MadMup.com

Two more for you:

• Guitar Hero III - More of the same, but a little bit more difficult and a few stupid things thrown in.
• Rock Band - Two people on guitars, one on drums, and one on vocals. I basically need other people to play this game with me. This one is the winner by far.

As usual, you're more than welcome to come over and play these with me most any time.

Labels: game review, music

2 comments

There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to why, but sometimes I make up songs.

Actually, there is no specific convergence of heavenly bodies or wind conditions or food ingestion that brings this about - it's just something I do. Whether it's singing to the cats about why I haven't fed them yet (usually it has something to do with "I don't want to go downstairs yet") or proclaiming the wonders of a particular food ("Donuts! I love donuts!"), I just find myself singing impromptu songs sometimes.

Here's an example of one that sprang to mind a long time ago. Dave and I were driving to school one morning when we saw a sticker on the vehicle in front of us that looked like a former President:

Hey, Woodrow Wilson
On the back of the truck
That's on the front of our car
That's on the ro-o-oad.

Certainly not Shakespeare by any stretch, but there's something about on-the-spot words and on-the-spot tunes that I really like. That one there, for instance, has been rattling around in my head now for over 13 years. Seriously. And it just makes sense, you know? Our car was on the road, the truck was in front of us, and the sticker that looked like Woodrow Wilson was on it. Perfectly logical. Should there have been more? Perhaps. We might have explored what it was we wanted to say to Woodrow Wilson. The quattrain in this form should simply be considered a greeting, I feel, one that is very specific as to location.

I know I'm not the only one that does this. You other guilty ones know who you are (Dave, for instance). I worry, though, that it's some sort of condition that will only get worse with time, but I don't worry too much about it, since it's something I enjoy.

I wonder if it's tied with my other musical tic. Sometimes when someone says a sentence, the meter of the sentence immediately fits the meter of a song I'm familiar with. "Those are some big guns that they're shooting in Iraq" immediately goes to the tune of the Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black," for instance. That one is helped more by "Iraq" rhyming with "black," but it isn't always that way.

And, of course, pretty much everybody does the "that reminds me of a song" thing. Should someone happen to encourage all partygoers to "have fun tonight," 93% of the attenders will immediately think (and sometimes sing outloud) "Everybody Wang Chung tonight!" traveling to Kokomo, Indiana for some reason? There's a Beach Boys song for that. It can be surprising some of the random lyrics and tunes that pop into a person's head triggered by the smallest thing.

None of this is necessarily a terrible thing... unless it happens 458 times in the span of an evening. Even then it's not necessarily a terrible thing... unless you happen to be in the company of others.

It is to those others that I apologize now. I'd like to say "it won't happen again," but I know it will.

Feel free to sing along.

Labels: music, quirks

1 comments

I realize I'm about 15 years late in making the following statement, but... I like dc Talk.

Expected responses to that statement include "Who?", "Oh my word," and eye rolls a-plenty. There will also be a few horrified looks and at least one or two bemused shakings of the head.

See, dc Talk was a Christian rap group. Near as I can tell, they had their heyday in the 90s, a time when I would have fallen into either the "horrified" or "bemused" reactions myself, depending on who was telling me about them. The words "Christian" and "rap" don't belong together, right? I'm not going to get into a whole debate on that topic, as there's no way to answer it satisfactorily for people on either side of the debate (so please don't focus on this aspect of it in the comments!). Those who've been reading for a long time, though, will know I have an affinity for certain types of rap, and there have been a few people here and there who've seen me "perform" such things as "White & Nerdy," "All About the Pentiums," "Vice," and "Nightmare on My Street." I don't get into "gangsta" even a little, and have no interest in cuss- and deragatory word-filled music.

But I'm getting off-topic. My point is that I've picked up a couple of dc Talk albums recently and have been enjoying them. In fact, the ringtone for my "Church people" caller group is the opening bars to "Jesus Freak," which, incidentally, makes me giggle.

