Given that I spent most of this weekend sick, in bed, and going nuts trying to sleep, I am lucky to have anything ready for this week's post. This is why a nice backlog of nearly-finished drafts is always nice to have at the ready.
Anywho...
What follows is some of my favorite new or obscure artists and some of my favorite songs by each. Consider this a "best of" list for music that I have discovered in the past six months. Some of these artists have been around quite a while - The Tragically Hip, anyone? - but thanks to discovery services like Last.fm and Spotify Radio, have surfaced recently for me. Expect this sharing of music discovery to become a regular feature on Critically Correct.
All links are Spotify handlers. If you cannot use Spotify, most of these songs are readily available on YouTube, but I declined to link to those videos since YouTube videos tend to come and go.
Enjoy!
The Damnwells
Sleepsinging
Golden Days
Electric Harmony
Bif Naked
Crash and Burn
Spaceman
I Love Myself Today
Matthew Good / Matthew Good Band
Deep Six
Rico
Last Parade
The Tragically Hip
Bobcaygeon
Wheat Kings
Gift Shop
Cowboy Mouth
Easy
I Believe
Tell The Girl Ur Sorry
B3 out.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Et tu, Green Day?
I will be seeing Green Day for my third time at the end of this month. My first two concerts were riding on the back of popular albums: first 2004's excellent American Idiot and then 2009's 21st Century Breakdown. I went into these concerts with clear expectations of the music. Green Day's catalog spans more than twenty years of punk rock that has been consistently built on the band's unique sound, and these first two concerts were perfect blends of the old and the new.
So why does this upcoming concert feel like I am going to my senior prom with the cross-eyed girl that no one else wanted to ask out?
No, it is not that 2012 iHeartRadio incident and rehab stint. Green Day is certainly no stranger to drama, as this latest incident unfortunately played out, and they also are not strangers to finding themselves in a commercial stalemate. 1994's Dookie was a monster success with over 26 million album sold. By the time 1997's Nimrod was released, Green Day had to make due with sales of just 2.6 million albums (still no small feat, but for the band credited with bringing punk to mainstream rock, a huge disappointment).
Despite the ups and downs, Green Day ultimately captivated the rock world again in 2004 with American Idiot. An album so brilliantly written and executed, it is set to surpass Dookie as Green Day's biggest album, spawned a traveling musical, and led to an excellent follow-up in 2009's 21st Century Breakdown, a spiritual successor in every manner of speaking.
It turns out my concert woes are based in Green Day's latest studio effort - their ¡Uno! !Dos! ¡Tre! trilogy of albums. Wanting to avoid a Pink Floyd-esque lock-in to operatic narratives, Billie Joe and company set out to explore their garage-based punk rock roots. Unfortunately, releasing three albums in five months may end up being the band's biggest creative and commercial mistake in their careers.
Why is the trilogy on track to be Green Day's poorest performing album to date (with less than 600,000 units sold in the first six months) and a big critical "meh" from the music world?
Let me back up for a second: the albums are decent, but not great. Thirty-seven (37!) fresh tracks spread across three albums may be stretching the creative juices a little too thin. For every excellent "Nuclear Family," "Stray Heart," or "X-Kid" there is a bland "Wild One" or even a horrendous "Nightlife" (what the actual fuck?). The trilogy would unmistakably have been better as one album: take the best five tracks from each set, combine them with an optional album of B-sides, and we would not be in this mess.
Going into this latest concert, I have no idea what I am going to be hearing. Does Green Day even know what rocks on their new albums? I sure hope so. Green Day is a fan's band - they have a core demographic that loves them to death, and the new trilogy is squarely aimed at those 600,000 fans.
But we have been here before. Green Day was on a crash course in the early 2000's as well, and we all know where American Idiot eventually landed them. This latest trilogy is not entirely terrible, but combined with some public relations woes, certainly ends up being a blemish on Green Day's otherwise fantastic complexion.
Just like the cross eyed girl that I am hoping stuns at prom, I am hoping that Green Day comes out swinging in a couple weeks - and for God's sake, stay focused, guys.
B3 out.
So why does this upcoming concert feel like I am going to my senior prom with the cross-eyed girl that no one else wanted to ask out?
No, it is not that 2012 iHeartRadio incident and rehab stint. Green Day is certainly no stranger to drama, as this latest incident unfortunately played out, and they also are not strangers to finding themselves in a commercial stalemate. 1994's Dookie was a monster success with over 26 million album sold. By the time 1997's Nimrod was released, Green Day had to make due with sales of just 2.6 million albums (still no small feat, but for the band credited with bringing punk to mainstream rock, a huge disappointment).
