Live Review: The Senate (10/21/09)

I haven't really had the luck of seeing a band that I've featured on here live more than once aside from Charetta and this group.

I hadn't seen The Senate in over a year and it was very different from what I'd seen the first time.

This show took place from the world famous S.O.B.'s. It was an interesting experience.

Whereas most of the shows I go to feature hard rock, this one was more of an r-and-b, nu-soul, gospel event.

For those who aren't into urban music, you're in for a real treat if you had the opportunity to go there. It features live music, which should erase the stereotype of urban music largely containing effects and samples. No matter what genre you listen to, there is nothing that can beat live music with live instruments.

That being said, let's fast-forward to about midnight that night. The Senate came on to a modest crowd playing tracks from Return to Democracy, an EP that largely deals with the concept of social change.

The first time I'd seen The Senate, it was a bit more raw.

This time, it was more refined and polished probably due to playing more live shows.

Instead of more than one vocalist, it was clear that Michael "Kellz" Coppola was the lead this time around. "Kellz" was schizophrenic, switching between Gerard Way vocals on "The Legend of Franquoix" (their single) to Jay-Z on "Madison Square" to Pharrell on "Changes". Much like N.E.R.D., The Senate was somehow able to switch genres from song to song (and sometimes within the song) seamlessly.

The part that struck me the most about this show didn't feature any notes. It was when Coppola went on stage and mentioned that his grandfather had passed away. He flew to Florida and back to New York City before the show started. They could have easily cancelled the show, but they soldiered on and the show went on as scheduled. It's a testament to their dedication for their fans and their craft. You have to respect that.

An idea for female-fronted bands...

A couple of months ago, I made a superlist of female-fronted bands and this just crossed my mind.

Keep in mind, this may not be a completely new idea, but read on anyway.

As you guys are well aware, there's a Rock on the Range festival every May in Columbus, Ohio.

I was thinking of having something similar, but just for female-fronted or even all-female bands. Kind of like Lilith Fair, but a little more badass.

It would be held in October and it would either be a one-day two stage event or a two day event. Proceeds from the concert would go and benefit Breast Cancer research.

For argument's sake, let's make it a one-day two stage event...

1st stage: Evanescence, Paramore, Flyleaf, Halestorm, In This Moment

2nd stage: Lacuna Coil, Hey Monday, Fireflight, The Letter Black, VersaEmerge

and perhaps a surprise guest or something like that.

I don't even know what you would call it. I jokingly said the Ovarian Woodstock, but I'm sure there's something better and I figure it'd be a great idea. If it got even more popular, perhaps a CD/DVD of the event with the proceeds again going to Breast Cancer research.

Hey guys, what happened last night? (A.K.A. The Death of MTV Part Deux)

This entry is going to be quite long, so pack your patience! 

In part because of what I blogged about below, I made sure to miss the MTV Video Music Awards. It has nothing to do with the artists. 

I just feel that MTV is not the "be all end all" for music videos anymore as they only show about 3-5 hours of actual music video programming a day. Don't worry, none of the other video music stations are any better at this point.

I didn't bother to watch. 

Last night, I'm between watching the Bears and Packers and online when I see a slew of comments about Kanye West. "Fuck Kanye West", "Kanye West is an asshole" and the like.

Within a half hour of the show's start time, Taylor Swift went on stage to accept her Video Music Award for Best Female Video for "You Belong With Me" and Kanye did...this.

3 million hits later, it's been the only thing people have been talking about relating to the VMA's and it got me to thinking.

Could this have been staged? I originally thought I was crazy, too. However, there's a lot more to this story than meets the eye.

Kanye West has showboated his way through awards shows since at least 2004 when he was up for Grammies as an artist for the first time. Nothing has changed in those five years. He has badmouthed MTV and the artists that play on MTV year after endless year and they keep inviting him to awards shows. Why? Because he likes the attention and MTV wants that attention.

