I just wanted to do a quick update because I know some of you know I want to move to Seattle. I have a job now and can save up money. My guess is it'll take around 3 years, but possibly less as the restaurant I work at will have a location in Seattle probably next year so it's possible I could transfer. I'll have to wait and see. First I have to save up to buy a car, and then I'll be saving up to move to Seattle.
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Thursday, January 08, 2015
The Polen
The Polen are a grunge/hard rock band from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. Playing since about 2000, their 10 song second album, Tandem, starts off with the heavy, energetic, catchy song "Warmachines". You'll be having the urge to headbang pretty quick. Then comes "Citizen & Welcome", which has this kind of melodic riff that I love, and turns into another rocking song that makes you want to move. I love the various guitar stuff here, and the drums add to the "get up and mosh" vibe. "Shout" follows the exciting rock path, with another type of hard rocker. This album certainly isn't boring. Most of the songs have that overall type of vibe, but mind you they aren't all the same song. There are different guitar riffs and patterns and instrumentation, some more tame and flowy elements as well, all leaving for an interesting album. "Midas" is a bit slower and has a bit of a Tool vibe. "Reasons" starts off with a softer element. Overall I'd say this is an album any hard rock fan would be happy with, and a band you should definitely check out.
Here are some video clips
Here are some video clips
The album cover
The band
Where they are from.
Thursday, November 07, 2013
It's not that kids don't rock today, it's that they can't get to the masses: What I've learned from my "Spread the word of good newer grunge bands" page
So from having my Spread the word of good newer grunge bands facebook page, which now has 700+ bands that have been posted, I have realized certain things. Mainly, that there are SOOOOOOOO many really good and amazing and incredibly talented and really hard rocking and totally revolutionary style bands today. There are also tons of modern grungers, tons of whom really want grunge to come back, tons of whom have good and genuine ideals and the same ones that folks like Kurt Cobain had, tons of kids who hate generation Y and feel alienated by today, tons of kids who want to rock out and rage against the machine and want some sort of revolution etc. Us modern grunge kids grow up hating our generation and thinking the ever-present thought, "Why doesn't today/my generation rock? Why do the kids of today sound softer than the older people of the rock generations when rock has always been said to be for the youth? WHERE'S THE FREAKING ROCK!?!?!?" Well, there are tons of bands today that totally freaking rock and kick ass, they just aren't getting to the masses, and aren't getting much attention at all.
It only takes so many really good modern grunge bands that could totally knock all the pop people off the charts, and really make you feel like moshing, and totally connected to their music, like all the best bands of the 90s do, before you start to realize that there is NO lack of hard/heavy/rocking/actually talented and good/revolutionary/unique etc. etc. bands today. So...what does this mean? There must be some sort of barrier stopping people from hearing of them. I think this has to do with the way things are today, and the internet. We have developed a generation that has less and less actual word of mouth and sense of real-life community, no more MTV, a zine culture that has died down, less record stores etc., more and more older people enabling kids liking the garbage of today and not telling them of actually good things because they figure it's the special "technology" generation and they'll like what they like and they don't really speak their opinion on how much they think it sucks, more people being apathetic and thinking "well it's all there is today, so what can you do? we have to like it/but into it/accept it", and people being more and more shackled to the internet (which has many flaws.)
The average person on facebook, for example, isn't like me to where they friend hundreds of music people and can see updates of music things from time to time or checks out tons of pages for mentions of things (which is really the only word of mouth that exists on the internet) but rather people who have average friends and do average things, so since the outside world doesn't tell them of things and they are friends with people that also don't know of these bands, they won't end up hearing of them. Like I tell people all the time, the internet has many flaws, some being that you have to know of what you are looking for before you look for it, you can't just type in a question mark in the search bar and have everything you would have wanted to know about come up, not everything gets put on the internet in the first place, tons of stuff gets taken down off the internet all the time, you have to do tons of advertising for something if you want it to get even the littlest bit of attention, but even then, lots of other comments and things will bury yours, things are actually pretty hard to find on the internet, search functions miss a lot of things and don't have them register, post tons of things that have nothing to do with what you searched for, and post only the most popular things, making the smaller things hard to find. If someone makes a page and doesn't advertise for it or tell anyone of it, it will never get any likes or anyone knowing of it. You have to do hours of searching on the internet for something you might like in order for it to actually be worth it and to find anything, and most people don't have that kind of time. The audience of bands is now limited to the fans who specifically search for them, and try really hard at that, and somehow find out that they would exist in the first place.
