the great barstoolio

FootbLOL PS: Jamar Hornsby

A little late, but very necessary.

FootbLOL: Off-Season Fun With Anti-Meth Ads

Sometimes, something noble and worthy comes along and you just have to desecrate it.  Such is the case with the award-winning Montana Meth Project, whose print ads and catchy "not even once" slogan have kept 11 of Montana's 14 teenagers off meth.  Anyway, the offseason drags on, idle hands are the devil's playground, and college football is our anti-meth.

Special tips o' the hat to Orson Swindle and Lt. Winslow, whose gleeful evil tittering came up with (more than) a few of these.

Click for larger versions.

Oh, and, having spent a month in Baton Rouge, I was particularly fond of one of the runners-up.

I'm Good, I'm Gone

I'm working lots and moving to a new place and running a fundraiser (no, not for me) and throwing my boss's dinner party and hyperventilating 'n stuff.  There's a hilarious ("and offensive" - Orson) whimsy post in the pipeline and then this place'll be dead for a week or two.
Be good.

Talking Heads | Lifetime Piling Up | Sand in the Vaseline | 1992

Songs 222: Just Be Good To Me

S.O.S. Band | Just Be Good To Me | On The Rise | 1983
+
The Clash | Guns of Brixton | London Calling | 1979
+
Ennio Morricone | Man With A Harmonica | Once Upon A Time in the West OST | 1968
=
Beats International | Dub Be Good To Me | Single | 1990

Beats International was the loose cadre of musicians led by Norman Cook, who went on to solo fame as Fatboy Slim shortly after the release of 'Dub Be Good To Me'.  'Dub Be Good To Me' reached number 1 on both the UK chart and the US Dance chart in 1990, but lawsuits over the uncleared samples cost Cook more money than the song made.  It lives on, though, as a timelessly perfect summer vehicle: love-sick naiveté over a slightly predatory, addicting bass hook is the sure recipe for this sort of thing.

How did it come to this? In 1983, Atlanta's S.O.S. Band teamed up with producers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis and achieved a string of funky R&B hits, including 'Just Be Good To Me,' which hit #2 on the R&B charts in 1983 and soundtracked Richard Pryor's 'Here and Now' the same year.  Prior to hooking up with S.O.S., Jam and Lewis toured with Prince as members of Morris Day and The Time, and after 'Just Be Good To Me' made their reputation they went on to produce Janet Jackson's Control and Rhythm Nation as well as a slew of hits for Mariah Carey, Usher, and Mary J. Ennio Morricone is the hipster king of original soundtrack material, and, I'm pretty sure, lays around Italy all day with mountains of cash and spaghetti being the world's coolest old man. We all know The Clash.

Other versions:

Silkk The Shocker | Just Be Straight With Me | Charge It 2 Da Game | 1998
Beats International | Dub Be Good To Me (Smith & Mighty Remix) | 12" Single | 1990
Shabba Ranks & Cocoa Tea | Just Be Good To Me | 12" | 1990

Songs 221

Kid Dakota | Stars | A Winner's Shadow | 2008
Chikita Violenta | War | The Stars & Suns Sessions | 2007
Chikita Violenta | Laydown | The Stars & Suns Sessions | 2007
Yeasayer | 2080 | Single | 2008
Sprinkles of aural fairy dust smother the psych and folk leanings to ensure that this foursome's harmonious vocal love-in don't fall victim to, well, being pigeonholed as something as narrow and ridiculous as freak folk. Multifarious but ridiculously catchy, in a nutshell they're as simple or as complex as Animal Collective going a full year on a strict diet of Fleetwood Mac and Genesis while holing themselves up in a Sunday School (yep, kids come join in towards the end to add some icing to the cake).

Yup.

Bruce Springsteen | I'm On Fire (Cousin Cole's Bad Desire Mix) | Tambourine Dream | 2008

On a sweltering night this past summer, at a crammed two-story house party deep in the outskirts of Williamsburg, Cole Gerard dropped his remix of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire” on a pair of turntables. You could hear the pounding “slow mo disco” beat (as Mr. Gerard describes it) from the rooftop, where revelers escaped for a smoke and a view of the industrial skyline. In the kitchen, Springsteen’s original plinking guitar line was the lullaby for partiers passed out on the tile floor. Spank Rock, the underground Philly party rapper, was getting a lap dance in a dark corner. The living room was packed, the air thick with sweat and cigarette smoke and hormone-induced heavy breaths from dancers making out, shouting out requests and falling off tables and sofa cushions. It’s here, where Mr. Gerard, 28, otherwise known as DJ Cousin Cole, was at the front of the room, hunched over the turntables, ending his set with Springsteen’s carnal ballad.

The original song usually stops people in their tracks, devastating them during everyday activities if it happens to come on some easy listening radio station while they’re shopping for batteries at Duane Reade and Springsteen moans, “At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet and a freight train running through the middle of my head, only you can cool my desire.” But Cousin Cole had the room in rapture, dancing their hearts out to a song that normally tears it apart.

