Its Tuesday - Here's a rock song

When Pop Music lets you know you're getting old

There is a longstanding cliche that your parents didn't care much for your music, but what the hell did they know? On the other hand, the stuff your kids listen to is crap. Kids today. Get off my lawn!

But it is different when the cliche happens to you. I just got back from a long road trip where my daughter insisted we listen to Top 40 radio all across the South. And I can tell you, the stuff they play now isn't that great. Worse still, it honestly sounds just the same. Here is an example:



This is one of those homemade YouTube videos. It is just a still photo and a Mashup of "Tik Tok" by Ke$ha and "California Gurls" by Katy Perry. The problem is, Mashups are really cool when you can hear how much skill the DJ used to combine the two tracks and play them off each other. In this case, it appears they are honestly just the same song, with two different cute girls singing over the identical backing track.

Adam Sterbergh seems to know why. This is a link to an article he wrote about Dr. Luke, who produced both songs. I think the clear bottom line is, no one really cares if they take the time to make them sound very different.

Kids today.

The 100 Worst Movies of the last 10 Years

Rotten Tomatoes is sort of a meta-critic file review site. The gather up the ratings given by hundreds of film reviewers and create a composite score. This link will take you to the 100 lowest ratings they have produced in the last decade.

The sad part is the huge number of these films I have seen. We go to Blockbuster every week and often pick movies to rent based on the number of them on the shelf and what the box graphics look like. This has led me to watch at least 15 of the 40 worst rated films.

This is a great indicator that I might want to be a little better prepared when I make my movie selections in the future.

Wordless

My Top Ten Movies from 1984

There is a brilliant article up on Entertainment Weekly called "Was 1984 the greatest year in movies ever?" Having been alive then, it surprised me to see the movies on this list. Here is my personal Top Ten list of movies I saw in the theater in 1984. These are listed in the order they were released, because ranking these is too big of a job.

1 - Spinal Tap
2 - The Natural
3 - Stark Trek III - Search for Spock
4 - Bachelor Party
5 - The Pope of Greenwich Village
6 - Ghostbusters
7 - Repo Man
8 - Purple Rain
9 - Amadeus
10 - The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
11 - Stop Making Sense
12 - Blood Simple
13 - The Terminator
14 - Beverly Hills Cop
15 - Dune

Look, did you see what I did there? I called it a top ten list, but then I included a whopping fifteen movies! So your job is to pick five you would leave out. There might be one or two, but I doubt anyone is going to find five.

New Music Friday - TV on the Radio

Everything old is new again.

Years ago, when I was in a band, my Dad gave me some unusually great advice. He suggested that I search through all of his vinyl music for a sound that I liked, but had never heard before. He reasoned that if I hadn't heard it, most other people my age would also be unfamiliar with it. His theory was, since that sound had been popular before, there was no reason it couldn't be popular again. And this way, people would might think I was some sort of talented musician who had created this new sound.

When I sat down to write about TV On the Radio, I thought of this. They join a growing list of current music that has strong roots in the sounds of the 1970's. Have you heard Wolfmother? They are pretty much a Big Dumb Rawk band, straight from 1975.. Do you like 70's era Southern Rock? Then you might want to check out Kings of Leon or The Eagles of Death Metal. My current favorite band, The Fratellis, follow a path that was first laid down for them by David Bowie and T Rex. And it is certainly not a stretch to compare the tight vocal harmonies of Fleet Foxes to CSNY.

TV On the Radio

So where does TV On the Radio fit in? I have included some of their new songs in the box above, including the one they played on the David Letterman show. While they may not exactly “sound like” Genesis, that is all I can think of when I listen to them. The good Genesis, with Peter Gabriel, before someone made the dreadful mistake of turning on Phil Collins' microphone. So either you have heard early period Genesis and will have an opinion on this, or you have never heard it before, so this will sound terribly innovative.

And so we are back where we started.

Wordless Wednesday