Oh, fantastic! I've been interviewed by the great Death Bear!
I'm terribly sorry for taking so long - I would have responded sooner, but I was out buying crap for university and doing a lot of packing.
1. is canada producing the best music in the world these days, if you subtract the shit that mainstream radio's are pumping out? if so, who are these bands.
While I tend to (unfortunately) live in the past rather than focus too much on upcoming bands, Canada certainly is spawning some great newcomers. The main one, of course, being The Arcade Fire.
Funeral is perfect in many ways (I love each and every song on that album), and definitely shows promise for what should hopefully be a brilliant career. The Arcade Fire are also opening doors for many other promising bands like Wolf Parade, whose debut should be good. As for other fairly new Canadian music I enjoy, I'm fond of Wintersleep and (some of) Frog Eyes and Hot Hot Heat. They're not what I would call fantastic, but there's some potential there. I really need to get into some more new stuff, though, I feel inadequate in this department.
2. in regards to the highly contentious debates regarding coldplay on this board over the past year or so, use this opportunity to express why you feel the way you do about the english foursome/fivesome whatever.
It's no secret around here that I think Coldplay are infinitely shit.
I didn't mind certain songs on their first album all that much, and I thought their first version of "Talk" was tolerable (forgetting that Kraftwork must be cringing over the fact that Coldplay sampled one of their songs). Everything else that they've produced on their past two albums has been nothing more than a load of overhyped tripe. What
I don't understand is why everyone goes so completely gagga for them. There's nothing even remotely interesting about them or their music. It's just a pile of dull, derivative, uninspired raw sewage. The only song on the latest CD they pulled from their asses that could be perceived as even
slightly good, is Twisted Logic, which sounds a bit like Radiohead gone bad. "Fix You" is one reason, amongst many, why I don't turn on the radio. And for the love of God, COULD COLDPLAY'S GUITARIST
PLEASE STOP IMITATING THE EDGE?
So in conclusion, Coldplay = shit to the
nth degree.
3. five bands you wanna see live within the next five years.
U2 (seeing them in Toronto in a few days)
Radiohead (obviously)
The Arcade Fire
Muse
Pink Floyd (only in my dreams
)
4. do you listen to music primarily with ear phones or through a stereo? do you spend time right before you sleep listening to music, and if so, what kind of music do you generally play at this time?
It's a bit of a combination, really. For songs that really require the FULL listening experience, like much of Pink Floyd and Radiohead, I'll listen through headphones. The rest is usually played on the stereo on full tilt. Before I go to bed, I usually listen to classical. Not the airy fairy classical, though - Chopin, Stravinsky, Shostakovich...I guess you could call them the alternative rock of the classical genre.
5. have you heard the leslie feist rendition of broken social scene's 'lover's spit'? if not, download it off soulseek, and then answer the following question. when the sounds of the wind come rolling through your speakers, with about, i dunno, 1-2 minutes left in the song, what sort of landscapes do you see in your head? is it perhaps one of the most beatiful sounds you've ever heard?
No, I have not heard it and I can't find it on Soulseek! This is making me sad, because the way you talk about it makes it sound like it's amazing.
Would anyone care to send it to me?
6. explain how music affects your daily life. when you walk into a room full of people you don't want to be near, what song plays in your mind...when you're looking for things to do around the house, what songs are the first you start singing without really thinking about it?
Music affects my daily life in a
huge way. If I didn't have something good to listen to every single day, or a guitar to strum away at, I think I'd go insane. Well, more insane than I already am, obviously. With regard to your first question, something by Radiohead usually plays... "How To Disappear Completely" being the obvious one. And if I'm forced to sit with said people for a long time, I usually play back Beethoven's entire 9th Symphony in my mind. I know that entire piece note for note, despite it being over an hour long.
