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Sturgeon's House

Collimatrix's Terrible Music Thread


Collimatrix

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As this video explains, the '70s was when the gulf between Soviet and Western ideologies was at its widest:

 

 

While the Soviet Union created the T-72, the USA created hippies, and languished on with a variety of lackluster tank designs that failed to copy even basic Soviet innovations such as TURNING THE GODDAMN ENGINE SIDEWAYS WHY DON'T YOU TURN THE GODDAMN ENGINE SIDEWAYS WHY IS THIS SO HARD?

 

But even hippies were not so bad, and I'm not saying that just because I was raised by them.  Pre-hippie pop music is ghastly:

 

 

See?  If I had to listen to that crap, I would consider ending Western Civilization in an orgy of mud and lies.

 

Which is exactly what happened.

 

See?  Hippies are not so bad.  They are just like you and me, but they embrace the darkness and madness of Nyarlathotep and accept their place in the great scheme to end all things.  They believe that man was made in the image of rodents, and that all works of man will flicker out like a candle stilled by the cold winds of the uncaring cosmos.  That is what they are really talking about when they say "peace" and "love."  They mean "the death of all you care for" and "do not resist entropy."

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While the Soviet Union created the T-72, the USA created hippies, and languished on with a variety of lackluster tank designs that failed to copy even basic Soviet innovations such as TURNING THE GODDAMN ENGINE SIDEWAYS WHY DON'T YOU TURN THE GODDAMN ENGINE SIDEWAYS WHY IS THIS SO HARD?

 

Because then there is no room for the internal gas tanks and you end up carrying gas around in external tanks like a bunch of Soviets.  

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Concerning Robert Allen Zimmerman, AKA Bob Dylan

 

 

 

 

Credit goes greatly to Tekky for opening my eyes to the cosmic horror and insanity that helped me write this.

 

One of the founding, constitutional documents of Sturgeon's House, which is hidden where you cannot see it, contends that the following people are undesirables, guilty, among other crimes, of gnostic turpitude, and are considered to be, therefore, enemies of the state:

 

-Hippies

-Furries

-Hippies

-Hipsters

-Hippies

-Animeas

-Hippies

-Emos

-Trotskyite Wreckers

-Hippies

-Trustifarians

-Albigensians

-Sickos

-Annoying Smug Atheists Who Think The Da Vinci Code In Any Way Resembles History

-Fucking Goddamn Hippies

 

 

However, as a dedicated aesthete, I cannot condemn art simply because it had the misfortune to be created by some reprobate.  At the temple of Baal there were human sacrifices and wild orgies, but I would not demolish it the way the Islamic State did.  And I'm not saying that because I like sacrificial orgies; it's coincidental.  I even appreciate good art by people whose beliefs and culture I find to be actually reprehensible.

 

As I may have mentioned once or twice, I hate hippies.  Hippies are civilization-wrecking thugs, liars, scoundrels and wastrels of the highest order.  If some curious oscillation had caused neutrinos from the sun to suddenly interact with all hippies and proto-hippies in 1968 thereby vaporizing them, the world would have been spared much pain.

 

However, it must be acknowledged that much of their music was really good.  Perhaps no other artist was closer to the hearts of hippies than Bob Dylan.

 

 

"OK," you say, "sure, Bob Dylan wrote the ultimate hippie song.  That's all that is; he's foretelling the destruction of Western Civilization by goddamn hippies.  It's not even a particularly prophetic sooth; given that the song was written while hippies were infiltrating and demolishing the university system, and given that Dylan was obviously a hippie himself.  It's more like a battle song.  An interesting period piece, and an evocative one, but nothing more."

"Furthermore," you note, "this song displays Dylan's weaknesses.  He can't goddamn sing.  Listen to this duet with Johnny Cash who most certainly could sing:



They're not singing in unison, and it ain't Johnny Cash who's off!"

And it's true.  Bob Dylan was a mediocre singer, at best, in the early days when he was pretending to be Woody Guthrie, and even then only by the undemanding standards of socialist folk agitators.  He got worse after that.  His instrumentals were not bad, but remained essentially workmanlike throughout his career.  So what, aside from his impeccable fit into the terrible hippie revolution, makes Bob Dylan so special?  We live in the messy, tornado-like wake of that event after all, and the hippies are all too old and disheartened to execute us for blasphemy against the heroes of the revolution:



It's the songs themselves.  It's the lyrical poetry that men twice as old and hardened as myself have said they would exchange years of their lives to have written.  These are songs that will turn the mediocre into guitar warrior-poets.  A devious deity descended from heaven, took hold of Link Wray, spoke in notes and said "recite," and there was Rumble.  That deity?  That devious, profane muse?  Bob Dylan has their number.  He's not so talented a performer that it's always obvious, but it is the plain truth.  Behold:

 

Is this not a performance that should be remembered for all time?  Well, I can't say for sure, as I have not yet been around for all time, but I think it will be.  When the objectivity of a hundred years has winnowed the steel from the slag, this I think will remain.  Hendrix's howling, dissonant guitar is correctly considered virtuoso, and we know it now for sure because he had the good sense to die before he could make any mistakes whatsoever.

