a spontaneous overflow of music

Mix CD: Music of the 99%

2011-11-17T02:22:00.001-05:00

1. Darkest Hour - The Sadist Nation
2. Crestfallen - Nine to Five RSVP
3. Every Time I Die - Enter Without Knocking and Notifying the Police
4. Every Time I Die - The Logic of Crocodiles
5. Refused - Protest Song '68
6. Leftover Crack - Gang Control
7. Thrice - Cold Cash and Colder Hearts
8. Thursday - For the Workforce, Drowning
9. Rage Against the machine - The Ghost of Tom Joad (Bruce Springsteen cover)
10. Fear Factory - Securitron (Police State 2000)
11. Propagandhi - Purina Hall of Fame
12. Against Me! - What We Worked For
13. Bruce Springsteen - We Shall Overcome
14. The Beatles - Revolution 1
15. On the Strings Of - Brick By Brick
16. This Is My Fist! - Voice from Occupationland
17. Aus Rotten - Welfare Recipients
18. Refused - Deadly Rhythm
19. The Assistant - 93,800 Hours

Boner Jamz '11

2011-10-16T19:00:00.001-04:00

1. Baroness - Ogeechee Hymnal
2. Baroness - A Horse Called Golgotha
3. Envy - A Far-Off Reason
4. Elliott - Voices
5. Elliott - Calm Americans
6. Far - Bury White
7. Deftones - Around the Fur
8. Sevendust - Grasp
9. Alice In Chains - Would?
10. Stone Temple Pilots - Down
11. Queens of the Stone Age - Song for the Dead
12. Radiohead - Myxomatosis
13. Adele - Rumour Has It
14. Kanye West - Slow Jamz
15. (hed) PE - Bartender
16. Jimi Hendrix - Red House (Live from Woodstock)
17. Led Zeppelin - Black Dog
18. A Perfect Circle - The Package
19. Nine Inch Nails - Somewhat Damaged

Thrice-Happy

2011-08-03T00:06:00.001-04:00

October 7th - THRICE @ Revolution

2011-08-02T19:34:00.000-04:00

here's what Thrice would play in my utopian fantasy world:

1. Lullaby
2. The Weight of Glory
3. Yellow Belly
4. Burn the Fleet
5. Flags of Dawn
6. Broken Lungs
7. Daedalus
8. The Earth Will Shake
9. Hold Fast Hope
10. Talking Through Glass/We Move Like Swingsets
11. Come All You Weary
12. Open Water
13. Lost Continent
14. The Whaler
15. Red Sky
16. Music Box
17. Like Moths to Flame
18. Backdraft
19. The Weight
20. Trust
21. The Melting Point of Wax
22. All That's Left
23. Silhouette
24. The Artist In the Ambulance
25. Cold Cash and Colder Hearts
26. Kill Me Quickly
27. To Awake and Avenge the Dead
28. Deadbolt
29. For Miles
30. Beggars

The more of these they play, the more epic this show will be...

30 Days

2011-05-23T13:17:00.002-04:00

So it seems there's a new trend going around Facebook. It's called 30 Day Song Challenge. Basically the idea is that you post a video every day according to the list of songs you're meant to select (found by clicking on "Rules"). As I was reading this list, I felt remiss at the idea of posting these videos and not offering any explanation as to why each fits into its given category. There are plenty of good stories behind more than a few of these songs, at least for me. For the purposes of this blog entry, I tried to, whenever possible, avoid boring videos of just the song over some pictures. Many of them are live versions, some music videos, a few special versions, and a couple of the aforementioned boring videos. Some I didn't bother posting videos for for what should be obvious reasons.

day 01 - your favorite song - Thrice - For Miles

It wasn't long ago that I'd have had a hard time even putting a four-minute song with a pop song structure in my top ten songs of all time. This song is an aberration. It may be the only song that I like more every time I hear it and it's one of the few I never get tired of. I've always been a sucker for songs with powerful "moments" and this one is basically one big four-minute and twenty-seven-second moment. The opening piano. The epic choruses. The passionately optimistic lyrics. The soaring bridge. The thunderous outro. It's all over much too quickly for a four-and-a-half-minute song but the impact it has is never gone.

day 02 - your least favorite song - Weezer - Beverly Hills

"Least favorite song" is an interesting category to me. There are tons of songs I truly loathe more than "Beverly Hills"--in fact, it's kinda catchy and I'll jam to it if someone puts it on. What makes this my least favorite song is what it represents. It's an absolutely awful song, to be sure, but it was written by a band that has written some of my all time favorite songs and two of my all time favorite albums. Considering how their fall from grace happened, it's hard to fault Rivers or the rest of the band for what they've become. Cuomo himself admitted in an interview on DirecTV that after the critical and popular failure of Pinkerton, he became extremely distraught and took some time off to "figure out how to write songs that will make people happy again." He talked about how he felt responsible for (seemingly, at the time) killing Weezer by making this incredibly self-indulgent record. So while I want to be mad at Weezer for turning into shit, I'm really mad at the consumers for not understanding or appreciating the brilliance of Pinkerton in its time and causing Rivers to have a nervous breakdown and start writing songs to placate people.

day 03 - a song that makes you happy - Radiohead - No Surprises

If this song can't make you smile then you've got a seriously rough life. Not only is this one of the most peacefully serene songs ever written but the lyrics are both comforting and empowering as well. "You look so tired-unhappy," it empathizes. "Bring down your government," it urges you, assuring you that "they don't speak for us." Also, for such a soothing song, it has a somewhat deceptive amount of momentum in a few key spots. The cascading choruses move like ice skaters and the key-changing bridge crescendos subtly into a joyful explosion. To me, this really is one of the best songs ever written and definitely one of the most joyous.

day 04 - a song that makes you sad - Incubus - I Miss You (acoustic)

The only way this song could possibly not make you sad is if you've never been in love or even really liked someone and you've never missed someone either. If you've ever been in love with someone who didn't love you back then this song probably kills you the way it does me. I've yet to meet a person who doesn't have someone this song reminds them of. The stories are never good, either. I put this on a mix CD I gave to the first girl I ever loved for Christmas. She asked me why I chose that song and I said because of the lyrics. Amazingly, this probably wouldn't even make the top five songs that remind me of people--mostly because it pretty much reminds me of every girl I've ever loved.

day 05 - a song that reminds you of someone - Deftones - Rx Queen/Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile

As you can see, I couldn't even pick one. The main reason being that the people they remind me of are equally important to how I've become who I've become, even if I knew one of them many years longer than the other. The first one, I put in a mixtape I made for above first girl I ever loved, which had a note tucked into it with explanations for each song. For this one I put: "I picked this song because I want you to be my girl." Shut up, I was 15. As for "The Fragile", this one belongs to the second girl I ever loved although she should be considered second to no one in the scheme of my life. No person has ever consumed me so completely as she did when we were in high school (and beyond). Both probably had equal hands in forming my concept of what love is, what it means to me, and what I love in a human being.

day 06 - a song that reminds you of somewhere - Stone Temple Pilots - Glide

When I was growing up, my family (mom, grandma, and grandpa) would go to Aspen every summer for the Aspen Music Festival and also to generally enjoy the mild mountain air and breathtaking scenery. Actually, my grandparents would usually stay for nearly the whole summer, my mom and I could only really afford to spend a week or so there visiting them. We did this from the time I was an infant until, I believe, the summer after my sophomore year of high school. Ironically, there's really only one summer where I listened to this song (and the album it's on, No. 4) a whole lot and it was the summer after my freshman year; the summer I met TFGIEL (The First Girl I Ever Loved). I'll always remember that particular trip to Aspen as the most miserable one for me. I had just gotten done meeting all these amazing new friends and TFGIEL and the last thing I wanted to do was leave them all to hang out with my family. I barely ever did anything while we were there that summer apart from listening to a lot of tortured, depressing music--along with this album. It also ended up that she had to fly home the same day I was coming back. I was informed of this one morning in Aspen, via email. Obviously that didn't exactly brighten my mood. That was a pretty miserable trip. Still, this song somehow also reminds me of all the wonderful times I spent in Aspen over the years. I hope we get to go back one of these days.

day 07 - a song that reminds you of a certain event - Darwin's Waiting Room - All I Have Is Me

Really, this song reminds me of a person in general. The same person that "The Fragile" reminds me of. But this one I associate even more with a period in time when she became very upset with myself and some friends of mine and decided to stop talking to us for a period of time. I can specifically remember one night when a mutual friend of ours brought her to my house to try to get her to talk to me but as soon as I opened the door, she turned around and walked away and our mutual friend apologized. Immediately after that, I went to my room, shut off all the lights and cranked this song as loud as I could. And, well, sang along to it. I was 15, ok? Unfortunately, I couldn't find a video for this one.

day 08 - a song that you know all the words to - Propagandhi - Back to the Motor League

I had a friend who introduced me to this band and he always used to say this song is about me. Well, that's a little less than fair. This song is about a great number of different people. It's about him, too, to be honest. But really, the reason I picked this one for a song I know all the words to is because it's probably the most impressive song I know all the words to. Specifically the very end of the song. I also chose it because the lyrics are phenomenal, as all Propagandhi lyrics are.

day 09 - a song that you can dance to - Black Star - B Boys Will B Boys

OK, I can't breakdance. That should be pretty obvious. Still, I can't help but move to this song when I hear it. I love those old school, organic break beats. They just groove so freaking hard. Not that much else I can say about this one.

day 10 - a song that makes you fall asleep - Incubus - Aqueous Transmission

There are so many great songs to fall asleep to but this one really has it all. Delightful plucking on the Pipa. The dreamy, surreal chorus of "further down the river." The delicate ambience of the frogs croaking in the last minute or so (although this video is a live version). I'm craving a nap just talking about it.

day 11 - a song from your favorite band - Radiohead - Planet Telex

In case you hadn't noticed, my favorite band is Radiohead. This is the song that got me hooked on this band. I actually wasn't that into them the first time I heard them but this song is just so epic that I couldn't resist.

day 12 - a song from a band you hate - Fall Out Boy - This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race

Honestly, Fall Out Boy is really interchangeable for about 5 dozen other bands that sound exactly fucking like them but whatever. I'm not posting a video for this because I don't want to subject you to that.

day 13 - a song that is a guilty pleasure - John Mayer - Slow Dancing In a Burning Room

You know, this is kind of on the borderline of guilty pleasure. John Mayer is actually a really fucking good guitarist (part of the reason I chose this video was for the noodling at the beginning). He just writes a lot of really boring, generic songs but every now and then he pops out a gem and this is one of them.

day 14 - a song that no one would expect you to love - Estelle - American Boy

To be honest, I'm not sure there really is a song that no one would expect me to love. Everyone always says they have eclectic tastes or they like a little bit of everything to the point that it's such a cliche now but I really, truly listen to a whole fucking lot of very different shit. This was as close as I could get to something that no one would think I would like. This song is the shit.

day 15 - a song that describes you - Thrice - Image of the Invisible

This song became something of a rallying cry to me personally in the time leading up to the 2008 election and the short time after. I still take it personally for me and my generation because this is the attitude we need to have. We need to be serious about taking over responsibility for making the world the way we want it to be. This song is a constant inspiration to me to keep fighting the good fight even when the battle is far uphill.

day 16 - a song that you used to love but now hate - Kings of Leon - Sex on Fire

The only reason I used to love this song was because it was the only thing on the radio in Ireland when I went there with my dad for about a week and it was kinda catchy. The problem was, they played it at least 30 times a day. This band has a few songs that are better than this one on the Only By the Night album but I've never really understood everyone's infatuation with them. They're just the poor man's Arcade Fire to me.

day 17 - a song that you hear often on the radio - Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child O' Mine

Another one that reminds me of TFGIEL. To be fair, I almost never listen to radio. In fact, the one thing I listen to more than anything on the radio is Beatle Brunch so I couldn't really count that. This is just one of those songs that they'll never stop playing on the radio. They play it on Big 105.9 now which is a trip. "I'd hate to look into those eyes and see an ounce of pain" still gets me every time. Still, I'm not going to subject you to the video as we've all heard this song way too many times.

day 18 - a song that you wish you heard on the radio - Thrice - Come All You Weary

Not only does this band deserve to be massively huge but the message in this song (which is a recurring message in Thrice's songs) is one that should be spread. A message of empathy and caring. This song reflects the band's attitude toward their music in that they want to be a comforting and supporting force in the lives of their fans and I'm pretty sure that's a goal they've accomplished quite well. If only more people in this world had such compassionate attitudes, imagine the kind of place we'd live in.

day 19 - a song from your favorite album - Tool - Ænema

Amazingly, no, my favorite album isn't a Radiohead album. This song also happens to be the title track of the album it's on, although the spelling is changed from Ænima to "Ænema" for some reason. This is far from my favorite song on the album but it's a damn good one and not too long and it has a killer video, which is why I picked it.

day 20 - a song that you listen to when you’re angry - Converge - You Fail Me

This is the quintessential angry song as far as I'm concerned. Not only is it viciously furious but its bile is so narrowly focused and so vulnerable that the impact it makes is massive. This is a towering cyclone of swirling fiery rage surrounding a white hot laser center. The main riff is an absolute steamroller. I know this kind of stuff is a little too intense for most people but anyone who has any desire to experience the most pure and passionate musical anger, I highly recommend this. If someone asked me what the heaviest song I've ever heard is, I'd have to really think about what I consider "heaviest" to mean--but my knee-jerk reaction would be to say this song. This is a video of an early version (two years before the release of You Fail Me) with different lyrics/vocals.

day 21 - a song that you listen to when you’re happy - Jimmy Eat World - Futures

This has to be the catchiest, happiest riff ever written. You can't help but bounce when you hear it. And you can't help but smile at the opening lines: "I've always believed in futures. I hope for better in November." The chorus soars: "Say hello to good times. Trade up for the fast ride. We close our eyes while the nickel and dime take the streets completely." Almost enough to give even me hope for the future. Almost.

day 22 - a song that you listen to when you’re sad - Radiohead - How to Disappear Completely

I don't even think I need to explain this one. If you have a different song you listen to when you're sad, you're wrong, this one is better. What could sum up the feeling of being sad or depressed better than "I'm not here. This isn't happening."

day 23 - a song that you want to play at your wedding - Bright Eyes - Oh, You Are the Roots That Sleep Beneath My Feet and Hold the Earth In Place

I want this played at my wedding no matter who I marry because whoever I marry, this song (hell, the title of this song) will undoubtedly describe that person.

day 24 - a song that you want to play at your funeral - Thrice - Beggars

What could sum it all up better than this:

All you great men of power,
You who boast of your feats,
Politicians and entrepreneurs:
Can you safeguard your breath in the night while you sleep,
Keep your heart beating steady and sure?
As you lie in your bed,
Does the thought haunt your head,
That your really rather small?
If there's one thing I know in this life,
We are beggars all!
All you champions of science,
And rulers of men:
Can you summon the sun from it's sleep?
And does the earth seek your council on how fast to spin?
Can you shut up the gates of the deep?
And don't you know that all things,
Hang as if by string o'er the darkness,
Poised to fall?
If there's one thing I know in this life,
We are beggars all!

All you big-shots who swagger,
And stride with conceit.
Did you devise how your frame would be formed?
If you'd be raised in a palace,
or live out on the streets,
choose the place or the hour you'd be born?
Tell me what can you claim?
Not a thing!
Not your name!
Tell me if you can recall,
Just one thing, not a gift, in this life?
Can you hear what's been said?
Can you see now that everything's graced?
After all,
If there's one thing I know in this life,
We are beggars all!

day 25 - a song that makes you laugh - Flight of the Conchords - Bret, You Got It Goin' On

Just watch...

day 26 - a song that you can play on an instrument - Converge - Heaven In Her Arms

I didn't even have to look at tabs; I learned this shit by ear. Yeah, be jealous.

day 27 - a song that you wish you could play - Between the Buried and Me - Mordecai

I have dreams of being able to play this song where I wake up all sticky.

day 28 - a song that makes you feel guilty - Thrice - Digging My Own Grave

I had a really hard time coming up with any song that made me feel intense personal guilt so I went with something a little more broad. Heaven knows I've got more than my share of nasty habits that I keep convincing myself I'm going to stop soon enough but "soon enough" is a very non-specific deadline.

day 29 - a song from your childhood - The Beatles - Being For the Benefit of Mr. Kite

My mom used to play the Sgt. Pepper album all the time when I was a little kid--or maybe she just played it for me once or twice and that prompted me to want to play it all the time. Either way, I've loved this album from a very young age and that love has only grown and flourished. This was probably my favorite song on the album when I was a wee lad and it's hard not to understand why. This song is bloody whimsical! It's fun and amusing and funny and twisted, just like The Beatles' sense of humor. Another fun memory I have of this song is listening to it while on a psychedelic trip. All I know is, I couldn't stop laughing at this song but it was the most beautiful song ever. The video is the version from Cirque du Soleil: LOVE that combines it with "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" and "Helter Skelter" quite effectively.

day 30 - your favorite song at this time last year - Deftones - Diamond Eyes

I don't know about favorite song but this song certainly is a representation of what I was listening to a LOT of at this time last year. To be fair, this album had just come out but I still must have listened to it front to back about 50 times since it came out. It's coming very close to surpassing Adrenaline and Around the Fur on my list of favorite Deftones albums because it's just really their most complete and focused album, I feel. Maybe most focused isn't the right term, it just seems like they finally found their sound, so to speak. It's kind of ironic because one of my favorite things about their first three albums is that they each sound completely and utterly different and I absolutely love bands that can do that from album to album and still have a sound that is distinctly their own. For Deftones, it seems like after White Pony, they decided this was their blueprint and they were going to fine tune it until they got it perfect and on this album, they've done that.

System of a Down - IZE

2011-05-04T14:54:00.002-04:00

As much as I love the System of a Down double album Mesmerize/Hypnotize, I really could have done without a number of the songs from both records. Most double albums probably should have never been double albums. I think SOAD had it right with the process they went through for Toxicity where they recorded somewhere around 30 songs and then whittled that down to 14. However, with the positive response to Steal This Album!, I think they felt like this time they could just leave those songs in and make an epic double album. Unfortunately, they had it right the first time because there's a lot of filler on both albums that doesn't fit in and interrupts the flow of the album. So what did I do? I removed them and reorganized the tracks the way I would have had them in a playlist. I call it "IZE."

1. Intro (Soldier Side)
2. B.Y.O.B.
3. Attack
4. Dreaming
5. Revenga
6. Violent Pornography
7. Kill Rock N' Roll
8. Question!
9. Tentative
10. Lost In Hollywood
11. Hypnotize
12. Sad Statue
13. Lonely Day
14. Soldier Side

new riff (layered swell)

2011-04-15T17:15:00.000-04:00

guitar 1

x-|-----7--10--
x-|--578-------
x-|0---->8-->7>

guitar 2

x-|-----32>3>2>
x-|--535-------
x-|0---------->

guitar 3

x-|3---->3---->
x-|5---->1---->
x-|0---->0---->

4:20 mix

2011-03-06T00:01:00.000-05:00

This is a mix of songs that are APPROXIMATELY four minutes and twenty seconds...sometimes it varies on different computers...whatever...

1. Korn - Blind
2. Dethklok - Into the Water
3. Mastodon - Colony of Birchmen
4. Bjork - Alarm Call
5. Radiohead - Lucky
6. Modest Mouse - Gravity Rides Everything
7. At the Drive-In - One-Armed Scissor
8. The Lawrence Arms - Your Gravest Words
9. Oasis - Wonderwall
10. Weezer - The World Has Turned and Left Me Here
11. Jimmy Eat World - Sweetness (demo)
12. The Beatles - Come Together
13. Bob Marley - Buffalo Soldier
14. Incubus - Psychopsilocybin
15. Limp Bizkit - Nobody Like You
16. Pantera - Suicide Note (Pt. 2)
17. Slipknot - Pulse of the Maggots
18. Thrice - Red Sky

Stoner Metal Mix

2011-03-04T14:17:00.000-05:00

I just put the finishing touches on what I think may be one of the best overall mixes I've ever made and I just had to share...now, I should note, this is not specifically a stoner metal mix in terms of the genre itself...it's just a bunch of cool "metal" (term used somewhat loosely) that I thoroughly enjoy listening to when I'm stoned...the real point is that some of these transitions are really awesome--particularly the stretch from #9 to #13...

1. Metallica - The Ecstacy of Gold (S&M)
2. Metallica - The Call of Ktulu (S&M)
3. Between the Buried and Me - Mordecai
4. Tool - Intermission
5. Tool - Jimmy
6. Kylesa - The Curse of Lost Days (Pt. III)
7. Dethklok - Into the Water
8. Isis - So Did We
9. Buried Inside - Time as Imperialism
10. Crestfallen - Scouring For Any Signs of Life
11. Coalesce - Cowards.com
12. Converge - My Great Devastator
13. Mudvayne - Prod
14. Mare - They Sent You
15. Cave In - Juggernaut

One Song, Glory

2011-02-13T17:23:00.000-05:00

Vaster Than Empires - The Ground Only Moves When You Walk On It - 3:01 - 3:40 is the best moment of my "career" as a musician...the one thing I've created that really sounds like something special to me, like something I want to listen to over and over...if everything I wrote was up to that quality, I'd be off to a good start...and I didn't even write that part myself...it came organically during a jam session Reisner and I were having after practice...when I'm famous, that will be a trivia question, trust me...

Four-Way Splits

2010-12-02T21:14:00.000-05:00

I was feeling a little nostalgic the other day for the days not knowing any better than to make mix CDs with more than one song by a given artist (not counting mixes of just one artist)...so I came up with an idea: 90-minute, four-way splits...in other words, an equal number of songs (or at least time) by each of four selected artists, arranged for optimal flow...here's what I have so far:

Radiohead/Thrice/Tool/The Beatles (my four favorite bands)

1. Radiohead - Planet Telex
2. Thrice - Daedalus
3. Tool - H./Useful Idiot
4. The Beatles - A Day In the Life
5. Radiohead - Paranoid Android
6. The Beatles - While My Guitar Gently Weeps
7. Radiohead - Exit Music (For a Film)
8. Tool - Pushit
9. Thrice - The Melting Point of Wax
10. The Beatles - Eleanor Rigby
11. The Beatles - Happiness Is a Warm Gun
12. Thrice - For Miles
13. Radiohead - The National Anthem
14. Tool - The Patient
15. Thrice - The Earth Will Shake
16. Tool - Right In Two

The Bouncing Souls/Foo Fighters/Jimmy Eat World/The Lawrence Arms (just four bands that seemed to go together well)

1. Foo Fighters - All My Life
2. The Bouncing Souls - Lean On Sheena
3. Jimmy Eat World - Table For Glasses
4. Foo Fighters - In Your Honor
5. Jimmy Eat World - Just Watch the Fireworks
6. Jimmy Eat World - For Me This Is Heaven
7. Foo Fighters - Everlong
8. The Lawrence Arms - Your Gravest Words
9. The Bouncing Souls - The Something Special
10. The Lawrence Arms - Brickwall Views
11. The Bouncing Souls - Hopeless Romantic
12. The Lawrence Arms - First Eviction Notice
13. Jimmy Eat World - No Sensitivity
14. The Lawrence Arms - The Ramblin' Boys of Pleasure
15. Foo Fighters - My Hero (Skin and Bones version)
16. Foo Fighters - Next Year
17. The Lawrence Arms - The Raw and Searing Flesh
18. Foo Fighters - February Stars (Skin and Bones version)
19. The Bouncing Souls - Lamar Vannoy
20. Jimmy Eat World - Call It In the Air
21. The Bouncing Souls - Anchors Aweigh
22. The Lawrence Arms - Fireflies
23. The Bouncing Souls - Gone

more on this as it develops...

Playlist: Modern Anthems

2010-09-06T16:00:00.000-04:00

The other day I was watching a live webcast of The Arcade Fire playing Madison Square Garden on youtube and chatting with my friend who was watching the same webcast. They closed (of course) with "Wake Up" and my friend said to me: "this is the last great anthem." Obviously I took this as a challenge. So I found 84 songs on my iPod that I deemed to be "great anthems" and that were released in or after the year 2004 (the year The Arcade Fire's "Funeral" was released). A lot of them were by the same artists so I made a mix (right in the range of 90 minutes so it would fit comfortably on a blank tape, if anyone's interested) of the best ones:

1. Thrice - Image of the Invisible

One of the more powerful songs you'll hear and one of the best opening songs on an album. The call-and-response gang vocals give me chills every time you hear them. This is one of a handful of songs that really captured the emotion and the significance of the 2008 Presidential Election for me. Not only that but the lyrics read like a war cry for my generation and are sung like one as well.

2. Jimmy Eat World - Futures

If "Image of the Invisible" was a war cry for the 2008 election then this one was a war cry for the 2004 election. Unfortunately this particular war cry wasn't exactly loud enough but that doesn't take anything away from this soaring pop anthem. Another one of my favorite album openers of all time, it explodes from the word "go" with one of catchiest riffs I've ever heard and the infectiousness doesn't stop there as a typically soaring Jimmy Eat World chorus sings "Say hello to good times...trade up for the fast life...we close our eyes while the nickle and dime take the streets completely."

3. Lucero - What Else Would You Have Me Be?

Yet another one of my all time favorite album openers and a perfect third track for a mix tape. This one doesn't soar quite as majestically as the first two but it's every bit as powerful in its simplicity and down-homey style. The stark, earnest crooning of "Come on baby, what else would you have me be?" in the chorus isn't exactly the epic, infectious sing-along that you normally hear in an anthem but the line is so starkly honest and vulnerable that you can't help singing along.

4. The Hold Steady - Southtown Girls

Another awesomely down-homey anthem with a very simple but very infectious chorus: "Southtown girls won't blow you away...but you know that they'll stay." Has a certain poignancy to it, doesn't it? Unlike the first three songs on this mix that open their respective albums, this song closes out the album it's on, and quite appropriately. It also features a totally rockin', infectious riff that will compel your hips irresistibly to move.

5. Drive-By Truckers - The Righteous Path

The kings of alt-country offer up a soulful rock anthem with an almost gospel feel to it, specifically in the lyrics. Lyrically it speaks very personally of every day life and troubles with money. The song itself has a nostalgic simplicity that makes it undeniably timeless, much in the same way that Smashing Pumpkins' "1979" is. This is a song I could see having my first dance with a girl to. It's catchy, it's poignant, and it's danceable. What more could you ask for?

6. The Bouncing Souls - So Jersey

I really wish I could have gone back a few years to 2001 when they released How I Spent My Summer Vacation because there are like 3 or 4 different songs on that album that are all-timer level anthems. The Gold Record has its share of great anthems also (although the best one is a song originally written by a band called Avoid One Thing). I picked this one not only because it strikes me as the most anthemic but because it's an anthem with a message that's very dear to me, which is: "And we want to say thanks to the music in our lives for helping us to survive..."

