If you haven’t seen this video or this guy yet, you’re welcome. Hilarious. Check out his other stuff if you like this, particularly the back pain one. Weather is getting super nice, just in time for Marathon Monday down in Boston. Good luck to everyone doing the marathon and the Epic Man!
• Hoodie Allen – No Faith In Brooklyn – Hoodie’s back with a new album, laying down some delicious white boy tracks. This new stuff is actually more melodic than past jams…and it’s awesome. Definitely worth a download.
• Scissor Sisters – Only The Horses - Also back on the scene with new music are the Scissor Sisters (all male) with their beat driving ballad that makes no sense. NO sense. But it’s a great beat and gets me pretty fired up, so whatever.
• TV Girl – I Wonder Who She’s Kissing Now -Great sound coming out of TV Girl. Fun 60′s retro strings mixed with a playful front man. Nothing than an innocent little sunset jam about the girl you’re digging making out with other dudes. God bless America.
• Skrillex – Ruffneck – Are you ready for the rock & bass? Soo…Skrillex is pretty intense. He’s also a musical prodigy, in my opinion. This remix of one of reggae’s legendary smash hits has become one of my favorite driving songs. Highly recommended download for anyone looking to get weird. Real weird.
• Alabama Shakes – Hold On – Imagine the Black Keys met up with The Band, had a few kids, who later started a band. This is what you would get. These guys are incredible – raw and rough.
Yes you saw it right. I managed to get TGIFjams on a city bus in San Francisco for the weekend!! Big ups to Katheryn in operations of the city for the hook up. Get on the bus!
If I do say so, the songs this week crush.
• Taio Cruz – Dynamite – From breaking your heart to exploding the dancefloor, TC makes me proud of his initials.
• Katy Perry – Teenage Dream - “Let’s go all the way tonight. No regrets, just love.” Words of wisdom about being a teenager. Fist pump from a power chick driving on a highway with her hair blowing in the wind? Image – check.
Kicking off our first ever celebrity jam session, MizKris delivers a quiver of weekend bending artillery. Track one gives us a phenomenal mix of Naughty by Nature-esque hip hope overlaid on one of the Paul and John’s classic ballads. Straight 90′s in every way possible, the flat brimmed Dyme duo indeed inflates the 60′s track with so much helium they must be floating in the troposphere. Hellz yeah.
Hmm, the religious overtones of such an experience are undeniable as wrapped up so well by the above equation. Is there anything more fervent than an addict who follows 10 rules as laid out by the dealer? Notoriously big in everything he does, the master of big beats showcases another powerhouse rap jam. Ironicially off the album life after death, which is both religious in it’s own right. Sort of.
Did a little research on this team of hip hop phenoms and I am pretty sure they are from Tufts college? Could be wrong, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Round 2 of the delicious 2010 trend of doing a “mashup” but sampling a different tempo of your favorite 1992 jam and supifying it. Is that a word? Nope. This would be a tough bed time story. I just can’t imagine a toddler sleeping well while bouncing their head to the beat.
It is only fitting to include a song by Vampire Weekend, taken off the Twilight soundtrack, on opening weekend of the movie opening. You just can’t script that kind of timing. I hear a little bit of Smashing Pumpkins in this one, and the slightest onslaught of feelin’ good. Transcendental, depending on the weather.
Talk about a song that puts a rocket launcher into your day dreaming. The rhythm correlation is fantastic – like the oscilloscope of brain waves that one experiences after a) waking and then b) baking. Those monumental feelings of being up, up & away come through in this one. Just play it loud. Maybe before watching the fireworks this weekend, maybe after drinking that 3rd “i shouldn’t have done that” cup of coffee on July 5th. Your choice.
Don’t worry if I write rhymes, I write chex. This song is so bombnastical I am having a hard time containing myself on this glorious Friday morning. It’s like all the power of a San Francisco throw down was packed into 3 monumental chords, 4 lines of lyrical brilliance, and 5 beats of bluemangroup magic. The Knife meets M.I.A, hummingbird meets giraffe, uppers meet downers. It’s the kind of song that somehow manages to encompass all genres, yet probably would never be the perfect song for anything other that sitting at your computer and ripping dreams of “what if’s.” And, really, that’s about as good as it gets these days.
