Hooray for me, Get With The Times has offically finshed. No, it's hasn't ended, it has FINISHED. It is a completed project that will forever remain to be enjoyed by anyone who stumbles past, i.e. you. So for a retrospective on musical history, scroll through these holy pages and hope that everything still works. If not, drop a comment and I'll do what i can.
If you haven't already, head over to http://openyoureyestomusic.blogspot.com, my most recent project
THANKYOU
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Good Riddance (00's)
Download Episode (10.4 mb)
Exhausting. This one word pretty much summarises my experience making this series. Every week, devoting hours of valuable time to a task that nobody really cares about (if you’re reading this, you’re probably one of only ten). But that hasn’t dismayed me one bit, for now that I have finished, I have a completed product to cherish forever. It seems however that nobody else cares for 5 songs stuffed into one file. No, they want individual files to claim as their own and while illegality of that is even greater, that is the direction I will be taking when I go back to new music at Open Your Eyes. So in other words, I will no longer be creating, just offering. All personal involvement has been severed and at the end of the day my effort will go uncredited. It’s sad I know but the collective ‘they’ haven’t spoken…..which is speak in itself. But thankfully this series, with the timeless content it contains, will live on forever….well at least until my free web space provider gets sick of me. In this final issue, the range spreads from veteran ensembles, to newly emerging wonders and finally to stars that shone a little too bright. But what amazes me though it really shouldn’t, is that despite being the 4th episode of the decade, contained here are some of the best bands to play over this, at the time of writing this, incomplete decade.
Death Cab For Cutie – We looked like Giants
It’s kind of sad that to achieve popular recognition you pretty much need the backing of a major record label. The ideal world would be one where record promotion was banned and all records are released on equal footing. That way the masses, well at least their MTV’s would have to listen to the songs and choose on merits, not just what the big 4 give them. However such a world does not and will not exist and unless we rally behind them, many bands will be forced to cross to the dark side. Such is the case with Death Cab For Cutie – same band, same music and yet there latest album, released on a major label, did far better than they’re previous. I choose this song not only because it’s good but to honour the material that ‘most’ failed to honour
Interpol – Evil
Interpol have the tendency to invoke feelings of darkness in me. Perhaps it’s the disturbing nature of the filmclip for this song. Or maybe the parallels in vocals I can’t help but make with Ian Curtis. Either way, most of their songs just sound depressing. I say this like it’s a bad thing but it’s not. What better way to cheer yourself up than to listen to someone who’s depressed and realise how much happier you are? Regardless, the music they create is great, with two out of two albums so far being top quality
Cake – Commissioning A Symphony In C
Cake are completely unique, no band (of notable worth) even comes close to the sound they create. The Distance, an early song of theirs, was a childhood favourite of mine and many years later I discovered and fell in love with their 2001 offering, Comfort Eagle. It’s a well-crafted, all-round album, one better remembered as a whole than for it’s individual songs, always a sign of quality. Cake have the skill of making their music funny, often for reasons I cannot explain, which is always welcomed
Queens Of The Stone Age – Go With The Flow
I suppose I should get this out in the air, this is not one of my favourite bands. But, probably to the disgust of many of their biggest fans I much prefer the newer stuff to the older. This is probably because over time their sound evolved from a self described “heavy sound, based on a solid jam and just pounded into your head” to a more innovative sound, which is what captured my interest. Rather than go for a song off their new album I’ve picked Go With The Flow, a gem off Songs For The Deaf containing the best elements of both new and old.
The Libertines – The Good Old Times
The Libertines – what a band. To put it simply, their history goes like this drugs – forgiveness – drugs/theft/jail – forgiveness – more drugs – end. The main offender on all accounts here was Pete Doherty. But believe it or not over the 4 rocky years of their existence they released two absolutely amazing albums. While the second received more commercial success, I maintain that Up The Bracket was the greatest, containing so much variety and catchy melodies it’s invigorating. But my respect for The Libertines did not come instantly. On first listen I couldn’t stand the slurred vocals and frequent lack of structure, it’s just didn’t go down well. But through determination I warmed to them and really began to appreciate their style. This song is particularly suitable, a prelude to their later demise and plus it sounds great.
Exhausting. This one word pretty much summarises my experience making this series. Every week, devoting hours of valuable time to a task that nobody really cares about (if you’re reading this, you’re probably one of only ten). But that hasn’t dismayed me one bit, for now that I have finished, I have a completed product to cherish forever. It seems however that nobody else cares for 5 songs stuffed into one file. No, they want individual files to claim as their own and while illegality of that is even greater, that is the direction I will be taking when I go back to new music at Open Your Eyes. So in other words, I will no longer be creating, just offering. All personal involvement has been severed and at the end of the day my effort will go uncredited. It’s sad I know but the collective ‘they’ haven’t spoken…..which is speak in itself. But thankfully this series, with the timeless content it contains, will live on forever….well at least until my free web space provider gets sick of me. In this final issue, the range spreads from veteran ensembles, to newly emerging wonders and finally to stars that shone a little too bright. But what amazes me though it really shouldn’t, is that despite being the 4th episode of the decade, contained here are some of the best bands to play over this, at the time of writing this, incomplete decade.
