What I Most Want Is Bad For Me I Know

It's been a long time since I've decided to write about bands you haven't heard of and don't care about, but I've been drinking and daddy needs a hit. It's actually difficult to avoid just making a list and telling you its good, go listen to it because you know I'm right. So instead I will try to tell you why I like it so much. This will often be because it reminds me of other things you haven't listened to.

So where to start? Just kidding, I know already. Cults - Cults. It's an awesome album. It makes you want to dance. Just right now. It's so reminiscent of 60's pop (aka what was then the devil's music) with a nice electronic covering to it. It's got finger snaps. I love finger snaps. "You Know What I Mean" sounds like it should be played at the prom in Back To The Future. A lot of their music just reminds me of "Then He Kissed Me" or "Duke of Earl" (I find out now the verse is apparently "Where Did Our Love Go"). Which is, now that I think about it, the music I grew up with. Surely I am not the only child who grew up listening to the music from when their parents were teenagers (god help my unborn children). It just kind of all flows together as this combination of the pop sensibilities of a previous era, which to me seem less pretentious than the current pop which tries to be something more than dance music, with the gentle synth and electric guitar which fits so well. It's just pleasant to listen to.

John Maus. You can tell the dude is good at the musics because his wikipedia page calls him a composer. Seriously though, We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves is awesome. In terms of pure genre categorization its kind of all over the place. It sounds like, I dunno, Kraftwerk and Duran Duran and Joy Division had a baby. If Duran Duran is the only one of these you know, then you can guess that it kind of sounds like something from the 80's! Which is pretty accurate. It's got that synth that just sounds like there would be leopard print spandex somewhere in the music video, but it lacks the amount of pop required for such a thing. There is a song where "pussy is not a matter of fact" are the predominant lyrics. While probably true, it was to me unexpected, and surprisingly catchy. Also not something you want stuck in your head at work. That aside, most of the songs have a kind of depth that leaves you with a slight sinking feeling. "Hey Moon" is without a doubt my favorite off the album. It has that wonderful night time staring at the sky feel down so perfectly with the lyrics and tempo and what I can only describe as the texture of the song. It's just how it feels.

Ok, I am tired. I wrote this basically to appease Pat who keeps telling me to write about music even though no one else likes it At all.

So what else should you listen to? Or rather, what am I listening to at the moment?
Washed Out - You and I
Bon Iver - Skinny Love
David Bowie - A New Career In A New Town
The Beatles - I'm Only Sleeping
Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
Panda Bear - Tomboy
The Soggy Bottom Boys - I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow (O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack)
Sonic Youth - Teenage Riot
Honey Cool - Then He Kissed Me (Found this while looking for The Crystals version)
The Crystals - Then He Kissed Me (classic 60's)
The Beach Boys - That's Not Me
John Maus - Hey Moon
Cults - Bad Things

When the MC's came to live out their name and to perform

You may or may not know that I'm a big fan of rap music. Especially 90's era gangsta rap. It is strange to think about now. How easy it is to find music similar to something you like. As I put on my horn rimmed glasses, twist my moustache, and lean my cane to the side, I will play on your nostalgia and reminisce about the olden days. I'd watch music videos on tv, back when there was music on MTV, even though we were already complaining about there not being enough of it, and on VH1 and a station called The Box, which was a station where you called in the music video you wanted to see. I say that because we only had that station when I lived in PA so I have no idea what areas actually had it. I bring this up because I remember seeing Wu Tang videos and was pretty much sold from there out. Especially Triumph, which was admittedly much later but was still so awesomely weird. I had heard Dr. Dre and Ice Cube when I was younger but didn't really get into it until I was older. I suppose it's because my sister never listened to rap so I didn't have as much exposure to it than I did to all of the 90's alternative bands.




The reason this is at the front of my mind is because I was in a hot dog place with some friends/coworkers and the restaurant was playing rap music from someone's ipod, and GZA's Liquid Swords album came on. This is one of the best rap albums of all time. I love it, and I announced it. I may have literally said "Oh shit this song is awesome," the second the intro started. It's got the kind of lyrical mastery that makes me love rap music. It also has tons of samples from Shogun Assassin and a couple from Five Deadly Venoms, which are both awesome movies.

