The Holtonian

Musical thoughts

Tonight we went out to the Las Mas, las margaritas. Good mexican food at a decent price. Chatty has one thing down, mexican food. I mean its not San Antonio by any means but hey, its pretty good. Las Mas, Taco Bell, and that Taco shack next to the chicken processing plant, we got some good places. Oddly enough I didn't drink anything... there, I did buy a BL on the way home and drank a few at the Roe's.

Not much happening, work's good.

I plan on mowing this weekend again. This week was a one two punch for grass growing it rained at night and was sunny most of the day. So the grass grew back intensely fast.

Man summer's fastly going by. Its intense. Before I know it I'll be watching my little Obscene Gene go down the aisle in Contitecticuted.

I started Zelda Windwaker on a gaming dork note. I'm not too into it. My attention span for games isn't what it used to be. I need a game that is easy to pick up and down, Zelda's one where you play in four hour timespans.. which tends to get me in trouble with the wizife.

I'm in a real CD buying craving thing now, though lack of financial funds keeps me from doing anything about it. I wish Itunes had AC DC on it... but alas no such luck. A few CDs/bands I'm wanting to get cds of are as follows:

Blink 182... yes I know they're sort of lame highschool rock, but i like that genre. Granted they hacked the Green Day sound abit, but their songs have a more comical edge to them and kind of remind me a bit of the Ramones.

White Stripes... alas i have zero of their albums though I borrowed one from Crabb. I need to get the new one too.

Beck's Guero... I downloaded the Gameboy variations but I want the real thing and am really into the album though never listened to the whole thing.

There's a few U2 songs i want off their complete u2 thing on itunes though don't want to pay for the whole thing. They're of course ones you can't buy individually. Paying 150 for all those songs when i already own most of them is rediculous.

Sufjan (Which for the longest time I thought was spelled SURFJAN)was pretty cool, roe Ipoded it up here tuesday night and I must say I liked it a lot.

Also I want the new Ryan Adams stuff and the new Coldplay despite everyone's beefs about the mediocrity of it.

Here's my thing: I'm a fan of bands first, then music. I can like a band's worst CD because its the band I like first, i like what they try to convey, i like their ethos or their theme, i like their tone and even though their CD might be subpar it could still ring true to the tone, theme, or whatever they portray. Coldplay's new one sticks to the same theme and tone of their others but its more of the same, which is a valid complaint. But its not too terrible, its just nothing new under the sun. So I kind of like it the more I hear it but I realize its pretty much a rehash of what they've already accomplished.

The same can be said for Ryan Adams, some of his lesser popular cds are some of my favorites because i like the tone. I like Love is Hell 1/2 because I think it builds on a lot of the themes and tone of Gold and Demolition. The new stuff is good too from what I tunes has showed me in its 30 second clips. This is why I like Pop and or All You Can't Leave Behind (which one of these is probably your least favorite U2 album) but i like both because they both convey something U2 is trying to sell you on. I think its something that there is more to this life than the surface. I think that's one thing U2 has stuck with, in the 90s they went about it in a cynical way that sort of mocked materialism and popularism (in a lot of ways they mocked their own popularity), and now they just overtly sort of "preach" against superficiality and meaninglessness... at least that's what I get a lot out of it, a desire to search for more meaning in life.

So that's my thing, so don't get too frusterated when I say i like Joe Blow's New CD even though the entire world thinks it sucks. It might suck but if I like Joe Blow i might just like the CD a lot.

Another example of this is Jason Harrod's new CD. Its not my cup of tea, not my style, i like his old stuff better. But I'm a fan of him and what his music portrays and sings about. Which his new CD maintains the themes of his earlier stuff just produces it in a form different from what we're used to from him. So I like the album even though its entirely different than his prior ones and in a lot of ways and in some parts I just really don't like the melody/music but I love the lyrics and theme of the song. I'd really love it if he could make an entire CD that flowed well and carried a consistent theme/story from begining to end. A lot of his CDs seem to be a collection of songs that go together theme wise but don't sort of fit musically sometimes. I want a song to end and then roll into the next and not miss a beat almost. A constant flow of melody and lyrics, that'd be really cool, though really hard.

Posted by holtonian at July 14, 2005 11:17 PM | TrackBack