"Knights of Cydonia" / Muse / Black Holes and Revelations

My buddy Eric (who, on occasion, will pop in a comment) once said to me that the first time he heard Muse he thought...."That's a Bryan band".

And, yeah, he's dead on there. With the exception of Arcade Fire, I don't think there's a band that I've been more stoked about in the 00's than Muse. They've been around a little while, but really started to break here in America around 2003 or so. You may have heard a couple of their more popular tunes, "Time is Running Out" and "Stockholm Syndrome".

And speaking of "Stockholm Syndrome", let me just stop right there before I go any further. This song has rocketed into my personal top five list with a bullet. One big contributing factor was looking them up on the Youtubes and finding this performance of that song when they headlined England's famous Glastonbury festival in 2004. Honestly, I watch this about once a week, just to revive my faith in music and make me love life and people. It's five minutes of proper song, nine total minutes of awesome.


Now, there you can see what I love about this band on display. First of all...chops. Dudes can absolutely shred their instruments. They are a tight band (and I don't mean "tight" like "Those Pumas are tight", I mean "tight" like disciplined, locked in).I'm a sucker for big, melodic, anthemic, bombastic songs. Wagnerian, even. The energy they exude, the cool rock / electronia hybrid thing they have going..it all works for me.

When I picked up this CD back in 2006, it was everything I expected it to be. "Knights of Cydonia", in particular however, was a standout. Since then, it's gained a little bit of notice for it's brilliant video (more on that later) and it's inclusion on the "Rock Band" game. But first hearing this, I alternated between disbelief, hilarity and joy.

I really can't write about everything that's great about this song, but I'll try. It begins with a motif straight out of an Ennio Morricone spaghetti western, leading into a galloping drum line over which the guitar is playing the song's melody. It's really set up like an overture, as we don't really get to any lyrics until 2:07 of the song.

The song does set itself up as some kind of space cowboy epic ("Come ride with me, through the veils of history" reads the opening line) though what or where "Cydonia" is is for them to explain one day or for us to figure out. Anyways, they get through the first two verses quickly (the only two in the song, by the way), and come back in with the opening theme at 2:02. Soon after, the magic happens - the music falls dead away (save for some little electronic bleeps underneath) and at 3:19 we get:

No one's gonna take me alive
The time has come to make things right
You and I must fight for our rights
You and I must fight to survive

What the...I almost drove of the road the first time I heard this. So ridiculous, so over the top, so...sweet. What does it mean? Again, I have no clue, but it all fits.

They repeat the chorus a couple more times as the music builds up slowly behind it (I know, the oldest, most manipulative trick in music...but always effective) until we explode at with the new guitar riff at 4:14. Then once more with the chorus, this time, with a feeling of triumph, and we're done.

(Not to gush again about my kids, but this was Quinn's favorite song for most of last year. I was playing it in the car one day, then about twenty minutes of thoughtful silence later, he asks "Dad, why won't no one take him alive?" I smiled and thought - "That's my boy!" He made me put this on one of his CD mixes too, and had to listen to it first every night as he went to sleep. He also refused to let me talk while it was playing, so he could concentrate more on it. Of course, he will remember none of this by Christmas of this year)

The video. Oh, the video. I believe with the video they are letting you know that it's all a big, fun goof, not meant to be taken seriously. What's my favorite part of the video? Too many parts from which to choose, but you gotta love the reappearance of the hero's girl at that 4:14 climax in full on space princess outfit, riding a unicorn, while kung-fu masters practice their kicks and a cyclon projects the bands image in the desert. Or something. Unbelievably awesome stuff.

"Railroad Tracks" / Juke Boy Bonner / Life Gave Me a Dirty Deal

W. T. F. ?

That was my first thought upon seeing this pop up on itunes. I'm not even gonna try to be cool and say I had any idea who this cat is or why he has a song on my itunes playlist.

Then I remembered...back when Quinn was about two and a half, he went through a HUGE train phase, which I'm beginning to think almost every American boy goes through (maybe like girls and ponies? I don't know) as Isaiah is in the throes of railroad dementia at this moment. Thomas the Tank Engine plays no small role in this , by the way

Click....if you dare!


Anyway, Beegee and I made Quinn a "train" mixtape CD (is that an oxymoron?) by searching the itunes music store for anything with "train" in the title. And thus, we get Juke Boy Bonner. Dude has an interesting backstory, which while typical of most blues artists (tough life, unappreciated as a musician, relatively early death) has a couple of cool tibets as well. It seems he was a poet as well ("ghetto poet", even) and was pretty much a one man band, accompanying himself on drums, harmonica, and guitar.

