Pinkshinyultrablast - Astrobrite

Here is a link to the entire Pinkshinyultrablast album by Astrobrite. This (haven't listened to it all yet) goes off pretty far into the noise channel of SG. As I think about making some of this music myself with my ukes + amp effects and synths, I'll need to choose a path between noise and melodicism.  It's a set of decisions that will probably be made when the music is emanating.  It can't really be planned.

Blaster - Pinkshinyultrablast

[link] Pinkshinyultrablast is also the name of an album by Shoegaze supergroup Astrobrite (another story for another day).  This is heavy stuff with the noise turned up, the rhythm turned down (but churning uptempo) and the vocal spread like mayo above and through it all. SG is ubiquitous, is what I am discovering.  Since the 90s it has literally become the world that many people are standing on. It's a medium like the earth is a medium for agriculture.

Hang On - Yukari

[link] More synth-gaze (I just thought of this but I bet I'm not the first to use this term) from Yukari. This is really amazing in its textures and the contrast between the heaviness of the bottom and her voice gliding above.

Automatic - the Pointer Sisters

[link] This is a hell of song.  From 1984. It's the arrangement and production that really does it.  This was the peak of synth pop.  The verse is so restrained and the thing just explodes in the chorus.  The chorus is the same music as the verse but it adds the high harmony and the over the top juiciness of the keyboards. The instrumental part I could do without. Brock Walsh co-wrote and co-produced the song and must have been the main force behind it, from what I read.  Genius pop. I love the old Soul Train footage as well.

Myrrh - The Church

[link] The Church are not a shoegaze band but in many ways the atmosphere of their sound is similar to that evoked by SG. Especially this song and others from the Heydey and Reptile. They are describing the same landscape as SG, in my mind. A gray, not quite apocalyptic place.

Tralfaz Christmas Song Playlist

Here is a link to my entire playlist of 34 Christmas songs. There are still a lot of Christmas songs that I'd like to try to learn. Not sure if I'll get to that this year. In the future, I'm thinking about volunteering to lead holiday sing alongs at local nursing homes.  We'll see if I have time to pursue that.

A Tralfaz Christmas - Part IV

Here Comes Santa Claus
White Christmas
It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
I'll Be Home For Christmas
Feliz Navidad
Ding Dong Merrily on High
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
What Child is This?
Do You Hear What I Hear?
We Three Kings
Walking in a Winter Wonderland
Silent Night
Here We Come A-Wassailing
The 12 Days of Christmas
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

Sleeper - Malory

[link] Shoegaze (Nu-Gaze) from Germany. Pretty controlled compared to some of the other current stuff. The high female vocal on top of the miasma is almost a requirement it seems. That goes back to founders of the sound Cocteau Twins and to some extent My Bloody Valentine.  Even in the bands without a female vocal, there's a cloudy, blurry quality to the vocal track (and a lot of effects and track duplication, as well as multiple vocalist tracks in unison).

Happy - Sugar Plant

[link] On the mainstream (Asian) pop side of Japanese SG, which makes it an interesting fusion. The vocalist has an almost English accent and sings in English. Very smooth and sweet. Definitely channeling Cocteau Twins, but to capture the sweetness of CT, not their complexity.

Leech - Alison's Halo

Really really enjoying this stuff.
Leech

The cover art for the eyedazzler 1992-1996 album I believe is a trace from a particle accelerator collision.  Really beautiful.

Bittersweet - New Model Army

[link] I've had this song on a gothic rock CD compilation. It's a really great song.  The bass and guitar are superb, driving, and precise.  The vocal adds a lot of the goth component. I should investigate the full oeuvre of this UK band who have been around since the punk era and are still cranking.

Dozen - Alison's Halo

[link] From back in 1995, the late golden age of shoegaze in the West (it could be argued that the golden age of shoegaze in Japan is now). That sparkling female vocal like the matron deity Cocteau Twins. Full, fulsome even, noise-juice in the guitar track. The pacing, the atmosphere, all there.

Loved - Cruyff in the Bedroom

[link] A pretty conventional heavy shoegaze sound from Japan.  Most of the major influences are in here. The tempo is too fast IMHO to have the impact the genre typically goes for. Just a bit too bouncy for the rest of it.

Common Reactor - Silversun Pickups

[link] Here's a different take on nu gaze.  Upbeat and more minimal. Again, not much hookiness here.  The vocal is also pretty far off from SG. I don't need to hear this particular track again.

Hearts - I Break Horses

[link] A nu gaze band. Which I think is newer bands trying to do shoegaze and adding their own signatures.  This is sleek and heavy, piercing in spots. Doesn't have the hooks that my favorite SG has.  Rhythmically, it's very machine like, in the sense of whirring motors.

Halcyon - Lemon's Chair

[link] This band goes for it with a wall of raw sound.  A howling, plodding bludgeon.

Fake Lights in the Sky - Last Leaf Down

[link] Downtempo atmosphere.  I really like the grinding baselines of the bridge. Very haunting keyboard lilting through it all.  This song has some power. Great band name too.

Flirtation - Burrrn

[link] On the punk side of shoegaze but not gratingly so.  The real SG element is the bass/chord combination in the 2nd phrase of the verse.  That is a signature with a lot of narrative content. I'm beginning to be convinced that the poetics of these simple musical elements set the entire atmospheric for SG.  It's not post-apocalyptic.  But it's a spent, urban, suburban, or heavily disturbed rural landscape.  It's bleak.  But as with gothic poetics, there is extreme romanticism present.  Still working articulating this...

Pastel Blue - Ariel

[link] Here's some deeply atmospheric Japanese shoegaze. The hook grind of some of the other songs I've been posting doesn't quite arrive here. The far-away-ness is good though.

Yukari - Yule

[link] Fantastic shoegazish pop.  And I love watching her lay down the vocal and keyboards in this video.  Mesmerizing.

A Tralfaz Christmas part III

Holly Jolly Christmas

I Saw Three Ships

I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

Let it Snow!

The Christmas Song

O Christmas Tree

A Tralfaz Christmas part II

Jolly Old Saint Nicholas

Up on the Rooftop

Good King Wenceslas

Silver Bells

We Wish You a Merry Cristmas

Blue Christmas

Found a shoegaze internet radio station

DKFM from Fresno, CA.  Good stuff from current bands and classics. Only listened to a little while before but it sounds really good.  Will be spending a lot of time with this station from now on...

Away - Maikotobranco

[link] Anthemic.  Bombastic, even, for shoegaze.  Pretty heavy stuff.  But also seems to bounce off the surface.  Doesn't go deep.

A Tralfaz Christmas part I

A Tralfaz Christmas part I

Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Frosty the Snowman
Deck the Halls
Jingle Bells
Silver and Gold
Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer

Flipper - Pasteboard

[link] The laid back side of shoegaze from Japan.  Wistful. Could accompany a romantic montage. Very listenable.

Brownsugar/Love Scene - Sugardrop

[link] Uptempo, hooky shoegaze.  Fuzzy guitar phasing in and out. High narrative content, even without the vocal.  But the vocal is a nice addition. I like this whole thing a lot.

Dracaena Sanderiana - Oell

[link] More Japan Shoegaze.  This one is delicate, sounds a bit like the Pale Saints.  Has some complex interweaving vocals and has some quaint, amateurish production/arrangement, which doesn't detract from the artistry.  The guitar work borders on prog. Interesting.

Rosoku - Civic

[link] A lot of things going on in this one.  Very free, noisy guitar, kind of like windy rain hitting your window.  Both low and high female vocals coming and going in and out of the rain. Emphasizing some of the creative possibilities that exist in the genre.  Nice stuff. And I like a band named after a car ;-)

My Dead Girlfriend - Kinoshita Fuyou

[link] Very My Bloody Valentine intro and break with a breathy high vocal. Two shoegaze staples. For some reason, the SG idiom has taken on really well in Japan.

Silver Screen (Shower Scene) - Felix da Housecat

[link] Another seminal electroclash single.  Pretty cool.  Seems highly influenced by industrial. Video is pretty interesting as well.

Feels Like Summer - Sing Sing

[link] Emma Anderson's band after Lush.  Different and not quite shoegazey, but you can hear some of the retro-ish styling that some of the later Lush material had.

Space Invaders - Are Smoking Grass - I-F

[link] Discovered the genre of electroclash when I was researching Lady Gaga, who Ru-Jun is starting to get into thanks to her dance class. This music came out in the late 1990s and the genre spanned the turn of the millennium. It's really atmospheric and has the abstractness that I really like.  This is the first of the genre I've listened to (and according to the Wikipedia entry was the first electroclash single).

Low Key - Pastel Blue

[link] Continuing with Japanese Shoegaze. Slow and spacey. A fuzzy throb of grayish color.

Sun House - Evil Daddy Dirt

[link] Continuing the Japanese shoegaze thread. More synthy and proggy than straightforward Shoegaze. I haven't ventured into much instrumental Shoegaze before. It's different, since the vocal is often part of the standard shoegaze layering.  But this is interesting; many layers and has narrative content.

