Blog Responsibly (a quasi-sequel to 'Zuckonit - the Ten Deadly Sins of Facebook').

In The Social Network, Rooney Mara's character Erica Albright says something to Mark Zuckerberg about blogging.  I can't pull up the actual scene right now, as my kid is watching Gnomeo and Juliet and turning it off would be like getting between a mama bear and her cubs, so my paraphrase will have to do.  See, Zuckerberg gets drunk and blogs about Albright in the beginning of the movie, and after she (and hundreds of others) read it, he finds her in a club later on and she scolds him about it.  The line goes something like this: "You sit in the dark and write on the internet because that's what the angry do nowadays.  But the internet isn't written in pencil, Mark; it's written in ink."

And truer words were never spoken, on either point.  The problem with the people about whom she speaks is their awful tendency to multiply, showing barely any form of evolution during the process.  This is, in my opinion, most evident in the twin Mordors of the internet: blogging and forwarded e-mails and their increasing workloads of carting pure bullshit around.

I'm sorry; what are you talking about anyway?

Tell me if this sounds familiar.  You get an e-mail or blog link from someone you know, regarding a topic on which he or she is known to be invested.  The article you're sent clearly supports your friend's stance on this issue, and the article's author is either insulting a type of person the author is, or is praising a type of person the author wasn't until just recently.  The author at some point uses him/herself as the justification for writing the article, which would otherwise be seen as bigoted trash.  I'm going to use the same three blogs or articles here throughout the rest of this discussion: one each on sex, religion and politics.  While they're usually 10 to 15 paragraphs long, they'll almost always contain a line similar to the following.

EXHIBIT A: "Men only think of women as objects - trust me, I'm a man."  

EXHIBIT B: "It's a fact that atheists are wrong and (insert religion here) is the truth!  Take it from me; I really was an atheist until I converted to (insert same religion here)."

EXHIBIT C: "I begged the homeless guy to take my money and he turned me down!  He said Obama gave him all the money he needed to live comfortably and I was a sucker for working for a living.  Trust me, I really tried to give him money, and I was always a big supporter of the homeless and Obama!"

It's not that confession or conversion stories are bullshit in and of themselves - I have a few myself - but it's the nature in which some of them are presented that betrays their near proximity to bullshit.

Why would someone bullshit like that in a blog or an e-mail?

This is the easiest question of the bunch.  Usually it's so someone with a specific ideology will get his or her voice heard in support of that ideology, but they are too lazy or insanely incorrect to find the proper supporting data as you would in a real debate, academic article, etc.  Sensationalism attracts attention, so it's not a surprise that this kind of communication has found its way online, where it can very quickly reach the world.  The other reason people do this is to attract more readers through a series of wild claims and assertions instead of valid points and rational thought.  It's easy, it's eye-catching and it's presented believably.  It just isn't very honorable.

Why would people believe that?

Most likely because it doesn't require a lot of proof to be a convincing story.  In terms of blogs, who would lie about themselves in a negative way?  Look at that first example above: "Men only think of women as objects - trust me, I'm a man."  The speaker seemingly addresses his empathy with a very serious and real problem women face: male objectification.  Historically, when someone addresses what many see as a problem, and acknowledges it as a problem himself, a solution usually follows.  There are myriad psych studies about leaders offering solutions to problems that I won't bore you with here.  This is just a microcosm, a subtle example of that - and who wouldn't want to listen to someone who understands their problems?

The other reason some people believe these things is a little more "Big Picture."  Blogs and e-mails with agendas claim to be written by public figures or private citizens - I used to get the same e-mail from Ben Stein, George Carlin, Bill Cosby and "concerned citizens."  In reality, they are ghost-written by employees of think tanks that are allied with politicians seeking to gain votes.  They get broadcast because of the clout associated with famous people making controversial opinions.  Sometimes, to be funny, I'll write a ridiculous e-mail and author it as someone famous and send it to people who have sent me those e-mails - both as entertainment for those of us who know they're little more than propaganda and as a lesson to those who don't that they need to consider the validity of information before they send it on.  If you've ever gotten an e-mail from Ben Stein complaining that Obama is merging the two Dakotas into one state, you can blame me for that one.

But you said yourself some confession/conversion stories are believable.  Wouldn't that mean some of these people are telling the truth?

Absolutely.  Everyone in my family - myself included - has those stories, and they're true.

So how do you know who's bullshitting you?

It depends on the writer and the typical audience in each case.  In Exhibit C, the writer spends a half-page of a newspaper swearing he was a big supporter of "left-wing causes like welfare and Obamacare" and is "shocked" that someone would ever take advantage, but only now is he starting to question the integrity of said programs.  If that's the case, how does that story get published at a right-leaning news outlet?  Is the writer really a lone wolf leftist at the publication, going against the grain of everyone else there?  Did the publication reverse its last five years of hard political leaning, risking its entire readership, just to tell the story of one poor writer who tried so hard to help the snotty leftist hobo who, in turn, rubbed the writer's generosity in his face?  It's up to you to decide which makes more sense.

I'll tell you though that every time I recommend you listen to an album, watch a movie or play a video game, it's because I've done so myself and think the contributing entertainers truly deserve your dollar.

What's the point of all this?

To those writers:  Stop.  You are the enemy of free media and the First Amendment.  You are creating the same spin machine you claim to hate on 24-hour news networks, and you're hiding behind "free speech" as an excuse to not hold yourself accountable whenever someone catches you bullshitting or disagrees with you.  You're failing in spectacular fashion to meet the responsibilities of a writer.  If you have an innovative, fresh, entertaining thing to say, you'll do better in the long run with credibility and a clear distinction between fact and opinion than you will playing the sheep in wolf's clothing - yes, sheep in wolf's clothing, not the other way around.

To the readers:  Don't play into bullshit.  Every blog you link to, every e-mail you forward, puts you in some writer's employ.  You're representing that writer's opinions as something you support and believe in and it's costing you more than you know.  I've lost friends and readers for things I've written and shared and you've done the same whether you realize it or not.  Free speech is a right AND a privilege; knowing when and how to exercise it is something a lot of people don't understand.

Doesn't that make you a hypocrite?

"We all whores, Frank." - Ving Rhames, Bringing out the Dead

Well, that's a possibility, isn't it?  Like, for one, I said, "Don't trust people who claim to decry something they're a part of," but I also said "Bloggers are shit - trust me; I'm one of them."  Then I said "Bloggers use fantastic claims and just get you to forward their links around" and "Everything you link to puts you in some writer's employ," but I also ask people to share my writer's page on FaceBook and to link to my writing any time they like.  Honestly?  That's a real pickle for you and me.  

I'm amazed if you're even reading this, let alone near copy-pasting the link somewhere.  It is my firm belief that every word I've written in my life is for entertainment first and education second, and I'll tell you openly I'd love to get more readers, sell more copies of my books and make more money, just like any other writer.  On the other hand, the difference between me and Exhibits A through C is that there's a reason I separate my work into so many blogs: I want to make it abundantly clear what you're getting into as a reader - no bait-and-switch here.  This blog you're on is for rants, raves, reviews, opinions, recipes, etc; This Job is Killing You is for samples from my writing I intend to have published as part of a marketable product one day (or already have); Penny Cavalier is devoted specifically to superhero culture and my second book; and Stay Out Stay Alive only pertains to another upcoming project of mine (DisasterLand) and other apocalyptic work of its ilk.  

I truly hope that whenever you get the urge to share a link of mine (and I can see where my traffic comes from and I do truly thank you for sharing my work), it's because of the quality and entertainment of the content, not because it may seem "controversial."  I'm honored if I can cause some intelligent discourse between you and your people, but please know I aim to please - not to pander.

Well, this has taken me all day.  Have a good evening.

The Audiovisual Experience of 'Koloss.'

Every so often, something about a music project piques my curiosity enough that I feel compelled to write about it. As a long-time music lover, I find myself very interested in between 30 and 50 albums a year and write about one or two. This is one of those instances.