7. Latterman - My Bedroom Is Like For Artists

The album that this song closes out (No Matter Where We Go) is essentially nothing BUT wide-eyed anthems from beginning to end. Picking just one to go on this mix was part mind-numbing deliberation and part total crapshoot. In the end, this one stood out marginally from the rest--maybe because it has that conclusive feel of a final song on an album. The point is, if you like the anthemic qualities of this song, you really need to hear the rest of the album because the choruses are just as powerful in every other song on it.

8. The Ergs! - Everything Falls Apart (and More)

This, to me, is the band that every fan of New Found Glory or Blink 182 or any of the other megastars of shitty mainstream pop punk needs to be listening to instead. These guys are the kings of nerdy pop punk, firmly planted at the intersection of Elvis Costello and The Descendents. Dorkrockcorkrod is honestly one of the ten best pop punk albums I've ever heard; fresh and diverse but focused and infectious. This tongue-in-cheek anthem articulates a sarcastic desire to be lied to by the girl of your dreams because "the truth hurts much too much sometimes." I think it's something a lot of nerdy, squirrely guys can relate to even if none of us legitimately wants to be lied to.

9. Dillinger Four - A Jingle For the Product

Another band, much like The Bouncing Souls, whose catalog I wish I could go further back into (a couple gems that could just as easily be on this mix: "Doublewhiskeycokenoice", "Super Powers Enable Me to Blend with Machinery", "D4=Putting the 'F' Back In 'Art'", "Fired Side Chat") but this song certainly belongs on that pantheon as well. Actually a lot of songs from C I V I L W A R are worthy of a spot but this one stands out above the others--as well it should, being the first song on the album (and Dillinger Four has always been one of those bands who never fails to deliver on a phenomenal opening track).

10. Foo Fighters - In Your Honor

One more band for which I wish I could go back earlier than 2004 (how perfectly would "My Hero" fit in on this list; possibly one of the great anthems of all time). I was sort of on the fence on whether to pick this song or "The Pretender" but this one is just so epic, the choice was clear. I mean you talk about a great opening song--I would have killed to have seen them live when they toured for this album and opened every show with this song. So profound, so poignant and towering. Then that bubbling riff that gives way to silence...a deliberate breath...and then it explodes.

11. Modern Life Is War - D.E.A.D.R.A.M.O.N.E.S.

It wasn't easy working a hardcore song into this mix but somehow I managed it. I had a hard time deciding between this and "The Outsider" which is a decidedly more powerful song but lacks a real sing-along or hook that would really qualify it as an anthem. So instead we have this song with its mesmerizing closing sing-along (see: song title).

12. System of a Down - Soldier Side

The poignancy of this song struck me immediately and impactively the very first time I heard it. I'd consider it a pretty major feat to listen to this song without getting chills. It doesn't so much have a specific hook as it is just one long anthem...every line soars and the harmonies of "they were crying when their sons left...etc." equal, if not surpass, the paralyzing outro of "Chop Suey." Extremely emotional, epic, starkly moving and, most of all, anthemic.

13. Leftover Crack - Soon We'll Be Dead (feat. World/Inferno Friendship Society)

At this point, we slow things down a bit; ironically, with an uncharacteristically slow song for Leftover Crack, best known for their crusty skacore and punk rock energy. Truly, it was a brilliant move on the band's part to bring in some of their friends in World/Inferno Friendship Society to help on this song because Stza's voice is clearly inadequate to execute this song and also the accordion adds a beautiful dimension that really puts the song over the top.

14. The White Stripes - Icky Thump

This might be the most unorthodox anthem on the list. The big hook is not a melody at all but a wild, hollering chant that you would have a hard time memorizing and singing along to without reading along with the lyrics. However, in spite of not having a catchy melody or being easy to follow along with, the "hook" is undeniably catchy and even if you can't remember the lyrics after you hear it 5-10 times, you won't be able to get it out of your head and will inevitably find yourself "singing" to yourself, something along the lines of "Icky Thump with the bump dumpa dump somethin' somethin' to Mexicooo."

15. Kanye West - Homecoming (ft. Chris Martin)

It was pretty much a toss-up between this and "Stronger" and I figured since I have a Coldplay song on here, why not put this song right before it. Actually, I chose this song mostly because everyone got pretty sick and tired of "Stronger" (myself included) and because the main hook in "Stronger" is a sample from a Daft Punk song and the main hook in this song is just plain better. Chris Martin fits so seemlessly into this song and the beat is absolutely phenomenal. Say what you want about Kanye's emcee skills (and his personality) but the man is a supremely talented producer and it's never more apparent than on this song and, really, on this entire album.

16. Coldplay - Viva la Vida

Anyone who knows me knows I'm no fan of Coldplay. I've always essentially viewed them as a diet version of Radiohead--actually, one of my favorite writers, Chuck Klosterman, has a much better line: "[Coldplay] sound like a mediocre photocopy of Travis (who sounds like a mediocre photocopy of Radiohead)." However, to their credit, on the album that this song takes its name from, they did a lot to distance themselves from the Radiohead comparisons, especially with this song. It has a kind of urgent energy which is not only a product of an ethereal sing-along chorus but also the noteworthy absence of conventional drumming and the inclusion of delightfully artificial-sounding string arrangements (and I say that without a hint of sarcasm; the electric string arrangements add a color and exuberance that I honestly don't think actual string instruments would necessarily achieve).

17. Bright Eyes - Road to Joy

As the song title insinuates, this song is loosely fashioned after Beethoven's famous "Ode to Joy" melody from his 9th Symphony. As you can imagine, this makes for a pretty epic anthem. This is another one of those songs where there isn't so much one great, epic hook as it is the whole song that's a sing-along. There aren't even any repeated lines that will stick in your brain but the melody is so infectious and powerful that it gives a chorus-like emphasis to pretty much every line in the song--and there are some phenomenal lines. Some of my favorites: "So when you're asked to fight a war that's over nothing, it's best to join the side that's gonna win. And no one's sure how all of this got started but we're gonna make 'em goddamn certain how it's gonna end." and "I read the body count out of the paper and now it's written all over my face. No one ever plans to sleep out in the gutter, sometimes that's just the most comfortable place." and, last but not least, a line that pretty well sums up the career of Conor Oberst/Bright Eyes: "Well I could have been a famous singer if I had someone else's voice but failure's always sounded better. Let's fuck it up boys, MAKE SOME NOISE!" which leads straight into the song's majestically noisy climax.

18. Dredg - Bug Eyes

Dredg was always more on the eclectic side than the catchy/sing-along-y side of things in spite of some very infectious melodies--that is, until the Catch Without Arms album. This was decidedly Dredg's most poppy album to date. This fact can be viewed either negatively or positively--on the positive side, the songs are beautiful and catchy with wonderful, dreamy, melodious hooks and textures; on the negative side, the songs are much simpler and devoid of many of the diverse textural and harmonic elements that made Leitmotif and El Cielo such fascinating albums. On the whole, it's a very good, well-written album and its dreamy, textural magnificence is exemplified by this song, with its iconic, delay-saturated, slide guitar intro and its soaring choruses that sing: "Your journey back to birth is haunting you; your departure from the Earth is haunting you."

19. Green Day - Wake Me Up When September Ends

I'd be hard-pressed trying to put together a list of the best anthems of the last 5-6 years without including a song from arguably the most commercially and critically (combined) successful album of the last decade. I certainly could have picked "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" or "American Idiot" or even one of the non-single tracks such as "Are We the Waiting" or even the 9-plus minute epic "Homecoming" instead; however, all things considered (overall song quality, popularity, anthemic...ness...), I think this song was the clear-cut way to go. As overplayed as this song has become, I doubt very many people can deny how powerful and anthemic it is. Also, having seen it live, I can attest to getting serious goosebumps hearing a huge crowd sing it in unison.

20. Far - At Night We Live

The only song on the list that was actually released this year, making it (obviously) the most recent song on the list. At first, this might seem a bit slow and methodical for an anthem but as a person who has done so much of my living after dark, the stirring chorus of the dark and powerful song resonates deeply with me. Sure, it's not exactly full of energy but it's starkly emotional and the exuberance in the lyrics and the melody can't be overstated. I also love how the mood of the song matches the subject material; the song truly resonates the energy of an exciting night full of dizzying possibilities.

21. Baroness - Ogeechee Hymnal/A Horse Called Golgotha

We close with a band that's hardly known for anthems and certainly not known for its hooks (at least not vocal hooks). While this song does have a pretty spectacular vocal melody in the chorus, it distances itself from the rest of the songs on the list in that it's most anthemic parts and aspects are instrumental. Some of the guitar lines and melodies in this song are more anthemic than some of the hooks in other songs on the list. I dare you not to hum along with the powerful hook that closes out the song.

Candidates for the Top 10 of 2010 (and, for good measure, 2009)

2010-08-24T22:56:00.000-04:00

The National - High Violet
Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid
Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me
Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
Beach House - Teen Dream
The Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
The Tallest Man On Earth - Wild Hunt
The Black Keys - Brothers
Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma
Blind Guardian - At the Edge of Time
The Fall - Your Future, Our Clutter
The White Stripes - Under the Great White Northern Lights
Anathema - We're Here Because We're Here
The Roots - How I Got Over
Laurie Anderson - Homeland
Deftones - Diamond Eyes
Johnny Cash - American VI: Ain't No Grave
Gorillaz - Plastic Beach
Nas & Damian Marley - Distant Relatives
Drive-By Truckers - The Big To-Do
She & Him - Volume Two
Kayo Dot - Coyote
The Hold Steady - Heaven Is Whenever
Matt Skiba - Demos
Torche - Songs for Singles
Jimmy Eat World - Invented
Envy - Recitation
Kylesa - Spiral Shadow

and since I never made a top 10 of 2009:

Mastodon - Crack the Skye
Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
Converge - Axe to Fall
The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
Raekwon - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...Pt. II
Natural Snow Buildings - Shadow Kingdom
Kylesa - Static Tensions
Ghost Brigade - Isolation Songs
Riverside - Anno Domini High Definition
maudlin of the Well - Part the Second
Transatlantic - The Whirlwind
Dinosaur Jr. - Farm
Mos Def - The Ecstatic
Alice In Chains - Black Gives Way to Blue
Isis - Wavering Radiant
Between the Buried and Me - The Great Misdirect
Ancestors - Of Sound Mind
Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Thrice - Beggars
Mono - Hymn to the Immortal Wind
Dredg - The Pariah, the Parrot, the Delusion
Baroness - Blue Record
Porcupine Tree - The Incident
Russian Circles - Geneva
Buried Inside - Spoils of Failure
Wilco - Wilco (The Album)
Propagandhi - Supporting Caste
Lucero - 1372 Overton Park

Derrick's Top Albums of All Time (#20-11)

2010-08-16T11:49:00.000-04:00

I know, I know, it's been over three months since the last installment in this series. I'm really slacking on this thing lately. But I FINALLY have gotten back on track and have prepared the next in this wonderful series for all two of you that read this blog (and that's being generous). I swear, honest to god, I'm gonna really try to start making a habit of updating this blog every week. Seriously. Anyway, on with the show...

20. Kayo Dot - Choirs of the Eye

I'd like to think that the small handful of people who actually read this would know enough to take me seriously when I say that Choirs of the Eye is the most musically diverse, eclectic, dynamic mindfuck of an album I've ever heard. There is no possible genre I could assign to this and describing it would be almost as impossible. The songs rollercoaster from classical music to folk to sludge, almost black metal to spacey post-rock, often within the same "song" (I use the term loosely because there are five tracks on the album, one is five minutes and the rest hover around the 11-15 minute mark...so they're really more like movements of a symphony than "songs"). I never thought I'd hear a beautiful trombone solo or brilliant clarinet solo in the same song as heavy metal guitars but the musicianship here is just on such a high level that the grace and flow with which the band bends and contorts between and across genre lines is truly astounding.

19. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada and Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven

Now we get into a few albums of what I consider to be my generation's classical music (although my generation has actual classical music too but whatever just go with me on this): instrumental post-rock. This is more of a classical-styled band in the genre in that they do employ the use of strings very often. Their music...at times is like the soundtrack to the end of the world. In fact their albums often come off as though they could be movie soundtracks and that whatever movie they were the soundtracks to would probably be really fucking good (for the record, post-rock band Explosions In the Sky literally did go that route, doing the soundtrack to Friday Night Lights, which was pretty decent). Slow Riot has a much more melancholy eastern music influence to it which is why I had to put it in a tie with Skinny Fists despite only having 2 "movements" and roughly 27 minutes of music. "Moya" is one of the great buildups of all time and "BBF3" really does literally sound like the soundtrack to the end of the world at times along with featuring a fascinating interview clip with Blaise Bailey Finnegan III (hence "BBF3"). Skinny Fists on the other hand is just full of so much music that I can't really even begin to describe it all...one recommendation I would give is to see if you can find a version that's broken up into movements--the original release of the album has four tracks, each in the 20 minute range, named "Storm", "Static", "Sleep", and "Antennas to Heaven"...however, in the liner notes each of these tracks is divided into "movements" denoted with beginning and ending times in each track for each of its movements..."Storm" is divided into four movements, "Static" into five, "Sleep" into three, and "Antennas to Heaven" contains seven movements. I say get this version because I just find it interesting to see where each movement begins and ends but I guess you could just buy the CD or look up the beginning and ending times online...but whatever it's cool to have.

18. Mono - Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined

Mono is a band that tends to catch a considerable amount of criticism among the more discerning fans of instrumental/post-rock music (along with Explosions In the Sky) for the lack of imagination, innovation, and creativity in their music. As a musician, I can see where they're coming from--Mono tends to rely on a lot of melodic cliches in their chord progressions and often uses and reuses many of the same effects and songwriting methods in many of their songs. All those things aside, however, this band makes some of the most achingly beautiful music you're likely to ever hear and that fact is no more evident than on Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined. Unlike Godspeed You! Black Emperor, this band (and Explosions In the Sky, for that matter) mostly employ the basic rock music instrumental nucleus of two guitars, a bass guitar, and drums--with the occasional sprinkle of strings or piano for ambiance or effect. However, their music is no less powerful for it. "16.12" and "Halcyon (Beautiful Days)" are two of the most inspiring pieces of music on my iPod and I constantly use the latter in mix CDs/tapes and playlists--to me, this song is literally the musical incarnation of falling in love, complete with an epically climactic first kiss toward the end.

17. Converge - Petitioning the Empty Sky

It's kind of amazing to think that this album came out nearly fifteen years ago, in 1996. Talk about being ahead of your time. Many still consider this Converge's best work and while I'm not sure I'd go that far, I can certainly understand the sentiment. It's much more raw and unfettered than anything else they released and you could also make the argument that it's significantly more unorthodox--specifically in terms of Jacob Bannon's tortured vocal delivery. It also has a lot more of the hardcore punk and thrash metal influences of Converge's late 90s output, which, along with the rawness of it, as much as I love all these elements, knocks it down a few pegs for me on my list of this band's best stuff. However, I can't write a synopsis of this album without talking about "The Saddest Day"--in my opinion, one of the greatest songs ever written, not just in hardcore but in all rock music. An epic journey through all corners of the hardcore spectrum, it features at least three of the most undeniably classic moments of hardcore songwriting ever put to tape--the riotous breakdown near the midpoint of the song, the haunting sing-along of "how we get older, how we forget about each other", and finally the irresistibly powerful chant of "EVERY TIME YOU JUSTIFY, ANOTHER GOOD IN YOU DIES."

16. The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds

I'm not much for sugary sweet pop music at all but this right here is an absolute pop masterpiece. If there were a Mount Rushmore of pop records, it would undoubtedly be three Beatles records and this one. We're all familiar with the megahits "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and "God Only Knows", two of the greatest songs of all time. But this record is so, so much more than those songs. The harmonies are achingly beautiful, the hooks are undeniably infectious, and the songwriting is simply masterful. There isn't much I can say about this album that hasn't been said already so I'll just say that if you don't own this album or if you've never heard the whole thing from start to finish then your life simply won't ever be complete until you do.

15. Envy - A Dead Sinking Story

Epic. EPIC. I'm going to attempt to describe this album without using the word "epic" more than ten times--or just typing "EPIC EPIC EPIC EPIC EPIC" over and over until it forms a paragraph. This is the music of the towering, the majestic, the sublime. It stretches so high over your head that your neck may become sore after extended listens--and most listens to this album are extended with no song (besides the interlude) being less than five minutes, four songs reaching over the seven minute mark, and one (the final song) eclipsing the twelve minute mark. The power and majesty of Envy's melodies are likely to make your hair stand on end and, at times, your jaw drop. No metaphor I could conjure would adequately capture it. No description I could give would be good enough. You have to hear it to believe it.

14. Cave In - Until Your Heart Stops

Keeping with the theme of beautifully complex hardcore records, I give you one that, in my opinion, is one of the best, and quite possibly THE most underrated hardcore record of all time. When you look at it in the context of the album that precedes it (Beyond Hypothermia, a decidedly heavier and more metal-influenced record) and the album that follows it (Jupiter, Cave In's Radiohead-esque left-field turn into the realm of spacey post-rock), it's clear that this album is the stepping stone between the two, combining elements of both of these sounds into one beautifully textured melting pot of awesomeness. The one-two punch of "Moral Eclipse" and "Terminal Deity" kick off the album with perfect attention paid to pacing--in fact, the beginning of this album is consistent with the unwritten rules of mixtape-making which are to start off with a bang, then kick it up a notch, and then pull it back...I think they originally come from High Fidelity though I'm not sure if they originally appear in the movie or the book. The next track does somewhat pull it back, but only in terms of sheer speed and ferocity. "Juggernaut" is another song that I feel belongs on the pantheon of great all time hardcore songs--brilliant riffing, clockwork-perfect time changes, beautifully spacey melodies...just an incredibly well-written song in every aspect. Following that is "The End of Our Rope Is a Noose", an eight-minute odyssey plunging even deeper into the spacey post-rock elements that would dominate the following album. From there, well, it really goes all over the place. The production is perfect, phasing out a lot of treble with very effective results and enhancing the atmosphere with some delicious little experimental loops and studio tricks. I can honestly say I will be listening to this album until MY heart stops! (rimshot)

13. Deftones - White Pony

Here's another very Radiohead-esque left-field turn by a band that, for several years, seemed to evolve into a new and different band with each album they released (see: Adrenaline -> Around the Fur -> White Pony). This band's turn, to me, is probably the most impressive of any, simply because, when they released this starkly experimental album, they were right at the forefront of the "nu metal" movement along with Korn and Rage Against the Machine. To take such a bold artistic risk after developing what was, frankly, a notoriously closed-minded following (by which I mean nu metal fans in general, not Deftones fans, who, to their credit, were always a little more open than the rest, as evidenced by the success of this album) is a truly commendable move to make. Of course, the main reason it was so effective and successful is because it's just that damn good. While it was a very experimental, spacey album, there was certainly no shortage of heavy down-tuned guitars. For every "Digital Bath" or "Rx Queen" or "Teenager" there was a "Feiticeira", an "Elite", and a "Street Carp"--interestingly enough, I just listed tracks 2, 4, and 6 followed by tracks 1, 3, and 5 of White Pony, so that just gives you an idea how much variation there is here. The highlight of the album, for me, is definitely "Passenger" which features guest vocals by Maynard James Keenan of Tool and A Perfect Circle--vocals which, to the untrained ear, are famously all but indecipherable from those of Deftones vocalist Chino Moreno. Another highlight is "Knife Prty", also featuring guest vocals, but these are lent by someone far less famous--a girl working next door to the studio.

12. Dredg - El Cielo

In years past, I used to completely dismiss the idea that this album was better than what I consider to be this bands magnum opus, Leitmotif. As time has gone by, I've softened more and more on that stance until now I'm starting to doubt whether or not I really still think Leitmotif is the better album. I'm not quite ready to relent on my stance that Leitmotif is the band's crowning achievement but I'm starting to see the scales tip that way in my mind. Either way, this album is certainly as brilliantly crafted as its predecessor, if not more so. It definitely is more diverse in its influences and its instrumentation, which I absolutely adore about it. Employing everything from a flute to a trumpet to a saxophone, this album sees the band stretching its creative wings much further out. Singer Gavin Hayes's vocals are also much less raw than they are on the previous album, much more developed and almost operatic, one might say. There are a number of very interesting interludes that lead into the songs that follow them perfectly and there are some very brightly shining moments on here as far as the actual songs. The ones that shine brightest for me are "Triangle" (one of my Top 50 Songs of the 2000s), "Of the Room", "Whoa Is Me", and the epic, aptly-titled album closer, "The Canyon Behind Her."

11. Tool - 10,000 Days

I feel like a lot of the things I'm saying in this series are things I've said a million times before and that people who might have read them before are getting plain sick and tired of. This is one that I actually already said earlier in the series but I have to repeat it to talk about this album also (and considering how long it's been since the entry in which I first said it, I doubt you'll remember it): As much as I loved and still do love Lateralus, [copypaste]I couldn't help thinking it left something to be desired five years removed from the masterpiece of Ænima. I felt like Tool was capable of doing so much better which speaks more to the otherworldly expectations created by Ænima then it does to the actual mediocrity of Lateralus[/copypaste]. As such, when 10,000 Days was released, I absolutely adored it immediately because, to me, this was more like the album I was expecting to hear when I bought Lateralus. This is what Tool is truly capable of--far more focused and scathing and considerably less indulgent than Lateralus. "Vicarious", "Jambi", and "The Pot" rank right up there with the best of Tool's "hits", as powerful and dynamic as anything they've written but also just catchy and accessible enough for rock radio. Meanwhile, "Rosetta Stoned" and "Right In Two" easily belong in the top ten songs Tool has ever written, towering tall alongside fellow epics such as "Third Eye" and "Pushit." "Right In Two" is quite possibly my favorite Tool song lyrically and the tabla solo is so amazing, the only thing better is seeing Danny do it live. It's wonderful to see how far along he's come on the tabla. "Rosetta Stoned", on the other hand, is certainly a fitting title for that song. It's really only something that obsessive Tool fans--read: most real Tool fans--are consciously aware of but this song has pieces of other Tool songs scattered all over the place. That's not to say they sampled other songs or ripped riffs straight out of old songs and pasted them into this one. However there are certainly very distinct homages to many of Tool's songs hidden within the song. Comparisons can be drawn between parts in "Rosetta Stoned" and parts in songs such as "H." and "Third Eye" that are a frequent topic of discussion on Tool message boards--and I would know. In many ways this song really is kind of a "rosetta stone" for Tool's music and a very interesting microcosm of their catalog. Tool has almost become known for these sort of 10+ minute epics that rollercoaster up and down and side to side and upside down countless times and while this is no "Third Eye" it certainly earns its place on the pantheon of Tool epics and helps earn 10,000 Days a spot on this countdown.

Well there you have it. Tune in next week (SERIOUSLY!) for the TOP TEN--very exciting stuff. Until then, enjoy!

"Boner Moments" (150 Songs)

2010-06-29T20:01:00.000-04:00

The Assistant - Training Wheels or No Hands
At the Drive-In - Invalid Litter Dept.
At the Gates - Slaughter of the Soul
Bane - Ali v. Frazier III
Baroness - Tower Falls
Between the Buried and Me - Mordecai
Blind Guardian - Noldor (Dead Winter Reigns)
Bright Eyes - Road to Joy
Bruce Springsteen - Thunder Road
City of Caterpillar - ...And You're Wondering How a Top Floor Could Replace Heaven
Converge - Heaven In Her Arms
Converge - The Saddest Day
Converge - My Great Devastator
Converge - Conduit
Converge - Heartless
Converge - Drop Out
Converge - Hope Street
Crestfallen - Scouring For Any Signs of Life
Darkest Hour - The Sadist Nation
Darwin's Waiting Room - All I Have Is Me
Dashboard Confessional - The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most
Deftones - Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)
Deftones - Beware
Dethklok - Into the Water
Dillinger Escape Plan - The Running Board
Dillinger Four - Fired-Side Chat
Dredg - Triangle
Eighteen Visions - Vanity
Envy - Color of Fetters
Envy - A Far-Off Reason
Every Time I Die - Jimmy Tango's Method
Fear Factory - Edgecrusher
From Autumn to Ashes - Capeside Rock
From Autumn to Ashes - Reflections
From Autumn to Ashes - Short Stories with Tragic Endings
Funeral Diner - Yeah, You Remember That
Funeral Diner - This Truly Is God's Country
Funeral Diner - End on 6
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Moya
Incubus - Just a Phase
Isis - Altered Course
Isis - So Did We
Jimmy Eat World - A Praise Chorus
Jimmy Eat World - If You Don't, Don't
Jimmy Eat World - Table for Glasses
Jimmy Eat World - Polaris
Jimmy Eat World - 23
Kayo Dot - The Manifold Curiosity
King Crimson - The Court of the Crimson King
Kylesa - The Curse of Lost Days (Part III)
Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven
Less Than Jake - Jen Doesn't Like Me Anymore
Machine Head - Davidian
Majority Rule - The Sin In Grey
Mare - They Sent You
The Mars Volta - Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of)
Metallica - One
Metallica - The Unforgiven
Metallica - Nothing Else Matters
Metallica - The Call of Ktulu (S&M)
Mineral - Parking Lot
Modern Life Is War - The Outsider (A.K.A. Hell Is For Heroes Pt. 1)
Mogwai - Ratts of the Capital
Mono - 16.12
Mono - Halcyon (Beautiful Days)
Mouth of the Architect - Baobab
Mouth of the Architect - No One Wished to Settle Here
Mudvayne - Severed
Neil Perry - Fading Away Like the Rest of Them
Nine Inch Nails - Ruiner
Nine Inch Nails - Somewhat Damaged
Pantera - Cemetary Gates
Pantera - Floods
A Perfect Circle - The Package
Pg. 99 - In Love With An Apparition
Piebald - Grace Kelly with Wings
Pink Floyd - The Great Gig In the Sky
Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb
The Plastic Mastery - Before the Fall
Queens of the Stone Age - Song for the Dead
Radiohead - You and Whose Army?
Radiohead - Planet Telex
Radiohead - Nude
Radiohead - Paranoid Android
Radiohead - Exit Music (For a Film)
Radiohead - No Surprises
Radiohead - Lucky
Radiohead - The Tourist
Rage Against the Machine - Know Your Enemy
Rage Against the Machine - Wake Up
Rage Against the Machine - Freedom
Refused - Protest Song '68
Refused - Refused Are Fucking Dead
Refused - Tannhauser/Derive
Russian Circles - Death Rides a Horse
Sepultura - Roots Bloody Roots
Shai Hulud - My Heart Bleeds the Darkest Blood
Strike Anywhere - Chalk Line (acoustic)
Sunny Day Real Estate - Seven
Sunny Day Real Estate - In Circles
Sunny Day Real Estate - Song About An Angel
Sunny Day Real Estate - 47
System of a Down - Tentative
System of a Down - Hypnotize
System of a Down - Lonely Day
System of a Down - Soldier Side
System of a Down - Revenga
System of a Down - Violent Pornography
System of a Down - Question!
System of a Down - Sad Statue
System of a Down - Lost In Hollywood
System of a Down - Chop Suey
Thrice - Broken Lungs
Thrice - Daedalus
Thrice - Come All You Weary
Thrice - Circles
Thrice - Doublespeak
Thrice - The Earth Will Shake
Thrice - For Miles
Thrice - Hold Fast Hope
Thrice - Red Sky
Thrice - Lullaby
Thursday - Jet Black New Year
Thursday - Understanding In a Car Crash (live)
Thursday - Autobiography of a Nation
Thursday - A Hole In the World
Thursday - Paris In Flames
Thursday - How Long Is the Night?
Thursday - A Hole In the World (acoustic)
Tool - Eulogy
Tool - H.
Tool - Forty Six & 2
Tool - Hooker with a Penis
Tool - Jimmy
Tool - The Grudge
Tool - Sober
Tool - Vicarious
Tool - Jambi
Tool - Rosetta Stoned
Tool - Right In Two
Vaster Than Empires - The Ground Only Moves When You Walk On It
Vaster Than Empires - Foundation
Weezer - Across the Sea
Weezer - The Good Life
Weezer - El Scorcho
Weezer - Say It Ain't So
Weezer - Only In Dreams
Yaphet Kotto/This Machine Kills/Envy - A Collaboration Song

Top Albums of All Time (#30-21)

2010-05-01T17:38:00.000-04:00

Slowly but surely I'm trudging my way through this massive endeavor...some of these entries it's taken me weeks to finish but we'll reach the end, don't worry faithful reader(s)...

