Kablammo!

OK, fuck this shit. Computer go bye-bye now. See you on the other side, maybe. Or possibly still on the same side, but a step or two along the way back.

Oh look, Kablammo! is alive again, and with yet another blogging-system to boot. Enjoy! If all goes well (or even if it doesn’t) there’s a good chance I’ll update this shit more often.

OK, the 3000+ spam comments I’ve received in the past few weeks have made me decide that this will be the final entry of Kablammo!, at least as it appears in this incarnation.

It’s not like anybody reads this anyway, and it’s not like I’ve been updating it either, so it’s no big loss. I promise that I’ll fully intend to replace this movabletype installation with some kind of functional equivalent, one with less fucking comment spam. I hope you’re happy, “Online Poker” and “Vioxx Prescriptions”.

Anyway, the real reason I started writing this update was to announce that I’m a fucking idiot and an embarrassment to nerdkind. A week ago I had two opportunities to illegally record concerts by CMX, a Finnish band I particularly enjoy the music of. I saw them two nights in a row, and they were kind enough to play the exact same set list both nights, as if they were telling me “Come on! Your bootleg didn’t come out last night, but tonight you have a fresh opportunity!”

Of course, for both attempts I left the Automatic Gain Control of my iRiver h140 set to ‘Off’, resulting in absolutely unlistenable crap. (To give you a better idea of what I consider ‘unlistenable crap’, I enjoy the music of Guitar Wolf.) Just pure noise, and Roland asking me where the bathrooms were during a quiet part.

You’d think that, after one failed attempt, I’d have changed some recording settings at random or (God forbid!) run a couple of tests of recording loud stuff with different settings. I mean, Ring the FM was obviously right out.

It was an awesome weekend anyway, despite the fact that it was terrible and terribly awkward for some other reasons, but you don’t care, because you’re not even reading this, you’re just an automated program employed to send a bunch of junk data and advertisements to my cgi scripts. Asshole.

An open letter to Romania:

Dear Romania,

I recently began bearing all kinds of ill will towards you for no other reason than the existence of the song ‘Dragostea Din Tei’, an unfairly catchy and annoying song by the Romanian artist Haiducii.

I would like to formally apologize for judging you solely on the basis of the shitty europop you have produced. I just heard a few songs from the album Cantafabule by Transsylvania Phoenix, and all is forgiven. Romania, you kick ass.

Yours truly.

Song of the Moment: «Invocatie» — [Transsylvania] Phoenix

So people have been complaining that I don’t update this thing as often as I used to. Fine, bastards. Here’s your update. For what it’s worth, Kablammo!’s recent hiatus kind of bit me in the ass, as evinced by the following picture (henceforth referred to as ‘Prosecution Exhibit 1’):

Anyway, the word of the past few weeks has been ‘loppasuu’ (as misspelled in a previous entry), as in the sentence “Kaikki suomalaiset ovat loppasuita”. Speaking of Finnish, today was a rather exhausting day, as my Wednesdays are wont to be. Eight hours of classes — with three different languages of instruction — are kind of draining. Especially when I’ve had maybe two good nights of sleep in the past fourteen.

For your pleasure (and since Lunarpages increased my disk quota), today’s entry will be a spectacular multimedia extravaganza. First comes a selection of random images from the past few weeks, then comes a big surprise (sssh, it’s a secret).

I’d have uploaded more (and better) pictures, but Movable Type is complaining. Oh well badly.

Perhaps you’ve gotten accustomed to my customary ‘Song of the Moment’ schtick at the end of every entry. Perhaps you’ve even begun looking forward to it. If so, boy do I ever have a treat for you. It’s been a while since my last SotM, and I’ve been exposed to a large (and, perhaps, unhealthy) amount of new music since then. Without further ado, and in no particular order,

Songs of Recent Moments:

• «Unchained» — Love Psychedelico
• «Life Goes On» — Love Psychedelico
• «Toxic» — Vanilla Ninja
• «Celine Attendue» — M
• «Sex Accordeon et Alcool» — Java
• «Goodbye» — Kemopetrol
• «Hypno Eyes» — Kemopetrol
• «Ainomieli» — CMX
• «Kätketty kukka» — CMX
• «Hiljaisuuteen» — CMX
• last, but not etc., «Take Your Love and Shove It» — Joe Pesci

OK, so the Black Eyed Peas have been quite busy in recent months, promoting such things as the NBA Finals and the Democratic National Convention with their “Let’s Get Retarded” song, which has been carefully modified to make it less ‘objectionable’ and more ‘rousing’. I can live with that.

