Midnight Project/Shinedown/Papa Roach

[sathor]

The first two were very disappointing last night. Granted, the first concert I ever saw was a real pro (Reznor) and maybe this makes me somewhat biased. Or maybe not.

Midnight Project and Shinedown are both guilty of having singers that just don't fit the music. I'm sorry if that hurts your feelings, but it's the unfortunate truth. Their singers also have very little stage presence (and what they did have, from what I could see, was based merely on fanatic fan-girls and fan-boys for the most part.)

Continuously, Midnight and Shinedown were -telling- the crowd what to do. This was a major mistake as far as I'm concerned, and I'm sure it goes over well at some other venues, but it seemed to me that they were trying -very- hard to make people do what they wanted to see. At NIN, for instance, I don't recall Reznor ever asking or telling the crowd to do anything. Yeah, he's much more well-known (so to speak - Shinedown has been on the radio for how long now, and Reznor didn't have much of a radio presence comparably) but I think this is mostly about how his stage presence presence dwarfed these guys.

My opinion - Shinedown's real musicians need to boot their singer out the door. They'd probably lose a good portion of their fan base, but I have no empathy personally with what the guy has to sing about. I think he's a shallow prick that likes to sing about drug abuse and suicide, the keys to every emo kid's heart. His shallowness and anger literally was projecting into the crowd (even with what he had to say at some points!) like, "If the person next to you isn't jumping, grab their hair and toss them to the ground!"

Modern music really has gone to shit. HOWEVER.

Papa Roach delivered flawlessly. I only heard a few off keys, stage presence was awesome, and he only -once- asked the crowd to do -anything-. The energy was very good for them, and I'm happy to see they played such an extended set for such a small crowd (The Civic Center was nowhere near capacity.) I think they knew Shinedown didn't receive a very warm welcome, and I'll wager a bet Shaddix found -his- welcome more than empowering.

The only other thing that bothered me throughout the night is that both Shinedown and Midnight Project used keyboard loops, with no keyboardist. They could at least employ a keyboardist so the stuff is fucking real. It's understandable when you have DJs with loops, but when you're a band, I don't really understand why you wouldn't have a live performing for synth. This is probably common practice nowadays, because the synth adds additional polyphony and makes the band sound that much "bigger" than they actually are.

On the whole, this concert was a real eye-opener for me. Watching all those guys on stage, I saw highly varied level of ability, talent and charisma. I really felt like I could be one of them, given the right opportunity in the coming years. I'll never stop making music regardless, though :)

I think if I had the resources, I'd really be able to design awesome live shows around my music. It's such a vast part of the art.

Comments

[sathor.livejournal.com]

With the way labels function nowadays, I've been under the impression that a great many singer's pasts "with regards to the band" are merely fabrications. When I watched these newer bands (Shinedown/Midnight) I felt like I was watching the lead singers overact, like a really -bad- actor might. Their music simply doesn't have the power and progression, melody and intensity that you get in classical music, in some forms of heavy metal and sparingly in most genres. Actually, I think the most bothersome aspect is that, compared to say, TooL, it feels like -there is no climax- to the music, just repetition. That's kindof the definition of pop rock. Granted, Papa Roach I always felt was a trendy group from the get go, but they've been at it ten years, I have to applaud that, and applaud the skills they've developed in that time.

But realistically, a Shinedown fan probably would have enjoyed the performance - if the guy hadn't been a complete dickhead. I can't believe you'd actually project any kind of anger at your own crowd - that's just fucking asking fate to take your ability to make music professionally. They've probably been on tour long enough for his voice to get a little shitty, but I still hate the style. He screams continuously on top of good music. They need to boot his ass out.

[sathor.livejournal.com]

No no, I meant that in a very generalized sense. It doesn't apply especially to any single band - it's just a general theory.

The bluegrass band my cousin has been touring in for years now recently got a new lead singer. She didn't know many of the lyrics for the songs they were doing yet (by heart) and had a very -very- privileged upbringing. She had seen many countries of the world by the time she was just becoming a teenager, and used to be a model. That's an example of what I'm talking about. They -always- want that kind of person as the front. I'm not saying she's some kind of sell out or anything like that - rather that these kinds of people are the kind that end up being the "face." Appointed by label.

And more or less, it's me bashing what's considered pop rock/metal/rap etc. Because for the most part, these guys and gals had connections and money that the vast majority of people do not have - that's what has allowed them to be where they are. It is very rare that you find people coming from backwater areas and working class families. Reznor was no exception, but his music -is- unique, creative, good, and most importantly, he has played the biggest hand in the final product.

