Music Musings

Is In Rainbows the Future of Music?

2007-10-11T13:28:00.000-07:00

I know plenty of people who don't like Radiohead, but however you like them, you have to admit their decision to release their newest recording on a "pay-how-you-feel" basis was a gutsy one. For any band less established, the move could have meant certain financial suicide. But it seems that many people have at least paid the price they would have had they gone through iTunes. Radiohead is a band that has achieved that brand of success lots of bands want: the one where they have fans who will buy whatever it is they record. I'm sure Thom Yorke, if he released his grocery lists in book form, would become a cult status, if not rabidly successful, author.

The bigger question is what's going to happen to the music industry if people can pay iTunes prices and not have to visit iTunes to get the music they want? I bought the recording for 5 pounds. Combined with the processing surcharge, my purchase came out to be about $11. I think that is more than a fair price for a recording. It's what I pay at the used CD shops I frequent, and this time I know the money is directly going to Radiohead, and not the record store. (It's probably still a very small percentage, but it's probably more than it would be if I went through Borders Music or what have you.)

Still, I wish the download had come with liner notes and album cover art. What keeps me buying CDs still is the booklet that comes with the disc. I love to hold it in my hand, to look at the random art and to read about who the band thanks and the song lyrics. It's a big disappointment to open up the CD and find the booklet isn't even a booklet, but just a cover picture.

Someone came up with this for a cover art design. It's my favorite out of all I have seen.

Though, if you think of Radiohead as a doom-and-gloom style sort of band, these are sure to make you smile:

(Yes that is a My Little Pony on the cover of the first one, and Thom Yorke himself dressed up as a leprechaun on the second fan-made cover.)

I think there are a lot of people who feel the same as I do, and I'm not sure if name-your-price downloading will take off if it doesn't come with the liner notes. That's such an easy thing to add, though, and if it is added soon, I'm sure that this may be the next step in buying music.

The recording itself is quite impressive. I'm just getting into Radiohead, embarrassingly enough, and am more familiar with their The Bends, Pablo Honey and OK Computer phase. I heard after OK Computer they took a serious left turn in composing their music, but what I'm hearing on In Rainbows isn't too radical. It's more dancey (though would anyone really dance at a Radiohead show?) and reminds me of a drum-and-bass show I saw when I was in Hong Kong. Their music is still beautiful and yet catchy, and so far my favorite song on there has to be "Bodysnatchers" closely followed by "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi."

No. No. No. No.

2007-08-21T15:18:00.000-07:00

Seriously?

From msn.com:

Did Mischa Barton beguile or bore James Blunt during a
recent tête-à-tête in the Hamptons? According to the New York Daily News, the statuesque starlet, 21, made a beeline for the "You're Beautiful" warbler, 33, at a James Taylor concert, leaning down to wrap her arms around him and exclaiming, "There he is!" The two gabbed and noshed, but as Barton yammered away, "Blunt became less and less enthused," according to the paper. The inexplicably seductive singer, who was once briefly linked to Lindsay Lohan, eventually moseyed over to chat with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen before returning to Mischa, whom he later accompanied to local club. But the actress ended up making an early exit, leaving Blunt to get his flirt on into the wee hours with "with blondes and brunettes alike."

Us Weekly, however, has a slightly different take on the evening. A source tells the mag that Blunt was "constantly hovering" around Barton, with another piping in, "He's obsessed with her and has been trying to get with her for a while." But he apparently doesn't measure up to the actress' oh-so-high boyfriend standards (her previous beaus include Cisco "Dangly Drawered" Adler and oily oil heir Brandon Davis). An insider tells the mag she "just wants to be friends."

Yes, I know. What's it to me? What it is to me is I can't stand the idea of James Blunt dating cause you know that's going to one day end up as little James Blunts toddling around all over the place, and I don't think we need any more of that do we?

No. And I told myself, almost as an unwritten rule for this blog that I'd ignore James Blunt and his...work cause it'd be too easy to make fun of him. But I can't help it, especially if he's hanging out with Lindsay Lohan or Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. I really hope it was a slow news day in the newsroom and stuff had to be made up to fill inches cause it's just really sad when you're a sad songwriter sadly hanging out with girls 10 years younger than you.

Ryan Adams

2007-08-20T09:33:00.000-07:00

Though I’ve never been one to like thrash metal, or even something as relatively tame in that genre like Metallica, I think my current taste in music is skewing, well, old.

Case in point, my latest musical love, Ryan Adams. Upon my first listen to his latest CD, Easy Tiger, I am instantly taken with his voice, but a nagging voice inside my head says “Doesn’t he sound a lot like Jackson Browne too?” That can’t be right. Jackson Browne is music fit for my father. To add insult to injury, my iTunes software gently mocks me, revealing that it has decided to categorize Easy Tiger as….country.

Though, yes he produced an album for Willie Nelson, George Jones he isn’t. He once sang in his old band, Whiskeytown that he decided to sing country cause it was easier on him than singing punk. One of his more famous songs is a cover of Oasis’ “Wonderwall.” Please don’t confuse him with that Canadian light-rocker either. I’ve only listened to this album twice now (I just bought it this weekend) but Ryan Adams seems more like had he been born 20 years earlier, he would have been right at home on stage for The Last Waltz with The Band, not quite kicking it up at the Grand Ol’ Opry. But his sound is definitely more rootsy than twangy and his singing voice is quite lovely, too, a tenor voice that easily stretches into falsetto when he wants.

I remember rumblings about Ryan Adams from when I was in university. He was, at one point, named The Person Who Will Save Rock and Roll. Only 32, he has put out a whole mess of albums since he was 16 -- some people in fact deliberately using the word mess to describe some of his past efforts.

True to form with those rockers marked for greatness, or at least cult status, Adams is not without his problems. Reportedly he is as mercurial in nature as his music – one never knows if they paid good money to watch him walk off the stage three songs in because he is unhappy with something about his performance, or the venue, or the fans. But in recent interviews, he claims all of that is behind him now. He is ready to play to his fans and work for his record label.

Only time is going to tell whether that is really the case. People who have been rock music fans for years can certainly say they’ve heard that one before from some other voice of a generation that imploded too soon. In any case, I’m looking forward to looking into his back catalog to see what other treasures I can find.

Henry Rollins

2007-07-16T13:30:00.000-07:00

If I took Henry Rollins out for dinner, I think everyone passing by our table would stop and stare. Rollins is heavily tattooed, short, built like a square and looks like he could hoist at least two wheels of a Volkswagen Beetle off the ground. He's like the Chuck Norris of the music world, if you ask me.

I remember seeing him in concert when I was in university and though my friend and I made sure we were a good 100 feet away from the flowing mosh pit, the one thing that couldn't be diffused was the ferocious intensity he exuded when he bellowed into his microphone.

Though Beavis and Butthead swear that chicks dig Henry Rollins because of the size of his neck, he is someone I admire because he seems to have carved out his life by being pragmatic. A devoted fan of the punk band, Bad Brains, he went to a number of their shows, and then one day asked someone in the band if he could come on stage and sing one of his favorite songs. They allowed him onstage, and Henry's singing career was picking up steam.

