Huffy Flounce

Heart of Glass by Blondie?

I don't know where you get "Heart of Glass" from, but I don't hear it. "Heart of Glass" has much more of a disco funkness to it.

The original had a bit of a Britpop-meets-indie pop feel to it. The video seems like something Supergrass might have released.

The remix gets a little busy for me at times. There's a part (around 2:30) where the vocals drop out and it sounds like a "happy" or upbeat version of Gary Numan. That's kinda cool.

Mal Shot First wrote:"Heart of Glass" has much more of a disco funkness to it.

My life is so full of disco funkness, maybe everything sounds that way to me. You should hear my doorbell!!

Bananarama's Bouncy Bits wrote:You should hear my doorbell!!

You know it!

I have not decided whether or not this girl is worthy of the names previously mentioned on this list.

However.... I like her stuff. So that has to count for something, one would hope.












Edit 01/07/16: Definitely worth it.

Just to balance out the songs in the other thread, I'll post one that I actually like.



If you don't listen that closely to the lyrics it sounds like just a fun song, but the content is actually pretty dark.

Followed up nicely with this song:

Mal Shot First wrote:If you don't listen that closely to the lyrics it sounds like just a fun song, but the content is actually pretty dark.

I keep wanting to sing along with the chorus and replace it with: "All the little chicks with the crimson lips singing Cleveland rocks, faster than my bullet."

"Pumped Up Kicks" belongs in the "songs that annoy Huffy Flouncers" thread so far as I'm concerned. Perhaps in the Mt. Rushmore of songs that annoy me.

Every other Foster the People song I've heard is actually rather enjoyable.

My feelings on Foster the People clearly belong in the "Current Mixed Feelings" thread, I guess.

I originally created this thread to showcase (or, in other words, force...) Canadian popular music down all of everyone else's collective throat.

I still intend to do that.

However, first... I think we would all benefit oh so much, from listening to Howard Stern's interview with Neil Young, which went down a few weeks ago:






I love the fact that my new job gives me Sirius Satellite radio. Fuckin' great new world we're living in. In some ways.

Does Neil talk about that expensive-as-shit lossless audio file player he's pushing? You know the one. It's the one that's such an aural delight it makes your skin walk right off your body and she-bop you so hard and fast you end up cumming a half pint of blood.

It sounds like you're right there in the studio. No. Scratch that. It sounds so much like you're there you start to wonder if maybe you're the one singing. No. Scratch that. You are the one singing. Holy shit. You've just traveled through space and time and jumped into Billy Idol's body. What's with this fuckin' itch? Surprise, motherfucker. It's herpes.

Uh, not in so many words... but yes, he does talk about the PONO player.

Of course he does.

Amongst other fascinating topics.

Songs I've enjoyed recently:


(The video is especially awesome.)


(I also like the psychedelic visuals in this video.)


(My favorite line: Simmer down and pucker up / I'm sorry to interrupt)

Can you tell I've been listening to the "alternative" radio station while driving?

Must be similar to the one I listen to...they alternate between themselves "Alternative" or "New Rock," the latter of which I feel is more accurate if we're to quibble about labels, which of course none of us ever do. Those songs have been on steady rotation for a while, but I haven't seen the videos. I especially like the Big Data song.

Hey, man, the only label important enough to quibble about is Freedom Rock, man:



This jammin' Frank Black tune, while titled "Freedom Rock," is not Freedom Rock:

I haven't been keeping up with the music world. I guess that comes with being a stay-at-home parent and a shut-in. These particular circumstances might have led to newer musical discoveries a decade ago, but these days I spend most of my free time reading, writing, and exercising. I've encountered some newer songs through The Voice, I guess, but it's not usually the kind of stuff I like.

The Big Data song has a Spoon-like feel to it. It could just be the stripped-down, bass-heavy approach of the intro. It gets less Spoon-like once the electronic instrumentation kicks in. Some Spoon songs for comparison:





I was going to say the Cage the Elephant song had a Humbug-era Arctic Monkeys feel to it (but with maybe some Pixies bass and Danger Mouse-type production), and was amused to see that you followed that song up with an Arctic Monkeys track. The Arctic Monkeys track you followed it up with doesn't sound much like Humbug-era Arctic Monkeys.

