Baroque Social

I do “produce art,” I’ve written songs with lyrics much better than alex’s and music every bit as dismal. The reason you piss me off enough to take a break from doing math homework, something that would be difficult to require less attention, is because you’re the opposite of me; I don’t go advertising the fact that I can write a bad song to every dumbass who might like me for it. I take a moment out of my “precious time that I could be producing art” to insult the way you produce art because it completely goes against the fundamentals I use, the reasons why I make art, and that disturbs me enough to want to correct it. So sorry, I’ll get back to art and producing quantity over quality so I can hide my mediocrity in numbers (apparently I haven’t managed to hear your good stuff) as soon as I’m done. I could go on and shoot all you said right back at you, like the fact that you said the goal of music is to sound good. : | That makes Christian music good, pop music good, etc. I hope that’s not your goal in music. Or that Morrissey and Brock go outside of pitch in some songs, at certain times in the songs, not at the end of every fucking line. That’s what we call a gimmick; even if Bowie did it, it was still a gimmick. Bowie had a little more substance in other areas of his music to back him up than you do, though. If you practice 8 hours a day I sure as hell can’t hear the improvement from what I remember in highschool. Maybe you’re practicing is more like this kid I know whose in much the same position as you, his practicing is a lot more like gloating, explaining the lack of advancement. I’m sorry I only practice 2 hours a day, I also go to college, work, and have other pursuits that take up my time. Also, you guys are engaged? That’s cute. May your children have the largest unibrow in all the Balkan countries. I don’t mind being an asshole to people like you, Franklin or Danielle, who talks up anyone whose currently on her good side and any time they’re not they suddenly become despicable. I seem to remember you did that with Franklin, too, when you weren’t “engaged” on facebook or in real life or whatever. I fucking hate these back and forth blog arguments that never get anywhere that you two seem to looove so much, wasting the time that both of you could be “producing art”! Get back to all the art that you produce, Danielle! Or are women only allowed to back up their men, not produce anything themselves?  Maybe that’s not it, maybe art’s a form of expression, of communication, and here’s some news, writing is an art form! This isn’t a waste of my time that I could be “making art myself”. You know my opinion and if you’re secure enough in your musicianship you shouldn’t be worried about someone’s opinion that’s “only heard 2% of your music.” It was the two percent you chose to publish on youtube, forgive me for judging it seriously. Word of advice: take up jazz, franklin, and don’t release anything until you’re at least bad at it.  I guarantee you, you will be able to communicate more accurately to more people than with what you’re doing now.

I am sick of people saying Franklin’s a good musician, for fuck’s sake. I don’t know who the smith and westerns are but it sure shouldn’t be that difficult to be in the water with Alex. Making songs with I-IV-V progressions, throwing in excessive hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides based on diatonic chord steps while you twiddle around pentatonics and feign comping is little to get excited about. Damn near every guitarist who’s ever delved into theory for more than an hour can do it, only on a professional level most choose to be a bit more tasteful about how fucking frequently they choose to do so . He’s a godawful singer, and I don’t mean to point towards his nasal, shaky tone. I’m implying whatever trademark way he has of ending every line out of tune. That’s not Rock N’ Roll, Franklin, that’s gay. And then his lyrics. BLUUURUPRROIPOWEschlpspppoooosh. Let me site an example:

Maybe its something in the way you move
That keeps me so hypnotized
because darling when i’m looking at you
I swear I speak no lies

Okay Franklin, you can rhyme. That must’ve been what you were trying to imply because I didn’t get a single thing outside of that from that stanza. And all your writing is like this! Attempts at worming together romantic cliches in rhymes at the level of a pre-teen gothic poet with a little too much self-esteem. No development, no hint at any meaning outside of a surface emotion that’s so lacking in constitution that you may as well be a frat-boy singing Wonderwall to get laid. What’s worse is that you’re satisfied! Spawned from the early days when you started advancing faster than others technically on the guitar, you got praise and praise is all you need. For all I know you could be fucking insane by now if you didn’t just quit advancing once you appeased people enough to be well-liked, once you learned to play big star covers. And now you float around a wasteland of a suburb getting drug-addicts together who haven’t put in more than a few hours on their instrument so that you still feel like you’re the shit, so that people can still be envious of the great Alex Franklin.

To a certain degree you can all argue about which band’s better than the other and never get anywhere because they’re all the fucking same, it’s art, it’s subjective. Whether one band attempts to use lo-fi to distinguish themselves or another imitates classic rock, neither substantiate themselves in doing so. You can substantiate your music by establishing context, by doing something other than showing that you can make noise that’s pleasing to the ear. Debussy and Ravel did it in the form of Impressionism, using whole tone scales and flurries of notes that seemed to meld together suggesting the that to them, everything seems to blur together, floating from unexplained dissonance to soul-gushing beauty so pleasurable to the ear that it draws out every listener’s most nostalgiac, personal vision (you’ve all been happy for no reason and sad when you shouldn’t be) at even intervals and that is what’s natural (least during their time). I fucking relate to that! That is what I want my music to express! to console upon me! to remind me that others recognize! Makes me feel a whole lot less alone. Two Gallants did it by molding their sound into an analogy of the days of the expanding West and comparing it to aspects love; the themes of melancholy, of a split inside yourself that takes place when you leave things behind the moment they go bad, in search of something better solely because you’re bound to find something better with all that unexplored land out there, etc. I fucking relate to that! In a world where there are so many fucking people and so many vices and so on and so forth, hearing that message through a medium of two brothers singing about the West really fucking gets me going! God, I could write pages upon pages about what they inspire in me! There are so many more! Every great band that holds themselves as artists more than musicians has some redeeming quality, but I fail to see any in Franklin other than his great dedication. But are you honestly surprised when a dog sits if you give ‘im a bone?  At least other bands seem to carry across some kind of message outside of putting chords to shitty monologues about love in the style of your favorite esoteric Rock N’ Roll bands.

Sorry, I needed to get that out. I’m a quiet kid and I usually keep my reserves to myself but this has been bugging the shit out of me since day one. Anytime I hear people praising Franklin I just always picture Sax when I used to hang out with him, whining about how envious he is of Franklin and I think to myself, what a sad fuck; your dream is another man’s medium of attaining popularity.

And I quoteth from the scripture of the formal UP Michigan Road Trip Plans in their entirety:

Day 4

Knox

Iowa- Self guided tours

Minnesota- Day 2

Carlton

Knox U of I

Sup sally? Sup Nigger Jesus?

The End