Mharles Cingus

Week 46 Rules

Contributors: 

Please don't hate me for this. The rule for this week is to post your favorite piece of music that is in some way classified as "jazz". 

Louie Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" does not count.

Neither does anything from Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. 

No "My Favorite Things" by Coltrane.

You'll be a Woman

Classic, I think Uma was dancing around or something.

It's magic!

O.K. in a nut shell. The false prince, who is actually really a horny lil street bum, all done up in his facadism and heads off to see the princess. He gets shot down and thrown out of the ladies room. As he is thrown out by his would be date and pulls his last card and reveals "the chic magnet". In truth it doesn't matter how arrogant you may be, if you have one of these, you can easily go from being thrown out for being a douche bag to greatest person in the universe in approximately less than 30 seconds, as the master of picking up women demonstrates in this how to video. Now with her attention on seeing the world he can now take the lovely local princess on a date across the vast expanse of the world, Noting that the everywhere they go it is still night. From what looks like rome or greece all the way to china. This little date entails a thrilling time out on the world of the ages in which there is unbelievable sights, indescribable feelings, soaring, tumbling, freewheeling through an endless diamond sky. All that will most definitely get you laid in real life, but NO this is a P.G. movie! I chose this song mainly because who wouldn't want a flying carpet. According to disney they can get you anywhere within minutes, No baggage fee's and no waiting on tarmac's. Also no matter who you are you can date hot chic's!

Robert Tepper

Greatest 4 minutes in cinematic history, that's why.

Warhead

This song is featured in the film "This is England," symbolizing a moment where a right-wing extremist group  misunderstands the clarion call of punk and takes up literal banners to foment discontent and promote racist ideals. I felt that this choice of song was an interesting one for several reasons, given how many times punk of that era, and the UK Subs in particular, have managed to be misunderstood. I was recently reading some histories of the UK Subs and Crass where a story of a misunderstanding between two bands was told from each perspective. The UK Subs "The Early Years" page, at http://www.newredarchives.com/bands/uksubs/chapter03.html, explains: "At the ‘White Lion’ show, Crass had an argument with Charlie (Harper, the band's vocalist -- ed.) over a Subs song “All I Wanna Know” during the set, claiming it was sexist. Some members of Crass pulled Charlie from the stage. But later, after going through the lyrics with them and explaining the context in which the song was written, things were resolved and we decided to do a double headline show way out in a residential area of Northeast London." While Crass were known as an overtly leftist, anarchist political ensemble, the UK Subs were certainly not of that brand of punk, so the idea of the two bands having an ideological dispute over the lyrics of the less political (apolitical?) group is kind of amusing. 

Perhaps Crass's intention was to work to politicize their fellow punks; perhaps it was a more reactionary, less measured critique, but either way, it makes something clear to modern listeners and enthusiasts of the early punk rock of the late 70's: it was, and is, music that desperately requires context to be understood. Poor Siouxsie Sioux is still plagued with questions from interviewers asking why she donned swastika armbands in the late 70's, even though she has explained a number of times that it was essentially an ill-advised tactic to provoke and shock audiences (and indeed to alienate people of her parents' generation). This clumsy provocation translates to a palpable, visual translation of the generation gap between jobless, aimless youth ready to shake things up, and complacent, conservative adults looking toward England's past, a division characteristic of the era in which she started performing and recording. This dissatisfaction and protest were, of course, at the roots of UK punk. Without an understanding of this context, you get music journalists (who really should know better by now, if they've done their reading) asking the same questions of an artist who has recanted her youthful mistake, apologized, and even written a song about Israel to show where her sympathies truly lay. Siouxsie provides a good example of how early punk needed context to be understood properly as an artistic expression, but she is far from the only artist of her era and movement who has had to explain herself and her youthful foibles on several occasions. However, she tends to be unique in that she will storm out of interviews if the point is pressed, rather than defending herself. I believe that she last did this a few years ago during an interview with Q, but she did make it up to the magazine later with a follow-up discussion and a very good performance at their awards show in 2011. (Honestly, I also feel that the interviewer had been baiting her throughout their discussion, trying to get her to talk about increasingly more sensationalist topics such as past drug use, the dissolution of her relationship with Steve Severin and then Budgie, her troubled working relationship with various other musicians, and then this. I can kind of understand why she was not willing to tolerate more goading about old times and old decisions.)

