Rock Star Supernova

It seems like whenever I wait for a CD to come out, two or three others I've been waiting for come out the same day. So as I went to the store to buy that Tom Waits collection, the Rock Star Supernova album also was released. Rock Star: Supernova was one of the few shows I've been addicted to in the last few years, and Lukas Rossi makes a phenomenal frontman for a band so I figured I should buy the album since I spent so much time in front of the tv watching the show. After one listen I must say that it is the best album ever known to man. Okay, it's not that great. It's not even great. It's pretty mediocre actually. You would think with Butch Walker producing it and cowriting most of the songs that it could have been pretty great, but nope. But I guess the whole project was pretty rushed since they had to capitalize on the success of the show. I don't blame them, since INXS have already been dropped by their record label one year after their Rock Star Show. However, the album does sound great and Lukas' definitely sounds great singing. Maybe some of the songs will grow on me, but so far the album is pretty 50/50.

KKKramer

There's been a lot of hoopla over Michael Richards (Kramer from Seinfeld)flipping out onstage, going haywire on two black audience members who were heckling him. After watching the footage, I had to shake my head. I understand how comedians are supposed to push the boundaries, but if a white comedian (or any artist) says the word "nigger," he or she should do so in a valid, or thought provoking manner. Not in a blatant racist way as Richards did. Lenny Bruce (a controversial Jewish comedian RIP) famously used this word in his comeday act. But he did it as social commentary. His argument was that it is just a word. He said that if people wouldn't get so upset at being called a "nigger'kike/wop/faggot/chink/etc" and if these words got used more, then the negative power of these words word diminish. This argument got adopted by the black community, where one black person can call another black person a "nigger/nigga." Essentially, they take this negative word and reappropriate it as a word of empowerment. I guess cops in San Francisco in the 1960s got fed up with getting called pigs by political activists, so they decided to call themselves pigs. Patti Smith had a contoversial song called "Rock n Roll Nigger." Her usage of the word went beyond the one meaning of a black slave. She used the term as anyone who got outcast by society. So for her, she included everyone from Jesus to John Lennon to Jackson Pollock. For her, a "nigger" was anyone who was "outside of society" and she wanted to be a "nigger." So Bruce and Smith successively pulled off using the word "nigger." Michael Richards, on the other hand, came across as being a blatant racist on par with Mel Gibson's anti-semitic outburst a few months ago. Watching the footage of Richards in the night club was almost painful. I find it hard to fathom in today's age that people still have these deep ingrained prejudices inside them.

Tom Waits - Orphans

Well, the "wait" was definitely worth it. The new Tom Waits collection is freakin' amazing. Orphans includes three CDs, Brawlers (which features bluesy uptempo songs), Bawlers (slower folky, jazzy meditations and ballads) and Bastards (weird spoken word pieces and what April refers to as "circus music"). I still have to listen to it all a bit more because 56 songs is a lot to take in in one shot, but there are some great songs that stand out. The first two CDS feature some of Waits' most accessible songs to date. Which means that the songs are still pretty out there. Anyways, my fave tunes so far are "Lie To Me" (which has a very cool video), "Bottom of the World," "Lucinda," "Long Way Home," "Bend Down the Branches" and the two Ramones covers ("The Return of Jackie and Jusy" and "Danny Says"). Waits is an acquired taste, but he it is definitely worth the effort taking the time to absorb his music. He is easily one of the best songwriters ever.

music

This past year has been a great year for music, with lots of really amazing albums being released. I am really pumped for next Tuesday because Tom Waits is releasing a 3 CD set of previously unreleased songs, soundtrack/tribute album songs, and new material entitled Orphans. It is getting rave reviews all across the board, so I may have my album of the year pick in my hands pretty quick.

A year and a half already...

Today is the year and a half anniversary of April and I dating. It's hard to believe that it's been that long, but we're still plugging away. We've definitely had some ups and downs, but I still really love April and I still feel lucky to date someone so loving, bighearted, and goofy. We still make each other laugh and she hasn't gotten sick of me yet, so she must be pretty special! So happy anniversary sweetie!

REM vs. U2 article

As I logged onto my msn page, I noticed a Slate articel on my fave two bands so of course I had to read it. Well, here it is.

