On Songs is Moving

This blog is moving to onandbeyondsongs.blogspot.com
The themes will be the same.  The look will be slightly different. My friend Darren will be joining the blog.  And I'll ask Old Grimy to stay with us as well.
See you over there!

Gu Qin

Which brings me back to the Gu Qin. This instrument gets closest to the pure sounds of nature of any that I've ever heard. I hope to play one of these some day.

Shahi Baaja

I've been thinking about getting one of these for a long time. It would be a lot of fun.  I wouldn't be able to do what Pete List is doing in the video but I could do some good stuff of my own on it.

I Can't Wait - Nu Shooz

[link] The early synth pop era resulted in a good number of fairly eclectically produced hitting the top 40.  This one is great.  One of the best uses of gogo bells in history.

Intro of Disney's Jesse

[link] Ru-Jun was into this show for a while a couple of years ago.  She still sings the theme from time to time.  It's a charming show with kids that are fun to watch but with predictably bad and over the top writing and acting.  I have always liked the intro.

El Final de la Noche - SVPER

[link] Recommended by my friend Darren.  Very reminiscent of early 80s brit/euro new wave, but also very textured and atmospheric. I love the analog equipment in the video. Good stuff.

Planet Claire - the B52's

[link] Off their first album, this song kind of summarizes the retro-kitsch-camp aesthetics. It simultaneously utilizes imagery reminiscent of golden age science fiction as well as a statement about a certain kind of person (Claire) who seems to be an image of themselves, and eventually their fans. All aspects of the song feed into this: the lyrics, the spy theme rhythm track, and the sound effects. Claire is an alien because she is different. A lot of people I knew in the 80s found this very appealing. The B52s were on the ground floor of what became a standard trope of what are now called hipsters.

the episodic 3rd The Gamers movie

[link to first episode] This one is funded via Kickstarter.  The hilarity continues. These guys are idols in the con world.

The first The Gamers movie

[link] Microscopic budget.  Still quite fun.  The actors are quite a big younger.

Alcest - Délivrance

[link] Slowgaze with a pretty simple progression.  Going for big atmosphere here. Works pretty well.

The Gamers: Dorkness Rising

[link] I'm enjoying this immensely.  It's only a put-down of D&Ders in the self-deprecating title. Overall, I find it to be a loving tribute of the people and situations of gaming. Really really funny.  But there are also some honest statements about the sociology of gaming and perhaps larger things.  This deserves a wide cult audience.

Ernesto Lecuona's Malagueña on the Moog

[link]
Always great to revisit this music from my youth.  So powerful. Helps that it is a great piece of music to begin with.

Warcraft 2 music

I loved the original Warcraft (2 and 3, never played 1) real time strategy game, before they went to World of Warcraft.  Found the Human and Orc music online.  Brings back memories.

Two of my very favorites from ABBA

S.O.S. [link]
Chiquitita [link]
Sweet but complex harmonies.  This is as atmospheric as high pop gets. Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson write great pop. All the cliches about this band and their popular fandom are unfortunate. Really good music often is very popular.  There's nothing wrong with that fact.

Sade - the two original classics

Smooth Operator
The Sweetest Taboo

These songs were ubiquitous on Top 40 radio in the 80s and they deserved it. Was working out to them the other day.  They don't get old.

Sade - Never as Good as the First Time

[link] Another really great one from Sade.  I really like the keyboard-bass interplay in the main lick.  There are great breaks in this song as well.

Not much time to play lately

Life has been too busy with work, health, caregiving, and parenting to play much music.  But I have had the uke out a few times lately.  No Earthstock performance this year - they didn't get in touch with me (possibly a new person is running it). Now that the weather is nice and Ru-Jun is going to playgrounds a lot.  I hope to bring the uke with me to sit and play.

Nothing Can Come Between Us - Sade

[link] Nothing can come between me and my love for Sade.  I really like the staccato base licks.  Sade surrounds herself with amazing jazz/funk arrangers and performers and it really pays off.

Tralfaz Wizard's special mix

(just created; still a work in progress - was working out to some of these tunes this evening)

Terence Trent D'Arby - Sign Your Name
Terence Trent D'Arby - Wishing Well
The Mary Jane Girls - In My House
Jane Child - Don't Wanna Fall In Love
JENNIFER PAIGE "CRUSH" original version
Lisa Stansfield - All Around the World
Mark Morrison - Return Of The Mack
Scritti Politti Boom! There She Was
Scritti Politti Sugar And Spice
Bobby Caldwell - What You Won't Do for Love

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqzdqL0Df0_8GkW7ATLVrCvrpK78mUk9H

Floating Area - Shelling

[link] Sloegazey. Lots of poppy little bellish high keyboard sounds on top of the whispery vocal. Atmosphere - but the whole thing has an anticipatory edge. Somehow doesn't take me nearly as far as Plastic Girl in Closet does.

