It’s been a while now, and I took about a month off of posting. I just wanted to let you all know that I am still here. I really just haven’t had that “me” time, that one needs to write on a blog.
I went and saw the Daredevil Christopher Wright at the Elbow Room in Ypsilanti, MI. It was a really good show, but I was kind of disappointed with the venue. It was loud, and you really couldn’t hear the band over the white noise created by uninteresting people who aren’t paying attention to the music. I also think that this show was the bands first show on their tour, and the band didn’t seem to put that much energy into the show. Overall, I feel like the band didn’t put forth enough energy to draw in the crowd, and that would have helped to keep the rest of the bar quiet.
Keep on with the tour guys, hopefully we hear some new songs soon.
I promise, promise, promise, that you will have some new articles. Coming soon – Dead Man’s Bones Review, Hot Chip, and whatever else crosses my digital path.
The New Year came and went. All the hub bub around the holidays are over. I am back in the groove of working, and I am now ready to dedicate some serious downtime to telling you what is in heavy rotation on my speakers. But first, I want to start the New Year and talk about something other than music. Always good to try new things.
I have considered writing about things other than music. But I really haven’t put my finger on anything in particular. I did come across a link to a website that sells art. I found it while looking at my friend Andy’s web page. I then followed one of his links to a website, Renegade Handmade, that helps artists sell their work to people interested in it.
Browsing through the page I ran across this work by APAK, who according to their website, are a husband and wife duo named Aaron Piland and Ayumi Kajikawa Piland.
I was really excited to see the artwork, it had a nice innocent style too it. It seemed like work my 3-year-old niece would enjoy. I think any child would enjoy having these fun pictures up on a wall in their room. As stand-alone pieces of art they are fun to look at, and any child or grown up could use their imagination to put a story to the pictures. So please use the links to check out Aaron and Ayumi’s work and support them in any way you can.
I was at work today. The shift was supposed to be easy. I was going to have some time to sit on my computer and do some “nonsense” stuff. Play games, listen to music, write blog articles. No heavy lifting today. While deciding what the next topic for my article was going to be, I decided to listen to the new Flaming Lips creation, titled “The Flaming Lips, Stardeath and White Dwarfs with Henry Rollins and Poaches doing the Dark Side of the Moon.”
According to the title of the article, I think my head did explode about halfway through the cover of Time/Breathe. It exploded in such as way as for me to run back, pack all the pieces back on my shoulder and then turn the speakers up louder so that it would explode again.
Like every kid in the suburbs of America, I went through the “Pink Floyd” phase of adolescence. I found that their psychedelic workings helped expand my mind across the musical universe. The first CD that was ever mine was “A Momentary Lapse of Reason.” Once I got a taste of that great big gig in the sky, I wanted more. I listened to all the Pink Floyd I could.
As I entered my thirties, I moved away from being able to enjoy the PF. It was getting harder and harder for me to dedicate serious time towards expanding my mind’s eye. I was getting older, and the free time from work I did have I would dedicate towards sleeping. I mostly listened to music in my car while commuting here and there. Car listening makes it difficult to put on The Final Cut, or Live at Pompei. Between cell phone interruptions, and fifteen minute car rides, you really can’t listen to a 17 minute rendition of “Shine on you crazy diamond.”
Honestly, I thought for a while that I was out of that psychedelic phase. I found other bands that could be put on long play. I found bands like Sigur Ros, and My Morning Jacket, the seeming adult alternatives to the trippiness of the past. I thought PF was in my past. But I was wrong. They will always be here in the present, bands like The Flaming Lips have seen to that. I will not leave Pink Floyd in the past. I think my head exploded back there, and I am picking it up and taking it with me, into the future. Flaming Lips – Time Breathe (Reprise) by user6399081
I am usually not a big fan of bands that release singles that don’t sound like anything else they have done. After I heard the album “Fits” from the band White Denim, I was willing to make an exception. The first single I heard from them was the single “Regina Holding Hands.” The song was getting some airplay on Sirius XMU and I always thought that they really sounded like a modern band mixed with Hall and Oats. The vocals had that jazz-rock sound that really sets of Hall and Oats songs. White Denim – Regina Holding Hands by user6399081
I liked that song, so I really tried to find other stuff by them. Everything I heard was a lot different than the above song. I gave in, and downloaded the album. It sat in my downloaded folder for a while and I finally gave it a listen the other night. I was really surprised to find that the whole album sounded like a lot of different classic rock genres. I heard garage rock, lite rock, classic rock, blues rock; and it was all intermingled over a solid album. White Denim – Syncn by user6399081
A long car drive, down roads I have never travelled. An early fall evening. The sun is going down, a little earlier than it went down the day before. Tonight was the first night I noticed the days were getting shorter. Driving west, I step on the accelerator, chasing the sunset, trying to make this last indian summer evening last.
