Neat.

So. I was contacted by a former member of The Nineteen of Salem, who subsequently sent me a few of their unreleased tracks in the interest of finally getting them out there somewhere for people to check out. I can’t tell you much more than that. So, enjoy!

Executive Order Number 9066
[See post to listen to audio]

257 in the Afternoon
[See post to listen to audio]

Richard
[See post to listen to audio]

ek

But.

Here are the tracks SFLW recorded for the split, posted with permission from the band. Enjoy!

We May be Old but You’re Fucking Boring:
[See post to listen to audio]

If at First you Don’t Succeed, Keep Fucking Stabbing:
[See post to listen to audio]

Song about Video Games.:
[See post to listen to audio]

Four out of Five Indie Rockers Agree We Have no Fucking Talent:
[See post to listen to audio]

If I had a Body like that I’d Bury it Out Back with the Rest:
[See post to listen to audio]

Until next time.
ek

front sleeve

Oh and in case you couldn’t tell, this is a music post.

Ahem.

Step Forward Look West was a band out of the glorious DuPage Hardcore days, though towards the end of it. Well, at least the end of my time involved before I ran off to get numerous college degrees in other states (how dare I?!).

I seriously enjoy this record, still. I think it came out in 2002 at some point, and was recorded in November 2001. I know this because of the rockin’ silk-screened poster that came with buying the 7″. It’s seriously amazing, though too large for me to scan and share. Maybe I’ll take a horrible picture of it someday so you can see it in all its glory.

The names of the songs may very well be the best part of the record.

back sleeve

Now, prepare yourself for fast and loud. Explicit lyrics warning. And it’s probably worth saying that these tracks were ripped from a 7″ record using an ion usb turntable. And not ripped all that well, either. Well, that’s not true. They sound alright.

Side A-

1. a name on the board with three checks only means i can fuck up twice without getting in trouble.
[See post to listen to audio]

2. you can’t spell “goonies” without the word “go!”
[See post to listen to audio]

3. a disfunctional family is any family with two or more members.
[See post to listen to audio]

4. one two three not it!
[See post to listen to audio]

5. it’s open season on crybabies and you’re fucking next.
[See post to listen to audio]

Side B-

1. i never thought i’d say the words “i hate you” and fucking mean it.
[See post to listen to audio]

2. jesus, elvis, and the easter bunny walk into a bar.
[See post to listen to audio]

3. alice don’t surf.
[See post to listen to audio]

4. the tcri strikes again!
[See post to listen to audio]

5. it’s like pissing in a shower with a slow drain and standing in a stagnating pool of your own urine.
[See post to listen to audio]

Interesting how I believe I completely avoided using any profane words on this blog until this very post. And those profanities coming from just the titles of the songs.

Anyway, listen and enjoy.

Until next time.

The DuPage Collective

But this post is about a band that gave a live show for Halloween back in 2002. That band is called Alkaline Trio. They used to be a Chicago pop/punk band, but now they live all over the country and who knows what the hell they do now. The last four years of their output hasn’t been all that interesting. (Though I still like[love] them enough to have a related tattoo.)

Anyway.

At that show in 2002 they gave out a little orange plastic disc.

Sleeve Front

Sleeve Back

On that disc were two Misfits covers: “Halloween” and “Children in Heat.” For your listening pleasure, here they are!

Side A

“Halloween”
[See post to listen to audio]

Side B

“Children in Heat”
[See post to listen to audio]

Enjoy, and happy haunting.
ek

The Beatles

Happy 9 9 9!

The long-awaited Beatles Remastered albums are being released today, as well as The Beatles: Rock Band! Hot damn am I excited for both of these. I’ll be at Best Buy when the doors open to pick up my copies.

In honor of this momentous date in history, I am going to share one of my favorite Beatles songs ever, and one of my favorites Beatles covers ever. Check it.

“Rain” was the B-side of “Paperback Writer”, their 11th single released. The songs were written while the band was recording Revolver in 1966. Beyond it being a great song (with a tiny bit of social commentary), it carries the distinction of being one of the first pop songs to include tape manipulation. At the end of the song, Lennon took part of the group singing and played the tape backwards. This happens all the time now, but back in the 60s recording techniques of this nature were still being developed.

“Rain” by The Beatles
[See post to listen to audio]

And here’s a fantastic cover (recorded live) by of Montreal:
[See post to listen to audio]

And just for kicks, here are some more Beatles covers by of Montreal:

“Nowhere Man”
[See post to listen to audio]

“Hey Bulldog”
[See post to listen to audio]

“I Will” (Kevin Barnes)
[See post to listen to audio]

Enjoy, and spread the Beatlemania.
ek

The Beatles

Drive My Car The Word What You’re Doing
[See post to listen to audio]

For those following along at home, it starts as “Drive My Car” (Rubber Soul, 1965) then goes to the into the main verse of “What You’re Doing” (Beatles For Sale, 1964). And then at the end it’s a free-for-all of with those two tracks mixed with the organ riff and chorus tag from “The Word” (Rubber Soul). It just blows my mind. The tempos weren’t altered. The pitch wasn’t raised or lowered. These three songs just fit together absolutely perfectly. I’m not sure if it’s a testament to the amazing song-writing abilities of Lennon/McCartney or aural proof that they had a specific formula for a percentage of their tracks. Either way it’s a fun listen.

ek

I find that I gauge the value of bands more on their live performance than on their studio albums. And what has made me love The Beatles the way I do is how absolutely fantastic they were live, even with thousands of girls screeching at them the whole time. I can’t even imagine how hard it was for them to hear each other on stage.

The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl is a compilation of two live shows at the Hollywood Bowl (surprised?) on August 23rd, 1964, and August 30th, 1965.¹ It was their only official live record, which was an oddity for bands back in the 1960s. Bands of the time typically released quite a few live albums, but the screaming girls made live recordings a bit difficult to engineer.

Frankly, I was not in favor of taping their performance. I knew the quality of recording could not equal what we could do in the studio, but we thought we would try anyhow. Technically, the results were disappointing; the conditions for the engineers were arduous in the extreme. The chaos, I might say panic, that reigned at these concerts was unbelievable unless you were there. Only three track recording was possible; The Beatles had no “fold back” speakers,² so they could not hear what they were singing, and the eternal shriek from 17,000 healthy, young lungs made even a jet plane inaudible.
– George Martin, 1977

Martin went on to say, though, that the recordings Capitol Records made of these two Hollywood Bowl shows were something special. They captured the energy of the crowd and how The Beatles responded and fed off of it. The banter of the boys between songs is pretty entertaining, especially how they egg the crowd on. One track that really stood out to me was “Things We Said Today,” written and sung by George Harrison (who was always my favorite, to be honest). You can tell it was a new song, because he forgets how long the introduction is, comes in late, stumbles on words, and seems generally tentative when singing. When Paul pipes in for the bridge the girls go absolutely nuts, as to be expected. I probably would have too; the bridge of “Things We Said Today” is quite possibly my favorite bridge of any song. Ever.

Here is the recorded version from The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl:
[See post to listen to audio]

And for comparison, here is the studio version from A Hard Day’s Night:
[See post to listen to audio]

I may have to share more Beatles love in the near future. I can’t be the only one that feels it.³

<3 ek

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogJQgo0QpSs]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHWxtURGECo]

I suppose I’m on an I LOVE SCRUBS kick right now. I admit that I’m getting a bit nostalgic as the series comes to a close. I’ve been really happy with season 8, particularly THE RETURN OF THE TOTALLY GORGEOUS SCOTT FOLEY. omg. His eyes are just … *ahem* anyway. I also really love The Blanks and Sam Lloyd’s voice. And their covers of pop tunes. Oh yes, there is an article on the music of Scrubs already in the works. I’ll be finishing it up this summer hopefully. I love genre blurring. It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

