On this site I will rant incoherently about songs that have utterly consumed me for extended periods of time. There will be an embedded Youtube video at the bottom of each post where you can easily check out the song. This is not a review site, and I am not a musician, so let's set the bar really low, shall we? If you would like to weather the extended rationale for this wholly irrational site, it’s in the first post.
I went and saw Paul McCartney last night. We had truly awful seats, but we got the seats for $60 at the last minute, so we were just happy to be there. But all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a miracle occurred. Apparently there was more room down on the floor than they had expected, so we got moved down to the 12th row! Joy! It was an amazing show.
Paul is such a positive guy, he got me to thinking about pick-me-up songs. There are some songs I can listen to, and no matter how foul my mood is, they will bring a smile to my face. The Talking Heads do this for me often, but there isn't a high quality version of "The Good Thing," and that's my ultimate TH's candidate for this topic.
So let's start with Prince's Mountains. Oh Ford, do I love this song. Parade is a criminally underrated album, and this is the best song on it. The chorus is transcendent, and Prince is God. Still the best concert I've ever seen. Sorry, Paul!
Then there's X's "You're Phone's Off the Hook, But You're Not." X mixes punk with rockabilly and a bunch of other catchy genres, so they can be singing about vomit and various forms of abuse, and I'll just be bopping my head and singing along. Plus, this song was featured on an episode of "Freaks and Geeks." "Freaks and Geeks" rules. Watch it.
English Beat's "Save it for Later" is just a perfect song. I love the video, with the band slowly getting the snobby patrons of the cafe to dance along with their song. The violin and sax that comes in are such a great touch.
And then there's Lisa Lisa. What can you even say say about about Lisa Lisa? The backing vocals are so great. Listen at 2:08. Sounds like sundaes and Slip n Slides.
I've gone to three raves in about the last ten years. I'm always pretty conflicted about it. The crowd can be so ridiculous, but when I go, it's because I really like a few of the djs on the bill. So I pretend I'm in a Terry Gilliam movie and just look forward to the music. I went to the second night of the Electric Daisy Carnival in LA this year. It was completely out of control. 185,000 people went in two nights. They used the LA Memorial Coliseum for one stage, and had four other adjacent stages. Each stage had crazy lighting and massive sound, but only one of the five stages, the Drum and Bass stage, had music that I was excited about hearing.
There were less candy ravers at this stage than the other ones, but there were still a few. Ignore them, and listen to the beats!!! The beat that kicks in at :54, then just destroys at 1:05. Are you kidding me? Ridiculous. Dynamite MC, who used to be Roni Size's MC, is great as well. I was just gonna post some mp3s, but nothing really replicates the energy of this live set. Dirtyphonics, LTJ Bukem, DJ Friction, Andy C. Stage went off all night.
It's easy to imagine why the Beatles might have felt like squares next to the Stones. Don't get me wrong, the Beatles were incredible, but some of the Stones' songs were just so... evil. I try to avoid using the word evil, because it feels so one-dimensional and flat, but the Stones just give me that feeling at times. Take a song like "Under My Thumb." It is definitely the coolest sounding song ever, but the lyrics are the most brutally misogynistic I've ever heard. They make gangster rap sound like "Lady in Red."
The Stones never sounded like they were posing, and if they were it didn't matter, because the music was just so g*ddamn great. "Sister Morphine" is a charming little hallucinatory tale about overdosing, but the mood of the song is so dank and desperate that it never descends into parody. The combination of the acoustic guitar, Mick's weary vocals, the sinister tone of Mick Taylor's guitar, the piano, and the drums that kick in at 2:42 just gives me chills everywhere. The Exorcist on vinyl.
Exile is my favorite Stones album, cause it just feels the most cohesive. And it's loaded with classics, including the great opener "Rocks Off" and the amazing "Torn and Frayed." If I had a gun to my head, I might pick "Torn and Frayed" as my favorite Stones track. But with a gun to my head I might be really nervous and totally choke and pick a song off that really lame 80s Stones album where they're dressed in pastels on the cover.
I like my music to have a little drama to it. It's why I love Bowie, Roxy Music, Kate Bush, etc. They're great musicians, but there's also a lot of theater thrown in there.
I'm certainly not comparing Bat for Lashes to these groups, but some of her music has a similar flair to it. As the drums and bass come in on "Glass," things seem to be getting really serious. And then when she belts out the chorus, I see her standing next to her liger on the edge of a cliff, wearing an ornate headpiece as she belts out lyrics about crystal towers and heavenly spirits.
The rest of the album is solid. She seems to channel a few of her favorite artists at times (Tori Amos, Bjork), but she does it well enough and adds twists like disco beats and Scott Walker (!), so it never sounds too derivative.
In other news, I'm back from NYC and happy to be in San Francisco. Humidity is the devil's work!
Kool Keith is weird. At one point there were rumors that he was a schizophrenic, though those were later shot down. From the beginning his lyrics were a little out there, and by the time he got to his "Dr. Octagonecologyst" album, his lyrics were borderline asinine. But! While he has since tried to distance himself from the album, I still happen to think it rules. Sure, it's filled with crass and borderline offensive lyrics, and the album's concept of a twisted alien gynecologist doesn't really pack any emotional resonance. But it doesn't change the fact that the production is ridiculously amazing, and Kool Keith/Dr. Octagon's flow is stellar.
