MC Atzilut

I wasn't planning on posting this week (I'm currently parked in front of a stranger's house, logging into their internet) but this news it too exciting to pass up:

I won the Rolling Stone contest! I've got a 3 month gig there this summer! Wooo!

-Mordy

Fact is, I'm going away to Orlando at the end of the week, so the standard project is taking a slight break. There might be one or two more project posts this week, but the truth is that my focus is on finishing work that needs to be done... and getting ready for the trip. Some more articles:

Good Charlotte Review:

Second single "Keep Your Hands Off My Girl" namedrops Dior bags and Louis Vuitton while indulging an ugly misogynist streak: "I got a model, 26/But she stays in her place." This isn't new territory for Good Charlotte—one of their first hits featured the lyrics "Girls don't like boys/Girls like cars and money." But you used to be able to ignore it because it sounded like kids making a tasteless joke. Maybe they'd grow up. With their new emo-radio-hit sound, though, they sound angry and hateful. The cute punks grew up to be really scary jerks. Relationship advice? "The only way y'all ever keep her in your hands/Is breaking apart her heart."

Joni Mitchell Tribute Notes:

Sufjan Stevens - Free Man in Paris: So bad, it actually makes me completely reevaluate whether I like Sufjan Stevens. I think he scrapes by, but barely. This is a horrific cover - and deserves as much disparagement as possible.

Prince - A Case of You: Whoever told me earlier last year that Prince did great versions of Joni was OTM. It's odd enough to be Prince and faithful enough to be a cover. It's the perfect cover - it changes the song just enough to become a new entity, but it's still a "free lunch" because of the original (contrast to Sufjan's cover).

Sarah McLachlan - Blue: I hate to say it, because I generally dislike McLachlan's stuff, but having her do Blue (Joni's most downer song on Blue and maybe in her entire discography?) was really inspired. It's fitfully sad, and just as mournful as the original. The only problem is that the layered voices and chimes in the background don't really distinguish it enough. It's fairly true to the original.

Annie Lennox - Ladies of the Canyon: Also surprisingly good. More bombastic than the original, and it fits the song well. A nice spin.

James Taylor - River: I've got a bootleg where he sings this song with Joni, and so I thought I knew what to expect. But it's really such a lovely tribute to Joni, and you really hear the tenderness in his voice. There's something faintly nostalgic and very warm about his cover. It's the perfect ending to the album, and more than anything I've ever heard/read it communicates James love for Joni. Maybe the best (most important?) thing on the album.

Stooges - The Weirdness Reviewed:

The instruments are about as blunt as Iggy's sense of humor. Which is to say that it's firmly within the tradition of punk music - a couple of chords played over and over. Sometimes that formula becomes grating, like on "Greedy, Awful People," which could have been a stellar song if the rhythm section didn't give you a headache halfway through. Even writing that briefest of critiques makes me feel guilty, though. As though I were one of the "greedy, awful people," Iggy is singing about, with a severe lack of class. The truth, though, is that it operates perfectly on many of the other songs, and sometimes even achieves sublime results.

For the sake of easy compilation (at some unforeseen date in the future):

Bright Eyes: Second Verse, Same as the First

If Modern Times was a reminder that the greatest songwriters grow as artists, then Bright Eye's latest EP Four Winds is a reminder that not everyone is Bob Dylan. "Reinvent the Wheel" finds Oberst singing: "You'll never come back now to the world where people are / Because you never understood what they loved you for." Essentially, he's lodging a reactionary claim that you should stick to what you're good at. But how many times can Oberst rerelease I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning.

How to Ruin a Fallout Boy Album in 14 Songs

At this point, Pete Wentz could overdose on cocaine, light himself on fire, get into a fist fight in Boy's Town and throw himself off a twenty story building - and he still wouldn't get anyone's attention.

Manowar: Gods of War - Rated E (for Epic!)

Instead, I shall review each track using iambic couplets and Beowulf references. Following that, I will jump off a large cliff, smash into the rocks below, and be reborn as a Phoenix. From there, I will fly throughout the land of the living and the dead, and recount of the cycles and stories of the brave soldiers of Manowar. It is only fitting that during this recounting, I will constantly interrupt myself to declare Manowar's praises. For how can I speak of them, and not burst into spontaneous affirmations of their greatness?

Wrote my first comic book review ever. Since I'm not used to this kind of writing (where you need to discuss narrative and the art with equal deliberation) I didn't field it out yet and instead published it on #comic-scans. The next one I wrote (on X-Factor) I fielded to Popmatters.com. So we'll see how that goes. If they don't want it, I'm pretty sure #comic-scans will be happy to keep taking my stuff.

