No, Michael Stipe looks dowright ill and he's an admitted drunk. BUT he may inspire someone who is politically minded to not be such a fuck up, and that is beautiful.

I hate it when music gets political.

Counterculture is fine but theres a line. (Oooo, im so lyrical)

I wonder if music has really changed anything anytime by bieng political. Ya don't see AC/DC trying to wake the masses, and they can Rock. (not as well since Bonn Scott choked on someone else's vomit, but they rock)

Would you vote for Mr Stipe if he were running for public office? (the only real way to make things change)

Not I, thats for sure...



THE
GENERATION
LAST
AARDVARK

That's pretty fucking cool that someone other than Robb (who used the music) and me (the one who met the band under unusual circumstances in the first place) bought the album, which validates the whole musical hook-up, IMO.

Look, after reading all of Ben's posts I have realized that taste in music is directly linked to intelligence and unless you listen to Ben's music ... you are a filthy moron guilty of any corporate crimes against humanity and yourself he accuses you of. Look, I like music that I think sounds good. I hear URT in "A Crimson Spring" and I bought the CD. You guys can analyze your music and say "I like this music because the CD is made out of a fucking steel polymer and the lyric book is recycled paper" ... you don't listen to music for something to bitch about ... listen to it for something to make you feel better to slowly reverberate inside your head and maybe ... JUST MAYBE make you feel a little better. Now I know good 'ol ben will reason that I am a jerk off trying to reason with him yet he is beyond fact, life, and reason. He is ben and he is on a message board ...

Ben, we get it. You are a hard assed ass hole who doesn't care about other peoples opinions and in doing that you are totally original ... it is just the same old crap. Everyone is a rebel with out a cause fount of knowledge. Frankly, I am darn glad to admit I'm a bit of a doofus, I am not cut throat because it is a Message Board, and I like those bands and am not a music nazi (yes yes I know using the nazi angle who am I to insult your originality) Look, I really don't care enough about the bands enough to argue that. But, you do realize your putting on an act ... even if you don't think you are putting on an act.

Eric wrote:There was a guy in the group who was obsessed with getting published this novel he’d taken seven years to write and was then rewriting. He was equally obesessed with rules and standards. For example, anyone who used anything other than “said” for dialogue wasn’t a real writer. He was as certain of it as my old Baptist Aunt was certain that all Catholics were going straight to Hell. If you ever had someone so much as “exclaim” or “sigh” you were a hack. Period. Everyone knew that.

Whoops, I thought I had a reply posted to this, but I guess I didn't save it. It only said:

That has got to be one of the most self-deluded guys in the realm of entertainment, much less literature. I always look at the use of "said" as simply something that makes every other description of talking more effective, by being so plain and uninformative on its own. There is almost always non-verbal content that is happening when someone is speaking to somebody else and sometimes it's even more important than the actual words -- in real life, and in novels. How can you lock yourself off to describing that?

Even if you were to have a conversation between an emotionless droid and your protagonist, you don't need to describe the droid's speech in terms of straight "said"s. You can have the protagonist project his own feelings on the droid or something.

Maybe... MAYBE if I were writing a screenplay and the actors that were going to perform it had about a billion times more pull than I, and would wave off my take on my script like Curt Schilling waving off some catcher that was just an emergency call-up from AA ball or something I could see it. But even then that's just an admittance of defeat on the author's part.

An elegant corollary of Eric's anecdote, ideally suited to the topic of music, may be found at the following link:

http://www.brunching.com/features/accou ... taste.html

It is funny.

It is also apt, and wise.

Rather than saying anything else about taste and standards I have to recount this little story. Just because the discussion brings it to mind. Even though it doesn’t concern music. I’m not trying to speak in parables or anything. Although maybe it gives some insight as to why any mention of “standards” sets me off.

While in In Rochester I attended a writer’s group for awhile – something I wouldn’t usually do – but the fellow who formed the group had half a dozen horror novels out from Tor Books so he knew something. This was before my wife and I finally managed our very (very) modest success selling our novels to an indie publisher, although we already were regularly selling short stories in anthologies and magazines.

There was a guy in the group who was obsessed with getting published this novel he’d taken seven years to write and was then rewriting. He was equally obesessed with rules and standards. For example, anyone who used anything other than “said” for dialogue wasn’t a real writer. He was as certain of it as my old Baptist Aunt was certain that all Catholics were going straight to Hell. If you ever had someone so much as “exclaim” or “sigh” you were a hack. Period. Everyone knew that.

Of course, that meant my wife and I were mere hacks, albeit published hacks. But I suppose in this guy’s mind it was better being a real unpublished writer than a hack. And the fellow who had the Tor books out was also a hack, not only by reason of various stylistic misdemeanors and felonies but because horror was a genre and another law was that all genres were unworthy and anyone who wrote in a genre was a hack. Vampires? AHAHAHA!

