they like, including me, and there may be a possibility that I have very specific or peculiar taste.
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( 9:48 AM )
Friday Morining, Music Currently Playing: Medeski, Martin & Wood Uninvisible
I am not submitting an actual review here (since it's ALL negative) but I need to warn music fans not to purchase the new David Gray album, A New Day at Midnight. I was so tremendously disappointed with this release that after a week of owning it I traded it in at the used record store for something else.
Why is it bad? So many reasons, but mostly it's the totally flattened emotional affect of the songs, there is just none of the energy and warmth that was present on his earlier releases. On top of this, he has further pursued the melding of techno and folk that he played around with on White Ladder. The result here is irritating, trendy-sounding, pop music, the type of inoffensive, peppy, corporate junk you can hear playing in the retail clothing stores at the mall. I don't know if it is simply because White Ladder was such a success that Gray is afraid to continue to explore... but this album is atrocious, a total waste of money. Don't bother picking it up.
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( 4:07 PM )
Friday Evening, Music Currently Playing: Trail of Dead.
Outside my building in the mornings is a little meal cart, they sell muffins and bagels and egg burritos and coffee, juice and milk, candy bars and mints, and it's staffed by this woman. She has dark blonde hair that is always pulled back in a pony tail that hangs just below her neck. Her neck is white, narrow, an arc from her collarbone to her hair. She wears a thin gold chain with a tiny gold cross that sits gently on the dip of her throat. She wears some sort of uniform: tight black jeans, maroon shirt, maroon windbreaker when it's cold, black wool gloves when it's cold. She smells like apple shampoo. Her eyes are small, blue, sort of sad. Her lips are thin, she bites them and raises her right eyebrow when faced with a difficult or confusing situation. Her smile is warm, and simple. Sometimes her hands, which are small and nearly opaque, tremble a little bit when she sorts through her change or pushes down the pump on the coffee despenser. She has a small diamond ring on her left hand. She is always polite and pleasant and has a tendancy to reveal small snippets about her personal life as she makes small talk with her customers. From this we know that her name is Marla. She just turned 34 in September. She has a fifteen year old daughter that has gone to live with her ex-husband, the girl's biological father, only recently. Her son, who is eight, likes soccer and is having alot of problems with reading at his school. When she talks about her kids, there is a little flinch she gives. As if the mere thought of these people she loves hurts her a little bit. She is remarried, her second husband is a contract plumber and electrician. They just bought a boat which they plan to use at Lake Roosevelt on weekends, but probably not until the spring since it's starting to cool off now. She like her coffee without cream or sugar except that she rarely drinks it and she does not like cream cheese, preferring butter or margarine on her bagels or muffins. She likes her job well enough, it's better than waitressing, but it doesn't pay very well and she doesn't always get the hours she needs.
Whever I see her, if it's while I am buying coffee, or just wandering around outside to get some air before I get on the phone, I get sad. It's not the sadness of pity, nor am I really attracted to her, though I acknowledge she is attractive. She just sort of exudes this subtle acceptance with what life has handed her. Almost as if, when she thinks no one is looking her face melts into this tired grimace of disappointment or greif. There is a saying that as you age you grow into the face you deserve, and I think that's often true. When I worked at the jail I would often pull the archive of mugshot photos on a defendant out of curiosity and was often shocked byt the progression, the downward spiral that manifested itself on the face of a person over the course of several years, several arrests and bookings (indeed there is an infamous link on Rotten.com that shows this very thing, a series of mugshot photos from a woman over the course of ten or fifteen years.) But I wonder if sometimes people don't deserve the faces they end up with. Some of the elderly I have met, and certainly Marla, who must have had lives of frustration and disappointment... I don't think they deserve to have faces marred by the strain of life's difficult struggles. And yet they do. That makes me very very sad to see.
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( 11:03 AM )
Wednesday morning, 10ish, Music Currently Playing: Calexico, Even My Sure Things Fall Through
Election day... how was it for me? Well I am a lazy slacker and voted with mail-in ballot two weeks ago. Which I sort of regret doing since I really like going to the polls. I like the nervous excitement on everyone's faces, I like standing in the booth with the little chad-poker, punching holes in the cards. I like the little stickers they give out when you are done which read "I Voted" that you can proudly wear in front of your co-workers to make them feel guilty for their lack of civic responsibility. My son's birthday is October 29, so when he was a newborn baby, merely a few weeks old, we took him with us to the polls to vote. Now he is seven and he sat down with me while I filled out the bubbles on mail in ballot asking me questions like, "What's a war monger?" and "Is that man an evil conservative too, Daddy?"
Otherwise: I was disappointed by the results of the senate race... A Republican majority in both the House and the Senate means that war with Iraq in inevitable (though debatably, with Dubyah at the helm, it was allready inevitable.) Currently the Governor race in AZ is still too close to call... should be interesting to see how it turns out. Otherwise the statewide propositions about Indian Gaming here had some success... the one proposition that the 13 tribes asked folks to vote for passed by a wide margin and the remaining propositions died. Voter turnout was much higher than expected, which really pleases me. I think that all the voter apathy and general political malaise is starting to dissolve a bit. People are starting to see that the things going on around them in local and national government have impact on their lives and they realize that they have a say. I am generally wary of extreme patriotism but on election day, I am proud to be an American.
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