So I am not musically inclined. Still, I know what music I like and what I don't like. I don't like pop shit like Britney Spears, Ashlee Simpson, Limp Bizkit or anyone else of their kind. I feel like they are talentless vehicles used by the labels. They don't have any instrumental talent and they don't write anything worth listening to if they write music at all. I know that pop music has always been around and that teenagers have always ruled the airwaves. However, I feel like everyone caters to pop music now in a way that wasn't true in the past. Some of my favorite musicians are people that got airplay around the pop hair bands of the 80's. Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Pink Floyd. These were all artists that managed to get played and be popular along side the pop crap like Poison and Bon Jovi. Now however, you don't hear anything but pop music on the radio.
This all leads me to my gripe. One of my favorite guitarists and song writers just put out a new album. Mark Knopfler's new album Shangri La is great in my mind. Knopfler was great as one of the leading forces of Dire Straits and his solo career has also been good. Furthermore, against the current trends in pop music he writes his own songs and in my estimation is one of the best guitarists currenlty producing new albums. However, all of the magazines that you find stocked on most store shelves gave it bad reviews. Why? Apparently, it is boring. Here is a quote from Blender magazine.
His melodies are minimal and his lack of vocal range can get monotonous and quite frustrating at times. Rolling Stone gave it 3.5 stars but that was less than new albums by Eminem, Gwen Stefani, Clay Aiken, Destiny's Child, Usher and Nelly. Spin magazine didn't even review it. So what do you need to get good reviews by these popular magazines? Have a dance hall beat, be on a "talent show" or maybe just sing R+B. Apparently it doesn't require much talent.
Yet even though these magazines call Knopfler boring I found good reviews on the internet. Compare the boring ones to this.
This music has more hooks than a...(fill in your own pun to this tired joke), and more texture than most artists display in an entire career. Wow!!! Much different than boring. Something else. It seems that even though american magazines only care about pop music european magazines give pretty good reviews of other music. I found good reviews of this album in MOJO and another european magazine as well. It pisses me off that the popular music magazines can't give accurate reviews because of thier focus on Ashlee Simpson.
As a side note. Tracks magazine is a new magazine that I have found that has good reviews of various styles. I think it is very good. Check it out. I'll leave the link and a link to the reviews quoted above.
--Chuck
Tracks
Good Review
Blender Review
If your stupid enough to listen to pop music you deserve to get your ears filled with horse crap. Give the fucking babies their bottle. I reject that entire section of our culture. I don't participate and I don't care what they do. They are so loathsome it almost makes me puke rapid fire machine gun style while fucking my sister, which I don't have, in the ass!
OK, sorry about that. But I do hate pop culture. If you feel like me, do what I do. Ban news and entertainment media from your life. The only media that I watch is "The Daily Show" and a few select podcasts that occasionally talk about current events. I can barely handle that much which is sad. Why does everything these days have to be so sensational and pumped up full of bullshit? There is hardly any real communication these days. We just keep puking up the same old tired shit over and over. The whole time trying to make it bigger and better than ever before but only making even less original and smelly. OK, I must stop my rant now. I have to go throw-up.
--Adam