Best. Song. Ever.

Well since YouTube is so incredibly popular I figured that it might have the answer to what the best song ever is since I am a little in the mood for some new music. Typing in Best Song Ever made quite a few show up but here's a run down of the first page of results.....

OK Go - Here is goes again - I've heard this song before, I reviewed the album in fact during college. It's a catchy enough song, sort of Stroke like, very British rock, pleasing yet not brilliant. The video however is the band doing all sorts of entertaining nonsense on a series of treadmill's. Very clever, very well rehearsed, very original. Very much worth watching the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI

Tenacious D - Tribute - Alright, I get it, they're funny. Hell though, they are not as funny as they get credit for. Yeah, School of Rock was nice and it proved one thing - Jack Black is not a good actor but when you have a good script it doesn't matter all that much. Tenacious D proves the same in their music. You don't need to write the best song in the world to be liked if you have halfway decent lyrics or can be entertaining. I just wish I found them more entertaining... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcJwz7wu8_s

Anchorman - Afternoon Delight - What are you joking? Sure, it's the last genius movie Will Ferrell has been in, that doesn't mean the song is the best song ever. Alright though, it totally makes me smile to see them knocking over the trash can in the video (ironic...) and it makes me realize just how not funny Brick Tamland is. And a sack race, really? How do I like my steak? Not at all. This video is decent though. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eplbDbp6XJQ

Dope - Take Your Best Shot - this song straight up blows. Best song ever? How about top fifty lamest teenage angsty songs ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZCGBI2SQUo&feature=PlayList&p=892F5EFEB6C7F065&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=24


Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas is You - holy lord, this actually is the best holiday song ever. Who woulda thought that they would get one song right on this? If you don't like this song I might just not like you. I know that probably seems a bit much but it's so adorable. It's Mariah Carey if she respected herself. It's smiles on Christmas, it's beautiful. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8rY0Fyws20

Stuckey and Murray - Tonight - Hah, this might be hilarious and it might be all sorts of dumb. Most likely it is just both. A collection of terrible pickup lines put into 80's rock song form. At times offensive and at times quite endearing, out of control just about the entire time, it may not be the best song ever but it might be the best / worst pick up song ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTLvIB4Jj5c


Mercenaries 2 - Oh No You Didn't - I don't have the interest to look up why the hell this song was made but it's actually kinda awesome. Is that an old man singin' gangsta rap or a muppet? It's actually really pleasant on the ears. Nice piano, nice backups, why can't rap sound a little more like this sometimes? Ba ba ba ba ba ba bah. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEbE3fGfF-o

Men At Work - Land Down Under - I will not justify this with a response, or a link.

Oh YouTube, you certainly know how to entertain me when I am bored. Thanks!

Addendum - I went on this evening to see what the "funniest video ever" was and of course the majority was absolute crap. There was one that isn't a video it is an audio track that is absolutely precious, for certain types of people, and I happen to be one of those people. A guy sees a car crash as he's leaving a voicemail and gives commentary on the mess that ensues. I don't even care if this is real, it's hilarious.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTUPseOtKBs

Camera Obscura “My Maudlin Career” Album Review (by Adam Peters)

Camera Obscura’s “My Maudlin Career” might be one of those handful of albums that hits you at just the moment in your life when you need it most. Do you remember those records you weren’t quite sure about at first, how they slowly crept under your skin, then became an obsession you couldn’t be without for six months? You almost gave up; you almost never knew. Do you ever realize that no matter how much you think you know about what good music is, and what it is not, that you are absolutely clueless because of this handful of albums you almost disregarded, the albums that have become cornerstones when you look back and try to make sense of your own history with all things music?

I remember reading a review by some poor, well-paid bastard from a major music magazine who obviously only listened to “Kid A” twice before tearing it apart as a failed and pretentious attempt at the avant-garde. It took me a solid six weeks to decide whether or not I liked “Kid A.” From week seven to sixty-four, that album didn’t once leave my side. I was commuting to college at the time—a perfect fifty minutes each way. The people, the classes, my mindset--every memory from that year will forever be burned with those forty-nine minutes of music. I can’t tell you the name of the critic or which publication he wrote for, but I can say that it was extremely gratifying to see his retraction/apology a few months later.

