:: Dreams and Other Chimera ::

:: 19.6.04 ::

Ok,

I'm getting togeather people to go to George Carlin with Dennis Blair at the Francis Winspear Center on September 21st (tuesday) Anyone who would like me to get them a ticket should put it in comments. Tickets will run $67. People who are going already are: Me, Jim, Gorra, Steph. So anyone else who wants in on this should leave a comment.

:: James [+] ::
...

A few things to report:

I seem to like bad movies. All of the following movies got poor reviews and yet I found some way to enjoy them and or appriecate them:
Chronicles of Riddick
Troy
Van Helsing
The Whole Ten Yards

Fortunetly this doesn't seem to follow in reverse as I did also like:
Shrek 2
Harry Potter 3

One of my games wrapped up wednesday. Fortunetly the game is continuing in a different. But I'll miss Just About Insane. And goodbye to Phillip.

Spent this evening talking with someone who lived through bad times (read grade 10) with me. I
t was enjoyable.

Spent last night talking with Other about insanity, it was a interesting discussion.

Found out that one of the people who picked on me in junor high committed suicide a few years ago. I'm not sure how to feel... I guess I'll just stick with the nothing that I am currently feeling about it.

Found out that my blood pressure is high, somewhere on the line between mild and moderate hypertension. This means less Caffine and salt in the short term, and losing weight in the mid to long term. Oh well, at least I had an inkling it was comming.

Thats all folks, time for a new day to begin anew.

:: James [+] ::
...

Out of curiousity I googled my name this morning, twice to be specific. I looked once and got 226 hits. None of those were really for me, mostly paintball ads or sales misspelling Tippman brand paintball guns. So I tried again and got Exactly 1 hit. Over in the archives at Meish.org she thanked me once for getting her something from her wishlist.

I kinda like that though. This is why I don't use my last name and stuff, I would rather not have access to my personal information being that easy to come by. But hey, I guess I gotta live whith the way of the world.

Mabey I'm just paranoid.

:: James [+] ::
...

So I realize that I may owe certain blog viewing people out there an explanation of what happened on wednesday. In lieu of this I give you a review of the concert I ditched not one but two role playing games to go to.

I went and saw P.O.D. (Payable on Death). More specifically I went to see their openers, Lacuna Coil. Now it was a strange concert. Usually the openers don't play till 8 or so, the second openers at 9:30, and the main act at 11. Being a wednesday concert, I guess, made them want to run the show early, so Coil played at 7:30, then Haven St. At about 8:30, and P.O.D. at 10 to 9 or so.

Now Coil was great, everything that I had hoped they would be, everything that they should have been. They only played for 34 min but I will survive with that. They played their heavy stuff which was great, they didn't do my 2 favorite songs, but given the bill, I don't blame them. Lately they seem to have changed from a heavy rock ballad band to a metal/metal ballad band. I can live with that though.

When they were done, Haven St. came on. They were very mockable. I could easially see all their influences shining through: Stage show from rappers, instrument tuning from Korn, song influences from Green Day, The Offspring, and Korn to name a few. But heck, they had the crowd going, their stage presence was very well developed.

Finally, P.O.D. came on. For their first song I spent most of the time being thankful that I was a couple hundred feet from the stage. I was struck mostly, however by the amount that their opening song pattern and antics mimicked Trent Reznor from NIN. Now they sounded nothing like NIN, but the similarities were there: The thin lankyness of the lead singer with black hair and black clothes, losing himself to a song that's half silence and half rage and aggression. The quiet, hard, quiet, hard quality of the song. It was strange. The second song was still unintelligible in both musical quality and lyrical quality, so I left.

And that was it for the show. On a related topic however, I was watching a Tori Amos DVD the other day and it had an interview in it of how she writes her songs. That sorta kicked off in the back of my mind the awareness of the songwriting and how the song trys to convey the message. So listening to music I have been slowly pulling together these comparisons and similaritys and differences between songs and artists and trying to come up with some way of classifying/categorizing it.

I've been listening to, in no particular order, KMFDM: WWIII, Women and Songs, Auf Der Mauer, Tori Amos, Sarah McLaughlin, Soulfly, Linkin park, and of course, the three bands at the show. Those are the ones I have thought about in this context. So some of the things that I have come up with.

What part of the song contains the message, or meaning. Is it the music? (Linkin Park: Session, Sarah Slean: Sweet Ones) Is it the Lyrics (Lacuna Coil: Cold Heritage, Tori Amos: Silent all these Years) Or more of a balance, (Soulfly: Soulfly, Paula Cole: Mississippi) I think this is more of a balance than absolutes though.

How direct is the diction, metaphor, and allusion? In some songs, the entire song is a metaphor for something, the artist always speaking around the meaning of song (Sarah Mclachlan: Posession, Tori Amos: (Almost all of her songs)) or coming right out and saying it (KMFDM: WWIII, Linkin Park: Numb). In fact, if you go one step further away from that concept, Does the song actually have a direct message? I know of a few songs that are designed to be an outlet for your own memories, (Tori Amos: Space Dog) In these the artist isn't telling you the theme, they are letting you use your own memories and guiding them to their theme, but in your own personal and special way.

How does the song change when performed live? You have some songs that are tired and old live, something brought out because the crowd loves it. (The Tragically Hip: New Orleans is Sinking) and songs that seem different and new, yet still the same song. (Lacuna Coil: Heaven's a Lie).

Anyway, that's today's music ramble, I promise not to ramble this badly again for some time.

:: James [+] ::
...

Allright, time for some words I never thought I'd hear myself saying. Its Meme time.

There are soundtracks to everything. If my life had a sound track, and you could add a song, which song would you add? Please leave a comment with the song.

:: James [+] ::
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