John's August Top 50 (pt. 4: 20-11)

20. Whole Wide World (Wreckless Eric)
I'll admit it, I fell in love with this song largely based on the movie Stranger than Fiction.

19. Leggy Blonde (Flight Of The Conchords feat. Murray aka Ginger Balls)
I recently went ahead and got the Flight of the Conchords CD and was pleased I did so when I could tote around my ipod listening to some of my favorite Conchords tunes, Leggy Blonde being high up on my list.

18. I'm Shipping Up to Boston (Dropkick Murphys)

17. Countdown (The Black Keys)
The Black Keys are incredibly enjoyable blues rock. Stripped down, great sound, nice licks, easy to love. Their most recent CD is especially nice, but all their stuff is solid.

16. Get Busy (The Roots feat. Peedi Peedi & Dice Raw)

15. Snap Music (The Apple Juice Kid)

14. Strange Apparition (Beck)
In anticipation of his new CD I started re-listening to some of my favorites. This is by far my favorite track off his list album, the Information.

13. The Mesopotamians (They Might Be Giants)

12. Break the Glass (Suicide Machines)

11. El Microfono (Mexican Institute of Sound - MIS)

John's August Top 50 (pt. 3: 30-21)

30. Magic Trick (M. Ward)
M. Ward's music fits nicely in the pantheon of folk rock singer songwriters, offering lyrical complexity, good and growing production sensibilities, etc. This song is nicely accessible and straightforward with the central concept that the woman he sings about has "one magic trick, just one magic trick, she disappears." I find it breezy, fun , summer-appropriate and smile-inducing.

29. Duck Down! (The Roots)

28. Dwarf Star Party (The Majesticons)
I wanted to check this album out about 5 years ago when it came out, but then quickly forgot about it. Recently I re-discovered it via Emusic, and have enjoyed the handful of tracks I downloaded. This one, specifically is about UFOs among other things. Alien Rap? Sweet.

27. The Passenger (Iggy Pop)
Nice duo here with Iggy and Robert Forster. The Iggy track is one of my favorites, just a good feeling all time classic if you ask me. Great for cruising around town, great for well... fuck it, anything. Let's be honest. The Robert Forster track is new but sounds like it could easily be a familiar track you first heard decades ago on the radio while cruising around in the car with your dad.

26. It Ain't Easy (Robert Forster)

25. Kelen ati leen (Orchestra Baobab)
This song is infectious. If you check it out, I recommend turning it on, turning it up, and getting ready to do some stupid dance you'd feel self-conscious about if you were in a public place. Seriously, Orchestra Baobab is enjoyable in general, but this track is SO sweet. It's been in heavy rotation for me since January!!!

24. The Denial Twist (The White Stripes)

23. Flames Go Higher (Eagles of Death Metal)

22. Holland, 1945 (Neutral Milk Hotel)

21. Walk it Off (the Breeders)
Return to form? Ok. I'll say it. Nice track.

400 Posts Old!?!?!

Wow... what a ride it's been!

2 Years!

400 Posts!

5 Contributors total!

Untold number of photos, videos, and other random tidbits from the internets, the world, random random randomness.

On that note... or those notes, I'm going on vacation. While I'm down South for the next week I hope to take bunches of pictures that I'll post up here. Keep your eyes peeled for photos of mountainous beauty, natural niftyness, and general merriment.

Also, while I'm away I'll have those top 50 track lists auto-uploading.

For now... I'm actually a little amazed to have logged in and realized that this is actually post #401.

Gosh.

John's August Top 50 (pt. 2: 40-31)

So I started a bit of a series here, thinking I might schedule a couple posts to drop in while I'm on vacation next week. Keep your eyes peeled for the remaining segments of my current listening list, and hopefully with high speed internet in the cabin where we're staying even some updates on the mountains of North Carolina.

Here are my songs #40-31 for August of 2008:

40. Busta Miles (by The Apple Juice Kid)
This is off a really enjoyable album of Miles Davis music remixed. The album treads a nice line aesthetically between keeping some of the edgy playfulness that is so central to much of mixing and sampling in hip-hop while also letting the originality and brilliance of the source material shine through.

39. I Summon You (by Spoon)

38. Cut Your Hair (by Pavement)
I went through a big Pavement and Pixies phase recently, pulling back out old CDs to rip tracks to the ipod, picking up a nice copy of the delux re-release of Crooked Rain Crooked Rain by Pavement, and this is one of a handful of tracks I've kept in steady rotation ever since.

"Darling don't you go an cut your hair do you think it's gonna make him change?
I'm just a boy with a new haircut and it's a pretty nice haircut!"

37. One Armed Scissor (by At the Drive-In)
Fun to crank up, hadn't heard this song in awhile, but tracked it back down via Emusic, I believe, and have enjoyed playing it in the car a lot lately.

36. Trapped By Love (by Manu Chao)

35. Leave You Behind (by Sleater-Kinney)

34. Dress Up In You (by Belle & Sebastian)
I have been a fan of Belle & Sebastian for awhile, listened to Tigermilk a lot while studying abroad in college, laughed when they were the butt of a joke in High Fidelity. After all this time, I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up a copy of The Life Pursuit. Their songs have consistently been enjoyable over the years, but often had a similar feel and pace, so it was nice to hear this new CD push their sound in ways that give a real sense of newness while capitalizing on the elements that have kept fans close to B&S over the years. Anyway, this is just one of a couple tracks I really like of the disc.