Pretty Little Bag - Plastic Girl in Closet

[link] Very poppy, smooth SG. This goes a long way. Like salve on a rash. It's calming, reassuring. Triumphant, even.

Rondo Acapricio - Tosca

[link] A find on Groove Salad from back in 2008.  A really great ambient piece with a beat. I love the radio sample from Singapore. Not sure about the audio samples that mix in toward the end (the male voice), but the rest is great ambient art.

Nightspots - The Cars

[link] Another track, less well known, from the same album (Candy-O).

Dangerous Type - The Cars

[link] One of the very best by one of the best American bands ever. The R&R H.O.F. is a fraud until these guys get in.

Bubblegum pop

Been reading a little about this genre.  Green Tambourine, by the Lemon Pipers is thought to be one of the first bugglegum pop singles. Pretty innocuous but fun in a way.  Here are a few other early bubblegum pop songs.
Simon Says - 1910 Fruitgum Company
You can definitely see the kid appeal here.
Yummy Yummy Yummy - Ohio Express 
 This song has some almost new-wavish complexity to it.
A Little Bit of Soul - Love Explosion
This sound was arrived at by a lot of artists coming from various different angles.

Thru The Flowers - The Primitives

[link] From 1987. This was the same time as the roots of SG were getting off the ground.  In addition to the bugglegum catchiness, the interest was the contrast between soft and hard.  This kind of feel is one of the essences of SG.

Rounders sequel

I really liked the 1998 movie Rounders, which was really important in popularizing Texas Holdem poker to the huge extent it has grown in the last 15 years. I don't like watching the whole thing because the Ed Norton character is annoying.  The Mat Damon character should never have let the Norton character get him into trouble, which was the central plot complication of the whole movie.  I really like the poker scenes with Damon and Malkovich as Teddy KGB.
I just read that there is a sequel in the works with Damon and Norton that will involve playing in Paris to start and Robert DeNiro as the new villain.
For a long time I've had a different idea for a sequel (which maybe they could still do something like after the current sequel): Damon has moved to Vegas and become a successful pro, playing big televised tournaments, publishing books, etc.  Then Teddy KGB shows up in Vegas and establishes a club.  Initially it looks like KGB is simply expanding.  But it will become clear that he really is running from the Russian mob.  Damon has to save him.  By playing poker of course.  There are a lot of ways that could play out.

Breaking Curfew - Red Rider

[link] And here's the title track from that album.  Really good song. The little unplugged intro version I had never heard before.

Can't Turn Back - Red Rider

[link] Another great one from the same album.

Work Out - Red Rider

[link] One of their bouncier tunes. Still has their edge. I have a special relationship with the album Breaking Curfew.  There was a multi year period in the mid-late 80s when I didn't go a week without listening to this album a few times. Love the synth work flitting around the background. Good hooks in this pretty simple song.

Sunbeam - Submarine

[link] This track was included on iTunes on a mac I had about three computers ago.  I went nuts for it. Really really amazing song.

Semi obscure movie recommendation #3

The Moderns

The trailer title is weired b/c Mickey Rourke is not listed in the cast and I'm pretty sure he does not have a major (or any) role.

Semi obscure movie recommendation #2

Bear Island

Semi obscure movie recommendation #1

Hanover Street

Honeymooners Rap - Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy

[link] I never stayed up late enough to watch SNL in those days but this song was really big on Top 40 radio for a short time (summer of 85 I think).  It hasn't stood up well, but not much old school rap style comedy has.

Wind Up - Pity Sex

[link] Low key up temp SG. Peppy but still glum chorus. The contrast between mood and tempo + sharpness of guitar lead is one of the most interesting aspects of this strain of SG.

Harpoons - Sisu

[link] This might be the reason for the Sinead earworm.  Sisu evokes a whole bunch of really great predecessors: Siouxsie, Bjork, Cocteau Twins, and a bit of Sinead. The chorus here is a force of nature.

Mandinka - Sinead O'Connor

[link] Had this as an earworm this morning.  Not complaining.

Slowgaze by the Tralfaz Wizard Experience

Recorded last night.

