Video: El-P- 'Deep Space 9mm'

Call me a racist, a rockist, or whatever you want, but hip hop, rap, or whatever the cool kids are calling it these days...well, it's never hooked me. I think this is mainly due to the fact that the production and beats are generally garbage. For instance, I love DJ Shadow's Entroducing, which is a rap record without rapping, effectively, because it's got great samples, loops, and production. Also, the content and attitude of most rap don't appeal to me, since I don't get off on pretending I can relate to ghetto violence, poverty, or bling bling millionaire philosophy.

All that said, I like this video a lot. And no, it's not because he's white. Eminem and Vanilla Ice are white, too, but you don't see me posting videos of them, do you??

My favorite part of this video is the evil group of Boy Scouts toward the end. Yeah.

Album of the Week- Guided By Voices: Propeller

There are certain works of art that have such great stories behind them that the tale and not the product get all the attention. A Confederacy of Dunces was published long after its author killed himself. The 'Penny Arcade' webcomic began because its creators lost a comic contest but liked their submissions enough to put them online. Kevin Smith's Clerks was made for only around $28,000 and filmed at night inside the convenience store Smith was working while it was closed. Add to that list Guided By Voices, a band that crafted Propeller as their goodbye album after years of going nowhere, handmaking the covers themselves for a limited edition pressing of 500 vinyl records. But then, so the story goes, they started to gain attention in the underground, and with the 1994 release of Bee Thousand the band had created a true masterpiece and a critical favorite. They had finally arrived.

It's a great story, but I've always thought it was more interesting that Robert Pollard was 35 when Propeller was recorded. That's relatively old for starting a rock 'n roll career in earnest. Normally by his age most bands are either breaking up or transitioning into the less inventive and intriguing phase of their careers. But Pollard was just getting started and would only get both better and more prolific as time went on.

All of that backstory aside, Propeller is a fantastic album. It's the sound of dudes who grew up on 70s rock really wanting to be arena gods but instead toiling away in obscurity for far too long. And then, pouring everything they had into an album made up of songs that only they could have come up with in that situation. I can only imagine their respective wives and girlfriends wondering when they were going to give it up. Luckily Guided By Voices were one band who refused to stop rocking even though they were starting to look like those pathetic 30 something dudes every town has who insist they can still make it. The difference, of course, is that Robert Pollard is a brilliant songwriter, and whatever motley assortment of Other Dudes he has hanging around are the kind of loose-but-tight backing band that every great rock star needs.

Yes, Robert Pollard is a rock star, but he's one of the weirdest to grace the stage. Sometimes you have to wonder if he realizes how strange his music and lyrics are. I mean, at their basic core, Guided By Voices are the link between 70s classic rock/arena rock and 90s lo-fi indie rock. While their songs are often anthemic and can rock all day long, the lyrics are generally surreal, psychedelic, and overtly strange. It's hard to imagine The Who playing a song called 'Some Drilling Implied' or '14 Cheerleader Coldfront', and I suppose that's why I love this band so much. Any old fool can write a song about love or being on the road and make it sound like an anthem; it takes a particular genius to write a song as bizarre as Bee Thousand's 'Tractor Rape Chain' and make it an anthem.

But we're talking about Propeller, which opens with the now classic "G-B-V!!" chant, intended to replicate a live show even though, according to the always questionable Wikipedia, it was done in-studio by the band. If they couldn't have the adoration of a huge audience of fans, by god, they were going to manufacture it. The song from which the chant comes, 'Over The Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox', serves as a very appropriate beginning, giving a sample of GBV's ability to capture all the power and swagger of an established arena rock touring band with nothing more than a humble 4-track, some cheap beer, and a group of guys who had nothing to lose. Side one--I'm reviewing the vinyl edition, since it's the preferred format for this album--mostly sticks to a hard rock vibe, while the second side shows off the band's stranger and calmer sides. 'Exit Flagger', '14 Cheerleader Coldfront', and 'Back To Saturn X Radio Report' form a string of three songs that demonstrate the band's strengths. 'Exit Flagger' is one of many minor masterpieces of the band's that you've probably never heard, an addictive song with a chantable chorus that you can just imagine being sung by the audience as Robert Pollard swings his microphone. '14 Cheerleader Coldfront' is a sweet acoustic ballad of sorts about...I don't know. But it's genuinely kind of pretty. Finally, 'Back To Saturn X Radio Report' is memorably made up of short snippets of several other songs that aren't actually on Propeller. This also neatly reminds you of Guided By Voices's ability to make short-but-potent music, reminiscent of Wire's Pink Flag in terms of concise-ness and memorability.

