This Playoff Flop Brought To You By...Steinbrenner!
Batters (.246 BA): $131,276,000
Starting Pitchers (6.13 ERA): $42,680,000
Losing the first playoff series 1-3 to a team that spent $116,360,000 less on its payroll: Priceless
There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's Steinbrenner.
Friday, September 22, 2006
Ganging Up on the Sun (Guster)
Switching time from 1994 to 2006, I'm here to review Guster's latest album. For you pleasure, I will review Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde from 1965-1966 next time.
[For the following few paragraphs I want to give a defense of Guster from wrongful criticism or lack of awareness, and tell a brief overview of their musical development. If you want to skip that and get right to the review, click here.]
It is a crime to say that Guster is a college band with acoustic guitars and a guy playing bongos that writes love songs. First, they are usually congas. Second, and more importantly, Guster has developed first-rate skills at music composition, and are capable of many moods and styles. Third, from the start they have written songs on many subjects. If I had to identify one band that most emulates the Beatles' way of doing things, it would be Guster. Not because they are a pop band in the style of the Beatles, which they aren't exactly (They didn't even have a real bassist originally!), but because 1)they like to write intelligent ballads, regardless of the fact that songs about love are unfashionable in this day and age of electronic weirdness and angry punk/grunge/alternative, and more significantly 2)Guster is a band that has never been content to make the same album over and over again. The success of Guster lies in those two traits. Of course, this latest album only went to #25 on the Billboard charts its opening week, and dropped off completely two weeks later. The sucess I'm talking about is musical success, the creation of albums that justify their existence.
As I mentioned earlier, Guster has written a lot of what are usually considered ballads, which has been a good thing and a bad thing. Good, because most of the ballads are quite good, and some of the best ones are actually songs about the end of relationships. Bad, because it has attracted a legion of teenage [girl] fans. However, (I think) this is a much more mature group of teenage girls than the one that followed the Backstreet Boys. Also, many high school to college-age guys are fans. And hey, the band broke out, in a sense, in 1999 with the release of Lost and Gone Forever, so 13 year-old fans from then would be 20 by now. And this band was never in any serious danger of becoming the next boy band. Seriously, have you ever looked at a photo of them?
They also have not only not made the same album over-and-over again; like the post-Rubber Soul Beatles, every album they have made sounds really different from the one before it. Parachute was made while they were in college, and is just two acoustic guitars and hand drums for most of the songs, with violin and cello parts done by guest musicians for atmosphere and the occasional background obstinato. There was a mix between happy songs and darker songs, with only half of the songs about love, all wordily written, with the downide being that some of it was meaninglessly metaphoric.
Superficially, their next album, Goldfly, follows the same pattern. However, while the darkness in Parachute was confined to a few songs, on Goldfly even the happy songs have notes of pessimism in them, or are happy songs about depressing topics, and darkness fills the album. And suddenly electric guitars are used to powerful effect, right along with acoustic guitars. And the songwriting underwent a major change, as now there are sparsely-written alternative-like songs, such as "Airport Song" and "Rocket Ship" that completely rock and are unlike anything they did before.
Lost and Gone Forever, while it was claimed to be an album to capture their live sound, couldn't have been such, because from the live album I've heard, only what little Parachute material they played live sounds much better than the album version, and most of that is due to the improved musical skill of the band. Okay, granted they made everything from Parachute and Goldfly bigger than it was in the studio. But I don't see what the big deal was about capturing their live sound. What Lost and Gone Forever represented was a major diversification of their sound, and production values and tricks that blew the production of past albums away. Their drummer at this point had innovated to the point that I think this album represents the bible of how to use hand percussion in rock music. So if you want musical innovation, from a '90s band, there it is. Just listen to the power in the drums in "Barrel of a Gun." Also, much of the pessimism of Goldfly has been eliminated or distilled into pure singing intensity. Accordingly, some of these songs are their loosest and happiest yet.
But by 2003, after almost a decade of hand drums, the drummer, and his hands, needed a change in style, and Guster, following the change is good philosophy, released Keep It Together. This album was completely different, but mostly the same, as Lost and Gone Forever. They became a quartet in the process of recording, adding Joe Pisapia, a multi-instrumental player who could actually play bass. Their drummer also learned to use a drum kit for the first time, so you get to here someone very good with hand drums play a drum kit sort of how it is usually played and sort of like hand drums. Even so there were still a fair amount of hand drums. Most importantly, this was where they really hit a stride with their musical composing on this album, with almost every song one of the best sounding they had made. All the melodies are first-rate, the songs are instrumented to the proper extent, and they have finally started addressing their only major flaw, there lack of skill at soloing, so this album actually contains some of the first noticeable soloing on a Guster album. And the lyrics were their best yet, with many of the best written by the drummer, Brian Rosenworcel, who was writing for the first time. Stylistically, they were more diverse. Despite the loudness and energy, Keep It Together was a very cozy, sociable, empathic album, and I think it was the first great Guster album. Ganging Up on the Sun is the second.
Right from the start, Ganging Up on the Sun shows differences from all previous Guster albums. In the past, Guster albums began with fast-tempo pop songs with a memorable intro. Parachute began with Adam Gardner singing out, "He smiled to the world," with the drums and acoustic guitars coming in a beat after he starts. Goldfly began with a repeated electric guitar note, followed by a shift to a lower note and acoustic guitar, before the drums burst in and the song began. Lost and Gone Forever began with light drumming of bongos accompanied by acoustic guitar and a triangle every two measures, before the congas and singing burst through. And Keep It Together began with just a slow resonant bass guitar melody before a unique (kit) drumbeat began. In Ganging Up on the Sun, at first there is silence, except for a quiet rustling and something being bumped. Then the horns start one-by-one, and play a slow minor-key chord progression. An amplified acoustic guitar or a clean electric guitar starts playing melody softly at a mid-tempo. An electric organ plays in the background. "Lightning Rod" is a song unlike any Guster has done before. The lyrics are half-metaphorical, some talking directly about war, other making reference to gods and the weather. There are just two verses, and the chorus is one sustained word melismatically sung. It is a very atmospheric and ominous song.
The next song, "Satellite," is also completely different - actually, no, it isn't. Satellite is along the same musical lines as a song from KIT, "Long Way Down," except this time they do it right. Where that song drowned in its murky atmosphere, "Satellite" revels in its acoustic-electric-electronic spaciness. It's a straight-forward love ballad, except for the spacey lyrics and instrumentation, with a circus-like keyboard instrumental bridge that is completely out of place and perfect at the same time.
Ganging Up on the Sun is the most ambitious Guster album yet, and even the title gives hints of that. Gus was the original name of the band, and it is a acronym that results from the album title. I bet they were inspired to do that from Dylan's Blonde on Blonde (BoB). Many of the songs were also self-produced, with the assistance of the fourth member of Guster, Joe Pisapia. The band had been diverse in its music before, but this album has a greater variety of styles than all of their previous albums combined. Keep It Together has more in common with Lost and Gone Forever than this album, and those two were at the boundary of a major shift in musical philosophy for the band!
Members of the band had said before the album's release that they wanted this album to be more of a "classic rock" album. I interpreted that as a declaration that they were imitating '60s and '70s rock music. Before it came out, I thought this album would be a disaster. I thought Guster had lost focus with all the different styles, and on some songs going back over the same lyrical ground, as well as imitating rather than innovating. The first listen of the album did not impress me very much, and I thought that this album could be an ambitious misfire, not living up to expectations due to a lack of continuity, originality, and pointless artiness.
However, in the final analysis I have reached a different conclusion. It would matter little that this is Guster's most diverse album if the songs were bad, but given that all of them are good to fantastic, with just one letdown, it is incredible. This album was not at all what I expected Guster's fifth album to be. I'll admit, I really wanted to listen to a KIT II. And as much as I like music from the '60s, I did not want Guster to mimic other bands. However, I think what Guster meant when they said this was more of a "classic rock" album is that this album doesn't shy away from the unconventional, looks to the '60s and'70s for inspiration, and like the White Album, tries to do a little bit of everything. In fact given the amount of stuff left on the recording studio floor, I'm guessing this was originally intended to be a double, but the band realized they couldn't have so much consistency if they were to put all the songs on here. This is still their longest album at 49 minutes, but KIT was 48 minutes so the difference isn't much.
Part of the reason it is the longest is the centerpiece of the album, "Ruby Falls." After contributing so much to the previous album, this is the only song with lyrics written solely by Brian Rosenworcel, but it is the best lyrics he has written, and fits the music of the song perfectly. The song is about the aftermath of a break-up due to what I'm guessing is the singer's alcoholism ("Don't look me in the eye/Just wash it all down"). It begins with the same guitar sound from "Lightning Rod" and soft singing and backing "ahs," but after one verse unexpectedly goes into a loud guitar-heavy section with big drum beat and the vocals cried out. Then after one verse, back to how it was at the start, except with drums to give it drive. And then comes a truly apocalyptic synthesizer solo over the loud section. You have to hear it to believe that Guster really could compose a solo like this. Then Ryan Miller returns with desperate vocals, and when he finishes the last verse ("Somewhere, down buried in the sand/two birds, give out, a song/and all of Ruby Falls, is singing along."), the loud guitars stop. We are left with an even softer version of the guitar from the start, a soft cymbal clap beat, and a synth obstinato in the background. Then a chorus quietly sings, "sing along." A guest female vocalist sings freestyle, Miller says two muffled lines, drum beats happen intermittently, and a muted trumpet solo begins. It continues to the end of the song, 7 minutes and 6 seconds after the song began, and 2:50 after the last verse.
I think the first half of the song is above reproach, so the real question here regarding the song's greatness is "Should the coda have been as long as it was?" Another song that the same question exists for is "Hey Jude." This case is different of course, but even the great musicians draw this question when they have long codas. I say the song justifies its length, because after the despair of the rest of the song, the listener is emotionally shut down. The ambient-like calm that starts the coda relaxes the listener, then the trumpet solo shows us that there is still hope. So in the name of optimism, I say the coda is right! Although, I can't figure out what possessed them to end the song with what I think is an outtake from a previous recording of the trumpet solo, building then cut off by what sounds like the onset sound of the low keys on a piano.
"Ruby Falls" is followed by "C'Mon," maybe the only song on here that would not be out of place on KIT, but it is nonetheless still different from what they have done before. For one thing, it sounds like they traveled back in time, kidnapped Dylan's backing band from Highway 61 Revisited and told them to play Guster-like music, and put the organ really low in the mix, because Al Kooper was outraged. Okay, the organ is really just atmospheric than melodic on the song, it's Joe Pisapia playing, not Al Kooper. But aside from the Dylan-esque wall of sound production, what really makes this song is that the song is Confidence in song form. So confident it would be arrogant, if it wasn't that everything sounded so happy and excited.
"Empire State" follows, which has been described by the band as their "quietest song." Yes, it is very quiet. Guster did release an album in 2003, but now in 2006, they feel the confidence to write a song about September 11th. And "Empire State" is nothing less than Guster's unique solemn memorial to those who died in the ruins of the World Trade Center. If you do not cry when you listen to this song, you either do not understand the song lyrics, you are a Wahhabi nutjob, or one of those android from Phillip K. Dick's novel.
Still, we must move on ("fallen walls all around/rebuid again/rebuild again"). Contrary to what some other reviewers have said about the album's second half, Guster is on a roll here and cannot be stopped. Adam Gardner has a much different voice than Ryan Miller, and often he sings in the sadder ballads or the more biting songs. Since the first album, he has had less lead vocal parts on each album than the one before, and on this one he has only one. "Dear Valentine" is it. Guster appears to have a theme going here in which each song sounds like something they did before, but when you really look at it, you see there is much that Guster has never done before. "Dear Valentine" is superficially just another ballad, like Diana on the previous album. Except for the loud, echo-ey production, the strange beginning, the cymbal-y drumming, the brass section composed through overdubs by Neil Rosengarden, the almost scary-conclusion to the instrumental bridge, and the reassuring/pleading/unassured/tired vocals. None of this makes any sense until you realize the song is a soldier in Iraq telling his significant other that he is coming home for Valentine's Day, and that everything will be okay when he gets home, but both of them know that he'll be going back to Iraq sometime after.
The next song, the "Beginning of the End," is a song that you'd think from their previous works that Guster couldn't do well, as it is almost thrash metal. But it is definitely hard rock and the lyrics are heavy, even if I can't understand them exactly. The vocal delivery is convincingly angry, and the song changes in ways that surprise you. Also, the solo fits the lyrics great. It's almost an instrumental verse. And Rosenworcel's drumming is kickass. Given how incredible this song is, I can't understand how they screwed up "The New Underground," which was made at about the same time. In that case the lyrics are easy to understand metaphors, the music is slightly less thrash and more punk. But it is a big letdown because the lyrics are somewhat stupid ("Welcome/you're under control/and buried like a mole/1000 feet below"), and they copied those stupid "O-o-o-oh"s from The Offspring's "Staring at the Sun." It doesn't help that half the time Ryan Miller is caterwauling on this song like a mountain lion. It is possible that they screwed this song up intentionally, but if they did, the achieved sound is not even interesting or funny.
About the other songs; "Manifest Destiny" is solid piano pop calling for declaring independence from the current political situation, "The Captain" is Country Joe and the Fish-inspired country/psychedelia with hard-to-interpret lyrics and a fun jam-coda, and "Hang On" is the band's third anthemic album closer.
