I guess more fanboyism of mopey alternative bands? This is what my life has come to. Doo-dah.

I must resist the urge to keep saying 'but seriously' and then degenerate into loopy-speak.

This week is radiohead week: that may explain the disjointedness.

Robert Christgau said (and he is my bible really when it comes to music, except of course for the pleasure centres in my brain, which are severely overworked now) that Radiohead has two modes: a more electronica-y, texture-y mode, and a rock-y, structure-y mode. The key i think to understanding this joyful dichotomy is that in the former they have layered guitar accompaniments: in the latter they have layered guitar solos. Get it? OK computer is the latter; In Rainbows is the former. Honestly i prefer them when they're fucking about with the tape loops and the stuff, but OK computer is still good honest music that you can get behind (and that solo on paranoid android, whoa?). In Rainbows is a nice album. Nice of them to give it away free too, otherwise i'd be twenty dollars deeper into my third-world-nation-crippling budget deficit. The first track, in particular, is good rolicking fun in 5/4 time.

Although I am definitely out of touch with what the world is listening to today (I still think jimi hendrix is pretty hot stuff, remember) I hope the present trend towards slightly silly punk-pop music goes away (although blink 182 has some(but not that many) things going for it, and so does Green Day) and I can only take heart that the 5-years-ago trend towards impossibly bland MOR songs about the most generic love affairs one can imagine has by now progressed into the realm of kitsch.

The two bands I have heard who are going places now, today, and not 40 years ago:
Arcade Fire and Radiohead

I hope U2 and RHCP, both stalwarts of the 80s, keep going without starting to suck (stadium arcadium? what were you thinking). I hope John Mayer scrapes some of his songwriting mojo together, with his guitar prowess, and gives us an album worthy of his idols rather than Michael Learns to Rock. I hope Nickelback dies in a fire. I hope the reunion bands - Pixies, Sonic Youth, Breeders - do justice to their illuminated past. I hope the memory of Nirvana never dies, although those who remember Nirvana often should. I hope people will let jazz die so the extremely talented performers who feel guilted into playing it by some sense of tradition will finally move on and make new, exciting music. I hope asia will finally (or have they already?) start contributing to rock music, which has become international in most senses of the word, but without needlessly co-opting american culture. If some of the newer japanese bands are any indication, we have hope (MELT BANANA. MELT BANANA.)

I hope hip hop will live up to its ideal, and become to the 90s-2000s what punk was to the 70s-80s. Outkast and Eminem - yes. 50 cent - no. I hope Eminem will be remembered like I said he would - otherwise I would've been wrong. I hope indie music will live on without the awful pretensions of its fans and practitioners.

That's all hope though. What I know is that music will live on regardless. Humans need it around.

adam