Don’t mess with the bull, Frenchies. You’ll get the horns.
My MacBook just about went across the room at the end of the 4×100 relay.
The Olympics are awesome.
Month: August 2008 (Page 2 of 2)
A few words about the methodology for my favorite songs list.
First, I had to own a song for it to appear on the list. Duh.
Second, I limited myself to one song per artist. After some consultation with a few other music geeks, I determined that I could consider both Beatles songs and John Lennon’s solo work separately. Same for Neil Finn’s work with Split Enz, Crowded House, The Finn Brothers, and on his own. Alas, no one made the final list under two different entries.
That did made some of the selection process a series of mini-tournaments to pick my favorite Beatles, Radiohead, Pearl Jam, etc. song.
So how did I put this together? First, I scrolled through my iTunes library and reviewed every song rated as five stars, pulling my favorites into a new playlist. Then, I reviewed all my four star songs to make sure none deserved an addition star. After this review, I started with a list of about 45 songs back in April. I purged and added and purged some more, but I doubt I ever got up to 50 songs for consideration. In fact, I got under 30 pretty quickly. By early June, I was sitting on a list of 22 songs that more-or-less included everything that made the final list. Those final two songs were the biggest struggle for some reason. At one point, both Marshall Crenshaw and John Lennon had songs at the tail end of the list. But, in time, they got bumped.
The rest of the list remained fairly static. I did a rough ranking, then compared each song to those next to it, decided which I liked best, and reranked them based on that. There was a song that at one point was in the top five that fell down into the second ten. One song that ended up in the top five wasn’t on the list until last week (You’ll read about that next week). But other than spending a lot of time thinking about what to write about each song, this was a fairly easy process.
Now that the gauntlet has been thrown, I hope to read some of your top 10 or 20 or whatever songs lists soon.
Songs 20-11 of my 20 favorite songs of all-time below the jump. I changed my mind; part two will come out next Friday.
20 “Born to Run” – Bruce Springsteen, 1975.
I have this theory, still in its infancy mind you, that all American rock groups must follow one of two models: Van Halen or Bruce Springsteen. They need to be focused on either having a good time for the sake of having a good time (VH), or on having a good time while talking about some important things with friends along the way (The Boss). Like I said, it’s new and I don’t know if it makes any sense at all.
In recent years, several indie rock artists, most notably The Arcade Fire, have mentioned Springsteen as one of their musical role models. When you examine Springsteen’s career, and see the sacrifices he made early on to maintain control of his music, and then the choices he made later without care for how it would affect his record sales or airplay, it makes sense that the indie kids would love him, even if they don’t write anthems meant to be sung by 18,000 people at once.
19 “She Sells Sanctuary” – The Cult, 1985.
One night, back in the day, a few of us gathered at a Kansas City restaurant to dine and drink. By chance, I ended up seated by one of my many brothers in music, David V. Sir V. and I drank and talked and drank and talked some more. Eventually one of us brought up The Cult’s “She Sells Sanctuary.” As legend has it, we spent the next 30 minutes discussing the brilliance of that track. Any song that elicits a 30 minute conversation deserves to be on my list of favorites.
Like just about every Cult song, this sounds phenomenal. But when you start digging into the lyrics…well, there just wasn’t much there. But damn can that Ian Astbury dance!
18 “Bitter Sweet Symphony” – The Verve, 1997.
One of the all-time great alt rock anthems – and a fitting coda to the Brit Pop era – it also sums up the career of The Verve nicely. A band with tremendous promise that was constantly derailed by bickering, egos, and drugs, they finally put it all together on their 1997 album, Urban Hymns. However, they failed to properly secure the rights to the sampled orchestral loop “Bitter Sweet Symphony” was built upon, and ended up losing all the royalties from this massive hit. Like clockwork, the band disintegrated, Richard Ashcroft went on to carve out a moderately successful solo career, and they’ve just decided to give the playing and recording music together thing another crack this year.
17 “Last Goodbye” – Jeff Buckley 1995.
There’s something about a great break-up song. Even when the breakup has passed, the heart has healed, and you’ve moved on, hearing it again reminds you of how you survived that rough patch and emerged a little wiser, a little tougher.
This undeniably beautiful tune is a classic break up song. It carries the extra weight of being Buckley’s only hit single before he slipped into a Memphis river for a late-night swim on May 29, 1997. While “Last Goodbye” was climbing the alt rock charts, I was in a particularly difficult stretch of my young, romantic life. The lines I’ve selected seemed to speak to my situation back then, and they still carry a bittersweet wallop today.
16 “Under the Milky Way” – The Church, 1988
A perfect melding of sound and title, this song came along just after I learned how to drive and had the freedom to roam around on warm summer evenings, with no plans or destinations, wondering what I was looking for.
15 “Welcome To The Terrordome” – Public Enemy, 1990.
When PE assembled to record their third studio album, the band was reeling. They had been called racists, anti-semites, anti-American, and were accused of seeking to turn an entire generation of black youths into domestic terrorists. And then they got us white, suburban kids listening and people really got pissed.
