#this one got so long 💀

[surrealisticduvet]

Album Review - The Prison: A Book With a Soundtrack (1974)

The Prison - Michael’s first album to be released under his own record label, and the first album maybe ever to be released with its own novella. The Prison’s concept is hard to explain (you either over-explain it or over-simplify it) but in a nutshell, it is about a man (interestingly named after Michael’s second son) who lives in a prison which he discovers is not real - he can walk out at any time he likes, and the prison will fade away. This is an allegory for the troubles of society; when one is entrenched in it, it is real, and constraining; when you leave, which you can do at any time, at great personal cost, you discover that it has been, all this time, a fabrication. The book itself is very interesting, but this review is about the album, and the music it contains; let us begin.

Favorite parts of the album:

It’s clear, between the album itself and the way he spoke about it, that this was a monumental production for him. It’s very different from his previous work, and much of his post-Prison work is influenced by it. The lyrics are very strong and poetic – which makes sense, considering that writing was his focus with the book. The instrumentation is wonderful too (I love the guitar and subtle pedal steel - yes, of course Red is on this record!). although the higher level of production can make it sound a little stiffer and more impersonal at times (compared to, say, And the Hits… where he did a huge chunk of the playing himself). I don’t think the album suffers for that, however - it’s a soundtrack, so the production is perfect. 

“Dance Between the Raindrops” is probably the catchiest song on the album - starting here, and continuing in other tracks, is the trend of using a subtle background melody to drive your reading along. Amidst the lyrics and the music itself, it’s easy to get a little distracted at times, but having that baseline to keep you grounded is nice. This happens again in “Hear Me Calling,” where he utilizes a sort of “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” western shuffle deep in the background of the song. (He uses this again in the next album I’ll be reviewing – I’ll rave about it then.) 

“Walking Mystery” is another hit in my book (to be clear, none of these songs are “hits” - they would never make good radio songs, except perhaps on an easy listening station.) It has a mystical, ethereal quality and ambiance, which is again wonderful for reading along. This song and a few others almost have a touch of that dreamy 80’s synth - six years before the decade rolled around. 

Overall, the album flows beautifully, and is in fact long enough for you to read the whole book while listening. Which brings me to my critiques…

Critiques:

It may be my fault, for rushing out of fear that I’d run out of music before I ran out of pages – but in fact, it was the opposite: I finished reading long before the album ran out, and I certainly didn’t digest it well enough. Having read through once, I ought to go back and savor it this time, reading slowly and feeling the music throughout. I do believe that while reading, you miss a little of the music (I enjoy it much more when I listen on its own), although Michael said that if you’re experiencing this issue, you might just need to practice. That could be true – or maybe the songs just aren’t as memorable as some of his others. Perhaps; they weren’t made to be stand-alone hits (he had to change “Marie’s Theme” quite a bit for it to sound like a standard track on the Ranch Stash re-release), and they’re not as easy to sing along with as the rest of his discography. 

My next critique is about the book itself, which isn’t very fair to the music, but they are intertwined – it’s very theoretical and a little preachy (a symptom of his present state), which doesn’t ruin the experience for me, but I see why it wouldn’t necessarily be critically acclaimed by a casual listener/reader. Oh well. 

Finally – and this is the big one – Michael here is entering his “hamming it up” era, which gets better as the 70s fade out, but never really gets cured. For some reason, there are many lines which he sings in a half-spoken, comical manner, something that would be natural for “Mama Rocker” but absolutely not for a lot of these songs and those that he performs live or on other albums. (This phenomenon is extremely bad on Live at the Palais, which I’ll get to in a few posts…) I guess it doesn’t ruin the experience for me, but it does make me cringe. 

Conclusion:

I truly wish that, first of all, we had a recording of the ballet (?!) that was performed for this album (if I remember correctly from Infinite Tuesday) and that, second, he was not so insecure/embarrassed about this album in the years after it came out. In live performances he apologizes for making people listen to songs off of it (albeit surely half-jokingly) and teases himself about the outro of “Marie’s Theme” (that it repeats 602,417 times at the end so you have time to catch up on some reading, etc.) 

Overall, The Prison is not my favorite album of his ever, although I do really appreciate it – it’s just not one I tend to listen to often. But I think it was a very important one that paved the way for a lot of his later work - a definite timeline shift. His later work was obviously influenced and inspired by it, and it seemed to be a culmination of what his earlier work was leading up to, philosophically (if not so much musically - sort of separate schools going on there – but he was all about that sort of unexpected, conceptual genre-melding approach to music… and that’s why we love him!)

[chloesimaginationthings]

The FNAF Mikes talk about their extended family..

[fumiko-matsubara]

He got them to join his emo band 😔🤟

The new year's show was a success and it became a yearly thing.

This is kind of a continuation of my headcanon and brainrot posts about Chiba's friendship with Gakushuu and Yukiko, with a bit of my oc Isami bc I'm not really normal about him 🩵

[ilonacho]

cock shame

[bluebird-ascended]

one piece redraw for prideee!!!

og art and headcanons under the cut :D

luffy: aroace and agender. triple threat, he truly doesnt give a fuck

zoro: gay and trans

nami: lesbian

ussop: demiboy, definitely uses he/they

sanji: bi but veryyy deep in the closet. which is ironic because he has horrible fashion sense. hes also tranfemme to me but thats post timeskip 😌

chopper: ally!

robin: trans and bi

franky: trans and straight t4t with robin. frobin canon i said so

brook: he's dead he has no game anyway. but pan

[3-aem]

is there anything a beginner should know about having a cat? i was never allowed any pets growing up and wanted to get one once i'd moved out (but i'm also a little terrified of just how small kittens are compared to humans)

i am most definitely not the one to ask bc ive had him less than a year and i know for a fact he is more baby than most cats are.

i personally just binge watched cat rearing videos for a few weeks but once u get one ur gonna realize that every cat is kinda different but they all bite and scratch u no matter what and u just have to

[coolnonsenseworld]

Omg your instagram story is so right! I can’t believe I’ve never even noticed that, probably because in fanon keith and shiro are so close that I’d forgotten that isn’t canon :0

Deserves this awesome quote which I had to dig out of my sideblog reblogs

[tommygotwrittenoff]

confession time!!! can't wait for bt bones

[lieutenantselnia]

Sometimes you just find quotes from historical figures that make you go "yeah, they may not have been particularly the best person ... but the specific thing they point out right there, big mood"

[masquenoire]

"What is that? Wait, no... don't tell me, that's a fuckin' Sundance A25, isn't it?? We're going out on a big mission tonight and you had the bright idea to pick something like that as backup??? You know what that is, that's SHIT! Which is what you are! You are shit, dumbass!"

[vadersaber]

and let me just say this too: making the promotion for hotd s2 as team black vs team green has divided the fandom even more & made it worse

[overly-verbose]

A whole lot of the next Part is literally just;

Everyone else's brains: *the entirety of the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney OST intensifies*

Meanwhile, SIkuna's brain: *the Wii theme song (occasionally interrupted by falling_metal_pipe_sound.mp3) starts playing*

.

[einsatzzz]

i’m sorry if this is a rude question, but I was a bit surprised by the housework part in your ship meme. i just doubt that tsuna is such a good housewife material considering that at the beginning of the manga he had nana doing everything for him, he had a messy room, so i seriously doubt his talent goes beyond heating up food…. i just thought that kurumi and tsuna would just set the house on fire together because they can't both do anything

Thank you for dropping by my inbox, anon! No worries, I didn't read it as a rude question, I actually even got inspo from your ask lmaooo I'm just gonna put it here hahaha 🤣

Also, here's the link for the ship meme mentioned! 🐟🎀

Ok, now to actually answer your ask!

I do agree that Nana practically did all the work in the house for him. His room is also quite messy as you said 😭 and highly likely, the only reason it gets cleaned up is also Nana (it's even shown at the room previews). There's even that one episode in Future Arc where Haru & Kyoko boycotted them, and they just kept eating instant noodles because they can't cook a proper meal. All in all, that's just how much of a Dame Tsuna he is, being crap at housework as much as he is with school grades.

Though, this doesn't mean he'll just "absolutely" stay like that forever. Just like the growth his character had throughout the entire story and his shows of courage (or just him stepping up when needed) in situations where we know he's scared too, I believe this characteristic of his can also spill over to other aspects of his life which includes something as common as housework. And it's not like he doesn't personally want to grow as a person too, you know?

