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I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve been wide awake since 4 this morning. I gave up on sleeping an hour ago and snapped my headphones on. Thought I’d share one band in particular with you: The Rural Alberta Advantage.
This one’s called Frank, AB:
And this one’s called Edmonton:
Leave it to a bunch of Albertans living in Toronto to make me wax post-nostalgic for our time in Montreal from where Hanne and I would think about all the good bits of our hometown. And sure, now we’re back and there are… good bits. North America’s northern-most city will have an unseasonable high of plus-11 C today. The past few days have been/will be a brief respite from the cold — these few days count as a good bit of a long brutal Edmonton winter. A spring-tease before we’re plunged back far under zero until April. Or will it be May? Winter here seems both colder and longer than I remembered…
New and old, here’s what SiS listened to in 2008. List will be updated until… I lose interest.
WSiSL2in2008 playlist will show up on your right side after the jump.
And whatever you’re listening to tonight, your playlist ought to end here:
Remix No. 1:
The Original:
Cut Copy – Lights and Music (from In Ghost Colours)
The Remix:
Boyz Noize – Happy Birthday Remix (from Lights and Music Single)
Remix No. 2:
The Original:
Does It Offend You, Yeah? – Epic Last Song (from You Have No Idea What You Are Getting Yourself Into)
The Remix:
Lifelike – Epic Last Song (from Epic Last Song Single)
Remix No. 3:
The Original:
Kraft – Kraft Dinner
– KD is okay, but it could be better. I’m right, right? Hanne and I got home late one night and I wanted junk food. KD sounded about right, but it’s boring and one-dimensional. So…
The Remix:
Supper in Stereo – BKD
– Fry four or five strips of bacon. Instead of using butter or milk as per regular KD instructions, use some (or all!) of the bacon grease. Chop bacon into chunks and mix it into finished KD. Peas would be good, too, I think. I’m going to try that.
AHA! I figured out a way to get music on our blog. Here’s what Hanne and I have been listening to in the kitchen.
Bon Iver: Flume / Skinny Love from For Emma, Forever Ago
Ingredients:
- 1 part Wolf Parade vocals/lyrics
- 1 part TV on the Radio vocals/plaintive shouting
- Dash of Califone pacing, folktronics
- Splash of Iron and Wine
- Pinch of Band of Horses
Passion Pit: I’ve Got Your Number / Sleepyhead from Chunk of Change
Ingredients:
- Drop of smoking Hot Chip beats and breakdowns
- Grating of Gibbard vocals dissolved in giddy-kid Go Team choruses
- Simmering zimming Unicorn(s) midi-synths
- 1 chunk of Styrofoam, broken into squeaky bits and blips
- Animal Collective / Daniel Johnston manic silliness, to taste
Let’s just say it’s probably good that Hanne doesn’t let me post what I want, whenever I want. Luckily, for me, Halloween is a great excuse to take SiS in a decidedly different (read lowbrow) direction. Here’s the world’s “blacker than the blackest black… times infinity” death metal band grocery shopping (*Hanne’s note–This is NSFW, and pretty vulgar):
The show is Metalocalypse. Ignore the video captions. Happy Halloween!
Youtube made Justice’s D.A.N.C.E. a smash over the summer. The song is infectious. Virulent even, sticking its noxious hooks in your ears. The schoolyard imperative shouts “Do the dance!” And you do. And you should. It’s a great song.
But I thought for sure that I’d broken it over the summer. That “do the d-a-n-c-e, 1-2-3-4-5” would quit repeating in my head. Pop hits are usually toast by late summer. But Justice’s sugar pop had been taking its licks well into the fall.
Now finally the clincher–the antidote for those of you still spellbound by D.A.N.C.E.’s ABCs. This is the song performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live:
Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Rod Stewart, Prince and Rick James all on one stage? It’s like when you get your slurpy straw just right and you get ALL syrup concentrate, sucking the slush into a chunk of flavourless ice.
And if that video didn’t make you lose your lunch, then here’s Simian Mobile Disco’s Hustler:
Above is the alternate video for Kanye West’s Can’t Tell Me Nothing, created by and featuring comedian Zach Galifianakis.
Kanye West‘s official video sucks. The video is shot on a desert with long dusky shadows. It trades cuts of a woman in a billowing dress dancing in the wind and West rapping and gesticulating wildly. The video ends with a Lamborghini pointlessly spinning out, raising a huge plume of dust. The title of the Youtube video should read “Kanye parks car on the set of an Enya music video.”
Notes: Galifianakis’s red shorted hoedown homey is indie-darling Will Oldham (Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy). The video was shot on Zach’s farm in North Carolina. And dude drives a mean tractor.
Here’s Zach at it again, with Fiona Apple:
Vodpod videos no longer available.
more about “The Hours – Ali in the jungle“, posted with vodpod
When Carlo I and decided to get married, I got scared. Not because I was unsure of our relationship, but because it dawned on me that we’re going to get old, and then we’re going to die. Please don’t ask me how I made that leap (apologies to my parents, who are my marriage template– you’re not old yet!).
On the other hand, I was excited. My dad told me (and I paraphrase, because I don’t know who said it first, or even really what he said) that a marriage is two people who know they can do more good together than they could apart. When we’re not bickering about the evolution of internet social networking sites (which, by the way, I still don’t think necessarily reflect the age and changing needs of their primary users) I know that’s what Carlo and I are. We’re a great team.
But we’re still going to die. That’s why I like this song by UK band The Hours so much. First, there’s the positive message, the stick-to-it, pick-yourself-up, it’s-okay-to-fail message. And the cultural references–you’ve got to like a song that mashes up Helen Keller, Nelson Mandela and Beethoven, not to mention the star of the song, Muhammad Ali. I also love that the “Jungle” of the title refers to Ali’s historic fight against George Foreman, who went on to sell us the grill Carlo bemoans in an earlier post.
What brings this all together for me, though, is Jonas Odell’s great steampunky collage video. First, it’s just really cool. Like Carlo said, inspirational music is all right as long as it’s got skulls and fighting. But those skulls remind me of the tradition of the memento mori, a Latin phrase that translates loosely as “remember you’re going to die.” When I think about it, knowing that I’m going to die isn’t such a bad thing. If we’re all going to die anyway, why shouldn’t we do the things we dream about, like getting married and writing about food and music, and actually cooking all those recipes we think up? So that’s what we’re doing.
Supper In Stereo 