Just 'cause I want to, all posts today will be Muppet-related.
Read up on legendary Muppet Show house band Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem at the MuppetWiki.
Fun fact: "In Muppet Babies [baby Animal] was voiced by Howie Mandel (1984-1985) and Dave Coulier (1986-1991)." (via)
Here, Floyd takes centerstage on "New York State of Mind."
—eh
I was playing around with Imeem, and you better believe we're going to be doing some more with this in the future. Here's my experimental playlist for now.
—eh
A friend of mine has a theory that if you start singing the "Fresh Prince" theme song in a room full of 20-somethings, about 90% of them will sing along with you. I've seen it in action, it's pretty amazing.
Anyway, via XKCD, one of my favorite webcomics, here's a new twist on Will Smith's classic anthem.
—eh
So we did some office karaoke last night (I am an embarrassing mic hog, by the way; someone get me my own band, stat), and this song came up on the rotation. Who even has thought about this song in, like, a million years?
—eh
Songs for Newsworthy News, a venture by One Ring Zero's Michael Hearst to publish almost a song per day relating to current events. My favorite, from Aug. 4, "Brian May of rock band Queen,/Has put together all the pieces./He’s finally finished his astrophysics doctoral thesis." Hear it and more at the above link.
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There comes a point in every rock star's life when they need to settle down and grow up.
Ha! That's not true. People become rock stars so they don't have to grow up. But they do have kids from time to time, and to show their paternal (or maternal) love, they sometimes write songs for them. Many times the songs are lullabies, but not always. Here are a few that we've thought of:
Billy Joel's "Lullaby (Goodnight, My Angel)" is actually the song that got me thinking about this. Alexa is also commemorated in (obvs) "The Downeaster 'Alexa'." I hate this song. Almost as much as I hate "Captain Jack." Maybe Billy Joel should stay away from nautical themes. But I'm getting off track...
Madonna "Dear Jessie." This song is actually about the song's co-writer Patrick Leonard's daughter, Jessie.
Pretty straightforward, Ben Folds writing about his daughter Gracie. He also wrote "Still Fighting It" for his son Louie (who is in the video), which if you listen to the lyrics, is a really sad song for your dad to have written you.
Lauryn Hill "To Zion." This is a beautiful song.
The Beatles "Good Night." According to wikipedia, John wrote this for Julian but asked Ringo to sing it, and George Martin to make a "really cheesey" arrangement.
John Lennon "Beautiful Boy." John's song for Sean is much nicer.
They Might Be Giants "Never Go to Work." The Johns have released two whole albums for kids: "Here Come the ABCs" and "Here Come the 1, 2, 3s."
What am I missing?
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So this song popped into my head just now, and I started wondering: How many music soundtracks is this song on. A lot, I bet.
According to IMDB, the song was used in the following films:
• Dan in Real Life
• Jersey Girl
• Along Came Polly
• Mr. Deeds
• Grosse Pointe Blank
• Look Who's Talking
But two other songs kept popping up on Mr. Townshend's entry.
"Won't Get Fooled Again" has appeared in a whopping 14 movies, tv shows and video games (Rock Band). It's the theme song to "CSI: Miami" and was featured in an episode of "The Simpsons. This is also not counting any Who specials or documentaries.
Baba O'Reilly (not "Teenage Wasteland") has had nine appearances on the big and small screen (no video games), including the theme for "CSI: New York."
Both "Baba" and "Fooled" are on the soundtrack to "Summer of Sam."
And now you know.
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So earlier this week, I promised you some American music in honor of Independence Day, but that genre's too big for me to handle. I suppose I could have gone with music about being Free or Brave or something, but instead I killed two birds with one stone and made a mix- and a muxtape for a road trip I'm taking this weekend -- because there's nothing more American than the Great American Road Trip. And paying $5 million for gasoline.
Enjoy!
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Tomorrow is Canada Day, so here are some Canadian tunes! (For the most part, locations are given for where either the band was formed or the individual singer was born.)
CSNY "Southern Man" -- The song that inspired Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama." (Neil Young is from Toronto; Crosby was born in LA; Stills, Dallas; Nash, Blackpool, England)
Sloan "Losing California" (Halifax)
The New Pornographers "The Laws Have Changed" (Vancouver)
Nickelback "How You Remind Me" (Hanna, Alberta)
Rush "Tom Sawyer" (Toronto)
Feist "Inside and out" (Amherst, Nova Scotia)
Metric "Combat Baby" -- This might be my favorite song ever written. (Toronto, mostly; also, fun fact: lead singer and Canadian citizen Emily Haines was born in New Delhi.)
