Music at Walmart

I dont like the music selection at Wal-mart, it's terrible. They barely have anything. They have Top 40 and a few other things and that's it. In some places the only place to buy music is at Wal-mart. They have that market cornered. That's Bad. One good point some guy on the Internet made was that they refuse to sell uncensored albums, yet they sell R rated movies and M rated video games. Uncensored. Sometimes, even if an album doesn't have a sticker they'll still censor it. Except they don't tell you. I buy albums at Wal-mart sometimes, mostly because they have some good deals, but I make sure what I'm buying doesn't have a sticker on it so I know it won't be censored. They censor alot of albums that may or may not have deserve it. But they didn't censor Nickelbacks new album. Why didn't they? It doesn't have a sticker. Why not? I'll tell you why. Those "parental advisory" stickers don't have any set standards like with movies and video games. Whether or not it gets a sticker is determined by the record label. This leads to some albums with absolutely no cussing on them to get stickers, while some albums with all sorts language or objectionable content wouldn't get one. They didn't put it on the Nickelback album. I think that it's so it would sell more and wouldn't put off parents. Besides, the lyrics on that album are just downright idiotic. You know, Nickelback used to be a Metallica cover band, I'm serious, they started out playing good music. But anyway, album wasn't censored. Another thing is that Walmart never has anything where it should be. One time I was looking for something and found it half way down the aisle. I'm not kidding. It says the artist on the little cardboard thing you know? And theirs a hodgepodge of different people, but nothing of what it says it is. I've seen worse at bookstores with music organization. But still. It's really the fault of people who are too lazy to put things in the proper place. But wouldn't you'd think the store would move it back everyday? I prefer to buy music at Best Buy, they have an excellent selection of artists, sell uncensored album versions, and everything is always where it should be. Although sometimes it's a hit or miss. For instance. When I go to buy music, I have a mental list of albums I want. Let me tell you what happened once. I was looking for some albums. I looked at Anthrax, didn't have the album I was looking for (Among The Living). This is strange because it happens to be their most popular album. They had a bunch of greatest hits albums, but I'm not the kind of person who just buys a greatest hits album. Unless their mostly a singles band (Creedence Clearwater Revival) or have way too many albums (David Allen Coe, with 41 studio albums) then I'll make an exception. I mostly stick to actual albums and not contemplations. So I moved on to Soundgarden, I was looking for Down On The Upside, they had Superunknown (already had it, and one of my favorite albums by the way), Badmotorfinger (already had it), A greatest hits album (already explained), they even had Ultramega OK their debut album that was made back when they were a local band that no one had ever heard of. But they didn't have what I was looking for. I went to The Smashing Pumpkins,alot of Internet people (such as Mark Prindle) hate them, but you can't deny they have some good songs, plus Brad from Brad's Completely Useless Record Reviews gave it a 10. But I didn't didn't find what I was looking for (Siamese Dream). This is strange, because sometimes they don't have the most popular albums by famous musicians, but they will have just about every obscure Death Metal band and people you've never heard that of you can imagine. Seriously, I saw a band called Sounds Of Animals Fighting. I'm serious, what the heck is that? Nonetheless, Best Buy is an excellent choice of music, it blows Wal-mart out of the water.

Behind the music...that sucks: Death metal coming soon

It's something I've been trying to get finished since the beginning of this blog almost, but I keep losing my draft every time. I'm not kidding, I almost got done just now, but I accidentally hit the shift back key. So much for auto save. That always happens, it's whats gotten rid of some really good material in the past few months, but rest assured, I will finish this hilarious parody. I really want to finish this because i feel i have some of my best stuff here, but every single time I have to start from scratch, that must have happened 5 or 6 times. but I will finish this.

Automatic hand dryers

I hate automatic hand dryers. You know those things in public restrooms you push and air comes out? Those things. Their useless. I can't count the number of times I've washed my hands to find the only thing they only have those freakin air whoosh thingies. Seriously. They don't do anything, a little air. How does that dry your hands? I have to shove my hands up near the nozzle to get any heat, and do it for both hands usually more than once. It's ridiculous. These things are completely useless. The only thing worse is a broken one. All restrooms should have paper towels. End of discussion.

Video and Song of the week

This is hilarious, it seems stupid at first but the ending is hilarious

Charlie The Unicorn



I spent over an hour trying to decide a song, I was going to use AC/DC's "Jailbreak" but I thought, what else is there. So im, looking, and for some reason record labels are cracking down on Youtube so that limited my choices. I thought of Alice in Chains. "Man In The Box" had embedding disabled, so I thought of using "Would?" but I couldn't decide between 3 versions. I move on to the Smashing Pumpkins, early Soundgarden ("flower"), Creedence Clearwater revival, Pantera, Van Halen, the Joy Division, Anthrax and some others. I didn't want more Metallica, and I went back to everything at least 3 times. But I think I've finally found something gthat satisfies everyone. But it has no music video. This is the trouble I go through to bring you quality.

Boston - Rock and Roll Band (Studio Version)

Political Blog

That political blog i've been talking about has finally launched. The address is www.onlevelpolitics.blogspot.com. Yes, I will talk about Barrack Obama.

Casino commericals

Whats up with casino commercials? At the end they always go, "If you have a gambling problem call this number." Usually its 1-800-BETS-OFF. Yea there required by law, but whats the point? Its like an alcoholic calling Budweiser. Seriously. Well, pretty soon it'll be Budweiser-Inbev. Dang Europeans. Speaking of which, we've bailed them out of 2 world wars, communism, and we get nothing, by the way, why are we always fighting there wars? When we're Iraq toppling a dictator and gaining a strategic position in the middle east people whine, but when we're in Bosnia fighting a country trying to suppress a rebellion people cheer. Genocide or not, who's getting in the middle of another countries civil war now? But that's for the political blog I'll probably start soon. I've never talked about politics here and I'm not starting now. Anyway those casino commercials make no sense. That's all I really had to say about this, I didn't really talk about casino commercials but whatever. Later.

Video and Song of the Week

Video of the Week

This is funny, a kid hits himself in the face with a basketball.

Stupid kid owns himself



I couldn't decide this week, metal or classic country? I'm a fan of both so why not two songs?

Song(s) of the week

I especially love the bass intro to this song, the first time i heard i thought it sounded really cool, still do.

Testament - Souls of Black


You've probably heard this song

Hank Williams Jr. - A Country Boy Can Survive

Why do kids think its funny

One thing I don't get is why kids at school think it's so funny to make fun of the Jews. Seriously? why is that funny? At all? It's not. Remember, Jesus was Jewish. Also, just because South Park did it doesn't make it ok. This is what happens when you let immature 13 year olds watch South Park. Its a social commentary stupid. Its COM-EDY. SAT-IRE. They don't seem the understand the subtleness, and also happen to watch family guy and The new Simpson's, the one that sucks. I doubt they could distinguish a Jewish person from any other religion, Nathan confused a Jew and a Muslim. Its not funny. Hitler would probably be proud of these immature morons.

Album review-Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory by Dream Theater

So, another musical related post, don't worry, I'm not turning this into a music blog, I'm working on Casino commercials and something I've been wanting to do since i started this blog. But this will not become a music blog, just saying, anyway, I listened to this album, its been called Dream Theaters masterpiece. But what did I think of it? Its sort of like Yes crossed with Metallica. And according to Brad’s Completely Useless Record Reviews
, Pink Floyds The Wall. But Yes had substance, Metallica (not the terrible St.Anger Metallica, the good one.) had substance, this doesn't. Its nothing but flashy show-off ism. Now, these guys are very technical and some of the stuff they do just blows my mind; they've got the potatoes but where's the meat? WHERE??????. Yes the guitarist can play multiple notes at a time really fast, and yes the drummer can hit the bass drum really fast, but maybe it should sound like a normal bass drum. Let me explain, most bass drums sound like boom or thud, not this, this sounds like a possum getting run over by a car, "squash", seriously. This flash gets old after 10 minutes. Not to mention, some of these lyrics are just plain stupid and these guys have no songwriting skills. Take out the flash and you have nothing. The ballads on here are terrible. The vocals are over the top operatic nonsense and there's rarely a moment when somethings not getting overplayed. Its so empty. But like i said, the technical skills are mind blowing. Another thing, the bass line and riff in the song "Home" reminds me of Tool. But this is no masterpiece, i stopped paying close attention around track 8 or so, and i cant remember how any of these songs go. All flash, no substance. 6 out of 10

Video and Song of the week

Video of the week

This is funny because its ironic.

Walmart Intercom: Michael Vick, please come to the....





This iv'e mentioned this in my last post, good song. Its got both Public enemy and Anthrax

Public Enemy & Anthrax - Bring the noise

Music today is terrible, a genre by genre explanation

Continuing my trend of music related rants, I’m going to talk about something I’ve tried to tackle in the past, but have never gotten very far before I scrapped it. But I’m here and I’m going to run down genre by genre why approximately 94% of music is terrible.

Pop music
Pop music is the scourge of modern music, the most shallow form of music in existence. It usually has nothing interesting, instead relying completely on vocal melodies, it contains clichéd lyrics about the same topic in every song. It also has infected everything else. It doesn’t exist for the art of music but purely to make money off people who have no taste and don’t understand that a computer going beep and a fake drum machine with the word love said every other line, with obvious melodies and nothing else barely qualifies as music.

Rock Music (and its subgenres)
After the mid 90s rock music started sucking, yes, the 80s had its share of terrible music but bands such as Nickelback, and Creed, released albums, they were complete rip-offs of earlier and far better bands, using the same "riffs" (seriously, Creeds "Torn" and "My Own Prison" are almost the exact same thing) over and over. Let me tell you the formula for everything. Quiet, with approximately 3 note variety, then the heavy guitars kick in, play 3 plodding notes and create back ground noise, rinse and repeat. It just sucks, theirs no creativity or originality. Seriously, every single thing i hear is a rip off of some early 90s band that is far better than they could ever hope to be. Then theirs Nu-Metal. Nu-Metal is a joke, its stupid, uninspired lyrics written by bands trying to sound angsty for the purpose of selling their albums to moronic teenagers. Unfortunately it works. The guitar is so detuned it isn’t funny, and the riffs are so simple. Fingers go up the neck, fingers go down the neck. Half the bands just grunt like a constipated bear most of the time and barely sing. That’s it, nu-metal is terrible. I blame all this somewhat on pop music for watering everything down for the mainstream to almost nothing. Really, the way i trace this, is after Nirvana broke up, record companies had to fill the gap. What did they do? They got bands that tried to imitate them as closely as possible. Nickelback started out this way. Listen to their first album (Curb) to hear what I’m talking about. After these bands became successful the record companies realized the answer to their problems. They could just tell people what to listen to and they'd buy it. This goes for all music in general. Part of the problem is idiotic 13 year olds that buy this stuff who don’t know what their talking about. Greenday is not punk. Avril Lavigne is definitely not punk. Slipknot is not metal (not good metal anyway, nu metal) Taylor swift and Carrie Underwood are not country music, but I'll cover this in the next section. The point is, the record companies realized anything can be sold to people if you pay radio stations to play it alot and drill it into their head so they think it’s popular, no matter how bad it really is. That’s how it works now. It’s terrible. Turning out the same music over and over and over for the purpose of making money off people with no music taste. There was also the "post-Punk" revival thing. Which sucked as well. I can safely guess that this too was created by the record companies. When I hear it on the pop station then it probably is. The Killers are not "post-punk", I heard them all over the pop station. The Joy Division is "post-punk” but chances are, you've never heard of them. The sad state of rock music in the current day is unbelievable. A minimal riff with a generically catchy melody is all people want now. Moving on to metal. Yes, "glam metal" in the 80s was sort of poppish and was really over the top with lyrics and wore stupid outfits. But it wasn’t really that bad. I’m not as biased towards it as some who grew up in the early to mid 90s might be. 80s bands are really starting to get popular again. Why, I don’t know, possibly guitar hero, I consider guitar hero a mixed blessing to music, but that’s for another post. I don’t really have a problem with them. One thing about metal is all the fights on the internet about who was better, usually these center around Metallica vs megadeth vs slayer vs anthrax. It’s stupid. Their all good in their own way, people can’t seem to agree on that for some reason. But since I mentioned it, why don’t I give my own opinions on these bands. I'll start with Metallica since I’m most familiar with them. In defense of Metallica, I’m tired of 13 year olds who hate them because they "sold out". Just because they changed their sound doesn’t mean they sold out. I love the stuff they did in the 80s, they did change their sound in the 90s. Why? I figure that after ...And Justice For All, and its ridiculous amounts progressiveness, they decided to go more back to the basics, simple structure, 1 riff per song, two maximum, 5 minute songs. You cant blame them, its got to be hard to play full sets of 8 and 9 minute songs that technical. But this lead to the album known as "The Black Album". It made them mainstream. People who had never heard of this band before were now fans. But at the same time they were pulling in MTV viewers and casual music listeners, they alienated some of their older more loyal fans. Now, at this point they would have probably become mainstream anyway, but would they have become so popular and sell 15 million copies? Probably not. The songs on that album were simpler and more mainstream but they were not sellouts. A sellout is a formerly creative band becoming generic and uninteresting. Merely changing your sound does not make you a sellout. And honestly, did people really expect them to play this aggressive thrash metal their whole lives? Seriously, eventually, it'd become stale. Besides as great as that was, they've started to move back to that. If you'll notice Death Magnetic has the old Ride The Lightning template. The thing that keeps them from achieving their old sound completely, is that theirs too many funky-bluesy-bendy note Load style riffs. That and the extreme over compression that just ruins it almost. really, go to YouTube, listen to the guitar hero versions of the tracks and listen to them in high quality, amazing, you can hear things that you cant actually hear on the album its so compressed. But "The Black Album" is not that bad, its still metal. And their still good songs. But from their they went in all sorts of directions. But I’m not going to comment on the Load and Reload albums because I’ve only heard 1 song from each of those. And yes, Even though I’ve only heard 2 songs, St.Anger is terrible. Megadeth is not that good in my opinion, their fans are ridiculous. Dave Mustaine can’t sing well, and just because some of his songs are more technical than Metallica’s doesn’t mean anything. Just because it’s more technical doesn’t mean it’s automatically good. He got kicked of Metallica because he was an alcoholic druggie that would have taken the whole band down with him. Anthrax is alright, I don’t have any albums but they sound fine, and they did that thing with public enemy so theirs that. But I'm getting off-topic, nu-metal is not metal, it’s a joke, the good news is that thrash metal is getting popular again. Theirs alot of new bands coming out that you've probably never heard of unless you look for them. But anyway, on to country music

