The Where's Luke Concert Review: Arcade Fire

About two weeks about, Open Bar and I went to see Arcade Fire in concert at Madison Square Garden. Were I not on blog vacation (industry jargon, YP, MP) I may have blogged about it in a more timely fashion.

The preamble is that only the two of us went, but we also invited Side Bar who had mentioned that he was developing an interest in Arcade Fire in previous goings on. But he didn't want to go. If he had gone and we could have bought the tickets on his AmEx card, then we would have had floor seats. Instead we were in the nosebleeds, but actually they were pretty good seats. Long and uninteresting to tell that whole story, but that's the bulk of it.

Anyhow, the concert was super fantastic awesome. It started with Owen Pallett, the dude who arranges the strings for Arcade Fire. He does this thing where he loops violin parts and plays more violin on top of it and the resulting sound is really pretty. I have his two albums and they are good. His one album, "Has a Good Home" is actually in constant rotation on my iPod. Except one dude playing one violin in a half empty arena doesn't exactly translate to a rockin' performance. I thought it was interesting, however. During that time, Open Bar went to watch the Mets game.

After that dude came Spoon. Open Bar said he recognized one of their songs from the radio, but I didn't recognize it. Their set started with a bunch of people on stage, most notably a horn section and the first couple songs rocked. Then the horn section left and I didn't enjoy the middle part as much. Then the horns came back and I enjoyed it again. They were actually pretty good overall, but I liked the horns.

Spoon didn't go off stage until like 9:45 and I lamented to Open Bar that Arcade Fire wouldn't go on until 10:15 and wouldn't finish until like 1:00 and I wouldn't get home until like 2:00 or 2:30. He seemed to think they would finish before 12:30, but I wasn't feeling that.

So, as predicted Arcade Fire comes on at 10:15. They fucking rocked it out. The second best part about watching an Arcade Fire concert is that they rock the shit out of a song and they all jump around and put tons of energy into it and you can't help but reciprocate that energy. The single best part, however, is that as soon as each song is finished, all of them (and there are like 12 of them) put down their instruments and run around and pick up new instruments to play the next song. Regine, also known as the little tiny girl in the shiny dress, ran from one side of the stage to the other in between every song. She played at least 6 instruments during the concert and also sang. They played a bunch of songs everyone knows and some songs from their new album, which had come out just the day before. (Awesome Music Week review coming on that one once I wrap my head around it a little more.)

And my pre-concert request as stated to Open Bar, "I hope they play all the 'Car' songs," came to fruition. The second song they played was "Keep the Car Running" and then during the encore they played "No Cars Go". They also rocked "Power Out", another of my favorites. And the highlight of the show was, of course, the finale. Their last song was "Wake Up", during which the chanted chorus was, well, chanted by everyone in the audience. Fucking rocked.

Finish time, 12:30, as Open Bar predicted. Plus I got a t-shirt. And even though it's a medium and not large, it isn't embarrasingly small, only "hipster tight" as I'm going to call it. I would fit in well in Williamsburg wearing that shirt.

This concert jumps near the top of the list of concerts I have ever attended. The first Dave Matthews concert I ever went to in 1996 I think is still at the top, just because it represented way more than just a concert to me, and also because me and Side Bar were in the 10th row. But aside from that one, I think this one is next. It was just so damn good. As my Facebook status the next day said: "Arcade Fire at MSG last night. Awesome. Sofa King Awesome."

Awesome Music Week: The Shins

I've decided that Awesome Music Week will now last indefinitely. As such, this will be the last time I justify squeezing a band into awesome music week even though it ended like a year ago.

Most interesting part about this post: My suspicion is that, despite his uppity musical tastes, I really feel like LJT would like this album. That should be enough of a review, but, inexplicably, I'll keep typing.

