Wow, I’m sorry…

(Two posts in one night! The triumphant return of Aziz lies below my inarticulate wailings.)

So, fun fact: as moderators of this blog, Aziz and I can see which search terms people use to reach our humble cache of suckiness. Usually, we’re just someone’s disappointing pit-stop on their way to ogling Attractive Music People Matt Bellamy (lead singer of Muse) and Lyn-Z (bass-candy for Mindless Self Indulgence). Those two names probably make up just under half of the Google search terms that cause people to click on links to this very blog. And for added buzzkill, my having written those names just now will make those search terms even more likely to bring you here! Enjoy not-what-you-were-looking-for, everyone who was looking for those guys!

My point is, we can see you. We often sit around in my mom’s living room giggling about people’s inability to spell or their mind-boggling unfamiliarity with Google. For instance, some poor kid probably read all our delicious, forbidden cuss words and later wept at the staggering plethora of hyphens herein when he found our blog through the search terms “info on sharks”. Now, I’m not going to call that stupid, because I’m giving the searcher the benefit of the doubt and assuming that he or she was under the age of four. Why else would you click on a blog about basically Queen and made-up words looking for pertinent information on sharks? And let’s not even talk about someone who came to our blog after searching for “gay boys penis”. That search term basically makes up for the other half of the clickthroughs to this site, what with all the gay boys penises up ins.

But even that was not as simultaneously grotesque and confounding as the person who found our site after searching for (I shit you not) “Chad Kroeger without his shirt on.” Google illiteracy aside, this person clearly knows where to go for his or her shirtless sheeprock. Longtime readers of AzizSucks know that we loves us some Kroegs. Not only do we love His Chadliness, we love ourselves a little band called what? oh yeah, NICKELBACK. Those of you who were here at ground-level may even recall that we even ran into some legal trouble when the blog’s original name- NickelBlog – was found to be already in use. But a picture of Him shirtless? Man, what we wouldn’t give to see those rippling pecs. Sorry, man/lady. If you find such an image, send it our way, because as I mentioned, we love Chad Kroeger, and his semi-clad image is all that’s missing from AzizSucks- and our lives.

 

(Téodor, how did you find our blog!?!?)

the price of being so hip

Apologies, loves, for the long silence. Z and I have been on many adventures indeed since last you saw us. So there’s a lot with which to try your blogtention spans, but the first thing I promised was Yelling About Muse. So here goes. A very long post you probably won’t read. It’s nearly a million words long and some of those words are ludicrously hyphenated and still others are made up.

This will take a thousand hours.

Anyway. We went to a Muse concert in like, oh, the beginning of August. (As I type this sentence, it’s October first. And yes, I’m still fat and I still haven’t done anything with my life.) We had a blast, staying with old friends and giggling our way around Beantown with our own particular brand of savoir-‘tard. And of course, Muse rocked our faces right the fuck off. But well, of course I’ve got beef. I usually do. In a few major ways, Muse disappointed us, but it (kind of) isn’t their fault.

Lemme ‘splain.

Their setlist followed a transparently precise formula: they opened with The First Song Off The New Album (“Take A Bow”), played most of the playable songs from Black Holes and Revelations interspersed with playbacks of The Good Songs from their older albums. They ended the show with Their Most Famous Song (“Time Is Running Out”) followed by That Upbeat Song We All Love But Wasn’t The Single (“Bliss”) and, after making us all clap for a stopwatched minute, returned to play The Best Rockout Song They Sing followed by The Loudest Song From Their Current Album (“Plug In Baby” and “Knights of Cydonia”). The whole thing clocked in at a neat-n’-tidy hour and a half. Wipe hands on pants, done, on to Baltimore (or Columbus, or Toronto, or whatever) to play exactly the same thing tomorrow night.

But really, the origin of my umbrage was not the predictability of their setlist. In fact, they did it Right™. All Polish. No banter. Zero surprises. Giant screens behind them showing technicolor, real-time close-ups of Matt Bellamy destroying a piano (in the good way) and sexy dancing lady robots. With the exception of the dangerously-close-to-douchey “Invincible”, they avoided playing any of their ballads (which, according to an ancient curse brought on the Bellamy clan in exchange for the exclusion of their ancestral lands from a Norman invasion, have to suck so bad). They put on a DVD-worthy (both in its duration and its degree of production) show with wide appeal. But doing it Right™ comes at a price. The crux of my beef (dear reader) lies in the fact that Muse seem very willing to pay that price.

What I mean is, it seems like Muse is trying to be Big in the US. Now, I have to qualify this. “Auntie Rachel,” you may chortle, with a self-important snort; wiping Vitamin Water off your Che Guevara t-shirt, “um, they’re not exactly unknowns if they headlined Saturday night of Lollapalooza and their last album went gold.” Excellent point, though you shouldn’t have been such a jerk. I know I’m not breaking any new ground with this, but in the US, there’s big, and there’s Big. Gwen Stefani is Big. Kenny Chesney is Big. Justin Timberlake is Big. Capital-B Big means flash. Style. Pyrotechnics. The question in the US is not whether The Kids are listening to you, but whether they’re wearing your T-shirts, whether they’re buying the clothing line in whose commercials hot models bop around detachedly to your latest single, whether John Q. Timbaland has heard of you, even if he’s never heard you. Sure, you have an enthusiastic, sincere fan base and you can play arenas, but do you believably drink Pepsi? In short: being Big isn’t a measure of your album sales, it’s a measure of a musician as a commodity.

