In a sense, doing this blog is a really strange thing for me. I’m more than happy to share my opinion with anyone about the music, movies, or games that I love, but I get nearly crippling anxiety when it comes to actually compelling them to sit down and experience the media I’m trying to recommend. It makes no sense, of course. Why would it matter if they like it or not, right? I mean, it’s not like it’s life or death or that they’ll stop being my friend, but I still get nervous.
The weird thing is that I don’t ever quite reach the point of comfort with even my closest friends. Recommending stuff to my brothers is usually pretty simple since I know them so well. It’s an uphill battle most of the time to even convince them that what I’m offering is worth spending time experiencing, but once they do, I’m right maybe 90% of the time about whether or not they’ll like it. There’s almost no stress involved unless you take away that family element…
If it was because of a specific, tragic event, I must have repressed it enough that I don’t even remember it, but I can honestly say that there are few things worse than that feeling you start to get in your gut when you can visibly see that they’re just really not feeling it. It was just a few weeks ago that I was in Chicago hanging out with a friend of mine who attends Northwestern.
“Duffy, you’ve got to hear these guys. This is the perfect music for warming you up in winter. They’re brilliant.”
The disc in question was Vampire Weekend’s latest, Contra. It’s this crazy indie rock album with these great worldbeat sounds. I don’t really understand why they call worldbeat worldbeat when they mean Afro-Caribbean, but that’s just me, I guess.
“Yeah, sure. Pop it in.”
It all goes south from there. Knowing myself, I know not to look directly at someone who is listening to something I’m making them listen to. It’s agonizing. The silence from her side of the car is deafening. I start counting the number of times that “Horchata” calls out that Koenig is drinking horchata in December. Her hands lower the volume knob twice during the first song. I try to shake it off.
“Eh…well I love it. It’s got a different sound to it and that’s really what attracts me to it, but I can see where you might not.”
She hadn’t even said a word, but I was defeated. The rest of the trip I let her control the radio as we alternated between country music, Lady Gaga, and Ke$ha (and the musical part of my soul died just a little bit).
I loved Sambomaster before I knew I loved Sambomaster, but when I read “changing the world in japanese“, a fantastic article about the band by tim rogers, I finally learned the band’s name and heard their best song. It’s hard to justify how much I love the band since I can’t understand a single lyric that Takashi Yamaguchi is saying, but the band’s music does mean a lot to me and I did my best to evangelize “Sono Nukumori ni Yō ga Aru” as best I could to my friends and family. Dave took to it instantly and even the difficult-to-please Duffy thought that the music was “alright”, but I was stonewalled when I sent it along to my good friend Min.
“Yeah, I just don’t like music in a language I can’t understand.”
I’m sure that part of the whole anxiety thing comes from your run-of-the-mill fear of rejection, but I think that it might also stem from the perhaps too extreme emotional connection that I make with my media. Many of my strongest memories are tied to the media I consume and I sometimes make these connections almost instantaneously.
One week before I went to Chicago, I was driving up to Ithaca with Min to meet up with some old friends. We were listening to podcasts and All Music Considered, one of NPR’s finest podcasts, came up with their Valentine’s Day episode featuring breakup songs. Each of the staff members presented a breakup song that had particular influence on their lives and one chose the Stars song “Your Ex-Lover is Dead”.
“Wow. That was amazing,” I told Min.
“Yeah. A friend of mine sent that to me in high school.”
I didn’t tell Min that the song touched me in a profound way, but I think he could tell from my reaction. If Min hadn’t been there in the car, I might have found myself crying. It just brought back so many memories about my long and damaging relationship with Ashley that it was overwhelming.
“I’m not sorry I met you I’m not sorry it’s over I’m not sorry there’s nothing to save”
It could be that my reluctance to share is preventing someone from learning about media that they’d never heard of before, (I think back to all the times I’ve successfully shared Arrested Development with friends), but then there are times when my nature is proven correct. I correctly balked at exposing my father to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, but he watched it anyway at the insistence of my brothers. He just didn’t get it.
There’s nothing like feeling that connection with someone over a shared experience. Having these interests in common gives us something to talk about and keeps conversation interesting. Maybe one day I’ll get over this fear of sharing. God knows I’m trying by writing this blog most days, even if I try to keep it a secret from most of the people I know.
One of my favorite tracks from Contra, “Giving Up the Gun”. Looks like the video for “Holiday” is next. I can’t wait. This video is great. Stick around until at least 2:00 or so for my favorite part.
It’s pretty funny in an intentionally cheesy way.
Damn good Brit-Rock
For a band that’s only been around since 2006, the Arctic Monkeys have made quite a splash in England, setting all kinds of sales records and winning tons of awards. As someone who is officially late to the party, here are some words about their three albums released since 2006
Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I Am Not
This is the way you debut a band. The Arctic Monkeys came out swinging hard in their first offering with a high octane offering filled with edgy lyrics and seriously upbeat, fast-paced guitar riffs and drums. If you’ve heard any recent Brit-Rock, you probably have some idea what to expect. It kind of reminds me of a moodier version of The Fratellis in that way that only British rock can really sound. If it weren’t for the fact that I’d heard their next two albums, I’d probably give this album greater props, but they’ve clearly grown some since their debut, which has a really same-y feel throughout the entire disc. Speaking of their next album…
Favourite Worst Nightmare
Yet another band that avoids the sophomore slump, Arctic Monkeys somehow managed to grow leaps and bounds from WPSIATWIAN. I mean, this album goes almost everywhere and is solid the whole way through. I can’t get “505″, “Old Yellow Bricks”, or “Fluorescent Adolescent” out of my head most days. Of the three albums, this is the real MUST HAVE. I wish I had a better musical vocabulary to describe it, but Favourite Worst Nightmare should be on everyone’s playlist.
