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TV

Not too long ago, we cut the cord television-wise in my house. This is not a particularly good analogy because we actually used satellite service and not cable, but I suppose that cords were involved. It doesn’t really surprise me that I miss having television service, but what does surprise me are the reasons that I miss it.

See, watching things is not the problem here. When I want to watch something, I know what I want to watch and have many ways to do this at my disposal. Here’s how it normally goes: I want to watch something. Is it on Netflix? If not, is it on Hulu Plus? If not, is it available through Amazon Instant Video or Vudu? If none of those qualifications are satisfied, I’ll usually find something else to watch. I’ve got a hefty backlog of things I’d like to watch and there will never be time in the world to watch them all, so this isn’t a problem.

So, like I said, the problem isn’t when I want to want something. The problem is when I want to watch nothing. That might sound weird, but give it a minute. Chances are good that you’ve done this before, or if you haven’t, you know someone who has. Basically, you probably know what I’m talking about, even if you didn’t know you knew until just now.

And that’s the problem. Most of my day is filled with knowing exactly what I want or have to do. I’d imagine that for most anyone reading this, your day is the same. Sometimes, though, I just want to do nothing for a few minutes. Since I’m not David Puddy, I’m not going to just sit there and stare into space. So I used television, even though I didn’t know that’s what I was doing.

I don’t have that anymore, and it’s strange how much I miss it sometimes.

As the great poets in Cinderella once said, you don’t know what you got till it’s gone.

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I’ll be honest with myself and say that I could have just as easily put any Guided By Voices song here and spent the rest of the post gushing with the same intensity. GBV are one of my all time favorite bands, and I’m one of those people who will stick up for the songs that even hardened fans of the band regard as sub-par. Just, you know, putting that out there. Anyway, now let’s get to the song: I’m going to link to the video on Vimeo this time, because it’s awesome and really should be seen in high quality.

The song starts with a piano and guitar intro that would surprise the pants off of a GBV fan who has only ever heard the “classic era” albums (ie. Propeller, Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes), but this type of thing was beginning to feel at home during the group’s later era. Then there are verses and choruses and things that songs usually have, including some excellent guitar work by Doug Gillard. But, as you may have guessed, that isn’t why I picked this song for this week.

Actually, the entire reason I picked this song only lasts for about 25 seconds, and comes in the final part of the song. Go. Look at the video; listen to the song. If you don’t know what 25 seconds I’m talking about, then you either have never heard of Guided By Voices before, or you have and you aren’t a fan. (Here’s a hint: the piano riff from the beginning makes a second appearance).

Those little treasures, those little nuggets of perfection buried within their songs are exactly what makes GBV such a satisfying (and for some, frustrating) band to listen to. To me, the rest of the song could be garbage, and those few seconds would still make the whole song entirely worth it.

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Once, when I was a kid, my friend and I took our bikes to the top of a hill in town. The highest hill in town, as a matter of fact. We were just about to head down when–

“Hey. What are you doing?” she said. “This is weird.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, “either you’re doing some sort of weird inverse fourth wall breaking, or you’re just starting to lose your mind. You were writing about your childhood, and now there’s dialog? Don’t you find that strange?”

I thought about it for a moment. “Maybe,” I said.

“What do you mean maybe? I don’t even know what I look like. I don’t have a name,” Daisy said.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “It was right there in the last paragraph. Daisy. Your name is Daisy.”

“Trickery,” she said. “You wrote that after I was done talking. So, can I at least find out what I look like?”

“You’re not going to like it,” I said, eying the wart on her crooked nose. “You’re not going to like it at all.”

She placed a hand on a hip that looked like a pile of cottage cheese under canvas. “Hey!” She said. “That’s totally uncalled for. You could have at least made me less ugly if I’m going to be unwillingly put into a story like this. I don’t even have backstory.”

I watched as she changed shape before my eyes, metamorphosing from a troll into a vision of loveliness such as I had never seen before. “There,” I said. “How about that?”

“I don’t know. I can’t see myself,” she said, even though there was a mirror right in front of her. She turned red. “Will you stop that?”

“Stop what?” I said.

“Fine. Forget it,” Daisy said, pointing a finger at me. “But I’m on to you.”

“On to me? About what?”

“I saw what you did,” she said. “You went back up to the top of this page and changed the beginning. Originally you were just typing for a while to see if you could get used to the color scheme and font of some writing program. Then you made it about being a kid. You even changed what I said. You changed my dialog!”

“I’m the writer,” I said. “I can do that. And nobody would have known if you hadn’t gone ahead and told everyone just now. I could go back and change what you said, you know. I’ve already done it once. Don’t think I won’t do it again.”