Bringing ourselves back into reality for a few minutes, I heard this one on the local FM box a few days ago and did the move where you wait in your car for a few minutes before getting out because you “just want to hear the end of the song.” You know what I mean. Best feeling. The power K’s of Keane and K’naan synergize in a way that really soars the way all track-2-tgifjams songs tend to do…not quite a celebration, but definitely something worth high fiving about. Like paragliding in Austria or Peru. That wild moment where you are so floored by what you are feeling that you want to shout to the world how sick everything is, yet want to say nothing because you feel it so deeply. Stop for a minute…I think about things I really don’t want to know. Ignorance is bliss?
THIS is a cover. Getting completely real on the piano, I liken this production to the Miles Fisher Talking Heads Cover. Calculated and organic all at once, perfect material for the next hipster RomCom, “900 days until I like you and wear something colorful.” The second half of this song brings together some simple drum tracks that balance the earnest piano chords, laid over an Owl City synthesized beat tapper. All in all an impressive piece of work. I gotta feeling that tonight’s gonna be a good night – this guy is definitely taking it easy.
Melting into the last of today’s mix, the ice cream of the first weekend in June brings with it a phantastic Beta Band-esque tune. Using Funkadelic’s Can You Get With That as a melodic springboard, Sleigh Bells manage to Santa Claus their way into the cerebral deep end of the headphones’ final destination. Is this ice cream? Or maybe a really creamy sherbert. Definitely not a sorbet. Not even close to a milkshake, but for some reason frighteningly akin to a frappe. I’m in the park, playing with puppies, eating ice cream, listening to this. The sky is blue. The air is clean. Life is simple moment to moment, and simple life is simple life.
A weekend tribute to the golden rule of marketing – give ‘em what they want. I decided to pull 5 of the hottest songs straight off the charts this week for your Friday pleasure and am understanding why these are pulling down millions of downloads. The George Jung inspired art work has an electric feel, cemented at #1 by an elixer of beat smashing, bikinis, and martinis – a formula that is the Rearden Steel of good times. Who is John Galt? If you don’t know what I’m talking about, he lives in California. The Golden State is the Golden rule.
Remember that K’naan song Wavin’ Flags? Well, imagine a Darth Vader remix and you get Eminem’s latest bombshell, a towering skyscraper of reverb laid on minor chords that add depth to Eminem’s signature somber attitude towards life. Even a theme so climactic as not being afraid manages to be a battle between him and the world around him. The dude is so serious. I bet he is left handed. Man, look at the choreographed symmetry on that album art?? Over under on number of shots in that photo shoot – 83. I’m going under.
Probably the biggest omg moment of the week was watching will.i.am launching the opening pitch of a major league baseball game. Really? I like the risks Usher’s producers took on this song with all the different beats – like a juicy watermelon for the DJ who blends flavors on the 1′s and 2′s. And realistically, if you look at where music is at these days – remixes and mashups – it’s probably the best move you can make. Give them the meat and potatoes, let them make the gravy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RnPB76mjxI
Madonna? No, Ace of Base. No, Lady Gaga. Track two of her 800x platinum career manages to be her 7th single in the past 500 days and for good reason. My favorite part of this left brained cognitive thanksgiving meal is the tempo – hovering somewhere in the 90-100 bpm range, the perfect timing for dance competitions. Or, to impersonate your friends’ dancing styles, as exhibited often at local dance spots. Love the Latin flavor from the PBR of pop queens – using the farce of hating popularity….to become popular.
Listening to the lyrics of this song is just so wild. An entire techno ballad about siphoning someone’s emotional aquarium, drought-ing someone’s rain forest, playing field hockey with someone’s hopes, dreams, and sensitive side. Shatter and splatter it into little bity pieces. Meat Loaf used rock opera to talk about lying to women in the backseat of his car. Bad Company used classic rock to woo a girl into his most primal desires. Taio Cruz makes a catchy pop song about being straight up about how he’s going to hurt you. But omg…does this make me want to dance. It’s the weekend!|
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Bringing ourselves back into reality for a few minutes, I heard this one on the local FM box a few days ago and did the move where you wait in your car for a few minutes before getting out because you “just want to hear the end of the song.” You know what I mean. Best feeling. The power K’s of Keane and K’naan synergize in a way that really soars the way all track-2-tgifjams songs tend to do…not quite a celebration, but definitely something worth high fiving about. Like paragliding in Austria or Peru. That wild moment where you are so floored by what you are feeling that you want to shout to the world how sick everything is, yet want to say nothing because you feel it so deeply. Stop for a minute…I think about things I really don’t want to know. Ignorance is bliss?
Business as usual, a solid mash without the smash.
