My new favorite blog

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/

It's about architecture, ideas, and the future. Lots of stuff about climate change, recycling, green materials, energy. Very well written. Beautiful art. Check it out...

New band name idea...

Mercy sakes alive.

Looks like we got us a convoy!

on TV

We basically skip network TV and head for deep cable. Here is what Mrs. Slig and I are watching these days:

Project Runway (Bravo) (BTW; a Canadian version of this show is in its first season; you can watch the episodes on Youtube.)
Top Chef (Bravo)
Iron Chef (Food Network)
The Next Iron Chef (Food Network)
Good Eats (Food Network)
Two Dudes Catering (Food Network)
Dinner Impossible (Food Network)
World Poker Tour (Travel Channel)
Weird Foods (Travel Channel)
No Reservations (Travel Channel)
One Piece (Cartoon Network)

Covers

In the shower this morning I managed to hear Placebo's cover of Kate Bush's timeless classic "Running Up that Hill". In my opinion it's pretty odious. It got me thinking about why bands choose the covers they do. Covering a well known song (and in international pop, there might not be a better known song than "Running...") seems to be done either as a tribute or as an implicit admission that you are out of original material and looking to score an easy hit (and there has been a lot of that lately). Covering obscure songs is a different matter.

Here are the bands that cover "Running up That Hill" and for which the song is available in the Itunes music store (I'm sure there are more): Placebo, Faith And The Muse, Re-Touch, Icon & The Black Roses, Danielle French, Jenna Myles, Elastik Band, Kiki & Herb, Visnadi, The Lund Clements Churchill Trio, Thomas Mery, The Baltimores, Kevin Slick, Dave Rummans, Isadar, Kenny Moran.

Most of these sound like fairly loving covers of the tribute variety. Few of these bands are ever going to make it big with Kate Bush's or any other material. The one by the Baltimores is not particularly respectful of the original song. The one by Icon & The Black Roses, which is a hard rock version, sounded the most interesting to me. Your mileage will of course vary.

The deal with this particular song is that the original is so amazingly good there's no way anyone could improve on it:

Songs that Write Themselves

Similar to the sculptor's concept that the sculpture is inside the rock and the artist just needs to remove the unnecessary material, some songs seem to already exist in ideal Platonic song space and simply await emergence by writing them down. This is no slight to the songwriter, since it takes a talented inner ear to find these songs and to know them when they materialize. Here's a song that strikes me as this type. It just flows out, probably like it did when they first put it together. "Caroline" by Concrete Blonde.



Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving.

Upcoming superhero movies

Movie versions are on the way for Sub-mariner, Captain Marvel, Luke Cage, Thor, and Green Lantern. Funny (non-optimistic) preview article.

Superheroes I'd like to see movies of:
Firestorm


Doctor Strange

FSM

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is hitting the mainstream! Long may He writhe!!!

Some Stevie...

...for your Thursday. I grew up singing along to her songs. She and I gravitate to the same stock chord progressions.

Bow down...

...before God Slayer!

Friday drum blogging...

... with the best pop drummer of all time, Stewart Copeland.

Bands I get mixed up...

Not because their music is similar (actually I don't know much about any of these bands but have heard them occasionally) but because of their names (or something...).

Mudhoney and Chickasaw Mud Puppies
Cake and the Wedding Present
Big Head Todd and the Monsters and Big Drill Car
Radiohead and Stereolab
Damn Yankees and Skid Row
the Verve and the Verve Pipe

When R.E.M. made great music

Lots of bands are really good in their first few releases and then get bad (sometimes really bad) after that. R.E.M. is the perfect example. Their first five studio albums, Murmur (1983), Reckoning (1984), Fables of the Reconstruction (1985), Lifes Rich Pageant (1986), Document (1987), in my opinions, are all masterpieces, although of slightly declining quality chronologically. And their pre-Murmur EP Chronic Town (released in 1990) shines above them all, in terms of a new exciting sound. This sound was dominated by Peter Buck's jangly electric guitar and Michael Stipe's oblique, often murmuring and incomprehensible lyrics. And it's steeped in the band's Athens, Georgia surroundings and folk influences. This IS the R.E.M. sound, and it's why they became titans of college/alternative rock. The international stardom that came after that somehow (the band themselves? production? I don't know the cause) ruined their sound. The guitar tracks became a mishmash of strummy acoustic pap and the songs became pretentious, unlistenable anthems.

Here's my favorite R.E.M. song, "Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars)" from Chronic Town. This is from a TV dance show, but they are actually playing live.



[edited by Slig 11/5/07]

Singapore Rice Noodles of the Month

From Tangerine in Port Jefferson Station, NY. Very tasty with a good veggie mix and just the right amount of oil. Spicyness is good; a little up front and a little delayed. A touch on the salty side but overall a quite nice Singapore Chow Mei Fun.

Book of Love

New York's (originaly from Philly) Book of Love made the best synth pop in America in the 80s and possibly ever. They were also a very fun show to see live (saw them in early '89 in a dining hall at the University of Rochester). The combination of crisp, bold rhythm tracks and the low-pitched vocals of Susan Ottaviano made for a rich sound that suited the dance floor scene very well (contrasting with the likes of New Order, Depeche Mode, and the Smiths). Their studio production was perfect. And the band had a lot of fun with the music.

Here's their biggest hit "Pretty Boys and Pretty Girls", which actually got some pop radio airplay:



For Halloween, I wanted to link to the song "Witchcraft", but I couldn't find it on Youtube. So here's a cover by a duo called Ejector. I recommend picking up Book of Love's original (much better but just as fun)...

Opera

This morning, NPR had a story about an opera commissioned to celebrate five paintings by Edward Hopper. Great idea; certainly his art is well deserving. The problem is the genre. Opera, especially contemporary American opera, in my opinion, is one of the least beautiful, in fact I would even use the term ugly, uses of the human voice imaginable. Listen to the clips from the radio piece and tell me you don't agree. I like classical music a lot. I especially like to hear contemporary classical music becuase it's interesting and often explores new musical territory. But putting that dissonant caterwauling over the top of it makes it unlistenable. Yes, this is art. And art doesn't have to be about beauty. But for me, music has to be at least somewhat about beauty, or I simply don't have time for it.

Jane Wiedlin

Have I mentioned yet that Jane Wiedlin rocks?

She just does.

Bands I have been in...

(that have played at least one gig; in chronological order)

Modern Vision
RSVP
Any Colour
the Skanks
Sleestack Embassy
Rubber Curtain
Seed Pod 17
U-Pump
Minus Paul
Megachild

Rush

As the last post of my series on good music by cliche-ishly popular bands, I have to briefly mention Rush. Coming of age male in the 80s in the Northeast, listening to AOR radio, Rush was unavoidable. Anyone in the other gender (generally, but there have been exceptions) and with a different background, has a much less likely chance of "getting" Rush. Rush is a lot of musical punch from three guys who are virtuosos. It's rock and roll glory, of by and for introverted geeks. You have to spend a lot of time in your bedroom emulating this stuff to play like this (and armies of introverted guys have done this, even myself on keyboards occasionally). You have to have grown up in this lonely existence (or among fellow lonely travellers) to understand what Rush is about and to appreciate their music. This is the soundtrack to a certain type of existence. Rush (and their fans) take a lot of undeservered crap from people who have never been there (those people have other brands of patheticness in their backgrounds and have migrated to other music, which, in turn, Rush fans don't understand).

Here is a live version of my favorite Rush song, "Analog Kid". It gives a good look at how three guys can produce such a big sound onstage:

Round and Round - Ratt

SD/LA’s Ratt was a transitional 80s metal band, self identified as “glam” metal. They were transitional musically between the early 80s harder metal of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden (actually in retrospect, a lot of this material doesn’t sound so hard today) and the like (by whom they were surely heavily influenced) and the full-on hair metal glammers of the late 80s and 90s. I mention them here because of a single song, their best known, “Round and Round” (1984) which stands out. The rest of their material that I’ve heard is pedestrian stuff. Hundreds of bands were playing this sound in garages and small bars all over the place. But “Round and Round” provides evidence that somebody in that band (if they indeed wrote the song; nothing on their Wikipedia pages indicates who wrote it) could write songs. There are unconventional chord changes in both the intro/chorus (an A flat augmented E flat major to a G flat augmented D flat major to a B major) and verse (E flat major to G flat major), providing for possibly the most unique hooks in any metal song that I’ve heard.

The video stars Milton Bearle and is pretty funny.