Kent

Best Music of 2012

Dec 192012
 

Apparently the only thing elbuzzard.com is going to be used for is to post a Best Music list once a year, so that Jimmy Valentine can find it 6 months later.  I’m ok with that.

Here’s my Best Albums of 2012:

1. Andrew Bird – Break It Yourself - This is Andrew Bird’s best album since The Mysterious Production of Eggs.  It’s also the only album that I really listened to consistently throughout the whole year.  The others’ popularity came and went of the course of the year.

2. Feufollet – En Couleurs - Yes, it’s a zydeco album.  Yes, it’s in Cajun French.  Yes, it did not come out in 2012, that’s just when I discovered it.  I listened to this repeatedly while I dug up my backyard and worked on my shed.  It’s great digging in the backyard music.

3. Christeene – Waste Up, Kneez Down - For some reason, I thought I had put this on last year’s best of list, but it did in fact come out in 2012.  Maybe it was on my mid-year best of list.  No matter.  I’m not just putting this on here for Paul’s sake, I do actually think it is my third favorite album of 2012.  I love the corny, in-your-face music, especially on Bustin’ Brown.

4. Alabama Shakes – Boys & Girls - I was really into this album when it came out early in the year.  I had read an article in Garden & Gun about them, and then all of a sudden they were everywhere.  Now, at the end of the year, I haven’t listened to them in months, or heard about the band anywhere.  I did give the album a re-listen a little while ago, and it’s a good album.

5. First Aid Kit – The Lion’s Roar - Country music from Sweden or some other Norse country.  Emmylou is great song.

6. Theresa Andersson – Street Parade - I didn’t care for this at first, I thought it was slow and boring.  It crept up on me though, mostly as I listened to it as background music at work and I found myself liking parts of the album that I didn’t like before.

7. Dr. John – Locked Down – Koster claims that this is just a Dr. John album at it’s core.  He’s right, but Dr. John has been putting out a lot of uninspired albums for many years.  This is a Dr. John album in the vein of Desitively Bonnaroo and Gris-Gris.  In other words, good Dr. John the Night Tripper, not bad Dr. John and The Studio Musicians Sing All the NOLA Standards Again.

8. Menomena – Moms – It’s a Menomena album.  It’s not great, but if you like Menomena, then here’s their album, which sounds just like them.

9. Muse – The 2nd Law - I’m ready to be mocked for including this.  This is some seriously corny music.  The singer’s falsetto screams make me laugh every time.  I would love to hear Muse do a cover of Queensryche’s Operation: Mindcrime.  I grew up on Operation: Mindcrime.  I love this over-blown, self-serious crap.

 

This year’s music had a theme: Get Ready to Be Disappointed by Phoned-In Performances.

Here’s a list of the biggest disappointments:

The xx – Coexist – I have an idea: Let’s take all the dynamism that made the debut album great and cover it up with string sections!

Titus Andronicus – Local Business – I have an idea: Let’s copy Bruce Springsteen because we are from New Jersey and so is he!

How to Dress Well – Total Loss – I have an idea: The record company says we have to make another album, let’s just noodle around in the studio for a couple days.

Frank Ocean – Channel Orange – I have an idea: Let’s get every trendy music blog to rave about Frank Ocean because he signs R&B songs about being gay, and they won’t even notice that the album is actually really shitty, rambling, dull R&B songs about being gay.

What happened?

Mar 032011
 

Something happened with elbuzzard.com’s theme.  I’ve been running this site for a long time, and while I do keep it upgraded, I think it had been upgraded one too many times, and finally required a clean install.

Of course, this comes right during Carnival, when all my free time is spent on other activities, so we’ll have to make do with the default WordPress theme for now.   Perhaps my Lenten resolution will be to devote more time to good ol’ elbuzzard.com, which had fallen into neglect recently.  Facebook killed the personal blogs.

Sorry man

Nov 172010
 

It’s beautiful weather in New Orleans right now.  I was eating my lunch in Jackson Square today, and trying to finish the last Harry Potter book before the movie comes out.   As usual, there are a ton of people in the Square enjoying the day. I noticed a gutterpunk couple sleeping in the sun.  They looked comfortable.  Dirty, but comfortable.

After a chapter or two, I look up and notice that the woman, who looked to be around 20, is trying to wake her boyfriend(?) up.  She’s patting him on the head, poking him, kissing him, pushing him over.  There is no response.  He feebly rolled over at one point, and I figured he just wanted some more sleep.  She kept at him, and he remained motionless.  She stood up and tried to drag him, and he didn’t move.  I started to get concerned, but I know better than to get involved with gutterpunks, so I just kept watching, waiting for her to look like she wanted help.  She never did.

Eventually, she gave up trying to wake him, and walked off towards the front of the Cabildo, where I watched her talk to some of the street people there.  She didn’t seem too worried, although I did see her point in the direction of the Square once.