The best and worst thing about Guided By Voices is that they have released so many albums, EPs, and singles that it's hard to know where to start. At the same time, every new release of their's you buy contains at least two songs so good you wonder how you ever got by without them. Though Propeller is neither the band's best album nor the best place to start, it's still a really good rock album. If you're in the group of people who often wish there was a bit more 'rock' in most 'indie rock', than Propeller is exactly the sort of thing you're looking for.

The Complainer: Facebook

I know what you're thinking, but no, I'm not actually complaining about the "new" Facebook. In this very special entry of The Complainer, I'd like to complain about people who are themselves complaining. Ironic, you say?? Maybe.

What it boils down to is this: Facebook was and is a free social networking site that you have no right to complain about because you don't pay anything for it and anyway why do you care??. Originally Facebook was only for colleges, but it quickly allowed everyone in, which eventually just made it like every other social networking site in history: that is to say, it's a pointless gathering place where the signal-to-noise ratio is very wrong. Genuine discourse and re-connecting with old friends/classmates/co-workers is constantly overridden by the posting of useless polls, endless creation of groups for Internet memes/every lame in-joke you and your friends have, and completely shallow attempts to rekindle friendships or keep in touch.

As the ease of communication over the past 100 years has increased, the content of said communication has become watered down until you get something like Twitter, where every event of our lives can be cataloged and broadcast to tens, hundreds, thousands, and millions of people. I like some people enough to want to talk to them every day, which is a huge compliment because I am a self centered jerk, but I don't need to know what they were doing at 2:46 P.M. yesterday. I'm sure that sandwich was very good but unless you are going to bring me one so I, too, can experience it, I don't know why I should care.

So it all seems faintly ridiculous to me that people are bitching about the "new" Facebook. Apparently it has occurred to no one that Facebook is the same damn thing you get on every other social networking site, and instead of bristling over its new facade you should ask yourself why you care so much about something that, in the grand scheme of things, is so trivial. In the end, it's all a way of wasting time you should spend doing other things, like, I dunno, reading, doing homework, exercizing, getting drunk, listening to music, posting angry screeds on your blog, etc.

p.s. If Facebook is the only way you are able to keep up with the aforementioned lapsed friends, ex-co-workers, and ex-classmates, then they probably don't mean enough to you to be worth the trouble in the first place.

Video: Minutemen- 'This Ain't No Picnic'

I feel like, at some point in the future, the Minutemen will have their day. This isn't to say that they weren't beloved in their day and haven't continued to be, but there haven't been a lot of bands that sound like them. Buying a copy of Double Nickels On The Dime is one of the best things you can do for yourself because you're unlikely to find a double album of such incredible economy and consistency. As the Minutemen are the mid-point between the "lean, clean, and bluesy" sound of Creedence Clearwater Revival, punk rock, and funk, they're an impossibly fun band to listen to.

Also, even if you don't like the political subtext of this video, you have to admire the fact that three pretty ugly guys made such incredible music. Maybe I've always put too much stock into the whole 'ugly people making beautiful art' thing, but it's inspiring that fat, dorky, and otherwise ugly dudes can rock so righteously. A-men.

EarthBound

There were a few older games I understood and appreciated more as I got older, but by and large the games of today are much more rife for reinterpretation and revisiting because they are trying to say something or give you more to work with. I mean, the original Mario for NES is still a lot of fun, but unless you're going to get really pretentious and read things into it that the designers never intended, your understanding of it now is still "hey, jumping on stuff is fun!!"