Like Siouxsie, like the Pistols, like most punks of that era, the Subs managed to be understood more than once, and are still not completely understood by fans. To this day, comments on their YouTube videos show that fans still weren't sure who really sang on which version of some of their more popular songs, or who was playing guitar, given the changes to their personnel that meant some rapid-fire shifts, then shifts back, in who did what on a few different albums. There is the great divide about whether or not it was a good idea for them to cover "She's Not There" by the Zombies, and whether or not it was a good cover (I prefer some of the live versions to the studio version myself). Charlie Harper began gigging as a singer in the R & B scene earlier in the 70's, and therefore had an identity as a performer that predated punk rock. Therefore, his band's sometimes less-than-p.c. treatments of women and cover versions of older songs, including "She's Not There," which is not precisely a song praises the goodness and merit of women, can be understood as hearkening back to older pop music traditions.As much as punk musicians liked to position 1976 as this sort of year zero of culture at the time, many notable artists have spoken about their affection for other, earlier pop music movements; Steve Ignorant turned the phrase that I just used and mentioned his involvement in glam rock prior to discovering Dial House and meeting the other members of what would be come Crass, whereas the rest of Crass were mostly hippies and art school students. John Lydon/Rotten's storied affection for progressive rock, reggae, and Hawkwind eventually left its imprint on his work with Public Image Limited. Many artists understood as part of the first rumblings of punk in the UK, such as Eddie and the Hot Rods, were in all actuality pub rock artists. Noted sex offender Jimmy Pursey from Sham 69, the father of all street punk and Oi!, actually got his start performing by miming Bay City Rollers and Rolling Stones songs at local discos, so didn't even get a start in performing rock, exactly, so much as just performing visually and kinetically to pop music.Then, in the US, the Ramones were fronted by a former hippie who had once dubbed himself Jeff Starship, whereas the rest of "punk" in the US made in the mid-70's was essentially art-damaged pop/rock, also made by art school students. The notion that punk sprung fully formed from a vacuum, played by fledgling artists who had only recently picked up a guitar or other instrument for the first time, is part of a mythos and misunderstanding that has plagued the subculture since its origins.

Back to the Subs and misunderstanding them in particular, though. They are commonly understood as the originators of "street punk," a sub-subgenre known not for being apolitical, but for its simplified political content, including a very populist discourse on being an everyday, working man, with simple pleasures like beer and girls, who just wants to make an honest living and live a good life in an often unfair, oppressive world. In this world, violence is a sad part of life, reflecting systemic corruption, poverty, social divisions, etc. Street punk was birthed from Oi!, which was always meant to be understood as a "working-class protest," yet somehow managed to split into two diametrically opposed branches, one of extreme right-wing ideology that claims "outsiders" as the scourge of working-class happiness, and another that just took the "working-class" idea and saw it as "proletarian," and ran with it allllll the way to the left, some groups even adopting Communist rhetoric and creating the "redskin" movement. Street punk, though, is music that is often easy to misunderstand because it is vague. It's political in that it discusses problems, but rarely proposes many specific solutions geared toward policy, voting, organizing, activism, etc. in the music, preferring to suggest instead, if it suggests any solution, things like unity, jobs, and telling people like Margaret Thatcher that they are "cunts." (Well, that's what the Exploited tended to do, anyway.)  The Subs maybe had a few more good-time party songs about girls, &c., than the Exploited, and talked less about necrophilia and prostitutes than G.B.H., and tended less toward shout-along choruses than Sham 69, but they were still pretty good exemplars of early street punk, in that they also managed to have a few more or less vague political songs along with pieces like "Stranglehold."