Humbug
The most recent 2009 offering is actually a bit of a step back from FWN. Humbug isn’t bad at all, it’s just not spectacular and its songs aren’t anywhere near as catchy. The band has still retained the maturity it gained in FWN, but I think they went a little too far in trying to make their music seem older. Getting back in touch with the lyrics and music from FWN without regressing too much will be a challenge for the band, but I’m sure they can do it. Heck, they’re about my age anyway, so they’ve got a ways to go. All that said, “Crying Lighting” is an absolute gem and “Cornerstone” rocks almost as hard, while “Dangerous Animals”, “My Propeller”, and “Dance Little Liars” are also fine tracks that round out their second best album.
If you can only buy one, go with Favorite Worst Nightmare, but the latter two are both solid purchases and their debut album is also plenty awesome to listen to if you’ve got spare cash.
I wrongfully believed that the difficulties in finding an embeddable version of the video for the site was due to OK Go being restrictive. I should have known better and assumed it was the record companies. Below is an open letter by Damian Kulash to the fans of OK Go about why their videos are not embeddable on Youtube. Sorry for doubting you OK Go, you guys are amazing. Record companies: Your days are numbered. Get with the times.
To the people of the world, from OK Go:
This week we released a new album, and it’s our best yet. We also released a new video – the second for this record – for a song called This Too Shall Pass, and you can watch it here. We hope you’ll like it and comment on it and pass the link along to your friends and do that wonderful thing that that you do when you’re fond of something, share it. We want you to stick it on your web page, post it on your wall, and embed it everywhere you can think of.
Unfortunately, as of now you can’t embed diddlycrap. And depending on where you are in the world, you might not even be able to watch it.
We’ve been flooded with complaints recently because our YouTube videos can’t be embedded on websites, and in certain countries can’t be seen at all. And we want you to know: we hear you, and we’re sorry. We wish there was something we could do. Believe us, we want you to pass our videos around more than you do, but, crazy as it may seem, it’s now far harder for bands to make videos accessible online than it was four years ago.
See, here’s the deal. The recordings and the videos we make are owned by a record label, EMI. The label fronts the money for us to make recordings – for this album they paid for us to spend a few months with one of the world’s best producers in a converted barn in Amish country wringing our souls and playing tympani and twiddling knobs – and they put up most of the cash that it takes to distribute and promote our albums, including the costs of pressing CDs, advertising, and making videos. We make our videos ourselves, and we keep them dirt cheap, but still, it all adds up, and it adds up to a great deal more than we have in our bank account, which is why we have a record label in the first place.
Fifteen years ago, when the terms of contracts like ours were dreamt up, a major label could record two cats fighting in a bag and three months later they’d have a hit. No more. People of the world, there has been a revolution. You no longer give a shit what major labels want you to listen to (good job, world!), and you no longer spend money actually buying the music you listen to (perhaps not so good job, world). So the money that used to flow through the music business has slowed to a trickle, and every label, large or small, is scrambling to catch every last drop. You can’t blame them; they need new shoes, just like everybody else. And musicians need them to survive so we can use them as banks. Even bands like us who do most of our own promotion still need them to write checks every once in a while.
But where are they gonna find money if no one buys music? One target is radio stations (there’s lots of articles out there. here’s one: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/20…ouse-senate.ars ). And another is our friend The Internutz. As you’ve no doubt noticed, sites like YouTube, MySpace, and Blahzayblahblah.cn run ads on copyrighted content. Back when Young MC’s second album (the one that didn’t have Bust A Move on it) could go Gold without a second thought, labels would’ve considered these sites primarily promotional partners like they did with MTV, but times have changed. The labels are hurting and they need every penny they can find, so they’ve demanded a piece of the action. They got all huffy a couple years ago and threatened all sorts of legal terror and eventually all four majors struck deals with YouTube which pay them tiny, tiny sums of money every time one of their videos gets played. Seems like a fair enough solution, right? YouTube gets to keep the content, and the labels get some income.
The catch: the software that pays out those tiny sums doesn’t pay if a video is embedded. This means our label doesn’t get their hard-won share of the pie if our video is played on your blog, so (surprise, surprise) they won’t let us be on your blog. And, voilá: four years after we posted our first homemade videos to YouTube and they spread across the globe faster than swine flu, making our bassist’s glasses recognizable to 70-year-olds in Wichita and 5-year-olds in Seoul and eventually turning a tidy little profit for EMI, we’re – unbelievably – stuck in the position of arguing with our own label about the merits of having our videos be easily shared. It’s like the world has gone backwards.