Country Music
Country Music used to be good, until pop music infected it. Carrie Underwood is fake, obviously studio altered, with clichéd lyrics and back ground music. To be honest, she’s more of a pop singer. Take away the acoustic guitar or fiddle or whatever and put in a synthesizer or something and you'd have a perfect pop song but no, you have to market this as country. Why? it sells better. That way you can pull in older people who would have never listened to something with the pop tag on it. Same for Taylor Swift. Their not country. I don’t care how many times you want to try and defend them, their just not. Just because you put an acoustic guitar in a pop song does not mean it’s a country song. Another thing about country music is that it’s so whiny now. I can’t stand the whininess of Tim McGraw or Keith Urban or anything else. Oh, my wife left me, family...nostalgia...and a bunch of drivel designed to make it sound more intelligent than pop music, when if you listen to the lyrics it contains the same themes. Half the songs are about love or something related to that. Whatever happened to sounds of Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, or David Allen Coe? Did they just disappear? Another thing, how come country stations never play older country. It’s the same top 40 songs over and over and over. Sound familiar? But if you want older country on the radio, the best advice I can give you is that if you get radio from anywhere near St. Louis, 98.5 plays older country sometimes. Sometimes in a row. They have a very powerful signal that goes down to the Arkansas border I hear. But that’s your best bet as far as I know. The sounds of older country still exist underground though. Ever hear of Hank Williams III? Probably not. You won’t hear him on the radio. Its not that he’s not popular, he’s got a large following in the underground, he plays older country, and punk rock and metal. He does alot. But there is him and other like him if you look hard enough. But seriously, why have we never heard of a "classic country" station? There’s all kinds of classic rock stations, why not classic country? I’ve never heard of it, but I should.

Rap Music
Now, I’m not someone who bashes rap music just because its rap music. Rap music has a short shelf life anyway. But rap music is terrible now. I’m not very familiar with rap music but i know it never used to be this way. There used to be rap artists who were better than some rock bands in their day. For a few albums Public Enemy was very good and surpassed even many rock bands at their peak. Plus they did that song with Anthrax. They didn’t write songs about the ghetto or life on the street or bling-bling. They wrote songs about political and social issues and they did it very well. And though I’ve never heard any of their songs, I’ve heard earlier NWA was really good even though they were gangsta rap. Which apparently ran its course 2 years after Staight Outta Compton according to Brads Completely Useless record reviews. But not all rap is bad, just the commercialized garbage that’s thrown out now.

That about covers it. Later