Despite the ups and downs, Green Day ultimately captivated the rock world again in 2004 with American Idiot. An album so brilliantly written and executed, it is set to surpass Dookie as Green Day's biggest album, spawned a traveling musical, and led to an excellent follow-up in 2009's 21st Century Breakdown, a spiritual successor in every manner of speaking.
It turns out my concert woes are based in Green Day's latest studio effort - their ¡Uno! !Dos! ¡Tre! trilogy of albums. Wanting to avoid a Pink Floyd-esque lock-in to operatic narratives, Billie Joe and company set out to explore their garage-based punk rock roots. Unfortunately, releasing three albums in five months may end up being the band's biggest creative and commercial mistake in their careers.
Why is the trilogy on track to be Green Day's poorest performing album to date (with less than 600,000 units sold in the first six months) and a big critical "meh" from the music world?
Let me back up for a second: the albums are decent, but not great. Thirty-seven (37!) fresh tracks spread across three albums may be stretching the creative juices a little too thin. For every excellent "Nuclear Family," "Stray Heart," or "X-Kid" there is a bland "Wild One" or even a horrendous "Nightlife" (what the actual fuck?). The trilogy would unmistakably have been better as one album: take the best five tracks from each set, combine them with an optional album of B-sides, and we would not be in this mess.
Going into this latest concert, I have no idea what I am going to be hearing. Does Green Day even know what rocks on their new albums? I sure hope so. Green Day is a fan's band - they have a core demographic that loves them to death, and the new trilogy is squarely aimed at those 600,000 fans.
But we have been here before. Green Day was on a crash course in the early 2000's as well, and we all know where American Idiot eventually landed them. This latest trilogy is not entirely terrible, but combined with some public relations woes, certainly ends up being a blemish on Green Day's otherwise fantastic complexion.
Just like the cross eyed girl that I am hoping stuns at prom, I am hoping that Green Day comes out swinging in a couple weeks - and for God's sake, stay focused, guys.
B3 out.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Beaten, But Not Yet Broken
This past week has been a reminder that I should never worry about my life becoming stale. While I get myself into the occasional rut of "work-eat-sleep," I ultimately have limitless opportunities to explore thanks to an active lifestyle, plenty of interests, and a strong start on my career as a software developer.
Work has been busy and Computol looks like it may grow overall this year. More projects, more people, and more learning opportunities await. This is the "good" kind of busy, as far as I am concerned.
While I am looking forward to what work has to offer, I am beginning to look forward to all that will be consuming my time this spring and summer: Shiggs Photography, three developer projects, and lots of hiking. More than anything, I am looking to balance all these things with everything else that matters: friends, family, and personal sanity. Toss in a little of the unexpected (huge career potential down the line, for example), and I can say that this year will in no way be dull.
I have some more interesting content in the pipeline, so stay tuned!
B3 out.
Work has been busy and Computol looks like it may grow overall this year. More projects, more people, and more learning opportunities await. This is the "good" kind of busy, as far as I am concerned.
While I am looking forward to what work has to offer, I am beginning to look forward to all that will be consuming my time this spring and summer: Shiggs Photography, three developer projects, and lots of hiking. More than anything, I am looking to balance all these things with everything else that matters: friends, family, and personal sanity. Toss in a little of the unexpected (huge career potential down the line, for example), and I can say that this year will in no way be dull.
I have some more interesting content in the pipeline, so stay tuned!
B3 out.
Monday, March 04, 2013
So I Want To Talk About Meltdown
In the 7th and 8th grades - junior high school at Otsego - I was influenced by several pieces of fiction. Video games such as Forsaken on the PC and Resident Evil on the PlayStation caught my attention. I began to fully understand some of the more intense messages in films such as Jurassic Park and Tremors. In 1998 I combined my new perspectives on these media with my love of travel (along with adventure) and did something I never thought possible: I began to write my own fictional story.
New ideas spawned on a daily basis. These ideas flowed together, sometimes violently. I took notes all day at school and sat in front of the family computer every night to hash these ideas into something coherent. Over the course of six months, the first draft of a story called Meltdown came together. The story was short, characters were crude, the writing horribly amateur, yet I discovered something magical: people loved reading it. Granted these were peers, but the dozen or so people who read it sucked down. Written as short, high-digestible five-page episodes, Meltdown was an exciting endeavor for me at the age of fourteen.
This was the birth of my writing career.
