8-Bitting Sleeping At Last

For as long as it had been decided that hipness and irony could co-exist artists (and wannabe artists) have retrofitted their work to not only make it appear older, but to make it appear nostalgically older.  This has made photo-filtering apps like Instagram insanely popular.  Swedish electro-disco musician Johan Agebjorn released a track only available on 3.5" floppy disc.  Google Maps turned the earth into a Nintendo playground this past April Fool's Day.  All for the aesthetic thrill of reveling in the imperfections of old technology.  When done well the results can be startlingly beautiful.  When done unwell... then you just fuzzed out a perfectly good photograph of your dog.

To my infinite amusement, Sleeping At Last just posted four "8-bit" tracks up on NoiseTrade.  Now solely the project of frontman Ryan O'Neal, the Illinois-based Sleeping At Last is one of the few remaining active remnants from when emo ruled the world a dozen years ago.  Normally the music is soft and introspective, but these remixed songs play like the soundtrack to a lost Zelda game.

This is retrofitting done well.

For comparative/contrasting purposes the original versions of the songs are included in the free(!) download.

I don't know how long this whole thing will be up.  However long a "limited time" is.  Check it while you can.

Hey You Guys, The Choir!

Despite releasing an album every couple years since 1985(!) and having a dedicated cult following, it is hard to find people who have heard of The Choir.  I don't know why they are so invisible and ignored, but they have always been supported by their tight fan base (which explains why Wikipedia, with its open-contributor policy, gives the band several lengthy sections while AllMusic and their selected fleet of music writers give the band's profile only two sentences).  It could be they way they've been [mis]marketed over the years.  Too artsy and intelligent and coffee-house for the general CCM crowd, but too Jesusy for anybody else.

According to Last.fm's user-generated charts (which will wonderfully waste hours of your time) the average Choir listener tends to be very male and very 40-ish.  So I guess if you're an old guy then this band is for you.  But, as you can see, there are people like me who like Cat Power (although I'll be the first to admit I'm not a 22-year-old female) and still dig The Choir.  So... whatever.

[Er... maybe I AM a 20-something woman]

The Choir is freely offering their 2010 album, Burning Like The Midnight Sun, on NoiseTrade.  It's good.  Surprisingly good, especially for a bunch of old guys.  This isn't a re-formed Eagles halfheartedly pulling themselves together for another easy-listening go-round.  The music here is fresh and alive and not at all what you would expect from a group of guys who've been doing the same thing for almost thirty years.  Man, even U2 blanded out, but The Choir sound like they're cutting these tracks with the exuberance of a first professionally made album.

In that NoiseTrade download they also snuck in a track from their just-released album, "The Loudest Sound Ever Heard." The song has a 90's shoegazey glam vibe to it, so if you were into the Prayer Chain or Luxury then you might be into it.  I don't know if the whole album sounds that way, but I do see Leigh Nash is featured on a track, so there's that.

http://www.noisetrade.com/thechoir

Adam Yauch. MCA.

This wasn't a Cobain shot to the face.  Not a Tupac drive-by.  Not an Elvis overdose.  Not even a Bon Scott misadventure.  No car wrecks, no plane crashes.  Nothing sudden or instantaneous.  And yet we were all caught off guard.

We knew his health had waned over the years, and we knew the cancer never completely left his body.  Maybe this is something we should expect when we see somebody slowly physically deteriorating.  But it is -- still -- unfeasible to imagine a world without any of the Beastie Boys frolicking around.

For those of my generation they have always been there.  The three of them jumping around, dropping sick beats, dropping sicker rhymes, constantly amused by the attention given to them.  As we grew up we watched them grow up.  We watched them evolve from bratty Brooklyn punkers to bratty hip-hop gurus to bratty music godfathers. Our lives had a varied soundtrack, and the Beastie Boys were a significant part of it.  

We still have the songs and the videos and the wacky interviews, but as MCA departed so too did the Beastie Boys.  The Beastie Boys without Adam is like The Beatles without... well, take your pick.  When one is removed what remains is noticeably incomplete.  

There will be a slew of unreleased material on the way as well as re-mixes and re-imaginings of existing BB material, but we won't have any more all-new studio albums.  No more new addicting hooks that bounce around in our heads for days.  No more big chunky beats that make us feel like pimps as we thump that stuff from our Honda Civics.  And nothing more from MCA and the mesmerizing unique way he slings out his rhymes.

But, like I said, we still have a large library of Beastie Boys music, and when we start missing the guy we can always bust it out.  And we will.  We'll bust it out LOUDLY.

Handsome Boy Maudlin School

One of my favorite late 50's/early 60's rock 'n' roll trends was the proliferation of teenage car wreck songs.  They were weepy little mini-soap operas, usually told in flashback, and somebody usually died.  They had song titles like "Teen Angel" and "Last Kiss" and "Tell Laura I Love Her," some featured sound effects ("Leader of the Pack," "Dead Man's Curve") and, looking back at the charts, were immensely popular at the time.

Today I came across an Everly Brothers song I had never heard before that takes the genre a step further.  I proudly bring to you... the AIRPLANE CRASH song.

(Cannot stop staring at those pompadours.  Plus, matching shirts!)

