Friday, December 25, 2009

Dane's Music 2009 - Part III


Merry Christmas!

I wrap up my my 2009 music list looking forward to 2010.

The most important music discovery for me in 2008 was the Athens, Georgia band The Whigs. Unfortunately, they have been touring all year and won’t have a new album until 2010. The good news is they pre-released a couple of tunes, so I include Hundred/Million to my list and hope to see more of their stuff on next year’s list.

Fortunately for me, the Whigs did their tour with a band called The Features. They have been around awhile, but were new to me. I skipped over a lot of great songs from their new album so I could include Now You Know (2009). I also had to pick a couple more from earlier material, Wooden Heart (2006) and Guillotine (2006). I have a few of their older albums to aquire yet, so you can probably expect to see another song from them on next year’s list.

Speaking of next year, have a good one and here’s to finding tons of new music to make your 2010 memorable.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Music 2009 -- Part II


Obviously, some of the best music I ran into this year couldn’t fit on one simple list, but one unique tune that did make the cut was Joseph Arthur & The Lonely Astronauts’ 2007 tune Diamond Ring. It was something I found on a Paste Magazine sampler which prompted me to download the whole album.

On the other hand, some of my favorite stuff was from bands I have been listening to forever.

Echo and the Bunnymen
’s Songs to Learn and Sing was in the tape deck of my ‘74 Impala when I made the move from Minnesota to Arizona back in ‘87. They released a new album in ‘09. Included from this was Think I Need It Too and Do You Know Who I Am? (2009).

Another staple in my collection is Cracker. Funny, quirky, intelligent alt/country, this stuff has been making me laugh for almost two decades. Their latest release is represented here with Turn On Tune In Drop Out With Me and Show Me How This Thing Works (2009). The latter is a song about some strange contraption that falls from space and can apparently do just about anything:

Will it make me rich, will it get me high, Will it look good with the rest of my furniture, Will it make a soft and pleasing tone at night (oh, oh, oh), Will it heal the sick, will it feed the poor, Will it give me everything I ever dreamed of....Show me how this thing works...


On the mellower side, there is another old favorite of mine that put out a new one in ‘09. David Gray is represented on the list with Stella The Artist (2009) and one from his Greatest Hits a couple years back that I had over-looked, You’re The World To Me (2007).

In my next and final post about my 2009 music list, I will wrap things up with a rundown on my absolute favorite finds of 2009.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Dane's Music List 2009


Well, another year, another “Best of” music list. I put one together every year, but mine is decidedly different than most. My list is more representative of what I was listening to over the course of the year, rather than an exclusive list of what was “best” in 2009, so I include stuff that I missed when it originally came out. This year’s list is decidedly mellower than usual as well. I must be getting old.

The oldest selection on my list is Nuclear Love Machine (1995) by The Ugly Americans. I came across this while looking for something Cracker-ish. There is a great Southern feel here and this tune has some Allman Brothers sounding guitar licks in it.

The Ugly Americans were fronted by Bob Schneider. I include his 2009 release 40 Dogs on my list as well.

The next oldest tune on my list is John Mayer’s City Love (2001). I may have overlooked him in the past because he was a bit too mellow for me back then. Not so much anymore. I love the jazzy feel of this song and some great lyrics: “She keeps her toothbrush at my place, as if I have the extra space.”

Not to get too serious, I also included a great new one from Philadelphia’s Canadian Invasion, Standing on the Shoulders of the Carcass of John Mayer (2009).

Another older tune included is the Candyskins’ Monday Morning (2004). I knew these guys from their Wembley tune, but digging deeper, I cannot figure out how these guys didn’t get bigger than they did.

I have always been a Hothouse Flowers fan, but kind of forgot about them after the ‘90’s. I rectified that by finding a new one from this decade and included Your Love Goes On (2004) to this year’s list.

Another ‘90’s favorite, The Wonder Stuff, has also been rediscovered. I include Tricks of the Trade (2006). It is impossible to listen to this song without hearing Cheap Trick.

Another "older" tune is from Nik Kershaw, Already (2001).

The last song to make the list that didn’t have some kind of 2009 connection is the Shout Out LoudsTonight I Have To Leave It (2007). I stumbled on these Scandahoovian popsters earlier this year. They have a catchy Cure kind of sound.

Well, not to get too long-winded, I will chat about the newer stuff from my 2009 music list in my next post....

Merry Christmas everyone.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

The Great "Rowdy" Roddy Piper



Sometimes I wake up at four in the morning with the weirdest things on my mind. Today, it was the movie They Live, starring "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, the great Canadian pro wrestler. The movie contains the greatest six minute fight scene ever put on film. It is spurred on by Roddy's opponent's refusal to put on a pair of sunglasses. If you refuse to see anything less than Academy Award material, this movie is a must-see.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Learning to Learn

Sorry for repeating myself, but I love these "Did You Know" videos. These videos shed a light on the fact that we must be open to change or risk becoming obsolete. Learning to learn is more important than knowing, because what we don't know is more important than what we already do know. The world is about to get much crazier as knowledge expands exponentially.

Also, India and China may be the largest English speaking countries in the world, but we would being doing your children a favor by having them learn Mandarin.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

The Dismantling of Tiger Woods

Why are people so obsessed with Tiger Wood’s infidelities? Sure, it’s hard to turn your head away from a train wreck, but why? In large part, we tend to measure ourselves by the actions of others. We watch someone go down in flames -- especially if they seem to have it all -- and we feel a bit better about our own miserable existences.

