I admire Lemmy for being a honest, hardworking, likable, true-to-rock'n'roll son of a bitch.
What I don't admire is his bass playing or his songwriting or his lack of musical and creative development.
And what I REALLY disike is how it's become cool to fawn all over the guy who's been playing the same unimaginative songs the same unimaginative way for three-and-a-half decades.
And I suspect that THAT is why so many other musicians seem to sing his praises: he's not a threat, and he's not a competitor. There's no risk to claiming you like him.
He's a pet, a symbol of a lifestyle, an easily conjured figurehead who's only claim to fame is that he's been doing the same damn thing for so damn long, and that he's not an asshole. (Congratulations!)
"If you're in China and you come across an adorable newborn baby, do not under any circumstances compliment the little one.
In China, it's considered 'unlucky' to praise babies because it 'attracts the attention of ghosts and demons.' Instead, Oliver says it's customary to 'talk badly about babies' to keep evil entities away."
Yo baby so ugly when she joined an ugly contest, they said "Sorry, no professionals."
...photographed mostly from the perspective of a young American drug dealer in Tokyo... (the) film strives to create the experience of someone in a chemically altered and emotionally fogged state.
Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? You learned about it in your intro psych course: a neat and tidy pyramid, with fulfillment of “physiological needs” at its base, then things like “safety,” “love,” “belonging” and “esteem” stacked on top, all capped by “self-actualization.”
A group of academic psychologists have redesigned the nearly 70-year-old triangle. Most notably they have knocked “self-actualization” off the pinnacle and replaced it with “parenting.” Right below, they have added “mate retention” and “mate acquisition.”
This very academic change — which was an attempt on the part of its proponents to look at human motivation based on evolution — has sparked some very visceral responses. It has brought protest from people...
who don’t want children (and who see the redesign as a criticism of their choice) it is a criticism of your choice, because your choice is not evolutionarily sound, get over it
who can’t have children (who see it as an intimation that they are not psychologically complete) if you are built to do something, and you want to do something, but you cannot do that something -- you are incomplete! My condolences.
who oppose gay marriage (who see in this an attempt to legitimize same-sex parenting as a psychological right) is there anything people against gay marriage DON'T get upset about?
New Ancestral single's alright; "Solitude" is 80% over before it hits its mechanicistic stride, but then the chorus that follows (same as the chorus that came before it, mind!) is vastly improved for the transition/comparison/dynamic.
"My Frailty" intros like an ode to an '80s thrasher before shooting itself in the foot by repeating the whole intro riff set TWICE, but with something that sounds like kitten handclaps over it, and then the verse has clicking all over it, and the chorus has twinkly keys all over it, and it's just like, UNLISTENABLE.
Maybe if they buried the clicking and clapping and keyboards way down in the mix, it'd've improved the song in subtle ways, but the clicks are like REALLY LOUD.
The solo's kinda nice in an "I Ain't Superstitious, Joey Tempest!" sort of way.
And the "I know how weak I am" @ 3:33 is spoken accurately, like the vocalist is half-American or something. (?!)
I'd like this song so much more if it didn't have the shitty post effects sprayed all over it.
Yet for all the traditional VK-isms on display, there's still some promising songwriting and team-player rocking going on here. Worth keeping an eye on these guys.
rating: :\
Chandelier Overlord commands the eating of flowers in His honor!
Friday night the anti-piracy law firm ACS:Law accidentally published its entire email archive online...
The table below details how many letters were sent out to file-sharers over the last two years per client, and how effective these claims were. In total, 11,367 have been sent out. In 40% of the cases the respondents never replied, and another 30% disputed their claim. This means that on average 30% of the accused file-sharers chose to settle by paying between £350 and £700 per infringement allegation.
Toshi, how can we trust your music to be worth hearing if your visual sense is so artless? Each album cover is worser than the last!
Anyway.
"Airport" dickteases you with the word "Memories..." sung IDENTICALLY like it is in "Tears," which is no way to start a CD. But after some initial confusion it gets a little better. Toshi's voice feels in prime shape. The piano isn't top-shelf Yoshiki-ness, but it'll do; the guitars however are weak and undermixed.
