POTW #9: I Did Not Promise Anyone Jetpacks
Once again, it’s time to unveil my not-exactly-weekly Picks of the Week! And it’s an extra-special edition this time because today is February 29th, and how often do you get to post things on February 29th? (The answer: Every four years. Duh.) Yeah, I know, that’s the lamest reason anyone has ever given for calling anything a special edition (George Lucas, all is forgiven). This entire introductory paragraph is making me sound like that stupid Batman villain who is driven mad by his obsession with the days of the week. And no, I did not make that up. His name is Calendar Man and he is excruciatingly lame.
Look at this guy. LOOK AT HIM. Someone at DC Comics thought this was a good idea.
You’re probably wondering what’s up with the bizarre title of this post. I usually title my Picks of the Week posts after a lyric from one of the featured songs, but the best I could come up with was something involving promising people jetpacks. That will make sense shortly. But first, allow me to treat you to not one, but two brand-spanking-new songs from Radiohead.
“Identikit”
“Cut A Hole”
The picks of the week are coming up after the jump – but not after any messages from my sponsors, because I don’t have any.
The Curious Case Of Chris Brown
As anyone who follows the music industry knows, the Grammy Awards were handed out earlier this month. The big winner, as expected, was Adele, who took home half a dozen pieces of old-timey-record-player-shaped hardware and received a standing ovation for her performance of “Rolling In The Deep.” The Foo Fighters were pretty big winners too, getting two performance spots and basically sweeping the entire rock category – they even took home the Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance award for “White Limo” over the likes of Megadeth, Mastodon, and Dream Theater. Other highlights of the show included performances from Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, and the reunited surviving Beach Boys, along with tributes to Glen Campbell and Whitney Houston.
You know who else was a big winner this year? Chris Brown. He may have only received one Grammy – Best R&B Album for F.A.M.E. – but he also got to perform twice and received a standing ovation at an award show that unofficially blacklisted him a mere three years ago in the wake of that incident. The fact that he was even allowed to appear there at all counts as a pretty huge victory for “Breezy,” since that incident briefly rendered him a pop pariah and possibly this generation’s answer to Ike Turner for all the wrong reasons. You think it’s any coincidence that Rihanna showed up to the Grammys looking like Tina Turner? Maybe it is, but she couldn’t have looked any more like Tina if she was auditioning for a remake of What’s Love Got To Do With It.
Top 5 Favorite Love Songs
Well, it’s that time of year again. It’s Valentine’s Day, the day when couples across the globe come together in a Hallmark-approved celebration of their love and bitter singles like me feel strangely compelled to remind everyone of the fakeness of the holiday and how if you really love somebody you don’t need a special holiday to make you show it. The central dilemma of Valentine’s Day is the conflict between true love and obligation – if you put on some big romantic display on this day of all days, are you really doing it because you love your partner or because you feel like that’s what you’re supposed to do every February 14th?
I don’t know, maybe I just look at Valentine’s Day this way because I’ve been single for it every year, so I feel like I’ve always been on the outside looking in and don’t know what it’s like to share it with someone. The highlight of my Valentine’s Day every year is getting my Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in the mail, the exception being last year because that’s the day Radiohead announced that The King Of Limbs would be coming out later that week.
Dear Kate Upton: If you’re reading this, I want you to know that you can teach me how to dougie any time. Love always, Wannabe Valentine #239,570,816.
But we’re not here to talk about any of that stuff, are we? Of course not! We’re here to count down my top 5 favorite love songs in honor of Obligatory Love Day. The fun begins as soon as you click “Read the rest of this page”!
The Birthday-Holiday Haul
Well, now that the holiday season is officially behind us (and gift return season is in full swing), it’s time to show off some of my presents. Time for a Colin’s Collection post!
I haven’t done one of these in a while — not since around the middle of June, actually. And not because I haven’t had my eye on any new music. It’s mainly because my birthday is within three months of Christmas, so I figured I’d hold off on this until after the holidays. (For purposes of this post, or at least based on when it was posted, “holidays” includes New Year’s and birthdays for my mom and my sister.) The result is what could be one of the longest Colin’s Collection lists ever, as I ended up getting eight new albums over the last couple months. The list is coming up after the jump!
