godthedog

jay-z's canonization as the biggest/best name in hip-hop has always had much more to do with his self-promotional skill and the public buying it than his actual output. he knows when he's working hard & when he's coasting, puts out the bare minimum amount of greatness to get by as 'great', and makes sure everybody remembers the great stuff & forgets the crap . he's got one of the worst signal-to-noise ratios of anyone i know in the musical canon, and i'm still pissed that he tricked me into buying 'vol. 2'. somebody should do an album-for-album standoff between him and nas. the results might be interesting.

the instrumentals on 'pet sounds' are really boring and lame.

top 5 90s albums i can think of: 1. lucinda williams - car wheels on a gravel road 2. massive attack - mezzanine 3. blur - parklife 4. outkast - aquemini 5. liz phair - exile in guyville in the order i thought of them.

the second one, yes. the first one, not so much.

'blonde on blonde' is certainly the only double rock album i can think of that doesn't have diversity of sound as one of its explicitly stated goals. lots of 12-bar blues, instrumentation is by and large the same throughout (with the only standout being "rainy day women #12 & 35"), dylan himself has a range of maybe 2 possible stylistic vocal choices (soft gruff balladeering or loud sing-song), all produced & mixed in more or less the same way. not really a criticism, and makes the album all the more remarkable for not relying on any of those tricks. dylan is the only one who could get away with doing something like that, except maybe neil young. i can't imagine how boring it would be listening to the white album or 'sign o' the times' with all the instruments on every song being the same, sung in the same way. speaking of remarkable in its monotony, i recently sat down and listened to 'the freewheelin' all the way through for the first time in a while. amazing. i think his later work tends to overshadow how right he had it from that early. his learning curve wasn't very steep.

so i've never heard ray charles's original version of "i believe to my soul," but after hearing 3 white guy covers of it that all worked (van morrison, the animals, & elliot yamin on 'american idol'), i'm convinced it's a great song anyway. and, 7 months ago, my girlfriend bought me a copy of the new cat power album on vinyl to show me that she loves me, even though she despises cat power. but i can't put it on my ipod, and i can only listen to it in the house when she's not around. which is never. so i've only been able to listen to my own birthday present twice.

what was this?

may i ask, aside from the debut, what has wu-tang as a group done to warrant being called one of the best hip-hop acts ever? i'm not saying the rest of their catalog sucks, cause i don't know it all that well, but somebody make a case for it.

'the w' is a good idea for a cover. it would be better if it didn't look like it was designed in 30 seconds on a really cheap computer graphics program.

i cannot in my heart of hearts call that a good episode. something about it was just...messy. it seemed more like a soap opera than anything else. now, in addition to wondering what's going to happen next with michael & jan and with jim & pam or toby & pam or roy & pam, you get to wonder what's going to happen next with dwight & angela and jim & what's-her-name. it's way too much going on, and it's too many storylines to worry about keeping straight & using screen time for, and the whole show just comes off as forced and inorganic. i'm starting to worry that they've written themselves into a corner with office romances, and it's becoming a crutch for lazy writing. so far they've spent almost as much time this season raising questions about relationships as they did all of last season. the second season was incredibly deft at putting little tensions & conflicts into the jim/pam thing without really making it go anywhere, and we were given enough surprises in the michael/jan thing without being beaten over the head with it. i haven't seen any of that deftness this season so far. i don't tune into 'the office' to find out about who likes who, i want funny situations and good jokes. romances which don't directly result in funny situations and good jokes should not be hijacking the show. the only thing that saved it was creed.

'the bends'. bought it in 95, listened to it for about 6 months, and for some reason none of the songs other than "street spirit" really clicked with me. sold it off, then gave it another shot about 6 years later, and jesus reveals to me all their songwriting prowess and solid guitarwork in an instant.

'after the gold rush' is my least favorite. though i attribute that to only owning it on vinyl and almost never breaking it out for a listen. there's also something about putting those CSNY-type harmonies into almost every song that just bothers me.

five favorite neil young albums i own: 1. tonight's the night 2. sleeps with angels 3. everybody knows this is nowhere 4. harvest 5. rust never sleeps this is not the best list, since i only own like 6 of his albums.

Wow, this show got dark real quick. Lots of keeping people unhappy, jokes that make you as uncomfortable as the characters, and general bleakness (those few extra references to Dunder Mifflin's dire financial straits go a long way). Felt like this episode tried harder than any of the others to be like the original, with the tone and the willingness to pull the rug out from under its characters. Some of the show just felt weird and awkward (especially the flashback), but that was bound to happen trying to tie up so many loose ends in one show. Overall I liked it a lot, but they're walking a fine line on the importance of Jim/Pam (I'm hoping it doesn't take over the entire structure of the show and give us another "Ross and Rachel" type thing).

saying "the murder mystery" is better than "new age" is like saying "revolution 9" is better than "eleanor rigby." well, really not quite, cause "eleanor rigby" is way better than "new age" and "the murder mystery" is better than "revolution 9." but it still is sort of like that.

r.e.m. has had some good moments here & there after bill berry left. "daysleeper" is a really good song. "at my most beautiful" is understated and nice. there was also the unplugged concert they did in...2001 i think, which was awesome and had the best version of "south central rain" i've ever heard.

it's time to face facts, people: pam is boring. she's kind of a wet noodle, and can't match his dynamism.

not bad. you may want to consider some revisions, particularly the references to tiresius. i understand what you're going for, but it feels a little too cozy and "connect-the-dots."

what he said.

i grew up in augusta. that's a terrible place for an ECW pay-per-view.

sam cooke's 'live at the harlem square club' is the best live album i've ever heard in my life.

'let it be' is just sort of an above-average album. a lot of the songwriting just sucks. 'let it bleed' was the weakest of the stones' godlike 4-album run--doesn't have the unified awesome sound of beggars or the riffs of 'sticky fingers', but still damn fine work.

115th dream is filler. dylan did way funnier than that. also wouldn't quite call maggie's farm great.

saw it last weekend. it's pretty god damn bad. after a certain point, you could really feel him stretching for ways to put tension in the story & fill the running time. i swear for something like 20 minutes, in what's supposed to be the big set-up for the climax, the only thing that happens is "oh, we read the signs wrong, it should be like this," and they go back and fix it. and then it happens again. and then it happens again. also, baldy acknowledging your characters are only there to serve the plot in a clever way is still no excuse to not write good characters. it's a sneaky way of evading criticism and avoiding the problem of making the audience actually give a shit. audiences want the material to be smarter than them, but not in that stupid smarky kind of way. a real writer proves he's smarter than his audience by actually OUTSMARTING them, not giving away the formula he's using, play-by-play, as he's using it. i already know the rules, i know shyamalan knows the rules, i don't give a shit, and i don't pay to listen to him tell me about how much he knows them.

i feel this way about the electric set of the royal albert hall show. "tell me momma" is the only one i can stand repeat listens of. everything else puts me to sleep.