Vintage Cut

Time reads 12:19 and 23 seconds. The blasted clock in this sorry excuse for a net cafe isn't working. I have got to write something, else I'm doomed to let a long while pass and make COMPLEX VERTIGO one of those exitedly-started-but-never-got-enough-cinder-to-continue-burning kind of weblogs. Another effort reduced to plain statistial occurence is what the only thing those kinds are of use (did you ever know that 34% fo the blogs hosted by blogger are never updated more than 1x a month?----no actual basis for the figures but something I conjured up to kind of strengthen my point).

I was staring intently over a rerun of Survivor All-Stars last Sunday when I noticed that the CDs and the old cassette tapes stacked under the TV are abnormally well arranged (the stuff is normally wilder than the kind of hair that "rhymes" with pubic). I saw a chimp picture on one of the covers and recalled it being my Arkarna record, bought in 1998 while still in college, the pre-audio CD era (or just my pre-CD era. I'm a late bloomer. Great excuse for not having enough dough to invest on gadgets). It's been years and I wondered if it still works. And dang it did! So I went to the "So Little Time" track and revved the volume up to the you-must-be-freakin'-deaf notch. The song still sounds great! I did a simple research and found out that "Fresh Meat," the name of their debut album, was self-produced (much like Alicia Keys' recordings). The tracks are varied to the point of it being unidentifiable to a specific genre. I would so far as conclude that their music is a little ahead of the mainstream back then. The band is ambitious, read: it would take a major move to come up with the next album, both marketing and quality wise to top what they started. Sad to note that I don't think I know of anybody who has heard of the succeeding projects Arkarna did. In their website (which has a sample of the track I was blogging about), I found something on a new album and several photos of what purportedly were album covers, all of which may have never been introduced or sold locally. Well, too bad. If my allegations are correct then they could just be another talented group reduced to a number in the list of bands under one-hit-wonders. Well, for the time being.

posted by Fritz @ 12:19 PM