What Are You Listening To?

[kimmy]

In the spirit of the season, here is some delightful Christmas music. Here is "What Child Is This?" performed on the otamatone by the Cleveland Otamatone Orchestra. (I've heard that all the minorities in Cleveland have otamatones.)

THANKS, OTAMA

-k

[Guest Derek L]

Big fan of Canadian Corb Lund, and with this duet with Hayes Carll here:

reminding me of another two fellows singing (and laughing about) the "Southern legal system":

http://youtu.be/WH22W4W3zIo

[dre]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26REYsR0K_I

Love the pipe organ made from miles of PVC

[cybercoma]

There's a website out there http://www.albumoftheyear.org that scores and ranks albums based on where they appear in various critics' Best of 2013 lists (click Year End List Aggregate in the top banner). There's a variety of things on here, but it seems as though indie rock is almost always overrepresented on it each year. Nevertheless, the top album so far is Kanye West's Yeezus, which sounds completely experimental. I've never heard another rap album like it. Given the reviews of it on iTunes, he completely alienated his fans with it too. However, he should be commended for being an artist and experimenting (his personal life aside and some of the sophomoric and trite lyrics aside). There's also some electronic music on there: e.g., Daft Punk's Random Access Memories, The Knife's Shaking the Habitual, Disclosure's Settle. Anyway, check out the site if you want to see what critics have picked as the best albums of the year.

Edited December 31, 2013 by cybercoma

[bleeding heart]

I'm not especially a Kanye fan, but I agree with your sentiment. Kanye is, in my view, more or less an idiot...at least, extremely foolish and apparently lacking in self-reflection when making numerous assertions in public.

But it doesn't matter. To paraphrase someone else, "the book is the thing."

Some people seem to have a strange idea that artists are uniquely insightful (writers, especially, tend to receive undue adulation on this point). It's hogwash, of course. Heck, read some interviews with Salman Rushdie, or Robert DeNiro, or Margaret Atwood or Picasso or George Carlin or Pete Townsend.

All reasonably intelligent people of average "insight." You can see just as smart on MLW.

[DogOnPorch]

First seen on SNL, if I recall...original video.

[Mighty AC]

WOW! What an incredible Stairway tribute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2BDi7GmXMI

Stairway To Heaven - Ann & Nancy Wilson with Jason Bonham plus a choir and orchestra.

[GostHacked]

The new Crystal Method cd is pretty good. Self titled, it's got some good breaks, some dub-step-ish tracks and some straight up banging electro house.

This was released in June 2013

[cybercoma]

Crystal Method...now there's a group I haven't heard about in years.

[Moonlight Graham]

One of the few modern pop songs/artists I actually like, but he's more of a soul/pop artist kinda like Adele:

[kimmy]

Avalanche season has arrived in Kim Country, and that means to expect a veritable carnival of carnage as backwoods skiers and backwoods snowmobilers meet their icy dooms. In honor of this annual Darwinesque thinning of the herd, here is Wave of Mutilation, by the Pixies.

Bonus icy doom track: Snowblind, by Black Sabbath.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHal84S_XkI

Remember, kids, stay off the mountains when the avalanche risk is rated extreme.

-k

[Mighty AC]

Thanks, I haven't listened to the Pixies in a while!

[Mighty AC]

Rollingstone.com ranked 102 Nirvana recordings and included commentary, sound and/or video for each.


Here is a Season's In The Sun cover, with Kurt on drums, Dave on bass and Krist on guitar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO4BF67pvsc#t=35

Edited February 28, 2014 by Mighty AC

[Moonlight Graham]

Avalanche season has arrived in Kim Country, and that means to expect a veritable carnival of carnage as backwoods skiers and backwoods snowmobilers meet their icy dooms. In honor of this annual Darwinesque thinning of the herd, here is Wave of Mutilation, by the Pixies.

Made-in-BC appropriate track for ya (the intro ends around 1:30):

[Guest]

Wilko Johnson was supposed to be dead by now. He isn't. And Roger Daltrey is sounding better than ever, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1Me-LubTgk

Edit> Can someone explain to me how to get the image from you tube to show up? It used to, but now it doesn't.

Don't let that take away from the experience, though.

Edited May 1, 2014 by bcsapper

[kimmy]

Cool. I often like songs with long introductions. I think they can be a neat way of building a mood. The repeated phrase "one foot in front of the other" with the sort of subdued monotone vocal creates a mental image of somebody persevering or enduring, like putting your head down and walking into the wind on a winter day.

