Where pop culture meets geek culture and they make out a little.
Music
My Baby My Darling at Dusk
May 11th
I was out the door in the morning. There was a trip to the DMV followed by errands all around town. There was that sharp and sometimes multiple popping and cracking sound when I stretched my neck and shoulders by the time it was dusk, vivid and beautiful and languid. I wanted dinner, and a beer if there was one in the fridge. There was still the drive home, though. Music, that’s going to help. Put something on and hey, why not something new which I’ve never heard before? Expand the musical tastes. She & Him Volume Two? Okay.
She & Him: Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward
First track. “Thieves.” It was melancholy, and it was sweet. Bittersweet sometimes. The thought of the follies and pain of inexperience that bring us to take chances with our emotions that almost break us. Words and choices whose effect could have been weighed better. An afternoon with fingers entwined and there would be tickets in an envelope placed carefully in one of our backpacks for a show later on that night. Chasing pigeons and lunch in a small deli in a corner and then dinner afterwards. Look around the wall and Al Pacino used to come here for his favorite sandwich. Then there would be words and choices and no, they cannot be unsaid nor undone.
Then there was the next track, “In The Sun,” which brought back those memories of old high school crushes. Coming off the bus and look around, is that her bus over there and maybe I can catch a chance to smile at her if I wait in that one part of the hallway that she passes by sometimes. Some days I did. Then there were the mornings when I did see her. And she smiled. And there was the pain of a crush that’s not returned but there was also that rush of blood to the cheeks because she smiled and it was sincere and honest. I watched the video for this song later on, watching Deschanel and crew dancing behind an oblivious M. Ward, because how else do you feel inside when a crush passes by and you play it straight until they’ve passed? I hear the opening and I laugh because it makes me want to find a nice girl to skip down a hall with.
Bittersweet. Melancholy. And through the simple sound of Deschanel’s voice and the playful melodies, wonderful as well. Like a salve, you know, succeeding in unifying all of these experiences and their inevitability and saying, perhaps, that it is all ultimately wonderful?
The Advantage of Appreciation
Nov 3rd
I’m probably one of many people who got a Nintendo Entertainment System when I was little. That was big. Being able to play Super Mario Brothers whenever I wanted was like some divine dream. Many other games came after that. Some were great and some were not so great. I remember enjoying the hell out of most of them for reasons I didn’t think about. It was just fun. I saw each game as a whole package. It’s like when you’re little and you listen to music and hear it as a whole, then later on you start to differentiate each instrument and appreciate them more.
So then new systems came and went, and I think I always took the same kind of enjoyment out of everything (probably) until games started to have real bands doing the music and there being cut sequences and such. I even had the occasional nostalgia trip with an old console or emulator (still do sometimes). But it wasn’t really until I heard a band called “The Advantage” that I really became impressed with the music of 8 bit video games.
I don’t remember how I first heard The Advantage, but I remember being instantly shocked at their musicianship. The Advantage is a band that only performs video game cover music (NES covers specifically). Somehow I got wind of their first album (self-titled) and was amazed. I had never realized how potent the music was. When it finally dawned on me, I realized that the music for these 8 bit games has to be looped (for one thing). It also has to be catchy and never, ever get old. Didn’t A.D.D. rise to prominence around the same time as video games? Somehow, those Japanese composers created lots of music like this, and it was flying over the heads of kids like me in the late 80’s and early 90’s.
So the change from composer to cover artist was through instrumentation. The Advantage seem to have painstakingly worked to recreate these old songs with guitars and drums rather than 8 bit waves and blips. The music becomes even more potent because of the fullness of the instruments (not to mention the faithful recreation of the original songs). And this is all from guys who really did notice how good the music was. From this, they created their band (which is a side project for each member) to play those songs they loved as kids and to give game fans an awesome nostalgia trip.
I know that I enjoyed the music when I was little. I just didn’t think about it. It was in with everything else. One big ball of silly putty. It just took a few musicians (who did differentiate those things) to create something nostalgic and jarring that would snap me into realizing it. The musicians and instruments changed, but the music (by skills of the band) is as good as it ever was.
