Pick 'Em Up ... Silversun Pickups

I stumbled across this band recently and they seem to have promise. They released an EP in 2005, an album in 2006, and they have a scheduled release of a new album on April 14, 2009. They opened for Foo Fighters, Kaiser Chiefs, and Snow Patrol.

their sound drips with fuzzy sounding distorted guitars, and it hints at the shoe-gazer genre. Oh and by the way, they have a girl in the band so they must be cool!!

Read more...

Murmur Remastered

This album had a major impact on my life. It was the first time that I heard music that was not in heavy rotation on the radio and liked what I heard. Loved what I heard. I played this cassette in the 80's so much that it wore out and I had to get a second copy. Now R.E.M. have remastered and re-issued what I consider to be one of the finest albums ever recorded.

Murmur was arguably the first album to start the college radio music scene. Any band who calls themselves alternative has R.E.M. to thank for blazing that trail through the music landscape.

This album is a mix of Stipe's garbled lyrics, Peter Buck's jangling guitar, and Mike Mills driving Rickenbacker basslines in the backdrop. The songs were like nothing else at the time, and were largely ignored by the public being lost in the storm of vanhalen, heart, and 80's one hit wonders.

Check out this interview with Peter Buck to get his take on the reissue.

Of course nobody could understand Michael Stipe's lyrics back in the day. Maybe the remastering will make it all clear. Hope not.

Here's a few samples of this masterpiece

Read more...

Your Hip-Hop Got In My Alternative. Your Alternative Got In My Hip-Hop

First off let me say that the title of this post was inspired by a recent post by losbastardosunidos, but it just seemed appropriate for this post.

Gorillaz. When I first saw/heard this band in the late 90's I didn't give it a second thought. However, a few years ago I was in desperate need of something new to stimulate my tympanic membranes and this fit the bill.

Gorillaz is the brain child of former Blur front man Damon Albarn, and Jamie Hewlett who created the comic book Tank Girl. Their collaboration produced the world's first virtual band. In the spirit of bands like Alvin and the Chipmunks and that band from the 80's that wore giant eyeballs over their heads, the musicians in Gorillaz have an alternate corporeal form.

The band "members" include 2D, the front-tooth-missing lead singer, Russel, the periodically possed rapping drummer, Noodle, the child guitar prodigy from Japan, and Murdoc, the demonic bass player.

Musically Albarn is the only constant in Gorillaz, but he has collaborated with artists such as Danger Mouse, De La Soul, and DJ Shadow to produce the studio albums and help with live performances.

Check out some of their tunes ...

Read more...

... best play ever, man.

Wes Anderson seems to have cornered the market on quirky films. This 1998 follow up to his film "Bottle rocket" seemed to establish him as the new king of slightly off-center films.

"Rushmore" is a Holden Caufield-esque coming of age story of a very precocious high school student at a prestigious academy who spends more of his time in extra-curricular activities than his academic pursuits. This story finds the main character, Max Fischer (played by Jason Schwartzman), involved in a love triangle of sorts with an eccentric and bored and burned-out steel tycoon Herman Blume (played by Bill Murray) and a recently widowed 1st grade teacher Rosemary Cross (played by Olivia Williams)

Max and Blume strike up a friendship based on the two seeing aspects of their "ideal self" in each other. Max then falls for Ms. Cross and upon sharing this with Blume, he promptly follows suit. Friendship takes a competitive turn and Max and Blume engage in a series of personal attacks which prove to be hysterical. ...

Despite the fact that Ms. Cross sees qualities of her deceased husband in Max, she is obviously too old for him, but still holds a special place in her heart for Max. Blume also fails to win her affection as he is married, and too old.

The subversive humor of this film is not delivered nicely on a silver platter. The quirky and endearing characters that Anderson presents to us are a refreshing alternative to the watered-down trite ones so often seen in blockbuster comedies.

If you are looking for a great story with slightly different characters, check out Rushmore. It doesn't disappoint.

By the way the soundtrack is fantastic... (listen to the Kinks song in this scene!!)

Read more...

Jose Can You See ...