In order to explain to you why I think the song works really great in the film, I will give those of you who haven't seen it a quick synopsis. "This Is England" is the story of a young teenage boy who is picked on by bullies in his neighborhood for being poor and fatherless until some older teenagers, a ragtag group of skins and punks, offer him first protection, then camaraderie. The protagonist and his clutch of friends drink, listen to various kinds of punk music with alternately vaguely political and apolitical, good-time themes, and generally have a happy time until some crazy right-wingers come in and start complaining about the economy and have a simple, yet elegantly foolish solution: it's those damn minorities and we need to get them out! These guys are initially welcomed into the the house of the gang's unofficial ringleader, because they were mates before the right-wing guy was sent to prison for his rowdy violence, but when it becomes clear that being in prison radicalized him in a rather unsavory way, he and his friends are quickly made to know that their sort of views are not shared or tolerated by many members of the group... except for those members who DO agree, of course, and join these neo-Nazis in their political meetings and protest, leading to some scathing portrayals of bogus extreme right-wing rhetoric and meetings where people hesitantly and inaccurately repeat ideas that they heard from someone they know who knew a guy who knew a guy who once read part of Mein Kampf. We also see the concerned-ish, yet half-hearted intervention of the protagonist's mother, who somehow manages not to stop her 12-year-old soon from hanging out with a gang of older teenagers and adults that are mixed up in fascist politics. The chilling catharsis of racist violence and murder leads to a sad and painful realization for the young protagonist, as well as the end of the internecine war between the apolitical punks/skins and right-wing extremists, as the members of the group of friends dabbling in fascism come back to their senses. This leads us to some slightly heavy-handed, but very effective symbolism in the very last scene, as the disillusioned, sobered young protagonist tosses a Union Jack given to him by the leader of the fascist splinter group into the ocean. Overall, I really enjoyed the movie, but I kind of found myself a little bothered when the protagonist, even though he was clearly supposed to be a naïve little kid, takes up with the fascists. Like, why would he be so easily swayed? Shit, when I was his age, I spray-painted "Fuck Social Darwinism" on my bedroom wall. Kids are capable of understanding politics!

The more I've thought about it, the more I've thought that the ambiguity of political messages in street punk and most classic punk (here, I am excepting anything like Discharge and any d-beat following in their wake, crust punk, or political hardcore, for obvious reasons... it was of the same era, but was thematically quite different, of course!) is kind of what allows for this slippage of meaning and misunderstanding. Punk has always been understood as a cultural movement of bricolage (see: Dick Hebdige), and, accordingly, draws from many disparate elements: R & B and classic rock 'n' roll songs about cars and women; Situationist revolutionary politics and critiques of capitalism, advertising, war, etc.; a reaction against "normal" society and a desire to subvert, or often simply invert, its morals and values; art-school theoretical folderol that most people like to play with, but don't understand perfectly; the ever-lingering presence of hippies and DIY movements, psychedelic rock and art, and the idea of dropping out of society; populism; etc. All of these movements bring with them an entirely different set of cultural baggage and political messages, often ones that clash entirely. Like, "respect women's autonomy and sexual freedom, but they're all lying heartbreaking bitches." "Fuck society and our scheming, untrustworthy politicians, but we need them to give jobs for everyone and fix this economy before we get disillusioned and drop out again." These discordant messages are definitely confusing, and any artists that wished to perpetuate a punk aesthetic had a bit of cobbling together of ideas to do before they could write and perform songs.

Certainly the gamut of themes in the UK Subs' songs makes this sort of cut-&-paste aesthetic pretty apparent; their basic, sped-up 60's rock guitar riffs and 4/4 beats, which are present in most of their songs, offer a unifying thread to their assorted different thematic elements. All of their songs sound like punk rock generally sounds, which helps make their image and aesthetic easy to pin down. However, "Warhead" was always a bit different from their other songs, and even though the group were not conventionally understood as being super leftist or even very political, I have always thought the lyrics to this song were pretty insightful, although still simple enough for most people to understand. First of all, the song is still a 4/4 punk song, but slower and perhaps more ominous-sounding than many of their songs, with a simple, repetitive guitar riff, no soloing, no exuberance, and thudding, lumbering drums with the low end mixed pretty high up in the mix: it sounds like marching, or like a heart beating, or both. The lyrics to "Warhead," if I understand them correctly, provide a jarring contrast to a scene of neo-Nazis carrying signs and banners and marching to a political meeting about how to oppress minorities, in that they are actually a critique of wars fought by the "little people" and orchestrated by history's "great men" who watch from a distance. The Subs actually seem to suggest that "Soldiers of Islam... loading their guns,"  "Russian tanks... mowing them down," and "Children in Africa loading tommy guns" are actually reacting to Western cultural imperialism and xenophobic, violence toward "Others" in distant lands (and well, also within their own countries, as is evidenced by the film's story and just reading the news and histories of that era, or today, or basically anytime within the last 150 years or so): 

