music

What is going on with Sesame Street?

/ Jared / 1 Comment

I didn’t watch a whole lot of Sesame Street growing up, so for all I know, it’s always been this weird.  But I keep stumbling on these strange videos from the show.

First came the Katy Perry collaboration, which, while still available online, was pulled out of the television episode in which it was supposed to appear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blE9qg-hCkc

I mean, I know they’ve done stuff like this before (I fondly recall Feist’s appearance from a couple of years ago), but Katy Perry seems like an odd choice.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m a fan of hers, and I don’t really think there is anything wrong with this.  But as soon as I saw her outfit and thought for a second about the unaltered lyrics of her honestly-not-Sesame-Street-appropriate songs I knew that people would be up in arms about it.  Don’t the good folks over at the Children’s Television Workshop know how much people love to have fits of hyperventilation about stuff like this?

Then today I saw their parody of True Blood.  It’s more benign than the Katy Perry performance, I guess, although I’m sure people can find something in it to complain about (vague vampire references = sacrilegious?).  I was more just baffled by it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dAZ1-nF3VI

I mean, I guess ostensibly we’re learning about rhyming?  Is that the point?  All I really took away from it was that grouches like mud.  I know they know more about education than I ever will, but it seems like we might be worrying too much about entertaining the adults watching along with their children here.

[via Best Week Ever]

[Update: Flavorwire has 10 additional Sesame Street parodies, including Mad Men and 30 Rock.]

The MTV VMAs, 2010

/ Jared / 3 Comments

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The VMAs!  I actually didn’t watch them live last year and then regretted it when I ended up spending the next afternoon catching up on the videos of the bonkers performances online and reading all about the Kanye backlash.  I was assuming that MTV and I had mostly diverged in our musical tastes and was overlooking the fact that this isn’t really about the awards, it’s about the spectacle.

Now, with the long-running award show winner-picking competition between Johanna and me, there’s absolutely no way I could miss it.  Filling out our ballots proved relatively difficult.  We both employed a strategy of spreading the awards around to as many artists as possible, because we figure the whole thing is rigged and MTV is going to want to get as many people as possible up on stage.  So, I basically just picked randomly.

Let’s roll.  Since this is the VMAs, Johanna has tried to mix us a cocktail that a young person might enjoy.  She’s combined vanilla vodka with Diet Coke, and we’re drinking it out of glasses we appropriated from our favorite bar in college, Jimmy’s Woodlawn Tap.  She initially wanted to call it the Sorority Slut, but we workshopped it and came up with the Mean Girl, which is more fittingly high school.  As always, categories and winners in bold.  Also, I unfortunately don’t have MTV in HD, so these photos look awful.  Apologies.

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One last thing.  I’m going on record early here saying that I guarantee they have Taylor Swift “interrupt” Kanye’s performance.  It’s going to be awesome.

8:19 – I have the pre-show white carpet on in the background (yes, white carpet), and all of the sudden Sway starts giving out awards!  WTF?!

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Lollapalooza, 2010 (Through the eyes of others)

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Lollapalooza

As I said in my previous post, all of the videos I took at Lollapalooza were pretty terrible.  I didn’t have my Flip or anything too fancy, so I was just taking them with my digital camera, which doesn’t allow me to zoom in or out once I start filming, and also doesn’t have the highest video quality.  Plus, I’m pretty unwilling to stand with my camera in the air for the entirety of what were, in most cases, my favorite songs by whichever band I was watching.  I’d get one chorus recorded for posterity and then turn the camera off and enjoy the rest of the song in the moment.

Some people, however, are much more prepared/professional/devoted than I am.  YouTube is awash in Lollapalooza videos far, far superior to my own.  For the entry that had all of my personal thoughts on the shows, I wanted to only use my own photos and videos.  But as a follow-up, I thought it would be nice to pick out some better representations of the artists I saw.

The New Pornographers – “Challengers”

Dirty Projectors – “Cannibal Resource”

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Lollapalooza, 2010

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For the third year in a row Johanna and I attended Lollapalooza in Chicago.  It’s become a tradition and a great excuse to return to a city we love.  (As I type this, I’m watching My Boys on TBS.  Yes, I love Chicago so much that I’ll even watch My Boys.)

I thought I would share my belated thoughts on the festival, along with some photos I took and a few terrible, shaky, fraction-of-the-full-song videos that I took.  Because who doesn’t love terrible videos?

Friday, August 6th

4:00 – 5:00 The New Pornographers

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During the first act of a music festival I’m always relatively distracted trying to get my bearings and people-watch, so it’s a shame that we started things off on Friday with The New Pornographers, a band that I actually like quite a bit.  I don’t remember much from their set.  I know Neko Case was wearing a big floppy hat, and I know that they played a nice version of “Challengers.”  That’s about it.

