pakistani music journalism, or lack thereof

listening to: Tracer AMC – Islands

Yesterday, in a multi-msn convo we (me, arafat, sidrah and abid) had a discussion about pakistan’s so called music critics being utter pants. for starters, most of them are self-proclaimed critics, critics with the cumulative music knowledge of a porcupine. being able to write articulately (some of them aptly fail at this even) doesn’t mean you are an authority on music, neither does having heard 2 radiohead albums and proclaiming that they are the saviour of modern music.

no, i’m not saying that to be a music critic you must have the innate ability to know what 3/8 is in terms of drum signatures, of know what a polyrythm or polymeter is. no, you don’t need to know the difference between shredding or playing fast on the guitar either, or what key a song is in.

what you NEED is the a near comprehensive knowledge of music. you cannot be a classic rock critic if you haven’t heard king crimson or all of zeppelin or UFO. does this mean you need the ability to drop obscure band names? NO. but, if you’ve heard what UFO sound like, then you’ve got a better understanding of rock music in the 60s-70s, because sorry, zeppelin weren’t the only band in the 60s and 70s, and neither were Pink Floyd (omg comfortably numb awesome lol!).

and for most pakistanis, a music “scene” isn’t when a couple of bands get together and play crappy covers. a music “scene” is when you have bands from a specific locale playing something DIFFERENT, ala montreal these days with their experimental indie-pop (broken social scene, stars, metric, feist, malajube, new pornographers) or montreal at the turn of the century when it was leading the way for chamber influenced post rock (the whole constellation label). That’s what a scene is.

moreoever, a better understand of genres would help too. there’s no such thing as “hardcore rock” to cue a recent article in instep, those are two significantly different genres :@.

why does someone have an epiphany and realize that they can write about music? or actually, sod that, about anything in particular? despite what may seem an elitist and arrogant statement, you cannot write about music if you haven’t heard 50 genres and 500 bands, JUST as you cannot be a movie critic if you’ve watched 2 movies or a literary critic because you’ve read 5 novels.

music journalists are supposed to know more about music then your average listener. unfortunately, in pakistan, music journalists (the self-proclaimed ones) know as much about music as someone blabbing about how impervious to fallacy the sajid and zeeshan or atif albums are.

goddamn xp

sometimes, it is way too easy to hate windows XP.

i say

kenneth keniff, you sir, are a genius.

exile

an inkling of times sanguine,
to waters that flow and run dry,
under our watchful feet,
this is our austere schism

tainted, discoloured walls speak,
to our paltry, timid imagination,
mundane pages culled together,
to form our farcical autonomy

beneath this veneer of mortality,
we lie on a cusp of our molten hearts,
murky shadows leak our divinity,
and our distaste for broken hearts

and to hades we are,
ever so slighty,
welcome.

footie and politics, always hand in hand

listening to: The End – Elementary

southgate, in his post-match interview said of morrison’s lunge at ronaldo “well in that situation we’d all like to do that”.

i guess we’d all like to punch the shit out of you too you fucking worthless cunt.

regardless, watford await in the semis, a game that we ought to win, but what worries me is that maybe fergie will mix things up and give a start to some fringe players like *gasp* kieran richardson. fucking hell, even with a 4×4 through my testicles i’d play better than that excuse for a footballer.

on a slightly different note, am i the only one who seems barely perturbed by the musharraf-removal/suspension-cjp bollocks? while everyone’s raised their arms aloft in a display of melodramatic furore, am i the only one whose going “fuck, that was stupid mushy”?

Apropos to nothing then, that most people don’t realize just HOW screwed up it all is. I’ve always held the belief that musharraf was the only one sane enough to rule (how he’s proving me wrong now tho, or has been for the past year anyway), in comparison to the lowly and frankly far worse benazir bhutto and nawaz sharif. for all those who support nawaz sharif and proclaim to hold the judiciary branch and the constitution above all else, when leghari dissolved the bhutto govt, the first thing nawaz sharif did after being elected for the second time was to amend the constitution so that the president couldn’t oust a prime minister again.

anyway, with a now insane musharraf, two “somewhat” party-leaders who are known for their corruption and utter lack of any ethics or morals, a system where politicians with no education or intellect are cabinet ministers, and a marked increase in the taliban’s presence in waziristan, can anyone tell me why we’re wasting so much time being appalled at the current state of affairs when we are in only so many words, FUCKED?

rip bob woolmer

so pakistan loses the opening match to the west indies and follows that up with an astounding loss to ireland.

on st. patrick’s day.

and then woolmer collapses, falls into a comatose state and is declared dead.

all i’m saying is that maybe the pakistani cricket team killed him with the loss against ireland.

maybe.

just maybe.

children of men

listening to: Philip Glass – Glassworks

so, without a glimmer of doubt, children of men has to be one of my all-time faves, and its cinematography has to rank amongst the best from the past 2 decades.

cuaron and his cinematographer manage to create these absolutely mind-boggling long shots (that cover more than a minute atleast), and unlike it being a shot where you’re just following someone around, there’s actual action going on (e.g car racing, people dodging bullets etc). its brilliant from a technical point of view.

