- The Strokes - Angles. This has been on my iPod for many months, but it's never failed to fail to make an impression. And that's weird since I like the songs when they pop up - I always grab the pod to see who's playing the song. The Strokes! But after the song's over, it slips my mind completely. There are a few that sound like Strokes songs I know: "Under Cover of Darkness" recalls "Is This It" and "Last Night", and "Taken For A Fool and "Gratsification" has a sweet "Boys Are Back In Town" vibe, which is what I expect from the Strokes. Some others are very disco or 80s new wave, but still good. And, all in all, pretty good. Like them when I hear them. Can't seem to remember them.
Six laquos: «««««« - Lightnin Hopkins - (some big-ass collection) Now this is awesome. Just based on the monster best-of collections I have, Albert King started off rough and gritty, but fell under the smoothing influence of horns and keyboards as time went by; and B.B. King was always fond of the big bands and arrangements. Soul blues. Bah! But Hopkins was straight-up country blues: acoustic, rough and immediate. The Kings were electric and sizzling, even when they were trying to be soulful, but Hopkins is just primal - if Robert Johnson had recorded in the 60's and not the 30's, it might have sounded like this. He's playing acoustic, mostly, so he doesn't get the howling, screaming tone of the Kings, but the notes he gets are even more in-the-gut than those other guys. And there's never much of a band behind him, so he can't sit around silently for two verses, waiting for a nice moment to jump in and play four notes; he's working the whole time - but never overdoing it. Just right. He kills it.
Nine laquos: ««««««««. - Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) The follow-up to this, New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh), kinda blew me away when I first heard it. So, after giving it a few months to marinate, I figured I was ready to try the predecessor. And... well, it didn't blow me away. It's similarly-dense and complex with layers of samples, complex song structures, etc.. But it feels less organic, and there's less of Badu's singing. It's a bit more uptempo, more hip-hop based. And I don't hate it, but it makes me appreciate the follow-up even more.
Six laquos: «««««« - Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee P2. Love the first three - completely classic old-school Beastie Boys. Love the hardcore "Lee Majors Come Again". "Say It" recalls "Gratitude" from Check Your head. But my favorite track is the one that features Santigold, "Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win", which sounds little like either the Beastie Boys or, from what I can tell, Santigold. Somehow it feels really long, though it's only 44 minutes. I think that's what happens when I put CDs in my car - the interruptions inherent in running errands breaks the flow and so it seems like the CD is always in the middle when I come out of whatever dumbass store I was in.
Seven laquos: «««««««
You peeps got anything good?
Category Archives: Uncategorized
The five-albums test
The AV Club posits a method for determining if a band is great or not: did the band release five, consecutive, great albums ?
They list some obvious examples from the days of yore: including Zepplin, The Beatles, Queen, Pink Floyd; they list some examples of bands who just fall short: Dylan, Stones; they list some newer examples: U2, REM, Yo La Tengo, etc.; and they list some modern examples: Wilco, Spoon, etc.. They list quite a few, but they missed a few, too.
I suppose people may have caught some of these in the 200+ comments, but I'm not going to read them all...
Greats:
- The Police. Only five albums, but each one is great.
- Miles Davis. Multiple times.
- Sea And Cake. Their first five = awesome.
- Van Halen. All six of their David Lee Roth albums are classics.
"Not greats":
- The Cure. They started out strong with "Three Imaginary Boys", "Seventeen Seconds" and "Faith", but "Pornography" and "The Top" aren't quite as great. They picked it back up with "Head On The Door", "Kiss Me..." and "Disintegration", though.
- Sonic Youth - "Sister", "Daydream Nation", "Goo", and "Dirty" are all strong, but "EVOL" and "Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star" just don't measure up.
What say you?
Three Frames
Check out three frames. It's a site full of animated GIFs, each of which uses frames from movies, but only three frames each.
And the results are amazing. Mesmerizing.
Note: the current first few pages are SFW, after the third (or fourth, not sure exactly - and I don't want to go back and look because I M @ W), there are some NSFW shots.
Endocannabinoids
How Hot Is It?
A Mug To Make Every Web Dev Sigh
Jicks!
Just got tix for Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks. Yay!
Odd thing, though. They're playing the show at the Haw River Ballroom, in Saxapahaw NC. It's a little town, a bit west of Chapel Hill, bit south of Burlington, at the end of the Sellers Manufacturing Company Lake, and one I'd never heard of. It has a population of 1,418 (2000 census). So, that sounds like an odd place for a band like SM & the J's to play.
Here's what it looks like from space:
Rural!
Upon further consideration, I guess a place that's roughly halfway between Greensboro and Raleigh (the bigger central NC cities) isn't really a bad place for a show. And from the pix on their website, the ballroom actually looks like a cool place. It's the former "dye house" of the Saxapahaw cotton mill, right on the banks of the Haw river: "with three levels, a riverside deck, a concessions bar and coffee shop, a full service stage and sound system, gorgeous historic detail, solar and geothermal power and an idyllic rural setting..." So, cool. Plus, geothermal power!
Jicks!
Poor Mrs C... I keep buying her tickets to shows she won't like.
Booster Camera Video of Atlantis Launch
This is footage from a bunch of different cameras mounted on Atlantis during this last launch.
There's a really awesome bit starting at about 6:45. Definitely check it out.
Attention Thieves: The Keys Are In This Box!
The city council in Cedar Falls, Iowa has absolutely crossed the line. They voted 6-1 in favor of expanding the use of lock boxes on commercial property. Property owners would be forced to place the keys to their businesses in boxes outside their doors so that firefighters, in that one-in-a-million chance, would have easy access to get inside.
href=Schneier.
OK, apparently, this is already quite common, and not just in the US. Move along.
The Theme, Take 1
New theme!
This is the new WordPress default. I'm tweaking it a little bit, to "make it my own", dog. New pic, font changes, etc.. But it's a bit hard to restrain myself! I keep wanting to add things to it that will make it look like... the old theme. Habits.
Anyway, if you see anything horribly broken, let me know.
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OK, still not used to this. Feels like I'm living in someone else's house. My last theme was a little dull, but at least I knew it was all mine.