My personal feeling is that Kanye probably did it because the producers asked him to do something crazy and spontaneous. Why else would they have let him on stage? He wasn't up for that award. Had it been any random person, they would have been escorted out before they even had a chance to finish. Security would have been there. But, he's Kanye and MTV loves Kanye.

Why do I think the producers did it? There are many reasons actually.

1. Look at the reality programming on MTV. The Real World, The Hills, and the like all exist for drama. Everything is edited in such a way to paint a picture and tell a story, because nobody wants to see a bunch of 20 somethings scratching their asses and doing nothing...they want to see drunkenness, sex, and fighting!

2. Something like this happens at MTV awards shows all the time to give people something to talk about. Just think about the Eminem/Sasha Baron Cohen situation. But MTV would never just fake something, right? Jerry Springer was a part of MTV's Spring Break way back when to promote his new movie Ringmaster when a fight broke out on his show. Days after it aired, Newsday posted an article with the party in question admitting that they put on a staged act.

3. Kanye gave The Insider something to put on their show the next day. Listen to the people that are there going about their business.

4. Beyonce's being seen as a classy lady. I totally believe that she is. She's the queen in shining armor for Taylor Swift and everybody was applauding what she did. However, she's worked in the business long enough to know how Kanye is and she probably has the bargaining power to work with who she wants to...so why is it that she's re-releasing I Am...Sasha Fierce with one of the singles off of it featuring Kanye West? I don't know. Maybe, I'm selfish. Badumbumchhhh...

Jay-Z knows how Kanye is and how he acted last night, embarrassing his wife and yet...he still let 'ye perform on The Jay Leno Show.

Still far-fetched? OK, maybe it isn't staged, but MTV allowed it to happen.

Kanye West has continued to do this at every single awards show, many of them related to MTV. Why keep inviting him when you know he's going to do this? It's MTV and they want the attention. If they don't have that "coffee talk moment" the next morning, it's perceived as a failure. 

Personally, I see it as a failure that they can't do an awards show on the credibility of the artists that they play.

A one liner history lesson of the last decade of VMAs:

1999: Lil' Kim's boobylicious dress.

2000: Tim Commerford's climb to the rafters.

2001: Britney dancing with a snake.

2002: Eminem and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.

2003: "The kiss."

2004: Welcome to Miami...booooooring.

2005: Fat Joe and G-Unit.

2006: Panic at the...fuck was that?

2007: The worst comeback of all time!

2008: The best comeback to the worst comeback of all time...and purity rings!

In just about every year, you wind up seeing at least one thing that you'll wind up talking about that may actually have nothing to do with the music at all.

It's the #1 show they have every year because of this and...big surprise, their ratings increased this year by 17%.

MTV has plenty to gain from this and from what I've seen...they already have.

The Death of MTV (no, really this time)

For 12 years, MTV lived at the center of the world...Times Square.

At the end of this year though, MTV's time has run out.

MTV had an iconic brand name when it moved into Times Square.

They built a couple of shows around it at the beginning such as MTV Live and MTV News 1515.

Then, they got a little edgy. They started to host New Year's shows from Times Square and a tradition was born.

Then came Total Request Live. Even if you hated it, you couldn't deny the impact it had on the bubblegum pop era of '98-'04.

It broke Britney, Christina, Backstreet, N*Sync, Hanson, LFO, and O-Town (for Christ sake).

But they also had their fair share of artists that broke the top 10 that didn't quite fit the norm from artists such as Incubus, P.O.D., Deftones, and AFI.

Ever since 1992, MTV had been considered a pioneer for groundbreaking reality television with The Real World. They'd been good at it, so why stop there, right?

Well, 17 years later, reality has killed the video star. All those dating shows, all those shows about yo' momma, and all of those shows about do-nothing, know-nothing 20 somethings took over the very thing that defined MTV. Music videos were shoved to late nights for insomniacs.

Not only that, but the era of the Internet has brought on the I-Pod and Youtube and has effectively made MTV less and less of a tastemaker because there are so many other avenues to watch your favorite music videos.

