Have you ever thought to yourself, “I wonder if any of my friends is eating a sandwich right now? And if so, is there lettuce? What about cheese?”
Well, I’ve got good news. The answer to those and equally important questions (“Is there mayo?”) can be found on the social networking website known as Twitter, where people of all ages, races, religions and sexual orientations gather to, through the miracle of wireless technology, slowly bore each other to death.
For the uninitiated: Twitter is a service that allows subscribers to create posts of up to 140 characters at a time and send them directly to other Twitter users. These posts – or “tweets,” as they’re called by people for whom dignity isn’t a priority – can be about virtually anything that pops into the author’s head, including, but not limited to, such popular topics as “It’s raining outside,” “I’m in the mood for tacos” and “Kittens are so cute.”
In other words, if an epiphany is what you’re searching for, Twitter might not be the tool for you. Conversely, if you firmly believe that the world needs to know each and every time you have oatmeal for breakfast, you might be the right kind of tool for Twitter.
Here’s a tweet from Todd, who is wearing a new shirt today. Here’s a tweet from Bill, who thinks that moms are hot. And here’s a tweet from Jill, who – OMG! – is eating a sandwich! And to think that you almost missed it! I mean, where would you be without this type of insta-communication in your life? Having sex, probably.
Ultimately, Twitter boils down to millions of people devoting their time to methodically narrating the minute-by-minute activities of lives that might actually be interesting if they weren’t spent almost entirely on Twitter. Oh, paradox! Fortunately for those people, being interesting is hardly a prerequisite for tweeting. Exhibit A: the single most popular Twitter user is Ashton Kutcher, who is dumber than ham loaf.
Some users take it very personally when you make fun of Twitter. “Stop the h8!” they say. “No 1 is 4cing U to look!”
Then they send out a tweet like: “Why do people PARK in a DRIVEway, and DRIVE on a PARKway?!?!!?? LOL! What’s up with that?! ROTFL LMAO OMG BRB L8R” and prove my whole point. Sure, Twitter has some attractive surface qualities, but underneath, it’s nothing but a mind-numbing wasteland of moronic half-thoughts and Hallmark Card platitudes. So basically, Twitter is Sarah Palin.
My young coworkers have tried for two years to convince me of the virtues of Twitter. “You should start your own account,” they say. “We can follow each other.”
“But we sit within 10 feet of each other for eight hours a day,” I answer. “Can’t I just, like, tell you what I’m thinking?” At which point they grab their phones and start sending out tweets about how Old Man Royer just doesn’t get it. Which I totally don’t.
But despite their ridicule, I have stood my ground and refused to start an account, based largely on my longstanding belief that stupid things are dumb. Twitter is just not for me. It’s not for you, either. Know who it’s for? Miley Cyrus, whose last tweet was (and I quote): “I am craving 1. Subway sandwich 2. Whopper from BK 3. A white chocolate mocha frap :( I’m veryy veryy hungee”
I don’t know what depresses me more: The fact that she actually used the word “hungee”; the fact that she thinks anyone would ever care what she wants to eat; the fact that her 1,660,046 followers really do care; or the fact that my coworker is one of those followers.
In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I did sign up for Twitter for a brief period of time, mostly because it’s hard to write about something you know nothing about. That’d be like a goldfish writing an article about space travel, or the Steelers writing a book about not looking stupid in gold tights. So, against every fiber of my being, including the fiber that says thirty-somethings shouldn’t be reading tweets written by Miley Cyrus, I created an account. I have to say, I was sort of excited. I was about to join the Twitter revolution, to discover what had millions of people so freaking cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs that they spent all day with their noses glued to their phones. I logged in, took a deep breath, put my feet up on my desk and waited for the winds of social networking to sweep me away.
Then it came, the moment I had been waiting for. My first tweet. And it said … wait for it … wait for it …
“I like dogs.”
OMG. L8R.
