Butch's Latest
So, Butch Walker has a new CD out. I didn't like his previous release all that much. You can read my review but the bottom line is that it was too dour and mawkish. (The dourness was understandable as the poor guy's house burned down, destroying everything he owned. But that doesn't mean I have to like listening to it.)
Anyway, the latest is called I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart. So, how is it? Much better. Not perfect. But much better. About half the songs are winners. That sounds harsh, but I'm picky and have high expectations for the Rock God,
even if he's doing everything but rock-out-with-his-cock-out.
The first thing to know about this release is that it's all over the place. There are some typical Butch pop gems. And there are some of the somber pieces in which he has over-indulged in the recent past. But there's also some country. And one song that I swear must be Queen.
Part of it is Butch growing
as an artist. But that's just part. I realized what this release is while listening to it on my daily walk yesterday. This release is a production demo. In addition to being a musician, Butch also produces. And he's been successful at it. I'd wager that most of his income comes from producing, not from his own CD sales. And this release covers the bases in terms of production. It's a genius move, frankly, even if it leaves me feeling a little used.
So, let's get into the tracks:
Trash Day: Typical Butch pop song with snarky-yet-clever lyrics. But there's no chorus and no hook and there's not enough going on melodically to make it work. It's not a bad song, by any means. But it's not strong enough with which to open the album, either.
Pretty Melody: Overproduced. Not catchy. Tommy no like. It just doesn't work for me. The part right before the chorus sound like a Cheap Trick song I can't place. The piano is almost Costello/ABBA/Rachmaninoff, but not quite. The whole track is just kind of a stylistic mess.
Don't You Think Someone Should Take You Home: Nice shot at country, but misses the mark a bit. There are three problems with the song: 1) Butch's voice isn't gritty enough for this song. 2) There ain't no harmony. Maybe a little in the chorus? So little that I'm not sure. 3) The big bass drum beat every measure is distracting.
And why does Butch's voice change so much halfway through? Done right, this could be a great Jayhawks song. I'd love if Butch pulled a Reznor and made this available as GarageBand files, so I could tone down the bass drum and add harmonies.
Stripped Down Version: Oh good God, this is gorgeous! (The preceding exclamation should not be construed as an endorsement of the existence of God.) Lush, fits Butch's voice, some actual melody, soaring chorus. It's not rock, by any means. But it's wonderful. The little yeah
at the end of the chorus keeps it from being too smooth. It's a little touch, but it's important. The self-referential bridge is just clever enough to work without being twee.
Canadian Ten: Second shot at country. This one is much better. It's not as gritty a song, so Butch's voice works better. There's some fun harmony going on with the background singers. It's a beautiful song. That said, I hate it. It's just not my kind of song. But it's not a bad song. It's really well done, just not my cup of tea. Also, tweeting that I'm listening to this song generally nets me 6-8 fake followers.
Temporary Title: This song bugs me. It starts rolling along in a sparse fashion, then has that tell-tale series of three dropping chords to tell you that it's going to open up into a bigger form. And then it doesn't, really. It adds more instruments, but doesn't really grow. And you call that a chorus? Overall it's kinda catchy, but leaves me unfulfilled. It just feels lazy.
She Likes Hair Bands: This is pretty much the same sort of thing as Trash Day. Same sort of snarky-yet-clever lyrics. This one actually has a chorus. It's not bad, but it's not really hooky either. But the lyrics are fun. (The thigh/thigh rhyme
is more lazy than clever, though.)
House of Cards: Damn! This is a good one. Nicely done pop. Has chanted counter-vocals that remind me of Queen. Fits Butch to a T. Lots of melody. Good chorus. Nice orchestration that feels Beatlesque to me. Butch + Queen + Beatles = Tommy like! Why isn't this the lead track?
They Don't Know What We Know: If the previous track reminds you a little of Queen, this track really could be a Queen track. (And I mean that as a compliment.) You'll see what I mean at just past the halfway mark, when the squeaky-balloon Brian May guitar kicks in. Great song. As with the previous track, why is this buried on side two?
Days/Months/Years: This track is goofy, in a great way. The lyrics are, frankly, in the gutter. It's just a fun goofy gross track. It's pretty solid, musically, too. Normally, this is the kind of track that Butch might stick at the end of an album as a hidden track. (Instead it's the penultimate track. I'm guessing because the last track closes the album so well.)
