shakahislop

Well-known member
after writing my previous post i went back to a white stripes live recording, i do think he has a nice and messy way of playing guitar. boring people go on about the vintage recording equipment they use and so on which does nothing for me really, but guitar-wise he plays very loose and its an enjoyably basic set-up, a lot of crunchy fuzz and an octave pedal thing that makes the guitar go up an octave for solos, which is something that you hear a lot in rage against the machine. forgetting about the albums and the media packaging, the live stuff does have something going for it i think, it's not like he's the first person to ever do it, it's a well-worn path by the time the white stripes come around, but i do like the way he plays guitar


this kind of thing
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
americans, is there a certian exoticness that comes with a band being from detriot? always feel that place has a particular symbolic place in the american psyche.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
i met them once, in the camden barfly, did i say that on here before? it was in that short period where you could buy mushrooms in shops. that was a good night. i remember that he was muscular and i shook his hand, he was sweaty.
 

version

Well-known member
But at 17 he was extremely skilled with super fast feet... he chose to go in one direction from there and it's hard to say he was wrong... but at the same time one can't help wondering what might have been...

But I'd agree he never had that poetic beauty in the way he touched the ball that Bergkamp did, I'm not sure Messi does either. If we're talking about pure aesthetic touch in caressing the ball... hmmmm... Bergkamp is one of the all-time greats... who else springs to your mind? I hate to admit it but Henry is up there, um, Zidane is another... Emile Heskey of course, be interested to hear what @version thinks... Iniesta, actually I think the most impossible natural touch I've ever seen is probably Ronaldinho.

Berbatov had an impeccable first touch. Supremely smooth player.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Berbatov had an impeccable first touch. Supremely smooth player.
That's true, but beyond that joyous touch and other related skills that developed and flowed from the same source, he wasn't close to the same level as most of those listed above.
 

version

Well-known member
That's true, but beyond that joyous touch and other related skills that developed and flowed from the same source, he wasn't close to the same level as most of those listed above.

Right, but you said "If we're talking about pure aesthetic touch in caressing the ball...".
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
VP-GRAPHIC-RONALDO-VS-MESSI-v2.jpg
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Right, but you said "If we're talking about pure aesthetic touch in caressing the ball...".
Yeah I did. Just thought it was interesting that he is generally agreed to excel at that without ever bring quite a world class player.
 

sus

Moderator
(23/100) Janelle Monae, “Cold War”



Honorable mention:



C and I met traveling along to our brothers' soccer tournaments. I would normally have preferred to stay home, but you tag along once, there are cute older sisters, girls your age maybe you go again. School is like the panopticon which means out here in the fields feels so free by comparison. Better talk to each other than to the parents or fourth-graders, and endless stretching time to kill. Like how expats abroad are suddenly buddies. Maybe it's a cold and drizzly day, there's a picnic blanket but it's barely big enough for everyone, brings people together. A slightly above average amount of physical contact so it becomes a question mark in both minds.

Texting was such a part of teenage relationships. Even though you're on same campus everyone hangs in different cliques has different classes. Approaching a circle at break is bold—you're making a public approach, intruding on a groupchat. When you're getting to know someone outside the performance stage of the quad, how do you change up the boundaries, the social configurations, the state of relation in public? There's an easing; public knowledge falls behind private status, it has to catch up. The bleeding edge is in the SMS between two shitty fliphones, red-eyed up past lights out parents made me ground my shitty flip phone when they found out, had to put it in a box before bed I was so enraged. Texting under table commit the feel of the keypad to fingertip but the real show's in the face, have to keep the expression natural neutral not like you're in another world, not like you're in another conversation, get busted even if you were just screwed up concentrating. Trying to be adult independent not a child try to learn quick with TV try to break free of your mother's child-image. Keep getting put back into place, humiliated, humbled. Neither of us could drive and it's a suburban i.e. unwalkable town so it was the extremely awkward thing where parents had to drop off and pick you up on dates, you go back to the beach come back with hickies busted humiliated you didn't even know what hickies are you don't even know they are possible but ma knows instantly what they signify. This information disparity persists and haunts you, the repeated rug-pull of thinking you were being subtle, covering the tracks of your development, and realizing you weren't.


(24/100) The Shins, “New Slang”



Honorable mention:



We had our first date at a boba shop, saw some awful movie for our second. We made out on beaches next to creeks under bushes. And it was always a conversation, was that okay am I doing it right I've never done this before. WikiHow's map only goes so far assisting in navigation of the real-life territory. She was Irish Catholic and took communion and I had no idea what communion was but it seemed extreme and almost pagan, the blood and the flesh. She was also shockingly pretty, at the time completely out of my league socially and physiologically, I was in disbelief, she was an angel she was perfect she had no flaws how could I ever deserve her (obviously I loved her) how could I do anything other than fret about the inevitability of my displacement how could I do anything but bring the end about by worrying about the end.

We were on rival club swim teams, she lived not far from her pool, so I hung out over there a bit, fraternized with the enemy. We’d sit on the poolside bleachers, or on a grassy field nearby, and listen to music by passing earbuds. Or we’d take parent-packed brown bag lunches (more weird child/adult blur) up behind the school, sit on an endless stair that wound its way up the mountain face.

