The Off-Colored Officer - Gifts From the Aughties (Pt.3)


Here's the third installment to the series...

Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Release date: April 23, 2002
Label: Nonesuch

For a while, this could have achieved what Radiohead did with In Rainbows six years later - earmarking the future format for music. Although it was only streamed live and not made available as a download, and for a brief moment before they could find a label willing to release it in physical format. Surprising indeed when as it turns out Reprise Records was the one who refused to release it in the first place because Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is by far still is Wilco's finest record ever. This is not the most important record for the past century - it is the most important record for the whole of Nonesuch's imprint.

The Streets - Original Pirate Material
Release date: May 25, 2002
Label: Locked On

It was a very short phenomenon UK Garage is but Mike Skinner's debut will long be remembered as the finest record ever released for that particular music style.

Beck - Sea Change
Release date: September 23, 2002
Label: Geffen

It's a totally dramatic album which opens up with a crisp, autumnal acoustic line and Beck Hansen singing: "Put your hands on the wheel/Let the golden age begins". That line really sums up the whole feel of the album - it's a revolution, it's a withdrawal, it's a sea change. Gone are the ironic lyrics and replaced with simpler, straight-from-the-heart honest musings penned from the pained heart of a man who had just gone through a break-up. Plus, "Guess I'm Doing Fine" is (among) the saddest song ever written.

Kanye West - The College Dropout
Release date: February 10, 2004
Label: Roc-A-Fella

Rolling Stone named the album the tenth best album of the 2000s decade. So Kanye West was actually some kind of a genius before this after all. He also won two Grammy in 2005 but nah, that's not important.

Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand
Release date: April 20, 2004
Label: Domino Records

Allmusic applauded Franz Ferdinand as being the more rewarding and exciting band than the current crop of Garage Rock/Post Punk revivalists. Which includes the most "The" band of them all: The Strokes, and The White Stripes. This album was listed in the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die book. It won this Scottish band the coveted 2004 Mercury Music Prize Award, which the alumnus member includes Radiohead, PJ Harvey, and Elbow.

Radiohead - In Rainbows
Release date: October 10, 2007
Label: -

Forget about the accolades Radiohead got from the press with this album. Forget about the achievements in terms of sales figure or general acceptance from the public. This album is among the most important album of the previous decade, and could be the most important for the coming decade, all for the simple fact that it was a glimpse into the future of the acceptable format for albums: digital. Because it shows that the current generation are ready to embrace a whole new format for a music record. If they can manage to sell more than a million record through internet download, why not everyone else? Metallica, in their infamous showdown with Napster users, was sadly fighting for a wrong cause because, as much as they were correct about copyright infringement and protection, they were wrong for fighting against the internet. Nobody would have predicted this, not even Nostradamus, but the internet nowadays have become the single most powerful tool for music marketing. What Radiohead have achieved with In Rainbows is basically a really sarcastic, huge middle finger to Metallica because by embracing the internet, and not fighting against it, they got a handsome reward in return.

Very Grammatic - E.A.R. (Ear Accidentally Rosak); the Original Intended Post

*Very Grammatic is an unscheduled, published-whenever-I-feel-like-it column for Hafeez, a resident blogger for this blog. This column is centered mostly on Hafeez's other main interest: unusual, unique, arty, and weird music that sane people only listen to while high on drugs.


...and yes here is the second part of the entry I posted yesterday, which was Monday actually. Ignore the date and time of the post. The timezone set must be somewhere in America I imagine and I can't change the setting - I'm just a guest columnist, a position title I dreamed up myself.

All along this week I have to say I do find a lot of free time doing things that I am not supposed to do at work. Since next week is the Mid-Semester break, I figured I'll have the presentation for the first assignment throughout the entire week. So, no before class preparation of finding notes and exercises on Google search, and no printing out sheets of notes on virus-infested computer at the Lab and going to the Photocopy room making hundreds of copies for the students. This week it is strictly clock in, sit in front of the PC, surf the internet, check my e-mail, download songs/movies, go to class and watch presentations, go back to my room, check the progress on song/movie download, have lunch, punch out, go home, do stuff, sleep. I leave the going out and do stuff with friends out of the cycle because it is an independent variable. Whatever that means.

Which then, speaking of presentations, it reminds me of those days when I was a student myself. Hated presentations - but loved presentations. Hated it because most of the time (and when it was done by other people) it is a yawn fest. None of the presentations that I've seen done by my peers are exciting. It was so mind-numbing that in comparison, sitting through a five hour Add Math symposium feels as exciting as a roller coaster ride diving straight into ocean while the car is on fire. Imagine your own worst version of Hell and I bet you it is not as Hellish as this. It is complete torture. But then I loved presentations because that is the only time throughout the semester where I know that I'll be attending the class and I don't have to learn anything.

