Subtext of a generation

If the purveyors of popular culture had it their way we may never experience another quiet sleep, a wistful moment of reflection, or a silent epiphany ever again. If the plans for constant commercial badgering already set in motion succeed we will be unable to wrench ourselves from an unyielding stream of vacuous stimulation. That our society may one day be so "keyed up" with an oversaturation of useless information puts me ill at ease. Yet, day in and day out we are stuffed with the empty calories of media that encourage us to support the new name brand, to spur on an already unsustainable economy, to feed the beast of many heads and one thirst - accelerated capitalism. Maybe in the far too soon future children will be given books that they can read but can't turn their pages. Like a crack addict looking for his next fix people will be (and are) filed away as commodities, dithered down into focus groups, demographics, and exploitable incomes circumventing individual humanity to satiate a seemingly infinite (and superficial desire). The blare of modern living, that engraved hum and whir trapped in our ears, can and should be ignored. We can defeat the monster because we are its master, its puppeteer, its fathers and mothers. We need simply to moderate our glib desires, our impetuousness, by concentrating on our fellow human beings and their trials. We can't afford a moment of serenity when we are too busy relying on mere diversions to survive. Anything can begin to unravel when racked with inattention, even our society.

Model A turns whispers into blows. They take hold of that precious ambiance so many of us ignore, serrate the edges, and then pierce the oblivious with the very melancholy they so desperately need to address. They put melody to a effected state of being that deserves even the most modest of our affection. This music reaches a hand to the uninspired, the distracted, and attempts to soothe and redress simultaneously. It seeks to be a constant reminder that, even if allowed to be entrenched for short time, we deserve our faint calm much more than the flickering bemusement we are so often provided. Most of all, however, Model A shows us that a squeak or sigh can squelch the most capricious roar.

Model A's Website



01 Angry Hippo
02 Robot's Dream of Love Pt. 1
03 Robot's Dream of Love Pt. 2
04 Rooftop
05 Street Sign Says
06 Gravel Poured Out

Notching it down a bit for quite some time now
MJT

Related Links:
Music courtesy of Sundays in Spring and the Internet Archive

Agitprop for the simple spirited

Simplicity is a concept highly underrated in the modern world. Whimsy is maligned for more desirable aspects such as productivity, complex problem-solving, and multi-tasking. Given the present population's proclivity to success and overachieving, a straight line to anything is more than likely to be bent, skewed, or molded in the name of ingenuity. However, history has always taught us that the glimmer of genius holds an indefinite debt to the ever-phosphorous sheen of naivete. If anything this perceived propensity for an elaborate state of mind is deceiving in the sense that projected gaiety can many times triumph over it's antithesis. A colorful worldliness can often be mistaken for gullibility or ignorance when in actuality it is much more informed of an Earthly yearning for joyousness and playful celebration. Maybe those people engaged with fanciful fetishes or overcome with indecipherable exuberance are also those truly actualized and at ease. When Albert Einstein was determined to be a self-actualized person, a human being in harmonious standing with the world, was it so attributed due to the man's personal accomplishments? One would think not. To use a set of an individual's achievements as a contribution toward his or hers fulfillment seems at odds with the very nature of the desired existence. In my humble opinion, Einstein reached harmony through understanding and logical implementation of the fact that any person's continuance is influenced by elliptical patterns of existence (space, time, etc.) that will erase and just as broadly retrace any discernible conquest or failure. Essentially, and to paraphrase an old, paradoxical adage, he took solace in the fact that there is always a method to the madness and that the method, conversely and unsurprisingly, is fully informed by madness. For all the academic, militaristic, and popular influence ole' Albert had he finally realized that no matter how deeply entrenched he may be in the public conscious, he would someday fade away to nothing. So he rejoiced every moment after that revelation for the fleetingly, oblique gifts they were.

The Galactic Heroes make music that is "in the moment" rather than producing something tepidly "of the moment". Any person, young or old, could tell you that it is always better to be fully engrossed, totally in tune, and wrecklessly interacting with a place and time. A sportsman, video game player, artist, public speaker, and yes, musician can all find that "zone" and piece themselves within the fabric of the whole. They can propel themselves within the atmosphere and bear witness to the ages old beauty of planet Earth. They can be all things to all the people they care about and one thing to themselves - alive. I thank God that there are musicians, much less bands, that strive to live "in the moment" the same way the Galactic Heroes do so effortlessly. And I thank them for sharing that instance of mirth with the rest of us.

