MUSIC: Start the Day Right

Long time, I know. Sorry loyal reader. Life has been busy. Today's topic is simple: Some music recommendations to kick the morning off better than some coffee.

Today's Progress: The Soundtrack

As I tweak and add little things, I wanted to share what I've been listening to while I work...

Here's some albums you should be rocking...

Random... OR GENIUS?

My Zune this morning so far... all on shuffle...

Duke Ellington - Cottontail
Joey Ramone - What a Wonderful World
Nat King Cole - It's Only A Paper Moon
They Might Be Giants - Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
Tom Jones - Kiss (Prince cover)
The Prodigy - Smack My Bitch Up
Dr. Dre - Nothin But a "G" Thang (Featuring Snoop D-o-Double G)
Rancid - I Wanna Riot

Weekend thoughts...

Watched most of the first season of West Wing Sunday... it's like watching a road map for the next 4 season... Sorkin telegraphs every story he's going to tell, but it's so brilliantly crafted, it doesn't matter.

Wiretree - great band... good driving to the lake music...

Warmachine is everything addictive about deck building in Magic The Gathering with the modeling fun of Warhammer... MK II is tightly written and the game seems to be all about going for the jugular. I'll have my Menoth army together by summer. Can't wait to learn a new game...

We are moving... Crowbar and I are moving just a hair north of where we are now because we found a better place for the effectively the same price... more space, we can see the sun and my cell phone works... just waiting to move out before I light up the old apartment on Yelp or something...

When I was a kid the dunk contest was the most magnetic thing ever... this year I completely forgot it happened until I heard the Sports Center Radio guy talking about how lame it was...

We got the T-Rex some D&D 4E on Friday... here's hoping the 1st TPK I've ever seen in 4E wasn't an indication of things to come....

A new Week dawns... anyone else do anything fun this Weekend?

Best Whatever of 2009

So yeah... I'm doing that...

Best music I bought this year: It is a close race this year for me. The Mastadon record is amazing... the Black Crowes record is magnificent. But for me, the one I like the most is the John Mayer Live in LA. The second set (his blues trio) got me back into the blues and is just damn fine.
EDIT: Yeah... I have to change my vote here... Blueprint III is too good. It will get a whole post devoted to it in the next week or so.

Best movie I saw: Wish I could say Watchmen, but it was just sort of flawed. I can't really put my finger on why. GI Joe is a hilarious nostalgia fest for me, and only lacked someone turning to the camera and saying "America... FUCK YEAH" to just be Team America without puppets. For me tho, I think this year, it was Inglorious Bastards. Christolph Waltz (the main SS officer) is unfathomably good in this. I can't wait to watch the guy in things, and wish I could appreciate more German cinema. The first scene in the cabin is worth the price of admission by itself. Also, Brad Pitt being so over the top as a Tennessee officer was amazing. I love that the guy can embed himself into a character like that and make it something memorable and not a joke. He walks the line, and pulls it off, which is really damn hard.

Best tech that actually delivered:  The year started with me drooling over the possibilities of the Palm Pre. Man it looked good at CES didn't it? Too bad the keyboard is criminally small and the apps aren't worth writing home about. For me tho, watching Android evolve into its own niche of a geeky iPhone was awesome. I have one (HTC Hero) and I freaking love it. Honorable mention goes to my swanky LCD TV and Blu-Ray player. I can actually watch football at home without wanting to choke someone. Going to games live and seeing the whole field spoils you in ways you can't understand until you've done it yourself. Another note... Windows 7 is actually good. It is so unproblematic that I forgot to include it.

Best Add-On for Firefox: This comes down to two for me... Stylish and Feedly. Yeah, I know, neither were new this year. But I got them for the first time this year. Stylish plays to me UI Config fetish, and Feedly is a superb RSS aggregation tool. Once you have either, you can't see the web the same again.

Best New Habit: I has a blog now. It clears my head and whether or not anyone reads it, its fun to do it.

Best Renewal of Old: I got back into Warhammer with the Bell Of Lost Souls Tourney in August. It is back as my main hobby, and I'm glad to be back. I'm committed to going to tourneys in 2010 and learning more about the game... and actually painting my Orks...

