Random Acts of Journalism


Top 5 Songs About Mexico
May 21, 2008, 1:46 pm
Filed under: Mexico, Top 5, nomadic tendencies

I’m off to Rocky Point tonight for Memorial Day weekend and i’m making a mix for the drive down.

Here are my top 5 songs about Mexico:

5. Between Texas and Mexico – Pat Green
4. Rodeo or Mexico – Garth Brooks
3. A Border Tragedy – Robert Earl Keen Jr.
2. Mexican Radio – Wall of VooDoo
1. Mexico – James Taylor

Kind of obvious…anyone have one  that i missed?

2 Comments


Top 5 Lists
May 5, 2008, 10:16 am
Filed under: Top 5, music

I received an email from a coworker Friday asking me what i thought the Top 5 most “beautiful” rock songs were…or was it even possible, by definition, for a rock song to be beautiful, etc. It didn’t really give a definition of what “beautiful” meant, it left it up to you. So, here’s my hastily put-together list…You could probably separate this into years and sub genres of rock a thousand times…this was a hard one…

5. Old Love – Eric Clapton
4. Blackbird – The Beatles
3. Southern Cross – Crosby, Stills and Nash
2. Bullet the Blue Sky – U2
1. Stairway to Heaven – Led Zeppelin

So what’s yours?

And since we’re on a Top 5 roll, i’m going to add my Top 5 Concerts i Need to See with Nole, Kev and Garret.

5. Metallica (circa 1998 )
4. Daft Punk – I don’t have a single one of their albums or particularly care for their music, but something tells me that this show would be infinitely entertaining.
3. The Decemberists – I was in Boulder 2 weeks back and Colin Meloy was playing at The Fox Theater…alas, i had other places to be.
2. Dustin Kensrue – He didn’t come to Phoenix to support his solo album and even though i’ve seen Thrice, i just want to see him. Damn.
1. Modest Mouse – I came one night and strep throat away from seeing them in Tucson a while back.

1 Comment


Links of the Day
July 27, 2007, 5:34 pm
Filed under: Common, Kanye West, Top 5, covers, hip hop, links

A lot of good musical stuff going on today:

First and foremost, the new Common CD, Finding Forever, is streaming at VH1 (see? it is good for something!) So far, i’m loving it. It’s very mellow, which is what i expected.

Also, check out the new Kanye video starring, who else, Zach Galifinakis. Say what you will about Kanye, he loves having fun with his videos. I’ll give him that. (Man i hope this new CD is good…)

Blender has put together a list — with accompanying youtube videos!! — of the “wackiest cover songs on the web.” It’s an amusing, if not incomplete, list. Good material for a friday.

Ok, here’s my Top 5 list of Hip Hop Albums. Thanks to Kevo for getting this started:
5. Jurassic 5 – Quality Control
4. Dr. Dre – Chronic 2001
3. Talib Kweli – Quality
2. Fugees – The Score
1. Mos Def – Black on Both Sides

2 Comments


Led Zep Top 5
December 7, 2006, 11:42 pm
Filed under: Led Zeppelin, Lord of the Rings, Top 5, iPod

Gotta thank Nole for getting this started. I was having major writers block until i saw his post and i was going to leave this in his comments and then it just got carried away. Make sure you visit Nole’s blog to see his thoughts and post on this topic yourselves too you lazy asses.

OK, top 5 zep songs of all time (with apologies to Good Times, Bad Times):
5. Since I’ve Been Loving You.
The blues riffs and solos in this song are just so smooth. And the vocals are sweet too. If Led Zeppelin had been Phish, this song would have lasted 28 minutes.

4. Kashmir – One of the coolest songs of all time. Hands down. Ever. It just is infectious. And never has a song been so simple yet sound so big and powerful. It’s only this low because of P-Diddy (and Ron), who spent many many hours rhyming over exact same riff. And no, i don’t care that he had Page and Plants permission and participation.