Which brings me back to the Wu Tang Clan. GZA is in Wu Tang for clarification. As is Method Man, ODB, Raekwon, U-GOD, Masta Killa, RZA, Ghostface Killah, and Inspectah Deck. They are my favorite, probably because there is significant evidence that they are nerds. The most gangsta ass nerds in existence. But there are all the references to these old Kung Fu movies and comic books which I also grew up on. They rap about the way every guy wants to imagine themselves. A rogue following his own honor, the ronin still living by the bushido. Up until a man is 25, maybe even 30, he still has certain thoughts. Maybe if I train really hard, pack up and move to a Shaolin temple in China and just train, I can be a total badass. Just quit and be a hitman. But a righteous one. Kill dictators or something. By all this I mean, it is both accessible instantly because it just sounds good, but like all the best music has depth.

As always, I'm having problems discovering not to mention maintaining any kind of main thesis. I guess it's because people think it's weird that I not only like rap music but am pretty open about it. I can't figure out if this is just a race thing or what. I don't really liked Eminem (though catchy and when I was young I did like his early songs), but I think he opened up rap music for a lot of white people, especially given Dr. Dre's endorsement. Which is really weird because little white kids (me) have always loved rap music. I think it was probably 1990 before they figured out that half the people buying rap albums were suburban white adolescents. This became kind of joke, check out the movie CB4 if you haven't before, it's pretty funny (and has Charlie Murphy!). What people thought this said was that we need to censor music to protect our children from terrible things like bad words and lyrics about sex and drugs which they don't even understand, but probably really said catchy songs with good hooks, and music your parents are against you listening to tend to become really popular. More than that, music about isolation and life's difficulty speak to everyone.

Maybe it's not the race thing, and just a general appearance thing. It apparently surprises people that I like heavy metal and punk, too. But, back to rap music. It has changed. Can we all agree that crunk rap is shit? That dance music is not hip hop? Even Nas says hip hop is dead, the fact that he does it with will.i.am is so ironic it hurts me.



Is it too corporate? It has always seemed that selling out degrades music but I am not even sure what that means anymore. Repeatable success is just hard, and studio influences can obviously be detrimental to the music. I dunno, underground hip hop, indie hip hop, is still pretty awesome. It is somewhat more complicated than that though. Like Common. Dude has some great songs. To me, for awhile, he was one of the best rappers that didn't break mainstream. And it was pretty obvious the reason he wasn't is because he didn't rap about what the record labels said would be successful. Now he collaborates with Kanye a lot and there's a lot of influence there. It's different. It's more main stream. Some of it is still really good, but some of it isn't as good. Maybe I'm just biased.

So Kanye. He seems like an ass. That said...his music is pretty good. Kanye always bothers me because I feel like he could do better. His ego is so huge it makes the music worse. If he could stick to anything in a song without saying how he's better than everyone ever, or making attacks on people that had a joke at his expense, his music would be much the better for it. I think specifically of him trying to get back at South Park for the fish sticks thing. By bringing it up he kinda proved their point. All that said, he has made some good music. But he's a dick and he's at the point now where he's successful because he was successful and that just sucks for music. Although My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a good album. Way better than 808s and Heartbreaks. But the ego is like a slime over the whole thing. You can see how good it could have been, but bleh.

Wu Tang - Cream
GZA - Liquid Swords
GZA - Shadowboxin
Method Man - Release Yo Delf
MC Lars - Ahab
Wu Tang - Triumph
Common - What a World
Sage Francis - Little Houdini
Kanye West - Monster (The Jay-Z verse is terrible, the Nicki Minaj one is awesome)

Grooveshark link because it takes forever to upload stuff to share and my dropbox is full

And I Want To Touch the Sun

So here's some select pictures from the pillow fight.

Music Suggestions:
The Pillows - Subhuman
The Pillows - I Think I Can
The Pillows - Last Dinosaur
The Pillows - Crazy Sunshine

Let's Talk About Spaceships...

