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khiphop-discussions · 3 years ago

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Do you feel as though the Hip-hop industry in Korea is getting saturated, especially with Smtm, and now the new show that Superbee is having? I don't know about all these new rappers, trappers or "singing rappers", everything new just feels so not genuine, the beats are the same and the lyricism is really downgraded. I feel like the Korean public (not the Hip-hop heads in Hipgal or other Hiphop forums) have like changed the entire image of it. But I wanna hear what you have to say about it!!

The general public is always gonna change the hip-hop. It's another issue with capitalism. Any time people start making money or a living off art, they will have to go with what the market wants at a given time or risk not making any money from it.

This is the same thing that people say about Hip-Hop in general.

I don't particularly care that hip-hop changes over time cause I'm not a SUPER hip-hop purist. I understand that hip-hop is a culture and culture is SUPPOSED to change and evolve over time. The only time culture stops (or should stop) is when the people who invented it are dead or decided they no longer have a use for it for whatever reason (in real life the process can be a bit different but that's a whole sociology and/or cultural anthropology lesson and we won't do that at the moment lol).

I do like some trap or some singing rap cause I LOVE genre fusions and crossovers (reason why I love Changmo and when artists put violins or other classical music influences on their hip-hop songs). However, when something like SMTM10 happens where damn near ALL of the songs where clearly just an attempt at doing really pop-y stuff to chart + make money off streams? That's a bit much. But AGAIN, I know their reasoning for doing that was to recuperate MONEY that was likely lost during the pandemic (as well as to give away bigger prizes) ! SMTM songs chart ANYWAY but I guess they wanted even MORE attention from the general public (I think I've heard that the GP and casual fans are actually more profitable. Hardcore fans will buy everything you put out BUT since there's more casuals + GP it's just a larger pool of money even if they only stream 1 thing or buy one album). Someone a few days ago even noted that it seemed like the ads got more blatant this season (IDK if that was you or not).

One thing I CAN say that I'm proud of the KHH scene for, is that actual hip-hop artists own most of the labels (or AT LEAST a chunk of a share in the company like Jay Park did). So most rappers (non-idols) are signed under actual rappers. One thing that is a big regret in Hip-hop (at least in the Black community) is that a lot of hip-hop is owned by white record execs so they can control the creativity and direction of hip-hop. Rappers like Lou the Human (now Lou from Paradise as he refuses to use the old name anymore. I'm not sure if the label owns it now or if he just doesn't want that name going into the next chapter of life with him since it is associated with that label), have said that they wanted him to pee on a black baby doll just to drum up controversy (as well as other things).

Since KHH rappers are involved still, they still have a certain level of control. But honestly, I feel like KHH is STILL pretty damn new. Even hip-hop in general is still "technically" younger than our grandparents for the most part but Korean hip-hop even younger than that. I hope they don't sell off the labels. Looking back, that CJ E&M acquisition of AOMG and Hi-Lite should have been a lot scarier to me but I was mostly fine with it for the increased reach. You live and you learn of course. As we're seeing now with MKIT/UNCUT, it's really dangerous for people who barely give a shit about hip-hop outside of money to get involved. So I can see why people don't like mnet or SMTM at all.

HOWEVER, I feel like as long as the rappers keep CONTROL of the labels (as well as their masters and everything on the business end), then SMTM staying or going can't control the future of KHH. Especially since the rappers technically have the means to make their own show that people would watch in the absence of SMTM.

BUT then the rappers themselves have to be trustworthy too. Cause what happens when there's a company who wants to buy your label for a large sum of money? Are you gonna take it and let them take over khh or will you stand firm?

My final thoughts are that the artists should get their money out of mnet and SMTM while it's still profitable and still a thing but never trust mnet + producers/staff that much. It seems like people in KHH have kinda already figured that out at this point now which is why the artists don't do stuff to fuck up their image or take the series that seriously any more. And you have people saying "FUCK SMTM" outright (dok2 literally said it in one of his songs MADE for the SHOW! Which means they ended up PAYING him for that! LOL King shit!) and/or throwing their chains from past seasons into lakes (Hongwon). SMTM will eventually start to lose viewers and fade out like EVERY show ever (seems like the survival show bubble is gonna burst eventually). And when that happens, mic swag, dingo, yng&rich records, and everybody else in KHH should be ready to pick up with new ideas and things fans wanna see. It's clear Super Bee is fine being a direct competitor with SMTM which is why he's having this survival show.

BUT on the fan side, we also need to make sure we are hyping up these shows that are non-SMTM as well which we do. We come out in droves to watch them.

BUT they have to be professionally run, they have to be PROMOTED so we know when and where to watch, AND the show can't just die out randomly without talking about winners/other contestants and/or having another season. Also, wouldn't hurt to have subs. CLEARLY international fans are watching by the THOUSANDS. CLEARLY y'all sell tickets when you're on world tours so ????

#asks

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arthur-j-raffles · 4 years ago

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Hey, why do you think people get upset (especially purists) with the concept of Johnlock when it's been here for ages? I love the thrilling impulsive disordered way Sherlock thinks and acts (like my ADHD, OCD, and other mental disorders which I headcanon Sherlock to have.) alongside his nurturing and supportive Boswell (like my fiancé). They're flirty, fun, and affectionate with their jokes and laughs with each other throughout their mysteries, and that comforts me. Canon is damned and I don't care what Conan's opinions are if it makes me happy. Why are people so sour, salty, and act like the idea of me writing fanfiction and buying fanart of my first ship at 12 (when I first read Sherlock from the public library with my nana a decade ago) is the worst thing in all of existence and ruins Sherlock Holmes? Am I the crazy one or is everyone else who's crazy? (Btw it's nice to see someone on Tumblr who loves the OG turn of the last century version Sherlock than the terrible show alongside Lupin and Raffles.)

Hi anon! I know you probably just asked this question to get me to respond about how it’s ridiculous that anyone would get that upset about a fictional ship, but this question got me thinking for a bit. I’m one of the most biased sources here (i’ve made posts about how i don’t tag John/Sherlock because it should be a given, etc.), but I’ll try to respond to this question with an honest and fair answer because there are a lot of factors as to why people get upset at John/Sherlock.

Below the cut I’ll talk about:

1. Cultural Osmosis

2. 19th Century Friendship

3. Distaste for Shipping

4. Homophobia

1. Cultural Osmosis

One of the reasons I think is most prevalent is that people who have never read or watched any Sherlock Holmes content assume because it’s so old and so popular that they’ve somehow absorbed enough of it through pop culture and references that they know what Sherlock is like via cultural osmosis. They know he’s deductive and doesn’t like people, so they assume he’s cold, always calculated, and the pinnacle of detective perfection. They know John is the narrator and Sherlock’s friend, so they just assume John is basic, boring, and so uninteresting that he’s barely in Sherlock’s social circle, but merely tags along with him. This vision of both of the characters is skewed so far from the canon that people either can’t fathom how you ship these two characters who in their minds are very incompatible, or the more common thing, people have a preconceived notion that you’re looking too much into it because nothing old and published can be gay.

(This kind of thing isn’t just exclusive to Sherlock, either. People will also gawk at the idea of Spock/Kirk from Star Trek TOS because they assume they know what TOS is without even watching it because they’ve seen the cultural impact of “beam me up, Scotty” and “live long and prosper.” They create a mental image of TOS that’s mostly full of their own assumptions, and gay subtext isn’t one of their expectations.)

2. 19th Century Friendship

Another reason is that historical male friendships are different than what the typical male friendship is now. In the 19th century, men were more open to showing affection for each other in strong ways. Photos from the century show male friend groups openly holding hands, arm in arm, and helping light each other’s cigarettes. Obviously a lot of men are shaking off ideas of “manliness” that limit the way they can express their platonic love to their friends, but there’s still a lot of men that won’t hold their best friend’s hands because “that’s just weird/that’s gay.” This is all a long-winded way of saying that, to some people, Sherlock and John are the pinnacle of close male friendship in the 19th century. They are the perfect show of platonic affection between men, something that some people look up to and aspire towards. To people who think of Sherlock and John as exclusively best friends, they may feel offended or baffled that anyone would try to “ruin” that friendship by making the two lovers. That’s why some people who are legitimate fans of Sherlock Holmes may take offense to the ship: they think it ruins the friendship between the characters.

3. Distaste for Shipping

It isn’t uncommon for fans of a series to have a distaste for shipping elements, especially for a series whose sole focus isn’t romance. Sherlock Holmes is in no way a romance, and some people feel that shipping shouldn’t be the focus of fandom content because the source material isn’t romantic. People who want to focus on mystery and suspense elements may believe that shipping ruins what fans should be focusing on and appreciating in the franchise. And they have some merit in thinking that shipping can ruin the focus of a franchise, because there are definitely some fandom subcultures out there that ignore important themes and messages in shows to instead focus on their ship. But, this is an over-generalization of any fandom, clearly.

The above reasons for someone disliking Sherlock/John are not malicious. They assume the person is well-intentioned but misguided. In the cultural osmosis example, the person just doesn’t understand the source material and thus doesn’t understand the ship. In the friendship example, the person just wants to see a male friendship that isn’t toxic, and mistakes the act of shipping for throwing away that interpretation entirely. In the distaste for shipping example, the person just wants to focus on the themes of Holmes and not the romantic subtext. However, saying that everyone who gets upset at shipping John/Sherlock is well-intentioned would be a lie.

4. Homophobia

There’s an obvious reason of—whether implicit or explicit—homophobia when some people get downright disgusted or outraged that someone would ship John/Sherlock. I don’t think it needs explanation as to what homophobia is, but Sherlock/John especially outrages people more than other gay ships because the characters are classic. Sherlock is known throughout the world, everyone knows his name even if they’ve never read any of the stories, and his iconography—smoking pipe, hat, and jacket—have become well-recognized. It makes ignorant people boil over when you say that this iconic character who has remarkable impact on the world may be gay, asexual, or transgender. They think that lgbtq identities are something taboo or something to be ignored. To them, lgbtq characters should be background noise at most. And vocalizing that you see John/Sherlock subtext in their interactions destroys that.

TL;DR: Some people may be upset by John/Sherlock because they don’t understand the source material, they think shipping destroys a friendship dynamic they liked, or they feel that shipping takes away from the story. Some people may be upset by John/Sherlock because of ignorance and homophobia.

#sherlock holmes #holmes #sherlock #dr watson #john watson #acd holmes #original post

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betterdaysareatoenailaway · 4 years ago

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RANDOM REVIEW #2: ANY GIVEN SUNDAY (1999)

“This game has got to be about more than winning. You’re part of something.” Any Given Sunday (1999), directed by Oliver Stone and featuring Jamie Foxx, Dennis Quaid, Cameron Diaz, Al Pacino, LL Cool J, James Woods, and Matthew Modine, is my favourite sports movie of all time. Of all time.

I’m not betraying my favourite sport by saying this. The Mighty Ducks is a kid’s movie. It’s okay, but it’s not a timeless classic. I don’t like the Slap Shot series, Sudden Death is fun but silly, and the Goon movies were a missed opportunity. The only truly good scene in Goon is the diner scene where Liev Schreiber tells Seann William Scott: “Don’t go trying to be a hockey player. You’ll get your heart ripped out.”

Such is the sad circumstance of the hockey enforcer. They all want to play, not just fight. Here’s a link to a video in which the most feared fighter in the history of the NHL, Bob Probert, explains that he wanted to be “an offensive threat...like Bobby Orr,” not a fighter: https://youtu.be/4sbxejbMH4g?t=118 Heartbreaking. But not unusual.

Donald Brashear, Marty McSorley, Tie Domi, Stu “The Grim Reaper” Grimson, Frazer McLaren: they all had hockey skills. But they were told they had to fight to remain on the roster, so they fought. As Schreiber says in the film: “You know they just want you to bleed, right?” If the players don’t bleed, they don’t get to stay on the team. So they fight, and they pay dearly for it later. Many former fighters have CTE or other head injuries that make day-to-day life difficult. The makers of Goon should have taken that scene and run with it. I was so disappointed they didn’t, especially given what happened right around the time the film came out, with the tragic suicides of Wade Belak, Derek Boogaard, and Rick Rypien, all enforcers, all dead in a single summer. So Hollywood hasn’t even made a good hockey movie, let alone a great one. Baseball has a shitload of good films, probably because the slower pace of play makes it easier to film. Moneyball has a terrific home run scene, Rookie of the Year does too. Angels in the Outfield was a big favourite of mine when I was a kid, plus all the Major League films, and Bull Durham.

Football has two good movies: The Program (1993) and Rudy (1993).

And football has one masterpiece. The one I am writing about today.

A young Oliver Stone trying not to die in Vietnam. ^ Now, I know Stone is laughed at these days, given his nutty conspiracy theories and shitty behaviour and the marked decline in the quality of his films (although 2012’s Savages was underrated). I know Stone is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but do you want a football movie to be subtle? Baseball, sure. It’s a game of fine distinctions, but football? Football is war. And war is about steamrolling the enemy, distinctions be damned, which is why Any Given Sunday is such an amazing sports film. I love the way it shows the dark side of football. In fact, the film is so dark that the NFL withdrew their support and cooperation, forcing Stone to create a fictitious league and team to portray what he wanted to portray.

This is not to say the movie is fresh or original. Quite the opposite. Any Given Sunday has every single sports film cliché you can think of. But precisely because it tries to stuff every single cliché into its runtime, the finished product is not a cliched mess so much as a rich tapestry, a dense cinema verite depiction of the dizzying highs and depressing lows of a professional sports team as it wins, loses, parties, and staggers its way through a difficult season. Cliché #1: The aging quarterback playing his final year, trying to win one last championship. (Dennis Quaid)

Sample dialog: Dennis Quaid (lying in a hospital bed severely injured): Don’t give up on me coach. Al Pacino: You’re like a son to me. I’ll never give up on you. ^ I know this sounds awful. But it’s actually fuckin’ great. Cliché #2: The arrogant upstart new player who likes hip hop and won’t respect the old regime. (Jamie Foxx)

Cliché #3: The walking wounded veteran who could die if he gets hit one more time. Coincidentally, he needs just one more tackle to make his million-dollar bonus for the season. (Lawrence Taylor)

Cliché #4: The female executive in a man’s world who must assert herself aggressively in order to win the grudging respect of her knuckle-dragging male colleagues (Cameron Diaz). Diaz is fantastic in the role, though she should have had more screen time, given that the main conflict in the film is very much about the new generation, as represented by her and Jamie Foxx, trying to replace the old generation, represented by Al Pacino, Dennis Quaid, Jim Brown, and Lawrence Taylor. Some people think Diaz’s character is too calculating, but here’s the thing: she’s right. Too many sports GMs shell out millions for the player an individual used to be, not the player he presently is. “I am not resigning a 39-year old QB, no matter how good he was,” she tells Pacino’s coach character, and you know what? She’s right. The Leafs’ David Clarkson signing is proof positive of the perils of signing a player based on past performance, not current capability. Diaz’s character is the living embodiment of the question: do you want to win, or do you want to be loyal? Cuz sometimes you can’t do both.

Cliché #5: The team doctor who won’t sacrifice his ethics for the good of the team (Matthew Modine).

Cliché #6: The team doctor who will sacrifice his ethics for the good of the team (James Woods)

Cliché #7: The grizzled, thrice-divorced coach who has sacrificed everything for his football team, to the detriment of his social and familial life, who must give a stirring speech at some point in the film (Al Pacino…who goes out there and gives the all-time greatest sports movie “we must win this game” speech)

Cliché #8: The assistant or associate coach who takes a parental interest in his players, playing the good cop to the head coach’s bad cop (former NFL star Jim Brown).

Best quote: “Who wants to be thinking about blitzes and crossblocks when you’re holding your grandkids in your arms? That’s why I wanna coach high school. Kids don’t know nothing. They just wanna play.”

Cliché #9: The player who can’t stop doing drugs (L.L. Cool J).

Okay, so the first thing that needs to be talked about is Al Pacino’s legendary locker room speech. Now, it’s the coach’s job to rile up and inspire the players. But eloquence alone won’t do it. If you use certain big words, you lose them (remember Brian Burke being endlessly mocked by the Toronto media for using the word “truculent?”). The coach must deliver the message in a language the players understand, while still making victory sound lofty and aspirational. This is not an easy thing to accomplish. One of my favourite inspirational lines was spoken by “Iron” Mike Keenan to the New York Rangers before Game 7 against the Vancouver Canucks in 1994. “Win tonight, and we’ll walk together forever.” Oooh that’s gorgeous. But Pacino’s speech is right up there with it.

“You know, when you get old in life…things get taken from you. That’s parta life. But you only learn that when you start losin’ stuff. You find out…life’s this game of inches. So’s football. In either game – life or football – the margin for error is so small. I mean…one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it…one half second too slow, too fast, you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when we add up all those inches that’s gonna make the fuckin difference between winnin’ and losin’! Between livin’ and dyin’!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_iKg7nutNY Somehow, against all odds, Any Given Sunday succeeds. It is the Cinderella run of sports movies. You root for the film as you watch it. The dressing room scenes are incredible…the Black players listen to the newest hip hop while a trio of lunkhead white dudes headbang and scream “Hetfield is God.” There is a shower scene where a linebacker, tired of being teased about the size of his penis, tosses his pet alligator into the showers where it terrorizes his tormentors. There is a scene where a halfback has horrible diarrhea, but he’s hooked up to an IV so the doctor (Matthew Modine) has to follow him into the toilet cubicle, crinkling his nose as the player evacuates his bowels. There is a scene where someone loses an eye (the only scene in the film where Stone’s over-the-top approach misses the mark). There are scenes that discuss concussions (which is why the NFL refused to cooperate for the film), where Lawrence Taylor has to sign a waiver absolving the team of responsibility if he is hurt or paralyzed or killed. I wonder how purists and old school football fans reacted to the news that Oliver Stone was making a football film. If they even knew who he was (not totally unlikely…Stone made a string of jingoistic war movies in the 1980s) they probably thought the heavy hands of Oliver would ruin the film, take the poetry out of every play. But the actual football is filmed perfectly. The camera gets nice and low for the tackles. It flies the arcs of perfect spiral passes. It shows the chaos of a defensive line barreling down the field. When Al Pacino asked quarterback Dan Marino (fresh off his own Hollywood experience acting in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective) what it was like to be an NFL QB, Marino said: “Imagine standing on a highway with traffic roaring at you while trying to read Hamlet.” A great explanation. Shoulda made the movie. So the football itself is fabulously done. Much better than what Cameron Crowe did in the few football scenes in Jerry Maguire. The Program had some great football, as did Rudy, but neither come close to the heights of Any Given Sunday. In one of the film’s best scenes, Jamie Foxx insists that his white coaches have routinely placed him in situations where he was doomed to fail or prone to injury, and we believe him because white coaches have been doing that to Black players for decades. Quarterback Doug Williams, who led his Washington Redskins team to a Superbowl victory in 1987, was frequently referred to by even liberal media outlets as a “Black quarterback,” instead of just “quarterback,” as if his skin colour necessitated a qualification. Even now, in 2021, the majority of quarterbacks are white, although the gap is gradually closing. The 2020 season saw the highest number of starting Black quarterbacks, with 10 out of a possible 32. Quarterback is the most cerebral position on the field, and for a long time there was a racist belief that Black men couldn’t do the job. Foxx’s character is a composite of many of the different Black quarterbacks who came of age in the 1990s, fighting for playing time against white QBs beloved by their fan base, fawned over in hagiographic Sports Illustrated profiles, and protected by the good ol’ boys club of team executives and coaching staff. Foxx’s character isn’t demoted because he can’t play the game. He wins several crucial games for his team en route to the playoffs. He’s demoted because he listens to hip hop in the dressing room, because he recorded a rap song and shot a video for it, and because he’s cocky. Yes, the scene where he asks out Cameron Diaz is sexist, as if her power only comes from her sexuality, not her intelligence and business acumen, but it’s meant to show how overly confident Foxx is, not that he’s a sexist prick. Any Given Sunday isn’t a single issue film. It’s basically an omni-protest piece. It gleefully shows football’s dark side, and there is no director better than Oliver Stone for muck-raking. He’s in full-on investigative journalist mode in Any Given Sunday, showing how and why players play through serious brain injuries. How because they are given opiates, often leading to debilitating addictions (this happens in all contact sports...Colorado Avalanche player Marek Svatos overdosed on heroin a few years after retiring from injuries). As to why, Stone gives two reasons. One, team doctors are paid by the team, not the players, therefore their decisions will benefit the team, not the players. And two, the players themselves are encouraged to underreport injuries and play through them because stats are incentivized. James Woods unethical doctor argues with Modine’s idealistic one because an MRI the latter called for a player to have costs the team $20k. But the player in question, Lawrence Taylor, plays anyway because his contract is stat incentivized and if he makes on more tackle he gets a million dollars. Incentivizing stats leads to players playing hurt. And although I loathe this term, a lazy go-to for film critics, Stone really does give an unflinching account of how this shit happens and why. When Williams is inevitably hurt and lying prone on the field, he woozily warns the paramedics who are placing him on a stretcher to “be careful…I’m worth a million dollars.” It’s tragic, yet you’re happy for him. The film really makes you care about these guys. Thanks to the smartly written script, the viewer knows that Williams has four kids, and you’re pleased he made his bonus because, in all likelihood, after he retires, his injuries will prevent him from any kind of gainful employment (naturally, they give the TV analyst jobs to retired white players, unless Williams can somehow land the coveted token Black guy gig). Stone is not above fan service, a populist at heart, and he stuffs the film with former and then-current NFL players, a miraculous stunt given the fact that the NFL revoked their cooperation. Personally, I think this was a good thing because it meant Stone didn’t have to compromise (the league wanted editorial say on all issues pertaining to the league…meaning they would have cut the best storyline, which is the playing hurt one). It also meant that they had to rename the team and the league. While I’m sure this took away from the realism for some fans, I’m cool with it. It also allowed the moviemakers to name the team the Sharks, a perfect name for this roving band of predatory capitalist sports executives. In another example of fan service, the call-girl Pacino’s quintessential lonely workaholic character rents a girlfriend experience from is none other than Elizabeth Berkley of Showgirls, who had been unfairly blacklisted after the titular Verhoven/Esterhaz venture, a movie my wife showed me one day while I was dopesick, which I became so transfixed and mesmerized by that I forgot I was. As mentioned above, the only misstep in the film is one of the offshoots of the Playing Hurt arc, where a player loses an eye on the field. Not because he gets poked, but because he gets hit so hard his eye simply falls out. A medic runs onto the field and puts the white globe on ice. Stone cast a player with a glass eye in order to achieve this effect. No CGI! Still, the scene is unconvincing, a tad too over-the-top. But this is Oliver Stone. At least Any Given Sunday’s sole over-the-top moment is a throwaway scene lasting all of thirty seconds. It easily could have been a secondary plot-line in which government officials try to sneak a Cuban football prodigy out of Castro’s communist stronghold but the player is brutally murdered the morning the officials arrive at his apartment to escort him to the private plane. Or else the team GM is revealed to be a massive international cocaine dealer. Or the tight end is one half of a serial killer couple. The film follows its own advice, focusing more on the players growth, particularly Beamon’s (Foxx). The anonymity of the title, Any Given Sunday, elevates the game, not the players. Thank God, the movie doesn’t force Beamon to assimilate into Pacino’s mold. He buys into the team-first philosophy without renouncing his idiosyncratic POV or his fierce individuality. This is a triumph. One of my biggest problems with sports is the flattening effect it can have on creative individuals. Players take media training in order to sound as alike as possible during media interviews, a long row of stoic giants spouting cliches. It’s boring. Which is why media latch onto a loudmouth, even while they scold him for it. All sports are dying for an intelligent mouthpiece who can explain his motivations in a succinct, sound-bite-friendly, manner. Sports are entertainment. As much as I love Sidney Crosby, in my heart I have to go with Alexander Ovechkin because Ovechkin is far more thrilling, both on and off the ice. Unlike almost every other NHL star before him, all of whom were forced to kneel and kiss Don Cherry’s Rock Em Sock Em ring, Ovechkin defiantly told the media he simply did not care about Cherry or Cherry’s disgusting parental reaction to one of Ovie’s more creative goal celebrations (called a “celly” in the biz). On the play in question, Ovechkin scored the goal, then dropped his stick and mimed warming his hands over it, as if his stick were on fire. As cheesy as the celebration appeared to the naked eye, it’s both a funny and accurate notion. Ovechkin was the hottest scorer in the league for many years and his stick was on fire, metaphorically speaking. The only celly I can think of that matches up in terms of creativity and entertainment value came from Teemu Selanne in 1993, who scored a beauty of a goal, threw one of his gloves straight up into the air, then pumped his stick like a shotgun while “shooting” his glove. Of course, Cherry took exception to it. Cherry’s favourite goal celebration features Bobby Orr putting his head down and refraining from raising his hands over his head. Cherry’s idea of an appropriate goal celly is no celly at all. This from a man who claims “we’ve got to sell our game.” But when an arrogant player shows up and he’s not white, he’s in for a shitload of bad press. Foxx’s Beamon illustrates this beautifully when he yells at Pacino after Pacino cuts him for an older QB who has lost four games this season. “Don’t play that racism card with me,” Pacino warns. “Okay…okay…” Foxx nods, “Maybe it’s not racism. Maybe it’s ‘placism’…as in…a brother got to know his place.”

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Here is the original theatrical trailer, featuring Garbage’s classic “Push It.”

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Above Lawrence Taylor begs Matthew Modine for Cortazone. There’s also a great scene where Pacino is trying to figure out where he has gone wrong and Diaz just looks at him. “You got old,” she says simply. No enterprise is more cruel to an aging human being than sports. And this movie makes football a big giant corporate machine that chews players up and spits them out, injured and drug addicted, after four or five years. Those who play for a decade are lucky. This is still how the NFL works. And the NHL is increasingly becoming a young man’s game. Experience matters less and less.

When I started watching hockey in the 90s, players regularly competed into their late 30s. Not so anymore. Players peak at 23-24 now, and are often out of the league by age 35. Thornton and Chelois are exceptions, not the rule. After more than two hours, Any Given Sunday finally lurches across the finish line, bravely refusing to give its viewers a traditional happy ending, in the great tradition of underdog sports films like Rocky and Rudy. The bombshell dropped by Pacino’s character at the end feels less surprising than inevitable, but by now the movie has explored so much of professional sports' seedy underbelly that you're glad it's over. The film is great but exhausting. Stone seems to be advancing the notion that the sport itself is pure, but the people in it are corrupt. If money weren’t involved, the game would be played for its own sake.

I agree with this. People playing pond hockey are engaging in wholesome fun, not necessarily practicing to make a professional league. Commerce corrupts the purity of the game, and the extent to which it corrupts is directly proportional to how badly the individual in question needs the commerce. Of course, the sport is highly racialized, with people in positions of authority white, and those being told what to do with their bodies Black.

Any Given Sunday is an important film, but it never sacrifices entertainment for the sake of moralizing. That it pulls off such a strong moralistic stance is a testament to the actors, who are all incredible, and the material, which is among the strongest of Stone’s career.

He never really made a great movie after this one. So check it out sometime.

#betterdaysareatoenailaway #anygivensunday #al pacino #jamie foxx #dennis quaid #james woods #matthew modine #jim brown #lawrence taylor #cameron diaz #ll cool j

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eagle-raider · 4 years ago

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Of hidden meanings

I wrote this back in August and it’s been collecting digital dust in my draft folder ever since. To celebrate International Translation day (yes, it is a thing, and yes, it’s today) I told myself I’d post it. Behold the wall of text.

I’ve been (re) reading one of my all times favorite books, which is Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782, Choderlos de Laclos), but in English this time – after months of trying to get my hands on a translation (the one I got is by Thomas Moore and was published in 1812).

The book is a classic of French literature, an epistolary novel telling the story of the Marchioness de Merteuil and the Viscount de Valmont, two narcissistic rivals (and ex-lovers) who use seduction as a weapon to socially control and exploit others, all the while enjoying their cruel games and boasting about their talent for manipulation.

The book has had several movie adaptations, ranging from the most faithful (Dangerous Liaisons, Stephen Frears, 1988) to the most forgettable (Valmont by Milos Forman, 1989), to a loosely based adaptation/Modern setting re-writing (Cruel Intentions, 1999 and that infamous tongue kiss between SMG and Selma Blair). So yeah, you’ve probably either heard of it, or seen one of those movies, or at least the gifs of that kiss.

Now, this book has been censored to hell and back because of its depiction of amorality. It explores different subjects: revenge, manipulation, malice and even female homosexuality (briefly, but it’s there – both in the book and the movie adaptation by Frears), with feminist undertones, which, for a book written by a military man in 1782 is a real novelty.

Yes, the Marchioness de Merteuil is a villain, if you look at the book through a Manichaean perspective (which is what the movie did), but above all, she is a victim of her time. And again, for a man to fully grasp the societal burden of women circa 1782 is absolutely unprecedented. And it’s way too real for it to be a happy coincidence.

I know this book almost by heart my copy is filled to the brim with annotations and almost all pages are dog-eared.

Now, one of my all-time favorite letters within the book is letter 141. It’s about 2/3 through the story – the Marchioness de Merteuil is peeved at Valmont because he is too enamored with his lover to pay her any attention – said lover is a married noble, a devout Christian he managed to defile—his words not mine.

The reason she’s peeved is never explained. Jealousy, perhaps, but it’s not borne out of love. Merteuil doesn’t love him, she just wants him wrapped around her little finger.

So, in this letter, as per their twisted game, she tells him that now that he got what he wanted, it is time to break things off with that Christian woman. And, in her infinite generosity, Merteuil provides him with the perfect breakup letter. I was really looking forward to seeing how the translator – Thomas Moore – would handle the nuances, and I wasn’t disappointed for the most part.

It goes as follows:

One tires of every thing, my angel! It is a law of nature; it is not my fault.

If, then, I am tired of a connection that has entirely taken me up four long months, it is not my fault.

If, for example, I had just as much love as you had virtue, and that’s saying a great deal, it is not at all surprising that one should end with the other; it is not my fault

It follows, then, that for some time past, I have deceived you; but your unmerciful affection in some measure forced me to it! It is not my fault.

Now a woman I love to distraction, insists I must sacrifice you: it is not my fault.

I am sensible here is a fine field for reproaches; but if nature has only granted men constancy, whilst it gives obstinacy to women, it is not my fault.

Take my advice, choose another lover, as I have another mistress—The advice is good; if you think otherwise, it is not my fault.

Farewell, my angel! I took you with pleasure, I part you without regret; perhaps I shall return to you; it is the way of the world; it is not my fault

It’s perfect, it’s vicious, it’s exactly what you’d expect to receive from an asshole like Valmont.

Now why am I telling you this? Because there’s a slight change in the movie adaptation, that I think fully grasps the hidden meaning behind “It is not my fault,” which is the literal translation of the original French version: ce n’est pas ma faute.

The writing team decided to change “It is not my fault” to “It’s beyond my control” and if you’re a purist, you might think they were absolutely stupid and why choose another option when word for word translation works just fine in this case? Why change it when the meaning behind the words is there?

To answer your question: because it’s not.

Keep in mind that the book is written in old-French, or an older iteration of French, rather. Words had a slightly different meaning than they do now, e.g. the verb to hear (entendre in French) meant “understand” which is something that the French verb kind of lost while the English retained somewhat (when people say I get you/do you hear me).

So, when the letter says “It is not my fault.” what it really means is, “It’s beyond my control.”

Earlier, I said that Merteuil wanted to have Valmont wrapped around her little finger? This is what I meant. It’s beyond his control. She demanded of him that breaks up with his lover, she provided the means to do so, and as she writes earlier in the same letter:

“My comparison appears to me the more just as, like [a Sultan], you never are the lover or friend of a woman, but always her tyrant or her slave.”

Boom. Burn.

Valmont is Merteuil’s slave and she spelled it out to him (quite brutally). Which is why, I believe that the translator could have maybe underlined the hidden take behind “It is not my fault.”

The movie did, because it fully grasped Merteuil’s intention: Valmont is her puppet. He should break up with his lover because Merteuil wants him to and because it is literally beyond his control. Which is what Valmont keeps repeating in the sequence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjUmvHBgHr0

(apologies for the potato quality)

It’s nitpicky but it matters in this case because the nuance is lost in the translation, unless the readers pay careful attention. I’m not saying the translation is bad, because it’s not. Literary translation is a balancing act of subjectivity.

It begs the question: how far can you adapt a translation into your target language before it reaches the point of no return and everything that made the text special/authentic/flavorful is lost? It’s the eternal debate between traductology scholars: are you a target-oriented/source-oriented translator. Most translators will say they’re target-oriented, and they’re right.

However, the game changes when you’re translating classics, because you’re not just translating a text into a language your audience can understand—you’re translating a chunk of history with it. You can’t dissociate the book and its author from the historical context it was written in because the context gives crucial clues on how to navigate the translation. A book, whatever it may be about, is a testimony of its time.

Does an English-speaking audience in 2020 understand that “It is not my fault” means “I’m somebody’s puppet, your life and mine aren’t ours to do as we please?”

Does “it isn’t my fault” hold as much meaning in 2020 than its French counterpart did in 1782?

If yes, keep it.

It not, then change it. Adapt it, make it more obvious even if you stray a little from the original version.

This is what the movie did, in all subtlety, forgoing a literal translation for something else that was in line with the context of the book/history/plot.

I will admit my own bias because this book is among my favorite pieces of classical literature – and Renaissance/pre-French revolution is my favorite period, so I nerd. A lot.

Next up: Game Localization and how the Japanese translation/VA work of Ghost of Tsushima influenced Jin Sakai’s personality (goody two-shoes in English vs. darker/grounded in JP)

Happy International Translation Day, folks!

#watch me write nonsense #about translation no less!#I'm no snob I promise #lost in translation #traductology #if you've read this far #I applaud you #I'm not even sure this makes sense #gibberish that's what it is #literature #classical literature #les liaisons dangereuses #translation

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thatbanjobusiness · 4 years ago

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Bluegrass Basics #1

WHAT IS BLUEGRASS?

I realize that, what with this being a bluegrass blog and all, I should probably start by explaining... this.

If you’ve hung out with me in the last year and a half, then you’ve been subjected (probably against your will, kicking and screaming) to a Haddock Talks About Bluegrass conversation. Within seconds, you may be bombarded to an inescapable wall of sound as I shriek about G runs, five-strings, and dudes wearing hats named weird stuff like Lester, Burkett, Arthel, Dorris, Junebug, Haskel, and Chi Chi. Understandably, to cope and survive, your mind might have blocked out the worst of the memories... leaving you now with the question, “Well, what is bluegrass? And why does Haddock find it so cool?”

At its simplest, bluegrass is a folk-inspired genre of music originating from the Southern United States that utilizes a core group of acoustic string instruments: guitar, banjo, string bass, mandolin, fiddle, and dobro. However, bluegrass is not a direct preservation of old folk music. Its biggest influences are Scots-Irish fiddle tunes, African-American blues, and gospel music, and in that you can hear a lot of "old" sounds. But bluegrass also began within a commercial setting. Most people date it to the mid-1940s—yes, it's that new!—and it not only integrated new compositions and contemporary songs, but it brought about innovative instrumental techniques that most audiences had never heard before. Since its inception, bluegrass has been a music of unique juxtaposition; it's simultaneously homespun and commercial, simple and technically complex, straddling tradition with truly progressive innovation.

Also. Unlike almost every other genre that exist out there ever, bluegrass can be traced back to and centralized around a *SINGLE* human being. Yeah. That’s right. ONE dude essentially started his own motherfucking genre.

Enter: the Father of Bluegrass. Mr. Bill Monroe (1911-1996).

This guy.

1. HOW THIS SHIT GOT STARTED

Bill Monroe’s music at the time was considered hillbilly music. (“Hillbilly” was the name of the genre before we changed it to “country”). He was a radio star starting in the 1930s, and by the late 1930s, Bill and his band had become members of a popular, wide-reaching hillbilly music program, the Grand Ole Opry, whose radio signal stretched across the American South. Bill’s music wove together several influences: in particular, he combined the sound of old Scots-Irish fiddle tunes with the pitch bends, syncopation, and blue notes of African-American blues. For good measure, he chucked in four-part gospel songs, threw his singing into the high tenor stratosphere, and pushed the music forward with an urgent drive.

And the name of his act? Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys.

Hmhm... something sounds familiar here... something to do with “blue” and “grass,” maybe.

Bill’s music underwent changes, different personnel, different instruments. Every musician’s contribution is important and worth noting, but regrettably my post would be too long if I talked about them here. I will, however, mention what’s often considered the last piece of the puzzle. On December 8, 1945, Bill introduced a new musician he had just hired, a twenty-one year old banjo picker whose style of playing was so unexpected to audiences that you could barely hear the music above the amazed cheers and shouts from the live crowd. People who heard it on the radio talked about the banjo picker all week; some blokes debated about whether one person was playing or several, or if it was even a banjo at all. I know peeps today don’t tend to think of banjos as “cool” and all, but he was shredding up the instrument like some banjo Jimi Hendrix, as far as they were concerned. It was so exciting. Bill was already a popular performer; under this ensemble he had between then and 1948, he was launched to even more popularity.

I’m not trying to focus just on the banjo, but my point here is to emphasize how bluegrass did invoke monumentally new ideas.

That 1946-1948 group is what we usually consider the first-ever bluegrass band. They created the initial blueprint by which a unique band style emerged. Now, some standard musical features of the genre got locked in during the 1950s after several seminal Blue Grass Boys bandmates left and formed their own band. But this original group’s sound started A Movement™ that trickled down over the decades. New-budding musicians began imitating Bill’s sound in their bands. And also, Bill’s band had constant turnover, meaning that a ton of people went into the Blue Grass Boys, got influenced by Bill, then left to form their own ensembles, carrying with them the musical ideas they’d learned from Monroe.

(And by “constant turnover,” I mean—no joke—Bill had something like 200 official band members over the course of his career.)

^^^ The “Classic Band” of Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, c. 1947. From left to right: Bill Monroe (mandolin), Chubby Wise (fiddle), Birch Monroe (bass), Lester Flatt (guitar), and Earl Scruggs (banjo). When talking about the classic band, the bassist usually listed is Cedric Rainwater, but here (and legitimately part of the band at the time) is Bill’s older brother Birch.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, mainstream country music had to find a way to compete with the new and oh-so-frustratingly-popular rock-and-roll. Mainstream country music strayed away from scratchy fiddles and banjers and moved to smooth, pop-inspired, electric guitars and background orchestration. And if you didn’t sound like that, you probably weren’t going to be played on mainstream country radio. But there was a notable cluster of acoustic string band musicians who had been left behind... those people and groups who had branched straight off Bill Monroe. By this point, they were distinct enough that their music began to be regularly referred to as... yeah, you guessed it... bluegrass music.

Having been ignored by radio, bluegrass continued through other means, such as festivals that began in the late 60s and 70s. Many musicians brought their own instruments to jam, and to this day, bluegrass is a genre in which it’s common to both pick tunes with friends and family as a social event and go out to see professional performers.

As new generations have entered bluegrass, new ideas and sounds have funneled into it. However, I feel like the theme of combining tradition with innovation remains. For instance, in the 1960s with the Folk Revival, second generation bluegrass musicians simultaneously inserted more several-centuries-old folk songs into the bluegrass repertoire (ex: Fox on the Run), and brought in contemporary rock and pop elements to their bands’s sounds. And while today you may meet bluegrass purists who want to stick with what they heard in the 40s and 50s, you’ll see just as many if not more musicians continue to innovate and expand the genre.

And expand it they will.

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2. WHAT MAKES BLUEGRASS MUSIC BLUEGRASS?

As I’ve said before, bluegrass is a somewhat progressive amalgamation and reformulation of older music styles combined with contemporary music. Bluegrass might have been based in part on ideas from British Isles fiddle tunes and African-American blues, but it’s certainly not regurgitating how people played in decades past. Familiar, old elements combine with new, creative, and original concepts. You keep a healthy dose of both old and new.

It’s because of bluegrass that the banjo was completely reformulated as an instrument: changed from a comedic prop that was strummed into an intensely-picked solo instrument. Within bluegrass, banjo performance technique has continued to evolve, new ideas and styles building on top of one another. And let’s not forget the other instruments! The first dobro in a bluegrass band went in extremely unique directions compared to what was heard at the time, taking influences from everything down to banjo technique. At the same time, bluegrass has provided the space for styles like the old-time hoedown fiddle in periods of music where fiddle was ignored.

But....... as you’ve probably been wondering this entire post.... what does this genre sound like?

^^^ The typical instrument set-up for a bluegrass band. In the back is a string bass. In front, left to right, is a banjo, mandolin, fiddle, guitar, and dobro. If you’re not familiar with how to distinguish instruments: basses are plucked and low pitch; banjos sound twangy and play short note values; mandolins are a high-pitched instrument with a mellower sound that often employ tremolo (quickly undulating notes by strumming the strings up and down rapidly); fiddle is... I mean, it’s a violin; guitar is a mellower acoustic instrument that blends sonically with everything; and the dobro (maybe you’ve heard it referred to as a “steel guitar” or “Hawaiian guitar”) has a... uhhh... it’s a unique hound dog tone I have difficulties describing but is very distinct to hear.

A typical ensemble consists of mandolin, guitar, banjo, fiddle, string bass, and sometimes dobro. On rarer occasions, you may see other instruments like autoharp or harmonica (drums are usually considered horrible, forbidden things, even though... for the record... some high-profile bluegrass bands have used them). You’ll notice bluegrass is a distinctly acoustic string band sound.

There are also, of course, vocals, and in bluegrass, there is notable emphasis on tight two-, three-, and four-part harmony. However, what’s interesting about bluegrass as versus, say, other strains of country, is that for bluegrass, it’s about the full band and not just the lead singer. It’s as important to pay attention to the technically-driven solos (“breaks”) that the instruments play between sung verses. Many bluegrass pieces are straight out instrumentals, too.

Every instrument has a role or roles it fulfills in a bluegrass band. In the background, instruments may play rhythm or fills. Rhythm keeps the basic beat. Fills are unobtrusive melodic-sounding fragments that hide behind the vocalist(s) singing the main melody. And when there’s no singing, instruments take turns in the spotlight playing breaks. You can hear any instrument play a break. It’s to note that breaks are often improvised or semi-improvised, which is half of the fun and skill of watching the musicians perform. Ergo, even if the song itself may or may not have simple chord structures and lyrics, it’s also technically advanced with an expectation that every musician can perform fast-paced solos they improvise on the fly.

There’s different types of guitar styles I’ve seen in bluegrass. I’m not a guitarist, so I don’t want to elaborate too far and share incorrect information. However, it’s fair to say that guitar can be anything from a backup rhythm chord strummer to a flat-picked, fast-paced, melodic soloist. There is a VERY distinct guitar fill that happens at the end of lines, phrases, or sections called the G run you’ll hear everywhere. Fiddle I’ve also heard a wide variety of styles. On the dobro side, the dobro tends not to be the “Hawaiian” sound you may be familiar with on a steel guitar, but more geared toward quick, technical, bluesy stuff. Bluegrass banjo has several styles, but the most prototypical is the Scruggs style, where the banjo does rapid-fire, ornamented, three-fingered picking in which a melody line is pulled out at the same time you’re also picking background chord notes.

