I had this on as background music, and then for some reason I actually looked at the video.
While we're here, I should watch/listen to this once a year. It's a nice tribute; it holds up well and isn't not over-the-top.
Many of you saw it live; I didn't because the holders of the remote control opted for a special presentation of Fear Factor. (How were we to know the quality of what we'd miss?)
Songs that didn't make this Onion AV Club list include, in no particular order:
1. Guns N' Roses, "November Rain"
2. Exposé, "Seasons Change"
3. Richard Marx, "Endless Summer Nights"
4. Billy Joel, "This is the Time"
5. Simon n' Garfunkel, "Hazy Shade of Winter"
I have a feeling some particular AV Club writers are at least 5-10 years younger than me. (Yes, I could have dated my adolescence with this entire list if I'd happened to choose the Bangles cover for #5.)
My cow orker is listening to a mashup mix, wherein one particular part sums up the '70s quite nicely with just a two-song combo.
Georges Bizet - L'Arlesienne Suite #1
Earlier this afternoon:
Richard Wagner - Tannhauser: Overture
(Victor Borge has a fantastic take on Tannhauser.)
Our household loves Leonard Cohen. But we learned from the documentary that we can sort of do without Nick Cave, and can definitely do without either of the Wainwrights, especially when Rufus tries to cover songs whose lyrics he doesn't actually know by heart.
Cohen is wonderfully understated, something his homage-givers can't quite capture.
(To be devil's advocate about even Cohen how hard would it be to write a Leonard Cohen song lyric generator? We can even make it an exercise for the reader. You don't have to implement it: Just some pseudocode and a list of your seed strings would suffice.)
Is it a bit suspicious that two of John McCain's supposed 10 favorite songs are ABBA songs, just when Mama Mia! is big in theaters?
The top-10 list I would release to Blender, were I a presidential candidate:
1. AC/DC - "For Those About to Rock"
2. Rush - "The Camera Eye"
3. Van Halen - "Jump"
4. Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Freebird"
5. Metallica - "For Whom the Bell Tolls"
6. U2 - "Bad"
7. Ozzy Osbourne - "Flying High Again"
8. Bon Jovi - "Lay Your Hands on Me"
9. Guns N' Roses - "Paradise City"
10. Frank Sinatra - "Summer Wind"
Fountains (of Wayne, NJ).
(It would have been funny to see the band acknowledged on the page, but I'll gladly settle for their being wise enough not to launch a dopey trademark infringement suit.)
To commemorate the news, I'm now 7 minutes and 30 seconds into this.
Going into the bottom of the 10th (11th?) inning Sunday the A's PA system played "Welcome to the Jungle."
Incoming college freshmen were not born yet when "Welcome to the Jungle" became a hit.
(They were also not yet born when Ronald Reagan left the White House. So not even Reagan babies: They're post-Reagan babies!)
Dear Sports Facility PA System Operators,
These AC/DC songs are vastly overplayed (not necessarily a complete list, and in no particular order):
"T.N.T."
"You Shook Me All Night Long"
"Back in Black"
"Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"
These AC/DC songs are vastly underplayed (not necessarily a complete list, and in no particular order):
"For Those About to Rock"
"It's A Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)"
"Thunderstruck"
(Yes, the 5th through 7th Google hits for that phrase are blogs; the other three of the top 10 are of course black-market lyric sites.)
Bay Area radio stations played these songs at the same time 15 minutes ago:
Cake - "Going the Distance"
Love & Rockets - "So Alive"
AC/DC - "It's A Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock N' Roll)"
Half-empty: Wish they'd spaced them out a little more, only caught the tail end of the latter two. Half-full: Great choices!
This weekend we walked around the Park Street Fair in Alameda. One of the booths was a wooden sign marker: "Signs Made in 10 Minutes or Less" was their tag line, as carved into one of their own signs. I was sorely tempted to order a "Signs Made in 9 Minutes or Less" sign just to see if it freaked them out.
This comment may misidentify Pavel Kubina's team (as I saw later in the thread) but the video is if anything even better than the soccer goal that inspired the original Deadspin post.
(Title of my own entry refers to the notes on the goal horn. It's an augmented A-flat chord. I think if I heard all 30(?) NHL goal horns I could identify most or all of the pitches within the chords. A gift and a curse, as Mr. Monk would say.)
Our voice mail system at work is Outlook compatible, and through a happy idiosyncrasy of sort order and incomplete metadata, every time I play a message the immediately following track is from the scherzo of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. (You know the riff: radio shows have used it as bumper music all the time, usually leading into news of the day.)
Every voice mail message is significantly improved if you think of that theme as the closing of the message itself.
Dear Sesame Street,
Please make this happen, if it hasn't already:
"A-B-C-D-E-F-G, H-I-J-K-L-M-N and O!"
"A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H, I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q!"
Greg is probably right: Nothing in this series will measure up to Tarzan Boy.
That said, if dancing Rick Astley needs a mate with a flexible neck, you know where to send him.
Inaugurating a new series, inspired by this article. When someone sent that out at work, I took a stab at finding ten Rickroll successor candidates in two minutes. It was pretty hit or miss.
So the ground rules:
1. Whatever I link to has to have received actual radio airplay (or TV, but it must be a song, or pose as such).
2. I promise it won't be "OK Go" or any existing stupid meme, nor anything NSFW.
Without further ado, here we go.
Part 2 might be tomorrow if I remember to link something.
This Don Williams song and this Kylie Minogue song are completely different musical genres, yet strikingly similar lyric structure.
(Thanks Maribeth, for reminding me of the former. Wow, I hadn't heard that song in decades.)
While we're here (the Kylie Minogue part), what's the Australian counterpart to For Better or For Worse? Of course I don't mean a comic strip, necessarily, just anything that ubiquitous and long-lived (yet oddly pernicious) that has wound up inadvertently representing a nation.
(The other day I saw the YouTube video of Andrew Bogut high-fiving himself, then read about Peter Moylan's injury. It was Oz convergence.)
"Kernkraft 400" is a song by Zombie Nation, not vice versa. (Per Wikipedia, Many people believe the band to be named "Kernkraft 400" and the song to be "Zombie Nation". I had been one of those people.)
This music video makes it out to be an anti-consumer screed. Don't tell all those sports fans (especially both the 2002 Giants and 2002 Angels: the first thousand times I heard this song were by way of either or both venues of that World Series).
Dear YouTube (and/or Universal Music Group),
The "Related Videos" on this page obviously are related; however, the "More From: universalmusicgroup" videos really don't belong in the same discussion.
blink-182 ?!
(And when I type "remix" I just mean "play them all at once, adjust the volume and hope for the best.")
A dash of Len
A twist of Mr. Mister (Live!)
And just a touch of White Zombie
Thanks, Onion AV Club "Videocracy."
Which version do you like better? this one, or this one?
Curse you, Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Not sure how/when this started but now every time I think of Clinton(s) I think of "The Rascal King."
...and it's not even noon yet.
KFOG's 10@10 (for the year 1986) followed up "Manhattan Project" with the Run DMC Feat. Aerosmith version of "Walk this Way."
Then in honor of the 35th anniversary of Dark Side of the Moon I listened to a bunch of Dub on YouTube. And finally as inspired by Cooch, the full-length version of Brass Bonanza.
Go Whalers! I never really knew you, and I'm not sure if I'd ever heard Brass Bonanza before, but as team songs go I highly approve.
I did not know until this morning that Rush (the Canadian prog band, not the talk show guy) had a song about the Manhattan Project.
It would be tempting to claim that this is the most interesting song that I previously didn't know existed; however, I'm sure there are a lot more incredibly good songs about whose existence I'm still ignorant.
May I form a Rush tribute band and do eight-minute songs about mundane tasks like making a peanut butter sandwich?
"RED STRAWBERRY RIVER, FLOWING ON THE BREAD!"
Who do you want answering the phone? KLF!
Start this one first, then this one a second later. Keep replaying the latter as necessary.
Thoughts?
They seem to be the biggest thing in Austin.
(Typed from memory. Pretend we're at open mic night and I take the stage, speaking rather than singing. I firmly believe this is one of the 20 best songs of all-time. 100% serious.)
Girl you're looking fine tonight, and every guy has got you in his sight (EXCEPT ME!*). Whatcha doing with a clown like me? That's surely one of life's little mysteries.