The third album from The Shins, Wincing the Night Away, is awesome. Their first two albums are also very good, but, right at this moment, Wincing has hit me in the sweet spot. The thing about the sound of this album is that it's poppy and catchy and melodic while at the same time having a drama and maturity about it. Ok, I'm officially a pretentious douchebag for using the word maturity to describe a band, but that's the best I can come up with at the moment. The thing about this is that it sortof takes a pop type formula but turns it on its head.

I'm really having trouble putting this sound into words, so I apologize. It's a bit like if a band from the 80s evolved from a fluffy new wave type thing into a band who learns to play their instruments and use other sounds. The mellow vibe of this album really lets it stand on its own without the sense that the band is trying too hard. It's slickly produced, but not overproduced.

I'm guessing that I'm the only who has the album by The Script, but you may have heard their song Breakeven on the radio, if you still do the radio thing. The Script album is really good, but what you notice most about it is how polished it is, in particular for a debut album. Again, while it is a good album, they were trying too hard. This album by the Shins is just as polished, but with a deftness that reflects the actual level that the band is on.

I had trouble picking just two songs to represent this album, but I think these two do it well.

This song is called Sea Legs. Good example of the melodic thing mixing with the drama thing.


This one is called Split Needles.

Awesome Music Week: Ra Ra Riot

I guess it's not really awesome music week anymore, but I'll bring it back for these guys. Speaking of Awesome Music Week, the reason I did that was because of three bands in particular, The Ting Tings, Glasvegas, and Phoenix. Out of those three I must say the one that has really stuck with me is Phoenix. Their most recent album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is just great. If you don't have it yet, then get it.

Anyhow, this band Ra Ra Riot is fucking dope. Tons of energy, catchy, poppy, violin filled, indie style rock band from Syracuse, NY. Remember when indie bands were called alternative? Why can't they just be called rock bands? I can't get enough of this album at this point in time. A lot of the reviews of this band compare them with Vampire Weekend, who I have spent a couple posts on in the past, including one during awesome music week, but I don't really get that. Ra Ra Riot is way more like Phoenix and they actually remind me a little bit of Keane. Dude, if you don't have the first Keane album, Hopes and Fears, then you need to go out and get that one, too. You really don't even need to go out, just download it.

Maybe I'm just a sucker for violins in rock music. I'm pretty sure the violin thing is what initially drew me to the Dave Matthews Band. I didn't realize until just recently that a lot of people associate me with DMB more strongly than they associate me with anything else. I think that's kindof interesting. In particular since I feel like I've personally sortof outgrown them. That's not to say that I don't still love them, but they do not occupy the singular space in my life that they once did. This doesn't have anything to do with the current post.

In conclusion, Ra Ra Riot is awesome.

I like this song the best at this moment in time. It's called Too Too Too Fast. I dare you to listen to this chorus and not bop your head around.


This is a really interesting video for their song Dying Is Fine.

Old School Album of the Day: In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

Now, I call this old school because the album was released in 1998. The truth is, however, I only heard it for the first time about 3 weeks ago. This band is called Neutral Milk Hotel and this album is called In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. I just want to say fuck you to everyone on Earth for not telling me about this album for the last 12 years. (This is especially true for Open Bar if he has heard of them before just now. I can't expect Side or LJT to keep me appraised of indie music happenings.) It's a little bit like how no one watched The Wire until the show had actually ended its run, but now that you've seen it you know how the world actually works (incidentally, that post about how The Wire is the greatest show in the history of television is noticeably missing from this blog. Although at this point the entirety of the post might just consist of the sentence "The Wire is the greatest show in the history of television." To be honest, I would write the post, but something inside me really wants to hear what Open Bar has to say about it.)

Anyway, this Neutral Milk Hotel album is genuinely one of the most beautiful records ever released. The lyrics are so strange and interesting and really stand out while at the same time blending in really well to the music. They also make really great use of the trumpet throughout the whole album. I don't know that I've ever really heard the trumpet used in such an interesting way. Especially in rock type music. Relatedly, you can definitely hear how this band would go on to influence Arcade Fire in the following years. Arcade Fire also has some strange instrumentation and ear filling sounds and awkward lyrics that somehow weave into the songs.

