Before I spend money to see a new movie, whether it’s $20 at Regal or $1 at RedBox, I always check Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic to see if the film is worth it. I admit that no one should rely solely on the opinions of these (somewhat snobby) individuals, but most of them get paid to review movies for a reason. I feel aggregator sites are reliable the vast majority of the time, but nothing pisses me off more when they steer you wrong.
Take Tree of Life, for instance. I watched this while visiting my family for Christmas. Every resource I used told me it was a sure thing. After all, Terrence Malick is a highly respected director, and I’m a huge fan of The Thin Red Line. By the end credits, however, the only thing I wanted for Christmas was the two and half hours of my life back. Tree of Life, without a doubt, is the worst movie I’ve seen in YEARS. Why? Let me make a list:
The utter lack of dialogue: Almost no one talks in this movie. Instead, Malick relies on voice overs in order to express the inner emotions of his characters. I guess his aim was to create some kind of heavenly narrator, which would have been great if it was audible. There was actually a message before the movie began explaining that, “for optimum viewing, please turn up the volume to a higher setting than normal.” We had that shit on blast, and I still had to squint my eyes and lean toward the TV anytime someone shared a thought. That message should have read, “for optimum viewing, please drop a fuck ton of LSD.”
Unexplainable visuals: Several of the reviews I read praised the cinematography, and I must say, some sections of the movie were beautiful to watch. But I can only look at the branches of a tree for so long, especially when I haven’t had four to nine bong hits. There were also random images spliced into scenes and transitions that made utterly no sense. It made me assume Malick must have gotten drunk before going into editing. “You know what are awesome? Oranges. Therefore, we shall put a ball of light here, here, and here. Why? Because you’re the intern and I have the Palm D’Or in my fucking living room.”
Dinosaurs: What does a movie about life, death, and destiny need? Why, pre-historic animals, of course. That’s where I lost all faith in the movie, and it happened thirty minutes in. Malick decided to hop in his magic school bus and time travel through the evolution of Earth. From tad poles all the way to retarded monkeys. In between there were mastodons. Let me remind you, this is supposed to be a serious piece of cinema. At the end credits, I told me mom Tree of Life is the reason why people think art is retarded (she teaches high school art).
In summation…Rotten Tomatoes can be your biggest friend or the Internet’s biggest sodomizer. And if you choose to watch Terrence Malick’s horse turd of a film, bake brownies or bring some BC Powder.
Kurt Cobain was so adamantly against this album cover being censored that he said the only way he would censor the baby's cash and prizes was to cover it with a sticker reading: "If you are actually offended by this, then you must be a closet pedophile." Kurt was amazing.
Saturday marks the 20-year anniversary of two landmark albums that changed the face of music and helped to redefine more than one genre. Nirvana’s Nevermind and the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik immediately established both bands, along with contemporaries like Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins, as leaders of a wave of grunge, punk/funk, and in essence the shake up rock needed as the hair band era drew down.
One of my favorite music videos ever.
Nevermind
The follow-up to their 1989 debut Bleach, Nevermind has sold over 30 million copies, a level of breakthrough success that clearly was difficult for frontman Kurt Cobain to handle. Nevermind drew on an array of influences, but The Pixies are among the most noteworthy and relevant for their dramatic dynamics changes (e.g. soft/quiet verse, loud/heavy chorus) that characterized many of Nirvana’s singles, especially Smells Like Teen Spirit. Cobain’s songwriting typically involved power chords and dissonant amelodic guitar. However, what is sometimes overlooked is the influence that pop music, especially that of the late ‘50s/early ‘60s, had on Cobain’s approach to songwriting. A Cobain biography called Heavier Than Heaven expands quite a bit on this, and it’s fascinating to look at the hybrid that Cobain created – the same digestible pop melodies applied to rough distorted punk rock. If it is hard to hear these influences, I highly recommend Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York album – about as acoustic as Nirvana could get (although their planned follow-up to their third and final CD, In Utero, was to be acoustic-heavy).