Before I get ahead of myself, let me clarify: “My Maudlin Career” is not “Kid A.” It’s not R.E.M.’s “Up.” It’s not Sonic Youth’s “Murray Street.” All I mean is that I find it very possible that it could be your sleeper album. I don’t even know if I like the damn thing and I’ve been listening to it for two weeks trying to make up my mind. But I do know how rare and wonderful it is to feel an album slowly win you over then very quickly consume you. And I could be wrong, but I think I’m starting to learn how to recognize this potential.

I won’t even try to give you a song-by-song critique of “My Maudlin Career.” This would betray my faith in the sanctity of the Album as a whole. I’d be nothing more than an enabler to all those acquaintances who have unwittingly and grotesquely failed the most essential of compatibility tests by surrendering for scrutiny an iPod filled with single tracks from albums by their favorite bands (usually U2 heavy), arranged into “party,” “workout,” and “[insert individual-appropriate euphemism for sex]” playlists, leaving 8-22 perfectly good gigabytes unused.

I will say this: The first song is amazing. Singer Tracyanne Campbell has a beautiful voice. And the album is about lost/unrequited love. I think.

Other than that, I don’t know. Ask me again in four weeks.

Soapbox, descended.

El Guincho "Alegranza!" Album Review

Ahh "world music". Growing up I thought that meant that you had someone famous (aka Paul Simon) going out into the world and recording music with folks that you might not otherwise be hearing from (aka Africans). The result? One of the best albums of all time, no questions. World music these days though has such a wider audience that now it is a non-stop flow of new music from all over the world.

From the Canary Islands by way of Barcelona, Pablo Diaz-Reixa et. al certainly are making worldly music. This by no way means that they are making music of the same caliber as Mr. Paul Simon did back in the day, even with their African tinged rhythms and chanting. This is more the soundtrack to a party I wouldn't want to be invited to than a revolution. It is more repetition than ingenuity. It is more average than amazing.

"Palmitos Park", the first track on the album gives the misleading impression that it will be more of a rock or standard World Music album and then it just falls apart from there into long droning songs which seem to have little organization and it doesn't pay off in its creativity. "Cuando Maavilla Fui" might be the big exception in terms of it just being straight up catchy and pleasant on the ears. The next song on the album, "Buenos Matrimonimos" almost sounds pleasant but it just feels as if too much effort was put into it being wacky. If El Guincho had produced the album more "Cuando" and less "Kalise" and "Prez Lagarto" it certainly would be much more palatable to the average non World Music aficionado.

Super Furry Animals "Dark Days / Light Years" Album Review (by Casey Lynn Roland)

Heroes Among Us

Super Furry Animals Bring the Funk

Just when you think there is no hope, that humanity itself is about to meet a fateful end, the Super Furry Animals come swooping in to rescue us all from stale, boring music. Leaping unoriginal pop records in a single bound, the Super Furry Animals stake their claim in funky psychedelic songs. Their latest album, Dark Nights/Light Years (Rough Trade) is due out April 14th on iTunes, and April 21st on vinyl.

The dance beats and psychedelic rhythms that form a continuous groove throughout the entire record. Opening with a track entitled “Crazy Naked Girls” – the title alone made me love it – Super Furry Animals prove themselves as quirky artists fusing some familiar sounds into an entirely new concoction. Although not a lyrical masterpiece, it’s a great tune to move to. Plus, I love a man that can sing in falsetto for an entire song.

As soon as the second track, called “Mt.,” begins I reach the assumption that these guys do A LOT of drugs, and by the end of the track I’m seeing sounds and hearing colors, too. I also commend SFA on their use of Erhu – if you don’t know what an Erhu is, it’s a two-stringed Chinese instrument played with a bow, kind of like a cello. By the second chorus, I’m hooked on this song. (Or maybe the steady riffs on the Erhu have altered my consciousness? What better way to achieve mind control of your listeners than to hypnotize them unexpectedly with unique instruments!)

Unlike a Justin Timberlake record, there is only one cameo on Dark Nights/Light Years. “Inaugural Trams,” the first single off the album, features Franz Ferdinand’s Nick McCarthy who lends his voice to the song in the form of a spoken word appearance which he performs entirely in German. This song also gives a nod to the current political scene with lines such as “The streets of your hands will never feel a recession” among others. If only having Super Furry Animals on our side meant that the rest of us could avoid a recession… if only…

As much as I love this record, there are times when I get lost in the psychedelic swirls of SFA’s longer tracks. “Cardiff in the Sun” and “Pric,” the final song, have the least vocals of any of the other tracks, and are also the two longest. “Pric” also culminates in its final 3:53 with ambient echoes that sound like a voice speaking from the bottom of a well. I was bored mid-way into each of them because there weren’t enough vocals or variations in sound to keep me interested, or to set them apart from the rest of the album. Luckily it only amounted to about 17 minutes of my time.