So the published horror writer tried to give the unpublished literary genius advice but, as you might imagine, none of it stuck. I tried to convince this guy that the horror writer might have something useful to teach him because he demonstrably knew something about getting published. But no, the literary genius knew what the standards were. He would constantly read the horror writer’s books to mock them. In one book there was a reference to someone’s eyes growing “round.” Mr Literature found this hilarious. The absolute smoking gun to prove utter incompetance. Well, at least people know what you mean if you say “his eyes grew round with fright.” So how bad is it? But that phrase was a cliché or some equal infraction of the rules of Literature.

Anyway Mr Literature, having been rejected by about 200 publishers – despite his high standards - finally paid iUniverse to store his book in their computers in order to print the occassional copy for relatives -- except an uncle who he doesn’t want to know since it recounts how he was secretly screwing the man’s daughter while he staying with him -- oh, did I mention that the “novel” is actually an autobiography? Part of his problem was he couldn’t understand why a lot of people would rather read about the life of a vampire roaming the night looking for blood than a middle-aged guy working in a cubicle twelve hours a day to buy a bigger house. Real writers write about real life. Everybody knows that.

Mr Literature is now happily posturing at various wannabe author sites, expounding on how real writers, who meet literary standards, have to find alternative ways to gain the publication that has been denied them by the unwashed hordes of clueless hacks the unwashed horde of the public insist on reading. If anyone manages to get published it is practically proof they’re no good.

Sigh. In the old days, when someone paid the printery to print up a few cartons of books only the local weekly mistook that for publication.

So you can see, maybe, why to paraphrase the famous German critic Goebbels, when I hear the word standards I reach for my gun. However, I admit I have worked the phrase “round eyes” into each of our hack mystery novels, as an homage, and so Mr Literature will not be disappointed if he checks one out of the library sometime to prove to himself just how substandard it is.

Eric

WHEN I WAS BEING PROGRAMMED, MY DRUGGED-OUT PROGRAMMER SLIPPED ON SOME BONG WATER AND KNOCKED HIS HEAD LOOSE AND NEVER FINISHED MY PROGRAM. SO AS A RESULT, I CAN ONLY COUNT ONE-DIGIT NUMBERS.

BUT THAT IS OK, SINCE IT WON'T TAKE ME LONGER THAN 9 SECONDS TO KICK YOUR ASS!!!!!!!!!!!!

RRRRRRrrr!!!

Ben wrote:Well, how about this:

How come it's you same uppity pseudo-intellectual pus-bags who, when YOUR music is attacked, instantly go all world-peace and start trotting out, "Well, nobody can judge any music because it's all in the eye of the flaming beholder, nyaaaaaeaeewwweewe", but you think nothing of sitting around in a giant sticky circle jerk going on and on about (and I'm just picking him as an example) how awful Eminem is, and how music has really devolved, and that "rap crap" is a load of garbage, and we are far, far too special and important to have our ears molested with that kind of noise?

Nobody ever says, "Well, I don't care for it, but to each their own!" If somebody says something SUCKS, and you AGREE, you'll pile on like the rest of us, you hypocritical, holier-than-shit sons of WHORES.

How you like me NOW?!??

Does anyone else remember Ben being there the last time you had a conversation about music with someone else? I don't. Because believe it or not, and if Jonsey was as sober as I think he was at the time he can back me on this, when Vanilla Ice was playing at Jeff and Cathy's wedding and people were mocking it I said "to each there own" .

Suggestion to Ben, who I can only now picture as being a want-to-be-angst-ridden teenager tediously grasping for more things to be grumpy about; if you hear someone have that conversation BITCH TO THEM. JESUS, you've got more w(h)ine than a vinyard, follow thier example, bottle it, cork it, and wallow in it later.

-LG

Because EACH PERSON is the ultimate Chief Examiner when it comes to musics that passes through *their* skulls and into their pea-brains. What happens is that people either forget this or are oblivious to it. If I am holier-than-thou (ALL of thou) about anything, it's just because I am able to engage in some simple human empathy.

There are individuals, though, involved with this music that none of us can judge for others. Saying that Eminem is a piece of crap for his rage-against-the-homosexuals agenda, or saying that he is a Comedy Kingpin for suggesting that himself, Carson Daly and Marky Mark ought to stand around in a "Fun Bunch" is wholly divorced from whatever tunes he manages to crank out.

You say that you hate REM because they are pretentious, but then you say that music and not lyrics are really the only thing that matters. I have a question for you, then. How can you perceive them as pretentious when you're just listening to the notes that make up their songs? Unless lyrics can have a negative effect on your perception of a group but not a positive one (which is entirely fair 'nuff if so).

Well, how about this:

How come it's you same uppity pseudo-intellectual pus-bags who, when YOUR music is attacked, instantly go all world-peace and start trotting out, "Well, nobody can judge any music because it's all in the eye of the flaming beholder, nyaaaaaeaeewwweewe", but you think nothing of sitting around in a giant sticky circle jerk going on and on about (and I'm just picking him as an example) how awful Eminem is, and how music has really devolved, and that "rap crap" is a load of garbage, and we are far, far too special and important to have our ears molested with that kind of noise?

