Music Videos: At the Diner

Superdrag - Sucked Out

There was a time when Mtv not only played music videos, but they did so in a manner that broke new bands and kept them in the spotlight when they were worthy. Superdrag was one such band simply because of the song "Sucked Out" and this video, which again takes place in a diner. Since 1996 was back before media was readily available on the internet I remember going days and possibly even weeks waiting to see this video again because radio stations weren't playing the song and Mtv seemingly had the rights to the video. I remember wondering whether or not the song was as great as I had been remembering since the morning I saw it before walking off to school (5th grade at the time) because I'd have to wait so long to see it again. It was. And is.

Listen and watch, HERE.

Superdrag toured for years and produced a lot of good music, all of which I've followed. I consider them one of the better power pop bands of the 90s, but popular history will prove them as One Hit Wonders.

Music Videos: At the Diner

MxPx - Chick Magnet
For some odd reason my two all time favorite music videos take place in diners.

The one you're about to watch is by my all time favorite band, MxPx. In this video from their 1996 release Life In General, the band decided for the first time to cast themselves in roles that didn't just include holding instruments and lip synching. Here the trio instead use their drummer and one of the most haggard looking human beings in the World, Yuri Ruley, as the title character, the "chick magnet." For me it was the cheesiness factor that made the video. Also, at about the 2:08 mark, the Chick Magnet uses a french fry as a Grouch Marx cigar to the delight of a throng of ladies.

Watch it HERE.

Vince Offer

The Sham Wow Guy I could just feel the demand growing for a post about the Sham Wow guy. I've assume by now you've seen his commercials or as the butt of jokes in several Conan O'Brien monologues. He's the abbrasive salesman for both the Sham Wow and, more recently, something called the Slap Chop. He's also the kind of guy that would have gotten you in trouble in high school using his "come on, what have you got to lose" mind tricks. Anyway, if his wikipedia page is to be believed, your suspicions that Vince Offer is an asshole were probably correct. Highlights ahead:

1. Father is Israeli (go figure...), his real name is Offer Shlomi. You mean to tell me this ubersalesman's actual first name is Offer? Bullshit.

2. In 1999, Offer released the Underground Comedy Movie to scathing reviews. The New York Post said it "may be the least amusing comedy ever made."

3.Sued Anna Nicole Smith for initially agreeing to be in said movie, then pulling out because "it would hurt her career." (Against all odds and in defiance of God's will she was right).

4. Offer sues Farrelly brothers, accusing them of stealing scenes from Underground and using them in There's Something About Mary. Farrelly brothers say "We've never heard of him, we've never heard of his movie, and it's all a bunch of baloney." Case is dismissed.

5. Sues Church of Scientology (he's an ex-member)alleging that the church had declared him a criminal and had urged its members to commit libel against him.

And after all that, I'd still probably buy a Sham Wow because he's a hell of a salesman.

Even More Awesometown

Glirk
By now you've seen the intro and the intro's intro. Here's yet another youtube link, this time to a full length sketch which made it onto both versions of the Awesometown pilot. Nothing too out of the ordinary for the comedy style of Samberg, seen here playing the part of a sexually amiguous alien. Enjoy.

More Awesometown

Jack Black as George Washington
Before their pilot for Awesometown was complete, Andy, Jorma, and Akiva were able to enlist the duties of Jack Black to shoot a 1 minute introduction to the show. In it he performs as George Washington the way only Jack Black could. Once again, the picture is the link.

Awesometown

When last we visited "The Dudes" of Lonely Island, they had just released their new album. In passing on the info I mentioned they had previously worked on a television pilot before ultimately landing in different behind-the-scenes roles on Saturday Night Live. Their pilot, called Awesometown, was commissioned originally by Fox and then again by MTV, neither of which ultimately picked up the show for a season. Then Lorne Michaels came calling and the rest is history. The link to the clip is in the picture above. It's the pilot's opening sequence. You can start to see why their brand of humor is better served in small doses as SNL Digital Shorts rather than full broadcasts.

Awesometown Intro

The Lonely Island Blog

Seeqpod

Seeqpod to me is like the wacky Uncle of Skreemr. The user interface is nuanced and busy, even though it seems to have more capabilities. The gist of Seeqpod is the same, just simply a search engine for tracks of music which pulls its searches from websites all over the globe. There may be a difference in the algorithms used to search the web, but that shouldn't bother the untrained user, as to my knowledge there's really no way of being sure. Whereas Skreemr (supposedly) allows you to download the tracks you find, Seeqpod just lets you save them to a playlist of your choice which can be saved for later, sent to a friend, or embedded into the boring blog of your choice.

Behold, as modern technology allows me to showcase the final song from Conan O'Brien's Late Night, along with two other random, strange tracks put together to form what some refer to as a playlist.


SeeqPod - Playable Search

SkreemR

You may have noticed that I like to back up my music blogging with sample tracks embedded into the blog. Although I can't really comment on the legality of this, I do know who I can blame if I'm in the wrong. Skreemr,is essentially the Google (which we've established is a genius) of mp3s and just individual song tracks in general. You simply enter what you're looking for into the search field and the resulting tracks (if available) will populate in order by their audio quality. From there you may play the track through skreemr's site, embed the track in a blog, or supposedly download the track to your computer. I've surprisingly not yet tried that.

