Recent Love

The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. So after blathering on yesterday about how The Fearless Freaks made me want to check out / revisit the Flaming Lips, I figured I'd grab the record that I was somewhat familiar with from my days at WBGU.
If you're not into the Flaming Lips, you'll probably recognize the lead-off song, "Fight Test", from when it was used as the opening theme from the MTV show 3 South (not to be confused with Undergrads which was better drawn but used some Good Charlotte bullshit for their theme). You'll probably also recognize "Do You Realize??" which, as it was mentioned yesterday, was in just about every commercial ever made since the dawn of celluloid film. ^{An exaggeration, sure, but check it.}
On the whole, though, you need to listen to this record from front to back. It seems like it ought to be or that it wants to be a concept record of sorts, especially when it starts getting into electronica-esque "dabbling", that is to say there are a few spots that seem like unnecessary segues, but that's probably just me. I've done the grossly superfluous, gratuitous, masturbatory electronic noise segues ad nauseum myself, so I can spot them from a mile away. Thankfully, there are bands like the Flaming Lips that are way smarter than I am, and if any moment on the record feels like you're veering dangerously close to the Snoresville exit on Route Otherwise Awesometastic, the band wakes you up a little and even offers to take over at the wheel because you're obviously tired.
ANYHOO, I dug it when I listened to it last night and I'll probably listen to it again tonight to let it set in a little firmer. The only thing I won't be doing again tonight is watching the director's cut of Brazil. Holy fuck, is that a long movie. Still not as long as Seven Samurai, though, but at least Seven Samurai didn't make me think of 12 Monkeys every other scene. Seriously, watch Brazil and tell me you don't see 12 Monkeys. I guess that's just Terry Gilliam's stylistic trademark, though.

Recent Love

Alternately titled: "I nearly didn't have anything today."
I know you're used to your morning dosage of SD&A, so I'll give you a quick heads up about a movie, maybe you've seen it already, the chances of that being the case always being quite likely as you're probably way more in touch with things than I am, called The Fearless Freaks, a documentary about the Flaming Lips.
I'm not exactly the biggest Flaming Lips fan, meaning that I've heard one song and it didn't bother me. It wasn't "She Don't Use Jelly" ₁, it was off of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. It was when I still had the radio show on WBGU and in a scramble, probably drunken scramble, to find things that I didn't play last week (which didn't matter because I could always find someway to play four Ramones songs in a row ₂), I would pick things with cool cover art ₃ and just spin those, because fuck knows I couldn't handle half the stuff in the metal rack.
So there was Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, and I played the one that goes "Yoshimi, they don't believe me" and it was alright. I'm sure the metal heads wondered what the fuck was wrong with their stereo, but I digress...
Anyhow, then I saw that commercial, I can't remember what it was for - I want to say Kodak, but a Google Video search tells me it could've been Dell, VH1, or Land Rover - and there was that Flaming Lips song, "Do You Realize?", in the commercial. Considering I was hopped up on all manner of goofballs from around 1997 until about 2005 and I was getting really into High On Fire, I said "Fuck that" and from there probably swore that I would never purchase a Land Rover. But I don't recall expressly hating the Flaming Lips.
Yesterday, things being as boring as they in the hostel ₄, I decided to start flipping through Hulu's movie pages. I started looking through documentaries trying to find the one about Chicago punk (You Weren't There) and the one about Naked Raygun (What Poor Gods We Do Make) and that's when I came across The Fearless Freaks. I vaguely recall one of my old college instructors telling me I should check this movie out ₅; I figured, "Why the hell not? After all, it's been only two years since I've even spoken to the guy."
I start watching it and the band is alright in the beginning, nothing to write home about. It's really the later era stuff that starts to perk my ears up a little. Now, the movie hasn't made me a convert by any means, but it does have me thinking that I should go back and revisit Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and listen to it in its entirety. You know just to check it out. Meanwhile, if you've got an hour and forty five minutes to kill, go to Hulu and check this flick out while it's still up.

¹ I recall one of my first BMG record club catalogs when I was fourteen had a little write up about Transmissions from the Satellite Heart, though at the time I felt I was too hip to listen to a sex joke about jelly. Which, as it turns out, the song is not.
² Worst. DJ. Ever.
<sup>3

4</sup> My job basically entails that I prevent the office chair from floating up and hitting the ceiling.
⁵ And why wouldn't I trust the judgment of a forty one year old man with a MySpace page?

How do we end November? Forgetting to do it until the fifth of December.