Bryan Adams "Everything I do" (Kingston, Ontario)
Joni Mitchell "Free Man in Paris" -- I like that this song is about David Geffen. (Fort Macleod, Alberta)
Islands "Rough Gem" (Montreal)
Celine Dion "I'm Alive" -- I just couldn't do "My Heart Will Go On" to you guys. (Charlemagne, Quebec)
Barenaked Ladies "The Old Apartment" (Scarborough, Ontario)
Alanis Morissette "Ironic" (Ottawa)
Bachman Turner Overdrive "Takin' Care of Business" (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
Malajube "Pate Filo" -- Because the list wouldn't be complete without a French Canadian group. (Montreal)
It would also be incomplete without Men in Hats' "Safety Dance." (Montreal)
According to this definitive list, Ontario leads Quebec six to four as the most musical province. Now you know.
eh.www.amNY.com
In the news wasteland that is the turn of the New Year, I can buy the compulsive need for everyone to run lists of their favorite everything from "the year that was." Hell, I did it, too. But stuff happens in June. We don't need to give over our page views to "the January-June that was."
Except that we do, apparently. Sheesh.
There's not a whole lot of consensus, although Vampire Weekend and Flight of the Conchords turn up more than once.
But, just, quantifying and ranking your favorite songs is such a ludicrous concept. Do we really have to do it now twice a year?
I blame VH1.
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I don't know why this old Kids in the Hall song popped into my head the other day, but it did. So now let's talk about the music-related Daves I know.
Dave Grohl has fantastic hair in this video.
Alanis Morissette's "U Oughta Know" is supposedly about Dave Coulier.
Everyday
Dave Matthews Band, "Everyday" -- I remember the day this video was shot; It was shot on the mall in Charlottesville, Va., where I was living at the time, and it was the biggest thing to happen in town ever. The mall is where all the (actual) punk kids would hang out; they'd dye their hair in the bathroom at the movie theater. When my parents came to visit around Halloween one year, my mom said, "We saw downtown, all the kids are all dressed up already." Yeah, it wasn't a costume.
The Stooges original bass player was Dave Alexander.
Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" is cited in almost every textbook on music theory as an example of music in 5/4 time (that and the Mission Impossible theme song). Well, this is Brubeck's "Blue Rondo A La Turk," which seems to use about 500 different time signatures.
David Bowie "Within You"
The Monkees. OK, he's Davy Jones (coincidentally, so was David Bowie), but it counts.
The Dave Clark Five, "Glad All Over" and "Bits and Pieces."
Talking Heads, "Psycho Killer" -- David Byrne has such an awesome voice.
U2, "Sunday Bloody Sunday" -- Here's a two-fer: Bono's real name: Paul David Hewson; The Edge: David Howell Evans. I still hate U2.
Also: David Johansen (NY Dolls), Dave Seville (Alvin and The Chipmunks)
eh.www.amNY.com
It's the type of music the New Yorker writes about every year or so (in fact they did write about this very project in 2002), but someone posted a random link in a random forum yesterday to Big Legal Mess Records (which is related to Fat Possum Records, the main subject of the abovelinked NYer article), and I randomly checked it out.
Apparently they are one of those groups that goes around the country searching for traditional blues players and setting them to tape. They've got a player up on their website, where you can sample some of their wares. It's good stuff. Check it.
eh.www.amNY.com
I'll put this upfront: The following post is gonna be pretty disjointed, but bear with me.
So lately I've been going through this phase where after midnight, I think to myself, "Sleep is overrated," but in the morning, I think exactly the opposite. So I had a vague idea to do a blog entry about songs about sleep. But I looked up the following video and got distracted.
Barenaked Ladies, "Who Needs Sleep"
The band has a whole series of videos featuring Ed playing in the bathroom!
I used to love these guys. They're a really fun live show, even if they won't let you throw Kraft Dinner at them anymore. Following in the footsteps of They Might Be Giants, they recently released a kids' album, because they're all old and have kids now. You can here it here.
The other sleepytime songs I thought of were ...
"Golden Slumbers"
(Ben Folds' cover from "I Am Sam." When I originally saw some special on this movie, I thought it was a joke. It helped that it came on in the time slot that had formerly belonged to "Twitch City," a totally bizarre post-KITH Canadian sitcom.)
And ....
The Beatles, "I'm Only Sleeping"
This became one of my favorite Beatles songs ever after I bought the British version of "Revolver." My dad, of course, had the American record, because he lived in America in 1966 (and now). (For those of you who aren't dorks: The track sequencing on a few of the Beatles' American releases differed from that on the British ones because Capitol Records played mix and match with "Help!," "Rubber Soul" and "Revolver" to create "Beatles Yesterday and Today" so they could release 4 albums instead of three. Google "Butcher Cover" if you want to know more.)
So, um, there's that.
