Archive for category Ａｂｏｕｔ

2014 Did Not Exist

Posted by Jim in Ａｂｏｕｔ, ｌｉｓｔ十, RECORDS. on 2015.01.01

Posted in: x
Posted in: RECORDS.
Posted in: list10

Saluton,

久しぶりね？ Last year I promised (to myself, no one else really cares) a post every Wednesday. This is a full-on, objective failure that I feel I have to mention up front. I make no such promises this year (to an imagined audience); in fact, I’m going to tell you I’m giving up forever and then come back anyway. People love that.

I’ve never been and am unlikely to be, important as a music writer. However, I used to be the guy paying attention to music no one else was paying attention to. That’s no longer the case. Besides from other bloggers who have a legit professional craft that now regularly talk about Asian pop music with a straight face, it went pretty mainstream this year. Once people got used to stuff like PSY and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, which, while good, is pretty much the exact sterotype of hyper goofiness the average person might expect, things seem to have settled down and it’s generally accepted that it’s not all like that. Earlier I even thought I found a band no one had written about, the unwieldily named ゲスの極み乙女。(Guess no Kiwami Otome), when I found a write up not in a blog but Time Out Chicago. Skipping right over the blogs now. Even Rolling Stone put K-pop’s Hyuna on their best videos list.

Well shit.

But forget about that. The big event for me as a person who writes things on the internet was the demise of the Robot Lounge, long running message board of Giant Robot Magazine. Giant Robot is kinda just a brand now that has some stores and art galleries and they finally redid their website to reflect this. The art and the toys and stuff used to just be a small part of Giant Robot, I think of it as just one of the eject-able lionhead/hands that just kinda floats in space now. Still cool, but it’s only a piece. GR encapsulated most of the things I was interested in from the late-90s on, and the board starting in late 2000 even more so. As cool as the magazine was, the board was more intellectual, funnier, and more filthy. Lacanian deconstruction (of J-pop videos), who Sammo Hung could beat in a real fight, and the joys of sex during menstruation could all be active threads on any given day.

I only write online because of the Robot Lounge. I would still be making my experimental art-music or whatever the hell it is I really do and posting it online, but I would be one of these yahoos with no ability to communicate socially, auto-sending direct messages on twitter: “Hi, I’m from [thing you’ve never heard of], I realize we live now in a world of unlimited free entertainment, but here’s more with no context.” What a great way of telling people you only followed them for the followback—awesome job guys, girls, most anyone trying to get attention for anything. Don’t give that potential audience even the chance of an illusion that they themselves are interesting, cool plan.

Anyway, I kinda lost interest in following most sites very closely, and haven’t even looked at most of the major lists. So there’s none of that recapping the entire internet nonsense I used to do. And I haven’t lost interest in buying large amounts of new music, but I have lost a lot of time and money this year doing other things. Like studying Japanese more seriously. That’s a big one. And once you step off the internet content train for a bit you start remembering things you used to enjoy like books, and movies. Really just one of those things at a time, for a couple hours at a time. That’s cool. And shows. And playing music. That’s maybe even better. For part of this I actually had some extra money because my health insurance dropped me and then I got on Obamacare, so I enrolled in a real Japanese class, bought some tickets to shows I would not have seen otherwise, and a cheap 7-string. Then I lost one of my jobs and now I’m broke again until I figure out something new. But that got me out of a hell of a rut. I got myself into a whole new rut of watching old anime and horror movies, but who are you to judge?

Point is, there’s not much to go through here. There’s my favorite 10 records this year, and then 10 more records and change, and we’re done here. For now.

Oh, I almost forgot, I’ve been saving this:

There’s also a downside. But I forget what that is, because I forgot to leave a note with this draft. (Always leave a note.) Wait, it’s forgetting stuff you liked. Not a problem this time. Not really a problem for me at all, because in “the game” (…) of music writing, I’m nobody, and I’m fine with that. I’m just a long-winded message boarder.

The List

  1. Cibo Matto | Hotel Valentine

    Didn’t expect this to be this good. Heaviest rotation. Some people seem hung up on the fact that they are like 50. Lotta bands from the 90s are 50 now. But wait, that means they were like 35 then. I don’t remember anyone listening to Fugazi and saying, “fuck these old dudes”. People said different things, but nobody said that. GOOD RECORD.

  2. Shellac | Dude Incredible

    New Shellac album is always going on the list. They are the Motorhead of indie rock. More consistent, even. And younger. Yes, 2 90s bands at the top. I am from the 90s. Gotta be from somewhere.

  3. Tombs | Savage Gold

    Got into this more than the last one, which was great, but the songs clicked for me here better and great production by Eric Rutan. I love how it opens with that delay/pitch shifted riff. Good opening riff makes you put the album on again and again.

