As this is vaguely a music entry, it goes in the Vox and gets LJ-linked.
So, in cleaning out my room (a momentous task - getting everything off the floor has left my bed full; I am sleeping on the couch tonight) I have, understandably, come across a great many burned CD of yesteryear. They all induce some form of nostalgia, whether embarassing anime mixes of my high school days or my "summer mixes" of my college years. A few of them are cromulent (hell, I found the Utena soundtrack and, being a sucker for pretentious rock chorales and elephant-chasing curry adventures, felt compelled to rip it) but one stood out to me as I gathered up the mix-cds of my past for garbage consideration: a single emblazoned =W=. At some point in my shady past, I made a Weezer Mix CD.
The memories came flooding back: "I remember listening to Weezer for a week or two several years ago!" Specifically, I remember that it was the week I had my wisdom teeth out. I liked the barbershop-style harmony in "Don't Let Go" and for some reason decided that the Green Album - and whatever else I felt like downloading that week - was the perfect accompaniment for painful dental surgery and vicodin-hazed recovery.
Try as I might to enjoy Weezer, and guilty pleasure they may have been, I can't entirely forgive them for the creation of sweater rock. Sure, Pinkerton's fucked-up contradictions and generally destabilizing vibe had a certain charm back in the day, but the spell's been broken. (There's another serious problem I have with Weezer, and that's their sweatered, bespectacled, indie-music-store fans: the ones who think everything after Pinkerton was blatant selling-out. I will happily argue that The Green Album and Maladroit were perfectly well-crafted albums, if only to piss these people off. Said fans moved on to deep-throating Thom Yorke years ago, anyway.)
The simple truth is that I do enjoy some of Weezer's songs, but never felt myself immersed or enamored with a particular album. Thus the mystery deepens: Why did I opt to spend a week of painful surgical recovery exploring a band I had never been particularly deeply into? Perhaps it was because Weezer had essentially come and gone; I had the band's history to contend with, and could listen to and trace the evolution of their sound. Maybe the stars were just misaligned and I missed the fad until that week. Or maybe Weezer was just bland and comfortable, like the broth and soups I had to eat for a couple of days. (Fun fact: I insisted on going out for Pho IMMEDIATELY after my surgery.) It wasn't a bad way to start off the summer in which I discovered some of my favorite bands - that was the year I discovered Metric, after all. But last week I fired up the Metric discography and took a binge. Up until today, I had literally forgotten Weezer existed. Why?
Ignoring the fact that Metric is undoubtedly a much, much, MUCH better band, I think the key lies in diversity of style and energy. Plus, Weezer is all well and good when you're sitting in your room with swollen cheeks and a vicodin-induced coma (they are warm and comfortable, like a sweater that comes unraveled by the hand of a vaguely oedipal fixation on TV moms and Japanese girls), but have you ever tried driving to them?
We can trace Weezer to an era of beige/brown combos and analogize them to clothes from the Gap or Old Navy. Hello Stranger, and the bands I tend to really love, on the other hand, embody a resurgance of energy and color - American Apparel, if you will. And frankly, I never shopped at the Gap, and only liked Old Navy for a short month of some forgotten summer, too.
Even then, I felt the need to make Weezer a little more interesting: the mix CD ends with numbers from The Jealous Sound, Spitz, and Reel Big Fish (oh, ska music, you came and went far too soon).
Speaking of which, my holiday mix CD for 2006 is complete. Anyone who wants a copy should email or IM me your address. In a year, will I listen to this mix again and reflect the same way? Oh, and there's no Weezer on it. I promise.
12/31 - New Year's concert with The Flaming Lips and Gnarls Barkley
1/23 - Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton @ El Rey
1/31 - Polysics @ The Knitting Factory
2/2 - Polysics @ The Casbah (San Diego)
Seriously considering hitting SD for the second Polysics show, simply because it's a Friday night and the Casbah is a sweet venue.
Coming soon: Why Polysics is great and why you should go to their show.
Ska and I are totally loving this song right now.
What do you get when you have an unusual thirst for light, happy driving fare? 12 years of light jrock, it seems. In a world and genre where it's easy to be inane and uninspired, how do you stand out with simple and fun? Answer: You borrow heavily from the pillows, probably.
...and now you think this post is going to be about the pillows, the prolific band I've finally given in and owned up to liking. You probably think it'll include some bitching about how a band that's been around for 15 years is known in the states solely for the FLCL soundtrack, or how their new and/or old albums are great, and you probably think I'm going to post a sample.