Let’s take a wider view for a second. What we’re really talking about here is the shift in the way we think about music. We’re stuck between two worlds: the world of ten years ago, where music was privately owned in discreet little chunks (CDs), and a new one that seems to be emerging, where music is universally publicly accessible. The thing is, only one of these worlds has a (somewhat) stable system in place for funding music and all of its associated nuts-and-bolts logistics, and, even if it were possible, none of us would willingly return to that world. Aside from the smug assholes who ran labels, who’d want a system where a handful of corporate overlords shove crap down our throats? All the same, if music is going to be more than a hobby, someone, literally, has to pay the piper. So we’ve got this ridiculous situation where the machinery of the old system is frantically trying to contort and reshape and rewire itself to run without actually selling music. It’s like a car trying to figure out how to run without gas, or a fish trying to learn to breath air.
So what’s there to do? On the macro level, well, who the hell knows? There are a lot of interesting ideas out there, but this is not the place to get into them. As for our specific roadblock with the video embedding, the obvious solution is for YouTube to work out its software so it allow labels to monetize their videos, wherever on the Internet or the globe they’re being accessed. That’ll surely happen before too long because there’s plenty of money to be made, but it’s more complicated than it looks at first glance. Advertisers aren’t too keen on paying for ads when they don’t know where the ads will appear (“Dear users of FoxxxyPregnantMILFS.com, try Gerber’s new low-lactose formula!”), so there are a lot of hurdles to get over.
In the meantime, the only thing OK Go can do is to upload our videos to sites that allow for embedding, like MySpace and Vimeo. We do that already, but it stings a little. Not only does it cannibalize our own numbers (it tends to do our business more good to get 40 million hits on one site than 1 million hits on 40 sites), but, as you can imagine, we feel a lot of allegiance to the fine people at YouTube. They’ve been good to us, and what they want is what we want: lots of people to see our videos. When push comes to shove, however, we like our fans more, which is why you can take the code at the bottom of this email and embed the “This Too Shall Pass” video all over the Internet.
With or without this embedding problem, we’ll never get 50 zillion views on a YouTube video again. That moment – the dawn of internet video – is gone. The internet isn’t as anarchic as it was then. Now there are Madison Avenue firms that specialize in “viral marketing” and the success of our videos is now taught in business school. But here’s a secret: zillions of hits was never the point. We’re a rock band, and it’s a great gig. Not just because we get to snort drugs off the Queen of England (we do), but because the only thing we are expected to do is make cool stuff. We chase our craziest ideas for a living, and if sharing those ideas takes 40 websites instead of one, it doesn’t make too big a difference to us.
So, for now, here’s the bottom line: EMI won’t let us let you embed our YouTube videos. It’s a decision that bums us out. We’ve argued with them a lot about it, but we also understand why they’re doing it. They’re aware that their rules make it harder for people to watch and share our videos, but, while our duty is to our music and our fans, theirs is to their shareholders, and they believe they’re doing the right thing.
Here’s the embed code for the Vimeo posting:
OK Go – This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.
Go forth and put it everywhere, please. And buy our album. It’s great.
Yours Truly,
Damian (on behalf of OK Go)
(Originally posted on the OK Go forums)
Should be a musical week here at IBNttT and I think I’m gonna start it off with my impressions on OK Go and Vampire Weekend’s new offerings, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky and Contra, respectively.
It’s been ~5 years since OK Go released one of my favorite albums, Oh No, and started to find some mainstream success thanks to the music video for “Here It Goes Again”. A lot can change in five years for a band so I was curious as to how it would turn out (and sound), especially since I’d heard it was a result of them touring for so long they hardly felt like themselves. Sonic shifts can be completely disastrous or they can turn out like OtBCotS and turn out pretty well.
The sound shift comes in the form of an almost 80s funk-synth sound a la Prince, complete with Prince-like yelps and screams. If you’re like me, your first worry should be, “Can Damian Kulash actually hit those notes and sound appropriate for this style?” I’d say that the experiment was mostly a success, with his wailing only taking center stage during the song “Skyscrapers” where it’s used to both great effect and only one mildly annoying overdone part. Beyond that, the synth-y sound is actually pretty great and I’m positive that OK Go will only grow from this experimentation.
My main gripe with the album comes with the back third, which seems like a lot (and it is!). I understand why artists like to slow down the beat and bring us down slowly for the tail end of the album, but, of the last four songs, only the final song, “In the Glass” does anything for me while the other three just don’t fit in thematically. That said, the first two thirds of the album is absolutely fantastic. I’d say my favorite tracks are the first six, so just about half. Not perfect, but not bad either. The bass and drum work are especially worth noting, specifically in “Skyscrapers” and “White Knuckles”, but they’re great throughout the entire album.
If you’re a real fan of the sound OK Go had for their first two albums, I’d give the album a listen before you buy to make sure you’re not getting any unwelcome surprises. For everyone else, if you like your music with a little funk sometimes, it’s worth picking up.
Contra
I’m a little late to the Vampire Weekend party since I’d only heard of them a few days before both of the album came out. When I did some background checking to see what their first album sounded like, I was shocked, since Contra sounds almost nothing like their prior work. That’s not a bad thing, especially since I’m fond of just about every track on the disc, but I have to wonder what old fans might think of the shift to a more tropical, almost reggae-ish sound. Wikipedia calls it “worldbeat”, if that helps any. Anyway, the album definitely sounds Caribbean and tropical, which is definitely welcome during these cold winter months.