  4. Agalloch | The Serpent and the Sphere

    I was not into this band much previously, but I went to see them for the hell of it and dug it. So I got this album on cassette and drove around all summer in a car with only a cassette player and no air and roll-up windows. (The car had air, but I refused to turn it on. I was trying to remember how much the 80s sucked. The only other cassette I had in the car was Black Flag’s In My Head. Try it. You will not be pleasantly surprised. I did this for months until I broke out my Pizzicato Five dubs.) On repeat, the album puts you in kind of a trance. Of the albums floating around that mix Black Metal with dreamy post-rock/shoegaze vibe, I like this one best.

  5. Mastodon | Once More ‘Round the Sun

    I still love Mastodon even if they don’t always make an album of the year. What else can you say. I’m not that good at reviewing records? You could say that.

  6. Emerald Four | Nothing Can Hurt Me

    Japanese witchhouse or whatever thankfully going strong because Purity Ring is normcore now or whatever, I have no idea what’s going on, this is a chill record.

  7. Boris | Noise

    This was supposed to be the ultimate Boris record whatever that means and I don’t think it is, but it’s pretty cool. I got the deluxe version on iTunes that has some live bonus tracks. In some cases, for some reasons, I think Boris is better live than on record. These are not those cases. Do not buy the deluxe version. There’s youtube vids you could rip with better quality. They need to get a good live recording that gets all the bass in somehow, that would be the ultimate Boris record.

  8. Marty Friedman | Inferno

    I like Marty Friedman, he’s really good at playing guitar. I could do without the vocal tracks on his albums, but these ones are not completely terrible. So maybe this is really the best Marty Friedman record ever, if you don’t count Tokyo Jukebox. I do.

  9. Triptykon | Melana Chasmata

    Oh man, this should be higher right? Just listening again. Got the CD for the art but only heard it so many times. Is this album cover the last thing H.R. Giger did? End of an era right here.
    (Does this band’s name come from the Transformer, because I forgot all about that and just noticed it.)

  10. Behemoth | The Satanist

    Technically and musically you’d have to say this is the best Behemoth album, where they finally brought the very mechanical blackened death metal into back the more organic realm of their earliest material. But I actually like the previous few that border on an industrial death metal sound, those are always gonna be my favorite. And I don’t care about the whole taking Satanism thing seriously, I prefer the vaguely sinister stuff of previous years. There’s been a lot of talk with these bands along the lines of, “I don’t agree with it, but you have to respect their religious beliefs.” Nah you don’t. It’s metal. The whole appeal was not respecting religious beliefs I thought. When you keep it on that level, I’m into it. When it’s on that Tom G. Warrior level when it’s really about depression and death, and no one knowing anything, I’m into it. Thankfully when interviewed, the members of the band seem very politically naive so they aren’t really promoting some fascist agenda, but you see where I’m going where I’m fully not into it. You gotta see there’s like a potential overlap there. I think right in that edge space is a lot of potential for great art, but sincerity can be a problem in that area. Great artists are not necessarily great thinkers.

Best Single/EP

  • Namie Amuro | Tsuki

    This is technically a single for a completely forgettable ballad. It’s the b-sides that made this an esstianal purchase for me. (Which I bought the last album for without checking the playlist, haha.) In the twisted alternate reality my own brain, putting nonsense lyrics on top of already successful EDM tracks equal the biggest pop songs of the year. In the real world they exist in an aesthetic no man’s land; not pop enough to be truly Pop, not original enough to be critically praised. I feel like this is simply every ele’s loss. There’s some cool sounds coming out of EDM, but it’s not enough to hold my attention since I don’t go to clubs and I’ve never done Ecstasy. Maybe this is my loss, but I’m not about to start. What, I’m a walking question mark that can go in any direction at any time? No. There’s gotta be a topline to actually listen to.

Videos

Not doing a best of videos this year. Got over a hundred in my Watch Later queue, and prefer to dole them out in a non-linear fashion on tumblr anyway. I do have a public playlist of J-pop/rock vids that I’ve been adding to for a while, but I haven’t kept track of what came out this year.

The Other List

  • Alto! | S/t

    Just a cool instrumental post-rock album I heard on Jon Solomon’s show and it came out on his label. Might’ve forgot about it otherwise. It’s kinda like King Crimson x krautrock. Not gonna change your life but if you are ordering other stuff from there which you should of course it’s a great add-on. Oh, you can d/l it free on bandcamp, sure you can do that too. I’m not telling you how to live.

  • Anaal Nathrakh | Desideratum

    This band started out as one of the the most extreme bands ever and just when you think they can’t get any more extreme…they don’t actually. Kinda plateaus. I happen to like this kind of plateau but it is what it is. Actually I think they peaked on 2004’s Domine Non Es Dignus, when they were going back-and-forth with some clean Power Viking Chorus Metal vocals. Now that was crazy. There was some kind of contrast.
    And yo, I did not hear this other album that came out this year also call Desideratum, but I gotta mention it, cause even the covers are similar in the same half-assed way. Really guys? Metal community? Gotta do better than this.

  • The Austerity Program | Beyond Calculation

    I like this band but the thing with the no song names is too much for me, or rather, not enough. Also, if you put this on your list the same year a Shellac album came out but didn’t include the Shellac kiiiinda fuck yourself?

