Hey Reinvented 90's Bands

Just in time to follow Chris! post on Pearl Jam are Weezer and AFI, bands with solid roots in the 90's, with sweet new singles that only loosely resemble the stuff that made them famous...Weezer doesn't often sound this swing-songey (their X-mas specials have the cutesy melodies, but not the snap-your-fingers beat) and I have never heard Davey Havok sing this low before. Check out both below:


Weezer

AFI

Speaking of Davey H., he was a guest at the Rise Against show I saw a month or two ago...it was awesome. They covered Minor Threat, and Davey's pipes blew Tim's (Rise Against) away:



Went to Outside Lands yesterday, surprise awesome performance was The Dead Weather, Jack White's new band. Not generally my kind of music, but it was just an awesome show. Jack plays the drums in the band, but did a guitar solo to please the crowd, and it was awesome. Plus, the singer is kind of a babe, and watching her throw herself around on stage was, by itself, enough to keep my attention.



These guys were cool too:



Other highlight: the bad religion drummer was drumming for Tenacious D which made my day.

Speaking of BR, it is the 20th anniversary of their awesome classic album No Control...here's a live version of the best track:



Someone just sent me this Girltalk song; have no idea if it's new or old. But I love the start of it...the contrast between the words in the background and foreground songs is amazing...it's hilarious because the guy made the music fit together so well but the ideas of the songs couldn't be more different.

Don't get in this guy's car...

Well, it's my last day of work and I needed a post worthy of that. Alex requested this song when we began this blog so I've been holding on to this gem for a while... I think today is an appropriate time to release it. (Sorry about the sketchy singer, but hey its a sketchy song)


SINKER:

Girl Talk as a Music Video

Build your own custom video playlist at embedr.com

I found this online and decided it needed to go up on the blog. It's a compilation of Girl Talk's last album "Feed the Animals" if the entire thing was one giant music video. Awesome.

Will Smith Should Have Headlined Lollapalooza

MCA has cancer. It sucks. Especially if you bought tickets to any festival this summer where the Beastie Boys were inevitably going to blow your fucking brain wide open. All Points West festival in New Jersey replaced him with Jay-Z. Outside Lands chose Tenacious D. Austin City Limits and Lollapalooza both chose the Suck Suck Sucks (Yeah Yeah Yeahs). But that's probably because C3 Presents, the company that puts on both festivals, also owns the PR company that used to rep the band... eeeek corporate-ness!!!

But we had a big group at Lolla and all of us decided that we needed a new hip-hop headliner in place of the Beasties... not just some indie-shit two person band who sucks. I'm sorry if any of you like them, but they fucking blow.

So anyway, what became a big joke all weekend was how we needed a hip-hop headliner, but someone that was a total throwback to the 90s when Lolla was the big dog on the festival scene. What we need is a real American Hero. What we need is Will Smith.

I enter unto the editorial staff here exhbits of utter rockness. The first one that tells me that you wouldn't want to see this man live and in concert is the first one I say has no soul.

PARENTS JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND


WILD WILD WEST


FRESH PRINCE THEME


WELCOME TO MIAMI


SUMMERTIME


MEN IN BLACK


GETTING JIGGY WITH IT

So... tell me you wouldn't go see that in concert. I mean, shit. That would be fucking awesome. I say we start the petition. Get that man on stage. I saw Seven Pounds. That movie sucked, dude needs a blockbuster where he can write the theme song again.. it's worked in the past. And I feel 9pm at Lollapalooza is the best time to debut it. Let's shoot for 2010.

New Pearl Jam!!!!!

I just had a beer with Alex tonight and he reminded me that we had this awesome blog where we shared music with each other and discussed how great tastes we all had. I'm sorry. I suck.

BUT WAIT!!!

New Pearl Jam has come out and I want to tell you all about it. So, Eddie Vedder and his band of merrymen have a new album coming out next month called Backspacer. And while I have only heard the first single, "The Fixer", I already think we can tell something special is here. You have a band that rocked our faces off in the 90s... but how do you adopt to the current culture? I say the answer is Melody. The other weekend, Mark and I rocked out 15 rows back at the Kings of Leon's Friday night headline spot at Lollalapalooza (word to wise: if you can, see those guys live. awesome.) There's a band that has the same love of a 90s-rock band, but with the cool bass grooves and melodies that we've all come to expect from new artists. If you're Pearl Jam, an album of 15 tracks of what has worked before will be nothing more than a Greatest Hits record. You have to reinvent yourself. And I think they have.

"The Fixer" has the same feel as any track off of Only By Night, but with some more 90s-rock influence. Hell, I hear a bit of Third Eye Blind on this track when it jumps from the verse to the chorus. I'll be honest, that gets me physically excited. I am halfway erect right now. It's 90s-rock to the T. And it is awesome. If the song being great isn't enough, the video was directed by Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous) and is totally reminiscent of old-school live-show Pearl Jam videos when MTV still knew what the "m" stood for. I know I posted that thing a few weeks back about how there has in fact been stand-out bands since 1980 and Billy Bob Thorton just sucks... but if there was any doubt if 90 bands had staying power, I think Pearl Jam just debunked that shit. I heard next week Vedder is taking on gravity. Newton, watch your shit.