Then you have the media and music corporations today pushing all that pop garbage, so the only thing that ever does get spread out there is the pop stars that are already as famous as can be, which leads to kids only knowing of pop. I have a feeling the people in charge of that have a big hold on what music ever gets anywhere. It seems like the mainstream media is pushing out a smaller and smaller amount of different types of music. I keep hearing that in the 90s, there were all sorts of styles of music that had mainstream success simultaneously (grunge/alternative/pop/r&b/latino/rap and hiphop etc) What do we have now? Pop, maybe some rap still, then the "underground" is the hipster indie which I'll get to next. All of this has made it very hard for anything new to come about in any sense where it gets attention. It's like there's a middleclass has disappeared so now it's poor vs. rich/99% type of problem in music where the underground is really underground and the mainstream is really mainstream, and the crappiest quality and smallest amount of music is getting the most amount of attention and the people behind them control all.
So then you have the false "underground/indie" made up of those popular, overly atmospheric and soft, hipster, "indie" bands that don't sound anything at all like rock and roll and sound half-dead, to give the people a sense of some sort of underground/indie "cool" culture when really these people are famous and I think a lot of them are signed to major labels anyway and they are probably being controlled and marketed as well, so it ends up in a level system for the underground, where the actual underground bands are really underground and no one's ever heard of them, because when you go looking for non-mainstream bands or bands that sound like 90s indie, you get the not-as-popular-as-pop-but-still-kind-of-mainstream "indie" bands.
Being the type of kid I always was and before I started this page and all that, you start to get fed up with the world and think "Ok well if no one's going to rock today or form a revolution, then I'll do it!" while also simultaneously thinking that maybe it would end up happening because you don't see anyone that wants to rage or has passion like you do and you know there would be a fanbase for it if you ever did do it because now would be the perfect time because polished pop has been around for so long and people would want raw and your thoughts are the same as Kurt Cobain's, and that it'll never happen because that'll never happen to you, let's get real here, it doesn't happen that often anyway, no one's ever going to pay attention to you, it's just not going to happen, but it's about the music anyway first and foremost, so it doesn't matter that much. The page also made me realize that there are so many bands that are so much further along at this game than I am, so much better, and would totally form a revolution before I do. It really makes you think, even if someone did form a band or help push a band thinking they would be totally revolutionary, they probably would just end up in the pile of bands that are already like that and haven't gotten there yet.
My page as of now has around 3,000 likes, 700 bands, and I'm sure it's not that famous. I'd say that's pretty good for a small-time page, but it doesn't have any sort of mainstream attention on it. I bet most grunge fans checking out the hundred-thousand-like grunge pages have never even heard of my page. Imagine the impact if it actually got any sort of attention. There'd probably be millions of modern grunge bands posted on there!
Luckily, there has been a little bit of attention here and there for some of these bands, like Violent Soho going to Lollapalooza a few years back, and selling out the shows of their recent tour, and The Indecent going to the Warped Tour, and them and a few others having facebook pages that are in the tens of thousands of likes, or being produced by cool people like Steve Albini, and I think a few of them opened for some more famous bands, so perhaps there is some sort of revolution but it is only just beginning. One can hope. At the very least, we need to find some other way of showing people these bands, because they aren't going to learn about them elsewhere.
You know what, as I am writing this, I am reminded of a few points that this recent article brought up. I think this kind of proves a lot of my points, The 13 Most Insidious, Pervasive Lies of the Modern Music Industry...
It only takes so many really good modern grunge bands that could totally knock all the pop people off the charts, and really make you feel like moshing, and totally connected to their music, like all the best bands of the 90s do, before you start to realize that there is NO lack of hard/heavy/rocking/actually talented and good/revolutionary/unique etc. etc. bands today. So...what does this mean? There must be some sort of barrier stopping people from hearing of them. I think this has to do with the way things are today, and the internet. We have developed a generation that has less and less actual word of mouth and sense of real-life community, no more MTV, a zine culture that has died down, less record stores etc., more and more older people enabling kids liking the garbage of today and not telling them of actually good things because they figure it's the special "technology" generation and they'll like what they like and they don't really speak their opinion on how much they think it sucks, more people being apathetic and thinking "well it's all there is today, so what can you do? we have to like it/but into it/accept it", and people being more and more shackled to the internet (which has many flaws.)
