Last Thursday, I went to an on-campus student pub for the first time since (I believe) 1994. Furthermore, it was my first time in a "student" club environment (def: place where one hears the kinds of music featured on the "Frosh" compilations, but not much else) since perhaps 1997. No, I haven't been a bedroom-only listener all these years, but I did realize early on in my adulthood that I wouldn't be able to hear "You Shook Me All Night Long" every night without going slowly insane, so I found infinitely cooler places to go dancing. The point here is that I'm quite out of touch with the music that today's young university minds want to hear when they go dancing. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that they dance to the SAME songs I did.

Not the same types of music, the SAME SONGS. Has student pub life really been in a holding pattern since 1993? Some of this is easily explained, starting with the 80's revival. When I was a teenager it was relatively contemporary music, but anyone born post-1980 or so (too young to remember it the first time around) has still grown up with many 1980's staples. What about the continuing popularity of "Groove is in the Heart" and "Jump Around"? I liked those songs at the time, but certainly didn't consider them so timeless that they'd still be crowd faves with a group of 20 year olds a decade later. But what about "Every Little Step" and "The Right Stuff"? Excuse me?

My gut tells me that "club music" and "radio/home music" are more segregated now than they were ten years ago. In 1993, you'd hear Nirvana and Pearl Jam at the student events but people also owned those records and listened to them at home and on the radio. Today, people like hearing 80's music and 90's hits like the aforementioned while in the clubs, but few people seriously listen to that stuff at home. Nobody's going to these clubs and hearing stuff that's going to change their life. The life-changing obsession important music is heard at home. This is also the case (unfortunately) with many people who go to house and techno clubs.

However, there is no way to explain the positive reaction to the damned NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK. Kitsch ... ironic ... silly ... whatever -- NO EXCUSE.

You can preview five tracks from Spiritualized's "Amazing Grace" through the NME web site.

"This Little Life of Mine". A wild, chaotic sprawl of squealing guitars. If this is representative of the "garage" sound of the album that's been written about in all the press releases, then the album will be a revisitation of their "Electric Mainline e.p." period, with a bit of "White Light/White Heat" thrown in to bump up the psychotic edge.

"She Kissed Me". Yep. This album is "Electric Mainline" + "I Heard Her Call My Name" = "Spacemen 3 Presents Lo-Fi Versions of Hi-Fi Rock Classics". It's "The Twelve Steps" recorded on cheap equipment. This stuff is so far removed from the 492 piece choirs and orchestras of their last two albums. I doubt that anyone who joined on as a casual fan with "Ladies and Gentlemen" will be able to tolerate this stuff.

"Never Goin' Back". Spiritualized have made a career out of finding creative ways to perform their studio symphonies on a stage in a concert hall near you. That aspect of their career will take a hiatus with this album. Most aspiring garage bands could perform this stuff after an afternoon's rehearsal.

"Lord Let It Rain On Me". Because it wouldn't be a Jason-penned album without the religion/sex/drugs ambiguous triumvirate. "Finally" there's a proper singalong track on this album preview. I say "finally" because ten years and three Spritualized albums produced no true singalong material before breaking the streak with a full album of campfire blues classic done Wagner/Spector style ("Let it Come Down"). So I can hardly say the band was failing by not churning them out this time. Anyhow, this certainly seems like a straight gospel lyric, but don't be fooled, it normally takes a few weeks to figure out the drug references in a Jason (or Sonic!) song. Too busy listening to the music, you know, because the songs aren't usually singalongs and all that. By the way, this track is so awesome I have to listen to it twice in a row.

"Cheapster". Wait a minute, let me get back to you in a few minutes, I lost this Spiritualized link and put on "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" by mistake. Just hold on ... oh ... what? ... what do you mean there's no CD in the player ... this IS Spiritualized?? OK, back to the review then. Uh, the organ, the rockabilly flashbacks, the big big big chorus. You want this.

I can't finalise my opinions based on only five tracks, but thus far I'd say believe the hype -- it's a Spiritualized album that captures the energy of their live shows, was recorded simply and cheaply compared to their previous efforts, and ressembles a Spacemen 3 or Stooges record far more than it ressembles anything Jason's done in the last five years. But will you like it? Hmm ... do you like Spacemen 3 and the Stooges? Do you mind the lack of an orchestra with your rock and roll? Did you like "White Light/White Heat" better than "Coney Island Baby"? Do you prefer early 70's Bowie to early 80's Bowie? Did you prefer the acoustic version of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus" (not Johnny Cash's version) to the second section of the Quad Mix of "Enjoy the Silence"? Do you feel that Ron Trent's "Altered States" is one of the finest pieces of electronic music ever to emerge from Chicago? If you answered "yes" to all these questions, then you will want to hear this album.