“New Slang” had these weird lyrics that always struck me. "Gold teeth and a curse for this town," "Turn me back into the pet," "King of the eyesores," "Dirt in your fries." The only poetry I knew was like, Shakespeare sonnets and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. These lyrics somehow felt more bizarre than Radiohead on singing about heads buzzing like fridges—the cold cyber-dystopianism Tom Yorke was on about I understood, this? I had no idea what these phrases were trying to say about the world, I just liked how the words went together.

I came across “Cello Song” on a compilation album, Dark Was The Night, which I know was important for a lot of people my age. There were the indie acts you were familiar with—Andrew Bird, The National, Grizzly Bear—and those you weren’t, who were even stranger—Dirty Projector, The Books. There were some classic Americana bands, covers of artists like Nick Drake, a ton of collabs, it just had so many pointers out. A single song on that record might point you five different places, turn you on to five new things. “Cello Song” got me into Jose Gonzalez and also The Books and also Nick Drake, who wrote the original. I probably could’ve picked a buncha tracks—“Giant of Illinois,” “Cello Song,” “Deep Blue” sea have all been favorites. “Lua” has that great line which goes (approximately) “The mask I polish in the evening / By the morning looks like shit.”
 

sus

Moderator
(25/100) Radiohead, “Nude”



I started hearing rumors about her hanging with this senior—an actual adult—in the school newspaper club. I was listening to “Nude,” changing out of my swimsuit in the locker when I got the text. The text that comes after a long radio silence, and amounts to “We should talk.” You get a pit in your stomach knowing what’s coming but you aren’t meeting up for a few days, so you have to live like this, on death row. You’re like a dog begging to be put down.

Then when I found out the story I’d gotten was false, that she’d traded up rather than "not being in a place for a 'ship." The teen thing where there’s a boiling vast sea bottled up inside you, and you’re stoic and placid on the outside. You couldn't talk to me or touch me for days. When I found out she’d asked him to the Sadie Hawkins dance. I ended up going as well, remember seeing her across the dance floor with pimply Mr Devirginizer as Rihanna’s “Only Girl In The World” played.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
spendo are you going to throw in the red hot chil(l)i peppers at some point? they'd be great for your meta-project of winding everyone up, which is of course embedded in your other project of talking about your life intertwined with music.

i've been listening to john fruscante and billy corgan do interviews today. the former comes across a nice thoughtful dude and i have to keep reminding myself how bad 99% of the music he's made has been. although i would say he briefly nailed something with guitar playing and guitar tones in the late 90s, popular tastes and his craft coming together for a brief moment.

this archeology of massive 90s and 00s commercial rock bands is fascinating to me in the same way as the killa kella podcasts are. all of these people you could never know anything about, speaking for hours (this fruscante interview is five hours long, it goes in depth), you get to know them a bit and hear what they have to say about what they think they've been doing. that bit of the music industry looks gross, damaging, how could such a thing be created? the humanity of these guys which was obscured by the music media machine comes out, how weak they are in the face of it, billy corgan still seems to be replaying bitter disputes with his bandmates when he was 25, he's still not got over it. fruscante doesn't seem to remotely realize how bad the music he makes is now. but he does seem to genuinely like playing live with his band, all the musiciany stuff, enjoying playing off each other and mixing things up even when he knows full well that the audience just wants to sing along to their favourites, that they don't even notice what he's doing.

it was a totally gross assemblage, the rock music industry when it had money to spend, good riddance, glad that it's dead in the water. no good to anybody, no good came of it.

ps one noticeable thing about these guys and about so many elite figures is the presence of therapy, even if they don't tell you they've done it they blatantly have, it's almost homogenising force in how they express themselves. this definitely doesn't happen in the killa kella podcasts.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
(25/100) Radiohead, “Nude”



I started hearing rumors about her hanging with this senior—an actual adult—in the school newspaper club. I was listening to “Nude,” changing out of my swimsuit in the locker when I got the text. The text that comes after a long radio silence, and amounts to “We should talk.” You get a pit in your stomach knowing what’s coming but you aren’t meeting up for a few days, so you have to live like this, on death row. You’re like a dog begging to be put down.

Then when I found out the story I’d gotten was false, that she’d traded up rather than "not being in a place for a 'ship." The teen thing where there’s a boiling vast sea bottled up inside you, and you’re stoic and placid on the outside. You couldn't talk to me or touch me for days. When I found out she’d asked him to the Sadie Hawkins dance. I ended up going as well, remember seeing her across the dance floor with pimply Mr Devirginizer as Rihanna’s “Only Girl In The World” played.
that's the thing isn't it with radiohead. it's an admission of weakness dressed up, that's what everyone gets out of it
 
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sus

Moderator
Never liked RHCP but a girlfriend did so they may get a cameo.

I think re rock money glut, this happens a lot, more attention can be quite damaging, there's a sweet spot for making good art.
 

sus

Moderator
Through a tremendous piece of serendipity I have stumbled upon THE breakup song, after having forgotten all about it nearly a decade, and seeing it for the first time since my teens in the wild



This is what my insides were like this is what it was like to be in my heady. Completely sappy sad romantic emptying, the last tones of a bell ceasing to ring. The wind whistles melodies of mourning through tree branches. A whisper in an echoing canyon. The simultaneous smallness and hugeness of the song's affect, of my conscious experience, how totalizing it felt and how little that added up to in the grand scale of the world. "This is where the glass leaves the lens / Ocean and the sky callin' me in / Because I drift outta nowhere."
 
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