MP3s are shared to try to convince people they should like the same music I do (As in... "then she told a friend, and she told a friend...) Of course if you love music, you should (responsibly) spend lots of your disposable income on music, concerts, and merch. If you are an artist or from a label, and would like a song removed, please e-mail me at kofis.hat [at] gmail [dot] com and I'll promptly do so.
As you can see in the image above, there plainly is a floor in the commercial plugging Queens of the Stone Age's digital-download-only single "Sick Sick Sick":
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The clip features two cartoon lightbulbs -- the star is "Bulby", who is broken, sassy, unkind, and smokes. A peglegged pirate lightbulb wearing an eyepatch makes a brief appeearance, as does a walking smiley character. At the end, Bulby falls. He asks, "How can I slip when there's no floor?" Yet both lightbulbs walk and lean on the floor. If there really wasn't a floor, I'd say ol' Bulby could still slip on it, just like cartoon characters keep running on the "ground" for a while after they've run past a cliff. Sometime after they look down and notice they're not on the ground anymore, that's when they're in trouble, and either fall, or if they can run fast enough, they can scurry back on the ground. Cartoons have different rules than reality.
It's a funny ad, but Bulby's cute antics and the video's flashing colors and lights can't disguise how ordinary the song is. It did provide decent background music for Bulby's antics. As counter-intuitive as it may sound, given the song's pounding beat, this track may serve as a sort of balm for times when this go-go world feels overwhelming. "Sick Sick Sick" has a very simple structure, uses simple rhymes, and is very repetitive. Also, at least in the portion played in the ad, there are no words with more than two syllables. Why, it's like a nursey rhyme set to music. Eh, it's okay, in that slightly-grating way, where you can't decide whether a song is annoying or not, but you know it will be at some point. I like these songs more:
Natural Calamity - As You Know (Dust Brothers Remix (on Peach Head) Very highly recommended. I heard the regular version after the remix and was disappointed by how bloodless it sounded. Pretty vocals, no pulse. The Dust Brothers brought out the track's potential... brought it to life. I'm very fond of it.
Whale - Four Big Speakers (on All Disco Dance Must End In Broken Bones) Yes, that Whale, the Swedish band of "Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe" (80s-era, fleeting) fame. Check it out, they had other songs!!11!! The band split up, and everyone has moved on to separate careers. One former member (thank you Wikipedia), Henrik Schyffert, is now a comedian. He's posted some clips of his material on his YouTube page. I didn't laugh, but that might be because they weren't in English.
Rufus McGovern - Burn (on Poor Man's Heart) Beautiful vocals. The sort of track Brits seem to call "Americana". It's almost alt-country, maybe an "alt-country ballad" and mostly quite good.
Serving iPods with Dinner... If You Can Stomach It
Chef Heston Blumenthal is also a cookbook author, BBC2 television presenter and hosts a Discovery Science show called Kitchen Chemistry, highlighting his affection for molecular gastronomy.
He apparently has a reputation for offbeat dishes, many of them using his scientific skills ("apparently" because I'd never heard of him, but then I live in California and have never supped in Berkshire.)
It's in Berkshire that Blumenthal is presenting diners with iPod shuffles along with one dish on his tasting menu. Pim describes the food she was served: "sand made of tapioca infused with miso, with medallions of Monkfish liver (Ankimo) in a seawater foam." Plus, assorted seafood, of course. Check out Chez Pim for photos and more about her dining experience.
The iPod shuffles, it should be noted, did not play pop or rock -- no "Eat It" or "I Eat Cannibals". No cheeky selections like Kate Bush's "I Eat Music", or songs by Phish or The Ocean Blue (this is making me want to do an ocean/water-themed playlist.) The iPod shuffles contained atmospheric ocean sounds (but imagine the potential for mischief if there's employee discontent!)
It's easy to build a case either for or against what Blumenthal's doing here. It's been done before, in museums, for instance. It may create a unique, fun, more multi-sensory experience, but also a more isolating one. Plus, iPods damage hearing. But Pim describes the music as "whispering", which doesn't make it seem that loud.