**The Advantage have released two official albums and a promo cd that was only available at shows (and online in some places). I’ve heard that they are all involved in new bands at the moment. Their myspace account hasn’t had any updates in quite some time and their official website, sadly, is long gone.**
The Exposure Whine
Oct 14th
As I sit here at my computer, thinking about this weeks subject, “overblown”, a number of recent occurrences come to mind. One of which is the recent release of a few cubic feet of Beatles merchandise. I like the Beatles. I feel that they live up to their colossal, perpetual hype and adoration. But after hearing all of their albums enough times to develop the ability to mentally play most of them back Andy Dufresne style, there’s only so much of the Fab Four I wish to hear, or hear about. Their legacy paired with the continuation of human reproduction will afford them an eternity of remastering, redigitizing, recompiling, merchandising, and whatever else can be done to make the music sound better, honor them, and please their fans (or generate money). But that’s all I really have to say about the subject.
Another recent thing I could talk about is Kanye West and his overblown ego. But this subject is so overblown, I’m sure the sight of the word “Kanye” causes various instant ocular diseases. So nevermind.
I suppose amongst all current things overblown, I have the strongest opinion about one relating to the new Guitar Hero game, “Guitar Hero 5”.
After hearing that Kurt Cobain would be a “playable character” in GH5 (and later hearing that Courtney Love was upset about it. Surprise surprise!) I went over to Wikipedia to check out the song list for the game. Lo and behold, one of my favorite artists, Elliott Smith was amongst the artists on the new roster. (If you haven’t heard of Elliott Smith, you’re probably in the majority. He was, more or less, an under-the-radar singer-songwriter on the indie “Killrockstars” label. He is probably most well known for his song “Miss Misery” on the Good Will Hunting soundtrack and for “Needle In the Hay” on the Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack.)
My first reaction to something like this is almost always a positive one. I love Elliott Smith and I’ve enjoyed Guitar Hero to a fair degree, so this is a good thing to me.
The song in question is called “L.A.”. Since Elliott Smith has about one billionth of the exposure that the Beatles have, I don’t know every song name and melody like the back of my hand. So to refresh me on exactly which song “L.A.” was, I went over to Youtube to check it out. Ah, that one. Okay, awesome… but then I scroll down to the comments.
Every other post seems to be about how all the little snot-nosed 15 year olds are going to start liking Elliott Smith now, talking about how they can “5-star” his song, thus “ruining” him for all of us old fans. Us old proud fans that found Mr. Smith when so many others didn’t and it was so special that he was ours and he was sacred and beautiful and blah blah blah. This is such a common overreaction of people in a billion other similar circumstances. “Their” underground or unknown band, movie, hangout, book, or whatever has become endangered by exposure, and more other people are going to start liking it and talking about it. If I can quote Dr. Evil: “Boo frickety-hoo!”.
Are those things any less entertaining after other people have gained knowledge of them? Really? It just seems to me that if you really like something enough to complain about its exposure on a website, the subsequent media and peer blatherings shouldn’t affect your love of that something (unless of course, you’re being inundated with it).
P.S. I can sympathize with the fear of a band going mainstream and becoming mundane pop, because it’s happened with some bands that were the ideal for an underground love. But Elliott Smith is dead. It’s not going to happen this time. (Some might argue that it did happen before he died. These people are musical elitists. Don’t tell them who your favorite band is.)
How I learned to Fall in Love and Inevitably Lose that Love in about 3 minutes: Or Iron & Wine
Sep 11th
Call me a pessimist but when I think of first love I think entirely of a love that was lost. This may, in fact, be because I lost my first love relatively recently. Directly after the break up absolutely everything would devastate me. And I mean everything….I seem to recall a particularly proud moment of mine while at work when checking out someone buying an Animal Collective CD. The mere sight of the record (Feels) had me running teary eyed from the registers, leaving behind a thoroughly confused and abandoned customer. The days of such easy sense memory triggers are over now though. Nowadays it takes just the right cue to get me going; and more times than not that trigger is musical. Furthermore to really hit that especially exquisite feeling of overwhelming love mixed with overwhelming loss I have to listen to Iron and Wine.