Singles from the album included classics Come As You Are, Lithium, and In Bloom. However, Smells Like Teen Spirit was far and away the exclamation point on the CD. Cobain himself noted that he was trying to rip off The Pixies in recording the “ultimate” pop song. He also found the repetitive four-chord riff to be very cliché and agreed with listeners who noticed more than a vague resemblance to previous hits like Boston’s More Than a Feeling.
The song was instantly anointed as the anthem of a new generation of apathetic teenagers, and its success played a large role in Cobain’s struggles to deal with overnight fame. He would later state in interviews that the band eventually became embarrassed playing it and felt it overshadowed their other work. The song began being excluded from setlists despite it clearly being the band’s most noteworthy song. Time magazine suggested in compiling a 100 greatest albums list in 2006 that Smells Like Teen Spirit may be the weakest song on Nevermind. That speaks more to the depth and strength of the other tracks than any weakness of Smells Like Teen Spirit, but it seems like a criticism Cobain would have been apt to agree with. R.I.P. This band had unlimited potential and will be appreciated for as long as there are people around to appreciate music.
Party on, Wayne! Even Wayne loves RHCP’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik sessions. This is a B-side called Sikamikanico.
Blood Sugar Sex Magik
After eight marginally successful years and four albums that (outside of their cover of Stevie Wonder’s Higher Ground) led to little notoriety at all, the Red Hot Chili Peppers rapidly ascended to stardom with arguably their best album. The CD produced mega-hits Under the Bridge and Give it Away, as well as hard rock/punk/funk blends like Suck My Kiss that still hold up twenty years later. The album sold over 15 million copies worldwide and cemented RHCP in the public’s eye.
The band’s previous effort, Mother’s Milk (1989), had been a moderate success that pushed the band closer to something like a hard rock/early metal hybrid on frantic songs like “Nobody Weird Like Me”, with then-new guitarist John Frusciante playing layered tracks with a heavy tone and lots of overdubs. The album’s producer pushed hard for the band to go in this direction, whereas the others and especially Frusciante had envisioned using space and funk riffs to compliment bassist Flea’s slap-pop lines, just as predecessor Hillel Slovak had. This may be what pushed the band towards a more polished alt. rock sound as well as Frusciante’ conscious effort to lose the overdubs and overwhelming guitar mixes.
The band spent two months recording Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and the aura of the studio is all over the record – e.g. easter eggs like cars audibly passing at the end of Sir Psycho Sexy. The band recorded at a Los Angeles mansion owned by producer Rick Rubin, which had hosted the likes of Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles years earlier. The recording process is chronicled on the DVD Funky Monks; Flea and Frusciante didn’t leave the mansion at all during the sessions, instead smoking copious amounts of weed and refining every last detail of the tracks. The band described it as a very surreal and rewarding experience, and I’m very jealous of them.
Though the years that followed were far from smooth sailing, Blood Sugar Sex Magik was the epitome of the band’s early musical maturation, without losing the energy and roots of their earlier albums. Singer Anthony Kiedis showed there was more to the band than being a bunch of drug-fueled sex fiends with personal and poignant lyrics about addiction and the feelings that come with it on Under the Bridge and Soul to Squeeze (B-side that later became a single). Both tracks demonstrated more somber songs and a depth that really wasn’t apparent on any of the band’s earlier work. Though it wouldn’t come for another several years, Soul to Squeeze serves as a preview of the minimalist guitar/somber pop that defined hits on Californication like Scar Tissue and the title track.
Rock is desperately in need of another wave of innovation and honesty that bands like Nirvana and RHCP ushered in with these landmark albums in the early nineties.
Here’s the beginning of a feature I’ve been kicking around as an idea for a while now that you’re sure to see on a semi-regular basis going forward (provided you guys don’t give this thing five views or a bunch of two-star ratings or anything).
