I think the Thurston reference was included because (1) he was the official guitar god at the time and (2) in the 90s he embodied a sort of unapproachable cool indie shtick that SK was trying to subvert or sidestep. See also: "You're No Rock n Roll Fun." SK was really earnest and almost desperate to connect in a way that conflicted with the reigning ironic ethos of 90s indie.
I remember writing a page-long review of this album in my high school newspaper, lauding it with all the horrible teenager metaphors I could muster. My (mostly male) friends thought it sounded like crazy ladies screaming and murdering their instruments. I think they might have been afraid that maybe Sleater-Kinney would murder THEM.... And here we are, 20 years later.
Albums usually tend get forgotten over the 5-10 year time span. That's just sort of how things work. The album is no longer the shiny new thing, people move on to other stuff (which I guess now is arty hip hop, R&B, weird electronic things, whatever it is Grimes is doing, etc.). Then people tend to unearth the album again at the 10 year mark, at which point there's sort of an initial decision about whether it's canonized or if it was overrated at the time. And then at about the 15 year mark you really start to see people filtering, and at 20 years the game is basically up (unless there's some sort of weird revival a la disco punk). It may well be that in 2024 people look at Embryonic as a great Flaming Lips album on par with Clouds Taste Metallic and Soft Bulletin... BUT TIME WILL TELL.
I'm guessing "untitled" refers to "title" in the sense of property. Like "title" to a house.
Obviously "unmastered" refers to "master" in the sense of a slave owner or boss.
So "untitled unmastered" is basically: not property, not owned.
This article is insane. The premise seems to be: take a random Kanye comment, and interpret it (to death) until it makes sense. I mean, is this an exercise in old school Derrida-style deconstruction or something?
The phrase "defecating on your microphone" has always stuck in my head in a really disturbing way. Every time I hear it, I think of a microphone sitting on the floor, with shit all over it. So gross. THANKS LAURYN!
Yes to “Fortunate Son” at #1. It has to be one of the most inspired covers I've ever heard. It's kind of hard to remember now, but indie rock music was pretty apolitical back then, for better or worse (I mean, maybe there was a political subtext sometimes, but it was pretty buried). Sleater-Kinney was the exception.
Re: the line at the end ... Kinda seems like a waste of money for Ye to pay so much for a stolen hard drive containing his homemade sex videos. I mean, if that stuff was leaked, people would be like, "yeah we suspected as much so what?"
I saw Lizzo open for Sleater-Kinney and I can confirm she is awesome. My husband actually liked her better than Sleater-Kinney (though he's not much of a rock guy).
It's almost as if sexual orientation is a spectrum and names for any point on that spectrum are inevitably going to be pretty arbitrary, so maybe we shouldn't get too hung up about whether the Passion Pit guy is using the correct arbitrary label?
This is exactly the sort of Grimes album I wanted. I hear a lot of styles people have been throwing around for the last few years -- but synthesized. There's a lot of talk about the fragmentation of music tastes, but maybe this is the synthesis. So glad she decided to wait a few years to figure things out rather than rushing to market with a follow-up.
I have to say this is the first time I really understood where he's coming from with his music. It always struck me as a little old fashioned, but now it kinda seems like a sort of rebellious rock classicism (not just "classic rock" revivalism).
I was 14 and living in the Chicago suburbs when it came out. In that context, the album was a ridiculously big deal, and the alt radio station played it constantly. I remember listening to a one hour special interview with Corgan (and maybe Iha) on the radio -- Corgan said he wanted to be "universal" like the Beatles, or something like that. At the time, I thought the album was kinda bloated, though now I'll admit it's a classic (but still kinda bloated). "The world is a vampire" remains the greatest alt rock punchline of all time -- even better than, "and isn't it ironic?"
And to be clear, Viet Cong were obviously trying to follow that post-punk tradition (that's their primary influences). Obviously, not even they seem to remember why their heroes chose such grotesque names. Now, maybe all those names suck, and maybe the "atrocity exhibition" shtick was really just a cheap pseudo-profound spectacle for jaded, privileged first world art students. Maybe that's the point the critics are really looking to make here (I wouldn't necessarily disagree).
This has been explained before WHY NOT ONE MORE TIME... Famous post-punk band names were typically chosen not to rebel against those in power, but rather to evoke human depravity: Joy Division (Nazis); New Order (Nazis again); Gang of Four (Maoism/cultural revolution); Mission of Burma (indirectly referring to the 1962 revolutionary coup, and supposedly chosen for its "sort of murky and disturbing" quality); and so on.
It seems like people have just lost the taste for disturbing art and can't imagine that sort of aesthetic even existing.
So... which is better, Late Registration or My Dark Beautiful Twisted Fantasy? I want to just say they're about equal, but I think the balance tips towards MDBTF, if only because it's a bit more coherent as an album, and I think it has the good luck of being the definitive cultural document of the Great Recession. I'd prefer to have a beer with the Kanye on Late Registration, of course.
Michael -- Actually, Chicago already had a tax for cable TV, so there's a serious argument that they're just equalizing the tax treatment: http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/fin/supp_info/revenue/tax_list/amusement_tax_subscriberstopaidtelevisionprogramming.html
As for whether it's a good tax... meh. It probably falls more on the rich, it doesn't reduce jobs/work, and Chicago really needs money. Sounds good enough to me -- and I'm a Chicagoan, so I'm the one who's going to be paying the tax.
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