Pirate Shows

One of Ru-Jun's favorite shows right now if Jake and the Never Land Pirates on Disney Jr. It's a pretty fun show with really good music, by two members of the band Captain Bogg and Salty (Loren Hoskins and Kevin Hendrickson) who are also depicted as Captain Hook's hapless crew members in the show. Meanwhile I continue to enjoy One Piece.  I am about to finish the Amazon Lily arc (episodes 408-421). Really good stuff.

Black coffee

I didn't really start drinking coffee until college.  At that time I couldn't drink it without cream and sugar.  I gave up sugar as part of a sort of unstated new years resolution about 10 years ago.  In the last year I started drinking it black. Now I prefer it that way (although Dunkin Donuts coffee with cream is still excellent).  Don't have to worry about keeping creamier around (which spoils quickly) or non dairy creamer (which is not food) or leaving space for cream at Starbucks (was always a pain). I always wondered why people liked it black.  This co-occurred with me starting to drink a lot of tea, which is now a daily habit.  I think the thing that did it was that tea has such a weak flavor, anything with strong flavor is a nice contrast to tea.  I like both.

Garden - Mash

[link] This sounds more western (I think it's in English).  Pretty good. Both more poppy and definitely more hard rockish than some of the other stuff I've been posting. Has some non-shoegaze in its bloodline.

See the Brightest Star - Clams

[link] Continuing to mine the Japanese Shoegaze vein. This is very smooth and sweet. The bubblegum pop aspect is quite a prominent part of the composition and production here.

Kisses Bloomed - Purple Bloom

[link] Another recent Japan shoegaze discovery.  Harder edged and more emphatic of the instrumenal sound than Bertoia.  But I like this song a lot.  The guitar and bass lines work together well.  I think the vocal could be turned up more; it's just an accent in this mix.

Some pics of Bertoia

Bertoia

I have fallen in love with this band.  They've been around for a few years in Japan and they do really sublime shoegaze.  And their videos are really fun and well made.

Here is all of there stuff that is on youtube

AnthRelax
Under Water (live) 2012 Tokyo Japan Shoegazer Festival
Under Water (live)
Snow Slide
Snow Slide (audio without cinematic video)
Monotone
Monotone (live)
Glass Bird
Color of Sound
Monotone ~ Glass Bird (live)
murmur/MONOTONE (Bertoia's cover)(2011/10/09 live)
1974 LAB./Under Water (live)
MODERN SYNTHESIS CM (not sure what this is intended to be; it's a 15 sec clip from Monotone)
MODERN SYNTHESIS Alubum Digest (previews of all the tracks from the Modern Synthesis album)
 
An interview with the band [in Japanese] (maybe not an interview; they are introducing their CD, it appears)

Madame Butterfly - Malcolm McLaren

[link] I don't know anything about the opera but always liked this pop version.  Jeff Gold used to play it quite a bit on Saturday mornings on WXDU.

Grandelinquent / Ritch in a Ditch - Klark Kent

[link] I love Stewart Copeland. Not only the drumming but the whole rhythm section and the way his songs are arranged.

Three alt dancefloor classics

Three alt dancefloor classics from back in the day (ca 1990)

There is No Love Between Us Anymore- Pop Will Eat Itself

Supposed to Have Sex with You - Tonio K.

People are Still Having Sex - LaTour

Def. Con. One - Pop Will Eat Itself

[link] A blast from the late 80s past (1988).  Pretty big alt pop hit. Referenced various pop emblems from the previous two decades. Sampling was pretty big at that time and being integrated into a lot of different genres, mostly of dance music.

Glittering Prize - Simple Minds

[link] One of my favorites from one of my favorite albums of all time (New Gold Dream 81.82.83.84).  Atmospheric and beaty in mid tempo.  The keyboard lines cascade down. The lyrics are abstract.  I never learned what this song was about but it doesn't matter. One of the main tracks on the soundtrack of my intensely self absorbed late teens in the mid 80s.

More on the nostalgia

That particular nostalgia has to do with the perception of being in an ideal situation and wanting time to freeze so that I can stay there.  The beginning of summer.  School year over.  Toward the end of my high school years I was very comfortable with my small circle of friends.  Looking back, it was only an ideal situation in that it was simple.  Nothing was required of me. I didn't have any particular cares, or any wisdom. I thought I did.  But the stuff I cared about was trivial.  The stuff I thought I knew something about I didn't.  I didn't know how to be a good friend or a good person.  I longed for romantic love but I had know idea how to love someone. So really in the end there is nothing to be nostalgic about. These days I cringe more than any other reaction to the way I was in those times.  It's a thought refuge for me, but I am alone there.  I take comfort in the fact that I am probably the only one who remembers anything about me in those days.

The nostalgia I was talking about

Here are two songs that are sort of emblems for me. Both by Seals and Crofts: Summer Breeze and We May Never Pass This Way Again. When I was in high school, on "Moving Up" day toward the end of the school year in June, there would be a slide show by the graduating seniors.  These two songs were frequently used as music.  It was the whole memories thing, summer coming, a great time but a completely ambiguous time in terms of who I thought I was (I was totally off, not even a person at that time; I don't know what or who I was; I wouldn't start to know or start to be a real, loving caring person, for another almost 15 years). Those two songs in particular are the pure essense, which is poison, of this feeling of paralyzing nostalgia. I avoid them.  I didn't listen to them (not for one second) just now when I was looking up the links.

Does Caroline Know - Talk Talk

A classic (starts with a line from Mirror Man, another classic). The dainty little keyboard riff defines the main line of this song. Great to see them doing this live from back in the day.  Wish the bass was turned up - it's a nice bouncy little line. Best atmospheric pop I've ever heard.

Nostalgia

I'm a really nostaligic person and maybe because of this I realize how lethal nostalgia, and nostalgic items, can be, to the psyche.  So in my latter adult life I have avoided engaging in too much specific nostalgia about my life, especially with items. It's weird why I am nostalgic about things from my childhood and young adulthood.  Maybe it's just innate.  But I wasn't the person then I am now.  I wasn't really even a person at all. I certainly wasn't worth remembering, and I am glad that most people don't remember stuff from back then.  It's a world that only really exists in my mind.  It never existed for anyone else.  They have their own version, if they have such a thing at all.

Right Time of the Night - Jennifer Warnes

A blast from the past (1977). I was 10 and this was about the time of my musical awakening.  Always liked this song a lot. The instrumentation and arrangement here are country but it's really a rock song.

Flowers - Galaxie 500

[link] These guys were huge on the 90s college rock scene. Shoegaze aficionados consider them in the genre. The sound has really good atmospherics and some things my own band here has done over the years approaches this texture.  It's good stuff.

Colourless Dream - Sad Lovers and Giants

[link] From 1982.  Which puts them right with the Cure in the sort of quintessential, slightly goth (although not nearly as much as the Cure), post-punk alternative pop. They should have had as much success as the Cure as their sound is just as good. From their Wikipedia entry, it looks like they were only really known in Europe.  They were around (with varying lineups) in the early-mid 80s and then more recently after being mostly inactive in the 90s.  I need to get all of their stuff, I think.

Aquarian Angel - Blue Six

[link] I really like the groove of these guys. Jazz, soul, and house influenced. They took Sade's vibe and carried it forward (although she is still grooving as well; actually Sade is officially a band named after Sade Abu, the lead singer). The vocals here are done by Lysa Aya Trenier (Aya). Upon Googling, I see that a lot of people compare Aya and Sade.

Things We Never Did - Sad Lovers and Giants

[link] I love everything about this song and this band's sound. Atmospheric, moody.  The guitar harmonics are really really cool. Beautiful use of keyboards.

To Live and Die in L.A.

[link] Great song. (Terrible movie).  Wang Chung deserves to be know from more than just their couple of big hits that everybody knows about. Interesting version of this song.  Good to see them still together recently.

Gunning for the Buddha - Shriekback

[link] Exotic, atmospheric, and very nice pop.  I've always liked these guys.

Prove - Ric Ocasek

[link] One of my favorites off his first solo album, Beatitude.  Summer of 85 I listened mainly to this album, Forever Now by the Psychedelic Furs, New Gold Dream 81-82-83-84, and Panorama by the Cars. All on cassette of course.

Crimson/Red - Prefab Sprout

[link] Quite a nice little song.  Hadn't heard it - from the more recent era.  Paddy McAloon has a wonderful, whispery pop voice and a terrific pop instinct.

We Came to Dance - Ultravox

[link] One of my favorites of theirs.  Atmospheric and even a little gothic around the edges.

Rock of Ages - Jobriath

[link] Didn't really know anything about these guys until I read about them on Wikipedia when looking up glam rock.  They were one of the major American glam acts.  There is a dissonance here between the music, which is pretty conventional hard rock that looks somewhat forward to some aspects of punk and metal, and the look, which is conceptual and futuristic. In my mind, they don't go together.

Rain on the Scarecrow - John Mellencamp

[link] Really great song.  Mellencamp is a modern American classic and has a lot of great ones.  This is one of my favorites.

Four Engines Burning Over the USA - Screaming Blue Messiahs

[link] Always had a thing for SBM. America reflected back to us through British, 80s, punk (and who knows what else) addled, male, eyes.

