Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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THE GAMECOCK ♦ Monday, November 4, 2002 ^5 CONTACT US TTTr, IVrT X THEY SAID IT Story ideas? Questions? Comments? I I I J II I / 1 .. OCDT , E-mailusatgamecockmixeditor@hotmail.com —I-m— m A -1- T I ...1.. ^ . m ALBERT EINSTEIN. The important thing-is to not stop questioning. More reviews, search functions on the way for music Web site BY CHARLES TOMLINSON THE GAMECOCK The Web site www.south carolinabands.com makes a plethora of resources available to any musician in South Carolina with an Internet connection, and those resources are about to be come even more plentiful. Eric “Nilla” Maddox, webmas ter and one-man driving force be hind the site since its inception two years ago, is planning a ma jor update for the South Carolina music Web site. He is reworking the coding for the entire site, using a lot of the “geek stuff’ he said he’s learned lately to improve the site and make it easier to use. He said he hopes the changes will be in place within the next two months. Part of Maddox’s plan is to en hance the message boards on the site, which are places for musi cians and fans to exchange opin ions about music and even find people to form a band with. “The message board’s definite ly what everybody goes there for,” he said. “There are definitely go ing to be enhancements on the message boards and things for more interaction there.” A chat room might be among the enhancements for the Southcarolinabands.com com munity, Maddox said. But he doesn’t want the site to be a forum for musicians only. “It sort of seems to lean toward just musicians right now, and I’d like to get people who are just in terested in music to come there,” Maddox said. “And to come there more than just once; to keep com ing back and keeping up with stuff.” He said he thinks album and show reviews will lure music fans, especially those who are new to Columbia and want to see what the local scene has to offer. The site recently acquired a re viewer, Michael Jones, and other writers have also shown interest, Maddox said. Bands that send CDs to Jones will get their record ings reviewed on the site. Jones has already reviewed CDs by such local bands as Hot Lava Monster, Winged DNA and the Lesser Light. Maddox and other Columbia band members also “bombarded” USC students with fliers for local r nU I U ILLUo I KA IIUI concerts on move-in day in August, Maddox said. He said that Southcarolinabands.com wants to get freshmen “involved in the scene, instead of them going out to booty clubs.” He said he wants to introduce a newsletter with the new Web site, as well as a calendar that con stantly runs on computer desk tops and automatically updates each time the computer restarts. “We’re gonna pound some show dates into people’s heads,” he said. The revamped Web site will also include a search function that allows visitors to look for South Carolina bands, band members, or musicians to play and form bands with. The search will locate Southcarolinabands.corn’s arti cles, reviews and any other infor mation about a particular local band. Also, Maddox said, the search function will let users search for bands by influence. He said that, for example, if someone searches for Queens of the Stone Age, the search function will display bands that are influenced by or sound like that band. But not only existing local bands will be featured on Southcarolinabands.com; defunct bands will also be included. And < UUUK I tbl T Uf bUUI ilUAnULIINABANUb.^UIVl through list ing these late bands, the Web site will provide a history of South Carolina mu sic, Maddox said. Eric “Nilla” A photo Maddox, the site directory webmaster, is in might be an the process of other new adding features to feature, and his site for S.C. would allow musicians and bands to up music fans. load their press photos and pictures from live shows. Maddox said this feature could be useful because, although people might not like to admit it, many people judge bands on the way they look. But even without the improve ments, Maddox’s Web site has been quite a helping hand to A some Columbia bands. Jason Kirincich, vocalist for Columbia g band Tykes With Guns, credits ? southcarolinabands.com with m, getting his band its first show. * He said the band Super Bike, for which Maddox formerly played ( ♦ WEB SITE, SEE PAGE 6 MOVIE REVIEW Odd pair makes ‘I Spy’ amusing PHOTOS SPECIAL TO THE GAMECOCK Owen Wilson, left, and Eddie Murphy star in “I Spy.” The chemistry between the two actors saves this film from its formulaic plot and lackluster cast of bad guys. “I SPY” Starring Owen Wilson and Eddie Murray ★★★ out of BY BEN ANGSTADT THE (iAMECOCK “I Spy” seems like a high-risk movie before it even begins. When the headlining cast con sists of one actor still trying to establish himself as a star and another whose best role in re ' cent memory was voicing an an imated donkey, there’s no way to predict what’s coming. But somehow, despite its ap parent cast shortcomings with the odd couple of Owen Wilson and Eddie Murphy, “I Spy” still manages to be a lot of fun. Wilson plays American spy Alex Scott, a less-than-super agent who’s trying to move up on the spy food chain. After a botched mission in Russia, he gets as signed to track down the Switchblade, a stealth plane that was stolen from the American military and taken to Budapest, Hungary, where the interna tional bad guys plan to auction it off tQ the highest bidder. By some amazing coinci dence, the auction is to take place at a party the night before World Middleweight Boxing champion Kelly Robinson (Murphy) defends his title in Budapest. The only logical op tion is for Scott to recruit Robinson and use him as a cov er so that Scott can sneak into the