I guess the real fun will be predicting what the reviews will look like. Will it be ---

"Finally, at long last, Spiritualized have ditched the high fidelity prog rock pretentiousness of their last two records and have recorded a whackload of songs that really ROCK. Jason Pierce is talented enough to know when he's missing the boat and letting his bloated ELO tendencies overcome his garage rock origins. The primal rock and roll crunch of current UK media darlings The White Stripes just might be that boat, because in the two year interregnum between "Let it Come Down" and "Amazing Grace", underground garage rock went overground, the urban grit of New York and Detroit are once again the epicentres of pop music inspiration, and Spiritualized were left playing antiquated yuppie music. Miles from being another "Avalon" for the post-Britpop generation, "Amazing Grace" is a mighty return to form".

or

"Sometimes it's better to leave old hat alone. Like the car adverts depicting boring (and bored) adult working stiffs looking to rediscover their vibrant younger selves by driving a sleeker car, Spiritualized have fallen flat on their faces while trying to catch up with the new sounds of the MTV2 three chord rock generation. You'd think that a guy with the stoner rock credentials of a Jason Pierce would know that there's more to a White Stripes record than some simple chords and smattering of 'tude. The spark, the swagger, and the magic are all missing, and as much as Jason would like to try on a Jack White coat of many colours and transform himself and his band into underground hipsters, it just isn't happening here on "Amazing Grace". How our mighty former heroes fall! First it was Damon Albarn's sad attempt to revive Blur's credibility by swiping African grooves for "Think Tank". Dress it up however you like, Damon, but at the end of the day it's just the same snobby drunken upper-middle class Brits playing bongo drums to try to look cool and fit in with a younger crowd. "Amazing Grace" is a similar cry for attention from a fanbase that has already long packed up for the next Yeah Yeah Yeahs tour and doesn't care about Spiritualized anymore. Don't buy this record, just wait for the real thing when the new Strokes record comes out".

You decide.

I've read review after review of Tricky's "Vulnerable", and they all seem to go like this: "Bleh, a mediocre effort from Tricky, watch out for those cover versions. It's really too bad, since Tricky's such a singular talent and "Maxinquaye" was the most bloody brilliant awesome album maybe ever, I wonder if he'll ever regain that form?"

I never understood the "Maxinquaye" fetish. Actually, I never understood the entire Bristol fetish. The Big Three were good, even bordering on great, but I couldn't get behind the deification movement. I think my love for beats peaks at 130 bpm, and falls off logarithmically in both directions. For that claustrophobic feel, I lean toward isolationist ambient, it was true then and it still is. Aphex's "SAW II" : listen and learn. Nevertheless, the Bristol legacy is a strong one, even though it is oft-ignored these days. Everyone remembers the mid-90's as the years of Britpop, but "Maxinquaye" earned Album of the Year (1995) in *both* NME and Melody Maker, and Portishead's "Dummy" earned top honours in MM for 1994. [side note: "Maxinquaye" actually tied with "Different Class" for the top spot in MM, but they *were* the better mag then, you know] [side note #2: everyone remembers 1989 as the year of the Roses + Mondays, but NME picked De La Soul's "3 Feet High and Rising" for Album of the Year, and MM picked The Cure's "Disintigration". Once in a while, when reading the scores of contemporary Madchester reminiscences, remind yourself of this ironic tidbit. I always do. But British music was so kick-ass after 1989, it earned the right to be inward-looking, ego-centric, and to rewrite history a smidgen]

I thought Tricky's most interesting period was "Angels with Dirty Faces". He bowled me over at Lollapalooza 1997 with his intensity. The rock instruments, mantra-beats, and vocal work not unlike that of a possessed preacher were the last things I expected from Tricky. I figured he'd pigeonholed himself into a world of ganja and armageddon ramblings. Suddenly, it was a new world of speed and wildman rantings against record companies. He'd finally captured the rage he'd hinted at with his cover of "Black Steel", and his newfound mobilities from more active drugs had given him the volition to get all good and pissed off about stuff. Critics complained that the album was musically primitive, not even a chord change to imply he'd run through a cursory songwriting process. That's certainly a valid reason to dislike the album. But mantras must be built through a minimalist construction. And I enjoy a dose of minimalism with my paranoia (SAW II, yet again)!

