Category: bmusic

12 Bonus movie Friday: Let me Rest in Peace

June 8, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Blogmeta · bmusic · movie · SSA week

Hey Cromrades, my #SSAweek Blogathon contribution day is rapidly approaching. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve pledged to learn, record, and post songs that you request, for a minimum donation of $10. Here’s a recap of the requests I’ve received thus far:

lorenprice pledges $15, and requests “Helter Skelter” by the Beatles
Cunning Pam pledges $25, and requests something by They Might Be Giants
jolo5309 pledges $10(? – didn’t specify), and requests one of three Canadian jazz(ish) tunes, to be chosen by me
John Horstman pledges $50, and requests “Thanks, Bastards” by Mischief Brew
Julia pledges $10(? – didn’t specify), and requests an original pro-science song her a capella group performs
Frogmistress pledges $10, and requests “3 Small Words” by Josie and the Pussycats
MSM16 pledges $50, and requests “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor
Karen pledges $10, and requests “The Ballad of Day Kitty” by Lou Barlow

A total of 8 donors and $180! I’ve certainly got my work cut out for me. There’s still lots of time for you to pledge and submit your request. I’d love to get past the $500 mark. Remember if JT Eberhard and I combine for a total of more than $1000, we’ll face off in an epic song battle to the tune of “Under Pressure” by Queen. If we outraise him, I’ll make him sing the RikRok part to Shaggy’s timeless “It Wasn’t Me”. Trust me – you’ll enjoy my Shaggy impression.

To try and pry your wallets open just a little bit more, here’s a video I shot last night that exposes me as the Buffy fanboy I am: … Continue Reading

3 Movie Friday: Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos

June 8, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · bmusic · crime · movie · race

Public Enemy was the very first rap group I ever heard (aside from Hammer, but even at age 6 I wasn’t particularly a fan). My own internal conversation about race was between me, my father, a nearly-monochromatic mountain town, and Messers D, Flav, and Griff. In light of the theme of ‘othering’ and black Americans’ experiences with the ‘justice’ system, I felt this song was appropriate (language obviously NSFW):

Lyrics below the fold … Continue Reading

2 Movie Friday: Clint Eastwood

April 27, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · bmusic · movie · personal

So last week I mentioned that my band does a cover of ‘Clint Eastwood’ by the Gorillaz. The cool thing about this song is that it features the rhyming of Del tha Funkee Homosapien, so covering it gives me a chance to rap, and provides the audience with something you don’t often see at a pub night. I said I’d get a recording for ya, so here it is:

I wish I could do something about the sound, but the microphone on my mobile doesn’t handle noise too well. If anyone knows a ‘fix’ for that I’d greatly appreciate it. If you’d like to contrast my performance with the original, here it is:

The self-aggrandizement continues!

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51 “I don’t even CALL it rap music…”

April 19, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · bmusic · Canada · forces of stupid · law · racism

I’ve been a hip-hop head since I was a little kid. I’m not sure what possessed my father to buy me my first album – Public Enemy’s Apocalypse ’91… the Enemy Strikes Black simply because I asked for it. I was 8 years old, and it took years of education for me to understand even half of the subject matter. Questionable parenting aside, I’ve always loved hip-hop. It wasn’t until my early 20s that I ‘rediscovered’ my love for the genre – an adolescence spent among friends who were almost exclusively rock fans limited my options a bit. As I’ve said elsewhere, I didn’t grow up surrounded by black folks, but listening to hip-hop was a way for me to connect to that part of my cultural heritage. Even though I didn’t fully ‘get’ all of the topics, I was able to glean an appreciation for issues that did not filter into the mainstream of discussion.

Now don’t get me wrong – there is a lot of awful hip-hop music out there. Even some of the stuff that gets lauded as ‘genius’ (I’m thinking specifically here of Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic” – I’ve tried liking this album; it sucks) is pretty bad. Some of this can be chalked up to personal taste – I’ve never found anything worthwhile in the materialistic top 40 stuff for the same reason I don’t bother listening to dance music – I find it repetitive and entirely disposable. Much of it can be chalked up to talent – a lot of so-called emcees should stay the fuck out of the booth until they learn to rhyme. There’s an aspect of exploitative marketing at work – since young white men are the largest consumers of hip-hop, labels prefer rappers that appeal to that demographic at the expense of better, more meaningful music.