RataRemix

I know I have posted on Ratatat already but this is a little different. Check out Ratatat Remixes Vol. 1&2 The title explains the project and well… I have talked about Ratatat before, so on to the Music. You don’t get hook, line, sinker on this one because it doesn’t really make sense.

Put the stereo on 11 for these…

Rad: Notorious B.I.G. – Party and Bullshit
Ill: Beanie Sigel & Jay-Z – Glock Nines
Dope: Memphis Sleek – Alright



Glock Nines

The Way We Were

Ok, first things first, I know that I've been MIA. The school year is back in swing here in San Francisco and I have young minds to corrupt. While drafting up tomorrow's lesson plan I got to listening to some of my favorite tunes and it occurred to me:

Every school year there are students who don't come back. Some of these kids go on to amass what amounts to a pre-tween cult following as their former classmates busy themselves speculating as to what really happened to them.

In the music world, this phenominon presents itself when bands who were really great simply stop making albums and disappear. We have to convince ourselves that they have left us dejected, musically unfulfilled and considerably less cool because they are off doing something very, very important. In my mind, these three bands are curing cancer, creating an AIDS vaccine and erasing the collective conscious of the Bush presidency. They are THAT good:

The New Radicals

The New Radicals were an American rock band active in the late 1990s, centered on frontman Gregg Alexander, who wrote and produced all of their songs and was the sole constant member.

Tired of touring and promotional interviews, Alexander disbanded the group in mid-1999 before the release of their second single.

The Format

The Format was an indie pop band formed by Arizona natives Nate Ruess and Sam Means. The band announced a hiatus on February 4, 2008.

Tsunami Bomb

Tsunami Bomb was a punk rock band from Petaluma, California that formed in 1998 and broke up in October 2005.

Atmosphere

Yeah, you all know them. This is my favorite version of my favorite song off the most recent album. It's a live version of "Music Box," and I think the pace of the live performance really makes it - the recording doesn't have enough in it.

What a cool performance...it just drips real, from the bare-bones performance to the story in the song (you know this little girl). Awesome.

No Posin'

My friend representing the big A in Altavista sent me this artist Matt Posner today. I don't know too much about him except he is from Southfield MI. Its a mix between pop and hip hop. Overall from what i've heard it seems pretty upbeat and good feel good party music. On March 1st 2009, Mike released his first mixtape, A Matter of Time, with DJ Benzi and Don Cannon. This one goes out to the Conductor.

Cooler than Me


Evil Woman

Throw Stones At Glasvegas

Oh hell, I’m bored and feeling generous today.

Check out Glasvegas…

The album get monotonous but these two standout.

Discover Discovery

Last night I was out at a little house party, yes, I was out on a week night. ..

Side story: It is “beer and nachos week” at the boathouse, which means going out every night and compromising all the training we have done in the last year. It is always the week after Canadian Henley

Anyways… so back to the party, this chick puts on her iPod and a song comes on that I know all the lyrics to, but still have no idea what it is. I finally give in and look at the iPod. I’ll have you know I hate doing this; hate, hate, hate it!!! I want people looking at my iPod! Guess what, I still have no clue who it is. Then another song comes on by the same band and I know all the lyrics again, but don’t know how. So I send a quick text to myself of the band so I can do some research at work. The next morning I searched in my iTunes for the band and nothing came up, so then off to the great internet I went. The second I saw the album art I remembered… When I was in my huge Vampire Wknd kick I wanted more music by them and I discovered this young side project called Discovery with the guys from Ra Ra (just checked my gmail and I was sending the link around in Febuary). At the time it was just a few demos (which is what I heard on the iPod) and now it is a full album. Granted the demos ended up being the best part, I still think it is worth to post here.

Discovery – Self Titled

Hook: Osaka Loop Line
Line: Orange Shirt
Sinker: So Insane

Can You Discover? Is a cover of Ra Ra’s Can You See? Kinda funky.

Amp and Del

Here is a quickie for missing last week. I was up in Canada, giving them some U.S.A. lovin’
Amplive remixed Radiohead’s “In Rainbows”, the album is free in the website
http://www.onesevensevensix.com/amplive/
First time I heard this remix I was instantly blown away… plus it has Del, and well, he is just rad.

Amplive - Video Tapez

Matt & Kim

This song is "the one from the Bacardi commercial" and is awesome.

Matt & Kim - Daylight

My Favorite, though, is definitely "Yeah Yeah;" check it out below:

It's From Some Movie

My friend was watching me try to write for this thing and suggested her new favorite song of the moment; it's from some movie apparently. Give it a little time to build up, and it's not bad at all...check it out:



This next one was in Rolling Stone and actually turned out pretty good...reminds me of The Shins:



Have I posted this one yet? Cuz it's awesome: