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The Dumbest Inning of Baseball

Whenever my friends who don’t follow sports ask me who to root for, I tell them to root for chaos. Outside of my favorite teams, I will always root for something ridiculous to happen during a game. 4 overtime periods, obscure rules violations, and large men carrying a football when they shouldn’t are the best, most absurd moments in sports that everyone can enjoy.

My favorite sport, baseball, has its own share of chaotic moments, and I’d argue it has the most chaotic moments out of any American sport. There’s just so much baseball out there. 162+ games every year for every team means that there’s so much more potential for chaos to take the wheel. And in a winner-take-all playoff game 5 years ago, we were subjected to the most ridiculous inning of baseball I have ever seen.

A bit of background: it’s game 5 of the American League division series, Toronto Blue Jays vs. the Texas Rangers. The series is tied 2-2, and it’s win or go home. Toronto is the home team, and the game is tied 2-2 going into the 7th inning. Rangers player Rougned Odor is on 3rd base with two outs in the top of the inning, and Shin-Soo Choo take ball 2 from Aaron Sanchez. And then this happens:

Doink! On the throw back to the pitcher, catcher Russell Martin hits Choo’s bat and the ball dribbles down the 3rd base line. Seeing an opportunity and actually knowing the rules of baseball, Odor takes off for home and scores to give the Rangers the lead. 

Catchers throw about 320 pitches back to the pitcher every game when accounting for both teams. If you spread that out over an entire season, that’s over 750,000 pitches thrown back to the pitcher every year. I’ve watched baseball for over twenty years, and I’ve seen this happen maybe two other times. 

If there’s no runner on base, no problem. The ball is retrieved, and you end up on a baseball oddities compilation on Youtube. But if there are runners on, the ball is live and the runners can advance if they desire. I was taught this when playing little league, when catchers weren’t as good at throwing and pitchers weren’t as good at catching.

So the rarity of this moment has everyone confused, including the umpires. Both managers come out to clarify the call. The umpires are asked to review the play and see if there was any batter’s interference on the throw back. The announcers are watching the replay over and over, saying the same thing to kill time. Overall, this delay takes 20 minutes. Meanwhile, the Toronto fans are pissed and they’re throwing garbage onto the field.

Fun times. Either way, the call stands, and the Rangers are now up 3-2. The Blue Jays have declared that they are playing the game under protest. They’re also not too happy at their fans.

And then, after the angriest 7th inning stretch, the bottom half of the 7th comes.

Oh jeez, where to begin.

Well, Russell Martin starts off the inning trying to redeem himself. He hits a weak grounder to Elvis Andrus, the Rangers’ shortstop, and Andrus misses it. Andrus is by no means a bad defender. In fact, he’s an above average defender in just about every season. Seems like he just got a case of the yips. This should have been out number 1. It’s a huge break for the Blue Jays, and Martin doesn’t have to do the walk of shame back to the dugout.

Next batter grounds out to first base. First baseman Mitch Moreland throws to second to get a forceout, but he throws it in the dirt and Andrus can’t catch it. Error #2 in two batters. Something weird is going on. The next batter comes up to bunt, literally saying “I’m sacrificing an out to move the runners up.” Third basemen Adrian Beltre fields it and throws to 3rd to try to get the forceout there. Andrus is at third ready to catch the ball. Andrus drops the ball. All runners are safe, Andrus has been at the center of all three of these mishaps, and if no errors were committed, the inning would already be over. Instead, the bases are loaded and nobody’s out. The inning has been sucked into the Twilight Zone.

A groundout and a run-scoring forceout later, the Blue Jays have tied the game, but there are two outs. They were gifted a perfect run-scoring situation, and only getting one run out of this would have been deflating for the team and their fans. The announcer casually says, “What next?” 

Jose Bautista was next.

Boom. A huge 3-run home run puts the Blue Jays in the lead. Bautista tosses hit bat away in celebration. It’s one of the most majestic bat flips I’ve ever seen. The gif doesn’t do it justice. Just look at this.

Image credit: Getty Images

Loooook at it. Bautista looks like he’s saying farewell to an old friend. “You have done your job,” he might say. “The baseball has been obliterated, and now it’s time for you to be free.” The bat soars into the night sky. It’s flying to bat heaven where it can crush all the baseballs it wants. There were probably angels singing as it flew through the sky, but they were drowned out by the sound of everyone in the Rogers Centre losing their minds. 

Watch the video too. It’s just too glorious.

Just imagine all the tension and anger the fans had about this game, and Bautista made that all turn into unbridled jubilation. I can’t imagine how that feels, but it must have been incredible. 

Then the fans start throwing trash onto the field in…celebration? Sure, why not. The broadcast doesn’t show it, but the announcers commented on fans running on the field and trash all over the outfield. The game is delayed again. In this delay, the two teams start to get into an argument and the dugouts clear. 

Image credit: Getty Images

Because how the hell do you recover from this as a Rangers player? Hell, even as a Blue Jays player? It’s been the most exhausting inning, wrestling with obscure rules, dealing with errors on three consecutive plays, and a capacity crowd that’s taken an emotional rollercoaster to the moon and back.

In the end, the Rangers didn’t recover. They lost the game and the series. The Blue Jays went on to the ALCS, where they were beat in 6 games by the soon-to-be-champion Kansas City Royals. And even though the Blue Jays’ season may have ended in disappointment, they will always have this. A moment where the baseball gods got drunk and destroyed the heavens and the earth. A moment of pure sports joy and catharsis. This will be the most memorable sports moment for Toronto baseball until their next championship.

So. Let’s recap: a freak accident invokes a rule that’s so obscure that even the umpires are confused about and gives the visiting team a lead in a sudden death baseball game. The game is delayed, fans are pissed, chaos ensues, and then the home crowd riots as much as they can without getting the game forfeited. Then in the home half of the inning, a generally sure-handed defense fucks up 3 plays in a row, which leads to a Blue Jays fan’s dream scenario: a big, huge, stupid home run to take the lead. The inning, after all the delays, took 53 minutes to complete. Incredible.

I love baseball. It can be so dumb.

In May of the following year, the Rangers and Blue Jays played each other again. The Rangers wanted revenge. This is what happened.

Odor got the punch that all Rangers fans needed to see to start the healing process. It was a stupid brawl, because all baseball brawls are stupid. But it felt like a proper epilogue for what was the craziest inning I have ever seen of baseball.

Here’s a video detailing the doink that started the chaos.

Here’s a video showing the entire bottom half of the inning in all of its messy glory.

#2015 alds #rangers #blue jays

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In 1989, Baseball Saved Hundreds of Lives

Have you ever seen a city hopped up on championship fever? A city’s sports team in the finals gets everyone caught up in the excitement. Everyone’s week revolves around the games. Water cooler talk in every office goes from “What are you up to this week?” to “Where are you going to watch the game?” People who weren’t fans are now wearing jerseys and caps, and diehard fans get even more excited and anxious. Signs hang in shop windows decked with team logos. Championship fever unites a city in ways that few events can.

And in 1989, this unity saved hundreds of people during a natural disaster.

The 1989 World Series of baseball was a very rare occasion where two teams from the same area faced off. The San Francisco Giants versus the Oakland Athletics. To my knowledge, ever since 1958 when the Giants and Dodgers moved from New York over to the west coast, this meeting of two baseball teams in the same media market has only happened one other time—the 2000 subway series between the New York Yankees and the New York Mets.

That barely scratches the surface of how improbable this meeting between the Athletics and the Giants was. In the 1989 MLB season, there were 26 teams, split into two leagues. The American League had 14 teams, while the National League had 12. The chance that the best team in each league, who additionally got to the World Series after a best-of-7 playoff, were in the same media market was extremely unlikely. According to my sketchy math, it was about a 0.5% chance. Then the earthquake happened.

29 years ago today, the Loma Prieta earthquake rocked the Bay Area. It clocked in at magnitude 6.9 on the Richter scale. A magnitude 6.9 quake is, surprise, another extremely rare occasion. Dating back to 1900, there have only been 9 other earthquakes that have matched or exceeded that seismic strength in the state of California. A magnitude 6.9 quake is strong enough to make buildings sway and roads crack. It’s strong enough to collapse highways and cause landslides. The earthquake’s epicenter about 70 miles from Candlestick Park, where the game was held, and it hit Candlestick hard.

ABC was broadcasting live from the stadium as it happened. They were recapping the previous game’s highlights when the feed started breaking up. Reporter Al Michaels was able to say “I'll tell you what, we're having an earth—” before the feed cut out.

The earthquake struck on a Tuesday at 5 PM, during rush hour. Bay Area traffic then wasn’t as bad as it is now, but rush hour still had plenty of cars on the road. And the roads were hit the hardest. Part of the Bay Bridge collapsed. The highway 880 overpass collapsed. In the wake of the earthquake, reports came out that the death toll was estimated to be around 300, many thought to be crushed underneath the fallen highways.

Yet, after rescue efforts and recovery, the death toll stood at around 60. The reason? Baseball. Game 3 of the World Series was scheduled to start at 5:30. Many people at that time weren’t traveling home. They’d either got home early to watch the start of the game or stayed later to watch at work or at a bar. Traffic on the highways was drastically lighter than the norm.

Everyone in the Bay Area, from San Francisco to Oakland to the entire region surrounding those two cities, was focused on the game, wrapped up in championship fever. Everyone's lives revolved around a baseball game because they knew they were watching something special. Two storied franchises that found a home in the Bay Area were squaring off. The Giants fans were tuned in. The Athletics fans were tuned in. And all the people watching the game weren't on the road when the earthquake hit.

As most people know, earthquakes are unpredictable. Seismologists can at best give odds for when a fault line is "due" for an earthquake. However, there is no way to predict it right before it happens. No weather forecast can give warning to people. Earthquakes just happen. So the fact that the earthquake struck right at game time during a World Series that had both teams in the same media market with most people already in a retrofitted building during what would normally be rush hour is absurd. The earthquake could have been so much worse. The casualty count could have skyrocketed. Yet just about every single possible variable lined up to keep people out of harm's way. Baseball saved hundreds of lives.

Looking at sports from an objective point of view, they’re very silly. As a society, we understand that sports are a worldwide phenomenon where individuals group together and arbitrarily root for people who wear clothes that match one’s alliance. However, these manmade battles foster camaraderie between strangers. There are very few things in the world that can capture a population's attention as sports do. Sports give people the highest and lowest of emotions, from sweet victory to crushing defeat. Sports give people something to believe in. And sometimes, by pure luck, sports can save lives.

