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In The Illiad we hear that Achilles, the Greek Hero, was prophesied to have one of two fates: a long but unremarkable life, or a short one of glory. He chooses the latter. In The Odyssey, Odysseus meets up with Achilles in Hades, and Achilles tells him that death sucks and he'd rather be a living normal person than a dead hero. All of which is to say I'm sure Frances Bean would rather have a lame, fat, living dad than a dead rock god. Imagined has a new favorite as of 22:03 on Sep 21, 2018 |
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Sep 21, 2018 21:58
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chitoryu12 posted:Kurt was also pretty mentally ill, so it’s no surprise that he struggled with the cognitive dissonance of chasing popularity while hating it. Same with Tupac Shakur and Biggie
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Sep 21, 2018 22:20
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Yea but imagine a 2003 weed comedy starring Tupac and Biggie.
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Sep 21, 2018 22:24
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SomeJazzyRat posted:Yea but imagine a 2003 weed comedy starring Tupac and Biggie. Imagine the rapprochement and Tupac/Biggie tour in like 99 or so. 
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Sep 21, 2018 23:06
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I kind of wonder of Kurt cobain actually wanted to be as famous as nirvana got. It seemed like grunge overall was a deliberate rejection of everything rock star so when it blew up way beyond a thing specific to Seattle it just kind of went "oh gently caress now what?" It was inherently in conflict with itself as record company execs were pushing to commercialize it hard as they could but grunge didn't want to be sanitised enough to be mainstream. I think that is part of what killed him and layne Staley; they had genuine issues that they were pouring into the music but suddenly the pressures of commercialized fame was dumped on them. That was one of the interesting things about the 90s. After the 80s it was apparent that the improvements of the 60s and 70s were being chipped away at while the blatant greed of the 80s was being questioned. Grunge, third wave ska, Celtic punk, nu metal, gangsta rap...It all had a very gently caress you attitude. However the record industry saw how popular it was and corrupted it all. It also didn't last as the naked greed of the industry drive more and more stuff and people underground or independent. Napster tied into that as well. The conflict you see now socially started then though it also ties into America's lovely history overall. The people with the money wanted sanitary, profitable acts that would make them cash by the bucket and cynically wrung whatever was popular for everything they could. People actually consuming music wanted a variety but the increased disassitisfaction as wages started to stagnate, progress slowed, desert storm happened, and the republicans got up to the poo poo they started doing led to deliberate rejection of that. The glitz and glamour had been scraped off and people started to see the world of poo poo. Vietnam was still a recent memory as was civil rights things from the 60s. The world just wasn't the clean, perfect world that pop music was selling. It felt horribly fake. In stuff like nirvana the message was way more honest. That pain was real which gave it an authenticity pop music never had.
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Sep 21, 2018 23:39
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ToxicSlurpee posted:I kind of wonder of Kurt cobain actually wanted to be as famous as nirvana got. It seemed like grunge overall was a deliberate rejection of everything rock star so when it blew up way beyond a thing specific to Seattle it just kind of went "oh gently caress now what?" It was inherently in conflict with itself as record company execs were pushing to commercialize it hard as they could but grunge didn't want to be sanitised enough to be mainstream. I think that is part of what killed him and layne Staley; they had genuine issues that they were pouring into the music but suddenly the pressures of commercialized fame was dumped on them. See people usually say that artists like Kurt Cobain never wanted fame and that's why they couldn't handle it, but his actions in marketing his music and making money kinda go against that. He even worked to retroactively get 75% of the royalties from Nevermind, which led to some bad blood with the other members. If he didn't want fame or money, he would have just kept putting out music and rejecting any opportunities for it. I think the reality is that he did want to become a big star and make a lot of money with his music, but quickly realized that he wasn't mentally or physically able to handle the stress.
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Sep 21, 2018 23:56
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Yeah by the 90s going into a rock band and seriously making recordings and music pretty much meant you wanted a little piece of the pie. but he bit off more than he could chew..
Last Chance has a new favorite as of 00:10 on Sep 22, 2018 |
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Sep 22, 2018 00:06
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Cobain recognized that his music was geared towards being more popular friendly than, say, the Meat Puppets. He knew he was writing melodies and lyrics that would hook people. All the anti-corporate stuff seems a little rooted in that 90s rejection of authority and aimless gently caress Youism that permeated the Bush recession. His follow up album was designed to be sonically aggressive so the band could go "heh, you wanted more Smells Like Teen Spirit? What a sheep" It's funny how culture rubberbanded back to sanitized pop with bubblegum acts towards the Millennium.
