markosis

Never liked this band, but this is pretty kick ass. Makes a good "just got fired from my job-friday morning in bed-internet surfing-illegal download" soundtrack.

Just one, eh? Damn...

Gotta say

some honourable mentions, of course:

Atlas Sound - Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel

Fleet Foxes

Sera Cahoone - Only As The Day Is Long

Seriously, Van's performance is my favorite one of the guest spots. I really don't care for any of the other ones.

Illiteracy Will Prevail is a demo tape by Fecal Matter, recorded in December 1985. The tape features the first songs written and recorded by Kurt Cobain, who would become famous as the frontman of the seminal grunge band Nirvana. Cobain performs guitar and vocals on the tape, while Dale Crover of the Melvins plays bass guitar and drums. It has been a much sought-after rarity by Nirvana fans since its existence became known.

You just answered your own question.

Messed up is an understatement. It was downright distrurbing....he looks like death warmed over...

i've never seen that.

truly disturbing.

I've always thought that scene was awesome. Just a bunch of drunk bastards jamming out, nothing disturbing about that. At least to me.

How do you know that hipsters bought all the tickets?

Have you ever been to a show in LA?

It depends on who you believe - Levon or Robbie I guess.

Well some may recall a year or two ago a bootleg from that concert called the "Lost Waltz" surfaced, and I was lucky enough to find pieces of it online. I distinctly recall watching the an unedited version of "Acadian Driftwood" with the bass being out of tune and the vocal harmonies being particularly off on the chorus. I'm sure that wasn't the only one, I'm sure some of the songs that made it on to the film also suffered from similar maladies.

I think "Via Chicago" could get a little sketchy, especially if a dorky kid goes home and tells their parents they dissected a song with the lyrics "I dreamed about killing you..."

How the fuck do two LA shows sell out? HIPSTERS MUST DIE

In case you were wondering....Obama drives a 2008 Ford Escape hybrid.

Frigging Muslims and their SUVs.

wtf

I had this page up, went away to get a hair cut and read through it when I returned. I then hit refresh to see if there were new posts and I could swear a post was missing? Did someone delete something? PANTHER or Markosis, I believe? Whoever it was, I liked what you'd said there.

I think it was something to the effect of:

everyone, in conversations about theology, gets all hung up on "the origins of the universe" and "what happens when we die." For me, here's how I deal with those issues:

1. We were created, and we are here. That much is true. Why that is, I don't know, and I don't particularly care. I know I am here now and I'll focus on the future instead of the past.

2. What happens when we die? We won't know until we're dead, so there's really no point worrying about it because there's no way of knowing.

Was that it? I deleted it because I thought it sounded a little harsh.

I'd like our search for ultimate truths about things like the origin of the universe to be a collective one.

That's pretty much what I've been trying to say all along. Some use science, some use religion, some use art, some use whatever, and all any of us is doing is trying to figure out our own purpose so its pointless to bicker about each other's "contradictory" beliefs when the reality is were all stiving for the same thing: meaning.

We, us humans, despite all our failures and shortcomings, were pretty fucking cool, and I see no reason to attribute our achievements to anyone or anything but ourselves.

Well, yeah, I don't just walk over to my guitar and slap my hands on it and say "OK great divine force give me an idea." It takes effort and trial and error, and I know the transcendent feeling I recieve when I'm totally vibing and creating freely, and its one I attribute to something more powerful than myself. The point I was making with Bukowski was to read a 200 page novel in three days and be totally engrossed in that world was a transcendent experience. See, now maybe I should explain my side a little more clearly: Some may say it's firing synapses in the brain, I say I'm tapped in to the universal inspiration, but I also say its the same thing, just worded differently. Its not really the point to worry so much about the means of reaching the conclusion, when the conclusion is the same thing.

That is my ultimate point in all of this: It doesn't matter what you call it when its really the same thing. Example: A song. "Far, Far Away," for the sake of example. You may call it a happy song, I may call it a sad song, but its the same song. The reasons you have for calling it happy may seemingly contradict the reasons I have for calling it sad, but its the same song we're listening to, simply through different ears into different brains.

Yes - we can. If you're really interested in understanding the evolution of music, I suggest you stop by the library and pick up Daniel Levitin's This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

I've seen that book. I'm sure the book is, like I've been trying to say all along, just a different way of arriving at a similar conclusion ie "music sounds good and makes me feel good." I'd rather spend my time reading Bukowski (who was surely channeling some other force in his writing. If you don't believe me, read the first 10 pages of Women).

We can say, with a reasonable amount of certainty, that they are zoological accidents (though I wouldnt phrase it as such) precisely because art springs from the mind of man, an evolved ape.

Well, being a songwriter I can say that my best ideas come from somewhere besides my mind. Where that is, I have no idea, but its surely nothing any scientific theory or organized religious doctrine can explain. It just is. Any artist worth their salt will say the same thing, for the most part.