"Ebony Eyes," written by John D. Loudermilk and performed by the Everly Brothers, was released as a single in January of 1961 and peaked at #8 on the US charts.  Incredibly, the song went to #1 in the UK despite the BBC initially banning it due to its somewhat disturbing content.

The B-side was "Walk Right Back," which would chart at #7 in the States and gave the Brothers another #1 in the UK.  At some point the record companies switched the songs so that "Walk Right Back" became the A-side single and "Ebony Eyes" the B-side.

Another commonality I just noticed, "Ebony Eyes," "Leader of the Pack," and "Dead Man's Curve" all feature a few seconds of spoken word.  I suppose that, given the narrative nature of these songs, this wasn't an unusual thing to do.  Speaking to the listener is also a good dramatic ploy (as if these songs need to be any more dramatic).

Anyway, I love finding lost treasures like these.  If anybody knows of any other old pop-music melodramas let me know.  We will put on our high school letter jackets and mourn the mangled corpses of our lost fictitious sweethearts.  It'll be fun!

[File under: They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To]

Sorry, Lars

I feel like I need to clarify that Metallica barb I made the other day.  I mean, I guess I don't NEED to clarify it, but I sort of WANT to.  Otherwise Lars, via Google Alerts, will hunt me down and litigate me.

My relationship with Metallica is complicated.  I'm sure it's the same way with a lot of people.  On one hand you have these classic Metallica songs, songs you crank up while driving, these primeval songs that force you, whether you like it or not, to make a metal face and bang your head.  That Metallica is dang near the best band ever.  And then on the other hand you have the past decade, these years of unaware self-parody, years of painful music, years of "IS THIS SERIOUSLY A SONG?".  Among their recent albums you may find a diamond in the rough, but you can't pop in St. Anger and expect the cover-to-cover rock'n'roll bliss of Master of Puppets.

So, yeah, Metallica has let me down recently, and sometimes that causes me to caustically lash out.  But then I'll hear "Wherever I May Roam" on my way to work and forget about the disappointment.

 

Remember the good times, folks.  And remember that while recording an album with Lou Reed may not have been a good idea, the band still has a substantially large library full of thrashy metallic goodness.

New Old Songs: Denison Witmer, Chris Staples

Yesterday I started a post about (of all bands) Metallica.  But, like Metallica, it became self-indulgent and out of control and pleasureless.  Unlike Metallica, though, I was able to delete everything I wrote, leaving no evidence for our distant-future alien overlords to puzzle over when they get around to analyzing our historical records and Google caches.

So instead I'll serve up these nummy nuggets:

Denison Witmer's 2005 album Are You A Dreamer? is now available as a full free download at NoiseTrade.  I've gushed about Witmer before, either here or on other blogs or aloud to myself in an empty room.  He is easy to miss, unassuming in every way.  But his music will cradle you gently while simultaneously conjuring up bittersweet imagery from vague memories.  Denison Witmer is the teenage scrapbook you forgot all about.

As far as this download is concerned, Are You A Dreamer? is vintage Witmer.  Mellow, acoustic, wistful, singersongwriter-rific.  Four bonus tracks are thrown in there as well.  Sufjan Stevens, if you're interested, does some vocal harmonizing and plays some accompanying banjos and recorders and wurlitzers and whatnot.

Recommended for people who like music.  Not recommended for people who don't.

Elsewhere in free downloads of old music, Chris Staples has made available two forgotten tracks he recorded a twelve years ago, product of a brief side-project called Donkey And Deer.  Actually, HE may have forgotten about them, but I've had those two tracks on one hard drive or another for those dozen years.  I downloaded them from MP3.com back when MP3.com was awesome, and those two files have somehow survived cut-and-pastes and computer crashes and all those things that have systematically erased pre-2001 Internet.

Get those tracks at Chris Staples' bandcamp page.

Old friends of mine will recognize at least one of those two tracks because way back when I was a mixtape-burning fiend I would usually find a way to include either song.  If you ask me for a CD full of whateversongs I would still probably stick a Donkey And Deer song on there.

Listen to "God Send A Bomb" if you'd like to be depressed out of your mind.  I like this one best.

Listen to "You Should Be Living" for something a little more motivating.

Happy Ireland Day

It's St. Patrick's Day!  A day originally intended to celebrate the patron saint of Ireland and Irish Christianity.  Now we drink beer and take drunk pictures and drunk text and drunk dial and drunk drunk drunk.

Hey, did you know St. Patrick's Day is a provincial holiday in Newfoundland (and, by extension, Labrador)?  I didn't.  Now I do.  Enjoy your day off of work, Newfie friends!  Your, uh, Saturday off of work.

Keep it real, y'all.  While enjoying your Guinness or your Kilkenny or your Smithwicks or your Harp or your Baileys or your Shamrock Shake or your anything but Corona, listen to this incomplete list of Irish rock 'n' rollaz.

(Right Click. Save As.)

Sinead O'Connor - Dagger Through The Heart

The Pogues - Sally MacLennane

Van Morrison - The Way Young Lovers Do

My Bloody Valentine - Lose My Breath

The Thrills - Say It Ain't So

The Cranberries - Hollywood

...and, of course:

U2 - Last night on Earth

[Extra points for naming that skyline.]