It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

The first thing I thought of upon hearing this most recent earworm is, “Wow, shades of The Miami Soundmachine.”  And apparently I’m not alone because the very same day, CBC Radio 3 Bloggers and Radio 3 host Grant Lawrence were all voicing similar opinions of this new song from the band Hey Ocean!  It’s not a remake or anything, but the sound  brings back some great memories of “Conga” just based on the way the refrain is delivered in a kind of rapid-fire way.

On top of this, it’s very peppy and very upbeat.  It’s now at the top of my “Energize” playlist for those times when I find myself slowing down too much at work.  If you do not feel compelled to tap your foot to this song (at an absolute minimum), I recommend contacting your physician immediately.  It’s a song about dancing that actually achieves the goal of making people want to dance.

The lyrics are not overly deep or meaningful.  This is bubble-gum pop stuff, but that’s not a bad thing.  Saddling people with deep, thought-provoking lyrics would kind of detract from the way the music drives you to get up and move your ass.  Besides, Hey Ocean has plenty of other fantastic songs which have the lyrics covered–this one is fine to be fun based on pure sound.

As usual, you can hear the song at the CBC Radio 3 page, AND, at least for right now, Hey Ocean! has made this track available as a free download on their Facebook page (you can also stream some of their other tracks–I also recommend “Fish”).  Load it up, revel in the memories of 80s Miami Sound Machine Goodness in a shiny new Canadian package…and make a new dance up.

I never would have thought I could kill so much time ranking music.

I don’t recall how I was introduced to GoRankem.com, but I do remember thinking it was a great tool.  Or at least, has the potential to be great.

Have you ever had someone rave about how awesome this band or that singer is?  You actually find yourself kind of interested, and you google the entity in question…..only to be overwhelmed by the multiple albums already in the back catalog.  Where do you start?  Is there a particular song that is truly the place to start one’s exploration?

Now, you could ask the person who went on and on about this band….but what if you don’t want to?  Or it’s 4am and you can’t?

Here’s where GoRankEm fills a niche.  The entire idea is crowd-sourcing recommendations on what songs are the best out of an artist’s catalog.  Finally!  A starting point is within your reach.

Assuming at least one person has gone in and ranked an artist.

Which brings me to my lost time.  I support this tool, and since it depends on the trends and preferences of others to provide data, I felt it my solemn duty to give my recommendations for certain artist’s…..and I couldn’t stop.  To be fair, the site is fairly new, so there are a lot of un-ranked artists.  And who am I to leave them hanging.  After all, as a fan of Joel Plaskett, I couldn’t very well leave him without any rankings.  And then no one had done anything for Corb Lund….and

Yeah.  Hours.  Gone.

And that’s before I started comparing my rankings with others….

As overdone as the zombie thing is these days, it’s still totally acceptable in the form of geeky music.  Especially when it’s a song dealing with a zombie take over in the office.  Because, well, a zombie take over in my office would be a total delight.

“Re: Your  Brains” is a staple in the diet of Jonathan Coulton fans–so I’m sure it’s nothing new to many of you.  It has all the key features of Coulton’s well-known songs: great music with a catchy tune and hysterical/geeky/just damn-good lyrics and high-quality delivery.

This particular ditty is a musical e-mail from an un-dead co-worker who really just wants to eat your brains.  Bob from the office down the hall is totally polite in his message, and–accompanied by great guitar work and a rock-anthemic chorus you can belt out with co-workers–he lays out the memo and the ultimatum  ”All we want to do is eat your brains.  We’re not unreasonable/ No one’s gonna eat your eyes.”

What’s not to love right there?  But, it goes further….it’s got all the necessary elements of a typical corporate office e-mail–all the phrases, the cliches, the passive-aggressive comments.  That’s actually more horrifying than the idea of  having your brains eaten.

Bonus fun for this song:  you can listen to the whole thing (and lot more) online for free at Coulton’s website (downloads are a buck), and it’s available under a Creative Commons license (along with all the other songs written by Coulton).

Today was a very rough day at work.  There was pummeling.  Of me.  And others like me.  And by 5pm, I really, really wanted to sit down for a beer.

In part because I’d had this little tune running through my head since about 8:30 this morning

“In heaven there is no beer / That’s why we drink it here….”

Yeah.

