Stuff I'm Listening To #83 - Crowded House

Artist: Crowded House

Title: Better Be Home Soon

Favourite Lyrics: 

So don't say no
Don't say nothing's wrong
'cause when you get back home
Maybe I'll be gone

Why?: I really like Crowded House. For me, they are a permanent part of the soundtrack of my teenage years... And not because I listened to them on repeat. I didn't have to. And it wasn't even the music that hooked me at first. Believe it or not, it was watching them get interviewed on MuchMusic of all things. MuchMusic Canada loved these guys. They received a fair amount of airplay on the station and they used to come in... it seemed, once a year to do a promotional interview. They always seemed like they were having a lot of fun, goofing around. Especially the drummer, Paul Hester. He seemed like such a happy go-lucky guy. Needless to say, I was sad and angry when I heard how he'd passed away.

If you lived in Toronto in the 80s to now, you are likely most familiar with 299 Queen Street West. It is the home of MuchMusic, music television done the Canadian way. Moses Znaimer had the building renovated and updated so one could essentially plug into the nearest pillar with audio and visual equipment and be ready to film anywhere in the building, without the need for a traditional studio. Love him or hate him, the man was definitely a visionary. The building was a fascinating spot to be near, let alone, inside. It served as a landmark for me. It indicated I was about three quarters of the way done my weekly hunt for records and other memorabilia, a trip that would start at Yonge and Bloor, run south to Queen Street, then west to either Spadina Avenue and up if I felt like traversing Chinatown, or all the way to Ossington Avenue, where a single vinyl shop existed and had the occasional gem hidden in it's bins. That trip and the memories is worthy of several posts easily.

So this is how Crowded House is heavily associated with MuchMusic in my mind and all the visits to downtown Toronto in my teenage years. It was always fun to pass by the building, peek into the windows to see what was going on inside. I never met Crowded House all the times they came by. I regret it a little, but it seemed that if Crowded House was in town, I had a far too important test to be skipping from school.

Here is a clip of the boys on MuchMusic answering view questions. Paul Hester's typical nuttiness at around the 2:20 mark when he takes a view phone question. 

Stuff I'm Listening To #81 and #82 - Gee that sounds familiar...

Artist: .o.rang

Title: Little Brother

and 

Artist: Mark Morgan

Title: Traders Life (The Hub) from the Fallout video game soundtrack

Why?: It's weird how things converge at times. I say this because as you know, I'm constantly blogging about my favourite music, and just recently posted about video game music. And unless you're new here, you know I'm a huge fan of Talk Talk and by extension, I've come to really love their other work, for example, .o.rang, Paul Webb and Lee Harris' amazing project after Talk Talk. 

But, who knew .o.rang could be found, in, of all places, a post-apocalyptic video game? Not me!

As per my usual, I can't sleep, so let's start reading unusual Wikipedia entries or tonight it was 'let's create a spreadsheet of Talk Talk related links so I can better remember which ones I've watched versus which ones I have not watched' because that seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, I was working steadily on my .o.rang section of the links. Seems like there's only one video on You Tube for 'N'hoojek' and the rest are just sound only.

In my browsing I found a piece of video game music that kept getting 'recommended' in YouTube for me. So I clicked on it. Like much of the video game music I like, it was ambient and probably set up some appropriate scene in the post apocalyptic world. Seemed ambient and pleasant enough. Then at the 1:26 point my ears perked up.

Ultimately, it's one thing to license songs for your video games (i.e. Talk Talk songs in one of the 'Grand Theft Auto' games), or even getting someone to compose music for your games (i.e. Nine Inch Nails for 'Quake') but this feels like deliberately stealing a riff without credit. I know it happens all the time. But there's a ton of video game players who likely had no clue who .o.rang is. Why deny them this gem? So this post is for all you unaware video game fans. Did you like this piece of music? Want to know where it was 'inspired' from? Look up "Herd of Instinct" and then "Fields and Waves". They're two really great experimental albums with some amazing music. "Spoor" is pretty damn good too. Just saying.

