Notes about endless pontification: I'm reluctant to make any sweeping judgments about 2009 music/movies/television/art/etc., partly because I never do that in my end-of-year lists, partly because I don't think any concrete assessments can be made with exceptional certainty when considering art in any time period in these modern times, and mostly I don't think any one gives a shit. This year's list is belated, but I think it's the most fun I've had doing one. These items listed are not solely my own choices as this year I somewhat accidentally enlisted the help of one Wes Delaney (of Ear Infections). We're constantly making recommendations to each other and having discussions about things we're excited about over the year and most of the following list is a result of things we've enjoyed together rather than being favorites I've determined on my own. As a result I've tried to condense the things I remember us talking about into the footnotes for each item. It's brutally honest (see 1b.) long-winded (see 5f.) and at times confusing (see 5f. I think), and perhaps even a little tedious. But I think in the long run it will be nice to look back and see what the hell were we thinking?!?!? (see 1b.) We hope that you enjoy this year's list! Yay!
1a. Disney's Friends for Change - "Send It On (feat. Demi Lovato, Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus & Selena Gomez)" (link)
1b. Miley Cyrus - "Party In the USA"(link), "The Climb" (link)
1c. Discovering Demi Lovato: "La La Land" (link), "Don't Forget" (link)2a. Kelly Clarkson "My Life Would Suck Without You" (link)
2b. Kelly Clarkson - "I Do Not Hook Up" (link);
2c. Kelly Clarkson - "Already Gone" (link)
3. Lady Antebellum - "Need You Now" (link)
4. Re-discovering Adele - "Hometown Glory" (link)
5a. Dan Deacon - Bromst
5b. Passion Pit - Manners
5c. Two Tounges - Two Tounges (link)
5d. Thursday - Common Existence
5e. Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (link)
5f. The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
5g. Jeremy Enigk - Ok Bear
5h. Sunny Day Real Estate - Diary / LP2 Reissue
6a. Scurvy D - Death of a Salesman (link)
6b. Shorty Strong - A Stranger (link)
6c. Anticipation of Heads Up (link) and Ad Libitum Avenue (link)
7a. Forty Psychic Frames - "MMV" (link)
7b. Drew and Shelley getting married! (link) / Forty Psychic Frames - "Third Adonis (The Wedding Song)" (link)
7c. "Please Please Please (One Cigarette)" video by Anthony Jackson (link)
8. Fantastic Mr. Fox
Adventureland
The Informant!
Funny People
Role Models
I Love You Man
The Hangover
The Hurt Locker
9. Last Days of Disco on DVD (link)
10. Getting Oceans 11/12/13 on DVD / getting Lethal Weapon 1/2/3/4 on DVD
11. Chuck Klosterman - Eating the Dinosaur (link)
12a. Getting a Nintendo DSi
12b. Getting Gilmore Girls Complete Series on DVD
13. Korg DS-10 (DS) (link)
14. Bill Simmons - The B.S. Report Podcast (link)
1a. 2009 was the year I discovered/embraced Disney's bubble-gum pop machine. The knee-jerk reaction to Disney music is of course that it's a fad, it's N-Sync/M2M/98 Degrees rehashed for The NEW GENERATION!!! and though this comparison stays with me in the back of my head (where I never go that often) I think at least some of these Disney artists are transcending the presumed cookie-cutter, ghost-written-by-forty-three-year-old-men, everything-is-fucking-immaculate-sounding music by being more subversive, borrowing structures and phrases from other music beyond Boyz II Men, and selling the notion that everything they sing is unironic and completely genuine. This is probably bullshit and I can swallow that listening to some of these songs because they're just good. They're just that well written. "Send It On" isn't that great, but I still like it a lot because the drums sound like a Timbaland beat, and it features all the major cogs in the Disney Machine, thus showcasing all the various "talents."
