Wat luister je nu? -- Nieuwe stijl -- deel 24

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Vocalist YaSuKo O. resembles a chipmunk in need of a heavy dose of Ritalin, or a chanting cheerleader after she's consumed a full can of coffee.
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Melt-Banana's songs are pointy, in a way, because of all the staccato rhythms they use. It's almost like being repeatedly poked in the ribs with a bony finger.

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"The Carny" is a definite highlight, the cracked music-box/carnival accompaniment courtesy of Harvey utterly appropriate for Cave's tale of a circus gone horribly wrong in ways Edward Gorey would appreciate.

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All my musical heroes were great live performers. When i joined Black Flag, it was pounded into my head that the live show demands your best. We worked very hard in the practice room getting it together so there would be no "warm up" show. We went out there and wrecked it nightly. The Rollins Band always prided themselves as being a top shelf live unit. Andrew, Sim, Melvin, Theo took all this very seriously and they all delivered magnificently and consistently.

The commitment level to the live show has not diminished in our camp. Pre-tour practise goes for about a month in a small room with no air conditioning. This tempers the stamina, getting us ready for the usual high quantity of low quality air and overabundance of heat, wich is our usual low-ceiling playing environment. By the time we get out there, we're not wondering of we can do it-weé wondering how you're gonna keep up with us.

On the festival circuit and the occasional outdoor multi-band radio-sponsored charades, we open for many contemporary, multi-platinum, much lauded groups and we keep seeing the same thing. A lot of these bands can't cut it live. What an insult to a paying audience.

Live is the proof, Live is the only way to know for sure

Henry Rollins

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Yo! Bum Rush the Show was an invigorating record, but it looks like child's play compared to its monumental sequel, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, a record that rewrote the rules of what hip-hop could do. That's not to say the album is without precedent, since what's particularly ingenious about the album is how it reconfigures things that came before into a startling, fresh, modern sound. Public Enemy used the template Run-D.M.C. created of a rap crew as a rock band, then brought in elements of free jazz, hard funk, even musique concrète, via their producing team, the Bomb Squad, creating a dense, ferocious sound unlike anything that came before.
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Though this music is certainly a representation of its time, it hasn't dated at all. It set a standard that few could touch then, and even fewer have attempted to meet since.

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Op vrijdag 4 juni 2004 19:29 schreef Summoner het volgende:

Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

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Op zondag 6 juni 2004 23:04 schreef ranja het volgende:
Mantra - Hard times

Leuk zo'n popquiz, je krijgt nog wat cd's in handen gedrukt. Maar wat krijg je dan? Nou, Mantra bijvoorbeeld. De achterkant van de cd doet iets met zware gitaren vermoeden, gecombineerd met de bandnaam denk je dan aan epic-metal ofzo.... Nou, bijna. Dit is muziek waarvoor Poison zich nog zou schamen. Ok, je hoort dat ze zijn beinvloed door een Queensryche en Juda Priest, maar zo moet het dus niet. Slechte zang, voorspelbare (en softe) deuntjes, totaal niet spannend. De namen van de bandleden doen vermoeden dat de band italiaans is, misschien is dat een excuus.

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Sometimes, I don't know what the world has done to deserve bands like !!!. Sometimes, I don't know what the world has done to deserve bands like !!!. There's so much great music out there crying out desperately to be heard, and it beats me why stupid, gimmicky trash like this is even released, yet alone hyped tremendously by the indie publicity machine.

Let's start from the top though. Last year, !!! released a single called "Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard (A True Story)", a dull piece of music without much at all going for it. For some reason, this was picked up by the public, and !!! became the new "in" band for a couple of weeks. Probably realising that the sudden fame from this single was the only way that the band were ever going to make it big, the band headed into the studio and churned out an album to capitalise and prolong their fifteen minutes of fame.

They shouldn't have bothered. "Louden Up Now" is such a lifeless jumble of beats, riffs, and inanity that it makes your average Spice Girls release look deep and sophisticated. There's nothing really on the album that you're not going to hear within the first two minutes of pressing play. When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Krazee, is pretty much representative of the rest of the album, with an amorphous structure, a few vaguely funky riffs thrown together in no particular order, and Nic Offer's awful voice, which sounds like a crackhead doing an impersonation of Joe Strummer.

If, for some reason, you decide to keep on listening, things get even worse. Shitscheissemerde is a pretty weak song that doesn't really deserve to appear once, let alone three times on the album. The lyrics are terrible too, like "What did George Bush say when he met Tony Blair? Shitsheissemerde!", being spat out in all seriousness. Various sundry references to weed are about as clever and subtle as being hit in the face with a cricket bat by an angry scouser. A shortened version of Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard is thrown in, and with the scissors taken to it, it actually manages to sound passable, which was a pleasant surprise.

Still, this record was even worse than I was bracing myself for, if that is possible. The band's name pretty much says everything about this album; full of style and attitude, but with absolutely no substance to back anything up. A really tiresome effort that brings nothing even remotely interesting to the table.