The Music Banter Members' Journals Monthly Update Thread

[Trollheart]

Oh man! Less than two weeks to Christmas! Hope Santa got my list --- what’s that you say? No, surely not! Why would anyone ---? Look, maybe I’d better just calm down and go through this week’s update before someone else upsets me. This is the next-to-last update before Crimbo, so expect many Xmas references, some appropriate, some not.

Briks starts us off this week with another visit to http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...seur-cave.html, in which he’s discovering that all he wants for Xmas is “gothic rock” as typified by The Cure and Bauhaus. Looking for more examples, so anyone familiar with that genre might let him know?

Butthead is back, all rested and ready to remind us that http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...therapy-s.html, though his journal is being kind of taken over… There’s an interesting argument raging between The Batlord and DJ on the subject of TV doctor shows. Really! I’m not kidding! Naughty or nice? You decide. Or don't. What do I care?

Perhaps one of the best-reearched and intelligently written journals in the section (but enough about me!) Gavin B is continuing his journey through http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...songcraft.html with articles on Mack the Knife, Blind Willie McTell and the great Scott Joplin, and more!

With Ki taking a well-earned break over Christmas, it’s up to LiL to keep the flag flying for MB’s favourite couple, so she’s wrapping up her look at 2009 while also checking out yet more T-Rex and some Lesley Gore, Slade, Golden Earring and more in her http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...ic-memory.html

Powerstars is starting off the “Twelve Days of Alternative” as he promised, with so far articles on Nirvana, Stone Roses and Smashing Pumpkins. Lots more to come in http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...sicalness.html . Well, nine more I guess!

Everyone needs to check out the journal http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...nnections.html to bear witness to one of the best posts I have ever read. Ever. If you can’t be bothered (shame on you! No presents for you!) check below…

The spirit of Christmas is in full swing over at http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...d-journal.html, where we’ve got more metal Christmas songs, this time from Far, as well as another selection from The Albatross, Room 101 which oddly enough has some people’s hackles up (!) and a very unwelcome guest comes to call! But http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...-emporium.html is of course where the magic happens this time of year, and we’re continuing our look through 25 really bad Christmas movies, spending more time with yours truly on the Christmas couch, while also getting in some more Babylon 5 and The Returned. Oh yeah, and Mister Burns crosses over from the Playlist to make his dread presence felt here too. Oh dear…

Unknown Soldier is of course doing the biz as ever, with reviews of albums by Kiss and some that failed to make the cut in http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...y-history.html. Wonder if he’ll charge into 1980 now or wait till after the festivities?

William the Bloody is wrapping up his review of Blood for Blood and moving on to Gallows. It’s all comin’ at ya, http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...ta-coffin.html so don’t miss it!

And now, as promised, a return to


There could only be one. He doesn’t post that often, but with gems like this it’s more than worth the wait. One of the best posts I’ve ever read, full stop. Or period, as you Yanks would have it…

Originally Posted by Surell

Though it isn't talking about music, I think it fits with the idea of the journal, and it's interesting to me and something I wrote. It's a draft I just wrote for most of today, I hope it's not too bad. It was for a class where we analyze films based on a theme, here obsession, usually along with a great work of fiction (obsession had Heart of Darkness but it doesn't come up here because I suck).

When you watch the Oscars, one can tell right away the dedication it takes to be a filmmaker with the regard of an artist by the fact that the categories branch not into genre, but technical departments. Films are comprised of various components manned by countless workers, to whom a great director has to have great interest devoted. For a true visionary, every project is a concise statement: You see it in Francis Ford Coppola, who in his finest cinema explores the alienation of man from his environment and even himself; or with Martin Scorcese, in his quest to pose human reality at its most naked to the audience; or in Paul Thomas Anderson’s portrayal of families as the form, disintegrate, and reform themselves to evolve; even Christopher Nolan, a grandiose magician of the screen, with his truly metaphysical conceits, pushes the audience to question their understand of the reality of his films, how that pertains to them, and then how they have to question their own realities; and then in a more subversive light, there is David Lynch, narrating the most repressed, unexplored impressions of American culture with an eerie innocence like that of 1950s America. But the almost inarguable apex of filmmaking, a man leaping from idea to idea, synthesizing the most disparate elements of storytelling, boiling his communications down to the most essential symbols, and still maintaining one of the most distinct, inimitable styles in the field, is Stanley Kubrick.

From the midcentury, a renaissance in filmmaking, until the turn of the millennium, Kubrick consistently release jaw-dropping, paradigm shifting films, influencing contemporaries and successors alike. He was a man of genius IQ, an obsessive chess player, and likewise an obsessive artist. His films are so deeply contemplated, so painstakingly developed, that it has left some with the conclusion that his films have no mistakes, no room for any shot containing misinformation or error. And this may especially pertain to symbolism, since among his many great qualities, the most distinct might be his cinematography, the composition of his shots and how they’re captured by the camera. This is so prominent, in fact, that for his longtime misunderstood horror The Shining, a movie has been dedicated to the many theories of fans on what Kubrick’s intent was for making the film, called Room 237.

(Sorry: max character count kicked in so I had to truncate the entry. But you can read the full thing --- and you should --- in Surell's journal)

So that’s it for the next-to-last update before Christmas. Hope you’re all busily tracking down the elements of my Christmas message in my journals --- what? Not one of you? I don’t know: I go out of my way to do something fun, spend all this time, writing things backwards mutter mutter don’t know why I bother…

Anyway, stay tuned to The Couch Potato for the upcoming “Battle of the Classic Christs”, as already signposted. That’s due sometime next week. And watch out for that Monty Burns fellow! I swear, he’s the very devil! (Burns: “What? Who told you that? That’s supposed to be a sec---”)

Till next week,
Toodles!