Ten year’s ago today, Apple released the iPod. Few could see where this little device would end up taking Apple. (Certainly not this guy.)
The headline is Commander Taco’s famous dismissive evaluation of the device on Slashdot, for those of you too young or too old to get the reference…
(Hat tip: Bill Crider.)
According to this list, Nurse With Wound’s “I’ve Plummed This Whole Neighborhood” is the Creepiest Song Ever. Having listened to it, I do think it’s contender, though a bit repetitive and trying too hard.
(The video is a bit NSFW.)
Back in the late 1990s, as I was looking around for some non-Slowdive Shoegazer music to listen to, I started looking through the late, lamented MP3.com. (It’s still around, but not nearly as good or important as it used to be.) One of the things I found was the EP Catch and Blur by an American Shoegazer band called Midsummer. After a long hiatus, Midsummer released a very strong album called Inside the Trees in 2008, which is well worth checking out on iTunes, etc. They fall somewhere on the “Shoegazer/Post-rock/Progressive Rock/Hey it’s music and I like it so stop trying to label it” continuum.
Here’s “Where the Waves,” which is on the poppy-side of Shoegazer, but is still I think a very good song.
Here’s another Peter Gabriel rarity, a song called “Animal Nation” he evidently played on his 2003 tour.
Recently I’ve been getting into the band Asobi Seksu which, despite the name, is based in New York. Their first two albums, the self-titled debut and Citrus, are both worthy of interest. “Stay” is off the first album:
The first time I listened to it, I thought it too lounge jazzish, but at about the 3:20 mark, one of the most awesome shoegazer guitar solos ever kicks in.
Other Asobi Seksu tracks worth checking out are “Thursday” and “Walk on the Moon.”
So I’ve been meaning to do some sort of comprehensive post on my love of obscure Shoegazer bands. But instead of one big post, I’ve decided to start parceling out little nuggets of Shoegazer goodness every Sunday.
If you’re unfamiliar with Shoegazer music, think of reverb-and-sustain-drenched guitars backing songs drifting between the poles of rock, pop, and ambient, with a little prog and psychedelia thrown in for good measure.
We start off with Slowdive, which is actually one of the least obscure shoegazer bands out there. I first heard “Catch the Breeze” on WHFS the one year I spent in the DC area. (Actually. WHFS was one of the few things that didn’t suck about living up there.) Later on I picked up Just for a Day, which I’ve always thought of as the definitive Shoegazer album. (I’ve never been able to get into My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, despite my best intentions. Maybe it’s the screechy, annoyingly high-pitched sounds scattered on many of the tracks. Or maybe it’s the sonic quality that sounds like someone recorded the entire thing in a bathtub on a Realistic cassette recorder after they’d dropped it down a stairwell a few times using factory-second Certron tapes.) Of the songs off that, “Primal” has long been my favorite, as it has a perfect, wistful descending chord progression at the start. But I haven’t found a good video for that.
Instead, here’s “Shine.” This is a pre-Just For a Day songs off one of their early EPs.
Interestingly enough, there’s another fine Shoegazer song called “Shine” (also not available as an embeddable video) from the short-lived band Lowsundays. I prefer the short version off the Projekt Spring 2001 Sampler.
Here’s a version of “Curtains” Gabriel did for the game Myst IV.
This version is available on iTunes, but only off a compilation album for a foundation supporting Transcendental Meditation. Since I hated my parents dragging me off to TM as a child (it was the 70s; normally rational people did crap like that then…), I’m going to have to pass.
I’ve seen some people claiming that the original version of “Curtains” itself is unreleased, which is not true, since it was included on the CD single of “Big Time.”
One final bit from Worldcon. Here’s an audio recording of David Brin playing “Camptown Races” on the harmonica on the shuttle bus from the 2011 Worldcon to the Reno/Tahoe Airport. (I’ve chopped off a couple of false starts on other songs before this.) There’s a little flutter toward the middle, but I think he does a pretty credible job…
The family involved seems a wee tad dysfunctional. Mama Mason’s boys (yes, there are three involved) don’t seem like the sharpest points in the punch-kit:
The charges said Jacob Cobb strangled his mother on the living room floor. Then he or his brother Andrew put a plastic bag over her head and tightened a belt around her neck. Clemens allegedly drove her body west to South Dakota, then east to Glenwood, Minn., before storing the corpse in a garbage can in a shed for months until the ground thawed enough for the two elder brothers to bury it.
Sounds like the makings of a good Coen Brothers movie. Or a bad Joe Pesci movie…
Bonus One: The climatic battle scene from the South Park episode “You Have Zero Friends”.
Bonus Two: Body Count’s “Momma’s Gotta Die Tonight”:
(Both of those are a little NSFW…)
(Hat tip: Bill Crider.)
It’s clogging up New York state, but mainly I’m posting this as an excuse to post a video of one of my favorite Peter Gabriel-era Genesis songs, “The Return of the Giant Hogweed.”
And no video, but here’s a cleaner-sounding, kick-ass live version from a BBC performance: