Geto Boys - Mind Playing Tricks On Me/Brian Eno - In Dark Trees/Aphex Twin - Next Heap With

I haven't seen a really scary movie in a long time. There's not even that many through the years, but The Exorcist, The Shining, Poltergeist (just for the old man), and Silence of the Lambs are legitimately frightening. Everything nowadays either seems like a rehash of an old idea, or an out and out remake. Remake of Nightmare on Elm Street! Remake of The Hitcher! Remake of The Hills Have Eyes! More like The Screenwriters Have No Ideas, amirite? I'm sure it's similar to music these days. You just have to look harder for the good stuff. I've heard there are a lot of great horror films being made in Asia lately...

Music can be scary in many ways, but it rarely has anything to do with a maniac hiding with a butcher knife while a blond girl for some reason searches for her boyfriend in a broom closet. Brian Eno and Aphex Twin create scary with atmospherics and mood, and Geto Boys create scary with some of the best rap lyrics I've ever heard. Every verse has a different story, every character has three dimensions. Just the first few lyrics are brilliant: "At night I can't sleep, I toss and turn/ Candle sticks in the dark, visions of bodies being burned." I also love the story of the guy who wants to love his girlfriend, but is too obsessed with the notion that she's somehow out to get him.

The last verse is the Halloween/trick or treat story, and it's nuts. They jump a seven foot tall behemoth and start beating him up, but then things really start getting weird: "The more I swung the more blood flew/ Then he disappeared and my boys disappeared, too/ Then I felt just like a fiend/ It wasn't even close to halloween/ It was dark as death on the streets/ My hands were all bloody from punching on the concrete." :O I haven't even mentioned the great sample and beats. A true classic.
NOTE: The album cover photo is real. Real-O-Meter went up to 11 on that one.

Happy Halloween!

ceo - Come With Me

I sometimes have a problem with music that is too three-dimensionally happy or perky sounding. Many people react to that issue by saying, "OH MAN, YOU'RE SUCH A DOWNER. GO MOPE IN A CORNER AND LISTEN TO YOUR RADIOHEAD AND SMITHS." But it's not as simple as that, not by a long shot. NOT BY AN ALL CAPS LONG SHOT. Can I make the commitment to never again write in all caps on this blog? I don't know. I just don't know.

I think I listen to a decent amount of "happy" music, but to me, if a song sounds completely happy, it just doesn't ring true. The Talking Heads make happy-sounding music, but there is always this strange undercurrent of paranoia or desperation, like Byrne is always looking over his shoulder, waiting for reality to smack him in the face. To me, that doesn't make the song any less happy, it just makes it more realistic. Take a song like "Hello, Goodbye" by the Beatles, or "Big Day" by XTC. Musically, they both sound like the emotional equivalent of a Smurfs episode, but lyrically "Hello Goodbye" is about Smurfette and Grouchy Smurf fruitlessly attempting to reconcile their diametrically opposed worldviews, and "Big Day" is about Grouchy's fundamental distrust of the institution of marriage. Man, if your name is Grouchy, there's just not much room for character development. Poor guy. No wonder he was in such a bad mood all the time!

There's been a lot of electro-pop coming out lately, and some of it is pretty good. I'll listen to many of these albums and enjoy them for a while, but after a while they grate because they're just too perky and corny sounding. I need at least a sliver of angst; it really doesn't take much. ceo has more than a sliver. He has a pretty sizable angstbag he seems to be toting around. It's the confluence of the happy and the sad, the combustibility of both occurring so intensely at the same time, that creates the beauty. That sentence was way too serious-sounding. I like turtles!

The Slits - Ping Pong Affair/Love Und Romance/Typical Girls/Man Next Door (RIP Ari Up)

[Introductory Note: If you only watch two of these youtubes, make them the last two. You'll be hooked for life.] Ari Up, the lead singer of the amazing British punk band The Slits, died this week. The Slits were one of the first punk bands to incorporate dub reggae into their sound...

Ok. enough introductory spiel. Ari Up and the rest of the Slits were amazing. They obviously weren't the most technically proficient musicians, but their warbled, off-kilter harmonies worked perfectly with their music. They had an amazing rhythm section, brilliant anti-everything lyrics, and an attitude (from what I can tell) that society is pretty ridiculous, and they were gonna enjoy making fun of it.

My music nerd friends and I used to discuss silly (but fun) topics like, "What's the greatest three song stretch on any album?". These weighty questions usually revealed answers from artists such as Joy Division, The Beatles, Radiohead, Can, or some other band from the rock critics' "canon." But in terms of a three song stretch that I derive the most pleasure from on a consistent basis, tracks 7-9 on the album Cut by The Slits is definitely up there.

I'm posting all three, though "Love Und Romance" is actually from the John Peel sessions. There's no Cut version on Youtube, but it's fine b/c the Peel session one features an also-amazing straight-punk version of the Slits. There's so much energy, so much humor, so much RHYTHM, so much of everything that makes rock great.

