I DREAM OF GENIUS

OK, Apple, you decided to call it Genius. Not me.

If you’d have gone with something less presumptuous (like say “iMix” or “24 Algorithmically Related Songs in the Same Genre as the Song You’re Playing Currently”), then we would not be where we find ourselves today.

I’d keep the gloves on, and simply thank you for the added functionality.

But no. You had to go and call it Genius.

And so now I have to gripe.

My first complaint is likely not even Apple’s fault. But it is very annoying that Beatles’ songs cannot be incorporated into Genius mixes.

This is probably some fine-print directive from McCartney/Starkey/Estate of Lennon/Estate of Harrison.

Can’t have the unwashed masses curating and recontextualizing the sacred texts…

Well let it go, gang. You cannot fight this tide.

Secondly, I’m concerned with the tendency to beat certain tracks into submission, like an old FM radio DJ. I have 8,294 songs loaded up on iTunes, but I swear that one of the following titles shows up on every Genius mix I make:

Age of Consent, New Order
Teen-Age Riot, Sonic Youth
Just Like Honey, JAMC
Milk Man, Deerhoof
Papercuts, Broadcast

Now I understand that these songs are probably a pretty accurate genetic mapping of my library, but I would encourage the Genius to learn that there are indeed other songs that share similar strands of DNA.

Finally, trying to figure out why the Genius can find 24 songs related to The Emergency Kisses, but cannot find “enough related songs to create a Playlist” for Come and Play in the Milky Night is the kind of thing that keeps me up all hours…

IN CONCERT

I have tickets for the Titus Andronicus/Pogues show in March, and I just bought a couple for Danielson in April.

But so help me, if Jeff Mangum comes within two states of the District in the fall, I might just lose my mind...

LINES FORM ON MY FACE AND HANDS

This past Sunday was our wedding anniversary. I'll let Alice tell you how many years:



With all sorts of freaky, glammy love, Taeko...

BROADCAST

Last night I was in a Palo Alto hotel room. I was bleary eyed, just checking e-mail and the internet before I went to bed. I came across rumors that Trish from Broadcast was seriously ill, and at first it just seemed like cruel and pointless misinformation.

However, as time wore on, it became clear that the rumors were true. Then I woke up this morning, my fourth day away from home, and saw confirmation that Trish had passed.

Part of me hoped I would get back home to my own couch, flip open my laptop, and find no trace of this information. All the mournful threads would be gone, and in their place would be typically enigmatic plans for the future. New albums, new collaborations, new art...

But being home has not made this any less real. Trish is dead.

I am sad beyond measure, and my thoughts are with her family and friends.

Thank you for the music, Trish...

CORPOREAL

Dammit.

Get well soon, Trish!

YOU'RE GOING HOME

If you're a child of the '70s and can claim to be untouched completely by Baker Street, well then you're a liar or something worse.

RIP, Gerry Rafferty...

ANOTHER YEAR OVER

Winter break time-- I'll be back posting in early January.

Happy holidays to you and yours!

Peace.

SO FRESH, SO CLEAN

My iPod has been talking to me again...

This morning on my way to work, it served up Do It Clean by Echo and the Bunnymen and then followed with Keep It Clean by Camera Obscura.

iPod, do you think I'm dirty?

MUSIC FOR BOYS

No amount of year-end persuasion is going to convince me that The Suburbs is a good album.

I will admit, though, that Sprawl II is a larf.

I'm beginning to think I might have Win Butler issues...

I'LL TUMBLE 4 YA

Big ups to Sebastian for helping his team take first place at their gymnastics meet this past weekend down at William & Mary. He won three gold medals overall, including the all around. (Then I spent the first half hour of the drive home explaining that the medals are not really made out of gold.)

Here's his winning floor routine...

YOU AND ME

We got our iPhones this past weekend.

I downloaded a ringtones app, and it's like deep-fried crack to me.

I've made about a dozen or so. Right now my all-purpose tone is the first 5 seconds of We're Not Adult Orientated.



My dedicated tone for when Taeko calls is the opening of Du Og Meg:

She fell in love with a boy
Who spoke her second language
And who lived across the ocean
In the Evil Empire

Which is pretty perfect...

WHO MADE THE GRADE

A ONE-A TOKE-A OVER THE LINE

Over on the other blog, I'm about to drop a reference to Brewer and Shipley (worst tease ever, I know).

Which led me to this. Gail and Dale doing "one of the newer songs" on the Lawrence Welk Show.

