You will be assimilated. You will listen to the slickly produced songs. You will watch the bright, bouncy videos in which even the “found objects” that make up “Marina’s” “drum” set are painted in preschool colors.
You won’t mind that the “rap” dude (“Twist,” of course) sounds like Jim Carrey’s impression of Vanilla Ice. You will, on the other hand, wonder if the former soap actress playing “Marina” is a long-lost relative of Khrystne Haje from Head of the Class.
And your kids will be dancing. Get used to it. We are not going away.
Just pray that your kids won’t graduate to Hannah Montana.
I’ve been meaning to blog this one for a long time. From my brief jazz fusion/New Age phase (thanks to VH1’s “New Visions” show), this was one of the highlights. Mesmerizing stuff.
This one’s mostly for the music-major friends who have recently befriended me on Facebook. And the Popdose gang. And anyone else who likes seeing weird old PJ Harvey videos.
These three songs all have odd time signatures. And yet they rock. They’re not some sort of prog-rock “Hey, look at us, we’re so sophisticated because we can count to 13″ mathematical exercises. Here goes:
The verses — in 11/4 — are the easy part. The choruses are more erratic, not easily described in one time. Alternating measures of 9/4? Rapidly switching from 3/4 to 2/4? Hard to say.
Then near the end, it slams into 4/4. Brilliant stuff.
I put the downbeat number in the middle. This is Tori Amos’ sprightly little ode to her own miscarriage.
It’s moving and quite intense, with verses that seem timeless. (Most of the time, it’s 13/8, but she throws in a couple of twists at the intro.) The gentle choruses are in simpler triplets. Then, like PJ Harvey, she resolves to something simple for the climax of the song.
The live version from Jools Holland’s wonderful show Later omits a transition into that thrashing section at the end, which you can hear on the studio version that I apparently can’t embed. Even after hearing this song 100 times or so, I sometimes get chills around the 2:50 mark. The video projects a completely different dramatic storyline on the song which, like Tori herself, is strange but compelling.
In both versions here, Tori has a secret weapon — the always excellent Matt Chamberlain on drums.
And we’ll close with one in which Chrissie Hynde just decides to skip a beat in each line of verse, giving us a skip between 7/4 and two bars of 4/4. Don’t crank this up at work — lyrics are a little suggestive. So suggestive I still don’t even know what she’s talking about. I probably shouldn’t.
I’m going to try to update the old blog more often, but I can’t promise anything.
You’ll occasionally catch some James Gang songs on the radio, but this live version of Walk Away shows just how ferocious Joe Walsh and company were before Joe joined the Eagles.
I haven’t been down lately — a little overworked, yes — but I’m still enjoying this downer of a tune from Bloc Party called Talons.
When people think of rock “opera,” they usually mean 20-minute songs. But this is operatic in style without demanding that the listener clear out a day to listen.
The most obvious interpretation of the song is a fable about AIDS, though that’s not necessarily the only interpretation. More broadly, it’s about guilt and death. The protagonist and his circle of friends have led entertaining but reckless lives, and they’re suffering the consequences.
What separates it artistically from the typical emo music is the change of moods. The verses are full of subdued regret. The chorus cries out against the same circumstances, dialing up the anguished self-loathing. “I have been wicked / I have been arrogant.”
The best part is the bridge, a final bit of defiance. “I didn’t think it would catch up as fast as I could have run,” they sing over a major key progression that sounds almost Wagnerian. Then they modulate back to the minor for the crushing line — “a new disease came in the post for me today.”
If you don’t buy all the aesthetic talk here, just know that it rocks. Enjoy.
The tools for blogging are just getting better, even as the time I have to blog is greatly diminished. I’m also spending more and more time on Facebook, where I can just make a quick comment and move on.
So the tactic I’m trying now for Mostly Modern Media is to make a quick comment and move on. Not as quick as a Twitter tweet or Facebook update, but something short and easy.
I reserve the right to go on the occasional 2,000-word rant. Maybe even a well-crafted 2,000-word hypertext essay. But in the interest of posting here more frequently, I’m going to try this sort of thing more often, using ScribeFire to help out.
As a test case, I’ve included a good PopUp Video above. Enjoy.
Evidence supporting this claim: Someone claiming to be Bo Wagner tells the full story on this site.
Evidence against: Why couldn’t I find any other reference to the good doctor being the marimba player from Starbuck, and why does the Starbuck bio page say his whereabouts are unknown? Especially when the person writing on the site above says he’s in touch with Bruce, the guy who posted the Starbuck bio page?
Rachael Yamagata’s style is hard to pin down, but the critics seem to like the melancholy … subtle … drama of her slow songs, which occupy one of the discs on her new double release.
I, on the other hand, like the faster stuff (including a song called Faster, linked below). She’s like PJ Harvey without the crazy.
Consider the video evidence, which I’ll just link up rather than embedding since everything I embed gets taken down. (And really, it’s about the music, not the visuals. Well, maybe on the one live clip I’ll explain.)
2. From her new album, the slow, slow song Elephants. Compelling, but would you want this to be the bulk of her repertoire?
3. A live Tonight Show performance of the song I’m playing over and over again on my iPod these days, Faster. The live performance isn’t bad, but the studio version is astounding, full of rhythmic surprises and jolting lyrics.
4. One of her older piano ballads, Reason Why. It’s a pretty song that holds up even when she’s playfully getting a couple of obnoxious guys to shut up.
I’m conflicted about that, too. On one hand, I’m impressed that she comes across as so charming when she’s just trying to get a couple of people to shut up long enough for her to sing a pretty, popular song of hers. On the other hand, doesn’t she end up encouraging a couple of guys to be assholes just because they’re cute?
