Tuesday, December 23, 2008

i got my head checked by a jumbo jet: 851-875



851. "hate it or love it" (feat. 50 cent)
the game

wait, did the avalanches produce this or something? the syrupy 70s strings and dopey bells n' chimes add an element of shockingly sweet sentimentality uncommon in mainstream hip and the hop. we never really got to know "rap's mvp" because he never really was all that compelling, but spotlight-stealing fiddee delivers one of the best non-sequiturs ever: "daddy ain't around, probably out committin' felonies/my favorite rapper used to sing 'ch-check out my melodies.'"

the game (feat. 50 cent) - hate it or love it

852. "don't let's start"
they might be giants

oh, just another example of a song that got ingrained into my brain after i saw the video on mtv back when i was a wee lad still wearing green day underwear. it's been a buzzing gnat; nagging, don't don't don't let's start in the recesses of my psyche. it would get caught on repeat in my head and i had no way to allievate the desire to hear it. i finally downloaded it illegally TEN YEARS later, but it's still there, nasally awkward voice and overwrought 80's production and all. such is the value - and obnoxiousness - of a expertly-crafted pop hook.

they might be giants - don't let's start

853. "lost highway"
mekons

oh, shut up you wacky post-punkers. like you know anything about highways or ramblin' and gamblin' and bein' like a rollin' stone or corn whiskey or juke joints and loose honky-tonked women. but, hanky-panky's version barely missed the 1950 cutoff date, so, mekons it had to be. fake and affected, yeah, but, it's all about the song - one of the greatest encapsulations of american, bleary-eyed wanderlust and the hopelessness of displacement and the loss of the foundations of family and community. is the life of sin and booze and sex and cards worth losing your VERY SOUL?

mekons - lost highway

854. "ankle injuries"
fujiya & miyagi

i actually really liked this band, where'd they go? wait, they released an album this year and no one cared? wait, they're just another overhyped, underdeveloped pitchforked band? at least they synthesized their influences better than most. they even chant the name of the band in the opening, yes! the panning effects tautly tease your perceptions while the throb of the bass challenges you to not move yr wretched feet. the motorik rhythm could sing me the phonebook.

fujiya & miyagi - ankle injuries

855. "hang on sloopy"
the mccoys

the guy who played guitar on most of weird al's albums is in this group. this is a excellent example of a defining '60s one hit wonderment - a bunch of dopey amateur teenage musicians from a small town in the middle of ass-raping nowhere stumble upon an engaging set of chord changes and slop it all off with a grandstanding, monster of a chorus and achieve national recognition. there's no substance here, just shake it shake it shake it [dancing = sex, by the way, in case you don't know, in case you live under the rock of ages]. sloopy will be the name of my firstborn.

the mccoys - hang on sloopy

856. "nutmeg" (feat. rza)
ghostface killah

ghost's rhymes are so dense and intricate, i don't even know what the fuck he's talking about most of the time. but, as any good intellectualized rap music fan will tell ya, he's so po-mo and joycean. you need footnotes to fully grasp the complexity of his wordplay and allusions - (i don't know if i came up with that thought myself or if i stole it from somewhere). seriously, check out the lyrics. ghost's kaleidoscopic schizophasia is complemented by a soulful yet frenetic rza beat dependent upon doppler effect strings. this is the beginning of ghostface's escalation from second-tier to the pinnacle of the twenty-first century wu empire.

ghostface killah (feat. rza) - nutmeg

857. "the boxer"
simon & garfunkel

this is a quintessential example of an overlong outro diluting the impact of an otherwise affective track. i call bullshit on most of paul and art's output, but hal blaine's drum snaps just shot me in the brain. is that a jew's harp? oh wait, "bass harmonica." paul simple simon the pieman's lyrics have always struck me as embarassingly pretentious and pansified and muted and diluted. more than anyone, i think he opened the doors for the likes of james taylor and any other castrated jackass with a vomit-inducing song in the heart and delicate, callous-less guitar strummin' fingers. regardless, there's some hellfire and creepy undertones here and again, those drum gingersnaps make me quiver in the liver.

