Beck 'Sea Change' (thread #4, I believe)

So he ain’t got no heart. BFD. Neither do I. Why are ppl tolerated if they’re deficient intellectually or technically, but crucified for having ‘no emotions’? Anyway, most people think that convincing themselves that there’s some ‘root cause’ (another idiotic nebulous catch-all) behind histrionic displays copied off TV actors = ‘having emotions’, and what’s that to brag about? (’But ‘music’ isn’t life, though. Emotions IRL may be the root of pointless attention-seeking and overbearing oppression-via-guilt/devious-camouflage-of-base-instincts, but in ‘music’ it’s kind of important!’) When somebody claims ‘x’ to be ‘important’, it means ‘I need ‘x’ to keep ME interested’. But who gives a fuck what ‘you’ like? Why are you under the illusion that your opinion has any worth whatever? (This goes for you, me, everybody, except maybe Summer Redstone). If you’re not interested in a ‘thing in itself’ then it means a) you’re really boring and self-obsessed, or b) you’re like the 99% of ppl who want attention and can’t do anything about it so you define yourself in opposition to some spurious target that, coincidentally, involves something superior to yourself that lots of ppl know about, conferring upon you the illusion that anything you say isn’t just empty drivel designed to get that “I FEEL therefore I am” humanoid pass. “Gee, there’s an item which is structurally complex enough to yield at least some analyses, but it caught me at a time when the orthodox response to my personal circumstance involves dismissing it out of hand, do I get to breed now?” Supposing for argument’s sake tho that ‘tunes’=’life’ – that still means that dismissing something for being ‘emotionless’ involves being prejudiced against anyone who’s emotionally ‘deficient’. But then, maybe ‘emotionless’ = ‘singing about stuff that I don’t care about in a way I can’t recognise’. (Dave fuckin’ Marsh lost all my respect for HIS Beck dismissal, something like “Aural montage, yawn, better when Zappa did it 30 years ago and it sucked then.” [Before writing anything about music ask yrself this question, “Would I mind terribly much if everything sounded the same all the time forever like if D Byrne’s ‘Heaven’ were about a club that only played B Adams’ ‘Heaven’? If you answered ‘yes’ then go into radio or left-wing politics or something else besides music writing”] Makes me want to send a letter to ‘R&RC’ – “Bruce Springsteen. Cultural-signifier-of-currency montage lyrics over anachronistic musical montage, yawn, better when the Stones did it 30 years ago and it sucked then – signed, Cranston Snord.” But that would be unethical, unless somebody else besides me wrote it.. (Hey didja know DM once referred to G Arnold as being ‘bad-to-the-bone’!]) ‘Aural montages’ are cool. “But he doesn’t do those anymore”. What do you think compiling a track with different sounds on it is called, you moron? Unfortunately these are different GTR sounds so it’s beyond the crit pale + Brit pale. Brits have always had a problem with these things (“Now there’s only two guitar sounds on record, the clean sound and dirty sound, I liked it better when there were all these credits like ‘sponge gtr’ and ‘neptune kelp harvest gtr’” – B Hanson) because a performance in real time is very difficult to duplicate and thus offends their tender egalitarian sensibilities. ClaptonBeckPage were studio hacks who needed a rocket up their ass from a black American and SabZep were acceptable because they were fat and decadent and braindead like the footy fans they were but when the Yanks took over from those globular slobs with stuff that was fun-&-fast! ‘punk’ was invented to ‘demystify the guitar’ (typical Brit official response, just erode the quality of something until it’s completely shit then say “Oh nobody wants it anymore”) and punk was deemed too elitist in ITS conceptual/cultural way so they started doing the entryist pop thing, but the US was always going to whip their ass on that one because there’s actual decent singers there, so after a brief dalliance with dance music which absolutely anybody with a pulse could do (and did, which fucked it) the utterly-crushed-but-still-in-need-of-further-annihilation Brits just threw their hands up and said “Let’s make the most utterly shit prefab pop of all time and celebrate our uselessness in our funny ironic fashion”, forgetting that by this time the rest of the world had long since ceased to care, which left them as they are, in a state of permanently self-devouring repressed homogeneity, exercising their morass of poses to an audience of nobody like a pensioner who continues to shit himself long after he’s been fitted with rubber underwear so even the nurses ignore him. See, despite rumours to the contrary (and I’d still consent to a romantic evening in an IDF helicopter strafing civilians w/ Anne Coulter but only if she gets a tit job first), postmod IS compatible with Manifest Destiny! Maybe France’s tho, because from an entirely random, biased and worthless anecdotal survey, the amount of records that sound like this one are multiplying at such a rate that by 2050 (I’ll be 84 by then so I won’t care) every single record in the world will sound like ‘Melodie Nelson’. HEAVEN!