Five months later, the track is now one the highlights of Tambourine Dream, a 6-song remix EP on vinyl and an 18-song mix CD made with his DJ partner Skooby Laposky, who calls himself Pocketknife. “It has a place in a lot of people’s hearts,” Mr. Gerard admitted about “I’m On Fire.” He worked on the remix while breaking up with his last girlfriend. “It’s a slow song, but it has a really fast beat. People can’t dance to that… But I wanted to play it out, so I made the remix… Everything on [Tambourine Dream], people can dance to, and hopefully will.”

[New York Observer | more]

Old School Lunch

Nice & Smooth | Sometimes I Rhyme Slow | Ain't A Damn Thang Changed | 1992

Songs 220: Fifteen Years Old, And I Feel It's Already Too Late To Live

Brandon Stosuy once noted that, while M83 is certainly on the shoegazer end of gauzy dream-pop, Anthony Gonzalez is focused on stars and hearts, not his laces.  It's a rare and enjoyable thing when someone captures that youthful kind of emotion and experience without turning it syrupy or cloying.  I'm just so in love with the new album, Saturdays = Youth, and I was going to write about it, but I a) ran out of time this week, and b) made the mistake of reading Pitchfork first and I can't say it better or differently.  Here's to copy and paste!  Sorry, Rules of Blogging!

Saturdays=Youth...offers a different take on M83's favorite decade, the 1980s. Where previous albums saluted the doomed grandeur of the Cure and the retro-futurism of Blade Runner, Saturdays=Youth pays homage to Cocteau Twins (whom Thomas has also produced) and the teen dramas of filmmaker John Hughes. It's dense with new wave tropes: the chrome-plated guitars and aqueous keyboards on "Kim & Jessie", the decadent synthetic toms on the otherwise cloudy "Skin of the Night", the funk guitars and shivering cymbals of the masterful "Couleurs". Many modern bands have appropriated these iconic touchstones with a wink, a revision, or both. M83's reverent take is less common, bringing to mind Lansing-Dreiden's underappreciated 80s throwback The Dividing Island.

The album has the same nostalgic sparkle as Hughes' films, a soft-focused mythology of eternal summers and young love. In the liner notes, Gonzalez dedicates it to "all the friends, music, movies, joints, and crazy teachers that made my teenage years so great!" At 26, Gonzalez is just the right age to look back on this era with rose-tinted glasses, forgetting the alienation and anxiety, remembering only the sweetness. Whenever the darker side of teenhood rears its head, it's heroically battled back: On the shoegaze-thick "Dark Moves of Love", "everything is wrecked and grey," but the song ends on a poignant note: "I will fight the time and bring you back!" On the album's cover, heartbreakingly radiant youths (one of them a dead ringer for Molly Ringwald) strike poses in a gold and russet pasture-- the same kind of beautiful misfits that Hughes arranged in after-school detention. In lyrics filled with lusty eruptions ("They are Gods! They are lightning!"), archetypal teens invent themselves with innocent fervor: A love-struck young couple in "Kim & Jessie"; a goth with a crown of black roses and a heart of bubblegum in "Graveyard Girl".

In the context of teen drama, how perfect is it that Gonzalez met Morgan Kibby, whose dovelike vocals enrich "Skin of the Night" and "Up!" [and "Graveyard Girl," below], on MySpace? In the context of a band whose music is both literally and metaphorically cinematic, how perfect is it that Kibby has done voiceover work on the trailers for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water? These symmetries make Saturdays=Youth feel like an unaccountably alive, complete album. While some fans might be disappointed by the lack of a "Don't Save Us From the Flames"-style anthem, the change in M83's sound arrives just as Gonzalez has pushed the maximal thing to its limits and risks diminishing returns. On its first two studio albums, M83 did one thing very, very well: create compact doses of tension and adrenaline. Saturdays=Youth meaningfully diversifies M83's catalog while retaining Gonzalez's indelible fingerprint. Like his recent ambient foray, Digital Shades Vol. 1, it finds a guy who's known for painting gigantic horizons figuring out how to broaden them even more.

M83 | We Own The Sky | Saturdays = Youth | 2008
M83 | Graveyard Girl | Saturdays = Youth | 2008
M83 | Too Late | Saturdays = Youth | 2008

On a side note, the "Graveyard Girl" IS my little sister. Short red hair down to the dead pet. It's FREAKY.

Songs 219: Bon Iver

I slept on this album for an inexcusably loooong time, because I thought Bon Iver was a stupid name (c'mon: 'bohn ee-vair?' You're from Eau Claire.  Oh...) and assumed it was a bunch of kids yelping in hair gel, but I gave in today and was bowled over.  This is Class A Porch Music - stuff so palpably lonely and heartbroken you have to stop what you're doing to listen.  It demands a certain surrounding; today a cold front came through and it was gray until 5 or so, and I was alone, thinking about moving, looking at all my stuff that needs to be sorted and packed away and taken to yet another place, and so on, and like musical Tetris this album plugged right into me.  It's not that I was depressed (no emo), but it was a solitary, thoughtful kind of afternoon- the kind for which an album created while the songwriter was isolated in a hunting cabin for three months of a northwestern Wisconsin winter with only a handful of instruments and a mountain of memories is really the only thing appropriate. The album is, in a way, "pure," and sounds it: Justin Vernon wrote, recorded, and produced  the whole thing on his own, free from label intervention or outside influence; only after gaining steam critically was it picked up by Jagjaguwar.  Somewhere between I See A Darkness and Heartbreaker, with the good parts of Neil Young and Mount Eerie and a dash of Chris Martin-if-Chris Martin-wasn't-a-total-pussy, Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago just aches for a glass of whiskey and a cigarette - even a couple mosquito bites. 