But this isn't really like Arcade Fire. Kathy says it reminds her of Bob Dylan. I can see that, although I don't know if I neccessarily agree. It definitely reminds me of Arcade Fire, as mentioned. It's a bit like Radiohead's quieter stuff, but at the same time not really. But it also really kindof stands out on its own. I would suggest that everyone go and download this on iTunes right now. It's that good. (YP, MP, I don't know all this industry jargon. What movie? Open Bar don't ruin it for everyone.)

There are lots of Open Bar shout outs in this post.

This Will Ultimately Cost Me A Lot Of Money

Ok, so Pandora Radio is a website where you type in the name of a band or a song you like and then they create a radio station for you based on that selection. You have the opportunity to rate every song that they play, which further refines the selections. First off, this is just a really good idea. It's like you love a certain type of music, but maybe you're tired of listening to the same albums over and over again or you want to discover something new. Also if you have a job where you sit in front of a computer all day or something of that nature, this would be way better than listening to a real radio station. Every few songs they play a sponsor commercial, but only one. You can just stream it over the internet and hook up some headphones or whatever. They also have a free iPhone app so you can listen to it anywhere.

So today is the first time I've listened to this for any extended period of time. To start with, I put that I wanted to hear songs similar to Arcade Fire, whom I love. So obviously they play an Arcade Fire song first. Cool. Then the next song is "Let Down" from Radiohead. I have also developed a recent pseudo-obsession with Radiohead. And "Let Down" is easily my favorite Radiohead song. So we're off to a good start with this Pandora thing. The next song they play I've never heard before, but it's awesome. It's called "Hummingbird" by Wilco. Then the next song is similarly awesome. A song called "Nothing Better" by The Postal Service. Anyway, the point is that this Pandora thing is a pretty amazing idea along with similarly amazing execution to this point. Not all the songs are super fantastic, but they are all at least pretty good.

Anyway, I go to iTunes and I end up buying those two albums from Wilco and The Postal Service based on the previews and the strength of those songs. I'm afraid that if I keep listening to Pandora Radio, I'm gonna end up spending a lot of money on iTunes. Now, I've listened to about 20 songs so far and I haven't ended up buying all of the albums, so that's good. But I have a real fear that this may be something I end up putting a lot into.

UPDATE: PS - I strongly encourage everyone to go to Pandora, put in A Tribe Called Quest and sit back and relax. Make sure you have like 3 hours to kill, though, because once they play "The Reminisce Over You" by Pete Rock and CL Smooth, you'll never want to turn it off.

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Select Start

I know you read the title of that post and immediately thought of Contra, one of the best games ever created for the original NES. (Incidentally, did you know that the "select" was only necessary if you were going to play a 2 player game?) This post is not about that, but, tangentially related, is about Vampire Weekend's new album, which came out today, entitled, wait for it, Contra. (I've reread that senctence about 5 times and I'm pretty sure it holds up despite all the tangents.) You may remember Vampire Weekend from Awesome Music Week a while back.

Vampire Weekend gained the bulk of their success from internet buzz and, as such, continue to have a strong internet presence. You can listen to their whole album online and you can even embed the album into a blog post to listen to it from here. I don't know if Vampire Weekend is everyone's cup of tea, but man do I love them.

Beatles Friday: Why Don't We Do It in the Road?

This is a lesser known but still dope song.

Only two Beatoos are on the track with Ringo on drums and handclaps and Paul on lead guitar, bass and vocals.

Here's something I bet you didn't know: it's about monkeys fucking.

Said Sir Paul:

A male [monkey] just hopped on the back of this female and gave her one, as they say in the vernacular. Within two or three seconds he hopped off again and looked around as if to say, ‘It wasn't me,’ and she looked around as if there'd been some mild disturbance ... And I thought ... that's how simple the act of procreation is ... We have horrendous problems with it, and yet animals don't.

