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tris mccall - 2006-12-15 17:15:13
see i thought i went way too easy this year, especially compared to last year, when i was just twisting the knife and laughing all weekend as i wrote it. i usually use these to blow off a little steam, and it turned out i didn't have any steam to blow. i guess for the first time ever i really felt like the pop artist could be on the ropes -- not because of digital downloading, but because of emerging options for file delivery and the growth of "music-intelligence" algorythms as a means of determining what gets played on the radio. it all made me kinda sad, which isn't the frame of mind you want to be in when you write these things. but -- it's a tradition!
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Bina - 2006-12-15 22:56:28
Thank you for making me feel like I wasn't insane for liking Fergie's London Bridge.
There's an amazing single by DJ Khaled, Paul Wall, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Fat Joe and Pitbull called Holla At Me. You should check it out.
Any thoughts on Robbie Williams?
Finally, your paragraph on the Middle East crisis was....interesting, to say the least.
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Greg - 2006-12-16 06:41:57
re London Bridge: Yaaaay that makes TWO! I do dig Pitbull though, despite the misguided anti-Castro stuff he can get into--but that's so common. Cuban-Americans really need to read the history of this imagined Eden they're so desperate to get back to and spill other peoples' blood on. Tris--I agree wholeheartedly about the anti-semitism running roughshod through the so-called enlightened left. It's vulgar, misguided and plain ignorant. That said, your New Jersey/Israel analogy left out the part about New Jersey adhering to over 50 years of seriously inhumane and utterly failed policy with regards to it's neighbors. The conservative party in Israel is their own worst enemy. The IDF has become largely rogue privateers plundering and raping up and down and across the borders. American and British news outlets also give a very lopsided view of what's going on there. Even Haaretz out of Tel Aviv reports of massive Israeli protests against the aggression, and that many Israelis there feel that they are held hostage by their own government. I'd also be willing to argue or arm wrestle over this but not on Paula's blog, so if you like: [email protected].
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Greg - 2006-12-16 07:09:46
On a pop music thing--They Arctic Monkeys hype was about as huge and weird as such things can ever get. I like the album just fine--a purchase I don't regret at all, but holy crap, how can any band ever live up to that kind of hype? That said, nobody does snotty, cynical and disaffected like English kids! On Matisyahu--putting his ethnic background aside, because I've heard as bad and even worse from Jamaicans and especially English-Jamaicans i.e. Sean Paul--Matisyahu just plain sucks. Agree on Christina Aguilera--the girl has a set of pipes so it's a damn shame that like so many others in her "genre" she just oversings on EVERYTHING she does.
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tris mccall - 2006-12-16 09:00:17
i love robbie williams. and i *loved* "holla at me"! got damn that cut is great. i actually bump "grammy family" more that it might have seemed from what i wrote. i have a huge soft spot for consequence that might just be nostalgia talking.
matisyahu comment: i guess i could have extended the analogy. new jersey has had over 50 years of utterly failed government, too, but still manages to be pretty great. i am no fan of olmert or the idf, and i am more than down with the israelis who protested the war in lebanon. if i had been in tel aviv this summer, i am sure i would have been right there with them. i was reacting to... well, you know what i was reacting to. lots of my friends from springfield and livingston took some serious shit this year, and felt like they couldn't talk back. well you know me, i never hold my tongue. that one was for them.
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Bina - 2006-12-16 10:03:17
I love Robbie Williams too, so his latest album "Rudebox" is... a disappoitnment. I LOVED Rudebox and play it almost every day when I work out, but the rest of the album... ugh.
Gwen Stefani: ANOTHER DISAPPOINTMENT. WTF. Seriously.
I'll never get El Mariel here, but I can dream... Get down, hit tha floor!
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Greg - 2006-12-16 10:56:13
The left has definitely had a moral failing over the years in several areas--anti-semitism being their most egregious offense. Nat Hentoff wrote some scathing essays about it after 9/11 when outrageously stupid rumors about Israel being behind the WTC attack were being considered credible. The hard left has lacked credibility in their stances on religious freedom and gay rights also--the ACP in particular has been absolutely catholic in their dogma.
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2fs - 2006-12-17 02:07:47
Yeah, Tris: there were some pretty brilliant or at least thoughtful moments on there this year. Consider it a major accomplishment when you can compel someone to read 10,397 words mostly about songs he neither knows nor cares about...
Paula? Who's she? I think she left hours ago...
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Greg - 2006-12-17 19:55:49
I really liked the first Strokes album and thought the second was a snore--lacking the energy and urgency and fun of the first. Seemed like something good should come out of the band a some point because they did have the "right idea" at first.
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