Bob’s Jukebox: Sports

Posted: September 1, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Bob's Jukebox, Culture | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

It may not be the soundtrack of the 80s, but you’d be forgiven for thinking that it is. Releasing toward the middle of the 80s in of 1983, Sports charted for 160 weeks (that’s three years), hit #1 on the Billboard 200 June 30, 1984, and ranked #2 for that year (and when the album that beats you is Thriller, you still get to hold your head up high).* Personally, I may not be a psychotic killer, but I have to agree with Patrick Bateman when it comes to Hey Lewis and the News: “When Sports came out in ’83, I think they really came into their own, commercially and artistically. The whole album has a clear, crisp sound, and a new sheen of consummate professionalism that really gives the songs a big boost. He’s been compared to Elvis Costello, but I think Huey has a far more bitter, cynical sense of humor.” (American Psycho, 2000)

So, statistics and dark, satirical references aside, what do I think of the album? I think it’s hard to do much better than this outside of a greatest hits album. Seriously, there are four Top-10 singles on this album, and at least two other songs that I knew as soon as I heard them – and there are only nine songs on the album. Come to think of it, I’ve had “greatest hits” albums that didn’t have that good of a “known to unknown” ratio.

Let’s get the easy and obvious ones out of the way, especially for anyone under the age of forty: the first four tracks (or what we called “Side one” back in the days of things like LPs and tapes) are definitely the best of this album when taken as a set (I’ll get to the very obvious exception to that in a minute). “The Heart of Rock & Roll” is a banger, just good old-fashioned rock ‘n’ roll. “Heart and Soul” goes a little harder, but still stays comfortable in the realm of rock. “Bad is Bad” goes bluesy in all the best ways, and “I Want a New Drug” goes back to those great rock sounds, although I have to admit there’s something very “80s” about this song to me. Maybe it’s just something about the idea of comparing the object of your desire to a drug rush.

Anyway, moving on. There’s nothing bad about the next five songs (“Side two”), it’s just not as strong as the first four songs, with one caveat. “Walking On a Thin Line” is a good song, and one of the ones I mentioned I recognized right away. I do like it, just not as much as my favorite five. And speaking of my favorite five, the big caveat I mentioned is “If This Is It”, which vies for my favorite song on the album. The music is solid, and the lyrics are a bittersweet gut punch all the way through. Normally I don’t include lyrics (you can look them up yourself), but this is just a sample of how this one hits:

You’ve been thinkin’ and I been drinkin’
We both know that it’s Just not right
Now you’re pretendin’ that it’s not endin’
You’ll say anything to avoid a fight
Girl don’t lie and tell me that you need me
Girl don’t cry and tell me nothin’s wrong
I’ll be all right one way or another
So let me go, or make we want to stay
If this is it please let me know
If this ain’t love you’d better let me go
If this is it I want to know
If this ain’t love, baby, just say so

“You Crack Me Up” is ok. Not great, but in no way objectionable. The same can be said for their cover of “Honky Tonk Blues”. It almost seems as if, having put that one last amazing song out there, they just ease their way on out the rest of the album, which frankly is okay. They certainly earned it by that point.

So clearly, I strongly suggest picking this one up. It’s still a great album, and there’s no bad songs on there. While it doesn’t have every great Huey Lewis and the News track, it has enough of them that you won’t be disappointed.

*Release date and chart information courtesy of Wikipedia

Bob’s Jukebox: Doolittle

Posted: August 18, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Bob's Jukebox, Culture | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Pixies are a highly influential band, having influenced Smashing Pumpkins, PJ Harvey, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, the Strokes, Modest Mouse, and more (https://www.wbur.org/news/2018/09/28/pixies-boston-rock-surfer-rosa-come-on-pilgrim), and some of my favorite songs are Pixies covers or remixes. I guess it’s kind of odd then that I can’t honestly say I like an entire Pixies album. If anything, I actually hate an entire Pixies album. But that’s not tonight’s topic (thankfully). Tonight, we’re here for Doolittle.

The sound is raw, wild, and strange. It’s also kind of full of itself and halfway up its own ass. I guess you take the good with the bad on this one. The Pixies play with sound on a collapsing wavefront of conventionality, and more often than not they’re out on the far side. Where I remember them from the most is hearing Doolittle being played, in its entirety, fairly regularly at the Dharma Coffeehouse back in the early to mid-90s.

