Please shoot me

Posted by Johnny at 4:48 p.m.

No matter how hard I try, I can't dislike the new Avril Lavigne single ("Girlfriend").

I know.

Hooks aplenty, there's a ton to latch onto in this little ditty: the cheerleader chorus, the layered harmonies in the verses, the half-time pre-chorus, etc. The production is great - I'm sure it's compressed like crazy, but the mix is fantastic. The guitars have a nice fluid crunch (I'm aware of the oxymoron), which reminds me of my twangy Strat sound through a high gain setting on my Orange amp. Mmm, delicious. The bass drum is a bit clicky for my taste, but it really drives the verses. The bass is there, doing its job as usual. If vocal pitch correction was used, they probably did it in the background harmonies to tighten things up, but I couldn't really hear any in the lead parts - another plus.

The target audience is clearly the 13-15 year-old female crowd ("she's like, so whatever"), and so the lyrical content is about as complicated and layered as Dude, Where's my Car?, but it's just so appealing to hear Avril say "motherfucking princess" (in the uncensored version, of course). I wouldn't put it in the same league as Norah Jones dropping the MF bomb in her Peeping Tom feature, "Sucker," because that was damn hot/sexy, whereas this is cute/playful.

As far as girl rock/punk/whatever is concerned, I still wouldn't put her in the same league as Katy Rose in terms of songwriting ability, but since most of you are probably saying "who?" to that reference, I think we know who has the better hooks.

The rest of the album is decent, but the 3 ballads feel forced and could have been left out. I highly recommend the uncensored version over the censored one for obvious reasons. After listening to all 40 minutes of it, you might feel like you've lost 30 IQ points and are on your way to developing diabetes, but that might be your thing.

Now to listen to some Shining to balance out my day....

Award Acceptance - God = Good

Posted by Johnny at 12:41 p.m.

The Grammys suck. This year was no different. Here are the reasons that it sucked:

• The Police played "Roxanne". It was the only song they got to play.
  
• Earth, Wind & Fire was the backup band for Ludacris and Mary J. Blige. Backup band? Are you fucking kidding me? Philip Bailey got to sing for 30 seconds max before the other 2 clowns came on stage and he absolutely destroyed them (he's the guy who sang the high stuff in "Fantasy").
• Not enough John Mayer.
• Too much Dixie Chicks.
• The James Brown tribute should have been way longer.
• RHCP played that shitty-ass "hey-oh, this is what I say-oh" song. Write better lyrics! Fucktard.
• James Blunt.

The only redeeming factors were Christina Aguilera and Gnarls Barkley.

But the worst part of the night was easily Mary J. Blige's acceptance speeches. When someone starts off a speech with, "First, I have to thank my father, God, lord Jesus Christ," you know it's going down hill. Why do people insist on attributing their achievements to God? It just cheapens their accomplishments and deems them unworthy of praise. Thank your parents for their superior genes that enabled you to have a marketable talent, or thank yourself for working so hard to achieve your goal. If God existed, he wouldn't give a shit about you and you're worthless Grammy anyways, nor would he care about your lame music. Therefore, be proud of yourself and cut that humble bullshit.

By the way, I changed the channel at the first hint of the words "God," "Jesus," or "Lord." I even jumped at the word "father."

The Only Reason to Watch Football

Posted by Johnny at 9:09 a.m.

The Superbowl halftime show: it usually has a washed-up band doing an unlikely duet with some shitty newcomer (Aerosmith & Britney Spears, anyone?), but this year, they finally did something right and chose Prince.

He put on a pretty sweet show, so if you have 12 minutes to waste, I'd recommend watching. He covers some CCR, Bob Dylan via Hendrix, and some Foo Fighters.

NOTE: I updated this embedded video to not use the YouTube copy. Hopefully this one lasts a bit longer.

"Miami Rain" via virtualmatter
Uploaded by virtualmatter

Things pissing me off today

Posted by Johnny at 9:25 a.m.

