This blog will be music only

I will make a separate sports blog in a little bit.

SHIT!

Fuck!

Jeremy Shockey's out for 3-6 with a sports hernia.  Just when he and Drew Brees were starting to build chemistry.  Fuck!

We can still beat the 49ers, though.  I hope.

The good news is, Reggie Bust is now Reggie Beast.  Hooray for improvement!

NFL- who's living up to the hype now?

Expected breakout stars that are living up to the hype:

WR Calvin Johnson- Lions

Johnson had two consecutive 100-yard games to begin the season, and he's arguably the best player on Detroit's pathetic offense.

RB Reggie Bush- Saints

Has Reggie finally arrived?  Reggie has over 400 yards of total offense in his first three games, and that doesn't include yards from punt returns.  For the first time in his career, he has scored a touchdown in three consecutive games, including 2 touchdowns against the Broncos.  Last year, Reggie only managed 6 total touchdowns.  In only three games so far, he already has 4.

QB Jay Cutler- Broncos

The "Next Great Superstar QB" has been, um, the next great superstar QB.  Cutler trails only Drew Brees in total passing yards, and he also has 8 touchdowns and just 2 interceptions.  Vince Young and Matt Leinart?  Suck it.  Great QB's come from Vanderbilt.

Disappointments

QB Peyton Manning- Colts

Peyton looks rusty rusty rusty, and the Colts are 0-1.  So far, Eli has been the better Manning.

WR Chad Johnson/ Ocho Cinco- Bengals

He has been a ghost on the field.  If you do a gimmick like that, you better have a wicked season, and so far, Chad hasn't been there.

QB Derek Anderson- Browns

The fans' chants for Brady Quinn now seem warranted.

QB David Garrard- Jaguars

He has not lived up to his huge contract.

QB Carson Palmer- Bengals

The Bungles are 0-3, and Carson Palmer's been way off the mark.  His performance yesterday against the Giants was much better, but he has a ways to go to right the sinking ship.

What a huge win!

Jarrett Lee,

Thank you.  You are the man.  You stepped up your game when it mattered.

At halftime, it was Auburn 14 LSU 3.  And then it was LSU 26 Auburn 21.  This is also the first time LSU has won at Auburn since 1998.  The trend of the home team winning in the LSU-Auburn series which started in 2000 is broken.  And LSU snapped it first.

Brandon LaFell is one of college football's best receivers.  Last year, LaFell had bizarre turnover against Auburn that had him benched.  This time, LaFell has the game-winning touchdown.  He's also a complete football player.  When the play didn't call for him to catch, LaFell made plays by blocking.

LSU's biggest question mark, quarterback, has been answered.  If Jarrett can play like he did in the second half, LSU is a title contender.  He is not as mobile as Hatch, but he gets the ball to the wide receivers and he stretches the defense, which in turn makes room for Charles Scott.

Scott, who looks like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, ran for 132 yards.  Beastly.

The defense made plays.  Chris Hawkins had two interceptions.  There were sacks a-plenty.

You know, there's a quarterback in Gainesville who still doesn't have a fourth-quarter comeback.

LSU Football

1.  QB inconsistency is a concern.  Neither Hatch nor Lee looked comfortable in the offense.  LSU really could have used that game against Troy, but oh well.  Jordan Jefferson didn't exactly light it up either.

2.  You're a bad man, Charlie Scott.  Charles Scott continues to be awesome.

3.  Auburn's offense has no spark.  Seriously.  What kind of football game ends 3 to 2?  Yuck!

Chad Ocho Cinco

The batshit-crazy Chad Johnson is no more.

The batshit-crazy Chad Ocho Cinco has arrived.  I love the NFL.

Chad Ocho Cinco is what the NFL needs- a talented uber-eccentric.  His interviews are never boring, and the more I learn about him, the more interesting he becomes.  His obsession with "Talladega Nights" and his Lynyrd Skynyrd ringtone.  Oh yeah, and his new last name.

Johnsons are a dime a dozen.  I have Johnson blood in me, but there are so many Johnson's, I probably won't miss him, even though we are no doubt related somehow.

Ocho Cincos are much rarer.  In fact, I think there's only one.

Brian Wilson- That Lucky Old Sun

Brian Wilson has something left in the tank.