To describe bluegrass vocals, you’ll sometimes hear the phrase “high lonesome” thrown around. I don’t hear anywhere as much high lonesome sound in contemporary bands as I do first generation, but the high lonesome sound is a description of piercing, high-range vocals. Bill Monroe would even take songs that were usually played in the key of G and pitch them higher into A or B, pushing his and the ensemble’s vocals into a higher range. I remember listening to Monroe and thinking to myself, “Even though it’s male vocals, why is it so easy for me to sing to?” Because I’m a fucking mezzosoprano, and there’s times Monroe hits and holds notes that are at the top of my range. Hot damn.

youtube

Rhythmically, bluegrass tends to be a driving genre of music. A term that gets thrown around a bit is “drive.” Even on the slow songs, you may hear the instruments push or strain forward. Beat-wise, bluegrass tends to emphasize both a strong downbeat and hit heavy offbeats in a boom-chick style. That last sentence might not have made sense to non-musicians, so I’ll explain...

When we listen to music, we can clap to it. We can also count along to any song as we clap. Music has an innate structure where, when we count, the sound seems organized in groups of two, three, or four. So, when we count to music, we’ll count repetitively. One song may be groups of two (you’ll count “One two, one two, one two”), groups of three (“One two three, one two three”), or groups of four. Every time you hit the “one,” it sounds bigger. It’s more emphasized. It’s restarting the pattern or unit of counting that’s inherent to the rhythmic structure of music.

Now, you can subdivide those numbers between your claps. That means you’d count “One (and) two (and), one (and) two (and),” where the “ands” tend to feel smaller and less-emphasized. Those “ands” are called offbeats. In bluegrass, you’ll hear both the numbers and the “ands” clearly hit. The string bass will play the one’s and two’s, while perhaps the mandolin and banjo are emphatically hitting the “ands” in the background.

There are subgenres within bluegrass. You may hear people refer to newgrass, progressive bluegrass, jamgrass, punkgrass, etc. Put a word in front of it, add the word “grass,” and it probably exists. Jewgrass exists and it’s awesome. There’s fusions, too. The Native Howl is a band that combines thrash metal and bluegrass. Gangstagrass is a band that combines bluegrass with hip hop. It’s also to note that bluegrass has long since become international, and there are notable communities and bands of bluegrass from everywhere to Japan to the Czech Republic.

3. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR GETTING STARTED?

Ummhmhmhm I honestly need a separate post to begin sharing videos, bands, periods of bluegrass, and more. It’s diverse and I love everything from the music coming out in 2020 to the stuff heard in 1947.

I realize that this post skews more toward first generation bluegrass and the starting bands in Ye Olde Days. Because of that, I’ll say this much: the Big Three bands of the early years were Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, and the Stanley Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys. Bill Monroe’s music is “the original” and is based, at least in his mind, the most on the fiddle tunes he grew up with. Flatt & Scruggs skew somewhat more toward a popular culture sound with smoother vocals and instruments like the dobro that other early bluegrass bands did not use. The Stanley Brothers lean the most to mountain old-time music. Every band is wonderful in their own way and I love listening to all.

I’ll leave this post with what was my gateway song into bluegrass. This was the first song I listened to with the intent of experiencing bluegrass, not expecting to like it, but being pleasantly surprised. I fell in love with the song and... well... as you’ve seen... I’m a year and a half into the genre and still charging strong.

youtube

I look forward to continuing to learn about bluegrass, refine my understanding of it, and share those discoveries with y’all in my future posts.

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askneruandhaku · 5 years ago

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Disrespectful behavior towards Neru, Haku and their fans

This is a letter of complaint, venting and opening my heart to you guys about a subject that has to do with the blog and matters lots to me.

I usually don’t address the disrespect towards fanloids and fanloid fans i’ve been seeing from Vocaloid purists since the very day i made this blog, but today is a heavy topic day.

As you guys know Miku is no longer gonna be a Vocaloid. What that means to the relationship between Piapro and Neru/Haku i do not know. If they’re gonna appear in Mega39s, if Crypton will use their image rights ever again and so forth is to be seen. But what’s going on in the Vocaloid Wiki is something i have seen coming for a couple of years now.

The Vocaloid WIki has been on a Vocaloid purism purge for a good couple of years. It started with the deletion of some character pages that were confirmed not Vocaloid like Alys or Meaw and it’s extending now to Teto, Vocalina, Acme Iku, etc. The topic of deleting fanloids was brought up by the same person who was doing the purge at the time and was ignored. Now that Miku is abandoning Vocaloid this user who to put it as kindly as i can has a hateboner for fanloids is taking the chance to get their pages completely deleted, arguing there’s the much copypasted, much more bare-bones and disorganized fanloid wiki for them if anything.

The initial purpose for Neru, Haku, Sakine, Hachune, etc having pages on the Vocawiki was to avoid confusion and correct the idea clueless fans have about them being Vocaloids. It’s there to inform and archive facts, story, trivia. I am someone against Vocaloid purism and deletion of information (fe all the interesting information on the Meaw project has been lost FOREVER wiped from the entire internet because their only wiki page with their profile and history was deleted by this same user) because it never hurts anyone to archive all the interesting tidbits things this Vocaloid fandom overall has gone through. It’s not occupying space on your computer so i don’t understand why it’s harmful for it to exist online for the curious to learn.

Because of my opposition to this direction i already had my qualms towards this user but on top of that they have given me reasons to believe they actually loathe Neru and Haku.

There are no comment sections more policed and controlled than Neru and Haku’s in the wiki. Any innocent fun cheeky comment under their page will recieve a lengthy reply from this person shutting the fan down because Neru/Haku are unoriginal Miku copies, “irrelevant” and “just memes”. It’s very disheartening for fans and disrespectful. They spread tons of misconception like saying Haku was made as a form of bullying users or that Neru and Haku have no merchandise since 2013. I myself bought official NeruHaku Piapro badges from the Animate store in my trip to Japan in 2017. Sega released in 14 a macaron set with Neru and Haku’s logos which Piapro reported on. Crypton staff featured a Haku song in their official “classics” Vocaloid collection in their playlist site Kiite... this same year.

Moreover, this person has a DA account which they use to comment rude things under MANY!! Neru/Haku artworks (such as "if they disappeared tomorrow it would have no impact") and try to get fans to ditch them for "real Vocaloids" instead, f.e. leaving comments like “sigh i’d love to see you draw Miku” (instead of Haku, etc).

Their crusade against Neru and Haku specifically borders on obsessive to me. I understand trying to clarify what's a Vocaloid and what's not to people, but why is it so important to you that you go out of your way to BROWSE arts of characters you dislike and pressure people into not drawing them any longer.

Bigger version here

Please don't listen to comments like this if you ever get them, block and move on. You're in the right to draw and love whatever characters you want no matter their recognition or label. There is a decently sized Japanese community of Neru and Haku fans over on Twitter so don't get a devastating picture of "nobody cares about those characters and if you do you're outdated" from these misinformed comments. Don't feel crazy or wrong for loving Neru and Haku in 2019 even OVER actual Vocaloids, there are many of us who love them still the most.

This is not my first rodeo with Vocaloid purists saying horrible things about Neru and Haku, however this time i had to speak on it since the person is involved in Wiki editing and it's going to affect the information available for all of us on their history, official links, artwork/concept art, most popular songs etc. This person themselves is also running the new Piapro Studio Wiki which means they will also have no future over there (even though Crypton’s Wat has recently tweeted being interested in including more characters in the MMD Piapro official model lineup in the future).

There is no point in protesting to such a stubborn person, so i’m just gonna archive Neru and Haku’s pages on the wayback machine and post links for everyone in the future. Personally i have no energy anymore to compile info, translate and make my own site about them.

But i want you guys to know. Even if i disappear for a year or two, for a long time. You all will always have a place here in my blog as Neru and Haku fans, you are valid. You enjoy whatever fanloid you want. You stan your dead fanloid, your dead Vocaloid, your Hibiki Lui, hell, whatever. Screw people who only see facts, software and data. Even their popularity “status” or recognition. Many people love Leon, Lola, Miriam, Piko... to this day. A fictional character dies when YOU decide it, when it doesn’t exist in anyone’s thoughts anymore. Not when a truly irrelevant “authority” figure Hereby Declares your Fave has Henceforth Become Irrelevant.

I made this blog at 19. I’m almost 30 now. And i still love Neru and Haku as much as when i first made this blog, if not even more!! Neru and Haku allowed me to meet some of the most amazing people in my e-life, like all of you askblog mods, but related to the subject in particular, some NeruHaku fans such as @ask-neru-and-or-haku who i still talk to every single day.

Life got super difficult and tragic for me so i’ve been having difficulties to post; partly it’s adulthood but partly just my luck (had three people die on me on the course of running this askblog... two a couple months ago). But thinking about Neru, Haku, the people they brought into my life. Makes me so happy.

I wish i could be back posting here everyday. I will be back for sure, from time to time, sporadically doing answerbombs in rampages... until i’m very old i hope :) but in the meantime have my blog as a safe Neru Haku loving space. A little shrine blog. I won’t tolerate disrespect towards my daughters here or bullying towards any of you Neru and Haku fans.

Phew... that’s it. Some good old venting and... sad but unsurprising news coming from this dry, canon-limited new wave in the fandom. Not “canon” to Vocaloid or Piapro? Gotta go!

RIP Neru and Haku Vocaloid Wiki entries (2009-20??)

#akita neru #yowane haku #vocaloid #yeah i DO dare use this tag fight me #OOC #sorry about so many OOC post but this really rustled my jimmies #this is not a callout post #its not to harass the person #but im concerned about you guys getting messages like these and getting discouraged or made feel uncomfortable for supporting the girls #and i don't want you all to become surprised if their wiki entries go oop- and disappear suddenly

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ethanlivemere · 5 years ago

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Nobody asked, but here’s my opinion on the CATS-trailer

So it’s been about three months since the CATS-trailer came out and somehow I thought NOW would be a good time to express my opinion on it. It’s quite controversial, but have you ever wanted to hear what a long-time hardcore CATS-fan who has been wanting a CATS-movie for years thinks about it? Probably not, but I went and made this very long post anyway.

1) Cast

Can’t spell ‘cats’ without ‘cast’ and there’s some big names in the list of actors they’ve released. Some are excellent choices, some are more… questionable.

Ian McKellen as Gus: Now this is something that makes me profoundly happy. Sir McKellen honestly seems perfect for the role, I mean, he practically IS Gus the Theatre Cat (maybe a little younger, and less feline). Great choice, looking forward to it. Judi Dench as Old Deuteronomy: Now here’s one of the more questionable ones. I love dame Dench, that isn’t the problem; it’s just that Old D is supposed to be a large, old, deep-voiced male cat, and dame Dench only fits one of those characteristics. Of course, they could very well change Old Deuteronomy to be the matriarch of the tribe rather than the patriarch, and that would probably be fine. I’m more worried about whether Old D’s singing parts (like The Ad-dressing of Cats) would work as well with a higher, female voice. And of course, they would have to do tweaks to the song Old Deuteronomy itself, and ‘Old Deuteronomy’s buried nine husbands’ doesn’t sound that great. Idris Elba as Macavity: Here’s one that I’m very interested in. I think they might give Macavity a larger role in the film, which is a big ‘heck yeah’ for me, and Elba seems like he could portray the Napoleon of Crime like the menacing figure it’s supposed to be very well. I look forward to both the portrayal, and what the writers do with him. Jennifer Hudson as Grizabella: There’s an old saying that goes: “a CATS-performance is only as good as its Grizabella”. Will this one be any good? I don’t know, we’ll have to see. The bits of Memory we have heard so far sound decent, although nothing will ever top Elaine Paige for me (as you will notice further in this post, I’m a bit of a ‘1998 video version’-purist) It should be noted that her design doesn’t look a whole lot like Grizabella, but that’s a different category. As long as she can deliver a Memory that almost makes me cry, then it’s fine. James Corden as Bustopher Jones: I know a lot of people hate Corden, but I personally don’t mind him. He’s okay in my opinion (I have never seen his late night show, so that might be the reason). Whether he’ll be able to pull of BJ’s almost opera-like singing is something we’ll have to wait and see, because I very much doubt he did the singing in One Chance himself. Taylor Swift as Bombalurina: I have no idea how this will turn out. She can certainly sing (something we can’t say for sure about a lot of other cast members) but I have no idea if she’ll make a good Bomba. Rebel Wilson as Jennyanydots: I’ll go ahead and say it: I wasn’t too fond of the Jennyanydots bits in the trailer. They were a bit too slapstick-y for my likes, and Rebel Wilson isn’t exactly known for subtle humor. Once again, we’ll see how it turns out. Jason Derulo as Rum Tum Tugger: Recent CATS-productions have been changing the classic RTT we know and love to some sort of rapper abomination, and many fans (including myself, as you may notice by that wording) don’t like it. It’s unclear which version the movie will be going for: Derulo certainly resembles the rapper version more, but what we saw in the trailer looks like neither, though slightly leaning towards the classic version. Let’s hope we don’t have to hear RTT rap his own song. Ray Winstone as Growltiger: Look, I have never seen or heard of Ray Winstone, but just seeing Growltiger on the cast list fills me with profound happiness, because that’s the one big complaint I have about my beloved 1998 video version: no Growltiger. Hurray for Growltiger’s return!

That’s the main ones I wanted to discuss. Munkustrap seems unimportant in the trailer (we’ll get to that in a bit) so I won’t discuss him. Victoria mainly just has to be a good dancer, and Francesca Hayward seems to be just that, so no further comment (though more on Victoria later).

2) Character design

Alright, let’s address the elephant in the room: the CGI. Yes, some of the characters make me very uncomfortable. Yes, I hope they change some things before the final product. But what I want to discuss is the designs themselves.

First of all: head shapes. Apart from some exceptions (Grizabella, Old D, Gus) all cats seem to have a human shape of head, and this bothers me. Usually, Cassandra stands out by her head shape, and so do Cori and Tanto, but here they all have that shape. Usually, RTT has a very wide head to go with his mane, but here? This is my biggest problem with RTT in this trailer (ignoring the threat of rapper-Tugger): the combination of his thin head, kind of small mane and completely different colors make him barely recognizable as Tugger. Many cats look very different: Old D, even ignoring the fact that it’s a woman now, has completely different colors. The same goes for Bombalurina. Maybe this is the ‘don’t you dare change anything’-fanboy side of me talking, but in cases where fur color is the only way to recognize a character, this is a big deal. Macavity also looks completely different, although cool. The hat looks be a bit weird on him though. Also Mistoffelees has black patches on his eyes, not sure how I feel about that.

Overall, the awkward CGI and many changes make character design one of the things I’m less happy about, but oh well.

3) Sets & backgrounds

I think the backgrounds look gorgeous, although some are very obviously CGI (here we are at the CGI again). But there’s one problem: CATS takes place on a junkyard. I know, obviously they would want to expand a little in the film and include more different settings, and I completely agree: I would’ve been disappointed if they hadn’t. The problem is that I haven’t seen a single junkyard in the trailer. We see streets, a theater, a fancy house, a square, a graveyard, a bar… but no junkyard. Some shots may look like they’re on a junkyard, but trust me: they’re either in the theater, graveyard, or the alley at the back of Bustopher’s favorite club. Again, this is basically me going ‘they changed something reeee’, but come on. It’s like if the Les Mis movie was set in Italy. Tom Hooper, do me a favor and include at least ONE scene on a junkyard.

4) Story

The musical is, much like Les Mis, 100% singing and talking with music accompaniment, and 0% regular dialogue. From the line said by Victoria at the end of the trailer, we know that they won’t do like Les Mis and completely sing the movie, and I’m perfectly fine with that. CATS’ story has always been a bit unclear for a casual patron who doesn’t know the lyrics and deep lore of the musical, so I’m glad they’re putting in some regular dialogue. If anything, it’ll give us a chance to see the Jellicles’ personalities better.

But speaking of Victoria: it seems like she and Mistoffelees will be the main characters in the movie. This is odd, but understandable. CATS doesn’t have a clear main character. You could say it’s Grizabella, but she’s only in a couple of scenes. You could say it’s Munkustrap, although he is regarded more as the narrator than the main character. However, the trailer has a disappointingly small amount of Munk, and his name is very low on the IMDB cast list. The same goes for Skimbleshanks, who I’m not sure if he’s in trailer at all (unless he’s the cat with the pants) and is even lower on the list than Munkustrap, plus there are no trains or train stations in the trailer. Odd.

Anyway, back to Misto and Vic. Normally, Victoria’s only role is performing a couple of amazing ballet routines, but that doesn’t seem to be case here. I personally would’ve picked Jemima over Victoria as a main character, but I guess her design isn’t as easily recognizable as Victoria’s (have I mentioned how many of the cats look pretty much the same in this version?)

Someone who also seems to have a much larger role is Bustopher. Normally he only appears during his own song, but here he seems to be a more general presence. We’ll see how that works out.

Anyway, if Munkustrap is reduced to just being the cat who sings about the Old Gumbie Cat and maybe Old Deuteronomy, I’ll be mad. (AND THEY BETTER NOT REMOVE HIS FIGHT OVER DEMETER WITH MACAVITY OR I’LL BE VERY MAD) Speaking of Demeter, she’s also very absent in the trailer and low on the cast list. Guess they made Bombalurina more prominent because they got a big name to play her.

5) Background characters (specifically Tumblebrutus)

As I said in the previous bit, it looks like many characters will be reduced to minor characters, so cats who already were background characters in the musical (like my boy Tumblebrutus) will probably have very little time to shine. I guess that’s inevitable, but I hope they at least make an effort to include the various background characters rather than replace them with generic OC’s. Luckily, I already recognized Pouncival in the background of one of the shots, so there’s hope. But if they don’t include my boy, my all-time favorite Jellicle, the best character in CATS, known as Tumblebrutus, then I’ll be even more mad than if they remove the Munk vs. Mac fight. He’s not on the IMDB list (unless he’s one of the ‘ensemble’ characters) but neither is Pounce and I definitely saw him so fingers crossed I can spot Tumbles when I watch this movie.

Conclusion

Am I excited for this movie? Heck yeah! Am I scared this movie might turn out shit? Heck yeah! There’s really no telling how good this will be (a lot depends on whether the final product has better CGI cats), but I think my viewing experience will be a mix of “Oh my god I’ve been waiting so long for a CATS movie oh look I recognize that character this is awesome oh here comes my favorite song I literally know this entire 2 hour musical by heart” and “Oh my god what is this RTT design where is Tumblebrutus why is there no junkyard why did they slightly alter this one lyric why isn’t this EXACTLY like the 1998 video version I love so much when I get home I’m just gonna watch that version again it’s much better anyway”.

Yours sincerely,

Ethan Livemere, certified CATS-expert and Tumblebrutus fanboy

#cats #cats the musical #cats the movie #cats 2019 #cats 1998 #my opinion #tumblebrutus #more like tumblrbrutus amirite

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sorinkavglazy · 5 years ago

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I recently watched Dmitri Chernyakov’s The Tale of Tsar Saltan on a big screen and it’s left some lingering thought and feelings and that’s probably the main compliment I’m willing to give it. But there are others, as well as some not so complimentary things to say here as well. It all starts with the explanation. I guess that’s what Dmitri learnt from his earlier works – if you want to ‘make it clear’ leave no room for any explanation except your own. Also, offer said explanation explicitly, leave nothing to chance when it comes to meanings. Explicit trumps implicit. Tell people in the audience what to think and hence, for the most part, feel. The good, maybe even great thing is, that Chernyakov’s not deaf. So, his explanations and mental build-ups tend to coincide with the musical material perfectly or at least seemingly seamlessly.

Most modern ‘director’s’ opera productions, I’ve seen, tend to share one feature (or a bug – depending on one’s point of view) – too much stuff going on on stage all at once. The productions either try to retell the libretto in some modern environment or tell some other unconnected or semi-connected story. And the logic of the story director wants to tell usually trumps everything else including the logic of the emotional story unfolding through music. Hence pseudo intellectual messy McMessness on stage!

Unlike a lot of modern director-driven opera productions Chernyakov’s creations are the opposite of a disorder. Being a self-professed control-freak, Dmitri Feliksovich admits his ultimate desire to guide not only the singers but everyone on stage and around it practically through their every breath. It certainly makes his productions unique but also deeply dependent on both his physical and metaphorical presence while also making them decidedly unsuitable for the repertoire theatre system to which most Russian theatres firmly adhere. Whether the way Russian ‘ballet and opera’ (in that particular order!) theatres operate is a good or bad thing is beside the point right now.

In his Tale of Tsar Saltan Chernyakov glibly commits the worst (according to traditionalists and purists) sin – he comes up with the story which ‘makes sense’ for a certain subset of modern people. His ‘Gvidon’ is an autistic child, whose mother – ‘Tsaritsa Militrissa’ – through fairytale tells him the story of her failed relationship with his father – ‘Tsar Saltan’. On its head the idea seems credible and Chernyakov, with a lot of assistance from his constant ‘partner in crime’ (Dmitri’s words not mine!) lighting artist Gleb Felshtinsky and the rest of their team, realizes it really well all together. For my personal liking, I’d prefer to have the idea less hammered though… Like not only autistic children understand the world through fairytales – I did it myself, most children, I believe, did and way past the age when they can ask a ‘where’s day, mummy?’ question. So, I’d let it to the audience’s imagination or understanding to decide mostly because I find the story where a child wonders why their father abandoned them even though they’re no better or worse, no less or more special than other children whose fathers didn’t disappear from their lives a lot more potent and nuanced.

Also one of the main points in the story (it’s in Pushkin’s original text and is a quote that literally all Russians know) is that ‘Tsaritsa’ promises to give her husband a ‘bogatyr’ – basically a baby equivalent of a knight in shining armor… And she does. Only then her jealous sisters (do not even start me on them!) with their co-conspirator ��Babarikha’ lie to ‘Saltan’ in the letter that she bore ‘not a mouse, not a frog but some unknown little beast’… The trouble is, I’m sorry, as far as the 19th century metaphors go, Chernyakov’s interpretation of the plot with the autistic ‘Gvidon’ (outstandingly played and sung by Bogdan Volkov) kind of turns everything on its head because technically the sisters didn’t lie to ‘Saltan’ at all, while ‘Militrisa’ broke her initial promise of producing a ‘bogatyr’ for her husband. By the way, she – ‘Tsarisa Militrisa’ sung by Svetlana Aksenova was IMO the best part of the whole opera both voice and acting wise while I personally liked Olga Kulchinska’s ‘Tsarevna Lebed’ a bit less.

One more crunch for me was the finale where the father ‘Tsar Saltan’ decides to return into ‘Gvidon’s life. If it was up to me I’d left in the child’s imagination, where the rest of the story after ‘Militrisa’s initial explanation basically took place, and as a result this particular part seemed emotionally fake-ish at least for me. Maybe, I’m just way to cynical!

During his public talk at the recent Digital Opera 2.0 conference, Chernyalov was asked why he became a director and why he does what he does (standard stuff) and he said basically because it’s impossible for him not to, that it’s passion through and through and somehow I believed him. Later on, during the last round table on the modern state of opera critique Q&A there was a tired and expected argument between the panel (in favor of modern, director’s opera) and some members of the audience, who favored the so-called traditional approach. During the exchange (rather heated and a bit hysterical at times on one side and sneering and condescending on the other – which was which – your guess), I realized two things – first that the panelists were wrong in assuming that the other side wanted the endless preservation of the old Soviet times made Socialistic Realism’s operas. Nope. They want new renditions. Because yeah – if you repeat the same performance for years and years, it either dies or turns into the kabuki theatre. Everybody can sense that. Those traditionalists want new renditions (maybe even with all the new, digital technologies used in them) but made like the old ones once were… According to the same literal aesthetics of ‘we will show directly what’s written in the libretto please and thank you, no more no lees and will make it beautiful, damn it!’

And here, I believe, we come to the crux of the problem (I’m sorry for the long lead-in) – I can’t really imagine a truly talented young director (or two) starting their career in operatic theatre with a Dmitri Chernyakov-style passionate dream… to make productions just like Franco Zeffirelli or Boris Pokrovsky if we want to stay on the Russian turf! As a result every season we get some (in Russia I’d say ‘a few’, but there’s Germany and co) examples of director’s opera – some horrendous, some musically deaf, some interesting, some not so much and some great versus some (in Russia I’s say – most) neutral (and often neutered) or purely ‘classical’ stagings of various operas. Most of these ‘classical’ renditions are either bad or boring (I also need the word for «пошлый» in English here!). Result? Very few people are ultimately satisfied.

However, after all said and done by me and other people you should really just see (and hear) it for yourself. They say it’s Dmitri Chernyakov’s best work to this day:

youtube

#opera #my opera shenanigans #as promised #the tale of tsar saltan #my thought #director's opera #regieoper

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heilewelt · 5 years ago

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“I like anything that’s good for me.” – An Interview with Orville Peck

Orville Peck is a good one. When we sat down in the lobby of his hotel it was easy to forget about the mask he was wearing – instantly I was caught by the glint in his eyes when he talks about his music. I love the idea of creating a new persona and starting fresh without the names of previous bands giving you an expectation of how the music should sound like. The debut album “Pony” is one of a kind – based in Country it opens up to so many more music genres like punk, Rock and even the huge singing style of musical. I’ve been in love with this beautiful dark voice since the first time I heard “Dead of Night” a couple of month ago, before I knew anything about him or the mask. We talked about his voice and that it wasn’t always this beautiful dark. If you want to know more about this and how everything came together, please enjoy our little conversation.

The first thing I thought when I heard your music for the first time – I didn’t see a picture and I didn’t know anything about you – I had to think about Jandek. He makes a little weird music and for 40 years or so no one knew who he was. When I heard your voice, I thought about him and afterwards I learned about the mask and everything.

Orville Peck: That’s funny. I haven’t thought about that for a while.

Would it be something you’d like to accomplish – no one knowing your face for so many decades?

I don’t think it’s a goal of mine. This look is just part of who I am as Orville Peck. That’s not really a conscious decision to conceal anything. It’s just part of my face.

What was first: Having your very personal songs and then hiding or hiding and then say now I can write about myself?

I think it was a bit of both at the same time. Some of the lyrics I’ve been writing for quite a long time now. For example I’ve written the lyrics for “Turn To Hate” about 4 or 5 years ago, before I really knew what I was going to do with it. Growing up with the music I really liked, I was always into the lyrics. I remember when I got the CDs I always loved reading the lyrics in the CD pamphlet and things like that. For me lyrics are very, very important. I’m a big Patti Smith fan and I think her lyrics are so important, maybe even more important than the music. The music just adds to it. I’ve always looked at music like that. I’ve always liked the stories behind songs and I’ve always loved reading tour bios and things like that because I love hearing about what a song is about and who they were written about. That kind of stuff always intrigue me. I just like making music that has a story. I think it was something that was already in me and the mask just gave me the confidence to actually do that finally.

I’ve recently done an interview with William The Conqueror from England. Actually there is no William in the Band. The singer and songwriter Ruarri Joseph said that going away from his own name gave him the freedom to write about his own past and get really personal. It’s quite funny to meet you now.

Maybe something similar I guess. I used to think I’m a really open person with friends and everyone and a very easy person to talk with. Until this project and writing very personal stuff, I realized that the older I gotten that I’m a bit of closed person and it’s actually hard for me to talk about my feelings in a real way which is funny because I never actually thought I was like that. People would always say that to me. So, it’s been an interesting, cathartic thing for me to do this album. When I get to sing these songs on stage, it’s sometimes hard for me. It’s been very good for me as a person because it made a lot more open.

It’s a bit like therapy.

Totally. It’s really special to see other people in the audience getting emotional because relate to it or they know the lyrics for a particular song. That’s very cathartic as well because it definitely feels to me like I’m not alone in it.

I think what always happens to all of us at least once is that we think we are alone with a problem and because of that we don’t want to talk about it because we maybe don’t want to annoy someone with our stupid problem or the stuff we’re scared of.

Exactly. There is a song on the album that is very personal to me. It’s “Nothing Fades Like The Nights” which is actually about a heartbreak but a heartbreak in a different way. It’s not about somebody else, it’s very much about my own heartbreak and disappointment in myself. At the time I didn’t really understand it but now that I’m older I kind of understand it better. I went through a long period where I felt very numb emotionally and I couldn’t cry when I was sad and I didn’t know why. I’ve been in situations where people were feeling all these emotions and I didn’t feel anything. I thought something was really wrong with me. Ironically that was saddest times of my life, when I didn’t know how to feel sad.

I think it’s not always that easy to let sadness take over. It sometimes takes some courage to be just sad, especially when you have people around you who don’t expect you to be sad.

I’ve travelled my whole life. I’ve been living in so many different places, so I’ve formed a lot of quick friendships that are usually quite intense. Some of them were on a superficial level where I felt like we could just exist, travelling, crossing path and I never had to be a 100% real with anyone a lot of the time. It was an easy way for me to remain a little bit closed because I had all these friends all over the place. I could travel and see them all and put the focus on them, their issues and tend to not address my own feelings for a long time. This album is very exposing in some ways because it’s dealing with topics I’ve been struggling with my whole adult life. It’s the first time I’ve put it into any kind of performance or art. The experience is a personal thing.

Was there an initial spark to do this?

