Batman

nice picks, especially with "Mighty Real." here are some of my faves: Earth Wind & Fire - Let's Groove Love Unlimited Orchestra - Love's Theme Change - The Glow of Love Carl Carlton - She's a Bad Mamma Jamma Cheryl Lynn - Got to be Real Chaka Khan - I'm Every Woman Rick James - Give it to me Baby Gibson Brothers - Que Sera Mi Vida The Bee Gees - Night Fever

The new MGMT album is streaming on their website. If your favorite song off the last album was "Weekend Wars," then you'll probably like the new album. If you only listened to the old album for Electric Feels, Kids, and Time to Pretend, you probably won't like it.

sounds like a lot of fun

Even though I wish America won, that was a really great game. And from an objective standpoint it was the perfect ending to the Olympics. What other country gets behind a sport the way Canada gets behind hockey?

High Fidelity is a great book

so awesome

yeah the kids have a lot of garbage marketed towards them. if you're a tween today your only hope is to have a cool older sibling to show you the light.

Yeah I suppose sex in marketing (music and otherwise) is more pervasive today. Or if it's not more pervasive, it's at least more obvious. Like in the 60s, with the Beatles, they definitely used their good looks to market themselves to girls, but they weren't posing nude in magazines or anything. But in my opinion it's not really that different today than in the 70s. Now you have hot girls in bras singing about lovely lady lumps, and in the 70s you had a shirtless Robert Plant singing about squeezing his lemon. One trend I think that is interesting now is that stuff like the Jonas Brothers is getting popular with the younger girls. In terms of marketing their sexuality, they are kind of like the bands of the early 60s in that they have a squeaky clean image but still base most of their marketing scheme on subtle sexuality. Oh definitely. That's why we're having this discussion right?

I just don't get why you think this. Or at least why Lady Gaga is proof of this. What she's selling is visual art, not just a sexy image. I don't even know of anyone who thinks she's attractive. Most people I know think she used to be a man actually. I do agree that people care less about instrumental proficiency, but I don't think it's because everyone became horny all of the sudden and they weren't that way in the past. I think our generation just admires visual art more than musical art, or at least moreso than our parent's generation. That's why music videos are so popular, and why people today try to do something more with a music video than just show the band play a song in an empty room. Yeah I think I agree with you then. I was thinking you were saying that drum machine usage in and of itself was simple, but I guess that's not what you meant. I've personally found that physical instruments are much easier to figure out than electronic instruments, but that could be because I've been playing the physical instruments much longer. I agree that Gaga's music isn't all that it could be, though. Since I prefer music over visual art, and know that she's very skilled in music, I think it would be cool to see her do more with it.

I read that the album cover is going to be scratch-off, like a lotto ticket. LCD Soundsystem just finished his album, hopefully it comes out soon.

I'm not trying to convince you that Lady Gaga makes good music, I'm just trying to convince you that Gaga's popularity isn't due to our generation not caring about talented artists, it's because our generation tends to respect visual artists more than musical artists (and even that isn't entirely true depending on where you are). Also, if you think writing catchy pop songs is as simple as "pressing a button on a drum machine," you are mistaken. First of all, have you ever played a drum machine? It's not as simple as you'd imagine. Composing the rest of the music with synthesizers is even more difficult.

I guess I'm just asking, why make the distinction? Some artists are musical, some are visual. I don't care that you don't like Lady Gaga, I just don't like the thing about our generation valuing image over talent. I guess you could say that our generation values the visual over the aural, but I'm not even sure if I would agree with that.

Yeah I know how you feel, I've been playing instruments since I was 6 so I also tend to gravitate towards music when it comes to art. But not all art requires musical talent, so I try to open my mind a little and appreciate the art that doesn't require musical talent sometimes (movies, books, plays, etc.). It's still pretty hard to leave the comfort zone of music though.

Now let me begin this by again saying that I don't like Lady Gaga and don't listen to her, but it definitely takes talent to do what she does. It's not like everyone with a glamorous image and a desire to be famous is able to achieve pop stardom. It takes talent to write a song that lots of people like. If you want proof of that just check out the "pop" section on myspace music. It's full of people who desperately want to be famous and construct outrageous images for themselves, but they don't have the ability to write a song that a lot of people want to listen to. In addition to the music it takes a lot of talent to design sets, choreography, and costuming. These things don't really prove anything about her musical talent, but they do go to show that she is a talented performer. It's like I said earlier, Lady Gaga is more of a stage performer than a traditional musician.

Oh I wasn't accusing you of being a Monkees fan, I'm just saying that marketing an image over music isn't a recent development in pop music.

Reading BA's posts is like reading Mad Magazine with all his puns

DJ Copy from Portland, Oregon does something similar on stage, except instead of emulating a guitar he uses the GH controller to make electronic dance music. Pretty interesting how people are using new technology to think about music in new ways these days.

The Monkees

I too think it's a bit of satire, as evidenced by the thing she did at the Grammys where she was dropped in some huge machine at "The Fame Factory." Then she just started shouting "TAKE MY PICTURE HOLLYWOOD! I WANNA BE FAMOUS!"

I think it's wrong to just say that Lady Gaga is bad because she sells an image before she sells music. Not that I'm a huge Lady Gaga fan or anything, but she's a visual artist rather than a musical artist. Watching her perform is like watching an outrageous musical. You're probably not going to go home and listen to the soundtrack (unless you're one of those high school theater nerds), but the show was put together well and you'll enjoy it.

Right on! Jimi Hendrix invented music and then disco killed it! Too bad nothing ever happened before or after!

I always say, "There is only one absolute truth, and this is it!"

for the winter games I like to root for USA (duh, I live there), Ireland (heritage), and anyone from a country without snow, because I think that's awesome when stuff like that happens.

I mostly just enjoy seeing hype deflated. So many commentators before the game were like "Peyton Manning may be unstoppable! There is no way he will throw a bad pass for years to come!"

My friends were also talking about Jay Z and came to the same conclusion. Ah well either way I'm in the same boat as pinkstones. The halftime show has always been the least important part of the super bowl for me (though if they picked someone I wanted to see it might be different).