Can you really tell me that

Try harder to understand the claims made by science and religion, please.

That's one option. Or, you can try option B, which is to leave the statistics for those that need things explained to them, and figure out all this stuff for yourself. Figuring it out for yourself is a bit tougher of a path, but ultimately much more rewarding. Give it a try. Everyone seems so hung up on "finding answers." The only way to find answers is to seek them yourself, not to listen to a theologist or scientist because in either one's case, they've found their own answers through their own experiences. Do the same thing for yourself and you'll find the answers you're looking for. Hopefully, like myself, you will see that whether its science or religion or spirituality or trial and error or whatever the method one uses to quantify this existence, its all the same thing.

I think everyone needs to stop being so hung up on the supposed "differences" between what we feel, and see the similarities. Life, beliefs, ideas, in all of it there is such ambiguity, I don't see any way to discount someone else's opinion because if you take off your blinders you'll see that you're probably saying the exact same thing just in different ways. And that's the beauty of humanity, that we are so different and we can choose to interpret our existence any way we want to, and at the same time we're just like the next person, we're just trying to live our lives and make sense of it all. We are all beautifully different as well as the same.

Finally, I've read most of this thread and I've come across alot of intolerant, even arrogant talk. No matter what you may think, to put down someone's beliefs or to label someone's thinking as "backwards", that's not going to foster a lot of tolerance for your beliefs. Its only going to create more barriers, and in coversations such as these we need to be more understanding of each individual's thoughts because a. they are entitled to feel anything they want to and b. even if they call it something different than you call it, or if they use a different method of discovering it, its really the same thing.

I like music.

Listened to today:

at some point though, it all comes down to if what we are pursuing is actually "something," if that "hole in our heart" persay can actually be filled, or if we attempt to fill it up with other stuff that truely doesn't fit, so we search for what does

Ah yes, and some of us will never really know. Some go through life never pursuing anything that has real meaning to them, they're just following a dead end road. I think a word like "God" came into being to describe those who had found their pursuit, the holy ones who knew their path and followed it, that those people are filled with "God", or they have found "God."

Are you saying that they are all legitimate "pursuits," is it just a way to define ourselves when we really aren't?

Not quite. I'm just trying to break down some walls. Get rid of the semantics of religion/spirituality and get down to the heart of the matter, which is the same no matter who you are. I don't think we need to be defined by anything other than the fact that we all breathe, eat, and sleep, i.e. we are all human beings. What I was saying wasn't really to point out the pursuits so much as to point out that we all do pursue, and religion is a means of pursuing that "something," so I think its foolish to reject spirituality when we are all engaged in spiritual pursuits of some kind. I also was trying to say that atheism/agnosticism doesn't really exist, for the very reason that we are all striving for something.

Every human being is after something, every human being strives for something. Even an atheist/agnostic seeks things that bring pleasure, things that will improve their existence. Some of the most vehemently anti-religious people I know are, ironically, avid sports fans, or avid partiers, or avid music fans etc. The act of watching a sporting event for enjoyment is itself a connection to "god." It is a connection to a power that they are after. It doesn't really matter what the power is called. Some may call it "happiness", or "love", or "God", or "truth." The fact remains that no matter who we are, we are after something, we strive to attain something: a feeling, a state of mind, a possession, etc. And even the most "atheistic" among us knows the feeling when we connect to what it is we are after. A bum strives for a meal and a warm bed, a songwriter strives for that magical mixture of chords and melody, an alcoholic strives for a drink. I don't reject any religious teaching or belief because I realize that organized religion is the way that some people use to connect to their happiness/truth/love/God. We're all in this thing together, we are all after the same thing. Maybe I go to shows, maybe you go to church, maybe someone else goes to a soccer game, someone else makes love, someone else goes for a bike ride. If one calls it God and another calls it something else, it doesn't matter. Its all the same thing.

I just don't think that the whole idea that Christianity was made up is valid, because it is so complicated, so unexpected, so radical, that it cannot be a mere man that has come up with such claims

Well, I'd say that the Bible (or the Koran, the Torah, et al) was one person's (or a group of people's) view of life. Life was, is, and always will be complicated, unexpected and radical. I'd say its certainly not impossible than an enlightened person could create something so resonant to help us deal with this existence. To say that a human is incapable of such things is to greatly underestimate humanity. All that any organized religion does is attempt to quantify existence, which is what we all do on a daily basis. To think that an enlightened few came up with a method of explaining our existence seems pretty reasonable to me.

I listened to that "Cyanide" song, and its weak as hell. Pack it in boys, and stop embarassing yourselves.

Led Zeppelin - "The Rain Song", which is essential listening in any weather, but seems especially fitting for a grey autumn day.

Norah Jones doing Gram Parsons' "She":

She

Not great, but its the closest I could find to a live version of it.

The more I listen to him, the more I'm realizing that this Bradford Cox guy is a minor genius.