G.NA And X-Cross Over On The Jukebox
Sep. 16th, 2011 07:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotEngaging in ever more desperate — but just as futile — attempts to find Canadian popular recording artists who aren't boring, the Singles Jukebox reviews G.NA's "Banana."
Which brings me to the topic: when crows travel from city to city, do they fly in a straight line? Wikipedia has no opinion on this issue.
(Thinking about G.NA, I wanted to know the distance from Denver to Edmonton, and wanted it as the crow flies (as opposed to as the car drives, presumably on roads), but eliciting this information from the Web I made do with as the plane flies.)
In other Jukebox/K-pop news, the Jukebox reviewed X-Cross's much better "Crazy" last week, and many Jukeboxers were just as bored. They've heard it all before.
I assume the song title is a reference to the given name of a member of the family Frog, though I may be mistaken, name order working differently in Korea from how it works here. Perhaps the family name was what was being referenced, and Frog is the given name.
How come shuffle dances are never done to shuffle rhythms?
When the man in red goes "dadda-dadda dat-dat DAT GIRL," he's quoting Nassun in Lee Hyori's "U-Go-Girl" (but that doesn't mean we've heard this before; there's a difference between drawing on traditions and tropes, doing variations on a hot template, etc., as X-Cross are doing, and merely recapitulating it all).
EDIT: Btw, I don't know enough about Canadian music to know how much it is/isn't boring; was just referring back to a convo where Anthony was saying that at the Jukebox we seem to review the worst of Canadian music, and Alex explained that there's plenty of great stuff from Canada but it's not charting and that to weigh our Canadian choices too much away from the charts would be to do things differently for Canada from how we do it for anywhere else. (I didn't actually feel that the song in question, Kay's "My Name Is Kay," was that bad. Might have given it a 6; it tried too hard but I liked what it was trying.)
Which brings me to the topic: when crows travel from city to city, do they fly in a straight line? Wikipedia has no opinion on this issue.
(Thinking about G.NA, I wanted to know the distance from Denver to Edmonton, and wanted it as the crow flies (as opposed to as the car drives, presumably on roads), but eliciting this information from the Web I made do with as the plane flies.)
In other Jukebox/K-pop news, the Jukebox reviewed X-Cross's much better "Crazy" last week, and many Jukeboxers were just as bored. They've heard it all before.
I assume the song title is a reference to the given name of a member of the family Frog, though I may be mistaken, name order working differently in Korea from how it works here. Perhaps the family name was what was being referenced, and Frog is the given name.
How come shuffle dances are never done to shuffle rhythms?
When the man in red goes "dadda-dadda dat-dat DAT GIRL," he's quoting Nassun in Lee Hyori's "U-Go-Girl" (but that doesn't mean we've heard this before; there's a difference between drawing on traditions and tropes, doing variations on a hot template, etc., as X-Cross are doing, and merely recapitulating it all).
EDIT: Btw, I don't know enough about Canadian music to know how much it is/isn't boring; was just referring back to a convo where Anthony was saying that at the Jukebox we seem to review the worst of Canadian music, and Alex explained that there's plenty of great stuff from Canada but it's not charting and that to weigh our Canadian choices too much away from the charts would be to do things differently for Canada from how we do it for anywhere else. (I didn't actually feel that the song in question, Kay's "My Name Is Kay," was that bad. Might have given it a 6; it tried too hard but I liked what it was trying.)
We love to shuffle
Date: 2011-09-17 04:33 am (UTC)[Error: unknown template video]
[Error: unknown template video]
Re: We love to shuffle
Date: 2022-03-15 12:49 am (UTC)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMBZHUhBAYU
[The second video is now unavailable, and I don't remember what it was]
scott woods
Date: 2011-09-19 01:45 pm (UTC)Re: scott woods
Date: 2011-09-19 05:21 pm (UTC)But the phrase "Cleveland music" means plenty to me (well, the 1970s northern Ohio version of what I call "The Velvet Underground diaspora": Mirrors, Rocket From The Tombs, Pere Ubu, Friction, Electric Eels). So, while "Canadian music" might be too broad and disparate a term — as, actually, are "American music" and "Korean music" — there may be meaningful subsets.
Re: scott woods
Date: 2011-09-19 07:54 pm (UTC)1) I think I was thinking of "Canadian music" in relation to "American music" and "British music" (and in all three cases rock and/or pop). I don't know how I would describe "American music" necessarily, but I think I can identify it when I hear it (and I think I can identify British pop and American pop in relation to each other -- the Beatles and Stones just sound British to me, and the Byrds and Beach Boys sound American, and I like to think I'd hear them all that way even if I'd never heard them before, though I could be deluding myself there). I've never had a sense of the same with Canadian music, though interestingly, some of what we do sounds like some mid-point between American and British pop (there's a small tradition of Canadian pop affecting British accents, even). I (and my wife, and other people I know) often have a kneejerk reaction to some of our more lame pop music -- "it sounds so Canadian" is a term of disparagement -- but that's usually just shorthand for, close-but-no-cigar.
2) The Canadian accent is often described by people even outside of Canada as being "neutral." Which is odd, but apparently true. (The only really strong accents you'll find are on the east coast and in places where English is not the primary language.) I remember reading somewhere (it was just someone's theory, I think), that a number of Canadian broadcasters have had success in the states (Peter Jennings, for instance), because they clearly speak the same language but not with any sort of particular regional stress... or something like that.
3) I agree about the arbitrariness of boundaries and whatnot but there are at least a few instances where I can at least begin to ascribe a characteristic sound to a music based on a characteristic of the place itself, i.e., Motown with its auto-factory pulsations? New York punk with its subway-train clamour? (stole that one from what Christgau said about the Dolls, which always seemed like a sensible way to describe the train-is-coming-watch-out rhythm of "Looking for a Kiss") Maybe a rubber-fatory/industrial vibe coming out of the Cleveland stuff? (Maybe the problem with Canada is we don't have enough demeaning factories.) I can't think of a region in Canada with something similar happening, but I admit I haven't thought about that angle hardly at all.
4) What I'm saying about our neutrality, our indistinctness, even our boringness, has its many advantages, too, certainly outside of music. Our politics are generally quite dull, our elections often more a chore than a privilege, but our political/economic situation is generally stable and sane. Not just as a result of our "character," or lack thereof, obviously (we have fairly strong regulations in place regarding financial institutions), but it does sort of tend to keep us out of trouble.
Re: scott woods
Date: 2011-09-19 08:51 pm (UTC)Re: scott woods
Date: 2011-09-20 07:29 pm (UTC)Re: scott woods
Date: 2011-09-19 05:24 pm (UTC)