what a day that was: 2011.12

2011-12-25

2011-12-23

Eye-opener

I recently posted about the killer cover of "Immigrant Song" by Led Zeppelin, from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the original being a sort of proto-punk anthem that still stands up today.

Blast this while you're brushing your teeth this morning :)

This is an absolute dynamite track. One of my friends (I think it was Ian) recently mentioned that Jimmy Page totally re-recorded all of his guitar parts on every Zeppelin record. I have no proof of this as yet but the fact remains that this is a killer song, and when you consider that this track was released in 1973 it makes it all the more impressive. Say what you will about Mr. Page's guitar parts, but the fact remains that this is a great song.

New Bowie video "unearthed"

I'm calling bullshit on this one... apparently some BBC cameraman "discovered" he had this video in his personal collection... and then someone generously posted graphics on it stating the very same thing. Readers of this blog know how much I love Bowie so I hesitate to say anything negative about brand new material, but really...

Decide for yourself...

Thanks to Jian Ghomeshi for the link

2011-12-21

New Weeknd album literally just dropped

I'm about to listen to it...

This is pretty cool as this completes the 2011 album trilogy, and just in time for Christmas.

2011-12-20

An overdue Prince concert review

Alright, this is overdue, and the further we get from the show the less I want to write about it, so let's get this post going!

I realized that maybe I didn't want to do a review at all. The main reason for that was the way we totally got the shaft. Let me explain.

Prince played two shows at the Air Canada Centre, November 25 & 26. We went to the Saturday show. On the Friday, Prince and the NPG played probably one of the most epic sets of all time. The Purple One once made Toronto home, so he has a special place in his heart for the city. Which is great, if you went to the first show.

Check out these two setlists:

Taken individually, these are two amazing shows. Taken together, and you can see why the people on the second night got a bit of the shaft. Thanks to social media & the web, we knew going into the show that there were six (6!) encores on Friday, and that Saturday was going to be a hell of a show. Well, the weight of expectations sort of brought that down and we couldn't help feeling disappointed. Which is kind of shitty, actually. If Prince had only played the Saturday show, I could easily have said it was one of the best shows I'd ever been to. But with the knowledge of what the audience got the night before, I can still say it was one of the best shows I've ever been to, but that's tempered with the mild bitterness of having missed the show the night before. The cynical side of me thinks this was due to the fact that every journalist would be out in full force on the first night, giving effusive praise, and that the second show would be basically ignored by the same press.

Wait... I guess I should write about the music too, right? Of course. Well it was phenomenal. His Royal Badness can still play the fuck out of the guitar, and his band is absolutely dynamite. They played a bunch of hits, but the surprising thing was all the cover songs the band played. Lots of classics, as you can see from the setlist link above, but the one sort of oddity was Sarah McLachlan's "Angel", which a couple of the lady backup singers came out and sang while Prince did a costume change. You will notice the Friday show did not get to enjoy such a treat. So take that, suckers! The second night also got "Mountains", so there's that small victory.

A bunch of random notes, and things I enjoyed about the show:

-"I'd like to call a special guest to the stage... my guitar!"

-"Turn the house lights up, I want to see all you people!" - this happened about 15 times during the show. Seriously.

-Prince finishing a guitar solo at the end of a song (I forget which one), then handing the guitar to one of the ladies from the audience who had come up on stage... the lights went down, and shadowy figures came on stage and quickly retrieved the guitar. Tough luck!

I hardly remember the way the show ended, and the alcohol was only partly to blame. He came out and jammed on the piano with some backing tracks... which is fine, Prince can do whatever he wants, but it was out of place given the killer encores from the Friday show. It felt like everyone in the building was expecting more than one encore (greedy!), and after about 10-15 minutes of the whole building chanting "Prince!", a voice came over the PA to tell everyone where the after party was being held, effectively letting everyone know that the skinny man had left the building.

Sort of an anti-climactic ending, but really it was our own fault for building up expectations instead of just going with the show.

But, like I said, a great show, maybe one of the greatest I've been to, and perhaps time will take the sting out of seeing the second best show of two, when the first was up there with the Artist's greatest shows ever.

The moral of the story is: Prince is so awesome that he can make one show of a lifetime pale in comparison to another show of a lifetime.

