"Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it."
Among the most frustrating proclamations of the Bush administration is their insistence that history will prove their actions justified. Imperialism works. Check this out, Saddam shaking hands with Donald Rumsfeld. Allies? Or is it Axis? I can never remember.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
major organs
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I will now risk a little real light. Timbits, if you will.
1. puretracks.com is a disgrace. I hate the idea of buying tracks for $0.99/song, or whatever it is that they charge. It saddens me to think that people don’t listen to whole records anymore. Downloading lone tracks makes for soulless college party compilations. Frosh 2004. Evidently, theme and storytelling are not important parts of music today. People have the attention spans of retarded chipmunks. Perhaps the technology shall one day reach a point where artist, listener and record company all feel comfortable with one another. But not yet. Not for me, at least.
2. What is up with the North American music scene? It’s awful. Nickelback? Good Charlotte? Creed? Linkin Park? Incubus? Staind? 3 Doors Down? We cannae hack it anymore. The lone bright spot for 2003 was Spoon's record Kill The Moonlight, and come to think of it, I think that may have been released in 2002. Even the hip-hop scene – the lone source of any real innovation in music in the last decade – has become stagnant and boring.
I want to believe that The Flaming Lips, or Wilco, or Beck will save us. Beck’s Sea Change (2002) is a masterpiece. Unfortunately, nobody heard it. I was never a big fan of his earlier work … it was too much satirical impatience and white boy coffee-house hip-hop, see Mellow Gold (1994). Sea Change is a perfect treasure of spectacular suffering. The album is also very British early-1970s school of psychedelic-comedown melancholy. I am still shocked by the strength of Beck’s naked voice. It’s not often that you hear a deep tenor, full of lust AND worry. And who produced the record? Nigel Goderich. Don’t mess. Listen closely to the backward tape buzz on the song, Lost Cause. Listen closely to the broken drums and guitar distortions at the end of Sunday Sun. Everything in it’s right place.
dollars and cents
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With his last failing senses Frodo heard cries, and it seemed to him that he saw, beyond the Riders that hesitated on the shore, a shining figure of white light; and behind it ran small shadowy forms waving flames, that flared red in the grey mist that was falling over the world.
Thank you Mr. Peter Jackson.
New Line
