The Best Video Of The Year Blows

I'm sorry, Beyoncé. Kanye West's little outburst at the VMAs this week is - by far - the most interesting thing about the "Single Ladies" video. Since when is 3 women dancing over an alternately white and grey background "Video Of The Year" material? In fact, none of this year's "Best Video" nominees are memorable beyond a few seconds after watching.

Come on, MTV! Don't you remember when videos were interesting? Well I do. This is not in any way a "best videos of all time" or even a "most interesting videos of all time" list, this is just a few videos that came to mind when I thought back on some music videos that never violated the cardinal rule of television: don't be boring.

• Nine Inch Nails - "Closer"
  I could only find the TV edit, but those "Scene Missing" cards make the whole thing all the weirder.
  
  
  
  
• Menomena - "Evil Bee"
  Creepy, beautiful, and a great complement to a great song.
  
  
  
  
• Bjork - "Bachelorette"
  Michel Gondry takes us down the rabbit hole of recursion in this fantastic video. Just one of many ridiculous and amazing Bjork videos (most have which have been pulled from YouTube - nice marketing, record label!).
  
  
  
  
• Fatboy Slim - "Weapon Of Choice"
  If you're going to make a video that's just dancing, it better either involve treadmills or Christopher Walken.
  
  
  

And, when you're ready to stop having fun and be bored:



Do you have a favorite video? Let me know and link it up in the comments.

Friday Playlist: High School Musical

Inspired by seeing Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction last week, I've been thinking a lot about other music I used to listen to in high school. It was an odd mix of stuff, influenced by my friends, my brother (who in addition to recommending music directly, would often mail home CDs he received as promo items at the college radio station where he worked), and to some extent "alternative radio" which hadn't yet been completely extinguished by this point.

What follows is a big list of some of the songs and artists to which I listened most frequently during my high school years. I tried to pare it down, but I couldn't get below 22 tracks. Sorry, everybody. Time doesn't permit me to do a per-track explication (much as I'd like to) but just assume that I like all this stuff for various reasons. [Editor's note: vague enough?]

It's worth noting that for some of these bands, I listened to their best or most iconic albums in junior high, or didn't really come to know their back catalogs until college. It's also worth noting that despite the length of the playlist, this is actually a very small sampling of what I was listening to in those days - completely ignoring tons of great music like the Beatles, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, etc. and also glossing over tons of crap like Cypress Hill and Danzig (not to mention all the death metal). But i tried to keep this all to music was either released within my high school years or stuff I listened to mostly during my high school years. Heavy metal is a notable exception here: that might have to be another playlist altogether, but I was listening to a lot of it in between all the grunge.

Enjoy, and please tell me in the comments what you used to listen to way back when.

Radiohead In The Rain

Like many of you, I recently went to see Radiohead play at Nissan Pavilion in Virginia. And like many of you, I left determined never to return to, as it's now known, "The Unhappiest Place On Earth."

If you haven't heard, there was a bit of a torrential downpour that night. I know we can't blame Nissan Pavilion for the rain, but we can blame them for having no ability to manage traffic and for apparently designing their venue as though it existed in some magical land where rain water will simply disappear, as opposed to creating giant lakes between you and the men's room.

Many people drove around the venue for hours only to get turned away; others left during the first encore, thinking it would help them avoid traffic, then sat in traffic for hours trying to get home after the show only to learn they had missed the second encore where the band finally played "National Anthem" (that was our car). And many, many, many people got seriously wet. And cold.

NPR's All Songs Considered blog has a post about the show, asking readers what bands are worth the horrible conditions we encountered there. My friend Eduardo, who blogs over at Abstract Citizen, had this to say:

Let's say Miles Davis comes back from the dead. He assembles the "kind of blue" group (all of whom are back from the dead) plus his 1960s quintet. Coltrane ropes his 60s quartet into playing a show too. Miles calls me, asks me to write up a setlist. So does Coltrane. Then Pavement reunite, as do the Talking Heads. The four acts decide to split a bill. Each will play two sets. Hell, I get to write up all the setlists. They give away free single malt scotch, free beer, pie, and sushi at the door. And I will get to hang out backstage for as long as I want.

But then they tell me this will take place at Nissan.

I think I would stay home.

For those of you who were smart enough to stay home, here's a playlist of a few songs they played that night. Enjoy! [Editor's note: they didn't play the only song off the new album (well, off Disc 2) that really would have made this all worthwhile, so I added it to the end of the playlist for my own amusement.] I think Radiohead songs are only available in 30-second-preview mode when the playlist is embedded, so click the "launch standalone" link at the bottom-left of the playlist to hear the full versions.

Curse you, Mika!

Mika, I'm trying hard not to fall your Freddie Mercury impersonation and your ridiculously catchy songs. And I am failing. After track 1 of your album made my Guilty Pleasures list, I never thought you would get me again. But here I am, playing track 2 on repeat over and over again.

Thanks for ruining my street cred.

For the rest of you, please enjoy "Lollipop" by Mika. I hope you can resist it more than I did.

Washington, DC: Ridiculous Taxi Fares, Great Music

As an excuse to use imeem's new playlist creation tool (see my review of it here), I decided to create a playlist of my favorite songs from DC-based artists. Inspired by this post on Creative DC, I recently started listening to some more local bands, such as Le Loup, Georgie James, and Jukebox the Ghost (I was bummed to miss them in concert recently - anyone know where I can buy their CD online?).

The results were fantastic. I'm hearing new music, and supporting the local economy at the same time. And I'm getting inspiration to finally get my band up and running. More on that later, if we ever get around to really doing it. Which we will.

Here's the playlist:



What are your favorite local bands from anywhere you've lived?

1.21 Jigowatts!!!

Yes, it's time to hop in the DeLorean and take a trip down memory lane. I didn't have a blog back in the magical year that was 2007, so I had to contend myself with simply emailing my friends and neighbors my "best of 2007" list. At least my friend Zack was clever enough to mail people an actual CD of his favorite songs. I have to use the stupid Internet.

Anyway, I figured it was time to share my list with the world. This playlist (created over at imeem, which I'm still using despite some reservations) represents my favorite song from each of my favorite albums of 2007. There are a couple albums that have since become favorites (LCD Soundsystem, I'm looking at you) but I'm only posting ones that were actual favorites when the big ball dropped on New Year's Eve. Enjoy!

The playlist:


The albums:

Animal Collective
Strawberry Jam

Arcade Fire
Neon Bible

Caribou
Andorra

Broken Social Scene Presents: Kevin Drew
Spirit If...

Menomena
Friend And Foe

M.I.A.
Kala

Panda Bear
Person Pitch

The Polyphonic Spree
The Fragile Army

Sunset Rubdown
Random Spirit Lover

The Besnard Lakes
The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse

The Earlies
The Enemy Chorus

The National
Boxer

By the way, check out those hot little icons next to the links in some of my other posts (they would be next to the album links above, but the Amazon quick-link script interferes with it). I just installed AdaptiveBlue's SmartLinks [Editor's note: more CamelCase!] and I think they're pretty cool. Let me know what you think.

What were your favorites of 2007? Any upcoming faves of 2008?

PS I'm as surprised as you guys not to see any hip hop on this list. I just wasn't blown away by the new Wu-Tang, the new Jay-Z, the new Ghostface, or the new Lupe Fiasco albums.