  • Nader Sadek | The Malefic: Chapter III

    So this art project is a really real death metal band now, with some awesome players, and I got it for free with my Decibel sub. Not much to complain about, sounds great, hits the perfect sweet spot of how this music should sound, even Flo Mounier on drums! Can’t really stand post-Lord Word Cryptopsy, so that is great to hear. The songs just didn’t stick for me so not many spins. Hold on, is there another way for people to get this thing? I’m just going to link to the guy’s website and it has to turn up there eventually.

  • The Roots | …And Then You Shoot Your Cousin

    I had this theory that my life started going off track when I stopped buying Roots albums as they came out. This album doesn’t help and I’m pretty sure now it’s a coincidence. But if you have any interest in making music with some kind of integrity and also be a success and you don’t pay attention to the Roots you’re dumb. I literally feel stupid because this album is so high-minded I don’t even get it as a long term fan. All you have to do is play live five nights a week on national TV and you can make whatever album you want.

  • Run the Jewels | RTJ2

    I was late really getting into the first one, which I listened to a lot this year until this one came out; it didn’t really hit me the same way. People thought it was better or more extreme…there was more jokes if anything. I’m not putting it down cause this is a great group, it just didn’t top one for me.

  • Charisma.com | DIStopping

    This group came out kinda like they were the anti-Halcali: they write and produce their own tunes and actually know something about music. I love Halcali but they went off the rails when they lost their producers. Anyway, on this album they do a ballad. Halcali ballads are sweet. Those girls are sweet. These girls are not sweet, it’s kinda the whole concept. So it’s obviously forced. There’s some good tunes, but that threw the record for me. Like they really are not in control of the thing which is a shame.

  • Judas Priest | Redeemer of Souls

    Maybe this could’ve bumped Marty Friedman off the top 10 if I got to it before this week. Nah, what am I thinking…Marty? I think it might be better than the Marty record in fact. But I’ve never been a proper Priest fan. I know all those old records are good, but I haven’t got most of ’em. I watched the Anvil movie from Netflix this year finally and it was cool, I respect those guys on some level, but they overhyped them being influential, I thought. People who were never really in bands seem to be inspired by it because they could see themselves being one of those dudes, I was a little scared cause I could see myself being one of those dudes. I love playing music, but I would rather listen to Priest and have some other decent job than play in a band that is almost not quite nearly as good as Priest and work endless shit jobs. I mean for 30 years? Do people not in bands realize how many times you have to hear your own songs as you play them? Lotta ear time.

  • Merkebah | Moloch

    I instantly thought of this as a top 10er upon first listen, forgetting at least that many good records had come out already. I do not remember how I heard of this, maybe just the name of the album caught me because I used to be obsessed with Ginsberg’s Howl. There’s also (probably several) bands named Moloch, but that seemed to be pushing it too far. An album about Moloch on the other hand is something I can get behind. Even better, it’s instrumental metal with a sax. Maybe my favorite example yet as far as the playing of the instrument. There’s no sense of novelty about it, there’s serious playing here. And there’s actually a sense of swing to the music.

  • Jute Gyte | Vast Chains

    Oh man, this is some creepy shit. So many metal albums come out in a year, and this did not even make my listening list because I only listened to it once on my laptop way in the beginning of the year, but once was enough to remember it and that alone should say something. This is some Grade A Bad Mood Sonic Youth atonal dissonance with a Satanic twist to it; it’s really unfortunate they don’t have a name people can remember, that’s the only tough part. Most bands this far off normal notes and scales either don’t really know what they are doing, are joking, or doing some kind of chaotic jamming thing. And it’s usually a lo-fi affair. I’m not sure what “it” is for these guys and I don’t wanna know, but these guys mean it and every part is clearly composed and recorded. Now I feel like a wimp for not putting in the top 10, right? But I’m really only listening to it for a second time right now. That’s really gotta be taken into effect for a personal list.

    Also there was the Shonen Knife album I already wrote about.

    And I have to mention the Relapse Sampler so I can cross it off my to-do list. Had to give this a close listen just to make sure I wasn’t stupidly missing something great (at least that was on Relapse), but I really think Tombs is the best thing they put out this year.

Old Records

  • Black Sabbath | Complete Albums Box (1970-1978)

    Holy shit, I listened the hell of of this. Never paid much attention past the first four, which I did not have full copies of.

  • Bottomless Pit | [all of them]

    I don’t feel like I’m qualified to write about this band. This should be every smart person’s favorite band. I mean smarter than me. If they were really smart I guess they would already be listening to them, so those are the smartest people but I mean, there’s gotta be a lot of people in the smarter than me, not as smart as those people range. And it’s not like a requirement. It’s not exactly Stockhausen. It’s not difficult music, it’s a rock band.

  • OOIOO | Gamel

    I guess the American release came out this year so it’s on some lists now, but it’s over a year old in Japan. Really need to talk about this one in depth because of the tuning implications. Before the world melts or explodes or we all kill each other.