The Galactic Heroes' Website



01 Coffee and Pastries
02 Cherokee
03 Wonderful

Looking for the "zone" that allows a 40+ hr/week career man to make daily updates
MJT

Beneath the automatons

The testament to the binding concepts of functionality and compartmentalism that we call the modern age has become a bulbous juggernaut, exponentially gaining ground by the minute. It seems, the further we travel in life the more guarded we are supposed to become, eventually transforming ourselves into emotionally flaccid agents. We are encouraged to forsake our individual quirks for a series of stream-lined, generic archetypes that achieve no real goals other than creating harmony for some grand unattainable design. I have seen people react to tangible, weighty emotions with either the most horrible disdain or with a flurry of hazed angst. Yes some harmony should be strove for, but the wholesale sterilizing of sometimes messy, infrequently predictable, yet always beneficial affections is a pulsating core of the human experience that should not be tampered with. It is true that there is more than likely a group of the human population that is truly sick and is unable to properly socialize with the remainder. However, I find disapproval for the raising stock of self-sufficiency if it is directly decreasing the sense of community. I concur that everyone needs to address their own actualization, however, I get better results, good, bad, or neutral, with a support system by my side. I hope one day we can curb our selfish, obsessive compulsions and try to improve our surrounding environment instead of just ourselves. We are as much a part of our encompassing habitat as anyone else so by contributing to it's functionality we are essentially insuring positivity in both personal and social states.

Twee pop is to this listener as Kryptonite is to Superman. I don't have a weakness to this sugary sweet confection per se, it just truthfully degrades my mental state. The melodies shut down my ability to think critically and an overall aura of whimsy seeps into my brain which can not distinguish between the music and endorphins. The Tales of Jenny managed to bring me close to this nirvana, however, it's work somehow bemused me. When I wasn't being lulled into a false sense of well-being by this siren, the literary correlations began to engage me. Something tells me that the members of this group are bookworms of the highest order with an extensive library of written works that enrich their lives but don't dictate their intellect. It comes as no great surprise then that the listener, if he or she is not entranced, will uncover a dauntingly expansive amount of well-written lyrics. Twee on the page can be moving, jarring, confusing, angering, and even depressing, therefore, making it a wonderful antipole to the ever-so popular concepts of functionality and comparmentalism. How Tales can take an emotional epic and dither it down to a breezy, unfettered ditty is a paradox I can't just grasp. However, it is a set of tales in a world that I am trying to better appreciate.

The Tales of Jenny's Website



01 Prague Spring
02 Noone Appreciates the Sky
03 Eye For Ivy

Petrified by the fact that I might be a hippy
MJT

Note: Special thanks to earlier feature The Lovekevins for linking The Tales of Jenny from their website, subsequently leading me to this wonderful music.

A technological flit

Unfortunate news hit me yesterday by way of Boing Boing. It appears as if Hollywood has managed to get the Broadcast Flag into Congress via an amendment to the monolithic Senate Appropriations Bill at the last second, thereby skirting a properly mounted opposition campaign. The amendment gets reviewed in subcommittee this afternoon, therefore, avoiding floor discussion or even a more robust debate in a full committee. A quick grassroots campaign has been launched and hopefully the amendment gets shut down. Why exactly is the Broadcast Flag so important and why does it warrant being addressed in a blog concerned primarily with music? I will tell you.

Like Apple Computers' DRM (digital rights management) for music files or Macrovision for video, the Broadcast Flag seeks to remove a great deal of the electronic, social elements present in today's television media, subsequently delineating the flexibility and freedom of said content in the most restrictive of terms. Now (trying my best to not sound like a crackpot) I have to wonder whether or not this attempted broadening of corporate control of a highly social environment (e.g. prosecuting 14 year old girls for file sharing over the internet) is closer associated to McCarthyism rather than a true fight over intellectual properties. From my perspective, I see what was once a near omnipotent system of enterprisers losing footing concerning how information can be communicated, received, composed, shared, presented, and manipulated. This instability has caused the corporate interest to co-conspire with the only tangible form of bureaucracy in an attempt to reign in a loosely governed, socially flourishing aggregate (i.e. the internet). Such restrictions on or even attempts at restraining this dynamic social structure manages to influence and mold this hierarchy in unpredictable ways. Any system that focuses on individual interpretation and assembles a forum conducive to user specific interaction will always be bound and determined to morph communally.