Hang around to the end and hear Mr Welk call it a "modern spiritual."

Sweet Jesus...

SMOKE AND LIGHTNING

It took me quite a while to get around to watching Anvil: The Story of Anvil.

I tend to react snarkily to heavy metal of any stripe, from Black Sabbath to, um, Stryper.

But it turns out the movie has a lot to say about the value of friendship and family and dreams. It’s subtle in ways you might not expect.

Hell, by the time they got to Stonehenge (and they did, literally, get to Stonehenge), I was too caught up in the small-scale human drama to get tripped up by the large-scale Spinal Tappiness of it all.

I think the best thing I can say about Anvil: The Story of Anvil is that I rarely laughed…

BROKEN GLASS EVERYWHERE

My hip-hop history?

Well, I can rap about 45% of Rapper’s Delight. Probably deliver about 90% of The Message. And I'm familiar with varying degrees of PE and BDP. But not much beyond that.

I know Kanye West more as a meme-tastic media figure than as an artist.

But all this buzz about My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (10.0! A! *****!) has inspired me to take the plunge.

OK, accolades, plus a $3.99 price tag from Amazon.

We'll see how it works out...

KNOT MUSIC

So while the official release date for the new Stereolab was 11/16, apparently it was available on iTunes about a week prior.

The curious thing is that it’s not currently available for download from Amazon.

Which leads to the question: Does Apple’s business model really get micro enough to cut deals for windows of exclusivity with relatively low-end unit shifters such as Stereolab?

If so, I don’t know whether to lean toward outright awe or plain derision.

Fun fact: Sebastian took a quick look at this cover the other day and thought it was pretty cool that someone would name an album “Snot Mucis”…

ZING! WENT THE STRINGS

New Stereolab released? Check.

Beatles on iTunes? Check.

The musical highlight of my day? Here...

IF YOU WANNA GROW UP

OK, one good thing about the Xbox motion-gaming appendage: it's got semi-obscure new-wave nugget Kinetic by Hilary stuck in my head...

RAKE AT THE (BILL) GATES OF HELL

When all is said and done, I guess I appreciated the irony of that Cadillac “lust for vomit” commercial from a few years back.

Once upon a time, Caddies were emblems of a version of the European immigrant dream (see “The Cadillac stood by the house/And the Yanks they were within” from The Body of an American), and I could see something circular and clean about GM putting a bit of money in the Pogues’ pockets.

That being said, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to reconcile the sandblasting irony of Microsoft using Natural’s Not In It by Gang of Four to sell the Xbox Kinect.

They‘re just utilizing the instrumental opening, but here are the subsequent lyrics:

The problem of leisure
What to do for pleasure
The body is good business
Sell out, maintain the interest
Ideal love a new purchase
A market of the senses
Dream of the perfect life
Economic circumstances
Ideal love a new purchase
A market of the senses
Remember Lot's wife
Renounce all sin and vice
Dream of the bourgeois life
This heaven gives me migraine

Coercion of the senses
We are not so gullible
We all have good intentions
But all with strings attatched

Fornication makes you happy
No escape from society
Natural is not in it
Your relations are of power
We all have good intentions
But all with strings attached
The problem of leisure
What to do for pleasure

Repackaged sex, your interest
Repackaged sex, your interest
Repackaged sex, your interest
Repackaged sex, your interest
Repackaged sex, your interest
Repackaged sex, your interest

The problem of leisure
What to do for pleasure
The body is good business
Sell out, maintain the interest
Dream of the perfect life
Economic circumstances
Ideal love a new purchase
A market of the senses
Remember Lot's wife
Renounce all sin and vice
Dream of the bourgeois life
This heaven gives me migraine
This heaven gives me migraine
This heaven gives me migraine

So, no. Just, fuck no...

PARAN MAUM

Finally got around to watching the slight but sweet Japanese movie Linda Linda Linda.

I’ve long had a soft spot for the Blue Hearts song that informs the plot, but it took Netflix to put the movie back on my radar.

It’s the story of a band of teenage girls preparing to play at a high school festival. They lose their singer, and end up recruiting a new one on a whim— a Korean exchange student who speaks very little Japanese.

The singer is played by Korean actress Doona Bae, who was in The Host (which is an entirely different flavor of awesome). She has a nice comedic touch— Keatonesque, minus the buster.

In case you never feel motivated to see the movie, take a few minutes now to watch the climactic festival performance…