English BMQ1

Cultural Fabric

Our album covers many different themes of the problems that we have encountered today. The album, comes to terms with the issues of the world. It faces the facts, and overall has a very good acceptance with who we’ve become. The songs insult many different aspects of society today. These songs, however are not saying that all of this stuff is bad though. It is just accepting all of these problems and saying that these are all livable conditions. All of these problems were relevant in the past but over time have been more and more problematic in our present day.

The first song about Donald Trump’s hair is just there to be funny but it serves a very good purpose. Many large media companies have tried to pass off these jokes of candidates such as Trump as serious contenders for the White House. On all forms of social media people have been bashing him and others like him for his joke of a candidacy. While all of those funny they aren’t well put together in a form which will leave a great impact on them and will gain any serious attention in the media. Having a majorly publicized album gains this satire major attention and leaves a large impact on voters. The way this song gets attention makes it easier to see that in order to win in politics you have to gain the most attention. This song is a representative of what everyone is saying on social media that doesn’t gain much attention.

Political correctness has also been a major issue of today. People in the news tend to be critical of the very small things that people say such as joking by saying a racial slur. They do this especially to famous people and even more so to those who they want to be bashed such as those who share contrasting political opinions to them. Satirical shows like Southpark have pushed the boundaries of how far it is okay to go. The majority of the show makes fun of current events and inputs real people with extreme caricatures. The song is very similar to what shows like Southpark are trying to do. The song is essentially saying there is no harm or foul in crossing the boundaries since no one gets hurt by it. The very fact that people who aren’t politically correct get bashed more often than those who commit serious crimes against others is why this song is correct. This song draws attention to those who criticize those on things they say that don’t hurt people but are more light on those who commit serious offenses.

Harassment has evolved passed physically harming someone. With anonymity becoming easier with the advent of the internet people have resorted to several different types of bullying. They tell others to kill themselves, encourage others to bash them online, and leak nude photos of them onto the internet for others to see on social media websites. Harassment to the point of suicide is a major cause of death in adolescents. The song goes through the different reasons for why the person wants to commit suicide to emphasize the current amount of reasons there are for people to commit suicide these days which have only been amplified by the increasing accessibility to the internet.

Racial tensions has also been a rapidly increasing theme of today especially in the last year due to the shootings of unarmed black citizens. Many news organizations such as FOX have misconstrued the public's agenda and say there is a war on cops. People are too focused on fighting each other that they don’t see the importance of coming together and finding the issue. The song talks about how people are so focused on fighting on both sides of the issue that they can’t accomplish anything.

The album tackling all of these themes in its unique way is in itself also attempting to address the current day crisis of lack of originality. This album clearly doesn’t want to be like any of the generic pieces of music in its generation and wants to stand out. It’s trying to bring back the originality that used to be so common for albums back in the sixties and seventies. The artist looked back at music from those decades and saw that it takes someone who is willing to include controversial issues in an interesting way in their art to gain attention in order to have a successful original album. People today try to be original in many different forms of media such as videos and books but are unsuccessful because their work isn’t polished, cohesive and doesn’t gain attention. This work solves all of those problems and makes itself an original piece of art that deserves to go down in history alongside other landmark albums.

Review

As you have probably heard, David Fricke, a very commendable senior journalist from our magazine has passed. He has been with us for 30 years and was one of the best journalist we have ever had pass through our hands. Writing for us, he has reviewed Led Zeppelin, the Grateful Dead, Buddy Guy, The Ramones, and many others. The list just goes on to demonstrate how creative this man is in his reviews and interviews. David Fricke has mainly stuck with Rock entrees but he has also ventured out into many other genres. He often complained that after the new millennium came he didn’t have many more great albums and most of them were garbage. He wanted to see something original and landmark like the great albums of the sixties and seventies. He would have loved to see a work such as “Untitled” by Paul Wright. I feel as though this is a work the David would have very much appreciated and would have felt similarly as I do to it.

