When in Chicken, do as the chickens do
Over here’s my rundown of the Chickenstock Music Festival. Below is some photographic evidence, including a wee-hours-of-the-sunny-night trip up the Top of the World Highway.
Coming around
Man oh man, have I been wrong about the National. For the past decade I could have sworn these guys sucked. OK, sometimes they suck. But not on this song. Thanks to Jonathan Brock for righting my wrongs
Or this one.
The gun club
On the flight back to Anchorage from Nashville a couple weeks ago, the guy sitting next to me was reading a gun magazine. I peaked over his shoulder a lot because I don’t guess I’d ever seen the insides of a gun magazine. One of the advertisements had a picture that more or less looked like gun porn with the tagline “The perfect blend of legality and lethality.”
I just thought of that because I was listening to this.
Word to the wise
It’s impossible to scream and play bass at the same time without looking stupid in photos. Can’t be avoided. I had to learn the hard way
Need more proof? Tom Araya can’t help it either. If Slayer can’t do it, it can’t be done.
‘You only get but one first sip’
You never know how much something means to you until it’s gone and stuff.
Pazz and Jop ballot
My Pazz and Jop ballot I was talking about the other day is over here. Like I said before, it’s all wrong. Of all the stuff I heard last year, Kvelertak’s self-titled was probably my favorite, which isn’t mentioned anywhere on this thing.
After the jump is a clip from everything in that ballot except for the really obvious stuff. It’s a lot of YouTube, so it may make for some slow loading.
Speaking of D-plan signatures…
How about the crazybrains chorus for “Pay for the Piano”? Two measures of 4 followed by a half measure, then two more measures of 4 followed by a measure of 3. Back to two measures of 4, one half measure, then two 3/4 measures. And that’s after they drop two beats in the lead-in to the chorus (or add two, I guess — depending on how you look at it). The second chorus ends with seven 3/4 measures, then adds a beat to the last measure before returning to the verse. And it’s totally catchy.
Meter reader
The review of the Dismemberment Plan reissue over on Pitchfork has got me revisiting Emergency and I. I’m realizing that, after nearly a dozen years, I still have no idea what time signature “Gyroscope” is in.
It’s almost 7/8, but there’s this weird half a beat thing. Is there even such a thing as a 7.5 measure? So I decided to finally get to the bottom of this — by Googling “gyroscope dismemberment plan time signature.” There’s a debate over here as to whether it’s in 7/8 (which I’m pretty sure it isn’t), 15/8 or 13/8. Someone over here suggests it’s 15/16. The last one sounds most right, but it’s still tough to count.
Short-term memory loss
I submitted my Village Voice Pazz and Jop Ballot the other day for the top 10 albums and songs of 2010. I had gotten pretty jaded about the whole practice of listening-as-list-making and wasn’t planning to participate, then I decided to do a little experiment. Off the top of my head I’d write down all the albums I could remember from the past year and compile a list out of those without thinking too much about it. My rationale was that the albums I could think of without racking my brain were obviously the best.
It didn’t work. I forgot how bad my short-term memory is. I raved about Coffinworm for six months and forgot to vote for them. I even forgot about that Cee-Lo song. That song was awesome!
The stuff I forgot. I’m sure I’ll remember more later.
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