[Chorus]
So tonight I'll ask the stars above: How did I ever win your love? What did I do, what did I say, to turn your angel eyes my way?
I'm the guy who never learned to dance, never even got one second glance. Across the crowded room was close enough; I could look(*) but I could never touch... [chorus]
Don't anybody wake me, if it's just a dream, cuz she's the best thing ever happened to me. All you fellows, you can look all your life, but this girl you see(*) she's leaving here with me tonight.
There's just one more thing I need to know: If this is love why does it scare me so? Must be something only you can see (well I sure can't*), but I can feel it when you look at me.
[chorus]
*- too soon? I honestly didn't realize he was blind until reading his obituary.
UPDATE: From three co-workers' worth of workplace e-mail banter:
"I never knew Jeff Healey was blind until now."
"Then you clearly have never watched Roadhouse (at least not closely enough)"
"The irony of that statement is not lost on me."
This is astonishingly on the mark, aside from my never having heard of #10 before. (I was going to take issue with #5 until I played the video and matched the title to the song.)
Flipping through radio stations this morning I happened across "Rock Your Body."
Despite what people remember now, the most offensive element of the Super Bowl 38 broadcast had nothing to do with the halftime show (I swear I was watching the most notorious moment, yet it even didn't register with me, nor anyone else at that SB party, that anything out of the ordinary had happened); rather, it was arguably the farting horse from a beer commercial.
Since the of course the half-time shows have been sanitized. Have the ads also gotten cleaner? My general impression is yes. What were the most offensive elements (if any) of the 2008 ads? I wish there had been less gratuitous yelling, but that's a personal problem. Really, the only things that stand out are the over-the-top racist caricatures from sales tool ads, plus maybe the crotch smacking inflicted on (ironically) Justin Timberlake.
Sneezing fire is even a rough analogue to farting fire, though distinctly less pushing-it.
(Oh yeah, just thought of this: 38 was also the year of the Brazilian Wax beer ad. The guy thought he was getting free beer, but didn't see the sign on the door and instead [...] "Yeow." This is significantly less appropriate for family viewing than a mammary gland with a pasty on it, if only because you know every seven-year-old watching asked the same question ("What's a Brazilian wax?").)
I couldn't sit through this prank. Are these things supposed to be funny? Am I crazy to be almost violently offended that the world actually enjoys stuff like this? I couldn't care less about violence or pornography, but so help me, this particular genre (everything from wacky morning DJ phone calls to whatever MTV fills its time with these days) is singlehandedly what's bringing down our civilization. There's no good way to convey how serious I am about this.
Oh, and ambient music from Windows.
You know Gogol Bordello from Everything is Illuminated.
Google Bordello is already in use as a blog name.
Who or what told White Lion they could besmirch their legacy (further?) with a lame half-time reprisal of "Wait," on the third disc of the More '80s Hair Metal compilation?
"Wait" is actually a magnificent song, great for aspiring guitar players to learn. It has no business being a studio-watered-down phone-in job.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer set The Great Gate of Kiev to the words "Come forth from love's spire, born in life's fire [etc.]." Bah. Prog-rock at its most over-the-top.
The phrase "Pictures at an Exhibition" fits the main melody of that movement just fine.
In any case the EL&P recording demonstrably lasts at least seven minutes longer than it should.
P.S. For informational purposes only (to be published only in the event of a win). Tough luck if you pre-ordered it.
Come for the classic Genesis, stay for the 1,300+ mostly political comments.
When I want to discuss the issues of the day, the first place I turn is YouTube with its well-informed, sophisticated pundits (the commenters and the Kige Ramsey types in front of the camera).
UPDATE: Oh hey, somebody took the Disturbed cover and made a video mashup with it. Oops, no, that was the Disturbed video. It just looks like a YouTube mashup.
Is it philistine of me not to worship the ground (ha!) Pavement walks on?
Too many vocal tics (especially in "Cut Your Hair"), not enough vocal talent. As compositions the songs are good enough.
Is this an acquired taste I should work harder to acquire?
There are more hit songs than hit song titles, partly because there are only so many meaningful ways to string together a small number of common words.
Sometimes when two hits have the same name (but are otherwise unrelated), the lesser hit is a truly atrocious song.
"Big Girls Don't Cry" is probably the best example (hence the title of this post). If for some reason you despised the Bobby Brown song "Don't Be Cruel" then that too would qualify. (I'm indifferent to it.)
Here's another example (I didn't like the original either but goodness gracious the more recent song is bad.)
Find your own favorite example(s) of this phenomenon.
UPDATE: Through the magic of in-frame volume knobs and tabbed browsing, you can watch one and listen to the other. I think the Bush video plus Good Charlotte audio works better than the other way around. (Is that a surprising result? I can't tell.)
Mix to taste. (For best results, start the former around 0:15 or 0:20. Or just speed that one up a bit.)
And yet one of the first full albums I ever bought on iTunes (possibly the first) still has yet to make a footprint on YouTube.
Every time I'd ever heard bits of this song on the radio, for some reason I thought it was Kelly Clarkson, or if not her then some other Idol.
If Kid Rock were a girl (s)he'd be Fergie.
Update: Did this song kill Kid Rock's buzz? Did this song kill Poison's groove? Are they fundamentally the same song?
What follows is meaningless without full context/criteria, yet the way it's phrased you can get the gist/zen of it and maybe even convince yourself you don't need the full context.
Stadium Arcadium is probably about to surpass American Idiot. Not this week, but maybe next week.
1. Yes. Then again, isn't this actually the hardest of the early questions?
2. Yes. They're not even the same type of thing.
3. Yes, by color and texture.
4. Yes, unless the latter is a metaphor.
5. Not that I know of. (Who's "they"?)
6. Not that I know of.
7. Maybe. Actually it looks pretty foggy.
8. Definitely not.
9. I don't think so, but what do these mean? (By the way we watched Extras, the David Gervais vehicle, last night. It was good, but not as good as the person who recommended it thinks. But isn't that always true?)
10. Since this is a pretty long bridge, a question right back: How appalled are you by the Fred Durst / John Reznik cover?
11. Why thank you.
12. Nope, I don't really feel that way.
13. On the contrary, I keep finding myself up to different things.
14. I'd have to say no.
Matt Loves the '80s begins with the most underrated song of that decade. Think of it as a time capsule. (The pre-song part of the video is every bit as good as I'd remembered.)
The series premiere of Ugly Betty and the music video for Metallica's "One" have almost nothing in common -- except that they're things that in the past 24 hours I couldn't quite make it through.
(Getting the former out of the way: Zany fashion folk! Zanier Latinos! Kind-hearted girl caught in the middle (who apparently doesn't know what constitute work clothes). Oh, will she ever catch a break? The two main demographics for this show should get together and compare their taste in men.)
The video for "One" delayed my acquired taste for Metallica by at least five years. But despite what I'd remembered, the problem wasn't horror/gore/squickiness -- it was an outright political thing for me. I realized this when that hangdog guy with the mustache tells his son ("Dad, what is democracy?") that democracy must be when young men kill each other.
Yes, Lars, et al, that's exactly what democracy is all about. It's precisely why all these people who didn't have the good fortune to be born in one were risking their lives to get (e.g.) past the Berlin Wall.
Who needs freedom anyway? (And most of all, as we learned ten years later, heaven f'n forbid anyone try to steal Metallica's intellectual property.)
My outrage was palpable -- but not so palpable that I didn't thoroughly enjoy finding a live performance of "Master of Puppets."
Continuing the "courtesy of YouTube" theme:
I just listened to a bunch of Arcade Fire, and then sought out a particular Metallica song. Which Metallica song was it, and what's the connection?
(This is gettable as-is, right? I'll add more if nobody gets it (or nobody bothers to guess).)
How does my taste in music compare to Big Daddy Drew? Courtesy of YouTube, my take on his top ten:
1. "I'm Designer," Queens of the Stone Age
I don't think I'd heard this before. Didn't see the big deal. Bailed after 15 seconds.
2. "Reckoner," Radiohead
I have "In Rainbows" (the first disc) and heartily agree. I just listened to the whole thing via YouTube despite having it at my fingertips on iTunes at work.
