Today, Diddy, a.k.a. P. Diddy, a.k.a. Puff Daddy, a.k.a. Sean "Puffy" Combs, a.k.a. Reese's Puffs, was due in court in response to a set of enduring grievances posed by alleged ex Valerie Joyce Wilson Turks.
In a move that ever so vaguely recalls Dr. Evil's more eccentric demands, Turks seeks to collect a chilly trill' from rap's man of many monikers. Move over Gates, get outta' town Buffet; there's a new champ of the cheddah upon us and the world (and Diddy's credit) will never be the same.
"One billion, gagillion, fafillion, shabolubalu million illion yillion ... yen"
The allegations, which are apparently so appalling that they could not be reproduced in cohesive English sentences, include countless acts of belligerence toward Turks and the American people, not least of which include Combs' direct responsibility for 1/3 of the September 11th catastrophe. Turks claims:
[Diddy] went through Kim Porter and Rodney King and knocked down the WTC and then they all came and knocked my children down. Set me up to be on disability and disabled my baby. he put my baby in a wheelchair. - He date raped me 24 years ago and knocked me down him and Kim Porter and Wallace Wright, then Sean Combs and Kim and Wallace Wright came back 18 years later and raped and sexually abused my children and knocked my children down and crushed me and my children daily. [1]
Prominent Intellectuals of the German Tradition/Mustache Quarterly Covers Over the Years
How very wise of me to major in this field of vast real world application. I can't say that the nine classes I've taken thus far have been a total waste of time, but I'd be lying if I didn't at least call them a large waste of time.
You know those commercials where the advertisers painstakingly convince you that something that has never bothered you once in your life is suddenly a problem; a problem that they so conveniently have a solution to? Throw in some choice words like comported and historicity and that's more or less what the introductory chapters of most philosophy texts are like.
Comfort Wipe: cause' wiping your ass is such a hermeneutical crisis
I don't want to sound unscholarly here, but frankly there's only so much enlightenment I can mentally manage in a day's time. I try to wrap my head around the loftiness; I try to grasp the pretension, but the fact is, I usually need some kind of an aid to protect my modest brain from it's presumably high risk for an aneurism.
In the past I've had great luck with teachers explaining material ad nauseam and finding sites that put in layman's terms, that which should have always been in layman's terms, but I might actually be screwed now.
Martin Heidegger, in addition to being a Nazi sympathizing douche (see, this isn't a totally random post, douchebags are a big deal here!), also writes with all the clarity of a pot roast. That's not even the problem, though; the problem is that the best aid I've found thus far is Xzbit's brief explication of Heidegger's watershed text, Being and Time.
Boy, would I rather have my car pimped than read another sentence about existentia, essensia, and existentialia.
Yup, this semester is going to blow.
* * *
Stay tuned for my next exciting post (after I figure out the true meaning of my being with regard to the ever present temporal conditions of our worldly environment- could be a while ...).
Those who know me are well aware of my general disdain for all things tacky, mainstream, and easily digestible (I like my music just like my food ... and McDonald's cashiers; SPICEY). That said, I rarely turn down an opportunity to watch others flounder with style. Honestly, what's better than a little Omazing Grace every now and then? There's just something so life affirming about watching others fail in ways that so vastly surpass our own capabilities. You may have sucked at life today, but there's someone else out there who sucked all the harder. The first few episodes of every American Idol season deliver that glorious suck in spades.
Even so, I've been a little shoddy with my attention to the singer's tour de farce of past seasons. If not for my roommate's insistence on seeing Steven Tyler gawk at his very attractive elementary school classmate, I might have missed a very conspicuous contestant.
But before we get into that, if you were at all curious as to whether or not season 10 carries on America's favorite pass time of embarrassing people with foreign accents, then you'll be pleased to know that the answer is a broken and resounding yes!
Those who tuned in on Tuesday will no doubt remember the dulcet croons of The Ivory Coast's finest female baritone, Achille Lovle:
Lots of great stuff here- in addition to 'Chille delivering a Madonna song bass warbled beyond recognition, this audition also catches a remarkably beautiful Lopez caught amidst an existential quandary concerning her most pitiable position. Seacrest is also on his game; what do you think about not getting the ticket; heading home?
Some people discover their passions early in life; that elect few who were simply "born to do it," whatever 'it' may be. We see these schmucks all the time on youtube flaunting their effortless preteen mastery of an instrument you spent the better part of your life merely becoming competent with.