The thing you have to understand about Dharma was that it wasn’t like you think of a coffeehouse today, since most people think of a Starbuck’s clone or something similar, and even if it has a little more personality than that you’re still probably picturing a bunch of people sitting around staring at their tablets or phones, connected to the free Wi-Fi and taking up space all day. So let me start by pointing you back the last sentence in the previous paragraph: “back in the early to mid-90s.” I remember people carrying pagers at Dharma. And not a lot of them, either. What I do remember is a lot of people showing up late in the evening and early night and staying all night long, sitting around drinking coffee, playing cards, and listening to music. Because the only networks that existed back then were LANs, and the only thing wireless was a cordless phone you might have in your house.

Something else Dharma had in plentiful supply was extremely colorful patrons (and staff) who tended to engender strong reactions (positive or negative varied from individual to individual). Which is something it has in common with this album. I don’t really have neutral or “meh” reactions to the songs on this album. Some of these songs I love, and I was really looking forward to reviewing this album because it’s been a while since I have heard them. I expected it would be like hanging out with old friends who I haven’t seen in a while. But I forgot that the assholes show up as well, and I can’t stand them. I usually just skip over those songs, but I am committed to listening to entire albums to get the “full experience”, and honestly, the full experience of the Pixies is that I don’t intend to listen to the Pixies again for a very, very long time.

The album starts off pretty good with “Debaser”, reminding me that this is going to be a weird ride but opening me up to a different experience than I normally get. “Tame” immediately comes behind it to let me know this isn’t going to be 100% an album I’m going to enjoy. That’s when they decide to screw with my head by throwing the four best songs on the album almost right in a row with only one mostly terrible song in the middle of them (“Wave of Mutilation”, one of the best Pixies songs in existence, “I Bleed”, “Here Comes Your Man”, the aforementioned somewhat execrable “Dead”, and then “Monkey Gone to Heaven”). “Mr. Grieves” holds the dubious distinction of being the only song on the album I have no strong feelings about either way. I suppose that’s rather appropriate, as it is right at the transition point between the “mostly good” half of the album and the “almost entirely trash” half of the album. “La La Love You” is the only good song on the back half of the album, although “Hey” is decent. Seriously, on “No 13 Baby” I thought I was listening to Adam Sandler trying to do alt rock. It was just bad.

So tough recommendation time. I would say if you like alt rock, try to listen to as many of these songs as you can before you buy the album. They’re really all over the place, and just because you like any three, four, or five of them doesn’t tell you you’re going to like the whole album. But if you can get it for a good price and you’re feeling adventurous, it’s worth a shot.

Bob’s Jukebox: Heart

Posted: August 11, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Bob's Jukebox, Culture | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

So last week I mentioned how MNSHS taught me growing up not to buy an album until I was sure I liked at least three songs on the album, because that way I would get a better price than if I bought the singles. Completely by coincidence this week I managed to pick an album that exemplifies why she told me to do that (although TBH, it’s probably not much of a coincidence; I’ve been following that rule for most of my life, so a lot of my collection is like that). This week we have a flashback all the way to near the beginning of the MTV era, the self-titled major mainstream comeback for Heart.

Kinda gotta admit I was thinking at first that I was looking at this one through nostalgia tinted glasses. The first track, “If Looks Could Kill”, did not appeal to me at all. The same happened with most of the songs on the album that I was unfamiliar with, the lone exception being “Nobody Home”, which I didn’t love but I at least thought was pleasant. I figured maybe I just enjoyed the old hits because they were exactly that, old songs I have heard plenty of times that reminded me of my youth (and to be honest, Nancy Wilson looked amazing in those videos at a time when I was just discovering that girls were… well… amazing).

But despite my huge crush on Nancy (which I have 100% gotten over I swear #Nancycallme), I had a hard time believing that I only liked those songs because of nostalgia, so I listened to the album again (it’s not a particularly long album, clocking in at just under 40 minutes). I started to realize two things: first, the singles that were released off the album just felt more polished, for lack of a better word. They had more je ne sais quoi, but apparently the music producers at Capitol Records do, because they picked the right songs to release as singles (although apparently they also released “If Looks Could Kill” as a single, but hey, if two out of three ain’t bad then four out of five is pretty darn good.) Second, I really liked 40% of the songs on this album, I kind of liked another 10%, and I was ambivalent about another 40% (for those of you doing the math, we’ll get to that last 10% in a bit). That’s average to good for pretty much any album, so it’s probably nothing to do with nostalgia, just a matter of personal taste.