Ezra Koenig’s voice does a great job covering this varied sound and much acclaim needs to go to the rest of his band, Rostam Batmanglij, Chris Tomson, and Chris Baio, for coming up with a wholly natural-sounding, almost ethnic album created by a bunch of kids from Brooklyn. I’d be hard pressed to select a single track as the standout so I’ll just say that my favorites are “Run”, “Diplomat’s Son”, “California English”, and “Horchata”. The entire album is available to be listened to on their website, so check them out. Given how different this album is from their first and how good it is, I’m really excited to see what Vampire Weekend does next. This is a band worth keeping an eye on.
Neat video concept. I’m a fan.
I’ll be gone from KORB on Vimeo.
The band never really saw much mainstream success. “Hey Driver” was their most popular song and actually made it into some video games, movies, and got some airtime, but they broke up only moderately more famous than they were when they were first signed.
Five Iron Frenzy
Notable Album: The End is Near/Here (2003)
As a primarily ’90s act, I was hesitant to include FIF in my list of my favorite music of the aughts, but their musical swan song had a major effect on my musical development, so I couldn’t rightly leave them out. Beyond just the CD, Five Iron Frenzy’s farewell tour, Winners Never Quit, was the first time I recognized that a live show was well worth attending. Before that I’d seen music live a few times and listened to a live CD here or there, but found them to be sub par. I was annoyed that the songs varied from the usual pace and intricacies of the album version and seemed to have lower quality. It all changed that night.
The small, intimate club atmosphere put me up close with fans for the first time (my previous concerts had been mega-stadium deals) with a band playing an emotional final tour. I also learned the best part about a live show: the new ways in which a band mixes up their music. I got to listen to the amazing FIF Medley (also on The End is Here), which, aside from it luckily being on a CD, I probably would never hear again. Ever since that night in Orlando, concerts became a part of my musical experience and the effect that FIF had on me is apparent when you realize how much of my music is upbeat, uptempo, and filled with brass sections. They may not be the best band on this list, but they’re one of the most important ones.
Notable Albums: The Resignation (2003), …And the Battle Begun (2006), Mandala (2009)
I didn’t realize what I got when my friend Daniela gave me a copy of The Resignation for Christmas back in 2004. We listened to it and she brilliantly pinpointed “Mastering the List” as my favorite track on the CD, but I didn’t get just how good the CD was for two years, a testament to how music tastes can drastically change over short periods of time. When I finally started listening in earnest in 2006, I think the best adjective to describe the experience was revelatory.
Of all the bands on this list, I think I’ve gone on and on about the Bandits the most on this blog and for good reason. They are talented, their music is rich and full, their lyrics are pretty solid, if not a little too hippie, and their dedication to an organic sound seems unparalleled in today’s overproduced soundscape. If there’s one album on this post that you choose to listen to, it should be …And the Battle Begun. It’s my favorite album of all time (as of 2009) and I don’t think there’s a single stinker on the whole disc.
Their best songs are “Mastering the List”, “Never Slept So Soundly”, “Decrescendo”, “In Her Drawer”, “Only for the Night” (my favorite on the list), “Tainted Wheat”, “White Lies”, and “Mientras la Veo Soñar.”
If there was one criticism I’d have for the band, it’s that they got rid of their horn section between …And the Battle Begun and Mandala. It doesn’t mean there’s no more brass in their newer work, it just means that it’s no longer a regular part of the band. Shame that they’re losing it, but they claim it has allowed them to open up and improve their song complexity.
Relient K
Notable Album: Mmhmm (2004)
When I think of my freshman year at Cornell, American Idiot and Mmhmm are the soundtrack that plays in the background. I listened to both CDs many times on my way too and from the townhouses and the engineering quad, not to mention through my computer’s speakers. Mmhmm represents the transition from Relient K from a slightly niche, Christian music band to a more popular, mainstream act with its understated message (it seems that they returned to their more obvious Christian references with Five Score and Seven Years Ago) and their sound had matured to the best I’d heard since their debut album.
The album is full of some great songs, but my personal favorites are “High of 75″, because it cheered me up in the miserable Ithaca weather, “My Girl’s Ex-Boyfriend”, because I love sappy love songs, and “Which To Bury, Us or the Hatchet?”, because it resonated with my seriously rocky and messed up relationship at the time. Beyond that, the rest of the album is also great, but I can’t just list all the tracks now, can I?
The Zutons
Notable Albums: Who Killed…… The Zutons? (2004), You Can Do Anything (2008)
This one comes straight from my old high school friend Michelle. A fan of the quirky, indie scene, she recommended that I check out this band of Liverpudlians and I was not disappointed. You almost can’t go wrong with me if you’ve got brass or a saxophone in your band and The Zutons have one saxophonist adding her own distinct flavor to their already distinct rock grooves. Their music is unique and just great to listen to, especially when you get Abi Harding’s voice harmonizing with Dave McCabe’s on a lot of their numbers and the band’s sound has improved greatly from Who Killed on to You Can Do Anything. Their best songs, “Pressure Point”, “Havana Gang Brawl”, “Valerie”, “You Could Make The Four Walls Cry”, “Put A Little Aside”, and “Freak” are all so different, but all so much fun to listen to, even if they’ll probably never get any airtime stateside.