EarthBound, then, is an older game that I understand much better today, now that I've moved beyond "is this entertaining or not??" as my sole determining factor for something being successful or not. As a game, EarthBound is very entertaining and a cult classic: a quirky RPG set in modern day with an odd sense of humor and an absurd, surrealist take on the world. At it's core, though, it's a competent Dragon Quest clone. EarthBound wasn't a huge success in the U.S. when it was release, but now it has a fanatical following that Dragon Quest has never achieved here. How to account for this, when the game is, as I said, a veritable clone of an unpopular-in-the-U.S. RPG series?? Sure, it's unique, but that's not always enough.A lot of the reason the game has been so cherished for so long has to do with all the things you don't think about while playing it. It's only after you're done with the game that you begin to think about what it's trying to do, what it achieves, and what it's about. Other than its sheer uniqueness, the allure of EarthBound is the same as that of the Dragon Quest series: the characters and scenario writing. I absolutely loved Dragon Quest VIII for the PS2 even though it's pretty much built on the same gameplay style from the series' 8 bit days. Like EarthBound, I loved it for the places you go, people you meet, and things you do. To be sure, EarthBound has incredibly interesting locales, from the trippy Moonside to the zombie infested Threed to the mysterious and aptly named Deep Darkness.
At the same time, EarthBound features a memorable set of characters that still inspire love today, most notably the (in)famous Mr. Saturn creatures, who've gone on to be weapons in Nintendo's Smash Brothers series. But let's get back to my three thinking points--to start, what is EarthBound trying to do?? Well, on the surface it's attempting to be a weird RPG that overturns many genre conventions. But beyond that, in actual practice, it's a pretty decent parody of the genre though it's not always explicit about it. In a early area of the game, the player's party has to defeat a group of moles who've hindered a mining operation in a desert. Funnily enough, every mole threatens you pre-battle and promises that it's the third strongest of the group. More brilliantly, the game breaks the fourth wall by requiring you to call your Dad to save the game; Dad is a character you never actually see, but who sometimes calls to remind you it's a good idea to take a break (implicitly, in real life, to take a break from the game) and save your game. The game's excellent translation helps these parodies succeed, thanks not just to faithful-in-spirit-but-not-literal-word-for-word-translating but also to neat tricks like the odd speech pattern and borderline-unreadable-font that the Mr. Saturn talk in.
In the game's most overt commentary on the RPG genre, you meet a character named Brickroad who designs dungeons for a living. His first appearance is right after a simple, rudimentary dungeon, the kind you may have seen in 8 bit RPGs, with only a few paths and dead ends and no possibility of losing your way or dying. Later when you encounter him again, he has become Dungeon Man, a literal living dungeon in a the form of a giant stone humanoid. After entering him, you climb to his top 'floor' in order to interact with him. On the way there are plenty of signs that comment on the dungeon and dungeon design in general, such as what a good dungeon should have. It's all very...meta and post-modern, when you think about it. What EarthBound achieves is to both critique and transcend its own genre. There is an undefinable quality in regards to what the game is about that I'll get to in closing, but its success as 'parody' and 'paragon' deserves further mention. Though it is, at heart, based heavily on the Dragon Warrior gameplay style, it's a bit more advanced in a few ways thanks to its unique-ness. For starters, the modern setting lets the game play fast and loose with convention. In typical Dragon Warrior-style RPGs, you stay in old timey Inns to rest, and you save at seemingly arbitrary locations, like with the Innkeeper or at glowing crystalline savepoints. You also get money from a bank or your characters simply hold unto all the money at all times. In EarthBound, you stay at hotels to rest, which also cleverly have bellhops reading you snippets from local newspapers as an ongoing commentary on the plot. There phones you can call your Dad on in order to save (or to order pizza deliveries, talk to your Mom to cure homesickness, and to access the game's storage system). Finally, there are ATMs in the world that allow you to depost or withdraw money.
EarthBound's gameplay and its battle system specifically are better than the usual Dragon Warrior clones. Instead of instantly being killed by a fatal blow, your characters have slot machine-style rolling meters for their life, perhaps indicating your character, when mortally wounded, is bleeding to death and trying to get off quick, desperate attacks rather than instantly succumbing. Instead of swords, armor, and magic spells, you are armed with baseball bats, frying pans, hats, bottle rockets, and psychic powers. Instead of static backgrounds of the current terrain, you get psychedelic colors and patterns. And finally, instead of the usual grand and dramatic ending, in EarthBound you get to revisit all the areas of the game to hear new dialogue from the characters before simply...going home and going to bed.
This last bit is important, because what EarthBound is about is growing up while still desiring to stay young and a child. Some have noted this interpretation of the game, and the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. Sure, the first set of towns you go to are called Onett, Twoson, Threed, and Fourside as clever wordplay and a simple way to remember which towns you went to in what order, but moreso it makes me think about how, just as games get more difficult as you go, in real life, growing up and getting older means that life becomes more complicated and difficult, too. The desire to stay young is something I read into the game, because there's an underlying feeling of nostalgia and childlike melancholy running through the whole thing that I can't quite explain. Since I replay the game every few years and simultaneously experience this feeling from the game itself as much as I do thinking back to other times I played the game and what age I was, this whole thing becomes a self-fueling loop of nostalgia. The game seems to feel the same way, because during the ending, on top of being able to revisit every place you had been to during the game, you also get to look back via a photo album of snapshots taken by a mysterious photographer during the course of the game. Could this photographer be interpreted as the player's memory of specific moments from a game, which you naturally revisit when you're doing playing?? Perhaps.

