It's the last day of 2010, and I'm an opinionated music fan with a blog, so it's probably the law that I have to make one of these lists, right?
While there are still plenty of albums I've been meaning to check out this year that I haven't gotten to yet (Massive Attack, the new Gorillaz album, etc.), these albums really stuck out to me in 2010:
I feel like I haven't stopped listening to Crystal Castles or Plastic Beach since the albums came out, so those easily get the top 2 spots on the list. Also honorable mention goes to Barking by Underworld. I also thought Tron: Legacy, Inception, and The Social Network had really great film scores.
Today I faintly overheard my big brother, who is visiting for the holidays, talking to my dad at the other side of the house about guns and the inevitable collapse of civilization. I think some degree of survivalism runs in our family. I wanted to experience that conversation, so I walked into the room they were in to find my dad showing my brother some of his rifles. They decided to go out and shoot his Weatherby rifle, which uses .270 Winchester cartridges, and I decided to go along.
As you might remember, this past fall, my dad and I went shooting with my cousin Patrick and his parents. This time was quite a bit different because there's snow and it's freezing out.
We shot at a target printed out on a sheet of computer printer paper, 8.5" by 11", a small image of which can be seen below.
The smaller colored circles on the target are the shots from a range of 100 yards. We each took 3 shots. My dad's shots are signified by yellow dots, my brother's are signified by blue dots, and mine are signified by red dots. My brother and I each missed the target with one of our shots, so you only see two of the small dots for each of us. I'm pretty proud of how close the ones that hit were to the center of the target.
Next we moved back to 200 yards, and my brother and I each took two shots, which are the larger colored circles on the target. Again, my brother's shots are signified in blue and mine in red. With my brother's and my shots, there seems to be a pattern in the relationship between our shots from 100 yards and 200 yards, but it's probably mostly a coincidence. Interesting nonetheless.
I haven't had internet access since Christmas eve, so this is a late Christmas post. I hope you all had happy holidays and also downloaded the new Gorillaz album that was released on Christmas.
I'd like to tell you about some new music-making gadgets I got...
Behringer Reverb Machine RV600
I've wanted this guitar pedal ever since I used the one my cousin Patrick has. I love the "Space" setting.
Now meet my new pocket-sized synthesizers, which I have named Flynn and Floyd.
Korg Monotron - "User Flynn"
Flynn was obviously named after Jeff Bridges' character in the movie Tron. I love the filter on the Monotron, and it's ridiculously fun to play with. Speaking of that new Gorillaz album I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, I noticed on the site that the Korg Monotron is one of the instruments they listed as being used on the album.
Stylophone - "Uncle Floyd"
The Stylophone, which is played with a stylus, is probably best known for being used by David Bowie for his hit song "Space Oddity". I thought about naming my Stylophone Major Tom after that song, but I thought more about it and decided I actually don't love the Stylophone playing in the song. I do, however, love the Stylophone part at the end of his song "Slip Away", and so I named it after Uncle Floyd, one of the subjects of the song. I also like the alliteration in Flynn and Floyd. To show you just how much better this Stylophone part is, here's a video of a beautiful live performance of "Slip Away" where Bowie plays the Stylophone at the end of the song:
I wonder if the Stylophone will be one of the objects in David Bowie's new book. Anyway, I know I'll be getting a lot of use out of my new music-making gadgets.
I went for a Christmas season mall trip yesterday with my sister and Patrick. On the way there we listened to the Low Christmas album. You should listen to one of the songs from the album while you read this blog entry. It's a cover of the traditional Christmas song "The Little Drummer Boy". I love how it is noisy and distorted, yet beautiful.
Speaking of noisy and distorted, we first went to Toys "Я" Us, where I bought a First Act distortion pedal for my guitar. I don't have much guitar pedal experience, and before I bought this one, the only pedal I had was a First Act analog delay pedal, which I love. I think First Act is a really underrated company, and their analog delay pedal sounds so much better than any digital delay pedal I've heard from any other company. It has so much character to it, which is something I really love when it comes to music equipment. Seeing as how so many people use all the same stuff from Line 6, I think it's cool to have something a little different, to stand out a little from the crowd.
I found the Series 3 collectible LEGO minifigures at Toys "Я" Us too, which I was very happy about.
Before I got the Series 2 figures from Borders on Black Friday, I was beginning to think my search for these was a lost cause. I brought my "cheat sheets" that I printed out on Black Friday just in case I found any of the minifigures, but they didn't really help me any this time. My sister and I sat on the floor with a box of the minifigures and my cheat sheet and tried to match the new bumpy codes on the packages up to the dots on the sheet, but we realized most of them didn't match up. I know I printed out the American codes, but they didn't match. A lot of the packages had an extra bump, making it just about impossible to match them to the dots on the sheet. When we were picking out my Series 2 figures on Black Friday, I attempted to feel the figures through the bag, but that was much more difficult than I thought it would be, and I went back to just trying to match up the barcodes. This time since the codes weren't any help, we went back to trying to feel what each of the figures were. It took us over an hour to pick out all the ones I wanted. An hour of sitting on the floor groping little plastic bags of toys while customers and employees walking by gave us very confused looks. I got all of the figures I wanted though!
My favorite from Series 3 is the cyborg space villain, because he's an awesome minifigure and he reminds me so much of Lord Dread.
He's just missing his purple cape and cutlass, which are things I have in my LEGO collection. Old friends of mine in the internet LEGO community might remember that many years ago I made some LEGO Captain Power stuff.
So I'm doing quite well at catching up with the LEGO company on the release of these figures. Now I just need to get the ones I want from Series 1, and Series 4 still won't be out for a while.
