Music

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

10 Random Songs

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From D: Put your .mp3 collection on random, list the first 10 songs it plays. No editing allowed (though I don’t mind editorializing, myself).

Mousse T: Horny (Clean Version) from DJ Mix 2000 (1998, 3:54): One of the side effects of DJing for years was picking up a lot of CDs that I otherwise wouldn’t have — this was one of them. Actually, this track is one of the more listenable tracks from the album (which really isn’t saying much), and I can at least listen all the way through (if I’m distracted) without jumping for the “skip forward” button.

The Vienna Boys’ Choir: Heiligste Nacht from Christmas in Vienna (1991, 4:26): I actually got to meet (and sing with, if I remember correctly) one incarnation of the VBC many years ago, when they came through Anchorage and I was still a member of the Anchorage Childrens’ Choir. This is an album that normally only gets played around Christmastime, as I’m no big fan of Christmas music, especially off-season.

The Sisters of Mercy: Torch from Floodland (1987, 3:51): I couldn’t listen to SoM for the longest time, after they got heavily overplayed at Sharkey’s, one of the earliest alternative clubs in Anchorage. Lots of SoM every weekend drove me away from them after a while. A few years later, I finally got back into them, and now there’s not much SoM that I don’t enjoy.

Queen: Don’t Try Suicide from The Game (1980, 3:52): While I’m a long-time fan of Queen, this has to be one of their worst songs ever. Why is it that Grand Master Flash has been the only artist ever to come up with an anti-(bad thing of choice) song that was actually good (in this case, his anti-cocaine jam “White Lines (Don’t Do It)”)?

Madonna: Vogue (Bette Davis Dub) from Vogue (1990, 7:28): I’ve always had a lot of respect for Madonna, and generally enjoyed the music she’s put out. No matter what you may think of her or her music, she’s managed to keep herself in the headlines and put out a lot of good, solid, pop/dance music for many years now, generally doing so entirely on her own terms, whether that meant being outrageously sexual, outrageously religious, or just outrageous. The famous Madonna/Britney kiss was one of the first big indicators I’ve seen from her that she might be slipping and getting a bit desperate for press — hopefully that was just a momentary aberration.

DJ H. Geek: I Don’t Know Who I Am… from 3 Years and Counting… (1998, 10:07): DJ Geek, aka Kory, is a friend of mine that I DJ’d with for a few years at Gig’s. He went from mixing to creating his own music, and was nice enough to occasionally toss a CD of his my way. These days, I’ll be listening to something, hear a track I don’t recognize right off, think “hey, that’s good…who is it?” and realize that it’s one of Kory’s tracks. Not bad, not bad at all.

Love and Rockets: Lift (Malibu) from Resurrection Hex (1998, 4:17): As good as it is, there’s so much more to LaR than just “So Alive“. Have any of the members of Bauhaus gone on to any projects that weren’t listenable?

Deconstruction: E-Trance from Trance Sexual (1996, 5:32): Random rather forgettable trance, really. Not bad, not great. Just there.

Die Krupps: To the Hilt from Rings of Steel (1995, 4:47): Die Krupps aren’t one of my favorite industrial bands, and many of the remixes on the Rings of Steel album are more impressive than the original versions, but they’re not bad.

White Zombie: I’m Your Boogieman from The Crow: City of Angels (1996, 4:29): Cheezy, yeah. Loud, yeah. And virtually always a lot of fun. Who needs actual substance when good samples, drums, guitar work, and a healthy dose of pure attitude will do?

Barry Manilow listens to Underworld?!?

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I never would have guessed this.

I was poking around on the iTunes Music Store, and started looking at some of the Celebrity Playlists — essentially “mix tapes” (only there’s no tape involved) assembled by famous people. I saw Barry Manilow listed, and had to know.

Two tracks immediately jumped out at me — favorites of mine, and not at all what I expected to see.

