Us Kids Know

stuff i like and do and see

Mash-up Monday: Neutral Bling Hotel- Forgot About Ghost (Neutral Milk Hotel vs. Dr. Dre feat. Eminem)

I was really excited about the whole album In My G4 Over the Sea, a mashup of Neutral Milk Hotel’s seminal album with random popular rap tracks.  Mostly its because I’ve realized I like some rap, but I like it way more with indie guitars (see: Girl Talk).  So being able to listen to “Look at Me Now” and indie? Great.  When I played it over the weekend, my friends were not impressed, and I get why.  As a mash-up its pretty simple, one track overlayed on the other, with minimal remixing or interplay between the two songs.  This track probably does the best job of that, the “New York City” moment being the most Girl Talk-esque part of the whole shebang.  But it also had me thinking about “Forgot About Dre”.  I used to take a really hard line on hating Eminem, and his rap on this track exemplifies both why that was and why he was defended.  Em had GREAT phrasing, and his rhymes are awesome.  But I have no use for a verse about beating a guy to death cause he looked at someone sideways…its so over-the-top but also matter of fact, and seems to undercut Em’s earlier great lines (“so what do you say to somebody you hate”) and Dre’s whole thing. Dre doesn’t have to talk about killing anyone, the threat and reminder of  his greatness is enough.  Eminem tries way too hard, and that’s never fun.

Summer Programming

Hello tumblr (un)faithful, its been a while.  But, as is my habit, now that I am more or less unemployed (but still drawing a salary! hooray for schools!) I plan to write more.  And one project is to post more music.  A favorite very tall colleague and favorite very tiny student (neither of whom will ever read this I imagine) started a music blog, and I am jealous.  So here is the music programming plan for summer.

Monday:Mash-up Mondays—a delightful new mixture of at least two songs from somewhere on the internet

Tuesday:Two-for-Tuesdays— come by every Tuesday for a posting of a cover song and its original version (two songs for the price of one!)

Wednesday:Wimpy Wednesday— I dig deep into my collection of introspective songwriters, second-generation emo, and any other genre designed to make you weep or stare longingly at the rain out the window

Thursday:THOR’SDAY— Did you know Thursday was named for Thor, the Norse God of thunder? And did you know gods like that are pretty closely associated with metal? No? Well, allow me to stretch your credulity by posting punk, metal, and anything else loud on Thursdays!

Weekends:Whatever I damn well please.

Stay tuned!

The alleys are the footnotes of the avenues. 

I mean, right? 

I think it’s time to come back here.

Together, we are all Radiohead

I just felt the need to lookup a former student of mine on facebook.  I had her when she was 13, at a theatre camp, and even then she was a little too precocious and a little too inappropriate for her own good.  I liked her, though, and she knew it, and we got a long.  She’s a rising high school junior now, I believe, and I felt compelled to look her up because I heard she just got out of rehab.

Now, its not like that’s never happened before, nor is it like I didn’t know those kids growing up myself in the way back when of the turn of the century.  But looking through her profile pictures, it’s all hipster kids openly and unabashedly drinking pbr and smoking cigarettes.  And it makes me sad.  I mean, everyone does those things in high school (well, not me, but you know, the normal kids).  But to be so public about it? To broadcast it to everyone you know, including that one former drama teacher you had who always wanted you to be a little better than you were? It just seems so obvious, and more than a little pathetic.

whisper whisper whisper

Song of the Week (like the song of the month, only less important): John Vanderslice, “Trance Manual” from his newish album Pixel Revolt.

Thanks for accepting my friend request John.

Song of the Month: Bill Callahan, “Riding for the Feeling”, from his staggeringly beautiful, sweepingly epic new album Apocalypse. 

In conclusion, leaving is easy, if you’ve got somewhere to be.

Bill, you slay me.

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Addendum Two: Spider in the Snow by the Dismemberment Plan

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addendum one: Don’t Hate Me by the Get Up Kids

so, this should probably be part of a longer post that is a variation on a theoretical conversation I’ve had with myself many times, defending the subgenre (though not the word or the associations) of late 90’s “emo”, but its not, so I digress…

In the year 2000 (the year two-thous-AND!) I was a high school junior, and, like roughly 98% of high school juniors, searching for an identity.  I was a drama nerd who had come to realize I didn’t like the drama nerds I hung out with, and a smart over-achiever who didn’t hang out with the other smart over-achievers that were my friends in elementary and middle school.  One thing I knew I liked was music, and whilst my strange, formative friendship with an older much-loved, much-drug-addled, outsider named Zack H. had turned me on to bands like Bright Eyes, Modest Mouse, and, most importantly, Elliott Smith, I still was hanging on to such terrible bands as Dave Matthews Band and Guster.  Enter a CD given to me by my friend (and fellow drama geek) Greg C. The album was called “Something To Write Home About” and, it was, of course, by the Get Up Kids.  Along with weezer’s twin colossus of debut albums, it would come to define the end of my high school career, and would be replaced only when I went off to college two years later, and then only by the Get Up Kids arguably better (and strangely more mature) debut, Four Minute Mile.  Through the Get Up Kids (and crush on a much cooler girl during my summer studies program at Brown) i discovered bands that meant (and still mean) a lot to me, most notably The Promise Ring, Jets to Brazil, Jimmy Eat World, and the like. I still love a lot of that music, and I will defend its right to exist, despite the so-so turns the groups took, despite the flash-in-the-pan third generation “emo” it sparked and I, for a time, ate up (here’s looking at you, Juliana Theory) and definitely in spite of the truly awful fourth and fifth gen emo that put the nail in that words coffin forever (where art thou, My Chemical Romance?).  

But the point is this.  The Get Up Kids defined, in a way I desperately needed, that time in my life for me.  For four or five years, I didn’t need to say how I felt about being away from home, from my friends, about getting into a huge fight with someone I used to love like a brother, about long distance relationships, about how much our summers meant together, etc because I had Fall Semester, Don’t Hate Me, Red Letter Day, Shorty, Out of Reach, Close to Home, WIsh You Were Here, and Campfire Kansas to say it for me.


Whilst I still love that band (my song now is Coming Clean) I didn’t have that one, definitive, these-songs-were-written-for-me-somehow group in my life for a while.  And then, enter, the Dismemberment Plan.  This post is already too long, and these are hardly new thoughts, but what tGUPK were for my late teens and early twenties, the Dismemberment Plan is for my mid (and sadly soon, i suspect) my late twenties.  Moved to a new place but it feels the same? Spider in the Snow.  Lie to your mom about what good time youre having far from home? The Ice of Boston.  Have to make yourself brush your teeth? The Jitters.  My entire life right now, minus one or two songs? All of Change. Plus they rock.  So I guess, what I’m saying is;

Dear Travis Morrison,

Thank you.

Love,

j