1b. We willingly saw Hannah Montana: The Movie and to a certain extent, we enjoyed it. It wasn't great but I thought it was interesting how it comes off as a commentary on celebrity and the various identities that are developed as a result of celebrity, featuring one of the biggest celebrities this year, Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana. "The Climb," the lead single from that soundtrack is great--is it a country song? Is it pop? No one knows but it's pleasant and again, well written for her. "Party in the USA" was almost a toss-off for her, coming late in the year on a CD attached to Miley Cyrus tank-tops at Wal-Mart, but it's great nonetheless. Everyone is tired of it except me.
1c. Demi Lavato is the best player in the Disney Machine without question. Her voice is so natural and effortless that it's a shame that it's being wasted in Camp Rock and Sonny With a Chance. "La La Land" is what got me started in Disney music and it's crazy to me that it's a song Disney produced. It features real guitars!, an unconventional song structure and best of all, probably the best last 51 seconds of any single out in the last few years. This was easily my favorite single not released this year. "Don't Forget" is great in that she's allowed to spend the majority of the song in a slow and soft burn and then explodes after the two minute mark, to then slow it back down to the beginning. These two songs are emblematic of how I think Disney's writers and possibly the artists themselves (ummm yeah, ok) are advancing beyond Britney and their kind ilk and thus advancing pop music in general (what a load of shit).
2a. This was one of my choices to have played at Drew and Shelley's wedding reception. It's also the first single from her new album, which I got a hold of as soon as it was released. I thought it was awesome, and it still is, but it will never beat "I Do Not Hook Up" (see 2b.).
2b. This is unequivocally my favorite song of the year.
Hold on, I wait until your finished laughing.
I'm serious when I talk about how great this song is. The subject matter isn't especially clever but it's done convincingly and has one of the best choruses I've heard this year. The song structure and instrumentation are great and indicative of a lot of pop music this year. It's got a little guitar and a little electronic bleeps and synth sounds and in this song it mixes them together wonderfully. So for those keeping track over the years:
It's that simple.
2c. We both came to the conclusion that we like this one more than "Halo" even though they're basically the same song and "Halo" is objectively better (link)
3. This was also the year that I, and even Wes towards the end of 2009, fully absorbed modern country music which probably sounds weird given our group's collective favorite bands are Wu-Tang Clan, Three Six Mafia, Bone Thugs, Geto Boys, etc. But there's some good in modern country if you can accept the fact that Haggard and Cline aren't going to rise from the dead and headline at the CMA's, Garth is too bored and rich to even be himself, and most importantly, that if country music represents the values and culture of the lower-middle and working class then values have changed, because this isn't fucking 1961. You can't drink a fifth of Jim Beam while driving your Trans Am to the honky tonk with your hands down the blue jeans of your ex-wife and a Winston hanging off your lips anymore, at least not as easily as you could have. There are no honky tonks, there are clubs. There are no ex wives, there are cougars. No smoking allowed, anywhere, at any time for CHRIST SAKE!!!!! It's a new world and for better or worse (probably the latter) Today's Country is representative of that, which is to say Country is now pop music with slide guitars and fiddles. That's not to say it's better or good even. It's only to say that it's different and for a reason. From what I've heard Lady Antebellum appears to be a mediocre band in this genre but they wrote probably my second or third favorite song of the year. Musically it's fairly monotonous and folky with some atmospherics (it's like Rilo Kiley-lite in 2003 without the guitar theatrics), but lyrically it sounds like that ol' fashioned country. It's about drinking by yourself (which is especially appealing to me) and longing and being sad about one or the other or both. Objectively it's not the greatest country song written this year (see Miranda Lambert's "White Liar") but it's sharp and pointed and rings true with every note (or at least it feels that way to me).
4. Holy shit, I missed this song. Forrest introduced this album to me a few years ago and I thought it was pretty good, and the more I've listened to it the better I think it is. Some of the songs on her debut 19 are just voice and bass guitar, which is crazy to describe, crazy to hear and even crazier to accept that it works. The second to last song on the album ("Tired") was immediately my favorite, in part because it's unlike anything on the rest of the album because it features a lot of bleeps and bloops and in part because the structure is so pretty. But in November the very last song, this song "Hometown Glory" really got to me. I want to sample it soooooooooo badly it hurts. Her voice is transcendent and she really lets go and kills it on this track. This is easily my favorite song not released this year by a British musician.