What really distresses me about Blumenthal's menu is the foie gras, highlighted by the name of the restaurant - The Fat Duck, which I don't see as funny or cute. I'm not going to post vivid descriptions or pictures to try to sway any minds, and I won't debate the topic. I will simply say that animals are abused very cruelly in order to make foie grois. The practice is already banned in the UK, but the sale isn't. That's ridiculous. If you live there, please sign this petition to ban the sale of foie gras in the UK. Signatures are being accepted until May 5th. Wherever you live, I hope you won't go to restaurants that serve foie gras or financially support restaurants that serve it, or chefs who prepare it, by selling any of their products. There are a lot of other cookbooks in the sea.
Melody Maker: 10 Essential Bands For The 2000 Festival Season
Thursday Songs:
Cranes - Thursday (on Wings of Joy) - A cross between a wispy cloud and a bit of lemon sherbet as it melts on your tongue.
Piziccato Five - Thursday (on The Sound of Music by Pizzicato Five) Breezy Japanese pop unless the lyrics are sinister, in which case it's superficially breezy, sinister, and sneaky.
Melody Maker:
Whether it's remembering "the one that got away" or posting and discussing music from 5 years before you started your blog, an anniversay often prompts a nostalgia for some time before the date itself.
While that's true, you might think an anniversary can also serve as a convenient way to link otherwise disconnected events and give someone an easy excuse to talk or write about virtually anything in the past.
Well, aren't we just Mr. Perfect? Hopefully, you can set such cynical feelings aside, at least for the moment.
I recently found a 2000 disc tucked away, and found it intriguing for a few reasons, aside from the ones raised by my lack of knowledge of my music collection. The disc came with the June 14th 2000 issue of Melody Maker, which published its last issue that Christmas, then merged with NME.
Did All The Rural Things: 10 Essential Bands For The 2000 Festival Season accurately forecast what bands were "essential" that festival season? Either way, did the process of trying to ensure musical bliss for their readers help drive Melody Maker out of business? Musical prognostication can be pretty expensive, depending on the methodology used. If they rang psychic hotlines and consulted tarot card readers, the costs might get pricey quickly.
Did Melody Maker know they wouldn't be around for long? Maybe they thought the publication was going to end sooner, so that they could easily evade the throngs who might endure "not particularly inspiring set"(s) based on their advice. Did empty superlatives hasten their demise? My guess is no. It's a superlative culture over there, innit?
Naturally, the impact of an "essential" endorsement (on bands as well as artists) is diluted by the number of them.
Of course, some of the artists on the disc are still clearly, actively, in the biz. Saint Etienne, for instance, performed a bit this month... and took a moment to praise a certain ubiquitous Alanis Morrissette video on their website ("I'm no fan but her video/cover of My Humps deserves a tip of the hat - maybe a wink, even...")
May 5th - New York - Studio B May 16th - Cannes - VIP room May 17th - Montpellier - La Dune May 18th - Barcelona - Catwalk May 19th - Madrid - La Rivera Club
However, we haven't heard much from several of these bands since 2000. Maybe they were essential then because people wouldn't get many more chances to see them. The don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-them nature of the entertainment industry is a bit sad. Why, in my day, FOX would sometimes give their rare good show a season or two before prematurely canceling it. Now, they won't wait three weeks. Bands and TV shows alike don't always get the real nurturing they need to thrive. But a positive reception may also bring more pressure than an artist wants or can handle.
Which artists who are commercially successful now will still be going strong in 2014? Time will tell. So will a psychic, but that might be pricey.
Melody Maker: All The Rural Things: 10 Essential Bands For The 2000 Festival Season:
Some feel that Wednesday is the most difficult day of the week. Others say that's a self-fulfilling prophesy: if you don't expect drama, there won't be any. As a general rule, it's not a bad idea to raise a single eyebrow at those who understate a case so sweepingly. You can go ahead and use the same eyebrow you raise at those who sweepingly overstate cases if you like. I can't raise one eyebrow at a time, so this doesn't apply to me.
Fear of Pop - In Love (on Fear of Pop Vol. 1) William Shatner delivers Ben Folds' kiss-off lyrics with brutal sarcasm.
Six By Seven - I.O.U. Love (on The Way I Feel Today) Coming up, a trio of festival gigs at the end of May for six.bysevem (or Six.BySeven or Six By Seven or 6 BY 7 ! if you prefer). If festival audiences are lucky, this terribly dramatic and beautiful tune will be on the setlists.