Walkaway - Nights

[link] This has most of the SG elements in a mid tempo poppy package. The guitar is really stretched and provides an almost cloying sweetness that somehow complements the very sweet, poppy vocals. A celebration of color and sugar, like stretched taffy.

Shoegaze weather

Today it was cold and gray and rainy/misty.  I did my fitness walk about the Heritage Park in Mount Sinai. I brought some headphones and listened to DKFM on my iPhone while walking.  SG was really appropriate music for the stiff cold and wet wind in my face, the cars going by on 25A and Rt 83.  The low gray sky.  Just right.

Guilty of Everything - Nothing

[link] What it's all about. Quiet, beautiful harmonies in verse.  Sweetness.  Then everything lines up for the huge chorus breaking through (presaged by the guitar feeding back). The wall brings everything, but it's still a sweetness. There's more to sculpt. Masterful SG. Without which just an innocuous little pop song.

F A O N Faon

[link] Here is just such a faucet.  This one seems like night.  Foggy and cold. Wet air getting around you on an empty train platform. With time passing differently, both more quickly and more slowly, in snapshots. Steam rising from pipes.

The high guitar

in SG is both the distant calamity and the siren responding to the calamity. A faucet of red sky beaming this way through a lens of yellow, industrial air. In an exurb waste, under a bridge, in the dry season with the evidence of the last flood in plain view. A high speed train burning by, carrying hypermodern youth across the wastescape between cities. A few of them may venture out here on foot or bikes on a sunny day in an obscure season. It's the soundtrack to this event, played by those same kids.  Staring down but only seeing the stones and shadows of the stones under the white sky.

You are Not Alone - Bleeding Rainbow

[link] Heard the studio cut of this on DKFM.  It's very clean and tight and has a lot of sophisticated sounding production.  This live version is great.  Pretty hard to carry off some of the contrasts. But they do a great job.  The harmony is always tough live. I like the main rhythm groove of the verse. Straight ahead SG.

The Foreign Resort - Tide

[link] One to travel to. Sort of a glide. The guitar noise lends a bit of machine grind to the affair. The instrumental narrative puts us out onto a plain, in the past, with the camera receding. There is a big horizon.

Doused - DIIV

[link] Not mainline SG but found it on DKFM. Strongly reminiscent of 80s goth-tinged postpunk like New Model Army and stuff like that. Urgent and atmospheric.  Refreshing to hear a revival of this type of sound.

Pilgrimage - R.E.M.

[link] I discovered this earlier album after The Reckoning, which was more subtle and in a lot of ways evocative of R.E.M.'s regional background. Murmur is a masterpiece of atmosphere and anthem; this song has both. One can see where folk music was Cezanne to their Picasso, here in an analytical cubism sense: constructing song as a rich but abstracted interplay and adjacency of motifs. The lyrics of all the earlier R.E.M. were also very pleasingly vague and abstract and stipes murmuring style of that period was the perfect way to deliver them.

Revisiting Gangnam Style

[link] Been thinking about, from an aesthetic point of view, why this video is so good. Good, in the sense that sometimes something hits the popular culture and becomes huge, because it has a new, somehow infectious, meme or set of traits. Here, the song by itself (I'm not at all familiary with Psy's music) is not particularly remarkable, although there are some interesting aspects to the song, in particular when parts build and then break down and start over. The song seems to be integral to the dance style that is the video (I don't know if Psy has this in his other videos). For me, and maybe for most viewers around the world, the part of the song and video that is most intriguing is the setting, the Gangnam district of Seoul and the apparent commentary on the people and lifestyle there. Putting the chauvinism aside, the concentration on a very particular urban place, and what appears to be a glamorous one, is intriguing. I've seen people like that occasionally in some parts of Taipei; the different parts of Taipei are also fascinating to me, so I can see Seoul being like that as well. The thing that really carries the whole video off of course is Psy's attitude and presence.  It's simultaneously self-deprecating and rap-esque arrogant. Also, at some points, he seems to be pointing to the whole place as an exhibition. I guess I've probably thought about this more than most people.  But I really like to figure out why some music and videos work so well.

Really happy for a colleague of mine

who heard today that he is being awarded his first NIH grant. I still remember that day and feeling for me.  It shouldn't be so important in science, but that's the system we have. My friend is an amazing scientist and colleague and a tremendous friend.

Love Removal Machine - the Cult

[link] I've probably talked about this before.  The Cult kept remaking essentially the same song.  But it was a damn good one.

Ship to Shore - Chris de Burgh

[link] My friend Scott was into Chris de Burgh in high school.  For some reason this song popped into my head the other day.  Doesn't really hold up over the years.  A little to slick for rock, IMHO.