3. "Misfit Love, "QOTSA
I gave it about 90 seconds (ditto the rest unless otherwise noted), didn't seem to be going anywhere. What am I missing about Queens of the Stone Age that everyone else sees?
4. "Killing the Light," Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Live version seemed fine.
5. "Teddy Picker," Arctic Monkeys
Meh.
6. "The Prayer," Bloc Party
Not bad. "Tonight make me unstoppable." Really picked up.
7. "Era Vulgaris," QOTSA
Better than the other QOTSA on this list.
8. "Come Alive," Foo Fighters
Meh.
9. "Intervention," Arcade Fire
Nice instrumentation.
10. "The Silence Between Us," Bob Mould
(Couldn't find on YouTube.)
I'll give him credit for pointing me to the Arcade Fire track.
I opened Spin (December 2007 issue) to a random page (p. 85) and found this paragraph:
"Touring the Verde Valley in his boxy 4x4, he takes in its expanse of farmland and vineyards and dreams of morphing it into a thriving food-and-wine community -- a future Napa Valley. [...] Even in this pastoral setting, it doesn't take much to trigger a rant about local developers pushing golf course ('What stops these people from being assassinated?') or the FDA's rules regarding wine bottle labeling ('Assholes'). But if Keenan's chi is perpetually cranked to 11, it eases every time he talks about one abiding preoccupation: his goal, in a culture he sees crushed by greed, of building a few modest and self-sustaining businesses."
What stands out more here: The petulance, or the narcissism?
If it weren't for Rage Against the Machine, Tool would be the most overrated band of the 1990s by a wide margin.
(A reminder if you don't feel like scrolling: These are all artists I'd have never heard of if it weren't for where I work. The links below all go to YouTube.)
Sweden: Kent
Lithuania: Andrius Mamontovas (warning: louder than most YouTube clips, and borderline NSFW)
Slovakia: Horkyze Slize
Winner: Slovakia. SHANGHAI COLA!
Venezuela: Guaco
Argentina: Soda Stereo
Italy: Eros Ramazzotti (singing with Anastacia in this clip)
Spain: Heroes del Silencio (found via Guatemala - got a nice hair metal sound going)
Mexico: Cafe Tacuba
Some singers/groups I know about specifically because of where I work (many of whom you can find here):
(By the way, I've meant forever to tell a story about Shockwave files, and True Type fonts that choke on the empty string -- except that I just told the whole thing (it's not much of a story).)
Japan - Mr. Children
China - Eason Chan
Pakistan - Atif Aslam
Those should get you started.
Local radio station has got some Doobie Brothers coming up for you.
If you've never listened to a station whose DJs sound like this, the effect is probably lost. But I suspect most readers have. The humor here is the pitch-perfect capturing of something so banal.
On the other hand (or, "as non sequiturs," I can't decide): Some of those "You Know You're From [X]" lists are pretty lame despite the supposed comedy verite. My friend Corwyn mocks them (or just thinks of them as self-parody) with line that goes something like "You know you live in the Tri-State area if you frequently attend concerts at The Meadowlands."
This list is fatally flawed without Barenaked Ladies' brutal takedown of Halifax.
Rhetorical or not, this question is the dumbest pull-quote I've seen on the first page of a newspaper section in weeks:
"Would Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong have had the drive to become a real rock star if he'd had the chance to simply be a virtual star in his parents' basement?"
Also, the virtual groupies will get you off in ways you can only imagine.
Is anyone else being haunted by Brad Delp from beyond the grave? Does Dennis DeYoung wish he'd thought of composing a song that namechecks Styx's greatest hits?
What if, in the fall of '94, somebody found a Kurt Cobain song built on nostalgia? ("Well we smelled like teen spirit and we came as we were...")
On the other hand I hadn't thought of "You Know You're Right" (the one where the chorus goes "HEY-aaEY-aaEY-aaEY-AY...") in years. Maybe that was almost as bad.
Still, "I grew up in the '60s. 1967 was the summer of love" is lyric gold: It sounds like a senior citizen being interviewed for a documentary, only set to music.
Spoilers (if you're not already familiar with Johnny Cash's life story)...
It was worth watching. We didn't need to have it for two months but better late than never.
"Where were you?"
"I hear angels!"
"I wish it had been you instead of your brother."
--
"I love you."
"But we only went out for one month and you're in the Air Force now."
"Marry me anyway."
--
"Shouldn't you sell things instead of playing music?"
"You can have the audition but don't play any gospel."
--
"You sing well."
"These are my wife and kids."
"I have kids too."
--
"Don't be so lazy when you get home, and don't talk to me about your tour, and [nag nag nag etc.]"
--
"Hello again!"
"How are your kids? Mine are doing well but the marriage didn't work out."
"Sing this song with me."
"But my ex-husband and I sang this song together!"
[kiss] [leaves stage] [next day]
"You're all drunk! I'm leaving the tour."
[at some point in the future they wind up in bed but regret it]
--
"Stay away from my kids!"
--
[wife #1 leaves, lots of pill popping ensues]
--
"Thank you for coming to my new house in North Carolina for Thanksgiving!"
"Son you're still worthless."
[storms out]
"June go take care of him."
--
"I'm going to give a concert at Folsom Prison."
"I disapprove but everyone watching knows you'll get your way."
--
"Marry me."
"For the thousandth time no. And stop asking."
--
"Marry me."
"But we're on stage! Just keep singing."
"Marry me."
[awkward pause]
"Marry me."
"Oh all right."
[All her misgivings about marrying him wash away as they live happily ever after, but we don't actually see that part.]
"If you say you're Italian but you don't know Lucio Battisti then you're not really Italian, you're from Jersey."
--my office roommate, who was born & raised in Verona (yes, he's a gentleman)
Balla Linda (compare to The Grass Roots cover)
Un'avventura (compare to Wilson Pickett's version)
Legend has it Battisti lost his guitar before this live TV performance and had to buy a cheap guitar at a train station.
As alluded to a week ago, every Tuesday my department gets some music appreciation going (unless the meeting is preempted, or unless it's my turn to present and the opening guitar part of Britney Fox's "Long Way to Love" augurs a descent to hair metal).
If forced to choose between an eternity of "Fergalicious" and an eternity of "The Sweet Escape": I'd go with "Fergalicious." Nothing in the former would drive me to homicide the way the repeat hook in the latter threatens to.
The official announcement went out today but the site redesign had been deployed since Wednesday. The Music Map has already gotten a BoingBoing link. If you mouse over "Music Search Tools" you can find your way to the Digital Top 10 and Elite 100.
(In a perfect world, the boilerplate text on those last two would explicitly state that the former is a weeks worth of lookups but the latter is several years' worth.)
If you feel like doing my job for me, feel free to comment (or e-mail me) about any problems with the chart data. (Or with the user interface, though in that case I'd cheerfully relay your feedback down the line.)
(The hot Japanese band right now.)
Google does a pretty good job translating their official web site.
I now believe that "One Word" (Kelly Osbourne) is to "Fade to Grey" (Visage) as "My Sweet Lord" (George Harrison) is to "He's So Fine" (The Chiffons).
I came to believe this while watching (and listening to) a presentation at work, during a section on John McGeoch.
One of the subsequent slides bore the title "Robert Smith: Pop Svengali of Doot" and had a brilliant assembly of clips to make that particular point.
It's not that I love my job so much as that I love the specific department I'm in.
Saturday I read at a high school tournament where the buzzers in my room made those high-pitched squeals. I got to hear that same sound about 200 times, but I got used to it.
Today I'm listening to Game 4 on WRKO (via archives on MLB Gameday Audio). The Rockies' PA system has played a particular snippet of "The Sweet Escape" at least twice, which is at least two more times than I can take it.
This Onion AV Club article did not include my favorite police-themed song, but at least two commenters did mention it.
Until three weeks ago, the word "Rocktober" always made me think of Led Zeppelin, not Matt Holliday. This filing should result in limited protection at best.
It's been way too long since I came across a mash-up this excellent.
There's a car commercial in heavy rotation on post-season radio that uses background music obviously meant to evoke a particular Coldplay hit without actually being that hit. I wonder whether the background music in question has an official title.
You already know how I feel about Pink Floyd, right? Not to reference-check Johnny Ramone's favorite t-shirt or anything.