Neil Gaiman’s The Eternals, which recently ran as a seven-part limited series, could have been anything. Although Jack Kirby’s original 1976 series had very specific tropes and storylines, no one but diehard fans would have faulted Gaiman for taking liberties with Kirby’s Eternals. That’s partially owing to Gaiman himself, who has earned a ticket to do whatever he wants. But it’s also due to the source material. The Eternals is essentially a story about giant robots and goblin-like hoards. In the hands of a graphic novel auteur like Gaiman, you would be forgiven for expecting a complete rewrite of Kirby’s ethos and mythology. Be prepared to be surprised. Gaiman is faithful to Kirby’s vision to a fault, which will either thrill you, or result in an immensely disappointing experience.

Click here to read the rest of the review.

Between a dozen articles due, editing responsibilities, and classwork, I think I may have actually burnt myself out on writing this week. Every word I write, I feel like I've seen and written that word before. Recently. That can't be good. None of it seems fresh. I need some new verbs, some new nouns. I need a new bloody set of pronouns to work with. I'm certain that I've used every word in this paragraph at once before this week. My vocabulary is reaching its limits. Language is dying. I'm beginning to understand Beckett. Or maybe not. Ack.

Luckily, Green doesn't demand a lot from me. His music is seductive on so many different levels. It's sexually seductive, obviously. But it's also emotionally seductive and intellectually seductive. He doesn't require that you fight to listen to him. He's like the womb, you could just float on his silky smooth voice - suspended in the warm liquid of his velvety music. "Womb." Now there's a word I haven't used yet this week. Thank god. Al Green gives me language!

Tomorrows album is Heart of the Congos, and as of yet, I don't know how much of a challenge it'll be. If it's not too bad, I'll do a post tomorrow night. But if it's a bit overwhelming - I may have to beg out early this week. But I promise, loads of music writing next week. So let me do a tid-bits section tonight of various comments, reviews, notes, etc from the last week. Beginning with the greatest performance thus far on American Idol: Jordan Sparks singing "I Who Have Nothing": http://youtube.com/watch?v=OzkNMiKjrGU

Top Ten Singles Thus Far in 2007 (ILX, Teenpop Thread)

1. Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend
2. R Kelly - Flirt
3. Taylor Swift - Tim McGraw
4. Natasha Bedingfield - Babies
5. Fallout Boy - This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race
6. The Klaxons - Atlantis to Interzone
7. Lloyd ft. Lil Wayne - You
8. D.B.’z featuring E-40 – Stewy
9. Bright Eyes - Four Winds
10. The Stooges - Free and Freaky / The Stooges - My Idea of Fun

The normal all-over assortment of singles. No particular order, though some are more heavily weighted than others. I can't imagine Bright Eyes, Bedingfield, Lloyd, or Klaxons making it to the end. Also, if Spring Awakening OST had a single, it would certainly be on the list. Also, I like both Stooge's singles equally, though my preference is for "My Idea of Fun" slightly over "Free and Freaky" but not enough to not list both - also, I don't like either well enough to give them their own slot. Together they earn slot 10. Any other caveats... oh, yeah. Swift is the cheater listing, because it was a single in 2006 - but it didn't hit charts until 2007. So I'm counting it. Na-na-na-boo-boo.

Frank and Adorno, Alternatively DMX and Kafka (Koganbot Livejournal)

Frank, I quoted you last week in my course on Kafka. We were talking about Adorno - and about how he uses Kafka instead of discussing Kafka. He basically takes a Kafka quote and then launches into his own creative expression - which is disguised as criticism. I quoted your answer to the question: Are there more great songs than writing about songs? And you said yes, but not for an essential reason. Then you explained that there aren't more great songs than conversations around songs, or dances to songs, or jokes about songs. And essentially, Adorno is using that with Kafka. He's dancing to Kafka - or joking about Kafka. For my last Kafka essay, I included a couple paragraphs about why I wanted to really write about DMX's use of dogs (instead of Kafka) and how my decision not to use DMX speaks to our prejudices around Kafka. (Ie: That DMX isn't on par with Kafka. Or that Kafka is a genius and DMX is a 'rapper' as though they are mutually exclusive. or that Kafka was writing intentionally using dogs and DMX's use of dogs are accidental. All premises I feel you'd reject.) Anyway, I felt that talking about why I wanted to do DMX on Kafka is a lot like making a joke about a song. It isn't inferior just because it isn't recognized in academia (and I remember your quote in the book about Meltzer - whether rock can save philosophy or not and the question of whether philosophy is worth saving).