This weekend I found a used copy of "Free At Last," their third album. And while titles like "word 2 the Father" and "Jesus is just alright" activate my Skeptic's Eyebrow, I still find some good stuff here and there. For instance:

Pullin out my big black book
Cause when I need a word defined thats where I look
So I move to the L's quick, fast, in a hurry
Threw on my specs, thought my vision was blurry
I looked again but to my dismay
It was black and white with no room for grey
Ya see, a big V stood beyond my word
And yo thats when it hit me, that luv is a verb

Say what you want about "Christian hip-hop," but this is an important for anyone to remember, church-goer or not: "love" isn't just a verb, it's an action verb. If I love you (as a friend, family member, or whatever else), I'll show you that I love you, I won't just say it. That's not just me doing things for you, that's me reacting correctly to you, me wanting the best things for you across the board, and me making things less about "me" and more about you.

I've been back at church for a few months now after being "away" for a few years, and I'm finding that my perspective's changed. I have the privilege of attending a church that stresses "real world Christianity," and I'm learning that it's what I do, not what I don't do that makes the difference. And the thing that I need to do the most is love others.

Jesus said it this way: "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." (John 13:34, NIV)

dc Talk says it this way:

Back in the day there was a Man
Who stepped out of heaven and He walked the land
He delivered to the people an eternal choice
With a heart full of luv and the truth in His voice
Gave up His life so that we may live
How much more luv could the Son of God give?
Here is the example that we oughtta be matchin
Cause luv is a word that requires some action

There's pretty much only one response I can have to that:

Word.

Labels: love, music

10 comments

I don't know if this is the sort of thing a person ought to mention on their blog or not. I worry a lot about appropriateness, if you hadn't noticed. I like for people to have a pleasant experience when they show up here, and I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable.

But this seems like kind of a big deal, so I thought I'd chance it.

I'm not even sure how to put this, so I guess... well, I guess I'll just say it like this, separately spaced, centered, and bolded:


It's taken me some time to come to this point, but I'm finally ready to announce it. Sure, it might not mean much to some of you - most of you, even - but for a select few, it might put a spring in your step, a gleam in your eye, or a flutter in your heart. To those select few I say this: contact me. My email address is in the upper-left corner, the comments section is open - I'll even give you my phone number if you want. Just give me a holler.

We'll have fun, I promise you. Oh, there'll be rough times, but if we work through them, we'll come out on the other side of them a better team, more prepared for the next challenges. But if you're up for it, so am I. With enough work, maybe we'll eventually be able to take a crack at something a little scary, very difficult, but ultimately rewarding: "Freebird" on Expert.

Considering I'm just now starting to try songs on Hard, it might take a while. But if you're available to work on it, I am, too. So if you wanna play some Guitar Hero until your fingers fall off, give me a holler.

I'm totally available. For playing Guitar Hero.

Labels: life, music

18 comments

My current song obsession is one I discovered watching Scrubs. I can't recommend the show 100%, but it does some things very well. One thing it does well is balance comedy and tear-jerking drama almost perfectly, all within the same 22-minute episode. There are many episodes that have caused me to tear up, and they are invariably my favorite episodes.

Another thing Scrubs does well is use music to not only advance the plot but also capture a particular mood.

While I was sick last week I started Season One and ended up getting through all of it and Season Two. One of the characters in Season Two, Episode 13, "My Philosophy," needed a transplant and prospects were grim. At one point J.D. (the main character) is talking to her about death and she says she hopes it's like a big Broadway musical. As sometimes happens, things go bad and she doesn't make it. At that point that show goes into "musical mode" and she and the cast sing this song:

Waiting for My Real Life to Begin

Any minute now, my ship is coming in
I'll keep checking the horizon
I'll stand on the bow, feel the waves come crashing
Come crashing down down down, on me

And you say, be still my love
Open up your heart
Let the light shine in
But don't you understand
I already have a plan
I'm waiting for my real life to begin

My real life to begin

But don't you understand
I already have a plan
I'm waiting for my real life to begin

On a clear day
I can see
See a very long way

While I think the music is beautiful, the staging of it on the show made it more poignant. You might not feel as attached to the characters, but seeing it might still help you see why it makes me tear up:

There's something about that concept of "waiting for my real life to begin" that hits me. It's the idea that all of the mistakes I've made up to this point were just practice and that the real deal is starting any minute now, so I'll be able to start in on this plan I've got in mind.