Ultramagnetic MCs was Kool Keith's earlier group, and Critical Beatdown is a classic album. A lot of the beats are sort of samey, but better to all be samey and great than samey and shite, I suppose. Dr. Octagonecologyst, on the other hand, has creative and varied production on all the tracks, sick scratching, and is great from start to finish. The instrumental "Bear Witness" showcases Q-Bert's scratching, and the phrasing of "IS HE WEIRD?!" at 1:06 in "Halfsharkalligatorhalfman" is just perfect.
The "98 Year Old Refrigerator" youtube is just an example of how amazing Kool Keith is. Really out there, but out there in a way that makes me stop and wonder if he is in fact the second coming of the messiah.
I'm almost halfway through my NYC trip. So far I've gone to a Mets game, seen a David Mamet play, done some shopping and seen a bunch of family and friends. These are the highest priorities, but after them comes an attraction that, while not highly publicized, is one of the greatest things this city has to offer: people watching.
Now I'm not talking about sitting on a bench in the mall, watching an exasperated mother drag her cranky three-year-old into Macy's. I'm talking about seeing a 6" 3', emaciated man with premature jowls and a green velvet suit walking down Columbus Avenue. Or sitting on the subway watching an infuriated twenty-something-year-old girl trying to smack her friend out of a vegetative state so she won't have to frantically drag her dead weight body off at the next stop. Or walking by a late-eighties socialite (still dressed to the nines) trying to keep up with with her two Yorkies scurrying down Madison Avenue.
If the entire country is words typed on a page, then someone definitely highlighted all of New York City and clicked bold. Everything is more sharply defined, for better and worse. It's definitely a magical place.
Pere Ubu reminds me of New York City, cause I can easily picture Dave Thomas (the lead singer, not that dude in the Wendy's commercials) walking down Broadway having an impassioned conversation with himself. Cause that's pretty much what he does on stage, as evidenced in the second Youtube I posted. But first things first. Street Waves, the first song posted, just rocks. The breakdown at :30 is perfection. The bass is amazing throughout, but is especially highlighted during the section from 1:41-2:30. Then Thomas barks and it goes back to kicking all sorts of *ss. The Modern Dance album is just a phantasmagorical heap of amazaliciousness.
In my scramble to find a live performance to illustrate Dave Thomas' otherwordliness, I stumbled upon Waiting for Mary. Fun performance, and hey! That's Debbie Harry! And Phillip Glass! And a superfluous saxophone! Yay 80s!
I like chunky bass. Bass can be great when it's the glue that holds a song together, but sometimes I love when it reaches out its chubby fingers and grabs me by the throat.
The bass playing in Scott Walker's "The Old Man's Back Again (Dedicated To The Neo-Stalinist Regime)" (how's that for a title! whatever happened to "My Boyfriend's Back"?) is of the second variety. To me it sounds like the bass is strung very loosely, but I'm not gonna speculate cause I don't really know what I'm talking about! It sounds great, and Walker's vocals are haunting. I'm not sure who plays the bass on this track, but my congratulations go out to him or her for a job well done.
James Jameson is one of the best bass players there ever was, and he really shines on "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)" by Marvin Gaye. You could say his playing is more glue and less "intrusive," but damn does it sound good. One of my favorite vocal moments on any song ever is at 2:49 when Marvin sings, "Oooh, make me wanna holler, throw up both my hands." The way he sings "hands" is so perfect.
Carol Kaye was one of Brian Wilson's favorite session musicians, and just a badass bass player. I love how the bass seems, to my non-musician ears, to be moving in the opposite direction of the rest of the song when it comes in at :11. I always turn up the bass in my car when this song comes on. It sounds so amazing. I still can't wrap my head around the fact that Wilson was 23 when he wrote this album. I love how in the Pet Sounds box set you can hear Wilson talking between takes with Kaye, drummer Hal Blaine, and about thirty other musicians playing trumpets, xylophones, and Cheerios boxes. So cool.
What can you even say about Joy Division and bassist Peter Hook? One thing you can definitely say is that Peter Hook is about the greatest name you could ever have in a rock band. Joy Division were one of the tightest bands ever, and Hook was the driving force behind them. Flawless.
Selected Ambient Works 85-92 might be the album I've listened to the most over the past ten years or so. It is perfect. It is beyond reproach. Criticizing this album is like criticizing Morgan Freeman. You just don't do it. "Bucket List! Ohhhhh, loved it! Timeless classic!"
Aphex Twin is incredible, and there are 20-25 other tracks of his that I love, but SAW 85-92 is his Taj Mahal. The Taj Mahal in India, not Las Vegas. I'm trying to imbue my metaphor with a sense of grandeur and spiritual transcendence, as opposed to trashy hedonism and material excess masking existential dread.
Wait, what the hell was I talking about again? Oh yeah, Aphex Twin. What a guy. If the g word applies to anyone, then it's him. Wait, there's too many words that could be the g word. That doesn't work. I could be calling him a gangster, or a grinch. I actually mean genius. That word is pretty annoying and pretentious, but this guy is head, shoulders, and an overdeveloped clavicle above the rest of the electronic music scene.
I'm posting two youtubes. The first is of Agieospolis, from the aforementioned SAW 85-92. Beautiful song, with a subtle little breakdown at 2:08. If you like it at all, immediately get the album and start living the life you know you're capable of living. The other is of Bucephalus Bouncing Ball, which reveals the slightly tweakier side of Aphex Twin. It still has an amazing melody, especially at 1:32.
Not posted here is the Windowlicker video, a fairly inappropes, but incredible song and video. Well, the song isn't really inappropriate, but they're almost a package deal in this instance. In other news, I think committing myself to not using the backspace button for that post might have been a mistake.
