FoeWeel !!! ???

17th @Treat Ave, 2008

The TV On The Radio show, Sunday night at the newly carpeted Warfield was a good time. Another high energy, dynamic show from one of the most important bands in music today. They only played for an hour, and with a catalog of 3 long players and few eps, they could have played a bit longer. The encore of ‘A Method’ with the Dirtbombs on stage to create a Stomp-like envrionment was a highlight as well as the driving hypnotic drumming that started and carried ‘DLZ’.

1. Young Liars
2. The Wrong Way
3. Golden Age
4. Wolf Like Me
5. Dirtywhirl
6. Stork and Owl
7. Shout Me Out
8. Red Dress
9. DLZ
10. Satellite

Encore:
11. Crying
12. A Method
13. Let the Devil In
14. Staring at the Sun

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Well, today is the day that New Order gets remastered and super-sized of their best material. Low-Life, Brotherhood, Technique and Power, Corruption & Lies are 4 classic albums that show a band coming into it’s own from the ashes of their previous band, Joy Division, by melding rock with synths to create a futuristic sound with Peter Hook’s melodic bass lines at the heart of each song.. This was the first band that I obsessed over. I had to get all of their releases and the first band that didn’t disappoint on most of their releases. They were the third band I ever saw in concert when they played with Echo & The Bunnymen on their 1987 tour and it didn’t sound that good, but by 1989 when they were touring with PIL and the Sugarcubes, they sounded much better (sampler technology improvements?). The shows were at Merriweather Post Pavilion, which is the name of the new Animal Collective album, and it’s also one of those truly non-distinct outdoor pavilions that’s usually located right in the heart of suburban blandness. Anyway, here are some of my personal favorites from the above mentioned albums. They are not the tunes that you normally dance to when it’s 80′s night. Some synth sounds may feel a bit dated and Bernard Sumner’s lyrics sometimes feel like they came from the back of a cereal box, but they are nonethesless one of the most influential bands touching everyone from LCD Soundsystem, Arcade Fire to Richie Hawtin. They were making the indie kids, the precursor to hipsters, dance when they were also just figuring out what else to do with their hips.

New Order – Age Of Consent

New Order – Lonesome Tonight

New Order – Love Vigilantes

New Order – Weirdo

New Order – Run

This is my mixtape to you. It comes in at 62 minutes and 24 seconds, so you may have to get a 90 minute tape. You may even have to buy a cassette player, or just get one of these gadgets. Maybe, this is a way to convince you to go to my junior year Ring Dance, or maybe even the Senior Prom. We’ll have cases of Becks beer, Peach Schnapps and Wine Coolers for the ladies, and whatever else we need to make the night memorable. I’ll give it to you at Burger King, the place to drive to in between classes, and meet the girls from the sister school. And if I get caught for leaving campus, and get detention, it’ll be worth it. I’ll clean the toilets, tap the kegs for the jesuits, get on my knees…..to pray.

I hope you like the tape. It’s probably best if you go to a quiet place, and listen to it through your headphones. I think these things come together better when you don’t have too much time to think about it. Take a mood here, a lyric there, and you have this entirely new thing that’s made up from the smaller parts, to help to capture a feeling that may be difficult to express through words, in our adolescence. How a song can take you to a place, this mixtape will take you to all of the places, experiencing all of the unexpected, and help you to remember this small moment, in our time together.

SMS Text: Food Court MixTape (Download)

Milosh – You Make Me Feel - a simple message of how “it” can make you feel. the music has that dream-like, delirious quality, just like “it”. “you, beautiful moment in my life, a sweet wrinkle in time, so let’s stretch this thing out”

Joseph Arthur – Honey And The Moon - maybe it’s about a past love, but the melody has such optimism. “if you weren’t real, i would make you up, now”. “and right now, all your dreams are waking up”

Jeff Buckley – Morning Theft (Live) – “a heart that beats as both siphon and reservoir”

Björk – Headphones (Live) – the power of music to convey emotion. how music may be the most powerful language. “these abstract wordless movements”. “i like this resonance, it elevates me”

Sigur Rós – Med Sud I Eyrum (With A Buzz In Our Ears) – we’re traveling on a train and looking out the window into a vast open space of the future, and it doesn’t matter where we end up, it’s all about the journey and adventure to get there, together.

