Blue Monday - New Order (1983)

Xanthe and i were shocked today when we found out that our friend Donni didn't know what a subwoofer was. i tried punching her (on beat) to explain. when that didn't work, i played this song.



the biggest selling 12" single of all time, "Blue Monday" is the best New Order song and it's one of my favorite dance songs ever.

when i listen to it on headphones, as i am right now, it's a comfortable living room experience. i'm just sitting here, turning up the volume an increment or two every half minute, bobbing my head with that standard house beat (with the occasional machine gun twitter), letting the guitar sidewind down my face, hearing monks proclaim their love for divinity and listening to divinity (in the form of synthesized strings) puke its love for monks.

then the vocals come on. then its 5 more minutes of dance rock power pop new waves. wonderful.

then there are the times the song is blasting out of speakers. maybe i'll just play extremely loudly in my own room, like i did for Xanthe and Donni this morning, or a dj will throw it on at a club. this happened pretty much every night i went out in Athens, and pretty much every time it happened, i let go of everything to get up and dance. and if i was already "dancing," i dropped the act and actually started dancing (because you're only dancing when you ignore yourself and submit yourself to the air swirling air around you.)

everything is perfect in this song.
the bass drum is perfect.
the synths are perfect.
the bass is perfect.
the hi-hat is perfect.
the snare is perfect.
the guitar is perfect.
the synthesized string section is perfect.
the singing is perfect
the synthesized horn section is perfect.
EVERYTHING IS PERFECT.

listen.

Patty Waters

Patty Waters is a mysterious jazz singer who made two recordings in 1966 for the obscure free-jazz label ESP-Disk. One of these albums was called Sings. The cover:



The first half is fourteen minutes worth of seven songs, for solo meandering/wandering piano and searching/lost female voice, with titles like "Moon, Don't Come Up Tonight" (because her man isn't coming), "Why Can't I Come to You?" (because he doesn't want her), and "I Can't Forget You" (with key lyrics, 'Since you don't want me / It makes me want you all the more'). Blunt.

The second half is fourteen minutes worth of a freaky horror-jazz take on the traditional folk song "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair," in which the word "black" is repeated almost ad nauseam in every vocal style known to Ms. Waters, from manly growl to high-frequency shrill to Damo Suzuki/Eye/Yoko Ono-begetting noise-making.

For reference, here is the cover of her other album, College Tour:


I bought this and now I'm sharing it! So you have no excuse not listen to it: the musics

Lily Allen

Lily Allen is serious paprazzi material (in the UK). She's popular because she's young, hot, and she sings about daily things such as boyfriends, fucking, and drugs, and because the music is slick pop with big electro beats. She made it big in 2006 thanks to MySpace, released an album and some singles, one of which, Smile, I think even US kids know, and in 2008 recorded her second album, It's Not Me, It's You, released just this February, 2009.



Anyways, I have this album, and here is what I think:

4.5 stars: 50 years from now, 4.0, but for its daring approach to pop and ridiculous popularity, a strong 4.5, resting largely on her voice and on her lyrics, the former so silky you think she was born singing like this, the latter direct and natural, a good quality in music this poppy. Play it very loudly so you hear all the nuances.

Lily Allen: smarter and more talented beyond either her popularity or her typical fans.

How I Fell in Love (with Belle & Sebastian)

Let me qualify: this is actually how I fell in love with Dear Catastrophe Waitress. And let me be blunt: I was stoned.

Now let me clarify my bluntness: this album, along with If You're Feeling Sinister, had sat in my library for ages, largely un-listened. Pot was the impetus necessary to lose any pre-conceptions about bands and albums and what I have or haven't listened to yet, so that I could, among other things, put on some headphones and get lost in a maze of shuffled music. And it doesn't surprise me at all in retrospect, that as with any relaxed, bias-free and intimate listen, I discovered truths previously invisible. And thus, my entry into the world of these lovely Scots.


