rob's blog

I struggled with April’s song of the month, “Gifted,” which appears on the album  Spirit of Apollo by N.A.S.A.  N.A.S.A (North America / South America) is a project of Sam Spiegel aka Squeak E. Clean and  Brazilian DJ Zego spent five years assembling a gang of artists spilling across genres.

Performers on this record include:  George Clinton, David Byrne, Cee-Lo, Seu Jorge, Sean Lennon, RHCP, Tom Waits, Ol’ Dirty, RZA, Method Man, oh and Kanye West. Continue Reading »

I just returned from an week-long trip in Norway with a handful of Babson MBA visiting students at ITNU in and looking at  renewable energy businesses.  It was a  great time, and I hope to blog about it soon.

For now I wanted to push down my last post about gmail being down with something suitably awesome.  Just before leaving for Norway, my pal Rob Teel tipped me off to a new music video from Peter Bjorn and John titled, “Nothing to Worry About.”

A comment by “Joe” on Booooom.com described it thus:  ”These guys are in their element, and they put alot of their money into it, but they feel relax and have no worries when they are doing their thing.

Others would call them crazy for their lifestyle but it’s what they want and like th lyrics says: aint got nothing to worry about.”

I don’t think I can put it much better than that. This serves as the song of the month for March.

Mando Diao - Blue Lining, White Trenchcoat

I was going to skip January, but then remembered this Mando Diao tune Blue Lining, White Trenchcoat.

This track begins at what sounds like a rail station and rips right into a piano driven frenzy.  Later on the song breaks down and then comes back together.

The lyrics are a lock often ending with the call for the blue lining, white trench coat:

“I’ve got my Armageddon boots, brown shades and brand new leather suit. Blue lining, blue lining, blue lining, white trench coat.

and

“I’m burning, like a combat zone, so sharp my senses cutting stone Blue lining, blue lining blue lining white trench coat”

This LP went on sale mid February, but for some reason is not available on Amazon.com or iTunes.

Listen to the track

I’m selecting a song from Vetiver’s  Tight Knit record (official release 3/4/09) for the February song of the month.

The album as a whole is quite good. I like the upbeat spring-day-type songs like Everyday and More of This.

The tune that gets my commendations is Another Reason To Go, which has a funky keyboard and horn backing.

I first noticed The Rapture when closing down a bar on Beacon and Harvard Ave.  Boston doesn’t seem to support a strong alternative scene, but it was going strong in the bar and the DJ closed the house with “Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks.”

People were going nuts.When I saw that the band had put together a mix of dance tracks for a new album,  Tapes (!K7), I had to check it out.  There are a lot of great sounding cuts on the record, but the stand out track is “Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll” which was originally released in my birth year of 1980 by Vaughn Mason & Crew.

The track is unchanged, but cheers to The Rapture for the back-of-the-crate selection.  I was a fan before I hit up Oak’s Park Jam Skate this past week.Here are some handy links to pick these up:

• Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll / Complete !K7 Tapes album
• Out Of The Races And Onto The Tracks 

I’ve begun work developing a guitar tab of the Britney Spears song, “Out From Under,”  but before getting to that, we have some ground to cover.

Some friends on Facebook noticed that for a few days this past week Britney Spears was on my list of ‘favorite music.’  The music section of the Info Tab on my profile is usually limited to a select group of artists I would feel comfortable having a clear argument for recommending them to a stranger.

Example artists include:  Beirut, Cat Power, David Byrne, Jandek, Kraftwerk, Thom Yorke, Wilco, Joanna Newsom, and Lupe Fiasco.  Each of those artists makes list through a combination of the following:

• Songwriting
• Performance
• Influence on their genre or music in general
• Personal character and mystique Continue Reading »

I’m going to try and start identifying songs of the month.  I think that these will be from artists that have released something new, for instance, a new album or perhaps a new remix of an old song.November’s song of the month was released in late October of this year by the Kaiser Chiefs.  This band is totally awesome.  I’ve seen them twice now, and this new album, Off With Their Heads is an absolute must have, must rock out to album.

The song I’ve selected for November 2008 is Never Miss a Beat, which clowns on the disinterested, apathetic youth of today.  The chorus is an early turn-off, repeating, “its cool to know nothing.” but the bridge is what saves the song where vocalist Ricky Wilson begs the listener, “Take a look at the kids on the street, no they never miss a beat.”

Buy Never Miss a Beat from Amazon for 99 cents.  Bonus: Pick up You Want History for more excellence.

Winamp has been my media player of choice for years because it is fairly lightweight, and has a long history off plugins.  Winamp also has the ability to use global hot keys which are keyboard shortcuts to play, pause and skip through tracks even if you’re using another application.

Since I got the iPhone, I’ve been leaving iTunes open more and more.  And since version 8 was released, I’ve been trying out the Genius play list.  The genius can be good, but sometimes it sticks an odd track in there and you need to skip.  The bummer is that iTunes doesn’t support global hot keys.

I can’t listen to music on a computer and work if I have to flip back to the media player just to change tracks , so I finally got around to searching for a solution and came upon Jacob Hickman’s iTunes global hotkey project.   I like it so far–it adds a “toast” or little roll-up/roll-down status display when you skip tracks and has a fun Domo-kun tray icon.  Check it out, if you’re a PC iTunes user.

I just got back from the 5/3/08 RJD2 show at The Paradise on Comm. Ave. I had been looking forward to the show for some time, pulling the on-sale date from an RSS item from tourfilter and within a week or two tickets sold out. It was with great anticipation that I approached the show. I saw RJD2 perform from a distance at Bonnaroo a few years ago, and had seen the crowd get worked. The Third Hand, Randle John Krohn’s latest from March this past year illustrated the major transition from a primarily hip-hop based library of music built on very deliberate sampling.

In his 2006 interview with Pitchfork Media, Krohn gave some important details about the album that would become The Third Hand. Specifically, the album was a huge transitionary work for him, moving from sampling to performance both in instrumentation and his own singing. In addition he moved labels from Definitive Jux to XL Recordings in an outwardly symbolic movement from hip-hop to a destination between electronic and pop music.

Continue Reading »

This music video comes from Pete Miser, founding member of the Five Fingers of Funk. Pete hails from Portland, Oregon and his band had a following in the PDX area back when I was in high school.

Apparently, Pete was actually asked to fly to LA for an iPhone commercial and was inspired to create his own. He wrote and recorded the song and then got some help from Merritt Duff and Arrow Kruse putting it together.

With the video remixing you might think it is another parody, but if you listen to his words you’ll come away seeing unique satire. Either way, I’m now officially sold on the iPhone and now intend to liquidate my Blackberry Curve. Continue Reading »