Skreemr can do all of this because they don't host any of the music through their service. They simply scour the web for freely available mp3s hosted on various music blogs and websites. You'll find that it has a very user friendly interface, and I especially love how it positions itself as a search engine for rare songs and single tracks rather than a competitor to other peer to peer file sharing networks. That should at least keep it afloat for a few years before the RIAA comes knocking.

Today's track comes simply as a testament to Skreemr as an indicator of how far we've come since the days of Napster. It comes also in defiance of God's will, so far as Lars Ulrich is concerned. Here's a rare good, new Metallica song, the new single The Day That Never Comes (let yourself listen at least to the dueling guitars starting at around 5:40):

	Metallica - The Day That Never Comes
	Found at skreemr.com

Scrobbling

Last.fm is a music service owned by CBS that acts as a one stop shop for all things music. You can find band bios, listen to clips, use the radio function, and purchase (or listen to for free) songs from an enormous catalog of songs by most of the "Big 4" recording companies. But since the site only allows you to listen to a full song 3 times before limiting future plays to 30 second clips, the site has little use for me, except for one small thing. Instead, the function of last.fm I find most fascinating is called Audioscrobbler, which is a tool you can download from the site to be used with most audio programs (iTunes, Windows media, winamp), which essentially collects data about the music you listen to and converts it into graphical form. They call it "audioscrobbling," or just plain "scrobbling." Whether you listen to the song from the confines of the last.fm site itself or just listen to your own library on iTunes,etc, Audioscrobbler sees that you've listened and sends the information to the last.fm database. The same is true if you listen mostly on an iPod or other mp3 player. All you do is plug in the iPod, and audioscrobbler automatically (if you want) scrobbles every song you've listened to since the last time you were online. It can be interesting, for sure. Here's my all-time chart (I've only been a member for a little less than a year.

Of course the system has its flaws. Certainly it can't scrobble everything you listen to, specifically if you listen to CDs (who listens to Cds??), but it paints a fairly accurate picture of use. Another problem is that on last.fm people seem to derive pleasure from having listened to a band more times than someone else. So I'd say if using audioscrobbler is going to dictate what you listen to for bragging purposes, it becomes both a complete waste of an otherwise interesting program, and an inaccurate picture of your true listening habits over time.

Paul's Boutique

The Beastie Boys are celebrating the 20th anniversary of their sophomore LP, Paul's Boutique, by offering various physical and downloadable remastered forms of the album on their website (for money, of course, but DRM free).

Paul's Boutique was the epitome of critical success but commercial failure when it was first released in 1989. It marked the boys' quick departure from the fast paced rap they became infamous for in their debut album Licence to Ill, a departure they desperately wanted to make. Where their previous (Rick Rubin produced) work succeeded due largely to their whiteness and outrageous rhymes, Paul's Boutique aimed to be showcase of creative beats and sampling. This was before Gilbert O'Sullivan sued Biz Markie, forever changing the procedures an artist had to go through to "sample" an artists work. This album includes an incredible 105 sampled songs. Perhaps you've heard some of them. To name just a few:

"When the Levee Breaks" by Led Zeppelin
"Good Times Bad Times" by Led Zeppelin
"One of These Days" by Pink Floyd
"Momma Miss America" by Paul McCartney
"Pump it Up" by Elvis Costello
"Dance to the Music" by Sly & the Family Stone
"Suzy Is a Headbanger" by The Ramones
"Back in the USSR", "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)", "The End", & "When I'm Sixty-Four" by The Beatles
"Breathe" by Pink Floyd
"Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash
"Are You Experienced?" by Jimi Hendrix

And on the subject of sampling, but from a different record, I found this quote on Mike D's wikipedia page amusing:

Regarding the cost to sample Bob Dylan's Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues for the Beastie Boys song Finger Lickin' Good:

"Seven hundred bucks, but he asked for two thousand dollars. I thought it was kind of fly that he asked for $2000.00, and I bartered Bob Dylan down. That's my proudest sampling deal."

Happy Anniversary to the Beastie Boys

Paul's Boutique - Wikipedia

Globetrotters at the Spectrum

The longtime home of the Philadelphia 76ers and Flyers will be demolished later this year to make way for restaurants, shops, and a hotel a la the Baltimore harbor...only without the ambiance of an actual harbor or any scenery really. To celebrate the end of the Spectrum era, the Globetrotters will play their longtime nemesis Washington Generals on the roof of the Spectrum on March 3rd, providing Philadelphians with an event I'm sure nobody asked for. It prompts the question "is that even safe?"

