song of the hour: none.
desired songs of the hour: lots.
haven’t really had much time to explore much in the music scene, but there’s a bunch i’d like to look into.
clinic. heard a couple of really good songs. I want to hear more!!
dj shadow. I definitely want to hear more from this guy. he’s amazing.
and so it goes for a few other bands. but honestly, my music selection feels so paltry right now. none of the new bands i’ve heard of seem particularly interesting to me. sure, I think the white stripes and the hives and the vines and the strokes are good and fun. they just aren’t it.
anyway, that unreleased nirvana song (you know you’re right) is pretty bad-ass though. click the link to get a listen. it’s what all the crap rock bands nowadays can only dream of doing. bow to kurt cobain, infidels!
also, I’ve got to say, eminem’s new song (I think it’s called “Lose Yourself”) is pretty sweet, even if it follows that power-crescendo anthemic formula every cock-rock song has to have (a formula most recently abused by pink in “just like a pill”). his vocal style and his lyrical arrangements are quite compelling; he comes at you at multiple levels with his voices forming certain rhythms and interlocking with those of the beats, bombarding one’s senses in the way the real world bombards ours every day. and it has a grittiness and intensity i really like. sure, it’s a hyper-produced commercial work, but it’s a very effective communication of the challenges the artist feels like he’s dealing with. it sent a couple of chills up me spine.
I’ve probably already talked about eminem in this blog, but I think i’ll bring it up again. it’s true that eminem says a lot of really horrible things about a lot of people — he’s made some very racist, misogynistic, homophobic comments, he insults people for no apparent reason (chris kirkpatrick? why the hell does eminem know who he is??), and generally he tries to be a pain in the ass. so he’s said some offensive things in his music. everyone expresses themselves or certain ideas in different ways; artists are better at doing so than most people. that’s why they’re called “artists.” and the ideas that artists express, like the ideas that everyone has, aren’t always exactly how we feel, nor the ones that we’ll carry through, nor the ones that govern our life thinking. they’re just “ideas.”
so a gifted artist like eminem has, like most of us, a complicated life in a complicated world. and like all of us, he has lots of ideas! everyone reacts to the world around themselves, right? they think about things, get mad when their boss puts too much pressure on them, get upset when things don’t go our way, are happy when we eat a good meal, etc. so we have lots of fleeting thoughts. eminem, as a recording artist, gets PAID to express those thoughts, large or small, deep or inconsequential in his life. he gets paid to imagine creative ways to express those ideas. it’s the art that can be created — not necessarily the moral value of those ideas — that is what actually matters.
so respect him for what he is: an artist. you don’t have to listen to his songs if you don’t like the message. if you’re worried about your kids, you can teach your children to think critically about it and do your best to instill a proper sense of values in him or her yourself. eminem is a mature artist, not your child’s babysitter.
