Friday, December 29, 2006
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Attention Citizenry...
Due to lack of time, internet access, and motivation, I am canceling my year end countdown crap.
But because I'd already had this made up, here's the list:
1. Scott Walker - The Drift
2. Liars - Drum's Not Dead
3. Joanna Newsom - Ys
4. The Pipettes - We Are the Pipettes
5. Jim Noir - Tower of Love
6. Fern Knight - Music for Witches and Alchemists
7. Cyann and Ben - Sweet Beliefs
8. The Fiery Furnaces - Bitter Tea
9. Man Man - Six Demon Bag
10. Espers - Espers II
With the following honorable mentions:
- The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America
- Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
- Larkin Grimm - The Last Tree
- Squarepusher - Hello Everything
- Matthew Friedberger - Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language School
- Matmos - The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast
- Paul Simon - Surprise
So there you go. You don't have to wait two weeks for me to ramble on about everything this year.
"Interesting" notes:
-Last year's Greg Weeks Count was two (his solo album Blood is Trouble and Espers' The Weed Tree), and this year it's up to three (Espers II, Music for Witches and Alchemists, which he produced and sang and played guitar on, and Sweet Beliefs, which he sang on for a song).
- Four of the top 10 artists were on my list in either 2004 (Liars, Cyann and Ben) or 2005 (Espers, Fiery Furnaces). If we include honorable mentions and make these lists retroactive to include albums from 2004 that I didn't hear during 2004, Espers and the Fiery Furnaces would both have been on there too (Espers got an honorable mention, Fiery Furnaces were not on my radar screen until early 2005).
AND ONE MORE NOTE...
Gerald Ford has died, which means that the Democrats have also taken control of the House of Living Ex-Presidents, by a two (Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton) to one (Bush 41) margin. What a sweep!
But because I'd already had this made up, here's the list:
1. Scott Walker - The Drift
2. Liars - Drum's Not Dead
3. Joanna Newsom - Ys
4. The Pipettes - We Are the Pipettes
5. Jim Noir - Tower of Love
6. Fern Knight - Music for Witches and Alchemists
7. Cyann and Ben - Sweet Beliefs
8. The Fiery Furnaces - Bitter Tea
9. Man Man - Six Demon Bag
10. Espers - Espers II
With the following honorable mentions:
- The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America
- Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
- Larkin Grimm - The Last Tree
- Squarepusher - Hello Everything
- Matthew Friedberger - Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language School
- Matmos - The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast
- Paul Simon - Surprise
So there you go. You don't have to wait two weeks for me to ramble on about everything this year.
"Interesting" notes:
-Last year's Greg Weeks Count was two (his solo album Blood is Trouble and Espers' The Weed Tree), and this year it's up to three (Espers II, Music for Witches and Alchemists, which he produced and sang and played guitar on, and Sweet Beliefs, which he sang on for a song).
- Four of the top 10 artists were on my list in either 2004 (Liars, Cyann and Ben) or 2005 (Espers, Fiery Furnaces). If we include honorable mentions and make these lists retroactive to include albums from 2004 that I didn't hear during 2004, Espers and the Fiery Furnaces would both have been on there too (Espers got an honorable mention, Fiery Furnaces were not on my radar screen until early 2005).
AND ONE MORE NOTE...
Gerald Ford has died, which means that the Democrats have also taken control of the House of Living Ex-Presidents, by a two (Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton) to one (Bush 41) margin. What a sweep!
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Tom's Favorite Songs of 2006
If you got here late (and by late I mean an hour ago or whatever), you can read my whole mission statement (why I'm still bothering to do this, etc.) in the post below this one. Or if you're too lazy to do that, just click here. This is slightly different from how I've done it before in that I'm mainly trying to pick songs that didn't end up on my albums thingy (although this is not the case with all of them). But anyway, here are some of my favorites of 2006:
Lily Allen - "Everything's Just Wonderful" - Lily Allen is surprisingly good to me, as I've written about before, and this was the song that hooked me. In fact, I specifically mentioned it before. It's just a good pop song, oozing effortless cool, with a wordy chorus that's an unlikely candidate to be suck in your head for days, but there it is.
