On one hand, I generally hate pop music mashups. They’re almost always stupid and more often than not I hate both of the songs they’re made out of.
On the other hand, I love it when two totally opposite things blend together absolutely beautifully.
That said, guess how I feel about the video embedded below. (Hint: I try to mostly only post about things I like.)
2001 was a pretty huge year for me. It was the year that Undergrads, one of my favourite TV shows, debuted and it was the year that the GameCube was released. Technically I also got my Game Boy Advance that year, but that’s not really relevant to the story.
Anyhow, the Undergrads theme song is “The Click” by Good Charlotte. It’s a pretty good intro theme, and not a bad song in its own right. I can’t verify the veracity of this assumption, but I’m pretty sure that I wasted no time in searching it out over LimeWire or BearShare or whatever spyware-infested P2P program I was getting my music from at that time.
I want to be a bit anal here though, and note that the word “click” is spelled wrong in this context.
One of the GameCube launch titles was NHL Hitz 2002, which I rented multiple times, because it’s frankly the only modern hockey game that I can enjoy. Among the myriad songs on the game’s soundtrack (none other that I can remember) was Good Charlotte’s “Festival Song.” I’m going to go on record right now and say that it might be the only actual good Good Charlotte song.
One song is one thing, but if I’ve heard two songs from the same band in my consumed media, then I know it’s time to dig a little deeper. Or something like that. Whatever. The point is that I got into Good Charlotte and those are the sources that I credit for introducing me to the band. I went out and bought their self-titled debut CD and listened to it obsessively for like a month or two.
They were good times. I had found yet another band that nobody new a damn thing about and that I could just enjoy for myself. Good Charlottle was never a great band, but I was young, and I thought that they were what punk was all about. Though in retrospect, I should have known better, as I was already listening to more “legitimate” entry-level punk stuff like The Ataris and The Vandals at that point. But for a while there, I had my bliss.
But then 2002 came around and The Young & The Hopeless happened. Good Charlotte hit the mainstream. Everybody knew who they were. My little brother bought that album. “Lifestyles of the Rich & the Famous” was played everywere. The video for “The Anthem” had the band dressed up like thugs. People who knew about music slandered them left and right. I called them sell-outs and renounced my fandom.
I abandoned them, but never got rid of my copy of Good Charlotte.
Years later -2008, to be specific- I decided to give the disc a spin again to see what it was all about. In the many years between, I’d expanded my musical tastes greatly, and learned so much about music and what I did and didn’t like. I remember distinctly being utterly disgusted that I had ever liked this band in the first place. It was almost physically painful for me to sit through the entirety of the album.
I can’t remember what posessed me to listen to it in the first place, but when it was over, I gingerly set the disc back into its jewel case and slid it back into its spot in the CD tower. Under G, as it was arranged alphabetically by band.
Not a month ago, I was sitting at home alone on a Saturday afternoon, the wife out at work, and mulled over what to listen to while I was playing Lightning Returns. Nothing loaded onto my iPhone struck me, so I went over to the CD towers and started browsing them. Eventually my sight landed on Good Charlotte, and I figured that it’d be good for a laugh. Get to rekindle my young self’s lesser taste in music. It also made for a fun coincidence.
I’ll admit, that after six more years, I didn’t hate the album nearly as much as I did back in 2008. No, I don’t think it’s good at all, but the things that really got under my skin back then didn’t phase me. They’re products of the time, of a group of kids trying to put together some music that meant something to them but was also marketable.
Good Charlotte is not a good CD. Now that I’ve come to terms with it, I’ll probably never listen to it again (but check back in 2020). And really, aside from having yourself a blast from the past, I don’t think it’s really a thing that anyone should be listening to. It’s just so fiercely 2001 that I can’t imagine that anyone but an awkward teenager in that that time could forge a connection to it.
I won’t go into detail about the things I think it does wrong, or the elements that really don’t belong in any time that is not the early 2000s, or why I think “Festival Song” stands out. I just wanted to tell a story, not write a review. It’s not a compelling (or even interesting) story, but it’s a story about how a small part of me has grown and changed over time. It’s a sequence of events that’s burned into my soul like so many others, even though they aren’t necessarily treasured memories. I felt like I’d share it.
That CD is still in its spot on the tower. I doubt it’ll ever leave.
I have a love/hate relationship with the internet. On one hand, it has a strong tendency to bring out the worst in people, and makes it so that they can very easily use that hatred to make other people’s lives worse. Also social media is the Stupidest Goddamn Thing and I don’t understand how it’s taken over the world.
