Obama’s Badass Week(end)

It’s nice to see Obama finally having a good week (or well weekend). I’m still waiting to see how the real America responds to sunday night’s events – will the right wing pundits head explode from Obama doing everything they expect from a president, with regards to national security and the war on terror?

But the badass weekend started a few days prior to last nights announcement, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Where he not only burned most of his potential 2012 republican opponents, but also celebrated the release of his long form birth certificate with a video featuring the song “I’m a real American” and the document. Check out the full 18 minute speech (or at least the intro song), he’s legitimately funny.

You have to wonder if he was thinking about this bin laden the whole time.

April Music Blog

Two Door Cinema Club

I found these guys thanks to NPR’s world cafe. They’re Irish but that have more in common with LCD Soundsystem, Phoenix and !!! than any Irish band I’ve ever heard.  They’ve been in my 6-changer  non-stop for the last few weeks and the first recommendation to all of my friends.  Check out two free tracks over at NPR!

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The Strokes – Angles

If you have yet to checked out Julian Casablanca’s 2009 solo effort, Phrazes of Youth, I recommend you get on that before listening to angles.  Here’s the video for 11th dimension, from that album.:

Music Round up week 1 Feb

The Band you have to check out:

Fitz and the Tantrums – Pickin’ Up The Pieces.

Their first single money grabber is a great soul infused throw back, mixed male and female vocals and a hip feel.  Lately they’re  getting airtime on WPGU (champaign-Urbana) and KHJK 103.7 in Houson.  The album packaging, physical cd, and the music video for money grabber all feature blue and red lighting effects on black.  Check out the video, one or two listens and you’ll be hooked:

Free Streaming Album

Adele – 21 NPR has a free first listen Here.  At 22 the girl has some amazing pipes, and wisdom beyond her years.

Best New Album in 2011

The Decemberists – The King is Dead. I always wondered what a band could do artistically after creating a fully realized concept album/Indie Rock Opera.  I figured nothing the decemberist did would ever live up to that.  Thankfully instead of an ill advised attempt to top it, they went back down to basics – shorter songs, Americana instrumentation, self contained stories, and Colin Meloy’s voice.  I was afraid they’d “gone country” with the first single, Down By the Water, but it was much deeper than the topical addition of twang.  They’re now on the front lines of the folk/Americana/indie/rock wave, with bands like Mumford and Sons, Avett Brothers, and the Monsters of Folk.  Can’t wait to see them live again!

2010 in Music Part 5: My Favorite Albums

Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

Arcade fire set the bar (again) for a great indie rock album.  I haven’t been able to find the proper words to describe this album, i’ve been scratching my head for weeks.  I know I really like it, I saw them play half of it live (which was awesome), but I’m not sure how to explain that to you.  So as a huge cop out, I’m going to let it speak for itself:

Dr. Dog – Shame, Shame

2010 in Music Part 4:Best albums 2010 (Runners up)

New Pornographers – Together

On previous new pornographers albums, I’ve enjoyed a track or two (notably Sing Me Spanish Techno on Twin Cinema and My rights versus yours on Challengers) but  never appreciated the entire album.  This changed with Together, which started strong with Moves, Kicked it up a notch with, my favorite track, Crash Years, and kept it there with Your  Hands (Together) and then relaxed into the rest of the album.  Later in the album, I really liked, Up in the Dark, (whats love, whats love, but what turns up in the dark?) This album spent a lot of time in my 6-changer and i was always happy to hear the first few notes of moves.

Free energy – Stuck on Nothing.

So I admit that I’m pretty biased on this band, back in the summer, I was spending a Saturday afternoon at cactus records in Houston.  There was super-poppy rock playing in the background and I had just missed some random band doing an in-store show.  The band was hanging out by the used records talking to the record store dude about tornadoes and hurricanes.  Super chill friendly guys, turned out they were from philly on tour, about to open for mates of state.  I asked them if they knew dr.dog and they were like yeah philly, and the guy from cactus records talked about dr.dog’s instore show the night before hurricane ike hit back in ‘08. 

