War, Inc. Makes a terrible movie...

but, it would be a great porno.

Seriously, it was awful. Don't go. It's only redeeming quality was that it allowed me to practice my Mystery Science Theater 3000 skillz. The really sad thing was that it COULD have been an excellent satire. It just wasn't. Seriously, it SUCKED.





You've been warned.

Stay Positive

I started thinking about the first half of the previous post on repetitive listening because I heard an album so good that I've listened to it all the way through ten times since I got it just a few weeks ago. The album, Stay Positive, by the Hold Steady, comes out the second week of July, but leaked in early June and is already available on the iTunes store (Remember to buy all of it! Not just one song!). The Hold Steady shot up into my top ten list of bands as soon as I heard them a few months ago, starting with their album Separation Sunday. When The Hydrogen Jukebox offered me the new album, I leapt on the chance. It was late at night when the file transfer finished, so I listened the next day in a state of shock. It was undoubtedly the best Hold Steady yet.

The Hold Steady have always been a riff based band, and they have done it well. The riffs on Stay Positive, whether played on guitar, organ, or even harpsichord, are some of the most memorable riffs since Amon Amarth's album The Fate Of Norns. (Did I really just compare The Hold Steady to Viking themed Melo-Death? I guess I did.) Some of my favorite riffs come from the opener, Constructive Summer, the ultra-catchy organ part in Navy Sheets, the intro riff from Yeah Sapphire, though every song on the album has at least one riff that sticks in your head and blows your mind.

Lyrically, The Hold Steady are at the top of their game. While I found the stories on previous albums to be somewhat loose and general, Stay Positive tells a specific story and it tells it well. As far as I've been able to tell, Holly and Charlemagne, characters from past albums, have returned, though they're not mentioned by name, instead by indirect references, such as the reuse of the line "and there's gonna come a time when she's gonna have to go with whoever's gonna get her the highest" from the opening moments of Separation Sunday, though instead of the first person used on that album, this time the words appear in third person, as though there is another observer. I have not yet been able to figure out whether the narrator is Charlemagne or if he is just another character referred to in the story, though I think he is. The plot opens with a declaration that "we're gonna build something this summer," setting the stage for a group of college students with nothing to do, hanging around and getting into trouble. From there the scene shifts to a deposition, Charlemagne - or a different male character - is being "interviewed" about what happened with him and a girl, where they were, what they did, what sort of car she drove. We then find out that a girl, Holly, has given a murderer a ride, without quite knowing if he did anything. Over the course of the rest of the album, Charlemagne struggles with his relationship with this girl who seems to be uninterested in him. 

In keeping with the Catholicism of The Hold Steady, each character has a crisis of faith, Charlemagne's come on the track "Lord, I'm Discouraged," a plea for God's help with his failing relationship: "Lord, I'm discouraged/she ain't come out dancing for some time." The girl's crisis follows two tracks later, on "Both Crosses," an incredible song, with some of the best symbolism I've heard in music. The plot element of the song is the girl seeing video of the killing, and finally realizing that yes, the boy she gave a ride to was the one who committed the murder. Meanwhile, in her head, all she can see is "visions" of the crucifixion, flashing back and forth with visions of the murder: 

And she saw all the footage right before it got cut

and she saw all the bodies and she saw the blood

she saw the angel put a sword in his side

and baby that's how we got canonized

and she saw him gushing blood right before it got cut

and she saw him put a body in a bag in the trunk

and she saw the guys coming in from the sides

and baby that's how we get energized

The song is unquestionably my favorite on the album, I've even joked that "It's almost good enough to turn me Catholic." 

Stay Positive cements The Hold Steady's position in my mind as one of the best rock bands making music at this time. Stay Positive gathers everything good about the previous two records, weeds out some of the more annoying bits such as the shouted vocals on Separation Sunday, and packages it all together in 43 glorious minutes.

Words Are All We Have, Really.

I love words. I thank you for hearing my words. I wanna tell you something about words that we think is important. As I say they're my work, they're my play, they're my passion. Words are all we have, really...