With Super Furry Animals the good far outweighs the bad, though. “Helium Hearts” and “Where Do You Want to Go?” are the most upbeat tracks on the record. I tend to judge good music on whether or not I could stand it on an extended road trip, and “Where Do You Want to go?” is a track that I could blast out of my open car windows. “Helium Hearts” is the most “feel good” song with lyrics like “It’s cool to find what keeps us all together” – peace and love are not dead.

Anyone who’s a fan of Beck, Machine 475 or The Flaming Lips will fall absolutely in love with this record – it’s one of the few recent albums I’ve been able to listen to from start to finish without wanting to pull out my hair in a long time. So can Super Furry Animals use their powers to save the world? Maybe not the way it is right now, but we’ll have one hell of a party while the experts try and figure out everything else.

For an mp3 of “Inaugural Trams” head to superfurry.com/tracks/inauguraltrams.mps. For photos check out www.beggarsgroupusa.com/press.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

When students offer me suggestions for books it is hard to tell even from their noticeable personalities what sort of book I might be getting. The things you do not know about young people as a teacher and their hobbies outside of school are staggering and this is coming from someone who makes a daily concerted effort to learn as much about my students as possible so that I may be able to teach them in a manner more effective towards their learning styles and their interests.

So when one young man came up to me with this book, after having finished its 374 pages in two days I figured it must be 1) a perfect match for him content wise yet maybe a bit simple reading level wise (since he completed it so quickly and 2) hilarious (since he tends to be and so does his writing). 'The Hunger Games' most definitely is a fast read yet it is far from hilarious.

The disturbing premise isn't all that new, folks are chosen to compete against each other to the death in an arena for the masses to gawk at. Only here it has to be children and it has to be watched, by law, by everyone. So when law-breaking pseudo-rebel Katniss' little sister is chosen for the Hunger Games she volunteers to take her place (one of the few rules of the Games which is controlled by the contestants). The only catch, out of the twenty four contestants who enter, only one survives the battleground and goes on to fame and fortune.

Collins, a one time children's television writer knows a good story and she knows how to allude to other good stories that children should (or eventually will know - star crossed lovers anyone....?) She knows how to build characters and she knows how to create a realistic setting. The only thing she seems to be missing on occasion is the description of emotion.

Clearly, I've never been trapped in an arena with twenty-three folks who want to murder me to save their own lives but I figure if I was, or if anyone was who wasn't trained to be (such as the career tributes in the book) we might be freaking out a little bit. Not only does Katniss not freak out, very few, if any characters seem anything but overly keen to their own actions. For a bunch of teenagers this smart, we should be having them skip a grade, not life entirely.

A very fast read, almost entirely entertaining sans the end (I love surprises but not the kind where you have to wait God knows how long for it...) I would highly recommend this to anyone who things the premise sounds good or to any middle school reader who is either struggling with interest in the books they are being given or the vocabulary of what they are reading.

On Feeling Violently Ill, On The Outdoors, On Love, and On Makin' 'Enz.

I've spent the last two and a half days in bed almost the entire day. I'm talking no more than say an hour and a half outside of it either day and that was primarily to go to the restroom (I mostly ate in bed). I was wrasslin' with a 103.2 fever Wednesday which slid down to a 102.7 Thursday and I thought I was all better. Well it hopped up to a 104 and I figured I should head to the hospital. I did. They didn't know exactly what was wrong other than that I was sick and they prescribed me penicillin and vicodin. I woke up at 5:30 today having had a terrible night sleep because there are no redeeming characteristics to painkillers when it comes time to fall asleep - they just make you restless. I should have just dealt with my pain last night since now I just feel like a complete lack of rest.

Right now I'm at 98.6 degrees.

There is a writer named Mortimer Adler who was in charge of compiling 'The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto' in 1982. He believed that at that point everyone should be taught certain things (how to cook and feed themselves, how to change their oil in a car and tires on a car). Small-ish, very-learnable things that would make everyone's lives a bit easier. Things that we really have no excuse for not being taught by someone while we are growing up because they are not specifically difficult tasks. I wish someone had taken time during health class to teach me more about the human body than what puberty means because it's freakin' me out that my temperature is changing more than six degrees in three days.