Of course, other people find themselves stationed halfway across the world before 'it' breaks a seven-string over their heads. This is the case of Chris Purvis, rising guitar talent and founder of up and coming DC-based metal band, Friend for a Foe. In addition to possessing an incredible feel for visceral and memorable songwriting, Purvis also carries one of the most remarkable paths to his passion I have heard from nearly any musician. He's also one friggin' cool dude.
BS: FFaF started off as your own solo project; how did the group come together?
CP: It started off as a solo project that I really just did to waste time and for fun, but I grew into it more and started learning production more and really expand my sounds. Eventually it got to the point where I really enjoyed it and started building up a fan base. Over the years I slowly began to want this to become an actual band vice a solo effort so I hit up a few folks I knew that played music in the same vein such as our guitarist Tony Marshall, who was previously in Periphery back in the Jake Veredika days, and one of our vocalists Benjamin Guarino, who I used to be in Maryland-based band Earthborn with. I made the whole process open for anyone that was interested and scoured the internet for like-minded musicians which Jason Novalis came to mind. His Animals as Leaders drum covers almost landed him a role in that band, but when his personal life wouldn't allow for it at the time, I eventually approached him about FFaF which he was more than thrilled to be a part of.
BS: I noticed that you serve in the U.S. Navy. Did you enlist before you started FFaF? If so, did you have time to write while abroad or have any musical outlets at your disposal?
CP: Music was always something I did in my spare time, but I didn't realize how much I enjoyed doing it until I joined the service. By joining I actually had the financial backing to afford decent gear. Since I could now afford equipment I wanted instead of equipment I just had to deal with, the door was wide open for creativity.
BS: That's really interesting. Serving in the U.S. Navy is certainly not your standard "bussing tables" musician's day job. How have you balanced writing/recording/producing with your service?
Not so long ago beat box extraordinaire Rahzel posed a provocative question to America's candy bar munching yutes': "What's it like to crunch into a twix?"
I pondered this point of crispy contention earlier today as I noshed on the bar and couldn't help but recall this ad. As I did, I got to thinking. Amidst the creamy/chewy and crunchy/cookie dichotomies Rahzel sets up, he manages to do something interesting in the fifteen second framework of this particular commercial; he crammed a true window of life experience into a small time frame and I hope to do the same today.
We might all know what life is like for a Twix consumer, but one might find himself less knowledgeable about the inner workings of the music critic, a topic I should know a thing or three about. CD or music reviews of whatever kind are things that we, as a culture, more or less, take for granted. I'd be a wealthy man by now if the reality were otherwise. For however little attention we typically pay these articles of semi-artistic expression, they definitely serve a purpose.
How often did you buy CD's back in the day (remember CD's?) only to realize shortly after that the lead singles were the only tracks on them worth paying for (remember paying for CD's?)? I would have saved myself a few months' worth of allowance had I hit up a review site or even opened a magazine at Barnes and Nobel before purchasing that Lit or Bare Naked Ladies album way back when. Music criticism can be quite the convenience and with great convenience comes great reward ... maybe.
I like to consider myself a reasonably free-thinking individual; the kind of person who can look at something like this and realize that myself, two minutes into the future, would most certainly kick my ass for subscribing to it:
As a free thinker (mounts high horse), the idea of self expression comes up quite often; which ideas to express to whom, how to express them, blah blah blah. Okay; I'm not that much of an airhead, but even I have to admit that blogging has gotten a little trendy.
We all want to feel important; like what we all do and say really matters; like there's someone somewhere out there to hear us gush about:
What do you think of when the miniature nation of New Zealand comes to mind? Flightless national birds? Long plane rides? “Business Time?” It’s unlikely that style-defyingly brilliant alt-rock comes to mind.
Aukland’s Decortica just might change that. The trio plays a distinctive strain of rock music that sprawls itself out across the borders of genre constraint and invites you to join it. This past summer the group released their second album, Love Hotel, a work that conceptually takes its listener places few if any records actually do (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_hotel). I recently was fortunate enough to skype it out with Decortica’s vocalist and guitarist, Mathew Bosher. The time difference required us to bust out some tricky elementary school math skills, but, needless to say, we knowz how to ad rul gud.
BS: Hey Mat. How’s it- goin’?
MB: Not bad ... thanks (laughs).
BS: Decortica has been around for a little while now. I noticed that you put out your debut album in 2008, but just from listening to your latest release, Love Hotel, it sounds like you’ve continued to grow quite a bit as a unit. Could you say a little bit about your formation and where you’ve gone since then?