33. Check Yo Self (by Ice Cube)

32. L.E.S. Artistes (by Santogold)

31. White City (by the Pogues)
Along side my Pavement and Pixies revival of late has been a broader punk, alt, guitar driven music revival. I have developed this habit over time of seeking out all kinds of music, but while my tastes have wandered and strayed I still do love some of the sounds that helped me jump off the land of top-40 radio into my own efforts to explore music on my own terms.

Wait, Did Paris Hilton Just Do Something Cool?

Funny or Die, previously most famous for posting a hilarious clip of Will Farrell arguing with his 8 month old landlord (outtakes here, criterion edition here), has just posted a video response by Paris Hilton to John McCain's celebrity ad.

If you aren't aware of the brouhaha that has surrounded it, last week McCain released a video online that compared Barack Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, saying he was one of the biggest celebrities in the universe and basically implying that he shares other qualities with the aforementioned vacuous pop star and celebutant. The Paris video is... I don't really know how to put this, um... good. Interesting, at the very least. Enjoy:

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

h/t Huffington Post.

Narcissist say wha?

BillO discussing what a narcissist is... wonderful




h/t Andrew Sullivan.

Incredible Muppet Outtakes

h/t Americablog.

John's August Top 50 (pt. 1: 50-41)

Ok, so in the spirit of our recent flurry of music-related content here on Best Way, I decided to start writing a bit about my fake ipod charts that I started awhile back. When I worked at my college radio station I generated weekly charts that reflected what discs were getting lots of play, what were new ads, etc. and distributed those to various distributors to keep them posted when their releases were getting pick-up. It was one of the more fun pieces of my job, along with the weekly conversations these charts spurred with reps from the various distributors.

Since owning an ipod I listen mostly to my own music when driving in the car (via FM radio adapter), at home, etc. so I have started thinking of my ipod as a little self-contained radio station. Hence, in June I made my first monthly top 50 playlist. I had toyed with the idea before, and it was lots of fun, so this month I'm doing the same. Below are songs #50-41 in my top 50 for August 2008. Songs newly added to my ipod and the list are in green.

50. Soggy Tongues (by Vic Chestnutt)
Lovely song by a widely respected artist, someone whose music I've always meant to check out, but only recently downloaded some of his stuff.

49. Climbing the Walls (by They Might be Giants)

48. Living Room (by Basement Jaxx)

47. Salamalekoum - Les Escrocs (by Bantu, Docta, Sister Fa & More)
This is off a wonderful compilation of African hip-hop I found on E-music. The album is called "Many Lessons: Hip Hop, Islam and West Africa." Some really wonderful sounds here.

46. Sweet Talk (by Spank Rock)

45. I Woke Up Today (by Port O'Brien)

44. Keasby Nights (by Catch 22)
I used to listen to Catch 22 a lot in college, but never purchased the CD until about a month ago. This has been in pretty heavy rotation ever since. Ahh for the throwback songs we used to crank while driving around campus!

43. Walcott (by Vampire Weekend)
They're a little too phenom-y for me right now, I see their record everywhere, but their sound is good even if the whole African sounds filtered through preppyness vibe is weird to me.

42. Ladies of the World (by Flight of the Conchords)

41. You and Me (by Solomon Burke)
Solomon Burke is an incredible soul singer who could literally make the warnings at the end of a direct-to-consumer drug advertisement sound amazing. This is a relatively new cut.

Happy Anniversary, Crap Bag

Today is the 20th anniversary of Rush Limbaugh's radio broadcast being on air. I honestly can't figure out anything more appropriate to say about this than what Tom Tomorrow said on his blog:

"Most of us try to make our mark, in some small way. But it’s a rare group of human beings who can look themselves in the mirror and know, beyond any doubt, that the world is a far worse place for their having lived in it.

It’s quite an achievement!"

What an ass. Rush, that is, not Tom. Happy Anniversary, ass.

OhNoesBama ALIENS!?!?!?!

Thanks to Wonkette I just saw this redonkulous piece of campaign interview footage. Obama, what kind of answer is that? It isn't even funny. He smiles like he thinks he's making a funny, but really his answer is just plain strange.

Now, granted, this has got to be the most silly question I've seen put to Obama since Georgie Stephanop-o-pop-o-lupus asked, "Does Jeremia Wright love America, Jesus and Apple Pie as much as Harry Carey loves the sun?" Watch the super quick and silly clip below and be amazed. Hooray for Friday Video Rediculousness!

New QTip... Maybe For Real This Time

So it has now been 9 years since the last release from Q-Tip, but that album, his solo debut, Amplified, is still great. Along the way between then and now there have been many indicators that something new would be released. Kamaal the Abstract was previewed to radio stations back in 2001 when I was still music director at my college's radio station, but while the initial tracks for that were tantalizing and intriguing it never surfaced. Today I read on Pitchfork that a whole new Q-Tip album is tentatively set for release in October. It sounds like this one may actually become real. Check out a stream of the first single.

Listening Notes Take 1

Nobuzaku Takemura: Scope
This has been one of the better rediscoveries on my iPod. I got this album sometime during college, and vividly remember driving back from the record store with my friend chuck, listening to the first track. It was about 20 minutes long and consisted mostly of silence broken by atonal, arrhythmic electronic noises. It was intriguing but hard to get into. The rest of the album is more accessible, and I am particularly fond of a track called “Icefall” which has been a regular feature on my playlist. It sounds like someone recorded a little synth riff, burned it onto CD and then scratched the hell out of it. It doesn’t sound like the recipe for gorgeous music, but it is—utterly gorgeous and utterly alien. In fact, in places, it reminds me somehow of Bach. Definitely worth listening to when you’re wearing headphones, alone in your room, or—as a study in contrasts—when you’re wandering through the woods early in the morning.