The argument that these poor, poor American soldiers were ‘coerced’ into committing these horrible things is being put forth, as though ignorance of the law or ‘just following orders’ will somehow remove the culpability of their deeds. – Yours truly, care of last week.
To further expand upon that, it would seem indeed that Whore First Class England, the woman who featured quite prominently in the Abu Ghraib photos, is indeed stating that she was ‘ordered’ to do the things she did from her superiors. Also, it was also learnt that she was more or less the prison’s f*cktoy. You know, when stacking innocent prisoners on top of one another and leading them around on dog collars got tired, the ‘boys’ would have themselves a ready and willing participant for their sexual activities. The kicker in all of this? The bitch is pregnant, so for those of you who were all ‘there are some people who just shouldn’t breed’, it looks like it’s a little too late for that.
To continue on about the abuses in Iraq, charges are coming forth that Canadian soldiers are also being investigated for ‘suspicious deaths’ in Afghanistan, as Canadian peace keepers are currently serving out there, helping to free up American troops to help ‘stabilize’ Iraq. Additionally, it wasn’t reported that much here in the North American media, but it appears that British soldiers are also being investigated for a number of abuses and deaths of Iraqi civilians, notable amongst them would be an eight year old girl. So, for those e-mails I got last week yelling at me because I was simply ‘bashing America’, I present you the sins of other nations troops, my own country’s included. Nevermind the fact that I talked about what Canadian troops were doing in Somalia a couple of years ago last column. Right.
For those few of you who were living under rocks and the such the past week, an American was beheaded by Islamic militants in Iraq. The video is floating around on the Internet for those of you who are curious to see it. I haven’t watched it yet, and I don’t think I will be able to. Seeing the photographs from the Iraqi prisoners and the video stills of Berg has been enough for me. The fact that humanity as a whole has such a wicked inclination towards the pain and suffering of our fellows is something that disturbs me greatly. Witnessing it through a video feed is more than I’d need to deal with, I think.
Ah, what it is to live in a world where my fragile, First World sensibilities don’t have to deal with mayhem such as what the people of Iraq are now dealing with on a day to day basis. Anyways, consider that to be part two of a public service announcement regarding world politics. As always, keep the e-mails coming, kids!
As for what’s been going down this week for yours truly? Not a whole hell of a lot, musically speaking. I’m really starting to get into the new Modest Mouse disc, which is a quaint little disc all in it’s own right. Aside from that, my life’s been very busy with work, work and more work. The time I’ve got not working is spent either at the pub, watching the Conference Finals in the NHL playoffs, or sleeping. I think my body just needs to adjust to working really long hours again and I’ll be back in the groove.
The good news is that my free time wasn’t totally dominated. That means that there’s a spot for…
Da News
News-lite this week, as there’s not much to be talking about that hasn’t been discussed elsewhere…
– REM have recorded an album’s worth of material and might be releasing it sometime later this year. The band has been recording down in the Bahamas and will be heading back to the States to finish up recording and mixing.
– Megadeth fans can check out the new mp3 the band is offering on their website, coming off of their upcoming album. Kick The Chair is their newest track from the still untitled disc, which is going to be due for a September release.
– As reported by Ashish earlier this week, Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor have begun work on the follow-up to 1999’s The Fragile. I also dropped word on this story back in, oh, February, but it’s nice to see that I’m read here on 411. In other Reznor-related news, it looks as though the much vaunted Tapeworm project, one that was listed as being a collaboration between Tool’s Maynard James Keenan and Reznor, has finally had the plug pulled on it. Damn shame, as the Tapeworm project was something that I’d been interested in for years, and would’ve liked to have heard at least something come out of it. To date, the only known performance of any Tapeworm material was at A Perfect Circle show in Vegas a couple of years back when the band performed 1-2 songs.