Ian McNabb - There Oughta Be A Law (on Before All of This) McNabb is best known as the frontman of The Icicle Works. He knows a thing or two about how to write and sing with emotion.
On this Tuesday, the playlist is as follows: two takes on "Ruby Tuesday", two sweeping, dramatic Britpop tunes followed by more subdued songs by a pair of talented American singer-songwriters, plus an electronic song for the coffee generation (the breathlessly-paced Röyksopp track) and one for the herbal tea/Pinkberry crowd (Télépopmusik's fizzy, but calmer "Into Everything"). A couple (more) sweet covers finish things off: Susanna Hoffs' version of Lightning Seeds' "All I Want" and Redd Kross' jangly "How Much More", originally recorded by The Go-Gos.
Today is the second blogiversary of Kofi's hat. The blog's namesake, Kofi Hales, was 11 months old when his dad, Matt Hales (of Aqualung) suggested the name for this blog ("Uppercase K, and lowercase h") and wrote it out for me.
Kofi's nearly 3 now; he probably has all kinds of things down. Now, 2, that's pretty young. I might still be expected to hold up a couple fingers and say "this many" when asked how long I've had the blog. Heck, I might idly hold up an index finger from each hand, then wander away in search of a more interesting grown-up.
Not that the blogiversary topic is boring. And if I was going to get some kind of temporarily-fascinating desk toy out of it, it would really hold my interest. Fortunately, standard blogiversary gifts apparently haven't yet been established (because they would probably be horrible). So my friends and family should feel free to use the nearest available substitute, wedding anniversary gifts as their standard. For the second anniversary, cotton is the traditional gift and desk items are the modern gift. For the indecisive, perhaps desk items made entirely of cotton! (And if the blog or the marriage ends within a couple weeks or so of the blogiversary/wedding anniversary, they should return the gift. Otherwise it looks like they tried to make it to that date just for the free cotton.)
This week, I'm going to revisit the Days of the Week posts from August 2005. Every day, I'll post a song or two from those posts.
I'll also post loads of other tunes this week, many new-to-the-hat. Should be as much fun as a ridiculous birthday hat, something else you'll be seeing more of this week.
Thanks to everyone who has been kind along the way.
The Nehru-jacket-wearing man beaming broadly from the cover of Ultra-Lounge: On the Rocks, Pt. 1 instantly reminded me of another far-out cat, J.R. "Bob" Dobbs of the Church of the SubGenius. They're not from the same eras, or is that "50s look" the new black, and always in? The album is ten years old, so by now the look could be out again. Or it could have been out and then made a triumphant return, lovingly embraced by the public, Nehru jacket and all. Can't say I dig the jacket but I do dig this music.
Edited to add that Sendspace has gone delete-happy. They have deleted a whole lot of files, seemingly paying little or no attention to the content of the files. It's apparently a sweeping, mass deletion of files, possibly done for the sake of appearances. They can point to the number of users whose files were deleted, and the number of files deleted and say, "See, we're not facilitating naughtiness." Nevermind that they've ignored the content of the files and whether deletion of any of them was appropriate, let alone a mass-deletion. "Facts are stupid things", as Ronald Reagan said. I re-uploaded the two files in this post to You Send It. The other song links are dead at the moment; a few will be re-uploaded. And I'll sort out the uploading situation for future files...
Update: Many of the most recently-posted MP3s have been re-uploaded.
In the video for Ullman's Kirsty MacColl cover, a supermarket is used to help depict the unglamorous reality of settling down and having kids when you're not well-off. Ullman's hair is a mess, her face appears free of make-up, and she's wearing slippers. Before the supermarket scene she was quite well-groomed and wearing gobs of lip gloss. In the market she wearily pushs the cart (complete with young daughter) down the aisle. But soon her spirits triumphs, and she spins the cart into a dance. At the end of the video, you see how content she is.
The "Been Caught Stealing" video is vastly overexposed. It features crossdressing shoplifters, so it may seem a surefire way of getting "the kids"' attention. But what is stolen first? Vegetables and fruits! Produce lobbyist payola could be the reason why this video is so wildly overplayed. We can't be sure; all we can do is reject the carrots, pineapples, and such that Jane's Addiction so enthusiastically shoved up their skirts.