Did I say just one let-down? I was wrong, there is a second. Guster has never made a pompous song, and their anthems are really quite humble. "Hang On" is quite humble, and is a plea for perseverance. Yes, it is obvious, and that is part of the problem. The whole song is pretty conventional, and doesn't stray that far from some of the stuff REM has done in the recent past, or some of the stuff Guster has done in the past. Its still a beautiful song, but in comparison to all the fantastic stuff preceding, it looks uninspired. I understand that Guster has in the past closed albums with uplifting anthemic songs ("Parachute," "I Hope Tomorrow is Like Today"), or slow dark songs that build to a shattering conclusion ("Rocket Ship," "Rainy Day"). And "The Beginning of the End" is not a good way to close an album. But I just feel that "Hang On" is a song to listen to after listening to the album, not whenever, as opposed to "I Hope Tomorrow Is Like Today," which is fun to listen to anytime you have a good day.
Still, one good but conventional song, and one song that falls flat on its face without being bad, does not break the album. Is the album innovative? I'll answer that with a question: Can you name any album that came out in 2006 that was innovative? Guster has at least set out to record an album with a lot of good songs in many different styles. And the fans that say they are selling out don't have to buy the album. Also the hardcore fans need to stop pretending that what makes this album great is that Guster doesn't care about commercial success. I'd say there are a lot of bands out there for whom commercial success is secondary to making music. What separates Guster from many of them is that Guster cares about creativity, about substance over image, about change, and about diversity of sound. Quoting Brian Rosenworcel, "All musicians should feel
like they're on the verge of break down all the time." This album is one of the best of 2006, and I recommend this as highly as Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum.
One last thing: this album is great, but it does not need to be relentlessly pushed on people like the guy is at BlogCritics. There are many albums better than it. No recent albums, but if you want to hear something absolutely fantastic put on the Beatles Abbey Road. However, Ryan Miller has said that the band wants to make an all-time great album, and while he admits (and I agree with him) that this is not an all-time great, this is not very far, and is certainly great in the context of the last 5 years. If it was more innovative, I would say it belongs in the discussion of the greatest rock albums ever made. I think that if the band sets as its goal for the next album, "let's top Ganging Up on the Sun" they will succeed. I've thought Guster has been making progressively better albums for so long without making a bad one, that they were just due to fall flat on their face, which may have colored my initial impression of the album, but I now think it is possible that Guster is a band that is incapable of releasing a bad album. I think that as long as they still care about making music, they will not allow an album to be released that is on average below what they are capable of, and will work on it until they get it right. That is why I think that they will succeed.
Switching time from 1994 to 2006, I'm here to review Guster's latest album. For you pleasure, I will review Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde from 1965-1966 next time.
[For the following few paragraphs I want to give a defense of Guster from wrongful criticism or lack of awareness, and tell a brief overview of their musical development. If you want to skip that and get right to the review, click here.]
It is a crime to say that Guster is a college band with acoustic guitars and a guy playing bongos that writes love songs. First, they are usually congas. Second, and more importantly, Guster has developed first-rate skills at music composition, and are capable of many moods and styles. Third, from the start they have written songs on many subjects. If I had to identify one band that most emulates the Beatles' way of doing things, it would be Guster. Not because they are a pop band in the style of the Beatles, which they aren't exactly (They didn't even have a real bassist originally!), but because 1)they like to write intelligent ballads, regardless of the fact that songs about love are unfashionable in this day and age of electronic weirdness and angry punk/grunge/alternative, and more significantly 2)Guster is a band that has never been content to make the same album over and over again. The success of Guster lies in those two traits. Of course, this latest album only went to #25 on the Billboard charts its opening week, and dropped off completely two weeks later. The sucess I'm talking about is musical success, the creation of albums that justify their existence.
As I mentioned earlier, Guster has written a lot of what are usually considered ballads, which has been a good thing and a bad thing. Good, because most of the ballads are quite good, and some of the best ones are actually songs about the end of relationships. Bad, because it has attracted a legion of teenage [girl] fans. However, (I think) this is a much more mature group of teenage girls than the one that followed the Backstreet Boys. Also, many high school to college-age guys are fans. And hey, the band broke out, in a sense, in 1999 with the release of Lost and Gone Forever, so 13 year-old fans from then would be 20 by now. And this band was never in any serious danger of becoming the next boy band. Seriously, have you ever looked at a photo of them?
They also have not only not made the same album over-and-over again; like the post-Rubber Soul Beatles, every album they have made sounds really different from the one before it. Parachute was made while they were in college, and is just two acoustic guitars and hand drums for most of the songs, with violin and cello parts done by guest musicians for atmosphere and the occasional background obstinato. There was a mix between happy songs and darker songs, with only half of the songs about love, all wordily written, with the downide being that some of it was meaninglessly metaphoric.
Superficially, their next album, Goldfly, follows the same pattern. However, while the darkness in Parachute was confined to a few songs, on Goldfly even the happy songs have notes of pessimism in them, or are happy songs about depressing topics, and darkness fills the album. And suddenly electric guitars are used to powerful effect, right along with acoustic guitars. And the songwriting underwent a major change, as now there are sparsely-written alternative-like songs, such as "Airport Song" and "Rocket Ship" that completely rock and are unlike anything they did before.
Lost and Gone Forever, while it was claimed to be an album to capture their live sound, couldn't have been such, because from the live album I've heard, only what little Parachute material they played live sounds much better than the album version, and most of that is due to the improved musical skill of the band. Okay, granted they made everything from Parachute and Goldfly bigger than it was in the studio. But I don't see what the big deal was about capturing their live sound. What Lost and Gone Forever represented was a major diversification of their sound, and production values and tricks that blew the production of past albums away. Their drummer at this point had innovated to the point that I think this album represents the bible of how to use hand percussion in rock music. So if you want musical innovation, from a '90s band, there it is. Just listen to the power in the drums in "Barrel of a Gun." Also, much of the pessimism of Goldfly has been eliminated or distilled into pure singing intensity. Accordingly, some of these songs are their loosest and happiest yet.
But by 2003, after almost a decade of hand drums, the drummer, and his hands, needed a change in style, and Guster, following the change is good philosophy, released Keep It Together. This album was completely different, but mostly the same, as Lost and Gone Forever. They became a quartet in the process of recording, adding Joe Pisapia, a multi-instrumental player who could actually play bass. Their drummer also learned to use a drum kit for the first time, so you get to here someone very good with hand drums play a drum kit sort of how it is usually played and sort of like hand drums. Even so there were still a fair amount of hand drums. Most importantly, this was where they really hit a stride with their musical composing on this album, with almost every song one of the best sounding they had made. All the melodies are first-rate, the songs are instrumented to the proper extent, and they have finally started addressing their only major flaw, there lack of skill at soloing, so this album actually contains some of the first noticeable soloing on a Guster album. And the lyrics were their best yet, with many of the best written by the drummer, Brian Rosenworcel, who was writing for the first time. Stylistically, they were more diverse. Despite the loudness and energy, Keep It Together was a very cozy, sociable, empathic album, and I think it was the first great Guster album. Ganging Up on the Sun is the second.
Right from the start, Ganging Up on the Sun shows differences from all previous Guster albums. In the past, Guster albums began with fast-tempo pop songs with a memorable intro. Parachute began with Adam Gardner singing out, "He smiled to the world," with the drums and acoustic guitars coming in a beat after he starts. Goldfly began with a repeated electric guitar note, followed by a shift to a lower note and acoustic guitar, before the drums burst in and the song began. Lost and Gone Forever began with light drumming of bongos accompanied by acoustic guitar and a triangle every two measures, before the congas and singing burst through. And Keep It Together began with just a slow resonant bass guitar melody before a unique (kit) drumbeat began. In Ganging Up on the Sun, at first there is silence, except for a quiet rustling and something being bumped. Then the horns start one-by-one, and play a slow minor-key chord progression. An amplified acoustic guitar or a clean electric guitar starts playing melody softly at a mid-tempo. An electric organ plays in the background. "Lightning Rod" is a song unlike any Guster has done before. The lyrics are half-metaphorical, some talking directly about war, other making reference to gods and the weather. There are just two verses, and the chorus is one sustained word melismatically sung. It is a very atmospheric and ominous song.
The next song, "Satellite," is also completely different - actually, no, it isn't. Satellite is along the same musical lines as a song from KIT, "Long Way Down," except this time they do it right. Where that song drowned in its murky atmosphere, "Satellite" revels in its acoustic-electric-electronic spaciness. It's a straight-forward love ballad, except for the spacey lyrics and instrumentation, with a circus-like keyboard instrumental bridge that is completely out of place and perfect at the same time.
Ganging Up on the Sun is the most ambitious Guster album yet, and even the title gives hints of that. Gus was the original name of the band, and it is a acronym that results from the album title. I bet they were inspired to do that from Dylan's Blonde on Blonde (BoB). Many of the songs were also self-produced, with the assistance of the fourth member of Guster, Joe Pisapia. The band had been diverse in its music before, but this album has a greater variety of styles than all of their previous albums combined. Keep It Together has more in common with Lost and Gone Forever than this album, and those two were at the boundary of a major shift in musical philosophy for the band!
Members of the band had said before the album's release that they wanted this album to be more of a "classic rock" album. I interpreted that as a declaration that they were imitating '60s and '70s rock music. Before it came out, I thought this album would be a disaster. I thought Guster had lost focus with all the different styles, and on some songs going back over the same lyrical ground, as well as imitating rather than innovating. The first listen of the album did not impress me very much, and I thought that this album could be an ambitious misfire, not living up to expectations due to a lack of continuity, originality, and pointless artiness.
However, in the final analysis I have reached a different conclusion. It would matter little that this is Guster's most diverse album if the songs were bad, but given that all of them are good to fantastic, with just one letdown, it is incredible. This album was not at all what I expected Guster's fifth album to be. I'll admit, I really wanted to listen to a KIT II. And as much as I like music from the '60s, I did not want Guster to mimic other bands. However, I think what Guster meant when they said this was more of a "classic rock" album is that this album doesn't shy away from the unconventional, looks to the '60s and'70s for inspiration, and like the White Album, tries to do a little bit of everything. In fact given the amount of stuff left on the recording studio floor, I'm guessing this was originally intended to be a double, but the band realized they couldn't have so much consistency if they were to put all the songs on here. This is still their longest album at 49 minutes, but KIT was 48 minutes so the difference isn't much.
Part of the reason it is the longest is the centerpiece of the album, "Ruby Falls." After contributing so much to the previous album, this is the only song with lyrics written solely by Brian Rosenworcel, but it is the best lyrics he has written, and fits the music of the song perfectly. The song is about the aftermath of a break-up due to what I'm guessing is the singer's alcoholism ("Don't look me in the eye/Just wash it all down"). It begins with the same guitar sound from "Lightning Rod" and soft singing and backing "ahs," but after one verse unexpectedly goes into a loud guitar-heavy section with big drum beat and the vocals cried out. Then after one verse, back to how it was at the start, except with drums to give it drive. And then comes a truly apocalyptic synthesizer solo over the loud section. You have to hear it to believe that Guster really could compose a solo like this. Then Ryan Miller returns with desperate vocals, and when he finishes the last verse ("Somewhere, down buried in the sand/two birds, give out, a song/and all of Ruby Falls, is singing along."), the loud guitars stop. We are left with an even softer version of the guitar from the start, a soft cymbal clap beat, and a synth obstinato in the background. Then a chorus quietly sings, "sing along." A guest female vocalist sings freestyle, Miller says two muffled lines, drum beats happen intermittently, and a muted trumpet solo begins. It continues to the end of the song, 7 minutes and 6 seconds after the song began, and 2:50 after the last verse.
I think the first half of the song is above reproach, so the real question here regarding the song's greatness is "Should the coda have been as long as it was?" Another song that the same question exists for is "Hey Jude." This case is different of course, but even the great musicians draw this question when they have long codas. I say the song justifies its length, because after the despair of the rest of the song, the listener is emotionally shut down. The ambient-like calm that starts the coda relaxes the listener, then the trumpet solo shows us that there is still hope. So in the name of optimism, I say the coda is right! Although, I can't figure out what possessed them to end the song with what I think is an outtake from a previous recording of the trumpet solo, building then cut off by what sounds like the onset sound of the low keys on a piano.
"Ruby Falls" is followed by "C'Mon," maybe the only song on here that would not be out of place on KIT, but it is nonetheless still different from what they have done before. For one thing, it sounds like they traveled back in time, kidnapped Dylan's backing band from Highway 61 Revisited and told them to play Guster-like music, and put the organ really low in the mix, because Al Kooper was outraged. Okay, the organ is really just atmospheric than melodic on the song, it's Joe Pisapia playing, not Al Kooper. But aside from the Dylan-esque wall of sound production, what really makes this song is that the song is Confidence in song form. So confident it would be arrogant, if it wasn't that everything sounded so happy and excited.
"Empire State" follows, which has been described by the band as their "quietest song." Yes, it is very quiet. Guster did release an album in 2003, but now in 2006, they feel the confidence to write a song about September 11th. And "Empire State" is nothing less than Guster's unique solemn memorial to those who died in the ruins of the World Trade Center. If you do not cry when you listen to this song, you either do not understand the song lyrics, you are a Wahhabi nutjob, or one of those android from Phillip K. Dick's novel.
Still, we must move on ("fallen walls all around/rebuid again/rebuild again"). Contrary to what some other reviewers have said about the album's second half, Guster is on a roll here and cannot be stopped. Adam Gardner has a much different voice than Ryan Miller, and often he sings in the sadder ballads or the more biting songs. Since the first album, he has had less lead vocal parts on each album than the one before, and on this one he has only one. "Dear Valentine" is it. Guster appears to have a theme going here in which each song sounds like something they did before, but when you really look at it, you see there is much that Guster has never done before. "Dear Valentine" is superficially just another ballad, like Diana on the previous album. Except for the loud, echo-ey production, the strange beginning, the cymbal-y drumming, the brass section composed through overdubs by Neil Rosengarden, the almost scary-conclusion to the instrumental bridge, and the reassuring/pleading/unassured/tired vocals. None of this makes any sense until you realize the song is a soldier in Iraq telling his significant other that he is coming home for Valentine's Day, and that everything will be okay when he gets home, but both of them know that he'll be going back to Iraq sometime after.