Let's get the obvious out of the way quickly. Koloss is the seventh full-length studio album from Swedish prog-metal act Meshuggah, released March 26 in North America. Meshuggah's trademark down-tuned eight-string guitars, intricate songwriting and aggressive vocals return for Koloss's entirety. Boasting 10 tracks and clocking in at just under an hour, Koloss is in every way the colossus it claims to be. It explores themes of the erosion of privacy in everyday life; a large, imposing force on the public; and so on. Fortunately, Meshuggah have opted to stick with what they do best and expand on it, rather than take a lot of the big risks that have made music fans grimace at so many other bands in the past. Remember Puff Daddy and Jimmy Page ruining Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" and turning it into "Come With Me" for 1998's Godzilla soundtrack? Yeah, I wish I didn't either.

Recently, Meshuggah has especially excelled in bringing together an entire album as a whole project. Their release Catch Thirty-Three featured 13 tracks that were one continuous suite. Its companion release, I, is the opposite - one 22-minute song that sounds like a whole album. Koloss rises to this occasion as well - though the tracks are clearly separate, and no leitmotifs or ostinatos appear to unify them, one full listen to the album draws the listener in to the idea that Koloss is a jigsaw puzzle and each track is a piece.

What first raised my eyebrow about Koloss is its digital artwork. Created beautifully by Keerych Luminokaya, the brown-and-black-tinged cover featured above is just one part of the overwhelming mural on the back of the 15-panel foldout liner notes accompanying the copy of Koloss that arrived in my mailbox on Wednesday. Luminokaya calls this piece "Gateman." Though some art critics and cynics may compare Luminokaya's high-detail digital artwork to that of Alex Grey or even H.R. Giger, Luminokaya's detail and style clearly make his mark as a unique and priceless visual artist. It's so visually stunning I had to order the vinyl just to see it larger. There are hundreds - if not thousands - of waves of textures and individual lines that constitute the massive "Gateman." Out of pure coincidence, I spent one complete listen of Koloss just looking at Luminokaya's artwork on the front and back of the booklet. As I read the lyrics and pored over Gateman's faces, vectors and triangle fractals, I started to realize not only how well its intricacies and overwhelming presence fit the sound of the album - even the heavy brown color palette matches Koloss's no-frills sound production - but that the two were inseparable.

Sure, it's easy to marry the massive, dark and intimate sound of their 2008 album Obzen to its polarizing artwork - which features a naked three-armed meditator with no body hair, arms dripping blood, sitting on a cement block...but Koloss provides this audiovisual onslaught on a level that makes it simply impossible to disassociate one from the other. The aforementioned triangle fractals adorning Gateman's background remind me of many of Koloss's guitar riffs, in 3/4 time and progressing from simple to labyrinthine - the main riff of "Do Not Look Down" comes to mind specifically, as does the overall structure of "Behind the Sun." The sheer weight of the artwork is a perfect representation of Meshuggah's larger-than-life sound, the latter largely provided by drummer Tomas Haake. The intimidating malevolence represented by the dozens of snakes and regal pose of the Gateman is reminiscent of Jens Kidman's brutal vocals and the pop-free metal riffs of guitarists Fredrik Thordendal and Marten Hagstrom and bassist Dick Lovgren. The level of detail in the piece conjures up the guitar-pick maelstrom of Koloss's faster thrash-influenced tracks like "The Demon's Name is Surveillance."

Meshuggah's Koloss and Keerych Luminokaya's Gateman are each such labor-intensive works alone that they deserve their respective lives and places in 2012's creative landscape, not to mention a king's ransom of kudos and respect from music and art lovers. In fact, I have no doubt that Koloss will be one of my favorite albums of the year, metal or otherwise, and I've been made a lifelong fan of Luminokaya's artwork. When working together, though, they become more than the sum of their parts, making 1 + 1 = 3. This is the musical equivalent of chocolate and peanut butter, if chocolate and peanut butter could kick you in the nuts and shove you in a coffin. I don't rate albums I review, but I will pay this pairing the highest compliment in which I believe - it is masterful. These are two distinct artists who have mastered their crafts and taken it to unexplored heights. If you don't at least give them a chance, you're missing out on one of the great collaborations of the year.

Holiday Movies that Don't Suck.

Some of us are getting a little tiresome of just seeing It's A Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street every holiday season - here are some alternatives.

