The Lennon remaster CD's have a specific URL on the back - johnlennon.com/70. That's a sign that you aren't supposed to just go to the official site, but to a specfic part of the site specifically made for the release. Here's what I found after following the URL:
1) The site isn't finished yet.
2) You won't be able to access it at all without having bought one of the bigger box sets or the deluxe edition of the new Greatest Hits disc.
So if you're one to simply buy a few of the albums, the site becomes not an extra level of value, but a paywall, and that link becomes not supplemental, but advertising. The cynicism only adds up.
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
John Lennon Remasters
Slightly more than a year ago, the Beatles album remasters were released. At the time, I felt like I did as a child during Christmas time, actively counting down the days until launch (when I remembered to do so, of course). It was a happy time, but deep down I knew there was a more cynical, capitalist angle to the event. It reminded us that no other band can quite get away as easily with charging premium prices for their material, nor can any other band quite dictate how it will be presented. It is a bit maddening to know that you can't buy the mono remasters as single albums, and even more maddening to know that the Mono box set costs more money for less music. There's no point in asking why any of this is the case. Paul McCartney will Force choke you and answer "Fuck you, that's why" (I say this lovingly). The fact that I was missing about half their discography was reason enough to plunk down, but when I see cranky old timers bitch about having to (or at least being asked to) constantly rebuy old music, I understand where they're coming from.
I can say, however, that my cynicism shield only exists for my favorite band of all time. I know this because I can't muster it for the band member's solo works. This week will mark the 70th birthday of John Lennon, and to celebrate the event, his entire catalog of solo work has been given the same remastering treatment that was used for the Beatles, right down to using the same alternating black/white album spines, and a giant, expensive boxset. I went out and immediately bought two of the records, but I have no strong interest beyond that.
But it's more than a lack of interest. I really feel that heavy air of cynicism around these remasters. This article on the Guardian spells it out perfectly. In short, much of the merchandising and branding of the man runs contrary to what he believed in, or at least, what we tell ourselves he believed in. Additionally, the man was not a saint, and his post Beatles output often fell flat. I've seen some of this material get ripped on with a ferocity that no other rock legend tends to receive, even for their worst work. Solo Lennon can be shitty, just like shitty solo McCartney can be.
What does it mean, then, that there's an entire box set of this thoroughly uneven work? It might mean that some revisionist cobbled up liner note material that tries to put the album Rock 'N Roll in the same Pantheon as Plastic Ono Band (though maybe it isn't so kind?)
What does it mean that there is a new greatest hits CD made for this remastering project? For one, it certainly means that Lennon's solo work isn't considered as sacred as the Beatles catalog, which will probably never see another compilation CD ever again. More importantly, there's already a fantastic hits disc which they could have worked with. The fact that it was left behind shows a greater concern for marketing than on making a definitive compilation.
And hey, there's some other component of the release - a box set compilation, containing CD's that organize the material based on themes, or some vague logic like that. Again, I see this as a lack of confidence. Not many fans will want all the albums, but maybe they want a decent chunk. But maybe that means that even a selection of the full albums isn't quite enough...
What I'm taking away from all of this is reinforcement of a growing feeling of mine, that the public at large has an odd dual relationship with John Lennon. We revere him at the same time we consider him human. We praise his great work with more gusto than we point out his failures. We try to make positives out of the fact that he was frequently an asshole. Maybe people are simply trying to hold on thee ideal they have formed in their minds, since Lennon isn't here to personally reshape their opinions. I think most of us know that we continue to be intrigued by the man at the same time that he frustrates us. Perhaps that alone ensures his infamy.
Look forward to some album reviews, hopefully.
I can say, however, that my cynicism shield only exists for my favorite band of all time. I know this because I can't muster it for the band member's solo works. This week will mark the 70th birthday of John Lennon, and to celebrate the event, his entire catalog of solo work has been given the same remastering treatment that was used for the Beatles, right down to using the same alternating black/white album spines, and a giant, expensive boxset. I went out and immediately bought two of the records, but I have no strong interest beyond that.
But it's more than a lack of interest. I really feel that heavy air of cynicism around these remasters. This article on the Guardian spells it out perfectly. In short, much of the merchandising and branding of the man runs contrary to what he believed in, or at least, what we tell ourselves he believed in. Additionally, the man was not a saint, and his post Beatles output often fell flat. I've seen some of this material get ripped on with a ferocity that no other rock legend tends to receive, even for their worst work. Solo Lennon can be shitty, just like shitty solo McCartney can be.