Your expectations are wrong, although I do recommend checking out their albums (especially "My Foot"). For today's sampling of music, we need to head back in time to the years 1997-2000. It was a different time musically in Japan; Shibuya-kei was in full bloom, with Pizzicato Five and Fantastic Plastic Machine peaking (though their later offerings were nothing to scoff at). Konami discovered a hit with Bemani games. The dance and rave scenes were at their peak in North America. In 1999, a younger Shiina Ringo released her second album. the pillows also released approximately 450 albums in this period, notable too because the three albums released in this period were raided for songs to use in FLCL, which would introduce the band to the US. Another strange new band called POLYSICS was re-exploring punk and nu-wave.
It's perhaps a bit understandable, with all these tiny fragments, that our Bands of Mention for today started out in such a climate. First up is GO!GO!7188 (go-go-nana-ichi-hachi-hachi), who come to me by way of Ska's apt introduction. Started in 1998 while fresh out of high school, their vocal stylings are a welcome discovery for anyone who loves early Shiina Ringo, but they don't end there. Their influences range from surf-rock to enka and I definitely suspect SR as well.
An early single from 2000, "Jet Ninjin" is a good example of everything stylistically the band does. James Bond, Shiina Ringo, traditional Japanese music, and the Beach Boys seem to come together in this song:
Now take GO!GO!, the pillows, and throw in a bit of POLYSICS for good measure, and you have the next band on the sampling block: Guitar Vader. You might know Guitar Vader if you own a Dreamcast; if you heard some catchy rock songs paired with nonsensical English lyrics while playing Jet Set Radio, you've heard them. Their tracks "Super Brothers" and "Magical Girl" graced the original Dreamcast version, while "I Love Love You" and "Baby-T" were featured in the X-Box's 2001 sequel Jet Set Radio: Future. (For the love of god, Sega, make a JSR sequel for the Wii!)
Now, you might say "Sure, Tommy, this band's music is great when it comes to grinding along the side of radio towers and spraypainting cops' faces, but why should I listen to it?" Paradoxically, you might absolutely hate this band if you had to listen to "Super Brothers" 50 times in a row on a stage you just couldn't pass. But if you display a little patience you'll find that some true gems lurk in their albums - catchy hooks, rockin' guitar, and awesome grooves. Their sound is deceptively diverse; some of thier songs have a POLYSICS feel (like the un-remixed version of I Love Love You, which also samples Yoko Kanno's SANTI-U), but tracks like "Heavy Metal Collector" and "The Time Slips Away" - a simple, clean rock track, are evocative of the pillows.
For your listening pleasure, I offer a track from their 2001 album, "From Dusk" - which is a bitch of an album to find. This track is called "Cutting Evil Smile," and it is a great sample blend of GV's penchant for simple verses, catchy hooks, and fun grooves - not to mention their signature male/female vocal doublings - a tactic Pizzicato Five was exploring in the same period, too. (Worth noting is that GV's music was chosen for JSR - a game set in and centered around Shibuya and its culture. Changing of the guard?) So, enjoy Cutting Evil Smile:
Until next time, enjoy!
So why jump on the VOX bandwagon?
...Well, it's always useful and fun to diversify your blogging a bit. I could use a little music-blogging fun and prefer to keep it separate from my emo bitching and political rants.
...But mostly I just wanted to see if they had an LA cityscape layout yet.
WE'RE THE SECOND LARGEST CITY IN THE UNITED STATES. DO OUR FUCKING SKYLINE ALREADY. OUR BUILDINGS ARE TALLER THAN TOKYO'S AND WE HAVE MORE PEOPLE THAN SAN FRANCISCO, BOSTON, SEATTLE, AND CHICAGO.
I did a little Googling. A request for an LA skyline on Vox was met with snot like "LA has a skyline?" Seriously, what is it with this "L.A. isn't a real city" attitude? Clearly the 10 million people in Los Angeles County are hiding something, right? Get your head out of the 1980s, commenting guy! Every day I see the city grow and develop more and more, and every day brings new hope and new life to this vibrant, weird, wonderful place I call home.
And that's really what today's music is about. Speaking of LA, here's a song about it by a band that is pretty much personifies the New LA Sound:
I can prattle on and on about Hello Stranger... if I decide to keep music-blogging here. For now, though, one of their great songs - perfect for a night on the town or a windy midnight drive through the urban landscape...
-T