Best Texas Football Thing: 1530 bring Geoff and Chad together is pretty sweet... 1300's morning show is brilliant (Ahmad Brooks will be a national analyst... just watch... its only a matter of time)... Seeing Colt get the love from the DKRMS faithful... Seeing the look on my father's face whenever Shipley broke one... The sound of my mother screaming "COME ON HORNS". For me tho... the best... was seeing Texas fight for every inch on every play. They never quit all year. I'm proud to be a fan of this team and can't wait for the big game next week.

Best Comic Book Thing: The fruition of years of plans by Brian Bendis has been a fun thing to watch, and it promises to truly pay off with The Siege. Blackest Night is fun as hell. Fraction's Iron Man is brilliant. Brubaker showing everyone that he had a plan from the start with Captain America is like that moment when you knew you trusted a friend no matter what anyone said, and he paid off that trust like gang busters. For me tho, the best of the year goes to something no one created... it came to my realization that what I truly love about comics is sequential, serialized story telling as its own art form. See the previous "What makes good comics" post for more on this.


Okay... I'm sure there is more... that's what I have for now. At some point I'm going to put up a wish list for 2010.

Oh and one last thing... to the God of War, the Crowbar and the Dog Barber... you three are my rocks, and I wouldn't have had the best year of my life without you.

Much love to all. Happy New Year... and don't break nothing what can't be fixed.

The Blues - When Being Emo Meant You Didn't Have to Be a Bitch

"Nobody loves me but my mother, and she might be jivin' too"

That's a line from the great BB King. He's a music god. He's a pillar by which the guitar as a form of expression is built. Much like Chuck Berry or a few others, you go through a phase when you learn to play guitar where you are trying to make your guitar sound like Lucille. You will fail, as many have before you... but that's not the point.

BB King, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Robert Johnson... the list goes on... but anyway... Why are they looked at as musical icons and legends when they are ultimately singing what by the lyrics is more emo than anything The Used or Fall Out Boy or whoever else put out?

Well, for me at least, it's because they play the blues as a kind of revival. They come off like like the whiney kid in high school with a self esteem issue... they sound like men in pain with crushed hearts and hard lives. Life can kick your ever loving ass. Singing the blues is a way to exalt and turn that pain into glorious celebration, and have an audience share their own with you through their attention and adoration. There is so much to it that is beautiful and brilliant, and most of all, none of it (well maybe Clapton) comes off as whiny. Why? Its all in the delivery kids...

The lyrics are as all about how bad someone has it. The lyrics are angsty. But the delivery is glorious.You feel these musicians bear their souls through their art. The soul of the music is undeniable and untouchable. But there is something forceful about it. Like they know that through this expression they free themselves of the pain. There is a sense of joy to the expression.

Emo music comes off like people want to lay down in self pity and cry the night away. It sounds like someone is saying "woe is me, my life sucks." But there is a sense that they want to wallow in that. There is no freedom, only self induced slavery to their own sadness. Who wants to listen to that? Why for the love of God would you want to wallow in pain? I mean, I've done it... its stupid and self destructive.

The blues is joy through pain... emo drags joy down to pain.

So to those who want to listen to emo bands all day and feel sorry for yourself... I say this: grow the hell up. Life sucks. Get a helmet. Share your art and express yourself, but please, stop making me want to slap you.

And yes... to those that now me... I know how odd that kind of advice is coming from me... but what can I say? I grew up... I had friends... they are awesome.

So what do you guys think?

Ideas from watching Jazz by Ken Burns

First off... see previous post regarding how Jazz is truly American Patriotic Music.

Now...

I find it interesting how much Jazz really really really drives home that race is an issue in America. To be fair, you can't talk about the music without race as a factor in the discussion. But the way Burns does it, he almost goes over the top... but just as he's about to go too far, he dials it back. That and the musicians involved are so damn amazing that their genius is undeniable.