With this collection of, well, words, George Carlin began his most well-known monologue, the infamous 'Seven Dirty Words That You Can Never Say On Television', a routine that has had implications far and wide both legally and comedically. While those seven words (and we will come back to them in a second) are the most famous Carlin ever uttered, the album from which they originally come, Class Clown, may be one of the most perfect collections of monologues ever put to acetate. From the very beginning of the album (People always want to know how you get started in this job... they say to you 'Did you always want to be a comedian?' 'Well, not in the womb, no, but right after that, yes') to it's very last comment on those dirty seven words Carlin is goofy, zany, biting, witty, engaging, along with pretty much every other quality that one could possibly want out of a comedian. The one thing Carlin isn't on Class Clown is the one thing he would eventually become known for, which is his anger. While Carlin wasn't the first angry comedian, he was the proto-typical one, and you hear this influence in comedians ranging from Patton Oswalt to Lewis Black to David Cross, almost as you hear the influence of Lenny Bruce on much of Carlin's early Seventies work. To be honest, his righteous anger is hysterical, and there's a really, really good reason it's influential. BUT...
Class Clown is better. While much of his later work relied mostly on criticism, on shock value, Class Clown sounds like it was written by a comedian who had developed a sense of the absurdity of life without letting himself become discouraged, a comedian who could still take pleasure in the presence of the fake dog crap in the window or the simple enjoyment of cracking one's knuckles for the entertainment of others. Even those routines that make up the latter half of the album, routines that would have sounded bitter later in his career, sound joyful. The track right before the seven dirty words is "Muhammad Ali - America the Beautiful" and although he is clearly concerned, and perhaps angry, Carlin isn't cynical. He sings, literally sings, a parody of America the Beautiful that transforms ' purple mountains majesty on the fruited plane' into 'strip mined mountains majesty upon the asphalt plane' immediately after delivering his take on war that sounds like the War in Iraq, except that it isn't. It's Vietnam. But he isn't bitter. Not yet. Class Clown celebrates the absurdities of life rather than railing against them, and this is what is brilliant about George Carlin, why he will be remembered long after his unfortunate and untimely death. He meant a lot to me, and to people like me, not only because of what he taught us about celebrating life but what he taught us about ourselves. To me, the Seven Dirty words were never just a monologue, never just a brilliant routine. It was a manifesto. Much of what I believe, much of what is important to me, is important to me because of that monologue. I believe in complete freedom of language and complete freedom of thought because of what Carlin tells us about words in those seven minutes of pure comedy genius. It didn't make sense to me at the age of 14, just as it doesn't make sense to me today, that people are offended by words rather ideas. This is the most important idea that humanity has ever stumbled upon, and it was popularized by a comedian, or perhaps simply a funny philosopher.
When I write, I live by one rule and one rule only: 'There are no bad words'. If anything, that is why I will remember George Carlin. That is why we should remember George Carlin. Everything else is just hysterical details. This is what is ultimately important. Why? Because words are all we have, really.


We'll miss you, George.

It's A Repeat, And It's Getting Old

Over the course of the last five days(at the time of this writing) I downloaded forty-four albums. Why? Because soon I leave on an extended trip to Israel. (I have pre-written some posts in advance, and The Hydrogen Jukebox should still be posting while I'm away.) While I am in Israel I won't have access to a computer, so I won't be able to download or rip music onto my iPod. Now, certainly this wouldn't be a problem for some people. Some people can easily go six weeks without getting new music, especially because it is so easy to share headphones or listen to another's iPod on speakers. But not me. I need new music. It's an addiction. I have never understood how so many people exist with such small libraries, listening to the same music over and over again. My own brother's library is about 200 songs, a far cry from the 9600 I have. He listens to the same album again and again, for weeks at a time, or sometimes the same three or four songs on repeat. I cannot understand this. Music stretches off in so many directions, it is so vast and diverse, one can never hope to know all of it. But why limit one's self to the same small collections of songs in one or two genres? Is it comfort in the familiar? Ignorance of the scope of musical expression? I suppose I'll never know. I've asked my brother and he just said because it's the music he liked; I only see that argument working so far. Since the world of music is so big, surely someone else out there is doing something similar, right? So why not spend that time and effort – not very long or hard, in this modern world – to find those other three bands playing the same style of music that is just as good, but haven't been signed or have broken up or whatever? To date I have found one band that makes music utterly unlike any other band I can find, and trust me. I've looked. (If anyone has any bands that sound similar to Circulus, I'd be very appreciative.)
Detractors from my opinion often tell me that “there's no way you listen to all of that music, I listen to every song in my library.” While it's true that large portions of my library sit unheard, the truth is there are very few complete unheard albums in there. I start nearly every album I download. It just happens that sometimes I don't finish them. I don't want to delete them, who knows when I might want to listen again, or finish the album? Deleting an album from my computer is a very rare occurrence. I always would rather have an album than not, and in these days of massive amounts of cheap digital storage space, I feel that it is to my advantage to keep albums I start but don't finish, or albums that I hear only once. I could be in a discussion about a band, and want to hear an album I haven't heard in months, or I could get bored and want to revisit an old interest. At the very least it serves as a kind of record book – I can see what albums I've listened to, and how long ago, and how many times.
Another pet peeve of mine is the trend of downloading single songs, revolutionized by iTunes and their 99 cents per song model. Though not quite of the same opinion as my father who constantly extols the virtue of the album and the glory days of the album-as-a-whole model of selling music, I still believe that owning a single song by an artist limits a listener's view of that artist. True, some artists have only one or two “good” songs, and I am guilty of the occasional single song or two downloaded – often songs from movies, like “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” off the Big Lebowski soundtrack – but I always feel cheated when scrolling through a friend's iPod, and am fooled by great artists into thinking a person has great taste, only to find that a person has only the most popular hits by any of the artist, with nary a full album in sight. I am left wondering what the point of music is, if you're just going to listen to what everyone else is listening to?