The first song on this album “Fair Hair” stands out from any intro song, on any album that I can remember. It starts off with an upbeat acoustic guitar riff that plays throughout the song. The song then goes on to describe someone’s weird hair with political terms as if to humanize the hair. The hair is made out to be a politician who tries to stand out by doing outrageous things, gains popularity among voters, and ends up winning his candidacy. The song is obviously a reference to Donald Trump and his outrageous hair. The song makes clear references to him where he sings, “The hair has no liking for anyone who's mexican or doesn’t share his same complexion”. He obviously wants to get his agenda across that it’s ridiculous how Trump is gaining popularity with all of the controversial things he said. The song takes a funny attitude toward the whole thing and makes it sound like some kind of children’s story. The style is reminiscent of the song “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” by The Beatles in how they are very bright upbeat acoustic songs. What sets this piece apart and elevates it from that is how it manages to keep that style while also getting a serious agenda across.

The song then fades out as the acoustic guitar turns into a distorted electric guitar. The song “Minority” is heavy and completely contrasts to the more child friendly “Fair Hair”. It uses several racial slurs and shows it’s clearly not afraid to be criticized. There was no care to censor the song in anyway. These slurs are not said in an offensive but rather in a casual way. The song makes it seem as though these slurs are casual and are only offensive when used for an offensive purpose. After listening to the song multiple times I have found that it has numbed me to the offensive meanings of those slurs and has turned them into casual words one would say with their friends when joking. For example the Jokes about black people doing drugs and being lazy are just laughable and are made to be seen as unrealistic caricatures which hold no merit. After the song goes through the different minorities it comes back to white people and makes fun of how they insult all of the previously mentioned minorities in the song but try to be like them. It repeats the phrase, “but who cares throughout the song” to show that it doesn’t matter what he thinks if he does nothing with it.

The rock song then slows down and turns into an acoustic song with piano. “A Day in Suicide”. The song is obviously sampling the song “A Day in the Life” by The Beatles. It even starts off with similar lyrics, “I read my feed today oh boy” which is reference to his social media feed. He goes through the several different ways in which he is bullied online such as being told to kill himself and others making fun of his physical appearance. He tries to kill himself everyday but can’t pull himself together. The song makes sure it goes into every detail to the listener feels as though they are there with him if not that they are him. It follows the same style as “A Day in the Life” up until the point where the song reaches its climax and is about to change style to the happier portion of the song. Instead after the suspenseful build up from the horns it stays in the same depressing style it was in and says, “and there’s no relief for me”. The song makes you feel as though you are trapped in a rainstorm with nothing to shelter you and every drop is an insult. The ambiguous ending which leaves you wondering as to whether he lived or not really makes you feel for the character to emphasize that people can and should feel sympathy for others in a similar situation to the character of the song.

Bleeding straight out of “A day in suicide” it then goes into the next song that goes by “Fine Fettle”. This song is similar to the “Cup song” from Pitch Perfect. The cup song begins only with the beat of the cups and with some vocals on top of it. “Fine Fettle” starts off with a beat. The beat consists only of a snare drum and the bass drum. These two are kind of toying with each other instrumentally. The beat that they are doing almost sounds like a ballad, mixed with a marching beat. Then comes the vocals. The vocals are three different pitches. It is completely an a capella song. The different pitches of this song are the bass line, chord pitches, and the melody/lead of the song . This song is focusing on the health care aspect of today’s society. It tells a depressing story of a man that cannot afford healthcare in today’s society because of how expensive it has become. The last line in the song says “Debt higher than my eyes, and when you don’t sympathize, I’ll creep off to Sleep, as my doctor says he died, nobody's gonna miss me when I’m gone”. This lyric alone is somewhat similar to the cup song but it really talks about the health care aspect.

And Finally, the last song is bleed into through the last line of “Fine Fettle”. This line is focusing on how black lives, in today’s society are under appreciated, and how it is not acceptable for everybody. We must change the way that everybody in the nation lives. There can’t be any racism in our society for our nation to fully change, and that is the issue that this song is facing. The song itself is a slow blues acoustic fingerpicking, slide song that is an extremely deep and emotional song. This song is called Grey Asphalt. One of the main lyrics of this piece that really caught my attention was “walking down the corner where the streets connect. Racial integration needs to be our intersect.” This song is very similar to Crossroads by Robert Johnson. Cross roads talks about a man that is standing at the crossroads trying to hitch a ride. In Grey Asphalt, it talks about the streets all connecting just as all races do.