#baseball #1989 world series #loma prieta #earthquake

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Let Me Tell You About Depression 3: Cure Stigma

May was Mental Health Awareness Month. The theme for this year was “Cure Stigma,” which feels more necessary and more possible than ever. 

Mental health has thankfully come into greater focus over the past few years. Many public figures, ranging from celebrities to athletes, are more open about their mental illness and mental health. Depression, which I will focus on for this post, has especially been put to the forefront.

Depression is a very lonely illness. It’s something that’s uncomfortable to mention. It’s something that people don’t know how to react to. It’s something to hide, to put a mask over. We live in a world where the default response to “How are you?” is “Fine, thanks.” It’s easier for both sides to give the default answers instead of digging deeper into more emotionally distressing topics. We aren’t expected say how we really feel. And so, people don’t mention their depression, which only makes things worse. Depression, even without the social shunning, is an isolating condition. It all happens without any external signs. It’s a battle within the head.

The writer Libba Bray wrote a blog post about depression four years ago that still rings true to this day. It’s a beautifully-written, brutal look at the lowest of lows. She documents her troubles with depression and puts it into situations and contexts that she hopes the non-depressed can grasp. It’s better than anything I could write myself, but I must continue to write myself, as it is my means to fight back against the darkness. 

My depression makes me feel like my brain is filled with television static. It’s a quiet but constant noise that obscures the signal trying to break through. Thoughts that are helpful, important, are coming in muddled. Sometimes it gets so bad that I forget what someone says right after they say it, and I panic and try to access memories that my mind couldn’t be bothered to form. Depression sucks all substance out of words and leaves me with inscrutable noise. 

I get angry at myself because of this. Why does my brain feel so broken? Is this how I’m going to be for the rest of my life? Why can’t I just feel normal? Who would want someone as defective as me? I don’t take it the best. The result has been years and years of self-loathing. But this only leads to more shame and guilt, emotions that further poison the mind.

It doesn’t have to be like this. 

Instead of suffering in your room, lying facedown at the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid, you can reach out for help. Instead of feeling hopeless, helpless, and useless, you can remember that you’re not alone. We’re not alone. We can help each other. We can beat this stigma.

We are also more than just this illness. We should not be defined by the void, but rather what fights against this void. The things we love, the skills we have, the personalities we possess are so much more than what impedes those things. 

We can remove the stigma of therapy and medication. There is nothing wrong with getting help. It’s not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of strength, that you’re doing something to fight against the void, to inch closer to full strength. There are lists of things to do when you’re deep in a particular depression. There is literature to read of others who are experiencing the same symptoms.

If you know someone who is going through depression, try to help. As Bray said, “One of the greatest gifts you can give is to listen without judgment and to let the person know that s/he is loved simply for being.” When a depressed person knows that those around them care and love them, it makes it all feel that much less isolating.

There is a lot of work to be done, but things are headed in the right direction. Allie Brosh and Libba Bray are just two people who have put depression in an honest, relatable light. There are many others who want the world to understand, too.

We may never be able to cure depression. But we can cure the stigma surrounding it.

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As always, if you’re in a life-threatening situation, there is always the National Suicide Hotline. And if you prefer to text, there is the Crisis Text Line. 

#depression #let me tell you about depression #libba bray #mental health awareness month

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Forgotten Songs That Deserve Another Listen

The music industry hates the past. New music sells better than old music. The moment that the new hotness becomes the old hotness, it’s quickly pulled from the airwaves. Cuz if the listener sticks to music they’ve already heard and liked, then who is going to buy and listen to the new stuff?

Screw that, though. There are some songs that deserved more time and more love. Here are some of my favorite songs, many of them released as singles, from the past few years that were forgotten too soon.

Little Boots - Stuck on Repeat

“Stuck on Repeat” was Little Boots’ aka Victoria Hesketh’s breakout song, back in 2008. After shopping around the demo for a while, "Stuck on Repeat" found its way to Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard, who immediately took a liking to it. Working together, Hesketh and Goddard created an absolute killer track. Little Boots' debut album Hands contained "Stuck on Repeat" in a remixed, shortened form that ran about three and a half minutes. In my opinion, though, the original mix that runs for seven minutes is the definitive version. 

The hypnotic beat builds and builds until Hesketh's vocals drop in at the two-minute mark. The lyrics, likening infatuation to a catchy song, is a nice meta-referential touch. The groove is infectious. The melody is catchy. The moments the beat kicks back in are incredibly rewarding. All these elements work together with the lyrics to create a musical metaphor that rings true. When you're hooked, all you hear is something on repeat.

Chilly Gonzalez - You Can Dance

Chilly Gonzalez may be best known for owning a Guinness World Record and having his song featured in an iPad commercial, but he’s a pretty good producer in his own right. Though he mostly collaborates with other artists (Peaches, Daft Punk, and Feist to name a few), he has a few solo albums under his name as well. On his album, Ivory Tower, hidden amongst the other tracks, is the funky anthem “You Can Dance.”

There isn’t much to this song. It’s just a great electro-funk jam with a catchy melody. But that’s enough. If you’re looking for something to move to, “You Can Dance” fills that need. There’s not much substance, really. Just a groove and a choir of people encouraging you to dance. The background vocals at the end of the song sum it up perfectly: Dance, motherfucker! Dance!

The Go! Team - Buy Nothing Day

The Go! Team have always been a band that deals in positivity. The exclamation point in their name is just a hint at the ridiculous amount of energy contained in each song. Every album the Go! Team has released is full of high-BPM, cheerleader-inspired indie rock. The style can be overwhelming at times, and some of their most unique songs can get lost in the shuffle.

“Buy Nothing Day” is one of the singles from their album Rolling Blackouts, and it’s the perfect pop song. Major key guitars, frenetic drums, and guest vocals from Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino combine to make a sun-kissed track that’s perfect for a summer road trip. Blast it through your speakers and let the good vibes wash over you.

Little Jackie - The World Should Revolve Around Me

Little Jackie is the on and off again project between singer-songwriter Imani Coppola and producer Adam Pallin. The goal was to make Little Jackie their depository of pop/R&B tunes separate from their more esoteric solo careers.

“The World Should Revolve Around Me” was the lead single from their debut album The Stoop, and it’s a brilliant throwback to feelgood Mowtown tunes of yesteryear. Happy string sections, bright horns, and a snappy beat accompany Cooper singing about how happy she is with herself. For Coppola, it doesn’t matter what kind of man invades her life. If he can’t deal with her, he should move on out. It’s pure narcissistic joy in the form of a poppy self-esteem boost.

The Rapture - Whoo! Alright-Yeah...Uh Huh

The Rapture will forever be known for defining the dance-punk genre with the anthemic “House of Jealous Lovers,” from their debut album Echoes. Their second album, however, has been largely forgotten. Pieces of the People We Love is a record that’s less punk and more pop. There’s less shouting, less noise, but they kept the cowbell, thankfully.

“Whoo! Alright-Yeah...Uh Huh,” despite the problematic song title, is one of the most appealing tracks on Pieces. Bassist Mattie Safer takes lead vocals here, sing-talking his way through a song about partying, music critique, and dancing. The second half of the song is dominated by Safer shouting along with a crowd, “People don’t dance no more/They just stand there like this/They cross their arms and stare you down/And drink and moan and diss.” These lyrics were in response to the many lethargic crowds at indie concerts in 2006. The callout was really on point. And the best thing they could do about it? Create a track where if you’re not dancing, you might hate fun.

#the rapture #little jackie #the go! team #little boots #chilly gonzales #forgotten tracks

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Puffy AmiYumi - Nice

Nice is one of my guilty pleasures. Though if I’m posting about it on a public blogging platform, is it really a guilty pleasure anymore? I can’t really define guilty pleasure well, but the closest I’ve got is it’s something that someone enjoys that runs counter to what one is thought to enjoy. But then again, would any of my friends be surprised if I liked J-Pop? I doubt it. What might be more fitting to the definition above is my love of “The Fear” by Lily Allen. Though I don’t feel guilty about liking that either. What gives? Perhaps true guilty pleasures are like awkward boners. They’re deeply embarrassing when in public, and only someone who intimately knows you can appreciate them.

Whatever, let’s talk about J-Pop.

Puffy AmiYumi are a Japanese pop/rock duo who at one point had a sizable presence in America. They scored their first big break when they provided the theme song to Teen Titans, and from there they had their own show on Cartoon Network that ran for three seasons. I first heard about them as I was going through my Teen Titans phase, and I decided to get their album Nice after seeing it on sale at my local used record store. It had the Teen Titans theme song on the album, which was enough motivation for me to get a CD that cost $4.99.

My love for Teen Titans has waned over the years, but I’m still listening to this album. And I listen to every other song on the album way more than I do the Teen Titans theme. Nice is just so much fun. It’s big, stupid fun. And I recommend it to everyone who’s looking for a pick-me-up.

Starting from the John-and-Yoko sit-in homage on the album cover, one might assume that the album is very silly. And my goodness, it is. Yet the songs are rewarding. Every song has its own identity and its own way of both enforcing and subverting pop stereotypes. A few of the campier songs have “really?” moments that can elicit a few giggles, too. The auto-tuned voice that says the band’s name on repeat at “Tokyo Nights,” the slow-motion hoedown that typifies “Thank You,” and the cheesy synthesizer that kicks off “Your Love is a Drug” (no relation) feel too ridiculous to be real. But they’re there, and they make me feel great.

Contrary to what people may believe, making pop music isn’t easy. There are the stories of Pharrell and Robin Thicke writing “Blurred Lines” in a few hours, and there’s an experiment to see if one could make a pop song in a day from scratch. But that minimizes the innate pop sensibilities producers have built up over years and years of work. Making that guitar chord sound just shiny enough or making the snare hits dry enough to sound like a live performance is really tough. The chord progression in pop is simple, but turning something so simple into something that will get stuck in your head for days? That’s hard, too. So I really respect albums that consistently have great pop hooks (see: The Bones of What You Believe). And each song on Nice has gotten stuck in my head at one time or another. Yeah, I might feel a little guilty when I start humming the melodies in public, but only a little. Sometimes, you can’t deny that a song is catchy as hell.

What about the lyrics? I don’t speak Japanese, so I wouldn’t know. It doesn’t stop me from trying to sing along, though. There are some songs that are in English, but the lyrics don’t really matter much. Puffy AmiYumi sound best when they’re singing together in their native tongue, anyways. Compare “Planet Tokyo” to its Japanese version added as a bonus track, “Red Swing.” The songs are identical, but Ami and Yumi sound so much more in sync when singing in Japanese.