Sam Beam’s music is not just deeply immersed in my relationship with my first love (i.e. a first kiss tracked against “Each Coming Night”). For me, it is first love itself. I fall deeply in love with Beam’s voice every time I hear it. Disregarding his poetic lyrics for a moment, his voice alone washes over the listener like warm milk nd honey (to borrow Kerouac’s description of being high atop a mountain in Dharma Bums). Yet, inevitably, one cannot disentangle the beauty of Beam’s voice from his profoundly moving lyrics. “Naked as We Came,” for instance, is able to evoke, in the mind’s eye, a breath taking scene of a couple lying in bed (after making love, of course) covertly discussing how they will be together forever. Beam softly sings, “She says if I leave before you darling don’t you waste me in the ground/ I lay smiling like sleeping children/ One of us will die inside these arms/ Eyes wide open/ Naked as we came/ One will spread our ashes round the yard”. Beam is able to do what countless other musicians and filmmakers fail to do (and continue to fail to do when they attempt to combine Beam’s music with sappy love scenes…I’m looking in your direction Twilight Franchise). He is able to reproduce a moment where true love lies- in the seemingly unimportant moments, in love infused tête-à-têtes.
My ex-boyfriend once said that Beam could write such romantically awe-inspiring music because he must be living in some type of familial bliss. For all my failed relationships, I’d like to believe that Beam lives what he preaches. It would be more appropriate, though, for Beam to be suffering with the rest of us who have loved and lost. The eventuality of loosing love appears to be a reoccurring theme in Beam’s songs. For, as “Naked as we Came” plainly states “one of us will die…” The end of love is inevitable. That appears to be the true and honest beauty of his music. Even in Beam’s ability to evoke the breathtaking and heart swelling beauty of love, he simultaneously presents the inevitable end of that love. Whether the death of that love is of natural causes or of irregular (and devastating) complications, it will, in fact, end. And thus, there lies the essence of the concept of first love- it’s overpoweringly wonderful but unfortunately it must end; for it is merely the first and not the only.
Oedipa Wheeler
Internet Music 101 – 4 Effective Ways of Finding New Music on the Internets
Sep 6th
I guess I can’t really claim that all of my favorite bands were found after getting a computer with internet. Well, I could, but I don’t think it would be 100% due to that. But it probably is.
Anyway, back in 1999 I was a senior In high school. While swirling brilliant galaxies of amazing music were sitting on store shelves (there used to be stores that actually sold cds, kids!), I was living in the cardboard box of KROQ. I loved Foo Fighters, Static X, Sublime, Blink 182, System of a Down, P.O.D., and a bunch of other bands that I would rarely give a chance today. While these are not all terrible bands per se, I feel that they made a crappy musical boundary for a person my age.
It wasn’t until I graduated that I finally had the opportunity to get my grubby hands on a crappy little Compaq pc that I bought from Best Buy. Oh, if I could have a conversation with my former self. I was forever changed. Now I could easily check out all kinds of new (and old) stuff, without any hassle. (incidentally, I’m typing this on my compaq laptop that has held up for quite a while).
In the time that has passed, I’ve found a few ways to locate new music that have worked well for me. Here they are in no order:
This is the kind of thing people probably talked about long before it ever existed.
Pandora is a website where you can input a band or song name and get a streamed radio station of similar songs by different artists. It’s free and is likely to yield results of which you’ve never heard. In fact, I’ve heard a few people who get frustrated with it because they like some of the artists, but can’t find the music anywhere else. If you get a song or artist that you don’t like, or don’t agree is similar, simply give it the thumbs down, and it’ll never show up again.
As an example, I’ve put in an artist I know Kilian enjoys: White Rabbits. The first song Pandora plays is always from the band you first type in. In this case, it’s “Kid on My Shoulders” from the album “Fort Nightly”. The text that pops up illustrates “electric rock instrumentation, a subtle use of vocal harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, acoustic rhythm piano, and minor key tonality”. These are the aspects for which it will find matches in future song plays.
The second song to come up is “Conquest” by Tapes ‘n Tapes. There are some matching aspects listed in the popup, but not all of them are exactly the same, though, the similarities are even more apparent in the music.
- Last.fm
Last.fm is like Pandora with a community built in. But it’s so much more than that.