5a. 2009 for me was a poor year for non-40PF music. I bought Merriweather Post Pavilion like everyone else in the world (apparently--have you seen any Best Of lists from this year?) and though it's good I wasn't really floored by it. Taking Back Sunday's follow up to Louder Now (a kick ass album) New Again was only okay. The new Thursday album disappointed me for seven months (see 5d.). All the songs I've listened to by the hot new acts this year (Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear, The XX, etc.--yes, DJ D, these are real bands) have been completely boring. And I absolutely despise people who say they're bored by new music, which should prove how resolute I am in my boredom. Granted I didn't buy a lot of music this year but that's mostly because I never really got excited by any new release this year. Except for this album, Bromst. Wes has his earlier album SpidermanoftheRings and plays the hell out of still to this day. I've always enjoyed it but most of the time it's too spastic for me to listen to repeatedly like he does. So when he first got Bromst and played it for me it was a revelation, it was transcendent, it was inspiring and all those other overwhelming adjectives and phrases people use to describe albums they really liked. It helped that I watched a short documentary on the making of the album before I played it because the recording is just as awesome as the music itself (insane player piano programming, spring reverb chimney, studio on top of a mountain, etc.). What I like most about it is how creative he was with what are for him fairly basic, simple compositions. There are a lot of dynamics at work and small but largely effective chord/note changes. And mostly there's a lot of sustained notes and repetition without become monotonous and completely atonal all while maintaining a lush and colorful and even poppy melody throughout the entire album. It's really good and I'm glad Wes showed it to me because I (we) needed this kind of album.
5b. This band made me buy a Palm Pixi that I didn't need. Just kidding. This was a close second favorite album of the year and I only got it a few weeks ago [ed. This was initially written in early January]. It sounds like I didn't put a lot of thought into this ranking but I can assure you it's true. This album has a lot instrumentation that Wes and I have been trying out in making the new Wyatt album, which has been fun to analyze and anal-ize. But mostly this is just a great, kind of subversive fun pop dancey kind of album. Also this album is important in 2009 for having a hand in The Great Electronic-Pop Song About Insects Battle: "Moth's Wings" vs. "Fireflies" ("Moth's" take it one and a half rounds, KO)
5c. This was also my vote for Gayest Album of the Year (more on that later) and Gayest Album Cover of the Year, a mild accomplishment in that it narrowly beats out (no pun intended) a this picture of Morrissey, for the single of his song "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris." Two Tounges are, on paper, one of the strongest emo-SuperGroups! to ever exist, pairing Chris Conely of 40PF favorite Saves the Day with Max Bemis of Say Anything, a band famous for a song that takes something as beautiful as female masturbation and makes it sound tacky and trivial. I was excited by the possibilities of this concept despite having no familiarity with Say Anything outside of hearing Bemis open for Dashboard at Meymandi Hall in Raleigh with Forrest through the bathroom speakers. I told Forrest about this album given that we both like Saves the Day a lot and he actually got the album before I did. "It's kind of weird, man" he relayed to me in a voice mail, "They sound pretty gay." After only hearing the first song I knew Forrest was right; this is one of the gayest albums I now own. In its defense I think the homoerotic imagery in the music is less overt than the album cover. Rather, it comes off (again, no pun intended) gay because of the song structure: every track is a duet. So, a song theoretically written about something that went wrong with, presumably a girl, actually sounds like the soundtrack to Down With Love if Doris Day had a big dick. As further proof of this perspective, it's been written that this was a cream dream project for Bemis as he "idolized" Conley from the Can't Slow Down era of Saves the Day. Which makes you wonder if this is Bemis' homosexual man-crush for Conley fully realized in song? Is Conley playing the bottom in this twisted sexual tête-à-tête? To me this album works both ways--as a straight forward, seemingly run-of-the-mill modern emo album, and as a giant gay love letter. And that's part of why I think this album is kind of remarkable, even though this duality is probably an accident. It's similar to why I kind of liked the Hannah Montana: The Movie movie (see 1b.). If anything it's a great addition to the Saves the Day catalog for those of us who like Saves the Day. Some might say it's even better than the last Saves the Day album we all listened to In Reverie, although after this year I could say a lot of positive things about that album in retrospect. I really hope their next album (if there is one) extends the concept further and have each of them sing about each other over the course of a night going to night clubs and snorting cocaine and Ritalin and eventually consummating on the last track with some chaotic emo-scremoh interpretation of ejaculation. And all of the music sounds like The Faint.
5d. This album let me down after I first heard it. (This story from here on out will take the path of all those albums people don't like at first and then later play it for an unspecific reason and suddenly realize how it was a great album all along and how weird it was that they didn't like it from the beginning and how all this time they could be enjoying said album, etc. So I won't bore you with the recollection.) As it stands now in my personal ranking of the Thursday catalog:
1. A City By the Light Divided
2. Full Collapse
3. Common Existence
4. War All of the Time
All of these albums are ranked very close. Common Existence could easily be number two, except that Full Collapse has a lot of influence over the feelings of nostalgia I have for it. War All the Time is fucking awesome too, but only slightly less fucking awesome than either Full Collapse or Common Existence and only a certain fucking times. Just know this: Dave Fridmann (who produced A City By the Light Divided and Common Existence) is the fucking shit! (more on that later).
5e. Minus the first two tracks this album is another great Sigur Ros album. A friend of Wes made a good point about it: "It's like they tried to make an indie rock record." At best it's still not as good as Takk… or ( ). Maybe if I end up driving up mountains in a snowstorm with Poody again with this album blasting I'll reconsider. If this were the place for me to digress I would maintain that this is still a great Sigur Ros album. Oh. That was a good place to digress. Hm. Then I digress then.
5f. This album is the realization (finally) of two previous and outstanding records of theirs The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots only a little weirder. This isn't my favorite of theirs and as much as I like it, I only consider it a solid record. It's really really good but it's not as affecting as either of the two albums previously mentioned (Yoshimi will always be my favorite). On a loosely similar note, Embryonic is the second album that I got this year produced by Dave Fridmann , the man who essentially cut his teeth on producing the modern day Flaming Lips sound, along with his band Mercury Rev. There isn't another producer (outside of those in 40PF) whose work I enjoy more. I own eleven albums produced by him and I love all of them (except one, Oracular Spectacular by MGMT but it's not Fridmann's fault that there's only three good songs on it). Even the ones I only kind of love and don't play as much I still find the sound on those records to be exceptional. There's a way he mixes the lower frequencies on all of the albums I've heard of his to sound full but kind of flat; distorted but clean; thick without being too fat, and never overpowering. Sleater Kinney's The Woods is a good example of Fridmann production in that everything seems to blast but not to the point of distortion while staying well within a comfortable almost "vintage" type balance. On the single "Entertain" you can somewhat understand the lower frequency manipulation with the drums at the beginning. They sound completely natural, maybe tuned a little floppy, but it's like the resonance dips into these bottom frequencies that are slightly exaggerated and turned up just a little. Meanwhile singer Corin Tucker sounds badass--again, it's clean but somewhat rough around the edges. This album got a lot of comparisons to old Zepplin records and I think you can understand, for reasons unto the concept behind this album, but also because of the production. Again listening to the drums they sound "big" but not in the conventional way that people mean it. There's grit there, a sort of lite-punishing tone that sounds, if possible, solid and determined without spitting in your face, like say a Pig Destoyer album (granted this is a ridiculous comparison—Sleater Kinney v. blastbeat-fucking-deathcore = ummmmmmmm, okay? I know it's an unfair comparison, I just wanted to throw a Pig Destroyer link in.) These songs sound so dense, without sounding heavy. Maybe it's because I'm not going to play a Led Zepplin song and then immediately play a song off Woods, but the comparison seems completely reasonable. The drums sound like Bonham's Ludwig's rather than the oft compared Bonham The Person. What's more important is that he produces this kind of sound, this kind of aesthetic on all of the records I've heard of his, but in a way that is specific to the band, and even more so, the