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In keeping with my promise, i started down the path of exploring the ‘bamboo band’ genre of music, but alas it did not lead me very far. Now obviously anyone can update Wikipedia, and so it seems that some dude has made up a brand new musical genre, and then linked it to the page that he created for his own apparently genre-defying band, the ‘Bamboos’. The spiel written for the bamboos goes something like this -

‘…Francisco “Bamboo” Mañalac serves as the band’s frontman. Contrary to popular belief, the band is not named after him….’

‘… According to the guitarist, the word bamboo relates to strength and durability with an island feel to it.Also, it’s very Filipino and Asian at the same time. Their first priority for a band name during 2000s was “Audio Barangay” which means “Audio Neighborhood” in English. However, they realized that its a bit hard to pronounce and it is not that catchy compared to just “Bamboo.” They also dropped the name “Audio Barangay” because Audioslave was formed roughly the same time during their band’s formation, to avoid confusion….’

Ok that’s all very well and good, but slightly delusional. Audio Neighborhood? C’mon. The fact that there is one less ‘real’ musical genre is quite a relief though, and it does bring me to the topic of Audioslave.

Audioslave – crap?

 I was, in a former life, a big fan of both Soundgarden and Rage Against The Machine. But, let’s be honest, both of those bands had their day, and the same chemistry was not re-ignited in Audioslave. You don’t even need to listen to Audioslave to know they’re bad. If they can get confused with  “Audio Barangay” then they must be bad, right?

Coming out of this short musical journey though, out of the archives -  i have uncovered a great Soundgarden track to download. It’s called ‘Like Suicide’ and it’s on the ‘Superunknown’ CD. Don’t play it on your iPods though unless it’s got good sound with plenty of bass. It’s quite heavy as you would expect, Chris Cornell has done well in the lyrics department with his trademark gothic imagery, and the solo is pure psychedelia. Apparently it was written by Cornell after a bird flew into a window of his house. He found the suffering animal and subsequently put the bird out of its misery by hitting it with a brick.

Isn’t that funny? Usually it only takes a few minutes to recover from the shock and the bird will get up and fly away. I’m glad Cornell is not a vet.

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These classifications are often arbitrary and controversial, and closely related styles often overlap, etc.

One of the first genres I’d like to explore /  review is the Bamboo band style, which is music played by hitting bamboo tubes with sandals

Exploring the various genre names on Wikipedia, I came across ‘Blue-Eyed Soul’ and was reminded that Wilco had a song of the same name on their A.M. album. The best song on that album though was ‘ How to Fight Loneliness’, which I myself discovered had the same chords in the verse as the song ‘Maneater’ by Hall & Oates, who pretty much define the ‘Blue-Eyed Soul’ genre. So the connection is complete – Wilco were listening to Hall & Oates circa 1982 when they did A.M. in 1995, and they ripped off the chords to Maneater.

There you have it – a great piece of musical detective work by me.

I really should be doing some work.

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