1. Scrooged - If you're a little sick of the normal telling of the Charles Dickens classic "A Christmas Carol" - and it's ok to admit; it's not actually a declaration of war on Christmas - you should definitely take a look at this update. For those unfamiliar, Bill Murray plays Frank Cross, a "work around the clock" money miser who dodges his nearest relatives for the holidays and works his underpaid assistant to the bone, completely ignoring the assistant's troubled child. And his secret regret is not sticking with his kindhearted young adulthood love. Sound familiar? Well, the differences are Frank is a high-powered TV exec, his Jacob Marley is his old boss - "the man who invented the mini-series" - and the whole movie takes place in 1980's New York. The always-genius Murray is complemented by wonderful performances from Bobcat Goldthwait, Carol Kane, Karen Allen and Buster Poindexter. The script manages to keep the heart and meaning of Dickens' tale and put it in such an unfamiliar setting (and more adult humor) that you'll find yourself looking for parallels to the original after your 20th viewing. My favorite? Taking Scrooge's "A bit of undigested food" explanation for Marley and referring to the warning spirit as "A hallucination! Russian vodka...poisoned by Chernobyl!"

2. The Nightmare Before Christmas - One of the highlights of Tim Burton's career, Nightmare is the story of the king of Halloweentown, Jack Skellington, as he and his spooky friends try to adopt Christmas as their own holiday. Released in the early '90s, this is a gleefully CGI-free stop-motion feature, and one of the few musicals with tolerable songs (all by Danny Elfman).

3. Love, Actually - This English ensemble romantic comedy shows the lives of over a dozen characters intersecting and humorously finding their true loves. I'm not a romantic comedy person at all, but the charm and fun throughout Love, Actually - from Hugh Grant's new prime minister with a boyish crush on his assistant to Liam Neeson's absurdly supportive stepfather helping a little boy get the attention of the object of his affection - win me over every time I see it.

4. Trading Places - Definitely a classic, though not much about Christmas. Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy play perfect opposites - the former an upper-class milquetoast with a butler, the latter an impoverished con-man. Aykroyd's evil bosses decide to place a bet on nature vs. nurture: if they ruin Aykroyd's life overnight and hire Murphy as his replacement, will the men take to their new roles or were they "born into" their places in society? Jamie Lee Curtis plays Aykroyd's would-be girlfriend - a prostitute who takes pity on him and helps him get his life back, for a percentage. It takes place around Christmas, of course, and one of the highlights is seeing Dan Aykroyd go back to his office completely drunk, in disguise as Santa, and seeing the mayhem that follows.

5. Elf - Will Farrell is Buddy the Elf, who, as a baby, snuck into Santa's sleigh and hitched a free ride back to the North Pole from an orphanage in New York. He's twice the size of everyone else there (including his foster father, Bob Newhart) and at one point he decides he has to go back to meet his real family in New York - including his real father, James Caan, a children's book publisher with a heart like a lump of coal. Zooey Deschanel shines as the cynical department store elf whose lack of enthusiasm is eventually warmed by Buddy's faith and naivete about the holidays. I wasn't crazy about Elf when it first came out, but Newhart's deadpan delivery starts a snowball (no pun intended) of great performances throughout.

6. Bad Santa - If you'll excuse one more awful Christmas reference, you'll want to make sure the kids are nestled all snug in their beds before popping in this adults-only R-rated comedy with Billy Bob Thornton as an alcoholic burglar who uses his gig as a mall Santa to rob department stores blind every Christmas. Directed by Crumb and Ghost World's Terry Zwigoff, Thornton is supported by Bernie Mac, John Ritter, Tony Cox, Lauren Graham and Brett Kelly as he moves in with a loser kid (Kelly) under the guise of being Santa. This is about as funny as it gets, and it could make a veteran sailor blush. One of the darkest comedies I've ever seen, but definitely one of the best Christmas movies too.

7. A Christmas Story - Jean Shepherd wrote (and narrates) this amazing narrative non-fiction film about a nine-year-old kid growing up in the '60s who wants a BB-gun for Christmas. Originally published as a series of stories in Playboy from 1964 to 1966, this was adapted into the now-classic movie starring Peter Billingsley as the kid and Melinda Dillon as his mother in the early '80s. Besides a child's love of presents above all else, Christmas Story explores such classic childhood themes as being bundled up in winter clothes to the point of immobility, tongues sticking to frozen poles, fathers battling decades-old furnaces and lying to your parents to get out of trouble.

