BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #22: Sing Me Spanish Techno by The New Pornographers

On a 2006 workday, I heard a co-worker playing "The Bleeding Heart Show", and the following conversation took place:

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #46: Ignition (Remix) by R. Kelly

Remember earlier this year when Pitchfork felt it necessary to actually review The Beatles' catalog?  That was awesome.  Is their any other website that could pull off such unfiltered pomposity in feeling they could actually say something new and worthwhile about The Beatles that nobody else had thought of in the past 40+ years?  Just think, mankind once spent decades wandering the wasteland of a perplexing society, pondering an uncertain afterlife without the knowledge that Beatles For Sale rates a 9.3, or Please Please Me is a 9.5.  Congrats, Animal Collective!  You're better than the damn Beatles!  Simply stunning.

Here's my point.  There are times when you have to admit to yourself that you have little to add to the discourse of a particular topic.  In the case of "Ignition," (the song with "Remix" in the title though there's apparently no non-remixed version), once John Darnielle constructed a list of 100 reasons to describe it's greatness, it became obvious that further dissemination would be clearly unnecessary.

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #71: Irreplaceable by Beyonce

Pop music is, of course, littered with abhorrent trends.  But none irritate me more than the "art" of the vocal run, wherein a singer shows off his or her "talent" by attempting to hit somewhere between 3 and 87 notes within a single syllable.  I don't understand how anyone can possibly enjoy listening to such horrors.  Everyone knows that Christina Aguilera can sing.  Does that mean we have to just sit back and take the abuse while she goes on her perpetual quest for the damn brown note?

The quest for vocal histrionics has become a bizarre American Idol-like litmus test.  Who gives a rat's ass if you can sing.  Can you sing in 4 different octaves and annoy the shit out of anyone within ear shot?  Yes?  Then welcome to the music biz kid!***  No?  Then take your played-out act back to that karaoke hell from whence you came, MC Borophyll.  And don't even think about ever singing the National Anthem before a World Series game.

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #89: 156 by Mew

No matter where you live, local news is terrible.  When I was a college freshman, we were given a class project where different students each wrote a script and direction shot list for a different component of a mock local newscast.  Our instructor informed us that recent studies had determined that the top reason most viewers gave for watching their local news was weather coverage, which is entirely expected.  However, the #2 reason was initially a bit more puzzling:  Lotto numbers.  At first, I wondered if society simply contained more degenerate gamblers than I previously thought.  But now, I think it's all about lowered expectations.  Viewers know they can count on a weather report and the lotto numbers, but anything else is a crap shoot.  Will the top story be a report from downtown on a string of lights from a war memorial, still being erroneously called a "tree?"  Or will the local hard-hitting investigative reporter blow the roof off a scam involving faulting ceiling fans?  Nobody knows, but they know it will be awful.  And that it may involve "ball tapping."

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #64: Impossible Germany by Wilco

Last summer, I went to see the Nels Cline Singers play at Martyr's.  I went in without ever hearing any of Cline's overwhelming catalog of solo work, but a friend gave me two pieces of advice beforehand.

1.  Don't expect anything remotely resembling Wilco.

2.  Do expect it to be really, really loud.

These proved to be sound pieces of advice.  The sound reverberated through the room to that point where you start to wonder, "Is it okay that I can feel my own heart vibrating within my chest?"  And you could clearly tell from various reactions around the room who the people were that were hearing something a bit different from their expectations.  It's probably the same reaction you might get from someone who loved The Straight Story, and thus attends a screening of Mulholland Drive.