Jose Gonzalez. Ok this dude is cool. He hails from .... guess where ... Mexico ... Brazil ... Argentina. Wrong. All wrong. This guy is from Sweden. The land of meatballs and Abba. His parents are form Argentina, and thus that Latin sounding name, but this guy is a Swede. Although he started his musical career in a hardcore punk band influenced by Black Flag and The Dead Kennedys, Gonzalez has evolved into a style of music that is heavy on the classical guitar and his light and airy vocals. Most of his music is original, but he has performed several covers by artists from Massive Attack and Joy Division to Bruce Springsteen and Kylie Minogue. If you have ever enjoyed Nick Drake, you will love Jose Gonzalez, and he seems to have found a way to take up the flag of the singer/songwriter and march forward.

Click here to hear his cover of "teardrop" by Massive Attack

And here is a great song called "Down the Line"

This is a studio of version of "The Nest" on what seems to be a Jewish music channel

Check this guy out. He is REALLY good. I promise.

By the way, is anyone reading this blog?

Read more...

Yorke Biography

Those of you (read me) who enjoyed the last post may want to delve further into fabric that we know as Radiohead. If you like what you hear, then this soon to be released biography may scratch that itch in just the right place.

On February 26, 2009, a biography of Radiohead front man Thom Yorke by Trevor Baker entitled "Thom Yorke Radiohead & Trading Solo" will be released. According to the press release by the book's publisher, this book will be "a tale of the extraordinary drive, ambition and perfectionism of just one man. Thom Yorke's story has never been told and this biography goes further and deeper than ever before with the help of in-depth interviews from former classmates, producers, video makers, and other key players in his life."

Several books have been written about the band, but none chronicles the life of the enigmatic singer and principal songwriter.  Hopefully it will shed some light on his often confusing lyrics. 

Read more...

OK Computer

Many people recognize Radiohead as that band that wrote that nineties song of angst and self-loathing "Creep". They were dismissed as a one-hit-wonder, and fell off the musical landscape.

Their subsequent album, The Bends, showed that these lads from Oxford actually had some talent and may have a bit more to offer. But it was their release of OK Computer in 1998 that blasted these guys into the pantheon of rock and roll's most exciting artists. Tom Cruise, Madonna, and R.E.M. led the droves of adoring fans and music critics alike to line up, seemingly overnight, to gush over the group formerly know as On a Friday. The sudden adoration caught the band off guard, and front man Thom Yorke struggled with the fame and attention the band had garnered. The film "Meeting People is Easy" documents the band during their meteoric rise to fame, and provides an insight to the affects of this fame on them as a band and as individuals.

OK Computer has been described as a "classic" album, the best album of the nineties, and a concept album. Musically it takes the listener all over the place, from the glockenspiel laced lulaby "No Surprises", to the hard edged almost grunge sounding "Paranoid Android", to the computer voice litany of positive thoughts in "Fitter Happier". Lyrically Yorke delves into alienation in the modern nuclear society, his distrust and fear of modern technology and mechanized transport, as well as nearly-averted death and coming "back to save the universe".

Many critics were quick to maintain that OK Computer is a concept album along the lines of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon". Radiohead have denied this, although the concepts are there, and the songs and the progression take the listener through a bit of a sequential journey of ideas. I'm not sure I buy the idea of a concept album, as some of the tracks ("Lucky" and "Exit Music (for a film)" ) were written before the group headed to Jane Seymour's mansion in the English countryside to record the album.

The (a)esthetic of the album's artwork nicely compliments the music, and is an integral part of the "experience" of the album. The imagery hints at a blurred view of aspects of society. You can sort of make out a bit here and there, but clarity is lost and the viewer is left with an altered view of something that appears on first glance to be familiar, but is now distorted. This seems to be the message behind many of the lyrics of the songs themselves.





I love how the music compliments the lyrics in "No Surprises". It's a kind of lull-a-bye that is sung to us by society and we gradually fall "asleep" as our lives pass us by...




... and I love how in "Let Down" the lyrics and music are contrasting. The lyrics are slightly upbeat and catchy, but the lyrics are describing how the world is essentially a let down. Brilliant!

Read more...