We were feeling musical tonight and since we haven’t done one of these in a while, here’s a new Firewater and Chaser combo.
Within every genre of pop music, there is a mountain of poo with the occasional gem hidden in the mess. Such it is with death metal. There are soooooooo many bands that sound like they trying way too hard to be angry, aggressive, or whatever. Most of them just sound interchangeable. If you’ve heard one vocalist scream with that growling demonic thing and thought “hey, that sounds just like the last guy” you’re not alone. It’s hard to be a bone-crusher when you’re boring the parents of the kids that listen to that detritus. So, groups like Lamb of God are refreshing. In the sea of mediocrity, Lamb of God actually sounds interesting.
You know how we don’t like to bother with a lot of biographical detail when we do these fireball and coolant duos. That’s what Wikipedia or Allmusic are for. But we like to glean the essentials because, like us, you are a product of the 3-second generation and … see? You’re already losing interest. “On with the music, damn you!” OK, OK, settle down. We still have to write something that the search engines will glom onto.
Lamb of God: Formed in 1994 in Virginia. Followed the same trite formula of religious provocation and antagonism (really? is invoking Satan so outrageous anymore? Wall Street execs listen to Jason Mraz just before scribing demon circles to call up the servants of the Dread Lord of Darkness). Lamb of God has released seven mainstream albums — all of them pretty decent compilations within their dirty corner of modern popular music.
Other than that, they’re kind of hairy 40-somethings. Here’s your moment of discomfort:
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And, here’s your chaser.
David Gray is a British guy that was formed in 1968. He does moody, kinda folksy pieces. Sometimes he jams on his acoustic guitar but it’s mostly non-threatening. There are plenty of contemporary adult alt-pop coffeehouse musicians (that’s a genre, right?) but, like Lamb of God, David is more interesting. His songs make us breathe and think about things like yogurt and winter sunrises. Kind of bleak but not in a bad sort of way. So, kind of like the British as a whole. Pasty and listless but wonderful company nonetheless. (Hey, hey. Shout out to our limey cousins who periodically wander to this sector of the Internub. Represent).
We really like his smash hit “Babylon”, but since we already did a post with a song that was titled as much, we’ll choose another favorite: “Please Forgive Me.” (Damn! We just realized this song is 13 years old. What the hell? Seems like just a couple of years ago. Oy vey.)
Since we’re now kind of in the mood for music from the hip single scene, here’s a cover of “Dancing in the Moonlight” by Toploader (originally recorded by King Harvest in 1973). We aren’t sure if we want to beat the crap out of these people or join in the frolicking. Maybe we can do both? Frolicking first, though. Hard to dance with shattered femurs.
Alright, fine! If we’re going to do the cover, we might as well do the original. Here’s “Dancing in the Moonlight” by King Harvest. (What’s an everbawduh?)
The first outing with Ronnie James was a tour de force — Sabbath’s first real success since Sabatoge (although we think Never Say Die doesn’t get a fair shake – certainly not traditional Sabbath and admittedly one hell of a mess, yet, still some really interesting music). Heaven and Hell was one of only two studio albums that the newly formed group recorded together. What a shame. This and Mob Rules were two very good albums.
Ipanema is the beach in Rio de Janeiro made famous by the Bossa Nova musical movement in the 1960′s. Strangely, the word “Ipanema” is an “Indian” word for “stinky lake.” Well, this stinky lake is home of the Brazilian equivalent to the beach society in the south of France. The music for the iconic song “The Girl from Ipanema” (“Garota de Ipanema” in its original Portuguese) was written by one of Bossa Nova’s early creators, Antônio Carlos Jobim. The original Portuguese lyrics were written by Vinicius de Moraes and the English lyrics were written later by Norman Gimbel. [By the way, we put "Indian" in quotes because we hate that misappropriation of the term. Columbus' error has had over 500 years to be corrected but, hey, we still use the damn Imperial measurement system too. Holy hell, only three (THREE!) countries are left in the world that still use that old measurement system. The U.S. is one of them, and...drum roll...Liberia and "Myanmar." Liberia isn't really a country. It's a botched effort to fix one of history's greatest horrors. Go read up on it yourselves. We're too upset. And you can imagine what we feel about "Myanmar" (yeah, that's right you loony junta-ists -- we're putting your "official" name in quotes because it's really Burma unless Aung San Suu Kyi and the people decide otherwise).]
“The Girl from Ipanema” was written in homage to a young and beautiful Brazilian girl that passed by a bar where Jobim and Moraes were enjoying a repose. The young lady, Helô Pinheiro, typified the people of the Ipaneman leisure class beach culture and she became famous for her part in inspiring the song. She cashed in on her celebrity and has had her 15+ minutes in the spotlight including a creepy Playboy shoot with her adult daughter. That aside, the song and it’s surrounding elements were pressed to vinyl at a perfect time since Bossa Nova was becoming quite popular worldwide.