What does it mean, then, that there's an entire box set of this thoroughly uneven work? It might mean that some revisionist cobbled up liner note material that tries to put the album Rock 'N Roll in the same Pantheon as Plastic Ono Band (though maybe it isn't so kind?)
What does it mean that there is a new greatest hits CD made for this remastering project? For one, it certainly means that Lennon's solo work isn't considered as sacred as the Beatles catalog, which will probably never see another compilation CD ever again. More importantly, there's already a fantastic hits disc which they could have worked with. The fact that it was left behind shows a greater concern for marketing than on making a definitive compilation.
And hey, there's some other component of the release - a box set compilation, containing CD's that organize the material based on themes, or some vague logic like that. Again, I see this as a lack of confidence. Not many fans will want all the albums, but maybe they want a decent chunk. But maybe that means that even a selection of the full albums isn't quite enough...
What I'm taking away from all of this is reinforcement of a growing feeling of mine, that the public at large has an odd dual relationship with John Lennon. We revere him at the same time we consider him human. We praise his great work with more gusto than we point out his failures. We try to make positives out of the fact that he was frequently an asshole. Maybe people are simply trying to hold on thee ideal they have formed in their minds, since Lennon isn't here to personally reshape their opinions. I think most of us know that we continue to be intrigued by the man at the same time that he frustrates us. Perhaps that alone ensures his infamy.
Look forward to some album reviews, hopefully.
Monday, October 04, 2010
Perl
I've spent some time at work finally learning Perl. When I first looked at the language back in college, I was turned off immediately. Now I understand what the problem was, and it is the same reason why the language has such a strong following. Perl's basic features and syntax are safe and straightforward. A Java programmer can look at it and have a decent idea as to what's going on. But Perl is also incredibly flexible. If you want to do something, you can probably do it several different ways. You can make a Perl program easy to read, or fast, or compact - whatever your tastes are as a programmer, the language will accommodate. This is what makes it so well loved, but it can also make it difficult to learn without the proper materials.
I also think there's another, more subtle psychological element to the way Perl works. To me, it strikes a happy middle ground between the various schools of thought about how a language should behave. A few days after writing that last sentence, I came across a Perl book containing the closest thing the language has to a motto: "Simple things should be simple, difficult things should be possible".
I guess I wasn't that far off. I think that is a great way to explain Perl. There is an incredible amount of different ways to use the language, but you don't have to use any of them if you don't want, or more likely, don't need to. And if you want to stick with the basics, there's no penalty. It's refreshing to see a programming language that isn't trying to shove a religion-like belief system down your throat. It can be frustrating to see object oriented languages which are so obsessed with making everything into a class that the simple act of opening a file requires six import statements and a method call that looks like
On the other hand, there are a lot of small, fast functional languages that decide that you need a million data types, each of which uses every brace and bracket on the keyboard for different results. Apparently, it isn't enough to have arrays. You also need lists (also nice), tuples (wtf?), and god knows what else. And if you ever read the documentation for these things, they make it sound as if every exception and difference makes perfect sense. Back in college, my friend Joe and I were frustrated with the fact that every time we asked what a certain concept was in our Hardware Engineering course, the answer was always "oh, it's just a 4-to-1 Mux", as if either of us knew what the hell that was at the time. That's what these "whizbang" little languages remind me of (though to be honest, we should have known what a multiplexer was back then).
There's another great quote from the Perl book, paraphrased here - "you can do just about anything you need with a hash". Amen to that.
PS - the crack at OO Languages above is more due to my time with .NET languages. Say what you will about Java, but it lets you get to core classes very quickly.
I also think there's another, more subtle psychological element to the way Perl works. To me, it strikes a happy middle ground between the various schools of thought about how a language should behave. A few days after writing that last sentence, I came across a Perl book containing the closest thing the language has to a motto: "Simple things should be simple, difficult things should be possible".