And Muse are certifiably little-b big: they have a solid following in the US, Everyone Who Matters has heard of them (Hell, even JT himself said they were the bees’ knees at the MTV Europe awards- according to Muse’s Wikipedia page, that is. Careful- it’s exceptionally bad.), and they’re getting nauseatingly excessive radio play. Not to mention, they’re HUGE in Britain. No, I’m not sad that Muse want to be Big because as a Tortured Indiekid, I’d have to stop loving them if The Kids could hear their songs on Razr commercials. Some people (ahem) might have that tendency, but I don’t: I still fucking love Eminem (which has reduced my indie cred for several reasons). I’m sad about it for a more simple and less sophisticated reason: I already love them. I wanted banter, fuckups, and deep tracks and got a polished, prepackaged American Version. Aziz and I, though we didn’t know each other then, both came into Muse in the summer of 2004. They are only now starting to be noticed by The Kids. And in order to be Big, they have to keep feeding the fire with easily digestible, glossy, flawless, just-edgy-enough nuggets of rock. And so, for being ahead of the curve on this side of the pond, we were rewarded by having to watch a band we love fork over their character in order to purchase wider appeal in a country that wants soundbites and not banter.

But I think maybe Muse should settle for little b. They’d be in unparalleled company. You know who else sells out huge concerts in the US but has never been Big? Radiohead. You know who else sold out London’s Wembley Stadium in a matter of hours but never got Big in the US? Queen. Not only that, but Muse truly merits the numerous comparisons they have drawn to those bands in terms of skill, style, popularity, and fucking rockouts. And they could go on to join the Pantheon of All–The–Best–Rock–Comes–From–Britain; their marble-hewn fauxhawks glistening under the pale moonlight that once lit the Druids‘ way as they built that timeless Henge. Or they’ll just make it Big.

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Post Script: The Cold War Kids opened for Muse. I think they are pretty okay- their debut album begins with a blistering indie rock one-two punch of radness (not-coincidentally the two singles from the album) and continues with a bit of a nap for the next eleven tracks. Still, solid jamz for boring people, and a little something for those of us who like dynamic facerockoffs.

Point is- they put on an amazing show. At least, I think they did. It certainly seemed like it. Their sound engineering was absolutely for crap. It was horrible. It was like i was in a tank of water and on the other side of the glass was someone rocking so hard. Very sad. They seem like an excellent up-and-coming album-take-or-leave-but-do-see-them-live group o’ guys. So if you get a chance, check ’em out- hopefully they’ve fired their sound people.

Next time: I Yell About Politics (or Ani DiFranco).

the jet game; or radio ga ga

I am working on a post about the Muse concert we saw like two weeks ago. As with most things, it became A Thing about Stuff. It has like a thesis n’ shit. Or maybe I’ll just talk about Matt Bellamy’s hair. Dude has some hair.

Bonusland Tiger Beat Frame of Dreaminess!

In the meantime, here is a fun game for you and your snarky, pretentious, self-important friends to play. It’s called The Jet Game. Now, Aziz has vowed never to sputter about Jet again, so I’m gonna turn in my token. The game goes like this: when you hear a song on the radio, and the artist sounds familiar, you and your asshole friends will start guessing who the artist is. After each naming of a possible songwriter, you must say “or Jet”. If you want to know why, read aforelinked rant. If you already know why, well, come and feel smug with us.

And we have been listening to the radio more than usual lately. Luckily for us, there’s a pretty good indie radio station right here in tiny Manchester, Vermont. Their website was designed by a one-armed six-year-old with Front Page, but you can get it to let you listen online. They play up-and-comers, bands your hipster friends like, and even the occasional Radiohead and (indie-friendly) hip-hop– but because of what I can only assume are Dark Forces within the radio industry, they have to play filth as well. It’s pretty sad. One minute we’re all “oh yes Karma Police” and the next, “this song is terrible.” And I’m not going to go into it, because I’ll deal with it extensively in the Muse post, but all music sounds like all other music these days. Is this what people want? When we hear that fucking Fratellis song with the doot-doots do we say, “oh yes, this could be one of six bands I could think of right now (or Jet) but I want the next song to sound like this also”? Does my beloved indie radio station think that this is what The Kids want right now, or are they required to be uncreative, unchallenging, and uninspiring? Aziz could probably rant about this much more articulately than I can, and I’m sure he will, but for now I want capture my tired, exasperated feelings about The Radio, however you-kids-and-your-long-hair I may sound in so doing.

Music seems to be getting worse, and it’s not because I’m getting more pretentious about it. I just honestly think people don’t realize they have to listen to this crap. I don’t want to misunderestimate people, but I really believe that some people feel their only option is the shit they hear on the radio. In such a world, your friend might give you a Rad Mixtape of Nickelback, Puddle of Mudd, Daughtry, The Fray, Breaking Benjamin, and New Weezer* (Weezer is to New Weezer as Coke is to New Coke.), and you would say “thank you this is the sound of Rock and Roll.” I just want proverbially slam down my lunch tray, climb to the tallest church steeple, and manically cackle at anyone who can hear me: LISTEN EVERYONE YOU DON’T HAVE TO LIKE P.O.D. All the bands I just listed (minus Weezer; the only band of that group that once was good) have the same cookie-cutter, template produced sound. And the tragedy is that the elements people like about that music are expressed more skillfully and more creatively by other bands that aren’t played on the radio.

Though it does afford more and more opportunities to play the Jet game.

In short: Fuck you, Jet. I guess this post became a Thing about Stuff too.

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Best “X… or Jet” Xs so far: Vivaldi, The Presidents of the United States of America

*Actual mixtape through which I have actually had to sit recently.