OK Go
Notable Album: Oh No (2005)
There’s a reason the phrase “sophomore slump” is part of the vernacular and it’s not often that a band not only releases a far superior second album, but does so with a significant change in sound. At a live show I saw them play at Cornell, OK Go outright stated that they were going for a safe, pop sound on their first album to try and appeal to the masses. Listening to it yields some decent tracks, but otherwise, I’d be inclined to agree. It’s cautious and it probably got them a record deal, but it’s not great. In three years, they turned around, completely matured their sound, and launched one of my favorite albums of the decade, Oh No. Almost everyone has heard “Here It Goes Again” or seen the treadmill video and I think you’d be hard pressed to find a person who would rather listen to “Get Over It.” They got that much better.
While I’m mentioning the videos, it’s also worth mentioning that Oh No also represents a creative turn for the band with it’s quirky, interesting, low-budget, high awesomeness music videos. “Do What You Want” has a more typical look, but “Here It Goes Again” and “A Million Ways” have hilariously awesome and indie videos a tradition they’ve melded with budget to create their newest video for “WTF”, which you already know I love. I don’t think that the viral video approach to music videos will take over the industry, but I don’t think you can say that they didn’t start something big with their Youtube-released video.
The whole album is pretty solid, but I’d also like to point out “Oh Lately It’s So Quiet” and “Let It Rain” as great tracks (beyond the ones I’ve already mentioned). They’re two of the slower, more contemplative ones, but they just feel right to listen to.
Fall Out Boy
Notable Albums: From Under the Cork Tree (2005), Folie à Deux (2008)
Yeah, they’re not the greatest band in history, but they’ve got some seriously catchy songs that I can’t help but enjoy. If their songs don’t make your toes tap, I’d seriously question whether or not you have a soul. FOB finally managed to break mainstream with their sophomore album, a CD filled with a neat take on pop and rock that’s just complex and different enough to pique my interests and just safe enough to be ok with the average Joe. Since then FOB continues to push into strange boundaries with its music borrowing from tons of genres and recording some solid tracks. I may not agree with their single selection (:cough: “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race” SUCKS :cough:), but I’d say that 80-90% of their albums are filled with great tracks.
My favorites: “The Take Over, the Breaks Over”, “Hum Hallelujah”, “A Little Less Sixteen Candles, a Little More “Touch Me”", “7 Minutes in Heaven (Atavan Halen)”, “She’s My Winona”, “Headfirst Slide into Cooperstown on a Bad Bet”, and “20 Dollar Nose Bleed”.
Matisyahu
Notable Album: Live at Stubb’s (2005)
I had the chance to see Matisyahu my freshman year at Cornell, but I had no idea who he was. The posters were up one day advertising a Hasidic Jew singing reggae and so I chuckled and went on with my day. Little did I know that a year later I’d hear a track from his live album in my ex’s brother Bobby’s car and fall in love with his brand of religious reggae. That’s the catch, of course, if Jewish-themed music offends you, Matisyahu is not for you. Then again, aside from allusions to scripture, isn’t reggae really all about peace and love? Matisyahu’s music may be about the Old Testament God, but its a celebration of love, life, and peace that will undoubtedly make you smile. My favorite songs by Matisyahu are “King Without a Crown”, “Aish Tamid”, and “Chop ‘Em Down”
Wolfmother
Notable Album: Wolfmother (2006)
Ever feel like the days of classic rock are gone? You must not be listening to Wolfmother. We’re talking straight up 1970s, Satan’s music here. From their ridiculous throwback album covers to the solid guitar solos, these guys clearly never gave up on the past and they want to bring it to the youth of today. They sound so classic that I didn’t notice for months after playing their songs in Guitar Hero II and Rock Band that the year was post 2000. If you’re ever craving a true hard rock sound, look these guys up. They’ll rock your socks off.
Best songs: “Woman”, “Joker & the Thief”
Incubus
Notable Album: Light Grenades (2006)
I know what you’re thinking. Incubus, really? Yes, really. Light Grenades was a solid album. Their best work in the decade, really. I happen to really love “Dig”, “Light Grenades”, “Anna Molly”, and “Paper Shoes”. It’s my list, leave me alone.
Streetlight Manifesto
Notable Albums: Keasbey Nights (2006), Somewhere in the Between (2007)
Probably my favorite ska act and one with kind of an ugly history. If you’ve ever heard of Catch-22, you’ve probably heard their most famous album, Keasbey Nights (1998) and the vocals of Tomas Kalnoky. At some point Kalnoky and the rest of the members had a major falling out and the band mostly split up. Kalnoky started up Streetlight Manifesto and the band gained notoriety quickly while Catch-22 morphed into a new band, but still played Kalnoky’s old songs from Keasbey Nights. Things were pretty dicey and ugly for a time too, because the bands traded lyrical jabs on their subsequent albums and, eventually, it seems that Kalnoky decided it was worth re-recording one of the seminal albums of third-wave ska, hence the Streetlight Manifesto edition of Keasbey Nights. As the owner of both editions of the album, let’s just say that the extra time and money made an already good album great. Kalnoky’s music work in Streetlight is sharp, the horns are solid and the guitars are great, creating a sound that you can’t help jamming to. Their best work comes out in “Riding the Fourth Wave”, “Keasbey Nights”, “Would You Be Impressed”, and “Somewhere in the Between”. Ska can be hit and miss, I know that most people don’t like it, but you’ve gotta check these guys out, they’ve refined the genre to its best.