I like the way the song makes me think. I've listened to it literally 20 times today. I'm sure I'll burn out on it soon, but for now I'll keep hitting replay.

I already have a plan
I'm waiting for my real life to begin

Labels: life, music, TV

17 comments

Do not watch the following clip if you don't want to see me rocking out.

I have two things to say in my defense:

1. I did not know we were being taped.
2. It is difficult to sing and play at the same time.

Thank you.

Labels: friends, music, video

6 comments

Earlier this year I bought an iPod. At the time seemed like the best solution to my music-playing and –holding needs. And, really, the iPod’s a good device. The things I don’t like about the iPod are endemic to me:

• I don’t like the scroll-y wheel. It’s touch-sensitive and that’s cool and all, I just never liked it. I don’t like the “feel” of it and I don’t like using it.
• I don’t like that I have to change a setting in the main menu to randomize my music, and that my music is either randomized or not.
• I really, really don’t like that I have to use iTunes to manage the music that goes on the iPod. I know that I am in a very small minority here, because any time I mention that I don’t like iTunes people look at me like I have a hand growing out of my scalp and they say, “Really? I love iTunes!” I’m aware that people use it and like it. I’ve used it and know how to use it, I just don’t like it. I don’t like how it organizes my music, I don’t like how hard it is to get the correct album cover picture for individual songs, and I don’t like its layout. (As an aside, I’ve also had iTunes completely mess up two separate Windows installs, to the point where I had to reinstall Windows completely. For my iPod I actually used my G4 Mac and its iTunes so it would stay happy in its own environment.)

But, really, the iPod is a fine piece of equipment and I have no problem recommending it to people.

A couple of months ago a friend at work started talking up the Microsoft Zune, a soon-to-be-released MP3 player. I had heard about it, of course, but he was pretty fired up about it. I liked what I was reading about it, but already had an iPod, so what was I going to do about it?

As it happened, some of us techs met for lunch on November 14, the day the Zune was released. Ryan (the aforementioned friend) and I were talking about going to Best Buy after work to play around with one and the question came up, “Are you going to buy one?” At this point I must say I was interested in getting one, but I didn’t really see how I was going to work it. Ryan was planning to get one for Christmas, and even had his wife talked into it already. I said, “If I could find someone to sell my iPod to I’d probably get one.” Ryan’s answer: “eBay!!!” (This isn’t just his answer to this, it’s pretty much his answer to just about anything. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he had stock in the company.) I, of course, don’t trust eBay and don’t want to mess around with it, and that doesn’t help me get a Zune that very day.

At this point another tech spoke up and said, “I’ll buy your iPod from you.” Sweet! We worked it out that he’d get me the cash after work, and after his cash and the nice little Best Buy Rewards discount coupon I had, I didn’t end up having to spend any of my own money on the Zune. Super sweet!

The Zune comes in three colors: white, black, and brown. I had no interest in white and was planning to get the black. My iPod was black and it seemed to make the most sense to me. Enter Ryan:

“No, dawg! You gotta get the brown! That’s the distinctive color! It’s what all the cool kids’ll have!”

I’ll never be exactly sure why, but I let him bully me into the brown. The salesguy said there was only one brown left, a bunch of black had sold, and that NObody had bought a white one. Okay, fine. Brown it is. Done & done.

I’ve had my Zune for almost a month, now, and I have to say: I love it.