Later on, he heavily followed the band Black Flag around the East Coast and let them stay at his place when they came through the Washington, D.C. area. They became friends and again, Rollins was invited to sing a song at one of their shows. Unbeknownst to Rollins, the singer and guitar player of the band was looking to step down and focus only on guitar; hey presto, Rollins became the singer of a band he really liked. It gives me hope that all I have to do is just keep asking random people if I could write for their music magazine and one day I'll meet someone who actually runs one.

He also is a very prolific writer and I really admire him for starting his own publishing company, 2.13.61 Publications, so his writings could reach a larger audience. (Looking back on my last comment, maybe I need to take a lesson from the Henry Rollins School of Business Management.) Henry has gone on many spoken word tours, and published many books, filled with poems, short stories and observations about life on the road.

One of the biggest things I admire Henry for is that he has been involved in the cause of the West Memphis Three for the past 14 years. While he rails against people like Bono for being pretentious and unoriginal, Rollins himself has realized what his star power can do for a cause. As this is a music blog and neither a true-crime nor political blog, I won't go into too many details, but the West Memphis Three have been held in prison for the past 14 years for a horrific crime some say they did not commit, convicted on evidence that was marginal at best and by a community that may have been tainted with bias. He is also a champion of gay rights and an outspoken critic of the Iraq War.

Rollins has come a long way from his military-school and Haagen-Dazs management days, and has done everything in his life in the true punk-rock DIY spirit. While I don't own much of his music yet, I definitely admire him as an artist and person.

Don't You Hate It When This Happens?

2007-07-08T17:46:00.000-07:00

I woke up early this morning, as in 430 this morning and I worried if I would manage to get back to sleep before my 830 alarm. I did, and I had this really strange dream involving space travel, a living ship, something that manifested symbols and designs on its deck whenever it wanted, Mulder and Scully were there, as was Avril Lavigne. Which makes me wonder just what the hell was going on in my brain at the time?

The thing that really struck me is I heard this song and woke up with it in my head. And I had it with me until I got into the shower and then it faded away, replaced with some Faith Hill and Nina Gordon songs. What I had was really original, but now I wonder if it might have been "inspired by" the Faith Hill song (though to call Faith Hill inspiring for me..egh, meh.)

Ages ago, I dreamed I was at some amusement park where I heard this "new" Bryan Adams song, and then months later when I heard the ubiquitous Everything I Do (I Do It For You)" I freaked out as the lyrics and tune were so similar.

When this happens, it ticks me off I don't have a working knowledge of music. I'd kill to be able to wake from a dream, sit in front of a piano or strap on a guitar and take it from there, see what develops. This is how Paul McCartney came up with Yesterday, after all. I'm a bit worried that it seems my subconscious wants me to get into songwriting for really AOR, Adult Rock style songs, though.

A Journey Through My Musical Touchstones

2007-07-03T08:42:00.000-07:00

(Work was slow today. Obviously.)

I've always grown up around music. I remember stealing peeks through my dad's records from the 1960s when I was a kid, liking Big Brother and the Holding Company's Cheap Thrills album because it was filled with cartoon pictures, giggling a little over the panel that said "Janis Joplin on vocals" with an off-panel speech balloon interjecting "And how!" and later chuckling over my dad's red ink peace sign scrawl on the upper right hand corner of some of them. (The idea of my dad being a hippie just didn't jibe with me then, and it still doesn't now.)

True, I grew up on MTV and there were those bands that I loved in the 1980s, like Duran Duran, but when you're 7 years old it takes an age and a day to save up for an album. Plus I was under the belief then that when a band put out an album, it would only be available up until they put out their next one. The idea of a back catalogue that could stretch 10 years into the past never occurred to me.

Whenever we drove somewhere together, the radio would be cranked up to some classic rock station and my dad would have one hand on the steering wheel and drum the other one against my leg against the music. He never was really much for showing signs of affection when I was growing up, so maybe this was his version of the manly-man's hug.

It was through these drives during my almost 11th year on the planet that I was introduced to my first musical love of my life, The Beatles. Not exactly the most ground-breaking, cutting edge introduction to music in retrospect, I mean had it been something like Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, that's be really something for an 11 year old to attach herself to! But I know I could do a lot worse, and I know I did when I wrote in my junior high school journal and saved for maybe not posterity, but memory that my two favorite bands ever were U2 and New Kids on the Block. (That lasted about 3 months.)

Strangely enough, I got into the Beatles about 2 years before it seemed everyone else in my school did, and maybe what started to send me off in another direction was a) They weren't around any more and I wanted to experience what it was like to love a band that was still evolving and creating and b) the most shallow, superficial people were starting to like the Beatles in school and the fact they supposedly appreciated their messages of peace and love while searching out and destroying the lower people on the totem pole (read: me) just smacked of hypocrisy.

So in 1988, I moved on to U2. Christ, Bono was one of those people who could sell ice to Eskimos. He was completely charming and charismatic. I remember having their cassettes of War and The Joshua Tree (copied off my Dad) and playing them over and over. Then I went to see Rattle and Hum with a friend of mine (where I asked her "What's apartheid?" in the middle of the movie, and she said "I'll tell you later.") I hadn't realized this powerful band was also quite political and I have to credit them with being the first band that allowed me to open my eyes to the idea that music could influence change in the world, as well as clue me into the fact that music could also be my church, my bridge to God, whatever that is.

While I still appreciated the Beatles, U2 was the first band where I started buying anything I could that related to them somehow. I joined their fan club and made pen friends from all over the world. I bought books that an Irish magazine published that documented their early days and their rise to the top. I joined Amnesty International. Strangely enough, I think this was the way I decided to rebel against my family. No hard-core drinking, just hard-core letter writing.

U2 are a hugely popular band. I don't know if there is anywhere in the world you could go anymore, say "Bono," and have no one know who you are talking about. But maybe back then, it wasn't enough for me. They were popular but they were still being overshadowed by MC Hammer and Paula Abdul and Color Me Badd. So I believed that MTV was "it" at the time, like it was a complete insult not to have your videos overplayed on MTV. Throw me a bone, I was like 14 at the time!

I was staying up late on Sundays, still trying to hold onto my faith in MTV and watching their 120 Minutes show, a collection of "alternative music" (as in NOT Mariah!) videos. I was searching for a band that I could love from the very beginning and watch them rise and grow and change, and I could say I was there from the start. I guess I was looking for my own Beatles, not really knowing at the time that they, through their many left turns later in their career, had alienated a lot of the fans that swooned and fainted when they were watching them on the *television* playing on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964.

So while I was wallowing in this sludgy wasteland known as the first year of high school, trying to forget the waste of time that was junior high school, another band threw open the windows for me, or as I like to see it, each band that I have fallen for, it's like a lens placed upon a filter placed upon another filter placed upon another lens, something that only adds to the way I saw my life before, and yet changes it in some radical way as well.