November had 39 posts, yielding 1.2 posts per day. So how did we spend this month of covering shifts for everybody, writing posts a day ahead of time, and trying to figure out where I'll be living in January?
Posts in November: 39
Posts per day: 1.2
Number of posts that were musically related: 22 (56% of total, a little more than once every other day)
Number of posts that used tablature to illustrate the differences between two similar songs: 4 (10% of total, about once every three days)
Font used to construct tablature: Courier New
Unicode characters employed: Quarter note (2669), Sharp (266F), Flat (266D)
Longest Post: Three Records Made Awesome By Drugs (And I swear, one day I'll find the word count feature in Word '07.)
Shortest post: Can We All Agree On Something? (4 words)
Favorite new graphic:

Jam Bands - Love 'em or hate 'em?

Ok, when I was younger, 18-23ish or so, I went to a lot of Jam Band shows and enjoyed them. Now that I am older, 27 in November, I couldn't care less about seeing them. There is just something about them anymore that I can't wrap my head around anymore. I don't know if my attention span has shortened to songs that last 3-4 minutes instead of songs that are 10-15 minutes long, but maybe it has.

I went up to The Clazel in beautiful Downtown Bowling Green Ohio tonight, the check out a band called Papadosio. I figured it was $10 USD and only a couple hours of my life, right? Well, they took stage around 9:50 pm and by 10:25 I was ready to leave. I got up there around 8:45 pm and caught their opener (name unknown) and thought that the Opener's could play some decent songs, but there was no fucking lyrics. I an not a huge fan of instrumentals.

After a 1/2 hour set break, Papadosio came out and jammed. 1st song, no lyrics. WTF? The 2nd song had some lyrics, but I couldn't fucking understand them. I was standing right behind/above the soundboard (soundboard is on the lower floor, I was on the upper floor right behind it) I decided to try to tape a small segment to see how the sound was up there (for future recording purposes). I still haven't listened to it, but when I do, I will throw it up in the comments section.

My question is, is it just me or are Jam Bands overrated?

It's Friday: Let's Piss Off Everybody Not Named Adam

The votes are in. They're a week late, but they're in.
Killing Joke's "Eighties" beat Nirvana's "Come As You Are" 2 to 0.
Boston's "More Than A Feeling" beat Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" 2 to 0.
Mudhoney's "Sweet Young Thing Aint Sweet No More" tied Nirvana's "Negative Creep" 1 to 1.
Sonic Youth's "The Burning Spear" lost to Nirvana's "Breed" o to 2.
All I can say is, "What the fuck is the matter with you?" In a democracy, there is no such thing as a wrong vote, but Contributing Author Adam cast the only right vote when he said, "Can I say no to both Boston and Nirvana?" Seriously? Two votes for fucking Boston? Are you kidding me? You guys (Adam excluded) are voting like my old man.

"And it's about goddamn time somebody concurred with me up in this motherfucker!"

Boston. Boston. I can't believe that. What the hell was it that drove you to decide that "More Than A Feeling" was better than anything else?
Killing Joke's "Eighties", I can kind of understand. Kind of. At the end of the day, you can sleep easy knowing that you didn't vote for Boston. Killing Joke at least have a background in... I don't know, some people call it industrial, some people call it punk, so they are decidedly not like Boston. We're dealing with a song about anti-capitalism vs a song about... what the fuck is "Come As You Are" about? Just the same, though, any doofus with a chorus pedal can arpeggiate an F♯m diad for one bar. Either way, I wonder how you gutless ninnies would vote if I told you that the chorus to "Eighties" rips off the chorus from Kraftwerk's "The Model".
But back to this Boston thing. Really. Why Boston?

"If you ask me, these Nirvana guys shoulda just played the song right the first time instead of screwing it up and putting a different name on it."

Did you guys even listen to "More Than A Feeling"? We're pitting a song that signaled a cultural shift in AOR programming and kicked hair metal off the radio against some saccharin, cloying 1970s bullshit, and you pick the 1970s bullshit. Really. I don't even like "Smells Like Teen Spirit" all that much (because I'm not twelve anymore) but come on, that song has so many more balls than "More Than A Feeling" does that, comparatively speaking anyway, it requires fourteen more scrotum than the number of scrotum present in the pants of Boston's membership. And some of those high notes make me wonder exactly how many scrotum are present in Boston in the first place.
The Mudhoney thing I get and the Sonic Youth thing I get. There's a reason that "Sweet Young Thing Aint Sweet No More" was a B-side. "The Burning Spear" is... well... It's alright, but there are things that rock harder.
But back to this Boston thing. Why? Why?