The last youtube is a Slits live performance in 1981. They're performing "The Man Next Door," which is what I guess you could call a reggae "standard." I loooove the version of this song by Massive Attack, and this performance is equally great. The drumming, the dancing, Up's vocals, everything. RIP Ari.

Meat Puppets - Plateau/Nirvana - The Man Who Sold the World

So this is my 100th post. Clearly this landmark means less than nothing, but I'm going to use it as an excuse to both focus on finding a song i really love, and also to write an incredible wanky post about said song. *approximately one really intense minute passes* So! That was easy.

I've been meaning to write about "Plateau" by the Meat Puppets for a while now, but every time I searched youtube for it I only found a middling quality live version. Now there is a studio version up! Someone obviously heard I was approaching my 100th post extravaganza! "Plateau" is such a beautiful track. My three favorite aspects are the plodding rhythm section, the strange yet somehow Zen-ish lyrics, and the amazing short guitar solo at the end.

If you read any of the comments in the youtube, you will see an intense conversation regarding Nirvana and the Meat Puppets. The Meat Puppets were, if you look at it from a commercial standpoint, a one-hit wonder. Their song Backwater was shown fairly frequently on MTV, but this entire gem of an album, and the rest of their catalogue, was pretty unheralded and "underground."

Nirvana happened to be huge fans of the Puppets, so when they made their post-Nevermind-explosion album "Unplugged in NYC," they covered a few Meat Puppets songs. Of course, Nirvana's covers garnered more attention than the Meat Puppets' versions ever did. Add to that Kurt Cobain's annoying propensity to mumble song intros while wearing wussy sweaters, and you'll understand why many people had no idea this was even a Meat Puppets track! "HummmummblahblahthisisaMeatPuppetssonghummuummmublahblah." "Umm. Come again, Kurt?!" "My sweater looks like I borrowed it from Freddy Kreuger, and my bass player kinda looks like he's smelling a fart!" "Oh, ok. Thanks, Kurt!"

I could pretend that in my infinite high school wisdom, I was fully aware of who all the real artists were on this album. But the Real-O-Meter would have my head. Nirvana also covered "The Man Who Sold the World" on the Unplugged album, and I always considered that to be the best song on the album. The guitar sounds like it's crying in the solo. So good. I really had no idea it was a Bowie song, though. He says it at some point, but it's Mumble Central again. Then I heard the Bowie song much later and thought, "WOW, THAT'S A GREAT NIRVANA COVER!" Then I realized that it was recorded over 20 years previous to the Nirvana version, and things started to make more sense.

The Bowie cover is my favorite Nirvana "song" by a pretty good margin. Kurt's vocals are relaxed and almost soothing, the band plays really tightly, and as I previously stated, the solo at the end is sublime. Actually, he doesn't really mumble Bowie at the end, but I promise he mumbled Meat Puppets! :/ To be honest, I don't think the name David Bowie really meant much to me at the age of 15. He might as well have said, "This is a Wilford Brimley cover. It's the right song to do, and the tasty way to do it."

So this is 100 posts. It's been a great ride. To all my fans out there, I never could have done it without you. To all my sponsors, thanks for standing by me during that unfortunate cow-tipping controversy. I really do love cows, but this one was just begging to be tipped! You wouldn't believe the look on his face! Anyway, here's to you, my 7-10 sporadic readers!

Single Cell Orchestra - I Want to Fall

The Nintendo Entertainment System was the hot video game system when I was a kid. By hot I mean basically every kid I knew had one and was completely obsessed with it. I would run to the phone to call my friends every time I beat a Legend of Zelda boss, figured out a 30 men free Castlevania cheat code, or beat the new Super Mario game. In our sixth grade kickball games, one team would be based on Super Mario characters, and one team would be based on Legend of Zelda characters. You might be thinking, "Wow, these kids sound like massive dorks!" YOU WOULD BE CORRECT IN THAT ASSUMPTION.

Breakbeat records are great for two main reasons: beats and weird noises. "I Want to Fall" obviously has filthy beats throughout, but where it really sets itself apart from some other classic breakbeat tracks is in the weird noises department. I feel like I'm playing a video game when I'm listening to this song. Or, more accurately, living a video game.

Contra was one of the most famous NES games, and also a personal favorite of mine. It basically consisted of running through the jungle with a fellow guerrilla soldier and shooting other guerrilla soldier dudes. I might add that the "killing" was a lot less graphic than it is these days. When you shot a guy, they did this really awkward and sudden back-flop. They actually looked like they had just stepped on a rake, causing it to smack them really hard in the face. Nowadays a guy gets shot on a video game and you see every last chunk of his brain splatter all over the screen. It's a little... intense.

To my ears, the weird noises in this song almost completely correspond aurally to the visual representations of the different guns in Contra. At :14, when the first nasty beat kicks in, the weird noise in the background sounds like the rapid fire gun that enables Joe Jungledude to shoot a bunch of red bullets in rapid succession by simply holding down the b button! Solid gun. The psychotic vacuum cleaner noise at :31 sounds like the laser gun, which while being the most powerful gun and shooting really cool looking lasers, is kind of a bummer cause you can only shoot one "bullet" at a time. At 1:11 the regular, or default gun comes in. It's functional, but not really exciting. You just shoot one red bullet at a time. YAWN. Hold onto that for too long and you're sure to end up laid out like a trampled palm frond.