I guess I wasn't that far off. I think that is a great way to explain Perl. There is an incredible amount of different ways to use the language, but you don't have to use any of them if you don't want, or more likely, don't need to. And if you want to stick with the basics, there's no penalty. It's refreshing to see a programming language that isn't trying to shove a religion-like belief system down your throat. It can be frustrating to see object oriented languages which are so obsessed with making everything into a class that the simple act of opening a file requires six import statements and a method call that looks like
We.Don't.Want.You.To.Get.Any.Work.Done.FileReader.FileBuffer.LayeredBuffer.LayeredNachos.OpenStream(AndYouThoughtTheArgumentListWouldBeSmall);
On the other hand, there are a lot of small, fast functional languages that decide that you need a million data types, each of which uses every brace and bracket on the keyboard for different results. Apparently, it isn't enough to have arrays. You also need lists (also nice), tuples (wtf?), and god knows what else. And if you ever read the documentation for these things, they make it sound as if every exception and difference makes perfect sense. Back in college, my friend Joe and I were frustrated with the fact that every time we asked what a certain concept was in our Hardware Engineering course, the answer was always "oh, it's just a 4-to-1 Mux", as if either of us knew what the hell that was at the time. That's what these "whizbang" little languages remind me of (though to be honest, we should have known what a multiplexer was back then).
There's another great quote from the Perl book, paraphrased here - "you can do just about anything you need with a hash". Amen to that.
PS - the crack at OO Languages above is more due to my time with .NET languages. Say what you will about Java, but it lets you get to core classes very quickly.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
anime
Today I bought Volume 2 of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Apparently, of the three Best Buys in my area, only one sells enough anime to stock the show in Blu Ray. That's kind of sad, but one store is better than none.
When I got home, I looked up the show's episode count, and did some quick math. At the rate that Funimation is going right now, they can release all of Brotherhood in exactly five volumes. At 44 bucks each on Blu Ray, that's.... ouch. That's a lot.
I've been going back and forth on whether I should keep buying the show on BD. To be honest, it isn't so much the price that gets me. 13 episodes for that much dough is still cheaper than anime in the days of singles releases. I guess what bothers me is that so far, the show hasn't proven that it's worth watching in Hi Def. The fight scenes look gorgeous, but like with so many anime these days, there have been episodes where hardly anyone moves, and so the BD quality feels like a waste. Meanwhile there were a few stories in volume 1 which felt slow and unnecessary, despite the fact that the first fourteen episodes are already a compression of events in the original series. I know it gets better over time, but Fullmetal is one of the only surefire money makers right now, and I figured they'd be more willing to pull out the stops. I want to make this a "one episode per week" show, but that only seems to work with 13 episode series, where every single one has to count.
When I got home, I looked up the show's episode count, and did some quick math. At the rate that Funimation is going right now, they can release all of Brotherhood in exactly five volumes. At 44 bucks each on Blu Ray, that's.... ouch. That's a lot. I've been going back and forth on whether I should keep buying the show on BD. To be honest, it isn't so much the price that gets me. 13 episodes for that much dough is still cheaper than anime in the days of singles releases. I guess what bothers me is that so far, the show hasn't proven that it's worth watching in Hi Def. The fight scenes look gorgeous, but like with so many anime these days, there have been episodes where hardly anyone moves, and so the BD quality feels like a waste. Meanwhile there were a few stories in volume 1 which felt slow and unnecessary, despite the fact that the first fourteen episodes are already a compression of events in the original series. I know it gets better over time, but Fullmetal is one of the only surefire money makers right now, and I figured they'd be more willing to pull out the stops. I want to make this a "one episode per week" show, but that only seems to work with 13 episode series, where every single one has to count.
IE 9
I tried the IE 9 beta out last night. I had trouble thinking of a way to describe it, so I will go with my original, awkward summary - it feels like Microsoft is approaching their consumer oriented web browser the same way they treat their professional products.
See, if you're just a normal computer user, MS doesn't really have to try and sell you on its wares. Chances are you're going to upgrade your computer right around the time that a new version of Windows comes out, in which case they've already got you. Businesses, on the other hand, are trickier. They're going to spend a hell of a lot more, and as a result, they're going to be much more hesitant to update their software on a regular basis. It is up to Microsoft to find ways to get them to do so anyway. They have a few methods, one of which is to make a product work on multiple OS's, but work best on only one. If you want all the new features (and chances are, at least one of them won't be useless), you either pony up, or take what you can get. Sooner or later, your OS of choice won't be supported at all, in which case you will have to move on whether you like it or not. Another classic tactic is to lay a ton of sheen and polish on the surface of a program, but leave the inner workings and menus exactly the same, leading to an aesthetic nightmare and, in some cases, a program that spends too much time with useless, sellable features that it fails to work on the issues which really need addressing.