• I like the bigger screen. Yes, it’s the same resolution as the iPod screen, but it’s bigger. Album art takes up the upper two-thirds of the screen when the song is playing, and it’s easily visible. I don’t know if it’s exactly a golden rectangle, but it’s in that direction and I wonder if that’s part of why it’s so pleasing to me. Pictures and videos are actually shown in widescreen (you hold it so the controls are on the right), and look really, really good.
• I like the simple menu interface. When you go into an album or an artist list, you are giving the option at the top of the list to “Play all” or “Play shuffled.” I really, REALLY like that. (For some reason, though, it doesn’t give you the “Play shuffled” option when you look at a playlist. If I want to play a playlist shuffled, I have to do the same thing I did on the iPod – change a setting in the main menu. I hope this gets changed in a future software update.)
• The click wheel is just that: clicky. I like that, too. I must respond to tactile interfaces, as The radio dial in my car has a “click” feel when I turn the knob and I like that as well. The Zune “wheel” actually functions more like the arrow keys on a keyboard, and its specificity is right up my alley.
• While it’s not a big deal, I also like that I can set any picture I have as a background for the main menus.
• The software used to manage content is basically a slightly different version of Windows Media Player, so it’s familiar and easy (for me) to use. It seems to me that it would have been easy to just use WMP for the content management – in fact, I would have preferred it. Oh, well. I still much prefer the Zune software to iTunes.

One of the big selling points for the Zune is that it has wireless capabilities. Right now that means you can send pictures or songs to other Zunes, but there’s hope for more functionality later. The music transfers have a 3-day/3-play policy – after one of those milestones is hit, the receiver can’t listen to it any more and would need to get their own licensed version. There’s been a lot of griping that it’s only 3-days or 3-plays, but I think it’s a neat feature for introducing someone to new music. Pictures don’t have the time limit on them. This transferring is the basis for Microsoft’s adline for the Zune: “Welcome to the social.”

I have yet to play with the wireless transfer, but have seen real-time videos of it working and it’s speedy and easy to use. “Oh!” you say. “You can test the wireless transfer when Ryan gets his at Christmas!” A fantastic idea, certainly. What better way to put the player through its paces than by testing it with another tech? There’s only one problem: it’s hard to test things with someone who’s a welsher. Ryan’s decided he’s not getting a Zune and instead has ordered a Creative Zen. Hoser.

I don’t really care, though, because I really do like my Zune. I might never transfer music to anyone from it and I might only use the FM radio feature to show other people it can be done, but it holds all my music and the rip of Garden State I did looks really, really good on it.

I’m just a little bummed that there was no ice cream involved.

Labels: music, new things

16 comments

Like most Beatles fans, I don’t have too many nice things to say about Yoko Ono. She broke up the band, man. Not cool. Very not cool. And she’s weird. Like, super-weird.

Recently, though, well…

Recently I’ve been listening to the soundtrack for the movie Rushmore. One of the songs on it is “Oh, Yoko” sung by John Lennon. He sings “In the middle of the night I call your name” and “in the middle of a shave” and other mundane times in a person’s normal day. She’s on his mind all the time. And it hit me – they were in love. No matter how weird they were or how “arty” or how whatever they were, they were in love.

John met her at a showing of her “work.” There was a ladder and John climbed it. On the ceiling above the ladder on a small card and in small type, there was a single word: “yes.” It intrigued him, and the ballad of John and Yoko spun out from there.

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who wouldn’t say John and Yoko were perfect for each other. Two more strange people you won’t find anywhere. But that hasn’t stopped 30+ years of Beatles fans being mad at her, including me.

But I think I finally get it. No matter how much it changed his life or the lives around him, he was in love. I can respect that. I think I can almost forgive him, even.

Yoko’s still a wacko, though.

Labels: Beatles, love, music

3 comments

In preparation for my trip to Canada, I purchased full-blown iPod. I figured I would like to listen to music on the flights and I also envisioned spending most of my time in Canada alone, so I thought it'd be a good purchase. In the Mac-PC debate I fall pretty squarely on the PC side of things, but I understand that people like Macs and I have no problem with people using them (though I do have a problem with Mac users implying I'm stupid for using PCs). While iPods aren't technically Macs, they are made by Apple, so I felt a little dirty buying one.

In the interests of full disclosure I should mention that this is actually the second iPod I've purchased. The first was a 1Gb Shuffle which I am trying to trade to any interested party (make me an offer!).

I bought a 30Gb iPod because the Shuffle wasn't getting it done for me. There was no screen and it doesn't hold much. I knew these things going into the purchase, but I thought it'd be okay. It wasn't. I found that I wanted something that could hold all my music so I could listen to a particular album if the mood struck. I looked at how big the collection on my hard drive was and it was 6Gb already, so an iPod Nano wasn't going to be enough, either. Enter the 30Gb iPod.