"There's a burning sun

And it sets in the western world
But it rises in the east
And pretty soon
It's gonna burn your temples down

While the heads of state are having their fun
Are they ready?
We're looking at the world through the barrel of a gun
Are we ready?
And you stand there beating on your little war drum
Are you ready?
And it won't be long before your time has come
Are you ready?"

While the song doesn't come right out and say "War is bad and this is why people in Africa and the Middle East are upset with us," certain textual elements spring out to demean and belittle the military campaigns, and show that not everyone is taking them seriously enough given the consequences: "LITTLE war drum," heads of state having their FUN." The lyrics do note that the Western world needs to look toward the day of reckoning when the rest of the world fights back and "burns our temples down," equating the Western world with the sinful Babylon, whose temples were destroyed by fire in the Bible (since early punk and reggae were bedfellows, it is easy to find a lot of punk songs that talk about the Western world as Babylon), and asking us if we are really ready, for our time, the time to confront our culpability, shall come. This is one reason I appreciate the film, even though sometimes its story takes a couple of turns where I am just like, "WHY DID THEY LET THAT HAPPEN??" (to move the plot along, duh, but still!) -- the juxtaposition of a song critiquing war between the West and the rest of the world, with a scene in a film depicting some people who don't get how punk is also a protest against that, and not just a call for jobs or whatever, is great. This is why I chose this song -- I feel that its use in the film is masterful, in that it evokes the marching militancy of this extremist group being portrayed, provides a period-accurate soundtrack, and is a damn good song... AND it embeds a critique of the fallacies in the group's understanding (or misunderstanding) of punk politics and the workings of the world within the scene at the same time. Well, or it does for those who listen to the lyrics of the song and consider the ways in which punk can be understood and misunderstood.

Dob Bylan - Batural Korn Nillers

It's from the part where Mickey escapes from the chain gang as the tornado approaches.

Week 45 Rules

Contributors: The rules are late this week because I have a hangover. 

Please post your favorite song from a soundtrack. Please explain the scene in the movie where the song occurs.

Zero One

Von Solt

Estrella

This song never fails to evoke visions of the swirling cosmos in which we are all but tiny specks, but all still have an integral part ("estrella" is Spanish for "star"). Something about the two different layers of gauzy, ambient keyboards makes me imagine a picture of the Milky Way with its spiral of small suns, gaseous orbs, dust in the universe. The lead keyboard, the one that sounds like a piano, keeps the song from going all the way into the ambient zone, and grounds it, sort of like I would be grounded when I look up at the sky to view the stars and imagine where I fit into the whole business of existence. The distant, slow-tempo drum machine throbs distantly like a slow pulse, a pulsing star...

I'm also pretty sure that this is supposed to be a love song, based on the lyrics, but it's so abstract that it could be any kind of love, from romantic love, to the love of a parent for his or her child, to the love between close friends, to God's love for humanity (which I wonder about, since Tara Vanflower from Lycia uses Christian imagery and is pretty vocal about her Christianity in interviews. Lycia is pretty much the only "Christian" music I tolerate, let alone enjoy, because it's always abstract, somewhat mystical, and never overt or overbearing). The message of love, "forever my darling am I with you," is pretty damn comforting to me. Obviously Tara's vocals are foregrounded, and are fairly easy to understand if you are listening for meaning, but the murmured, muted, spoken background vocals have always made me listen more closely to hear what is being said.... without success. In a way, this is also evocative of looking up at the sky to see the stars... the light of the stars can be muted through clouds or a haze of pollution (I live in LA now, remember), or light pollution could be overwhelming their distant glow, making it hard to see them and know where they are and what their features are.

