nice dood.

I really don't go to shows anymore. I've probably been to a handful in the last 10 years. I was all about it in my 20's. Don't know. Just not really into it any more. Funny as it may seem, I'm much more content to listen to an album alone than see a live performance with hundreds of other people.

I'm not jabbing at you sev, just rambling about getting old haha.

No, no worries man. I feel the EXACT same way. Shows are a goddamn headache most of the time. In my 20's, there was rarely a week that went by where I wasn't either playing in or attending a concert or two. I saw hundreds of bands back then. But now, there are only a few artists that I'd bother to travel to an arena for.

Kanye West is #1 on that list, because I've never fucking seen him. I caught some glimpses of his set at a festival many many moons ago, but I wasn't into him at the time, and I was actively avoiding his performance, so I certainly don't count that.

I totally know where you're coming from. I actually don't relish the idea of crossing state lines to see a big show in a fairly unknown area, but I strongly feel that I need to see Kanye West while I still can. Last several years I've kept a pretty low show-going profile, seeing "smaller" acts only, like Low and Swans a few times each, and old faves like Melvins or Ghostface when they come around.

I'm pretty goddamn pumped about this though. seriously.

I saw Gibbs a few weeks ago and he either yelled the lyrics with a DJ playing the beats on the background, or rapped his verses in accapella really fast. It was extremely crowded and the sound was messed up.. so yeah, I couldn't help but think about how I'd much rather enjoy one of his albums at home.

im definitely liking this Game. a lot

samesies. I almost feel like the fact that it's a low stakes release made him just sort of gather some buddies and make an album for fun and that shows. Nice and breezy.

...

Also, did you guys hear the new Bishop Nehru? I heard a track yesterday on my Spotify "discover" playlist and it was fantastic.

Speaking of Gibbs... should we even get in to the rape allegations that one's facing? Pretty unnerving, to be sure.

Incidentally, I officially quit Spotify yesterday. Cancelled my premium account for the first time since 2012 I think. I still had some time left on my current month, but I just deleted the app altogether.

I pay for Apple Music now, and I'm Apple is so thoroughly entrenched in my life that I wanted to give it a shot as my go to for steaming. I almost never listens to Spotify anyway, and it's been years since they recommended me anything I wasn't already into. Apple Music isn't quite as user friendly yet, but the playlists show me new names every once in a while.

Meh.

I find Apple "the company" fascinating.

I hate Apple products, tho.

I don't believe it. I read there's footage of that chick walking with him to the hotel room willingly. So I think she's just looking for a quick cash grab..

Ah, I love Apple. I've never been a big brand loyalist, but I have a few exceptions, and Apple is one of them. Ever since I bought my first iPhone, I have been all in. I had a MacBook at that point, and a couple of iPods, but it was the iPhone that really made me say fuck everything else.

Now, I almost never use a non Apple device. Thankfully I work in a newsroom, so we're all Apple at work, and I love it. It's seamless. I'm a bit of an Apple whore I guess. Not because I think it's a social symbol or anything like that. I just LOVE the functionality and performance of the products. Granted, iTunes and Apple Music could use some work, but in terms of quick computing and cloud access for professionals who don't give a shit about video games but still appreciate a kickass display and a really solid design, Apple is just it.

Not that you asked.

I also really like the North Face. I buy North Face coats and spend disastrous, absurd amounts of money on them, but they're fucking worth it.

I'm, like, negative punk at this point in my life.

Eh i have always been a tinkerer and gamer. Apple doesnt mesh with those things.

sell out bastard ;)

and i LOATHE macs

the OS is just so damned needlessly ass backwards its ridiculous. and my $30 android STILL out performs all my friends iPhones on almost every day to day task, and i am not even exaggerating

That's weird. I actually have a couple of android phones. One cheapo backup phone for emergencies, and one Droid model. Also an HTC Evo from a few years back. They all eat shit compared to every 4G level iPhone I've ever used. The difference is appalling. In quality, design, functionality, camera, everything. Also the Droid developed a dead spot just from regular daily use. My iPhone 5 and 5s both still function perfectly, and run the newest version of iOS, while all those android phones were using an outdated operating system within 6 months. I'm going on 3 years with the 5s, and I use it as my go to phone even though I got a 6s from my employer for work. That thing just sits and looks pretty. I don't even need to use it yet, and the 7 will be out in just a few months.

But it all depends on what you like, what you need to do, and so on. But overall, I loathe open source apps, and prefer an App Store that regulates content more strictly.