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Sep 22, 2018 00:08
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Wheat Loaf posted:There are four movies I have on dvd which came in snapcases for some reason: Shaft's Big Score, Shaft In Africa, Natural Born Killers and, for some reason, the David Mamet movie Heist. Speaking of terrible packaging, there is still a store in my town, a furniture store for whatever reason, that still has some CSs for sale in the old long boxes. The do sell some TVs, so maybe its a leftover of a time when they sold a wider variety of electronics and media  For those that don't know or don't remember, they were about 3x longer than a standard CD case and just held the cd case inside it.
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Sep 22, 2018 00:11
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FilthyImp posted:It's funny how culture rubberbanded back to sanitized pop with bubblegum acts towards the Millennium. The thing is, it's not like that ever really went away. The biggest names in popular music in the middle of the decade were still Garth Brooks and Céline Dion and MC Hammer and Will Smith between them sold far more records than just about any "serious" rapper.
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Sep 22, 2018 00:20
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FilthyImp posted:Cobain recognized that his music was geared towards being more popular friendly than, say, the Meat Puppets. He knew he was writing melodies and lyrics that would hook people. That wasn't genuine rubber banding. A lot of industry stuff happened that led to that. Every band ever dreamed of getting a record deal simply because that was the only way you could really get published. The mainstream industry always preferred inoffensive stuff but would grab and sanitize anything that was getting popular. All they cared about was making as much money as possible. Musicians varied. Some wanted fame and money while others just wanted to quit their day jobs and focus on music. The increasing technology and the rise if the internet lessened the industry's control. It became less and less expensive to put an album out which let more and more indie stuff happen. The mainstream industry wants to totally control what you even have access to so now they just do fun stuff like manufacture lowest common denominator stuff. Now any dumbness with a few hundred dollars can release an album and barf it all over the internet. Nobody needs the industry anymore so they focus on manufacturing stars. Which of course makes it horribly bland. A big difference is that indie musicians can't afford the gigantic, expensive promotion campaigns that the industry can. Getting a record deal and signing to a label used to be a huge deal no matter what you were doing. Now it's basically selling your soul unless you have major star power.
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Sep 22, 2018 00:22
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FilthyImp posted:aimless gently caress Youism This right here is the most 90s thing.
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Sep 22, 2018 01:50
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uli2000 posted:Speaking of terrible packaging, there is still a store in my town, a furniture store for whatever reason, that still has some CSs for sale in the old long boxes. The do sell some TVs, so maybe its a leftover of a time when they sold a wider variety of electronics and media They invented these in the transition period between LPs and CDs so that music stores could stock CDs in shelves and bins designed for LPs.
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Sep 22, 2018 01:57
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Imagined posted:They invented these in the transition period between LPs and CDs so that music stores could stock CDs in shelves and bins designed for LPs. OK, that makes sense. I guess that also explains those plastic monstrosities they used after long boxes that were a pain in the rear end to get your cd out of.
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Sep 22, 2018 02:05
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Imagined posted:They invented these in the transition period between LPs and CDs so that music stores could stock CDs in shelves and bins designed for LPs. I always thought the idea for the long box was to make it harder to shoplift the disk. They took forever to get open, especially the plastic ones.
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Sep 22, 2018 02:26
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mostlygray posted:I always thought the idea for the long box was to make it harder to shoplift the disk. They took forever to get open, especially the plastic ones. Not sure if you're doubting or just saying "I had no idea!" Either way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longbox wikipedia posted:
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Sep 22, 2018 02:49
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Some of my managers at HMV had been working long enough to remember the long boxes. They remembered when they were banned they had to spend a ton of time ripping them open and re-wrapping the Cds. Has there ever been a era of music where musicians were not getting hosed over?
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Sep 22, 2018 03:11
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Imagined posted:Not sure if you're doubting or just saying "I had no idea!" Either way: To be fair the article says both. quote:Some merchants resisted this disapproval of the packaging, as longboxes theoretically made it harder for shoplifters to hide the items as well as avoiding friction with retailers
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Sep 22, 2018 03:55
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Sep 22, 2018 09:49
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chitoryu12 posted:Kurt was also pretty mentally ill, so it’s no surprise that he struggled with the cognitive dissonance of chasing popularity while hating it. 27 club
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Sep 23, 2018 20:36
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myu5mDdb530
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Sep 24, 2018 10:45
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I woke up this morning remembering something I haven’t thought about in like ten years. Do you remember those animal-shaped floating obstacle/climbers that used to be at some pools? They weren’t soft like inflatable pool floaties but hard and acrylic-feeling on the outside, and they were usually attached to the bottom or the sides of the pool by a chain. This indoor pool I used to go to as a kid had a big alligator shaped one that they would bring out for birthday parties and events. Do pools still have those things? I tried searching for them online but I don’t know what search terms to put in that don’t bring up inflatable pool toys instead.
