Rusko ft. Amber Coffman - Hold On (Sub Focus Remix)/Lenzman - Masquerade/Chase & Status - Judgement

Recently, within the span of a week, all 10,000 songs somehow vanished from my ipod, and my hard drive on my laptop crashed. Being the doofus that I am, I had only backed up N-Z, and that was about a year and a half ago. Needless to say, I was and still am crushed. How crushed, you ask? Imagine if your goofy little puppy Bobo with the floppy ears suddenly spontaneously combusted. Or if your 300 page thesis fell down a drainage ditch and some homeless guy stole it. Oh wait, Joe Pesci actually did that.

I sent my hard drive to data recovery, but it's not really working out. I feel like Sally Field when she's doing calisthenics with a hopelessly comatose Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias. I KNOW YOU'RE BUCKING FOR AN OSCAR HERE, BUT PULL THE FREAKING PLUG ALREADY (I'm mining the movie references a little hard here, my apologies). Part of me tries to put a positive spin on it. You'll be forced to revitalize your collection! Get some remastered versions of old albums! Sure, that all sounds good. I just wish someone could convince my heart!

There was one fortuitous confluence of events that occurred. At pretty much the exact time that I was losing all this music, I downloaded a bunch of drum & bass and dubstep. I've been listening to it somewhat obsessively lately. Back in the day I almost listened exclusively to breaks, save the occasional Roni Size or Goldie CD, but now I'm almost a complete convert.

The first track is more dubstep than drum & bass, and it's so freaking good. 1:07-2:13 is out of control. Only small complaint is that it sort of repeats the same section twice, but it's not that hard to forgive considering how great it sounds. The second track is a great drum and bass track, with surprisingly soulful vocals. It's usually annoying when a DJ talks over the record, but it's alright cause it's from a podcast, and DJ Friction's accent kinda rules. 1:26 = yessssssss. Massive choon! I dig the third track cause the atmospherics are so freaking dark. When the beat drops at 1:08. Filthy.

NOTE: These songs (especially the last one) are soooo much better when mixed, and not listened to in a vacuum. If you enjoy the tracks, this is a great DJ Friction mix: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IUMNWI9W

Sparks - This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us/Thank God It's Not Christmas

The Minutemen, the Smiths, and the Sparks probably write the best song titles. The Minutemen have Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing, Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Truth?, and The Roar of the Masses Could be Farts, among others. The Smiths have That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore, Girlfriend in a Coma, and Shoplifters of the World Unite, to name a few. The Sparks have the two featured in this post along with Falling In Love With Myself Again, Angst in My Pants, and Rock and Roll People in a Disco World. Stellar. But what about the songs themselves?!?!

Sometimes the Sparks can be a little patchy, but Kimono My House is great throughout. Funny lyrics, solid guitars, and great vocals. I love the lyrics and insane grandeur of the singing in this part of Thank God It's Not Christmas.

"If this were the Seine
We'd be very suave
But it's just the rain
Washing down the boulevard

Thank God it's not Christmas
When there is only you
And nothing else to do
Thank God it's not Christmas
Where there's just you to do
The rest is closed to public view"

Visually, the band is also intriguing. There's the initial shock of finding out that the singer is actually a guy, along with the unnerving stare of the Hitler look-alike keyboard player. Their songs are so over-the-top that this album could practically be a Broadway play. I know I'd go see it.

Ariel Pink - Round and Round

Admittedly, I don't really know anything about Ariel Pink. He might as well be Ariel from The Little Mermaid for all I know. I've always been partial to Jessica Rabbit, myself.

This song just sounds like a mish-mash of a bunch of different samples, but it works! I especially love the chorus at 1:59. This song doesn't necessarily inspire that much confidence that the rest of the album maintains this quality, but we'll see. It got some pretty positive reviews. Until then, I'll just go out on a limb and say this is the best song named "Round and Round" since Ratt's classic 80s track. Remember that video with Milton Berle?! You know you do!

Prince - Mountains/X - Your Phone's Off the Hook/English Beat - Save it for Later/Lisa Lisa - Lost in Emotion

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.

Dj Friction & Dynamite MC live at EDC 2010

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.

Rolling Stones - Under My Thumb/Sister Morphine/Rocks Off/Torn and Frayed

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.

Bat For Lashes - Glass

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!

Ultramagnetic MCs - Ease Back/Dr. Octagon - Halfsharkalligatorhalfman/Bear Witness/98 Year Old Refrigerator

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.

Pere Ubu - Street Waves/Waiting for Mary

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!

Scott Walker - The Old Man's Back Again/Marvin Gaye - Inner City Blues/Beach Boys - Sloop John B./ Joy Divison - Transmission

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.

Aphex Twin - Agiespolis/Bucephalus Bouncing Ball

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.

XTC - Grass/ Earn Enough for Us/Big Day

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!

Bill Withers - Use Me & a scene from The Wire

!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.

Massive Attack - Unfinished Sympathy/Protection/Mezzanine

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.

Pantha Du Prince - Satellite Sniper

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.

R. E. M. - Talk About the Passion/Find the River

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.

Pavement - Gold Soundz

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.

Mary J. Blige - You Remind Me/Erykah Badu - On & On

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.

Minutemen - Corona/Anchor/Glory of Man

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.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Messages/Duran Duran - The Reflex

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.