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| Portugal The Man : Censored Colors by Zsenitan 02/04/2009, 5:57am PST | ||||
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| Man I just don't know how I feel about this album. There are too many songs, that's part of the problem. I really like that the singers are unafraid to go Country/Soul at the drop of a hat, but the rest of it is tough going.
Ditto Department Of Eagles; like everyone else on the planet I am not immune to the Top 40 Hit In A Better World, "No One Does It Like You", but even though there are other good songs on the album, it's tough. IT IS TOUGH GETTING ALL THE WAY THROUGH THAT. Both bands have a problem where, since sincerity was outlawed in the mid-90's, they have to be camp instead of sincere. All indie bands suffer from this condition, but I think it's worse with these two bands (especially Portugal) because they're well-made enough that it makes a Barneys fashion show soundtrack out of them. TASTE LUXURY HUMOR SPQR. I don't even have a non-commercial language to discuss them since they don't discuss anything, musically or lyrically, that doesn't make me think of tasteful commercials or high-end hipster retail establishments. Actually that's an interesting question so let's ask it: Are the primary movers of Artistic Middle musical tastes (Artistic Middle we define to be: people who are interested in the arts beyond the most basic levels presented on network TV, standard AM/FM radio, bestselling books, and blockbuster movies; but not so interested in the arts that they need or want to be on the cutting edge of any particular cultural field; and whose tastes are neither particularly forward-looking nor conservative) no longer media-moving channels like the radio? It seems that musical tastemaking gets done now as a part of co-branding - what's playing in American Apparel, what's listened to by people who buy Am Appy; what's playing in the Apple store; what's playing in the background on Lost; what are bloggers saying. Pandora is a tool that generates new "leads" that correspond to tastes previously defined; in this sense it's like a microclimate radio station. Is Pandora a tastemaker? Certainly it doesn't present a listener with anything excessively new. Good or bad? How would you set up a Pandora channel to present you with new things anyway? Here Pandora fails the same way that Clear Channel radio stations fail: they can't usefully introduce new ideas to an audience that has no idea about them, because the audience has no vocabulary with which to ask for them. Is there a better method for getting outside of one's musical boundaries than trial and error? E.g. is there a Pandora that tries to piss you off on purpose. For me at least it's enough to take a car trip with any other person on the planet; I find that they will uniformly play unlistenable trash that I have never heard of before. |
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Portugal The Man : Censored Colors by 02/04/2009, 5:57am PST  Were you eating when you wrote that? NT by 02/04/2009, 7:20am PST Yes. NT by 02/04/2009, 7:25am PST "I was eating when I wrote this/Forgive me if it goes to gay" NT by 02/04/2009, 12:42pm PST two thousand zero zero party over oops out of time my bacon smellin fine NT by 02/04/2009, 12:53pm PST I think you got a problem here. NT by 02/04/2009, 7:24pm PST It's from Don't Be a Menace 2 South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hoo by 02/04/2009, 7:33pm PST no that's just how the original song goes like the post I replied to NT by 02/04/2009, 7:35pm PST Re: Portugal The Man : Censored Colors by 02/04/2009, 4:47pm PST |
