Sakura Breeze

EBTG

Mirrorball - Everything but the Girl

Happy St. Andrews Day

Time HealsT0ddRundgr3n
1981

I used to quite like this stuff. Seems so cheesy and weak now.

http://museum.woolworths.co.uk/

For quite some time now, every other T0ddRundgr3n release has seen him delve into new musical territory, whether broadway, hip hop, bossa nova or RnB. Arena continues this pattern. The concept this time is 70's stadium rock and heavy metal.

Some may say that this perpetual musical mimickery shows Rundgr3n lacks the originality he once had. But in actual fact Todd Rundgr3n has always been an acolyte for the art of reproduction, the chief alchemist taking base musical metal and altering it wonderfully so. It’s that gift that made him a Wizard, a TRue star. From the C.a.r.o.l.e.k.i.n.g and L.a.u.r.a.n.y.r.o influenced Something Anything to the didactic titled Arena, Rundgr3n never conceals his musical cues. Sometimes he does it well. Sometimes he doesn’t.

With limited resources at his disposal, T0ddRundgr3nought to be given credit for his skill in putting together another album on a shoestring. However it is disappointing to hear that all the same sound issues that blighted The Individualist are present on Arena. Lyrics are hard to make out, as if T0dd is TRying to disguise the frailties of an aging vocal behind loud music. The overall production and mixing has a cheap digital feel.

Granted, he has toned down the usual Rundgr3n embellishments on this album; a TR-ick he has used copiously in the past to tart up fundamentally weak and repititive material. This time the music isn’t an ugly mug with some make up on, just an ugly mug. The music sounds remarkably mechanistic and artificial for an album that is supposed to be stripped-down lo-fi ballsy rock. This is more like faking it in front of the mirror with an air laptop. The epitome of plastic pastiche.

Taking a look at the tracks themselves, MAD is just about ok, but the way he takes the song from it's nice clean acoustic CSNY/America beginning, and thrusts it into heavy metal, is just one of many dubious progressions on this album. The Utopian heavy metal guitar sounds like someone trying to cut their way out of a brown paper bag with a blunt chainsaw. Unconvincing and unpleasant.

Many songs on Arena not only have a limited pleasure principle, but also compositional problems. Too many songs on the album sound like a verse has been grabbed from here, a riff from there, and a middle 8 from some sub-folder leftover from the Liars album. It all sounds too much like a square object jammed into a round hole. This album has a lack of musical fluency whichRundgr3ntries to disguise with for example the little funky flick on Afraid, tenuously linking the verse to the middle eight. It cons some people, but it doesn’t work for me anymore.

TR-i isn’t hiding behind multi-track polyphonic wizardry this time, which just makes the limitations of this psuedo-analogue reTRovation all the more apparent.

AFRAID is just a banal conciousness-raising effort that sounds like a Christian rock song. A miserable dirge.

MERCENARY has this Led Zep Hawkwind thing goin on, threatens to be pleasing but is killed off by the sheer digital mechanical lethargy of it all.

GUN is a witty blues-rock indictment of gun culture. The middle eight is a lovely piece of blue eyed soul, Todd’s instinctual phrasing is flawless here, pity it sounds like a totally different song.

COURAGE and WEAKNESS are two lumps of sugary earcandy for the T0ddcrusties. We’ve heard these chords, harmonies, and the sensitive-man sentiments a zillion times before. Passable, lyrically truthful, and unoriginal.

T0dd takes impersonation to a new level of literalism on STR-iKE. Single handedly incorporporating the whole of AC/DC in his macbook reportoire.

PISSIN is fun. Reminiscent in some ways of Soul Brother from Liars. The same laid back wit.

Almost surprised to see that TODAY came bottom of a T0dd Rundgr3n fan poll, gaining zero votes. Lovely spacey Utopia synth intro, and a riotous guiter-vocal, best served loud, ala Billy Idol. This is Arena rock with spikey short hair. Slightly Emo, and a hundred times better than MCR. A good track.