Title of the post is from a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. It came to mind when thinking about putting an album on repeat.

I've Watched Some TV Lately

I've watched a little bit of TV since the summer started. It's weird because I NEVER watched during the school year. But one of my teachers showed us an episode from the second season of Lost, which reminded me how much I loved the first season, and so I started watching the second season. I intend to finish before I leave for Israel, but because I'm only on the 3rd disc of six, I might not get to do that. But Jesus, what a show. I sometimes think it's one of the only good shows on television, until I remember I've been lying to myself. I know there's lots of great TV. The Wire, Weeds, The Sopranos, Flight of the Conchords, Dexter; I've heard great things about all these shows. Not to mention standards like SNL or The Daily Show, and my own personal favorites, Metalocalypse and Mythbusters. But many of these these shows are serial, and have left me too far in the dust to ever hope to catch up. Several of these shows run on Showtime, which I don't get, and others simply don't occur to me to watch. I don't really have an explanation for why TV doesn't interest me despite full knowledge that I'm missing out. It could be because I'm too lazy to wade through the chest-deep sludge of reality shows, bad sitcoms, cliched dramas and stupid rip-offs of other shows (I'm looking at you, MadTV). It could also be because I prefer a slightly more interactive entertainment experience, but I kid myself when saying that. Interactive often means listening to music whilst playing tetris, hardly harnessing the power of the digital age. Even Netflix, a brilliant, wonderful, neigh-on-messianic invention, has only gotten me to watch two episodes of Weeds. The disc still sits in my living room, I hope to watch the other four episodes on it, but I know I'll just send it back after one or two more. I can't get into it, and don't have the time to catch up. I guess I just wish that TV was easier. I know, I know, "watch it on your computer," "watch it on DVD," "watch it instead of sitting on the computer," but that just isn't good enough. Lost is the ONLY show that manages to engage my attention enough to want to watch more than a single episode at a time. I really do wish I had the patience to follow every show; I wish I could engage in Lost conspiracy theorizing, or Weeds gossip, or collective masturbation about how godly The Wire is. But for some reason, I can't bring myself to sit down, pick up the remote, and stare passively at the screen for 22/30/48/whatever minutes.

Another thing I don't watch are movies. Sure, I watch more now that I have Netflix, but I still lag far behind the average consumer of film. I almost never go to the movies. The last two movies I saw in theaters were The Forbidden Kingdom (Awful, but hysterical) and The Bourne Ultimatum (Wonderful). Still, TFK was at least a month ago, and Bourne was in August 2007, almost a full year ago. As with TV, I like movies. I really do. I like them even more than TV.But I rarely watch them, and I have a much better idea why: most of them suck, and they're too expensive to be worth it. Good movies come through, but getting to the theater, paying the $8.75 (or higher at Sundance Cinema, where more arty movies play) and finding people to go with is just too much for me. Netflix, then, has been a godsend for me. Though I share the list with my family and still do not watch many movies, I've watched more since getting Netflix a few months ago than probably the whole year before that. The next movie I'll watch is by a left-wing gay Israeli director, something I'd never get to see in a theater here. I adore Netflix.

More on movies later.

Edit: I've since watched the rest of the Weeds DVD and it's REALLY GOOD. Any criticism of Weeds in this post is hereby retracted. Thank God for perseverance, eh?