Meanwhile I really, really, really, really like Radiohead. I haven't decided how much to pay for In Rainbows yet but it will be more than zero despite my already having access to the music. The new album has nearly everything loved about OK Computer, without any of what I hated about that album.
I work with someone who would donate money to induce Radiohead to stop making music, who (like me) also has a Pink Floyd rant. Another co-worker introduced me to Easystar All-Stars, an ad hoc reggae band that's paid track-for-track tribute to both Dark Side of the Moon and OK Computer.
Should the difference between my opinion of Radiohead and my opinion of Pink Floyd be the source of cognitive dissonance? Maybe not: I claim that Radiohead understand beautiful chord progressions in a way that Pink Floyd just doesn't (aside from a couple outliers like "Brain Damage").
"Cleanup urged for gunkiest creeks"
--headline in today's SF Chronicle (print edition)
Meanwhile, I work with some of the [...].
At some point Yahoo! Music revamped their subscription service so that if you "Play Top Songs" you get arbitrarily many, not just 10. We're up to #23, a version of "Xanadu" that clocks in at 12:36.
Remind me to try pot at least once before I die. If I could do my undergraduate experience over again, the three biggest changes I'd make, in order:
1. Don't cut class.
2. Go to the gym regularly.
3. Freshman year, that time in February when two roommates wanted to smoke up and offered to share with me and our other roommate, join them instead of playing Pictionary across the hall.
Fortunately, Urinetown transcends that kind of silly pigeonhole. (I don't know who first drew that connection, which I found apt for the first half hour but spurious thereafter, but it's specifically why I'd planned never to see this.)
We saw a community theater production of Urinetown last night. Very well executed. The musical itself feels like a Saturday Night Live parody of Les Miserables, with a teaspoon of what somebody who'd heard about (but never seen) South Park might falsely take to be the essence of Trey Parker & Matt Stone.
Speaking of urine, stay classy, Townie girls.
[Title just barely no longer true as of when I started typing this.]
I wish I could remember who came up with the rule of thumb that the bigger a band's geographic namesake, the harder the band sucked.
(e.g. Asia > Europe > Kansas > Chicago > Boston)
"Heat of the Moment" was one thing. "Sole Survivor," etc. But I stuck with it (by default, busy writing) through a 10-song set that included a cover of "Roundabout" and a prog monstrosity called "Wildest Dreams." I can only say WTF?
Middle of the ninth, home team down by a run. Help me understand how somebody looking around for rally music would alight on "Even Flow."
Julia wasn't even born yet. (I was just barely alive myself.) According to Yahoo! Music Jukebox one of the artists most similar to Linda Ronstadt is Seals & Crofts.
This is reasonably good music, and I was the one who actually clicked on it. If I protested too much that the Linda Ronstadt (and by extension the S&C) comes from my wife's request, you'd either vastly overstate or vastly understate my opinion of it, which is somewhere in the middle.
(continuing with the Best of Cracked theme from two posts below)
...isn't how seriously they take themselves so much as how seriously their fans take them (see comments in the link).
I wonder how long it's been since the last time I heard the live version of "Musta Got Lost" (J. Geils Band). My wife had never heard it at all.
Meanwhile, you can probably guess what song Yahoo! ranks at #1 on a list of Loverboy songs sorted by popularity. #3 is "Almost Paradise" (even though that should be attributed to Ann Wilson and Mike Reno). For a quick 10 points can you name any other Loverboy song in the top 10?
(Yes, I listen to Southern rock when I'm typing out blog posts that might come off as homophobic. Doesn't everybody?)
When Molly Hatchet sings that the "the wine and the women are free," what exactly does that mean? Are there places in {Jacksonville, Gainesville, Tallahassee} where you can just show up with a chalice and a condom and [...]?
NOTE: According to Yahoo! Music Jukebox, bands similar to Molly Hatchet include Atlanta Rhythm Section ("So Into You" et al -- I just don't see it) and Montrose. Their list of the most popular Montrose songs begins with "Rock Candy" and "Bad Motor Scooter." Montrose fans don't even need on-line music streaming: They can just listen to stations like this.
Oh, and The James Gang. You've heard "Funk #49" a million times but I bet you didn't realize that's what it was called.
You can get from this wildlife encounter to this fatal pitch in as few as three intermediary adults. (For 10 points each...)
According to Yahoo! Music Jukebox, "Similar Artists" to Crash Test Dummies include:
Spin Doctors
Soul Asylum
The Presidents of the United States of America
Toad the Wet Sprocket
Lit
Quick: without looking it up, can you name at least two songs apiece by each of those bands?
(Before signing on just now I could have named three PotUS (I actually own two of their albums on cassette!); none of Lit (will I feel stupid?); and one each of CTD, Spin Doctors, Soul Asylum, and Toad.)
This began with my craving for Crash Test Dummies' most famous song but come to think of it, I bet Julia will really enjoy Toad the Wet Sprocket.
(I meant to blog this 10 days ago, i.e. shortly after it happened, but didn't get around to it.)
The wedding reception Julia and I went to had some fantastic music. Almost none of it was trite; even the trite songs ("Love Shack", "Shout") were good enough to survive their inevitability with one exception.
The worst song on the playlist (in my opinion) was also the one song that literally cleared the dance floor. The DJ noticed this and, 20 seconds into it, moved on to the next song. For 10 points--name that shunned song!
(Hints: Up-tempo ballad love song, white male Northern Irish (I did not know that!) singer-songwriter, 1967.)
Since there's no way to comment on this post anymore (after it fell off the main page: Maribeth is right, I did once write a theme pack based on that song. I was especially proud that this included a tossup on Donna Shalala. I think I was indifferent to the song then; not sure how I developed such an intense dislike for it subsequently.
1. The years have not treated you well.
2. That dead-air delay to set up the portable keyboard was unacceptable.
3. If I remember right your hit(s) were flagrantly overrated to begin with.
Besides which The Captain wouldn't be caught dead backing up Barry Manilow.
Meh.
This ain't a band, it's a poor man's Maroon 5.
(IoH is clearly the second best of the three albums I've listened to today, light years ahead of The Best Damn Thing but behind (the still-underrated) Let Go. If future musicologists think of Avril Lavigne and Fall Out Boy in a similar pigeonhole then neither of the two can feel all that slighted.)
She dumbed herself down. (I could swear I read an album review a few weeks ago that made the exact opposite claim about the subject matter of her new songs. If so, whoever wrote that is just goofy.)
Every song is about a boy-girl-girl triangle in the style of 14-year-olds. It's almost enough to make someone sympathize with this guy.
The same artist that brought us "He was a boy, she was a girl, can I make it more obvious?" has had a new album out for awhile. Thanks to Yahoo! Music Unlimited, I can listen to it whenever I want (for the next year or so).
My favorite(?) lines from the new album, in no particular order.
"'I wish you were her.' You left out the 'e'. You left without me."
"She's, like, so whatever. You could do so much better."
"I want to put your hand in my pocket* because because you're allowed."
"I hate it when a guy doesn't get the tab and I have to pull my money out and that looks bad."
["And the other one's hailing a taxi cab"? -MLB]
Quick bonus observation: I wonder if the same people who've referred to Avril as "punk" would use that same label for (e.g.) Jimmy Eat World. They probably would.
An interesting drinking game for any given album listen would be to call out influences. Any given stretch that reminds you of some other act, shout out the name and if the people around you agree then sips all around. Doing this sitting by myself defeats the purpose but so far I've had moments of:
Gwen Stefani (duh)
Alanis Morissette
Jimmy Eat World (as mentioned above)
The Spice Girls
Kelly Clarkson
The Police suck live?!? WHO KNEW?!?
I could have saved a lot of people their money.
Question for anyone better at parsing 1960s lyrics than I am (especially if you lived through that decade):
What really happened up on Choctaw Ridge? I get the impression that the heroine may have thrown B.J. MacAllister off the Tallahatchie Bridge, but why? Or was it just a horrific accident?
Is it all basically an allegory for "if you live in Mississippi in the long run you're screwed" (also the central point of most Faulkner novels)?
...in a roundabout fashion...
(The real news here is "KFRC is back," though I first heard about this through a cryptic promo given on the A's radio broadcast.)