The next song, the "Beginning of the End," is a song that you'd think from their previous works that Guster couldn't do well, as it is almost thrash metal. But it is definitely hard rock and the lyrics are heavy, even if I can't understand them exactly. The vocal delivery is convincingly angry, and the song changes in ways that surprise you. Also, the solo fits the lyrics great. It's almost an instrumental verse. And Rosenworcel's drumming is kickass. Given how incredible this song is, I can't understand how they screwed up "The New Underground," which was made at about the same time. In that case the lyrics are easy to understand metaphors, the music is slightly less thrash and more punk. But it is a big letdown because the lyrics are somewhat stupid ("Welcome/you're under control/and buried like a mole/1000 feet below"), and they copied those stupid "O-o-o-oh"s from The Offspring's "Staring at the Sun." It doesn't help that half the time Ryan Miller is caterwauling on this song like a mountain lion. It is possible that they screwed this song up intentionally, but if they did, the achieved sound is not even interesting or funny.
About the other songs; "Manifest Destiny" is solid piano pop calling for declaring independence from the current political situation, "The Captain" is Country Joe and the Fish-inspired country/psychedelia with hard-to-interpret lyrics and a fun jam-coda, and "Hang On" is the band's third anthemic album closer.
Did I say just one let-down? I was wrong, there is a second. Guster has never made a pompous song, and their anthems are really quite humble. "Hang On" is quite humble, and is a plea for perseverance. Yes, it is obvious, and that is part of the problem. The whole song is pretty conventional, and doesn't stray that far from some of the stuff REM has done in the recent past, or some of the stuff Guster has done in the past. Its still a beautiful song, but in comparison to all the fantastic stuff preceding, it looks uninspired. I understand that Guster has in the past closed albums with uplifting anthemic songs ("Parachute," "I Hope Tomorrow is Like Today"), or slow dark songs that build to a shattering conclusion ("Rocket Ship," "Rainy Day"). And "The Beginning of the End" is not a good way to close an album. But I just feel that "Hang On" is a song to listen to after listening to the album, not whenever, as opposed to "I Hope Tomorrow Is Like Today," which is fun to listen to anytime you have a good day.
Still, one good but conventional song, and one song that falls flat on its face without being bad, does not break the album. Is the album innovative? I'll answer that with a question: Can you name any album that came out in 2006 that was innovative? Guster has at least set out to record an album with a lot of good songs in many different styles. And the fans that say they are selling out don't have to buy the album. Also the hardcore fans need to stop pretending that what makes this album great is that Guster doesn't care about commercial success. I'd say there are a lot of bands out there for whom commercial success is secondary to making music. What separates Guster from many of them is that Guster cares about creativity, about substance over image, about change, and about diversity of sound. Quoting Brian Rosenworcel, "All musicians should feel
like they're on the verge of break down all the time." This album is one of the best of 2006, and I recommend this as highly as Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum.
One last thing: this album is great, but it does not need to be relentlessly pushed on people like the guy is at BlogCritics. There are many albums better than it. No recent albums, but if you want to hear something absolutely fantastic put on the Beatles Abbey Road. However, Ryan Miller has said that the band wants to make an all-time great album, and while he admits (and I agree with him) that this is not an all-time great, this is not very far, and is certainly great in the context of the last 5 years. If it was more innovative, I would say it belongs in the discussion of the greatest rock albums ever made. I think that if the band sets as its goal for the next album, "let's top Ganging Up on the Sun" they will succeed. I've thought Guster has been making progressively better albums for so long without making a bad one, that they were just due to fall flat on their face, which may have colored my initial impression of the album, but I now think it is possible that Guster is a band that is incapable of releasing a bad album. I think that as long as they still care about making music, they will not allow an album to be released that is on average below what they are capable of, and will work on it until they get it right. That is why I think that they will succeed.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
From "Making Flippy Floppy," Speaking in Tongues (Talking Heads)
The world is fucked. No one is going to save it.
Everything is divided
Nothing is complete
Everything looks impressive
Do not be deceived
You don't have to wait for more instructions
No one makes a monkey out of me
We lie on our backs, feet in the air
Rest and relaxation, rocket to my brain
[...]
I can't believe it
And people are strange
Our president's crazy
Did you hear what he said
Business and pleasure
Lie right to your face
Divide it in sections
And then give it away
The world is fucked. No one is going to save it.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Saturday, July 22, 2006
MTV Unplugged in New York (Nirvana)
This had been sitting in my music collection unlistened for years. (It was an **legal c*py from a cousin.) I actually have never heard any of the songs on this album from any other source, except for "Come As You Are," which I heard performed by Caetano Veloso, who is a famous Brazilian musician. So, I have no clue how totally mind-blowing or anti-establishment the non-acoustic version of these songs might be. I'm not interesting in finding out either. But that is a personal preference, not a statement on this album.
This paragraph is the last time in this review I will mention the band by name. The album has a meta-layer given that Cobain killed himself 5 months later, however historical significance only counts for anything if people care about it, and eventually one tires of historical significance and is left with just the music. So what do I think of Nirvana? Nirvana was a band of talented but morbid, morose, depressed, and drug-addicted musicians. Their message should have been far too depressive and (self)-loathing to resonate, so I don't know what that says about "Generation X." They didn't add anything to music except combining self-loathing and anti-social attitudes with punk. However, in MTV Unplugged they demonstrate that they were somewhat talented, versatile, and had tastes in music that were surprisingly diverse, which counts for something. I think Nirvana deserved to be more than a footnote in the history of popular music, but did not and does not deserve the fame they do have. The Pixies had a style that was much more original, most similar to garage-rock post-modern power-pop (but not really similar), and they never became a huge success like Nirvana at their peak. If you look at today's music scene, Guster deserves to be a major phenomenon much more than Nirvana did in their time. (I am serious about this. Ganging Up on the Sun is a significant achievement in today's popular music.) That's all I'm going to say about Nirvana. For the rest of the review I'm going to pretend this is some demo tape by an obscure alt-rock band from today.
So, to the actual review. What does this album sound like? Well, it is acoustic, so the sound is relatively easy to understand. It isn't heavy, but some of the songs, especially the closer, have a heavy air of menace. This isn't grunge, if grunge means LOUD angry rock music, but it is alternative, if alternative means deliberately far from what "normal people" consider "normal music." The entire album is either depressed, angry, or cynical, with two exceptions. But those are the background emotions. There are self-loathing songs, songs about rendering judgement on others, about hating other people, songs about the absurdity of life, and many songs about oh how fucked up am I. Basically, these songs are potentially depression-inducing, but they are depression-inducing in unique ways. I must also give them plaudits (an actual word?) for 4 excellent covers out of 7.
Because this is an acoustic album, the instrumentation is quite important. As you would expect, its base is an acoustic guitar, acoustic bass guitar, and quietly played drums. However, there is interesting use of other instruments. A very bright accordion is used on one song, as is an electric guitar. Cello is even used in a few songs to provide thick bass notes. I must say that the acoustic bass guitar player uses a lot of neat riffs, sometimes carrying the entire melody. Listen to the neat intermeshing of cello and bass guitar on "Dumb," which gives a song which otherwise is only memorable for the Black Francis-esque line, "I think I'm dumb, maybe just happy," a dark piercing vibe that is hard to forget. The guitar player, Kurt I think his name is, plays with a memorable intensity on songs such as "Pennyroyal Tea," also the only performance on here that makes sense for it to be acoustic, as it is arranged as solo acoustic guitar and singing. (The acoustic bass guitar has the unique distinction of being designed from it's electric counterpart, and the electric guitar was invented to allow playing over loud drums and amplified vocals. Now, if they had originally played these songs in a country style it would make sense for them to be done in an acoustic version.) The drums are notable only for keeping time and not overshadowing the rest of the instruments, which is all you want in an acoustic performance like this.
I'm going to get the discussion of what I don't like about this album so I can spend the rest of the review saying what I do like about it. I don't like "Polly," a song that the band made for no obvious reason other than to pretend that they are assholes. And they are monumental assholes for making that song. If I was rating this album on a scale, I'd be forced to lower it a point just for that song. Fortunately, CD players have a skip button. (Good thing it never came out on 8-track;)
Another problem is that two of the songs are well put-together but just not very interesting in this form ("Come As You Are" and "Lake of Fire"), and three of the songs have nothing to hold your interest but their groove ("Dumb," "Something in the Way," and "Oh, Me," in decreasing order of how interesting their groove is. "Dumb" and "Something in the Way" each have only one interesting audible lyric, and "Oh, Me" has none.) That's a total of six songs that are not really all that interesting, and the album is only fourteen songs long.
Actually, "Dumb" has a really interesting groove that is a blend of irony, apathy, and (self-)loathing. I like it as a groove, but not so much as a song. In other words, I could hum it, but I don't know all the lyrics and the song doesn't make me want to know them. But I dig that bass guitar-cello interplay. And the chorus: "Think I'm dumb, maybe just happy..."
And "Come As You Are" is just an average alternative song when played like this, and "Lake of Fire" is begging for a Willie Nelson cover. So even some of the uninteresting songs aren't bad. Not good, but not bad. Sort of like background music. Anyone who is now yelling at their monitor is ordered to re-read the start of this post.
The album starts off with a bang, with the biting cynicism and bare emotions of "About a Girl." The song has an entertaining melody to go along with it's love-hate relation to its subject. Then it's off to the vicious "background music" of "Come as You Are," which is followed by two great covers.
The first, "Jesus Doesn't Want me For a Sunbeam," is one of the two openly optimistic songs on this album. I think it is my second-favorite song on the album. The first four bars in which the accordion chords start are pure magic. The accordion drives this song, and it sounds more angelic than a harp. A whole album of music like this would be one of the most beautiful and hopeful albums ever made. The content of the song is interesting too. The Vaselines, who wrote it, turned a Christian song into a spirit-lifting religion-rejecting anthem. Which seems like a great idea to me.
Following this song, there is the confusing, and confused, "The Man Who Sold The World." Intentionally or not, they cover the David Bowie song with almost the same instrument set as were on "Space Oddity," right down to the...um, electric guitar, played by that Kurt guy. Who also gives a downright odd vocal performance. Combined with the sparse eerie use of the electric guitar, this song sticks in the crevices of my brain.
I suspect that Kurt played the electric guitar because the recorders were nice enough to record the comments in between the songs, in which Kurt promises "I will screw this up." But he doesn't and says afterwards, "I didn't screw it up did I...okay, but here's another one I can screw up," and then discusses with the rest of the band before going into a solo version of "Pennyroyal Tea." The comments in between songs are amusing, and the humbleness of the band made it a lot easier for me personally to stomach the album at first.
I want to note two more songs before I get into discussing what is my favorite song on the album. "Plateau," a Meat Puppets song, reminds me of David Byrne's songwriting. This is from "Plateau":
And from Talking Heads' "Cities":
Innnnn-teresting. Also, Any song with the lines, "There's nothing on the top but a bucket and a mop
and an illustrated book about birds," gets my seal of approval. Man, I'd scale the Tibetan Plateau for a great illustrated book about birds.
A quick note on the song before the last one on the album. "All Apologies" is a rambling mumbled half-mantra with a sparse guitar line, and is the most content song on this album song on the album. It is a nice contrast to the final song of the album. But the lyrics? They are sort of depressed and morbid, but when you sing "in the sun" over and over in a an energetic voice then shouting with all emotion, "married, buried," followed by yelling "Yeah yeah yeah yeah," you will sound at least a little happy. Not even David Byrne could sing that sarcastically.
That brings us to the grand finale of this review and the album. "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" A folk song popularized by Leadbelly, this is a fantastically dark and gripping rendition. In case you haven't heard it before, the song is likely, but not definitely, about a man in an affair with a married woman, asking where she slept last night, just after her husband's "head was found in a driver's wheel," and she tells him "in the pines, where the sun don't ever shine." What is not entirely clear is which of them killed her husband, and for me this ambiguity makes the song creepier. No one less than Allen Ginsberg has praised this performance: "Great vocal control and subtlety, it's almost as good as Leadbelly's."
The song is gripping from the start, with a series of acoustic guitar chords synchronized with the bass guitar, which evokes the classic sound of old country-western. About vocal control and subtlety, everyone who has heard this knows about the screamed last verse, but I've noticed that he subtly changes the way he sings three times in the song. He starts singing like a traditional country-folk musician, and then an element of contempt and anger slips into his voice in the first half of the second chorus/verse. An instrumental break starts halfway through the second verse, in which the cello, which was just below the surface, really begins to assert itself, with dark bass harmonies that I couldn't identify the source of until I realized that they had a cellist with them. Without the cello this song would still be good but it wouldn't be incredible.
After the instrumental break, Kurt sings the second half of the second chorus in a vulnerable and soft tone, as the rest of the band plays as softly as possible, which really makes you unprepared for the apocalyptic final verse, in which the entire band turns it up a notch. Some people may dismiss Kurt's singing as just being shouting, and say anybody can shout, but what Kurt does is shout and keep his voice from cracking or varying in pitch and tone. Try to scream like he does and control your voice in the same way and see how easy it is. All-around, the song is a very impressive vocal performance by Kurt with great backing from his band. The best track of the album, and in my opinion one of the best live song performances recorded in the '90s.