8. 200 Cigarettes - This ensemble dramedy takes place on New Year's Eve, 1981 and revolves around the lives of a couple dozen people trying to reconcile love and growing up while the clock ticks down. This is a decent flick worth a watch to break the George Bailey Doldrums.

9. A Charlie Brown Christmas - One of the few awesome classics (in my opinion). Join the Peanuts gang as they search for the true meaning of Christmas and belt out one of the most excellent Christmas songs ever, "Christmastime is Here." I'm also a sucker for that song's use in Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums, but it's a testament to its timelessness and nostalgia for a childhood classic.

Sneaking A Couple In for the Men

I'm becoming convinced that casting directors hire awesome actors for small parts in sub-par romantic comedies to keep the men interested - which is what I thought would happen with Liam Neeson and Alan Rickman being in Love, Actually except that it turned out to be fantastic. It seems that every time my wife wants me to see some train wreck about true love, she becomes the world's quickest salesperson. "Hey, let's go see New Year's Eve!" "Screw that!" "But it has Robert De Niro in it!" Considering that, I think the shoe is on the other foot when it comes to sliding a couple non-Christmas movies into our "Holiday Movies that Don't Suck" list simply because they take place on or around Christmas.

Die Hard and Die Hard 2 - If you find yourself scraping the bottom of the barrel to avoid your 156th showing of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - and every channel seems to be showing nothing but Miracle on 34th Street - you can convince your family on the facts that both movies take place during the Christmas holiday. This is more like the Lee Marvin spoof The Night the Reindeer Died as featured on Scrooged than anything else, but what the hey - it's Christmas.

The Long Kiss Goodnight - Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson kick ass in this action-comedy about a thirtysomething suburban housewife with amnesia who suddenly regains her memory and realizes she's a high-ranking spy for the U.S. government. Sam Jackson is her low-ranking private eye who gets dragged into her world of espionage and uzi-happy action scenes. Not only is this movie full of hilarious jokes and convincing action, but the whole thing revolves around Christmastime.

Gremlins - A little fuzzy creature who pops out rapidly-multiplying green homicidal monsters? Well, they are green...Gremlins takes place on Christmas and is as typical '80s horror as you get - think Critters but with an adorable little mascot, whose species was later co-opted for one of the best post-rock bands on earth: Mogwai. Much like the Bill and Ted movies, the first Gremlins seems to almost take itself as seriously as it can, while the sequel is so self-parodying and -referential it's great if only for its mockery of the sub-genre.

* Note - I Googled some other cool winter holiday movies, as I was hoping to find some bitchin' Hanukkah or Kwanzaa flicks, but apparently there aren't many. I've seen plenty of great movies based on Jewish and black/African-American culture and history in general, but upon further reflection I don't feel that shooing them in as general consolations would be doing either people justice. My apologies.

Why Tori Amos's 'Night of Hunters' Might Be the Best Album of 2011.

I was as excited as any average Tori Amos fan when I heard she had a new album coming out this year - well, to be fair, about as excited as i was to hear about new music this year from Bjork, Saul Williams, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Skinny Puppy, Junius, Radiohead and everyone else whose albums I awaited with bated breath in 2011.

I was, subsequently, so intrigued by the concept and composition of the new Tori Amos record as to say my intrigue was only matched this year by Bjork's Biophilia - which involved bespoke instruments and aural interpretations of natural phenomena (like using a Tesla Coil to make a bassline for a song about electricity). The structure of Tori's Night of Hunters, as I've come to understand it, is that it is a 14-track song cycle in the tradition of classical collections like Franz Schubert's Die Winterreise - a sort of allegorical mini-opera. The story behind this album finds the female narrator on the eve of the end of a relationship, suddenly whisked away by a spirit on a journey across 400 years to see herself and her partner's earlier incarnations throughout fantasy and history.

