September 03, 2010
Labor Day Weekend Dentist's Office Mini-Mix
Moody Blues - Your Wildest Dreams
Steve Winwood - Back in the High Life Again
Nothing says END OF THE SUMMER like Labor Day weekend and a trip to the dentist's office, right? Maybe just Labor Day. But I've been thinking a lot about the way music is used for different purposes, and this reverie was kickstarted by my re-listening to the Avalanches' "Yoga Mind Meld Zombie Relaxation Tape" (which you can still download from their website), which the band advertises as being of good use "when the party's over." Obviously the music played in a dentist's office cannot be too stimulating or intense, since the patients will inevitably succumb to their natural urges to dance or play air guitar or sing at the worst possible times, i.e. when the dentist is like 2 mms. away from drilling right through the roof of the patient's mouth and into the temporal lobe. The music at the dentist's office needs to act as a sedative in its own way, transporting the patient to a world of soft neon, mist, precise percussion, perfect vocals, light euphoria, and cumulus synths.
All four of these songs have been played in dentists' offices across the country perhaps millions of times. No doubt. I would in fact elect Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out" as the Dentist's Anthem if I could, but I am (understandably) not the head of the ADA. I put this mix together for people who want, for whatever personal and secret reasons, to recreate the experience of sitting in that pneumatic chair, head tilted back, mouth open to ligament-ripping aperture, having their teeth worked over and tricked out. Why not. Enjoy the weekend.
[Though on a personal note, I love both that Steely Dan song (featured in a little essay from before) and the Moody Blues song, which, when I was six, I decided with my post-toddler faculties was the most romantic thing I'd ever heard.]
Posted by Kevin at 06:53 AM | Comments (0)
September 02, 2010
Walking Through Aspic
Oneida - Up With People (link fixed)
Just a few loose propositions about this song: It will rev you up, but do not try to run while listening to it. Too much strain on the heart. Maybe if you're like a suburban Usain Bolt, you could run to the first half minute or so (alternately if you're like a Prefontaine clone, you could run to the whole thing, but at an adjusted pace; not synchronized with the beat). || The conjunction of dirty riffs and cymbal hits can, under certain circumstances, have adverse effects upon your brain, as I found out once when I fell asleep listening to this song on a transatlantic flight (extradition), and found myself half-dreaming that the stewardesses had transformed into the shiny metal robot women sometimes seen on 1980s-era pinball machines. || The percussion here accurately conveys the pleasure of drum-playing (can you imagine being able to play this?) || There is a flute in there, somewhere, and it is very frightened. || Here are all the lyrics, and they are strongly and weirdly motivational: "Sunlight shines on the top of the trees/the highest hills feel the sweetest breeze/you got to get up to get free//Open your eyes the things you see/are determined by the height of the ground you seize/you got to get up to get free."
Oneida will soon release the final installment of their Thank Your Parents trilogy ("Preteen Weaponry" was pt. 1, and "Rated O," the triple album, was pt. 2), titled "Absolute II." This record will feature "experimental drones," per the band's website announcement. You can listen to an excerpt of a new track, "Equinox," over on XHOL Recordings' website. Get excited, friends.
Posted by Kevin at 06:53 AM | Comments (0)
September 01, 2010
I was not alarmed at the immediate prospect of kissing a dead woman
FWP: So what inspired you to open the tanning salon?
[cascading sound of something being spilled]
FWP: What are those?
Pete: These white tablets?
FWP: Mmmhmm.
Pete: Do you want one?
FWP: Wow, there's a lot of them on the floor now.
Pete: Don't fret. So this girl Ashley, she was deeply tan. Fucked like a policewoman. Kind of a trash. Big, white teeth. Do you know those girls, who have that sort of horse-mouth look? Ashley looked like a hot, tan police-horse with bleached teeth. And this girl went to the tanning salon twice a week, for half an hour at a time. This is what she told me about the times that we talked. When I asked her how much money she spent to pursue this hobby, I thought, What a racket! And: I need to get out of this relationship.
FWP: So that was when you opened the salon?
Pete: Approximately. Well, there was the long deal of obtaining a loan from the bank, then finding the space to rent, and hiring employees. Do you know how hard it is to get a loan?
FWP: I've heard it's difficult.
Pete: You heard right, friend. And finding good help these days. Have you heard about that?
FWP: That it's hard?
Pete: Also correct. It's a horse-fuck-horse world out there.
FWP: What is it that you enjoy most about running the tanning salon?
Pete: The customers. And the free time. But the customers more than anything.
["Killamangiro," like Art Brut's "Emily Kane," features a shout-out to a former love, in this case Pete Doherty sings, "on the off-chance that you're listening/to the radio/thought you might like to know you broke my heart," in what has got to be one of the best advantages musicians have over normal everyday civilians, i.e. having their heartache broadcast, witnessed, and sung along to.]
Posted by Kevin at 07:01 AM | Comments (1)
August 31, 2010
Adherence to the Abundant Style
Someday in the future when I'm teaching mp3blogging courses at West Albany Technical State University, I will have to answer my future-students' questions about what things were like when people first started writing about music online. I'll smile, maybe erase a word or two from the blackboard (laserboard), then sigh and lean heavily on the lectern. "Things were different," I'll say. "People didn't know what to think at first. They were confused. Songs and writing at the same time, it was just...too much content, too much media for people to handle. And the writers didn't know that they'd invented a new form of expression. It was like jazz, except, instead of only a few people caring, no one cared. Writers were posting song files, .wavs, .smfs, .aiffs, sometimes just typed-out sheet music, along with their poorly articulated recommendations and criticisms, which often consisted of little more than ASCII art of a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Some writers, perhaps high on the pneuma wafting up from the towers of their overheated desktops, would post songs paired with geometric proofs, or recipes for vegan french toast--there were no rules! Once, an mp3blogger in Peru posted a second-by-second description of George Thorogood's "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer," in what some now call the saddest and most punishing post ever." Then I'll stare into the distance until the students leave the classroom and turn off the lights.
[This song is the sinister death-roll cousin to the XX's lovers' conclave; The Kills will hold a knife to your throat while you cuddle with them.]
Posted by Kevin at 06:48 AM | Comments (0)
August 30, 2010
Dewey Dell and Harriet
Brides of Funkenstein - When You're Gone
To say that this song reminds me of CBS' classic sitcom, WKRP In Cincinnati, would be a vast understatement. Something about the strings (alternately wan and viscous), and the staggering desperation in Dawn Silva's and Lynn Mabry's voices when they sing, "In this world/all of my dreams/one by one/they all fell through," really captures the sort of febrile weariness I felt while watching re-runs of the show as a kid. I would be lying if I said that, in listening to this song so intently over the past few days, I haven't imagined intricate scenarios where Loni Anderson's character, Jennifer Marlowe, in a full-on dissociation, sings this song to a penitent and less sleazy Herb (WKRP's advertising sales manager) amid a shower of Harvest Gold paint chip confetti ("When You're Gone": inspiration for delirious musings).
This is taken from the Brides' (who were, pre-Funkenstein, backup singers for Sly Stone) 1978 debut LP, Funk Or Walk, produced by George Clinton. You can buy it on Amazon for about the cost of a Kia.
Posted by Kevin at 07:49 AM | Comments (0)
August 27, 2010
Favorites, pt. 3
I'm going to use this space from time to time to re-run some of my favorite mp3blog writing from the past six or seven years. There are, of course, about as many mp3blogs now as there are people with internet connections (exaggeration), but back in the crazy fucking days of the early 2000s, there were only, say, 400,000,000 mp3blogs that were essential reading, and of those, there were only about a dozen whose authors wrote with style, energy, and coherence. [Here's pt. 1 and pt. 2, in case you missed them]
This entry is from Slatch, one of the first music blogs I ever read regularly. Jon was the main writer for Slatch, though he also started 75 or Less, a site that posts very short album reviews (per the name of the site). Jon put the cap on Slatch in 2005, and switched his attention to the amazing Tiny Showcase, which does some fantastic work. I remember exactly where I was when I first read the following (in my office at a job I despised), and I remember how hard I laughed too. Here's the link to the original entry.
Several Common Misconceptions About Hall and Oates
"You can't listen to Hall and Oates' new album, Do It For Love on repeat from 9am until 11:30pm without going fucking insane."
Not true. I put the album on repeat and listened to it all day in my office. Eight hours of Hall and Oates with only an hour break for lunch. I also listened to it on the ride home. Then, I took it out of my car and listened to it in my room while I finished up some work. THEN, I put the album on as I tried to fall asleep.
I woke up with these shivering cold sweats at 3:30am. There was this sort of buzzing in my brain (like the sound a guitar amp makes when you only plug the cord in half way) and the bass line from "Man on a Mission" running through my head. I ran to the bathroom and tried to splash water on my face. I'm pale-faced, clinging to the counter, thinking to myself "MUST. REMAIN. CONSCIOUS. DON'T. PUKE. I'M A MAN ON A MISSION TO LOVE YOU. BAAAAABY..." I came so close to passing out and smashing my face on the faucet.
So, you probably shouldn't listen to the album for thirteen hours straight, but it's totally possible. I love this album. I'm hoping the near-stroke and Hall and Oates overdose were unrelated incidents.