30. Blind Guardian - Nightfall In Middle-Earth

There aren't very many albums with direct, significant attachment to the year I spent at UCF, but this is one of them. I have my good friend Rudo to thank for introducing me to this one (I believe this was one of his many "experiments" on me having to do with metal). Now, when most people think of "power metal" (if they even know what that means) they probably tend to think of, say, Dragonforce (specifically "Through the Fire and the Flames", the fabled Guitar Hero pinnacle)--maybe Rhapsody if you're really into power metal. Blind Guardian is pretty high on the list of most popular power metal bands as well but this album is really like few others in the genre. It's a concept album based on J.R.R. Tolkien's almost textbook-like (or bible-like) history of the Elves, The Silmarillion. Musically it truly is a worthy companion to the book, full of epic, and really quite emotional songs that feature everything from dramatic choir parts fused with very Middle-Earth-esque folk music elements (that makes sense, right? sure.) to towering, beautiful metal riffing. As cheesy as high-pitched 80s-style singing can be, Hansi makes it work beautifully as he really does have a phenomenal voice even if he's a male soprano (I dunno if he actually is or not, that's just as high as the voicings go as far as I know...SHUT UP, THAT'S WHY). My favorite song is easily "Noldor (Dead Winter Reigns)" but "Blood Tears" and "Time Stands Still (At the Iron Hill)" are up there too, as is "Nightfall." Not something that's necessarily for everyone...not because it's too extreme but because we tend to have a very specific paradigm about this style of music that makes us just automatically laugh at it. However, I hope you can trust me enough at this point to listen to this from beginning to ending before making up your mind about power metal--although, to be fair, there is no power metal album anywhere near as good as this one (I mean, technically that's my opinion, but there's a degree of objectivity to that claim as well, specifically among people that listen to a lot of this kind of stuff). ANYWAY. Check it out.

29. Mare - Mare

It breaks my heart so much when a band THIS talented never garners enough popularity to release anything more than a 5-song EP. I can't imagine what this band could have grown into over the years so all we have to go on is this insanely eclectic and musically accomplished EP. For starters, the five songs clock in at just under 25 minutes, roughly five minutes a song (and one of them is just under three minutes). This band is simply crushing, monolithic, mindbending, and beautiful all at once somehow. They don't have the fastest guitar playing or the most technical drumming but the outrageous chords that the guitarist uses and the things they do with timing (and lack there-of) are ridiculous. The vocals can be very harsh and abrasive but they can also be incredibly serene so if you're ok with screaming, dive right in, otherwise, tread carefully. Still, everyone should give this band a shot on sheer musicianship and songwriting because they were one of the best that heavy music has produced recently and almost no one has really ever heard of them.

28. The Beatles - Revolver

This album was actually released right before The Beatles' last tour ever but the songs were so complex that none of them were played on the tour. It's the mark of a creative turning point in The Beatles career. I mean what more can I really say about this record at this point? "Eleanor Rigby" is a mainstay on "Greatest Songs of All Time" lists--and with good reason. Eastern philosophy ("I'm Only Sleeping") and music ("Love You To") begin to creep their way into the Fab Four's pop sound, creating something revolutionary that would lead right into the groundbreaking Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The album is marked by complex arrangements and groundbreaking studio techniques. As Richie Unterberger of Allmusic so eloquently put it: "In many respects, Revolver is one of the very first psychedelic LPs--not only in its numerous shifts in mood and production texture, but in its innovative manipulation of amplification and electronics to produce new sounds on guitars and other instruments." Couldn't have said it better myself.

27. Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

I guess if I'm going to talk about this album the first thing I (begrudgingly) have to talk about is Billy Corgan's voice. I know, I know, it used to annoy me too. The thing is that when you have a band this talented who are this good at writing songs, you tend to look past someone with an annoying voice--or at least I do but music always tends to be the star of the show for me and I know not everyone is like that. The other thing is...well...Billy Corgan can actually sing really well. That is, when he's not doing that high pitched wailing thing (but even that kind of grows on you). You don't have to go far into the album to recognize this; "Tonight, Tonight" is the first (actual) song on the record and one of Corgan's best vocal performances. But ANYWAY, the point I really want to make is that there are SO many songs on this album that are SO good that you would be doing yourself a disservice by writing it off because of the vocals. We've all heard the singles but there are so, so many great songs other than those. Once again, you don't have to go far, because tucked away in between the singles on the front end of the first disc are "Jellybelly" and "Here Is No Why", two of my favorite Pumpkins songs. Track 2 of the second disc is "Bodies", another perfect example of this band's songwriting greatness. They're littered all over the two discs of Mellon Collie; "To Forgive"; "Fuck You (An Ode to No One)"; "Where Boys Fear to Tread"; "Thirty-Three"; "Thru the Eyes of Ruby"; and a song that is, in my opinion, one of the best ever written: "1979." Double albums tend to be overrated as these epic sprawling artistic statements by simple virtue of the fact that they're double albums. What's actually underrated to me is when a band puts out a double album that never gets tired or dull and is filled from top to bottom with quality material. Very few bands are able to accomplish this. Nine Inch Nails did it with The Fragile. Red Hot Chili Peppers did it with Stadium Arcadium. And Smashing Pumpkins did it with Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

26. Dream Theater - Metropolis Pt. II: Scenes From a Memory

What an epic journey this one is. Better fasten your seat belts. Ever heard of a heavy metal record that sounds like a Broadway musical? I know it doesn't make any sense right now but once you hear it, it will. For one thing, all the lyrics are composed in the format of a play--I mean characters and a script and the whole deal. It's a concept album, obviously but moreso than that it's a sequel to a song that appears on the band's 1992 album Images and Words called "Metropolis Pt. I: The Miracle and the Sleeper." You see, the Miracle and the Sleeper are the two main characters of this opus. The story is way too intricate to go into at any length but if you want to read more about it, check out the wikipedia page for the album. This record is a trip, to say the least. A musically and technically brilliant journey through a riveting story told not only through words but through music. And an incredibly rewarding one.

25. Stone Temple Pilots - Purple

For my money, this is easily STP's best album. Core gets most of the attention (not all of it positive) but I feel like this is when the band found the sound they wanted; something original but familiar. Scott Weiland definitely found his voice on this record, shedding all comparisons to Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder. My favorite song is probably the desolate, ghost town feel of "Big Empty"--a song that was featured in the second Crow movie. "Still Remains" is one of the most underrated STP songs and also a very meaningful song to me. "Interstate Love Song is impossible not to love. "Silvergun Superman" provides this album's "Piece of Pie"--i.e. it's the heaviest song on the record and one of the best. Actually, I take it back...my favorite song is definitely "Kitchenware and Candybars." Absolutely positively beautiful song with a phenomenal guitar solo. I actually got to see them play this song live and after seeing that I feel inclined to say this might be one of my 100 favorite songs ever.

24. Thrice - The Artist In the Ambulance and The Alchemy Index

Thrice has certainly gone through a lot of evolution over their 10+ year career. What we have here are essentially step 2 and step 4 of the progression (excluding Identity Crisis and First Impressions). Step 1 was the somewhat generic Illusion of Safety and The Artist In the Ambulance was the next logical progression from that. The sound is still a bit predictable but it's still done really well. The songs are irresistibly catchy, many are quite powerful, and for the first time, the band started using some complex rhythmic structures in their songs. Lyrically speaking, many of the songs speak to the theme of the record (and the title track). The Artist In the Ambulance was the album where the band first decided to start donating half the profits to a chosen charity and the content reflects that. The title track is a perfect example of the overall theme of this record, with lines such as "I know that this can be more than just flashing lights and sound." "Cold Cash, Colder Hearts" also speaks to this theme, musing very bitterly and sarcastically about the supposed unimportance of other countries and their people and their cultures. There are also some far more personal songs such as "All That's Left" and another personal song to me, "Stare At the Sun." Track 8 is a song based on the story of Icarus and Daedalus seemingly told from the point of view of Icarus. It's a very exuberant, uplifting song...just the first verse is enough to always give me goosebumps:

I've waited for this moment all my life and more
And now I see so clearly what I could not see before
The time is now or never and this chance won't come again
Throw caution and myself into the wind...

And that's a perfect lead-in to The Alchemy Index (released after the brilliant Vheissu, which was released after The Artist In the Ambulance), which features, in my opinion, one of the five best songs Thrice ever wrote, "Daedalus"--which is, of course, the story as heard from the point-of-view of Icarus's father, Daedalus ("son, please keep a steady wing, you know you're the only one that means anything to me...steer clear of the sun or you'll find yourself in the sea"). The Alchemy Index is a very unique collection of four six-song EPs, each sonically and thematically dedicated to one of the four elements--Volume I is Fire, Volume II is Water, Volume III is Air, and Volume IV is "Earth." A really interesting concept and perfectly executed. Volume I features a collection of very "fiery", heavy, impassioned songs with names such as "Firebreather", "The Arsonist", and "Burn the Fleet" (another incredibly uplifting song based on the story of Napoleon telling his men to burn their ships before an invasion). Volume II is dreamy and, well, "watery" sounding. The definite highlights are "Digital Sea" and "Open Water" but I feel this might be the most complete disc because "Lost Continent" and "The Whaler" are both beautifully melancholy, dreamy songs and "Night Diving" may be one of the most compelling songs on The Alchemy Index, a slow, heavy, plodding, melancholy, instrumental romp through Isis-like heavy tones. The title is really fitting because the song definitely sounds like a night dive. Volume III is where "Daedalus" is and also starts off with one of Thrice's most powerful songs, "Broken Lungs", which is clearly lyrically centered around 9/11 conspiracy theories--two very interesting songs for an "Air" themed album. "Earth" is probably the best accomplishment of the four EPs, as it's a mostly acoustic, very folky, dustbowl-esque sound that Thrice has never really explored before but do so very capably. Two beautifully melancholy opening songs then a phenomenal folky cover of a Frodus song called "The Earth Isn't Humming." A short interlude follows and then yet another wonderfully uplifting song, "Come All You Weary." This song is described by vocalist/lyricist Dustin Kensrue as reflecting his attitude toward his music--he wants to be that shining light that all the people in dark places turn to in order to help brighten their lives. I can't really think of a more noble pursuit as an artist. There's one more thing I have to add about this quadruple album: each four-song EP is ended with a song in the form of a sonnet, each of which is sung in the same melody but in different keys, and each of which is written from the point of view of the element of the given EP. Easily the most powerful and effective of the four sonnets is the very last song of the record, "Child of Dust":

Dear prodigal you are my son and I
Supplied you not your spirit but your shape;
All Eden's weath arrayed before your eyes
I fathomed that you wanted to escape.

And though I only ever gave you love,
Like every child you've chosen to rebel;
Uprooted flowers and filled the holes with blood;
Ask for not whom they toll the solemn bells.

But child of dust your mother now returns
For every seed must die before it grows;
And though above the world may toil and turn,
No prying spade will find you here below.

Now safe beneath their wisdom and their feet;
Here i will teach you truly how to sleep

(apologies for the photo, the biggest one I could find was 110x110 so I stretched it out to 500x500 for the sake of consistency)

23. The Plastic Mastery - In the Fall of Unearthly Angels

I first heard of this band when I saw them at Orlando Fest in 2003. This was the first out-of-town music festival I would ever travel to and I think it might have actually been the first road trip I ever took without any members of my family. Now, when I say music festival, you have to understand that this thing was held in a courtyard at Rollins College and hosted about, oh, roughly 200-300 kids altogether. Most of the bands that played aren't bands you've ever heard of (except for Against Me!, but this was long before they had become popular outside the underground punk/DIY scene). I remember being impressed by the fact that they featured a trumpet and a keyboard in addition to guitar, bass, drums, and vocals and I remember being slightly reminded of The Get Up Kids when I saw them for some reason. Other than that, I don't remember much other than being very impressed by them. The record actually took some getting used to because it's very lo-fi indie pop with very little bass and lots of treble. However, the songs are so exuberant and so emotional and the entire record is put together so well that it's easy to look past the production if you try. The highlights for me are the three-songs-in-one punch of "Yeah, Tonight"/"Remember That Night When I Thought I Was Going To Die?"/"The Bomb Song" as well as the widely spaced triumvirate (Tracks 1, 8, and 13 out of 13) of "Before the Fall" (a phenomenally joyous opening song), the title track, and the solemn closer, "After the Fall." Another one of my favorites is a song that meant a lot to me when I first went off to college--and you'll see why when you hear it, with the repeated singing of "there is so much more to life than this place"--"Light Above Your Head."

22. The Clash - London Calling

There are a pretty select group of bands that are talked about among the pioneers of punk rock music--usually something along the lines of The Ramones, Sex Pistols, and maybe The Stooges if the person knows what they're talking about. Oh, yeah, and The Clash. "The only band that mattered," as the saying goes. As much as this record means to punk rock, it goes so far beyond that label. The influences are incredibly diverse to the point where almost every song seems to delve into a different genre. The anthemic rock romp of "London Calling" and "Clampdown", the swinging "Jimmy Jazz" and "Rudie Can't Fail", the solemn but infectious rock of "Spanish Bombs" and "Lost In the Supermarket"...and that's only side one of the record. For my money there is no punk rock record that even comes close to being as good as London Calling and anyone who is a fan of music owes it to themselves to hear this.

21. Weezer - Blue Album and Pinkerton

I swear I tried really, really hard to find a reason to put one of these ahead of the other. The temptation is to put Pinkerton a little ahead because it's a little more complete and more personal to me. Really I was pretty close to putting Pinkerton ahead but the more I thought about it, tracks 7-10 on Blue Album make that nearly impossible. There aren't many people at this point that haven't heard "Say It Ain't So" and with good reason, that song is an absolute classic and one of the best ever written. "In the Garage" is nerdcore at it's absolute finest and "Holiday" is a classic 6/8 time power pop anthem. Then the album ends with easily the best Weezer song ever written, "Only In Dreams." Clocking in at just under 8 minutes, "Only In Dreams" is every awkward teenager's theme song for his woes with women and features one of the all time great basslines in a song. Now, obviously Blue Album is more than just those four songs--everyone loves "Buddy Holly" and "Undone (The Sweater Song)", myself included (even if I consider those songs a little overrated). Not only that but one of the most underrated Weezer songs by far is "The World Has Turned and Left Me Here." Speaking of underrated Weezer songs, another one that deserves mention is "Across the Sea"--one of those songs that means a LOT to me personally. Pinkerton in general, to me, is the more complete album and also is the Weezer sound I like best. I absolutely love the huge, buzzsaw guitars and the dark, introspective content that this band was never really able to recapture (only coming even remotely close with Make Believe). Songs like "Getchoo", "No Other One", and especially "Falling For You" can STILL give me goosebumps and make me feel irrepressibly nostalgic. It makes me feel so privileged to have had the opportunity to see this band live back in 2001, just before Green Album came out and they started to progressively suck worse and worse (only redeeming themselves to a marginal degree with Make Believe) and was able to witness them play a set composed entirely of songs from these first two albums (with the exception of a small 4-5 song portion of the set dedicated to "new songs" i.e. songs from Green Album). Not only that but I was blessed enough to see them come out for their encore by playing "Only In Dreams." One of those most incredible moments of my life--but we'll save that story for another entry.

WHEW! Another entry in the books. I gotta say, guys, it usually takes me a couple days to even get through these things. Like one day I'll actually make the list of the albums I'm gonna do for the current entry and put in all the html for the pictures and what not. The next week or two I'll spend procrastinating or just writing about 2-3 descriptions every 2-3 days. By the time I have one finished entry it's at least two weeks after I wanted to post it. So I really, really hope that SOMEONE is reading this because it's hard to motivate myself to do this thing without an audience. Point being if ANYONE has any comments or questions, please feel free to post them here or wherever you want to where you think I'll see them. The whole reason I'm doing this is to receive feedback as well as to share my love and knowledge of music with people who I think will appreciate it. So hopefully to that end I'm doing something right. Let me know.

Tune in next week when we crack the Top 20...just taking a look at #20-11 right now I'm pretty excited for the opportunity to talk my head off about all of these albums...hopefully that will motivate me enough to actually finish the next entry in the next week...I wouldn't bet money on it though...ciao!

Summer Festival Band Recommendations

2010-04-15T18:03:00.000-04:00

So I saw a piece today on Facebook...something about "10 Reasons You Should Wake Up Before Noon @ Coachella"...and I read it and I thought, man, I could make way better band recommendations to my friends than these dudes. So I decided I would write up a list of band recommendations for Coachella. But then I thought, you know, I know several people going to Coachella, but I probably know just as many people going to Lollapalooza or Bonnaroo. And for the record, I know there are way more summer festivals than those three (probably most of them you've never even heard of...there's actually a website that lists all of them) but I'm gonna stick with these three cuz they're the "Big Three" so to speak and they have the best/biggest line-ups for me to pluck gems out of to show you, my loyal reader(s)...so here they are:

COACHELLA - April 16th-18th (in other words, it starts tomorrow, hence why it's first)

FRIDAY

Baroness - 2:00-2:45pm - Mojave Stage

-Prepare to witness one of the ultimate creative forces in heavy music today. Influences that range from Neurosis to Motorhead to Emerson Lake and Palmer to god knows what else...they incorporate so many elements from crushing southern rock riffs to epic, towering guitar harmonies of the 70s that crash land into heart-wrenching twinkly/fuzzy indie rock passages and everything in between. MAYBE if you're not into heavy music this might not be your cup of tea. But even you should still watch this band just in case.

She & Him - 5:45-6:35pm - Outdoor Theatre -OR- The Dillinger Escape Plan - 5:45-6:30pm - Gobi Stage

-First, for the brave and bold, The Dillinger Escape Plan are a very avant garde hardcore/metal band. I've grown less interested in this band since they got a new vocalist and a new direction but they're still a major creative force in heavy music and worth taking in if you're really into that kind of mindfuck-y abrasive music. According to recent setlists they apparently still play "Sugar Coated Sour" and "43% Burnt" so when you hear the vocalist say "this is an old song", I suggest you move forward a bit (not too close though...seriously...)

-She & Him is the retro folk/pop duo of prolific folk/indie songwriter M. Ward and prolific actress and incredible voice (which isn't news to anyone who's seen pretty much any of her movies because they always seem to find some excuse to have her sing) Zooey Deschanel. They do a few really cute covers of old pop songs but a lot of the songs are actually written by Zooey herself. The band was actually formed when Ward heard her sing in Elf and called her up only to find out she had a whole bunch of songs written that she'd never done anything with. I highly recommend this band, not just because Zooey has a beautiful, adorable voice but because the songs are seriously really good.

The Specials - 6:20-7:20pm - Coachella Stage

-Simply one of the best, most influential ska bands ever. They formed in England in the late 70s and were a far more political band than most ska bands at the time. They had a huge impact on the so-called "Third Wave" of ska (ska-punk) because their sound featured a "danceable ska and rocksteady beat with punk's energy and attitude" which was a huge influence on later ska-punk bands. They also were unique in that, on their second album, More Specials, they experimented with sounds that were a departure from their straight up ska sound. According to wikipedia: "The album featured a more experimental approach; including influences from pop music, New Wave, and muzak. Their 'lounge music' style would later be an influence on bands to come. The Specials also experimented with what could be described as dark, almost psychedelic reggae." I know a lot of my friends are into dancey music, specifically reggae. I would highly recommend that those friends take in this band's set and dance (skank) the night away.

Lucero - 6:50-7:40pm - Mojave Stage

-Don't ever let anyone tell you that all country music sucks. This band is your evidence. Now when I say country, you have to understand, this band is way, WAY more depressing (and drunk) than any country music you've probably heard before. But it's also a lot more heartfelt and infinitely better written (including some really amazing lyrics). Don't be surprised if the singer is too drunk to stand up and plays most of the set from a bar stool but trust me when I tell you it won't hinder his ability to sing or play his beautiful music.

SATURDAY

Porcupine Tree - 1:35-2:25pm - Outdoor Theatre

-I dunno if it's a good idea or not that the first thing I tell you about this band is that they're often hailed as this generation's Pink Floyd. According to wikipedia, "Wilson would later lament this, stating 'I can't help that. It's true that during the period of The Sky Moves Sideways, I had done a little too much of it in the sense of satisfying, in a way, the fans of Pink Floyd who were listening to us because that group doesn't make albums any more. Moreover, I regret it.'" Since then they've gone on to forge a much more focused, very distinct and unique sound that combines elements of classic, progressive, and psychedelic rock with some elements of heavy metal. Easily one of the most interesting bands in existence right now, especially in the realm of "heavy" music (if you can even call them heavy, which is debatable).

Faith No More - 7:55-8:45 - Coachella Stage

-I feel like I have to tell everyone to watch Faith No More even though I probably don't have to. Those of you that think Faith No More is a one-hit wonder absolutely need to watch them. This is easily one of the most influential bands of all time and probably the most under-appreciated of all the most influential bands of all time. It's impossible to downplay the influence or importance of this band and of its vocalist and driving force Mike Patton to the landscape of current music. Mike Patton has been colonizing untapped pieces of the realm of Left Field within the world of music since the late 80s and hasn't let up since, hammering out albums with such avant garde (and self-founded) groups as Mr. Bungle, Fantomas, and Tomahawk, releasing numerous solo records and even recording a short EP with The Dillinger Escape Plan. His output is beyond prolific. What else can I say, if you miss Faith No More, kill yourself.

I'm going to save myself the effort of telling everyone to watch Muse and Devo since they're headliners...but god help you if you still decide to miss them because there's really no excuse (especially for Muse, who conflict with almost no one else...I'm sure a lot of people will miss Devo for Tiesto which makes me want to stab someone but that's life, isn't it?)

SUNDAY

Sunny Day Real Estate - 4:45-5:30pm - Outdoor Theatre

-I'm glad I'm doing this one last because, honestly, if you don't listen to ANY of my other recommendations, please, PLEASE listen to this one. One of the pioneers of the original "emo" sound (not the whiney pop punk bands that people refer to as "emo" now...what was originally "emo" is basically now referred to loosely as indie rock) and one of the most capable collections of musical and songwriting talent ever assembled. I would say that if you miss this band you'll be sorry, but the only way for you to know how sorry you would be for missing them is if you actually didn't miss them. So I guess it's your call. But if you do miss them, I reserve the right to call you a moron as I rub your nose in the Diary album like a pee-stain on your better judgement.

BONNAROO - June 10th-13th (this seems to be the ugly stepsister of the other two that not as many people are interested in which is oddly fitting considering it's FOUR days, not three, it's CHEAPER than the other two, and has by FAAAR the best line-up of the three...at least in my opinion...no schedule yet since it's in June so this will be altogether)

Tenacious D

-OK if I really have to tell you to see this band, you're probably fucking retarded.

The Flaming Lips performing Dark Side of the Moon featuring Stardeath and White Dwarfs

-I don't think I really have to explain this one very much either. If you're not a fan of The Flaming Lips, do yourself a favor and pick up Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Other than that, there's no reason not to miss this, it's going to be a once in a lifetime experience.

Damian Marley and Nas

-Once again, no explanation necessary. This is one of the coolest things ever conceived. I wish I could see this. Fuck you if you see it. Fuck you harder if you don't.

The National

-A really terrific dream pop band in the vein of The Smiths. Velvety smooth songs with velvety smooth vocals to soothe the soul and make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

Dropkick Murphys

-Working class punk rock meets Irish folk music. Most people know who this band is because of that song from the movie The Departed so I probably don't have to tell everyone about them but seriously, if you haven't seen this band's live show, you're only getting half the experience. Just pray that they open with "For Boston."

She & Him

-see above

Against Me!

-For those of you that haven't noticed the "folk punk explosion" (to no fault of your own), allow me to introduce the poster child of this movement. They've long since departed from their folk punk roots (rooted firmly in the Gainesville punk rock scene that built itself up around No Idea Records and vice versa) but they can still write damn good songs, as evidenced by their 2005 album Searching for a Former Clarity (which almost makes up for their lackluster 2007 album New Wave).

GWAR

-Gosh What A Racket! Don't be fooled by their music...it's fun but it's nothing special. But if you miss this extravaganza, you might not even need me to tell you that you should kill yourself. If you're into massive medieval aliens cutting off Saddam Hussein's head, disemboweling George Bush, stroking giant alien penises and jizzing all over your face (don't worry it's just colored water), then what the fuck are you waiting for?!

The Melvins

-One of the most influential underground bands of all time. Mostly influenced a lot of heavy "sludge" metal bands but were also cited by Kurt Cobain as a major influence on Nirvana, especially their major label debut, Bleach. This band isn't gonna be for everyone but if you love HEAVY and LOUD then go check out The Melvins.