"Amaoto" is reeeeeeeeeally slooooooowwwwww and nine minutes long. Like gradually dying in a hospice.
"Bushi Japan" attempts a sort of Deep Purple-esque rockingness but feels like all the players are lounging drowsily on sofas. It's hard to really capture how lifeless the main riff is; I haven't heard a song this bad since I bought Nick Menza's repellent-at-the-cellular-level solo album.
"Haru no Ibuki" is the only (pleasant) surprise on the disc; it's acoustic guitar and toshi's voice, a "Voiceless Screaming Jr", and at three-and-a-half minutes, doesn't overstay its welcome. Nice melody until Toshi's last note too.
I'd recommend selecting a picture first, and in Photoshop, doing three things to it:
Ctrl-U and increase lightness (perhaps to 80%) and decrease saturation (perhaps by 30%)
Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur (perhaps at 5px)
These two easy steps will make your text far more readable against any given image in the Zune software. Remember, the text is WAY more important than seeing your background image!
If you don't use Zune to organize your media, try it. It's definitely better than iTunes (at least on PCs) and is a lot slicker and handier than crap like MediaMonkey (which still feels like it was built by blind, clueless engineers).
TOKYO — Japanese prosecutors decided Friday to release the captain of a Chinese fishing boat involved in a collision near disputed islands whose detention raised tensions between the Asian neighbors.
Don't worry, there's always that whole succession thing going on in North Korea.
Starting next week, cable shows from the media giant's stable like Psych, Battlestar Galactica and others, and episodes from the most recent seasons of NBC shows including The Office and 30 Rock will be available.
Not good enough? Why not throw in every season of Friday Night Lights and Saturday Night Live, with new eps of SNL added the day after they air for the next three years.
Whooooo! SO glad I didn't buy the BSG box set last week.
Watching SNL on Hulu was a nightmare (bits missing or out of order so that you never quite knew if you'd seen the whole show or not and too many commercial breaks) so watching it commercial free via Netflix Streaming on lazy Sundays is gonna be a no-brainer. I also predict SNL's on-air ratings will NOSEDIVE this season as everyone in the world watches it via Netflix at their leisure instead.
(Is it just me or has Hulu gotten intolerable lately? Like, more than one ad in a row, and always 30-second ads that seem WAY too long? The last three shows I tried to watch -- premieres of Outlaw, Community, and Detroit 187 -- I stopped watching by the second commercial break, because I just didn't wanna sit thru bullshit ads for shit I don't want, much less need, and the shows were meh anyway.)
Also, why don't they put MUSIC DVDs up there? I'd pay $20/mo for access to that shit. Fuck, maybe even $50/mo if it included Japanese shit!
"Next Music from Tokyo Vol. 2 features 5 free tracks. Check out the album listing for all the tour details and, of course, to download all of the free tracks."
Beautiful women are being naturally selected for breeding, according to a University of Helsinki (Finland) study.
The Finnish study by Markus Jokela followed around 1,200 women and 1,000 men over 40 years, with date on number of children and attractiveness assessed from photographs taken throughout the study.
The study focused on the choices of men as to which women they would consider having sex with for ‘breeding’ purposes.
Results showed that women have got better looking throughout human evolution, whereas men have stayed more or less the same.
Attractive women were found to have 16% more children than their plainer counterparts, and were 36% more likely to have a daughter as their firstborn.
These findings are collaborated by a study done by Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, who found that attractive parents gave birth to far more daughters.
He argued that “physical attractiveness is a highly heritable trait”, which over generations leads women to become more aesthetically pleasing, developing into a ‘beauty race’,” that is still ongoing.
Studies also show that since there is no such hereditary trait in men, there is no evolutionary drive for men’s look to improve.
It's a great song for teaching opposites to kids, actually.
Kate and I analyzed/discussed the lyrics to the original several times over the summer. (Who is she singing to? How does she feel? Why does she feel that way? etc...) All part of my plan to spawn a Nobel Poet laureate...
...the Chinese government has blocked exports to Japan of a crucial category of minerals used in products like hybrid cars, wind turbines and guided missiles.