Grandaddy - "Jeez Louise" - Grandaddy always sounded weird when they were really trying to rock out (it hurts having to write about them in the past tense). It seemed somehow out of their comfort zone, because even though everything was really loud, it was missing some intensity or something (think "AM 180"). In truth, this one would probably sound just as good if they dialed down the distortion and layered on their usual synths and whimsy and whatnot, because it's a good melodic rock song with all the usual harmonic twists that somehow make sense. That was their specialty over their last two albums, and even if it wasn't Earth-shattering, it had a tenacious consistency that grew on you at the most unexpected moments.
The Flaming Lips - "Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" - At War With the Mystics turned out the be the first Flaming Lips release in almost a decade and a half that wasn't a complete reinvention of what the Flaming Lips were, and by that lofty standard it was a disappointment. That's not to say it didn't have its moments, though. Neither Wayne Coyne nor Stephen Drozd have the most naturally great singing voices, so it was an interesting choice to start the album with 20 seconds of layered a cappella harmonies (compare that with the spacious bombast that opened up The Soft Bulletin), but it ends up working. "Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" is about as close as the Lips ever come these days to being a normal rock band, which says a lot about how delightfully weird they are, especially when those odd harmonies come back for another minute during the bridge.
Belle and Sebastian - "Song for Sunshine" - I described this as something like "Sly Stone verse with a Todd Rundgren chorus" when I first talked about The Life Pursuit, and that still holds, but hey, it's still a great song. It's hard to believe this is the same band who recorded If You're Feeling Sinister (people who got on the B & S bandwagon late are likely to be confused with the "twee" tag that used to haunt them), and I like the more recent outings considerably less than the old, but who doesn't? It's not like they don't still have great moments.
Zero 7 - "You're My Flame" - A lot of this list is shaping up as a tribute to past years' "best of" artists. That's an accident. But I still like Zero 7, even as they keep on shifting from "groovy downtempo act" to "indie soft-rock." "You're My Flame" is a song that never would have ended up on their first album, but it's still a fun dose of soul-inflected electro-pop.
Scritti Politti - "Dr. Abernathy" - Listening to, of all people, Scritti Politti in the year 2006 seems like an outrageous anachronism (popular bands from the 80s seem connected to their time frame in a way nobody else is), but I'll be damned if White Bread, Black Beer isn't actually way more listenable than the ultra-sterile mechanized pop of their 80s heyday. As long as Andy Partridge isn't making music these days, this is the next best thing. Also, how is it possible that Green Gartside is 50 years old? His voice is still impossibly smooth and bright. He must drink nothing but honey and green tea.
Stereolab - "Vodiak" - I'm not sure if this counts, coming as it does from a b-sides compilation, but I didn't hear it until 2006, so here it is. Picking one song from any given Stereolab album can be damn near impossible, but this one best embodies the outright coolness of the band. Splatty 60s organ? Check. Driving Neu!-style beat? Check. Synth beeps and blips? Check. Two or more unrelated female vocal parts? Duh, of course. They could keep doing this forever, and I will always dig it.
Justin Timberlake - "My Love" - Come on, you know I had to have this one on here. Just try to think of a hit single that has been as popular as this one, but also sounded this idiosyncratic and unlike anything else, while also happening to be a brilliant song. What's the list of songs that fit those criteria? "Good Vibrations," and then what? "Hey Jude," maybe? "Tiny Dancer?" "What's Going On?" That's not bad company to be in. If you ask me, FutureSex/LoveSounds is a real snooze once you get past track 5, but Justin Timberlake has a few classic pieces of pop to his name already.
Mogwai - "Glasgow Mega Snake" - I told you I'd get to this one! (See last paragraph in the link.) The first song on Mogwai's album this year was called "Auto Rock," which just about summed up the ho-hum autopilot they seemed to be on for the most part, but "Glasgow Mega Snake" is something else. Everybody should download this and play it with your speakers turned all the way up sometime. Or blast it in the car sometime. It's the type of screaming, raging instrumental rock that Mogwai made their name with, that they do like nobody else. It's all the fury and intensity of "Mogwai Fear Satan" compressed down to three minutes. I can't think of any more superlatives to use.
So that's that. Coming soon: album runners up.
Lily Allen - "Everything's Just Wonderful" - Lily Allen is surprisingly good to me, as I've written about before, and this was the song that hooked me. In fact, I specifically mentioned it before. It's just a good pop song, oozing effortless cool, with a wordy chorus that's an unlikely candidate to be suck in your head for days, but there it is.
Grandaddy - "Jeez Louise" - Grandaddy always sounded weird when they were really trying to rock out (it hurts having to write about them in the past tense). It seemed somehow out of their comfort zone, because even though everything was really loud, it was missing some intensity or something (think "AM 180"). In truth, this one would probably sound just as good if they dialed down the distortion and layered on their usual synths and whimsy and whatnot, because it's a good melodic rock song with all the usual harmonic twists that somehow make sense. That was their specialty over their last two albums, and even if it wasn't Earth-shattering, it had a tenacious consistency that grew on you at the most unexpected moments.
The Flaming Lips - "Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" - At War With the Mystics turned out the be the first Flaming Lips release in almost a decade and a half that wasn't a complete reinvention of what the Flaming Lips were, and by that lofty standard it was a disappointment. That's not to say it didn't have its moments, though. Neither Wayne Coyne nor Stephen Drozd have the most naturally great singing voices, so it was an interesting choice to start the album with 20 seconds of layered a cappella harmonies (compare that with the spacious bombast that opened up The Soft Bulletin), but it ends up working. "Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" is about as close as the Lips ever come these days to being a normal rock band, which says a lot about how delightfully weird they are, especially when those odd harmonies come back for another minute during the bridge.
Belle and Sebastian - "Song for Sunshine" - I described this as something like "Sly Stone verse with a Todd Rundgren chorus" when I first talked about The Life Pursuit, and that still holds, but hey, it's still a great song. It's hard to believe this is the same band who recorded If You're Feeling Sinister (people who got on the B & S bandwagon late are likely to be confused with the "twee" tag that used to haunt them), and I like the more recent outings considerably less than the old, but who doesn't? It's not like they don't still have great moments.
Zero 7 - "You're My Flame" - A lot of this list is shaping up as a tribute to past years' "best of" artists. That's an accident. But I still like Zero 7, even as they keep on shifting from "groovy downtempo act" to "indie soft-rock." "You're My Flame" is a song that never would have ended up on their first album, but it's still a fun dose of soul-inflected electro-pop.
Scritti Politti - "Dr. Abernathy" - Listening to, of all people, Scritti Politti in the year 2006 seems like an outrageous anachronism (popular bands from the 80s seem connected to their time frame in a way nobody else is), but I'll be damned if White Bread, Black Beer isn't actually way more listenable than the ultra-sterile mechanized pop of their 80s heyday. As long as Andy Partridge isn't making music these days, this is the next best thing. Also, how is it possible that Green Gartside is 50 years old? His voice is still impossibly smooth and bright. He must drink nothing but honey and green tea.
Stereolab - "Vodiak" - I'm not sure if this counts, coming as it does from a b-sides compilation, but I didn't hear it until 2006, so here it is. Picking one song from any given Stereolab album can be damn near impossible, but this one best embodies the outright coolness of the band. Splatty 60s organ? Check. Driving Neu!-style beat? Check. Synth beeps and blips? Check. Two or more unrelated female vocal parts? Duh, of course. They could keep doing this forever, and I will always dig it.
Justin Timberlake - "My Love" - Come on, you know I had to have this one on here. Just try to think of a hit single that has been as popular as this one, but also sounded this idiosyncratic and unlike anything else, while also happening to be a brilliant song. What's the list of songs that fit those criteria? "Good Vibrations," and then what? "Hey Jude," maybe? "Tiny Dancer?" "What's Going On?" That's not bad company to be in. If you ask me, FutureSex/LoveSounds is a real snooze once you get past track 5, but Justin Timberlake has a few classic pieces of pop to his name already.