The thing about shoegazing music is that the sound of the vocals and any distinguishable lyrics is always more important than their meaning, and most bands don't strictly adhere to the songwriting activity of creating concrete images through words. For that reason, shoegaze of its various flavors always sets me at peace. When I understand the lyrics, they never offend me, but rather tantalize my mind with abstract, sometimes lush and beautiful images and meanings... but if I don't understand them, that's fine. So, I don't always work very hard to understand what is being said, and can just let my mind go and immerse myself in the sensory experience of listening. That is something that is hard for me to do, because lyrics are normally VERY important to me. When I manage to do it, it's nearly as good as meditating. This is also why I listen to music in languages that I don't understand, or listen to black metal with unintelligibly, hoarsely screamed vocals, or mostly-vocal music without lyrics. For some reason, most instrumental music just makes me drowsy, not peaceful, so when I need peace AND wish to stay awake, I have a few specific categories of music that do the trick. I recommend putting this song on, closing your eyes, and thinking about stars on a clear night while you overlook the city of your choice from a high hill. Breathe deeply, and remember that the universe has a place for every speck and every atom, including you.

Bets to Jrazil

This one goes out to the Chicago kids that hit on my wife at the thrift store after I bought them burritos. Peace be with you.

Baker Street

In case you are keeping track, this is my second Jerry Rafferty post. 

Week 44 Rules

Contributors:

Last week was fun, yes? 

Let's call a cease fire.

Play me a song that sets you at peace.

This could make any Nation go nuts.

Yeah...he raps.

NO FUN!

                            After researching a bit under age demographics of the middle east. I found that in the greater parts of middle east there appears to be a very sizable amount of youths compared to the older residents. Even in the other countries more towards the middle are also having projections of their youths growing in number. Projections are kind of staggering and worrisome for the people discussing the topic. I will say at this point its safe to assume that my target would be a rebellious youths.
Now by looking into what types music that has influenced the peoples of the mid east I found there is a plethora of types ranging in everything from strings to percussion and onto winds like chimes and woodwinds and shit. Dance music and the modern dance style appear to go hand in hand in this part of the world. I quote "  Before the influence of Islam, music in the Arabian Peninsula was associated with prostitution and drunken entertainment. Under the wide rule of Islam, vulgar lyrics and suggestive dancing by women became illegal. Much post-Islamic music is used in ceremonial dance and recreation. Meditation, trance, and self-flagellation are often used while listening to music to bring one to a higher sense of God" WOW! so prolly playing something like benni benassi is out of the question. There was also a huge part of influence from religion but we wont go there.
Pop culture seems to be mostly based around dance, rap, rock and punk. Which seems to be taking off in these lands as of recent.  I did find a wonderful little bit of music I will share at the end. I did more digging and once again here I find more about how the british were an annoyance to this part of world as other parts the that they had been poking and prodding through out the histories. I couldnt help but think of the sex pistols. I could listen to the sex pistols all day all night. Just because of the gritty disgusting nature of the sound they play. Simply make a bunch of noise and sing with no sense of rhythm in a drunken stupor. Yeah gotta love it. Most people, through my experiences,of today that didnt grow up with the sex pistols or in that particular culture have been quite disgusted with it. I will assume for this post it would prolly work in this case too.


Industrial? I would say this is a form of industrial! I flippin love it!

The Hoff

This is going on the make them smoke the whole carton in one sitting method.

Those poor East Asians!... Taake

Hey guys, sorry to post a day late. My internet was out of service yesterday and I can't post from my phone.

Anyone who enjoys musicology or enthnomusicology or anthropology must surely be aware of the fact that different cultures have not only different aesthetic preferences, but sometimes a completely different idea of what sounds like music, looks like art or clothing, tastes like food, etc. The divide between Western and non-Western music truly does exist, despite the cultural erasure of globalization in media (everyone listens to American and European top 40 music, everywhere in the world!) and the increasing popularity of hybridized East-West musical genres (see: k-pop, j-rock, Western 60's rock music using sitars, gongs, and chimes alongside Western instrumentation like guitars, orientalism in classical compositions -- composers such as Rameau, Saint-Saens, even Beethoven and Mozart used Near Eastern motifs in their compositions, French punk rock that employs Southeast Asian motifs such as Bérurier Noir's "La Fille du Delta" or "Vietnam Laos Cambodge").

