iTunes Running Diary - Sunday, August 2, 2009

This week's artists.

- “Use Somebody” by Kings of Leon. I actually don't care much for Kings of Leon's biggest hit, “Sex on Fire,” because it makes little sense to me and isn't that interesting, musically, to me. It has these weird, muddy vocals that I'm not into.

However, “Use Somebody” is great for the opposite reason – The lyrics on it are strong, and the guy's voice is quite lovely to listen to. I realize that it is overplayed a bit too much, but this will just make it better in a couple years, after it has gotten a bit of rest, a la Primitive Radio Gods.

- “King Nothing” by Metallica. I'm just playing through Guitar Hero: Metallica now, which has made me realize that they've sneakily come up with about a dozen really good songs. Back when I was growing up, I always associated them more with “Enter Sandman” and a bunch of filler, but as I've matured, that song has gotten really F'ed out, while the others have aged better.

Case in point: This song. It was like the 40th single off of Load (note: actually the eighth, an obscene amount for a single album), and at the time, I didn't think it was anything special. But after being forced to play it or Judas Priest to advance in Guitar Hero, it has definitely grown on me. The same with kind-of-repetitive (at least to me) Metallica songs like “Master of Puppets” and “The Unforgiven.”

- “You're So Damn Hot” by OK Go. OK Go hasn't really shown much range at all, but that's why I like them so much. All they do is make incredible hit modern alternative rock songs. I suppose at some point, they'll try some more ballad-y or artistically credible music, but until then, I revel in songs like “Here We Go Again” and “Get Over It.” Both of them, and “You're So Damn Hot,” are somewhat simplistic, but they're all solid songs, first and foremost.

Although Interpol has a much different sound, I feel the same way about them. They have a particular niche – eerie, atmospheric alternative – and they are content to repeatedly butter the same bread. (That analogy is a little sloppy, but you get the picture.) Ditto with the hard-driving music of Queens of the Stone Age. I'm almost willing to put the White Stripes in this grouping, but they do veer a bit more to the “fulfilling self-artistic side” than just making music people like, at least in my opinion.

- “Train In Vain (Stand By Me)” by the Clash. It's the Clash, so it's obvious that they're great; you don't need me to tell you that. They missed my list the other day because, while I can appreciate their musicianship, I'm not a huge connoisseur of Clash songs, and they didn't have a slew of radio hits. The same thing goes for the Ramones (who are way overrated in my book).

I do think this song is incredible though, and it deserves kudos for being on the best video game soundtrack in my opinion: NCAA Football 2006.

Oh, you thought I'd go with something more conventional, like Secret of Mana or another Square game? This will no doubt annoy some of the video game players reading this, but I vastly prefer commercial music to just about anything in video games. While Secret of Mana does have a great soundtrack, when I replay it, more often than not I mute the game's sound and just play my iTunes.

There are two exceptions to this. One, games that emulate modern music with their tracks. The best examples of this are the PS2 Persona games, which both have great soundtracks, and the DS RPG The World Ends With You. Second, I like games that just say, “Eff it,” and include commercial music. Most EA Sports games take this tact, which I enjoy.

NCAA Football 2006 is the best of the bunch, as it features the aforementioned Clash song, “Hyper Enough” by Superchunk, “Kill Your Television” by Ned's Atomic Dustbin, "Me Myself and I" by De La Soul, "Debaser" by the Pixies and “Teenage FBI” by Guided By Voices. Haven't heard of any of them? Well, just buy NCAA Football 2006, because it has all of them and costs $5 on eBay. Problem solved!

iTunes Running Diary - June 7, 2009

Back in college, whenever I was a bit cramped for entertainment column ideas, or just feeling plain lazy, I would simply do a running diary of my iTunes library on shuffle. (That bastard Chuck Klostermann had the same idea in one his books that predates my column, as he comments on a straight 24 hours spent watching VH1 classic, but I'm going to pretend as if I don't realize I'm reinventing the wheel.) Anyway, from this long preamble, I imagine you know where I'm headed... The links in the entry are to the songs mentioned, when applicable.

1) “December” by Collective Soul. A pretty decent song, but Collective Soul is definitely on my list of “What the hell happened?” bands. For a period in the 1990s, every other song on radio was Collective Soul, either “December” or “Shine” or that either popular song who's name I never remember. Then, they were abruptly never heard from it again.

