Monthly Archive for October, 2008

Marillion

Published
by
Stefan Claypool
on October 28, 2008
in Media
. Closed

There may be no band working today as fundamentally unique as Marillion. Every lyric is poetry, every song is wonderful, every album is a masterpiece, and each album is so stunningly different than any other band that I’ve ever heard that I can’t bring myself to classify them. They’re one of those precious few acts that completely defy genre, not because they’re trying to, but because what they’re doing is so characteristically them that to lump it into a category like prog-rock would completely neglect the intricacies of their music.

I just finished the band’s latest album, Happiness is the Road, and while I’ll need a couple more listens before I really figure out how I feel about it, right now I think it’s one of their strongest efforts. It’s a brilliant piece of work, and felt to me like sort of a bizarre fusion of two previous efforts, Marbles and Brave. I’m just blown away and can’t wait to listen to it again.

With one exception, every member of the band is talented but not mind-blowingly good at what he does. Steve Rothery is a wonderful guitarist, Pete Trewavis is a wonderful bassist, Ian Mosley is a fine drummer and Mark Kelly is a great keyboardist. But what makes them special is the way that they fill each others gaps. No one is trying to show off, but everyone is doing exactly what he needs to do in order to create a listening experience that leaves the listener stunned.

The exception, of course, is Steve Hogarth, who is perhaps the most wonderful vocalist working today. His voice isn’t the best I’ve ever heard, but I can’t think of anyone who sings each line with as much raw passion. I’m generally pretty dismissive of band members who just sing, but Hogarth gets everything out of his voice that he possibly can.  He never overpowers the music, but often gives it that little boost that it needs to become more than just run-of-the-mill awesome.

What I think puts the band over the top for me is its power to elicit an emotional response from each listening – the sort of response that the vast majority of artists hope to get just once in their career. Remember how you felt the first time you heard Pet Sounds? How it grabbed you by the heart and soul and left you with a different appreciation of music? Remember the first time you heard Abbey Road or Remain in Light or Animals? How each of those albums wrenched this raw emotion from you? Well, Marillion does that with every album on every listen, or at least it does with me. They make the music I want to listen to when I’m happy and that I need to listen to when I’m down. I can’t explain why or how they do it, but somehow, someway, they have tapped into the very definition of what music should be and I can’t stop listening to them.

If you’re searching for new music, I can’t give any band a stronger recommendation.

Obama Says That the Supreme Court Should Address Redistribtion of Wealth

Published
by
Stefan Claypool
on October 15, 2008
in Politics
. Closed

This is Marxism.

A Tolerant Campus? Hardly.

Published
by
Stefan Claypool
on October 1, 2008
in Politics
. Closed

Even after three years in the wild green yonder that is Vermont, I am constantly amazed just how blatantly disrespectful intelligent people can be if given the opportunity. On what is supposed to be a tolerant campus where people of all beliefs can coexist in harmony, conservatives remain a persecuted minority. Tremendous social pressures force conservatives to conceal our views for fear of alienating an already-hostile community, reducing the so-called open diversity Middlebury prides itself on to the spread between Barack Obama liberals and Hillary Clinton liberals.

The pressure on conservatives to remain silent is ever-present and all-encompassing. Just as students begin casual conversations with, “You’ve got to admit Sarah Palin is an idiot,” so too do distinguished professors lecture students on the terrifying dangers of Christianity in America. Discussions and debates are nonexistent; most conservatives are too uncomfortable to talk about politics, and those who try to are inevitably shouted down by an irrationally hostile crowd of four or more – an amateur thought-police determined to crush dissent, lest someone challenge their notion that pacifism, higher taxes, and moral relativism are the ideal tools for building a better world.

These are the people whose targets are never policies and always people. They don’t dislike Sarah Palin because of her conservatism. They dislike her because they’ve decided that she is “an idiot.” They welcome radical Muslims with open arms and insist that they are misunderstood, but are terrified of American Christians because “they’re so strange.” They refuse to argue points on merit, instead demanding an acknowledgment of their righteousness before they’ll even have a discussion. And if you don’t acknowledge it, they shout until you just don’t care anymore.

As a result, intelligent voices go unheard. Middlebury is deprived of an intellectual perspective that could give legitimacy to the campus’s pledge of tolerance. And we’re left with a school where everyone who speaks out on any issue looks different but says the same thing. Is this diversity? Of course not. It’s a disgrace.