Recomendations That You Didn't Know You Wanted

The world would be a much better place if we all took some time to consider Neil Postman's TECHNOPOLY: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. Postman digs back in history chronicaling the rise of technology and its impact on our culture, resulting in our serving it instead of it serving us. I've not had a non-fiction book impact me more in recent years. Here'sHere's a link.


Two other albums I've been enjoying a great deal lately:
TV on the Radio's RETURN TO COOKIE MOUNTAIN, a sonically rich masterpiece, with voices that make one believe in angels, as beautiful and as scary as they are
Moneybrother's TO DIE ALONE, yet another Swedish band who sings in English, recalling torchsongs of yesteryear but with Disco and '50's rock and a little Sinatra thrown in

Damn they're both good.


Finally, I've recently received a copy of the new album by shock metal band, Slayer CHRIST ILLUSION. As a teenager I raged along to SOUTH OF HEAVEN, attracted by all the sexy evil in their imagery and lyrics and the energy of punk music. Many have flocked there since and no doubt many more will. The music doesn't offer me exactly what I need now. Yet what lies beneath their calls to satan and a rhythm section that could take down buildings as big as the World Trade Center, remains compelling. I may have been a unique teenager, but I'm not so sure I was alone in finding the tales that singer Tom Araya spit out to be merely about satan and blood shed and hell. Rather they were really about politics and bloodshed and hell, hell on earth that is. A recent NYT review of the newest album explores this further here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/14/arts/music/14choi.html. For this I thank Slayer for making real and true the wars of our (then) century: WWI, WWII, and Vietnam. As a teenager, we only learned the dry lessons, not the magnificent meaning. Slayer are not historians; their lyrics are, however, historical. They paint pictures, no matter how gruesome, that give meaning to our lives on earth and the lives lost in war, a meaning whose imagery we all want to sweep under the not-so-proverbial carpet. For this they deserve credit for making history relevant to today's youth who sleep through it in class. Three cheers for Slayer!