Play For The Song

Lately I've been searching around the Net to bring you the best of the best in terms of useless information you probably don't need- and found this funny-as-hell but disturbing little article:

http://www.cracked.com/article_18906_7-shockingly-dark-origins-lovable-childrens-characters.html

Cracked.com does seem to have the inside scoop on how righteously messed up the world (more specifically Japan) is. I liked the 'Animals That Don't Give A F*&k' article, too.

But then again, if you don't laugh during the day, you'll probably go crazy. Of course, there are lots of people who spend the day doing nothing but- they're generally hospitalized for their own safety and the safety of others. Or you can turn it into a reflection of the world around you, going the Marilyn Manson route of changing "I'm never going to get laid in this lifetime" to "If I didn't learn to laugh at myself, I'd never get laid in this lifetime". See, this blog actually is educational! In some sense.

Well, apart from that, found I actually like Siouxsie And The Banshees a lot- this came as something of a surprise to me, as the lead singer was a big fan of the Sex Pistols. I never liked the Sex Pistols, thinking them musically not all that and a bag of chips, and personally obnoxious. Punk, keep in mind, had somewhat of a noble origin- minimalist and primal, simple music that unabashedly appealed to baser instincts. All in all, this could have, I think, gone a different direction, perhaps even evolving into a more sophisticated form of expression. But no, it kind of fizzled. Never mistake lack of talent for genius, and unfortunately, this has happened. Minimalism is good in music- I'm reminded of the late great guitarist BB King, one of the people I like to think I learned bass lines from. Listening to him play, I would always notice how there was never a note out of place- never too few nor too many. Each note conveyed the idea (unlike this blog, which conveys pretty much mental chaos in 200-odd posts...) and each note fit together in a whole. This was kind of the retrospective vision I had for punk music. Actually, some artists have managed to bridge the gap, and created pretty decent punk. Though minimalism is good, if it's all you can do, you're not 'playing for the song', you just suck.

But again, how does one apply principles like this to a high form of self-expression? Music, I think, is good because it communicates something of the individual creating it, and yet at the same time we identify with it on some deeper level. Underneath the exterior, we're all composed of the same stuff.