The Arctic Monkeys sound keeps evolving. When they started out, their sound was positioned squarely between the Strokes and Libertines--though their guitars were harder than both of these bands, which helped them pull in some hard rock fans. I guess it's cool that the Arctic Monkeys keep refining their sound. Lots of bands do it. With the Arctic Monkeys, though, I feel like I'm never sure if it's their song if I hear something new. This could just be because I've never really followed them closely or listened to any of their albums more than once or twice.

I guess I have listened to one new thing. I sought out the Julian Casablancas + The Voidz album pretty recently. This track was the standout for me:



It sounds vaguely like a longer and more abstract version of Blur's "Sing," which is an old favorite of mine:



I have been listening to a good bit of music over the course of the last year or two. Some of it has been stuff that was new to me. This stuff isn't new to the world, mind you. Maybe I'll post some video links to some of it in a bit.

I also thought of Spoon when I heard the Big Data song, but for me it was a mixture of the vocals and the bass that did it.

My first exposure to the Arctic Monkeys was through this song:



You can hear the juicy bass already in that song, but it's not as defining as it is for "Do I Wanna Know." It does seem like their style has changed significantly since then. It seems more stripped down to me, even though that's probably not true. I guess it's the focus on percussion and bass (and the loudness of the vocals relative to the instrumentation) that gives me that impression. By the way, there is some consistency of style among the songs from their AM album.

"Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?" is another song that is getting some radio exposure right now, and I could immediately identify it as an Arctic Monkeys song based on its similarities to "Do I Wanna Know."



The vocals are really the main thing that "gives it away" - the tone of voice is similar to "Do I Wanna Know" (and noticeably different from "Crying Lightning"), and there is that echo-y quality to it that appears in "Do I Wanna Know" starting around the 2:00-minute mark. What would you call that effect that I hear in a bunch of rock songs these days, where the vocals sound as if they're coming from a radio speaker? Lo-fi? They sound almost tinny or a bit static-y, or something. Anyway, the vocals in "Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?" have that quality, and to a lesser extent I can also hear it in some parts of "Do I Wanna Know."

I guess it could be called lo-fi, but there are some lo-fi purists who would argue that the entire song has to be lo-fi and that it doesn't count if you're just putting the vocals through a processor/filter. Most digital mixing boards make it pretty easy to a achieve the effect. (Some do this by recording everything onto low-quality cassettes. Others do it digitally by reducing the bit rate.) There's usually a "telephone" selection offered among the EQ options. You can also jigger the settings manually to achieve this effect. I used to do this as a way to hide not-so-great vocals. A telephone effect and some multi-tracking goes a long way.

Another way to distort vocals to get a similar effect is to run them through a guitar amp. The Strokes and Radiohead have both done this.

That apostrophe-D in "Why'd" really bothers me. It seems to be the official spelling of the song title, but the contraction doesn't quite make sense in the context of the song. The way I see it, "why'd" can stand for "why would" or possibly "why did." They intend it to mean "why do" - it should be written "Why d'you only call me when you're high."

The title for the Led Zeppelin song "D'yer Mak'er" baffled and annoyed me for years. It wasn't until I became an Internet regular that I got an explanation for it. From Wikipedia's "D'yer Mak'er" article:

The name of the song is derived from an old joke, where two friends have the following exchange: "My wife's gone to the West Indies." "Jamaica?" (which has a similar pronunciation as "D'you make her?") "No, she went of her own accord". On 21 July 2005, Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant discussed the song during an interview with Mike Halloran, a DJ on radio station FM94.9 in San Diego. During the interview, he talked about the different interpretations and pronunciations of the name of the song.[4] The title, which appears nowhere in the lyrics, was chosen because it reflects the reggae feel of the song. Plant has said that he finds it amusing when fans completely overlook the apostrophes and naively mispronounce the title as "Dire Maker".

Plant's being "amused" by fans' interpretations of it is annoying in the same way that Meat Loaf's reaction to fans' interpretations of "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" is annoying. Even with the apostrophes and the explanation, it doesn't quite work for me. I'd expect to see something more like "'Ja Make 'Er?" (The 'Ja would be a contraction for the informal Didja.)