The Fratellis
Notable Album: Costello Music (2006)
The UK makes the list again with Scottish rock band The Fratellis. Their music is so full of energy and that unique, intangible British music quality that I couldn’t help but fall in love with the band after playing their songs in Rock Band for the first time. “Henrietta”, “Chelsea Dagger”, and “Ole Black ‘n’ Blue Eyes” are my favorites from the disc, but there are plenty more where that came from with a mix of wild rock and slower, British-sounding songs to break up the beat and calm the heartbeat. A band definitely worth checking out. Jarabe de Palo
Notable Album: Adelantando (2007)
I’ve listened to a lot of Spanish music in my lifetime. It’s a byproduct of my heritage, but most of what got airtime when I was a kid was salsa, merengue, the occasional bachata, and (nowadays) reggaeton. While they’re all plenty fun genres to listen to, there’s not a whole lot of innovation to be found in the strict confines of their musical definitions. Then Daniela went and introduced me to yet another great band, Jarabe de Palo. They’re not what you’d call typical Latin music, in fact because they’ve gone and formed a rock band and it’s actually not half bad. It’s actually pretty common to see other countries try and adopt American musical styles, but the results are usually pretty ghastly. Thankfully, Jarabe de Palo avoids this common shortcoming of foreign rock and is actually some pretty great music. His best tracks (that I know) are “Me gusta como eres”, “Dejame vivir”, and “Estamos prohibidos”.
Jonathan Coulton
Notable Albums: Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow (2004), Thing-a-Week 1-4 (2006)
In 2007 I played a game by Valve called Portal. Aside from being one of the best games in the history of gaming, it also featured one of the greatest songs in gaming at the end, “Still Alive”. That same Christmas, my ex-girlfriend’s brother (he makes a reappearance) showed me a youtube video of Coulton playing “RE: Your Brains”. Both were great, but in the hustle of the season, I failed to take notice of Coulton until about April or May of 2008. On a whim, I decided to check out Coulton’s work and bought his entire collection off of his website without listening to most of it. That day I took notice of the greatest Internet folk sensation to ever grace the web. Coulton’s music is mostly nerdy love songs and he himself has claimed that he needs to make an effort to write fewer melancholic love songs, but he’s also got songs about completely random things, like a tall tale about baseball’s first commissioner and how he dealt with the Black Sox Scandal, Kenesaw Mountain Landis (in a song appropriately titled “Kenesaw Mountain Landis”) or one about the trials and tribulations of being a clown (“Bozo’s Lament”). Perhaps his greatest undertaking was his Thing-a-Week challenge, where he took it upon himself to write and produce one song every week, which actually produced some of his most famous songs like “RE: Your Brains” and “Code Monkey”.
Other than the songs I’ve already mentioned, my favorites include “Screwed”, “Skullcrusher Mountain”, “Madelaine”, “Mandelbrot Set”, and “When You Go”, but I could list 10 or 20 more songs that are just as fantastic. Even better is that Coulton is all about Creative Commons and he understands the internet. He’s got an option to pay him some cash if you’ve already stolen his music and he’s more than happy to let you remix it or use it however you want, so long as you credit him. He’s truly a product of the Internet and a great musician to boot.
2007/2008 also brought two big concepts that changed the way I dealt with music and time. One thing, podcasting, is arguably not music, but it’s audio-related, so it’s worth mentioning. Before I had an iPod, I occasionally walked around campus with a CD player, but I mostly didn’t listen to much at all. After I got one and started getting podcasts, the way that information was relayed to me made a fundamental change and now I was learning about all of my hobbies and passions during my dead time walking around campus (and driving to work once I graduated). It’s pretty amazing to see that in a few short years which podcasts I’ve settled on and which ones I’ve moved on from as I struck a balance between too much (and a diminished ability to listen to anything but podcasts) and too little.
The other major musical revolution of the decade was the rise of Guitar Hero and Rock Band. I first played Guitar Hero back in the summer of 2007 and I immediately fell in love. When word started to trickle in about Rock Band, I was initially skeptical, since I believed it to be a knockoff (I later learned that it was the true evolution of the series put forward by the true innovators behind the magic, Harmonix), but I eventually came around and pre-ordered the special edition for my xbox. That game meant a lot to me and it even changed some fundamental things about me. It’s also been one of the best ways for me to gain access to new music and has widened my musical tastes considerably.
Back to bands!
Anamanaguchi
Notable Album: Dawn Metropolis (2009)
I get why people might be skeptical about chiptunes. It’s 8-bit music coming out of retro sound chips and nine times out of ten, people use it to just remix video game music. Imagine my surprise when I read an article about Anamanaguchi on Kotaku by Leigh Alexander detailing how this Brooklyn band was making great strides. Their music is top notch and stands out from the crowd because they don’t just play a 1985 NES, they’ve also got a drummer, guitarist, and bassist thrown in there. The music may take its cues from some of the conventions set forth by the game composers of the 1980s, but their music is completely original and super catchy.
My favorites: “Jetpack Blues, Sunset Hues”, “Tempest, Teamwork, Triumph (at Sea)”
Sambomaster (サンボマスター)
Notable Albums: サンボマスターは君に語りかける (Sambomaster is Talking to You) (2005), 僕と君の全てをロックンロールと呼べ (Call everything that we (you and I) are ‘Rock n’ Roll’) (2006)
What’s an article on this blog without some sort of tim rogers mention? It was this year that I read “changing the world in japanese” on his blog LargePrimeNumbers, a treatise on rock music, Japan, and, most importantly, how Sambomaster was one of the most important bands playing in Japan. Listening to the track he had posted on that article, Romanized as “Sono Nukumori ni Yō ga Aru”, I saw precisely what he was saying and became an instant Sambomaster fan. From that sandpaper, gravely voice to the emotion that is so obviously apparent through the language barrier, Sambomaster’s music speaks to a deep part of me. The guitars are stellar and interesting, the drumlines are solid, and Takashi Yamaguchi’s vocals just resonate and feel so right.
