Posts tagged with "music"

Guilt-Free Selfishness

I’ve been brave enough to lis­ten to The Postal Service late­ly, although my enjoy­ment is restrict­ed to head­phones on the bus. It’s still some­thing that’s a lit­tle too per­son­al to be lis­ten­ing through speak­ers, and for some rea­son, I’m not com­fort­able with oth­ers hear­ing the same songs that I do. It’s as if being able to hear the same trip­py beats and soft voic­es gives oth­er peo­ple the abil­i­ty to expe­ri­ence the mem­o­ries that the music brings to my mind; curves in a gen­tle face, car rides through the thick sum­mer air, ner­vous fum­blings on the couch, the scent of unfa­mil­iar sheets.

They’re all good mem­o­ries, noth­ing painful any­more, but it’s all some­thing I’d like to keep to myself for just a lit­tle longer.

The Differences Of Sad Songs

I have one playlist of all the sad songs in my col­lec­tion. I named it OAC because that was the year I first made the playlist (it has since come to define that time in my life), and it’s grown from 11 songs to over 50.

I late­ly find myself skip­ping songs when I lis­ten to that par­tic­u­lar playlist, and to me, the entire point of playlists is so that one does­n’t have to skip songs. I’ve start­ed to dis­tin­guish between two types of sad emo­tions, and with this dis­tinc­tion comes the sep­a­ra­tion of two types of sad songs.

There is the “true sad”, which delves into depres­sion. Songs such as Tindersticks – Trouble Every Day, or Dir En Grey – Mushi are the per­fect com­pli­ments for such a mood. Then there’s the “hurts-so-good sad”, where there’s bare­ly any sad­ness at all, but just enough to remind one­self of what one has been through and how far one has come. The ben­e­fi­cial sad­ness, which does good and not harm. The type of lin­ger­ing, resid­ual sad­ness that almost leaves one crav­ing more of the once famil­iar feel­ing. And with this beau­ti­ful emo­tion goes songs such as Bad Astronaut – These Days, Portishead – Wondering Star, Red Hot Chili Peppers – Otherside.

I need to make anoth­er playlist.

The Worst Band In Canadian History

I don’t like Nickelback. I don’t like them so much that I don’t even both­er cap­i­tal­iz­ing the name of their “band” or putting a link to their site. That’s because they suck. They’re pris­sy fucks play­ing watered down rock. All their songs sound the same, and this is proof.

Listen with head­phones because it’s two dif­fer­ent Nickelback songs, one on each chan­nel. And yet, it’s not two dif­fer­ent songs. Why? Because the tim­ing, chord pro­gres­sion, even cer­tain melod­ic parts are exact­ly the same. Both start with a voice and gui­tar, both end with a fade out that last the same amount of time. The list of sim­i­lar­i­ties go on and on.

Usually, play­ing two dif­fer­ent songs at the same time, even if they’re both by the same band, will sound all messed up if only a sin­gle part is dif­fer­ent, even just a sin­gle note in the bass line. That’s because good musi­cians take the time to devel­op songs, come up with new motifs, maybe even exper­i­ment. But not this. This is just Nickelback with a fuller sound. It’s so sad that it’s enter­tain­ing. I can’t stop lis­ten­ing. This should be hap­pen­ing at every show.

Once I was dat­ing some­one who bought a Nickelback album when we were com­ing up to the 1.5 year mark. I did­n’t see it com­ing at all. I mean, she liked David Usher, which is under­stand­able because he’s hot and comes out with decent mate­r­i­al, but there was no warn­ing of Nickelback. I was dev­as­tat­ed. I was crushed. Heartbroken. She might as well have said, “HEY GUESS WHAT I BEAT THE FUCK OUT OF SOME KID TODAY BUT ONLY BECAUSE SHE WAS OLD ENOUGH TO UNDERSTAND WHAT WAS HAPPENING AND TOO YOUNG TO DEFEND HERSELF”.

Ben Vs. Thom

I was glad to find out that Death Cab For Cutie isn’t a stu­dio band, after watch­ing their video for The New Year. They’re well timed, well rehearsed, and most impor­tant­ly, the vocals were spot on. However, I was sore­ly dis­ap­point­ed to find out that Ben Gibbard’s voice and lyrics don’t match the way he presents him­self. Why does this mat­ter? I have no fuck­ing clue. I guess I always pic­tured Ben as some skin­ny, young, emo god, so sud­den­ly see­ing him as an old­er man of mod­est looks was quite a sur­prise. He does­n’t even come close to match­ing the sex appeal of Tom Yorke, whom I imag­ined him to rival.

The Only Rabbits Foot

I’m gen­er­al­ly not a super­sti­tious per­son but I have this one super­sti­tion when I’m lis­ten­ing to my iPod. I always have my songs on ran­dom, and if two songs ever play in a row that were meant to be played in a row (i.e. in order on an album or if the sec­ond song devel­ops the motifs from the first) then I think I’ll have a good day.

I think it start­ed when I used to play lad­der match­es in WC3 with Jacky. She always lis­tened to music when she was play­ing, so she had her 8000 songs queued up. If Sigur Rós ever came up, she would know that we’d win. I don’t think she was ever wrong.