Mogwai - "Glasgow Mega Snake" - I told you I'd get to this one! (See last paragraph in the link.) The first song on Mogwai's album this year was called "Auto Rock," which just about summed up the ho-hum autopilot they seemed to be on for the most part, but "Glasgow Mega Snake" is something else. Everybody should download this and play it with your speakers turned all the way up sometime. Or blast it in the car sometime. It's the type of screaming, raging instrumental rock that Mogwai made their name with, that they do like nobody else. It's all the fury and intensity of "Mogwai Fear Satan" compressed down to three minutes. I can't think of any more superlatives to use.
So that's that. Coming soon: album runners up.
Tom's Year-End Music Talk Starts Now!
Well, it's that time of year again. No, not Christmas. Well, it's that too. But I'm referring to the end of December, when all the people who have nothing better to think and talk about twiddle their thumbs and compile pointless year-end reviews of what they thought the best of the year was in art, music, whatever.
And as I have done for the people couple years, I will be doing my own thing, music related, of course.
I considered not doing this at all, or in doing it in some other form than a Top-Whatever list, because I am more and more turned off by the idea of ranking art and and designating some things that I like as "better" than others. In any given year, there are usually only two or three albums that absolutely blow me away anyway, and beyond that, I have trouble designating one thing as 6th best and another as 7th best, especially since, like so many other people in the internet-driven world (there's a music writing cliche for you), I now take in such a wide variety of music that it's almost pointless to even try to do this. When the Pipettes ended up next to Scott Walker on a first draft of my list, I couldn't help but question the purpose of even trying to compare those two. It felt like looking at Tiger Woods and the 1927 Yankees and trying to decide who was better, in general, at sports.
But that's what's fun about music, isn't it? And I decided that an individual's list is probably more interesting than those compiled by websites or magazines, since any given person is more prone to weird oddities than a collective will, which tends to accentuate that which is more widely appealing, even if it's not #1 on anybody's individual list. (I'm using TV on the Radio and The Hold Steady as examples of this, even though I think they are both good.) On top of all that, people seem to enjoy when I do this sort of thing. My readership probably jumps from 5 people to 10 people. Wow!
So I'll be doing what I've done before: first some individual songs I liked (I'm trying to focus on songs from albums that didn't make my top 10 this year), then my "runners up," then my top 10, which, as always, is purely a reflection of my opinion, and not an attempt to "canonize" anything, nor an attempt to force anybody to like anything or admit something HAS to be good. If you're annoyed that I'm doing this, you're taking it way more seriously than I am (despite my own lengthy explanations of this whole thing).
Debate is encouraged. Some of my picks will certainly be easier for dissenters to tear down than others (in Joanna Newsom's case, I am disregarding any argument against her that involves her use of the word "thee"), but whatever. Let's all have fun. Feel free to leave your own top-whatever picks in the comments (anybody can post).
And as I have done for the people couple years, I will be doing my own thing, music related, of course.
I considered not doing this at all, or in doing it in some other form than a Top-Whatever list, because I am more and more turned off by the idea of ranking art and and designating some things that I like as "better" than others. In any given year, there are usually only two or three albums that absolutely blow me away anyway, and beyond that, I have trouble designating one thing as 6th best and another as 7th best, especially since, like so many other people in the internet-driven world (there's a music writing cliche for you), I now take in such a wide variety of music that it's almost pointless to even try to do this. When the Pipettes ended up next to Scott Walker on a first draft of my list, I couldn't help but question the purpose of even trying to compare those two. It felt like looking at Tiger Woods and the 1927 Yankees and trying to decide who was better, in general, at sports.
But that's what's fun about music, isn't it? And I decided that an individual's list is probably more interesting than those compiled by websites or magazines, since any given person is more prone to weird oddities than a collective will, which tends to accentuate that which is more widely appealing, even if it's not #1 on anybody's individual list. (I'm using TV on the Radio and The Hold Steady as examples of this, even though I think they are both good.) On top of all that, people seem to enjoy when I do this sort of thing. My readership probably jumps from 5 people to 10 people. Wow!
