Music You'd Better Listen To

Booker T & The MGs - Green Onions

Website / Myspace / iTunes

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Forgive me for the past two days; the parents have been in town, and I’ve been spending my nights (my usual writing time for this blog) with them. I don’t feel like I let myself down, so I hope you feel the same.

I was with the ‘rents tonight, too… we went out to Fogo de Chao (I think that’s the name), this Brazilian steakhouse on Lasalle. It was a fun time, definitely a restaurant experience. Very unlike our other huge restaurant experience on Thursday night: they took me to Alinea, for which I am DEEPLY grateful.

Heard this song tonight on the radio while cabbing back home and was reminded of its insane funkitude. Green Onions is one of those rare timeless, cultural-group-less track; a song that will work wherever you are, with whomever you’re with.

Notorious B.I.G. & Frank Sinatra - Juicy/New York New York (DJ Cappel & Smitty)

Website (Sinatra) / Myspace (Sinatra) / iTunes (Sinatra) / Website (BIG) / Myspace (BIG) / iTunes (BIG) / Myspace (Cappel & Smitty) / via Blue Eyes Meets Bed-Stuy

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Okay, so those of you who know me know that I’m a sucker for a good mashup. And, while this isn’t nearly the best produced mashup I’ve ever heard (its core is definitely too short, for one), I was thoroughly impressed when I just listened to it for the first time.

My buddy Max at work turned me on to the Blue Eyes Meets Bed-Stuy album today at work, and I can’t wait to listen to the whole thing tomorrow. This track was just too enticing to leave alone for tonight. And now that I listened to it… well, I’m glad I gave in.

Anything that combines my love of Biggie and Sinatra is great by me.

Hell, this city’s why I first started listening to Sinatra — I picked up this Greatest Hits vinyl for a buck or two at the inaugural Pitchfork Fest. Thank you, Chicago!

MC Hammer - Have You Seen Her

Website / Myspace / iTunes

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I kid you not, dear readers. Today’s piece of music that you’d better be listening to is none other than MC Hammer’s infamous love ballad.

Now why would I post this, you might be asking yourselves. Well, hell, I’m asking myself the same question. It relates back to today at the office, but I can’t remember what possessed me to turn on some Hammer. It started out with some Biz Markie, playing Just A Friend for my two office-mates… and then it came to this.

LOOOOOOOVE, OH LOVE! LOVE IS A FEELING!

Love is a feeling that the Hammer definitely needs, ahhhh yeah.

Anyway, I’m pretty tired right now. This is a nice chill song, and amazingly campy (those of you who know me know how much I love camp — given the choice, I’d rather watch 1960s Batman than most of what I can watch on TV these days). Which is in stark contrast to how I remember re-visiting this song.

By revisiting, I mean that I hadn’t heard this track in many years — the last time I probably gave it a listen was between the ages of 3 and 5 (1990 to 1992), as I was MC Hammer’s Youngest-Biggest Fan. I was the day-for-day champion of MC Hammer adoration.

And then, one day, I happened on his Greatest Hits album (I was expecting it to be an EP), and decided to put it on in my car, ironically blasting all of his old hits. So I rode around Montreal pumping Have You Seen Her all ghetto-styles out of my Mom’s Volvo.

Classy. I know.

Buraka Som Sistema - Kalemba (Afrikan Boy Remix)

Website (BSS) / Myspace (BSS) / iTunes (BSS) / Myspace (Afrikan)

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Goddammit Tumblr. I just wrote this post. Stop deleting my writing into the dead spaces and unexplored corners of the interwebs; I’m tired and losing my wit with each minute!

At least this song is energizing and bouncy.

I mentioned before, but you didn’t get to see it, that I never really got the hype around Buraka Som Sistema until I heard this track earlier today. It’s minimal without sounding minimal, which is exactly what I like in dub-y (I have no idea what else you would call this, please enlighten me?) music. I’ll usually post really busy, loud, obnoxious tracks… but this only has a few layers, none of which really drives in its positive space, but Afrikan Boy’s use of the negative space, the silence, just makes this perfect for me.

I also apologized that I didn’t write yesterday. Only got home after the midnight cutoff, and I wanted to write after work, not after a night of HBO.

Black diamond black diamond hey! (Or is it blood diamond?)

Go watch The Rundown. Or IMDB it. We were talking about it last night, and this track reminded me of that.

Lily Allen - Fuck You (Doctor Rosen Rose Rx)

Website (Lily) / Myspace (Lily) / iTunes (Lily) / Website (Rosen) / Myspace (Rosen)

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Not gonna lie, I wasn’t too enamored with the new Lily Allen album. Maybe she passed her prime for me? I loved Alright Still when it came up, and some of those jams still get me in the right mood.

(Though, to give credit where it’s due, I’ve got to add that the video for Fuck You was amazing.)

Anyway, Chicagoist pointed me to Dr. Rosen Rosen’s re-edits of It’s Not Me, It’s You (aptly re-titled It’s Not Me, It’s Dr. Rosen Rosen). It’s really what I was hoping for — a maturation of Lily’s sound, not just her lyrics. You can download it (for free) from his website up top.

Now here’s where I’m tempted to talk about the nature of sophomore albums, or how online culture has made remixing/remaking songs to how you would imagine them available to anyone with a halfway decent computer. But that’s kind of cliché, and I’m not in the mood to talk about that.