Throughout high school I expanded my writing tremendously. I kept busy with creative essays, music reviews for a Toledo magazine, short stories, technical documents, and poems. Meltdown evolved with my writing style - it even had a tagline by this time: Meltdown: A Survivors' Story. The short, poorly written first drafts evolved into much longer and much more detailed episodes. This is when my hero and mentor of the time, Aaron Weisbrod, tempered my expectations and grandiose dreams of publication and helped me to understand that good writing was more than just action and characters. Meltdown was on hold for years to come, despite multiple attempts at a major rewrite.
Today Meltdown exists as an on-going stack of notes, rough drafts, outlines, character bios, and evolving tastes. In 2011 I rewrote the basic story altogether, reduced the character count (from an astonishing eight leads to just four), and gave it a new name: Children of the Meltdown. I now spend about four to six hours a week filling out story details, writing scene outlines, and reworking my characters.
So what is Children of the Meltdown?
From 1998 until about 2006, Meltdown was a story about a group of teenagers surviving a cross-country trip in an apocalyptic United States. Challenges were many, and zombies were plentiful.
Largely thanks to the influence of modern zombie fiction (I'm looking at you, The Walking Dead), Meltdown has become something a bit more personal. No longer a collection of fun scenes about shooting zombies; survival and basic human decency have become the norm. I asked myself this question: what would today's awkward teenager do when the world goes to shit?
I have the entire story outlined and about a third of it drafted. So far I have addressed a lot of issues: death of friends and family, teenage isolation, loss of innocence, lack of moral guidance, heartbreak, rape, and redemption. I know a lot of these sound like some heavy-hitting issues, but in all honesty, they have made for fantastic topics in the latest drafts.
If I should stick to this revision of the story, I plan to release the episodes a month apart beginning sometime in 2013 or 2014. Eventually I will bring the episodes together into a novella and self-publish the entire story.
At this point, Meltdown is like a child to me. I was there when it was born, I have watched it fall and recover, I helped it mature, and now I feel like it is finally coming into its own. Once the story is completed, it will almost certainly feel like the passing of a huge part of my life. But man, has the journey ever been a great one.
B3 out.
New ideas spawned on a daily basis. These ideas flowed together, sometimes violently. I took notes all day at school and sat in front of the family computer every night to hash these ideas into something coherent. Over the course of six months, the first draft of a story called Meltdown came together. The story was short, characters were crude, the writing horribly amateur, yet I discovered something magical: people loved reading it. Granted these were peers, but the dozen or so people who read it sucked down. Written as short, high-digestible five-page episodes, Meltdown was an exciting endeavor for me at the age of fourteen.
This was the birth of my writing career.
Throughout high school I expanded my writing tremendously. I kept busy with creative essays, music reviews for a Toledo magazine, short stories, technical documents, and poems. Meltdown evolved with my writing style - it even had a tagline by this time: Meltdown: A Survivors' Story. The short, poorly written first drafts evolved into much longer and much more detailed episodes. This is when my hero and mentor of the time, Aaron Weisbrod, tempered my expectations and grandiose dreams of publication and helped me to understand that good writing was more than just action and characters. Meltdown was on hold for years to come, despite multiple attempts at a major rewrite.
Today Meltdown exists as an on-going stack of notes, rough drafts, outlines, character bios, and evolving tastes. In 2011 I rewrote the basic story altogether, reduced the character count (from an astonishing eight leads to just four), and gave it a new name: Children of the Meltdown. I now spend about four to six hours a week filling out story details, writing scene outlines, and reworking my characters.
So what is Children of the Meltdown?
From 1998 until about 2006, Meltdown was a story about a group of teenagers surviving a cross-country trip in an apocalyptic United States. Challenges were many, and zombies were plentiful.
Largely thanks to the influence of modern zombie fiction (I'm looking at you, The Walking Dead), Meltdown has become something a bit more personal. No longer a collection of fun scenes about shooting zombies; survival and basic human decency have become the norm. I asked myself this question: what would today's awkward teenager do when the world goes to shit?
I have the entire story outlined and about a third of it drafted. So far I have addressed a lot of issues: death of friends and family, teenage isolation, loss of innocence, lack of moral guidance, heartbreak, rape, and redemption. I know a lot of these sound like some heavy-hitting issues, but in all honesty, they have made for fantastic topics in the latest drafts.
If I should stick to this revision of the story, I plan to release the episodes a month apart beginning sometime in 2013 or 2014. Eventually I will bring the episodes together into a novella and self-publish the entire story.
At this point, Meltdown is like a child to me. I was there when it was born, I have watched it fall and recover, I helped it mature, and now I feel like it is finally coming into its own. Once the story is completed, it will almost certainly feel like the passing of a huge part of my life. But man, has the journey ever been a great one.
B3 out.
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