Today, though, I saw the Raveonettes and “That Great Love Sound” pimping K-Mart. Nothing wrong with that either — hey, I love the song — but it’s interesting to see these previously-obscure songs on TV a few short months after they were on a mix CD I made. Coincidence? That same CD also featured Outkast and “Hey Ya!”

If I ever hear Tomte’s “Schreit den Namen meiner Mutter” or my own “Everything” in a commercial, I’ll know something is very wrong with the world, and that I need to be extra careful about what I put on mixes from then on.

No doubt I’ll end up making and distributing a few CDs consisting entirely of Guitar Wolf and Thee Michelle Gun Elephant, just for the hope of being able to hear some Japanese noise-rock on the tube. Mmm.

In other news, I leave on August 22 for parts unknown Estonia. For a year. Should be interesting. We’ll be in touch.

Song of the Moment: «Let’s Get Hurt» — Guitar Wolf

Before I begin in earnest, I’d like to quote somebody, if I may:

The cause of America is, in a great measure, the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all lovers of mankind are affected, and in the event of which, their affections are interested. The laying a country desolate with fire and sword, declaring war against the natural rights of all mankind, and extirpating the defenders thereof from the face of the earth, is the concern of every man to whom nature hath given the power of feeling; of which class, regardless of party censure, is

The author.

The author, of course, is Thomas Paine, and the passage above is from the introduction to Common Sense. I can’t help feeling that his writing is just as relevant today as it was on Valentine’s Day, 1776. Back when he was inciting insurgents into insurrection against their imperial overlords, America was the underdog. Have we lost our way?

Perhaps, but that’s not really what I feel like writing about right now. What I do feel like writing about is the asshole who rear-ended me on I-95 earlier today. I don’t wanna say whiplash just yet, cuz that’s a little too far, but good thing he was insured. For what it’s worth, I’ve now been involved in the fucking up of both the front and the rear of my mother’s automobile. God damnit.

So anyway, the day after we missed the first half of the Violent Femmes concert in DC, they played a free show at Baltimore’s annual Artscape festival thingy. So it was all good, and I even managed to record 80 minutes worth of their show on Saturday. I ran out of space before they got to the encore and rocked out with “Kiss Off”, but it’s all good.

Speaking of which, Spitesto turned out fairly anticlimactic, tho it was still well worth attending.

Song of the Moment: «Me and Jesus Don’t Talk Anymore» — Beulah

For one thing, it seems I’ve now taken and passed enough courses that I’ve satisfied Cooper‘s credit requirements for a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering. Now I just have to make sure the Office of Admissions and Records becomes aware of that fact, so I can get a stupid-looking, poorly designed piece of paper attesting to it. I can then use that piece of paper to replace the one saying ‘hey you still owe us some classes motherfucker’ that’s currently in the diplomaholder I got at commencement.

In other news, however, I was at CBGB (& Omfug) tonight, watching Shamra playing their set, when I made some interesting observations about this week in music. Well, this week in music as it affects me.

See, last Saturday I saw Suspyre, a “progressive metal / neo-classical” band, playing at Red Rock, a showcase of local bands playing in the firehouse of some shitty Podunk village in Hunterdon County. Tonight, as mentioned above, I saw a rock-type band with an album playing at a highly respectable club. This Friday, God willing, I’ll be seeing the Violent Femmes, a platinum-selling (and minimalistic) group, playing at the 9:30 Club, an ‘actual’ venue.