BARDO is just a soporific spliff-fest. More Eastern preachy. Gary Moore. Not my scene.

MOUNTAINTOP. Synchronise those air guitars, throw out the mic, your goin up to the spirit in the sky... It sure feels like I may expire at any moment. Rolleyes.

PANIC, frenetic rock reminiscent of The Police and Utopia’s network album. Good track.

MANUP, the rockier side of Foreigner and The Cars. If that’s ya drift, It’s an alright track. But not my drift.

To sum up, this album isn’t in the same league as its RnB inflected predecessor Liars, and is emblematic of my own existential loss of love for the music of a life-long hero. This is T0dd in, fling out another album hit the road and have a few beers mode. Other than that, the innovaTR offers nothing new on this elpees worth of Wrigleys. The fans will lap it up, and the rest of us will remain a tad more circumspect. But at 60 years old and 40 years of music-making, T0ddRundgr3n remains indestructible. He’ll be back with a masterpiece next time. He’s a one off with a huge ego who enjoys the job he’s doing. You can’t quibble with that. Here’s to the next 40 years, even if some of us won’t be around.

Arena, two stars.

I'll maybe put this review up on play.com and Amazon soon. I'll do Mar1t Lars3n's new album in the next day or two.

Arena.. Sheer musical luddism. Hannah Montana for 50 year old's.

467 x 115

normal 794 x 196

Problem is that the resolution of the subject is lower than the resolution of the background. I could contract the size of the subject a bit, but will it be enough to remove the mismatch between grainy subject and glossy background.

Today I did 45 minutes of tennis on the grass until It got too dark to continue.

I came back in house, put on my lights, gathered my racquet bag, then ran up the hill to the municipal works and refuse dump just outside the viilage. It's only just over a 2 mile round trip, but it's uphill all the way. So I guess i'm still reasonably fit just now if I can run up that hill with a racquet bag on my back.

Anyway I took out a racquet and ball and played there for a while, hitting against the side of the shed.

Today was cool windy rainy, nothing new really. But soon I guess it will become too cold to hold the racquet without gloves on.

The surface is hard stone. I hit against a 6' tall brick wall section of the base of the shed. Above 6 foot the side of the shed becomes corrugated. If I hit my ball against the corrugated section there is no chance. I just have to keep the ball low and make sure I hit it early. Who practiced tennis in a similar environment, where there wasnt enough room to swing a cat as we say.

The length I have is about half a court length, not much. After that the surface elevates and becomes very uneven.

The width is really narrow too, three or four metres I guess

On the plus side, there is a reasonably bright street light.

It isnt ideal. But at least it's pretty quiet up there. I must have been up there for an hour without seeing a single car pass. No doubt I will be clocked at some point. No one up here misses a trick. But I am not disturbing anyone, or tresspassing, it isnt within reach of a residential area, so hopefully people will turn a blind eye and just let me play.

Maybe people think it's weird that I do exercise. But what do other people my age do recreationally here. They either drink, or take weed, or make babies and run after them. So playing tennis may be a very unusual sport up here, but I dont fancy those other lifestyles.

One guy said to me in the summer, a neighbor, I really think it's great what you do, but why dont think you are overdoing it.. I mean i'm not trying to offend you, but when I first seen you you where much heavier.

That's true. But then he is only seeing a small snapshot. He probably thought I was on some thirties woman exercise-fad out of singleness! What he doesnt know is that for much of life I cycled a lot and did a little running. People judge on what they see.

Oh he was drunk by the way. So I guess that's what gave him the Dutch courage to approach me. His comments are more a reflection of how unfit Scot's are rather than being any special statement about my own fitness. Maybe he felt some sense of male insecurity.

Not got round to those album reviews yet.

Hm. What's a sensibly priced alternative to Photoshop?

I think I will review the two new albums I downloaded the other day.

ArenaT0ddRundgr3n
The Chase - Mar1t Lars3n

But not today cos i've got stuff to do.

Supreme Disappointments

Neither McCain nor Obama will nominate judges who understand the Constitution’s basic principle of individual rights.

