iTunes Musings....

If my iTunes is to be believed (and it is, it meticulously captures every thing I listen to anywhere, and is extremely anally refined on daily basis by me. We all have our things...), the only two albums from 2009 that I have really liked and played often are MSTRKRFT's Fist of God and The Thermals' Now We Can See. I thought that was kind of weird and random. MSTRKRFT had a few heavy weeks of play after I got it, but The Thermals, no surprise there as that is just a damn good album and "When I Died" may just be the best song ever. But still, I do get a lot of music (I can't recommend eMusic highly enough, especially since they now have major label stuff), so I thought it was weird.

And then I realized, no, no its not weird at all. In the past year I have mostly gotten and listened to what could be characterized as two distinct spheres of music: old sad bastard/country music (lots of Johnny Cash, and recently, Elvis, Carl Perkins, Willie Nelson, and old favorite Ryan Adams) and 90s rock/indie (including Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Metallica, Pavement, The Get-Up Kids, and a hell of a lot of Soundgarden).

Clearly this means I am way way off of the pulse of the music community, but fuck it. Too much poseuring for my taste anyway. I'm pretty sure The Thermals are the tops for 2009.

Then again, in a library of 16,000 tracks, the Pokemon theme is the 3rd highest played with 43 listens, so what the fuck do I know.

Side note: The Thermals are great, but since I'm writing about music, I'd be ashamed to not mention The Gaslight Anthem and by far my most played 2008 album "The 59 Sound." If you listened to "Great Expectations" (a track-1 to rival "When I Died") alone, it would change your life.

Oh and as for random one-off songs I have been liking from 2009... I'm ashamed to say I really like that Sean Kingston song about the shorties burnin on the dance floor. And "Hold the Line" by Major Lazer is a solid track, though I haven't had enough interest to get the whole album. At least not yet...

Green Day

I wish Green Day would stop putting out crap. Remember when Green Day was awesome? Take a listen to Dookie and tell me it isn't one of the cornerstones of the 90s rock sound. Man, that album always takes me back to grade school. I'll never forget this one day in fifth grade when my entire class just started singing "Basket Case." It was so ridiculously surreal that sometimes I wonder if it actually happened.

I'm also really partial to Insomniac, their commercially failed follow-up to Dookie. I have no idea why the album didn't take off like Dookie did. It's a little repetitive of the Dookie vibe/sound, but who fucking cares? Green Day was a poppy punk band. Who the fuck expects them to be all deep and shit?

Well they do apparently. They've got another sure to be craptastic rock opera album coming out this year. Let's just get this down on the internets as a matter of public record... I do not like American Idiot. I think it's stupid, pretentious, not good lyrically or musically, and provides an indelible stain on the pop culture of this decade and certainly on the Bush administration (not that I'm a Bush supporter). Who in the hell ever thought the band that came up with When I Come Around would be writing two EP length rock operas? I didn't, and with good reason. I thought Green Day and I were on the same page. That this is gonna be a band that will rock the shit and bring the shit down, but aren't gonna get all political and hoity toity on you.

Nimrod was kind of their fall from grace in my mind. Some great tracks, but you know and I know that that fucking album was the on with Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) on it, and I. CANNOT. STAND. THAT. SONG. Not only is it the most overplayed song in the history of overplayed songs, played on a seemingly endless loop of graduations in the late 90s [it's called fucking Good Riddance you imbeciles!] but it is the gateway to let Green Day, the SoCal punks, onto shit like Lite FM or some other innocous pop music vacuum station. (PS remember radio stations?)

After that, what did they put out next? Warning? Another underrated album in my book that didn't sound quite like a Green Day record. I'm not sure what it sounded like, but it was passable and not worthy of the scorn a lot of people gave it. Minority was a great song for one. Some of the other ones, yeah I can see how a fan of Dookie's aggressive punk licks wouldn't dig on the mellow somber acoustica of Macy's Day Parade. Anyway they followed it up with stupid ass American Idiot and now they have some other shit concept album coming out and I couldn't care less. Say what you will about it musically and thematically (and I personally say it sucks ass on both levels, with the exception of Holiday which is a damn fine tune), but American Idiot, to me, is the thing that launched Green Day into the eye-liner wearing, Hot Topic poster selling, douchebags putting St. Jimmy quotes onto their facebook phase that they are now firmly entreanched in.