Personally, I thought the performance was a highly entertaining look at what Spinal Tap may have been aiming for during their Jazz odyssey phase.  Especially if you replaced "Jazz" with something along the lines of "Avant-garde-noise-rock-kitchen-sink-jazz odyssey."  I'm not sure how else I would categorize offerings like this:

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #49: The Man Comes Around by Johnny Cash

The art of the fan-made music video montage is a practice I've never been able to wrap my head around.  Search for virtually any well known song on YouTube, and more often than not you'll find multiple fan edited productions using that particular number.  I'm not talking about those that create a concept and shoot their own video for a song (for example, this fan made Death Cab video was so impressive that it became the official video).  I'm referring to the baffling practice of pairing a song with unrelated clips of television/movie/video game characters.  Looking for a Wheatus/Gossip Girl production?  Not anymore you're not!  Is Lady Gaga more entertaining when simultaneously watching some clown play The Sims?  Shockingly, no.  Have you spent time wistfully pining, "If only I could combine the awfulness of Godsmack with the awfulness of the Saw franchise!"  I'm delighted to inform you that your awful wish is granted.   And to tell you to think of better wishes.  (And as a bonus, it's a video camera recording of a TV playing Saw.  The triple crown of failure!) ***

Yet the most perplexing array of fan videos I've seen thus far center around Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around."

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000's entry #95: Tonight's Not Alright by Plumtree

The first cell phone I owned was a tiny Japanese model that is still lighter than all phones I've owned since. One of the ever-so-Japanese gadgety features was the ability to program customized ring tones via a simplistic Do-Re-Me interface. Needless to say, when you're a highly overpaid and underworked employee of the Japanese government you'll find time to tap out a ring tone or two.

Flash then to some evening at one of the gaijin bars with great names like Spoon, Mondo, Flower, or Wanted. Somewhere in the mix, and most likely on purpose, I played my pocket-sized ring tone for Catriona. She was flattered and the insider tidbit she offered made me glow with glee.

The 20-second snippet I'd chosen to recreate in electronic polyphony came from "Tonight's Not Alright" by Plumtree. Thanks to Catriona I had a copy of This Day Won't Last at All and had fallen in love with its entirety. But the heartbreaking walk down the fretboard at the 2:16 mark had been what hooked me.

Now people will and try and make suggestions,
and it only makes sense,
'cause they're having days like today,
where everything seems so crisp and clear,
crisp and clear,
crisp and clear,
crisp and
clear.

The twelve notes that intertwine with those closing words have had an immeasurable and unexplainable effect on me. This album became the soundtrack to my time in Japan, and those twelve notes the backbone of my ring tone, an homage to band I would never see live.

The cool part, the part I can articulate, is that after my debut of Casio-proud talent, Catriona told me that those few seconds were singer and guitarist Carla Gillis's favorite part of the album. It used to strike me as odd that artists could actually like (or dislike) different parts of their work, but finding out that through some cosmic coincidence I was in love with the same moment as someone else made feel fuzzy.

I still have that cell phone and its AC adapter. I used to show it to people who even in this age of smart phones were mesmerized by its wee-ness. The battery used to hold a charge, but would lose full power from time to time. Some time ago, I got it out, plugged it in and fired it up. Evidently the battery can't sit dormant too long because despite any hopes, all stored memory was gone.

I lost my ring tone, but in all honesty, I don't seem to mind.

Bad Idea Live Blog: Dayton vs Villanova

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #67: Ocean Breathes Salty by Modest Mouse

Ocean Breathes Salty

Modest Mouse | MySpace Music Videos

BAD IDEA PROGRAMMING NOTE

Check back to the site around 3pm ET/2pm CT today for a software test run masquerading as a liveblog of the Dayton vs Villanova game in Puerto Rico.  Hopefully some of the following questions may be answered:

• Will Paul Williams again assume the role of the bespectacled lad in the above video, rescuing his flying friends from certain doom?
• Will Marcus Johnson finally make a 3-pointer?  Or will he continue to play like a broken-winged Isaac Brock?
  
• Did Chris Wright leave all his athletic ability at the welcome celebration?
• Will I use any close officiating call to continue bitching about Ireland getting screwed by France?  (SPOILER ALERT: Yes.)

Be here.  Aloha.

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #5: Crazy by Gnarls Barkley

This doesn't sound like a song someone wrote.  It sounds like something found in a time capsule, years after it was systematically created in a lab, and now we are hearing something that contains no obvious influence of the society in which it was created.  It comes from no discernible musical era, sounding like something that would seamlessly fit in with any genre of pop music that has existed within the last fifty years.  Likewise it refuses to be pigeonholed into any particular genre.  I mean the guy from Goodie Mob is singing over a spaghetti western sample, for God's sake.  This is a song that I can't imagine ever aging, specifically because it appears to be without age.  It just seems like something that has always been around, but we just didn't know about it.