The average person on facebook, for example, isn't like me to where they friend hundreds of music people and can see updates of music things from time to time or checks out tons of pages for mentions of things (which is really the only word of mouth that exists on the internet) but rather people who have average friends and do average things, so since the outside world doesn't tell them of things and they are friends with people that also don't know of these bands, they won't end up hearing of them. Like I tell people all the time, the internet has many flaws, some being that you have to know of what you are looking for before you look for it, you can't just type in a question mark in the search bar and have everything you would have wanted to know about come up, not everything gets put on the internet in the first place, tons of stuff gets taken down off the internet all the time, you have to do tons of advertising for something if you want it to get even the littlest bit of attention, but even then, lots of other comments and things will bury yours, things are actually pretty hard to find on the internet, search functions miss a lot of things and don't have them register, post tons of things that have nothing to do with what you searched for, and post only the most popular things, making the smaller things hard to find. If someone makes a page and doesn't advertise for it or tell anyone of it, it will never get any likes or anyone knowing of it. You have to do hours of searching on the internet for something you might like in order for it to actually be worth it and to find anything, and most people don't have that kind of time. The audience of bands is now limited to the fans who specifically search for them, and try really hard at that, and somehow find out that they would exist in the first place.
Then you have the media and music corporations today pushing all that pop garbage, so the only thing that ever does get spread out there is the pop stars that are already as famous as can be, which leads to kids only knowing of pop. I have a feeling the people in charge of that have a big hold on what music ever gets anywhere. It seems like the mainstream media is pushing out a smaller and smaller amount of different types of music. I keep hearing that in the 90s, there were all sorts of styles of music that had mainstream success simultaneously (grunge/alternative/pop/r&b/latino/rap and hiphop etc) What do we have now? Pop, maybe some rap still, then the "underground" is the hipster indie which I'll get to next. All of this has made it very hard for anything new to come about in any sense where it gets attention. It's like there's a middleclass has disappeared so now it's poor vs. rich/99% type of problem in music where the underground is really underground and the mainstream is really mainstream, and the crappiest quality and smallest amount of music is getting the most amount of attention and the people behind them control all.
So then you have the false "underground/indie" made up of those popular, overly atmospheric and soft, hipster, "indie" bands that don't sound anything at all like rock and roll and sound half-dead, to give the people a sense of some sort of underground/indie "cool" culture when really these people are famous and I think a lot of them are signed to major labels anyway and they are probably being controlled and marketed as well, so it ends up in a level system for the underground, where the actual underground bands are really underground and no one's ever heard of them, because when you go looking for non-mainstream bands or bands that sound like 90s indie, you get the not-as-popular-as-pop-but-still-kind-of-mainstream "indie" bands.
Being the type of kid I always was and before I started this page and all that, you start to get fed up with the world and think "Ok well if no one's going to rock today or form a revolution, then I'll do it!" while also simultaneously thinking that maybe it would end up happening because you don't see anyone that wants to rage or has passion like you do and you know there would be a fanbase for it if you ever did do it because now would be the perfect time because polished pop has been around for so long and people would want raw and your thoughts are the same as Kurt Cobain's, and that it'll never happen because that'll never happen to you, let's get real here, it doesn't happen that often anyway, no one's ever going to pay attention to you, it's just not going to happen, but it's about the music anyway first and foremost, so it doesn't matter that much. The page also made me realize that there are so many bands that are so much further along at this game than I am, so much better, and would totally form a revolution before I do. It really makes you think, even if someone did form a band or help push a band thinking they would be totally revolutionary, they probably would just end up in the pile of bands that are already like that and haven't gotten there yet.
My page as of now has around 3,000 likes, 700 bands, and I'm sure it's not that famous. I'd say that's pretty good for a small-time page, but it doesn't have any sort of mainstream attention on it. I bet most grunge fans checking out the hundred-thousand-like grunge pages have never even heard of my page. Imagine the impact if it actually got any sort of attention. There'd probably be millions of modern grunge bands posted on there!