Summer didn't feel real until yesterday. Yesterday I played four sets of tennis without the specter of essay grading hanging over me, I read a book (of my choosing!) in sunny Dolores Park, and I sipped on a beer on the back patio of a neighborhood bar. It was the perfect summer day. So I thought to myself that I have to post about the perfect summer album. It took me all of .368 seconds to think of XTC's Skylarking.
XTC was never really that commercially successful, but they wrote Beatles-level pop songs. I'm posting my three favorite tracks from their amazing album Skylarking. They wrote such clever lyrics. "Grass" is about a guy trying to get fresh with a girl who doesn't seem to be too interested. "Earn Enough for Us" is about a poor young guy just trying to make enough money to survive, and feeling thankful that his girl even stays with him. "Big Day" is awesome cause the music is so cheery and lush (the guitars that come in at 2:14 just kill me), but the lyrics make it the most cynical song about marriage ever written. I really want to post "Another Satellite" too, cause the xylophones are so freaking beautiful, but I gotta draw the line at three youtubes.
Some of my favorite lyrical snippets:
Grass: If you fancy we can buy an ice-cream cone Your mate has gone She didn't want to be alone I will pounce on you Just us and the Cuckoos You are helpless now Over and over we flatten the clover
Earn Enough for Us: I can take humiliation And hurtful comments from the boss I'm just praying by the weekend I can earn enough for us
Found a house that won't repair itself With it's windows cracking And a roof held together with holes Just because we're at the bottom of the ladder We shouldn't be sadder Than others like us Who have goals for the betterment of life Glad that you want to be my wife, but honest
Big Day: So you want to tie the knot Tie it tight, don't let it rot, the memory of this day Are you deafened by the bells Could be heaven, could be hell In a cell for two Big day come and big day go Life goes on after the show But will your love have the fire and glow Like on the big day Statistics they don't say a lot But can you keep what you have got forever together There's a lesson to be learnt Many fingers have been burnt with the touch of gold
If I was a lyricist, I would aspire to write lyrics like this. Pop music that doesn't make you feel like an orangutan with special needs!
!Spoiler-free post! I've resisted going into any depth about my Wire obsession on this blog, because at this point it's become very "Stuff White People Like" to jump on the "Wire is the Greatest Show Ever!" bandwagon. Well, there's a reason why this statement has become so tiresome and redundant, and that's because it is a correct opinion!
I first heard "Use Me" in the pilot episode of the Wire. It's the scene when D'Angelo Barksdale has just gotten out of jail, and he's talking to Avon and Stringer in the luxury suite of a club about what went wrong and got him in trouble. D'Angelo is such a great character, and it's an interesting beginning point for him considering how he evolves. I'm trying to keep it uber-vague for those who haven't seen the show. I'm getting giddy just writing about it. So amazing.
Beyond having three-dimensional characters, an intricate plot, yadda yadda yadda, there is amazing use of music in the show. I had heard the Withers classics like "Lean on Me" and "Ain't No Sunshine," but this song just came out of nowhere. It's so damn funky, between the keyboards, the acoustic guitar, Withers' soulful, masculine voice, and the ultra-cool drums. I love when everything but the drums and his vocals cut out during the chorus. The lyrics are also very clever and salacious in that special 70s way.
I'm posting both the studio version of the song and a great live performance. Below it is a completely non-spoiler Wire scene in which D'Angelo talks about The Great Gatsby.
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.
Four more days of school and I have to say goodbye to my sophomores. I taught freshman honors last year and I'm teaching sophomore honors this year, so I have about sixty kids for the second year in a row. I'm going to miss teaching them next year. I'm gonna miss the tiny little shy girl suddenly morphing into MC Lyte as she raps about Romeo forgetting all about Rosaline. I'm gonna miss my music club head constantly checking to see if I'm back from brunch yet, so he can rave about how amazing Can or Radiohead or Portishead is to me before class starts. I'm gonna miss giddy kids excitedly posing for Macbeth tableau vivant photos, then blowing my mind with their Photoshop skills on the final product. But most of all I'm gonna miss just teaching them every day.
On the really really really bright side, I don't have to grade essays for two and a half months, I'll have a new batch of awesome kids next year, and I'll still see a bunch of these kids through music club, class advisor, and helping out with the tennis team. And the good thing about teaching is, though students come and go, the teachers are always there, and the teachers at my school happen to be awesome people. So that works out.
This Pantha du Prince album is groovy. A sweet beat kicks in around the 1:00 mark, but it gets really great at 2:43. The whole album is very shimmery and metallic sounding. I went to a Napoleon Dynamite-themed party last night, and I feel like it's coloring my language a bit this morning. That and the fact that I was out till four a. m. We had an incredibly hard time getting a cab home. Thus I'm writing in very simple sentences and feel like a bit of a doofus. Oh well, I'm going to absolve myself (omg absolve, recovering some brain cells I must be!) of any responsibility for writing a good post considering how up the arse of an essay stack I am right now.
You know that melancholic feeling you get on a Sunday at the end of a really amazing weekend? It's not that I'm dreading Monday or anything, it's just that this weekend was so much fun, AND NOW IT'S OVER. It's like in sixth grade, when I used to have "double feature" sleep-overs with my friend, filled with vicious tetherball games, Legend of Zelda marathons, and our special version of Tron where we'd stick my friend's Dachsund in a backpack and run around his house late at night throwing pillows at each other and hitting lamps instead. There was always a certain twinge of sadness attached with going back home on Sunday, when all the fun was over.
