Merry Christmas Everyone!

Last year, I compiled a playlist of Christmas songs I remember enjoying when I was young. I remember loving "Christmas Is The Time to Say I Love You" by Billy Squier and "Father Christmas" by The Kinks and "Christmas Wrapping" by The Waitresses.

Seeing Love Actually inspired me to add a few more to it this year "Christmas Is All Around" and "All I Want For Christmas Is You," making it a total of 15 Songs of the Season.

While I usually only play these songs at this time of year, as Santas and reindeer don't hold up too well in July, there is one song I absolutely love whenever I hear it, and I could very well play it year round.

This song is the 1984 version of Do They Know It's Christmas as sung by members of the British pop royalty at that time: Simon LeBon, Boy George, George Michael, Bono. It's amazing what your memories will do to a song. Even when I was 8 years old, I understood that this song was part of something really big. I felt I was watching a part of history being made. Live Aid the next year was completely unbelievable in my young, impressionable mind.

But anyways, the song itself is just so upbeat and beautiful, it's like a modern day Silent Night or Joy to the World for me. And the request for charity, spoken smack dab in the middle of the decade of decadence is a very realistic one. It asks people to not give up everything they own, but to at least reflect about where they are in life that holiday season and realize and be thankful that they are in fact quite lucky compared with others in other parts of the world.

They recently remade the song to celebrate its 20th anniversary and for the Live 8 festivals which were held last year to support the idea behind the world debt-reducing Jubilee 2000 initiative. While the proceeds for that single and video went to charity as well, I stand by my belief that the original in all its cheery, teased out bleached hair glory is the better of the two.

Here's the video for my favorite Christmas song ever. Enjoy it, and I hope you enjoy the time you spend with your loved ones this holiday season!

A Musing About Muse

I think it’s only fitting that I should write about a band I share a name with. Yes, that’s right, I want to talk about the band Muse in this entry. I want to point out before I begin that I did not choose my name in reference to the band; I chose it because I liked the idea of being a goddess-like type connected with music. So there you have it. I’m a bit more humble in real life. I promise.

Anyways, even though where I live is not exactly a hotbed for rock and roll talent, it does show the occasional music video in between shows and one of those videos, shown earlier this year was Supermassive Black Hole, off of Muse’s Black Holes and Revelations CD. For reasons unknown to me now, after hearing this song and liking it quite a bit, I went back a notch and started downloading everything I could off of Absolution, their previous CD. When I realized I pretty much liked EVERYTHING I was hearing and then sheepishly realized I had downloaded the entire album, I then bought the CD. (Look for another post soon on my thoughts about downloading music, when I think it is OK and when it isn’t.)

Muse’s music seems pretty complex and hard-edged. One song features a Rachmaninoff styled piano solo, and another is like a mini-rock opera, featuring different movements within the same song. Then there’s the case for the lyrics being somewhat dark as they explore things like death and conspiracies taking place within our governments. And yet this is also a band that wrote a beautiful song called Starlight, which could be their most mainstream love song style hit, except Matt Bellamy sounds like he is going on about being taken away in some kind of (space)ship, which will take him far from his loved ones.

Matt Bellamy – The Truth Is Out There

Matt Bellamy is the lead singer, guitar player, pianist and lyricist for Muse. One of the more interesting things about him, aside from composing the music for Muse and singing it an impressive range is that he also subscribes to a number of way out there ideas. Some are pretty routine, like life colonies existing on other planets, but another one he has gone on the record believing is the idea that September 11 took place with the American government knowing full well what was going to happen on that day either because they were directly part of the plot to have extremist Muslims hijack planes and slam them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon or at least knew of the plot and did nothing so they would have an excuse to invade the Middle East again.

The title “Knights of Cydonia” refers to a region of Mars which is believed to have at some point housed human life. The video is this futuristic spaghetti western style movie, filled with references to various science fiction films. See it here and be prepared to be blown away. It’s quite elaborate, and a bit over the top, but also quite awesome.



Here’s a video I found of Dom Howard, the band’s drummer, making fun of Slipknot, an over the top American post-metal band. The best bit of the video I think is Matt Bellamy’s cackling throughout it, though the bit with the sombrero comes awfully close.


Just watch it.

CD Review: Under The Iron Sea

Note: I wrote this ages ago for a newspaper out in California who told me then that they would soon publish it. They still haven't so I am putting it here! If for whatever reason I am unable to keep this posted when it gets published (ah the power of positive thinking!) then I'll delete this post. I think it needs to see the light of day somehow! Looking at it now, I know my opinion of Keane has changed since I wrote this, but for purposes of a time-capsule style entry, I'll post the review I wrote as it was when I first wrote it.

