Okay, so like, these people working on robotic soldiers/war machines haven’t seen Terminator??? NO WAR ROBOTS PLEASE!!! Like, after seeing the terrorist attacks in India…what are the chances terrorists will ever get ahold of killer robots? And once we have killer robots, people will want weapons that knock out electrical functions, like electromagnetic pulse weapons, as self-defense against the robots, and of course once those become common people will be knocking off power grids left and right and we’ll be screwed, without the ability to use electricity…and the robots will be able to track you through your cellphone use, GPS, etc…BAD IDEA PEOPLE!!!
Talk about an arms race/race to the bottom. WE NEED SOME HELP WITH GAME THEORY HERE PEOPLE!!! I mean, once country A has the robots, so will every other country want similar robots, etc etc etc. We should just have a world-wide ban on war robots, period. Of course, the logic is also that no country wants to be the last to develop them and be caught unprepared…
Felix da Housecat: Madame Hollywood from “Kittenz and Thee Glitz.”
Remember 2001? Still a great album, for its mix of italo, house, new wave. Never quite understood the term “electroclash” though. Guess it was like, a pretty savvy repackaging/branding term…
Interestingly enough, Felix was executive producer on an as-of-yet unreleased Puff Daddy dance album?!
Required reading for anyone wondering about our current economic mess. Here’s where regulation is needed and free markets don’t just work: you can get a ton of really smart people together controlling major sections of the world financial system, who are only out for short-term profits (i.e. tomorrow, next quarter maybe), and many of whom don’t know what they’re selling, just that if they keep hyping it and selling it they can charge a lot of money for it. And not just ignorance, but other times outright fraud, knowingly giving things good ratings and telling people they are secure financial instruments when they know they are not.
The emperor really has no clothes. Things got so complicated, non-transparent, and under-regulated, even within individual firms…
Another thing that worries me in terms of regulation and transparency, is the whole Katrina fiasco. I mean, I can’t believe that Bush didn’t immediately send in the National Guard with tons of water, food, supplies, etc. I mean, if Katrina didn’t count as a huge national disaster, what would? And does that mean that the US doesn’t have an adequate stash of food and water and an adequate national disaster response communications network and strategy plan set up? What if there was a disaster on the scale of Katrina but man-made–would the federal government have stepped in to help US citizens any sooner? Or would people still be going without adequate supplies and assistance for days, weeks, etc? QUITE WORRISOME, no? I really hope our disaster response plans nationally have been beefed up–Obama, this should be a top priority when you take office.
Camper Van Beethoven, November 22, 2008, The Abbey, Chicago. Almost like what I would imagine seeing the Beatles would be like. Absolutely phenomenal. Incredibly high-quality mp3s of the amazing performance are available at the Internet Archive for free (Camper Van Beethoven allows non-commercial taping of their shows–in fact they use the exact language of the Grateful Dead’s taping policy on their website!!!). The old songs before Key Lime Pie sound to me even better in this live recording. Just as good or up to three times better than when I saw Daft Punk at Lollapalooza, which of course was leaps and bounds above every other one of the many other live shows I have ever seen. Camper Van Beethoven are all truly amazing musicians, and the lyrics and songwriting are often amazing and heartbreaking. Musically they are experts in playing blues, rock, country, classic rock, prog, indie, metal, ska, psychadelic, styles sounding like Klezmer, some sort of folk Gypsy, Mexican, and Arabic musics (see their song title “ZZ Top Goes to Egypt” ).
Camper Van Beethoven–Sweethears (live 2007)
They have songs literally as good as Dire Strait’s Sultans of Swing–“some of their best songs trace out the route between Fleetwood Mac’s Rhiannon and Dire Strait’s Sultans of Swing”–and more (see their album Key Lime Pie, which is their best album, with amazing songs like “Borderline,” “Sweethearts,” “When I Win the Lottery,” etc. Somehow everything really came together with Key Lime Pie). Overall being at the show was like seeing the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, the Pixies, Blur, Oasis, Radiohead, the Cure, Brian Eno, Roxy Music, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, ZZ Top, Dire Straits, the Grateful Dead, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and Pink Floyd etc etc etc all in one.