Review of "Army @ Love," the New Vertigo Comic (#comic-scans mIRC chatroom)

It's about an attempt to raise morale in the army by hosting explosively sexual retreats and throwing expansive orgies for all the military personal. That's the plot, but it's actually about showing naked soldiers killing people. Throw in anymore hot triggers and the comic might as well be a Mountain Dew commercial (Eugene Mirman reference: "Do the Dew before the Dew does You!")

Excerpt from Short Fiction Piece (Submitted to YU Writing Contest)

We took the 3 train into the city, and for the duration of the trip my brother kicked his legs back and forth and rambled on about wrestling. “The Undertaker, he destroyed Vince. He was gonna - gonna facebuster him - but then, he hit him with the gutwrench superplex.”
While he talked, I read the advertisements on the subway walls. When he went silent, catching his breath or running out of things to say, I asked him another question to keep him going. “So what is your wrestling name going to be?”
“Facebust Feinstein. Or Michal the Murderer. Or the Hopping Hebrew.” He jumped up on the subway seats and hopped around to show himself off. “My signature move is gonna be...” and he threw his fists out and kicked into the aisle. When he kicked, the fringes attached to his undershirt came loose and I grabbed one to pull him back down.
“Don’t stand up.”
“Can we stop in the WWE superstore in Manhattan?”
“Sure. But we can’t get anything.”

Clearly when I wrote last night that I'd be updating later that night, I lied. Not maliciously, but the callousness of fate led me away from this blog and into an early evening slumber. Too much Indian food weighed heavily upon me, and I needed to close my eyes for only a few minutes - just to relax my head. Yet no sooner had my face hit my delicate pillow then my soul suspended over my body - kabbalists say that sleep is 1/80 of death - and thus I slept. Which is to say, in simpler language, I didn't come back to the blog, I didn't write about Miles Davis's evocative Live-Evil.

"Live-Evil." Without the dash, it would be a declarative - a command. "Live, Evil!" he might be demanding, and from the tone of some of the songs ("Little Church," "Selim.") I'm not entirely sure that isn't what is happening. He's rousing something from sleep. I'm not sure it's evil, though. It may just be the surreal, or mystical forces and cosmic vibrations (last week was the tenth anniversary of Allen Ginsberg's death) that Davis is rousing forward. Certainly, he is evoking something, bringing forth something, calling attention to some other-worldly or non-human force. This isn't music that human beings make! It's haunting, snippets of humanity slipping in through breaks in the narrative - touches of flesh in a fog of smoke. This is music best described through imagery, not through description!

Look at that cover alone - the swollen (pregnant?) belly. The lady pyramid in the lower left side - is that a river of a headdress spilling off her head? Or the woman/snake/wave/cloth waving throughout the right-hand side. The bizarre symbols in the background. Is this album witchcraft? Is it meant to confound or lure the listener?

Obviously, the album is not called "Live, Evil." It's called "Live-Evil" and that's because it's a double-album. Yet for all my listening, I can't point out whether that changes the perfect match of the two albums. They seem to compliment each other beautifully. And when they don't, it's not because of the albums, but because the songs themselves are disjointed. Case in point: "Little Church" which starts out with a whistling sound - piercing loudly while what sounds like random piano keys are played dimly behind it. Yet fifteen seconds in, a hideous, horrible, angry screech diverts the listener's attention. It holds your attention for a few seconds and then starts to dim... into the whistling sound you heard in the beginning. Even this is a brilliant feat though. Because you are used to the first sound, when the interruption comes, you're obviously biased against the interrupted. But when the interruption is illuminated to be the one and same sound you first identified with, it completely manipulates your listening. You don't know what to trust anymore, or whether any sound you're hearing deserves prejudice over another. Something similar happens a minute and a half in, but instead of horrifying you, like the first sound, you're already accustomed to this trick. And so a sound that would normally startle you (like if it happened in the first seconds) seems rote and normal.

That's the story of "Live-Evil." It tricks you into accepted the otherworldly and the obscure and the rare and surreal. It doesn't make you think those things are normal - it merely blends them into the normal so that you dare not question them. After all, the interruptions are still audible - you just don't bother to respond. Are those chickens in the beginning of "Medley: Gemini / Double Image" or merely the approximation of chickens? I'd rather not ask. I feel like it'd break the spell.

Last week the Village Voice printed my review of the Reel Big Fish / Zolof the Rock N Roll Destroyer album, Duet All Night Long:

Since no one is paying attention, Duet has the freedom to experiment, such as on a version of Fishbone's "Lyin' Ass Bitch." What does it feel like when a ska band covers a ska band? Like staring into parallel funhouse mirrors.

Read the whole review here.

Going out to dinner. Will update later tonight.