Someone, Somewhere, in Summertime - Simple Minds

[link] An anthem of mine.  For almost thirty years now.

Light, Raking - Polvo

[link] The early 90s were a great time for music in the Triangle of NC. Polvo was a staple of the scene there.  Never saw them live (that I recall) but they were all over WXYC and WXDU.

Underdrawing For Three Forms Of Unhappiness At The State Of Existence - My Dead Girlfriend

[link] This band has some long song names and their name is reminiscent of My Dad is Dead, an 80s alt band. This is a really rich song.  The rhythm section plods and the vocal line is on-beat and chantlike. But there is a lot of sweetness. The B parts have a lot of denouement to them (I know I'm not using that word exactly correctly here). A heavy hard rainbow belying the title of the song.

Road, River, and Rail - Cocteau Twins

[link] From the sublime "Heaven or Las Vegas" album.  In three. It keeps a very even feeling through the verse parts and then comes to sort of descending rally points in the chorus intervals. For me there is this expansive landscape. Transport, but the land and water flowing by are the story.

what is it about Shoegaze

I've been thinking about this a bit lately. What do I hear in SG that attracts me so much? I think it is a really advanced form of music. It fills the space in a very noisy way.  The noise has emergent properties.  The noisiness is like clay.  It can be molded in very sublime ways. There are deliberately beautiful threads in a lot of SG: namely the use of very airy, soprano female vocals. This is a contrast but also a sort of adjuvant or catalyst. There is something akin to abstract expressionism in the application of these sounds together.  That's all I have on this for now...

Dry Your Eyes - Ash Code

[link] Found this on DKFM. Combines a lot of early 80s influences, from synthpop to goth. The silhouette-y video is reminiscent of the Sisters of Mercy.

A Rose Made of Galaxies - Orange Yellow Red

[link] I haven't read anything about these guys. Like Pale Saints back in the day, they vary in who does the vocals. The instrumental sound really is presaged by Pale Saints as well. And that is a completely great thing.

We Ran - Orange Yellow Red

[link] I really like this sound.  Terrific vocal texture and harmonies. Pale Saints blended with Cocteau Twins. The chorus of this song and the sort of abrupt transition into it is really nice. The production is superb. Nice video too.

Sleeper - Malory

[link] Smooth and heavy at the same time. Juggernauty. Sort of slipstream on the top end and a bit plodding in the rhythm section. Also evokative of some 80s gothy stuff. So in other words, it works.

Just found this

A Christmas card from my favorite online radio station, DKFM.

Technophilia

I imagine this word has a pretty broad usage, but I'm thinking of it as a trope that is in Computer Love, as well as a song I've blogged about here previously: I Love You Miss Robot by the Buggles.  I've also found it quite a bit in anime.  For example, the Big O, which we on DVD and have seen parts of (my wife has seen the whole thing) which involves a main male character and an assistant, who is romantically implicated, who is an android. The trope robot-ifies a female character, I think to symbolize the inaccessibility experienced by romantic male protagonists, who are often introverted. The tension is a huge part of the atmospherics of these stories.

More on Computer Love

The song can be read on several levels.  The raw sound was novel in 1981 and was the harbinger of electronic music invading pop and becoming ubiquitous.  The melody, arrangement, and production is supreme atmosphere. It's wistful. It has a retro tint to it. It's future as future-as-past, as something that has worn. I've always read this music as the product of a European modernism that was already the better part of a century old. By the 80s, a lot of internationalist architecture, while still being built around the world, was also starting to crumble.  It was lived-in and becoming gritty. Many of the visual images that Kraftwerk used had this feel to them. So there's a new vibrancy to this music but also a projection of how a future that is still a little ahead of us will be looked back upon.

Computer Love - Kraftwerk

[link] This song gets at an aesthetic that Kraftwerk classically developed that I have also been reaching toward. The sort of experimental (but aesthetically serious) desire to mechanize. An admiration of machine perfection and efficiency. A willing assimilation of inevitable technological change. So open that accepting it includes the romantic.

When You Get There - Zebra

[link] Loved these guys in high school. They're actually a Long Island band (originally from New Orleans, I think) and still play around here.  Here is a live version of this song recorded in 2009.