Another important thing to consider for this is the dynamic between Tsuna and Kurumi (a character who's an added variable to what we initially have as canon, which can affect Tsuna's character as well). A key part of their relationship in general that we want to portray is that they provide each other more opportunities for personal growth. Of course, this includes Tsuna stepping up in taking over for most of the housework.

A nice analogy for this would be when you pair up an introvert and an extreme introvert together for a project, so now the introvert will have to step up their game for the other introvert even if they're bad at it.

So if we apply this example to them, while Tsuna is quite bad at doing housework (with Nana doing it all for him), Kurumi is even way way worse (with having multiple servants at their family's disposal to handle their housework + spoiled even more by her family + whatever black matter cooking fuckery she has going on). In the end, Tsuna is forced to step up his game, for both his and Kurumi's safety in their shared living space. He won't be perfect at it especially during the period when they just moved in together, but at the very least I can see him improving to somewhere around below average to barely average skill, which is as the anime dudebros would call "mid" jfmdhdjdjdhd 🤣🤣🤣

We never really said that he'd be a good housewife material, but instead! ✨He will be Kurumi's housewife when they're together in their home 🙏✨

He won't be able to cook those five-star restaurant steaks for her, but you can at least expect him to cook some fried eggs that are a bit burned on the side (or maybe even underneath lol) - it's still edible. I can see him learning to cook other easy fried dishes or boiled dishes (boiled eggs ftw 👍) or maybe just plain eggs over rice (can you tell i love egg dishes, but I've never tried eggs over rice, I just discovered it in Gin//tama).

Then when he washes the dishes, he definitely broke glass plates or cups while attempting to do so. As time goes on, the frequency of that happening would decrease, but he'll still break a few from time to time. I can imagine even more scenarios but I'll stop there hehe He's not perfect, but he's doing his best!

One can also argue that they can just hire servants (or Kurumi can just bring a maid with her) since they're both Bosses of their respective Families, but they're also the type of characters who wants to live a normal life away from the underworld (at the very least, in their home life). Having "servants" or "guards" is off the list for that! So, it's just the two of them trying to live a simple life together in a comfortable apartment (...as simple as they can. They're not exactly normal people to begin with 💀).

I'll be stopping myself from any further rambling, this is long enough kdhddkhdjd Thank you for coming to my Housewife Tsuna and Domestic TYL TsunaRumi TED talk!🥰🥰🐟🎀 I've been wanting to yap about this, thank you again for sending this ask, yippeeee!!!

=====

reference for the short above, the og user in tik//tok alr deleted their acc unfortunately huhu

[todayisafridaynight]

no ones ever gonna understand how much i love daigo doin this stupid shit after dissolving the tojo

[blue-thief]

pls let me back into the friend group. i was barely a part of it the first time and i won't contribute anything if you let me back in. but i wanna know why the breakup between that one couple was so bad that the entire group is falling apart

[good-beanswrites]

If ur still doing reqs id love older brother and little siblimg 0003!! I love es and fuuta sm, you can choose what they do but id rather it be post/no milgram!! Tysm

Ahh this was such a sweet request, thank you ✨ I had a lot of fun with it! I kept the details loose -- I don't know how t3 actually shakes out -- but Es still doesn't know much about themselves, so they end up moving in with the Kajiyamas. Enough time has passed for things to become fairly normal between the two.

“What are you doing? It’s giving me the fucking creeps.”

Fuuta made a disgusted face, but Es didn’t seem to notice. They just kept standing in the middle of the kitchen. It was 3am. They were barefoot, wearing one of Fuuta’s old pairs of pajamas. They stared at the countertop intently. They hadn’t even turned on the lights. Fuuta waved his phone flashlight around, trying to see what they were up to. It didn’t look like anything had been touched.

He took a step closer. His nerves were already on edge, coming into the kitchen to steal a late night snack and finding them standing ominously in the darkness. The little bit of light from his phone reflected in their icy gray eyes. 

“Oi, Es…?”

Sleepwalking. That had to be it. Fuuta rolled his eyes, breathing a small sigh at the realization. The sound was somewhere between relief and annoyance. Es was an odd kid as it was. It had been strange getting used to them living in his house, and now he had to deal with freaky stuff like this…

Fuuta approached as quietly as possible, putting his phone down. He reached out his hand. He planned on guiding them back to bed in silence, but he must have been too harsh with his grip. 

