Honestly I cant stand her live! I saw her in Chicago and I wanted to leave before her voice made me hate her and any clip of her live on YouTube just reaffirms my experience. I will buy anything she puts out on CD or the internet, but tickets to her live will be untouched by me.

And you can enjoy anything drunk. I once stood and listened to a homeless guy slap his hands against his body for like 5 minutes and then gave him a dollar for being so awesome.

Lol, Woody is a genius. One could quote him all night and still not get bored. Has anyone ever had the chance to see him play with his Jazz group at the Carlyle in NYC? He’s gonna be back soon in theaters.

Thanks Muralimannered, I’ll revisit MIA and with a more open mind this time. And even if I don’t like the music, still respect to her for sticking by a cause she believes in. Most of the artist out there don’t.

Listen to Horizontal K’s mix of M.I.A.’s “URAQT” at http://www.myspace.com/horizontalk

his mix makes me want to clean my apt or up the speed on a treadmill!

a clarification – my comment was not about her songs/records per se, it is just that i felt her exploitative use of imagery trumped her music. maybe, i am being too cynical in not forgiving her for the past use of her imagery, but from the descriptions of her recent shows, it looks like she still continues to peddle it albeit in an understated manner. in any case, i think we all know where we all stand, so i will stop now.

here’s a curry-leaf branch (as I don’t have any olive trees handy–common Tamil failing)

muralimannered, i accept your curry-leaf branch and hand you some mustard garnish in return. heck, i will even ladle out some virtual sambar

and I think the basic reason I can’t ascribe any sort of purposive action to that drift away from usage of terror imagery is that the production of art, even for people who don’t think of themselves as artists, is rarely done under a strict politico-social rubric–i.e. “my first priority is making sure people know I like XXX…my second priority is making sure people know I am ambivalent about YYYY” Perhaps this comes from growing up in a home where fine arts (performing variety) were produced daily and partly it’s because I don’t want to believe that MIA is some heartless, bean-counting, corpie-clone, niche-marketed robot who would be so thoughtless/careless as to pimp terror imagery for profit/success down the road.

FuDaMenTal’s tragic tumble down the terror-lite road happened so quickly (within the space of an album!) I didn’t wish to contemplate the same happening to her.

lol. i believe that’s cicatrix.

this argument’s been had many times over on this site, i don’t think she’s changed her views on the war (which were never entirely concrete, anyway), she’s just actively focusing on wider issues now because she’s seen how the pigeonholing can detract from the music

http://www.citypages.com/databank/26/1268/article13099.asp

I think she states the situation far more eloquently than your or I can.