Lowering the BPM....

[thoreau]

Boxing while on the elliptical seems to be a new trend - it was reported by dendren this morning on his journal - and the last few workouts to the gym - there is this guy with his iPod on - in a tech-music trance punching into the air like (as Dendren so aftly described) a kitten after a roll of yarn. and you could hear the vocal cue on his iPod track - and PUNCH - and he'd swat out in front of himself accompanied by a "I'm the butchest thing on the entire planet" grunt.

Whether he realized it or not - he was fodder for much amusement as the five or six people around him - could hear the musical crescendos - and the next awesome, masculine scream on the recording of the word - "PUNCH!". LOL!

It seems almost too multfunctional to me - I mean you are already on the elliptical and listening to your iPod - adding punching and choreography seems to me like a recipe for falling on your ass and eating some elliptical machinery on your way down. "OH there goes Jose - down again... he needs to lower the bpm...."

Now I have to admit - that I download an elliptical workout track on my iPod as well. (Link to Podrunner Cardio Tracks) But I try not to have vocal interactions or "sing along" if a favorite song cues up.

Less I become that character on someone's else's blog "omg - that muffinguy was at the gym again singing "Clang Clang Clang Went the Trolley" while on the elliptical; somewhere needs to get her off the trolley and onto the Clue Bus!?"

I guess we all need that 'something' that keeps us on the elliptical - I know I'm constantly changing stuff up so I don't get bored at the gym. How do the rest of ya'll feel about iPod useage at the gym - is someone humming to "bootylicious" while you are trying to concentrate on a lift? Do you find it makes the gym less social?

Comments

[excessor.livejournal.com]

Well of course that's how it works and in my book, it's unmockable. It's like mocking ABBA: it's simply not done.

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

I grew up sharing a room with an Abba-obsessed pre-queer. I can't listen to it - and consider it dreck from the lowest level of hell.

[excessor.livejournal.com]

Who are you? And what have you done with Robert?

Next you'll tell me you think Britney is fabulous. I may have to cut you.

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

I love most things gay - but Abba is a giant permanent exception.

[airporter.livejournal.com]

One more thing in common. Thank you.




(Besides being fabulous, of course.)

[excessor.livejournal.com]

You just haven't had the right ABBA.

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

So you really don't want those tickets to see "Mamma Mia" I was going to offere?

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

no as in never as in no thank you.

[pklexton.livejournal.com]

*gasps*

[airporter.livejournal.com]

Oh please. Mocking ABBA is entirely appropriate in this day and age.

And yes, I do subscribe to Bernadette's credo on this - just ask allanh

[excessor.livejournal.com]

Just because Bernadette uttered the line (perfectly) doesn't make it a philosophy worth following. ABBA is a pinnacle of musical greatness.

found on the net - and posted here for maximum bitchfight inducingness

[low-fat-muffin.livejournal.com]

I hate Abba. I hated them first time around, when their cheesy disco pop with its clod-hopping rhythms and banal, repetitive, linguistically challenged choruses made them singalong family favourites. And I hate them even more now, when the flattening effect of nostalgia has lent a spurious retro-credibility to their formulaic Euro drivel.

People talk about Abba as if they were on a par with the Beatles, when all they did was grab one little corner of the Fab Four’s harmonic oeuvre and pillage it for all it was worth. Sure, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson knew how to craft a pop song. The verses are catchy, the bridges prepare us for lift-off, the choruses are relentless and everything falls neatly in the right place.

But they were musical one-trick ponies: the Ramones for squares, a spandex Status Quo. Just because they created hooklines so insistent it would take invasive surgery to remove them from your cranium does not make them classic songwriters. By that criterion, the folks behind the Crazy Frog ringtone would be geniuses.

Rather than being a Swedish Lennon and McCartney, Bjorn and Benny were just an earlier incarnation of Stock, Aitken and Waterman, making ersatz teenypop unredeemed by wit, emotion or imagination.

Everything that is contrived and corny about pop is to be found in Abba. As song titles such as Money, Money, Money, and (surely you remember this one) I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do suggest, the prosaic appeal of repetition was the most potent weapon in Abba’s limited armoury.