Ten years ago, an impish wee-man known as Moby became the world’s most unlikely pop star thanks to the multi-platinum success of Play, a transfixing crosspollination of old gospel field recordings and modern-day house beats bolstered by the monster hit “South Side.”
While Gwen Stefani is no longer licking the back of his head in music videos, little else seems to have changed in Moby’s life. The self-proclaimed “weird, bald, middle-aged man” is still completely unequipped to deal with fame. He’s still hated by millions of people for no apparent reason. And he’s still churning out artful electro-pop that manages to be simultaneously poignant and escapist. His latest album, Wait For Me, is being hailed as his finest effort since his 1999 breakthrough. Ambient and subdued, it’s described aptly enough by Moby himself as a “hangover record.”
Team Last Call chatted with the baldheaded beatmaster prior to his North American tour to discuss his name, what he wants to think about on his deathbed and a certain phenomenon known as “nerd sweat.”
Team Last Call: Is it true that you got the name Moby because you’re actually an ancestor of Herman Melville?
Moby: That’s what my parents told me. Before I was born, they had decided that if I was a boy, my name was going to be Richard Melville Hall. And then once I was born, they looked at me and realized that was a very grown-up name for such a little baby. So as a joke when I was literally 10 minutes old, my dad started calling me Moby. I don’t think either my mother or my father anticipated that 43 years later I’d still be saddled with my infant joke nickname.
TLC: Wait For Me is getting an amazing response. It got on my radar because I flipped on NPR and heard the music critic call it your best album in a decade.
M: I try very hard not to read any of my own press. At this point, there are still a lot of journalists that just hate me for whatever. I could make the best record in the world and they’re still going to hate it. If I read good press, it makes me uncomfortable. If I read bad press, it makes me want to kill myself.
TLC: Why do people hate you?
M: I was actually talking about this the other day. Do you watch The Simpsons? Do you remember the Simpsons where Lisa had a bully? They realized that what the bully was responding to was the pheromones in Lisa’s nerd-sweat. That’s all I can think of. Maybe I’m missing something. It seems like there are probably more loathsome people on the planet than me.
TLC: Over the past couple of records, you’ve returned to making music for yourself, as opposed to satisfying expectations of a record label. Did you have some sort of epiphany?
M: The epiphanies that I have tend to be things that are fairly self-evident for most people. My epiphanies happen slowly over a long period of time. I rarely have one of those “Saul on the road to Damascus” moments, where the scales fall from my eyes and I can suddenly see things clearly. It usually comes from making the same mistake a few hundred times.
I guess what happened was, I never expected to have a record contract and I never expected to have any success as a musician. So then when Play became very successful, it certainly wasn’t a bad thing, but I was quite unprepared for any of the ramifications of success, the creative ramifications. After Play, suddenly I was getting more phone calls from the record company. I found myself trying to make records that the record company liked and that the press would like and that people would like – trying to please everybody. And especially with the album Hotel, I ended up with a record that I just wasn’t all that happy with. So I guess with Wait For Me, I just wanted to focus more on first and foremost trying to make a record that I loved, and then trying to make a record that another individual would love. Instead of generalizing about tens of millions of people, just trying to think of one other person at home in their living room on a Sunday morning when it’s raining outside.
TLC: Making an album like this is obviously not about trying to make millions of dollars and get free drugs. What is it about?
M: I have an answer, but I hope it doesn’t sound overly earnest, even though it’s true. At some point, I realized, I mean, life is short. Maybe we live to be 70, 80, 90 years old, but in the grand scheme, that’s not such a long time. I guess I just asked myself the question, “On my deathbed, what do I want to remember?” And I don’t want to remember meetings with record companies where they’re talking about collaborations with Top 40 stars. I don’t want to remember spending my time at celebrity parties. For me, one of the only things that I feel gives my life any degree of meaning is working hard trying to make music that I love.
TLC: That sounds honest, not earnest.
M: It’s hard. In interviews, you want to retain a degree of detachment. I think a lot of people, when they do interviews, they sound tough or they sound ironic or they sound like they don’t care. I’m neither tough, ironic nor apathetic.
