OFF: (waaaaay OFF) Scene Report Alternarock USA 2001

[K Henderson]

DJ DoPe bringz us old-schoolerz up to date...

but first...
>>The Hard & The Heavy Volume One

OK, I saw this comp. in the store today and flipped through the booklet
briefly...and it looks like the "Overnight Sensation" on there is from the
"Everything Louder than Everyone Else" live 2CD.  At least there's a photo
of the album cover in there.  For Monster Magnet, they had the Powertrip
cover scanned in there, whereas their 'Gimme Danger' cover didn't actually
appear on that album, so...not sure absolutely if that proves that this MH
tune is the same or not...but I would guess it's nothing unique.

>A.F.I.
>Alien Ant Farm
>Puddle of Mud
>Sum 41
>P.O.D. - OK, the guys from Flipper *already* parodied the naming convention
>with their side project, "A3I" (Any 3 Initials - remember the early-80s
>hardcore era of MDC, SOD, MOD, SSD, SWA, JFA,

Hmmmm...I don't actually know who these be..."Masters of Destruction" seems
vaguely familiar.  I saw a band once called Corrosion of Conformity (musta
been one of those Danzig shows I saw) - I think they went by COC.  They were
really nasty FWIR.  I think Slayer may have been on that bill too.

So what does POD stand for?  In high school, we were all forced to take a
course in POD, which was Problems of Democracy...was that a Pennsylvania
thing or a national thing?

>System of a Down
>Linkin Park - every other band of the night had a four piece
>guitar/bass/drums/singer lineup (a couple of the singers played second
>guitar), but these guys added a rapper (in addition to the singer) and a
>DJ, who's actually the main reason I'm posting this message here.  Mostly,
>the DJ seemed to play "backing tracks" (keyboards & percussion) for the
>band to play along with (pretty lame IMO), but occasionally, he'd spin
>records with synth effects on them.  And damned if some if his between-song
>synth sounds didn't sound frighteningly like the parts between songs
>on 'Space Ritual' (only with less delay)!!!  Obviously, that was the best
>part of the band.  So don't be surprised if you play Hawkwind for a High
>School kid, and he asks, "whoa dude, who's their DJ?".

Hmmm...my brother has mentioned thinking this band (LP) is 'ok'...and if
they have a rapper, I find that rather hard to understand!  But then, his
taste has been gradually eroding over the years, due to (I'm pretty sure)
the fact that his son is now 14 and the influences are starting to work both
ways now rather than just 'downhill.'  :)  Last time I visited his place, he
was playing Rammstein, and I thought the world was coming to an end!  :)
What is that stuff anyway?  Is that "Nü-metal?"  I'd call it
gimmick-industrial....can't say it's awful, but it is rather
um....obvious...should I say?  Kinda like those dudes with the weird
costumes, Slipknot.  Never actually heard them, just seen photos.  I can
only imagine they're truly awful.  Blink 182 I heard for the first time
several days ago on Conan O'Brien (he has all the lame-o pop/alternative
bands) and thought maybe they were Green Day.  Blah and Double blah. "Hey,
Green Day - You're from Portland!  Act like it!"

On rap/metal, I remember a band from about 10 years ago (maybe three words
in their name) that were definitely 50% of each, and I just laughed at the
absurdity of it (little did I know...).  I think they were Canadians.
Seemed like they were one of the first, if not truly the first (not counting
that 'Right to Party' thing by the Beastie Boys...was about that same time).
Anyway, if someone knows who I'm talking about, are they seen as some sort
of 'legendary' trend-setters nowadays?  They were really bad.  I don't know
if they still exist - I think the 'singer' did something on his own for
awhile at least.

Anyway, I'm kind of interested to look at this year's top 100 sellers - I
remember that last year, the list I saw contained absolutely nothing that I
had purchased.  I did buy the Tool Lateralus CD recently (there's one at
least), and I even think it's worth having.  I'm amazed that this CD is so
popular - they played here at Ohio State in the huge bball arena (that can
seat 18000, but I'm not sure they had the full thing open that night).  It
really is quite the prog rock opus.  (King Crimson opened for them?  I
didn't realize it was working this way - KC I'm sure wasn't here that night
with Tool.  What's next?  Hawkwind opening for Monster Magnet?)  Do kids
think that Tool invented prog?  :)

As I don't ever hear the radio (my car hasn't had one in five years or so,
not that I even drive more than once a week), so I only get little snippets
of pop music from TV and in various businesses (like record stores).  Today
for instance, I heard some female-fronted punk band that obviously recorded
an album of cover tunes, as I heard one classic tune by Gang of Four redone
and then 10,000 Maniacs' 'My Mother the War.'  Who's that?  Wasn't that No
Doubt band was it?  (Wasn't very good.)  Anyway, somewhere else today I
heard this popular rap/metal :) tune with the lyric "Hey now, You're an
all-star..." which has to be about the worst song I've ever heard.  And
what's disgusting about it is that I can see that they put in a whole bunch
of sports-cliches in it in order to give it 'arenability,' i.e., the 'Who
Let the Dogs Out'-style free promo in every sports arena in the United
States.  Because every one of them plays exactly the same 15 songs (at
ever-increasing volume*), including three by Gary Glitter (what a genius he
was!) and once you get onto that playlist, man, you're famous for life!
Even if nobody even knows who did that song.