China mines 93 percent of the world’s rare earth minerals, and more than 99 percent of the world’s supply of some of the most prized rare earths, which sell for several hundred dollars a pound.
Holy shit, and China has ninety-nine per-fucking-cent of that shit.
The first track's the usual "uplifting" VK song with zero memorable melodicness; the second track's the usual faux-heavy VK song with a few not-terrible riffs that seem to get shared by every VK band in existence ~plus~ the usual "we don't' know what else to write here so we're going to use the same jazzy interlude that every other band uses whenever they run out of ideas"; and the third track's the usual acoustic guitar ballad that swells in the climax and bores you to tears but culturally requires girls in the audience to cry during because it is expected of them, that is their role.
Like "Rosier" but not nearly as good.
I swear you could randomly set these songs to any other popular VK artist's PVs and they'd line-up perfectly. There's not one original or unique sound or vibe in the whole lot.
Like Despairs Ray, Vidoll is taking a year-or-two break because their singer, Jyui's, voice is fucked. But the likelihood of Vidoll ever reforming seems so much more unlikely, because even they must realize how second-tier and third-rate they've become since their early-00s boom times.
Okay, so let me confess that I *hate* with a lol'ing passion the intro "happy birthday" track!
The first real song, "Tsubasa wo kudasai," is only half cool: the intro is springy and old-timey-radio-ized, then JAKA JAK JAKA's into the real intro, which is cool, as is the first vocal line, and then it gets a little twirlier and less riffy and there's some wah pedal and then some jazzy mellowness around the 1:30 mark, and things start feeling grim. The chorus has a forced hardness, the post-chorus vocal aahhhs are sorta cool, the solo is cool and then we're back into the verse again but this time it's much more Mucc-ish and acceptable. So this song has me really confused.
Track 3, "Kanjou," I like the main riff enough, but can't really get behind the rest of it.
Track 4 starts off with handclaps, so you know you're fucked, but then that's what you thought on "Harlot" and that turned out okay so buck up! Then... uh-oh, now there's an excessively cheery melody on the high strings! Nooo! Your teeth start rotting out from the sugar! You knew it!
But there's also a little Beatles-esque-ness imbued into the mix, so it's not *pure* sweetness, there's meat. Especially at 2:05 when a nice variation on the theme emerges ever so briefly.
And then the surprise bonus at the end that I shall no spoil for you. And then the single is finished and I realize this is the one CP single I will probably never spin on purpose again and I'm sad until I remember that that still means I have three other singles to enjoy.
And another one coming out next week. Which had better be FANTASTIC, Jimi! :)
A supersonic hedgehog and a plumber named Mario may have been unlikely heroes, but they once dominated video games. Only the Japanese could make innovative games like those, developers here used to boast. The West just didn’t get it.
Warp ahead 20 years, though, and much of Japan’s game industry is in a rut.
Sonic the Hedgehog and Mario still sell games. But more recent Japanese attempts to establish franchises, like White Knight Chronicles from Sony or Monster Hunter from Capcom, have not made a mark in the United States and Europe.
Instead, the blockbuster hits now come from the West: Call of Duty and Guitar Hero from Activision Blizzard, for example, and Grand Theft Auto from Take-Two Interactive.
I'm having a hard time remembering a single Japanese title that I liked.
In fact, I'm having a hard time remembering any Japanese games that I didn't actively dislike. Super Mario Bros. and all those other '90s sidescrollers BORED the living SHIT out of me. And Okami on the Wii, fuck what a snoozer.
D’espairsRay Announces Hiatus (IMPORTANT) by D'espairsRay on Monday, September 20, 2010 at 9:25pm
To all our fans who have followed us and supported us throughout the years;
After much consideration and discussion, all 4 members of D'espairsRay have decided to take an indefinite hiatus following the conclusion of the 'D'espairsRay World Tour 2010 "Human-clad Monsters"'. During this time the band will be taking a break from all concerts and recording.