Digital television has also allowed people to see music videos whenever they want to on demand.

The only time this year that MTV really made music videos its focus was after the death of Michael Jackson.

I used to be excited for every MTV VMA's. I don't remember anything from the last three.

Maybe I'm just getting old and past the MTV age, but it's disconcerting to see a channel that I used to go to music for become almost completely musically irrelevant. 10-15 years ago if you didn't have a video you didn't matter as an artist.

In some ways, it's actually gotten better to become noticed, but I can't help but get those nostalgic feelings that go back to that age.

You can't tell me that in this age that people all own a music player and download music all over the Internet that people aren't passionate about music. If anything, they want more.

Top Albums of the first half of the year.

Even though we've only gone through six months, this year has already turned out to be a more competitive and diverse year than all of last year's.

Top Albums:

13. Charetta-Defying the Inevitable: At only 9 songs, this is the shortest of all of the albums to make the list. It's a small package, but it packs a powerful punch (that's what she said).

Listen to: The Truth is Out, Stop the Cycle

12. Nine Lashes-Escape: Produced by Travis Wyrick (10 Years, Pillar) this young band has the potential to be a future Cornerstone favorite. 

Listen to: Words of Red, Escape

11. No Love Lost-No Love Lost: Just outside of the top 10 is this kick ass band from K-Town, Tennessee. Travis Wyrick also produced this solid record.

Listen to: The Silence, Break Me Now

10. Decyfer Down-Crash: When Caleb Oliver, the original lead singer, left the band last year after putting out the EP for Crash, I'd been skeptical that the band was going to jump the shark. Enter TJ Harris. He far exceeded everyone's expectations of how the record was going to sound and the band has remained among the top Christian rock acts in the country.

Listen to: Crash, Fading

9. The Veer Union-Against the Grain: For those of us who know their independent record from a couple of years ago, we were waiting for this to deliver and it did. It's a solid work from this band who's going to be touring with the top radio acts throughout the rest of the year.

Listen to: Seasons, What Have We Done

8. Dredg-The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion: This album that largely deals with agnosticism is Dredg at their absolute best. It's heavy, it's funky, it's groovy and it flat out rocks.

Listen to: Saviour, I Don't Know

7. Halestorm-Halestorm: Lzzy Hale turns the tables on the guys and becomes the most talked about girl rocker of the year so far.

Listen to: I Get Off, Familiar Taste of Poison

6. The Leo Project-Every Song Reminds Me...: This band should have a major record deal right now, it's ridiculous. This album got them on Rock on the Range and has taken them on tours with bands like 10 Years, Adelitas Way, and Tesla.

Listen to: Without the Sunshine, Half as Good

5. Karnivool-Sound Awake: The only band here that won't see an American release of their album until 2010. It's a shame, too because the songs on this record rank from amazing to fucking amazing. 

Listen to: Set Fire to the Hive, New Day

4. Nural-Entitlement: This is one of my favorite albums ever produced by David Bendeth. It is basically the male counterpart to Paramore's Riot!, which still hasn't left my player.

Listen to: The Hits Keep Coming, Me or the Music

3. Ben Moody-All For This: As an Evanescence fan, this was an album that I'd been waiting for since 2005. It's a completely unexpected effort, but all the more appreciated.

Listen to: 10/22, Nothing Left of Me

2. Hurt-Goodbye to the Machine: It is not very often when a band's material improves after getting dumped by a major label. Not only is this one of those times, but this is my favorite record of theirs to date.

Listen to: Wars, Well

1. Red-Innocence and Instinct: I really liked End of Silence, but they really stepped their game up big time on Innocence and Instinct. A lot of bands tend to suffer the sophomore curse and Red avoided it in a big way. They built up the hype of the record in a way that I had not seen   from many other bands and they delivered with their material.

Listen to: Shadows, Never Be the Same

Music Videos...

In the wake of Michael Jackson's death, I was going to discuss what has happened to music videos and why it appears that they're dying when all of the sudden, really good music videos have recently emerged.