I went with my heart and choose Villanova to go (almost) all the way. Truthfully, a moment of self-control took over and I picked Georgetown over Villanova. Though my heart ached - because I'm a 3rd generation Philadelphia (Ukranian Jewish immigrants tended to accumulate in Philadelphia as opposed to the Polish/German immigrants in New York) and my mother attended St. Josephine's for a brief few semesters. So picking another PA parochial school seemed like a way to pledge myself.

As it goes, despite picking 50% of the first round East games wrong, my Regionals are all ironically in good shape (perfect shape if Texas beats USC). My Midwest lost Notre Dame - which kills my final four, and so that's out. My South is ugly as hell, which is the flipside irony of my East games. Because my first round picks for the South were spot-on gorgeous. It's only now that the flaws begin to emerge.

Finally, sad-sad-West. I'm sure everyone's brackets took blows with Duke and Gonzaga losing (except those who are hardliners when it comes to hating teams. I once bet against the Eagles, because I was sure they'd lose to Minnesota - this is years ago. They ended up losing, but I couldn't forgive myself. So I understand the hardliner-hatred mindset. It's just hard for me to give myself up to it). But not only did I literally get 50% of the games wrong (including aforementioned Duke + Gonzaga) but my pick for the semi-finals was Villanova. Sad, pathetic, glorious, painful Villanova. Which means that half my top four didn't place anywhere near that (Notre Dame + Villanova) and my bracket is officially DOA.

Bloody hell.

Last week I placed in the top 10 on the Rolling Stone contest again. Next week is the final week, and then they pick the Grand Prize (a gig writing for RS). I assume I've got a 1 in 10 chance. So I'm crossing my fingers, and whatnot. The upcoming week's contest is writing about a local business and their relationship to the environment. I picked Yeshiva University, and listened to Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, while I did research on my college's spotty relationship to the environment. The only bright point are student activists, which is how I spinned my Rolling Stone piece. I have no idea if I'll place again, but I feel like I really put the effort into this contest in general and I'm hopeful about the final results. Working for Rolling Stone is a dreamjob, and even if they don't pick me for this, I submitted an application for a summer internship. So maybe I'll be there through different means.

I don't know if it's that What's Going On sounds political conscious, specifically environmentally conscious, or just sexually conscious and I've been brainwashed to believe there's a connection between sex and social activism. Anyway, the music put me in the proper groove for outraged social commentator. Here's hoping my University doesn't throw me out after reading the piece (if they end up posting it). It won't be the first time I pissed off Yeshiva University. The lyrics themselves lend themselves to a passionate shifting of the times. But unlike Dylan's "The Times Are A'Changin'," and Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come," Gaye's words seem far more passive - or at least more like wide-opened excitement. "What's Going On," isn't as blunt, but it's far more seductive. It's like the music itself can convince you to join the movement. "Drink some understanding here today," could be as easily be an invitation to sit down and get drunk (Happy St. Patrick's day!).

And "Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)" is essentially about our destructive attitudes toward the environment. "Where did all the blue skies go? / Poison is the wind that blows from the north and south and east." "Oil wasted on the Oceans and upon the seas / Fish full of mercury." "Radiation under ground and in the sky / Animals and birds who live nearby are dying."

So it's one of those serendipitous moments in this project - when my real life writing coincides with an album. I remember during the 2004 election, there were websites where liberals would sleep with you if you didn't vote for George W. Bush. Obviously they got their idea from Marvin Gaye. If you can make saving the environment sound sexy, you might be able to affect some positive changes.

Wish me luck in the contest! If I don't place, I'll post the piece here. Also, once the contest is all over, I'll post all the pieces from the contest (or links to them). Since I have actually entered in every single one.

Well, I turn off my computer for 24 hours because of the Sabbath and my comments go to hell. For awhile, I've wanted to follow in a number of respected blogs, and refused to delete posts. But I don't see how tolerating conspiracy theorists and religious nuts are going to improve the quality of a music blog.

One bonus to this unexpected gluttony of posts: I thought I'd have a hard time proving to my readership that Sex Pistol-deniers and Ramones-deniers exist. I mean, it sounds outrageous to believe that the Sex Pistols were a boy band. Yet these people exist, and are apparently attracted to the same threads as conspiracy nuts. So there ya go, anyone from Idolator or ILX that made their way here. There are actually people who believe this stuff. For some reason, The Clash have escaped being painted by the same revisionist brush. (Ironic how music revisionism and political/racial revision use so much of the same jargon.)

Anyway, here's the rule for anyone joining this blog: No racial/sexual/etc hate or I delete your post. Otherwise, you can state your opinion and freely expect courtesy and intelligent discourse over what you believe. I'd rather not have to switch blog services to one that provides an IP blocker. But if I start spending more time deleting posts than reading them, that's what I'll do.