A lot of what was driving that personal taste was the fact that this album is driven more by raw talent than the sum of its parts. The lyrics aren’t particularly strong on any of the songs, and the music isn’t overly intricate or interesting except in its execution. Which is to say, Ann is a great singer with a beautiful voice, and Nancy is a great guitarist who knows how to be entertaining. That comes through in the popular singles from this album (“What About Love”, “These Dreams”, “Never”, and “Nothin’ at All”) and not so much if at all on the other songs. This was particularly apparent (and egregious) toward the end of the album.

The album ends on the thoroughly disappointing “Shell Shock”, which I would never have sat all the way through if I hadn’t promised myself I would listen to the entire album. Quite frankly, the only thing of value in the song are Nancy’s all-too-brief guitar solos, and they in no way justify the existence of this song, no matter how good they are. Ann’s vocals are at least decent to excellent on every other song on the album, so I have no idea what happened here. I guess she decided she could phone it in at least once. Considering there is only one song on the album with as many credited writers (that being “The Wolf”), it’s also no surprise the lyrics are even more disappointing than the rest of the album.

All things equal, unless you are a huge Heart fan, I would recommend either just buying the singles these days, or else getting a copy of a greatest hits album that has the four big singles off this album. There’s just nothing special here to recommend it.

Bob’s Jukebox: Sonic Jihad

Posted: August 5, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Bob's Jukebox, Culture | Tags: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

I’ll be the first to admit, I have quite a few albums in my collection that I only bought because I liked one song on them, and there was a stretch of time (let’s call them “the 90s”) where you couldn’t really buy singles. I tried to hold off unless I knew at least three songs off an album, a trick My Not So Humble Sister taught me back in the days when you actually could buy singles (one of many life skills I have tragically outgrown; back then the cost of three singles was higher than the price of the entire album).

Of course, these days you can buy almost any song digitally as a single, and most music is available streaming. But as I have discovered to my dismay, there are plenty of cultural artifacts (music, TV, movies, and more) that are falling down what a friend of mine has dubbed the “digital memory hole”, as they are not available on any digital platform, so it is best to hang on to a physical copy of anything you are serious about enjoying in more than the most ephemeral sense. And that also brings to the fore the issue that, unless you have virtually unlimited resources, the fragmentation of entertainment has gotten to the point that the availability of any given piece of entertainment relies as much on luck as it does on careful planning. But now I’m just becoming the old man shaking his fist at the cloud (in more than one sense of the word).

Before I got off on my tangent about getting off my lawn, I was talking about albums I bought because of a single song, specifically because of Snake River Conspiracy’s Sonic Jihad. They had a bit of success around the turn of the millennium with their cover of “How Soon is Now?”, which I maintain to this day is the best cover I have ever heard of that song or of the Smiths in general (and Dr. Pat, you can just go back to watching Charmed, I’ll talk about Love Spit Love when I’m good and ready). Since I’m going off on tangents anyway, I might as well go off on a tangent about covers, since this one (as well as another on this album, a cover of “Lovesong” by the Cure) manage to be exactly what I look for in a cover. That is, close enough to the original to be easily identifiable as a cover (at least to those who are familiar with the original song) while sting being innovative enough to feel like an original composition. There’s nothing wrong with a band doing a song “straight” as it were, but then it doesn’t feel like they’re bringing anything new to it, and I have to ask, “why did you decide to perform this song?” A tribute is well and good, but even then, it’s better to add something fresh, to say “here’s what I wanted to say/what this song means to me.”

But once again, I should probably talk about the album itself. This turned out to be a delightful surprise. Their style is defined as “industrial rock”, along the lines of Nine Inch Nails or Marilyn Manson, which checks out. I’m not a huge fan of the genre, but I enjoy it, and that’s about where I fall with this album: not a huge fan, but I enjoy it. There are no songs on the album I particularly dislike, although a few fall in the category of “meh” (“Breed”, “Strangled”, “Oh, Well”). A couple of them of them are “like, but not love” (“Act Your Age”, “Somebody Hates You”), and there are some that I really do feel are standouts (“Casualty”, “You and Your Friend”, “Lovesong”, “Vulcan”, “More Than Love”, “How Soon Is Now?”). There’s a lot of variety in terms of tone and content, even staying within the same broad style, and they deserve a lot of credit for that exploration.