My favorite story about the band is that I’d actually heard their music back in 2005 as the fifth opening to the Naruto anime. I had no idea what the band was called or what the song was, but when I heard it, I immediately called it my favorite opening of the series and filed it in the back of my mind. Imagine the joy that returned to me when I was reading about Sambomaster on tim’s site and I downloaded and listened to “Sono Nukumori ni Yō ga Aru”. As I recognized Yamaguchi’s distinct vocals and guitar style, I immediately began researching whether or not the same group was responsible. I was right and I’ve been smiling about the band ever since.
Ok, I know I’m way behind on this “of the Decade” project, but bear with me, the winter is the hardest time for me to keep on top of things and I’ve been dead tired all week long.
OK Go may or may not actually appear on my Best Music list, but I can guarantee you that their music videos more than deserve to be on the list. This latest one is pretty catchy and a great concept. Enjoy!
OK Go – WTF? from OK Go on Vimeo.
The taste of Cuban food, the smell right before a thunderstorm on a summer afternoon, the sound of disco music, the oppressive feel of summer heat, and the sight of a pink building all remind me of my childhood home. Everyone knows that the senses trigger strong memories. It’s also common sense that the media we take in over our lives can have a profound effect on our memories of our past and development. From the simple books of my childhood to the games and music I played and listened to along my 23 years of development, there are certain pieces of media that are just inseparable from the circumstances surrounding their initial consumption. They range from the simple joys of childhood all the way to the angst of high school and the harsh realities of adult life, but I wouldn’t trade these associations for anything.
My earliest conscious memories all come from the modest house in Hialeah we lived in as children. The memories come flooding in as I think about the years I spent growing up in that house, but some of the most vivid come from the John F. Kennedy Memorial library. A giant, two-story behemoth of a building, I spent many a day browsing the books with my parents and in library camp during the summers. In the corners of my mind, I can recall watching a movie about a mouse who had a race car, but I know it wasn’t Stuart Little, it was far too early for that. I remember reading books about a purple monster (El Monstruo?) with my dad to practice Spanish, I remember watching Bob Ross videos (“Happy little trees”!), and I remember the joy of getting my own library card, even though it had a single-digit limit on check-outs, but most of all I remember checking out Three Investigators books. This, initially, Alfred Hitchcock-supported trio of detectives were the main characters in a book series that my father used to read as a kid. Knowing that I enjoyed mystery books, my father recommended them to me and they quickly became a favorite of mine. I can still remember the corner of the library where I used to look for these books. He may not realize it, but those books have stuck with me to this day and they will forever remind me of my father and my time in Hialeah.
While I have plenty of memories of playing the NES in our family room or Eric’s room in Hialeah, the first gaming system that was truly mine was the SNES that lived in my bedroom from 1992 until we moved. The story behind the Christmas I got it is colorful and fun, but Super Mario World sticks out beyond that in my mind for one simple reason. I specifically remember playing that game in the corner of my room, my television sitting atop my dresser, requiring a bash or two to get the colors just right, throughout that year and the next. It was conquered several times in two different parts of my room, with David watching me or playing as Luigi.
Memories of that bedroom are also carried within the bytes of King’s Quest VI. My father brought home the game at someone’s recommendation – this was when my father still played games on occasion – and began to puzzle through its depths at night after completing his homework. His obsession with the game became so great that he would often sneak peeks at strategy guides within computer stores during his breaks or on the way home from work so that he could get unstuck that night. My memories of the game develop from fear to delight as I grew older. You see, the King’s Quest series was not like the adventure games of Lucasarts, you could die at a moment’s notice. The realism and the grisly deaths combined to make me actively fear the game as a small child and I used to cover my ears so as not to hear the inevitable phrase “Tickets Please” uttered by the gate man of Hell itself as my father as Alexander perished yet again.
I would brave the depths of King’s Quest VI years later with Eric when we had moved to Tualatin, a small suburb of Portland, Oregon. With the help of a guidebook so detailed it included a novelization of the game’s events, we easily conquered Alexander’s quest and that of Graham and Roselia in the games immediately preceding and following. Much stronger media memories from my Oregon days come more from my original playthroughs of both Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI. My Chrono Trigger story was already documented pretty well with the 16-bit All-Stars, but what wasn’t as well documented were the days spent sitting on the floor of Eric’s room as we played. Poor David was relegated to spectator status as he watched me trek through the 16-bit time travel saga, but he got his money’s worth as he asked me to read and act the character’s parts aloud as I played, which I happily did for him most of the time.
An epic nine-day rental of Final Fantasy VI will always remind me of the family’s first big screen TV. I fondly remember powering through the game, grinding in the desert as we leveled up each character in our repertoire to prepare for our battle against Kefka. Since FF VI featured a two-player mode, David was more than happy to play along through battles as we forged our way through the epic story of my favorite in the series. I can still picture the position of the television next to the fireplace in our living room. I can still remember the Hollywood Video we used to go to where we rented the game.
