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the closest thing.
Kaki King - Legs to Make Us Longer - Neanderthal ( live in a store somewhere )
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sleeping makes me tired.
The Weather Station - all of it was mine - If I’ve Been Fooled
[ video ] [ when they come ] [ home ]
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This was in my inbox yesterday morning. I hope you get a chance to listen. THX HAZ.
These beats were all produced while I was in Philly for a 19 hour layover after returning from London. Most of that time was spent watching the Philly news and a couple NBA playoff games. My UK brother, http://soundcloud.com/propa, hooked me up with a gang of drums and songs to listen/sample. All tracks were produced using items in that folder.
This is to all my friends on Soundcloud that helped me reach over 30,000 plays and close to 1000 followers. Much love to you all.
1// Baggage Claim
2// Not Always Sunny In Philadelphia
3// MissionFaCheeseSteak
4// SeptaRiot
5// BSL
6// FrozenDew
7// LemonHill
8// CherryStDeli
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Drizzle some of this on your speaker box. Some reign for your rainy day.
Chuuwee - Watching the Throne - Reign (Long Live the King)
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double yoke, borrowed sounds, getting back on track, band aide blood spots, soft launch, relativity.
Lantern - Burned Youth - Alap/Emily
1/2 mile sprints.
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This is a hard song to write about without sounding like I’m gushing, but here goes:
I first heard it while driving through Kentucky at night with a girl who would become the love of my young life, at least for a while. We had set our sights on Florida as friends, knowning that there would be a stop somewhere along the way to sleep, and knowning that something was probably going to come of it, but knowning absolutley nothing at the same time.
This song is unknown. It builds, it pumps, it pounds. Its dark. Forboding.
Windows down and the radio up, it played. Highlights on the highway and the temperature climbing as we moved further south. The smell of the air in a new state. Vines appearing. I had never seen them before.
This is a story, some kind of a story
this is a story about about a boy and girl,
a girl and a boy, a boy.
Sometime later, she left. Sights set on some other kind of life. I hated her for it.
One thing she said about that journey was “It was so beautiful that it hurt. It hurt because that experience can never be felt the exact same way again.”
Yeah. I suppose that’s true.
Though Andrew Bird’s “The Trees Were Mistaken” instantly takes me back there. To Kentucky. To a shitty motel. To vines. To roadside attractions. To Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida. Its a time travel song that when I hear it, I see everything, I feel everything, I taste it in my mouth, and its vapors burn my eyes. Who doesn’t have a song like that? We all have them.
this is a story about the memory of water
translating the sound of the traffic.
remember the traffic?
it’s making you carsick all along southfield freeway.
A time travel song.
Yeah.
Someday I’ll call her up. Someday when time travelling stops being enough.
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Though not even close to their best album, R.E.M.’s 1991 release Out Of Time still spawned one of there best known/best written songs. Opening with Peter Buck’s instantly recognizable mandolin riff, ”Losing My Religion” latches on to the brain and embeds itself into the memory. Upon its release, I found myself annoyed with it. I couldn’t comprehend it. I couldn’t shake the treble of the strings and the catchy arrangment, but I soon became enamored with it as it began to click. Even then I still didn’t know what the song was really about, but whatever it was, it was powerful and it spoke to the core of millions of listeners. Today, I’m still not sure what it is about. Today, though, it still clicks and it still moves me.
Promoting its release, R.E.M. also put out one of the most memorable music videos of all time mixing religion with homosexual undertones, facism, and Michael Stipe’s dancing. That was the best part. When Michael moves, he isn’t just dancing, he’s raging with his arms flailing, feet sliding, hands clapping, and that tense, morose, look etched onto his face. If you haven’t seen it, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if-UzXIQ5vw&ob=av2e
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Rowdy, wild, raunchy, and real, Bon Scott area AC/DC goes above and beyond the sexually charged double entendre of the Brian Johnson years (when the brothers Young took over all lyrics). While not exactly existential, Bon’s lyrics were real. Reflections of a young man dealing with fame, excess, women, and touring, but not so far into that life that he forgot days of being a struggling musician or even just a struggling human being. “Down Payment Blues” is an ode to wanting it all, having some of it, and being able to afford none of it. Plus, its a good rant song since I spent most of my morning going round and round with AT&T on the phone. Bastards.
From 1978’s Powerage, it’s “Down Payment Blues”. Let’s get a little rowdy on this Sunday and count change to put gas in the car.
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A song that plays as a lament spoken to God about the loss of identity, family, and a reflection of his ancestors slavery in America and the want to be taken to “a better place” to “forget all that hurts”, “Tennessee” by Arrested Development, can be is a complicated piece and an easy piece to identify with.
When reading lyrics about African-American life and past and a relationship to God, a caucasion atheist from Wisconsin maybe hard pressed to understand what about this draws his attention twenty years after its release?
Perhaps its that as humans, we all suffer at times. Perhaps its that AD founder Speech is a Wisconsin native. Perhaps its that Tennessee was a place of importance and transformation in life. Perhaps its that when this song was first released, it was catchy, but didn’t hold any meaning and now, as an adult, re-reading the lyrics, one can appreciate the power and the personal meaning of Speech’s verse. Perhaps it is all of the above. It is all of the above.
I woke up this morning with this song playing in my head and what I mean is that I didn’t wake up and this song started playing. I drifted back to reality with this song running the whole time. That happens from time to time.
From the 1992 release 3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of… is Arrested Developments’ “Tennessee”. Occasionally corny, occasionally preachy, but always thoughtful, give it a minute and anyone can relate to it.
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From his 1972 release Talking Book, Stevie Wonder brings the funk with “Superstition”. Wonder himself preforms vocals, drums, and keys (yes, that includes that immediately recognizable clavinet riff), turning out one of the most memorable tunes of all time. All at the age of 22 with this being his tenth U.S./U.K. album. 22! Tenth album! Hard to not feel humble when comparing life to that.
Happy Friday the 13th, kids. Watch out cause, as Stevie says “writing’s on the wall… ladders ‘bout to fall”!
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Under the moniker “Death Vessel”, Joel Thibodeau releases music centering around jingle pop, cut and paste style lyrics, driven by vocals sung with pipes that belong to a young choir girl. While the combination of such sounds awful, Thibodeau weaves together unassuming melodies that take moments, if not full minutes, to catch ones attention, that is, of course, if his voice hasn’t started in. When playing the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, WI (4/26/2010), as opener to Jonsi, Joel walked out, waist-length black hair, jeans, black t-shirt, and an old 3/4 sized acoustic guitar, stepping before an audience who had never heard his music and was skeptical, to say the least. With the look and the name sounding as if it belonged to a metal band, the feeling amongst attendees was “this should be interesting/awful”. And then he began. For his entire set, there was barely a word spoke, save for heavy applause and shouts in between songs. This is the one he opened with.
From his second album Nothing Is Precious Enough For Us, the track “Block My Eye” opens with, what I regard, one of the saddest lines in my collection of music:
“Now I am versed/ In silence my throat hurts/ Not from yelling/ But from holding back”
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Guy Clark’s “Anyhow, I Love You” boarders between an off hand play-it-cool remark and a full on declaration of love during the morning after. The song’s intention is to turn a one night stand into a lasting relationship and Clark’s chorus is written as a rambling statement from a man who doesn’t know how to say what he desperately wants to. “I wouldn’t trade a tree for the way I feel about you” makes no sense, but as many can attest to, sometimes scrambling to find the right words will lead to a foot in the mouth or a palm to the forehead. As if to brush off the awkardness of the previous sentence, the man just wraps it up with ”Anyhow, I love you”, hoping that that will get his point across.
