Archive for the ‘Music Monday’ Category

This post is dedicated to all the lovely people born in September. This is a special month for me because some of the dearest people I know came into the world this month. When you think about it, September babies might be more special than other babies (with the exception of November babies, which were probably conceived on Valentine’s Day) because they were conceived during a very happy time of the year, Christmas and New Years. Of course, some of them could totally be the product of a drunken New Year’s one night stand. Anyway…

I scoured long and hard to find a good song to kick off September with. After rejecting September Gurls by The Bangles, September When I First Met You by Barry White, Pale September by Fiona Apple and September Song by Frank Sinatra (I also listened to the Dean Martin version) I decided to go with Neil Diamond’s September Morn, which was really my first choice all along. You’ve got to love the glitter blazer. And the hair. Oh that hair! Enjoy!

I don’t live in SLO anymore, so it was a total chance thing that I even found out about this show, but I’m glad I did. I’ve been a Kate Nash fan for a couple of years and I have Pandora to thank for that. Her songs kept coming up on the Lily Allen station I was listening to. It was love at first sound.

Bonus: I learned how to make an animated gif for this post and there is also a video at the end. Enjoy!

If I had to blame somebody it would have to be Dave Mustaine. When I was a kid my family picked up and left for the summer like a pack of migrating hyenas. Literally, the whole summer. We would leave the day after school let out and wouldn’t return until a day or two before school started again. Upon returning I realized that I had a lot of catching up to do. Less in the “Gee, I sure missed you” kind of way and more in the “I have no idea who or what Slayer is” kind of way. The summer between 5th and 6th grade saw the most drastic change. In my future memoir it will be the chapter entitled “The Summer My Besties Discovered Death Metal”. While I spent the summer on a lake waterskiing, hanging out with my parents, mowing the lawn, playing chess against myself, drawing on yellow legal pads and watching fireworks from our deck my friends were growing out their hair, mastering the art of headbanging to power chords and memorizing lyrics like “Darkness imprisoning me, All that I see, Absolute horror, I cannot live, I cannot die, Trapped in myself, Body my holding cell.”

My best friend, Sam, showed up to school with a Mega Deth shirt. A very school appropriate one that had a guy, probably a skeleton, squeezing a bird. The birds feathers were all askew and I remember a lot of blood. Probably flowing out the birds eye sockets*. My other best friend, Scott, was wearing Slayer and Iron Maiden shirts.

While I was still rockin’ my Thrilla Gorilla shirt my friends were actually rockin’. In this case to music that scares parents and makes them wonder where they went wrong while they research local priests that have performed exorcisms.

Although I never fully got “death metal” I was totally down with pretending to, which is why I bought this shirt out of the sale bin at Boo Boo’s.

When I got home and showed my parents they were instantly furious. I wasn’t sure what the big deal was. It’s not like I was wearing the stuff my friends were promoting. You know, shirts like…

Anyway, my parents were pissed. They couldn’t believe a store would sell a shirt to a kid that said “Helloween” on it. And that’s when I realized my fatal mistake. The whole time I sat there soaking up their disappointment I kept wondering why they would be so mad about a shirt that said “Halloween” on it. That one letter makes a big difference. Then I felt like an idiot. Of course, my parents wouldn’t be on board with Helloween. At that point we drove downtown to the music shop where my mom made them give me a refund. I should have been more embarrassed by it, but really, all it meant was that now I could buy more Lemonheads (not the band, the candy) and sour licorice.

To this day I still have never even heard a song by Helloween. I may not have acquired an ear for the likes of Mega Deth, Iron Maiden or Slayer, but I did get obsessed with some pretty awesome hair bands that were a lot less hard and a lot more…I don’t know, into frizzy hair and make up. Oh, and wicked sweet guitar solos. I’m talking about Motley Crue, Guns N’ Roses, Poison, Warrant, White Snake and Skid Row to name a few.

Yeah, that’s four dudes.

So many bands to choose from, but I have decided to end this post with a Poison video that I almost can’t even watch myself, but couldn’t get enough of as a 12 year old.

Enjoy!
– Jeff

* When I first wrote the description of the Mega Deth shirt I tried and tried to find a picture of it and it wasn’t until later, while searching Slayer shirts that I actually came across the “bird getting squeezed” graphic.

No wonder my 6th grade teacher pulled me aside one day and asked me what was going on with my friends.

Sometimes I just like cute songs.
To check out more Donora goodness visit their site at www.donoramusic.com.

That’s all.
Enjoy!

– Jeff

If I attempted a stage dive at my next art opening it would simply be labeled “performance art”. There would be no viral pictures or videos of it because who wants to see some art nerd dude belly flop straight onto the floor.* I might get a few claps afterwards. Oh, and a broken front tooth.

*Actually, that could totally go viral on youtube. The clip would at least show up in one of those millions of “Fail Compilations”.

This is Karen O’s cover of Daniel Johnston’s song that she did for the “Where The Wild Things Are” soundtrack.

I think it’s an absolutely gorgeous song.

Enjoy!

– Jeff

I first heard this song a few months ago when it started showing up on one of my Pandora stations. It was love at first listen. A few days ago it came on when Evy was in the car, so I had to skip ahead to the next song because I’m a good parent. She only heard a few seconds and was all, “Oh, I love this song!” And I was like, “What the?” Then she told me it was “like the most popular song at school.”

Later that day when James got home I started playing the song. Just the intro to see what kind of a reaction it would get. You know, before Macklemore mentions the size of his you know what and before he drops any mutha f-bombs. And all be damned, within the first few seconds James was all, “I love this song!” Again, I was all, “What the?” He also said it was the most popular song at his school. I don’t know where they’re hearing this. Honestly though, I was listening to Eazy-E at that age, which is so much worse. Like way worse and I have no idea how I ever discovered that. But enough about Eazy and back to the main event.

