The Great Project: Entry 3 Well, this is one of those albums I was talking about; the albums that will require explanations. Much to my own chagrin, I had a Jam Band phase. This is derived from my guilty pleasure… Dave Matthews Band. Say what you will about DMB, I like them and every time I connect with someone over DMB, I have a good conversation. But, this isn’t about DMB… it is about Phish.
Phish was one of the bands that I listened to in the peak of my Dave fan years, mostly high school. It peaked my senior year and the summer before I came to college and discovered the indie radio station. But I own a few Phish albums, and each one has one song I like.
Lawn Boy has “Bouncing Around the Room,” a poppy jam song. These are the only Phish songs I like… the very few that clock about three minuets and have a very pop feel. Otherwise, I just get bored now. I swear, while listening to this album today, I felt like I was living inside a Fraggle Rock episode. I’m fairly certain that they incorporated the theme song into one of the tracks on this disc. This music has no purpose in my life. Not now. I don’t identify with this sub-culture at all. I’m liberal and all… but I really can’t do hippies. There are some nice hippies… don’t get me wrong. But the whole scene… not for me.
So, the one track I like of this disc will be ripped and this thing will be tossed into the sell back box.
trust me, if you think my owning Phish is funny, just wait. I’ve got some surprising stuff in my CD box. Stuff I’ve been carting around a lot longer than this.
This made me laugh in the fifth grade kind of way, but it is worth a watch. Points for using JT. I’m sure it will be so overplayed in the next few months. But seeing that frat kids are home for the holiday, they can’t talk about it and buy overpriced T-shirts online… or can they?
A new challenge. With friends Eric and Sarah, I will be resolving to blog as much as I can. The rules? Only one. Each post must have a graphic element.
This is the third disc in a three CD box set that chronicles Belle and Sebastian’s first three eps from 1997. There are four songs, mostly standard issue Belle music. The stand out track to me is “Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie” a track that would fit well on either of the two most recent Belle releases. This is early stuff, but it is important. It might not be the strongest offering from the group, but it shows how they developed early and how while later developments might have sounded drastic, they were in fact there all along.
Once I get the other two discs of this set reviewed I will make my decision on keeping them or not. I think at this point I lean toward keeping them for two reasons, 1) it is a box set (something that I like to have around), and 2) Belle is one of my favorite bands.
The Oregon State Beavers will be playing in the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas this year. And according to the following press release from the Oregon Governor’s office… there is a little “gentlemen’s wager” going on between the Oregon governor and the Mississippi governor.
Governors Kulongoski and Blunt Agree to Gentlemen’s Wager on Sun Bowl
SALEM– Governor Ted Kulongoski and Missouri Governor Matt Blunt will engage in a friendly wager over the outcome of the upcoming football match-up between the Oregon State Beavers and University of Missouri Tigers in the 73rd Annual Brut Sun Bowl.
“Although I may feel a twinge of regret when my alma mater goes down, Governor Blunt has agreed to provide a nice selection of products from Missouri to help me savor our victory,” said Governor Kulongoski, who was raised in Missouri and received his bachelors and law degree from the University of Missouri.
As part of the wager, Governor Blunt has offered Kulongoski a selection of Missouri branded beef, award-winning Missouri wines and an AgriMissouri basket containing Show Me BBQ, Fitz’s Root Beer,blueberry amaretto syrup from Persimmon Hill Gourmet Foods and apple butter from Bekemeier’s Fruit Butters if the Beavers triumph.
In the event of a Tiger victory, Governor Kulongoski has agreed to provide Blunt with a bounty of Oregon goods including a large selection of premium Oregon craft microbrews from the Oregon Brewer’s Guild, three full wheels of globally-recognized Rogue Creamery bleu cheese, and a sampling of fresh Oregon seafood.
“Both teams deserve congratulations for their respective successful seasons and I’m looking forward to an exciting bowl game,” Governor Kulongoski said.
The contest will take place on December 29 in El Paso, Texas.
I love it.. we give beer and cheese. My two favorite things.
For those of you unfamiliar with !!!, let me explain. Commonly pronounced “chk, chk, chk,” the three exclamation marks are meant to stand for any hard, powerful sound repeated three times. With a mix of horns, congas and deep, sexy funk, !!! is one of the most unappreciated bands of this decade. They are strange. They break the rules. They swear, a lot. In multiple languages. But damn, they make you want to move.
There are two live shows that have made me so sweaty I felt like a fat kid running a mile in gym. The Faint in New York and !!! at the WoW hall in Eugene. They only played for 45 minuets. However, no one person seemed to be mad. We were all so tired from dancing that we were ready for a break. What a great experience.