This weekend my friends and I went to the Russian River, and it was a blast. We missed Bay to Breakers this year, but it was worth it. Wine tasting, canoeing, lounging in the jacuzzi, gorging on great food, playing stupid games. Good times.
One day last week I put on R. E. M. as I drove to school. I hadn't listened to them in a while, and it just blew my mind how many amazing songs they have. There are a lot of great bands out there, but a select few, like the Beatles, Stones, Smiths, R. E. M., and a few others have practically endless amounts of incredible songs in their catalog. I could include seventy-five Youtubes in this post, but that would be really annoying and take up a lot of space.
Talk About the Passion is off R. E. M.'s first full-length album, Murmur. I love Peter Buck's guitar playing in early REM so much. Perfect song, perfect album.
Find the River is off their (counts fingers) eighth studio album, Automatic for the People. AFTP was the first REM album I owned. Find the River is a little Terms of Endearment-ish, but it gets me every time. The backing vocals that kick in are so perfect.
I'm sitting here crushed underneath a stack of essays, but you know what I'm thinking about? Summer. In three weeks, school will be done and summer will begin. I love my job, but by the time the year ends our brains are swiss cheese and our nerves are frayed. I'll probably be taking classes and writing this summer, but it will be purely of my own volition! I will also be choosing to spend long afternoons at Zeitgeist baking in the sun and sipping on a cold beverage. I will also choose to go to Guerneville and laze down the Russian River in an inner tube, with a Coors Light in my hand and a smile on my face. I will also choose to go to several street fairs that offer mediocre art and slightly less mediocre meat on a stick. I will also choose to wander the streets of New York City - my old love that I resolve to meet up with for a yearly tryst.
As summer comes into focus, there are certain bands that typify these feelings of relaxation and contentment. Pavement is one of them. Pavement is reuniting for a tour this summer, and I'm hoping like crazy that I'll get to see them. They're the perfect summer band, and Gold Soundz is the perfect summer song. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
I had a dream last night with toooooooooooooons of KFC in it. All the teachers I work with were walking around our school, and there were huge trays of KFC items spread throughout. For some reason Michael Jordan was there. He kept taking all the green beans, which were of course the only healthy option available. I remember being very excited that I scored like five green beans at the end, which somehow made me feel better about what I had ingested beforehand. I remember Jordan being kinda testy.
When we were in high school, we had an open campus and could drive to get lunch. There was a KFC buffet very close to school, so of course we hit that up occasion(3 times a week)ally. The dangerous thing, however, was this damn left turn arrow coming back from KFC to the school. It would take so long, and of course the caravan of cars coming back would be late returning to school. There would be no cars coming for five minutes, and still that red arrow would leer at us as we heard Ms. Dorensen's voice croaking in our heads. One time we ran it, and the cops pulled over three cars! It was brutal.
One good thing that did come out of these rides was hearing Mary J. Blige in my friend Glyn's car for the first time. I was way more into classic rock, grunge, and rap at the time, but "What's the 411" was a perfect album. Soulful singing with the hip hop beats I already loved. What a combination. She had extra cred cause she did that great "You're All I Need" duet with Method Man. I love the end of "You Remind Me" when she really lets loose.
I obviously didn't listen to Erykah Badu until later, but what can you even say about her. The video for "On and On" showcases her unique voice and amazing style. Talk about an old soul, she seems like she's been alive for 400 years, but she's still the coolest woman in the room. Her new music is good, too, including a song and video where she walks down the streets of Dallas undressing and gets assassinated like JFK. This is the first song that got me into her, though, and it's still my favorite.
There are many drawbacks to being a music obsessive. Little things that really don't matter in the larger scheme of things really tend to annoy you. For instance, the fact that the "Corona" youtube says (Jackass theme) under the title. ACTUALLY, JACKASS, THIS SONG WAS WRITTEN ABOUT TWENTY YEARS BEFORE JACKASS, AND JACKASS DOESN'T EVEN PLAY D. BOON'S AMAZING VOCALS IN THE INTRO. See? Not really something I should be getting worked up about, but the caps almost lock by themselves.
Anyway, this is one of the greatest, most inspiring bands ever. Their documentary "We Jam Econo," is both the Rocky and Steel Magnolias of band documentaries. Inspiring and depressing at the same time. Makes me want to run to my Ipod dock and scream, "I can jog all the way to Texas and back, but D. Boon can't!!!!!!!!!!!"
"Corona" is obviously a brilliant track, and it's actually awesome that it got such great exposure through Jackass. But man, I love those vocals. Combine his voice with lyrics like: "The people will survive - In their environment - The dirt, scarcity, and the emptiness - Of our South - The injustice of our greed - The practice we inherit - The dirt, scarcity and the emptiness - Of our South - There on the beach -I could see it in her eyes - I only had a Corona - Five cent deposit." I don't know, if there's any band I could get truly emo about, it's this one.
"Anchor" and "Glory of Man" (listen to that guitar - sounds like a buzzsaw) are two more killers, but honestly this band was like what Guided by Voices was fifteen years later. They could crap out great songs. Double Nickels on the Dime has 44 tracks, and I usually skip two of them. I heart the Minutemen.
I first heard this Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (best name ever) song sans music video, and I fell in love instantly. I was driving and blaring it in my car, and I instantly started bobbing back and forth all cool like an '80s keyboard players. I was sure that once I did see the clip, it would completely live up to the coolness of this song.
