TGIF

A phone call woke me up this morning. My boss said that the other two rate clerks called in sick today, and could I come in early?

I'm not calling it work intrigue anymore, it's just annoying. :P But as it happens I was really tired last night and went to bed early, so I guess that was good.

Daily Kitten
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I drink to refuse the future! What about you?

(no subject)

My car cost me $677.00. I can't really complain because everything that they did was what they would have done for a 60,000 mile tuneup anyway, and I'm at 57,000 miles now. They needed to replace the sparkplugs and flush out fuel lines and whatever, and they said that I might as well flush the radiator since that was one of the few things they would do for a 60,000 mile tuneup that they weren't already going to do... so I went ahead and did the whole ball of wax.

Well, my car is clean and running really well. I still could use new front tires and I probably need to have the brakes checked at some point, but that can wait for now.

Two days ago I finally finished building new iTunes folders for all of the music I already had on my iPod. This means that I can now reload the iPod with all of that music whenever I want to or need to. In the meantime, secure in the knowledge that I could wipe the iPod at any point and load all of my favorite music back on it quickly, I wiped it and loaded a completely different set of tunes.

This was a folder I labelled "New Stuff". Some of it was new music that I'd recently bought -- Lacuna Coil, Evanescence. A lot more of it was stuff that I'd... er... "borrowed" from a friend, so to speak... some of which I've actually had on my computer for many months and have STILL not really listened to. So, in essence, I had an iPod full of music -- nearly all of it progressive rock or metal of some sort -- that I wasn't familiar with.

Then I took it to work and played it on shuffle. My impressions so far:

I like Lacuna Coil and Evanescence. I knew that already. These are "goth hard rock" bands I guess you'd say, not really metal.

I like Kamelot. I knew that too. They are, I suppose you'd say, speed metal or more likely power metal, similar to Blind Guardian I suppose. I think I actually like them better than Blind Guardian.

I have some early Blind Guardian on there. It's not nearly as good as their later stuff, so I'm kind of glad I've never bought all of their early stuff. Included is a cover of Barbara Ann (the Beach Boy's tune) which sounds remarkably close to the original -- which is pretty odd, really. If a speed metal band from Germany is going to cover a song like that, you might expect them to do it in a different way than the Beach Boys did. I mean, it's okay but it's not as if they do a better job than Brian Wilson and co did.

I also like Sonata Arctica and Stratovarius, both of which are speed/power metal bands in a vein similar to Kamelot or Blind Guardian. It's true that all of this stuff starts to sound the same after a while, but it's good stuff with good melodies so I don't care, I like it.

Shadow Gallery is a band that I'm not sure about yet. Some of their stuff is okay. They're more of a progressive metal band, which means they use synthesizers and get a little carried away and over-the-top on occasion. You know, grandiose concept cds with ludicrous storylines and voices intoning helpful dialog to help you understand whatever goofy plot they're trying to convey.

Ayreon is in a similar vein, except that they're even more over the top and grandiose and goofy. Some of their stuff sounds good though. They compare favorably to Porcupine Tree I think. Both bands are largely one-man projects, and like to produce double-cd works with grand themes and overly complex music. I have one cd by Ambeon, which is basically Ayreon with a 14 year old wunderkind prodigy girl writing new lyrics and singing to Ayreon music... I like that cd a lot, and that led me to Ayreon, which my friend Adam has latched onto. Adam is a bigger fan of prog-rock than I am though -- he's a huge Rush fan and became a huge Porcupine Tree fan after skyoxford introduced them to him.

Typical of the goofy Ayreon plots is a song that sets out to tell the story of someone from the future, where humanity is dying, sending messages and images via some new technology to a man in the 9th century (who's name happens to be Ayreon -- this might be their first cd, I guess). Ayreon is supposed to recieve their messages and warn humanity to alter it's course. And then a bunch of psuedo-Medieval synthesizer music kicks in. You know, over-the-top, high-concept, rather silly stuff.

The problem with a band like Ayreon is that, if it's a song you don't like, it's probably a 10-minute epic song that you don't like. Nothing they do is over in just three minutes. They also did a cover of Major Tom, which I liked quite a bit.

I also have a band called Streams of Passion which is by the same guy who does Ayreon (a prolific writer/guitarist, with far too much time on his hands apparently). Streams of Passion is more of a goth metal band comparable to Nightwish, Epica, and Within Temptation, so you'd think they'd be right up my alley, but actually what I've heard of them is only mildly interesting. I think the melodies just aren't there.

Speaking of Epica, I have some of their stuff on there that I haven't bought yet. I like them. I'll need to pick up more of their stuff eventually; right now I only own Consigned to Oblivion.

Lastly, I have some Liquid Tension Experiment on there. This is frankly a band that I can't stand, and I reached that decision very quickly. They're in theory similar to some of these other bands I'm talking about, but in practice they are much more geared towards free-form instrumental jamming and soloing. In fact, some of their songs appear to be nothing but five or ten minutes of free-form jamming. Some people like this sort of thing, and I'm sure they're all incredibly talented musicians, but I need a melody at the very least, and preferably lyrics to go with that melody, although good instrumentals with good melody are fine too. But not 10 minutes of someone's jam session, I have no interest in that at all.

So, to recap:

Great stuff that I need to buy more of: Kamelot, Sonata Arctica, Stratovarius, Epica. Also Lacuna Coil and Evanescence.

Good stuff that I'm interested in: Ayreon, possibly Shadow Gallery.

Stuff that I'm not sold on: Streams of Passion, old Blind Guardian, possibly Shadow Gallery.

Stuff that I can't hit the next song button fast enough on, and probably need to delete from my music library: Liquid Tension Experiment.