25 years ago, Wilson was a crazy fat drug addict nobody thought would ever speak a coherent sentence again.  Call the long-long-long-long-awaited release of Smile the final rehab project.  Brian is making new music again- good new music.  That Lucky Old Sun has moments of Wilsonian brilliance.  It is nowhere near the sustained quality of SMiLE or Pet Sounds, but please excuse Brian Wilson for this album's surprisingly few faults.  Even forgetting what he's been through, Wilson is 66.  Add in all the history, and this album is a miracle.  It's also pretty good.

The album's premise is really corny.  It's a tribute to Wilson's native Southern California.  I could have lived without the narratives that split the music, but aside from the one where Wilson tries to use Spanish, they're not as bad as you would imagine.  The album's worst moments have to be when Wilson and the Wondermints try to rock.  They're just too clean and polished to pull off a 3-chord rocker like "Morning Beat", but even that song has a really cool motive at the beginning of the track.  Wilson is too old to sing something like "Mexican Girl".  That one could have been given to one of the younger singers.  "California Role" sounds like the Beatles' "Honey Pie" in the wrong hands.  "Oxygen to the Brain", Brian's admission to his past drug use, sounds too much like a bad SMiLE outtake.

But then there are some real gems.  "Good Kind Of Love" is the kind of whimsical pop-tune that reminds me that there is something left in the tank.  "Forever She'll Be My Surfer Girl" is clearly self-referential, but it's good enough to work.  "Live Let Live" is 70's Beach Boys done right.  I absolutely loved hearing the opening of the brilliant outtake "Can't Wait Too Long" rerecorded.  It sounds exactly like the original, but better.  I wish they did the whole thing.  "Midnight's Another Day" is a beautiful ballad.  It's a little bit overdone, but it is very effective, and it fits Wilson's range.  "Going Home" sounds like a lost corn-rocker from Love You, but it works.  Love that harmonica.  The closing ballad "Southern California" is really effective, and it ends the album on a good note.  So yeah, good album.

At first, after I switched to BA Music from Music Comp, I was excited that I only had to take one more year of comp.

Now I'm thinking "oh dear God.  Not another year of comp."

Quite literally, I'm only doing it for the scholarship money.

Mom says "James, you can be the guy that makes Classical music popular again."  My response: "why in the hell would I want to do that?"

You know, I don't think "Gee willikers, I love Mozart!"  I think he was a cool guy, but I have never felt compelled to listen to him.  There will never be another Mozart.

I actually like Beethoven's music, but he's dead too.  There will never be another Beethoven.

Nobody's listening to modern classical music, and why should they?  Most of it sucks ass.  There are film composers, but nowadays, with music production getting cheaper and cheaper, it's becoming easier to score films and video games, and there's less demand and less money.

Zappa once said "Jazz is not dead.  It just smells funny" and I have to say the same thing about Classical music.  Beethoven will always be fresh, but all there is now is revivalism and tuneless academic/scientific noisemaking.

I am not saying that classical music should be ignored, but in the academic world, it is everything you study.  You follow their rules, and that's what you do.  There's now jazz studies here at LSU, but there they put the same sort of rules in there too.  I'm not really sure if music-writing is something that can be taught, and it certainly isn't something that can be governed either.  Besides, almost all music-comp guys eventually become either a. unemployed at 35, b.  stuck at college, working on their doctorals, or c.  becoming music students themselves.

One thing I have learned is I've got to please myself with my music.  You can't aim to please the crowd, because the crowd always changes, and eventually, you'll get abandoned and you never made anything you really wanted to make.

Here are a few reasons why I don't want to do comp anymore:

1.  I'm not interested in classical music.

2.  I don't want to be known as a composer.  It's such a disgusting term.  People should only be referred to as composers if they're dead.

3.  I don't want to make anything good, because if I make something good, then everyone will want more.  I don't want to be good at something I don't want to.

Seriously, if I was the world's best toilet cleaner, everyone would want me to be a janitor.

Favorite Songs of all time

Weezer

"Undone (The Sweater Song)"

Weezer

Geffen Records, 1994

Composed by Rivers Cuomo

Once upon a time, Weezer was good.  Very good.  Proof?  Their album named Weezer, the one with the band standing in front of a blue background.  Every song on this album is good, but track five stands in my top ten favorite songs of all time.  It's called "Undone (The Sweater Song)"

F#, B, C#, B, F#, B, C#, B...