The sound is gentle. It's the soundtrack to the lives of lonely high school boys and girls who, instead of becoming angsty, rebellious, or destructive, continue to believe that life can be beautiful, lovely, and maybe even lively. Where both groups embrace the all-too-important fact that life's (often) a bitch, one throws a finger in everyone's face and the other hangs on to who-the-fuck-knows-what. Hope, probably.

The music's romanticism is sharp, and so, as Chopin's was grounded in "harmony, counterpoint, and fugue," so is Belle & Sebastian's grounded in reality and in the honest belief that life can be beautiful. As such, the album becomes wistful, blurring the line between being pensive and being content. Its joie de vivre means when it's happy, it's exuberant. Its romanticism means when it's sad, it's either nostalgic or just selflessly hopeful, roaming along in a haze of comfortable familiarity (which is always changing).

Rarely does music, lyrics, and statement (otherwise known as swagger in bands like Bad Company) come together so well on an album as they do on this one. And I ask you, how can anyone so me-against-the-world love the world so much? Key theme: books.

By the way, the musicianship is astounding; tight, lyrical, and professional. Thus, a song like Asleep on a Sunbeam still wins, and when those horns drop in you'd think the album had peaked.

Album Art (One Dominant Color)

Carmina Burana - Carl Orff (1937)

if you think the obsession in music with "fucking bitches" started with gangsta rap, then please take a seat.



that's a page from a 12th century text called Carmina Burana, or "Songs from Benediktbeurn," written entirely in Medieval Latin. created by a couple clergy students, the manuscripts concerns itself with themes of the fickleness of fortune and wealth, the ephemeral nature of life, the joy of the return of Spring, and the pleasures and perils of drinking, gluttony, gambling, and, of course, lust. if the drawing above doesn't demonstrate how loopy in love with decadence and sex were the minds of these kids, then give me a moment.

give me 800 years.

in 1937 Germany, the Frankfurt Opera premiered a piece composed by Carl Orff called Carmina Burana, a "scenic cantata" that used various parts of the original medieval text as its libretto. Orff's full Latin title was Carmina Burana: Cantiones profanae cantoribus et choris cantandae comitantibus instrumentis atque imaginibus magicis, or "Songs of Beurn: Secular songs for singers and choruses to be sung together with instruments and magic images."

i don't know about the premiere, but the first time time i saw a performance of Carmina Burana, all the magic images were in my head. the melodies are so catchy, it hurts. the instrumentation is glittery, the rhythms are like running through a meadow. angels and demons fly out of the soloists' throats. most importantly, this is without a doubt one of the most epic collections of music ever created. and it's raunchy, too.

the best example i'll give are the lyrics from the "Tempus est iocundum." i won't say it explicitly, but the chorus appears to be quite the ejection of excitement...

Tempus es iocundum,	This is the joyful time,
o virgines,	O maidens,
modo congaudete	rejoice with them,
vos iuvenes.	young men!
(Baritone)
Oh, oh, oh,	Oh! Oh! Oh!
totus floreo,	I am bursting out all over!
iam amore virginali	I am burning all over with first love!
totus ardeo, novus, novus amor est, quo pereo.	New, new love is what I am dying of!
(Women)
Mea me confortat	I am heartened
promissio,	by my promise,
mea me deportat	I am downcast by my refusal
(Soprano and boys)
Oh, oh, oh	Oh! Oh! Oh!
totus floreo	I am bursting out all over!
iam amore virginali	I am burning all over with first love!
totus ardeo, novus, novus amor est, quo pereo.	New, new love is what I am dying of!
(Men)
Tempore brumali	In the winter
vir patiens,	man is patient,
animo vernali	the breath of spring
lasciviens.	makes him lust.
(Baritone)
Oh, oh, oh,	Oh! Oh! Oh!
totus floreo,	I am bursting out all over!
iam amore virginali	I am burning all over with first love!
totus ardeo, novus, novus amor est, quo pereo.	New, new love is what I am dying of!
(Women)
Mea mecum ludit	My virginity
virginitas,	makes me frisky,
mea me detrudit	my simplicity
simplicitas.	holds me back.
(Soprano and Boys)
Oh, oh, oh,	Oh! Oh! Oh!
totus floreo,	I am bursting out all over!
iam amore virginali	I am burning all over with first love!
totus ardeo, novus, novus amor est, quo pereo.	New, new love is what I am dying of!
(Chorus)
Veni, domicella,	Come, my mistress,
cum gaudio,	with joy,
veni, veni, pulchra,	come, come, my pretty,
iam pereo.	I am dying!
(Baritone, Boys and Chorus)
Oh, oh, oh,	Oh! Oh! Oh!
totus floreo,	I am bursting out all over!
iam amore virginali	I am burning all over with first love!
totus ardeo, novus, novus amor est, quo pereo.	New, new love is what I am dying of!