I Still Do - Cranberries

[link] One of my favorite bands of the 90s and one of my favorite songs of theirs.

Applause Applause - Lady Gaga

[link] Ru-Jun dances to this in her hip hop dance class and she saw it in a Kia Soul commercial.  I haven't followed Lady Gaga closely but she has a couple of good things that I've heard and this is one of them.  She's about more than the music, the whole pop/celebrity package, like Madonna is/was.  And in a pretty sophisticated way. Madonna got a lot of help on the musical side and maybe Lady Gaga does as well, I don't know.  Gaga seems to exploit stock dance/pop chord progressions more than Madonna, but she does a good job with them.  She's interesting, but I'm a bit repulsed by her strictly because of her popularity.  Maybe that's my loss, or maybe there's not much there there.  I probably won't ever study it enough to figure that out.

I Do the Rock - Tim Curry

[link] Fun to see him working live.  Fun guy at a fun time. (on edit: although this is likely to be lip-synched b/c no monitors, and it sounds a lot like the studio track; and the fadeout).

Totally novel ideas

in dreams, that I never would have thought of awake always fascinate me.  Had another one last night; not going to mention what it was.  Why (and how) does the brain do that?

Transponder snails

Just one of the examples why I love One Piece.  Bizarre and wonderful creativity.

Criteria for a good Halloween costume

1. warmth (for trick or treating or outdoor Halloween parades in these parts and where I grew up)
2. no makeup (it's a pain in the ass)
3. no masks (uncomfortable)

A Woman Needs Love - Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio

The pop charts in 1981 were still a miasma of 70s influences; this song is an example.  Very light fare. Bouncy.  Things weren't so severe back then.

Welcome Back Kotter theme/opening

[link] This was a great song (by John Sebastian) and intro.  The show was one of several classic 70s pop cultural attempt's at social progressivism (like Good Times, and All in the Family). The 70s ended with the dawn of the conservative era that we are currently still in, which was a fear- and hatred-based reaction to social progress of the 60s and 70s.

Biology doesn't have this problem

I like reading about quantum physics even though I don't have a feel for the mathematical side of the theory. All of the non-intuitive stuff, like entanglement, is really fascinating. What's also fascinating is that all of it is subject to a bewildering number of (and number of kinds of) interpretations and even though there are now realms of experimental data supporting the predictions of quantum mechanics, there is not yet a consensus on what the theory means in the real world.

Cat People (Putting Out Fire) - David Bowie

[link] Couldn't find the studio version from the Let's Dance album, which is better than this version, IMHO.  I don't remember seeing the movie, but I may have seen it back in the 80s sometime.  This is a great song (from a great album). Extremely atmospheric.  I'm not a huge Bowie fan except for the Let's Dance album, which I think is one of the best 80s albums. Bowie's detached vocal sound works perfectly in this song.

fashion

In terms of what I wear, I have two goals: (1) comfort, and (2) timelessness, which is that it would not look out of place in any of the last few decades.

Every Breath You Take - The Police

This is of course an ironic song.  It is about the creepiness of stalking.  It is not a romantic song.  People who think it's romantic are not intellectually mature enough to autonomously understand irony.
And, as overplayed as the song has always been, it's still a powerful piece of pop on the musical side.

Faded Flowers - Shriekback

[link] A dark and beautiful song.  No one was better than these guys in setting up an organo-SF atmosphere.  The beautiful melodic-romantic edge that makes goth, although Shriekback wasn't primarily known as a goth band (that I know of). Saw them open up for Simple Minds at Buff State College in 1985 (or possibly early 86).  They were great, especially the backing singers.  Good show.

Warcraft

I was really into Blizzard's real-time strategy game Warcraft.  But went to role playing in World of Warcraft, they lost me.  I don't have time for that kind of gaming these days; I really like real time strategy.  Just playing the against-the-computer modules was fun enough; I never played much against other people.  I tried Starcraft but the visuals were too dark; I literally couldn't see anything.  I liked the bright visuals of warcraft.  Warcraft III is available as the continuation of the Warcraft real time strategy game but I don't really have time to check it out.  It probably has a lot of changes.  I wonder if it still plays like Warcraft II.

You Might Recall - Genesis

[link] This is an immaculate song.  Genesis purists tend to like the earlier Peter Gabrial material.  But Phil Collins was supremely good and they cranked out a whole bunch of excellent songs right through the yellow eponymous shapes album in the early 80s. Collin's solo stuff was also pretty good right into the mid 80s.
I love how this song consists of this large cycle.  The driving bass line, the arpeggiating guitar with keyboard backing it.  The whole thing is really driving.  Then there's the key change toward the end.  These guys fused amazing pop out of art rock.

Come to My Aid - Simply Red

[link] Wasn't much better soul-pop than Simply Red in the mid 80s. The UK and Europe kept the 70s alive so that the US could rediscover everything about them in the 90s and after.

All For Leyna - Billy Joel

[link] I really liked this 1980 song. Piano driven like most of his stuff. It's in tune with the new wavey inflences that were trickling through rock at the time.  Still sounds pretty good.  Lots of interesting chords and changes.

Stumblin' In - Chris Norman and Suzi Quatro

[link] I had a thing for this 1979 song, which was played incessantly on the radio. It was kind of one of those annoying songs that grew on you. It holds up now only has a historical piece, really. Music was different then.

Imagination Movers - Magic

This is a really great song from Imagination Movers, which we watch in the morning while Ru-Jun wakes up.  Really good show with lots of good songs.  These guys are good.

Doc McStuffins - Halloween song

This is a really great song. Doc Mcstuffins is one of Ru-Jun's favorite shows.

Deeper and Deepr - The Fixx

[link] The Fixx in their highest period of popularity and guitar synthy wonderfulness. The 80s equivalent of art pop. Really liked this then and still pretty good now.

Organimodality II

Daily life is like moving through a two dimensional space filled with force vectors, like wind gusts, of various directions. Some days it may seem that all of the vectors oppose you. But really they are all in different directions and cancel out, providing no net opposition or assistance to your journey through them.

Standing in the Doorway - A Flock of Seagulls

[link] One of their more obscure tunes.  But I really like it.  It has an edge that their better known songs don't.  The instrumental part at the beginning is a really nice contrast. This band is more complex than the pop cliche that they became lets on.

Into the Fire - Sarah McLachlan

[link] I still remember exactly where I was when I heard this amazing song for the first time. I was at an impressionable age, in an impressionable time, and this song melted all over and through me.

Mirror Man - Talk Talk

[link] One of their very early songs and one of my favorites.  These guys are pop geniuses and I am one of the army of musicians who counts them as major influences. There are a lot of elements, the melody line and Mark Hollis's delivery, the hooks in both verse and chorus, the keyboard figures driving the whole thing, the entire atmosphere (really effective live), the building of the song.  All really singularly great here.

Tony Adams - Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros

Link below. Really nice song named after a soccer player. Heard it on WFUV the other day, which is a bit like WXYC was back in the day, very eclectic. 

http://youtu.be/EEEWarLHymI

The Magnificent Seven - The Clash

[link] I've always loved this classic of theirs. It's done with a nonchalance that's infectious. Not sure what the heck the song is about, but it's nevertheless attractive and rewards lots of listens.

organimodality

This is a term I thought of today (it only has 1 google hit) to describe a way of living I've been considering (and perhaps following, at least somewhat) in the past few years, ever since my life changed in 2010.  It involves letting the random, instantaneous variation of the world partially steer one through one's day, taking care of many decisions (e.g. where to park or which way to go home) that don't really matter to one's larger goals.  If I have time and articulateness going forward, I'll try to detail my thoughts on this.

The Living Daylights - A-ha

[link] I think this is my favorite Bond theme.  And the movie is in my top 5 favorites in the Bond series.  Helps when the lead singer has a lot of narrative quality just in the tone of voice, which Morten Harket has in spaces.  The chord progression and changes are really nice here, even within the constraint of the spyish motifs needed for Bond themedom.

Head of the Class

Liked this show ca. 1988.  Had a think for Sarah, played by Kimberly Russell, who strikingly is 3 years older than me (I didn't know at the time; I was in college and she was playing a high school girl).

Wide World of Sports intro

Also loved this intro music. I researched this and the In Search Of theme a few years back.  Both were written for the respective TV shows by obscure TV music composers. Just goes to show that really good music can come from anywhere and often is not appreciated by the musical world proper.

In Search Of

Watched this a lot in the 70s.  The Bigfoot episode scared the crap out of me. Loved the intro/outro music.  I think this show is the reason why I have a continuing fascination with the phenomology of people's sightings of the paranormal, even though I have no belief in paranormal/supernatural phenomena.

Project UFO TV series

[link to intro] This is a later series that I also did not watch, but I remember friends talking about it.  Sort of the first X-files. Very late 70s.

1970 UFO TV series

[link to intro] I was too young for this and never saw it.  But it looks both corny and (for TV) slick for its time. OK, well maybe if it were 1950 it would be slick.  The episodes appear to be on youtube, so maybe I'll check it out.