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Sep 24, 2018 16:10
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chitoryu12 posted:Kurt was also pretty mentally ill, so it’s no surprise that he struggled with the cognitive dissonance of chasing popularity while hating it. See also Bill Hicks, who died in '94. I take some comfort in the fact he died before he had a chance to go full conspiracy theorist, which he was just starting to dip his toes into. He would have abso-loving-lutely gone full 9/11 truther and spiralled down from there.
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Sep 24, 2018 19:35
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Parkingtigers posted:See also Bill Hicks, who died in '94. I take some comfort in the fact he died before he had a chance to go full conspiracy theorist, which he was just starting to dip his toes into. He would have abso-loving-lutely gone full 9/11 truther and spiralled down from there. What conspiracy theories was he hawking? I mean, I know he was really upset about what down at Waco but he was kind of there, wasn’t he?
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Sep 24, 2018 19:38
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He was definitely one of those Joe Roganesque "I did MDMA and my third eye opened and its likely shrooms were put on earth by an advanced alien intelligence to make us evolve" kind of guy. Plus all the illuminati jokes about presidents being shown the CIA Exclusive Alternate Angle JFK Assassination Footage.
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Sep 24, 2018 19:44
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I mean there is a conspiracy theory itself that Alex Jones IS Bill Hicks, so
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Sep 24, 2018 19:47
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FilthyImp posted:He was definitely one of those Joe Roganesque "I did MDMA and my third eye opened and its likely shrooms were put on earth by an advanced alien intelligence to make us evolve" kind of guy. Ah, yes. I know he was way into shrooms. I just didn’t know there was a high correlation between “talks way too seriously about drugs and drug experiences” and “is actually insane about real life things.” I can see it though.
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Sep 24, 2018 19:49
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Lost animals of the 20th century. I remember watching this show in the late 90s or so. Thats how I found out that a pretty dope animal known as the Thylacine aka Tasmanian Tiger once existed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnLtoVegfU8
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Sep 24, 2018 22:25
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Fyadophobic posted:I woke up this morning remembering something I haven’t thought about in like ten years. Do you remember those animal-shaped floating obstacle/climbers that used to be at some pools? They weren’t soft like inflatable pool floaties but hard and acrylic-feeling on the outside, and they were usually attached to the bottom or the sides of the pool by a chain. This indoor pool I used to go to as a kid had a big alligator shaped one that they would bring out for birthday parties and events. Do pools still have those things? I tried searching for them online but I don’t know what search terms to put in that don’t bring up inflatable pool toys instead. yes i remember some hard rear end lily pads they had at this hotel i went to. those fuckers hurt when you slipped and fell on them. wonder if they've gone away because of that
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Sep 24, 2018 22:36
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Last Chance posted:yes i remember some hard rear end lily pads they had at this hotel i went to. those fuckers hurt when you slipped and fell on them. wonder if they've gone away because of that I managed a pool for a few years, but we didn't have these things. My guess is they completely obstruct a lifeguards view and therefore are bad, Kids could get trapped under them, fall, and hurt themselves, etc. It's the same reason a lot of pools don't allow inflatable rafts. The guards can't see poo poo and it's surprisingly easy to miss a human child-like shape at the bottom of a pool.
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Sep 24, 2018 22:40
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Imagined posted:Not sure if you're doubting or just saying "I had no idea!" Either way: Oh, I'm not doubting by any means. I just didn't know. I remember that my less-than-reputable friends told me it was anti-theft back around 1991 and I never bothered to look up the real reason. They were mad that CD's were harder to steal than tapes. They really wanted to be able to pop the CD out and put the case back but it was impossible with the long box.
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Sep 24, 2018 23:20
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Maybe that was why PC games came in those big square cardboard boxes? My dad used to be really into PC games when I was younger and he really loved Command & Conquer, and I remember he had the original Red Alert and its expansion packs all in this huge rectangular box: 
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Sep 24, 2018 23:57
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Wheat Loaf posted:Maybe that was why PC games came in those big square cardboard boxes? That was more because 1. There wasn't an industry standard so everyone made different boxes and would try and be as eye catching as possible. 2. PC games would often include physical items or huge manuals that necessitated big boxes.
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Sep 25, 2018 00:05
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RagnarokAngel posted:2. PC games would often include physical items or huge manuals that necessitated big boxes. Oh, sure, I remember the Lego games used to have these exclusive minifigures packaged with them. (Except Lego Island.)