I'll make a bold prediction: This probably means Woody, Tony & Ravey are out at Live-105. (Would you rather listen to them or to Adam Carolla? Would CBS rather pay all three of them or syndicate Carolla? I think Free FM is dead in San Francisco -- thanks indirectly to Don Imus -- as it would be silly of them just to change frequencies.)
UPDATE: Or rather, Free FM just moves to AM. I guess people weren't giving enough free podcasts to the old version of 1550 AM.
"Rock-based music": Is that more like pasteurized process cheese spread, or pasteurized process cheese food?
I used to think I didn't but now the evidence is unclear.
The only musicals I distinctly remember disliking are Annie and Damn Yankees. But somewhere along the line I got the impression... well, at the very least I'm not nearly as enamored of Busby Berkeley numbers as some people seem to be.
I thought I would actively despise the Disney movie High School Musical, yet I loved it. I thought I would at best find Dreamgirls moderately entertaining, yet I was completely captivated by it. (Oddly my wife -- who has directed a bit of musical theater -- found the songs in Dreamgirls too long and thus the movie too long. I completely disagreed.)
Oh, and I completely enjoy all the Family Guy references to musicals.
NP: Bullet Boys
That is all.
(Wrigley Field aside nobody in baseball plays Friday day games. Fridays and Tuesdays both have this morning void.)
(No, not Tom Shimura.)
Searches on Yahoo! Music now return lyrics. Go look for your favorite song as I hope and pray nothing is messed up.
On my neck, as always (though I must admit that sometimes when it isn't there, I find your song there instead).
Thank you for your continued concern, and indeed I will not let the walls cave in on me.
If I'm not mistaken, Creedence Clearwater Revival already asked that same question.
Are you just following up for lack of a satisfying answer?
This is from an iTunes mix I have at work. I presume you're all familiar with the shuffle meme.
1. 1000 Homo DJs - "Hey Asshole!". Eight minutes of a 20-something punk impersonating a stereotypical 40-something Chicago cop. Oh, and it namechecks Erma Bombeck for no apparent reason (as part of the cop's futile attempt to refer to "that bitch that whines all the time").
2. The Pogues - "If I Should Fall From Grace of God". My freshman year in college I had a roommate who loved The Pogues. Thank goodness I met him.
3. Sarah McLachlan - "Drawn To the Rhythm".
4. Eminem - "Stan"
5. The Who - "Baba O'Riley"
6. The Rolling Stones - "Jumpin' Jack Flash"
7. The Juliana Hatfield Three - "Spin the Bottle" (from the earlier blog entry what assumptions might you make about the length of my playlist?)
8. Jeff Buckley - "Last Goodbye". This was Barry Zito's warm-up song until Mark Mulder was traded and Zito took over Daft Punk's "Harder Faster Stronger" from him.
9. Tears For Fears - "Shout"
10. Gretchen Wilson - "Redneck Woman"
(Oh, I still own John my address for the CD mix of his favorite female artists.)
I've had "Spin the Bottle" by The Juliana Hatfield Three stuck in my head for several days now. I can't remember the last time one song stayed there so long on end without being superseded.
As long as you can master the 5/4 time this seems like it should be easy to play by ear on the piano. Oh, and the chord change on "Five minutes in a closet with you": If I'm not mistaken it's: C#m - A - C#m - G.
Needed a break from the baseball audio. Needed someone to Dig Me Out, so to speak.
There's no ideal occasion for Sleater-Kinney. Depending on what you really want, you're probably either better off with Veruca Salt or better off with The Donnas.
(Re the former, both Nina and Louise sing better than any S-K member, though S-K's best songs are better composed. Ironically, S-K vocal stylings would be perfect for most tracks of Live Through This (C. Love).)
"Why is Nickelback covering Tori Amos?"
Well, they're not: According to Wikipedia (and confirmed elsewhere), Kroeger wrote "If Everyone Cared" himself.
I still wouldn't mind hearing Nickelback cover some Tori. They'd be surprisingly good at it.
While we're here, everyone realizes "Rockstar" owes a lot to "Life's Been Good" (Eagles), right?
Coming full circle, one way to make "If Everyone Cared" even better would be to dub in that "So how you gonna do it?" voiceover line at every pregnant pause.
That's this blog's Nickelback quota for 2007.
M.S. understands me well! (See comment on post below this one.)
I came across Alanis Morissette's "My Humps" parody via Fark last night, right before I left work, and almost posted a link here but didn't feel like spending the time.
Despite the lack of a link, that video rocked my world.
"What's bothering me... Is why the hell they care, or assume people need to know, if he's gay to enjoy his music."
--first comment on this Onion AV Club post about Mika
I understand claiming that elements of a singer's personal life are irrelevant to his music. But in the case of Mika, IT'S THE MUSIC ITSELF that... something something "Three Dollar Bill."
If you told me Mika was straight, I'd be... surprised. I'd need time to wrap my head around it. But it would be okay. And it still wouldn't change the fact that his music is over-the-top Freddie Mercury.
(Hint to the clueless: If this were really about the man rather than the music, there would have been gratuitous references to Harvey Fierstein or Nathan Lane or the like.)
(If you don't know what Holly Dolly is, trust me, you don't want to. All you need to know is that this is the next project from the people who inflicted Crazy Frog on the world.)
I'm told it's #5 in France. Don't blame me, I'm just the messenger. It's probably not too late for us to spend summer 2007 hiding in a bunker until this too shall pass.
(When I was in high school, a trip to Germany was enough to spare me the summer of M.C. Hammer and Jeffrey Dahmer.)
On my way to work this morning I heard both "Irreplaceable" (Beyonce: the 'to the left, to the left' song) and "Brand New Lover" (Dead Or Alive, circa 1987) on different stations.
What is your favorite "I dump you" song? (Note the obvious distinction between this and a typical breakup song.)
At my discretion, "Hit the Road Jack" does fit the category even though it's Ray's backup singers dumping him in the chorus and Ray begging not to be dumped in the verses.
Julia and I have both taken to the same play list that I had created ad hoc for a Purm party. Going alphabetically by artist, it's hard to tell the theme until you got to some of the full albums' worth. (Also, several songs don't really fit at all other than adding to the festivity.) But on balance it's klezmerrific.
The Andrews Sisters - "Rum And Coca-Cola"
Anthony Newman - "Beethoven: Symphony No. 9: Ode to Joy"
The Bangles - "Walk Like An Egyptian" [sic: Persia != Egypt]
The Beatles - "A Hard Day's Night"
Cake - "Sheep Go To Heaven"
Chumbawamba - "Tubthumping"
David Cassidy - "I Think I Love You"
Ella Fitzgerald - "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea"
Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons - "Big Girls Don't Cry"
Gloria Gaynor - "I Will Survive"
Itzhak Perlman - "Williams: Schindler's List - Theme"
Judy Holliday, et al - "I'm Going Back" (from Bells Are Ringing)
Julie Andrews, et al - "I Could've Danced All Night" (from My Fair Lady)
The Klezmer Conservatory - all 19 tracks from Dance Me to the End of Love
Kylie Minogue - "I Believe In You"
Lena Horne - "Come on Strong"
Mandoline Orchestra - "O Sole Mio" and "Neapolitan Song"
Nicola Piovani - "Buon Giorno Principessa" (from La Vita e Bella)
Pesni Nashego Veka - "Brigantina"
Ray Coniff - "Moscow Nights"
Riccardo Muti; Philadelphia Orchestra - "Moussorgsky: Pictures At An Exhibition - The Great Gate Of Kiev"
Robert Preston, et al - "Ya Got Trouble" (from The Music Man)
Scott McKenzie - "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)"
Shania Twain - "Man! I Feel Like A Woman!"
Smash Mouth - "I'm A Believer"
Sunny Hodge - "Hell's Bells" (from Backed In Black: An AC/DC Tribute)
Three Dog Night - "Joy To The World"
Toby Keith & Willie Nelson - "Beer For My Horses"
U2 - "City Of Blinding Lights"
The Verve - "Bittersweet Symphony"
Vince Guaraldi Trio - "Oh Good Grief"
Vladimir Visotsky - "Zhiraf" (and five other tracks)
The White Stripes - "My Doorbell"
Alla Pugacheva (name displayed in Cyrillic) - all 17 tracks from Golden Songs
I hate to say this but I've come around to appreciate "Chasing Cars" (Snow Patrol). Should have seen this coming, since the last time I had that particular form of dislike for a song, it was "Beautiful" (Christina Aguilera), which I ended up thoroughly enjoying.