On the other hand, the internet affords me the ability to buy pretty much anything on a whim. While I’m very happy to have this convenience, it’s kinda dangerous for someone like me who has a terrible habit of impulse buying. I’ve sunk far more money that I should have into eBay, Humbe Bundle, and iTunes purchases over the last year, and the Mastercard people are laughing about it all the way to the bank.
And all that just to say that I purchsed some random album on iTunes yesterday. Goldenheart by The Organ Beats, to be specific. And how did I get around to picking out this album that nobody’s ever heard of? It’s pretty simple. The lead singer is Noelle LeBlanc, formerly of Damone, a band that I was pretty into back in aught-seven. I liked her previous work, so I bet $10 on her new(er) band. It was mostly worth it.
I haven’t been listening to very much in the way of new music lately, but it seems like a lot of the bands I’m currently into like to pump up their drums while sort of tucking the guitars away in the noise, only turning up their levels for solos. The Organ Beats went pretty much the opposite way in their mixing, and put the guitars front and center with the drums in the background, keeping the beat the way drums are wont to do.
The one thing about Goldenheart that I really take issue with is that they either recorded the vocals really poorly, or turned down their volume for some reason. Noelle is basically inaudible for half the album, which is a huge bummer because I think she’s a pretty good singer. Well, usually. It seems like she kinda phoned this one in. Maybe it’s just the mixing, but her singing just isn’t as strong as I’m used to.
Of course, she could have also been singing half-heartedly on purpose, because apparently (and I’m going entirely by the video embedded below) she wants to be the indiest motherbuzzer out there.
Stupid hat? Check. Scraggly hair? Check. Walking down a street trying to look deep? Double-check. Yep, that’s about as indie as you get. They just need to pop an air of self-righteousness in there and it would be totally unbearable. Oh, and also much, much worse music.
As an ironic twist, the vocals do finally stand out on the last song, “Don’t You Ever Feel Like Dying?” which pretty much just as dreary and depressing as it sounds.
Of course that all betrays the fact that The Organ Beats are a pretty hard rockin’ band, and I’m really digging them. They just need to turn Noelle’s levels up a bit next time, and they could be the next big thing for me. For now though, I’ll take it. Ten bucks well spent.
I got tickets to [what’s left of] Queen today, and there’s only one way I can think of to properly convey the overwhelming glee that I’m feeling right now.
There’s this band that I’ve been following for a while, We Are The In Crowd. They’re another pop-punk group, which is apparently my current thing. Anyway, I got their first album, Best Intentions, some time last year and thought it was pretty rad. Truth be told though, I dug their EP, Guaranteed to Disagree, even more.
Weird Kids is their second studio album, which just released last Tuesday. First thing I did when I woke up that morning was to boot up iTunes and get that sucker downloading. It’s not too often that I pay enough attention to the music world to get really excited about an upcoming album, but I was almost unreasonably hyped for Weird Kids. In the weeks leading up to its release, I found myself constantly checking iTunes to see if it was out yet even though I was well aware of the release date.
And I guess that’s really the best thing I can say about social media. I kind of hate it in general, but I do appreciate how easy social media makes it to keep abreast of what my favourite bands are working on. I kept seeing WATIC on my Facebook feed promoting Weird Kids, and it absolutely worked on me. Twitter is still a horrible mess of stupid, meaningless garbage posts, though.
Back to the album in question, Weird Kids is absolutely the ideal sophomore album. A little deeper, a little rougher, a little more varied. I could probably say all the same nice things about it that I said about Tonight Alive’s The Other Side last year. There’s a notable amount of growth on display here, and I really love the direction that WATIC went with it. It’s got much less of a pop vibe than their previous works, and veers more towards a punk/alternative style. At the very least, it’s a more refined kind of pop, working hard not to be mindless radio trash.
If I had to knock it for one thing, it’s that there’s way less back-and-forth between Tay and Jordan’s vocals than in their previous works. It’s one of the things that really defined WATIC to me, so I miss it, but Tay is definitely a stong enough singer to carry the bulk of the vocal work on her own.
I won’t bother to give “detailed” breakdowns of songs or anything, because I’m pretty terrible at that. I will say that I’m super happy with Weird Kids. Like Tonight Alive and Go Radio, We Are The In Crowd is one of those bands that I’m really into that nobody I know has ever heard of, so I’m making it my mission to spread the word as much as I can. So here, have a music video.
Last weekend was delicious Thanksgiving long weekend for us Canadians, but the awesome dinners I got three days in a row are actually the least incredible things that happened over the weekend.
Not to downplay those dinners, of course. Many people worked hard to prepare them, and I appreciate all that effort. In fact, you might even say that I give them my thanks for stuffing me so full that I literally rolled out of bed on Tuesday morning.