It wasn't an issue that was solely limited to Collective Soul, as there were a slew of bands that had a couple of hits before vanishing off the face of the Earth. It wasn't a one-hit wonder issue either – Collective Soul is clearly better than bands like Len (“Steal My Sunshine”) or King Missile (“Detachable Penis”).

But along with Toad the Wet Sprocket and Better Than Ezra, it seems like Collective Soul had a hay-day and then vanished, giving way to better bands with staying power (Green Day, The Beastie Boys) and puss rock (The Goo Goo Dolls). My theory, assuming there wasn't something like band tension at work, blames radio DJs. I think more than anyone else, they serve as “tastemakers,” and if you hear the same band or style for a couple of years, four to eight hours a shift for five days a week an entire year, you invariably want new music, even if the audience is still OK with it. It wouldn't surprise me if DJ fatigue is responsible for nuking plenty of bands.

2) “What I Got” by Sublime. Everybody I went to high school with and hung out with knew the lyrics to this song, and it's not like I ran in a crowd obsessed with the song of the moment. Half of them were in a band that's main musical influences were The Beatles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Band... and it was 2002.

But invariably, if this song came on, everybody knew the words. The only other CD that had that status was the blue album by Weezer, which even Mike Smith knew the words to. The lead singer of Sublime, Bradley Nowell, also pulled a Cobain and killed himself before he could make a truly bad album. Or, as I call it, before he could Pearl Jam his band, forcing them to make a bunch of inaccessible, artistic crap that isn't worth listening to.

While some people insist that 40 Oz. To Freedom is a better CD, I think that only applies if you're really into booze or weeed or flashy titles or rebelling against pop sensibilities. From start to finish, Sublime's self-entitled CD is one of the best albums of the 1990s. It is a refined ride that branches a bit into reggae, alternative and hard rock seamlessly.

3) “Smack My Bitch Up” by Prodigy (only a minute available online, unfortunately). The song itself is actually pretty mundane, the mirror opposite of a landmark, great video that was so good that MTV even caved and showed it late at night, even though it had full-frontal nudity, drug usage and vomit. The song features a rhythmic, hypnotic, grinding beat throughout, its best virtue, but the rest is primarily unimaginative techno staples – the droning chorus of “Smack My Bitch Up” and ethereal female singing.

However, like a lot of techno, it makes for a great music video, which follows the day in the life of a British hooligan. You follow the hooligan through cocaine usage, heavy drinking, a bar room fight, vomiting, a strip club and promiscious sex, only for the reveal at the end that the “hooligan” is a woman by a look into the mirror a few seconds before the video ends. A very neat concept video, with some nice touches like breaking up and muting the song with the punches in the bar fight and the effects of the drugs.

4) “What Would You Do?” by City High. Rap one-hit wonders never get as much attention in hindsight as similar rock and pop tracks; I'm not entirely sure why. During the summer of 2001, this song was ridiculously popular. Now, when I mentioned it in passing a few months ago (don't ask me the context, I have no idea), nobody had any idea what I was talking about, even though they were all the same age as me. I realize I have a good mind for pop culture and pop music, but this song probably hit #1 at some point, charted for a long time and had a chorus that was its title.

5) “Some Postman” by The Presidents of the United States of America. Outside of myself and high school and URI friend Bill Bartholomew, I don't know anyone else who loves this band. But I do. Just about any track they've ever done, I'm a big fan of.

This one comes off their ill-fated, most recent album, Love Everybody. I remember giving it a positive review as a college junior or senior, and I was surprised at the time that nobody else even wanted to review it. They were a “name” band that had sent us a free CD, when the usual crap we got was from affiliates of the Wu-Tang Clan with horrible names like Holocaust.

In the pantheon of PUSA songs, “Some Postman” is one of my favorites. It combines the usual witty, twisted lyrics – the song is about a demented postman who abducts love letters – with the usual bouncy guitar, bass and drums combination of PUSA. I realize that the band is a bit one-note, but at least that note is freakin' awesome. Always better to shoot for perfection and greatness in a single area as opposed to striving for “balance” and mediocrity.

6) “Here It Goes Again” by OK Go. And oddly enough, I'll end it for now on the band that most reminds me of PUSA. OK Go has more of a hard rock edge, and they are much more popular than PUSA ever was. But I still hear the same sort of rhythmic rock in them that I did in PUSA and other bands I enjoyed while growing up.