Be Good Until Then: The album closer is a quiet little number that's basically a series of pieces of advice. None of it is earth-shattering, but nor does it feel, well, pretentious. It's just a nice little piece and feels just right as the closer.
So, there you have it. First half of the album has a great track and a few decent-but-nothing-special ones. The second half is loaded with gems.
I can't talk about the album without mentioning the sorta single that preceded it. Butch did a really cute cover of Taylor Swift's You Belong With Me.
I hate to be catty, but Butch sings it much better than Swift did, at least on the Grammy's. Butch can hit the high notes and sings on key. Swift? Not so much.
Anyway, it's the sort of big bouncy song of which Butch needs to write more. It sounds so much like really good Butch that it was a week before I realized it was a cover and not a Butch original.
I got a coupon for a free download of it with the CD. Of course, I had already grabbed a copy when he put it on his blog.
We Suck at Winter Sport
I was comparing Olympic medal counts today. Of course, we all know that the US has the most, followed by Germany, then Norway.
Feeling all proud about that, fellow Americans? Don't be. Adjust it for population first.
I grabbed the medal counts from the official site on Wednesday afternoon. They may have, of course, changed by then.
If you just look at the medal counts for the top ten countries, the good old USA looks pretty good. But if you take the population of each country and divide it by the medal counts, you get, basically the number of people in each country per medal. Which is a much truer look at how well countries are doing. And if we do that with the top ten, how do things look? Like this:
Wow! The USA gets its ass handed to it, doesn't it? Dead last out of the top ten. I'm guessing that if I included even more smaller countries, we would continue to plummet quite a ways.
The right-most column tells the real story. It's the ratio of how many more people each country needs to win each medal, compared to Norway.
Even second place Austria needs nearly three times as many folks than Norway for each medal it wins.
But look at the USA. We need over 40 times the people than Norway does for each of our medals. We need 11,874,808 people for each medal! That's nearly two and half Norways alone.
Man, we suck at this! And Norway fucking rocks!
Here's the same info as a graph, for the visually-oriented:
And all this doesn't even take into account the Norwegian Curling team's pants.
Battling Insomnia
My insomnia from last winter had basically disappeared. The problem seemed to be some chest congestion which prevented me from breathing well at night. A prescription for Advair took care of it and I was fine all summer and fall. (I actually have two extra discs I didn't use. Which is a bummer as they're $40 a pop.)
But then I started having problems again this winter. Not in breathing department, but I started having bouts of insomnia, limited mainly to Sunday nights.
Basically, it started to hit me during Xmas break. My wife gets more than a week off for Xmas. As we started getting up later and later each day, I started having problems getting to sleep at night, particularly on Sunday nights.
So I went into the doctor. After all, last time, there had actually been a simple fix.
Well, this time, there sort of was, too. He basically asked if we did anything different on Sundays. And I replied that we usually just relaxed. We work all week. We do the shopping on Saturday. Then we veg out on Sunday.
His advice? Stop vegging out on Sunday.
Well, okay, there was a little more to it than just that. He also recommended Benedryl or Tylenol PM to get me through the next few Sundays. (Keep in mind that, while Benedryl can induce extreme drowsiness, the body builds up a complete tolerance in, oh, about 3 days. So it's not something you can keep taking every day and expect a continued effect.)
I mentioned that I normally take Sudafed, or a generic substitute, for allergies. Oh, well, that stuff can cause insomnia. Oh, great!
So, what I've been doing is the following, throwing everything, of which I can think, at the problem:
- Exercise every day. (I'm supposed to be doing this anyway.)
- Stop taking Sudafed.
- Take Benedryl on Sunday nights.
- Don't take in any caffeine past early afternoon. (I've set the cut-off at 2pm.)
- Don't drink any water at all after 8pm. (So that I don't have to get up an hour after going to bed in order to pee.)
- Take some melatonin. (The doc recommended it.)
- Take some Vitamin D. (Since my insomnia seems to be seasonal, could it be related to decreased sunlight and a Vitamin D deficiency? Who knows. There's some anecdotal evidence, but no real science. But, since it's pretty hard to OD on Vitamin D, it can't hurt much.)
The results have been pretty dramatic. I get really freakin' sleepy after 10pm. We turn in at 11pm and, usually, I sleep solidly until morning.
Sunday nights have been fine. But Monday nights have been a problem. What happens is that I'll fall asleep right away, but wake up at 1am-2am, then have trouble falling back asleep. But, even then, I do manage to drop off within an hour.