i’m not going to let out much about the story, except that its sci-fi, providing an alarmingly realistic vision of the future. no bullshit cgi where the cars are flying or the buildings are nothing but steel and the cities are concrete monsters (as if they aren’t that already though). clive owen plays theo, a guy whose been asked to transport a refugee, only till something happens and he realizes the task is more than just getting a girl out.

stunning acting backed up by some appropriately realistic writing and ofcourse, the aforementioned breath-taking visuals make it an absolutely superb movie.

everyone, EVERYONE should see this flick.

this is our masked decline

burning shuttles collapse,
under this, our grevious sun,
as you instigate and portray,
under him, our aching son

to our detriment and to those who align,
themselves,
with our beasts and our fears that live,
amongst

to march on amongst a tide of immorality,
and to rise from the dead, a sullen magnate
this is to our irrevocable masked decline,
to an age of death, yours and mine

qotd: musical horoscope

stolen/borrowed from shahzad’s blog:

Q: What’s your musical horoscope?  (Put your player on shuffle and write down the first 10 songs that come up.)
Inspired by Stephanie.  

1. kid dakota – ivan (from the album “the west is the future”)

2. the rapture – get myself into it (from the album “pieces of the people we love”)

3. ane brun – my lover will go (from the album “a temporary dive”)

4. the shins – the past and the pending (from the album “oh! inverted world”)

5. the decemberists – california one youth and beauty brigade (from the album “castaways and cutouts”)

6. low – take (from the album “long division”)

7. hope of the states – the red the white the black the blue (from the bbc6music acoustic live performance)

8. queensryche – chemical youth, we are rebellion (from the album “rage for order”)

9. rainbow – man on the silver mountain (from a best of)

10. novembre – the winter eyed (from the album “dreams d’azur”)

lhr

listening to: 65 Days Of Static – The Fall Of Math

so, the first thing i do when i get to lhr? go to play football. can’t even catch my breath or make sure my nuts have the ability to feel, cause waqas told me to come straight to football.

played against this guy called “meero” and a bunch of his ‘cronies’. in our team we had me, waqas, shahzad, adil and wabi (two of waqas’ friends) and afnan. we started out quite shit, i was sent upfront and i missed a real sitter and generally played like crap, static and with a disappointing first touch (something very new for me :S). after 5-10 minutes i decided to go in the centre or the back so i could see more of the ball, and that’s when my feet woke up. by then though, we were 3-0 down, and waqas decided to thump some long balls forward, a tactic defended by “co-captain” shahzad, justifiying it by saying how it got us back on track blah blah. anyway, after that we kicked their ass, created some very good passing plays ala arsenal and scored some sexy goals. at the end, from 3-0 down we’d turned it into somewhat of a rout, winning 8 or 9-5. i didn’t feel flustered with happiness though cause i didn’t really see much of the ball (although we were playing long ball stuff so no-one really saw a lot of it) but the team won so “yay” :p

scored 3 crackers, two were drives, both along the ground; one with the left and one with the right. scored another where i beat two guys i think and then slotted it. made a couple of nice runs and beat defenders and all the usual, just wish i could’ve done it more regularly. waqas scored a goal with a cool freekick and shahzad missed two one on one’s by sliding the ball wide thinking the goal was somewhere else :p still, the guy’s game is very good and he’s like a little skillful “rottweiler” in the middle of the park. keeper let in two goals which he could’ve saved, but then again he saved a couple too.

after the game, waqas explained the concept behind his band’s soon-to-come music video, which me and shahzad made fun of but stayed within ourselves :p my body ached for 2 days after that cause of a lack of proper exercise in the weeks (well years) prior to the game and not warming up for the game itself.

same night, played pro evo 6 with spain and went to the WC after qualifiying in style. In the quarters, came up against Italy and were 2-1 up with a minute to go, only to see Italy score and make it 2-2. However, from the restart, we managed to put a classy move together and score in the first minute of stoppage time to win it 3-2, deservingly

after that, it became ridiculous. next up we had to face mexico, and then i think in the final australia. at the prospect of such a “final”, we became disheartened. who the fuck wants to play against “australia” in a final? No brazil, or france or portugal or argentina. No, we got the goddamn aussies. and we lost, cause we really weren’t up for playing.

next day we went to hussam’s around 4 and hammad (corpsepyre’s vocalist) along with afnan were there too. they were watching prison break while me and waqas watched united steal a victory from yankepool at the last minute :D:D thanks to, of all people, john o’shea when the freekick was given, i had a feeling ronaldo was going to go for goal, only to see giggs talking to him (and probably telling him that if he didn’t put a great ball in and went directly for goal, fergie would assrape him, and giggs would tape it). Cue the moment, and ronaldo puts in a stellar ball, saha runs across it and manages to confuse reina who can only parry it to o’shea who finished it by side-footing the ball into the top corner of the goal

united 1 – 0 liverpool, at anfield. 12 pts clear of chelsea (who brought it back to 9 later in the day).

the league is now ours to lose (which can still happen because united have been rather disappointing of late).

anyway, set a football game for 11am on sunday, and everyone else obliged. woke up around 10:15 am on sunday and waqas was sleepy so we decided to cancel it msged shahzad only for him to tell me to fuck off cause he’d ruined his sleep for the game. sorry man :p really :p

came back sunday, and islamabad seems to suck that little bit more now.

man, i really should start taking pictures and the like.