Song of the Day #4- His Mister’s Pet Whistles by Major Organ and the Adding Machine from Major Organ and the Adding Machine: My posts are scarce and I apologize very much. I will really try and post more but I am up and 6 every day, home at 7:30 every night. No time for posts! Except for these freaking “Song of the Day” things. I have a really good one for you guys today by Major Organ and the Adding Machine. The forgotten child of an Elephant Six orgy. No one really knows who’s project it is but everyone was in on it. It is really rather crazy but has an awesome D.I.Y. psych charm. Very The Music Tapes meets Neutral Milk Hotel meets Olivia Tremor Control with a little Of Montreal thrown (although Keven Barnes was not part of the project. Really there are only two songs that I will go back to on the album, this being on the and the other being the last song “Life Forms (Transmission Received).” Check this out though, weird but very charming.
Song of the Day #3- Blushing by Adrian Orange from Bitches is Lord: i know! i haven’t posted in a while, there are many more to come but for now! listen to this amazing song by Adrian Orange (aka Thanksgiving).
DieHard Battery vs. Reggie Watts. best commercial music ever. not the most memorable most memorable jingle, but awesome, none-the-less.
my dog just farted. i made this playlist. all of the music, all of the stuff that is either lo-fi, sixties/ psych influenced, or some combination of the two.
Playlist (in this order):
- Odle(y) Tyme(y) by Andree Jackson Jihad
- Everything Disappears When You Come Around by Of Montreal
- What the Single Made the Needle Sing by the Music Tapes
- Poor Me by Karl Blau
- Majesty by the Music Tapes
- The Opera House by Olivia Tremor Control
- Untitled by Neutral Milk Hotel
- All Jets Are Gonna Fall Today by Julian Koster
- Up and Over We Go by Neutral Milk Hotel
- Courtyard by Olivia Tremor Control
Vampire Weekend Song. crazy. wait for the thing with the faces. trust me, you will know.
well, contra leaked. it is not slated for release until the twelfth but i have it, and a good download link for it! haven’t finished listening but i am about 3/5s through it (it is pretty short) and it is pretty good so far, exactly what i thought it would be: hipster rock. not a huge leap in any direction from their first album (so far), but nice melodies and some pretty interesting instrumentation (so far). more electronics than last time, ugh (so far) but not very much (so far). but whatever! a fun listen (so far)! :]
EDIT: ok well just finished the album and instead of wasting a whole nother post on a review i will just do a short simple one here. take any vampire weekend s/t album review, take out anything it says about standout tracks and then read the review. that is this album. more of the same but without any exceptional tracks. well “cousins” was above the rest but not by much. its a fun listen if you like them but nothing amazing. however, it did have one or two real shit tracks. “giving up the gun” was awful. i am not one for electronics (not that it was entirely electronic) but i just didn’t like it, it felt forced, it didn’t have the quirkiness other vampire weekend tracks. even ezra sounded like he didn’t want to sing it (which is probably why they hide it behind “cousins,” they hoped that “cousins” would be so good, we could forgive its terribleness), the vocal line is stolen from ‘87 shit. just a bad song. overall though, a fun thirty two minutes (app. and not including the nearly five minutes of “giving up the gun”).
The BPA and David Byrne, great song, very clever video.
Song of the Day #2- Me and Stephen Hawking by the Manic Street Preachers from Journal For Plague Lovers: another one that didn’t make the best of 2009 list but a ripping good song and surprisingly good album, a brilliant tribute to Richey James Edwards.
(from allmusic) “Richey James Edwards disappeared in February 1995, just months after the release of the Manic Street Preachers’ lacerating third album, The Holy Bible. He was officially presumed dead in November 2008 and just months later the Manics released Journal for Plague Lovers, an album that’s an explicit sequel to The Holy Bible right down to its Jenny Saville cover art. The Manics pay tribute to their lost comrade by setting his last writings to music, getting Steve Albini — beloved by Richey for his production on Nirvana’s In Utero, a clear antecedent and close relation to The Holy Bible — to produce a record unlike any they’ve made since his vanishing.”