So, final thoughts: First of all, this album is not grunge, whether you think that's a good thing or bad thing. Call it acoustic alternative if you will. The album is very dark in parts, and gloomy in general. That can easily put off people. For me, I suppose that makes it less likely for me to listen to it often than other albums of similar quality. Also, the material here is very uneven, with a few great songs, some good ones, some average ones, and an offensive song. Because of the limitations to the instrumentation, the average ones get boring really fast because it is hard to make the music more interesting, so part of my downgrading of this album from being a great album is beyond the control of the musicians. However, I will say this album is a good one on the strength of the better songs, but it is not for everyone.
If you are a fan of bands such as the Talking Heads and the Pixies, as I am, the odds that you'll like this go up significantly. I'm not entirely sure what actual fans of Nirvana think of this album, or if there is even a consensus, but even if they prefer the originals, they should at least recognize the versatility of Kurt and the range of the band's interests in music. It goes without saying that anyone who claims to be a fan of Cobain but hasn't heard "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" is missing a lot.
Going outside of my promise not to discuss the context of the album, I've read that Nirvana was considering making an entire album in this style before Cobain's suicide. In that way, it is especially terrible that he killed himself, because an album actually designed for this style may have avoided all the problems I mentioned previously, and could have really been a great album. Regardless, MTV Unplugged shows that the member's of Nirvana were developing serious artistic ideas and were willing to evolve their music. A band like that would have been welcome in the decade since.
So you may wonder, Tally Hall gets 7 paragraphs, and this gets 20? Well, my feelings towards this album are...complex.
Voice of Generation X: Just like fuckin' high school ain't it?
NF: I was in 4th grade, dickhead.*
This had been sitting in my music collection unlistened for years. (It was an **legal c*py from a cousin.) I actually have never heard any of the songs on this album from any other source, except for "Come As You Are," which I heard performed by Caetano Veloso, who is a famous Brazilian musician. So, I have no clue how totally mind-blowing or anti-establishment the non-acoustic version of these songs might be. I'm not interesting in finding out either. But that is a personal preference, not a statement on this album.
This paragraph is the last time in this review I will mention the band by name. The album has a meta-layer given that Cobain killed himself 5 months later, however historical significance only counts for anything if people care about it, and eventually one tires of historical significance and is left with just the music. So what do I think of Nirvana? Nirvana was a band of talented but morbid, morose, depressed, and drug-addicted musicians. Their message should have been far too depressive and (self)-loathing to resonate, so I don't know what that says about "Generation X." They didn't add anything to music except combining self-loathing and anti-social attitudes with punk. However, in MTV Unplugged they demonstrate that they were somewhat talented, versatile, and had tastes in music that were surprisingly diverse, which counts for something. I think Nirvana deserved to be more than a footnote in the history of popular music, but did not and does not deserve the fame they do have. The Pixies had a style that was much more original, most similar to garage-rock post-modern power-pop (but not really similar), and they never became a huge success like Nirvana at their peak. If you look at today's music scene, Guster deserves to be a major phenomenon much more than Nirvana did in their time. (I am serious about this. Ganging Up on the Sun is a significant achievement in today's popular music.) That's all I'm going to say about Nirvana. For the rest of the review I'm going to pretend this is some demo tape by an obscure alt-rock band from today.
So, to the actual review. What does this album sound like? Well, it is acoustic, so the sound is relatively easy to understand. It isn't heavy, but some of the songs, especially the closer, have a heavy air of menace. This isn't grunge, if grunge means LOUD angry rock music, but it is alternative, if alternative means deliberately far from what "normal people" consider "normal music." The entire album is either depressed, angry, or cynical, with two exceptions. But those are the background emotions. There are self-loathing songs, songs about rendering judgement on others, about hating other people, songs about the absurdity of life, and many songs about oh how fucked up am I. Basically, these songs are potentially depression-inducing, but they are depression-inducing in unique ways. I must also give them plaudits (an actual word?) for 4 excellent covers out of 7.
Because this is an acoustic album, the instrumentation is quite important. As you would expect, its base is an acoustic guitar, acoustic bass guitar, and quietly played drums. However, there is interesting use of other instruments. A very bright accordion is used on one song, as is an electric guitar. Cello is even used in a few songs to provide thick bass notes. I must say that the acoustic bass guitar player uses a lot of neat riffs, sometimes carrying the entire melody. Listen to the neat intermeshing of cello and bass guitar on "Dumb," which gives a song which otherwise is only memorable for the Black Francis-esque line, "I think I'm dumb, maybe just happy," a dark piercing vibe that is hard to forget. The guitar player, Kurt I think his name is, plays with a memorable intensity on songs such as "Pennyroyal Tea," also the only performance on here that makes sense for it to be acoustic, as it is arranged as solo acoustic guitar and singing. (The acoustic bass guitar has the unique distinction of being designed from it's electric counterpart, and the electric guitar was invented to allow playing over loud drums and amplified vocals. Now, if they had originally played these songs in a country style it would make sense for them to be done in an acoustic version.) The drums are notable only for keeping time and not overshadowing the rest of the instruments, which is all you want in an acoustic performance like this.
I'm going to get the discussion of what I don't like about this album so I can spend the rest of the review saying what I do like about it. I don't like "Polly," a song that the band made for no obvious reason other than to pretend that they are assholes. And they are monumental assholes for making that song. If I was rating this album on a scale, I'd be forced to lower it a point just for that song. Fortunately, CD players have a skip button. (Good thing it never came out on 8-track;)
Another problem is that two of the songs are well put-together but just not very interesting in this form ("Come As You Are" and "Lake of Fire"), and three of the songs have nothing to hold your interest but their groove ("Dumb," "Something in the Way," and "Oh, Me," in decreasing order of how interesting their groove is. "Dumb" and "Something in the Way" each have only one interesting audible lyric, and "Oh, Me" has none.) That's a total of six songs that are not really all that interesting, and the album is only fourteen songs long.
Actually, "Dumb" has a really interesting groove that is a blend of irony, apathy, and (self-)loathing. I like it as a groove, but not so much as a song. In other words, I could hum it, but I don't know all the lyrics and the song doesn't make me want to know them. But I dig that bass guitar-cello interplay. And the chorus: "Think I'm dumb, maybe just happy..."
And "Come As You Are" is just an average alternative song when played like this, and "Lake of Fire" is begging for a Willie Nelson cover. So even some of the uninteresting songs aren't bad. Not good, but not bad. Sort of like background music. Anyone who is now yelling at their monitor is ordered to re-read the start of this post.
The album starts off with a bang, with the biting cynicism and bare emotions of "About a Girl." The song has an entertaining melody to go along with it's love-hate relation to its subject. Then it's off to the vicious "background music" of "Come as You Are," which is followed by two great covers.
The first, "Jesus Doesn't Want me For a Sunbeam," is one of the two openly optimistic songs on this album. I think it is my second-favorite song on the album. The first four bars in which the accordion chords start are pure magic. The accordion drives this song, and it sounds more angelic than a harp. A whole album of music like this would be one of the most beautiful and hopeful albums ever made. The content of the song is interesting too. The Vaselines, who wrote it, turned a Christian song into a spirit-lifting religion-rejecting anthem. Which seems like a great idea to me.
Following this song, there is the confusing, and confused, "The Man Who Sold The World." Intentionally or not, they cover the David Bowie song with almost the same instrument set as were on "Space Oddity," right down to the...um, electric guitar, played by that Kurt guy. Who also gives a downright odd vocal performance. Combined with the sparse eerie use of the electric guitar, this song sticks in the crevices of my brain.
I suspect that Kurt played the electric guitar because the recorders were nice enough to record the comments in between the songs, in which Kurt promises "I will screw this up." But he doesn't and says afterwards, "I didn't screw it up did I...okay, but here's another one I can screw up," and then discusses with the rest of the band before going into a solo version of "Pennyroyal Tea." The comments in between songs are amusing, and the humbleness of the band made it a lot easier for me personally to stomach the album at first.
I want to note two more songs before I get into discussing what is my favorite song on the album. "Plateau," a Meat Puppets song, reminds me of David Byrne's songwriting. This is from "Plateau":
Many a hand has scaled the grand old face of the plateau.
Some belong to strangers and some to folks you know.
Holy ghosts and talk show hosts are planted in the sand,
to beautify the foothills and shake the many hands.
And from Talking Heads' "Cities":
There are a lot of rich people in Birmingham.
A lot of ghosts in a lot of houses.
Look over there! A dry ice factory.
A good place to get some thinking done.
Innnnn-teresting. Also, Any song with the lines, "There's nothing on the top but a bucket and a mop
and an illustrated book about birds," gets my seal of approval. Man, I'd scale the Tibetan Plateau for a great illustrated book about birds.
A quick note on the song before the last one on the album. "All Apologies" is a rambling mumbled half-mantra with a sparse guitar line, and is the most content song on this album song on the album. It is a nice contrast to the final song of the album. But the lyrics? They are sort of depressed and morbid, but when you sing "in the sun" over and over in a an energetic voice then shouting with all emotion, "married, buried," followed by yelling "Yeah yeah yeah yeah," you will sound at least a little happy. Not even David Byrne could sing that sarcastically.
That brings us to the grand finale of this review and the album. "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" A folk song popularized by Leadbelly, this is a fantastically dark and gripping rendition. In case you haven't heard it before, the song is likely, but not definitely, about a man in an affair with a married woman, asking where she slept last night, just after her husband's "head was found in a driver's wheel," and she tells him "in the pines, where the sun don't ever shine." What is not entirely clear is which of them killed her husband, and for me this ambiguity makes the song creepier. No one less than Allen Ginsberg has praised this performance: "Great vocal control and subtlety, it's almost as good as Leadbelly's."
The song is gripping from the start, with a series of acoustic guitar chords synchronized with the bass guitar, which evokes the classic sound of old country-western. About vocal control and subtlety, everyone who has heard this knows about the screamed last verse, but I've noticed that he subtly changes the way he sings three times in the song. He starts singing like a traditional country-folk musician, and then an element of contempt and anger slips into his voice in the first half of the second chorus/verse. An instrumental break starts halfway through the second verse, in which the cello, which was just below the surface, really begins to assert itself, with dark bass harmonies that I couldn't identify the source of until I realized that they had a cellist with them. Without the cello this song would still be good but it wouldn't be incredible.
After the instrumental break, Kurt sings the second half of the second chorus in a vulnerable and soft tone, as the rest of the band plays as softly as possible, which really makes you unprepared for the apocalyptic final verse, in which the entire band turns it up a notch. Some people may dismiss Kurt's singing as just being shouting, and say anybody can shout, but what Kurt does is shout and keep his voice from cracking or varying in pitch and tone. Try to scream like he does and control your voice in the same way and see how easy it is. All-around, the song is a very impressive vocal performance by Kurt with great backing from his band. The best track of the album, and in my opinion one of the best live song performances recorded in the '90s.
So, final thoughts: First of all, this album is not grunge, whether you think that's a good thing or bad thing. Call it acoustic alternative if you will. The album is very dark in parts, and gloomy in general. That can easily put off people. For me, I suppose that makes it less likely for me to listen to it often than other albums of similar quality. Also, the material here is very uneven, with a few great songs, some good ones, some average ones, and an offensive song. Because of the limitations to the instrumentation, the average ones get boring really fast because it is hard to make the music more interesting, so part of my downgrading of this album from being a great album is beyond the control of the musicians. However, I will say this album is a good one on the strength of the better songs, but it is not for everyone.
If you are a fan of bands such as the Talking Heads and the Pixies, as I am, the odds that you'll like this go up significantly. I'm not entirely sure what actual fans of Nirvana think of this album, or if there is even a consensus, but even if they prefer the originals, they should at least recognize the versatility of Kurt and the range of the band's interests in music. It goes without saying that anyone who claims to be a fan of Cobain but hasn't heard "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" is missing a lot.
Going outside of my promise not to discuss the context of the album, I've read that Nirvana was considering making an entire album in this style before Cobain's suicide. In that way, it is especially terrible that he killed himself, because an album actually designed for this style may have avoided all the problems I mentioned previously, and could have really been a great album. Regardless, MTV Unplugged shows that the member's of Nirvana were developing serious artistic ideas and were willing to evolve their music. A band like that would have been welcome in the decade since.
So you may wonder, Tally Hall gets 7 paragraphs, and this gets 20? Well, my feelings towards this album are...complex.
Saturday, June 24, 2006
The Battle of the Ironclads and the Brutality of the Civil War
From the March 2006 National Geographic article on the first battle of the ironclads:
According to the 2001 World Almanac, there were an estimated 215 thousand battle deaths combined in the Civil War, and approximately 3,263 thousand soldiers combined. That is a 6.6% death rate. No major American war before or after that has had a rate higher than 3%. The Civil War was possibly one of the most balanced wars in history in which neither sides exercised significant restraint for the purpose of self-preservation or respect for the lives of those on the other side. It was a war in which the victor, who had a morally stronger side, laid waste to vast areas of the defeated's territory en route to victory, and did not restrain looting in the major cities.
The Civil War was not especially deadly for Americans because they were on both sides. It was especially deadly because the most desperate, unwavering, and ruthless enemy Americans could fight were each other.
From the March 2006 National Geographic article on the first battle of the ironclads:
Making a steady approach, Buchanan blasted the Cumberland for 15 minutes, then plowed his iron monster straight into the wooden ship. Sailors on both vessels felt a terrific crash as iron ram hit solid oak, punching a hole at the waterline some said was big enough for a horse and cart to pass through. The ram worked almost too well. The Cumberland began sinking so fast it threatened to take the ironclad down with it. At the last moment the ram wrenched off, freeing the Virginia from its victim.
