Hello droolycats! I am in the middle of finishing up my masters dissertation! Lately I have been listening to my thesis anthem, The Bad Girl Workout Plan, while I write. Listen along! The whole thing is excellent, but my favorite part starts at 14:28.
Bad Girl Workout Plan by djlilray
ALSO, I accidentally made a really excellent hipster breakup/rebound mixtape. this is hilarious because i am a) not seeing anyone and b) not going through a break-up, but I am c) a giant hipster. (recently in Urban Outfitters I was mistaken for an employee.) Enjoy.
01. abducted - cults
02. bedroom eyes - dum dum girls
03. romance - wild flag
04. get some - lykke li
05. heavy cross (RAC mix) - the gossip
06. we can't stop [ft ne-yo] - jj
07. try sleeping with a broken heart (alicia keys) - chad valley
08. indestructible - robyn
09. super bass - nicki minaj
10. last friday night (tgif) (viceroy poolside remix) - katy perry
Yes, i can hear you judging me from over there for the last few tracks. Thanks. I bet you'll secretly love them anyway. Download this mix, which i have pretentiously named 'this is not a love song' here.
Hello Droolycat! First of all, I have to share this majestic video of Andrew Bird playing in a church. It will blow your mind.
Second, I've been working on this new mix which I think you guys should check out. See, in high school I was an avid progressive rock fan. Popular in the 60's and 70's, this genre abandoned the typical verse-chorus-bridge song structure for something more complex and story-like. Being a band kid, how could I resist a form of rock which was highly influenced by jazz, classical and world music, and favored obscure time signatures? I could not. I have learned since going to college that most people think prog is funny. Well, here's my attempt to argue that it is real and influential music! I tried to choose the most accessible tunes from each of these artists (which was hard since the average prog song is about 15 minutes long). Anyway, give it a try!
Finally! Watch this sweet video of Genesis playing "Firth of Fifth" in Dallas, 1977. I think you'll at least appreciate Phil Collins during his "caveman" stage. This has got to be the peak of his career.
I love this playlist! It is so full of awesomeness. I really took some time in crafting this collection of songs. Despite the fact that there are 30 tracks, which is longer than usual, I was cutthroat. Great bands can cover other great bands, but the results just aren't always special enough to stand alone as a cover song. I think that the best cover songs are made carefully and abstractly; someone else supplied the music and lyrics, so what happens next? It's great for one artist to pay homage to another, and the best way this is done is if the cover song diverges from the original in a new perspective, while still retaining the integrity of the original. It is hard to do, but it is also incredibly fun to do. Fun is another criteria for creating the best cover song, it should always be fun. For my own ukulele covers, I often use Chordie.com to search for chords.
Adele! She does some amazing covers, here is a Buzzfeed article listing some of her others. This song would be on the playlist however Grooveshark did not have the file in their library. Lame!
I was really blown away by the Cee Lo Green cover of Band of Horses' "No One's Gonna Love You", it might be my favorite on the list (aka. I can't stop listening to it). I didn't even realize that it was on his most recent album, The Lady Killer (2010). I was really into Band of Horses during freshman year of college, they're wonderful to listen to during the fall/winter. Second place favorite might be the Benzedrine Monks of Santo Domonica's cover of Queen's "We Will Rock You", just because I love to imagine them standing in a church in their robes, rocking it out.
To come up with some ideas for this playlist, I used this awesome website called The Covers Project. It is a searchable database with comprehensive listings of many, many bands covering others. Obviously though, the place with the most covers, updated constantly from all around the world, is YouTube. There are some fantastic unknown musicians who do fabulous covers that we would never hear, had it not been for YouTube.
EDIT, 09/7/2011
I was going back through older posts of mine, and realized that Grooveshark is not an ideal way to share playlists in the long term. One of my lists from earlier this year went from having about ten songs to...three? While I am not exactly sure where the songs come from on the website, the fact of the matter is, they disappear and it affects my lists, causing me to lose whatever I worked to share with you in the future. So, from now on I am going to make cuts like this with the list of songs, just so they are never lost. I suppose any site besides a direct link to the song may do this as well, YouTube isn't forever either. So, anyway, click the link below for a listing of the tracks.
We spend a lot of time on this here blog talking about music we really love.
What about music we really hate?!
I went through my iTunes the other day, looking for some. And then I remembered I make a concious effort to not curate music I hate on my hard drive. But then I was curious about something I'd really not want to listen to for any extended period of time (ie. more than 30 seconds). I have a bunch of artists I don't really like, per se, but upon revisiting them 2-5 years later, I love them (see exhibit a: Hot Chip. God DAMN was I missing out. I'm just getting into them now- good thing I saved those three albums of theirs!)
But this still doesn't solve my mystery of music I really hate... or does it?
Here are some things that I, Heather, cannot stand to listen to:
1. Rap-Metal. Why did this have to happen.
2. Modern Pop-Country Music. I actually really love country music - old stuff (Johnny Cash!) to newer alt-country (Neko Case! Wilco!), bluegrass (Crooked Still!) and even Dolly Parton (yes I said it, you guys can stop taking me seriously now...) But this shit? Terrible.
3. Musicals.* I really dislike when people leap up out of nowhere and start singing and dancing. Musicals, therefore, I something irrationally hate. Maybe this means I don't like fun, I don't know.
* I make four exceptions to this rule: 1) Mamma Mia, as I sometimes get drunk for the sole purpose of watching the DVD (and the entire thing is people singing - they don't stop singing OR dancing, so it's sort of okay); 2) Rocky Horror Picture Show; 3) Hedwig and the Angry Inch; 4) The Muppets. #2, 3 and 4 are weird enough as it is, so adding more unnecessary weirdness is just entirely campy and over the top and therefore enjoyable!