The song is just a straightforward boogie-woogie, nothing fancy at all. It's really good, solid music, and I think an interesting addition to your collection. I know some of you guys reading are big blues fans and like this kind of stuff; I have to admit that it's an area in which I'm a little deficient. I mean, I give you people Superchunk last week and get two responses, and one is about The Two Coreys?! What do you want from me? *puts head in arms, weeps softly*

Here's Juke Boy!
http://www.mediafire.com/?wwmyfx4ymdy

"Hyper Enough" / Superchunk / Here's Where The Strings Come In

It's Superchunk, kids! Another pantheon band of mine, with 62 songs on my itunes playlist. If there's ever one band that I looove that I wish you all would jump on immediately, it would be the Chunk. They are the indie rock band nonpareil, in my humble opinion. Plus, they are good southern kids from Chapel Hill which is a plus. (And they have a hot bass player, but that's really neither here nor there). They had a semi-hit in the early 90's with "Slack Motherfucker" which (supposedly) is one of those defining Generation X songs. Or something. (Actually, watch that video for a taste of how amazing these guys are live)

I specifically remember how I got into these dudes too. I was at the old Big Shot records when it was back on College Square in the mid 90's (where Chapel Bar is now) and was browsing around. They were playing Superchunk's "Foolish" CD, which had just been released. I was listening with interest as I looked around, then became really intrigued as more songs came on. It's not often that a song or band strikes you upon your very first listen, but they did it for me. Once the song "Driveway to Driveway" played, that was it, and I had to ask the clerk the group and album playing, and bought it on the spot.

"Driveway to Driveway" = teh shit


(You know what? I've never seen this video. I started to watch it, but then quit because it's obviously a "story" video, and I don't want the song to be ruined for me.)

"Foolish" didn't leave my CD player for weeks and weeks. It's still my favorite CD of theirs, in fact one of my all-time favorites, and I highly, highly recommend it to any and all of you's.

Buuy /steal this


So, "Hyper Enough" is the leadoff song on the CD following "Foolish". It boils down what I love about the band into three minutes and change : great riffs, energy, melody and fun. I love that 12 second hammering intro that leads right into that ecstatic riff. The guy's voice may grate on some of you, as it's pretty high and nasal. It shouldn't work, but somehow it does. Random fact : this song leads of a mix CD that I made for Isaiah, as it's one of his favorites to "rock out" to, and just the title of the song fits that boy pretty well *end parent gushing*

They throw in a little bridge there at 1:55 for about 30 seconds, but it feels more obligatory than anything else. Then they come right back with that riff and steamroll through the remainder of the song. In fact, my favorite point is at 2:44 (3:00 in the video) when they just say "Fuck it" and rock the fucking fuck out of the song until the end. This song, as you can imagine, is kicks ass live, and is a great show opener too.

I must say, as with "Driveway to Driveway", I never saw the video for this until today. It's hilarious, though. Starting with the drummer getting pissy, it takes the band through therapy. Look for Laura to get the best scenes at 2:12 (the trust fall) and at 2:27. (And curiously, they unknowingly paved the way for Metallica's (unintentionally) hilarious therapy sessions years later)



Get the song:
http://www.mediafire.com/?lrcnux1czdm

Completely random addendum: Watch the hilarious "conceptual" video for "Watery Hands" starring Jeanine Garafalo and David Cross

"One More Time" / Daft Punk / Discovery

Let it never be said that I don't enjoy a great dance tune every now and then. Daft Punk is a duo that specializes in club hits, and they take pride in their anonymous nature (much like Kraftwerk, another electronic based dance band from the 70's and Daft Punk's spiritual forefathers), always performing publicly in space helmets. Of course, they are French.

I think I first heard these guys watching MTV late one night and seeing the awesome, sad, heartwarming story of Dog Head Guy with Broken Leg in their video "Da Funk". Does he know he's got a dog head? Does anyone tell him? Does he care? It was all very intriguing to me.

Seriously. This video breaks my heart


Something strange happened along the way, and these guys got to be pretty popular. There was the Juliette Lewis Gap commercial they did:


And then Kanye tabs one of their songs as the backing track to his hit "Stronger"

They are a pretty unlikely American hit, if you ask me. Still the boys make a damn catchy song, don't they?

"One More Time" is a bit different, it all starts with those lush keyboards that give it a 70's feel right off the bat. The lyrics go a little something like this:

One more time
We're gonna celebrate
Oh yeah.
Alright.
Don't stop the dancing.

