To Boldly Go

I am constantly in need of new music. And by this I mean music that is new to me, whether it's from the noughties, the eighties, or the eighteenth century.

The first phase of my musical life has been written about elsewhere. Here I want to talk about the current phase -- the Age of Discovery.

By the time I got to IIT I was tired of Classic Rock fundamentalism. I started discovering more and more new bands that kick serious ass. it's just that that since hip-hop dominates, these bands consider selling half a million copies a reasonable success. Far from the days of Dark Side of the Moon's 14 years on the US album chart. Oh well. Rock excess gave us hair metal.

In IIT I got into early UK Punk Rock. The Sex Pistols are spectacular. Menacing, crazy, funny, and they made some righteous noise. Not for everyone though. To my great irritation, someone once asked me if I had "graduated" to the Clash. Philistines! Of course, the Clash are awesome. I'm surprised that their album London Calling wasn't a college favourite - it has bits of reggae and ska, and plenty of good guitar. In any case, my tastes sort of became a bit more edgy and less laid back - not at all heavy metal, but up-tempo jangly guitars. Maybe pent-up IIT-related restlessness found its outlet that way.

Punk and New Wave set me up very well for the 21st Century's "New New Wave" or the "New Garage Revolution" or whatever you want to call it. Franz Ferdinand was the first of these bands that I heard. I first saw then on TV in 2004 -- on MTV India no less. The Libertines I discovered on the LAN in IIT. They really hit the spot. Much of the UK's rock scene can trace its origins to the Libertines thrilling, shambolic exuberance. The Strokes were the next band I picked up. I can't express the particular way their jaded rock reaches in and grabs me.

I don't recall how, but I started finding a fair number of bands that suited my taste from mp3 blogs. The mp3s they talk about are collected on sites like The Hype Machine and Elbows. The Hype Machine has a pretty awesome little flash player to sample mp3s. I also follow NME, a venerable old UK rock magazine, which, back in 1994, was the first to champion a new band from Manchester called Oasis. I like their taste normally. They're unapologetic about being smug trend-spotters. Another good website is The Guardian's music section. So I hear about a new band, then listen to them on their MySpace page, or on HypeM. And if I'm sufficiently curious, I download the album. I probably download an album once a week on average. If I like an album, I check out the band's wiki page. And If I really like an album, I go to Metacritic and All Music Guide. I love reading reviews of things I already like. It supplements my musical vocabulary. That's how I picked up the word "shambolic". Occasionally the reviewers talk about the band's influences, and then I do some musical archaeology/anthropology.

In the US you can find some pretty diverse musical tastes (every possible niche market has been explored-- I attribute it to Late Period Capitalism and its associated saturations.) In my department I found several people with strongly overlapping tastes. (My department is full of brilliant musicians -- I feel like the odd one out.) We go for concerts together, and I get recommendations from them. Some good, some weird, some awful. So it goes.

~

The mp3 I'm going to post now was not discovered by any of these methods. I saw it on TV. It's a My Chemical Romance song. Pop punk went and got all prog. In their new album they shamelessly lift musical ideas from Pink Floyd and Queen, and their clothes hark back to Sgt. Pepper, albeit in and emo avatar. I admire their ambition. However, the song I am going to post now is not prog. It's a regular rocking stomper, and I can't get enough of it. (Salil! Can you detect the T. Rex?)

My Chemical Romance -- Teenagers

~

September '07

When I got my very own laptop, nigh on 15 months ago now, I was overjoyed. Here at last was a computer I could organise the way I wanted to. No more folders scattered all over various hard drive partitions, no more desktops filled almost completely with icons and shortcuts (YUCK!), and no unwanted programs whatsoever.

(You should see our desktop at home. Sheesh. I guess it can't be helped, when more than one person uses a computer regularly, without making use of different Windows logins.)

Then the question arose -- how to organise my music? Some people, especially those with many gigs of mp3s, have a different folder for each artiste, and subfolders within those for each album. It's a reasonable system if your music consists mostly of entire albums, or if you're the type who knows exactly what he wants to listen to at any given time.

But it made far more sense to me to organise my music by genre, and only broadly. And it also made sense to use Windows' pre-set folders such as My Music, My Documents, My Pictures, and My Videos. Why go to the trouble of having another folder somewhere else entitled 'Music'? That just leads to complications when ripping, downloading, and so on.

And my 'system' works well for me. This is what my My Documents folder looks like:

I've tried often to remove Azureus Downloads, My eBooks, and My Sharing Folders, but they keep coming back. And this is My Music:

Tee hee. You may notice I had to look up how to take screenshots. And to think I used to want PrintScreen (SysRq), Scroll Lock, and Pause (Break) to be removed from standard keyboards.

