Music

Music is a necessity. Though I focus mostly on alternative/industrial/EBM/electronic styles, my tastes are eclectic and wide-ranging.

Gallimaufry

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Terrance resurrects an old meme as a weekly thing. He titled it Friday Ten, but posted it on a Wednesday, so I’m not sure where things are going to go from here, time-wise, and so have decided that ‘gallimaufry‘ will make a good title (the definition works, and it’s a fun word). In any case, it can be entertaining to do, so let’s see what we get…

The rules are simple: put your entire music playlist on random, and post the first ten songs your music player comes up with.

  • The Postal Service, ‘Nothing Better‘, off of Give Up: Rick had me make a copy of this album to see what I thought. I’m still not entirely sure if I’d buy it, but it’s not bad — a very 80’s-synth-pop-ish feel to the songs. Catches my ear, but hasn’t yet snagged my wallet.

  • Pigface, ‘Hips, Tits, Lips, Power’, off of Fook: Pigface is one of my personal favorites, an industrial ‘supergroup’ with an ever-changing lineup. HTLP is definitely one of their better tracks, but it’s the live versions that really stand out.

  • Simple Minds, ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’, off of The Breakfast Club Soundtrack: Okay, yeah, I’m a child of the 80’s — not only is this one of my favorite songs from that era, but often it’s all I can do not to pump my fist in the air like the character does at the end of the film as this song kicks in just before the credits roll.

  • Scott McKenzie, ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair)‘, off of Pop Music: The Golden Era 1951-1975: The Sony Soundtrack to a Century collection has an incredible set of songs spread across twenty-some discs, covering literally a century of recorded music. I’ve got most of the sets that make up the full collection, and will track the last few down eventually.

  • Tori Amos, ‘Yes, Anastasia‘, off of Under the Pink: Much as I like Tori’s work, her more recent albums have just been getting weirder and weirder lyrically. This is from back when you could still figure out what she was talking about on most of her songs. ;)

  • Delerium with Sarah McLachlan, ‘Silence (Sanctuary Mix)’, off of Plastic Compilation Vol. II: The Plastic Compilation series of samplers are some of the best collections of modern electronica I’ve found in recent years. This track (in its various remixes) was quite a hit on the dancefloors a few years back.

  • Fischerspooner, ‘Emerge (DFA Remix)‘, off of iTMS Exclusive EP: I first heard of Fischerspooner when The Vogue got a bunch of free sampler CDs that included Emerge, which was one of the more requested tracks at the club for a while. Admittedly, though, this is a rather bland remix.

  • Bytet, ‘Anything‘, off of Split Single: Bytet is Robert Geiger’s dark electronica project from Anchorage. I saw him perform on quite a few occasions, and I used to chat with Robert every so often when I ran into him around town. I was very pleasantly surprised to find out that he’s on the iTMS, even if I had to link to different mix of the song that popped up on my playlist. Going to have to drop him an e-mail later on and say hi.

  • Mojave 3, ‘Mercy‘, off of Dr. Martens: Shoe Pie: The Dr. Martens shoe company used to put CD samplers in with their shoes from time to time. Shoe Pie is one of two of the samplers that I have, though I picked it up used rather than with a pair of shoes. The song…well, I can’t really say it grabs me.

  • Tori Amos, ‘Past the Mission‘, off of Under the Pink: Now, that’s just funny. 15,189 songs in my collection, and iTunes randomly grabs two songs off of the same album. This one happens to feature Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails doing backup vocals — singing, even, rather than screaming!

Not a bad little list, that.

And now, a ‘bonus’ eleventh track (consider it a not-really-hidden track), thanks to the usual iTunes blurb I toss on posts when I’m posting from home…
iTunes “Higher Than the Sun” by Primal Scream from the album Just Say Anything (1991, 3:37).

Cover Tunes

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Mike linking to this punk cover of Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’ reminded me of something that I had bouncing around in my head yesterday.

There’s no end of punk/goth/alternative/industrial covers of pop songs — KMFDM’s cover of U2’s ‘Mysterious Ways’, 1000 Mona Lisa’s take on Alanis Morisette’s ‘You Oughtta Know’, Bigod 20 doing Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer’, and countless others (including the only-in-my-head, never-going-to-happen cover of Garth Brooks’ ‘Ain’t Goin’ Down ’til the Sun Comes Up’ by Ministry with guest vocals by Les Claypool).

I want it to go the other way.