album. Low is a band writers have lumped in with the sub-genre slowcore. They've spent the bulk of their career making, um, slow but darkly impassioned music with guitar, bass and drums (I'm not describing them very well). (Actually as another aside, I made a mix-CD when I first met Anthony that I never gave him that was supposed to reveal some of my favorite music. One of the first songs I put on the list was "Dinosaur Act") After a while they went to make a decidedly minimalistic half-electronic album (the excellent Drums and Guns) and went back to Fridmann to produce it after having produced their preceding album The Great Destroyer, which was their fuck-you-to-harcore-fans, big ROCK record that wasn't really at all. At most there are vocals, a drum machine and a guitar on almost every track and still, this lower frequency manipulation (which I'm just going to start calling "The Lower Freek Technique") is there and it makes the whole thing sound incredible. In fact this is probably where his production is most apparent because there isn't much instrumentation which provokes the argument that the "production" of a song should never be "heard" or rather overwhelm the actual music. This could be debated at length but in Fridmann's case I don't think there should be an argument. He makes great albums.
5g. Enigk's Return of the Frog Queen can never be bested in my opinion so it's usually surprising when I return to his second solo album World Waits for time to time and find I like it more and more. This one is really good, maybe even objectively better than World Waits, but I still haven't taken to it like have the others of his. I think I need more time with it? Another year probably? I'm glad he got it out nonetheless.
5h. These two releases were without any contention my favorite releases this year, in the non-40PF, re-release category for three reasons:
1. I've never had a hard copy (cd or vinyl) of these albums so that in and of itself is worth the cost alone.
2. It's easy to say now that, "These two are my favorite Sunny Day Real Estate albums!" when the fact of the matter is that all Sunny Day albums are my favorite. (For some reason all the reviews I read for these albums were a. reviewed together and b. favored LP2 over Diary. I just thought it was weird how universal that opinion seemingly is. It implies that Diary is only good as a means for name dropping when talking about emo and LP2, which never gets mentioned anywhere ever until this release, is actually a better record. Huh?) But for these two to be remastered and to have included some key b-sides is really really really exciting for me. They sound like the versions Poody played on his 7" (I can't remember the name) and that Anthony found an mp3 of and burned onto cd (which I still have with his notebook paper track list) only slightly cleaner and a touch louder (no Twin Tone remaster here). The linear notes are kind of weak (I don't think Ben Gibbard should be considered a go-to guy on Sunny Day knowledge, but what do I know) but they shed some much needed light on the recording processes and the relationships within the band and kind of revisit why they broke up the first time, although it's still not very clear. If Scurvy D and I had these during MWF some of our conversations would be completely different. Which is another reason that these re-releases are such a big deal:
3. Sunny Day Real Estate is, to the majority of the 40PF, an important piece in our friendships. It's a band we all really really enjoy, which isn't common in all group friendships. There's always the two or three guys who like this one band to some varying degree and then a couple of guys who just never say anything when the band gets mentioned. Sunny Day is the primary concensus band for 40PF and, in some respects, just as important to 40PF as Wu-Tang Clan is. If you can believe that.
6a. This was an awesome release this year for four reasons:
1. It's a solo album. I love 40PF solo albums mostly because it allows us to hear the member in a context of their own creation. It's them mostly alone, doing their own thing, the way they want to do it, as part of their own vision. And while that sounds selfish and would seem to take away from the group aspect of things it does the opposite--it fleshes out individuals within the group even more. It gives the listener other dimensions to the character they may not hear in group songs. I love 40PF solo albums.