Death Cab For Cutie – We looked like Giants
It’s kind of sad that to achieve popular recognition you pretty much need the backing of a major record label. The ideal world would be one where record promotion was banned and all records are released on equal footing. That way the masses, well at least their MTV’s would have to listen to the songs and choose on merits, not just what the big 4 give them. However such a world does not and will not exist and unless we rally behind them, many bands will be forced to cross to the dark side. Such is the case with Death Cab For Cutie – same band, same music and yet there latest album, released on a major label, did far better than they’re previous. I choose this song not only because it’s good but to honour the material that ‘most’ failed to honour
Interpol – Evil
Interpol have the tendency to invoke feelings of darkness in me. Perhaps it’s the disturbing nature of the filmclip for this song. Or maybe the parallels in vocals I can’t help but make with Ian Curtis. Either way, most of their songs just sound depressing. I say this like it’s a bad thing but it’s not. What better way to cheer yourself up than to listen to someone who’s depressed and realise how much happier you are? Regardless, the music they create is great, with two out of two albums so far being top quality
Cake – Commissioning A Symphony In C
Cake are completely unique, no band (of notable worth) even comes close to the sound they create. The Distance, an early song of theirs, was a childhood favourite of mine and many years later I discovered and fell in love with their 2001 offering, Comfort Eagle. It’s a well-crafted, all-round album, one better remembered as a whole than for it’s individual songs, always a sign of quality. Cake have the skill of making their music funny, often for reasons I cannot explain, which is always welcomed
Queens Of The Stone Age – Go With The Flow
I suppose I should get this out in the air, this is not one of my favourite bands. But, probably to the disgust of many of their biggest fans I much prefer the newer stuff to the older. This is probably because over time their sound evolved from a self described “heavy sound, based on a solid jam and just pounded into your head” to a more innovative sound, which is what captured my interest. Rather than go for a song off their new album I’ve picked Go With The Flow, a gem off Songs For The Deaf containing the best elements of both new and old.
The Libertines – The Good Old Times
The Libertines – what a band. To put it simply, their history goes like this drugs – forgiveness – drugs/theft/jail – forgiveness – more drugs – end. The main offender on all accounts here was Pete Doherty. But believe it or not over the 4 rocky years of their existence they released two absolutely amazing albums. While the second received more commercial success, I maintain that Up The Bracket was the greatest, containing so much variety and catchy melodies it’s invigorating. But my respect for The Libertines did not come instantly. On first listen I couldn’t stand the slurred vocals and frequent lack of structure, it’s just didn’t go down well. But through determination I warmed to them and really began to appreciate their style. This song is particularly suitable, a prelude to their later demise and plus it sounds great.
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Second-Hand Records (90's)
Download Episode (9.4 mb)
Living through a decade really helps when you’re looking for music during it. The list of artists I want to include isn’t endless, but it doesn’t end here. So had I the time or patience I could easily have done another episode, but well I don’t. To all those great artists out there that I missed, you know who you are, keep on loving yourself. Now just because I lived through it, doesn’t mean I got to know all the music along the way. In fact had it been left purely up to me my knowledge would undoubtedly be limited and poor. However that is the advantage of an older brother. While later I would discover his tastes were only the tip of the iceberg, a better start than nothing it was. About a year ago, I discovered his plethora of mix discs, filled with the many songs I loved, yet I had no idea who they belonged to, let alone what they were named. So I underwent the tedious, yet successful task of matching what I heard to online lyrics databases through the ever-handy Google. Now I can call all those songs my own and enjoy them at my leisure. While this doesn’t apply to all songs here, it applies to most and the other two are favourites of others, recommended to me anyway so the common theme still holds.
The Verve – Bitter Sweet Symphony
This is simply an epic song. I don’t know why I feel this, perhaps the orchestral sound, but whenever I listen to it, I always feeling that it is being sung for a reason and having some profound effect somewhere in the world. It’s stupid I know but it’s true. Richard Ashcroft played this song at Live 8, backed up by Coldplay, where Chris Martin introduced him as ‘the best singer in the world’. While this is a ridiculous claim, it’s gotta count for something. A truly sad story, but which I find hilarious is that they were sued for including a Rolling Stones loop in this song and subsequently didn’t make a dime from by far their biggest song.
