15 Apr 2012
Inner City Blues - Marvin Gaye
I don’t know what inspired Jessica to start delving into a 1971 album all of the sudden in 2003, but she did. It was less of a discovery of Marvin Gaye and more of a rediscovery. What’s Going On is a great album, but there was no question about what song to put in here. Makes me wanna holler…
Love and Happiness - Al Green
At the same time as Jessica was rolling out the Marvin Gaye she was also dropping the Al Green. I think she did this specifically to confuse me. They sound very different to me now, but at the time I was very mixed up. Al Green seems to on average have a groovier sexier sound, but Marvin Gaye is the one to really call out “Let’s Get It On” and lay down some “Sexual Healing”. However Marvin Gaye is the one with the thoughtful social commentary, while Al Green is the Reverend. It was a bit disorienting.
But ever since I’m prone to, as Morphine put it, “put the Al Green on”. You really can’t go wrong. Everybody wins.
I Believe In A Thing Called Love - The Darkness
Music games. They’re a huge thing now (or maybe a huge thing that’s jumped the shark a bit), but not so long ago they were new and niche.
I remember Ben first bringing around Karaoke Revolution to our gaming gatherings. His idea was simple: he wanted to get better at singing, and a game seemed like a great feedback mechanism to make that happen. The idea of a game judging your musical ability was still a novel idea back then. So we played this game, and soon it became clear that non-gamer people were interested in this too. Even, gasp, girls.
Fast forward to the sequel, and we have a growing crowd of people. But no one has the balls to tackle this song. Until Rand does. And he fucking nails it. He committed, he delivered, and it was awesome.
For years I was waiting for this song to make it to Rock Band. It always seemed like an obvious pick. Fun and challenging vocals, rocking guitars, and of course a big cup of awesome flair. I mean, have you seen the video? One of the best ever. Anyway, someone had once figured out the rights to get this song into a music game, so what was the hold up? I did eventually get my wish, although only a year ago. I’m still waiting for someone to really step it up and deliver the vocals…
Habanera - Carmen (Donkey Konga)
Okay, so no orchestral recording of this song is going to accurately represent how this song exists in my head. Thankfully bored people on the internet exist to archive this stuff for me.
So, somehow this crazy Gamecube game that came with a plastic bongo controller made it stateside. The track selection was… well… I’d be generous even calling it “uneven”. But beating drums to music is pretty much fun no matter what. Even if they’re fake drums, and even if the music is often terrible.
By the time Donkey Konga 2 came around we had a setup with a TV and two bongo controllers at work. When the mood was right at the end of the day we’d have some drinks, bang some bongos, and have an all awesome time.
Oddly enough, this song was the best one. So many times Jon and I would be scrolling through the track list, pondering, and just end up back on Habanera. It makes zero sense until you’ve actually drummed along to it.
Go It Alone - Beck
Beck, you’re not so sad anymore are you? You’ve had years to heal that broken heart, and as a result you were able to give birth to Guero. Which I like to believe is so much better for the heartbreak that preceded it. So… thanks for taking one for the team.
This song… yum. It’s a foot stomping, snappin’, can’t help but bob your head kind of a groove-a-long. A minimalistic triumph. So. Good.
I actually first hit this album via the GameBoy Variations remix. Okay, it’s not all proper chip tune mixes, but the thought is still there. I actually prefer the remix version of “Hell Yes” to the album version. The “Girl” remix is also pretty rad.
12 Apr 2012
Transatlanticism - Death Cab for Cutie
I remember listening to this song, lying face-up on the floor of the townhouse we lived in at the time. Jessica had put on this album on and it was this song that first stood out to me. Which is saying something, because the song is pretty deep into the album, and there are a lot of great songs that come before it. But it was the one that operated on the wavelength I needed.
I think the reason for that is that this song isn’t as concerned with being, well, a song. It finds a space, and then it spends some time just existing there. Building without building. I can see myself lying there on the floor, listening, and then really starting to feel it as the song enters its latter half of pure jam. Then at 6:31 the vocals come on in this lifting way that’s perfectly justified and made more powerful by what preceded them. And then of course it just expertly blends into the next track. Album planning for the win.
Once my ear was cocked, I delved into Death Cab pretty deeply, and they quickly became a favorite. This was the bridge.
Catch Me - Supreme Beings of Leisure
I discovered Supreme Beings of Leisure in a bit of a roundabout way. I got the Animatrix DVD as a gift. I want to say that the soundtrack came with it, but it’s possible I just followed up and checked it out later. Doesn’t matter. There were a couple interesting tracks on it, but the one that matters here is called “Under the Gun” by Supreme Beings of Leisure. I enjoyed it, but didn’t immediately dig deeper.