#100: The Album That Started It All
It’s fitting that I write my 100th post on this blog on New Year’s Eve 2011, the third anniversary of its creation. But there’s another reason why the date seems appropriate. Next year marks the 25th anniversary of the release of an album that I credit with kick-starting my lifelong love affair with music. And that love for music was what led to me getting a radio show on WMUC2, starting this blog to promote that show, taking up multiple instruments, and even writing and recording my own music as a personal hobby.
That album was released at a time when soft rock was all over the charts (Kenny G has a song on the ’87 year-end Hot 100 – seriously). Hair metal had transitioned from its hard-rocking virtuoso beginnings (think Van Halen) to cheesy party rock stuffed with aimless shredding and mandatory power ballads (think Poison). Bruce Willis scored a hit single back when he was probably better known as a singer than an actor (he hadn’t even made Look Who’s Talking yet, let alone Die Hard). A teenage singer from Hawaii won a local talent contest and got a nationwide hit single basically via word of mouth (Glenn Medeiros, “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You”). An Australian new wave band became a one-hit wonder by covering a one-hit wonder (Pseudo Echo, “Funkytown”). And yes, I got all of that from Wikipedia and Todd In The Shadows. Still, it was an odd time for music and the alternative rock boom of the early ‘90s was a few years away.
But none of that stuff really mattered to me. I was about six months old when the album in question was released. And by the time I was around five years old, I was listening to this record so much I practically had it memorized. So what was that album? The Joshua Tree by U2.
The 2011 “Listen Up!” Awards: Handing Out The Harleys
So here we are, entering the home stretch of the year 2011. And if you actually believe that whole stupid Mayan apocalypse theory, we’re entering the home stretch of the human race. On that happy note, we’re going to be seeing some year-end lists popping up some time in the next couple of weeks. I figure I might as well submit my own, but just as I did last time I’ll be looking at unconventional categories (read: totally arbitrary distinctions that I made up myself). It’s time for the 2011 Harleys!
Who's a good little award statuette? YOU ARE! Come here and let me scratch you!
The fun begins, as always, after the jump. Bring on the first award!
The 15 Most Disturbing Illustrations From “Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark”
Oh man. I am going to hate myself so much for doing this. But not right away. I’m going to hate myself while I’m lying in bed tonight trying and failing to fall asleep.
You see, Halloween is just around the corner so I figured I would do some kind of Halloween special, or at least the Internet blog equivalent of one. The question was what I was actually going to do. I’ve already done a post about the scariest songs in my collection, and since I’m doing my Top 5 lists in the same order in which they appeared on my show, the Top 5 Songs To Scare Trick-Or-Treaters Away From Your House is still a long way off.
And then it hit me: Do a post about the Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark series.
Watch That First Step, Mac – It’s A Lulu
I’m not entirely sure how eager people were to hear the results of a collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica. To just about anyone outside the studio in which Lulu, the fruit of this collaboration, was conceived, this seemed like a mismatch of epic proportions. Reed is a long-tenured experimental art-rocker from the Velvet Underground and is also known for solo hits like “Walk On The Wild Side” and “Perfect Day.” And Metallica – well, who isn’t familiar with Metallica on some level? They’re titans of heavy metal who need no introduction. The artists themselves seem pretty excited though – they decided to work together after performing at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary concert and have been hyping this record as one of the highlights of each of their careers.
I’m not familiar with the work of Lou Reed. I know him as the guy who did “Walk On The Wild Side” and inexplicably thought it was a good idea to release a double album filled with nothing but guitar feedback; I wouldn’t know a Velvet Underground song if it pulled a Mike Tyson and bit my ear off. Meanwhile, I see myself as a casual fan of Metallica. I dig their first five records, I like a few of the Load/ReLoad era singles, I think St. Anger is irredeemably flawed and yet still an honest artistic expression, and Death Magnetic is a step in the right direction. I was only somewhat curious to hear what Reed and Metallica would sound like together. But that curiosity was especially piqued when early reviews proclaimed that Lulu was now officially the worst thing Metallica’s name had ever been attached to – yes, St. Anger had finally been bested (or is that worsted?). I simply had to experience this thing for myself.