A great and extensively archived example of technological, ad hoc expression, at least in music, is hip hop. One of the purest forms of this approach that I ever heard was put forth by the New York duo, Siah and Yeshua DapoED. The Visualz EP, in its broadest interpretation, is nothing more than verbose braggadocio over CTI jazz-inspired beats. Closer inspection, however, reveals a discordant document which addresses the intellectual property cops with vitriol. Uncleared samples, lo-fidelity recording, esoteric lyrics, and a grandiose sense of adventure give the EP a cloistered, subterranean aura. This sense of rebellion feeds either into or off the burgeoning nonconformist internet community stabilizing a great deal of its footing in the mid-90s. I believe anything this cavalier definitely has a place within the modern-day, dissentive cyberspace and is certainly as inauthoritative. By combining these admirable traits with the fact that the EP was a limited-run, vinyl-only release, the artists insured themselves a relatively obscure existence. All that plus the epic last song, "A Day Like Any Other", is likely to put a smile on any RPG fans face.

Siah and Yeshua dapoED @ Fondle Em Records



Siah and Yeshua dapoED - The Visualz EP
01 The Visualz
02 Gravity
03 Glass Boat Bottom
04 No Soles' Dopest Opus
05 The Mystery
06 A Day Like Any Other

File Format: .zip (Download Winzip to unpack.)

The group, Text Adventure, present a more recent view on the polychromatic world which is more engaged with technology than the message ingrained within. When first experiencing Text Adventure's Fantastic Disaster EP, the listener may write it off as nothing more than another in a long line of electro-emo-pop releases following the mass exposure of The Postal Service. The electronic flourishes of Text Adventure come off more processed and less maudlin by presenting a dissonant world of blips and beeps. Their music immerses a personal voice (sentimental as it may be) into a menagerie of expansive technology, represented by unfamiliar yet simultaneously comforting patterns of sounds. By doing such, the group constructs an intriguing point of view concerning the intimidating, daunting technosphere increasingly becoming prominent in our everyday lives. By consuming Fantastic Disaster one is essentially attempting to find the beauty in the maelstrom, to decipher meaning in a world overwrought with information.

Text Adventure's Website



01 A Little Explosion
02 If It Could Talk It Wouldn't Say Anything
03 Kill Meow
04 I'm a Shoe I Miss You
05 Tide to the Ocean

Bold enough to say online what I won't in public
MJT

Related Links:
Text Adventure EP courtesy of Observatory Online and the Internet Archive
For more information concerning the legalize of technology please visit the Electronic Frontier Foundation

When the carnival comes to town

A rural existence guarantees a certain set of mitigable truths for the average child. Small town residents generally police each other concerning the publicity of their dysfunctions, keeping the less attractive embellishments of human existence cloaked. The younger set is usually shielded from the darker side of small town life to more less contribute to the ambiance of the rural sheen. Children of the backwood persuasion usually have nothing more than their imaginations and a strongly encouraged sense of socialization to entertain themselves. As a matter of fact, my life as a rural child was usually marked by two occasions exclusive from holidays, the circus and the carnival. Arcadian carnivals differ from the theme parks of major cities and usually coincide with a fair that is commemorating some forgetful event. Fairs and their carnivals, to me, were always an extended metaphor for my pastoral home. Yes, the rides were fun, the times fond, and the food irresistible, however, I never realized that all of these amenities were being maintained, produced, and sustained by transients. Many of these vagabonds were adrift and homeless, some were criminal, and all resembled parts of our community closer than we expected. The bright lights of the carnival were never very flattering to the fading patina of small town life. At times they made our lives seem boring and square, a brooding, conformist existence with no real surprises. However, when we looked behind the luminescence we found people just as unhappy as us, except they were willing to openly trick and mock us all (leading me to wonder if we were more alike than I had previously thought). Sometimes we can't see the grime in our lives if the light is shining directly in our eyes - an action the "carneys" had mastered by standing on the other side of, as well as being the source for, that intoxicating glare, to which we all flocked to unconsciously.

Big Fresh (aka The Joybombs) understand the whimsy of the Bluegrass state and sound like experts of the down home brand of celebration that I was ushered into as a child. Their approach to Midwest eccentricity sits comfortably next to that of Wayne Coyne. The band(s) successfully manage to internalize and splice together disparate elements of the American experience, subsequently forging a nearly covert statement on modern culture (think an approach trying to hold hands with John Philip Sousa and Outkast, among others). Unfortunately, one may outright consider this to be strictly carnival music upon a cursory, first listen. This may be a somewhat accurate view, however, it does lack an appreciation for a great deal of the subdued substance put forth. While listening to The Joybombs, I understood that they were speaking to us people who celebrate and party as a means to consecrate all the disorder, aggravation, hard work, etc. associated with our attempts at happiness. The melodies may sound saccharine, but listen to the words. You will be surprised at the great deal of sarcasm and satire fueling this good time pop music. Big Fresh and The Joybombs are actually trying to give their listeners license to throw their hands up at their problems (albeit temporarily) and have a good time. Therefore, it wouldn't surprise me if John Linnell was silently wringing his hands somewhere with a tentative eye placed firmly on eastern Kentucky.