TLC: You’re at a weird point now where you’re starting to sell more records out of the country than you are in the U.S. Does that matter?
M: It’s a bit strange. We just finished a European tour, and the shows there were a lot of big festivals where we’re playing to about 60,000 people a night. And then I’m looking at the North American tour, where on average we’re playing to around 900 people a night. Which is fine – I actually selfishly really enjoy playing smaller shows. But I think it was on the last record where I sold more records in Belgium and the Netherlands than I did in the United States.
TLC: Was it ever much of a priority for you to be famous in the first place?
M: I truly believed that I would spend my entire life making music in my bedroom that no one would ever listen to. If we had been talking 20 years ago, I would have guessed that my life would involve teaching in college and working in a book store. There’s never been any plan. When I found myself having success or being more in the limelight, it was very accidental. As a result, I wasn’t really prepared to deal with it. Now the way I deal with it is by almost avoidance – avoiding a lot of the institutions of fame that for me I just don’t see as particularly appealing. Most of the people who really pursue the world of fame, they have lives that I wouldn’t even want to have. Not that their lives are even available to me. I’m 43 years old. Being 43 and not able to dance does kind of limit your ability to be famous in 2009.
TLC: You keep talking about being 43. Do you feel cooked? What else is there?
M: All I want to do for the rest of my life is try and make music that I love. I’m not really too concerned about how the music is made or where the music is made or whether it’s successful. Honestly, that’s pretty much it. I mean, it’d be nice at some point to fall in love and get married. It’d be nice to learn how to put up drywall. It’d be nice to speak Spanish better. But pretty much the only serious goal I have in life is trying to keep working on music.
Armed with a quiver full of syrupy metal ballads and clad in zigzaggy, yellow-and-black spandex armor, the soldiers under command in California metal band Stryper single-handedly put Christian rock on the mainstream map in the ’80s.
While their peers on the Sunset Strip notoriously drank, snorted and shot themselves full of every available substance after shows, Stryper handed out free bibles. Needless to say, “odd man out” is an understatement. But despite almost constant ridicule, Stryper took their gospel to the Top 40 airwaves and set up shop at MTV with megahits like “Honestly.”
After a 12-year hiatus, Stryper reunited in 2003 and released a pair of albums, including 2009’s Murder By Pride. This month, the band welcomes original bassist Tim Gaines back into the fold and embarks on a 25th anniversary tour that includes a stop at the Chameleon on September 23. Team Last Call tracked down singer Michael Sweet to get the lowdown.
Team Last Call: What was the catalyst for this tour for you personally?
Michael Sweet: My wife passed on March 5, and right after she passed, a light went on in my mind and in my heart to heal. It’s not that Stryper needs immense or intense healing. It’s just that there’s still some things going on with the band, things from the past that I don’t think have completely been let go of. And I just thought, how cool would it be for all of us to get together, go out and do a tour together and not just tell people that we forgive and forget, but show them? Live it.
TLC: I read that you’ve got new yellow and black suits for this tour. Are you going to be rocking the spandex?
MS: Definitely not.
TLC: What’s the significance of the colors to you?
MS: Back in the day, there really was no significance. It was just a bright color, bold color. Then as we progressed and became Stryper, that’s when we found the scripture to go along with the stripes, Isaiah 53:5, “By his stripes we are healed.” That’s when we came up with the acronym and that’s when we defined the colors to be more like a warning that God’s message through this band is going to be presented.
TLC: It’s funny that even now, 25 years later, people still aren’t over the fact that you guys are a Christian band.
MS: We are that band that falls into the category of getting it from all sides. We really do. I’m not complaining. We’re used to it. We’ve been dealing with it for years.