So, the first thing I did after purchasing it was rip my entire CD collection all over again. I used Windows Media Player 10 on a Windows XP machine to rip them to MP3 format at 192kbps bit rate, and each CD took a little over 2 minutes to rip. (I tested Windows Media Player 11 Beta, but it took closer to three minutes per CD, and I didn't use iTunes because a) it's quite a bit slower (though I don't have the actual time here for comparison, sorry) and b) I don't care for iTunes' layout, design, and way-of-use.) When I was done, my entire CD collection weighed in at almost 19Gb.

Well, okay, not my entire collection. As I went through the process I realized there were CDs I wasn't ever going to listen to (orchestral versions of Beatles songs, for instance), so I didn't rip them.

Once I was done ripping what I was going to rip I transferred them all over to my G4 Mac that otherwise does nothing. I figured if I have to use iTunes to transfer my music to my iPod (and I do – though other programs have been written to do this task, they haven’t worked well for me), I might as well use its native environment (and this way I wouldn’t have to use iTunes on my PC – I had to re-install Windows a few weeks ago because iTunes had messed my computer up something fierce).

I didn’t end up using my iPod on my trip very much, as it turns out I like to read on flights and the people in Canada were extremely good at keeping me “in the loop” and having me hang out with them. The purchase wasn’t a total loss, though, as I’ve started taking it to work with me. Summers at my job are quite busy, as I have to upgrade (and therefore be physically at) every computer in my school – that’s somewhere north of 400 computers. It’s not difficult, but it is time-consuming, and having music helps the day pass faster. I’ve used a CD-player boombox in the past, but it was bulky and a pain to carry around. The iPod sits on my belt quite nicely and holds more music.

I started out listening to a “Favorites” playlist of 125 songs, but soon started listening to whole albums. Earlier this week I decided to start playing the whole collection in random order. Here’s a sampler segment from that playlist:

1. “Toy Soldier” – Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons
2. “Across the Universe” – Rufus Wainwright
3. “That’s Amore” – Dean Martin
4. “Somedays” – Paul McCartney
5. “Market Day in Guernica” – Katie Melua
6. “My Bologna” – Weird Al Yankovic
7. “Who’ll Stop the Rain” – Creedence Clearwater Revival
8. “True Companion” – Marc Cohn
9. “Do You Know You Are My Sunshine” – The Statler Brothers
10. “It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll (But I Like It) – The Rolling Stones
11. “Young at Heart” – Joss Stone
12. “Thank You Girl” – The Beatles
13. “The Times They Are A-Changin’” – Simon & Garfunkel
14. “Kamp Krusty Theme Song” – The Simpsons
15. “New Slang” – The Shins

It can be a little jarring, and I will admit to skipping songs if I’m not in a mood for them.

I’ve decided, though, that are just some things that I don’t really want on the playlist. Though I like Danny Elfman, I’d rather have words to sing along to. So, earlier this evening I took some albums off. Soundtracks: gone. I like Christmas music, and even listen to it off-season sometimes, but not right now: bye, bye Debbie Boone and George Winston.

I kept some other stuff even though it’s not well-suited to random play. Mandy Patinkin’s first few albums were medley-riffic, and hearing just one piece of the medley out of place sounds quite odd, but it’s still good stuff. Concept albums are also an ill fit with random play. Albums like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band weave song into song throughout the whole album, and later Beatles stuff like Abbey Road has little song fragments and even talking in-between songs. It gets a little surreal on my iPod.

I’ve whittled my songlist down to 3792 songs currently. iTunes tells me that’s a little over 9 days’ worth, and it’s a better mix of the variety and sameness I’m after. I’m sure there will be more cuts later, and I doubt spoken-word comedians will make the next one.

My playlist, like my life, is a work in progress.

Note: Please do not turn the comments section into a Mac-PC debate.
Note: Thanks to the CT for getting me thinking about music.

Labels: music

7 comments

It was a few months ago that I wrote a song for Snakes On A Plane. It was just today that I finally recorded it with a friend.