I caught the final eight minutes of "Canadian Idol" last night, and I'm going to pass some judgements based on this brief viewing experience. I saw Ryan Malcolm's performance, the judges evaluations of him, and the ten second clips of the other contestants songs. Normally, I'd be silly to make conclusions based on such meagre exposure, but a) the time I spent watching each prospective Idol is longer than most of their careers will be (hey, what ever happened to Sugar Jones anyway?), b) if you can't make a good first impression in the pop music game in less than ten seconds, you shouldn't play the game to begin with.

First off, I have to say that the Ryan Seacrest clone and the judges are pathetic in that they are CLEARLY trying to play the equivalent roles of their counterparts on American Idol, right down to the haircuts and personalities.

-- Jenny "Oh my, I wish I was Kimberly Locke" Gear. Don't try emulating a third place contestant, you'll end up in third place just like her.

-- Gary Beals. Boy, don't try to be so white. It's OK to sing a white song, Ruben sang them all the time but kept them grounded in his own style. Same went for Clay. "Unchained Melody" is easily one of the top five whitest songs ever written, but that's still no excuse. (brainstorming the rest of the top five: The Power of Love (Air Supply, Celine, Jennifer Rush), How Much for That Doggie in the Window, Saturday Night (Whigfield or Bay City Rollers, take your pick), Theme from 1988 Calgary Olympics. How many David Foster songs have been on Canadian Idol so far, anyway? For any Americans reading this, David Foster is the Canadian equivalent of Diane Warren. Honourable mention goes to Pat Boone's cover of "Tutti Frutti", which wasn't eligible since it's a Little Richard Song. As a consolation, Pat Boone would easily make the top five list of the whitest singers ever to live, along with Rick Astley, Joey McIntyre, Ira Kaplan, and of course, Michael Jackson).

-- Audrey de Montigny. And here's the Carmen Rasmussen of the competition. She should easily win based on looks alone. However, if they continue to stick her with cutie-pie sexpot tunes like Mariah Carey's "Dreamlover" then maybe she's a darkhorse. But they'll probably embarrass her by making her do Sass Jordan's high register "Don't Rush Me", and then Sass will embarrass herself by trying to diplomatically say Audrey's performance sucked in 482 poorly phrased ways.

[damn, "Don't Rush Me" was Taylor Dayne. What WERE Sass Jordan's hits, anyway? Hmmm? Oh yeah, "Tell Somebody". The point still holds, either song would cause Audrey to embarrass herself. None of this matters now, because I'm correcting my factual mistake on Sept. 9, and she's been eliminated]

Seriously, what's with the hard-on these shows have with making everyone sing in a variety of different styles? How many styles does Geri Halliwell carry well? Or Britney Spears? Their careers were doing OK, last I checked. Sure, Carmen butchered "Love Will Lead You Back", but 95% of female pop stars wouldn't have done any better.

-- Billy Klippert. Paul Tracy doesn't look like a pop star. Dyed hair or not, neither do you.

-- Toya Alexis. Great voice. Will probably win.

-- Ryan Malcolm. He can sing (albeit in a style reminscent of doing karaoke to Clay Aiken songs), and has the natural charisma to pull off the pop star thing, but dude, you're GOING BALD. I hate to be so blunt, being a guy in his 20's myself, but you don't see any balding pop stars in the charts, do you?

I was introduced to a new word a few weeks ago. It was in an article in Exclaim! several weeks back. I'd heard the word previously, but hadn't understood the meaning. The word was "blog".

Huh? Ever been in a conversation with somebody, and they said a word you'd never heard before? Probably. You may have paused to ask for a clarification, or you may have tried to infer the meaning using the rest of the sentence. Well, I'd received emails from people commenting on (what they called) my "blog", and I took the latter action. Except obviously I hadn't considered the meaning of the word. I knew what documents were being referred to, but I essentially ignored the word itself. I even scanned through the Exclaim! issue in question without noticing what the article was actually about.