Bon Iver | re: Stacks | For Emma, Forever Ago | 2008
This my excavation and today is Kumran
Everything that happens is from now on
This is pouring rain
This is paralyzed

I keep throwing it down two-hundred at a time
It's hard to find it when you knew it
When your money's gone
And you're drunk as hell...

This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization
It's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away

Bon Iver | Blindsided | For Emma, Forever Ago | 2008

Bon Iver | Skinny Love | For Emma, Forever Ago | 2008
The most uptempo song on the album, it makes for a lovely video from old favorites La Blogotheque:

Friday Feelgoodery

Thrushes | Heartbeats (Dthenextlevel Remix) | Heartbeats Remixed | 2008

It's not often that a remix is this much better than the original, but this one from Dthenextlevel makes me wanna get out of bed on a Friday morning and just get at life.  I imagine a video soundtracked by this song, in which all the events of my day are show in rapid-fire, full of bustling activity and smiling faces, and seeing myself in a flurry of activity and interaction before flopping into bed exhausted and satisfied  with a day's work.  Ha!  Today most of my office is gone and I plan to dick around the internet and take a lunch twice as long as normal.  But for a second, this droning shoegazer dirge turned bright, optimistic pop  beauty actually got me.  Brilliant work from dthenextlevel, who says, "I always thought the song had a very cinematic feel so I guess I tried make it sound like it was playing at a very key moment in a John Hughes movie. Like the prom scene in 'Pretty in Pink'."

Stuff Orange and Green People Like

...is up over at EDSBS.  Go worship the Lieutenant and Orson accordingly.

Oh, and you know we've got a remix for this:

Craze | Bitch, I'm From Dade County

Also, in completely unrelated news: this is killing me.  Clear!  Not Clear!

Oh, and Japanese game shows where contestants must be quiet and face the punishment of "old man bites tenderly": comedy gold.

It's A Long Time Coming

The words "Fugazi" and "remix" probably curl your toes, but this is both really tasteful and extremely fun. 

The OG, which I forgot to upload from home but will do tonight:

and the remix, which just proves that there's really nothing better than danceable punk, when it works.

Fugazi | Long Division (Emynd's Disco Edit)

Friday Feelgoodery: Freestyle

Freestyle for Leah, who took me out, liquored me up, and talked music 'n stuff with me at the Hub when I needed it most.  Luh you grrrl! 

If you didn't grow up in Florida or New York, chances are you know little about freestyle except for possibly Shannon's "Let The Music Play," which broke nationally on the dance charts.  With strong roots in Latin music, freestyle spread mainly to cities with large urban Hispanic or Italian populations, but played a pretty substantial role in the history of dance music.  The fusion of disco vocal styles with electronic beats favored by breakdancers were the building blocks, but when producer Chris Barbarosa added Latin funk and syncopated drums while creating "Let The Music Play," freestyle was born.  From New York, it spread to Miami, where producer Tolga Katas, who is credited with creating the first hit record made entirely on a computer, took freestyle in a more upbeat, optimistic direction while New York Freestyle remained more raw. Freestyle isn't "hard," and it's cheesy as hell - but it's also really light and fun, and super nostalgic for anyone who grew up with this on local radio. 

Nocera | Summertime, Summertime | Over the Rainbow | 1987
Stevie B. | Spring Love (Come Back To Me) | Single | 1988
Noel | Silent Morning | Single | 1987
Pretty Poison | Catch Me (I'm Falling) | Single | 1987

DJ Ayres' THE FADER Freestyle Mix [zshare]

Article/Tracklist from The Fader #36/Vinyl Archaeology Column:

Sure there’s geek appeal to poindextering out to obscure records, but when it's time to party, those sealed Axelrods ain't gonna cut it. (Unless you party with morphine, but that’s a different story.) Since every ’80s pop record been worn out already, it’s time to channel your inner 15 year-old Puerto Rican girl with some freestyle. Freestyle was crossover music, combining the electro hip-hop jam and the pop ballad to create a new style that was equally comfortable in metropolitan dance clubs as on the Billboard Top 10. Early ’80s tracks "Planet Rock" from Afrika Bambaataa, "Let the Music Play" by Shannon and Freeez’s "IOU" were the pre-style hits that jump-started the movement, freestyle just added big hair, unrequited love and a cheese factor turned up to 11. Its producers kept the space synths and the drum machines of electro, but replaced the raps and computerized voices with mostly young, untrained (predominantly female) singers. If electro was about the future, then freestyle was about romance. Freestyle’s reign at the top receded at the end of the ’80s, but its influence is still felt in new electro pop like Ciara’s “1, 2 Step” and Brooke Valentine’s “Boogie Oogie.” To this day, new and classic freestyle is played on the dance radio stations in New York, New Jersey and Miami, but this will focus on hits from the first wave that lasted from 1985 to 1987.

Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam With Full Force | I Wonder If I Take You Home | 1985
With "I Wonder If I Take You Home" in 1985, Lisa Lisa became the first real "Latin hip-hop" star, even if she was a singer (albeit an excellent one and a total fox). Up until that point, most of the Latino DJs in New York were playing records by black hip-hop and pop artists, but Lisa Lisa was a Puerto Rican from Brooklyn that they could embrace as their own. Like Jellybean Benitez did on earlier electro jumpoff "The Mexican", the Cult Jam would sample Lisa Lisa's voice and retrigger phrases, pitching her up and down the keyboard—a often obnoxious technique that became a trademark for freestyle productions and edits.

Exposé | Point Of No Return | 12-Inch | 1985
After Lisa Lisa hit it big in the Latin club scene, producers in New York and Miami were scouring the streets for young talent to record their lyrics and make them some money. Miami producer Lewis A Martineé found three singers and turned them into Exposé, who would go on to become the genre’s biggest group. A crucial trick to making a hot freestyle record was a keyboard melody so simple that the first time you heard it, it sounded like the hundredth. The salsa-inflected xylophone synth on "Point Of No Return" is catchy as fuck, but I can't cosign on the vomitous guitar solo before the final verse.

TKA | Scars Of Love | 12-Inch | 1987
Like Exposé, TKA was a manufactured group, but this time it was three male teenagers from the Bronx. They were discovered by Joey Gardner, an A&R rep from Tommy Boy Records, who convinced them to stop rapping and focus on singing. He became their manager and put them in the studio with the Latin Rascals, who were big radio DJs and freestyle/house edit kings at the time. TKA were soft like one-day-old shit (they wore turtlenecks and sung about their feelings), and young girls went batshit for "Scars Of Love.” TKA’s tacky emo sound anticipated pop boy bands like New Kids On The Block and when you turn on the radio in Long Island or on the Jersey shore today, you still hear music that sounds exactly like this.

The Cover Girls | Show Me | 1987
The Cover Girls were another party-in-a-cereal-box prefab group out of New York, but like TKA, the Cover Girls stood out from a lot of cookie cutter groups thanks to the Latin Rascals, whose drum programming and vocal edits stay sharp without going overboard. Both Cover Girls tracks "Show Me" and "Because of You" were big cotton candy hits that recall Gloria Estefan And Miami Sound Machine with their full pop arrangements—big synthesized horns and electric pianos that provide a warmth not always associated with freestyle records.

Connie | Funky Little Beat | 12-Inch | 1985
Producer Amos Larkins brought the bass that made Miami famous, sustaining the 808 kick to make it rumble. His track for "Funky Little Beat" combines that distinctive Miami 808 sequencing with fake synth flutes and strings, letting the sub-bass stand in for a bassline. The result uniquely mixes a harder almost Detroit sound with the cuteness of freestyle. (Larkins was no stranger to innovation, having already produced what many would say is the first Miami Bass record, MC ADE's "Bass Rock Express".) The singer Connie came from a mixed Cuban and Ecuadorian heritage, and her career basically ended after this hit.

Stacey Q | Two Of Hearts | 12-Inch | 1986
Stacey Q was the Janis Joplin of freestyle, but with more crimping. She was almost 30 when her big hit dropped, but looked like a cracked-out teenager. If you grew up in the ’80s you may have caught DJ Tanner’s favorite singer performing "Two Of Hearts" on Full House. The track’s tempo is particularly fast for freestyle, and the drums and bassline sound an awful lot like New Order's "Blue Monday," but the bongo breakdown is focused. In true time capsule fashion, listed on the picture sleeve are local party crews (the freestyle version of the dancing gangs from Westside Story) including Thee Laydees, Unique Playboyz and Lustik Illusions who wrote in to the Stacy Q fan club to get shoutouts on the back cover.

Noel Silent Morning | "Little" Louie Vega remix) | 12-inch | 1987
As a teenager, soon-to-be house legend Lil' Louie Vega was a freestyle DJ, packing them in at the Devil's Nest, one of the first all-freestyle Latin clubs in the Bronx, and later at Heartthrobs in midtown Manhattan with his future partner in Masters At Work, Kenny Dope. His remix of Noel’s "Silent Morning" has that slightly-choppy-breakbeat-hip-hop-meets-house-Todd-Terry feel that was popping in the clubs at the time with tracks like “Bango” and “Can You Party”. Just beware of the completely overboard keymapped vocal samples. I feel bad for Noel when listening to "Silent Morning", not only because he woke up to discover his girl left him, but also because he was a pretty bad singer.

Taylor Dane | Tell it To My Heart | 1987
Freestyle DJs mixed in plenty of house, pop, electro and uptempo hip-hop in their sets, and Taylor Dayne’s "Tell It To My Heart" was a pop record with a freestyle beat that did it real big in the Latin clubs. She came out of nowhere and with her first record crossed over to go double platinum. On record you would swear she was black, but then you saw her on Friday Night Videos and she was a whitey! Dayne’s success helped enable the meganess of teen dreams Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, who got it popping with their watered down take on freestyle. And Ric Wake, the dude that produced "Tell it to My Heart", now works with Mariah Carey and Jessica Simpson. That’s major.  