I know we have some other musicians as both readers and writers here, so let me just go ahead and say that (as with all my writing) I don’t consider myself an authority and my intent isn’t to get up on an awfully high soapbox or talk down to anyone.
I’ve played guitar for close to ten years now (yikes, am I that old?) and bass guitar for a little more than that. I also dabble in drums, keyboard, mandolin, singing, and even trombone (way back in the day). I never took lessons and have a still limited knowledge of and comfort with music theory. This isn’t about me, but it’s just to say that I don’t think studying or playing or writing music is a one-size-fits-all concept. There’s no wrong way to eat a Reese’s… er, I mean to write a song. Damnit.
With that in mind, though I don’t consider myself important to the process of making music, I’m at least good enough at my part in it to have been asked for advice more than once recently. The things that have helped me improve over time (and I was very bad for a very long time) won’t work for everyone, but if they speak to you then maybe they unlock the instrument for you in a way you hadn’t really considered previously.
In addition, if this series continues and I don’t get an annoyed IM from dangermike tonight, then I would also like to use this to look at a band/artist’s artistic relevance and note things about them or in the music itself worth studying. Under both scenarios, I’d encourage any other TBSErs to contribute if they feel compelled to. Something like ginger jack handy’s recent piece on Tupac with an emphasis on the second half is exactly the kind of thing I have in mind.
Well, without further ado… I’d just like to write about this silly idea that probably all of us playing an instrument have or have had at one point. I know I certainly did when I first picked up the guitar and was listening to my friends cover Zeppelin while I struggled to play barre chords. It’s easy to watch someone with more experience and a trained ear tear up the fretboard and think you can’t play or write good music until you can shred at that speed, with that kind of tone, etc.
Sure, speed and technique give a musician more tools to use with their instrument, but a lot of times less is more. My friend Dave told me at a band practice long, long ago about Police drummer Stewart Copeland playing a “solo” for a drum clinic. He basically played a very simple beat for three minutes and said that the biggest problem with music today was that people (specifically drummers in this case) didn’t know how to take a backseat to make a song work.
Learning an instrument can definitely be a slow and frustrating experience, but getting expectations and what others sound like out of your head can make it more enjoyable. Free of those restrictions, you can begin finding your voice on the instrument – which is honestly the most important ingredient. And there is inspiration for a “less is more” music ethos on guitar all over, but new wave is a great place to look (bands like Joy Division and The Cure). You’re about to hear a lot about John Frusciante’s hard funk rock on Blood Sugar Sex Magik with the album’s 20th anniversary coming up later this year, but the CD he says he is most proud of is Californication, which features very sparse playing inspired by the same era. I mean hell, the good version of Green Day was just a bunch of power chords (and songs about beating off).
Music wants you to find it; it will come so long as you open your mind up and let go of the expectations of impressing people or fear of embarrassment or whatever frames how you think about what you are supposed to do with your instrument. Everything else falls into place once you are willing to accept that those judgments aren’t relevant at all to your ability to play music and to enjoy that creative process. As with most other things, joy will come from viewing the process as of equal or greater importance to the results. Music is a discipline all about enveloping oneself in the process and letting it dictate what the results will be. I truly believe we ‘channel’ music and none of us are actually writing it. The individual is an unimportant part of the process (i.e. music would still exist had – god forbid – Jimi Hendrix never been born. It would have continued to evolve and move forward.). In this way, music is one of those beautiful contradictions – it’s an example of where the ego can be your best friend and worst enemy all at once. You need to be confident in your ability to play your role in making music; i.e. you are always good enough. But the moment you think that you’re good enough because you’re special or some kind of prodigy, the attitude inevitably shifts towards impressing others, making money or otherwise working to promote that ego. All of those things are going to interfere with letting music come unrestricted, and it is typically not difficult to tell the difference between an honest song and a marketing toy.
