Tomorrow (later today, whatever), a friend and I will participate in a conveniently scheduled Guitar Hero tournament at the library, then go over to another friend's house to play Rock Band for the second time (first with more than 2 people) when he conveniently gets off work a few hours after the tournament starts. I'm also considering us going to the movies and riffing on something awful. Conveniently, there are a number of awful movies to choose from at our theater right now.
I feel bad for forgetting about Sara's birthday (I usually remember March birthdays!), so if you don't shower me with appreciation in the comments, I won't judge. :'(
This is my mp3 player, and I like it quite a bit. It's a Gigabeat F60 (60 gig) built way back in 2005, though I purchased it new just a year or two ago.
The controls consist of five buttons on the right side (power/home, menu, volume up/down, and a multifunctional "A" button), which you can't see in the picture, and the pressure-activated plustouch on the front. Apparently, some reviewers didn't like the plustouch, and of course it's an obvious effort to somehow counter the iPod's clickwheel, but from what I've used of iPods, I honestly like this a bit more. It offers two more methods of input than the clickwheel, for one thing: both can be pressed up, down, left, right, and in the middle, but while the clickwheel can only turn clockwise and counterclockwise, you can slide your finger across the plustouch right-to-left, left-to-right, down-to-up, and up-to-down. And then there's still the side buttons on top of that, so I find navigating the device to be a much easier process than on the iPod, when you get used to it.
And it's very fortunate that the controls are so good, because the rest of the interface is pretty iffy. The screen is bogged down with oversized, gaudy bits of graphical paraphernalia, all playlists have to be uploaded to the player from a computer, the delete function is buggy, the custom EQ is 2-band, and the system is generally slow.
These things can be a pain to deal with sometimes, but usually it's not that bad: I rarely use custom playlists when I listen to music, there are enough decent EQ presets to keep me from being frustrated often, and the slowness can be expected from a system this old. Still, it's enough that I'm heavily considering putting Rockbox on there. If I do, though, and don't like it, I don't know if Toshiba still has the original firmware available for me to put on again. I'll have to look into it.
The absolute worst part about this system, though, is the software. It's a slow, heavy, buggy, inflexible piece of crap called Gigabeat Room, and it's the only thing you can use to transfer files to the player aside from WMP, which I haven't gotten to work period. I also can't get it onto my laptop, so whenever I want to download music to it, I have to pull the music off my laptop and put it on my desktop, which only has USB 1.0. Hopefully, Rockbox will allow me to download from the laptop.
I realize I've made the player sound kinda abominable, but I really do like it a lot, especially for what I paid for it ($75 compared to about $400 retail).
1. I finally got my driver's license today! I took the driving test once on Friday, but my examiner was batshit insane (no, really D:) and failed me almost immediately for one or two very minor violations. I got a much nicer lady today, and even when she did tell me of things I did wrong, she didn't actually seem to detest me for making mistakes. Cool.
2. I've had a nice, old set of garage-sale speakers lying around for a while now, but I didn't have the right adapters to connect them to anything and I didn't want to cut the ends off. I finally got past that crap a few days ago, chopped off the ends, and plugged them into my stereo. For someone with my budget for these kinds of things, they sound totally great. I haven't had a chance to really crank them yet, but I don't do that often anyway. I hooked up my crappier stereo speakers to my record player, and finally got that going again for the first time in ages. Since I last used it, I had purchased old copies of, among other albums, Over-Nite Sensation by Frank Zappa, Machine Head by Deep Purple, and, most surprising of all, The Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall by The Fall. Mind you, I found it (and the other two) at an antique store in Hays, freakin' Kansas. You don't know how rare those little glimmers of culture are around here, even if you're looking for them. Fucking cool.
3. Yesterday I tuned my guitar to EEAADD on a whim, and I'm finally beginning to really comprehend the value of alternate tunings. I haven't been able to make a single noise yet that doesn't sound angry, melancholic, or otherwise negative. It sounds kinda Slint-y, even. Very cool.
4. The record player stopped working today :(. Granted, I got it from a dumpster, but it still kinda killed my hopes. I don't know if it'll work again, or when the next time I'll be able to find one is. I might check antique stores and garage sales soon for a new one. Uncool.
Let's do some Mario Kart, guys.
Show us your favorite album cover.
Sadly, I don't even have this album, though I've been meaning to get ahold of it or something else by the Silver Apples. Still might be my favorite album cover, though.
Loveless also has a pretty great cover. It conveys the music so accurately, and well, it just looks nice.
I bought a DS. Anyone want to duke it out on Phantom Hourglass until I get Mario Kart? We'll exchange friend codes and take turns hitting Link with big swords, it'll be a beautiful thing.