This album has one of my favorite songs from what I can now call “my college days.” ‘Intensify’ is a pounding song. Over seven minutes long and full of nothing but drug references. A sample:
LSD taught me a lot about me. I learned a lot, from smoking pot. Well maybe not, can’t remember what I forgot.
I don’t really identify with anything this band spits out, but thats not the point. This is music to let go to. I once knew a guy who you could swear was high all the time. He was socially awkward, loved ambient music and the first time I met him he had an authentic WWII gas mask on. But this guy loved music, and he loved !!!. He would strap on a bongo drum and dance around his room playing along. This is his music. And you should listen to it too. (By the way, turned out he was in the military and served a couple of times in Iraq. So, he was never high. In fact, he never touched the stuff.)
Okay… recently a friend of mine started a project. It is his goal to phase out all his CDs and have only digital music and vinyl. I really think this is a great project. First, CDs will be a dead media in the next decade. Second, they will never have the same feel or sound as vinyl, so there won’t be that feeling… you know the feeling vinyl gives you. Third, he is going to get all kinds of cash for these things and be able to buy the vinyl version and the digital version. Why not, right.
So, I guess I am a copy cat. But I am too connected to my huge box of CDs. I can’t just sell them. So, I am going to listen to my entire music collection. Cd by CD, record by record, 7″ by 7″. Every digital download. This is going to take hours, weeks, months and perhaps years to do. But thats why it is a project. It will be ongoing.
After I listen to each CD or record, I will try to make/download a digital copy. Then, if the CD has no sentimental value, no huge cash value or anything else like that… to CD exchange I go. With the cash, I will buy vinyl replacements of the albums I like. I will buy digital versions. Or, I will save it. I will be cataloging the whole adventure here, on 7″ of Separation.
I am a nerd.
Anyway, each CD will have a little review to it. An explanation to why I own it. (I’m sure this will be required of some titles.) And, I will let you know what the future is. Hopefully I can also keep track of what I sell and how much I make off of it. This might be harder though.
This is old hat, but I love this video. Hot women singing a hot song. I hope to fashion my girlfriend and two of her friends (Kate and Chelsea) into a new version of this band. So, girls, if your listening… lets talk record deal!
Hot.
I mean it too…
Ell, Kate, Chelsea… look at them… this could be you!
The following is from a mass editorial submission service. I get a few of these each day in my inbox. I disregard most of them. But this one caught my eye.
Dear Editor,
Please consider this Op-Ed submission from the Ayn Rand Institute.
Why Christmas Should Be More Commercial Christmas should celebrate reason, selfishness and capitalism.
By Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Christmas in America is an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalist productivity, and the enjoyment of life. Yet all of these are castigated as “materialistic”; the real meaning of the holiday, we are told, is assorted Nativity tales and altruist injunctions (e.g., love thy neighbor) that no one takes seriously.
In fact, Christmas as we celebrate it today is a 19th-century American invention. The freedom and prosperity of post Civil War America created the happiest nation in history. The result was the desire to celebrate, to revel in the goods and pleasures of life on earth. Christmas (which was not a federal holiday until 1870) became the leading American outlet for this feeling.
Historically, people have always celebrated the winter solstice as the time when the days begin to lengthen, indicating the earth’s return to life. Ancient Romans feasted and reveled during the festival of Saturnalia. Early Christians condemned these Roman celebrations–they were waiting for the end of the world and had only scorn for earthly pleasures. By the fourth century the pagans were worshipping the god of the sun on December 25, and the Christians came to a decision: if you can’t stop ‘em, join ‘em. They claimed (contrary to known fact) that the date was Jesus’ birthday, and usurped the solstice holiday for their Church.
Even after the Christians stole Christmas, they were ambivalent about it. The holiday was inherently a pro-life festival of earthly renewal, but the Christians preached renunciation, sacrifice, and concern for the next world, not this one. As Cotton Mather, an 18th-century clergyman, put it: “Can you in your consciences think that our Holy Savior is honored by mirth? . . . Shall it be said that at the birth of our Savior . . . we take time . . . to do actions that have much more of hell than of heaven in them?”
Then came the major developments of 19th-century capitalism: industrialization, urbanization, the triumph of science–all of it leading to easy transportation, efficient mail delivery, the widespread publishing of books and magazines, new inventions making life comfortable and exciting, and the rise of entrepreneurs who understood that the way to make a profit was to produce something good and sell it to a mass market.