Most of the time a terrible fever would not make me want to avoid the outdoors as I have always felt that they make me feel better when I'm either physically or emotionally down. Alas, I sat outside in the sun yesterday, or it must have been the day before, and I thought I was going to freeze to death even though it was probably in the high 50's. How feeble.

When sickly things can certainly seem accentuated and the love I feel for me most certainly is. What sort of amazing woman am I with who will willingly do whatever she can to try to make me feel better (including imitate my mom's standard sick-Andy meal from back in the day; white rice in soup, ice cream, ginger ale - healthy). I am so wildly in love it is just about indescribable.

If you pay attention to this site at all on a regular basis (and thanks to Analytics from Google I know how many of you do - no small number, thanks!) you will have noticed that I temporarily tried out some advertising through Google on the side of this site. Wasn't that ugly as all get out? Yes, yes it was. I guess I thought it would be nice to potentially earn even the smallest amount of money for something I love so much (I mean I already get paid for teaching, next they'll tell me that I'm going to get paid for eating and being in love...) - that is, until I realized just how scummy it looks. I hope you will accept my apology for even considering this shoddy form of advertising and although I would love to be able to make a little bit of scratch from the effort I put into this, it is payment enough just knowing you all are reading it.

Thank you.

Eddi Reader 'Love Is The Way' Album Review (by Casey Lynn Roland)

Around the Fire

Eddi Reader Reignites Folk

After enduring many incarnations during her musical career, Eddi Reader will release her tenth studio album entitled Love is the Way (Rough Trade) on April 21, 2009. The album began as extra tracks written for what would have become a “Best Of” release, but Reader loved the songs so much that she decided to focus on completing a full-length album of new material.

This is great background music for a backyard barbecue or for hanging out around a fire toasting marshmallows, but probably won’t stand as one of the “Greatest Records of All Time.” Opening with a simple waltz called “Dragonflies,” the record as a whole gives me images of the country, lemonade and humidity. Reader’s voice is undeniably beautiful, almost unbelievably gorgeous, but I wish she had better lyrics to sing with it, rather than “We all feel helpless once in a while.” Initially I chalked it up to a fluke – the entire album couldn’t possibly be this cliché. Could it?

Yes, yes it could.

Maybe it’s my cynical side, but I get all twitchy listening to an album filled almost entirely with gushy-beyond-belief love songs. If most of the songs weren’t jam-packed with one cliché after another, it would be a great “feel good” record – the music alone is enough to make you smile, but not enough to make me love all the songs. The album’s title track, “Love is the Way,” is most guilty of being trite. Apparently our “female lead” was “in a haze” before she met this fantastic guy (who we never see because she never describes him), but now “love is the way” he leads her (to what, we never know). With lines like “All the moments we share just between me and you / Are among those I care to treasure my whole life through…” I’m a little envious of this love, but if it’s this boring, why would anyone want to follow this guy wherever he’s going?

“It’s Magic” had promise because if its Billie Holiday-esque vocals, but once again, Reader can’t seem to escape the trap of the cliché. I think during the course of this album, I’ve heard her use the phrase “in your arms” at least a dozen times. But my sentimental side keeps kicking the crap out of my cynical side, and this song kind of makes me wish I had a guy to slow dance with to it.

Despite all the smooshy lovey-dovey stuff on this record, there are some great songs that I found myself humming days after first listening to them. “Dandelion” is the most noteworthy track because in addition to its folksy, country sound, Reader infuses it with a jazziness that puts me in a riverside bar on a hot night, colored lights strung around the patio, sipping gin... Aaahhh, summer…

As a whole, the album tells a love story from beginning to end. I will admit it took me a while to like the female “character” in this story – it took me until the last song, but anyone would like her after listening to “I Won’t Stand in Your Way.” This beautiful, soulful, heartbreaking is the only track on the album that doesn’t have that “down country” feeling, and here Reader finally abandons the gushy love stuff. We can still feel the female leads affection for this guy, but now we know she isn’t willing to let him mess with her. She’s letting him go out tonight, but she probably won’t be there when he gets back.

Eddi Reader gives us folk with a jazzy twist on Love is the Way. If you can get past the clichés, and the fact that Reader starts to repeat her sentiments towards the end of the album, then it’s worth a listen. The album stakes itself in its musical quality and the beauty of Reader’s voice, but it could’ve been about five tracks shorter.

For more information visit www.eddireader.co.uk or www.myspace.com/eddireader.