  

Stuff I'm Listening To - Special Happy Birthday Paul Webb Edition

Out Of Season - Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man

Artist: Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man

Title: Rustin Man

Favourite Lyrics: 


How many more days can we take in the hope of seeing you
Oh Rustin Man

Why?: Hmm. Must be someone's birthday today. HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAUL WEBB!

It's a work day for me, which means I only really get my drive in and back home to tuck into his almost 40 year old catalogue of really good music to celebrate. Of course his most recent 'Drift Code' album is in there, all three .o.rang releases and along with newly transferred from vinyl 'Out of Season' with Beth Gibbons, which has been on loop since the transfer on New Year's day when I finally got a moment to hook up my record player to my laptop. Honestly, if you haven't heard any of these albums, why are we even friends? Go out, listen, redeem yourselves! :) 

Normally, at this point, I would go on to tell you that he's one of my favourite bass players. In case you didn't already know, I have a thing for them. And there would be me gushing about how he was (along with his other bandmates) not hard to look at and hell, he's still hot. But I wouldn't lower myself to that kind of fangirlling. Not today. That would just be weird. 

And calling Paul Webb a bass player? That's not a fair assessment of him. He's, as I discovered, so much more than that. Someone who takes the time to learn almost every instrument to play on his album... well that's a sign of a great musician so far as I'm concerned. So instead, I'm going to tell you he's one of my favourite musicians of all time. 

Happy birthday Mr. Webb. I hope you spent it doing whatever you wanted to do.

Stuff I'm Listening To #80 - Super Mario 64 - Dire Dire Docks

Composer: Koji Kondo

Title: Dire, Dire Docks

Why?:
After yesterday morning (an alert about an incident at the local nuclear power plant that turned out to have been sent in error), some calming down was in order. 

Guaranteed, most people are familiar with the music from Mario Brothers. It's instantly recognizable and Koji Kondo is the man behind it. 

But this piece, which occurs on the water level in Mario 64 stands out for me. It was the first time I actively wanted to have video game music included in my playlist. True story. I'd actually put the game on and leave Mario in a safe spot while the music played on loop in the background. Aside from the sound of Mario sleeping (which happened if you left the controller alone for too long) I found it was a kind of calming, dreamy piece of music. In fact, I had it as a ring tone for a while, upon which my non-video gaming husband, after getting startled by said ring tone, asked why did I have weird glory-to-heaven church bell kind of music on my phone? 

I never thought of it as heavenly or churchly. Just glorious and beautiful. Because this music plays in a water level, I obviously associate the tune with water. I like water. I can sit by water and just relax. It's calming. Above the surface, the motion of the water, the waves, even the sound of the surf... well... it's nice. But underwater, it's a different thing altogether. Take any underwater nature documentary you've ever seen. For me, the sounds like the way sunlight looks when it's being filtered through the water. The motion of the water is going to break that sunlight up into a twinkling mess, but a pretty one. And the sound of water, while under it, has this weird, bubbly, buoyant and bloopyness to it. Somehow, Koji Kondo figured out how to compose a soundtrack for being underwater, collecting stars, and coins.

Video game music is a weird thing. The music back with the 8-bit systems were tinny and weird at best, but super catchy. BBC6 radio had this wonderful program on about video game music just last year. I learned some interesting things about how video game music gets programmed in (FYI, back in the day, they could only program one note at a time, so any chords you're hearing? A trick in programming where the notes are played sequentially, and within milliseconds of each other. We're fooled into thinking it's a chord, when it's a super fast computerized trill... oh look... digressing). 

The fact that this piece came from a video game level, of all things, astounds me. 

Stuff I'm Listening To #78 and #79 - Gee... that sounds and looks familiar...

Artist: Rogue Traders

Title: Voodoo Child

Favourite Lyrics:
So here it comes, the sound of drums
Here come the drums, here come the drums
 


Artist: Elvis Costello and the Attractions

Title: Pump it Up

Favourite Lyrics:
Down in the pleasure center, hell-bent or heaven sent
Listen to the propaganda, listen to the latest slander
There's nothing underhand that she wouldn't understand

Why?: I've decided to set my iPhone on shuffle and let it do it's thing. Today, Rogue Traders popped up. I admit I had totally forgotten about this song. Dr. Who fans will remember the song as it was featured in the "The Sound of Drums" episode. Spoiler alert! It's the episode that brought back the Master and subsequently we discover that if a Time Lord is aged thoroughly, they turn into Dobby from 'Harry Potter'. 