Buchanan hailed the sinking ship, demanding its surrender. A defiant Morris yelled back, "No, damn you! I will never surrender!" The Virginia now lay parallel to the sinking Cumberland and fewer than a hundred yards away. The Cumberland's crew, some in water to their knees, took their revenge, pouring round after round into the ironclad at close range. Gunners aboard the ironclad, their bodies black with powder and streaked with sweat, returned fire with devastating effect. "The way was slippery with blood, and the mutilated humanity was a sight too awful for description," recalled acting master William Pritchard Randall, who ordered the last shot fired from the Cumberland. Of the 376 men on board, 121 were dead or missing and perhaps another 80 or more were wounded.
"The normal practice at that time was to fight until you had 10 percent casualties; then you could honorably surrender," says Craig Symonds, professor emeritus of history at the U.S. Naval Academy. "The 55 percent casualty rate on the Cumberland was phenomenal[...]"
[...]
As the Virginia made a lumbering turn and headed back toward the stricken Congress, Lt. Joseph Smith, hoping to escape the Cumberland's fate, ordered a nearby tug to ground his ship beneath the shore batteries at Newport News Point. But even there the Congress was still within reach of the Virginia's merciless nine-inch-diameter guns. Flying splinters ripped from the ship's wooden walls killed more than shot or shells, some men impaled by wood fragments as thick as their wrists. Within half an hour nearly a quarter of the crew were dead or wounded, including Lieutenant Smith, who was decapitated by a shell fragment. The ship raised the white flag.
The water around the Congress was too shallow for the Virginia to approach, so Buchanan sent two small Confederate vessels to claim his prize. They were met by withering fire from Union soldiers on shore under the command of Gen. Joseph Mansfield. One of Mansfield's officers reportedly complained that the ship had surrendered and the rebels had a right to take her, to which the general replied, "I know the damned ship has surrendered, but we haven't!"
Buchanan was livid. He demanded a rifle and without thinking began firing at the soldiers on shore from atop the Virginia. A hail of bullets came back in reply, and Old Buck crumbled to the iron deck, shot in the groin. Calling for Catesby Jones, his unflappable executive officer, Buchanan turned over command with an order to "plug hot shot into her and don't leave her until she's afire!" Jones quickly complied, blasting the vessel with shot heated red in the ship's furnace until the Congress was a funeral pyre for the living and the dead.
For decades afterward, veterans of the battle argued about who committed the more dastardly deed, Mansfield or Buchanan. "Here's an iron vessel firing hot shot at a stranded wooden vessel with wounded aboard," says Symonds. "It's a total violation of the traditional rules of war." Incredibly, Buchanan set the Congress aflame knowing all the while that his own brother, also a naval officer, was aboard the doomed ship.
According to the 2001 World Almanac, there were an estimated 215 thousand battle deaths combined in the Civil War, and approximately 3,263 thousand soldiers combined. That is a 6.6% death rate. No major American war before or after that has had a rate higher than 3%. The Civil War was possibly one of the most balanced wars in history in which neither sides exercised significant restraint for the purpose of self-preservation or respect for the lives of those on the other side. It was a war in which the victor, who had a morally stronger side, laid waste to vast areas of the defeated's territory en route to victory, and did not restrain looting in the major cities.
The Civil War was not especially deadly for Americans because they were on both sides. It was especially deadly because the most desperate, unwavering, and ruthless enemy Americans could fight were each other.
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Eagles Watch - NFL Draft Edition
I will discuss what I think of the Eagles draft tomorrow after it is finished. Although I will comment about the Texans draft.
The pick makes no sense whatsoever. In relation to my earlier post, Mario Williams does not appear to possibly be the sort of all-time great player that Vince Young could be, he doesn't look like the sort of phenomonon that Reggie Bush looks like, and he is not even the best lineman in the draft, with D'Brickashaw being an all-around good offensive tackle already, who dominated constantly in college (and also dominated Mario Williams in the senior bowl). A very confusing decision. I can only conclude that taking Reggie Bush was so obvious that the team went overboard in trying to come up with reasons not to take him, and somehow came to the conclusion that the best way to start rebuilding the franchise is to take a top defensive end. When Mario Williams was quicker to reach a contract with the Texans than Bush, the Texans decided this meant Bush didn't want to play for them, so any remaining doubts about passing on Bush were swept away. They must think Mario Williams is the next Bruce Smith or Deacon Jones and be correct to even start justifying passing on Reggie Bush. Oh well. I hope Reggie Bush enjoys getting footballs from Drew Brees down in New Orleans.
But enough of that, the real reason I am writing this post is to tell you what I think are the best and worst Eagles draft picks of all time.
Best Pick: Chuck Bednarik, C/LB, #1 overall selection of 1949 NFL Draft
It's impossible to say that the drafting of Chuck Bednarik was not one of the all-time great decisions, seeing that he is a Hall of Fame player who was good at center and incredible at linebacker, at the same time no less. What makes this the greatest Eagles draft pick ever is that he played his entire 14-year career for the Eagles and missed only 3 games. Not only this, he played both sides of the ball until 1957, long after free substitution was allowed, and in 1960, at the age of 35, he went back to playing linebacker again in addition to center because of injuries to the starter. He contributed to the Eagles shutout-victory in the 1949 NFL Championship in his rookie year, and the Eagles would have definitely lost the 1960 NFL Championship, if they even got there with their depleted linebacking corp, if not for the 58 minutes Chuck Bednarik spent on the field, and the game-saving tackle of Green Bay running back Jim Taylor on the final play. Jim Taylor, by the way, was 10 years younger than Chuck and only 19 pounds lighter, and is also a member of the Hall of Fame.
Also, receiving consideration was Steve Van Buren, a #1 pick in 1944 who played halfback for the Eagles for all 8 years of his career, and was essential to winning the 1948 and 1949 NFL Championships. In addition, I would be remiss to not mention the late-Reggie White, who may not have been able to lead the Eagles to any championships, and he did leave the Eagles for the Packers where he was a factor in their Super Bowl win, but he did average more than one sack a game during his career, and set the career and single-season sack records for the Eagles before he left.
Worst Pick: Freddie Mitchell, WR, #25 overall selection of 2001 NFL Draft
What do Reggie Wayne, Chad Johnson, and Steve Smith all have in common (other than the obvious)? They were all drafted after Freddie Mitchell, the man with too many names for himself and too little talent. How can a selection made immediatly before the Eagles went to 4 straight conference championships and 1 Super Bowl be the worst pick in the history of the Eagles? Because if the Eagles take any of the three named above, the Eagles probably would have won at least one Super Bowl and may have played in as many as three between 2002 and 2004. I'll go throught what happens in the parallel universe where the Eagles make a good decision at #25.
First of all, it was an interception caused by Freddie Mitchell running the wrong route that sealed the 2001 NFC Championship for the Rams, so if you feel particualrly vindictive you can add a third super bowl appearance that was missed because Mitchell was picked. The Rams went on lose to the Patriots, but then again Mike Martz is an idiot as head coach and even Bill Belichik couldn't believe the Patriots won that game. So that could be Superbowl win 0 that the Eagles missed. The Eagles would have had a chance to beat the Bucs and go to the Super Bowl in 2002 behind the receiver duo of an Antonio Freeman in his last decent year and Chad Johnson/Reggie Wayne/Steve Smith, all of whom had 50 or more receptions, compared to Mitchell's still-incredible 12.
The Eagles likely win the 2003 NFC Championship with Steve Smith, Chad Johnson, or Reggie Wayne as a #1 receiver. (Although in Reggie Wayne's case, not a terribly great #1, but then again he is in reality playing behind Marvin Harrison under Peyton Manning, so it is hard to say how he'd do as the go-to guy. Also, he is far better than any one of James Thrash, Todd Pinkston, or Freddie Mitchell.) With a passing game that can win the game in addition to the three-headed monster of Staley-Buckhalter-Westbrook, the Eagles may have clinched HFA before the last week, all the starting running backs sit for the game, and Westbrook is not injured before the playoffs. Freddie Mitchell is not needed for 4th and 26 because there is no 4th and 26, as the Eagles demolish Green Bay's defense and win handily. Against the Panthers, the Eagles win in a shootout, as the Eagles have too many weapons on offense for Carolina to counter, even at its peak in the playoffs, especially compared to an unusually mediocre Rams offense that the Panther needed double-overtime to defeat. In Super Bowl 38, the Eagles and Patriots strengths and weaknesses face off, with the Eagles offense vs. the Patriots defense and the Patriots offense vs. the Eagles defense, respectively. So I think the Eagles with any of the three receivers would have had a 1 in 2 chance to win it.
In 2004, the Eagles don't get TO because they already have a #1 receiver and therefore focus on getting the "last player" needed to win a Super Bowl. They somehow acquire a top run-suffing defensive tackle through free agency, in addition to bringing back LB Jeremiah Trotter to see if he can still help out after flopping in Washington. If the Eagles drafted Steve Smith, maybe he is still destined to get injured, so the Eagles struggle a lot but still make the playoffs because their conference is terrible and the defense is better than it was in this reality. Given that in reality the Eagles burned through the playoffs without Owens, with a better defense against the run, making the playoff may be good enough. However, they still lose to New England, and it isn't close. However, if their receiver isn't injured for all or part of the season, they are just as dominant, and they may even win Super Bowl XXXIX by completely shutting down Corey Dillon.
In 2005, it is possible McNabb never has to go on injured reserve if the #1 receiver is not suspended, but even so, the trio of Smith/Johnson/Wayne, Reggie Brown, and Greg Lewis helps ensure that the Eagles don't reach the depths of offensive terribleness they did in reality. And a Reggie Wayne/Brown starting duo in 2006 might just be one of the best starting WR pair ever, considering media marketability along with football ability. The Eagles going into 2006 have a stout run defense, a pass defense that is about to match its publicity with actual performance, and an offense that is explosive in all aspects.
So there you have it. Freddie Mitchell was such a bad pick that it hypothetically denied the Eagles as many as two dditional Super Bowl appearances and at least one Super Bowl win, which would have just been the start of an NFL dynasty. I'd say that's a lot worse than Mike Mamula making bad '90s Eagles teams worse. The only comparable pick I can think of that had the same sort of obvious negative impact on the team that made it was the Tennessee Titans decision to pick Kevin Dyson instead of Randy Moss, which in the near-future could have won the Super Bowl against the Rams, where they ended up one yard short of sending the game of overtime. The Titans would also end up a few games short of reaching the Super Bowl throughout the first few years of the new millenium.
Unlike in the case of the Titans, there is still hope that a championship will be won by the current group. The good news is that the core members of the 2001-2004 run are actually not all core members. Duce Staley, Bobby Carpenter, Troy Vincent, and whoever played strong safety were all replaced before they reached terminal decline. Both lines have also seen significant turnover. McNabb has at least 4 good years left, and the wide receivers and running backs are young. L.J. Smith came in just before Chad Lewis suffered a career-ending injury, and much of the depth is young as well. The only currently-unreplacable players in danger of reaching the twilight of their career are Jon Runyan, Brian Dawkins, and Jevon Kearse. Maybe the 2006 draft has a solution or two to those cases. Maybe the solution is already an Eagle. Next season the Eagles will be back and better in every respect, and maybe even better than they were in 2004.
I will discuss what I think of the Eagles draft tomorrow after it is finished. Although I will comment about the Texans draft.
The pick makes no sense whatsoever. In relation to my earlier post, Mario Williams does not appear to possibly be the sort of all-time great player that Vince Young could be, he doesn't look like the sort of phenomonon that Reggie Bush looks like, and he is not even the best lineman in the draft, with D'Brickashaw being an all-around good offensive tackle already, who dominated constantly in college (and also dominated Mario Williams in the senior bowl). A very confusing decision. I can only conclude that taking Reggie Bush was so obvious that the team went overboard in trying to come up with reasons not to take him, and somehow came to the conclusion that the best way to start rebuilding the franchise is to take a top defensive end. When Mario Williams was quicker to reach a contract with the Texans than Bush, the Texans decided this meant Bush didn't want to play for them, so any remaining doubts about passing on Bush were swept away. They must think Mario Williams is the next Bruce Smith or Deacon Jones and be correct to even start justifying passing on Reggie Bush. Oh well. I hope Reggie Bush enjoys getting footballs from Drew Brees down in New Orleans.
But enough of that, the real reason I am writing this post is to tell you what I think are the best and worst Eagles draft picks of all time.
Best Pick: Chuck Bednarik, C/LB, #1 overall selection of 1949 NFL Draft
It's impossible to say that the drafting of Chuck Bednarik was not one of the all-time great decisions, seeing that he is a Hall of Fame player who was good at center and incredible at linebacker, at the same time no less. What makes this the greatest Eagles draft pick ever is that he played his entire 14-year career for the Eagles and missed only 3 games. Not only this, he played both sides of the ball until 1957, long after free substitution was allowed, and in 1960, at the age of 35, he went back to playing linebacker again in addition to center because of injuries to the starter. He contributed to the Eagles shutout-victory in the 1949 NFL Championship in his rookie year, and the Eagles would have definitely lost the 1960 NFL Championship, if they even got there with their depleted linebacking corp, if not for the 58 minutes Chuck Bednarik spent on the field, and the game-saving tackle of Green Bay running back Jim Taylor on the final play. Jim Taylor, by the way, was 10 years younger than Chuck and only 19 pounds lighter, and is also a member of the Hall of Fame.
Also, receiving consideration was Steve Van Buren, a #1 pick in 1944 who played halfback for the Eagles for all 8 years of his career, and was essential to winning the 1948 and 1949 NFL Championships. In addition, I would be remiss to not mention the late-Reggie White, who may not have been able to lead the Eagles to any championships, and he did leave the Eagles for the Packers where he was a factor in their Super Bowl win, but he did average more than one sack a game during his career, and set the career and single-season sack records for the Eagles before he left.