I hinted at this before, but the music on Nice spans a bevy of genres. Yes, “Thank You” inexplicably sounds like a hoedown on opiates. It doesn’t take away from its appeal. And every kind of genre experiment seems to break even, if not do it better. “Sayonara” begins with a Beatles-esque guitar riff before sliding into a song that sounds like it came from a world in which the British Invasion took a wrong turn at Okinawa. “Your Love is a Drug” sounds like something from the Kids Bop cutting room floor, but the melodies are too fun to deny. The lyrics are afterschool-special-level quality (As I’m jonesin’ for those eyes/It’s amazing/How you can make a sober girl so high), the song breaks down into a ballpark organ solo, and there’s even a part that features fake inhaling sounds. Those things all sound awful, but it all coalesces into something that’ll make you say “I hate that I love this song.”

A particular highlight is “K2G,” incidentally another song that was featured on Teen Titans, which is closest in style to ska. It has all the hallmarks: bright guitar chords, an excessive amount of horns, and a guitar solo that’s trying to sound more badass than it really is. There’s just so much bounce to this song that it warrants dancing like an idiot to. And why not?

It might feel less so for those who are reading this in the future, but at the moment this kind of music is a necessity. From the macro to the micro, things are anxiety-ridden and upsetting. Beloved celebrities are dying left and right. People feel uncertain about their rights in the next few years. The sun is setting at 4 PM and it isn’t even the solstice yet. These are all stressors that are affecting people right now. And there will be times to deal with these problems. But a place to escape to is needed sometimes. It’s worth it to put on something so uncomfortably happy that you can’t help but smile along. Nice is an album full of songs that sound like the sun visiting you on a cold winter day.

At this point I should probably remove the “guilty” from the phrase and simply say that Nice is a pleasure to listen to. While Nice is schizophrenic in its scope, it’s also a rousing success as a pop record. The music is fun. That’s what makes it great. So go ahead and laugh at the cheesiness. Go ahead and pretend you can sing along to the Japanese as if you know what the lyrics mean. Go and listen to something fun. You deserve it.

#Puffy #puffy amiyumi #Nice

[wordinvader]

Song Islands #4

The Olivia Tremor Control - NYC-25

I still miss him. Bill Doss passed away over three years ago, and I still miss him. It still makes me sad to think that he’s gone and that he’ll never be able to write another piece of beautiful music again. I didn’t know about his personal life. I didn’t know what kind of personality he possessed. I’m just sad because it’s all over. It’s finished. There’s nothing more to be found. The Olivia Tremor Control is gone. He’s gone. It hurts.

Bill Doss was one of the founding members of the Olivia Tremor Control, who were one of the three original bands to come out of the Elephant 6 collective. Compared to the other members of the big three, Neutral Milk Hotel and the Apples in Stereo, the Olivia Tremor Control were relatively unknown. As Neutral Milk Hotel grew to indie stardom with In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and the Apples in Stereo got their song on a Pepsi ad during the Super Bowl, the Olivia Tremor Control released two albums and went on hiatus.

The other founding member of the Olivia Tremor Control was Will Cullen Hart, and and like Paul was to John, Doss was the pop to Hart’s noise. Many of the Olivia Tremor Control’s more accessible songs were written and sung by Doss. “Jumping Fences” and “Hideway,” two fan favorites, have Doss on lead vocals, and are some of the brightest, cheeriest songs I’ve ever heard. They both seem to channel the Beatles’ ebullient “Rain” in the best way possible. But for me, my favorite track by the band is the closer on their debut album, Dusk at Cubist Castle. The song is also sung by Doss.

After the sprawling adventure that is Dusk at Cubist Castle, the album finishes on a quiet, relaxing jam in the form of “NYC-25.” Yes, the song is about LSD. The 25 in the title is a dead giveaway. Yes, the lyrics are about tripping. But in the face of all of this, the words still sound meaningful even for those who haven’t lost control of their ego before. As you (*cough*) dream, Doss takes you on a whirlwind tour to places such as Candyland and Apple Corps, and you observe the phenomena as if you’re watching it all through the backseat window of a car. 4 million feet walk by you in Apple Corps. Then 10 million eyes look right through you in Old New York. And all these places are possible in dreams, where, as he says, “we spin around on the turnstiles we create.”

In contrast to that, though, is the beautiful chorus where Doss cautions, “Don’t sleep too long/’cause everything you need is right here.” It’s a reminder that you shouldn’t lose yourself, or else you lose everything around you. It’s so easy to get caught up in fantasies, giving into the anywhere-but-here mindset. As we focus more on the negatives every day, we lose sight of the things we have. These lyrics, as drug-influenced as they may be, remind us that this world is always here for us. And you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

I miss him.

The guitar solo at the end is a beautiful coda to a wonderful song. Never have I heard a guitar sigh as much as this. Once the solo kicks in, with Doss playing a lilting descending line, it feels like weight is coming off your shoulders. It feels like you’re able to slow down, lay your head, and finally, sleep well.

With one final “Pleasant dreams but please don’t sleep too long,” Doss plays a little riff on the guitar while Julian Koster plays a singing saw in the background. The guitar cuts off abruptly, as you hear a brief “Pfff. Nevermind.” followed by a far-off “That’s it!” as Doss walks away from the mic. All that’s left is Koster’s singing saw, warbling away until it, too, fades out.

Yes, the singing saw sounds ghostly. Yes, the fact that Doss passed away makes this outro feel sadder, and in a way, scarier. Yes, it’s stupid to make a connection between a singing saw and a ghost of a singer you like. It’s completely irrational, but I can’t hear the end of this song without thinking about how he’s gone. Maybe it’s because I saw the Olivia Tremor Control play this song live, and I was in the front row, right by his mic. Maybe it’s because I invest way too much emotion into the music I like. It doesn’t matter. “NYC-25″ makes my heart swell with joy and sadness, and I love it for it.

#NYC-25 #The Olivia Tremor Control #Bill Doss #Song Islands

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Anxiety and Shame

Hoo boy. It’s been a while. A lot of things have happened. I’ve been away. I’ve been busy. I’ve been preoccupied. I’ve been missing. I’ve been hiding. I’ve been ignoring this for many reasons. It’s been over a year since something has gone up here, which matches up to the lengths of my previous extended breaks. After each absence, I’ve promised a new series, a new set of ideas, or more frequent updates. This time, though, no promises. I don’t know when the next update will be. I don’t even know if there will be a next update. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It’s best to think of a blog as a place with no audience. As much as I may crave recognition, and as much as I will post a link of this post to Facebook, this blog is personal. Blogs were originally once online diaries, after all.

I’ve been thinking about anxiety and shame over the last few days. They’re terrible feelings. But they’re everywhere. Anxiety is the more understood of the two. We all have anxieties of some sort. Social anxiety, workplace anxiety, self-imposed daily anxiety. There are many kinds of anxiety, and each one is painful in its own way.

Anxiety and fear are closely related. Usually one follows another, and they both stymie progress. In our lives, when we’re presented with big decisions, anxiety is a natural reaction. Anxiety and fear are a natural response to something risky. The pain we feel when anxiety appears is a signal for us to think things through. Someone without fear would stroll into any situation, damning the consequences. That someone would probably die at an early age, because living without fear is dangerous and stupid. As much as we hate it, anxiety and fear are useful, even though many times they feel like a hindrance.

But anxiety can hold you back. It negatively affects tons of people each day. The big stupid punchline is that the emotion that enabled our survivability is what’s slowly killing us. We aren’t in as many situations these days that require big decisions and lots of second-guessing. Anxiety has nowhere to go but into the small things in our lives that we shouldn’t fear. That talk with your friend, that job application you’ve been meaning to send in, and that trip you’ve been meaning to commit to are all stalled by anxiety and fear. And the inaction that follows only builds on the anxiety. You’re late in applying, in taking action, and then the door closes. Things go from an opportunity, to a possibility, to a failure. And failure due to anxiety only brings on the shame.

Oh, shame.

Shame is one of the worst feelings in the world. This is not an opinion. Shame is the driving force behind many mental illnesses, including depression, and is the cause of a multitude of violent acts. Say a husband finds out he’s been cheated on. What occurs in his mind first isn’t anger. It’s shame. He thinks he’s not good enough for his wife. He’s embarrassed that he’s getting shown up by someone else. He’s vulnerable, and many men react to vulnerability with anger and violence. That’s where the felonies come in. The abuse, the fights, and the revenge. Revenge is borne out of shame. It’s the feeling that if someone thinks you’re unworthy. Then you have to prove you’re better and stronger, no matter the method. Things hurt. Things fall apart. And it’s all because we as a population can’t deal with shame.

But shame, as terrible as it may seem, is also necessary. It’s a humbling emotion that takes someone beyond guilt. Removing shame from your life would remove your ability to connect with others. Empathy is closely linked to shame and vulnerability. We feel for others who are down because we’ve been there too.

Yet, we still inflict shame upon each other. There are few phrases worse than “shame on you.” When you say that to someone, you want them to feel bad for themselves. You want them to feel like a bad person, because shame is there to convince you that you’re a bad person. That you’re defective and awful. Shame is the critic in your mind, sitting high above you and telling you that you’re terrible. And when anxiety leads to failure, shame is there to remind you that you’re terrible.

Shame also prevents progress. Failure is something that sticks with you, strongly, and comes up when things go bad. When something makes you anxious again, you’re reminded of that last time you failed because of anxiety. That feeling of anxiety reminds you of the shame you felt when you failed. Shame reminds you that you’re awful. You fail again. It’s a vicious cycle.

This is the cycle of depression. Anxiety and shame are two of the biggest contributors to breakdowns, depressive episodes, and detachment from others. (Side note: I considered including sadness into this post so I could talk about anxiety, sadness, and shame aka the ASS of depression.) Shame is the big player in all of this, and even when it feels like you can reason your way out of shame telling you that you’re not good enough, there’s something else to make you feel just as bad. “Oh, well you may think you’re good enough, but that’s only what you think. Your friends know you’re not good enough. You never were.”

I’ve struggled with my demons for years. I���ve given into shame and stopped my life. I’ve numbed my emotions to never feel shame again (which, in turn, kept me from feeling anything). I’ve embraced my flaws for what they are. It still isn’t all there. For the longest time I’ve thought that I was a failure, unworthy of the love and friendship of others. I’ve thought that romance was a lie, that happiness was fake, and that depression would be the end of me.