Windows Automatic Update
If I tell you that I don't want to restart my computer right now, STOP ASKING! God damn it! Every 15 minutes that stupid countdown timer comes up and says "your computer will restart in 5 minutes if you don't interact with this dialog box" and if you don't press "Restart Later," it will restart your computer immediately. What if I went to the washroom and couldn't get back in time to press that button? Would you kill all my programs and force me to lose unsaved work? You would, you asshole, I just know it.

Fuck the asshole manager/lawyer who decided that a major sacrifice in usability was worth the 0% security improvement gained by this so called helpful reminder.

Headphones and Transit
Dear people on the train, please buy some FUCKING BETTER EARPHONES. If I can hear your music, it's either too loud or you are wearing them backwards. I wouldn't be surprised in either case because I've been around train folk for a long time, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that it's too damn loud.

Fat white chick: Not only do I not want to listen to techno at 8am, I also don't want to see you dance like your spending a night at the Roxbury. When you bob your head like that, your neck jiggles - it's fucking hawt. Fuck, look what you made me do - I replaced the letter o with aw. I hope you realize that it was done for the purposes of sarcasm.

Asian hipster dude with massive head: If you insist on blasting Kelly Clarkson and miscellaneous Asian power balladeers through your $10 Samsung ear buds, I will have to bring a power drill on the train and run it at full power and hopefully channel the noise directly into your ear drums. This will spare me and the other 20 people within earshot of your god awful music from the vomit inducing pain that you have chosen to inflict upon us, and will hopefully quicken your inevitable hearing loss. It's only fair. By the way, the 80s called and they want their guitar licks, reverb, and mullets back.

The following headphones are 20 dollars and they are sound isolating. This means you can keep your god damned noise confined in your own aural cavities so that your poor eardrums are the only ones assaulted. I spent $200 on mine so that my god awful noise would be kept to myself. All I ask is that you do 1/10th of what I did.


Slow-Walkers
When you're downtown during rush hour, please realize that most people want to get to work in reasonable time and will therefore walk at a reasonably brisk pace. We're not trying to break records, but we also don't want to lollygag around. So if you're too fat or too old to walk at rush hour pace, keep to the right. It's that simple - just keep to the right so that people with fully functioning legs that don't have to support 300 extra pounds can walk past you at twice the speed. Maybe you should try walking a bit faster too for yourself. It's decent exerci.. FUCKING WINDOWS UPDATE GAAARRAAAAHHHH.

You can't like everything

Posted by Johnny at 9:09 a.m.

Whenever I ask someone what kind of music they enjoy, I occasionally get the response "Oh, I like pretty much everything." This raises some flags. You can't like everything - it's just not possible. When I dig deeper, they usually say, "yeah, I'll listen to rock, country, rap, hip-hop... you know... everything." Ah, yes, everything.

If I had more free time, I would continue these conversation by challenging them on their umbrella statement - the surprisingly narrow "everything." I know for a fact that amongst the ~800 albums I have scattered around my hard drive, I will find something that they will hate. Ideally, it will be something that causes them physical pain to listen to, but I would also accept moderate discomfort.

Many pop music aficionados will grimace when they hear heavy metal, stare blankly when they hear some jazz fusion, or yawn when they hear classical orchestral art music; this isn't enough. I want them at the very least to scratch their heads and at the very most to plug their ears. If my iPod had more capacity, I would carry around a collection of weird music, listed below, in order to help people avoid using the word "everything" due to naivety.

On the off-chance that they enjoy the music the first time they hear it, I would question their aural comprehension abilities, because even a slut for the musically bizarre like me didn't enjoy most of the following list upon first listen, and there is some stuff that I respect more than I enjoy. Without further ado, here is a list of some music I have, much of which I own, ordered by increasing strangeness. Bonus points if you can guess the artist/album names.