We’ve always been a band that’s gotten it from the secular mainstream side for being a wimpy Christian band who, because we’re a Christian band, we must not be good. We can’t play, we can’t sing, we can’t write, we can’t perform. We must suck because we’re Christian. And the flipside of that coin is, from the church, we can’t be a Christian band because we’re metal, because we’re hard rock, because we look like we look, because we sound like we sound. It’s impossible, because of those things, to be Christians, so we’re hypocrites, we’re wolves in sheep’s clothing, we’re fake. So we’ve gotten it from both sides for years.
TLC: What’s the meaning behind the new album title, Murder By Pride?
MS: We all have pride. I feel like I have a lot. We’ve got to stand and put our pride aside and to just follow what it is that God wants for our lives and not let our pride cripple us.
TLC: You know, I’ve got to say, after being slapped around like the band has over the years, it seems remarkably ballsy to talk openly about stuff like that.
MS: We are four guys who blow it on a day-to-day basis. We sin, like everyone else. We’re weak guys, and we need God. We’re not ashamed to admit that. We all need God, man. It’s something that we’ll talk about and hopefully be humble enough to admit for the rest of our lives.
TLC: If you got to design it, what would you put on Stryper’s headstone?
MS: I would want people to read and know that no matter what, we always took a sincere, bold stand for Christ. I hope that that came through. Did we do some things kind of cheesy and corny? Yeah. But we tried.
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine
There are pros and cons to having a computer as a bandmate. He rarely comes up with song ideas, and almost never pitches in for pizza. On the other hand, he doesn’t drink the band beer, and if he ever gives you any attitude, you can unplug him.
No one has learned these lessons as well as Jason Reynolds and Rob Lindgren of Revolution, I Love You, an indie rock-dance-pop band from Middletown, Delaware, whose third member always seems to view the world in ones and zeros.
“It sucks, because the laptop doesn’t go to the diner with you after the show. It’s not much fun,” says Reynolds.
“On the other hand, breakfast is a lot cheaper,” Lindgren offers.
The laptop is in some ways Revolution, I Love You’s defining element, providing the fat-bottomed beats and buzzing bass that turns Reynolds and Lindgren’s eerie Brit-pop into something fiercely fun. Stripped of the ornamentation, the songs might come across as gloomy, if not downright creepy, with Lindgren moaning and crooning in half-time over droning keys and dark guitar lines soggy with reverb. But those chirpy, choppy beats wring out the melodrama and replace it with a winking dare to dance. In the words of Black Eyed Peas, Revolution, I Love You are not afraid to get retarded when necessary.
The band captured this dichotomy on its debut EP, noise. pop. deathray., released last year to rave reviews that drew comparisons to modern-day buzz bands like Menomena, Ratatat and other groups that, frankly, RILY had never heard of prior to recording the album. “I listen to a lot of Bright Eyes and Rob listens to a lot of The Smiths,” Reynolds shrugs, adding Squarepusher and Aphex Twin as electronica influences.
“When we first started writing the album, we wanted to make something expansive and strange, but we kept coming up with these quirky little pop songs,” Lindgren says. “So the goal became to make these pop songs work with our propensity for abrasive noise and weird arrangements.”
Lindgren and Reynolds have been playing in bands together since high school, but it wasn’t until they were in college that one of their projects finally started to take off. So they both quit school to pursue it on a full-time basis – just in time to watch all of their bandmates quit. It was around that time that Reynolds wrote a song called “Can I Get the Door for You?” that would lay the foundation for Revolution, I Love You’s ass-shaking future.
Reynolds recalls, “At some point, I said the now infamous words: ‘Why don’t you try putting a beat under that?’”
“I entirely misunderstood him,” Lindgren says. “Apparently, he wasn’t thinking of ’90s house when he said ‘beat,’ but that’s what he got.”
The success of that song was the impetus for RILY’s sound to-date; the dance odyssey had begun.
So they can talk the talk on the dancefloor, but can they walk the walk?
“I do the Lawnmower,” Reynolds deadpans.
“And I’m working on the Carlton,” Lindgren says. “But seriously, I wouldn’t brag, but I don’t think either of us would get kicked out of the club, either.”
