Favorites
Writing:
- Economic Fallacies, Frederic Bastiat
- No Treason, Lysander Spooner
- Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Etienne de la Boetie
- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein
- Human Action, Ludwig von Mises
- Power & Market, Murray Rothbard
- Crime & Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
- A Confession, Leo Tolstoy
- The Road to Serfdom, F.A. Hayek
- The Nature of Man and His Government, Robert LeFevre
- Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
- Vices are not Crimes, Lysander Spooner
Music:
Alot of really heavy shit. Love the old Metallica from “Master of Puppets” and “…And Justice For All.” Rage Against the Machine. Anti-Flag. Rise Against. Mod-Surf Rock, like the old Weezer (Blue Album) still kicks my ass. Wu-Tang always keeps it real. Nas, Tupac, Jay-Z. Arch Enemy rocks. H.I.M. is pretty intense. Viking metal like, Finntroll. Indie-punk like Five Victims, Four Graves is sweet. Emo, Screamo, punk, hardcore… If it has rad guitars, I’m probably down.
But I’m also moderately refined. I like the old delta blues, like Robert Johnson, or Mississippi John Hurt. I like the french singers like Edith Piaf. Classical composers like Tchaikovsky. Classic rock like Pink Floyd. Classic country like Johnny Cash. I’ll listen to just about anything that doesn’t suck, and isn’t breastfed daily by Carson on MTV (is Carson still doing TRL, or did I just reveal my age?).
I am always open to suggestions for new music to listen to. Send me some mail and suggest something. I won’t hold it against you if I think it sucks.
Anything RUSH.
Pay attention to the master lyrics.
A canadian power trio with unparalleled and understated supremacy.
Of their 20+ albums my personal favorites are, in no particular order:
2112, Signals, Presto, but all of them are excellent in their own right.
Overall, my favorite RUSH song is Entre Nous off the Permanent Waves album.
My 2nd fave is Eric Johnson, guitarist excellante’.
Tones, Ah Via Musicom and Venus Isle are his 3 main albums and all of them are unbelievable.
For electric guitar toonage it doesn’t get any better than Testament’s “Return to Serentity” which without a doubt, to me, is the best guitar song ever, bar none.
For what its worth http://www.beemp3.com has lots of songs available for free download.
I’ve grabbed a few toons off there and never had any problems.
I can’t stand Rush vocals… but I’m familiar enough to understand why they appeal to the libertarian-ish crowd.
Funny, it’s Geddy Lee’s vocals that first caught my ear back in 1974 and only after close observation the other 2 members won me over. I’m a player (guitar) and have been since about the age of 11. I was a little disappointed in the early 90’s when Geddy lost the high values in his voice but I understand why and don’t let it bother me, and I’ve grown used to his *new* voice. I play bass too, even have a bass rig sitting about 8′ from my desk right now but don’t particularly like it so I don’t do it much. Just sold my massive drum cage this past Feb cause I never play it, and I have 5 guitars here in my office that I rarely play anymore too. Funny how your priorities change over time. I used to live for this stuff but now it mainly just gets on my nerves. I always heard about this, that getting old is a bitch but I never understood it. So now I’m all the way in it and I still don’t understand it. It just is.
One more thing. I remember reading, back in 1974, on the back of the 2112 album, “With compliments to Ayn Rand” and wondering who he-she-it was. It was another 10 years before I found out who she was and another 10 years before I read everything she wrote. All of RUSH’s lyrics are penned by Neil Peart the drummer and I guess he was influenced by Rand early on and you can see traces of it in just about all of their work. Peart is the drummer, and what a drummer he is.