I heard about Failure quite a while ago, I even had one of their songs (a cover) on my computer long, long before I realised just how incredible they are as a band. They contributed a cover of “Enjoy the Silence” to a Depeche Mode tribute album, which my sister bought and ripped, which I then copied. It was a good cover; so good that even Depeche Mode like it better than their own version. I tried searching for some of their other stuff, but could find nothing, and gave up on it.
Fast forward several years, sometime after I discovered the Minibosses. At one point, they had a live cover of a song called “Golden” available for download from their website. I grabbed it because I was grabbing everything they had up on the site, and there were few details available on the individual tracks. It was a neat song, but I had no idea who was responsible for the original. I tried searching for individual lyrics (I’ve had good success with that in the past), but came up empty. For all I knew, it was a Minibosses original in a more conventional alt-rock style. It’s live, and the ‘bosses were drunk, so the vocals are bad, the guitars are sloppy, and it’s a piss-poor recording. For some reason though, my wife really liked it. It’s unusual enough that she likes anything in that style, let alone a grainy live recording, so I tried to discover exactly what it was for her benefit. Whenever she does like something like that, I try to be as diligent as possible in accommodating her.
To that end, I emailed the Minibosses, asking them about it. To my pleasant surprise, they got back to me, letting me know that it was a cover of a Failure song. Now that I knew the band I thought I’d have better luck finding it. That was not at all the case; searching for Failure was pretty futile. It was almost as though they didn’t exist. In fact, what I did discover was that they did exist, but were now defunct, with almost no trace of them on the internet (at the time). I did find a few sites that mentioned them, and some bad samples of Golden that sounded just as bad as the Minibosses cover version (possibly thanks to the inferior WMA CODEC). So again, I’d given up.
Then one day, I got a mailer from Grant Henry, a.k.a. Stemage, the fellow responsible for the MetroidMetal project (of which I am a fan and sponsor). This mailer had information pertaining to a tribute project that he was working on to none other than Failure. Looking it up this time revealed a lot more information. It seems that the internet caught wind of them, and word-of-mouth had increased their fanbase a lot. They now had a detailed Wiki page, and a huge underground following. I found that a collection of their b-sides, demos, and rarities was even available for free download. Paydirt!
I got a chance to listen to this collection (a while ago) and I can confirm many of the things I’d read about them. I didn’t think that anyone made music like that anymore; they continued the evolution of great underground acts from the late 80’s and early 90’s (minus the mainstreaming). The best way I can think of to describe it, is that they sound like a “retro” indie-garage-rock act, the likes of which could have come from the Pacific Northwest scene circa 199x, and yet, at the same time, sounding like they come from 1,000 years in the future. The sound is very atmospheric, concentrating on creating texture and mood rather than on technical displays (though it’s evident in some tracks that they’re still capable of excellent musicianship). Long story short, they blew me away.
Posted by Ron as Music at 1:16 PM EDT
No Comments »
When I was young, and first exposed to the marvel of Much Music, I began keeping a list. This list contained the band and sometimes album or song name of things I’d heard that I wanted to check out in greater detail. It grew and grew over the several years I’d kept it, and while I’d never made an exact count, I estimated that it may have contained as many as 2,000 entries.
Sadly, at some point, the battered blue spiral-bound over-sized notepad which contained this list became lost in time and space, possibly as the result of cleaning my room, or perhaps when I moved back upstairs from my windowless room in the basement. I don’t know exactly when it was lost, just that the next time I went to look for it, I couldn’t find it anywhere. I was pretty distraught over it, as it took me a long time to compile and at the time, could not easily be re-researched and compiled. I wrote the stuff down precisely for that reason.
It was probably just as well. I vividly recall crying myself to sleep one night after having made the realisation that I would probably never have the resources in time and money to follow through with my research. After all, at $20 per CD, just to sample the most acclaimed album from each band would have cost in excess of $40,000. Even if I were hunting through pawn shops, that still represented more money than I could ever commit to such a project. That list didn’t include movies either, and when you factor in that many of the groups on the list probably had more than one release worth buying, the cost grows rather quickly. The list was still growing at that time as well. The conclusion I was left with was that I would be constantly playing catch-up.
Then the internet happened. Napster. It was a dream come true. I downloaded a lot of stuff. I started keeping track again (though mostly just on scraps of paper). It was like a second shot at the dream, until the service was shut down by the lawsuits of a few wealthy artists whining about how they were missing out on revenue desperately needed to fund drug habits, psychiatrists, and whores.
Still, the genie was released from the bottle, and has to date proven impossible to put back. Things aren’t as easy as they were then, but looking this stuff up is still fairly trivial, as is keeping a list on my computer. It doesn’t have 2,000 entries or whatever, but factoring in all the bookmarks and everything, might be getting there. Wikipedia helps a lot too.
And that’s one of the many things I’ve been using to occupy my time whilst I’ve been away from work. I’ve also taken the time to rip many of my old CDs to MP3. I hadn’t realised how many of them were not on my computer until recently. I think that was a result of being storage-limited before. Now I have more space than I know what to do with.
Posted by Ron as Computers, Music at 6:58 PM EDT
No Comments »
I’ve been feeling a little less than stellar about things in general lately. What precipitated this melancholy introspection, I can’t be certain. I just know that I need to do something to make it go away!
Work has been picking up a little, and as such I have been helping out a little when and where I am needed. Today though, I stayed home from work; I wasn’t feeling well. I’m also not so sure that I want to go back full time. I guess this is less about what I don’t know and more about what I do know. I know now that this trade is not for me. I love learning, and I love doing the work, but I don’t think that it’s what I really want. I think the change of heart comes from my reflections on the past couple days experiences. I had two less than stellar days, yesterday being particularly bad. I know it isn’t always like that, everyone has both good days and bad, but I now know that I need to alter course again.
I wish I could be one of those people who just knows what they want and can therefore go after it, or at very least one who has enough success with something that they can tolerate that they can focus on other areas of their life. Both would be better still. I seem to have neither.
Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 4:30 PM EDT
3 Comments »
I despise April first. Despise. It’s a pretty strong word, and maybe not strong enough. The whole concept of April Fools just incites me to near-rage; consequently, I have exactly zero tolerance for all the stupid gags. You know the ones; websites littered with disinformation, silly products that don’t exist, fake press releases, and the like. Hate it.
I spent all day yesterday trying to discern why that might be, but unfortunately, drew no meaningful conclusions.
Posted by Ron as Miscellaneous at 8:46 AM EDT
2 Comments »