Taken on Route 66. Also, the theme pic for this mix.
I made another summer mix! This is almost unheard of, that I would make two mixes per season. But when I uploaded my Travelogue mix, it got pretty excellent responses, plus I *accidentally* got all that new music, so I decided to document it all!
This one is better than my first mix. I guarantee you that you will hear songs you don’t know.
Ha! Appealing to the hipster in you!
No, but seriously, they are really amazing songs. Several of the bands are local, so I’m also kind of doing a plug for their albums, which are available… somewhere. I guess this isn’t a very good plug.
Here’s another example of the cool 70s/vintage look in music videos that I was talking about.
This is The Horrors, “Still Life.” I must say, it’s pretty mellow and lethargic for a band called “The Horrors,” but I guess that’s they just have the nouveau indie irony going for them.
This blog has no set specific theme, and this is the reason: It’s because if it were solely dedicated to music, I wouldn’t be able to post thing like the following article… which actually, now that I think about it, has some musical qualities.
Apparently, there is very little science focused on studying the sounds that animals make. But wait, you say, what about all that hoopla about whale noises and dolphin clicks?
Ah, but those animals are alive. NPR covers this story about a French scientist, Marguerite Humeau, who is working on recreating the voice boxes of now-extinct animals, like Lucy. Lucy was one of the first chimpanzee found to have walked on her back legs, so scientists consider her one of the first hominids.
To recreate Lucy’s voice, Humeau studied available skeletal data from Lucy’s remains. As best she could, she constructed synthetic versions of the resonance cavities in Lucy’s skull. She even spoke to the Martin Birchall, a British doctor who performed only the second successful human larynx transplant on a California woman earlier this year.
…
“What makes the difference between a human voice and an animal sound? The difference is the brain, so we think before we talk. I mean, for most people.” – Humeau [how drôle]
So Humeau actually made physical representations of the vocal chords, then set up a system to have air pass through them at a set rate so that it would make the desired noise of the animal.
Lucy’s “voice” turned out somewhere between a groan and terrible saxophone playing.
Then, Humeau moved on to recreate the sound of a wooly mammoth. She actually met with the guy who helped Steven Spielberg with dinosaur noises on Jurassic Park.
See pictures of the recreated voice contraptions and listen to the full story here.
To celebrate not only the fin de la Tour de France, but also having the most posts this month than I EVER have accomplished before (in three years!)….
I might argue that this is the best song about Paris, ever. I mean, I’m all for “Free Man in Paris,” and all, but… damn. You can’t NOT sing along to this song.
Okay, maybe you can’t sing along because you have no idea wtf it’s saying (ha, burn), but trust me.
Translation:
I have walked along the avenue
The heart opened for the unknown
I wished to say: good morning
No matter whom
No matter who you were
I told you no matter what
It was enough talking to you
For taming you.
At the Champs- Élysées
At the Champs- Élysées
In the sun, under the rain
At noon or at midnight
There is everything you want
At the Champs- Élysées
You told me: „I have a date
In abasement with the madmen
Who spend with the guitar in the hand
From evening to morning.”
So, i have accompanied you
We sang, we danced
And we weren’t even thinking
Of kissing.
At the Champs- Élysées
At the Champs- Élysées
In the sun, under the rain
At noon or at midnight
There is everything you want
At the Champs- Élysées
Yesterday evening, two strangers
And this morning, on the avenue
Two lovers, all dazed
From the long night
And from the Étoile to Concorde
An orchestra with thousand strings
All the birds of the point of the day
Sing the love.
At the Champs- Élysées
At the Champs- Élysées
In the sun, under the rain
At noon or at midnight
There is everything you want
At the Champs- Élysées
I accidentally downloaded nearly 200 songs today. I know you don’t believe me. How could one accidentally download 200 songs?
Fair enough. I guess only about 15 of them were really by accident. But all were free. Beat that.
Anyway, you probably know how these things go: watch one YouTube video, be reminded of… that one band. Look them up on eMusic, go see if they’re in your Saved Items folder. Get preoccupied with cleaning out your saved items, then in the process, get preoccupied with organizing iTunes. In the meantime, you remember that thing you were going to look up on FrostWire, and then FrostWire tells you that they have all these immediately downloadable folk albums for free. Say wha?! You get some of those folk albums, which remind you of more stuff you had on eMusic. Then you look up that stuff on YouTube, and then you find some online software that will convert YouTube audio to downloadable MP3s. Lifesaver.
In the midst of all that, you update podcasts, subscribe to some NewsU courses, make dinner, eat chocolate, check Facebook, Tweet, write a coupla emails, do some jumpingjacks, make tea, text, and contemplate life and death.
