I'm A Car Dancer

There's a feeling, indescribable
Connected, infected, reflected
Up your arms, down your ears, warming you
From the inside out and
Outside
In
Crackle and pop
Radio static clears
And a song
Comes
Through
Crack a grin and sing
Bang your head and dance like
No one's watching
All alone in your car.

Ukulele Nonsense Poem

To paraphrase Amanda Palmer:

Play your ukulele loud

Play your ukulele proud

"'Cos even if your grades are bad it doesn't mean you're failing"

She makes me wish I could have made

Any thing so quite as good

So catchy and amazing

It's just three chords

That's all it takes

To banish any evil

So

Play your ukulele loud

Play your ukulele proud

Art's not hard

Just do it! Now.

It's just liking knitting only not so stringy

Or so wooly or so 

Utterly confusing

So

Go out and buy your ukulele

Don't worry if you think you're stupid

It will probably make you feel better

Even if you have

No musical inclination!

I don't even have one and

I really really want one and

Perhaps I'll gift my self with one and

Busk my way though DC.

I'll play my favorite cover song

Even though the words are wrong

Bring joy for all the world to see

With the power of ukulele.

(Apologies to Amanda Palmer, and hear the original song here.)

Metal

The room is quiet, except for the occasional page turning or the underlying click-clack of laptop keyboards. The fluorescent lights shine over many toiling (or most likely slacking) high school students, their sweatshirts showing a school name in varying shades of navy, gray, or white. The teacher at the front of the room vaguely scribbles in the margin of some paper they’re grading, probably for the oh-so-lofty upperclassmen they’d rather be dealing with. Nobody likes supervising ninth graders.
I always sit about the fifth row up, in a chair that swings out to the right. I can’t concentrate if the chair goes the other direction. Today, however, concentration is not on my mind. I only have Spanish homework left, and my severe dislike of the subject prevents me from caring if I do a good job or not. The workbook pages pass quickly, with a little help from GoogleTranslate and the dictionary at the back of the chapter. There are more important matters at hand.

Back in the good old days of freshman year, my school hadn’t figured out how to block many music listening websites. There was Youtube, of course (and there still is, thank goodness), but for those of us who took our music seriously and didn’t want to pay, there was Pandora.

Laptop click-thunks open, headphones settle gently into ears. Click-click-click with the mouse and the lovely blue Pandora screen appears. Pandora, simple and brilliantly easy: input an artist, and the algorithms within the program spits back songs by similar artists. It’s better than listening to the radio, with fewer commercials.
So, what shall I listen to today? Well, let’s see what the algorithm gives me. Silence, then tick-tick-tick of a high hat cymbal, then the slow, dull boom-boom of a bass drum. I’ve never heard this song before. Before I can think anything else, fuzzy guitar distortion pounds my ears, and then a voice, gravelly and electronic, and then guitar the riff everyone knows, even if they don’t know where it’s from. I do know this song, but I’m not thinking anymore.

The guitar and the drums reverberate all through my body. I can feel the vibration in the floor. My boots are stuck to the ground, my head feels like it’s about to explode. I’m suddenly a million pounds. I can’t think, or feel, or do anything but listen. I don’t know if my eyes are open or closed, if I’m standing or sitting anymore. As the tempo rises and the guitars shriek, I’m flying too. Just as I’m sure the song is ending, the distortion rises and I slam back into my body, back from my journey riding the spikes and valleys of jagged vocals and throbbing drums. The song peters out with a long trail of background static and one last note.

I remember to breathe again. The feeling slowly returns to my fingers. My feet unstick themselves from the floor. The weight lifts. I experimentally shift in my chair, and my whole body protests. I’ve cramped up in the four minutes I’ve been sitting here. Dazedly, I gather my things for my next class, not sure what just happened or what I just heard. The song plays back through my thoughts. Belatedly, I check the song listing, and a surprised chuckle escapes my throat in this quiet room. The little box flashes an album cover, and the words “Iron Man” followed by the artist. I stop, and frown, and then smile as recognition dawns. Black Sabbath. Still grinning, I leave for my next class, humming under my breath.

On A Music High

Good music + good weather = good mood. A sure recipe for success. Today was perfect in that respect. I spent two of my free periods outside basking in the sun with my friends. Then I had crew practice where we got to run outside, an activity I usually loathe. Today I was booking. Nothing could keep me from running. It was amazing.

Then I get home and tell my friend Aaron that I bought tickets to the Streetlight Manifesto concert in our area. He was super excited (as am I- it's going to rock!) and then he imparted a bit of interesting news: there are three opening bands, and one of them is Larry and His Flask. So I watched the very video that is linked here, and my first reaction was "Oh. My. God. These guys are AMAZING!" My second reaction was "Beards", followed by "That bassist is INSANE!" and "I can't believe I'll get to see them live!"

To cap it all off, the Strokes came out with a new single called Under Cover of Darkness. It's honestly my favorite song of 2011 and I can't wait for the full album to come out. I've been listening to the song on replay and I still can't get enough.

It seems that music is my drug.

Pandora Radio

Whoever invented Pandora Radio is a genius, or at least very skilled at making people happy. For those who don't know, Pandora is an online, customizable music player that you can program with music that you like, and it will provide other music and songs that you may like according to specific criteria. They have some sort of formula that takes into account music style, vocals, instruments, and a ton of other factors in deciding what kind of music you already listen to, and what you might appreciate.

