So, I guess The Pomegranates may be on the way out. (Note: This is how rumors get started).
Consider the evidence: Cincy blog Each Note Secure reports that one of the band’s members is releasing a solo project:
And now, one of Joeys side projects is seeing the light of day as well. The project, called Firs, is a collaboration between Joey and Sophia Cunningham, a friend and fellow music enthusiast who also sits in the WOXY studios behind the mic on Monday nights. FIRS allows the duo to experiment with different instruments and sounds that you might not hear on a more traditional Pomegranates album.
Ah well. Members going outside the band to be “creative.” This is a familiar plot. Consider the Duran Duran (i.e. Power Station and then that other thing that Simon and Nick did to get revenge) … or Rob Thomas … or Jay Farrar …
Then again, if it weren’t for the KISS solo albums, would we have this little gem?
Anyway, so RIP Pomegranates. I’m tongue-in-cheekly starting the rumor of your demise. I hope I’m wrong. Your album Everybody Come Outside is one of my son’s (and my) favorite albums of 2009. Prove me wrong.
NPR.org, May 20, 2009 – The rise of the MP3 might spell doom for the album as an art form, at least where some artists are concerned. But not for Pomegranates: On its second full-length release, Everybody Come Outside, the Cincinnati band has produced not a cobbled-together collection of singles, but a suspenseful novel in lush art-pop form, valuing atmosphere over hooks while continuing to surprise with each innovative twist.
The vastly diverse sounds of Everybody Come Outside mean that no single track can showcase them all, but “Southern Ocean” still stands alone. The tune opens with a catchy, surf-tinged motif, then shifts into a tense second movement, propelling the immaculately crafted plot with anticipation and a rich melody. The band never sacrifices the blithe rock sensibility needed to keep the track afloat: “Southern Ocean” exudes such effortless precision, and such fun, that accomplishing all of that in two and a half minutes isn’t even a stretch.
So I go out of town tomorrow and that means I get to make a travel CD. It’s my own private “Project Mayhem,” except without all the violence and hitting and explosions and split personality.
It’s something I have done the past couple times I rent a car: I leave the CD in the player for the next person to enjoy. (OK, OK, I know … the company checks the radio for stray CDs before renting the car out again, but allow me my fantasy.)
Now, making a mix CD always reminds me of “High Fidelity,” one of my top five favorite movies. In it, Rob Gordon (John Cusack, the greatest American living actor) delivers this soliloquy:
“The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick it off with a killer to grab attention. Then you gotta take it up a notch, but you don’t want to blow your wad, so then you gotta cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules.”
Mind you, this project has two distinct purposes:
It has to entertain me as I tool around some strange town for a couple days.
And possibly, more importantly, this music I leave behind is a statement of who I am to the next person, a kind of tutorial on things that I think others should be listening to.
With that in mind, what should I put on it? Who is worthy of such a statement? Bob Dylan? U2? Hanson? (OK, maybe not Hanson … I just don’t know you well enough to drop some MMmm-Bop) … Should I put some Johnny Cash or stuff more obscure, like The Pigeon Detectives or Iron & Wine? Should I try for some street cred with early Public Enemy AND some Clash? Should I be totally androgynous and record 80 minutes of Morrissey?
Sometimes I put the Britsound radio show on. Maybe I’ll be loyal to the family and put the Pomegranates.
What would you put on a mix tape left for someone anonymous?
So, my nephew’s band, The Pomegranates, has a entry in Wikipedia, the online user-generated encyclopedia of everything. (Here it is) I guess that means they’ve made it, on some level. It used to be that if you googled yourself and found yourself, you pretty much made it. Now, in this age of information, it’s probably Wikipedia.
It used to be that google was a noun, too. But that’s another story.
Sure, one of the band’s members, or the band’s label, created the citation, but still, it’s there. For any high schooler to try and use in a research paper. But don’t even THINK about using it in college. No way. Wikipedia is the devil.
Maybe.
But it IS a good place to start if you’re looking into something. I would bet that deep down, most professors who openly deride Wikipedia have used it at one time or another. Just to get a sense of things. It’s a starting point. You wouldn’t use it as a prime source for research, but it could point you to some prime sources for research
If we could put it in a hierarchy, here’s how I see it:
Primary Sources – what you should use
Secondary Sources – what you can use to point you to primary sources
Wikipedia – what you can use to point you to secondary sources
In this day and age, we need to use as many tools as possible to make sense of the world. To not is to fall behind.
Anyway, here’s a video of the Poms. My nephew plays the bass. He’s not that good of a dancer, but I’m proud of him.
The Pomegranates
