Today is my birthday, and in celebration I’m sharing the incredible stop-motion video for The Smashing Pumpkins‘ timeless love song, Thirty Three. It’s not just one of my favorite tunes of all time, but one of the best videos from my childhood.
Music
Yo La Tengo covering The Cure’s “Friday I’m In Love”
When I saw that longtime favorite band Yo La Tengo were covering the classic hit Friday I’m In Love by The Cure, I pictured something hushed, understated, and endlessly charming. I wasn’t wrong.
When I watched the music video, however, I was fucking flabbergasted. It’s an epic story about love destroying the earth, as violent and jarring as it is hypnotic. Coming from this 30 year old band, it’s hilarious and.. surprising.
Roy Orbison – In Dreams
In dreams, you’re mine
all of the time.
There are a handful of beloved pop songs that somehow fill me with the most profoundly dark imagery, contrary to their buoyant reputation. In Dreams is one of those songs, a lifelong favorite and classic radio staple that shakes me to my core every time it plays.
Kanye West’s “Monster”
A lot of my friends just can’t get past Kanye West‘s outsize personality, and I think that’s a damn travesty. He’s not just a good rapper and producer; he’s a bonafide superstar with the gravity to pull in a who’s-who of incredible artists. He might shine too bright in public for your tastes, but he shines even brighter on record.
Despite all this, I’m a firm believer that one listen to Monster should be all anyone needs to become a fan. For this track from his 2009 opus My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye’s managed to corral Jay-Z, Rick Ross, and most notably Nicki Minaj for set of ferocious verses that more than justify the name.
This tune is one of the best posse cuts I’ve ever heard. It’s on par with a lot of great Wu-Tang material; just flawless verse after flawless verse, a parade of wildly different personalities detonating as one cohesive sound. It’s kind of insane to read just today that West doesn’t think the album is as good as us fans do.
Oneohtrix Point Never – Garden Of Delete
Oneohtrix Point Never has returned with a massive new album you can call G.O.D. It peels up the corner tiles of a thousand realities over 45 minutes, blooming micro-worlds of sound and immediately dissolving in head-on collisions.
For the first time in years, OPN – real name Daniel Lopatin – hasn’t completely restructured his sound, yet I’m feeling the same sense of dizzying vertigo that he’s made a career out of conjuring. In a real sense, the strongest component of his appeal has always been that daring sense of surprise, the act of an artist venturing over the edge of the known music world and bringing back sounds that I’ve never even anticipated, much less heard.
More than a style, it’s an idea, a philosophy. In the wrong hands, it can become a cheap trick. This is something far more substantial.
Funk Is Important
I’m always hearing music from outside my window. I live near a lot of bars, and my downtown has become a sort of motorcycle Mecca in the summertime, so I often hear classic rock or country blasting into my open windows before an open-throttle roar into the dark. It’s usually crap that I tune out, but just now I heard this song.
It’s Let It Whip, by Dazz Band, and it’s one of those songs you know even if you don’t realize it. Even better, it made me think about how fantastic it is that funk is making an oblique comeback in the cultural consciousness.
I heard the bass line echoing through the full row of windows I’ve got cracked open on this balmy 70 degree night in late September, and sprung to attention. It’s one of my favorite funk tunes but I couldn’t place the name. Where did I first hear it? Probably a Grand Theft Auto game, I think. Since you’ve seen the video above, you know the answer is yes.
I’m feeling so thankful for Dam-Funk and his ambassadorship of the entire funk genre. If it weren’t for him, I don’t know if I would have ever taken a leap back into the sounds of Zapp, Cameo, and Funkadelic. The weirdest thing is, once I cracked open these sounds I realized that funk had been with me all along. I’d been living and breathing the familiar beats my entire life, influenced by movies and the radio I’d mainlined as a child, without ever explicitly focusing on the genre as something I’m passionate about.
There’s something inherently cheesy about a lot of funk, and that’s something that a lot of people have to get over before they can engage it head on. Funk is an incredibly earnest genre, and in our current culture that’s kind of an embarrassing, abrasive feeling to convey. It’s the opposite of comfortable detachment, in a lot of ways, and that just feels weird when you’re not used to it. But once you let it in and enjoy it on its own aesthetic and emotional terms, this is music to keep warm to.
Right now, I couldn’t be more glad that I’m a believer in funk. 2015 has been a banner year for the genre, infusing one of the biggest albums of the year from end-to -end with a hard-fought riot-funk edge and being shot into the sky in neon fireworks proclaiming its vitality. The latter was Dam-Funk’s very own Invite The Light, a triple LP that continues to be my most-listened album in months, and the former was the absolutely monumental To Pimp A Butterfly, from Kendrick Lamar. As an independent entity, it might be more of an endangered species among current music genres, but the essence of funk has once again blown fresh life into hip-hop and jazz alike.
EDIT: I seriously hope you clicked that Cameo link above, because the video for Candy is some seriously bonkers hypnagogic dreamstuff. Just watch it, I’m making it super easy:
WOW, right? I thought so.
Indian Summer
It’s almost October and I’ve been biking to work every day in a tee shirt. It’s been glorious. I’m luxuriating in the best Indian summer in memory here on the coast of Lake Michigan and I’m taking the opportunity to share the best song named after this rare phenomenon.
I present to you Indian Summer, by Spectrum (aka Pete Kember, formerly Sonic Boom and half of Spacemen 3):
Despite Kember’s affectless delivery and detached atmosphere, this Beat Happening cover is incredibly warm, an enveloping bear hug that’s equal parts comforting and unsettling. He might be known for a deadpan take on psych drone, but his organ swells and horn blasts feel like the sun on your closed eyelids compared to the original recording’s caveman minimalism. While the sonics reach a nearly anthemic pitch, the lyrics rip the air from our sails.
We’ll come back for Indian Summer
We’ll come back for Indian Summer
We’ll come back for Indian Summer
And go our separate ways
Seriously this song. I always feel like I’m beaming until the last few lyrics cut through. It’s a good, well-earned deflation though. It feels good in its cool letdown. The kind of sadness I can get behind on any sunny, oddly warm day.
I think I should post a lot more about the 80s and 90s rock that I’ve loved for years. While you’re here, why not check out the original too? Which do you prefer?
Optimistic Underground 