“Terrordome” was a fierce response to many of those charges. But it wasn’t just Chuck D. firing back at his critics. It was also a man explaining himself and his actions, and calling out the black community to take responsibility for ending the injustices he railed against. While the model for reacting to negative attention in the 1990s became that of Cobain/Vedder (retreating, looking inward), Chuck was thrusting his chest out saying, “Here I am. Here’s what I stand for. If you don’t like it, come and get me.”
14 “Battle Flag” – Lo Fidelity All Stars featuring Pigeonhead, 1998.
I’m not a big electronica fan, but the power of this song is undeniable. It’s been used in movies, TV shows, video games, and commercials, yet remains as essential today as it was a decade ago.
13 “Love Will Tear Us Apart” – Joy Division, 1980.
I think there’s a law, perhaps unwritten and only understood, that if you’re putting together a “best of” list that is primarily based on alternative rock, this song has to be included. Lennon may have sewn the first seeds for alternative rock in “Tomorrow Never Knows,” and the punks of 1977 may have nourished those seeds. But this song was the moment when alt rock truly took root and demanded its own place in the rock music family tree.
It’s a great song, there’s no denying that. However, you can’t discuss this song without at least acknowledging the rock ‘n roll martyr factor. A month after the song’s release, singer Ian Curtis took his own life. Guilt or morose fascination or just realization that there was far more to the song than was first apparent? Something after Curtis’ death made this stand up as the song that launched a genre.
12 “Raspberry Beret” – Prince, 1985
I had a very hard time picking out a Prince track. And there had to be a Prince track on the list. He’s had a ridiculous number of great songs over the years, and I probably listened to no artist more in the 1980s. This got the nod over songs like “Purple Rain,” “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” “I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man,” etc. It’s nearly a perfect pop song, nicely blending Prince’s twin influences of Beatlesque pop and classic R&B. It’s so perfect, in fact, that it probably took me 15 years to really appreciate it. And I wasn’t one of those haters back in 1985 who said, “It’s not Purple Rain II, so it sucks.” I liked it back then. I only learned to love it recently.
11 “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next” – Manic Street Preachers, 1998.
We needed some Welsh representation on the list. It just so happens that these Welshmen may have put together the finest anti-war song this side of the Vietnam era. Bonus points for taking the road less travelled and writing about the Spanish Civil War, something only The Clash had the guts to do before the Manics.
I used to call this the most pretentiously titled great song ever. However, while doing some reading, I learned that the title was actually taken from a Republican recruiting poster during the war, which showed a child who had been killed in a Nationalist bombing raid, with that phrase stamped at the bottom. The second half of the lyric I quote below was the reason a Republican soldier gave for enlisting.
Singing against war never sounded so glorious as the final two minutes of this song.
A quick but good trip to the lake over the weekend. There were four families, and ten kids total, at this get-together, which made things a little crazy. Especially when the three two-year-olds decided to get wound up. Unfortunately, we were the only family without an older kid – each of the other three had at least a seven-year-old – so our girls lagged behind everyone else a bit. While even the other two-year-olds were hopping into the water (with life jackets, of course), ours would only stick a toe in, or walk ankle deep while holding one of our hands. The house we spent Saturday at sits about 40 feet above the water, with a long staircase down to the boathouse and shore. M. walked up and down that staircase at least 25 times, as she struggled to fit in with the bigger kids and their games. It was a little sad to look up and see her, once again, tentatively starting down the stairs, talking to herself the entire time.
The older girls loved taking care of our girls and the other little ones, though. They kept telling us they were setting up a free daycare so the parents didn’t have to worry about the kids. Free is good. The oldest girl, who will be eight soon and is a total sweetheart, kept picking C. up and carrying her around, which C. completely loved. All the girls (seven of the ten kids were girls) also found a snail and decided to built a little town for him with rocks. By the end of the day, they had built a “house,” “library,” “gym,” and some other structures for him. They also had a birthday party for him. Whatever keeps them occupied.
We pretty much stuck to the boathouse since we had so many people. We took one quick boatride just before lunch, but that was the extent of our true lake time. We had perfect weather: low-to-mid 80s, low humidity, and cool evenings. You can’t ask for better than that in early August.
It was fun to get away. It would have been nice to stay longer, but only if there had been fewer families together for the weekend. I’m sure all the kids were getting on the parents’ nerves. Especially when some of our friends have very different ideas on how to discipline their kids than others do. There were about five minutes Sunday morning, before everyone else had woken up and while our girls were still mellow, when we could just sit there, relax, enjoy the silence, and breath in the clean, cool, lake air. And hope the girls all get scholarships so we can shift some money from the college fund to the lake house fund sooner than later.
We came back early yesterday, as S. had to run into work for a bit. By 12:30, the girls were asleep on the couch. A few minutes after S. left, I was asleep with them. I guess that’s a sign that we had fun.
