Puts your hands up, and step away from the iTunes

Here I sit, at my awkwardly tall desk in an awkwardly short chair reading about the 2006 collapse of the subprime mortgage market for my econ exam tomorrow, all the while listening to my "study jams" playlist on iTunes....
               
Don't take the title of this post the wrong way.  I'm a fan, avid user and general enthusiast of iTunes.  However, while sitting here, reading and listening to music for the past seven hours, I started to think about the way I used to listen to music before Steve Jobs firmly planted his flag on the home screen of every American under the age of sixty.  It's not an easy thing to recall.  I think I got my first iPod in 2004 during the summer between middle and high school and quickly stocked it with every Sum 41, Blink 182 and Green Day song that I could pirate from Limewire. So, when was the last time I extensively listened to music on something other than than my beat up, 40 gig iPod classic?

I'd have to say that it was on the bus ride to that all important event in a young man's life: the eighth grade trip to Orlando to visit the Kennedy Space Center.  I boarded the bus with my trusty Sony Walkman and three CD's.  Smash Mouth's Astro Lounge, The RHCP's Californication and the Beatle's Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  During the eight hour trip, during which I was stuck on the bus for kids who were late showing up to the cafeteria, I listened to each of these albums straight through several times in a vain attempt to pass the time.

And thus, we arrive at point.  Since you got iTunes, when was the last time you listened to an entire album?  I know it's been a while for me.  It seems that all I do these days is listen to a playlist or throw on Pandora.  There used to be a time when albums were king.  Look back at Pink Floyd's "The Wall", The Who's "Tommy" or U2's "War."  These are a few of the greatest albums ever made, and they were written to be listened to in their entirety.

So what happened? Why did we stop listening to albums?

And thus, we arrive at my point. iTunes has seriously altered the way in which we listen to music. Obvious, I'm aware.  However, when you really think about it, it may have changed the way the musicians make music as well.  Just think; when was the last time that you heard a song on the radio, went home a bought the entire album that song was on?  I'd venture to say that for most people, it's been a long time if ever. So, if musicians (and more importantly their agents) realize that we only download their songs that get airplay, where's the incentive for them to spend time writing cohesive albums as opposed to a collection of songs they think might get played on the radio?

Indeed, there are contemporary artists who still find it necessary to produce great albums, but generally these aren't the people or groups that the American public is bombarded with on a daily basis.  This has created a culture where artistry has given way to mass appeal.  Ultimately, I'm afraid it's just a matter of time until the notion of listening to an entire album will just be something your parents did in the basement while smoking doobies and wearing bell bottoms.

So do yourself a favor.  Go listen to your favorite album and enjoy it, or write all of this off as the inane ramblings of a man who's been awake for far too long.

Reflecting on the Blog Project

Here it is, my last post of my business writing blog project. No longer will I don the frock of the hipster. I can go back to pithy, whiny posts about the degradation of the American spirit and the incompetence of foreign drivers. I will say that it's been a mildly enjoyable experience. I've listened to some new tunes and I've enjoyed getting back to the classics.

I've also had some minor revelations. Nothing overtly groundbreaking and excessively cathartic, but revelations none the less.

1) Rap is on it's last leg. I listened to a lot of contemporary hip hop artists trying to find one to write about and it was almost too much to bear. Grandmaster Flash, Heavy D, and Easy E would be so upset. There are a few people still making great hip hop. The Game's latest album is great, I'd recommend to any rap fans who are losing faith.

2) America celebrates the odd, not the talented. Let's be very honest with ourselves, if this was not true, Lady Gaga would just be another possible transvestite walking the streets of LA, LMFAO would not be getting as much air time as they are, and Kesha would probably be sent to rehab somewhere instead of signing record deals. It's true, video killed the radio star.

3) Bluegrass will never get the attention it deserves. Damn you "Deliverance"! You've turned the sweet sounds of a banjo into an inbred redneck mating call. It's a crying shame that some of the most talented musicians in the world will be lumped in hillbilly culture.

4) Justin Beiber is everything that is wrong with America. I am not joking when I say that I legitimately thought that Justin Beiber was just another ugly Canadian chick the first few times I saw him on TV. He's turned our nation's women into a horde of uncultured zombies with an insatiable taste for jailbait.

5) We will never agree about music, and people like me will always complain about it. To each their own...unless their own doesn't agree with your own. I find myself judging people on the music they listen to. If you listen to Nickleback on a regular basis, chances are I secretly think you are white trash. If you enjoy the musical stylings of Kesha, I think you are a twelve year old girl trapped in an adult's body. But hey, I love bluegrass. Does that mean that I think everyone has a real purty mouth? No, it doesn't. So maybe it's time to cut people some slack.