Isis

-In my opinion, Isis is arguably the greatest creative force in underground heavy music today (Baroness is up there too). They have a sludgey heavy metal sound but are also well known for spacey/melodic soundscapes within the suffocating sludge sound. They have influenced a plethora of bands from Cult of Luna to Mouth of the Architect to Baroness to Pelican and the list goes on. No one has done what this band has done better than they have done it and that alone is worth checking out.

Baroness

-see above

Lucero

-see above

LOLLAPALOOZA - August 6th-8th (the "big one" so to speak...mostly because of the history behind it...speaking of which, I really, REALLY wish this was still a touring festival...sigh...)

The Arcade Fire

-Yeah, they're pretty popular and they're one of the headliners so I shouldn't have to say this but dammit, you have to see this band. Considering how successful they've gotten, how accessible they are, and yet how creative and unique they are, I'd have no problem saying this is one of the best bands in music, all things considered. Funeral is an absolutely brilliant album worthy of all the praise its gotten. If you've never heard of this band but you've seen the movie Where the Wild Things Are, or even just seen the trailer, the song in that trailer is "Wake Up" from the Funeral album and it's an incredible, joyous song by an incredible, joyous band that will undoubtedly put a smile on your face.

Social Distortion

-One of the pioneers of the hardcore punk explosion of the 1980s. Extremely important band that you owe it to yourself to at least watch for a little bit.

The National

-see above

Devo

-see above

Drive-By Truckers

-Another really, really good country band (like Lucero) but this one is much more on the rock side of the spectrum. Awesome, exuberant alt-country with all the different elements rooted in country music. "The Righteous Path" is one song I just can't seem to stop listening to from their latest album Brighter Than Creation's Dark.

Well, that about rounds it out. There are obviously bands missing like Soundgarden and Green Day for Lolla and other headliners that I didn't think necessitated a mention but for the most part these are the majority of bands that you should talk yourself into seeing if you're lucky enough to be at any of these festivals (nevermind who you were originally planning on seeing, these bands are better :P).

Tune in next week for Derrick's Top Albums of All Time #30-21!!!

Derrick's Top Albums of All Time (#40-31)

2010-02-11T13:02:00.000-05:00

40. Deathspell Omega - Fas--Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum

As the years have passed, it's become increasingly difficult to push the boundaries of my musical tastes any further out than they already are. Gone are the days when records like Converge's Jane Doe and Dillinger Escape Plan's Calculating Infinity were changing the way I thought about music altogether. Leave it to Deathspell Omega to release an album so discordant, so amelodic, so wrong-sounding that it could somehow stretch those boundaries--which are so close to the extent of their elasticity--an inch or two further outward. This is the second chapter of a yet-unfinished trilogy of which Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice is the first chapter. As with part one of the trilogy, the title of this album is also latin; this one meaning "Divine law - Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." This thing is such a major mindfuck from beginning to end that attempting to describe it would just end badly for everyone involved. Just be warned that if you attempt to brave the painful but incredibly rewarding experience that is Fas--Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum, it's not going to be a very welcoming experience the first time around. In fact, I wouldn't recommend this album to anyone who doesn't have at least some experience with extreme metal and/or unusual, highly inaccessible music. And even then you might not be adequately prepared for what you're about to hear. But rest assured, it will be worth every bit of time you invest in it.

39. Envy - All the Footprints You've Ever Left and the Fear Expecting Ahead

Before Japan's epic post-hardcore kings were constructing 8-plus-minute towering hardcore symphonies, there was this album. This album sort of serves as the bridge between Envy's mere-mortal screamo output (including a myriad of EPs and split records as well as full-lengths Breathing and Dying In This Place and From Here to Eternity) and the ultra-epic, sprawling landscapes of A Dead Sinking Story and Insomniac Doze (as well as the recent Abyssal EP and splits with Jesu and Thursday) much in the same way that Revolver was the stepping stone between the pop-sensation Beatles and the brilliant, musically groundbreaking output of the 1967-1970 Beatles. It starts with a fairly unassuming but mildly ominous intro track "Zero" that leads straight into "Farewell to Words", and already you can hear how Envy got to where they are today, only things are just slightly different. The epic guitar melodies and paint-peeling screams are just as prevalent but the pacing and the rhythms are markedly more frantic and urgent. "Left Hand" starts with an immediate and epic attacking guitar much in the same vain as the later "Color of Fetters", soon giving way to a swirling verse that could just as easily have been featured in a song on A Dead Sinking Story. The highlight of this record, however, is easily the one-two punch of "The Light of My Footprints"/"Your Shoes and the World to Come" that closes the album (and often times the band's shows). Coming to a combined 12 minutes, this epic journey is certain to leave you emotionally exhausted by the time it's over.

38. Radiohead - Amnesiac

Like so many other Radiohead fans, I used to be sort of indifferent toward this album. For so long, it has been relegated to the status of being a collection of Kid A B-sides--which is understandable since the songs on here came from the same recording sessions as the songs on Kid A--and is even referred to as "Kid B" from time to time by snarky music critics and snobbish Radiohead fans. To me, on the other hand, this is probably the most underrated Radiohead album of all. If you were to listen to it for the first time, you might be somewhat turned off after the first three tracks, which delve seemingly further into the electronic realm that the band began flirting with on Kid A (ok, maybe more than "flirting"). "Pulk-Pull Revolving Doors" especially is full of pulsating computerized jackhammer beats and meandering vocorder ramblings about doors. I'll admit these songs take some getting used to. However, if you're patient enough to reach tracks 4-6, your rewards will be: 4) a soothing, melancholy, whisper-soft guitar ballad that gives way to a joyous explosion of piano as Thom croons "we ride tonight...ghost horses." Ladies and gentlemen, "You and Whose Army?" 5) a meandering, guitar-heavy groove-laden rock song (well, "rock" by Radiohead's standards anyway) that takes a seemingly 180-degree turn toward the end before falling haphazardly back into its grinding groove--"I Might Be Wrong." 6) One of Radiohead's best songs ever, the eerie, cannibalistic "Knives Out."

37. Yaphet Kotto/This Machine Kills/Envy - Split CD

There's a very specific story to go along with this one: Valentine's Day 2004. It's the second semester of my first year of college and I'm in a rut. It's a pretty average Valentine's Day for me, lovelorn and jaded. I can't remember exactly why or when I first downloaded this album but on this day I finally decided to give it a listen. I burned it to a CD, popped it in my discman, and headed over to the dining hall to get some dinner. I remember listening to it while I had a slice of pizza and being impressed by the Yaphet Kotto tracks--which I still firmly believe are the best songs they ever wrote. I remember digging the This Machine Kills tracks in spite of being a little impatient for Envy's portion to start. I remember Envy's portion starting and my jaw dropping. I specifically remember taking my tray over to the conveyor belt when I was done eating and putting it down right as the song kicked back in from the ultra-quiet part midway through the song and being paralyzed by what I heard for a good 10 seconds. I remember walking back to my dorm as tears began to form in my eyes (I've never been moved to tears by music in my life except for this moment). More than anything I remember the transcendent moment when I first heard "A Collaboration Song." This isn't so much a song as an event. It begins unassuming enough, adding layers upon layers as the minutes tick by. Then something happens. The dam breaks. The walls crumble. The flood roars in and sweeps you up in emotion. The singer of Yaphet Kotto's voice soars as Tetsu from Envy responds to his call. Then something else happens. Yaphet Kotto takes over and makes the song's epic conclusion their own, ending on a melancholy note with the screamer of YK repeating "FACE DOWN WITH MY HEAD...AGAINST THE WALL" over the minimal music still meandering in the haze. And just like that, it's over. And you're not sure how you can be expected to return to real life.

36. Glassjaw - Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Silence

I don't know if there's a better soundtrack to the angst and frustration that a lot of squirrely, awkward, shy guys feel toward women. The longing is undeniable, the anger is potent, and the heart is perched firmly on the sleeve and bleeding out everywhere. This is without a doubt one of the most unbridled, unfettered, lay-it-all-on-the-line albums I've ever heard. The emotion doesn't so much pour out of every song as it shoots out like water from a broken faucet as vocalist Daryl Palumbo begs, pleads, screams, sighs, cries, berates, and bellows some of the most impassioned vocals you'll ever hear. Every song seemingly has a different feel, from the "emocore" rage of "Pretty Lush" and "Siberian Kiss" to the plodding, bass-driven "When One Eight Becomes Two Zeroes", the up-beat "Ry-Ry's Song", the melodic anger of "Lovebites and Razorlines" juxtaposed with the grinding, pounding, discordant anger of "Hurting and Shoving (She Should Have Let Me Sleep)." "Majour" seems to begin a sort of second act of the album with a very melodic, swirling pseudo-ballad (well, about as close as you get to a ballad on this album) and the diversity doesn't end there from wild hardcore romps ("Babe") and heavy groove-laden mosh pit tunes ("Motel of the White Locust") to meandering slow jams (the title track) and fervent blasts of melody ("Her Middle Name was Boom" and "Piano")...by the time the haunting hidden track rolls around you'll be more than ready for a break.

35. Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run

I'll admit I came into this one very late. I only really got into it about a year or two ago but one thing I know is that once I heard the beautiful climax of "Thunder Road", there was no going back. It seems like The Boss has had the heart of a 20-year-old pretty much his entire life and this record really shines in that respect. The exuberance in songs like "Born to Run" and "She's the One" are undeniable and, if you have a soul, you'll find it hard to suppress the urge to dance--or at least smile. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary Concert on HBO featured a quite lengthy set by The Boss that, among other things (like teaming with Billy Joel for "New York State of Mind" and "Born to Run"), featured an incredible performance of the album's closing track, "Jungleland." It damn near made me cry. That should be pretty much all you need to know about this album.

34. Poison the Well - The Opposite of December

This is one of those albums I sort of got into little by little. It's also one of the main albums responsible for me getting into hardcore. Like most PTW fans I became obsessed with "Nerdy", which was the first song I heard by them and prompted me to borrow a PTW mix from a friend of mine. It contained every song on this record plus all those from the record before it (when they had two vocalists, one screaming, one singing, neither of which is the current vocalists) as well as a few from a split record before that, when they were called An Acre Lost. I started listening to this mix religiously (at least the songs from this album) in the time leading up to PTW playing a show at Kaffe Krystal that I was determined to attend. This would be the first real hardcore show I would ever attend. It wouldn't be a stretch to say this show changed my life, even if it does sound a bit dramatic. I had never seen anything like that before. Stage diving. Head walking. Kids scrapping and climbing on each other, screaming the words in vocalists Jeffrey Moreira's face, grabbing for the mic, losing their minds. Musically, very few hardcore bands have ever been able to measure up to this record--and way, WAY too many have tried to...this album basically spawned an entire genre of copycats that left something to be desired. The formula has become a parody of itself now: metal-infused hardcore with pretty melodic passages, "emotional" singing juxtaposed with blood-curdling shrieks, sprinkle in some monster breakdowns to spark up the mosh pit and some Swedish death metal riffs for the metal nerds and eureka! Generic melodic metalcore band #84573. I think they call it "screamo" nowadays. Whatever it is, it started with this band and this album.

33. Stone Temple Pilots - Core

I went through a phase in my early days of high school where I listened to this album along with Purple and No. 4 almost compulsively. They seemed to capture so much of what I was going through in high school so perfectly for some reason. I can remember one of the first times I listened to this album the whole way through, there were 4-5 songs on it that I knew I had heard before but I had never known who wrote them. I love those little revelatory musical moments, like a rosetta stone unlocking a musical gift. As much as I love this album, it's easy to see the criticism of sounding too much like Pearl Jam that came along with it...even if the songwriting is significantly more interesting. "Plush" will always be one of my favorite songs in the world and will always invoke so much nostalgia and so many memories for me. It doesn't even have anything to do with the lyrics it's just a mood that hovers ominously yet beautifully over the song like the towering, color-splashed sky at sunset. "Creep" is another wonderfully melancholy, dark, dusty pseudo-ballad that seems to go well together with the end of a day--and another song that stokes the fires of nostalgia in me. There are way too many highlights to go through them all. Everyone knows the singles, which are great and everything but some of the most underrated STP songs are on here as well: "Sin", "Naked Sunday", and "Piece of Pie" come to mind. I saw this band live at the first concert I ever went to, Zetafest 2000, and they opened their set with "Crackerman" which is something I'll never forget.

32. Foo Fighters - The Colour and the Shape

This is a deeply, deeply personal album to me for reasons that don't really make a whole lot of sense to me. Well, ok, I guess they kinda do. I listened to this album a TON around the time when I had completely and totally fallen desperately in love...and in that repetition became something of a soundtrack for said love and said girl. A lot of it had to do with "Everlong" and its uncanny ability to make my heart flutter. "February Stars" and "Walking After You" had something to do with it too. But other songs that don't make as much sense became so resonant for me during that time like "Hey Johnny Park" and "Up In Arms." Really the whole album just has a sound and a mood that has a subtly supernatural ability to transport me back in time to 10th and 11th grade, the peak of my desperate unrequited love that defined who I was in high school to a far greater degree than it probably should have--certainly to a far greater degree than I would have liked.

31. Black Star - Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star

You always hear about Straight Outta Compton and Fear of a Black Planet...and sometimes Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) enters the discussion of great all-time hip hop records. In my book, it doesn't get any better than Black Star. Two of the most talented underground(-ish) superstars hip hop has ever given birth to collaborating on one unbelievable album. Two unmistakable voices. Two distinct(ly different) styles--Mos's highly rhythmic, soulful delivery provides the perfect contrast to Kweli's fervent, fast-paced, more complex delivery. And the songs...ugh. This is no mere collection of "tight beats" that provide a decent enough backdrop for the lyricists. There's a brilliant parody of "Children's Story" that talks about "jacking beats." The beautifully mellow ode to women of color, "Brown Skin Lady." A tribute to their break beat heritage in "B Boys Will B Boys." The highlight for me is an intense track near the end called "Respiration" which features a guest appearance by Common. At Rock the Bells 2007, Mos Def and Talib Kweli shared the stage for a short Black Star teaser set and for this song they actually brought Common out to do his parts of the song which was greeted by a wild crowd response (which, at a hip hop show, means everyone goes: OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH). It was a pretty amazing moment and one that I'm sure I won't soon forget.

OK well that does it for #40-31...sorry it took such a ridiculously long time...I've been picking at it since I posted the last one...I've literally sat down to finish this at least 4-5 times only to stop after writing blurbs for 1-2 albums...hopefully the blurbs for #30-21 will come to me easier and I'll be able to miraculously complete the next entry sometime next week...yeah, we'll see how THAT goes...

Derrick's Top 50 Albums of ALL TIME!!1one (#50-41)

2010-02-10T05:32:00.000-05:00

Well as you can see the updating every day thing didn't go well...maybe now that I've started the actual top 50 I can try to stick to it...I wouldn't bet on me though...anyway let's get to it:

50. Skycamefalling - 10.21

I got into this album around the time I was first getting into hardcore. I'm pretty sure I bought this because I read some press on it saying it sounded like Poison the Well. I think that comparison is both fair and unfair. It's fair because they're definitely of the same ilk, playing melodic metalcore that can be as brutally heavy as it is achingly beautiful. But it's also unfair because not only does this band's brand of melodic metalcore vary greatly from Poison the Well's, but I think this album is possibly better than anything PTW put out. The melodies are so much more subtle and more seamless in Skycamefalling's music. There's significantly less melodic singing but I actually like Christopher Tzompanakis's scream better...which is saying a lot because I love Jeff Moreira's screaming in PTW but Tzompanakis has such a brutal, throat-tearing scream, but at the same time it's far from being harsh, it almost has a dull (as in the opposite of harsh) sound to it and it's really the perfect scream for the melodic metalcore Skycamefalling plays because it's really kinda chill for a scream. The guitar work is what makes this band for me cuz they do some really great harmonies and beautiful melodic-yet-heavy chords. As far as songwriting chops you'd be hard pressed to find any hardcore band with as much talent as Skycamefalling, they're so in control of the creative process and it really shines through in their music. A must-listen for anyone who likes heavy music with heart.

49. The Arcade Fire - Funeral

This is undoubtedly one of the best bands to garner significant media attention in recent years. They have a very rare quality of being accessible but also unique and fresh-sounding (something very, VERY little mainstream music is these days). A lot of it has to do with Win Butler's wailing, almost desperate vocal delivery that lends the music a certain exuberance. That's not the only exuberant thing about the music though, as their music is filled with these wonderfully joyous explosions and happy sing-a-long choruses. It even has it's darker sounding moments like certain parts of "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" but for the most part it's very uplifting, beautiful music. It even has some elements that remind me of Jimmy Eat World's Clarity album, which is just about the highest praise I can give any band.

48. Jimmy Eat World - Static Prevails

When I was first introduced to Jimmy Eat World I had a keen dislike for them because all I knew of their work was "The Middle" and "Sweetness" being played on MTV constantly (and put in movies). Then a good friend demanded that I buy Clarity and boy am I glad he did because I saw a side of JEW that I never imagined existed. More on that later. After I had become obsessed with Clarity my good friend implored me to give their poppier stuff (specifically Bleed American) a fair chance...and he was right, Bleed American is an awesome album--even the singles grew on me after a while. I remember he explained his theory on how JEW tried to do straight up rock/pop with Static Prevails and it wasn't particularly good other than the song "Call It In the Air" but then they did Clarity and decided to come back to rock/pop with Bleed American and got it right the second time around. At the time it made sense but the more familiar with Static Prevails I became, the more I disagreed with this theory. Static Prevails is a great pop album and I love that the production and a lot of the songwriting has more in common with Clarity than with their output from Bleed American on. The guitars are dripping with Christie Front Drive inspired washy wall of sound guitar tone and guitarist Tom Linton's voice is featured much more prominently than in the post-Bleed American albums which some people don't really care for but a lot of hardcore JEW fans miss dearly about the band. Bottom line: if you like Jimmy Eat World from Bleed American on then do yourself a favor and check this album out because it blows away the rest of their "poppy" output.

47. At the Drive-In - Relationship of Command

I first heard this band during the later stages of my "nu metal" phase and as a result, was unprepared for what I was hearing and didn't really get into it. It took a friend yelling at me for me to realize how amazing this album is. At the time, I was used to chunky, heavy guitars so the crazy chords and intricacies of ATDI were sort of lost on me until my friend educated me on why I was an idiot. Finally I saw the light and realized that the guitar work on this album is some of the best and most creative you'll ever hear. This whole band really melds together so well but it definitely centers around the brilliant guitar work (at least for me it does). The songwriting is pretty brilliant too and full of wild, untamed energy that releases in uncontrolled bursts inter-spliced with some really good catchy indie pop moments and a lot of swirling, uneasy atmospheres. The Mars Volta is a great band but they really can't ever measure up to the raw, unbridled musical tantrum of Relationship of Command.

46. Refused - The Shape of Punk to Come

I can actually remember the specific day I first bought this album. Actually I'm pretty sure it was my very last day of high school. I think everyone else was off celebrating in some way or another and somehow I ran into my friend ML and we hung out and went to Best Buy and I bought this CD. His house was within walking distance so we walked there and he put on the CD and immediately we both were really into it (well, he liked it, I dunno if he was REALLY into it...but I was). The energy and the hard attacking riffs reminded me a lot of a hardcore version of Rage Against the Machine (at least in the first track) but the more I listened to the album and the deeper into it I got the more I discovered that this was far from the average hardcore record. The Shape of Punk to Come really is quite a fitting title for this album because its influence remains prevalent even now. There are bursts of pure hardcore energy such as "Worms of the Sense/Faculties of the Skull", "New Noise", and the short, fast explosion of "Refused Party Program"--sometimes infused with vaguely folky or jazzy elements such as with "Liberation Frequency" and "The Deadly Rhythm", respectively. There are the danceably dangerous grooves of "Summer Holidays v. Punk Routine" and the title track as well as the slightly more sassy "Refused Are Fucking Dead" which features a brave, powerful ending climax. Then there are the deeper, slightly darker, more melodically satisfying songs like the marching romp of "Protest Song '68" (another great climactic ending here) or the powerful, melancholic, violin-laden "Tannhauser." From there it quiets down with "Tannhauser" feeding directly into the bouncy acoustic "Derive" (the two are part of the same song named "Tannhauser/Derive") which then gives way to a very solemn acoustic closer called "The Apollo Programme Was a Hoax" that closes the album out on a beautiful note, repeating the lines "Sabotage will set us free. Throw a rock in the machine."

45. nine inch nails - The Downward Spiral

I used to love this album in high school in spite of the fact that I was only truly familiar with the first five songs. "Heresy" was always my favorite because honestly, what angsty teenager wouldn't love screaming "YOUR GOD IS DEAD...AND NO ONE CARES...IF THERE IS A HELL...I'LL SEE YOU THERE" over and over. I always liked The Fragile a little better though because I was more into Reznor's atmospheric ventures than his harsh industrial ones. But as with anything, the more familiar I became with this album, the more I realized how truly brilliant it is. "Ruiner" is one of the most haunting, ominous songs in the NIN catalog and without a hint of subtlety. "The Becoming" is a textbook example of Reznor's programming wizardry slamming head first into his effortless talent for songwriting and arranging. Reznor said in one interview that "With The Downward Spiral I tried to make a record that had full range, rather than a real guitar-based record or a real synth-based record. I tried to make it something that opened the palate for NIN, so we don't get pigeon-holed. It was a conscious effort to focus more on texture and space, rather than bludgeoning you over the head for an hour with a guitar." That's a perfect description for this record, it absolutely has a little bit of everything that NIN fans love. There are roaring guitar-heavy tracks like "Mr. Self Destruct" and "March of the Pigs", there are gyrating, kinky songs like "Closer" and "I Do Not Want This", some with combinations of these elements and so on. It's hard to really describe this madness or classify any of the songs because there's so much going on in each song that no matter how many times you listen to it you'll find new things to love about it.

44. Nirvana - Nevermind and MTV Unplugged

There's a whole school of jaded Nirvana fans who are so sick of Nevermind and all the radio airplay it gets between "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "In Bloom", "Come As You Are", and "Lithium" and have therefore declared their staunch belief that In Utero is Nirvana's magnum opus. If not, then they are of the steadfast opinion that MTV Unplugged is the best thing they ever did. The latter argument I can understand better than the former, to be honest. Unplugged is an amazing snapshot of a band not only at the top of their game but willing to step off the pedestal and try something drastically different, playing an acoustic set full of some of the deeper tracks from their albums as well as some magnificent covers of songs by The Vaselines, The Meat Puppets, David Bowie, and Leadbelly. As for the former, I see where they're coming from and yes, I do think Nevermind tends to be a little overrated and In Utero tends to be vastly underrated but I also don't think that makes it better. In Utero is definitely more in line with Kurt Cobain's vision for the music he wanted to play but it's also somewhat unfocused and forgettable at times, while Nevermind is relentlessly strong (and a lot more diverse, really) from start to finish. Sometimes it gets lost in the sweeping tide that was the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" sensation but when you get past the first (three) track(s) there is so much underappreciated and brilliant music to be had. "Breed" is punishing but oh-so-catchy punk rock classic. "Polly" is a starkly tragic and honest acoustic venture with incredibly simple chords and verse/chorus arrangement but is so powerful in its simplicity. "Territorial Pissings" is an angry burst of shrill guitars and throaty shrieks. "Drain You", "On a Plain", and "Lounge Act" are some of the most capable pop songs you'll ever hear and truly a testament to the band's songwriting chops, being simultaneously accessible, memorable, emotional, raucous, and downright captivating. "Something In the Way" takes the album out on a desperately solemn acoustic-guitar-and-strings note that seems only fitting somehow, doesn't it?

43. Deftones - Adrenaline and Around the Fur

For quite a long period in high school, Deftones were hands down my favorite band. I must have listened to their first three major label releases at least a hundred times each from start to finish (hundreds in the case of Adrenaline). Adrenaline was the first Deftones record I bought and I was into it but not that into it because the production seemed kinda weak and treble-y at the time. Once I bought White Pony and heard them in all their glory I was hooked but not until I bought Around the Fur was this band cemented as one of my favorites. I bought it about a week before I was going to see them live at my first concert ever, Zetafest 2000. As soon as I heard "My Own Summer (Shove It)" I couldn't stop listening to it. That riff was just so perfect and the song was so heavy but so watery and melodic. The whole album has that same watery/washy feel to it in the guitar tone and the cymbal work that lends it such a unique sound among "nu metal" bands. All three of Deftones's initial major releases has something about it that makes it sound unique and completely different from not only every other band they're considered to be peers to but also the album that came before it (or after it). I've always had a soft spot in my heart for bands that seem to be able to somehow sound completely different with every subsequent album they put out and still retain a distinct sound that is unmistakeably their own. Deftones were one of those bands--although their ability to morph so drastically from album to album seems to have diminished to a certain degree with their last two offerings. Adrenaline is almost in the realm of skate rock (or even skate metal, if that even exists) with its vaguely hip-hop grooves and unmistakable, almost "tube-like" (very treble-y and streamlined, tightly distorted...like the sound waves distort with such a high frequency that the loose, more Harley Davidson sounding distortion is absent) guitar tone that sounds like no other guitar tone I've ever heard. Around the Fur is just a perfect fusion of aggression and melody, of angst and desperation. It's the album where Deftones really hit their stride with the whole "whisper-scream" dynamics thing that they were so instrumental in pioneering. And to ask me to pick between the two is just unfair.

42. Tool - Undertow and Lateralus

When I first heard Lateralus, as much as I unabashedly loved it, I couldn't help thinking it left something to be desired five years removed from the masterpiece of Ænima. I felt like Tool was capable of doing so much better which speaks more to the otherworldly expectations created by Ænima then it does to the actual mediocrity of Lateralus. In reality, Lateralus is an amazing album and one which is entirely worthy of bearing Tool's name. Yeah, the droning interludes and extended passages get tiresome and are a bit too self-consciously artsy at times. However, it's hard to deny the strength of "The Grudge", "The Patient", the title track, and the "Disposition"/"Reflection"/"Triad" triumvirate. Even "Parabol"/"Parabola", "Ticks and Leeches", and "Schism" are perfectly adequate Tool songs, if slightly subpar by the lofty standards the band has set for themselves. Undertow, on the other hand, is one that had to grow on me a lot. The production is a bit thin and the music suffers to a certain degree as a result. But look past that and you'll find a plethora of extraordinarily powerful songs, albeit relatively simple ones as far as Tool is concerned. "Intolerance" is a perfect example of this, which is a good thing because it's the opening track. We all know and love "Sober", of course. "Bottom", "Crawl Away", "Swamp Song", "4 Degrees) and "Undertow" are all phenomenal hidden gems on this album with powerful choruses. "Flood" is the last real song on the album and ventures out close to sludge metal territory in the intro before giving way to one of the best Tool songs ever. The album ends with the very odd but very intriguing "Disgustipated" which features a very weird speech about carrots and harvest time and how "for them it is the holocaust." Before you even know what's going on, a primal, tribal drum beat kicks in with Maynard repeatedly whispering "THIS IS NECESSARY...THIS IS NECESSARY...LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE FEEDS ON LIFE" over it. Pretty fitting end for a Tool album when you think about it...totally weird but unexpectedly gripping and fascinating.

