Focus on the Family reviews IOWA
By Eric | November 20, 2001 10:16 am
Focus on the Family reviews IOWA… this is a great read…
Artist: Slipknot
Album: Iowa
Genre: Rock/Metal
Chart Action: This deplorable disc checked in at number 3.
Reviewed By: Bob Waliszewski
Pro-Social Content: None
Objectionable Content: On the title track, the singer murders his girlfriend in a demented act of affection (“I will kill you to love you”). The band screams countless obscenities (the f-word is a favorite) in violent, hate-filled tirades such as “Left Behind,” “My Plague,” “Metabolic,” “I Am Hated” and “Disasterpiece” (which alludes to an act of sexualized homicide too heinous to describe here). Diseased stuff. Nasty threats are joined by a pervasive self-loathing. These guys moan about their pain and invite others to put them out of their misery (“Disasterpiece” says, “Feel like I’m erased, so kill me just in case”). To escape this hellish existence, “Gently” suggests escaping into a drug-induced euphoria. The dark, morbid “New Abortion” paints a bleak picture that invites an entire “exploited” generation to join in the pity party. Why so much despair and a hair-trigger desire to lash out in gruesome ways? Clues can be found on “People=S—” (“I got changed and I’m sittin’ on the side of Satan”), “The Heretic Anthem” (“If you’re 555, then I’m 666”) and “I Am Hated” (“We will not repent–this is our religion”). Clearly motivated by an unholy alliance.
Summary/Advisory: One song states, “I’m teaching your brightest/They’re listening.” Sad, but true. Focus on the Family gets letters from Christian Slipknot fans asking if it’s okay to tune in. The fact that they have to ask is troubling. Even Entertainment Weekly called Slipknot “the sickest of the sick.”
OK granted, he’s not gonna like the album from the get go, but, at least get the lyrics right, they’re printed in the liner notes! But it never seems to fail that these wonderful social watchdogs target bands like this so they can write a scathing self-righteous review. I realize that not everyone likes slipknot, but it could be any band. Next thing you know, clowns and aliens are gonna be evil, so Cold’s gonna get the shit end of the stick next.
On to happier subjects, my DataComm test went very well, and last night amidst packing and cleaning, we hit MacGregors to celebrate Kelley graduating from RIT! Had a fine time, and then brought Mike and Ann back to watch Damon Wayans, which Jeff had also never seen… ain’t that some fraggernarkle bullshit? ::)
The site is going on hiatus for a little while, a mini version will be up while I’m on break, the blog will be up, with maybe 1 or 2 other things… when I get back from break the site should hopefully have a new look!
Current Mood: just woke up, gotta pack some more, gotta look at some Human Factors crap
Song: 40 Below Summer -Falling Down (Spinner.com is cool!)
Shirt: RIT football
Topics: Blog | Comments Off on Focus on the Family reviews IOWA
Tags: blog, cat, family, football, NT, target
animosity for dino
By Eric | November 15, 2001 1:34 am
Tuesday night was pretty cool. I got out of my DataComm test after a half-hour, so I came back and chilled at home, and unfortunately I had to go back for Human Factors. After getting out of there an hour early, I came back to Dan making Chicken… mmm mmm good! Had a Natty Ice, and then another as I was finishing up my Database lab. Works well! 🙂 Then I popped in a video and stayed up way too late.
Wednesday was a nice leisurely day. Got up late, gave Mary a ride to work, watched a little Price is Right, had a good time in Leg. Process, Database wasn’t too bad, and I ran around at ETC. I came back, we waited for Dan and Scott, and got dinner at Dinosaur BBQ. BBQ beef is the way to go! 🙂 Stopped off to see the fine folks at 1209 Genny, came back, and finished up the last of the IMM project web site, for the last time, go look here: http://www.rit.edu/~ejb0568/imm/project4/6n.html, this last incarnation has embedded video and audio, and animation! Woohoo!
The Cake and Econoline Crush reviews are up in the concert section… Cake was my 100th concert! 🙂 And I picked up the new Sevendust CD “Animosity” yesterday, if you like sevendust, GO GET THIS ALBUM! And if possible, get it at Best Buy so you can get the limited edition two track live CD, with Denial and Angel’s Son recorded in Florida in early October. RAWK!
