SOUNDTRACK: YO LA TENGO-I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass (2006).
I’ve liked Yo La Tengo for a really long time. And not only because they’re from Hoboken and play Maxwell’s pretty much every week. I wouldn’t call them a favorite band, but most of their singles from the 1990s are some of my favorite songs. I find that they don’t really release great albums, and they don’t really release bad songs: they release great songs and good songs, and their albums are made up of some combination of these.
The great title of this album, is something of a misnomer, as you might expect a riled up and raucous record. And the first song, the nearly 11 minute squealing guitar rave-up “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind” goes along with that premise. But some of the middle songs like the piano ballad “I Feel Like Going Home” and the 8 minute instrumental ballad “Daphnia” are mellow, and rather pretty. In fact, the album is kind of all over the place. Some songs really stand out: “Mr Tough” and the long opener and closer are really great. The middle is a bunch of solid, well-crafted songs. For some reason, not too much left an impression on me, even though I enjoyed the disc while I was listening to it.
[READ: July 18, 2008] Player Piano
When Kurt Vonnegut died, I made a note to myself to read more, if not all, of his books. I had read Slaughterhouse Five and Time Quake maybe one or two others, but I figured I’d make the effort and start from the beginning.
Player Piano was his first book. And what a way to start. The time is the future, after the next war; the second industrial revolution. Machines now do most of the work that people used to do. In fact, machines now determine what job you are allowed to do. If your IQ is tested high enough, you can become an engineer (or manager) of the machines. If not, you get assigned to the Reeks and Wrecks: Reconstruction & Reclamation Corps, or basically, manual labor: fixing the roads and other maintenance projects. It imagines a future in which machines can do everything. And, it’s pretty horrible. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 