This Is Not What I Want to Write About

Kanye West, you are killing me. Serious. I am quite behind in the world of music (and blogs, too--months, maybe years) and recently heard the new Kanye West single, "Stronger". It's pretty much the Daft Punk track, "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", with West rapping over it. Well no. Borrowing heavily from. Or samples. I mean samples, right? I feel like a sample shouldn't be so blatant but what should I know (there are, of course, exceptions, i.e. Girl Talk's spastic samples are earth-shatteringly obvious yet deceptive and brilliant that it's a work to behold). Anyway, I disliked it when Busta Rhymes sampled Daft Punk's "Technologic" for his single, "Touch It", last year. Same French duo, different song, different artist, and I still dislike it. The a cappella version floating around on the internet last year is more interesting than West's take. It feels more sincere. Dudes actually try and appear to care.



I'm not quite sure how I define sincerity, but I don't hear it often. Music or anything. It's the sort of thing one recognizes when it's there, and if it's not present, everything seems shallow and pointless. "For fun" is not a good enough excuse to make crap.

With that said, I find the track with West rapping over Peter, Bjorn, and John's "Young Folks" to be lackluster. No pop for a pop song. And let's not delve into the mess that is Lupe Fiasco, Pharrell (an aside: I have a cousin who is the spitting image of this dude), and West sampling Thom Yorke's "The Eraser". Ick. Granted, I find it the best of the three latest tunes. But that's not saying much, is it?

I really want to like Kanye West. Really, I do. I liked that first album that made him ridiculously famous. I even somewhat liked the one that came after--Jon Brion did work on it and Brion is a darling in my musically-illiterate universe. Hearing these recent tracks, however, I have a feeling that the drop out from my school is going to do like most Columbia (or any college) alums--he's going to get boring and coast.

...

I have a lot of posi stuff to write about. Swears! It's just taking some time to collect my thoughts. Or pretend to. I don't really collect anything.

An Office Job To Do

I loved it when RJD2 decided to speak up, um, I mean sing in "Making Days Longer" off of Since We Last Spoke. Yeah, that's right. I didn't mind his sing-speak. I liked it. I loved it. If I were in a band, I would sing-speak. I also loved the idea of him departing from his norm and doing a more pop-oriented album (though, if this were a Serious blog, I would contend to say that everything he's done is Pop. Alas, I am not Serious nor is this blog and it's not like I thought that out before I started typing).

There's the problem: the idea is great. Full of promise. The actual manifestation of it is really not what I hoped he would accomplish. Accomplish is not the word. "Come up with". Listening to it straight-through the three times that I have so far in the past month or so, I feel like Rjd2 could've pushed and then pushed some more to get something not necessarily more polished, but something that's much more focused, more of what we all know he's capable of.

If the breeziness of "Making Days Longer" carried over into The Third Hand, I wouldn't've disliked the album so much. Yes, I disliked it and no one is surprised. Good job at trying, but it just didn't work out. If you're going to sing-speak, do it right. Make it the focus. Make the lyrics, the vocals punchier. Sure, stay restrained but let something peek out. Anything. I bought the album out of sheer curiosity. I listened because I wanted to hear him. But where did he go?

I wholeheartedly believe that one can be timid and present at the same time. He showed us with one breathtaking track and it's there, you know, inside of all of the crud, there's a breathtaking album. The Third Hand feels like a collection of afterthoughts or maybe a rough draft for something that Rjd2 is trying to develop. I'm not sure if the album is, in the grand scheme of his career, a step backward or forward. Maybe it's not a step at all. Maybe it's an extended jump straight up into the air but so far up that the world continued rotating and the poor guy just landed in the middle of the ocean.

...

No mp3 but the randomly found YouTube video is magnificent. Beautiful and minimal. Much like the song, I thought to myself, "I can't believe I actually like this." You could also watch the related videos where Rjd2 performs the song. With a band. And an acoustic guitar. I'm sorry. Really. I apologize. I just can't seem to dig that because I'm a close-minded asshat.

