Tag: Music

Sound of Music

I’ve been on a bit of a sound wave this morning – with my earlier posts – and the slightly more heated than anticipated comments on my anti-U2 post. I’m not surprised. Bono’s public Christianity makes him a bit of a sacred cow.

But I don’t like to criticise things without offering solutions here are 5 bands that are better than U2. In my opinion*…

  1. Radiohead – both Coldplay and U2 wish they were as politically aware and musically diverse as Radiohead – incidentally – Radiohead are apparently recording a new album.
  2. Muse – another British band with less people and more musical talent (and a greater talent per capita ratio) than U2.
  3. Gomez – They are to alt.Country what the muppets are to puppetry. Defining. Actually they’re incredibly difficult to pigeon hole.
  4. Athlete – For those of you who like U2 because they’re easy listening try Athlete, or Death Cab for Cutie – both equally compelling in sound but less self-righteously musically annoying.
  5. Augie March  – not only are they Australian, intelligent, poetic, they’re “easy listening” without being middle of the road inoffensive babble.

There’s six bands in a list of five bands that I find more sonically pleasurable than U2. Here are 10 more that fit that category off the top of my head (or out of my iPod – which does contain a bit of U2 – early U2, back when the Edge didn’t look like the kind of guy you’d keep your children away from at public parks).

If you like saccharine music and just can’t help yourself – why not listen to Dave Matthews, or Simon and Garfunkel…

  1. Smashing Pumpkins
  2. Weezer
  3. Architecture in Helsinki
  4. Blur
  5. Oasis
  6. Cake
  7. Custard
  8. The Dandy Warhols
  9. Placebo
  10. The Panics

Those are just the bands – there are plenty of solo artists or balladeers who write nice, sweet music who are infinitely more compelling than a 50 year old who petulantly refuses to remove his sunglasses. I won’t list them. I think I’ve made my point. Why listen to one band that tries to appeal to every aspect of musicality and becomes middle of the road when you can embrace diversity which lets you appreciate the whole road, bit by bit.

That is all.

*I’m not sure this needs to be said on a blog. That’s kind of the point.

June 5, 2009

Crap sound

You like iPods? Me too. iPods are so awesome we all have to wonder how we lived without them. You can take them everywhere. But keeping them in your pocket while you’re going about your “business” can be a hazard – it’s far too easy to drop electronic items in the toilet. Here’s something that will help.

Found here.

June 5, 2009

Not you too?

This article pretty much sums up why I don’t like U2 (and Coldplay for that matter).

U2 have long been so ubiquitous that their music has threatened to lose all meaning – for me, it happened around 1988 – but of late, they have truly excelled themselves. Some questions: when Bono is photographed going to church in New York with Blair, what does that do the idea of rock as The Other? Is their slide heartening proof that, after years of handwringing about music becoming so pan-generational and pro-establishment it had lost all meaning, there may actually be a point where the great unwashed realise a group stands for absolutely nothing, and recoil? If so, watch out Coldplay.

Are you a U2 fan? Are you offended by such snobbery?

June 4, 2009

Tidal title

There is a new Gomez album out. It’s titled “A New Tide”. You should most definitely get a copy. Unless three part harmonies sung over the top of complex multilayered melodies and infused with a bit of alt.country banjo isn’t your thing. Then you should probably go listen to something else.

On the first listen this sounds like a bit of a mix of old Gomez and more recent Gomez – with a bit of Athlete thrown into the mix. But they’re a band who are notoriously difficult to pigeon hole with categorical certainty.

It really is most excellent. And they maintain their position on the top of the pile of my current favourite bands.

The new Augie March CD is also worth a spin. But that’s probably something I should have mentioned a few weeks ago.

April 8, 2009

We will become silhouettes

Silhouette is a fun word to write. The title of this post is also a great song by the Postal Service. I don’t blog about music enough. You should check out the Postal Service. They’re quite literally one part Death Cab for Cutie, one part awesome.  

The etymological source of their name is quite awesome too. Here’s the story from wikipedia:

“The band’s name was chosen due to the way in which they produced its songs. Tamborello wrote and performed instrumental tracks and then sent the DATs to Gibbard, who edited the song as he saw fit (adding his vocals along the way), sending them back to Tamborello via theUnited States Postal Service.”

Here’s the video clip.

They also famously signed a distribution deal with the Postal Service during a legal challenge over their name. 

That’s a very long, and tangential introduction to the real purpose of this post – a great collection of silhouette art. It’s clever, and it’s the kind of thing I’d like to hang on my wall. You can buy them as framed prints. Check out my favourites:

You may need to google steam punk for this...

You may need to google "steam punk" for this...



February 27, 2009

Band names

I read something somewhere about band names today. It reminded me that I need to record the following for posterity’s sake.

