Double Standard?

In a phone conversation with Dan Darling the other day, he mentioned an AEI event where they showed some torture videos from Abu Ghraib* - under Saddam's rule. Reporters were invited, of course.

* = MP4 file, may not play in Windows Media. If so, Apple's QuickTime will work. Warning, these videos are very unpleasant, definitely R-Rated and beyond. View at your own discretion.

LGF (who has now implemented registration for commenters, a development I'm watching with interest) notes that very few reporters showed up. But then, this is not unexpected. One is entitled to ask why some stories seem to receive endless front-page treatment, while others are being thrown down the memory-hole. Accuracy in Media does:

[Winds of Change]

Well, color me silly, but I think it''s fairly simple:

Not News: Tyrannical Dictator tortures own People! News at 11!

News: American Soldiers torture Detainees! News at 11!

I dunno, you tell me, which one is a shock to you?

I have to say, in that vein, I think it's a good thing that crap like Abu Ghraib is news.

What amazes me is that people are asking these kinds of self-answering questions with a straight face.

12:30:37 PM     Discuss: []


Lest anyone get the wrong idea...

BTW, please understand, I don't have anything against electronics, amplification, even distorting voices, anything of the like.

What I don't like is using the tech. to enhance people who can't actually sing themselves.

It's the same issue I had with Rap, back when it was starting out, it was being used to mask the fact that people didn't have good voices and didn't have anything to say, but that's ok 'cos "It's Rap".

And that's just Bullshit. Listen to someone like Nas and then listen to some of the early crap that came out in the 80's.

Or take Ozzy Osboune(please :)), I don't remember when it was that I heard him on a radio concert, and he sounded terrible, his voice, you could just tell. It was Shot, he was done, I basically said "God, he needs to stop doing those concerts". I have no problem him putting out a couple more albums, as long as the music is decent, and he can still sing in studio. But at least he could sing in the first place.

12:03:10 PM     Discuss: []


Free Association Music

It's funny, previous article is setting up all sorts of free-assiciation. I just thought about the beginning to the Joe Walsh song "15 years" where he starts with the song, then strums and you hear him say "could you turn up my guitar a little bit?" after which point the guitar is stronger, as if he were in a live show.

11:53:50 AM     Discuss: []


David Crosby on Music It changed it from being about the music to being about what you look like. And that was a terrible blow to music, because now you've got all these people who look great and can't write, sing, or play. [PBS Frontline]

Definitely a good article to read.

One piece that I found particularly interesting was the section where he talks about the use of Synthesizers, and how heavily they are used now to modify singer's voices.

For starters, I kinda already knew this, but I really hadn't paid it a lot of attention. After reading this article, I did. What I noticed was not just the "Boy Band Music Magic" crap that I have always noticed, I noticed how many singers are having their voices overlapped, and a huge amount of other "subtle" effects. By "subtle," I mean that you need to listen somewhat carefully to hear the effects.

It's funny, I remember growing up and listening to singers and trying to emulate them, people who I knew I had no hope of matching, like Rob Halford, and Bruce Dickenson (Yeah, I know, good idea emulating Opera-trained heavy metal singers.

What the hell do you get when you get people learning to emulate people who suck and are just being enhanced?

While writing this I was reminded of a passage in "Ringworld" where Louis Wu talks about listening to a huge (thousands of people) crowd singing singing in chorus and is entranced, and finds himself about to join in, when Teela, the other human in the expedition says "It sounds flat". Louis then notes that she had probably never heard something that wasn't amplified, re-recorded, etc, to work out the imperfections.

Baby, that's nothin' compared to this crap.

11:52:38 AM     Discuss: []