I wish Green Day would stop putting out crap. Remember when Green Day was awesome? Take a listen to Dookie and tell me it isn't one of the cornerstones of the 90s rock sound. Man, that album always takes me back to grade school. I'll never forget this one day in fifth grade when my entire class just started singing "Basket Case." It was so ridiculously surreal that sometimes I wonder if it actually happened.
I'm also really partial to Insomniac, their commercially failed follow-up to Dookie. I have no idea why the album didn't take off like Dookie did. It's a little repetitive of the Dookie vibe/sound, but who fucking cares? Green Day was a poppy punk band. Who the fuck expects them to be all deep and shit?
Well they do apparently. They've got another sure to be craptastic rock opera album coming out this year. Let's just get this down on the internets as a matter of public record... I do not like American Idiot. I think it's stupid, pretentious, not good lyrically or musically, and provides an indelible stain on the pop culture of this decade and certainly on the Bush administration (not that I'm a Bush supporter). Who in the hell ever thought the band that came up with When I Come Around would be writing two EP length rock operas? I didn't, and with good reason. I thought Green Day and I were on the same page. That this is gonna be a band that will rock the shit and bring the shit down, but aren't gonna get all political and hoity toity on you.
Nimrod was kind of their fall from grace in my mind. Some great tracks, but you know and I know that that fucking album was the on with Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) on it, and I. CANNOT. STAND. THAT. SONG. Not only is it the most overplayed song in the history of overplayed songs, played on a seemingly endless loop of graduations in the late 90s [it's called fucking Good Riddance you imbeciles!] but it is the gateway to let Green Day, the SoCal punks, onto shit like Lite FM or some other innocous pop music vacuum station. (PS remember radio stations?)
After that, what did they put out next? Warning? Another underrated album in my book that didn't sound quite like a Green Day record. I'm not sure what it sounded like, but it was passable and not worthy of the scorn a lot of people gave it. Minority was a great song for one. Some of the other ones, yeah I can see how a fan of Dookie's aggressive punk licks wouldn't dig on the mellow somber acoustica of Macy's Day Parade. Anyway they followed it up with stupid ass American Idiot and now they have some other shit concept album coming out and I couldn't care less. Say what you will about it musically and thematically (and I personally say it sucks ass on both levels, with the exception of Holiday which is a damn fine tune), but American Idiot, to me, is the thing that launched Green Day into the eye-liner wearing, Hot Topic poster selling, douchebags putting St. Jimmy quotes onto their facebook phase that they are now firmly entreanched in.
And that is why the best album they've put out in the past decade wasn't a Green Day record. Foxboro Hot Tubs, the infamous Green Day side project from last year, is infinitely better than the American Idiot crap they pumped out 4 years prior. Poppy, catchy, heavy guitar riffs, and not at all serious. That's how I like my Green Day. That and recorded prior to 1997.
Funny how I wrote an entire diatribe about Green Day when all I wanted to say was "I really like the Foxboro Hot Tubs album and apparently Green Day have some new pretentious shit album coming out." Their new album is billed as being in "three acts." Go fuck yourself, Green Day.
Showing posts with label things that got crappy as you got older. Show all posts
Showing posts with label things that got crappy as you got older. Show all posts
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Monday, April 21, 2008
I Don't Really Like Red Hot Chili Peppers
To be honest, I feel like I'm late to this realization, that a lot of the world made this decision a few years ago, but I am really sick and tired of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Some history...
In 1993, (I think that's the year, I'm too lazy to fact check any of this...) when Blood Sugar Sex Magik came out, it was a big deal. One of those iconic early 90's albums that I don't think many would argue ranks up there with Nirvana's Nevermind or Pearl Jam's Ten in setting various stages for how music would progress over the course of the decade. Sublimely converging funk, punk, and just all out rock, it was a damn good record. "Under the Bridge" is a damn good song. And they had some wild antics, dancing around on stage naked with tube socks on their wing wangs, and overall were a part of the overall gestalt that was the early 1990's to me.
Then they came out with One Hot Minute in 1995 (again, rough estimate). I remember "Aero Plane" getting decent radio play and I liked it enough. But despite having this album on my iPod for probably the past 4 years, I've never listened to the whole thing in full. I think "My Friends" is on it, and that's my favorite RHCP song, but memory serves me right... the album was a bomb. And not like a Tom Jones "Sex Bomb" either; like an Eddie Murphy's Adventures of Pluto Nash bomb.