Here's a suitably musician-y picture of Scott and I during the recording session at his studio/house today:

He teaches at the school where I work and plays publicly in places around town. He does mostly Dylan and Guthrie and blues stuff, and was more than willing to aid me in this endeavor.

I am not entirely pleased with the way my singing turned out, but it is what it is.

So! If you're interested, here you go.

Labels: music

7 comments

I had the chance to see Sheryl Crow in concert this past Monday, and I took it. She's just now starting to get back into touring after having cancer surgery, and the show in Indianapolis was a rescheduled date from earlier this year.

It would be stupid to say I enjoyed the concert, I think. Who pays that much money to go to a concert they're not sure they'll like? Not me. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

But as I sat there, I got hit with a wave of "Man, I need to"s. As in:

• Man, I need to learn how to play the guitar.
• Man, I need to record my Snakes on a Plane song.
• Man, I need to get that children's book that's in my head out on paper and find someone to illustrate it.
• Man, I need to start that webcomic I've been thinking about.
• Man, I need to get in shape.
• Man, I need to do something.

There's Sheryl up on stage, 44 years old, having the time of her life, and looking great.

Here's me in my chair, 34 years old, trying to figure out my life, and looking tired.

Maybe Sheryl's onto something:

Live it up, like there's no time left
Just like there's no tomorrow
Live it up, like there's no time left
And there's no time to kill
Live it up, like there's no time left
And no time left to borrow
Why don't you try to get it right this time
Get it right this time

Labels: music

5 comments

To the tune of "When I'm 64" by The Beatles:

When I get older, postings are rare, a couple hours from now
Will you still be clicking on things underlined, email links and commenting fine?
If I don’t post ‘till week number three, would you get too bored?
Will you still need me, will you still read me
When I’m thirty-four?

Mmmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm.
You’ll be older, too. (Aaaaah)
And if you say the word,
I will post for you.

I could eat candy, noting the lines written on the wrap
You could read other sites while waiting for posts, read a good book or take a long nap
Talking of cats and Snakes on a Plane, who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still read me
When I’m thirty four?

Every year in school I will comment on and write about, if it’s not too drear.
I will rant and rave.
Comments are welcome from: all of you. And Dave.

Send me an email, drop me a line, tell me ‘bout your blog.
Indicate precisely if you’ve got an URL, I might link to you, boy or a girl.
So for now I’ll keep posting these things, rambling more and more
Will you still need me, will you still read me,
When I’m thirty-four?

Based on my friend Kat's singing just the line "When I'm thirty-four" on the phone. She'd kill me if I didn't give her at least a little credit.

Labels: music

2 comments

A few weeks back I bought the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds. I have always liked The Beach Boys, but I only owned a couple of compilation albums that had all of their most popular songs. I had always heard that Pet Sounds was "groundbreaking" and a "must have," so I finally bought it.

I had heard four of the thirteen songs on the album before, but the rest were new to me. To my untrained ear, it sounded like, well, The Beach Boys. So what was so groundbreaking? After all, I had heard that after The Beatles heard this album they freaked out, along the lines of "Brian Wilson is so far ahead of us!" and "We better catch up!" (Their answer was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, an album widely acknowledged as an album that changed the face of pop music forever.)

I asked a friend of mine why Pet Sounds was so groundbreaking. Those of you who grew up with me will immediately know who this friend is, as he is widely considered the "go-to guy" for all things Beach Boys, but he has asked me not to name him here. The internet celebrity afforded by my site would, no doubt, overwhelm him and he would be swamped with offers.

I mock him here, but he really is quite knowledgeable on this subject, so I post his response in its entirety (though edited for various things such as non-capitalized letters and such). I realize this will be interesting to exactly .02% of you reading this, but I felt his breakdown was ... breakdown-y enough that other people ought to be able to read it.

It is ground breaking in that it turned pop song form inside out and then tore it up and then taped it back together again. The structure of "You Still Believe in Me," "Don't Talk," and "That's Not Me" were very bold compared to the standard verse chorus verse chorus bridge (maybe a third verse) chorus. Even songs like "God Only Knows" which was fairly traditional in construction were ground breaking in chord progressions, modulations within the verse and chorus that required another modulation to get back to the original key for the start of the second verse.

