Do you believe in the power of Cher?

So this blog was originally supposed to document my life as it realtes to music.  And it as.  Although that has meant playlists of gigs I've done (mostly at the Castle), mixes I've done, opinions around concerts I've been to, and some sporatic album reviews.

But music is a part of everyday life as well.  From the music you hear actively or passively every day, to casual conversations about music.  I don't write about those because they are usually so mundane that I don't ever want to have that crap documented.

But there was an odd little music glitch in the matrix yesterday that I thought was worthy of a few words.

I'm not a fan of Cher.  Well, 80s, 90s and 00s Cher.  I admit that if "Gipsys tramps and thieves" comes on (which only happens on a decades oriented satellite station these days), I guiltily sing along in my car.  With that said, in my Pensacola hotel room last night I couldn't help but pause during my channel surfing when I discovered a channel that was broadcasting northern floridians singing karaoke at a local bowling alley.  And not very well, mind you.

I could only listen to two singers...the first was singing some country song so off key that I doubt I would have known what the song was, even if I listened to country music.  The second was barely passable as she worked her way around Cher's "I Found Someone".  Yeeesh.

Fast forward 15 minutes when I'm in the car on my way to dinner.  There I hear the actual version by Cher being sung on the radio!  I actually do believe that coincidences happen all the time and that some cosmic force isn't telling me something by having me hear the same Cher song twice within 15 minutes, but it was still creepy.

There you go...something different on my blog...yahoo!   And if you are ever in the panhandle and feel a burning desire to be televised while singing karaoke, go here

castle playlist 4/24/09

A good night of mixing things up.
Thanks to astralwerks records for providing the swag for the Pet Shop Boys listening party.

wire - feed me
the cure - lullaby
2 cold - short back and sides
layo and bushwacka - chapter one
gershon kingsley - popcorn
battery - gangsta's paradise
depeche mode - in chains
camouflage - that smiling face (justin strauss remix)

pet shop boys listening party

pet shop boys - always on my mind
devo - that's good
david guetta - this is not a love song
headman - catch me if u can
craig armstrong - ball
oasis - falling down (chem bros mix)
ANA - are friends electric?
jesus and mary chain - april skies
kmfdm - more and faster
she wants revenge - dont wanna fall in love
white lies - to lose my life
bitchee bitchee ya ya ya - fuck friend (css remix)
combichrist - get your body heat
junkie xl - cities in dust
koen groeneveld - rockafeller skank
lcd soundsystem - get innocuous!
dj not i - more cowbell
depeche mode - wrong (trentemoller remix)
revolting cocks - attack ships on fire
calvin harris - im not alone (deadmau5 mix)
team 9 - small town apology
evolved - a matter of time
SMD - hustler
play paul - la la land
electric six - gay bar
rob zombie - dragula
white stripes - 7 nation army (adam freeland mix)
leftfield - open up
sebastien leger - the people
fukkk offf - rave is king
ministry - stigmata
acid horse - no name no slogan
new order - subculture (12" mix)
sarah mclachlan - fallen (gabriel & dresden remix)
pvd - time of our lives (club mix)
the doors - light my fire (hot rocks mix)
the cube guys - baba o'riley
the killers - mr brightside (thin white duke remix)
q lazzarus - goodbye horses (rmx)
lady gaga v princess superstar v mason - perfect poker face
queen v ramones v NIN - bootlegger rhapsody
aggro1 - strange cocaine
flight of the conchords - business time
ps boys - west end girls (sasha mix)

castle playlist 4/10/09

thanks to A_V_E for helping out

kiln - rustdusk
2 cold - short back and sides

bat for lashes listening party

pet shop boys - love etc
headman - catch me if you can
royksopp w robyn - the girl and the robot
santogold - LES artistes


A_V_E in the house

death in vegas - dirt
ellen allien - go
sebastian leger - the people
dj not i - more cowbell
depeche mode - wrong (dim vs boyz noise mix)
mstrkrft - 1000 cigarettes
she wants revenge - dont wanna fall in love
the illuminoids - get it on at le disko
electrosound - sweet motorcycle dreams
ils, everyones a crook - love will tear us apart
eon - spice
the prodigy - invaders must die


A-V-E

deadmau5 -hi friend
koen groeneveld - rockafeller skank
junkie xl - cities in dust
matmos - send me an angel
apop - kathys song rmx
felix da housecat - ss shower scene (remix)
NWA - straight outta compton
parliament - flashlight

tampa theatre spring fling 04/02/09

we had a great turnout for this one.
thanks to bamboozle cafe for providing the food for the balcony club event


dido - here with me
the orb - earth (gaia)
lemon jelly - space walk
royksopp - so easy
dusty springfield - spooky
len - steal my sunshine
2 cold - short back and sides
thievery corporataion - until the morning
rob - musique pur un enfant
mulu - pussycat
koop - summer sun
mr scruff - music takes me up
propellerheads - history repeating
future loop foundation - whats your name (fila brazilia mix)
johnny nash - i can see clearly now
biz markie - its spring again
moby - in my heart
mr joshua - in praise of the sun
rinocerose - radiocapte
house music united - yes we can

Flight of the Conchords

Meandering. Unrehearsed. These are the words that Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie used themselves to describe their show at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center on Monday April the 6th. They may have been these things, but they make meandering very very funny.