41. Thursday - Full Collapse

Such phenomenal songwriters deserve better than to be referred to as "screamo" or "emo" or whatever the hell. This is easily one of the most well-written albums to be lumped into a genre so full of unlistenable dreck. The guitar harmonies, both distorted and clean, are something to behold, as are the seamless arrangements. Geoff Rickly's vocal delivery may not be everyone's cup of tea and it's certainly not classically trained but he does lay it ALL on the line when he sings and I appreciate "heart-on-your-sleeve" earnest, passionate vocals probably more than technically sound ones. An interesting note about this record: Tom Schlatter, whose work in seminal screamo (without quotes...as in REAL screamo) bands You and I and The Assistant was hugely influential on Thursday's music, does guest vocals on "Autobiography of a Nation" and "Cross Out the Eyes."

OK, that's it for today. Tune in tomorrow to see if I can actually manage to update this thing two days in a row (again...I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you).

Derrick's Top 50 Albums of ALL TIME!!1one

2010-02-06T16:04:00.001-05:00

OK so it's been a while since I've written something in here. I wanted to come up with a really cool idea that's not too similar to the other entries I've written so far. As I was brainstorming for new brilliant ideas, I had a revelation. OK not really. Actually I just got sick of trying to "out-creative" myself and decided I would just do a countdown of my top albums of all time just to get the juices flowing again. I'll try to update every day and reveal the Top 50 ten at a time like I did with the last countdown...and when that's over, I'm gonna really, seriously try to update once a week with something new and interesting. Some ideas I've been throwing around are "The Art of the Mix Tape v2.0" (a tribute/reboot of a classic article written by my friend the great Matt Underfoot), a few entries about specific bands (Radiohead, Tool, Converge) somewhat akin to the Thrice entry but hopefully better and more in-depth, an entry about the best bands I've seen live (with objective v. subjective rankings and possibly integrating the following idea...), an entry about the best "Moments" I've ever had at the concerts I've been to, possibly something about all the "fests" I've been to (Ozzfest, Warped Tour, The Fest, Orlando Fest, This Is For You Fest, 305 Fest, Plan-It-X Fest, Rock the Bells), perhaps an entry on the relationship between music and drugs (which could go in a few different directions), maybe even something on the relationship between music and politics (maybe throw in some gender issues for good measure). Anyway as a primer for the Top 50, let's start off by running through 20 albums that just barely missed the cut...

-Korn - Korn and Life Is Peachy

Let's face it, as much as we all loved this band in high school/middle school, they can't seriously be considered for the Top 50. Yeah they were pioneers (of a sort) but it's still nu-metal. The lyrics still read like an adolescent girl's diary and the music is still mostly uninspired and simplistic. Still, though...something about these two records actually holds up after over a decade of the hideous music they helped spawn. For one thing, they're still heavy as fuck. The riffs may be unimaginative but they're still as visceral and pummeling as they ever were. I don't care how long it's been since you realized Korn was kinda silly, you still want to fucking move when you hear "Blind" and you know it. And, honestly, the songwriting on these albums is pretty decent. They do pretty good work with atmospheres in the verses, the songs are fairly diverse, especially for a nu-metal band (particularly on Life Is Peachy) and they're good at riding the momentum of a song through some great build-ups and breakdowns and all that good stuff that made us all love nu-metal in our angsty years.

-Pantera - The Great Southern Trendkill

I always get funny looks from Pantera fans when I tell them this is my favorite Pantera record. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Vulgar Display of Power and I adore Far Beyond Driven but to me this is their most solid, well-written, diverse album from start to finish. I'll start with the opening tracks. VDP has "Mouth for War" and FBD has "Strength Beyond Strength." "Mouth for War" is pretty sick but it's kind of a weak opener for such a brutal album. "Strength Beyond Strength" fucking rips and has a siiick breakdown to boot but as much as I love it, it is, again, far from the strongest track on the record. Both songs almost feel like preludes to the albums they're on because they lead into MUCH better songs. Actually it's interesting because these albums have very similar organization, at least on the front end. You have the brutal opening track that really only serves as a prelude to things to come ("Mouth for War"/"Strength Beyond Srength"). Then comes the powerful, anthemic live favorite with the sing-along chorus ("A New Level"/"Becoming"). After that is the "single" with the very simple but extremely heavy and memorable riff ("Walk"/"Five Minutes Alone"). Next up is the even heavier but slightly lesser known fan favorite ("Fucking Hostile"/"I'm Broken"). This is when they slow things down ("This Love"/"Good Friends and a Bottle of Pills" and "Hard Lines Sunken Cheeks) followed by a savagely brutal, riff-heavy song ("Rise"/"Slaughtered"). After that it's kinda murky but anyway you get the point. Anyway, coming back to the opening songs and bringing it back to my point about GST...the first track on The Great Southern Trendkill is the title track...and talk about setting the tone. This is one of my favorite all time opening tracks because it grabs you by the balls from the very start and never once lets go. It also features some absolutely scathing lyrics about trends--a recurring theme on the album. That's another thing I love about this album. It was released in 1996, in a time where heavy music was basically declared dead in the mainstream. By contrast, Far Beyond Driven was released in 1994, debuting at #1 and going multi-platinum. To me, to have the balls to come out and release quite possibly their heaviest, least accessible album of all in a musical landscape dominated by superficial images and pop sensations and mostly devoid of heavy music is demanding of respect. Anyway, from the title track, we dive head first into "War Nerve" and "Drag the Waters", two of the band's heaviest groove-driven songs that delve heavily into the band's southern rock influence (especially "Drag the Waters"...I dare you to listen to that song and not want to pump your fists along with the beat...no...not like on Jersey Shore...go kill yourself). If the album has a weak spot, it's probably tracks 4 and 5, "10s" and "13 Steps to Nowhere." I love these songs but there's no denying they are markedly weaker than the rest of the album. Have no fear, however, because next comes the "Suicide Note" saga in two parts. This is definitely one of my favorite two-parters just because of how well done it is. The first track is acoustic (12 string FTW) and DARK and has a somber and helpless tone lyrically, helped immensely by some starkly emotional crooning by Phil Anselmo. It ends sounding so desolate that you'll almost fall out of your chair when part two comes roaring in. "Suicide Note Pt. 2" is, in my opinion, the heaviest song Pantera ever wrote. Anselmo trades off blood-curdling screeches with the guitar with some intensely angry and almost shocking lyrics, seemingly taking the position that if someone wants to kill themselves, leave them the fuck alone and let them do it. It ends with an epic, crushing breakdown that will flatten your face. "Living Through Me (Hell's Wrath)" is a textbook Pantera song, pummeling guitars and Phil roaring like the lion he is. The lyrics are some of my favorite Pantera lyrics ever. Then you come to "Floods." "Floods" might be one of the best songs ever written--definitely one of the greatest metal songs of all time and one of the greatest guitar solos as well. With all due respect to "This Love" and "Cemetary Gates", this song blows them both out of the water as Pantera's "power ballads" (if you can call them that). Then we close out with the one-two punch of "The Underground In America" and "Sandblasted Skin" which hammer home the album's theme of trends (they're not big fans of trends, by the way) in spectacularly brutal fashion. The riff in "Sandblasted Skin" will literally sandblast your skin. OK, not literally. Anyway I've rambled on enough about this album and I still haven't really explained why it's better than VDP and FBD. When it comes down to it, for me, the production sort of kills Vulgar Display of Power to a certain extent because as heavy as it is, the guitar sound is SO scooped ("scooped" = the mids are "scooped" out leaving just the highs and lows which makes for a brittle, hollow, attacking guitar tone) and even though it works for the music they play, I can't help thinking how much better it could sound. Also in spite of the great number of memorable songs on that album it does also have it's share of forgettable ones, which is the same problem I have with Far Beyond Driven (which definitely does NOT disappoint as far as production...FBD actually has one of the coolest, heaviest, most unique sounding guitar sounds I've ever heard). GST has all the elements in place, it's diversified, the production is crisp and heavy as balls (still scooped but not nearly as much as VDP), the songwriting is solid, fearless, and savvy, the lyrics are fucking fantastic, Phil's vocal prowess is at its peak...it's all there. The only thing that keeps this off the Top 50 is, well, the fact that it's Pantera. Yeah, they're great and brutal and everything but their music isn't exactly rocket science now is it?

Mudvayne - L.D. 50

I don't care what anyone says, as far as nu-metal bands go, Mudvayne was pretty fucking amazing. I know they painted their faces and all that crap and yeah "Dig" was a pretty mediocre song but honestly the rest of this album is actually very interesting and unique as far as heavy music goes. "Death Blooms" and "Nothing to Gein" are both great case studies in simultaneously being super heavy and melodically intriguing while "Severed" and "Prod" demonstrate a very unique brand of songwriting that so many people pigeonhole and cast aside due to the nu-metal stigma. Trust me, give this album a chance. It's worth your time (even if it's not worth a spot in the Top 50)

-American Nightmare - Background Music

This has almost become required listening for hardcore kids over the years. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who listens to hardcore and has never heard Background Music. And why not? No album had so immaculately and effortlessly done straight up hardcore this well in many years...or has in the years since it was released. The lyrics are really the foundation that holds this album up. Vocalist Wes Eisold has become a hardcore legend for his brilliant writing and his words have been screamed en masse more times than you can imagine in the short lifespan of this band. I can't even attempt to quote all the great lines from this album because we'd be here all day so I'll leave it up to you to do your research. For now I'll just say that the only thing keeping this album out of the Top 50 is the fact that, well, it's straight up hardcore. The lyrics are among the best you'll find but musically, as tight and well done as it is, it's still just hardcore, i.e. faster, more aggressive, less melodic punk rock. Anyone can do it, even if they probably can't do it quite as well as American Nightmare could.

-Björk - Homogenic

Björk is an artist I've only recently really gotten into, which has a lot to do with why this isn't in the Top 50 but it's not the only reason why. This album has some of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard on it, such as "Joga" and "All Is Full of Love" and as much as I love Björk and her beautiful, unique voice and her beautiful, unique music, she isn't one of those artists I just go nuts over. Generally speaking, most artists whose chief tools of songwriting are electronic do less for me than those who use instruments. Not that electronically constructed music doesn't do it for me, because I love Björk and Aphex Twin and Portishead and later Radiohead, etc. But I prefer music made with instruments in general is all I'm saying. So as much as I love Björk, putting this album in the Top 50 would be pushing it.

-Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American

It's hard to find a better straight up mainstream rock/pop album than this one--and who better than Jimmy Eat World to show the mainstream how it's done. Few bands have such a talent for crafting such ultra-catchy, ultra-memorable, ultra-polished melodies without sounding stale and generic. It just shows you how good pop melodies can be when they're written with care and with emotion. You can probably figure out why this isn't in the Top 50. It is still pop music, after all. It's far more fun than it is musically accomplished, even at its best. But that doesn't make it any less relevant artistically. Just not really Top 50 material.

-Stone Temple Pilots - No. 4

When this album was released, I feel like it was seen as something of a disappointment to many people, including STP fans. I can't argue that it's not exactly up to par with Core or Purple, musically (which is why it's not in the Top 50). This is more of a personal choice, really. This album was in my CD player on repeat a LOT during one of the most tumultuous times of my life. I don't know why exactly but it seemed to make sense out of the madness of falling in love for the first time. "Church on Tuesday" is a particularly meaningful song to me because the girl I fell in love with lived far away and was only visiting Miami for the summer. When she went back home, I can't tell you how many times the words "And I don't believe it...is she really gone again?" repeated in my head (and in my ears). I also really love "Down" and "No Way Out", probably the two heaviest songs STP ever wrote...that's not why though. There's something about the way STP does a "heavy song" that's very much unique to them and their style. Scott Weiland's sultry delivery has a lot to do with it but they also have a tendency to rely on very moody, dark, dreamy passages to set the mood for the heavy parts. Even the heavy parts have a slithery, sensual, almost hedonistic feel to them that is distinctly STP. "Sour Girl" is also an insanely beautiful song as is the epic "Glide." To me, Weiland is really at the top of his game on this record, his voice sounds as velvety and smooth as ever with no traces of the grunge "errr" sound that Eddie Vedder made famous. They close things out with the spectacularly dreamy acoustic ballad "Atlanta" which evokes hints of "My Favorite Things" and other familiar melodies before closing out with serene xylophone harmonies that fade to silence.

-Shun - Michael In Reign

This EP and this band are one of my favorite hidden gems in the largely unexplored world of underground music. If I ever found a single person who had actually heard of this band, I would probably fall out of my chair. Even the most underground of underground music lovers has most likely never heard of this band due to their relatively short lifespan and very little in the way of touring or distribution of their music. It's really a shame because I'd be willing to bet money that if this band had half a chance, they could have garnered a sizable following because their music is beautiful, unique, and just heavy enough. The vocals are absolutely captivating and definitely evoke shades of Dredg (honestly, the whole band kind of does, but in a good way). It pains me to say it but the only reason they're not in the Top 50 is that I can't, in good conscience, put an album in the Top 50 that the world never really noticed. OK maybe that's not the whole reason...there are a couple albums like that in the Top 50 (even though those albums still got more recognition than this one)...but I dunno, for some reason this album never really took "the next step" for me...maybe I haven't listened to it enough...

-Incubus - S.C.I.E.N.C.E., Make Yourself, and Morning View

OK this is kind of cheating but I honestly couldn't put one ahead of the other. I used to put Morning View a step or two behind the others but the more familiar I became with the last few songs on that album, the more it caught up with the pack. S.C.I.E.N.C.E. is probably the one I would recommend above the rest if I had to because it's the one fewest people have heard, it's the heaviest one (which isn't as superficial a reason when you're talking about Incubus), it's the most diverse, interesting, unique one, and it's basically the last remnants of the "funk" era of Incubus, which was a much more interesting time for the band than their rise to mainstream popularity. Each album does, however, has its own reasons for being deserving of an honorable mention--in spite of the fact that none of them are quite deserving enough to be in the Top 50.

-Marilyn Manson - Antichrist Superstar

I know. Marilyn Manson. Lame. But not so fast. Look past the shock rock antics and homo-eroticism for a second. This is actually a very good industrial metal album if you really, really listen to it. It didn't sell 7.5 million copies just because kids wanted to piss off their parents. That's part of it, but just one part. The visceral nu-metal-y songs are certainly capable...we all know and love "The Beautiful People." But the really great moments here lie in the more industrial, dark, moody, somewhat atmospheric tracks such as "Tourniquet", "Cryptorchild"/"Deformography", "Dried Up, Tied Up, and Dead to the World", and several other tracks from "Cycle II" (tracks 5-11). Trent Reznor's undeniable influence shows up in some of the more deliciously spastic industrial metal tracks such as "Irresponsible Hate Anthem", "1996", and "The Reflecting God" (which Reznor helped write along with "Little Horn" and "Deformography"). The album closes with the desolate, somber "The Man That You Fear" which is the perfect ending to such a dark and twisted album. It only missed the Top 50 because...you guessed it...it's Marilyn Manson. I mean come on. Marilyn Manson? Seriously?

-The Beatles - Rubber Soul

This, to me, is when The Beatles started to become The Beatles. There are still remnants of their pop sensation days here but they're done in a much more mature way and the songwriting brilliance of the Fab Four really begins to emerge in songs like "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)", "Nowhere Man", "Michelle", and "Girl." This album also features one of the greatest songs ever written in "In My Life." I'm not a huge fan of the poppier works of The Beatles, which is why this just misses out on the Top 50 but it still belongs on the pantheon of the great Beatles albums (Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, White Album, Abbey Road, Let It Be) and that's gotta be enough for an honorable mention.

-Metallica - Master of Puppets and ...And Justice for All

Now we're getting into some albums that were harder to justify not putting in the Top 50. Some people might think me a bit blasphemous to mention ...And Justice for All on the same level as Master of Puppets but honestly I don't know why. Sure, Jason Newsted is no Cliff Burton but don't let that influence your opinion of AJFA. In my opinion, it's the heaviest of all the Metallica records. True, the epic song structures of MoP are tuned down a tad but there's still some phenomenal songwriting going on as well as some outstanding fist-pumping anthems in "Harvester of Sorrow", "Eye of the Beholder", and "The Shortest Straw." Not to mention some of the best songs Metallica has ever put to tape in the title track, "One", and the brilliant instrumental, "To Live Is to Die" (which may be my favorite of the holy trinity of Metallica instrumentals...although it's hard to top "The Call of Ktulu"). I can honestly say that the only reason these two aren't in the Top 50 is that there's not enough room...

-The Lawrence Arms - The Greatest Story Ever Told

I feel like The Lawrence Arms would have an album in the Top 50 if Chris McCullough wrote ALL of their songs and not just half of them. Don't get me wrong now, I love that old drunken bastard Brendan Kelly and all, but there's only so much you can do with straight up balls-to-the-wall punk rock. That's not to say that Kelly doesn't have a few songs that are on the level of Chris's...but it's only a few. Still, as much as I'd love to hear a full album of "Chris songs", the fact that they mix together each other's songs on each album is one of my favorite things about this band. It really makes for a much more interesting listen and keeps things fresh which is something you don't see often from pop punk bands (and this is a pop punk band, make no mistake about it). Still it falls just short of the Top 50 in spite of the fact that I really, really wanted to put it in.

-The Pixies - Doolittle

Maybe it's just because I've been listening to this a lot lately, but it's definitely becoming one of my all time favorites. I used to be kind of lukewarm on The Pixies cuz they're not very accessible and are prone to fits of wild yelling and discordant Fugazi-esque guitars but it's these things I've come to love about The Pixies. While I do feel they're at their best when they're playing straight up pop music, the fact that they're not content to just be another pop band is what makes them so interesting and unique. The fact that they were doing all this in the 80s makes them special. And anyway, who can resist getting up and dancing when they hear "Here Comes Your Man?"

-Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity

I consider this a significantly important record in my evolution as an appreciator of music. The first time I heard this album I distinctly remember thinking to myself: "Am I supposed to feel like this?" I couldn't really decide if I liked what I was hearing or not but I couldn't turn it off because it was too damned interesting. This record really did a lot for me in terms of pushing the boundaries of what I thought music could and should be. It's such an avant garde mess of clangy, clashing notes and screams and pummeling, spastic drums...and yet it is far from a mess. Every last note on this album is so carefully and meticulously planned out that it's impossible not to be captivated by it, even if it sort of horrifies you. This is one I really, really wanted to be in the Top 50 but, alas, there just isn't room for it.

-Deathspell Omega - Si Monvmentvm Reqvires, Circvmspice

Ahhh, black metal. Probably the least accessible genre of music on the face of the Earth. It's truly something that isn't easy to appreciate, especially since so many albums in the genre sound like they were recorded inside of a trash can (and usually sound that way on purpose, for aesthetic and atmospheric purposes). This is an exception to the rule, but that's not the only black metal rule that this album is an exception to. This band is part of a much more spiritual sect of black metal with much deeper and more diverse influences (and when I say influences, I don't just mean music) and a far more unique and interesting philosophical approach and aesthetic than other black metal bands. For starters, Deathspell Omega refuse to play live because music, to them, is not mere entertainment. This album is probably the most epic journey through black metal you'll ever hear and while not for the faint of heart or the casual listener, are a very rewarding listen, if at times a painful one. The title of the album is latin for "If you seek His monument, look around you." This is another album I truly wish I had enough room for in the Top 50, but alas, it was not to be.

OK boys and girls, that'll do it for today. Be sure to tune in tomorrow on the off chance that I actually do update again like I said I would. #50-41 are some real classics and there are several ties between albums by the same band that I just couldn't decide between so check it out!

Top 50 Songs of the 2000s (Top Ten!)

2009-09-08T17:56:00.000-04:00

This is it, ladies and gentlemen! The TOP TEN! I know you're all as excited as I am and I'll have more than enough to say about these last ten songs--all of which I would undoubtedly put on a list of top 50 songs of all time--so let's get the ball rolling right away...

10. Funeral Diner - This Truly Is God's Country

Yeah, yeah, more screamo. Hear me out. There was a period a few years ago for a couple of months where I just didn't see any point in listening to any band but Funeral Diner because nothing else measured up. Funeral Diner is one of those bands where no one instrument is the real star of the show because they all mesh together as one so perfectly. However, I will say that Matthew Bajda is one of my top 5 drummers of all time...even now that I don't listen to much Funeral Diner--or screamo in general--anymore. This song, like a lot of the screamo songs on the list, was picked because of the truly special "moments" in the song moreso than the song as a whole--a distinction which is even more apparent in the highest ranked screamo song on the countdown. Don't take that to mean that these screamo songs aren't great all the way through. It's just that screamo songs do tend to rely on dynamics and emotional peaks and valleys and builds and payoffs to carry most of their emotional weight. In the case of this song, these "moments" are not only brilliant musically but lyrically as well. In fact, as hard as it may be to believe, the lyrics may even overshadow the music in some places. When vocalist Seth Babb wails "the holes you dig are always deeper though better informed" I can't help but get goosebumps. And, of course, the song's main climax in which he shrieks "as much as it hurts, they were right when they said: 'change is the only constant'" will always take my breath away no matter how many times I hear this song.

9. The Lawrence Arms - Your Gravest Words

Easily the catchiest, most accessible song in the top 10, The Lawrence Arms get their only nod in my top 50 for a song I've probably listened to more times than almost any song I've ever heard (there might possibly be 2 or 3 that I've listened to more times...if only I'd had a last.fm count my whole life). For a pop punk song, you can't do any better than this. One of the most beautiful chord progressions you'll ever hear begins the song and flows through all the choruses like sheets of rain washing down on your face. Now, for those not familiar with The Lawrence Arms, their music is unique in that guitarist Chris McCullough writes about half of the songs while bassist Brendan Kelly writes the other half. Much like The Beatles did, Chris and Brendan each sing lead vocals on their own respective songs, so their albums are split between "Chris songs"--they tend to be a little on the softer, prettier side--and "Brendan songs"--falling on the harder, more punk rock side of things--which make for an interesting experience. This is probably the perfect embodiment of a "Chris song." Beautiful, powerful, catchy as all hell and dripping with his uniquely low-pitch, smooth, melodic voice (as opposed to Brendan's gritty punk voice). When he croons "I am a satellite, never getting signals right. You are a constellation. I can barely make you out tonight. The city lights are burning too bright." it will melt your heart, I can almost guarantee it.

8. Envy - A Far-Off Reason and Yaphet Kotto/This Machine Kills/Envy - A Collaboration Song

These two songs appear on the greatest split record I've ever heard in my life. For those not "in the know", a split record is a record that features songs by more than one band (usually two bands, three in this case) that is generally a collaborative effort between the two bands, at least to some extent. Some bands cover one or two of each other's songs when they do a split together (as is the case with the Alkaline Trio/Hot Water Music split). I used to own a split 10" by Envy (who are from Japan) and a band called Iscariote who are Italian and they did a cool thing where each did one song in the other band's language with lyrics written by the other band's lyricist. This split is unique in that it features three bands (there are certainly other splits between three or more bands but most features just two) and, moreso, because the three bands collaborated on the final song on the record. This split stands as the best split I've ever heard for several reasons: 1. the three Yaphet Kotto songs on this split are, in my opinion, the best songs they ever wrote, 2. the way this split is organized, with Yaphet Kotto's powerful but more up-tempo songs leading off, This Machine Kills's solid, chaotic, but ultimately least exceptional songs in the middle, with Envy's masterfully powerful contribution and the subsequent brilliance of the collaborative track bookending the record perfectly...the organization reminded me a lot of the way you're taught to write five-paragraph essays in middle school and high school: second best argument first, third best argument second, best argument first, 3. Envy's contribution itself...incredible, and 4. A Collaboration Song. I absolutely, positively had to list both "A Far-Off Reason" as well as "A Collaboration Song" simply because they are two of the greatest songs of this decade respectively. "A Far-Off Reason" is really the song that made me stand up and take notice when listening to the record. I had enjoyed the contributions of Yaphet Kotto and This Machine Kills albeit a bit passively. However, when I first heard the intensely moving chord progression at the heart of this song, my jaw dropped and my eyes started getting misty. Then there's a moment where the music drops out for an extended period of time and all you hear is screaming off in the distance. I don't want to ruin the surprise but pay close attention during this part. When I heard it, I stopped what I was doing and was pretty much frozen in the same position for the rest of the song. "A Collaboration Song?" I can't even describe it. You have to hear it for yourself. It's a religious experience.

7. City of Caterpillar - ...And You're Wondering How a Top Floor Could Replace Heaven

This song is the true embodiment of the statement I made in my Funeral Diner blurb in reference to "moments." This song features some of the best "moments" in any song I've ever heard in my life--and they happen almost one on top of the other. I must warn you not to be deterred by the raucous, somewhat chaotic beginning of the song. The raging tide of the song soon settles some of the most beautiful atmospheric passages ever put to tape. I can sit here and try to describe what these brilliant moments sound like (all the stars falling to earth is one image that comes to mind) but I could never do them justice. All the velvety layers and swirling textures surround your head and immerse you in a warm, starry experience that I highly recommend to everyone. EVERYONE.

6. Radiohead - The National Anthem

I have to say, honestly, if there were to be a national anthem for this decade or even this millenium, you'd have a hard time doing better than this. This isn't really even one of my absolute favorite Radiohead songs--it's way up there but maybe just short of a top ten--but it is a perfect microcosm of not only Radiohead's artistic and musical prowess but of the music industry as a whole: an unsettling, undeniably catchy and yet incomprehensibly chaotic cacophony that snowballs into a most beautifully decimating conclusion. It's sparse and a bit disjointed lyrically but perhaps fittingly for a song so chock full of notes that bite and scratch and clash with each other in a wonderful garbage pile of juxtaposed beauty and ugliness, musicality and amusicality. A perfect way to summarize this song is a quote I used time and time again to describe avant garde black metal band Deathspell Omega's discordant 2007 masterpiece "Fas -- Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum": Only truly great musicians could create something this amusical.

