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Mad Fly lives

My iPod is named HAL

As I was driving to work a couple of months ago, I pulled into the Union Station parking garage while listening to The Shins' "Caring Is Creepy" on the Garden State soundtrack (pretty worthy, by the way) on the CD player. As the song went into the chorus, I thought, "I've heard this before . . . in another song." I was sure I knew that chorus, or the vocal pattern, or something -- it wasn't an egregious rip-off on the part of The Shins, but still damn close. Of course, you can never think of a song with another one playing, and it was just bugging me.

I parked the car and began walking to my building. Just as I was about to turn on the iPod and tune out, I even came up with a couple of lyrics: Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire / something something something . . . dammit, what is it? I shook my head, plugged in the earphones, and gave up. Oh, well.

iPod shuffle, second song as I walked to work. Crowded House, "Weather With You." Son of a bitch.
Out of 9,057 songs, it nailed it in two tries. I was stunned, and felt like buying a lottery ticket or something. Didn't, of course, which is why I didn't win.

* * *

Fast forward to this weekend. I was working in the yard, accompanied by The Pod once again. (The iPod, not the Ween album, of course.) Shuffling it up, as always, and Killing Joke's "Eighties" came up. Now, I don't know how many of you recall this song, and of that group how many of you have heard it since, say 1991, when an up-and-coming Seattle act lifted the riff nearly note for note to create one of the staples of the grunge campaign. It was worthy of momentary reflection, though, when I was weed-eating (i.e., doing yardwork, not practicing Herb's erstwhile recreations) and "Eighties" charged into my ears with its sped-up "Come As You Are" intro.

While the Shins/CH similarities are debatable and perhaps only apparent if you listen to way too much music, the Killing Joke/Nirvana tunes were close enough that litigation almost came into play when "Come As You Are" hit the radio. (Kurt Cobain was always humble about who and what his band pilfered from, most frequently naming the Pixies but definitely acknowledging this particular borrowing. I think that forthcoming approach to his musical "creations" may have saved him some court costs and more.) Anyway, the notable parallel between the Killing Joke song and its later, more popular counterpart, was the most uncanny event in a mundane morning of yardwork until three things happened.

1.) I decided I'd like to hear the two songs back-to-back for good measure.
2.) I decided I probably would never bother to actually play them back-to-back.
3.) The very next song on the shuffle after "Eighties" was "Come As You Are" by Nirvana.

My jaw instantly fell open with a "Wha?", and I looked around the yard to see if I were on some reality television show. After realizing that it would have been the most boring, dreadful visual for any TV show ever, I simply stared at the machine with a "How'd you do that?" look. I was perplexed for half a hedge's worth, but I eventually came to the only conclusion there can be.

The iPod uses earphones that are jammed way into your ears, (a) likely destroying your eardrums gradually, but more relevantly (b) pressed way up against your brain. Over time, the player, with its feelers tapped into your brainwaves, starts to read your thoughts, musical and otherwise. Usually this just manifests itself in the shuffle coming up with the perfect song for the perfect frame of mind, but occasionally, like in these two examples, there happens that rare case where it reads the synaptic request for a particular track, and it delivers.

I'm dreading the day I casually click on the Disco playlist, only to have my iPod blurt into my earphones in HAL's voice, "Just what do you think you're doing, Whitney?"

...

a musing

a cross-post form the lammie-blog

The weather in st petersburg florida is hot....as.....fuck. Who in their right mind would live in such a god-forsaken locale? me, apparently.

The radio. It seems that because it's really fucking hot in florida all of the cool college radio people go to school in other states and as a consequence the radio sucks. Sure, we've got WMNF, the third leg of the Pacifica/WBAI radical radio triad busting out Democracy Now and Alan Watts buddhism lectures in the mid-morning but I'm stuck with R&B as told by old white dudes all afternoon - who the fuck wants to hear Rufus Thomas over and over again? not me. The weekend on WMNF is no better - polka party on saturday? The Sunday Schmita (sp?) klezmer show? fuck. I like klezmer and polka but not every weekend. I also know there's a reason why these shows are on air and I'm all for it, it's just that I have nowhere else to go. One of the few bright spot on WMNF, music wise, is Friday nights from 7-9 when Steve "the hitman" Williams and some guy named, strangely, the Original Get-Down Plunder, kick out the old school soul jams.