First, Underworld’s “Born Slippy/NUXX“. Underworld is one of my favorite modern electronica acts, and while most people know them for “Cowgirl” off of the Hackers soundtrack, they’ve done a lot of other excellent work, including this track (also featured on the Trainspotting soundtrack). Driving rhythms, inscrutable lyrics, and lots of electronic bleeps and bloops — good stuff. ;)

Even better, though, was seeing the Peter Gabriel/Kate Bush collaboration “Don’t Give Up” off of Peter’s album ‘So‘. Where many people would rank “In Your Eyes” (also featured on the Say Anything soundtrack) as their favorite song of his, “Don’t Give Up” has always been my personal pick. Beautiful, haunting, and full of hope for the future, this song is one that often helps me get through some of the rougher times in life. It also has one of the best videos I’ve ever seen — good enough that I remember it clearly, though I only ever saw it once, in a hotel in Italy during one of my trips to Europe. Just Peter and Kate embracing each other against a sunrise, standing on a platform that revolved so that each was facing the camera as they sang their lines. Very simple, and very effective, much like the song itself.

Good to know that Barry’s got better taste in music than I’d expect.

Free music is good

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One free iTMS song!

I got my first free song from the iTMS today, thanks to the current promotion with Pepsi!

I’d been keeping an eye out for eligible bottles, but today was the first day I’d actually seen them. I picked one up on the way to work, popped the cap, and won right off the bat! Not bad at all — even with one out of three bottles being a “winner,” I hadn’t expected to find a good one right away.

Figuring out what to get wasn’t terribly difficult, either. Ever since I started listening to the CD I got from Kev and Emily at their wedding, I’d been convinced that I knew the Dolly Parton song “Travelin’ Prayer”, only I remembered it being a man singing it rather than a woman. While looking up songs on the iTMS for the previous post, though, I figured it out — she’s doing a cover of Billy Joel’s song “Travelin’ Prayer” off of his Piano Man album.

I knew I’d heard that somewhere before!

Soundtrack to a wedding

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One of the many nice things that came of Kev and Emily’s wedding was their interpretation of the Alaskan “potlatch” tradition, in which the hosts of a large gathering pass out small thank-you gifts to the people who attended. During the wedding reception, they passed out CDs they had made with a selection of songs special to the two of them.

Here are the songs that they chose to represent them at this point in their life:

  1. Billie Holiday: All of Me
  2. Bob Marley and the Wailers: Sugar, Sugar
  3. Crosby, Stills and Nash: Helplessly Hoping
  4. Dolly Parton: Travelin’ Prayer
  5. Lauryn Hill: Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You
  6. Joni Mitchell: A Case of You
  7. Edgar Meyer and Joshua Bell: Short Trip Home
  8. Nanci Griffith: If Wishes Were Changes
  9. Jimmy Cliff: Sitting in Limbo
  10. Tracy Chapman: The Promise
  11. John Prine: Angel from Montgomery
  12. Robin Dale Ford: Where I Am Bound
  13. Super Bass: Blue Monk
  14. Bob Dylan: Shelter From the Storm
  15. Nickel Creek: When You Come Back Down
  16. Arlo Guthrie: Darkest Hour

The Grey Album

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Vocal tracks from Jay-Z’s “The Black Album” + samples from The Beatles’ “The White Album” = Danger Mouse’s “The Grey Album“.

Interesting project, which I’d heard about, but have not yet heard. However, as Danger Mouse (the DJ who constructed this project) has been served with a cease-and-desist order, Waxy.org is hosting the .mp3 files.

I’m downloading them now…

(via Mike)

iTunes: “TNT” by Sister Machine Gun from the album Covered in Black (1997, 3:47).

GarageBand is evil

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I’ve poked around with GarageBand a bit since I got it, but haven’t created anything major yet. However, it is way too much fun.

It’s also far too easy for me to put together something really, really stupid with it. This is dangerous. Fun — but dangerous.

And here’s the evidence: countrybounce — 71 seconds of banjo and drum loops.

I’m sure I can come up with something better than that given time. But for the moment, this stupid little ditty is it.

Enjoy.

Or don’t.

;)

iTunes: “Must I” by Lizette & from the album This Is (2003, 3:32).

This is so juvenile. I’m very sorry.

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My computer doesn’t like my Prick.

I wanted to get my Prick into my computer. It didn’t seem like such a difficult task, should be simple enough, right? So I took out my Prick and put it into the computer.

The computer pulled it in, sat for a moment, then pushed my Prick right back out again.

That’s odd, I thought. It’s certainly not what I was expecting.

So I tried again. In went my Prick — and out came my Prick.

Weird. I thought that maybe my Prick was dirty, so I took it, got a soft washcloth, and gently cleaned my Prick, taking care to stroke in straight lines and not use circular motions. Once that was done and my Prick looked nice and clean, I put it back into the computer.