Here is my look at the latest iPhone software update, the Application Store, and other things iPhone.
I’ve found the iPhone 2.0 software update to be a profoundly mixed-bag. One of the reasons that lines were (and continue to be) so long for the 3G iPhone is how successful the first generation model was. There were some opening weekend issues a week ago, as well, but things quickly fell into place. The January software update solved some minor stability issues and added some fun and useful new features. So the folks that decided to wait a year seemed justified to bite the bullet and head out to get the second generation phone.*
As I’ve already written, 2.0 does not seem ready for prime time. My phone, which was rock-solid-stable under 1.4 (or whatever the last version was) is now slower when moving from application to application, crawls when loading new screens, and often has a delay of several seconds when I attempt to use the keyboard. Frustrating.
Worse are the crashes. I had one crash in six plus months with the previous software. I’ve had numerous application crashes under 2.0, and one full phone crash. People who use theirs more and have more third party apps than I do are reporting even more frequent crashes and freezes. I’m no programmer, but a lot of developers seem to think these issues are because of instability in the phone OS rather than in the applications (although to be fair, there are some shitty applications out there that are no doubt causing problems).
So, frustration because it seems like we got a beta release rather than a fully baked version, but tempered by the hope that 2.1 is coming soon and will solve these issues.**
What about the apps themselves? I’ve only tried a few, but there are my favorites so far.
Perhaps my favorite is MLB.com At Bat. While it would be great if it streamed games live, instead it gives you a running line score of games along with a snapshot of what’s going on at that moment: pitcher, batter, count, outs, men on base. The coolest feature is the link to highlights. Select a game, click on the video icon, and you can get highlights of each game, often just a couple minutes after the play occurred. It’s like having Baseball Tonight on your phone, but without John Kruk et. al. ruining your night with their nonsense. My only quibble is that live box scores aren’t included: it ships you out to the MLB.com’s mobile website for those. Otherwise a great little app, especially for $6. I hope they don’t try to charge $30 for the entire season next year. And I would love it if ESPN did something like this for college basketball, although that’s probably asking way too much.
Another new favorite is <a href=”http://www.pandora.com/”>Pandora Radio</a>. Pandora Radio is an off-shoot of the Genome Project, which attempts to categorize music through its core elements, then connect bands and songs via these elements. You plug in a band or song you like, give Pandora a few moments to assemble a station for you, and soon you have a running playlist of music based off your first selection. For example, I’ve put together a station based on three bands I’m listening to a lot: Silversun Pickups, Frightened Rabbit, and Andrew Bird. Right now, my Pandora Radio is playing a song by Eels and tells me it was selected because it features mellow rock instrumentalism, folk influences, repetitive melodic phrasing, major key tonality, and melodic songwriting. OK, maybe that description sucks some of the cool out of it, but it’s a fantastic way to discover new music. And thanks to the iPhone app, if I get tired of the music I’ve already loaded my iPhone up with, I can venture out and try some new stuff. Even if you don’t have an iPhone (or other AT&T and Sprint phones that are compatible), you can check out the web service.
The final app I’ll talk about is a game. Geeks were totally geeking out over the gaming possibilities on the iPhone. I’m not a big gamer, but after I heard some glowing reviews of Dizzy Bee, I thought I’d check it out. It’s a terrific little time waster. You control Dizzy Bee by tilting your iPhone different directions to direct him (her?) around the screen to free his friends who have been captured. Um, yeah, it’s cooler than it sounds. I promise. Think of a modified Pac-Man that involves tilting the screen rather than using a joystick. One of the promises of iPhone games is that they give you things to do in those small increments of time we all have while waiting on hold, in a lobby, on an elevator, or in line at the store. Dizzy Bee is perfect for wasting a few minutes in a way other than checking your e-mail for the 8000th time that day.
The bottom line is that the iPhone is still a game-changing device. 18 months ago, other cell phone manufacturers scoffed A) at the idea that Apple could create a decent phone and B) that anyone would want/use a touchscreen phone. Now they’re all scrambling to get a touchscreen phone to market and are marketing them as potential iPhone killers. Looks like the gamble paid off. As expected, most of the competitors are better at individual things than the iPhone. But none combines the complete experience of the iPhone. Whether Apple continues to lead the field is another story, but the iPhone is the first step in a fundamental change in how we access our online data. High speed access to information is no longer a luxury. It’s becoming something that we expect to have no matter where we are. Five years from now, the computer industry is going to look dramatically different because of what the iPhone started. Warts and all, it’s still on the cutting edge.
/* I know, it’s super confusing if you aren’t paying close attention. There’s the first generation phone, the second generation phone, and the 2.0 software. But the second generation phone is called the 3G iPhone because it operates on the 3G data network. Maybe we should just say old and new.
** Rumor has it the beta of 2.1 that’s been seeded to developers sucks, too. If it’s going to take two updates to get every software package to work correctly, those people who claim Apple is becoming Microsoft might be right after all.