More people need to listen to classical. Too many just pass it off as boring or pretentious, but hell, it provided the backbone for great music today as we know it! As for the second question, I've never really noticed myself doing that all that much. But if I ever do sing for no reason, it's usually something I've been listening to a lot prior to then. Like the other day, I had been listening to Pink Floyd's
The Final Cut on repeat, and would just randomly hum songs from the album when I was making tea, or whatever.
7. since this is a u2 message board, which are your favourite 4 albums and why?
Achtung Baby - musically and lyrically, I feel it's U2's best album. There are certain songs I could do without, like TTTYAATW and So Cruel (I appreciate the lyrics in that one, but the music sucks). The rest is pure musical gold. Zoo Station, The Fly, Acrobat, UTEOTW, and Love Is Blindness are perfect. It's definitely The Edge's best album, that's for sure. Those opening notes to Zoo Station blow my mind. If they're playing that one in Toronto, I think I may just pass out!
The Unforgettable Fire - pure atmospheric bliss! This album frequently moves me to tears, even though it's not overly depressing or anything like that. The music is absolutely beautiful and paints the most wonderful pictures in my mind. A Sort Of Homecoming, Promenade, The Unforgettable Fire, Bad, 4th of July, MLK...it's all amazing.
The Joshua Tree - while JT isn't really the type of
music I enjoy, I love the lyrics. There's obviously some of U2's greatest hits on it, but I don't listen to them all that much when I put on the album. I'm more interested in the second half of the album, to be quite honest. RTSS is wonderful (though I do prefer the Zoo TV version much more than the album version), Red Hill Mining Town has one of the best U2 choruses of all time, One Tree Hill is brilliant, Exit is just out of this world...Exit's also one I listen to before I go to sleep, I forgot to mention that. It's so dark and eerie...U2 need to do another song like that, but alas, I don't think it's possible given their current musical style.
Zooropa - Zooropa's a bit of an on/off album for me. I really do appreciate the experimentation on it, probably more so than Pop. The first half of the album is brilliant, but I feel it lags a little in the end. The title track is one of my all-time favourites. Numb and Lemon are perfect, Stay is amazing, and Daddy's Gonna Pay is great too (I don't know why so many people slam that one to death - the guitar and drums are fucking AWESOME). I don't care that much for SDABTO, The First Time, or The Wanderer...but I do love Dirty Day (especially some of the remixes). And, unlike most U2 fans, I LIKE the beeping at the end! Those of us who do seem few and far between.
8. favourite 10 songs of all time?
Bugger, this is a hard question! I can't even begin to order them, so I'll just do them by band.
1. U2 - The Fly
2. U2 - Please
3. U2 - Where The Streets Have No Name
4. Radiohead - Climbing Up The Walls
5. Radiohead - My Iron Lung
6. Radiohead - Optimistic
7. Radiohead - Paranoid Android
8. Pink Floyd - In The Flesh
9. Pink Floyd - The Gunner's Dream
10. Pink Floyd - Time
9. favourite 10 songs right now?
1. Radiohead - Dollars And Cents
2. Radiohead - You And Whose Army?
3. Queen - The March Of The Black Queen
4. The Arcade Fire - Cold Wind
5. Wolf Parade - You Are a Runner and I Am My Father's Son
6. Muse - Hysteria
7. Muse - Butterflies and Hurricanes
8. Queen - Death On Two Legs (Dedicated To...)
9. U2 - Love And Peace Or Else
10. Pink Floyd - Embryo
10. where do you hope mainstream radio will find itself in three years?
Unless mainstream changes drastically (which I doubt), I hope it will find itself under several layers of vile, unmentionable things. Mainstream music, and the radio stations that play it, will forever suck no matter what bands are involved. Sometimes, good bands can fuck with the mainstream a little bit and get themselves heard amongst the crap. But there will always be plenty Coldplays, Keanes, Backstreet Boys, 50 Cents, and Gwen Stefanis to push them straight out again. That being said, I guess we need them there - if it wasn't for mainstream music, there would be nothing to measure good music against.