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #63: Wilco (the song) by Wilco

So there's this band called Wilco.  You probably have never heard of them, but don't worry.  CBS Sunday Morning (aka my source for cutting-edge music reporting) will fill you in on a band that's been a well-kept secret, but might actually start getting some respect!

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #61: You Know You're Right by Nirvana

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #15: Hoppipolla by Sigur Ros

A full in depth dissertation of Sigur Ros' evolution from sparse, glacial minimalists to dynamic, orchestral showstoppers is coming after the jump!

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #77: The Hardest Button to Button by The White Stripes

Which White Stripes/Michel Gondry collaboration is the best?  There is no wrong answer of course.  "Fell in Love With a Girl" probably holds the most cultural significance, while "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" seems ahead of its time, considering that Gondry's trademark projection got much more recognition when he repeated it for an equally enjoyable Paul McCartney video five years later.  "The Denial Twist" has a compelling concept but the manipulation gets distracting on repeat viewings.  That said, it's hard to find fault or boredom with a single frame of "The Hardest Button to Button."

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #87: 1234 by Feist

Tuesday was Sesame Street's 40th anniversary. Naturally this post would have more sense on Tuesday, but planning ahead has never been my strong suit. Nevertheless, I present 10 classic Sesame Street musical moments after the jump.

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #54: Day After Tomorrow by Tom Waits

Wow. I just found this video for the first time today, but I remember Chase shooting it when we were at Camp Arifjan in 2004.

I spent nearly three weeks in Kuwait in September 2004, and in the five years since, I still haven't been able to fully articulate the trip, aside from saying it was the best experience of my life.  The laundry list of things I witnessed still seems like something out of a Fellini movie, starting with the fact that my ride forgot to pick me up at the airport on arrival.  Imagine the normal encounter one gets when landing at a big airport, where cabbies bombard arriving passengers looking for a fair.  Now imagine that same group mentality, only everyone is speaking Arabic and you don't see any other white people.  Prejudiced or not, it's not something you can really prepare for.

Once I got my ride straightened out and got to the army base, I immediately jumped into an edit room and got to work, despite the fact that I had been up for about 24 hours straight at that point.  Within a couple minutes, a curious soldier poked his head in to see what we were working on.  I invited him in where this exchange took place:

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #69: Fidelity by Regina Spektor

Oh Regina.  You and I have such a conflicted history together.  Half the time I find your slight vocal affectations unique and endearing, such as the "bett-aww" repetitions in the bridge above.  Yet often times you can't contain yourself, and what begins as charming goes overboard (see the chorus progression through "Us," or the terrible newer song that reminds me of Joan Osborne*) to the point where I entertain thoughts of ramming an ice pick through my ear.

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #58: Kim and Jessie by M83

SIX VIDEOS INCORPORATING THE ART OF SKATING

"Kim and Jessie" by M83

Oh they have a secret world, alright.  A secret world involving creepy eyebrows, homages to Thriller and The Big Lebowski, and a variety of ways to resist each others charms, intertwined limbs and all.  Bonus points for the subtle social commentary of having the girls switch to rollerblades for the second half. 

"Get Myself Into It" by The Rapture

Well of course!  The hipsters wearing white suits are OBVIOUSLY going to throw the biggest multi-cultural skating party you've ever been to!  They hang out with the guy wearing the Patrick Ewing jersey all the time!  For you to suggest anything else makes YOU the asshole.  Their friend in the fedora totally has their back.  We're gonna meet back up with him later for some clowning.

Side note:  Skating while playing a saxophone will land your ass in Roller Cave jail faster than you can say "Hey mom, why cook?"


 

"Kissing the Lipless" by The Shins

I don't know how it got started, but it's always there.  Anytime I see a man ice skating by himself, something inside me really wants to see him fall.  ESPECIALLY if he's wearing an "outfit."  I've accepted that this is the way it is, and ultimately I blame Chris Farley.
 

