Special Countdown: 12 Years of Last.fm (Part 4) (#20-11)

Counting Crows ca 1994

I'm back with another installment of the countdown of the Top 50 artists that I listened to from 2/14/06-2/14/18. This episode is the much-anticipated Bottom 10 of the Top 20.


12 Years of Last.fm (Part 4)

***Featuring***
Ben Folds
Cartel
Counting Crows
Fall Out Boy
Green Day
Kanye West
Less Than Jake
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes
R.E.M.
Radiohead
Red Hot Chili Peppers

New Countdown: Eventually, Everyone Goes Disco

Yuck

A pretty fun countdown this week! Spring is in the air and we're rocking out! Enjoy!


Countdown #289

***Featuring***
Ben Folds featuring Regina Spektor
Cold War Kids
Coldplay
Empire of the Sun
Foals
The Lumineers
Nothing But Thieves
The Strumbellas
twenty one pilots
X Ambassadors
Yuck

One Year, 100 Albums: #64 Ben Folds - Rockin' the Suburbs

Ben Folds Rockin' the Suburbs, 2001

If I'm being really honest with myself, I was disappointed with this album on my first couple of listens. It was a rainy evening and I'd just gotten back from the mall with my purchase. I put it on the 5 Disc CD changer (which would break and be chucked off of a 5 story parking structure before the school year was out) and pressed play. And something just seemed....off.

It's taken 12 years, but I think I've figured out what the disconnect was.

Ben Folds Five was like those older kids that would come back to visit in High School and still be so cool and rebellious even if you had this feeling in the back of your head that they were kind of total losers, in terms of life achievement. It didn't matter. They were scruffy and raw and didn't give a shit. That was the attitude of BFF.

So I was expecting something in that vein when I played Folds's first solo album, but here's the difference. If Ben Folds Five was the angry teenager reflecting on love decaying into hate, or how you can love a baby so much even as you're driving to the abortion clinic, Rockin' the Suburbs sees Ben Folds as Father. The anger has faded, replaced with a mixture of dark humor and bitter resignation. "And you wonder why your father was so resigned. Now you don't wonder anymore," he sings on "The Ascent of Stan" and you realize that for all the love songs to his son ("Still Fighting It") and wife ("The Luckiest") that bookend this album, there's a darkness that colors everything in between.

So it makes sense why this album didn't really connect with me when I was 18. But over the years, I've had time to live with it. And it has had time for me to catch up to a place close to where Ben Folds might have been in his life when he wrote it. And now it seems so wonderful and perfect and spot on. And I never realized it until now. You reach a point when you're considering the existence of your child(ren) where you realize that they represent both the extension and extinguishing of your life. It's light and dark. And this album is the soundtrack.

Ben Folds - The Ascent of Stan

Ben Folds - Still Fighting It

You can buy Rockin' the Suburbs at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes

I'm still here!

I'm totally still here, I've just been busy recently. And my computer has been rather narcoleptic recently. Well, I guess not narcoleptic. Isn't there like a chronic fatigue syndrome? Checking...Ha! Everything's something these days! Basically it's going fine, going fine, going fine, then UNBEARABLY slow. It's a lot easier if I put it on standby when I'm done with it, though. So that's what I've been doing. But enough about me. What do YOU think about me? Hehe.

I've been listening to my iPod in alphabetical order. Skipping duplicate songs and live songs if I have the studio recording, but listening to covers. A took me a week. B appears to be an even bigger letter. Maybe that's why "bigger" starts with B! At this exact moment, I'm on this song:

Lagwagon - Billy Club from Blaze

Which isn't my favorite song on the album. That might very well be this:

Lagwagon - Never Stops from Blaze

Lagwagon is funny because sometimes you're listening and thinking, "This is run-of-the-mill Fat Wreck Chords pop-punk" and then other times you wake up 2 hours later after having been knocked off your feet by the brilliance of a verse or turn of phrase. Here's my favorite part of that latter song:

Hands across America, let's catch contact hysteria
Our flag erects from broken homes
July 4 for evermore
Colors of democracy
Fly from every SUV
The Misspelled bumper sticker's here
Where did all the honor students go?


So anyways, all that and Ben Folds has an album coming out on Tuesday. We're feeling good.

Title of Entry (7/13/08) [Points For Creativity]

Hi!

So, I see that maybe some of you (read: a LOT of you!!!) have been voting! Thank you to each and every one of you for your votes! Keep them coming. We're past the halfway mark of Round 1 and that's certainly the longest round. Speaking of voting, how about...

Round 1e!!!

1.Bob Dylan vs. New Found Glory

Bob Dylan - Rollin' and Tumblin' from Modern Times
New Found Glory - Crazy For You from From the Screen to Your Stereo Part II

2.Death Cab For Cutie vs. Ben Folds

Death Cab For Cutie - You Can Do Better Than Me from Narrow Stairs
Ben Folds - Landed from Songs For Silverman

Happy Voting!

also, how about a nice shot of...

