Music Isn't Scary

When I was a kid I loved Alice Cooper. He also scared the hell out of me. I was pretty young to be listening to Alice, but there I was, five years old and loving it to death. During the daytime hours I was in awe of "Welcome to My Nightmare", Vincent Price was magnificent, but come dusk, that shit got scary.

Fast-forward to adulthood, yes adulthood.

I have come to the conclusion that music isn’t scary, bands aren’t scary, the mere fact that they are musicians excludes any such notion. We are talking about musical notes and the usually pretty fucking boring people who play them, not “oh my gawd their music is terrifying, have you heard about them, they display carcasses on the stage”. They didn’t kill those animals, someone else did. THEY, are musicians. No one can murder you when they are playing music, it's impossible. Just because musicians aren’t to be trusted doesn’t mean they are scary. From Narcocorridos to Gangsta Rap, to Bach’s Tocatta and Fugue in D minor, music isn’t scary.

Justin Bieber Thoughts.

I was a little too young to go ape shit over Bobby Sherman, but on the other hand I always felt too mature for the Defranco Family. The same sort of dichotomy was needed for the given choice between two rated G movies that my daughter wanted see, Gnomio and Juliet and Never Say Never, The Justin Bieber movie. I never get to see movies, I would probably go see Black Swan if it was up to me, but these were my options. Justin Beiber, as a person is intriguing, and Gnomio and Juliet has a gross version of Crocodile Rock by Nelly Furtado and the appalling Sir Elton, the choice was pretty easy for me. Sadly enough both movies are in 3D. Bummer.
I heavily steered Lucy’s hand by stating that I was going to see Never Say Never, and reminded her that I was her ride. She understood that and fell happily in line. After watching this movie I’m not going to say that I have Beiber fever, but I will say that Justin Bieber is easily better than Lenny Kravitz, and quite possibly better than Vampire Weekend. The movie is a straight up pop-oganda film, you almost get the feeling they are grooming Justin to be a Mayor or something, except for the fact that they didn’t get into his thinking and point of view, I figure he has some, but they just give you a couple facts about his upbringing and leave it at that. The kid does look pretty good in purple, but most importantly he is a drummer. His upbringing is that of a drummer, big points for that. I’ll give him quite a bit of leeway, like I do other drummer/singers like Phil Collins and Karen Carpenter. I give Phil some space, but he has committed treasonous acts upon my sensibilities with songs like It’s No Fun Being an Illegal Alien, and being in a band with a guy that was in Mike and The Mechanics, there are limits to my leeway, but still a little space. I am a song lover and there really is only one song of Justin’s that I like, “You Smile I Smile”. It has a super pretty sentiment, and dang pretty hook, that I’m sure is ripped off from somewhere else, I just can’t place it. That feeling of not being able to place a ripoffed melody is a pretty big compliment. So to recap, I liked the movie, the slo-mo hair flip ruled, and the crazy screaming and crying kids made me mist up. I didn’t like the stylist/best buddy guy at all, but I did really like the vocal coach. Usher ends up kind of looking like a hanger on who has invested some money into Bieber’s career. I didn’t learn much about Justin, but I now have one question for people who hate Justin Bieber: Why?