"Medicine" by Orbit

The graceful ice ingenue who pulled off a triple salchow into one Ross MacLochness' heart.  It's all in the hips.

"Nothin' My Love Can't Fix" by Joey Lawrence

This video is like a documentary of my adolescence.  Every weekend, me and my friends would make our way to the wrong side of town.  It was covered in graffiti and despair, so it was the perfect place to dance on skates, practice floor exercises, and fill up buckets with acrylic paint then dump them out for no reason! Once we had our fill of chillin' on scaffolding, we'd head to the beach for a football game, where I would play both quarterback AND wide receiver.  And I haven't even gotten to the giant disorientation globe that we'd spin in!  Most people only ride in those at Space Camp, but we always just had one with us.  It's how we roll.  One time the flannel shirt I had around my waist got caught in one of the rings at the playground.  Whoa, indeed.

"Fully Flared" by Spike Jonze

Nobody is wearing skates here.  And technically, this isn't a music video.  It's the intro to a skating video that Spike Jonze directed.  However, it might as well be an M83 video since the soundtrack is their song "Lower Your Eyelids to Die with the Sun" (full circle!) That said, this video is five minutes of jumps and explosions, all in slow motion.  Having read that last sentence, you're probably saying to yourself, "There's nothing in that description that doesn't sound ridiculously awesome!"  And you are right.

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #47: Against All Odds by the Postal Service

The #1 single on iTunes is a song called “Fireflies” by something called Owl City. The first time I had heard of Owl City revolved around news of merchandising footie pajamas to adults (congrats on out-doing Weezer on embarrassing wearable fabric!) so naturally I expected terrible things. But I severely underestimated the overall shittiness of this garbage:

Ugh. What’s the worst thing about this charade? The nonsensically vapid lyrics? The ridiculously calculated visual affect of a kitsch-filled bedroom to artificially create nostalgia? Or the fact that EVERYTHING related to the melody, beats, and vocal affectation is wholesale stolen from the Postal Service (if the Postal Service were terrible at music). And for some reason this clown is UPSET by people continually bringing this up in interviews? Use your footie pajamas to hang yourself from that disco ball, you diaper faced plagiarist.  I hope you get beaten with a Speak & Spell.

Good Lord. If only someone could help me calm down from this intense rage burning through my bloodstream. Someone like…Phil Collins?

Look, everyone realizes that 98% of the Phil Collins catalogue is awful. But that other 2% is “In the Air Tonight” and “Against All Odds,” the latter of which served as a centerpiece for one of my favorite This American Life segments, and also may have served as a video inspiration for an earlier playlist entry.

The song itself is overbearingly earnest, but then again so are break-ups in general. The Postal Service cover features Gibbard handling the lyrics without any cynicism, but layered with less outright sadness and more wistfulness and mystery, the opening verse sounding like it's coming through AM radio.  The unintentionally hilarious video (edited from the movie "Wicker Park") only adds to the mystique.  Josh Harnett is a terrible actor even when he's doing nothing but staring!  Or caressing a phone!

The TV disappears but the IKEA furniture cart remains!  I wonder if the hipsters inside Debonair vanished too?

If recent history is any indication, we can probably expect an Owl City cover of "Sussudio" before too long. 

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #93: Fort Hood by Mike Doughty

Mike Doughty - New Music - More Music Videos

Mike Doughty wrote about the meaning behind the song "Fort Hood," released in 2008.  He further elaborated on Stereogum:

I wouldn't call this an anti-war song, because I'm not gonna rail about who lied about what. Too late for that. I'm concerned about lost innocence, and damaged young bodies and minds. I think I say it most directly in the bridge: "You should be getting stoned with a prom dress girl...You should blast Young Jeezy with your friends in a parking lot." 

Not to mention my own guilt at being able to live a normal life while that nightmare is going on over there.
The USO invited me to Walter Reed a couple years back; I met a bunch of guys who had lost their limbs. Young guys. But I know that you don't have to be wounded to be scarred by war.

