Elevator Music
Every third blue moon I write about things other than economics and technology. So here are some good ear compatible noises from around the weboshphere. These songs you won’t hear on the radio but the terms artists and mainstream are a shade antithetical in my opinion.
Nobody will argue that Imogen Heap will get much face time on the E! channel (unfortunately) but she is a raving musical genius. She actually flew to LA from London to do this for her friend Zac Braff (Scrubs, Garden State) and it was a one off performance. My mind is boggled.
The following is my favorite Strokes song. Ize of the World. If you Google “Ize of the World” my blog shows up 4th, so it gets me a lot of traffic. Why is that interesting? Because musicians comment on my blog. I like to think the only person who knows this much about the song is a member of the band… To wit:
“It’s actually a bend that projects upward from the 3rd of the major 1rst to a 4th spanning the length of one of the arpeggios that he plays for the rest of the chorus. The reason it’s so great sounding I suppose is because it is the highest note at this point in the song and if you’re really riding the arpeggios (which themselves utilize a heavily cinimatic progression akin to that which is popular in alot of scifi movies i.e. the Matrix) that he’s weaving it sort of projects your gut into euphoria for half a second before returning to normalcy which is just moderate enough to make it rock. PS arpeggios are way underrated which is why the Strokes rock + the guitar solo is probably the best thing I’ve heard in pop music to date. Sorry for the overindulgence.”
This is one of the reasons I like having a blog.
The Smiths aren’t exactly underground but ridiculously talented they were. The guitarist strikes me as one of those musicians who joins a band and humbles the lead singer. Morrissey was never as good as The Smiths for this very reason. I listened to this CD almost exclusively on my journey to Maui. I rented a moped and rode around in the humidity with my brother. It wasn’t terrible. Here is Radiohead playing one of my favorite Smiths songs…
Underworld is just begging for a soundtrack in a movie featuring Angelina Jolie in some sort of pale, edgy, hacker underground scene. This one accompanied me on my morning journey to a finance degree for four years…
MIA. Daughter of a war lord from the Tamil Tigers. I could have gone with Paper Planes or something you hear on the radio but that would be incompatible with the design pattern of this post. Weird? I’ll grant you that…
I couldn’t resist, here’s paper planes:
Here’s a classic atheist rant from XTC. I’m not an atheist but who can possibly argue with “We all need a big reduction in the amount of tears”?
I like this one because I listened to this album on a flight to New York and it was actually a pretty good primer for a city that I absolutely love. Illinois is the type of CD you have to listen to a few times but when it sinks in it’s worth the time.
I’m not a huge fan of Dave Matthews Band but I’ve always had a soft spot for this song.
And finally, a tribute to Geico, who saved me a bunch of money…
As an aside, I have 56 draft posts yet to see the light of day but one I think I’ll finish soon. I’m going to take the top stories of the week and find the top comments from around the Interweb about those stories. The wisdom of the masses filtered by interestingness applied to current events can’t be entirely boring…