R.E.M. vs. U2Who was the best rock band of the '80s?

By Dan Kois
Posted Thursday, Nov. 9, 2006, at 10:18 AM ET

You can tell a lot about a band by how they tell their own story. This fall, R.E.M. released And I Feel Fine, a collection of songs from their early years, 1982 to 1987. The deluxe two-disc edition comes with liner notes in which R.E.M.'s four founding members relate stories of the band's early years. As a one-time devoted fan, I devoured these 11 short pages of storytelling—a tiny window into the songs I'd spent so many hours rapturously listening to, obsessing over, and decoding.

In weighty contrast to this slim text is the just-released U2 by U2, a $40 coffee-table book that exhaustively recounts—in 352 pages of interviews—the birth, struggles, and modern-day megasuccess of U2. Now that U2 has become America's spokesband for human dignity, it's difficult to remember that R.E.M., the quiet Georgians with the elliptical lyrics, once competed with U2 for the title of world's best rock band. With U2 triumphant and R.E.M. fading into near-obscurity, And I Feel Fine reminds listeners that R.E.M., not U2, made the most memorable music of the 1980s.

Throughout that decade and the early 1990s, a fierce rivalry existed between R.E.M. and U2—not in real life, mind you, but in my head. Among certain floppy-haired music nerds in that era, you were either an R.E.M. person or a U2 person, and this R.E.M. person has spent the last five years in agony, watching my one-time heroes release several drab albums, while U2 famously announced they meant to matter again—and succeeded.

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It's hard to imagine R.E.M. making a similar pronouncement, given the determination with which they pursued their off-center, Southern muses for so many years. For all of their ambition, in the 1980s, R.E.M.'s music was willfully obscure. Much has been made of Michael Stipe's mumbly lyrics, but it wasn't that you couldn't make out the words of early R.E.M. songs—you just didn't know what the hell they meant. Neither did the band. "I still have no idea what that song is about," Stipe writes about "Pilgrimage," and bassist Mike Mills says the same about "Gardening at Night" (while drummer Bill Berry claims it's based on a euphemism for peeing along the side of the road during an all-night drive). The lyrics could mean anything, and therefore they meant everything, weighted as they were with mystery, resonance, and passion. "It's not necessarily what we meant," writes Mills, "but whatever you think." A friend once gave his sister, for her birthday in 1988, a complete collection of R.E.M. lyrics, painstakingly hand-transcribed from repeated listens to the songs. Were they right? It hardly mattered.

Even R.E.M.'s "political" songs of the era, like "Fall on Me" or "Exhuming McCarthy," are tricky to parse. "Fall on Me" could maybe be about acid rain, or maybe air pollution in general, or maybe, uh, missile defense? Whereas U2's political songs of the 1980s are a little easier to work out: "Pride (In the Name of Love)" is about Martin Luther King Jr., for example, and "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" is about Bloody Sunday. Stirring as those songs are, there's very little a listener can bring to them; they are Bono's take, not yours, unlike "Fall on Me," which, for me, in 1987, was a deeply personal song about the crushing whatever of existence.

When U2's songs weren't on-the-nose political anthems, they were vague but heroically uplifting—filled with signifiers but signifying nothing. Whereas R.E.M. songs, drenched in Southern detail, allusive and elusive, sounded like fables or folk wisdom, U2's majestic uplift often felt like the outtakes of a melodically gifted youth-group minister.

There's a charming modesty in R.E.M.'s liner-note stories of how they learned to create these songs. Mills devotes paragraphs to explaining why it was fun to play bass within the framework of Peter Buck's guitar. And in the notes on the collection's best new track, a slowed-down version of "Gardening at Night," the band explains how, struggling with the song in the studio, they tried playing it slowly—to see if, in Mills' words, "it might hold up well with a softer treatment." Unlike most previously unreleased demos, this version is a treasure: The intricacies of Mills and Buck's interplay at a slower pace—overlaid by Stipe's falsetto and supported by Berry's expressive drumming—reveal new beauty behind the familiar drive of the original.