Shinedown really, I'm bashing hard. To be honest, their bass is way too background for me to like listening. That's on top of the singer's lack of harmony (and for that matter, jumping on the screamo bandwagon - there's nothing artistic about screaming unless you're doing it like kittie, as far as i am concerned)

[sathor.livejournal.com]

This is partly why Bakunin talks about ending inheritance back even before Soviet Russia. He's the origin of moral anarchism, and one great, unique thinker. It is ridiculous we call it free market when the reality is that it will only be free when everyone is rewarded based solely on merit.

However, at least in the case of art, the internet has changed how much of it works. Most bands aren't actually making much of anything through record sales anymore - it's all online sales (if at all) and live play. Labels are losing.

My plan is to hopefully, before I'm 30, have the equipment necessary to do smaller-time gigs. I'll probably have stuff up on iTunes within the next year. But in my case, there is no label. If people buy anything of mine, all of it goes directly to me - which means I'll have more money to invest in my own music and advertising. I'd be taking a much different route as well. I imagine not charging more than $1 per CD-quality song download. If the provider wasn't taking much more than 10%, I'd be fine with $0.50. That makes it something worth purchasing even for someone who normally pirates music. 20 pristine quality songs for 10 bucks? You really can't beat that.

I'm slowly building a rather decent collection. Eventually, hopefully I'll have enough to put together an album. I probably already do (probably two at least), but it won't be cohesive enough.

There's enough serious electronic (and non) fans I've known who've thought my stuff was better than anything they hear in clubs for me to feel like I have whatever it is the listeners want. The problem is me being satisfied enough with my own work to finally put it out there, and settle down with a permanent name.

[sathor.livejournal.com]

Capitalism doesn't really thrive - it only thrives for a small few. It is meant only as a way of feeding the selfish (and typically never achieved) desire to be better than others (to be a have, while there are have nots), and to guarantee that families who do incredibly well will have much more to offer their children (even if genetically and potentially their children are not a good candidate for this support.) It also has to be noted that /western/ capitalism has thrived for a great deal of time by keeping other countries from living at our level. The world could not support every country living the way we do here in the west. This is something you don't see conservatives talking about - why do you -really- think we don't want other nations developing, and so we put in place trade blockades, we bomb them, and we even enslave them - but the final part is corporate achieved and backed by the US government to boot. People in America feel like slaves at minimum wage, so tell me how it must feel when the only job available is that of an American corporation giving you cents per hour? And then they turn around and sell it back to us, where we -make- somewhat decent wages, and take a greater portion of that as well.

If you take the conservative estimates for total US income (and this is likely leaving out major players, I don't doubt that a bit) and spread it equally amongst all US citizens over the age of 18 (that's each individual citizen) you end up with $36,200/y. That means for a mother and father, they'd easily earn 72,000/y together, which puts them above the current middle-class marker and well into an easy comfort zone. An individual person making $36,200 with no dependents is in an easy comfort zone.

There's a lot of hype about capitalism, but there is plenty of evidence that even back in the early years of this country people were not very happy about the idea. But we'll just toss all that aside and continue talking about it like it's the next best thing since sliced bread, while bashing socialism and anarchism, and all of the alternatives spawned because of the great thinkers who created them, without having read a lick of the information pertaining to it. THAT is the way most people in this country operate with regards to those ideas.

I am my own worst critic, but unfortunately until I'm satisfied that is never going to happen. What might happen is if I can find a provider that will sell individual songs, I will not even have an album, and just put it out there for people to basically -have-. I.E. sell it on tunecore, itunes, amazon, but also have lower-quality free downloads on a website so people can listen and enjoy it for free. I also want to mostly be donation-oriented, not sale-oriented.

But at this point, there's so much scattered around my hard drive I wouldn't even know where to begin. I jumped across an old song I sent to a few people and really thought it was great, but I can't remember what I named the composition file that created it. It was only a 192kbps mp3, so it's not exactly what I want to provide to song dealers.

[sathor.livejournal.com]

The soviet union was not socialist. There has not been a real attempt at socialism of any kind since the conception of the idea. Soviet Russia was a tyranny, and nothing more - they labeled themselves socialist to gain face from all of the intellectuals of the world, and the US labeled them socialist to make them the enemies of capitalism.

Real socialism wouldn't have a top-heavy government that gained large portions of the nations income, or create a military-industrial complex.

I think 36k/y would be easy to live on for just about anybody, as long as they didn't have that entitlement syndrome that people tend to have. People manage to get by on 24k/y in big cities - so what if it's not full of entertainment and fancy things - it's a comfort zone as far as most other ways of living in the world are considered, and that's a major reason why things aren't changing for the better in this country. We want to keep things the way they are here, but it's simply not sustainable without ever more advances in technology and cheaper ways of making necessities without slave labor.