Music videos used to make or break an artist. Throughout the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, many were these flashy productions that normally cost endless amounts of money.

Nowadays, the event that used to be the music video is not anymore. Many videos nowadays are simply performance videos. I want to go back to a time when music videos were creative and groundbreaking all of the time.

That being said, there are three videos that I've seen recently that still give me hope that music videos are still alive and well.

Seether's Careless Whisper (directed by Tony Petrossian)-Tony Petrossian is one of my favorite directors currently. He's directed videos such as Stone Sour's Through Glass, Rise Against's Prayer of the Refugee, and Serj Tankian's Empty Walls. He may be very political, but the way that he's done it is always creative. In this particular case, he uses the 80s and tries to tie it in with what's going on in the world today through an Atari-esque video game featuring the band.

Framing Hanley's Hear Me Now (directed by Mason Dixon)-Mason Dixon has directed all of Framing Hanley's music videos and this is the second version of Hear Me Now. I like that this video takes more of a literal approach to the first one. It's dark, but very sexy. You could say that this video's built for sin (HA!). Jimmy Swaggart never sinned this badly.

Alice in Chains' A Looking in View (directed by Stephen Schuster)-Easily my favorite video of the year thus far and it has nothing to do with the nudity. This conjures up bad memories of the Tool videos I watched when I was younger. Except, whereas those videos were more sublime, there was a realness that made this particular video more disturbing. It kind of reminded me of the movie Requiem for a Dream. There was simulated child abuse, simulated rape, an implied suicide attempt, and a simulated drowning all within seven minutes. As crazy as it may sound, this is what music videos are all about. That video set the tone of the song and vice versa. I guarantee you won't be seeing that video anywhere near television anytime soon. 

The Death of Michael Jackson: My thoughts and personal memories.

I haven't blogged on here in about a month and it's sad that it took this tragedy to get me to come back, but I had to get my thoughts out and make sense of the whole thing.

He was our Beatles. He was our Elvis.

I was born in 1983, at the height of the Thriller era, almost 26 years ago.

You can play that record today and it will be as relevant as it was back then.

Michael Jackson, however, was more than just a song. More than just an album. He was a movement.

He was known to be an extremely shy person and yet, through the music he put out, he let his voice and dancing shine through and he got other shy people like him to do it, too. Perhaps it was why he was so influential to so many artists.

He was not overly political apart from maybe this or this, but his music got people who would normally be apathetic to take action.

Michael's professionalism as a musician, performer, and entertainer not only made people want to work for him, but made those around him better. Better dancers, better collaborators, better producers, and better entertainers. Michael was a better artist and performer because of it.

Above all of that though, the music that has come out of four decades as a performer has brought people of all cultures, all creeds, and fans of all musical genres together.

I remember when HIStory came out and "Scream" was all the rage. I was at a summer day camp in the suburbs at the time and met this huge MJ fan who was my age. He was a white Jewish kid and for someone like me who grew up in mostly racially homogenized communities (whether black or white, HA get it?), it was both interesting and wonderful to see that this kid looked past any of his differences and appreciated his music for what it was.

As Videostatic so eloquently put it, Michael was and still is inarguably the greatest music video artist of all time.

They weren't just music videos, they were events. I remember the time (again, HA get it?) I watched his music videos when they premiered on Fox. Even Eddie Murphy got in on that shit.

25 years after the Thriller video came out, after a quarter of a century's worth of technological advancements in how music videos are produced, the Thriller video is still considered to be one of the greatest music videos ever made. It is old, but has not aged.

In this era of music videos, there are very few if any music videos that can hold a candle to it.

So many artists twittered (or is that tweeted) about his death. Rappers, rockers, pop stars, and metalheads alike are saddened and are probably reminiscing back to a day when they saw Michael moonwalk across a stage and decided that that was the day that they wanted to do what he did.

Whether he was covered or parodied, one thing is clear, his music and legacy will never be forgotten. Thanks for the music, MJ.