I have a new laptop! And that means that a very arduous migration of gigabytes worth of Music was in order. Unfortunately, my brother had no plans of keeping any of my music in the old laptop (enacting turnover rights, etc). And more unfortunately, when I descended upon him to collect my files, he claims to have “accidentally” deleted some of my songs already. One of them including this very serious collection of Rock anthologies and The Knife! Gah. Ate must grab everything all over again. I figured, since people do check out my music every time they get my hands on my laptop, I might as well have the satisfaction of not letting them listen to what they want to hear but instead let them listen to a more selective collection of music. Nya-ha-ha! Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s a video of Alanis Morisette’s cover of The Black Eyed Peas‘ song “My humps”. I’m shunning comments about how much a lot of people dislike this song. I just think it’s ridiculously brilliant. It’s a parody of how insipid songs, videos and pop culture can get. And the touch that Alanis put in to it just underscored feminist undertones. ALAVET!
I should probably be embarrassed but I actually am not. I love Marit Larsen’s new single, Don’t save me. It doesn’t sound M2M-ish at all, plus maybe I’d count it as poppier Mazzy Star or maybe not Mazzy Star, but something that’s Sixpence non the richer-ish. I love pop! Wow. Well, I guess what sets her apart is the fact that she doesn’t sound like her former counterpart, that Marion somene, who I by the way think is a ditz.
So I guess this is high time to make some confessions about some other things I like that a lot of people might find surprising. For example, I happen to like Hanson, that even Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins/Zwan would agree with me. I love Nelly Furtado because she’s lovely especially in her commercially “discreet” 2nd album Folklore wherein most of the songs sounded Folk-ish. Kudos to her single Força which some of you might want to check out if you’re a Belle and Sebastian fan. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE Janet Jackson. Surprise much? I used to imagine myself being able to wear what she wore in the music videos of Together again, Deep and Someone to call my lover (You may notice that for this last bit she borrowed the riff from one of the songs of Counting Crows, I forgot which one though). Which reminds me, she’s a genius otherwise she wouldn’t be the top selling female artist in terms of album sales.
Here’s the clincher: I adore Benny Benassi and I don’t know why. He’s house and his music sounds absolutely gay but I get a kick out of it. His music is what I would call m “MRT Music”, y’know just to keep me awake and pumping in my head while I watch out for pickpockets and pervs. I think he’s playing in Manila this December, for Big Phish. Ticket’s 800? Hmm… Man, too bad I’ll miss that. Staying here in Davao to spend a quiet new year, maybe. Or maybe Cagayan. (Sigh.) Let me tell you, when you’re mom’s not around and nobody can cook as great as she can, you’re Christmas options are kind of glum. Any suggestions?
New stuff. Some Daring Vids I noticed: One by Sarah McLachlan. This $150,000 budget video, which incidentally cost $15 only. (Whereas the rest of the money went to charity.) Another by Alanis Morissette, a music video of her single “Crazy”, illustrating the neurotic nature of female same-sex relationships. (Ahem. Wow, I can only say kudos to what Brokeback Mountain did for the world.) Daring vids for today’s kids.
For the OPM scene, on the other hand, you have Barbie Almalbis and Kitchie Nadal on the same screen singing together. This could mean either a boost or a desication of their careers, my darlings. I used to be a big fan of the two and now that they’ve gone mainstream (not that there’s anything wrong with it, as long as you don’t purposefully alter what’s already good about your music), I think I’m slowly but surely losing my musical respect for them. Yes, I know they still have water tight arrangements but it all seems so contrived. You’ll see what I’m talking about if you’ll compare their songs back then and now. When Barbie was still with Hungry Young Poets and the earlier years of Barbie’s Cradle, she composed superb songs like Firewoman, Deep, Goodnight, Money for food, Dark and I’m lonely, Sleep…ack! So much more. Now what do you have? You have that smile, smile thing and that other song for Nescafe. See! I don’t even remember their friggin titles. As for Kitchie, she was so much better with Mojofly. Memorable tracks like Another day will never come out on another day seeing as how she runs the shows. Kitchie, can you make more songs like Run, pretty please? Please?
If you ask me what I think, I don’t like how the 2000 mainstream music scene is going. But we have got to mark this decade with something distinct aside from the dawn of such daring videos. One may have noticed that each decade had its own innovation. 70’s for funk and retro, 80’s for New wave, and then 90’s for pop as we know it, to name a few. Now we ought to ask: What is so different about the musical age of 2000? Is it a hodgepodge of musical genres evolved? Or is it a deconstruction of all of it? Worse: Could it be a desication of these genres? The way I see it, I’m more inclined to indie and older tunes since they’re more loyal to making music out of integrity not for popularity. As Gabriel Marcel would put it, we have to fear the day when opinions (especially those concerning the “palace of art”, and music in this sense) are easily swayed by popular vote.
I don’t know with you, reader. Do you ever see this happening?
