This the end.  I am leaving for a new home where I doubt I will continue this endeavor.  We are all made up of the people in our lives and the places we have been.  That means part of you gets to come along!  Even though you will be coming with me, I will miss you anyways.  Muah!

Edwarde Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes – Home

I put on a Gorillaz mix after listening to the newish and awesome Gorillaz album and came across this mash-up.  It is an old one, but I’m so addicted to it right now that I am sharing anyways.

Gorillaz vs. Sean Paul vs. Black Eyed Peas – Get Eastwood

Girl Talk is coming to Indy in a few weeks.   He’s the mash-up artist.   There are plenty of other mash-up DJ’s out there, but none with the commercial success of Girl Talk.  He uses dozens of shorter samples in his songs rather than mashing up 4 or 5 songs per track.  For example, listen to What It’s All About and see if you can pick out

some of the songs.  36 different songs are mashed together to one awesome track.  Here’s the tracklist:

4. “What It’s All About” – 4:15

* 0:00 – 0:11 Beyoncé – “Ring the Alarm”

* 0:00 – 0:21 DJ Funk – “Here We Go”
* 0:00 – 0:18 Queen – “We Will Rock You”
* 0:05 – 0:18 Beastie Boys – “So What’cha Want”
* 0:18 – 0:21 Phil Collins – “In the Air Tonight”
* 0:20 – 1:35 Busta Rhymes featuring Rampage – “Woo Hah!! Got You All in Check”

* 0:21 – 1:04 The Police – “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”
* 0:40 – 1:35 The Cure – “Close to Me”

* 1:04 – 1:25 Ini Kamoze – “Here Comes the Hotstepper” (which samples “The Champ” by The Mohawks)
* 1:05 – 1:32 Wilson Pickett – “Land of a Thousand Dances”
* 1:33 – 1:36 Rotary Connection – “Memory Band”
* 1:34 – 1:36 The Fugees – “Killing Me Softly”
* 1:35 – 2:16 Faith No More – “Epic”

* 1:35 – 1:52 Mike Jones featuring Hurricane Chris – “Drop & Gimme 50″
* 1:38 – 1:57 Kidz in the Hall – “Drivin’ Down the Block” (which samples “Born to Roll” by Masta Ace Incorporated)
* 1:36 – 1:58 DJ Assault – “Ass ‘n’ Titties”
* 1:57 – 2:16 Junior Reid – “One Blood”
* 1:59 – 2:19 Boogie Down Productions – “Criminal Minded”

* 2:18 – 2:29 Yung Joc featuring Ms. B – “I Know You See It”
* 2:19 – 2:29 Paula Cole – “I Don’t Want to Wait”

* 2:19 – 3:24 Tones on Tail – “Go!”
* 2:24 – 2:29 Beanie Sigel and Freeway – “Roc the Mic”
* 2:29 – 3:12 Argent – “Hold Your Head Up”
* 2:29 – 3:12 Wu-Tang Clan – “C.R.E.A.M.”

* 2:51 – 3:09 Terence Trent D’Arby – “Wishing Well”
* 3:12 – 3:25 N.W.A. – “Dopeman”
* 3:17 – 3:17 50 Cent – “What Up Gangsta?”
* 3:17 – 3:20 Genesis – “Mama”
* 3:20 – 3:22 Bow Wow Wow – “I Want Candy”

* 3:24 – 3:28 Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Gold Lion”
* 3:25 – 3:26 T.I. featuring Wyclef Jean – “You Know What It Is”
* 3:30 – 3:33 OutKast – “Ms. Jackson”
* 3:32 – 4:04 Vanilla Ice – “Havin’ a Roni”
* 3:33 – 4:03 The Jackson 5 – “ABC”

* 3:33 – 4:04 Rihanna featuring Jay-Z – “Umbrella”
* 3:53 – 4:14 Queen – “Bohemian Rhapsody”

I saw him in Bonnaroo, but stayed out of the fray for the most part.  It was 2:30am and I was a walking zombie after a full day of watching shows.   The stage and crowd was packed with thousands of dancing, jumping, screaming, absolutely manic fans swarmed around a single guy standing behind a table and a laptop.   Girl talk is literally him and his laptop.   There were so many fans on the stage that at one point somebody unplugged the audio input to his laptop for  few seconds.  It looked like a fantastic time and I definitely wished I had the energy to pull it off.  Now I get a second shot.  Yea!