Well, it did and it didn't. I'm not sure why they're separated by chain link partitions. Perhaps there are some federal regulations concerning the proximity of highly radioactive new wave awesomeness. The lead singer is so great, with his suit and Charades interpretations of the lyrics. When your video budget allows for an abandoned warehouse and a disassembled fence, all you really have are gesticulations and attitude.
The synth guy almost has the ultra-cool keyboard sway down. He's a little too herky-jerky to truly embody the detached, I'd rather be f*cking a supermodel look. He should have watched Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran for some tips. It's debatable whether Rhodes was actually a better keyboardist, but damn could he sway. I've posted "The Reflex," a criminally underrated Duran Duran track, as evidence of Rhodes' impeccable sway. The first glimpse is at 0:15.
It's kind of interesting to juxtapose OMD and Duran Duran. You see, OMD couldn't afford the fake wave that at 3:04 drenches the entire Duran Duran crowd caught in the rapture of Simon LeBon's completely unrealistic stage jumps and upon-closer-inspection-quite-mediocre dance moves. It really ends up looking more like a Sprite commercial than anything else, but the chorus is massive. And sweet fancy Moses does Andy Taylor, their guitarist, have a fierce mullet. Only in the '80s could a supposedly fashionable band like Duran Duran have a monstrosity like that in their music video.
Panda Bear is a member of the popular indie group Animal Collective. Try not to run screaming after that first sentence. Animal Collective has their moments, but can get grating if I listen to them for more than fifteen minutes at a time. This album, on the other hand, is pretty consistently amazing, and relies much less on dissonance and noises that make your ears bleed. My boy Panda is more about harmonies and really airy, uplifting (ascending uplifting, not Amy Grant uplifting) sounding music.
Bros is a really amazing song. Critics sometimes cite a Beach Boys influence, and it's pretty evident in this song. Unfortunately this is a shortened version of the track, but the only full version on Youtube has countless gaps in it. The guy who posted this video also added an apostrophe and made Bros possessive. It totally changes the meaning of the title! "Hey man. We're all bros here!" Feeling good, enjoying the music, relaxed vibe. "Hey man, get your hands off that! It's my bro's!" Woah! Step back! All of a sudden a little tension is creeping into this once tight-knit Animal Collective, and everyone's doing side projects. Looking for new "creative outlets." We all know how this story ends. All because of a damn apostrophe.
So it's Spring Break! I love teaching, but by the time the end of March rolls around, we all need a break. So on the Friday night kicking off Spring Break, we decided to go to a club. There was a hip hop dj spinning, but I didn't expect much. Most djs in San Francisco play danceable music, but nothing that gets me insanely excited. When I heard that the title of the night was "Golden Era of Hip Hop: 88-94," however, I got really intrigued. That was when I really got into hip hop, and though I dig some newer artists like Madvillain, Blackalicious, etc., the majority of rap I listen to is either from that era or originated from that era (IE Ghostface, Dr. Octagon).
Wow, this night totally went off. Not only was DJ Apollo a great dj, never letting a song get played out before he brought another one in, but every freaking song was a classic. Wu Tang, Gangstarr, Mobb Deep, Tribe, Beasties, De La Soul, Black Sheep, Snoop, Notorious B. I. G., Pharcyde, and even slightly more obscure stuff like Jeru the Damaja and Main Source. I was in heaven. Best way to kick off a much-needed Spring Break.
One absolute favorite of mine he played was 93 'Til Infinity by Souls of Mischief. I didn't grow up listening to a ton of West Coast rap, but this album has been a favorite since high school. Sometimes when an album has a "chill" vibe to it the beats are languid and the rapping is blah, but this album is the opposite. So good.
The Fugees were the Cream of rap. Cream were a "super-group" in the 60s with Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce, and they were just better than everyone else. The Fugees were also, in a nutshell, better than everyone else. And even from inside that nutshell, Lauryn Hill's greatness was evident. That started off as a stupid joke ripped from Austin Powers, but now I'm thinking on this really deep level about her relationship with Wyclef. Anyway, she has an amazing voice, is a great rapper, and is so beautiful. No wonder she owned the world for a second there.
Chief Rocka is another absolutely classic track. The combination of that sick horn sample, the great beat alternating between bassy and echoey, the scratching in the chorus, and the rhyming make this legendary. I love rappers like Grand Puba and ODB that have distinctive voices, and a couple of the guys in this group do too. I really hope DJ Apollo is based in SF, cause if he is then I'm basically gonna stalk him.
I need to make a bit more effort in finding new rap artists. I finally heard Cannibal Ox the other day, and I was digging him. I just LOVE the "Golden Era" so much, and most mainstream hip hop is so corny that I forget that you gotta dig pretty deep to find the great stuff in most genres anyway.
The first two things that came to mind when I heard the beginning of "Behind the Mask" were Jane Fonda's Workout and old Nintendo music. Then that melody at 0:33 came in and I got chills all over. The end is great too, when he vocodes, "is it me, is it you behind this mask i ask, is it me, is it you who wears another face." This song NEVER gets old and sometimes makes me a little verklempt. And how cool is the freaking stage setup in this video?
The second youtube is the music video for Rydeen, a really great song that is also on the album Solid State Survivor. Considering this video came out in 1979/1980, it is all kinds of amazing. My favorite video section is the breakdown at 2:33, when the group members mimic the synthesizer sounds with ray guns. My favorite song section is at 0:47 when the high-pitched synths lead into the 1:00 tunnel of awesomeness punctuated by the "DI DI LING DI DI LING!." It is really ridiculous how I describe music on this blog, huh? Love this group so much!