Here's the final draft of a compare/contrast essay I wrote for English. It gets turned in tomorrow, but something still seems a little off about it, so I wanted to know if anyone here has a tip or two they'd like to offer. Suggestions for the title would also be cool.
Ever since it emerged over half a century ago, the musical phenomenon of rock and roll has been constantly expanding and reshaping itself. Originally, it was an easily definable genre that revolved around a certain blend of country and blues with a steady backbeat. But since then, it has taken many twists and turns, donning and shedding skins as popular culture demands it and scattering myriad subgenres in its indelible wake. Rock has reinvented itself so much and so radically, in fact, that there are some who believe that by now the potential of the genre has been completely sapped and there are no more innovations to be found within it.
If there’s one band that can change this view, provide a beacon of hope for the future of rock, and illuminate the depths to which it has not yet been tapped, it is My Bloody Valentine. After creating a large amount of goth-tinged post-punk in the mid-to-late eighties, MBV shattered the music world’s preconceptions about rock and almost singlehandedly defined the burgeoning scene of “shoegazing” music with their 1991 album Loveless. However, an unfortunate side effect of the acclaim they received for this release was the total overshadowing of their back catalog. Even to this day, the band’s earlier work is mostly regarded as nothing but a build-up to Loveless, and is rarely appreciated for its own merit. This is something of a tragedy, since these songs, while perhaps not as good in individual quality as the material on Loveless, are in their own right quality works of music.
The most important reason one is still able to enjoy MBV’s back catalog is the sheer sonic difference in the music compared to the sound that defined Loveless. In fact, a listener unfamiliar with the band would almost certainly be unable to distinguish the album from their first release, 1985’s EP This Is Your Bloody Valentine. This album’s extensive use of synthesizers, reverb, and original lead singer Dave Conway’s off-kilter baritone voice showcased the band’s initial tendencies towards gothic rock and combined them with raw, sparse, high-energy post-punk. If this had been all the band had ever produced, perhaps they still would’ve been regarded as an underground treasure, though much less well-known.
The band continued making music in this fashion until Conway left in 1987. This would later prove to be an immense turning point in their sound. Unable to find a new fulltime vocalist, lead guitarist and main creative force Kevin Shields took over the position with assistance from new rhythm guitarist Bilinda Butcher. Shields’ lack of confidence in his singing ability and Butcher’s naturally soft, feathery voice were a drastic change from Conway’s strong, bombastic crooning. Thus, with the band keeping their instrumentation as loud as ever, the vocals seemed to drift along somewhere lower in the mix, creating an androgynous and almost indecipherable vocal ambience that would later become one of their hallmarks.
However, it was MBV’s next release, 1988’s You Made Me Realise, that truly began to give tell of the sound the band was destined to create. The eponymous first track actually recalled their material with Conway a good deal, except this time with Butcher’s soft vocalizations filling in the sonic cracks left by the jagged, angular guitars. But after this quick assault, the second track, “Slow,” begins by introducing a strange and altogether new sound for the band, as a meandering, tremulous, and highly-processed tape loop weaves its way through the speakers. If you had bought this record when it first came out, you might have thought to take it off and check it for warps at this point, but before you have time to adapt to this unfamiliar turn of events, the guitar comes in; it also is different from traditional MBV canon. The sound is denser, heavier, and fuzzier. It still contains a similar aggression to what fans are used to hearing, yet somehow it also creates a soft blend from the music, causing it to lose focus in places. The tape loop, as has now become apparent, serves as a drone through the entire track, aiding this process. The song is vaguely comparable to—and to some ears, could even be considered a herald of—the grunge music of the early ‘90s. One more oddball track like this makes its way into the album, “Cigarette in Your Bed,” which shows the future sound of MBV even more distinctly than “Slow.” The mix of tape loop, whispery acoustic, and passive, ultra-fuzzy electric guitars create a dense and detailed texture that almost seems to fold over onto itself, and Butcher’s lead vocals on the track solidify the sense of thick delicacy. It is perhaps the first song ever released that fell squarely into the grounds of the shoegazing genre. Their next releases,1988’s EP Feed Me With Your Kiss and their first LP the same year, Isn’t Anything, would have similar qualities, only this time injecting a little more aggressiveness back into the music again and piling the denseness and softness back on top of it. The combination of the harshness of the band’s past and the swirling softness of their future seen in these three albums—You Made Me Realise in particular—created moods and tones that would never be captured again in future releases, including Loveless, and thus documented a unique and altogether satisfying creative period for MBV.