The big news, as you might be aware, was that Pokémon X and Y launched on Saturday. I was so damn excited about them, in fact, that my youngest brother and I decided to attend the midnight launch at our local used games store. Wifey tagged along for the ride too, but I was not able to convince her to start her own journey with Pokémon. Some day…
We figured it’d be a pretty low-key thing, because I guess neither of us know many Pokémon players in the city. Also, like I said, it’s a little local place. But the turnout was pretty amazing! I’d say that there were at least 60 or 70 people there. Which is low-key compared to the official Nintendo launch event in Toronto, but still way more than we’d expected. There wasn’t much more to the evening than waiting in line for half an hour and then merrily skipping out of the store with games in hand, but it was still a pretty fun experience.
And so that’s what I did all weekend when I wasn’t out Thanksgiving binging.
Except for Monday night, which was just wonderful enough to outshine a new Pokémon game as the best part of my long weekend. Yes, you read that right. And that totally awesome thing was the opportunity to go see Joe Satriani.
I first heard that he would be playing here back in the summer, but there was no way that I could justify dropping enough cash for tickets. I so desperately wanted to go, as I’ve been a Satch fan since the very first time I heard “Surfing With the Alien” and he was easily on my top 5 list of concerts to see. (The rest: Matt Good again, Tom Petty, Tonight Alive, and Go Radio)
A miracle happened though, and my in-laws bought me tickets for my birthday. It was way more than they should have spent, but it is quite possibly the best birthday gift I’ve ever received. At the very least it’s neck-and-neck with Life and an NES.
It doesn’t really need saying, but the concert was fantastic. I didn’t recognise a lot of the songs because I don’t have the new record (Unstoppable Momentum), but maybe that’s even better, as I got to experience a bunch of material for the first time live. “Satch Boogie” and “Surfing With the Alien” were in the set, and that’s all I could really ask for. And the encore… oh, the encore. Let’s just say that even my wedding day may not have been as emotional a day as the day I was actually in the damn crowd for “Crowd Chant.”
I don’t go to very many concerts, but the ones I go to are so damn good. And now that that’s all said, I have to get back to work. And by “work”, I mean “Pokémon.” Because I totally don’t type these things out at work.
(Fair warning: this is less a “review” than “ramblings of an excited fanboy.” But I suppose you could say that about most of the things I write.)
If you read the “articles” I posted back in January about the music I listened to the most in 2012, you may recall that last year I got myself really into a band called Tonight Alive. What Are You So Scared Of? was -by a very wide margin- my most listened-to and favourite album of the year, and I still spin it (figuratively, I’ve only used the disc to rip the songs to my PC and 360) fairly often. I’d absolutely consider the Australian band to be one of my recent favourites.
Over the last few months, I’ve been absolutely frothing with demand for their second album, The Other Side. It finally dropped on September 10th, and I couldn’t have asked for a better belated birthday present. I was on vacation last week, and it’s the only music I bothered to listen to the entire time (radio during car times notwithstanding).
Seriously, I listened to that thing like six times last Friday. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve gotten myself so worked up about an album. A new album anyway. I listened the crap out of Queen’s The Miracle when my years-long search for a copy came to a close last year.
You can tell
By the wind
By fresh cut wood
All stacked to dry
That autumn’s here
It makes you sad
About the crummy
Summer we had
With pine trees creaking
The ravens screeching
Just like the story
My grandma tells
About when a bird
Hits your window
Someone you know
Is about to die
But autumn’s here
Autumn’s here
It’s okay if
You want to cry
Cause autumn’s here
Autumn’s here
Autumn’s here
So find a sweater
And you’ll be better
Until the kindling
Is tinder dry
We can be quiet
As we walk down
To see the graveyard
Where they are now
I wonder how
They brought their piano
To Haldane Hill
From Old Berlin
Be hard to keep it
It well in tune
With winters like the one
That’s coming soon
Cause autumn’s here
Autumn’s here
It’s time to cry now
That autumn’s here
That autumn’s here
That autumn’s here
It’s okay if you want to cry
Cause autumn’s here
I think that ghosts like
The cooler weather
When leaves turn colour
They get together
And walk along these
These old back roads
Where no one lives and
And no one goes
With all their hopes set
On the railway
That never came and
So no one stayed
I guess that autumn
Gets you remembering
And the smallest things
Just make you cry
Autumn’s here
Autumn’s here
Autumn’s here
Autumn’s here
Autumn’s here
It’s time to cry
Cause autumn’s here
Woah-oh
Autumn’s here
Autumn’s here
It’s okay now
Cause autumn’s here
If you’re into video games at all, it’s very important that you go and buy yourself some DuckTales Remastered as soon as possible. It’s currently available on something you own (Wii U, PC, PS3), so you’ve got no excuses. Do it.
