A Vanity Projection of all Seven Colours

What are the best things? Like, what is the stuff you really like best?

The good stuff, right? The things that are are generally of superior quality, the things that are made up of such unarguable value that their very existence seems to increase the very worth of your being even just an iota. The things that are either useful or beautiful.

Some people say they like bad stuff. They’ll swear that they definitely see quality or usefulness in the music of Phil Collins, eating non-magic mushrooms, the films of Adam Sandler, fascism, and organic food*. These people may often claim ‘irony’, but that’s only because they don’t understand what ‘irony’ means. But these people don’t actually like bad things because they’re bad, they secretly like them because they’re too stupid to realise that they’re bad, and actually think they’re good. These people are absolute idiots, potentially dangerous, and should be disregarded in any serious debate.

There’s stuff that tries to  be bad- your Sharknados, your Donald Trumps**, your Blink 182s. This is the bottom of the barrel, merely a celebration of renouncing ambition and lowering expectation. These things, and the people who like them, are just celebrating nihilism rather than anarchy. These people are absolute idiots, potentially dangerous, and should be disregarded in any serious debate.

The next best stuff after the actual good stuff many people believe to be the ‘quite good’ stuff, the ‘OK’ stuff, the ‘perfectly serviceable’ stuff. Not so. These things are either the product of many people’s maximum effort and mental fortitude honestly believing they were making something that was both beautiful and useful, and instead ended up with something that was resoundingly unspectacular. Or, these things are made by people with actual talent for the good stuff, but lack motivation or passion in this particular thing so simply settled for producing something they considered adequate. Rather than being the next best things, this actually leads to by far the most depressing things. These people are very sad, potentially dangerous, and should be disregarded in any serious debate.

The actual next best stuff to the actual good stuff, is the glorious failures, the ambitious messes, the earnest, well-meaning and ridiculous experiments with potential.

‘I Can Spin a Rainbow’ (puns should always be celebrated in album titles +5) is a wonderful and extremely lovable example of this.

It’s… not a great album. The opening track, Pulp Fiction  threatens the status quo: it’s one of the absolute best songs of 2017 and suggests that this pompous vanity project might actually deserve its seat amongst the legitimately good things. Unfortunately, thaaaaaaaaaaat’s more or less it, and the rest of the album neglects to take the glorious sound introduced in the opening track to any further places. It meanders, it gets stuck on aimless grooves, the lyrics are frequently laughably grandiose nonsense (which, just to confirm, I’n a big fan of +5) nothing ever really happens musically, and It’s always hard to imagine the actual thought process behind most of the songs. But… so much of this album, so many of the songs, so frequently throw out turns or oddities that still makes so much of it a fascinating and worthwhile experience.

It’s also really, really pretentious. And pretension always has to be celebrated, in either of its understood forms.

Firstly, the correct meaning- of attempting to convince people that you have higher status or intelligence than you by affecting greater facets than you actually possess- is something to strive for! It’s the act of attempting to raise your stature by affectation, rejecting whatever status society has cruelly punished you with and aiming for the stars! We should teach pretension in school! We do teach pretension in school! We encourage students to act more intelligent than they actually are in order to fool exam coordinators! THIS WORLD IS BUILT ON PRETENSION!!

The second, more universally accepted, meaning of ‘pretentious’ means ‘doing something that I don’t understand so much therefore hate’. Never pander to these people.

OK, I best address that giant elephant in the room, as I don’t want to spend the next few days answering a thousand emails all asking the same question: ‘Are you and Amanda related??’!!

First of all, think about it for just a second: if me and Mandy were related, do you think we’d be allowed to be married between the years of 2004-7?? They have laws against that type of thing you know!!!!! 😉

Secondly, ‘Alex Palmer’ is only my kayfabe name, my real name is Girtrinød Skarslader, but when I joined the Blog Writers Guild (BWG) it turned out that there was already a Girtrinød Skarslader! He writes tips on catfishing (which he never elaborates is fishing for catfish or actual cats) in the Netherlands, and before you try and seek out his blog I should confirm that in no way endorse his views on eugenics, nor his belief in the legitimacy of catfish coursthip (CC). And so, Alex Palmer was born!

Funnily enough, soon after I’d registered with the BWG, a man attempted to join who was actually called Alex Palmer! He slightly changed his title, and went on to far greater success than me all while peddling the exact same stuff I’d been doing for years. I’m not bitter, I’m just feeling resentment as a result of perceived unjust treatment.

That man’s name? Alex Jones. True story

Jesus, Girtrinød, try and keep your word count down…

Score

Album Length: 50 minutes (-4)

Very Good Songs: 4 (+8)

Brilliant Songs: 2 (+10)

AMAZING Songs: 1 (+10)

% of Album Worthwhile: 77.7777778

Cover:

Yep. See all that? See all that stuff going on? That’s what the album sounds like

+4

Previous Entries: None (+25)

Total:

180.7777778

https://amandapalmer.bandcamp.com/

https://edwardka-spel.bandcamp.com/

*Ooooooooh, organic food! I’ll get to you one day, maybe one day quite soon, I’ll get to you!!

**Ditto