Anyhow, so my Rock, Pop, & Hip-Hop folder is by far the biggest. Duh. It has three genres in it. Starting from January of this year, however, (i.e. when I got internet access in Delhi-- prior to that this laptop had never been connected to the 'net), I began to keep my new music in separate bunches for easy access, rather than have it lost within Rock, Pop, & Hip-Hop, where apart from a few folders all the songs are merely listed alphabetically:



For example, January had a lot of Keane downloading (I love them!), and this is reflected in its icon.

Finally arriving at the point of this post (!), here are some recommendations from my September 07 folder:


(1) Don Henly - Boys of Summer

This Eagle apparently had quite a successful solo recording career when his band split up prior to Hell Freezes Over, and if all his songs are like this one, I don't doubt that. After timestamp 2:30 it sounds like something off Pulse, only slightly faster than Floyd's usual stuff.


(2) The Eagles - One Day at a Time

Alright, I confess, I got both of these songs after happening to catch an Eagles concert on Zee Cafe's Sunday evening show, 'The Gig.' (Ten out of ten for imagination.) I like Boys of Summer better, but this is pretty good too, IMHO. Oo-la-lala! :)

By the by, I didn't know that so many of the Eagles sung. It was a different lead singer on almost every song I saw.


(3) Hard-Fi - Suburban Knights

If you don't already have this song, you must get it. The chorus is rather eighties English adult poppy, and, like Rihanna's Umbrella, the song was born to be played on the radio. Eminently listenable-to.


(4) Newton Faulkner - Dream Catch Me

Could be criticised as being a bit monotonous, especially the rythm section, but I like it. I'm trying to think whom his voice reminds me of: a younger hybrid of Gordon Lightfoot, Rod Stewart, and John Mayer?!

NB Please do comment if you listen to Gordon Lightfoot. I've never met anyone else who does, although I'm sure many people do. It's a parent thing, if you know what I mean. Only those whose folks listened to him are likely to have even heard of him.

(5) The Go-Go's - Head Over Heels

This one is pure eighties, and is in fact flicked from the soundtrack of a movie set partly in the eighties. (13 Going on 30, with Jennifer Garner. Forgive me.)


(6) P Diddy feat. Keyshia Cole - Last Night

I never thought I'd ever download a Puff Daddy song (apart from that cover of Every Breath You Take that he arranged.) I lost what little respect I had for the man who called himself Sean "Puffy" Combs when he changed his name to P Diddy after he split up with Jennifer Lopez. I mean, dude, she's blazing hot, but duuuuuuuudeee.. you can't change your NAME every time you lose a girlfriend! And from Puff Daddy to P Diddy!!! Did he? Didn't he? Diddy?!!?
Jeez.

But you know what... he does make some pretty darn good hip-hop songs. I stumbled across this while downloading the other one - Come to Me, featuring Nicole "PCD" Scherzingerburger. While Come to Me has been ingrained in my head as a "club" song (bound to come up while on the dance floor), Last Night isn't that common yet (in my circles, anyway), and I like, I like.


EDIT: Sorry, the screenshots came out far smaller than I expected. Bad Blogger!

Blonde Redhead

I forget which blog or site I was reading a few days ago but I stumbled upon this new band. Well, not exactly new because they've been around since the '90s but new to me. Anyway, they're called Blonde Redhead and they were discovered by Sonic Youth, who produced their first album. The album I just discovered is their latest effort, titled 23, which was released this past April. They're categorized as indie/alternative rock and the band is comprised of a female Japanese frontwoman and two Italian brothers (who I think are identical twins), one of whom happens to be the singer's husband.

Logistics aside, I really like the album. It has a dark/gothic/eerie feel, which is highlighted by the singer's high, ethereal voice against the background instrumentals and riffs. 23 was produced by Alan Moulder, who also produced Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness for The Smashing Pumpkins; a few of Moby's albums; and the two The Killers albums, if that is any indication of their sound.

(Yeah, the album cover is kinda creepy...)

Here are my two favorite songs from 23:

Blonde Redhead - 23

Blonde Redhead - Silently

(Btw, it's just a coincidence that all the bands I have posted about thus far have female singers. Honest.)

Don't Speak

The other day, I was in the car with my mom and I was listening to this modern rock/alternative rock station on the radio when No Doubt's "Don't Speak" comes on. I was amused and quite surprised that my mom knew all the words. Turns out they play it all the time on this soft rock station she listens to fairly often. Interesting...

Anyway, I was reminded of this incident when I recently read that No Doubt is back in the studio recording their next album and Gwen Stefani said that they might go back to their ska roots. Seeing as Tragic Kingdom is, in my opinion, their best album to date, I'm excited. (It was also the first and only official album on cassette tape I have ever purchased. Pretty late, I know, but before this album, I had never been enamored enough to buy actual tapes and just stuck to making a crapload of mixtapes off the radio.) And the farther No Doubt's sound is from Gwen's solo efforts is fine by me. Don't even get me started about those Harajuku girls.