Sometimes all you need is three chords and a typical bass-snare-bass-snare drum pattern.  I've never been able to write a good song with only three.  Rivers Cuomo wrote a fucking epic.  The guitar melody remains among the best and most eccentric of all time.  The melody is perfect.  The dynamic shifts from soft to loud are perfect.  The vocal harmonizing is fun.  This is one of those songs one can't perfectly describe.  The bridge is flawless and surprisingly disorienting.  The buildup to the end with all the "woooohs" that sing the initial guitar part?  Oh my God!  Perfection.  Nobody has been able to write a song as perfect as this one in a long time.

Partie Traumatic

Well, Pitchfork sure was quick to hop off the Black Kids bandwagon

Seriously, what assholes.  If you magically change your opinion on a band, you better explain it instead of just slapping a 3.3 and a picture of two pug dogs looking sad on it.  That's not cool.  Black Kids don't deserve the Jet treatment.

The only thing I hate more than the obscene amounts of hype piled on young, inexperienced bands like Black Kids is the sudden change of opinion everyone has once they get signed and hit #5 in the UK.  This is sickening.  I haven't heard it, but I can't imagine it being too bad with songs like "Hurricane Jane" on it.  EXPLAIN, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!!!

Pitchfork is an influential hub of music knowledge.  People's opinion feed off Pitchfork, and probably too many.  The problem is, it's almost as if Pitchfork pulled an elaborate prank by raving about their debut and trashing their new album.  With Pitchfork's influence, Black Kids' fame could vanish as quickly as it arrived.  And Pitchfork isn't giving any reasons why, either.  This is just plain wrong.  Rot in hell, Pitchfork.

Chump

My album has changed a lot.

I've gotten into Black Sabbath, which is awesome.  I'm adding a thick, sludgy guitar sound to all my songs.

A lot of my songs have changed, too.  A lot of the songs I made demos for are gone.  Only "The Monster" and "Christmas in July" (as "Yeah") remain.

I wasn't sure about rerecording "Smile Feral Child", but I believe that song is too good to leave off.

"Take Me Away" "Here Comes the Love Bug" "Nothin' Better to Do" "Yeah" "The Monster" "Taylor Morris" and "Three Minute Mile" are mostly done.  "Smile Feral Child" needs to be done, I need to write the lyrics to the middle part of "Not That Strong/ Chris Paul is God/ Faces of Death" suite and only the first part of a multi-section song is completed.  There's a few other songs I recorded, namely "Invinciblity", "75", "Perspective" and "Punk Song with Lots of Reverb" but I'm not sure about any of them.  "Invincibility" is really short and it has finished lyrics, so it could make it.

I'm mixing the album in my room, using my sound system.  I'm mixing drums and bass lower, guitar and vocals higher.  It makes for a clearer sound, and the guitar is low and dirty enough to make the sound heavy.

The album will be called "Chump" for now.  It was going to be called "Shamelessly Delightful" but my sound isn't shamelessly delightful anymore.  "Chump" fits me better because a chump is an unathletic person.

How to make your lyrics seem better than they actually are

1. If you have a bland set of lyrics, here's one trick I learned that can make a set of lyrics better.

Here is a bland set of lyrics I wrote.

Let's go caroling

sleigh bells everything

I just want to close my eyes

need no reason why

Christmas in July

I just want to close my eyes

April Seventeenth

time for Halloween

I just wanna trick or treat

dusk turns into dawn

life drags on and on

I just wanna close my eyes

Here's a cheap way to make it seem better:

Give the song a random, unrelated, title.

You can name it something controversial, like "The War In Iraq", or "Al Sharpton" or "White Guilt".  Instant speculation!

You can name it something completely random, like "Damn, Gas Prices Sure Are Expensive" or "The Monkey That Protects The Banana Horde."

You can describe the song without mentioning the lyrics, like "This Is A Song In Gb" or "This Song Involves An Acoustic Guitar, So That Means I'm Versatile".  You can also be cute and sarcastic like that.

See? You don't have to take your title from a lyric in the song.  Cool, huh?