Japan-related Disappointments (Non-political)

  • New FLiP but it’s boring
  • Kyary & Perfume Singing in English doesn’t quite work (yet?)
  • New Perfume Singles were kinda weak
  • tricot lost their drummer and is corny now
  • Sugar’s Campaign full album is…I dunno yet.
  • Still really expensive to get there; far away

I think things will work out. Before, you know. Ultimately.

That was kinda of a downer to end with how about Best Live Shows

  1. Pig Destroyer/Tombs/Fight Amp@First Unitarian
  2. Perfume@the Hammerstein
  3. Cibo Matto/Deerhoof@Union Transfer
  4. Agalloch/Vektor/Jex Thoth@Underground Arts
  5. Sleep@Union Transfer
  6. OOIOO@Johnny Brenda’s
  7. Morning Musume@Best Buy

Shit that’s everything.

Obliquior!

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About

Posted by Jim in Ａｂｏｕｔ on 2014.01.01

Hi there. My name’s Jim and I feel compelled to tell you about my record collection for reasons I myself do not fully understand. Perhaps I do know the reason and don’t want to tell you. Perhaps I simply choose not to go down that long and possibly dark road. Perhaps I have been down that road and choose not to rehash the whole thing. Perhaps I live on that road and would prefer to think about something else.

It’s not important. Intro’ing a review blog is totally unnecessary. But it’s gotten complicated. Why’d I have to go and make things so complicated? Cause life…is like that. Holy shit I need a real job. “Didn’t you used to have a blog?”, people could ask me. And I could painfully cringe and say, “Ah…yeah…the blog. I’m just so busy with this goshdarn job. Can you believe they pay me even if I’m not in the top 1% in my industry? It’s wild. I can pay rent AND buy food working a measly 40-50 hours a week.” And then they could say, “I kinda liked you better when you didn’t always talk like a sarcastic hypothetical conversation that will never happen BECUZ U GOTZ 2 BLOG, BLOGMAN. YOU. AINT. GOT. NO. CHOICE.”

And I guess they would have a point.

    Main categories:

  • RECORDS.

    This one explains itself, right?

  • ｌｉｓｔ十

    Lists of records. 十=10.

    Other:

  • ×

    This is/was the ｍｅｔａ category (a/k/a ドッグチーズ). Now retired.

  • 「J-pop vs. Metal」

    This was only added here to make an RSS feed for just the podcast of the ＪＰＶＭ site. It’s redundant now, but some people subscribed that way. And I don’t mind copy/pasting every single playlist line by line, because I get to see it formatted differently, which is it’s own reward. Really. It’s distracting. I mean nice. I enjoy it.

    New:

  • ０～１１

    This is for explaining my numerical notation system, which I’ve mentioned a few times. It is either needlessly complicated egghead nonsense of use to no one or so head-shattering obvious that it is unbelievable I think people would need it explained. I believe it can be both. (It needs a better name.)

  • ｍｙ訳

    For posts or reposts of my translations of J-pop lyrics. Which may be subject to deep readings, psychological deconstruction, post-modern analysis, footnotes, and endless updates. 楽しい。

✔✔✔✔✔

And now my ridiculous signoff mark which allows me to definitively end posts with no real textual conclusion. %

2 Comments

フィナルＦｒｉｄａｙ～１１月２９日

Posted by Jim in Ａｂｏｕｔ on 2013.11.29

That’s right.

Pretentious, huh? That’s a big word.

Evs.

What we ask of artists in 2013

  1. Work harder than everyone else.
  2. Be smarter than everyone else.
  3. Work for free.

I feel like you can only expect to get two of these at a time.

Final Followups

I’m going to have to actually write another review to do followups in the future. Oh no.

  • This post by Ian F. Martin about language in music is pretty great. There was also this one on the idol/indie/noise crossover, which seems like the kind of thing I would be into but not so much in reality.
  • Been thinking about that interview with Maynard James Keenan. Something about it bugs me. I feel like I’m giving him too much credit as a philosopher. I mean, the song “Stinkfist” is like, anti-fisting? Didn’t you think these guys were totally into fisting and wasn’t that part of the appeal? I can’t believe I let that go and simultaneously kinda let believers in nonsense off the hook. If you have to believe in “something” to be an artist, couldn’t that thing be fisting? I mean, if you’re doing it every weekend, maybe that’s kind of just a ridiculous hobby, but the first time you did it, you’d have to believe pretty hard that it was going to feel good. That’s faith.

    I’m just saying artists should get some slack because their job makes no sense so you can’t expect them to be logical. Do not ask an artist who to vote for, or if you should get that thing on your back looked at. It’s not in their lane. They don’t even recognize the concept of lanes. Their job is to question the concept that they don’t even recognize. Who is “they” even. Indeed.