Song of the Day #1- We Didn’t Come Here to Rock by Andrew Jackson Jihad from Can’t Maintain: this song wasn’t on my list (and i still need to finish the second half) of the best 20 tracks of ‘09 but two songs off the same album were. fuck this song is a close #21. i guess my issue with it is that it is a hell of a lot like heartiliation, the first track off the album and (spoiler alert) #7 on my list. awesome song and a perfect place to start songs of the day. amazing lyrics: “we didn’t come here to rock. we only came to disappoint you, because deep down in your cunt, that’s what you wanted us to do.” brilliant album from the best punk band out today.
ok, i know that i owe you some best of lists but i have been pissed about a few things and need to get them off my chest:
ok, so let me start off by saying that i am a pirate. i illegally download a lot music and i haven’t bought a piece of music since the impossible to find Major Organ and the Adding Machine S/T Album. i feel bad about this, to an extent. music off of independent labels should be bought, and i mean that. however, i am broke. but, at the same time, music pirating is just as much a part of the music industry, now, as anything else. it needs to be accepted because it is helping to break down much of what has become terrible about the music industry, things that artists like Lily Allen would love to keep going. Why? well honestly i have no fucking idea.
this is really a reaction piece to Lily Allen’s kinda recent (september 2009) myspace blog post which garnered her a lot of attention as being very against music pirating. the link is
go read it. now you can not agree with me, that pirating is o.k. and you not agreeing with me is o.k. i see and understand your point before you even say it. but! at the same time, lily allen is not only defending the major record labels who are losing money but the evil practices by which they are making even more. let me quote:
“You don’t start out in music with the Ferraris. Instead you get a huge debt from your record company, which you spend years working your arse off to repay. When you manage to get a contract, all those pretty videos and posters advertising your album have to be paid for and as the artist, you have to pay for them. I’ve only just finished paying off all the money I owe my record company. I’m lucky that I’ve been successful and managed to pay it back, but not everyone’s so lucky.”
now this is the point where i tell miss lily to seriously fuck off. what she is defending is one of the greatest crimes in music history and it has happened countless, literally countless, times. what is brilliant, and what she very conveniently seems to have forgotten is that because of music pirating (and i mean BECAUSE) 1. fans gain easier and FREE access to music that they would not have had before 2. artists are realizing that there is substantial money in self-releasing music. maps and atlases self-released their first two EPs. Regina Spektor self-released her first two albums. Independent labels as small as Plan-It-X (Paul Baribeau) to as big as Merge (Conor Oberst, Neutral Milk Hotel) to as influential as K (kimya dawson, the microphones) have only grown more powerful and popular. my point? the music industry has benefited from music pirating.
of course, this all depends on what one means by “benefited.” i see it as meaning that there has been a rise in unconventional music and tastes, a regaining of the meaning “good” music. not entirely, of course, bad taste in music will always dominate and that is why the major labels will continue to be major. but that doesn’t mean that independent labels can’t grow and reach wider and wider audiences. artists like kimya dawson and the animal collective have become wildly popular and certainly with no help from major record labels. and other examples are endless.
one of ms. allen’s biggest points is that music pirating is bad for new artists. she keeps saying that and yet she never exactly says how. she gives an example (quoted above) of how it can hurt artists, by stopping them from paying back the record companies as fast, but then i have to ask, what new artists? the new artists that sign with major labels and sell themselves into debt? the same artists that could record the same album for a few hundred dollars vs. a few hundred thousand dollars and release it themselves? artists that could be recording and mastering the same quality tracks with free software like garage band? it is cheaper than ever to record music so why do artists keep signing themselves with major labels? labels that only pay them 5% on every c.d. sold. the same labels that are even elbowing in on internet revenue (which was supposed to be the answer). lily mentions spotify as not hurting artists, and yet lady gaga only made $167 for over 1 million views (source). why are artists siding with such obviously corrupt and awful labels? the answer is greed. the way i see it, lily allen is defending greed. and that is why lily allen can suck my dick.
The First Post- “Lily Allen is a Government Lackey”
Music Contracts- Great article about music contracts, very general though. Explore the rest of the site to learn more.