2. It's the result of six years in the making. I started Unknown Circuitry about the same time that Anthony started Satisfaction which is also the same time Scurvy D came up with the concept that is this album. He's spent all this time finishing tracks here and there and it's amazing that he finally got them all together and arranged into an album.
3. It's a broad sample of Scurvy D's work. Because he's been working on Death of a Salesman so long the album displays a variety of themes, topics, styles, deliveries, and tones that he's explored over the years. "O.P.E.C." is an overt meditation of Scurvy D's politics set in the context of the global fuel crisis ("republicrat demoncrans get on tha same page"). "New Era" (one of the earliest tracks) shows Scurvy D very much alone and (literally) isolated from the rest of the group and thus, the world at large, and his frustration seethes in the tenor of the track alone almost more so than the lyrics. "UnNatural Change" is Scurvy going off with a concise and tightly wrapped lyrical vision, plus is an excellent representation of what happens when he can bounce of just one other person (see also one of my favorites, "Master Controller (Press the Button)").
4. It's a really really good album. When it comes down to it, all these intangible factors can only account for so much why I like Death of a Salesman. The fact is that I just really really like this album. I think Scurvy did a great job arranging the songs and delivering and providing some trademark Scurvy D moments while also experimenting. In some ways I think this was hard for him because more than anyone in 40PF, Scurvy likes having another person in the room when recording. Even if that other member only has two lines, it's important for Scurvy D to have someone to bounce ideas off of not because he has to but because he enjoys the dynamic. He revels in the dynamic of the group setting or pairing. Note the number of featuring players in the tracklist. Note the collaboration in God Wolf, a side project of Scuvy's created this past year. Scurvy D loves working with others which is why I think this album is a new favorite of mine and I'm so happy he was able to release it this year.
6b. What I love most about this album is the world that Shorty exists. There isn't another 40PF related release that compares to how dense and how insane the scope of this album is. It's essentially a horror and road trip movie mixed together and then set to a hip-hop soundtrack. It's David Lynch sitting in the booth with Hunter S. Thompson circa 1970 and Harmony Kornie circa Gummo telling each other stories, made up and factual, and then fed into Shorty's headphones as he rhymes almost in a stream-of-conscious fashion. It's a ghetto Edgar Allen Poe walking through an alternate world version of Vegas on crack and hallucinogens, rather than coke and absinthe. And it goes beyond making a cohesive track-by-track album with a clear narrative, which it embraces entirely (He finds an ear? Holy shit! Then he tries to find the guy whose head the ear belongs to? Holy shit! This is crazy!). There is a definition of character and situations and places that is unlike any other 40PF release which is why I really grew to like it. It establishes a tone and mood that is beyond any 40PF release yet, and possibly ever, because it approaches so closely the line of insanity. It's weird: I never would have expected Shorty to make an album like this but now that I've heard it, he's the only one who could have made it. I'll be playing this one more and more this coming year.
6c. 2009 was the year of announcements (much like 2008 I suppose). This past year three new solo/soloish albums were announced officially: Forrest Jameson's Ad Libitum Avenue, Xplicit's Unmasked, and DJ D's Head's Up. I've already detailed my love for solo albums in general, so it goes without saying that I'm excited by the announcements alone. Most of all, to have a true DJ D solo album, possibly with beats produced by himself, will be a joy beyond joys. As he's described it he's really excited and has a lot of ideas for songs, namely pairing himself with each member for a track. And Forrest's Ad Libitum is going to be the realization of a consciously arranged freestyle album, something none of us have tried before, all done in his car. I couldn't be more excited for these releases.
7a. I don't remember ever doing this song at all, in any form or fashion. Not at all. At all. With anyone. At all. But this was one of my favorite beats to make this year and the song itself is meticulously arranged by Anthony Jackson and in general sounds incredible. I'm sooooo glad we found this because I think it's on my top ten 40PF songs now. Thanks.