If I were in a band – and that’s a big if because it would require musical talent – I would call my band Panache Attack. I am putting that here, now, to claim it.

If I were in a punk band – not such a big if because it doesn’t require musical talent – I would call it Disorderly Fashion, and we’d all wear the same suits on stage. 

If you had a band what would you call it?

February 18, 2009

(Not)Youtube Tuesday: Radiohead plays with a marching band

February 10, 2009

Bookmarks for January 4th

Best of the interweb:

February 3, 2009

Goodshirt

Goodshirt were a cool Kiwi band that Australia never managed to claim. They had this cool song called “Sophie” that had a very cool acoustic version.

But I digress. Glennz.com is my current favourite shirt site (I haven’t bought any yet – but I’d like to. Thanks mostly to these:

Experimental Music

Experimental Music

Self Maintenance

Self Maintenance

Extreme Beginnings

Extreme Beginnings

Evolution

Evolution

After Hours

After Hours

If anyone buying me Christmas or birthday presents hasn’t done so yet – you can’t go wrong with a good novelty T-Shirt.

December 17, 2008

Genius

iTunes 8’s genius feature is brilliant. I hearts it, I do. It’s house cleaning time. I picked Yves St Klein’s “Polka” the song from that ad with people throwing stuff in the car from their second story window. And I get the following:

Darren Hanlon, Xavier Rudd, White Stripes, Kaiser Chiefs, Supergrass, Pulp, Placebo, Gotye and the Dandy Warhols – a perfect Sunday afternoon clean up mix.

November 23, 2008

Rubbed out

Like millions (well hundreds and thousands (the number, not the little colourful balls of sugar)) of others I’ve been hotly anticipating the hotly anticipated new Thom Yorke solo album, The Eraser. So today… upon its release… I bought it. And I listened to it. And now, here are my thoughts.

This album is slightly more avant garde than any of Radiohead’s work (for the uninitiated and uninterested, Thom Yorke is the singer from Radiohead). The music is a series of syncopated and sometimes rhythmic noises. With very little musical quality whatsoever. Except, and this is a big exception, for Thom Yorke’s voice. I’ve decided I could happily listen to Thom Yorke sing over any noise in the world. It wouldn’t make me happy, because Thom Yorke is a very melancholy kind of guy. But it would be a pleasurable experience nonetheless. He also writes lyrics with cool words and concepts. And his cover art is good. There’s my in depth analysis and review of the CD. I was also looking forward to the release of Muse’s new album. But it wasn’t available at Wow. I wish Townsville had a JB Hifi. Actually, that would be bad for my bank balance.

Another variation on the rubbed out theme – Steve asked me what I thought the Italian guy said to Zidane in the build up to his send off this morning, and I must confess I did not get up for the World Cup. I set my alarm, but promptly metaphorically threw it at the wall. I actually dropped my phone rather half heartedly on the floor. If Zidane is the typical French creative genius then I imagine it was something along the lines of “Oi, you French poof” which was enough to send my favourite all time player, Eric Cantona into a violent fan directed frenzy (see below) – he’s not my favourite player because he karate kicked a fan in the head. He karate kicked a fan in the head because he’s my favourite player. I’m not sure the logic there worked any better than it did in that trashy teen movie which I won’t admit to viewing. My sisters have a lot to answer for.

My parents, and sister, arrive in Townsville tomorrow – it’s the first time they’ve ever come to stay at “my” house. So I’m inventing all sorts of new house rules… actually I’m tidying my room. Maybe.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMCmHBqRXnQ]

July 10, 2006

Musical Calculus

I’d like to use today’s entry to pose a question inspired by Mark’s comment on my last post.

“The “derivative is bad” argument is silly. Pretty much everything in art, music, science, social/political thought, etc has prior art “influences” and thus can be seen as derivative or reactionary.”

Yes Mark, that is a fair comment – and one well backed up by the Ecclesiastes passage you referred us to. Nothing is new under the sun. However, that does not give musicians open slather to run around stealing other people’s style. Intellectual property laws ensure that you can’t get away with simply stealing another person’s idea, and doing so in the realms of art, music, science and social thought is generally frowned upon. It’s called plagiarism. You don’t see wannabe painters out there recreating the Mona Lisa. If music is art then some originality is required. When seven bands release seven songs with the same chord progression and the all wear the same clothes, and claim the same influences – bands 2 through to 7 of that group are redundancies – unless 2 is a tribute band with a clever pun as a name.

There’s an old song lyric – and you can google it if you like – that says “if everybody looked the same, we’d get tired of looking at each other,” which is pretty much the point of the “derivative is bad argument” – if all music sounded the same we would get tired of listening to it. Therefore derivative music is bad.

I would also make a distinction between “derived” and “influenced” – derived work is something that could only be reached by copying something – there is no art to that. So that step in Mark’s syllogism is a non sequitur.

