オン 拍 と 脈

[7th | 2004]

…but apparently they were a big influence on craprockers Fall Out Boy:

“After Naked Raygun, Chicago was the Smoking Popes” says Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy. “They were Alkaline Trio before Alkaline Trio; they were Fall Out Boy before Fall Out Boy. This band is one of the reasons that Fall Out Boy even exists.”

Wow. The Popes must stab themselves to sleep every night hearing that. Maybe not. I don’t know em or nothin. And maybe that kind of support from a currently popular band, however nefarious, currently allows them to make their comeback tour. I have a feeling Fall Out Boy fans don’t really give a fuck and these shows will mostly be attended by old fans. But I don’t know those people either.

So I was not a big fan of these guys so I’m not seeing them play Philly tonight. (quote from the R5 page) But they are pretty good. Not at all like Fall Out Boy so just forget all about that. (If Avril is a borderline 5 on my personal hate scale, as I’ve said, FOB is an 8 or 9). I’d feel pretty dumb at a reunion show knowing only one song from a mixtape I got once tho:

Need You Around [Born To Quit | 1994]

Hey, this song was also on the Clueless soundtrack? I had no idea.

Waitamintute…what jerk gave me this tape? Goddamnit.

I was in the process of doing more podcasts, or pseudo-podcasts or whatever, and I got pretty far of the topic of music. I was already thinking about doing another blog about non-music issues, and I might do that or not. I the meantime, I just made a seperate page here for what I did so far on this. Explains itself. Maybe too much?

I say that a lot. It mostly has to do with “80s music”. People in my general age range (late 20s-early30s) seem to be big fans of “80s music” by default. It’s a little annoying. I’m not a snob about it, it’s just that “80s music” isn’t simply music from the 80s (So many great underground bands, and Hip-hop of course.), it’s narrowed down to the biggest Billboard top 40 stuff that nobody even liked then. It’s all a combination of simple nostalgia combined with 90s “irony” that results in the embrace of that stuff. Imagine all the rock dudes from the 70s who drove around blasting Zep with a “DISCO SUCKS” bumpersticker deciding the Village People and the Bee Gees were actually better only 10 years later. This is my generation. Sure, there were undoubtedly a few acts that transcended the typical paradigm into timeless brilliance, but it was basically a crapfest. (And Cyndi Lauper. THAT’S OBVIOUS. Maybe The Cars. There’s a few.)

But people say things like: “Hey, the 90s sucked too!” Well, somewhat. Don’t think I’m letting the 90s off the hook, because there was a ton of shit. But there was a much greater percentage of the kind of stuff I liked that got popular. More importantly they say: “That J-pop shit is soooo 80s. Wtf are you talking about?”

NO. NOOOOOO.

Wait, it kinda is. And I was trying not to think of it myself because I couldn’t figure it out either. Especially when I’m driving around blasting Amu’s WHAT A FEELING with a Sub Pop bumpersticker on my car. (Altho making a hip dance track with a sample from a lame 80s song is soooo 90s.)

I digress. Much J-pop is very much like a style of music from the 80s. But it’s not really what you think of right away by “80s music”. Depending on your age and where you live, you might not think of it at all. It’s so weird that I never thought of it before, but this music has had an almost subliminal effect on me. I never bought a single record, or considered myself a fan of it, but it’s effect on my current taste is undeniable.

The music is Latin Freestlye:

It’s called Latin Freestyle because it was made almost entirely by Hispanics and was/is mostly popular in those communities, and to differentiate it from improv battle rap. (The name “freestyle” came from the music not having a set 4/4 beat to it like other dance music.) I grew up in a very Italian part of South Jersey, and it was always referred to simply as “Freestyle”. Italians at the time maybe thinking they were Latin instead of Black. (ME=PART-ITALIAN) It really wasn’t questioned at the time and nobody was trying to rap yet is what I’m saying. There was no confusion in the term.

Anyway, there’s not many songs there, but it doesn’t take much. Eerie? To many, it could be stupidly obvious. Me, I wonder. Could this relatively obscure music really be an influence on J-pop, or is there just something universal about teenage love and heartbreak, simple melodies and cheesy keyboards? I don’t know. But I love it.

Just wanted to throw in a quick post about a somewhat regular non-Asian rock band I actually like. There’s no policy of not writing about that stuff here, it just bores the piss out of me lately. So I get extra excited now when something not like…fuck it, I’m not gonna whine about about other bands sucking here, let’s just do it. Good bands still exist all over the place. And I had no Australia category at all before.

Two points I’m gonna get crap for that I’m not really sure how to get around:

1. Are bands from the Australia region “Western” bands?
2. Unless New Zealand becomes my new Jamaica, it goes in the Australia category. Sorry Kiwis.

Ok, fuck it.

The band is Die! Die! Die!.

Myspace

That it all.

I don’t even remember what I doing this time 2 years ago.

You shouldn’t delete blogs, kids.

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I had a post about this blog being a year old a few months ago, but according to the woefully outdated Google blog…linkback thing (if you are linking here and not on the list, I’ll get to it, sorry), this blog started on Wordpress right about this time last year (intro post was deleted).

So what. Well here was the first post.

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