Made Me Cry – Hello

“Hello Goodbye” makes me cry ever since Paul opened his concert in Tel-Aviv with it.

Broken, Ungrateful, Forgiven

I am totally addicted to “Forgiveness Rock Record”, Broken Social Scene’s new album.

I knew that it’s gonna be great when i saw my two year old niece dancing to “Forced to Love”:

I became addicted to it, to all of it, after i heard “Ungrateful Little Father”. It starts out like a good Broken Social Scene song and ends like a good múm song.

Plus, one of their many guitarists – i’m not sure which one – looks like Berry Sakharof.

My fake plastic love, part 1

I just watched a WikiMovie. (Read on, this post doesn’t have significant spoilers.)

I watched Cashback once when it came out and enjoyed it immensely.

There was one thing that bugged me though. In a climactic scene towards the end “Power of Love” plays in the background. It is a good song and it is more or less fitting, but there’s one song that would fit much better.

The movie is British. It deals with the subjects of love and reality. Most of the it takes place in a supermarket. A climactic scene.

All this can only mean one thing: “Fake Plastic Trees“, 2:30.

So today i watched it, and at that scene i muted the movie and played it instead. It was perfect.

Seriously, the wiki idea should be enhanced to all things in life.

Mr. Self Destruct

For the first time in my life i am enjoying a Nine Inch Nails song. This is NOT a good thing. I do not envy the people who enjoy it on regular basis.

MIDI

For years my geek friends forced me to listen to Dream Theater. I hated it.

Yesterday they played in Tel-Aviv. The reviews are good. Oh well.

I just listened to Pull Me Under on YouTube and now i finally understood what does it sound like: like a demo song of a MIDI keyboard.

Violinist

I am living in a four-story house. In front of my window¹ there’s a fifteen-story house and it blocks the view.

It basically sucks, but a violinist lives in that house, and she² practices all day long, which is very pleasant.

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¹ I wrote “Window” first. Why would i do such a thing? :)

² Does this make me sexist?

Amazing

Kanye West wrote a book. That’s what he has to say about it:

“Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed. I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book’s autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life.”

I am a proud non-listener to hip-hop.

Hip-hop is not a crime. Hip-hop is not bad music. Occasionally i listen to a hip-hop song and enjoy it.

But i don’t get why some people talk about “innovative” hip-hop. Nothing changed in hip-hop in the last twenty years or so.

I heard a lot of talk about Kanye West lately. I haven’t heard any of his songs. So i tried a few on YouTube.

Fuck it. Kanye West is not innovative. M.I.A. is not innovative. Timbaland is not innovative. Eminem is not innovative. Dr. Dre is not innovative. Danger Mouse in not innovative. None of them have ever been innovative. Some of them are good artists, but none of them is innovative, never been.

And no, there hasn’t been a lot of innovation in rock music for many years now. Interpol, Elbow, Decemberists, Shins, Libertines, Arctic Monkeys – none of them are innovative. Some of them are good artists, but none of them is innovative. That’s unfortunate, but at least nobody makes such a big deal out of it as it is with hip-hop.

Wagner

Wagner’s antisemitism and use of his works by the Nazis caused him to be banned in Israel: he’s not played on Israeli radio, and playing him in a classical music concert is a sure way to be booed and to be mentioned on the front page in the next day’s newspapers.

As far as i know, Wagner had sick opinions, but didn’t kill anyone.

Now: Will “Let It Be”, “Imagine” and “Jealous Guy”, produced by an alleged murderer, be banned from Israeli radio? Or from BBC? I think not.

All lost in the tide

What do you get if you search for Soundgarden’s “Pretty Noose” video? The “Alternate Version” – the one where the band just performs. So the song is awesome, but the interesting original video is not on YouTube.

But what’s interesting is what appears in “Related Videos”. After a bunch of Soundgarden videos you get: Radiohead – Creep; Weezer – Say it Ain’t So; Roxette – Listen to Your Heart.

At this point i am supposed to write a Russian cuss word, but actually i can’t deny that Marie Fredriksson looks a lot like Thom Yorke. I’d love to say that it ain’t so, but it is too.

You never wash up after yourself

Hello, World.

World, you owe me. Not too much—about fifty bucks. But you still owe me.

You see, World, i’ve been listening to Radiohead since the second “You’re so fucking special” was played on Israeli Educational TV for the first time. When “Pablo Honey”, “The Bends” and “OK Computer” were released, i was a penniless teenager. Few of my friends listened to such music and those who did like it, were penniless teenagers, too, and didn’t have the CD’s. And, believe it or not, there were no MP3′s to download then. I only knew the songs from the videos on MTV, but did’t hear “Black Star”, “Planet Telex”, “You” or “Exit Music”.

Long story short, by 2000 i finally bought all those CD’s. I even became so rich, that i bought “Kid A” the day it was released.

What’s the problem then? The rest. With every album that they released, Radiohead released a separate companion EP. And these companion EP’s were good, too. And they were almost as expensive as the albums. For some time i didn’t buy them, because i hardly had the money to buy the albums. Later i was sure that EMI ere about to re-release them in some way. Then i stopped seeing them in record stores. Hey, i stopped seeing record stores—they began to get closed one after the other.

And then i saw those EP’s somewhere, and i had some spare money and i gave up and bought them—”My Iron Lung EP”, “How am I Driving EP”, “Com Lag EP”. Excellent music—”The Trickster”, “Permanent Daylight”, “Pearly”, “Palo Alto”.

Mere weeks later, bang: Radiohead’s First Three Albums Reissued and Expanded.

Well, yes, those tracklists have the complete EP’s and then some: “Molasses”, “Talk Show Host”, “Pop is Dead” and “Killer Cars” are all great and hard-to-find songs. And i am going to buy that crap, because i am the sucker that keeps the CD industry alive. But damn it, i don’t know what is it in me that makes record companies re-release albums days after i, of all people, buy myself a copy. It happened to me with Bob Dylan, Pavement, R. E. M. and Arik Einstein, but somehow with Radiohead it’s especially painful.

So there. I guess that i had to buy those EP’s to have them re-released so you, World, would be able to pay less than i paid and get more than i got.

Fuck justice. Fuck EMI. Fuck Radiohead. Fuck money.

P.S. At least i didn’t buy “Seven Television Commercials”. Go-go, YouTube.