Archive for 2013

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band – Trout Mask Replica (1969)

Trout Mask Replica is the definition of sound as art. It combines free jazz, delta blues, african chant rhymes, avant-garde, and Ginsberg like maniacal (raving hobo) beat-poetry that anticipates rap into this experimental thing called genius. I’m not kidding, Trout Mask Replica is the definition of sound as art.

It’s the definition of hard listening, passively listening to all the intentional off-notes, abrupt stops, collisions, screams, and howls won’t do them justice. And when you’ve completed the strenuous process of paying attention to everything (because you have to), listening to any other album feels like getting off the highway. It’s a very self-aware deconstruction and reconstruction of sound as art. (I dare any musician to try and cover/ replicate any part of the album.)

Amazon reviews for this album are polarized, and hilarious; one review titled ‘Can’t listen to it enough’ says it all for me:

Yes yes yes. It’s cacophonous, it’s gritty, it’s unpleasant. Put it on at a party and watch people Continue Reading →

Aesop Rock – Coffee & Pigs

Personally, I think this is one of the best and most accurate protest songs of my (North American) generation. I’m part of a generation that found Bob Dylan talking of conflicts past, and a generation that found that Gil Scott-Heron’s advice on staying away from the hard drugs and hard streets that came out of the 80s was already street knowledge because we saw what they both did to idols like Huey P. Newton and Tupac (no Depression, no Vietman War, no Civil War, no ‘War on Drugs’, Continue Reading →

I don’t want to change the world, I only want to stop pretending. And to help others stop pretending. And to help others stop pretending by pretending.

This is very very very hard to do, but I will die trying. Yes, trying, because I will fail, I will do and fail; I will stop myself from pretending and start, start others pretending and stop, and fail many times over. It’s a ridiculous life mission, I know, but aren’t they all? Hey, if all roller-coaster rides end with you getting off, I might as well pick the one with the highest ups and downs and pee my pants proudly. I will get off this ride laughing and scared out of my mind. Point and ridicule all you want, my sheepish smile will be as big as Texas.

At any given time, the most dangerous person in the world is the person who has absolutely no doubts about their beliefs.