Then they did who the fuck knows what and eventually came out with Californication in 2000. While Californication has some good jams, namely the title track and I've always enjoyed "Parallel Universe," and "Road Trippin'," the album suffers under its own popularity. I still turn on the radio and fucking hear "Scar Tissue." As far as overplayed albums go, this one is probably the fucking king (until I think of a better one...). All of its singles, including "Californication" which I go through cycles of love and hate with (loved it when I first heard it, before it was a single, hated it when it hit big, loved it when I learned it on the guitar, hated it when I heard it on the radio for the 700th time...) are still played now, 8 years later, and when they have a new album out.
That brings me to their latest album, which I can't even remember the name of. The one with "Dani California" on it. I hate that song. It sounds exactly like the entire album Californication. And it's a double album. Nothing, and I mean nothing, says "we like to sniff our own farts" more than a double album. Ok, side note, Smashing Pumpkins' Mellan Collie and the Infinite Sadness as well as New Order's Substance are both double albums and are great (though not completely perfect... you can't have 2 hours + of music and expect them all to be hits). So why do I hate on Planet Ardcadium, or what ever this album is called? Because the difference is that those were kind of the iconic albums for the Pumpkins and New Order, this is just a desperate attempt to milk the same cash cow that sold so many copies of Californication from a band whose prime is long past. If you have never heard the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which is probably damn near impossible, listen to Blood Sugar Sex Magik, watch their episode of The Simpsons, and call it a night. Trust me on this one.
The culmination of all of this? Tonight I finally excise my iPod of RHCP for good. I'll keep a couple of choice tracks, but say goodbye to "Around the World." I've always hated you most of all when you came up on random.
In 1993, (I think that's the year, I'm too lazy to fact check any of this...) when Blood Sugar Sex Magik came out, it was a big deal. One of those iconic early 90's albums that I don't think many would argue ranks up there with Nirvana's Nevermind or Pearl Jam's Ten in setting various stages for how music would progress over the course of the decade. Sublimely converging funk, punk, and just all out rock, it was a damn good record. "Under the Bridge" is a damn good song. And they had some wild antics, dancing around on stage naked with tube socks on their wing wangs, and overall were a part of the overall gestalt that was the early 1990's to me.
Then they came out with One Hot Minute in 1995 (again, rough estimate). I remember "Aero Plane" getting decent radio play and I liked it enough. But despite having this album on my iPod for probably the past 4 years, I've never listened to the whole thing in full. I think "My Friends" is on it, and that's my favorite RHCP song, but memory serves me right... the album was a bomb. And not like a Tom Jones "Sex Bomb" either; like an Eddie Murphy's Adventures of Pluto Nash bomb.
Then they did who the fuck knows what and eventually came out with Californication in 2000. While Californication has some good jams, namely the title track and I've always enjoyed "Parallel Universe," and "Road Trippin'," the album suffers under its own popularity. I still turn on the radio and fucking hear "Scar Tissue." As far as overplayed albums go, this one is probably the fucking king (until I think of a better one...). All of its singles, including "Californication" which I go through cycles of love and hate with (loved it when I first heard it, before it was a single, hated it when it hit big, loved it when I learned it on the guitar, hated it when I heard it on the radio for the 700th time...) are still played now, 8 years later, and when they have a new album out.
That brings me to their latest album, which I can't even remember the name of. The one with "Dani California" on it. I hate that song. It sounds exactly like the entire album Californication. And it's a double album. Nothing, and I mean nothing, says "we like to sniff our own farts" more than a double album. Ok, side note, Smashing Pumpkins' Mellan Collie and the Infinite Sadness as well as New Order's Substance are both double albums and are great (though not completely perfect... you can't have 2 hours + of music and expect them all to be hits). So why do I hate on Planet Ardcadium, or what ever this album is called? Because the difference is that those were kind of the iconic albums for the Pumpkins and New Order, this is just a desperate attempt to milk the same cash cow that sold so many copies of Californication from a band whose prime is long past. If you have never heard the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which is probably damn near impossible, listen to Blood Sugar Sex Magik, watch their episode of The Simpsons, and call it a night. Trust me on this one.
