That dog is a star

Blackberry jam is my go-to

Why are you cutting a 2x4 with a hacksaw?

Something something hammer…

Something something nail.

I’m telling you, Molotov cocktails work. Any time I had a problem and threw a Molotov cocktail, boom! Right away, I had a different problem.

Ready or not, like it or not, here they come again…

If you’re a fan of Townes Van Zandt in any capacity, Steve Earle released an excellent tribute album titled Townes in 2009. Steve dropped out of high school to seek out Townes, eventually meeting him and kindling both a mentor/protégé relationship and a friendship. Van Zandt’s influence is easy to find in Earle’s style, though the latter definitely went his own way. There’s an authenticity to Earle’s interpretation of TVZ, despite providing a markedly different listening experience.

SSX Tricky

Honorable mentions:
SSX 3
Trapt (Kagero II: Dark Illusion)

Both of you are in this thread! What are the odds?

Nina Simone recorded it a year before The Animals. At the time, it was regarded as a metaphorical statement about the Civil Rights Movement.

There’s a lot of nuance and hair-splitting involved; it’s unlikely Yasuke would have been granted the title of samurai, but he was referred to as kosho. He was given a short sword, but not a long sword to pair with it. Samurai were required by law to wear the paired swords, known as daisho, and anyone else was forbidden.

Almost all samurai were indeed retainers, with the exception of ronin. But bushi who were not samurai could still be retainers. It’s all kind of a huge classist mess. Thanks feudalism!

If you throw out the hierarchical nonsense, Yasuke fit the role of what most people today would think of as a samurai. It’s kind of weird for anyone to argue against that in the fast and loose setting of an Assassin’s Creed game. Ubisoft aren’t known for churning out painstakingly accurate historical reference works. It’s a game with a character roughly based on a distinct historical figure.

The point being made is that Jamaican Patois is a language, not an accent. It’s an English Creole.

Technically, they’re only “Samurai” if they’re produced in Nippon within the duration of the Kamakura Period through the Meiji Restoration. Otherwise they’re just sparkling warrior-nobles.

“Its 68°, and there’s a 30% chance that it’s already raining.”

It’s likely that the use of “Western Liberals” here is meant to include both major US political parties.

The Aquabats

That’s a big reaction for a tongue-in-cheek comment on an unpopular opinion post! Joe, is that you? I’m sorry they used Steve in Crossroads instead of you, but you gotta let it go! Sometimes the student becomes the teacher!

Joking aside, the whole “soul” thing can be seen as somewhat of a compliment in a sense. Blackmore, Yngwie, Satch, Petrucci, Vai, Johnson, and other neoclassical players strove for technical perfection. The bits and bobs of music that are generally lumped into the idea of “soul” are the mistakes, the imperfections, the unintended, the miniscule fuckups. As an off the top example, think of Merry Clayton’s voice cracking as she belted out a vocal masterwork in her pajamas and curlers after being dragged out of bed at midnight to back up Mick Jagger. It’s imperfect, it’s unrepeatable, and it’s amazing.

Contrast that with what the technical shredders were intending to do: they wanted to hit every note with exacting precision every time they played. It’s no less impressive than those one-off moments like Gimme Shelter, but it’s markedly different. Listeners who don’t identify with the sound sometimes perceive a sort of sterility in the style, whether deserved or not. The degree of technicality alone can almost come across as machine-like. That doesn’t mean that it has no merit, or that anyone who feels it deeply is in some way “defective”. These guys wouldn’t have had 40+ year careers if nobody was feeling what they were doing.

Enjoy what you enjoy, groove to what grooves you, and above all else, be secure enough in your own taste that a bit of banter about a genre doesn’t seem like a personal attack. Remember: Barry Manilow has sold over 85 million albums, so there really is a market for everything!

Through the magic of buying two of them.

No? Well…

For me, that description fits Yngwie more than Satriani. Satch had at least 1%, maybe even a whopping 2% soul. Vai is probably sneaking up on double digits.