House Keeping!

Would you like a hot towel?

Hmm bad joke, I know.

So anyway, if you check this blog regularly you’ll notice that there have been subtle changes made to help make accessing the content easier for readers. This has been a bit of a new field for me as I’m far from the most technically sophisticated person on the planet, but it’s coming along in baby-steps and I’m excited for what it means for this blog.

For example, one of the new changes has been the addition of an email subscription system. Under the Your Favorite Craze section, you’ll notice the field where you can submit your email address, which will then sign you up for email updates via my blog feed whenever I post new content. You’ll still be able to access and subscribe to the regular blog feed by clicking on the large orange feed icons on the left and the bottom of the posts, but if you enjoy updates in your inboxes, this is the way to go.

Also, I made it public knowledge as to how many readers are currently subscribed to my blog feed by posting the reader counter under the Your Favorite Craze section as well. It’s more for me to monitor how these experiments are going, but if you care about the superficially of how many are following me, then it’s great for you as well.

My hope is that it allows you guys that frequent my blog to be kept up to date with the newest content that gets put up here. And perhaps, it’ll allow more people to find out about it. Who knows, maybe it’ll give you something to talk about over coffee, about how pretentious and dumb that guy at This Song Starts A Craze… is.

So subscribe! Get emails! And stay informed!

Beck Is Mixing Up Tons Of Bizness

Conversations with my friends frequently come up about how music is pointing out important things in our lives. This goes beyond the mournful croon of Morrissey and his misanthropic view of the world, or even Bono’s call to arms to achieve something greater. Rather, a lot of the times conversation hovers around what artists have to say about society at large rather than an introspective analysis of the self that’s set to loud guitars.

Enter my friend Chris.

Last semester, Chris decided to write an extremely thought provoking final paper for his Women & Gender Studies class. Aside from some of the material he’d been exposed to in the class, Chris decided to use a piece of music that he felt really illustrated something poignant about the roles in masculinity and sexual identity.

Using Beck’s album, Midnite Vultures, in conjugation with Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, Chris crafted an articulate response on the nature of masculinity. The result is one of the most enjoyable academic papers I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. I decided to post this paper on my blog because I fell in love with Chris’ analysis of possibly my favorite Beck album, and how he displays Beck’s satire as more than just a good listen.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Beck Hansen, in the song “Get Real Paid,” makes a very quick but meaningful reference to gender identity, only two lines that are unmistakably loaded: “We like the boys with the bulletproof vests,” he sings in a monotone drone, “We like the girls with the cellophane chests.” Here, boys and girls have been marked with the appropriately gendered chest gear. Girls have their “cellophane,” an obvious reference to breast implants and the ornamental nature of American femininity. Boys, on the other hand, are given “bullet-proof vests,” which easily connotes the notion of gun-violence. It is masculine to be violent...”

If this excerpt has peaked your interest, I highly recommend you download the paper for yourself at this location: http://www.sendspace.com/file/i9j915

Who knows...you might learn something!