Red Mosquito

BurtReynolds wrote:I want to talk about muppets. when do we get to talk about muppets?

McParadigm wrote:

aurynsdad wrote:

McParadigm wrote:I want to read this poetry.

Give me a reason to believe that this is not just as disingenuous a response as the one from Alex.

As requested.

McParadigm wrote:

aurynsdad wrote:

McParadigm wrote:I want to read this poetry.

Give me a reason to believe that this is not just as disingenuous a response as the one from Alex.

As requested.

aurynsdad wrote:Paradoxes can't be expressed easily in ways people can understand

malice wrote:

aurynsdad wrote:Paradoxes can't be expressed easily in ways people can understand

i don't understand

Alex wrote:

BurtReynolds wrote:I want to talk about muppets. when do we get to talk about muppets?

Face it, you're a slave to capitalism and materialism. You're life circle is based on Epicurian delights and your sense of self esteem is derived from other people. Barely even fit to be called a human being.

BurtReynolds wrote:I want to talk about muppets. when do we get to talk about muppets?

Lament wrote:

Lament wrote:

BurtReynolds wrote:

Coach wrote:

BurtReynolds wrote:Their music sucking is directly related to their beliefs, passions, etc. When they were raging against the machine, even if it was stupid, it inspired them to make great music. Their current influences only inspire them to write feel good bullshit like Amongst the Waves and sappy love songs, and music that sounds like farts.

I don't care that they've sold out or not, I never agreed with them in the first place. But that punk inspired, hypocritical, black and white, morally superior bullshit did make for great music.

True, but even their current/recent passions - politics/war - haven't translated into great music (i.e. Army Reserve).

To me, that's indicative of a change in belief as well. With Avocado, Ed moved away from just shouting his beliefs at people, and instead tried reasoning. He tried to "use his words". What resulted is clumsy, false sounding stuff like Army Reserve. Sure, the rational, level headed approach is more mature, but it makes for shit music in their case. I liked them better when they were pretending they had a punk idealogy.

Coach wrote:

BurtReynolds wrote:

Coach wrote:

BurtReynolds wrote:Their music sucking is directly related to their beliefs, passions, etc. When they were raging against the machine, even if it was stupid, it inspired them to make great music. Their current influences only inspire them to write feel good bullshit like Amongst the Waves and sappy love songs, and music that sounds like farts.

I don't care that they've sold out or not, I never agreed with them in the first place. But that punk inspired, hypocritical, black and white, morally superior bullshit did make for great music.

True, but even their current/recent passions - politics/war - haven't translated into great music (i.e. Army Reserve).

To me, that's indicative of a change in belief as well. With Avocado, Ed moved away from just shouting his beliefs at people, and instead tried reasoning. He tried to "use his words". What resulted is clumsy, false sounding stuff like Army Reserve. Sure, the rational, level headed approach is more mature, but it makes for shit music in their case. I liked them better when they were pretending they had a punk idealogy.

It also seems that Ed stopped writing about himself. My guess is that his early writing (Ten, Vs., Vitalogy) acted as therapy. It was honest and true and full of passion and it made for great music when mixed with talented songwriters like Stone.

I just wish they'd take a page from Uncle Neil's playbook. He's certainly still producing good music. There must be some wisdom that they can glean from him.

Birds in Hell wrote:Well, having reanimated the hoary old "Is RM is too negative?" debate, I guess it makes some kind of sense to move onwards to discussing the validity of Metacritic:

stip wrote:I also thnk it would be helpful if there was some place that compiled the judgements of professional evaluators of art and gave us a place to evaluate the critical reception of that art, which would be helpful for distinguishing between the aforementioned distinction between subjective response and objective merits (or at least the subjective critical response to those objective merits)

If only such a place existed...

One of the difficulties I have with this is that I don't think there's any kind of special skill being displayed by those professionals that sets them apart from the informed and articulate posters here such as Jorge, Kevin, McP, Heathen or whomever else.

We're talking about rock music here, not fine art; it's a form of expression that is, at its essence, visceral and sensory - and, as such, wildly subjective. What pushes my buttons may very likely do absolutely nothing for someone else.

Does some music push more people's buttons than others, create some kind of critical consensus? Certainly, but I don't find that particularly meaningful or necessarily worthy of further consideration. Lots of people enjoy what I think is terrible, irredeemable music.