Current Mood: not really tired, but it’s 1:30am, so its bedtime
song: Alanis Morissette – You Oughta Know
shirt: Vanilla Ice – Hard To Swallow Tour 1999
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Tags: Nate, NT, video, Work
econoline to erie for cake
By Eric | November 11, 2001 4:10 pm
What a long freakin weekend… and it’s not long as in extra days… long as in long days with little sleep. Wake up friday morning to be at work at 7:30am. Work was fine, same as always. Mary goes to the SG meeting, and then we leave to get her sister Patrice in Erie. Takes a good 2.5 hours to get there, and then turn right around and take another 1.5 hours to get back to Buffalo. We went straight to Niagara Falls to catch the Econoline Crush show (review will be up shortly), then another hour back to Rochester. got back into the apartment to find that the wonder folks at RIT Resnet shut off my ethernet jack, and I can’t find out why until monday. (I love RIT, did I mention that?) Luckily we have a jack in the living room, and a nice long ethernet cable, so I’m back up for the time being, but the website won’t be back for a little bit. Woke up late saturday morning, finished my Legislative Process paper, then took off about 4:30pm for Cornell University in Ithaca for the Cake show [SHOW #100!!!!] (again, review up shortly), which takes two hours each way. Got back late last night, then woke up early this morning to take Trice back to Erie, 2.5 hours each way again. 14 hours and 820 miles of driving later, I’m right back where I started. At least the shows were good, and Trice looked like she had a great time, so it’s all good 🙂
Gotta finish up my DataComm paper, and I’ll be right back on track. 🙂
Current Mood: somewhere this side of exhaused, but no nap for me….
song: Soundgarden – Bleed Together
shirt: Matt Good / Asshole
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Tags: Buffalo, cat, driving, NT, rochester, Work
11/10/2001 Cake, Rahzel, Spoon (Ithaca, NY at Cornell University – Barton Hall)
By Eric | November 10, 2001 11:59 pm
This was my 100th concert!!!! And what a band to spend it with! We drove down to Ithaca and were one of the first people in line. Aside from the dumbass girl at the gate giving me the wrong side of the ticket stub, I got in pretty easy, and for the first time, I was the *FIRST* person into the venue! We waited around for an hour until Spoon came on, and totally SUCKED. I don’t care for emo, but these guys were just atrocious. A great band for people with ADD, as every song was a minute and a half long, tops. Thank God they only got a half hour to do their schtick and leave. Rahzel was up next. A member of the Roots crew, this guy can do beat box and sing at the same time! His DJ, JS-1, wasn’t doing too much of anything, and Rahzel did all kinds of beatbox and rapping and sound effects and whatnot, and he was damn impressive! 40 minutes later, its Cake time!! They opened with Arco Arena, and second, played (suprisingly!) Sad Songs and Waltzes!! I was riveted from that point on, bouncing around to every song they played. A suprisingly large amount of Motorcade songs, they played a few set songs, then started playing whatever the crowd was yelling for, which ended up being a lot of old stuff! I was yelling for Comanche, which I got, Mary and Trice wanted Stickshifts and Safetybelts, which they also got, among others. In all, they also played (these are out of order, sorry!) Ruby Sees All, Is This Love?, Frank Sinatra, The Distance, Nugget, Never There, Sheep Go To Heaven, Opera Singer, Meanwhile, Rich James…, Comfort Eagle, Love You Madly, and closed the main set with Short Skirt / Long Jacket. Then for the encore we got Italian Leather Sofa, Haze Of Love, and they closed with Jolene. There were singalongs abound, and during Sheep Go To Heaven, John McCrea, the lead singer, pointed out a girl at the barrier, and remarked “Why aren’t you singing? You’re in the front row and you’re not singing? What kind of bullshit is that?”. Needless to say the girl wasn’t happy, but the rest of us got a huge kick out of it! The entire show was a hell of a lot of fun, and measured up to everything I thought a Cake show would be. What better band to bestow upon Woopop’s 100th concert!!