And I'll do my album music post later tonight... after I see how much my NCAA bracket has been decimated.

The Sex Pistols walked a tricky road. Acting like a complete lunatic requires some poise and a lack of self-consciousness. If you're wondering how you look, you look like an idiot - with your middle finger and your rolling around on stage and cursing out the British government... you look insane. You need to not care. You need to be free with your feelings and be willing to let it hang out. You need to be ok with random strangers hocking saliva onto you. See, that's what is dangerous about the Sex Pistols. It isn't what they did, but that they were willing to do it at all. That's why you can do something offensive and stupid and no one will care - or you can have all your concerts in England canceled.

The obvious question, though, is whether the Sex Pistols accomplished anything. Not whether they have influence or not - they obvious have influence. And not whether they left behind any good musical artifacts. Never Mind the Bullocks is one of the catchiest, popiest punk albums ever. I bought it once while I was still in Yeshiva. My friend Aryeh and I went into New York City (the Yeshiva was in Staten Island) and while we were there we stopped in Tower Records. My friend bought... Offspring I think? Or maybe Genesis. I can't remember off-hand. (Maybe he didn't buy anything.) But the Sex Pistols were on sale and so I bought a copy. I smuggled it into Yeshiva, removed the cover from the jewel case, and burnt it. The album I kept hidden under my mattress. I'm sure the scrapes and scratches only made it seem more dangerous at the time. But even then, I understood how good it was. It was an album you could jump around the room while it played - you could bang your head to it - you could point your finger at people and shout at them. It was an album that let you burn things, or protest things. I want to destroy passerbys.

Anyway, it still holds up today.

And let me take this moment to bitch. I generally try to stay out of the cultural battle over punk - the "superword" battle as Frank would call it. I don't feel a need to argue about what punk means, I just enjoy it. If Green Day isn't punk, then it's something else. But I still like it. But here I'm going to drop that cold, intellectual facade for a moment. So bare with me.

FUCK YOU LITTLE TEENY-BOPPER KIDS WHO CLAIM THAT THE SEX PISTOLS AREN'T PUNK. >.<

That's right. I know you think you're all that with your The Clash albums and your Buzzcocks albums and your... oh. Buzzcocks aren't punk anymore? Just Rancid and The Clash? Fine. Why don't you like the Sex Pistols? Because they were "constructed" by the owner of the a store? Because they were a boy band? Well the shop was called SEX and what makes a band of boys unpunk? Because Sid Vicious couldn't play bass? Vicious wasn't even on this album. So give it a break. And you know what else? Johnny Rotten had one of the most punk names ever. You know what else? Joe Strummer was inspired by the Sex Pistols. Know what else? Buzzcocks/Clash/Sex Pistols Anarchy shows are some of the most amazing live sets ever. And I wasn't even there - I only heard the bootlegs. And! And! And!

Ok. No more rants. I just felt it was appropriate, in the spirit of the album and all. I doubt Rotten needs me to fight for him though. Someone who can give the middle finger to the music industry (in the guise of refusing to be inducted to the RockNRoll Hall of Fame), then he doesn't care what some punks on the internet are saying about him. Fact is, Never Mind the Bullocks blew my little teenage mind back in highschool. That's punk enough for me.

Is this project self-destructing? I'm not quite sure why that would matter. As long as it self-destructs in public, it will be fulfilling the missive of the project - which is to attempt to document a year of listening to 1970s albums. Since I stripped this project of rules from the beginning, even a week of empty entries would be faithful. I'm not saying that I intend to leave this hanging for weeks at a time - only that even that would be faithful.

Lemmi start with This Year's Model's cover. Here's a good question. Who is the subject of the cover? First glance suggests it is the man with the black sunglasses and the wiry frame - his hands splayed out, his head crooked to the side, his facial expression suggesting consternation. But the action he's engaged in (his aim is true) is photographing you, the listener. In fact, his left hand is splayed towards you, standing outside the album - and it's your picture. You're this year's model. Or maybe not. It's hard to ignore, in the face of the misogynistic content, that the term Model tends to refer to a very specific profession (think Mary Gaitskil's brilliant Veronica, or Plath's Belljar). Then there's the contradiction of the term "model" to the posture and composure of the photographer (who looks like he'd belong better at a prom, or a highschool).