And appreciate it I do. Even with the occasional advertisement, Pandora gives me music to fill my life. I'm too much of a miser to actually spend money on iTunes, so I get my music other places (legally, I might add). Also, there's something incredibly fun about putting your ears in the control of a computerized program that decides what you shall listen to based on some sort of formula or algorithms. I've never thought of music like that before. Usually it's how it sounds, or what other people are listening to, that influences the listeners. With Pandora, it's from what you already like, but objectively, not subjectively. A bit of a takeoff from traditional musicology, in my opinion. I could be totally off base here, but as far as I know music was (and should be) about achieving sound and a connection with the listener.

Pandora's changing that, but not in a bad way. The listener still gets a connection, but it's with themselves. Bits of personality get embedded in the music you listen to, and bits also come out, influenced by music. It's like telling a circular story, but with a different ending each time. And if you don't like the ending, you can simply click the thumbs down button, and viola! you've got a new ending. Happy music listening times are here to stay.

Music

Music's a funny thing. Some days you feel like a certain type of music, and some days only one song will do. Each song has a unique ability to hold a particular memory or emotion, at least for me. Situations each come with their own song in my memories. Other times the lyrics or chords will play in my head, or I'll hear a snippet of a song and suddenly be back to a certain time or place that somehow became connected to that music. I have no idea why my memory works like that, but work it does.

I also seem to have my own private radio in my head, that plays music and lyrics from the countless songs I've listened to over the years... from Elton John and the Spice Girls (my two favorite artists when I was about 4-6), going through the Beatles, Queen (the first record I ever heard on vinyl), the Rolling Stones, Destiny's Child, a brief stint in R&B/ hip-hop, moving on to Top 40 pop, tangent-ing into Good Charlotte and MCR, migrating to Green Day, Nirvana, the Ramones, and the Strokes, hopping over a little to Streetlight Manifesto, taking the plunge with Black Sabbath, Seether, and Metallica, riding the wave to Smashing Pumpkins, the Sex Pistols, and Pearl Jam, surfacing for some Zac Brown Band, Miranda Lambert, and Trace Adkins, and finally landing (for the moment) with Avalanche City, the B-52's, Sons of Admirals, Eddplant, and Tom Milsom. Each of these artists have affected me differently, given me a little bit of them, their music, and their culture. The beauty of music is that the artists give only themselves and their music, and we, the listeners, take so much. On that level music is completely pure.

I remember the first time I heard Black Sabbath. I was in study hall, trying to do some homework, with my headphones in and my Pandora radio on. Suddenly there was a science, and then a single drum, pounding, pounding, and then that chord. That single power chord, building, building, rising up, and then the riff. I was floored. I'd never heard anything even close to that type of raw, heavy POWER. I literally stopped what I was doing, sat back in my chair, and just listened. I think I actually felt my heart beat in time with that riff. Going back and listening to it again, it still has that sense of pounding, inevitable, incredible power to it. Admittedly, there's not that first impression of starkness and "wow", but there's still something that resonates. I guess it's one of those things that will stay with me for a long time, simply for the impact it had at that one moment in time. Music's like that. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

< 3 (Less Than Three)

 I love Eddplant. His new song, Less Than Three, absolutely blew me away the first time I heard it. It's catchy, it's happy, and there's Christmas lights in the music video- what could be better?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeYpXEuHqvo&feature=sub

Who is Eddplant? He's a Youtube musician, part of the band Sons of Admirals, and an all around amazingly cool person. His songs are beautiful. His new album, Confidence Tricks, is available from DFTBA Records, on Amazon, and (soon) on iTunes. I can't wait to buy it! I've been listening to Less Than Three on replay for the last hour, and it still amazes me every time. I can't get enough of it.

Yours Forever, <3

"Let's Run Away Where They Can't Find Us Now" (also Sons of Admirals)

Post title is part of a song that's been playing in my head for the last 20 minutes. It's from Alex Day's album The World Is Mine, and it's called "You and Me". The album is classified under iTunes as "Dance", but it's really more of an electric/ techno/ indie album.

I originally found out about Alex Day through Youtube (his username is nerimon). He's part of a band called Sons of Admirals, which is a British group composed of 4 independent artists who collaborate and do covers of songs. I think they all met through Youtube, or something... anyway, they all have Youtube accounts and have released albums on their own, all of which are pretty amazing.

The Sons of Admirals:
Charlie McDonnell- charlieissocoollike on Youtube. #1 most subscribed person in the UK. Plays the ukulele and generally makes pretty funny videos. Album was just released.
Eddplant- eddplant on Youtube. Really talented singer, writes his own songs. Just released an EP and his full length album is coming out on December 12.
Alex Day- nerimon on Youtube. Singer/ songwriter, plays the guitar, drums, and bass. Vlogs, blogs, and is generally the "cocky" one in the group.
Tom Milsom- hexachordal on Youtube. Probably the most talented of the group in terms of musical ability- I don't think there's an instrument he can't play. Definitely the quirky one in the group; he has blue hair!

Out of all of them, I think either Ed or Tom are my favorites, followed by Charlie and then Alex. I love Alex's music, but there's something about him in his videos... cocky, I think. Tom is just plain weird, and his music is sublime and like nothing else you'll hear. Ed seems really sweet, and he's got a gorgeous voice. I can't wait for his album. Charlie is adorable. He just is. All of them are amazingly talented, and you should definetly go check them out. Their music is available on iTunes, and their "big hit" single is called "Here Comes My Baby". It's a cover of a Cat Stevens song, and the music video is hilarious and cute. Check them out! :)