Darkness - the Police

[link] A song to fit my mood tonight. A masterpiece, actually.

parenting and science

cannot be done simultaneously.  Successful scientists who have kids do not parent those kids.  Someone else does. Or at least they have a physically able partner. But male scientists typically are the minor partner in the work of parenting.  It takes my situation for a male scientist to realize really what parenting is.

today's legos

Legos were great when I was a kid.  There were relatively few kinds of pieces and few colors and the child's creativity made up all the rest.  Today there are way too many specialized and really tiny pieces. Unfun, in my opinion.

More about Star Wars Uncut

The real message I take from it is that by "doing" Star Wars in all those different interchangeable contexts, Star Wars becomes a transforming principle for the whole culture.  Star Wars is more than just a huge pop cultural phenomenon. The entirety of modern life can be seen through Star Wars, as Star Wars.

Star Wars Uncut

[link] Really creative idea.  Absolutely hilarious and deeply loving results, from the fan perspective.

Extended winter

It's officially still winter until 21-Mar, but usually by this time we are climbing through the low 40s for high temps.  But we have been in an extended "polar vortex" due to erratic jet stream patterns for most of the time since mid January. We did manage to get two high 40s days last weekend to get rid of a lot (but not all) of the heavy snow that had accumulated. There is more snow on the way after the weekend, however.  A lot of people are complaining about winter now, of course.  But I'm trying not to. It is what it is.

Working on a conceptual paper

I've begun work on a short conceptual paper on the evolution of parental care ideas I've been developing, some of which if discussed in this blog.  My thinking has come a long way since I wrote that stuff. The editor of Quarterly Review of Biology is a faculty member in my department and I brought up the idea with him and he is receptive to the idea of submitting a piece to QRB. Hopefully I'll have enough time to get it done this semester.

Submitted a paper yesterday

One of my most recent student, Shu-Dan's, thesis chapters. I haven't been able to work on publishing much since the events of 2010. It's good to be getting back into it.

Goodbye to You - Scandal

From 1982. Always loved this brilliant little pop song. The keyboard solo is pretty fun. The break after that is one of the truly great moments in pop.

Good Girls Don't - The Knack

[link] This was the B side of the mega hit My Sharona and is just as great a song. From 1979. Had the 45 rpm vinyl.

Rosanna - Toto

From 1982. This song probably got more airplay on rock radio than any other song of the 80s. But it has held up. Very tight arranging and production put keyboards and brass on high display. Here, Toto probably achieved the peak of the funk/fusion-influenced rock boom that started in the late 70s and really took over the rock sound for a while. Chicago was also a huge purveyor of this sound. Lots of others, though.

Midnight Wind - Jon Stewart

Another one from his 1979 Album Bomb's Away Dream Babies. Stevie Nicks sings background just as in his megahit Gold. There is a subgenre here that includes Nicks's stuff, Fleetwood Mac's material from this time, and probably others. It's all about what the 70s were in pop, aside from disco and stuff that was going on with Soul and R&B.  The soft rock that was happening in the US was strongly country and folk influenced and had to do with the post-60s disillusionment and loss of vision and direction. It was a turning inward.

Lost Her in the Sun - Jon Stewart

[link] An old great one from 1979.  Stewart's late stuff brings a very nice but subtle rock/pop edge to his folk style.

Cocoro - Plastic Girl in Closet

This is an entire album I haven't listened to in full yet.Very poppy and sing song. You can hear the Beach Boys-incluenced facet of shoegaze. Pretty conventional chords and structure. The SG is the blurry vocal harmony, and the guitar noise, primarily.

Transmutation of noise...

My first two years of being a dad, my brain transmuted various faint house noises into baby crying. Still happens occasionally...

Upside Down - Bertoia

[link] Not sure I had this in the list of Bertoia songs in that earlier post. This song seems a little different from their others.  Maybe a bit more conventionally pop-structured. Less striving for atmosphere, although there is still plenty here. More attention to the vocal.

thinking during manual labor

Manual labor, like snow shoveling and washing glass fly vials, has always been an opportunity for me to think.  I can do the work basically without being conscious of it. So at the end, the works gets done, which for me is very satisfying, and hopefully some creative thinking also gets done.

Pretty sure no one is reading

Each one of my posts get exactly two views.  One occurs very quickly and the other shows up within a day. These are probably webcrawlers. So I'm blogging in silence for now.  Still, I'm going to keep it up.

Moon Note - Bertoia

[link] I haven't seen this one before but it's on the same album as some of the others I've posted. Incredibly lovely.  The video is seems like a night time version of the ride I had from Tokyo to Narita airport, which was a breathtaking techno-urban panorama. I e-mailed this band's contact address several months ago indicating that I was interested in a t-shirt and some of their other stuff.  I really hope they are still active.