Yeah, I played in bands for many years. Then I took about five years off making music after my last band stopped playing and touring. I went to focus on other things. I acted my whole life, was a dancer and many different things. I went and focused on other kinds of performance. I thought I was done making music and touring. I really felt jaded about it all. After a lot of time passed I felt like something was missing from my life. I made music since I was a very little child and realized I missed it so much that couldn’t really be without it. I wanted to do something new and totally different from what I’ve done before. I loved Country music my whole life and loved singing my whole life. I’ve never really been a front man that often. I’ve usually played other instruments in my previous bands. I knew I wanted to do it my way finally. A lot of different factors encouraged me to do this. Up until a few months ago when we started releasing singles, I wasn’t sure how people were going to react to it. I feel very proud of the music. I feel like it’s music I would listen to but I didn’t feel confident that people were gonna respond in the way it has been. It’s been really, really lovely for me as well.

It’s sort of old-school but fresh at the same time and it has sometimes this schmaltz which I love.

I grew up with a very diverse taste in music, art and film. I really genuinely love every type of music. I understand when people are genre purists but to me I just don’t know why I would want to deny myself. Why would you want to do that? I think some music sucks but it’s not by genre. I like anything that’s good for me. I knew I wanted to root this album in Country music. That’s the main influence, especially Outlaw Country from the 60ies and 70ies. I definitely wanted to add a little bit of flavor of different influences of mine – those range from Punk to New Wave to Classical Music to Musicals. There are a lot of things on this album that I purposely referenced and slit in in different places. When I listen to complex artists I really like knowing that there is something in there they’re referencing, something totally different. I love finding those things as a music fan. I love nerding out over that. So I wanted to put that in there for people to find it.

I think if you wouldn’t do that as an artist you would just copy pasting what has been there beforehand.

For me it’s not even necessarily about trying to stay authentic in myself and that…of course it’s that as well. For me, I think, it’s about artists sometimes not giving the listener enough credit and they think they have to spoon feed something or have to do something very one dimensional for someone to buy it, especially nowadays. I think people appreciate complexity a lot more than we give them credit for.

It’s maybe not what you find in the charts but it’s here for the long term.

It’s maybe paves you a way as an artist.

I’ve read that you’ve lived in a lot of places like Africa, US, UK… how did you treat the local scene and the folk scene from those places as it’s different from Country or Americana, especially in Africa.

Although people might not pick it up right away but there’s a lot of African influence in the songs that I make. The kind of African music I really love growing up is penny whistle jive and Miriam Makeba or Brenda Fassie. The thing that I really love from that time period is that it is has a really upbeat sound to it and the rhythms are very specific and the core progressions are very specific but the lyrics are sometimes so somber and so sad but you wouldn’t notice it right away. I think someone like Miriam Makeba was really amazing at that. Essentially she was the South African Nina Simone. All of her songs were very much about Civil Rights and race and oppression but from the sound you couldn’t tell it right away. I actually have a song that didn’t make it on Pony eventually which is specifically about the longest period I’ve been living in Africa. That probably be on the next album.

You recorded your album in British Columbia and then my head started spinning with the mask and everything and all of a sudden you became the lone ranger to me. [we laugh] In the wild west…well, not that wild. I looked it up and the studio is pretty remote on an island.

Definitely. It’s a very rural part of British Columbia, it’s a small island called Gabriola. It has a very small population of people. If you don’t have a car… you can’t walk around at night because it’s just pitch black. There are really incredible beaches there and phosphorescence in the water. It’s a really picturesque place to make an album like this. I spend a good amount of time living in the pacific northwest mountain region and wrote quite a few songs there like “Big Sky”. I think a lot of people associate cowboys with the desert and that very dry atmosphere and a lot of my songs have that setting. The sound I wanted to capture for “Big Sky” is a rainy, dark feel, maybe a campfire in the mountain with a rainy, kind of cold feeling - that pacific north west your socks are always wet kind of feeling.

When I looked at a map, Vancouver is just across the sea - as if you could see it from there and I thought it’s a perfect setting for your music.

I think a lot of the things I sing about on this album were experiences that happened on the west coast of North America – from Vancouver all the way down to Los Angeles and Nevada. A big portions of the event in these songs take place along this coast.

You’ve got a big variety in landscapes just like in your music. My favorite song is “Buffalo Run”. It sounds very angry and aggressive but the words you chose always make me smile, too.

I’m a big fan of bluegrass which is a certain type of country. Bluegrass is famous for being really fast with the banjos and the mandolins with quite steady slow vocals on top of it. It gives the song a dichotomy. The thing I always love in is the key it is played in a lot of the time and the speed the banjo and mandolin are played at. It sound quite frightening to me, even though they are singing about some folky thing. The music sometimes sounds frantic and kind of scary to me. With Buffalo Run I wanted to make a song that brought that and also a little bit of my past of playing in punk bands. I wanted to combine these things and make a scary Orville Peck song. I also wanted it to feel like buffalos charging since it speeds up and has this stampede feel to it. That song is definitely going back to my old days of playing in Punk bands where when we played out every night I was getting to release a little bit of tension. [laughs]

It’s perfect for that. How long did it take you to find your voice? I love the tone of your voice.

I’ve been singing since I was very little. I always loved to sing as a child. I never was able to sing low at all, I used to sing in a high register. I did classical training as a tenor for most of my young adult life. When I moved to London about six years ago, I was doing this very intensive performance training and learned that I have this whole other two octaves to my voice that I never really knew about. For me, who sang very high my whole life, it was very exciting to find out something so drastically new about myself.

It doesn’t happen every day.

As a singer I was really excited to suddenly have a three octave range. I’ve always been such a fan of Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and all these Country crooners who sing so low. I always wanted to make music like that and suddenly I was able to. I trained as a kid but this just happened by chance.

It’s so funny especially since you’ve been making music you whole life.

It’s bizarre. It’s like someone told me something like ‘you’re a tenor, you sing high’ and I was just like ‘yeah, ok’ and never even explored that other part of my voice for 20, 25 years or whatever.

To discover something that new that late, has it influenced the way you approach music nowadays?

Definitely. In some respects it has opened a literal range but also an emotional range within me. Maybe it was what I had to do to unlock my feelings. For instance “Winds Change” is a song on the album I go from really, really low in my register to going really high in my register. For me to be able to perform that… it is something really indescribable to perform that song because it just moves through my entire range of emotion. It makes it a lot more fun and it makes it a lot more liberating in the creative sense. I don’t feel like I’m trapped in one part. I feel really grateful that I can do it now.

As far as I read you played most of the instruments yourself.

Yes, for the first three songs that I wrote and recorded for this album, which were “Dead of Night”, “Big Sky” and “Roses Are Falling”…and “Take It Back” actually. On those songs I played probably 95% of the stuff on them. And then the engineer who recorded my album – his name Jordan Koop and he lives on Gabriola Island – plays a couple of instruments in those songs. And then some of the others were a mix of different musicians I worked with on the east coast and on the west coast. There is a really fantastic banjo player named Tina Jones. I play banjo on one of the songs and she plays banjo on a couple of the other songs because I wanted a very particular sound and it’s not my first instrument. I got her to play on the album. It was really nice. It felt very much like I got to choose the right people to fill the roles were I knew I wanted them instead of me.

How do you know you’re not able to do it yourself? Try it first and then figure out that maybe you should take some who can actually play that part?

I think for instance for an instrument like banjo there’s bluegrass, there’s folk banjo, there are just so many different sounds. The way I approach playing banjo is just from the banjo stuff I mostly listen to - bluegrass, faster banjo. For “Big Sky” there is a really beautiful line that Tina wrote that clicks just underneath everything. She is more of a Folk banjo player. I knew I wanted to have someone who has a better ear for that. Even though I can see and hear it in my head I need someone to execute that. Same as my guitarist Duncan Jennings who plays in my live band. He helped me to write a few of the songs and arranged some of the songs because he definitely more of a technical skilled musician. All the instruments I taught myself. I never went to music classes or anything like that. I sometimes feel like I can hear something in my head or visualize it but I don’t know how to execute it because I don’t have the technical skill. It’s good to have someone like Duncan in the studio because then I can be like ‘I want it to sound like it’s 1980’s and it’s slow motion and it’s on the beach in Malibu but it’s raining and that it’s that kind of guitar sound’ - I don’t know how to describe it and he’ll be like ‘like this’ and it’s perfect.

That’s magic!

That’s literally how I described the sound of “Hope To Die”. I approach music from a visual point of view because I’m a visual learner and I don’t have the technic. Luckily I know people who can not only help interpret that crazy explanation but also can execute it. Sometimes it’s a lot of experimentation but we get there in the end. It was a really cool experience working on this album because I had such a clear vision what every song should sound like and what it should look like, what emotion I wanted the people who listen to it will feel. We worked really hard that it will come across. I’m very happy with the outcome.

How did you make sure that people feel what you want them to feel whilst you were writing and recording the songs?

I’m saying this in a way that I hope it does do it. As I said to you earlier – I just used to spend a lot of time taking the focus off my own feelings, listening to all of my friends problems and put the focus on them because I didn’t want to be open. So, I think I’ve learned to be a really good listener and I understand other people very well. I think it’s actually the biggest skill that I have is to understand how to navigate all different types of people. It also comes from the fact that I’ve travelled so much and lived in so many different cultures, societies and class systems. I just understand that among all of us there is a common threat all the time and I know to access that with other people because I think it’s just about telling a story that everyone can relate to even if it has specific differences. It’s about knowing that we all have the same story. I think it has been really special for me with Orville Peck, or with “Pony” rather, that I sing about men a lot on this album, about men relationships.

I think it’s very good. I listen to a lot of music made by men who sing about women, so I usually have to switch the gender in my head.

I think the thing that is really interesting, that is so wonderful to me, is that a lot of people who are coming to my shows or messaging me are older middle age straight men with kids and a wife who say ‘man, that song is so beautiful. My wife and I are listening to it all of the time’. It’s so funny for me because it’s a song about two men and the fact that it doesn’t bother this person and that they connect to it regardless is so comforting for me as well. It’s funny because I feel like a lot of the songs on this album are about me feeling like such an outcast and such a loner in life and the fact that all these people love it so much and relate to it, suddenly I feel like I’ve so many people around me supporting me – it’s almost this ironic full circle where these songs are about my loneliness but now there are all these people around me. It’s a fascinating thing that has been happening to me with this whole album.

Thank you for the interview, Orville!

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“Pony” has been released a couple of month ago and it’s been my favorite album of the year so far! He will be back beginning of November and be fast - the first concert is already sold out.

8.11. Nochtwache, Hamburg 09.11. Badehaus, Berlin - sold out 10.11. Folks! Club, München

Thank you for reading,

Dörte

#orville peck #interview #pony #country #outlaw country #on tour #music #rock #punk

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mostlovelyband · 3 years ago

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Jumping Down the Vinyl Record Collecting Rabbit Hole

There are two ways of looking at keeping vinyl records — as an art form or as an investment. If you're collecting for yourself, the first option is more fun but also potentially costly if you don't know what you want. The other path can lead down a rabbit hole that's difficult to escape from once you've got into it. It might not be worth the money either.

I'm going to assume here that you've chosen the latter route, which means you have no real interest beyond having something tangible collectible-like with books or baseball cards. If this sounds like you, let me introduce you to my friend Dave LeClair who has kept his entire vinyl collection since 1977. His advice? "Don’t worry about cost."

"Just buy whatever you think will make you happy," he said over email. "And put them all together in one big crate. That way they’ll take up less room."

Leclair, who lives in Portland, Oregon, told us that he bought his first album when he was 14 years old after seeing its cover on television. He didn't even really understand much about how albums worked before that point, so it wasn't until later that he realized he could actually play them back himself. Now, nearly 40 years later, he still owns hundreds of classic albums that he never listens to anymore. But he doesn't regret any purchase decisions whatsoever.

Not everyone agrees with that logic though. Vinyl purists often insist that quality makes better use of scarce resources than MP3s do while digital hoarders say nothing beats owning physical media. So I asked several people who keep their collections alive whether they thought it made sense to buy new releases digitally because those were cheaper. All agreed that the answer was yes. And most noted that listening to Spotify or Pandora might help curb impulse buys.

So if you find a great new release today, go ahead and download it onto your phone or computer. You'll probably listen to it twice before adding it to your growing library of tunes online. Once you've decided to add it to your ever-expanding collection, however, there are only three things left to consider: How long should you wait before purchasing another copy, where do you store it, and why would anyone care about what you've collected? Let's address each concern one at a time.

Find the right space

Vinyl needs proper storage conditions to maintain sound quality, just like CDs need certain temperatures and humidity levels to avoid warping. Most importantly, however, is ensuring you can access your records without getting hit by cars or tripping over them.

"You definitely need somewhere safe where [you] won’t bump into them or drop them accidentally," said Le Clair. “That’s pretty easy these days thanks to technology. Just set aside a shelf near a window or something similar. They usually aren’t too heavy and aren’t very expensive.”

He added that storing records vertically instead of horizontally helps protect against static electricity that causes damage. In fact, many experts recommend hanging your records upside down as opposed to placing them flat on top of shelves. This technique prevents dust buildup around grooves and keeps air flow moving through the stack.

Start small

Once you've found a good place to stash your newfound treasure trove, it’s time to decide exactly which ones deserve permanent residence within your collection. A few questions to ask yourself include whether you enjoy the artwork, does the songwriting or performance capture your attention, and did enough others share your sentiments to warrant inclusion?

It may seem silly to pick out favorites among recordings you've enjoyed equally, but doing so can teach you a lot about what works well and what doesn't. For example, perhaps you liked Nirvana's debut LP Nevermind but had zero desire to check out sophomore effort Incesticide. Or maybe you loved both but felt differently about the songs off Bad Radio Love Song. Those kinds of differences happen every day between albums released decades apart. By sifting through your collection regularly, you can learn which artists appeal to you most strongly, thus allowing you to focus your efforts on discovering new titles rather than trying to fill gaps in your collection.

In addition to making informed purchases, following your favorite artists' discography can give you a heads up on future releases. Even if an artist isn't planning a comeback anytime soon, there's always a chance you'll hear about a reissue or compilation album coming sometime down the road.

Collect everything (and anything)

As we mentioned earlier, Le Clairs approach centers around simplicity. While you certainly shouldn't shy away from exploring new genres or delving deeper into a particular band's catalog, his method suggests there's little reason to do so unless you're interested in expanding your collection in general.

The idea behind this philosophy comes from his belief that "collecting records is kind of pointless otherwise." Sure, you'd eventually build up a nice selection of jazz albums but wouldn't you prefer to simply buy 10 different copies of Blood On The Tracks? Why spend $20-$30 on one title when you can afford $10-$15 for multiple entries in the same genre?