In Which I Compare My Old iPod With My New iPod

Some evil genius who works for Apple managed to invent an entire line of devices that become indispensible in your life almost immediately, cost like $300, and, like clockwork, break every three years. Then when you go to see if they can fix it they either say that they can't or that it will cost $150. Either way, you might as well just get a new one because they get better all the time. So, for the second time since I digitized my music collection, my iPod broke.

I don't want to hear from you about how you still have the iPod with the 4 buttons on top and it still works great. I take my iPod everywhere and I listen to it all day. I go running with it and I have it in my car and it gets a lot of general wear every day. I take care of it, but there's just an unavoidable depreciation that it goes through (that's probably not a good context for "depreciation") every day. But at the same time, there's no reason that it should simply stop working after a couple years. The Apple "genius" (seriously, Apple?) went on and on about how the iPod classic just has a regular hard drive and those moving parts just won't hold up to that wear and tear. I never had a walkman or discman break like this and there are a billion more moving parts in those.

Anyhow (see what i mean), I had to get a new iPod and there were many reasons why it seemed to make sense that I should get an iPod touch instead of a classic iPod. First is that the "genius" (for the love of Christ) was going on and on about the moving parts thing and how an iTouch uses flash memory and has no moving parts and will stand up better to the everyday use. I don't know if I believe that line of bullshit as the iTouch seems a lot more fragile, but it definitely doesn't have any moving parts, so I guess there's something to it. Also the iTouch is just cooler, isn't it. And since I'm 31 and married and have a kid and I've managed to hold down a job for 7 years now, I just have to take cool wherever I can get it. (I totally understand the 55 year olds in Corvettes now, by the way.)

So you'd think the iTouch must be better than the classic iPod in every conceivable way, wouldn't you, but, surprisingly, that's not the case. There are some things about it that are indsiputably amazing, but there are some minor annoying things that just bug me about it. First of all, it won't charge in my car. If I plug it in to the thing that's supposed to pump the songs through the radio and simultaneously charge it, it pops up a message that says chargin is not supported for some reason. So it does play the music on the radio, but it does not cahrge. I never had to think about my Classic charging because it was plugged into my car so often that it would always be at full charge. Now I have to worry about if it's charged or not before I leave the house or actually bring the charger with me and charge it at work or wherever. That's fucking ghetto.

Secondly, you can only work the thing by actually toucing the screen and interacting with the interface. It sounds stupid to say that you have to touch the iTouch to make it work, but it's really annoying. I can't just reach into my pocket and replay or skip a song. I have to take it out of my pocket, press the button, unlock the screen, and then do whatever I want to do. And you obviously have to look at the screen to do it, so it's far more difficult to do while driving. Or just sitting, for that matter.

Additionally, there is this feature where you can shake the iTouch to make it shuffle the music. This falls under the "just because you can, doesn't mean you should" category. I don't see why anyone would need to use this feature. Plus, unless you disable it, it mistakes anything for shaking. Things like, ahh, walking, or slipping into your shirt pocket. Until I realized what was going on and disabled it I had to take the thing out of my pocket in order to unshuffle it every ten steps. Freakin' stupid.

Also, I ended up getting only the 32GB model when i really should have gotten the 64GB model. I was only using 30GB on my classic, but I really need more room to expand, especially with the much greater video capabilities of this one. Really lacked foresight there, though it was also $100 more expensive, which is obviously why I didn't get it in the first place. The classic is less expensive and now only comes in a 160GB model, which is clearly more space than I need. I can't imagine who would need that much space on a Classic iPod with inferior video capabilities.

The one thing that does make this far far far cooler than a classic iPod is the applications, or "apps" as the kids are calling them these days. There are tons of free apps for cool games or any other sort of thing. Also you can pay for apps I guess, though I have yet to, and probably won't. And the video quality is way better with the bigger screen and everything. It's also much easier to navigate through the video section in the Touch than with the Classic. The apps alone really do a lot in terms of balancing out the bad things, but those minor differences are really really annoying on a day to day basis.

