The End.

Yesterday, 31DEC2013: Silent scream – Slayer

Today, 01JAN2014: Absolutely cuckoo – The Magnetic Fields

This is where i will leave it, and i guess it’s two appropriate songs to leave on. Though do i wish i could have filled the conspicuous absence of any Minutemen, Sleater-Kinney or Fugazi songs before i had finished. My three favourite bands (even though they’ve held that title unrevised for nearly fifteen years now) and not a single song by them in the four and a half years i’ve been throwing this crap out into the internet ether. It began as a writing exercise and it fulfilled that, and once upon a time and on occasion i wrote some ok stuff. But that ok stuff has been a rare thing recently and mostly i just wish i was doing something else. I’m a terribly slow writer and writing these would often take more hours (yeah.. hours…) than they were worth. I’m sure i won’t do anything better with my new free time but at least i’ll have it. If you somehow have stumbled upon this thing over the years searching for Lorde and LMFAO mp3’s or if you know me and have been following in secret, thanks for reading my out of touch, squeezing blood from a stone, quantifiably wrong music opinions. I’m sorry i will no longer be able to tell you which 80’s J-pop group i’m now in love with. My favourite album of last years was the Joanna Gruesome one. The best movie was Stray Dogs except i haven’t seen it yet. Prayers for life improvement in the coming year are welcome. Thank you.

Ghosts Of War

Ghosts of war – Slayer

My first Slayer album was a taped copy of South of Heaven flowing over to the second side, with Metallica’s Jump in the Fire single making up the leftover time. It was an elder brother of a friend’s copy, gathering dust with others in a box in their garage long after he had left home, and, it was decided, long after he had left the person he was who had any use for a Slayer tape. That’s kind of assumptive, selfish and cruel looking back on it, but what else are ten year old kids but assumptive, selfish and cruel? I haven’t heard anything about him looking for it or the NWA, Iron Maiden, REM, De La Soul, and other tape staples of the suburbs we divvied up between us.

And i played the hell out of it, especially in the car which i still can’t believe my mum let me. And then one day i heard Reign in Blood and Hell Awaits and it didn’t sound so great anymore. In an instant it was obsolete, like Metallica songs strapped to the end of a Slayer tape, and so i myself confined it to gathering dust in a tape box. The cycle continues, and i’m waiting for some snot nose to raid my mum’s garage and steal it. But some songs still stick with me. This one mostly, and mostly i think because it is fast. It is probably another album due for me to reconsider with adult ears, because maybe, just maybe, there are other pleasures in metal besides it being played as fast as possible.

Blurred Lines

Blurred lines – Robin Thicke

I’m late to the party on this but that’s because i only heard it for the first time last night. I’m not sure which of the two parties that seem to have developed around it i’m actually late to, but i’m leaning more on the outrage party because if i’m going to form any opinion of it, let it fall as far away from considering its musical merit as possible because lord it is such a boring song. And gross. A kneejerk revulsion led me to a search last night for commiserative internet opinion i found more than enough, written months ago and by more intelligent people than i, to make me not add to it. It’s gross, fantasy camp male power fun and i can’t believe the world, whether against or for its grossness, has offered any time to the greasy 36 year old wanting to live it out.

I just want to forget about it. Like i said i knew nothing of it until last night (though if i had paid attention i would have joined a few dots over the year and figured he was the guy also on stage during that Cyrus thing [and who escaped without a fraction of the censure]) and what a bliss that was. I know a lot of people can’t escape it and to simply be a productive, functioning social human being in this day puts you in the line of so much crap – crap one’s continuance in society demands if not an opinion of then some internalising, consumptive response to – but it’s a wonderful world away from all that. That’s one upside to being a shut in.

Roam

Roam – The B-52’s

Is it time for me to reconsider the post-Ricky Wilson B-52’s? A lot is palpably missing, but the two most perfectly matching voices to ever be paired in music remain, and they’re still that wonderfully singular band in the overwhelming muck of the music industry. The B-52’s as a band working past an incredibly tragic event and creating, while not a patch on their earlier stuff, still an OK album and their biggest commercial success. I should actually listen to it more rather than resting my experience of it based on this song and that other one coming at me at social places i’d rather not be.

Song About An Angel

Song about an angel – Sunny Day Real Estate

Shameful admission time, but i carry only three Sunny Day Real Estate Songs in my heart and those are the first three off of Diary. I’m not sure why. I don’t own the record, only borrowed it from a friend numerous times when i was younger. For some reason, though, nothing stuck with me after this song and i just listened to Seven, In Circles and this over and over again. I’m sure i was just being young and dumb, but that young and dumbness has carried on to today and i have no idea what made me think these three are enough nor what i’ve made myself miss out on; if it’s really that much of a massive drop i’ve made it out to be all these years. The opening three mean so much to me so why, even if they were lesser songs, would i just choose to neglect everything beyond that? I guess i won’t find out until i see my friend again (when?!), or buy my own copy. Then i can call myself an idiot.

Loveblind

Loveblind – Secret Shine

A dream put this song in my head. I was back in high school but the age i am now, and i hear from my maths class a band rehearsing it in the music room. Through no small amount of desperation – desperation i had enough of then, but has accumulated to unbearably unused amounts now – i run out of class to find this band and this unknown kin of mine they are. Of course they’re young and beautiful, well-dressed and affluent, but they were at my school (ten years later) and they had been affected by Secret Shine enough to replicate them and speak the exigency of their youths through it. What could i do in front of them but a thing possible only in dreams and dance requisitely as hard as this song means to me? All the while i was thinking why they didn’t ask me to join their band.

Well that was my dream. There’s a lot of ugliness here: Jealousy and spite towards youth who haven’t wasted theirs yet, regression back to high school, the want for all this, the want to be noticed, dancing just to prove a point that this music affects ugly, old me just as them. It’s boring to say, and i’m sure it happens to everyone, but i think my time has passed. I’m hulled in, invisible, ineffective, and everything i believe i might have to offer the world is hulled in with me. How can people tell you’re a decent person if your ability to communicate that you are – in any way from verbally, qualifications, appearance, other sellable qualities – is completely non-existent?

I’ve decided i’m giving this up in the new year. I have to change my routine, and i haven’t written anything good in years. If it’s to give up to try and be more effective in the real world or to better disappear from both worlds, we’ll see. At least i’ll spend less time on the internet. I’m very depressed. To chronic levels, if i’m ever to believe i can actually admit that. To write it doesn’t seem like the admission it should but i don’t think i will ever do anything more. What do you do? Friends, call me. People, like me. Jobs, hire me. Life, work out. World, stop seeming like not the place for me. Hair, come back. Me, try for once. Try in the face of every crippling thing, imagined and not, that says you can’t. Or just disappear. This is a great song.

Christmas Eve: Koi suru fortune cookie – AKB48

Christmas Day: Merry X’mas for you – Onyanko Club

Finally, an actual Christmas song falls on Christmas Day. It’s probably not that worth celebrating. We listened to it while opening presents because i’m a huge bully and it’s the only Christmas record i own apart from the Phil Spector one. Credibility lies with that over this, but i’m too far below credibility to be any other way.

Would I Lie To You?

Would i lie to you? – Charles & Eddie

I haven’t posted for the last couple of days because it was the exact same Saint Four song each morning and what am i going to keep writing about it? It’s a great song, one of my favourites, but i just feel as though i am never going to be able to convince others it is and transfer its effect on me to them, so why bother putting myself through the embarrassment? So i decided to wait for the next one. I was getting afraid it would never come, or that it would be equally as less easily defendable. But it’s this. This is a great song, right? Self-evidently and readily recognised as so. Almost as good as 不思議TOKYOシンデレラ.

Fushigi TOKYO Cinderella

Fushigi TOKYO Cinderella – Saint Four

It’s the same song as yesterday! What can be don? I could stop listening to it so much. I’ll post an encore perfromance of the same concert i posted yesterday. They let their fans sing this one.

Fushigi TOKYO Cinderella

Fushigi TOKYO Cinderalla – Saint Four

Below is a blurry live video of this song at what must be one of Saint Four’s last outings as a group. The money isn’t coming in any more, the songs aren’t charting, support has left and gone on to other things, the production has scaled down, and one of the members has even left. But tell that to the three remaining girls and the dedicated down front, and really throughout the whole building, enraptured, screaming along, pumping their fists, and giving everything that one last time.