The culmination of all of this? Tonight I finally excise my iPod of RHCP for good. I'll keep a couple of choice tracks, but say goodbye to "Around the World." I've always hated you most of all when you came up on random.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Moronic TeleVision
This year marks the 25th anniversary of MTV, the revolutionary channel that helped launch the careers of hundreds of vapid braying airheads and systematically ruined America. Let's all take a moment to congratulate them on this milestone.
MTV began as a simple idea. Put music to a kind of freeform movie - a music video - and have them be shown in succession with the help of an on-air VJ (video jockey). It was basically radio with a visual element. And that's a pretty cool idea. I'm all for movies, I'm all for music. MTV, in 1981, sign me right the hell up. (Well, I wasn't alive, but if I was). Unfortunately, over time, as money and marketing consumed the network this premise was completely abandoned. Today, in 2006, I would pay cash money to someone who can find me a good 15 minutes of full music videos on MTV. At this point, even MTV2 is devoid of any music videos and only plays reruns of "Beavis and Butthead" and derivatives of "Jackass."
I remember back in the day - let's say the era spanning from 1993 to 1996 - when MTV was just the absolute shit. Not "shit" like it is now, but "THE shit." They were just past their ten year anniversary and approaching their 15th. The aforementioned "Beavis and Butthead" was making a whole ton of waves in the media when idiots copied what they saw on TV (and this was also repeated by the aforementioned Jackasses of "Jackass"). The MTV beach house, the mighty MTV beachhouse Tiki God (anyone remember him?), "Headbanger's Ball," The 10 spot, "The State," "The Brothers Grunt" (who even remembers that show besides me?), Jenny McCarthy and Chris Hardwick flirting it up on "Singled Out," and fucking MTV's Oddities starring "The Maxx" and "The Head." It was violent, it was loud, it was sexy, and it was fucked up. THAT is what MTV meant to me as a kid. This taboo network that, when I was nine or ten, was what I immediately put on when the parents went to bed and the remote was all mine.
This was the era of grunge, the era of Generation X, a time when low-budget indie movies called "Slacker" or "Clerks" were coming out and advertising the shiftless lazy masses that wanted to say a big fat 'fuck you' to everything and everyone that expected them to "make something of themselves." MTV was the counter-culture and it was fucking great. I remember staying up late one summer to catch Prodigy's video for "Smack My Bitch Up," which was only aired after 1 am due to the excessive violence, drugs, and nudity it contained. Yeah, MTV played videos back then. And they were starting to do more shows and less music, but it was fine. Most of them still revolved around music anyway. "Beavis and Butthead" was more or less all about mocking bad videos, aside from the whole frog baseball thing. But for anyone with eyes still reading what I have to say on this foresaken blog, I can tell you the very moment, the very day, that the MTV I knew and loved so much, died.
September 14th, 1998
I was but a starting freshman in high school, filled with dread and anticipation over four years that might be hellish and scar me for life (they were and they did). And to coincide with my change of life, one of my favorite networks was about to have a change of its own.
On that fateful September day, they premiered a show called "Total Request Live."
Enter Carson Daly. Enter Britney Spears. Enter NSync and the Backstreet Boys and fucking 98 Degrees and 5ive and every other idiotic boy band. Enter Avril Lavigne and (even though I like them) blink-182. The new audience wasn't that generation x slackerdom that I as a pre-teen so desperately wanted to identify with. No, it was teeny-bopping middle America being pandered to by blonde-haired blue-eyed sirens singing about how they're not that innocent and waving bye, bye, bye. Jump ahead eight years and see the fucking difference MTV made. There are preteen girls out there wearing shirts that say "I faked it." and dressing like whores to be like their precious MTV role models. Fucking disgraceful...
I'm not trying to say that MTV was a positive role model for anyone in the pre-TRL days; like I said, idiots were copying Beavis and Butthead all the time. But truth be told, I'd much rather my kids - should I one day seed them - copy Beavis and Butthead than Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson. At least Beavis and Butthead blew stuff up, they didn't just act like spoiled brat retards.
Oh well, I've long accepted that my MTV is long gone and recognize the fact that my bitching about this makes me feel like an old man. "In my day," etc... All I can do now is listen to Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, or Soundgarden, watch my battered old VHS tapes of "The Maxx" and "the State" and remember that once, a long time ago, I was witness to something extraordinary. Maybe it's my beloved Gen-X slackers that are now parents and just don't care that their kids are watching mindless pablum.