I did have one really bad night, Sunday of last week. I couldn't sleep, eventually gave up and went downstairs, where I folded a large accumulated pile of clean clothes. Then I went back to bed around 4am and slept until morning.
So, why was that night so bad? It might have something to do with my skipping exercising the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday before. I didn't feel great on Friday, so I skipped it. Saturday, we had a ton of shopping and it was getting dark by the time we got home. And Sunday I was just lazy.
You can be damn sure I did my walking all three days this past weekend!
Creative But Futile
I ran across this page of really cool tea-bag designs.
I've used the Ineeka bags in the past. It's an inspired design that allows for a decent amount of room for the tea, while also aiding bag removal. All in all, a nice design and probably as good as you can get in terms of practical tea-bag design.
The other bags are mainly just graphically clever. A few have some sort of added feature to help remove the bag. But, in general, they're just exercises in creativity.
And there's nothing wrong with creativity, as long as you remember that tea-bags are a crappy way of making tea!
Everything is Porn
When it comes to porn, the court system is just fucked up.
The whole idea of community standards is just wrong. Why should someone's First Amendment rights ever be subject to the opinions of people who happen to be geographically close to them? It conflicts with the very idea of people having rights unassailable by the majority. It's nuts.
But, at least it's somewhat workable. If you don't like the community standards in one area, you can move to another. You shouldn't have to, but you can.
But now we have a mind-boggling stupid court decision regarding online porn.
Here's the deal: The court held that porn material online can be held to the community standard of any community in which they can be viewed. Let that sink in for a minute.
Yes, that means that you could produce a piece of porn in Los Angeles, put it online, and someone in Podunkville could watch it and then have you arrested for violating their local community standards.
Or, as one Slashdot comment put it:
So by that measure we should censor all pictures of women's faces as it violates the decency standards of Iran.
Now, let me be clear, Max Hardcore is a slime-ball asshole. If you get off on his movies, you have serious issues and you should see a shrink. Seriously.
But as long as the people making the movies and watching the movies are doing it of their own free will, it shouldn't be illegal.
But now, under this ruling, anything on the net is now subject to the standards of, say, Utah.
Oh, wait, Utah consumes the most porn, per capita, of any state in the union. Gee, I wonder why?
Agreeing with Hitler
I never thought I would ever agree with Hitler:
ModBook or iPad?
Well, the new iPad has been revealed. I'm not all that excited. For $500-$830 you get, well, a big-ass iPod touch with 3G.
I could do better by just taking my existing white polycarb MacBook and have it converted into a ModBook for $630.
Here's a quick comparison:
| Feature | ModBook | iPad |
|---|---|---|
| Internal RAM | 2 gigs | Unknown, iPod touch has 128 meg |
| Storage Space | 160 gigs | up to 64 gigs |
| Screen Resolution | 1280x800 | 1024x768 |
| Multi-Touch | No | Yes |
| Operating System | Real OS X | Enhanced version of stripped-down version of OS X |
| Multitasking | Yes | No |
| Run Any App | Yes | No |
| Run iPod touch apps | I have an iPod touch for that | Yes |
| WiFi | Yes | Yes |
| GPS | Yes | Yes |
| 3G | No | Yes |
| Price | $630 | $500-$830 |
The ModBook looks pretty damn good. If anyone thinks of additional points of comparison, stick 'em in the comments and I'll add 'em to the table.
Music Survey (4 of however many more until I get bored)
I'm renaming this a Music Survey,
rather than a poll because it's unlikely that anything would get more than a single vote. I'm just more interested in people's favorites.
So, here's the question:
What's your favorite cover version of a song?
Since this is a survey and not a poll, feel free to list multiple songs.
Music Poll Results (3 of ?)
Well, there weren't a load of votes, once again. But, hey, ten is better than six.
First place goes to the Ramones with 3 votes.
Second place goes to Black Flag with 2 votes.
Everyone else received a vote each: Crass, Fear, Fuckboyz, NoFX, and the Sex Pistols.
No one voted for the Clash.
Music Poll (3 of 50)
I think last week's poll was a little too difficult, hopefully a factor in the dreadful number of votes cast.
So this week's is an exercise in simplicity:
What was the best punk band ever?
There are loads of possibilities: Ramones, Sex Pistols, Clash, Black Flag, X, Dead Kennedys, and a whole shit-load more.
Have at it. Vote this time, dammit!
