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Monday, May 12, 2008

Quantum Reviews: "The Queen is Dead" By the Smiths

Greetings! This is the first of hopefully many weekly reviews ranging from music to movies, games to books that I will post on my facebook page, my myspace page, and my ultimate-guitar page (only music reviews will go to the later for obvious reasons). My goal is simple, to get noticed!!! I want nothing more than to be a music critic and I hope that someone will read my review, enjoy it, and then pass it on to someone else, and they can pass it on until it winds up in the laps of someone from SPiN or NME and I get a big fat pay cheque and can start doing lines of blow off the back of $50,000 dollar a night prostitutes and... I forgot where I was going with that... Anyhow I will do one review a week, probably on a Monday or Tuesday, well with that said, I hope you enjoy my review this week of the Smiths' critically acclaimed album "The Queen is Dead".

I had never heard a Smiths' album or even a Smiths' song until I purchased this album because it was this album that everyone said is a "must own". In fact "The Queen is Dead" frequently tops Best Alternative Albums and was named "Most Important Album of the '80's" by SPiN magazine. This combined with Five stared ratings by both Rolling Stone and NME made it the most logical choice to start off with and it was met with a resounding "meh".

Judging from most people I've talked to in the past about Morrissey and the Smith's it seems like you either love or hate them, something I fully understand and sympathize with now. As I said earlier I've never heard a Smiths' song before and "The Queen is Dead" is the fourth entry into their catalogue so maybe there's something in the other three albums that I'm missing. The only thing I knew going into listening to "The Queen is Dead" is that Morrissey is some kind of reincarnation of Oscar Wilde as far as wit goes. To his credit he is a very witty writer and the song "Frankly, Mr. Shankly" nearly had me in tears of laughter. That song being the only song on that album that didn't seem to be about loneliness actually brightened my spirit so for that, the album does succeed and begins to slightly earn it's keep. However the gold star I gave it for the song "Frankly, Mr. Shankly" is nearly immediately taken off with the nearly six minute track "I Know it's Over". This is one thing that progressive bands do that annoy me, the drag songs out to the point where I want to break out a bottle of champagne to celebrate finishing it in it's entirety. Maybe it's because at a young age I was raised on catchy three to four minute radio friendly rock songs that I just don't possess the brain capacity to comprehend it's awesomeness when I see it. Or maybe perhaps it's because my head is shoved so far up my own ass that I can actually hear it for what it is, shit. (Note: This doesn't apply to all Prog rock/metal bands, some of them like "The Devin Townsend Band and Tool do a good job at at least making their longer songs rock from beginning to end.)

Anyhow getting back to the lyrics of "The Queen is Dead" which is probably the saving point and reason for it's perfect scores and place in Alternative Rock history. Yes I will admit that Morrissey is a very good writer, he portrays loneliness in an interesting and witty way, but the problem is that's all he really knows. Every song on this album was about loneliness in one way or another except for "Frankly, Mr. Shankly". However just when you think that Morrissey has found something else to write about, he goes back to his mournful boring self. Now I just want to clarify one thing, Morrissey's loneliness isn't a moaning, wining, in the vain of Dashboard Confessional or Panic! At the Disco (Who I can easily see as being GREATLY influenced by Morrissey.) Morrissey's writing is similar to the loneliness you experience after you remember the happy moments of someone you lost, even though it hurts to think about it, you still like to think about them because of the joy it brings you, if that really makes any sense at all, loneliness is a complicated thing to describe properly.

Morrissey's writing is complimented by Johnny Marr's interesting and very '80's sounding music. His use of major chords and snyths adds a poppy, radio friendly sound that masks the lyrics unless you pay extra close attention when listening to the songs (this is excluded for the song "There is a Light that Never Goes Out" because it just sounds sad no matter what.) The use of a pitch-shifter in the songs "The Queen is Dead(Take Me Back to Dear Old Blightly) creates a weird feeling that perplexed me instead of intriguing me. Luckily it was used sparingly in the two songs that it's in and after awhile I didn't really notice it. The album contains more complex music arrangements that are properly used and fit well with the lyrics, however the songs themselves I found to be stagnant and boring.

With my review drawing to an end I'm finding it hard whether or not I would recommend it. If you've listened to the other three Smiths' albums or any of Morrissey's solo and found the enjoyable then by all means I would say that getting "The Queen is Dead" is not the worst thing you could buy. However if you've never heard of The Smith's or Morrissey or have no interest in '80's alternative rock then I don't see "The Queen is Dead" giving you any epiphanies. I've been an alternative rock fan most of my life and this album opened no doors into a brave new world of music. The only thing it did was give me reason to doubt perfect reviews, not that I needed more proof to do that. However if you enjoy today's emo music and you're interested in where all your new forever miserable singers got their inspiration from, this is a great album to start with. If you're not interested in emo music or it's routes but still want at least one recommended song it would have to be the songs "Frankly, Mr. Shankly" and "There is a Light That Never Goes Out".