For the first few weeks I was in college at the University of Illinois I did not like the people who lived around me. I’m all for a good time, but I lived in the partiest of party dorms – “The Six Pack” – at one of the partiest of schools, and it got old real quick. Here is some original MS Paint artwork that reflects my feelings:
This isn’t to say that I endorse talking down to people about pop culture either. If autotune is your thing or sometimes you just don’t care if some music is more about image and marketing than art, no one has any right to tell you that you’re wrong. Do you know that guy who name-drops obscure indie bands at literally any opportunity in a conversation, mostly to emphasize how eccentric and distanced from the mainstream he is? “Lately I’ve been listening to chill envelope-pushing bands like Three Fur Mittens, Rusted Red Wagon, This Is A Large Tent, and Cockblocalypse…” Have you heard of any of those artists? Neither have I, because I made all of those up, and I’m convinced he usually does too. I digress.
Anyway, what am I getting at? I recently received a Facebook invite about a teaser for an unmade independent film about renewable energy. It looks pretty terrible, but it did help me stumble upon an excellent resource for people who take an interest in discovering and supporting new independent art, music, and film.
Kickstarter is actually a fundraising platform that is largely modeled after Kiva, an awesome microloan site that you should check out while you’re at it. Kickstarter bills itself as “a new way to fund and follow creativity”. Independent artists of all kinds can create and promote project proposals (hey there, alliteration) using Kickstarter and set a fundraising goal for the public to help them reach. Contributors get their money back if the target is not reached within an allotted amount of time to ensure efficiency and legitimacy– i.e. only projects that the public believes are worthy of support will reach fruition. If projects do not get fully funded, all donors have their money returned.
Another great feature is that project creators are required to provide incentives to donors. They must set fundraising tiers and offer increasingly attractive rewards in exchange for contributions. Granted, some of these rewards may be as simple and uninteresting as getting your name listed on the credits of some obscure video game. But others include receiving a framed copy of an art project, tickets to a film premier, or workshops with professionals. It’s a great way for artists to connect with those that support them and to make followers feel more connected to the work they are funding.
Not all of us are swimming in a pile of gold coins to throw at strangers, but I still think it’s at least interesting to see the various ideas and ambitions people have. You can take a look at the site’s Hall of Fame to browse some of the most popular projects, several of which raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are handy Apple accessories, well-produced documentaries, 3D optical illusion sculptures, and even wall gardening. Cool stuff. Now if only someone will step up and start asking for donations to bury Mr. Kroeger up to his neck next to a colony of flesh-eating ants. I’m dead positive that this would count as a charitable contribution to society for tax purposes.
This song of ze day is so monumental it deserves an entire list of reasons as to why it is da’ bomb!
1. I first watched this video while on SBFMB2K11 (spring break fort myers beach 2011, DUH)
2. I was drinking 4loko-5 hour energy margaritas with my best friends in 70 degree weather on a beach.
3. How freaking cute is that little nugget of an angel at the beginning?
4. KANYE KILLS IT ON THE COP CAR. (I have always wanted to dance in a similar way on a similar surface)
5. Rihanna looks amazing. Everyone has a crush on Ri-Ri. I need that silly top she is wearing.
6. Check out the list of collaborators. I can’t wait until I have such a stacked celebrity posse to make music with.
7. As a lover of typography, I need to get my hands on some of those fonts.
8. This song just makes me want to shake my tail feather/ like a polaroid picture.
9. THERE IS AN EPILEPTIC WARNING. ENOUGH SAID.
A big problem with moving out of your parents’ house, whether it be for school or the working world, is the seriously lack of furniture, dishware, and things to hang on your wall. This is especially true for guys.
But rather than talk about the newest armoire to be imported by IKEA, I’ll touch on the easiest way to spice up a room: posters.
Now, I know that the word “poster” is commonly associated with cheapness, tape, and inspirational (or sometimes perverted) photography. But since we’re grown ups now, I felt like sharing a few Web sites that offer fantastic rock posters. Each artist has incredible talent, and the bands they work with aren’t too shabby, either.