Before digging into Star Trek it’s important to define what I mean by irony. Here are a few dictionary definitions:
Socratic Irony: a pose of ignorance assumed in order to entice others into making statements that can then be challenged.
Verbal Irony: the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.
Dramatic/Tragic Irony: a literary technique, originally used in Greek tragedy, by which the full significance of a character’s words or actions are clear to the audience or reader although unknown to the character.
Situational/Cosmic Irony: the disparity of intention and result: when the result of an action is contrary to the desired or expected effect. Likewise, cosmic irony is disparity between human desires and the harsh realities of the outside world (or the whims of the gods). By some older definitions, situational irony and cosmic irony are not irony at all.
Historical Irony: a subset of cosmic irony, in which the element of time plays a role; irony through retrospection.

Alright, with that out of the way … I’m thinking about looking into these episodes:
- “The Corbomite Maneuver” – Balok being this mysterious, powerful being … but in the end turning out to be a somewhat mischievous, child-like creature. Both sides are using Socratic irony, while the music is hyperbolic in its melodramatic affirmation of a later discovered untruth.
- “Amok Time” – Spock and Vulcan culture are explored in a ritual that seems quite barbaric for a logic-oriented, emotionless race. The ritual of pon farr is one of situational irony, where a part of the Vulcan culture appears to be in direct contradiction to the edict of the race: logic. In the vein of cosmic irony, pon farr and the koon-ut-kal-if-fee show disparity between the Vulcan ideals of logic and suppression of emotion and the barbarism associated with the biological changes and rituals Vulcans go through during pon farr.
- “Mirror, Mirror” – This episode has a clear instance of music acting in a way similar to verbal irony, where it communicates information to the audience that is unclear to the characters. I’ll address this in more detail below.

Before moving on, here are a few more important definitions to know:
Musical topic: short melodic figures, harmonic or rhythmic formulae carrying literal or lexical meaning; meaning can come from literature, social history, and the fine arts.
Musical trope: the combining of two or more topics to create a new meaning, or comment on the meaning of the topics being combined.

To illustrate, think of Marlena’s theme from “Mirror, Mirror.” This is considered a musical trope, a combination of two musical topics: the barbaric/evil/enemy “threat” theme, and the singing/romantic/string “love” theme. The troping of these musical ideas tells us something that Kirk may or may not know about her: she is evil and a threat (if only because of her existence in the Mirror Universe), yet has the capability of being a heroine (which we find is true towards the end of the episode). This musical trope is then considered “ironic,” as we the audience are given a cue that she is a heroine while Kirk does not, nor does he anticipate that she could be.

Musical topics and troping can go across episodes as well. Consider the famous music played during the fight scene in “Amok Time.” It does transform during the course of the episode, starting off as a low, lyrical song while Spock relates his people’s customs, and is transformed into a booming march-like battle song during the episode’s climax. But the theme comes back in later episodes in different contexts, particularly as underscoring for enemies and in other battle situations. The meaning has changed again; rather than being about Spock/Vulcans, it is about anything barbaric or threatening. The element of time does not necessarily make the changes in musical use “cosmic irony,” though it can be argued that the element of time becomes important in the reception of musical topics over the course of the show. Through retrospection, however, the audience member can recall the music from “Amok Time” and wonder if it carried meanings not apparent at the time. (Though, to be honest, the reuse of music was simply an issue of using available resources and saving money. But at the same time, there must have been musical qualities of the theme that carried connotations appropriate for the later reuse, and this in itself brings a new and different meaning to the theme in retrospect.)

This is definitely a complicated subject, but I think you can see (if you read through all of that) that irony is a big part of Star Trek. In fact, irony is a large part of science fiction as a genre. And I admit, I am a bit obsessed with genre studies. So if you read through this and have any other ideas for episodes, or musical uses, or both, that deal with any form of irony let me know. And to be clear, I am focusing specifically on the original series, which ran from 1966–69. Any and all comments and suggestions are welcome!