Song in My Head

Here's a new one I just discovered (and will no doubt make my end of the year Best Of list): Washed Out's "Amor Fati". I'm a sucker for 80s sounding chillwave (Neon Indian anyone?) and this fits the bill -- warm synths, a cool, ambient vibe and almost unintelligble vocals (who needs words anyway?). And the video was shot in Iceland. Washed Out is the stage name of Ernest Greene, a rural Georgia boy who started making music after moving back in with his parents after earning a Masters degree in Library Science. He couldn't find a librarian job and the rest is history. (He also gave us the terrific theme song to the IFC show "Portlandia".) Enjoy!

Someone's Missing on Rolling Stone's 100 Best Guitarists List

You'd have to be in a hole for the last 40 years not to guess who Rolling Stone named as the best guitarist of all time: Jimi Hendrix topping the list is predictable. But there's 99 other guitarists on the list, and not one of them is named Johnny Marr. What's up with that?

Mashed Up Madness

Part 1

Part 2

I finally finished Simon Reynolds' great book Retromania a few weeks back, and now I'm having another round of researching all the references I dog-eared in the book. And there are a lot. First up is Osymyso's "Intro Inspection" -- a 12 minute long creation that stitches together the intros of more than 100 well-known pop songs. It's fun to listen and try to pick out the samples, or you can cheat and watch the samples as they pop up here and here.

See if you can guess my favorite moment -- alright, I'll tell you. It's at about 2:48 on Part Two, when Duran Duran's "Is There Something I Should Know?" is layered alongside "Sweet Dreams" by Eurythmics along with Dee-Lite's "Groove is in the Heart." That triumverate goes on for about 15 seconds before Yello's "Oh Yeah" comes in and hands off to Blur's "Song 2" and New Order's "Blue Monday" -- both intercut with the Kinks guitar riff from "You Really Got Me." Although I do like when Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough" is mashed up with Chaka Khan's "I Feel For You."

It's fun, and certainly a remarkable achievement. But it's really just a novelty song in my opinion. And musically, I don't even think it hangs together cohesively as well as the stuff I've heard by people like Girl Talk.

Thoughts?

R.I.P. Heavy D

And to paraphrase your most famous question, Now that you've passed on, what are we gonna do?

Song in My Head

"Weekend Wars" by MGMT. Never mind that these retroglamsters are so derivative it hurts -- 2008's Oracular Spectacular was a very good record -- and I still haven't figured out which of three or four very strong tracks ("Kids", "Time to Pretend", "Electric Feel" and this one) I like the best. Today, it's the neolitihic yet progressive "Weekend Wars." I just woke up singing it.

Song In My Head!

Man, this one is bad!  On the bus ride to our District Semi-Final game, we were talking about songs in movies, more specifically, the montage.  One of my favorites comes from the highly over-rated Rocky IV (I am much more of a III, Clubber Lang guy.)  The terrible song I cannot get out of my head is the one hit spectacular "There's No Easy Way Out," by Robert Tepper.  I even included the montage.  I enjoy watching Stallone run through the gears like he's playing a video game.  Also the classic "You Got A Friend In" Pennsylvania liscence plate.

Song In My Head

I'm going Old School with this one -- it's "Getting Better" by the Beatles. I pulled out Sgt. Pepper's this weekend and played it during the snowstorm as the kids and I build Legos. Alex especially liked this song -- which has long been one of my favorite non-exotic Beatles songs. And let's hope things are getting better... for all of us.