These tactics pretty much sum up what MS has done with IE9. Take a look:
- It is tightly integrated into Windows 7, with all sorts of features which I haven't yet seen
- It will run on Vista, but without all the same features
- It won't run at all on XP
- The interface is brand new, minimal, and integrated into the look and feel of Aero. Meanwhile, the Internet Options menu is exactly the same as it has been since IE4 or so. Not only does it look old, but it makes you wonder - if IE keeps supporting all these new features on the web, then why are we still configuring a web browser the same way we did in the days of dial up?
MS is using IE to give users the double deuce. It is telling WinXP users that if they're pretty much screwed at this point, while Vista users are going to have to pay for spending money on the company's mistake.
Thank goodness for options.
See, if you're just a normal computer user, MS doesn't really have to try and sell you on its wares. Chances are you're going to upgrade your computer right around the time that a new version of Windows comes out, in which case they've already got you. Businesses, on the other hand, are trickier. They're going to spend a hell of a lot more, and as a result, they're going to be much more hesitant to update their software on a regular basis. It is up to Microsoft to find ways to get them to do so anyway. They have a few methods, one of which is to make a product work on multiple OS's, but work best on only one. If you want all the new features (and chances are, at least one of them won't be useless), you either pony up, or take what you can get. Sooner or later, your OS of choice won't be supported at all, in which case you will have to move on whether you like it or not. Another classic tactic is to lay a ton of sheen and polish on the surface of a program, but leave the inner workings and menus exactly the same, leading to an aesthetic nightmare and, in some cases, a program that spends too much time with useless, sellable features that it fails to work on the issues which really need addressing.
These tactics pretty much sum up what MS has done with IE9. Take a look:
- It is tightly integrated into Windows 7, with all sorts of features which I haven't yet seen
- It will run on Vista, but without all the same features
- It won't run at all on XP
- The interface is brand new, minimal, and integrated into the look and feel of Aero. Meanwhile, the Internet Options menu is exactly the same as it has been since IE4 or so. Not only does it look old, but it makes you wonder - if IE keeps supporting all these new features on the web, then why are we still configuring a web browser the same way we did in the days of dial up?
MS is using IE to give users the double deuce. It is telling WinXP users that if they're pretty much screwed at this point, while Vista users are going to have to pay for spending money on the company's mistake.
Thank goodness for options.
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Kindle reminds me of Kindling
Android phones finally have a version of Amazon's Kindle app. I have been waiting for this for a long time now, though sadly if I hadn't unintentionally found it in the Marketplace last week, I probably still wouldn't know about it.
Now that it's out, the question is whether it is any good, and even still, if it is worth a download. The whole ebook thing never really excited me at first, mostly because they were always discussed in the context of expenseive e-readers, a device which I still consider to be unecessary. I know this comes from the guy who has spent the same amount of money on portable gaming consoles, but at least those are meant to run sophistacted pieces of software. Spending hundreds on a large reading device whose sole selling point is a special screen meant to emulate the look of paper is not, in my mind, quite the same. This was especially true to me after having finally seen a Kindle in the wild, and finding that magic "e ink" technology didn't look all that different than a regular old screen.
Of course, Amazon is smart enough to know that the real money comes not in selling their e-reader, but in getting people to buy their digital books. Which is why they have made a free Kindle app for as many devices as they can. In this context, ebooks start to become a lot more appealing. I still love the feel of a real book, and I enjoy the act of going to the library, but library selections can vary wildly based on your location, and time constraints keep me from doing so as frequently as I would like. At the very least, a Kindle app could serve as a reader program for the hundreds of free classics available online.
This is exactly what I set out to do, and this weekend, I gave the Android version of Kindle a spin. While it certainly isn't' the first reader program on the OS, and also not the first I have tried, I find it so far to be the best. The main screen is pleasant, and makes it easy to find your books (it updates itself whenever it is started, so you don't have to manually refresh). Reading the books themselves is also made intuitive. You tap the sides of the screen in order to change pages (which I suppose is true for all of the different versions of the App), and the responsiveness is perfect. You can also change the size of the text, which I find to have a powerful psychological component. One one hand, I like to zoom it out a bit, so the little cell phone screen contains about as much text as a real paperback. On the other, the default size breaks each page into bite sized chunks that are easy to stay focused on. There's also a silly feature which Amazon has branded as Whispersync - whenever you finish reading, the app uploads your place in the book, so that your spot is synced up on all Kindle fueled devices you own. While I'm glad to know I could switch between my phone and my PC, I don't see myself doing it.
And now for the most important question - is it actually easy to read on a phone screen, or any screen for that matter? Lots of people believe that this isn't the case, and I agree that I struggle to read any good piece of fiction on an LCD monitor (which is why I stopped bothering to use that site that emails you a book chapter every morning). However, cell phones these days have very excellent screens, and so the e-pages jump out at you, and do a good enough job at imitating a page. Furthermore, while phone screens aren't large, they tend to be oriented like an actual book, rather than the mostly widescreen monitors we tend to use on our PCs.
I don't see myself buying tons of ebooks, but so far, I'm glad to have the option.
Now that it's out, the question is whether it is any good, and even still, if it is worth a download. The whole ebook thing never really excited me at first, mostly because they were always discussed in the context of expenseive e-readers, a device which I still consider to be unecessary. I know this comes from the guy who has spent the same amount of money on portable gaming consoles, but at least those are meant to run sophistacted pieces of software. Spending hundreds on a large reading device whose sole selling point is a special screen meant to emulate the look of paper is not, in my mind, quite the same. This was especially true to me after having finally seen a Kindle in the wild, and finding that magic "e ink" technology didn't look all that different than a regular old screen.
Of course, Amazon is smart enough to know that the real money comes not in selling their e-reader, but in getting people to buy their digital books. Which is why they have made a free Kindle app for as many devices as they can. In this context, ebooks start to become a lot more appealing. I still love the feel of a real book, and I enjoy the act of going to the library, but library selections can vary wildly based on your location, and time constraints keep me from doing so as frequently as I would like. At the very least, a Kindle app could serve as a reader program for the hundreds of free classics available online.
This is exactly what I set out to do, and this weekend, I gave the Android version of Kindle a spin. While it certainly isn't' the first reader program on the OS, and also not the first I have tried, I find it so far to be the best. The main screen is pleasant, and makes it easy to find your books (it updates itself whenever it is started, so you don't have to manually refresh). Reading the books themselves is also made intuitive. You tap the sides of the screen in order to change pages (which I suppose is true for all of the different versions of the App), and the responsiveness is perfect. You can also change the size of the text, which I find to have a powerful psychological component. One one hand, I like to zoom it out a bit, so the little cell phone screen contains about as much text as a real paperback. On the other, the default size breaks each page into bite sized chunks that are easy to stay focused on. There's also a silly feature which Amazon has branded as Whispersync - whenever you finish reading, the app uploads your place in the book, so that your spot is synced up on all Kindle fueled devices you own. While I'm glad to know I could switch between my phone and my PC, I don't see myself doing it.
And now for the most important question - is it actually easy to read on a phone screen, or any screen for that matter? Lots of people believe that this isn't the case, and I agree that I struggle to read any good piece of fiction on an LCD monitor (which is why I stopped bothering to use that site that emails you a book chapter every morning). However, cell phones these days have very excellent screens, and so the e-pages jump out at you, and do a good enough job at imitating a page. Furthermore, while phone screens aren't large, they tend to be oriented like an actual book, rather than the mostly widescreen monitors we tend to use on our PCs.
I don't see myself buying tons of ebooks, but so far, I'm glad to have the option.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Comic Timing
I feel like I need to use this blog more for venting. It would probably do me a lot of good. After all, no one's really reading this, right? (hi Joe!) And even so, there are plenty of people with actual fame and notoriety that get away with writing any old crap by claiming "it's just a blog post!" Might as well get away with what I can.
I just wrote a review for the DS game Flower, Sun and Rain for videolamer. It is half critique, half rambling against the entertainment industries of the U.S. and Japan, but I don't think it ended up crossing the line. I have a habit of railing against the games industry when I should be writing about a single game, but FSR is a game by Suda51 and his studio Grasshopper Manufacture. These guys are notorious for making games with deeper commentaries on both game design and society, who have a habit of making these points in games which are themselves faulty in design.
