There are as many opinions about Health Care Reform as there are strains of the flu. Like it or lump it, the legislators have legislated. Here at Pure Pop we only see one course of action when vastly complicated and controversial bills dominate the headlines; we listen to songs that are superficially connected to them. In that spirit, we proudly present 10 songs to Celebrate or Lament Health Care Reform By.
1. Gregory Isaacs “Night Nurse”
A classy start.
2. Phish “Down With Disease”
The local heroes take a stand against disease.
3. Alien Sex Fiend “Here Cum Germs”
Is being a sex fiend covered under the new plan?
4. Deltron 3030 “Virus”
Animated persons are low-risk for skin disease.
Read the rest of this entry »
10. Iron & Wine-Norfolk 6/20/05
9. M. Ward-Hold Time
8. Beirut–March of the Zapotec
7. Dirty Projectors-Bitte Orca
6. Fleet Foxes-self titled
5. Bon Iver-From Emma Forever Ago
4. Monsters of Folk-selt titled
3. Dark was the Night-various artists
2. Grizzly Bear-Veckatimist
1. Animal Collective-Merriweather Post Pavillion
Hey, it’s my top ten list for this year. Hope you like. It’s been a rough year for me. High school sucks.
7. The Jesus And Mary Chain, “Automatic”
This tape is really cool, but too short even though it has two extra songs on it. It has a really neat rocking sound with electric drums. Triple-X has been playing “Head On” a lot but I like “Blues From A Gun” way better. I don’t care about the state of my hair!
Ten years ago I was enrolled at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. It doesn’t feel like a long time ago, but looking over my haphazardly-compiled best-of-the-decade list, I’m forced to consider the range and scope of the experiences that I will forever associate with these fantastic albums. It’s been a hell of a decade.
Apparently 2003 was a particularly great year in music for me. It occupies about half this list. Also, the second half of the decade only provided me with two albums. Is that a consequence of my growing cynicism? I’d like to think it’s simply a matter of these albums not having had a chance to resonate as deeply as something like Pig Lib, which was a daily source of comfort and inspiration during a tough time.
If I were to reconsider this tomorrow, I think about half the list would stay the same. Contrary to what some might say (Casey Rea, I’m looking at you), the aughts have been a fertile decade for music. (At least the first half. The second, I think, may belong to television, but I digress.)
My favorite album’s of the decade:
Deltron 3030 – s/t (2000) – The best thing Dan The Automater, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien or Kid Koala have ever done is this early-millennium masterpiece. The production is staggering and Del is in fine-form. This is a genre-transcending hip-hop record.
Super Furry Animals - Mwng (2000) – I was pleased to see Casey The Contrarian include Rings Around The World on his list, but I’m going to have to side with its predecessor, Mwng. With their former label bankrupt, the band had a lot to prove. Rather than play it safe, SFA released an all-Welsh home-brewed triumph. They put it out on their own and managed to parlay its acclaim into a deal with a new label.
Daft Punk – Discovery (2001) – Possibly my favorite album on this list, Discovery raised the bar. Infectious, upbeat, moving and witty, there’s not really anything that compares. It towers over the rest of the band’s catalog as well as the rest of the French House scene.
Steve Malkmus – Pig Lib (2003) – With his solo debut, Malkmus demonstrated that he’d be just fine without Pavement. With Pig Lib, he almost made you forget about his former band. Everything about this record is seeped in excellence.
I was recently given the opportunity to compile a list for the Waterfront Video blog – to read the entire list head here – but just to give you a little teaser, here are a few selections. Just so you know, we have a nice selection of classics and cult favorites alike here at PP.
Children Of Men (2006) – If this list were numbered, this would probably be #1 – I think i crie
d after this one. I think i remember driving home and just not saying anything at all. Just thinking about this one. I think for the first time in distopian Sci-fi film history, for me anyway, a film really kicked me in the nuts. Not in that sort of esoteric, rhetorical, snide way that is great too, the way the other great distopians do, like Brazil, The Delicatessen, or Terminator 2. But just a real emotional visceral, nut kick. The story was taut and the hand held documentary style camera work was incredibly unique, the acting (aside from Maude Lebowski, but we won’t go there.) was superb, and the actual future world itself, is easily the best imaged in the 00′s and an easy contender for the 5 of all time.
