Hey, did you guys know the CMA awards are tonight? No? Well, what the heck is wrong with you? Didn’t you know that the CMA awards are the latest in a long series of battles the black man has to win? Darius “Hootie” Rucker has risen to prominence in the previously lily-white industry of country music (yes, I’ve heard about Charlie Pride. In fact, I’ve been punked by Charlie Pride. Is Chaz Pride nominated for anything this year? Hmm…let me checkNO) and is on the cusp of Obama-ing this whole operation. Can he overcome the “Texas Factor” and win Male Vocalist of the Year? Also, Will Taylor Swift be booed for going pop? Will she admit that “Cowboy Casanova” is about Tony Romo? Will anyone admit that country music is just bad pop with steel guitars? Will Danny Balis even get invited to sit in the audience? Will Brad Paisley admit that his real name is Brad Butterhammer?
The answers to all these questions, sadly, is no. The last one isn’t even true. I’m not going to watch, but that won’t stop me from disparaging the winners. Country music might as well be baseball.
11/11 — The most important made-up holiday of the year, perhaps? No, I’m not talking about Veterans’ Day — that’s real. I’m talking about s***t mansion day, which only comes once a year and fills us all with good feelings. I can’t wait for 11/11/11. I don’t even know what I’m going to call that day yet. What’s two degrees bigger than a mansion? The mind boggles.
Feel free to ignore the preceding paragraph. Back to music: do you remember that kid who really liked Queen, and had an IQ of about 80, and then read Orwell’s 1984? That’s Muse right now. The Resistance is pure stupidity wrapped up in big-sounding words, revolutionary jargon, and Queen. Not everyone should be allowed to read 1984 and apply it to their lives, is what I’m saying. It’s a fun album, though, even if they think that a vast right-wing conspiracy controls us in every way. Of course, they may just be exploiting dumb people to make money like so many other politically charged bands out there. Take the Dixie Chicks, for example — it’s impossible to know how much of the “I’m embarrassed to be from Texas” thing is real, or an act, or just something Natalie Maines said to be popular in front of a London crowd. The best thing to do (in the case of Muse at least) is to listen to the music and ignore the gibberish. Because it’s hypnotic, and will make you dumber.
That was pretty harsh. You might want to go ahead and ignore that previous paragraph, too. Let me rescue this post with some links I’ll entitle, “Songs you might not have expected Joy Electric to cover.”
That Feist song with the video that looks like an ad for The Gap. It’s fun because it really sounds like the kind of song Joy E would write.
That ubiquitous song that Coldplay stole from Joe Satriani last year — “Viva La Vida (not Loca)”
Finally, that painfully romantic song from the movie Once, which he covered even though in the movie she leaves him for a piano (at least that’s how I remember it) and in real life the leads recently broke up. Beware: This might make you weep.
It’ll be interesting to see if these links work after I post this.
