New Media versus Reality

As a long-time fan of Coverville, I was disappointed to learn there'd been some kind of kerfuffle at the Coverville 500 concert being held to celebrate 500 episodes of the podcast. The most common story on the Internet about it is that Richard Cheese, a cover artist who specializes in lounge-style covers (and whose first few albums are fucking fantastic) told the audience not to record his performance, grabbed a dude's camera, threw it at him, and spat at someone else. What a dick, right? Except as usual, the Internet is not so good with nuance. Or details. The whole incident is being blown out of all proportion, and it kinda sucks.

But the real thing that's astonishing me is that all these "new media" "superstars" think that just because they have a blog/podcast/YouTube channel/whatever, they're somehow special snowflakes who can do whatever they damn well please and fuck everyone else. I have news for you - you're not special, you're not an exception, and if you're going to keep recording a show after the performer has told you repeatedly not to, don't be surprised when he gets shitty at you. Don't be a fucking tool. Being in "new media" doesn't make you untouchable. And you commenters on these blog posts about it - you're even bigger no-nothing fuckholes with no grasp of reality for flipping your lids about how Cheese has somehow infringed your "right" to do whatever you want. Reading those comments is like reading YouTube comments with marginally better grammar.

But then again, Internet lol.

And full credit to Dick for trolling an entire audience, Clifton-style. I may've thought Silent Nightclub was ass, but this is proving you're still class.

Party Like It's 1989

God fucking damn I love YouTube sometimes:

It Was A Good Day (Week)

Pfft, as if a week off from this is anything new.

It was a good week. Got most of my work handled by the middle of the week, then made the most of the good weather on Friday, chilling out in the park, and then hitting up Yangmingshan Saturday afternoon. It's nice up there, nice and sunny, up above the smog and shit of Taipei, and full of people doing normal people shit you don't see in Taipei normally, like a family in the park playing backyard baseball. Nice recharge, and I'll slap up a few photos once I figure how to get the transfers off my phone working.

The nights were good too. Friday went out to Alleycat's at the invitation of Frost and got a nice dinner, chatting with people (and learning about the freakish genius of Blue Jam), before briefly going to the Taiwan Beer Bar and then to a place near the BJJ club called Playing, where me, Miltownkid, Pedro, and a few others hit up the hookah and potato wedges. Saturday, Bryan had a DJ gig at The Source, so from midnight till about 4 I was there making the most of the all-you-can-drink offer and spitting bilingual game like a modded PS2.

Then back into BJJ tonight after a week off for work/injuries/dodginess.

It was a good week.

Both Sides Now

Finally got off my ass and made it back down to Riverside for the first time in a while to check out one of my favorite indie acts here, Coach. Unfortunately, first I had to sit through the support act. (pic related)

The first act of the double-header, and as such the first hour of two, was a band I'd heard of only in passing, The White Eyes. As it turns out, there's a reason "in passing" is the most I've heard of them. They represent almost everything that is epic fail in Taiwanese popular and youth culture. The music is technically tolerable, but they desperately, desperately want to be punk, except for the fact they have none of the talent, emotion, experience, or linguistic capability necessary to do so. The guitarists do nothing more than thrash out the same piece of shit "melody" that they've robotically memorized for EVERY. SINGLE. SONG., while the "vocalist" - in the loosest sense of the term - screams incoherent English lyrics into the microphone. Even better, she seems to have decided that punk = British, so she does all this with an amazingly affected pseudo-English accent and peppering her songs with Britishisms like "bloody," despite clearly not understanding them. This leads to her sounding like the bastard love child of Sid Vicious and Mushmouth, but without the eloquence. Even worse, they have no stage presence. None. Zero. It was the loudest hour of boredom ever.

tl;dr: The White Eyes are fucking lifeless, soulless, poor excuses for robotic punks.

But then Coach came on, and renewed my faith in Taiwan and Taiwanese music.
These boys know how to put on a fucking show. Talking shit to each other and the audience between songs, getting the audience singing along - no mean feat here either, each of the instruments working together instead of sounding like a bunch of showoffy fucks, and a lead vocalist who stalks and bounces around the stage like he owns that shit. The sheer energy they put out in that hour had everyone in the crowd enjoying themselves. Good thing, too, since last time I saw them they put on a decidedly average show, and sounded like they were going soft. Turns out that was a slump, at worst.

You'd think in a culture so oppressive of creativity, independence, and individualism, Taiwanese youth would freak the fuck out like their Japanese counterparts do. But no, most just buckle under the pressure and become robots capable of little more than soulless memorization and repetition. Thank God there are some who manage to come out of the process with some sense of themselves. That minority give me faith that perhaps there's a chance Taiwan's going to end up alright after all.

For your listening pleasure (and as a reward for getting through all that crap): Coach - Ballet Girl (mp3)

OMG MY MUSIC'S BETTER THAN YOURS

So for the past few days I've been on a major jazz kick, after being driven by Jolin and her ilk to the point where I was about ready to fucking give up on music altogether. I was sorting through my CDs the other day and found my copy of A Love Supreme, and after throwing it into iTunes I remembered why I enjoy that shit. So since then I've been trying to find a decent record store around here with a good selection of jazz (IN BEFORE "lol download it"), and managed to grab a copy of The Blues and the Abstract Truth on an Intarwebs recommendation, with a good half-dozen other CDs lined up for the next few weeks. Also finally realized that Blue Note is like 1km up the road from the new apartment, so that's a large serving of win too.

To close, enjoy this shit - Miles Davis and John Coltrane performing So What from the album Kind of Blue:

MP3 downloads:
John Coltrane - Acknowledgment (track 1 from A Love Supreme)
Miles Davis - So What (track 1 from Kind of Blue)