Watch me hit the ground running.
Good evening and welcome back to our normally scheduled programming. I have been listening to a lot of music in the past year that is not necessarily morbid or depressing, but rather comes from a place of ominous or somber contemplation. Just what does that mean, you ask? Looking at the posts I've written about Portishead, Akira Yamaoka and Gayngs, it should be apparent that I have a certain zeal for music that serves, in a way, to create an ad hoc soundtrack for my own life. Songs that fit well behind walking down the streets of Minneapolis and observing life while contemplating my own narrative. Par example, there is a play list on my phone titled 'Sneaking'. This is not to say I do any sneaking of any sort, but that it would all be music that would fit well behind footage of a spy looking over their shoulder as they slip undetected past guards, or perhaps a gumshoe trailing someone while flipping through a notebook, perusing his clues. I like the idea of living out a noir film in my mind; admittedly it's escapism at the basest level. I probably sound incredibly vain and delusional as I type all of this.
The admission, though, does nothing to diminish the enjoyment. It's just a thing I do to help me find an amusing little way to get through the day. A dark winter's night walking back from the bus stop feels a little less difficult to endure with the proper soundtrack. I've probably scared you off by now, haven't I? Oh well. The point of all this embarrassing admission is that in my play list I stumbled across a song that, while certainly fantastic and notorious among certain circles, it goes largely unappreciated by today's audiences. The song I speak of? Radiohead's sublime addition to the soundtrack of 1996's Romeo + Juliet, 'Talk Show Host'.
Initially a b-side to the heartbreaking and bleak single 'Street Spirit', 'Talk Show Host' was actually remixed by Nellee Hooper for the soundtrack and given a whole new feel. Hooper's influence here is certainly worth note as well, in particular for his work with other artists I've written on such as Bjork, Garbage, Massive Attack and the amazing (and pending relevant article) single by U2 'Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me'. Hooper's influence added a bit of thump and groove to what is otherwise a talented if stiff and uptight band of self-important artists' artists. What would have been a fairly rote take on the Radiohead sound at the time was suddenly broken and allowed to breathe. It turns out when you crack open a Radiohead song and let the songs grow in their exposure to the natural world around them, they do so organically and in a very natural progression of ideas and themes already present.
Hello, hello.
This is it, friends and neighbors. My last round up before I start writing regular content again. I must confess it has been nice not to be under the perpetual self-imposed deadline of fresh, charming content every day. On the flip side, I've begun to itch, not having that full release of the creative mind. I've had a chance to reboot and restock. Watched a few movies, listened to some music, dl'ed some podcasts and am in the midst of another book. So starting tomorrow I'll be doing my usual columns on things you SIMPLY MUST KNOW ABOUT but may already be well aware of. At any rate, we will soon be back at equilibrium. Until then, feel free to look back at some of the more modern selections from the first 100 posts of sekrit awesome things:
Das Racist - The craziest post-modern, da-da rappers around. DL their mixtapes. NOW.
Simple Science - The Get Up Kids return from the grave with renewed vigor!
Spoon - Their freshest single is a sick, sick mess full of off kilter drums. It's a knockout.
Sleigh Bells - Noise-pop electro duo from New York making some of the most popular music in some circles.
Atmosphere - Minneapolis' legends of hip hop put out a crazy good free album a couple years ago.
The Strokes - In light of their new album I offer a look back at the album that shaped the decade.
Childish Gambino - A look at the multi-talented career of Donald Glover and his musical exploits. Not long after that article was written he released a brand new EP. Check it out.
Gayngs - The mega-group has made huge waves in the music community this year. Find out why.
Analog Heart - American Idol winner David Cook made a phenomenal, hush-hush album before his big win.
The Gorillaz - Damon Albarn and Co. made an entire free album all on the iPad. It's a strange, beautiful thing.
That's it for now, kids. Like I said, I miss the regular grind even if the break has been nice. I just had to take a brief reprieve to build up a little momentum. Tomorrow we're back at it. Until then, read up and sweet dreams.
Evening.
Way too late to be doing this. See how it gets when you let life happen? Things get re-ordered and priorities get in the way, and suddenly I'm frantically typing up a blog post just to get one up and tallied for the day. In the spirit of a frenzied feeling of harried crossed wires, the theme of today's roundup is posts on Mash-Ups and cultural jams, things that are spliced and resequenced for the sake of art. I think the reason I obsess over this concept is that it expresses the sheer possibility of infinite permutations, that even after a thing is created and labeled finished it can still be reconstituted and put into fresh context to become a new thing with new meaning. Peruse these pieces, won't you?