I want to hear Britney Spears cover My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult’s ‘Days of Swine and Roses’ (“Christian zombie vampires!”). N*SYNC or whatever boy band is around taking on The Sisters of Mercy’s ‘Dominion/Mother Russia’. Janet Jackson’s version of the Violent Femme’s ‘Day After Day’. Eminem doing Concrete Blonde’s ‘Bloodletting’.

And so on.

It’ll never happen (the closest thing to this that I know of is Russian pseudo-lolita-lesbian duo t.A.T.u. doing Morrissey’s ‘How Soon is Now’), but I would so buy an album of covers like that.

iTunes “Jesus Christ Superstar” by Laibach from the album Jesus Christ Superstars (1997, 5:45).

Balloon Feather Boat Tomato

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Jason Webley has updated his site with information about his most recent show. He has links up to the photo galleries that Josh and I have posted (nifty!), plus a few other goodies.

The “Life of Webley” animation that opened the show can be downloaded as a 4.8Mb .wmv file, and he’s posted the text of the four stories from the evening:

The Story of Balloon:

What is it about holding a balloon that is so magical and familiar? A hand that is holding a balloon is a content, happy hand. Why exactly is that? I’m sure the scientists and philosophers and marketing people have written dozens of millions of pages about this subject, but I have my own theory.

The Story of Feather:

Feather was a girl who trusted her feet. She ran so light, so fast and so reckless that she never had time to fall and skin her knees. She had big bright eyes filled with bees a-buzzing and long yellow hair that trailed behind her when she ran through the garden. There was always dirt under her fingernails and snot on her chin. But never a scrape on her knees. Because she trusted her feet.

The Story of Boat:

Isn’t it interesting how differently people move through the world? One person walks down the street and everyone he passes immediately likes him and thinks to themselves, ‘what a nice pleasant fellow! I should invite him over for dinner!’ But when another person walks down the same street in much the same way, people lock their doors and grumble to themselves, dogs bark, he is met with suspicious glances until eventually someone throws a shoe at him.

The Story of Tomato:

Tomato was the most beautiful woman in the world. She never knew her mother, but she never gave that much thought. She was the most beautiful woman in the world and there were always plenty of people around to shower her with attentions and affections.

iTunes “Music That Tears Itself Apart” by Webley, Jason from the album Viaje (1998, 3:22).

iTMS: Kevin Spacey ‘Beyond the Sea’

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Beyond the Sea

Last night while bouncing randomly around the iTMS, I noticed an album by Kevin Spacey. Since I know Kevin as an actor, and not a singer, I was a little curious, and did some investigating. Turns out that there’s an upcoming biopic of Bobby Darin called Beyond the Sea with Kevin in the lead role (as well as directing and producing), and he actually does all of his own singing for the film.

That was enough to peak my curiosity, and I went ahead and bought the album (19 songs for \$9.99). After a couple listens over the course of the day, I’ve gotta say that I’m impressed — while I have no doubts about Spacey’s acting chops (I think he’s one of the best of today’s stars), it’s a very pleasant surprise to hear how well he does crooning away at Darin’s signature pieces.

Highlight tracks I’ve discovered so far are The Lady is a Tramp, Beyond the Sea, As Long as I’m Singin’, and of course, Mack the Knife. If you’re at all into this era and style of jazz, I’d say the albums worth picking up, and I’m definitely looking forward to the film.

iTunes “Mack the Knife” by Spacey, Kevin from the album Beyond the Sea (2004, 3:04).

Blast from the Past

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Something I never realized before — apparently, the person in this iconic ad for Maxell audiocassettes…

Maxell Audiocasette ad

…is none other than then-Bauhaus frontman Peter Murphy. Nifty!

(trivia via Cult of Mac, image from Stangbangers, clumsily Photoshopped together by me — sorry, my Photoshop-fu isn’t good enough to remove the horrid moiré pattern from the original scan)

iTunes “Sister of Night” by Depeche Mode from the album Ultra (1997, 6:04).

The Complete U2

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The Complete U2

So U2’s “digital box set” hit iTunes this morning. I can’t take a close look at it at the moment (no iTunes at work), but I’ll poke around later on. Mostly, I’m just posting this as an excuse to toss the little advertising banner up on the site in the desperate, misguided hope that one of my readers will have the money for the set, feel like buying it, and do so after clicking through from my site. Hey, I can dream, right?

Fifteen albums, 25 rare tracks, and a “digital booklet” (ahem….pdf file). I’ve gotta admit, if I had the money to blow, I wouldn’t mind picking it up.