Aureole - Jens Gad

[link] And now for a song called "Aureole" by Jens Gad, a NY based artist.  Instrumental, but almost in the same genre as the previous song.  Except for the soft jazz horn element that comes in the middle. Very dreamy stuff.

Suicide - Aureole

[link] Found this Tokyo band linked to some of the Bertoia videos. Slow, soft, haunty. The very dreamy end of dream pop. All creaminess, no edge.  A good refresher from some of the harder stuff.

Time Passages - Al Stewart

[link] High pop art from maybe the peak of pop diversity (1978) - also one of the peaks of my early age music influence sensitivity (I was 11). This song has at least three hooks: the intro figure, which comes back in the chorus, the verse part, and the break part. Stewart's warbly voice is also unique. A song of its times. Nostalgic.  Hauntingly so, in fact.

Never as Good as the First Time - Sade

[link] Sade is listed in the Quiet Storm artist list that I saw on Wikipedia. What makes songs like this great are the rhythm track, specifically the bass line. What You Won't Do For Love by Bobby Caldwell also has this characteristic (and great brass). It would be fun to sift through all the QS and really find the trenchant rhythm tracks. For me, that's where the lasting impact is.

Gold - Sugarcubes

[link] No other band was like them. Nobody else ever will be.

Quiet Storm playlist

[link] I just found this; haven't explored it yet and there's no playlist. From the first song it sounds like it's going to use a broad definition of the genre, including a lot of 80s stuff.

Classic commercial from my youth

Gillette Foamy. I have always used the product because it is thicker than other brands. So I guess the commercial worked.

Outside - the Fixx

[link] Another epic song. One of their most atmospheric (which is saying a lot with a band that thrives creating atmosphere). I hadn't seen this live video previously; it's pretty faithful to the studio track.

Mother's Opinion - Men Without Hats

[link] Sort of an epic song from Men w/o Hats; not one of their better known. Angry and atmospheric, it builds and repeats and keeps building. The guitar line folds in and out, crisscrossing with the vocal.

Mummenschanz

A childhood exposure to Mummenschanz on the Muppet Show and possibly PBS may be at least in part responsible for my appreciation for the abstract and conceptual in art and (to a certain degree) in music.

Eyes of a Stranger - Andy Summers

[link] Fragile, and even vulnerable-sounding, pop from the former Police-man. This album brings back the summer of '88 I think. One of the soundtracks to my pathetic and pathetically introverted little life back then.  Things were simpler then, by about ten orders of magnitude.

You - Gold Panda

[link] Found on a search for "Asian Dream pop". Interesting. Rather lo fi and machiney; a lot of treble. Has some narrative content. Gold Panda is a British guy named Derwin Schlecker. There is an Asian feel to this music; thanks to some of the note motifs.  Maybe that's what he intended with the performing name.

What You Won't Do For Love - Bobby Caldwell

This song is in a commercial now (I forget what) so I hear it a lot.  The version they use on TV has a stronger base line. I've always loved the song, which is from 1978.  Researching the song on Wikipedia, I find that it is an example of a genre called Quiet Storm. (Named after a 1975 Smokey Robinson song.) It will be interesting to research this genre further.

the interpersonal matrix

For a long time, I've envisioned the state of relationships among individuals who know each other as a huge 2x2 matrix with either number or color in the cells indicating the warmth or coldness of the relationship. For my part, I like to keep my column as uniormly good as possible and I worry when cells indicate a bad relationship (pretty rare) or a recent encounter that was awkward. But it's frequently the case that I am friends with two people who  do not have a good relationship between each other. While not necessarily being a mediator trying to improve the relationship, I am dealing with both people who are not dealing well (or decidedly not at all) with each other. This is often very frustrating.

Talk Talk live from 1986

[link] One of my major influences.  Great stuff.

I'm Gone - Tamaryn

[link] Very guitary and spooky. The instrumental track moves under the vocal like oil. Then noise binds it all together.

All Names - Jun Miyake

[link] Heard this in a Land Rover commercial.  Pretty groovy. Very textural.

Eyes on Fire - Blue Oyster Cult

[link] Continuing the thread of late 70s-early 80s hard rock that I was steeped in in my mid-teens.  The whole "Revolution By Night" album by B.O.C. was a favorite of mine.  This is one of several hooky songs on that album.

In the Dark - Billy Squier

[link] For some reason this song jumped into my mind today.  It's a staple from my hard rock youth.  Still sounds pretty good. There are three hooks in this song; two in the verse and the chorus.