  • That guy from Trail of Dead draws those crazy covers.
  • The top 10 Shonen Knife songs by Michie post was updated when I discovered some songs I left out. I also fixed the youtube links so they do the popup thing.
  • You don’t have to pay for Crunchyroll. There’s just no ads and it’s better quality if do.
  • Billy Bragg keeps popping up; here’s a good talk about why Punk is/was exciting: “enthusiasm trumps musical dexterity”. That original idea of Punk is still good. If you’ve got an idea for a band you can start doing it “for real” the same goddamn day. Then it can evolve into something else. But there is no excuse, it’s even more true now.

    And he was also on the Margaret Cho podcast again.

  • Bragg also had this to say on Spotify. Which I thought was interesting because it goes against other lefties who are arguing it from that position and Bragg has much more cred in that area and tends to know what he’s talking about. Personally I think the service will fail against something designed and marketed a lot better.
  • And finally this Watt from Pedro Show w/ Joe Biaza gets into a discussion of the original, arty Punk vs. the youth oriented stuff that followed.

    It’s Over.

    Went to see Mono, some pics on Instagram. Should do a post on it. In fact, I should bring back the live category. I can make a category on music theory and another on translation if I want. What’s to stop me? Column width? Probably. I’ll figure something out.

    Going to see Slayer/Gojira tonight.

    Also, if you’re taking the JLPT in Philly and/or going to the Punk Rock Flea Market any time in the the future probably maybe I’ll see you there. %

1 Comment

フィナルＦｒｉｄａｙ～１０月２５日

Posted by Jim in Ａｂｏｕｔ on 2013.10.25

If anyone read this blog, I would have to remind them that this monthly meta series could end at any time. Like anything. But I could maybe review records instead. Hm, I just had some internal monologue on the subject. Don’t need to type that out at all. Felt pretty good. Yep.

Tumblr

Renamed the main tumblr. Just the title. After I changed the url I was keeping the old name for SEO purposes in case someone was googling for it after hearing the podcast. But I deleted the podcasts, and a spammer bought the old domain. So that’s that. Also, I got back into the reblog tumblr. I liked the design after all. There’s a few original posts here and there but I’m calling it the reblog tumblr because I’m trying to phase out reblogging on the main one. Probably not completely, but it goes weeks at a time of only reblogs, and it’s really thought out sequences of reblogs which is making me nuts and I don’t think anyone even notices it. The queue was over 100 at some points, unworkable. The Halloween thing I’m doing now I’m not doing again. Running out the queue to the end of the year.

“Band”

Trying to clear out more old stuff. Working solo at the moment. Thought about changing the name of the band many times or starting a new one. I run into a lot of cool Japanese words or phrases when I’m studying that I think about using but then I look it up it’s always taken by some pretentious douchebags and then I think it’s the perfect name.

J-pop vs. Metal

I went through all the old posts and replaced any deleted videos. This was a lot harder to do in the blogspot version. On the sidebar of the site you’ve got the social link icons and a link (really several links) that takes you to random pages. If the podcast stays up with no problems it will likely continue. I was only going to take another short break again and do that every 10 episodes to make it something cohesive. But then October comes up and what, I’m gonna make it creepier? Better for people just to go back and listen again if they want their fix. Who wants to listen to new music they have never heard before on Halloween anyway?

Been thinking about mp3 rates. The first 9 eps used 128. Thought it was alright. Bass gets a little muddy. 10th used 320, wanted to see if it was clearer, which is is, but the file’s a little big. Used VBR after that. Seems like it would be best. I dunno. Reading this guys advice here but he thinks all mp3s sound terrible. (He’s talking about the rates for recording, not data compression, but I think a similar concept applies.) His other thoughts on digital recording are worth reading.

Shows vs. Shows

As a movie, Through the Never was a pretty great show. Never seen Metallica live, but people tell me that as they’ve drifted into MOR hard rock territory over the years with their new records, their mighty back catalog has also been dragged along into a watered-down mush. There was a lot of nonsense in this thing, but the sound of the band was definitely not an issue. It’s like 90% the classic sound—even the newer songs that are not that great sounded pretty good. And Trujillo is a great player. His whole crabwalking thing never seemed to fit, but it kinda did here. And he keeps Lars on time. The rest of the thing I am not even commenting on, but they put in a great performance.

I don’t know how much longer they can last like that, and they definitely don’t have another movie in them, but musically their performance here rescues their legacy quite a bit for me.

Oh my, oh no, one word is meaning more than one thing. Joined Crunchyroll on the 2-week free offer to watch all of Attack on Titan. Kinda loved it. Also watch the first eps of Kill La Kill. That show is pretty goofy but it’s fun. Notice both shows feature people gaining superpowers by cutting themselves AND unexplained amounts of steam?

I guess I’ll come back when I have $6 a month or whatever. They have dramas too. I haven’t torrented since before youtube so I haven’t seen most new stuff, just random clips. I do have Netflix, but they just cut off my streaming cause I’m on the cheapo 2-disc plan. Which is a fine plan.