Girl With the Dragon Tattoo opens today

I'm actually pretty excited about this one. The book was great, and so was the first movie. Of course, the big draw for me is the soundtrack, done by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. The movie was originally scheduled to come out Wednesday, but they bumped it up to a day early, I guess so it wouldn't compete with the Tintin flick.

I picked up the soundtrack recently, and the closing track is sort of curious. It's a cover of Bryan Ferry's "Is Your Love Strong Enough", which was from the movie Legend by How to Destroy Angels, which is basically the two guys who did the soundtrack plus Mr. Reznor's wife Mariqueen Mandig. I had never heard of Legend or that song before. Given the subject matter and story of the movie, it seems like this would be an odd choice for the closing credits, but I'll reserve judgement til I see it in context.

It's not a great song, but it is a great production and I've been listening to it quite a bit lately.

Also check out this great cover of Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" by Reznor and Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs:

The soundtrack album itself is interesting because its total running time is about three hours. I'll take a wild guess and suggest that the movie itself probably isn't that long. The physical version of the soundtrack album will be spread over three discs, but the download advance copy I have lays out the track sequence as 1 to 39, rather than 3 sets of 13. I like this, because it treats the entire thing as one whole piece of work, a sort of ambient rock opera. Of course, none of this lends itself to casual listening, but that's not really the point. I imagine the whole thing playing out as the Ghosts album set to the movie, which is just fine by me.

2011-12-17

Beach Boys reuniting!

The original lineup... the guys that are still alive, anyway.

[link]

Tool concert - January

Landed some Tool tickets today... they're one of my favourite all time bands, and the thought of getting a new album this year practically gives me shivers.

Sugar Plum Fairies on Glass Harp

[via Neatorama]

Austra's Feel It Break

The band Austra has been getting a lot of press lately, appearing on a bunch of Canadian 'best of' lists for 2011. They were also nominated for the Polaris Prize earlier this year.

I don't think this band really deserves all this glowing press. They're pretty good, don't get me wrong, but it's not original or fresh enough to warrant the gushing praise for a relatively new band that hasn't found its own distinctive voice quite yet.

I find at this point, they're taking a lot from Ladytron. I will certainly be following this band as they continue to make music, but I can't agree with what appears to be the popular opinion on this group. I'm sorry I missed out on their recent Toronto performance, cause I imagine them as a performance-first type of band.

From their new album, the track "Lose It" also seems to get the most chatter. I prefer "The Beat and the Pulse", as it's the defining track on the album and contains the lyric from which the album gets its title, Feel It Break. It also has a killer build to through the song to the chorus, and the track just sounds amazing.

Decide for yourself:

Also, I can't decide whether this video is unbelievably precious and pretentious, or just low budget:

I'm going to say a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B.

2011-12-16

Interesting post on music in political campaign ads

Alex Ross: More on campaign ads, as a follow up to this post

The context of the stuff he mentions makes a lot more sense if you've read his great book The Rest is Noise.

Hey, let's all go to Burger King in Russia

No, seriously, let's go:

Makes you wonder if this is real, or just a viral campaign for North American BKs.

2011-12-14

Drake - The Homecoming

Here's a recent show I worked on, doing audio post for Muchmusic.

The video doesn't seem to want to load in Firefox, but it works in Safari. Skip right to the end of part three for the credits ;)

Drake - The Homecoming

Back to the blog

I've sort of fallen of the consistency wagon, which really is a basic requirement of maintaining a blog. Falling of said wagon means that I have notes and notes for great post ideas but lately just haven't getting them to virtual print.

In the coming weeks I hope to get some of these wonderful ideas on the blog. Here are a few posts that will hopefully be forthcoming:

-Prince concert review (way overdue)
-Best___ of the year
-Top tracks of the year
-Attempts to reach 190+ posts on the year (this will be 168).
-A review of National Novel Writing Month, which I could say left me to drop the ball on the blog, but is not true, comparing the post count for this month and last month.
Thanks for reading, and I'll be sure to flood your RSS feed with outstanding posts in the coming weeks.

2011-12-12

Merry Xmas from Scott Weiland

Mr. STP himself filled with holiday cheer. This odd, creepy take on the Xmas classic replicates what Weiland's day to day haze must be like. This is very weird.