Surprisingly, your or my opinions on subjects like fire spirits, mythical goddesses and peyote rituals - all of which are explored on the album - or concept-based albums at all are rendered irrelevant by the next trick Tori had up her sleeve in Night of Hunters' composition. All 14 songs, without exception, are either based upon or at least inspired by classical pieces from the last 400 years. It's no coincidence that the history of music she explores matches in time with the journey on which the narrator travels - nor is it coincidence that such subject matter would find itself on Tori's first release under contract with the classical-based German record label Deutsche Grammophon - but it's the near-tribute to some of the world's most renowned classical composers that acts as adhesive bridging each track into a full-length quest to the 17th century and back.

My one complaint with Night of Hunters was that as truly classic (excuse the terminology) as it sounded, I didn't recognize any of the reference material as I listened - until I realized that was really a problem with my rudimentary experience with classical music, not Tori's selection. A quick YouTube search, the benefits of which you're about to reap, quickly revealed to me the intimate and respectful true nature of the album towards Tori's predecessors - who include Chopin, Schubert, Schumann and Bach, among others.

Consider Tori's new song "Battle of Trees." Here's a link to it on MySpace (just click the "Play" button, and try a couple times if it doesn't work the first time).

http://www.myspace.com/toriamos/music/songs/battle-of-trees-83864619

It's instantly memorable for several of its chord and singular note progressions. "Battle of Trees" is based on Erik Satie's "Gnossienne No. 1," written over a hundred years ago. Give it a listen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLFVGwGQcB0

Not only is "Battle of Trees" a faithful reproduction of "Gnossienne No. 1," but Tori adds her own style and flair to it as well - and the whole album follows suit! Not all songs are as similar as their inspirations, but listening to the reference material and the Tori Amos song back-to-back are a real treat.

The amount of work that's gone into the reinterpretation and production of these songs to bring them up to the 21st century is daunting enough without considering that it manages to flow as a unified whole, and not just 14 random songs sequenced together. If it's not the most impressive and ambitious endeavor in music this year, it's certainly near the top of a short list. Night of Hunters is an absolute odyssey from front to back, but one worth hearing again and again.

One final note - an Amazon.com reviewer known as T. Fisher, in critiquing the just-released instrumental version of Night of Hunters, tracked the entire album to its sources. For your enjoyment, I'll list them as follows, with thanks to him or her for the information.

1. Shattering Sea (Alkan: Song of the Madwoman on the Sea-Shore, Prelude op. 31 no. 8)
2. SnowBlind (Granados: Añoranza - from 6 Pieces on Spanish Folksongs)
3. Battle of Trees (Satie: Gnossienne no. 1)
4. Fearlessness (Granados: Orientale from 12 Spanish Dances)
5. Cactus Practice (Chopin: Nocturne op. 9 no. 1)
6. Star Whisperer (Schubert: Andantino from Piano Sonata in A major D 959)
7. Job's Coffin (Inspired by the next song, Nautical Twilight)
8. Nautical Twilight (Mendelssohn: Venetian Boat Song from Songs Without Words op. 30)
9. Your Ghost (Schumann: Theme and Variations in E flat major WoO 24 from Ghost Variations)
10. Edge of the Moon (Bach: Siciliano from Flute Sonata BWV 1031)
11. The Chase (Mussorgsky: The Old Castle from Pictures at an Exhibition)
12. Night of Hunters (Scarlatti: Sonata in F minor, K.466 and the Gregorian Chant "Salva Regina")
13. Seven Sisters (Bach: Prelude in C minor)
14. Carry (Debussy: The Girl with the Flaxen Hair, from Preludes I)

How iWish You Were Here.

Yesterday I read an article in Side-Line stating that by 2012, all major record labels will stop supporting cd's. An hour after this, I was reading an issue of Sound + Vision featuring interviews with and features on Pink Floyd, in respect to their series of box sets called Immersion, which feature 5- or 6-disc deluxe reissues of Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall. And it got me thinking.

I think giving up on cd's is a misstep - and yes, I've heard of iTunes. My problem with digital distribution for music - which includes Amazon, iTunes, 7digital, p2p sharing, torrents, whatever - is twofold. First, it ruins the experience of an album as being larger than life, with the artwork, the liner notes, the whole visual experience. But that's besides the point.

