Five FBI agents recently arrested blogger Kevin Cogill(aka Skwerl) at his Culver City, California apartment for posting on his blog - antiquiet.com - nine leaked songs from the never-ending saga that is Chinese Democracy - the Guns N' Roses album which is roughly fifteen years(and counting) in the making.
As a piracy advocate and participant, you would think that I would have little sympathy for GNR frontman, Axl Rose, in this case, but I do. Cogill contends that if the album is good - which he believes it is - it would do well financially, in spite of any leaks. The financial aspect, however, is irrelevant to me. I just simply believe that the artist should be able to, at least, have control over their work before it is released.
Do I want Cogill to "rot in jail" as former Guns N' Roses guitarist, Slash, has advocated? Of course not. Is it really necessary for five FBI agents to take Cogill down? I mean, come on. Regardless, if Axl feels he needs twenty more years to complete his "masterpiece in progress" without it being released, I believe he should ultimately have control over that decision.
I saw the band - A Place To Bury Strangers - tonight at Emo's and it got me to thinking about the loudest bands I've ever seen live. Yes, it's list time and this list is in no particular order except for numero uno. 1)Mogwai - Somewhat mellow on record, yet anything but mellow live in concert. This is absolutely the loudest band I've ever seen. With a huge wall of amps stacked on top of each other, I'm surprised the band didn't blow themselves off stage. Everyone in the audience seemed to be in pain. 2)Jucifer - Tiny, tiny club...tons and tons of amps. The husband/wife duo that is Jucifer brought more amps than there were people at the show. 3)A Place To Bury Strangers - feedback...distortion...smoke from smoke machine...repeat. 4)Mission of Burma - The best band out of Boston. Don't let the old guys fool you - they are not for the faint of heart. 5)Comets on Fire - An absolute sonic assault with a couple of guitarists on stage seemingly trying to out-loud the other.
P.S. There's not a video out there that I could possibly post that would do any of these bands justice...you'll just have to take my word for it.
I never had much respect for djs and dj culture until DJ Shadow hit the scene with his 1996 breakthrough album - Entroducing.... I simply failed to see the importance of someone exclusively using other people's music as a viable art form. With Shadow, however, it became clear to me that using sound bites and samples from various albums was simply an audio form of collage and, if done right, could be every bit as original and entertaining as any other format or genre of music around. Not to mention the fact that djs, like Shadow, are some of the most knowledgeable music geeks in the world because they meticulously sift through tons of albums spanning every genre and musical era known to man in order to find that perfect sound.
The latest "collage" album released this year is What Does It All Mean? 1983-2006 Retrospective. The majority of it was created in the early days of hip hop by a Jewish white kid(Steve Stein, AKA Steinski) and yet it is just now getting an "official" release because of the obvious copyright infringements in his use of samples.
It was only a few months ago that I had even heard of Steinski and I imagined in my mind that this album would be a crude, outdated sound of the beginning stages of collage as a musical art form. At most, I thought it would be interesting, but far from great. What I heard, however, blew me away and it is, without question, one of my favorite albums of 2008. Steinski's use of sound bites and samples fits perfectly to create a fun record that sounds as fresh today as I'm sure it did in its bootleg form in the 80's. If you like DJ Shadow or modern collage progenitor, Girl Talk - I assure you that you will most certainly love this album.
I saw Man On Wire yesterday and it is an amazing documentary that chronicles not only the life of highwire extraordinaire, Philippe Petit, but the preparations, as well, for his ultimate dream - to run a wire between the two World Trade Center buildings and walk across. At a distance of approximately a quarter mile(1,353 ft) above ground, I can honestly say that the culmination of Petit's dream is probably the most insane act achieved by a human being. I mean, walking across a wire at that distance is crazy enough, but walking across a wire between two enormous buildings that have been known to sway because of wind gusts?! This guy weighs 135 pounds! Absolutely nuts. I have a healthy fear of heights and my nerves were wrenched just watching it. Being that the act itself was illegal, director James Marsh does a brilliant job in setting up the film as though you are watching a bank heist movie. The hijinks that ensue in attainment of this daring feat is enough to keep you on the edge of your seat throughout the whole film which is recounted by its fascinating protagonist - Philippe Petit. And there are many terms you could use to describe the man himself. Mad? Crazy? Insane? Perhaps. But whatever adjectives you throw out there, one thing is certain - the world needs more characters like Philippe Petit.
I've been hyping the Austin music scene a lot lately, but there's an equally incredible scene in a city that, for years, I have derided as culturally vacant. Yes, Los Angeles is making a comeback, at least as far as music is concerned.