The band I'm talking about was Nirvana, and oh my God, they were so exciting to me then, after I lost my suspicions about them as I didn't want to like a band that everyone else did right off the bat (snob, I know!) They turned the musical world on its ear. Kurt Cobain (god bless him) was full of vomit and vinegar, and perfect for me as I was someone who hated the fakery that was going on within my high school career. I loved how he wanted to be respected as a musician but not be popular. How he tried to work the system on his own terms, which meant flipping it the bird more often times than not.

The funny thing was at this time, "grunge" became not just a music style but a fashion statement. It was cool to be a bit ugly. It was cool to express yourself, in any way possible, so long as you just did. And I was exposed to these women, these strong, cool women, that I really wanted to be like. Kim Gordon was the epitome of the perfect woman for me, the one I wanted to grow up to be. She didn't seem to be too concerned about fashion, but still looked good. She had a tough edge about her, fiercely intelligent, just drop-dead cool. And she played bass guitar in a non-fluffy way. She rocked! I think this is the point where I stubbornly took up the idea that I could be whomever I wanted and damn if I didn't find someone to be with. After all, Kim just exuded a confidence in her skin that was what it was all about for me. It didn't matter having the perfect hair or clothes or makeup. Kim still looked pretty glamorous, but she gave off this vibe and I felt that you could get somewhere by being honest and original by being yourself, and that was a pure gold revelation for me in high school.

But when I saw a video around this time of Boyz II Men wearing matching flannel shirts, maybe this was the signal the beast had grown too big for its cage and was starting to bite back. And when Kurt killed himself, the crown was passed to Pearl Jam. Then on the radio everyone supposedly sounded like Pearl Jam. When Pearl Jam itself decided to drop out and stop making videos, it was hard to keep up with their new material and I started to lose interest.

Though I never stopped liking Pearl Jam, listening to Nirvana today sounds almost really dated to me, like they came at the perfect time where I was feeling the vitriolic self-hate that only comes during high school. But that was my moment of realizing what it meant to like popular music, music so popular it becomes part of a fashion trend.

In college, I latched onto Sebadoh, and discovered how it felt to be looked at as not "indie" enough to appreciate their music. At around this time, I was living in a musical bubble, and probably playing a mix of everything I had loved up to that point: Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Sonic Youth interspersed with U2, R.E.M. and The Beatles. This where I saw my own high-school smugness bite me in my own ass, and I started to understand that music shouldn't come with a uniform and a code to live by. I started to appreciate music for whatever reason I appreciated it. That would include the industrial metal sounds of Nine Inch Nails, the wispy vocals of Juliana Hatfield and the bombastic fluff known as ABBA.

That's pretty much how I was living my life before I moved to South Korea and during that time too. Let's call this period My Time in the Desert, seeing as it was a bit of a cultural waste land. It was amusing, however, to see Korean hip-hop bands and girl groups trying to emulate The Spice Girls. (Korean pop culture exists in a vacuum I think.) When I arrived in Hong Kong, I was happy to see that there was an HMV near by me, I later discovered (though a bit too late) used CD shops there as well, and by watching the local TV at around 10 p.m. I could see what EMI Asia and Warner Brothers Asia were trying to promote over here to the expats. In a word, Brit-rock. Without my time spent in Asia I would not have discovered for myself Muse or Keane or The Kooks.

It was also at this time I had joined a music tracking site that through my plays of Radiohead and Muse that I would probably really like Jeff Buckley. Now, I know I have already gone on about him well enough in here and I will err on the side of caution here so as to not have my Music blog be confused with a Jeff Buckley blog, but I just found his life to be very inspiring, his voice absolutely beautiful, and the best thing about him was reading about how in his tumultuous childhood, it seemed his guitar and his tapes and records were also a connection to what was real and true in a world that probably made not much sense to him.

For me, for how I now approach appreciating music, it only makes sense to me that he is my fourth and most current touchstone point in my musical journey. He was someone whose album was unable to be categorized because he cast a wide net and recorded whatever sort of music moved him. Like I felt for the first time being a U2 fan, his voice to me is like attending a church service, and I recognize in him what I loved about Nirvana -- he did not want to sacrifice himself and his art for commercial gain. He had this amazing life through which he absorbed so much music, and I totally understand it now, not just through him but through all the artists that somehow came into my life before, that the purpose of music is to be an integral part of life itself. Expression, of yourself and your feelings, is everything. The connections you make, through people or music or through spirituality, are key.

Musicians I'd Like To Take Out To Dinner (Part 4)

2007-06-23T22:21:00.000-07:00

It's a total crime, a total show of me dropping the ball that I have had this blog for almost a year and not once -- NOT ONCE!! -- have I ever mentioned one of my favorite bands on here, The White Stripes.

The White Stripes have been around since 1999, but I hadn't really heard of them until my brother picked me up for whatever reason when I came home for my mom's funeral in 2003. Seriously, I have no idea why he picked me up but I knew he was playing "Elephant" in the car. Their sound instantly made me feel nostalgic for the time I would visit my aunt's and uncle's house and listen to my cousin Chuck bash it out on his drum set.

I guess that is the main thing that I just love about their music. It manages to retain this organic quality about it, just because it's simply the guitar and drums (for the most part. Get Behind Me Satan also featured marimbas and mandolins and all that). It reminds me of being a kid and getting my hands in the dirt, searching for earthworms. It's cool and gritty. Playful but satisfying.

Another thing I love about this CD is how it seems that Meg is coming into her own as a singer. "St. Andrew (This Battle is in the Air)" is a really freaky-cool song, made especially so by the use of her high pitched voice that interweaves with the bagpipes. On the last songs she sang, "Cold Cold Night" and Passive Manipulation," she sounds a little hesitant to be in the forefront but on St. Andrew, she seems to becoming more comfortable with her voice and being up front and I hope eventually she will sing more songs on future White Stripes releases.

I think a lot of that comes from their being disciples of the DeStijl art movement, a school of painting where artists used a limited amount of colors and horizontal and vertical lines.Another thing I really appreciate about them is that you can tell so much that Jack and Meg White view what they're doing as an art form. They seem to directly control their stage image, their personal image and their fashion sense. Their videos look low budget but they are brilliant. I just recently came across this one after watching an episode of The Simpsons.

A friend I know recently compared their new album Icky Thump to something that sounded like something Led Zeppelin would have came up with: really blues-based rock and roll with face melting guitars and crashing drums. And I think he has it exactly right and I find it absolutely amazing that something this retro sounding could resonate with me so well. This is a CD I bought Thursday after mulling over a better part of a few days whether I needed to buy this CD or cereal and bread (I wound up eating out a lot) and then played it fully through three times, picking up my air guitar every now and again. This is an album that is really riff heavy, and it's one thing to say "Yeah I like this music," but totally and completely another to say "Man, I wish I could play this music!"