Director Jake Scott calls the classic clip "an allegory for death and reincarnation" but thinks anyone who sees that meaning is "weird". So feel free to substitute your own meaning, as long as you know it won't be the one they intended.
A few months after "Fake Plastic Trees" came another classic video in which the group's singer rides in a supermarket cart. Last year's BBC documentary "The Story of Pulp's Common People" recounts the creation of the song as well as the video. In Part 4 (of the clips kindly posted to YouTube), director Pedro Romhanyi matter-of-factly explains, "There's a line that says 'I took her to the supermarket.' So we did a scene in the supermarket." (The line is actually "I took her to a supermarket."
There's also more to it than that. It isn't as though singer Jarvis Cocker and actor Sadie Frost (who portrays the posh Greek student studying sculpture at St. Martin's College) merely walk through an ordinary supermarket aisle. Cocker, like Yorke, rides in a supermarket cart. He's shown as tiny, trapped in a large trolley pushed by his new friend. The colors in the store are extreme and jarring - bright yellow, fuschia, and purple. Among the products on the shelves are boxes labeled Pulp, an apparent statement on the commodification of their music. A video is, after all, an advertisement.
A friend suggested the Haines clip for my Supermarket Videos collection. I initially protested that it didn't seem like it was set in a supermarket. He said it may be a hypermarket, a term I could hardly resist sharing, regardless of the video's setting.
It seems as though he's right, as the video's director, Jaron Albertin, says singer Emily Haines, wanted to shoot in "a massive Wal-mart type store" Wal-mart is an example of a hypermarket, "a superstore which combines a supermarket and a department store".
Haines says she wanted to convey a "disorienting, paranoid, fear" in the video, in which she, and several other people are trapped in this hypermarket when it abruptly closes. She and Albertin sound very earnest in describing the "surreal" feeling they wanted to bring to the clip, but I just find it incredibly dull. There's a difference between haunting and boring.
Marc Klasfeld directed this video in which Pallot sings about war while dodging a foodfight. She eventually strikes a Christ-like pose and is pelted with food. I've previously criticized this video for striking an inappropriately light-hearted tone given the nature of the song (it's about the Iraq War). I have a problem with the song as well; it feels both too breezy and overwraught to me. But the video seems altogether weird, an odd choice if motivated by artistic reasons.
It's unfortunate a top-notch song was given such a shabby video. The supermarket isn't a necessary setting, so it shouldn't have been used. One by one a few women are shown, in slow motion, dancing in a supermarket aisle. Each is wearing a uniform apron. The song is directed to one person, but perhaps these are supposed to be women he has felt that way about at different points of his life and they all happen to work at the same supermarket. What a wacky coincidence; it should be a sitcom! Or perhaps the song is playing at the market and everyone is taking turns slowly dancing to it instead of working. If the happy, dancing women were in a park or the mall, the impact, whatever it may be would have been the same. A setting shouldn't be used just because someone thinks of it, or because it's cheap. That's not creative or interesting.
In Travis' bubbly clip, singer Fran Healy stands outside a supermarket dressed as a bear. He takes off his bear head in front of a young boy, possibly scarring him for life, and heads inside to use the store's PA system to sing. Ben Stiller, slumming for the night as a grocery store manager, is upset by the happy music because he is The Man. Fortunately every time he exits his tiny miserable office, the sunny pop of Travis is replaced by boring music. Store employees, i.e. the band, pick up instruments to play. People are brought together by the band's sweet music, and everyone's content... except a thin man crushed by a large woman hugging him. That bit's intended as humorous, but it's dated and just unfortunate. I'm thin, and didn't think it was funny. The video is otherwise sweet, but ordinary, nothing special.
The supermarket is such a relateable setting, and rather obvious go-to for bands, but for those very reasons it would be great if bands passed it over as a video setting unless they intend to use it in a creative way. And they shouldn't rush to use convenience stores instead.
Hmm, videos set in convenience stores...
Other Supermarket Videos:
The Mavericks reportedly dance in a supermarket in the video for their 1998 single "Dance The Night Away". I haven't seen the video, but if that's all there is to it, it sounds pretty boring.