Unfortuntely, if WMNF is sucking I can't tweak the dial, always below 92-93-ish, to 90.7 (grunge and bile, we got style, paul verkuil) WCWM in the 'burg, 90.5 WUOG to rock out to the latest coolest hipper than shit tunes in Athens GA, or even 88.1 WMBR@ M.I.T. in Cambridge where (although they're a little more mature than typical college radio - they don't bring their drunk friends into the sound booth or their friends are nice and quiet) the playlist was brand new each and every day. I shit you not, the radio really sucks so bad here, in terms of hearing *new* things, that I find myself relying on internet radio - KEXP in Seattle (a little corporate but better than nothing) WFMU - East Orange NJ for the real deal college FM without the college and WFUV (Fordham - for my "adult" album rock jones). I also find myself digging around the ether-stacks on my own. Which brings me to my point.

We all miss shit. I missed Phish (whatever), Pavement (taken care of), and REM (still haven't figured out what everyone creamed in their pants for over them), among others. I've spent the better part of my lunch time and post-lunch time digging around and figuring out what I've been missing. So far Dinosaur Jr (smack in the middle of a Pixies-magnitude reunion) is promising, Nuetral Milk Hotel is fucking rocking and M. Ward is coming around the bend and picking up speed. Rock on.

Beck, Winner

Beck's new album Guero is a keeper -- it only took me a couple of spins to really get into it. It was produced by The Dust Brothers (Odelay, the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique), and it has an Odelay feel to it, all over the place without being choppy. "E-Pro," the first song, is a great opener, faster and harder than most of the album. Every song therafter has its own style and sound to it, simultaneously derivative of a million different things and yet unlike anything else I've come across in a while. I was always a tiny bit lukewarm on Beck, never fully endorsing him because of some odd notion that he was copying the Beasties. Clearly he's miles away from that comparison now. It was probably on my brutally hung over ride home from Jersey to Arlington last Sunday with the windows rolled down and this album turned up that I decided that Beck is the real deal and this album is worth highly recommending.

Also getting some airplay in my domain is Morrissey's latest record, You Are the Quarry. A lot of what I said about the Camper album applies -- if you always found The Smiths and Morrissey to be whiny, mopey alt-pop, you won't be any happier with this effort. But those who enjoyed them/him will dig it -- better than he's done in quite some time. He's still pretty much a lyrical downer, but there are more than a few enjoyable tunes here. He recently issued a live album as well -- one which incorporates a handful of Smiths songs in the set list. Even more enjoyable.

In the next four weeks there will be new albums from Springsteen, Ryan Adams, nine inch nails, Dave Matthews Band, Weezer, New Order, Lucinda Williams, and, of course, The Flaming Lips. Ween is supposedly going to issue some kind of album from their website soon; you never know what it will be with them, or if that's even true, as it may just be some high joke.

Also, don't miss the debut release of the up-and-coming New Jersey act Greasetruck. And if you ask nicely, we can set you up with the one-off recording of "I'm Your Hero, You're My Gyro" by Random Idiots.

HFS RIP, but the HFStival Lives

As most of the guys who chime in here probably know, DC's original alternative rock radio station 99.1 WHFS went to a Latin pop format recently, dismaying many but putting a quick end to its slow, painful death in the eyes of many more. While I intended to start a thread discussing whether rock radio as we know it is pretty much dead in the water in 2005, I didn't get around to it. (I'd still enjoy doing so at some point.) Meanwhile, WHFS has sort of, kind of been resurrected . . . on a Baltimore talk radio station during certain hours in a frequency that doesn't really reach DC's airwaves. And from what I have read, they're still churning out the same overplayed, underthought playlists from Billboard's Top 100.

The powers that be have, though, managed to keep the HFStival alive an well, at least according to this set list:

Billy Idol
Sum 41
Social Distortion
Garbage
Foo Fighters
Good Charlotte
Coldplay
The Bravery
Citizen Cope
Jimmies Chicken Shack
New York Dolls
Unwritten Law
They Might Be Giants
Louis XIV
Echo and the Bunnymen
Interpol
The Stereophonics

The show is in Baltimore, appropriately, at the Ravens Stadium. I saw the HFStival there five or six years ago, and it was a great one. I nearly died in an Offspring moshsmash, and the Chili Peppers unveiled Californication brilliantly. Anyway, I'm not sure I'm even young enough to qualify for admission, even though the concert is chock full of 80's artists (not to mention the New York Dolls!), but it looks like it'd be an entertaining show.

Post-Patty Hangover

Ugh. March 18, international hangover day.

Music can be therapeutic in these instances, but it has to be the right music. Slow, easy tunes. No metal, no hip-hop, nothing danceable. Country and anything that could fall under the singer-songwriter genre do the trick, but you're not limited to easy listening per se to get you through. It always helps if the song is a sad one, even better if it mentions or alludes to alcohol, and it's ideal if the lyrics are about hangovers. Here's a list if you're making a disc or playlist of Hangover Cure Music.