I checked the web pages of the bloggers mentioned in the Exclaim! piece, and continued following a trail of links from those pages. Incredible -- here were zillions of other writers updating their web pages with regular thoughts, brainstorms, and rants. Just like me. Is this what Columbus felt like? OK, bad example, I'm not out to steal people's web space and unwittingly infect them with my dastardly European diseases. Is this what it was like to work behind the Iron Curtain? Damn, that's another bad example, my own ignorance has kept me in the dark all this time. No greater power ever cut me off from half of the world. Anyhow, I was QUITE surprised. More so, I assumed a coat of restrained arrogance as I scrolled through the archives of the blogosphere and couldn't find anyone who'd been, uh, blogging for as long as I have. Could it be ... was I the original blogger? A tech pioneer? Holy crap, would THAT be ironic -- I don't even own a computer! I've always been technologically behind the times. I didn't get a CD player until 1994! An email address until 1996!! A cell phone until 2001!!! More particularly, I didn't even feel a person NEEDED those things until I got them, became utterly dependent on them, and understood that they weren't just luxury items and technotoys for showing off to friends. And yet inexplicably, me, a class A upholder of technological stasis, I'd pioneered the next wave of online journalism ...

Clearly it was time to do a bit more research, so I googled "blog history" and was pointed toward Rebecca Blood's article , written in September 2000. The first blogs were primarily web filters. The blogger (in the course of his or her normal web surfing activities) would compile (and regularly update) a list of links to the web sites they found most interesting, and include a commentary along with each link. In effect, Joe Websurfer didn't need to search the entire web, because like-minded bloggers had already pre-surfed the web and identified the best content. For instance, two of my last three diary entries follow this format (as does this entry).

With the release of software such as Pita and Blogger (summer 1999), there was a shift away from the web-links format toward an online journal format. This also necessitated a shift in terminology. A blog (circa early 1999) meant a series of filter-based entries as I described it. Now, a blog is a web page containing regularly posted diary entries. These days, a blog has no specific purpose, filtering or otherwise. The format and content are completely open-ended. They develop according to the discretion and imagination of the author.

As for my pedigree as a pioneer ... Blood states there were 23 blogs at the start of 1999 and many thousands when her article was written. I'm obviously somewhere in line between the few and the few thousand. But as a music-only blogger, I'm fairly certain that I can take my spot far closer to the few than the few thousand.

Does it matter? Who's on first? Who cares? Well, I do. In truth, I don't care too much about being first or 50th or 500050th. What matters more to me is thinking up -- independently -- a cool idea for my web page and coming to understand that lots of others think it's a cool idea as well. Maybe I am bragging a little bit because I came up with the idea all by my lonesome, but you can only brag so much about being ignorant to what other people have already thought up. If I'd known about blogs in the late fall of 1999 then I could have concocted a title less awkward and adolescent than "Diary of Musical Thoughts". It's a title I never liked but couldn't think of anything better.

Unfortunately, scientists nearly always can't settle for the "independent discovery" argument. Being first is the main thing. But for a guy who had a good idea while working outside his field of expertise, I did all right.

While I was away, eye magazine managed to sneak in this article about Asshole Chic -- Toronto indie record stores are apparently soaking in it. First of all, you do have a choice if you're an indie music fan in Toronto. You don't have to directly deal with anyone if you don't want to. I rarely do. No offense to any of the nice people who work in these stores, but most of the time I'm not there on a pleasure trip. Music buying for me is quite often a business trip. I know what I'm looking for and I know where to find it. Surgical strike completed, I pay and I'm gone. Even if I'm just browsing, I want to be alone while doing so. I won't take the time to stop and chat. And guess what? Just as sometimes I don't want to talk with the staff, I wouldn't expect them to always want to talk with me. Does this coldness make me an asshole too? Am I so far into my own introspective Asshole Chic that it makes me an unpleasant presence in their stores? I highly doubt it. So, is there a double standard here? If the consumers are assholes, then it's OK because the customer is paying the money, wants his or her money's worth, wants quality, the customer is always right. If the staff are assholes, then it's not OK because being an asshole isn't OK. Huh?

I've never experienced firsthand dissing via Asshole Chic. Not one time ever. I'd chalk it up to my taste in music being impeccable and impervious to such scorn, but then I'd be guilty of asshole chic and that's not what I'm trying to do here. I'm not saying it doesn't happen because I've seen it happen to others, and I've also seen the insults start flying once the customer left the store, so I've no reason to assume this hasn't happened with me too. But why should I care? Do I need the curiousity or approval from the cool kids (the staff "clique") to feel good about my purchases? This isn't junior high, I've got no interest in getting nods of consent from the cooler kids who sit at the lunchroom tables at the front of the caf. If you want to buy Dump's album of Prince covers, then BUY IT and if the staff think it sucks, screw them. They just have a funny way of showing their displeasure with records they don't like. They work in a record store, you know.