Signal to Noise Presents: Batting Lead-Off

Sometimes, even though people live on the West Coast, we still like them.  Signal to Noise, who writes everyone's favorite sports blog...Signal to Noise, is one of those people.  He's a fabulous writer and (probably) a consumate ladies' man, loves whiskey, and - if my twitter feed is to believed - may have a rabbit-related rage problem, and he is here to school us. Take it away, buddy!

In a semi-celebration of baseball returning to us, I wanted to evaluate how important the lead-off track on an album is -- it may not be so much any more in the era of digital music, but groups always wanted to put a really good (if not best) foot first when the needle dropped or the laser read the disc. Originally, I was going to get all authoritative and stuff, but simply putting together a mix of really good 1st tracks on albums I owned was enough.

(I avoided some of the more obvious choices; i.e., Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," AC/DC's "Hell's Bells", even though those songs are indisputably awesome.)

Fugazi | Waiting Room | 13 Songs | 1990

A bass line open that could induce vertigo with drum clicks in the background timed to sound like the second hand on a clock, launching into an obvious punk rock classic of call-and-response sing-along. Fugazi spent their entire career trying to better this initial blast, and often did so.

Dismemberment Plan | Sentimental Man | Change | 2001

Follow the D.C. legends with these boys from our nation's capital, who bring it down with a placid keyboard and chiming guitars to a solid beat. Eric Axelson was one of the better bass players that I had the pleasure of seeing live.

Queens of the Stone Age | Regular John | Queens of the Stone Age | 1998

Power chords, sneaky, backwards-sounding guitar licks sneaking in blazing into full on crunch from Josh Homme and one of the myriad of drummers he's been through with this band.

Steely Dan | Black Friday | Katy Lied | 1975

Watching the collateral damage as the financial world collapses in the late 20s, sung to a variant on your basic blues boogie.

Pixies | Caribou | Come On Pilgrim | 1987

A haunting beginning, with Black Francis strumming out the intro until the open space where Joey Santiago plays one note that cries until Francis and Kim Deal begin the verse. "Debaser" might be the leadoff track that everyone thinks of, but this is the song that has enough space in it to scare you with the lights low. Repent!

The Velvet Underground | Sunday Morning | The Velvet Underground & Nico | 1967

If only because Lou Reed crooning about a feeling he doesn't want to know to a very placid and pleasant track seems completely off-kilter with everything else non-Nico song on this album. That feeling he doesn't want to know is everywhere else; it's like dipping a toe into the eerie waters the band spent its time in lyrically, and revealed the influences of Brill Building pop.

The Clash | Safe European Home | Give 'Em Enough Rope | 1978

The snare sounds like a gunshot, and we're off as scared bystanders as Joe Strummer takes us to Jamaica, playing the stuffy tourist scared out of his wits as he goes through Kingston who's just happy to be back in his false sense of security.

Bill Withers | Harlem | Just As I Am | 1971

The arrangement is derived from that sort of Shaft vibe that was the 1970s, funky scratch guitar and tight organ stabs (both courtesy of producer Booker T. Jones), with Withers crooning about moving up to the NYC neighborhood from his Southern roots. It's like turning Otis Redding's "The Dock of the Bay" inside out.

(I have "Just As I Am" on vinyl; this digital file comes from a Withers best-of.)

Afghan Whigs | Somethin' Hot | 1965 | 1998

Starting by striking a match and declaring in the first verse, "I think I might be out tonight, maybe give you a ride" is the best way to kick off an album that's pure sex.

Teenage Fanclub | The Concept | Bandwagonesque | 1991

Open with guitar feedback, sing a love song about a female fan in three part harmony.

The Smiths | The Queen Is Dead | The Queen Is Dead | 1986

"When you're tied to your mother's apron, no one talks about castration." Would be worth it alone for one of Morrissey's most biting lines, but the quasi-funk propelled by Johnny Marr's wah-wah pedaled guitar and Andy Rourke's bass pops earn its spot.

Ben Folds Five | One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces | Whatever and Ever Amen | 1997

The geek's verbal vengeance on his (imagined?) teenage enemies put to tape.

-S2N

Let's Goooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Ah, Spring.  That magical time of year when a young girl's fancy turns to run blocking and the early enrolled Baby Canes tear up the scrimmage. 149 days til kickoff.  Can you feel it?

N.E.R.D. | Things Are Getting Better | In Search Of... | 2002

The World Is Such A Wonderful Place

Band of Horses | Ode to LRC | Cease To Begin | 2007

Sayin'.

Songs 218

I got nothin'.  But he's back it...why wouldn't he be?  (What is that from? Oh, yeah...Mr. Cheeks!)  Visit our old pal Jeebsykins for the hilarious - and currently unfolding - tale of one man's epic quest for a hug.   

The Mountain Goats | Get Lonely | Get Lonely | 2006
Mylo | In My Arms | Destroy Rock & Roll | 2004
Bruce Springsteen | Human Touch | Human Touch | 1992
Black Keys | Hold Me In Your Arms | Thickfreakness | 2003
The Mountain Goats | Song For Lonely Giants | Get Lonely | 2006

Songs 217: Little League

Yo La Tengo | Little Eyes | Summer Sun | 2003
Just that time again. 