1. An eclectic outing by the guitarist of the recently dubbed, "biggest band in the world," that is low fidelity cross between folk and post-punk. It was apparently recorded on his living room floor.
2. A record of film music as interpreted by an avant metal band named after the anti-hero of a series of legendary French crime novels.
3. An infamous and non-famous California "rock" band (now defunct) recorded an album that experimented with genres from death metal to free jazz to surf music. One song was a ten minute lo-fi masterpiece that ended with 20-30 seconds of ear-splitting static. In another song, the singer invented a new phonetic vocabulary/language for the lyrics.
   
4. A record by the same avant metal band as in #2 in which they composed one song per day in April 2005, titled the songs accordingly, and arranged it such that it sounds like someone channel surfing through cartoons with a heavy metal soundtrack. Oh, and there aren't any lyrics, per se.
5. A record of compositions created from the complete destruction and rearrangement of existing pop music by the father of sampling (who took it 50x farther than anyone would ever go).
6. A 70s album that covers pop music from the 60s, but conceptualizes its mind numbing catchiness as fascism in disguise. Thus, the songs are torn up, chewed, and spit out and arranged into two side length pieces. The cover has a picture of Dick Clark dressed as Hitler holding a carrot.
7. Three albums by a New Jersey hardcore band that pushes the genre farther than anyone else. Seemingly random tempo/time signature changes, shockingly technical guitar and drum lines, screamed lyrics - they have it all. This is not screamo.
8. A record of live jam sessions by the prog outing for one of the worlds most inventive guitarists, edited in such a way that the album plays out as a single composition. No vocals, just a heavy, moody, and exhilarating oddity of instrumentals.
9. A 20 minute composition with an ever-increasing tempo (starting at 40 bpm and ending at >400 bpm) comprised of split second samples from 1001 pop songs that were available from the introduction of the CD until 1993. The samples are arranged such that they create an entirely new piece of music with often intriguing lyrics.
10. A record of hell-inspired noisecore by an avant-garde free jazz saxophonist with the help of some Californian experimental types. Apparently the vocalist suffered a migraine after the 8 hour recording session.
11. A double-album of live Japanese noise sludgecore.
12. A 45 minute song consisting of a single guitar/drum metal riff that undergoes a slight transformation every few minutes. Virtuoso musicianship aside, it is almost entirely unlistenable.
    
13. An album that contains both the studio and live versions of a 30 minute piece that sees concert A (440 Hz) undergoing slow transformations, occasionally adding octaves, harmonics, and other sound effects. Yes, you read that right: 30 minutes of concert A.
    

A collection of pointless stories

Posted by Johnny at 11:24 a.m.

Story 1 - The Train
I was riding the train this morning and when we got into downtown, this crazy lady started saying things like, "Fuck! Why isn't this train going faster?" and, "Jesus Christ, this can't be happening to me. Go fucking faster! God damn it!" It was weird, then I got off the train.

Story 2 - Oasis ripped off Mr. Bungle
I heard an Oasis song yesterday, called "Let There Be Love," from the album they released last year and the intro is pretty much a direct rip-off of the Mr. Bungle song, "Retrovertigo," which was released in 1999. The Bungle song is way better.

Story 3 - Pool Last Night
Reid and I played pool last night. It was fun.

Story 4 - Substitute Prof (a.k.a. Meta Storytelling 101)
I'm going to tell you a story. In second year, my Signals & Transforms prof was away for a week, so one of her PhD students filled in for her. He decided to tell us a story about his undergrad experience, the details of which I cannot recall. He did, however, prefix the story by saying, "I'm going to tell you a story," then he told the story, which had no point whatsoever, then he said, "So, that was a good story. I'm glad I told it." And so were we. So, that was a good story. I'm glad I told it.

Happy 2007

Posted by Johnny at 9:13 a.m.