Applause - Lady Gaga

[link] Ru-Jun is really into this song thanks to her dance lessons.  Musically, it's a cool song with some powerful moments. She co-wrote and co-produced it.  So not only can she sing, she has a musical ear and can write. Musically she earns my respect.  I have only heard a couple other of her songs, but even just from these I think she must be taken seriously by musicians (and I generally think she is, from what I've heard). This video is captivating. I can't take my eyes off it. There's a lot there and it is fascinating to think about what she is trying to say. She is dead serious in making a statement about fame here and just looking into her eyes, Lady Gaga is very sophisticated in what she is about and she has big things to say.

I defy

Anyone tracking my consumer activity, to successfully change or predict my activity to the point where a cent of profit can be made.  It can't be done. To quote Crow T. Robot: "Nobody gets me.  I'm like the wind."
On the other hand, if they put something in front of me and I buy it and it gives me pleasure, more power to them. That's what I want to happen.

Breathe - Drowner

[link] Very chimey and open at the beginning; there is a lot of space. Then when the somewhat Cocteau Twins-esque vocal comes in everything goes full.  Then it all disappears for a moment and begins to build again. The dynamic changes certainly keep my attention. A very interesting melding and melting. Going from clean to dirty and back again. This song hangs a lot of major stuff on it and accomplishes an ambitious schedule.

Bewildered - Cranes

[link] Early 90s stuff that is enjoying new popularity among the younger shoegazers, according to airplay on DKFM. As complex as Cocteau twins but mining a distinct territory. The overlap with conventional SG is a bit minimal in places but the feeling and atmosphere are there.

machines emulating song beginnings

The startup tones of Windows 7 Starter on my Toshiba netbook sound like the first few guitar notes of A Forest by the Cure  (here is a cover of that song by Creaming Jesus that I also like). Also, when our microwave kicks on, it reminds me of the very beginning of What Difference Does it Make by the Smiths. So when I'm cooking dinner I often have that as an earworm.

vintage live Cars

[link] Two great songs off the Panorama album, their most experimental work.

Span the Universe - Soundpool

[link] This song turns the shoegaze sound into a vibrant rainbow. Sweet and sugary.

Run and Run - Psychedelic Furs

[link] One of my all time favorite songs from one of my all time favorite bands.

Love in Vacuum - Til Tuesday

[link] Always a good time for one of my favorite bands of my youth, Til Tuesday.

I love that cosplay exists

[link] even though I don't do it myself and I don't know who most of these characters are. It's just cool.

Picture - Ninth Paradise

[link] Pretty heavy, and on the proggy side with the unconventional time signature. Not as ethereal as mainstream SG.  Mines a more raw, garagey thread. Which makes it a bit less accessible than most.

Misunderstanding - Genesis

[link] Genesis was yet another interesting thread in the eclectic mix of rock that was on the radio at the turn of the 1970s-1980s decade. They were working through some higher accessibility in those days, after the earlier art rock of the Gabriel days, which purists will say is the best.  Phil Collins was about to launch into a very successful pop solo career. These guys could put a song together and they could play their instruments.

Magnet and Steel - Walter Egan (w/Stevie Nicks)

[link] Another of my favorites from the 70s. Great hooks in a pretty simple song.

Nights are Forever - England Dan and John Ford Coley

[link] I'm always back to my roots in the miasma of 70s top 40 music. This is a great song. Multiple hooks. Great harmony in the chorus. One of my early favorites.

Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey - Paul and Linda McCartney

[link] I probably already discussed this topic, but I stipulate to the greatness of the Beatles without actually choosing to listen to their stuff very much.  It just doesn't do much for me.  This particular post-Beatles track (compilation of song fragments) from the McCartneys in 1971 I remember being played to my 6th grade music class, I think as an example of musical creativity.  In particular the vocal effect on the Uncle Albert part toward the beginning has always stuck with me.

Dream About Me - Depreciation Guild

[link] I really like these guys' sound (interesting band name). The vocal on this song reminds me a bit of Michael Quercio of the Three O'Clock (one of my faves from the late 80s).

Ambient Gaze

Or ambigaze.  The term has already been coined.  I've been thinking about doing something like this conceptually.  Here is one video I found. The artist is Echoes Dwell.  I like it a lot.

Okay, Cupid - White Lodge

[link] Heard this on DKFM today.  Very hooky and poppy with a bit of a goth-maudlin male (Zach Weeks) vocal. Definitely springs from the Joy Division (almost Cure-ish) axis of postpunk. Good stuff.