Topics: Concerts | Comments Off on 11/10/2001 Cake, Rahzel, Spoon (Ithaca, NY at Cornell University – Barton Hall)
Tags: 2001, Cake, Cornell University, Ithaca, Rahzel, Spoon
11/09/2001 Econoline Crush, Mudmen, Lucid (Niagara Falls, NY at Evening Star)
By Eric | November 9, 2001 11:59 pm
We drove down to Erie, PA earlier in the day to pick up Mary’s sister Patrice, and drove right back to Niagara Falls to catch the show. I’d never been to the Evening Star before this, and was pleasantly surprised at the place. I was expecting this hole in the wall shitty-type bar, and while small, it was really clean and the sound was decent. And no barrier!!! We got there and there was no one there except for our crew: Joe, Nick, Janet, Sara, Danielle and Adrienne. This was Lucid’s first show ever, and they sounded pretty good, much like a conglomeration of Creed, Tantric, and Cool For August. Very good stage presence and such for the lead singer considering it was their first show. Mudmen came out, and they have two bagpipe players with them! Its primarily punk rock with bagpipes, but its decent! The bagpipe players were really good, and they utilized them throughout all the songs, not just in spots like Korn. Although the lead singer was definately Italian, they closed with a Irish-like number called “Drink and Fight” that was pretty rowdy. Then it was time for Econoline. Dan was MIA, supposedly he’s sick and we’ll be back, but no one knows for sure. The replacement bass player looked like his little brother, according to Joe its one of Mark’s old bandmates. They played almost the same setlist as at Showplace, expect for the Encore we got TDM, The Devil You Know, Blunt and May I Go, for which Ziggy brought out an acoustic! We were mad close, Trevor touched Mary, and they sounded as good as always. Another fine show by the EC boys, and Patrice had quite the experience for her first real rock concert! Thanks to Adrienne for the pictures!
[flickr-gallery pagination=”0″ mode=”tag” tags=”2001-11-09″ tag_mode=”all”]
Topics: Concerts | Comments Off on 11/09/2001 Econoline Crush, Mudmen, Lucid (Niagara Falls, NY at Evening Star)
Tags: 2001, Econoline Crush, Evening Star, Lucid, Mudmen, Niagara Falls
backstreets butt alright!
By Eric | November 3, 2001 1:14 pm
From todays Democrat and Chronicle, in an article about the Backstreet Boys new greatest hits album:
“Despite selling more than 5 million copies domestically, the Backstreet Boys album Black and Blue was considered a commercial disappointment after the smash success of its predecessor, 1999’s 12-times-platinum Millennium.”
Hey, at least 7 million people pulled their head out of their ass and didn’t buy the next one!!! I’d still like to know how selling 5 million copies of any album by any artist is a disappointment! How the hell does that work??
PARTY AT 156 TONIGHT 9:30pm …. BE HERE!!!!!!
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Tags: commercial, NT, Work
slipknot’s jizz
By Eric | November 1, 2001 3:02 pm
I got my Cake tickets, to the tune of $30 apiece, but hey, its gonna be worth it.. There isn’t a whole lot going on at this juncture, I have another hour till DataComm, I should be reading for it, but we all know that’s not going to happen.
Mary found this on the BoyHitsCar board, and it should give you a bit of a chuckle:
Random Slipknot Fact: Are you a poser? Quite possibly, by statistics. This can actually be backed up. Slipknot’s first CD went gold and is on it’s way to platinum. Iowa is quickly getting to gold status as well (Gold = 500,000 copies SOLD). Well… Slipknot has sold more T-shirts than CDs right now… what does that say about their fan base? Shirts are about $30 a piece, if not more, and CD’s are generally $15. Hmm… I smell POSERS!
To fill some space and make this a bit more entertaining, check out this information from a woodcarvers exhibit:
Current Mood: kinda bored
Song: Sevendust – Redefine (Animosity – only two more weeks!)