Worst Pick: Freddie Mitchell, WR, #25 overall selection of 2001 NFL Draft
What do Reggie Wayne, Chad Johnson, and Steve Smith all have in common (other than the obvious)? They were all drafted after Freddie Mitchell, the man with too many names for himself and too little talent. How can a selection made immediatly before the Eagles went to 4 straight conference championships and 1 Super Bowl be the worst pick in the history of the Eagles? Because if the Eagles take any of the three named above, the Eagles probably would have won at least one Super Bowl and may have played in as many as three between 2002 and 2004. I'll go throught what happens in the parallel universe where the Eagles make a good decision at #25.
First of all, it was an interception caused by Freddie Mitchell running the wrong route that sealed the 2001 NFC Championship for the Rams, so if you feel particualrly vindictive you can add a third super bowl appearance that was missed because Mitchell was picked. The Rams went on lose to the Patriots, but then again Mike Martz is an idiot as head coach and even Bill Belichik couldn't believe the Patriots won that game. So that could be Superbowl win 0 that the Eagles missed. The Eagles would have had a chance to beat the Bucs and go to the Super Bowl in 2002 behind the receiver duo of an Antonio Freeman in his last decent year and Chad Johnson/Reggie Wayne/Steve Smith, all of whom had 50 or more receptions, compared to Mitchell's still-incredible 12.
The Eagles likely win the 2003 NFC Championship with Steve Smith, Chad Johnson, or Reggie Wayne as a #1 receiver. (Although in Reggie Wayne's case, not a terribly great #1, but then again he is in reality playing behind Marvin Harrison under Peyton Manning, so it is hard to say how he'd do as the go-to guy. Also, he is far better than any one of James Thrash, Todd Pinkston, or Freddie Mitchell.) With a passing game that can win the game in addition to the three-headed monster of Staley-Buckhalter-Westbrook, the Eagles may have clinched HFA before the last week, all the starting running backs sit for the game, and Westbrook is not injured before the playoffs. Freddie Mitchell is not needed for 4th and 26 because there is no 4th and 26, as the Eagles demolish Green Bay's defense and win handily. Against the Panthers, the Eagles win in a shootout, as the Eagles have too many weapons on offense for Carolina to counter, even at its peak in the playoffs, especially compared to an unusually mediocre Rams offense that the Panther needed double-overtime to defeat. In Super Bowl 38, the Eagles and Patriots strengths and weaknesses face off, with the Eagles offense vs. the Patriots defense and the Patriots offense vs. the Eagles defense, respectively. So I think the Eagles with any of the three receivers would have had a 1 in 2 chance to win it.
In 2004, the Eagles don't get TO because they already have a #1 receiver and therefore focus on getting the "last player" needed to win a Super Bowl. They somehow acquire a top run-suffing defensive tackle through free agency, in addition to bringing back LB Jeremiah Trotter to see if he can still help out after flopping in Washington. If the Eagles drafted Steve Smith, maybe he is still destined to get injured, so the Eagles struggle a lot but still make the playoffs because their conference is terrible and the defense is better than it was in this reality. Given that in reality the Eagles burned through the playoffs without Owens, with a better defense against the run, making the playoff may be good enough. However, they still lose to New England, and it isn't close. However, if their receiver isn't injured for all or part of the season, they are just as dominant, and they may even win Super Bowl XXXIX by completely shutting down Corey Dillon.
In 2005, it is possible McNabb never has to go on injured reserve if the #1 receiver is not suspended, but even so, the trio of Smith/Johnson/Wayne, Reggie Brown, and Greg Lewis helps ensure that the Eagles don't reach the depths of offensive terribleness they did in reality. And a Reggie Wayne/Brown starting duo in 2006 might just be one of the best starting WR pair ever, considering media marketability along with football ability. The Eagles going into 2006 have a stout run defense, a pass defense that is about to match its publicity with actual performance, and an offense that is explosive in all aspects.
So there you have it. Freddie Mitchell was such a bad pick that it hypothetically denied the Eagles as many as two dditional Super Bowl appearances and at least one Super Bowl win, which would have just been the start of an NFL dynasty. I'd say that's a lot worse than Mike Mamula making bad '90s Eagles teams worse. The only comparable pick I can think of that had the same sort of obvious negative impact on the team that made it was the Tennessee Titans decision to pick Kevin Dyson instead of Randy Moss, which in the near-future could have won the Super Bowl against the Rams, where they ended up one yard short of sending the game of overtime. The Titans would also end up a few games short of reaching the Super Bowl throughout the first few years of the new millenium.
Unlike in the case of the Titans, there is still hope that a championship will be won by the current group. The good news is that the core members of the 2001-2004 run are actually not all core members. Duce Staley, Bobby Carpenter, Troy Vincent, and whoever played strong safety were all replaced before they reached terminal decline. Both lines have also seen significant turnover. McNabb has at least 4 good years left, and the wide receivers and running backs are young. L.J. Smith came in just before Chad Lewis suffered a career-ending injury, and much of the depth is young as well. The only currently-unreplacable players in danger of reaching the twilight of their career are Jon Runyan, Brian Dawkins, and Jevon Kearse. Maybe the 2006 draft has a solution or two to those cases. Maybe the solution is already an Eagle. Next season the Eagles will be back and better in every respect, and maybe even better than they were in 2004.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum
An incredibly well-produced and creative first album for the independent band Tally Hall, some college students from Michigan. Tally Hall is quite possibly the newest great art rock band. Do not walk, run, or at least jog to your nearest respectable music store to buy this album. If you do not find it there, which is likely, buy it on Amazon.
Now, the actual review. This album is an extremely professional use of studio effects and guest musicians combined with unpretentious and actively diverse musical creativity. The first half of the album is a musical collage, with the exception of two songs "Greener," and "Welcome to Tally Hall." Nothing short of a denial by the band will convince me that "Greener" is not a tribute to '90s non-pop rock. "Welcome to Tally Hall" is actually a feather-light rap, with the priceless verse "Well I might rap like an english chap\take you by the knickers and I'll bum your slap\you didn't think we had the gall\well bloody welcome to Tally Hall!" The world needs more rap songs like that song. This song is quite possibly a spoof of self-exaltation songs, with the repeated lines at the end "We think we're playing in a band\But we'd like to give you all a hand!" Tally Hall, by the way, was originally a mini-mall in upstate Michigan. Hmmm...
What I meant by a musical collage, is that particularly daring bands might incorporate two completely different sections into their songs, while "Good Day," "Take You For a Ride," and "The Bidding" each have no less than three different sounding sections, with "The Bidding" having four if you count the pop rock coda. This is all well and good, except for the fact that it can be difficult to get into these songs on the first listen, due to the sound effects used, distortion, and change in style. On the first listen, there is a lot of noise, but some good music. On the second, the noise begins to be decoded, and you understand the order of the songs. By the third listen, the musical tapestry fully reveals itself. Something that doesn't help you listen to the songs, but ultimately makes them more enjoyable, is the unconventional lyrics. I won't spoil the trip of figuring them out, but this is where I'll note these guys proclaim themselves a wonky rock band. [Edit: In retrospect, even "Welcome to Tally Hall" has three sections, with the rap, a short funk section, and a pop rock coda.]
The rest of the album is much more conventional in song structure and easier to understand, but if anything the song topics get stranger. "Be Born" is a country-folk song about what the title says. "Banana Man" has an excellent music video set to an earlier version of the song, and the song is about being addicted to eating...bananas...and about playing...spirit games. Oh, and it's in a carribean(?) style. "Spring and a Storm" reminds me of the Beach Boys in sections. I think it's about hanging on to life in face of rains, or maybe it's just Tally Hall's, "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head." [Edit: Yep, it's definitely about persevering in the face of life's storms. Soulful too, under all the seeming nonsense.] Two Wuv is the most hilarious song ever about viciousness from unrequited love from...Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Yes, this stuff is weird.
The last song, Ruler of Everything, is a collage in the same style of the earlier part of the album, and I only mention it to say that it has an awesome drum beat in a style shift about halfway through.
"Be Born" is pretty much the only song I don't like, and I think it's the ridiculous chorus at work here. That's the one weak spot on the album. This is a good album, hell, this is a great album, and if you like to listen to eclectic music with eccentric creative lyrics, permeated with infectious enthusiasm, you should get it. Myself, I can't wait to see what Tally Hall does next.
One last thing: At the end of the album, there is some reversed tape of Marvin Yagoda, the proprietor of the real Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, saying, "Wouldn't the world be better off if we took nonsense more seriously?"
In case you missed it, the official band website is here. It has some funny non-music stuff in the video section.
An incredibly well-produced and creative first album for the independent band Tally Hall, some college students from Michigan. Tally Hall is quite possibly the newest great art rock band. Do not walk, run, or at least jog to your nearest respectable music store to buy this album. If you do not find it there, which is likely, buy it on Amazon.
Now, the actual review. This album is an extremely professional use of studio effects and guest musicians combined with unpretentious and actively diverse musical creativity. The first half of the album is a musical collage, with the exception of two songs "Greener," and "Welcome to Tally Hall." Nothing short of a denial by the band will convince me that "Greener" is not a tribute to '90s non-pop rock. "Welcome to Tally Hall" is actually a feather-light rap, with the priceless verse "Well I might rap like an english chap\take you by the knickers and I'll bum your slap\you didn't think we had the gall\well bloody welcome to Tally Hall!" The world needs more rap songs like that song. This song is quite possibly a spoof of self-exaltation songs, with the repeated lines at the end "We think we're playing in a band\But we'd like to give you all a hand!" Tally Hall, by the way, was originally a mini-mall in upstate Michigan. Hmmm...
What I meant by a musical collage, is that particularly daring bands might incorporate two completely different sections into their songs, while "Good Day," "Take You For a Ride," and "The Bidding" each have no less than three different sounding sections, with "The Bidding" having four if you count the pop rock coda. This is all well and good, except for the fact that it can be difficult to get into these songs on the first listen, due to the sound effects used, distortion, and change in style. On the first listen, there is a lot of noise, but some good music. On the second, the noise begins to be decoded, and you understand the order of the songs. By the third listen, the musical tapestry fully reveals itself. Something that doesn't help you listen to the songs, but ultimately makes them more enjoyable, is the unconventional lyrics. I won't spoil the trip of figuring them out, but this is where I'll note these guys proclaim themselves a wonky rock band. [Edit: In retrospect, even "Welcome to Tally Hall" has three sections, with the rap, a short funk section, and a pop rock coda.]
The rest of the album is much more conventional in song structure and easier to understand, but if anything the song topics get stranger. "Be Born" is a country-folk song about what the title says. "Banana Man" has an excellent music video set to an earlier version of the song, and the song is about being addicted to eating...bananas...and about playing...spirit games. Oh, and it's in a carribean(?) style. "Spring and a Storm" reminds me of the Beach Boys in sections. I think it's about hanging on to life in face of rains, or maybe it's just Tally Hall's, "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head." [Edit: Yep, it's definitely about persevering in the face of life's storms. Soulful too, under all the seeming nonsense.] Two Wuv is the most hilarious song ever about viciousness from unrequited love from...Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Yes, this stuff is weird.
The last song, Ruler of Everything, is a collage in the same style of the earlier part of the album, and I only mention it to say that it has an awesome drum beat in a style shift about halfway through.
"Be Born" is pretty much the only song I don't like, and I think it's the ridiculous chorus at work here. That's the one weak spot on the album. This is a good album, hell, this is a great album, and if you like to listen to eclectic music with eccentric creative lyrics, permeated with infectious enthusiasm, you should get it. Myself, I can't wait to see what Tally Hall does next.
One last thing: At the end of the album, there is some reversed tape of Marvin Yagoda, the proprietor of the real Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, saying, "Wouldn't the world be better off if we took nonsense more seriously?"
In case you missed it, the official band website is here. It has some funny non-music stuff in the video section.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
FDA Panel BS Watch
I take one of the drugs mentioned in this article for ADHD, and this froightened me somewhat before it pissed me off.
Warning Urged for ADHD Drugs:
No no no no! If you feel that way, get the fuck off the panel. If you want to totally fuck up the public's trust in the FDA, make the issue of whether a drugs side-effects are significant tied to whether you think it should be prescribed less. You're admitting that if this was some anti-allergy drug with the incidence of those side effects, you wouldn't give a shit. The FDA should be judging safety based on the data, not on how much the drugs are used. This is no way to run a drug safety agency. This is the road to PR telling the public what drugs are safe and which aren't. This is the road to influence and bribery infecting the FDA. Nissen and Furberg, resign and stay the fuck away from the FDA. This is a fucking travesty. You were given a simple task of saying whether you think these drugs are safe, and you turn into a medical-political crusade. You're more politicians than men of science you dipshits. Go fuck yourselves.
I take one of the drugs mentioned in this article for ADHD, and this froightened me somewhat before it pissed me off.
Warning Urged for ADHD Drugs:
Several drugs widely used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder should carry a prominent "black box" warning because of reports that they may have caused sudden deaths or serious complications, a federal expert advisory panel recommended yesterday.
The proposal to require a warning on medications such as Adderall and Ritalin took the Food and Drug Administration, pharmaceutical companies and advocates by surprise. The panel voted 8 to 7 to call for the labeling change after reviewing reports of several dozen patients who suffered cardiac arrest, toxic reactions or sudden death while using the medications.
[...]
"On the surface, it is hard to believe," said Curt Furberg, professor of public health sciences at North Carolina's Wake Forest University Medical School, who voted for the black-box warning. "What is also interesting is this condition is not really recognized in other countries -- you wonder what we are treating. I am sure there are patients who need these drugs, but it is not 10 percent of all 10-year-old boys."
FDA officials, who convened the panel to discuss how best to assess the risks of the drugs, said they would weigh the recommendation. The panel called for warning labels on methylphenidate drugs, sold under the brand names Ritalin, Concerta, Methylin and Metadate, and on the amphetamines Adderall and Adderall XR.