If I took Jack and Meg out for dinner I'd want to talk to them about music as an art form, about their sound and their influences. I'd ask them if they thought Get Behind Me Satan would go down in the history books as a total departure for them, or should we expect a whole mess of left turns during what I hope will be a long career. I'd also ask them if there'd ever be a time soon where I could afford to see them. They're playing in L.A. this September...the only thing is where they are playing is charging almost the same amount of money for PARKING as they are for a full priced ticket! If I get lucky and score a date for The White Stripes' show, you can be sure I'll report on that.

I feel right now that if I were to make a Top 5 White Stripes Songs list, it'd run heavily biased to their new album, which my iPod told me I played about 3 times last week, starting on Thursday. So while I'm still throwing confetti into the air for buying this CD in the first place, I'm not going to make an official list, but will say that "You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told)" and "Conquest" are the absolutely awesome songs on the new CD, and for what I own of the White Stripes (hello, White Blood Cells in the near future!) the awesome songs are Blue Orchid, Seven Nation Army, Take Take Take, My Doorbell, and The Hardest Button to Button. And a whole boatload of others, but in the interest of making sure my reader doesn't fall asleep, I'll stop with these.

Home, Home Where I Wanted to Go -- Coldplay

2007-05-29T21:42:00.000-07:00

It's been a very long time, and I'm not sure how good this explanation will be, seeing as it really has nothing to do with music, but here goes.

I decided to bite the bullet in February of 2007 and uproot myself and my things from Hong Kong to California, a place I had never really lived in before, but at the time, just that it was in the United States was good enough for me.

I was a bit nervous thinking that I was leaving behind some sort of glamorous life that I hadn't quite noticed and/or appreciated for something akin to working in a salt mine, but I was done in Asia. It was time to settle down and put down some roots and no proximity to Thailand, however close and not even the rent-free life I was living would be enough for me. I wanted to be home with like-minded people, get a job where I could be promoted, drive a car, meet lots of different people, have a deeper understanding of everything around me.

In any case within a matter of weeks landing here, I found a car, house, and job in that order. And life has been treating me really well. I wonder sometimes if I should say I'm lucky or I've finally been blessed. With the passing of my grandfather in November, maybe my cheering section got a little bigger, who's to say?

I wrote in here earlier that I wondered if listening to sad music makes one sad, it was like the whole chicken vs. egg riddle. I think now it certainly helps to have things in your life turn around and get a break every now and again. Everyone who really knows me how unhappy I was in Hong Kong because I had this massive goal of finally breaking through the bubble and going home and that meant saving a heap of money, given I gave myself less than a year to do it, and that meant no frequent shopping trips or dinners out...the CDs I bought were my only real luxury, my way of keeping sane.

Anyways to cut to the point of why I'm writing about this in my music blog, it's because I noticed that my music tastes have changed a little more since I've been here. Sunnier, happier stuff. Muse and Radiohead, while I still quite appreciate them, have gone way down my Last.fm charts. I've been listening to a lot more of bands like No Doubt and songs like Len's "Steal My Sunshine." God, I looove that song. It's poppy and it reminds me of a sunny day spent at the beach where you get to just chill out, but there's a place in my heart for that sort of thing. And "There She Goes" by the La's is also something I can not get tired of. Maybe what these songs have in common is that I was able to listen to them for the first time in high school and at university, a time that no matter what, always gets tinted in a rose color hue because of the distance of time attached to it.

Anyways, I'm just hoping this mood will continue, and I'm just happy to be using the word Home as often as I have been lately.

Jeff Buckley 1966-1997 10 Years After

2007-05-29T21:28:00.000-07:00

This should speak volumes alone. Rest in peace, and thank you for the music you gave us during your short time here.

Top Songs of 2006

2007-01-03T01:49:00.000-08:00

I seriously feel as though I do not know enough about the current state of pop music to fairly judge albums (I was once even told that my taste in music “looked a little old” – ha!), so I will name my personal Top 10 of songs made in 2006. These are songs I have played over and over, and mostly ones where when I hear it once, I really want to hear it again.

1. Belle and Sebastian – ‘Funny Little Frog’ First of all I would like to dedicate this song to my boyfriend, Jeff. *cough* I have to say this song is absolutely brilliant both musically and lyrically. First the music, with its horns, piano and accented guitar strums are all played with so much life behind it sounds like a white soul hit from the 1960s. Then the lyrics sound at first like your typical “You’re amazing, baby and I’ll love you till the day I die” love song until he starts talking about having one sided conversations with the object of his desire and then admitting he doesn’t even know how she smells. Well, what’s going on here then? If you don’t know, I’m not going to ruin it for you, but I will ask you to go to YouTube and look for this video and see for yourself. Sure, it’s a bit sad, but it’s such a completely amazing concept and I have to say tonight alone I played this song 5 times in like an hour and enjoyed every minute of it.

2. The Killers – “When You Were Young.” This reminds me in a way of U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name,” not just in influence, but this song seems to be talking about a perfect place in one’s life, yet as opposed to U2’s state of utopia, this song seems to be about having childhood dreams and ideals that most people tend to give up as they get older, like when it comes to meeting the Perfect Someone, or seeing love as a kind of redemption for yourself. I tend to embarrass myself on the subway playing air guitar to this song or straining to hit the high “talks like a gentleman, like you imagined” bit every time I hear it. Who cares that fires have nothing to do with hurricanes?

3. Keane – “Is It Any Wonder?” I may have said it before but this is the song that completely changed my opinion on Keane. And I was tricked into thinking Keane had broadened their sound by putting a guitar into the mix. Apparently though, if you hook up a certain type of effects pedal to your keyboard, you get a sound that kind of resembles what The Edge played in his glory days of U2. Tom Chaplin’s voice is like an acrobat doing handstands and cartwheels on a tightrope – it’s amazing to witness.

4. Muse – “Starlight” Damn what a pretty song. What an absolutely gorgeous song. “I just wanted to hold you in my arms.” Matt Bellamy sings during the chorus. Well, if you’re going to twist my arm…but seriously. For a band concerning itself with distrust of political leaders, it’s good to hear them wanting to open up to someone else on a more personal level.

5. Razorlight – “In The Morning” Now, Johnny Borrell apparently has one of the biggest egos in all of rock music right now, and has made dumb ultimatums such as he’d only be a presenter at a British music awards night if he got to play a minute of Manic Street Preachers’ “Motorcycle Emptiness,” but this song is so addictive, even if it sounds like it is talking to a girl who seems to have too many drunken hookups and then wonders why she is feeling empty inside. God, I love rock songs you can actually dance to! I love both the beginning with the booming drums that slap you for your attention and the breakdown at the end, the “Are you gonna do it this time” that carries the song to the end.

6. Lily Allen – “LDN” It’s part of the postal code for London England. I love songs where the music sounds all happy but has some pretty dark and/or twisted lyrics. Here Lily sounds as though she is bouncing around the city (and indeed in the video you see her skipping down the street.) and if not enjoying the seedy side of life that comes with living smack-dab in the middle of a city at least accepting that when you choose to live in a city for its culture, diversity, and nightlife, you also have to deal with the homelessness, drug use and violence that comes with it.