Lykke Li | Little Bit | 2007
Lykke Li | Little Bit (Diego Chavez Remix) | 2008
Lykke Li | Little Bit (Matas Berlin Remix) | 2008
Hard to believe someone putting out stuff this charming is still unsigned.  But that won't be the case for long with Lykke Li, who's poised to be the next Robyn/Annie/great Swedish pop darling.  And just in time, too, because the steel drum sample makes this perfect beach music.

American Music Club | The Decibels and The Little Pills | The Golden Age | 2008

In 2004, American Music Club returned from a 10-year hiatus to release Love Songs for Patriots, an angry wartime record that occasionally abandoned their usual palette of soft grays and browns for a fiery-red crunch. On smoldering rockers like "Ladies and Gentlemen" and "Patriot's Heart", AMC's Mark Eitzel was a bar-stool prophet calling the nation to account for its moral hypocrisies and empty promises. These polemics, rendered as character sketches, were softened by the profound empathy the singer displayed toward his subjects. Four years later, we're still at war, and like many of us, Eitzel seems to have found his anger shading into weariness. There are still flashes of bile...but by and large, The Golden Age is a relentlessly interior record, from the contemplative nature of its quiet arrangements to its dreamy, sentimental lyrics.

Besides exceptionality and archetypal purity, golden ages are typified by brevity. As such, AMC's The Golden Age is appropriately obsessed with the hemorrhaging of time; many songs here find Eitzel grasping at the stuff even as it spurts through his fingers. "It's hard to love when you only see the dust," he mopes amid the wistful acoustic arpeggios of "All My Love". Eitzel's view of life as something one snatches from death's clutches, bit by bit, is the motif that drives the album. "Time is a current that only flows from warm hands to warm heart," he asserts on the darkly rushing "Decibels and Little Pills", after observing that "names are only good for grave stones."  [-Brian Howe]

You're Welcome

Big Boi f Raekwon & Andre 3000 | Royal Flush | Sir Luscious Left Foot | 2008 (?)
Hooooly cow.

Ten Years! Ten! And, Um, I'm Not Sure Yet.

Songs 216

Cologne's venerable Kompact label has been at the forefront of electronic music since 1998.  From ambient pop to thundering techno to last year's innovative work from The Field, the label's output runs the gamut, but all with the approval of tastemaker Michael Mayer. "We still do Pop music," he says. "The moment you do music like this repetitive music where your parents can't separate one record from the other, it sounds all the same to them. This moment you maybe start to discover little things in the music. They become like a Pop sign, something you can recognise. We always try to see Techno music from the Pop side. When we do Ambient it has this Pop surface in a complete distraught form maybe but it's still there in a way.  It's maybe just a fragment of the melody. If you take a Pet Shop Boys record and hear a beautiful layer at the beginning, you take this layer and cut it and it only sounds like a blip but you know it's the Pet Shop Boys."  Sounds like From Here We Go Sublime.

In addition to signing artists and purchasing for distribution, Mayer releases his own music on Kompact as well as its sublabels.  2002's Immer was a touchstone, and 2006's Immer II, with Tobias Thomas, contained extra remixes of better-known songs, including a Yeah Yeah Yeahs cover.

Ada | Maps (Michael Mayer & Tobias Thomas Mix) | Immer II (Bonus Tracks) | 2006

Michael Mayer & Tobias Thomas | Sweet Harmony | Immer II | 2006

In the last year he hooked up with Kompact's star Superpitcher and became Supermayer.  They've released a few singles to great acclaim, including this one:

Supermayer | The Art of Letting Go (Ewan's Daft Funk Vocal Edit) | Single | 2007

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Old School Lunch: Pigs In Bass

My friend Mia and I recently orchestrated the world's greatest mixtape swap: I got a cd with a roller skate sharpie-d on, she got Miami bass. We both lived happily ever after, and I don't see why you shouldn't, too. Unless I hate you.

[Need more?  Stylus wrote a primer.]

The Dogs featuring Disco Rick | Your Mama's On Crack Rock | The Dog House | 1991
You can pull off a song about AIDS or genocide, so long as you get children (or puppets) to do a sing-song chorus. The sweater/overalls combo in the video is amazing.
 
Maggotron | Fresh Beets | Bass Invaders 12" | 1988
Gucci Crew II | Booty Shake | 12" Single | 1990
Kenny B. Devine | Bass In The Box | 12" Single | 1989
M.C. Nas-D and DJ Freaky Fred | It's My Cadillac (Got That Bass) | 12" Single | 1992

Songs 215

LCD Soundsystem | Someone Great | Sound of Silver | 2000
Nico | I'll Keep It With Mine (Pocketknife's Odd Beauty Remix) | Tambourine Dream | 2008
Adem | These Are Your Friends | Homesongs | 2004
Kings of Convenience | Days I Had With You | Kings of Convenience | 2000
Bruce Springsteen | Blood Brothers | Greatest Hits | 1995

Manflesh Monday: The Buzzcocks

Of all the Manchester punk bands, it's the Buzzcocks that have perhaps aged the best.  Their raucus pop songs, tinged with hard-luck romanticism, prized melody and cleverness over abrasiveness and noise - and that kind of thing is a joy forever.  They formed in 1975 over a shared love of Brian Eno and The Stooges, played Malcom McLaren's 100 Club Punk Festival in 1976 along with Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Sex Pistols, and The Clash, and just a few short years later their compilation album, Singles Going Steady, was declared one of the masterpieces of punk. A few from the era:

The Buzzcocks | Why Can't I Touch It? | Single B-Side | 1979
The Buzzcocks | Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've) | Single | 1978
The Buzzcocks | Everybody's Happy Nowadays | Single | 1979
The Buzzcocks | Promises | Single | 1978

But We Are Against Those Thugs

OH MY GOODNESS THIS IS THE SECOND* GREATEST THING I HAVE EVER HEARD IN MY WHOLE LIFE.