Yes yes it of course comes down to preference. Im on like my 7th droid. I love the os. I dont understand my wifes iphone. I hate walled off os's etc. Just my mindset as a tinkering nerd.

what i always loved most about Game is he the first true local rapper on the bigtime. even Kendrick and School Boy don't drop enough LA locals only and in particular Hood AF only references. i mean, y'all probably have no idea when Game even mentions it but i grew up in these neighborhoods and streets, i know all the references dropped and it makes me love it so much

haha i remember in ealry 90s when they changed tje name of Compton Blvd which runs through the neighborhood i grew up in to "Somerset Blvd" because of all the negative publicity about the C-P-T..

those of us old enough still call it Compton Blvd

and i was talking about Mac OS that sucks soooooooo much dick, as to iOS i can't say definitively i ve never tried to use it personally

Game went quasi-conscious on Documentary 2, with this Streets of Compton its honestly the most straight up gangsta and ruthless record I heard outside of local hood mixtapes in ten years, possibly fifteen. I mean literally, you'd have to be in a gang to honestly get like half of it. It feels entirely like a "local" rap project with ZERO intentions of if anyone else "gets it", its some shit to bump sitting in front of the pad with the homiez drinking brewz. i love it


I heard the single, I hate to say it but its getting to be boring. It just sounds like slightly tweaked versions of what they did fifteen years ago... I'm willing to give the record a try, but it strikes me as becoming more like those boring nostalgia records rather then some kind of legitimately "new" stuff or progression the way No Cities To Love was..

This is a masterpiece, I'm not ashamed to admit it. I listened to it literally every single day for over two weeks after it came out. Still listen to it several times a week. I honestly have not had the kind of "first listen" experience about a record like this in a long long time. Its restored my hope and curiosity in obtaining new musics


Speaking of which, I need to get this and Swans already, I am just being lazy I have the money.

at this point, only half a year in, I feel I an say that 2016 has been a better year for music in my mind than 2015 was.[/quote]

woah!!!!!

Hmm. See, I like OSX. A lot, actually. But again, it comes down to what you use it for. When I was in grad school I would have NEVER used a Mac, simply because proprietary software like SPSS is expensive enough when you're just buying it for Windows use. That shit gets unreal when you need to duplicate that kind of stuff onto a Mac. I think it's probably gotten easier over time, with the advent of apps and whatnot, but when I was in school that shit wasn't around. I never would have tried to use a Mac for scientific research in those days.

Now I work in conpletely different field, and my primary focus is on design, media, simple writing and photo processing, and Apple has worked hard to build a kickass professional platform. These days, Apple Mail is a better option for office comms than the once mighty Outlook (which is basically dead, having transformed into a .com and all service, with outmoded business versions that companies the world over are dropping for Gmail Business), and Adobe works so goddamn beautifully on OSX that full InDesign and Photoshop have the functionality of factory installed extensions. On Windows, they're always so goddamn problematic.

Granted, my experience with Windows post 8.1 is pretty minimal. I have used a (godawful) HP with Windowss 10 in the past year, and while I like certain elements of the user experience, it's still a long way from being a truly practical and user friendly system like iOS and OS X.

But hey, it's whatever... right?

Sorry for more tech babble, but I just want to say one more enormous and long winded thing:

I love think the biggest thing for me is he fact that the same company is building the software AND the hardware that I love most. With Windows and Google, it's always a matter of picking the "right" notebook or tablet or phone or desktop that ALSO runs the "right" version of your preferred OS. Like the aforementioned HP — a Fucking awful company that builds momentarily flashy devices that inevitably go to gadget hell after no time at all — or the Chromebooks that Samsung builds, or the Android OS-running phones that run their version of Android because, y'know, they can, and pure android doesn't make them any money.

With Apple, I don't have to worry about it. They make my preferred desktop, tablet, laptop, smartphone, etc. and they ALSO make my preferred operating system. Then they put the two together. Easy. I don't have to "shop" for a new tablet or laptop if/when I need one. I know exactly what the fuck I want, and why.

It's universal functionality from a brand I trust. Yeah, the products are on the pricey side, but there's never any doubt about whether I'm making the right decision. Need a laptop? MacBook Pro. Tablet? iPad. Phone? iPhone. Wireless keyboard? The kickass Bluetooth board that Apple makes. USB keyboard? The badass full key and number pad board Apple makes. Stylus? Apple Pencil. Smart watch? Apple Watch. Not that I have an Apple Watch or have any desire to own one, but if I did...

It's all built like a dream, looks badass, and means having to deal with only one company, one retailer, one tech support center and so on. I love Apple. Apple
Makes my life SO MUCH EASIER.

like I said (and you said) depends on the user. I love Win10 personally. But like I said earlier, I've always been a gamer. If you want to play PC games, you plan your build, buy your parts, and create a beast. If you want to play Mac games, you... buy a Mac and are stuck with that one configuration. Macs just aren't made for gaming. As a PC Gamer, I'm also the type to constantly be upgrading parts - that just ain't happening w/ Macs.