Beatles Friday: You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)

One of the most unusual and least known songs in the Beatles catalogue is "You Know My Name (Look Up the Number), released as a "B" side to one of their best known songs, "Let It Be".

It is delightful in its silliness.

They began to record it in 1967 but did not complete it until 1969 and it features Brian Jones, of the Rolling Stones on saxaphone.

John Lennon got the title off of a phone book slogan and worked the eight words into a great little song.

Paul said of it, "John Lennon turned up at the studio and said, 'I've got a new song'. I said, 'What's the words?' and he replied 'You know my name look up the number'. I asked, 'What's the rest of it?' 'No, no other words, those are the words. And I want to do it like a mantra!'"

The song goes through five sections, each of which get progressively more bizarre: first is a rocking group singalong, followed by a kind of reggae beat section, then a cheesy lounge singer type thing, then what can best described as a bunch of muppets talking and, finally, a couple of unintelligible old British guy mumbling to a jazzy tune.

Enjoy!

An (Un)Interesting Revelation

A thought crystallized in my mind yesterday. I've actually been ruminating on this for a while, but now I'm confident in this conclusion. I'm pretty sure, almost certain in fact, that my single favorite song ever is "Linger" by the Cranberries. I guess this isn't that exciting for anyone, but it's interesting that I feel like I've always known that I loved this song, but I just kindof decided yesterday that I loved this one more than all the others. Except it wasn't a decision, it was just a realization. It was like in those romantic comedies where there's 90 minutes of contrivances and then in the end they realize that they've loved each other all along.

I guess it's not something that's super important to realistically define your favorite songs or movies or books or anything, but for some reason it's important to us as people to have firm decisions on at least a top 5 or something. Vis-a-vis songwise I always sortof hovered around a few favorites, including "#41" by the Dave Matthews Band, "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" by The Police, and the aforementioned "Linger". There are obviously other songs that I love, but these three hover above the rest for me. Well, these along with Bach's Cello Suite No. 1, but I can't really say that's my favorite because you can't sing along. Incidentally, that Police song is just amazing. It was written in 1978, but it never goes out of style. It doesn't fit into any kind of mold. If it was released today it would be a hit. Anyway, this ceases to be interesting to anyone but me.

Please to enjoy:

Can You Help A Brotha Out?

I need your help everybody. This has been driving me crazy for months now.

Listen to this song by Phoenix, who you may remember from Awesome Music Week, for the song "Lost and Found". Right at the 1:20 mark there is sortof a downward chord progression that I'm like 99% sure is from a Simon and Garfunkel song, but for the life of me I can't figure out which song. What song is this from?

Where's Luke Concert Series: Regina Spektor

Tangentially related, two of our four blogmates went to the Springsteen concert last week, but nary a word of it has hit the interweb. Seems like something that would make a good blog post, especially since both of them told me the concert was awesome.

Anyhow, the week before the aforementioned concert Side Bar says to me, he says, "I'm going to see Springsteen and he's going to play the entire Born in the USA album. I'm pretty phyched." And then I said, "You may be going to see Springsteen or whoever, if that's how you pronounce it, but I'm going to see Regina Spektor at Radio City Music Hall." And then he goes, "Who's that?" For serious, that's what he said.

So, on that note, if you've not heard of Regina Spektor, then you are missing out. Or if you just saw her for the first time on Saturday Night Live last week, then you gots to get your listen on. The short version of the story is that Regina is a female songwriter and piano player and so she automatically falls in the category with Tori Amos and Sara McLachlan and maybe an Alannis Morissette or Fiona Apple. The thing is that Regina Spektor is as different from those people as it is possible for a female songwriter and piano player to be.

First of all, she's originally from Russia, then from the City but spent her high school years at Yeshiva in Bergen County and also in Fair Lawn High (go Cutters! side note: that Fair Lawn mascot must have taken on a whole new meaning circa 1998), so she's cool. Second her songs are just awesome. She really plays with the rhythms and melodies of each song and the lyrics are really interesting. She plays a lot with strange dissonances that don't sound non-musical, but rather highlight different aspect of the song. I could go on, bottom line, she's awesome and pretty amazing.

