Tuesday, February 2, 2016

MovieDude Does Music: Bomba Estéreo, 'Amanecer'




I can't help but feel that this challenge is more a journey than anything else. While I have every intention of giving due diligence to the matter, I also believe it is also my job to embrace the possibilities and open myself to new concepts. Just like any good adventure, closing yourself off from where the road might lead you defeats a great deal of the purpose of the venture altogether. The trick in all of this is to both enjoy yet keep an objective eye. As I mentioned before, I'm not a music person. My understanding of music is on par with a third grader's comprehension of algebra.

Then I listened to Bomba Estéreo's "Amanecer".

Monday, February 1, 2016

The MovieDude Does Music: Intro

I enjoy music but I don't love it. I'm a movie dude. I can tell you the cast list of a billion films, tell the title of a flick within 3 random seconds of a scene. I have a listless amount of ideas and thoughts on an endless sea of cinema. Music is a passing thing. I listen to a song I like, I might sing along if I happen to know the lyrics.

I'm best friends with a music guy. He's also a movie guy but for the sake of distinction, let's just say that he's ONLY a  music guy. He loves the pop music, the not so pop and even the obscure. For years he has hounded me of my limited knowledge of music (which I take umbrage in because I know and enjoy a wide variety of music... in certain quantities).  His guide to music is the Top 50 list of best albums of the year from Rolling Stone Magazine. He doesn't always agree, but he swears by it that this list is THE way to know the music of a year.

As a pure exercise, I thought I would step out of my comfort zone and accept a challenge that he laid upon me this year: listen to all 50 albums and give my non-expert yet highly analytical opinion of each album. So I'm going to do so starting immediately. I intend to go through each album and post my reaction. I will be looking at both the songs and the album as a whole but I will rate only the album. As someone who does not believe in reviewing art for anything arbitrary as a score, I'm going to rate each album by a word that best fits my opinion. I'll try to be as objective as I can though as with any art, the first question I always as is "do I like this". 

Let me make this perfectly clear: I have never heard these albums before. I'm coming at all of them from a perspective of a babe in the words. I have a wide variety of musical tastes but I'm still at heart a complete noob. It will be interesting to see how I see music coming out of this. I might post once or twice a week as my time allows.

For those trying to follow, here's the link to the list. This is the list for 2015 and I will be starting at number 50. I'll try to keep up with thoughts and opinions on the comments section and on twitter. I'm not going to compare my opinion with Rolling Stone or by any other writer. This will be entirely my own opinion and nothing but. I'm also going to start writing about movies again as part of my Contemplating series.

It appears that my first assignment is on Bomba Estéreo's Amanecer.

Wish me luck.