I heard the Coldplay song “Viva la Vida” the other night in this quaint little sports bar where I was chilling. To be honest, I’d always found the song a little cheesy and just to roughly mimic in tempo and mannerism the former, mega-hit “Talk”; from their prior album. Eventually, though, as we all know, … Read more“How My Relationship with ‘Viva la Vida’ Has Shifted in the Wake of Recent Events”
I did one of these posts for Wilco, too, and truthfully, they both probably stand no chance of creation on account of label restraints. But the mission statement is clear on both: showcase the band’s best material on clear, analog sound, and pare things down to a $20 piece of merchandise that can be stuffed … Read more“The Best of Modest Mouse (Designed for Vinyl)”
Both LIVE and The Smashing Pumpkins took three years to release albums subsequent to their commercial apex as bands, the mid-’90s. I’m not sure if this is important but it’s sort of interesting to note. It’s also pertinent that there was a lot of messed up sh** going on in the world, such as an … Read more“Comparing and Contrasting Two High-Profile Commercial Followups, Adore and Secret Samadhi.”
It seems a shade misanthropic but my version of He** is pretty much hearing the music that people play in the sports bar on a Saturday night. I’ll be having a decent time, anyway — I was chilling in there this past Saturday evening, dead tired from a crazy dinner shift, and the Washington – … Read more“Where Black Sabbath and Creed Meet in the Dark World of Hopeless Sports Bar Denizenship”
Growing up here in South Bend, Indiana, where today there are 14 and a half violent crimes per 1,000 residents per year, I would come across certain people who were especially hard to please, when it came to music. The black people around here often term Wu-Tang “white people sh**” (especially ironic as one of … Read more“Third Eye Blind: AUDITED.”
It’s puzzling to me that in pretty much all of the Reddit discussions on “Snow (Hey Oh),” a hit single from the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 2006 album Stadium Arcadium, nobody really talked about the lyrics at all. They would tend to extol the guitar riff as if it were the second coming of Led … Read more“A Bit on ‘Snow (Hey Oh)’ and Its Ironic Endorsement of Narcissism”
If it were going to happen at all, it would have happened by now. I’ve heard reams and reams, droves and droves of cocksure rhetoric on Neil Peart. I’ve heard this ex-junkie I used to work with go “Fu** John Bonham” and then put on Sublime after we’d just had Sublime on the last night. … Read more“Second-Favorite Drummer of All Time? I’ve Got a Somewhat Eccentric Pick”
Supertramp is one of those bands that seems so singles-oriented that you’re tempted to ask, What kind of band ARE they? I mean, even Electric Light Orchestra, for all their spotlight-leaning proclivity for radio drama, have a slight history in hard rock, or at least in the impetus for centering things on guitar which would … Read more“Dolby’s Rupees: Supertramp – ‘Take the Long Way Home’”