It's the kind of conundrum that I feel like I see all the time these days; something comes out that is either bad, or just partially bad, and someone comes along to tell me that this badness is, in fact, intentional. This leads me to stand there and wonder whether they're being sincere, insecure, or so condition to embrace the modern perception of irony that their response is simply rote. With FSR, I came to the conclusion that there's an honest game somewhere inside, but I know that somewhere, someone is out there who would violently disagree. This doesn't bother me, but as one who strives for honest critiques, it makes me wonder if I'm giving Suda's games the same kind of pass that I yell at others for giving the things that I hate.
In case you're wondering, this all stems from the fact that I was this close to devoting a paragraph of the review in order to make fun of the band Muse. Luckily I punched out at the last minute and avoided this mistake. I'm trying to review a video game. I'm lucky to have anyone reading it in the first place. The last thing I need to do is drive them away by trying to impose my flippant observations on popular music onto them. It would be even worse to do so by pretending to make a clever comparison to the game. There are already too many games writers who make their body of work more about them than the games they cover; the last thing I want to do is make that situation worse.
So instead, I'll take that reference and write about it here. Muse kind of pisses me off. In my mind, they are the kind of band that is trying to get away with pulling off a variety of ideas that, in the year 2010, musicians should have a pretty fair grasp of how to pull off (and in some cases, the ideas are simply stupid, and they should know better than to use them). Yet they go ahead with it anyway, and their fans make plenty sure to give it all a pass. They're a fine example of why I struggle to get into a lot of modern bands, indie or otherwise; I can never tell who the fuck is being sincere, and who is simply lost and confused.
A good example of my frustrations can be found in "Uprising", the opening song of their latest album, "The Resistance". The song has this funky, fairly cheesy disco beat, with lyrics that tell everyone to rise up and fight against evil governments and corporate overlords. The overall tone and lyrical content makes me almost - almost - think that it is a satire on inexperienced, overly delusional people who rail against The Man without truly grasping what The Man is, or how best to stop Him. Yet the Internet has bred a generation of kids who easily eat this shit up, and the theme of the song is also in the name of the entire album. So the fans can tell me that it's meant as a joke - you can tell me anything on the Internet, if you really want - but I don't have to believe it. The fact that the band has been featured on the soundtracks of the Twilight films, which only know how to take themselves seriously, makes it apparent that at least someone in charge of marketing has deemed Muse as needing the serious angle. That's not really damming proof, but it's a bit more concrete than the words of anonymous fans.
But still, even if we were to buy the notion that Muse is cracking a joke, one more question remains; is it a good one? I don't think so. This gets back to another point I made in the FSR review - these days, an entertainer (or their fans) can simply state their intentions, and everyone behaves as if they succeeded in their goals just because they tried. There's still a matter of quality of execution, and in this regard, the Muse song fails. For comparison, look at most Dead Kennedys songs. You can tell that DK isn't interested in killing the poor, and you know that they aren't cops looking to abuse their power. Their lyrics discuss these topics because they're attempting to lash out at certain aspects of society, and this is made crystal clear by both the tone of the music and the vocal delivery. With Muse, I can't immediately tell what side they're trying to push, and if you think about it, the side the fans want you to believe - that this mega popular band, signed to a major label, is mocking the idea of resistance - is actually a more scary alternative than if they were dead serious in their overblown, out of touch protest. In either situation, good taste loses.
To go back to a previous statement, this shit frustrates me because there is no sincerity in it. There's none in the music, or the fan's reaction to it. A band like Muse exists solely to address the interests that gullible kids have been told to enjoy. I guess the only difference between them and pasts bands of this ilk is that arrested development has caused an army of twenty somethings to eat this up at an age when they should probably know better. But this can be a big problem, since these twenty somethings are so afraid to grow up, or even take a stand for what they think, that they muddy the waters of discussion by sewing doubt in the minds of anyone who dares think that the stuff they started getting into in college may not be timeless.
Muse Nation, take it from an ELO fan: like symphonic pop, symphonic rock isn't awesome by default. If you're not using the string section to enhance and improve the rock sound, then kindly get it out of the song. Don't fuck things up because you feel the need to insert some false sense of classiness into your favorite genre, and are too lazy to explore actual classical music.
I just wrote a review for the DS game Flower, Sun and Rain for videolamer. It is half critique, half rambling against the entertainment industries of the U.S. and Japan, but I don't think it ended up crossing the line. I have a habit of railing against the games industry when I should be writing about a single game, but FSR is a game by Suda51 and his studio Grasshopper Manufacture. These guys are notorious for making games with deeper commentaries on both game design and society, who have a habit of making these points in games which are themselves faulty in design.
