Well, I'm kind of biased, I'm married to her. I think I'm pretty lucky. Now if I could get her interested in washing dishes...And I can't link her from my blog, cause she's on Livejournal and I am a Blogger man. It's like West Side Story. "oh Libelle, Libelle, wherefore art thou..."
http://www.livejournal.com/users/blaue_libelle/
She's stiltwalking tonight:
web.radiant.net/phoenix
Never been to Spain.
Friday, July 15, 2005
Friday, July 08, 2005
Lay off Bono and Bob already
#1. Rock stars should shut up and sing and not have opinions.
Firstly, their hearts are firmly in the right place no matter how ridiculous things get. They are fighting what they see as the good fight and I can't see them doing it for any other reasons than they believe it's the right thing to do.
Secondly, anyone who crosses genres gets ridiculed in popular opinion, yet we have managed to eventually accept Reagan as president, Arn as the Governator, Cate Blanchett as a serious actor and David Hasselhoff as a popular singer in Germany. Well, 3 out of 4 ain't bad at least.
Thirdly, you can only sing about it so long until it becomes either boring, uncommercial or preachy-sounding. How do you write lyrics about debt relief? Eventually, you have to put down the guitar and pick up the soapbox if you consider yourself a truly political person.
#2. Rock stars should not be entitled to opinions.
And neither should politicians, journalists, pseudointellectual criminologists, right-wing pundits, church bigots, neo-nazis and other racists of any form, corporate leaders (unless talking about the corporate sphere) and anyone else I didn't vote for personally, yet I am constantly subjected to the opinions of these people wherever I go, plus a few other random bigots whose presence I can't escape for one reason or another.
I'm soft on including journalists in this list, because you can only report on other people's opinions for so long before you begin to develop your own. I just think they need to be open about the fact it is their opinion, despite illusions of neutrality taught in journalism school.
#3. Leave the opinions on making the world a better place to the politicians.
That's worked well for us so far, hasn't it?
#4. They're just the guilty idle rich.
This is the best one I've heard so far, and it comes from the far left mostly, not from the opinion columns of, or letter writers to, major newspapers. I kind of agree. Problem is, no one in society's mainstream wants to listen to the unwashed poor at all. Certain members of the educated classes fare better at getting their opinions across, because of respect, fame, or the fact that our post-feudalistic society has pretenses of being a meritocracy and values the opinions of so-called experts above others.
But rock stars? Now those guys make history. A single lyric captures a moment everyone has felt, a sense of Zeitgeist, an opinion we share. David Bowie famously and controversially called Hitler the first rock star, a fact that Marilyn Manson has played with in his live shows.
I can see how someone might want a rock star to plead their cause, I can see how a rock star might think that massive fame could be put to a use. Rest assured, behind those rock stars are people who have worked for these causes for years, whispering lines in their ears to repeat to the media.
Guilty rich bastards? Well, yeah, Bono probably earns a large portion of the Irish GNP personally, but the Prime Minister of my country owns a shipping empire. No one in the mainstream seems to mind that nearly as much, but I find it far more worrisome.
Firstly, their hearts are firmly in the right place no matter how ridiculous things get. They are fighting what they see as the good fight and I can't see them doing it for any other reasons than they believe it's the right thing to do.
Secondly, anyone who crosses genres gets ridiculed in popular opinion, yet we have managed to eventually accept Reagan as president, Arn as the Governator, Cate Blanchett as a serious actor and David Hasselhoff as a popular singer in Germany. Well, 3 out of 4 ain't bad at least.
Thirdly, you can only sing about it so long until it becomes either boring, uncommercial or preachy-sounding. How do you write lyrics about debt relief? Eventually, you have to put down the guitar and pick up the soapbox if you consider yourself a truly political person.
#2. Rock stars should not be entitled to opinions.
And neither should politicians, journalists, pseudointellectual criminologists, right-wing pundits, church bigots, neo-nazis and other racists of any form, corporate leaders (unless talking about the corporate sphere) and anyone else I didn't vote for personally, yet I am constantly subjected to the opinions of these people wherever I go, plus a few other random bigots whose presence I can't escape for one reason or another.
I'm soft on including journalists in this list, because you can only report on other people's opinions for so long before you begin to develop your own. I just think they need to be open about the fact it is their opinion, despite illusions of neutrality taught in journalism school.
#3. Leave the opinions on making the world a better place to the politicians.
That's worked well for us so far, hasn't it?
#4. They're just the guilty idle rich.
This is the best one I've heard so far, and it comes from the far left mostly, not from the opinion columns of, or letter writers to, major newspapers. I kind of agree. Problem is, no one in society's mainstream wants to listen to the unwashed poor at all. Certain members of the educated classes fare better at getting their opinions across, because of respect, fame, or the fact that our post-feudalistic society has pretenses of being a meritocracy and values the opinions of so-called experts above others.