After a few short years in Oregon, we found our way back to Florida and I found myself in my freshman year of high school. It was in that last year in Broward county that I have my strongest media-related memories. Eric started reading books by Neal Stephenson when we were living in Oregon and he got a hold of Cryptonomicon around the year 2000. I read the book in the back of my computer programming class during the spring of 2001. My desk was in the back of the room and I finished programming assignments so quickly I always had time to read. I even remember one of the assignments, a tic-tac-toe game coded in Visual Basic.
My memories aren’t completely limited to games of the video variety, the card game Spades, a game I learned also in the spring of 2001, is forever associated with being 15 and playing water polo. Coach Childs worked somewhere else in the district and he had to travel to the high school for practice every day. To pass the time before his arrival and our usual stretching routine, my friend Scott Huntley and other members of the team would play an informal variant of spades where the first to seven books won the game. Those spring afternoons playing cards in the amphitheater on the red mesh lunch tables of our outdoor cafeteria were great. I took the great card game of Spades with me when I switched schools the next year, introducing it to as many as I could and I played at the end of the year almost every year, but it could never beat those afternoons before practice.
We moved that summer up to central Florida, the greater Tampa Bay area, to be specific, much to my chagrin. The prospect of meeting new people and making friends yet again was daunting, but I had the help of aspiring pirate Guybrush Threepwood to get me through the anxiety of that summer and keep me from worrying too much. My first playthroughs of the fantastic games within the Monkey Island series come from that summer. As I type this on the desk I first got when we moved to Tampa, the memories come flooding back to me. The precise positioning of the desk in my bedroom. I can remember David lying on my bed behind me as we worked through the puzzles and my first girlfriend, Daniela, laughing at the ridiculous jokes in the later iterations of the series, brought to life through Dominic Armato’s voice. Lucasarts adventure games dominated that summer, but the Monkey Island games, by far, left the greatest impact on me. The day that I learned about the new iteration in the series and the MI remake I told almost anyone I knew who would care. They could all vouch for how excited I was. I owe this all to that one summer where I learned the art of insult swordfighting as I got ready to enter a brand new high school in a new town.
I listened to oldies music for the first 14 or so years of my life and, while it brought me my great love and appreciation for greats like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, it didn’t factor as much into my life as pop music did during my later high school years. Predictably, most music associations I have are tied to various girlfriends I had throughout high school. Take Sublime’s tribute to the working girl, “Wrong Way.” I discovered that song the summer of my Junior year when I met and was dating a girl named Stephanie I met at my job at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay. She happened to live near the park and was definitely from the “wrong side of the tracks,” so to speak. I’m not implying that she was a working girl, but I couldn’t help but think about the more dire economic situation near the amusement park (seriously, it was in a really crummy neighborhood) as I drove out there to see her after work or on the weekends.
Two songs by the Lostprophets, “Last Summer” and “Make a Move,” were weighing pretty heavily on my mind before I went off to university the summer of my senior year. Read the lyrics and you’ll understand why my good friend-turned-girlfriend Ashley is particularly associated with both of those songs in my mind before we went off to separate universities.
Not all song associations have to do with girls, one in particular, “All My Life” by the Foo Fighters, is actually associated with the swim team, my friend Chris, and districts. The slowly building beat was perfect for hyping us up for our races and Chris and I both gave it a listen before lining up on the blocks to get the heart pumping in preparation. I can still almost picture the tent-like structures pitched off to the side of the pool, the smell of chlorine in the air, and the simultaneous excitement and dull boredom that is a district-wide swim meet.
All that’s great, but I want to end where I started, video games. This past summer was a huge period of transition for me. I was graduating, but the job I thought I had was closed off to me through circumstances I’m completely at fault for. Faced with the prospect of heading back home with my tail between my legs or sticking it out and looking for work, I chose to find a job or starve. I was determined to make it out here and I was lucky to have a very understanding roommate allowing me time to get back on my feet. The days were spent working toward finding myself a new job, but the nights were spent finally indulging in something I had to put off for my final semester at school: Metal Gear Solid 4. Any link between the struggles of Solid Snake to stay alive and determinedly finish one last mission despite his clone degeneration and my job hunt would be ridiculous in more ways than can be named here, so I won’t go there, but I will say that playing MGS4 on the floor of my apartment (we had no furniture at that point) on my teeny 25″ television (we have a 65″er now) will always be special to me. It was the first game I completed after completing my education. The first game I finished after I was set free in the world on my own. It was (supposed to be) the end for Solid Snake and a new beginning for me (I couldn’t resist). Beating it was my first victory amidst some pretty terrible losses that brought me to that point throughout the summer and I’ll never forget the mixed emotions I felt once I’d finished Snake’s swan song. On one hand, the MGS story was done (so I thought) and Kojima went all-out to end his landmark series I was thankfully not alone in a new state (glad to have you around Eric, Min, Duffy, and my other local friends). On the other hand, the finale was overwrought, overproduced, and kind of lame and there I was jobless and left with a feeling of “What now?” thanks both to Kojima’s ending and my situation. It been working out for me so far, but I find that I can’t go back and play MGS4 just yet. Something about the experience resonates too much within me to just replay it in these better days.
That was a rather long-winded way for me to talk about memories of my past. Any of my readers (all three or four of you) have any memories of media strongly associated with their past that they’d like to share? Comment away.