Hall & Oates - Man On A Mission
Posted by Kevin at 06:59 AM | Comments (0)
August 26, 2010
Do You Want New Wave or Do You Want the Flat Pink Truth
Les Savy Fav - Sleepless in Silverlake
Besides Wale's "Mixtape About Nothing" (which referenced Seinfeld), I can't think of many recent examples of music about television shows, though I don't listen to the radio anymore, so maybe there are tons of elegiac ballads about Lost and sweet little pop songs about The Real Housewives of ______. But I'm convinced that "Sleepless in Silverlake" is about The Hills, about the people-characters on the show. Tim Harrington says, in the very first line of the song, "We hit the hills/and we hit 'em hard/with iron wills/and with Mastercards." Is there such a thing as a fan-song, like fan-fiction? Surely there are good precedents in the Replacements' "Alex Chilton" and Pavement's "Unseen Power of the Picket Fence," (even Belle & Sebastian's "Shoot the Sexual Athlete") but those are all about other musicians or bands, which seems more like an inside baseball kind of thing rather than bare adoration. I'm willing to publicly accept that this song is not about the cast of the Hills, but will still cling privately to my misinterpretation and the idea that Les Savy Fav and the Hills is a good combination.
[BUY Root for Ruin (now with acoustic take of this song!)]
Posted by Kevin at 06:57 AM | Comments (0)
August 25, 2010
Triumphator
The Recoys were the band that nurtured the talents of Hamilton Leithauser (Walkmen lead singer and Recoys frontman), and Pete Bauer (Walkmen bassist/keyboardist). 'Shake Off Your Nerve' is definitely proto-"Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone," i.e., replace the harmonica in this song with an organ, and you've got yourself a Walkmen track (which actually, "Blizzard of '96," and "That's the Punchline" were both written as Recoys songs).
"Shake Off Your Nerve" features a galloping drumbeat and a sheer wall of harmonica lament to accompany Hamilton's swagger and shout (he has never sounded more like Mick Jagger than he does in this song). "I did a dance in the beam of your flashlight there/out on the grass/under millions of stars" is one of the more evocative lines that Leithauser has ever written, and that, along with parts of the chorus ("C'mon kids/lets show off your haircut") make this song essential.
Posted by Kevin at 06:36 AM | Comments (0)
August 24, 2010
Concrete Literal Style
Beachwood Sparks - The Good Night Whistle
If the world divides into facts, with no remainder, then it's tempting to think that certain things that happened could not have happened any other way. George always said about his meeting Sylvia: "Even though we met because of a machine, I would have loved her before the Industrial Revolution." That was their horrible little joke. One of a hundred tiny isthmuses that connected her to him--bound them together during their long periods of separation.
She was working the cash register at a coffee shop near his school. The machine was malfunctioning beautifully, spitting out long and perforated blank receipts, which the customers were less than pleased to see. Cappuccino and scones were transubstantiated into nothingness, as the register was having its tabula rasa'd. Because George had enjoyed a lengthy and glorious tenure as a grocery store cashier, he knew many models, possessed all the necessary knowledge to fix this problem, which he did, brushing aside several disgruntled and toe-tapping customers to come around the counter and, gracefully, press just the right button on the register to make it stop and remember where it was and what it was supposed to do. He rubbed his hands together and placed his palms on the keyboard, smiling at her the entire time. A half hour later, just as he was about to leave, she stopped him and asked him if she could take him to dinner, to repay him for the favor he had done her. He accepted, embarrassed because she had beat him to the punch. They introduced themselves. Sylvia was the name on her tag, pinned to her clothes that hung on her body like they couldn't care less. Sylvia is the name that is christened, in George's mind, as the marker of a certain push-and-pull feeling that ripples from his torso to his toes.
Posted by Kevin at 09:16 AM | Comments (0)
August 23, 2010
heaven forfend a fine fettle
The Thieves of Kailua - The Thieves of Kailua
This song deserved a prime spot on the soundtrack to "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." In fact, if it were up to me, I would've re-written the movie around this song, which gives you an indication of why I am not a top Hollywood executive. Jason Holstrom sings of his encounters with the titular thieves, so the song lyrically is like Bresson's "Pickpocket" transposed to Hawaii. I'm surprised, come to think of it, that there aren't more songs about muggings, pickpocketings, etc. It's a pretty emotional experience, but maybe easier to deal with through the medium of the written word or perhaps the three-dimensional arts (we're all familiar with Brancusi's infamous sculpture, "Shiv").
"Thieves of Kailua" (the song) sounds a lot like some of the sections of "Smile," (2004 version), particularly those segmented, thousand-instrument-track songs with seven bridges, filigreed with alien sound effects, i.e. it's both weird and catchy. The percussion on this is especially notable, it puts a world of texture into the song and complements the sweetness of the ukulele. I really don't know how this album isn't more popular. Jason Holstrom: you missed the beachcore/littoraphilia trend by releasing this album three years too early, but try to take solace in the fact that you're extremely talented and have a wonderful voice.
Posted by Kevin at 06:51 AM | Comments (1)