So there you go. Thanks to the faithful few who may or may not have glanced at this project over the past couple months. I hope, at the the very least, that I haven't given you any reason to want to attack me.

-N

Chiddy Bang

I'm going to make a brief departure from my comfort zone on this one. If you can't tell I'm a big fan of laid back rock and bluegrass, and anything falling in between those two genres. I'd say if you looked through my iTunes, you'd find nearly 150 hours of music and you may have an hour's worth of rap. It's not that I don't enjoy rap, it's just hard to find rappers with something to say in the mold of Grandmaster Flash and NWA these days. Most of the rap songs these days are an auto tuned monstrosity compelling the listener to "get all the way turned up" or "teach me how to dougie." Certainly these songs have their time and place. That time and place just happens to be the basement of a party house at 2 am.

Chiddy Bang is okay though.

Chiddy Bang is fairly new to the rap game. It's made up of a pair of childhood friends from New York City. They bring an underground attitude to the table, even though their songs have been featured in national advertising campaigns. The lyrics lack the angst of a Tupac, the thoughtfulness of a Talib Kweli or Mos Def, and the word play of Lil' Wayne or the Game, but that's what's beautiful about it. It harkens back to the old days where people just rhymed about the things that meant something to them. There aren't any beefs or agendas, just well executed lyrics about everyday life. Chiddy Bang has a knack for sampling as evidenced by their song "The Opposite of Adults" which heavily samples from the song "Kids" by MGMT. However, this group didn't step into the classic pitfall of sampling: laziness. A lot of artists will simply take the bassline from someone else and attempt to pass it off as an original song. Chiddy Bang samples and makes it their own which is an admirable, if often unsung, trait of contemporary music.

I've picked out a couple of my favorite songs. I hope you enjoy.

Whiskeytown

I'm a broke college student. I'm also a big fan of going downtown with my friends on the weekends. It's not difficult to see that each of these traits beget the other. Thus, at the beginning of this semester I decided to pick up a part-time job to make a little extra cash. I applied for and got a landscaping job for an elderly couple in Seneca. On the way to work the first day I thought to myself "piece of cake, cut some grass make some money." It didn't pan out that way at all. I quickly learned that I never want to work for another Georgia Tech engineer ever again. I mean, the man moved into a house in the middle of a coniferous forest and has a zealous disdain for pine cones. Needless to say, I've spent many a long day fighting against a rising tide of pine cones with only Slacker Radio on my Crackberry to keep me afloat.

This is how I discovered Whiskeytown.

Whiskeytown is an alt-country band hailing from Raleigh, North Carolina. They sound a lot like every other alt-country band to come out of the 90's. You can draw lines from their sound directly back to bands like Uncle Tupelo and the two bands that resulted from Uncle Tupelo's breakup, Wilco and Son Volt. While the sound isn't anything incredibly unique, it's front man Ryan Adams' lyrics that really set the band apart from their contemporaries. The lyrics are beautifully written; simultaneously whimsical and melancholy. Adams has a way with words that you just don't see in this day and age of LMFAO and Justin Beiber.

Whiskeytown and Adams were the last of a dying breed. They were your one of those bands that fought like cats and dogs and came out on the other end with incredible music. Adams had a reputation for hard living and ultimately that broke up the band. They left behind a comparatively small, yet quality library. I've chosen a couple of my favorite songs. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Bombay Bicycle Club

I wasn't planning on writing another blog post today, but I ran across an album on my iTunes account that I hadn't listened to in quite some time. Back in the day when I was really into The Strokes, I was messing around on iTunes instead of paying attention in my philosophy class. While I was buying a few more songs from the new Stroke's album, I saw a section on the screen that said "Those who purchased this song also enjoyed..." and it listed several bands that I'd never heard of. Being in a rather inquisitive state of mind for some reason or another, I downloaded a few songs by Bombay Bicycle Club. As I said I was in class, so I bought the songs without so much as a sample. Truth be told, I just thought their name was interesting. It was just another serendipitous turn of events in my musical life that ended up making a profound impact on my musical tastes.

To me, Bombay Bicycle Club sounds like the Strokes would sound if the Strokes just had everything figured out. BBC has the same general instrumental sound, but it's more laid back; kind of like the Strokes and Sublime were blended together with a dash of the Kings of Convenience. It's one of those sounds that's so familiar, but you can't help from looking for that little nuance that you can't put your finger on but can't ignore either.