Anyhow, last night was the concert and it was enormously cool. First of all, after all these years, I had never actually been to Radio City Music Hall. It's a beautiful theater and it's enormous. Like, enormous. Then the concert was just great. She managed to play all of the songs I like from four different albums. It was a very cool experience. It was similar, but somehow unlike any other concert I'd ever been to. The sound was great, her voice is beautiful, and she's got a really interesting way of pronouncing some words in her songs. I'm gonna post a couple of videos to give you an idea of her stuff.

This is her best known song, I think, "Fidelity". Notice what I mean about the playing around with the sounds. Speaking of people from North Jersey, doesn't Regina look a lot like another Toker who knows how to, but won't, say "cheeseburger" in Russian.


This is my current favorite song of hers, "Us", which, incidentally, opens the movie 500 Days of Summer, which I also really liked.


The last video is "Ode to Divorce". This is a really good example of the strange, seemingly non-fitting lyrics here right at the 2:00 mark. Also it's a beautiful song.

Seriously, Though, What Is The Best Beatles Album?

First of all, is there a difference between your favorite Beatles album and the one that is objectively the best? Can you really make a coherent argument on a foundation of, "Well, in terms of being groundbreaking, Rubber Soul is their 'best' album, but my favorite is still Magical Mystery Tour."? Also, do we have to count the entire White Album? Because, honestly my favorite Beatles album is the first disc of the White Album, whereas I can do entirely without the second disc. But I also love Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road. And, well, shit it's all great isn't it?

At the same time, what is your favorite Beatles song? I'd be lying if I said that I had a single favorite static Beatles song. I do know, however, that I'm a Paul devotee. I love Yesterday, Blackbird, She's Leaving Home, Maxwell's Silver Hammer, I Will. It's not that I don't love the others, but I do find myself leaning towards the Paulish stuff.

Dear Lord Jesus, Thank You For Jay-Z

Holy fucking shit, Jay-Z's new album, The Blueprint 3, is so good I almost don't believe it. Every time I'm about to give up on rap music, Jay-Z comes out with a new album and this one is no exception. Let me just say this, is his song "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-tune)" the beat is supported the whole way through by a clarinet (it's possible that it's a saxophone). And it's not like, "why is there a clarinet on a rap song?", it's more like "why isn't there clarinet in every rap song?" I don't know what else to say. It's just so damn good.

Jay-Z aside, I don't really know what else to think about the rest of the rap world. As good as Jay-Z has been since 1996 is how bad the remainder of rappers have been since then. The exceptions, Eminem I guess, are few and far between. Even guys who were great at one point, let's say Nas or Q-Tip or Method Man, have been wack for years. I'm in a quandary of sorts in that I know I love rap music, yet there isn't any new rap music that I like even a little bit. I can name a hundred rap songs that I love, but none of them have come out since I was in high school. I know it's not that I've changed, because every time Jay-Z comes out I love it, and I can appreciate that Eminem was perhaps the cleverest rapper ever and threw down some great shit. I know in my heart then, that new rap music just sucks.

Hopefully they're just going through their adolescent phase, kindof like rock and roll in the '80s, before they blow it back up. Of course, for every Nirvana and Pearl Jam from the '90s there are a hundred Matchbox 20s and Nickelbacks sucking the life out of rock and roll.

Anyway, thank you Jay-Z.

If You Were Gonna Have A Party...

My buddy, the Commodore, formerly known in blog parlance as Sushi Bar, recently asked me a question that I figured I'd open up to the forum. Incidentally, I changed his nickname because Sushi Bar was an exceedingly stupid nickname that I came up with and the Commodore is a good nickname, so there. Anyway, he's having a party (presumably in his new South American enclave) and wants to have an old school hip hop theme. Except he spent those formative years in Texas listening to the Judds or whoever, so he doesn't know anything about it. The question, then, is if you were to have an old school hip hop party, what would you include? For the sake of argument, let's say that old school is anything more than 10 years old.