If I met everyone who read this, shook their hand, and had a conversation with them, I could easily say that they’re worthy of love and friendship, but I still can’t say that about myself. I can’t love myself yet. I’m still questioning whether I’m worthy of love and friendship, or even if I’m worthy of being a person. But I’m aware of this, and that’s good news. The only way to fight your demons is to know them well. For a long time I had no idea what was wrong with me. I only knew that there was something wrong and that is was terrible and that I was probably irrevocably broken. Maybe I’m less broken now. Still picking up the pieces from when I fell.

The only thing I want to do in life is make things better for someone else. And even if I have done so tenfold, one hundredfold, or inconceivably, one thousandfold, I don’t think I’d believe it. It’s the depression, obviously. This is one of the few tweets that I’ve actually favorited in my five years on Twitter:

The only thing left after that is anxiety, sadness, and shame.

I was walking in Golden Gate Park today when I saw a cardboard sign leaning against a tree that said to keep on creating. It said that no matter what it was, the creation process was more important than the finished product. I guess it inspired me to make this. I loaded up on Ze Frank and Brené Brown videos and got to writing. But this isn’t a great piece of writing. I’m out of practice. This is all embarrassing. It’s gross and ugly and raw and uncomfortable. But if anything is to be taken from those videos, it’s that it is better to take the risk than to keep it painfully inside. So, here’s my bleeding heart. Here’s me. Warts and all.

#anxiety #depression #shame #Actual Substance

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SPACE Thoughts: GRBs

I like outer space. Or perhaps I should call it SPACE, to appropriate the unfathomable vastness of the cosmos. I didn’t major in astronomy at Uni, so all my knowledge comes from nights of research and a few classes I took that were, in the end, way out of my league. But I want to write about it now, as part of a general writing exercise. I’m out of practice. Again.

So, SPACE thoughts #1: Gamma Ray Bursts or; How the World Could End at Any Moment and There’s Not a Damn Thing We Could Do to Prevent It.

One of the more famous space phenomena are black holes, incredibly dense celestial bodies that have such a strong gravitational pull that not even light can escape its grasp. And, as such, they are black, invisible. There are tons of black holes in our galaxy, including one supermassive black hole (what up, Muse) in the center. But black holes get a bad rap. I mean, they’re still an incredibly destructive force that sucks matter away into an unknown space. But they’re not quite the “Hoovers of Outer Space” that they’ve been touted to be. Black holes don’t move. The reason why things get sucked into black holes is due to something getting too close to the black hole. This is the equivalent of tearing a hole in a bed sheet. If you drop something onto the sheet, the object may fall through the hole. The hole doesn’t move towards the object. That would be impossible. But I digress. We’re supposed to be talking about Gamma Ray Bursts.

Wait wait, a bit more prologue. Sorry.

Black holes themselves are a product at the end of a massive star dying. And while the black hole may be more fascinating to the everyman, the actual process of a star dying is just as incredible.

Our sun is an average star. A boring star. A C+ star. When the sun dies, it’ll puff up to a humongous size, become a red giant, and likely swallow the earth in its expanded radius, assuming we haven’t blown the world up before that. Then it will cool and shrink in size, as it expends the last bits of its energy, and eventually becomes a red dwarf. Red dwarves are small, relatively cold stars. Yawn. 

The big stars, though, are quite the spectacle. These huge stars are, uh, rock stars, in a way. They live fast and die young, shining brightly for millions of years before ending their lives in a fantastic explosion. On the molecular level, here’s what happens: every star is a balance of two forces. One is gravity, which pulls all matter towards the center of the star, and the other is nuclear fusion, which keeps pushing the mass and energy out into space. As the star continues to burn its energy, the helium atoms caused by nuclear fusion begin to then fuse together, creating the more complicated elements: carbon, oxygen, sodium, etc. As the heavier elements are created, the star becomes more dense, thus the gravitational pull becomes stronger. Concurrently, the star’s available hydrogen needed for fusion is dwindling, and at some point something has to give.

Gravity wins out, and all the dense matter collapses in on itself, squeezing itself into as compact of an object as possible. The collapse causes a shockwave, and all the material not sucked into the star is jettisoned out into space. Thus, a supernova occurs. Supernovae are very pretty and leave absolutely gorgeous nebulae. They also cause gamma ray bursts.

We’re 600 words into this post, and I finally get to what a gamma ray burst is. Go me.

Anyways, as a star explodes, a gamma ray burst is emitted from its poles, shooting out far into space. A GRB is a narrow beam of extremely energetic rays, the power being something equivalent to the amount of energy the sun will expend in its entire lifetime. These things are very powerful and, potentially, very dangerous.

Most of the GRBs scientists have witnessed are very far away, somewhere in the billion-light-year range. But, if a GRB occurred close to us, say, in the thousand-light-year range, and we just happened to be in the beam’s path, things would go bad very fast. A GRB can be as short as two seconds, but there would be enough energy in those two seconds to irrevocably alter the earth.

Theoretical models have the intense wave of radiation slicing through the atmosphere and depleting up to 25% of the ozone layer. This would be a disastrous amount lost in one sitting. Those living on the side of Earth facing the blast would be subjected to lethal amounts of radiation immediately. The side facing away from Earth wouldn’t be as bombarded by harmful gamma rays, but the ozone depletion and UV radiation would likely kill them eventually. On top of that, a dramatic change to the atmosphere would disrupt many food chains and elemental cycles, leading to many species dying due to food shortages. So those humans who happen to not die of radiation poisoning would die of starvation. It wouldn’t be a pretty sight. 

The thing is, we can’t predict this. We don’t know which massive stars have their poles pointed towards us. We don’t know when they’re going to explode. For many other natural disasters, we’d have projection models and years of warning. A catastrophic meteor would at least be observed a year before impact (though we wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Sorry, Bruce Willis). We’re in the midst of extreme climate change and can observe it directly. A gamma ray burst, though, can happen at any moment. The radiation travels at near speed of light, so as soon as we see the star exploding, it would already be too late. Once the light arrives, so does the radiation. 

You may say that the likelihood of a GRB hitting us is very slim. True, it is. However, it’s likely that Earth experienced a gamma ray burst in the past. It’s been theorized that the Ordovician–Silurian extinction event, the second largest extinction event in the history of earth, was due to a GRB. It’s not impossible.

So what’s to be learned from all of this? Probably nothing you haven't heard before. Cherish every moment; live every day as if it were your last; life is fleeting; etc. But now you can append “because at any moment you could be bombarded by one billion nuclear bombs’ worth of radiation and die a painful death” to all of that!

Science is magical.

#GRBs #Gamma Ray Bursts #Armageddon #SPACE thoughts

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Song Islands #3

Led Zeppelin - How Many More Times (Live at Danmarks Radio)

Bit slow on this, but with the reissuing of Led Zeppelin’s studio albums in the last month, I feel it’s time to talk about why they were so amazing.

Yes, this desert island track is a live cut, not the studio version. The studio version of “How Many More Times” is the last track on Zep’s debut, a strong, bluesy, frenetic end to an incredibly solid album. It has it all: “borrowed” blues riffs, Robert Plant’s howl, Jimmy Page’s guitar + violin bow combo, weird spaced-out jams, lyrics about girls and loving and sexual frustration. This is textbook. A complete snapshot of what Led Zeppelin is, and what they would be for a very long time. The only thing missing was the Tolkien, which may have been for the better.

But while the studio version is the addendum to their opening statement, their take of “How Many More Times” at Danmarks Radio may actually be the perfect introduction of Led Zeppelin for anyone wondering who the hell these guys are.

Their Danmarks Radio session was one of their first taped performances, coming a few weeks after they released their debut album. It’s filmed in an incredibly cramped studio, the band playing to perhaps only fifty people huddled around their setup. This tiny show was a peek into a band that was on the precipice of worldwide fame. Led Zeppelin was playing in a room far too small for their sound, and that in a way makes the performance all the more remarkable. The feedback produced by overworked speakers, the dead air in between songs, the slightly muffled sound of Robert Plant’s voice, all these were constraining, keeping the band from unleashing their full force. It was a contained explosion, a precursor of what was to come for years afterwards.

As for why this is a great intro for the group, the evidence should be obvious in the first few seconds. The song starts out with Robert Plant literally introducing the group, going from John Paul Jones, to John Bonham, to Jimmy Page, and then to himself. When Page is introduced, he lets loose a powerful, bluesy riff. The riff in question is actually a take on Howlin’ Wolf’s song “Smokestack Lightning,” the song that “How Many More Times” borrows its riff from. It’s perfect. It shows Led Zeppelin’s roots in blues of the Deep South, but the timbre of Page’s guitar also shows how Zeppelin was adapting blues to fit their style. While traditional blues was played on an old acoustic guitar, Page’s guitar is slick, heavy, and just plain loud. Playing the riff is also homage to their influences. Instead of simply stealing riffs and selling them as their own, they want to let people know who inspires them. That quick riff succinctly tells the audience exactly what Led Zeppelin’s style is, who they admire, and how they’re going to change the music landscape. All of that, in six seconds.

Then Robert Plant introduces himself, as if it’s no big deal. It is a big deal. Let’s talk about Robert Plant’s vocals for a bit.

Music critic Robert Christgau was never a huge fan of Led Zeppelin, but he could not stop talking about Robert Plant’s voice. He mentioned its power, its strut, and most importantly, its use as an instrument, not a means to deliver lyrics, because honestly, Zeppelin’s lyrics were never much to write home about. But Plant’s delivery made up for all of that. It’s said that every musical instrument in the world tries to imitate the voice, but nothing on earth could match Robert Plant’s pipes. His voice is a force of nature. Some fans say that his voice was so powerful that during live shows his voice could still be heard even if his mic cut out. Over all the cacophony caused by the band, the amps, the speakers, you could still hear him shouting.

Of course his voice isn’t what it used to be. After years of grueling tours and tons and tons of drug abuse, Plant understandably had to phone it in every now and then. Zeppelin often played three hour sets on consecutive nights, and sometimes even two sets in a day. That destroys the voice. But, as a reminder, this session was performed at the beginning of Zeppelin’s rise to fame. Before all the stadium tours, the Stairway to Heaven, the genre experiments, Zeppelin didn’t care about longevity. They were there to make as big of an impression as possible. In the early years, Robert Plant never held back. He was going to shout and shriek at every moment possible, and his voice is at full force here.

