Kevin Devine “Murphy’s Song”

Perhaps not the best song on Devine’s new album, but I can’t stop playing it. I can’t stop playing the album. Go get it!

Amazon

MySpace

Listen to “Murphy’s Song”

Hello World

I got a ton of new music yesterday. If I sift thought anything good…you’ll see it here in the near future.

- Matt

Return of SOTD: Matt & Kim “Daylight”

A great dancing/running/smiling/grooving/drinking song. Enjoy! Really. Do it.

Matt & Kim “Daylight”

I’m baaAAAaaack!

Hello all.

Here’s the song from the end of the Scrubs finale. It’s “Book Of Love” by Peter Gabriel. It’s pretty.

I’m taking summer classes, and I’m bogged down with work, but more songs should be on the way.

Peter Gabriel “Book Of Love”

Break Time

Hey everybody. I’ll be taking a break from posting for at least a week due to finals. If you need a music fix then check out http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/.

Until next time

- Matt

Art McGregor on Outkast, Porn, and The Karate Kid

The man, the myth, the legend. Art McGregor. Check out his blog for sexy pictures and drunken memories. Take it away Art.

Outkast “Aquemini”

Outkast “SpottieOttieDopaliscious”

We’ve all got that first album we remember listening to in the car 9,162 times when we or one of our friends got the driver’s license. It’s a cassette for anyone born between 1966 and 1981, and a CD for anyone born between 1981 and the present. That’s not entirely true. I can’t imagine many people born this decade have driven a car. But hey, I don’t know the laws in North Dakota. I’m no constitutional scholar.

In the summer of 1994, my buddy Misko got his license, wore Southern University shorts and drove his Chevrolet Celebrity to and from Dairy Queen on weeknights, and we’d listen to Outkast’s Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik (1994.) I could have sworn there was a double-c in that album name somewhere. Misko wasn’t allowed to drive on the weekends (yet,) and, like all the other 1,100 students at Poland Seminary High School, Misko rocked white chocolate skin, also known as Caucasian.

We rolled the windows down. They weren’t automatic.

Unlike movies, I have trouble differentiating between a group’s “best” album and my “favorite” album. With Outkast, it could go both ways. Like dudes in bi-curious porn videos. Seriously. What’s up with that? When I go to my favorite adult sites, I want to know I’m clicking on the good “bi” material. Oops. There’s no need for that discussion on this blog. We’ve all been there.

Apologies. To the kids. To the entire Husky Nation.

It’s like I can say, “Rocky IV” is my favorite in the series, but “Rocky II” is the best movie. No questions asked or answered. ”The Next Karate Kid” does not warrant consideration. But I still don’t know if Radiohead’s OK Computer (1997) is better than The Bends (1995) just because I like it more on its surface.

Aquemini (1998) is Outkast’s finest album. Best album artwork, too. The drawing makes this Art’s heartbeat. Not really. Just trying to be poetic. Fail.

Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik (not a word) is my favorite. Outkast didn’t release an album with a name that actually included a real word until its fifth studio release Big Boi and Dre Present … Outkast (2001).

Their third album (Aquemini) is a non-stop listening joyride, says Peter Travers at Rolling Stone magazine. He never really said that. Doesn’t mean it’s not true. It’d be more true if you started the album with track No. 2. Return of the ‘G,’ a great opening song at No. 2, has nothing to do with Gatorade’s latest advertising campaign. The next three songs reach their highest point with the title track Aquemini, a song best listened to, strangely enough, when high. I don’t know what to say about the song other than it starts and ends but at various points in the tune you’ll say to yourself, “Wow. This song still is going on?” Maybe you’ll say it with your buddies when you’re driving to Dairy Queen. At this point of our lives, we’re allowed to drive on the weekends whether we made our beds this week or not. What’s up adulthoooooooood?!?!?

West Savannah didn’t make the cut for the band’s debut album (Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik.) I didn’t find this out until about a year ago, and now every time I listen to it I can’t believe I didn’t put to and too together. Also includes one of my most favorite lyrics: “February 1st, 1975 it happened. Was born in West Savannah way before I started rappin’. “

Making up playlists for parties is amongst my favorite activities. I mainly only do favorite activities as things I don’t let routinely get pushed to the way side. Putting SpottieOttieDopaliscious on a playlist is a guaranteed way to get any party going/continuing. It’s not even a “party song,” come to think of it. It’s just a song everyone has heard at least once and it’s un-not-likeable (not a word.)