Hip-hop is no better and no worse than other forms of music – there is a lot of really great stuff out there if you know where to look, but the majority of the market is schlock designed to turn a profit. Such is the consequence of for-profit art. No big deal, right? Well… maybe not exactly: … Continue Reading

8 Movie Friday: Fuck Shit Stack

February 24, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · bmusic · funny · movie

Don’t ask why, but the FTB backchannel was briefly full of My Little Pony conversation. I don’t understand the craze, but that’s okay because it seems like everyone else does.

If the show were more like this, maybe I’d watch:

WARNING: TOTALLY NSFW LANGUAGE! Also, you will laugh really loud, so make sure you’re in a place where you can explain yourself if need be.

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20 Movie Friday: Laughing With

February 24, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · bmusic · critical thinking · movie · religion

So for whatever reason, my musical selection is skewed strongly male. It probably has more than a little to do with the fact that I primarily listen to rock and hip-hop, both of which genres have strong macho bias. But whatever the reason, there are very few female singers who I really like to listen to. I’m a big fan of the Cardigans, Lauryn Hill (obviously), I was a big fan of Poe’s debut album (long before her name was a synonym for an internet troll), I thought Tragic Kingdom was pretty good… other than that though, women don’t feature large on my iTunes.

There is one female artist, however, that grabbed me from the moment I first heard her voice in a duet with Ben Folds – Regina Spektor:

(Please forgive the intro and the Spanish lyrics – the official video has embedding disabled)

She has a lot of amazing songs, and a lot of amazing videos, but this one got stuck in my head the other day. The lyrics are incredibly enigmatic, and they strike me as something of a Rorschach Test – the level of subjectivity lends itself to multiple interpretations. Ms Spektor apparently refuses to tell people what they ‘really’ mean, leaving it up to interpretation.

To me, it seems like she’s talking about the concept of ‘God’ as opposed to expressing an actual belief. Everyone takes the idea very seriously when the chips are down, but you’ve got to remember the lighter, more hilarious side of the idea that there’s a supernatural being handing out rewards and punishments. She also singles out its most fervent believers for a bit of ridicule – basically, it’s not something to be taken seriously. It’s a joke that we can laugh with.

Then again, the top-rated comment says something completely different:

Basically, if your plane is crashing, God doesn’t seem like a joke. You can spend your whole life not believing in a higher power and even ridiculing it, but if you’re moments from death and you know it, I think everyone would wonder.

Ah yes, the old ‘atheists in foxholes’ nonsense. Glad to see that some things never die. Wait, did I say ‘glad’? I mean ‘exasperated’.

Anyway, leave your interpretations in the comments! Lyrics below the fold.

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5 Movie Friday: In the Flesh

January 27, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · bmusic · conservativism · movie · politics

Since we talked about Republicans and their famous political strategy of demonizing minorities to gain the votes of the ignorant and bigoted, I’ve had this little ditty buzzing around my head:

Now I hope it is quite clear to everyone reading this that I do not consider the Republican party a violent white supremacist fascist group. They are not there yet, and I doubt they ever will be. As long as there can be free press and media in the United States, there will be enough people who can see through the darkest parts of the GOP (irony intentional in the word ‘darkest’, of course).

However, the threat of fascism to the USA will undoubtedly come from that party. For all their hysteria about “socialism” and fetishization of “small government”, it is the Republican party that has been committing the greatest crimes against democracy over the past decade, and who have been wielding government as a cudgel against those who don’t qualify as “real” Americans.

Anyway, I will try to find some happy things to write about next week.

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9 A ghost of Christmas past

December 26, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · bmusic · funny

It’s Boxing Day here in Canada, which is a statutory holiday, and absolute MADNESS in the stores. The legend goes that Boxing Day got its start as the day when gifts go back in their boxes and get returned to the store for stuff you actually wanted. In the spirit of returning stuff, here is a golden oldie from my very first blog that I started back in 2004 with a buddy of mine from Greece. In this edition, I take the piss out of Christmas music.