Repeat for six minutes. I realize that lyrics are hardly the key to any good dance tune, in fact, any attempt to be serious or put a message in a dance song is sort of missing the point. But, and here's the key, they use robot voice for the singer. I'm fully convinced, and may examine this in more detail later, that robot voice increases the awesomeness of any song tenfold. Plus, the video is in anime, and you can't really beat that either.

My favorite part of this song is the "Breakdown" at 2:06. They slow the tempo down, and just riff over the keybords. It's taking the piss out of songs that do that, I believe, but it's fun anyway. I mean, they actually sing, "Music's got me feelin' so free". I honestly can't decide if singing lines like that is cooler if you really mean it, or if you're being cheeky.



Here's the song, 'cause I know you want it for your next house party:
http://www.mediafire.com/?koy9emguzpz

"Ain't No Mountain High Enough" / Diana Ross / Hitsville USA

You know, I really do like Motown. I think it's become a little bit cooler these days among musicophiles to say you were really into the Atlantic artists or maybe the Stax / Volt crew, but you have to give it up for Motown, too. I love how Berry Gordy built an autonomous, top to bottom, minority owned and operated juggernaut. Word was he was an asshole, but he had an ear for a pop tune and could sniff out talent from miles away.

I also have some nostalgic feelings whenever I hear a Motown record, which of course makes no sense because they were recorded while my parents were negotiating middle school. I guess when I hear those songs, I imagine how someone that age (baby boomers, I mean) must feel when they hear them. And much of that comes from the incredible Funk Brothers, the instrumentalists who are more or less responsible for that Motown sound. As I said earlier, I love the idea of taking ubertalented artists and plugging them into the songwriting / performance machine you've set up and reeling off hit after hit after hit. You can hear that same sound in every song, but adding a David Ruffin, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, or in this case, a Diana Ross over it just makes it unfair.

I did a little bit of digging on this song, and I found out an interesting fact - it was written by none other than Ashford & Simpson

Solid!


Of course, it was recorded originally by Marvin Gaye, then Diana Ross covered it in this version. I like this version better - it's slower, a bit more dramatic, and I love the intro, with the horn flares and the lovely melody. But you what's really cool about this version? The talking. Ross doesn't sing this song, save for the chorus - she speaks it. Why doesn't anyone do that any longer? In this case, it makes the song more intimate, and makes that awesome chorus more dramatic and effective by comparison. In fact, the structure of this song reminds me a lot of my favorite Supremes' song "Someday We'll Be Together". Listen to them one after the other and see what I mean.

The other secret weapon in this song and in the whole Motown arsenal is the bassist, James Jamerson. I know people make fun of the bass / tuba player always pimping the bass guy, but Jamerson is ridiculous. His lines are so clean on the Motown tracks, they pop right up out of the mix (no accident, I'm sure) and they are so rhythmic and innovative. Just try to imagine "I Want You Back" without him. Listen to this song and concentrate on the bass part. Just watch this white boy do it (he's doing the six minute version, too. And, no, that's not me)

Oh, and here's the song for you:
http://www.mediafire.com/?htyxtm1twpu

"This Hard Land" / Bruce Springsteen / Tracks

Bruuuuce! The Boss! The American Bryan Adams!

Well, it's about bleedin' time. Fifty posts into this blog, and it's my first Springsteen post. I have a full 160 Springsteen songs on itunes, but for some reason the 'ol random button never seems to pick them (but it loves it some Black Sheep - go figure). Give it credit for picking a great song for his first, though. Well done, random!

I'm sitting here trying to pinpoint the beginnings of my Springsteen fandom, and it's hard to do. My first brush with him was, probably like most people my age, through the Born in the USA hype in the mid eighties. I really had no context for him then, as far as I knew at the time, he was the dude fighting it out for Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna for 80's pop supremacy. Of course I bought that tape, and of course I loved it, and yes, of course (like Ronald Reagan) I famously misread the subtle irony of the "Born in the USA" song.

I remember there being huge hype for the subsequent Live 75-85 record set, but that included alot of his classic tunes that I wasn't familiar with at the time (though I loved his cover of Edwin Starr's "War"). By the time Tunnel of Love came out, I just casually listened to the singles and moved on. Of course, how could a fifteen year old really grasp the subtle genius of a track like "Brilliant Disguise" or "One Step Up"? It's impossible).