By Thomas A. Bowden

No matter who wins the presidency--and with it, the power to appoint Supreme Court justices--America’s judiciary will remain locked into a crucial error that corrupts their interpretation of America’s bedrock constitutional principle: individual rights. That error consists in regarding rights as gifts from society, with judges as diviners of the so-called social will.

The most fundamental question a Supreme Court justice must answer is what in fact do the individual’s rights to life, liberty, property, and happiness include? Only then can he determine if a certain law or government action is securing or violating those rights. But no justice asks this question anymore because none believes it objectively answerable.

Instead, and broadly speaking, judicial conservatives ask what privileges did American society at the time of ratification grant the individual. So when modern legislators make criminal offenses out of abortion, contraception, homosexuality, and other acts said to be frowned upon centuries ago, conservative judges feel duty-bound to stand aside and do nothing. To conservatives, it’s meaningless to ask whether the right to liberty in fact includes the right to use contraception (a question 18th-century Americans may have answered incorrectly). The only question is whether society at that time meant to permit this action.

John McCain has pledged to appoint judges in this conservative mold.

Judicial liberals reject this worship of bygone days. Instead, liberals see constitutional values evolving like a motion picture, constantly updating to reflect current social mores. So when Congress declares federal dominion over every nut, bolt, and button of American industry, liberal judges feel duty-bound to stand aside and do nothing--not because earlier Americans intended to allow such controls, but because modern Americans want them. To liberals, it’s meaningless to ask whether the right to liberty in fact includes freedom of trade and contract (a question that a majority of Americans may be answering incorrectly today). The only question is whether the “will” of today’s society favors permitting such actions.

Barack Obama has pledged to appoint judges in this liberal mold.

But conservatives and liberals are both wrong about rights. It cannot be true that rights come from society. The very concept of a right identifies the actions you can take without anyone’s permission. Rights are not social privileges but objective facts, identifying the freedoms we need to live our lives--whether a majority in society agree or not. This is why the Founding Fathers dedicated their new government to the protection of each individual’s already-existing rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Thus, the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments forbid the government to deprive you of “life, liberty, or property” (except when you have violated someone else’s rights, and even here the government must follow due process, such as holding a trial). The Ninth Amendment safeguards all “rights” not listed elsewhere. These principles encompass all the innumerable actions required for your survival and happiness over a lifetime--the right to make a contract, earn a profit, build a house, make a friend, speak your mind, and so on.Because the Constitution is the “supreme Law of the Land,” judges are duty-bound to strike down statutes that violate rights. This is not improper “judicial activism” but the robust, constitutional power of judicial review.

Judges must never bow to social opinion, historical or current, when exercising judicial review. For example, laws that institutionalized government discrimination against blacks in military service and voting deserved to be struck down, even if political majorities in both the Founders’ generation and modern times favored such rights violations.

To their discredit, today’s judges--conservatives and liberals alike--have all but abandoned this essential safeguard of our liberties.

The arch-conservative Robert Bork once declared that Ninth Amendment “rights” carry no more meaning than an accidental inkblot on the constitutional parchment. And according to Justice Antonin Scalia, there’s nothing in the Constitution “authorizing judges to identify what [those rights] might be, and to enforce the judges’ list against laws duly enacted by the people.” As for life, liberty, and property, government can smash them at will, if society so wishes. “Does [the Constitution] guarantee life, liberty or property?” asks Justice Scalia rhetorically. “No, indeed! All three can be taken away. . . . It’s a procedural guarantee.”

Judicial liberals don’t dispute that a judge must bow to the “social will”--they simply divine it differently. As one liberal Justice declared, the Constitution “must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.”

While conservatives and liberals squabble about whether society permits you this action or that, they are defaulting on their sacred constitutional duty of judicial review.

America desperately needs a new generation of judges who understand that their function is not to uphold social opinions but to protect our rights.

Copyright © 2008 Ayn Rand® Center for Individual Rights. All rights reserved.