It's the kind of conundrum that I feel like I see all the time these days; something comes out that is either bad, or just partially bad, and someone comes along to tell me that this badness is, in fact, intentional. This leads me to stand there and wonder whether they're being sincere, insecure, or so condition to embrace the modern perception of irony that their response is simply rote. With FSR, I came to the conclusion that there's an honest game somewhere inside, but I know that somewhere, someone is out there who would violently disagree. This doesn't bother me, but as one who strives for honest critiques, it makes me wonder if I'm giving Suda's games the same kind of pass that I yell at others for giving the things that I hate.
In case you're wondering, this all stems from the fact that I was this close to devoting a paragraph of the review in order to make fun of the band Muse. Luckily I punched out at the last minute and avoided this mistake. I'm trying to review a video game. I'm lucky to have anyone reading it in the first place. The last thing I need to do is drive them away by trying to impose my flippant observations on popular music onto them. It would be even worse to do so by pretending to make a clever comparison to the game. There are already too many games writers who make their body of work more about them than the games they cover; the last thing I want to do is make that situation worse.
So instead, I'll take that reference and write about it here. Muse kind of pisses me off. In my mind, they are the kind of band that is trying to get away with pulling off a variety of ideas that, in the year 2010, musicians should have a pretty fair grasp of how to pull off (and in some cases, the ideas are simply stupid, and they should know better than to use them). Yet they go ahead with it anyway, and their fans make plenty sure to give it all a pass. They're a fine example of why I struggle to get into a lot of modern bands, indie or otherwise; I can never tell who the fuck is being sincere, and who is simply lost and confused. A good example of my frustrations can be found in "Uprising", the opening song of their latest album, "The Resistance". The song has this funky, fairly cheesy disco beat, with lyrics that tell everyone to rise up and fight against evil governments and corporate overlords. The overall tone and lyrical content makes me almost - almost - think that it is a satire on inexperienced, overly delusional people who rail against The Man without truly grasping what The Man is, or how best to stop Him. Yet the Internet has bred a generation of kids who easily eat this shit up, and the theme of the song is also in the name of the entire album. So the fans can tell me that it's meant as a joke - you can tell me anything on the Internet, if you really want - but I don't have to believe it. The fact that the band has been featured on the soundtracks of the Twilight films, which only know how to take themselves seriously, makes it apparent that at least someone in charge of marketing has deemed Muse as needing the serious angle. That's not really damming proof, but it's a bit more concrete than the words of anonymous fans.
But still, even if we were to buy the notion that Muse is cracking a joke, one more question remains; is it a good one? I don't think so. This gets back to another point I made in the FSR review - these days, an entertainer (or their fans) can simply state their intentions, and everyone behaves as if they succeeded in their goals just because they tried. There's still a matter of quality of execution, and in this regard, the Muse song fails. For comparison, look at most Dead Kennedys songs. You can tell that DK isn't interested in killing the poor, and you know that they aren't cops looking to abuse their power. Their lyrics discuss these topics because they're attempting to lash out at certain aspects of society, and this is made crystal clear by both the tone of the music and the vocal delivery. With Muse, I can't immediately tell what side they're trying to push, and if you think about it, the side the fans want you to believe - that this mega popular band, signed to a major label, is mocking the idea of resistance - is actually a more scary alternative than if they were dead serious in their overblown, out of touch protest. In either situation, good taste loses.
To go back to a previous statement, this shit frustrates me because there is no sincerity in it. There's none in the music, or the fan's reaction to it. A band like Muse exists solely to address the interests that gullible kids have been told to enjoy. I guess the only difference between them and pasts bands of this ilk is that arrested development has caused an army of twenty somethings to eat this up at an age when they should probably know better. But this can be a big problem, since these twenty somethings are so afraid to grow up, or even take a stand for what they think, that they muddy the waters of discussion by sewing doubt in the minds of anyone who dares think that the stuff they started getting into in college may not be timeless.
Muse Nation, take it from an ELO fan: like symphonic pop, symphonic rock isn't awesome by default. If you're not using the string section to enhance and improve the rock sound, then kindly get it out of the song. Don't fuck things up because you feel the need to insert some false sense of classiness into your favorite genre, and are too lazy to explore actual classical music.
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