(I can't say "last time I despised a song so much" because songs I violently dislike tend to be either great after all or soul-crushingly bad, and it turns out to be easy to distinguish them. The canonical current examples of soul-crushingly bad songs are "Fergalicious" and "SexyBack.")
Anyhow, one of my least favorite things about "Chasing Cars" as a composition actually works out well for it as a potential karaoke song: Just the same melodic riff over and over again. The range is less than half an octave (a perfect fourth to be exact): from the A below middle C to the D above it. But since it's so distinctive as a tune, you can actually sing it and, when you're on key, be confident that you sound great and members of the appropriate sex will swoon. In short, FANTASTIC karaoke song.
Two other songs illustrate this point by being the exact opposite: First, "Not Ready to Make Nice" needs to be banned from karaoke bars before those weird intervals kill someone. "Evergreen" used to be the quintessential 'hard' song but I think NRtMN is even worse. The only way around it is to sort of speak (instead of singing) the verses until the chorus is some semblance of easy melody.
Oh, and the aforementioned "SexyBack": Not really a one-note song so much as a zero-note song. You could stay on any pitch at all (technically it's all two notes a half-step apart but who would actually notice?) and do reasonable well, yet still sound bad because the song just isn't music. (But if you can get your drunk friend to yell out "YEAH!" every other measure, you have the production values nailed.)
By the way, I'd never seen Fergie until some picture someone posted to Fark. She is FUGLY. Now that I know that, her musical popularity baffles me even more.
...will apparently be a Coldplay song.
An internal (work) e-mail thread about this announcement somehow devolved into (of all things) Fight Club references. Well, not just "somehow": really it was my fault.
Google the name "Holly Dolly." Your top several results will be videos. Watch/listen to one as long as you can stand it.
My office mate claims that "Holly Dolly" will be the next big cultural thing. The last time he made that claim, he was basically right (Gnarls Barkley, some time last spring).
I can see the next Numa Numa guy (I suppose it already is), maybe the next Crazy Frog if someone up above hates us all.
(People who read Spin are ineligible.)
"Kids were gonna kill themselves. Then they heard our music." The speaker of that quote comes from which band? (Quote is from the February 2007 issue.)
(or, "BINGO!" - and yes, I realize that one of the two elements below would be out of range for either reference, but play along anyway)
Who would win a beef between the groups B5 and D12?
(Gnarls Barkley is an exercise for the reader.)
All is well with the world. (See the Mellon Collie post just below this.)
"Rock rock, rockaway beach..."
Between playlists and shuffles I rarely listen to full albums anymore. Revisiting an album now as I type this (and do other computer stuff):
"Thru The Eyes Of Ruby" is so underrated. They could have gotten away with making this a 16- or 17-track CD with better editing. Fully story after the jump.
1. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. I'm surprised more double-albums don't have a mood-setting instrumental first track. I love this one. Some day I'll learn exactly how to play it on the piano instead of just sort of.
2. Tonight, Tonight. Still the best track the first disc. At some point I caused myself to be sick of this song but that was long enough ago that revisiting it is nice.
3. Jellybelly. Kind of a necessary evil, to make the transition from the sappy first two tracks to harder rocking. Otherwise doesn't bring much.
4. Zero. "Emptiness is loneliness and loneliness is cleanliness and cleanliness is godliness and god is empty..." I'm so familiar with this song that it didn't register much this time (was focused on going through e-mail).
5. Here Is No Why. Underrated track that I never think much about.
6. Bullet With Butterfly Wings. "Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage..." Why was this the second radio single off the album? That's almost as inexplicable as the first radio single (several tracks from now). [N.B. I'm probably wrong about the order of the radio singles.]
7. To Forgive. Huh. I'd misremembered this track as being on the other disc. This is the funeral-dirge tempo, lose your will to live, everything that's wrong with Mellon Collie as an album. But I'm resisting the urge to skip. "Holding back the fool again..." Blech.
8. An Ode to No One. The random garbled curse-laden rant is three minutes away and already I'm looking forward to it. Why couldn't this have been a radio single instead of (say) Zero? I suppose the fact that the coda sounds like a homeless man is part of it. Given what did make radio airplay, this is a redundant track, if fun.
9. Love. Most Smashing Pumpkins songs with that kind of guitar opening are happier, or at least less distorted. Reasonable filler track.
10. Cupid De Locke. I like it. I don't care how corny it is, I like it.
11. Galapagos. Slower and lusher. This is a reasonable facsimile of a generic non-rage-infused SP song.
12. Muzzle. Check that. THIS is the quintessential generic SP song. "It's for the girl I loved all along. Can a taste of love be so wrong?" Incidentally, there's a ad in heavy local TV/radio play urging us Bay Area people to drive Fords to some ski resort (not sure if the ad is for Ford, the resort, or both), and the background music for that ad is just different enough from whatever SP song it ripped off to avoid infringement, but just similar enough that the inspiration is obvious.
13. Porcelina of Vast Oceans. I turned the volume all the way up for the fade-in. Will I turn it back down in time to avoid scaring the cat? Nine minutes of this... hmm... So at home games, how long do Major League starting pitchers get for warm-up music before the first inning? I wonder if you could time this so that the "Ladies and gentlemen, your [team name]!" synced with the blaring guitars around the 2:13 mark.
8:55 into Porcelina it occurs to me, I could really use some Ramones as antidote.
14. Take Me Down. See above comment about Ramones. This should be a torch song. And so ends "Dawn to Dusk."
15. Where Boys Fear to Tread. Oh great, blaring distorted guitars, almost like overcompensating for the previous song. "Twilight to Starlight," we're on our way...
16. Bodies "Love is suicide..." I'd forgotten that "Twilight to Starlight" began by sounding a lot like previous SP albums. Did I mention love is suicide?
17. Thirty-Three. What a weird transition between songs. I still have sentimental attachment to this song because of a coincidence about what was getting heavy radio airplay at a given point in my life. Never noticed this before but of all songs on Mellon Collie thus far, this would easily make the best Me First cover.
18. In The Arms Of Sleep. I actually like the trilogy here even though it's three completely unlike songs. "Bodies" is like a manic delirium, then "Thirty-Three" is a rhapsodic fantasy, and then this is when you come back to reality, head on the pillow, in bed alone.
This whole album is about unrequited love, right? I'm not just projecting that? "I'll do anything to keep her here tonight." Except that she actually isn't there and never was. "Suffer my desire..."
19. 1979. What a waste of album space, much less radio play. This adds nothing to the album and adds nothing, period. I will resist temptation and not skip. But I've NEVER understood why this was the song that got SP breakthrough airplay.
20. Tales Of A Scorched Earth. Horrible song.
21. Thru The Eyes Of Ruby. On the other hand this is the most underrated track in the whole album. I love everything about "Tales Of Ruby." Best song composition on the album. (Written by Billy Corgan I presume? Or Corgan and [bandmate(s)]?)
While we're here: Is My Chemical Romance this decade's answer to the Pumpkins of Mellon Collie onward?
22. Stumbleine. Filler.
23. X.Y.U. Okay fine, I'll skip.
24. We Only Come Out At Night ...and skip again, even though this song doesn't deserve such short shrift. It didn't need to make the cut, but of the 10+ songs that didn't need to be on the album, this is one of the least unworthy.
25. Beautiful. Made it through one minute. Skipping is so empowering.
26. Lily (My One And Only). This song I actually appreciate much more in isolation than after hearing the previous 24 songs on the double-album. But now that I'm in skipping mode... made it through almost a minute.
27. By Starlight. Worthy of being on the album and worthy of not skipping. Man, I'd forgotten why I never listen to Mellon Collie the whole way through. "Dead eyes, dead eyes..."
28. Farewell And Goodnight. Sweet ending to the whole shebang. Again, this release has about 10 more tracks than it really needs but hey.
Alphabetically next (as sorted by artist) on my personalized playlist is a song by Squarepusher, from the Lost in Translation soundtrack. Then a bunch of Staind. Evaluate my taste in music accordingly.
(No more to come.)
When one speaks no Spanish, it's not a matter of hearing or mishearing a lyric so much as clinging to a syllable for dear life.