5:00 – 5:50 Dirty Projectors

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Reviews of this performance were pretty mixed, and seemed to be less about the performance and more about how much the individual reviewer actually likes Dirty Projectors.  Well, I like Dirty Projectors and loved Bitte Orca, and I thought they were great.  The tempo of the songs was even less stable live, and several seemed just about to collapse before Dave Longstreth pulled everything back together.  The erratic nature added a nice bit of tension and seemed to snap me to attention, which was good since I’d been sleepwalking during the New Pornographers.

Johanna and I really enjoy this stage because it’s usually easy to get pretty close to the action, and also because we’ve seen some of our best afternoon/early evening shows here (Sharon Jones, Santigold, Band of Horses).

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Music Video Monday

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Could people please stop making their own music videos for songs?  Or at least label them clearly as “homemade”?  I’m getting sick of having to dig through all of the personal photo montages set to favorite songs.  The worst was when I was looking for videos for my Beatles list.  Honestly, earnest chubby guy with glasses and a goatee, I really don’t need to see your acoustic version of “Blackbird.”

Vampire Weekend – “Giving Up the Gun”

I actually prefer both the song “Cousins” and the video for it, but this one has all the famous people in it.  How did Vampire Weekend even come into contact with Joe Jonas?

I’m also posting this over “Cousins” because it seems like Johanna and I are the only people that actually still like Vampire Weekend, but I know this song has had some crossover with the haters.

Local Natives – “Wide Eyes” (Live)

I’ve been listening to these guys a lot lately, and I’ve been patiently waiting for them to make a video that I could post, but I can’t seem to find anything.  I’ll have to settle for this high-quality live performance.  Why are all of these good live performances coming from Britain?  This one is from the BBC, and I’ve used a ton of videos from Later…with Jools Holland in the past.  Search for “Jools Holland” on YouTube and tell me you wouldn’t watch that show if it were on over here.

(Edit: Video removed for some reason.  I put up a different performance)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdJ7zMu9YpI

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Music Video Monday

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It occurred to me after I had already picked my five videos for this post that I should start focusing on bands that are going to be at Lollapalooza this year so that I could expose myself to some of the artists that I haven’t heard before I go.  It looks like I was way ahead of myself, though, because three of the five here are, coincidentally, going to be at Lollapalooza.  That’s a testament to how great the line-up is.

Side note before we get started: when I saw that the LCD Soundsystem was posted to YouTube by Parlaphone and not the band itself or whoever, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to use it.  It’s been my experience while doing these posts that record labels generally disable embedding on their videos, which is so shortsighted and counter-productive of them that it always made me mad.  Isn’t the point of a music video to have it be seen by as many people as possible and then, you know, sell records because of it?  Anyway, Parlaphone (and hopefully the other record labels) seem to have figured that out, so, hooray and enjoy!

LCD Soundsystem – “Drunk Girls”

As much as I enjoy his feature-length films, part of me wishes that Spike Jonze would completely devote himself to music videos, because every single one he makes is unbelievably good.  I wish I had half as many ideas in my brain as he does.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdRaf3-OEh4

The xx – “Crystalized”

Shout out to Johanna’s sister Becca for giving us this CD for Christmas; they had somehow completely slipped under my radar (even though Pitchfork had their album ranked as the third best of the year), and now I listen to them constantly.

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Throwback Thursday: 1982

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I was thinking to myself the other day, you know what might be a fun thing to do for the blog?  Pick a year, do some research on it, write down my thoughts on the major events, and dig around on YouTube for corresponding videos.  And you know what?  It was absolutely as fun as I thought it would be, mostly because of the videos.  Old videos on YouTube are unbelievably great.  God bless the people that not only hold on to their old VHS tapes, but also willingly spend their time putting them online.  Or however it is these things find their way to my computer.

It seemed like 1982 would be an appropriate place to start; after all, that’s when I got my start.  If I do muster up the energy to keep this going, though, I don’t plan to go sequentially, because that seems like it would be really, really boring.

I came up with the idea of beginning this entry with the first video that showed up for me when I searched for “1982.”  I was pretty convinced that this would end up being a terrible idea, as I assumed that the first result would be something terribly dull.  Boy, was I wrong.  I think if I looked up “how to start a blog entry about 1982” in the dictionary, this video would start playing:

I was hoping to work things into a seamless narrative, but that would be too much work, so let’s just take things a category at a time.

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Music Video Monday

/ Jared / Leave a comment

Tonight Johanna took Ernie to his dog training class.  I intended to use my time alone to go for a bit of a walk and then settle in for an evening of 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa.  Alas, this was not to be, as I got completely sucked in watching music videos on YouTube.  When she got home I was in the same position as when she left, except the apartment was now dark.

