I’ve assembled a playlist of all those good classic Christmas songs, so you don’t have to sit through all the bad ones on the radio, and Merry Christmas!
Continue reading Merry Christmas Everyone- Xmas ’10 Playlist
Tag: mp3’s
It is 5 AM…and You Are Listening to Los Angeles
In the annals of 90’s music, you might run across a band called Soul Coughing. If you hadn’t heard the name before you’d be likely to shrug it off as some metal band that was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and probably wasn’t very good anyway. You’d be hard-pressed to find yourself more wrong.
While what we remember as alternative rock in the 90’s may mostly consist of that of two California bands; Cake and Sublime, the east coast too was making its own mark on music. G. Love and Special Sauce is one such example that still has a grip on music today, though his brand of hip-hop blues hasn’t been very groundbreaking since his debut in 1994 (Though “This Ain’t Livin'” is one of the most poignant songs you’d find on any record past and present) yet there was a band with an even more creative vision who came out of NYC who would call themselves Soul Coughing.
Poetry and music had been intertwined before, but usually only to little success, and found mostly in run-down jazz clubs and open mics. M. Doughty and his band mates would try to fill the void in popular music form, Doughty’s alliterative and abstract stanzas would be a percussive instrument of their own backed by a tremendous rhythm section of upright bass and drums. However clever his lyrics, it is doubtful just how good they would have been without another key member, Mark de Gli Antoni, who played keyboards, and more importantly provided samples.
Sampling today is more important than ever in rap music, the backbone by which most rap songs live and die by and yet creatively it was never better than when Soul Coughing was at their best. Listening to Ruby Vroom, their debut album is like stepping into the looking glass from Alice in Wonderland, everything is delightfully surreal and new. Not many bands would have the gall to start their debut song with a line like “A man drives a plane into the Chrysler Building” yet their sound is so unique and dynamic that by the time “Screenwriter’s Blues” and “Down To This” roll around, you’ll never look at Los Angeles, Howlin’ Wolf, or the Andrews Sisters the same.
Yet Soul Coughing isn’t a one-trick pony, their taste for the surreal blends rather well with true sentiment, “True Dreams of Wichita” wouldn’t feel out of place on an early Tom Waits album, with its musings on a recent break-up, and songs like “Soft Serve” combine a mellow instrumentation with intricate imagery.
Check out some of Soul Coughing’s material after the jump.
Continue reading It is 5 AM…and You Are Listening to Los Angeles
Snakes, Neighbors, and A Good Kind of Crazy: A Mixtape
It’s been far too long since I’ve done a Mixtape and far too long since I’ve updated the site in general so enjoy this latest mixtape packed full of both old and new, some classics, some you never will have heard of…all of it good. So sit back, relax, get that right-clicking hand ready and enjoy the full mix after the jump.
Continue reading Snakes, Neighbors, and A Good Kind of Crazy: A Mixtape
In Memoriam: John Lennon
On the 70th anniversary of his birth, I’ll be the first to admit that there was a time where I was obsessed with the man, since being a Beatles fan at the age of 5, I delved into the mythology, the legend that made up the story of John Lennon’s life. It was always an intensely sad and morose feeling listening to songs like “Across the Universe” and “Imagine” with the knowledge that a man who was at such peace to write these things was dead, assassinated, murdered by a man who made no more sense than the Catcher In the Rye he claimed to be. I too, as a tremendous Beatles fan, fell victim to blaming his wife Yoko Ono, of destroying the band and was also blinded as to how far love will make someone go. Yet as I reach the final mark of adulthood, I find myself almost at odds with the continuing legend.
Sure, there’s using his image and fame for peace, that’s noble, and true to what Lennon himself believed in, Peace is truly more than just limited to the life of one person, and using a status of fame and fortune for a good cause is never a bad thing. Yet, it’s almost a twist in the gut to at the same time release a remastered Lennon catalog, things that have stripped down the original versions. If anything, this is something ignoble, and something Lennon never would have stood for.
“It’s better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. I don’t appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious or of dead James Dean or of dead John Wayne. It’s the same thing. Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison — it’s garbage to me. I worship the people who survive. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo.”
So although it is painful to acknowledge the death of a prolific man before his time, it is almost criminal how his image continues to be used for profit. I do not stand to say that I believe Yoko Ono is a woman without talent but I will say that she is a woman without shame. Remarkably, she claims to stand for what her late husband stood for, but has no problem with keeping the money that comes along with it. She refuses to forgive his killer, even though in John Lennon’s message of peace, it would be understanding, and moving, to forgive a man who did not know what he was doing. John Lennon was a great man, a great musician, a great writer, but he was not God. He never wanted to be. So yes, on his 70th birthday, celebrate his music, his fight for peace, and mourn that he died a horrible death. But please, do not spend your money doing it. John Lennon is no Che Guevara. Every time you see him featured in a TV ad, what he stood for dies a little. Remember the man for the man that he was, not the image that Yoko Ono has made him be.
So in remembrance of his music, I give you three songs which were symbolic of his musical output (inspiring, anthemic, and introspective), and a great cover of one of his best.
The Art of the Mixtape 