A friend of mine once told me a good story about Ravi Shankar in which the legendary Indian composer and sitar player attended a concert of classical music in the US. When asked afterward what piece he had liked the best, Shankar responded that he liked the first song the best. The person asking hummed the first composition that had been played, and Shankar said, no, it sounded like this, and hummed an entirely unfamiliar piece of music. The hosts asking the question were puzzled by this and asked Shankar more questions about what it sounded like, what instruments it used, etc. Shankar said it was the best piece because it sounded the most like music to him, and kept describing it. Finally, everyone figured out that what Shankar liked, what sounded like music to him, was the sounds of the orchestra warming up their instruments together. The rest of it really didn't sound like music to Eastern ears, or at least not like the music that Shankar preferred himself. It is likely that Shankar would not have enjoyed more than an occasional bit of exposure to this non-musical-sounding music. Although I love music from around the world, I have to admit that Indian traditional music, like music from farther east, including Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, etc.) traditional music, and even these culture's pre-globalized pop music, is something I like only in small doses because it sounds so different to my ears. The experience of hearing it is intense, hard to deal with, and sometimes even unpleasant if I have to hear a lot of it.

Therefore, one can assume that what would truly perturb and torture East Asians would be Western music, and the more it diverged from Eastern musicality, the harder it would be to hear. The tones and scales used in Chinese and Japanese traditional musics are distinctive and sound "Eastern" to the Western ear, right? So one can imagine that Western music "sounds Western" and would be suitable as an instrument of aggression if it were used to accompany military and cultural aggression, as, in this instance, it surely would be. It would remind the people forced to hear it that their entire cultural system, including their aesthetic one, was imperiled, disregarded, and endangered. This Western aesthetic, applied by force, would be quite a powerful assault.

I chose Taake because this kind of extreme black metal is VERY distinctively Western, and also in a way that many Westerners don't appreciate. The harsh, snarled, screamed vocals (in Norwegian!) at the beginning of the song, coupled with the driving guitars and blastbeat of the drums, are certainly very aggressive and not pleasant to the ears of the uninitiated. The song's motif then switches to a slower, more folkloric and lilting melody, with non-distorted guitars, but continued use of picking. However, Western folkloric music is still very foreign to Eastern ears, and juxtaposing it with Hoest's raw, sometimes squawking, usually screaming, tortured howls, er, vocals, and the gloomy ambiance, plus the echoing, lo-fi production, seems to be at odds with the lightness and sweetness of the folkloric melody, threatening to make it sink like a soufflé with the miserable weightiness that much of Norwegian BM creates so well. Then a slower motif comes in, which is even gloomier, before a more driving reworking of the intro riff comes in, speeds up the song, and gives the transition to a very cathartic-sounding howl from Hoest, then another fast-tempo, pulsating build-up recreates the tension... before the folkloric motif, now a leitmotif, reasserts itself.

The movement between folklore and contemporary motifs and instrumentation is a VERY Western tradition, and a modern one at that. It is not something that occurs in any culture's traditional music, and is still a fairly unpopular style in Eastern popular composition. That kind of Westernness would surely alienate the Eastern ear, as well as being FORCED to hear it. The song closes with the folkloric motif being played over the quintessentially black metal, driving blastbeat and tremolo-picking, distorted, manically sped-up riffs of the guitars. The music then builds to another crescendo, more unearthly howls and screams, and a finish on the folkloric letimotif, in which the drums and distorted guitars fade to the background, while an angelic, mixed male and female chorus vocal reminiscent of traditional Norwegian vocal music comes in to close the song and the album.

I think it's a beautiful song, but I am also a Westerner long habituated to extreme music and the hybridization of genres. I think most Westerners don't like this music, and most Easterners would HATE it and find it very, very, very unpleasant to be subjected to it. Frankly, the control and manipulation of sensory environments is something that many people, myself included, are very susceptible to. I feel panic and paralysis if I am forced to listen to a Top 40 song that I don't like while in a public place. That music hurts my ears and soul because it is so contrary to my aesthetic sensibilities and preferences, and I feel this sense of being powerless and small when I am subjected to it against my will. It makes me angry and profoundly anxious.