 

But don't forget that Bob Dylan is a part of this performance.  That's his song that Jimi is making scream.  That needs to be remembered.

 

"Fine," you say, "this is all very well.  Hendrix did a Dylan cover that was really good.  So what?  That just proves that Jimi Hendrix could make anything cool.  He made nineteenth century cavalry uniforms a hippie thing.  How the fuck does that even work?

jimi_hendrix_general_Lasalle_royal_hussa

 

Obviously, Hendrix's iconic rendition of All Along the Watchtower is not proof of Bob Dylan's genius, but further confirmation of Hendrix's."

And you would be right.  On its own, the piece is not convincing.  So let's observe some more data points, shall we?

 

Rise Against is normally like a less shit version of Linkin Park.  There are worse things to be than that, I guess.

 

But suddenly they're transformed into a screamy, early nineties super-lefty punk group.  Like Rancid with a touch of Black Flag.  If everything they'd done sounded like this; a genuine, heartfelt call to arms to liquidate the bourgeois class and end its expropriation of the proletariat's surplus capital, critics' hearts would flutter a bit every time their name was mentioned.  Not flutter a lot, but a bit.  They would be name-dropped in Seattle.  Pitchfork would bother being a little disappointed with them from time to time.

 

It's clearly an improvement.

 

Still don't believe me?



This is a good music video, and not just because My Chemical Romance gets police brutality-d.  They've somehow transformed into a vaguely Flogging Molly-esque hard rock act instead of a ghastly, cynical and utterly forgettable piece of commercial detritus listened to only by tweenagers who wear fishnets with leather miniskirts, black eyeliner, black lipstick and a shirt from hot topic that says "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERFUKERS" that sets off their limpid eyes and black hair with purple streaks in it.

In fact, it's a little sad.  My Chemical Romance is clearly competent enough to turn out reasonable hard rock/punk, but some horrible perverse incentive of the music industry keeps them from doing so routinely.  In nearby parallel universes, My Chemical Romance is actually an OK band.  You have a taste of that might-have-been, courtesy of Bob Dylan.

 

Still don't believe me?



Yep, it turns out that Miley Cyrus is actually reasonably talented.  In a not-too-distant parallel universe she's a moderately well-known country/folk singer who opens for Luncinda Williams and has one really good collaboration album with Jewel.  You know, instead of Miley Cyrus.  You are seeing a heart-breaking sliver of that possible reality that was dashed to pieces by some cynical, tone-deaf, money-counting bastard.  Your heart was just broken, courtesy of Bob Dylan.

 

Could it be that any reasonably talented artist who covers a Bob Dylan song is good, even if their talent was so carefully hidden by the soulless and evil currents of the music industry that it was hithertoo undetectable?  Could it be that Bob Dylan is rock Midas?  Time for the ultimate test, motherfukers:



OK, well that was... tolerable.  It did not feel me with dispassionate loathing.  It is an undefinable improvement over normal Ke$ha, if only because you can't divide by zero.

So he can't make K3$h@ good per se, but only God himself could.  Bob Dylan isn't quite God.

But damn, does he have a way with words.
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-In which colli tries to prove he's more of a hipster than you, despite hating hipsters-

 

 

Dylan's lyrical formula is simple. He abides only by the rules set by folk music, but throws in undertones of Marxism.

 

These have become the very same rules that govern any and all hipster music, and if you stray outside of them, that's "selling out".

I'll give you that Dylan's lyrics are better than the other elements of his music. I'll give you that the lyrics inspired a generation (aging hippies certainly won't shut up about them). I'll even give you that other artists (and "artists") can cover Dylan and achieve a whole new (often better) sound.

But I grew up on a forsaken peninsula where sea winds blow and the only civilization was brought by the United States Navy. It was a land outside the influence of the hippie, and therefore Dylan doesn't to me have the same hearth-smell that he does for others who grew up with him.

So he basically sounds like ass, but his lyrics are passable, I guess.

 

Here's Cash covering Trent, a rightfully famous combination:

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Best airborne song ever, yes even better than the VDV theme

 

Great to play at full volume while carpet bombing HATO columns with Su-22M4's and wiping out HATO commando's with glorious Czech paratroopers 

 

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