The Joybombs' Website
Big Fresh @ Myspace



01 Joybomb1
02 Joybomb2
03 Joybomb3

Thinks funnel cakes are a great metaphor for the pitfalls of life (or not)
MJT

Hybrid saga

Some theories of existence give credence to the thought that everything merely exists on a cosmic Möbius strip bound to repeat cycles and languish in sameness. When applied to popular culture, this school of thought holds a lot of truth. Most could remember when the 90s nicked the 60s and 70s for trends and most people can observe those around them cribbing elements of the 80s in today's life and times. When two Möbius strips are combined a Klein Bottle is formed. Just as the Möbius strip has no discernible beginning or end, the Klein Bottle has no true "inside" or "outside" in relative terms of space and dimension. My view of spacial existence favors a construction akin to the Klein Bottle. Having no distinguishable plane, the Klein Bottle more closely resembles a plethora of possibilities placed before us. Essentially, we can all exist of and within the elements, grabbing and infusing them along the way, rather than being stuck on a path that eventually leads to deja vu. This view also represents a great deal of the music which finds weight with me. Those bands that take a comprehensive set of influences and derive a new approach almost always hold my attention and ear better than those that attempt a half-hearted continuation of one or two obvious inspirations. In music and popular culture, like in life, a multi-perspective view is always better than a one-dimensional picture.

Bands with deceptively simple titles can usually be a crapshoot. Bands like The Blasters or The Clash are forefathers of their respective genres, but just looking at their names, one might assume that these bands might be run of the mill. I nearly made this mistake when I stumbled across the homepage for the already-pigeonholed, "alt-country" band, The Bellyachers. Luckily, I clicked on one of the music links and was instantly greeted with a big middle finger for my nearly premature misconception. AOR, metal (heavy and hair), acoustic folk, powerpop, and yes country (as well as many other as-of-yet unprocessed flourishes) all float through the reverberations The Bellyachers stridently produce. Like many other "alt-country" tinged productions, this is perfect roadtrip music. So grab a few albums from the website, gas up, and head out. Rest assured, The Bellyachers are the perfect soundtrack for motoring on this Klein Bottle I call life.

The Bellyachers' Website



01 Fool's Game
02 Halfway Around the World
03 Walking Time

My roadtrip's in my mind
MJT

The icon's anthem

In the world of music what does an icon's anthem truly sound like? Is Led Zeppelin's anthem, the true representation of what these men strove for, really encompassed in Stairway to Heaven? Maybe Zep's true anthem is played every time a band they influenced takes the stage. When an artist like Zakk Wylde steps before an audience to essentially pay homage to the heavy metal demigods, does not every note that leaps from the man's guitar represent a tribute to those that came before him? Are the anthems really found in the work of those people who toiled away at the feet of the masters? Yes, the masters can be surpassed, and in doing so they are simultaneously dismissed and revered. The icons continue to have their anthems, but they no longer can have a personal connection to most who appreciate their music. Essentially, the icon becomes a legend and it's songs become parables. Therefore, it always is tricky to have a unique, personal connection to something a multitude of people have come to appreciate.

Living in the Midwest I, like many others, understand the reverence the music fan has for a state like Illinois and its most populous city, Chicago. In an indie scene that ran most of my lifespan (at least two decades), Chicago has been epicenter to a flurry of creative activity. So from the rural areas around Chicago (Belleville, to be exact) we have Wake Up. Report. This "indie rock" band carries the torch of anthemic post-rock glory that many metropolitan bands before them had built from tinder and brush. Wake Up. Report. reaches a hand out to Sonic Youth with it's tonal manipulations, yet pulls back just short of anything revelatory. There are also other independent giants on the way to Wake Up. Report.'s ultimate goal. For some strange reason, however, I am usually too distracted with the scenery to see the destination. I am sure that in some time Wake Up. Report. will find a voice specific enough to allow them to stand in the hallowed halls of the "indie giants". Then they will be the icons serviced by other bands' music. For now, though, they seem to be in a pleasant stage of development.

Wake Up. Report.'s Website



01 Spilt to Bill (Lies, Lies)
02 The No Vote
03 The Telephone Calls (Keep Quiet)
04 The Book You Never Read

Looking for an anthemic personal voice
MJT