This was the first stop on their tour, so they may very well have been a little unrehearsed. Florida because of it's dangling penile geography often is either the first or last stop in a band's tour, or not at all.

Unfortunately, we switched from HBO to Showtime last year (Dexter was the deciding factor), so many of the songs that they played were lost on us, although no less funny. Highlights included "Business Time" and "Robots". One kid two rows down from us even dressed as a Robot, with the crowd around him unsuccessfully trying to get the Conchords' attention.

Kristen Shaal (who plays Mel on the show) opened up the evening with a comedic act that will forever make me look at kitchenware in a new light. She is only performing with the Conchords for part of the tour, so I considered it a treat that we got to see her act.

Sure enough, videos from the evening were posted on youtube mere hours later. The "unique" experience that a few thousand persons share can now me shared by geeks all over the world.

What ultimately marred the show was not their meandering performance, but the performance of the audience. It began between lulls in the songs as people in the crowd started yelling out song requests or other pithy statements ("I love Australia!"). The Conchords handled this well at first, but as the night wore on and the alcohol fueled crowd gained confidence, the Conchords had a harder time shutting the obnoxiousness down and seemed annoyed. Mob mentality is a funny thing...I even found myself wanting to scream out "Not as Good!", a reference to the fact that Jemaine had a brief stint on a series of Outback Steakhouse commercials. I held my tongue. It was the Performing Arts Center, after all. Would you shout "burn the witch" during a performance of Wicked?

I felt weird going there dressed in jeans.

WMC is still for me

For the last few years I've been wrestling with the concept of "age-appropriateness". When someone says that you are too old for something, what does that really mean? I suppose there are some absolutes (I am too old for bed wetting), but other concepts are much more vague. A man grows up and is too old to play with Hot Wheels, but having a child completely justifies that same man to kneel on the floor with his son and play "vroom vroom"!

So does this age appropriateness concept apply to certain types of music?

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are still rocking, although the argument may be made that their music sucks now. Apart from that, is it "age-appropriate" for a 60 year old guy to go out on stage and strut the same way he did 40 years before?

With that said, a few weeks ago I made the annual pilgramage down to Miami with my friend Trey for the Winter Music Conference. For those unitiated, WMC is the end-all and be-all gathering of DJs and musicians in the world of electronic music. The list of events is staggering. DJs by the hundreds are spinning everywhere from clubs to hotel lobbies and bars to even retail outlets. I've seen DJs in Apple stores, Urban Outfitters, and Sephora.

The conference more or less climaxes with Ultra, which is the two day music festival at Bicentennial park in downtown Miami. Many of my friends that are in the music scene frown at Ultra. I admit that in the past I have as well. Ultra is a huge commercial endeavor that takes on an almost state fair like atmosphere, except instead of cheesy rides there is cheesy techno music. Nevertheless, from a cost/benefit perspective, it's a no-brainer. There are 6 or 7 tents that house DJs and musical artists for up to 12 hours straight, and if you want to hear some big names, Ultra is the place to hear them without shelling out $60 to hear them at a nightclub.

We only went for the Saturday edition of Ultra, and then only for the evening's performances. One of the first things that struck me was how many candy ravers there were. Candy ravers remind me of 1991 when techno was fresh and the beats were hard and frenetic. As the genre has branched and mutated over the last almost 20 years, I'm always a little surprised to see that candy raver fashion still shows up, at least at big muscial festivals like Ultra. What really surprised me was to see a "mom" candy raver Is this age appropriate? Still, when you are wearing little satin shorts and your butt is too flat to fill them in, your age doesn't really play into it...it's just gross! Trey said it best: "you don't have to dress like an a**hole to enjoy the music".

We saw great performances by Boyz Noise and MSTRKRFT, both masters of hard gritty electro tinged techno. From there we ambled over to the Carl Cox tent (a veteran of the scene at the age of 46) to see the one and only Moby.
Moby played a pretty hard set, completely unlike what you hear on his brekout 1999 album "Play" or even his recent release "Last Night". I like that. A DJ/artist doesn't need to be
pigeonholed into one genre. DJs like Paul van Dyk and Tiesto, although good at what they do, have fallen into that DJ trap. When he played Fukkk Offf's Rave is King the crowd went crazy. It doesn't hurt when you climb up the rafters and start shaking your fist like a crazed ape. And this guy is 45!

Our Ultra night ended with the Prodigy (all in their mid to late 30s). The Prodigy's new album is the aural equivalent of crystal meth. It is loud intense, and tweaked out. Samples from the Experience days are brutally apparant. They played a healthy dose of tunes from the new album, plus tracks like "Smack My Bitch Up" and "breathe" that made "electronica" a household word to some, a dirty word to others. I only wished they had played the song that popularized (and perhaps killed) rave music: Charly

There were other more low-key events that we attended that rounded out the weekend....a pool party at the Hotel Victor with Felix da Houscat (age 37), Late of the Pier playing live at the Vagabond, cumulnating with John Digweed (age 42...I see a pattern here), who performed Saturday night at the same club. Really the only thing that marred the weekend was the fairly high concentration of douches on the street and at select events. After all, spring break was going on at the same time.

I don't know if I'll go back next year, but if I do, I know I won't dress like an a**hole and I'll know that I'm not too old to still enjoy the music.