I haven’t even talked about the performance of actual song yet. Jeez. The song itself plays out more or less like the studio version, with a few notable differences that further define Zep’s live presence. For one, Jimmy Page has often been criticized for being sloppy with his playing, but here, he is spot on. There are some flubs, sure, but you try playing a hundred notes in ten seconds and not mess up.

Secondly, the violin bow on guitar interlude from the studio version is modified to fit a live set. Instead of Page mindlessly bowing his guitar while Plant sings about having eleven children, we see how Plant and Page would often play off each other, with Plant mimicking Page’s guitar and vice versa. Also, while the listener may be focused on Page’s guitar shredding, one cannot forget the very strong, stable rhythm in the back, with John Paul Jones and John Bonham jamming out with each other. Instead of just playing the same note with a steady beat, they’re both improvising. I doubt Bonham could ever play a steady beat without getting incredibly bored anyways. He had to play drum fills whenever we could.

And lastly, there’s the moment when everything breaks down, when everyone stops except for Plant whispering into the mic. As the song builds up again, we’re treated to the band creating as much feedback as possible while Plant shouts nonsense (“isn’t it nice, sugar and spice”???). All that tension is released, and everything snaps back together again.

Then the audio fades out before the song ends.

The ending is the best/worst thing ever. It’s awful in that it fades out. There is no resolution. There is no held-out note, no closing drum fills, and no final shout from Robert Plant. It just fades out abruptly. I don’t know how the song ends. I haven’t found a recording that has the ending included. That sucks. But…for someone who’s new to the band, it’s a tease. A twelve-minute tease, but a tease nonetheless. The unresolved ending just leaves you wanting more.

If you are a vinyl fanatic or a newbie to the band, go pick up the studio reissues. I’m sure they’re awesome. But when you really want to see Led Zeppelin at their heaviest, pick up their live CD and DVD. You will not be disappointed. Led Zeppelin will be remembered as one of the biggest, heaviest bands ever, and this one take in a small Danish studio is the embodiment of their sound. A complete package.

#led zeppelin #how many more times #led zeppelin I #Danmarks Radio #Song Islands

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Song Islands #2

In the midst of all the pandemonium regarding Random Access Memories, I hope people haven’t forgotten about Discovery, their memories album before Memories. I wrote about Discovery in the wee old days of the blog. You don’t have to go read that. I didn’t even read the post after I published it. But I did cover why it was awesome. Assumedly. Either way, Discovery is still a great album and deserves a spot in your music library.

While I was going through my Daft Punk phase, at around the time of their Alive 2007 tour, my favorite Daft Punk song changed every week. It was “Human After All” then “Da Funk” then “Harder Better Faster Stronger” then their entire Live at Coachella set, etc. If you asked me what my favorite song of theirs was, I’d say “whatever I’m playing right now.” But for some reason, I never focused specifically on “Digital Love.” I can’t say why that was, because “Digital Love” has been my favorite Daft Punk song for the last few years, and likely will be for the foreseeable future.

On the surface, the song seems rather simple. The base of the song is a sample of George Duke’s “I Love You More,” sped up a little to meet the uptempo requirements of club fare. There’s programmed drums and bass to give the beat a little punch. There are some lyrics to sing along to. And of course, there’s the moment when the beat drops. This is all textbook dance music. But while other hits like “One More Time” made their money on this simple build and release structure, “Digital Love” deviates from that path and does so much more.

The song breaks the sample down, chops it up, makes a new riff of it, then breaks the song down for an electric piano solo, and then builds it up to its climax: a really dopey yet amazing “guitar” solo. The solo even has hammer-ons! The song itself is about unspoken love, with the singer dreaming of a wonderful night out with his crush, only to have his heart broken when he wakes up in the morning. It’s a cheesy story. It has cheesy lyrics. It’s a cheesy song. It’s…cute. Nice. Sweet. Adorable. But “Digital Love” has a lot more subtlety than that.

One of the most difficult things to pull off in music is to have the music inform the lyrics and have the lyrics inform the music. Much like how scenes in movies need the perfect soundtrack to heighten the mood, lyrics need the right music to get the point across. “Digital Love” does a great job, though it may not be obvious at first blush. Apologies for the music theory, but the sample for this song is what you’d call “unresolved.” That is, in music theory, chords naturally progress from one to another, eventually coming back to where they started, or at least something the feels final.

“Digital Love” doesn’t have that. The sample never finishes. It’s always hanging. And this perfectly mirrors the lyrics, about unspoken feelings, things that are hanging in the air but not finished. This kind of unresolved chord progression closely resembles, now bear with me here, Richard Wagner’s opera “Tristan und Isolde,” where the two lovers are represented by a motive that never resolves. Much like how the two lovers can never come together, the motive never finishes, until the end. After five hours of turmoil, the two lovers finally find peace, and the motive resolves in a huge orchestral swell. It’s a simple musical trick, but very effective. The ending of “Tristan und Isolde” is guaranteed to produce tears. Guaranteed.

Thankfully, in “Digital Love,” things don’t take five hours to resolve. At the end of the big solo, the synth plays the sampled tune, finishing with one final, held out note.

Except that’s not the end.

As that final note trails off, a muffled version of the unresolved sample plays again, behind a crescendoing synth pad. So, things aren’t really resolved. The song is still about unspoken love, not unspoken but then true love. And that synth pad that rises in volume as the song peters out sounds suspiciously like the rising sun the singer mentioned earlier. And if that is true, we can see the whole structure of the song like the dream the singer described.

The bridge after 1:40 could be interpreted as a musical representation of the dream, where he’s dancing with his crush as the beat gets stronger. The electric piano solo is when they get closer. The big, goofy solo is when everything comes together. Then the sun comes, and the dream disappears. Then the song ends.

The lyrics themselves aren’t going to win any poetry competitions. I was surprised that Daft Punk actually had someone else write the lyrics for them, as they’re incredibly simple. Rhyming is minimal and lazy (rhyming “about you” with “beside you”? Really?), metaphors and similes are nonexistent, there’s no turn of phrase or anything clever like that. The lyrics are just straight, almost stream of consciousness words. But it’s the way they’re delivered that makes it work. The processed vocals sound almost like they’re being sung as a confession over the phone. The words are basic, but the easy melody and the smooth intonation make the words sound much more real and relatable. And as silly as this sounds, the use of vocoder actually makes the singer sound more emotional. 

As a whole, Daft Punk created one of the more perfect love songs. The tone is nice and warm, the vocals are easy to sing along to, and the instrumentation is gorgeous enough to make your heart swell. Many dance songs are about having a good time, finding love in the club, but few dance tracks are about longing and desire. Few dance tracks hit you right in the feels like this. And every time I listen, I get overwhelmed with warm fuzzies. That’s why it’s my favorite Daft Punk song. 

Also, almost forgot, but no mention of Discovery should go without mentioning Leiji Matsumoto's amazing Interstella 5555, the film accompaniment for the album.

#Daft Punk #Discovery #Digital Love #Song Islands

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Beck - "Debra"

Let’s do a new series. Something that is short. Something that doesn’t spiral out of control. Something that is less painful.

Every now and again I get questions about my favorite songs, my desert island playlist, and my answers change everyday. But there are some constants. The Song Islands series will be my takes on said constants. It’s like the original purpose of the tumblr, except not as wide in scope. Without further ado, I present:

Song Islands #1: Beck – Debra

“Debra” may be Beck’s least favorite song. Or, at least it seems to be now. He’s mentioned every now and again that he’s not proud of the work he did on Midnite Vultures. You can probably see why, when you compare it to his newest release. Midnite Vultures is kind of a joke. A big, 40-minute joke between Beck and his friends. It’s an extremely silly album. “Hollywood Freaks” is a caricature of the extravagant lives of celebrities, with couplets such as “tutti fruity/automatic bzooty” sewn into the lyrics. There’s an interlude entitled “robots doin’ the nasty.” The music video for “Sexx Laws” features kitchen appliances grinding up on each other while a very young Jack Black looks on in terror. And then there’s the album closer: “Debra.”

A quick summation of Midnite Vultures would be “Beck tries to be Prince and succeeds,” and “Debra” is the Prince-iest of all the tracks on Midnite Vultures. After an album full of funk and soul, peaches and cream, Beck ends it on a slow jam which is absolutely, positively, beautifully, taking the piss out of every other slow jam ever. Instead of a suave man catching a young lady’s eye, Beck meets Jenny at JC Penney’s and offers her a piece of gum. Instead of rolling up in a Cadillac, Beck greets his ladyfriend with a Hyundai. Instead of wining and dining the lady in the Hollywood Hills, Beck takes her to a chicken place in Glendale. And after all of that, when the time is right, he tells her, “I wanna get with you and your sister. I think her name’s Debra.” It’s the sweet spot between sleaze and cheese, and it’s all for the sake of parody.

Like every good comedian, Beck knows that if you’re gonna do satire, go 100%. So “Debra” isn’t just a song with silly lyrics, it’s an unbelievably smooth slow jam with Beck’s falsetto shining through, piercing the heavens. And this falsetto, my god, it’s so beautiful, so alien (much like the rest of his music, now that I think about it). Who would have thought that a gravelly-voiced “loser,” who grew up with K Records and Latin Jazz, would have one of the most powerful, emotive falsettos in the world? It’s like he was hiding it, waiting for the perfect moment to unleash it. Which, well, is exactly what he did.

From what we can tell, Beck had Debra in the works before he even released Mellow Gold. Beck diehards recall him performing “Debra” as early as 1993, six years before Midnite Vultures came out. Since its inception, the live version of “Debra” has taken on many different styles. Early recordings hinted at the funk to come on Midnite Vultures. A version on KCRW in 1998 gave the song a much more acoustic and raw feel. On the Midnite Vultures tour, Beck would often serenade the audience from a loveseat that was lowered from the rafters. And probably the most bizarre adaptation, Beck performs an unaccompanied, moody version in which Debra grows a moustache and moves to the country while Jenny has a sex change and gets hella swole. I’m not kidding.

But my favorite performance of “Debra” has got to be the one at the VH1 Fashion Awards. He’s introduced as a fashionista of “loser leisure,” but then comes on stage and just kills it. Many of the people there must have known Beck as the ramshackle folky dude who sang about nonsense. Instead, the crowd is treated to a suave sex machine that woos the crowd, does a smooth shuffle step, and just fucking drops the mic at the end. And his voice is spot on. It never wavers. It’s just pure power. 