Emotion in Motion - Naked Eyes

[link] I love the high sweeping verse of this song.  Naked eyes could do synth pop with the best of them.

William It Was Really Nothing - the Smiths

[link] Great jangly moving song. The chorus is really sweeping. I really like the way the Smiths have rallies in their song, like the chorus into the 2nd (last) verse. 

O My God - the Police

[link] Another great life statement by the Police. And another great groove.  These songs are immortal...

When the World is Running Down... - the Police

[link] Really amazing groove. Prescient in its time, how much truth in it.

Wishing Well - Bob Mould

[link] Mould was huge on college radio in the late 80s and early 90s. This is great pop.  And I really think his voice was a prototype for the likes of Eddie Vetter and scores of other calculated low-gravelish (hard to describe), overproduced male vocal sounds that came after.

Dress You Up - Madonna

[link]  From 1985.  I've always liked Madonna. You can't understand 80s pop  culture in America without understanding the Madonna phenomenon.  But underneath the image was smart music-making.  Not that she herself was/is a musical genius, just someone with a good instinct.  The musical people she surrounded herself with, like Nile Rodgers, knew what they were doing and helped her put out consistently catchy pop that was usually pretty interesting.

Hippychick - Soho

[link] I remember dancing to this in 1991ish.  The "How Soon is Now" sample used as the rhythm feature is interesting and a reference to the 80s club scene.  It's a nice, mid-tempo groove and still largely works over 20 years later.

Actually got some time

to play around on the uke this evening.  I still remember Lola (but not the lyrics) and New Years Day (with the lyrics).  Department picnic coming up.  Hopefully I can play a few songs there.

Not sure if I can do this

But it would be cool to write a song about Tardigrades based on the pop song Dynamite by Taio Cruz.  Here are the lyrics.  This might take some time...


"Dynamite"

[Music video introduction:]
I throw my hands up in the air sometimes,
Saying AYO! Gotta let go!
I wanna celebrate and live my life,
Saying AYO! Baby, let’s go!

I came to dance, dance, dance, dance
I hit the floor 'cause that's my plans, plans, plans, plans
I’m wearing all my favorite brands, brands, brands, brands
Give me some space for both my hands, hands, hands, hands

Yeah, yeah

'Cause it goes on and on and on...
And it goes on and on and on...

Yeah!

I throw my hands up in the air sometimes,
Saying AYO! Gotta let go!
I wanna celebrate and live my life,
Saying AYO! Baby, let’s go!

'Cause we gon’ rock this club,
We gon’ go all night,
We gon’ light it up,
Like it’s dynamite!
'Cause I told you once,
Now I told you twice,
We gon’ light it up,
Like it’s dynamite!

I came to move, move, move, move
Get out the way of me and my crew, crew, crew, crew
I’m in the club so I’m gonna do, do, do, do
Just what the fuck, came here to do, do, do, do

Yeah, yeah

'Cause it goes on and on and on...
And it goes on and on and on...

Yeah!

I throw my hands up in the air sometimes,
Saying AYO! Gotta let go!
I wanna celebrate and live my life,
Saying AYO! Baby, let’s go!

'Cause we gon’ rock this club,
We gon’ go all night,
We gon’ light it up,
Like it’s dynamite!
'Cause I told you once,
Now I told you twice,
We gon’ light it up,
Like it’s dynamite!

I’m gonna take it all,
I, I’m gonna be the last one standing.
Higher over all,
I, I’m gonna be the last one landing.
Cause I, I, I believe it,
And I, I, I I just want it all...
I just want it all...
I’m gonna put my hands in the air!
Hands, hands in the air!
Put your hands in the air!

I throw my hands up in the air sometimes,
Saying AYO! Gotta let go!
I wanna celebrate and live my life,
Saying AYO! Baby, let’s go!

'Cause we gon’ rock this club,
We gon’ go all night,
We gon’ light it up,
Like it’s dynamite!
'Cause I told you once,
Now I told you twice,
We gon’ light it up,
Like it’s dynamite!

Don't You Want Me - Jody Watley

[link] Since I was going back to 1988 the other night with Scritti Politti, here's another pop song from that time that I've always liked.  Nice hooks and classic synth songs.

When It's Over - Loverboy

[link] People like to hate on early 80s power rock, but from a composition standpoint, lyrics and shrill male vocals aside, there is a lot of basic territory being covered here.  The instrumentation is also relatively new for the mainstream.  Hard guitars and hard synth sounds, put together.

Sugar and Spice - Scritti Politti

[link] Really liked these guys in the mid/late 80s and these songs still sound great.  Really smart dance pop.  Everything is so tight in the production. Listened to them incessantly between '85 and '88.

Hit - The Sugarcubes

[link] The Sugarcubes were really one of the best bands of the ca. 1990 era. I love this bouncy little song.  Rich pop.

Not much time

to do much with any of the ukes recently.  Real life schedule too hectic.  Hopefully things will settle down soon.

When You're Gone - Benjamin Orr

[link] I really like this ballad off Orr's 1987 solo album.  It's a beautiful piece of pop.

Midnight to Midnight - Psychedelic Furs

[link] The title track of their 1987 album.  This is my favorite track on the album. This is arguable the last album of their mature pop sound.  They stripped things down after this and sounded quite a bit different. It took me a while to grow into this album (or it to grow on me).  They were going for high imagery, which seemed a bit pretentious (and still does).  But the songs eventually get some depth after repeated listenings.  Or most of them anyway.  This one has nice dynamics and intensity.  The churning vocal line against the rising and falling of the rhythm guitar in the chorus is my favorite part.

Limbo - Bryan Ferry

[link] Another classic from that album. The cold, sort of aloofness I get out of this is really strong. A very measured but still very rhythmic song.

The Right Stuff - Bryan Ferry

[link] With Roxy Music, Ferry got through the 70s sort of in parallel with punk and disco and emerged in the late 80s with this incredible album Bete Noire, which spanned the pop and alternative genres.  These songs really hold up. He inspired a lot of post punk, but going forward, I think his later stuff has the potential to be revisited.  It's influenced by funk and soul but really has a lot of originality, resulting in a sound that no one that I've heard has replicated.

Stay the Night - Benjamin Orr

[link] Bassist and half the vocals of the Cars, the late Ben Orr knew how to make a pop sound and how to put a pop hit together.  This 1986 song still sounds amazing.

Prove - Ric Ocasek

[link] Off his first solo album, Beatitude, from 1982.  Great rhythm track and the composition and keyboard tracks are as innovative as the most new wavey Cars stuff (e.g. on Panorama). Really great song. This album is now out of print and the CDs that are available are selling for about $25 on Amazon and ebay.  I'm thinking about dropping the coin on one even at that price.

Since You're Gone - The Cars

[link] The Cars were a huge influence on me and this is one of my favorites (I pretty much like every one of their songs, which I can't say about too many bands). These guys were successful on pure rock radio, even though they were innovating in New Wave most of the time and in their Heartbeat City with huge Top 40 pop success. Ocasek seems pretty strongly in the Lou Reed lineage and with the instrumentalists, who are all supreme talents, synthesizes a novel, edgy, American sound.

Ric Ocasek

From the early 80s on, Ric Ocasek was a bit of an image icon for me.  Others I have picked up over the years include William Gibson and Anthony Bourdain.  He's still rocking.  This seems not very long ago; never heard the song before, probably from one of his later solo efforts, which I need to listen to and get.

Tattoos

Not a music or science topic but an aesthetic one.  I hate them.  I think almost all of them are ugly, except maybe for really small ones in unobtrusive places. It's really sad to me that people are covering their otherwise beautiful skin in a lot of cases, with these things.  But that's their choice and their right.  Not my idea of beauty.

The Waiting - Top Petty and the Heartbreakers

[link] Another early fave of mine. The Early Petty breaking into the pop and rock charts was trying for a different image than he eventually evolved into.  It's cool to go back and look at these videos.  The songs have lost nothing and overplay hasn't tarnished them at all.

Every Little Thing She Does is Magic - The Police

My original favorite song. I was a piano player and drummer and this song has both. I loved the image of these guys.  I loved (and still do) Copeland's drumming. Still one of the greatest pop and rock bands ever. A trio of three differnt guys synthesizing a sound that nobody else had before or after.  And after five masterpieces they decided that was it and broke up instead of turning out crap for $ for the next two decades.

Gardening at Night - R.E.M.

[link] A classic from their early days when R.E.M. was inventing a new sound that they would later abandon and an army of Southeast bands would simultaneously spend a decade trying to replicate. I wonder if the early guitar driven songs like this began as Peter Buck guitar riffs that everything crystallized around.

'The Invisible Lighthouse'

[link] This looks interesting, if a little self-indulgent, which is sort of Dolby's modus these days. Kind of a new form: interactive, partially live performed, film.  He would be the one to do it.  Gotta research that keyboard instrument he has slung over his shoulder on a couple of the tunes in the trailer.

Romanticide - Combo Audio

[link] A classic, synth driven one hit wonder song from the 80s.  The central keyboard theme in the intro and chorus really defines it and is the hook of the song.  The sound is essentially the same as Ultravox, which probably arrived at this kind of sound first and inspired a lot of others.