So I'll be doing what I've done before: first some individual songs I liked (I'm trying to focus on songs from albums that didn't make my top 10 this year), then my "runners up," then my top 10, which, as always, is purely a reflection of my opinion, and not an attempt to "canonize" anything, nor an attempt to force anybody to like anything or admit something HAS to be good. If you're annoyed that I'm doing this, you're taking it way more seriously than I am (despite my own lengthy explanations of this whole thing).
Debate is encouraged. Some of my picks will certainly be easier for dissenters to tear down than others (in Joanna Newsom's case, I am disregarding any argument against her that involves her use of the word "thee"), but whatever. Let's all have fun. Feel free to leave your own top-whatever picks in the comments (anybody can post).
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Philly sports are in a slightly less dire situation
Let's start with the Eagles, who beat the Panthers Monday night in what was apparently a very exciting win (I didn't see the second half because of work). Sure, it's just one win, but still... it's one win! That's exciting these days!
Jeff Garcia: 300+ yards, 3 TD passes, no interceptions. Any of you guys still want A.J. Feeley in there? And let's not forget that he basically outperformed Peyton "God's gift to quarterbacking" Manning last week (not that Manning had to actually do anything to lead the Colts to their blowout win).
Then I read this: "The Eagles took the lead when their offense was set up by a Brian Dawkins interception of a bad passed caused by pressure from the defensive line." Hell yeah! About damn time those guys showed up. The defense didn't seem to play all that great, and Jake Delhomme had way better stats than he should ever be allowed to get, considering that he's Jake Delhomme, but the important thing is that they didn't give up more than they gained, and they made some big plays to seal the win.
A few more games like that and the Eagles might just earn the right to get blown out by New Orleans in the first round of the playoffs (the implicit prediction there is that Chicago and Seattle are getting the byes).
Moving on, the Phillies may have lost out on the big power hitters, but who wants to be stuck paying $136 million to Alfonso Soriano until he's an old man, anyway? Chicago is going to be dying to get rid of that contract in a couple years, like Texas was with Alex Rodriguez and Boston is every offseason with Manny Ramirez (and you can see Soriano becoming a huge pain in the ass and demanding a trade like those two guys too, if the Cubs don't start winning right quick). And like the Astros will be with Carlos Lee soon enough. Soriano might come back full circle to the only team that could afford him, the team that traded him to get A-Rod in the first place. You heard it here first, folks: Fonzi a Yankee again by 2010.
Anyway, the Phillies signed Not-Randy-Wolf to a three year deal, completing a rotation that looks like it could easily be one of the best in the NL. And Adam Eaton finally gets to play for the team that drafted him. It's not quite Peter Forsberg's 13-year Philly homecoming, but it's nice anyway. (And that Forsberg trade was still a great deal in hindsight; wouldn't you much rather have our amazing memories of the Eric Lindros era than wonder what could have been if the Flyers had just kept the 50 guys and $80 billion or so that became the foundation of Colorado's Stanley Cup-winning teams? Sure, we might have had a couple parades down Broad Street, but what's that compared to, say, Lindros getting hammered by Scott Stevens? Or Lindros' dad's pissing contest with Bob Clarke?)
Speaking of Forsberg, the Flyers are starting to play like professional athletes, slowly climbing their way up out of the cellar. Or they'll be out of the cellar soon. The point is, they're getting a lot better.
Plus, John LeClair was recently waived by the Penguins, and rumor has it the Flyers are interested. I think that's a good idea. Philadelphia has a long-standing tradition of bringing back our aging former stars for one last futile gasp at glory. Everybody from Hugh Douglas to Ron Hextall all the way back to Jimmie Foxx has done it. Hell, even Rocky Balboa's making another go of it. Let's add ol' Johnny LeC to the list! I can just see Allen Iverson returning to the 76ers in six or seven years after being traded at the end of this year, playing second fiddle to some guy who's a freshman in high school right now, and finally admitting that maybe, just maybe, even he needs to practice now and then.