Given Beck’s more solemn mood over the last few years, it’s easy to see why he doesn’t jive with the song. On his later tours, he would perform “Debra” solo, with just a guitar. He never broke out the falsetto for it. It became a slow, stoic acoustic jam with silly, though uninspired lyrics. It got laughs from the crowd. A few cheers. But it didn’t fit with his style. And by now, it’s been taken off the setlist altogether. Likely permanently.

But for me, “Debra” is an incredible piece. It’s both gut-bustingly hilarious and passionate enough to make you swoon. The production is both pristine and cheesy. The vocals are ridiculous but sung flawlessly. It’s a song that has both instant laughs and staying power. And of course, it’s special. Beck’s hasn’t brought his falsetto out for any other song he’s recorded. Not like this. “Debra” is something worth remembering, even if Beck wishes it ever existed.

#beck #debra #song islands #midnite vultures

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End of the year top 10 albums extravaganza

Hi! This blog is temporarily un-hiatused for my top 10 albums of 2013. 2013 was an amazing year for music. I loved a lot more albums this year than these top 10, but I'm the kind of man that sticks to arbitrary numbers.

11. Kanye West - Yeezus

YEEZUS IS THE 11TH BEST ALBUM OF THE YEAR OF THIS LIST OF THIS PERSON'S TOP 10

*cough*

moving on.

10. Joanna Gruesome - Weird Sister Seriously, get past the stupid name. Imagine the band is named something else. Like, I dunno, Inevitable Heat Death of the Universe or something. Got that? Good. Now listen to the music.

Wait, no. Don't listen to the music yet. Listen to their origin story. Supposedly the band members met in anger management, and they formed the group as a de-stressing exercise. It didn't really work. They still hate each others' guts, but they all agreed that the music was cool and it was worth tolerating each other to play a few shows. Take that story as you will, but I want to believe it SO HARD. A bunch of angry musicians moments away from smashing each others' faces in, playing fuzzy bubblegum guitar pop is a beautiful marriage I never knew I wanted. Their music's just so fucking fun, and there's this tension, as if things are going to fly off the rails at any moment. But it never does. If moshing was still a thing at shows, I could imagine jumping around to this.

9. Cut Copy - Free Your Mind

Honestly I need to give this album some more time. I mentioned before that their new album basically sounds like they're trying to recreate Primal Scream's magnum opus Screamadelica, and I'm totally okay with that. They've largely succeeded, though they pushed it a bit far by including samples of preachers chanting about love and peace and fluffy things. While many parts of [i]Screamadelica[/i] hold up, the new wave hippie schlock it tries to force down your throat does not. The message of the album seems to be "take drugs, be groovy, peace out, bro" which is myopic at best. Cut Copy have never been good at writing lyrics, but that's okay, since their production is what often shines. And Free Your Mind is chock full of insanely catchy hooks.

8. Arcade Fire - Reflektor

Another one I need to give more time! Arcade Fire are tough to work through, as their songs often contain layers upon layers of meaning, cloaked in hyper-emotional vocals and dramatic riffs. When I heard that their new album was going to be a double album, I didn't think I'd be able to fully internalize it until the end of 2014.

After a few good spins, I like it. The songs are good, and some of them have already hit me straight in the feels. But it's the whole package that matters most in this respect. How does the sequencing affect the emotional heft of each song? What is the running theme throughout the album? Who are they talking to in this song?

I really can't answer these questions yet. What I can say, though, is the album is a good experience, and a success for the band. Switching their style up was incredibly risky, but they're still able to make it sound like an "Arcade Fire" album, not a "Arcade Fire wants to be ____" album. The fact that there's much more to uncover makes me excited for the subsequent listens. I've listened to other albums in 2013 tons more than Reflektor, but I feel this beats many of them based on potential enjoyment alone. Also I am a huge Arcade Fire fan, and many of my friends would shun me if I didn't put them on a list DON'T BE LIKE ME AND GIVE IN TO PEER PRESSURE, KIDS

7. James Blake - Overgrown

I'm honestly kinda bummed that this album featured less electronic meddling than his incredible debut album, but what can you do. He wanted to go more towards the singer/songwriter side than the dubstep artist side. That doesn't mean that he's given up dubstep as a whole yet. No, he's just spent a bit more time at a piano than mixing board, and his music has really bloomed, in a way. The arrangements are no longer so close, so small. The title track itself features an explosion of sound of what could be a full orchestra. It's much more melodic, and at times it's incredibly beautiful. The lead single "Retrograde" could be one of the most haunting songs of the year, Blake's vocals fully on show. He's become a lot more confident in his voice, and it's become much more than "just another instrument."

On other parts of the album James Blake actually goes the other way and makes something much closer to jungle and rave, another direction he could take his music. "Voyeur" and "Digital Lion" specifically feature the same trunk-rattling bass that made his solemn version of "Limit to Your Love" so enchanting, but with a livelier beat and a rougher synth. However, Overgrown also has a terrible track with RZA rapping about his family or some shit. THUMBS DOWN

6. Darkside - Psychic

I quite liked Nicolas Jaar's debut Space is Only Noise, but it never completely clicked with me. I could listen all the way through, bob my head, and sing along to the pitch-shifted vocals a little, but I never needed to listen to it. Darkside, his project with Dave Harrington, is a much more accessible, atmospheric record. Not accessible as in top 40 or anything, but definitely livelier and catchier than Space is Only Noise. The grooves here are much more robust. The bass is more elastic. The drums thump a little more. And the addition of guitar is a huge boost in complexity. Mix that in with some bone-chilling vocal turns, and you've got one of the better electronic-ish albums to sink into. Every sound seems to come so naturally, even though the album as a whole features some terribly unnatural production. It's hard to describe. Sorry. Just listen to this with your eyes closed and headphones on and maybe you'll see some pretty pictures that make you feel something.

5. The Field - Cupid's Head

The Field, aka Axel Willner, is a strange dude. He set out on his own in 2007, releasing From Here We Go Sublime, a minimalist techno album featuring microsamples strung out into excruciatingly long tracks. It was also Metacritic's highest rated album of 2007. The formula is simple, but effective. Make a beat. Stretch the beat. Slowly change things over time. End song. Boom, ten minutes. Any dumb laptop monkey can do that. But what makes the Field so unique and so satisfying is how well he executes the formula. Many tracks on Cupid's Head are long. Most people probably find the album incredibly boring. But if you get sucked in, immersed in the pool of looped samples, it can feel like a transformative experience. The minimalism makes the littlest things feel like a revelation. Every time the beat changes, a pitch shifts, an instrument comes in, it all hits hard. The music is a study in subtlety, showing just how gorgeous simplicity can be. And while you might think he's painted himself into a corner with his style, he's found ways to expand the scope of his music. Cupid's Head is a darker affair, with each track taking a more world-swallowing tone than his previous balearic beats. Most reviewers point to "No. No..." as the best example of this, with its pitch shifted sample of a genderless "no no no no" repeating for the full 9 minutes. It somehow splits the gap between gimmicky and terrifying, sitting in this strange middleground of hesitant fear. I don't know how I feel when I listen to the song, but I feel something very strongly. That probably means he's good at what he does.

4. Los Campesinos!  - No Blues

LC! have been my emotional barometer for years now. That is, when they're unhappy, I'm unhappy. They've been unhappy since 2008. Welp. But misery loves company. And there are many different kinds of misery to wallow in. For a while this band was too into being scenesters to step out and make a statement, but when they finally did, the band turned into my go-to station for tales about terrible love and frustrated loners. Each song is a story, and lead singer Gareth is scarily adept at describing a scene in all its horrific, offensive glory. He doesn't hold back one bit either. The words are painfully honest. Disturbingly so at times. If he wants to die, he is not going to tiptoe around the subject. If he hates the world, he's going to make you want to hate it too. That's their specialty: cathartic, clever lyrics that use metaphors and shout-along choruses to further punctuate how terribly devastated one feels. LC! are far too mopey to deserve their exclamation point anymore. Things hit a low point in their last album (they named it Hello Sadness for christ's sake), where things felt all too hopeless. What were once dynamic choruses became slogs. But this new album has a spring in its step. Well, as springy as songs focused on cheap love, death, and football (european, of course) can be. It's dark subject matter. It's always been dark. Some people may think there's no place for sad music, but there is.  Gareth's lyrics are as sharp as ever, spitting double meanings (I take no solace in coastal breezes because the quay is sea minor without you) and fabulous analogies (I leave with all dignity/Of missed Panenka penalty) out at rapid speed. The lead single "Avocado, Baby" has probably one of the silliest lines I've heard in modern day music: "A heart of stone, rind so tough it's crazy/that's why they call me the avocado, baby" But with their combination of lyricism and big choruses, it turns into a mantra. I relate to an avocado now. For real. This band has a special hold on me, and I can't see myself breaking up with them anytime soon, especially if they keep on making albums this good.

3. Disclosure - Settle

It's not supposed to work this way. Here's how it usually goes: hotshot producers make some awesome beats, recruit guest vocalists to sing over their tracks, and release an album. The album is shit. Rampant guest vocalists dilute the talent of the dance group themselves, which sends fans into a frenzy, pining for the early days before their favorite group "sold out." That's what always happens. Except everything is wonderful. Every song, every single vocal turn on this album, is good. There is not one bad song of the 17 on this album. They've created some of the most accessible, dance-in-your-chair, sing-when-no-one's-there pop. I don't think I've heard a more immediately likable song than "Latch." Pop perfection doesn't come this easily. It shouldn't. It only makes Settle all the more remarkable. You done good, Disclosure.

2. Chvrches - The Bones of What You Believe

I would have said that Disclosure was the best pop act out of the UK in 2013, but then CHVRCHES came along. The trio from Scotland formed when they bonded over their love of disco and new wave, and they channeled their hero worship into big, big pop. Like Disclosure, CHVRCHES take big risks in their songs. It's not really risky in terms of style, but rather going for the gold with each pop song and expecting everything to work. Once again, against all odds, they succeed. Each song works. The album is like they've hooked up wires to my brain which run to a remote with one button, marked "happy." And they can't stop pressing the button. I mean just listen to this.

oh god i'm having a seizure i've lost control of my handsjkhfkhsabghawopeurihgls It's like this with every song. Every anthemic, rollicking, exploding piece of pop hits a pleasure center. Once again, pop shouldn't be this easy. But they make it look easy.

1. Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City

What's kinda sad is that I really hesitated in putting this as my #1 album, but not because it wasn't my favorite album of the year. This is my favorite album of the year. I know that. I hesitated for really stupid reasons. Like, what does putting Vampire Weekend as #1 mean? Does this mean I've officially punched my ticket to hipster town? Am I only allowed to wear plaid now? Is this the final nail in the coffin for anyone taking me seriously as a music fan? Vampire Weekend have been one of the most controversial artists in the indie (whatever that word means) world for the past few years, and taking sides means something. But honestly, I don't care anymore. Modern Vampires of the City is good. It's very good.

I've always been a sucker for coming-of-age stories (or bildungsroman if you wanna get snooty about it), and this album delivers. I know they've been both praised and maligned for their tongue-in-cheek lyrics, their NYC style, and their "Ivy League smarts," but throw that out the window. Just, do it now. You're not in college anymore. Time to face the real world, boy. And you know what? The real world sucks. Modern Vampires of the City is an album documenting how sucky life can be after college. I know it's kind of niche in that respect. Many listeners in their teens or 30s probably won't feel this as strongly as people like me, going through :early20sproblems: . 2013 has been a down year for me. A frustrating year. I'm often pessimistic about my future, my prospects. And 2013 felt like a kind of giving in to hopelessness, but also a learning experience in how I can be better in the future. So the stories told in this album, the same kind of frustration, sadness, and forgiveness, really resonated with me. Life in school was a bubble, where you could make mistakes but recover from them rather quickly. It was a time of experimentation, learning to know yourself. And the scope was very small, talking about social life, fearing seeing your ex walking across the campus, etc. Some places were better than others. Some places had cooler, smarter kids. Some places had more arrogant students than others. Some students were flush with cash, while others were scraping by every day. But when you graduate? Where you went to school hardly matters. The mistakes you make are bigger. The recovery takes a lot more effort. It's all on you now. And all of a sudden, it doesn't matter where you were, what dorm you lived in on campus. It's about taking the next step, transitioning from being to student to being an adult. The transition is not smooth. Take "Hannah Hunt," arguably the album's centerpiece. It tells a story of two lovestruck kids, abandoning their home, their friends, and moving out west to live together. Yet, when they get there, everything falls apart. (Check the sweet double meaning in the lyric "Hannah tore the New York Times up into pieces") The relationship dies. Their trust is broken, and their future together disappears. And now, you find yourself across the country, separated from those you love, picking up the pieces from a catastrophic mistake. It's not easy.  This kind of struggle with maturity permeates through the album, with people learning how to settle down, others forming fake nostalgia for their "younger days," some wishing to die young to escape their decline into mediocrity, and a few others taking on their core beliefs, wrestling with God and their home country. I haven't even touched upon the music itself yet. Here I am talking about Vampire Weekend's lyrical maturity, but you can't forget their musical development as well. What was once such inoffensive music, featuring string quartets and playful guitar noodling, has expanded into a soundscape of disparate music coalescing into a beautiful whole. Vampire Weekend's instrumentation here reminds me of what Grizzly Bear did on Veckatimest. They marry the ugly with the beautiful, the weird with the traditional. From the pitch-twisted bluesy breakdown offsetting the surf-rock pace of "Diane Young" to the straight vocal fuckery dropping in on the unstoppable rush of "Ya Hey," they confidently take the unusual and make it unique. Modern Vampires of the City represents the most complete package of any album I've heard in 2013. It's got the catchy pop goodness, the audacity to break from the norm and try something new, as well as the emotional heft to make reviewers cry and give at least one early 20s kid a cathartic snapshot of his world. What's more incredible that this record came from a band that once sang about drinking Horchata (though the song means more than that no I'm not a crazy fan). It's amazing how far they've come. What a fantastic album.

These albums would have easily made my top 10 in any other year, but 2013 was that good: -Janelle Monae - The Electric Lady -Paul McCartney - New -Jon Hopkins - Immunity -Charli XCX - True Romance -Daft Punk - Random Access Memories These albums I need a little more time to fully internalize, but may later be among my favorites of 2013: -Icona Pop - This Is...Icona Pop -Cults - Static -M.I.A. - Matangi -Local Natives - Hummingbird -Four Tet - Beautiful Rewind -Machinedrum - Vapor City -Burial - Rival Dealer -The Knife - Shaking the Habitual -Julianna Barwick - Nepenthe

#top 10 albums of 2013 #Actual Substance #joanna gruesome #darkside #cut copy #Arcade Fire #James Blake #the field #los campesinos! #disclosure #chvrches #vampire weekend

[wordinvader]

New (Other) Blog!

Hey you! Yeah, you. The person who is still following this tumblr.

I haven't been updating in what feels like forever because my life has been going through some ch-ch-ch-ch-changes, and I haven't had much of an opportunity to just sit down and write. Also I'm lazy and despondent, so I played a lot of games instead of applying myself.

But I'm working to change that! I made a separate blog for little rants that will hopefully get me writing again. That blog that will be updated a lot more often than this one, because I'm actually going to make a concerted effort to use my brain every week. Music reviews may someday come back, but for now, head on over to that blog to get actual content. Not the PSA bullshit you find over here.

#PSA #wasted words #no real substance

[wordinvader]

Linkin' Logs #6: The Wood Brothers and Moderat

Hello everyone I've neglected, I've been writing. Not a lot, but it's been happening. I wrote a review of Moderat's II here, as well as a piece of the Wood Brothers' new album The Muse. I recommend you read the review here, since it has better formatting as well as pretty pictures, but if you're lazy, I posted the review below as well. Such convenience!

The Onion’s AV Club has a long-running series named “Undercover,” where a visiting artist covers a song from a list of 25 staff-selected favorites. These songs range wildly from Kanye West to Tom Waits, so bands often have to stretch far out of their comfort zone to make the cover work. Last year the Wood Brothers paid a visit and decided to cover Michael Jackson’s smash hit “P.Y.T.” This song is difficult to cover for even the biggest of pop groups, so of course a folk trio would make one of the best songs in Undercover history. 

It’s easy to assume that such a genre disparity between rootsy folk and Quincy Jones would make the cover sound like a novelty. There have been countless gimmicky albums of bluegrass covers of Led Zeppelin and a hip-hop covers of Elton John. They’re all tongue-in-cheek, and they’re often only worth one listen before the CD goes in the trash. In contrast, the Wood Brothers’ cover is something worth replaying endlessly.

Replacing the glittery studio production with acoustic guitar, upright bass, and a guitar rigged up as a percussion instrument, the group largely relies on their voices to carry the song to the end, and it’s a smashing success. The arrangement, which mixed in denser harmonies and a little audience participation, showed a band square in their comfort zone, rather than in foreign waters. The cover was unique, fun, and most importantly, completely irreverent.

The Wood Brothers are back in 2013, releasing their first true album since 2011’s Smoke Ring Halo. The two Wood Brothers, Oliver and Chris, play on guitar and upright bass respectively. Jano Rix rounds out the trio, playing a bevy of instruments including melodica and his aforementioned percussive guitar, dubbed the “shit-tar,” due to its lo-fi nature. Decorated with tin cans and jingle bells -- stuff that you’d find in a recycling bin -- it aptly represents the band’s DIY nature.

The new album, titled The Muse, is the first where all three members worked in the studio together. Jano Rix was the newest addition, replacing the session musicians they’d previously utilized. In doing so, they’ve made a more cohesive record, another showing of what the group does best: folk music with a few twists and turns.

Each band member contributes vocals, though Oliver Wood does the heavy lifting as the main vocalist, while the other members provide powerful backing vocals to push songs closer to their climaxes. These harmonies add significant weight songs such as “Sing About It,” a pseudo-soul piece about getting over your worries. Oliver Wood’s twang is backed by Chris and Jano, each one pushing their voices high into their falsettos, sounding surprisingly not unlike a group of cooing women.

One of the unsung heroes of the album is the extensive use of the melodica. It’s an odd instrument; it splits the difference between the accordion and the harmonica, and doesn’t get particularly loud. Other bands often employ the melodica as something for a vocalist to play when they’re tired of singing, but on The Muse, it plays a bigger role, adding depth to what would have been a guitar/bass/percussion album. The melodica fills all sorts of niches, mimicking vocals, harmonizing with guitars, or even just laying down the basic chord progression while the Woods noodle away on their respective instruments. And, given its prominent role, the melodica notably carries some emotional weight of its own. With the stripped down nature of the album, every instrument has to contribute significantly, and Jano Rix’s melodica steps up to the challenge and gets loud.

Not to be outdone, Chris Wood’s energetic bass playing adds a necessary intensity to the album. Chris Wood, also a member of jazz trio Medeski, Martin, and Wood, brings his jazz sensibilities to this record, deftly plucking the bass, establishing the foundation for the track. When he’s not plucking, he can saw away, bumping up the low end to add some emotional oomph. His bass can play the main riff of the song as well, letting Oliver’s guitar strum some chords for added texture.

But of course, the focus is always the vocals. And the Wood Brothers, in case it wasn’t clear, are very good at singing. Their vocal arrangements are always so close, sometimes with harmonies separated by only few notes. The best example of this is the gorgeous piece “Sweet Maria.” While the song includes accompaniment from guitar, bass, mandolin, piano, and melodica, all those instruments pass by like extras in a movie. The vocals are never not the focus.

The Muse also features a multitude of genre experiments, or at least as many different genre experiments a folk trio can accomplish with just three or four instruments. Sadly, these tracks actually detract from the otherwise quality songs. “Honey Jar,” marketed as a track to lure in fans of mainstream blues rock, sounds too much like the Black Keys. It’s not like the Wood Brothers are copying the Black Keys per se. It’s more that both of those groups have their hands in the same honey pot. Additionally, unlike their video of the group playing “Honey Jar” in one take in the studio, the album version is rather overproduced. Oliver’s guitar has been given a heady fuzz effect, and live drums from an actual drum set come in, which adds too much to an album that’s more a restrained, minimalistic affair. The same problems plague “Who the Devil,” where its fun, frenetic pace feeling out of place.

The band by nature is very raw, very rootsy. The Wood Brothers recorded each song in the studio together in one room, just three guys surrounding one mic and playing songs all the way through. That’s what represents them more than anything else. They’re a live band in the way that they can set up shop anywhere and put on a good show. That’s why their cover of “P.Y.T.” was so satisfying. The spontaneity is what makes the music stand out, not the production. And while I can understand the group wanting to try new things, it’s best for the Wood Brothers to stick to their guns. They’ve got nothing left to prove, nor do they need to tread new ground. They’re better off just being themselves.