Then, in 1989, they set to work on Loveless—though it might be more accurate to say “he,” because Shields wrote and recorded almost all of the tracks by himself. It would prove to be a grueling process, taking two years to finish; this was due largely to Shields’ unwillingness to make any compromises regarding his creative vision for the album, and his inability to explain it thoroughly to anyone else involved in production. Upon listening to it, one could sympathize with this conundrum, because when the arduous process was finally completed—during which the band also released two more EPs and reportedly cost their record label anywhere from 160 to 250 thousand British pounds—the product was magnificent to behold. Loveless emits textures, moods, and imagery that nobody had ever realized could exist in a rock idiom. Warmth seems to radiate with a strong pulse from somewhere deep within the heart of its enormous sonic density, yet the music is in the same moment subdued, thoughtful, and almost uncomfortably intimate. The vocals, and even (perhaps especially) the guitar sounds seem to come out of nowhere, and powerful melodies emerge in places where you’re not even sure there are any definite notes being played. At times, it can even become difficult to tell whether the sounds you’re hearing are soft or harsh, or both at the same time; in fact, every bit of existence outside of the music, including any traditional standards of measurement, seem to be diminished, perhaps even destroyed. The listener is left with no reference point with which to immediately decipher the music, and is almost forced to simply experience it. Such a sensation had never been achieved in rock music before nor has been since.
However, Loveless, for whatever sound it seems to dig up out of the forgotten depths of rock’s potential, still represents just one sound and one musical experience, and as majestic as it is, it still can’t seem to negate the musical endeavors that preceded it. Those little EPs scattered across the eighties somehow maintain in the shadow of the sonic giant that pushed them out of the public eye so efficiently. Perhaps if MBV had been making their trademark shoegazing music for their entire career, this would’ve been different, and the inferior songs of yore would’ve been pulverized by Loveless and left with few redeeming qualities about them. As it stands, however, they’re just too different from the band’s later sound to be neglected. And though they aren’t on the same level individually as Loveless, I think they can, as a whole, still stand next to it as a true accomplishment from a truly great band.
- Broke up with Kylee over the summer. We both had pretty good feelings about it though, and we realized we work a lot better as friends. And I was being an asshole sometimes, although I often didn't notice it and I don't think it was a primary factor in the breakup (even if it should've been). Nevertheless, I'm glad I was in it; I learned a boatload about relationships and about myself, plus, having learned more about Kylee and how she works has given me even more respect for her than I would have otherwise.
- I'm doing a lot better with my classes this year. Chem II is a lot easier, and I'm actually learning things in this class that I should've known in Chem I had I not slept through so much of it lol. Mind you, the teacher still gets me lost as hell a lot with his ramblings and vagueness, but it's worth it. It's a small class, and those are always great.
- Scholarships should be flowing in at a nice pace this Spring. My cumulative GPA is so-so, but I got a 28 on the ACT (at least until I get a report mailed in from the most recent time I took it) and my family's got financial need out the ass (at least on paper, where my dad's not employed. In reality, while we're still in quite a bind, we're not living at the level of a family with zero income). And even if the scholarships don't cut it, a good friend of my dad's has actually promised to pay for my entire tuition, which, rich though he be, is amazing. I'm just trying pretty hard to not have to take him up on that offer.
- I'll be going to the local college, Fort Hays State University. They're a pretty decent school, and damned cheap, especially for a local resident. But what's important is that their graphic design program is ridiculously good--I'm talking somewhere among the best in the nation here. The students they turn out could get work almost anywhere, and there are very high-demand ad firms that come to recruit the cream of the crop twice a year. Sadly, I plan on teaching graphic design at a high school level, so no high-paying job offers for me lol. But it'll still be worth it; there's just not enough public school graphics programs anywhere, despite so many schools investing in new technology. I think it's grown to be an important and very valid media, not to mention highly applicable to the non-artistic world. Plus, it's gotta be the easiest teaching job in the entire school system: no notes to prepare, no tests to write, no essays or other tedious assignments to grade, and since the technology will be evolving so rapidly, I won't have to teach the same material from year to year. Even better, that leaves me with a lot of free time, so I could pull in more money with freelance work.
- The house is coming along great. The time limit on the construction loan was supposed to be in October, but the bank gave us a good extension. We're done with most everything on the inside, and on the outside we're finally working on siding. Hanging the siding is tedious, but it feels awesome because every time we finish a section I get to reflect on how I'll never be working on that part of the house again. Mmmmmmmm...
So yeah. I really would like to start posting more, and more importantly, read you guys' Voxes more. I've been busy this year, but the internet seems a little more empty without a Shin to exchange MST references with, or a Mimmi or a Lea to dote on. (And the rest of you awesome folks, but they commented most recently, and when you get beyond three examples The Rules say you've become too rambly.)
Still, I've been busier this year than in previous ones, so it might be a bit of a challenge. I'll try to give an update of what's happened in my life in the last several months in a day or two.
I think these solidify my career opportunities in graphic design education.