Kids & Explosions - A look at a fantastic mash-up album that doesn't just pair up songs, it creates whole new pieces.
Simpsons/Futurama Crossover Crisis - Just as good as it sounds, honestly. Two great tastes that go great together.
Chronologically Lost - Why my brain melts at the idea of watching Lost in sequential, chronological order.
Star Wars Xmas Invasion - Nothing at all related to the horrible special you're thinking of. Just look.
Fan Edits - In which I fawn over the concept of new & improved versions of films perceived as flawed.
Jaydiohead - Hipster Gods meet Hip Hop Deity courtesy of Max Tannone.
The Hood Internet - Watch these artists reconstitute the amazing work of Felt via Electro records. As dope as it sounds.
Affiliyated - In which the relentless Doomtree re-grind the slow-burn slow-jams of Gayngs.
Girl Talk - The DJ who crashed the internet last fall with All Day, a sick party album.
See what I meant? All these posts are basically accounts of my brain shutting down over the circular, downward spiral logic of these meta-contextual works of art. Read 'em and weep. My brain is fried. Yours can be too, just read up.
Holy Hannah, people.
Super warm today.
Like, warm enough that there are real threats of thunder storms and bad weather. I love storms. Can't get enough of it. As long as it doesn't interfere with grilling, then it's all gravy. Spent the weekend getting things done. Paperwork, errands, cleaning, all that jazz. Spent last night watching Shaun of the Dead and poking around on my iPad. Fun way to watch movies, felt like I was researching it the whole time. But that's beside the point. The point, dear readers, is that you need, I mean NEED to know about Doomtree. These local musicians are masters at what they do. I went so far as to spend an entire week just breaking down their members and respective releases, all the while barely scratching the surface on what this amazing rap crew has accomplished. Talented to unfathomable depths, they comprise the best and brightest Minneapolis has to offer. Check out these posts to get a rough idea of who they are and what they've done:
Hand Over Fist - The unstoppable duo that is Mike Mictlan and Lazerbeak.
Ipecac Neat - A look back at the rise of P.O.S. and his debut album.
Sims' False Hopes 14 - The stealth release of a fantastic artist whose ethic is relentless.
Dessa's Scattered Interlude - An examination of the literary genius of song-smith Dessa Darling.
Rebel Yellow Deluxe - How multiple versions of Cecil Otter's superb 2nd album makes an interesting extended mix.
DJ for MCs - The sublime nature of Paper Tiger's False Hopes and why it moves me.
Meatcleaver + Shotgun - MK Larada's Break In Two and some other details of the crew's work.
Affiliyated - A look into Doomtree's re-grinds on the mind-blowing Gayngs album Relayted. Read it.
Thus ended the week-long Doomtree Diatribe. They're abosolute favorites of mine, whose work and crazy live shows I evangelize to any and all who will listen. They made a massive splash at SXSW this year and now Dessa and Sims are embarking on a national tour, so be sure to check them out. I'm gonna cut here, as the temp has dropped a solid 15 degrees and I have a dinner to grill. Gotta beat the rain, son. Shrimp's waiting.
Gang busters.
Been resting and pressing reset. Feels great but I am still mending. Lost my voice a bit but it's coming back. There's no misery like wanting to blow off some steam with a happy hour on Friday but not being able to due to sheer volume of consumed cold medicine. Oh well, if thats the worst I'm dealing with then my life is just fine. My better half and I spent the day running around and filing paperwork for Big Things and we're both exhausted. While she's heading out with her friends, I'm taking time to get stuff done around the apartment, so tonight's post is another roundup of previous posts. Tonight we look at the music from the turn of the century. It seems to be a period that I am particularly focused on, due in part to the impact it had on me as I grew up. Everyone loves the music they listened to when they were like 16-21 and I'm no different. That's probably why I proselytize so much about this awesome era of music that (thankfully) has yet to see an ironic resurgent ascension. Regardless, here are some amazing, if neglected, albums from that time:
Depresso - A tale of my joy in finding a lost gem by the Smashing Pumpkins.
Nirvana - A similar tale, only centering around a sekrit Nirvana treasure.
Portishead - Hands down the best Trip Hop music I've ever heard. Adds a film score to your life.
Siamese Dream - A definite desert island disc, one of my favorite albums EVAR.
Adore - The fascinating and underrated sea-change in the Smashing Pumpkins story.