So it is perhaps self-evident that the same musical signatures would be endlessly recycled: perky piano descents, toy-box organ sounds, staccato keyboard hooks and gimmicky backing vocals (a phrase like “Take a Chance” can become “Teka cheka-cha-chance” and “Super Trouper” metamorphose into “Supa-pa True-pa-pa”).

Then there were all those market-expanding, pan-European catchphrase choruses (Voulez-vous, Mamma mia, Chiquitita), cod-American English lyrics (Abba songs are full of unconvincingly pronounced “chicks” and “babys”) and the kind of bizarre phraseology that comes from writing in a foreign tongue (in Winner Takes It All the loser at a metaphorical card game announces that she has “no more ace to play”).

English was not Abba’s first language, but I remain to be convinced it was even their second; their lyrics are full of words included only because they rhyme. Has any song used a reference to “Glasgow” less convincingly than Super Trouper, where it is shoehorned in just to rhyme with “last show”? Bjorn once confessed that he would sit up all night struggling to write, then take whatever scribbles he had managed to note down into the studio, just to prove he had been doing some work.

He expected rejection by his band mates “but actually, they didn’t care”. This was the kind of quality control that led to songs like Bang A Boomerang with its couplet “Dum-be-dum-dum, be-dum-be-dum-dum/Love is a tune you hum-de-hum-hum”.

But you cannot pin Abba’s gaucheness just on lyrical shortcomings. Anyone who still wants to argue their pop genius obviously hasn’t heard Abba’s medley of Pick A Bale of Cotton, On Top Of Old Smokey and Midnight Special. This is the stuff of variety shows, which is where Abba truly belong.

Pop music has always been about style as much as content - and Abba had no style at all. The girls were not without their charms, but behind them lurked Tweedledum and Tweedledee, two plump, beardy guys in dungarees. Any woman attracted to a buffoon in a romper suit deserved pity, not admiration.

The one thing I have been able to begrudgingly admire about Abba has been their refusal to re-form. No amount of money could lure them back into the dressing-up box. But it turns out there is no need for them to embarrass themselves - for their evil work is being carried on by others.

So we end up with Mamma Mia!, It is not a musical at all - it is a karaoke event, a place for people to revel shamelessly in the bad taste of their youth. Abba are the perfect band for such a cynically contrived misadventure: trite and simplistic, and with a musical range that goes all the way from A to B and back again. To paraphrase the lyrics of a well-known Eurovision song, it is like history repeating itself.

Re: found on the net - and posted here for maximum bitchfight inducingness

[excessor.livejournal.com]

Oh Pandora! Dear, sweet, confused Pandora, just always wanting to trot out that box and open it, huh?!

Any reviewer who thinks the Beatles were good music clearly has no standards. Or is tone deaf. Or both—because you'd have to be if you think the Beatles are good music. I Wanna Hold Your Hand (an-a-an-a-a-a-and)? Yellow Submarine? Sgt Pepper? Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds? Please—the ravings of drug-addled teenyboppers. Love Me Do? Wouldn't it be nice if any two of them could sing in the same key at the same time?

But then, I'm no expert. I think Cher & Bette & Judy & Billie & Barbra & more are all goddesses, too.

Back to you, Arlene.

Re: found on the net - and posted here for maximum bitchfight inducingness

[pklexton.livejournal.com]

I love Abba but they're clearly not high culture or technically sophisticated. The Beatles are much more important musically, obviously. (Not that Abba, at zero importance, is a high bar to beat). Abba is schlock for schlock's sake. I liken it to mid century modern design (now that oughtta get rise out of someone). Abba is almost be definition not to be taken seriously.

Sort of like me.

Fundamentally everyone's idea of what's fun (just like everyone's idea of what's culturally important) is a matter of taste and, as Comrade Lenin once said, there are no comrades in matters of taste. I suspect our differing views have more to do with the associated memories - for me Abba is associated with happy memories of time spent in Scandinavia as a teenager (even though lots of them hate it too). For you I suspect it's far different.

[airporter.livejournal.com]

What he said. We can agree on many things I'm sure: you're hot, so's Curtis, and you've wonderful hands, just for a small start.

We'll have to agree to disagree about ABBA.

I will say their marketing was brilliant; for me, though, it's like "Jarod" and Subway: way too much airtime for the merit of the piece.