And the 76ers, they're looking up too! They've got... uhh.... hmm..... Oh, I got one! Remember when Mo Cheeks helped that girl sing the national anthem when he was with Portland? What a great guy! (Wait, actually that was a really heart-warming moment.)
One final note: did anybody see Sylvester Stallone at the Eagles game last night? He was never exactly the most handsome guy in the world, even if he's always been ridiculously ripped, but his face has definitely suffered from significant droopage and a little bloat over the past few years. Combine that with his weird, outdated haircut, and you know what? The New Yorker who's been posing as a Philadelphian all these years is actually starting to look like one of those weird, wrinkled Italian guys you see in South Philly. You know, the guy who's had season tickets to the Eagles since they opened up the Vet, who's capable of drinking an entire case of Budweiser before 1 pm on a Sunday, and who still goes to games at the Linc wearing his Kelly green Seth Joyner jersey that he bought in 1991 (or he would if it still fit him). That's what Stallone looks like now. Except he's still from New York, he's still a phony, and he still only ever comes here when he wants people to go to another Rocky movie or buy his book. See you when you need press for Rocky VII, Sly.
Jeff Garcia: 300+ yards, 3 TD passes, no interceptions. Any of you guys still want A.J. Feeley in there? And let's not forget that he basically outperformed Peyton "God's gift to quarterbacking" Manning last week (not that Manning had to actually do anything to lead the Colts to their blowout win).
Then I read this: "The Eagles took the lead when their offense was set up by a Brian Dawkins interception of a bad passed caused by pressure from the defensive line." Hell yeah! About damn time those guys showed up. The defense didn't seem to play all that great, and Jake Delhomme had way better stats than he should ever be allowed to get, considering that he's Jake Delhomme, but the important thing is that they didn't give up more than they gained, and they made some big plays to seal the win.
A few more games like that and the Eagles might just earn the right to get blown out by New Orleans in the first round of the playoffs (the implicit prediction there is that Chicago and Seattle are getting the byes).
Moving on, the Phillies may have lost out on the big power hitters, but who wants to be stuck paying $136 million to Alfonso Soriano until he's an old man, anyway? Chicago is going to be dying to get rid of that contract in a couple years, like Texas was with Alex Rodriguez and Boston is every offseason with Manny Ramirez (and you can see Soriano becoming a huge pain in the ass and demanding a trade like those two guys too, if the Cubs don't start winning right quick). And like the Astros will be with Carlos Lee soon enough. Soriano might come back full circle to the only team that could afford him, the team that traded him to get A-Rod in the first place. You heard it here first, folks: Fonzi a Yankee again by 2010.
Anyway, the Phillies signed Not-Randy-Wolf to a three year deal, completing a rotation that looks like it could easily be one of the best in the NL. And Adam Eaton finally gets to play for the team that drafted him. It's not quite Peter Forsberg's 13-year Philly homecoming, but it's nice anyway. (And that Forsberg trade was still a great deal in hindsight; wouldn't you much rather have our amazing memories of the Eric Lindros era than wonder what could have been if the Flyers had just kept the 50 guys and $80 billion or so that became the foundation of Colorado's Stanley Cup-winning teams? Sure, we might have had a couple parades down Broad Street, but what's that compared to, say, Lindros getting hammered by Scott Stevens? Or Lindros' dad's pissing contest with Bob Clarke?)
Speaking of Forsberg, the Flyers are starting to play like professional athletes, slowly climbing their way up out of the cellar. Or they'll be out of the cellar soon. The point is, they're getting a lot better.
Plus, John LeClair was recently waived by the Penguins, and rumor has it the Flyers are interested. I think that's a good idea. Philadelphia has a long-standing tradition of bringing back our aging former stars for one last futile gasp at glory. Everybody from Hugh Douglas to Ron Hextall all the way back to Jimmie Foxx has done it. Hell, even Rocky Balboa's making another go of it. Let's add ol' Johnny LeC to the list! I can just see Allen Iverson returning to the 76ers in six or seven years after being traded at the end of this year, playing second fiddle to some guy who's a freshman in high school right now, and finally admitting that maybe, just maybe, even he needs to practice now and then.