Gosford Park (2001) - This film is simply pure understated cinematic perfection – it’s Altman flexing his incredible film-making muscle with little to no intention other than to pay tribute to and at the same time beat at it’s own game, a handful of Hollywood’s beloved genres – period piece, murder mystery, and his very own trademark style of overlapping dialog and character arcs. All with a slight self aware wink and nod that never over asserts itself – This film can be enjoyed (and indeed, for me has been) on so many levels, snippets of dialogue, slight glances and knowing aversions of eye, all reveal themselves slowly over time and by it’s 20th viewing you realize how incredibly rich and demure a film (and homage to film) Altman crafted with Gosford Park.
The Proposition (2005)- Watching the proposition is like watching someone slowly hang to 
death while tripping on mushrooms. I imagine anyway. It’s also like if you could watch a bunch of Nick Cave songs, while tripping on mushrooms. But that’s fairly reductive isn’t it? It’s hard to say what makes this film so riveting – the acting, is all as good as it gets, Ray Winstone is one of my favorite actors, his beleaguered law-man and husband is so pitiful and real – “Real” that’s the word, this story, while strikingly, phantasmagorically lyrical is also one of the most flat out “real” films I’ve seen this decade. You can practically smell the flies sticking all over the faces of the corpses, man. i mean, wow man, tripping balls.
Independence Day Weekend is one of the biggest for the Hollywood Box Office. In that spirit, we’ve decided to dedicate this week’s list to songs written for movies. Sure, we could have done a list of patriotic songs, but we’re pop-culture obsessives. Bear in mind, there are many great songs strongly identified with certain films, but they only qualified for this list if they written specifically for the movie they appear in. No “Head Over Heals” in Donnie Darko, for example.
Transformers The Movie
The Touch – Stan Bush
Well before Michael Bay’s live-action celluloid nightmares, the robots in disguise made their first cinematic foray in support of the original animated tv series. Released in 1986, Transformers: The Movie became a sort of minor classic. Whereas the show had been relatively low-stakes, the film heightened the drama by killing off major characters, portraying genocide and, in certain editions, featuring swear words. This may have been enough to make the film endure, but Stan Bush’s “The Touch” ensured members of a certain generation would never forget . Wailing guitars, churchy synths and a Loggins-esque vocal delivery characterize this anthem. What is “the touch”? It’s an indelible quality that creates greatness. Featured twice in the film, it was resurrected in 1997′s Boogie Nights as one of Dirk Diggler’s ill-fated would-be singles.
Flash Gordon
Flash’s Theme – Queen
It’s common for movies these days to feature scores by rock bands and popular musicians. In 1980, it was something of a novelty. Queen’s score for Flash Gordon is a great example of how the marriage can work. Who better to provide musical accompaniment to the bombastic, over-the-top theatricality of Flash Gordon than rock’s most bombastic, over-the-top and theatrical act? Look no further than Flash’s Theme, one of the few tracks on the album to feature vocals. It is both the perfect piece to set the ironic tone of the film as well as a classic Queen track. The film was unsuccessful, retaining a small cult following, but the song lives on in Queen collections and as a ubiquitous pop-culture reference.
The Triplets of Belleville
Belleville Rendez-vouz – Beatrice Bonifassi
The Triplets of Bellville feels like a timeless classic the moment you first see it. It is a singular and striking piece of animation. It has the surreal quality of a dream. Its dialogue free-narrative gives the story a universal quality. Its elderly protagonist predates the elderly protogaonist of Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle by a year Pixar’s Up by six. Most of all, the music is absolutely, balls-to-the-wall amazing. An amalgamation of popular styles from the 1920′s, Benoit Charest’s music for this film evokes more than any amount of dialogue ever could. The film’s theme, Belleville Rendez-vous is uplifting, infectious and inspiring. I could levy a complaint or two against the film, but the music is perfect.
The Jungle Book
I Wanna be Like You (The Monkey Song) – Louis Prima
These days Disney offers vacuous, over-focus-tested entertainment designed to strike your emotional palette the same way a MacDonald’s Big Mac is intended to strike your oral palate. Once upon a time, they were the premier innovators of animation and family entertainment. They did things on old technology that would be difficult to accomplish today, post-digital revolution. They also hired some of the best song-writers of their time. For our list, we had to go with “I Wanna Be Like You (The Monkey Song)” from The Jungle Book as the penultimate Disney song. Sung by the incomparable Louis Prima, the song has a backbeat that won’t quit, tasty harmonies and a superlative melody. When Baloo tries to rescue Mowgli during this musical number, his plan derails as the song overtakes him and he helplessly joins in the performance. You know what? I buy it.