then the next song, "Dulcissime," which consists of two lines of lyrics:

Dulcissime,	Sweetest one! Ah!
totam tibi subdo me!	I give myself to you totally!

wow. absolute orgasm. and it's not just the words. from the rapid, haphazard choral excitement of the piece right before, this is just one female vocalist moaning for 34 seconds.

you already know the most famous piece from this work, "O Fortuna." it's that incredibly epic song reminiscent of horses charging, planets crashing, slow-motion, and unstoppable glory in all its forms. check out these lyrics though:

O Fortuna	O Fortune,
velut luna	like the moon
statu variabilis,	you are changeable,
semper crescis	ever waxing
aut decrescis;	and waning;
vita detestabilis	hateful life
nunc obdurat	first oppresses
et tunc curat	and then soothes
ludo mentis aciem,	as fancy takes it;
egestatem,	poverty
potestatem	and power
dissolvit ut glaciem.	it melts them like ice.
Sors immanis	Fate - monstrous
et inanis,	and empty,
rota tu volubilis,	you whirling wheel,
status malus,	you are malevolent,
vana salus	well-being is vain
semper dissolubilis,	and always fades to nothing,
obumbrata	shadowed
et velata	and veiled
michi quoque niteris;	you plague me too;
nunc per ludum	now through the game
dorsum nudum	I bring my bare back
fero tui sceleris.	to your villainy.
Sors salutis	Fate is against me
et virtutis	in health
michi nunc contraria,	and virtue,
est affectus	driven on
et defectus	and weighted down,
semper in angaria.	always enslaved.
Hac in hora	So at this hour
sine mora	without delay
corde pulsum tangite;	pluck the vibrating strings;
quod per sortem	since Fate
sternit fortem,	strikes down the strong man,
mecum omnes plangite!	everyone weep with me!

these are the words that Orff's masterpiece starts AND ends with. essentially, even though much of the cantata has lyrics about love and drinking and growing and youthfulness and growing old and everything else you can think of, the composer realizes and makes you realize that all that is simply life. and it can be summed up with a fearful, epic, monolithic, tumbling, black, monstrous ode to Fortune and her fateful wheel that spins us around. and so, in an effort to replicate life, Orff ends Carmina Burana the way it starts.



birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death.

"Life ain't nothin' but bitches and money." -- Ice Cube, from "Gangsta Gangsta" on N.W.A's Straight Outta Compton.

download or watch.

Spacemen 3 - Taking Drugs to Make Music To Take Drugs To (original release: 1990)

This album makes me feel good.

Enough rock.

Enough feedback.

Hard enough.

Soft enough.

Slow enough.

Long enough.

Monolithic drums.

Dry feedback from the same riff over and over.

Spaced out, drowning vocals.

And textures.

I constantly find myself turning to this album especially when I can't listen to anything else.

In a way, I guess you can call this one of my comfort albums; an album you can turn to any time and feel fine.