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I interviewed comedians Kristen Schaal and Kurt Braunohler for tomorrow's paper, and like always, not everything made it into the paper. Here's a little music-related snippet:
I asked about the "Penelope Princess of Pets" videos.
Kurt: We completed 6 more episodes in February and they are currently sitting on a shelf somewhere at the now defunct Superdeluxe offices. The delay is that the 4th episode is a music video for the New Pornographers that we shot with the band. But now Matador and Turner have decided they care a lot more about arguing about money then letting a cool video be seen by people's eyes — so lawyers have been fighting about it for 5 months now. It is very frustrating. Hopefully someone somewhere can decide to be cool and let our little video be seen by people and then everyone can see all the other episodes.
The song in question is "Mutiny, I Promise You."
eh.www.amNY.com
I found the above genius exploration of the emotions of felt monsters this morning, which kicked off the following train of thought. Won't you join me for a ride?
(Digression: The voice of the puppet singing B-52 Kate Pierson's part is pre-"Avenue Q" Stephanie D'Abruzzo.)
So I was watching the Sesame Street video which made me, of course, think of the original song. I remember it as being tritely upbeat, which, at the time of the song's release didn't seem odd, but thinking about it now, it occurred to me that Michael "Everybody Hurts" Stipe is not really that upbeat of a guy. And of course, a quick perusal of bastion of truth Wikipedia reveals that the lyrics are a parody of Chinese propaganda or something.
But whatever, because the far more salient fact on the page is that Stipe actually hated the song and said so on "SPACE GHOST COAST TO COAST"! I loved that show when I was younger, and having watched a few episodes this morning, it still holds up. I don't know if that means that the show is just that good, or my intellect hasn't matured since I was 14.
Anyway, here he is:
If you wanna see it in Spanish, it's here (Stipe is at about the 8-minute mark). In any language, my favorite part is when Zorak asks Stipe, "Is that you in the corner?"
Of course, the way the interview is edited, there's no way to know what question Stipe was actually responding to, or what he had intended to say, when he said "I hate that song." (Which, and I may have said this before, but I think that "The Daily Show" interview style owes a lot to Space Ghost and friends.) But it was on purpose left off of their "Greatest Hits" album, so the band prolly was not so pleased by it.
Also, "Shiny Happy People" was on Blender's (undated, but I remember seeing it a year or so ago; I wish people would date things on the internet) list of 50 Worst Songs. Best critique: "[The main riff] sounds like a cellphone ring tone chosen by a sociopath."
In other news, I think I need a new ring tone.
Oh, yeah. Here's the actual song.
eh.www.amNY.com
On last week's finale of Lost, we confirm something very valuable: Jack Shepard has the coolest musical taste of any of the Castaways. (You probably don't want to continue with this post if you haven't seen Thursday's show yet.)
At about 3:50 in the video above, we find Jack in the car headed back towards the funeral home listening to the Pixies' "Gouge Away." In last year's finale, he was shown (driving to that same funeral home earlier that day) listening to Nirvana's "Scentless Apprentice." It's a subtle thing, but it's an awesome character point that Jack would be into '90s alt-rock.
Over at Lostpedia, they've got a database of what music has been used when in the show. Much of it is '50s rock and roll, because a lot of the diegetic sound is sourced from the record player in the hatch, and that's the kind of music the Dharma Initiative stocked it with. But we can see that Sharon, for example, was into Dave Matthews Band (makes sense) and Hurley had brought his Damien Rice CD with him to the island ... this was one of my favorite devices that the show used when it first started; each episode (or many of the episodes, it's been a while) ended with a standard musical montage, but music we were hearing was actually what Hurley was listening to on his CD player. Until the batteries ran out.
eh.www.amNY.com
NY Mag is on the hunt for the Song of the Summer, and they've got eight likely contenders. I just have to say I hate that Leona Lewis song, so I hope that's not the one that dominates the airwaves until Labor Day.
Personally, my vote is for this guy:
Gnarls Barkley, "Run"
One day this band will make it big. I just know it.
eh.www.amNY.com
As Gawker (and their clever commenters, excerpted above) points out, graphs about stuff are awesome. Check out GraphJam for more. Here are some of my favorites.
more song chart memes
more song chart memes
more song chart memes
And, of course, there's always Rob Harvilla's graphical dissertation of Mims' "This is Why I'm Hot."
eh.www.amNY.com
Today's story on William Shatner awoke a memory from my ska-ed up past. Long Island band The Scofflaws penned an ode to the man way back in 1995. Hear a live version here. Sadly, that's pretty much all the internet has to offer of that song. It seems mid-'90s, Long Island ska bands don't have videos on YouTube.
But the lyrics are great. If you can't decipher them in the song, read them here.
