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August 28, 2005
Death Reason (part 1)
In Hell, 3rd Curtain:
Joe is sitting down on a bench thinking. It's in a quiet park close to the fire rows in isle 5467342 of Hell.
"The isle number looks very familiar", Joe wonders.
After a bit of thinking, a nifty smile covers his face. That was his social number in the other world.
"Other world"....He hesitates. "Why is it always "the other world" ?"
"Why isn't ever "the other world", the world that we live in ?", he asks himself. After a moment of thinking, he finds out the answer. It's because of what "other" means. "Other" means something not what we are dealing with right now. Something besides "this".
"Hmm. So the opposite of "other" is "this"", he nodds to himself and happily fills up another row of the word puzzle.
The last time he saw someone pass close by this bench, was 3 days ago. He is getting a week of vacation from his fire chamber, because he has "followed the instructions". He is a good citizen. Not as good as Alina though.
Posted by masoud at 10:42 PM | Comments (2)
August 18, 2005
The Doors Concert: The Jim Morrison Experience, Metallica, Pink Floyd, Vanilla Fudge, Everything From Everywhere
And there goes The Doors concert at the Vancouver Coliseum on Thursday, July 21st! The former cult singer, Ian Astbury had the difficult task of representing Jim Morrison, which he did it almost perfectly. It wasn't sold out, but the place was almost full.
As usual I took my camera inside along with some other stuff ;) and as usual, the security bugged me for taking pictures, which I don't understand why, since I never use flash to distract the band and so many people take pictures anyways. The security has to always be a pain in the ass I guess, that's part of their routine.
Ian Astbury who looks like and sings like and dances like Jim Morrison, made everyone believe that Jim Morrison's soul had got permission from God to come back for a while and bring back memories. The rest of the band had become old, while Jim Morrison was still young.
The concert proved to be quite educational besides being entertaining. It gave rise to so many philosophical questions to which the answer is still not quite known.
Does the former cult singer (which I haven't still memorized his name and refer to him as "the singer guy"), feel good or bad about himself representing Jim Morrison ? On one hand, he's representing a big idol and makes many people happy, on the other hand he's just a fake one, can't have his own personality and full creativity on the stage and has to be someone else. My friend, who is a big-time Jim Morrison fan and got into drugs, etc. just because of Jim Morrison and thought he was Jim Morrison for a while (he's ok now ! at least much better) described the concert as "the best fake show ever".
This reminded me of Kirk Hammet, the Metallica's guitar player. As I watched the movie Metallica: Some Kind of a Monster a while ago, I figured that in this band, only James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich would actually make the songs and would come and give the note sheets to the others and the others had to go along with them. In the movie Kirk Hammet was saying he was completely comfortable with his role in the band, i.e being a doll and not being creative and becomming famous and rich by just being a toy in the hands of others. This brings up another issue about the unfairness of the world; even if you are creative but at the wrong place and time, you can be much worse than some pathetic person who turns out to be at the right place and right time. And if you think too much about this, it will lead to questions about God and your own existence. I don't recommend going there.
Seemed like Jason, the bass player who separated from the band a few years ago, did it for the exact same reason; i.e that he couldn't be creative and so he tried to be creative in a small group outside Metallica, but James Hetfield, made it hard for him, cause he wanted Jason to be fully committed to Metallica, although he wouldn't let him to be creative. That's abuse of power, as the rest of the movie suggested the same thing. Although it's not right to work in another band while having the first band (Jason's case), I think James Hetfield was not justified to pressure Jason for doing that, since the cause of problem was James Hetfield himself. Had it not been because of him, he was totally right to kick Jason out for not being completely committed to Matallica.
And after Jason was gone, the band was so arrogant and cruel, that they didn't even mention his name afterwards, ignoring the fact that they had reached that level of fame together with Jason, working for 15 years together. Metallica and Napster story shows more of their attitude towards the audience as well.
This reminded me of Pink Floyd. Roger Waters separated from the band too (and they rejoined temporarily a while ago in London for the Live 8 concert to help pressure the so-called G8 leaders to pay more attention to poverty specially in Africa). But he separated because of the opposite reason, he seemed to be more creative and apparently the rest of the band didn't really like the lyrics to be always about sad things. In any case, for Pink Floyd, it was never the case that they wouldn't mention Roger Water's name, although he still has some issues with the band, they even rejoined for a good cause.
Although Metallica and Pink Floyd stories might not quite be that much similar, I put them on opposite sides, attitude-wise; while I find Metallica to be selfish, arrogant and abusive, I find Pink Floyd to have much higher moral values. This brings another question that when looking at art, do you have to consider the artists' attitudes to praise their work or not. Next time, should I go to Metallica's concert again, despite the fact that I don't like their attitude, just because the concert would be a great experience or not ?
Two bands opened for The Doors, the second one was Vanilla Fudge, a fourty-something-year-old band that many haven't even heard of their name after so many years and they're still together, all the original band members. They've had single hits like "Keep Me Hangin' On", etc., but nothing more. When I saw them, I thought whether they're being pathetic that after so many years, they haven't got to anywhere or it's that they don't really care and they just love the music ? And when you compare them with huge bands like Pink Floyd and Metallica that have reached the highest points of success, but have had problems inside the band, you wonder how powerful fame or money are that result in these conflicts. In a song called The Gypsy Meets The Boy by W.A.S.P, a boy is telling a gypsy that he wants to be the crimson idol of a million people and be famous and the gypsy tells him "do you see what I see?, be careful to choose, be careful what you wish for, cause it may come true"....
And having said all that, there are always stories going in the background that we don't know of, and therefore our judgement might be quite far away from the truth. And more over, who knows if there really is a truth....
Here are some of the photos of the concert:
Posted by masoud at 10:19 PM | Comments (3)