Let’s get my verdict out of the way right now: Lulu is an absolutely terrible album. It’s still streaming online as I write this, but please take my word for it. Don’t listen to this.
BLAST FROM THE PAST #4: Linkin Park
A recent episode of South Park posited that there comes a time in your life when everything you once loved as a kid starts looking like crap once you’re older. While I will certainly admit to growing more critical and cynical as I’ve grown, I’d like to think people don’t change that much. Some things in life never get old – I’ll probably always have a soft spot for U2 and Green Day, for the Three Stooges and Looney Tunes cartoons (and South Park, for that matter), for Super Mario Bros. 3 and Final Fantasy VII. Then there are things that give you little to no sense of pride or nostalgia, things that make you look back and wonder, “Why the hell did I ever like that?” And for me, sometimes I look back to my teenage years and try to figure out why it took me so long to grow out of nu-metal, though I do give that particular phase credit for helping me get into heavier music.
I was never a hardcore fan of that whole late-‘90s, early-double-0s scene, but I did get my feet wet. I liked Korn’s singles back then, but never bought any of their albums. I could never really get into the Deftones (and still haven’t, even though I’ve heard lots of good things about them) or P.O.D. I flat-out didn’t like Disturbed at all (and still don’t). System Of A Down? They were okay, though for some reason I thought Serj Tankian kind of looked like Osama bin Laden. I didn’t hear anything by Slipknot for the first time until long after the nu-metal craze had hit its peak, though I’d seen plenty of their merchandise around school. There was a brief period where I actually considered getting that Crazy Town album with “Butterfly” on it – yes, I once thought the guys who horrifically mutilated “New Noise” by Refused were at least competent musicians. I was totally ready to buy Kid Rock as an “American Bad Ass” until I found out that he took that riff from an old Metallica song (for the record, I’m usually OK with sampling as long as you make interesting alterations or additions to the sample; leaving the sample as it is comes off as lazy, like all you did was make up new lyrics to someone else’s song). And who the hell were Primer 55 and Ill Niño? I certainly didn’t know.
Really, there were (and are) only a handful of albums in my collection that probably qualify as nu-metal at all: the first three Limp Bizkit albums, Infest by Papa Roach, The Lonely Position of Neutral by Trust Company, and of course the required soundtracks for any angsty teenager’s life from 2000 to 2004, Hybrid Theory and Meteora by Linkin Park.
Picks Of The Week #8: The Ps Have It
Hey everyone. It’s been a while since my last post. And I have my reasons. Last week I was away from my computer because I was vacationing with my family at our house in Ocean City, Maryland. I spent the week working on my tan, chilling in a nice warm swimming pool, and actually going into the ocean for once. There are lots of broken seashell bits in the sand as you enter the water and it just really annoys me and kind of hurts my feet a little (I have nice and delicate feet, dammit).
The week before that I went to volunteer at the Philadelphia Union match against Everton and ended up hospitalized with heat exhaustion, which is a pretty crappy experience that I don’t recommend for anyone. I had to stay inside for a few days during the recovery process, but I wasn’t really in the mood for blogging. It made me miss out on the Union’s match against Real Madrid, which sucks because I really wanted to go to that one. But enough about my, um, awesome life. This is a Picks of the Week post, and this week’s picks are all brought to you by the letter P.
And it’s not even like I specifically chose this letter for a POTW post. When I was putting together this little list, I noticed that the songs on it were all by bands whose names began with the letter P. So I figured I might as well make that the theme. But first, check out a couple new tunes from Radiohead and Mastodon.
The Picks of the Week are coming your way after the jump, as always.
Top 5 Lists I Didn’t Get To Do On My Show
During my tenure at WMUC2 as the host of Listen Up!, I did 34 shows. Only two of them ended without a Top 5 list – three if you count the Top 20 Shortest Songs list, which I did as part of an experiment to see how many songs I could squeeze into two hours – and only one of those was because I didn’t have an idea for the week. The other was because my show was cut short by a Maryland baseball game.
Terrapins baseball: Interrupting my radio shows since 2009.