5. Converge - Heaven In Her Arms

And you thought "The National Anthem" was chaotic. I should warn you all that this is arguably the most abrasive and least accessible song on the entire list. Enter at your own risk. If you do take the plunge, you'll be holding on for dear life for the entire ride. Set partially in a 7/4 time signature that comes off more like a 7/8 with the scathing pace of the song, it features one of the most devastatingly powerful riffs you'll hear in any metal or hardcore song along with Jacob Bannon's trademark bloodcurdling screams and, of course, Ben Koller's ever-transient, ever-mindblowing drum work. A somber tone and a 4/4 time signature kicks in for an epic bridge that sees Bannon shrieking maddeningly: "forgive me for the sadness and the bringing of you down...I just needed a lover and I needed a friend...and there you were, running from forever like all the rest." However it soon becomes clear that all this was just a prelude for an epic conclusion that's as emotionally powerful as it is crushingly heavy: "three simple words bled me dry: I love you."

4. Tool - Rosetta Stoned

This is the one song on the countdown that features an intro that's fairly essential to the experience of the song, especially because the two tracks bleed together. In fact, I really like to start listening to this song with an interlude that sits one track previous to the intro for this song because it serves as a great preface for the "Lost Keys"/"Rosetta Stoned" experience. And "Rosetta Stoned" is certainly a fitting title for this song. It's really only something that obsessive Tool fans--read: most real Tool fans--are consciously aware of but this song has pieces of other Tool songs scattered all over the place. That's not to say they sampled other songs or ripped riffs straight out of old songs and pasted them into this one. However there are certainly very distinct homages to many of Tool's songs hidden within the song. Comparisons can be drawn between parts in "Rosetta Stoned" and parts in songs such as "H." and "Third Eye" that are a frequent topic of discussion on Tool message boards--I would know. In many ways this song really is kind of a "rosetta stone" for Tool's music and a very interesting microcosm of their catalog. Tool has almost become known for these sort of 10+ minute epics that rollercoaster up and down and side to side and upside down countless times and while this is no "Third Eye" it certainly earns its place on the pantheon of Tool epics as well as a spot in the top five of this countdown.

3. Between the Buried and Me - Mordecai

On sheer musicality alone, this song blows every single one on this list away and then some. The opening seconds set the perfect tone for this punishing whirlwind of blinding metal riffing and constantly transitioning tempos. The guitar work here is second to none, all at once technically masterful, totally organic, and melodiously impressive. If all the chaos and noise isn't your cup of tea, I urge you to brave the storm for a little longer because the song closes with a beautifully epic and moving passage that includes a truly great guitar solo that very much serves the song as opposed to the guitarist's ego. I dare you not to get goosebumps during the soaring melody of "from the reciting of the show...from the plip in the shevanel...from the grind that annoys...and the sarcasm they all hate"

2. Converge - Jane Doe

This is the emotional 11+ minute conclusion of the album with the same name...and a fitting conclusion it is. An album as powerful and as challenging as this deserves nothing less than a towering, spiraling, desperate epic. One of the greatest shows I've ever seen was a Converge show where they closed their set with this song and I have to admit that I literally wept seeing them perform this song. Such an overpowering emotional song with Jacob Bannon musing during the choruses "IIIIIIIIII waaaaaaaant ouuuuuuut." The outro is a crushingly beautiful bookend to a magnificent, majestic song. Powerful beyond belief.

AND THE GREATEST SONG OF THE DECADE IS...

1. Thrice - For Miles

I have to admit I feel a little guilty putting this at the top spot because I feel like I probably have an overwhelming bias toward this band but at the same time I just don't fucking care. This song is just achingly, impossibly beautiful. I can't even describe how much this song moves me. The beautiful piano line. Dustin Kensrue's incredibly voice. Ridiculously powerful lyrics. Spacey guitar work in the chorus. A towering bridge with a fantastic guitar riff. And an outro that will make the hairs on your neck stand up. No praise I can give this song is too high. No description I can give can capture its captivating beauty for you. You just have to go buy yourself a copy of "Vheissu" and wait patiently for track 5 so you can experience it for yourself.

Well, that's it...the countdown comes to its dramatic conclusion. I hope it was as fun for you--all two of you reading this--as it was for me.

Top 50 Songs of the 2000s (20-11)

2009-09-07T14:37:00.000-04:00

I know, I know, I've been slacking on this...but look on the bright side, we're now into the top 20. I personally am pretty excited because we're starting to get into some songs that I'm really gonna have a hard time not gushing like a fanboy about. Just looking over the top 10 right now, I can't wait to blather on and on and bore everyone to death about these 10 songs...they really are some of my favorite songs of all time...anyway, on with the show...

20. Mono - Halcyon (Beautiful Days)

I'm convinced that this song is the audio incarnation of falling in love. It really does sound like a song from a movie soundtrack that would be played over a romantic, exhilarating new year's eve scene where two anxious, smitten lovers play out an out-of-this-world first kiss as brilliant fireworks explode over their heads. The great thing is that you can pinpoint exactly where the kiss happens and the fireworks explode at the overwhelming climax of the song. Listening to this song after smoking a little herb and hearing that burst-and-bloom climax explode all around you is the closest thing to a fireworks display literally going off inside your head. It's not particularly complex for the 8 minutes it takes to play out but that's really part of the beauty of it...it's simple but breathtakingly majestic.

19. Baroness - A Horse Called Golgotha

I had to go back and amend my list to allow for this song because I am officially 100% sure that this is the best song Baroness has ever written. It features a majestic intro that serves as a perfect preface and then it launches headfirst into the epic guitar harmonies that line the entire song. The verse features a nice transition into some almost Torche-esque hook-driven heavy psychedelic pop which transitions back into an extraordinarily powerful chorus. I absolutely can't get enough of the guitar solo on this song and the scathing tone with which it drips. There's another solo like this in the song "Jake Leg" but it's nowhere near the brilliance of this solo...one of the best solos I've heard in quite a long time to be honest. And then what puts it over the top is the way it comes crashing to a close with a soaring instrumental outro that will send chills down your spine.

18. System of a Down - Question!

By a long margin, this is the most challenging, creative, and perhaps the best-crafted song in System of a Down's catalog. The haunting picked acoustic intro gives way to a sick riff in 5/4 time which then gives way to a highly complex 9/8 time verse that I had to listen to about 10 times before I could really figure out what time signature it was in, especially the way it's phrased. It also features one of the signature epic choruses of the "Mesmerize/Hypnotize" double album with their best soaring harmonies since the closing moments of "Chop Suey!" It's so rare nowadays to see a band that can challenge listeners with truly unique music that features things like odd time signatures or complex song structures and still garner massive popularity along the way. System of a Down is one of those bands. I can really only think of maybe two other examples of such bands--each is featured twice in the top 15 of this countdown.

17. Mare - They Sent You

I'm sure I don't have to tell anyone that this is probably the most esoteric selection on my list. It is certainly my opinion that Mare is by far the best band to ever record only five original songs and go almost completely unnoticed, even in the underground. I was lucky enough to see this band live--ironically we got there late and missed the first song they played, which was this song, a fact that haunts me to this very day--and they played to a room that would have held about 50 people at capacity and probably held about 20 that night. I guess it's not difficult to imagine this band not being for everyone. Their music is extremely challenging and complex, similar in many ways to the music of Baroness in that they are able to so seamlessly combine so many different elements and push genre boundaries. However, their approach is far more avant garde than that of Baroness, opting for towering, unsettling atmospheres and brooding, restrained rhythms, often not staying on a beat for long if there even is a beat. This song is a mindfuck from the very beginning, leading off with some very eerie programming and singing before nosediving into massive stoner rock riffs with beautifully complex guitar chords that are about as far from power chords as you can get and still be ridiculously heavy--this guitar work has actually been a major influence on my playing and my songwriting as a whole. The most compelling moment of this song comes toward the end as the music abruptly pauses for a very ominous guitar chord that almost sounds like an alarm being sounded, a chord which is then coupled with some distortion and some huge, sluggish stoner riffing to create a truly ominous atmosphere--an atmosphere abandoned as abruptly as it is ushered in as it quickly gives way to a beautiful guitar outro that almost speaks to you, saying: "everything is ok now."

16. At the Drive-In - Invalid Litter Dept.

A far cry from the chaotic assault of the rest of the "Relationship of Command" album, this song showcases the lighter side of At the Drive-In with a beautifully unsettling guitar line as its centerpiece. The verses are noticeably relaxed compared to much of this band's work but they're juxtaposed very nicely with rapid-fire incendiary spoken word vocals to create an interesting urgency among the restraint of the instrumentation. The vocal ramblings are also interspliced with the catchy and haunting melody of "dancing on the corpses ashes." The choruses are catchy and a bit more rowdy but ultimately play into the relaxed atmosphere of the song perfectly. What really puts this song over the top is what happens after the music abruptly stops toward the end of the song for vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala to whisper "dancing on the corpses ashes...dancing on the corpses ashes." You'll see...

15. Dredg - Triangle

Another track that is very much enhanced by being preceded by an interlude that makes for a very fitting preface. Much like Baroness's "Wanderlust", however, it stands up spectacularly on its own. What really made me pick this over other Dredg songs--and there are certainly a number of them I could have picked--is the fact that this song is almost like 2-3 songs put together, abruptly but seamlessly changing gears twice in the first two minutes and even a couple times after that to some degree. After those two minutes the song is truly allowed to settle in and even without all the abrupt pacing changes stands as one of Dredg's greatest achievements in songwriting and melody as well as lyrics. Some brilliantly poignant moments in this song include singer Gavin Hayes soaring through one of my favorite lyrics ever--"and it's not impossible for flowers to bloom and grow next to graves when babies are born in the same buildings where people go to pass away"--as the instruments trail out momentarily behind him and a droning chant of "we live like penguins in the desert...why can't we live like tribes?" in the song's bridge.

14. Radiohead - Idioteque

Leave it to Radiohead to write a discoteque song that is all at once the best discoteque song you'll ever hear and a big "fuck you" to discoteque in general. This is probably the most well-known example of Radiohead's trademark knack for marrying aggressive yet organic sounding techno beats with sometimes-eerie, sometimes-serene, always-beautiful melodies. I can still remember seeing this song performed on Saturday Night Live and Thom Yorke flailing his head around screaming "ice age coming! ice age coming!" An interesting aspect of this song is how much it has been connected with 9/11, with one fan even making a very interesting and relevant music video for the song using some interesting footage and photography. In fact, if you want to go even deeper, there's a whole passage in Chuck Klosterman's book "Killing Yourself to Live" about how he Radiohead might have accidentally predicted the events of 9/11 with their "Kid A" album--not literally, of course, but there are definitely some very interesting parallels.

13. Bright Eyes - Nothing Gets Crossed Out

As is often the case in the music of Conor Oberst, this song is carried predominantly by the power of his lyrics. A solemn, self-reflective, nostalgia-inducing merry-go-round ride of achingly powerful lines like "I know I should be brave but I'm just too afraid of all this change", opening lines "well the future's got me worried such awful thoughts, my head's a carousel of pictures, the spinning never stops", and boyhood laments of how he "fell under the weight of a schoolboy crush, started carrying her books and doing lots of drugs." But as is also often the case with Conor's work, the lyrics are nestled on a solid foundation of beautifully crafted music, including a gorgeous, starkly sweet bridge that gives way to a powerful conclusion as Oberst wails: "So when I'm lost in a crowd, I hope that you'll pick me out. Oh, how I long to be found. The grass grew high. I laid down. So now I wait for a hand to lift me up, help me stand. I have been laying so low. Don't wanna lay here no more."

12. Envy - Chain Wondering Deeply

There's really only one word that inevitably comes to mind when one talks about Envy, there's no avoiding it, it's the only one that lives up to what this band is capable of: EPIC. With songs that sprawl over 6, 7, 8, even 9 minutes sometimes and echo with the majesty and ferocity of Vesuvius, it's hard to avoid using the word "epic" when describing any Envy song--and no song they've written better embodies that than this one. It's not hard to imagine what's about to be unleashed upon you when you hear the haunting opening moments of this track but even then it can take you by surprise. I know I keep using this adjective (among others) but this song is truly one where the music (and specifically the guitars) truly tower over you like skyscrapers. That is, until the harrowing bridge of the song which features a twinkly guitar line that will pluck at your very heart strings--and if I'm being overly cheesy, it's purposefully. The only problem listening to this song is that if you don't have the whole album playing then the ending is awkward since it tumbles immediately into the next track on the album. That aside, though, if you truly love powerful, epic, dramatic music, this song just might change your life.

11. Tool - Right in Two

I have to say it's really a damn good thing that Aenima was released in 1996 otherwise I might have put half that album on the list. Tool's output in this millenium has never really lived up to the sheer brilliance of that album but, to be fair, that would be nearly impossible. Their last album, "10,000 Days" came much, much closer than 2001's "Lateralus" did--I often say that "10,000 Days" is the album I expected and the album Tool was capable of when they came out with "Lateralus" even though I still adore "Lateralus." This song is one of the main reasons why. Lyrically it's definitely one of my favorite Tool songs, to the point that if I were to quote every line I love in this song, I would probably end up covering at least 75% of the song. It also features a breathtaking tabla solo by drummer Danny Carey in the interlude that I had the good fortune of witnessing live and is truly something to behold--actually the tabla solo on the record is not even close to being as amazing as the one he played live. Add in the fact that this song is somehow in 11/8 time and still feels pretty much like a straight up 3 and you absolutely have yourself one of the greatest songs of this decade.

Tune in tomorrow for the TOP TEN. I keep staring at the top ten as I write this and drooling all over myself at the prospect of discussing these songs. Since I can barely contain my excitement, I'll give you guys a little teaser: 6 of the top 10 slots are occupied by bands who have already had at least one song on the countdown, one of which appears in the top ten twice...and yet doesn't even hold the top spot. Excited? I AM!

Top 50 Songs of the 2000s (just missed the cut)

2009-09-03T22:32:00.000-04:00

I thought it only fair to do a little side feature about the songs that would have been on the list if I only had the energy to do a top 100 instead of a top 50...but uh...fuck that...so here's a look at the tracks that just missed the cut:

Sigur Ros – Untitled Track 1
Converge – You Fail Me
Converge - Plagues
Queens of the Stone Age – First It Giveth
Queens of the Stone Age – No One Knows
Queens of the Stone Age – Feel Good Hit of the Summer
The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (Pt. 1)
dredg – Of the Room
Mastodon – Sleeping Giant
Mastodon – March of the Fire Ants
Streetlight Manifesto – A Better Place, A Better Time
Deftones – Passenger
Deftones – Change (In the House of Flies)
The Mountain Goats – No Children
System of a Down – Toxicity
System of a Down – Lost In Hollywood
System of a Down – Soldierside
The Weakerthans – Reconstruction Site
The Weakerthans – Psalm for the Elks Lodge Last Call
The Weakerthans – Presience of Dawn
Ben Folds – Still Fighting It
Propagandhi - Mate Ka Moris Ukun Rasik An
Propagandhi – Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes
Propagandhi – Purina Hall of Fame
Thrice – Hold Fast Hope
Deathspell Omega – Bread of Bitterness
Funeral Mist – Circle of Eyes
A Perfect Circle - Judith
Circle Takes the Square – Interview at the Ruins
The Hold Steady – First Night
Talib Kweli – Get By
Majority Rule – The Sin in Grey
Aphex Twin – Vordhosbn
The Bouncing Souls – Night Train
The Bouncing Souls – Anchors Aweigh
Bright Eyes – Haligh, Haligh, a Lie, Haligh
Dr. Dre – Forgot About Dre
Dr. Dre – Still D.R.E.
Eminem – Kill You
Green Day – Jesus of Suburbia
Green Day – Wake Me Up When September Ends
John Mayer – Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
John Mayer – The Hurt
Kelly Clarkson – Since U Been Gone
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Stadium Arcadium
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Slow Cheetah
Thursday – Paris In Flames
Thursday – Standing On the Edge of Summer
Thursday – How Long Is the Night?
Thursday – War All the Time

Top 50 Songs of the 2000s (30-21)

2009-09-03T18:08:00.000-04:00

Sorry for missing a day or two but now is the time to start getting excited cuz we're starting to get into some songs I really, REALLY like a lot. Once we start getting into the top 20 I'm gonna start really gushing uncontrollably about some of these songs. Well let's get started already...

30. Mono - 16.12

A few years ago a friend of mine told me there was this band from Japan who were kind of in the same style as Explosions in the Sky and Mogwai and that I should check out their (at the time) newest album entitled--brace yourself--"Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and the Sun Shined." I'm always up for some good epic ambient post-rock type stuff so I checked out the album. This is the first song on that album. It's a long journey, clocking in at over 10 minutes, but when the 10 minutes are over it will seem all too soon and you'll be anxiously awaiting the rest of the album. It starts with the soothing sound of waves crashing on a shore, soon joined by some solemn violin harmonies, both of which eventually give way to the quiet first of many layers of sound that lay one on top of the other gradually as the song progresses. The driving force of the song soon becomes apparent in a perpetually ascending delay-soaked tremolo-picked guitar line climbing to towering heights before exploding into a beautiful climax which eventually trails off back into the subtle tones of the intro of the song.

29. The Arcade Fire - Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)

Another fantastic opening track of an album that really impressed me when I heard it. The Arcade Fire has a really great sense for making music that is at once memorable, accessible, unique, compelling, dramatic, and interesting, something exceedingly hard to do. This song is such a joyful explosion from the very first note, it's no wonder they made it track 1 on their breakthrough "Funeral" album. At times this band actually tends to remind me a little bit of Jimmy Eat World with their use of sweet, twinkly indie rock moments, however Win Butler's wild wailing vocals lend the music a captivating, almost At-the-Drive-In-esque exuberance and does so much to make their sound truly their own.

28. The Weakerthans - Aside

If you've ever seen the movie Wedding Crashers, chances are you've heard this song without even knowing it--it's the song that plays over the closing credits. I can remember walking out of the theater after seeing the movie and being taken by complete surprise when I heard John K. Sampson's unmistakable voice over the end credits of a "Frat Pack" movie. Sampson is undoubtedly one of the least well-known great songwriters of this generation and you don't have to listen to very many Weakerthans songs to figure out why. His undeniable wit and charm shine through not only in his brilliant lyrics but in the songs themselves. This is probably one of the more simple but also more powerful songs in The Weakerthans' catalog and is, of course, chock full of amazing lines including a fantastic bridge--"Circumnavigate this body of wonder and uncertainty armed with every precious failure; an amateur cartography. I breathe in deep before I spread those maps out on my bedroom floor"--and an unforgettable chorus--"and I'm leaning on this broken fence between past and present tense...and I'm losing all those stupid games that I swore I'd never play...but it almost feels OK."

27. Outkast – B.O.B.

In the Pitchfork Media feature I cited as my inspiration for this little article of mine, this song was given the honor of being the #1 song of the decade. The reasoning is sound enough, specifically when you factor in popularity and social relevance more heavily. As Pitchfork says, "'B.O.B.' is not just the song of the decade--it is the decade" going on to note that with Bombs Over Baghdad, Outkast "effectively craft[ed] a fast-forwarded highlight-reel prophecy of what the next 10 years held in store." It's hard to argue considering that the very title of the song was eerily prophetic but the power of this song goes so far beyond its title and subject matter. It's such a glorious onslaught of danceable but incendiary bombast that its universal appeal should be no surprise and the soulful choir makes this song almost a religious experience.

26. Envy - Color of Fetters

The first (and certainly not the last) Envy song on my countdown. Envy is an epic screamo band from Japan and when I say epic I mean...EPIC. The great thing about this song is that it doesn't waste any time, it grabs you right from the get-go and doesn't let go. Characteristically of Envy, this 7 minute ride is wrought with dynamic contrast and powerful moments from the swirling opening to the desolate middle refrain and so, so much more. I can't do much to describe the roller coaster ride you embark on when listening to an Envy song, you're just going to have to take the ride for yourself.

25. Tool - The Grudge

As much as I love everything Tool has ever done, I've always felt like Tool was capable of much more with the "Lateralus" album. It's still an incredible record but I felt like it was a bit weighted down by its own self-conscious arty-ness and that a few of the tracks were weak by Tool standards ("Schism", "Parabol"/"Parabola", "Ticks and Leeches"). Still it did offer some typically brilliant moments that Tool can always be counted on for, such as "The Patient", the epic prog-driven suite of "Disposition"/"Reflection"/"Triad", and this immensely powerful opening track. Set in the challenging time signature of 5/4 with a sort of 3ish feel to it, this song features some of the best songwriting Tool is capable of such as the fleeting pounding riff with the bass drum doubling in speed under it every measure and then giving way to a beautifully desolate bass line which builds (with the help of the drums) and carries over into the verse. It also features one of the great ending climaxes of any song in Tool's catalog and that's a major compliment because that's really Tool's modus operandi.

24. Baroness - Rays On Pinion

I vividly remember the first time I heard Baroness's "Red Album"--of which this is the opening track. I smoked a huge bowl and put on this record as I packed another one. When those opening guitar tones hit my stoned ears it was like biting into a filet mignon you can cut with a butter knife...and it was only going to get better. The lead-off track of "Red Album" is a much more raucous one than "Wailing Wintry Wind", much heavier on the heavy stoner riffage and classic rock guitar noodling with the exception of the intro, however there is no shortage of Baroness's impeccable sense of melody.

23. Converge - Thaw

This may be one of the hardest songs for most people reading this to get into for many of the same reasons I named it one of my top 50. This song is just one serious mindfuck--sonically it just sounds to me like a person in the depths of a serious mental breakdown. And you'll know when they snap as this is one of the most powerful moments on the entire "Jane Doe" album--very lofty praise, well deserved. If you're one of the few who is actually interested in checking out the songs I'm talking about on this list, definitely keep a very open mind when going into this one (and also make sure to listen to it all the way to the end or you might miss the best part).

22. Bright Eyes - From a Balance Beam

Another one of the Bright Eyes catalog that is overflowing with potent imagery and powerful lyrical lines. This song became something of a rallying cry for me personally in the months leading up to last year's election and with lines like "so I wait for the day when I hear the key as it turns in the lock and the guard will say to me 'oh, my patient prisoner you've waited for this day and finally you are free...you are free...you are freezing." One of the more powerful Bright Eyes songs in Oberst's catalog with some scathing but beautiful songwriting and absolutely incredible lyrics.

21. Thrice - Daedalus

On Thrice's "The Artist in the Ambulance" album they had a song called "The Melting Point of Wax" that was written from the point of view of Icarus. Icarus was the son of Daedalus and they were both imprisoned by the Minotaur in the Labyrinth so Daedalus constructed wings for the two of them to escape using wax, string, and feathers from nearby birds. Where "The Melting Point of Wax" is full of the youthful exuberance of Icarus wanting to "touch the sun" flying on "secondhand wings", "Daedalus" has a mournful tone of a loving father worrying for his son, a very potent metaphor for fatherhood. Singer Dustin Kensrue soars on a desperate bridge: "Oh Gods, why is this happening to me? All I wanted was a new life, for my son to grow up free. Now you took the only thing that meant anything to me. I will never fly again. I'll hang up my wings." When I say this is one of the most powerful and one of the best songs Thrice has ever written, you should know I'm not fucking around here.

And the Nominees Are...

2009-09-01T14:24:00.000-04:00

I thought it would be fun if I made a list here of all the albums I'm currently considering for my customary list of the top 10 records of the year...here are (some of) the nominees for 2009 (there could certainly be new contenders arising between now and December 31st):

Thrice - Beggars (likely will be #1 barring some sort of miracle)
Converge - Axe to Fall
Baroness - Blue Album
Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavillion
Mastodon - Crack the Skye
Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
Amorphis - Skyforger
Kylesa - Static Tensions
Isis - Wavering Radiant
Dredg - The Pariah, the Parrot, the Delusion
Mono - Hymn to the Immortal Wind
Buried Inside - Spoils of Failure
Propagandhi - Supporting Caste
Wilco - Wilco (The Album)
Coalesce - OX
Thursday - Common Existence
The Mars Volta - Octahedron
Minsk - With Echoes in the Movement of Stone
...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of the Dead - The Century of Self
Poison the Well - The Tropic Rot
Wu Tang Clan - Chamber Music
Lucero - 1372 Overton Park
Between the Buried and Me - The Great Misdirect
Russian Circles - Geneva
Flight of the Conchords - I Told You I Was Freaky

Top 50 Songs of the 2000s (40-31)

2009-08-31T20:55:00.000-04:00

40. Deftones - Knife Prty

I have to admit that I have a pretty heavy bias when it comes to this album--as the old cliche goes, "this album got me through some tough times." I have a lot of very emotional memories attached to this disc but I promise that didn't influence me in picking this song (too much). This song is just such an emotional ride and features some impressive drum work by Abe Cunningham. The epic, swirling ending featuring the chilling vocal performance of Rodleen Getsick gives me goosebumps every time. Just such a powerful, epic, haunting, borderline disturbing song by one of my favorite bands since high school, I had to give it a spot on the countdown.

39. Dredg – The Canyon Behind Her

To say this is the most epic song in the diverse Dredg catalog is a far bigger compliment than you might even realize. I've always thought Dredg was one of the most underrated bands I had ever heard. Every time I show this band to someone they're always blown away by how beautiful, unique, and moving their music is and yet they never really seem to garner the audience they deserve, never really fitting into a particular niche or scene. The title of this song is very fitting because as soon as it kicks in you can feel the sensation of standing at the edge of a great canyon looking over the scenery. The epic, flowing melodies of the guitars blanket you like a massive waterfall and then drop you into outer space with a characteristically (for this album, anyway) quicker-paced spacey verse before letting you fall back to earth into the waterfall. The towering final moments of the song are accentuated by an ethereal choral arrangement that ends up being the last thing you hear before cutting off abruptly, completing the journey.

38. The Mars Volta - Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of)

I often have a hard time deciding whether I prefer At the Drive-In's swan song "Relationship of Command" or The Mars Volta's full-length debut "De-Loused in the Comatorium." Generally it depends on whether I'm in the mood for raw, irrepressible emotion or well-developed melodies and epic prog-rock atmospheres. The Mars Volta also tends to be a band that tries a little too hard sometimes and gets lost in their own sprawling prog sensibilities, especially on the albums that followed their debut full length. This song is The Mars Volta at their best with flowing, dynamic songwriting marked by a towering chorus and some brilliant musicianship in the bridge, especially by drummer Jon Theodore.