MB: Sure. We’ve been operating for about five years and in the early days, as with any band, we were working through the bulk of material we were writing as young people- and there was a lot of it. The New Aesthetic [Decortica’s first album] was really sort of the best of the material that we felt would work well as a cohesive unit in an album format. So, soon after we had pretty clear ideas about, “okay now we’ve gone through the studio experience, we’ve been gigging for a while, and we’d like our next album to be a statement, with regard to production levels, the type of songs we wanted to write and also the level of craftsmanship.” So, the idea of doing a still alternative, but slightly more progressive rock concept album was really exciting. It’s a feeling of natural evolution.
BS: The concept of Love Hotel is fairly unique you might say. What inspired you to write a collection of songs about these Japanese “love” hotels?
MB: I think firstly I was interested in the themes of escapism and fantasy and so on. The hotel setting in general I thought was quite an interesting backdrop for those themes because of the anonymity and, as I started to think about this more and just do a little more reading on the subject, love hotels became apparent to me. So I delved pretty deeply into that research which was anything from fiction of native Japanese and foreign writers of that territory through to the anthropology books and what not. The fascination just grew to a point where I could see that we could sort of have this theatrical presentation in the form of a rock album.
Why do some bands make it while others don't; why do bands practically dribbling with talent and poise not get the credit they so deserve; why is it that far inferior groups seem to attain success and wealth beyond imagination? When one looks closely at these questions something becomes clear; this is the all too typical "why do bad things happen to good people" dilemma played out on a musical stage.
The other day, in answering a certain moral call to dispel, what I believed to be, some very erroneous notions about the music industry, I explained that record labels really do act on principles. If the slothful bands of today could only learn to internalize the ideals of "money, sales, profit, gains, and earnings" (MSPGE for short), they'd, indubitably find themselves in far more desirable positions.
It pains me, however, to see that so many decent acts already seem to have lost the MSPGE game long before they've even started it. Let's face it, if your band is going to make labels money, sales, profit, gains, and earnings, you guys had better look the part and, honestly, what says "I make a shit ton of money and don't care what'chu think" better than the "douche bag rocker look":
I must confess that on this day I find myself a bit perturbed. Earlier this afternoon I had a friendly chat with some nice fellows I hadn’t seen in some time and through our discussion I noticed a disturbing trend concerning the state of the modern music industry. This trend isn't some sudden influx of homogenous acts that endlessly ape each other’s sounds [1] and it certainly isn’t the subliminal injection of transhumanist and totalitarian political agendas into pop music [2]or anything of the sort. Get real, girlfriend; this is a serious problem we're talking about here-
Young people, it seems, have acquired this ludicrous notion that the music industry is a business without principle. Well, you know what I have to say about that?
Major record labels today have principles coming out of their metaphorical ears. If you have a q-tip and an open mind you can see them too. The American music industry of the present is a (no pun intended) sound institution guided by many hearty principles like: money, sales, profit, gains, earnings, and I could go on, but, by now, I think you surely see the point. The music industry isn’t some lifeless, heartless force that’ll do anything for buck, rather, it’s that friendly Wall Street stockbroker, not looking to wrong anyone, just trying to make his honest share.
"Listen Bud, if I sign the next LMFAO I'll be able to buy groceries for a whole week."
At the end of the day, we’ve all gotta eat. It isn’t fair to hold the folks at record labels to a different standard (I'm sure the bands that get kicked to the curb after their follow-up singles tank will manage somehow). Have some heart; corporations are people too.*
Looking out my window this evening I can see the snow on the ground and feel the icicles in my heart as I scratch my persistently itchy legs and apply my prescription hand lotion. It's all too clear; winter is here again.
I'm not a seasonal scrooge by any means, but freezing my ass off is definitely one of my lesser-enjoyed activities (right up there with smashing drum sticks into my fingers and stubbing my big toes). Yet, all this cold makes me think; it makes me think about the fragility of life, the solitude of nature, how dirty my car looks, and a particularly annoying trend in modern rock music.
The year was 2004; America had given Bush two thumbs way up with another well deserved presidential term and I was one awkward sophomore to boot. It was a cold winter that year and angst was in the air. Two bands in particular took that accumulated mass of repressed feelings straight to the bank. Breaking Benjamin and Crossfade were hardly the first bands to add the word "cold" to rock's lyrical vocabulary, but they fricken' ingrained it into the minds of anyone who heard such songs.
"So Cold" and "Cold" were everywhere, but, surprisingly, active rock radio wasn't quite the winter wonderland one might have, accordingly, expected. "Cold" was a dingy modern power ballad that took the "shut up, already" regretfulness of Ruben Studdard's "Sorry 2004" and fed it to an audience of love-lorn teenagers like my 16 year-old self. The song also made use of one of my favorite generic rock song-writing devices: the GUITAR SOLO that sounds JUST LIKE the CHORUS! What a novel idea!