While I embrace the message of this song, it’s not exactly what you want running on an infinite loop in your head all day.  I had two near miss incidents where I almost started humming it in the presence of VIPs.

That aside, the song is rather witty, so at least there was amusement in an otherwise cheerless day.  If only those words weren’t saddled by a tune that’s made of superglue and annoyance.

And now, I can drown the sorrows of my day in beer that I have to drink while I’m here (because when I’m in heaven, my friends will be drinking it all.  Mostly.  Except for the ones who don’t drink beer) and freebie Amazon.com MP3 sampler albums to drown the incessant rounds of the song (which heaven better be devoid of as well)…..

Yeah.  It’s been a looooooong day.

I’ve been “held captive” by yet another song on repeat.  It’s one I should have known about much sooner, but was only introduced to earlier this month as I’ve been re-establishing my quality time with CBC radio 3.

Sarah Harmer’s “Captive” is poised to become the song of the summer for me.  Within just a few listens, I was out buying the album (“Oh Little Fire”) because I had to have this tune.  It’s catchy, upbeat and just plain fun.  It’s going  into my road-trip mix and is already on my playlist for working out.

After all my usual go-to Sarah Harmer songs like “I Am a Glow” and “Escarpment Blues” and “The Hideout”, “Captive” is a departure.  Where the others are definitely heavy to the acoustic and folk side (which I love), “Captive” is refreshingly pop.  If you want something to dance around the house and sing along with, it’s tailor-made for the occasion.  That’s not to say the other Harmer pieces aren’t just as good (if you are in the mood for some great acoustic folk, check out any of those others–”I Am A Glow” is a particular favorite of mine).

The music is definitely the draw here.  Lyrically it’s a fun love song (“I wanna be held captive/Forget the way I acted”….”As long as there’s a view to look to/Fence me in and keep me close to you”), which is all well and good, but the real fun is in the beat and the “Oh-oh-oh-ohs” (ever notice how songs with things like that are automatically more fun to sing along with?).

And, bonus, there’s a fun video.  A whacky visual piece with late 1800s/early 1900s costumes, some trampoline-style acrobatics (without the trampoline) and streets turned into canals.  It’s nice to know people still make music vids, even though the crappy cable channels never play them.  In this case, you get the fun of watching AND it gives me an easy (and legal, since this is posted by the record company) way to share the song* with you, gentle readers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV2Ab0hE4HE

Have a look, have a listen and let yourself be held “Captive.”

*You can also listen, as usual, on the CBCR3 Page.

I’m ashamed that I haven’t taken the time to put this recommendation down any sooner.   There are any number of reasons I could recommend Grant Lawrence’s book Adventures in Solitude, What Not to Wear to a Nude Potluck and other stories from Desolation Sound, which made it that much harder to focus on putting a meaningful and worthy review down on paper.  A recent trip back home to Texas crystallized the element that meant most to me:

It’s about a place.

For some of us, me included, places play a role every bit as important in our lives as people.  They have moods, characters, and as much an influence in the plot of life as any human being.   Lawrence captures this brilliantly in Adventures in Solitude.  The picture he paints of his family’s remote property in Desolation Sound, British Columbia is more than just a setting for events–it’s a character in and of itself, shaped by the land, the sea, the weather and the oddball mix of people crazy enough and hardy enough to cling to its rocky shore.  Lawrence does not stop with just a vivid picture, but injects his own feelings about the place in a way that adds the discriminator turning Desolation Sound from location to character.  From Lawrence’s initial dislike, to an acceptance, a breakup, a reintroduction and a renewed love of Desolation Sound, his own feelings toward this place only serve to make it more of a dynamic player.

For Lawrence, Desolation Sound is cast in a principle role in the story of his own journey from painfully geeky West Vancouver kid, to rebellious punk rocker, to the voice of Canadian Independent Music.  The family cabin and its surrounding landscape is an extension of his family–the teacher in his youth, the thing against which he rebels in his young adult years, and the steady constant he comes back to in maturity.  Along the way he reveals some of the more famous (and infamous) tales in this history of the place in a parallel to his own moments, and moments of others who’ve come under the spell (or curse) of the area.

