Album Review #1

Here's my first attempt at writing a CD review. So, I said a couple of posts ago that I was going to try to review one album that I consider to be in each category each week. Not sure how well this will fit with my CD collection, but I'll have to give it a shot, at least until I use up a category. Without further adu, my body (physical/surface emotions and music) album of the week is:

Guns and Roses: Appetite For Destruction


Scary as it may seem, this is one of my newer albums, released only 17 years ago in 1987. Fine year, that 1987... produced a bumper crop of good people, and then me... Anyways, it's also new to me: I've been a GNR fan for ages, but only got this CD a week ago (before this, I only had the Greatest Hits, which is also a sweet CD). But to get to the actual music: The album kicks off with one of the most memorable guitar intros/riffs I can remember, courtesy of Slash, and really sets the stage for the whole mood/rebellion theme of the CD, with the great track "Welcome to the Jungle". I'm sure most of you have probably heard this song at one point in time, so I won't go on about it. I'm not a huge fan of the next track, "It's So Easy", as it seems even a little shallow for an album like this, plus the music doesn't really resonate with me: yet, it's still a decent cut. However, the album only gets better from there. The third song is "Nightrain", which has fast become one of my favorite GNR songs: I'd never heard it before this, but it is very well done musically, and also is somewhat poetic (metaphors and the like). The album stays strong throughout, and includes such classics as "Sweet Child Of Mine" (probably my favorite love ballad ever, and also one of their best guitar riffs) and "Paradise City" (very well balanced between all the instruments and vocals, plus it is incredibly catchy). Another surprising track I found and enjoyed was "My Michelle": it really takes advantage of dynamics, and again is full of vibrating rhythms and chords.

Anyways, enough about the songs: here's some thoughts on the album as a whole. First off, this totally fits into my "Body" category, at least in what appeals about it to me. The lyrical themes of rebellion, paranoia, love, and sex reach out to the surface in me, not just in terms of shallow thoughts but also unconcious instincts and desires. The music also reinforces this: it can range towards the experimental and intellectual at times, but is always driven by the solid rhythm section, and is always based around continuing the general, logical progression of this song. Here, GNR show some indications of their later work, which involved many more experimental songs that were both lengthier and also dynamically and symphonically arranged (i.e. Don't Cry, November Rain), but reveal their straight-ahead rock side as well.

To sum it all up: amazing album. Each of the band members (Axl Rose, vocals, Slash, lead guitars, Izzy Stradlin, rhythm guitars, Duff McKagan, bass, and Steven Adler, drums) fully portray both their individual talents and their legendary chemistry as a unit throughout. One thing I was especially impressed by, as a drummer myself, was the inventive way that Adler incorporates his cowbell into almost every song. It is a very cool sound, but is easy to overuse. Adler manages to make it feel essential to each song, rather than only tacked on at the end. Anyways, thought that was cool, as I've always been a fan of stepping outside the conventional "drumming wisdom" box and using cowbells to a wide extent in rock. I'm going to stop rambling now, but will leave you with one thought: sweet album! If you are at all into hard rock or metal, you probably already own it, but if you don't, I highly recommend it.

Disclaimer: Some of the lyrics are rather explicit. If that bothers you, don't get it.

Love to hear some thoughts on this review from anyone else who owns/has listened to this album! Also, tell me if you have ideas to improve my future album reviews.

New logo!

This is a new logo for my Hattrick team. Check it out! (For those who don't know, Hattrick is a pretty cool online soccer management game: www.hattrick.org).

My Theory of Music

Most of those of you who know me well probably know of my music obsession. I have close to 100 CD's at the moment, plus plenty of homemade mixed ones, and then lots more on my computer. I always wind up spending too much money on music, but I enjoy it, so it's a guilty pleasure... still better than blowing it on cigarettes or drugs, imo. I listen to music pretty much around the clock, which is why being a delivery driver is perfect for me: can listen to cd's or the radio, drive around, and get paid for it! (of course, there's all the hard work of greasing pans, portioning pasta, etc that goes with the job as well, but I'm not complaining). I also have played drums for about 8 years now, so I look at music from an analytical perspective as well, and am starting to pick up more and more of how it is structurally composed. Anyways, to get to the point: I was recently thinking about how diverse my taste in music is (many of you can affirm this), and trying to come up with some common denominator between the different bands and genres that I came up with. I actually thought of something that seemed pretty deep (to me, at least: might just be random and stupid to some of you), and, more importantly, fit my music taste to a T. Here it is (CAUTION: THINKING ALERT: You'll have to use your brain even to label my line of reasoning rubbish, so those of you who prefer summer vegetative states may not wish to read on...):

I think it was the ancient Greek philosophers who had the idea of man being made of body, mind and soul (but I could be wrong). The idea's always appealed to me: seems to clarify the different points of human experience quite well, so I thought I'd try applying it to my musical tastes. Much to my surprise, it fit almost perfectly. For me, at least, there is music that appeals to my body, music that appeals to my mind, and music that reaches out to my soul. I'll try to give some examples to demystify this a little. For example, one of my favorite bands is AC/DC. They aren't known for deep insights in their lyrics, or really spiritual moments in their songs. Why then do I like them? Well, there is something in the pounding, earth-shaking riffs that reaches right out into your body: it is almost impossible for me not to tap my feet to one of their songs, or even start drumming on my steering wheel while I'm in traffic (thus earning strange looks from fellow road-users). Also, their lyrics primarily appeal to surface emotions and desires. Therefore, I would put them generally into the "Body" category.