If collecting new vinyl records, you can often find vinyl deals on a variety of music sites.

"There’s no need to own every album by every artist just because you can," said Le Clair. "Owning a record doesn’t mean you have to play it."

This strategy obviously applies mostly to newer artists, but plenty of established acts release cheap compilations nowadays. One such example is Frank Ocean's Blonde era project Endless, which came packaged with four discs featuring previously unreleased material recorded during sessions for Channel Orange. Another is Kendrick Lamar's 2015 release To Pimp a Butterfly, which included a bonus mixtape called untitled unmastered., despite only containing tracks from K-Dot's 2016 followup Good Kid, M.A.N.D. & El Children.

When selecting items to add to your collection, remember that you can never truly finish building it. There's always another cool album, EP, single, or live recording waiting for you to discover, plus there's no telling what else someone else will stumble upon next. Keep the search open indefinitely and you can rest assured not missing out on anything worthwhile.

Putting on some music

While you're sorting through your newly acquired stacks, try plugging in a few albums and playing them back. Some recommendations include The Velvet Underground & Nico, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From the First Psychedelic Era, 1973-1976, White Light/White Heat, Neil Young and Crazy Horse Greatest Hits, Led Zeppelin II, Yo La Tengo's Fade Away, Tom Waits Complete Discography, John Coltrane Classics, Blue Note Records 1001 Series, Roxy Music Best Of, The Beatles Anthology 2, U2 Songs 1982–2010, Jimi Hendrix Experience / Axis: Bold As Love, Eric Clapton Great Concert Performances, Bob Dylan Live At Carnegie Hall 1963, Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon Deluxe Edition, Steely Dan Gaucho, Sixties Power Pop Gems, David Bowie Blackstar, Van Morrison Visions, and Elvis Presley Sun Studio Album Releases.

Some of those suggestions come from our list of 50 essential albums to stream before 2022 ends, while others represent popular choices based on listener feedback. Regardless of your musical tastes, chances are you'll end up enjoying at least one track off each album listed above. Then again, you might dig deeper into the music featured on the playlist embedded below. Either way, you'll likely find something enjoyable amongst the thousands of options available. Afterward, you can continue browsing Amazon for additional options.

Keep it forever

Whether you choose to digitize your treasures or stick solely to hardcopy, you now know everything there is to know about starting your own vinyl collection...for free! However, the biggest takeaway from Le Clair's experiences remains unchanged: Don't waste money on stuff you don't enjoy. Instead, save it for special occasions and revisit tracks you haven't listened to lately whenever possible.

After all, there's nothing wrong with having a large collection of music. Rather, it depends on how you grow it. Whether you choose to dedicate hours per week to digging through crates or invest in a few hundred dollars toward a nice case, there's no question vinyl is far superior to streaming services and downloads. Plus, unlike digital formats, you can carry your entire library wherever you go and pop it into any player regardless of brand loyalty.

Of course, the downside to vinyl is you'll need to clean your turntable periodically. Fortunately, cleaning wax manually takes only five minutes and costs pennies compared to replacing cartridges, styluses, needles, and platters that wear out over time. Not to mention the environmental benefits of using reusable products versus disposable plastic alternatives.

Conclusion

Whatever choice you ultimately make, remember the golden rule of acquiring anything valuable: Be prepared to part with cash. No matter what format you opt for, you're almost guaranteed to pay at least a few bucks per item. And if you're serious about preserving your collection, it pays to shop smart. When you're ready to expand further, consider joining a local record club or attending events hosted by companies like Third Man Records and Record Store Day. These opportunities typically come with perks and discounts that provide ample motivation to stop hoarding and start stocking up.

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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The Trouble with Alien Zombies

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Soon we’re going to be watching Zack Snyder leave behind the quest for a “grown-up” superhero movie and return to his old playground, the zombie movie. Army of the Dead looks like a huge amount of fun and leaves us wondering why nobody has made a zombie heist movie before (except for Train to Busan sequel, Peninsula), but one of the plot details that has leaked about the film is that Area 51 plays a significant role.

This suggests that the zombie plague may be extraterrestrial in origin. Like most subversions of the zombie apocalypse genre (although Army of the Dead promises a much smaller and more contained “apocalypse” so that all that cash they steal is still worth something) this is actually a plot twist you can trace back to the earliest roots of the genre.

In Night of the Living Dead, the zombie apocalypse (although again, by the end of the film the “ghouls” seem to have been mostly mopped up) is the result of strange radiation emerging from a probe that has returned from Venus. The trope goes back even further than that.

One of the few films that can make a claim to an earlier take on the zombie apocalypse than Night of the Living Dead is the timeless classic Plan 9 from Outer Space. In that film, which we will not be making any jokes about, aliens reanimate the recently dead and drive them to attack the capital cities of the Earth.

In fact, if you want to find pre-George Romero examples of zombie apocalypse stories, the original series of Star Trek has done two. In the episode “Miri” the Enterprise encounters an exact duplicate of Earth, except that humanity has been wiped out by a deadly pandemic that turns every adult human into a violent, raging monster. It’s a premise explored in more detail by Charlie Higson’s YA zombie series The Enemy, and the Netflix series Daybreak.

Star Trek also gives us the brilliantly titled “Operation — Annihilate!”, where a swarm of spacefaring parasites sweep through the galaxy, infecting humanoids and driving them to a violent rage.

Yes, zombie purists might claim both of these are close to 28 Days Later’s “Rage infected humans” than true zombies, but in truth, the genre is big enough to include multitudes, and anything that A: uses human bodies, to B: create more entities like itself, while C: Not appearing to be intelligent, will usually create a story that looks a lot like a zombie story.

Indeed, Star Trek would come back to space zombies again, once more in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode, “Impulse” and again in the pilot episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks.

Is There Death on Mars?

Star Trek is not alone in drinking from this particular well. Early in its run Dark Matter had a space zombie episode. Doctor Who has done two space zombie episodes in the new series alone, “The Waters of Mars”, and “Oxygen” (which used zombie movie tropes for their intended purpose- bringing down capitalism), and that’s just including the ones actually set in space. Hell, even the primitive bandage-and-hospital-gown-wearing Cybermen from “The Doctor Falls” have a very George Romero vibe to them.

The appeal of putting a zombie in a spaceship for a TV show is easy to see. Zombies are a cool and instantly recognisable monster. Spaceships are a cool and instantly recognisable setting. What’s more, while your production values may vary, zombies on a spaceship is a pretty damn cheap concept to realise on screen. Zombies are just however many extras you can afford with some gory make-up. All you need for a spaceship is some suitably set-dressed corridors and maybe a couple of exterior model shots if you’re feeling swish.

And as with the zombie apocalypse genre as a whole, the audience instantly and instinctively understands “the rules” of a zombie story, allowing you to focus on your characters and the solutions they come up with.

The movies are no stranger to the space zombie either. The most straightforward example being The Last Days on Mars, which is pretty much a note-for-note remake of Doctor Who’s “The Waters of Mars” but without David Tennant. Mars is a popular venue, in fact as we see also Martian zombie apocalypses in Doom (2005) and Doom Annihilation (neither of which I watched to research this article, because there are limits). Even the “Ghosts” in Ghosts of Mars (which I did watch) may resemble more of a cross between Mad Max baddies and Evil Dead’s Deadites than zombies, but still, have a certain zombieness about them.

Most recently, in this last year Bruce Willis has starred in not one, but two movies with sub-Doctor Who production values where he fights space zombie-like adversaries (I have watched Breach/Anti-Life and Cosmic Sin, so don’t know why I thought I could get away with being snobby about the Doom movies earlier).

But Doom also raises another point about space zombies – a really popular venue for the extra-terrestrial undead is videogames.

This is for surprisingly very similar reasons to why space zombies are popular on telly and in film. Videogames will get far more creative in designing the appearance of their space zombies – with the Dead Space trilogy setting the bar with their gloriously gory Necromorphs – but the AI for a zombie, environmental navigation aside, seldom needs to be much more complicated than that of a Pac-Man ghost. Space has been a popular videogame setting for as long as videogames have been a thing, thanks to the handy black background it offers, and once again, corridors.

We’ve seen them in Dead Space, in all the Doom games, but also the Halo games in the form of the fungal, cancerous looking, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis-inspired Flood. Mass Effect gives us colonists zombified by the sentient Thorian plant, as well as the more technological “Husks”. And of course, there’s that one Call of Duty map.

Even now the makers of the original Dead Space games are looking to get back in on the action with the upcoming game, The Callisto Protocol.

And yet, while the appeal of space zombies is undeniable, by the same token they just don’t feel quite like “proper” zombie stories.

In Space, Nobody Can Hear You Shout “Brains!”

The problem is this: Your archetypical zombie story is ultimately a siege narrative. Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead, even twists on the formula like 28 Days Later, Train to Busan, and Pontypool all operate on a similar premise. You and some humans you probably don’t get on with are trapped in a structure (in Train it’s a moving structure, but still counts). Outside of that structure, there are somewhere between hundreds and thousands of zombified humans who want to get in and kill you. The humans keep arguing until the zombies get in and kill everyone.

For this to work you need a structure with a lot of room around it, and a big population of people to be turned into zombies.

Unfortunately the living conditions in space, even in our wildest space future fantasies, tend to be A: Quite claustrophobic, and B: Don’t have many people in.

Even in Dead Space, arguably the best example of a space zombie story, you very often find yourself thinking that if zombies hadn’t killed off this mining ship/space station/mining colony, overpopulation would have.

At the same time, spaceships, space stations and colonies tend to have really good, robust metal doors separating any two parts of the habitat, quickly reducing any zombie plotline to this XKCD cartoon.

But there are workarounds, and ways to use these restrictions to your advantage. Zombies are, by nature, pretty rubbish, slow-moving, stupid, easy to kill in small numbers. Most zombie stories get around this issue by throwing loads of them at you. Space zombie movies can make use of those corridors we mentioned earlier, showing how much scarier a single zombie can be in enforced close quarters.

Zombies also have one major advantage over their living victims – they don’t need to breathe. This is a major plus point in space, offering you the chance to have hordes of zombies crawling along the outer hull of the ship – something we’ve seen in Dead Space and Doctor Who’s “Oxygen”.

At the same time, the space setting also emphasises another key aspect of the zombie story – resource management. In space there is no huge abundance of well-stocked shopping malls or bunkers full of firearms. One of the ways The Last Days on Mars manages to make its very small number of zombies threatening is that their small hab modules have very little that you could use as a weapon.

And yet, space zombies still lack a certain something of their terrestrial counterparts.

It’s Undeath, Jim, but Not as We Know It

The thing is, aside from anything else, zombies are a transformation of the familiar. They look like more beaten-up versions of your neighbours and co-workers. The zombie apocalypse is a scene you can easily imagine on your street, at your pub, your local shopping centre.

Army of the Dead gets this – no matter where you are in the world, the iconography of the Las Vegas strip is familiar and we enjoy seeing it overrun by the undead.

And spaceships just aren’t. You might conceivably end up on holiday in Vegas. You’re statistically unlikely to be an astronaut.

But it’s more than that. Zombies are far more than cheap monsters that require little in the way of make-up or AI programming. The symbolism they carry is incredibly weighty. Earthly zombies have been used to represent capitalism, conformity, Vietnam soldiers, couch potato culture, mob mentality, our instinct towards violence, poverty, our obsession with mobile phones, and our ability to dehumanise one another.

Divorced from our world, from us as we recognise ourselves, that symbolism becomes a lot harder to nail. The zombies in The Last Days on Mars are just zombies. Dead Space’s Necromorphs are maybe a legally-safe satire on Scientology? Pandorum gives us extremely pale evolved human descendants that are extremely zombie-ish, and they certainly exhibit some of the worst bits of humanity, but they also live in a darkened, claustrophobic Hell, so it’s hard to hold it against them.

Zombies rarely represent anything in the way Earth-bound zombies do.

At least, nothing human.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Ruin features a sentient alien slime mould-like creature that, in its curiosity and need to explore, infiltrates and takes over the nervous system of the humans it encounters. To an outside observer, they look extremely like zombies, but the lifeform itself isn’t aggressive, just very, very alien. Andrew Skinner’s Steel Frame gives us not only space zombies, but space zombie mechs, and again the “Flood” (not the Halo one) that infects them is implied to be a kind of hivemind.

Most of the space zombies we’ve seen here aren’t what purists would call “true zombies” but are some manner of hivemind. This is true of Halo’s Flood, Mass Effect’s Thorians and Husks, and if we throw the doors to zombie-dom wide open, while they’re very different in the TV series, the Borg of Star Trek: First Contact come across as alien cyber-zombies.

One book to feature relatively harmless alien-created zombies is Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic. In that book the aliens aren’t robots or little green men, we just encounter their leftovers and garbage, which are artefacts strange and incomprehensible to humans. That these artefacts somehow raise the dead as mindless automata is a minor side issue – the book is about how alien intelligence might be something so different from ourselves we don’t even recognise it as intelligence.

If there is a space for alien zombies and zombie astronauts in the zombie pantheon, maybe it’s there. Space zombies are scary because they look like us but think so differently that we can’t comprehend them, while Earth zombies are scary because we have oh so much in common with them.

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Chris Farnell is the author of Fermi’s Progress, a series of novellas about a prototype FTL ship that blows up every planet it encounters. The latest instalment, Descartesmageddon, features an alien planet undergoing a very different kind of zombie apocalypse. It is available at Scarlet Ferret and Amazon.

The post The Trouble with Alien Zombies appeared first on Den of Geek.