Anyhow, I think the song that piqued my interest is "Cogela Que Va Sin Jockey" (by Daddy Yankee) but I'm not certain (would need to listen to a free 30 seconds of it somewhere). All I know is the repeated reference to "candela."
The song I'm looking for begins with a sample of the same horn part heard at the start of "Jump Around" (House of Pain). Or at least some remix of it does.
The first two reflect carelessness more than mistaken assumptions, though all three are embarrassing (given where I work). Just to set the record straight:
1. Gnarls Barkley is not British.
2. Neither is Fergie. (For awhile my mental images of Fergie and Lady Sovereign were somehow of the same performer.)
3. Mika is not female, despite his best efforts.
Earlier tonight Alice* radio segued from My Chemical Romance ("Welcome to the Black Parade") to The Talking Heads ("Once in a Lifetime").
When the former came on I had the Backyardigans theme song stuck in my head. When the latter came on I still had the Backyardigans theme song stuck in my head. My Chemical Romance would do a great job covering that: Talking Heads, I'm not so sure.
I will also arrange "Welcome to the Black Parade" for piano, where by 'arrange' I really mean learn to play it by ear (the opening bars are very easy) and gradually improve my rendition of it.
Now it's time for us to have a snack!
(Alternately: Is "the savior of the broken, the beaten, and the damned" Pablo, Tyrone, or Uniqua?)
*- Despite the name, Alice is NOT a "Jack" format. That would be Max FM.
The "quiz" really isn't the point, so much as the associated snark.
"I don't know what color your eyes are baby,
but your hair is long and brown.
Your legs are strong and they're so so long and you don't come from this town.
My head is full of magic baby and I've got to share this with you.
I feel I'm on a cross again lately but it's nothing to do with you."
5. "Pride (in the Name of Love)". Honorable mention to "Red Hill Mining Town," "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," and several others. The gap between #4 and #5 is bigger than the gap between #1 and #4.
4. "Where the Streets Have No Name". Like the song at #3 on this list, the problem is as much as I love the first minute or two, the rest of the song isn't strictly necessary.
3. "Bad". "Wide awake... wide awake... wide awake, oh, I'm not sleeping... oh no. If I could, you know I would, if I could I would. So let it go..." If the lyrics brought ANYTHING to this song, and if it were half as long, it could easily be my favorite U2 song.
2. "City of Blinding Lights". Give me a few years, not only for it to grow on me but also for me to forget its use in The Devil Wears Prada. The more I listen to this, the more I realize how much this song owes to Coldplay (specifically "Clocks"). Funny, since I claim I don't even like Coldplay (but do like "Clocks").
1. "Gloria". Still the one.
It's theoretically possible that so-called "conceptual artist" Jonathan Keats recorded a live performance of 4'33" and preserved that performance as a ringtone. This would be suboptimal, since you'd always just heard the same coughs and foot shuffles and light fixtures at the same intervals, instead of hearing similar sounds spontaneously.
But it would be a great deal closer to Cage's vision than just timing an amount of "silence" and farting out a press release with the facetious claim that Cage "failed."
If you thought that the point of 4'33" was a specific duration of silence (rather than of the ambient noise resulting from a concert hall's mostly successful attempt at silence), shame on you.
Over the weekend the NY Times had a column about a format change at a NYC radio station that now rebroadcasts Mexican (not Caribbean) music from a Los Angeles station, mentioning in passing that the stream includes even the L.A. traffic reports.
Since reggaeton, salsa, bachata, and merengue are all mainly Caribbean (as much Dominican as anything else) it's a bit odd that the first Spanish-language station I added to my dial would be reggaeton rather than something that people who came from Mexico to California would listen to.
With that in mind I flipped over to La Preciosa. Language (and specific song familiarity) aside these are essentially the "oldies" that have otherwise disappeared from the Bay Area radio dial (now that KABL is no more and KFRC flipped over to that "Movin'" dance format).
For a split second I thought it was funny that Spanish speaking Mexican-Californians were doing more to preserve this era of music heritage than English speaking Gringo-Californians. Then I realized that the best way to get English language oldies and "standards" on your radio around here was just to get satellite radio, and that the Anglos who want to are spending the money to do so.
Oh, obligatory Spanish language music commentary: If "Labios Compartidos" is the song I think it is then Maná es muy Nickelbacko.
(Yes, I saw "Canadian Idiot" coming. Didn't everyone? I used to hum along to the main line of the Green Day song as "Don't wanna be a Canadian idiot" but had no sense of what the other lyrics would be.)
Anyhow, "1984": The story of Winston Smith, to the tune of (and one digit off from) a certain Bowling for Soup song.
(From Richard Mason, 10th comment in this thread).
Follow-up bonus challenge:
11. "He could have smashed through any bank in the United States, he had the strength, but he would not"
12. "Let your warm hands break right through me"
13. "I don't believe in Peter Pan, Frankenstein or Superman"
If you ever find yourself with both these questions at once:
1. "Why is Star 101.3 playing country music?"
2. "Why do I recognize her voice?"
The two questions answer each other.
*- or Boston's Mix 98, or whatever your local market's middle-of-the-road station may be.
By the way the most anal thing I've done in the past few weeks is rearrange my wife's presets so that stations we have in common are on the same buttons in either car. Our AM lineups now match completely, as do 10 of our FM's. We each have two FM stations the other one doesn't.
I see no reason why anyone would bother to take the time to do this, but name both of "my" unique stations and both of "hers." One of hers should be obvious from context; the other three probably have ridiculous male-female demographic skews.
(I don't think she actively chose "her" other station. I know I unilaterally banished KOIT from her dial for going all-Christmas several weeks too soon but we're back in that ten-month period where it's moot.)
You know the drill: Song name and artist name, don't post anything you already looked up, etc.
1. "If you go a million miles away I'll track you down."
2. "I may be disturbed, but won't you concede even heroes have the right to dream"
3. "Put anthrax on a Tampax and slap you till you can't stand."
4. "Any trick in the book now, baby, all that I can find."
5. "If I'm alive and well will you be there holding my hand?"
6. "Forget about your ex, he don't know what love is, he just failed the test."
7. "It's a struggle man but we taking it one bullet at a time."
8. "I'll hold on to the wings of the eagles, watch as we all fly away."
9. "You smell of corduroy and lemon drops, and reds pulled from a can."
10. "Gimme the electric chair for all my future crimes."
At least twice in the last 24 hours our local reggaeton station has played "Hypnotize' by Notorious B.I.G. Any ideas why this would enter a radio station's January 2007 rotation?
Biggie is a pitch role model for tenors everywhere, just like myself, Humpty Hump, Akon, and (I'm told, though have never heard first-hand) Bill Simmons.
This requires a really good ear, familiarity with recent music (of the 2000s) and probably access to a guitar or a piano. One band, two songs, chord sequences as I hear them listening to the songs in question. (I do have perfect pitch but I make no guarantees of 100% accuracy.)
("m" means minor, "#" means sharp, "b" means flat, A thru G are self-explanatory)
Post band and songs in the comments. I'd urge you not to look this up but I'd be very surprised if this were searchable anyway.
Hint(?): I'm 99% sure "Weird Al" Yankovic has never parodied this band. If he ever did, it would be immediately obvious who he was aping and I'd be deeply impressed with him on several levels. Your jaw would drop if "Weird Al" ever parodied this band successfully. It also isn't The Pussycat Dolls, though if this band ever decided to cover a PCD song various heads would explode.
I.
Em, C, Em, Eb, G, Eb, G, Cm, G
Em [several measures], C, B
Em, C, Em, Eb, G, Eb, G, Cm, G
Em [several measures], C, B
Em, C, Em, Eb, G, Eb, G, Cm, G
C, Eb, G [the titular lyrics extend over those last two chords]
C, Eb, G
Am, D, Em, C, B, Em
Am, D, Em, C, B
Em, C, Em, Eb, G, Eb, C, G
II.