Starfighter's 2005 video for "#1 Today", in which a guy dressed as a big 1 cheerfully travels into town and encounters a mixed reception, includes a very brief supermarket scene. Our #1 guy enters the market, looks around, walks by the produce unnoticed, and then the next thing we know he's sitting on a bench at a mall. The market's a brightly lit, colorful place, but there's hardly anyone there, and no one pays attention to him. The market serves a purpose, then.
Supermarket Videos Playlist on YouTube (which I'll keep adding to; there are no doubt more supermarket videos...)
The Theremin is handy in that one doesn't touch it while playing it. That doesn't make it the instrument for everyone who's abandoned the triangle in frustration, tired of practicing for hours everyday and not getting any better. This weekend, I learned that the hard way.
Alright, I haven't really taken up the Theremin. But watching a 2004 Screen Savers segment in which Robert Moog demonstrated the instrument and introduced a cool performance by Thereminist Robby Virus of Theremin lounge band Project: Pimento (pictured above), I could almost hear people deciding to become Thereminists. Sure, for a few it's so they can introduce themselves as a Thereminist, but not for most.
A fascination with the instrument's workings likely plays a larger part. It uses radio frequency oscillators and two antennae (one for pitch and one for volume). The Therereminist moves their hands around the antennae without touching them. The more skilled the person, the better the sound.
Under the control of the most acclaimed Theremin player, Clara Rockmore (who was classically trained, on the violin), the instrument sounds like a gentle song. That instrument bears only a surface resemblance to the spooky uses it would later be put to in horror movies. It also doesn't sound much like the Theremin heard in some modern songs.
However, the "Theremin" heard in some songs isn't necessarily a Theremin. While the world does seem to have a fever, the only prescription may not be more Theremin. Many groups, such as Stereolab use, or have used, Moog synthesizers to simulate the Theremin sound.
Theremin World maintains a small music store. However, the site also includes a huge list (down all afternoon, possibly vexed by the world's Theremin fever) of music supplied by website visitors, bound to be somewhat less reliable. It's still an impressive resource, but as always, buyer beware. (One questionable recording on the list: Rooney's "Blueside".)
A lot of groups have tricked people with their their trusty Moog. Both instruments are worthy in their own right; I gotta have more of both.
For one shining month (September 2005), the Poptones record label blog featured two amusing songs from the stars of the 1960s Batman series. The songs are still there, both the decidedly odd song stylings of Burt Ward, who played Robin, and a melodramatic musical gem from Adam West, who played his caped partner in crime-solving.
West begins his song with a question: "Will tonight be the night... that Bruce reveals himself to... the magnificent Miranda?" He means taking his mask off, kids. It's a big moment in any superhero-civilian relationship. The decision to share it with the world through music is a brave one for any superhero, let alone one with little musical "talent" in the strictest, technical sense of the word. Fortunately, the song is intentionally camp and silly. It's a good bit of fun.
As West proved on Lookwell, he does have great comedic chops. Andy Barker, P.I. is pretty good and the accountant/P.I. bits are cute, but Lookwell was better, and the actor-who-once-played-a-cop/P.I. bits were funnier. I like the idea of actors, if they must record music, doing so for (intentional) laughs. Zing!
In a new video clip, Aqualung's Matt Hales graciously teaches the proper way to make a good cup of tea. If you've ever given him a cup of tea with cream, here at last is your confirmation that you did terribly offend him.
This video beverage-related lesson is brought to you by Spinner and the letter T.
The new Aqualung album, Memory Man is out now in the States, Canada, and the U.K. and should soon be available anywhere it hasn't yet been released. On the March 14th episode of The Late Show with David Letterman, Aqualung performed the album's first single "Pressure Suit". The episode repeats Friday night, and the performance is also available on YouTube:
Aw, how neat! The folks at Google are fans of the keen, prematurely-canceled sitcom Undeclared. Sure, they're demonstrating their fondness with a stolen joke, but thievery is allegedly flattering, or something like that.
Google does add bits about advertising and archiving emails to their gag (and I'm almost positive they're kidding), but I think most of the humor stems from the idea, which is all Undeclared's. Just leaves a slight taste of bitter apple in my mouth.