Lovin' You is So Easy - Journey

[link] When it comes to hard/power rock, I've always loved Journey.  Their songs are tight, well constructed with lots of hooks, and powerfully played (and powerfully sung by Steve Perry).  This stuff is by now an acquired taste; you had to be growing up male and white in certain places to get this stuff.  But that Venn diagram includes me and the spacetime I was in and in some ways will always be located in.

Kiss on My List - Hall and Oates

[link] From 1981.  These guys were pop geniuses spanning the 1970s and 80s. And the songs have lost nothing between then and now.  This was probably the first song of theirs that I really notice and appreciated but there were several before this and a whole string of them in the 80s. This was a great time to be doing pop, because it wasn't that hard to cross over between pop (top 40) and rock stations, and these guys were one of the acts that did that.  Less than a decade later rock would ossify into a harder genre, in which "classic rock" sometimes didn't include the more poppy sounds like this.

2 great Howard Jones B-sides

Learning How to Love and Why Look for the Key were both B-sides to Howard Jones singles that I bought the 45s for.  In those days, I recorded everything onto cassettes on my stereo and listened to the tapes.  These two songs became part of the soundtrack to my introverted existence during freshman and sophomore years of college.  Howard Jones is a great pop song writer and has some similarities to Thomas Dolby being a keyboardist with a certain synthesizer aesthetic.

New soprano uke

[link] My "Little Theme" on my new Lanikai LU 21P sporano ukulele.  I like this instrument a lot.

Clipped - Curve

[link] This is on the more over-produced end of SG, in terms of the rhythm track.  The drum tracks from stuff like this could be (and probably are in some cases) done by machine and if they are not, it is kind of sad that they sound like machine tracks. In my opinion it creates too rigid a structure for the rest of the instrumentation to fit into and takes away from the dynamics of the song.  But nevertheless this is pretty good stuff; the vocal track is definitely in the mainstream of atmospheric SG.

Overkill - Men At Work

Just one of the quite a few pop masterpieces by these guys. In the early 80s, you could get sounds like this with themes like this going very high on the Top 40.

Misled - Kool & the Gang

[link] Since we're in 1985, here's a pop effort by Kool & the Gang, which were one of the most successful acts of the earlier funk era and fully crossed over into pop by this time. I like the chord progression in the chorus.  They used this progression in a couple of their other big hits as well.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG0_BNlWGc0

King of Pain - The Police

Heard this today listening to Underground 80s on Soma FM. Took me back to 1985.  So many great tunes on that album.  I remember reading that when they were recording and mixing it, they kept taking away stuff and it kept sounding better and better.  Less is more.

Rip in Heaven - Til Tuesday

[link] The quality of this Letterman clip could be better, but this is a really good song off their 3rd (and last) album, 1988's Everything's Different Now, that I really like.  I listened to this album a lot in the Winter of '88-89 and spring of '89.  The chorus is the genius hook of this song.

Thinking about getting a real soprano uke

I have been having a good time playing around with Ru-Jun's toy $20 soprano uke, since I was able to get it into the BEAD tuning that I'm used to on my other ukes.  That uke does not stay in good tuning and doesn't sound very good overall. So I want to get a real soprano uke.  For the heck of it, I'm thinking about getting this pineapple uke.  It should be fun...

merging folk and electronica

I've been thinking a lot about strange hybridizations and juxtapositions that might be possible with acoustic instruments.  Here is a uke guy who does some amazing electronica sounds with his (pretty high end acoustic electric) uke. It's quite amazing. The acoustic pickup can be used in essentially infinite ways to make sounds that are the same as analog synths. So this is one angle on the idea of producing modern sounds with roots instruments.  There are other angles, such as doing covers of electronica music on all acoustic instruments, which would appropriate the song into a different sound genre.

Sugar Hiccup - Cocteau Twins

From 1988. This is very early in the SG era and arguable a precursor.  I've seen it argued that CT invented the instrumental, "ethereal" sound of SG and 4AD records became known for this sound. Pale Saints and Lush followed at 4AD and became two of the central bands of the SG sound.

Rave Down - Swervedriver

[link]  Among other things, these guys have one of my favorite band names.  They have a pretty tight, polished sound among those on the hard rock end of SG. There is definitely some overlap with more mainstream hard rock of the time.

Train whistle sounds

Here is a great explanation and some samples of various train whistle sounds.

Stella Harmony

A close friend of my parents, who sung folk songs in our church back in the day, was cleaning out her house and my parents got this guitar from her to give to me. The Stella Harmony was a very popular folk guitar in the 60s.  It's still in great shape and sounds good.  I absolutely cannot play chords in standard tuning, so I decided to tune it in Taro Patch slack-key (DGDGBD) and am able to make music with it now.  It will be fun to mess around with.

train whistles

I grew up about 1/2 mile from a major railroad line.  Just visited there this week. The chord of a train whilstle, which is something like a minor 7th chord, has a huge amount of narrative quality.  My predilection toward this type of chord is probably explained by this influence during my childhood.

Pitch the Baby - Cocteau Twins

[link] The first song on 1990's amazing album Heaven or Las Vegas. Did a lot of driving to this album back in the early 90s. Really great set of songs all around.

Soprano uke

[link] I bought this uke as a toy for Ru-Jun; it cost $20 new.  It doesn't sound like much but I finally got it into the tuning that I play (the gears are really crappy on it) and have been messing around with it. Off to Palmyra for a few days.  Will catch up on blogging when we get back.

Rev it Up - Jerry Harrison

From 1988.  I've always like the basic groove of this song. Was pretty popular on college radio in the day.

Sweet Water Pools - Screaming Blue Messiahs

[link] I've always liked these guys' rather nonsensical lack of control.  They have some really good, sweet songs, and can clearly write and play.  But they also seem really nonchalant about it.  It's cool.

House - the Psychedelic Furs

[link] One of the better of their later body of work.  The chorus is very hooky.  Good to see them still rocking.

Lights Go Out - the March Violets

[link] One of my favorite of the 80s goth bands. They still kept the lighter poppy side of the sound, unlike the better known Sisters of Mercy and most of the other well known goth acts.

Porcelain - Pretenders

[link] Great to see live footage of the Pretenders from 1980. They were great with very simple, but sophisticated, guitar and bass licks.  They could turn them into incredible hooks. Less than two years after this, guitarist James Honeyman-Scott and bassist Pete Farndon were both dead from drug-related causes.  The two LPs with this original lineup were their best (as well as stuff that was on EPs).  Their first album with their post-1982 lineup, Learning to Crawl, was also amazing.

Weightless - Thomas Dolby

[link] An epic classic.  The conventional parts of this song are bouncy pop, sort of, at first.  Then it builds through a B-ish part. Then there is a break. Atmosphere through out.  Then back to the bouncy little verse. Then the cycle repeats.  The whole effect puts me in a late-tech/retro world, existential, lonely.  The little song near the end completes the loneliness and nostaligia.  I've never heard pop like this by anyone else.  Ending on the bouncy little verse provides the abruptness that finishes the thought and the feel.

Miss Drugstore - Medicine

[link] From 1992.  Hard edged SG from its early high period.  Pretty conventional in the song structure.  The SG comes from the guitar sound and the vocal and production.

One Simple Thing - the Stabilizers

Remembered because of the similarity of the band names (not the sounds). [link] From 1986.  A great pop/rock song.  The video is more over-wrought than the song.  The mid-late 80s were full of really image conscious stuff, most of the time trying to cover up the vapidity of the music.  But in this case, the song is worth listening to.  Even if these guys put every good musical idea they'll ever have into it and didn't do anything else after that (as may be the case here).

I See Red - the Silencers

[link] Great mid-80s alternative pop hit. I think these guys were mainstream pop in the UK and elsewhere but I only heard them on college/alternative stations here.  This song brings back some memories...

Bigfoot

Love bigfoot/yeti/sasquatch/skunkape stories and the classic (now pretty much known to be faked) footage form the Pacific NW footage from the 70s scared the crap out of me as a kid.  Of course, there is no way bigfoot can be real.  There would be physical evidence all over the place.  But here's they way I would write bigfoot in a SF story: they are the remnant of a civilization that predated Homo sapiens. Thousands of years ago, aliens arrived, made contact with them, and befriended them.  The aliens left behind a cloaked space station to watch over them and protect them.  These aliens had the power to eliminate all signs of the bigfoot species existence to H. sapiens. The plot of the story would be that the alien civilization is in decline and has not visited or provisioned the space station for hundreds of years.  There is only one alien left on the station and it is his/her job to continue to protect the bigfoots.  Something like that.

Shirley Temple Tidal Wave - Airiel

[link] From 2005.  Latter day SG that really gets the sound down and even enhances it was a smoothness and a melding of the layers.

Copperhead Road - Steve Earle

[link] I've always liked this 1988 song.  It fit in with the cultural rediscovery/restoration of Vietnam veterans that took place in the 80s (e.g. the Rambo movies, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, etc.), which I think is still under-analyzed by media historians.

