Oh, man, you know who’s really good? This new band, 2:54, is really good.
Actually, I don’t know that. I haven’t listened to the rest of their album yet, but I really like this song. So, the rest of their music could be shit. But, listen to this one! It’s good!
FUN FACTS: The band is led by two sisters, and all of their songs are two minutes and fifty-four seconds long! (That last part isn’t true at all.)
hg-:
“I want to say a little something that’s long overdue
The disrespect to women has got to be through
To the all mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends
I want to offer my love and respect to the end”
I’ve seen Beastie Boys live more than any other. I had tickets to their sold-out show in 2009 when they had to cancel due to Adam’s diagnosis. I remember listening to License to Ill on my Walkman until the tape wore out wondering why my parents let me be born in the Midwest instead of Brooklyn.
This is the first time I have ever cried when I heard about a celebrity death.
This video was a live performance in 2004 on The David Letterman Show. There had been some chatter about how they had run their course. I tuned in prepared to see them do their thing on the stage and kill it.
The performance started out with Mix Master Mike on stage and then quickly cut to the Boys emerging from the subway. One straight, uncut shot of them walking through NYC while performing. It was exhilarating. The quality of this video isn’t that great, but it is one of my favorite live music television moments.
RIP, Adam
This was the coolest song in the world to me, when it first came out.
It kind of still is.
No one will ever be able to convince me that The Hives are not one of the best live bands in the world. This is worth eight minutes and twenty-one seconds of your time.
The awkward realization that you can never comfortably tell anyone what your favorite Wu-Tang Clan song is. “Shame On A Person”? Yeah, that’s the one.
Wub-Wub Wednesday
Resistance Hardcore star trek DubStep by RipSoundRecordings
You guys, my love for dubstep is becoming dangerously unironic. That’s why Wednesdays on this blog are now Wub-Wub Wednesdays! Because going on YouTube and looking for shitty homemade dubstep based on things like Star Trek and Jurassic Park is the best use of my time!
One of the signs of a truly great bad dubstep remix is that the remix has almost nothing to do with the thing it’s supposed to be a remix of. Take this “Resistance Hardcore star trek DubStep,” for example. It is Star Trek-related in that it has some Star Trek dialogue in it, and the accompanying video consists of Star Trek movie footage.
And that is all.
And that is beautiful.
Weezer
“Say It Ain’t So”
Weezer (1994)
Directed by Sophie Muller
I’ve been on a bit of a Weezer kick lately, after seeing recent footage of the band performing a ton of old songs — and actually doing them justice, for once. Say what you will about their new material (such as “it’s terrible,” or “why am I suddenly bleeding out of my ears?”) but Rivers is showing more respect to Pinkerton and The Blue Album than he has in years.
Anyway, please excuse me if I indulge in a little nostalgic GIFing over the coming weeks. I associate Weezer’s early work, and especially their music videos, with a great many fond memories and warm fuzzies. I mean, just look at that hackysacking sequence. Like anyone could ever pull that off today without looking like asshats.
Okay, so, two things happened yesterday.
So, shitty GIFs and Tune-Yards.* That’s what’s going on in my life.
* If she thinks I’m going to stylize her name every time I write it, she is mIsTaKeN.
Whitney Houston vs. Robyn
Obvs y’all have probably already heard this since it’s been making the rounds lately, but it makes me sad/happy so it’s going here anyway.
Ah, okay, so that’s how you get me to listen to Whitney Houston.
So, I was watching Mission: Impossible 2 (I know) with Dad last night.
You guys. You guys.
I totally forgot that Limp Bizkit did the Mission: Impossible theme for that movie.
It was like Christmas morning.
And I especially love the fact that they went from Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen of U2 — one of music’s best rhythm sections — covering the M:I theme for the first film, to the likes of Fred Durst and Wes Borland covering it for the very next one.
By the way, if you’re really into thirty-something, shaggy-haired white guys dressed in black, wearing sunglasses, and riding motorcycles, then I’ve sure got a movie for you.
Also, Ving Rhames.
It was all right. Kind of goofy in places. I liked it, though.
What are we upset about, again?
Oh, yes, the fact that someone in the music industry isn’t 100% homegrown and natural. That is so incredibly shocking. A musician and her handlers cultivating an image! WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO US ALL OF A SUDDEN?!
Admittedly, her lyrics can be a little dippy and pretentious, and “This is What Makes Us Girls” is basically a Nazi war crime, but I enjoyed the majority of the album. I couldn’t care less about the politics behind it.
But, yeah, she should stop doing that thing with her lip.
So, I was thinking about the statement I made in my last post, “I was ‘with it’ for approximately two years in the early ’00s,” and, you know, it’s really true.
Growing up, I was raised on classy shit. Musically (and cinematically and televisionically) I had limited exposure to what was modern and popular. I listened to the Beatles and the Monkees as a child, as well as Springsteen, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, the Police — all of which were technically popular and, some, modern — but none of them were what most kids were listening to in the late ’80s.
In the ’90s, my musical intake was limited to the radio (which I listened to obsessively) and some “Christian rock.” My parents kept a tight lid on what entertainment I was allowed to ingest, for better or worse. Then they bought me Collective Soul’s self-titled album(!) on cassette(!) for one of my late-’90s birthdays. The musical world slowly began to open up.
In 1999 and 2000, a couple of new friends from church blew my mind wide open by introducing me to Weezer’s first two albums and the Pixies. They were revelations. I started writing lyrics (badly). I became involved in the Weezer fan community. And that, right there, sometime between 2001 and 2004, is when I was “with it.”
I started listening to the likes of Stephen Malkmus, Cat Power, Ash, Of Montreal (very briefly), Nada Surf, Arcade Fire, and a multitude of other indie-type artists that I can no longer remember because OLD. This particular Weezer community was pretentious, off-color, elitist — i.e., right up my alley. I’d found my first Internet home in a post-America Online world.
Thanks to that community, I was with it, downloading music illegally on Soulseek and putting it on my Dell DJ mp3 player. I was cool, man.
Then, the forum’s cool kids decided I was creepy and annoying (fair enough, really). I was harassed. I left. I came back on a new account. I got banned.
I stopped being with it.
Since then, Weezer and Nada Surf went to shit, Ash fell apart, I stopped being able to tolerate Arcade Fire, and no matter how hard I try to like the current crop of indie sensations (your Mumfords and your Bon Ivers and your Vampire Weekends) I just can’t do it. It is an alien language that my brain is not meant to decipher.
But, for a couple of years back there, I knew what was up. Mmm. Yeah.
Sleigh Bells
“Comeback Kid”
Reign of Terror
And so, Sleigh Bells continues to be one of the only newfangled indie-type bands those damned kids seem to go nuts for nowadays that I actually kind of enjoy.