7. Arctic Monkeys – “Fake Tales of San Francisco” It was the slightly funky guitar hook that dug its claws into me when I first heard this song. The Arctic Monkeys are OK. They are a very young band and it shows sometimes but I do have to say without a doubt that Alex Turner can definitely write some really good lyrics. This is about people trying to make the scene at a nightclub, something I have no interest in and thankfully, neither does Alex Turner. “Get off the bandwagon, put down the handbook” Indeed.

8. The Kooks – “Naïve” Part Two of Thinking About What the Hell I Was Doing When I Was 20 Years Old. Another ridiculously young band. But they have made such great music with their debut CD Inside In/Inside Out. Lots of the songs betray their age with mini tantrums in “You Don’t Love Me” and the somewhat ridiculous “Matchbox.” With its lyrics “The Kooks are coming out tonight,” it makes me wonder if they’re going to meet the Jets and have a rumble. I wonder: If you’re a Kook, are you a Kook all the way from your very first breath to your last dying day? Someone should ask them that, but then again with their average age of 20, they may not want to admit to having any knowledge of West Side Story. Anyways, end the random ramble here. I think I like “You Don’t Love Me” best because it just charges ahead full of steam but “Naïve” was the first song to introduce me to this band and I am pretty excited about what they may do later on in their career. People may dismiss them as shite with a shite singer, but if anyone’s ever heard any old U2 recordings, Bono didn’t come blessed with a golden throat from the start, either.

9. My Chemical Romance – “Welcome to the Black Parade” Oh Christ, I have a song on here from a band that everyone and their mother and their mother’s dog considers “emo.” I am not 15 years old but I love this song. I love it. I love it. It’s big. It’s bombastic. It’s grandiose. Not since Jeff Buckley’s Grace has anyone made dying (which while is a part of life, still scares the shit out of many people) sound like such a noble, dignified thing.

10. Scissor Sisters – “Paul McCartney” I love this song because it’s gently making fun of a pop icon by creating a song whose music could have easily been a backing track for many songs by Wings. It starts with some “whooo!”ing Paul McCartney style from the band members, the bass guitar and the hi-hat is way up in the mix, there’s some hand clapping thrown in there. It is such a fun song to listen to mainly because it sounds like it was so much fun to record.

Honorable Mentions: “Incinerate” by Sonic Youth, “Never Be Lonely” by The Feeling, “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” by KT Tunstall, “That Old Pair of Jeans” by Fatboy Slim, “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley, and “You’re All I Have” by Snow Patrol.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

2006-12-19T04:52:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-18T03:57:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-06T22:59:00.000-08:00

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

2006-12-06T22:26:00.000-08:00

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.

Hello World, Here's a Song That We're Singing! C'mon Get Happy!

2006-11-30T01:52:00.000-08:00

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? -- Rob Gordon, High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

Kurt Cobain once sang "I miss the comfort in being sad," and without going into too much detail (this is after all, a blog about music, not a makeshift confessional/therapist's couch), I have been going through some minor inner conflicts, been feeling some minor pangs of ennui (does ennui even come in minor pang form?) and I've noticed lately that I can't seem to get enough of bands like Keane and Radiohead and Muse. It may have even gotten to the point where others say "Hey that Jeff Buckley guy, he wasn't exactly the most up person out there, was he?" and I don't even notice. Someone on a website I frequent recently recommended Editors to me, and I like them, even though I think someone's observation that they are quite like Joy Division is spot on.

And I'm not even looking at this as part of that lame ass argument for parental warning stickers where parents without a clue think that listening to Korn or Marilyn Manson makes their children into homicidal killers. I just think I am listening to too much music that is cut from the same emotional (but not EMO) cloth, and I'm wondering if I abandoned my beloved music for a few weeks, what would happen? Instead of listening to a man pine for the father he never knew and listening to another complain about getting old when he isn't even 30, why don't I see what happens to my psyche if in their place I listen to Fergie and Pussycat Dolls and Gwen Stefani? Would whatever is affecting me, those problems, would they become different? Would it be the end of the world for me over something more trivial, as in "My local drugstore doesn't sell blue eyeliner!"? Would I end up going completely bat-shit mental?

I know I go through phases of music, where sometimes I like music that sounds completely ethereal and almost fragile, and then I turn around and want to hear someone screaming over crunching guitars and bashing drums. But I have to wonder now if it really is the music that I am listening to that is making me feel meh.

Any lurkers out there know of any intelligent feel good music? Or am I completely missing the point? If everyone felt safe in their own skin and had plenty of money and a lovely person to come home to, etc, etc, would there even be pop music in the first place?

Musicians I Would Like To Take Out To Dinner (Part 3)

2006-11-28T04:44:00.000-08:00

I first heard about Sebadoh in high school. After Nirvana came and turned every high schooler on its head, what became known as "indie-rock" was the way to go and Sub Pop and Matador Records were the record labels that had all the cool next big thing bands.

Anyways, in 1994, a close friend of mine was practically singing the praises of Sebadoh to me, and finally when I bit down upon the hook I thought she had been offering me, she balked and pretty much said to me that she didn’t want me to listen to their music because she didn’t want them to go mainstream. I was a little offended at both what seemed to be her selfishness and the allusion that I was what was (horror of horrors!) mainstream. Looking back on myself then, I sure as hell felt like I was out on the fringe but I didn’t subscribe to the uniform of the fringe sitter. Still the idea that I could single-handedly be some band’s critical downfall and point where they officially sold out boggled my mind. Dejected, I didn’t bring up the point with her again.

In the fall of 1996 I was a sophomore at university and again I came across Sebadoh in the circles I traveled and again I was greeted with indie-rock snobbery. (By the way, in a future post I will be addressing this issue of whether to share the music you hold dear, and why I find it positively stupid to be a royal music snob, as in “My God! My Beloved Iraqi Transistor Tomato just sold 5,000 copies of its latest album Kaleidoscopic Junkie Health Insurance! They fucking sold out! Poseurs!”)

But this time, as I was able to get to the used record stores in my neighborhood, I figured enough was enough and I picked up their Harmacy CD. Instantly, I was hooked. The album was a mixture of poppy guitar rock and harder punkish rock. I've amused myself by thinking of a time where Lou and Jason were jamming in separate bands in apartments above each other until one day they can't take the others noise anymore and start screaming "You got pop in my punk!" "Oh yeah? You got punk in my pop!"

I remember I instantly was taken with how one singer was very confessional, sounded sensitive and a bit wounded, lovesick and mooning over some girl whom he knew was The One. In Willing To Wait, he sang of his Beautiful Friend who had taken a chance on him in the past, and how he wanted that chance again, if only she would give it to him. I also quickly realized that if said woman was going to kick him to the curb then I'd be happy to take her place. (Yes, I admit it, I had a pretty sizeable crush on the semi-dorky looking guy in the forefront of the above photo throughout most of my college days.) The other voice was more like “Hell, fuck it, either you like me or you don’t.” I don't think it really is that far off to call Jason Lowenstein and Lou Barlow the indie equivalent (at that time) of Lennon and McCartney.

