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February 1, 2003

I'm just finding writing now

I'm just finding writing now very much comforting, so you'll forgive me for keeping going for at least a bit more. I think I've really sold REM short on New Adventures in Hi-Fi, though it might just be me being sentimental at the moment. How the West Was Won is actually a remarkable almost-transfiguration of the ur-song of Monster. Keyboard riff is fantastic - if I was a shitty music journalist, I'd say it's hypnotic. But I suppose really it's the continual dialogue between the guitar and keyboard that makes the counterpoint so poignant. Of course by now it's Wake-Up Bomb, so mood's shifted slightly, even by the end of that sentence. So what, the putting down of words itself is subject to the variations of the moment? I suppose I'm just sick of analysing other people's writing, wish I could just read my own and revel in it. But how to put meaning and purpose into each syllable? Other than the purpose and meaning that is constitutive of Me.

I just revel as well in the timbre of Michael Stipe's voice, plaintive and open, raw and almost out of control. It's like the bang and blame video, you almost feel he's flubbing the line, when it's still so clearly sung.

Fuck, Li Peng just came up to tell me to turn it down. Suppose Spong's sub really isn't the best thing for the middle of saturday morning. I always wondered if he was annoyed by the noise. Well there's no longer a radio show to play in the middle of the night. And right now the definition of the bass and the sharpness of the treble in my earphones is incredibly pleasant. One thing I'm rather ambivalent towards is all this "commentary" in music about "society" the particular leper of which seems to be talk-show hosts ala-Springer. That whole Barry Williams show thing by Peter Gabriel has put me off him forever. Pettish and not particularly insightful - full of righteous angst and affectation. Pretty much as bad as the Alanis Morissette school of lyric writing. Music is actually great, but decides that lyrics need not have any transcendant relationship to that music. And it's not even that you can't write bad lyrics, it's just if you do, don't foreground it so much in the song.

And Spike Lee going off on one at BET. What's that about? It's not that I disagree, and I think he's quite right as an influential figure to critique his own community (unlike Bill Cosby on the Osbournes, which is just annoyingly unperceptive); it's just that Spike Lee looks so smug and the sentiment of him doing it just strikes me as being so proprietary and parochial.
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Posted by subtitles at February 1, 2003 11:39 AM | Blogger Entries