Es gasped, the dull look in their eyes turning to shock.

Fuuta immediately leapt backwards, his startled curse turning to frantic apology.

“Y-you were sleepwalking, I was trying not to wake you up but…” he trailed off, seeing Es scan the kitchen and get their bearings. 

“It’s alright. I’m used to waking up in strange places, I suppose.”

Fuuta grimaced. ‘Odd kid’ was an understatement. 

They didn’t seem to notice. Their expression had darkened. “I… I was dreaming. I was back there, and,” their voice shook with sudden emotion. “And we were all…” their breath caught.

“Hey, don’t go and start cryin’ on me.” They didn’t sound like they were going to cry exactly, but he couldn’t be too careful. He wouldn’t know what to do. “You’re not some baby. All of that is over now.” 

Fuuta had meant it as encouragement; he knew how strong Es was. As strange as they may be, they were the toughest person Fuuta had ever met. Realizing that his words may have come out a bit harsh, he tried to speak softer. “Really, it’s all over. You can relax here.”

Es nodded, but stayed silent. The two stood in the dim glow of the flashlight.

Fuuta coughed. “Now, did you want something, or…?” He gestured to the fridge, then made his way around them. He dug around inside for a snack. 

“N-no. Thank you. I’ll be heading back to bed, then. I’m sorry to have frightened you.”

“I wasn’t scared.” Fuuta said quickly. He took out something, sniffed it, and shrugged. “And anyway, it was way less terrifying than when Haruka did it.”

“Haruka sleepwalked?”

“Yeah, and when you wake a normal person up from it, they’re supposed to go into fight or flight. None of us were itching to deal with Haruka’s fight response, you know?” Fuuta took a big bite. He turned to find Es with a miserable look on their face. Through the food, he mumbled, “what?”

“I… I didn’t know that. About Haruka.”

“Okay?”

“There’s so much I didn’t know about all of you.”

“You also didn’t know jack shit about yourself, so we can call it even.” Fuuta took another bite, assuming the conversation was over.

Es wasn’t as satisfied. “I mean it,” they said, their voice still strained. “I thought I knew you, but I’ve learned so much here. There was so much I didn’t know about you. I never knew what your family was actually like, or how well-kept your room is,” they gestured to him, “or that you hardly ever sleep normally.”

Fuuta couldn’t tell if it was a criticism or not. He clicked his tongue. “Well, I never knew that strawberry milk was your favorite, but you don’t see me getting misty-eyed about it.”

Es had opened their mouth to continue, but they blinked in surprise. “How did you know I liked it?”

“Because I like it, and you keep drinking everything in the house.” He rolled his eyes.“I bought twice as much last time I went out, and you still ended up stealing it all. There’s only one little carton left…”

Es’ face slowly softened. Then, a devilish smirk crossed their lips. “You know, I thought I heard that milk is good to drink before you go to sleep…”

“Eh? Oh, hell no! That’s mine.” He went back to the fridge, rummaging around to get it.

“Says who?”

“Says me. I’m older. And I liked it first.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. And I should get it because I’m younger.”

“Now that doesn’t make sense!” Fuuta retrieved the milk. He turned the carton over in his hand. A thought crossed his mind – one he would never speak aloud to anyone, ever. He recalled his sister helping him when he was too small to reach the milk. She used to heat it up for him before bed.

He lazily tossed it across the kitchen. “Not like I care. Here, be grateful.” 

Es scrambled to catch it. Once again, their expression turned emotional. “Fuuta…”

“It’s not a big deal, sheesh!” He picked his phone up from the counter, biting down on the snack he’d grabbed. “Like I said, all that is over. You just gotta be normal now. I know that’s hard for a weirdo like you –”

“Hey!”

“– but just try, okay?” He shoved Es’ shoulder as he walked. “C’mon. Pops doesn’t care when I’m up, anymore. But he’ll give a goody-two-shoes like you a lecture if he hears.”

“I’m not a goody-two-shoes.”

“Psh, you’re the worst I’ve ever seen!”

“There’s nothing wrong with being disciplined.”

“Drink your damn milk.”

“Yeah, yeah.”