Grey, Gray Sky Is Still Raining

It's dark but it's daytime still. I've just gotten out of the bath and I've dried off and dressed now, but I'm coiled up on my bed, my knees tucked in, my sheets pushed at the end of the bed. I'm listening to Lavender Diamond's "Garden Rose" (mp3 via yousendit) and it's not at all how I'm feeling, contrary to what's going on, to the lights having been turned off, to the heavily sad humidity.

I'm feeling more like "Here Comes One" (ditto); a continuation of something, a readjustment, another variation of an already existing deviation in the whole. Look, I'm gonna smile once in a while if I don't mean it. It happens, you know?

An aside: "Like An Arrow" on the same album as the two provided tracks, Imagine Our Love, reminds me of Heart. Yeah, that band. I don't know why.

Justin Long Is a Beautiful Man Who Shares My Last Name

I have given tons of money to Apple. I have an iPod now. I held off for a long time when it came to purchasing one, but I decided to just do it, gosh darn it, just get on that bandwagon already when I bought my new laptop.

So now I'm the owner of an 80GB iPod. How sweet is that?

You know what would be even sweeter? If my external hard drive with the roughly 60GB of audio files worked. That would be sweeter than the season's ripest fruit. Mango. Berries. Compound fruits are awesome.

What's Your Favorite Record?

This is me. Hi.

In greater detail, this is me with three days unwashed, straightened hair holding on to a copy of one of my Favorite of All Time Ever records in beautiful yellow vinyl with white and pink marbling. This copy of Beat Happening's You Turn Me On cost me a bit more than I would like to admit to having spent on a record seeing as I am not exactly in the financial state to be spending any money at all on anything other than rent and bills and possibly food and tampons, but I essentially am an irrational young adult whose priorities are mixed up. All said and done, this record cost me a pair of quarters shy of $25 and, let me tell you, it was worth it.

The record, physically and audibly, is simple and beautiful. The embellishments are subtle and fuzzy. I want to laze around the apartment with the love of my life (not just summer love, I mean apartment love, love love) while listening to this record. Maybe not lazing but doing an activity that isn't much of anything like, say, rearranging books.

You know Beat Happening. Everyone knows Beat Happening. It's that warm tingle in the bridge of your nose when you've met a cute somebody who has a skinned knee and squints a lot and just wants to walk quietly in a park with you, but you both end up on the beach instead, digging your toes into the sand, past that warm layer and deep into the more compact, water-cooled layer while your bikes are resting nearby somewhere and you don't even mind that it's getting late and there's sand in your trousers because that tingle* in your nose bridge is lasting for more than a moment. This is it. Everyone knows that, right? Some of us could pretend to and ache for it until it happens, oh god, if it ever happens, this deceptively simple kind of love, and really, Beat Happening is it. This band, this record, is one of the few that breaks and reassembles my feeble, little heart.

*Or it may only be allergies.

Rejoice. Oh Glory, Rejoice.

I have a shiny MacBook Pro now. Lovin' it. Lovin' it real good. Lovin' it so much that I almost shed a tear when I plugged my external hard drive in and figured out what I knew all along: I have corrupted files. I'm working on it but haven't had the time to try and salvage the bulk of my digital music collection. There are two reasons for this:

One. The new-ish El-P record, I'll Sleep When You're Dead. It's so good. And different. And not disappointing. It's rather dark and not summertime music in the way that the usual indie-pop fare I gravitate towards to is what with the lack of sunshine of the over-exposed variety and hand-claps and vanilla ice cream and it being, well, not jangly pretty music. Dark but not angst-riddled. None of the malaise I often attribute dark things. Dark and pulsing. Dark and alive. Dark and Dark. Dark. Dark. Dark. But fun. I can listen to this album and hear something different each time. The truth is, I've spent the bulk of the past month holed up in my room trying very much to get writing done. What I have accomplished, however, is the fine art of reading in bed whilst listening to records in their entirety. This is one that I'm mostly certain will stick with me beyond summer. Oh, hey, I listen to something other than guitars and drums and all of things like that?

Two. I learned how to ride a bike. Sort of. I have no time for computers and music what with slimmed-hipped boys distracting me. I also bought a U Lock so no more lugging it up and down three flights in a very narrow stairway. Music. Pfft.