Music
drorzel | July 6, 2007I know, it's "Live Earth," but they've got this giant blue-green circle at the left of their logo, which makes it look like an illuminated initial capital...
So, the latest charity rock specatcle is scheduled to start tonight. I can't say I've been paying any attention-- I only noticed it today because the New York Times had a feature article about the event that somehow slipped into the "Science" RSS feed.
I'm pretty ambivalent about the giant charity rock spectacle. Of course, as a good child of the 80's, I remember the Live Aid shows, but I can't say I was all that invested in those,…
drorzel | July 4, 2007
"American Music," the Violent Femmes
"California Stars," Billy Bragg and Wilco
"The City of New Orleans," Arlo Guthrie
"Song to Woody," Bob Dylan
"The Body of an American," the Pogues
"Born in the USA," Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
"Fortunate Son," Creedence Clearwater Revival
"American Idiot," Green Day
"War," Edwin Starr
"Buffalo Soldier," Bob Marley
"Christ for President," Billy Bragg and Wilco
"The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song," The Flaming Lips
"Walk on the Wild Side," Lou Reed
"Paradise by the Dashboard Light," Meat Loaf
"Lower 48," the Gourds
"American Land," Bruce Springsteen and…
drorzel | July 2, 2007A while back, Kate and I saw Richard Thompson play a solo acoustic show at The Egg in Albany. Last night, he was back in town, this time with a band, touring in support of his new album, Sweet Warrior. Here are the band credits from the program:
Michael Jerome: drums, percussion
Taras Prodaniuk: electric bass guitar
Pete Zorn: baritone, alto & sopranino saxes, bass flute, mandolin, acoustic guitar, vocals.
I'd like to officially nominate Pete Zorn for the vacant title of "Hardest Working Man in Show Business," as some of the songs required him to play the sax, then sing backup, then go…
drorzel | June 18, 2007It's the first day of the summer research session today, which means I'm going to be run ragged getting my three (!) summer students started with their various projects. So, here's a pop-culture post inspired by the wedding Kate and I went to over the weekend:
What's the most inappropriate song you've heard played at a wedding?
This came up because while we were waiting for dinner, they were playing miscellaneous songs, one of which was "Lost Cause" by Beck. Which is a great song and all, but not so much the sort of thing you really want to play at a wedding...
In fact, I'd say that a good…
drorzel | June 15, 2007I'm turning in my grades today, which means another year has come to an end. Also, I'm on sabbatical next year. Woo-hoo!
To celebrate, here's a silly random songs post. In honor of the end of the term, iTunes chose to serve up a set of songs with lyrics that are either completely insipid or ridiculously self-important. #10 in particular might as well be an instrumental, for all the sense the lyrics make. And you have no idea how hard it was to find a line in #19 that doesn't give the whole thing away.
Anyway, these are off the four-and-five-star playlist, and I don't think they're all that…
drorzel | May 29, 2007Only four songs from the Memorial Day music post remain unguessed, so here are some additional hints:
1) "So, she said it's time she goes, but wanted to be sure I know she hopes we can be friends."
2) "And as we sort out the who said, you said, who said, I said, I only wish I came a little better prepared."
3) "I can't stop/ The way I feel/ Things you do/ Don't seem real."
11) "She said you are the perfect stranger she said baby let's keep it like this."
#2 is legitimately kind of obscure, but the others are among the best-known songs by the artists in question. #3 gets line breaks indicated…
drorzel | May 29, 2007While poking around to double-check the lyrics for several of the songs in the previous post, I stumbled across SongMeanings.net, which turns out to be fairly entertaining.
As the name suggests, it's a site where you can find a pretty comprehensive list of song lyrics by different artists, with notes attached regarding the meaning of the lyrics. The thing is, these are basically comment threads, so most of the people posting are just throwing out wild-assed guesses, not drawing on any particular knowledge.
This leads to some interesting discussions when applied to famously inscrutable…
drorzel | May 28, 2007For most people in the US, this is a day off. For most academics in the US, this is already summer. Not so for us-- we're on trimesters, so we're still in session, and have classes scheduled. This tends to undercut the solemnity of the occasion.
There's also an Admissions event today, and then I'm having a class over for dinner, so I'm going to be pretty busy. In addition to being a solemn official holiday, this is also the semi-official start of the sumnmer season, so I thought I'd acknowledge that aspect with a little pop-culture thread...
Stretching the Memorial Day theme a bit, these are…
drorzel | May 21, 2007Top choices from the recent acquisitions playlist:
"Sly," Cat Empire. I bought this because of the 75 or Less review, which asks the important questions: When did G Love become the bandleader for the Blues Brothers? And when did they add reggae and Latin influences? And why are my feet doing this stupid dance under my desk?" This is my favorite track off the record, just for the trumpet line after the chorus.
"What's Goin' On," Detroit Cobras. I heard this on KEXP, and wrote down the artist and title right away. Unfortunately, the samples for the rest of the album didn't sound that good, but…
drorzel | May 10, 2007The iPod giveth, and the iPod taketh away.
Back in the day, there was this technology called "audio tape," which people used to record music. On a typical tape, you could record maybe ten or elevent pop songs, and then you had to flip it over, and record another ten or eleven songs on the other side. As a result, mix tapes of that era tended to come in distinct "sides."
I always thought it would be amusing, in a just-about-as-dorky-as-the-guys-in-High Fidelity way, to make a mix tape where the two sides featured the same song titles in the same order, but with all the songs being different--…
drorzel | April 27, 2007Pretty much all of the songs that I thought anybody might possibly guess were guessed, so I might as well reveal the answers. If you'd still like to try your hand, don't click through to the rest of this post until after you've finished...