Luckily, there has been a little bit of attention here and there for some of these bands, like Violent Soho going to Lollapalooza a few years back, and selling out the shows of their recent tour, and The Indecent going to the Warped Tour, and them and a few others having facebook pages that are in the tens of thousands of likes, or being produced by cool people like Steve Albini, and I think a few of them opened for some more famous bands, so perhaps there is some sort of revolution but it is only just beginning. One can hope. At the very least, we need to find some other way of showing people these bands, because they aren't going to learn about them elsewhere.
You know what, as I am writing this, I am reminded of a few points that this recent article brought up. I think this kind of proves a lot of my points, The 13 Most Insidious, Pervasive Lies of the Modern Music Industry...
Friday, October 25, 2013
Grunge References on Parks and Recreation
So when the show Parks and Recreation first started, I noticed a few grunge references. Then as time went on, they seemed to have more and more. I'll mention as many of the ones I remember and caught. I have a feeling that this may be due to Chris Pratt's (who plays Andy) influence, as he is at the beginning of that I love the 90s clip in the 1991 episode when they get to grunge, saying, "The biggest I think, most poignant topic of the 90s to be touched upon is is the explosion of grunge music out of Seattle" and I think he really plays the guitar, so I'm guessing he really likes the stuff and was influenced by it, and his character has a lot of the references, though it could also be due to Adam Scott, since his character Ben also has a lot of good references.
*Every time Andy's band plays at that one venue they always play at, the marquee has a band called Flannel Grunge, I think the first time being in the season 1 episode "Rock Show".
*One of the names that Andy's band used to be called is Malice in Chains, as mentioned in the season 1 episode "Rock Show".
*In the season 2 episode "Leslie's House" Tom says, "Pawnee is the opposite of hip. People in this town are just now getting into Nirvana. I don't have the heart to tell them what's gonna happen to Kurt Cobain in 1994."
*There is a Letters to Cleo shirt and a mention of it in the season 4 episode "The Comeback Kid", and apparently that led to the band trending on twitter, and the shirt has shown up since then as well. They also had the band play at the Unity Concert for the season 6 episode "Moving Up"
*They mentioned the Singles Soundtrack in the season 5 episode "How a Bill Becomes a Law" when April and Ben are stuck in a car together and she is going through his CDs.
*In the 5th season episode "Halloween Surprise" there is a garage sale and Andy is wearing a Pearl Jam shirt with a flannel over it, and holding a hat, saying it was the hat he was wearing the first time he heard Vitalogy by Pearl Jam, and he has other grungy clothing there, and come to think of it he always seems to be wearing flannel throughout the series, and Ann mentions that she adopts the personality of the person she is dating, and Andy was her grunge phase.
*In the season 6 episode "Filibuster", Leslie throws Ben his dream Birthday Party: A roller skating bash with an early 90s theme. She says, "Ben lives for the early 90s. The music, the fashion, it's his favorite era." which sounds a lot like us! So of course there are lots of cool references. The ones I picked up on are I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers playing, Ann dressed as Blossom, April saying that Leslie said it was a "Come As You Are of The 90s" party, Tom dressed as Kriss Kross, Hey Jealousy by Gin Blossoms playing, Leslie wearing overalls and a sideways neonish dark pink hat and a white and neonish pink shirt and buttons, Ben wearing a flannel shirt and a Toad the Wet Sprocket T-shirt and a sweater jacket and jeans, Ben mentioning R. E. M. and their albums Monster and Automatic for the People, Larry/Jerry/Garry wearing an Arsenio Hall shirt, Losing My Religion by R. E. M. playing, Chris wearing a denim jacket an a white t-shirt under it and jeans that look a bit acid-washed, a mention of a Reservoir Dog themed birthday cake, and Unbelievable by EMF playing.
*In the season 6 episode "Farmers Market", Dave Grohl was mentioned. When Andy is playing with his band to get ready for a show at a kid's party, one of the members said, "You said we were playing at a festival" to which another replied, "You said Dave Grohl might be there" to which Andy replied, "Dave Grohl might be there, I don't know, he might be anywhere. The guy's awesome, and he's unpredictable."