“Well I can do this!” Daisy said, pulling a gun from a purse that I swore wasn’t there a minute ago. She narrowed her eyes. “And I saw you fix that typo just now.”

“Hey, come on,” I said. “You can’t do this.”

“Oh yeah?” she said. “And how are you planning to stop me?”

“Well,” I said. “I could just stop writing this.”

 

So I did.

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“Hey Kris, you know you haven’t updated your blog in nearly a year, right?

“Actually, that’s not true. I wrote two posts back in November, but I decided I didn’t like them and deleted them.”

“That doesn’t really help.”

“I didn’t say it did.”

“By the way, you know this isn’t a real conversation, right? You know you’re just talking to yourself.”

“Really? Crap.”

So anyway: Ukuleles. I know, right?

According to Wikipedia, “After the 1960s, the ukulele declined in popularity until the late 1990s, when interest in the instrument reappeared. During the 1990s, new manufacturers began producing ukuleles and a new generation of musicians took up the instrument.” This is, in my opinion, one of the worst things to ever have happened to music.

Now I’m going to take time to admit a fault: I am not very good at arguing my opinion. About anything. So instead, I offer you this:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWSz_PAfgNc]

Just look at that.

Now, I am fully aware that there are a lot of things wrong with that video aside from the ukulele, like the fact that the singer sounds like he really needs to clear his throat. And the mustaches; the sheer amount of them is horrifying. But the ukulele, the ukulele is the anchor of that song. The precious, bewilderingly hip anchor.

Clearly, this must be stopped.

Because as bad as it currently is, this is only the beginning. The ukulele knows what it’s doing, and it has got backup. Not only are there four variations of the ukulele–soprano, concert, tenor, and baritone–but it has begun to infect other instruments. Not only have we got the electric ukulele, but the resonator ukulele, the lap steel ukulele, the harp ukulele, the banjo ukulele, and the utterly vile (I can’t believe I have to type this) guitarlele.

This disease is going to spread. If we don’t act, aberrations such as the pianolele and uke-drums are sure to follow, leading up the the ultimate horror, the humanlele.

So please, anyone who is reading: save the world, destroy a ukulele.

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The usual: buy this song, but if you don’t want to this very second, it’s available on YouTube for listening as you read.

Unlike every band I’ve posted a song of the week from so far, I don’t really know Sebadoh that well. I have a trio of albums from them, but the only one I’m really familiar with is Bubble & Scrape, the record that this song is culled from. “Flood” is a raucous song, more so than almost any other song on a generally mellow record, and that may very well be the reason my ears perked up the first time I heard it.

I’m not going to bother talking through the song as I have previously because it’s a pretty simple verse-chorus-repeat formula until the very end. It’s a fun song, but you don’t really need me to tell you that since there’s a link two paragraphs up that will explain in greater detail than I could.

So why is “Flood” this week’s song of the week? Simple, the lyric “I’m stump-jumpin’ drunk from the get go.” I don’t know, I get a kick out of it every time. Don’t get me wrong here: I wouldn’t listen to the song if I didn’t like it, and it’s just generally a fun piece of rock and roll, but man. “Stump-jumpin’ drunk?” I’ll take it.

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It’s going to get really old if I keep using the same old line about how you should buy the songs I’m mentioning here, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Here’s a hint for this one, though: searching for the title as it’s written above won’t do you a whole lot of good. Instead, search for “Noth1ng 3v3r Chan935,” as that’s the way it’s spelled on the back of the record. As always, it’s available to listen to via Youtube.

This song first catches me about five seconds in, as soon as the bass kicks in. The first time I heard this song was in the context of the record it’s on, Hissing Prigs In Static Couture, so I knew what I was in for, but if you’ve never heard Brainiac, you’re either going to love this song or hate it. I’m going to go with the former. If you pay attention you’ll notice distorted guitars but they’re far from the focus of the song. As with pretty much everything else Brainiac did, the guitars take a backseat to the synthesizers, but even the synths aren’t the star of this show.

Tim Taylor – Brainiac’s frontman – could be called the singer of the band sure, but his heavily manipulated voice was often more of an instrument than a conduit for words. Compared to other Brainiac songs you could even call him reserved on “Nothing Ever Changes,” but that doesn’t make the vocal on this song any less striking, a fact that is made evident the moment the band launches into the chorus.

At their best, Brainiac sounded like a  machine that was just on the brink of breaking down. Mechanical squeals and squeeks are common in this song but they’re percussive or melodic, it’s never noise for noise’s sake. Before the second verse starts there’s quite a bit of this, and I never get sick of those guitar stabs and keyboard glitches.