Hanne Hukkelberg – Ease – whimsical, yet painful. change can happen.

New Order – Every Little Counts – the laughter, for being stupid, together. not the greatest lyrics, but every little does count, like making a bed. “every second counts”.

Damien Rice – The Blower’s Daughter (Live) - “i can’t take my mind off of you”

The Cinematic Orchestra – To Build A Home (featuring Patrick Watson) – home is not necessarily a place. is it a state of mind, or another person ? “Out in the garden where we planted the seeds. There is a tree as old as me. Branches were sewn by the color of green. Ground had arose and passed it’s knees”

Daft Punk – Digital Love – so sappy, but such a great pop song about happiness and hope.

Cat Stevens – The Wind – when you least expect it, your soul will guide you in the right direction, or to the food court at the mall.

Iron & Wine – The Trapeze Swinger – a song about purgatory which I have often felt that I was trapped in as well. all of the beautiful haunting imagery in one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded. it has that sort-of sad optimism feeling to it. happy sad.

Bloc Party – Tulips (Original Version) – “this could be an opportunity”. the drumming helps to convey the mood of urgency, and trying to convince someone that this is special, that this is real……

Radiohead – Go Slowly - i love how his voice flows through, and acts out the lyrics, “come slowly to me”, “patiently”.

There’s a great site, Song Meanings which lists lyrics as well as user interpretations of each song, and it helped with the lyrics stated above.

SheLeaves, Silver Falls State Park, Oregon, 2008

I have been hearing rumblings that my blog has become soft. That it’s become a forum for my new positive outlook on life. There’s no more edge to my ramblings, and selections of music. It’s all happy singer-songwriter crap made for AAA radio. Well, out of my 400 gigs of music, I think there are only a handful of happy songs anyway, although I have been introduced to a whole new world of music that revolves around positivity.

So, here are some more songs about hope, basement walls that sweat at 4am, and the power to see perfection in imperfection.

Joseph Arthur – Honey And The Moon – hopeful, optimistic, loss–”if you weren’t real, i’d make you up”

Digital Mystikz – Misty Winter – sometimes beauty comes out from the darkest places.

New Order – Elegia (Terranova Remix) – off of the Color Calm by design dvd which basically turns your tv into a giant color palette featuring designs from Peter Saville who designed most, if not all of the Factory record covers, from Joy Division to New Order. Terranova’s ambient take on this instrumental classic makes you feel as if you were underwater.

The Beatles – A Day In The Life (John Barrett Tapes) – off of the John Barrett bootlegs. probably my favorite beatles tune. i love how the tune starts with lennon’s dark imagery and turns into mccartney’s lighthearted take on…..life.

Far Niente Winery 2007

i guess i need to work on my year end lists. i’ve already picked out the best singles of the year which i only have three, but maybe i’ll have more. so, before the craziness of the past few weeks, i went to see spiritualized for their acoustic mainlines tour at bimbo’s 365. after reading all the positive reviews on other shows from the tour, i was looking forward to it as the only other time i got to see them was in 1997 when they opened up for radiohead and they preceded to play feedback for an hour with barely any discernible lyrics. i enjoyed it, but i think everyone else in the audience felt like it sounded like microphoned fingernails against a chalkboard. so, we get to the show and it turns out to be a sit down affair. fine. 3 gospel-like singers, 3 string players, one rhodes electric piano and one guitar playing and singing jason pierce. great idea, but…. what makes spiritualized so great and the fact the ‘ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space’ is one of my favorites is that they create all of these layers of sound by the vast amount of instruments they use while not overwhelming the song itself. the greatness is not with the lyrics or pierce’s voice. it adds to the overall piece, so when you strip out what makes these songs unique, you are left with something far from interesting. oh well.

Joy Division – Ceremony (Alternative Rock) – after hearing radiohead’s version of ‘ceremony’, i noticed that thom yorke was trying to imitate ian curtis rather than bernard sumner. this track is a rare version with ian curtis on vocals. the movie ‘control’ is worth seeing although it does make the guys in new order look a bit inconsequential, but they were part of 2 of the most influential bands ever in music.

Radiohead – I Want None Of This – from the 2005 help! release, it’s basically a solo piece with a piano. they played it a bunch of times on their last tour, but here’s the original. haunting.