3. Nobody’s Fault But Mine – Gotta love the guitar in this. And the vocals (No-no-no-no-no-no-no-noooooooobody’s fault but mine). And the drums. And everything. But you have to stand and applaud at the damn harmonica. John Popper eat your cholesterol clogged heart out! (That joke doesn’t work anymore because of this.) This song, in this top 5, is like that figure skater or gymnast in the Olympics who has to do their routine too early in the program and basically can’t get 10s from the judges no matter how good they are because the judges are saving the 10s for later. It would be higher, but it can’t be higher than Ramble On or Over the Hills and Far Away (or When the Levee Breaks for that matter, but Nole already used that one.) I used to put this song on repeat and walk from class to class at ASU just listening to this over and over and blatantly singing and air-guitaring on a crowded walkway and not giving the slightest shit how weird people thought i was. And that’s how good this song is, it makes you rock out. You don’t have any control over it. This song owns you. You’re its bitch. You might as well lay back and enjoy it. It’ll be over in about 6 minutes.

2. Ramble On – Flea and Les Claypool might, and i mean might, be able to play this bassline exactly. (Alright, i’m exaggerating, Flea could definitely rock this part, but that shouldn’t take away that never, in my time playing bass, did my fingers even come close to moving that fast.) The part during the chorus is mind blowing. And the Lord of the Rings reference can’t be beat: “In the darkest steps of Mordor, i met a girl so fair, but Gollum and the evil one crept up and slipped away with her.” Now Eragon, Nate and I have to go track the Uruakai westward across the plain.

1. Over the Hills and Far Away – You never forget your first love. The guitar at the beginning almost sounds like a question being posed. And then when the drum kick comes in, that’s the beginning of the answer. And i guess the lyrics fit that too. The guy says, Hey lady, you got the love i need. Are gonna give it to me? And then goes on to convince her why she should. (I’m not on drugs, but sometimes i think if i was, that would explain a whole lot.) I’ve mentioned before my passion for songs that start out slow or quiet and build up to some amazing crescendo (G&R – November Rain, Weezer – Only In Dreams, etc.) and this song gets there in a hurry but it feels like there is more wheeling, turning, tumbling fury as the song plays until about 40 seconds left and then it bottoms out into a quietness before coming back about half volume to end the song. It’s like the guy paused to wait for the girls answer, she said yes, he grabbed her hand and walked off. I can see the scene in my head. And that my friends is MUSIC.

And i don’t mean to put a damper on this post by ending it this way, but my garage and car were broken into last night and what do you think they stole that bothered me the most? It wasn’t the golf clubs, the power tools, the skateboards or the feeling of peace and security that my neighborhood USED to give me. It was my fucking iPod (and 20 assorted CDs). And they took the tape adapter and the charger too so they probably drove away scrolling through my 4,000 songs, my belongings hastily thrown in the back of a truck. (I’m trying so hard not to assume their race right now but i’m guessing i didn’t have anything they wanted to hear.) Anyway, i’m not looking for sympathy or anything but it’s anecdotal evidence of how much i love music and i thought that was important to share.

3 Comments


Teen Angst Top Five
October 19, 2006, 5:57 pm
Filed under: Aerosmith, Metallica, The Offspring, Top 5, Weezer, soundgarden, teen angst

This site promises top five lists, and so it’s about time that i finally get down to one. This is called the Teen Angst Top Five, not because all these songs are angstful, but because that’s what i was listening to when i was an unhappy teenager (some may argue that i still am, but that’s another topic for another day.). And in a new wrinkle, most of these music videos are on youtube.com, so i’m posting the links so you can enjoy. Just click on the song name and it’ll take you there.

#5. Buddy Holly - Weezer – Blue Album
It was a hard choice between this and “The Sweater Song” and really, both should be here. But, when pressed, i had to go with Buddy Holly. I think the video put me over the top, really. This wasn’t so much an angstful album so much as an album that so completely articulated the awkwardness of being that age it was scary. On “Only In Dreams” my favorite line is “It’s a good thing you float in the air, that way i won’t crush your pretty toenails into a thousand pieces.” And after Kevin on the Wonder Years and all those other shows set all us boys up for being retarded at every school dance, while the girls were more mature and always looked like they were having more fun while we just stood against the wall afraid of rejection and stepping on toes, i mean, that was just the Blue Album. I don’t know of any guy my age that didn’t have it. Except for Danny Bogen, who for some reason always liked rap. But he’s it.