I was going to do some kind of extrospective post about the state of affairs in the year 2007 and what I hoped for the future, but time is money and I'm not made of money, people. So then I thought about doing some kind of introspective post about my state of affairs in the year 2007, but that would just bore you. Maybe I'll save that for my 1 year anniversary of singlehood at the end of this month, assuming I make it there (and chances are great). Finally, a recap of my 10 days off would be reasonably pointless, since most of the people who read this blag were present for most of what I would have written about.

Instead of all that pseudo-philosophical bullshit, I present to you, as a late Christmas present, the worst album covers ever (from here). If I find any more today that aren't on the previously mentioned site, I'll post them.

[Edit: This is probably a fake]


















The guy in front is now a US Congressman.

I love you all (well, most of you).

[Edit: Here is another album cover, from this webpage. It looks real to me.]

Blog: updated. Also, torture.

Posted by Johnny at 3:49 p.m.

Well, they finally allowed Premium Mediocrity to upgrade to Blogger Beta. I decided to commemorate this momentous occasion by updating the site template to what you are looking at right now. What do you think? I made small adjustments to the Rounders theme.

I almost forgot the original reason I went to the Blogger dashboard, but luckily, alcohol hasn't destroyed my memory yet.

If you feel like reading about a US citizen's account of being tortured in Iraq by the US, read this article. If you don't, however, allow me to re-post what I think is the most important part of the article:

The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was...

When you think of music that could be used for torture, most people would think "heavy metal" fits the bill perfectly. More specifically, they are thinking about any music that involves screaming, unrecognizably distorted guitars, and rapid-fire double bass drum sequences. Oh, and maybe some bass fuzz for good measure.

I would agree that when played at loud volumes, this would become torturous to me after a few hours, but there are some cases in which I'd enjoy it for a little bit. More specifically, if it was The Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge, or Mastodon that they were playing, I probably wouldn't complain. But as indicated in the article, heavy metal and hardcore aren't the only styles of music that could be used for torture.

Yes, he said they used country music. This made my day. I don't like to generalize, so I'll just say that I dislike most country music. There's just something about the twangy vocals, concrete lyrics, and repetitive instrumentals that doesn't sit well with me. I'd classify it with any other kind of pop music in that it's 70% repetition, but has added twang and in some cases, depression. Just imagine "Achy Breaky Heart" being played for 4 hours, let alone 4 minutes.

The more I think about it, there are even more musical styles that they could use to torture people. A little Will Smith, anyone? How about some O Town? Or maybe they could loop "What is Love" for 6 hours. And nothing says "kill me" (or "rape me") like listening to 50 Cent. On the flip side, we could pipe in a Shine FM broadcast for a couple hours and make any normal person try to puncture their ear drums with a coat hanger.

My brain is bursting with ideas. I think I have some John Zorn / Mike Patton collaborations that most people would burn after the first couple songs. I also downloaded an album by some weird 2-person band called Orthrelm that could drive you insane - it was basically a 40 minute set of ultra fast and ultra repetitive drum and guitar prog metal licks. If I wasn't so amazed by their musicianship (the entire thing was recorded in one sitting), I would have vomited.

Speaking of vomit, I think I've come up with the ULTIMATE torture: Kenny G. Specifically, play all of his Christmas albums in a big loop until the inmates kill themselves. I bet you could even use this for population control in overcrowded countries. Just pipe it through loud speakers in the streets and eventually, the population will lack the will to reproduce for fear of creating the next Kenny G.

Modern translation of a Beatles song title

Posted by Johnny at 9:58 p.m.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand

becomes

I Wanna Wrap You in Saran Wrap from Head to Toe and Cut Two Holes For You so that You Can Breathe and We can Have Sex

Now contribute more because the Beatles are (finally) no longer sacred.

I might as well opine on the above linked-to album entitled, "Love", and created by George Martin and his son Giles. I love it... but...

I would have liked to hear them go waaay farther with the mashups and remixing efforts, but I realize that they had to both satisfy long-time, die-hard fans, of which I am not, and create something that sounds new and fresh. Maybe one day they will do something truly original with these original master tapes, but that day has not yet come (unless you count the Grey Album).