Okay, so you need a little more convincing? Let’s start with the first thing you’ll notice: the spectacular soundtrack. I’m not even exaggerating here; the DuckTales R soundtrack needs to be on iTunes yesterday so that I can be listening to it at all time. Made up mostly of remixes of the original game’s soundtrack, DuckTales R’s music puts pretty much every other retro release’s tunes to shame. It certainly helps that the original soundtrack was pretty damn amazing to begin with, but the arrangements take it to a whole new level.
The title screen music, an instrumental arrangement of the DuckTales theme, is so good that I left the game sitting on the title screen, plugged my headphones into the Wii U gamepad, and just listened to it over and over while I played Animal Crossing: New Leaf for a while. Sound crazy? You won’t think so once you’ve listened to it. Don’t even get me started on the Moon remix. Ducktales R’s soundtrack goes all the way past “memorable” into “infectious.”
The visual style is interesting, and the best thing I can say about it is that it features Wayforward’s beautiful spritework galore. Unfortunately, those sprites live in a 3D world, which is a mish-mash that I’ve never really cared for. I’d much prefer 2D stages as well, but whatever. It looks good, and that’s all that matters.
It’s probably important for me to note that the game is kinda tough. Like, not unbearably tough, but probably enough that you’re going to see the game over screen a few times. Of course, you could always just do like me and play on the Easy Mode For Babies difficulty, and just soak up all the goodness that the game has to offer. I’ll move up to tougher levels eventually, but on my first run, the goal was just to experience the game.
I also chose easy because I’ve never really played the original games on the NES, so I was going in more or less blind. I knew what the game would be like, because I’ve watched at least one video LP of the original, but that was ages ago and this is a pretty different game. The core mechanics of using Scrooge’s cane as a pogo-stick and golf club are the exact same and super fun, but I’m,fairly sure that the levels have been slightly reorganized, with new “modern video game” events speckled throughout each one. Like a fight atop a biplane, and a treasure hunt for a bunch of coins that function as an overcomplicated key. They’re all pretty well in the spirit of the game, so none of the additions feel clumsily shoehorned in. They’re integrated so well, in fact, that if I hadn’t done any research I wouldn’t know which parts are new.
Ducktales Remastered is not universally praised, however. It’s kind of a shame, but I think a lot of people were just expecting too much, or something completely different. There is a pretty vocal group of critics complaining that it’s too hard, but those people are just Stupid Whiny Babies. And then there are the people who are complaining about the cutscenes.
Yes, Ducktales Remastered has cutscenes. And they are glorious. They are fully-voiced by the original actors from DuckTales, and they are pretty darn funny. They make each level of the game seem more like an episode of the cartoon. Yet people are dercying them, and how hard it is to skip them. Wait, what? Yeah. You need to press two buttons to skip cutscenes, and this is a real thing that real people are complaining about. I love the interent as a tool for information and communication, but damn has it made people into whiny, entitled… well, tools. Or maybe they were like that before and you just didn’t ahve to hear ’em.
Anyway, DuckTales Remastered = Good Times, and is totally worth the slightly-higher-than-I-had-expected price tag. Honestly though, $15 is pretty good. If they’d put this in a box you know it’d be double that at least. I’d call that a bargain. Maybe not the best I ever had though.
I’ll start off with a rather painful admission: I don’t know anything about music. I know about bands and a little about the industry and how to tell a hack from a real artist, but that’s about as far as my “expertise” goes. And yet I love to pass myself off as someone who truly understands music. I suppose it comes from my inner hipster’s need to have superior taste to everyone else.
The problem this presents is that I still long to talk about music as if I know anything about it. Look back through the archives for posts tagged “BOTM” and you’ll see some of my finest attempts to pass as a connoisseur. I think the fact that My Chemical Romance was the first or second Band of the Month put that dream to bed before it even really got going.
So, in the spirit of talking about music without actually talking about music, I’ve come up with a brilliant plan. Actually, I didn’t come up with the idea. It’s stolen wholesale from Dinosaur Dracula, and I won’t even bother trying to pretend it was my own stroke of genius. I may be a hack, but at least I’m honest about it.
More to the point, I’m going to review and rank all of Queen’s studio albums. Well, the album covers, anyway. Just in case the article’s title didn’t tip you off. I don’t really know a lot about art design either, but I’m certainly more qualified (at least in my own mind) to talk about that than the actual music contained within.
I think this intro has gone on more than long enough now, so let’s maybe get down to business, yes?
