Politics in Music

Is it just me, or does anyone else annoyed by bands who put their 'message' before there music?

I listen to music because I want to be entertained, and feel a connection that helps to better understand myself. This may seem like an ambitious thing for music to do, but I think it has an advantage over any other art form in this department. Have you ever tried to rationally defend a very passionate feeling that you have? You will always fall short of explaining the real thing. This is what is so irksome about musicians that try transform artwork into rational argument! It just doesn't work.

I think truly great art should be universal. Sure, if Bush is pissing you off, write a song about it.
But don't explain to me why you dislike him. If you want to do that, put down the guitar, grab a pen, and write an essay. Don't pollute my ears with your emotionless sound. Write about your rage and your passion! Everyone has felt passion and anger before, that is something we can understand. If you make me feel that passion, then I might consider your rational argument to mean something.

But anger at the government is NOT the only important thing! Frankly, to me, it seems trivial when compared to real human compassion and understanding. Tell me something that I can relate to. Anyone who has felt like an outcast at some point in their lives can relate to Daniel Johnston's "Like A Monkey In A Zoo", anyone who fears their morality understands Neil's "Sugar Mountain" (it's my 20th birthday soon... oh God), anyone who's tried to accept their morality finds solace in "Do You Realize?" by the Lips. To me, these are real beautiful songs. This is music.

I think what it comes down to is this question: Do you think that the value of something is based on it's applications? For me, the answer to this is no*, and the * reads, 'Of course not! Are you fucking kidding me?!' If this were true, the value of love is procreating the human race. The value of art is absolutely nothing. The value of mathematics is just engineering and building shit. The value of living is to not die! Perhaps you answered this question 'yes', and so you think that music is only valuable if it tells you how much of an idiot Bush is. I respectfully disagree.

The Obscure Song Fun Game!

Next time you go to a concert, I suggest playing this game. Here's the idea:

1. Choose a song that you really want to hear the band play, tell the people that you're going with to do the same.

2. Decide amongst your selves the order of the obscurity of the songs. Meaning: which ones are most likely to be played. Basically it goes new singles, hit singles, new other songs, old other songs, bad songs, etc. (For example, at Daft Punk, Harder Better Faster Stronger is more likely than Emotion is more likely than Rock 'n Roll. Something like that. Comment if you disagree.)

3. If you're song is the most obscure one to be played, you win! You can spice things up by making wagers to this effect.

Of course there are many strategies. You can pick a sure think, and hope that no one else is lucky. Or, conversely, pick a weird song, and hope to get lucky. I always does pick a song that I doubt they'll play, but really want to hear. This also makes the concert more interesting, because if they play your song, it's an added bonus! For example, at a concert for Coheed and Cambria's Good Apollo I tour, I picked Delirium Trigger. This is an old song, and not even a single, so there was virtually no chance of them playing it. But it's an excellent live tune, and it totally builds up to a precipice of awesomeness. And they played it! It totally pumped me up for the whole show. Same thing for NP (see last post), I picked Jackie, at which point my girlfriend figured that there's no way they'll play it, so she went for the safety play with Mass Romantic. I was getting worried that they wouldn't play it since it wasn't in their main set (it's not their most popular song), but they did it as the opening song for their first encore! How awesome is that?

All over

Well, It's sort of hard for me to Follow up Pré's post. I'm not nearly as articulate. So until they invent some way for me to project feeling onto this blog in a non ...words... way you're going to have to put up with me.

Does anyone recall a "the 80's were cool" fad that happened a while ago? It may have only lasted a month and it may have just been confined to leg warmers but I could have sworn it was there. Anyways, I had just thought that the 80's would stay dead...or mostly dead. The French have different plans however, caaaaaaauuse they're back.
With acts like Kavinsky , Yelle , College and others much beyond my musical knowledge I'm expecting the club scene to completely embrace this for at least a year and possibly another after it gets old.

It's not that I dislike this music. I really enjoy it. I'm just getting increasingly worried that my generation will claim no new and revolutionary grounds musically. I don't want to be known as the generation that had interesting takes on styles of music already created. I think at that I'm left to suggest where to take things and Honestly I have no clue. I think I'll just try and sleep comfortably on the thought that there is some underground revolution happening right now that I'm just too uncool to know about.
Until that comes around here's some reheated 80's!



lot's of love,

Keane

New AND Improved

For my first music music review/rant, I thought I'd talk about a good ol' Canadian band that we all know and love, The New Pornographers. Specifically, their live concert at the Phoenix in Toronto last Sunday.

That they are a 8-person Canadian power-pop super group is interesting, but not fascinating. In fact, I hadn't really heard them until about 2 months ago, when my girlfriend told me they were touring and that she wanted me to take her. If she hadn't, I probably would never have listened to them, which would be a shame because I really love them!

When you hear “8-person power-pop band”, you think, “what the hell do they all do? Take turns?” (And actually, in the case of Dan Bejar, this is true). But really, one of the great things about the NP is the layering to their songs. Their songs are filled with tension build-up and breakdown, caused by the addition of subtraction of the different instruments, or, (my favourite), different vocals. It's beautiful to listen to an album and hear a variety of moods to songs, and different voices singing them. There's 3 main lead singers in the band, 2 male and one female. But there's lots of background vocals with “ahh ahh's”, and “wee oo's”, and “lalas”. I fucking love that shit.

But I digress, this was supposed to be about the live show. This was really a lesson in how an excellent, high-energy band with a huge catalog of songs should perform. Even though this was basically a tour to support Challengers, they played a ton of old stuff too. And not just singles, older obscure songs that are clearly crowd favourites. They really know how to pick a song line-up too, they build you up with the high-energy songs, and slow it down with some of the softer ones, all with little-to-no breaks in between the songs. They are all clearly into the music, really intense. The drummer does some pretty neat tricks twirling his drumsticks (at least he seemed impressed with them), and the singer does this funny thing where he shakes his right knee while he's playing guitar, and there's a neat light-up NEW PORNOGRAPHERS sign in the background.

I don't know how they all fit on the stage, but they they do it without seeming awkward. The only funny thing was Dan Bejat. He's the other male lead singer, who, as far as I can tell, writes and sings lead in about ¼ of the songs. He would only come on stage for the songs that he sings, and then slinks off backstage. Still, it was exciting to see him stumble back on stage in his pink shirt, swigging a Stella, since his songs are my favourites really (Testament To Youth In Verse, Jackie, Myriad Harbour, etc! So weird and wonderful).

There were a few awkward moments in between some songs, since no one in the band really talked to the crowd. There was one time when people were shouting out requests for songs, and Carl said, “we'll play your requests as long as you don't all yell out at once. Ok, go.” And of course everyone yelled out at once. Dan was on the stage at the time, and said, “It's ok, this is a really good song.” And then went right into Testament. Awesome! They ended up playing all the requests anyways, since they played for about 2.5 hours, and then a 4 song encore, and an unprecedented 2 song second encore!

All in all, an incredible show.

New Blog

So this is the first post to our new blog. Keane and I wanted to start a radio show/audio blog about music, comics, math, stuff that pisses us off, etc. This is a normal blog, but it's a start.