Can't Stand It, I Know You Planned It

RIP MCA

"Adam Yauch, one-third of the pioneering hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, has died at the age of 48, Rolling Stone has learned. Yauch, also known as MCA, had been in treatment for cancer since 2009. The rapper was diagnosed in 2009 after discovering a tumor in his salivary gland."

Beastie Boys Co-Founder Adam Yauch Dead at 48 - Rolling Stone

Songs about happiness murmured in dreams

I knew I would leave you with babies and everything

On this date, in 1989, the Cure released Disintegration. I love this album.

Pictures of You

Lovesong

Fascination Street

If it is accurate to say that I love this album, and as I wrote that I love this album above, it is accurate, it is safe to say that I adore this song.

Watching these videos, I was struck by a couple of things. The first being that these are great rock songs. Fascination Street is sublime in brilliance.

And then we get to the title track...

Disintegration

This is another a great rock song and it has one of my favorite lyrics of all time...

I never said that I would stay 'til the end, I knew I would leave you with babies and everything...

One of the other things that I observed is that they were great in spite of the shtick. Rollins makes a joke about Robert Smith saying that he is a "Hell of a songwriter" but why did he make that "choice".

I am just glad that this album was made and fifteen year old me loved this album nearly as much as thirty seven year old me does.

Monday Morning Looking Up

(As opposed to Sunday Morning Coming Down)

Song that deserves to be remade

Teacher Dave and I were talking about this song the other day. It is an incredibly dark song about addiction and relapse and it has not aged well. Part of it is the synthetically awful Casio tinged keyboard tones, part of it is the drum machine, and part of it is because it evokes a certain feeling of the '80s and not the good part.

So, here is my suggestion...some act that plays down and dirty rock and roll should remake this song. I would listen to it.

Image all the people
I saw this the other day and it still bothers me.

Things like this often bother me. Not that there is an obvious mistake, everyone makes those, including me (see the lack of editing on this post and/or entire site.) but that a really nice image and idea was ruined by something that could have been corrected by the designer asking someone else to take a look. (For the record, I do not know who designed it, and this is not a veiled or passive aggressive attack on someone. I just think that it was a great flyer ruined by something silly.)

FAILBlog has things like this all the time, and while some of them are quite amusing, most of them just irritate me. This like this prove one of two things: People too busy to care about quality control or people who do not care about quality control at all. One is an issue that can be remedied with staffing and training and the other makes me weep for the future.

Self Abuse
Last night, someone who knows me quite well, asked me not to do something today for my benefit and offered me options to do other things, and I insisted that I would be fine. Well, they were correct. I am, and will continue to remain, an idiot. In this vein, if you are not using RunKeeper to keep track of your activities, what are you using? A number of people I know use Daily Mile but I do not like it as much. Anyway, just askin'.

Ponies that are not "My Little"
WRGB (aka CBS 6 Albany) has a handful of programs that I will watch. HIMYM is the only scripted series that I enjoy though I will watch BBT when I catch it. However, they do news quite well. 60 Minutes is the gold standard. CBS Sunday Morning is wonderful and Face The Nation is my Sunday Morning Talking Head Program Of Choice (from now on SMTHPOC) and now that John Dickerson is the Political Director for CBS News and on the program every week I do make time to watch it. My SMTHPOC was supposed to be a hour long this past Sunday with the first half being an interview with Vice President Biden (which was great) and the second half being the "regular" show. At 10:59, I was told that most local affiliates had decided to keep with the second half hour and I assumed because I live in the CD which is the seat of power for one of the largest economies in the world that some of the people living around here would want to see what the talking heads had to say.

Then...

THERE WAS A CARTOON ABOUT PEOPLE AND THEIR HORSIES SOLVING CRIMES AND HAVING ADVENTURES ON THE FRAKING SCREEN!

CBS 6, who was watching this? Better question, were you better serving the public by showing F***ING CARTOON PONIES over a news program? I am being serious about this question? Were you acting in the public trust by doing this? Did you think that no one would notice or just that no one would care?

Get back to me on this.

And during the few moments that we have left, . . . We want to talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand.