Flickr vs. Instagram

Stopped paying for flickr because I don’t need more than a TB. Instagram is cool right now but they censor shit, or rather force you to censor shit or they delete you which is not cool, even tho I mostly post pictures of the sidewalk, but anyway, it’s gonna suck when they put in ads which is gonna happen soon. So I think flickr will get more social again after that if they don’t screw it up too.

Marc Maron vs. Mari Yaguchi

Both Marc Maron and Mari Yaguchi are having some personal problems. Yaguchi’s has forced her to retire. Maron’s has forced him back into heart-rending opening monologs which end hilariously. I really liked Mari’s TV work. I haven’t seen Maron’s TV work. Unless you count Remote Control. That was a long time ago. I am not happy about either of these things. I want Japanese celebrities to be able to fuck whoever they want. Within reason. I mean I guess that whole thing wasn’t right. No it wasn’t. But she should still be able to work. What I’m saying is these J-celebs have to live up to this impossible image or it’s over. Those fans won’t allow them to have a life that is not some version of perfect. But what if Marc Maron fans are doing the same but in reverse? Do we need Marc Maron to be miserable? Is he making his life miserable…for us? The thing is, those J-celebs, idols, whatever, don’t really need to be perfect. We just don’t need to find out about it. What I’m saying is, Marc Maron, ideally, I would like you to be happy. But you can keep that happiness under wraps, man. You’re our misery idol. We don’t need to know.

Maybe I never got over Jesus not being real.
^^^^^^^^^^This was just in my draft like that and I don’t remember how I was supposed to work it in.

Anki vs. Credit card

Still plugging away on Anki. Never updated my desktop version, which was 1.0, and it’s stopped working. But I got everything on the iPod. I think doing Anki everyday has organized my brain better, which is helping me pay off my credit card. Really tho? Or am i just over-committed to this list format I just came up with?

Japaneseclass.jp is also a great learning tool I just started using, which would fit better under the heading “Japanese learning tools” or something. The great thing about it is, after you know the language you can just sit around all day answering the questions you already know like these jerkoffs in the top ten.

Youtubes vs. Vimeo

I have two youtube accounts (1, 2) and one Vimeo account (1). I have uploaded some old concert footage. Some of them were uploaded years ago but they look a lot better now and the sound is synced. Learning more about video.

Admen vs. Artists

You know, there could be a set of of circumstances were maybe I would work in or with “The Ad World”. If this entire blog was about how I was trying to do this, repeatedly, desperately, I suppose it would be somewhat scandalous to call them all scumbags. Foolish, even. Ill-advised. Well, it’s not about that. And I don’t think I called them all scumbags. But, for example, if they were to pay me. If they were to pay me, in money, for work I considered reasonable, perhaps I would work with them. This has not occurred.

Look, I’m not really conservative about the definition of “Art”. You could take horse_ebooks, print it out, silkscreen it some nice 60lb. acid-free, frame it and hang it in a gallery and that’s Art. Of course, if you did do that before last month, hopefully it sold, because you now some totally worthless stock on your hands. Exactly zero people would buy such a piece for aesthetics alone, which in my opinion, makes it BAD ART. “Good” and “bad” are subjective, even on a consensus basis. But if you remove the judgement, what is and is not art is so slippery. Calling something “art” doesn’t elevate it in my opinion either, so there’s no reason to seek it out as validation. Parts of this whole horse_ebooks thing is in the art category, but when they try to take credit for this whole part they did not make that was not intended as art by the original creator and then try to retcon their intent into that, that is just bullshit. It’s like Duchamp taking his readymades from the art gallery to an industrial design show. You are plain saying something is something that it isn’t. Wait, that could be art. It’s like claiming you’ve done something that you haven’t. (Altho many professionals outsource or have uncredited assistants.) The famous quote is that art is whatever you can get away with, but this illustrates the danger of taking quotes seriously. Like the oft-cited “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” That’s about supplies! %

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フィナルＦｒｉｄａｙ～９月２７日　

Posted by Jim in Ａｂｏｕｔ on 2013.09.27

Been quiet lately.

Shallow Rewards deleted

Bummer.

Podcasts

J-pop vs. Metal is at rest, which may or may not be eternal. It could theoretically go forever, but it does take almost a whole day out of my week, and I will eventually run out of server space, and, if it was very popular, bandwidth, and, money because I would be sued. (It is not very popular.)

I have deleted all of the old talking podcasts from the server.

  • The Requiem Metal podcast is still my favorite. Wish they did it more often, but it’s more about the depth they get into, so it’s worth it to go through all the old ones maybe multiple times.
  • All of Benjamen Walker’s shows are great.
  • The Metal Asylum is a really good show on Radio Valencia, which I think I found looking for the podcast version of the SubGenius show Ask Dr. Hal. But they’ve got a lot of good shows as podcasts. I’m stuck on this one right now tho, even tho it’s on hiatus or maybe done for good, but all those old shows are available. Some killer playlists.
  • Hymns to the Dead Goddess is another Metal show on hiatus by another SubGenius, Popess Lilith. It features all bands with at least one female member. Maybe for more open-minded fans of the Female Fronted Heavy Metal project, it’s mostly more recent and more extreme stuff, mostly Death, Black and Grind. Some out-there experimental stuff too, love it.
  • Vernon Reid & W. Kamau Bell tackle the question I dare not.
  • I don’t always love everything on the It Came From Japan podcast but if you follow J-pop fandoms at all you hear so many crazy opinions and statements the most recent one was really good for my sanity.
  • In Skeptics Guide to the Universe 424 they interview someone from the HuffPo which they’ve been really critical of. Which was fair, but I think that’s one of those things that’s alienated people. I think a lot of psudoscientific beliefs are a social or cultural thing where people don’t really believe them, but want to be the kind of person that does. I think they need to get more into the psychology of that. In SGU 426 they have a bit about Ayn Rand who I feel like was getting a pass before. Situation corrected.
  • Boing Boing’s Gweek 111 had some interesting stuff about Mark Twain and Atheism.

Postcards

I didn’t forget the Equinox postcard; I’m not doing it anymore. Only doing End of Year/New Years cards now, except for exchanges if anyone still does that. Email for address.

Movies

  • The Grandmaster
    I love Wong Kar Wai. I love Tony Leung. I love Bruce Lee. It’s a movie about Bruce Lee’s teacher in China starring Tony Leung. The pieces fit together even better than I thought they would. Seemed like a bit of a sellout move on WKW’s part to make a more or less straight up biopic that is more or less a straight up Kung Fu movie, but it works. Also Zhang Ziyi is still pretty cool. Why are people gonna pretend they don’t like Zhang Ziyi now? Almost half the movie becomes about her character and there’s less than a minute about Bruce Lee but it’s WKW so it just doesn’t matter.

  • The Wolverine
    Another movie with Japanese villainry. I just enjoyed this as a dumb action movie and how close Hugh Jackman (+cgi claws) got to looking like the comic book character. Didn’t work in every scene but it was pretty cool when it did.

    I personally hate what they’ve done to the character’s origin with the bone claws and exaggerating the healing thing to where he’s like a vampire. It makes him more like a fantasy character. I used to like him as the hard sci-fi element of the Marvel Universe, where he had these mechanical claws installed somehow. (Finally explained in Barry Windsor Smith’s Weapon X—everything after that is garbage.) Not really the movie’s fault tho. Actually there was a bunch of other stuff that made no sense. The Viper went way too far, giving her random powers…whatever I can’t even think about it anymore. Random point: some people said Huge Jackman is too tall for the character who is supposed to be 5’3″ but did you notice they chose really tall Asians? (Tao Okamoto and Rila Fukushima are models more than actors.) He’s only a few inches taller than them. And most of his bodybuilding was making his upper torso wider; check out how his arms are not that big comparatively. It’s the exact stout kinda look of the character. Pretty impressive. (Yes, I’m ignoring all the previous movies.)

  • Life in Japan

    Just a doc from the youtube. Reality! Different viewpoints.

Books

David Bryne’s How Music Works is now in paperback. I just finished the (lusciously soft) hardcover. I’m told the paperback has some extra and updated stuff. I guess he talks more about Spotify and stuff like that. Seems like a detail to me. It’s more about a way of thinking about music. It’s not a technical book, it’s for everyone, altho if you aren’t a big Talking Heads/David Byrne fan the details of how he recorded every album he’s done might get boring.

This horse_ebooks thing was fucking bullshit

It’s weird how with the internet making it a million times easier to fact check and remember things people still don’t bother, or even get more forgetful. The New Yorker tracked down the real horse_ebooks guy last year. Now they cover this new story like the old one never happened.

Reporter Gaby Dunn has the insider scoop on this thing. The whole buying out someone’s idea in a non-transparent fashion and using it to market your whatever dumb thing is pretty standard ad world scumbaggery and its the kind of thing you expect to happen more often. But turning it around to where they’re saying they personally planned it that way as “Art” from day one is NOT ART. It’s just lying. That’s like Duchamp saying he designed the toilet. It’s not the point. This other thing they made as “the end product”, sure that could be art, but they’re just some ad dudes so it’s not that interesting by itself. I don’t know what the hell it is, so if it’s not anything else, it must be “art”. Why not.

But they compare it to “a painting”. Gimme a fucking break. I think you could compare a twitter account to a career in stand-up: a never-ending series of performances. Even that’s a stretch, but what stand-up works for a few years, puts all his bits on youtube, stands back and says, “That’s it. There it is: My Painting”. You’d tell that dude to fuck himself in a heartbeat.

Now that I look into it more, I was thinking how lame it was that this Buzzfeed article left out the part where Pronunciation Book started posting joke pronunciations which seemed critical to the “storyline” of the dude behind it all having some mental breakdown, but now I see that was a parody account by someone else (with a better sense of humor):

Moving on.

