The set, by the way, is from Rhino. If and when I find myself back in some money, I might have to splurge and get the set just for its sheer gimmicky opulence: it comes boxed in a hat box, the booklet is made to look like a diary, the CDs are housed in oversized makeup compacts, and the discs themselves look like powder puffs. Fantastic!
As the AMG review rightly points out, the set is strengthened by the fact that it skips the obvious songs, going for B-sides, rarities, and lesser-known hits. This is a big beef I have with oldies and classic rock-style radio programming: there's such a rich heritage of great music from the three decades you're picking your playlists, why go with the same 50 songs over and over?
To whit, here's a few selections of my personal favorites:
I posted this vid over on my Facebook too. Halloween is a great time to invoke Lightning Bolt--
--no! Not that kind of Lightning Bolt! This kind:
I love that pan at the end where you suddenly see somebody literally swinging from the rafters. Looks like quite the show.
###
From the life imitating art files, here are a couple videos of bands playing their effing hearts out despite what I think few would argue are less than rockin' surroundings.
First, we have seminal 80s doom pioneers Saint Vitus kicking ass at...the Palm Desert Community Center.
I love how the lead singer has this standoff about shilling for Cokes before grudgingly acquiescing.
It's all strangely reminiscent of when Spinal Tap winds up playing at an Air Force base.
Second, legendary Swedish hardcore punk band Refused playing...an Irish pub??? WTF!?
Playing their hearts out, tight as all hell, trying SO hard. And you've got these typical Saturday night bar-goers just...sitting there. Christ. I immediately thought of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
Much like Hedwig, Refused wasn't long for the world thanks to bookings like that one. Just too damn depressing, I guess.
One thing [G20 protesters] won't likely encounter are citizens. Fear of protesters is the talk of grocery and bank lines. At one point, local media was filled with reports of surreptitious foreigners training in a vacant building (they turned out to be a Swedish punk band on tour).
Sauce.
Sufficiently cranked up, The Barbarians make everything A-OK.
No barking from the dog, no smog
And momma cooked a breakfast with no hog
No barking, check. No smog, amazing! But cooking the breakfast with no hog? C'mon Cube, you can't be serious! That would straight up ruin my day, starting it out without some wholesome bacon or perhaps sizzling ham shanks. I don't know about you.
Is there something I'm not aware of at work here? Is Ice Cube a member of the Nation of Islam? Is he trying to watch his cholesterol? Some bit of arcane slang from "teh ghettoe" that I don't know about? Fifteen years later, I still can't figure that line out.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
tigerpillow:"SOUTH PARK MURDERED ME LAST NIGHT AND IT'S PRETTY FUNNY. IT HURTS MY FEELINGS BUT WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT FROM SOUTH PARK! I ACTUALLY HAVE BEEN WORKING ON MY EGO THOUGH. HAVING THE CRAZY EGO IS PLAYED OUT AT THIS POINT IN MY LIFE AND CAREER. I USE TO USE IT TO BUILD UP MY ESTEEM WHEN NOBODY BELIEVED IN ME. NOW THAT PEOPLE DO BELIEVE AND SUPPORT MY MUSIC AND PRODUCTS THE BEST RESPONSE IS THANK YOU INSTEAD OF "I TOLD YOU SO!!!" IT'S COOL TO TALK SHIT WHEN YOU'RE RAPPING BUT NOT IN REAL LIFE. WHEN YOU MEET LITTLE WAYNE IN PERSON HE'S THE NICEST GUY FOR EXAMPLE. I JUST WANNA BE A DOPER PERSON WHICH STARTS WITH ME NOT ALWAYS TELLING PEOPLE HOW DOPE I THINK I AM. I NEED TO JUST GET PAST MYSELF. DROP THE BRAVADO AND JUST MAKE DOPE PRODUCT. EVERYTHING IS NOT THAT SERIOUS. AS LONG AS PEOPLE THINK I ACT LIKE A BITCH THIS TYPE OF SHIT WILL HAPPEN TO ME. I GOT A LONG ROAD AHEAD OF ME TO MAKE PEOPLE BELIEVE I'M NOT ACTUALLY A HUGE DOUCHE BUT I'M UP FOR THE CHALLENGE. I'M SURE THE WRITERS AT SOUTH PARK ARE REALLY NICE PEOPLE IN REAL LIFE. THANKS FOR TAKING THE TIME TO DRAW MY CREW. THAT WAS PRETTY FUNNY ALSO!! I'M SURE THERE'S GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN THIS... THAT'S HOW YOU KNOW IT'S ME!"