"This just proves that that's the kind of music that people want to hear."

Is this some kind of hipster irony thing? Like moustaches and pink t-shirts? Are you trying to be cool by picking something decidedly uncool? Is that what this shit is all about? Or are you guys just fucking with me? "Hey, let's fuck with that blog guy!" I bet you guys would've voted for Adam & the Ants over Megadeth in a metal poll. Jesus Tap Dancing Christ.
Boston.
Boston.
You see, it's precisely because of bullshit like this that Adam gets to write for Sound Design and Assembly and you don't.

I went through at least four title options for this Weezer related post.

Fuck Weezer. I was about to write a post on how "Beverly Hills" sounds like "Undone (The Sweater Song)" but come on; Weezer is fucking stupid.
Granted, "Say It Aint So" is a good song as far as good songs go, but that's -
Sorry, the phone is ringing off the damned hook this morning, which is unusual for our slow season at the hostel. Some guy from Winnipeg with a bunch of questions. Convinced he's prepared to put down the entire amount as a deposit when he doesn't even know if he can make it here before we close. I persuaded the gentleman to take the 10% option, or at least I tried to persuade him; he said he'll think it over and call back.
So where was I? I was going to segue from Weezer being stupid but having at least one good song into telling you about Shitty Weezer, Joe Fur Seal's friend's band who practice at Fur Seal on occasion and I get to hear them do fairly decent renditions of songs I don't like, but now I do like them because I have this feeling that all the songs have the word "shitty" in front of them. I really want that to be the case. "Shitty Island in the Sun", "Shitty Buddy Holly", "Shitty Beverly Hills"; I mean, you really can't go wrong.
Again, lost my train of thought but this time it's because I had to make up the cover for The Shitty Blue Album and, believe it or not, that shit takes time. I have to pick a century gothic font and then, when my plan to put those Groucho moustache glasses on them failed (MSPaint, bitches), I just decided to resort to the tactic employed on the cover of Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.
Where was I though?
I mean, I was really unprepared this morning. I was going to write about how it snowed last night but what can I do with that? It's December. It's supposed to snow. Then I thought about continuing our little series on songs that sound similar, but that would've meant talking about Weezer and embedding Weezer videos on this blog, which I would be loathe to do. I don't want to listen to Weezer and I hope that you don't want to listen to Weezer either. Weezer is the Black Eyed Peas of rock music.
Wait.
That gives me an idea.
I'm going to start a cover band and call it Shitty Black Eyed Peas and then we can open for Shitty Weezer. We'll have Shitty Fergie, Shitty Will.I.Am, Shitty Short Black Guy Who Sometimes Has A Mohawk, and Shitty Tall Alien Looking Guy Who I Think Is Asian But I'm Not Sure And I Don't Want To Offend His Heritage So We'll Stick With "Alien-Looking".
Yeah, that's already sounding like a bad idea because then I'd have to listen to (and learn) Black Eyed Peas songs. I can only imagine the hell that Shitty Weezer have to put themselves through.

You don't get a Not Safe For Wednesday.

I just watched Benji. You should watch Benji. Benji.

Gouda Nuff's

I went out Saturday and checked out Charlie's little Brother's band, The Gouda Nuff's. They opened for a couple of bands at Howards Club H. I went up early with my girlfriend and some other peepsand hung out with Joe before the show. They went onstage around 11 and I stood about 5 feet in front of the Soundboard and taped them.

Howard's acoustics suck balls. If you have never been there before, there stage is in a big open brick walled room and they have HUGE fucking speakers. Everything bounces off of the walls and distorts. Its rare to hear good vocals their, it always seems muffled. I cut a sample out of the track Joe requested and here is a link:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/tk6z3y

Listen for the driving bass line, that's Joe!

Peace

Free Drum Sample Alert!

OK, show of hands, who has an email address they use for spam? You know, it was the first email account you ever created, it was something stupid like golden_shower_head or bongeriffic420 and you occasionally still check it to see what kind of Cialis spam or "Sue Walmart!" petitions you've accumulated just for shits and giggles. Well, now you have a reason to use it.
Analogue Drums Big Mono sample set requires you to provide an email address to acquire a "secret code" to download their 135MB .zip folder containing a 60s Ludwig kit with 50s Rodgers snare and Zildjian cymbals. I still haven't tried the set I got, but the two demos they posted sound cool.
And you know for damned sure that I didn't want my real "adult" email address getting spammed for special offers and such.