In the words of someone who played an important role in the artistic movement – or in the words of some sort of manifesto – Vive Le Difference…

And now… on the subject of the French and Revolutions – check out the newest, most coolest thing on the internet – askaninja – actually it’s not new, only recently discovered…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56vcMhVv_WM]

June 28, 2006

Taste in music

I am a music snob. This will come as no surprise to some of you out there. Other people (perhaps Townsville people who’ve seen me lead the singing in church) will question my right to hold such a position based on my demonstrated lack of actual musical ability. Still others may argue that musical taste is a matter of personal taste and therefore should be judged subjectively, and on that basis my musical snobbery is yet another form of arrogance.

I haven’t always been a music snob – in fact the darkest skeleton in my closet is an old Backstreet Boys album** (it’s not literally in my closet having been donated to the Campbell family music collection some time ago – perhaps it should have been donated to the Smith family… but that would hardly have been charitable).

I was recently directed to a website that I’m sure will amuse my fellow music snobs. It’s the brain child of Eman Laerton (which backwards is Not real name). A mysterious caped crusader fighting the good fight against bad, derivative music. I’d recommend you spend some time there appreciating all the fine videos. I’d particularly recommend the Evanescence one.

“If Linkin Park is the derivative – what do you call the derivative of the derivative?”*

This site is the coolest thing I’ve found online since discovering Strong Bad and friends at homestarrunner.com. The download times are well worth it – I’ve been literally LOLing for days.
Special thanks go to housemate Dave (as opposed to other Daves, of which, it must be said, there are many) for sending me to this site. I can only hope that further Eman Laerton productions are equally amusing.

*I must confess at this point to owning a Linkin Park album, it was a rainy day, I was walking through Target, and it was pretty cheap… That’s all I have to say in my defence.
** The nice thing about writing blog entries is that they don’t have to be linear – I have no defence for buying this album apart from youthful naivety… I should point out in my defence that I did grow up listening to Simon and Garfunkel – and surely that gives me some credibility.

June 25, 2006

My very first post

Welcome.

For those who came in late… to steal a well worn line from a comic book hero… here’s some information about the creator of this blog:
My full name is: Nathan Macleay Campbell.
I’m 22.
I like stuff.
and things.
I guess you can read more about the particular stuff and things I like on my profile.

At the time of writing I’m two days out from beginning the next adventurous stage in my life. I’m about to move 1400kms north to Townsville where I begin my life as a fulltime worker.

In order to cash in on the tradition of great Hollywood D-Grade movies like Ernest Goes To Camp I’ve decided to put the words “goes to” in between my name and my destination in the title of my blog. I’d like to think my adventure north is at least on par with Ernest’s trip to summer camp. I hope my adventures will be at least half as wacky as his were. I’d also like to think that reading about my adventures will be less painful for you than sitting through an Ernest movie. If you haven’t seen an Ernest movie you’re not missing out on much. They’re basically as painful as fingernails being scraped along a blackboard for an hour and a half.

There’s a lot of things I like about reading other people’s blogs that I’ll aim to recapture here. There’s a lot of things I don’t like about reading other people’s blogs that I’ll try not to include here.

So here you have my thoughts on my impending departure: I am simultaneously excited and nervous (I’m not sure what the adjectival form of the word trepidation is but I would have used it there, maybe trepidated?) Until last Sunday night I’d been pretty cool about the whole moving away thing casually farewelling friends with the knowledge that I was about to make a new beginning somewhere else which, at least in my mind, isn’t all that daunting. I’m really looking forward to starting my new job with Townsville Enterprise, who you can find here. I’m looking forward to meeting new people. I just didn’t think it would be that hard to say goodbye to old people but on the upside it’s not like I’m dying and there’s always me in blog form if you miss me too much. It’s much harder for me to be cool, calm and collected when other people are displaying their emotions. At the moment my emotional compass is pointing more towards the excited end of the spectrum but it fluctuates depending on what I’m doing with my time. I think making huge life changing decisions is like eating Pringles, once you pop, you can’t stop. To explain that analogy and further explain how i’m feeling I’ll use another analogy – you can’t get off the rollercoaster in the middle of the ride, you just have to sit back and enjoy it. There’s no pulling out now so I guess there’s no place for second thoughts even if I was considering having them. Which I’m not. But if I was I wouldn’t be any more because that analogy explains everything. I am clearly wise beyond my years. Or not.

So now to my favourite part of other people’s blogs the bit where I show just how good my taste in all things aesthetic is. The bit where I record for the ages what I’m listening to, watching, wearing etc. I’m going to restrict it to what I’m listening to this time round but if I find good websites I’ll put links and stuff.

This post was brought to you by the band MUSE and the album Absolution.

March 15, 2006