I'm a bit ashamed to say that despite my advanced years, extensive music knowledge, and love of all things Sci Fi, that I am just now getting into Rush. Despite the fact that those first three facts are false, it still surprises me a little. Since I feel shame just by waking up in the morning, being ashamed about it isn't exactly groundbreaking though.
My musical taste is always changing and I admit I sound like a blathering idiot whenever anyone asks what kind of music I like. To say "everything" is both an outright lie and as close to the truth as I seem to be able to manage. I can be very dismissive of music I don't like, but usually only because other people's taste in music is awful. Most people don't like to hear, "Well I like prog rock, punk rock and revivalist punk rock but it's all crap for the last decade, opera but mostly only German ones so far, electronica but rarely trance or industrial, mostly late 80s and early 90s gangsta rap and some of the transition into R&B like LL Cool J but never crunk rap." I could go on, but by that point someone has poured a drink onto my head. And for good reason, because I would go on.
I bring this up because I've been having difficulty placing myself on the musical taste map lately. Post rock, dream pop, space and prog rock. Somewhere in there is a commonality that I have been craving and it's causing me to jump between bands quickly and with little to no real forethought.
To put it simply I want to reenact a moment I am not sure if I've ever actually experienced. I've got all the details down pretty well so I think it must have actually occurred sometime when I was in high school. It's not overly complex or anything. I just have this very specific and tactile memory of listening to music of this type, from timing I'm going to guess Mogwai, and lying on the floor of my room. Which is weird because I rarely did that. I was usually in my chair or hammock. So I'm just listening to music and staring at the ceiling, possibly at the fan, and am just completely caught up in the music. Sitting, staring, time goes by and that's it.
It's just so oddly specific given that my memory is usually terrible. Although now that I think about it many of my memories are like this. Completely meaningless and without context, but thoroughly detailed and nostalgic.
So I guess I want to recreate that feeling of just nothingness and absorption, but it's not specific to the music as much to the texture of the music. Mogwai sounds significantly different than Stars, and Rush, and My Bloody Valentine. But when I listen to them I want to sit and just listen, but I worry that I'm not even capable of that anymore. To just sit and listen to an album or two. Given how much I've ranted about the superiority of album rock this is clearly hypocritical, but it's hard to just sit and listen these days.
I listen while doing other things, but it's hard to really say how much listening I'm doing. My mind used to be full of at least 50% song lyrics, but that number seems to be decreasing. Honestly, I don't know the words to very many "new" songs that I have been listening to. I like it so I listen to it while I work or while I read, but what am I listening to? I worry that it is becoming just noise.
And I'm not sure how to prevent that other than to pay attention to what I'm listening to. This is something I tend to do once and then take completely for granted. But I suppose that is why I am liking Rush so much. It's great to just hear it. Upbeat, moderate tempo, easy to listen to. But it is so much better when you listen to it. The lyrics are great, and nerdy (meaning it has space and fantasy influences), but it's all very well crafted. It is tricky, because once you have really listened to it, it's hard to just hear it afterwards.
Not to compare Neil Peart to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, but Scheherazade had a very similar effect on me. I heard it before and recognized it because it's quite popular. It was even in an episode of Leverage. But then, I actually listened to it. And the violin comes in just completely fills me with music and a little sorrow and thoroughly demands my attention. ( directly to the violin and youtube sound quality is awful, but you owe it yourself to listen to the whole thing).


To summarize: Rush is awesome. So is Scheherazade, and you should listen to better music.


This is the point where I list specific songs for you to listen to, but since I've been listening to Rush while writing this, I don't even know which ones are best. So I will say, Tom Sawyer, Tears, and La Villa Strangiato.

Portishead - Small
Stars - Death to Death
Le Tigre - Deceptacon
New Order - Regret
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - Scheherazade (I Movement - The Sea and Sinbad's Ship is my favorite)
The Hundred in the Hands - Lovesick
Sufjan Stevens - They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From the Dead!! Ahhh!

Also




I'd also like to ask if anyone even listens to these suggestions, if not I'll stop.

Forget Your Name, Forget Your Fear

All credit for the gifs to iwdrm.tumblr.com

I've often thought of expressing myself through visual means, but my skills of an artist leave much to be desired. So I'll shamelessly show these cyclic animations which about sum it up.

I can't decide if New York just sucks in the rain or if in my transition to adulthood the rain has lost all it's power over me. I was always the kid running outside in thunderstorms. Soaked completely through and chilled to the bone, shouting challenges to the gods of fury, which seem to have gone largely unnoticed.