Please tell me this sounds familiar; otherwise I’ll keep thinking I’m a freak.
Here are a few of the things that so grabbed my attention:
I don’t like the intro of this song, but once it picks up, it’s delightful. I don’t usually listen to music like this in the summer (ditching mellow electro-folk for more upbeat, dance-y things), but it’s nice for a cloudy summer afternoon.
Haven’t decided how I feel about this song, but I fiercely admire the animation.
And one more, because of the artistic, intimate portrait of the artist (literally):
A woman named Ingrid Dabringer has made portraits and drawings using maps of cities, countries, continents… anything. Dabringer’s map illustrations were recently featured on Laughing Squid.
This is my favorite of Dabringer’s illustrations, created with a map of the Phillipines:
The most recent podcast of This American Life is about breakups of all kinds. So Ira Glass includes an interview from 1987, when a 9 year old girl was interviewed about her parents’ divorce. It’s very sweet, and for me it put words in the mouths of many of the kids of divorce. I am so lucky to have no experience in this field.
It’s really cute, but it’s also extremely heartbreaking– especially the part where she says she talked to her counselor at school. Apparently, the counselor told her that out of the 400 kids at school, about 300 were going through (or had gone through) divorces. And that was 20 years ago! So, so sad.
Right now I’m kind of obsessed with these retro music videos that either incorporate legit footage from the 70s or are filmed to look like 70s-quality clips.
The music of “La Marseillaise” was written by Claude Joseph Rouget de L’isle in 1792. He was in Strasbourg at the time– and trust me, if ever there was the place to write a national anthem, it would be Strasbourg. It became the national anthem only three years later.
Because it’s classic (if you want, skip to 1:00 or 3:50; that’s when it gets ridiculously epic):
Just for fun:
BEST. VERSION. EVER. I hope this gets a million YouTube hits.
The guys on the left and right are priceless.
My only beef is that it needs more cowbell.
And, because apparently I’m never done with fireworks, here are some from Bastille Day in Lyon, France (I was there a little over a year ago!)
It is nearly Bastille Day (France’s independence day)! So I’m honoring the French… kind of.
In my french class a couple years ago, this guy from Québec came in and talked to us about the differences between French Canada and France. Mostly, that means he philosophized about hockey for an hour. He also played us this song, by the group Mes Aieux (My Ancestors).
From what I remember, and from what I understood of his explanation of the song, the lyrics are extremely morally questionable. You see, Québecoise are, for the most part, very religious (Catholic). But when they swear, they use words that also are religious terms. For instance, one of their curse words actually translates to something like, “damned altar!”
This song, “le yâbe est dans la cabane,” is about a face-off between Jesus and the Devil in a bar. It’s très comédique, especially because it uses metaphors and symbolism in words that may correspond to either the religious term, or the swear word. That makes it both very morally questionable, and very difficult to translate. I haven’t found a good translation since the one our gust speaker brought, which I don’t seem to have anymore.
If I remember correctly, it was banned from a few radio stations (or maybe all of them). Cool, huh?
“Yâbe” is the Québecois word for “diable,” which is the French word for “devil.”
“Cabane” means some sort of hut in French, which means some sort of bar in Québecois.
I woke up, and it was a Chelsea morning. The first thing that I heard was a song outside my window… Won’t you stay? We’ll put on the day, and wear it ’til the night comes.
The first thing that I saw was the sun through yellow curtains, and a rainbow on the walls. Blue, red, green, and gold welcome you… crimson crystal beads beckon. Won’t you stay?
The streets are paved with passersby, and pidgeons fly, and papers lie waiting to blow away.
The sun poured in. Like butterscotch, it stuck to all my senses.
We’ll put on the day. And we’ll talk in present tenses.
Sublime – Caress Me Down The Cat Empire – The Wine Song Beulah – Popular Mechanics for Lovers Talking Heads – Dream Operator Cee Lo Green – Bright Lights Bigger City Donovan – Super Lungs Mika – Billy Brown The Beach Boys – Come Go With Me
Sandi Thom – The Human Jukebox The Walkmen – Canadian Girl
We Are Scientists – Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt
Tokyo Police Club – Your English is Good
Ricky Fante – Are You Lonely Too? Men Without Hats – Safety Dance
Matt and Kim – Daylight
Vampire Weekend – I Think Ur A Contra
This video is filed under “new Americana.” I don’t like Americana. I like this song.
Since I already post a lot of YouTube videos, I’m going to have this kick of posting cool music videos. And I’m going to try to find rarely-seen ones so that there isn’t just a ton of OK GO. But, there might be a little OK GO.