To convey the power of torture through music, I will tell you a story of my own. I recall once when I was 8 and at summer camp (ironically, at a camp for diabetic children) and my fellow campers played a nearly constant rotation of the song "Pour Some Sugar on Me" by Def Leppard, which was very popular that summer. It was a song for which I had no particular affection to begin with, finding it somehow both sleazy and banal, and hard to buy as a come-on with its dumb, vague metaphors and big, dumb, overproduced guitars, but hearing it repeatedly was making me CRAZY with panic and anger. I begged the girls in my cabin to stop playing it, trying to explain to them why being forced to hear a song I didn't like hurt me, but their only response was to laugh and play it several more times, even louder. I went to the counselor in tears and she told me to just ignore it because it wasn't a big deal. I thought I would seriously lose my shit. Then, a more sympathetic, younger, hipper counselor gave me her Walkman with headphones and a Sinéad O'Connor album. That young woman saved my sanity. I really hated the other girls in my cabin for their act of aggression. They were bullies and rude and unfriendly to me, but I simply could not understand why they had been so cruel and done THIS, even when I explained to them why I needed them to stop playing the song.

I think that the incident when detainees at Guantanamo were tortured with Metallica and other shitty rock and pop music on repeat was really disgraceful. Not just because late-period Metallica sucks, but because I think it is really an unspeakably cruel torture to violate someone's comfort by creating a sensory environment that violates not only their tastes, but their cultural habits and their morals. For that reason, while I think I have an argument for Taake being some of the worst/most effective music for this exercise, it sort of makes my skin crawl to do the exercise. Fascinating assignment, though!

Bichael Molton

I'd like to point out that I have nothing but respect for South American artists like Victor Jara and Tom Araya, and, of course, Madonna.

Week 43 rules

           Contributors! This week, you are not just only contributors BUT..... you are brutal dictators! Dictators in which have been threatened with sanctions and possible international military intervention. You have cornered your enemy rebels using a whole plethora of military tactics in which are not morally nor internationally acceptable. In a last effort to keep the world off your back you decide to use psychological warfare to drive your enemy insane to point they give up their arms and surrender.
          Your mission : you will be given a region of the world and you will have to figure out what that demographical majority most likely will go nuts if it were subjected to a certain style of music for too long. Shouldnt be too difficult to make an educated guess from the knowledge you may already have or can actually find through just looking up the demographics for given region and applying a lil assumption here and there.
           For instance, You are given east asia. You wouldn't blair a local pop musicians fantastic artistry. You would prolly blare ministry's jesus built my hotrod! wich is off limits for this week. Another example would be if your given north america, you wouldnt put adelle on repeat. You could get real creative use polka or bossa nova styles, maybe even just use Psy - gangman style.Which is also now off limits to use.  You know that has to annoy everyone in this country after being played repeatedly for 72 hours. Well you would have to be 14 and on drugs to get through that. North America would be too difficult to even try to come up with something without having to be given a single group of  people such as the kkk. Even in that it would still be too easy then to figure what would annoy the living shit out of those asshats.

                                                                    

                                                              Jack: South America

                                                              HoneyBear: East Asia 

                                                              Jae-Hak: Europe

                                                              Kyanimal: Middle East

                                                              Soup: Australia

                             Now get out there and use your profiling skills we learned so well to use from our friends in the TSA and other government organizations of the world.

}}]]}SockmOnkey Socks Soup%%%$$%^#$$#

I get the impression that Soup likes Kyuss so...

wakamojo!

                                   More of our local boys for your enjoyment.......  thanks to les rodgidigerger shit..... its on his youtube channel

The Rev

Dunno why, but this was the first song that came to mind m

Big Jilm

What's the biggest thing you ever did done see, Big Jilm? I love it when Ween channels mulleted NASCAR lovers. They do it so well. I almost put "In the Mood to Move" instead. Or "Piss up a Rope." There are a lot of Ween songs that fall into this week's category...

I'm Bad and You Know It.

Reek 42 Wules

Contributors: Please post a song that makes you want to wear a mullet, overalls, and flip flops.

Next week Kyanimal makes the rules.