simon & garfunkel - the boxer

858. "lex"
ratatat

i'm mc vag and i'm here to say/i rap to this shit everyday: the beats are rude like your attitude/the bass is hot like a witch's twat/the drums are loud and it make me proud/to say, hey, fucker, get off my cloud/you know no boys are allowed/i'll piss on you like you're the turin shroud/because i'm mc vag and i'm here to stay/i'll shoot you down anyway. if ratatat can inspire a white girl from the 'burbs of chicago to freestyle, it must be some DOPE, ILL, NASTY boisterous electro-mash.

ratatat - lex

859. "sweet jane"
cowboy junkies

ssee, now, you just don't listen, mott the hoople. i TOLD you that "sweet jane" is a SAD song. you don't need to glam it up more. you don't need to rock it out. it doesn't need two guitars and an extended intro, lou, you rock and roll animal. it just needs a sweet, sad lonely voice and some bare instrumentation. isn't that better? doesn't that heighten the emotional vulnerability and poignant hopelessness inherent in the original song? the best velvet underground covers emphasize the melancholy and downplay the raucousness. this will haunt your dreams, evil mothers and role-players.

cowboy junkies - sweet jane

860. "da doo ron ron"
the crystals

his name was bill? really? next thing you'll tell me is that "da doo run run" is code for "uncouth, dirty, premarital, unprotected sex." i mean, it has to be, right? his name was bill and then it was all "da doo run run." how influential is phil spector? production ultimately makes or breaks or fakes a track and he arguably started that trend. pare away the wall o' sound and this would have been a pleasantly inoffensive pop track. but then add a percussive, pounding piano, snarling horns, and a thwacking, smacking stop 'n start teasing drum beat and it turns into something gigantic and pulversizng. phil spector, you may be crazy, but you knew how to make a pop record. and then he hit you and it probably felt like a kiss.

the crystals - da doo r0n ron

861. "you are a runner and i am my father's son"
wolf parade

under certain conditions, those gargantuan drums, the herky-jerky unrelenting rhythm and the incoherent yelping constitute something incredibly ominous and threatening. spencer krug is among the most talented indie-schmock songwriters, but i've never been able to delve into his work - mainly because i'm wary of his unrestrained proggy influences. [his other band, sunset rubdown, is an absolute snorefest live too; literally, i was nodding off to incomprehensible noodling and jammed-out ballyhoo]. regardless, this is a steel-toed boot in the drywall opening track; it'll knock you out of your see, feel, hear, smell, taste.

wolf parade - you are a runner and i am my father's son

862. "the humpty dance"
digital underground

humpty hump coulda been big; a contender; a real force to be reckoned with. he had the wit of chuck d., the refinement of rakim and the whimsical spirit of luther campbell. he had his own dance, he appeared in a dan akyroyd film and he was poised to rule the rap world. then a young machiavellian upstart named too pack stole the limes from the light and humpty-pronounced with an "umpty"- was reduced to being a forgotten novelty act, a mere one-hit wunderkind. it's a rough game out there, folksies. learn from his mistakes and stay away from lumpy oatmeal and burger king bathrooms.

digital underground - the humpty dance

863. "melody day"
caribou

see, everybody loves trying to sound like 1968! even name-changing electronic musicians. with all those sleigh bells, you'd think there would be chestnuts roasting on an open fire at grandmother's house through the woods (his name is a synonym for "reindeer" yar har har har har!!11). dan snaith unashamedly stacks layer upon layer of chimes, woodwinds, horns and percussion, resulting in a dizzying amalgam of psychedelic whimsy and chamber-pop pathos. this may be "record collecter pop," but it swirls and soars and pirouettes gracefully around your jaded, disaffected ears.