That I'm able to get so much from EarthBound this many years later...well, I think it really says a lot about the quality and depth of the game, its world, and its story. What you bring to it is equally as important as the game itself, and the fact that a much younger version of me enjoyed it as much as I do now--with all my interpretations and pretensions--is pretty incredible.

Coming To A Theater Near You

Going to the movies can be a terrifying experience, one that you'll often describe to friends, loved ones, and barbers-you-can't-think-of-anything-to-talk-about-with as "harrowing", "an ordeal", "confusing", and "popcorn fart inducing." Since movie studios only see fit to advertise films on TV with suddenly-much-louder-volume, quaint voice clips on the radio, annoying (often interstitial) Internet Flash animations, the sides of buses, and by paying off your wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend/friend/caddy/therapist/sidewalk taco vendor, it's become more and more difficult in this disconnected age to know what films are playing and what they're about without having to drive to the megaplex and read the sign while rearending people in front of you because you weren't paying attention to the road.

Lucky for you, then, that I couldn't think of anything else to wri...uhhh, I mean, lucky for you, then, that Whiskey Pie is here to inform you of and also summarize upcoming films. I will attempt to make each description so succinct and coherent that you can use the following as responses to the elderly greeter at your local Walmart.

Ghost Town This movie answers the questions that have been on our minds since the ending of Ghostbusters 2: "where did Slimer grow up??" and "what was his childhood like in his ghostly hometown??"

Igor From the creators of I'm Not There, in which various actors and actresses played Bob Dylan throughout his life, comes Igor, which does the same for Igor Stravinsky. Those tackling the role this time out include Kevin Bacon, Heath Ledger's corpse (too soon??), Billy Crystal, Jack White and Jack Black in one of those two-person horse costumes, and Amanda Bynes.

My Best Friend's Girl Industry insiders promise that this movie will do for the Cars what Mamma Mia! did for ABBA.

Miracle At St. Anna A spiritual drama based on the true story of one of those times somebody in a no-name place found a potato chip or oil spill or scab with the Virgin Mary's likeness on it.

Nights In Rodanthe Sorry, I started thinking about Rodan there. You know, Rodan?? Godzilla nemesis and sometime-partner...?? Anyway, I think Nights In Rodanthe is about old people crying a lot, and standing together on the beach where it's artfully implied they're going to have sex soon by cutting to footage of the waves flooding the moat of a child's abandoned sandcastle.

Eagle Eye This romantic comedy stars Adam Sandler as a man born with the powerful vision of an eagle, thus getting him into all sorts of hijinks with the fairer sex. 'Beak' careful not to miss it!!

Lil' Indie Round-Up 4

Album: Angels and Demons, Space and Time by Hypatia Lake
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: This cover reminds me of something a high school art student might do to raise controversy at her school. Or post on her DeviantArt page. Either way, it looks amateurish and stupid, and not in that awesome, minimalist, and iconic Daniel Johnston kind of way. So, I'm expecting ham fisted gothy rock.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: While it's admirable for bands to have a sound that can accommodate so many different sounds, the important thing is that they do it well. Hypatia Lake do not do it well. Yes, it's impressive that this album has prog rock, folk, psychedelia, noise rock, and a few tracks that remind me of REM circa Monster, but none of it is done well and it makes the album a fucking mess instead of a coherent work. Meanwhile, the band really wish they were alive in the 70s, when the ridiculous concept of this album (for a baffled laugh, go read up on what the band and the overarching 'story' of their albums are about) might have flown.