It took hearing the name a second time, from Francis if I recall, to lead me to Divine Operating System. And with that came many things, but especially the excellent James Bond anthem that never was: “Catch Me”. This band is one sexy, classy act.
Somersault - Zero 7
Ambient chill background music, it’s a thing. Here is some more. But there’s a bit of a story to go with this one.
I remember hearing about this band on the pilot episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. For those first couple episodes they had some other dude sitting in the questionable “culture” seat. I remember him riffling through the subject’s CD collection and criticizing it. Making fun of a dude’s clothes and lame bachelor apartment is one thing, but it’s something else entirely to hate on their music. Sure, I think some music is less than worthy; not all of it is good. But it’s ridiculous to think that you can take someone’s entire music history, dump it in the trash, and replace it with something hip. They can’t un-experience all of that. Maybe other people don’t have the emotional nostalgic connection to music that I do, but I can’t imagine completely changing my music tastes overnight. I mean, that’s why I’m doing this whole thing - I consider music to be part of my identity.
Anyway, the culture guy had the subject put on this Zero 7 album in the background during his date. It’s odd how despite my negative reaction to the whole scene I actually looked up the album. The thing is, it’s not the music recommendation that I found repulsive; it was the request that the subject also throw out their pass.
The album actually has a number of good tracks on it. Super soft, super chill, but good.
Panther Dash - The Go! Team
This is something that my officemate Krishna brought to my attention. We would close our door, crank up the volume, and groove to Go Team.
The entire album sounds like it was duct-taped together in a basement with bargain bin recording equipment. But there’s so much energy in the music that it doesn’t matter. Actually, I prefer it this way. It’s raw. The only downside is that this makes it incredibly difficult to insert into a mix with more-produced music.
I mean, this whole album is bat shit crazy. It’s got this bizarre backbone of cheerleading chants. Mix that with funk, and pop, and hip hop. And a harmonica. And trashcan drums. And a string section. And… holy crap what the hell is happening and why is it so awesome? How did I get this huge grin on my face?
The sort of raw delight that this music can induce is probably why they decided to use “Get It Together” as the theme for the adorable Little Big Planet. Which is a good pairing. But despite that huge marketing association Go Team always takes me back to those times with in that office with Krishna.
10 Apr 2012
Sure Thing - Saint Germain
Okay, one more ambient track before we move on. Groovy, bluesy, relaxed, repetitive. Good for programming and parties. I like it, partially because of the fact that it doesn’t tax my brain.
Undress Me Now - Morcheeba
Jessica finally made it out to a Morcheeba show, at the Moore. It was around the release of their album Charango, but I remember that we hadn’t heard it. Either it wasn’t out, or we hadn’t picked it up yet, I can’t remember which. What I definitely remember is that it was very fortunate that we caught this show. Shortly after the band split ways with the lead singer, Skye Edwards, in pretty much the Worst Idea Ever. I don’t care if you have artistic differences and are miserable, it’s your job to suffer through that and keep bringing me more music. I have needs.
I remember her singing this song at the show. She was entirely wrapped up in the performance. When the song was over it was as if she woke up and just then realized what she had been singing. “Undress me now, you know how / Using my mind”. Suddenly she had returned to earth and was blushing and embarrassed. It was adorable.
We Will Become Silhouettes - The Postal Service
There’s something special about The Postal Service. The way the electronic elements blend with Ben Gibbard’s vocals is so… something. Wistful? It sounds nostalgic to me now, but I’m pretty sure it always has.
I remember listening to this album while playing Halo with the boys (Alex, Ben, and Rob). It doesn’t seem like the most obvious pairing, but there’s something about the genesis of this music that works so well for a bunch of programmers playing video games.
I think it was actually in response to Daft Punk, and it was probably two years earlier, but I distinctly remember a car conversation with Rob where he made a critical connection for me. Our generation grew up with Nintendo. The only way to communicate music on this hardware was with glorified bleeps and bloops. What the musicians of the time were able to accomplish with this was actually pretty incredible, but the important point is that we as kids were absorbing this new kind of music slowly, and in an enjoyable context. Those seeds laid dormant for years and years and eventually blossomed into brain receptors that were attuned to things like The Postal Service or Daft Punk. We had never thought of ourselves as being listeners of electronic music, but without knowing it we had been prepared for this since childhood.
I adore this album. I’ve heard it countless times, and it still totally works. It’s simple, and joyful, and just lovely. Except for the last track. I recommend erasing it from existence.