7b. One of the best trips/events I attended this year was the marriage of two of our biggest fans, Drew and Shelley. We've all known them for a while, some of us since they got together, so it was more than overwhelming when they announced their wedding in 2008. Forrest and I decided we should make a track for them to play at the reception almost a year and a half before the wedding and in typical 40 PF fashion, we finished with a paltry four days to spare. Making the beat a collaboration with Forrest and I was an awesome experience now that we're both working in Fruity Loops and it was a lot of fun hearing it progress as we were making it. Transposing the early, goof-about, while-we-were-fucked-up keyboard jam song "Third Adonis" was fun and, in our opinion, a fitting tie to one of the few people outside the band who've heard songs from those weird recording sessions. My favorite part is the end, where we add the vocal outro, the part I call "SKIIIIPPP!!!." Just kidding. Hearing it now I think the beat itself is a strangely wonderful mix of Forrest and my tastes/choices/senses/etc. I hope we can do more in the future.
Perhaps more importantly, was the wedding itself. For it to be at UNCA was incredible and then to be in the Carol Belk theater where we all spent time watching Drew and Shelley perform was that much better. Being back in Asheville with everyone together was a revelation of its own and I was so glad everything came together. The ceremony itself was so sublimely fitting for Drew and Shelley that, were I capable of such a thing, I would have cried.
At the reception all our planning and scheming came to a head. We were all becoming almost exponentially drunk and much superfluous debate was had over how to approach the couple to get the song played. It appeared easy—the "DJ" was merely an iTunes playlist hooked up to a Fender P80. So all we had to do was get one of our three iPods in and hit play. But what are the rules on hijacking modern wedding receptions where iPods are the "band." Do we ask Drew if we can play something? Do we ask Shelley? Do we tell them what it is? Will they allow for such a cryptic request? Can we reset the levels if need be? Should we announce the song to the guests? Should we perform it live, along with the song? Is there room for pyrotechnics? What say you Amy Vanderbilt?
Once the song started and Drew and Shelley started to realize what was going on, everything clicked. It was a great five or six minutes where we were all standing around the computer three or four rows deep and just listening and watching Drew and Shelley freak out. It was the summation of a great weekend: Poody, DJ D, Xplicit, Fambrough, Anthony, Forrest, Drew, Shelley—all of my closest friends all together in a single great moment. It easily ranks in my top ten favorite Consciously Awesome Moments of all time, where I know at the moment it happens that it's something incredible and something I will always remember. I put it up there with watching the Blutarsky sorority spy scene in Animal House for the first time (shortly after I woke up), which is really really fucking high.
7c. 1. I didn't see this coming at all.
2. I never even entertained the idea of a video concept for "Please Please Please".
3. I couldn't believe it when I first saw it.
4. It plays exactly like I would have wanted it to. Of course I didn't know how I would have wanted it to (see above, 2.) but it's as though I'd subconsciously had a hand in making it. Especially the ending. That's almost exactly what I was envisioning when I was recording the ending.
5. The video by itself, without considering myself, or the artist, or the director, or the circumstances, objectively is great. It's awesome. The out-of-tune piano makes the images sadder than they probably are but not in an over-the-top The Notebook fashion. Naturally, there are sentimental aspects in both the music and the images—they're from weddings after all—but they don't force the typical idealism one usually associates with lone, reverberated piano sounds and home movie clips of weddings.
6. The second time I couldn't believe it and wondered where he found all the footage. By the fifth time I was in awe of how well the images fit with the music. But then in talking to Forrest and Anthony, it was revealed that Anthony envisioned the footage being taken from memories I'd never fully realized that are in my brain from My So Called (Previous) Life. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit, this blew the door off my head. It's incredible.