That having been said, it turns out that about half the album is covers, which if I’m being honest somewhat takes away from my admiration for the group. Not that I have anything against covers per se, but there’s a not-very-fine-line between “doing a couple covers” and “basically being a cover band”. When roughly half of your album is cover songs, I think you’re walking right up to that line, and you may even be stepping across it. Which is a shame because there’s clearly a lot of talent here. Tobey Torres has amazing vocal range and capability, and I would love to hear more of her.

Clearly my take away is if you have any interest or admiration for industrial rock or female vocalists in general, I give Sonic Jihad a solid recommendation. It definitely earns the “Parental Advisory – Explicit Content” sticker, so if that’s going to turn you away, don’t say you weren’t warned. But otherwise give this one a try.

Bob’s Jukebox: Updated links

Posted: July 31, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Quick update. One of the intentions I had going into this was to share my favorite music with everyone (and all the rest of it, too), but of course I had to go and make a hash of it.

I’ve always tried to be open about the fact I participate in the Amazon Affiliates Program (In a good year make enough money to cover my hosting fees; I ain’t getting rich here, folks), but apparently at some point when I wasn’t looking they changed the way the links worked. That’s on me, not them; Amazon customer service was quick to explain how to fix it and fix it I did.

So now if you go back to all the Bob’s Jukebox posts you can find functional links to the music therein if you are interested in the artists I have shared so far, and hopefully you will find something you like.

Bob’s Jukebox: Lincoln

Posted: July 28, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Bob's Jukebox, Culture | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

I decided to pull out something random for this week, and I guess it’s true what they say – be careful what you ask for. Strap in kids, it’s gonna get a little bit weird. Our selection for this week is They Might Be Giant’s Lincoln.

I first heard this album back in high school, although it wasn’t the first album I heard by TMBG. That would be Flood, which we’ll get to eventually, I’m sure. I vaguely recall at least some people giving me a rash of shit about not having heard of Lincoln when I was listening to Flood one time, and I don’t know to this day if they actually thought it was a superior album or if they were just proto-hipsters determined to make a big deal about the fact that they liked the band before they were cool. Personally, I preferred Flood then and now, but that’s neither here nor there.

The first thing I notice about Lincoln is that it involves a lot of word play, and not particularly clever word play, so much as weird word play. Not to say there’s isn’t a certain cleverness in the word play, and it does have the quirky rhythm and flow that is unique to TMBG, but the oddity of it seems to lean into “weird for the sake of being weird” rather than “weird because we’re trying to make an artistic statement” or “weird because metaphor be like that, yo”. And I am fully willing to acknowledge two things: first, that not all of the weird word play misses its mark of being satire: “Purple Toupee”, “Pencil Rain”, and “Kiss Me, Son of God” are not exactly subtle satire. But a lack of subtlety does not excuse an overabundance of inanity (and that’s ME saying that).

Before it sounds like I’m trying to completely poo-poo all the “weirder” songs on the album, I enjoy some of the more “out there” songs specifically because they are doing something different, but they aren’t trying to do too much at once. Which is to say, they nicely balance their lyrical explorations with a musical joi de vive and lightness that is missing from those other songs. In particular I’m thinking of “Where Your Eyes Don’t Go”, “The World’s Address”, and “Snowball in Hell”.

“Santa’s Beard” seems to be mean for the sake of being mean. “Ana Ng” and “They’ll Need a Crane” are the stand out songs that are about as close to approachable as I think you’ll find on this album, which honestly isn’t saying much. It seems to be telling that both of these songs are about troubled relationships.

Here’s the thing I’ve found about They Might Be Giants: they’re not the kind of band I can really just sit down and listen to cold. I have to listen to them several times, either all at once or (preferably) over the span of several days or a couple weeks. The first time I hear them I find them annoying and try-hard, college radio holdovers who had a couple of catchy songs that hit big. After I’ve listened a few times, they start to infect my brain, the different musical styles they range across keeping me from comfortably boxing them away and ignoring them long enough to hook me. That gives the lyrics and the music time to remind me that I actually do like them, at least somewhat. They’ll never be my favorite band, nor will I ever understand the fascination some people seem to have with them, but I can still enjoy their music.

Bob’s Jukebox: Lost Mixes – Extended Ecstasy

Posted: July 23, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Bob's Jukebox, Culture | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

I originally bought this CD a few decades ago, so my memory around it is a little hazy. As I recall, I picked it up because it had extended remixes for a couple songs I already had in my collection, as well as a couple others I didn’t have but knew I liked. I was getting it used, so I figured it was a bargain. And I was mostly right.

As one reviewer on Amazon put it, if you love the dance music of the late 80s and early 90s, this one is going to be right up your alley. Another way to put it is that the average track length on this record is 6-7 minutes, so hope you’re not going anywhere for a while. There may only be 8 songs on the album, but it still weighs in at a play time of almost an hour. These are, indeed, “Extended Ecstasy”. Mostly.

“Kiss and Tell”, “Little Respect” and “Blue Monday” don’t sound all that different from their original versions to me, although I’m not such a huge music buff that I could definitively say “ooh, that’s a huge difference”. For the most part it just sounds to me like they looped the same music for an extra few minutes, called it an “extended mix”, and collected an extra paycheck. By contrast ”Roam” and “Crazy” definitely have some differences, enough to warrant being called a different mix. I don’t know “Sunshine and Ecstasy” or “Loaded” outside of this album to offer an opinion on whether or not they justify being called a remix.

Which brings us to the ultimate question, “Is it worth buying the album?” And I guess that depends on why you’re considering buying it. Like I said at the start, if you love the dance music of the late 80s and early 90s, yeah, might as well. Even the tracks that don’t sound significantly different from their originals are still some of the best dance music of the era, and the ones that are different are particularly good examples of the remix genre.

Another reason to buy the album would be if you’re just starting out as a DJ and hope to someday be as good as My Not So Humble Brother-in-Law. These remixes are basically tailor-made for mixing, with long stretches of instrumentals and simple beats that all but make this album “My First DJ Kit”.

Or if you’re just looking for something to throw on and mindlessly dance for an hour, this is a great choice. It’s well balanced and fun. Nothing wrong with that either.

Bob’s Jukebox: A Momentary Lapse of Reason

Posted: July 15, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Bob's Jukebox, Culture | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

This week on Bob’s Jukebox, I’ll be discussing the Pink Floyd album A Momentary Lapse of Reason. This is another one I’ve spoken about previously, just over ten years ago, so I don’t blame anyone for not remembering (and this is a bit of a different and more expansive take). At some point I will be discussing (most) every Pink Floyd album, although I don’t want to focus on any one artist for an extended period of time, even if they are the greatest artist of all time. Don’t take it from me; it was voted on all the way back in 2014 for Bobapalooza: Clash of the Titans. And no, I didn’t rig the voting. Who do I look like, the IOC?

So why start with this one, you may ask? It’s quite simple, really. This was the first Pink Floyd album I ever heard, and it started my lifelong fandom.

Go ahead, gasp in shock and dismay. Yes, as a matter of fact I was born under a rock and then raised by wolves. In a barn. On Mars. Are we done here?

I distinctly remember seeing the video for “Learning to Fly” on MTV (and if that doesn’t make me sound old, nothing will) and the sound captured me completely. I had to find more of this incredible new band. The entire album was intoxicating, and when I found out they had so many (allegedly better) albums out there, I started slowly working my way through their back catalogue. We’ll get to those albums eventually, but one thing at a time. (Don’t worry, I’ll be doing the entirety of The Wall as a single post.)

Pink Floyd is another one of those artists that you just can’t compare to other artists, because they’re just that good; you can only compare them to themselves. Is Momentary Lapse the best Pink Floyd album in existence? No, but it is my baseline for what a good Pink Floyd album should be (“you must be at least this quality to be considered good”). We’ll discuss my favorites as we get to them, and this isn’t one of my top three, but it is one of my top five… or six, depending on how you count them. We’ll get to that too.

Right from the start, the use of ambient sound leading into an instrumental on “Signs of Life” just works for me. This album probably has my favorite use of instrumentals paired with ambient sound outside of Animals, and yes, I realize that’s a bold statement considering that both Wish You Were Here and Dark Side of the Moon exist. I said probably, and I love each of them for their own reasons. “Learning to Fly” as previously mentioned is sublime.