Also all of the instrumentation and orchestration was pretty unusual. Most songs have 2 or three basses (2 different electric basses and one acoustic) to give the bass line a really fat sound. Throughout you will hear such exotic (at the time) instruments as the bass harmonica ("I Know There's an Answer"), accordion ("Wouldn't It Be Nice"), flute ("God Only Knows"), all manner of other wind instruments (listen for the oboe that doubles the vocal melody on the verses of "I'm Waiting For the Day") and strings (the surprise slow down at the end of that same "I'm Waiting" as well as all of "Don't Talk"). Also the intro to "You Still Believe in Me," is Brian [Wilson] plucking the piano strings of a piano prepared with little washers and stuff on the strings to give it a funny jangly sound. The weird guitar solo in the middle of "Let's Go Away for a While" was made by using a coke bottle on the guitar strings. These are just a few examples of the kind of innovation and experimentation that the album is chock full of.

Then there is the percussion. Brian had been eschewing the simple backbeat played on the normal drumset and cymbals for a few albums now (check out the original version of "Let Him Run Wild"). The best examples of his spare but dramatic use of percussion are found in "Don't Talk" (in which the bass provides most of the "beat" and also contains timpani), the tambourine featured throughout "I Know There's an Answer," the carefully placed and fairly raucus (for a relatively contemplative song) drums in "That's Not Me." The exotic sounding "drums" at the beginning of "Caroline No" (that alternate with the tambourine) are actually orange juice bottles filled with water to achieve the exact sound Brian wanted. Then of course there is "Pet Sounds" which is a percussionist extravaganza.

Also the subject matter was very advanced for the time. Consider what songs topped the charts the same year as "Wouldn't It Be Nice" (a song about yearning for the day when they could spend the night together) and "God Only Knows" broke into the top 40:

"We Can Work It Out" (Beatles)
"Wild Thing" (Troggs)
"Counting Flowers on the Wall" (Statler Brothers)
"You Can't Hurry Love" (Supremes)
"Good Lovin'" (Young Rascals)
"Ballad of the Green Beret" (Sgt. Barry Sadler)
"Barbara Ann" (Beach Boys)

Lyrics like "I once had a dream so I packed up and split for the city/I soon found out that my lonely life wasn't so pretty" strike a sharp contrast to the relatively fun, straightforward approach those other songs took.

Finally there was the depth of the production which in part was based in everything above. You will hear this especially in the stereo version of "Wouldn't It Be Nice." Ignore the words and listen to just the instruments. No one else sounded this . . . full and wide open at the time, with the possible exception of Phil Spector productions. I could go on. I have probably said more than you care to read anyway. Enjoy.

On top of all that, the album is enjoyable to listen to. Many "concept albums" are a chore to listen to, as you feel like you ought to be getting something more out of them, but this album still succeeds as listenable.

Rest assured this won't be turning into a "music blog" any time soon. Though you might (read: probably will) get a song-by-song breakdown of the new Weird Al album when it's released, that'll be about it. I just wanted to share Da --- oops, I almost told you his name!

That was close.

Labels: music

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EDIT: The song has finally been recorded. Download here.

Because of this, I give you the following.

To the tune of "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas:

I board my ride
I put my seat back upright and I stow my tray
On my feet
I feel a slithering and I turn to clay
Snakes on a plane
Everyone sees snakes on a plane

They are long
You think they are slimy but they’re really not
All they do
Is scare the flight attendants and stay uncaught
Snakes on a plane
All they are is snakes on a plane, ohh

Now, don’t freak out
They can sense your fear and then they’ll bite your face
Then slip away
To hide in the overhead compartment space
Snakes on a plane
Everywhere are snakes on a plane
You’re sure there are snakes on a plane?

Snakes on a plane
Everywhere are snakes on a plane
Who let all these snakes on a plane?
A plane

And there it is, my Snakes on a Plane song.

Labels: music

5 comments

I don't understand music, and I mean that on a couple of levels.