And incredibly you could tell the absolute influence they have had on any sort of indie/alternative music. Bands like Oasis and Teenage Fan Club and Radiohead must have listened to Camper Van Beethoven albums in awe, and Teenage Fan Club indeed covered their song “Take the Skinheads Bowling,” and Sublime covered “Eye of Fatima.” The best thing is Camper Van Beethoven are so good you could never categorize them as “rock” or “ska” or “alternative” or “country” or whatever. They are so skilled at songwriting and playing that they can do literally anything and it sounds good and real and authentic, some sort of new “Camper Van Beethoven” genre that doesn’t sound like a mishmash of influences but is just good.
The singer’s voice is incredible; the lead guitarist is incredible; the singer’s guitar has this perfect tone; the bass is awesome; the drummer is awesome; and you would not believe how good the violinist is and how much the violin adds to the music, taking it over the top. It’s incredible.
I kind of hope they can keep touring every year and become sort of like a Grateful Dead, where people come to all their shows because they’re just that good. And John Mayer, you should invite them on the next Mayercraft. Camper Van Beethoven rule at that sort of singer-songwriter blues thing too even though that’s just one aspect of their rich sound.
See the CVB webpage “Sound Off!” section for more details on the show including setlist, with plenty of fan favorites including at least three off of Key Lime Pie.
Great 80’s pop/new wave retro song from the Kaiser Chiefs “Never Miss A Beat.” Cue My Sharona. Sounds like Magazine,Blur, Franz Ferdinand, Madness.
Wow, this band is great. Kaiser Chiefs “Oh My God.” Reminds me of when you could hear Madness or Men at Work on the radio. 80s without being too cloying.
Some sort of catchy experimental hip hop/dance song made for fun, with a guitar solo. Sort of like Sexy Back by Justin Timberlake. With rock drums in some parts and guitar solo!
Steely Dan…I can never tell if they’re “taking the piss,” if at all, or if 95% of the time, or if always. Of course they have amazing songs like Deacon Blue and Peg (“it’s your favorite foreign movie”…) but there are rather few songs by them that I can listen to without having some nagging suspicion in my mind, and this is one of them…that there’s some sort of running in-joke in the whole concept of the band that I’m not privvy to, like that Steely Dan developed as some sort of warped jazz-rock elevator music ironic/satirical art project that just happened to be particularly successful in the music industry and they ran with it, not letting most people in on the joke/art/satire/commentary aspect of the band. Like some of Frank Zappa’s music, but rather than blatantly advertise the commentary, they buried it deep beneath their smooth jazz cabaret exterior, out of sight of up to 95% or more of their fans.
I mean…Steely Dan is sort of like Throbbing Gristle or the Swans in wielding and creating a sort of extreme element of musical aural attack/musical offense except their weapon isn’t noise it’s sort of this artificial-machine made-saccharine sweet-plastic smooth-granite cold machine sheen of sort of killer smoothness…like an artificial intelligence program is pumping out what are supposed to be “smooth” licks all day but it’s some sort of cognitive experiment too…kind of scary.
I feel like the music may be composed by some AI machine built at MIT in the 70s, hence the “Steely Dan” reference (look it up on Wikipedia)–they’re actually trying to tell us that the music is created by a machine, a machine pleasuring device in not strictly the physical sense but in the aural sense…maybe that’s the secret pun, they seem to be pretty super-intellectual, punny people, I’m sure the irony of the name “Steely Dan” as an artifical pleasuring device did not escape them at all during any part of their career but in fact was a founding principle/guiding force of the band.
That said, of course they are great musicians. I like the sort of LA jazz rock sound, I slightly prefer that kind of sound on Joni Mitchell’s 70s albums like Court and Spark and Hissing of Summer Lawns (with Larry Carlton, etc), as it’s done so much more organically, a lot less elevator music-like, on those albums. What would be great is if Joni Mitchell had a new album with Steely Dan as the backing band, yeah.
Ahh, this is great stuff…great lyrics, delivery, synths, drums, etc. Any rapper who name drops Kurt Vonnegut is tops in my book….not only that, but Obama, Kurt Vonnegut, and Kurt Cobain all in the same bar!
“I spit that Wonderama shit, me and my conglomerates shall remain anonymous, caught up in that final shit–get that type of media coverage Obama get, spit that Kurt Vonnegut, that blow your brain Kurt Cobain, that Nirvana shit…” And best of all over a super-good fusion-sounding Just Blaze beat…
The Trickle-Down 