And for those who couldn't quite place what the guitar riff was, it's taken from Elvis Costello's awesome song, 'Pump It Up'. It's not a sample though. Rogue Traders rerecorded it for their version. Of course, naturally, I made sure to queue up Elvis Costello after hearing it because it's just a great song.

Upon watching the video for 'Voodoo Child', imagine my surprise to see the the face of the singer, looking an awful lot like a favourite album cover too! Seems all roads eventually lead there lately. I'm sitting here now, as we speak, reinventing a game and calling it 6 Degrees of Talk Talk. 

Rogue Traders -> Elvis Costello -> Talk Talk (opened for him). 2 degrees.

Stuff I'm Listening To - #77 - The Beastie Boys - Sabotage

Artist: The Beastie Boys

Title: Sabotage

Favourite Lyrics:

I can't stand it, I know you planned it
I'mma set it straight, this Watergate
But I can't stand rockin' when I'm in this place
Because I feel disgrace because you're all in my face
But make no mistakes and switch up my channel
I'm Buddy Rich when I fly off the handle
What could it be, it's a mirage
You're scheming on a thing, that's sabotage

Why?:
Like many of you, the first song I'd ever heard by these guys was "Fight For Your Right To Party". I can't give you any specific memory here. It was a hit and everyone loved the song around me. The 80s were a weird time and spawned plenty of one-hit wonders. This could easily have been them. That song was super catchy. They could have quite easily have faded away. But often, as with many talented artists, don't let their mega hit fool you. These guys were super talented and spawned more than one hit and some super great music. Their sophomore album, 'Paul's Boutique' widely panned, only to be recognized later for the masterpiece it is. And it didn't stop there.

No surprise, these guys started out punk and made the move to rap. As I said before, punk is funny, and they carried that through. 

Their videos have always been as amusing as their songs. This one is no exception. It taps into all the cop movies and shows I don't ever recall watching in their entirety but am familiar enough with because I suspect Dad and older brother did and I, being the baby, had zero say on what we were going to watch on the one television. 

This comic book cover is from the beautiful comic book inspired by the video in honour of Adam Yauch by artist Derek Langille. Link below. 

http://dereklangille.blogspot.com/2012/06/for-adam.html

Stuff I'm Listening To Special Birthday Edition

photo by Mark Jordan

Artist: the Reaction

Title: I Can't Resist

Favourite Lyrics:

I can't resist
The feeling's so much stronger now
I must make sure
To do the things I want to do
Life's just too short
For answers to your problems

Why?: I'll give you one guess who's birthday it is today. This was the single from his first band released in 1978, four years before Talk Talk released their first album. I may or may not have damaged car stereo speakers whilst listening to this.  

Photo credit and further photos can be found at Friars Aylesbury website. 

Stuff I'm Listening to #76 - Kate Bush - Cloudbusting

Artist: Kate Bush

Title: Cloudbusting

Lyrics:
But every time it rains
You're here in my head
Like the sun coming out
Ooh, I just know that something good is going to happen

Why?: This is actually my first clear memory of Kate Bush. I really enjoy her body of work. She's a phenomenal artist. 

I remember not quite enjoying this song at first, but the video made me stick around. In my research I have discovered that Terry Gilliam (of Monty Python) actually conceived the video, which provided me with that 'Eureka!' moment. I love Monty Python and I really enjoy Terry Gilliam's work, so it should be of no surprise that the video would grab my attention the way it did when I was ten.

Eventually the song did grow on me. Bear in mind the song wasn't what my synth-pop tuned young ears were used to hearing. As I got older and experienced more of life, the song started to make more sense to me. 

Why this song now? It legitimately popped into my playlist today and having friends in Australia (@mynamelorraine) hoping for some reprieve from the fires, it just seemed appropriate. Also, I know that Kate is a fav of one of earliest Instagram buddies @hollystarlightpinup and I was thinking about her the other day. I know she’s been busy and hasn’t instagrammed for a bit. Funny how songs you haven’t heard in a while will pop up when you need them to.