Conversely, take my absolute favorite band, Rush. They are a deeply intellectual band: not just with their profound and often incredibly clever lyrics, but in the amazing skill each of the band members display, and even more so in the almost symphonic way they play together, arranging musical parts to give a certain impression: this is demonstrated by how effective and themed their long instrumental segways and soloes are, enhancing album and song themes, rather than deviating from them. As such, I would drop them into the "Mind" category.

Finally, I'll mention another band I really enjoy, U2. I had the priviledge of seeing them live this year with a few of my close friends, and it was an incredible experience. However, I liked them long before this year. Yet, their music doesn't seem to really fit into the Body or Mind categories. They aren't needlessly cerebral, but they can be at times. They also don't rely on straight power and crunching riffs. What I've found most in their music is a sort of spiritual attraction. Here, I am not talking about what their religous beliefs are, or how they are expressing them: rather, I think that they are able to build a deep connection with people through their music. They play on the universal human themes of longing, love, and conflict, and are able to reach above the body and bypass the mind, to touch the soul, so that is the category I'd put them in.

Some final notes: I don't claim that any of these three dimensions are superior to the others. I think they all have their place, and there's definitely times when one appeals to me more than another. The mood you're in has a lot to do with what you choose to listen to. This theory also goes beyond music: the same thing is true in any form of entertainment. For example, in movies, there are action ones or comedies that are just fun to watch, without thinking too deeply (body). There are incredibly subtle movies that either try to make a point or just use witty humour (mind). Then, there are those movies that deeply affect you: make you empathize with the characters, laugh when they laugh, cry when hard times come to them, etc, which I think draws close to the soul. The same is true with books. Also, it's pretty hard to say that a band/book/movie is entirely one-dimensional: there are always many that cross the boundaries, and even the examples I mentioned appeal to the other dimensions as well: I just referred to their primary impact. Anyways, let me know what you think of this idea: am I way out of my tree, like usual?

P.S. I'm going to try and write/post one detailed album review for each of the categories per week, mostly just for fun, but also to see if I can defend this theory more specifically. Stay tuned to the Underground HQ to see/comment on these!

Good times

Yesterday (Saturday, which was actually technically two days ago, but it still feels like Sunday night to me) was a lot of fun. Went out for a fancy dinner at La Masia (amazing Spanish/Italian restaurant near my house) with my grandparents, parents, sister, and uncle, theoretically as a late grad celebration, which was sweet. The evening only got better from there... I got to go to my friend Stewart's place for a farewell party for him (he's leaving to go do wilderness guide training sessions, for those of you who hadn't heard), which was awesome. I saw so many of my friends that I hadn't seen since grad... it was just like the occasionally good, but frequently bad, old days of high school. We also went swimming at 1:30 A.M., which made for a neat finish to the evening: definitely an experience to remember! Hopefully, I'll get to do some more stuff with the guys before summer ends and I head off to Ontario: it's starting to become more real to me now that I'm likely to lose contact with some of my good friends. After grad, it wasn't such a big deal, but now the summer's half gone, and the rest is flying fast. I'm still working 40+ hours a week, and usually when my friends have their time off (I work nights, they all work days), which sometimes sucks, but I'm sure I'll need the money for school. Anyways, the big trip of my summer is coming up in a couple weeks: going to Golden for a softball tournament (know it's not much of a thrill compared to some of the stuff you guys are up to, but I'm really looking forward to some competitive sport again: haven't really played much of anything since grad). Until then, it's the same cycle for me: work until 12/1/2, come home, be too hyped up to go to sleep, sit at the computer for a couple hours, finally go to sleep, wake up anywhere 10-noon, lie around, go to work...

University courses

I'm having some trouble with my courses for university at the moment. As further confirmation of my uniqueness, I seem to be the only student trying to take a Chemistry major/History minor (I know it's an odd combination, but those are my two main interests...). Unfortunately, not only did my first and second choice history classes conflict with my required schedule of courses, but now it seems the third (and only remaining option) does as well. I hate how universities cram all students in a particular course into one lecture block; it means there's very little flexibility in terms of timetables (labs and seminars have multiple sessions, but it seems most lectures only have one:(.), as well as restricting access to professors and the chances to get to know other people. Oh well. I'm hoping to be able to sort the course thing out this week, but we'll see how it goes. I really hope I don't have to drop history altogether: the history courses look like honestly the most fun in university (I'd take a history degree, but I don't really want to wind up teaching it, writing books on it, or pursuing unrelated work: the jobs in science seem much more appealing). I'll have to wait and see, I guess.