Every season (which happens to roughly coincide with the quarters of the school year; imagine that) I naturally make up a new playlist. I don’t actually plan to do it; usually I just start listening to new songs about every 3 months, and then realize that the seasons have changed and I have begun a new quarter. The songs aren’t always new, either. Sometimes I rediscover an old artist or just keep waking up with the same familiar song in my head. The playlist is usually about 40 minutes long and, if I don’t rush it artificially, it takes about 2 weeks to complete.
Here is my Summer 2011 playlist so far:
Sublime – Caress Me Down The Cat Empire – The Wine Song Beulah – Popular Mechanics for Lovers Talking Heads – Dream Operator Cee Lo Green – Bright Lights Bigger City Donovan – Super Lungs Mika – Billy Brown The Beach Boys – Come Go With Me
Sandi Thom – The Human Jukebox
I cooked perfectly done green beans tonight. They are soft but also just barely squeaky-crunchy. I have no secrets; it was simply luck.
Also, this is my first 4th of July in a city. Usually, I am in my quiet, rural hovel at home. (I like the term “rural hovel.” It reminds me of a “remote hamlet.” Hence the title of this post.)
There is a lot of noise right now. I kind of wish I were a dog so I could require valium and go put my head under a pillow. Alas, I am not.
So I was thinking how excellent it would be to have some experimental electronica that incorporated those noises. On a whim, I Googled “firework music.” Unfortunately, many of the results referenced a song called “Firework” by this brunette bimbo named Katy Perry?
Anyway, I also came across this gem:
I absolutely love Handel. There’s the Messiah and all, but damn. Look at all he did.
He also composed some operas. And I think it’s pretty impressive that a lot of his music was used in Italian operas. I don’t know a ton about opera or German vs. Italian classical music, but I would bet that at that time, there were very distinct sounds from Germany and Italy. So for Handel’s music to cross that boundary and be applicable in an Italian opera is probably quite notable.
But… I wish I knew more.
So tomorrow when you’re watching fireworks, put in headphones and blast some Handel!
I hope someday I have the opportunity to view royal fireworks while an orchestra plays Handel.
So the Tour de France started yesterday! The course looks exciting. I’ve only been to three or four towns that they are cycling through, but hell, what difference does it make? I’ve seen enough to know that France is fucking gorgeous.
I can’t tell you much more about that, because I’m not very invested in the race this year. I used to watch the Tour every year with my dad, who is an avid cyclist, and I still dream of going to watch one of the mountain races with him one day. But since Lance Armstrong quit, Tyler Hamilton got busted for drugs, Alberto Contador is a douche, and Jan Ullrich is long gone, I don’t know any of the names anymore, and I’m much less invested in the whole thing.
However, I do have a way to celebrate the occasion. And I will have more music when the whole thing is over.
If you’ve never seen the movie “The Triplets of Belleville,” you should go do so now.
Watch the trailer here (the synopsis is under the video):
This movie has everything: A dog, elderly women singing, a woman tuning the spokes of a bike wheel to get the best sound from them, heartache, the mafia, some tropical beach, the Tour de France, more heartache… It’s a really haunting movie. Incredible soundtrack and animation (for all I know about animation), but it gets dark, and there is very little dialogue. Honestly, it’s a little chilling. But… it’s set in Paris. It’s the city of lights! How depressing can it be?
Well… actually, it can be intensely depressing. Especially in some neighborhoods (ahem, quartiers).
I imagine it’s difficult for a director to pull of heart-wrenching and heart-warming simultaneously, but Sylvain Chomet does so.
He also teams up with well known French director and screenwriter Jacques Tati for “L’Illusioniste,” (umm, “The Illusionist”), which is also an impressive animated film with little dialogue. But maybe I’ll cover that later.
This is something that makes me cringe and tear up a little bit just thinking about it: Some brilliant musicians have figured out that the most popular songs through history have been very simple, very repetitive, and very standard.
It feels like, as music consumers, we have been cheated out of good songs. It’s very manipulative. “They” know what we want to hear! It feels wrong…
Don’t believe me?
Told you.
But what that video leaves out is that those four chords have been around for centuries. The original one hit wonder?
Fuckin’ Pachelbel.
“Punk music is a joke; It’s really just Baroque”
I love that guy. The first time I saw that video, I had MySpace. That is a long time ago. So I’ve known about these four chord songs for years, and the music industry still gets me. But… it’s just like blues songs, right? I mean, those I, IV, V chord songs… the 12-bar blues? That’s just as repetitive, right?
