ipodshuffle

You have got to be kidding me

The Ram Ones tribute album WE'RE A HAPPY FAMILY is not particularly necessary but generally adequate, with one glaring exception which bugs me every time I hear it: In The Offspring's version of "I Wanna Be Sedated", Dexter sings the key line as "twenty twenty twenty-four hours ago" instead of "hours to go."

How does a self-respecting punk rock icon (who's not just a snot-nosed young whippersnapper, mind you) bollocks up a key lyric and blow out the meaning to what's possibly the band's best known song? Was it on purpose? Or did he just not know the right line, and nobody felt like correcting him? And why does it bug me so much?

(Maybe he was reading this version of the lyrics online - to that classic "I Wann Abe Sdeated" - oy vey...)

New Order: "Blue Monday" (1982)

Volume 6 of The First Time Ever I Heard That Song: 15 songs that made an impact

OK, been meaning to write this one for a while, and then I heard the track at *a Subway* today ("at a Subway," not "in the Subway") and I realized that I might as well get this down.

NYC in the early eighties was kind of wierd and great, with many collisions among all the various subcultures. Having hit town as a college radio geek / semi-arty punk I dabbled with a few groups of friends, including East Village bohos, clubbers, lefties and intellectuals and more. Somehow along the way I managed to find a job in the record biz - an indy label with a long history was doing a lot in the dance world and wanted to get into 'that new wave music' and somehow figured I'd bring the right attitude. And getting thrown into the confluence of the club and punk movements was pretty cool, especially when 'Blue Monday' took over the city and brought all those various groups together.

Anyway is there any point in 2004 to saying that "Blue Monday" was a revelation? It celebrated the technology, it had the coolest fucking die-cut 12" sleeve with no words, and it even got a respectable amount of airplay on 'KTU. But these days any discussion of the record suffers the same problem as 'Blitzkrieg Bop' - the sound was so influential and widely imitated that it's hard to hear now how revolutionary it was at the time. But still - put it on and hear that double-kick drum, and you're right back at Danceteria or the Garage...

Original MTV VJ J.J. Jackson dead at 62

Here's the story from MTV News. Lovin' the red leather - straight out of the first Romantics album cover.

I'm a little concerned how easy it is to call up the list in my head: J.J. Jackson, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, Nina Blackwood, and of course Martha Quinn... Don't ask me who gave us what wedding presents, but the names of the original 5 MTV VJ's? No problem!

U2's "One" named greatest song ever

Oh those English and their "greatest song ever" polls. Well the latest has "One" by U2 in the top slot. Here's the BBC News article (source - Sh*thappens blog).

Most days, my #1 would probably be "Here Comes the Sun" (as we've established, I'm old...), though Bono and the boys would make it pretty close to the top with "I Will Follow"... But on the other hand I hate making those commitments because any list like that is always going to change and also can't reflect the full breadth of anyone's musical interest...

The greatest song of the 80's

... was (as everyone knows) the Coldcut remix of Eric B and Rakim's "Paid in Full". The brilliant original track (that flow, that bassline), merged seamlessly with the Ofra Haza vocal track - which at the time, in that context, sounded like it came from another planet... In some ways you could call the track one of the first mash-ups, though I'm sure there are earlier examples.

But also part of what made it great was that it was underground - the remix was just out on a white-label pressing, so if you weren't friends with the right clued-in DJs it was pretty hard to find. Now the damn thing is everywhere, it's on like three soundtrack albums, two Eric B and Rakim hits comps, and it took me about a minute of online searching to find a link to this passably-listenable 2-minute stream. Which makes me feel a little sorry for people today who may not experience the same thrill of the search, looking for a cool rarity in every record store for months or years... now it's all out there somewhere, it's just a matter of digging it up...

Ringtones

Hey, I like 'Ode to Joy' as much as the next guy ... In fact on most days it'd probably make #1 on my mythical 'greatest musical compositions of all time' list (don't worry we won't actually be doing that)... But that doesn't mean that I want to hear a tinny beep-beep version of it coming from the aforementioned next guy's cell phone when he's sitting next to me on the train...

I know, I know, it's all about personalization, not about music, you old curmudgeon. But why, I say, can't it actually be about music?...