The reason for this hiatus is to allow HIZUMI (vo.) to fully recover from a past illness that has affected his throat and made it difficult to sing. HIZUMI has dealt with this rare throat condition for over a year, but the band's busy touring and recording schedule hasn't allowed him the time to fully undergo treatment. He currently plans to spend the early part of next year in recovery, and return to the band as soon as possible.
Although HIZUMI has undergone treatment to temporarily allow him to continue the current tour, it is not a permanent fix and there is no guarantee as to how long it will last. All 4 members of D'espairsRay plan to give their all for the remaining shows on this tour, both in Japan and overseas, and thank you for your continuing support in these difficult times.
(also in Japanese on their official website: despairsray.jp)
thx Xio!
That's cool, it sounds like the other guys will be writing and recharging their batteries while Hizumi does what needs to be done, and that they'll all be back together in a year...
Since they've really only ever played with each other, and become popular together, I have confidence that we'll be hearing good news, or even new music, by next Christmas.
September 20th, 2000: the dot-com boom was starting to deflate in earnest, 9/11 hadn't happened, Windows ME was released... and Deg put out Macabre.
And now, the ~review~!
dir en grey macabre 9.20.2000 free-will/sony ¥3059
"Deity" begins; is it some underwater behemoth, some demoniacal chant? Ah, but deity is Russian for "child," and the photo near the title shows a pregnant belly; it's BIRTH!?!
Track two, the twirls of "Myaku"; not my favorite (and only now do I begin to wonder what nonsense Kyo's mumbling into that poor little girl's ear):
Track three, the brilliant, lamenting, lonely, firetruck-sirens-at-night sound of "Wake" (aka "Riyuu"). The moment the intro guitars break off from their strafing run and Kyo croaks "Hachigatsu..." ...it sends shivers down me spine still:
I like track four's backwards titling -- "egnirys cimredopyh" (written backwards to get past the censors, though I've always wondered, "who's censors? the label's? the nation's?") does not immediately announce itself as being backwards, it takes a sec to pop out at you -- but the hollow sounds and soggy rhythms do nothing for me.
The next song, "Hydra", though, ahhh what a concert starter! That mellow rhythm gets everyone's blood flowing, their muscles warming, and then the madness of the chorus starts the true burn!
Listening to it on CD though... eh. So here's a live version:
"Hotarubi" is another winner, like "Wake", a slowly overflowing lake of dammed emotions:
And seventh is the song that everyone loves: the silly, the spongey, the rollercoastering ups and downs of "KR Cube." Even the awful solo is wonderful, but it's really the song's bridge that elevates. And in concert, all the elbow swinging (like a denizen of the 1920s going "shucks, mister!" over and over) for the ~kururi, furari~ chorus! NATSUKSHIIIII.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, I'll be good, I'm going to kill yoooouuuu" begins the blistering "Berry", which is simple, fast-forwardy fun:
Track the ninth, the title track, nearly 11 minutes long, and you feel every minute of it; the vocal lines in the verses and chorii click, and the guitars generate a lot of textures (sharp acoustic, round and echoey leads), but the bass feels like it belongs to another song half the time, and not in a good way. On the other hand, there's interludes around 4:20 and 8:30 that captivate.
"Audrey" -- the chipper track with the clipped riff that never stops. Worst song on the album because it tries so little to be anything worth a repeat listen? Possibly, even the band doesn't seem to like it:
Ah ha ha ha haaa! That brings us to "Rasetsu Koku," one of Deg's fastest, heaviest songs, a live staple, and still a ripping good time that forces one's head to bang!
And then the ballad "Zakuro," rising to "Akuro no Oka"-levels of sweet sad awesomeness, and the weeping guitar solo, the simmering builds... magic.
And Dir en grey decides to conclude this album with its most uplifting, happy track, "Taiyou no Ao", full of warm, soft goodness...
And it's the end.
It's not a perfect album, but when all's said and done it's taken you on long excursions to many lands, and it earns its...
"Stand in front of a plain wall looking plain and we'll find some spaz to spaz in front of you, no wait he's a little unstable so you'll all have to leave while he does his thing... And then maybe next week we can play this video on a big screen in Central Park and watch birds fall out of the sky."