That “not a word” thing kind of works for Outkast.

Other singles on the album are Rosa Parks and Da Art of Storytellin’ (Part I).

Wild Wednesday 2/24 – too longgg, back hooome

T.I. “Dead and Gone”

Deep Tracks With Dan – The Hold Steady “Stuck Between Stations” and “Party Pit”

The Hold Steady

So, I am sitting here in my environmental chemistry class with nothing but music in my head. I find that with my busy schedule, music has played more of an escape for me. I find myself listening to songs that take me to a place that I want to go. For example, I listen to a lot of Bruce when I want to think about my time spent backpacking through Europe. Even though Bruce might be one of the more classically American bands I listen to, I found myself listening to him constantly when I sat on trains gliding through the Swiss Alps and the lowlands of Eastern Europe.

The Hold Steady, a band that Matt introduced me to during freshman year, takes me to my time spent road-tripping through California and Nevada (my home state.) It’s hard for anyone to describe what a certain song means to them because it’s such a personal feeling. I think that is what is great about music; everyone takes something different from a certain song. While many people who hear this song hear just another rock song, I take away something totally different, with both of us being right.

Comments are always welcome! I would love to hear about what everyone thinks about these songs!

Thanks for reading.

A True Sean Rose Guest Review

[BTW: I've been putting album titles in bold and song titles in italics. I know this isn't the common format, but it's how I've been standardizing things on CtheH. I'll probably go back and fix this all at some point (albums go in italics and songs go in "quotes"), but until then just keep this in mind. Also, when I post the guest reviews, everything before the album photo is by me and everything after is by our guest.]

I would like to introduce our newest contributor, Sean Rose. This modern renaissance man twitters, blogs, makes comics for the Uconn daily newspaper, and probably does a whole lot more that I’m unaware of. His review today, a special for our 90’s flavored Tuesday, is of Primal Scream’s Screamadelica [1991.] Enjoy!

I am not sure if many folks my age remember, since we were all a little too young at the time, but the early 90’s were drenched in trance-y dance-rock. Maybe this craze didn’t hit America quite as hard as I think it did – we had Jesus Jones and EMF dish out their respective one-hit wonders, but Nirvana pretty much wiped the slate clean in terms of cool early 90’s music trends. Britain, though, was a whole other story. Those blokes were pullin’ up their baggy pants, poppin’ some sweet ecstasy (before it was made illegal, I imagine) and havin’ one massive, hazy, multicolored dance party all the freakin’ time.

At least, this is the image I see in my head every time I pop in Primal Scream’s Screamadelica, an album that marries Stones-y snarl with massive house/dub beats and the ever-present haze of early 90’s Manchester drug culture. From what I remember, Primal Scream – fronted by the Jesus and Mary Chain’s former drummer Bobby Gillespie – were not much of a dance-rock band before Screamadelica’s release defined their career. In the late 80’s, they started off as a Byrds-y folk-rock band before molting that image away and somehow becoming noisy MC5/Stooges knockoffs for a little while. And then, out of fucking nowhere, Screamadelica is released and Primal Scream is transformed into a house-techno-rock machine, to the point where it doesn’t even sound like Primal Scream anymore. Hell, let’s be honest, most of this album probably isn’t Primal Scream – the only songs that sound like fully-formed “band” arrangements are the gospel opener Movin’ on Up and the sweetly acoustic Damaged. Everything else sounds like Bobby Gillespie’s disaffected British coos floating over producer Andrew Weatherall’s expansive, crazy beats – this, without a doubt, was THE dance record of early 90’s Britain, throwing in every respective style possible – psychedelia, garage rock, house, sample-heavy hip-hop, gospel, pop, and even a little shoegaze – and shoving it all together in one beautifully hazy symphony to unchecked debauchery.

The best songs on Screamadelica are paired together, right in the middle of the album. Come Together, with its lovely gospel vocals, tastefully sweet guitar samples, uplifting Bobby Gillespie vocal and funky beats, is a real celebration and probably one of the most genuine attempts at fusing gospel and house to be found on the record. Then, there is easily the finest song on the album and one of the best dance songs ever, the classic Loaded, an entirely vocal-less piece that takes the bass line and guitar from Primal Scream’s own I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have and marries it with an irresistibly powerful drumbeat sampled from God knows where, a weird sample of Bobby Gillespie singing Robert Johnson’s Terrapin Blues, and a bit of repeated Peter Fonda dialogue from the 1966 film “The Wild Angels.” But none of the samples matter – just listen to the song, and everything makes sense. Clocking in at a perfect seven minutes, it is one of my all-time favorite dance songs, an addictive groove that never lets up and makes you wish, wish to God, that you were on a dance floor right at that moment. There are other nifty grooves on this record that I appreciate, but Come Together and especially Loaded are so killer that I feel like I don’t even need to mention anything else.

