ChapStick Weekly: Chapstick Weekly v2

Chapstick Weekly (so what I’m a little late.)
For the prudent gentleman or gentlelady

Summer Sinsemilla Mix

Beck – Girl
Paul Simon – Late in the Evening
Badly Drawn Boy – Once Around the Block
The Little Ones – Cha Cha Cha
The Pinker Tones – Sonida Total
Ray Charles – Mess Around
The Rolling Stones – Can’t Always Get What You Want (Re-Mixed and Re-Edited by Soulwax)
Sweet Emotion – Leo Kottke & Mike Gordon
Mixel Pixel – Sinking Feeling
Radiohead – The Reckoner
Heavy Metal – Sammy Hagar

Albums in my Car

Ghostland Observatory, Robotique Majestique
Heavy Metal, Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack
The Koop, Koop Islands
Radiohead, In Rainbows
Does it Offend You, Yeah?, You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Into
Matt Pond PA, Last Light

There’s my Chippie. There you are Chippie.

First thing’s first, the live bake-off went great.

We arrived in Chicago at full speed, parking a few blocks away from the Vic. After unloading a few tickets, we made our way into the already over-crowded Vic just as Hot Chip opened up with their first track.

The Vic is the Old Victorian Theater – and it is an old Victorian theater. The layout includes downstairs and balcony seating areas, with a large dance floor up front. We didn’t really get an opportunity to explore through the venue, but we did pound our way up to the front area very quickly.

As the show was All Ages, there was a wide spattering of disrespectful, inconsiderate people of all ages throughout, all happy to spill your beer on your face then stare at you as you tried to move about in a danceable fashion.

This being said, after 10 minutes or so, I was well on my way to being a beer-smelling sweaty bastard, dancing precariously close to the drug-riddled, teenaged neighbors, and generally greatly enjoying some of the best live music able to be heard.

I love Hot Chip. I can’t tell you enough how much I love them. I am unphased by their recent boom in popularity. I was disappointed when the concert ended....but I was re-enlivened when they announced an after-party at the Metro.

So, to the Metro I went to enjoy hours more of dancing and drinks before I tumbled back to the Swissotel for the night to sleep and dream right through the biggest midwest earthquake in years.

What’s New to Me and Maybe New to You

Does It Offend You, Yeah?

Don’t let the poppy punctuation fool you, they are diverse and danceable. Their new CD inspires your ass to get moving, is innovative, expressive, and generally well put together. With tracks titled “Attack of the 60 ft. Lesbian Octopus” and “Being Bad Feels Pretty Good” how could you go wrong?

Ghostland Observatory
Solid. An all-around solid band who greatly deserve their recent attention. They are an amalgam of Japanese De-Ionizing Foot Pads and 3 a.m. Strong Coffee, ready to point your toes to the dance floor and scream at you if you start falling asleep. If you get a chance to see them this summer, take that chance and take a friend. I am feeling a wide range of appeal here.

Bonobo
With a little help from Bajka who also makes appearances with Radio Citizen, Bonobo has created a beautiful album. If you’re a tracks person, check out “Days to Come,” the title track of the album, it will get you a solid taste for the complex instrumentation, lyrics and playful harmonies of this group.

In Case You’re a Dummy
Buy the Mark Ronson, Version disk. You’ll laugh (When you hear ODB’s rendition on Toxic. Yes, the Brittany Spears song), you’ll cry (When you hear ODB’s rendition on Toxic), and you’ll burn a few calories as if you were on a spin master. His unique mixes and remixes combine influences from all around, but most noticeably from genres that include a large amount of horns, backbeats, singing soul girls, and getting in the mood to do something experimental. Sexually.

The Alamo: Air, Moon Safari

Remember Moon Safari? That album that so precariously combined influences from Serge Gainsbourgh, early Beegees, Van Morrison, and the Beach Boys? The album that started it all, changing the ever-present drumming

beat of electronic music in popular listening to a more sublime, artistic and unmistakably French electronic wonderland.

Burn yourself a copy, dust off your old copy or buy the new re-release and pop it into your favorite stereo. You’ll be toe-tapping to Sexy Boy and Kelly Watch the Stars within minutes with a Nostalgic smile on your precious chapped or unchapped lips.

You’ll catch yourself saying things like, “I saw the Sexy Boy video late night on an MTV Amp. That was a cute little monkey.” or “The first time I got high, I listened to Moon Safari on repeat. It was soooooo French.”

This album is timeless, under-represented, and more than worthy of a daily listening.

Technology for Sounds: Muxtape.

Clay showed me this one www.muxtape.com. You can get on, make your own .mp3 mix or listen to others. Upon an hour’s perusal I listened to a few cool remixes and made a few notes on other bands to watch out for. This site looks to be in its infancy, but is worth checking out on the strength of its original idea. I can truly see this developing into something great, or influencing other sites to include similar functionality.

Some Things Are Funny

Like Heavy Metal the movie and Southpark. Here is a dirty confession: I downloaded Sammy Hagar from iTunes. I am consistently listening to it daily. There is something decadent to thinking about large breasts and head banging to my soul’s content.

There is a picture of Sammy in a boxing ring, red, oversized codpiece included, on the iTunes artwork. Is Sammy Hagar a sexy bastard? I’m assuming that its undeniably so. He is the current embodiment of the less extreme, more acceptable type of debauchery that people have come to accept as “Heavy Metal.”

Also on the soundtrack was music from Devo, and those bad-asses, The Blue Oyster Cult. We all know these guys know how to rock! Right? Can I get the pinky and first finger symbol and some head nodding?

Probably not until you are desperate enough to get yourself stoned off of cat urine (see Southpark episode “Major Boobage”) would you really think you could rock out to Devo. Even so, the super-straight, super-conservative heavy metal-ers out there would never get close to a cat’s genetalia. This is ironic, in the whole irony sense of the word.

The genre dilution that happened with Heavy Metal is embodied by this soundtrack. Commercial Capitalism at its finest! Thank you Southpark for introducing me!

ps. Portishead just released a new album, and that’s no joke, buster.