With their piano driven rock and their introspective lyrics, Keane certainly aren’t going to ask you to get up and dance any time soon. They’d rather know how you were feeling at that very moment and let you know how they were feeling themselves. It can be a bit melancholy at times, but Tom Chaplin’s voice soars above it all.

What Keane are doing isn’t particularly groundbreaking. Plenty of comparisons have been made between Keane and Coldplay and Radiohead. Unfortunately these days, any band that primarily uses a piano will have people nodding over in the direction of Coldplay, and Chaplin’s singing is like a cross between the show-stopping acrobatics of Dennis DeYoung from Styx and Freddie Mercury and the emotive wailing of Thom Yorke.

The album opens with “Atlantic,” a song that sounds moody and ominous, like you were stuck on a rowboat at sea with a storm cloud rushing at you. But then the mood is quickly uplifted with “Is It Any Wonder?” the band’s first single.

This may be the one song that allows Keane to get greater radio exposure, but it might also be the one song that does not sound like typical Keane. “Everybody’s Changing” off of Keane’s 2004 debut Hopes and Fears seemed to paint Keane as a somber, mopey band who seemed to despair over the lack of permanence occurring in their day-to-day life. The rest of the album sounded quite similar, with a moody piano and bass backing up Chaplin plaintively asking “What does it all mean and where do I fit into it?”

With Under the Iron Sea, Keane are still earnestly asking the same philosophical questions but the band’s sound is much more upbeat. The opening riff of “Is It Any Wonder?” might confuse some people into thinking that someone in Keane has finally decided to pick up a guitar, but in fact, the sounds are made by Tim Rice-Oxley playing a distorted piano. This could be the one song that Keane could play in concert and send its fans pogoing into the aisles.

“Put It Behind You” is one of the stranger songs on the album. It starts off as a pretty straight-forward rock piece, but the song abruptly ends at around the four minute mark. What follows next are two minutes of an odd mix of swirling, atmospheric synthesizer loops. It’s quite a departure from the original tune and really doesn’t add anything special to it.

The next track, “Crystal Ball” is just as shimmery and ethereal an experience as one would hope going to a gypsy to find out your future might be. The only song that is really weak on this album is “Hamburg Song,” which features an annoyingly slow piano. As it is a holdover from their Hopes and Fears days, it’s a good reminder as to just how much their sound has evolved.

Keane might still be concerned about their future and finding their place in the world but seem like they will be enjoying their journey of self-discovery more than they did before. Under the Iron Sea is worth a listen, and you’ll especially like it if you are into Coldplay, Muse or any other band that seems to owe a large debt to Radiohead.

The Lost Art of Rebuying Recordings

Do any of you out there have holes in your CD collection that were created when you made the move from cassette to CD? I can remember having quite a few tapes in high school. It wasn't until maybe my sophomore year in university that I started buying CDs, with the intention of converting all of my tapes to the newer, supposedly better CD format.

When I had them on tape, I owned every single U2 recording that had been made up until Zooropa. Now I have just 8 U2 CDs. I am missing only October, Rattle and Hum, and Pop. I could go either way now with completing my U2 collection.

I also once owned everything R.E.M. made, up until their Up CD. Now I just own six. The point of what I own by R.E.M. is moot to me these days anyhow, as I think they stopped being relevant when they continued on without Bill Berry. I want to get Automatic For The People though as I remember it being a really good tape.

On tape I also collected a couple of recordings by Midnight Oil. I loved Blue Sky Mining and Diesel and Dust. They are nowhere to be found in my CD collection as well.

Pixies were another band I got into while in high school. I think at one point I owned almost everything they put out. Now I just have three CDs: Trompe Le Monde, Doolittle and Bossanova. I would love to own Surfer Rosa again if only to have Gigantic to play over and over again. It's a great song!

I also remember owning Sinead O'Connor's The Lion and the Cobra and I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got and really liking them. I wonder if those songs have stood the test of time with me, or if their memory of them is better than the songs themselves.

It's really hard when you want to embrace both the past and present when you like music as much as I do. I have to admit I have not bought anything in a long time in an attempt to recreate my high school tape collection. I wonder if anyone else is in the same position as me, wondering if it is a good idea to be so nostalgic for a time period when maybe there is other good current music out there that I should be paying more attention to.