In the studio, R.E.M. was tentative and exploratory, while U2 was as straightforwardly ambitious as a band could be. "We're going to make the big music," says Bono, in U2 by U2, about the band's mindset leading up to the recording of 1984's The Unforgettable Fire. "That's who we are. ... Big ideas, big themes, big sound."

Live, the two bands were markedly different. U2 By U2 is filled with stories of Bono climbing the stage rigging and leaping into the audience at shows. Contrast that willful courting of—and connection to—an audience with Stipe hiding behind the drum kit on David Letterman's show in 1983, or, in 1987, telling a story about the origins of "Life and How to Live It" that just adds to the song's curiosity.

"There's nothing like being at Number One," Bono says in U2 by U2. "It's just better than Number Two." In the early 1990s, both bands were Number One: U2 with Achtung Baby and "One," R.E.M. with Out of Time and "Losing My Religion." By the late 1990s, both bands were in career lulls: U2's dabbling in electronica with Zooropa and Pop had turned off many hard-core fans. R.E.M.'s Berry had amicably left the commercially floundering band after suffering an aneurysm onstage during a concert.

Without Berry, R.E.M. has recorded three quiet, unimpressive albums. Meanwhile, U2 is on top of the rock heap again—a brand as much as a band, representing both sincerity and success. Just check out their Successories-ready aphorisms in U2 by U2: "I always thought the job was to be as great as you could be," says Bono. "If it is not absolutely the best it can be, why bother?" says bassist Adam Clayton. And that's just in the flap copy!

Either you loved U2, or you liked them fine. Either you loved R.E.M., or you hated them. The delicacy at the heart of R.E.M.'s 1980s albums fostered introspection and brotherhood among those of us who loved them in those years: introspection, because the songs pushed the listener inward, finding significance in every line; brotherhood, because we had to band together to defend our heroes against the unfeeling jerks who found R.E.M. precious and maddeningly opaque. I assumed, of course, that those jerks were U2 fans.

There never really was a rivalry, of course. In 1992, members of the two groups combined to perform a sweet version of "One" at MTV's Inaugural Ball. Despite all of my righteous teenage anger on R.E.M.'s behalf, U2 and R.E.M. were entirely friendly. Bono even discusses Stipe in U2 by U2: "Michael Stipe's friendship means more to me than I can ever tell you," he says on Page 162. Then, he doesn't mention Stipe's name again in the book.

Halloween pt 3

You know, you just gotta keep on fuckin' givin' er. That's all you gotta do.

Halloween pt. 2

Zubazz was supposed to dress up but he was late getting off work.

Halloween 2006

For Halloween, April and I went to McNally's with a bunch of people. Kevy had hands down the best costume of the night, where he dressed up as a creepy old guy at a strip club... Okay, maybe it wasn't a costume :) . Anyways, here are the pics.

Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame

Today it was announced that R.E.M. are among a list of artists (including Patti Smith, The Stooges and Van Halen) that are nominated to be inducted into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame next March. It would be really cool to see them at the ceremony performing onstage with Iggy and Patti Smith. I just hope that Van HALEN would perform.... not Van HAGGAR. Not that being inducted validates an artist's work. But it would still be nice to see them amongst other worthy inductees like U2, Springsteen, The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles.

Football and cars and chicks f'n rule!!!!!!! Give'r!!!!!!

I think I made my least masculine purchase ever today when I poked my head into Walmart (Yes, I hate Walmart but I was in a hurry) to purchase some black makeup for my halloween costume and some white panty hose for April's costume. Yup... makeup and pantyhose. Somebody, please get me a beer or something. Fark.

Actually, on second thought, that would be my second least masculine purchase ever. About four years ago I entered the annual Waskimo Red Dress Run with my friend Sandra so I had to go to Value Village to by a red dress. Yes, I got some funny looks. Although after checking out some pics of my cousin George on his myspace dressed up as a woman for Halloween, I've got nothin' on him.