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thegroovethief · 7 years ago

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#TGTfeature 008: Lea Luna [Magik Muzik; Dim Mak; Raid Recordings: Denver, Colorado, USA] Fresh off my interview with world champion turntablist DJ Shiftee, #TGTfeature 008 is with the skilled Lea Luna, who kills it on the decks whether bass, house, or beyond! She took the time out for a chat just before headlining a hometown show at The Black Box. This and forthcoming #TGTfeature articles will highlight dedicated musical talents by featuring their recent work as well as an in-depth interview. Known for her passion and dedication to dance music as well as the art of DJing, Lea Luna is also a chart-topping singer and a respected music journalist. She kindly shared her thoughts on bass music, repping Denver, dealing with online trolls, and more. A bit about Lea Luna: - With nearly 20 years behind the decks, she’s played numerous noteworthy clubs: NYC's Limelight, LA's Avalon, and Denver's own Beta - Frequently called on for vocal collaborations, she’s recently worked with the likes of Sydney Blu, Manufactured Superstars, and Quivver - Also known for her production work, she regularly releases her own music, including “Rock Show” out via RAID Recordings

TGT: You’re leading an excellent lineup of bass talent at The Black Box, all representing Denver. What styles will you be bringing for this set, and how do you determine ‘tough bass’ in 2018? LL: I’m definitely planning on keeping it bass-driven, much like my last Black Box set was. Bass house, maybe a few breaks, maybe a few trap drops to break it up. I’ve always said this as my overarching quote: “Genres don’t define artists, artists define genres.” I pretty much live by that ideology. I’ve been DJing for nearly two decades now and have seen many music fads come and go (fidget, for instance, was one such fad genre in the bass category I used to like that died). Everything all stems from two main influence points- the first influence is the roots of the underground— the old history behind the emergence of the new sound. People like classic vocal hooks in newer remixes if they were a part of the scene back in the day, and bass house wouldn’t be where it is now without the original house music and garage innovators. The second influence is technology. Bass music sounded way different before the VST (virtual instrument) plugin Serum was invented because producers had different tools. I remember when the VST called Massive first came out and dubstep as a genre resulted. Electronic music is largely affected by these nerds who make virtual instruments and how artists interpret that technology as tools for creative flow. While everyone as listeners are pulling apart which bass music artists are making new genres, most real artists are at home dorking around with compression ratios and wave tables trying to invent an actual noise. So it’s hard for me as an artist to talk about bass music as an evolving fad because I sit here with the tools all day looking at the other perspective of what’s really evolving. TGT: Denver is certainly a unique place! How would you describe the realities and complexities of the scene here as a local artist with a global following? Any advice for up-and-coming DJs/producers on navigating our “island?” LL: I could not be more proud of Denver, and even electronic music as a scene in general. This city used to only offer these (beloved) secret warehouse-type hideout parties with a bunch of obscure DJs, vinyl collectors, and underground ravers interested in coming, and now every large venue in the city is wall-to-wall packed with dance music fans on any given night. There’s a lot to be accredited to the increase in our culture, but also a lot that has been bastardized. What I will say to the new kids is if you’re out here letting a controller do all the work for you onstage, playing the top 40 dance chart releases in order so you can be popular, you are sh*tting all over my craft and culture. It’s not a popularity contest and the DJ booth is not a bottle service area. The best way to become a DJ is to care about actually DJing. Be authentic, know your roots, respect your predecessors, respect women, respect other subgenres, and don’t spend your life savings on social media likes. Inspire people, ask for help, collaborate, offer something OF yourself before asking about something FOR yourself. Create. Learn. Be humble (but please stop humble-bragging). Start a crew. Give a damn, you know? We’ve all had our bouts with fame and drama as artists, but if you’re not creative at all and you’re not keeping it real, you shouldn’t be doing this.

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TGT: There’s a lot of debate about whether certain strains of electronic music have reached full saturation, or have become so derived they’ve practically lost relevance. What are your thoughts on the current electronic dance scene, particularly within house music, and what’s your approach to keep your own productions sounding fresh? LL: People of the underground like to worry I’m too commercial, people of the commercial world like to worry I’m too underground. Some people want to hear music everyone understands, some people act rude when something becomes popular because they want to be viewed as purists. Like I said before, know your roots, know the trends, give a damn, create something original, and keep it moving. That’s the motto. If I claimed to be a purist 10 years ago and stuck to it, I’d be in hot water right now trying to play washed up music that pales in comparison to new mastering and technology on those fresh new funktion-ones (the incredible speakers they have at Black Box). If you stay current in your arena and true to your roots, genre and saturation thereof can be left to the listeners to decide. Ain’t nobody got time for that in my world. Artists. Define. Genres. I play what I think is ahead of the curve, and what I think is classic, all in one set. There’s no genre about it, but I will say that my tempo lately in clubs is 122-128, with an occasional drop to 100 just to grab people’s attention. All things house, garage, and breaks fall into that first category, and trap/twerk drops (second category) make life fun.

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TGT: You’ve recently posted about receiving online threats from a random stranger. This is, sadly, nothing new for female public figures. How can readers (particularly men) succeed in eradicating this all-too-common misogyny within our music community? And offline, what should promoters and venues be doing to keep their dance-floors safe? LL: As for keeping clubs safe - I truly believe in strength in numbers. I have a strong, supportive, loving crew of friends and fans, as well as professionals and security guards. I take threats very seriously and file reports and blacklists when they happen to protect myself and other women. I have very strong security measures held at all of my shows, including this one. But in the big picture, the biggest thing that is going to make any club a safe environment is a positive example of the members of any audience at any show ACTING RIGHT TOWARDS WOMEN. If you see someone put something in someone's drink, report them. If you see someone abusing a woman either verbally or physically any way whatsoever, DO SOMETHING. Inaction is still an action. I come with a large group of friends that I deeply trust to every event and there is no way in hell someone is going to act in public like they do on the internet towards me or any woman in my presence and get away with it. One time someone lifted my skirt up and hit me on the ass at a show and although they were "only joking," they were being held by the neck of their shirt over the patio rail and reprimanded by my friends a split second later until security came and got them. These types of people will always be outnumbered and will never get away with what they think they can. They try it on the internet because they can troll and hide. [As for online threats:] Here’s the deal. People are jealous. It happens to both sexes, but primarily females because sexual iconography or lack thereof triggers people who writhe in unnecessary hatred from the comfort of their hate-hobbit computer den. Being attractive does not make me stupid or talentless. There is no such thing as “using” your looks. I look this way. That’s a fact, maybe a hobby, not a tactic. I also write music consistently and contribute a lot to this scene. Do all girl DJs do that? Likely not, but many do. The problem lies in the prejudice, pegging all women as having a backhanded agenda or a lack of intelligence or avoiding authenticity. This claim emerges from the hearts of people whose mothers didn’t hug them, whose girlfriends cheated on them, whatever. Hurt people hurt people. Do I care what these specific people think? No. I care if I screw up publicly and true fans lose interest in me. I care about staying true to myself and my brand, and I care about doing what I say I’m going to do for my shows, my opening DJs, the promoters who believe in me, my agent and manager, my crew, my friends, and my fans. Anyone who is so clearly coming from a place of jealous bigotry who tries to threaten me, embarrass me, or thwart my success always fails. Because they aren’t battling me, they’re battling something very dark and unhappy inside themselves. TGT: And, to end on a lighter topic – what’s your favorite spot in town for a post-gig meal? LL: Post gig? I’m always exhausted around then, but definitely just as junk food hungry as anyone at 2am leaving a bar. I rarely go out after bar hours to eat though. I’m more likely to hit a grocery store for a pizza to pop in the oven at home or if I’m feeling extra self-loathing I’ll get cheesy popcorn and pop tarts from a gas station [laughs].

#Lea Luna #Lea #Luna #DJ Lea Luna #DJ #TGTfeature #Interview #The Black Box #Denver #Colorado #Bass #House #EDM #Electronic #Dance #Music #TGTstylee

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onceuponamirror · 7 years ago

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omg I also refused to watch Lost for very similar reasons. I've also never seen any of the Star Wars films, so. I think i'm just a little outside of the zeitgeist, in a Not Cool way. Anyway you said you do meta and I was wondering: do you have any specific thoughts about the Jughead/Betty/Archie friendship when they were kids? I'm interested in your perspective on it. (All good if you have no specific thoughts about it though!) :)

sorry for a kind of delayed response! last couple days were busy.

anyway, hello darkness my old friend, i’ve come to ruminate on childhoods again

the way i see it, up until, say, about age 7-8, the Andrews did not live in the nice little nightmare on elm street neighborhood (legit this is canon; the coopers live on elm street, like), just as i don’t think the Jones lived in the trailer park all Jughead’s life

(also because he canonically had a treehouse at one point. things said in passing still count!!!!)

so let’s say around age 8, Archie Andrews and his family move in next door to the Coopers. Andrews Construction is doing better—not great, but better—and in order to appease Mary’s growing restlessness, Fred thinks if he can show his wife a good, comfortable life, she’ll stop mentioning Chicago so much. so he takes out a mortgage, even if the man at the bank had seemed a little too eager to give out loans like candy.

before that, however, the Andrews and the Jones live nearby one another. not quite southside, not quite north; not quite bad, not quite great, but equal.

Archie and Jughead are inseparable—in that Archie has an utter lack of boundaries and completely misses the dismissive social cues from a shy, quiet little boy who has never been good at making friends.

what starts as being thrown together in a very rudimentary and machismo concept of a preschool at a construction site becomes a genuine friendship, if not albeit one that still halfway requires proximity in order to function

and then the Andrews move, and FP is helping with boxes, and Jug is there to check out Archie’s new big bedroom in the big new house when he spots a little hand quickly disappearing behind a pink curtain across the way

he asks Archie then if they have neighbors and in a distracted voice, he says something to the effect of uh, yeah, i guess, but look at my tv, jug!

they come downstairs and FP is looking around with his lips pressed together, a sense of wariness that Jughead will not know how to place at age 8 but will learn to not much later

(here is where my headcanon gets syrupy: the Jones were also a founding family. they ran a glass blowing factory that made the maple syrup jugs for the Blossoms—until Forsythe the First picked a fight with old man flower dick and got blacklisted and lost everything)

(FP Jones, once the official Big Man On Campus, the boy with the sleek black camaro and money to spare, quickly learns what his life is worth) (his father turns to the drink and bitterness is a sweet fruit upon first bite)

(but hence, the name JUGhead, because life is a cruel joke)

the doorbell rings like the bell tower at high noon and Why It’s The Coopers! in all of their beautiful blonde glory carrying brownies. there’s the awkward shuffling of pairing up age groups and Jughead recognizes the little hand at the window as belonging to the girl who sits at the front of his classes.

he should’ve known that hand anywhere, because it’s constantly in the air in front of him, stretched high over her head as she answers question after question.

and at first—that’s it.

but then after a couple of weeks, he comes over to the Andrews’ new house and Betty Cooper is there, sitting in his usual spot on the black beanbag, and he has never been such a sucker to believe in cooties, but how dare she?

more importantly, how dare Archie let her?

Archie is the only friend he’s got, and he knows from a growingly keener eye on Betty that she has got plenty of friends and she can’t have his

this wariness and increasing surliness as childhood veers closer and closer towards adolescence, bringing with it realities that he Is Too Young To Understand, Jughead, But Your Father Knows What He’s Doing, but he still thinks he’s starting to

and then the summer of pee-wee football arrives. they’re 11 going on 12, and suddenly Archie can’t hang out in the weeklong intervals Jughead has become accustomed to. when he shows up on his bicycle at the Andrews only to be reminded of this, he starts to turn away, when he hears a little voice calling to him from over the fence

it’s Betty Cooper, and she wants to know if he wants to go for a bike ride because oh my god, she just got a new one and she’s sooo excited to ride it and Look At The Tassels!!!Jughead! and he’s about to say um no way and how old are you that you still want tassels on your bike when that rattling mouth of hers offers him sandwiches and chips and lemonade and all that’s in his house right now is instant oatmeal so fine, Betty, Fine

they ride down to the river and end up talking about their favorite movies and books—and jesus, she really likes The Mists of Avalon, but besides that, she actually has decent taste and they vow to make Archie suffer through a classics night

(and Archie absolutely hates Casablanca, the ending bothers him so much, and won’t hear the defenses from Betty and Jughead)

(but then they make him watch it again when Betty’s friend Kevin finds out she watched his favorite movie without him and it starts all over again)

that year, Jughead finds himself almost thinking that sometimes he likes spending time with Betty more than Archie, but he’ll never let himself admit it. he’s a purist, and Archie was there first. Archie is his best friend, even if lately all he wants to do is talk about girls and pee-wee sports

there’s a touch of irony when Jughead thinks about the fact that Betty is technically a girl too and he might think about her as much as Archie talks about Valerie and Cheryl and Josie and—

Jughead doesn’t dwell on it. he doesn’t.

and then they’re 13, and things really start to change. he’s shooting up faster than they can afford new pants, and so is Archie, minus the financial obstacles. Betty too. her hair seems brighter, her skin seems softer, and she finds an affinity for lip gloss

(Archie is the only one who doesn’t seem to notice, because by golly she’s good ol Betts! and pass the pizza, dude)

(Jughead thinks it doesn’t seem to bother her so much as it makes her transformation into a teenage girl all the more willful)

(—he also knows that her home life is stressful, and in a different way, just as stressful as his own—even if he can’t think about it too hard without needing deep breaths—)

Betty admits to him one afternoon by the river that her mom wants her to be so perfect and she doesn’t know what that means anymore.

but then he sees her figure it out—perfect grades, perfect dress, perfect smile.

perfect boyfriend.

people in their grades are starting to pair up and it’s freaking Jughead the fuck (*hell, sorry, he’s still 13) out, but nothing freaks him out as much as the fact that Betty is acting so weird around Archie now

he thinks what bothers him most is the way he can feel time pressing in on like a brick meeting mortar. things are changing and he hates it and he just wants to be watching movies in Betty’s basement and throwing popcorn at the tv with his friends, not watching her frown every time Archie watches a girl walk by

but what can he do? he’s not the perfect boyfriend. he’s not the one on the football track. he’s not all-american anything, unless you count trailer trash, because, well, that’s where he lives now

(as the narrator here, i must insert that what jughead is feeling at this juncture is less a crush and more the wistful nostalgia for the one he could’ve had)

(if only he had been born into a different family, he thinks to himself one night)

and that’s where he pulls back, because he’s getting a little sick of constantly thinking about paradigm shifts (a term he now understands and has rocked his world view) (ouroboros will be next)

he dodges texts, he briefly entertains lunches at the AV club room until the school cuts the program because We’re Sorry Mr. Jones, but One Student Does Not a Club Make, until Betty swoops in like his goddamn white knight and insists she is in the club and now they can’t cancel it!

and his attempts at pulling away are briefly loped off.

until high school.

freshman year is every thought he’s ever thought multiplied by ten, including all the ones about Betty Cooper.

as the narrator, i again interrupt to remind the reader that this is not so much pining as it is defensive frustration—Archie keeps getting Perfecter, Betty is getting Perfecter, and they are going to be Perfecter together and they’ll realize that Jughead is not part of the picture they want to be painting and soon he’ll be avoided and next year, Archie will probably be shoving him into lockers like Reggie Mantle

and that’s why, when the summer before sophomore year rolls around, and Betty is going to Los Angeles for her internship and Archie starts acting cagey, he accepts this as the inevitable, and bows out, thankful for the time he did have

but that’s the summer that everything changes

#bughead #riverdale #betty cooper #jughead jones #archie andrews #meta #i told you this would be a lot #relax sarah!!!#headcanon #fics #kind of #this is not really a oneshot but it could be #crawledoutofthesea

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