37. Baroness - Wailing Wintry Wind

Baroness is a band unlike any other you'll ever hear and, as a result, possibly one of the most accessible and without question one of the most unique metal bands currently in existence. I know some of you might find it hard to believe you would ever like a band that could be referred to as "metal" but Baroness is the furthest thing from your typical metal band. They manage to pack everything from massive stoner rock riffs to beautifully serene melodic guitar harmonies to classic rock noodling and rhythms and more into each song they craft--and I do mean craft. "Wailing Wintry Wind" is compelling for its snowballing progression from the hushed atmospheric tones of the intro to the snare-driven build-up that teases you by dropping into an uneasy sounding plucked guitar line before really going into high gear. Baroness's unique talent for dynamics is especially prevalent throughout this song, which is almost bereft of any scathing metal riffs or guttural growls, opting instead for deep, gravelly, bombastic vocal melodies and atmospheric tones that are as mesmerizing as they are moving.

36. The Hold Steady - Southtown Girls

And so we come to our first repeat offender on the list, The Hold Steady. I saw The Hold Steady live in Orlando in December of 2006 and was kind of blown away by how phenomenal they were live. Full of the energy and exuberance that flows forth from many of the tracks on "Boys and Girls in America"--and it was only fitting that they played almost every song from that album which is so chock full of joyous, anthemic choruses. This was the last song they played before the encore and couldn't have been a more fitting close for their initial set--it also closes out the "Boys and Girls in America album--and when you hear it, you'll understand why. Craig Finn's poignant crooning of "southtown girls won't blow you away...but you know that they'll stay" is impossible to resist singing along to--even if you don't know the words...which you do now. That impeccably catchy line is followed by an equally catchy guitar riff ushering in the verse of the song, however it pales in comparison to the catchy-ness of the chorus which will be stuck in your head for days to come: "southtown girls won't blow you away...but you know that they'll stay"

35. The Bouncing Souls - Gone

The first (and by FAR the best) time I saw The Bouncing Souls live, singer Greg Attonito prefaced this song by saying "this is for anyone who's ever gone through a hard time in life...just remember it gets better and tomorrow the sun will rise...this song is about that, it's called Gone." That's this song in a nutshell; the triumphant closing song of "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" is one of the most uplifting, most powerful, and easily one of the best pop punk songs I've ever heard (there are only two pop punk songs ahead of this one on the list. Attonito's ultra powerful pipes carry the soaring melody of "It was a darkness all my own...a song played on the radio...it went straight to my heart...I carried it with me until the darkness was...GOOOOOOOOONE"--that elongated "gone" signifying one of the most powerful, infectious hooks I've ever heard. If you didn't think pop punk could be beautiful, you need to hear this song.

34. Outkast - Ms. Jackson

Repeat artist #2. Another in a long line of infectious Outkast hits with a ridiculously catchy beat, an even more ridiculously catchy chorus (sang in a weirdly endearing out-of-tune wail) complete with Andre and Big Boi's brilliant, passionate lyrics. This song has a unique soulfulness to it that almost reminds me of Bone Thugs's "Tha Crossroads" and gives the track a timeless quality. When all these elements combine they make for an absolutely unforgettable song.

33. Bright Eyes - Something Vague

Lyrically, it would be tough to find a better song in the Bright Eyes catalog than this, which is really saying something. The vividness of Conor Oberst's storytelling is never so brilliantly accentuated as it is here as the song almost plays out like a miniature film in your head. When he wails "and then the bridge disappears and i'm standing on air with nothing holding me" I can really visualize myself standing, in that moment, on an old medieval bridge that has suddenly disappeared--as a matter of fact, I can't not imagine that. And those flutes. Oh, those flutes. Conor Oberst never fails to disappoint when he decides to take you on a journey through his whimsical mind.

32. Radiohead - Knives Out

Sadly nestled in one of Radiohead's most overlooked albums (and although some consider it a collection of b-sides from Kid A, the band has said the two albums should be considered "twins separated at birth"...and honestly it is a phenomenal album that has some brilliant tracks like "You and Whose Army?", "Pyramid Song", "I Might Be Wrong", and others), "Knives Out" is a song about cannibalism. It's not hard to imagine, with lines such as "So knives out...Cook him up...Squash his head...Put him in the pot." Radiohead's unique talent for unsettling atmospheric chord progressions is very apparent in this song, and perhaps fittingly, considering the subject matter. If Amnesiac really were to be consider a b-sides collection from the Kid A sessions then I would think this would be a song that Radiohead would be kicking themselves for not including on Kid A.

31. Eminem - Stan

I had never even heard the Dido song that this beat was sampled from before I heard this song. When I checked out the Dido song after learning of what song it was, I was pretty disappointed that it didn't live up to the dark, sweet melancholy of that clip from the verse and certainly of this entire song. A very compelling and poignant (if a tad egotistical) concept for this song really accentuated that darkness in the melodies of Dido and made for an extremely powerful song. What really put it over the top was a pretty intense music video featuring a pretty decent performance from Devon Sawa as the crazed fan.

Top 50 Songs of the 2000s (50-41)

2009-08-30T14:17:00.000-04:00

The other day I saw that Pitchfork Media did a staff list of their top 500 songs of the last decade so I decided it would be fun to make my own (much more esoteric) list. As with most lists like this I make, while it is not merely a list of my favorite songs and I do make these lists with a degree of objectivity, it is also very much a biased list. I also put far more emphasis on sheer musicality and songwriting than I do on popularity or "social significance" and therefore don't expect many people to agree with my choices...but that's why it's fun, right? Anyway I'll be posting a series of five entries in the next five days counting down my own person top 50 songs of the last decade in increments of 10...starting with 50-41:

50. System of a Down - Tentative

When I started getting into more underground/DIY (and, thus, better) music, I sort of wrote this band off. Even though they were still one of the few "nu metal" bands I thought had some merit, I didn't much care for them anymore. One day not too long ago I decided that a lot of the music I'd written off as I became more immersed in the DIY scene was music that I had been convinced didn't matter as opposed to deciding it didn't. Shameful indeed. So I decided to...you know...write it back on, I guess? Whatever. The point is that during that time I discovered that System of a Down's Mesmerize/Hypnotize double album--an album I never really bothered to check out since it came out when I was all DIY holier than thou--was actually the best thing they had ever done...and it wasn't even close. Well, actually maybe it was kinda close but only because the two albums had a lot of...I don't want to say "filler" because they're good, listenable songs; but songs that don't measure up at all when compared to brilliant tracks like "Revenga", "Violent Pornography", "Question!", "Sad Statue", "Lost In Hollywood", "Attack", "Dreaming", "Hypnotize", "Lonely Day", "Soldierside"...or this song. The first time I heard the haunting bridge of this song my jaw literally dropped and I had to listen to it like 10 more times in a row. The chilling relevance of Serj Tankian crooning "where do you expect us to go when the bombs fall?" fell on my chest like a cinder block and left me gasping for air under its emotional weight. Accompanied by a raucous, vintage SOAD verse and a characteristically (for this double album) epic chorus, this is perhaps the most shining example on either disc of guitarist Daron Malakian's growth as a songwriter...and that's saying a lot.

49. Ben Folds - Zak and Sara

No one does quirky piano pop like Mr. Folds himself and you'd be hard pressed to find as exhilarating a romp in his catalog as this. From the second that exhuberant piano line kicks off the song, you can't help but wear a big, shit-eating grin. As he muses about "Sara-spelled-without-an-H...getting bored on a Peavey amp in 1984" and how "Zak-without-a-C tried out some new guitars, playing Sara-with-no-H's favorite songs" you feel yourself start to wish that you were there in this mythical guitar shop with Zak and Sara. The whole song just feels like a "becoming good friends/falling in love" montage from a romantic comedy and drips with heartfelt nostalgia--complete with la-la-la's and ooo-ooo-ooo's. Ben Folds is a pop music messiah.

48. The Hold Steady - Chips Ahoy!

Much the same as Against Me!'s "As the Eternal Cowboy" album, there's a part of me that feels like The Hold Steady's "Boys and Girls In America" could have been better served to have this song open the album. As great as "Stuck Between Stations" is as an opener, this song really has a lot more of a "kick things off" feel to it, especially as the keyboard swings the track from warm-up mode to first gear. One fantastic opening line ("She put $900 on the fifth horse in the sixth race...I think his name was Chips Ahoy") kicks it into second gear just as fast. Before you know it the song is at full speed ahead with a joyous, anthemic chorus that becomes somewhat of a theme with this album. Craig Finn croons "how am I supposed to know that you're high if you won't let me touch you...how am I supposed to know you're high if you won't even dance" over an exuberant chorus of whoa-oh-oh's that you just can't help singing along to. Bar rock has never been this much fun.

47. Neil Perry - Fading Away Like the Rest of Them

Ah, so we come to the first of many very esoteric selections on my little countdown. HEY, STOP SKIPPING AHEAD. Neil Perry is a very unheralded, largely unknown screamo band (that's REAL screamo...as in Funeral Diner, Circle Takes the Square, City of Caterpillar...bands you've probably never heard of...NOT My Chemical Romance or Hawthorne Heights or whatever new shit band is doing that style on MTV6 now) whose lifespan was a mere five years (1998-2002) and who produced a great number of songs during that time--40 in total, all of which fit on one disc of their discography entitled "Lineage Situation", about seven of which are actually really good...at least in my opinion. This is the best of those seven without question. Definitely the least disjointed and complex of the first seven songs on "Lineage Situation", "Fading Away Like the Rest of Them" relies less on piercing screams than any of the others and more on haunting melodies and a straight-forward time signature. It also has some of the most breathtaking drum work you'll ever hear and one of the most epic breakdowns as well. Seriously, go download this song and tell me you don't get goosebumps when that spellbinding drum solo comes crashing into the soaring vocal harmonies of "the same wayyyyy."

46. The Assistant - Training Wheels or No Hands

Another highly esoteric track out of the screamo genre by a band with an equally short lifespan (1999-2003). This one, however, is far less accessible than the Neil Perry entry. It relies a lot more on disjointed, complex timing but don't let that fool you because there is a healthy dose of melody here as well, including a beautiful recurring keyboard melody (played in piano mode, so it's not cheesy or anything). But really the star of the show any time you're listening to The Assistant is drummer Ross Olchvary, one of the great technical drummers that no one has ever heard of. What makes him such a great technical drummer (and a great drummer in general) is his tremendous feel for tempo, his impeccable, innate, subconscious internal metronome...a crucial and rare trait in a drummer, especially nowadays. You'll see what I mean when the pretty, melodic opening minutes of the song run head-first into...well...you'll see...

45. A Perfect Circle - 3 Libras

Now we jump from two largely unknown bands back into the mainstream full force with a hit single from A Perfect Circle. OK, maybe it's not a hit single but it's certainly one of the most beautiful songs that's ever made its way onto the radio waves. To me this song sounds like a sailboat sailing off into the sunset. I can recall listening to this song in my headphones on the metrorail ride home from high school on friday afternoons and how perfectly it captured the peaceful joy I felt looking forward to the weekend--especially long weekends. I also feel a special affection for this song because it's about unrequited love--"difficult not to feel a little bit disappointed and passed over when I've looked right through to see you naked but oblivious and you don't see me" Maynard James Keenan sings in his flawless trademark croon--which is a subject very close to my heart.

44. At the Drive-In - One Armed Scissor

I have to admit that when I first heard this band they weren't really my cup of tea. The guitars were kind of weird and not that heavy (this is when I was all into Korn and Limp Bizkit and all that bullshit). But the more chances I gave it, the more I loved the intricate guitar work and the irrepressible urgency of this band, no better packaged in any song than this one, complete with an ultra-catchy chorus. I can recall seeing a video of the band performing this song on the Conan O'Brien Show some time after they had broken up and wanting to kill myself for never having seen them live. I guess I still have a chance to see The Mars Volta but that could never possibly be the same.

43. Thrice - The Earth Will Shake

In the liner notes of Thrice's 2005 magnum opus "Vheissu", singer Dustin Kensrue cites a CD of old chain gang songs as the main influence for this song (although I think Isis might have had something to do with it as well...specifically the chorus). You can really hear that bluesy influence shine through in this song, especially vocally. Obviously it's most evident in the "call-and-response" style passages in the intro and bridge of the song but you can hear it in Dustin's voice through the whole song. The roaring Isis-esque 7/4 time chorus is so achingly powerful you almost forget that Kensrue is screaming in your ears: "heartbroken we found (a gleam of hope) harken to the sound (a whistle blows) heaven sent reply (however small) evidence of life (beyond these walls) born and bred (in this machine) wardens dread (to see us dream) we hold tight (to legends of) real life (the way it was before)."

42. Eminem - Guilty Conscience

No, it's not "My Name Is." No it's not the song that put Eminem on the map. It is, however, a much better song, conceptually as well as lyrically. It's also, in my opinion, the song that put Eminem over the top. "My Name Is" is, in spite of its lyrics, a very poppy song, much like "The Real Slim Shady"...and it's songs like this that kept Eminem on MTV and radio waves. However this song better established his credibility as a real MC with some scathing lyrics and a guest appearance by Dr. Dre. The proverbial "angel and devil on the shoulders" storyline of this song is compelling and creative...and who doesn't love the surprise ending that MTV had to censor due to its obvious negative moral turpitude.

41. Andre 3000 - Hey Ya!

This song was a phenomenon unlike anything we've seen this decade, even if it wore out its welcome before long. No one song of the 2000s became such a sensation so immediately. For what seems, in retrospect, like a week tops, this song was absolutely EVERYWHERE. And why shouldn't it be? It's also probably one of the 10 catchiest songs of this decade as well...and certainly one of the most quotable (go ahead and try to find someone who actually goes out of their house and can't correctly answer the question "What's cooler than being cool?"). Not only is it catchy but it's brilliantly written and overwhelmingly fun and accessible...a combination Outkast have shown time and again they have a very unique talent for.

tune in tomorrow for 40-31

Radiohead...A Prelude...

2009-03-06T02:55:00.000-05:00

In the next couple days I'll probably cook up a nice, LONG, pontificating entry about the unparalleled genius of Radiohead but right now it's 3am so for now I'll leave you with these:

Radiohead Mix (1995-2000)

1. Optimistic
2. Just (You Do It to Yourself)
3. Everything In Its Right Place
4. Lucky
5. Bullet Proof...I Wish I Was
6. Exit Music (For a Film)
7. How to Disappear Completely
8. Planet Telex
9. The Bends
10. High and Dry
11. No Surprises
12. The Tourist
13. Idioteque
14. Morning Bell
15. Paranoid Android
16. The National Anthem
17. Street Spirit (Fade Out)

Radiohead Mix (2001-2008)

1. Bodysnatchers
2. Myxomatosis (Judge, Jury, & Executioner)
3. You and Whose Army?
4. Nude
5. Knives Out
6. There There (The Boney King of Nowhere)
7. Pulk-Pull Revolving Doors
8. 15 Steps
9. 2 + 2 = 5 (The Lukewarm)
10. Where I End & You Begin (The Sky Is Falling In)
11. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
12. House of Cards
13. Pyramid Song
14. Like Spinning Plates
15. We Suck Young Blood (Your Time Is Up)
16. All I Need
17. Dollars & Cents
18. Videotape

and, well, what the hell, since I made all these tonight...

Danielle 1 (a.k.a. "homework 2"...this one is easier...)

1. My Bloody Valentine - Only Shallow
2. Isis - Wrists of Kings
3. Jedi Mind Tricks - I Against I
4. Baroness - Cockroach En Fleur
5. Baroness - Wanderlust
6. Russian Circles - Death Rides a Horse
7. Jesu - Old Year
8. Down - Ghosts Along the Mississippi
9. Floor - Tales of Lolita
10. Mastodon - The Wolf Is Loose
11. Torche - Charge of the Brown Recluse
12. Kayo Dot - A Pitcher of Summer
13. From Autumn to Ashes - Chloroform Perfume
14. Thursday - How Long Is the Night?
15. Gregor Samsa - Makeshift Shelters
16. Grails - Burden of Hope
17. Lightning Bolt - Forcefield

Danielle 2 (a.k.a. "homework 3"...even easier...)

1. Of Montreal - Good Morning, Mr. Edminton
2. Bright Eyes - Bowl of Oranges
3. Piebald - Long Nights
4. The Plastic Mastery - Before the Fall
5. Cursive - The Recluse
6. Modest Mouse - Teeth Like God's Shoeshine
7. Pygmy - Nous Vehement Sans D'hiver (sp?)
8. Dredg - Bug Eyes
9. Sunny Day Real Estate - Seven
10. Jawbreaker - Jet Black
11. Mineral - Parking Lot
12. Elliott Smith - Between the Bars
13. Rio de la Muerte - I Just Want to Breathe
14. Rumbleseat - Walk Through the Darkness
15. Lucero - What Else Would You Have Me Be?
16. Hot Water Music - Translocation
17. Down Home Southernaires - Seashell
18. The Hold Steady - Chips Ahoy!
19. Heavens - Another Night
20. Denali - Lose Me

Reinier I

1. Bruce Springsteen - Thunder Road
2. The Hold Steady - Chips Ahoy!
3. Jawbreaker - Jet Black
4. Against Me! - Problems
5. Dillinger Four - A Jingle For the Product
6. Cursive - The Recluse
7. The Arcade Fire - Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
8. Modest Mouse - Teeth Like God's Shoeshine
9. Brad Mehldau - Paranoid Android (Radiohead cover)
10. Sarah McLachlan - Climbing Up the Walls (Radiohead cover)
11. Bright Eyes - If the Brakeman Turns My Way
12. The Decemberists - The Infanta
13. Jimi Hendrix - Red House (Live @ Woodstock)
14. Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
15. Jedi Mind Tricks - I Against I
16. M.C. Chris - Fett's Vette
17. Thrice - For Miles

Reinier II

1. Mono - Halcyon (Beautiful Days)
2. Kayo Dot - Marathon
3. Gregor Samsa - Makeshift Shelters
4. Russian Circles - Death Rides a Horse
5. Isis - Wrists of Kings
6. Floor - Ein (Below and Beyond)
7. Baroness - Cockroach En Fleur
8. Baroness - Wanderlust
9. Tool - Right In Two
10. System of a Down - Tentative
11. A Perfect Circle - The Package
12. Thrice - Broken Lungs

Reinier III

1. Vaster Than Empires - (destroy/rebuild/repeat)
2. Vaster Than Empires - Foundation
3. Cult of Luna - Eternal Kingdom
4. The Assistant - Training Wheels or No Hands
5. Limp Wrist - Limp Wrist v. Dr. Laura
6. Shai Hulud - Scornful of the Motives and Virtues of Others
7. Between the Buried and Me - Mordecai
8. Deathspell Omega - Bread of Bitterness
9. Meshuggah - Combustion
10. Kylesa - The Scarab
11. Coalesce - Cowards.com
12. Mastodon - March of the Fire Ants
13. Thrice - Hold Fast Hope
14. Mare - They Sent You
15. Back When - We Giveth and We Taketh
16. Mouth of the Architect - Hate and Heartache

Against Me!

1. Pints of Guinness Make You Strong (R.A.R.)
2. Cliche Guevarra
3. Joy
4. Holy Shit!
5. What We Worked For
6. Tonight We're Gonna Give It 35%
7. T.S.R. (This Shit Rules)
8. Those Anarcho Punx Are Mysterious (R.A.R.)
9. Reinventing Axl Rose (R.A.R.)
10. Walking Is Still Honest (Crime)
11. Pretty Girls (The Mover)
12. I Still Love You Julie (Holding On For a Scam) (Crime)
13. The Disco Before the Breakdown
14. How Low
15. Jordan's First Choice (s/t)
16. Sink, Florida, Sink
17. Problems
18. Violence
19. Impact
20. Mutiny On the Electronic Bay
21. Turn Those Clapping Hands Into Angry Balled Fists
22. Burn
23. Baby, I'm an Anarchist!
24. Beginning In an Ending
25. We Laugh at Danger (and Break All the Rules
26. 8 Full Hours of Sleep

11.04.08

1. Bill Hicks - The Elephant Is Dead (Bush)
2. Thrice - Image of the Invisible
3. Darkest Hour - The Sadist Nation
4. Bob Marley & the Wailers - Redemption Song
5. Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone
6. Bright Eyes - From a Balance Beam
7. Bruce Springsteen - The Ghost of Tom Joad
8. John Lennon - Imagine
9. The Beatles - Revolution
10. Foo Fighters - My Hero
11. Bouncing Souls - Letter From Iraq
12. Propagandhi - Today's Empires, Tomorrow's Ashes
13. Green Day - American Idiot (yeah, whatever, shut up, this song rules)
14. Jawbreaker - Save Your Generation
15. Jimmy Eat World - Futures
16. Against Me - Impact
17. Leftover Crack - Super Tuesday
18. Refused - Protest Song '68
19. Rage Against the Machine - Take the Power Back
20. System of a Down - Sad Statue

Jimi Hendrix

1. Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
2. Purple Haze (Live @ Woodstock)
3. Bold as Love
4. May This Be Love?
5. Are You Experienced?
6. The Wind Cries Mary (Live @ Monterey)
7. Hey Joe (Live @ Monterey)
8. Like a Rolling Stone (Live @ Monterey)
9. All Along the Watchtower
10. Killing Floor (Live @ Monterey)
11. Foxy Lady (Live @ Woodstock)
12. Fire (Live @ Woodstock)
13. Manic Depression
14. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Live In Stockholm)
15. Woodstock Improvisation (Live @ Woodstock)
16. Red House (Live @ Woodstock)
17. Star Spangled Banner (Live @ Woodstock)

and while we're at it, why not some that I didn't make tonight...

Alkaline Trio

1. Private Eye
2. We've Had Enough
3. This Is Getting Over You
4. This Could Be Love
5. Queen of Pain
6. Cringe
7. My Friend Peter
8. Armageddon
9. One Hundred Stories
10. San Fransisco
11. '97
12. Maybe I'll Catch Fire
13. Message From Kathlene
14. Stupid Kid
15. Goodbye Forever
16. All On Black
17. I Lied My Face Off
18. Clavicle
19. My Little Needle
20. Southern Rock
21. Bleeder
22. Radio

The Beatles

1. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
2. Eleanor Rigby
3. Because
4. Strawberry Fields Forever
5. Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds
6. Across the Universe
7. Something
8. Happiness Is a Warm Gun
9. Dear Prudence
10. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
11. And Your Bird Can Sing
12. Blackbird
13. You've Got to Hide Your Love Away
14. Hold Me Tight
15. When I'm Sixty-Four
16. Penny Lane
17. Here, There, and Everywhere
18. Girl
19. All My Loving
20. I've Just Seen a Face
21. With a Little Help From My Friends
22. In My Life
23. Let It Be
24. Golden Slumbers
25. Carry That Weight
26. The End
27. All You Need Is Love

Foo Fighters

1. In Your Honor
2. All My Life
3. Big Me
4. My Hero (Skin and Bones)
5. Next Year
6. I'll Stick Around
7. Monkey Wrench
8. Breakout
9. The Pretender
10. Walking After You (Skin and Bones)
11. Hey, Johnny Park!
12. Best of You
13. Up In Arms
14. Alone + Easy Target
15. Times Like These
16. No Way Back
17. Learn to Fly
18. February Stars (Skin and Bones)
19. Everlong (Skin and Bones)

Godspeed You! Black Emperor

1. Lift Yr Skinny Fists, Like Antennas to Heaven (from "Storm")
2. She Dreamt She Was A Bulldozer, She Dreamt She Was Alone In An Empty Field (from "Antennas to Heaven")
3. The Dead Flag Blues (Intro) (from "The Dead Flag Blues")
4. Steve Reich (Live VPRO Radio Session)
5. Motherfucker=Redeemer (Part Two)
6. World Police and Friendly Fire (from "Static")
7. 09-15-00 (Part Two)
8. Dead Methany (from "Providence")
9. Moya

Metallica

1. The Ecstacy of Gold (S&M)
2. The Call of Ktulu (S&M)
3. Master of Puppets
4. Blackened
5. Seek and Destroy
6. Ride the Lightning
7. The Unforgiven
8. Turn the Page
9. Fade to Black
10. Nothing Else Matters
11. One
12. Battery

Side One, Track Ones

1. Converge - Concubine
2. Converge - Fault and Fracture
3. Crestfallen - Nine to Five R.S.V.P.
4. Darkest Hour - The Sadist Nation
5. Baroness - Rays On Pinion
6. Deftones - My Own Summer (Shove It)
7. Every Time I Die - Emergency Broadcast Syndrome
8. Modern Life Is War - The Outsider (a.k.a. Hell Is For Heroes, Pt. 1)
9. Lucero - What Else Would You Have Me Be?
10. Bruce Springsteen - Thunder Road
11. Jimmy Eat World - Table For Glasses
12. The Ergs! - First Song, Side One
13. The Ergs! - A Very Pretty Song For a Very Special Young Lady (Part 2)
14. Radiohead - Planet Telex
15. Give Up the Ghost - (It's Sometimes Like It Never Started)
16. Give Up the Ghost - Love American
17. Against All Authority - All Fall Down
18. Propagandhi - Mate Ka Moris Ukun Rasik An
19. Thrice - Image of the Invisible
20. At the Drive-In - Arcarsenal
21. City of Caterpillar - ...And You're Wondering How a Top Floor Could Replace Heaven

System of a Down

1. Intro (Soldierside)
2. Prison Song
3. Know
4. Question!
5. Spiders
6. Mind
7. Toxicity
8. Violent Pornography
9. Deer Dance (demo)
10. Suite-Pee
11. Science
12. Attack
13. Revenga
14. Chop Suey!
15. War
16. Forest
17. Tentative
18. Aerials
19. Sad Statue
20. Hypnotize
21. Lost In Hollywood
22. Lonely Day
23. Soldierside

Tomas Kalnoky

1. Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution - Here's to Life
2. Catch 22 - Sick and Sad
3. Catch 22 - Walking Away
4. Streetlight Manifesto - Point/Counterpoint
5. Catch 22 - Keasbey Nights
6. Streetlight Manifesto - That'll Be the Day
7. Catch 22 - Giving Up, Giving In
8. Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution - Dear Sergio
9. Streetlight Manifesto - A Better Place, a Better Time
10. Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution - It's a Wonderful Life
11. Streetlight Manifesto - A Moment of Silence
12. Catch 22 - Kristina, She Don't Know I Exist
13. Streetlight Manifesto - Everything Went Numb
14. Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution - They Provide the Paint For the Picture Perfect Masterpiece That You Will Paint On the Insides of Your Eyelids
15. Streetlight Manifesto - Failing, Flailing
16. Streetlight Manifesto - The Big Sleep
17. Catch 22 - 1234, 1234
18. Streetlight Manifesto - Here's to Life

Bright Eyes (another band I'll probably blog about at some point)

1. Soul Singer In the Session band
2. Road to Joy
3. The Difference In the Shades
4. Arienette
5. Nothing Gets Crossed Out
6. The Calendar Hung Itself
7. First Day of My Life
8. Make a Plan to Love Me
9. Bowl of Oranges
10. Something Vague
11. Contrast and Compare
12. Lua
13. If the Brakeman Turns My Way
14. Haligh, Haligh, a Lie, Haligh
15. If Winter Ends
16. Method Acting
17. Touch
18. Clairaudients (Kill or Be Killed)
19. From a Balance Beam

TOOL (super-fucking-hardcore-epic ditto for this band)

1. The Grudge
2. Jambi
3. Disposition
4. Eulogy
5. Vicarious
6. Ænema
7. Intolerance
8. H.
9. Prison Sex
10. Swamp Song
11. Forty Six & 2
12. Right In Two

wow...what is that...mmmmm...twenty mixes...wow...I need to seriously go to bed...

oh and if anybody wants a copy of ANY of these, I'll absolutely make you one (I mean literally if you want a copy of every single one of these I'll do it for you...it would be nice if you contributed some blank CDs if that's the case and it might depend how much I like you but I'll probably do it)

25 Most Important Albums of My Life

2009-02-28T00:34:00.000-05:00

inspired by the facebook trend thing but I spruced mine up a bit and turned it into a blog entry...I put these in as much chronological order as I possibly could...