1) I have a hard time hearing lyrics. Until my friend Dave straightened me out, I thought the Beach Boys were singing "And Benny took and he ate a ball of my corn" in the song "Sloop John B." Turns out they were singing "And then he took and he ate up all of my corn." Even though I know better now, I still sing it my way when I have occasion to do so.

But what I'm particularly talking about is

2) I don't understand how music locks itself away in a particular spot in your brain and stays there waiting to come back out. I can hear a song I haven't heard in years and sing along with it, word for word. Even stranger to me is the fact that if pressed, I couldn't recite or sing the lyrics on my own without the song playing in the background. But play it for me and I'm instantly there. Memorizing speeches, facts, or Bible verses never came easily, but music puts it straight into my brain, apparently. This might have something to do with why I liked to set Emily Dickinson poems to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme song.

Music also tends to bring to fore certain memories or feelings. Most of the time it isn't a specific memory, for me anyway. It's more a memory of a how I felt at the time, a non-specific subtle mental nudging.

I've bought two CDs in the last two weeks that reminded me of this. One was The Statler Brothers - The Definitive Collection and the other was Paul McCartney's Chaos And Creation In The Back Yard.

The McCartney CD took me immediately back a few years ago. I had just started a new job and his Driving Rain and Flaming Pie albums were the soundtrack to my summer. The songs on the new album are unfamiliar, of course, but the style and sound immediately bring back the mixture of fear and excitement from that summer. It's actually kind of difficult to listen to for those exact reasons.

The Statler Brothers CD, on the other hand, takes me back to when I was a kid. Specifically, Saturdays helping mom around the house. She'd generally have one of their albums playing while I was making cookies or washing dishes or something. It's funny, the Statlers are kind of "nostalgia country" music (they've got a lot of "do you remember when?" kinds of songs), and most of the stuff they were singing about was before my time, but I love the music. It fills me with feeling-memories of comfort, warmth, and safety. It's been a long time since I've felt those for real, so I'll take the memories where I can get them.

(You, by the way, know The Statler Brothers from Pulp Fiction. The song used in that movie was their biggest hit, "Flowers on the Wall," when Bruce Willis is driving his car right before hitting Ving Rhames. That's a pretty long way from safety and comfort, frankly.)

I get tired of whiny "artsy" songwriters that mean to reveal the secrets of self-examination with confusing, pseudo-deep lyrics. It must be a function of getting older, but I roll my eyes at their "I feel everything so deeply" lyrics and their meaningfully cracking voices. I try to imagine twenty years from now when people hear those songs again. What kind of feeling-memories will they evoke? Personally, I'm thinking it will be like my generations memories of shows like The A-Team and The Dukes of Hazzard: we remember them being TOTALLY AWESOME!!!!1!! but when we actually sit down to watch an episode, we can't believe how incredibly ridiculous and lame it is and how did we ever think this was cool?

Anyway, rants aside, I've listened to the Statlers CD more than the McCartney CD by an almost 2:1 ratio. It's no surprise to me that the familiar wins out. I just wish I knew what they were saying.

Labels: music

4 comments

I stumbled onto this song after not being quick enough on returning a CD that BMG sent me. It's by Avril Lavigne, and trust me, I know how goofy it looks for a 32-year-old to be quoting songs by a punk-ish teeny-bopper.

She wrote this song about the death of her grandfather, and I thought it was beautiful. If you've ever lost someone, I'm sure you'll be able to relate to it.

Oh, and I've removed the "na na na" parts, because it's weird to read those, I think.

I miss you
Miss you so bad
I don't forget you
Oh it's so sad
I hope you can hear me
I remember it clearly

[Chorus]
The day you slipped away
Was the day I found it won't be the same oh

I didn't get around to kiss you
Goodbye on the hand
I wish that I could see you again
I know that I can't oh oh oh oh oh
I hope you can hear me
Cause I remember it clearly

[Chorus]

I've had my wake up
Won't you wake up
I keep asking why
And I can't take it
It wasn't fake it
It happened you passed by

Now you're gone
Now you're gone
There you go
There you go
Somewhere I can't bring you back
Now you're gone
Now you're gone
There you go
There you go
Somehow you're not coming back

[Chorus x 2]

I miss you

Labels: music

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