Top Gun
Danger Zone – Kenny Loggins
Top Gun is a very silly movie. One could imagine it began with a studio excec or producer muttering, “fighter jets”, scrawling it on a cocktail napkin and coming up with the plot on-the-fly at a pitch meeting. It is one of many 80′s cinematic curios, seemingly made in all sincerity with much in the way of hilariously unintended subtext and overtones. The soundtrack for the film spawned several successful singles. “Danger Zone” somehow rises above the rest, with its literal lyrics (You’ll never know what you can do/until you get it up as high as you can go), Giorgio Moroder production and Kenny Loggins’ classic vocal performance. If you can say you didn’t love it at the time, you are either a liar, or one of the members of Berlin.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ysUbo4bED4
I think we’re entering the HAL-3000 phase of electronic music, in so much as saying that manipulated tones are starting to breathe. Now first off, I loathe techno. The few raves I attended as a teen were definitely not for the purpose of the music. The whole DJ house-beat, communal sweat-off thing never grabbed me, and I’ve kinda always looked down upon so-called “electronic” music. And I only mention this because in laymans terms, Dan Deacon‘s latest album, Bromst, would be classified as electronic music, and quite simply it’s already one of my Top 20 albums of all time.
As I did a full interview with Deacon for State of Mind, (viewable at www.stateofmindmusic.com) I’ve had a few months to continually redigest the early copy of Bromst I received. Now if you’re familiar with Deacon, you know that his live shows are absolutely rediculous, and essentially just involve him making a bunch of crazy looping tones and patterns with structured chaos ensuing. Well this new album was made with the intention of Dan performing the music live with a full ensemble – thus, there is a thickness and far more tangible quality of these songs than anything he’s ever done before. It sounds cliche’, but this album is overwhelmingly organic. He’s using real instruments for the first time, all be it they occasionally get recycled into something brand new and unfamiliar, but he’s never before used piano riffs, for instance. The result is a massive new era wall-of-sound. Each song climbs and reforms into huge moments of beautiful modern psychadelia. And these tunes really are beautiful, they have the power to bring stashed emotions to your brow, they cause a sonic release, a relaxation from a tenseness you weren’ t even aware of.
“Snookered” is frankly amazing. It’s a movement of build and release, but in a completely unexpected way – when all the patterns interect towards the end, it’s utter euphoria. As Dan said, “I wanted this album to be more of a celebration and less of a party.” If you’ve already taken Animal Collective‘s latest Merriweather Post Pavillion as your guiding torch into a new modern era of emotive, manipulated sound, then Bromst will quite frankly knock you on your ass. Gonna be tough for something to come out to beat this for “Album of 2009″ in my book. Here’s “Snookered” – sorry, Youtube is the only thing I’m good at embedding.
I seem surprisngly in-tune with the latest top 10 sellers at the store this week, so I thought I’d drop a line of knowledge on 6 that I’ve been rocking heavy.
Department of Eagles – In Ear Park – Featuring a couple of the guys from Grizzley Bear, it isn’t hard to get it mixed up with their other band, but the lengthy driftoffs are traded in for more concise tunes. Takes 3 listens to get hooked.
Ryan Adams – Cardinology – The guy releases friggin’ 17 albums a year so it’s definitely hard to keep up, but this one has some of the best tracks he’s released since Heartbreaker.
TV on the Radio – Dear Science - The most popular indie band in the world seems to have finally realized that people are paying attention and decided to batten down the hatches a little bit. I feel it lacks, but have gotten into serious debate about it. Definitely a must-hear.
Kings of Leon – Only By the Night – I don’t care if teenage girls think they’re dreamy and older fans bitch about them giving up their southern roots, this album is amazing. Huge, catchy, rock songs. They’re the biggest band in the world right now, except nobody in the U.S. has realized it yet. Probably in my year’s top 3.
Of Montreal – Skeletal Lampings – You’re either in or out with this band, and if you’re in then this album will only bring your passion deeper. Kevin Barnes is a nut, and has a way of turing his lunacy into logic. You gotta see em’ live, but this album is a good place to start.
Kanye West – 808 + Heartbreak - Ok, I haven’t heard it yet, but Herb’s poste intrigues me. My open minded love for music urges me to push past Kanye’s pompous b.s. and give it a shot. Hey, I finally stopped thinking about Chris Martin being in Coldplay, and now I love the new album! So anything’s possible. Except for my ability to post youtubes, let’s try again…