I Know You (Pt. III) - Morphine
Back when I was in college I used Napster to fuel my music discovery. There wasn’t much barrier to trying something new. Then they shut down Napster and that all became hard again. People still did it with torrents and such, but at this point I had a job and a paycheck and didn’t feel comfortable stealing music off the internet. Music is important to me, and when I find something I like I don’t have a problem paying for it. But in this legitimate world how do you discover new music?
Into this situation was born the music subscription. Pay a fixed fee for access to all the music you want. I started doing this when Napster relaunched as a service, and I’ve been doing it ever since (although now with Zune). Under this system there’s absolutely nothing getting in the way of finding new music, which is how it should be.
Another aspect of this newfound access is that I could dig into my back catalog of artists. Despite my love of Morphine I hadn’t really had a chance to listen to their older albums. As soon as I hooked up to the music subscription fire hose I was able to check out everything else they had ever put out.
This song is off of Like Swimming, and it’s amazing. It’s so deep and dirty. Soulful. I love how it rolls into the chorus with those paired sax hits. It’s sexy, sultry, and oh so good.
Chicago - Groove Armada
Through work I got on the Halo 2 multiplayer beta. I had played my fair share of local LAN multiplayer on the first Halo. In the sequel they were doing some pretty revolutionary stuff with how they brought this online, and that’s what I was supposed to be testing.
What does this have to do with music? Well, I had both my Xbox and my Media Center hooked up to the TV. I had a Napster app on the PC that let me stream pretty much whatever I wanted. I figured out a workable setup where I could get the audio from that in addition to the audio and video from the Xbox. I set this up right around the time I got on that multiplayer beta, so the whole time I was playing I could listen to music.
This song is completely linked to the “Ivory Tower” map from that game. As it grooves along I can see myself running around in that space. The song and the environment and the game just all fit together for me. It’s one of those crazy tight links that I keep talking about here - personal but undeniable.
06 Apr 2012
Paper Tiger - Beck
Beck went through a serious breakup, and he wrote an album. There is no denying the impact of one on the other. Gone is the manic spread of tunes from the previous albums. In their place is solid cohesive songwriting. This is the ultimate breakup album. Thankfully you don’t need to be going through epic heartbreak to appreciate it.
This song is probably one of the least depressing of the lot. I mean, it sounds borderline uplifting. Tonally, not lyrically, that is. The whole album is a pit of crushingly depressing lyrics. So it feels a little odd to single it out this song, a relative outlier, to represent the album. But it’s just so damned good I can’t bring myself to put anything else in its place.
I apparently get off on depressing music. Too much happiness and I start to get suspicious. So naturally I love this album.
Teardrop - Massive Attack
Apparently most people know this song as the instrumental intro theme for House. Yeah… no. I can’t even imagine this song without the vocals. I mean, I’ve seen House. I just get disoriented and keep waiting for the rest of the song to kick in.
As great as the song is, I’m putting it on here for the album as a whole. It was a recommendation to me by Francis. Jessica was very confused when I mentioned this, because she already owned the album. Had for years. And somehow I’d missed the whole business.
The album fit in so well with my other M’s: Morphine and Morcheeba. Deep, dark, and lovely.
Clarity - John Mayer
This song is a fantastic album opener. It starts out sparse and gentle, slowly adding elements. It feels like waking and opening up to the day. It takes a full minute to put it all together, but even then it doesn’t overpower. It’s relaxed. The thing I love about this song is how it comes out of the bridge at 3:18. Restraint, horns, and then the wall of sound hits. It gets me every time. Perfection.
I’ve already gone over my introduction to John Mayer. I felt some betrayal at the overproduced Room for Squares. Plus I could do without Mayer’s pop crush image. Jessica and I went to a concert of his at the Paramount and were overwhelmed by the large number of swooning young girls. Mayer was too, apparently, and openly mocked them from the stage. Sadly it seemed to go over their heads. They weren’t so into his jazzy instrumental indulgences with balding accompanists; they just wanted to hear how their bodies were wonderlands. Gag.
Heavier Things was still pretty poppy, but less so than Room for Squares. This thankfully proved to be a positive trend that would continue with the following albums.
Lebanese Blond - Thievery Corporation
I think Jessica and I first came across this via some sort of compilation. From there we dug in dabbled with The Mirror Conspiracy and The Richest Man in Babylon. There’s definitely a fusion of a wide range of elements happening here. Latin, Indian, African… the album just kind of stirs them altogether into some sort of super chill soup. Because of that it’s hard to develop strong opinions about any track in particular. The whole experience is rather ambient. Not really challenging, just there and… listenable.
