Thursday, July 31, 2008

Let's Do This! (John's ipody goodness)

I was so pleased to see Matt's post about ipody goodness that I had to post a little quick tidbit of my own. I've recently been fishing around on my own ipod a good bit. Since I got one about a year and a half ago I've been frantically cramming pieces of a huge CD collection into apples sleek little sexy player... slowly taking my 30GB of space and narrowing it to the point where I think I maybe still have 4 GB or so. Along the way I've also become aware of and filled some gaps (never owned any Bob Dylan so I bought a bunch starting with Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Tracks).

Lately I've gotten back into the swing of tracking new acts, and I've got a couple I'm pretty pumped about right now. The are Santogold, a group/performer I think is blowing up in a general sense. The sound is catchy, the beats are good, and the whole package comes together well. Many people make a quick comparison to M.I.A., another musician whose work I love that has come up in the past few years. The shoe fits in that department, and the similarity in their sounds is fine by me, as I like both. I've also heard Santogold compared in sound to other luminaries of fem rock and pop including Sleater Kinney, another group I admire greatly. Worth your time, no doubt, even as the tracks get picked up as background music for Bud Light Lime ads! (ak!)

The second new group I'm pumped about right now is Dr. Dog. I just downloaded a bunch of their stuff in the last couple days, and I'm pretty hooked right now. They've got a clean hooky sound. They're from Philly (as supposedly Santogold is as well... REPRESENT!!!), and they've got a devotion to certain founding rock sounds (think Beach Boys and Beatles) but they've also got a newskool arts and craftsy creative edge. Their arts and craftsy workmanship has me lumping them in with groups like Spoon, Interpol, and others like them who take well used sounds and hustle them into something new and interesting.

Let's hear it for music talk! I WANT MORE!!!

ipody goodness

I have recently finished taking the bar exam, an experience that is nearly as much fun as spending an evening with Karl Rove and Richard Simmons while drinking expired milk. (Apologies to anyone who spent their Saturday night that way).

The one good thing about the last two months is that I was motivated to finally go out and get an iPod, so I could use music to tune out the sounds of the world. When I first got the iPod, I decided to revisit some of the music that I own but haven’t listened to in years and years. For me, this essentially means raiding the vast collection of electronic music that I acquired in college. For the last 5 years or so, I’ve gotten really into –i.e. obsessed with—that ill-defined and venerable genre of music known variously as “classical”, “serious” or “art” music. So I haven’t really been keeping up with the phat beats and crazy mixes.

Anyway, I have thought about making some notes about music and my reaction to it, since I am by nature narcissistic enough to subject my friends to my opinions about this sort of thing. Therefore, you should all look forward to my random, incoherent and very possibly drunken ramblings about CD’s no one cares about anymore! Hurray!