Category: nerdiness
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Noctiluca.
Noctiluca, at first listen, is more like Sleepwalking Sailors than it is Night Terror or Stillicide–more of a gradual pummeling than a carpet-bombing. It’s a reminder that Helms Alee is more versatile than most bands, a reinforcement of the idea that, despite the band’s unabashed heaviness and facility with metallic screams and grit, they are, at their…
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Darryl Zero’s Albums of the Year List – 2016
I never finished this. I gotta get the 2017 list started, though, so here ya go with an unfinished post. So…2016 was actually a really good year for music. I can’t lie; I was pretty content with a lot of stuff. Don’t even have a ton of stuff to say other than that, really. I’m…
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ZERO’S LIST OF 100 GUITARISTS WHOSE ABILITIES HE APPRECIATES MORE THAN THAT OF JIMI HENDRIX, JIMMY PAGE, ERIC CLAPTON, AND ALL THE OTHER GUITARISTS EVERYONE FREAKS OUT OVER
I have ten guitarists I love above all others: 1) Prince 2) Eddie Hazel 3) Chuck Berry 4) Ian Williams (Battles) 5) Tyondai Braxton 6) Vernon Reid 7) Dr. Know (Bad Brains) 8) Carlos Santana 9) Michael Hampton 10) Ben Verellen (Helms Alee) and the rest, numbered only to keep place–I love them all in…
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On Battles, part two.
Seeing Battles for the first time without Tyondai Braxton threw me for all kinds of loops. For one, I’d heard the new Battles single and hated it. HATED it. Even months later, I still can’t stand it–the arrangement is okay, but the vocals are silly, pandering, and completely uninteresting to a point at which I…
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On Battles, part one.
I can’t remember when I first heard of Battles; it would have to have been before mid-2003. I’m going to say it was mid-2002 or so, because I was doing some digging and looking for anything on Ian Williams. I was a huge fan of Storm and Stress at that point, just coming down from…
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The Way Things Are, Part One: Wisconsin.
I left work today to discover that Wisconsin’s Republicans had decided democracy just didn’t suit them today. When I first heard about Scott Walker’s quick and easy plan to fuck over a significant portion of his constituency (directly or otherwise), I was actually pretty low-key about the whole thing. I do think public workers’ unions…
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Libertarianism rant.
Point of clarity: I’ve gone all over in my life, from right-leaning moderate, family-influenced Democrat to ardent center-leaning Green party idealist to aggressive Socialist asshole, and have reached a point where no political philosophy clearly speaks to me anymore. In the interest of full disclosure, at this point all I can tell you is that…
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in which i go off for no particular reason about music.
I’ve probably written about this before, but I’m going to do it again. I can’t put an exact date on when I decided irony (or the perception thereof) was killing music. Yes, my perceptions are clouded by the social climate of the city in which I’ve spent the majority of the past decade, but if…
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Da Bears.
Even I’ve been surprised (and pleasantly so) at the controversy surrounding Jay Cutler and his early departure from what was, arguably, the most important game in Chicago Bears history. I think the best piece on the subject was Michael Wilbon’s ESPN bit from yesterday; in it, he takes the time to detail the Bears’s history…
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Gnosis
One of the things upon which my liberal brethren and I often stand apart is the issue of religion. From my days as a myopically conservative Jesus freak to my militant agnosticism to my flirtations with Islam and Sikhism that continue even as we speak, my spirituality has always remained the most easily-debatable aspect of…