And that's what he's trying to drive to, at least as far as I can tell... he's driving to the idea that Jazz transcends races, it was started by Blacks in New Orleans, but has transformed and reshaped itself into a truly American concept. If anything, Jazz was the true mechanism by which Black culture pushed through and shifted American ideas to meet its own nature and in doing so, shape America unlike just about anything else.

Jazz is everything... and it is nothing. It is just music after all. But saying that is like saying that Jerusalem is just a city. Jazz has shifted the world musically unlike anything that had come before since the ideas of Beethoven. Jazz pushed music to places no one had thought to go, as an expression ultimately of freedom from the constraints of what has come before and the tyranny of what comes next. Jazz is the ultimate expression of NOW.

Everything American about music stems from Jazz. It pushed the boundaries of what came before and opened the world to a truly new idea.

That being said... just because its truly American doesn't mean it is evil imperialism. If anything, its the idea of what people really felt America as an ideal always has been... freedom of ideas and innovation of a concept beyond constraints seen before. That idea has been lost some how, buried under the reality of who is expressing the ideas and their inability to listen to one side or another. Jazz, in an odd way reflects that as well. Its been divided into intense schools since Bop punched Swing in the chest and pushed the music ever forward in the 40's and 50's.

Jazz is a reflection of America as a concept, an ideal, a history, and is the musical landscape that shaped the 20th Century.

What is Patriotic Music?

Watching Ken Burns Jazz and something occurs to me...

People should feel as patriotic when they hear In The Mood or Sing Sing Sing or 1 O'Clock Jump or Swingin at the Savoy or Mood Indigo as they do when they hear America the Beautiful or even the National Anthem.

Those songs are truly American, without force or contrivance, and grew from a uniquely American idea and environment. Just brilliance and exploration of what you can do with music that really only could have happened in the melting pot of America in the early 20th Century.

So I ask you this if you hate Jazz... Why do you hate America?

10 Live Albums You Should Own

In no particular order, but all great albums...

• Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis - Live In Swing City (Swingin' with Duke): brilliant musicians playing music that is beyond timeless to utter perfection.
• The Black Crowes - Before The Frost ... Until the Freeze: Just something about this disc keeps me coming back again and again. Its really good. Especially the middle with The Band Played On, Where Love Lives and Lazy Antelope. I could listen to those three tracks for days...
• Brad Mehldau - Live in Tokyo: Just the man, playing piano. Monk's Dream and Someone to Watch Over Me are great, but the near 30-minute Paranoid Android defines Mehldau's passion at interpretation and performance.
• Bruce Hornsby - Here Come the Noise Makers: Great songs from top to bottom, never mind the stout musicianship.
• Phish - Live Phish Vol 5:  Phish is an all time love, and always will be I think. I've heard hours and hours of their concerts, but Vol 5 is probably my favorite collection. Silent In the Morning into Possum is a great way to start a day. Run Like an Antelope finds its rhythm beautifully. And of course the Tweezer sandwich.
• Rodrigo y Gabriella - Live in Japan: Once you hear these two, and then see them play, you can't help but be addicted. They have so much energy and life in their performance, and their skill at the instrument is almost beyond category. 
• Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis - Two Men with the Blues: Just go listen to it. If you don't like it, I think you might be dead inside.
• John Mayer - Where the Light Is: John Mayer Live In Los Angelas: So yeah, I like me some blues. This CD is really 3 bands... 1st is Mayer playing solo acoustic guitar showing off what made him famous, 2nd is the John Mayer Trio playing electric blues with chops that make you understand why he's so regarded as a guitar player, 3rd is the band Mayer put together for Continuum where he still brings the blues along. The 2nd set is really why you check this out. The guy covers Hendrix, and has the chops to truly pull it off.
• The Dropkick Murphys - Live on St. Patrick's Day: One of my favorite band's in their element, showing off what makes them so damn good.
• Kaizers Orchestra - Live at Vega:  Doesn't matter that its not in English. Doesn't matter that its a band you've never heard of. Go watch them live on YouTube. Be converted to the congregation. God I can't wait to see these guys play in the states. If you dig DKM or Flogging Molly, these guys will knock your socks off.