Adult Education - Hall & Oates

[link] From 1984. One of my favorites of theirs.  The rhythm section groove makes it; love the strumming guitar.  The cadence of the lyrics is perfect.  Really just one three chord progression through the whole song.  I don't really get the video.  It doesn't seem to fit the lyrics (which I think a lot of people actually got).

Comic Book Men

Have been enjoying this reality series on Netflix.  I used to hang out with dudes like these guys back home.

Emotion in Motion - Naked Eyes

[link] A sweeping synth pop song.  Majestic.  The descending vocal line in the verse catches me and holds me through the whole thing...

Middlemarch

Started reading it (free from iBooks) on recommendation from Atrios. Haven't read Victorian fiction before but I've enjoyed a couple of Edwardian (I think they're called) movie versions ( A Room With a View and Howard's End), which are later but seem to have some similar themes. Commenters on Eschaton seem to think MM is difficult compared with say Pride and Prejudice, which I've seen parts of carious movie versions of . We'll see.

couple of themes I've been jamming on lately

Theme 1

Theme 2

Played through my Roland micro Cube with some pretty good on board distortion (using an amp model), flange, and chorus.

Flying North - Thomas Dolby

[link] One of my favorites.  From "The Golden Age of Wireless", his first and I still think, his best, album.  Trenchant.

I Wanna Be a Flinstone - Screaming Blue Messiahs

[link] Just silly fun.  This band has some really good songs.  This is sort of one of them.

double chin genetics

This might be an interesting topic of study (provided cases of benign double chins could be distinguished from cases of goiter).  I appear to be homozygous for double-chin promoting alleles at many double chin QTL loci.  Men in both sides of my family have had this trait.

Sabotage - Beastie Boys

Really great video.  Which vastly helps the song, which is also great, sink in.

Money 80s songs

I used to (very amateurly) DJ parties with iTunes on my computer and a small PA setup.  I actually did a wedding reception once.  There are several songs from the 80s (and some 70s) that always got people out dancing.  Here are some of the ones that I can remember:

Rock Me Amadeus - Falco
99 Luftballoons - Nena Hagen
Dancing Queen - Abba
One Night in Bangkok - Murray Head
Whip It - Devo
Tainted Love - Soft Cell
Don't You Love Me - Human League
Rock Lobster - the B52s
Love Shack - the B52s
Sabotage - Beastie Boys
Word Up - Cameo
I Feel For You - Chaka Khan
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Come On Eileen - Dexy's Midnight Runners
Brick House - The Commodores

this will have to be Volume I; I'll get back to this list in a later post...

Little Fluffy Clouds - Orb

Hard to fathom this song is 23 years old.  This was a core ambient house song in the high time of raves. It's incredibly atmospheric and the use of the audio sample (Ricki Lee Jones from an interview) is mesmerizing.  The adding and subtracting of tracks, a staple of house, is really effective in adding to the ambiance and narrative quality.  The most trenchant passages are when the tracks are reduced down two one or a few rhythm tracks.

One Night in Bangkok - Murray Head

[link] Never saw the musical but I've always loved this iconic 80s song.  Right into the mid 80s, pop had a lot of different types of music in it (although still probably not as diverse as the late 70s, when country was regularly in the top 40), including what were essentially novelty songs like this.

Kiss You (When It's Dangerous) - Eight Seconds

Another gem from the 80s (1986) found on Flashback Alternatives.  The rhythm section sets up a very nice tempo and guitar rhythm.  Then the big title hook is the chorus.  The verse and bridge parts are just OK.  This is one of the only Fixx-sounding bands that I've ever come across.  These guys are from Canada and this song was produced by Rupert Hine in the UK.  Hine recorded With One Look with Cy Curnin of the Fixx, the ending title song of the 1985 movie Better Off Dead (great flick), so the connection is there. Hine produced the Fixx as well.  So the sound similarity makes sense.

Review of The Hobbit

From io9.  This is a very positive review that I mostly agree with.  I enjoyed the movie a lot, especially the concentration on the backstory of the dwarves.  I always played dwarf characters in D&D because I was inspired by the Hobbit and Gimli in LOTR (although the dwarf portrayals in the Rankin Bass cartoon version of The Hobbit, which also massively influenced me, were rather weak and hapless).

Young and Proud - Ace of Bass

I loved the early stuff from this band.  More the less well known tracks than the ones that were played incessantly on the radio. Good dance pop.  This is one of my favorites from the first album.  The anime stills are cute.  Also into anime a bit these days.  Perhaps more on that in the future...