Shirt: Bootleg Korn Sick and Twisted
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Tags: NT, random
10/28/2001 Family Values 2001: Stone Temple Pilots, Staind, Linkin Park, Static-X, Deadsy (Buffalo, NY @ HSBC Arena)
By Eric | October 28, 2001 11:59 pm
Okay, the family values review. We got to the MMA about 5 or so, the doors opened at 6, show started at 7. We got a barrier spot on the right hand side of the stage. Deadsy was up first, and boy do these guys suck. Every song sounded like a rejected Orgy demo. Apparently the lead singer is the son of Cher and Duane Allman, and he got musical talent from neither. Also, their other “guitar” player was playing this thing that looked like a playskool guitar. Whatever, these guys blow.
There were two high school girls next to us that were talking about how they were going to “so go off during linkin park!!” Yeah, that was before Static-X came out. They came to the intro from Machine, and kicked right into Get To The Gone. Then the first crowdsurfer came overhead, I gave him a good 3 shots in the back of the head, and then was repremanded by the security guard who told me “If you don’t like it, don’t be up front”. FUCK THAT. The assholes that go up and surf take just as much risk by going up there as I do by being up front. Anyway, Static-X was damn exciting to watch, even though there was like 10 people that had any idea who they were. They also played This Is Not, Black and White, Permanance, Cold, Bled For Days, Love Dump, and Push It. Wayne had his hair going in full form, and I caught one of Tripp Eisen’s picks.
Linkin Park was up next, and they ran through the same set as at the Slipknot gig over the summer (that being: With You, Runaway, Papercut, By Myself, Points of Authority, High Voltage, Pushing Me Away, In The End, A Place For My Head, Crawling, One Step Closer). It was okay, but they somehow just werent as good as they were over the summer. They were still running around like little kids, and Aaron Lewis came out during One Step Closer.
Then Staind was up next. Opened with Open Your Eyes, and then in order, Mudshovel, Fade, Take It, Outside, For You, Crawl, Suffer, It’s Been Awhile, and closed with Spleen. They were in top notch form, and sounded excellent. We got out of the crowd at this point, as getting slammed for STP just isn’t worth it.
We found Mary’s friend Dave, he had some empty seats by him, so we sat on the left side of the stage. . Opening with Wet My Bed / Crackerman, and then Vasoline, Weiland got mad pissed at somebody in the crowd after the song, challenging someone to get up on stage and suck his dick. “I’ll whip it out right here and you can suck it BITCH!!” hehe! Next was Wicked Garden, Big Empty, and Chester from Linkin Park came out to do Dead and Bloated with them. They used the rotating set to play Creep acoustically, at which point they pulled people from the crowd to get on stage. STP boy (our buddy from all the EC shows over the summer) had his Still Remains sign again, and not only did he get up on stage, while he was up there, they played Still Remains!!! Electric again for Trippin on a Hole…, Coma, Interstate Love Song, and the main set closed with Plush. For the encore, they did the Beatles Revolution, and then closed with Sex Type Thing, with Weiland doing the American Flag naked schitck once again. STP was pretty good, but played almost all old stuff! Only Coma from Shangri-La, absolutely NOTHING from No. 4, and only Trippin on a Hole… from Tiny Music. Everything else was Purple and Core! It was pretty cool, and I had a good time, but I dunno if it was a $42.50 good time. On the whole it still ends up on the plus side! 🙂
Topics: Concerts | Comments Off on 10/28/2001 Family Values 2001: Stone Temple Pilots, Staind, Linkin Park, Static-X, Deadsy (Buffalo, NY @ HSBC Arena)
Tags: 2001, Buffalo, Deadsy, Family Values, HSBC Arena, Linkin Park, Staind, Static-X, Stone Temple Pilots
10/21/2001 Fuel, Saliva, Breaking Point (Syracuse, NY @ Landmark Theater)
By Eric | October 21, 2001 11:59 pm