And later on, I dig deeper into the Sebadoh library and found the albums which featured what can only be called the sound creations of one Eric Gaffney. Not a singer by any stretch, Gaffney's contribution to Sebadoh was the sound loops he liked to throw together which made these really kaleidoscopish collages which were certainly not like anything else I had heard at the time. (Check out Bubble and Scrape for some later Gaffney works.)

I think I really respect Sebadoh for not really selling out, even though yes, they did sign to a major label for what would be their last album. I love what Lou Barlow did with The Folk Implosion, bringing more dancey beats and loops to his music. But I also remember remarking to myself after hearing The Sebadoh that maybe once Lou had won his girl, there was just nothing left for him to say within Sebadoh. (Lou has not only a wife and daughter these days but also his first ever solo album I want to check out sometime soon!) And is it necessarily a bad thing that maybe the reason why a band dried up is because the underdog won the girl of his dreams? I don't think so.

Top 5 Sebadoh Songs (The hardest one yet! I really want to cheat and go 5 with Jason and 5 with Lou...):

1. Too Pure
2. Think (Let Tomorrow Bee)
3. Rebound
4. Together or Alone
5. Got It

Holy Shit, This is Awesome!

2006-11-27T07:32:00.000-08:00

Well, wait. Is awesome really the word for this?

Billy Idol. White Christmas.

Let me say it again!

Billy Idol. White Christmas!

Anyone else getting Love Actually flashbacks?

Hope everyone has a happy, festive and SANE holiday!*

*(Only 27 more shopping days to go!)

Skeletons In My Closet (Part 2)

2006-11-20T00:19:00.000-08:00

I'm not ashamed to say I like Led Zeppelin. I'm just ashamed that it's taken me so long to finally get interested in them. So my second publicly aired skeleton is this: I consider myself a big fan of music and fairly knowledgeable about it, but have, for the past 15 years or so, largely ignored the catalog of work Led Zeppelin created. Once I was of the mind they were way too metal for my tastes, and way too popular, too middle of the road rock for me. Now I think, "How can you not like them? How can you not like the chances they took musically throughout their career? How can you not appreciate the power of Robert Plant's singing or John Bonham's drumming?"

Changes that I am anticipating for later on in the year made me decide to download some of their songs online, as opposed to buy another CD. This is a really hard thing to do when some of the song titles are never sung during the course of the song! I plan on buying their CDs at some point (I already own Led Zeppelins II and IV), but right now I'm worried about seriously going berserk in HMV at this point, and while it breaks my heart a little to go in and walk out empty-handed, I am a little proud of my self-restraint!

But Led Zeppelin are one of those bands I grew up with, or I should say, one of the bands my dad listened to while I was growing up. When I was much younger, I was plagued with chronic headaches that would last for 2 or 3 days at a time, ones that would prevent me from sleeping until my body couldn't take the strain and I would eventually pass out from exhaustion. Anyways, during that time, as most TV stations were not in a 24 hour format like they are now, my dad would stay up with me into the wee hours of the morning, and we would watch his video collections of concerts and videos, made from taping MTV overnight, back in the day when the channel actually played music.

One of the specials was the Led Zeppelin concert movie The Song Remains the Same. I vaguely remember Robert Plant's video sequence, where I think it was medieval themed. The one that sticks out the most for me, though is the one featuring John Bonham, where we see him play Moby Dick and cut into the performance are clips of him racing a car, some nitroglycerin fueled funny car. I don't know how this memory came about, but I do remember learning that he had died and then asking my dad if he had died in the car crash. My dad probably thinking I'd grow up to try the same thing if I knew he had actually died from a serious bender of 26 vodka shots in one day, told me "yes."

Then when I got older I somehow associated Led Zeppelin with being like the grandfather of all things hair metal. Yes, I (at the time) saw bands like Poison and Warrant in the same light as Led Zeppelin. I now see that all four members of the band, whether separate or together are extremely talented. This is not the case for Warrant. But at the time, I saw Led Zeppelin as too excessive and flashy and was turned off by the whole thing.

I think they are one of the most musically interesting bands out there. It doesn't matter what part you concentrate on. It's all really interesting and amazing. I tend to pay attention most to John Bonham's drumming. It's amazing how much force he put behind his playing. He just beat the shit out of his drums constantly, both destroying his sticks and the drum heads. He drummed with four sticks on the song appropriately titled Four Sticks.

While Stairway To Heaven leaves a bad taste in my mouth, only because it was the one song they played over and over at my school dances to signal the dance's end and thereby signaling to me another wasted evening where I hung out on the sidelines and never was asked to dance, I am now starting to slowly appreciate the song and especially starting to love the guitar solo for it.

I think the best Led Zeppelin song where they all come together so well has to be The Immigrant Song, which is off Led Zeppelin III. I'm really amazed at just how short that song is, just over 2 minutes long. I guess when I first heard it while driving around with my father, I was pretty dumbstruck at the combined forces of Robert Plant's wailing and the solid rhythm section of John Bonham and John Paul Jones.

Also I learned something kind of funny while trying to research Led Zeppelin completely through the wonders of Google, but you have to wait for it. When Robert Plant's 5 year old son died (not the funny part) he was so devastated that he almost decided to quit Led Zeppelin and music for good (also not the funny part) and become a kindergarten teacher. How awesome would that have been? Former rock god Robert Plant once wailing "Squeeze me baby, till the juice runs down my leg!" on The Lemon Song, now singing very soulful versions of the ABC Song and The Eensy Weensy Spider. I wonder how much the bootlegs would have gone for!

I'm very glad he had a change of heart and decided to carry on, even though John Bonham's death only a few years later would shelve Led Zeppelin for good. Robert Plant's song to his deceased son, All My Love is one of the prettiest songs Led Zeppelin songs I have ever heard and it becomes even more beautiful when you realize that this is not a run of the mill love song between a man and a woman, but an elegy to his son who spent such a short time on this earth.

My Top Five Led Zeppelin Songs (subject to change as I am still figuring them out!)

1. The Immigrant Song
2. Good Times Bad Times
3. Four Sticks
4. Misty Mountain Hop
5. All My Love

By the way...

2006-10-05T06:19:00.000-07:00

I have not abandoned this blog. Work's just kept me busy and I'm actually starting playing the guitar again and undertaking some self-help work on your creativity project, so I haven't had as much time to blog as usual. I wanted to hit this blog at least once a week but well, maybe in a bit I can get back to that.

I want to write more "People I'd Like to Take Out To Dinner" articles, and am thinking of someday soon lengthily singing the praises of Franz Ferdinand, Sonic Youth, Sebadoh and Pearl Jam, I just need to find the time to sit down, write something and do the article justice!

So stay tuned, you faithful 2 readers!

Songs I Can't Stand Part 2

2006-10-05T06:07:00.000-07:00

I feel old doing this one, because I remember laughing at old Tonight Show footage where Steve Allen was reading in a very serious tone the lyrics to "Be Bop-a-Lu-La" or something like that and as the audience was laughing with him, thinking "My God, Steve, you're right this makes no sense!" I was laughing at him, thinking "My God, get a life, it's just lyrics."

