At work, I’m kind of forced to listen to a lot of classic rock. I guess I could avoid it if I wanted to make a big deal out of it, but instead I’m just going to pick apart and rant about some of the worst songs you hear at your dentist’s office about 237,000 times per annual visit.
Douglas Rushkoff is best known for his work on media theory and influence on the cyberpunk subculture. So that he can write an insightful and gripping novel in what seems like such an effortless way should be depressing to writers who devote themselves solely to fiction.
I never liked Green Day that much, but this mash-up of Get Up, Stand Up and Hitchin’ A Ride works perfectly. Video embedded after the jump:
As you’ve probably all heard by now, the artist formerly known as Snoop Dogg has finally smoked enough weed to have had a “spiritual experience” in Jamaica, as a result of which he’s changed his name to Snoop Lion and converted to the Rastafari movement. Achievement unlocked!
Since we will probably all be following Snoop Lion on this spiritual journey, it behooves I & I to learn a little about this religion. Here are a few fun facts about the one true religion of the King of Kings and All Living Things.
John Hugar is a BEAST contributor who covers sports and music and a student at the University at Buffalo. We talk about music, movies, violence in sports, and lots of other random stuff.
These two guys don’t look alike at all!!1
Constellations never made any sense to me. The stars are just randomly plotted around the night sky and it always seemed arbitrary to me to say that certain stars make up one constellation while others are separate. And all the shapes they were mean to represent were never apparent to me, even when other people tried to point them out and connect the dots.
The Winged Beatle reminded me of how I can be astrologically challenged in that sense. It’s a documentary which promotes the conspiracy theory that Paul McCartney died in a car accident in 1966 and has now been replaced by a doppelganger. This is “proved” by a series of unrelated anomalies and “clues” mostly hidden in Beatles music and the album artwork.
So I’m back to doing a series of short news stories in this space. You should all just get used to there being no real consistent structure here. The best you can hope for is a focus on people doing and saying crazy things. So let’s get to it.
I was looking over my music collection the other day and noticed that when I sorted it by date, the number of albums I have released over the past 3 or 4 years is much smaller than previous years. And an alarming number of the newer releases I have are from old groups. Last year I picked up new albums by such ancient bands as The Beastie Boys, Skinny Puppy, KMFDM, Flogging Molly, the Dropkick Murphys, Radiohead, Mogwai, Jane’s Addiction, Daft Punk, and Atari Teenage Riot. Sure, they all still make great music but they’re also all just a few years away from artificial hips and pill cases with the days of the week marked on them.
This could only mean one thing: I’m in danger of becoming one of those out-of-touch old people who doesn’t understand new music. Back when I spent way too much time seeking out new music I used to hate how older folks seemed proud of not knowing anything about music the kids listen to these days. It’s still annoying. Nostalgia is always overrated, but it’s especially the case nowadays when you can read tons of music reviews for free and hear samples of music without having to go to that one store that will let you listen to their used section on a CD player.
As an attempt to reverse this disturbing trend, I’m giving myself this assignment to write some short reviews of new albums every few months this year. So here we go.
Adam WarRock is a nerd rapper who releases a ridiculous amount of free content through his website. His newest album, You Dare Call That Thing Human?!?, was released just this week. We talk about nerdcore rap, comic books, sci-fi, ragequitting, politics, and his newest album.
You can buy his newest album here. Also, check him out on tour if you can.
Paul Wolinski plays guitar and keyboards in the instrumental rock band 65daysofstatic. Their most recent album is called Silent Running and is a soundtrack to the 1972 science fiction film of the same name. He also has a solo album under the name Polinski called Labyrinths. I catch up with him shortly after his tour of Japan. We talk about science fiction, music, songwriting, and how to avoid going mad with the power of being in an awesome band.
Atheist Hobos 