Nobody ever says, "Well, I don't care for it, but to each their own!" If somebody says something SUCKS, and you AGREE, you'll pile on like the rest of us, you hypocritical, holier-than-shit sons of WHORES.

How you like me NOW?!??

Cause to vomit, too. First a pause. And then vomiting, due to his cause. Puking. Technicolor yawning. Selling of buicks. Etc.

Ben wrote: Truth is: I, of course, don't mean any of that crap that I said (other than I hate the bands that I mentioned). A wise man once said to me, the more things you can enjoy in life, the better off you are.

What the hell is this GARBAGE? I didn't write the previous response only to see you trot this pathetic sack of sentiment out in front of everybody, ensuring that they all got a whiff of the pungent smell of a pussy backing down from the front-yard cross-burning that he so richly deserves.

You were onto something with the bile that you were slurping out onto the keys. They formed a more-or-less coherent semblance of human thought. This... this... foul backtracking does little else than give me pause to VOMIT.

Eric wrote:Holy shit!
So Its you who set the "standards."
Wow, I am honored to know the man who sets the standards.
Me, I just have opinions, but this Ben guy, his opinions are standards.

I'd like to step in here for a moment and state that this was probably another piece of performance art by our guy Ben here.

But what I think he was getting at was, when it comes to music, *each person* is the ultimate arbitrator when it comes to whether it's any good or not. I look at it like this -- I can sit down and watch a movie and dislike it, or at least have an indifferent reaction to it. It is possible that someone can then point out details that I have missed, someone can show me that certain scenes make up pieces of a larger narrative that I had not seen (perhaps the film is the second in a trilogy) and actually move my opinion of the film in a different direction.

This is possible with other forms of entertainment, I think. For instance, I used to read the occasional comic book drawn by Rob Leifeld ten years ago. Maybe one of his every fourth month or so. It was good enough at the time, but I later learned that the guy had like ten "stock" poses that he'd put his characters into, so that each comic ended up looking like the one that came before it. I wouldn't have noticed that, buying his stuff as infrequently as I did.

It's not like that with music. There is absolutely nothing anyone can say that will change my opinion on the song "Phoebe Cates" by FenixTX, for instance. I understand that someone could say that it's a trite piece of unfunny nostalgia pop and I would say, "maybe, but that doesn't change the fact that I like putting that CD and that track on in my car the instant I hit the highway home."

This is also why I think that music is inherently unreviewable, but that's another post.

Additionally, the criteria that we all subject music to is totally different. Ben has stated that he doesn't care about lyrics (thus, as final arbitrator for what Ben Likes, lyrics matter not). This isn't the case with me. Lyrics are very important. Sometimes for what they say, sometimes for what they imply, sometimes for the way they sound and sometimes for all of the above. Time and place is also very important to me. The CD "Wish" by the Cure will always be the second month of my freshman year. "Disintegration" by the same band also has a lot of scenario surrounding it.

Eric wrote: But, that's just my opinion and at least I can tell the difference between opinions and facts.

This is true, but in my opinion (heh) I think music is subject to different rules. We can have a thread on whether or not Grand Theft Auto III was a decent game or not. I think a discussion of the album "Vapor Trails"'ll eventually come down to "Rush rocks" or "Rush blows." (Mind you, like-minded citizens can thrash out topics on a more detailed level... at least in theory. I'm guessing here. I've never been on alt.fan.rush or any of those Usenet groups, so I dunno.)

Ben wrote:Well, the bands you posted were so obviously awful that I didn't think I needed to even point it out.

I'm going to put my fist through your throat because of that wisecrack. I will then attempt to retract said hand and allow you to live your life as a traechiaed sideshow, only it won't be so easy due to my extreme amount of You-Pulping Punching Power that I possess and I'll have to throw your form around in a hasty attempt to cause your throat to let go. Eventually I'll get it right and allow you to live the rest of your life no longer nicknamed Ben "Pinback" Parrish but rather Ben "Pez" Parrish.

I never got irate,just annoyed.A good debate is fun, and when a quick comeback is open like that, it has to be taken =)

-LG

So I'll ditch the note I was gonna post saying, what the hell is going on here and why am I arguing about this.

But I gotta admit, getting irate about music -- makes me feel like a teenager again.

Eric

Oh, you know, I could go on with this for weeks and months, building a thread which would make the original BBQ list look like a bad fart in the wind, but I just don't have the heart for it.

Truth is: I, of course, don't mean any of that crap that I said (other than I hate the bands that I mentioned). A wise man once said to me, the more things you can enjoy in life, the better off you are. And as Morgan Freeman said at the end of Shawshank Redemption, "Where that damn fool whitey go??"

No, wait... he said: "Absolutely goddamn right."

Christ, I just wanna be loved, is that so wrong?!?!?