Throwing Back the Apple - Pale Saints

[link] From 1992. One of the first and still one of the best whatever you're counting in Shoegaze (bands, albums, songs). Very poppy and accessible as well.  If it weren't for songs like this, SG would not have gotten off the ground.

New Music

Theme for Family Pics January-June 2013.

Sunshine Smile - Adorable

[link] This one comes across as indy-pop ish in the verse and the SG really kicks in in the chorus.  The lyrics are sing-songy, moreso than a lot of SG.  The edginess of the vocal and guitar tracks really work well.  Good 'gaze.

band possibilities

I've tapped into a set of potential new musicians for a band.  More on this soon.  But these folks are in my department (except for 1) and a few are highly interested.  One is Steve the drummer from Megachild. So we may have something started again before too long...

Speed Racer - Devo

[link] Here's the genius of Devo.  Throw away song, right? Wrong.  Extremely biting, abstract social commentary in the lyrics, ahead of its time. Throw away music? Wrong.  The rhythm track is stripped down superb, like so much of their stuff. The song title refers to the anime that was one of the first to make its way to the US.  Considered light weight, but idonic.  And presaging an entire genre that now represents an entire world of virtuoso and very serious popular culture. All in 1982. Really important stuff.

Crank - Catherine Wheel

[link] One of the first non-Lush, non-My Bloody Valentine SG songs I heard.  Loved it immediately. Simple but amazing bass line.  The vocal melody is one of those lines that probably wrote itself. The hook is an itch that feels so good to scratch.  The hook is the scratch too.

The name of my SG band

If I ever do a solo shoegaze band, like Kurt Ralske did with Ultra Vivid Scene (which some consider broadly in the genre), I'll name it Id Zinnia.

Desire Lines - Lush

[link] When it comes to the low tempo end of SG, Lush were no slouches. No one did SG vocals better than theirs.  Helps to have two breathy female vocalists, Miki Berenyi and Emma Anderson.

Catch the Breeze - Slowdive

[link] Classic ethereal SG.  This has all the ingredients and it's great to see a live version. This song doesn't quite have the richness of the better Lush songs but it's a nice miasma.

Blue Thunder - Galaxie 500

[link] Under some broad definitions, Galaxie 500 gets counted as a SG band or at least within its precursors.  There's a country tinge, which was also really popular in college/indy rock radio in the late 80s and 90s.  The grinding guitar sound here, when wide open, flows into a SG type sound and atmosphere. This music has a lot of room in it.

Working on My Tan - Tim Curry

[link] I may have blogged about this before but it doesn't matter.  This is a bit of a summer anthem for me even though I don't tan and I avoid the sun.  There is a long narrative content to this.  My favorite WXDU DJ, Jeff Gold, often closed his Saturday morning show with this song, especially in the summer. He had a great show every week and listening to him really brightened up my otherwise lonely existence in the early 90s.  That was the pre-internet era, so the playlists and everything are probably lost to history. I hope Jeff has been successful in his pursuits since then. He was really successful as a DJ.  I am an eternal fan.

You Tear The World In Two - Pale Saints

[link] Definitely on the indy pop side of shoegaze. There's also that flavor of 60s folk rock harmony. And a little bit of proggy time signature variation. All in an atmospheric little noise package.

Horror Head - Curve

[link] Curve adds a bit of an electronic edge and really features the breathy female vocal (Toni Halliday) on top of it all. The synth-bass shifting really drives this song. One of those sounds that emphasizes the aesthetic of turning everything up, especially the low end, and riding the compression waves out.

Lorelei - Cocteau Twins

[link] From 1984.  Probably the first CT sing I heard, although I wouldn't have heard it until about 1989. A major precursor and inspiration of shoegaze. The instrumental tracks and vocal combine to produce the "ethereal" sound that their label 4AD became known for.  This music also overlaps with the sweeter ends of world music type stuff like Enya. The nonsensical lyrics are a signature of CT and in their way presaged the sublime noise aesthetic of shoegaze.

doing simulations again

I spent some time working on a new simulation on my parenting evolution stuff that I mentioned a few months ago. It's going well so far (doing it in BASIC; fewer initial bugs than expected and I have a significant piece of code done). The final formulation for getting started occurred to me on a fitness walk around the SBU loop this morning.

Whirlpool - Chapterhouse

[link] From 1991, still early on in the shoegaze era.  Tempo is upbeat.  The overall sound is smooth-noisy and streamlined at the same time.  The vocals have a really soft tone; there is a bit of that effect where they are used as another instrumental line (a la the Cocteau Twins). The central break kind of strips is apart a bit and then of course reassembles it. A really great feeling sound is achieved in this song.

New Town Velocity - Johnny Marr

Brand new song from Johnny Marr.  It's a really nice song.  Can definitely hear his latter work with Electronic in it.  The video has him walking through all kinds of European Modernist and some Brutalist architecture, which is really cool.  This kind of architecture, because of its abstractness and rectangularity and rectilinearity, makes for great visuals.

Kaleidoscope - Ride

[link] On the far more upbeat sound is this one by Ride. There are more clear harkenings to the 60s inspirations of SG in the vocal harmonies.  The sound here seems almost not to be pure SG.  The broader sound associted with "Indy Pop" in the 80s and 90s would seem to encompass this type of sound.  But the guitar lines are SG.  The tone of the vocal is still the downishness of SG as well.

Alison - Slowdive

From 1993.  This album (Souvlaki) is rated the 2nd greatest slowdive album in that list I posted previously. The bottom end here is slow and thick with the SG atmosphere.  The vocal line is depressoid, with a male lead (Neil Halstead) but at least some of the vocal is female (Rachel Goswell). This kind of vocal combination is fairly common and SG (e.g. My Bloody Valentine and the Pale Saints, to name just a couple other examples). The vocals definitely feed into the "ethereal" atmosphere. I really liked listening to this sound on college radio in the 90s.

Cinnamon - Airiel

[link] These guys are a Chicago shoegaze band that did a lot of stuff in the early oughts. One of many bands FB shoegaze group alerted me to.  Airiel definitely gets the sound and mood right.  Like the other bands, there will be songs I like more or less depending on the chord progression.  It's fun going through new-to-me material.

Shoegaze on Facebook

The Shoegaze group on Facebook is really active and is a many times daily source of new and old Shoegaze songs and info. For example, here is a page on the top 100 shoegaze albums of all time.  Great for exploring and revisiting favorites in this amazing genre...

Don't Watch Me Bleed - Til Tuesday

[link] This has become one of my very favorite of their songs. Their first album, even without Voices Carry, is just trenchant.  Some of the best rockish pop ever made.

All You Zombies - Hooters

[link] 1985 was a real mishmash for pop and rock in the US. This was one of the songs on the rock side that I liked (although it did get old after a lot of overplay). These guys were a Philly band that made it big with this hit and performed at Liveaid and then I guess sort of burned out, in terms of limelight, after that.  But interesting things like that were happening all over mainstream music in the mid 80s.

You Know the Rest - Til Tuesday

[link] Really good live version of one of my favorites from them. Pretty close rendition to the studio version, which is hard to do.

Desire (Come and Get it) - Gene Loves Jezebel

[link] There is a lot of greatness in this 1985 song.  The blazing guitar.  Jay Aston's goth-tinged vocals.  The danceability and rockability in one package. There's even cowbell.

TiK ToK - Ke$ha

[link] Every once in a while something good comes out of current pop.  Of course it's the chord progression here, but the video is funny and the whole thing is really fun.  So I like it.

Late in the Day

[link] This was one of the core Megachild songs.  Adam's vocal was the main defining character with the chord progression coming out of one of our early jams.  The good key for me on the uke is not a good vocal key for me in either the higher or lower  octave but I sang it in the higher octave. I could never find the original lyrics so I made up new lyrics, some of which reflected some of the words I could discern from the original.  Hopefully it captures the tone and atmosphere of the original version.

PR Australia

Just discovered that seasons 3 and 4 of Project Runway Australia are now on youtube.  Cool.

President Gas - Psychedelic Furs

[link] On one of my favorite albums of all time, 1982's Forever Now.  Still very appropriate lyrics for today. The furs had a very edgy but at the same time melodic method for narrating the post-punk darkness.

Docklands - Stevie Nicks

[link] From her 1994 album Street Angel.  Co-written with Trevor Horn. Interesting.  B-part is a bit generic.  I hadn't heard much from this album before. Her voice is great with just about anything behind it though.

The Message - Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five

[link] Summer of 1984, I went to a Critical Issues conference at St. Lawrence University with high school students from both the US and Canada.  One of the guys was from Montreal and played this incessantly.  One of the first rap songs and still pretty relevant.

Subdivisions - Rush

[link] Some great Canadian rock for Canada Day.  This one was a bit of an anthem for guys of my generation and background.  Rush was absolutely huge in Rochester and my friends in college were way way way into them.  I was just into them, by comparison.  Great instrumentalists and some pretty damn good songs.  And the stuff has aged well, I have to say...

Black Metallic - Catherine Wheel

[link] There really is no substitute for some excellent shoegaze. This song is a big, good-feeling throb.