As for the rest of this album? Doesn’t reach the true glory of those couple tracks, but there’s plenty to like. Primal Scream clearly had a love of Exile on Main Street-era Stones, and it shows in the giddy opener Movin’ on Up and the sweetly tortured late-night acoustic dirge Damaged. There are some appropriately loopy, trippy moments to be found here too: a cover of the 13th Floor Elevators’ Slip Inside This House is trance-y as all get-out (althogh sadly, unlike the original, there is no electric jug,) and creepy numbers like Inner Flight, I’m Comin’ Down, and Shine Like Stars bring the negative side-effects of drug culture to life. Several of the other dance songs strike me as kind of generic – Don’t Fight It, Feel It and Higher Than The Sun being examples – and they tend to go on for a little too long. So if you’re not fond of feeling like you’re stuck in the middle of a techno dance floor, waiting desperately for your friends to pull you off the floor and throw you into the back of their van, this record might not be for you. But if you, like me, feel the constant need to relive an early-90’s dance-rock club fantasy that never really existed, then Screamadelica is a place to call home.

Primal Scream Loaded

- Sean Rose

Teenage Tuesday 2/24 – while we were getting high

Oh, Oasis. I’ve been listening to “D’You Know What I Mean” over and over while trying to put together this post, and honestly, I am getting annoyed by it. I was going to post it for today’s song, but I’m not the sadistic type. Instead, I’m posting an often overlooked track, Go Let It Out, from the most overlooked Oasis album, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. Enjoy!

Oasis “Go Let It Out”

[The embed is working now, but I'm going to keep the Youtube vid up just incase it goes on the fritz.]

Mash-up Monday – just your favorite DJ savoir

 

 

DJ Shadow sorting through 45s to make yet another perfect mash-up

 

DJ Shadow “Fixed Income”

Embed fixed. Enjoy!

Saturday Night Live – life is short but sweet for certain

Just about everyone has their opinion about Dave Matthews Band. I’ve heard everything from, “They are the best band ever,” to “Dave Matthews is a tool, and my 3 year old brother can play guitar better then him.” All I have to say is that DMB live is a million worlds away from DMB in the studio. Their studio work is great, and they’ve pumped out a bunch of hits, but DMB is a live band. We live in a world where many bands are fabricated in the studio by big record labels, mass marketed to target audiences, and end up sounding like shit live (that was a bit gratuitous, but it really has been too long since I last trashed Avril.) But back to the point…DMB is incredible live. There is just an energy to the music that comes through. This is his alternate intro to Two Step for the Central Park crowd:

So I was dreaming 
I find myself up here standing 
Before me there 100,000 friends 
Gathered one and all 
And so decided 
We could rule it all if we should 
Dance all the way across 
The greatest city in the nether world

This is Two Step live at Central Park by DMB. It’s roughly 19 minutes long, but if you don’t have the time to listen to it all, at least listen to the first 2 minutes. The bass (I think) intro and opening lyrics are worth it.

Dave Matthews Band “Two Step (Live)”

Deep Tracks with Dan – Counting Crows “A Long December”

Counting Crows

Short post today!

Recently, a friend of mine gave me the 250 top songs from the 90’s, and I added them to my Itunes library. So, between the Cher, Brandy, Vanilla Ice and Coolio, I found a song that I really forgot about since it came out in 1997. There is no denying Counting Crows is way past their indie rock phase. However, Long December still feels like it has the “it” that made Counting Crows a very recognizable band, even now that the 90’s have come and gone.

Thanks for reading!

F’in Fun Friday – Marilyn started the fire

Awesome vid:

Another: http://yeli.us/Flash/Fire.html

And just for fun:

Have a fantastic weekend all. Also, the great Sean Rose may make an appearance next week. Keep an eye out.

- Matt

Thursday is for Lovers 2/19 – Pack your bag, your smokes in your pocket

Dexter Freebish “Leaving Town”

 

More later.

- Matt

 

More: Today I wrote a paper. Also, The Office was a rerun. And, Dexter Freebish is not girly.