Images of Heaven - Peter Godwin

From 1982. Have heard this song quite a bit on Flashback Alternatives.  It's all about the chord progression and the Bryan Ferry-inspired (weren't all those turn of the decade post-punk bands) vocal. I love the 60s fashion video clip that were put with the song in this youtube video.
Godwin was in the band Metro and wrote the song "Criminal World", which Bowie covered on his Let's Dance album (a favorite of mine, indicating to true Bowie fans that I am not one of them). Here is Metro's version of "Criminal World."

Ship of Fools - Erasure

From 1988. These guys were huge on college radio, dance club scene, and a little bit into the US mainstream invthe late 80s. I've always liked this song and learned it the other day. I have to sing it an octave down but the soaring vocal above the slower changing chord hooks is the key to the song.

Strange Fruit - Catherine Wheel

[link] I think I blogged about this song in the early days of onsongs.  Doesn't matter.  This song always pays going back to.  It moves.  It entrances.  It penetrates.  A miasmic syringe of trenchant-ness.

Weakness - Inspiral Carpets

[link] These guys have been around since the 80s and were part of the college/alt rock scene that I didn't have a chance to explore.  Heard this song today in the lab on Flashback Alternatives internet radio.  Chord progression driven.  Can certainly here the punk roots, also ska.  Powerful vocal.

Something For You - Dillon Fence

These guys were beginning to be huge in the Triangle when I was in Durham but I never caught them live.  They are apparently still going.  Good to see.  Their first album, of which this is the only track I can find online, was 100% sweet, bouncy pop songs.

Him - Rupert Holmes

From 1980. One of those somewhat odd little pop songs characteristic of that diverse musical time. Got played a lot on the radio that year then seemingly vanished.

Pitch the Baby - Cocteau Twins

[link] Don't know what the title means and haven't tried to decipher the lyrics, but it doesn't much matter. This is yet another hugely formative slice of the 90s for me.  I listened to Heaven or Las Vegas a lot on drives between Durham and Raleigh (over to NC State for a class); great driving music.  Some of the most beautiful pop in history was made by CT.  The atmospherics are perfect.  Their sound helped spawn the genre of Shoegaze.

Take Me Back - Single Gun Theory

This song in fact does take me back.  Again to my grad school days.  Really like the sample from "Splendor in the Grass" (because I love Natalie Wood).  It's a really cool mid-tempo song.  Love the vocal.  This band has more recent stuff that I have not explored at all.

The Hobbit

Saw the new movie today (part I of a trilogy).  It was well made and entertaining.  Some stuff was embellished and the story was supplemented with important background stuff from Lost Tales and/or The Silmarillion (have not fully read either).  I ended up really liking the Radagast part.  My Tralfaz persona owes a bit to that sort of character, in addition to Gandalf.
I've always like the dwarves and always played dwarves in D&D. I grew up on the Rankin Bass cartoon version, which is simplified and kid friendly.  But I think that version captured some of the real essences of the story, including Bilbo, Gandalf (the John Huston voice was excellent), and Gollum.

Reptile - The Church

Another one from the soundtrack of my grad school days.  One of their best (and most up tempo).  They are masters of desolate atmosphere.  I drank a lot of Rolling Rock to this album.  1989-1990.  It was a brooding time.

Surreal Reebok commercial

I remember this ad from the 90s.  The song is "Surfin' Bird" by The Trashmen. The ad is one of the weirder things I saw in that decade (didn't watch much TV so there was probably a lot weirder stuff that I didn't see).

SCMF news

Our local Chinese take out place, The Great Wall, in Sound Beach, is making some very excellent Singapore rice noodles these days.

Chihuahua - The Sugarcubes

[link] Great percussion (again).  A bouncy fun song.  Bjork's vocals, which I can only describe here as juicy, also make this song.  This is almost an instrumental.  A jam on a riff.  Amazing...

Deus - The Sugarcubes

Love this song too.  Nice mid tempo groove - their drummer is truly excellent.  The B part really rallies the song - great chord progression.  Another perfect song from a perfect band.  Definitely on the soundtrack of my graduate school years.

Motorcrash - The Sugarcubes

Bjork's best work was with the Sugarcubes.  Nobody sounded like this band.  Nobody looks like Bjork or sings like her.  And this was one of several songs of theirs that was just perfect.  They don't make bands or music like this anymore.

One of Our Submarines - Thomas Dolby

[link]  This is Dolby's essence.  Retro, tech, gloomy, atmospheric, yet weaving a huge and vibrant emotional tapestry.  This was one of the most played songs on The Golden Age of Wireless (1982), one of the first albums that became part of the core of my musical being.