Instead, I’ll just say how amazing it is to do things in your underwear. Seriously, I spent a lot of today hanging out in my apartment, wearing pretty much nothing at all. I ate a peanut butter sandwich that way, and it was the best peanut butter sandwich I’ve ever had. Probably because of my limited clothing, because there was nothing really special done to it.

I’ve fried bacon in the same manner, and maybe it wasn’t the tastiest bacon I’ve ever had, but it was damn sure the most fun I’ve ever had preparing bacon. Ever.

Got a problem with me being under-clothed? Fuck you. Fuck you very very much. Unless, of course, you’re my apartment-mate, and you walk in while I’m at the stove in my well-worn skivvies.

Hall & Oates - You Make My Dreams

Website / Myspace / iTunes

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I wasn’t thinking of posting this today until I loaded up another track, then realized that I shouldn’t leave 500 Days of Summer on such a negative note when it was such a well-done film that I really appreciated. So what better to put on than what is sure to become the classic track set to be revived as this summer’s happy jam?

When I saw this song and how it was used in the previews/teasers (I can’t remember which, or if it was both…), I thought it was a throwaway. Imagine my delight to see it in the actual movie!

Seriously, the sheer energy and emotion conveyed in this scene rivaled the scenes from the preview of Nine that led up to the movie (which I’m also incredibly excited about, by the way).

But yeah. Please don’t let my pessimism of that one ruined moment tarnish your opinion of this movie (assuming you assign value to what I write). The film is honest in all the right places, and avoids becoming cliché in all the right places.

Regina Spektor - Hero

Website / Myspace / iTunes

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Okay, so I’d like to preface this post with two things:

1) I actually like some Regina Spektor. Not love, but I like her music.

2) I really, REALLY thoroughly enjoyed 500 Days of Summer.

With those two things out of the way:

WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING WITH THE PLACEMENT OF THIS SONG?

Again, I should probably give the director and his crew some slack, as it really fit for a fair bit of the scene in which it was used (I’m trying to avoid spoilers, here).

A lot of this track really highlighted the differences between Tom’s expectations and his reality. I don’t know about the lyrics (still haven’t listened all that much). But goddammit, they were just WRONG for the ending.

“I’m the hero of this story” came at the perfect moment. But it should have cut out shortly after, in favour of the ambient noise — or even silence — as the street turned into a sketch.

Look, I love well-placed music in movies. But this just killed the moment.

Santigold feat. Andre 3000 & Bun B - You’ll Find A Way Player

Myspace (Santigold) / iTunes (Santigold) / Website (Outkast) / Myspace (Outkast) / iTunes (Outkast) / Website (Bun B) / Myspace (Bun B) / iTunes (Bun B)

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Bah! Humbug. I wanted to write about how 500 Days of Summer spoiled this one magical moment with a song that just didn’t fit, but I need to get the soundtrack first. So instead, you get this.

(Oh, by the way, the movie was actually fantastic. There were just two moments that irked me, which is pretty damn good for a contemporary American movie, all things considered.)

So, International Player’s Anthem is one of my absolute favourite hip hop songs, past, present, and probably future. You can probably imagine, then, why I flipped over this: this version keeps enough of Andre and Bun B’s soul and just… amazingness?… while making it nice and summer-rocky.

I played this for my office-mates today, and they were shocked that I knew all (well, most) of the lyrics to the Player’s Anthem part. I don’t get that stereotype.

Ultra Orange & Emmanuelle - Don’t Kiss Me Goodbye

Myspace / Facebook / iTunes

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I was kind of hoping to write this post about 500 Days of Summer, but I realize that by waiting until after I see the movie will push me too close to the wire. So you’ll have to do with listening to the song used in my absolute favourite instance of music use in film.

I had a (brief) conversation with Duarte Da Silva, aka @modernmod, on Twitter about how beautifully this track is used in the 2007 French film The Diving Bell & The Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et le Papillon).

Every time I hear it, I think of wandering streets in the middle of the night, a sort of bleak hope hovering over me, knowing that even if everything is wrong with life, things can still be okay. I think of darkness surrounding me, except for a disturbing red glow from an electric Jesus (or was it Mary?). I think of driving in the car last summer with Aldeli, driving to some part of Montreal I had never visited before, and admiring the beauty of the known unknown.

The Very Best feat. Ezra Koenig - Warm Heart of Africa

Myspace

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Wow. The mood of this song is in stark contrast to the mood of what I was just writing over at Thoughts. That’s life.

So I didn’t go to Pitchfork yesterday. I don’t know if I mentioned that, and I’m not wasting precious writing time to check. Missing these guys turns out to be my biggest regret. But I guess not that much — they were on the B stage.

It’s weird. I’m sure everybody had flocked to the Flaming Lips, and rightfully so: they’re an absurdly amazing Festival-style band. They can rock a crowd no matter how close to or far from the action you are. With Wayne’s hamster ball, confetti cannons, cute girls dancing in short-skirt alien, Santa Claus, and other costumes… well, you get the picture. But you really don’t. Just… go see them.

Anyway, if I’d have been there, I wish these guys would have been on the A stage instead. That way, I would have been able to listen to them while staring at what I like to call “the Joshua Tree of Union Park”. There was this beautiful tree, lit perfectly, against a stark backdrop of dark trees. Old-looking, tall, and leafy. It stood out majestically in the park at night.

I spent most of The National’s set looking at that tree, and would have loved to do the same during The Very Best.