Handlebars and Bob Seger

Two weeks ago my friend told me to listen to to “Handlebars,” a startlingly popular, too-literate, “message-oriented” hip-hop song by Flobots. I believe my exact words were “sounds kinda hipster,” and I refused to listen to more. Also, they had a sound like 21st century rap-rock, something that should have never been allowed to continue. But then, just yesterday I listened again. Why? I didn't like the song much the first time I heard it, and I had no desire to get into the music itself. Perhaps I saw a reference to handlebars somewhere, which put the catchy first line and popular facebook status “I can ride my bike with no handlebars, no handlebars, no handlebars” into my head. This time though, instead of streaming the song on their myspace, I watched the music video on youtube. For some reason I liked the song much better. Ironically, the video should have made me dislike the song more. I generally don't like the animation style used, and the preachy message of two friends taking different paths in life, with the corporate and dictatorial friend ordering the riot police on the protesters that contain his former companion, is something I find annoying in music. Music that tries to be more political than it has to be. Once Rage Against The Machine did political rap-rock, then it was over. I guess some people didn't get the memo. Either way, I vow not to listen to that song again, no matter how much I liked it the second time.

I also listened to Bob Seger's Greatest Hits recently, on the advice of the same friend. A few things struck me. First: Seger's lyrics contain some of the most tired, stupid old clichés that I've ever heard. I can't even count the number of times love and/or sexual desire was compared to a fire or burning sensation. I think once Johnny Cash sang Ring of Fire all other comparisons of that nature sort of lose their meaning. (I also think that there hasn't been a truly bad-ass song written since Folsom Prison Blues – everyone who writes a bad-ass song after that is just expanding on Cash's having shot a man in Reno, for the purposes of watching his death. But I think Chuck Klosterman may have already written about that.) Anyway, I also noticed that Seger sounded like a half-hearted version of Bruce Springsteen, both lyrically and musically. Hard driving riffs backed by piano, songs about normal people in love or getting by in life, often attempting some sort of narrative but always lacking that power and brilliance that makes a Bruce song great. Having said that, I think some of the songs on the album were pretty good. “Old Time Rock and Roll” is always a fun song, if only because of the image of Tom Cruise dancing around in Risky Business. “Turn the Page,” too, is a classic. “Night Moves” and “Main Street,” while both major Bruce-rip-off-offenders had a nice sound to them.

Hello World

I suppose I should introduce myself.
I am the Hyrdogen Jukebox, and I'm here to temper the views of my crustacean friend.

Incidentally, my favorite political party is the Crustacean Liberation Party.
FREE THE LOBSTERS!

(real post to follow, I swear)

Today I listened to Woods of Ypres's stellar first demo/album, “Against The Seasons: Cold Winter Songs From The Dead Summer Heat.” I know the band refers to it now as an album, but at thirty minutes and without the clean production from their second two albums, it could also be considered a demo release. Regardless, it's great. WoY hadn't quite found their voice yet, and stuck to a more traditional cold, harsh black metal landscape. Despite this, on a few songs, most noticeably “The Sea of Immeasurable Loss” and “A Meeting Place And Time,” incorporate some clean vocals, a standard in later Woods efforts. I also find the story of the album to be less cohesive than that of either of the following releases, furthering my opinion that W1 is more of a demo release. Nonetheless, the piece is great. Partially because WoY Hadn't fallen into their niche yet, and partially because I listened to the second album first, the pure Black Metal sound feels somehow 'wrong,' and going any farther over those thirty minutes would have been a mistake. Lyrically, I find nothing wrong with the album, though David Gold's oft brilliant words are in this case hidden under a layer of murky, thin “Black Metal” production, abandoned on subsequent releases. This has caused, though, the rare instances of clean vocals to stand out even farther, as former vocalist Aaron Palmer (Is this correct?) pleads “could you be careful with your words/because my world is in your hands,” a line that partially caused my slightly unhealthy love of the Woods. Aside from complaints in terms of production, this demo/album stands out as a fantastic piece of post-Norway Black Metal, too Canadian to be called USBM, and filled with enough Doom to bring about a few intense personal moments, Against The Seasons demands attention. The album closes with a short burst of speed, capping off a fade-out and focusing the Woods' energy towards their much more powerful second album, Pursuit of the Sun and Allure of the Earth.