Just as importantly, I'm one of those "weirdos" who still thinks an album is an album, and should be listened to at least a few times through from start to finish as a whole. Even though only a small percentage of released albums qualify as "concept albums" - in which every song relates to and helps explain a specific concept, point or theme - most songs still sound different when taken in the context in which they're recorded and released as part of a series by an artist. I don't read individual chapters of books when I'm bored, or watch individual scenes in movies. I don't watch just one play from the middle of a game either. I don't go so far as to plan car trips to be long enough that I know which albums to listen to and which ones "not to bother starting," but if I've got an hour to kill, an album's going on and it's likely not leaving until it's finished. Sometimes I do listen to one or two songs from an album and change it out for something else, and I do love making mixtapes - which is where my single-song buying comes into play - but not only do I want to hear an album in its entirety, I'm not the only one.

German prog-metal outfit The Ocean have released five full-length albums. They encourage their fans to listen to them straight through to the point that their liner notes request that you do the same. Their third major release, Precambrian, is the clearest example of this reasoning. Each song is named after a period of the Precambrian age - yeah, that's right; there are songs called Rhyacian and Neoarchean - and are written to represent this, and sequenced chronologically. A double-disc, Precambrian boasts a 25-minute EP-style disc ('Hadean/Archean') and an hour-long album-style disc ('Proterozoic'). Hadean/Archean is five blasting metal tracks, meant to aurally represent a chaotic and fiery time in geology; Proterozoic is more tempered, with some classical instruments peppered throughout, to simulate a time when life began on earth and there was some tranquility.

Strange as it sounds, listening to it straight through just makes sense. Much the same as when you hear Radiohead's 1997 OK Computer and the first crunchy guitar and supporting cello and tambourine on "Airbag" start an adventure that doesn't end until the triangle fades at the end of "The Tourist," each of The Ocean's albums are clearly planned to be front-to-back journeys.

So what if digital distribution and all its necessary technology - iPods, computers, etc - had existed 50 years ago?

Let's look at Pink Floyd again, upon whom I'm focusing for today in light of the Immersion sets and the fact that they're a perfect example for this point. If iTunes existed 50 years ago, you'd have kids across the nation in high schools saying "Pink Floyd sucks. I heard Dark Side of the Moon was supposed to be like the best album ever, and I bought a song from it on iTunes and it was just like clocks going off or something. Why would people buy that shit?" ...which they do now, but their parents smack them on the back of the head and tell them they're morons. Instead of The Wall being an 85-minute descent into madness, and one of the greatest concept albums ever made, it would just be one entry on 20 million iPods - "Another Brick in the Wall (Pt. 2)," or as my generation knows it as, "We Don't Need No Education." It's poppy, short, has a nice guitar solo, and teenagers like it because they think it's all about skipping school.

But it's not just the 25-and-under crowd. I was talking to a middle-aged friend about new albums this fall and how I was falling short on picking them up, and she said "Well you just need to get over the whole 'album' thing; you should only get one or two songs." I can't imagine any piece of Dark Side missing (nor of a specifically defined concept-based album) let alone the majority of it. Plenty of albums tell a story and every song is like a chapter in a book. To discard any one piece of The Wall is to lose a legitimate facet of Pink (the main character)'s personality and tragedy. For example, f you were to only take out "Mother" and "Another Brick in the Wall (Pt. 1)," Pink almost seems like a bratty, anti-military asshole rocker who just can't stand his own fame. You lose the roots about his father dying in the war (an unnecessary victim of Operation Cinder, we found out in the song "When the Tygers Broke Free"), his overbearing and traumatizing mother and how these influences on him shape his inability to have fully-functioning relationships with women, trust his local authorities and finally have a nervous breakdown - only to be cast aside with disdain by the world that sent him there. It's a tragic story, and one that would be sorely missed without the entire album.