"See her picture in a thousand places 'cause she's this year's girl / You think you all own little pieces of this year's girl," the implication of ownership has certain tones that the later line "'Cause you don't really give a damn about this year's girl" either compliments or absolutely negates. See, maybe you're wrong about Elvis Costello, because like the cover - it appears to be about him, but really turns out to be about you. It's a trick. You're watching him on the cover, and meanwhile he's taking a picture of you. Even songs that seem to be completely about him ("Little Triggers," his simultaneously catchiest song on the album, and most misogynistic) are a trick to switch perspective on your suddenly. It begins with him singing to a woman: "Little sniggers on your lips. / Little triggers in your grip. / Little triggers. My hand on your hip." but then shifts. "Thinkin' all about those censored sequences, / worryin' about the consequences, / waiting until I come to my senses. / Better put it all in present tenses." Of course, this could be a plead on his part to get the girl into bed. But it could easily be a plead to the listener to come to his own senses, and to stop trying to censor him.

This project is a lot like that album cover. It keeps deferring attention on the album, when really the subject is the project, or me, or you, the reader.

For a film so preoccupied with being impressive on every scale - from passionate speeches about freedom to enormous charging rhinos, to battle scenes unmatched in modern cinema - my only reaction to 300 is also the most damning. I was unimpressed. Sure, they had enormous elephants (on par with Lord of the Rings!) and Braveheart-esque speeches about (capital-letter) Freedom. They even had enough nudity to fuel a third-world country porn industry for three years. Yet this bounty of eye-candy only made the film seem like that desperate younger kid trying to be friends. He tries everything to impress you, but you're left with the motivation over the presentation.

I've read the original graphic novel by Frank Miller. While I enjoyed the read (it takes about 20 minutes to blow through), it lacked any substance beyond the pretty pictures. As such, I wondered going in how they'd flesh out a quick - mostly visual story - and fit it to a narrative medium. Apparently that was accomplished by throwing in an unnecessary storyline about a Queen trying to convince a council to go to war, and by dragging out the combat scenes. On page, you can let your eyes wander over the gore - and decide how long you wish to stare at the broken bodies and flesh wounds (if at all). During a film, you are forced to watch a scene for as long as the director decides. One way to puff out the story was to let the camera remain on these violent depictions for far longer than necessary. The camera drags over a tree made of bodies for an excruciating minute - showing us the discarded bodies.

Welcome to the generation of the snuff film. At least Passion of the Christ had an arguable purpose (to show a religious scene). Thousands of years after the Spartan battles, can any argument for necessity be made? Can you actually argue that one benefits from seeing this kind of over-the-top bloodshed? As such, the closest film I can compare it to was Dali's 1929 Un Chien Andalou, with its iconic vision of a woman's eye being split open by a razor. In fact, during one of the films numerous endings, I searched through the field of bodies - trying to see if an arrow had pierced any of the character's eyes. So extreme was the films attempts to titilate that I found myself working for the film - trying to strike horror in my heart. But once again, the question of why remains. Why be witness to a fictional event? And were it real, why stay witness to this event?

There's the cool factor, of course. Something responds to men hoisting spears and shouting "Tonight we dine in hell!" Still, that 'coolness' must be mitigated by the ick factor. And I feel dirty having seen the film. Like I exposed myself to something unredeemable, and very junk foodish. It's like eating a pint of ice cream. Delicious, but now I've got a stomach ache.

Including classical music (whatever such a term may mean) on a list of best albums of the 70s is not merely disingenuous, but feels like a token choice. Squeezing Reich in between CCR and Elvis Costello is a surefire way to outline how many classical albums are missing from the list. That's what happens with all token choices in lists - they make you aware of how token they actually are.

Actually, because of the last paragraph, I was going to completely skip this album. But then I read an email that film composer Jamshied Sharifi is speaking to my film course: American-Jewish Identity in Film. He is responsible for the soundtrack to brilliant films like: Muppets from Space and Harriet the Spy. (He also scored The Thomas Crown Affair.) And thus, in homage, I decided to give the album a listen and do a post tonight. But I can't promise any interesting insights. The most I know about classical music is that Mahler was a genius, Wagner was a Nazi, and that film Amadeus was about Beethoven (who turns out was a bit of a sleaze).

So tonight's post is a bit of a place filler. Also, I entered this week's Rollingstone prompt. There are three more to go after this, and then they pick the Grand Prize winner. The prompt was: find an unreported trend and report on it. I'll tell you all what I picked on Friday. Night, all.

Another album I love. Thank you, Pitchfork, for not drowning me in obscure German techno bands. Question about Ramble Tamble; does Eminem borrow one of the riffs in one of his samples? It sounds awfully familiar...

