Too Much “Concept,” not enough “Album”
Shooter Jennings has a new album out. On a scale from 1 to 10, it’s fair to middling.
For the uninitatied, Shooter Jennings is a musician, and the son of former outlaw country star Waylon Jennings. I say “former” because Waylon sadly passed on about 8 years ago. Nevertheless, his music continues to rock and roll me today.
But this post is really about Shooter, and his new concept album “Black Ribbons.” SavingCountryMusic.com has a thorough and interesting review on the album, as well as some interpretations as to what Shooter was, well, shooting for in this opus. The author sort of vacillates between not really loving it and trying to acknowledge that Shooter was trying to do something big,maybe even something epic, with this effort.
I can’t do as good a job as they did in interpreting what Shooter was aiming for, why it’s important politically, socially, or to the annals of Country (and other) music. What’s more, I don’t really care to analyze it that way. I like Shooter’s music, particularly his 2007 album, The Wolf. I like his voice, I like his arrangements, I like his melodies, and I like the fact that he cheerfully injects a bit of cheesiness into his rock. He doesn’t didn’t take himself too seriously – that’s shone through his music like a ray of molten sunshine peering into the south end of a north-bound donkey.
Black Ribbons doesn’t feel like that. According to SCM.com Shooter is intentionally leaving “Country” behind. That’s cool – I like good music, of whatever stripe, flavor or variety. And Black Ribbons isn’t bad music. It just feels a little confused, a little angry, and sometimes a little boring. I’m not trying to bash on Shooter (though I guess I kind of am bashing) or his music. Hell, I can’t make a rock album, angry or otherwise. But I’m just not that into this one. I’ll keep listening to it, but it’s probably not going on my iPhone. I only have 8 gigs after all.
In the end, this album (which is clearly a concept album) is a little too heavy on the concept, and a little too lite on the album.
Today, all most of these networks have a place. Obviously Facebook is kicking ass. MySpace still has tens of millions of users, many some of them active. Even Friendster, for instance, is insanely popular in the Philippines. Orkut, Google’s social network is very big in Brazil (though Facebook’s presence is growing there.) But what has become of Tagworld? Nothing good.
What’s interesting is that some people do seem to still visit Tagworld – to me though, the site seems effectively dead. If you visit the home page, you’re greeted with a stunning bit of verbiage (look to the right.) To me, between the lines this says: “we’re over it – if you want to keep using it, run it yourself.” Some members do seem to visit and update their profiles – many of the public profiles on the homepage have updates newer than the last 24 hours. 
We got a dog recently, and adorable Golden Retriever puppy we’ve named Cash. He’s a part of this family, and 100% awesome. But he’s got a weak tummy (or worms) and he’s lost control of himself a couple of times, both at the office and at home in our bedroom. Cross my fingers, we’ve so far avoided any squishy toes (thanks to Ron H. for that lovely and descriptive term.)
Now, for the first time since I’ve been using Facebook (~3 years) I got a MySpace-style spam friend request. See picture on the right. I’m pretty sure I don’t know that person – I’d remember a stunningly hot woman named Miles Michaels. And I notice that the fan pages “she” is following are both for clubs in Las Vegas. Huh. What do you know.
On a scale from 1to10, this Best Buy kiosk is experiencing a serious fail.