Of course, I don’t have the money to blow, so it’s kind of a moot point (grin). Those silly little details keep tripping me up.

Update: Having had some time to take a look at the set…well, if some kind (rich) soul were to suddenly drop a \$150 iTunes gift certificate![][1] my way I wouldn’t be complaning. Nope, no complaints at all. ;)

[1]: http://ad.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/show?id=xLsJkztrnNY&bids=78941.10000058&type=3&subid=0 {width=”1″ height=”1″}

Jason Webley Halloween Deathday 2004 Bootleg

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laurachandae was kind enough to send me a copy of her recording of Jason Webley‘s Halloween show, so I’ve converted it to .mp3 and have ~~posted it on my webserver~~. It’s only the first half of the show (apparently a mic cable got unplugged during intermission), but what there is is pretty good quality, and very listenable.

I’m still hoping that I might eventually run across someone who has the rest of the show recorded, but until then, this is what there is.

Enjoy!

iTunes “I’ll Fly Away (Live)” by Webley, Jason from the album Halloween Deathday 2004 (2004, 3:59).

Voltaire at the Vogue

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Just a few quick impressions, because it’s way past my bedtime on a weeknight (and having to say that before it’s even 1am is so depressing…).

Excellent show.

Wandered up to the Vogue at just a tad after 9pm and headed in. Got to say hello to some of the few people I know — Ogre, Mickey, and Kayo — and then ran into Richard just a few moments later. Ended up getting a table right up by the side of the stage, with a perfect view.

The Arid Sea opened, who I knew pretty much nothing about. Not bad at all, though admittedly, not so good that I’m going to be rushing out to pick up an album. A good opening show.

Voltaire came up shortly afterwards. While on his albums he has backing musicians, his performance was simply him and an acoustic guitar. He started by walking up to the mic and saying, “Hi! I’m…Rammstein!” and then proceeded to do a tongue-in-cheek cover of “Du Haßt Mich” (“You / You love / You love this / Even though you don’t know what I’m saying.”)

The next song was “Ex-Lover’s Lover”, and then he went through a good number of songs that I didn’t know (as The Devil’s Bris is the only album I own — something that will have to change), but were all very entertaining.

He prefaced a song about being eaten by cannibals by talking about how he’d just done a show in Japan the week before, and while he was able to do his between-song chatter in Japanese, the songs themselves were in English, so the Japanese audience didn’t pick up on all of the puns in his songs. He did say that the show in Japan went really well, though, and so he’d decided to do the exact same performance, since it went over so sucessfully — and then proceeded to speak in Japanese.

Between two of the songs he took a moment to read a few short passages from a small book he’s just put out, What is Goth?, commenting that “the surest way to a girls…(long pause)…heart…is suck-ass Goth poetry.”

There was actually a lot of fun between-song banter, and since much of the music I was hearing for the first time, that’s much of what I’m remembering. He told a story about going to the PTA meeting for his six-year old’s school, a fancy private school in New York, and realizing that both Dave Gahan (the lead singer of Depeche Mode) and David Bowie also had children in the same school (“The parent choir is going to rock!”).

Also, just before a very sweet (if disturbing) lullabye “written to scare my son to death, apparently,” he told another short story about his son. Apparently he came home and heard one of his son’s friends talking to the nanny, and declaring that, “that coat smells like his dad.” At his point, Voltaire paused, hiding around the corner to find out just how bad he smelled.

“What does his dad smell like?” asked the nanny.

“Evil.” (Much laughter here from the audience.)

Then the nanny followed up on this. “And what does evil smell like?”

And then, very matter-of-factly, the friend just said, “Pretty good, actually.”

He ended up finishing his show with “When You’re Evil,” only with a slight twist to the final lyrics:

It gets so lonely being evil.
What I’d do to see a smile,
Even for a little while,
And no one loves you when you’re DJ Eternal Darkness…

All in all, much fun, and well worth staying up past my bedtime for.

iTunes “Anniversary” by Voltaire from the album Devil’s Bris, The (1998, 4:35).

Jason Webley Halloween Show 2004

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Jason Webley Halloween Show, Seattle, WA

Prairie and I went to Jason Webley’s Halloween/Deathday show last night.

The show, of course (and as always), was incredible, and I’ll try to get a better writeup later on today. For now, though, I’ve uploaded a photoset from last night to Flickr.

The pictures don’t have full descriptions yet (another as-soon-as-possible project), but they start with the gathering of fans outside Town Hall, go through the entire show, and then follow us all out through Freeway Park until Jason left us yet again.

Enjoy!