Several days spent surrounded by rockcrits (all awesome - I can't even conceive of indulging in blog beef again, in part because only Jess is taller than me), bracketed by eight-hour bus rides with nothing but my discman and Lester Bangs anthologies for company, sent my observational receptors into hyperdrive. Sadly, sleep and half of an extra-large All The Meats pizza have allowed most of the Big Ideas to float beyond my transom. I should buy a tape recorder: "Electric Six crunks the Roxy Music archetype in order to convey American Nihilism as discussed in Everything But The Burden. Remember to ponder further."

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Facts I've used to rationalize why the Streets made my top ten but Devin The Dude didn't: too many tracks about pot, wack pacing ("Anything" into "The Funk" is the most heinous example), the word "bitch" and that violent, mood-killing guest verse on "Party." That's really all I've got. Every compliment we toss at Mike Skinner should be thrown at the Dude. His beats are better too. I've got to utilize headphones more often. I lose the right speaker (damn this ironic monaural disability), but I grab lyrical content easier.


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"In fact, I have been known to say that JFK's killing was a good thing, historically speaking. A man died in an ugly fashion, he happened to a man that people who didn't know anything about corporate politics considered the leader of the "free world," it was a national tragedy, etc. But on another level it was good because it opened a lot of things up. When Kennedy was in office we were living in a national dream world, the New Fronteir as panacea, the illusion of unity. Underneath it all things were just as shitty as ever, but patriotism in those days seemed viable even for many of the avant-deviant-opposition fringes of our society. That misconception was shattered with the president's skull: the dream was over, and we were left fragmentation, disillusionment, cynicism, hostile factions."
- Lester Bangs, 1975

People forget that a third of our country hated Clinton when he was in office.