I was born in Paris, but only lived there for two years. Once I moved to the States, I only heard French being spoken sporadically. Still, to this day, whenever I hear French, my mind starts to melt. I'm like Jamie Lee Curtis with Italian in A Fish Called Wanda. Well, I don't exactly want to rip my clothes off, it's more of a crazy deja vu rush while simultaneously marveling at the beauty of the language.
The first clip, by Francoise Hardy, is just smooth. Her voice, the strings, the little trumpet "Bum bum bum bum bum" that plays off her vocals, It never breaks a sweat.
This Jacques Brel (he's actually Belgian, but he sings in French) clip is amazing because not only does he have an incredible voice and write great lyrics, he also emotes and gesticulates like a performance artist. The lyrics are a bit off in this translation: he is "hearing" the chief office "on" his ass, he "hears" the voice all the time, the voice is smelling "of" garlic and bad alcohol.
Finally, France Gall is just a lot of fun. She was a teen idol of sorts in France, but her songs are really good. Note: I'll deal with Serge Gainsbourg in another post, he can't be contained in this one.
Tonight is the Firestone reunion back in Florida. Firestone is a club my friends and i used to go to back in the day. I normally wouldn't have thought twice about the reunion, but I recently stumbled on a facebook group that has tons of old breakbeat mixes on it. Other than that Beach House record I've been completely obsessed with, these old mixes have been pretty much all I've been listening to lately.
I've become a little bit nostalgic about the ole rave days lately. Don't get me wrong, I love San Francisco and being in my 30s and an adult and all that, but man were those days fun. A combination of being completely carefree to the point of borderline idiocy, having a really tight group of friends that all lived within two hours of each other and were always down to party on the weekends, and a music scene that was pretty freaking exciting at the time.
I kinda wrote off that music after I stopped going to clubs. I started listening to tons of different genres, exploring more "sophisticated" electronic music, and just kind of forgot about breaks. But returning to these old records made me realize that some of these songs still hold up. Maybe some of them aren't exactly nuggets of musical genius, but the beats are great and I still totally get off on great mixes.
These are two of my favorite tracks of all time. The first one, Security, is from way back in '86, and it's really more of an old freestyle/electro track. That's one of the cool things about breaks djs, they'll thrown in songs like this all of the time. This song gets nuts at 1:04, when it breaks down and gets all funky. So good.
I can totally remember hearing A-1 Love at Firestone. It's one of those songs that sounds particularly insane at a club. Firestone is a big club, with great lights, and when this song blows up it sounds like the world is ending. The part at 3:37 is so psychotic, it sounds like some sort of apocalyptic science fiction natural disaster. I love it!
I had no idea who Sandy Denny was when I was a kid. Like 99.3% of the male pre-teen population of the universe I was a huge Led Zeppelin fan, so I only knew her from those random Lord of the Rings lyrics she sang on Battle of Evermore. Her vocals were great, but I had no inclination at that point to explore any music outside of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Who, the Doors, and Jimi Hendrix. I think when boys start getting acne and trying to score they also begin to realize that there is actually music outside of the 100 song classic rock radio rotation.
Fairport Convention is an amazing British folk group, and this song, with its sweeping tale of a servant lad who scores noble tail and eventually pays for it, is a gem. I heard a bluegrass tune with the same melody at a concert, so I'm assuming it is an old standard that has been passed down through the years. Denny's voice is so incredibly badass, especially when she sings lines like, "But if I am Lord Donald's wife, Lord Donald's not at home. He is out in the far cornfields bringing the yearlings home." The bass and drum set that great tempo, with the fiddle and guitar slinking around in the background. Love this song so much.
Everything I love about music is encapsulated in 1:22-2:22 of this song. The whole song (and album) is amazing, but this section makes me physically high. Keyboards out of an 80s song, Kim-Carnes-without-the-cigarettes vocals, lush sounding guitar, propulsive drums, and production that brings it all together into this mushy haze of dreaminess that I want to float around inside for a year or two. It's also unabashedly emotional, like Arcade Fire without all the deaths in the family. What a freaking voice Victoria Legrand has.
I keep saying to myself, "I must not play this record out. I must not play this record out." But it's like when I accidently take a thirty minute shower. I just stand there, hot water pounding on my head, my mind in a haze, and there's really nowhere else I'd rather be. So I start a countdown to 50, and when I get to 50 I'm gonna get out of the shower. But then I get to 49 and I still don't want to get out. So at 49 I go to 49.1 and after 49.9 I still don't want to get out. So I go to 49.91 and I know I'm in trouble. That's how good this record is. Listen to it.
In honor of Valentine's Day, I decided to write a song for my main squeeze.
Dunkin' My Dear
Dunkin Donuts, your coffee tastes like candy, Dunky Donuts, my heart is so randy For the sweet sweet loving that you always bring, Our love affair is no brief fling, But you’re so far away, 3,000 long miles, Why do you torment me, and silence my smiles,
I’ve never been a fan of long distance loves Other coffee suitors, they come to me in droves, But I push them away, too mainstream, too snobby, They’re a passing fancy but you’re my real hobby, But these West Coast fools don’t know coffee from Adam, When I bring you to my lips, my eyelashes I bat ‘em.
Oh Dunkin Donuts, you got me forever, If you wanted me to, I would dress up in leather, Put a ball gag in my mouth and drink you through a drip, Soak up your greatness, intravenous sip by sip.
Oh Dunkin Donuts, I surrender to you. Pot after pot, I wish I could brew. But I just can’t seem to get it right on my own. Oh pretty baby, can’t find my way home.