#the wood brothers #the muse #moderat #ii #linkin' logs

[wordinvader]

Linkin' Logs #5: Backlog

It's been a while! I haven't done much here, but I have been writing. Last week I finished I review of Jon Hopkins' new album Immunity, and this week I had a review of Stripmall Architecture's Suburban Reverb published. Check 'em out in the links. More interesting, original content will be here soon. Maybe.

#jon hopkins #immunity #stripmall architecture #suburban reverb #linkin' logs

[wordinvader]

Getting Hyped for Random Access Memories

Fuck. I can’t do it. This is really weird. I can’t get excited for the new Daft Punk album.

A little backstory may be in order: I love Daft Punk. I really do. I’ve loved Daft Punk for a long time. Not super long, mind you. I didn’t even purchase Discovery until 2006. I have no goddamn right to be a Daft Punk hipster or whatever. I wasn’t there when “Da Funk” hit the dance floors, when Michel Gondry’s brilliant music video of “Around the World” premiered on MTV, or even when “One More Time” blew the doors off what we thought House was. Daft Punk have done a lot of stuff in their career, and in regards to the band's history, I'm basically a neophyte.

Still, I have a lot of memories with Daft Punk. Yeah, 2006 wasn’t 2001, but Discovery was still a revelation, and it got more and more rewarding to dig into their discography and see what crazy stuff they made over the span of their career. Sure, this doesn’t sound too different from any other band I get into, but Daft Punk was different.

2006 Coachella hit, and the electronic music world went nuts. Daft Punk, a late addition to the lineup, made what many would describe as a definitive performance for an electronic music act. Not playing a live show for almost nine years, they came back with the pyramid. That big, blinking pyramid.

I wasn’t there, mind you. As mentioned before, I was just getting into Daft Punk in 2006. But the timing was impeccable. Imagine this: nerdy high school kid who mostly listens to classic rock discovers Daft Punk, becomes obsessed, and downloads their 2006 Coachella bootleg on a whim. It was a revelation. I hadn’t played Homework or Discovery to death yet. I wasn’t bored by Human After All. I was a rock kid converted to the altar of electronic music, and Live at Coachella was my bible. They were my gateway drug. And I have never looked back.

So of course I saw them on their Alive 2007 tour. There was no way I was avoiding that. As expected, it was great. Probably the best concert I’ve seen in my life. And as I slowly dug deeper into electronica, saw more of electronic concerts, I realized that Daft Punk’s show wasn’t the standard. It was the ideal, and no one could equal it.

It’s no secret that Daft Punk like to do their own thing. They’re an independent bunch, and it’s paid great dividends. In 1997, Homework shook up the club scene. In 2001, no one knew how sampling + vocoder could work so well until Discovery. They’ve consistently pushed the bar with everything they do, because they don’t see the bar. They just do whatever they want.

And it’s all worked. It’s absolutely unprecedented. They broke new ground with each album (even if many regard Human After All as experiments gone wrong), and redefined how their music could be consumed. Their music video project with Leiji Matsumoto, Interstella 5555, was way beyond what people imagined. A music video for every song on a pop album, that tells a coherent story and actually makes people feel feelings? Fucking sold.

They did the same thing with their live act. After getting a few negative reviews for their DJ sets in 1997, they went back to the drawing board and drew up the schematics for their new live show. Up until then, many electronic acts would just play their songs with maybe a light display. Daft Punk made the live show a visual experience – something inseparable from the music itself. They mashed all of their songs together and created the necessary visuals for each piece, a retrospective that truly showed how fucking awesome their entire discography was.

In summation: Daft Punk revolutionized house music, music videos, and live shows. Everything they’ve touched turned to gold. Every move they’ve made has paid huge dividends, and their mainstream success was inevitable. Dudes know how to sell their brand.

And so we come to Random Access Memories. They’re still pushing the envelope. How? Their promotion of the album. Mysterious ads airing during SNL, little Vine teasers, and a cameo appearance at Coachella have really excited the masses.

The hype train is pretty huge, and it’s only gotten bigger with each new teaser. The stream of “Get Lucky” on Spotify broke records. Each new news headline generates myriads of clicks. But I can’t get on board.

Random Access Memories, for me, suffers from the hype surrounding it. Yes, it’s the first new album in eight years by a well-known, world-shattering electronic duo that I love. But it’s still just an album. And it might not even be that great. Sure, it could be great, but I feel the album itself can in no way live up to the excitement in the dates leading up to the release. It’s similar to when you’re really excited about a new movie coming out, reading interviews with the actors and directors, rewatching trailers, and when you actually go see it, all you can say is, “Is that it?” I don’t want to be disappointed for the album, so I’m not setting my expectations too high. I’m not expecting a bacon-wrapped Jesus. I’m expecting an enjoyable dance album.

I also can’t imagine the album breaking barriers like their old work did. Discovery blew people’s minds, because the nostalgic tunes that were reshaped into crowd pleasers was something people never thought was possible. They’re doing something similar, digging into their past, trying to recreate the sound they loved so much. They employed their heroes Nile Rodgers and Giorgio Moroder, as well as a slew of guest artists. Upon first listen of the album, yes, it does recall dance floors with disco balls and sexy synths. And that’s great! We don’t hear that sound too often these days, and having Daft Punk recreate that sound is absolutely antithetical to most modern dance music. But I can’t imagine how it could surprise me. I can’t imagine how it could change the dance music landscape again. Sadly, there will never be that moment of listening to their Live at Coachella bootleg for the first time. That ship has sailed. So let’s just enjoy Random Access Memories for what it is: a new Daft Punk record. Nothing more, nothing less.

#Daft Punk #random access memories

[wordinvader]

Let Me Tell You About Depression II

Once more, without feeling.

Let’s talk about numbness. It’s very weird, especially if you went through the self-flagellating portion of depression right before it. That’s what happened to me. After days, weeks, months, and even years trying to shut up the irrational side of my head telling me to fuck off and die, it disappeared. Sweet! I don’t have the equivalent of a Youtube commenter in my head anymore! I’m free of that asshat.

Except there isn’t anything to fill the void. The rational side of my head may pop up every now and again, making a good decision or two, but it’s not a constant. It can’t be a constant. It’s pretty scarred from being beaten down repeatedly by the irrational bully. Any kind of assertiveness is absolutely alien to it. And so, there is nothing to fill the void. It’s just the void.

(I will be using some of her pictures here I am so sorry once again I am not very original)

So you’re left with all that open space in your head, but nothing seems to fill it. Motivation, emotion, memories...nope. Nothing. It’s stale air up in there. But, in a way, the battle has been won. The irrational side has been vanquished. But, in a way, the battle has been lost, and this void is your casualty. In the process of fighting against everything the irrational side said, pushing back every negative thought, the emotions have been beaten down and buried. Gone are the days of crying to yourself in your bed saying, “it’s not fair it’s not fair it’s not fair.” But also gone are the days where you worked towards something that you really loved. Gone are the days when you legitimately laughed at something. Gone are the days where you felt a high for no reason. It’s all :-| . That is the face you make.

At least with major depression there were those days where you’re inexplicably happy. They were pretty cool! Maybe that’s what happy people feel like all the time. But no one feels happy all the time, so actual “happy people” are a myth we use to make ourselves feel worse. But whatever, that’s over with, so FUCK that theoretical happy guy.

But I don’t really have enough energy to flip the guy off. Even if I did, would I even really mean it? It’s been forever since I flipped someone off with real malice behind it. Man, those were the days.

So yeah, what you have left is a pretty empty person. It’s as if, after all the fighting against that asshole, he got one last parting shot, and that was you finally admitting that you were nothing. Doing nothing and going nowhere. The world fades for radiant to gray. And that’s when the walls start getting put up.

Words of advice bounce off you like they were pellets shot at a suit of armor. It’s damn near impenetrable. Even aggressive shaking has no effect. It’s like a heavy blanket has been put on top of you, and everything is just muffled. Tearing down these walls, taking off the blanket, it’s not something that can be done in an instant, or by someone else. There is no “cure” for this. Things just have to get better. And take note: the fact that things have to get better does NOT mean that “everything works out in the end.” Just ask those who died.

Oh yes, suicide. That’s always the elephant in the room. Well, ok. Suicide is what some depressed people want to do, but there is a distinction between those in the hyper-emotional state and the numb state. For those that want to die, those that really really hate themselves, the world, and everyone in it, they're looking for an escape. And their last resort is ending their life, because there’s nothing left in the world to live for. Numb people think there isn’t much in the world to live for either, but it’s not like they hate the world. It’s just nothing. It’s a projection of their inner void onto the outer world making it feel emptier than it is. And so, the reasoning goes, "Oh, this world has nothing to offer me. Ah well, see y'all later."

I felt like, when I was completely numb, I was in a highly suggestive state. It was something akin to being hypnotized. People would think of things to do -- go to the park, get a round of drinks, watch a movie -- and my default response was yes all the time. But it wasn't with an actual desire to go. Someone asked me to do something, and I said yes. I would go talk a bit, be social, but when I went back home, I reverted to my general apathetic lifestyle. I doubt others noticed how distant I was. I’m a fucking champ and hiding this kind of stuff. I’ve had a lot of practice.

I’m really hoping people see Allie Brosh’s post as more than something humorous. I’ve heard a lot of positive responses, with people relating to her many clever pictures and metaphors. But I’m afraid that a lot of people will just say “oh, she’s so funny! I thought the part about the fish was HILARIOUS.” Or there might be others who may reply, “Oh, I totally know how you feel. I’ve spent some time just confused and tired, but I picked myself up and I was all better!” Hate to break it to ya, I don’t think you actually had depression. To quote my previous piece, please, please don’t underestimate how serious depression is.

Oh, and of course, don't be an ass, clamoring for another update. In case you couldn't tell, she's going through a lot, fuckface.

Look at when Brosh’s last post was dated. October 2011. 2011. That’s a long time to feel numb, and it sounds like not too much has changed. Any progress that may have taken place seems miniscule. But any progress is good progress. Sometimes that gigantic hole you fell into is deeper than you think, and climbing out is going to take longer than you expect. But that’s okay. There’s isn’t an elevator to zip you out overnight. There is work to be done.

This was the last image of the post.

It’s one of my most favorite pictures ever. I fell in love with it the moment I saw it. It screams, "Maybe one of those bullshit things are actually worth it! Maybe!" That feeling might not be hope, but it's something. And it's something worth climbing for.

  (Note for those who may worry: No, I am not feeling suicidal. No, I don't hate everything. And no, I actually do believe the world has something worth fighting for. But I've been there. And that's what I wanted to talk about.)

#numbness #depression #suicide #hyperbole and a half #let me tell you about depression