“Dogs of War” is the turd in the punch bowl. It is the rare Pink Floyd song I just don’t much care for. It’s derivative and boring. I usually skip past it. But I promised myself I would listen to the entire album, and listen I did. My opinion has not changed.

Fortunately, we then get into the meat of the album, where the music and the lyrics combine together into something truly magical. Again, not the best Pink Floyd ever produced, but still well worth the price of admission. Even decades later, lyrics like “Was it love, or was it the idea of being in love? / Was it the hand of fate, that seemed to fit just like a glove?” hit like a hammer. Even when the lyrics don’t quite rise to that level (“Yet Another Movie”, I’m looking in your direction), Gilmour’s guitar work is still delightful.

Overall, this was the perfect introduction to Pink Floyd. It’s middle of the road (for Floyd), not their best album by a long shot but far from their worst either (and I can’t wait to see the flack I get when we get to that one).

Bob’s Jukebox: Glass Houses

Posted: July 8, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Bob's Jukebox, Culture | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

A while back, a good friend of mine (Dr. Pat) used to spend every Friday night doing what he called a “Full Album Flashback”. He would listen to an entire album (and when was the last time you even SAW an entire album?), and he would post his thoughts on the Book of Faces. I was intrigued by the idea and thought I would like to brazenly steal it for myself borrow it and give credit where credit is due. So, thank you Dr. Pat for the inspiration for Bob’s Jukebox.

What is that exactly? Well, I have an old collection of CDs sitting around, roughly 300 or so, that I haven’t really listened to in a decade or longer, and I thought now’s as good a time as any. I also know for a fact I bought at least some *cough*most*cough* of them for only a few songs at best. So actually taking the time to listen to the entire album will be a new experience for me. Good? Bad? Indifferent? We’ll find out together!

I decided the perfect album to kick this off with was the first “real” album I can ever remember listening to, Glass Houses by Billy Joel. I suppose there’s a certain synchronicity that the first album I started Bob’s Jukebox with is also, completely unintentionally, the first album I used to start The Soundtrack of My Life. Hopefully in the future I’ll manage to be a little less predictable, but I somehow doubt it.

Before I get into my specific thoughts on this album, I think it is worth mentioning that I consider Billy Joel to be on a special tier of artists who can’t be fairly compared to other artists. When I say a particular Billy Joel album is “good” or “bad”, I am speaking in relation to other Billy Joel albums. I don’t honestly think there are any truly, objectively bad Billy Joel albums (although some do come close to being mediocre, and we’ll discuss those when we get to them).

Glass Houses is the seventh studio album from Billy Joel, which honestly surprised me when I looked it up. I’ll be discussing his other albums (at least some of them) in future posts but suffice to say I was more impressed with at least one of his earlier releases, significantly more in fact. I’ll let you guess in the comments which one that is (all of you except Dr. Pat, because he already knows for a fact which one it is). The lyrical ability he displays on this album is more clever than poignant or deep, with memorable hits such as “You May Be Right” and “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me” showing an ability to turn a clever phrase without significant depth, and “C’etait Toi (You Were the One)” honestly just feels like a failed attempt at looking sophisticated (really, an entire verse in French? Even worse, the same verse? I thought my teenage poetry was pompous, but damn.)

His great strength lies in storytelling, and the more relatable the story, the better the song. “All for Layna” and “I Don’t Want to Be Alone” are perfect examples of this, as is “Sleeping with the Television On” (which also does an excellent job of placing the album within a specific few decades within the US; listen to the song and if you know, you know.)

At this point he still is a young, perhaps not angry but definitely cynical man. How much you can relate to that may influence how much you enjoy his music. Also, it is to some extent of its place and time. There is no doubt that Billy Joel has a certain style, particularly early in his career, and while that style did evolve over time, on Glass Houses it is in full force and clearly on display. If you like that style, you’ll like this album. If you don’t, you won’t. It really is that simple. For myself, this still remains one of my top five Billy Joel albums, and arguably one of my top three. I freely admit nostalgia plays a certain role in that, but there honestly are no bad songs on the album (even “C’etait Toi”, for all that I love to give him shit for it), and only a couple of truly forgettable songs. The fact that a couple of my very favorite Billy Joel songs are on this album, along with some of his biggest hits (and no, they are not one and the same in this case; again, different albums yield different results) sets it high on my personal ranking.

Who Matters?