Of course, along with the 32 lists that made it to the airwaves, there were several list ideas that I never got to do. Most of the time it was because I had a hard time thinking of five songs with which to fill the list, which kind of defeats the purpose of the whole “Top 5” thing. But that’s what happens when you try to classify songs into excessively specific categories, especially because my brain isn’t quite the encyclopedia of music knowledge that I would have liked for it to be. It certainly would have made filling these lists a lot easier!
As always, the fun begins after the jump.
The Search for the Song of the Summer
Every summer is often defined by that one massive pop hit, that one song that so thoroughly dominates the airwaves that it will lurk in your memories of that summer for years to come whether you like it or not. And as much as I would love for the Radioheads and My Morning Jackets and Minus The Bears of the world to dominate the summer with a monster hit, I’ve accepted that it’ll probably never happen. Not unless I one day gain the power to reshape mainstream culture to fit my own taste. There’s probably an X-Men character who can do that.
Last year the title was pretty much handed to Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” the instant it was released. This left me to wonder if I was the only person on Earth who realized that “California Gurls” was a blatant rewrite of Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok,” a song that already irritated the crap out of me the first time around. Hell, I still have memories of being the only kid alive in 1996 who didn’t want to learn the stupid Macarena. And if I ever hear “Livin’ La Vida Loca” or “All Star” again, it will be too soon. I guess the lesson is that no matter what the song of the summer ends up being, by the end of that summer simply hearing the first new notes of that damn song will be enough to drive you utterly mad.
So with the summer of 2011 officially underway, let’s take a look at some randomly chosen contenders from this week’s Hot 100. The fun begins after the jump!
A Quick Update Because I Was Away
Hey everyone. Just got back from a weekend in Ocean City, Maryland. In between looking to see whether or not My Morning Jacket has announced any tour dates in the Philly area (answer: no) (EDIT: The answer is now YES — they’re playing the Mann Center on August 23) and any updates on whether or not a new Radiohead tour has been announced at all (answer: also no), I noticed that I haven’t updated this blog in a while. So much for that whole “new post every week” schedule I’d been trying to stick to. So here’s a nice quick Colin’s Collection update to get me back in the swing of things. As always, the list can be found after the jump. Or if you prefer, you could always just listen to this song that inspired the title of today’s post (and also much of Green Day’s post-Warning career).
POTW #7: Telling Fortunes In American Slang
You know, this year I’ve been trying to follow a weekly posting schedule just so I can keep this blog updated and also give me something to do. Lately I’ve been slipping in that particular regard. That’s the thing about those Blast From The Past posts — they take a really long time to write. Also, I’ve had one sister graduate from college (yay Kerry!) and we had to move both of them back home. And then there’s that whole “job hunting” thing… yes, still. Oh, and I’ve been volunteering with the local MLS team, the Philadelphia Union, for their home games.
But enough about me. Here are my picks for this week… after this new Arcade Fire song.
And also this new Arcade Fire song.
And also after the jump, just like always.
BLAST FROM THE PAST #3: Weathered
SETH GREEN: Hey, you guys hear that? It sounds like Creed!
DAX SHEPARD: I never thought I’d be so happy to hear anything that sounds like Creed!
– Without A Paddle
Ah, Creed. How I remember the halcyon days of 2000 when their songs were played on the radio every ten minutes and on TRL every day after school between Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. And how the “Pearl Jam rip-off” criticism was so prevalent that Y-100 actually held a contest where they played a song by either Creed or Pearl Jam and you could win a prize if you called the station and correctly identified the performer. I also remember how Scott Stapp wrote songs about God, kind of looked like Jesus, and struck so many poses WITH AHHRMS WAAAHDE OHH-PUN that the only way the Christ allusions could be any more obvious would have been to shoot a video at Golgotha (although they did shoot the “Don’t Stop Dancing” video in a church)… while simultaneously proclaiming that no, they were not a Christian rock band, and where in the world could you ever get that idea?
(Two videos, people. I got these images from TWO VIDEOS.)
I also remember having two of their albums. Human Clay was a burned copy and I remember listening to it once, being bored with it unless the singles were playing (now where have I made that biting criticism before?), and never really bothering with it again. I vaguely recall the non-singles often being kind of slow-paced and sometimes overlong, though never as egregiously overlong as the last album I reviewed for this feature. For all I know I could be completely wrong about this. But even now that I’m going back and revisiting all these old albums, I still feel no urge to dig up Human Clay and listen to it again.