The Landmark Theater is a very nice place, much like a Shea’s in Buffalo. While a beautiful place, it’s NOT the place for a fuel show. Did I mention I hate seats? Besides the fact that nothing in Syracuse is GA over a certain capacity due to some stupid law, its always the least interested people that get the good seats! Anyway, me, Mary and Jason got there at about 7pm, the show started at 7:30. We had 8th row seats, but wandered up to third row and sat down for awhile. We made it all the way through Breaking Point without getting booted. Breaking Point was nothing spectactular, they’re just another rock band. I thought the singer kinda sounded like Travis Meeks from Days of the New, and their single, Coming of Age, sounds like they stole a riff from P. Roach’s “Between Angels and Insects”. But I digress. We move back to our real seats, and this 300 pound fatass is trying to tell us we’re in his friends seats. Before Jason can even get his ticket out to show the guy, this dude shoves Jason! I got right up in this guys face and I’m like, “Where’s your ticket?” Then his friends show up, and give us the same shit. People, if nothing else, at lame seated shows like this: READ YOUR TICKETS!!!! Damn! Anyway, Saliva was pretty good, they played the same set as they did at Darien Lake. The crowd was amazingly really into them, at times due to the pro-American comments Josey was making; “We’re gonna bomb the shit out of Osama bin whatever-the-fuck-his-name-is…”. Got everyone riled up in a good way! Early on in Saliva’s set, a kid from the balcony tried to leap to the “gallery” box high up on the wall on the right side of the stage. Suffice to say he got about halfway to it, then decided he wasn’t gonna make it and turned around, barely making it back to the balcony. Needless to say, security manhandled him pretty good. While it would have been a hell of a sight to see him fall, it would have been the end of the show, and there would have been a near-riot. Score one for the idiot kid. Then it was time for Fuel. Almost the same set as at Brockport, but we got Bad Day this time. The stage setup was pretty cool, they had these stairs that led to a platform behind Kevin’s drumkit. The guys were running all over the stage, and at one point, Brett came out into the crowd, at the edge of the Orchestra pit. Mary ran up and was in the thick of the throng that met him as he made his way across the front of the stage. They dedicated Innocent to everyone involved in the NYC tragedy, and Bittersweet was prefaced by a thought of sending Bin Laden back to Afghanistan as a woman, to let his own country take care of him. 🙂 They closed the main set with Ozone, and the encore with Hemmorrhage. Fuel was awesome, but no more venues with seats!! Please!!
Topics: Concerts | Comments Off on 10/21/2001 Fuel, Saliva, Breaking Point (Syracuse, NY @ Landmark Theater)
Tags: 2001, Breaking Point, Fuel, Landmark Theater, Saliva, Syracuse
not pledging allegiance
By Eric | September 30, 2001 10:12 pm
So much for Pledge of Allegiance. The Buffalo date got canceled, so I gotta go get a refund for my ticket. I can use the $40, don’t get me wrong, but I would really liked to have seen System Of A Down. Ah well, what ya gonna do. Friday was an early morning, then I kinda bummed around most of the day. Mary got home from the SG meeting, and we headed home to have dinner with Mom, Dad and Amanda, who was home for the weekend. Jake went to the football game, so he didn’t join us. It was nice to sit and have conversation with the parents. We came back and watched TV and talked for awhile, then me and Mary went over to Joe’s house and chilled for a little bit. Saturday brought a leisurely late get-up, then a CD/thrift run, which brought Mary a Canon BJC-4300 printer for 8 bucks! I also bought her the cool word-flip clock that we’ve been looking at forever at Target. Later that night we did the Greece mall run, and picked up a cartridge for Mary’s printer. We ate pretty late at Jack Astors, then came back home, and Karl came over. Me and him headed over to his sisters apartment for a party they were having. Not the coolest people I’ve ever met, but hey, can’t win em all. Today was another wake up late day, then some football, then homework. Got my mulitmedia project done, if you really want to be bored off your ass, check out my class page at http://www.rit.edu/~ejb0568/imm, then head for project 1. The Annotated Bibliography is not the most exhilarating thing you’ll ever read. 🙂
Current Mood: Relaxed, done with HW for tonight
Song: I Mother Earth – Cloud Pump (Blue Green Orange)
Shirt: God Lives Underwater / Blue Mantis
Topics: Blog | Comments Off on not pledging allegiance
Tags: Buffalo, football, house, NT, target, Work