Бони НЕМ (Boney NEM) rocks this catchy little ditty with their Russian metal bravado. Who are we to judge their song choice? Keep in mind that these are the same blokes that covered “Strangers in the Night.” Why are these lads so rough? Well, glad you asked. And… here comes the lazy part because we’re not going to spend a lot of time (read: any time at all) researching the background of the band and since the only Wiki entries we found are in Russian and German and we don’t know either of these languages because it’s hard enough to know “American” so … we don’t even remember what we were getting at here – something about … oh yeah, we’re not going to put effort into regaling you with actual facts about Boney NEM, dammit, so here’s what we are making up on the spot about the band’s background:
So, who was it that brought us this gem of song originally? Why it was Afric Simone of course. Who is Afric Simone? Well, we’re glad you asked. Again, with the laziness. Afric Simone was the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Commerce during the Nixon presidency. While his colleagues fell like flies around him, Afric was never implicated in any scandal. It was no surprise really. Everyone who knew Afric thought well of him and the words “integrity” and “fellowship of the ring” and all that were synonymous with Afric’s good name. In 1981, however, that all changed. When rumors of marital infidelities and questionable close-door meetings with Ben Fritzwilling, then the head of Chevron’s controversial oesmetic elemental separation program, began to surface, Afric first resigned and then quickly left the country to return to his father’s home in Kenya. There is almost no record of his activities for the next decade or so, but in the mid-1990′s his name began to surface again in political junkets. To everyone’s surprise, Afric surged out of nowhere to participate in the heated Nairobi mayoral race of 1998. He lost of course. Hakembe Betowansa took the prize and went on to hold the position until 2006 when he was assassinated by a Ugandan contingent claiming to be a faction of the Pan-African People’s Express. Anyway, long story short, Afric is Barak Obama’s half-brother.
Tough day at the office? Kids getting on your last nerve? Parents getting on your case? Husband/wife/significant other/bum that lives in your extra bedroom taking more than their share of the world?
It’s been a while, so we’ll bring back a fan favorite. For those of you that are new to this, the method is to post an aggressively harsh burner of a song, and then follow it with something lighter, more mellow or that sort of thing.
Let’s be fair. For as versatile as a synthesizer is, DJs are often very narrow in their focus (e.g., you can hear Tiesto coming a mile away), so kudos to Yello for still having a broader canvas with which to paint, even if the general theme is still the same. As the previous songs attest, even if the album isn’t another Stella or You Got to Say Yes to Another Excess, each release has individually great songs.
KMFDM is a German band formed in 1984 and was instrumental in mainstreaming the heavy-beat industrial sound. KMFDM stands for “Kein Mehrheit Für Die Mitleid.” Since we don’t sprechen die deutsch, we’re not entirely sure what the intended statement means, but it apparently translates into “no majority for the pity.” There’s more to tell, we’re sure, but whatever. Here’s one of their best songs:
From the musical film Bugsy Malone, we get this little darling of a song. Blousey Brown, aspiring singer and object of interest to the titular character, is waiting for a date with Bugsy but, ever the rogue (or so she thinks, since she doesn’t actually know what’s happened to him), his reputation solidifies her assumption that she has been stood up. She realizes that like so many other dames, she has fallen for Bugsy’s charms but should have known better. She breaks into a sad song called “Ordinary Fool.” So forlorn is she …”I shouldn’t cry, but I do.” Be strong Blousey. Be ever so strong.
Four years after forming, Black Sabbath released Vol. 4. The year was 1972. The year of Munich. The year of Watergate. The year of Bloody Sunday, of ERA, the attempted assassination of George Wallace, Richard Nixon’s groundbreaking visit to China, Bangladesh gaining independence from Pakistan. The space shuttle program began, and as of now the last man walked on the moon. It was a big year in the news.
“Toxicity” is the eponymous title track for System of a Down‘s 2001 album (10 years old!?! – jeez, where does the time go?). The big hit of the album is “Chop Suey.” “Aerials” brings it too, but “Toxicity” takes a rough slash through the vein that neatly summarizes the sensibilities of the happy-joy-joy boys of SOAD. By the way, the name “System of a Down” derives from a poem Daron Malakian (guitarist) wrote about victims of a corrupt establishment. The word “Victims” was changed to “System” because it sounded more ominous or something, and voila – a confusing band name. Not that we much care. The music rocks. Sometimes, one is distracted by the preachy and counter-intuitive (peace through violence or something) messages , but by gum, those Armani-Americans (what now? Oh, Armenian-Americans) sure channel their rage into some good stuff. Keep the faith brothers.
Tonight’s chaser comes to us from the Blade Runner (1982) soundtrack. The music is in the crooner style popular in the 1920′s with Don Percivel as lyricist. Vangelis accompanied and Peter Skellern wrote the music. Like “Loser,” “One More Kiss Dear” is a song of some angst but “Kiss” is more melancholy.
The song was originally released on the tepid New American Orchestra soundtrack, although it fit much better in the 1993 Off World Music bootleg. Blade Runner is a Comics A-Go-Go! favorite and will be written about again at some point in the future (meaning possibly never since there are a mountain of things to write about).
After lazily putting together the previous post, we thought it might be a clever idea to match up two songs that otherwise probably wouldn’t be sitting next to each other on a playlist. We’ll play this one out and see if it takes hold. Here again is another harsh song with a chaser to mellow you out afterwards.
For your chaser, we was tempted to use Owl City’s Fireflies but we’ll save that for later (that would be an appropriate chaser for something like System of a Down, right?). Instead, since Mr. Waits has been around a while, let’s go instead with a song that has some seasoning to it too. We absolutely love this song. “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” by Talking Heads is such a delightful piece that it just doesn’t get old no matter how many listenings it goes through. Our favorite lyric is “sing into my mouth.” Don’t know what that means but it’s a lovely sounding phrase. The best version of the song (and of many of Talking Heads songs, actually) is on the two-thumbs up live album “Stop Making Sense.” By the way, we’ll have to write in a future post about the concert movie directed by Jonathan Demme. Hmm. That would actually be a good item to add to the 
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