IT IS OKAY
TO BE A RAVER NOW
BECAUSE I CAN STILL
HAVE MY BONE THUGS.

Thuggish Ruggish Bone (Doo Doo Brown Breakbeat Mix)

* First: Whitney Houston, I Wanna Dance With Somebody. Step down.

Remixes V: T-Pain's Top Hat-Free Edition

Missy Elliot | Ching-a-Ling (Atlantic Connection Bass It Remix)
Lil' Mama w/Chris Brown & T-Pain | Shawty Get Loose (Remix)

DJ Ayers | Black Box: Everybody Every Body (Quiet Storm Remix) | I Like Make Dance EP | 2007
Sade | By Your Side (Ben Watts Remix) | 12" | 2001
Old favorites awash in classy house are never a bad look.

Santogold | L.E.S. Artistes (Xxxchange Remix) | 2008
And speaking of Santi, here's the video for the original L.E.S. Artistes, which'll be promoting the new album across the pond while 'Creator' gets pushed stateside.  It's the perfect visual match for singing, straight from the gut:
I can say I hope it will be worth what I give up
If I could stand up mean for all the things that I believe...
Change, change, change
I want to get up out of my skin
tell you what
if I can shake it
I'm 'a make this
something worth dreaming of.

Songs 214: What's Cooler Than Cool? Sampling It.

Oh, Snoop, you rascally rogue.  First you sensually seduced us, and now you take us to Paisley Park in the backseat while Teddy Riley drives.  You had me at "play," even though by all appearances you toooootally jacked your own west coast homie Suga Free, who got there first.  But if an album full of stolen flavor is this fun, I think we can excuse it.  Now where's my Halston dress?

Morris Day & The Time | Cool | The Time | 1981
Suga Free w/Big Z | Cool | Cool 12" | 2004?
Snoop Dogg | Cool | Ego Trippin' | 2008

Songs 213: Rock, Remembered

It used to be that rock, indie or otherwise, was this blog's bread and butter.  While briefly thrust into hosting a "dance party" last spring, I was forced to face a world of music that a few years ago would have churned my stomach.  At the same time, this "indie rock thing" got big.  Really, really big.  Prime time on Fox big. Grammy big.  And that's okay, great even, but at some point it began to feel stale and watered down and, well, used.  And maybe it's me - it could be me - but I think it's all in a bit of a lull.  I'm of the mind that the best art has to be worked for, and ease is doom.  Seems like all it takes right now is a ridiculous name and a clothing gimmick and you can rule Hype Machine.  I'm bored by current blog rock; it's completely uninspiring (with the occasional gem, but still).  Posts are harder and harder to come by, I'm enjoying a disco and house phase, and I just wanna dance dance dance.  I won't apologize, but I'll throw out a few bones to those who are here for the rock and try to keep my two-hour Laidback Luke mixes* to my newly glo-sticked self.



Bush Tetras | Too Many Creeps | Too Many Creeps EP | 1980
A female-fronted group, the Tetras were big in the New Wave clubs of downtown New York but never got much recognition nation-wide. Both the distorted guitar licks and lyrics were simple and repetitive, giving the Tetras a unique sound that they accented with Caribbean and African rhythms.  This was their first "big" song, and it's a jagged, fun little stomper.


The Darling Buds | Please Yourself | Erotica | 1992
The Darling Buds | It Makes No Difference | Crawdaddy | 1990
The Darling Buds, from Wales, came a little late but they're still associated with the C86 genre - named after the NME mixtape release that was a pivotal turning point in UK alternative music.  They didn't appear on C86, but the jangly guitar work and twee melodies lump them together with the rest of the lot. A top 30 UK albums chart appearance with a couple Melody Maker covers couldn't propel them to further stardom, and they had the misfortune to release their 1992 album Erotica just a few weeks after Madonna's.  That was that.  But if you like 'Just Like Honey,' check these two.


999 | Homicide | Seperates | 1978
A popular act on the London Punk circuit, 999 didn't survive the early '80s - but sometimes a girl feels stabby, you know?


The Undertones | Teenage Kicks | The Undertones | 1979
Legend has it The Undertones were the only punk bank in Ireland in the late '70s. ('Cause there's so many pots of gold, duh!) Anyway, this single was declared his favorite song of all time by legendary and hugely influential BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, who gave it 28 stars on his five-star scale.  He also made history by playing it twice on a row live in air, for what its worth, and the opening line, "Teenage dreams, so hard to beat" now grace his tombstone.  Cover versions abound, with The Raconteurs, Snow Patrol, Green Day, Franz Ferdinand, and others getting in on the act.  Never gets old.