My Dad was in the Army, and I grew up in the 70s on Army bases; he, and basically all the adult men around, had been in Vietnam. There was a lot of weird, angry behavior that was baffling to me as a kid, but now I recognize as post-traumatic stress disorder. That's what I wonder about when I see guys in uniform coming back from the war, sitting around an airport; what's in this guy's head? What has he witnessed? What kind of terrible images is he burdened with?

It's oddball in indie-rock-land to steal a chorus and repurpose it; I grew up with house and hiphop music, so sampling seems very natural to me, the only difference is that I'm actually singing it. Actually, I downloaded (OK, stole) an MP3 of the Japanese cast of Hair. The verses were hilarious and strange, of course, but when the chorus came in, it suddenly switched to English: let the sunshine in, let the sunshine in. I was listening to it on the D train over the Manhattan bridge and suddenly I found myself tearing up, extremely moved.

While this song might now become inadvertently infamous, it'll pale in comparison to the overall eeriness and timing that marked Ryan Adams' "New York, New York."   But sometimes on occasions like Thursday, even the hackneyed cheesy refrain from Hair can seem oddly life-affirming. Sometimes that's the best you can hope for.

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #11: White Winter Hymnal by Fleet Foxes

Ah, stop motion.  It's retro chic in Fleet Foxes videos or when Wes Anderson is making movies, but where was all the trendy buzz in the heyday of the California Raisins?

This video teaches an important life lesson.  We've all at one time or another developed a a magical spinning crank for the purpose of spinning time backwards, thus reverting our physical appearance to that of fifty years in the past.  But when doing so, KEEP YOUR HANDS ON THE DAMN WHEEL or you'll ruin everything and end up once again a beardy old man living in the forest.

The more you know.

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #10: Come Pick Me Up by Ryan Adams

Ever so often a publication of one form or another will inevitably do a ranking of top films, and it's inevitable that Citizen Kane tops the list time after time.  Yet nobody watches Citizen Kane with any frequency, not the way people still occasionally watch The Godfather or Gone With the Wind.  Film critics are all too eager to rattle off the laundry list of groundbreaking techniques that Orson Welles introduced as a 25-year-old (!) writer/director, but I can't imagine that anyone watches the film repeatedly the way other classics are viewed.  Nevertheless, I'm often curious as to how Welles handled the fact that every movie he directed the rest of his live (13 in total) would inevitably fail to measure up with the first. He made a number of other excellent films, but he wouldn't ever top that debut, and so it is that he is, fairly or not, viewed as someone who a) peaked at 25, and b) later became infamous as a drunken pitchman.
 
If it weren't for Heartbreaker, Ryan Adams wouldn't catch half the shit he does now.  It's easy for people to say that he's too prolific with his output the last several years, but that's really just a nice way of saying that the majority of his recent work hasn't been very good.  After all, Jack White has released eight albums the last ten years, but nobody accuses him of needing to self-edit (most likely because he's consistently put out good/great albums.)

But in many respects it's tough to blame Adams.  It's not as if his albums have been bad, and in reality most are better than average.  Unfortunately, like Welles, he happened to put together a masterpiece when he was 25 years old, and at this point he's unlikely to top it.  Again, this isn't necessarily his fault, as over 99% of albums recorded by anyone since Heartbreaker came out are inferior to Adams' debut.  (However, he'd make it much tougher for people to write him off if he would go back to listening to Gram Parsons instead of the Grateful Dead.)  One edge that I'll give Adams over Welles:  Heartbreaker ages much better than Kane.

A side note about "Come Pick Me Up": This probably says more about me than it does about the song, but within the airing of grievances voiced by Adams, the line "steal my records" always strikes me as the most evil. That's against the law, you heartless harlot! 



Ryan Adams - Come Pick Me Up (mp3)

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #31: The Funeral by Band of Horses

I flew back to Indy from Connecticut when Dave died. After the funeral, I was talking to one of his ex-girlfriends when she wistfully sighed, “I never got a chance to say goodbye.” I was puzzled to hear this, primarily because it was the first (and thus far only) time I’ve heard someone actually utter that particular sentence in real life. I thought it was something only said in the minds of unimaginative screenwriters, along the lines of a wedding officiant offering, “If anyone objects to this marriage…” or a nerdy girl at prom demanding to know, “Was I just a bet to you?”