And that is why the best album they've put out in the past decade wasn't a Green Day record. Foxboro Hot Tubs, the infamous Green Day side project from last year, is infinitely better than the American Idiot crap they pumped out 4 years prior. Poppy, catchy, heavy guitar riffs, and not at all serious. That's how I like my Green Day. That and recorded prior to 1997.

Funny how I wrote an entire diatribe about Green Day when all I wanted to say was "I really like the Foxboro Hot Tubs album and apparently Green Day have some new pretentious shit album coming out." Their new album is billed as being in "three acts." Go fuck yourself, Green Day.

What iTunes Can Really Say About You

I didn't want to make this an ultra-personal blog, but considering I never write in it anyway (i'm busy watching tv and stuff), I'll do just that.

I'm a little anal about my mp3 collection. I've had mp3s for about 10 years (pre Napster! does anyone else remember Scour Media Agent?) and through about 4 hard drives and 3 iPods. I love love love the metadata on each song and how you can track things, and make smart Playlists, and blah blah blah. I go through this kind of shit all the time, fine tuning the data and making new playlists. It's just fun for me.

Anyway, one of the most basic measures of an mp3 collection is the play count. I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at some of my top played songs as of July 4th...

#1 - The Will of One by The Protomen - 44 times

I love this song, but I'm pretty surprised it's the most played in my library. The Protomen are a band dedicated to playing a rock opera about Capcom video game hero, Mega Man. It's a hell of a lot better than that sounds and was my favorite album of 2006. But still... number 1? I would have thought a They Might Be Giants song would be up there...

#2 Ana Ng - They Might Be Giants - 39 times

Yep. That one doesn't surprise me at all. Probably my hands down favorite song of all time.

#3 - Pokemon - TV Theme - 35 times

I could justify this by saying that not only does this song have great music that puts me in a good mood and gets me excited about boring shit or that the cheeseball lyrics make me smile and I know all the words or that I genuinely like Pokemon, but you know what? Go fuck yourself. This is a jam.

#4 - Snakes on a Plane (Bring It) - Cobra Starship - 34 times

Kind of depressing that this is on here really (and I stand by Pokemon still). I listened to it A LOT in 2006 when SoaP was the rage. It's a catchy song but not really worthy of this vaunted spot.

#5 - From the Ritz to the Rubble - Arctic Monkeys - 32 times

Another no-brainer. Love love love this album and this song and Arctic Monkeys in general. They get a lot of backlash considering the considerably gushing praise they got when this album dropped, but they're one of my favorite bands so either accept that or go read some other blog. I am kind of surprised that I bet That You Look Good on the Dance Floor isn't in this spot, but it only pops up at #17, the next highest Monkeys song on my list.

#6 - The Fallen - Franz Ferdinand - 32 times

I don't LOVE Franz Ferdinand. I'm a fan, yeah. When their first album came out, I listened the shit out of it. Then their second one came, the one this song kicks off, and I was largely indifferent. THEN I saw them live and they rocked the shit, particularly this song, which is a most excellent track 1 to a mediocre/good album. Still, I did a play list of songs that I never have skipped (like once it comes on, I listen to it to the end every time) and this was the number one song in terms of play count and least times skipped. Weird.

#7 - Batman: Stage 1 - The Advantage - 30 times

I love Batman, I love Nintendo, I love covers of Nintendo songs. Not a lot of logic to this one. Just a great background tune to any activity.

#8 - Bust A Move - Young MC - 30 times

I also love late 80's and early 90's rap. This is just a damn good song and I am fairly sure I can sing it from start to finish. I think that's why I played it so much. Never know when that will come in handy. Incidentally, this whole album is pretty good.

#9 - Talk to Me - Stephen Lynch - 29 times

A comedic song about masturbation. I just think its catchy. Fun to sing along with in your head when you're walking down the street.

#10 - Tarzan Boy - Baltimora - 28 times

Um. I have no idea. I like this song. Weird that its so high up though.

#11 - This is Halloween - Danny Elfman - 28 times

The opener of The Nightmare Before Christmas, the best musical ever. And I only barely like musicals.

#12/13 - Kickapoo and The Pick of Destiny by Tenacious D - 28 times

Wouldn't make sense if the D didn't pop onto at least the top 15. These are the starting and closing songs respectively of their movie, which was only a decent flick, but had a stellar soundtrack.