WOOOO! (Busts out air guitar!)
AHHH (and ... breaks a string ...)
"So Cold" was, at least at the time, the more musically interesting selection and would have been remembered as such if 90% of the songs Breaking Benjamin penned afterwards didn't sound just like it. Tastes aside, the term "cold" was never the same. It became one of those ambiguous terms that seemed to mean everything and nothing, all at once. "This is cold, I'm cold, you're cold, my feet are cold, etc." When feelings and temperatures collide, it isn't a pretty sight:
"Hey man, how ya doin'?"
"Ehh, I've been really cold lately."
"I'm sorry to hear that, I was feeling rather lukewarm myself yesterday."
"Yeah, I don't know what's up, I've just had so many feelings, but I feel like I have to bottle them up inside and walk around being a moody turd-wich all day."
"I feel you on that. Did you watch the weather channel today? The way that cold front hit those warm South Western breezes was really something."
"I suppose, but I'm gonna go back to my room and be reflective."
"Cool, man. I mean, cold, man."
And you'd think that people would be tired of this by now. Not quite. In 2010 we had the incredibly original single "Turn So Cold" from Drowning Pool and on Breaking Benjamin's most recent outing, "Dear Agony," Ben Burnley had the gall to spit a line like, "I don't want to change the world, I just want to leave it colder."
Are you kidding me? You whine about this and that being cold and now you want it colder? Well, if I were you, I'd get on that whole global warming issue as that will, no doubt, throw a serious kink into your plans.
Mr. Burnley- from one Ben to another, I'd just like to say that I think you can be a very competent songwriter when you choose to be, but, please, p l e a s e get over the girl already (and stop dragging the weather into your heartache). I read The Diary of Jane and, truth be told, it seems she was getting just a little tired of you moping around all day being a gloomy little shit (not to mention, never putting the thermostat above 65˚).
* * *
So, I guess it's cold outside; she hands me a raincoat.
What a year 2010 was; full of exciting new experiences, good tunes, and “karate and friendship for everyone.” But, merely speaking from a musical standpoint, there have been so many great releases it’s been hard just keeping up with them, even on a weekly basis.
Fortunately, none of that matters.
In fact, none of the albums released in 2009 matter either. The people have spoken; 2010 has a crowned champion and, boy, is it a blast from the past. The best selling hard rock album of Oh-10’ was neither Disturbed nor Godsmack’s best rehashings of their past works, nor was it Linkin Park’s most (self) important release to date. Nope; this record is in a league of its own. The big winner is… triggered drum roll please …
Now, I know what you must be thinking- “how can an album possibly be this good? It’s a great question, one that I was forced to grapple with a few years back, when I reviewed the release (http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/28033/Nickelback-Dark-Horse). Unfortunately, Dark Horse is a work that eschews simple explanation.
In 2006 Donald Rumsfeld, in commenting on U.S. military expenditures in the Middle East, said, “from my standpoint, I think numbers are almost distracting” [1]. Rumsfeld makes a great point in this excerpt; that in applying rational concepts to irrational things one can easily lose sight of the topic at hand. When one starts throwing around words like “great” or “phenomenal” in discussion of a Nickelback album he almost fails to grasp the essence of it, the real emotionality, its “truthiness,” if you will.
So, if you will allow it, I want to paint you a picture. You must forgive me if my language at any time gets flowery or grandiose, but I feel that this is the only way that I can truly help everyone to understand this most interesting of anomalies. It’s holiday season again (hey guy; today is still Kwanzaa...) so in that spirit I have a scene that I find very helpful in illustrating the Dark Horse phenomenon:
You’ve just finished a big meal with the fam, (whether it be at the Christmas or Hanukkah table or even at your Umoja Nia Kuumba feast of unity, purpose, and creativity). Your spirits are high, but your stomach isn’t quite on the same page. You know well that your floor level waste receptacle can only handle such an amount of "holiday cheer" and the wrapping paper that comes with it, but that’s not your chief concern, at least at this particular moment. As my great uncle once said in a similar situation, “you know, it happens!” You do the dirty deed and spend the rest of the evening pretending that your foulest of transgressions never occurred; that it’ll just “go away,” but deep down, you know just as well as your horrified guests that your little “yule log” is a holiday relic that’s here to stay.
Nickelback’s Dark Horse is not simply their crowning achievement, but it is that very log, here to spread fumy yuletide goodness and bad facial hair for years to come. Absentmindedly pick one up for someone you love this holiday season and get em' while they're still hot.