More details at: the700level.com

Angels & Airwaves

Last Blink-themed post. I started with a thesis and now I'm just chronicling the lives of Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge for my own benefit. The latter of those two men seemed to go off the deep end after after Blink 182's original demise. He got a lot weirder, and I think that album cover explains it all. Keep in mind that album artwork is not supposed to be ironic or juvenile. His new band, Angels & Airwaves, has a website that actually requests that you pay for their content such as films and artwork, as if fans cared about anything other than the music. In other words, Tom's new work has been largely pretentious. In fact, when "AVA" debuted, Tom went on a PR blitz claiming his new band was revolutionary. Turns out Tom's idea of "groundbreaking" and "new" just includes some extra irrelevant tracks of noise and guitars with a delay effect. So ironically, groundbreaking to Tom just meant making his band sound like U2. I'm not sure whether or not they've sold well, but combine the current economy with the fact that Tom has lent his name to various business ventures like Macbeth shoes and Atticus clothing (while mark sold his stake in those same ventures) and I think Tom probably has the most to gain by reuniting the old Blink 182 name. As bad as they are, you've likely heard an Angels & Airwaves song, as one song, The Adventure, has been a lot of commercials in the past year. (Ford commercials I think):

	Angels And Airwaves - 05 The Adventure
	Found at skreemr.com

+44

When Your Heart Stops Beating +44 formed in the wake of Blink 182's "hiatus." This new band featured Mark Hoppus and Travis yet again on drums (he was in Boxcar Racer, too). Of the various Blink 182 offspring and side projects, +44 ended up sounding most like its predecessor. They also represent the only project to realize that moving on from their past work didn't mean they had to forget about it completely. Said Corey Apar of allmusic.com:

On their debut, When Your Heart Stops Beating, +44 has managed to balance out upbeat rockers and somber introspections to create a record that is thoughtful and composed, yet fun, and almost like the album blink could have made had they stuck together.

There are some electro-pop elements and softer songs here that prove Mark Hoppus' worth as a pop song writer, and validating in the process his newfound success as a producer for such bands as The Matches, Motion City Soundtrack, Socratic, and New Found Glory.
Here's a song from the album which actually attacks Tom, who at the time had finally formed his new band, our next subject, Angels & Airwaves:

	(+44) - No It Isn't
	Found at skreemr.com

Boxcar Racer

(Blink 182 + David Kennedy) - (Mark Hoppus + Pop Elements) = Boxcar Racer

Boxcar Racer was a side project put together by Blink 182's Tom Delonge between Blink's two final albums. He positioned it as an outlet for material he felt would have been unbecoming of a Blink 182 record. By saying this he was more or less admitting that Blink had become a cash cow that had gotten away from what had originally driven the band to make music. It was a more personal, much angrier, political record, as well as a continuation of Tom's lyrical theme in which he tries to tell teenage America to stop being so stupid and gullible and stand up for themselves, which we heard earlier on Anthem Pt.II.

For what it's worth, this was Tom's one and only actual punk effort, and in my opinion the greatest work he's ever done. Probably as a way of saying "hey, look, I can be punk," Rancid's Tim Armstrong appears on the track "Cat Like Thief." Needless to say he dismantled the band after this, their only release, saying it had served its purpose. Luckily I had a chance to see them headline with Sum 41 before the breakup. He then went back to (now that I think about it) purposefully make a really crappy Blink 182 record so he'd have an excuse to leave it for good.

	Boxcar Racer - Cat Like Thief
	Found at skreemr.com

My choice for the album's best song:

	Boxcar Racer - There Is
	Found at skreemr.com

Blink 182 - The End

I hope that by this point I've at least established an idea of what made Blink 182 successful. The fact is, though, that the band were all in their late 20s (Mark was 31) by the time Take Off Your Pants and Jacket came out, and everyone knows a punk can't be a punk forever. So, no doubt feeling swayed to achieve more artistry and depth in their musical endeavors by time and age, Blink put out their self titled record, which, while of course lauded by critics, was kind of a slap in the face to everyone who had been a longtime fan. Why did it suck? Well, being more serious and sonically advanced (they harmonize on this record!) would have been a great change of pace, and even appreciated by me. But what came out was more than just that. There's a track which devotes an entire minute to an old woman talking about a war, there's a two minute piano "interlude", and even a duet with The Cure's Robert Smith. I think the interlude speaks on behalf of the rest of the album, so have a listen and tell me where you can hear any influence from previous records at all:

	blink-182 - the fallen interlude
	Found at skreemr.com

It's not even that the record is horrible, because it's not. It's just that it shouldn't have been released under the Blink 182 name. At least when Paul McCartney decides to change it up and take an audio shit he has the decency to call it The Fireman. But, alas, this is where they were headed, and you can hear the direct influence of whatever was pulling Tom and Mark apart on tracks of this album. The tracks that still held an influence of pop punk were clearly Mark's. And the track's that were spacey and weird were Tom's. It was obvious.

Mark:

	Blink 182 - Feeling This
	Found at skreemr.com

Tom:

	blink-182 - all of this (feat robert smith)
	Found at skreemr.com

And someone in the band must have felt the same way because they broke up shortly after this record, and they should have. I'm not saying they had to hate each other like they did, but if your influences have changed so differently, start a side project. Everyone starts a side project.