Cult of Personality

Let's Go Crazy?

My allergies, which I only luckily get every three years or so, acted up with a force that is wonderfully unique. Seriously, I tweeted earlier that I want to take a tack hammer to the space between my eyes and I was not kidding. Something else will come to my rescue (Alfalfa supplements have been suggested) but as of now, nothing is working for me.

That does not mean that I am total shutdown mode though, and I had to do some running around this afternoon.

Just because my head was pounding did not mean that my journey was going to be without music. (Really, leaving the house without a book and music would be really odd behavior on my part, I expect to be buried with an iPod and a book just in case I get bored in my casket.)

Using the power of the shuffle, I heard a song that I had not heard since...well...last Friday with Teacher Dave but I did not expect it to shuffle on up (Think about what would be on my Shuffle for a minute...Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Matt Nathanson, David Grey...not something like this.) and it made me feel instantly better (for at least the time the music was playing).



Yep, I was rocking out to Prince in the middle of Price Chopper. I was dancing with my headphones on to Prince in the frozen food aisle (I needed a pizza) and it was awesome in a way that I was completely making even more of a fool of myself than usual.

Prince prompted me to, in fact, go crazy, and it was wonderful.

90s Nostalgia - The Suggestions

So, I asked for advice yesterday about music for TEA and the interwebs provided.

• Apart from "I Wanna (Sexx You Up), most of the suggestions were appropriate
• Oh, I chose which song represented the band.
• It was curious that U2 was not mentioned.
• I think Bell Biv DeVoe's Poison may be an important lesson for TEA...i.e. "Never trust a big butt and a smile."

Bell Biv Devoe


Paula Abdul


The Fresh Prince (of Bel Air)


Violent Femmes


INXS


Digapble Planets


Portishead


The Cure


The Bangles


The Charlatans UK


Matthew Sweet


Beastie Boys


New Order


Faith No More


Color Me Badd

(Thank you to Erik, Joy, Andrea, Tracy, Sean and Mike for offering suggestions)

90s Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a combination of two Greek words meaning "returning home" combined with "pain or ache". (I read this while in Boston last weekend and it stuck with me.)

Earlier in the week, Lux sent me a piece from Slate about showing the 1992 Reading Festival performance of Nirvana at this year's festival.



The Slate piece bothered me...for a couple of reasons...some of it is an inside baseball thing about Slate being contrarian when it comes to the general mood, and part of is how they will happily borrow ideas from New York Mag and slag them at the same time.

Mostly it is because the early 90s were different, because...well...they were my formative years. This is when I was a late teenager and young twenty-something. I have been spending a lot of one on one time with TEA lately, and I have been consuming his media in an effort to understand him and I am struck how different his view of the world is than mine it.

Then...I got to thinking about how to introduce this era to TEA.

TEA is too young for Nevermind, and too young for Ten (Do you think that Jeremy would cause nightmares?)

Lux and I had a conversation about hot to introduce TEA to my music and what would be appropriate for him, and all I could come up with is "Squeeze".

But...I know I am leaving bands out...

What late 80s or early 90s band would you introduce TEA to?

A song...

A classic song...

Well, maybe not a classic...

Just a song.



MAL and HJ77, I blame you for this, though it is better than "Forever in Blue Jeans".

Someone had to do it!

I know that at least some of you have had this in your head due to the weather.



Come on, sing along, and break out your overalls! I know some of you still have them!

(And for some of you, it is one of my first memories of you.)

This is a great summer song!

The only number that you need.

I hate discount cards. I find them to be awful for a couple of reasons though I am all about getting things for less money.

This past weekend, a friend and I were in CVS. You see, she had forgotten her sun screen and she needed some. She had also forgotten her CVS Value Card.

Happily, I volunteered mine.

"Can you use mine?"
"Sure"
"It is 5-1-8-8-6-7-5-3-0-9."

You know what? It worked. My friend received about half off her sunscreen.

When I read this, a week or so ago, I was skeptical, but now I am a believer in Tommy Tutone.

I guess, I no longer need Jenny's number unless it is for CVS.