Numerical notation project

Something I continue to work on. It could be more of a teaching tool than something useful. Is is Art? No I just told you.

New tumblr I already gave up on

I dunno, trying to organize things differently. Might use it again just for reblogs. I’m locked into this weird reblog idea I gotta get out of. Might be Art!

Digital Drums

Highly recommend this course if you are into that kind of thing. It’s changed my mind about working directly into a DAW (ProTools or whatever). I have been recording into either tape or digital recorders and assembling it into Adode Audition and that works so I wasn’t planning an upgrade. But I’ve kinda been planning my whole living situation around having to have a room with real drums setup that I can record, even tho it’s not a great drum room and I don’t have very good mics or know how to use them. Worth learning but if I can get some ideas down that sound good for less than the price of better mics (and I can do this in my own apartment) that’s gotta be the way to do it. Game changer.

What is Rock?

Thing in Sterogum about decline in guitar rock. Makes sense. Meanwhile Billy Corgan says “fuck music”. Is it really music, or Rock Music that kids don’t care about? Or just the idea of “Rock”.

What is Loud?

This thing on the new NIN gives you way more insight than any normal person might care about. BTW, when I make my J-pop vs. Metal mixes, if I have to raise a level it’s almost always on the Metal songs. (In the early ones I didn’t change any levels and you can hear it.) Even the loudest NIN song from the 90s doesn’t get to 0db, but a Perfume ballad does. When I finish the fix, I normalize the whole to -3db and it’s still really loud. If I don’t do that it distorts because I’m making an mp3 of mp3s. It doesn’t sound louder unnormalized, just distorted. When you keep the overall volume lower you can still turn it up and I think it still sounds good.

What is Good?

Nicholas Payton and Zac Brown try to deal with this one in their respective genres. Also, Patrick St. Michael on the music writing game in Japan.

Random followups

  • It should be clear that I am only doing “better” financially than some other people because I’ve managed to hold onto my (mostly maxed out) credit cards. I kind of admire people saying fuck it and continuing at full speed ahead but I just made a different choice. If I were trying to be a part of the local music scene (which I’m not even sure I’m trying to do) and I was shitting on other people when I myself am not that big a deal, this would surely and rightly equal my doom. I am not even talking in general, I’m seeing some real specific, bizarre behavior which should not be stood for and if I’m doing 1% of that or if it even seems like it I have to change things up because I might be a total failure but I cannot be THAT guy.
  • It should also be clear that I only do self recording right now. That’s all I’ve ever done. Other people are doing a great job recording other bands. I don’t have that setup. Don’t wanna make it sound like I’m doing something that I’m not.
  • So anyway the other day I’m listening to myself tell my bullshit story about how I used to be in this band, and it’s not a bullshit story, but it’s bullshit that I still have the feelings and excuses about certain things but it’s like I can’t stop myself in the middle of the story. Gotta watch that.
  • This is pretty dumb article for the Guardian. I thought it was supposed to be one of the only good news outlets left. Not worth refuting.
  • The new Perfume video is a lot like the those lyrics videos that guy who I said should get paid for making videos made. I’m guessing he did not get paid.
  • That course on digital drums reminded me about what I was saying about female drummers. The loudness setting for the drums is called “velocity”. Not “hardness” but “velocity”. That’s because to get the loudest sound out of a drum you don’t just hit it harder, you hit it faster. If you can’t simply crush the drum with muscle power, you can’t make the mistake of doing that. I realize of course that there are female bodybuilders with huge arms, but I’ve never seen one of them play drums. They would be susceptible to the same dude mistake of just slamming the stick down, which chokes the drum. In general it’s more about what they don’t do. I stumbled onto this series on youtube, but it’s pretty random. I’m thinking more like Sleater-Kinney’s Janet Weiss.
  • Turned off the follow feature on my facebook profile. I never got public posts to work without making it all public which is not happening. It’s the worst. My “page” (also mostly useless) is here.
  • Dungeons & Developers may offer a way out of my Shadowrun obsession that could led to an actual job.
  • I said something about how I was mostly into the nihilistic side of Punk, but wasn’t thinking about how much I used to listen to The Clash. Definitely not nihilists. My life did not really make any sense for a number of years, which I recommend, but sometimes it trips you up when writing a retrospective blog post. On the whole I think it’s worth it, and so is listening to Rat Patrol from Bragg which is the demos and outtakes from Combat Rock. (I have lost track of where I got it from but it’s not hard to find.) Only if you already know the album tho, some of the versions are pretty bad. Hearing really bad versions of stuff that a band’s gotten right later is always inspiring to me anyway, probably not fun for everyone.
  • I think the period I didn’t listen to Metal at all is now pretty short in a longer view tho.
  • “Yelling at the TV” in the real or metaphorical sense is not the same as heckling. Heckling is always intended to be heard by the performer. On the internet it is not always clear what people are intending to do because it is not clear if people are hearing them or not.

Anyway

The official cover to the new M.I.A. single is an animated gif. What, that’s cool. %

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