But rock stars? Now those guys make history. A single lyric captures a moment everyone has felt, a sense of Zeitgeist, an opinion we share. David Bowie famously and controversially called Hitler the first rock star, a fact that Marilyn Manson has played with in his live shows.
I can see how someone might want a rock star to plead their cause, I can see how a rock star might think that massive fame could be put to a use. Rest assured, behind those rock stars are people who have worked for these causes for years, whispering lines in their ears to repeat to the media.
Guilty rich bastards? Well, yeah, Bono probably earns a large portion of the Irish GNP personally, but the Prime Minister of my country owns a shipping empire. No one in the mainstream seems to mind that nearly as much, but I find it far more worrisome.
Songwriter for the working class...my ass
Explain yourself, Mr. Springsteen.
Tickets for your upcoming show, where I can go hear you perform your songs about the downtrodden American worker in a gigantic stadium are priced: CA $95.00 - CA $115.00.
So for 95 bucks I can sit in GM Place's nosebleeds and watch the E-Street ant-band play through my binoculars. Tickets go on sale monday. If I get the HOB promotional code, I can buy one today.
I really think you need to explain yourself to your fans. What would Townes VanZandt have to say about all this? What about Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck, whose tradition you follow? I guess Woody wrote corporate jingles and Steinbeck is the main tourist attraction of Salinas. Who wasn't forced to become a corporate slut? Phil Ochs seemed to maintain his integrity- and ended up committing suicide. Bruce, I would never wish that upon you.
Poet of the working class, my ass. I'll stay at home and listen to "Greatest Hits","Ghost of Tom Joad" and all the MP3s I've pulled off the internet of your newer stuff. I like the fact you are rediscovering your singer-songwriter roots, I just can't afford you anymore.
Tickets for your upcoming show, where I can go hear you perform your songs about the downtrodden American worker in a gigantic stadium are priced: CA $95.00 - CA $115.00.
So for 95 bucks I can sit in GM Place's nosebleeds and watch the E-Street ant-band play through my binoculars. Tickets go on sale monday. If I get the HOB promotional code, I can buy one today.
I really think you need to explain yourself to your fans. What would Townes VanZandt have to say about all this? What about Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck, whose tradition you follow? I guess Woody wrote corporate jingles and Steinbeck is the main tourist attraction of Salinas. Who wasn't forced to become a corporate slut? Phil Ochs seemed to maintain his integrity- and ended up committing suicide. Bruce, I would never wish that upon you.
Poet of the working class, my ass. I'll stay at home and listen to "Greatest Hits","Ghost of Tom Joad" and all the MP3s I've pulled off the internet of your newer stuff. I like the fact you are rediscovering your singer-songwriter roots, I just can't afford you anymore.
Vancouver pub/bar owners are cheap "barstards"
I could talk about current geo-politics, in light of the G-8 conference and the London bombings and the new cold war brewing between America, China and the rest of the world, but what really burns my ass today is that I pay up to $7-8 for a beer in a local pub and I would have to go to a Belgian speciality restaurant to avoid the waiter just plunking the bottle, sans cap down in front of me.
As anyone who has been to Europe knows, every beer deserves its own glass.
Not just it's own fresh, clean glass every time you drink another, but a glass specially designed for that beer, shaped to bring out the maximum potential of the brew. Not the same old sturdy, cone shaped 3-ounces-short-of-a-real-pint glass that is the mainstay of the local pub industry. Not for 8 bucks a pint.
Despite all their pretenses of serving fine beers in good surroundings, the actual presentation of what they serve bites. There are finer glasses out there: for instance, Alexander Keith's *can* come in a nice, bow-shaped glass, but rarely does. The only reason for that is that they are afraid of breaking it before they've used it to sell a million slightly short "pints" of beer in sturdy, squat, thick glasses or even better, the bottle it came in, which is pretty much disposable and doesn't require any extra effort. Vancouver pub patrons need to rise up against this cheapness, rather than have the owners pass along any improvements, whcih should be standard practice, to the consumer.
As anyone who has been to Europe knows, every beer deserves its own glass.
Not just it's own fresh, clean glass every time you drink another, but a glass specially designed for that beer, shaped to bring out the maximum potential of the brew. Not the same old sturdy, cone shaped 3-ounces-short-of-a-real-pint glass that is the mainstay of the local pub industry. Not for 8 bucks a pint.
Despite all their pretenses of serving fine beers in good surroundings, the actual presentation of what they serve bites. There are finer glasses out there: for instance, Alexander Keith's *can* come in a nice, bow-shaped glass, but rarely does. The only reason for that is that they are afraid of breaking it before they've used it to sell a million slightly short "pints" of beer in sturdy, squat, thick glasses or even better, the bottle it came in, which is pretty much disposable and doesn't require any extra effort. Vancouver pub patrons need to rise up against this cheapness, rather than have the owners pass along any improvements, whcih should be standard practice, to the consumer.
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