1. Nirvana - Nevermind (cliche, I know, but it's the first real rock record I ever liked/owned)
2. The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (my mom would play this all the time when I was a little kid and I fell in love with it at an early age...to this day it's one of my top 5 records of all time)
3. Limp Bizkit - Significant Other (yes, I'm ashamed of this, but I can't deny that this record marks a very definitive beginning to me being truly passionate about music...considering I heard it when I was starting freshman year of high school...)
4. Slipknot - Slipknot (I had never heard anything that heavy before...blew my mind)
5. Deftones - White Pony (part 1 of 3: The Always-Resonant Soundtrack to Summer 2000)
6. Stone Temple Pilots - Purple (part 2 of 3: The Always-Resonant Soundtrack to Summer 2000)
7. Stone Temple Pilots - No. 4 (part 3 of 3: The Always-Resonant Soundtrack to Summer 2000)
8. Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine (meet the band that introduced me to politics)
9. Metallica - ...And Justice for All (meet the band that introduced me to THRASH)
10. Tool - Ænima (I had this album for a while and never really got past the first song--or at least paid attention. Then one day I decided to lay down on my bed and listen to it in my headphones. By the time "Third Eye" was through, my life had been changed...they've been one of my top 5 favorite bands ever since)
11. Mudvayne - L.D. 50 (I don't care what anyone says this album is pretty decent...for nu metal, it's brilliant. Not only did this band introduce me to Terence McKenna but they did a lot to pique my interest in the "deeper" more melodic, unique, interesting side of not just heavy music but eventually all music)
12. Weezer - Pinkerton (I never related to an album the way I related to this one my first couple years of high school)
13. Foo Fighters - The Colour and the Shape (Popping this on can STILL immediately rocket me back in time to high school)
14. Poison the Well - The Opposite of December (this album is how I got into hardcore)
15. Converge - Jane Doe (this album completely obliterated my concept of what "music" is...the first time I listened to it I could only think: "Am I supposed to feel like this right now?")
16. The Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity (see above)
17. Jimmy Eat World - Clarity (for a while, I hated Jimmy Eat World...well what do you want, all I knew of them was the music video for "The Middle" on MTV2. Then my friend Matt demanded that I buy this album and refused to burn it for me because the songs bleed together--which I'm glad he did. MAN did this album blow me away...the most beautiful, intricate, twinkly, breathtaking journey through pop music I've ever heard. It's pretty much been my soundtrack to love and heartbreak ever since...sure there are other albums but none hold up to this opus. I'm so, so, SO happy I own it on vinyl. I'm gonna listen to this right now actually.)
18. Bright Eyes - Lifted -or- The Story Is In the Soil, Keep Your Ears to the Ground (another one Matt introduced me to...when I asked him once what Bright Eyes album was his favorite--as research to see which one I would buy--he said it "would be like choosing his favorite limb." Once I became immersed in the music of Conor Oberst, I completely understood that statement. This album was where that started. It was also a step in the right direction as far as less accessible, more off-tune vocals by people that can't necessarily sing particularly well...a big, huge paradigm that I'm glad I broke.)
19. Against Me! - Reinventing Axl Rose (one more to attribute to Matt--if he or anyone else who KNOW who they are are reading this...shut up. Where Bright Eyes bent the barrier between me and more "punk" sounding vocals,--punk in spirit, in the sense that they can't necessarily sing well, not literally "punk sounding"--Against Me! broke it. I think the first time I actually heard it was at our friend's house while she was making us breakfast and I didn't particularly care for it. But after that he burned me a copy and I gave it a few more chances and eventually my love for it grew and grew to a wonderful climax with the now-legendary Against Me! show that Matt booked and which was mentioned in a few earlier posts.)
20. Catch 22 - Keasbey Nights (I hated ska before I heard this album. Thank you OT.)
21. Blind Guardian - Nightfall In Middle-Earth (sooooo many college memories come rushing back when I listen to this album. It really blew me away when I first heard it because I was amazed that cheesy power metal could be SO well done and so...well...powerful. When I showed it to friends of mine and they laughed I knew I had busted through another paradigm :D)
22. Yaphet Kotto/This Machine Kills/Envy split CD (this one is incredibly specific. I first heard this album on Valentine's Day of 2004 and as I was hearing it for the first time so too was my good friend Rudo. Eventually when the two of us came to the Envy portion of the split, both our lives were changed forever. I can't speak for him but I know personally I have NEVER, EVER been that deeply affected by a piece of music on first listen in my LIFE. It was otherworldly, really. We could hardly believe that human beings had made these songs. And when we heard the collaboration song that closed out the album...forget about it. We knew we'd never be the same.)
23. Bestial Warlust - Vengeance War 'Til Death (back to Rudo: the story of me getting into this album is that Rudo decided he wanted to do an "experiment" on me. He sent me the last song on this record, "At the Graveyard of God" and told me to listen to it and see if I liked it. I did, so he sent me the rest of the album which I also liked. This was the beginning of the difficult process of me getting into black metal and while I don't listen to most black metal bands I used to like anymore, there certainly was an important and well-worth-documenting period of time while I was in college where I listened to a great deal of black metal.)
24. Kayo Dot - Choirs of the Eye (this album did kind of the same thing that Jane Doe and Calculating Infinity did for me but in an even bigger way--although less impactful since it was later on in my life. This unclassifiable record flies in the face of everything you think you know about music and everything you think music is.)
25. Thrice - Vheissu (I never used to think very much of Thrice until I heard this album in a friend's car one day and deemed it worth checking out--amid accusations of devolving into "Thrisis"--Thrice meets Isis. Personally I get the Isis comparisons but this album is sooo beyond that. It touched me in a way that no album has in a very long time, which, after hearing so much and evolving in my tastes so much in the last 10 years, is not so easy anymore.)

Top 10 Encores I've Ever Seen

2009-02-20T21:37:00.000-05:00

10. Dredg – Nothing particularly special about this one other than the fact that they closed with the combination of “Yatahaze”/“90 Hour Sleep” which couldn’t have possibly been a more perfect way to close the show.

9. Andrew W.K. – This whole set was one big fucking party and I’ve never felt so much positive energy at any show I’ve ever been to, easily the most joyful set I’ve ever seen and the most inspirational with some amazing words from Mr. W.K. Just seeing him close with “Party Hard” and seeing the most amazing circle pit open up would have been enough but this guy was somehow able to get fans rushed onto the stage at fucking Warped Tour! What an amazing site, he even had one kid riding around on his shoulders. What a guy.

8. Eric Clapton – I got to see “Layla” live. That’s all I have to say about that.

7. Radiohead – Radiohead scores major points for having TWO encores. Not only that but after ending their first set with “Videotape” (wow.) they opened their first encore with fucking “Optimistic” and then went straight into “Just (You Do It To Yourself)”…fucking AMAAAZING. Then, after a beautiful version of “Faust Arp” with just Thom and Jonny on acoustic guitar sitting across from each other on two stools, they played “Exit Music (For a Film).” Oh my god, you guys. I remember hearing my boy Robby say “this is about to get really fucking good” right before the epic explosion at the end of the song. It really did. If that wasn’t enough they closed out the first encore with Thom playing a second drum set on “Bangers and Mash” and then came back out with “House of Cards.” Then the close the whole deal, they did something I only used to be able to imagine I would see. Ended with “Street Spirit (Fade Out).” Wow. WOW.

6. Bright Eyes – There’s something poignant about ending the set, coming back for an encore and going right into “A Song To Pass the Time.” Really a perfect way to open the encore and then it went straight into a really fun, rockin Tom Petty cover that I really wish I knew the name of. The very last song was Conor Oberst all by himself in one spotlight singing an adorable acoustic ballad which he introduced as “a love song.” I can’t be certain but I want to say the song he played was “First Day of My Life” but I don’t remember the song especially well and it was way before that double album even came out.

5. Converge – They ended their set with fucking "Jane Doe." I fucking cried.

4. The Hold Steady – This one is probably the best closing/encore song choice ever for me. For starters they closed their original set with “Southtown Girls” which would have been a perfect closer in its own right. But then they came back and opened their encore with “First Night”…absolutely spellbinding. Then to top it all off they closed the whole deal with a wonderfully joyful rendition of “Killer Parties” in which a whole mess of people (myself included) joined them on stage. I actually danced with the keyboard player.

3. Reggie and the Full Effect – This show would probably rank 3rd on my list of most fun shows I’ve ever been to (which is really high because the only ones ahead of them are Andrew W.K.’s set at Warped Tour and GWAR). So…they played their last song and pretended they were done or whatever, blah blah blah yeah right. Then “Reggie” comes out in this British Parliament getup and does this really bouncy techno-ish song with really cute vocals/lyrics. Then they did another pretty anthemic song if I remember correctly...actually it might have been vice versa. I think it was. Anyway, when he finishes, Reggie says "Common Denominator is up next."

Oh...shit...

Without warning, a man with an incredibly distorted bass, black cape, and a fucking rubber skull mask comes on stage playing this DIRTY bassline. After a few minutes of this intro, the rest of the band emerged...and then...KLAUS (Reggie...with death metal make-up). He had this WEIRD pointy had and a wand of some sort and a vile of blood that he drank and smeared all over the skull guy's...skull. They did Dwarf Invasion and it was nuts. Everyone screamed "DWARF INVASION!" and shit. Good god what an amazing encore.

2. Against Me! – (taken from the excerpt posted below): I had been…imagining them closing with "We Laugh at Danger (and Break All the Rules)" [for months]...so Against Me! is wrapping up their amazing set and they say "this is our last song" and after a few moments of anticipation i flip my lid as Tom announces the final song as:

"WE LAUGH AT DANGER (AND BREAK ALL THE FUCKING RULES)"

as soon as the singing part kicked in, myself and a few others (Matt included) launched ourselves onto the stage and sang along. But then when the chorus hit...WHAM! The stage was fucking RUSHED. It was a sight to see. Kids were on the stage dancing with each other, singing to each other and just having so much fun. We even got the whole crowd clapping along to the little breakdown chorus and then we all let out the loudest WOOOOOO! we could muster as we brought the song to its crashing close. We all thought it was over then. Even as shouts of "BABY, I'M AN ANARCHIST" peppered the venue, people were beginning to file out...when suddenly...the motherfuckers BUSTED RIGHT INTO FUCKING "BABY, I'M AN ANARCHIST!!!!" What an AMAZINGLY PERFECT moment that was. Everyone was just on stage singing along in a circle around the band and it was so beautiful that it made me want to cry. What an ending to an amazing show.

1. Weezer – I feel so very privileged to have been able to see the once-mighty Weezer JUST before (or maybe slightly after) the beginning of their decline. It was just before the Green Album was coming out so, other than a small 4-5 song stretch of songs from that (including "The Christmas Song" which I maintain to this day should have been on the Green Album and is better than any song that was on it), every song they played was from Blue Album or Pinkerton. Truly an amazing show I’ll never forget but the encore cemented it in my mind forever. While they stood off stage with the crowd still begging them to come back, a blue light came up from the darkness. After a few seconds the band slow walk back on stage…and begin playing "Only In Dreams." Witnessing this might rank somewhere in the top 25 experiences of my entire life…they even extended the build-up/solo portion in the middle of the song to this incredible explosion that was just perfect. Then to cap it all off they closed with "Surf Wax America." Incredible.

honorable mention: Mastodon – they closed their set at The Fest 2 with two Ramones songs…that was rad.

Just Noise

2009-02-06T17:08:00.000-05:00

I was just having an argument with a friend of mine (one that's fairly common between us) about "screamy" music or "hardcore" music...the kind of stuff that's not very accessible at all and most people would say is "just a bunch of noise." My argument to her was that I feel like there are certain kinds of music or maybe just certain bands that you might need to...well...try to like. They just require some effort from you because they exist so far outside of paradigms most people have about music that the first time they hear such sounds and such an absence of the normal ingrained structure and rhythm of mainstream music that it's just kind of a shock to your system and your immediate response is to reject it. I can't tell you how many bands in my iTunes playlist right now are bands that I didn't really like or wasn't sure if I liked the first time I heard them. Wait, actually I probably could do that. Anyway, my point I made to her is that I feel like people do themselves a disservice by spurning music like this without really giving it some effort because some of these bands (SOME) are really brilliant musicians and songwriters and are truly doing something unique and interesting with their music rather than what most people are doing with it. I also feel like when you're able to put that kind of effort into liking a band even if at first they don't necessarily rub you the right way that it can be rewarding in a way that no music can be which is immediately and innately pleasing to the ear. If I hadn't given certain bands 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 17th chances then I would never have gotten into:

Against Me!, Alkaline Trio, American Nightmare, ANY Black Metal (a true case study in what i'm talking about), At the Drive-In, The Beach Boys (you'll see how in a lot of ways this whole argument kind of works in reverse for me), Blink 182, ANY Ska (thank you Catch 22), Coalesce, Converge, Dillinger Escape Plan, Foo Fighters, Gorillaz, Gnarls Barkley, Incubus, Jimmy Eat World (though I guess if I heard Clarity first instead of The Middle it would have been different), John Mayer, King Crimson, Lightning Bolt, ANY hip hop (thank you Eminem and Outkast), New Found Glory (THAT'S RIGHT), ANY Death Metal (thank you Opeth), A Perfect Circle, Poison the Well, Radiohead (that's right...my favorite band in the entire world and I didn't like them the first time I heard them...didn't like Thom's voice...true story), Shai Hulud, Smashing Pumpkins, Sublime, Weezer

So in conclusion, I'm making a mix CD for my friend in the spirit of this argument that's titled "Just Noise (a.k.a. Homework)" and this is the tracklist:

1. Shai Hulud - Scornful of the Motives and Virtues of Others
2. Coalesce - What Happens On the Road Always Comes Home
3. Dillinger Escape Plan - 43% Burnt
4. City of Caterpillar - ...And You're Wondering How a Top Floor Could Replace Heaven
5. Funeral Diner - End On 6
6. Circle Takes the Square - In the Nervous Light of Sunday
7. Ampere - Woodlawn
8. Neil Perry - Nine Minutes of Non-Fiction
9. Off Minor - The Transient
10. The Assistant - Training Wheels or No Hands
11. Poison the Well - Slice Paper Wrists
12. Cave In - Juggernaut
13. Between the Buried and Me - Mordecai
14. Mare - They Sent You
15. Botch - To Our Friends In the Great White North
16. Converge - Heaven In Her Arms

Top 10 Records of 2008

2009-02-05T15:15:00.000-05:00

This is something I've done every year for the last five years and only now has it found a proper venue (rather than simply being relegated to my livejournal). You'll find out soon enough--provided you read this blog--that I am sort of in love with making lists...in fact come to think of it I bet I'll be posting a shit ton of track lists for mix tapes/CDs I make in this blog...anyway listed below is my top 10 for 2009 and if you're interested at all here are links to top 10 lists from previous years:

2004
2005
2006
2007

and now...2008...

1. Thrice - The Alchemy Index Vol. III & IV: Air and Earth
(I'd really like to give this consideration as a full album but the first disc came out last year...this one is way better though...the Earth disc is amazingly written and Broken Lungs and Daedalus are two of the most powerful songs this band has ever written...which is saying a lot, trust me)
2. Russian Circles - Station
(jesus the things this band can do without using any words...no other instrumental band is capable of what this one is and that's a hell of a compliment)
3. Sigur Rós - Með Suð í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust
(this band could just keep making records that sound like "( )" and everyone--myself included--would be happy...but for some reason they continue to do different things...when I first heard the romping acoustic intro to this album I was a little iffy but this band really has done it again)
4. Portishead - Third
(somewhere in between krautrock band Can, Bjork, and Radiohead lays this beautiful, catchy, grooving, and above all unique record...I'm now a Portishead fan)
5. Mouth of the Architect - Quietly
(not quite as great as The Ties That Blind, a little more simple, but this band continues to make epic, heavy music that is not contrived as so many slow, heavy, epic bands are nowadays...do yourself a favor and check this band out)
6. Kayo Dot - Blue Lambency Downward
(it's truly a testament to this band's talent that this album really isn't that good by their standards...Choirs of the Eye is so ridiculously brilliant that you can only call this a shadow of that record...even then it's absolutely brilliant and this band is still one of the creative forces in underground music today even after losing and gaining so many members)
7. Meshuggah - ObZen
(this band sure has come a long way from the slow, crushing, off-time brutality of it's earlier work...this is a masterpiece of timing, precision, and ingenuity in the realm of metal)
8. Cult of Luna - Eternal Kingdom
(pretty much the same deal as Mouth of the Architect except that I think this might be my favorite album this band has done yet)
9. Flight of the Conchords - Flight of the Conchords
(it may have lost a few slots because I didn't particularly care for what they did with some of the songs--although rerecording songs is always hard to do without overdoing them cuz you want to make them different but the songs from the show were perfect--but the fact remains that not only are FOTC hilarious but they write great songs too...like Tenacious D but funnier and with better tunes--and I fuckin LOVE the D)
10. Gregor Samsa - Rest
(the most underrated band doing instrumental music right now and maybe the best until GY!BE come out of hiding)

same time next year

I'm sure I'll probably post at least one more entry this week so stay tuned

OLD SCHOOL: Against Me! Live at The Alley in 2003

2009-02-04T23:42:00.000-05:00

this is a "review" I posted in my livejournal (one of my first ever lj posts) of the Against Me! show that will forever go down in Miami punk rock history...pretty much everyone I know or knew that was at that show will get a weird, glazed look in their eyes when you ask them about this show as they slip away and get lost in a better time (for DIY music in Miami and definitely for Against Me!)...it's not exactly a great review as I wrote it when I was 17 and a few things in it probably won't make sense to anyone but it's ridiculously exhuberant, substantially embarrassing, somewhat interesting, and kinda fun to read so I figured I'd share...

The first band to play was Stop This Fall, hardcore punk with Pointless singer Johnny. They're a good band, Bane-type stuff but with screaming. They have good energy and some good songs, but nothing to cream your pants over (or get hard nipples over...not to mention any names)

Next up was the band formerly known as Lockjaw in the Locust Valley, who had Andres from Eat Shit on vocals and were replacing that same band on the bill. GREAT grindy metalcore kind of like Adore Miridia but different. Lots of energy, very intense set.

I didn't stay in for Never In Red but they're basically Glassjaw with pop punk parts and mosh breakdowns. A decent band for what they do. They also put on a great show. But from what i heard their set on this night was lacking. Oh well.

After them was Modern Day '84, Grimm's punk band. I didn't expect much of these guys but they turned out to be quite awesome. Good street-ish punk/ska stuff. Grimm dedicated a song to the fordapunx message board which was quite cool. We all humped him after the set.

Then came Revolver. DAMN! These guys are doing something really unique and special in the scene right now. This is beautiful music people. It's like Melodic Rockish Indie Pop with an almost Lounge-like touch. WOW they were excellent. Much respect to Adolfo for putting together such a great band with great musicianship and songwriting skills. The lead guitarist had some gorgeous solos too...not ripping solos but nice, real, soulful solos a la Carlos Santana. GREAT SET!

After them, Pygmy played by MATT's decision, not because they absolutely refused to play. They were hardly being assholes about it so let the rumors end now. They only played for about 20 minutes but in that time they ripped it up in usual Pygmy fashion. Blah blah Pygmy is sheer brilliance, blah, they're the best band in the scene right now, blah, you've heard it all before...tonight was no different.

and then...

AGAINST FUCKING ME!!! Wow, from the opening lines of "Those Anarcho Punx are Mysterious" to the AMAZING anthemic choruses of "Walking is Still Honest" and "Pints of Guiness Make You Strong", these guys were just INCREDIBLE. They played some new songs--one from the new EP and two TOTALLY NEW unreleased songs...all of which were SUPERB--and they blasted through a lot of great songs off Reinventing Axl Rose. The most amazing part of the entire show--and maybe even all the shows i've been to--was the end of Against Me's set. I had been creaming myself for months imagining them closing with "We Laugh at Danger (and Break All the Rules)"...so Against Me is wrapping up their amazing set and they say "this is our last song" and after a few moments of anticipation i flip my lid as Tom announces the final song as:

"WE LAUGH AT DANGER (AND BREAK ALL THE FUCKING RULES)"

as soon as the singing part kicked in, myself and a few others (Matt included) launched ourselves onto the stage and sang along. But then when the chorus hit...WHAM! The stage was fucking RUSHED. It was a sight to see. Kids were on the stage dancing with each other, singing to each other and just having so much fun. We even got the whole crowd clapping along to the little breakdown chorus and then we all let out the loudest WOOOOOO! we could muster as we brought the song to its crashing close. We all thought it was over then. Even as shouts of "BABY, I'M AN ANARCHIST" peppered the venue, people were beginning to file out...when suddenly...the motherfuckers BUSTED RIGHT INTO FUCKING "BABY, I'M AN ANARCHIST!!!!" What an AMAZINGLY PERFECT moment that was. Everyone was just on stage singing along in a circle around the band and it was so beautiful that it made me want to cry. What an ending to an amazing show. Matt, Mambo, TONS of props for putting this shit together, we love you!

Introduction/Thrice

2009-02-03T00:47:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine told me that I "of all people should start a music blog." I thought she might be onto something, so here we are. I'm not exactly sure what this is going to be yet...probably mostly random record reviews, random musings and crap that's on my mind, maybe old concert reviews or whatever else I can dig up...the possibilities are endless really

I think it only fitting to make my first entry about Thrice, a band I've been obsessing over for a few months. "Obsessing? Isn't that a little bit of a strong word." On my last.fm page (this essentially pointless website that catalogues the statistics of what you've been listening to on whatever media player you have it synced up with...one feature of which is creating lists of the top songs and artists you've listened to in the last: 7 days, month, 3 months, 6 months, and year...really that's kind of the only feature...ANYWAY...) in the last 3 months, Thrice is the most played artist with 969 plays...second place is System of a Down with 88...

What really gets me about Thrice is their sense of dramatic structure in their songs. It's clear just from listening to their songs (specifically on the last three albums) that they know exactly where to go with a song and when. They have some of the most dizzying build-ups and most powerful, emotional, melodic releases. Some bands noticeably approach their songs in a very cinematic way and are able to take you on a journey where you can almost form the story in your mind as you listen to the song. The two best bands alive at doing this, in my opinion, are Tool and Thrice.

Vheissu has already cracked my all time top 25 but with their new opus "The Alchemy Index" they really pushed the envelope of what they're capable of. "The Alchemy Index" is a collection of four volumes, in EP form, each of which is "sonically and thematically" centered around one of the four natural elements (Volume I is Fire, Volume II is Water, Volume III is Air, and Volume IV is Earth). To top it all off, the 6th and final track of each volume comes in the form of a sonnet written from the point of view of the corresponding element (they are, however, songs, not readings, with the lyrics being in sonnet form...also the ending couplet of every sonnet is sung in the same melody and progression just in a different key each time). I hope you're beginning to see why I'm so obsessed with this band. Others probably think this is way too complicated and this band is a bunch of art fags. YOU all can kindly leave and never return. :)

One of the coolest things about "The Alchemy Index", to me, is the sonic aspect of the elements concept. The "Fire" disc is full of incendiary, raging, fiery material with plenty of corresponding imagery ("Firebreather", "Burn the Fleet", "The Flame Deluge", etc.). The "Water" is deep, dreamy, watery with songs like "Digital Sea" and "Open Water" (bookended by a dazzling sonnet about minding the power of the sea). "Air" is one of my favorite as it features an opening song ("Broken Lungs") essentially arguing in favor of 9/11 conspiracy theories ("are we fools and cowards all to let them cover up their lies? because we all watched the buildings fall...") with a breakdown so powerful that the first time I heard it my jaw literally dropped. It also features one of my favorite Thrice songs ever, "Daedalus" which is thematically wrapped around the story of Daedalus, Icarus's father, and is a strikingly beautiful metaphor for fatherhood ("oh son, please keep a steady wing, you know you're the only one that means anything to me...").

But nowhere does the elements concept shine through better sonically than on "Earth", the final volume. In a startling turn of Radiohead-like proportions, Volume IV of "The Alchemy Index" is a collection of old-timey, folky, beautifully earthy tunes with titles like "Moving Mountains" and "Digging My Own Grave" that sound like they're straight out of a John Steinbeck novel. There's even a brilliant, grooving cover of a Frodus song called "The Earth Isn't Humming." The last two songs really steal the show though. "Come All You Weary" is a powerful and uplifting song that reflects Dustin Kensrue's feeling about his music--in that he's said in interviews that he wants his music to help people and when he's in a dark place he likes to write about the light and lift himself out of the dark and hopefully be able to do that for other people too--with almost biblical imagery ("I've got a couple of loaves, sit down at my feet. Lend me your ears and we'll break bread and eat."). Then is the final sonnet of the opus, "Child of Dust", written from the point of view of the Earth. This has to be one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever heard. I remember the first time I really listened to the song while reading the lyrics, when I heard the line "And though I only ever gave you love/Like every child you've chosen to rebel" I almost cried. Seriously.

Don't even get me started on their older material, which I'm only recently (the last few weeks) starting to get obsessed with. Not so much "The Illusion of Safety", which is decent, but "The Artist In the Ambulance" has some seriously catchy, fun, heavy songs (the title track is one of the catchiest songs I've ever heard). But anyway, I should wrap this up. Do yourself a favor and go buy Vheissu...if nothing else you need to hear this album at least once. Tracks 5-8 are one of the most unbelievable four song stretches I've ever heard. Also make sure you read their lyrics too because some of them are just beautiful.