From the Guardian's overview of the Noughties:
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There is a parlour game you can play to gauge how dramatically rock and pop music has changed in the course of a decade. Imagine a music fan from the start of the decade is transported to its end, and plonked in front of the Christmas Top of the Pops: how confused would they be? In the case of the 1960s, their bafflement would be total: imagine the fan from 1960 – with his Brylcreem, his Tommy Steele albums and his suspicion that trad-jazz might be the future of pop – gawping incredulously at the sight of Thunderclap Newman and Jimi Hendrix.
The same would go for the 1970s: what would even the most forward-thinking "head", their mind recently blown at the Isle of Wight festival, make of the fact that Jethro Tull and the Moody Blues had been supplanted by punk, disco and Gary Numan?
But the fan of 2000, shuttled forward to 2009's Christmas Top of the Pops (handily taken out of mothballs this year), would probably feel weirdly familiar with the show's contents. They might wonder whatever happened to nu-metal, although the rise of emo might have given them an inkling; and they might be bemused by the sheer number of synthesiser-prodding female singer-songwriters, such as Lady Gaga and Little Boots.
In truth, though, the music that's big in 2009 isn't all that different from what was big in 2000. Rock's lingua franca remains the post-Oasis, post-Radiohead big stadium ballad, replete with keep-your-chin-up lyrics, usually suggesting you "hold on". R&B isn't quite as staggeringly strange and futuristic as it seemed at the start of the noughties: in perhaps the decade's solitary example of genuinely odd and innovative music that wasn't by Radiohead finding a mass audience, producers Timbaland, the Neptunes and Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins competed to see who could make the weirdest-sounding No 1 single. Yet, judging by the sound of Beyonce's Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It), R&B is still the source of the most thrilling pop music.
That seems true to me, but I just chalked it up to being an old fart who wasn't paying attention to all the hyphy and crunk and grime and dubstep.
The late nineties into the new millenium was all about the popstar and that just didn't really change that much over the last decade.
There was never the broad based, generational cultural upheaval in music. In the business and technology the change was huge. By the end of the next decade the music business will be unrecognizable.
SO, I just spent way too much on my Dh's Xmas present. [link]
It combines two of his main geeky loves, Beatles music and tech--if I could have gotten it to somehow connect to a motorcycle, it would have won the gift trifecta.
The Bouncing Souls have a run of shows after Christmas called Home for the Holidays (I believe they got the practice from the Mighty Mighty Bosstones). For three (this year FOUR!) days they play a different set list every night and have different opening acts. And then there are afterparties with even more bands. It's pretty much heaven.
This year they're having a setlist contest. They'll be picking four. I don't know that anyone 'round here knows the Souls well enough to relate to the following, but here is mine:
• Here We Go
• I Like Your Mom
• The Freaks, Nerds, And Romantics
• The Gold Song
____________________
• Late Bloomer
• So Jersey
• I Think That The World (actually wanted Mental Bits, but its not an option )
• Joe Lies (When He Cries)
____________________
• Private Radio
• Night Train
• That Song
• Kid
• Cracked
• Serenity
• Ghosts On The Boardwalk
• Sing Along Forever
____________________
• Better Things (The Kinks)
• Hybrid Moments (Misfits) (unless it is night four, then this is where you put • Born To Lose (Johnny Cash))
• Fight To Live
• K8 Is Great
• True Believers
This has been so mad fun I don't even care if I win. I went with a big loud opener, a few slower ones to catch their breath, a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, and then some wham-bam in the end.
I'm pretty pleased with it.
I'm thinking about picking up a couple of Christmas cds this year, Tori Amos's Midwinter Graces and Sting's If on a Winter's Night. Has anyone else listened to these and thinks they're worth it?
I'm curious about Sting's too. I've listened to the samples, and I can't decide if it's weird or just cool. I do like a lot of his choices, like "The Cherry Tree Carol".
I can't decide if it's weird or just cool.
You Know, I Used To Be Kind Of Cool Once
I gave up on Tori Amos since The Beekeeper, but From the Choirgirl Hotel is maybe one of the best albums I ever had the chance of listen to ("pleasure" is inapplicable in this case). "Playboy Mommy" still hurts me like nothing else can. And of course I bought tickets to her show in Israel, even when it was after my big crush on her (musically), 3 seconds after they were available. Such is the nature of love.
Sometime, about 4 computer formatting ago, I had every last song of hers.
Then I got distracted by Greg Dulli. Still there, AIFG.
The Beatles: 1000 Years Later [link]