The explosions of music and beauty that is the album Pneuma is what I believe the above would sound like if it was turned into electricity and passed through a mix board. The band takes the art form behind making an album and raises the bar. Few albums are out there that I can listen to all the way through. Most of them I have to skip a song or two because they don’t fit.
I originally discovered this band while hopping around on YouTube. I stumbled across a video by a user named Charlatantric. The video was about the 100 greatest songs of all time, and I watched it because it didn’t have the normal things that most 100 greatest albums have. The video was put together with some great stock footage of fight scenes from B movies and had a soundtrack of some bands I have heard of, and some bands I haven’t heard of until then. One of those bands was Moving Mountains, and I was drawn to listen to more of their music. It just happened that Charlatantric also enjoyed the band and had made a couple of videos just for Moving Mountain’s songs.
Just about a month ago the band passed through Michigan while they were on tour with Say Anything. They came to Clutch Cargo’s in Pontiac. I picked up the two CD’s that they were selling, Pneuma and Foreword. The set was great. I finished work later that night, got to say hi to the lead singer Moving Mountains – Ode We Will Bury Ourselves by user6399081
You can not listen to these three songs and make a complete decision about this band. I only put them up to help you understand their sound. You must listen to their albums from beginning to end. There is no other way to do it. You must do this or else you might fail to recognize the full scope of their music. It has an epic sound to it. The complete album is made up of many things; an up, a down, a reckoning, a lesson learned, a love lost, a gentle tragedy, and a sonic battle brought forth on the audience’s eardrums.
It’s 10am. I am sitting in my car on the east side of Detroit and I am in a complex that used to house a tire company’s manufacturing facility. The sun came up about an hour ago and it is still pretty cold outside. It’s funny about winter in Michigan. You would think that a sunny day would be nice, but really all it does is just let’s you see the damage winter does on everything. Dried up salt everywhere mixed in with ice puddles and gravel and broken concrete. Detroit blight makes an interesting backdrop. Sunny enough to squint without sunglasses but cold enough to not go outside unless you are forced to.
About a year ago, I decided to make a daytrip to Chicago to see the band Cloud Cult perform. It was a good excuse to see a good show and a couple of friends I hadn’t seen in awhile. The venue was the Double Door. Small and intimate. A little stage in one corner and a bar along a wall. Pretty simple setup. A great place to see a show.
We arrived just after the first opening band played. My friend and I walked in, and the second opening band was just tuning up. I was excited to see Cloud Cult, but didn’t expect to hear what I heard next. Three guys were on stage and they seemed to be the usual setup for a band. Didn’t look like anything special. Then they started to sing. When I say sing, I mean harmonize; and when I say harmonize, I mean capture my attention for the rest of their set. The only time I looked away was to turn to my left, look at my friend Andy and exclaim “Wow.” The Daredevil Christopher Wright – The East Coast by user6399081
I was really excited. I really hadn’t heard a sound like theirs. The band introduced themselves as The Daredevil Christopher Wright from Eau Clare, Wisconsin. All I could think was, barber shop accapella mixed with pure goodness. I was drawn into the harmony of their voices, the ups and downs of their rythem, and the intricacies of their songs.
Back at the show a year ago, at the end of their set, I ran back to the merch table as soon as the band came off the stage. They were there selling their CD’s. I wanted to hear more of their stuff. But to my dismay, all they had for sale was a little three song EP. A year later, I was sitting at work and I listened to one of their songs. I look up the band and see that they finally released a full length album. With just three songs, I needed more and finally I got it. The new album is called InDeference to a Broken Back The Daredevil Christopher Wright – Bury You Alive by user6399081
Back to the beginning of this post. I went to explore a bit of the area I was working at. No real curiosity, I really just needed to find a place to urinate. If you’ve seen one abandoned manufacturing facility in Detroit then you have really seen them all. All it is, is a shell of a building, stripped down to its skeleton because of the price of copper. I look in the dust and see a bird’s foot on the ground. It wasn’t a small foot either. It was more like a talon. The talon was connected to a mass of feathers. It was either a dead hawk or owl. Either way, it was a majestic bird, dead in a dusty random corner of an open shell of a building Just another instance of a once great thing like the city of Detroit, dead and left to rot. No one even there to care that there was a dead animal in the building. Just dust, dirt, broken concrete, and copper thieves.