A Porocrom look at Christmas Music

It’s that time of year again… when there’s a crisp chill in the air, and a spring in your step. Where the only force stronger than the love that unites all of mankind is the force urging shoppers to trample each other in order to save 50 cents on a dented DVD player. It’s that magical time of year that we tell children to follow in the example of the baby Jesus and DEMAND another fucking Furby doll from parents too kid-whipped to stop and think what long-term damage mindless commercialism could do to their progeny.

It’s the one time of year that the voices in your head telling you to pull out an AK and spray death all over your local mall are drowned out by the sickening pablum of

Christmas Music

In true Porocrom style, I’m here to take a closer look at the songs that warm our hearts as we empty our pockets. Maybe some of the insanity that accompanies this season can be explained by the drivel that we play ad nauseam year in and out.

… Continue Reading

3 Classic Crommunist: Being creative without a Creator

October 13, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · bmusic · crommunism · religion · science · skepticism

Still in blah-mode. Will have something new up at noon PST once more. Until then, please enjoy this post that originally went up in August of last year, about a non-supernatural source for artistic creativity.

A friend sent me a link to a 20-minute talk on creativity by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the novel Eat, Pray, Love. I’m not a big fan of the book (I got through about 25 eye-rolling pages before giving up and reaching for the remote), but I am a big fan of (my friend) Claire, so I gave it a chance. I was right with her up until 8:30 when she started in on “creative mystery” and an external, supernatural source for creativity, and then the rest was invocations of magic and self-indulgent privileged pap, the likes to which Jim Carrey would be a fervent subscriber.

I do not know if Claire’s intent was to murder my neurons; I doubt that she was trying to lobotomize me through the intarwebz. She did ask me to write about some of my thoughts on the creative process from the perspective of an atheist. I suppose I have some claims to qualifications in this regard, given that I do spend the non-science half of my life playing and creating music. I’d like to share some of my thoughts on this subject, but first I want to address some of the themes that came up in Ms. Gilbert’s talk, which is available below: … Continue Reading

9 Movie Friday: Keep it Clean

October 7, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · bmusic · hate · movie

For new readers: every Friday, in honour of it being the weekend, I put up a movie instead of a long post. Sometimes they’re funny, sometimes they’re serious, sometimes they’re weird. It’s whatever crosses my desk as I wander around the internet, and it’s all for you on a Friday!

As you may know, I am a musician in addition to being a scientist. I began playing violin when I was 6, began singing lessons at 8, picked up the guitar at 14, and have kind of been going strong ever since. My long stretches of 9-5 at a desk are punctuated by weekends full of rawking out. I like to call it my Clark Kent/Superman life – I even take my glasses off.

One of my favourite musicians of all time has to be Dave Grohl. The first time I heard In Your Honor, I nearly lost my mind. I played it on endless repeat, transfixed by the skill and care that clearly went into each song. Sometimes you hear a song that seems like it’s speaking directly to you – every cut on that album (and it’s a double album) did that for me. One By One was also top-notch, and Echoes, Patience, Silence, Grace is a goddamn masterpiece.

This, however, is my favourite thing he’s ever done:

Dave Grohl: epic troll.

I often hear people ask what the best way to deal with the Westboro Baptist Church is. Should we slash their tires? Should we beat them up? Should we counter-protest? Should we point out the errors in their theology? Should we stand up against their hate?

Folks like the loonies in the WBC are like Bobo dolls – no matter how hard you smack ’em, they keep coming back smiling. They are a machine that is fueled by controversy, and the more agitated we get, the more they think they’re winning.

The only sane response to an insane opponent is open, unashamed, joyful and unrestrained mockery. The WBC are a joke. They are self-parody, and the only strength they have is in the anger they can stir up in us. They should be mocked – not because it would piss them off, but because they’re silly! It’s a backwater basement church full of lunatics with weird signs and comically offensive messages. If you put Fred Phelps up on a stage opening for Don Rickles, he’d have the audience rolling in the aisles.

Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters have shown us the truth: once we realize how monumentally silly the Westboro Baptist Church is, all that remains is a bunch of sad, lonely people following a confused and deluded old man in his vain attempt to return to the 16th century.

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