And yet Fergie's London Bridge lyrics just make me wanna go "Huh?" And it's sung in one of those ways where it leeches onto your brain and sucks the life out of it.

How come everytime you come around,
My London, London bridge, wanna go down like,
London, London, London, wanna go down like,
London, London, London, we goin’ down like…

Is it in your head now too? Good. Let's suffer together!

Jeff Buckley, God Bless Him!

2006-09-10T07:09:00.000-07:00

Jeff Buckley’s voice makes me weep like a baby. It’s just so fucking beautiful. Three full octave ranges in his voice. At least. I’m listening to the only album he completed almost 10 years after he died, and I can’t believe he’s gone. I remember talking with a friend about him when I was in university a few years ago and she told me how she loved Jeff Buckley and I said to her “It’s terrible what happened,” and she actually looked at me and said “What?” Then I got the painful job of telling her how one of her most favorite singers of all time in the entire world had lost his life when he drowned in a Memphis river. I felt like a complete asshole.

His voice seriously is like an infection. It just stays under your skin and you’re not the same after hearing his songs. After pinching a few of his songs off the Internet I finally bought his Grace CD today and am in the middle of listening to it. I’ve been tearing up every now and again, for the beauty of his voice, for his death which just seems to serve as one of many examples as to how life is far from fair sometimes, and for Hallelujah, the song MTV latched onto when covering the September 11th attacks five years ago. The coverage will soon be relived all over the TVs and the Internet tomorrow. As I lived in Washington D.C. then, I’m really not looking forward to seeing any of the coverage, but I know I’m not a special case. I highly doubt anyone else is, too.

Anyways, my most favorite (so far) Jeff Buckley song, “I Want Someone Badly” isn’t even on this CD. In that song, he just completely bares his soul, stretches his voice high up over the lyrics and the backing vocals which are quite reminiscent of something out of the early 1960s soul groups. I love this song so much because his voice is just oozing with pain, dripping with loneliness and I can totally sympathize with it. I just wish I could emote like that too. Everyone has so much to say, has so many feelings they would like to share but he just does it in a way that is unbelievably articulate and vulnerable and just plain amazing.

I’m a woman obsessed now. I can’t stop playing his songs, even though they make me long for an alternate universe where he has grown older and has made a few more albums and I have seen him in concert. Anyone stumbling onto my small pathetic corner of the Internet, please get away from my page and point your browser in the direction of amazon.com or CDnow.com or whatever else and buy his CD Grace. Don’t be stupid like me and download his songs. BUY HIS CD. Really! You certainly will not regret it.

Skeletons In My Closet (Part 1)

2006-09-04T06:28:00.000-07:00

I think I like The Feeling.

This belongs in here as a skeleton in my closet because every time I look at the lead singer, Dan Gillespie Sells, I am strangely reminded of Orlando Bloom, who is really too pretty to do anything but be pretty I think. Dan Gillespie Sells, who is right in the center of the picture, may be talented, which would make him really interesting to me, but then he has this Orlando-esque aura to him (is it only me who sees this?) which unsettles me.

Also, on the band's debut CD, Twelve Stops and Home," a promo sticker which labels The Feeling as a "soft rock" can be found quite prominently on the front of the CD.

Soft rock to me is Chicago. It is Air Supply. In short, it can be nothing that I really like, and I just so happen to find two of the songs I have heard from The Feeling pretty darn catchy.

Am I getting old?

And what sort of band of twenty-somethings embraces the label "soft rock"? They don't have to crank it up to 11, but who really straps on a guitar and yet seemingly wants to be featured on Magic 95.7 or whatever it is?

It really is just because of the whole soft rock thing they've been lumped into (and who knows, maybe it's been unwillingly) that I feel a wee bit embarrassed I like their music.

Come on guys, prove me wrong! When you go on your tour, blow out your amps. Smash a few guitars. Be as un-Neil Diamond as possible! I dare ya!

Musicians I Would Like To Take Out For Dinner (Part 2)

2006-09-01T21:28:00.000-07:00

I can’t remember when it was that I became enamored with Paul Westerberg and The Replacements. It might have been during my junior or senior year of high school when I saw the movie Singles, and two of his songs, "Dyslexic Heart" and "Waiting For Somebody" were featured on the soundtrack. It might have been a few years later when I heard his version of Cat Stevens’ “Sunshine” which was featured on the Friends soundtrack.

That Paul Westerberg is far removed from the Paul Westerberg of The Replacements, a band who was notorious for showing up to its own shows past drunk -- as in completely obliterated -- and who would play nothing but a set of cover songs, if they damn well felt like it. Those shows, and unfortunately, I am too young to have even seen The ‘Mats toward the end of their career at the end of the 80s, were legendary -- you’d go and not really know what to expect, in terms of set list or the band’s temperament.

Paul Westerberg is just cool. He knows how to write smart, abrasive lyrics, like his dissing of MTV in “Seen Your Video” or when he snidely looks down on flight attendants in “Waitress in the Sky,” and then he can turn around and write something that makes him sound so vulnerable like when he sings “How do you say I miss you to an answering machine? How do you say I’m lonely to an answering machine?” in "Answering Machine" and in “Unsatisfied” where he dares someone to look him in the eye and tell him he's satisfied, before screaming out at the end “I’m so unsatisfied! I’m so dissatisfied!”

I think The Replacements were never a band wanting to be taken ultra-seriously, as seen in their goofy songs “I Don’t Know” from Pleased to Meet Me and “Gary’s Got a Boner” from Let It Be and in a more subtle way, where they show they are just like any other fan of rock music by covering Kiss’ “Black Diamond” in Let It Be and writing an idolizing love-letter song about one of their rock heroes, “Alex Chilton” on Pleased To Meet Me. They understand very well what it’s like to feel an instant connection to a song, even when you don’t know all the details about it just yet: “I’m in love! What’s that song? I’m in love with that song!”

Another can’t miss song is “The Ledge” also off of Pleased to Meet Me. This is a song about a suicidal man, who is threatening to jump, and Westerberg gives us a look inside his head, where he talks cynically about how the cops have called in his ex-girlfriend to convince him not to jump and how the media have made a circus appear down on the street below, and he seems smugly content that for the first time in his life, he is the focus of someone’s undivided attention. It’s quite apparent what becomes of the person deciding whether to jump. Instead of this being a song of redemption and taking it on the chin when adversity smacks you around, the song ends with a fading scream.

I really like this song because it isn’t one of those “Oh yeah, hold on and life will get better” platitude-type deals. (Remember the old “The World I Know” video from Collective Soul?) I’m sure there are people who stare down from a bridge at the water below or count out a number of pills from a bottle and then snap out of it, wondering what the hell possessed them to think about offing themselves, but there are, of course, those people who go through with their suicidal plans and Westerberg again shows his skills as a writer by making the narrator of this song not an adolescent cliché but very real, and very human.

