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The Dream Is Over: The Life And Times Of Chris Cornell
I bought a CD copy of Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger in Chilliwack in 2019. At the time, I didn’t know anything about the Pacific Northwest, Grunge music, Soundgarden, or Chris Cornell, but I bought the CD because I was interested by the complex album artwork, and the fact that it was a “25th Anniversary Remaster”- I thought…
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2024, A Decade To Live In
Listening to old Post Malone albums, 7:55 AM. The weather is mild for this time of year, -6 in mid February. My car is in the shop, a vehicle from a different year. 2017. Other side rockstar is a sugar wraith, and he wants to stay after he leaves, the pop singer tells me. The…
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A Year On The Road, Pt. 2: Genre and Form Defined in the 21st Century
What musical genre does Twenty One Pilots and Imagine Dragons belong to? And don’t try to tell me it’s “Indie Rock” or “Alternative Rock”. Indie Rock is made on a budget and Alternative is introspective music with a focus on songwriting rather than production. “Pop Music” is often used as a derogatory term by music…
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Head For The Hills! (A Misunderstanding Of Southern Gothic Literature And Cinema)
H.P. Lovecraft writes in his essay “Supernatural Horror In Literature” (published in 1927) “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”. The essay goes on to describe the progression of Gothic literature, and the ways that it allowed for supernatural and…
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A Year On The Road
Genre, style, and accent are expressions of individualism. David Lynch has a pastoral, surrealist approach to filmmaking. In some ways, his films are extremely simple. This ‘style’ of filmmaking has much in common with the religious tradition he was raised in, Presbyterianism. Francis Ford Coppola’s “Godfather” trilogy is an expression of Roman Catholic culture. The…
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Pragmatism
The lady of the night and the wiseguy live in despair of Providence. They provide for themselves. Does a boy deserve to live as a gun? Does a girl deserve to live as a body? What they deserve does not concern them, because they do not receive what they deserve. They take the work that…
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Canadian Influences on American Popular Music
It has been said that the last great music scene was Seattle in the early 90s, before, during, and after the Grunge movement exploded onto the charts. Bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden had an old soul with a new sound. Washington State had long been disregarded by the cultural centres of California and…
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Vessels
Your Love is like a building, four walls and a door. A set of windows look out into the horizon. You see a flock of birds and a yellow sunset. Someone calls you on the telephone, and they start screaming about a storm coming, “blowing in from the East”. The birds are flying West, and…
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Maybe Someday, Ronnie
Hold off the countdown, I can’t keep track of my fingers. The rivers run and I can’t say anything else about it. Wirejaw is a scary word, but it’s nothing to worry about. There’s still a road to travel, and an answer to find. I speak and lose my tongue. High beams shine out from…
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Mother-Blaming and Mother-Worship in Rap Music
Hip Hop, as a genre, is traditionally assertive. It tells the listener that the artist is powerful, determined, unstoppable, and capable of anything. The stereotypical attitude towards women in rap is manipulative, utilitarian, promiscuous, and dominating. As a result rap music is often labelled as misogynistic. But “misogyny” is a term loaded with judgement, and…
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High Strung Poetry and Analysis 