Steampunk?

I've been doing some homework, because I'm considering a musical career move toward Steampunk.

Steampunk? You may ask ... Is that even a genre of music?

Well, yes and no, as I'm discovering. And I should say that in truth I'm not, as I've seen some artists do, picking a genre and redoing my music to match. It's more like I have an idea of the kind of music I want to make, and while I go about fashioning it I'm thinking about where to go trolling for fans, as much as I'm ever going to have any.

But when you take what I want to do -- psuedo-retro electronica, industrial and technopop, as well as acoustic and folk music (especially of the British Isles) -- a mix of the organic and synthetic, in other words, it's not so hard to see how that might fit the Steampunk aesthetic. Plus, I get to play dress-up!

Much to my delight, Steampunk as a musical 'movement' is extremely nebulous, and mostly consists of songs and artists that are perceived to fit the relevant aesthetic. But when I look at the bands that have voluntarily draped themselves in the Steampunk mantle, my delight fades considerably. As much as I want to, I just can't bring myself to like them very much.

Abney Park has improved a lot since their early days, but everything they've ever done sounds really clumsy and contrived to me. There are glimpses of promise, but the lyrics are so dismal they kill it all for me. Vernian Process seems like the best of the bunch to me so far, but his vocals are somewhat off-putting and he seems to take himself just a smidge too seriously. But the arrangements and musical performances are redeeming. Unextraordinary Gentlemen ... I dunno what to say. They're fine; they just don't excite me.

(On the off chance that any of the above artists may ever find this blog entry, let me say that I mean no insult or disrespect ... it's wholly subjective, and y'all's hearts are definitely in the right place; I just feel really musically unsatisfied by what I've heard so far. I reserve the right to change my mind in the future if my perspective changes or I hear some stuff that sets my hair on fire!)

I suppose what I need to get a feel for is, are there other Steampunk artists out there that are significantly different from those three? I'm sure there are. And regardless, is that sort of stuff what the Steam audience expects, or just what they settle for? I love SP literature and the community, but it's relatively new to me.

I want to land in the ballpark; I don't expect to fit in TOO much -- that would be boring. But mostly I want to get back to making some motherf**king music!

At present, I'm reading an Advance Reader's Edition of Douglas Coupland's Miss Wyoming acquired from one thrift store or another some months ago before finally getting around to reading it this week.

Today, I discovered, slipped between a couple of pages, a Post-It Note. It was of that shade of yellow and size and shape that all Post-It Notes used to be, but nowadays seems very hard to find.

On it, someone wrote, "meisa18" in letters so carefully drawn and redrawn that, despite all the effort the writer was clearly going to to make the letters legible, was hence rendered almost illegible.

Whoever or whatever meisa18 is, it was evidently very important to someone, somewhere, at some point. Now, it's just a mystery. And suddenly the world seems just a little bit bigger.

Woodhands

YOU'RE A VERY GOOD DANCER. WHAT IS YOUR NAME? WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

Caps intended. Listen.

COMPLY.

I'm weirdly obsessed with this song. The band sort of reminds me of what would happen if Fischerspooner teamed up with the Scissor Sisters to mug Nine Inch Nails in a back alley behind a dance club somewhere.

America's uncomfortable relationship with celebrity

Unless you're, say, Oprah or something, becoming famous in America ought to come with a free 'Please destroy me!' sign you can wear around your neck. Honestly, we seem to like tearing down even more than building up.

I'm reminded of this most recently by looking at the savaging that Victoria Beckham's reality show got from the press, and similarly by observing the barely-concealed delight with which the sports press reports on David Beckham's injury-induced inability to practice or play with the LA Galaxy yet. All that money, and all he's managed to do successfully is find his way to California!

Neener neener.

In praise of the latest iTunes

I should preface this with two important facts: One, I'm a librarian by training, if not by profession. As such, I get weirdly obsessive about weird classification and categorization things. Two, ... OK, well, I forgot what the second thing was.

But anyway. Since the invention of ASCII, computers have improperly sorted numerals so they appear before the alphabet. That's wrong. And by extension iTunes has been wrong since its invention, because it always put bands like 10,000 Maniacs ahead of bands like a-Ha and Air.

Not anymore, though. With the most recent update, iTunes sorts your music library properly, putting bands, songs and albums with numerals at the start of their title at the end. Yay, Apple!

As for everyone out there who's complaining that they suddenly can't find half their music or something, shut up and quitcherbitchin.

Qatar Airways and the 787

What does it mean, exactly, when an airline half owned by the government of a Persian Gulf oil state orders 30 of the 'greenest' jet liners ever produced?

Hot dog!

Hurray for horrible, revolting, stupid, gratuitous overeating competitions. Because if there's one thing that reminds me how many people are starving in the world, it's the freakish, foolish waste of food for purposes of entertainment and fascination.

I'm just waiting for one of the contestants to die sometime in a very high profile manner, so it'll finally become fashionable to dislike these flagrant displays.

Sometimes I think we really DO need a drastic reallocation of resources to restore balance to the world.