I tend not to watch the news, so I have been able to stay away from most of the sordid details. With that in mind, my thoughts on the topic are pretty limited.

When the story broke, one of my friends made a post on Facebook about how disappointed she was with Tiger’s discretion. Another friend commented that Tiger’s wife should have seen it coming. After all, Tiger is famous and his wife obviously must be a gold digger and couldn’t have been so naïve. Tiger must have women throwing themselves at him constantly, he argued, and no man could resist that constant temptation. I have never been rich, famous, or that good-looking, so I guess I will never know.

I think many people overlook the obvious nugget in this story, though. It is the question of integrity. Tiger’s mistake wasn’t that he was sleeping around on his wife -- if people want to have a open marriage, that’s their business -- it was that he didn’t have an honest conversation with his wife going into the marriage. Granted, people can also have a change of heart during their marriage (I speak from personal experience on that one), but Tiger was too small of a man to have an honest conversation even then.

If Tiger wanted to sleep around, he should have been man enough to tell his wife, allowing her to decide whether she wanted to stay with him or not. Tiger should have been honest with her. The value of honesty doesn’t change just because fame and a large bank account are involved. If you don’t respect the most important person in your life, how can you respect yourself? And without self-respect, where is the integrity? In the toilet.

Most people think the opposite of honesty is dishonesty. Really, the more accurate antonym is chicken-shit. People who are not honest are scared -- scared of the consequences that honesty may bring. True alpha males aren’t scared. Even with all he has and all he is, Tiger was a chicken-shit. I guess that just makes Tiger another beta.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

The World is Changing

One of my bosses shared the original version of this video with us. This is the second in the series, but I think they may be up to 4 or 5 now. I have not verified any of the facts presented here -- and I hate sharing things without having a good feel for their accuracy -- but this is thought provoking regardless.

If you find this interesting, I recommend spending a few minutes on You Tube tracking down the rest of them...

Friday, December 4, 2009

You Weren’t Born Here, The Police Brought You



I was preparing for a road trip to California recently and was looking around for something different to pop into the CD player when I ran across an old Bill Cosby bit I remember listening to with my buddy Scott when I was a kid.

I only had time to download To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With, but after listening to it, the consensus in the car was that I should download more Cosby for next time. Mr. Cosby’s stuff is classic, and with a ten year old around, being able to listen to a comedian that can pull off his craft without resorting to adult language and themes is a bonus.

The truly awesome thing about this album is you can download it in it’s entirety off of Amazon for $4.95. Better still, you can just get the best part, the 27 minute title track for a mere 99 cents. Well worth your buck. Or if you are dirt cheap, you can listen to it now on iLike.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

On Global Warming

The politics and pseudo-science behind the issue of global warming (or is it politically correct to call it climate change?) make it almost impossible to have an opinion on the issue without “picking sides”. If you believe man is making the polar ice caps melt by using gas-powered leaf blowers, then, it is assumed you must logically conclude that all governments must join together to ban fast food hamburgers. On the other hand, if you ignore the glorious wisdom of our great spokesmen on this subject, you must be a quack. After all, who can argue with the man who invented the internet.

I have concluded -- like what the Republicans and Democrats are to politics -- so are the scientists on both side of this debate. They are all wrong.

First of all, both sides twist the data to verify their own conclusions. For every one of those charts scientists claim as conclusive evidence, there is someone on the other side that can re-configure them into opposite conclusions. On top of that, we, as humans, are very bad at determining cause and effect and are even more inept at accurately defining correlations between complicated phenomena. We also tend to arrogantly think we know more than we really do. If all the knowledge we have about global warming could fit on a grain of sand, what we don’t know would encompass the entire earth. Yet we continue to spew at facts as if we have some omnipotent insight into them.

Secondly, we ignore that every generation conjures up it’s own earth-ending disaster scenario. There was communist global domination, the population bomb, various world pandemic hysterias, and -- one that may actually still deserve some real attention -- nuclear annihilation.

We live in a dangerous world. We calm ourselves by thinking we -- or more dangerously -- our fuhrers can do anything about it. Treaties don’t work. Ask the Native Americans. It is simple arrogance to think that we can mandate away global warming any more than we can world hunger. Giving up sovereignty for safety has never worked. But fear works. Real or not, political power depends on it.

So, what to do? The science on both sides is iffy and the potential political solutions are even worse. And even if you do believe one side has the monopoly on truth, that does not mean that side's solution shouldn't be scrutinized.

How about this? Let’s all agree that we don’t know it all. Let’s not shoot first, ask questions later. Let’s not put guns to people’s heads and tell them what vehicle they can drive, whether they can travel, or that they can’t eat red meat. Let's not create new carbon taxes and regulations to stick it to the productive people of this world.

Here’s a novel idea, let’s agree that we all like clean air, water, and land and start showing some respect for those things -- regardless of where one may stand politically or scientifically. Even if you are on the side that doesn't believe man’s activity is in some way responsible for climate change, let’s be prudent and take care of our resources, stop buying crap we don’t need and casting off our used consumer goods haphazardly.

And finally, let’s stop picking sides and just do what is right in our own households. Let’s start there before using our governments to self-righteously demand others half way around the globe to bow down to our version of justice. After all, those people on the other side of the world are the ones buying up our debt, allowing us to continue our over-consumption, debt-ridden lifestyles.

We ain’t that holy.

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