All of this is accomplished with incredible humor .  Lawrence has a great writing style.  If you’re a fan of his CBC Radio 3 show, or the CBC Radio 3 podcast (which, you damn well should be), you’ll recognize his voice right off.  There are moments of laugh out loud hilarity (snarf warning:  I had at least two instances of beverage-through-the-nose discomfort on the first reading and one on each subsequent reading) at Lawrence’s completely honest, unsentimental descriptions of his initial impression of the property he would come to love, and of his own painfully nerdtastic beginnings.  And I was pleasantly surprised to find that the man even managed to bring the funny in photo captions–it’s a pet peeve to endure crappy photo captions, so the fact that Lawrence made the captions not only something more than a cut & paste from the taste, but actively funny is worth its weight in gold to me.

And for those who pick up this book solely for the Canadian Music factor, the title alone (taken from the New Pornographer’s song “Adventures in Solitude”) should tell you that the book is not without sufficient nods to the music that plays into Lawrence’s life almost as much as Desolation Sound.  My copy of the book actually came with a “Backstage Pass” on a lanyard giving the Adventures In Solitude Playlist–where the songs listed are also found as chapter titles.  For the music connoisseurs with a keen eye, you will probably find other references.  I know I spotted a line or two from Joel Plaskett and a bit from a Great Lake Swimmer’s song in my first read.

The book held up for 4 reads already, which ought to tell you a lot right there.  I had initially pre-ordered the book from Amazon, but they fucked-up, I wound up going to Lawrence’s website and ordering direct.  In my haste to make sure I had the book before I travelled to Australia (plane reading is essential), I didn’t realize that the books from the website were, at least at that time, coming signed from Grant Lawrence himself.  For this long-time Radio 3 fan, that was the kind of pleasant surprise that resulted in a squeal that sent the cat running for cover.

I encourage anyone to seek out a copy.  If you’re a fan of humor, you’ll get a great laugh at the way it embraces absurdity.  If you’re a fan of Candian Indie music, you’ll get insight into the chief Evangalizer of that fabulous category of tunes.  But most importantly, if you know what it’s like to have a love for a place in your life that ranks up with the love you have for some of your family, you’ll find yourself in good company.

Adventures in Solitude
What Not to Wear to a Nude Potluck and other stories from Desolation Sound
by Grant Lawrence
published by Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.

When I hit a certain level of pissed, I go beyond the point where some laid-back Jimmy Buffett is capable of unwinding me.  I’m angry, livid, out-of-my-head seething….and I have no intention of letting that feeling go.

It is in these moments that I turn into a fan of German heavy metal, including the only such group most Americans know, Rammstein.

There are a few Rammstein songs I can jam to when I’m not in a homicidal rage, but one in particular I can really only deal with when I’m too angry to think about what it’s actually saying, and that’s “Bück Dich.”

The first time I heard the song I was in Dallas traffic that was moving, but full of total assholes who were tailgating, cutting people off, and weaving in and out at excessive speeds.  I had popped in a recently acquired Rammstein album, thinking that “Du Hast” would fit the mood.  It fit, as did some of the following songs, including “Bück Dich” until the point where traffic had thinned out and I was starting to relax.

As I morphed back to a human from being like a mental Incredible Hulk whose dearest wish is a top-mounted antitank weapon on the roof of my car, the part of my brain where my college German lessons are stored kicked in.

“Bück dich befehl ich dir / wende dein Antlitz ab von mir / dein Gesicht ist mir egal / bück dich nocheinmal”

Whiskey.  Tango.  Foxtrot.

Did that say what I’m fairly certain that just said?  ”Bend yourself over”?  ”Your face doesn’t matter to me?”

O-M-G.

Yeah.  Therapeutic as it is to hear those creeptastic vocals (if I had to imagine the voice that would most likely make me pee myself if I heard it coming from a dark alley?  The vocalist for Rammstein would have it), and the pounding, grinding music to go with the blinding anger coursing through my veins, it’s only that level of anger-out-of-my-wits that manages to block me from thinking about what the hell the song is actually saying.  I mean, a creepy, angry German man is growling about screwing someone in a very uncomfortable place (Kevin Smith fans chorus “Like the back of a Volkswagen?”) in a very not nice way.

I can’t say I hate the song.  When I’m mad enough that the only part of me that’s tuned to music is a monkey-brain that wants to head bang and doesn’t speak German, it’s perfect.  But the moment I come back to my senses, “Bück Dich” goes back on the shelf.