At 3:49 the big daddy of all guns comes in. It also happens to be represented by the best weird noise in the entire song. It's when the song goes from Barry Bonds pre-steroids to Barry Bonds post-steroids. It's the spread gun, which shoots out five red bullets that spread throughout the screen. It fires rapidly, so you can cause awkward back-flops as far as the eye can see. Amazing gun. The fireball gun, on the other hand, is awful, and I always got rid of that thing post haste. The record would have to be warped to sonically represent that meandering, good-for-nothing albatross of a gun. Accidentally replacing the spread gun with the fireball gun instantly caused Joe Jungledude to spiral into a crippling depression, inevitably leading to a half-hearted awkward back-flop off the television screen and into the vast abyss of video game purgatory.

And how about that awesome Close Encounters of the Third Kind-ish weird noise that comes in at 5:29? That has nothing to do with Contra, and everything to do with Richard Dreyfuss being surrounded by a bunch of benevolent breakbeat aliens and busting a move.

Led Zeppelin - Dancing Days/The Who - Love Ain't For Keeping

This post is brought to you by the Sony 7500XP Real-O-Meter. For those of you who don't know what the Real-O-Meter is, it forces a person or group of people to "keep it real." Sometimes it forces people to keep it a little too real. Now, the majority of the music I've written about in this blog is music I've gotten into within the last ten or fifteen years. It's music I love with all my heart. The Real-O-Meter has no objection to that. The Real-O-Meter has been wondering, however, why I insist on denying my roots. What about those songs I listened to in Westhampton basements and Port Orange bedrooms, when I was in my pre-adolescent years and my musical knowledge was restricted to hand-me-down tapes and FM stereo playlists? Am I trying to give the impression that I was listening to Can and Wire as a pimply pre-teen? That doesn't sound like I'm keeping it real.

When I decided I should do a classic rock post, I wanted to write about bands that I still listen to at least fairly regularly, like Love, Cream, and the Zombies. But the Real-O-Meter went off like a pulled fire alarm during an organic chemistry final. From the age of about ten to thirteen, I listened to mostly Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Doors, and The Who. Familiar male pre-teen story, right? I knew every word to every Led Zeppelin song (even the ones on Coda), I had seen the Wall seventy-eight times, and I was still under the illusion that Jim Morrison wasn't a cringe-worthy songwriter. One thing the Real-O-Meter can't make me do is post a Doors or Pink Floyd song. I can still listen to Led Zeppelin or The Who (especially Tommy) and enjoy them, but the Doors are just too corny, and while Pink Floyd have some good songs, they're just too damn serious and angsty for me. Piper at the Gates of Dawn is listenable b/c they were too zonked out on acid to ponder their navels for too long, but after that it got progressively worse and worse. If I'm gonna go back to 1989, I gotta have a fun time doing it.

Devo - Satisfaction; Mongoloid; Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA

The San Francisco Giants, the local baseball team, went into the last series of the season this weekend with a three game lead in the division. They are playing the second place team, so fate lies completely in their hands. Even if they lose three games in a row, there would be a fourth game to break the tie on Monday. No pressure, right? OOPS! So far the Giants have lost two games, and there's gotta be a little doubt creeping into their minds. I don't think they're completely freaking out at this point, because they still have two solid pitchers scheduled. HOWEVER, if they somehow manage to lose the next two games and not get in, the sound of their collective choking would reverberate from San Jose to Sausalito for decades to come. In other words: YOU BETTER NOT SCREW IT UPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!

This whole situation got me to thinking about the most nervous-sounding bands out there. There are a few candidates, but no one even comes close to Devo. Maybe the greatest example of how tweaked they are is their cover of The Rolling Stone's "Satisfaction." They took this balls-out rock classic and COMPLETELY spazzed it out, with the jerky percussion, paranoid synths, and warbly vocals. It's one of the greatest covers in the history of music, and while I all too often fall into a hyperbowl, I don't think this is one of those times. The "BABYBABYBABYBABYBABYBABYBABYBABY Tells me baby better come back later next week, can’t you see I’m on a losing streak" section at 1:48 is pure gold.

Just the intro to "Mongoloid" makes me start freaking out. That bass comes creeping in, then the guitar slinks in behind it, then the little keyboard riff taps you on the shoulder, then the drums smack you in the face. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. LEAVE ME ALONE! YOU'RE SCAAAAAAARING MEEEEE! Add in alien robot vocals and the permeating synths at 2:46 courtesy of in Eno We Trust (well, probably, he produced the album), and you have a classic.

I'm not gonna say much about Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA. It's another twisted song with ridiculous and funny lyrics. I'm personally partial to the Mr. DNA section. THAT GUITAR FILTERED THROUGH A SYNTH FILTERED THROUGH A CHAINSAW FILTERED THROUGH ET'S LOWER INTESTINES NOISE AT 5:34. KILL ME NOW.