2010 in Music Part 3 : Revisionist History, Best of 2009

These are my favorite albums of 2009, most of them i actually discovered in 2010. If I had written this at the end of 2009, I would have missed so many great bands!   I tried to capture each album in 5 words or less. what do you think?

Ida Maria – Fortress around my heart

poppy Norweigen chick rock

Metric – fantsy

80′s synth driven indie rock

Julian Casablancas – Phrazes for the Young

Strokes singer rocks on solo

Passion pit – Manners

2009′s most fun electronic rock

2010 in Music part 2: Lowered Expectations

2010 was a bad year for releases from bands I already liked.  Only two managed to produce something comparable to their previous releases – Spoon and Vampire weekend – and only a couple other bands (that I’ll get to in future posts in this series) created something bigger.  I’ve separated the less than stellar albums into three shades of disappointment: expected, slight, and HUGE.  In all categories, excluding expected, these are actual albums in my car purchased on a physical cd, because I still live sometime between the late 90’s and early aughts.

Expected dissapointment:

Weezer – Hurley. It has been cool to be down on weezer for at least a decade now.  Depending on how cool you were you stopped being a fan early when the band lost matt sharp (post pinkerton) or later after the dismal maladroit (even a muppets music video couldn’t save that album).  I hung on long enough to find a few good tracks on make believe (neither of the singles, mind you), but red was terrible, rattitude wasn’t even on my radar, and the only remotely cool piece of this new album was hurley from lost on the cover.  WHY WON’T THIS BAND DIE?

This would have been a better idea.

2010 in Music part 1: A New Hope

2009 was a tough year for me to keep up with music I ended up listening to an excessive amount of pop music (houston radio was lame), and lost track of my favorite radio station (WPGU) and the indie scene in general.  hosuton was not getting as many good bands on tour on 2009 either, the only bands i really saw were at ACL ( thankfully that has changed since)  I decided that in 2010 I would stay on top of new releases, which was mostly successful.  This is part 1 of a multi-part series on the music of 2010, like with my 2008 review, I haven’t heard every album this year, but these are going to be all the ones that I loved.  So today, let’s talk about two bands I really liked prior to 2010, who produced albums early in the year which gave me hope for a great year in music.

 

Spoon’s Transference was initially challenging for me. Their previous album, 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga got a lot of airtime at regular Carl N house parties in my last year of college and became one of my favorite albums (so many glorious dance parties). 

Tax Deal

At 10:25 eastern yesterday Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VM) Started speaking on the floor of the Senate against extending the bush tax cuts for the weatlhiest Americans.  He didn’t stop speaking until 6:59 pm.  He’s the first senator in the last 2 years to actually perform a fllibuster, the rest of the senators like to threaten the use of a filibuster, but never actually do it.  This is a much shorter version of what he spoke about from Nov 30th:

He argues that the top 1% of americans are making 23% of the income in this country, which is more than the entire bottom 50% of income earners combined.  This has been steadily rising since the 1970s when it was only 8%.  This disproportionate division of wealth is crushing the middle class and the federal government is faced with huge deficits (mostly from the wars that coincided with the bush tax cuts – how do you fight a war and decrease taxes simultaneously?)  So why would we ever as a people choose to give the top 1% (the millionaires who can pay taxes) a free pass on billions in potential revenue?

Sanders facts were checked here.

Call your senator, Call your congressman.  Tell them that they answer to you, their constituent and not the millionaires and/or corporations who bankrolled their regular and/or smear campaigns.  If they actually want to do something about the deficit, this is the place to start.

The Job, this week

So this week is the first time I’ve been directly effected by a shuttle launch slip. I knew when the week started that one of two paths were in front of me, either the shuttle would launch and I would get to be on overnights doing some “on the job training” (and seeing awesome things like the space shuttle docking to the international space station and the installation of a new module. Maybe even helping the specialists with the mound of replanning that happens during the kinds of complex operations the shuttle brings with it.)

The second less exciting path is what actually happened – the shuttle launch slipped 4 days and I got stuck working an overnight shift by myself and helping with the mound of replanning that happens when the timeline shifts 24 minutes for every day that the shuttle stays on the ground.