The punk explosion born out of the New York City/CBGB's scene in the mid to late 70's was a much needed cultural shift in the musical landscape that eventually made its way to Los Angeles, infecting its youth and thus creating a thriving underground scene that birthed some of the most influential bands of the modern musical era including Black Flag, The Germs, Minutemen, Saccharine Trust, The Weirdos, X, The Circle Jerks, The Descendants, Fear, Suicidal Tendencies, etc., etc. It was also home to the greatest, in my opinion, underground label ever - SST Records - which was founded by Black Flag guitarist, Greg Ginn, and responsible for an array of 80's classic albums such as: Bad Brains - I Against I Black Flag - Damaged, My War Sonic Youth - Confusion Is Sex, EVOL, Sister Dinosaur Jr - You're Living All Over Me Descendants - Milo Goes To College Meat Puppets - II, Up On The Sun Husker Du - Zen Arcade, New Day Rising Minutemen - Double Nickels On The Dime
Yet, since the grunge era of the early 90's, the underground music scene in L.A. seemed pretty dormant until now, as a new crop of bands are once again putting Los Angeles back on the map. Young and experimental, these bands which include No Age, Abe Vigoda, Mika Miko, and my personal favorites - Health and Ariel Pink - are not only making great albums, but their live shows are some of the most talked about in music circles today. I saw Health for the second time last week and they are absolutely amazing live. Health further impressed me with a recent blog they posted on their myspace page:
AUSTIN KIDS PLZ READ -- AND FUCK CIGARETTES IF YOU WERE AN UNDER 18+ KID THAT GOT TURNED AWAY AT THE EMO'S SHOW PLZ EMAIL US YR FULL NAME TO: healthnoise@gmail.com EMO'S IS ALWAYS ALL AGES, BUT THE AESOP ROCK SHOW NEXT DOOR BEING SPONSORED BY CAMEL CIGARETTES FUCKED OUR SHOW WITH A SUPRISE AGE LIMIT. (DUE TO PATIO CONNECTION) EMO'S IS GONNA GIVE YOU 2 FREE ADMISSIONS TO OTHER SHOWS, AND THE NEXT HEALTH SHOW IS FREE. ALSO INCLUDE YR ADDRESS SO WE CAN GIVE YOU SOME STUFF. AND FUCK CIGARETTES P.S. BE HONEST
And just when I thought the youth of today were getting away from the punk ethos...anywho, if you haven't heard of these bands, go check them out.
Satire is defined as the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
I must say that I loved the recent satirical, yet controversial, cover of the New Yorker magazine the second I saw it because it mocks the absurd and exaggerated attempt by Fox News, in particular, to play off of people's fears by painting the Obamas as extremists. I have personally received emails from people I know informing me that Barack Hussein Obama attended a jihadist school in Indonesia as a child and would I please forward this email to as many friends as possible to prevent this radical from reaching the White House.
Is it the New Yorker magazine's fault that some people in our society choose not to filter out what the media and others feed them? When you refuse to question the environment around you, interpretation is easily manipulated. This is exactly the reason why the parents of JonBenet Ramsey, who were cleared last week of any wrong doing in the death of their daughter through DNA evidence, were convicted in the court of public opinion; and this is exactly why I feel that Barack Obama doesn't have a chance in hell of winning the presidency. Sound bites are accepted as fact; demagoguery is the new truth; and common sense, apparently, is the new code word for uppity, sophistication.
Conspiracy theories often thrive for years because all that is necessary to keep them going is reasonable doubt. For years, I was absolutely captivated by the "doubt" cast upon the JFK assassination - the undisputed king of conspiracy theories. Each year, as the anniversary of the events of November 22, 1963 approached, I would sit transfixed in front of the tv as the annual JFK conspiracy theory documentaries were rolled out, usually around the Thanksgiving holidays, as I remember. I also remember thinking to myself, at the time, that that blurry image, which looks like nothing more than a Rorschach test to me now, was actually the second shooter lurking behind the grassy knoll. And I was convinced, as well, that Lee Harvey Oswald was nothing more than a "patsy" when ballistics experts would declare that it was absolutely impossible for Oswald, a former Marine, to shoot the President in a moving vehicle, regardless of the fact that it was a slow-moving vehicle, from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. When I personally visited the site of the assassination for the first time last year, I was stunned, as I gazed upon the window where Oswald is alleged to have taken that fateful shot, to realize that you could have thrown a rock from the sixth floor of that building and hit the president and, yet, expert after expert has, for years, convinced people that Oswald, a man whom I'm quite sure had weapons training while in the military, couldn't have possibly shot the president from that distance. Yet, for all the flaws in the conspiracy case of the Kennedy assassination, it doesn't even come close to the inaccuracies involved in the latest conspiracy craze known as 9/11.
The basic theories behind that fateful day include: (a) the collapse of the World Trade Center was the result of a controlled demolition (b) United Airlines Flight 93 was shot down where it crashed in an open field in Pennsylvania. In the popular conspiracy film, Loose Change, there is even speculation that Flight 93 safely landed in Ohio, and a substituted plane was involved in the crash in Pennsylvania. (c) The Pentagon was not hit by American Airlines Flight 77, but a missile launched by the American military. Loose Change bolsters this theory by asserting that there were no discernible pieces of debris from Flight 77.
And the insinuation that the events of September 11 were an "inside job" by the US government is supported by many high profile individuals such as film directors David Lynch and Michael Moore; actors Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, and Charlie Sheen; as well as many others including that icon of American icons, Willie Nelson...
As to Willie Nelson's concerns regarding the demolition-style manner in which the towers fell, what precedent is there to know how buildings fall once commercial airliners hit them? The fact that no steel-framed building structures had ever collapsed due to fire before or since 9/11 is often used as an argument in favor of the "controlled demolitions" theory but, again, how many of these steel-framed building structures were struck by a commercial airliner that weighs several tons and travels at a high rate of speed? It's a very rare occurrence and it needs to be taken into consideration when debating the science of collapsing buildings. And while the designers of the World Trade Center buildings created the towers to withstand the impact of a commercial airliner, it's still difficult to know how your design will succeed until you actually fly a plane into it to test the structural integrity of the buildings you created. The Titanic used some of the most advanced technology of its day to create what many believed was an unsinkable ship and look what happened.
And yet, the biggest question I have in regards to this whole 9/11 conspiracy nonsense is this - why would you need to detonate explosives in the World Trade Centers or fly a missile into the Pentagon when the justification to start a war was already validated once those two planes hit the twin towers? We're talking about the first foreign attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. You don't need to bring the towers down or fire a missile at the Pentagon; American public opinion would have fully supported retaliation against the perpetrators of this disaster regardless of whether the buildings fell or not. Almost every infamous tragedy is usually followed by a conspiracy theory. If only common sense could follow alongside it.
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