[...]
Much as in the debate over antidepressants, Nissen and Furberg said the committee was not just weighing uncertain signals of risk but broader questions, such as how often the drugs are used and the impact of drug industry marketing. A black-box warning would probably curb direct-to-consumer advertising.
[...]
"I felt strongly we need to slow the growth of utilization," Nissen said, adding that about 2.5 million children and 1.5 million adults are taking the drugs. "When you have that kind of exposure for drugs that are suspicious, that does create a major public health concern."
No no no no! If you feel that way, get the fuck off the panel. If you want to totally fuck up the public's trust in the FDA, make the issue of whether a drugs side-effects are significant tied to whether you think it should be prescribed less. You're admitting that if this was some anti-allergy drug with the incidence of those side effects, you wouldn't give a shit. The FDA should be judging safety based on the data, not on how much the drugs are used. This is no way to run a drug safety agency. This is the road to PR telling the public what drugs are safe and which aren't. This is the road to influence and bribery infecting the FDA. Nissen and Furberg, resign and stay the fuck away from the FDA. This is a fucking travesty. You were given a simple task of saying whether you think these drugs are safe, and you turn into a medical-political crusade. You're more politicians than men of science you dipshits. Go fuck yourselves.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
One Day All My Comments Will Come Home to Roost
Pt. 2
My dissertation on why the Houston Texans should pick Reggie Bush in the NFL draft is available at Football Outsiders. Full text:
Since this was written, Vince Young's draft stock has dropped quite a bit, and he may fall to the Raiders at the 7th pick. If he does, I think the Raiders will get a steal, even though I am serious about everything I wrote. He is a once-in-a-lifetime roll of the dice, and my problem is that in terms of accounting cost, to borrow economics language, a 7th overall pick, or even a 1st overall pick, is not an unreasonable price. However, the opportunity cost is Reggie Bush or Matt Leinart, and that will likely require a fantastic return to make it a good acquisition. I'm not sold on the odds of that return, and neither should the Texans. However, if the opportunity cost is Jay Cutler, or not even that...roll those dice like you mean it!
Pt. 2
My dissertation on why the Houston Texans should pick Reggie Bush in the NFL draft is available at Football Outsiders. Full text:
“Ironic that the one position where the Texans are strongest is RB. There’ve been a bunch of busts at RB high in the draft too - Dayne, Biakabatuka, Ki-Jana, Blair Thomas, Enis, Salaam, Thomas Jones (ARZ version)… and as Kubiak should be well aware, you can dig up quality RBs pretty much anywhere in the draft.”
Quick question: Who are Curtis Alexander, Chris Howard, Olandis Gary, Quentin Griffin, Ahmad Galloway, and Brad Miree?
The Answer: Running backs drafted after the second round by the Broncos other than Mike Anderson since 1998.
Who was drafted higher, Jonathan Wells, worst starting RB of FO statistics, or Domanick Davis? Jonathan Wells, 99th rather than 101st.
Do you want to know what other RBs have been drafted high in the same time-frame of the players you mentioned? Emmit Smith, Jerome Bettis, Marshall Faulk, Warrick Dunn, Edgerrin James, Shaun Alexander, and LaDainian Tomlinson.
Also, Houston may be strongest at RB, but certainly not very strong at RB. They have Jonathan Wells and some other guy backing up Davis. The fact that they already have Davis actually enhances the potential value of Bush on the team in his rookie year, as Reggie Bush was in a tandem with LenDale White at USC.
“It seems like a no-brainer to me to take D’Brick at #1. OL prospects like him only come around once every few years, and all those Super Bowls that Barry Sanders won are enough to dissuade me from taking Bush. They invested a ton in Carr and Davis too - why waste so much cap space on one position? That’s Detroit’s specialty.”
How many Super Bowls have Willie Roaf or Jonathan Ogden won?
Name the coaches of the Detroit Lions while Sanders was on it. Name any famous players from the Detroit Lions teams Sanders was on.
The problem Houston has had with their line has been since the expansion started, which suggests that it is a problem with the way the team is managed. In all Houston drafts after their first, they have drafted only one OL in the first 4 rounds. To improve the O-line, Houston needs to put actual effort into it and get actual O-line coaching. They do not need to get a superstar lineman to get an average O-line.
D’Brickashaw may be a future HoF lineman, but he is just one guy of 5 that make up the line. And those 5 guys only help other players score touchdowns. D’Brickashaw would be the perfect pick for a team with a potential HoF RB, a good QB, and plans for making a run deep into the playoff, but needs to have an O-line that will dominate good D-lines. (I’m looking at a team with a blue-like colored jersey, not sure which.)
The Texans need to improve both sides of the ball significantly to get back to average, and it will take even longer to make the team great. A great OL who makes the O-line average will not make the whole team average. The way to start rebuilding the team with the intention of it eventually being great is to get some franchise players on the team that can be built around if they are a sucess, and while there are no defensive players who stand out as being potential franchise players, there are obvious potential franchise players at offensive “skill” positions. As for cap problems, the Texans could take Bush and get a good offensive lineman by trading Domanick, or they could take Leinart and get a good offensive lineman by trading Carr.
Taking Vince Young would be a mistake, because perhaps the biggest known factor of the Texans currently is that Carr is at least an average QB who is poorly coached, and has a terrible O-line. Taking Vince Young would make Houston a draft day hero, but it is the equivalent of a hobo with a total of $110 bucks putting $100 on 7 at roulette.
Vince Young may range anywhere from being the last great scrambling QB to average to Ron Mexico to bust. Reggie Bush is widely regarded as one of the best RB ever to play in college football, and it would be a surprise if he is a complete bust for any reason other than injuries. Matt Leinart has a lot of experience for a college QB, plays in a pro style system under a former NFL coach who was good as a coordinator at least. Texans fans should be outraged if the Texans draft Young instead of Bush or Leinart, as it says that the management is willing to risk not having a forseeable winning season in the first 8 years of the franchises existence when they supposedly already have a franchise QB, there is a QB more ikely to suceed in the NFL they could have taken, as well as a RB whose ceiling is probably as high as Young’s who is more likely to actually reach it.
For Tennessee, who has Billy Volek as a backup to McNair, a rebuilding defense, and won’t be able to pick Leinart or Bush, it makes sense to take a chance on Young. But if Houston takes Young, they aren’t trying to rebuild, they are trying to be a hero and get lucky. If Houston was lucky it wouldn’t have the 1st pick of the NFL draft.
And they should not pass up two players, at positions that are the hardest to find good players for, who each have a decent chance to be one of the best of this decade, to draft an offensive lineman who won’t be needed if the team’s target date to have a really great O-line is 5 seasons from now instead of the year after next.
Since this was written, Vince Young's draft stock has dropped quite a bit, and he may fall to the Raiders at the 7th pick. If he does, I think the Raiders will get a steal, even though I am serious about everything I wrote. He is a once-in-a-lifetime roll of the dice, and my problem is that in terms of accounting cost, to borrow economics language, a 7th overall pick, or even a 1st overall pick, is not an unreasonable price. However, the opportunity cost is Reggie Bush or Matt Leinart, and that will likely require a fantastic return to make it a good acquisition. I'm not sold on the odds of that return, and neither should the Texans. However, if the opportunity cost is Jay Cutler, or not even that...roll those dice like you mean it!
Friday, February 10, 2006
In Case You Were Wondering What I Did Tonight
5:30 PM - Put laundry in dryer, went to eat dinner at cafeteria.
7:00 PM - Took laundry out of dryer, began to put it away.
7:30 PM - Watched the Medwin String Quartet perform "Not So Classical," an assortment of classical rock pieces arranged for a string quartet. This included "Eleanor Rigby," "Stairway to Heaven," "Live and Let Die," and "Sunshine of Your Love." Highly enjoyable, and the all-instrumental performance of Stairway confirms my belief that it is a case of "great song, dumb lyrics." They had pizza and other snacks after the performance (If all classical performances did this, you can guarantee that the attendance of college kids would increase). I had a soda and a cookie.
8:30 PM - Returned to my dorm to finish putting away my laundry.
9:00 PM - Arrived at the campus center to watch performances of four campus rock bands. As none had started yet in the blanket enclosed section of the lower floor, I watch tv.
Moments later - I watch the introduction of the Winter Olympics, the weirdest thing I've seen in at least the last month. Weirder than the music video of Hasselhoff singing "Hooked on a Feeling." It was like a psychedelic circus. My mouth is literally hanging open as I watch this.
Moments later - NBC wisely cuts off the performance with a commercial break, not long after the giant pipehorns come out, followed by dancers in cow-patterned suits and dresses come out, as well as what I think the announcers called treemen. The first rock band is ready to start.
Sometime after 9 PM - The mini-concert is MCed by a guy who looks like Brian Rosenworcel with puffier hair. The first band is Jack Bauer and the Traumahawks, a great name but an average college metal band (I define college metal bands as bands that have relatively loud guiitars that dominate the music but can't afford the amps to be real heavy metal). I think it is in the intermission between this and the next act that I go back to the tv just in time to see the Olympic Teams march out. And they are led by women carrying signs with the teams name on it wearing huge white dresses that are meant to look like the Alps by having trees on them.
A moment later - The next band, Adderol, comes on. They were a pop metal band, and I enjoyed listening to them, even if they were really loud. The lead singer looked sort of nerdy-cool, which I think is extremely cool. After came the reason I attended the mini-concert: Copper Tree. This was only the 3rd best of the 4 performances I've seen of them, but that is mostly because the mixing was not good. I swear, when I start a Talking Heads cover band, I will give my two little toes for a good sound technician. They had a new song, unfortunately I couldn't make out most of the words. Copper Tree has good lyrics and a sound that is unlike anything you have ever heard. The role of guitar in rock is split between a precise cello and a manic piano. You should check out the songs on their site.
11 PM - The last band, supposedly "dance rock" is some techno stuff by the Brian Rosenworcel-lookalike. And I was hoping it was actually good to dance to. Instead of listening to it, I watch the end of Ali for the second time on campus tv. That is the only part of the movie I've seen. I then buy some chips, eat them, then go back to my dorm.
That's one way to spend a Friday night.
5:30 PM - Put laundry in dryer, went to eat dinner at cafeteria.
7:00 PM - Took laundry out of dryer, began to put it away.
7:30 PM - Watched the Medwin String Quartet perform "Not So Classical," an assortment of classical rock pieces arranged for a string quartet. This included "Eleanor Rigby," "Stairway to Heaven," "Live and Let Die," and "Sunshine of Your Love." Highly enjoyable, and the all-instrumental performance of Stairway confirms my belief that it is a case of "great song, dumb lyrics." They had pizza and other snacks after the performance (If all classical performances did this, you can guarantee that the attendance of college kids would increase). I had a soda and a cookie.
8:30 PM - Returned to my dorm to finish putting away my laundry.
9:00 PM - Arrived at the campus center to watch performances of four campus rock bands. As none had started yet in the blanket enclosed section of the lower floor, I watch tv.
Moments later - I watch the introduction of the Winter Olympics, the weirdest thing I've seen in at least the last month. Weirder than the music video of Hasselhoff singing "Hooked on a Feeling." It was like a psychedelic circus. My mouth is literally hanging open as I watch this.
Moments later - NBC wisely cuts off the performance with a commercial break, not long after the giant pipehorns come out, followed by dancers in cow-patterned suits and dresses come out, as well as what I think the announcers called treemen. The first rock band is ready to start.
Sometime after 9 PM - The mini-concert is MCed by a guy who looks like Brian Rosenworcel with puffier hair. The first band is Jack Bauer and the Traumahawks, a great name but an average college metal band (I define college metal bands as bands that have relatively loud guiitars that dominate the music but can't afford the amps to be real heavy metal). I think it is in the intermission between this and the next act that I go back to the tv just in time to see the Olympic Teams march out. And they are led by women carrying signs with the teams name on it wearing huge white dresses that are meant to look like the Alps by having trees on them.
A moment later - The next band, Adderol, comes on. They were a pop metal band, and I enjoyed listening to them, even if they were really loud. The lead singer looked sort of nerdy-cool, which I think is extremely cool. After came the reason I attended the mini-concert: Copper Tree. This was only the 3rd best of the 4 performances I've seen of them, but that is mostly because the mixing was not good. I swear, when I start a Talking Heads cover band, I will give my two little toes for a good sound technician. They had a new song, unfortunately I couldn't make out most of the words. Copper Tree has good lyrics and a sound that is unlike anything you have ever heard. The role of guitar in rock is split between a precise cello and a manic piano. You should check out the songs on their site.
11 PM - The last band, supposedly "dance rock" is some techno stuff by the Brian Rosenworcel-lookalike. And I was hoping it was actually good to dance to. Instead of listening to it, I watch the end of Ali for the second time on campus tv. That is the only part of the movie I've seen. I then buy some chips, eat them, then go back to my dorm.
That's one way to spend a Friday night.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
My First and Last Post on the Mohammed Cartoons
All 12 cartoons can be found here. Most are either just drawings or satires of the newspaper asking for cartoons of Mohammed and the imagined response to the cartoon. Only four of them are actually insulting of Mohammed and by extension Islam. Of the four, two are about suicide bombing done in the name of Islam, one is about Muslims requiring tha women wear burkas, and only one is completely general in its intention to offend, a cartoon of Mohammed with devil horns resembling a halo. The former cartoons are less offensive than people actually carrying out suicide bombings and requiring that women wear burkas in the name of Islam, so one would hope that the people outraged by these cartoons are at least as outraged by those two practices. Unfortunately, reality couldn't be more incongruent.