Beethoven (I Love to Listen to) - Eurythmics

[link] Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart were amazing. They did more innovative pop than just about anybody and Lennox really played with image and gender and roles.  The video for this song is a great example.  This is one of their hits that I only hear on college radio.  I don't think it did much on the pop charts in the US.  It's a really good dance song.  The use of the narrated audio samples is terrific.

805

[link to some of their recent live stuff] Sorry I never saw these guys during my formative years back in the 80s.  But one of my bandmates was then into them and I would occasionally hear them and about them on album rock radio, since they were relatively local.  Looks like they have been active in recent years. This 80s proggy sound is so "of its time". The first of these songs in in 7.  Takes some skill to pull that off but in many ways it limits the narrative ability of the song, in my opinion. All 7/4 rock songs kind of say the same thing to me.  Still, when you hear it with the synth heavy treatment like it is here, it can only be from that time. And it's a sound I'm a bit nostalgic about...

Night Shift - Quarterflash

From 1982. Came out in between their splasn "Harden My Heart" and their later hits, including "Take Me to Heart".  Kind of clean and low key. Still has their swingy beat of HMH. The instrumentation and production are definitely early 80s US mainstream Pop pieces.  A smooth little pop jaunt.

One Piece Manga

I got the first three volumes of the English language manga of One Piece in order to help me translate the Taiwanese versions that I have.  It's been a fun read so far, but it is a bit of a mystery how it got so popular because, at least for me, a lot of the attraction to the series is the quite literally the color art, which the manga does not have (except for the cover art and various posters). The manga was hugely popular in Japan before the anime.

Actually

Fields of Gold was pretty easy to pick up.  I may not have the chords exactly but since his chords are funky to begin with, my fudging of a few of the chords is just an eclectic take on an already eclectically scored song.  Memorizing the lyrics, as always, will be the hard part...

Sight of You - Pale Saints

From 1990. One of the original Shoegaze bands.  This one evokes Jesus and Mary Chain a bit in the chord changes. There are sort of two phases of the Shoegaze sound.  One is the noisy guitar sound itself and the next phase is the wall of sound made by one or several guitars playing that way.

Fields of Gold - Sting

[link] This was the last song at my brother's wedding reception.  I might try to learn it.  Has a simple-sounding melody but the actual underlying chords are more complex, which is not surprising given Sting's jazz background.

CHiPs

Another of the shows we watched every week.  This was in the later 70s during the disco era.  The intro credits are very memorable.  There were a lot of car chases and the music became sort of definitive for that type of scene.

Emergency!

This was one of the TV shows that we watched every week when I was a kid.  I remember the characters and settings, but the music in the intro credits is no longer familiar.  Maybe because it's too generic.

Gu Qin

[link] Listened to gu qin music while studying Chinese in my office today.  This music is really great.  It's great to watch the players. It would be really fun to play this instrument.  The cheap ones (probably not well made and hard to tune and keep in tun) are over $1000.  So I may never be able to get my hands on one...

One Piece Opening 5

[link] I'm just past the point of this one.  The music is getting a bit more polished. This is not a bad song.  The bass line moving against the melody in the 2nd line of the verse is a nice touch.

One Piece Opening 4

[link] This one's not bad.  I'm almost at episode 300 of about 600 (and it is still being produced in Japan) and am just past the time when this was used.

Turn Me Loose - Loverboy

[link] Loverboy, like Journey, gets slammed as clichish, but they could play their instruments, Mike Reno could sing.  They are a great example of mainstream hard rock that integrates guitar and keyboards.  This was one of their hits and is a very simple song.  It still sounds great. 1981 was a great year for vanguard hard rock that crossed over into the pop charts (Foreigner, Journey, and quite a few others were also right there at this time). Songs like this were great anthems for teen high school angst, driving around, summer, ...

One Piece Opening 3

[link] Didn't like this one at first but it grew on me like a lot of things do.  They always sound good when I've watched 50 or so episides with the next iteration of the intro.

One Piece Opening 2 (English)

[link] I've never seen the English versions of this theme song before.  It's not half bad.  Would be fun to learn.  It's a little fast.  A folk version would be slower.

It's really a mystery

why I have fatty liver.  I am not obese and don't have type II diabetes, which are the two factors most associated with this disorder.  Both times I was diagnosed with it, my diet was horrible. The first time I cleaned things up and the biomarkers righted themselves (that may have happened this time; the next set will tell) but the condition was worse this time, according to the ultrasound.  It's a form of inflammation and it predated my ankle tendon inflammation and kidney/lung involvement that led to the Wegners diagnosis.  It kind of makes me wonder if fatty liver might have been the first manifestation of the disease.  I'll have to look around the web to see what I can find.

Dream Girl - Pierres Pfantasy Club

[link] An iconic acid house track from the late 80s (couldn't find the specific date). This genre of house is defined by the sequenced bass sound produced by the Roland TB-303 synthesizer. It becomes very abstract and mesmerizing (trancy, but trance is a different subgenre).  Very different from the original house music.

One Piece - English Opening

[link] This is the English language opening for the short-lived, highly edited, and highly unpopular 4Kids version of One Piece that ran on Cartoon Network's Toonami, late Saturday night set of anime shows.  I really grew to like this opening although the real aficionados hate it. Since then I've gotten into the Funimation English subtitled version which closely tracks the original Japanese TV episodes.  I'm still less then half way through the >500 episode run (which is still ongoing).  This is a great series and I'm enjoying it hugely (first four seasons on hulu and now in season 5 on a web site).

Duel - Swervedriver

[link] One of the great shoegaze songs of all time. Multiple hooks, yet these are not pop hooks.  They are achieved within the instrumental miasma. The mood progression that this song goes through is remarkable.  It starts very intense and then goes in to a mostly major, slightly sing songy section, gets lost in that for a while (in a good way), then quiets down and then launches back into the first part, redrawing all of the blood a second time around.  Very intense instrumentals both times through.  Then back into the B part and then the quiet part, I guess the C part, heads out to a fade. Almost two different songs except that the transitions between them really meld them together

Slit Skirts - Pete Townshend

[link] I never really understood this song but it doesn't matter.  It's a genius piece of rock music.  And the live video really shows how good Townshend is on stage.  Great songwriting and really good at pulling off a difficult song (although he skipped a line in the 2nd verse section).  Townshend is serious about getting across complex messages with rock songs.

Gemini Dream - The Moody Blues

[link] Always liked this 1981 song, even though I am not a fan of their work as a whole.  It has a good late disco-ish beat.  It's very similar to E.L.O. of the same time period, a little of which goes a long way. But I really like the verse and the transitions, which do some pretty cool things, especially the one back into the verse from the bridge.  The chorus has that classical pop/rock songwriting that goes back through Meatloaf and glam back to the Beatles. The very end rally (there are two of them in the linked version) is also pretty cool.  Just puts a lot of interesting things into one song.

Fat and diet

The state of knowledge on the various types of fatty acids and health is a bit of a mess, even though some things appear to have been established.  Here is my understanding of the current knowledge/conventional wisdom. Saturated fat = good. Unsaturated fat = bad.  HDL cholesterol = good, LDL = bad. However, within unsaturated fat, there's still a lot of uncertainty.  Omega-3 = good because it's anti-inflammatory (I won't get into the pathway here because I don't yet fully understand it) and Omega 6 = bad because it's pro-inflammatory.  So the ratio of Omega-6/Omega-3 is important because if it gets too high then one is at risk for all kinds of inflammation throughout the body (and many disorders are inflammatory). There is a now pretty widely accepted hypothesis (I don't know if I would call it a theory) that the ancestral human diet was rich in omega-3 and that is what we are adapted to and the modern grain-based diet is more rich in omega-6 (from most vegetable oils).  Processed food is of course usually rich in omega-6 even if it is not rich (any more) in saturated fat.  Within omega-3, there are three main kinds: ALA from plant sources and DHA and EPA from animal sources (primarily fish oil and krill oil).  DHA and EPA can be immediately used by the human body (i.e. incorporated into cell membranes) wherease ALA needs to be processed by several enzymes into usable sources.  These enzyme reactions are slow and not very efficient.  So it is currently unclear whether ALA is as beneficial as DHA and EPA.  A lot of foods that have been enriched omega-3 (e.g. eggs, margarine) are enriched with ALA, not the other two.  ALA is probably better than either saturated fat or omega-6, but it's not clear how actually beneficial it is.  More science is needed...

Pictures of Bernadette - Talk Talk

[link] The Colour of Spring (1986) era of Talk Talk saw them reach the prime of their merging of their early pop work and their more atmospheric and textural "post rock" sound that they came to mine later on.  This is one of the songs right at the interface between the two concepts.  A lot of the rhythm and solo section instrumentation is from the atmospheric vein but the song itself has a conventional pop structure and is a very melodic pop song.  The overall feeling is rich but, not dark, but I would say maudlin, given a bit of intensity by the vocal.

I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll - Nick Lowe

[link] Don't know why I'm thinking of this just now except that Ru-Jun and I will be flying out to my brother's wedding in Cali in a few weeks.  This is a really fun wedding reception song.