As an addendum, I'd note that attitude is everywhere. It's in bars, restaurants, and office buildings. Wading through bureaucratic crap at universities is so entrenched, it's practically part of the education you receive while attending the institution. But the attitudes at these places aren't Asshole Chic. They're just assholes.

Over the weekend, I realized what SFA's "Juxtapozed With U" is about. Maybe I've merely realized the obvious (two years later) but I'd never read anything explaining the song's meaning beyond vague notions of class struggle or resentment of the rich and powerful. First off, in post-Pulp Britain (and to a far lesser extent, post-Pulp Britpop) there is no need to write about either class struggles or the pressures of fame. Jarvis covered these subjects perfectly, and there isn't anything left to be said (musically) about these issues for another five to ten years. That's why a) bands have turned to writing simple love songs, a la Coldplay; b) bands with a political eye have turned toward more global issues, a la Coldplay. And don't feed me a post-9/11 "everyone is paranoid and concerned about world issues argument", Britain stopped becoming introverted a long long time before that. The record company mega-mergers of 1997-1999 saw to that.

To sum up : Jarvis is a god and nobody writes about class struggle anymore.

Furthermore, I wouldn't want to hear a Super Furries song about class struggle or any other complex political issue, inasmuch as it's best for the world that SFA's lyrics remain vague, fun, and about magic scissors and poisonous cockroaches. However, they are certainly entitled to write about firsthand personal experiences, as is any writer in any artistic genre. Thus, their opinion on their band's move from Creation to Sony is welcomed. The first lines of the song "It's easy when you know how // To get along without Biff! Bang! Pow!" didn't make sense to me until I read David Cavanaugh's "The Creation Records Story" -- Biff! Bang! Pow! was the name of Alan McGee's band in the early days of Creation. So the story goes, as Creation goes down, the wierd, wacky, Welsh and proudly indie SFA sign with a major label (i.e. the "juxtapozition" (sic) in the song's title), and everybody gets along because the band is smart enough to "tolerate all those people that you hate". Sure, acting this way is a wee bit phony, but like the song says, it's easy when you know how.

As for the song, if the 70's/80's revivalists would make music like this ...

And if my interpretation is completely wrong, who cares? It was so much fun trying to figure it all out.

Chris Dahlen's Pitchfork Media article about Instant Live was a total Eureka read for me, a mixture of "why didn't I think of that idea?" astonishment and "how could I hate a mega-media conglomerate when they answer my dreams like this?" joyous restraint. The basic premise is this: watch the show, and buy its CD-R "bootleg" on your way out. Clear Channel launched this service in the spring, and hopefully it spreads beyond its home base of Boston (and to Canada?) sooner rather than later. Dahlen's one nagging concern is that owning the live recording might ruin the mystique behind a great show. I think that's a valid concern, but the reward of owning a memorable concert recording far outweighs the (much smaller) risk of discovering that it sucked after all.

I've been down this road before. I own several bootlegs from shows I've attended, and in only one case does the recording not do justice to my good memories. That show is Depeche Mode at Kingswood Music Theatre in June 1994. The audience was completely losing it, partly due to an amplified hysteria effect brought on by packing 10 000 people into an intimate space (for its capacity), and partly because any DM show up to and including that summer '94 tour was the best place in the world to scream like a little girl. DM didn't tour for four years following, and all their fans developed a collective maturity and stopped letting loose at their shows, stopped cheering for Dave Gahan's every tiny mannerism, stopped wearing black clothes and leather bondage gear, etc. Say what you will about Gahan cleaning up, Martin Gore cutting his hair and settling down, Fletch recovering his sanity off the road -- these things are obviously positive steps for the band as people -- but their shows were more fun when they and their fans were all fucked up. That's not a nice thing to say, but people, music is fantasy. Anyhow, the bootleg revealed a band that was trying hard, but didn't have much left in their bodies after a year of touring. Dave's voice was course, brutal, and husky. He sounds sick, and he was. His vices were no secret at the time, but precisely how bad the band was doing didn't become widely known until much later.

The show is sometimes fun to listen to, but remembering it in my mind is a lot more fun, not to mention a more vivid depiction of how enjoyable it actually was. I can't let the disappointment of the recording ruin that for me.