(four-measure instrumental intro:)
A, C#m, A, C#m,
(vocals start here (verse):)
A, C#m, A, C#m, A, C#m, A, C#m,
F#m, C#m, F#m, C#m, F#m, C#m, E
(chorus:)
F#m, D, E, C#m,
F#m, D, E, C#m,
F#m, D, E, C#m,
F#m, D, E
[same chord sequence again for four-measure instrumental, second verse, and chorus]
D, F#m, E, F#m, Bm, C#m, D, E,
(instrumental interlude:)
F#m, D, E, C#m, F#m, D, E, C#m,
F#m, D, E, C#m,
F#m, D, E, C#m,
F#m, D, E, C#m,
F#m, D, E
A, C#m, A, C#m, A, C#m, A, C#m, A [fade out]
At one point the gold standard for radio edits came from "Creep" by Radiohead, with a line sanitized to "you're so very special."
Then there was The Slim Shady LP, in which (among other things) "killing lesbians" somehow became "in a spaceship."
It just now dawned on me that Akon only has one song named like "I Wanna [Verb] You," just clean and unclean versions with different titles.
(So help me the only time I've heard that song it was a reggaetone remix featuring Tego Calderon. I think all the best rap songs should be dubbed into Spanish by a guy who sounds like he might have just been some day laborer picked up off the street, hanging out in the studio to smoke and drink and laugh it up.)
Wolfmother, covered track for track by Veruca Salt.
Next time you hear the lyrics "I had a vision of festive days, she's like an eagle in the misted haze" just pretend it's Louise Post singing.
(N.B. There is not in fact a track called "Wolfmother" on American Thighs. That song is just "Wolf.")
(Yes, I realize that the song is about his musical genre rather than his person.)
Mass hysteria. This is techno.
My house is not my home, it rocks though.
Checked up on the late J.B.
His death is said on national T.V.
How, when and why? These are the main things
That I heard when I stroll down the lake
Now memory man, are you with that?
JAMES BROWN IS DEAD
Allyson knew "Wishing Well" (Terence Trent D'Arby) from the first measure of the opening drum riff.
I thought of that this morning when that very same drum riff gave me the shock of insufficiently precise recognition. (Insufficiently precise recognition is when you know you know something it, yet can't immediately come up with the right association.)
For a split second I convinced myself the song was about to be "Nasty Boys," which is just embarrassingly wrong.
Do you think Stephen Hawking ever gets tired of pop culture exploiting the sound of his voice box?
My least favorite track (by a wide margin) on the original OK Computer inspired my favorite track (by a slim margin) on Radiodread. Apparently the same aphorisms that are chalk on a blackboard through a voice box, become hilarious in a Jamaican accent.
Easy Star All-Stars: They're on tour now to support Radiodread. Go see them if they're near you. And then some day after the hype dies down I'll release my own track-for-track cover of OK Computer on lounge-style piano.
(You think I'm kidding, but I have a straight shot of "Airbag" through "Karma Police" almost ready for prime time. The most frivolous reason I hate "Fitter Happier" is that there's no good way to capture it as an instrumental.)
Sorted alpha by album, my personal iTunes playlist runs from Radiodread to Recurring Dream - The Best of Crowded House. The only song I have from the latter is "Don't Dream It's Over." On so many levels that turns out to be the only song that could make a smooth transition to generic music from a reggae tribute to Radiohead. It's never sounded so good.
I've never done illegal drugs in my life, yet this would be the perfect occasion to be high as a kite. (Playing with a cat must be even more fun high.)
Oh, after Recurring Dream I get Reflections: The Best of Carly Simon (CD ripped from Julia). "Coming Around Again." I know nothing stays the same, but if you're willing to play the game... so if Easy Star All-Stars are looking for new source material, I think "You're So Vain" would especially kick it reggae style.
I could only make it through about half of "Fergilicious." Tone-deaf melody, nonsense lyrics. Unless there's any Spanish in the part after I couldn't listen further, this might be the only all-English song played by La Calle.
Even "Telefono" (Hector El Father) is less annoying and more lyrically fulfilling. It's entirely in Spanish (a language I don't speak) but as far as I can tell he loves her, she loves him, her parents won't let her see him, so they have to settle for phone calls.
This rock station has a house ad with a battle-of-the-sexes theme. It uses Sarah McLachlan's "Building A Mystery" as an example of what women (and henpecked men) listen to.
I've heard that ad twice now. The most recent time it led into "Better Man" by Pearl Jam. Now there's a macho song. "She lies and says she's in love with him..." Even if it's Pearl Jam, I don't think dudes are the target audience.
(Then again, I suppose a lot of Pearl Jam songs have lyrics that skew girly. Usually the riffs balance that, except that "Better Man" sounds as though it should be part of the same station format as "Building A Mystery," aside from the obvious happy-versus-sad thing.)
Speaking of so-called Bone music, Disturbed's cover of "Land of Confusion" reminded me how great that song was. The song is so good that even the band being Disturbed can't ruin it.
(Actually it's an image's title text, since ESPN.com is just that slow to load at the moment.)
"Did Ali invent rap?"
(Hint: There is some prior art.)
My most recent: Wolverine Destroyer (it is indeed on iTunes)
Before that: Straight Outta Lynwood (also iTunes)
Next: Radiodread (if it's on iTunes -- I'll find out tonight -- and if not then I'll add it to my (severely out of date at the moment) Amazon wishlist).
There are about four good songs on Wolverine Destroyer; from memory, two of them are "Bomb Ann Arbor Now" and "(Ay, Oh,) F'k Bo." If I were a better punk listener then I'd recognize more of the original songs that the Schembechlers use as their template. I don't regret spending $9.99 (instead of 99 cents for a track), but it's close.
Along those lines (but please don't assume I'm comparing the Schembechlers to The Shaggs, as it's apples and oranges): Everyone should listen to the free 30 seconds of "My Pal Foot Foot." Once you've done that, 99 cents for the track might or might not be worthwhile; $9.99 for Philosophy of the World was money wasted, though I've certainly made worse album purchases.
My three most recent brick-and-mortar purchases:
The Lost in Translation soundtrack was completely worth it (Julia disagrees). Before that, in the same transaction, 200 km/H in the Wrong Lane and St. Anger. The t.A.t.U. album is actually the less bad of the two, but it's a very close race to the bottom.
One song in heavy rotation on Radio Disney (as of November, possibly still) is Bowling For Soup's "1985." I don't think Radio Disney's core audience is the target audience for that song.
Over the summer AOL ran a filler article with 111 arbitrarily chosen songs, then I added 17 more to make a bracket, and got through most of the first round before just getting too busy/lazy/flaky to continue. At least, "too busy/lazy/flaky" is the boring true story.
For posterity I plan to claim that Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars" came out of nowhere to win by acclamation. "If I lay here... if I just lay here..."
(Remember: The only known cure for having a terrible song stuck in your head is to concentrate very hard on a Paula Abdul song. Paula will flush out the previous song but won't stick in your head either.)
Very neat resource found via the intro to this YouTube video.
Mind, I'd already been playing by ear a half-decent facsimile of all this. I can also do a passable version of Blades of Steel (and am not holding my breath for anyone to annotate that).
Watch this update of the Quincy theme song (via Mike Burger exactly one month ago).
Some day I'll do more with "The Great Gate of Kiev" than just "Piiiiiic-tures at an ex-hi-bi-shun, at an ex-hi-bi-shun..." Some day.
The world needs more Cuban-American rap. You may not know who Armando Christian Pérez is but he'll be astoundingly popular soon, as if out of nowhere.
Meanwhile, Google Language Tools translate lengua afuera a bit too literally (as "language outside").
(The following is not a test, DJ.)
Even though their music has almost nothing in common (aside from the "rap" pigeonhole), Pitbull reminds me of very early Eminem in that the songs are just that obscene.
(His songs also remind me of Poison's "Sexual Thing", again despite being a totally different genre.)
One of the greatest thing about Pitbull is that compared to him Justin Timberlake is just pathetic. Listen to a Pitbull song, then Justin "I'll let you whip me if I misbehave," then back.
Some of my favorite things about this radio station, in no particular order:
It's owned by Univision and its offiical site is on the Univision domain.
Despite knowing Spanish phonetics, I could not have correctly spelled its nickname after hearing it. ("lah KYE-uh").
The DJs speak Spanish but use English phrases about every other sentence. It's like listening to Julia talk to her parents only with a different base language.
Reggaeton is on the cusp of completely ruling the world. Before long it'll be everywhere and you'll wonder, "where did THIS come from?!" Just like rap metal 5-6 years ago.
This query was all I needed to find