And the computer pushed my Prick right back out.

Admittedly, I’ve had my Prick for a while now, and it is getting a bit old. Maybe that’s the problem.

I guess I’ll just have to go to a store and get a new Prick.

Marcel Marceau’s Greatest Hits!

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As The Apple Turns points out some of the amusing things that happen on the iTunes Music Store:

Yesterday we mentioned in passing that faithful viewer djsteve had purchased a track that cost him the “best 99 cents [he’d] ever spent.” The joke, of course, was that it was the second track from The Whitey Album by Ciccone Youth, which consists of a minute and three seconds’ worth of silence. To tell you the truth, while we’re amused by the fact that Apple is charging 99 cents for a song full o’ nothing, we’re even more amused by the fact that said track contains the usual digital rights management code to prevent you from playing it on any unauthorized systems. And the most amusing thing of all, of course, is that the song has a thirty-second preview.

Well, as it turns out, the Ciccone Youth track is by no means the only all-silent untune for sale at the iTMS; faithful viewers ben, Scott Levin, and Michael Wyszomierski contributed their own suggestions, too. And you know how Apple recently added a bunch of “iTunes Essentials” playlists to the store, such as “Cover Songs” and “’70s AM Radio Classics”? Well, we’ve compiled all the silent tracks we managed to scrape together into the first AtAT Essentials playlist, “To Be Played At Maximum Volume.”

Turn it up! Turn it up!!!!!

iTunes: “Papa Was A Rolling Stone” by Kickshaw from the album Superstar (1999, 6:45).

Only Just Beginning

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Only Just Beginning

Jason Webley has a new CD coming out.

There once was a boy who remembered that his heart did not ever really belong to him.

So he tried to give it back to the sky.

The CD will be in stores May 11th, with a CD release party April 30th kicking off this summer’s round of touring.

(via Mike [See you at the release party?])

That’s no pastie!

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Janet's not happy

I’ve been reading various accounts of yesterday’s “accident” during the SuperBowl when Justin Timberlake removed part of Janet Jackson’s top, exposing one of her breasts on live television. Viacom, CBS, and MTV are all madly apologizing, and apparently there is going to be an FCC investigation into the incident.

An outraged Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell on Monday ordered an investigation into the broadcast of the Super Bowl’s halftime entertainment show, during which singer Janet Jackson’s right breast was exposed.

During the break in the National Football League’s championship game, pop singer Justin Timberlake reached for Jackson as they sang a duet and tore open part of her black leather bustier.

“That celebration was tainted by a classless, crass and deplorable stunt,” Powell said in a statement. “Our nation’s children, parents and citizens deserve better.”

I’ve got to admit, in some ways, this whole thing has been amusing me to no end.

In the middle of a heavily-publicized violent sports event (maybe not as overtly violent as boxing, but when many players are injured and hospitalized each year, sometimes gravely so, we’re not talking tiddlywinks), in the midst of a halftime show known for excess and pushing the boundaries, the world got a momentary one-or-two second (accidental?) glimpse of a single breast.

One breast. A couple seconds. And it’s instant controversy.

Roughly half the world’s post-pubescent population already has two breasts of their very own, and I’m assuming that unless they ensure that all lights are off every time they get dressed or take a shower, they’ve probably already seen those; and the other half of the population generally spends a fair amount of their waking hours trying to find ways to see those breasts that they don’t have! This isn’t exactly a new thing, folks.

Ah, well — my views aren’t about to change anyone’s mind. Still, I’m constantly frustrated by a culture that glorifies violence and vilifies sexuality (unless it’s being used to sell something). Seems pretty backwards. But that’s just me.

One thing I just noticed this morning, though. When I first saw pictures of the dastardly deed last night, it looked for all the world like Janet was wearing a pastie on the exposed breast — which, when combined with the conveniently detachable breast cup, definitely called into doubt the “accidental” nature of the flash. This morning Drudge Report posted some better-quality images though, and when zoomed in, it’s apparent that it’s not a pastie — but rather a nipple piercing with a silver sun shield around it.

Okay, so maybe it was accidental. I’ve gotta say, though –decent taste in body jewelry. Good for her!

Update: Lane posted video footage — that does not look “accidental” to me!