Master of Crime - Colin James Hay

[link] This is a really great (but strange and awkward in a lot of ways) song off Hay's first solo album, which apparently did not sell well and has been out of print for a long time.  It definitely harks back lyrically and in other ways to the later Men at Work material. I loved M@W and a lot of the songs off this album (Looking for Jacks) and I listened to it a lot back in the late 80s. The bridge part really makes the song.  Haven't heard it in a very long time.  Great to find it on youtube.  Still sounds good.

Pump up the Jam - Technotronic

From 1989. This is from the rap house genre.  I went for the song in a big way.  The literal pumping of the drum machine line and the chord sequence really work.  I always thought the vocal was by a male, but it turns out is a woman (Manuela "Ya Kid K" Kamosi). These guys are from Belgium and this sound took over the dance floors of the world for a while.  This was always a money song when I was DJing.

Away - The Bolshoi

[link] Really great song. From 1987 (I think; it was also called A Way in some versions).  Trevor Tanner's vocal (and its production) are goth-pop.  The simple chord progression really sounds like it should be more complicated (I just learned it on the uke) but what makes it complex is the shifting bass line which hits unconventional on-root notes (this is a great technique of a lot of post-punk).  We have here most of the goth of say The Sisters of Mercy but in a cleaner, more poppy package.

Freedom of Choice - Devo

[link] Devo making a serious point about conformity but also with a great musical statement.  A deceptively simple chord structure underlies a driving bass line.  The intensity of the vocal burns above the whole thing, especially in the B part.  The chorus is simple and contains the take home message.  The instrumental brings a very beautiful high synth voice in.  These guys knew how to craft a message into the building blocks of pop/rock.  Great stuff.

inchworms

It's a pretty good year for (what I think are) spring cankerworm (Paleacrata vernata) inchworms.  Ru-Jun has collected some into a couple of containers and we have been feeding them leaves. One appears to have pupated.  Problem is I think they need to go through winter to emerge and the pupae are probably vulnerable to viruses.  But it's been really fun for Ru-Jun.

The Rhythm of the NIght - Corona

[link] This brings in a new dance subgenre: Eurocance/High NRG.  From 1993, this comes after the house stuff that I've been talking about.  The tempo is faster.  It's synth/sequencer driven.  Really really good, this one.  The big hook is everything.

Finally - CeCe Peniston

[link] This is one of the mixes of this song that falls under the Piano House subgenre.  I really like the organ progression that drive the B part,which is later picked up in piano. A nice complement to the strong vocal.  As a keyboardist it's really attractive to have songs that are driven by the keyboard chords, which the whole tempo is here.

Italo-House and Hip House

I listened to some examples of both of these genres today trying to figure out a difference.  From what I heard there isn't much of one, except for perhaps where the artists are from.  They both have piano and synth hook chords and both can have rap elements.  Both have diva singing (or samples) and sort of gender-neutral soul-ish vocals.  I like and dislike examples of both.  Italo- does seem more upbeat and anthemic, whereas Hip House tends to be more edgy.  But there seem to be huge overlaps.
Here is a Chicago Hip House mix

(Hip House is most associated with Chicago DJs in the late 80s)

Here is an Italo-House mix (also called Piano House)

Italo-house is associated with the producer Gianfranco Bortolotti

In these particular examples, the latter is more atmospheric and instrumental.  There are a lot of mixes on Youtube and they vary all over the place.

Everybody Everybody - Black Box

[link] Love this song, from 1990.  It was a staple in my 80s mix when I was an informal, amateur DJ. I'm not an expert on the genre, but the sub-genre that Black Box is described as is Italo-house or Italian.  The defining characteristic is the specific electric piano chords.  That sound, and the particular chords and chord progressions are really what make it.  Also, the tempo is slightly below the faster rave music of that same era.  Everybody Everybody has an infectiousness and accessibility that is really noticeable.  When it goes on, people dance.

The Sorceress Amy

[link] Finally got a decent recording of this (decent enough for now; I screwed up the ending). I've been working on playing standing up.  The strap I'm using is a Mobiusstrap.  Works really well.

Alison - Slowdive

[link] A more canonical shoegaze sound from these guys.  This way of making music defies the melodic convention, although there are usually melody elements present in the vocals.  The instrumental sound is sort of a color faucet that is pointed outward and manipulated.  The effects on the guitars and sustains and reverb in the other audio elements set up a background, which is then manipulated and sculpted by the performers. I think the narrative content of the music can be huge, such that the vocals themselves are often free to go abstract.  In the case of the Cocteau Twins, one of the founders of this sound, the vocals typically went into experimental and conceptual (if not sonic per se) spaces that musical composition usually reserves for the instruments.  The era of shoegaze was pretty short. But it never really ended, either.  There is still huge potential for the genre.

Crazy for You - Slowdive

From 1995. The dream pop side of shoe gaze.  The atmosphere almost goes into ambient, thanks to the samples and repetition.  Very dreamy.  Almost cold.  But also warm.  I like the miasma...

Drive, She Said - Stan Ridgeway

[link] Stan also fits in the New Wave idiom I discussed below.  His voice was made for storytelling - especially with a background of kitsch/Americana, which was a major focus of American New Wave (e.g. the B-52s, most famously).  He structures his songwriting and production around this storytelling aspect.

Interesting Dream

I often have interesting dreams but I seldom remember much. In the one I just woke up from, I was one of hundreds of workers being transported large distances by plane, train, and bus working on building a pipeline. We were going ever further south to eventually finish in Antarctica. We would hear the pipeline humming at each stop and I was tringvto figure out if the humming was getting higher as we got closer to the pipeline's source in the south. We were laying down plastic tubing or hose in an underground facility and one guy asked me if I could hear the D note of the humming. I replied that I don't have perfect pitch so I couldn't tell. At one point we got out of buses at night and we were trying to figure out where we were. It was warm and the stars were bright. We concluded we were in southern Africa. There were several buses of other crews there. I think we were supposed to have a meal there in a large cafeteria but I got separated from the group and missed the meal. The team I was in had men and women of various ages, none were known or recognizable people from real life. But in the dream I thought I recognized one or a few of them as character actors from movies or TV and I was going to talk to them about that. The person I was invthe dream had also played minor parts in a few movies. Toward the end when we were outside just before I lost the group i remember that I had put down a oair of fingerless gloves that were mine on the ground. A third glove was found, maybe by me, that was identical but I concluded that it wasn't mine.

World Party - The Waterboys

[link] From 1989.  I really like Mike Scott's vocals and the use of fiddle in these guys' songs.  Songs like this one and We Will Not Be Lovers are intense.  A lot of soul here.

Boheme - Deep Forest

[link] Listened to these guys (specifically this album, from 1995; this is the title track) a lot ca. 1996. They do a good job with most of the samples.  Extremely atmospheric, which is kind of the whole modus here.

Devo, the Talking Heads, and American new wave

At Ru-Jun's dance recital over the weekend, one of the classes danced to Whip It by Devo (in red futuristic dresses).  This is the only Devo song 99% of people know and it's a really good song.  It got me thinking what Devo actually did to music.  Like the Talking Heads, Devo had its roots in the punk movement of the mid-late 70s and many of their songs had rootsy origins (e.g. Working in a Coal Mine) (TH had more funk flavors).  Both of these bands stripped down those sounds and made them abstract, sometimes by adding synthesizers, other times by just going really minimalist.  Then stuff could be added back to expand the possibilities of the abstract essence.  Both bands did it with the rhythm section. TH did it predominantly with rhythm section, reflecting the funk essence, whereas Devo added a lot of synths on top of things (TH was no slouch at this either) and later got into more of the 80s synth pop sound (whereas TH ended up going toward what David Byrne eventually did solo with the Latin influences he got into).  I really like this about these bands' role in new wave: abstracting, finding the essence of the music, and using it to make a completely different, and often completely infectious, sound.

September Morn - Neil Diamond

[link] From 1979.  That year I ended up listening to a lot of AM radio, more than most years of my childhood.  I think this was due to car rides to the Pittsford YMCA for swimming lessons and swimming with my dad and brothers.  Anyway, this was one of the big hits of that year and it kind of grew on me.  I learned this on the uke a few months ago, then forgot it, then relearned it again tonight.  I hope I can keep it available in the set.  Should be fun to play live.

Piccadilly Palare - Morrissey

[link] Morrissey  has to be indulged  when it comes to the dark material, but this song is musically delightful with any words.  Bouncy and sing songy. The edginess doesn't overwhelm.  And he really knows how to build through the song and rally out of breaks.  The dynamics of the song parts are great.  Just a terrific song.

Brilliant Mind - Furniture

[link] This song was on the sountrack of the 1987 movie Some Kind of Wonderful, which was one of my favorites back in the day.  Hugely wonderful song, especially for the introvert.  Everything works here, the tempo, the progression, the rhythm track, the vocal.  It's a lonely, yearning, song.  I was there then.
Tonight I've been going through old poems from 10-20 years ago.  I really was tied up into myself just as this song makes me feel.  Kind of got stuck in the process of writing through myself, running rusty water out of a pipe to get to clean fresh water.  Anyway, this song does a supreme job of complementing my inner life back from the late 80s on.  Still does today...