12:34 pm - 0 comments - 0 Kudos

Thursday, May 08, 2008

Why I'll Never Be Punk

Anyone who has the most remote clue as to who I am will probably agree that the one thing in life that I give a rat's ass about is my music. I absolutely love music. Music is the most beautiful thing in existence, in fact, music is so beautiful that were it an inmate in prison it would be the bitch of everyone to the degree of Andy Dufresne from "The Shawshank Redemption". (A special thanks to Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw for making that reference for me to "borrow").

To those few special people that I let closer into my life will know that it is hard for me to define what style of music I choose to play and then to an extent, emulate my life by. Since picking up my first guitar (a Squier Strat) on May 25th, 2002 I've had trouble picking up a genre to focus on. I remember when I got my guitar, the first song I tried to learn was "(Welcome Home) Sanitarium" by Metallica. Back in Januray of 2002, Metallica and metal became the first genre of music that I chose to listen to without direct outside influence (I don't count the stuff I listened to when I was a kid and my disastrous rap phase because one was influenced by my mum and the other by my friend). I was at Recycled Records in Reno when "Metallica" or "The Black Album" caught my eye. Now upon reflection of this I did have one friend who was into metal and I vaguely recall him mentioning Metallica, but he wasn't try to push a new genre of music on me, upon further reflection he was a very good friend for that reason. Anyhow, the point I am laboriously trying to get to is that metal was my first genre.

Since then many have followed, a brief list includes... ska, pop, acoustic, grunge, alternative, nu metal, punk, and indie. Now before anybody mentions anything, yes I am aware that I'm two paragraphs into my essay and haven't gotten to the genre of punk yet, so I'll do one more sentence and before I get into the very meat and 'taters of this essay. I tried all those genres I listed and none of them really worked out for me until I tried punk, which seemed to really click, but alas I am doomed to the exclusion from the punk rock scene.

I am doomed from the start of the punk scene because I truly only care for the music, and not the ideals that follow suit. Now I do care for some of the ideals, i.e. working class, non-judgmental people, anti class system, and so on and so forth. However as the ideals of punk shift from idealism to consumerism and bands like "Social Distortion" and "Bad Brains" are replaced with "Hedley" and "Cute Is What We Aim For" it seems that you have to evolve with the system to be a part of the scene. The extremes between the "true" punks and the "poser" punks continues to grow to opposite ends of the spectrum it seems that you have to join one side or you won't be welcome into the scene in general.

It seems that in the new scene for punk in the "true"punk scene you have to dress in a strict fashion, which always been rule for punk. While I'll never be a punk rocker is that I refuse to dress a certain way to have to fit in somewhere, I don't care what it is, I refuse to have to dress a certain way to get accepted, however this is such a hypocritical statement as I dress a certain way when I go out to a pub or a club or some social occasion, however usually I wear what I would normally wear. Another attribute to be a "true" punk is to know the most obscure bands that are available, who most of them suck. I don't listen to bad music for the sake of gaining a reputation. In many ways I am very disassociated with the scene because they do not accept me for who I am, which is ironic as they are seen and a scene who accept the people who are rejected.

The "posers" which have seemed to have taken over the scene are a particular nuisance because they accumulate for most of the crappy bands that are on the radio and the Warped Tour. Most people refer to them as "posers" however after my experience at the Warped Tour I like to think of them as "Hollow Punks" because in all actuality that's what they are. They are hollow in the sense that all what they do is look the part. They wear their hair spiky, dress all in black with some band name printed on a T-shirt and hang out in groups of 5 to 20, all of whom are very loud and all of whom have been dropped off by mummy and daddy in a fucking SUV. All what these kids do is look the moment, they have no real thought towards the past, and no reflection on if they follow this suit where it will take them in five years, if they will even be punks, or if they will just follow the latest fad. I'd like to say I hate these people most, but it's honestly not their fault, they're just stupid, it's like blaming a dog for dragging it's ass on the carpet or licking it's balls, it's just what they do.

There's a lot of pointing fingers going around with who's responsible for the state that punk rock is in. I'd like to know who's fault it is for ruining one of my favourite genres of music. I mean, it use to be back in the '70's it didn't matter if you were signed to a major label, the Stooges were signed to Elektra before getting dropped after Funhouse then signed onto Columbia... before getting dropped again. The Ramones were signed by Sire Records which is owned by Time Warner, but back then it wasn't all about independent record companies, it was about exploiting the record company you were currently signed to get high and drunk off their dollar. Now-a-days it seems like there's this general consensus that big record labels are set to bend you over and fuck you raw and the smaller independent ones are sent by God almighty to lead us to the Promise Land. Independent labels are run by people, same as Major labels, people in general are tempted towards greed and Independent labels are out to fuck as many people over as major labels. The Clash put it best when they said in the song "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais" "Ha! you think it's funny, turning rebellion into money". Punk, like communism, is good in theory, but put into practice in real life and all you've got is a pile of shit.

A friend of mine put it best when he said that "Punk is alot like the ying and yang, the posers and the true punks being the opposites of each other, yet they still occupy the same circle...

2:40 pm - 0 comments - 2 Kudos