I think I started paying attention again through Bizarro Wuxtry, of all places. In the late 90's, I ventured into that venerable Athens store and availed myself of the famous "records by the pound" offer. One I happened to buy was Darkness on the Edge of Town. When I took that bad boy home, placed the needle on the record and heard the first beats of "Badlands" blast out, I was thinking, "Holy shit. How did I never hear about this before? Why wasn't I told?!" And they kept coming off of that album - "Adam Raised a Cain", "Candy's Room", "Racing in the Street", "The Promised Land", "Prove it all Night", "Darkness on the Edge of Town"...are you kidding me?

Again, are you kidding me?


As soon as possible I went back and bought the other albums from the pile - The River...Greetings From Asbury Park...finally got into Tunnel of Love...and, lord Jesus, Nebraska. I was a convert. Then to seal the deal, my wife bought me Tracks, the four CD set of rarities and B Sides from which this song comes. It all lead up to seeing him play at Philips arena on the next Live CD tour, and that was that. Shoot, my wife and I's first dance at our wedding was to "Happy", another unreleased song from Tracks. Since then, I've gobbled up everything he's released, read tons of books on the dude, and am just as pleased and excited with last year's "Magic". Bruce Springsteen IS Rock & Roll, and screw all you haters.

"This Hard Land" was one that he wrote back in the mid eighties, and he's said that it's probably the best song that he's never released. It's hard to believe he didn't, as it would have been a sure-fire hit back then. Although, I see his point if he didn't want to include it on the Tunnel of Love album, as it's not really about the disillusion of a marriage or the artifice of love. Yikes.

He starts off with a Dylanesque harmonica riff, then goes almost acapella for the first verse, with only a stummed guitar for accompaniment. By the time he hits us with the melodic hook "They've just blown around / From town to town / Back onto these fields" at :32, he's given us two classic Springsteen moments - a "Sir" and a "Mister". Do you know how many "Sirs", "Misters" (or "Mary"s) he has sung to over his career? It's quite a bit.The rest of the song is just that straightforward - verse, chorus, repeat. For all intents and purposes, it ends at 3:43, but he rocks another fuckin' harmonica solo until the song fades out. It keeps going live, as you might imagine. I love the dissonance of this tight, upbeat song against the depressing subtext of the lyrics - the struggle of the main characters to maintain hope in the face of adversity. It's not unlike the "Born in the USA" phenomenon that I mentioned earlier that had all of America fooled.

One other thing I've liked about Springsteen's songs is that they are a steel pedal and twangy dilevery from being kick ass country songs. Those core themes in his songs of family, perseverence, nostalgia, dreams, drudgery, maturity, hope, friendship and loss are universal to all genres of music and to all Americans. That's why a suburban kid from a southern town can count a New Jesey / rustbelt singer as maybe his favorite artist. Ever.

Here's a live video for "This Hard Land", but I actually like the recorded song better...
http://www.mediafire.com/?mkgmmxud90d

"Break On Through" / The Doors / The Doors

OK, I'm gonna admit to liking the Doors, and I know that they're one of those love / hate bands for a lot of folks. I guess I'd fall on the "love" side, although that's a pretty stong word to use for me with the Doors.

I know that Morrison is the epitome of the pretentious rock star, and Ray Manzerick is pretty much a douche, and normally I'd hate a band with those qualities, but dammit, Morrison was so earnest that I kind of can't help but admire him a little bit for his Lizard King / drunk poet / tribal chief schtick. (By the way, I mentioned Morrison in passing when discussing this curious tendancy of some lead singers to inexplicably reinvent themselves as Native American, made even stranger by the fact that fellow pseudo-Indian Ian Astbury of The Cult toured with the remainder of the Doors recently)


"Break On Through" is the first song on thier first album, but the first time I heard it was on that red double CD "Best of the Doors", which I think came pretty much standard issue in any white kid's music collection (along with probably Bob Marley's "Legend" and later, Pearl Jam's "Ten"). Back then in ninth grade, I only knew The Doors from a few radio hits, like "Light My Fire", "Touch Me" and "Riders on the Storm", although I remember MTV sometimes playing "Unknown Soldier" and "Wild Child" videos in the 80's for some odd reason.

Someone you knew had this

In this song I like the quiet beginning leading up to the loud chourus (that quiet verse / loud chorus dynamic would be populaized by many an alternative act in the 1990s too). My favorite part (and it's a really short song, so there's not much from which to choose) is the last verse where Morrison gets really rolling around the 2:00 mark ("day to day / week to week / hour to hour") - that's good right there, and he's really selling it. Say what you will about the guy, but he really had a hell of a great voice, and one of the greatest howls in rock & roll history (check about 1:50 in)