I guess it works a little better when I consider British spelling conventions and think about how Americans spell a certain discourse particle "uh" and Brits spell it "er." The pronunciation is pretty much the same. It also helps to think about how Germans approximate the J sound with Dsch, as is the case with jungle and Dschungel. It helps, but still!

Annoyance at Plant aside, I've always dug the song:

I've been listening to Maury Muehleisen's Gingerbreadd a lot lately. Here's the song I like best on the album:



You may recognize Muehleisen as the guy who plays lead guitar in videos of Jim Croce playing live. They played together. They died together.

* * *

I've spoken favorably of Michael Nesmith and the National Band's Magnetic South in the past. I think I've even linked to the song "Joanne" from the album. I've probably also lamented that their cover of "Beyond the Blue Horizon" wasn't on YouTube. Well, now it is:



It's a builder. It's best played loud. The genius of the cover, beyond the building and beyond the (likely annoying to some) farm sounds is how many of the lyrics have been stripped away from the original. It generalizes the meaning and gives what's left of the lyrics more punch.

Lou Christie covers the Nesmith arrangement of the tune (absent lyrics and all) to good effect. He cuts out the farm intro and outro and his vocals are (as one would expect) crazy good, but as far as I can tell, he doesn't give a writing credit to Nesmith. The 45 I've seen only credits Harling, Robin, Whiting--the song's original writers. Since Nesmith's version is so different, I feel like it's a dick move not to give Nesmith a credit. Then again, it might not be Christie's fault. For all I know, he was brought the Nesmith song by some label exec and led to believe it was a faithful cover of the original.

I prefer the Nesmith version because of the farm sounds and slower build. Taking away the farm sounds, for me, alters the meaning of the Nesmith version. I see it as a farmer locked into his life on the farm but dreaming big. When the farm sounds return, it's clear he's going nowhere. It's dark and beautiful. The Christie version suggests the persona is actually going to escape his/her dull life. Also cool, but different.

If you like Gram Parsons and the Byrds' Gram Parsons era, you will probably like the whole of Magnetic South.

* * *

The next song is a song by the Insect Trust. Their name comes from William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch. This makes two bands I know of who took their names from Naked Lunch. (The other is Steely Dan.)

The song is "Ragtime Millionaire," from the album Hoboken Saturday Night:



It's not to be confused with William Moore's pretty awesome (and much older) "Ragtime Millionaire." They share a title, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Insect Trust got their title from the Moore song, but the music and lyrics are both significantly different. Wikipedia claims the Insect Trust song is a cover of the Moore song, but Wikipedia is dumb and wrong. At most, I'd grant an "inspired by."

Hoboken Saturday Night is good stuff. I think it's the Insect Trust's second of two albums. It's probably most famous for putting "The Eyes of a New York Woman," from Thomas Pynchon's V., to music. Frankly, I'm a little surprised Wikipedia doesn't think the Insect Trust song is a cover of the B.J. Thomas song of the same name. (Thomas recorded his song during his "Hooked on a Feeling" era, so you'll notice some sonic similarities to his version of "Hooked on a Feeling." This is mostly thanks to the electric sitar, but it's also thanks to the line "lips as sweet as honeycomb." (Note: Mark James, who also wrote and recorded "Suspicious Minds" [which would be covered by Elvis and would be his last number one hit], wrote the lyrics for both "Hooked on a Feeling" and the version of "The Eyes of a New York Woman" sung by Thomas.)

You may know two of the Insect Trust's members. One was the Holy Modal Rounders' Luke Faust, and the other was Robert Palmer. I should clarify that it was the Robert Palmer who went on to write for Rolling Stone, and not the Robert Palmer who sang "Addicted to Love." He was also not the Robert Palmer who founded the first American doctoral program in music (at Cornell) and who composed "Toccata Ostinato."

* * *

I'll probably post some more videos in a day or two. It'll just be the songs next time, I think. I may add a line or two talking about the songs, but I doubt I'll add much more.