7 posts tagged “music”

Holy crap does the new Outkast album rule. You must pick it up. Though, be warned, that several tracks will burn their way into your brain and you won't be able to get them out, no matter how hard you try. But that's a good thing in this case. One of those songs has a video - and thanks to BET and the fine folks stealing content over there at YouTube, I give you "Morris Brown". w00t!

 

What are your three favorite album covers of all-time? Any honorable mentions?

Question submitted by Tamara.

This is an interesting one, as for me, the amount I like the album art is heavily influenced by how much I like the music on the album. I mean, would I still like Monet if it sounded like a boy band? Probably not.

The Who - Tommy: Awesome.

The Beatles - Rubber Soul: I see the cover, I hear the music. I hear the music, I see the cover.

Billy Bragg - Worker's Playtime: I like this because of what I'm assuming is Billy Bragg not taking himself too seriously - an album filled with socialism and waiting for the great leap forwards, but mostly singing about failed relationships. In any case I love the cover.

BranVan3000 - Glee: This is my "Honorable Mention" one - only because it's a CD cover, and not an album cover. But it's pretty fucking awesome nonetheless.

OK, so at what point did 2006 decide "I'm going to surprise the hell out of everyone and put out more kickass music than we've heard in a while"? I saw this video while channel surfing over the weekend, and promptly went out and picked up Sergio Mendes' Timeless. So you've got that, you've got the Herb Alpert & Tijuana Brass Rewhipped, and you've got Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere. I can't remember a year that had me so happy about new music.

 

Oh how unfortunate... Diana Ross, Ain't No Mountain High Enough was top of the charts when I was born. I was kind of hoping for something a little more ass kicking. Though at least I wasn't born a month earlier - then it would have been the Carpenters (which would have allowed me to make a Karen Carpenter joke, and now I can't...) Two months earlier and it would have been Three Dog Night's Mama Told Me (Not to Come). Wow - the more I look at the chart topping music from the year I was born, with the exception of one Simon and Garfunkel song at the beginning of the year, and a George Harrison song at the very end, it's a clusterfuck of bad AM radio.

And when I turned 21? Oh eat me. Color Me Badd's I Adore Mi Amor. A year that has Extreme, PM Dawn, and Prince sprinkled throughout couldn't throw me a bone? Well, at least it wasn't one of the other craptastic songs from the charts that year (Michael Jackson, Michael Bolton, or Whitney Houston).

(Oh, and thanks to Lilia I used the Top 100 list on Wikipedia to avoid having to pay out to be saddned by birthday music.

a) This is an awesome qoTD
b) They'd never make a movie about my life
c) If they did (except they won't (see 'b')), the soundtrack would be all over the place.

I spent a lot (read: "the twenty minutes it takes me to walk home from the office") of time thinking about this, and what the question could mean. Does it mean "what would I like the soundtrack to the movie about my life to be?", like if I were editing it and making it more interesting, or "what would the actual music from the soundtrack of the never-going-to-get-greenlit movie of my life be?". I wound up leaning towards the latter (call me a glass-half-empty kind of guy). Clearly it would need to be edited down. And clearly I need to find other Monday night hobbies (though this ain't so bad).

Note: the early-years stuff is more fuzzy memories, the later years is more what was in heavy rotation on the tape deck then CD player and in my head as I walk around...

Childhood (let's say until around 10):

Me and My Arrow from The Point, Free to Be You and Me, Simon & Garfunkel, KISS-pre-Dynasty, Blondie, The Beatles

Early-teens (oh, let's go 11 - 17)

Hall & Oates, Art of Noise, a-ha, Paul Simon, Men Without Hats, early B-52's (Bouncing off Satellites), Howard Jones, Depeche Mode, Prince, Wham!, OMD

The College Years (part one, undergrad)

Tribe Called Quest, Led Zepplin, 3rd Bass, Billy Bragg (Worker's Playtime, esp. "Little Time Bomb" and "The Only One", Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Jesus Jones, EMF, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, The Beatles, Ray Lynch, MC5, lots of underground late 60s So-Cal psychedelia, The KLF, INXS, Van Halen, Aerosmith, Beastie Boys, Peter and the Wolf

The College Years (part deux, grad school)

Sting, The Orb, Stereo MCs, Seal, Daniel Lanois, Carl Orff's setting of Carmina Burana, Van Halen, Aerosmith, The Proclaimers, Bix Beiderbecke

Mid-to-late 20s

Cake,  Shitty Shitty Band Band, Brian Setzer Orchestra, Aerosmith, Beastie Boys, BT, Propellerheads, Fat Boy Slim, Spring Hill Jack, Art of Noise, Portishead, Kid Rock, Prince (c'mon, it turned 1999), Pink Martini, Afro-Cuban All Stars, Willie Nelson, Tom Jones, Theivery Corporation, lots of albums produced/released by DJ Kicks, Allman Brothers, The Beatles, The Saint soundtrack

Early-to-mid-30s (that is, 'til now)

Clair de lune (from 'Suite Bergamasque', conducted by Eurgene Ormandy, performed by The Philadelphia Orchestra), George Michael, Seal, Evanescence, Handsome Boy Modelling School, Tom Jones, Gorillaz, Oasis, Bebel Gilberto, Louis Prima, Jack Johnson, Peter and the Wolf, Johnny Cash, Herb Alpert, Kid Rock, Gnarls Barkley

Hmmm... in looking this over, I might be sharing too much (or insuring that I spend Monday nights in front of Vox followed by Stargate re-runs). And this is an edited down list - all kinds of albums and songs could have worked their way in there. But for the time being, this is my list, and I'm sticking to it. Oh, and what a fucked up tag cloud this would make...

Of course, this list makes me think of a conversation I had with my brother over drinks on 2nd Avenue off of Union Square in NY a few years back as to what are the top twenty most influential artists ever, and why. Now that is a qoTD. Hell, that's almost a qoTD that would need its own mailing list - my brother and I only got to 17 due to the back and forth as to "does that actually make the band influential - would music be where it is today if [insert artist here] hadn't put out a song or album?".

Uh... that would have to be "Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael".

But c'mon, "Freedom 90" is hands down an awesome song (and guaranteed to get any bad AM radio song stuck in your head out in two seconds).

You know what - I'm so NOT embarrassed by having the CD in my collection.

"Swinging on a Star".