Unlikely Words » music

Prince wrote Manic Monday and Nothing Compares 2 U

aaron cohen — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:45:03 +0000

I guess Prince writes a lot of songs, but I was still surprised to find out he wrote Nothing Compares 2 U, made famous by Sinead O'Connor, and also Manic Monday made famous by The Bangles.

The other surprise from this is that the woman from 4NonBlondes wrote Pink's entire album.

My favorite of these all time is that Young MC wrote most of Tone Loc's album, including Wild Thing and Funky Cold Medina, but that's probably just because I love Young MC.

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Holy shit. Glenn Danzig’s Yelp Reviews

aaron cohen — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:10:16 +0000

Here are Glenn Danzig's Yelp reviews. As good as Cormac McCarthy's.

"If this place was any shittier and more unoriginal, it'd be called "The Misfits with Michael Graves"."

Via @Carveslayer

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Lookout Records shutting down

aaron cohen — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:11:02 +0000

Gosh, this is sad news. The label that was home at one point or another to Screeching Weasel, Green Day, Avail, Rancid, and Operation Ivy, among others, stopped putting out new music in 2005, and since then has struggled to right the ship. Unfortunately, losing their distributor, CD printer, and mail order provider in the span of a year was too much to overcome. This is a microcosm of something, but really the label kind of died in 2005 when they gambled on new bands with money owed to the higher earning older bands. They lost and thus lost the rights to Green Day and Op Ivy's back catalog. The specifics aren't clear in their blog post, but it looks like their sending everything left over back to the bands. Here's an interview with Lookout Records co-founder, Larry Livermore.

Lookout Records will be closing its doors over the next few months. Most people that are reading this know that the label stopped releasing material towards the end of 2005. It was then that Lookout ended its long relationships with Green Day, Operation Ivy and a few other artists. That development meant significantly scaling down the business, which included letting the staff go and moving from the label's Berkeley headquarters and warehouse into a small office.

It wasn't easy to keep catalog items in print and that became especially challenging when our primary compact disc manufacturer and our distribution partner Lumberjack-Mordam went out of business unexpectedly. Having our physical distributor and a manufacturer go belly up disrupted our sales, meant a significant loss of income, and caused inventory and accounting problems. The next year when our mail order partner, Little Type, went out of business, Lookout was also dealt another significant blow. We did our best to resolve the issued caused by these developments but both ultimately amounted to a lot more work and severely impacted income.

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Story of Tweeter and the Monkey Man

aaron cohen — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:36:01 +0000

Not only does the Traveling Wilburys song Tweeter and the Monkey Man mention the titles of 8 Bruce Springstein songs, it also mentions 2 additional songs released AFTER the album came out. The songs are: "Stolen Car", "Mansion On The Hill", "Thunder Road", "State Trooper", "Factory", "The River", "Lion's Den", "Jersey Girl", "Lion's Den", and "Paradise".

Additionally, the Wiki surmises that Tweeter is a male to female transsexual, which I'd never thought about before.

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LCD Soundsystem’s SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS trailer

aaron cohen — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:36:01 +0000

Well, I'd watch this twice. Sounds like Chuck Klosterman doing the interviewing.

On April 2nd 2011, LCD Soundsystem played its final show at Madison Square Garden. LCD frontman James Murphy had made the conscious decision to disband one of the most celebrated and influential bands of its generation at the peak of its popularity, ensuring that the band would go out on top with the biggest and most ambitious concert of its career. The instantly sold out, near four-hour extravaganza did just that, moving the thousands in attendance to tears of joy and grief, with NEW YORK magazine calling the event 'a marvel of pure craft" and TIME magazine lamenting "we may never dance again.' SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS is both a narrative film documenting this once in a life time performance and an intimate portrait of James Murphy as he navigates the lead-up to the show, the day after, and the personal and professional ramifications of his decision.

Directed by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace

Via Senator John

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Daft Punk’s Derezzed as disc drive music

aaron cohen — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:28:24 +0000

Youtube user MrSolidSnake745 makes pretty awesome floppy disc music. Here's Daft Punk's Derezzed, which I think is his newest.

If this isn't enough for you, see also

Super Mario Remake,

Imperial March on three floppy drives, and Party Rock Anthem on five floppy drives.

Via Stellar Interesting

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Real music video innovation

aaron cohen — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:35:20 +0000

It's possible everyone's seen this already, but just in case.

"When Keith [Schoffield] came up with this idea of 'crotchfaces,' we just thought it was hilarious. He started coming up with all these gags and describing the characters living in this sort of parallel world, and we were sold. He wasn't sure if we'd be down to play the leads, but our take on this was, if we're going to do this, we need to go all the way. So we played the dickheads, essentially."

Quote via Rolling Stone. Video via Stellar.

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Punk rock dads

aaron cohen — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 20:14:05 +0000

This is now the movie I most want to see. Opens in Boston at Kendall Theater on 11/11.

This revealing and touching film asks what happens when a generation’s ultimate anti-authoritarians — punk rockers — become society’s ultimate authorities — dads. With a large chorus of punk rock’s leading men – Blink-182′s Mark Hoppus, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea, Rise Against’s Tim McIlrath – THE OTHER F WORD follows Jim Lindberg, a 20-year veteran of the skate punk band Pennywise, on his hysterical and moving journey from belting his band’s anthem “F–k Authority,” to embracing his ultimately authoritarian role in mid-life: fatherhood.