It's the same thing about the outputs of (this person that I've been wanting to talk about) Kevin Shields throughout his career (if it can so be referred to as) with My Bloody Valentine and his one-song-output Experimental Audio Research. I know, and I can say this confidently because I've read about it many times before, that Kevin Shields is a perfectionist. Not the most brilliant songwriter obviously but an anal one at that. Which kind of really begs the question of what or where in the part of his music that really needs that kind of attention to detail? Because My Bloody Valentine is certainly not Kraftwerk; it's just a fuzzy puddle of guitar distortion noise with a 'female high on orgasm' hush lullaby floating in mid air, mired in the heavy drift. It is not a structured entity like a Georges Braque's painting; in fact, if it is a painting, it'll be more like Henri Matisse's. It's not too outlandish either like a Salvador Dali's painting, but almost quite restraint like Kazimir Malevich's. And I haven't got to his one song output with E.A.R.

Make no mistake - I both loved and hated Kevin Shields' output with both M.B.V and E.A.R. I loved it because no one makes hazy music beautiful like M.B.V does. Because it's a complete wanker; it's an un-academic, miseducation approach to music. Every single technical notion and approach to music was thrown out the window. It is very much like a presentation class - you attend the class feeling happy because you know you're not going to learn anything, you don't have to learn anything. But I hated Kevin Shields' output with E.A.R because, blame me for my lack of technical nous, I cannot for the life of me understand why does he have to be so perfectionist because all the materials that he have produced needs no eye for details. There is absolutely nothing in his output that needs such a thorough checking. It's like drinking a glass of water over and over again because you're not doing it correctly. You're not doing it with the correct amount of sips, or you're drinking it 0.325 seconds too fast, or you tilted the glass about 2 degrees more than you should have, or that the water slides down your throat at the maximum velocity of 0.3 G, which is 0.05 more than you should have. It's madness.

What really irritates me though is that because of his perfectionist stance, his output with M.B.V does not go beyond 1994, and his output with E.A.R does not go beyond the first track of the ensemble's debut long player. Which is a loss. Because otherwise he is brilliant.

Very Grammatic - E.A.R. (Ear Accidentally Rosak)

*Very Grammatic is an unscheduled, published-whenever-I-feel-like-it column for Hafeez, a resident blogger for this blog. This column is centered mostly on Hafeez's other main interest: unusual, unique, arty, and weird music that sane people only listen to while high on drugs.


I will pick up the yet-to-be-concluded Gifts From the Aughts series later on whenever I feel like it, which incidentally, today is not the said day. In fact, today is not the day for either this column (Very Grammatic) or the other one (One Day Holiday). The only reason why I'm posting this under Very Grammatic is because The Off-Colored Officer column were not supposed to even exist in the first place. Like how I have demonstrated earlier on, my thoughts can really be, to sum it all up in a convenient term, a pile of incomprehensible rubbish. I can skip from one reality to the other very seamlessly, and very effortlessly, leaving other people who are firmly rooted to the reality, panting in exasperation, trying very hard at playing catch up. Which I suppose then explains why my students loved my class very much. Because it is very un-academic. Few of what I've said in class are precious gems of knowledge but they come by around very few, very far between and very rare. Like the kind of music that I listen to.

The same thing applies with everything else about me - I am unconventional, illogical, rare, difficult, and maybe perhaps a little conventional, logical, common and easy as well. I have frustrated a friend who have been trying so hard in hooking me up with lots of girls, but every time I turn down the initiation. Because I'm not interested. He said I'm too picky. No, choosy. I have been criticized over and over by many people at the office for my unwillingness to 'make a move' with the many single, attractive female lecturers who I imagine must be in a line, waiting for their Mr. Charming to take them away to La La Land on a white horse while angels on pillows of cloud from Heaven sings beautiful songs as both of them rode across a vast field of golden grass. Very romantic indeed a notion but I'm a bit German. This college I have to say is awashed with hundreds of buxom virgins - but I treat all of them as mere colleagues. Why? I have no idea.

Actually I wanted to talk about a band called E.A.R. (which by the way stands for Experimental Audio Research), and as you can see from the picture above, Kevin Shields in particular. Since I have drifted very badly off-topic here, let's just assume there will be a second part to this entry.