So not only did dozens of artists steal Chuck Berry's intellectual property during his career, but Marty McFly actually went back in time and played one of Berry's most popular songs before Berry even had the chance to come up with it himself. That is some high level mind fuckery, McFly. Yeah screw you man. Who the fuck do you even think you are in that vest
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"Johnny B. Goode" by Chuck Berry
Here's Chuck Berry performing his VERY ORIGINAL AND NOT WRITTEN BY A TEENAGE SKATEBOARDER IN A STUPID VEST song live in 1958. Watching Berry play guitar is just about one of the best things. He seems to be having so much goddamn fun and handles his guitar so naturally it may as well be another limb.
[drives on drugs] [tearfully tells drugs' wife how sorry i am i killed her husband] [helps pay for drugs' children's educations but am never truly able to absolve myself from the guilt of drugs' death]
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"Feel It Still" by Portugal. The Man
Merry Belated Christmas, Velocininjas! I wasn't here on Sunday due to it being Christmas Eve and I was spending it with Dantasia's family. Just a few weeks before that A Dan for All Seasons and I were out to dinner with his dad and his dad's girlfriend, and "Feel It Still" came on the radio.
After a few seconds I remarked that the song sounded like "Please Mr. Postman" by The Marvelettes. When I got home I was smugly pleased to find that Wikipedia supported my claim:
I mean what else are blogs for other than to brag about being right about really inconsequential things?
When I've made observations like this in the past some have assumed that I must not like the new song in question. But I actually really, really like "Feel It Still" and think it's all the stronger for what it took from "Mr. Postman". It's a groovy tune that makes me want to dance, and one I've been listening to on a fairly addictive basis while writing in recent history.
"Feel It Still" does have an official music video, but I tend to be of the opinion that most official music videos are kinda crap (with some great exceptions, of course). So instead you guys get a video of some very skilled dancers from Brian Friedman Choreography doing a super fun routine to the song in a warehouse.
A Tale of Two Dans: the delivery’ll be here in an hour
Me: your butt’ll be here in an hour
The Candy Dan: [looks backs at me] my butt’s eternal, bitch
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"Bang Bang You're Dead" by Dirty Pretty Things
I've been doing lots and lots of work on my novel Viable lately and it is not always the easiest to motivate myself on these dreary winter days.
When I sit down to edit I've been putting on "Bang Bang You're Dead" and something about the opening guitar riff hits me like an extra-strong cup of coffee and getting going suddenly doesn't seem quite so hard.
So I mentioned previously that I've been doing something called "joke twitter" for a while now. In joke twitter it's common for people to put together collections of their best jokes from the previous month, then do a call inviting others to swap jokes. I did my first monthly call for October and it was a lot of fun getting to read jokes from friends as well as a lot of very funny strangers. So I did another one for November:
Ayn Dand laughed when he saw the picture I used for the call. Hoover Dan: Someone is going to take that picture of you and be like, "She slapped my baby!" And the cops are gonna be like, "Oh yeah she looks like a real... Me: [answers phone call from delivery person] Dantasy Football: ...BABY-SLAPPING BITCH!"
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"Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones
I've been a fan of the Rolling Stones ever since I was old enough to tell people my favorite band was the Beatles, and have them respond with something along the lines of, "I prefer the Rolling Stones myself."
(I don't know when I became a Beatles fan. I have no memory of a world without their music, quite luckily for me.)
Since people kept associating the Rolling Stones with my favorite band, I figured maybe I would like them too. And I did, very very much.
The many times throughout my life that people have asked me, "The Beatles or the Rolling Stones" I've just been like, "Why? I CAN LIKE TWO BANDS GODDAMMIT."
Anyway, "Sympathy for the Devil" is a hell of a song. The samba beat, in theory, seems like such a weird fit for this song, and yet it works perfectly. It has some of the best narrative lyrics I've ever heard and makes me think of John Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost.
And let's not forget that fucking sick guitar solo.
Generally with music I am a song-by-song type. Many of the songs I love most are the only ones by that band that I know, and while I love Led Zeppelin dearly I have no idea which tunes belongs to which album.
However, when I really really really like a song I'll sometimes feel inspired to check out the band's other stuff.
That is precisely what happened with me and "Hands Down" by The Greeting Committee. I was blown away to find that The Greeting Committee is comprised of mere children who are every bit as good live.
I don't even hear lyrics most of the time, but some of these lyrics in this song, I mean, Jesus Christ:
"Baby, you know I love you
More than my words know how to show you"
Aaaaand now I'm crying, and only slightly because I have been writing words my entire life and these babies are already better at it than I am.
I highly recommend their other stuff, especially "Elise" and "She's a Gun" (which has a super fun video game-inspired music video).
Me: I get the feeling you are going to bop my nose again Raisin Dan cereal: [pats my nose] Boop! Me: Ha I was right Bicentennial Dan: No that was a boop you ignorant savage
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"Hallways" by Islands
You may be wondering what the fuck we're all doing here since today is Tuesday and not Sunday. But alas, I was at my cousin's in DC for Thanksgiving, seeing memorials and portraits and shit (and also the movie Coco, which I very highly recommend).
I miss the alliteration of Short Post and a Song when it doesn't occur on a Sunday. I mean let's face it, we all do. But life is just too short to let alliteration call the shots.
My cousin is the proud owner of a keyboard and as someone who hasn't had regular access to a piano in nearly a decade, it was difficult to keep myself from tinkering with it whenever I was in the keyboard's vicinity. (This should be a lesson to all of you: Do not invite me over, I am not a good house guest.)
I generally stuck to the scant handful of songs that I still have stored up in my fingers after all these years, but I missed the days of tediously and neck-ruiningly bending over my parents' piano growing up, trying to sound out the songs and movie scores I loved most.
"Hallways" makes my fingers itch. It'd take two people to achieve the full effect but I think after many, many, many hours of making terrible noise on a piano I could maybe figure out some sort of one-person version. My one criticism of this lovely tune is that the piano at the end could go even further complexity-wise, but then I found this live version where exactly that happens.
I hope you had a good Thanksgiving, Velocininjas! Unless you're British.
I'd be in great shape if I could just dedicate as much thought to getting my shit together as I do to how that one dude offered Schmendrick a taco in The Last Unicorn even though his group only had rat soup.
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"Lost Coastlines" by Okkervil River
While a few trusted friends are looking over Viable, I've been doing a lot of thinking about The Renaissance Experiment trilogy as a whole. Not writing anything down, really—just thinking about themes and messages and all those other sorts of things that can be a bit dangerous to think about when you're doing the actual writing (or at least it can be for me).
While I've been doing that thinking I have listened to this song roughly 5,000 times. When I first heard it I just thought it was a sweet, lovey sort of sounding song and I plopped it on my "Roth" playlist (every main character in the series has his or her own playlist, and even some of the secondary ones).
As I found myself coming back to this song over and over, I realized how strongly it applies to not just one character, but the whole series. The song is about getting on a boat and heading away from everything you've ever loved toward the unknown. It's about feeling lost.
But if you listen to the song, it doesn't sound like it's about that at all! It sounds so damn happy. And a happy song about being scared and alone and lost happens to fit this series like a glove.
Also check out the video, guys—it documents all the amazing drawing of the illustrations and lettering artist Kevin Tong did for an Okkervil River show.