Listen to good music, it helps drown out the smell of the dead bird in the corner that is the blight of Detroit.
Toro y Moi’s blog is not the blog of an artist trying to commercially ply his trade. The cookie cutter style that most labels and artists do is not there. Other, it seems like you are looking at the blog a friend made up. ( a friend that is really talented!)
I first heard him when I ran across a cover of the Michael Jackson song Human Nature on YouTube. Then, two days later, I heard it on SiriusXMU. The last couple of months I have been seeking out his music. It is very hard to come by. You have to find his music in some very different places. He only has a handful of songs, but they are like gold when you find them.
His name is Chaz, and he is from South Carolina. He does a wonderful job at combining some really great genres and coming out with something sounding very fresh. He was just signed to Carpark records. The press page for him says they plan to release two full length albums for him in 2010. I have already pre-ordered the first one. I hope some of this music I am going to post will help you purchase and support this new artist. I think he is on his way up and I am excited to hear what he puts out next.
PS. I have been putting Toro y Moi out there ever since I heard him. My wish list would have to include him playing a show in Detroit sometime soon. He would even be a great addition on the DEMF ticket for this summer. I could see him playing a set in the underground, or even up on the main stage right before it gets dark.
Who would have thought that a Tuesday night would have so much fun? I certainly didn’t.
I had class that night. It started at 6:30pm and I couldn’t blow it off. I had a presentation due, and my group and I were going to get it done at the last second. Dammit we were determined to finish it by the skin of our teeth. I went up to the professor. Asked him if it would be a problem if I left right after our presentation was over. I fibbed a little bit and told him I had to go to work. Technically, I was going to a place where I have worked at in the past.
By the time our group got done it was 8:25pm. A successful presentation behind me, I packed up my belongings and headed towards my car. I began the 62 mile, hour-long trip from Ypsilanti to Pontiac. I steadily made it through the sparse evening traffic and arrived around 9:20pm. I made it. The opening bands had already played, and the band I came to see had already played a couple of songs. It was all worth it.
They played some new, they played some old. They even did an acoustic version of Playground Love by Air from the Virgin Suicides Soundtrack. The picture at the top of my blog is from that show. The great performance they put on is why I wanted to make my first blog post about them. Phoenix – Playground Love (Air Cover) by triselectif 1901-Phoenix by foodzik
It’s 6:15 AM. I have been up all night listening to music at work. I found a couple of new songs tonight. I found some videos on YouTube and posted them to my wall on Facebook. I wanted to do something more. I have another blog that I haven’t wrote in for a little over a year. It was a project for class, and I wanted to keep it on topic. I feel that this blog needs to be dedicated to what I like most. New Music.
Bands come and go. I am old enough to have seen some new bands disappear real quick, and some of the old ones come back around for a second or third run at success. Non-radio friendly music is what I tend to lean towards. Indie rock, alternative, there are many names for what I like. But really, all it has to do is tell a good story, have a good beat, and even maybe bring a tear to my eye for me to like it.
I feel (like everyone else does) that my tastes are superior to everyone else. I know that sounds cocky and pretentious, but that is how I feel. Even the “accept me as I am and I don’t care how you feel about it” attitude is pretty pretentious. I am not like that. I recognize that everyone has different tastes. All I want to do is show you what I like. I want you to see something that you might not have seen before. I want you to hear a song that you might not have heard in a while. I want to influence you. I want you to take a second to stop and listen to what I like.
I promise to you that I will not post crap. I promise that will not post filth. I promise not to waste your time. But feel free to comment on if you do like the music I post. Or comment on if you don’t like it. I would also like any suggestions of new music to listen to. I am like everyone else. Every new band I have heard was introduced to me by someone else. A community of people all showing people new music that they may like. I love it.
~Matty “totheMFin” Mo
~~Of course I peed mypants, everyone my age pees their pants. It’s the coolest~~