This video has been viewed over 250 million times, which is more than impressive. Super fun video and great song. Check it out.

You might also want to take a look at this interview Macklemore and Ryan Lewis had with John Norris at SXSW. It’s great hearing artists talk about their work intelligently.

Enjoy!
– Jeff

One day Kid Cudi came on Pandora. At the time I had never heard of him and it’s probably because I’m not 16 years old anymore, which means other things have gotten in the way of keeping up with new music. Real life grown up stuff. You know, things like overcoming my Bike Race addiction and learning how to text message without looking at the keyboard. It’s no wonder some people never progress much past what they liked when they were in high school. But I digress…

So, Kid Cudi came on and I liked it, which prompted me to start a Kid Cudi Pandora station. And that led me to buy a few of my favorites on iTunes, including this song, Cudi Zone.

Enjoy!

Oh, how I love Pandora! There are so many bands I would never have found out about had it not been for Pandora, including this one, Chiddy Bang.

Do you remember fourteen years ago when you bought a Sony Playstation for the sole purpose of playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater? Well, I do. If you are wondering what this has to do with Music Monday and Hip Hop sensation Chiddy Bang you need to work a little on your patience skills. Really, what’s the rush? I’ll fully explain, I promise. Plus, my tangents make for a more entertaining reading experience. This post is kind of like one of those Memento type movies that don’t make sense, but in the last thirty seconds all the loose ends are tied and you leave the theater thinking, “Wow! That was genius! Wait, what the hell just happened?” If you became obsessed with Tony Hawk Pro Skater like everybody else in the world, I mean, afterall, you did buy a $100 game console just to play one game…so yeah, if you didn’t become obsessed you really wasted a lot of money. We owed it to ourselves to get obsessed and deserved having our girlfriends leave us. The game was pretty addicting, like crack. It came as no surprise that when given the ultimatum of “do you choose me or that dumb video game”, we went with Tony Hawk Pro Skater every time, without hesitation. It was even more like crack in the way that playing the game normal didn’t give you the same high after awhile. You had to do more and more. First, you beat the game as Jamie Thomas, then Kareem Campbell, then you had to beat the game as Chad Muska and so on and so forth. Admit it, you even dedicated the time to beat the game as Elissa Steamer. This is where the high actually become a depressing low and the only way to get the high back was to find cheat codes. Now you’d do something like hold L at the pause screen and hit X, B, Up, left, left and then return to the character select screen. That nifty little code would unlock…wait for it. BIG HEAD MODE! Prepare to be dazzled because this is where it all ties together.

Chiddy Bang is totally in BIG HEAD mode for their “Opposite Of Adults” video!

Enjoy!

A year ago I went through a brief music app obsession. I especially loved messing around with iElectribe and iKaossilator. Searching the internet for music made with these apps I discovered soundcloud.com and a plethora of awesome musicians.

My favorite track I’ve come across to date is this one by Kieran Klaassen. Also, he’s got a pretty cool last name. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. Also, it was made entirely on the iPad (at least I think it was), which is pretty amazing.

Klaassen’s track also inspired me to get the Animoog app, which is super awesome.

If you have any favorite tracks made entirely with iPhone or iPad apps I’d love to hear them. Yes, I know about the Gorillaz iPad album.

Enjoy!
– Jeff

This is the only song I know by Chairlift. Based on this one song I think they’re totally awesome and someday soon I’ll listen to more of their stuff. I’ll get around to that after I listen to this on repeat for five days. This song was featured in the 2008 commercial used to launch the fourth-generation iPod Nano, so that’s super duper cool. Also, I don’t know that because I’m a stalker, at least not yet. I just read that factoid on wikipedia. Like thirty seconds ago.

Check out their site: chairlifted.com.
And buy all their music. Or at least this song.

And Chairlift, if you’re out there googling yourselves and come across this post, let me know. It would be great to hear from you.

See ya!
– Jeff

Most people wouldn’t think to mix Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” with Radiohead’s “Creep”, but most people aren’t Gregg Gillis. Under the name Girl Talk, Gillis has become the heavyweight champion of mash ups. I, for one, have been obsessed with his album “All Day” for awhile now. I can, and have, literally listened to it all day everyday for days and days. Anyway, I am, by no means, a music reviewer and there are plenty of things written about Girl Talk that you can google to your hearts content, but I am a fan and I just wanted to mention how awesome this album is.

With 372 samples “All Day” is begging for a copyright lawsuit, which is probably why Gillis offers it as a free download. The album, intended to play as one 71 minute track, can be downloaded at:
http://illegal-art.net/allday/.
Personally, I went with the “separated track” option. Either way, you’re in for a treat. Be sure to check out the list of samples.

Other Girl Talk links that you might be interested in.

– Girl Walk / All Day: A dance movie set to the entire “All Day” album. It’s broken into 12 chapters. My favorite part is the break dancers in Chapter 11. Skip ahead to 2:56. Of course, you are free to watch from the beginning.

Girl Walk // All Day: Chapter 11 from Girl Walk // All Day on Vimeo.

Check out the whole movie, starting with Chapter 1 right here.

– RiP: A Remix Manifesto: An amazing documentary on mash-ups and copyright. The DVD has a very informative talk in the Special Features by the founder of Creative Commons, Lawrence Lessig. You can watch the movie for free at http://vimeo.com/8040182 and on the RiP site you can download it and “pay what you like“.

Happy Mashing.
– Jeff