Calling all shameless self-promoters?

I was just looking through my links, and I don't actually have all that many yet. If any of you who consider yourselves my friends, acquaintances, or whatever else, have blogs anywhere (blogspot, myspace, somewhere else), that I don't currently have linked, please let me know, and I will add a link to yours if you would like (if you don't want the link posted on my blog, please tell me your address anyways, as I'd still like to read your thoughts!)

H2G2

Well, I recently discovered an amazing website: www.h2g2.com. For any of you who are familiar with the genius of Douglas Adams (author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in its myriad of multimedia forms, such as a BBC radio drama, a BBC television miniseries, five books, a computer game, and most recently, a feature film), this may be worth checking out. It's a site he founded in the late 90's, based around his idea of a vast encylopedia of knowledge, written by roving researchers all over the place, in an informal and humourous style. It's amazing how much of what Adams predicted came to pass: the "Sub-Etha Net" of the books (written in the 1970's) closely resembles today's internet, and his "Babelfish" translator later became the moniker of a highly succesful search engine's translation device (www.babelfish.altavista.com). Anyways, this is a very cool website: it's basically an online encyclopedia on most things that you could want to know, with articles written by real people (I know it sounds similar to Wikipedia, but I'm pretty sure Adams came up with this first). You can read any entry without signing up for anything. If you want to post comments in a discussion, or contribute your own articles, you can become a member for free. The site is now run by the BBC, who seem to have done an excellent job of maintaining Adams' vision and goals for it. There's great articles on everything from Kevlar to Murphy's Law to kissing technique (you know, I have to research this stuff in case the opportunity ever comes up;)!). Check it out!

London

Well, you probably have all at least heard of the terrorist attacks that happened in London (if you have had your head under a rock for a while, or just want some more detail, check out http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/uk/05/london_blasts/html/default.stm). For me, these strike pretty close to home: I was in London a couple years ago with my uncle, and traveled very close to the affected area. In fact, the second attack came on a train on the Piccadilly underground line, one of the lines that we took. These attacks have hit me even closer to home than September 11th, because I've never been to New York, but I know and love the London area. I think that people are starting to become a bit desensitized to terrorism, seeing as it is so prevalent these days. It still receives a huge amount of exposure, but I think many people are beginning to feel that it's "just another attack". In my opinion, it's truly a shame that this is the case: terrorism should never be a part of our daily lives. One truly tragic story I read was of a group of Israeli children, who had had the privilege to travel to London in order to get away from the threat of violence and the frequent bombings. As far as I know, none of them were killed in the attacks, but it must have been incredibly frightening to find that a supposedly "safe" place was just as dangerous as what they normally go through.
Fortunately, it looks like the terrorists will not win this time around and Madrid will not be repeated. There, the terrorist attacks swung the balance of an election, and convinced the government to pull out of Iraq. This didn't seem to help much, as Spain was struck by another attack shortly thereafter, proving that appeasing terrorism really doesn't work. However, the British have more backbone, and have first-hand experience of the folly of appeasing the power-crazed, under the infamous Mr. Chamberlain. It looks like this attack might even wind up strengthening their national resolve to keep fighting terrorism around the globe.
There is some bad news for us Canadians, however. With this hit, it looks like we might now have the giant bullseye painted squarely on us. A while ago, Al-Qaeda promised to hit the U.S., U.K., Spain, Canada, Denmark, and Italy for their roles in Afghanistan. The first three have now been hit: are we next in line?

Grad Reflections

So, a couple weeks ago I officially graduated: had a bit of a party yesterday with some friends to commemorate that (I know it's a bit late, but I've been working pretty steadily since grad: even worked the night after!). Grad is an interesting ritual: for many, it is treated as one of the biggest moments in their life. Personally, I didn't find it as big of a deal: a lot of my friends have been all disappointed that high school's at an end, but I wasn't that big of a fan of high school in the first place, so it didn't affect me as much. I'm also planning 9-10 more years of schooling (Bachelor's, then Master's or Ph.D), so it's not like it's all over for me. It is nice to be done high school, and travelling on to university, where hopefully they'll treat students as if they have a little more intelligence... that remains to be seen, however. I can't say I'm really missing high school: now I can still hang out with the friends I made there, without having to put up with all the idiots and jerks that populated the hallways. However, I do miss getting to see friends every day, but it makes the times we can get together (like yesterday) more memorable. I think for me it will be a bigger change moving away from everyone I know in September. Anyone else have some thoughts on what high school's conclusion has meant to them?