Life Wasted

Two albums to recommend

- "Pearl Jam", Pearl Jam.
For bringing urgency back into their music. Screw all the moping around, lazy experiementation, and just bash and rant. Worked wonders.

Check out "Life Wasted", "Marker In The Sand" and "Unemployable". Raging beauties.

This is what a rock band should be, not those whiny poseurs on the Channel U band contest.

- "10,000 Days", Tool.
This band fascinate me. Some may be turned off by their weird rhythms, loooooong songs and super-doom-laden atmosphere.

To which I say: "Where's your sense of wonder?"

Allow me to rant a bit. Ever since the 1990s, when grunge and alternative music took over with their "less is more", minimalistic aesthetics, rebellious youths suddenly had a good excuse to be lazy.

To hell with improvement, we're gonna stay in our own shell because this is what we are. You cannot change us, we won't be changed. Complicated music is just fake. If you can play difficult riffs, you're a show-off, a phony.

Hell, ain't that lazy. All of a sudden, music became the run-of-the-mill, three-chords and some needly doodling on the guitars -- and they dare call it honest music. Honestly, it smacks of immense bullshitting.

I confess, I was sucked into it at first, then I realised: "Hey, we're not moving forward with our so-called music rebellion. We're stagnating, we're shooting ourselves in the foot."

Minimalism can only take you this far. Having an open mind, with an open heart to learn and improve yourself, now that's rebellion.

Now look what the Nineties have done. All of youths then, are now half-baked, left far behind.

Back to Tool, the band. They came into prominence in the Nineties too. Their first album was very alternative rock. Then they evolved as musicians, came up with music that keeps you awake at night thinking: "How the hell did they come up with this idea?"

Their music is very bleak, but their adventurous spirit and superior musicianship remains. That's why they continue to inspire me to dream up better music.

Don't be intimidated by expertise, that's all I'm pleading.