The (music) Negativity Removal Project
Lately I’ve been spending a good chunk of time off and on searching for new music. See, I’ve run into a bit of a conundrum with it – problem is, the types of music I most like are hard rock, blues rock, and sometimes some metal-ish stuff.
However, at the same time, I realized a while back that life is actually pretty good. I’m not loving my job but things seem to be improving there, I have a great girl who I’m fairly confident will end up being “the one,” I have good friends and family nearby… I mean really, what do I have to bitch about aside from wishing I had a bit more disposable income?
So – what is there in this music that I can relate to? Almost all of the song subjects are angry, depressive, or both – don’t rock bands ever have a good day that they can talk about?
In my searches I’ve found other people asking the same thing – where’s the happy metal?
I think some of us are probably having flashbacks of much of the music that was considered into this genre back in the 80’s and early 90’s – back when a lot of the bands just had fun lyrics, and didn’t feel the need to fill 3+ albums with non-stop angst.
The “nu-metal” genre seems to be especially bad for this from what I’ve noticed. You can pull up a song sample list on Amazon, and every.single.song is essentially about how life sucks or how his girl is a hateful and sometimes suicidal bitch or how the world is out to get you, etc etc etc etc ad naseum.
About the only modern US band I’ve found that doesn’t really fall into this may (surprisingly) Rob Zombie – I’m not saying his music isn’t dark, it is, but it’s not spiteful, hateful, “my life sucks” shit like so many other bands are spewing out. It’s more along the lines of “cinematic” dark themes – basically he’s a huge horror movie buff, apparently especially of the “campy” variety, and those themes tend to enter his music.
It’s looking like that “cinematic” dark may be the direction I end up having to lean towards if I don’t have much luck finding more “happy hard rock” – another band I discovered not long ago that appears to have this similar type of theme is Within Tempation (although, now that I think about it, they’re not American either). The sound is similar to Evanescence except with less angst and more werewolves.
Really what I keep running into as far as themes that fall into either a fun or fantasy/cinematic theme is more often than not in the “progressive metal” or “euro metal” category. This is stuff I can take in somewhat small doses – I kind of like Symphony X, for example. But overall most of these bands just don’t do it for me – they’re too synthesiser heavy, and it seems like they’re really bad at choosing vocalists, and it often seems like they are able to put together a good guitar riff but when it comes to arranging an entire song, not so much.
So, most of the negativity has been removed from my life, but I still have a little work to do. I’ve sort of naturally drifted away from people in my life who were I guess you could say emotionally draining, which is a good thing, and I highly recommend it for anyone else who similar relationships, and I don’t just mean of the romantic variety.
Although I’d like to have more money (and I’m still working on it), I’m not obsessed over a need for it, and can deal with not having a shiny new everything – another lesson I think more people could use to learn.
Now if only I can find some entertainment that provides a little but of adrenaline without trying to convince me that slitting my wrists might not be such a bad idea, all should be good 😛
The Bacon Vodka Experiment
A while back I came across a post on Brownie Points that perked my attention – bacon flavored… vodka?
Now, I’m not a huge bacon fan. For the most part it’s just a decent occasional side to breakfast, but I don’t go nuts over the stuff, and haven’t really participated in what has basically been a bacon-loving fad that’s been going around over the last year or two. (with the possible exception of Contagion’s Bacon Explosion… damn that thing was good), and I wasn’t real sure about bacon flavored alcohol… but then figured, hey at least somebody liked it enough to bottle it and give it as a gift, so maybe it can’t be so bad?
So I bought a $6 bottle or rotgut and a pack of bacon and started the process.
Step 1: Fry up some bacon
Step 2: Place fried up bacon into mason jar
Step 3: Add vodka to mason jar with bacon
Step 4: Stash into a dark, cool counter for a while so baconness can infuse into vodka for a while. The linked web site suggested at least 3 weeks – trust me, it doesn’t take that long. This was very strong after only about 9 days.
Step 5: Place into freezer for a while to solidify the fats. Pour through coffee filter. This is the finished product after filtering.
So… How does it taste?
Well, let me tell ya, I tried a couple of sips of this stuff straight – and wow, was it horrible. I mean just about upchuck-enducingly bad. I just don’t think bacon was meant to be taken in liquid form.
I tried mixing it with some vermouth, to sort of make a bacon-laced martini? No good – it’s not as bad, but still not something I’d want to drink.
But, based on one of Contagion’s suggestions I did try it with some bloody mary mix, and… it’s really not bad at all – the heavy taste of the tomato and spices is enough to cut back the bacon enough that it’s balanced out enough to be drinkable, and it’s actually a pretty interesting flavor.
So there you go – it’s easy to make, but I probably wouldn’t suggest it unless you’re a HUGE fan of bacon and/or bloody marys.
Not dead
Wow, I really need to start updating this thing more regarly.
Stupid Facebook / Twitter. I’ve been “micro” blogging so much that I just haven’t had the inspiration to write full blog entries here.
Need to fix that.
Refractional Darkness 