Album: La La Land by Wax Fang
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: Let's be frank here; let's not mince words, and just get right down to it: this is a terrible cover. It's the kind of thing you might make as a joke to piss off a record label or in case you don't want anyone to buy your album, ever. Seriously. I'm all for kitsch and randomness and absurdity, but this is awful. What I expect from this is a really adolescent punk band with neither imagination nor skill.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: You know, not bad. It's not punk rock, let's clear that up right away. Rather it's more akin to the distinctive sound of mid 70s rock, warm-but-distorted guitars and all. The singer sounds like a combination of Carey Mercer of Frog Eyes and David Bowie, too, which makes it a strange beast. All in all, it's pitched somewhere between Brian Eno's mid 70s solo albums (but not as experimental) and how Pink Floyd sounded on the more rocking tracks from The Wall (but not as good). While La La Land is not a bad album, there isn't enough unique stuff about it to get me excited enough to completely recommend it.
Album: Waves On Waves by Waves On Waves
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: What a garish mess. I don't want to come off as a homophobe, but this cover reminds me of the self-consciously weird fashion photo shoots involving gay men that I randomly came across while flipping through fashion magazines while bored in bookstores waiting for ex-girlfriends to check out. Thus, I pretty much expect glammy piano driven rock a la the Scissor Sisters.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: A lot of 80s pop music has a sound to it that always makes me think of nightclubs and parties held by the upper crust of New York society. It's not even always dance music but it just sounds like it belongs in a dance club, you know?? That's what Waves On Waves sound like: 80s pop music, but recorded with a modern sheen and production techniques, so it's also vaguely-spacey-at-times pop/rock. Some of the song titles are genuinely terrible, too--witness 'U Moved Me In2 The Future' and 'We Want 2'--which is always a bonus. I should mention that I hate this kind of 80s coke party, vaguely gay, dance clubby kind of music and just move on.

Album: John Eichleay by John Eichleay
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: Using your name for your 'band' and your album title usually implies one thing: singer/songwriter. Otherwise, this cover is vague enough to be nearly anything.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: Competent, incredibly faceless pop/rock, with terrible lyrics. Like most singer/songwriters who dabble in other genres--in this case, country-rock ('Great Love'), ska ('Countdown'), and Southern Fried boogie ('Subway Shuffle')--they manage to do so with skill but little personality or invention. John Eichleay also bears the disadvantage of really bad lyrics, which trot out such trite, unoriginal sentiments no one could sue him for plagiarism because there are a million other songs saying the same things in the same ways.
Album: Leavetaking by Peter Bradley Adams
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: A badly drawn owl?? OK. Owls are generally symbolic of the country and rural-ness. Meanwhile, Leavetaking is the kind of odd turn-of-phrase that people who write a lot of poems/lyrics fixate on. All signs point to country-ish singer/songwriter music, fit for coffeehouses and the record collections of intensely uninteresting people.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: I was really close. Leavetaking is a pleasant, totally unmemorable singer/songwriter album in a crowded field. There's nothing inherently wrong with this music, but there's simply so much of it that sounds so much alike that it's hard to care. You really need something--a voice, songwriting, instrumentation, etc.--to set you apart, and Peter Bradley Adams doesn't have it. Still, it'd be a nice album to overdose on sleeping pills to, or as background music for bedding a vapid co-ed who thinks Jack Johnson is too challenging.
Album: Re-Education by Rurik
What Does The Cover Make Me Expect??: Something about the band's name and the cover itself makes me expect a techno or techno pop sound. Call it a hunch.
What Does It Actually Sound Like??: A slightly-more-deeply-voiced Weird Al leads a band who can't decide if they're synth pop, pop punk via Good Charlotte, ora long forgotten one hit wonder of late 90s alt. rock. Being unique does not automatically make you good, and while this may come off as needlessly vindictive, I have no problem with telling you that this album is incredibly irritating and I truly regret the time I wasted listening to it.