Good luck on the next 25 years, MTV. I don't think you can mess society up any more than you already have, so there's the silver lining. That and "Pimp My Ride." I love that show.
MTV began as a simple idea. Put music to a kind of freeform movie - a music video - and have them be shown in succession with the help of an on-air VJ (video jockey). It was basically radio with a visual element. And that's a pretty cool idea. I'm all for movies, I'm all for music. MTV, in 1981, sign me right the hell up. (Well, I wasn't alive, but if I was). Unfortunately, over time, as money and marketing consumed the network this premise was completely abandoned. Today, in 2006, I would pay cash money to someone who can find me a good 15 minutes of full music videos on MTV. At this point, even MTV2 is devoid of any music videos and only plays reruns of "Beavis and Butthead" and derivatives of "Jackass."
I remember back in the day - let's say the era spanning from 1993 to 1996 - when MTV was just the absolute shit. Not "shit" like it is now, but "THE shit." They were just past their ten year anniversary and approaching their 15th. The aforementioned "Beavis and Butthead" was making a whole ton of waves in the media when idiots copied what they saw on TV (and this was also repeated by the aforementioned Jackasses of "Jackass"). The MTV beach house, the mighty MTV beachhouse Tiki God (anyone remember him?), "Headbanger's Ball," The 10 spot, "The State," "The Brothers Grunt" (who even remembers that show besides me?), Jenny McCarthy and Chris Hardwick flirting it up on "Singled Out," and fucking MTV's Oddities starring "The Maxx" and "The Head." It was violent, it was loud, it was sexy, and it was fucked up. THAT is what MTV meant to me as a kid. This taboo network that, when I was nine or ten, was what I immediately put on when the parents went to bed and the remote was all mine.
This was the era of grunge, the era of Generation X, a time when low-budget indie movies called "Slacker" or "Clerks" were coming out and advertising the shiftless lazy masses that wanted to say a big fat 'fuck you' to everything and everyone that expected them to "make something of themselves." MTV was the counter-culture and it was fucking great. I remember staying up late one summer to catch Prodigy's video for "Smack My Bitch Up," which was only aired after 1 am due to the excessive violence, drugs, and nudity it contained. Yeah, MTV played videos back then. And they were starting to do more shows and less music, but it was fine. Most of them still revolved around music anyway. "Beavis and Butthead" was more or less all about mocking bad videos, aside from the whole frog baseball thing. But for anyone with eyes still reading what I have to say on this foresaken blog, I can tell you the very moment, the very day, that the MTV I knew and loved so much, died.
September 14th, 1998
I was but a starting freshman in high school, filled with dread and anticipation over four years that might be hellish and scar me for life (they were and they did). And to coincide with my change of life, one of my favorite networks was about to have a change of its own.
On that fateful September day, they premiered a show called "Total Request Live."
Enter Carson Daly. Enter Britney Spears. Enter NSync and the Backstreet Boys and fucking 98 Degrees and 5ive and every other idiotic boy band. Enter Avril Lavigne and (even though I like them) blink-182. The new audience wasn't that generation x slackerdom that I as a pre-teen so desperately wanted to identify with. No, it was teeny-bopping middle America being pandered to by blonde-haired blue-eyed sirens singing about how they're not that innocent and waving bye, bye, bye. Jump ahead eight years and see the fucking difference MTV made. There are preteen girls out there wearing shirts that say "I faked it." and dressing like whores to be like their precious MTV role models. Fucking disgraceful...
I'm not trying to say that MTV was a positive role model for anyone in the pre-TRL days; like I said, idiots were copying Beavis and Butthead all the time. But truth be told, I'd much rather my kids - should I one day seed them - copy Beavis and Butthead than Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson. At least Beavis and Butthead blew stuff up, they didn't just act like spoiled brat retards.
Oh well, I've long accepted that my MTV is long gone and recognize the fact that my bitching about this makes me feel like an old man. "In my day," etc... All I can do now is listen to Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, or Soundgarden, watch my battered old VHS tapes of "The Maxx" and "the State" and remember that once, a long time ago, I was witness to something extraordinary. Maybe it's my beloved Gen-X slackers that are now parents and just don't care that their kids are watching mindless pablum.
Good luck on the next 25 years, MTV. I don't think you can mess society up any more than you already have, so there's the silver lining. That and "Pimp My Ride." I love that show.
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