party, get the information about the stolen plane and fly it back to America. The brash, pompous Robinson has no desire to work with the nerdy spy Scott, but once he sees all the great spy gadgets, his interest is piqued and he can’t turn the job down. From then on, everything fol lows the standard buddy-come dy formula: a by-the-book pro fessional gets teamed up with a rookie who does things his own way; sparks fly between them; they begrudgingly work to ^ gether; they have a falling out; and by the end of the film, they’re the . || ♦ I SPY,' SEE Ik PAGE 6 DVD REVIEW ‘Spider-Man9DVD spins out IC X m 1 UK on Tln + nv, U 3 A3 i 1 J *1__ J _ “SPIDER-MAN” Starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst ★★★ out of *☆☆☆☆ BY ERIN CLINE THE (IAMEC0CK A summer blockbuster movie should also have blockbuster DVD features. But that’s not the case with the just-released “Spider Man” DVD. It just doesn’t hold up to the responsibilities of a megahit. The movie, which was released in theaters in the summer of2002, Parker; Kirsten Dunst as his crush, Mary Jane Watson; Willem Dafoe as scientist Norman Osborn; and James Franco as his son, Harry Osborn. The movie follows the obstacles faced by Peter, who is on a field trip with his high-school class when he gets bitten by a geneti cally modified spider. He soon de velops acute senses, the capacity to shoot webs and the ability to climb walls. Peter uses his spider charac teristics for money at first, but then uses his powers to fight evil after his uncle gets killed. Meanwhile, Norman, a scientist, turns himself into Spider-Man’s nemesis, the Green Goblin. The movie is two hours of fight after fight between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin, while Peter com petes with Harry for the affection of Mary Jane. It’s the classic com ic book turned big-screen movie, with the hint of a sequel. “Spider-Man” comes packaged as a two-DVD set. The actual movie has a grainy quality at times, but overall, the images are close to those from the theater. The menus for the two disks can be hard to navigate and control, ±a\j nc*ci, anu uiai uuuiu ucr ter those not as interested in learning everything possible about Spider-Man. The first disk contains the stan dard behind-the-scenes commen tary by director Sam Raimi and a few members of the cast. Of course, they have nothing but praise for the movie, and it’s tedious to watch that over and over. Also on the first disk are the 11 commercials that ran for the movie, even the one that endorsed a phone company. Wow, is that overkill necessary? The music video for Chad Kroeger’s “Hero” is also on this' disk, as if it wasn’t overplayed enough during the months after the movie’s theater release. The second disk is loaded with all the Spider-Man stuff anyone can stand. Viewers get, yet again, more looks behind the scenes. The HBO special, the E! Entertainment special and a pro file of Raimi add up to more than an hour’s worth of overplayed Spidermania. With the gag reel, the DVD offers one glimpse of hope, but fails. The chosen outtakes are disappointing and not funny at all. One thing of ♦ ‘SPIDER-MAN,’SEE PAGE 6 “0" Sigur Ros ★★ out of BY WILLIAM MILLS THE GAMECOCK Sigur Ros succeeds in daz zling fans with the obscurity of its latest album, “0 ” This is one release, however, that fans can’t sing along to; the album is as mysterious as it is pretentious. These Icelandic dream-rockers don’t include a single word, track title or clear picture in the liner notes, but even if they did, it probably wouldn’t be in English, anyway. Sigur Ros sings in a made-up language, called Hopelandish, somewhere between Icelandic CD REVIEW Album gets mired in mystery and fantasy. “()” is the band’s third album since its.beginning in 1994. Sigur Ros has since toured with such popular artists as fellow Icelander Bjork and Thom Yorke, who specifically re quested the band. If its goal is to make beautiful sleep-inducing music to play for toddlers just before bedtime, then Sigur Ros is ahead of its time. But it’ll take a little more than the occasional whale sound and light piano to bring this album down from the secluded mountaintop in Iceland where it rests from the first untitled song to the last. Although the album contains only eight songs, they all clock in at between six and 13 minutes, and the album clears 70 minutes. “0” is bursting with beauti fully raw keyboard crescendos and resonant guitars, but by the end of the album, the dreami ness has departed and listeners are left with something com pletely confusing. Although the cosmic super-whiney epic songs seem incredibly emotional and moving in the beginning, that fades away by the final track. But Sigur Ros — Jon Thor Birgisson (vocals, guitar), Georg Holm (bass), Kjortan Sveinsson (keyboard, guitar) and Orri Pall Dyrason (drums) — do provide a valuable service. These cosmic blizzard-rockers allow listeners to derive their own meaning from the songs. The songs act like an inkblot test in which lis teners can twist and reconstruct the incoherent words to build their own castles of melancholy. Furthermore', “()” just seems like one of those albums that all of the indie kids scrambling for something different and un tainted latch on to. Sigur Ros definitely tries to be different and inventive. Birgisson plays his guitar with a bow in stead of the traditional pick, pro ducing a symphonic whine. This sound is augmented by his un stable, high-pitched voice and lay ered over the backdrop of slow keyboards and slower drumbeats. The end result of the album is confusion. This is either the music of the stars or pretentious nonsense. If the future of ob scure rock is drawn-out lyrics about nothing, music fans should invent a time machine. Comments on this story?E-mail gamecockmixeditor@hotmail.com