caribou - melody day

864. "the windmills of your mind"
dusty springfield

this sounds like anomaly; the lyrics are too clever (simile after simile after simile!), the structure too complex and labyrinthian, the production too string and castanet laden, dusty's voice too sultry (but not "soulful.") surely this is from the 50s, or even the early 60s. surely this wasn't released the same year of woodstock and the proliferation of the moog. this represents a dying gasp of a declining method of musical production. the paradigm would shift irrevocably and this sound would soon be labelled archaic, moldy, and retrograde.

dusty springfield - windmills of your mind

865. "needles in the camel's eye"
brian eno

i hear the roots of shoegazing in the pounding rhythm and repetitive, heavily-layered guitars. i hear every indie rock vocalist in the yelps and strained notes. i hear the anachronistic detuned, twanged-out surf rock guitar in the instrumental bridge battling the ramshackle noise underneath. i hear the fake-out and stop starts toying with your expectations. i hear YET ANOTHER opening track that captures the power and emotional dynamism of the entire album. i hear bryan ferry's heart snapping in two like a piece of glossy plastic - hey brian can do fine on his own! i hear the most influential rock musician (/producer) of the 1970s.

brian eno - needles in the camel's eye

866. "sunshowers" (diplo mix)
m.i.a.

it's pretty minimalist: the "push it" drums, a throbbing mechanical bass, occasional sound effects or synth swells and then maya's off-kilter rhymes. if the album version is actually kind of pleasant, diplo's mix (that actually showed up on the piracy funds terrorism mixtape released before arular) heightens the ominous, drugged-out undertones of the refrain (sampled from a group called "dr. buzzard's original savannah band") and draws attention to maya's contradictory, politically-charged words (which usually get obscured by the beats).

m.i.a. - sunshowers (diplo mix)

867. "jambalaya (on the bayou)"
hank williams

all right, so maybe this is a gross bastardization of cajun music and maybe that faux-patois is kind of grating (and both grammatically and politically incorrect), but i'll be damned as all hell if this isn't the most fun hank ever seemed to have on record. it's really a throwback to the old, weird america: the distinctions among roots music - "blues," "country," "cajun," et cetera - in the twenties and thirties were blurred, if not completely non-existent. a few decades later williams recognized the playfulness of the sound of fiddles and accordions and slapped it to record. "son of a gun, we'll have big fun," indeed.

hank williams - jambalaya (on the bayou)

868. "maybe partying will help"
minutemen

the bass pops and chicken scratch guitar have always sounded more red hot chili peppers than gang of four to me, but this ode to existential dread is more clever than anything anthony kiedis ever vomited out. what else is there to do when faced with the unbearable nothingness and the perils and tribulations of being a lonesome, isolated individual? let's get drunk, let's do drugs, let's have sex, let's just have fun, damnit. if you stop and wonder why, you'll just depress yourself, bro. hedonism is better than disillusionment.

minutemen - maybe partying will help

869. "too drunk to dream"
the magnetic fields

only stephin merritt could construct a "post-modern drinking song." we don't drink because it eases the pain of loneliness or heartbreak, or because it really makes everything seem better. we drink because it's what we think lonely, heartbroken people are supposed to do. he details the dicotomy in the opening: sober - misery, idiocy, ennui, spiritual death VS. shitfaced - excitement, revelation, clarity, strength. then the hyper-distorted instrumentation catapults in, causing you to lose your balance and fall into a trashcan. is booze the only way to alleviate the cruelty of all the heartless bastards? no, but that's what we all want to think when we're downing the umpteenth shot of jameson while the room swirls and prances.

the magnetic fields - too drunk to dream

870. "kill you"
eminem

what ever happened to eminem? wasn't he constructed as the aughties quintessential self-contradicting, "complex" yet mass-appealing pop persona? did kanye usurp his position? most of marshal mathers' work sounds incredibly dated to these old ears, but the exaggerated, slapstick-y and self-aware references to violence, sex, drugs make "kill you" his defining track - even if he does come off as self-aggrandizing. Vile, venomous, volatile, vein, Vicodin, vrrin, VRRIN, VRRIN!