The whole idea of Last.fm is built around a plugin for your media player. Whether you prefer iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp, or anything else, chances are there is a compatible last.fm plugin for it. The plugin monitors your listening habits and sends the data to the last.fm website, where stats on your profile show your top songs and artists. The website also recommends all kinds of things based on your info, such as “neighbors” (people who have a similar musical taste), events by your favorite artists in your area, and artists and songs that play through a streaming radio station.
Last.fm is a rather vast entity for it’s age. There is a webpage devoted to every artist (even every song!) with links to similar artist pages and streaming radio stations that play similar music. There are comment boxes on every artist and song page, with “top listener” information and band information.
Of course you’ll always get the dingleberry that went on Kazaa and downloaded “Love Gun” by Iron Butterfly, listened to it a bunch of times, and got the song into the last.fm databanks… except that Love Gun is by Kiss, not Iron Butterfly. Last.fm recently integrated something that catches these mistagged or incorrectly named tracks and automatically corrects them. This is a simple, yet potent joy for anyone who has seen any horribly mis-labeled tracks that border on being offensive.
This would be the undisputed holy grail of music sites (it probably still is), but has one drawback. The music to which you listen has to be from a device or from your computer. This may not be much of a drawback for most, but personally, I listen to a lot of the music from cds in the car. But if you’re using an ipod, zune, or what have you, there is a plugin that allows you to “scrobble” (send music data to last.fm) the tracks to which you’ve listened. I’m always seeing new ways to scrobble cropping up, so who knows where they’ll take it.
This one is the one about which I’m most excited. I am a mixtape/mixcd fanatic. If I know you and haven’t ever made you a mix, it’s out of the ordinary for me. I have to make a new personal mix about once every one or two weeks, because I’ve gotten pretty picky about what I’m hearing in a given week. I get sick of music pretty quickly.
Being the mixfreak that I am, I’ve searched for a website where I can upload songs and arrange them to a mix, so I could access it if my media player decided to magically clear all my playlists (itunes is the major perpetrator for this). It’s also convenient if you want to share a mix with a friend easily. I’ve found a couple sites in the past that do this, but they have since been shut down (“Muxtape” was one of them). I think this happens because the site creators don’t structure the functionality of the site in accordance with certain copyright laws.
8tracks allows you to upload your songs and create a playlist, but it must be at least 8 tracks long. Other site users can find your mixes via keyword search (you can apply 3 searchable tags to any 1 mix). You can view how many times your mix has been played, as well as comments that other users might leave you on that mix.
You have the option to “follow” any other user, which adds every new mix they make to your “mix feed”. I haven’t done this too much, but I know it’s a good way to get people listening to my mixes. You give a little, you get a little.
- Blogs
Now, if you told me a few years ago that blogs were a surefire way to find great new music, I would have said something akin to “Really? I’ll have to check that out.” Then never give it a second thought. Half of the reason I wouldn’t have given it a chance is that I didn’t think it would work, and the other half is that I wouldn’t know how to search something like that anyway. It turns out it’s as easy as going to google and typing in the band’s name and blogspot.com.
I would recommend searching a band you like first, find a blog containing feature or information on said band, then seeing what else the blog has to feature. Blogs usually stick to some kind of theme or genre, but they often network with other blogs, so there’s more to peruse.
There’s not much else to say about blogs, other than that many of them contain links to free full album downloads.
So there you have it. All of these items have helped me find new music in one way or another. So if you’re looking, check em out and you’re likely to find something you like.
My Wife Will Tell You…I Do, In Fact, Enjoy Butts
Aug 15th
There was a time that I could sing Baby Got Back in its entirety without missing a syllable. I haven’t kept up with my freestyle “skillz” in recent years but I’d say I can still get through about 85% of it without fail.
Baby Got Back, of course, is a song familiar to many. Probably not so familiar, however, are the rest of the songs that appear on Sir Mix a Lot’s 1992 release Mack Daddy.
For instance, the first single off that particular album was the first track, One Time’s Got No Case.
And that link will take you to the video, which I would have embedded but either I am stupid (entirely possible) or Spike won’t allow that video to be embedded (also possible, but less likely).