#4. Eat The Rich – Aerosmith – Get A Grip
There was an age when swearing became suddenly OK. And then it was more than OK, it was cool, and you were lame if you didn’t. I remember exactly where i was when i first said Fuck. (In the desert behind Sonoran Sky elementary school, on the land that is now the JCC.) Matt Mahonen made me say it to get into their fort, and it probably took me a good 15 minutes to work up the courage. And damn wasn’t that a slippery slope. But this CD also came out when the parents of America were freaking out about music and slapping parental advisory stickers on everything and my mom was one of those moms that paid attention to that stuff. So i had to hide those CDs or blackout the advisory label with a magic marker and only listen to those CDs on my headphones. So Eat The Rich was such a battle cry (even though i was a spoiled little rich kid), just because it had a cuss word in it that my mom wouldn’t have liked. That’s a big step for kids that age. That and the pierced cow udder on the CD cover. That was awesome.

#3. Enter Sandman - Metallica – Black Album
I’m not going to lie. I was a masssssssssssssiive Metallica fan. Every CD, every lyric, every b-side, every book, DVD, box set, everything. I loved them. I played bass like Jason Newsted, i even sang in a Metallica cover band for like a month. But this song was without a doubt my first love. This song was the door that opened up Metallica to me. Before i liked Metallica, i liked country. Then i started playing hockey with my good friend Doug and we listened to Metallica in his front yard while playing. I started to get the songs stuck in my head and eventually bought the tape…yeah that’s right, the tape. Enter Sandman just had that kick to it, that chorus and that thrash that you just couldn’t escape. It was perfect angry kid music. And it still is really. I liked them from about 6th grade on through to the day Jason left the band. I can still remember Alissa Butler walking down the hall towards me during 7th hour of high school with tears running down her face.

#2 – Black Hole Sun - Soundgarden – Superunknown
Speaking of tragic break-ups. This one was a hard one for me too. But without delving into that, or my disappointment with Audioslave, let’s just discuss this song, because there’s plenty to say about it. From that opening guitar, to the first drum kick, to Chris’ voice coming in, to the dark, twisted lyrics that made zero sense, it was just good. And for some reason it made sense then. Honestly the video for this song is probably the last time i watched a video straight through on MTV. And that had to be what 10 years ago? This has to be one of the creepiest and best videos ever made. And that’s what it was about then. It wasn’t a commercial for your band, it wasn’t interrupted by some girl on Spring Break screaming “hi my names krystal from ButtFuck, Iowa and i voted for the black hole sun video because that guy doing push-ups at the end is so hot!WOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!” It was a video that reflected the music and told a story and was just done for the sake of the art form, not for any other reason. And it is just too weird to ever be done today. Nobody would do it, because it wouldn’t make any sense, it would scare children and it wouldn’t be marketable. That’s the bottom line, plain and simple. You couldn’t make money on this today, because it would scare all the little cookie-cutter children we’ve created away. I’m going to watch this video about 9 more times before the day is over.

#1 – Bad Habit – The Offspring – Smash
Of all the parental advisories, this was the all-time best. I mean, we didn’t have our licenses yet, so really, we could only imagine what driving fast and cutting people off and giving them the finger and dropping a laundry list of expletives on them would feel like. But in the mean time, it really gave us some great artillery to throw at our friends and enemies at lunch and after school. I remember being super pissed at my parents and just playing this song over and over on my headphones. Usually on long car trips. And if i really got mad at them, i would sing the lyrics out loud to the whole CD but just “beep” myself when the bad words came up. It’s not like they didn’t know what went there, it’s just that i couldn’t get in trouble for saying it. HAHA. This song (and really, the whole CD) has to be #1 because the Offspring did for the pissed off kids what Weezer did for the awkward ones. Just an entire CD of fuck you, i am who i am, screw you for judging me, fuck the popular kids, i hate you, you hate me, let’s go break a window kinda tunes. And keep in mind, this was a while before they went all “weird-al yankovich” on us and stunk up the joint with that “Pretty Fly For a White Guy” song. God that song sucked.

The tragedy about all these bands is that they either no longer exist, or they completely suck. And I know you hardcore Weezer fans will argue, but the Beverly Hills song sucked and you know it.

Alright, here’s my recommendation for the week. And it’s fitting because i spent most of those angstful years listening to these songs with my friend Donny, who is in this band. They are local and are playing shows Friday night and Saturday night this week. They just released their first CD. Here is their Myspace. Check them out. Let me know what you think in the comments.

2 Comments