*In the season 6 episode "Prom", Tom is having trouble connecting with the kids with the music he plays as the DJ, and Ben offers to step in, and plays Pop Song 89 by R.E.M., and a kid says, "Hey I love this song" and Tom says, "You actually like this?" and the kid replies, "Yeah dude it's classic rock" and then Ben says, "Well there's more where that came from..." and the kid replies "I only listen to CDs. It's the way music like this was meant to be heard." and Tom says "But it's not even autotuned." I think more songs were played after this as well (I think Husker Du was one) Haha, looks like they're trying to portray how the youth of today has a growing resentment of modern music. (though I hate it when they call the stuff I listen to from the late 80s on up "classic rock" haha) There is also a deleted scene where Ben is playing something grungy and then says, "...Hope you brought some laundry detergent, because things are about to get grungy in here. Uhh, grunge music."
If you know of any more, please comment.
*Every time Andy's band plays at that one venue they always play at, the marquee has a band called Flannel Grunge, I think the first time being in the season 1 episode "Rock Show".
*One of the names that Andy's band used to be called is Malice in Chains, as mentioned in the season 1 episode "Rock Show".
*In the season 2 episode "Leslie's House" Tom says, "Pawnee is the opposite of hip. People in this town are just now getting into Nirvana. I don't have the heart to tell them what's gonna happen to Kurt Cobain in 1994."
*There is a Letters to Cleo shirt and a mention of it in the season 4 episode "The Comeback Kid", and apparently that led to the band trending on twitter, and the shirt has shown up since then as well. They also had the band play at the Unity Concert for the season 6 episode "Moving Up"
*They mentioned the Singles Soundtrack in the season 5 episode "How a Bill Becomes a Law" when April and Ben are stuck in a car together and she is going through his CDs.
*In the 5th season episode "Halloween Surprise" there is a garage sale and Andy is wearing a Pearl Jam shirt with a flannel over it, and holding a hat, saying it was the hat he was wearing the first time he heard Vitalogy by Pearl Jam, and he has other grungy clothing there, and come to think of it he always seems to be wearing flannel throughout the series, and Ann mentions that she adopts the personality of the person she is dating, and Andy was her grunge phase.
*In the season 6 episode "Filibuster", Leslie throws Ben his dream Birthday Party: A roller skating bash with an early 90s theme. She says, "Ben lives for the early 90s. The music, the fashion, it's his favorite era." which sounds a lot like us! So of course there are lots of cool references. The ones I picked up on are I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers playing, Ann dressed as Blossom, April saying that Leslie said it was a "Come As You Are of The 90s" party, Tom dressed as Kriss Kross, Hey Jealousy by Gin Blossoms playing, Leslie wearing overalls and a sideways neonish dark pink hat and a white and neonish pink shirt and buttons, Ben wearing a flannel shirt and a Toad the Wet Sprocket T-shirt and a sweater jacket and jeans, Ben mentioning R. E. M. and their albums Monster and Automatic for the People, Larry/Jerry/Garry wearing an Arsenio Hall shirt, Losing My Religion by R. E. M. playing, Chris wearing a denim jacket an a white t-shirt under it and jeans that look a bit acid-washed, a mention of a Reservoir Dog themed birthday cake, and Unbelievable by EMF playing.
*In the season 6 episode "Farmers Market", Dave Grohl was mentioned. When Andy is playing with his band to get ready for a show at a kid's party, one of the members said, "You said we were playing at a festival" to which another replied, "You said Dave Grohl might be there" to which Andy replied, "Dave Grohl might be there, I don't know, he might be anywhere. The guy's awesome, and he's unpredictable."
*In the season 6 episode "Prom", Tom is having trouble connecting with the kids with the music he plays as the DJ, and Ben offers to step in, and plays Pop Song 89 by R.E.M., and a kid says, "Hey I love this song" and Tom says, "You actually like this?" and the kid replies, "Yeah dude it's classic rock" and then Ben says, "Well there's more where that came from..." and the kid replies "I only listen to CDs. It's the way music like this was meant to be heard." and Tom says "But it's not even autotuned." I think more songs were played after this as well (I think Husker Du was one) Haha, looks like they're trying to portray how the youth of today has a growing resentment of modern music. (though I hate it when they call the stuff I listen to from the late 80s on up "classic rock" haha) There is also a deleted scene where Ben is playing something grungy and then says, "...Hope you brought some laundry detergent, because things are about to get grungy in here. Uhh, grunge music."
If you know of any more, please comment.
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