Now that’s a decent song. It’s not NWA or Public Enemy, but as far as early 90’s hip hop goes, it’s strong. Most of the album is solid, in fact, but there’s one jem on there that never got its due…I’m Your New God.
As far as I know a video was never made for the song, below is just the song playing to a picture of the album cover, but go ahead and listen to it in any event.
I bring up Sir Mix a Lot because I loved this album when it came out in 1992. At that time (I was 14) I listened exclusively to punk…or so I claimed.
I went a long time decrying any music that wasn’t punk, or political, as weak and not worth listening to. I was young and stupid and thought that everything I enjoyed (music and books, especially) had to be charged with ideals or “artistic”…whatever that means.
In any event, it took many years for me to admit it but, damnit, I like pop music.
OK, I like some pop music.
I mean, I don’t roll around blaring The Jonas Brothers.
I know I mentioned this one some time ago, but it’s so good it deserves a second go round…Shake It by Metro Station.
Around the same time that I was falling in love with big butts I also played drums in a short lived (I think we lasted a month) band called Boogie Shoes. We took our moniker from the KC and the Sunshine band song of the same name and the premise was that we covered disco songs but played them like a punk band. We never played a single show. I wanted to be in that band not for the punk, but for the disco…Let’s Get Down Tonight is still one of my all time favorite songs.
In case you are curious, here’s the song that inspired us.
Now imagine that song 3 times faster and out of tune. See why we never played a single show?
So, there you have it. For all my talk about bands no one has ever heard of I still enjoy some top 40ish stuff. I think, honestly, it comes down to the fact that, regardless of genre (and this is true of all creative outlets, I think) solid craftsmanship (for lack of a better word) shines. Do I think Metro Station is the next Beatles…of course not. On that one song, though, they really did capture something infectious and fun. I’m adult enough now to admit that I enjoy it…
But I can’t leave without sharing something with a bit of an edge…
Or something a bit odd…
Featuring…The Features!
Aug 7th
Back when Jonesy’s Jukebox still existed…greatest radio show ever, by the way…I often heard stuff that I felt retarded for not already being aware of/owning. So one day (this would have been mid to late 2004…I think) I heard a song called “Blow It Out.”
I bought the album it was on, titled Exhibit A, the next day (this was when the bookmines still carried music). It remains one of my “desert island” albums. Exhibit A was released on Universal and the band had, prior to that, released an EP (if memory serves it was either on a small label or independently released).
At some point they left Universal. I have only conjecture as to why that was…probably because Exhibit A wasn’t a breakout success, the label wanted to force the band into changing up their sound on a subsequent recording.
Whatever the reason, The Features next release was a self released EP, titled Contrast, that came out in 2006. Last year the band released a full length album, Some Kind of Salvation, but only did so digitally. Thankfully, Kings of Leon (I know, you’re thinking what?!) helped to get the album actually onto discs that can be purchased in stores and, as of July, said purchasing can be done…I mean, not at my bookmines cause we only have like three CD’s in the store, but I’m sure you can find it at a good music store…do those still exist?…OK, forget that, just buy it here.
Now, I’m not saying Some Kind of Salvation is better than Exhibit A…but I’m also not saying that it is worse. The band continues with it’s perfect blend of pop hooks and rock beats while also seamlessly incorporating horns on several tracks which is a perfect complement to the organ they regularly feature.
Matt Pelham, the singer and principle songwriter (I understand) has the unique ability to make even a song about the birth of his twins rock and groove. I was trying to find an adequate comparison but they blend so much stuff together that any description wouldn’t do the band justice. In any event, check out the following video and see if you don’t find your head nodding or your toe tapping.
Modest Mouse — The Whale Song
Judging Stuff by Covers is What I Do Best
May 27th
Because what happened was, as per usual, I was at the bookmines, in the music shaft specifically, and came across this album:
It's Frightening
Now I hadn’t heard of White Rabbits, but the image was of interest to me. In fact, more and more recently, I’ve simply picked things up based solely on covers and, you know, I’d say that my success with finding decent things to read/listen to/watch has probably gone up. So that’s a quick way of saying that White Rabbits second full length album (if wikipedia is to be believed…) “It’s Frightening” is worth listening to, but I hadn’t thought so on the first listen through.