Some months ago Amy Winehouse caught my eye for sleazy emaciated beehive haired girls while zapping. Her voice seemed ok, and I liked the retro R&B. Then someone said something about a new pop star dragged into drugs and shit, how sad it was, whatever. Thing is the music and the persona are really quite fresh, even with all the retro aura—retro which has actually become so prevalent in good music as to make one wonder, isn’t this really the way music IS, and all those other non-retro forms nothing but deviations?

But then, why decadency has such power over us? First, success doesn´t help at all the basic sufferings we all have, sometimes it even intensifies it—we enjoy having this knowledge, being the losers we are. We like to devour the idea of such wasted life, exactly because it is mocking itself, specially when some new bravery comes with it—I don’t even know why I spend some time every day thinking of her, maybe its just that I got caught into some advertisement campain, but, alas, we all have to do something with what captures our minds… or maybe we don’t. Well, its better than thinking about totalitarianism or any castle-of-cards shit they give me at the philosophy class...

Who knows? I cheated myself as I knew I would. Maybe we are just enjoying her buzz through some twisted sense of empathy, having some of her drugged-delight through her voice, safe crumbs of a high we know from the womb. Forget: the open quality of some of the vintage reverbs they are using makes it all so much like a sunny happy day, and some honest slutty frailty will always give us mind boners.

Great album with some heartfelt singing and guitar. Been listening so much of it for a week that I it actually have turned out to be a little annoying at times. Guitar solos are too short.

I have never really been a Trekkie, and if I was, Captain Kirk would not have been my favorite character. Nevertheless, I certainly am a fan of his acting in Boston Legal (really not-that-great TV show, but plenty watchable) — from overacting to perfect timing and genius self-ridicule.

Again, this post is due to a recommendation by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche — well, not a recommendation per se, but he actually plugged his Ipod in the great sound system in the Lha Kang at Khadro Ling and made us listen to two tracks from this great album: You'll have time and Common People.

A crooner handsome as Jim Morrison — and seemingly troubled and poetic like him —, player of many instruments, produced by the same guy who produces Beck, and whom, of course, also makes apology of drugs (starting, like Beck, with the name) with the same old double ententres that are with us since the sixties. Yes, it seems The End.

The cover looks like something from Van Morrison, from whom he drawns deeply. Those who say he is similar to Dave Matthews Band, Rod Stewart and Coldplay are also right (although I had never heard the last since I was compelled by the extreme ambiguity of a post in portuguese by brazilian journalist Bruno Galera about our guy, James Blunt. By the way, I still don't know what "the hecatomb of little dough's faces aesthetics" mean... oh, well...)

In reality, the guy is a product, knows he is a product, uses it to his own benefit and suffers. Amazingly, he was proven to be a Captain in Kosovo while the action was still going. His song about war (hey, don't we need more songs deprecating war?), No Bravery, is as simple as poignant. There's also an homage to Jimi Hendrix (and some say, because of the "Riders in the Storm" sequence in the end, also to Jim Morrison) in So Long, Jimmy. But every track is consistently good, though with a irritanting "musical aftertaste" such as I hadn't obsessed hearing inside my mind since The Beatles. Back to Bedlam¹ is a complete emotional experience about a lost and drugged soldier facing the lost of loves, suicide attempts and fame. It is also a pretty edgy critique on the cynicism and complacency of today's youth.

He is around for more than a year, and was first place both in North America and the UK. It's amazing I had to read about him in a blog. That must be because I don't have a TV. Must be.

I just hope he doesn't commit suicide and lead people to drugs: the three products (the last one being his carisma) are many times bundled together.

Such a clever movie. Truly enjoyable music score, great guitar. Also King Herod with a jewfro and a dancing jellybelly, so good. But the best is the black Judas, wonderful! Carl Anderson, one of the greatest voices ever died of leukemia last year.

In a mean gospel r&b:

Judas: Mmm, everytime I look at you I don't understand / why you let the things you did get so out of hand. / You'd have managed it better if you had it planned. / Now, why did you choose such a backward time and such a strange land. / If you'd come today you could've reached the whole nation. / Israel in 4 BC had no mass communication!

Chorus: Don't you get me wrong... / Don't you get me wrong... / Did you get me wrong? ... / Only wanna know!

...

Judas:Teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell me what you think about your friends at the top. / Now, who do you think, besides yourself was pick of the crop? / Buddha, was he where it's at? Is he where you are? / Could Mohammed move a mountain, or was that just PR?

...

Judas: Did you mean to die like that, was that a mistake? / Or did you know your messy death would be a record breaker?