In reference to this:
OK, first off: one of the hot books with a lot of holds on it here at the library is The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Crash Following the Greatest Boom in History. OK, I can dig why that book might be a high-demand item in this day and age. The author is Harry S. Dent, Jr., who the very cover of said book then points out is the "New York Times bestselling author of The Roaring 2000s and The Next Great Bubble Boom". So basically what we have here is one of the clueless boobs who, Jim Cramer-style, ra-ra-ra'd us right into the shithole we currently find ourselves sitting in, and now he's going to come down dispensing further "wisdom" from on high, still pedaling the same old self-centered greed-centric rhetoric that got us into this mess in the first place. How much you want to bet his methods are neither helpful nor constructive towards the greater good? In these uncertain times, I'm pretty sure that's a sure bet!
Secondly: I noticed on the news this morning a screen-shot of the top downloads on Walmart.com's MP3 listing (about as close to a vox populi of the current mainstream musical trends as I can figure). The top two spots were held by Lady Gaga and Flo-rida. OK, since when--WHEN--did it become acceptable for popular musical acts to have baby names? Next month's top musical act: Kaka-Doodoo-Bahbah. I mean, seriously.
::old geezer mode::
When I were a lad, and well before that even, musical acts had cool names. Evocative names. Names that made you go, "Wicked!" or "Boss!" or what have you. Guns N' Roses. Public Enemy. Nirvana. Black Sabbath. Even the silly ones, like Mötley Crüe or Run-D.M.C., still had a certain gravitas to them. Now, I say "Lady Gaga" or "Flo-rida" out loud and I can actually feel my brain cells dying. I don't even care what their music sounds like--I can't even get past the ridiculous names. Ah well, I am now officially old. Great.
They were so psychotic at this point. My favorite era.
...
Black Flag rumor control: Henry Rollins was on tons of acid during this time period, Kira was intensely creeped out of the band by savage man lust, Greg Ginn blew all the band and labels money on pounds & pounds of pot. Whaddya think? We all know this doesn't matter at all, its the music that counts. Still, I am curious.
..
I love the acid-era Flag. Greg called is "psychedelic violence."
Rollins' face at the beginning is just...insane. Another commenter said this was their first punk show. Good lord.
Man, I really want to run an urban horror game where the characters are 80s hardcore punk kids.
I gave it a test spin, recreating a playlist off my computer that was filled with somewhat obscure songs. Had about a 90% success rate. Not too bad.
The genesis of this playlist was in the first eight songs or so. They came up on my iPod shuffle exactly in this order during my bus ride home from work on a Friday evening. Very unusual to have that many high-energy, punky-type songs come up like that. I decided to recreate the order and expand the vibe into a full playlist, which I now enjoy whenever I need a little energy boost or what have you. So now I can share it with you, loyal readers. Use it to help get spring cleaning done, or do a workout, or just open your windows, piss off your neighbors, &tc.
( Click here to rock out with yer cock out. )
This might become a semi-regular thing for me. Sort of a spiritual successor to Tuesday Night Videos.
They don't make TV like this anymore, kids. Sit back and feel the love:
via videosift.com
I was never a HUGE Cramps fan, but I've always respected their music and their legacy. Sad to see another great pass on. Plus the soundtrack to Return of the Living Dead just wouldn't have been the same without "Surfin' Dead", one of my all-time favorites.
( Read more... )
Most of the songs on this mix come courtesy of links posted by the inimitable
missannethorpe, so if you enjoy it or hate it, be sure to give her partial credit!Click on the happy Santa pic to download the ZIP file (approx. 58MB). As usual, an M3U file is included--just download the tracks, then drag the M3U file into your iTunes/Winamp/whatever and enjoy!
( And God said, 'Let there be ROCK.' )
And while we're at it, let's look at some videos of a chubby Japanese cat.
atomic_star, this part's for you.( Eases the pain... )
Ah. Much better!
Just remember folks--when things look down, keep those balls in the air!
You can download it here. I included a track listing and an M3U playlist file--you should be able to just drag the latter into your iTunes or WinAmp and it'll import the playlist automatically.
Let me know if you enjoy it!
ETA: Ooops, forgot to include the track listing. Heh heh...
( Read more... )
\m/
That amazing guitar work was courtesy of Robert Fripp of King Crimson (and a bit from Paul Rudolph at the end, to be fair).
I think when your full name is Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno you're pretty much condemned to be some sort of eccentric, eh?