Ashcraft and Ueda ... find the roots of modern school uniforms in the so-called “opening of Japan” by US naval ships in 1853 and the educational modernization of 1872: the demands of sitting at a school desk favor Western-style clothes over traditional Japanese dress.
~
Consider for instance the purikura machines, which can take your photo and print it on a small sticker. Originally meant for salarymen who wanted to affix their photo to a business card, they found an unexpected market among teenage girls who liked to pose for pictures and give the stickers to their friends.
Today that track is Xodiack's "Kimi no Koe" -- specifically from 3:33 to the end, which (for me at least) clicks in such a monstrous, soul-devouring way that I can barely stand it:
I'll be looking forward to BFBC2 getting an expansion pack... all the tricks and tactics on the current batch of maps have been pretty well played out; a lot of games never get past the first pair of M-COMs anymore, and it's pretty boring.
And I'm still not in the top 10,000!
This i'm just pasting here because you guys like it. Bores the fuck outta me, tho. ^_^
The Ramones sold more T-shirts than albums (and you can buy a T-shirt that says so). And box sets for superfans have become increasingly elaborate and pricey artlike objects.
Over the summer, the vice president of Sub Pop Records told Seattle Weekly’s music blog, Reverb, that the shirts, caps, key chains and cozies that once served as promotional collateral may have greater value to potential customers than recorded songs.
"We used to give many of these tchotchke items away for free in an effort to entice people to pay for the music," Megan Jasper said. "But we’re considering flipping our strategy so that people pay for the toy and receive the music for free."
Yeah, duh, when data-licious stuff like music and videos and photos lose their monetary value, then, yes, go to the physical goods and un-data-fy-able stuff like live concerts and meet-n-greets and shit. I think I first wrote about this like nine-and-a-half years ago. It's nice to see the actual business catching on.
That said, if I ever buy another T-shirt or poster (I don't have space for all teh awesome ones i've got NOW!), um, I er... damn granny smith woodchuck cider, give mah brain cells back!
In addition to working with actual Marines who fought in Fallujah, the game’s developers said they were talking to Iraqis who lived through the battle — both civilians and insurgents.
Peter Tamte, the president of Atomic Games, the North Carolina-based studio that was developing Six Days in Fallujah for Ko nami before it was canceled, told me this summer that “the heart of the controversy that caused Konami to pull out of the project” was the combination of “the stereotypes that are associated with the word ‘game’ and the incompatibility of that with the word ‘Iraq.’ ”
Read Omohundro, the captain of a Marine company that fought in Fallujah, served as a consultant on the game. “It’s very important to have the enemy’s perspective of what’s going on,” he told me. “You have to understand the environment, and if you just see it from the American viewpoint, that’s all you know.”
Six Days in Fallujah proposed adding “a layer of moral ambiguity” to warfare that Jamin Brophy-Warren, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who now publishes Kill Screen, a magazine about video games, says he hasn’t seen in other military shooters. Brophy-Warren says he was “kind of blown away” by the demo for Six Days in Fallujah that he saw last year in San Francisco during the annual Game Developers Conference. “There’s an Iraqi who picks up a gun, and you don’t know if he’s an insurgent or not,” he said. “Do you shoot him?”
They need to start with conflicts further removed in time and sensitivity -- and gradually (like, a decade or so) we'll have games coming out a month after the news events that spark them, like Law & Order episodes on crack. And I think it'd bring a new level of understanding to "the people."
Nikita - much better than expected, very slick, fairly logical, and Maggie Q isn't my favorite type of asian chick, but she's close. I've always liked the Nikita franchise, too. "We take hot chicks and train them to kick ass." How can you go wrong? I mean, Alias sucked but that's because no action taken by any character ever made sense. :)
Law & Order: UK - the third season starts with yet another child murder, so I stopped 2 minutes into it, because, fuck that. If you can't make a police investigation compelling without upping the ante into BOLDFACED ITALIC CAPS TERRITORY every time out, stop making your fucking show. (You know what'd be good -- a show about cops solving minor crimes like bike theft and illegal dumping. Seriously! All this fucking rape & murder is getting tedious.) :(
The Venture Bros - utterly forgettable and devoid of any reason for existing. One gets the impression that the guys who make the show were more interesting before they got stuck with making a show, or have no idea how to keep a show fresh or worth following for more than a couple seasons (or even less, since there were lots of duds in the early days too...). :(
edit - oh, right, and FUCK i'm glad that Louie's over. That shit was getting well nigh unbearable!