Posted: May 11, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Culture, Musings, Politics, society, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

(Disclaimer: The following post has spoilers for the first season of The Peripheral on Amazon Prime. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it. You have been warned.)

I recently binge-watched the entirety of the first (and so far only) season of The Peripheral on Amazon Prime (note to Amazon: get on that next season, ya’ll have a bad habit of dragging your feet). I have a complicated relationship with cyberpunk in general and William Gibson in particular. When cyberpunk is done well, I love it, and when it is done less than I despise it. The same can be said for Gibson’s work. His better novels I am a rabid fan of (and that isn’t limited to his cyberpunk work; Pattern Recognition remains one of my favorite novels), but his lesser works leave me completely cold. In both cases I think it is a matter of knowing what heights they are capable of makes me demand nothing less. Fortunately, in this case they delivered, and truth be told The Peripheral goes beyond cyberpunk (although it does incorporate many cyberpunk elements and themes) and covers elements of several sci-fi genres.

One of the key themes that particularly stood out for me in the show was the question of who matters in society. This was brought into stark relief when Flynn Fisher (Chloë Grace Moretz) states to her “employers” in an alternate future timeline (like I said, it gets into broader sci-fi elements pretty quick), “I’m trying to think of you guys as real.” While this is the most obvious moment, it is far from the starkest divide, as the power differentials between various groups make up much of the drama in the show, and while they are mostly drawn with a broad brush and a heavy hand (yay science fiction), they still serve to illuminate the broader concept.

The most obvious divisions of course are in the future society between the major power players: the Research Institute (the intelligentsia), the Klept (the rich and powerful), and the Metropolitan Police (the government). The rest of the people in this future society are either servants of one of these groups or simply outcasts.

There are other, less obvious (although still not exactly subtle) divisions to be found in the show as well. The specific choice of a small town, rural setting for the 2032 “stub” timeline versus the metropolitan London of the “main” 2100 timeline dovetails nicely with the plot point of choosing groups of rural friends as soldiers for the haptic devices (an obvious allusion to the over-representation of rural Americans in the military), which then lends itself to the obvious division between veterans and civilians. There’s also the divide between disabled veterans and able-bodied civilians to explore.

It’s very easy to tell who the good guys are: just like in real life, pick the people you agree with, and there you go, you know who the good guys are. Because really, there’s no other way to tell. Everyone has an agenda, everyone does morally and ethically questionable things (to say the least), and everyone has a justification for their actions that essentially amounts to “I did what I had to do”. So like I said, just like real life.

It’s become fashionable to loudly proclaim “everyone gets a voice,” while sotto voce saying, “as long as we don’t have to listen to them.” For some groups it has become even more fashionable to simply say, “You are too vulgar, too violent; you shouldn’t be allowed to speak at all.” To those who insist that everyone deserves and must get an equal voice, here’s a short list of groups that I want you to look at and seriously tell me you want all of them to have an equal say:

  • Flat Earthers
  • Jews
  • Incels
  • TERFs
  • Trumpers
  • 9-11 Truthers
  • MGTOW
  • Muslims
  • Homophobes
  • Feminists
  • Conservatives
  • Disabled people
  • Racists
  • BLM
  • KKK
  • Antifa
  • Liberals
  • Veterans
  • LGTBQ+
  • Nazis
  • Hippies
  • Elderly people
  • Libertarians

Does everyone on the list get an equal say? If not, why not? Was it the same 20 years ago? 50? 100? Why is it different now? (And if the best answer you can give me is “because society is fairer” you get an A for optimism and an F for naivete.) Having a good rationale for not letting part of your population participate when you claim to be a free and just society is putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. Understanding the likely outcome when people feel they are not being heard, their needs are not being addressed, and they are being forced to participate in a society that is taking from them without giving in return is the first step to rectifying the situation. Because the hard truth is that, long-term, most groups are not going to just sit back and be grateful for what they are given. So what do you do then?

And that is a problem that can come from any direction. Look again at that list. I’m not asking you to like or agree with anyone on that list. I’m not asking you to condone or tolerate anyone on that list. I’m asking you to acknowledge that every one of those groups exists, that they have a point of view, one might even say an agenda, and every single one of them is capable of morally and ethically questionable things (to say the least). And I guarantee you, when they do them, they will have a justification for their actions that essentially amounts to “I did what I had to do”. Just like on The Peripheral. The question is, how will you know who the good guys are?

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