Garbage - Remember when this band was the hottest ticket around? This was why.
Version 2.0 - In which Garbage one-ups their own sublime debut. Still fantastic.
Neon Ballroom - A sign of the great things to come from a young band, where Silverchair grew the beard.
Dust Brothers - A fantastic marriage of du-jour music and ascendant film style.
Foo Fighters - Before they were the best modern rock band around, they were just one man. Literally.
The Colour and the Shape - Foo Fighters sound even better as a full band. A phenomenal album.
Fiona Apple - Her sophomore album is a beautiful, bizarre thing that surely merits more praise than it gets.
Homogenic - I swoon for Bjork; this envelope-pushing album was years ahead of it's time.
Check Your Head - My favorite Beasties album, feels like a cohesive band wrote & played it because they did.
Is This It? - Wherein The Strokes changed the landscape for the next 10 years.
Can't Change Me - Chris Cornell's haunting, absolute tops single that was criminally under-appreciated.
Insomniac - When a band like Green Day feels persecuted, they go deeper into depression, with great results.
J.A.R. - How did this awesome single hit #1 and I never really heard it? I look into why this is.
There we go. As you can see, I have a bit of a fixation on this time period in popular music. I guess you write what you know. So it goes. You take a look through here and see if something doesn't strike your fancy. I've got an apartment to clean and a hungry self to feed. I'll see you tomorrow. Till then, kids. Till then.
Friday, kids. Good gawd.
Took long enough to get here. It's quickly become patio weather here in MPLS and I've even seen more than a share of kids rocking the shorts already, despite the fact it's only 60 at the moment. Considering how cold out it was just 10 days ago, though, I'll allow it. Myself, I can never wear shorts. Just don't care for them, plain and simple. I know that sounds nuts. But that's me, not you. You should enjoy short pants all you want. You should also enjoy your Friday night. If, like me, you're still shaking off the grip of a nasty little virus, you might not be out and tearing it up tonight. That's just fine, I dig. To improve your Friday night entertainment options take a look at this collection of posts I wrote about online content. I put online content in your online content so your online content will...never mind. Just peruse at your leisure.
Webcomics galore - A series of absurd and hysterical webcomics, all highly respected.
Nerdist - The best podcast also has a fantastic site now! Go and see!
Gamespite - A repository for retro/2D gaming with a great community to boot.
The Ricky Gervais Show - Also available in podcast form. Witness the insight of Karl Pilkington.
WTF With Marc Maron - An amazing series of interviews with the best, most notorious comedians alive today.
Nostalgia Critic - Tearing apart the best and worst of your childhood entertainment
Think Geek - Coolest shop I've been on.
I think between these posts you should be able to find something funny or insightful to help you relax and unwind this weekend. Take a look and enjoy coasting into Saturday.
Hey there, friends and nieghbors.
Short post today, still fighting the lovely bug I picked up in the aeroplane. Weather is gorgeous (for this time of year) in MPLS. Tomorrow is Friday, super excited for that after an exhausting week. Been reading on the bus a lot (and my lunch break when I can sneak it in) and working my way through the stack of books my loved ones were kind enough to impart on Christmas. Shows you how busy I've been and how many books I received if it's April and I still have a few left. I don't want to just chew through them though, blindly flipping pages and glossing over developments in a desperate quest for completed titles. To quote The Simpsons "I would be morally remiss to display these books on my shelf if I hadn't read them, all". So in the interest of encourage more torrid affairs with the written word, secretive nights with reading lights and hardcovers, I offer these posts I've written in lovely ode to the written book:
Sleepwalk With Me - In which Mike Birbiglia breaks our hearts and funny bones with personal anecdotes.
Calvin & Hobbes - Hands down the funniest, smartest strip to emerge from the newspaper.
A Dirty Job - How the gift of this book introduced me to this amazingly funny and twisted fiction author.
The Stand - King's magnum opus, an American Lord of the Rings, inspiration for the amazing Lost.
Fluke - Another of Moore's insane, funny and astounding novels, this one about whales in Hawaii.
Norwegian Wood - Murakami blowing my mind with his touching, nostalgic work about (not his) youth.
Wild Sheep Chase - Another amazing Murakami work, this one a hard-boiled detective story.
The Long Halloween - The best Batman you'll find, other than Year One. An crazy good tale, inspired the Dark Knight.
That's all for tonight, folks. I'm gonna cut loose here. Gotta rest up and get plenty of fluids and rest. Tell you what - I'll make a deal. You read some of these and I will too. How's that sound? Good? Cool. See you tomorrow.
