So I'm not gonna post on Sunday, cause it's my birthday and the end of school. I will probably sleep late due to the festivities that will be taking place the night before. But I'm dedicated to my one or two readers! Haha. I actually really love writing this blog, so I will post this tonight.My friend Jamie randomly mentioned Geoffrey the Giraffe tonight. It immediately reminded me of what probably was one of the most exciting events for me as a child. At the age of eleven I was, of course, completely obsessed with Nintendo. My friends and I would call each other every time we'd pass a stage of Legend of Zelda, or figure out a cheat code to Castlevania or Contra. Hell, our kickball teams at school were based on the names of characters from Zelda and Super Mario Bros. Nerd alert!
Anyway, the most exciting thing in the WORLD for me at that point was frantically running down the aisles of Toys R Us to see if they had the Nintendo game I was currently obsessing on. But they didn't have the games out on the shelves, cause that would be like keeping the Baseball Diamond on display at a Housewives of Orange County photo shoot. So either my face would light up in joy as I hastily grabbed the ticket to bring up to the old guy behind the glass at the counter, or my heart would immediately sink to my ankles as I stared at the gaping void where the white plastic ticket for Rygar should have been.
How does this little anecdote relate to Massive Attack, you ask? Well, let me tell you, I loooooooove me so Massive Attack! They are truly the Tecmo Bowl of electronic music. And I saw them live last night! They're supposedly approximately ten years past their prime, and I really do prefer their older stuff, but their performance last night was so great. They played Unfinished Sympathy, Mezzanine, Karmacoma, Risingson, Teardrop, and Angel, among others. They used three guest vocalists, and they were all great. A perk going forward is that though I've d/led their new album, I hadn't really listened to it before last night. Well, it sounded really promising live, so I'm excited to check it out.
Below are three of my absolute favorite Massive Attack tracks, and they highlight different strengths of the group. Unfinished Sympathy is an upbeat track with amazing, soulful vocals. Protection is a downtempo song, but the beat, samples, and synths work perfectly with Tracy Thorn's beautiful vocals. Mezzanine is a dark, dank, tightly wound, barbed wire fence of a song. A lot of bands that go for dark fall on their poseur faces, but Massive Attack creates mood so skillfully. That subtle little blow up at 2:13 followed by the clipped vocals is so great.
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