And the 76ers, they're looking up too! They've got... uhh.... hmm..... Oh, I got one! Remember when Mo Cheeks helped that girl sing the national anthem when he was with Portland? What a great guy! (Wait, actually that was a really heart-warming moment.)
One final note: did anybody see Sylvester Stallone at the Eagles game last night? He was never exactly the most handsome guy in the world, even if he's always been ridiculously ripped, but his face has definitely suffered from significant droopage and a little bloat over the past few years. Combine that with his weird, outdated haircut, and you know what? The New Yorker who's been posing as a Philadelphian all these years is actually starting to look like one of those weird, wrinkled Italian guys you see in South Philly. You know, the guy who's had season tickets to the Eagles since they opened up the Vet, who's capable of drinking an entire case of Budweiser before 1 pm on a Sunday, and who still goes to games at the Linc wearing his Kelly green Seth Joyner jersey that he bought in 1991 (or he would if it still fit him). That's what Stallone looks like now. Except he's still from New York, he's still a phony, and he still only ever comes here when he wants people to go to another Rocky movie or buy his book. See you when you need press for Rocky VII, Sly.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Music in (not so) Brief
The Beatles - Love - This is kind of an officially-sanctioned remix/mashup thing, in case you somehow were not aware of that. I remember watching a TV special a couple months ago about the making of Love, which had at least as much to do with Cirque du Soleil as it did with George and Giles Martin (what kind of a first name is Giles, anyway?). It was kind of annoying to watch George Martin and Paul McCartney pat each other on the back, congratulating themselves for having the brilliant range of vision to put the rhythm track from "Tomorrow Never Knows" underneath the vocal from "Within You Without You." ("Hey, you know those two really trippy songs we did? Let's make them into one really trippy song!") And you can just imagine Paul McCartney's joy at the thought of removing George Harrison's guitar solo from "Drive My Car" and replacing it with Paul's own solo from "Taxman." ("If I can overdub the background vocal, we can take George out completely!")
So Love is basically an exercise in pointlessness. There are probably five minutes of things worth hearing over the 26 tracks. My favorite moment by far was mixing the end of "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" with the end of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)." Adding some of Paul's vocal histrionics from "Helter Skelter" was the icing on the cake. Aside from that, there's nothing much worth mentioning. The songs are still the Beatles', and thus they are still brilliant, but that's not really the purported point of this release. There's the exact same a cappella version of "Because" that's on the 3rd Anthology release, a version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" that's also on the 3rd Anthology, except with a pointless string arrangement. Other "brilliant" ideas: using the live Ed Sullivan intro to go into the studio version of "I Want to Hold Your Hand," reducing "Glass Onion" to 1:20 (actually, that does kind of help that song), flipping the tape of "Sun King" backwards and calling it "Gnik Nus," and awkwardly cramming the vocal from "Octopus' Garden" on top of the string arrangement from "Good Night." "I Am the Walrus" appears virtually untouched; I guess there's no point in trying to make that song any weirder.
Anyway, to finish my thought about the TV special: McCartney, Martin, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono, and a woman that I'm assuming was George Harrison's wife or girlfriend or something all showed up in Las Vegas for the premiere of the Cirque du Soleil show based on all this music. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it looked to me like Paul and Yoko still hate each other. That's what I call carrying a grudge.
Oasis - Stop the Clocks - This is a "best of Oasis" release. I'm not reviewing this. I'm not even going to listen to it. I just wanted to take the opportunity to talk about how annoying I find Oasis. These guys could have been legends if one of the Gallaghers had OD'd or something in about 1997. People might have even hailed Be Here Now as an ambitious masterpiece if that had happened. But instead we're stuck with the same old crap a decade on, where the brothers Gallagher start saying whatever comes out of their head to any tabloid reporter with a notepad any time there's a new Oasis release, and we all get stuck reading headlines like "Noel Gallagher: Radiohead are 'rubbish.'"
