Three songs

Music is a huge part of my life, as it probably is for a lot of people. I'm thrilled about how often I hear something that I instantly love because I'm the type to play that song exclusively, over and over for 2 weeks straight. But it isn't very often at all that I am blown away enough to stop what I'm doing and listen to the whole thing with my jaw on my desk. This usually happens about once every year and a half, but I guess I've been lucky lately because we just hit time number three for 2010. Just want to share these three very different songs with you. Maybe you'll like them too, if you haven't heard them yet.

Hot Chip: I Feel Better
I first heard the Bonnie Prince Billy remix of I Feel Better on RCRD LBL, and loved it. My friend Lucy sent me the original, and I wanted to jump out the window. I went home that night and transcribed the entire thing because I wasn't satisfied simply listening to it. Yes, people are sick of autotune by now, but I don't know if I ever will be. It can be used in a ton of different ways, and this way is spectacular. I kind of hate the video because it violates the image that the song put in my head originally, and it's a slightly edited version. And all I need is the magenta of the audio (but click on that link if you're curious and in the mood to be creeped out by an endearing bald man).



France Gall: Poupée De Cire Poupé De Son
I heard this one off of Niotillfem's French Spotify playlist. I stopped working and listened to it 3 times in a row; I couldn't tell at first whether it was a girl or a very young mischievous boy. Then I looked up France Gall and it turns out she was part of a huge musical movement in the 60s called yé-yé. I had heard of it before, but didn't know how influential of an explosion it was. It mostly involved young girls singing about boy stuff in an intentionally innocent way. I don't know what the song is about, but I do know that Serge Gainsbourg wrote it and that it's been covered all over the place (Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene are just 2 of the bands who have).



Mark Ronson x Ghostface Killah: Lose It (In The End)
Some of this album gives me a slight golden oldies feel, but I may be the only one. The song has a good intro, a great beat, and an extremely catchy verse. Almost reminds me of the Four Seasons (it's less than two and a half minutes long, too). He throws in that effect that sounds like you're singing into a fan, and Ghostface swoops in nearly a minute in (similar to how he does in his version of You Know I'm No Good with Amy Winehouse). I smiled the whole time I heard this song for the first time, and it's my favorite on this album (Record Collection; I bought the whole thing after previewing on Spotify and I suggest you do the same. Also check out the final track).



Hope you enjoyed. I might stitch together a playlist that features songs that have affected me similarly in the past; I wonder if it will have a good flow or just sound like a complicated mess. Anyway, has this happened to you this year? What song(s)?

Untitled, Anonymous 2009 – revealed

The anonymous video project I wrote about almost a month ago (wtf, it's October?) had its official screening a couple of nights ago in London. Again, it's called UNTITLED, ANONYMOUS; clicking on that will take you to everyone's submissions, including mine! The theme of Paul's was around this Buddha quote that I hadn't heard before and now adore:


Great, isn't it? Check out a few of the videos; they range from beautiful and introspective all the way to bizarre, strange and completely bonkers.

Watch for the nucular medley.

Yesterday, my friend Jess sent around an mp3 she made with her friend Lucian. It is basically a collection of Sarah Palin's "best" sound bytes set to a cheesy dance tune. I listened to it quite a few times, and then made my poor roommate and house guests listen to this bastardization of the English language last night. Today Jess Twittered the URL for the video that Lucian made for the song. Here it is, folks.


The song was funny the first time, but adding the dimension of video almost sets tiny explosions off in my head. It is completely off the wall bonkers. Well done, Jess and Lucian.

Top songs of the 90s?

Warning: This is a video-laden entry.

I went to Florida for a week for the holidays. When I'm there, I have the tendency to watch a ton of terrible television. One of the things I spent hours watching was VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of the 90s. It wasn't terrible at the time... it was fun to watch because a huge portion of those songs were very instrumental in my angsty teenage years, as they were with a lot of you (maybe). The more I thought about it though, the more I realized that there were some HUGE OMISSIONS in there that I cannot understand for the life of me. Thinking about them made me want to hear them /watch the videos, so here they are.