Weathered, on the other hand… well, that was a completely different story.
Hey Look, Another Collection Update
Hey everyone, I’m back on the blogosphere with another eagerly-anticipated (by very few people, if any) Colin’s Collection update. I’ve been pretty busy with job hunting lately, going to career fairs, browsing Craigslist, checking temp agency websites, and other wonderful stuff. Okay, I’m lying about that last bit — job hunting is pretty much the most frustrating and depressing thing in the world.
The good news is that so far this has been a pretty good year for music. I just keep on adding stuff to my collection, and with new releases from the likes of My Morning Jacket (Circuital comes out on 5/31) and the Arctic Monkeys (the oddly titled Suck It And See arrives in June) on the horizon, I know I’m still not done.
My latest musical acquisitions are coming up after the jump.
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Free Single Review: Porcelain Black, “This Is What Rock N’ Roll Looks Like”
Let’s consider for a moment what Lil Wayne apparently thinks rock music is.
A few years ago he contributed a guest verse to “Let It Rock,” the debut single from producer-turned-singer Kevin Rudolf. “Let It Rock” isn’t really a “traditional” rock song in any sense; it’s more of a typical club banger that happens to feature power chords. The song itself is okay, but I really bring it up because it seems like the seeds of Weezy’s ill-fated attempts at crossing over were planted within that track. Ever since that song came out, he’s been trying to add rock elements to his usual rap and AutoTune pop and… well, let’s just say it hasn’t really worked out.
In January of 2010 Lil Wayne unleashed Rebirth to a world that had been dreading its arrival since the day it was announced. The album had been delayed so often that by the time it finally came out its lead single “Prom Queen,” which is already a strong contender for worst song of the decade, was all but a distant memory. The critics, of course, completely eviscerated it – and rightfully so; Rebirth was a total disaster.
Rebirth was a rock album made by someone who had no clue how to make rock music – hell, he could barely even play two notes on the guitar – but tried anyway because nobody was going to tell him, “Dude, this is a really bad idea.” It was filled with extremely overproduced guitars, cheesy solos, and quite possibly the worst singing I’ve ever heard from a major-label artist. This is probably an unfair distinction to give it – Lil Wayne was, after all, a rapper using excessive amounts of AutoTune, but it was his idea to let us hear him warbling like a whiny robot and so he must pay the penalty.
An Old-School Colin’s Collection Post
Lately I’ve noticed that my Colin’s Collection posts have become increasingly tough to write because I’ve been trying to add little blurbs to the list about the band or the album or whatever. The thing is, sometimes that leaves me having trouble finding something to say about albums I haven’t listened to enough yet. So for now I think I’ll go back to the old style of just listing the albums, only with some videos from the albums in question.
The list comes up after the jump, but for now here are some recent or upcoming albums I’d like to get my hands on…
Foo Fighters, “Rope” (from Wasting Light)
Elbow, “Neat Little Rows” (from Build A Rocket Boys!)
TV On The Radio, “Will Do” (from Nine Types Of Light)
Free Single Review: Mac Miller, “On And On”
There are a lot of cities in America that can closely identify with a specific genre of music. Chicago was where Delta bluesmen began forming bands and plugging in their guitars. Los Angeles had glam rock in the ‘80s and gangsta rap in the ‘90s. Detroit? Motown, baby! Seattle has grunge, Nashville’s got country, Philly’s got soul, and Atlanta’s got “dirty South” hip-hop. New Orleans? They’ve got jazz – or at least they did until the franchise packed up and moved to Utah (*rimshot*). Memphis was one of the birthplaces of rock and roll. DC has a famous punk scene, and Baltimore’s indie rock is only an hour’s drive on I-95 away. And New York… well, they’ve got pretty much everything.
This year has seen the rise of another city that hopes to become a new mecca for hip-hop. That would be the Steel City itself, Pittsburgh, PA. It’s home to six Lombardi Trophies, three rivers, and two colors that all their sports teams wear: black and yell—well, gold, actually. Which of course brings us to Wiz Khalifa, the Pittsburgh rapper whose breakout single “Black And Yellow” has been practically inescapable in 2011. The Steelers adopted the song as their team anthem during their run to Super Bowl XLV this year.