It seems ridiculous to say the rain has changed, but maybe it's just the kind of rain. Lacking in intensity, it seems incapable of soaking anything, just making it all damp. Rain without the fury is just, well wet. But it's getting harder to imagine myself running through a thunderstorm these days. Maybe I've romanticized it too much. Without someone to run to in the rain, I'm just as well off watching it from inside, behind the closed curtains.

I used to have a balcony and would sit out and watch the thunderstorms but the buildings here make it difficult to see the lightning, especially from my lowly vantage point. It's like smoke with no fire. It lacks that primal mesmerizing feature and instead of entertainment really only provides with you smelly clothing.

So when it rains here, I expect it to be like this

But the reality doesn't leave me feeling cleansed at all. It just leaves me feeling like it should be better. Just, angry that I"m wet. More like this, well minus the wet.

Again, all credit to iwdrm.tumblr.com for the amazing images. Oh and bonus points to you if you get the film references and even more if you get the reference in the first paragraph.

playlist here

Led Zeppelin - The Rain Song
Electric Light Orchestra - Standin' in the Rain
Cam Wilkinson - Song of Storms
Massive Attack - Pray for Rain
Echo & The Bunnymen - Ocean Rain
The Who - Love Reign O'er Me
Yoko Kanno - Rain

We Are Very Busy People

To say that I love learning is commit an extreme exaggeration of Mission Accomplished proportions. I hate studying, that's why I never really did it. At best I'm capable of grasping onto facts for 32 hour periods. I almost always understand, I just never bothered getting the space to commit things to memory. Sure I know all the words to "It's the End of the World as We Know It" but triple integrals? My calculator does that. Biatch.

Because I don't love learning. I love knowing things. Preferably more things than you, but I'll settle for more things than most people. Maybe just more things than the average fifth grader. None of the ones on that tricky show, though. Clever bastards. I just like finding things out. The more useless the knowledge the better as far as I'm concerned.

I hate to veer radically on topic, but I think this is due to the way education has always been presented to me. When you think about how you learn things naturally, it's a rapid progression of whatever catches your eye on any given explanation. When a child asks a question, they invariably ask why after you answer. Let's say that the answer given has 3 parts. Do they ask about part A, then part B, then part C? No. They ask about which part catches their ear, and the same with each following sentence. I like to think of it as conceptual tree branches, one after the other, more and more specific, until you get to the leaf. But that isn't how any class I've ever taken has evolved. It's strictly confined and covers A, B and C before going onto the next sentence. Maybe it's just residual resentment, but I really do believe the way we learn and the way we are taught often diverge to a significant degree.

This is why I love the internet, specifically wikipedia. Because it lets me learn about anything, and go immediately to the points that interest me. It is, to put it mildly, amazing. I remember the feeling of being a child without a computer. I read my books. I looked through the encyclopedia to try to find more about the things that caught my eye. I had to wait until someone took me to the library to get more books. To be so anxious for new information. It was like a great fanning out, starting with the very vague book on animals, then reptiles, then prehistoric reptiles, dinosaurs, the cretaceous period, bipedal carnivores. I think wikipedia works in this very casual, general to specific kind of way, that our minds, and more importantly our curiosity works.

I don't mean to denounce the whole education system because it has entirely different goals. It's goal is to cram certain knowledge into you, with a certain percentage of accuracy (grades). With wikipedia alone I could probably not be an engineer, despite the fact that I use it frequently. I will always be a proponent of free education, but I think that wikipedia, like many classes I have taken, promotes knowledge and not necessarily understanding.

That is to say, it's very easy to see an equation on wikipedia and memorize it, but to know all of it's uses and limitations can be very difficult without information that isn't apparent. This all applies mostly to math and science, but I always assume there are similarities between everything that I just might not be aware of. Historical events may not seem as significant without their background. Plays might not have the same impact without a knowledge of the symbols involved. Context. Somewhere to place the knowledge.

All of that being said, I could have been a much better student than I was. The only thing I really seem to excel at is failing upwards. Because information I am not interested in, I have always viewed as completely useless to me and therefor had to force myself to learn (temporarily). I suppose that is what separates me from the driven, who are easily capable of learning things they don't want to, and the intelligent, who can pick it up casually enough that force is not required.

Stars - The Night Starts Here
The Limousines - Very Busy People
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth
Harvey Danger - Sad, Sweet Heart of the Rodeo
Modest Mouse - Out of Gas
Against Me! - I Was a Teenage Anarchist

Heavy is the Cost

I uh, don't know what to write. I thought I did. Words on the tip of my tongue, teetering on the edge preparing to jump to their doom. Or onto the written page. Whichever.

I haven't been sleeping. You'd think that all the extra time might lead to some increased productivity at home. At least on accident. But not so much. Stacks of papers, discarded boxes and grocery bags make of the landscape of what I like to describe as the English countryside for rodents. Although it's probably more like Mexico City. The sights are quite nice but you might get a shoe thrown at you. They're just lucky I have terrible aim. Or maybe not, I'd probably feel bad and nurse them back to health.

Poor little things. God knows I hate living here, must be way worse between the floorboards. Down there with that beating heart. I mean the vital organs of the body I disposed of. Just kidding, god knows you can't fit that in a New York apartment. Stick to car trunks, kids.

Ok, today's songs.

The Smiths - Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want
Stars - Personal
Neutral Milk Hotel - Oh Comely
The Cure - Boys Don't Cry
Ben Folds - You Don't Know Me
The Sounds - Rock'n Roll
Crystal Castles - Not In Love
Plastic Little - The Jumpoff

There's almost a theme today. Minus the last song. That's just a song that needs to be listened to. Mainly for the end. And your worst enemy's momma, gets killed by ninjas, at disneyworld. That's the jumpoff.

Like most children, I was born.

I just always wanted to be cool. My definition for such things has changed drastically over the years, but it doesn't really matter because I fail at it anyway. Everyone I know is just so fucking cool. I tried though. Maybe that's the problem, you can't be cool if you're trying to be cool? I should be cool right? I listen to good music. I listen to it before you do. On vinyl. I listen to bands live and then break their hands so that only I can ever bask in the greatness that was their stereotypical indie sound.

I've always thought the main problem was that I can't be cool because I'm fat. This has generally held up except that via comparison, I was a normal enough weight to be cool when I started thinking this. The jury is still out on that one, I suppose. Probably eating donuts. Rest assured they are doing it very nonchalantly.

Is it the jeans? I know they're not skinny jeans but do you really want to see my junk? I'll show you my junk if that's what it takes. Is my t-shirt not ironic enough? It's the lack of a summer scarf isn't it? I got hot. Surely no scarf is better than sweaty, fat, white man with sad, desperate eyes and a beer in each hand having a seizure/dancing away the pain?

Maybe I can squeak by just by being funny right? Everyone likes a good joke. Especially math and science jokes. Those are the best! Maybe throw in a little Star Wars, mix it up with a Woody Allen reference, hell throw in a little self deprecation for good measure. It's not working. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. More self deprecation. More. Keep going. Oh god they're staring. Wait, is she crying? Tears of laughter? No...that's, yep, pity. Definitely pity. Or as I like to call it, the great aphrodisiac.

I know what the problem is. I'm just cooler than cool. Cool before my time. Cool like an ice cube. Cool like a bad Mr. Freeze pun. Wait.

And now I'm just too old or too pigeonholed to be cool. Some of the people I work with are that hip, cutting edge, arty kind of cool. They wear black turtlenecks, drink red wine, talk of museum exhibits opening and are easily reduced to stereotypes, much like the white man. But in my dress slacks, button up shirt, and no tie cause I'm so laid back, I just can't compete.

Nope. Not cool.

Song suggestions:
Asobi Seksu - I'm Happy But You Don't Like Me
The Wombats - Let's Dance to Joy Division
Moby - When It's Cold I'd Like to Die
Necro - Your Fucking Head Split
Mastodon - Blood and Thunder
Against Me! - Baby, I'm an Anarchist


It should be noted if you listen to these in sequence, your neighbors will think you are having several psychotic breaks as evidenced by the drastic changes in music. If you like more than two of these songs, you are apparently me. I'm going to try to keep up with the song suggestions for each blog post though.