Wrong

you'll be free, child, once you've died
free from the shackles of language and measurable time
and then we can trade places, play musical graves

I "learned" in AP Lit that repetition adds emphasis to poetry. What a steaming pile of bullshit. Maybe it holds true if your words are so pathetic that they need to be said over and over again to be remembered, but actual poets are good at perfectly stringing words together into the most delicately perfect structures. "Repetition adds emphasis and develops a poem." Fuck off, you're wrong.

External Link

I don't like the URL I gave this blog, really.

This is a substantially more reliable source of my regular musical musings for those who are interested.

I'll likely return to this blog in the future, but for now, I recommend following the non-linear path of online reading.

To Null

I know nobody's going to read this, but I figured, like most activities in my life, I'd pursue them no matter how futile they might seem to be. I obviously haven't been updating this blog lately, but I have still been reviewing albums here and there. Most of them can be found here but a number of them are in an unreleased list.

Stop

To every single musical ensemble ever in existence:

Incorporating several genres and styles into your sound does not make you a great band. Making great music makes you a great band. In reality, every group can trace their style to any number of roots an influences and listing your influences does not make you cool. Nor does it make you anywhere near as unique as you think you are, for that matter. Saying you incorporate the sound of '70s prog rock groups does not make your band more any more progressive than the next group, especially if you can't list your influences past Yes, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, and Metallica. I'm sick and tired of bands that, while advertising themselves, first say things like "yeah, we mix a lot of styles," "we incorporate everything from hip-hop to folk in our sound," and doing things like listing hundreds of band on their "sounds like" section on their myspace. Seriously, if you can honestly say that Between The Buried And Me as an influence but play pop, you need to take a step back. Genre-bending sounds really unique and original, but its been done before, and quite possibly been done to death.

Of Song Lengths

I'm ashamed to admit that the length of a song is something that ultimately affects what music I listen to. I know it shouldn't, but "I'm only human," and it does. I believe the root is found in my old Dream Theater fanboy self. I learned of all these elements of "progressive" music from Dream Theater members talking about their own group. They'd either make reference to Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, which isn't even a song, or they would claim that the average Dream Theater song is about 10 minutes long, which isn't the case. Its 7:33; yes, I did calculate it, and yes, I'm ashamed to admit it. This perception is one I'm trying to lose, but one that doesn't want to be lost. I owned Close To The Edge for months before listening to it. I somehow got the idea what a title track of 18 minutes is too good for my ears, so I put off listening to the album at all, which turned out to be a mistake. I initially looked up on The Decemberists because they wrote some long songs, like The Crane Wife and The Island. I looked down up bubblegum-era Beatles because their songs were always 2 minutes and something long. I didn't bother listening to Frank Sinatra because he just sang 3-minute pop songs, which, being 3 minutes long, were inferior to 10-minute prog epics. And somehow Death Cab For Cutie didn't contribute anything to music because they wrote shorter songs. Only when I got past that fact did I learn that quality and song length aren't remarkably correlated.

The only time I listen to music without knowing the length of the song is while watching concert DVDs, which is what brought me here. I watched Joe Satriani's Live In San Francisco DVD and one of the highlights was a bass solo from Stu Hamm that I remember as being well-developed and fun. What I didn't learn until skimming YouTube today was that it is more than 6 minutes long. It didn't seem that long while watching it without knowing the length. My interest didn't waiver and I didn't ever think "wow, this guy has been playing forever" or "this part is too repetitive." When I came across it on YouTube, I realized that if I hadn't already seen it, I would have noticed the 6:04 timestamp and skipped it. Unaware that it had multiple parts to it and was actually decent, I let something from my past self prevent me from enjoying music that interests me.

Linings of Silver, Clouds of Black

So a week or two ago, Mike Portnoy released the title, album artwork, tracklisting, and release date of Dream Theater's tenth studio album.  My immediate reaction was of minor excitement, but held no characteristics of euphoria, orgasm, or fanboyism, which I'm quite proud of.  A few more months of not being a fanboy and I hope to add Dream Theater to a weekly rotation of my favorite artists without relapsing into my close-minded past.

I'm really looking forward to hearing their next studio effort, as it may be a do-or-die album for me with the band.  Save their debut and their attempt at being a pop band, their discography gets weaker with each album, chronologically.  Mike's fascination with Systematic Chaos compared with how I saw it, his sudden burst of interest in metal, the quality of the Chaos In Motion DVD, being signed on a label with commercial metal bands, and the general direction of the band lately make me wonder if Dream Theater is slowly dying off.

I'm still hoping for a Death Magnetic, and I mean that as an analogy for their old style, not a dominance of metal elements.

Compositions & Classics

Tonight I saw Al Naylor and a rhythm section he brought together play an hour set here in town.  It made me realize why they think more live jazz needs to be played in Cedar Rapids.

Combo: 

John Shultz - Piano

Dave Tiede - Drums

Gary Palmer - Bass

The setlist was comprised of jazz standards and Al Naylor compositions, with a tasty mix of bluesy and upbeat tunes:

Blue Boppin' at the Saint

Take The "A" Train

Teach Me Tonight

Little Proxy

Summertime

Politely

Blue Monk

The band was tight all through the night, if you'll pardon the rhyme.  The piano player and drummer both found ways to use a lot of notes in a very musical manner.  The combo did a fantastic job of interacting with the soloist-whoever he may have been.  The flow of the gig showed not only preparation but decades and decades under each players' belt (save the dummer, who looked to be in his 20s).  Everybody's playing was amazing.  The drummer was changing it up and adding bits and pieces here and there.  The bassist's style was very fluent and he used the upper range of the instrument with no intonation issues.  The piano player had some serious chops and completed the ensemble.  Al made sounds come out of his horn that I didn't think trumpets could make.  New horn in hand, his phrases were very clean, be it fast or slow.  There were some solos that were absolutely sublime and its a real shame that these guys struggle to make a living in a day where the shittiest of musicians can make millions in a night.