– A Pew Internet study shows that musicians, you know, the ones who are focusing their creative muses down into music for us poor souls to listen to, don’t believe that the RIAA’s lawsuits are going to do a damn thing for them personally. Additionally, only 5% of nearly 3,000 musicians and songwriters believe that downloading has adversely affected their careers or album sales. So, the question needs to be asked, then. If the artists don’t believe that the RIAA’s lawsuits are going to help THEM, the people that the RIAA are supposedly trying to protect and ‘save’, who exactly do the artists think the lawsuits are going to benefit, if anyone? The RIAA: Self-serving and looking out for it’s own needs moreso than Machiavelli himself. For more related music industry gibberish, check out PBS May 27th. Frontline is doing a feature on the music industry and how the biz is on the verge of collapse, and hey, Velvet Revolver are going to be featured on it. Seriously, this should prove to be a very interesting show and I’d advise checking it out.
– British retailer HMV has finally conceded defeat in the United States, the store will be closing 2 of their 3 remaining stores down in the States, with their third one following suit not too long after that. The well held opinion is that the retailer didn’t ‘get’ the American market, and attempted to do things ‘their way’, which the results proved ruinous. See? Not EVERYONE has to blame p2p downloading and Napster for the source of their problems! Idiots!
– The Warner Music Group has opted to go the way of Universal and drop the Suggested Retail Price (SRP) on more than 1,700 titles starting next week. Titles that have been available for 18 months or more get the price drop, with 1,200 of the titles will drop from $18.98-13.98 in price to a flat $9.98. The remaining 500 or so titles will drop in price from $13.98 to $11.98. Considering that Universal has already decided that this wasn’t the best thing to be doing, I’m not sure about the longevity of Warner’s plan, but in the meantime, there’s going to be some more discs that are going to be dropping in price in the next little while. Woo!
Anti-Pop: There Ain’t No Place For A Street Fightin’ Man
2 off-site links right off the bat, really quick-like. I think the headlines will speak for themselves:
Man Fatally Bitten To Death By Sexually Aroused Horse
Double Amputee Arrested In Rape Of 78 Year Old Woman
…Sunday Bloody Sunday, delivering to you the news that nobody else would want to touch with a ten foot pole! And now, on with the pimps!
This time around, I’m going to also match up 411 columnists with upcoming summer blockbusters that I’m wanting to take a look at. Hey, if Aaron and Jeff can get away with matching 411 writers with Transformers and food items, why can’t I go the route of movies? What, we have a Movies Zone? Since WHEN!?
– Jeff waxes on about shitty covers and states that the new Donald Rumsfeld disc is the worst musical idea since having Limp Bizkit cover The Who. While I’m not one to try and encourage dissent amongst my Minority Report compadres, I do have to beg to differ, as two rather horrible covers spring immediately to mind that, if not surpassing Rummy’s disc, at least equal it in it’s heinosity (yes, I realize that isn’t a word): Dolly Parton’s cover of ‘Stairway To Heaven’, and the Scissor Sisters cover of Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’. Jeff, whose columns are always informative and provide me with music news that I myself might’ve missed, gets the nod as Will Ferell’s Anchorman, one of the few comedies this summer that I want to check out.
– A-Cam, who hasn’t expressed his displeasure of that particular nickname and hasn’t given me a shove back through the Glass Ceiling thanks to being the guy who carries around the 411 Music Zone Championship Strap, sent me down a Nostalgia Lane thanks to his column this week, with his Transformers pimps. Cosmos was the first Transformer toy I ever owned, and I used to take him everywhere. Yes, this is important/relevent information for all of you out there. Ranks right up there with all the political stuff I was talking about earlier. I’ll match up Aaron’s column with the ‘family friendly’ remake of the Stepford Wives, as Aaron likes to talk about Mrs. Bootleg and little Jalen, as well as the fact that the movie stars the Immortal Christopher Walken, of whom A-Cam himself happens to represent just a tich (the ‘immortal’ part, at least…I mean, how else do you get to be 411 Music Zone Dictator For Life?)
