{"id":12758,"date":"2011-07-19T21:38:18","date_gmt":"2011-07-20T01:38:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=12758"},"modified":"2011-07-19T21:38:18","modified_gmt":"2011-07-20T01:38:18","slug":"listening-to-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=12758","title":{"rendered":"Listening To"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><b>The Strokes - Angles<\/b>. 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.<br \/>\nSix laquos: &laquo;&laquo;&laquo;&laquo;&laquo;&laquo;<\/p>\n<li><b>Lightnin Hopkins - (some big-ass collection)<\/b> 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. <i>Soul blues<\/i>. 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 <i>primal<\/i> - 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.<br \/>\nNine laquos: &laquo;&laquo;&laquo;&laquo;&laquo;&laquo;&laquo;&laquo;.<\/p>\n<li><b>Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)<\/b> The follow-up to this, <i>New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh)<\/i>, 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.<br \/>\nSix laquos: &laquo;&laquo;&laquo;&laquo;&laquo;&laquo;<\/p>\n<li><b>Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee P2<\/b>. Love the first three - completely classic old-school Beastie Boys. Love the hardcore \"Lee Majors Come Again\". \"Say It\" recalls \"Gratitude\" from <i>Check Your head<\/i>. But my favorite track is the one that features Santigold, \"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ck_OTqI8WNk\">Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win<\/a>\", 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.<br \/>\nSeven laquos: &laquo;&laquo;&laquo;&laquo;&laquo;&laquo;&laquo;<br \/>\n<\/oL><\/p>\n<p>You peeps got anything good?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-listening-to","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12758\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}