See, I mistakenly thought the music festival was the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass fest, so I didn't think it would be a big deal. Turns out that festival is in October. This festival is the Outside Lands Music Festival, which is considerably a bigger deal. As in, the headliners for Friday night were Radiohead and Beck. Shit.
So needless to say, the two bus lines that I could take from downtown back to my house were PACKED. And that was even with the bus lines running every 2-4 minutes. I knew I had no chance at my regular stop, where only one line comes by, so I walked seven LONG blocks down to the Powell Street stop. There were about 80 people there. I am not even joking. It was like seeing the queue for the last chopper out of Saigon.
Fortune was on my side, as two #21 buses pulled up at the same time and the majority of the people at the station--being out of towners--were waiting for the #5, which is the more direct bus line, so I was able to shove my way onto the second bus and even got a seat! Hurray!
That's about where my luck ran out.
You see, the thing about Radiohead is that in the last few years they've started to attract of cadre of White People as fans. I hate White People. Now, don't confuse that with white people. White People are the Euro-Americans who can identify with the majority of stuff on this blog. And I was surrounded by them.
No problem, just bust out the iPod and crank it up, right? That was the plan--until my iPod immediately took a dump on me and claimed it was out of battery power, even though there had been a little bit of a bar on the battery indicator seconds before. WTF.
So I was trapped on this bus ride, which was about 10-15 minutes longer than usual (for a total of about 35 minutes), listening to inane White Person chatter. Like, as they popped open their Red Bulls, they compared energy drinks. Or how they reminisced in exacting detail about scenes from Growing Pains ("Yeah, Robin Thicke's dad was in that show!") and Family Ties. How "I have little faith in the franchise now that John Favreau is no longer writing the script." I think the best was when the Barbie doll in the seat in front of me proudly announced to her friend that she was getting a tattoo, "but a small one behind my ear, so no one can see it and only I know it's there."
When I at last stumbled off the bus, I had a raging headache. It was just so bad.
In some ways, though, it was illuminating. It coalesced my distaste for White People, which I'd never really been aware of before, not beyond a vague sense of discomfort whenever I was around them. I realized it's the reason I don't like certain people, the type of people who go out drinking on Friday night and then spend the rest of the week talking about how drunk they got; it's the people I found myself amongst at the Wolfmother and Faint shows (in addition to the freaks and weirdos I feel much more kindred with, of course). So I guess in the long run, it was a good thing, this bus ride. Still, it took me all night to recover. We watched Meet the Feebles and it barely fazed me.
Post-script: Like the aforementioned shows, it's not so much the bands playing at that festival as it is the people attending that bothered me. When I got home and checked out who was playing at the festival, there were actually a few acts I found myself thinking, "Shoot, I would've liked to have seen them!" The Black Keys, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Black Mountain, Rodrigo y Gabriela, etc. Ah well.
Post-script the second: After getting home, I stumbled across this cartoon which kind of sums up how I feel about my place in the world:
Post-script the third: For no reason at all, a hedgehog:
So Alex and I flew in on Friday and saw The Faint that night. They definitely put on a good show. The opening acts were decent to awful (in that order); we actually sat down against the wall during the second act, and a bunch of people started following suit. Ha! The first act were actually pretty good. There was a singer/keytarist (is that a word?) and a drummer. My only problem with them, actually, was the smirk the singer had on his face the whole time. The highlight for the act was on two songs, when this guy who looked like a slightly duskier version of Will Ferrell sort of wandered out on stage with a sax and started honking along to the music. The second time he came out the crowd actually gave a big cheer.
The Faint were quite good indeed. I've never been to such a bass-heavy show. It was weird to leave the venue and not have my ears ringing. A refreshing change of pace. Alex said that at one point he actually felt his entire skeleton vibrate during one extremely bassy note.
I only have experience with one Faint album (Danse Macabre), so a lot of the songs were unfamiliar to me, on top of the fact that they're on tour to promote a new album. But they absolutely killed "Agenda Suicide," which they saved for the last song of their encore.
Oh, and the lead singer was dressed in a lab coat and aviator goggles, so major points in that regard.
One other weird thing was similar to my experience when I saw Wolfmother: the crowd mix was extremely random. You had the goth-industrial clique (surprisingly small and all about my age...sad), you had frat boys, you had plastic L.A. Barbie dolls, you had punkers, you had bull dykes and lesbos (a pair of pretty hot lesbians started full-on making out right in front of me during the second-to-last song--bonus!)...it was strange. But fun. I'm glad I went.
(I actually took a couple 15 second vids to send to Des during the concert; I'll see if I can upload them later and post them here.)
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