Music: August 2004 Archives

Got this off (what else?) a blog.

What is it? It's basically a guy standing on a box outside of concerts, exhorting attendees to refrain from actually entering the venue, and informing them that if they're over 20, the only acceptible reason for them to be there is as chaperones for those too young to know better.

(His targets? Hoobastank, Christina Aguilera, Justin  Timberlake, Staind, Train...etc.)

There are several video clips of his appearances at these concerts, which are pretty funny. My only complaint is: dude, you used gif images for ALL of your layout and text? Image maps? No alt text? Come on. Don't make me create a website called You Have Appallingly Poor Web Coding Skills Dot Com.

http://www.youhavebadtasteinmusic.com

Usually (I thought this was the case, anyway) it's the old fogies bemoaning the state of the music scene and harking fondly back to a golden era of sound, while conveniently forgetting all the sucky tunes that were really popular at the time. This time, though, the bemoaner appears to be a 17-year-old guy.

"Our generation has had absolutely nothing in the form of timeless music. Where are our Beatles, Elvis or Hendrix? We don't even have an Aerosmith-caliber group that we will be able to remember fondly."

Oh, really? Maybe they're no Beatles, but what about Franz Ferdinand? The White Stripes? The not-as-famous-as-they-should-be New Pornographers? Not sure how timeless they'll turn out to be, but they do rock.

"The last great movement in music was grunge rock from Seattle in the early '90s, and before that the hip-hop/rap rising led by groups like Run-DMC and N.W.A. So, we're in that horrible spot in the musical cycle with no definitive voice. We're waiting for our Rolling Stones or Madonna. Until they arrive, we'll have to settle for G-Unit and Britney Spears topping our charts."

Yeah, stick to ClearChannel and that's true. But change the dial! Tune it to a college station. Go online and sample some free songs from Epitonic or BetterPropaganda. Listen to some of the radio stations on the web like Boombastic Radio. (These are all in my navigation bar so I'm too lazy to link to them here again.)

Or look outside our borders — check out somebody like Rachid Taha, who mixes rockabilly and rai in "Kelma", or Mano Chao, whose music doesn't sound like anybody else's in the world, but is all about the world.

There is great music being made all the time today. Yeah, it sucks that it isn't topping the charts, but the truth is, many of the bands we love today didn't chart that high at the time either.

And Alex... I don't think the music industry was ever beloved. Only the music itself.

--> "Our generation is lacking a worthy soundtrack", Alex Terrazas, San Jose Mercury News, August 10, 2004

The percussionist for the group The Polyphonic Spree got nabbed by the FBI for a suspicious item in his luggage which caused an airport security panic. A friggin' microphone, of course, but the bomb squad somehow didn't figure that out in time to prevent what happened next:

No word of the scare had reached the Birmingham Airport Thursday evening when Teasley arrived in Alabama, where he currently resides, though he was disappointed to discover his luggage hadn't arrived. So he filed a complaint with American Airlines, then proceeded to do what anyone else in this situation would do: He went to Taco Bell.

It was upon arriving back at home that [Brian] Teasley was approached by an FBI agent. Appearing seemingly out of nowhere, the agent asked, "Are you Brian Teasley?" When Teasley replied in the affirmative, the agent stated calmly into his lapel, "We got him." As Teasley tells it, cars immediately came from every direction at once, blocking off the driveway and thoroughly congesting the street. It turns out that after the airport security discovered the device in one of Teasley's bags, five gates were shut down in the C terminal, the bomb disposal robot was called out, and the FBI was contacted.

My favorite part of the piece:

"I don't want to over-dramatize the situation... but there were two or three minutes when I thought I was going to be in Guantanamo Bay with the Abu Ghraib people holding a thumbs up while pointing to my penis. I wasn't really scared about Guantanamo, I just didn't want people to see my penis. I'm a very private person."

It's funny, until you remember that every minute that our "protectors" spend on this kind of diversion is a minute they could have used for actually tracking down real terrorists.

Read about it at Pitchforkmedia.com

So, there have been several rock musicals coming out in the last few years, yes? That is, rock musicals using the songs of a band and wrapping a plot around them. So, first we had "Mama Mia", featuring the music of ABBA. Currently, in San Francisco, "Movin' Out" is playing, with songs by Billy Joel.

But that's not all that's coming.

When we were in London a couple of weeks ago, we passed posters advertising: a Queen musical and a Rod Stewart musical. Yes. Not making it up. I swear.

Before you read further, would you like a chance to guess what they're called?