*Columbus has entered the 'big time' since we know have NHL hockey, so I've
heard how loud they play this shite now.

>Except for the overall mediocrity of most of the bands (but hey, the crowd
>dug 'em all, and I'm not gonna argue with 12000 people), I actually came
>out with a positive impression.  At least the kids are listening to ROCK,
>not some baggy-pants rave crap (apologies to all ravers on the list).  At
>least the kids know how to score (a LOT of) weed (one of the station DJ's
>MC-ing the event made a comment about all the burning xmas trees).  At
>least the bands stir up shit, the way rock bands are supposed to (you know
>they're playing to a teen crowd when they have to put this in the form of a
>question: "who here knows how to drink?  who here knows how to do DRUGS?
>who here knows HOW TO FUCK?"),

Too much of the first two, and the last one turns into a "Not today."
Was this asked of people at the door for entry?

Did they pull a Jay Leno and take all the young, attractive people out of
the general admission and move them down front where they could be on camera
and make a grey-haired old man look hip?

Grakkl (FAA)

Today's Horoscope...courtesy theonion.com
"Your life will be lauded by parents' groups for containing no sex, drugs,
profanity, violence, or adult situations."

P.S.  Today I bought Boredoms - Super, Bark Psychosis - Hex, and a sealed
UK-version of Porcupine Tree's Sky Moves Sideways (for $7) as a
for-trade/sale item.  Nothing here from any Top 100 list.  :(

P.P.S.  I looked again through my DVD collection (perhaps 15 items), and
found that nearly all *do* have a region declaration, just not all in the
same place.  Some are on the back cover bottom, a '1' superimposed on a
globe, but many are written out on the text ring on the disc itself in
little tiny letters.  A few are not marked anywhere at all.  With one
exception (a lone Region 0 disc - all regions), all of mine are specifically
Region 1.  Of course, I'm still ignorant about the NTSC-PAL concept in terms
of DVD playing.  It says right in my DVD manual that "DVD discs can be
either NTSC or PAL, this player will play both types."  Which, if what
someone here said is true, is not really the correct story.  But anyway, if
the NTSC-PAL issue with DVD's is the output that goes off to the TV, well
then, there's no switch or control on my machine for changing that, so I can
only assume that it knows what the TV 'wants.'  Actually, I do have my DVD
player hooked through my VCR (Since my TV is old and doesn't have one of
those special ports whatever they're called), but then my VCR really isn't
doing anything with the signal I don't think (just sending it along through
the auxilary), so I suppose it doesn't matter at all what type of VCR I have
(of course, it's a NTSC only).  So, as I'll never use a computer to watch a
DVD (I never use one to listen to music...well, almost never - this one
can't play music, and the one at home has such a slow dialup/modem that it
takes forever to download anything, and streaming is impossible), when I get
to Switzerland, I still wonder what happens when I buy a TV (now are these
PAL vs. NTSC, or is it just the VCR?) and plug a US-DVD player into it.  I
know, I'm rambling incoherently and I'm fixated on a simple situation, but
I'm hopelessly tech-illiterate.  I use Eudora 1.4.4 (and Netscape 4.08) for
instance, and wish I could still use my old DOS-based log-in email account
(that the university nixed four years ago)...it was so much faster than what
I use today (and I could do both email and USENET browsing at the same time
so easily and it never 'crashed'), and anyway the web-linking crap I just
find annoying.  Has anybody ever been typing a web address in a standard
Word-document and had the thing automatically create a damn blue/underlined
link device in the middle of your document?  Boy is that ever stupid.  Yeah,
I know, somewhere I can go and turn that feature off.  If I ever was
nostalgic about music, I'm finding myself 10 times more nostalgic about
software from c. 1995.  Everything that's changed in the last six years with
computers has been (from what I can tell) for the purposes of
'entertainment.'  Playing games, music, watching video - shit that I never
do.  Just makes the whole thing useless to me.  The 'faster' they are, the
longer it takes for me to get it to do what I want to do.  I want text and I
want numbers, that's all.  (Yeah, photos/images too.)  OK, I know half the
people here are IT specialists or whatever and I've just dissed your whole
field.  Go ahead, call me a luddite.  That's fine.

P.P.P.S.  I finally went out to the Post Orifice and sent out a crapload of
stuff that I owed people.  Sorry about the delay.  So those of you waiting
for a Quarkspace CD, they'll be coming in two-six days, depending on your
relative distance from central Ohio.