-k

[Moonlight Graham]

Cool. I often like songs with long introductions. I think they can be a neat way of building a mood. The repeated phrase "one foot in front of the other" with the sort of subdued monotone vocal creates a mental image of somebody persevering or enduring, like putting your head down and walking into the wind on a winter day.

-k

Well some people are ADD, didn't want you tuning out over a long repetitive intro haha, but I like it too, glad you did.

The song is actually about the great emotional and physical turmoil Matthew endured for years from untreated bipolar disorder. He had no clue at the time he wrote this song or released the album that he actually had bipolar disorder, and was only properly diagnosed about 4 years later when finally hospitalized. It's pretty amazing reading/listening to the lyrics and realizing what he went through after the fact.

[kimmy]

Well some people are ADD, didn't want you tuning out over a long repetitive intro haha, but I like it too, glad you did.

The song is actually about the great emotional and physical turmoil Matthew endured for years from untreated bipolar disorder. He had no clue at the time he wrote this song or released the album that he actually had bipolar disorder, and was only properly diagnosed about 4 years later when finally hospitalized. It's pretty amazing reading/listening to the lyrics and realizing what he went through after the fact.

I wonder if people who turn off a song because the intro was too long would walk out of a movie because they didn't like the opening credits?

I had heard that Matthew Good was a jerk, difficult to work with, alienated people, and so on... hearing that he had undiagnosed bipolar disorder makes it all make sense. Sometimes you find out stuff about an artist that puts a song into a new context in hindsight. "Out in the Cold" by Judas Priest kind of took on a new context for me when I found out that behind the scenes, Rob Halford was struggling with living "in the closet" and his boyfriend committed suicide around the time that record was released.

-k

[kimmy]

This song had confused the heck out of me for a couple of weeks, because I heard it a lot on the radio and never heard who the artist was. The music sounded a lot like the Black Keys, with the heavy drum and guitar sound, but the vocal didn't sound like the Black Keys.

Mystery solved! It's "the Arctic Monkeys", whoever the hell they are. The song is called "Do I Wanna Know?" from their record "AM". The video is really cool, and at first glance you might think it plays on the AM theme. However, as Bonam would be quick to point out, this isn't actually amplitude modulation at all, it's just a bunch of sine waves that are not, in fact, an amplitude-modulated radio signal.

-k

[cybercoma]

It's funny because the Arctic Monkeys have been around forever, selling out Wembley for multiple nights even. They just haven't made it as big in North America.

[GostHacked]

I wonder if people who turn off a song because the intro was too long would walk out of a movie because they didn't like the opening credits?

-k

I love long progressive building songs. To the point it is reflected in the music I have done.

[GostHacked]

Found out Korn released a new album.

Good track ...

[bleeding heart]

Kimmy,

I liked your remark about Rob Halford....it took me back. As a teenager in the mid '80s, I was a Judas Priest fanatic. Oh, I know, they're Dramatic, they're so...British Metal, of the old school. But those of us who loved them, loved them a lot. And a lot of bands, from Iron Maiden to Metallica, have named them as an influence.

I bring it up because of Halford's homosexuality. I don't know what 16-year-old metalheads think now, but in those days, they were a fairly conservative bunch. Sometimes reactionary. (Ironic, considering that the godfathers, Black Sabbath, wrote so many anti-war and peace n' love songs...they were basically Flower Children with loud guitars and playing in minor key.)

Because even in 1984, rumours abounded about Halford's sexual preference. (I mean: "Hell Bent for Leather"? I hate to stereotype, but come on....)

And the common reaction was "I don't believe it, man, no way!" Because, you know, God forbid.....

Anyway, yeah, thanks for the video, and the nostalgia....and I see what you mean. It's a little touching to me.

And there are a couple of old love songs, too, many of them, I see in retrospect, that were gender neutral. No wonder.

Edited March 14, 2014 by bleeding heart

[Mighty AC]

Let me take you to the hurting ground
Where all good men are trampled down
Just to settle a bet that could not be won
Between a prideful father and his son
Will you guide me now, for I can't see
A reason for the suffering and this long misery
What if every living soul could be upright and strong
Well, then I do imagine

There will be sorrow
Yeah there will be sorrow
And there will be sorrow no more

[WestCoastRunner]

I saw this band perform on David Letterman a few weeks back. The band is 'Future Islands' and they are pretty good. The singer is priceless, you have to watch his dance moves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ee4bfu_t3c