I understand the "it just works" thing - and that's great for folks that want that. I get it. I just want my car to work. I don't want to tweak it in any way. But I have a basement room full of Frankensteined PC builds and spare parts. Haha.

as far as Android goes, I love it. I actually upgrade my phone about once a year. SRSLY. Right now I have an LG Stylo I adore. Huge screen. Stylus. Excellent camera.

I have an Nvidia Shield tablet - which has an insane processor as it's aimed at gamers. Not just Android gaming, but streaming PC games to it.

I also have a Shield TV which is like a Roku but again - crazy CPU for gaming built in. I love that thing.

Dude... RHCP is no Sleater-Kinney. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to think of two bands that reached their peak in the '90s "alt rock" era that are more radically different in style, substance and sound than Red Hot Chili Peppers and Sleater Fucking Kinney. There's no reason to expect that the Peppers would EVER drop anything as striking or profound as the worst S-K album.

And it's not that I hate RHCP. To me, they're kind of like the Flaming Lips (who I obviously love) in a kind of weird, bizarro, alternate dimension kind of way. Both bands are old as sin, and started out making what amounts to butt rock before finally blowing up after several unrefined, acquired taste albums, to find themselves still going, 3 decades later, with an unrecognizable line-up making music and sounding like a different band entirely.

BUT, unlike the Lips, and very unlike S-K, they're a pop group. They're an arena rock band that makes modern rock radio megahits, and their music rarely moves beyond simple "fun." S-K are punk feminists rabble rousers and fucking sonic arsonists, the female Nirvana if ever there was one, only more musically skilled and way more stable.

You can't be surprised that The Getaway isn't a punch to the nuts powerhouse like No Cities, which — despite my initial doubts — made it feel like S-K had never left. They're just not that kind of band. And as weak as I think RHCP is, in comparison to bands like S-K, I still can't resist their '90s singles and I think they're absurdly talented musically, so don't get the wrong idea.

But the comparison is bum-fucked. Sorry.


I actually stopped listening to this one completely, despite the fact that "Burn the Witch" has grown exponentially in my estimation since its release. It's just one of the most perfectly timed political songs in years, especially in the wake of Orlando, Trump's Muslim talk, and (perhaps more than anything) the Radiohead streaming attack in Istanbul. The song becomes more powerful the more the world fucks itself. We're definitely in the midst of several cultural "witch hunts" right now, and this song soundtracks this global dischord beautifully. It's not my favorite song of the year, but I think it should win a fucking Grammy for its aptness.

I do like the album, but some of the songs just never really clicked with me, so I stopped playing the record. I will start again.


Yeah, you need to get the new fucking Swans, friendo. I like it a great deal more than To Be Kind because it just simply has more to offer sonically, and instead of bludgeoning you over the head, it worms its way into your brain and has babies there. Good stuff.

Well, in all honesty if you're a jailbreaking type, the Mac can be pretty goddamn tweakable. I'm not that that guy, but that's what I hear. Also, you can do a lot of cool coding and app development in Mac OS and iOS, with either developer versions or betas or the right software.

But I get what you're saying. If you're the kind of person who wants to/needs to be able to switch launchers at a whim, or customize your home screen to high hell, then Apple is not for you.

But if you're like me, and you have crippling obsessive compulsive disorder, and will, if given the freedom and ability to do so, worry and nitpick and tweak your settings constantly until everything is perfect (which it never is, if you're me), it's way easier on the old noggin to simply start up your device and have it laid out beautifully and minimally from the get go.

I also just really love the color schemes and design elements of iOS/OSX, while I think Windows 10 and every version of Android are absolute chaotic messes that look like shit.

I have a MacBook and an iPhone and an iPad and a work issued iPad Pro and iPhone 6s. Easy peasy.

I'm the kind of guy who likes things to be orderly and neat and a pleasure to look at. (Obsessive compulsive.... debilitating so)

yeah it's not just the jailbreak thing, it's that... ok, sometimes I just build a PC from scratch to relax. Not because I need another functioning PC. I enjoy the hobbyist side of planning builds, picking parts, and so on. I can't do that with a Mac. Not to mention that (while it has improved a lot in recent years) there are thousands of PC games that aren't on Mac. In the 90's Mac had Marathon. But now you can play that on PC. So...