Here are the results of my busy evening.

By the dubs, if the new M.I.A. video were available on any of the sites that I know how to embed video from, it would absolutely be represented here, because it is completely awesome.

Girls – “Lust for Life”

It’s seems weird to give your song the same name as another song that is much, much more famous than your song will ever be.  But it also seemed weird that the Iggy Pop song of the same name was used to advertise cruise ships, even though it’s about heroin or something.  What do I know.

Miike Snow – “Animal”

From the guys who brought us Britney Spears’ “Toxic.”  I love the Swedes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVWeqAPQUXc&ob=av2n

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Beatles Songs

/ Jared / 4 Comments

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I hesitate to call the Beatles my favorite band.  It feels like a bit of a cop-out, and there are a lot of modern bands that I’m much more passionate about.  But I can’t deny that I love them, and occasionally get obsessed with them, as I did after the release of the remastered CDs and The Beatles: Rock Band last September.  They are sort of the Platonic ideal of the rock and roll group, so they seemed like the most appropriate choice of band for a favorite song list.

In addition to the album and the year of release, I’ve also included the name of the Beatle to whom the song is most often attributed in an attempt to finally figure out who is my favorite Beatle.  As I suspected, it appears to be Paul.  I also suspect that I’ve really shortchanged George, so much so that I think I might give him his own list later on.  Past Masters singles are listed with the year of the single’s release.

35) “I Saw Her Standing There” (Please Please Me, 1963, McCartney)

For a long time I didn’t really have any interest in the early stuff.  It’s not that I thought it was, bad; it just didn’t sound like the same band to me.  My introduction to the Beatles was my dad’s copy of Abbey Road, and I moved backwards from there.  This early stuff just didn’t resonate.  I’ve come around, though, at least with the standout songs.  This is head and shoulders above the other half of the single, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and has a lot more bite than I used to give it credit for.

Update: Actually, I just went back and listened to “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and while I wouldn’t describe it has having bite, it’s still pretty awesome.

34) “Yes It Is” (Past Masters, Vol. 1, 1965, Lennon)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uVRIAinA3E

This is from 1965 but sounds like it could be off of Please Please Me.  I first came across a version of this song on the second of the Anthology collections, and have always loved the vocal harmonies.  This seems like a slick, slowed-down version of the song that Rivers Cuomo always used to try to write.  Before he completely lost it.

This is one of Lennon’s least favorite songs that he wrote, which doesn’t surprise me.  He and I have very different opinions about which of his songs are the best.

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Songs, 1990-1999

/ Jared / 2 Comments

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This list has been the hardest to compile so far by a wide margin, for several reasons.  When the 1990s began, I was seven years old, and the music I was most familiar with was the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack that my dad was always playing and the Super Mario Bros. theme song.  By the time they ended, I was seventeen, had gone through about ten favorite bands, and was eagerly anticipating the release of the new Radiohead album.  It’s hard to rank songs from a time period when I was so many different people.

Also, I could never really decide if I wanted this to be a list of songs that I loved at the time, or songs that I really love now.  In the end, it’s a little bit of both, and sort of suffers because of that.  There are songs on here that I don’t even have in my music collection anymore, and also songs that I never really listened to until five years ago.

But the real reason this was so difficult is that I’m absolutely sure that I’m forgetting things.  I have a pretty good grasp on music from the 2000s, and didn’t really feel like I was leaving anything major out.  This time I feel like there could possibly be a song out there that I might have put in my top ten that I didn’t even think of.  Let me know if you see any glaring omissions.

So, all that said, here are my ninety favorite songs of the nineties:

90) Kris Kross – “Jump” (1992)

An appropriate song to start things off.  This isn’t the oldest song on this list, but it might be the oldest song here of which I was a huge fan from day one.  I spent about six months of my ninth year listening to my Totally Krossed Out cassette non-stop on my Walkman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN8WeadBW1o

89) Cornershop – “Brimful of Asha” (1997)

This song, and this entire album, really, is such a weird blip on the nineties pop scene.  Making this list made it clear to me that while music was much better in the 2000s, it was quirkier and seemed to take more risks in the 1990s.  I was introduced to the song, and the band, when this video appeared on the short-lived MTV show 12 Angry Viewers.

88) Coolio – “Gangsta’s Paradise (feat L.V.)” (1995)

Johanna said this had to be on the list, and I suppose she’s right.  I loved it at the time, obviously, but don’t have much to say about it now, so instead let me just suggest that all of you go Google the lyrics to another single off of this album “1,2,3,4 (Sumpin’ New).”  Johanna and I had each other in hysterics talking about them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUTJgk0HFqw

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