It’ll be interesting to compare the trends in recognition and sound for these bands. Last weekend I saw some guys playing basically for their family and friends, and the family and friends of the guys in the other bands. These guys also happened to be completely electrified, their two guitarists trying to outduel each other in the most flamboyantly homoerotic ways possible, and their drummer whacking his choice of about 15 different cymbals he had set up as part of his kit. Tonight I saw a band playing for their friends, acquaintances, and fans, as well as for the kind of people who go to well-respected rock’n’roll clubs on a Tuesday night. For every Telecaster or other electric guitar they used, they had 1.5 acoustic guitars in use (note: there was only one electric guitar), and the drummer had a pretty standard drumset set up. Next weekend, I’ll see some guys playing for a bunch of fans, some of them casual, some of them rabid, some of them younger than the band’s first singles. The band themselves? Three guys, three drums, acoustic bass. What more could you ask for?

PS. Happy Bastille Day.

Song of the Moment: «Cop Killer» — Body Count

It might be spring break, but the inch of snow and slush on the ground really doesn’t make it feel like springtime. So in stead of doing anything productive, and also in stead of writing anything meaningful here, and to placate those few of you who have been telling me to update, I will now proceed to regale you with fanciful tales of the music I’ve been listening to recently.

• «Hot on the Heels of Love» — Throbbing Gristle
  Techno at its simplest, most minimalistic, earliest, and best. It revels in its pounding monotony, and you should too, since this song is far catchier than it has any right to be.
• «Down to the Waterline» — Dire Straits
  There’s a certain magical quality to the guitar work on Dire Straits’s long-playing self-titled debut album, as Rich’s fascination with «Sultans of Swing» attests. The interplay between the rhythm and lead parts is downright magical, and nowhere moreso than in «Down to the Waterline», the initial track. The album opens with a bit of noodling by the lead guitar, when suddenly the drums kick in, the lead part sounds like it has found a purpose in life, and the immaculately flanged rhythm guitar enters the right channel. Magic is made.
• «a passing feeling» — the thermals
  Allow me to quote:

  memory wise
  memory flies
  memory rarely satisfies
  the past tense
  tense and bleeding

  They sure fucking said it. And it helps that the words go along with a great song, too. In any other context, or done by most any other band, this would be a frantic and fast-paced song, but coming as it does near the end of the irrepressibly intense more parts per million EP, it feels almost gentle and soothing compared to balls-out rockers like «goddamn the light» and «i know the pattern». (The key word, of course, is ‘almost’.)

• «Sing It Again» — Beck
  This song has been earmarked for a reserved space on the ultimate “So You Just Survived a Global Thermonuclear War” mix CD. If it can’t help you cope with being one of the last inhabitants of an uninhabitable Wasteland, then nothing can. It also goes quite handily with that last drink you take at 5 in the morning.
• «What Is the Light?» — The Flaming Lips
  Combined with the two tracks immediately following it, «The Observer» and «Waitin’ for a Superman», this song forms one of the best sequences of consecutive songs on any album in recent history. The song, the sequence, and the album (the phenomenal The Soft Bulletin) all contain carefully balanced measures of crushing sadness, plaintive hopefulness, and guarded exuberance. It’s a beautiful effect, and it makes for beautiful songs, like this one for example. Wayne Coyne sings his poor little heart out, and you can’t help but be moved.
• «Metsik Häda» — Kuldne Trio
  Europop meets «Hava Nagila» and everyone’s a winner! Why should the Jews be the only ones to enjoy this song?
• «The Late Great Libido» — Menomena
  I am incapable of saying enough good things about this song, so I won’t even really put forth more than a token effort. I wouldn’t know where or how to begin, really. Please just trust me when I say it’s a fine piece of work, and worth listening to repeatedly.

Song of the Moment: «Fall in a River» — Badly Drawn Boy

So it’s come to this, has it? USB knives and pedal-powered masturbation machines? At least I have these rap chips to keep myself satisfied.

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, it seems my chum Paul has come under fire recently, drawing the ire of PETA and other organizations that are equally adorable and cute in their naïveté and lack of even a single clue. But don’t take my word for it.

What you should take my word for, of course, is this. Tell me what you think, regarding both content and presentation thereof.

Song of the Moment: «The Late Great Libido» — Menomena