Here's the trailer:

Via Laughing Squid / Brand Flakes for Breakfast

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How much does a band get paid from Spotify?

aaron cohen — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:50:31 +0000

I'm always fascinated by the 'economics of music' blog posts when they come from the musicians. Uniform Motion has a new album out, but not in stores because they don't have a distributor. They were kind enough to let us know what they earn when you listen to their music (or buy it from a digital service like iTunes). These numbers also make more clear their decision to let you pay what you want for a digital download. *The post is in Euros, but you'll understand.

With Spotify, we’ll get 0.003 EUR/play.
If you listen to the album all the way through, we’ll get 0.029 EUR.
If you listen to the album 10 times on Spotify, we’ll get 0.29 EUR
If you listen to it a hundred times, we’ll get 2.94 EUR
If you listen to the album 1,000 times (once a day for 3 years!) we’ll get 29.47 EUR!
If you use the free version of Spotify, it won’t cost you anything. Spotify will make money from ads. If you use any of the paid versions, we have no idea how they carve up the money. They only disclose this information to the Major record labels…

Via Stellar / @Chartier

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MC Hammer and gangster politics

aaron cohen — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 23:43:42 +0000

Saw this analogy about John Huntsman and the Republican presidential primary field.

Huntsman is like a rapper who isn’t gangsta, doesn’t want to be gangsta, and knows that some of the people making their name on gangsta don’t want you to know that they have problems with “authenticity.” The problem is, Huntsman is like M.C. Hammer—a family-friendly rapper with mass-market dance moves and baggy pants—and he’s certain that, sooner or later, people are going to get tired of all the songs about gangbanging, and what they’ll want instead is … him and his G-rated rhymes and his dance moves and clown pants. Because that was popular before gangsta.

Political calculations aside, the problem with the analogy is that MC Hammer did try to go gangster when he moved to Deathrow Records, dropped "MC" from his name, and released The Funky Headhunter. Young MC went gangster, too, Tone Loc was never G rated, would Kid N' Play work in the analogy?

via Balloon Juice.

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For crying out loud. James Brown ramen advertisement

aaron cohen — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:29:58 +0000

Freddy Mercury wasn't enough, so here's ‪James Brown selling ramen.

Via CLiu

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Freddie Mercury selling ramen

aaron cohen — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:04:37 +0000

I don't want to live in a world where Freddy Mercury isn't allowed to sell you ramen‪.

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Open letters to Bon Jovi

aaron cohen — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:07:25 +0000

Steve Jobs isn’t the problem here. The music industry is the problem—too many bad songs are the problem. It’s the reason the audience doesn’t roar when you talk about playing a new track or two that were added for a re-release of your greatest hits. If your greatest hits were from the last three years, imagine how much money you’d be making on album sales even beyond your touring.

In a letter from Jeremy Horwitz to Bon Jovi who recently said "Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business."

Via

But then I also went back to look at all of the Open Letters to Bon Jovi I could find:

An Open Letter to Bon Jovi (Regarding Setlists)

An Open Letter to Bon Jovi (Regarding Palestine)

An Open Letter to Bon Jovi (Plea for Tickets)

An Open Letter to Bon Jovi (Crush Review)

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Same name, different face

aaron cohen — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 18:49:51 +0000

Daniel Bejar is an artist with a project he calls Googlegänger. Daniel Bejar is also the name of a musician from Vancouver.

This is what Bejar did: He grew his hair into a frizzy mane, and he grew a beard, and then he set about re-creating some of the most widely circulated images of Bejar the musician, who has frizzy hair and a beard. Their faces aren’t identical—Bejar the artist has a more assertive brow and a narrower face—but the resemblance in the images is pretty close. He called his project “The Googlegänger,” and he put his work online. So far, at least two reviews of the new Destroyer album, “Kaputt,” have been accompanied by images of Bejar instead of Bejar.

Via kayfabe and Charlie Todd.

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If you watch Weezer backwards

aaron cohen — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 01:33:42 +0000

If you watch Weezer backwards, it’s about four rich guys who aren’t very good, but they practice hard, sacrifice all their wealth and eventually become one of the greatest bands of the decade.

via iywib and No You Shut Up

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Jesus is My Friend on Glee

aaron cohen — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 01:18:31 +0000

Watching Glee on DVR and noticed Oral Intensity did a cover of Sonseed's Jesus Is My Friend. If you haven't watched this video, you really owe it to yourself find sometime to watch what critics have called, "Not only one of the funniest music videos of ALL time, but also a really interesting use of religious appropriation of popular musical culture. A must see."*

*If a critic said this, it's a coincidence because I just made it up.
**I've probably posted this before.

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Steve Martin’s banjo skills

aaron cohen — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:18:51 +0000

I'm not sure how I missed the fact that Steve Martin plays the banjo, but he does, and he's good.

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How to hire an SEO expert

aaron cohen — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 21:59:14 +0000

This is the standard against which all SEO experts should be measured. If your SEO consultant isn't a rapper you're really not spending your budget the right way.

Via Videogum, thanks Adam.

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Odd Future on Jimmy Fallon

aaron cohen — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 22:52:07 +0000

You might have seen this last week, but if you didn't, watch Odd Future on Jimmy Fallon performing 'Sandwitches'. Exciting.

Thanks, Andy.

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Full Ol’ Dirty Bastard documentary on Hulu

aaron cohen — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 14:59:56 +0000

Dirty: One Word Can Change The World is available for viewing on Hulu. Here's a description from a review:

Dirty effectively straddles the fine line of paying homage to an artist while still examining his negative attributes. Although one of ODB's children, son Barson, makes an apperance, noticeably absent are his other children and their mothers, who would obviously have a different, perhaps more demeaning perspective of him. But this omission is understandable, since the mothers have most likely moved on and probably want to stay away from the public scrutiny that comes from being involved with someone as controversial as the Ol' Dirty Bastard.

Thanks, Seth!

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