The obvious ones:
"Scenario" - A Tribe Called Quest
"This or That" - Black Sheep
"OPP" - Naughty by Nature (You could substitute "Hip Hop Hooray" if necessary)
"Rapper's Delight" - Sugar Hill Gang
"Rock Box" - Run DMC (any song by Run DMC is acceptable. This is my favorite)
"They Want EFX" - Das EFX
"Momma Said Knock You Out" - LL Cool J
"Sometimes We Rhyme Slow" - Nice and Smooth
"Fugee La" - The Fugees
"The Humpty Dance" - Digital Underground

A couple of personal favorites:
"Parents Just Don't Understand" - DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince
"Basketball" - Curtis Blow
"Where I'm From" - Digable Planets
"93 'Til Infinity" - Souls of Mischief

What would you include? My list is far more old school than 10 years. I should have included some Jay Z and probably Eminem. I also left a few out intentionally, in order to elicit some comments. So comment, biotches.

Tuesday Classic Video: The Best Video Ever?

Someone took a lot of time putting this together. It's pretty amazing.

The Frabulous Playlist

UPDATE: I did some extensive searching through some old mix CDs I had a discovered a bunch of songs last night that were not in my iTunes Library. Many of them went directly onto the Frabulous playlist. As a result, rather than 192 songs, the Frabulous playlist now has 237 songs, all of which are reflected on the list.

It took longer than it seems like it should to make a list of all the songs on the Frabulous Playlist. If you missed something, I posted earlier about making the perfect iTunes playlist. And yes, the second song on the list (sorted alphabetically) is "After The Rain" by Nelson. Deal with it, bitch. I am not suggesting that these are the only good songs in the world. I'm also not suggesting that the list will remain static forever or that there aren't other songs that are good enough to be on the list.

I'll start your comment for you. Choose from one of the below:
a) This playlist sucks because....
b) How can you say this is the best playlist ever when you don't even have...
c) I don't believe you have [song name] on the list and you claim this is a good list...
d) Now that I've read your playlist I know why you pussy out of fights all the time.
(choose d only if angry at the whole world)

Zen and the Art of the iTunes Playlist

I first got an iPod in 2005. Getting an iPod versus having a CD player is one of those enormous leaps on the technological timeline that really is life changing. I don't want to overstate the idea when I say it's life changing. It's not like having a kid or anything, but at the same time, for someone who likes to listen to music (and I assume that everyone falls into that category. Like making a subgroup of people who like breathing), having an iPod changes the way you live your life. First of all, you don't have to buy CDs anymore. Secondly, you can carry your entire music collection on one iPod. I'm guessing that I have a relatively large and eclectic music collection that has grown pretty steadily since roughly 1989. My collection, combined with my wife's comprises roughly 30GB of memory on my iPod, which is cabaple of holding 80GB. So I've got a ways to go.

Incidentally, at the time i bought my current iPod, the choices in terms of memory (side note: I really hate people who use the term vis-a-vis and also people who use the suffix -wise. For example in this current sentence, if you would say "my choices vis-a-vis memory" or "my choices memorywise" then you suck. If you use the first one, then you are a pretentious douche, the heir to the Masengill fortune, if you will. If you use the second one, then you need to gain a firmer grasp on the English language to more clearly state what you mean.) were to get an iPod that held 4GB, 8GB, 80GB, and 160GB, and nothing in between. I really only needed like 40GB to hold my existing collection and potentially grown into a slightly larger one, but that choice was lacking. At the same time, I seriously considered buying the 160GB one because it was actually a good value vis-a-vis paying like $50 more for twice as much memory, but then I decided I would never use the 80GB, so there was no way I'd ever use the 160GB.