Esquire Magazines, of which I'm a subscriber (J'Accuse? I confess!) recently ran an article about alcohol consumption and writing. The author of the piece drank a shot ever article. The writer progressively got worse/more chaotic/more interesting. I intend to do something similar with music writing - to settle the famous Lester Bangs question. You may not know the question, so I'll offer it for you: Do drugs, alcohol, etc make for more interesting music writing? The author of the Esquire piece framed the question nicely: Do famous authors succeed because of alcoholism, or in spite of it? I'll paraphrase that question once more:

Are you still dancing to architecture if you can't stand up straight? In case you, my faithful (and adulterous) readers want to suggest an album to do this project with, here are the next bunch of albums I intend to do: Elvis Costello, Sex Pistols, Tim Buckley, Marvin Gaye, and Miles Davis. I'm totally open to suggestions for this project, though.

(Travellin' Band sounds like Jerry Lee Lewis, but with fewer burning balls of fire. What's the guy on the cover doing on that bike?)

Another thing. Ever listened to an album you don't think you've ever heard before -- and then you find out that you've heard all these songs before (Lookin' Out My Back Door)? That happened to me when I was thirteen and heard Fleetwood Mac's Rumours for the first time. It also happened when I finally tore through James Taylor's discography. I hazard that when I reach Jackson Brown - something similar will occur. Well, that's what happened when I first heard Cosmo's Factory. I kept my mouth shut at the time, because I was with music elite - and that kind of admitting would've given them the fuel to light that mocking fire of superiority. But here, with a facade of anonymity, I feel comfortable acknowledging that there are many classic albums that I suddenly recognize when I hear them for the first time. It's not deja vu. It's misplaced context.

I bet there was a time a song like "Run Through the Jungle" was a scary song. Like, I bet there was a time Slayer's Reign in Blood was scary (and not scary-good - just scary). Now even cannibalistic Norwegian death-metal bands seem a bit... light. Ya know? Like, not too horrifying. Maybe we've all just gotten jaded. Or maybe it has just become ridiculous.

Thanks to Kingfox we're back on track. Just in time for me to find yet another album that I hate myself for missing until now. This is a beautiful, incredible, jazzy piece of godliness, and I'm ashamed to admit I never really got into Nick Drake before. (Lucky, I don't think my friend Paul reads this blog, otherwise he would never let me forget this admission.)

He reminds me of a male-Joni Mitchell (circa Court and Spark) but a little softer. Maybe Sam Beam + Joni? (For those just joining the blog, Joni Mitchell is probably my favorite singer-songwriter. Ever.) His voice is slightly rustic, but the piano playing is what makes it perfect. Sometimes there's a hint of a saxophone in the background, or a slight trumpet line, but the piano is what weaves in and out of his voice. They compliment each other perfectly. It's albums like these that make this project worthwhile. "I could've been a whistle. I could've been a flute."

He does other great things too. Like Simon from yesterday, or Mitchell during the mid-70s, he incorporates many different music structures that seem foreign to his personal experience. Like the gospel choir on "Poor Boy" that turns into a sax midway through the song. I promised near the very beginning of this project that I wouldn't make generalizations about 70s music. But embracing numerous outside influences seems to be a trend in 70s music.

That said, the Rollingstone Prompt this week is to describe a trend. I don't expect to place (they seem to have gotten cold on my style of writing - or just want to give other people a shot) but I'll write it anyway. The practice is good for me.

(Anyone else find Drake looks a little like Eliot Smith on the front cover?)

Also, this is album number 55 on the list. We've almost done half the list, and it's only March. Way, way, way ahead of the game.

Apparently Pitchforkmedia's list went down. If it's not back up by tomorrow, I'm going to start going through the ILX list. If someone happens to have the PFM list, though, post it? Or email it to me?

I have been negligent - no updates in four days. That is most sincerely my bad. But I blame it on the appearance of Purim - the holiday when Jews celebrate a Persian genocide attempt upon them, and God (and Queen Esther's) intercession of their behalf. They get completely plastered, eat great food, and dress up in costumes. The most diligent students drink so much alcohol that Hatzolah (the Jewish ambulance service) has to drag them to a Hospital for stomach-pumping. In the past (ie: four-five years ago) I was quite diligent in performing this custom. This year, though, I suddenly don't feel the need to completely black out on the streets of New York. The only thing that has changed from last year was my marriage. I blame Charlotte for my moderation in alcohol consumption.

I did dress in my perennial Purim costume, though. A Dashiki and a dreadlock cap that I tuck my curly black hair into. Yes, I go as a Chabad Rastafarian (this is funnier if you're familiar with Chabad beliefs about their Rebbe and his eternal life). This is fitting, because tonight's album - Paul Simon's Paul Simon - begins with the song "Mother and Child Reunion," with a rasta-kinda-beat. Another Jew adopting the noise of a foreign culture. The next song, "Duncan," is standard Paul Simon song-writing, but this album marks an emergence of Simon's interest in foreign cultures.