Right now I'm listening to Kroda's brilliant debut full-length, “Cry To Me, River.” A Ukrainian band, I cannot fault them for their impeccable, if possibly unintentional play on “Cry Me A River.” Despite the slightly-cheesy title, Kroda pulled through and, in my opinion, brought forth the greatest folk metal album ever produced. Everything about CTMR screams out cultural pride, the driving force behind much of the folk-metal scene. Eisenslav and Viterzgir adore their country, and it shows on this album. Though I cannot speak Ukrainian, and Metal-Archive's translations probably don't capture the essence of the original, one can easily see the patriotism Kroda embody in lyrics such as “This is Fatherland, yours and mine, - Always remember that! Glorious be in ages, forever alive, -My Land! My Ukraine! Fatherland, in all the world only one, Free, Mighty, Great” from the aptly titled song “Native Land.” But despite foreign, overdone lyrics, Eisenslav proves himself an excellent singer, his growls neither overwhelming the music nor failing to show themselves when necessary. I can also say this: he knows when to shut up and let the flutes do the talking. And talk they do! On nearly every track, the folk elements blend perfectly into a seamless blend of folk and metal – something some other folk-metal bands seem to have forgotten. Manegarm are the only other band I can think of who maintain such a pure mix of the two genres, band like Tyr switching from song to song somewhat, or supergroup Folkearth who weighed down their albums with too many exotic instruments all competing for attention. Kroda, though they flip back and forth between more-Metal and more-Folk, they do so within each song, and the two compliment each other well. Keyboards or panpipes carry a melody over a rhythmic guitar line, which gradually fades into the melody as well, swallowing the pipes whole and spitting them back out when it comes time for more folk. I often do not even notice the transformation. Drums, while not innovative do their job well, providing ample blast-beats while not straying into overuse, rounding out an already dense sound with numerous cymbal crashes and king-size fills. CTMR grabs other Folk-Metal albums by their Nordic balls and gives it a nice, strong, Eastern European, leather gloved fist to the face. Plus, they used to sell scarves with their logo.

In blog news, I haven't settled on a name yet, though I'm considering something along the lines of “Today I Listened To:” and trying to avoid “clever” plays on songs or album titles. If I can get sufficient material written before I leave, I think I can figure out how to have it automatically post stuff. Who knows?

In personal news, I sat around a lot today and also purchased the latest Unrestrained! magazine, with Woods of Ypres on the cover, an event which partially inspired this post.

A Manifesto of Sorts

I can no longer continue to deny what I now see to be the truth. It is not worth continuing to fight against something which you yourself have embraced within yourself. To do so prohibits personal growth, and impedes the realization of goals and visions. Too often corporations, politicians, celebrities and activists persist in rallying behind a cause that has lost all meaning and purpose. And now, the time has come for me to admit that I have fallen into the same snare. I see this not as a denial of past ideas, merely a tacit understanding that I have continued some things beyond their optimal life span.

I speak, of course, of the battle of the so-called “indie” movement against the encroaching wrath of the “hipster.” Members of the two camps have fought long and hard, and both sides have suffered many casualties. Irony is dead; hipsters beat the life out of irony long ago. Likewise, the indie scene has lost many of its major focal points to accusations of being 'too hipster.' For so long I have refused to take a side in the battle.

I equated the hipster and the indie kid, because they seemed so similar I could not conceive how the two could be different. I railed equally against both; hipsters for their obsessive pursuit of the-next-big-thing-to-abandon-for-something-new, their perverse fixation on appearances of 'cool' and their utter mishandling of whatever Metal they decided had enough 'art' in it to be cool, but not enough aggression or speed to be intimidating; indie kids for their elitist flair, bizarre fashion and similar dismissal of the mainstream. But now I see that the two camps could not be more different.

Recently I put out a call for new music, addressed to all my friends I could describe as 'music-nerds.' These MNs responded in full force, inspiring me to try music I never could have pictured myself listening to. And though I have yet to wade through most the 30-odd albums they've given me, I can already detect a slight whiff of change in the air. Now, don't get me wrong. I have devoted the past several years of my life to Metal, and do not intend to now disavow my genre of choice. I have simply met the realization that music – in all forms – is to be equally respected. And it is with this newfound enlightenment that I intend to throw most (but not all!) of my support behind the indie movement, in an effort to defeat the vile hipster threat.

And with this new blog, heretofore unnamed, that I plan to bring about this fight. This blog shall be an expression of media of all types: Music at the forefront, with a sprinkling of movies, a dash of TV, a hint of magazines, and a generous, Jewish-Mother-style helping of literature, both of others and my own.

But I promised no disavowing, and I intend to keep that promise. I shall not forgo Metal in favor of anything else in the long term. I merely intend to recognize the exploits of those in the media and bring my own perspective to an internet sadly devoid (ha.) of personal opinion.

It comes at an unfortunate time, though, this realization. In precisely one week I leave for an extended stay in Israel, and shall remain absent until August 3rd, returning until the 11th at which point I leave for a few days in Colorado. Though unable to post after I leave, I shall not allow a week to go by without writing at least a few words by means old fashioned pencil and paper. They may be short stories, album reviews, quick musings or anything, but I assure you: They shall be posted.