Does It Offend You, Yeah? | With A Heavy Heart (I Regret To Inform You) | You Have No Idea What You're Getting Yourself Into | 2008
Back in the present day: there's sooooo much working against this one, including ridiculous band, track, and album names, but yeesh, there is NO denying this riff.  It just isn't done.

* It's sooooo good. Here!

Friday Afternoon Feelgoodery: Flagrant Fowl

Ah, Friday afternoons: that magical time of the week brimming with hope and sunshine when you stare out the window all afternoon waiting for the weekend to arrive.  Here's a twenty-five minute mix of re-dos from DJs Cousin Cole and Pocketknife, many of which are available in full-length form on Tougher Than Feathers, the first EP on their Flagrant Fowl label.  It's not necessesarily club-appropriate, but it's a bubbly, pop-flavored start.

Flagrant Fowl MiniMegaMix
(click and follow instructions)

0:00 Wale - Good Girls (Cousin Cole Remix)
1:23 Spank Rock - What It Look Like (Pocketknife's Poppinspiel the Glockenspiel Remix)
2:49 Arthur Russell - She's The Star (Pocketknife's Continual Cornfield Remix)
4:21 Joanna Newsom -The Book of Right-On (Pocketknife's Scowling Owl Remix)
7:05 Cousin Cole - Untitled (Rave Grobbing)
9:06 Cousin Cole - Bam a Lam
10:57 Cousin Cole - Chicken Moose Rhino Monkey (Part One)
12:40 Salt & Pepa - Push It (Cousin Cole Bonus Beats)
13:09 Pocketknife - Wyld Ignition Thang (Pocketknife's Oh Pee Pee Masher)
14:35 Cousin Cole - Ignition Remix Remix
15:35 Cat Power - Free (Pocketknife's Give It Away Remix)
16:40 Cousin Cole - Who's Your Daddy
18:08 Marvin Gaye & Tammy Terrell - Ain't No Mountain High Enough (Cousin Cole Disco Mix)
19:15 Love Is All - Make Out Fall Out Make Up (Cousin Cole Edit)
21:28 Jesus & Mary Chain - Just Like Honey (Cousin Cole Edit)

Songs 212: In Which I Fan Out On Roy Orbison

Roy Orbison is the O.G. pimp and I will not hear a word otherwise (seriously: look at him).   Until Cash kicked the bucket he ruled as Best Dead White Man Singer/Songwriter and I bet they're currently locked in a pill-fueled (drugs don't count in heaven) danceoff duking it out for black-clothed supremacy in some celestial saloon with June Carter clinging to a barstool in blushing horror, her honor up for grabs. Why do I love him?  The voice, yes, the voice is there - a soaring tenor that effortlessly covers four octaves, evokes an even wider range of pain and sorrow, and makes loneliness majestic - but the bolero flourishes on these songs are exquisite.  This is the stuff of drinking tequila alone at night with the stereo cranked, and, as sad songs go, I can't think of a much higher calling - or anyone who comes even close to pulling it off like this.

Roy Orbison | It's Over | It's Over/Indian Wedding (Single) | 1964

Roy Orbison | Heartache | The Many Moods of Roy Orbison | 1969

Roy Orbison | Goodnight | Only With You/Goodnight (Single) | 1965

Roy Orbison | Pretty Paper | Pretty Paper/Beautiful Dreamer (Single) | 1964

Songs 211

Like many Americans, you probably heard Snoop's 'Sensual Seduction' (we roll PG-13 in public) and thought, "Who the hell is responsible for this?"  Well, it's Atlanta's Shawty Redd, best known for mixtape work and a couple Jeezy tracks.  But here he is, giving us the SnoopSings! number we never knew we always wanted, and bringing a hip-hop micro-trend to the mainstream.  As far as I can tell, this "vibe" thing (I didn't come up with this, and I hope someone thinks of something better) is pretty concentrated in Florida, but its two-step-ish synth-heavy tentacles reach throughout the south.

Shawty Redd | What's Da Deal, Boo? (w/Pastor Troy & Big Kuntry)
Real heads love Prince samples, if not misogyny.

Shawty Redd | Drifter
Classic vibe.  Snoop's tune is like the grandson of this.

GrindMode | Xtascy Floating
Smoooooth.  And possibly the best track of this post.

GrindMode | I'm So High (w/Rick Ross)
GrindMode hail from Opa Locka, so here's Rick Ross with the assist.

Ballgreezy | Shone (w/Rick Ross)
And speaking of Rick Ross, here's Little Haiti's Ballgreezy, with Gorilla Tek production.

Paper Route Gangstaz | Rollin'
Alabama makes the vibe scene with Paper Route Records, who are looking forward to a mixtape release of old classics and new remixes out from Diplo's Mad Decent imprint this year.  The majority of the label is made up of the nine-member Hood Headlinaz, who are involved individually with other label projects in various capacities, like a southern-fried Wu-Tang Clan (which I can only imagine would be delicious).

Songs 210

Looks like this week is gonna be hit-n-run style. 
Busy busy busy busy busy.
Sorry.

Two gentle ones (+ remix) to close out this looooong day:

Sarabeth Tucek | Something for You (Contino Mix) | 7" Single | 2007

Caribou | She's The One | Andorra | 2007

Caribou | She's The One (Hot Chip Remix) | She's The One 12" | 2007

On Break