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Sep 25, 2018 00:21
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burial posted:What conspiracy theories was he hawking? I mean, I know he was really upset about what down at Waco but he was kind of there, wasn’t he? My rule of thumb is that if anyone gets into more than a single CT, then they're susceptible to getting into all of them eventually. First he would do overlong bits about the JFK assassination that went way beyond just "a bit" making jokes. He did visit Waco on the 7th day of the siege, when was overseas later on. But he was super into the footage going around of a tank smashing a hole in the wall, which he and a whole bunch of others (to this day) claim was a flamethrower tank because obviously some shaky 10th generation copy VHS being passed around by paranoid stoners is obviously The Truth. There was something else I vaguely remember him being shady about too, but for the moment it eludes me. I liked Hicks a lot, especially during the early 2000s when American politics made all his material relevant again. But anything that might be latched onto by people of that mindset, he was up for it. I guess he might just have likely made a clean break from it later, as have gotten deeper into it, but if the last 20 years has taught me anything it's that you should always expect the worst because [gestures vaguely at everything]. RagnarokAngel posted:That was more because I'm very happily all digital when it comes to games these days, and it's good to be free of all the clutter. Especially when I keep moving around and just have to ditch a bunch of stuff with every move. I couldn't return to the days of huge boxes full of stuff even if it were to make a comeback. But back in the day though, ooooooh there was some good poo poo in those boxes. My favourites were the original Wing Commander, which had blueprints for the main ships you fly, and a little in-universe printed ship's magazine with stories from the 23rd century. Also Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe (later to get a really arcadey and crappy sequel) came packaged with what was legitmately one of the greatest WWII history books I've ever read. A heavy spiral bound book which covered all of WWII from the perspective of the air forces on the Western front. I would have paid money just for that alone, and still would if it were republished. Let's not also forget those PC boxes were often that big because when you opened them up you knew you were in for an epic experience because the game came on 5 or even 6 little diskettes. That could be 9MB or more of solid gaming goodness. Back in the day when my first gaming PC was a 12mhz 286 with a 20MB hard disk.
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Sep 25, 2018 04:40
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Parkingtigers posted:Bill Hicks Somewhere along the line I either missed or forgot about the JFK stuff. I’ll see what I can dig up later on. It doesn’t at all surprise me that he’s a little more out there than I maybe knew but I always read it as passion rather than outright madness. You’re right that one thing often leads to the other though.
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Sep 25, 2018 04:50
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Wheat Loaf posted:Maybe that was why PC games came in those big square cardboard boxes? The big boxes also lets you appreciate the art work. 
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Sep 25, 2018 05:05
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burial posted:Somewhere along the line I either missed or forgot about the JFK stuff. Boy, I love talking about the Kennedy assassination, man. That’s my favourite topic. You know why? Because to me it’s a great example of, er, a totalitarian government’s ability to, you know, manage information and thus keep us in the dark any way they … Oh, sorry. Wrong meeting … Ah [beep]. That’s the meeting we’re having tomorrow at the docks. I love talking about Kennedy. I was just down in Dallas, Texas. You know you can go down there and, ah, to Dealey Plaza where Kennedy was assassinated. And you can actually go to the sixth floor of the School Book Depository. It’s a museum called … The Assassination Museum. I think they named that after the assassination. I can’t be too sure of the chronology here, but … Anyway they have the window set up to look exactly like it did on that day. And it’s really accurate, you know. ’Cause Oswald’s not in it. It goes on to conclude with "GO BACK TO BED AMERICA, your government is in control again. Here, here’s American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up!" Anyway, some of the specials about his life go into his use of hallucinogens and other things. Thats the "all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively" joke.
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Sep 25, 2018 05:05
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The world just wasn't the clean, perfect world that pop music was selling. It felt horribly fake. In stuff like nirvana the message was way more honest. That pain was real which gave it an authenticity pop music never had. I think another issue was the presentation of the college/grunge scene in the 90s. Maybe it was this thread, but I used the description that scene of music to a lot of audiences had the 'artsy fartsy' quality to it. REM might be a good example of this. You have them doing these songs like "End of the World", "Superman", "Pop Song 89" and "Stand" that I think a lot of people saw as cute and goofy. Then you have this serious and angsty Losing My Religion and The One I Love that felt more mature and sensitive. The grunge scene felt more jaded than that, and I think that's one reason it blew up and burnt out like it did. You had a lot of the latter angst, and not much fun, and not much 'attitude'. It was tapping into something that had an audience, but it wasn't an audience served by the nearest similar genres of metal/hard rock. Grunge didn't have the same baggage and trappings that either scared people away or turned people off. It was almost back to real garage band rock. Eminem might be the REM of rap. Rap was the either funny/fun 80s stuff that was radio friendly or the hardcore threat to our children. Then you've got Eminem bouncing back and forth with songs that are both funny pokes at himself, but then a few songs later something so serious that people are considering him dangerous.
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Sep 25, 2018 05:08
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Mu Zeta posted:The big boxes also lets you appreciate the art work. "Kirov reporting." popped into my head when I saw the upper right corner.
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Sep 25, 2018 05:10
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