The New Pornographers

Last night April, Mark, Tessa and I checked out the indie rock supergroup The New Pornographers at The Distrikt. Besides having arguably the best name for a band ever, they put on a great show of hook-filled, pop-rock tunes. Even without Neko Case in the lineup, the band put on a fun, energetic show. I especially liked how they insulted the guy who requested "Freebird." Their drummer, Kurt Dahle (formerly of Age of Electric and Limblifter) was the most entertaining to watch. He reminded me of Animal from the Muppets with his crazy hair and manic, spastic movements. Definitely money well spent. Sadly, The Distrikt was only about half full. People wonder why so many great bands pass over Regina in favour of Saskatoon. Maybe if people actually showed up to some shows here we might get some more good bands stopping in on their tours.

creative writing

I've really enjoyed my creative writing class so far. It's been a lot of work, but some of the writing exercises have been fun. A couple weeks ago, our professor asked us to choose from 15 possible options to write a very short story. One of the writing prompts read: "Write a story that begins with a man throwing hundred dollar bills out of a speeding car and ends with a woman urinating in a tin bucket." So of course I had to choose that one! Here it is, in all it's um... glory?

Macsweeneys Writing Exercise…$100 Bills and a Tin of Piss

Brown bills were flying in the air. Hundred dollar bills! So of course like a mad vulture I scrambled out to the street where this crazed man was just freely tossing out handfuls upon handfuls of brown bills out the passenger window of a car that was just zipping down the street. Luckily for me there weren’t that many people on that street so I made out like a bandit. It was the easiest $2000 I ever made. I figured this had to have been a joke or something or that there had to be a hidden camera lurking around somewhere. I don’t believe in God or any sort of higher power, but sometimes I get tempted to start. I mean, I don’t pray. The closest thing I do is close my eyes sometimes and just wish I could win the lottery or something. It’s never anything to improve the world really. Just good old money. For me.

I’m an artist you see. An artiste. I hate to sound like I’m the stereotypical starving artist, but it is really feast or famine sometimes. Okay, maybe it’s more nibble or famine. So this extra money came at a great time for me. I wasn’t really ready to get a day job for a while yet. I dabble in a few things. I do some photography, a bit of painting, some writing. I’m just versatile I guess. I don’t have any visions of grandeur of writing the great Canadian novel. Some people put everything they have into their work. Good for them. I just want people to buy my shit. No more, no less. I figure if pictures of Campbell’s Soup or a picture of a crucifix in a container of piss can be considered art, then count me in. I can do that. I’ll throw a handful of paint against a canvas while in a drunken rage and I’ll call it art. It’s amazing that some of my art has sold. There was even a review of my work in the local independent paper. I found it hysterical that the writer saw how much my photographs portrayed the existential angst of living in a world of McJobs and globalization. I took a wrapper of a Big Mac, pasted it to a lamp post with a wad of gum and took a picture of it. I decided to make it black and white. Voila! Art! And I got paid for it. And now I’m another spokesperson for anti-globalization. Whatever floats your boat I guess.

I was a little late for my appointment with my model this morning, since I got preoccupied scavenging after any brown bill in sight. After I figured that I picked up every last bill, I picked up a cup of coffee and walked to my studio. Okay, it’s my apartment. But it is where I do all my work, so I call it my studio. The woman was a little nervous when I showed up. She asked me why in my add I asked for the model to drink lots of fluids an hour before the session. She thought it was a little bizarre. She said she felt like she was preparing to go to a doctor’s office for a check up or something. I told her not to worry and that it would all make sense soon enough. I made sure that she was comfortable with nude modelling. She said she’s done it a few times for various art classes. My set up was pretty simple. A white sheet for background and blue lighting. And a tin can. I made sure that I had the temperature pretty cool in my apartment because I probably only had one chance to get a good shot. I gave her a big glass of water to make sure she was ready to go. Then I gave her her money for her time and efforts. I explained to her what I wanted, so she chugged the water. We waited for a few minutes until she started to get really antsy. She was finally ready. She took off her robe, grabbed that tin can and pissed like a race horse. I got seven great shots out of it. It was a good day. Except for the cleaning up part.

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boobies

Sarah had to get a couple pictures of her boobs in, so I have to include them. By doing so, I am not condoning any ogling of her breasts. Because she's my cousin. And that's just wrong. So don't stare at them you sick pervert. Yes, keep scrolling. Keep scrolling. If you can read this, then you are probably still staring at Sarah's boobs. So quit it. She has a mind too, you know. You're still staring, aren't you? I am really ashamed of you now. Pervert.

High five!

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