#14 - Long Long Way From Home - Foreigner - 27 times

#15 - Nightrain - Guns n Roses - 27 times

Both self explanatory.

Thats all I got. It's late.

I Don't Really Like Red Hot Chili Peppers

To be honest, I feel like I'm late to this realization, that a lot of the world made this decision a few years ago, but I am really sick and tired of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Some history...

In 1993, (I think that's the year, I'm too lazy to fact check any of this...) when Blood Sugar Sex Magik came out, it was a big deal. One of those iconic early 90's albums that I don't think many would argue ranks up there with Nirvana's Nevermind or Pearl Jam's Ten in setting various stages for how music would progress over the course of the decade. Sublimely converging funk, punk, and just all out rock, it was a damn good record. "Under the Bridge" is a damn good song. And they had some wild antics, dancing around on stage naked with tube socks on their wing wangs, and overall were a part of the overall gestalt that was the early 1990's to me.

Then they came out with One Hot Minute in 1995 (again, rough estimate). I remember "Aero Plane" getting decent radio play and I liked it enough. But despite having this album on my iPod for probably the past 4 years, I've never listened to the whole thing in full. I think "My Friends" is on it, and that's my favorite RHCP song, but memory serves me right... the album was a bomb. And not like a Tom Jones "Sex Bomb" either; like an Eddie Murphy's Adventures of Pluto Nash bomb.

Then they did who the fuck knows what and eventually came out with Californication in 2000. While Californication has some good jams, namely the title track and I've always enjoyed "Parallel Universe," and "Road Trippin'," the album suffers under its own popularity. I still turn on the radio and fucking hear "Scar Tissue." As far as overplayed albums go, this one is probably the fucking king (until I think of a better one...). All of its singles, including "Californication" which I go through cycles of love and hate with (loved it when I first heard it, before it was a single, hated it when it hit big, loved it when I learned it on the guitar, hated it when I heard it on the radio for the 700th time...) are still played now, 8 years later, and when they have a new album out.

That brings me to their latest album, which I can't even remember the name of. The one with "Dani California" on it. I hate that song. It sounds exactly like the entire album Californication. And it's a double album. Nothing, and I mean nothing, says "we like to sniff our own farts" more than a double album. Ok, side note, Smashing Pumpkins' Mellan Collie and the Infinite Sadness as well as New Order's Substance are both double albums and are great (though not completely perfect... you can't have 2 hours + of music and expect them all to be hits). So why do I hate on Planet Ardcadium, or what ever this album is called? Because the difference is that those were kind of the iconic albums for the Pumpkins and New Order, this is just a desperate attempt to milk the same cash cow that sold so many copies of Californication from a band whose prime is long past. If you have never heard the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which is probably damn near impossible, listen to Blood Sugar Sex Magik, watch their episode of The Simpsons, and call it a night. Trust me on this one.

The culmination of all of this? Tonight I finally excise my iPod of RHCP for good. I'll keep a couple of choice tracks, but say goodbye to "Around the World." I've always hated you most of all when you came up on random.

I Might Be Giant Too

I did this same thing on my LiveJournal years ago and I thought it was a pretty cool little thing. Describe yourself using only song titles from your favorite band. Then, I did it using Radiohead and it turned out pretty gosh dern good. Today, I'm doing the same thing with my other all tiem #1 favorite band, They Might Be Giants. Enjoy...

Describe yourself using one band and song titles from that band
Choose a band/artist and answer only in song TITLES by that band::	They Might Be Giants
Are you male or female::	Particle Man
Describe yourself::	Hypnotist of Ladies, SEXXY, Am I Awake?, Your Racist Friend
How do some people feel about you::	Kiss Me Son of God, My Man
How do you feel about yourself::	I Palindrome I
Describe your ex girlfriend/boyfriend::	Your Own Worst Enemy
Describe your current girlfriend/boyfriend::	A Self Called Nowhere
Describe where you want to be::	The Statue Got Me High, Road Movie to Berlin
Describe what you want to be::	Rabid Child, Spy, I Should Be Allowed To Think
Describe how you live::	Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes, Experimental Film
Describe how you love::	Birdhouse in Your Soul, Finished With Lies
Share a few words of wisdom:	You'll Miss Me, Now Is Strange, We've Got a World That Swings
Take this survey Find more surveys You've been totally Bzoink*d

Maybe tomorrow I'll make a real post. I got a lot of beef with the world...