And if you like what you hear, there's more on the band's (still active!) MySpace page.
eh.www.amNY.com
For those of you following the saga, my computer is now back up. Super.
eh.www.amNY.com
I have no love for my computer, nor it for me, as it is totally NOT WORKING today. At this point, it's only mildy stressful, but I did a lot of work for tomorrow's paper last night and now I cannot access it. I'm not doing that junk again.
So I'm hoping Kraftwerk can spread their "Computer Love" and turn my unweildy paperweight back into a functioning analytical engine.
Oh, yeah, and the song may sound familiar because Coldplay sampled the main riff on "Talk."
eh.www.amNY.com
We have moths. In our office. Thank goodness it's our Friday. With any luck, by the time we get back on Sunday they'll be gone.
In the meantime, here are some insect-inspired songs for ... well, us, really.
Jethro Tull "Moths"
Tiger Moth
Psapp "Rear Moth"
Black Moth Super Rainbow "Sun Lips"
They Might Be Giants "Bee of the Bird of the Moth"
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks "Dragonfly Pie"
Adam Ant "Goody Two Shoes"
So much more, after the jump ...
I wanted to do a little something special for post 500, and what's more special than a video interview? Well, lots of things. Cake, for example. But I'm not making you a cake.
Apropos of nothing, except that I really like them, I sat down and spoke with Christian Rudder of Bishop Allen. Fortuitously, they have a gig at Music Hall of Williamsburg May 16, so if you like what you hear, go see 'em.
Here we are in all our camera-shy glory:
Let me know what you think. If you like it, we may do more of these.
Also, a special thank you to One Brooklyn Bridge Park for the use of their location.
And here's "Click, Click, Click, Click," the best indie pop song about photography since Spoon's "I Turn My Camera On."
Happy 500! See you again in 500 more ...
eh.www.amNY.com
PS I'm on vacation next week, so I really hope you like this ... enough to tide you over until May 4 when I'll be back ... with tales of Jazz Fest in New Orleans!
I totally thought the Ocarina was an instrument made up by the folks who produced Zelda. I was wrong.
eh.www.amNY.com
499 ...
My previous post made me think ... why is it that I like that "Composure" song so much. And then, serendipitously "Lake Michigan" popped up on the old iTunes, and it hit me ... I really enjoy music written in 6/8. And it's cousin 3/4 -- I'm a waltz lover! But mostly I love the 6/8, the tripping over it of jamming two different meters in one. So I made you a mini-mux with some examples of the time signature I love.
Ok, the last one, "Bam Bam" by Rob Crow, is not exactly 6/8. As far as I can tell, it's written in x/8, where x = cosin of the degree heading of which way the wind is blowing AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT.
Anyway, find a list of more 6/8 tunes at Wikipedia.
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I've been taking bass lessons for a minute (I'm getting really good, if you need a bassist!), and one of the things I talked about with my teacher last week is singing while playing -- a skill I lack and would like to improve upon. He basically said, "practice more," which is his answer to everything; and also pointed out that it's harder to sing while playing bass than while playing guitar because you're doing something completely different rhythmically. I'll buy that, but I still don't think it's impossible. So here's a list of noted singer/bassists.
• Kim Deal, Pixies (also The Breeders, but she's not their bassist) ("Gigantic" is one of the first songs I figured out how to play)
• Kim Gordon, Sonic Youth
• Pete Wentz, Fall Out Boy (He sings back-up, but still)
• Paul McCartney, The Beatles
• Geddy Lee, Rush
• Sgt. Floyd Pepper, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem
• Gene Simmons, KISS
• Lemmy, Motörhead
• Phil Lynot, Thin Lizzy
• Roger Waters, Pink Floyd
• Les Claypool, Primus
• Benjamin Orr, The Cars
• John Entwhistle, The Who
• Kip Winger, Winger
• Sting, The Police
• Jack Bruce, Cream
• Maya Ford, The Donnas
Can you think of any other singer/bassists? Can you think of any other bassists period? I can: Carlos D, Interpol; Noel Redding, Jimi Hendrix Experience (among others, but not as a bassist, I don't think); Mark Ibold, Pavement and Sonic Youth ...
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eh.www.amNY.com
OK, the actual holiday is Monday, but I've been mired in our weekend coverage all day. So I just thought I'd share my favorite Irish song, the Dubliners and Pogues doing "The Irish Rover."
Also, bonus, The Pogues doing "Waxie's Dargle," a song which reminds me of the greatest triumph of my life: winning the quiz at the end of Dublin's Literary Pub Crawl. (Actually, my sister and I took second and third, but first prize was a t-shirt and the second and third prizes were bottles of Jameson. I think it's clear who actually wins there. And there's nothing more important in life than drinking, literature and winning — so, there you go. OK, I guess music's pretty important as well.)
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