From the time that we become old enough to understand life and death, we are taught that final breaths can come quickly and without warning, be it via a car crashes, aneurysm, or any assortment of freak acts of God or nature. But these occasions are the clear exception.  Far more often, we are confronted with a death where we find ourselves with too many chances to say goodbye. Long illnesses, or a diagnosis where we’re told the end is definitely coming but cannot predict the exact date, leave both the dying and the survivors with little to do but wait. And as that tortuous wait plays itself out, you realize that you no longer fear a phone call coming in the middle of the night or the middle of the workday. Instead you fear that every phone call will in fact be THAT phone call. Every visit ends with you walking to your car, wondering if you’ll still have reason to make the return trip the next day or week.  It's a thoroughly exhausting process for all parties involved.

“At every occasion I’m ready for the funeral.”

The first verse is ethereal and subdued, with falsetto vocals soaring over the hallowed-out reverb of a lone arpeggio. With the second verse, the catharsis kicks in under the guise of searing power chords and the full drum kit. The vocals are still mournful but unflinching, shouting into the ether of sustain effects.  The loss, be it still just expected, or having finally happened, is ever present, but there’s an underlying defiance that stands in place for optimism that can't yet be seen.

It's also apparently a natural soundtrack for yet another car ad, but at this point is anyone really criticizing these business moves?  It's not as if there's another viable option for as many people to see the original video, which channels John Cassavetes' directorial style of close ups and overall human misery.  When you're seeing dead animals in your whiskey tumbler, it's time for someone to take your keys.

BIBJ Playlist of the 2000s entry #9: Poor Places by Wilco

There’s something inherently fascinating about watching a talented person do their job well, regardless of your interest in that job itself. In this regard, I always take issue with snobs who deride “reality television,” as if anything that isn’t scripted falls under a singular umbrella. The key to whether non-fiction television or films are worth watching lies in a vital question the viewer should be asking: "Are the subjects on screen showcasing their talent in a compelling way?" Yes answers seem to apply to "Deadliest Catch," "American Chopper," or "Project Runway." No answers apply to anything with the word "Housewives" in the title, or any talent being showcased in "talent show" format.  There's a reason why "Top Chef" is appointment television for me, despite the fact that I know next to nothing about most of the foodie language they're throwing around.  Likewise, NPR makes a perfectly compelling argument about why ESPN's 30 for 30 docs are perfect for people who hate sports. 

Watching talented people work is the key to the success of Sam Jones' documentary about the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Granted, both the film and the album are perhaps overshadowed by the now legendary circumstances surrounding the album being dropped by Reprise - a still baffling rejection that former A&R rep Mio Vukovic will wear to his final days.  And yes, it's also true that other surface highlights of the film are the arguments between Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett, culminating with Bennett's bitter departure from the band.   

But the soul of the film is Bennett and Tweedy showcasing how they collaborated to come up with arrangements that neither would never achieve afterward without the other.  The output that the two achieved in the Summerteeth and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot era was lightning in a bottle, light years beyond Being There, which is pretty great in its own right.  The arguments seem obviously petty with Bennett now gone, but the document of their actual work is still spellbinding, particularly in the way that Jones documents the evolution of "Poor Places," from an outstanding-yet-simple folk song to a multi-layered schizophrenic masterpiece.  Jones seamlessly paces through the progression, from Tweedy playing the bare demo, to Glenn Kotche experimenting with rhythm, to Bennett grinning like a kid on Christmas as he wonders if they'll lose their mind while looking for more layers to add.  

Obviously when Jones decided to record Wilco making an album, he had no idea about the politics and in-fighting that would become such a big part of the narrative. But he also couldn't have known how impressive the final product itself would be.  Considering Bennett's early passing, it's nice to have a permanent record of his creative process to remember him by.