Besides that, I bought some shirts. One from a store called Around The World which had a section of shirts made from artists in Thailand I believe. I also bought some really nice quality blank shirts from H&M to work on the prototypes for my Jacob's Shadow t-shirts. I'm excited about finally getting around to doing that, and looking through the shirts in Around The World was inspiring.
Since depending on how fast you can read, "The Little Drummer Boy" might be over now, listen to this other song from Low's Christmas album, called "Just Like Christmas". Now since you won't be reading, you can really pay attention to the lyrics of this one, which I think are clever and cute.
Today a friend of mine posted a facebook status that said, "Has anybody figured out what to call the last decade yet? The Zeros?, 2000s? The '00s? I think this needs to be settled."
It reminded me of a Ian Svenonius interview I heard from 2006 after his book The Psychic Soviet was published. I'm paraphrasing here, but in the interview, Svenonius talked for a little bit about how the first decade of a century is generally forgotten by history because it is rarely referred to since no one knows what to call it. He said that in the late 20th century, he told people to get done what they needed to get done before the 21st century started, because until we figure out, universally, what to call this decade, everything you do during it will be forgotten in the long run.
He referred to the last decade as the oh's, and I like that. I guess that would make the first decade of this century in particular the twenty-oh's. It makes sense to me since people refer to the individual years with the word "oh". For example, '05 is pronounced oh-five and '08 is pronounced oh-eight. This is the only decade of a century where any year's pronunciation includes the word "oh". Just as 1925 is pronounced nineteen-twenty-five. Drop the "five" and you get the name of the decade. Nineteen-twenties. 2005 is pronounced twenty-oh-five. Drop the "five" and you get the name of the decade. Twenty-oh's. It's not perfect, since you can't refer to it with numbers, but it should be simple enough writing "the oh's".
"2000's" doesn't work in my opinion, because it makes it sound like you're talking about the entire century, much like saying "the 1900's" or "the 1800's".
So my vote goes for "the oh's" and more specifically "the twenty-oh's" for the universally accepted name of the last decade.
I've been a fan of this video for years, but I totally copied Austin by putting it on my blog.
Shortly after finishing work on his album "Heroes", David Bowie was invited to be a guest on Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas, because Crosby's children were fans of Bowie. It was Crosby's last television appearance, as he died just a month after it was filmed, coincidentally on the very same day that "Heroes" was released. The special aired several weeks later on Christmas Eve 1977.
There's a rather interesting Washington Post article from a few years ago about how Bowie didn't even want to sing the song until the "Peace On Earth" bit was added.
I apologize. I didn't mean to be a downer with all that death stuff and "Bowie didn't even want to sing the song" stuff. I just wanted to give the video some context.
If you enjoyed that music video I posted the other day, and thought it was as clever as I thought it was, you may want to watch this "making of" video:
Like I said the other day, the new album by The Streets, Computers And Blues, will be out on February 7th, 2011.
As a holiday gift to their fans, one of my favorite bands, Low, released a free EP today called Live At Eindhoven. Backed by an organist/keyaboardist, percussionists, and a full choir, the band recorded the EP in St. Catherina Church in the Netherlands on January 22, 2009.
The first two songs on the EP, "Monkey" and "Silver Rider" were almost definitely included because Robert Plant's new project Band Of Joy recently covered both of the songs for their self-titled album released earlier this fall. As great as Robert Plant is, I think the original Low versions of the songs are far superior.
Live At Eindhoven is a perfect example of the stripped down yet somehow lush arrangements, and beautiful vocal harmonies that Low is known for.
Low is also known for their holiday spirit, having recorded and released a Christmas album in 1999 and another Christmas themed vinyl single called Santa's Coming Over in 2008. The glittery cardboard sleeve of the Santa's Coming Over record even had a punch-out snowflake tree ornament. They go out on a Christmas tour next week to support the vinyl reissue of the 1999 Christmas album.
You can download the Live At Eindhoven EP at Pitchfork for absolutely free by clicking on the EP cover below.
Low's new studio album, C'mon, will be released in early 2011.
My favorite Jimmy Eat World song is "Disintegration", which they released on their Stay On My Side Tonight EP. I always found the drum sound in the song to be fascinating.
I love when musicians get "outside the box" creative, either in the studio or on stage, and I love finding out what creative and experimental techniques they used to achieved certain sounds. It's inspiring.
Today on the band's twitter account, they posted a photo of when they recorded the the drums for the song five years ago.
As you can see, it's a pretty interesting setup, and there were 4 drum sets being played at the same time to get the huge drum sound in the song. The drummers from left to right in the photo are the producer Mark Trombino, Jimmy Eat World drummer Zach Lind, At The Drive-In and Sparta drummer Tony Hajjar, and Jimmy Eat World singer/guitarist Jim Adkins.
The second Crystal Castles album has been one of my favorite albums from 2010. One of the songs on the album is a cover of the 1983 song "Not In Love" by the band Platinum Blonde. Although I'm not a fan of the original version of the song, I immediately loved the cover by Crystal Castles, sung by main songwriter Ethan Kath. I guess it's been around for about a month, but I only just found out the other day that there's an alternate version of the Crystal Castles version with lead vocals by Robert Smith, frontman of The Cure. I can't adequately communicate with words how much I love it. I'm a big fan of Robert Smith, and his voice fits so perfectly with this song that it gives me chills. I also love that it keeps bits of Ethan Kath's vocodered voice as background vocals. Take a listen to the song, you won't be disappointed.
The single is being officially released on December 6th.
UPDATE: If you want to download a free mp3 of this song, click here.