It feels weird to punctuate this list with music that feels a bit like filler to me. But it’s what I was listening to at the time. I think I needed some ambient filler. As I mentioned before, that sort of music is of particular use to us programmers. Sometimes you need music that doesn’t make you think, but keeps you driving forward.
Epoca - Gotan Project
This is such a lovely blend of old and new. Tango music met electronica, and a beautiful thing was born. But I don’t know if I have more to say about it than that. Yes, it grooves, it moves, it’s hip… but it’s destined to stay in the background. It fills a certain kind of need. Party music. Something to put on so that there’s not nothing, but it’s not something that’s going to invade and derail you from whatever it is you actually want to be doing.
04 Apr 2012
Buena - Morphine
Oh “Buena”. So aptly titled. This song starts with such powerful elements, rolled out one at a time to slowly increase its hold on you. And when it stops it just drops you on the floor, ravaged.
I had been listening to Cure for Pain for awhile by this point. But I have a specific memory of gifting this song to Rob in the middle of the computer science lab. I’m wearing headphones, grooving on some Morphine, and Rob’s sitting next to me. I hand him the headphones and queue up this song. I can see it washing over him in waves. After about a minute he’s taking off the headphones and demanding to know what it is he’s listening to and how he can get more.
“I hear a voice cry out… you want something good.”
“I think it’s time for me to finally introduce you to the Buena…”
Bubble Toes - Jack Johnson
It would have made sense for me to discover Jack Johnson through his work with G. Love, but that’s not how it went down. It also feels like something Dan could have put in front of me as a guitar showcase around the same time as John Mayer and Monte Montgomery. But it’s probably more simple. Jessica heard it on the radio, picked up the album, and eventually put it in front of me.
What really connected for me was the unrelenting chillness. There’s an undeniable rhythm to his vocals. This song in particular highlights it around 2:00. Yet despite this the sound always manages to stay relaxed. It works incredibly well.
The runner up here was “Flake”. Great song, but it doesn’t capture the vocal quality that really caught my ear in “Bubble Toes”.
Ghosts - Dirty Vegas
I graduated from college and got a job. With this came something called a paycheck. Those are handy for paying rent and utilities and such, but they can also be used to buy stuff. So it was that after getting some essentials out of the way I bought myself an Xbox.
The Xbox had this nifty feature where you could rip music to the hard drive and use that as a soundtrack in certain games. Racing games in particular seemed more likely to support this feature. These games also happened to be something that Jessica and I could play together. I remember us dabbling with Project Gotham Racing, Rallisport Challenge, and especially Quantum Redshift (because racing games where you can shoot the guy in front of you are inherently more awesome).
The games had their own music. In fact I believe the first time I heard The Chemical Brothers was in PGR. But it was so much more awesome to drive along to your own music. One of the few discs I put in there was Dirty Vegas, and to this day when I hear those songs it makes me think of these games.
I had thought “Days Go By” would be the obvious pick here, but listening back on the album “Ghosts” actually better captures this time for me.
Star Guitar - The Chemical Brothers
I was going to put “Star Guitar” in as an honorable mention for the previous story. But then I listened to it again and decided, f-that, it gets its own entry.
I remember jumping through some serious hoops to get this song and put it on the Xbox just because I thought it’d be awesome to drive to. It involved getting the song a la cart, then burning that to a disc, then ripping it again onto the Xbox. When I finally got it in there, I was totally right. I remember happily zipping around in a virtual Mini Cooper S with “Star Guitar” driving me forward. But I don’t remember how I got the idea that this was a good idea. It could have been a suggestion from Francis, but I’m not sure.
As far as I’m concerned the song was invented for this sort of pairing. I mean, have not you seen the music video? It resonates with me on a fundamental level. Seriously, it feels like childhood. Riding in the car, bored and staring out the window, listening to music, my eyes and my ears finding hidden connections. It’s still true today, as I commute on the bus. But now I get a bit more emotional about it, feeling that the connections I see are part of some sort of cosmic transcendental truth.
Last Nite - The Strokes
There’s something about The Strokes that sounds like they’re saying “Screw you mom, I’m gonna be a rock star!”. Not in an angry way, but in a teenage optimism sort of way. It’s earnest and detached all at once. It’s like they care more than anything in the world, but also don’t want to let you know.
At the same time this music sounds to me like something both old new. The vocals are… distant. But perfectly paired. It somehow makes them even more present. The musical structure is so incredibly simple, not overly produced, and just… good.
Simple. Good. Love it.