Hey cats.
100 posts. Has a nice round ring to it, huh? I think so, but maybe that's just our human nature to attach significance to even integers with zeros after them. Either way, I'm glad I've gotten this far and am so appreciative of the audience I have. Just knowing there's anyone out there reading about the awesome things I'm excited about makes me happy - that's the whole point, just to let other people know about some particular thing that is excellent but has little recognition nowadays. So, having hit a nice round, distant number (and once again feeling like crud after being crammed into an airplane twice in less than a week) I thought instead of simply taking a brief sabbatical I would compile some of the similarly themed posts for a few days. Nothing too long, just enough of a break to recharge my batteries and enable me to give you the best of my rambling brain. Today, then? Today we have the posts I've done about movies! Look at them:
Brick - see Joseph Gordon Levitt make his presence known in a great modern noir.
Monsters - a great indie film made for unbelievably little, very cool.
Cloverfield - why 'The Blair Witch Eats Manhattan' is actually pretty rad.
Fan Edits - In which I show my apologist leanings in favor of The Phantom Menace and the Matrix Sequels.
Spirited Away - one of my favorite movies, full of gorgeous, quiet moments.
The Matrix Trilogy - say what you want, but these were amazing to see on Blu Ray!
The Goonies - my secret love of Cyndi Lauper's black-sheep hit.
Moon - the most poignant, sorrowful and above all lovingly done sci-fi film of the last five years.
Mystery Team - the twisted take on Encyclopedia Brown/Hardy Boys starring Donald Glover.
Take a pass through these excellent movie-centric posts and get an idea for what to watch this weekend. I know you can find more than a couple of these online, ifyoucatchmydrift. I'm gonna go overdose on fruits and veggies. See you with another roundup tomorrow!
Hey kids, what do you know? I'm back in Minnesota and glad to see I brought just a little bit of the warmth home with me. My flight got in just after midnight - consequently I'm dragging today. To boot, this is post number 100. I should be doing cartwheels and lighting off fireworks. Instead, my head's bobbing and I'm thinking fondly of pillows. I got nothing. While I had sworn up and down that today would bring a wondrous return to form, instead it will be just one more slightly truncated post. So what can I evangelize about when I'm feeling so foggy?
Girl Talk. All Day.
That's what's up.
I've talked about mash-ups here at great length, from the artsy compositions of Kids & Explosions to the meta-contextual jokes of the Hood Internet. The golden boy, though, is the massively popular Girl Talk, also known as Gregg Gillis. Gillis has been making music for years, at this point having put out five albums of remixes and mash-ups. His latest salvo, All Day, was so popular and hotly demanded it basically broke the internet when it came out in November of 2010. His site and any other that hosted the album were crushed under the overwhelming surge of traffic seeking a working link. I'm guessing the odds are pretty high that if you're even reading this then you have at least a passing familiarity with this ridiculously talented DJ. Alternately available as either one massive track or 12 separate songs, the album is, in my opinion, even better than his previous release Feed The Animals, even though the All Day hasn't received as high of marks as Animals.
Day five, I'm just finishing my travels, currently on the way to the airport. A little rushed but mostly alright for time. I've had a phenomenal time in AZ and eaten way too much sinful food, including Black Sphinx dates - I honestly wanted to weep when I ate them, they were so good. Made a crazy ice cream Sunday like a child at the Road Runners show because apparently 60s radio hits necessitate a full ice cream bar. Chocolate covered blueberries were good but too much chocolate, not enough blueberry. Honey roasted peanut butter fresh pressed at Whole Foods was unreal. Sad my local store has no peanut butter press. Got too much sun and feeling fried still, just tired and dumb from all the vitamin D flooding my system.
Since time is a bit of a factor here I'll just throw a short bit up here on a popular but oddball music group, Das Racist. Hailing from New York, this meme-tastic hip-hop outfit first made waves with the dada-esque viral song "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell". Soon after, to establish their legit rap cred, they released a pair of mixtapes: Shut Up, Dude and Sit Down, Man. These two mixtapes are not only super awesome examples of modern hip-hop and the humor it can wield but they're also totally free. While critics may dismiss it as joke rap or absurdist, they'd be missing out on awesome beats and surreal lines these guys create. My personal favorite track - the bobbing weirdness of "hahahaha Jk?" that sample the theme from Days of Our Lives. The refrain: "we're not joking, just joking we are joking, just joking - we're not joking." Sounds weird but it actually is a great line.