7. I can't believe of all the songs in the 40PF catalog, he chose this one. I feel kind of honored.
8. I'm not sure I should feel anything but objective about the whole project (see above, 5.)
9. I don't think I should really think about it so much.
10. I don't think I've thanked or congratulated Anthony enough.
11. I'm not sure I'll be able to thank him enough.
12. I'm not sure if that's appropriate. (I think it is.)
13. I really really really love this video. I'm really happy when I watch it.
8. These movies are ranked in order from most favorite to slightly less than most favorite but not by much. The data between Adventureland and Fantastic Mr. Fox may be skewed slightly due to viewing resonance (I saw Mr. Fox last), but it should be said that Adventureland hit me the hardest. I didn't really understand the trailer, so I didn't really see a coming-of-age, post-grad, malaise of summer, manic-depressed comedy coming my way. So when I saw it in the theater I was kind of floored. Whereas with Mr. Fox I knew the source material and I damn sure know Wes Anderson, so I was more or less expecting the movie I saw, although with low expectations (for no reason at all really.) Mr. Fox exceeded my expectations and in ways I wasn't expecting (haha) and I came away struggling where to place it in my Wes Anderson Movie rankings (ummm, this is really fucking hard:
1. Rushmore
2. Bottle Rocket
3. Royal Tenenbaums
4. Fantastic Mr. Fox
5. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
6. The Darjeeling Limited
The order has already changed. What a stupid idea.).
Seeing The Hangover with DJ D was a big treat this year. I don't usually see movies with DJ D, but we both had been talking about trailers and teasers for the movie months beforehand so it was fitting that we saw it together. This was definitely one of my most favorite movie going experiences this year (others: seeing The Watchmen with DJ D and Forrest; seeing Star Trek with DJ D and Forrest and then going to Fat Daddy's afterwards; watching Be Kind Rewind with The Raleigh Crew).
9. Whit Stillman is in my top five favorite directors (with Wes Anderson, David
Gordon
Green, PT Anderson, and Cohen Brothers; I think maybe the Steve Soderbergh is number six) and his first two movies Metropolitan and Barcelona are two of my favorite movies of all time. This getting released on DVD and having never seen it before was a slam dunk for my list this year, such is this obligatory summary. Blah blah blah, "my favorite" blah blah waaaaaa. Anyway, it's a great movie but I don't think it tops Metropolitan for me personally.
10. Our favorite movie trilogy/film series is the Bourne movies. These can never be topped for us. We both agree resolutely on this issue. Many film series may come close but will never best Bourne. With that said, we also tend to agree that the Ocean's movies and the Lethal Weapon series would be in our top five film series
(Wes:
- The Bourne's
- Evil Dead/Evil Dead II/Army of Darkness
- Lethal Weapon 1/2/3/4
- Back to the Future I/II/III
- Ocean's 11/12/13
Me:
- The Bourne's
- Back to the Future I/II/III
- Ocean's 11/12/13
- Lethal Weapon 1/2/3/4
- National Lampoon's Vacation/European Vacation/Christmas Vacation/Vegas Vacation
6* (BONUS!) Gus Van Sant's "Death Trilogy")
and so finding them as a set this year was kind of a big deal for us. Getting all the Lethal Weapon movies was especially gratifying as it allowed us to relive the marathon experience I had with Anthony in Baird.
11. My second favorite Klosterman book (behind Killing Yourself to Live (number 1) and Downtown Owl (number 1.87777)) and his best non-fiction book to date. I would recommend it to anyone who thinks that the world is slowly unraveling in the context of our modern American culture, as a result of technology, failed NBA draft picks, In Utero, and the wildcat offense.
12a. The greatest gift ever received! besides:
12b. this, truly the greatest gift ever received. I could go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about Gilmore Girls but I think I'm going to do something on it in a blog series. It deserves it's own space.
13. My favorite DS release I bought not released this year. I hope to make a short EP from beats made solely from this cartridge.
14. The only person in sports smart enough to have Klosterman on their show semi-regularly. Their conversations proved to be the best radio or radio-like programming I heard all year (besides This American Life, which is always really good)