Coming out of the second chorus, the song breaks into a bridge where a synth steps out front to enjoy the air for a while. In fact, it’s having so much fun it decides to stick around for the chorus, and it’s my single favorite part of this song. In the previous choruses the synthesizer more or less followed the vocal line, but this time it breaks into a melody that wouldn’t be out of place in a New Wave song. It shouldn’t work, but it does.

After Hissing Prigs, Brainiac put out a very strange sounding E.P before getting back to work on a new full-length. Unfortunately we’ll never get to hear it, as Tim Taylor was killed in a car accident while they were working on it. You might listen to Brainiac now and think “oh, that’s not that different – I’ve heard that before.” Maybe you have, but keep in mind that this song was released in 1996 and Brainiac had been going for four years already by then. Sure, bands had mixed punk and electronics before, but none of them had done it with as much energy and excitement as Brainiac, and “Nothing Ever Changes” is a great example of that.

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This song is from Medications’ most recent release, Completely Removed. You can buy it immediately in digital form at the Dischord Records online store. Even better, you can buy it on vinyl and get a free MP3 download of the record as well. If you want to listen as you read and buy the record later, it can be found on Youtube.

Now I’ve got to be honest here: every time this song starts I can’t help but be reminded of the song Cheech and Chong play in the battle of the bands at the end of Up In Smoke. It’s not even the guitar riff so much as it is the general fuzzed out sound. Likeness to a song in a movie aside, it’s a very cool riff, and absolutely unlike anything I’ve ever heard from Medications prior to this record. The B-part is similar, and that leads you to think that you know where the song is headed. Believe me, you don’t.

The real surprise here is when, after a few iterations of the relatively heavy opening part of the song, it suddenly transforms into a breezy, Beach Boys-esque affair, complete with layered vocal harmonies. What really makes this part of the song for me is the rich piano in the background and the slippery slide guitar following the lead set by the vocals.

A return to the opening riff serves as the exclamation point on the song, and it’s a great way to end it. If you like the song (and there might be something wrong with you if you don’t), I highly recommend picking up the entire album. I’ve been a fan of Medications  – and Faraquet, the band that preceded them – for a long time, and this is by far the best they’ve put out yet, in my opinion.

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The song that happens to be the subject of this post is from The Oranges Band’s 2002 E.P, On TV. I suggest that you go buy it immediately if you don’t already own it, but the song can be found on YouTube if you’d like to listen along as you read.

The song starts off with chiming chords suggesting a bright, sunny day on the west coast, which is somewhat strange as the band is from Baltimore, but hey, nobody ever said a band needs to sound like its surroundings, though I’m sure some Norwegian Black Metal bands would disagree with me. I love the way singer/guitarist Roman Kuebler’s voice is overdriven here; it’s a great contrast to the relatively clean sounding guitars.

The verse is great, and I remember being caught by it immediately the first time I heard the song, but my absolute favorite part of this song comes just after Kuebler wraps up the last line. Out of nowhere, a super-distorted, ugly sounding guitar suddenly enters the mix. The guitar sounds like it’s trying to claw its way through your speakers, but it’s smiling at you the whole time, because it’s actually a really nice melody underneath the layers of fuzz.

The song could just repeat that a few times and I’d be happy, but instead it throws a perfectly good bridge in for good measure in addition to repeating the hook. “Success” is a great example of tasteful production taking what is at its core a great song (look for a live version if you don’t believe me) and enhancing what it is that makes it a great song by pulling your attention to where it should be at any given moment.

On TV is a great E.P. as a whole (see “My Street” and “I’m Still Right”), but honestly they could have just put “Success” on there seven times in a row and I’d still be happy.

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Let me stop you right there. Nobody ever feels like it. Ever. Not once. Got that? No? Okay, I’ll continue.

This is an oft-used tactic; so much so that you may not even notice it any more. What it boils down to is this: someone is asking you to do something while relieving themselves of the guilt of doing so. When it’s someone you know, say a friend, it’s very close to “I hate to ask you this, but…” When it’s someone like your boss saying it, the general idea is usually this: “I know this is not part of your job, in fact, it’s part of mine, but you have to do it and I’m only phrasing it this way because it’s not really your responsibility. If you don’t do it, believe me you will hear about it.”

I know, that’s a lot of subtext, which is why this method is used so often, and why it works so often. So put yourself on the other side of it; if you find yourself doing this, or about to do this, stop and try to think of a way that might be more polite and, more importantly, more honest to the person you are about to ask a favor of. They’ll appreciate it, even if they never know it.