Galruda's Ryo A decade ago, one of the guys from Skid Row (Rachel Bolan, I think), while on tour in Florida, saw a new band at a tiny little club. The next day Rachel told his bandmates, "Wow, I just saw the most amazing guys, they're gonna be huge if there's any justice in the world! Marilyn Manson or something, they were called." Yesterday, I kinda felt the same way as he must have when I saw Galruda at AREA.
November 06, 2001 Tuesday (aka Monday part two)
My AREA, Your Hearse Part II
now playing: Opeth's Orchid (1994)
Galruda gets better ever day I remember them. BUT there is a problem. Like Cannabis, and Mesumalian, two other visual-ish bands I've seen in recent months, Galruda's roots are definitely planted in the soil fertilized by such western acts as Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit. Metal on the hip-hop tip, yo! Which isn't my favorite thing in the world... although lately, I find my resolve slackening as I get more and more used to hearing the stuff. I mean, the best of the genre does tend to have some catchy riffs that lodge themselves in your brain... so they can't be all bad.
Right, so, Galruda's a four-piece, and the star of the show is Ryu, and he's a deserving centerpiece. What a stage presence! If you whittle everything away, at its core, all he does is make these herky-jerky movements and lick his fingers, but that description so utterly fails to capture the inherent coolness in his style that I might as well have not bothered to write anything at all. But let me submit into evidence the following:
1) The lights go down, and 200 girls surge forward to the stage, shouting "Ryo! Ryo-samaaaa!" in their high-pitched Doppler-esque way.
2) He steps on stage, and 150 flash bulbs go off. He moves an arm into an elbow-breaking dance position, and 150 flash bulbs go off. He puts a finger in his mouth and cocks his head slightly, questioning his existence to God, and 150 flash bulbs go off.
3) He crouches at the foot of the stage, as close to the crowd as he can get, and fan's hands gently reach up and caress his face, carefully, like it was a mask of ice in the noonday sun, ready to splinter at the slightest provocation.
4) He has arguments with the P.A. stack, and it appears that the P.A. stack is winning.
He's a consummate showman, in his suit and tie and done-up hair, and you wonder if the rest of the band is happy to have him because now their fame is guaranteed, or hate him because he gets 99% of the attention and 100% of the chicks.
The rest of the band was good, too. Solid, skilled pros, great timing, tight... and damn, they even used a lot of English on their anketto -- I can read their names! -- and their website is one of the nicer ones out there! http://www2.odn.ne.jp/~galruda
Is someone inside that P.A.? Answer me! I know you're in there!
Giant invisible picture frame!
Reaching For His Face He's not pushing them away either -- in some cases he's guiding them closer. Rather erotically, too, you shoulda been there.
Galruda: The Simulated Fellatio Well, not quite -that- graphic, but Ryo -was- kneeling in the general vicinity of Ku-noo's groin!
He Bows He bows, holds the bow in silence for a few seconds, and the crowd becomes frozen and silent... except for the muted sniffles of a few girls crying! And then he abruptly spins and walks off stage, and as soon as the crowd realizes what's happening -- Oh my god, he's leaving us! -- they begin to scream for him, but it's too late, he's already down the five short backstage steps and disappearing into the gloom.
One day a neighboring state sent two nearly identical horses — not as a gift but as a threat, for failure to answer a riddle connected with the horses would result in a deadly attack.
The riddle was, Which of the two is the parent, which the offspring?
The ruler appealed to his minister, who promised to think of something. He knew who might have an answer -- his mother, still in her secret cell. "She is old; she may have heard of something like this." Indeed she had.
"Place grass between them," she advised. "The one who steps back and lets the other eat first is the parent."