So because I've been listening to a lot of this album lately, here are some old favorites:

No Doubt - Don't Speak

I don't know how she stayed in the same band with the bf of 7 years she just broke up with and wrote the song about and sang it all the time with him right there but this is a damn good song and I love to sing along to it. And apparently, so does my mom.

No Doubt - Spiderwebs

Fairly simple lyrics but this single pretty much revived the ska genre in 1996.

No Doubt - Happy Now?

Angst-ridden ska. Enough said.

Autumnsong

I remember when we first got an internet connection at home. I was in 10th grade, I think, so that must have been almost 8 years ago now. The computer (we had only one) was at that time on the 1st floor landing, near the stairs. My dad sat down one morning to connect and we all stopped in our various stages of tooth-brushing and shoes-polishing to watch. Lo and behold, the line was busy.

The line remained busy, in both a literal and a figurative sense, for the next few years. All through school, we had dial-up internet. For some reason, there were only a limited number of telephone lines connecting the college campus (where we live) and the hospital campus (where the internet servers are), and this meant getting on the net was quite a job. It could easily take an hour or so, with the modem on auto-redial.

Now, even with superfast always-on broadband, where a song downloads in no more than 2 minutes (at home, not in Delhi), it's not easy to forget how much the internet has changed since it first began.

I was reminded of this while downloading the Manic Street Preachers' latest hit, Autumnsong. (Talk about a beautiful name.) Because the Manics (as Wikipedia tells me they're called - wouldn't the Preachers be a better moniker?) also created the first song I ever downloaded off the old Triple W - 1998's You Stole The Sun From My Heart. There was no Limewire then (although I did use WinMX for naughty chat sessions and the occasional song download), and I don't recall where I got that song from. Perhaps mp3.com, before they became commercial sell-outs. Anyway, it took me the better part of the day to download it. Hurrah for 28k modems!

At the time, I knew nothing about the band. I just thought it was a decent song. I still know nothing about the band, but the Preachers (screw you, Wik) moved back into my field of radar recently when I heard their song If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next** -- which, oddly, was the number 1 hit from the same album as You Stole the Sun. (1998's This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours.)

Your Love Alone Is Not Enough caught my attention on internet radio, but I could barely believe the RJ when he said the track was by the Manic Street Preachers (feat. Nina Persson in a Cardigan).

And Autumnsong (from 2007's Send Away The Tigers, along with Your Love Alone) has a great riff and a simple but effective chord sequence. It sounds like the sort of song that'll get old rather quickly, but right now it's pushing my buttons rather well.

So, in chronological order:

Manic Street Preachers - You Stole The Sun From My Heart

Manic Street Preachers - If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next

Manic Street Preachers - Your Love Alone Is Not Enough

Manic Street Preachers - Autumnsong

If, like me, you never download all the listed songs, take If You Tolerate This and Autumnsong.

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** A great song. It's in the Guinness book for the number one single with the longest name without brackets. It's also the only MSP track to ever be released as a single in the United States. Go Wiki.

Give A Little Bit

Since around 2005 I've been a major advocate of new music. My hard disk has vast quantities of music from post 2001. But deep down, I'm a fan of classic rock and pop. Music from the 50's, 60's and 70's was my staple until very recently. That, and the quality pop from the 80's and 90's.

Recently I've been returning to my musical roots. Interestingly, much of this old music was discovered recently. But somehow these songs get filed away as classics, and acquire much of the warmth of the songs I heard before I could even speak. Here are a few songs that have been on rotation lately:

Supertramp - Give A Little Bit
A pretty little love song that just about avoids being too twee. I do love a good voice. And delicate, crisp guitars.

Cliff Richard - Bachelor Boy
This ancient hit is by our very own Cliff (who is an Anglo-Indian!). He ruled British pop until the advent of the Beatles. This is the kind of song we were taught at school, and everyone in the family probably knows it. It's from the film Summer Holiday, which is an intensely pleasant musical. Sort of like a Hindi movie done well.

The Beach Boys - Good Vibrations
Those sunny Californians proved they could experiment a bit. They really did create some good vibes here. "I don't know where but she sends me there."

The Who - My Generation
Say what you want about Tommy. As far as I'm concerned, the Who where at their smouldering best here, at the place where British R&B became the roots of Punk. Gotta love that stuttering.

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bad Moon Rising
I guess this qualifies as dadrock -- I associate this band with my dad and one of his college mates. Great upbeat song about paranoia!

Janis Joplin - Piece of My Heart
Good grief she was passionate. Alanis Morissette's spiritual great-grandmother.