I think one of the great things about Bombay Bicycle Club is their lyrical style. They don't exactly lean on finesse when they write a song. The lyrics in the songs I've heard have been straight forward, but well written. You don't find them stretching for a rhyme or jamming five syllable words into a three syllable space. It make sounds a bit unreasonable or nerdy to appreciate proper and effective use of grammar in alternative rock music, but it's definitely one of the aspects of this group that I find so incredibly refreshing. They've got a masterful way of blending lyrics and instrumentals in such a way that it seems like the track never stops trying to speak to you. It's hard to recollect many other groups that create this dynamic as effectively. The Silversun Pickups and Iron and Wine are two examples, but outside of them it's tough to say.

I haven't listened to more than a handful of songs from the EP "The Boy I Used To Be," but I've still picked out a couple of songs that I think are indicative of their style. I hope you enjoy these.

Changing it up a little bit: The O Brother Where Art Thou Soundtrack

This past week I was sifting through a box of assorted junk in my closet in an attempt to find a flash drive, and I stumbled upon one of the best movies that I have ever forgotten about. For those of you who haven't seen the movie, it's the Cohen brothers depression era adaptation of the The Odyssey. George Clooney gives an outstanding performance and is surrounded by great co-stars in John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who considers themselves true fans of cinema.

I remember that for years after it came out, it was a staple of the Pierce family Thanksgiving celebrations. It filled in those strange couple hours that exist between the end of the meal and the inevitable tryptophan induced coma. Watching this movie again took me back to the golden days before everyone grew up and went their own ways.

However, I haven't chosen to be a movie blogger for my project, so I'll talk about the soundtrack for this movie.

This is one of those soundtracks that makes a movie. I'm sure that even with a completely different lineup of songs, the Cohen brothers would've still created an amazing film, but it would've had a completely different character. The directors pulled together gospel, bluegrass, southern folk and old timey blues songs that are completely indicative of the culture of the southern depression era. From songs like "Man of Constant Sorrow" to "Down to the River" and "I'll fly away" the tone of the movie isn't merely set by the soundtrack, it's raised to the upper eschelons of cinematic beauty.

Again, I highly recommend this movie to anyone who is a fan of the Cohen brothers. It takes a couple times watching it, but eventually you'll begin to realize the importance that the soundtrack plays in the overall effectiveness of the movie. Here's a couple of my favorite songs from the album.

The Avett Brothers

At the ripe old age of 18, I was bitten by the bluegrass bug. I fell hard and fast for the genre and I haven't looked back since.

As I sat down to write this post, I got to thinking about exactly when I became a fan of bluegrass. Admittedly, I'd been a bit of a musical nomad for most of my life. I was constantly changing my mind as to what I liked best. One week I'd be rolling down Cherry Road bumping to "Get Buck" by Young Buck and the next I'd be sitting on the roof of my house, staring at the sky and listening to YoYo Ma play Bach's Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major. No doubt this general lack of direction was completely indicative of the high school search for one's self, but I digress. I think that my musical tastes began to take serious roots in blues and rock when I was a freshmen in college, living in Byrnes 10D6 with Jeff Zimmerman. Then, all of a sudden, Jeff's sister was driving us home for fall break. We'd gotten through all of the obligatory conversation that is required between a senior girl and the two freshmen guys in the back seat, so she decided to play some music. What burst forth from the speakers of that mid 90's Jeep Grand Cherokee was the most interesting sounding music I'd ever heard. It sounded like country, but more real; more visceral. I didn't know it at the time, but I was listening to the song "November Blue" by the Avett Brothers.

The Avett Brothers are one of those unique bands that can, on an album, seamlessly go from a ballad about bygone romances to a wailing, foot stomping ode to the joys of country life. The Concord, NC natives are also renowned for putting on some of the most electrifying live performances around these days. They have a great sound. It's like the alternative country of the early 90's like Drive By Truckers, Son Volt and Whiskeytown fused with renaissance string bands like Old Crow Medicine Show and Yonder Mountain String Band. The great thing about the Avett Brothers is that they've got a song for any mood that you're in. Go ahead, try me. Melancholy? Try "I and Love and You." Whimsical? Give "Kick Drum Heart" a listen. Feeling philosophical? "Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise" is for you.

I sat down and listened to the album "Country Was." This ultimately led to me sitting around and listening to several other albums including "I and Love and You" and "Emotionalism." It'd be folly for me to attempt to provide one favorite song, so I'll give you a few.