Java Hair

I’ve been lax with the music posts lately, too many presentations to prepare and technical stuff to get done, so I thought I’d take the time to post something today and liven up the blog a littel bit. All this talk about Forms, ADF, and Java can get a little dry sometimes.

Alkaline Trio has been around for a while now, and in my opinion they haven’t exactly been getting better. They are a 3 member (big surprise, there, paty poker netunbegrenztes frei spielgratis online poker gamespoker texas holdem pc gamepoker spielen spielgelddeutsches online pokerpoker bonus codestrip poker pc gameparty poker deposit bonusholdem poker turnieronline poker ohne geldparty poker bonuscodewww poker spielenpoker bonus reviewregeln für texas holdempoker bonus ohne einzahlungtexas holdem poker onlinegiochi on linestrip poker game online,strip poker online gratis,strip poker onlinegioco poker in italianogioco poker da scaricare7 card stud onlineonline gamesbet and win pokerstreap poker onlinesrtip poker gratisistruzioni gioco pokertorneo poker gratisstip poker onlinestrip poker online demotornei poker texas holdempoker slot gratisno deposit bonus pokergioco onlinepoker texas holdem onlinevideo poker gratisadvance cash loan payday,advance cash cash loan loan payday quick,advance cash loan payday todaycash advance,business cash advance,online cash advancecash till payday loaninstant online guaranteed cash advance credit card,cash advance from credit card,cash advance credit cardfree online casino gamblinghow to win at rouletteplay free slots gamemultistrike video pokerwinning at video pokercomputer black jackcasino secure online gamblingcraps free online play,free craps,free online casino game crapsfree black jack gameplaytech online casino heh?) punkish rock band with some definite goth tendencies which have been emphasized a lot more in later albums which have also become a little more mainstream.

My favorite Alkaline Trio album is “Maybe I’ll Catch Fire.” It has a lot of catchy tunes that are somewhat dark and comic in nature. The song “F* You, Aurora” about a town in Illinois named Aurora in which there was a bad car accident that took the life of one of the band members friend’s. It includes the lyric s “…And although it’s all my fault, The blaming myself had to come to an end. So I say:F*** you Aurora, you took my only friend. You won’t catch me behind the wheel, Of a Chrysler ever again.” Matt Skiba has a flair for good lyrics.

My other favorite song on the album is simple entitled “Radio”. It is one of the best I-hate-you and wish-you-would-die type of songs out there. With lyrics including “I wish you, would take your radio to bathe with you, plugged in and ready to fall,” and “while you’re taking your time with apologies, I’m making plans for revenge,” it gets my vote for one of the best sing-along songs ever. Not that I’m bitter or anything, but everyone has a bad day every once in a while and just needs to get it out somehow, don’t you think?

Other albums I would recommend by the Trio include “From Here to Infirmary” and “Goddammit”. “From Here to Infirmary” is definitely more pop-punkish than the other two, it has some better production values, and was their first album to get any real airplay. It is still pretty funny in that dark humor kind of way and so definitely worth a listen to.

That’s all I got for today, and the funny thing is, I’m in a good mood, not bitter at all, go figure.

Time for another music review/tirade/lesson. As you will eventually guess if you stick around this blog long enough, I have somewhat diverse taste in music. I listen to everything from Hip-hop to Punk Rock to Alternative Country to Electronica and anything in-between.

About a year ago I learned of a guy who records under the nom de plume of Girl Talk. He is really a DJ and Mash-Up artist and not so much a singer/songwriter or a musician but in some cases he makes some great music just the same.

Though his latest album is a masterpiece, some of his earlier stuff is pretty bad. “Secret Diary” from 2002 is difficult for me to listen to. If you want to hear something really awful or feel like punishing your cube-mates, blast some of that, really it doesn’t matter which song.

With “Secret Diary” and on into “Unstoppable” you can see the seeds of what eventually became “Nightripper” which he released in 2006. With “Nightripper”, Greg Gillis aka Girl Talk combined all of those great samples he must have catologued in that head of his into something musical. With the first album, he had some great samples but wasn’t really sure how to put them together musically and instead strung them together with lots of noise, a lot of times sounding like someone was turning a radio dial, and sometimes sounding like someone running their nails across a chalkboard. Like I said earlier, this one can be painful to take.

On the other hand, if you want to listen to an example of what Mash-Up artistry really is take a listen to “Night Ripper”. This album combines riffs and samples from a huge variety of songs, from Elton John and Cyndi Lauper to 2 Live Crew and Eminem, into one cohesive collection of actual musical noise. In my opinion it is really a work of genius that can only be fully explained by listening to it. In this album he takes all those great samples and instead of putting them together with random noise, incorporates them into actual songs. I’m pretty sure I said that he wasn’t a musician, but anyone who can write songs like this has got to be classified as a musician, don’t you think?

So, since many may have found my last post to be pretty drab, all about ADF and all, I decided I’d spice up this blog by every now and then letting you all in on what music I’m listening to. If I get crazy enough, maybe I’ll even take the time to post a last.fm widget up here so you can get the latest info on what I’m listening to (come on, you know you want to).

My musical tastes are fairly varied, in the last hour while I’ve been sitting here, I’ve been listening to Jay-Z (his first, Reasonable Doubt), Kittie (their latest), and Feist (The Reminder). All good stuff, but I really have a soft spot for female-lead punk rock, and the more they don’t fight the poppiness of punk the better.

That being said, the album I’ve probably spent the most time listening to over the last month, the cd that has been in my car since I got it, is the latest album by The Dollyrots, Because I’m Awesome. I like it because it is pretty much pop-punk the way it should be, a lot of tongue-in-cheek in both the lyrics and the music. I was a pretty big fan of The Donnas years back, but as they’ve gotten older, and especially on their newest releasse, they just seem to take themselves too seriously. The Dollyrots, on the other hand, still do not, not with lyrics like “I don’t need you cause I’m neato and I beat you, ’cause I’m awsome.”

So if you are in the mood for some good ole pop-punk check out the Dollyrots, they won’t disappoint.