eminem - kill you

871. "song 2"
blur
1997
blur

so it's the summer of 1997 and a young, impressionable stephen brown is starting to really get into mainstream music for the first time ever. before this, he had primarily relied on his parents for musical stimulus, but as a big badass ten year old going into the fifth grade, he had shifted his focus from gift mixtapes and weird al to "modern rock radio" and mtv. he now makes fun of most of the bands he enjoyed at the time - matchbox 20, third eye blind, sugar ray - but how can he explain his still-lingering fascination with blur's "song 2" he developed at that early age? it's an anomaly; a british deconstruction of american indie-rock with non sequitur lyrics and a big massive, shout-along chorus. i remember it being played at pool parties, basketball games, skating parties, ymcas, tae-kwon-do dojos and any other public center of midwestern mundanity conceivable. most americans still only think of blur as the "woo-hoo!" band.

blur - song 2

872. "i'm a slave 4 u"
britney spears

whether you care at all about brit brit as pop icon and immerse yourself in all the tabloid sensationalism and no panty upskirting is yr prerogative, but, uh, the neptunes? williams and hugo could have conquered the world. this sweaty, bacchic track was crucial in the shift of focus within pop music - at least among critics and nerdy fans - from performer to producer. "rockists" - a younger me included - would have balked at the idea of genuinely digging a britney spears song when she was in pigtails and a schoolgirl outfit. but then the neptunes came and surrounded her with synth swells, handclaps and crazy beats and, voila, a new way of thinking about pop music.

britney spears - i'm a slave 4 u

873. "i had too much to dream last night"
the electric prunes

for me, it's all about the oscillating backwards guitar. "psychedelia" may have acquired negative connotations due to dirty, rotten hippies, but those fucked-up guitar sounds piled on top of an otherwise conventional rock song was pretty "mind-expanding" and brilliant. later these dudes got involved with david axelrod, who diluted their rawness and grit. there's a reason why this is the opening track on nuggets; this captures all the insanity and uncertainty of the mid-'60s while still managing to RAWK like metamorphic.

the electric prunes - i had too much to dream last night

874. "pogo"
digitalism

the first mix CD from a significant other inevitably leads to sentimental attachments to songs you otherwise may have ignored or even actively disliked. such is the beauty of sharing music; it establishes a completely new context for the consumption of music and transform how you would engage with it. track is a fairly innocuous dance-rocky rave-up, but my memory of it will be permanently linked to not only that all-important first mix CD from an ex-girlfriend but also her cute commentary on the lyrics: "they sound like a crest ad campaign!"

digitalism - pogo

875. "suite: judy blue eyes"
crosby, stills and nash

my mother knows more than me about the technicalities of music. she can tell if someone is singing off-key, i can't. in terms of reading music, she's a college graduate and i'm still in first grade. even if "mom's ipod" usually inspires a groan from me and my sister during car trips, i usually respect her taste in music because i think that she understands and experiences it in a completely different manner than i do. she holds some obnoxious boomer attitudes - "a synthesizer isn't a real instrument" and "rapping doesn't take any talent, it's just talking" are the most grating - but i do value her opinions on music. ANYWAY, the point is, she has inspired me to appreciate songs i normally would dismiss. without the influence of my mother, i probably would denigrate the lyrics to this track as hippie sentimentality, criticize the four-part structure as pretentious and casually toss it into the "whatever" pile. but, because i've talked to her about it in those aforementioned car trips, i recognize and appreciate aspects to the song that i otherwise would have missed, particularly the complexities of the harmonies. "doo, doo doo, dep-doo, doo doo doo doo."

crosby, stills and nash - suite: judy blue eyes
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