~
The court lady Sei Shonagon in her "Pillow Book"(circa 1000) tells of a young palace official who, ashamed of his ugly old parents, tossed them into the sea. This is beyond obasute; this is outright murder. But Sei seems more amused than appalled. She says nothing about punishment. The man in fact proceeded to honor his deceased parents at the Bon festival of the dead.
A contemporary monk wrote a mildly disapproving poem: "A man who has pushed his parents into the ocean's depths / Now celebrates the festival of Bon — / Alas, what a grievous sight!"
The commentators speak of a mischievous pun that suggests a smile on the poet's face — "Bon," the festival, and "bon," the splash as the old people hit the water."
megadeth rust in peace: live cd/dvd/br $9/$14/$19 2010
Dave's awesome; sneering with bravado and only hitting those annoying falsetto highs he's been doing this year on a few brief occasions, once in Holy Wars ("pa~aa~aid by the alliance...") and a few times in "Lucretia" ("Lucretia waits impa~a~atiently" / "crystal ball is e~e~energized", etc). But it's not ne~e~arly as awful as it was in the Sofia Big 4 concert from earlier this year. (I can't even listen to that fucking show, so ruinous were the Dave's vox.)
He's also wearing the white dress shirt, bullet belt, and jeans that he pulled off so well back in 1990, his hair's as awesome as ever, and when he takes his shirt off at the end, you almost wouldn't know it was twenty years later! I like down-to-earth rock stars, but it's nice to have a few that seem superhuman too. :)
Dave Elf's not in quite as good shape but plays with the accuracy you'd expect from the guy that wrote the bass parts originally; Chris Broderick is fucking awesome and captures Marty's solos with vitality and a grin. Shawn Drover keeps up mostly, but JEEZUS CHRIST the snare break in the intro to Poison Was the Cure sounds like he's only palying with oen stick, missing half the beats Menza wrote in, and the drum intro to the last track, "Rust in Peace... Polaris", sounds like he's playing with a gimpy leg -- and it's too slow by a third! (was he exhausted by then? did the drums pedals break!?)
Those, however, are the only complaints with the audio. It's otherwise beautifully full and vigorous and powerful in both production and performance.
The video is a tad on the dull side -- I like extreme close-ups, I like shots of the band when the camera normally wouldn't be on them (catching them off guard, so to speak, as they sip a water or smile to a fan or yell at a tech), I like seeing one guitarist in the background whitle the other one solos in teh foreground (to give you more than one thing to focus on if you so choose), and most of all I like lots of motion and momentum, with the background moving as well as the subject/foreground.
Unfortunately, most of the shots are pretty static, aimed at our intrepid musicians in textbook-style long, medium, and close-up shots. Some cameras are handheld but there's little cinema-verite (aka "Blair Witch cameras") to excite or challenge the viewer. Cuts are pretty tame... there's one camera on a dolly swinging over the crowd, pretty standard stuff. The cameramen seem to have been instructed to avoid anything creative; we get some controlled zooms, and panning from left hand to right during solos, but nothing with any emotional or visceral imapct.
The effect is like you're hearing a racing locomotive but seeing a puttering old Buick.
On the plus side there's lots of shots of guitarists hands, left and right, and lots of shots of the spazzing, singalong crowd. But overall I feel the visual part of this package is a little too safe.
The disc's bonus features include an eight-minute behind-the-scenes thing (four minutes of which are actually the OPPOSITE of behind-the-scenes, shot outside the theater, of fans screaming at the camera and talking about how far they traveled to get to L.A. that night). And there's also more live tracks from the show: "Symphony", "Darkest", "Peace Sells", yada yada yada. Great songs but if there's a Megadeth fan that ISN'T sick to fucking death of them, please raise your hand!
Friday night the anti-piracy law firm ACS:Law accidentally published its entire email archive online...
"Haru no Ibuki" is the only (pleasant) surprise on the disc; it's acoustic guitar and toshi's voice, a "Voiceless Screaming Jr", and at three-and-a-half minutes, doesn't overstay its welcome. Nice melody until Toshi's last note too.