All of this is sortof beside the point I want to make, except that it's all related iPodwise. My real point is that since I got that first iPod in 2005 I've been working on creating the perfect iTunes playlist. It's much harder than it seems it should be. The nature of the iTunes playlist is that you are not limited by things like space and time (Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.) and as such, you can make the playlist as long as you want. On a CD you've got to pare the choices down to basically 15 or so songs, so you end up with a pretty tight mix every time (it's in the gies) although it could get boring to listen to in a couple months or so. My working theory was that I should be able to create one playlist that I could listen to forever. It would basically act as what I would consider to be the perfect radio station with songs from every genre with different energies and really the only thing they have in common is awesomeness.

With awesomeness as my copilot my first iTunes playlist, creatively titled "Jerry's Playlist", consisted of about 600 songs. I would put my iPod on shuffle, and listen to it wherever I went. In the car, running, walking to places, you get the idea. The problem with the 600 song playlist is that there are too many marginally good songs and not enough awesome songs. I would end up skipping a lot of songs and that kindof defeated the purpose of the perfect playlist in my mind. The second playlist I made, "The Short List", was created to remedy that song skipping situation. I knew the problem was that there were too many songs on the list and I needed to limit myself to only songs that I really liked. That list had about 350 songs. The second list ended up being only the second step in the evolutionary process. Still there were some songs that were not good enough to stand up to repeated listening, which is to say forever.

About three weeks ago I created what, to date, is the greatest iTunes playlist ever created. It's titled "Frabulous", obviously, and it has 192 songs. I went through my entire music library and picked only the songs that I was confident I could listen to over and over for eternity. The other day something happened that has never happened before. I was listening to the playlist at work and the music stopped. I thought it might be a really low intro to a song and then I thought that the battery may have died, but when I looked at the iPod, it turns out that I had actually listened to the entire playlist all the way through. Again, this is something that has never happened. Typically I'll listen to the playlist until I get in the mood to listen to a particular album or a specific song and then I'll back out of the playlist to do that and then come back to it. When you come back to the playlist it reshuffles the songs and the count starts over again.

In short, this playlist is amazing. It's as close to perfect as I've come so far vis-a-vis playlistwise. I was initially confounded by my ability to make what was essentially a neverending playlist, but now I realize that all good things must come to an end. Like this post.

Michael Jackson Died

I don't want to get into a big long thing. It just struck me as I was watching coverage of the death of Michael Jackson that I'm old enough to remember the mid 1980s when Michael Jackson was unquestionably the single coolest person on the planet and also the more recent years when he was undeniably the single weirdest person on the planet.

In looking back on his life, I just can't help but feel anything but sad for him. I'm struck that the coverage of his death, along with many of the more recent reports on him, really say nothing about what was clearly a ridiculous amount of psychological, physical, and emotional abuse that was inflicted on him as a child and an adolescent. I'm not trying to excuse him from whatever he may have been accused of, but just look at his behavior even outside of those allegations. He clearly never came to terms with all that abuse, and I'm sure that being the most talented Jackson also meant that he received the most abuse.

In the end, all I really want to say is that I love his music. And now that he's gone and not acting like a...well, there aren't even words, but maybe we can just remember the music.

Awesome Music Week: The Bravery

I first heard them: On iTunes, after having it recommended to me by a smart computer
Would Side Bar like them?: maybe to no.
Would Open Bard like them?: no
Would LJT like them?: surprisingly, he's probably the most likely fan. But I'll still say probably not

The Bravery are another synthesizer based rock and roll slash new wave revival band. Lots of energy, good use of the synthesizer, very 80s throwback from the music to the wardrobe and everything. I really like them, but my guess is that none of my blogmates will really like them.

Interestingly for their second album they made two versions. First they put out a non new wave version called which was "The Sun" and then a few months later they remixed all the songs into sythesized versions and released bascially the same album and called in "The Moon". And so together their second album is "The Sun and The Moon".

This is really the only video I could find of them that I could embed into the page, although this song is kinda wack. I would suggest you check out An Honest Mistake off their first album. I like their second album much better, but there isn't even a good video to link to off their second album. It's sortof too bad because even though this is a band that you all may not like, I don't feel like these videos available accurately represent them.