The Ideal:
Johnny Cash, "Sunday Morning Coming Down"
Jimmy Buffett, "My Head Hurts, My Feet Stink, and I Don't Love Jesus" and "Trying to Reason with the Hurricane Season"
Old 97's, "Jagged"
The Replacements, "Here Comes a Regular"

The Rest:
Allman Brothers Band, "Whipping Post"
The Band, "The Shape I'm In"
Barenaked Ladies, "Brian Wilson"
Beatles, "Golden Slumbers" and "I'm So Tired"
Ben Folds Five, "Smoke"
Beth Orton, "Stolen Car"
Big Head Todd & the Monsters, "Please Don't Tell Her"
Bill Withers, "Ain't No Sunshine"
Billy Bragg & Wilco, "California Stars"
Blind Faith, "Can't Find My Way Home"
Bob Dylan, "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"
Bob Marley & the Wailers, "Natural Mystic"
Bruce Springsteen, "Jungleland," "Point Blank," "If I Should Fall Behind," the Nebraska album
Cake, "Friend Is a Four Letter Word"
Camper van Beethoven, "Come On Darkness"
Cat Stevens, "Wild World"
Chris Isaak, "Wicked Game"
Coldplay, "In My Place"
Commodores, "Easy"
Connells, "'74-'75"
Cowboy Junkies, "Sweet Jane"
CCR, "Long As I Can See the Light"
CSNY, "Helplessly Hoping"
The Cult, "Black Angel"
Dave Pellicane, "Crazy"
David Gray, "Please Forgive Me"
Dire Straits, "Water of Love"
Eagles, "Peaceful Easy Feeling"
Elvis Costello & the Attractions, "Beyond Belief"
Elvis Presley, "In the Ghetto"
Eric Clapton, "Promises"
Fountains of Wayne, "Hackensack"
Grateful Dead, "Fire on the Mountain"
Hall & Oates, "She's Gone"
Harry Chapin, "Cat's in the Cradle"
Jayhawks, "Blue"
Jim Croce, "Time in a Bottle"
John Anderson, "Seminole Wind"
Keane, "Somewhere Only We Knew"
Kinks, "Waterloo Sunset"
Little Feat, "Trouble"
Lou Reed, "Perfect Day"
Lyle Lovett, "If I Had a Boat"
Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Tuesday's Gone" and "Simple Man"
Moby, "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?"
Morphine, "Candy"
Morrissey, "Every Day Is Like Sunday"
Neil Young, "The Needle and the Damage Done," "Helpless," "Out on the Weekend," most of his catalogue
Nirvana, "Something In the Way"
Old 97's, "Stoned"
Peter Gabriel, "Mercy Street"
Portishead, "Sour Times"
R.E.M., "So. Central Rain" and "Country Feedback"
Radiohead, "Street Spirit (Fade Out)"
Ramones, "She Talks to Rainbows"
Random Idiots, "House of the Martha Wood"
Red Hot Chili Peppers, "I Could Have Lied"
Rolling Stones, "Salt of the Earth," "Dead Flowers," "Time Waits for No One," and Mad Fly's fave "Loving Cup"
Ryan Adams, "Harder Now That It's Over"
Seven Mary Three, "Lucky"
Smashing Pumpkins, "Never Let Me Down Again" and "Disarm"
The Smiths, "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want"
Son Volt, "Windfall"
Spoon, "Everything Hits at Once"
Starsailor, "Alcoholic"
Talking Heads, "Heaven"
Travis, "Why Does It Always Rain on Me?"
U2, "Bad"
Van Morrison, "And It Stoned Me"
Violent Femmes, "Good Feeling"
Ween, "It's Gonna Be (Alright)" and "Baby Bitch"
Wilco, "How to Fight Loneliness" and "Red-Eyed and Blue"

Happy St. Patrick's

Erin go bragh, pogue mahone, and all that.
Here is a smattering of Irishness to enjoy this Thursday whilst slugging Guinness and Jameson:

The Pogues, "The Sick Bed of Cúchulaínn"
Hothouse Flowers, "Don't Go"
The Boomtown Rats, "Up All Night"
Van Morrison, "Domino"
The Corrs & Bono, "When the Stars Go Blue"
Sinéad O'Connor, "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance"
The Cranberries, "Wanted"
My Bloody Valentine, "Sometimes"
Shane MacGowan & the Popes, "Nancy Whiskey"
Danny Wilson, "Mary's Prayer"
Luka Bloom, "In Between Days"
The Undertones, "Teenage Kicks"
The Commitments, "Mustang Sally"
Stiff Little Fingers, "Alternative Ulster"
Thin Lizzy, "Whiskey in the Jar"

and that obscure Irish quartet . . .

U2, "A Sort of Homecoming"