The objective of the Danish newspaper asking for cartoons was to see if Muslims would tolerate any public speech contrary to their taboos. Somewhere along the line, they decided they also wanted to see the reaction if some of the cartoons were also insulting of Mohammed, so they including four cartoons that were directly offensive to Islam. It is pure conjecture what the response would have been had they left those four cartoons out.
What should have happened at most is peaceful demonstrations and letter-writing campaigns to the newspaper asking for an apology for the offensive cartoons, which they may very well have got. What happened instead, and the only thing I will condemn about this situation, is that there was a global reaction from presumably extremist Muslims demanding that the people making the newspaper be punished, in the least severe request by prosecution by the Danish government, and in the most severe by beheading. There has also been a targeting of Danish diplomatic buildings in Muslim nations, and protests of Denmark as a whole. The protest has also extended to newspapers that have reprinted the cartoons as part of their reporting. Lastly, there has been many demands that Denmark criminalize speech offensive to religions. None of this response is consistent with free democracy.
In short, what has happened is an extreme over-reaction by extremist Muslims. I will condemn this, but not a Danish newspaper that deliberately published offensive cartoons to show that this would happen. All right-thinking Muslims should condemn the actions of the extremists more strongly than they condemn the cartoons, and if they don't it is because they are cowards. That is all I have to say about this.
All 12 cartoons can be found here. Most are either just drawings or satires of the newspaper asking for cartoons of Mohammed and the imagined response to the cartoon. Only four of them are actually insulting of Mohammed and by extension Islam. Of the four, two are about suicide bombing done in the name of Islam, one is about Muslims requiring tha women wear burkas, and only one is completely general in its intention to offend, a cartoon of Mohammed with devil horns resembling a halo. The former cartoons are less offensive than people actually carrying out suicide bombings and requiring that women wear burkas in the name of Islam, so one would hope that the people outraged by these cartoons are at least as outraged by those two practices. Unfortunately, reality couldn't be more incongruent.
The objective of the Danish newspaper asking for cartoons was to see if Muslims would tolerate any public speech contrary to their taboos. Somewhere along the line, they decided they also wanted to see the reaction if some of the cartoons were also insulting of Mohammed, so they including four cartoons that were directly offensive to Islam. It is pure conjecture what the response would have been had they left those four cartoons out.
What should have happened at most is peaceful demonstrations and letter-writing campaigns to the newspaper asking for an apology for the offensive cartoons, which they may very well have got. What happened instead, and the only thing I will condemn about this situation, is that there was a global reaction from presumably extremist Muslims demanding that the people making the newspaper be punished, in the least severe request by prosecution by the Danish government, and in the most severe by beheading. There has also been a targeting of Danish diplomatic buildings in Muslim nations, and protests of Denmark as a whole. The protest has also extended to newspapers that have reprinted the cartoons as part of their reporting. Lastly, there has been many demands that Denmark criminalize speech offensive to religions. None of this response is consistent with free democracy.
In short, what has happened is an extreme over-reaction by extremist Muslims. I will condemn this, but not a Danish newspaper that deliberately published offensive cartoons to show that this would happen. All right-thinking Muslims should condemn the actions of the extremists more strongly than they condemn the cartoons, and if they don't it is because they are cowards. That is all I have to say about this.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Indianapolis Was a Fine Place Before The Developers Arrived
One of my rules in life is to never visit a city that has suburban development projects with streets named after guns, Kentucky Derby-winning racing horses, ducks, a second development with streets named after champion race horses, flowers, music terminology, references to Robin Hood, avian fauna, "leisure" words, and patriotic places.
And that just scratches the surface of the oddities of suburbs in Indianapolis. One neighborhood has streets with spanish names, including one named "Gringo Drive." You can not make this stuff up.
I have a theory about why I hate suburbs. Towns and countryside has a degree of natural and varied development to it in layout, architecture, and names. Cities often have large building squezzed into small spaces, utilitarian architecture, and arbitrary names, usually numbers. Suburbs are cities pretending to be towns, and the deceit implicit in their existence is why I distrust them.
One of my rules in life is to never visit a city that has suburban development projects with streets named after guns, Kentucky Derby-winning racing horses, ducks, a second development with streets named after champion race horses, flowers, music terminology, references to Robin Hood, avian fauna, "leisure" words, and patriotic places.
And that just scratches the surface of the oddities of suburbs in Indianapolis. One neighborhood has streets with spanish names, including one named "Gringo Drive." You can not make this stuff up.
I have a theory about why I hate suburbs. Towns and countryside has a degree of natural and varied development to it in layout, architecture, and names. Cities often have large building squezzed into small spaces, utilitarian architecture, and arbitrary names, usually numbers. Suburbs are cities pretending to be towns, and the deceit implicit in their existence is why I distrust them.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Fun Facts About Lawyers
All statistics from US Dept. of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, and use November 2004 data.
There are over 500,000 lawyers in the U.S. There are about 420,000 professional "hard" scientists and social scientists in the U.S. There are approximately 250,000 general and family practice doctors, pediatricians, dentist, and optometrists.
The annual median wage of a lawyer is around $100,000. The median wage of a biochemist or biophysicist is around $70,000. The median wage of a police officer is $45,000. The median wage of a civil engineer is $65,000. The annual 90th percentile income of a civil engineer is approximately $100,000. The annual 10th percentile wage of a civil engineer is $43,000. The annual 10th percentile wage of lawyers is about $50,000.
The total income of all lawyers is $58 billion. The total income of all non-specialist doctors is $43 billion. The total income of all high school teachers is $50 billion.
By amateur economic analysis of these statistics, and assuming that wages are equal to the economic value of work, the U.S. economy requires more lawyers than scientists or general doctors; the work lawyers do, given availability, is more valuable than that of biochemists, police officers, or civil engineers; the work of less-skilled lawyers is more valuable than the work of police officers or less-skilled civil engineers; the work of an average lawyer is more valuable than the work of a skilled civil engineer; and the economic value of the work of all lawyers is greater than the economic value of the work of all non-specialist doctors or all high school teachers.
The legal representatives have increased. There's too many of them.
All statistics from US Dept. of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, and use November 2004 data.
There are over 500,000 lawyers in the U.S. There are about 420,000 professional "hard" scientists and social scientists in the U.S. There are approximately 250,000 general and family practice doctors, pediatricians, dentist, and optometrists.
The annual median wage of a lawyer is around $100,000. The median wage of a biochemist or biophysicist is around $70,000. The median wage of a police officer is $45,000. The median wage of a civil engineer is $65,000. The annual 90th percentile income of a civil engineer is approximately $100,000. The annual 10th percentile wage of a civil engineer is $43,000. The annual 10th percentile wage of lawyers is about $50,000.
The total income of all lawyers is $58 billion. The total income of all non-specialist doctors is $43 billion. The total income of all high school teachers is $50 billion.
By amateur economic analysis of these statistics, and assuming that wages are equal to the economic value of work, the U.S. economy requires more lawyers than scientists or general doctors; the work lawyers do, given availability, is more valuable than that of biochemists, police officers, or civil engineers; the work of less-skilled lawyers is more valuable than the work of police officers or less-skilled civil engineers; the work of an average lawyer is more valuable than the work of a skilled civil engineer; and the economic value of the work of all lawyers is greater than the economic value of the work of all non-specialist doctors or all high school teachers.
The legal representatives have increased. There's too many of them.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Odd Link of the Month
"Warm and Fuzzy TV, Brought to You by Hamas" - New York Times:
"Warm and Fuzzy TV, Brought to You by Hamas" - New York Times:
Hazim Sharawi, whose stage name is Uncle Hazim, is a quiet, doe-eyed young man who has an easy way with children and will soon preside over a children's television show here on which he'll cavort with men in larger-than-life, fake-fur animal suits on the Gaza Strip's newest television station, Al Aksa TV.
But Captain Kangaroo this is not. The station, named for Islam's third holiest site, is owned by Hamas, the people who helped make suicide bombing a household term.
"Our television show will have a message, but without getting into the tanks, the guns, the killing and the blood," said Mr. Sharawi, sitting in the broadcast studio where he will produce his show.
"I will show them our rights through the history," he said, "show them, 'This is Nablus, this is Gaza, this is Al Aksa mosque, which is with the Israelis and should be in our hands.' "
[...]
When asked if the animals will have names, Mr. Sharawi looked slightly nonplussed and said: "Bob. Bob the Fox, for example."
[...]
The show, which will be broadcast on Friday mornings, the beginning of the Muslim weekend, will be preceded by an hour of cartoons, including a serialized life of the Prophet Muhammad, and that universal send-up of deadly conflict, Tom & Jerry.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Unintentional Irony Alert
This article is rich: "GOP furious at closed Senate session"
The subtext of this is that if they really wanted the public to know what went wrong, there should be more openess, not less.
This article is rich: "GOP furious at closed Senate session"
Reid demanded the Senate go into closed session. With a second by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the public was ordered out of the chamber, the lights were dimmed, senators filed to their seats on the floor and the doors were closed. No vote is required in such circumstances.
Reid’s move shone a spotlight on the continuing controversy over intelligence that President Bush cited in the run-up to the war in Iraq.
The subtext of this is that if they really wanted the public to know what went wrong, there should be more openess, not less.
Friday, October 07, 2005
Refusing to oppose loose nuclear weapon development at all costs does not an anti-nuclear crusader make.
Or the nuclear ambitions of Iran. The only reason that ElBaradei isn't exiled to Zimbabwe is that North Korea withdrew from the NPT, making it none of the IAEA's problem. When Iran has nuclear weapons a year from now and you see the beginning of the complete nuclearization of the Middle East, this will look like giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Neville Chamberlain.
“At a time when the threat of nuclear arms is again increasing, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to underline that this threat must be met through the broadest possible international cooperation. This principle finds its clearest expression today in the work of the IAEA and its director general.”
Or the nuclear ambitions of Iran. The only reason that ElBaradei isn't exiled to Zimbabwe is that North Korea withdrew from the NPT, making it none of the IAEA's problem. When Iran has nuclear weapons a year from now and you see the beginning of the complete nuclearization of the Middle East, this will look like giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Neville Chamberlain.
Saturday, October 01, 2005
One Day All My Comments Will Come Home to Roost
Ep. 1
On this post I left a comment about this article which I am reprinting here not because I think this is a complete critique of the article (it definitely isn't), but because I think that this is likely not a case of an idealogically-biased professor, but more likely a professor who set off to prove a point empirically and found out about halfway through that it is very difficult to make an argument for or against his hypothesis on empirical evidence. However, momentum continues to move an object in the absence of an opposite sustained force, so the result of his labors was the Foreign Affairs article. Also, the final paragraph is my theoretical justification for the hypothesis that democracy in the Middle East will reduce terrorism.
Also, this is the first part in a continuing series. Really, it will be different than my Kerry-Bush internal poll series.
Ep. 1
On this post I left a comment about this article which I am reprinting here not because I think this is a complete critique of the article (it definitely isn't), but because I think that this is likely not a case of an idealogically-biased professor, but more likely a professor who set off to prove a point empirically and found out about halfway through that it is very difficult to make an argument for or against his hypothesis on empirical evidence. However, momentum continues to move an object in the absence of an opposite sustained force, so the result of his labors was the Foreign Affairs article. Also, the final paragraph is my theoretical justification for the hypothesis that democracy in the Middle East will reduce terrorism.
I read that article. On the first reading it sounded like it might be true, on the second reading I saw that a lot of the statistics were interpreted to be more general in conclusions than they actually were and not much effort was made to discuss any contradictory evidence.
A big problem was that the author failed to really describe what sort of terrorism he was trying to show was not reduced by (or the spread of? Another vaguity.) democracy, in that he focused a lot on domestic terrorism, while ignoring international terrorism, and assumes that all terrorism can be viewed as equivalent regardless of ideology and history (Thus he references studies that deal mainly with terrorism in the '80s and does not consider whether the results are applicable to terrorism today). He also views terrorists as if they were a static ethnic group rather than a fluid organization.
The author also incorrectly connects anti-Americanism with support for terrorism, and assumes that just because democracies are antri-American, they are more likely to directly support terrorism, which is clearly not the case with Germany and France. In my opinion, the most significant problem with his article is the failure to look at whether democracies are less likely to be sources of financial support and manpower for terrorist organizations that commit attacks mainly outside that nation, due to vigorous anti-terrorist law enforcement by the government.
I say all this about his article, but I do not think the author has an ideological axe to grind. He supports democratizing the Middle East, cites statistics showing that arabs support having democratic governemnts, and gives some unrealistic suggestion on how to (slowly) promote liberal democracy.
I think it is likely that, given that he is a political scientist, he saw the common idea that democracy in the middle east will reduce terrorism, and he decided to try to disprove it. Along the way he realized that actual detailed research on this is sparse, which he actually says in the article, and ends up grasping at straws to build his case. He doesn't give up on the paper because of all the time he has already spent working on it, and ends up with a loosely-supported paper arguing his initial hypothesis. However, he does write PolSci papers well, so even though his argument is not strong, the paper appears good. What I'm saying is that I think that if you were to ask him two years from now if spreading democracy will reduce terrorism, he would tell you that he's not sure one way or the other.
By the way, I'm not sure there is any evidence to generalize that democracy will always cause less terrorism, but I can't see how the publc in a truly open democracy in any Muslim nation, given a true look at terrorist organizations operating in that nation, will tell their government to do anything but stomp the mother******s. Why I say this has nothing to do with whether they think the US and Israel is right or wrong and everything to do with the fact that in general, people that haven't been deluded into thinking that black is white by people of authority will take a look at what the terrorists in their midst have done and see that the people behind al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda in Iraq, etc. are simply psychopathic murderers, and every one of them should be killed.
Also, this is the first part in a continuing series. Really, it will be different than my Kerry-Bush internal poll series.