The Dark Side of the Moon Immersion Box Set is a real beast. Disc 1 is the original album, digitally remastered this year. Disc 2 is the entirety of the album performed live. Disc 3, a DVD, contains a 5.1 surround version of the album from 2003 and the original Alan Parsons quad sound version, each with standard- or high-resolution options. Disc 4, a visual dvd, includes live performances, a documentary and some other press stuff. Disc 5 is a blu-ray of Disc 3 (the surround/quad disc) and Disc 4 (the live/visual stuff), and Disc 6 is an early stereo mix of Dark Side by Alan Parsons along with some bonus/live/alternate/etc tracks. The set also comes with two booklets, an art print, a replica tour ticket, replica backstage pass (so you can your friends can play "I'm Meeting Pink Floyd" in your basement), a scarf, collectors' cards...and nine coasters and three marbles, because hey, fuck it, why not? (Thanks for the item description, Amazon!) So it's $120 for seven mixes of the album, some live stuff and a bunch of ridiculous crap. It actually sounds pretty awesome; it's what I'll end up using to get my kids into Pink Floyd when they're old enough. A similar package for Wish You Were Here was released this past Tuesday and next year, The Wall will follow suit.

Now, there are a lot of other avenues worth discussing in this topic.

1. How is one song on an album affected by its neighbors.

2. What tone does the artwork set for the album.

3. Is the outsourcing of physical album production (by bands to indie presses like TuneCore) as democratizing as it sounds.

4. Why is the job market doing the exact opposite.

And this is setting aside the issues of

1. Sound quality, which has been in decline for the last four musical formats (we piqued at vinyl, kids; even Beats headphones can't save crappy frequency cutoff points on mp3's).

2. What positive and negative effects the collapse of the music industry is having on bands.

3. What will be the next billion-dollar idea that introduces up-and-coming bands to the world.

and so on. But those are topics for another day and other people much smarter than myself. I'm just a kid who loves some Floyd and "the album experience."

Milagres - Glowing Mouth review.

Just prior to kicking off their fall 2011 East Coast tour, Milagres released their full-length LP Glowing Mouth this month. By the time the listener is two minutes into the first track, "Halfway," it's clear this is a band who knows how to write a song.

The title track "Glowing Mouth" is as laid back as it comes, evoking shades of darker Blur throughout its six-minute journey, along with a falsetto croon that would make Bono blush. Some earlier tracks, like "Here to Stay" and "Gentle Beast," would be comfortably at home on a Danger Mouse project or Adult Swim compilation. Throughout the vast majority of the album I found myself hearing an undeniable fun factor and earnest humility in the music and lyrics.

With big drums and tambourines and clean, echoing guitars - and swimming in reverb - it would be easy at first listen to label Milagres as a more energetic Sparklehorse, or The XX's older, cooler brother - they've earned comparisons to Grizzly Bear in the past as well - but anyone insisting Milagres is 'just that' would be committing a crime against a five-man act of beautiful spacepop and thoughtful 21st-century songwriting.

Glowing Mouth is available now on Kill Rock Stars directly from their site as a CD, vinyl and digital download, or from iTunes. Punch that shit!

5a7 review.

Matthew Thomas (alias 5a7 - five alpha seven) is a fellow Valdosta State University alumnus and a graphic designer and visual artist. He set up a shop on zazzle.com - which, as far as I can tell, is like a print-on-demand version of Etsy - and I bought one of his t-shirts this month.

The interesting thing is, you can customize the shirts how you see fit - I could've added an image to be printed onto the original design, or text. Different brands of actual shirts with the same design on them differ in price according to what you want. In fact, another product - a pair of low-top Keds with the same basic logo printed overall on it - goes so far as to allow the customer to choose the color of the base, the sole, the eyelets, the shoelaces, etc. But I stuck with Matthew's original design on a normal American Apparel shirt.

It arrived in a timely fashion. Zazzle under-promises and over-delivers, leading to positive mental feedback. The shirt material was sturdy but comfortable, and the design wasn't a cheap silkscreen by any means. It's tagless, which I love, and fits perfectly. Not only did Matthew's masterful graphic design shine through on this zombie-slaying "battle tee" (his words), but the quality of the print is really up to snuff.

The 5a7 store features a wide variety of goodies all based on the same motif: Zombie Suppression - 147th Task Force, with a skull and crossbones logo - but the crossbones have been replaced by assault rifles and a large blood spatter adorns the top left corner of the logo. There are t-shirts, hoodies, shoes, fridge magnets, buttons, bumper stickers and more. The design and quality are about as good as it gets; I highly recommend stopping by for a visit at zazzle.com/5a7design.