I mean we're just going back and forth and saying nothing haha. Like I'm saying "I like Windows and Android because ______" and you're saying "I like OSX and iOS because _____" and it really doesn't matter. We both understand that you should use what makes you happy and that's what we're doing so it's all good.

hAha life is funny because Severian said OSx is "user friendly" yet every single time i use a mac i yell at the computer "why is this fucking operating system so damned ass fucking backwards!"

i spent an hour before i realized you can't just right click to save a file or open a new tab ;)

while i agree that SK is a very different band i could make a mixtape of Red Hot Chili Peppers songs that are far more "substantial" than just pop. of course they are an LA band with an LA sound so i might have bias. i wouldn't call myself a full fledged "fan" but the songs of theirs i like, i really really like

also i wasn't really trying to make a literal comparison btw, more so using NCTL as a benchmark of what a 20 year old band should be doing vs the plethora of bullshit nostalgia albums that so many bands have put out in past years

I am down for everything RHCP put out until BloodSugarSexMagick, which, due to it's production, sounded like a watered down RHCP to my ears when it came out.

I would argue that RHCP did not become buttrock until they hit the mid-90's. For 15 years before that they were fucking awesome, and NO ONE sounded like them, and I still miss Hillel Slovak's riffs so much.

man, I love those early RHCP records too. MM and and their Sly and Hendrix covers and all that. Right after BSSM came out, I got that What Hits? compilation and loved all that early stuff. Hillel was awesome.

But I really love the Fruscante era. I don't know. It's surprises me that a fan wouldn't dig BSSM at least on some level. I still love that album so much.

I think I'm gonna listen to What Hits? in a bit actually haha

Sure you can. You just have to set up your mouse. It's true, Macs don't come with right-click functions turned on by default, and a lot of people think that your Mac mouse simply doesn't right click. But it does. And you can set the middle scrolling button to scroll 90°, or do nothing, or do other stuff, based on your preference.

There's a photographer at the office who simply refuses to learn or accept this. His mouse is useless, and it's a pain because he has the most recent version of Photoshop, so we all work out photos on his computer, but he'll get steaming mad if we change the settings, and demand that we change them back, even though he wants to be able to right click and save, etc. Hah. Thank god for folks like that who make remind me that in the grand scheme of things, I'm still pretty young.

For me that benchmark is Portishead's Third. I don't think a band has ever bounced back and sounded so fucking awesome and different, while maintaining the same fundamental identity. It's the best "comeback" album — for lack of a better word — that I've ever heard. Thought it would suck before it came out, but now I prefer it to Dummy AND self-titled... by, like, a lot.

I like One Hot Minute. I think that's my favorite. Not that it's filled with great songs or anything, but the singles had an epic quality to them... darker and more sweeping than previous records, IMO, that I took to right away. Warped, Aeroplane, My Friends... good stuff, all in all.

I also like that track they did for the Coneheads soundtrack. Blanking on the name right now. But. Yeah.

i agree in spirit with you BUT i think Californication is their masterpiece and By The Way is also one of my favs. the early shit was way more in your face, but when they finally settled down to focus on instrumentation suddenly they were a decent band

Soul to squeeze.

I like one hot a lot. Love caifornication.

Third is awesome agreed.

This is why I compare them to Flaming Lips. That band's early records were a hot mess trying to be Butthole Surfers one second, J&MC the next, even Spaceman 3 and SY.

I LOVE those records, all of them, from the disastrous self-titled through Telepathic Surgery, but I like them because I just love the Lips, and that's one of my things. Couldn't change it if I tried.

They didn't really turn into a legitimately "good" band that could stand on its own two feet until Priest Driven Ambulance, and they hadn't even really refined their sound at all at that point. By the mid '90s they were one of the most exciting and fun bands around, and THEN they found their muse and started to experiment with car stereo orchestras, concept albums, Zairkeeka, and The Soft Bulletin, which is barely a rock record at all, but even for a guy like me, raised on pulverizing punk, it was a transcendent album and a masterpiece.

Indeed I like their earlier albums more because of the later work, as I can see the fleeting sparks of what was to come even in songs like "Jesus Shooting Heroin."

I'm talking about the Lips because I really have nothing to say about early RHCP. It's all very meh to me until Blood Sugar, and it got meh again after Californication was played into the dirt by everyone everywhere.

I heard some of Stadium Arcadium once and thought it was ok, but this was like ten years ago now... not sure I'd feel the same way. Even at the time I was loathe to admit that I liked anything about it.

But "Soul to Squeeze" is early '90s gold man. I dig that song like crazy.
I also like their "Love Rollercoaster" cover from Beavis and Butthead Do America. Heh.

thanks for clarifying, not that i minded but i was thinking why did he write like 1000 word essay about flaming lips??


sure but there was a reason for the overkill, it was a good record.


i initially liked Stadium Arcadium but it was not lasting good like Californication or By The Way and yes literally it was ten years ago