Also, Stop the Clocks is on two CDs. Guys, come on. If the Rolling Stones want two discs for their greatest hits, they can have it. Same with, say, David Bowie. Hell, the Beatles basically took four discs for their best of. You guys? I don't think so. You don't need two discs to contain your five good songs from your two listenable albums.
Squarepusher - Hello Everything - Oasis could use lessons in late-career management from electronic maestro Tom Jenkinson. Hello Everything is basically one of those albums that spans everything he's done over the past decade (not unlike Yo La Tengo's new album), and it works pretty well, even if it's not particularly cohesive in a way that earlier albums like Hard Normal Daddy and Music is Rotted One Note were. He still plays bass at about a million miles per hour, he still likes a lot of noise, and you'd still give yourself a heart attack if you actually tried to dance to this "dance" music. If you've never heard Squarepusher, I'll put it this way: Aphex Twin made ambient music before he heard Squarepusher. (Like anybody reading this has heard Aphex Twin but not Squarepusher. Whatever.)
So Love is basically an exercise in pointlessness. There are probably five minutes of things worth hearing over the 26 tracks. My favorite moment by far was mixing the end of "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" with the end of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)." Adding some of Paul's vocal histrionics from "Helter Skelter" was the icing on the cake. Aside from that, there's nothing much worth mentioning. The songs are still the Beatles', and thus they are still brilliant, but that's not really the purported point of this release. There's the exact same a cappella version of "Because" that's on the 3rd Anthology release, a version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" that's also on the 3rd Anthology, except with a pointless string arrangement. Other "brilliant" ideas: using the live Ed Sullivan intro to go into the studio version of "I Want to Hold Your Hand," reducing "Glass Onion" to 1:20 (actually, that does kind of help that song), flipping the tape of "Sun King" backwards and calling it "Gnik Nus," and awkwardly cramming the vocal from "Octopus' Garden" on top of the string arrangement from "Good Night." "I Am the Walrus" appears virtually untouched; I guess there's no point in trying to make that song any weirder.
Anyway, to finish my thought about the TV special: McCartney, Martin, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono, and a woman that I'm assuming was George Harrison's wife or girlfriend or something all showed up in Las Vegas for the premiere of the Cirque du Soleil show based on all this music. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it looked to me like Paul and Yoko still hate each other. That's what I call carrying a grudge.
Oasis - Stop the Clocks - This is a "best of Oasis" release. I'm not reviewing this. I'm not even going to listen to it. I just wanted to take the opportunity to talk about how annoying I find Oasis. These guys could have been legends if one of the Gallaghers had OD'd or something in about 1997. People might have even hailed Be Here Now as an ambitious masterpiece if that had happened. But instead we're stuck with the same old crap a decade on, where the brothers Gallagher start saying whatever comes out of their head to any tabloid reporter with a notepad any time there's a new Oasis release, and we all get stuck reading headlines like "Noel Gallagher: Radiohead are 'rubbish.'"
Also, Stop the Clocks is on two CDs. Guys, come on. If the Rolling Stones want two discs for their greatest hits, they can have it. Same with, say, David Bowie. Hell, the Beatles basically took four discs for their best of. You guys? I don't think so. You don't need two discs to contain your five good songs from your two listenable albums.
Squarepusher - Hello Everything - Oasis could use lessons in late-career management from electronic maestro Tom Jenkinson. Hello Everything is basically one of those albums that spans everything he's done over the past decade (not unlike Yo La Tengo's new album), and it works pretty well, even if it's not particularly cohesive in a way that earlier albums like Hard Normal Daddy and Music is Rotted One Note were. He still plays bass at about a million miles per hour, he still likes a lot of noise, and you'd still give yourself a heart attack if you actually tried to dance to this "dance" music. If you've never heard Squarepusher, I'll put it this way: Aphex Twin made ambient music before he heard Squarepusher. (Like anybody reading this has heard Aphex Twin but not Squarepusher. Whatever.)
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