For the first time, the giving of gifts became a major feature of Christmas. Early Christians denounced gift-giving as a Roman practice, and Puritans called it diabolical. But Americans were not to be deterred. Thanks to capitalism, there was enough wealth to make gifts possible, a great productive apparatus to advertise them and make them available cheaply, and a country so content that men wanted to reach out to their friends and express their enjoyment of life. The whole country took with glee to giving gifts on an unprecedented scale.
Santa Claus is a thoroughly American invention. There was a St. Nicholas long ago and a feeble holiday connected with him (on December 5). In 1822, an American named Clement Clarke Moore wrote a poem about a visit from St. Nick. It was Moore (and a few other New Yorkers) who invented St. Nick’s physical appearance and personality, came up with the idea that Santa travels on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, comes down the chimney, stuffs toys in the kids’ stockings, then goes back to the North Pole.
Of course, the Puritans denounced Santa as the Anti-Christ, because he pushed Jesus to the background. Furthermore, Santa implicitly rejected the whole Christian ethics. He did not denounce the rich and demand that they give everything to the poor; on the contrary, he gave gifts to rich and poor children alike. Nor is Santa a champion of Christian mercy or unconditional love. On the contrary, he is for justice–Santa gives only to good children, not to bad ones.
All the best customs of Christmas, from carols to trees to spectacular decorations, have their root in pagan ideas and practices. These customs were greatly amplified by American culture, as the product of reason, science, business, worldliness, and egoism, i.e., the pursuit of happiness.
America’s tragedy is that its intellectual leaders have typically tried to replace happiness with guilt by insisting that the spiritual meaning of Christmas is religion and self-sacrifice for Tiny Tim or his equivalent. But the spiritual must start with recognizing reality. Life requires reason, selfishness, capitalism; that is what Christmas should celebrate–and really, underneath all the pretense, that is what it does celebrate. It is time to take the Christ out of Christmas, and turn the holiday into a guiltlessly egoistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration.
Dr. Leonard Peikoff, who founded the Ayn Rand Institute, is the foremost authority on Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. The Ayn Rand Institute (http://www.aynrand.org/) in Irvine, California promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
I can’t quite tell if Peikoff is serious or he is simply being cute. It might be a mix of both. What I don’t agree with is the notion that no one takes “love thy neighbor” seriously. I take it seriously, and I know quite a few Christians and non-religious types who feel it is a good law to live by. To use history as a grounds for support on how Christmas should be celebrated is a flimsy argument at best. Just because it has been a pagan holiday and many of our traditions are derived from pagan tradition doesn’t mean we should revert.
The civil war was based on the northern-whites fear of the slavery trade destroying their business, and many were as raciest as their southern countrymen. The civil was was over business, not race equity. So, should we take away race equity just because the civil rights movement had beginnings in raciest business concerns? I would hope not.
Just because our traditions have strange beginnings shouldn’t mean we should honor the beginnings. Traditions are fluid, and change with the culture. So, we should remember our traditions, but remain progressive enough to allow them to fluctuate with the times. So, Christmas might have a capitalistic hint to it these days, but we should allow Christian movements to place any meaning they want on Christmas, especially if the meaning brings with it a spirit of good will. Because no matter its beginnings, it is brotherhood and family, giving and kindness that should mark the holidays, not greed, ego and capitalism. The moment we give into these completely is the moment the struggle for our souls is lost.
I watched a documentary last night that really had an effect on me. “The World According to Sesame Street” mainly follows Nadine, a smart, attractive and composed producer for the Bangladeshi version of the show, called Shishimpur. the movie opens as Nadine is ready to travel to Bangladesh to begin production on the show. Only two Americans are involved with the production, the majority of the cast and crew are all Bangladeshi. The show is not simply a dubbed version of the American program. It is in fact a completely new version, complete with its own muppets! The movie is socially relevant and moving, showing how something like Sesame Street can really make a change by taking steps to deprogram the violence and hatred from children abound the world.
This become so clear, and very moving, when the movie detours to Kosovo, where a room of eight producers has nothing but tension. Six of the producers are Albanians, the other two, Serbian. Here they tell American producers that their version of the show needs to be separated for the two ethnic groups, but both sets need to know how to identify a grenade on the ground. Wow! What stands out to me, is these eight people are educated people. However, they still see the need for complete ethnic separation. They have no desire to even try to work on a amalgamated future through the show. As a result, it fails.
But, by the end of the movie, the focus is back on Nadine. And the results make you proud to have grown up on Sesame Street.
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