Pavement – Gold Soundz
Pavement never achieved mainstream fame, but meet a fan and you’ll realise just how big a cult following they had. This following includes many high profile bands and they are quoted as influential far more than their success would suggest. Similarly they were one of the first indie (independent (not the genre this term somehow spawned)) bands to make a mark without the help of a major label, inspiring many more to do so. I personally took a while to get into pavement, the timely onset of my realisation of their quality coming only after a few listenings of Crooked Crooked Rain. This song was the first I warmed to and subsequently my favourite though, Cut Your Hair, which for some reason invokes thoughts of Weezer, is threatening to take it’s spot.
Idlewild – You Held The World In Your Arms
This song has always been one of my favourite ‘single songs’. While I would normally call myself an album collector, I also have a small number of songs which I either don’t want to get more of the band or simply never get round to it. I would put this band in the latter category for while I know little about them it appears this wasn’t just a one hit wonder. I especially like the energy of this song and while I’m thinking about it, I guess you could say the long drawn out vocals in the chorus go really well. The quality of this song is a bit off in the file, I tried fixing it but apparently it just doesn’t like being at 80kbps.
Eels – Last Stop: This Town
My memories of Eels consist of pleasant vocals and well crafted film clips. This song definitely brings back such memories. The sound here is also rather unique which makes even better. Mr. E, I would just like you to know that I enjoy your blend of catchy tunes and soothing vocals
Stereophonics – More Life In A Tramps
While I actually don’t mind their latest offering, that is almost irrelevant, for it feels that their older stuff, especially this, is by a completely different band. It seems so much more intelligent, in many ways. It is more complex, there’s more variation and the lyrics are well, they’re about the same. Most notable the voice sounds very different; I personally like this sound better
Living through a decade really helps when you’re looking for music during it. The list of artists I want to include isn’t endless, but it doesn’t end here. So had I the time or patience I could easily have done another episode, but well I don’t. To all those great artists out there that I missed, you know who you are, keep on loving yourself. Now just because I lived through it, doesn’t mean I got to know all the music along the way. In fact had it been left purely up to me my knowledge would undoubtedly be limited and poor. However that is the advantage of an older brother. While later I would discover his tastes were only the tip of the iceberg, a better start than nothing it was. About a year ago, I discovered his plethora of mix discs, filled with the many songs I loved, yet I had no idea who they belonged to, let alone what they were named. So I underwent the tedious, yet successful task of matching what I heard to online lyrics databases through the ever-handy Google. Now I can call all those songs my own and enjoy them at my leisure. While this doesn’t apply to all songs here, it applies to most and the other two are favourites of others, recommended to me anyway so the common theme still holds.
The Verve – Bitter Sweet Symphony
This is simply an epic song. I don’t know why I feel this, perhaps the orchestral sound, but whenever I listen to it, I always feeling that it is being sung for a reason and having some profound effect somewhere in the world. It’s stupid I know but it’s true. Richard Ashcroft played this song at Live 8, backed up by Coldplay, where Chris Martin introduced him as ‘the best singer in the world’. While this is a ridiculous claim, it’s gotta count for something. A truly sad story, but which I find hilarious is that they were sued for including a Rolling Stones loop in this song and subsequently didn’t make a dime from by far their biggest song.
Pavement – Gold Soundz
Pavement never achieved mainstream fame, but meet a fan and you’ll realise just how big a cult following they had. This following includes many high profile bands and they are quoted as influential far more than their success would suggest. Similarly they were one of the first indie (independent (not the genre this term somehow spawned)) bands to make a mark without the help of a major label, inspiring many more to do so. I personally took a while to get into pavement, the timely onset of my realisation of their quality coming only after a few listenings of Crooked Crooked Rain. This song was the first I warmed to and subsequently my favourite though, Cut Your Hair, which for some reason invokes thoughts of Weezer, is threatening to take it’s spot.
Idlewild – You Held The World In Your Arms
This song has always been one of my favourite ‘single songs’. While I would normally call myself an album collector, I also have a small number of songs which I either don’t want to get more of the band or simply never get round to it. I would put this band in the latter category for while I know little about them it appears this wasn’t just a one hit wonder. I especially like the energy of this song and while I’m thinking about it, I guess you could say the long drawn out vocals in the chorus go really well. The quality of this song is a bit off in the file, I tried fixing it but apparently it just doesn’t like being at 80kbps.
Eels – Last Stop: This Town
My memories of Eels consist of pleasant vocals and well crafted film clips. This song definitely brings back such memories. The sound here is also rather unique which makes even better. Mr. E, I would just like you to know that I enjoy your blend of catchy tunes and soothing vocals
Stereophonics – More Life In A Tramps
While I actually don’t mind their latest offering, that is almost irrelevant, for it feels that their older stuff, especially this, is by a completely different band. It seems so much more intelligent, in many ways. It is more complex, there’s more variation and the lyrics are well, they’re about the same. Most notable the voice sounds very different; I personally like this sound better
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