The show is going to be like this.  Yes!  Buy tix!

A few delicious tracks:

Girl Talk – Bounce That

Girl Talk – Set it Off

Bat for Lashes – Sleep Alone

"Silenced" by Artoland, click for source and more by the artist

Now I’m sure you’ve had times when you’ve felt down or angry,
Wanted to lash out, punch a wall and be manly,
But the question I pose now will offer you a plan B,
And maybe some peace and quiet for your friends and family,
How hard is it to decide to be in a good mood,
And then just be.. in.. a good mood?
That’s all I have to say because it’s a straight up fact,
You control your emotions it’s as simple as that”

- Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip – Waiting For The Beat To Kick In

Buy Angles by Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pop

What was the point of Oregon Trail again? If the point was to make me really glad I didn’t have to live in that era, then it was a resounding success.

Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip – Thou Shalt Always Kill

Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip on Amazon

You are missed.

Ladytron – Beauty*2

Pink Floyd – Unknown Song

Music is getting louder.  It’s not just played louder and written faster, harder, with lower lows and higher highs, but actually processed to sound louder on your stereo regardless of where you set your volume knob.   Louder songs sell.  If Intergalactic is played right before Boom Boom Pow, and Boom Boom Pow sounds louder, listeners will prefer Boom Boom Pow because the louder song is initially more pleasing.   At least that’s what record execs and studio producers believe.

The problem lies in what is lost when the ‘volume’ is cranked up.   When the quiet parts of the song are loud and the loud parts are peaking at  zero (the loudest volume possible on CD’s) the listener misses out on the subtleties in many songs.  String accompaniments are drowned out by bass beats and electric guitar.   Snare drums sound dull.  Otherwise beautiful and dynamic songs lose much of their texture.  Imagine listening to The Dark Side of the Moon with the levels on your equalizer all the way up.  Try it sometime.  It’s disgusting.

NPR’s All Thing’s Considered ran a story on this phenomenon a few weeks ago.  Check it out here.

Because louder music creates a more immediately pleasing effect on the listener, record execs have been ordering the volume knob cranked up for the last three decades. This could be chalked up to harmless capitalism, but the problem is that audio can only get so loud before it begins to lose all the stuff that makes it so good. Once you compress the peaks and valleys of rhythm and sound too far, it becomes the visual equivalent of typing in all caps: All the the loud sounds are loud and so are all the soft ones. The dynamic of sound, or the part of music that makes it funky or groovy or smooth or mellow or punchy or whatever you like, is suddenly being pushed to what is more or less white noise, merely for a chance at that #1 spot.

- NPR – A Visual History of Loudness

The Loudness War is a youtube video that provides an excellent audio/visual representation of the loudness problem:

Even if you’re listening to properly mastered music, you still might be falling into a similar trap by listening to low quality .mp3 files (avoid going lower than 256kpbs!) or listening on crappy headphones/speakers.  You might also be cranking up the bass or treble on your equalizer or by using the loud feature on your stereo or mp3 player.   If you try flattening your equalizer and listening on great headphones, you will hear all the subtleties in the music (as the artist intended).

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life…You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.

-  Neil Gaiman

Magic Sam – Everything’s gonna be alright

Peter Broderick – And It’s Alright

Stereophonic – I’m Alright

Sigur Rós – All Alright

Jamie Myerson – Everything’s gonna be alright

How can it feel, this wrong
From this moment
How can it feel, this wrong

Portishead – Roads

Portishead ft. Tricky – Hell is Around the Corner