Dunkin Donnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnutttttssss (repeat ad infinitum with some random “doo doo doo doo doo, come on and lick it up!”s thrown in here and there).
Btw i know loves doesn't rhyme with droves, I'm going for the Eno China-Regina thing there. :p Wait, now this seems like I put a lot of forethought and effort into this, which will screw me in the likely event that this blows. Forget what I just said.
In honor of Valentine's Day, I thought I would post about a song bemoaning the torturous end of a relationship! Suck on that, Kay Jewelers! For cereal, though, what a song. Stephen Merritt (Magnetic Fields is him and some musicians he works with) made a triple album called 69 Love Songs (omg, get it?), and at least 45 of them are drop dead gorgeous. His lyrics are clever in a really unique way. Nobody writes like him. Sure, he throws some cliches into this song, but he can write a song that's completely earnest and tongue-in-cheek at the same time.
On another note, why do people make Youtube videos like this? I don't want to see the Beaver getting run over by a Studebaker while I'm enjoying this sweet tune. It totally distracts me. People need to ease back on the Youtube artsiness, especially when it directly conflicts with a song that is about 75,000 rungs higher on the creative ladder. That sounds snobby, but so be it!
Badass is a much-maligned term. If you say it, it's corny, and if you try to embody it, you usually end up looking like a tool. An over the hill accountant wearing a pristine leather jacket and straddling a twenty thousand dollar Harley is probably not badass. A scrawny nineteen year old with a silver chain, brand new kicks, and jeans five sizes too large is probably not badass, either (that was me, btw). Badass cannot be found on an episode of Jersey Shore. Though perhaps badass is in the eye of the beholder, and as ridiculous as Ronnie D and The Situation look to some, maybe the fact that they are so convinced that they are badass makes them badass. I can't believe I said that word so many times in one paragraph.
If the word badass was in the dictionary, an audioclip of this performance would play. From the old horror movie organ as theremin intro, to the massive beat that drops out of nowhere, to the DJ's stuttering scratching, to Beth Gibbons' haunted vocals, to the insane acoustics of that venue, to the horns, bass, and strings that add to the creepiness. The bass especially, that complements the beat with the "DOOM DOOM DOOM DOOM!"
The section at 4:10 is great, with the beat cutting out, Gibbons' piling on strindbergandhelium.com adjectives like unresolved and unredeemed, and the orchestra enhancing the morbidity. The beat kicks back in, we get a great shot of Gibbons singing, and the dj doubles up on the beat and starts scratching again. Basically, give me weird sounds, beats, and female vocals, and I'm good to go.
Dummy is my favorite Portishead album, but they're all great. They FINALLY came out with a new record a couple of years ago, and they've still got it! P. S. Is it ironic that the week after I post about Salinger I go on what basically amounts to a rant about phonies? I promise it was just a vehicle to discuss this song.
As everyone knows, J. D. Salinger died this week. Catcher in the Rye was always my favorite book growing up, and I loved some of his other writing as well. I taught Catcher this year for the first time in a while, and it was really great seeing some of my students also connect with his writing. True, Holden is annoying and jaded, but there is so much love in that book, and most of Salinger's other writing. You can really tell how much he loved kids.
If I had a gun to my head, I would probably also say that Pet Sounds is my favorite album (though the person holding the gun would probably ask for money instead of my favorite album). There's a lot of sadness in the Beach Boys music, but there's also a lot of love. "You Still Believe in Me" has always been one of my favorites. It's so lush, the harmonies are of course brilliant, and Brian Wilson makes it sound like a kid's song by adding in the bike bell and horn. Wilson was only 24 when this album was made! All but two songs on this album are absolutely knock-you-on-your-ass spectacular, and the other two are very good.
"Surf's Up" might be the saddest Beach Boys song, along with "Caroline, No." But wow, so amazing. My favorite part is at 3:12, the "Child is the father of the man" section. Gives me gigantic chills every time. Also don't forget how amazing their early songs are, like "Warmth of the Sun," "Don't Worry, Baby," and "Please Let Me Wonder."
There aren't many songs and books that can bring me to tears, but dammit, I'm man enough to admit when they do! Salinger and the Beach Boys both can do this. I have so many favorite parts in Catcher in the Rye, one of them being when Phoebe insists on keeping the broken pieces of the Little Shirley Beans record Holden bought for her. But I'm gonna post an excerpt towards the end of the book, because it sums up how listening to the Beach Boys sometimes makes me feel. Happy, sad, and completely in awe.
