This should have come out last week if not for Blogger's two-day hiatus.
Took a long road trip this weekend. Started to grade music on a new scale. The road trip scale.
I was surprised by how many of my favorite albums are not the most enjoyable to listen to while I'm driving a car. Actually, I found myself skipping rapidly through them to get the songs I wanted to hear while avoiding the songs that were quickly putting me to sleep. And this isn't a knock at mellow albums, I still found the melodic pace of the xx and Bon Iver to be quite entertaining. The Cure's
Wish was outstanding. But while listening to a lot of my favorite albums, I found very little about them that I actually liked. I struggled through DM's
Some Great Reward, DCFC's
Narrow Stairs, and The Killers
Hot Fuss. Oddly, I made it through Brandon Flowers solo album without skipping once.
Maybe some albums are just made with a different pace in mind. Or maybe my frame of mind was in a different place. Machester Orchestra's new album kept pace with me on my two-day fourteen hour trip...so they must be doing something right.
Here are the 11 Best Songs By Manchester Orchestra:
1.
Wolves at Night (I'm Like A Virgin Losing A Child)
2.
Shake It Out (Mean Everything To Nothing)
3.
In My Teeth (Mean Everything To Nothing)
4.
Alice and Interiors (I'm Like A Virgin Losing A Child)
5.
The Only One (Mean Everything To Nothing)
6.
Where Have You Been? (I'm Like A Virgin Losing A Child)
7.
Everything To Nothing (Mean Everything To Nothing)
8.
Anne Louise (Fourteen Years of Excellence)
9.
This Neighborhood Is Bleeding (I'm Like A Virgin Losing A Child)
10.
Sleeper 1972 (I'm Like A Virgin Losing A Child)
11.
I Was A Lid (Let My Pride Be What's Left Behind)
Buy Manchester Orchestra's new album,
Simple Math, now!!
This week the swelling pied piper of social media took on two foes. In both cases, social media triumphed and the accused offenders were shamed into submission. The first was Boomer Esiason. Bengal Boomer made a comment that baseball player's Daniel Murphy's pregnant wife should have had a scheduled c-section prior to MLB's opening day. The second was Brendan Eich. Eich was a brief two-week CEO of Mozilla because social media shamed him out of the job. Around ten years ago, Eich contributed money to a California proposition that would ban same-sex marriage. For this "crime" he received a tsunami of digital slander until the point came that he had no choice but to step down to escape. Though social media won in both instances...only in the first situation did social media succeed. With Eich, social media failed.
With Boomer Esiason, Boomer tried to cast his outrageous, outdated, misogynistic views upon another person. He tried to shame Daniel Murphy for being a pussy-whipped husband in an attempt to look more manly himself. It back-fired. In this case, social media played the perfect partner of checks and balances. The interwebs slaughtered Boomer from all directions. He got sacked faster than he did running a play action for the Bengals. With Boomer, social media was the hero.
With Eich, social media ventured into a various dangerous territory. I will start by saying I think gay marriage should be legal and if you don't believe in gay marriage, don't marry a gay person. Though Eich may be on the wrong side of history, does that mean he shouldn't have a right to function in society like everyone else? Eich is not the only one who contributed to Prop 8. I'm sure some of your neighbors, your friends and even your family members contributed. Should Eich be publicly shamed for supported a cause he believes in? Should everyone you know be publicly shamed? What social media did wrong here is that it imposed its will upon an individual person. Social media committed the wrong that Boomer Esiason was guilty of.
The problem with social media having this much power is the ease in which it can be manipulated. From the incorrect suspects being identified in the case of the Boston bomber to the #cancelcolbert weekend trend, when social media snowballs in one direction, it is impossible to slow it down. We need to be more diligent as a people to be more responsible with this power. If we lose control of it because of our flippant negligence, then we're in danger of being lost. What happens next time when a different viewpoint is the majority or has the momentum...and the spot light gets turned on you?
The great thing about this country is that we get to believe in whatever we want. And we get to express it, we get to voice it when we vote. We shouldn't be tied up to a tree and be forced to endure insults because our opinion was in the minority. The point of voting is to maintain order. If we lose sight of this, we become the bullies, that we stand up against.
Here are the 11 Best Songs By Manchester Orchestra:
