i remember when i skipped grimes at the babylon in ottawa, although i almost went to see the opening act (born gold), and would have if i wasn't broke, although i was considering leaving early...

"it just sounds like madonna. this isn't going anywhere. it's just all hype."

and, i don't step away from that analysis. grimes is overrated.

but, it is a show i regret missing,

ok.

so, i think my initial perception that this is just shallow capitalism was actually spot on. you can say i didn't get the joke, i guess, but it's less that i didn't get it and more that i just saw right through it - it's more like when a comedian walks into a club and says something she thinks is absolutely hilarious, and then just gets dead air instead. it's more stupid than it is funny, really.

so, if i thought there was nothing to this besides an attempt to maximize profit, i guess i was right. and, this video here would appear to be the decryption matrix.

i dunno. i still might want to get out of the house. put some makeup on. have a few beers. let's see what else i can line up for the month....

it looks like a slow month, though.

and, if i scratch out most of the rest of the month off early, i may find myself wanting to get out of the house on saturday night.

i think i have grounds to expect a show at least.

i might give it a chance to redeem itself as performance art. maybe....

like i say: i want to pull something out of this, i just really don't like the metallic imagery. i wish it was less system of a down and more bjork...

i had to sleep.

those thoughts were rambly and unorganized. so, let me summarize.

poppy is not a metal singer, but she has appropriated the aesthetic of metal in a very shallow and surface manner. i initially reacted by comparing her to marilyn manson, but manson himself was essentially just 80s hair metal, and this is an idea that is maybe better rooted in something like van halen. her music is essentially a series of strung together cliches, which the kids today call "memes", but which music critics still can't like, even if it's currently hip and trendy to be unoriginal.

i have a longstanding aversion to the aesthetic she is shallowly appropriating, stemming from my upbringing in 90s anti-rock iconoclasm. my initial reaction was exceedingly negative, as would be expected from anybody coming from that background.

her music has a certain level of elaborateness to it, though, and i can't help but be drawn to the complexity underlying it, and sort of want to find some underlying value to it. i can often sort through a bad surface image to try to get through to something more worthwhile underneath. however, i find the surface heavy metal aesthetic to be singularly too unappealing to be able to do this in any substantive way, and i'm not convinced that there's actually much there, anyways.

i've mentioned that i'm at least pleasantly surprised by the more serious nature of the younger generation of pop musicians, and this might fall into that category, eventually.

but, my opinion is that this walk down the road of heavy metal imagery is a decidedly wrong turn, and if that poppy is going to write substantive pop music in the future then she'll have to drop the 80s metal cliches, which are just simply artistically irredeemable.

so, i've got the list built up, but i'm actually mostly going to be listening to classical music for the next however long.

i told you this was coming.

i like ravel, but i couldn't imagine going to one of his operas. the "debussy and ravel" night the week after is more likely. and, then they're doing beethoven's sixth the week after that.

as for rock shows, it is very likely that i'll hit man or astroman at the end of the month - that's actually a kind of a bucket list show, for me. that's the only thing i'm taking seriously, right now.

there are a few shows in march, but it looks like april is particularly stacked. i may find myself wanting to save up, instead.

so, i'll be spending the day listening and testing.

on second thought, i found a few things near the end of the month that are pretty high probability.....

i'll get a list up in a bit.

this is our last solar cycle to figure this out in.

and, if business continues as normal, we probably won't make it through it without seeing irreversible climate change kick in.

i remember back around 2013 or so i was saying things like "this might be the last serious winter that we get here".

then we got some brutal winters. and, i had to adjust my thinking around the topic.

the way climate change has been affecting us here has been to incrementally shift the oscillations upwards. there are 11 and 22 year solar cycles (roughly), and climate change doesn't reverse or negate those, but it can exaggerate or blunt them. the last couple of years have felt very cold, it is true, and we have seen some record breaking temperatures as well, but, on average, they've trended upwards.

but, we were at the low point of the cycle, and we're coming out of it now...

the northern hemisphere has an exaggerated importance regarding climate feedbacks. the next 11-22 years are really critical. politicians keep looking for deadlines, because they think we need some kind of business normality, that we need to get the fucking memo, but of course it's not going to actually work like that - we can't calculate the exact moment where we're officially fucked. we won't know it until it happens....

but, what we can say with some certainty is that we're entering the end game. we don't know how strong this solar cycle is going to be. if it's really, really weak then maybe we eek out another cycle before we're officially fucked; more likely is that the coming tipping points are now imminent, and we're in a race against time, as the sun starts to accelerate the process rather than slow it down.

if these tipping points click in over the next 11-22 years, then winter's years in southern canada may be numbered, and we may have seen our last serious winter, here. 

i'm going to be analyzing shows in detroit for the next month, but i don't expect to attend many, if any at all.