And the rest of America has been remixing it like crazy ever since. Lil Wayne turned it into “Green And Yellow” in honor of the Green Bay Packers. Snoop Dogg did a Lakers version called “Purp And Yellow.” Even Tom Hanks’ son did “White And Purple” for Northwestern University (I swear to God that is NOT a joke). Basically, if your favorite team wears colors, somebody has taken Wiz Khalifa’s song and painted over it with those colors. Brace yourselves, Flyer fans – soon I’ll be set to unleash “Black And Orange” on all y’all. (Oh wait, San Francisco Giants fans beat me to it. DAMN YOU ALL!)
When Bad Songs Happen To Good Bands #5
The Beach Boys are one of those rare musical acts where they’ve been around long enough, prolific enough, and most importantly good enough to say that everyone probably likes something they’ve done. Even if you’re not a diehard fan, you have to at least tip your cap to the sheer songwriting genius of Brian Wilson. His intricate song structures, diverse instrumentation, and carefully arranged vocal harmonies were so far ahead of their time that people are still having trouble keeping up with him – and Pet Sounds came out 45 years ago. If any pop or rock musician had earned the right to call his music “teenage symphonies to God,” Brian Wilson was that man.
But we’re not here to talk about Brian Wilson’s Beach Boys. That band was one of the greatest of all time. No, we’re here to talk about what that band eventually became after Brian’s drug problems and mental illness sadly phased him out of the picture. By the late 1980s and early ‘90s they’d completely abandoned nearly all traces of their classic sound, creating some depressingly lousy music in the process.
Seriously, I was shocked to discover just how far this band had fallen. But I guess that’s what happens sometimes… When Bad Songs Happen To Good Bands.
POTW #6: I Heard These Songs, They’re Alright
All right, I’m going to finally give myself a break from writing about Radiohead all the time! And in the process I’m going to resurrect a feature that, thanks to my lengthy hiatus from the ol’ blogosphere, has been buried since October of 2009. It’s time once again for my Picks of the Week!
Of course, maybe in this case I should change the name to Picks of the Year or something. Or maybe just Picks of the Month. I mean, even back in ’09 I was only doing Picks of the Week posts every couple months or so. So maybe it should be Picks of the Last Couple of Months? …Nah, Picks of the Week rolls off the virtual tongue a lot better. Plus, it only requires me to think of songs I’ve been listening to a lot in the last seven days, which is a lot easier. This edition of Picks of the Week features some brand-new music and a couple older songs from perhaps a wider range of genres than in any other POTW post. And it’s coming up after the jump…
…and also this new single from TV On The Radio, which just came out two days ago. Enjoy!
Hail To The King Of Limbs, Pt. 2: First Impressions
Well, well, well. How’s this for a pleasant surprise? After the Valentine’s Day announcement that their new album The King Of Limbs would be released on Saturday, Radiohead apparently decided that five more days was too long after making us wait for nearly three and a half years and let us download it a day early.
So now the mysteries surrounding LP8 have been resolved – well, mostly. The King Of Limbs is an 8-track affair; half the album consists of songs nobody outside the band’s inner circle even knew existed. The songs the fans already know that appear here (in completely revamped form) are “Lotus Flower,” “Give Up The Ghost,” “Separator” (formerly “Mouse Dog Bird” – thank God they changed that title), and perhaps most surprisingly “Morning Mr. Magpie,” which has been kicking around since the Hail To The Thief sessions and was only played once in a live webcast. (It’s also featured in The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth Of All Time, a collection of short films set to Radiohead songs and clips of the band performing.)
And how does the new record sound? Completely different from anything else they’ve ever done, as usual. It’s very, very far from the folksy record you might expect considering that it’s named after a tree. But where its predecessor In Rainbows is one of the most immediately accessible albums of the band’s career (and a good place to start for newcomers), The King Of Limbs challenges you from the very first note. It’s even stranger than Kid A and Amnesiac in places, and sometimes feels like a follow-up to Thom Yorke’s solo album The Eraser only with more guitars. Turns out “These Are My Twisted Words” was only a partial preview of what was to come. We’ll take a track-by-track look at this baby after the jump!
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