Mercy Seat - Ultra Vivid Scene

[link] UVS was a staple of 90s college radio music. UVS is also seen by some as being within the Shoegaze fold. But their (i.e. Kurt Ralske's) sound overlapped with other artists.  Most palpably for me, was The Church, another band I was listening to a lot at the time.

Tape Tape - The December Sound

[link] There is a decidedly gothic tint to The December Sound.  But overall they can be heard as carrying forward threads that MBV initiated, especially with the main guitar screech theme. I also hear a little Ultra Vivid Scene in the phrasing and slight bounciness of this song.

We Ride Tonight - The Sherbs

[link] This Australian band hand a handful of singles that got played on US rock radio stations (or else I would never have heard them) in the early 80s. This is probably my favorite. Hugely influential on me. All the best music of that era integrated keyboards and guitar. Guitars became way too prominent in rock after that, for a long long time. Great atmosphere and pacing in this song.

All your base are belong to us

Here is the original that went viral. The video game is from 1991 and the vid was made in 2000.  I discovered it a few years after that, well after the meme had peaked. It's really well done and pretty funny.  And a loving tribute to the video games and video game music of that era.

One Girl/One Boy - !!!

[link] Taking a break from shoegaze for a moment.  Friend of mine posted this on a message board I frequent.  Very bouncy pop.  Fun stuff.

Cuckoo - Still Corners

[link] This one moves along (like the train in the video) and has lots of space between the high vocal and the muted rhythm track. Pretty good for a dream while traveling.

Love Fade - Tamaryn

[link] Pretty straightforward SG with a poppy side. A lot is done with high vocal washes.  There's a march like quality to this one. Channels Souxsie in places, but from a very silky texture, not abrasive at all.

Andy Summers

Here is a recent interview. He looks really different having aged. He has a documentary about his years with the Police. A must see for Police Fans like me. (Must be pretty new b/c I can't find anything online about it).

Drive that Fast - Kitchens of Distinction

[link] A classic from the early days of SG, although this is not in the core of that sound. This is really dreamy and poppy; the vocal is breathless.  Huge atmosphere and narrative content. One of my favorites from back in the day.

Breather - Chapterhouse

[link] Really good poppy-end shoegaze from one of the flagship bands of the sound. The main feature I like here is the use of vocals as another layered instrumental sound.

Mass of the Fermenting Dregs

These guys are fun to watch. Asian women using rock music to slash down the barriers of cultural norms of expected behavior are really interesting.

Untold - Luminous Orange

[link] Both edgy and trippy.  I like this sound.  It definitely takes SG to a new place. The vocal parts especially. These guys through everything at it in this song.

Im Nin'Alu - Ofra Haza

[link] Ofra Haza was huge on college radio in the late 80s and early 90s. I really like the atmosphere she achieves when her voice is put above these rhythms. She was lost way too soon.

Just Alright - Tokyo Shoegazer

[link] On both the noisy and upbeat side, almost poppy in the vocal arrangement. This one kind of skips off the surface of the pond, at least until the heavy instrumental bridge comes in.  Then it sinks to the bottom like a concrete snapping turtle. But just as quickly it bubbles back up to the surface.

Living in the Plastic Age - the Buggles

A 1980 song for 2014.

Shadow Where It Doesn't Disappear - My Dead Girlfriend

[link] This band appears to be named after a Manga. This song moves along pretty good and doesn't bury the rhythm under the noisy guitar.  Still, it achieves a pretty good atmosphere with its blurry vocal flitting over the top. Pretty good stuff.

For 2014

Things are getting better for me, in terms of managing my scientific career under the weight of my home responsibilities. In this calendar year I need to publish a lot of stuff.  And I need to get back to my book project, although I don't know if I can get that close to completion this year. The demands on me are still really unreasonable all around, but I am resigned to that. Nobody can really help me. I just need to continue to figure out ways to be productive while taking care of all this stuff.

Bertoia amazes me

The song Snow Slide and the video for it give me a feeling that are hard to describe. Wistful is the first word that comes to mind.  It's comfort music for the soul.  The video shows a dream where the lead singer goes into another world and unexpectedly meets her bandmates, each one providing her with a key that helps make a door back to her world to appear.  But then when she wakes up in the real world her friends (in their otherworld guises) are there with her.  She's living a dream.  From the band's pics and videos, one does get the impression that this is a group of friends have a great time.  This is what being a band is all about.  They have an amazing musical voice and they are getting this message across.