One song with two different ideas of love, two different ideas of boundaries.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Top Covers '00s: #4
It's nice to know that bands on earth are still making music for John Peel in heaven. Seriously, a postpunk cover of Kate Bush? that works?
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Top Covers '00s: #5
Such an unlikely song to have received so much cover attention... with the Field edging out the competition.
Top Covers '00s: #6
Monday, December 28, 2009
Top Covers '00s: #8
Cash's American recordings sound in retrospect like a beautiful, decade-long swan song... here's the statement of defiance that sums up the whole project.
Top Covers '00s: Honorable Mention
Last year before the release of Offend Maggie, Deerhoof asked their fans to cover their new single before it came out. They putting some sheet music online and posted the mp3s. It was especially surprising since the band's musicianship always seemed studio-driven and somewhat slapped together (not meant as a negative!) A better idea on "paper", but the covers have their moments. Also, like Kutiman, something that couldn't have be done in previous decades.
Fresh Born fan covers
Fresh Born fan covers
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Parking Lots
The Village Voice Worst Song of the '00s is a cover! And the write-up is brutal, which may be an understatement.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Santa Monicas
"2009 saw the release of a lot of vital, compelling, essential recordings. Consider In A Different Light the soundtrack to the other side of the equation." [via The A.V. Club]
Friday, December 25, 2009
Top Samples '00s, #1
Kanye West at his best. Not just samples but a slowly unfolding collage of an entire deconstructed song, a bassline, the variations on a Morrison grunt, a guitar. The unlikely match of source and destination is so strange at first and make so much sense less than five minutes later.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Top Samples '00s, #2
The Field took the scalpel to Lionel Richie here, chopping "Hello" into CD-skip length microsamples and turning it into sublime dance music.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Top Samples '00s, #4
Girl Talk pulls no punches here. In the first minute of the first track on Night Ripper, he breaks out the most infamous sample of the generation—the sample that turned the writing credit for "Bitter Sweet Symphony" to Jagger/Richards.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Top Samples '00s, #5
Mad Lib and MF Doom are a SftD dream—samples,found sound, a continuous string of aliases... plenty of samples from Madvillainy have a place on this list, including the Fever Tree sample which serves as the background for "America's Most Blunted," but Mad Lib takes sampling all the way back to Steve Reich's voice-looping process music.
Top Samples '00s: #6
In a class of its own and some thing that absolutely could not have existed in the last decade...
Monday, December 21, 2009
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Blenders
SftD will have its Top 10 Samples of the 00s this week. Sampling was ubiquitous before the decade began and technology had seriously lowered the barriers to entry, so it took that much more to stand out. The Avalanches' Since I Left You and Girl Talk's Feed the Animals come at either end of the decade and show two very different approaches to the art. The Avalanches threw a bunch of ingredients in the blender, turned it on, and made something wholly new. Girl Talk threw in the ingredients and left them lying next to and on top of each other.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Chains
Spotting these things can be like Magic Eye. I know the Grateful Dead sample is there—pretty much every story about the new AC EP mentions that this is the first licensed GD sample. Sometimes I think I can "see" it, then it vanishes. It continues to elude me.
So what are we supposed to make of all this "first licensed sample" talk... I suppose there are two implications:
1. GD are showing their support for AC. Possible, but irrelevant. Licensing is a money game (and a legal game). It's like talking about how much Matt Holliday is going to make next year, and not whether he can throw strikes.
2. AC are wearing their GD influences on their sleeves. Again, possible, but the sample is so obscure that I had to be told it was there, and it still more or less is lost on me.
It's not that want the music press to turn their backs to news, legal matters, etc., just to be a bit more clear on what they're trying to get across.
So what are we supposed to make of all this "first licensed sample" talk... I suppose there are two implications:
1. GD are showing their support for AC. Possible, but irrelevant. Licensing is a money game (and a legal game). It's like talking about how much Matt Holliday is going to make next year, and not whether he can throw strikes.
2. AC are wearing their GD influences on their sleeves. Again, possible, but the sample is so obscure that I had to be told it was there, and it still more or less is lost on me.
It's not that want the music press to turn their backs to news, legal matters, etc., just to be a bit more clear on what they're trying to get across.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Rights
Classic rock as existential philosophy, with references....
Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven
Bob Seger, Against the Wind
Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven
Bob Seger, Against the Wind
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Friday, December 11, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Psychos
There's a new DVD release of Stop Making Sense. A nice opportunity to see how bands—especially really, really good bands—can rewrite themselves and their songs over the course of their career.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
My Lifes
Glee. Personally, I don't get it, but then again I'm not necessarily in the target audience. It doesn't matter—this is surely 2009's biggest market for covers, versions, remakes, etc. What's really amazing is the covers cycle here... this is the second(!) album like this from the show this year(!) and the song covered is from 2009(!). The fidelity is close to 99.44%. The songs are even both exactly 3 minutes and 31 seconds.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Satisfactions
And I try, and I try, and I try, and I try... an abbreviated, but full-circle history of the touchstone of rock and roll imitation.
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