CP B-sides!!

This week was Monkeys and Apes. And it was a good time. Was it me, or was this episode especially wild?!

I submitted:

Traveling Wilburys - Tweeter and the Monkey Man from Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1

and I selected that fairly quickly. I also considered "Monkey Man", but Dirk submitted a version of that song so I didn't miss out on hearing that. I also considered submitting:

Counting Crows - Monkey from Recovering the Satellites

which I've heard is about Courtney Cox (not that he's saying she looks like a monkey, but I think that that was his pet name for her....maybe because he thought she looked like a monkey?)

Quick Side Note: In the blogs that I read, spouses are referred to in adorable ways. Nat calls her hubby Mr. Nat, Dirk calls his wife Mrs. Loser. But I think I'm just going to refer to my wife by her first initial, K. I think Mrs. Appetite isn't very flattering and Mrs. Distraction sounds like a super-villain, which I'm pretty sure K is not. But then again...where did we get all those bags with dollar signs on them?

Anywho, K and I went to go see Get Smart today and I was impressed. I really felt like it pretty much captured the feeling of the original but still seemed fresh and had me laughing really hard. It had all the gags that I would hope to see including probably my favorite thing from the series: the Cone of Silence. Great stuff.

We went down to Harrisonburg yesterday for a day full of reliving our lives in college and K's year of grad school. It's getting so developed and it's really weird to come back to a place after only a couple of years and see that it hasn't been patiently waiting unchanged in a state of suspended animation. We ate at a couple of our old haunts and paid a visit to the Green Valley Book Fair, which, if you're anywhere near the Shenandoah Valley, you should see when it's open (it closed today for about a month or so.)

And that was the beginning of the birthday celebrations for yours truly. I'm turning 25 on Wednesday and I'm feeling chill about it. Not getting any anxiety about the passage of time or the inevitability of aging. Just keeping it real. :) What does that mean, come to think of it? Can you keep anything in this life in any state other than real?

Alright, I've descended into the pit of questioning figures of speech. That means it's time for bed.

Goodnight everyone. Have fantastic weeks/days/hours!

Brackets

Ok. So NCAA Basketball March Madness is pretty much over now, but I decided I wanted to try something related to tournament brackets. The classic rock station that we occasionally listen to at work is having a battle of the bands with this tournament bracket and everything. So that's what I'd like to do too.

I'm a part of this website called Last.fm that keeps track of music that I listen to on my iPod or computer. And so, using the chart that it has for the Artists I've listened to most, I have made up a bracket of my own. It's really neat, but I don't think you get to see it yet. First, I'm going to gauge the interest in this endeavour with something of a pre-tournament set of match-ups. There are some positions on the bracket that are ties (basically, I've listened to two or more artists the same number of times) and so we're going to pick who gets those positions right now.


RULES FOR SAMPLE SONGS (Pre-tournament and Round 1):

For the first two contests, I will be posting songs from the contestants' most recent LP (not including greatest hits, live, or B-sides collections) that I own. Round 2 will have a different set of rules.


Oh, and the winner of the whole thing will have an entire post devoted to them including a playlist created by yours truly that you can download and burn to a CD in memory of the time we've spent together! Awww.

OK. So here are the pre-tournament match-ups and their sample songs:

1. Fall Out Boy vs. Sufjan Stevens
Fall Out Boy - You're Crashing, But You're No Wave from Infinity on High
Sufjan Stevens - Decatur, or, Round of Applause For Your Stepmother! from Come On Feel the Illinoise

2. Outkast vs. Blink-182
Outkast - Idlewild Blue (Don't Chu Worry 'Bout Me) from Idlewild
Blink-182 - Easy Target from Blink-182

3. Coheed and Cambria vs. Catch-22 vs. Taking Back Sunday
Coheed and Cambria - Feathers from Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV: Volume 2: No World For Tomorrow
Catch-22 - So Cold from Dinosaur Sounds
Taking Back Sunday - My Blue Heaven from Louder Now

4. Jack Johnson vs. Sublime
Jack Johnson - Sleep Through the Static from Sleep Through the Static
Sublime - Jailhouse from Sublime

5. Alanis Morissette vs. MxPx
Alanis Morissette - Everything from So-Called Chaos
MxPx - Well Adjusted from Before Everything and After

6. Ben Folds vs. The Get Up Kids vs. Foo Fighters (Now, that's Ben Folds (solo) not Ben Folds Five)
Ben Folds - You to Thank from Songs For Silverman
The Get Up Kids - Martyr Me from Guilt Show
Foo Fighters - Let It Die from Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace

7. Descendents vs. Linkin Park vs. No Use For a Name
Descendents - I Won't Let Me from Everything Sucks
Linkin Park - Given Up from Minutes to Midnight
No Use For a Name - Bullets from Keep Them Confused


So, take a listen if you don't know the artist, leave a comment with your votes and I guess the voting will close at like 11 pm EST on Monday. Thanks in advance for participating!