No Doubt: There was no No Doubt on the list. none. Out of 100 songs of the 1990s, no No Doubt. Whether or not you like them, there was no way to get away from them when you turned the TV on. I can't decide whether it should have been Just A Girl (which put them on the map and was an anthem for girls everywhere) or Don't Speak (which showed how versatile they were).





Speaking of (sort of), there was no Bush on the countdown. I feel like Glycerine should have been on there, my roommate thinks it should have been Everything Zen. Their Mouth remix was still my favorite (or Machinehead).





I did NOT like this song, but it was still very popular. Dishwalla - Counting Blue Cars



This omission stunned me. Who could forget one of the biggest songs from Empire Records? Gin Blossoms - 'Till I Hear It From You



I might be able to understand why this one was left out, MAYBE. But it was one of my favorite songs and I was sad to not see it on the list. Superdrag - Sucked Out



Like it or not, this song was huge when I was in 7th grade. Seal - Kiss From A Rose



There was no Sponge on the list. Would it have been Plowed (Sony BMG disabled embedding, wth), or Molly?

Candlebox - You. Was this just huge to me? I am never sure when it comes to songs whose videos didn't get ridiculous rotation (like No Doubt's did. I still can't get over that).



Tonic - If You Could Only See (another video with disabled embedding from the label. Why?)



Soul Asylum - Runaway Train (come on.)



I feel like these songs (and probably some others - comment with any omissions I may have missed myself) definitely definitely should have made the list. I am not sure which ones I would take out though; as much as I hate songs like EMF's Unbelievable, they were still pretty instrumental in the "music of the 90s" thing. I don't know, maybe they should have made it The 150 Greatest? _

Chromeo videos

Here are four videos from the Chromeo show 2 nights ago.

Fancy Footwork (and Satish screaming the words)

Bonafied Lovin'

Dave 1 & P-Thugg

Bringing everyone on stage (my favorite out of the videos, I think)

EDIT | Here is a video NYMagazine put out from the night.

oldish video

Last week, I remembered that this video exists. It was my response to a Creative Thinking assignment at school. Fenske said:

"One of something is boring.
Ten of something is art."
Then he said "Show me this. Show me that multiples of something can add up to having more meaning than the one thing by itself." (I am paraphrasing this part) Pretty much "The whole is bigger than the sum of its parts."

This is what I did:


Most people know this, but tattooing is "the practice of making a design on the skin by pricking and staining." In other words, many many many pricks with a needle. many. get it? okay. So I showed the movie. Most people didn't get it. I didn't care though, I mostly did this for myself and the assignment was a good opportunity for it. My friends helped; Subodh filmed the whole thing and Aaron wrote the music (& helped with FCP).

Here it is today:


A little over a year and a half later, I got the close tag on the back of my left arm.

Anyway, just wanted to share that video. I hadn't seen it in almost two years and realized I had never uploaded it before.

Extremely unrelated: Paul made a pie for us yesterday and I wrote about it here. yum.

Heron the blind pimp

I just had a conversation with Heron in our kitchen about my watch. I got it at Air Market; every hour it screams the time at me in Japanese. They had the watches in several different bright colors, and two other languages too (English and German).


Heron told me that these Talking watches were originally produced to be sold to blind people, so that they could know what time it was at the push of a button (I can make it talk on command as well). I had no idea! Then he started telling me about a movie (perhaps a TV spot?) he starred in a while ago. He played a blind pimp with one of these Talking watches (plus bling of course). Wait for it to load: it's not a YouTube video (but a .mov)!

Every single topic of conversation seems to bring up a memory in Heron in which he did something far out like this. He's a good guy to have around.


I will update about Brazil as soon as I have everyone else's photos - there are a couple on Kacy's camera that are integral to telling our road-trip-with-scarface story.

crazy yellow shirt guy

Last Sunday at the pool party, I was standing behind Crazy Yellow Shirt Guy. The Thermals were playing, but I couldn't even pay attention to them because of him.





Apologies for the shaky camera, I was laughing. a lot.