And speaking of all rock stars who don’t die as a result of suicide or a drug overdose or a plane crash, Paul Westerberg just plain got older. As a result, his songs changed too. He no longer screams his throat raw into the mike, though years of doing that and smoking countless cigarettes have made his voice perpetually scratchy.

One of my most favorite Paul Westerberg songs is “Love Untold” where he talks about two people getting ready for a date, and you can almost see him watching it all unfold, this world-weary but sympathetic 40 year old man watching excited 20 year olds get ready for what could be the first night of the rest of their lives. But then something goes wrong and the meeting doesn’t take place. At least it doesn’t take place like it should have, anyways. “It never came to be, I’m told,” he sings and then asks almost sadly “Does anyone recall/The saddest love of all/The one that lets you fall/With nothing to hold?” Maybe they met, and expecting the world, only saw the equivalent of a vacant lot sitting across from them. Who knows?

I’m not sure what I would ask or talk to Paul Westerberg about if I had him over for dinner. It’d probably be something dumb, like “That song? Alex Chilton? I really think it’s cool!” (long pause) and then “You remember the video for ‘Bastards of Young?’ I love that video,” (longer pause), mimicking that Saturday Night Live skit where Chris Farley interviews Paul McCartney.

In short, I think Paul Westerberg is cool because of how well he writes his songs, how funny and heartbreaking he can be at the same time. How he was living a life that seemed to be on the fast-track to self-destruction, but pulled himself out of it, and is now writing songs in a different style that are still quite good.

Top Five Paul Westerberg/The Replacements songs (and this is absolutely tough because I could easily add five more, but that would make that much harder to rank them!):

Alex Chilton
Answering Machine
I Will Dare
The Ledge
Love Untold

Songs I Can’t Stand (Part 1)

2006-08-25T22:37:00.000-07:00

Rihanna is an R and B artist who seems to have a promising career as she looks beautiful and can sing well to boot. For the record, I love “S.O.S,” but maybe that is because while it has nothing to do with ABBA, it features a sample of another so cheesy it’s good band, Soft Cell and their 1981 hit “Tainted Love.”

So here I am wondering what she’ll do next. Something that features Men Without Hats’ “Safety Dance”? A song that samples Howard Jones’ “New Song”? No. What she does is this overly grandiose ballad full of typical R and B wailings (and the video is filled with typical drama-rama posturing) called “Unfaithful.” In it she talks about how she has a boyfriend, but she also is keeping a lover on the side. I apologize for not knowing much about the song, and damning it anyways, but the one thing I have the biggest problem with is the chorus.

I don't wanna do this anymore
I don't wanna be the reason why
Everytime I walk out the door
I see him die a little more inside
I don't wanna hurt him anymore
I don't wanna take away his life
I don't wanna be...
a murderer

A murderer? A murderer???? Now, I am positively sure that Rihanna did not write this song, and so she is only playing the messenger I suppose, but who in their right mind is so presumptuous to assume that if her boyfriend figures out what’s been going on between her and some other guy, that instead of dumping her clothes and all her things on the front lawn, instead of kicking her skanky ass to the curb (yeah, I personally hate the idea of infidelity in a relationship), instead of idly entertaining thoughts of hurting her, he’s going to go and off himself? What?

And yeah yeah yeah, I know what the argument for this is. Rihanna might be as much of a cheater as John Lennon was really a walrus or Johnny Cash really shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. However…a murderer! Ha ha ha…someone needs to get their head out of the clouds.

Musicians I Would Like To Take Out For Dinner (Part 1)

2006-08-24T05:03:00.000-07:00

I'm cribbing off a friend of mine who has her own series, but since I think a) she has a great idea but b) she has some hugely glaring omissions on her list, I figured it'd serve me well to compile my own list of musicians I really dig. These are all people I would like to have a chance to sit down with and talk to over a good meal, preferably not from my own kitchen. But that is another post on another blog.

The first one I would like to consider is John (Cougar) Mellencamp. John Mellencamp, not only being a fellow Libra, is also someone who strikes me as being completely unpretentious, a straight-shooter, and someone who doesn't stand for much bullshit.

While I don't know much about Mellencamp's earliest recordings, I have heard that a) he sang covers of rock tunes from the 1950s and '60s and basically sounded like a wanna-be Bruce Springsteen, and b) his stage name ("Johnny Cougar") was given to him and showed up on the front of his first record without his knowledge or consent.

I got to know Johnny Cougar when I was maybe 7 or 8 and watching Solid Gold with my mother. He was performing "Hurts So Good," strutting across the stage and wildly waving one of his hands in a circular motion toward the end of the song. Even then at the young age I was I thought he was a really weird dancer, and while I didn't know at the time that he was most likely lip-syncing, I think there had to have been something about his performance that has made it stand out all these years later.

A few things I admire about John Mellencamp is how he has never forgotten where he has come from, a small town in Indiana. After all, he may have married a former supermodel, but they currently reside in Indiana most of the time. After 1985's Live Aid made hundreds of thousands of people turn their attention to starving children in Africa, Mellencamp and Willie Nelson put together a benefit show that raised awareness of another group of people struggling to get out of poverty -- American farmers. And unlike Live Aid, which had one show in 1985 and another one to commemorate its 20th anniversary in 2005, Farm Aid has gone on every year save for two since its inception. The 19th Farm Aid will happen September 30th in Camden, New Jersey.

I also admire how over the years, he not only gradually renounced what essentially was his slave name (ha), he has constantly looked for new ways to express himself in his music. Earlier I stated that he was a kind of Springsteen clone, someone who sounded like they'd be perfectly happy as some bar's house singer, who covered hits like "Do You Believe in Magic?". 1985's Scarecrow mirrored his work in Farm Aid, celebrating Middle American life with songs like "Small Town" but also cautioning the rest of the country about how a necessary American demographic was slowly fading away in "Rain on the Scarecrow."

1987 saw John Mellencamp reinvent himself again, playing music that was now incorporating elements of bluegrass, country and folk. I'm not generally a fan of these genres of music, but I love what he was doing on Paper and Fire and one of my most favorite John Mellencamp songs, "Check It Out," a song that features an accordion and a fiddle, along with the standard drums, bass and guitars.

And then later, he worked with Junior Vasquez, who is famous for making dance records. Not the kind of dancing Mellencamp claimed he was good at way back in "Crumblin' Down" (and John, I love you, but...no, you really aren't a real good dancer!) but honest to goodness dance music producer and DJ.

In short, I admire him for his integrity as a musician and for his humanitarian side.

My Top 5 John Mellencamp Songs: (thanks to Rob Fleming/Gordon for the inspiration!)

1. Small Town
2. Check It Out
3. Pink Houses
4. Rain on the Scarecrow
5. Lonely Ol' Night

Looks Like Keane Are On Their Way...

2006-08-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

Keane singer Tom Chaplin admitted recently that he has decided to check himself into rehab for his own growing concerns over the amount of alcohol he's been drinking.

Usually it's a musician's friend or loved one who puts them in rehab, but maybe Keane are doing this to ensure that VH-1 will make a Behind the Music special on them now that this piece of news has come out.