Melkor was home last Christmas and mentioned a band he thought was really great called Muse. About a month ago, Decoy left a CD of the album The Resistance laying around. I listened to it and understood what Melkor was raving about:
Combining overambitious rock/classical/operatic styles like glam bands Roxy Music & Queen did in their prime with a modern rock attitude, and just as importantly, modern technology, Muse may just be the best band to come around in a couple of generations. Yes, this reviewer is totally bowled over and is wondering if just maybe the rock opera album, The Resistance, is one of the top 5 albums of all time. And they excelled in a genre (the rock opera) that no one except The Who with Tommy and Quadrophenia ever successfully pulled off.
The band is able to pull off rip-roaring rockers (Stockholm Syndrome) as well as classical symphonies (Exogenesis). And the thing is, that symphony isn't a joke. That sounds as legit as anything you'd hear on a classical music station, but with rock drums and guitars mixed in, accentuating it rather than ruining it. Masterful.
Matthew Bellamy seems to be the driving force in the band, being the singer, guitarist, and keyboard player. He is clearly an accomplished classical pianist. I think the one mild criticism is that his voice seems a little weak, but he makes up for it by dripping sincerity and not shying from vocal challenges.
I thought, there's no way they can repeat this stuff live, but I thought wrong. Check out this live performance of Stockholm Syndrome: ass kickin'!
Wolfmother concert rocked btw, and their new songs were ass kicking face-melting material that we were used to.
ReplyDeleteI am reading "The closing of The American Mind", by Allan Bloom and the book talks about culture, and I found some interesting quotes about music that I thought were cool.
ReplyDelete"Abstracting from the capitalist element in which it flourishes[Rock music], they regard it as a people's art, coming from beneath the bourgeoisie's layers of cultural repression. Its antinomianism and its longing for a world without constraint might seem to be the clarion of the proletarian revolution, and Marxists certainly do see that rock music dissolves the beliefs and morals necessary for liberal society and would approve of it for that alone."
Allan Bloom stated that Herbert Marcuse said that, "he promised that the overcoming of capitalism and its false consciousness will result in a society where the greatest satisfactions are sexual, of a sort that the bourgeois moralist Freud called polymorphous and infantile."
"It[rock music] makes conversation impossible, so that much of friendship must be without the shared speech that Aristotle asserts is the essence of friendship and the only true common ground. With rock, illusions of shared feelings, bodily contact and grunted formulas, which are supposed to contain so much meaning beyond speech, are the basis of association."
Guilty is charged ;)
ReplyDeleteThe thing is Jeff, Alan Bloom says "Abstracting from the capitalist element..." well, that's a major abstraction! The pop music business is just about the most cutthroat capitalistic business in the world! No government subsidizing, poor contracts, many bands competing for few good gigs or record contracts. It is a stark example of a business where only the strong (ie those that provide what the customer wants) survive.
I would say that you would find the most hardcore leftists in the Classical music business, which is almost wholly government-subsidized in one form or another.
Rock is rooted in jungle-music blues for sure, and has always been a form of rebellion and release. Certainly young people who make up most of the bands and fans, just like in Rap, are inclined to spout the cheapo leftist slogans they are taught in school, and also fill the music with violence and sexual innuendo. They're teenagers and young adults for cryin' out loud! The leftist claptrap is something the discerning rocker needs to be able to filter through, and something the youngsters performing grow out of. Did you know that the archetype rebellious band, the band that kicked off anarchical punk rock, The Ramones, contained a hardcore Republican? Johnny Ramone (who I always thought was the coolest one, naturally) was a fierce Republican. Check this out:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3710263.stm
But again, if you look into it closely, you will see the pampered elite lefties are to be found in Classical and Jazz music, both as performers and fans (a perfect example is my mom).
But Jeff, to get back to Muse, I challenge you to listen to Muse's three-part symphony Exogenesis. It has plenty of classical music that both Allan Bloom and the true lefty Classical music fans and performers would enjoy, and is one of the reasons I rave about them. They can bring both the rock and the classical, doing both very well. I've never heard anything like it!
www.grooveshark.com
ReplyDeleteTotally free, design your own music selection website.
I am joking. I only posted some quotes that I thought sounded cool. I found the chapter about music interesting. It is worth a critical examination of our favorite pastimes or leisure activities. I still listen to rock every now and then, but I do think pop culture does promote an agenda and is helping to undermine the foundations of our civilization by fostering values that are the antithesis of the ones that form the foundation of our free society.
ReplyDeleteI don't think people that listen and enjoy rock music are really concerned with this; they only care about the music; and when I listen to it, I just enjoy it.
Muse definitely rocks. They arent the best band in generations. That trophy belongs to Tool and Tool alone.
ReplyDeleteMuse is probably the best ACTIVE(Tool only enlightens us with shows and albums once every millenia) mainstream rock band out there and very unique as well. My band(Zombie Breakfast, Speak English, Skin Disease...not sure what our name is yet) is definitely going to surpass Tool and Muse and The Beatles.
Let no one say that RTP is a mutual agreement society! Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom!
ReplyDeleteI just want to dance
ReplyDeleteA little slideshow that can help us identify the Celebs we like:
ReplyDeletehttp://wcbstv.com/slideshows/Conservative.Celebrities.20.824701.html
Dad's Romones is in there, Alice Cooper, and host of other people.