"Aren't you gonna ride, too?" she asked me. She was looking at me sort of funny. You could tell she wasn't too sore at me any more. "Maybe I will the next time. I'll watch ya," I said. "Got your ticket?" "Yes." "Go ahead, then--I'll be on this bench right over here. I'll watch ya." I went over and sat down on this bench, and she went and got on the carrousel. She walked all around it. I mean she walked once all the way around it. Then she sat down on this big, brown, beat-up-looking old horse. Then the carrousel started, and I watched her go around and around. There were only about five or six other kids on the ride, and the song the carrousel was playing was "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." It was playing it very jazzy and funny. All the kids kept trying to grab for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she'd fall off the goddam horse, but I didn't say anything or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything to them. When the ride was over she got off her horse and came over to me. "You ride once, too, this time," she said. "No, I'll just watch ya. I think I'll just watch," I said. I gave her some more of her dough. "Here. Get some more tickets." She took the dough off me. "I'm not mad at you any more," she said. "I know. Hurry up--the thing's gonna start again." Then all of a sudden she gave me a kiss. Then she held her hand out, and said, "It's raining. It's starting to rain." "I know." Then what she did--it damn near killed me--she reached in my coat pocket and took out my red hunting hat and put it on my head. "Don't you want it?" I said. "You can wear it a while." "Okay. Hurry up, though, now. You're gonna miss your ride. You won't get your own horse or anything." She kept hanging around, though. "Did you mean it what you said? You really aren't going away anywhere? Are you really going home afterwards?" she asked me. "Yeah," I said. I meant it, too. I wasn't lying to her. I really did go home afterwards. "Hurry up, now," I said. "The thing's starting." She ran and bought her ticket and got back on the goddam carrousel just in time. Then she walked all the way around it till she got her own horse back. Then she got on it. She waved to me and I waved back. Boy, it began to rain like a bastard. In buckets, I swear to God. All the parents and mothers and everybody went over and stood right under the roof of the carrousel, so they wouldn't get soaked to the skin or anything, but I stuck around on the bench for quite a while. I got pretty soaking wet, especially my neck and my pants. My hunting hat really gave me quite a lot of protection, in a way; but I got soaked anyway. I didn't care, though. I felt so damn happy all of sudden, the way old Phoebe kept going around and around. I was damn near bawling, I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth. I don't know why. It was just that she looked so damn nice, the way she kept going around and around, in her blue coat and all. God, I wish you could've been there.
(Sorry for the blob - I got it online and there were no paragraph breaks)
I could blog about any song on this album, because it is immaculate. Prince is to music what macaroni and cheese is to irrational late night food cravings. I don't know if that works, but I'm going with it. This is the first album i got into as a really young kid that I still worship to this day, and that speaks to just how amazing it is. His music appeals to kids, to critics, to rock fans, to funk fans, to Midwesterners (who aren't Tipper Gore), to New Yorkers. It speaks to the brain, it speaks to the hips, it speaks to the crotch. Even my Dad, who was about as into music as he was into sports (read: not at all - he was an art guy), loved this record.
My favorite part is 1:38, when Prince starts shredding on the solo. Then it works up to the climax, and at 2:10 it smooooooooooooooooooooooooths out. Aw yeeeeeeeeeeeeeah. That's a whole lot of puddin. So good. Then there's the whole nebulous lesbian (omg!) bath scene at the very beginning. I'm sure that made Tipper nervous. Personally, I had no idea what the hell that was about when I first heard the record. I was 10 years old and probably thought it part of some groundbreaking new recording process. "Wow, they sound like they're really in the zone!!!!!"
Prince has made so much amazing music. Dirty Mind is such an incredible record, and if you thought Purple Rain was racy, umm... haha. I personally think the Under the Cherry Moon soundtrack, which everybody shat on when it came out, is really great. Mountains (ugh, what a song!) Girls and Boys, etc. Sign of the Times is an incredible double album, packed with amazing songs. Etc., etc., etc.
I was lucky enough to see Prince live at the Filmore in San Francisco. It was the best concert I have ever seen. He might be doing slightly embarrassing things now like writing ill-advised songs for the Minnesota Vikings, but absolutely nothing can tarnish the amazing legacy he has created. I'm gonna stop now.
Last night I saw Crazy Heart, a film in which Jeff Bridges plays a burnt-out country legend as effectively as he played the Dude in The Big Lebowski. In other words, he is amazing. In it, a journalist asks him if there are any "real" country music artists around anymore. I wish he'd given a more direct answer, because while I love some old country like Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, and Johnny Cash, I haven't heard much new stuff that grabs me. I'm sure it's out there somewhere.
I don't know if I'd go so far as to call Neko Case a country artist, but there's definitely some elements of country in her music. One thing I can say is, DAMN, can Neko Case sing. Something about her voice reminds me of Patsy Cline. I also like how she has the kind of voice that you'd expect to sing love songs, but her songs usually only deal peripherally with love. One lyric from this album is, "The next time you say forever, I will punch you in the face." My favorite (probably... I think... right now) song by her, "Star Witness," is about a murder.
I first fell in love with her solo work (she used to be in a great "power-pop" band called The New Pornographers) on her last album, "Fox Confessor Brings the Flood." I was lucky enough to see her live on that tour, and it was amazing. Overall I think I prefer that album, but they're both very good. See her live if you ever have the chance!
Now that I'm freed from my somewhat self-imposed "nothing but new music" Florida stint, I'm back to mixing the "old" music with the newer stuff. I had fun trying out some new albums on the trip, but I missed the classics. There are a lot of interesting bands out today, but I have yet to hear anyone these days that can bring it quite like Funkadelic.
Parliament and Funkadelic were "sister" bands in the 70s. Both were amazing, but Parliament was more of a singles band, so they received more attention. But they never came out with a full album that could rival Maggot Brain. One of the greatest things about this album is how much musical territory it covers. The first song, the title track, is a ten minute long instrumental, featuring one of the best and most emotional guitar solos ever (seriously, listen to it, it's amazing). And then this song kicks in and the mood of the album gets flipped on its head. The rest of the album is an amazing mix of rock, funk, r & b, soul, etc.
And talk about a freaking album cover. Doesn't get much better than that.
I went and saw Paul McCartney last night. We had truly awful seats, but we got the seats for $60 at the last minute, so we were just happy to be there. But all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a miracle occurred. Apparently there was more room down on the floor than they had expected, so we got moved down to the 12th row! Joy! It was an amazing show. 