– Mr. YOU reviews Bowie’s Diamond Dogs in his most recent Wayback Machine. Since we’re doing the historical thing here, Mr. YOU gets historical epic Alexander, which stars Colin Farrell for the Wayback Machine, and Mr. YOU himself gets to play the role of the hurricane in The Day After Tomorrow for his Thursday column, which tend to leave a path of destruction in their wake.
– Tom gets the nod as Arthur, as his column is the trend setter of the entire WORLD, and I expect Arthur to be the flick this summer to check out, much like Pirates Of The Carribean was last year. Check out the TMNT Freestyle this week as well. No, I’m not making that last bit up.
– What do Elliot and Shrek have in common? The number TWO! This summer, we’re being treated to the second Shrek flick, and Elliot’s made it two times, two times in a row for columns. Will he be able to threepeat this week? Will he be able to exorcise the demons that seemed to have inhabited the first paragraph or so of this week’s column? Will Shrek FINALLY conquer the world once his movie comes out later this summer, given all the god damned fanfare it’s been getting or will Elliot be triumphant in the end? TUNE IN NEXT WEEK!
– Mathan gets the Spiderman nod because of his double duties over in the Comics Zone. I was torn between giving this nod to Ryan T Murphy, given how much he loved the first one, but then I remembered he didn’t write anything this week and yeah, that was a lazy one, but hey, I doubt Mathan’ll complain.
– Melchor vs Aliens vs Predator, if only because Melchor would sound like a name of the Aliens home planet, or the title that an elder Predator would be given.
Sound Advice
I apologize for the rushedness of this particular entry, I’m not too fond of it and may do a re-write of it sometime down the road. However, I felt the need to do a feature on THIS particular inductee THIS week for reasons that’ll soon become apparent…
This week we’re going to be looking at a Canadian group out of Halifax that has their most recent disc getting the release in America treatment. Rockers Sloan, who have carved out QUITE the niche for themselves up here in the Great White North thanks to their Beatles inspired tunes have Action Pact coming out this Tuesday in retail outlets near YOU.
Sloan was one of the groups that blew up quite well in the mid 90s after Kurdt Cobain decided to play target practice with his face. Emerging from the ‘post-grunge’ landscape, they were embraced by Canadians eager for something that wasn’t so bleak as the majority of grunge/alternative music was. Pop, but not in a crappy sense like the Backstreet Boys or N*Sync were at the time, the group, which is made up of Patrick Pentland, Chris Murphy, Andrew Scott and Jay Ferguson became critical darlings both here and abroad.
The band have 8 albums to their credit, Smeared (1993), Twice Removed (1994), One Chord To Another (1996), Navy Blues (1998), 4 Nights At The Palais Royale (1999), Between The Bridges (1999), Pretty Together (2001), and Action Pact which came out in Canada last year, but this Tuesday in the States, as well as a couple of EPs, ’92’s Peppermint, ’97’s Rhodes Jam and 2000’s Don’t Believe A Word.
Notable tracks would be:
– ‘Good In Everyone’
– ‘Underwhelmed’
– ‘Money City Maniacs’
– ‘Other Man’
– ‘If It Feels Good Do It’
Check them out if you’re a fan of the Beatles or similar sounding groups, or if you’re into this whole ‘garage band’ stuff that’s the chic thing these days, such as the Strokes. You won’t be disappointed.
Other artists featured in Sound Advice: DSK, Knucklehead, Matthew Good, Joel Kroeker, The Dears
If you’d like to see an artist featured in Sound Advice, you can contact me on MSN Messenger or e-mail me at trevor411music@hotmail.com or catch me on AIM as flinch311.
The End Is The Beginning Is The End
Next week is a gong show for new releases, therefore I will not write about anything. Melchor’s got the goods tomorrow. Have yourselves a WONDERFUL Sunday!