I was torn about what to do.  I surely didn’t want to go over to the passed out man in the Square, but I was also worried for him.  I didn’t want to read about how a young man overdosed in the middle of Jackson Square and no one noticed.  I contemplated calling 911, but didn’t.  Eventually, I saw an NOPD officer that I recognized pass by on a Segway on Chartres in front of the Cathedral.  I walked over to him and told him that there was a gutterpunk passed out in the Square, and that he didn’t look too good.  He said he would check it out.  I headed back towards work.

I was intending to go back to work, but my curiosity got the better of me, and I went back into the Square.  On my way, I passed the young woman.  She was talking to a tourist couple seated on bench and smoking a cigarette.  She still didn’t seem too concerned about her companion.

I got back to the center of the Square, and watched the cop approach the man.  He tapped him with his foot to wake him, but got no response.  He nudged him harder and spoke louder, and eventually the gutterpunk started coming too.  Then he lunged for the cops knees and tackled him.  They rolled on the grass for a bit, but the officer quickly subdued the man and called his partner over.  As he handcuffed him, the gutterpunk was wailing “No!” and “Please, baby!”  The cops were rough with him, I think deservedly so.  They never swung at him, but they did forcefully keep his head to the ground with their knees until he was handcuffed.  It was not pleasant to watch, knowing that I started it.  Eventually more cops showed up and he was taken in.  His girlfriend talked to the cops for a bit, but was told to go away.  She collected their things and walked off.

I really felt bad about the whole thing.  I knew he was going to get arrested if I told the cops about him.  I also knew that if I went over there myself, nothing was going to come of it.  I didn’t want him to get hurt, but I also didn’t want him to OD in the Square.  I’ve also been harassed enough by gutterpunks (you’re an easy target when you are young and wear a coat and tie in the French Quarter) to not really want to see them around.  I’m sure some are great people.  But my experience tells me that many are hostile, intimidating, and rude to everyone who doesn’t live by their philosophy of life.  I don’t wish them ill, I just wish they were nicer to strangers.

So, to the gutterpunk that I helped get arrested today in Jackson Square, I’m sorry.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Sep 172010
 

I’m not really sure how I never saw this movie until now.  I think it came out in that period between 2002-2007 where I didn’t really watch movies.

Such a shame, because it is really a great film.  I had previously only seen Adaptation, and I could never understand what the appeal of Charlie Kaufman was.   After ESOTSM, I totally get it.  It was like watching an Italo Calvino novel.

What a boring movie Adaptation was.  Now I see that it wasn’t Charlie Kaufman’s fault, it was Nicolas Cage’s fault.   Or maybe Spike Jonze’s.

After checking Wikipedia, I see that Spike Jonze has directed three movies:  Being John Malkovich (written by Kaufman, which I haven’t seen), Adaptation, and Where the Wild Things Are (which is terrible).  I think perhaps Spike Jonze’s reputation is a bit overblown.

The Lovely Bones

Sep 082010
 

My apologies for not updating this in awhile.  In order to try and make myself update more regularly, I’m going to try to put reviews of movies/music that I have recently seen up here.  Since I usually see movies about a year after they come out, I will not feel bad about posting spoilers.

The Lovely Bones.

I never read the book, but I’ve heard many people have.  It seemed like there was a lot in this movie that would be better with a deeper exploration, the kind you can do with a book that is harder to do with a movie.  I don’t feel I am the kind of person who needs a happy/satisfying ending every time, but it really seemed to me that the ending of the film said that it didn’t really matter that these children had died in terror at the hands of a brutal killer, so long as they had each other in heaven.  It was pretty unsatisfying.  Because I wanted a little justice in my ending, it made me feel like a movie watcher with totally unrefined and pedestrian tastes.

Failed again

May 242010
 

So the Corps of Engineers has fucked us again, this time denying the permit to build protective barrier islands off the Louisiana coast:

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will not allow land barriers to be built to protect the state’s coastline, Plaquemines Parish Billy Nungesser told The Lens today.

“They turned it down,” Nungesser said. “They denied the plan to do the barrier islands, so I don’t know, so we’ll have to come up with something else. We’re going to plan B, but I don’t know what plan B is.”

This is the same type of project that folks have said would help rebuild the wetlands and protect the people living in southern Louisiana from flood surges and hurricanes.

I suspect the real reason it was denied was money.  BP won’t pay for it.  The federal government doesn’t want to pay for it.  So it doesn’t happen.

I got in a nice drunken argument with Dave over the weekend about this.  I don’t know how anyone who has paid a speck of attention to the Gulf Coast in the past five years can say that the federal government has any attention of helping.  They have repeatedly hung us out to dry (or drown).   Dave insisted that surely they are doing the best they that they can, that they have the best minds around working on the problem.

I agree that they have the best minds working on the problem.  Unfortunately for us, the problem as the government sees it is saving money and maintaining their cozy relationship with the oil companies.  They will do everything they can to make sure that they fix the problem.

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