Those of you who have given up can find the full list of titles below the fold, with commentary on the songs that nobody recognized.
"I Don't Like Mondays," The Boomtown Rats
"I Wish I Was A Girl," Counting Crows
"The Destruction of Lurel Canyon," Youth Group. Off Casino Twilight Dogs. I couldn't find lyrics for this online (though I didn't try all that…
drorzel | April 24, 2007Until I get around to making an iTunes run, I'm listening to the four-and-five-star playlist, which is much better fodder for the "Random Ten" thing than a bunch of filler tracks off really recent albums. We'll do this in guess-the-lyrics fashion because, well, because I can.
Despite the title, there are some absolute meatball songs on this list, that ought to be pretty easy to guess (1, 5, 7, 8, 10, 19, 20). There are also some things that are really damn near impossible-- I'll be absolutely stunned if anybody recognizes #16, and Google didn't turn up lyrics for #3 or #6..
Here's the list…
drorzel | April 23, 2007I usually listen to music on the computer using the "Party Shuffle" feature of iTunes on a playlist consisting of recently acquired music. It gives me a chance to get a good feel for new albums, and then when I'm at work or on the road, I listen to the four-and-five-star playlist.
I haven't bought much recently, though, so the playlist just clicked over to only one album, the new Fountains of Wayne record. Which just isn't that good-- it's not terrible, but it's not so good thhat I want to listen to it exclusively for any length of time.
So, what should I buy when I hit iTunes for new music…
drorzel | April 22, 2007Whenever I post about the music I listen to, I get a comment or two from people commenting that they've never heard of any of the bands I talk about. This is always a little surprising to me, because I don't think I'm all that much of a High Fidelity type.
As proof, let me note that I really have never heard any of the albums on Bullz-Eye's list of The Fifty Best Albums You've Never, Ever Heard. I've never heard of any of the bands on their list. I don't think some of the people in those bands have ever heard these records...
(Link via jefitoblog.)
Any of you recognize any of these?
drorzel | April 20, 2007There's a concert on campus this evening by Third Eye Blind, best known for the doo-doo-doo chorus of "Semi-Charmed Life" from about ten years ago. I wasn't aware that they were still together, but they're apparently here, and playing a show on the court where we usually play our pick-up basketball games.
When I was at Yale, one of their songs came up on the Internet radio thing I was listening to at the time, and one of the grad students in the group pegged them pretty accurately as a Car Radio Band: their better songs have a sort of doofy charm such that when you're driving alone, and they…
drorzel | April 10, 2007Let me be the millionth person to link to the Washington Post article about the busking virtuoso. Let me also agree with Kevin Drum about the reasons nobody listened:
Plus, of course, IT WAS A METRO STATION. People needed to get to work on time so their bosses wouldn't yell at them. Weingarten mentions this, with appropriately high-toned references to Kant and Hume, but somehow seems to think that, in the end, this really shouldn't matter much. There should have been throngs of culture lovers surrounding Bell anyway. It's as if he normally lives on Mars and dropped by Earth for a few minutes…
drorzel | March 30, 2007It's Friday, and the new academic term starts on Monday (I'll be teaching at 8am-- shoot me now), so it seems like a good time to try to forget about our troubles with pop music:
The Onion's AV Club has a list of great story songs, topped by "A Boy Named Sue." I was amazed to discover a year or two ago that this was actually written by Shel "Where the Sidewalk Ends" Silverstein, who also wrote a sequel. the world is a very strange place.
Also on the list is Dylan's "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts" off Blood on the Tracks. "Tangled up in Blue," from the same record, doesn't make the…
drorzel | March 22, 2007Via Rachel Manija Brown, a Wikipedia page on misheard lyrics in Japan:
From Sean Paul's "Fire Links Intro":
Mayday! [...] Sean Paul! This one is hot!
ç®çã! [...] ã·ã£ã³ãã¼! ãªã³ã¹ã¯ç¡ãã!
Me itai! [...] Shanpū! Rinsu wa nai sa!
My eyes hurt! [...] Shampoo! There is no hair conditioner!
Global pop culture is Difficult. Still, this is probably fair payback for the word salad of the Hellsing theme music, which puts absolute gibberish over one of the coolest theme tunes around.
drorzel | March 19, 2007Over at Kurt's Krap, there's extensive discussion of the relative merits of Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth as the front man for Van Halen. You can also find them discussing a bunch of other songs, but the Hagar/Roth question is the important one.
By a weird coincidence, I read Chuck Klosterman's Fargo Rock City over the weekend (booklog post forthcoming), which also contains an extensive discussion of this critical pop-culture question.
It's kind of a tough call: Roth had more style, but Hagar was a little more consistent. I'd probably go with Roth, but I have a soft spot for Hagar, as the…
drorzel | March 9, 2007Light blogging today, because I'm having muscle spasms in my neck and shoulder again. Blogrolling and typing aggravate that, so there will be minimal posting for the rest of the weekend.
To fill a bit of space, though, here's a call for music recommendations: I bought a whole slew of Crowded House/ Finn Brothers stuff off iTunes last night thanks to Senor BaconCat, and I picked up the much-hyped new Arcade Fire album at the same time, but what else should I be looking at buying?
I'll throw out an oddball recommendation just to get things started: I bought the Holmes Brothers State of Grace on…