I peg his trek as a flirtation with the Other in life. Far more than Leonard Cohen, who mines his own soul for content, or Bob Dylan who looks into the heart of Society like a prophet, Paul Simon is a ambassador to the world. Graceland solidified that depiction, but even here you can hear the roots of his attempts to embrace the Other in his music. Consider this Jewish kid from Cherry Hill, NJ, who writes lyrics like: "A young girl in a parking lot / Was preaching to a crowd / Singin sacred songs and / Reading from the bible / Well I told her I was lost / And she told me all about the pentecost / And I seen that girl as the road to my survival."

What does it mean in response to that stanza when Simon sings, "I know, I know, I know, I know." Who is he reassuring? What does he know? Does he know that he's dancing with an outsider? Does he know that he's mouthing language that isn't naturally his own? Is the "young girl in the parking lot" the Virgil for Simon's journey, or is Simon our own Virgil? Though you can still hear traces of the work he did with Garfunkel on the album, he introduces Dante here. He even looks like an intrepid adventurer on the cover - about to scale Mt. Everest, no doubt.

Who is Julio?

Another reason I've lapsed updating in the last couple days is because I had to get a new Arts & Culture section in the Commentator out. The issue comes out this week, and I've got two music reviews in it (which I'll link to when it launches). Also because I needed to write another piece for the Rollingstone prompt - to promote a new artist. Unfortunately, that was in vain. Rollingstone completely ignored my contribution. So I'll post it here. I really like it, so if someone has an idea of where I can place it, let me know.

by MORDECHAI SHINEFIELD

If the Disney Channel has become Motown Records for the teenpop set, Miley Cyrus makes hits like Diana Ross did - with verve, style and attitude. Save the fact that Cyrus, who performs with the name Hannah Montana on the Disney show of the same name, is only fourteen. Born in Franklin, Tennessee - a town best known for a Civil War battle and retired NASCAR legends - Cyrus has country pedigree. Her father, Billy Ray Cyrus, wrote “Achy Breaky Heart.” On a recent episode of her show, Nashville royalty Dolly Parton guest-starred as her godmother.

The country prodigy pulls her own weight, though. Last year she propelled the Hannah Montana soundtrack to the top of the charts. The album debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 - beating out My Chemical Romance’s emo-opera for the top spot. On the strength of Cyrus’s syrupy melodies and the 8-15 year old tweens that comprise her fanbase, the soundtrack was the year’s 9th best-selling album. When her solo album is debuted on June 18th this year, label Hollywood Records will let her flirt with the kind of mainstream success Disney predicted when they compared her stage presence to Shania Twain - the number one selling female artist of all time.

Cyrus combines her Nashville twang with young Spears-styled bubblegum pop and her father’s country chops (and his sense of the ridiculous). Her husky voice explodes with joy when she sings in her drawl, “Living two lives is kinda weird!” Sometimes she strips down to an acoustic (she plays a Daisy Rock Guitar) and plays confessional rock more suited to MTV. If she can straddle Nashville, TRL and Disney at the same time, she’ll be living in three worlds - which, she’d probably admit, is pretty weird.

I turned the Marjorie Morningstar stub on Wikipedia into a full article in the last couple days. Check it out here. Feel free to add/edit/comment.

The tribute is to the heavy-weight world champion boxer Jack Johnson, not the college-loved Hawaii-born singer-songwriter Jack Johnson (who was actually born in 1975, more years after the release of this album - so I'm not sure why you'd confuse the two). Anyway, the album is like what I'd imagine being hit by a heavy-weight world champion boxer is like. Pow. And then you're lying on the floor. Obviously I'm not lying on the floor now, though I was earlier. What I mean is that it's exciting jazz - pulsating jazz - jazz with movement and style and grace. Look at the front cover, where Davis leans backward in an agile, but emotionally packed pose - fluid but coiled like a snake ready to spring. That what the jazz sounds like. "Float like a butterfly, Sting like a bee." Since I believe the music is intricately related to the theme, here are some facts about Jack Johnson, who is the far more obscure figure than Miles Davis.

• Called the "Galveston Giant," he was the first black heavyweight champion of the world.
• In 1901, Joe Choynski, a Jewish boxer, went to teach Johnson how to box. They were both arrested for "engaging in an illegal contest."
• Johnson won his first title fight in 1903, beating "Denver" Ed Martin for the "Colored Heavyweight Championship."
• In 1910 a former champion boxer - James J. Jeffries - said, "I am going into this fight for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a Negro." He came out of retirement to prove this.
• Johnson beat Jeffries in 15 rounds.
• Jack Johnson could KNOCK you out.