Creep – Radiohead
Hello, Goodbye – Beatles
Deathly – Aimee Mann
Karma Police – Radiohead
I Am The Walrus – Beatles
AM 180 – Grandaddy
Say It Ain’t So – Weezer
Reckoner – Radiohead
Oh Darlin’ – Beatles
Under The Bridge – Red Hot Chili Peppers
I’ve Just Seen A Face – Beatles
The Rip – Portishead

Creep, The Rip, and Oh Darlin’ were, in my opinion, the most excellent, although everything sounded better than it did a month ago (which is about the last time we all played together). Next time we’ll video some of it.

I’m happy to share my first video-based post. Here is an excerpt from the description I wrote on Vimeo:

One day in December of 2007 while riding to work on the bus I snagged my MP3 player (at the time a Palm Zire) on my bag, unplugging my headphones just the slightest bit. I was listening to “Faust Arp” at that precise moment, and Thom’s vocals completely cut out but the music (though now MONO) remained.

I experimented with more of the album for the rest of my bus ride (and work day, subsequent journey’s, etc.). I had difficulty replicating it on my computer, but no problem with my iPod.

So I consider this an alternative way to dig into Radiohead’s best album ever: In Rainbows.

In In Rainbows: Instrumental “Easter Eggs” from tyler on Vimeo.

The end of our work week just got a whole lot bettah.

5 gold stars if anyone can name all the visible albums right thurr in my iTunes. Ok, and you’ll get a copy of the Jetsetter album.

Part of our musical inclination leads us to discover the wide variety of music new and old out there. I like to call it our musical education. And I have learned about way more music in the past few months than at any other time in my life. Keeping our musical selection lively in our office keeps our office going, for sure.

The best is when you discover a new song that you just can’t stop listening to. This doesn’t happen every day. Tyler acquired this great song on iTunes for free no less, “Time to Pretend” by MGMT, found on Oracular Spectacular. Immediately we were obsessed, playing it over and over (later realizing we weren’t the only ones). What is it about this song? First off, the beginning keyboard melody was inspired by the dance of the band’s pet praying mantis! Very cool sound. The lyrics in this song are quite ridiculous and involve a lot of mocking of the music culture and themselves.

This is our decision to live fast and die young
We’ve got the vision, now let’s have some fun
Yeah, it’s overwhelming but what else can we do
Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?

Why at the same time strangely uplifting:

But there is really nothing, nothing we can do
Love must be forgotten, life can always start up anew

The song is loud, intriguing, and addicting. The video is amazingly creative and goes all out and there is a 3D version!! Fun!

MGMT, started by Ben Goldwasser and Andrew Van Wyngarden’s from Wesleyan University, have a website that is kind of whack. You can enter a keyword to search images and then an image matching the keyword appears as the background for the site. It also has some crazy color changing roll overs. More goodies – the song “Electric Feel” (my current favorite) features a user interactive video where you can change the background and foreground images.

She got the power in her hands to shock you like you won’t believe
Saw her in the Amazon with the voltage running through her skin

If you want to have some fun, check these songs out, as well as others done by these talented musicians, just don’t blame me if you can’t stop listening to them!

I didn’t know what to expect, and I think had lower expectations because of the general weirdness surrounding it all. So I’ll keep the review short: the show was great. Maybe better than some of the best Rustic shows during their previous prime. The mix was a little drum/bass heavy (Tony & Jon, you rocked though) and I was wishing for a little more from Spencer’s keys (which is never the case, WTF?). But sound aside, the performance was tight! Here’s the complete setlist:

1. Rock Like War
2. Oxygen >>into
3. Carsick
4. Historycrush (!!!)
5. Crash Landing
6. Carnival (!!!)
7. Tequila/surf jam
8. Troublesome
9. Love Underground
10. Hardest Way Possible
11. Iron Boots
12. Combustible
13. C’mon
14. Gas on Skin
15. Light At The End
16. (encore) Letter to the President (just Dave(singing only)/Spencer(guitar)/Noyes(Xylo) and??)

Looking back at that set, it flew by. Maybe it is because I never thought I’d ever hear these guys play Historycrush again, or Carnival at all, but if you were in Ithaca and missed this show, you lose big time. But, you should buy their albums, especially the latest one. Seriously.

Staff favorites: Katy loved – Troublesome, Chip – 2nd half of Historycrush, Casey – Light At The End, Molly – Everything, and me – Iron Boots (as always), but Light At The End was wild too.

Thanks Rustic, the show was super great.

Thanks guys.

(Dave Gutter’s (left) signature megaphone performance during “Smoke”. Spencer – right – in awe.)

Rustic Overtones are back, and more importantly, they are going to rock a show in Ithaca at the Haunt (4/4/08).

I last saw these guys perform a half-hearted set at Cornell many years ago. Minus 1/3 of the original members. I left disappointed to say the least. This came about a year after they performed at The Haunt in one of the best sounding, worst attended Rustic shows I’ve been to. Which came a year or so after I left Maine for the college life at IC, and missed a ton of awesomeness with the band I grew up idolizing. ripple dissolve to...

Part of my attachment comes from 8th grade when I transitioned from playing classical piano (about 7 years of lessons) to bass and acoustic guitar. The first entire album I learn on the bass is the Rustic album Long Division (which is getting re-released soon). I start high school (the same high school that some of the Rustic guys went to, just 5 or 6 years ahead of me) and form my first ever band and jam on RO songs for hours. Then we go into the “big city” (Portland, which is big by Maine standards) and catch their sold out shows, packed shoulder to shoulder with sweaty teenagers and 20 somethings, and sing every word. We beg for an encore, and half the time they come out and rock another of their songs and one from either Peter Gabriel or Huey Lewis and the News. Life was good.

Fast forward a few years and instead of watching shows, I’m in a different band, opening for Rustic. Some of the RO guys learn my name (some don’t). We jam together on occasion, playing each others songs or just noodling. Sometimes this is 1am on a Tuesday, a school night for me, the 18 year old (just another dollar draft night at Stone Coast for the 21+ers). Sometimes this is at a college in Massachusetts, or New Hampshire, or Maine. Life is really, really good.

And then college happens. I watch from 400 miles away as New England praises the record deal that Rustic lands with Arista. Then we mourn the failed deal (but got some super-awesome new songs and recordings out of it, featuring David Bowie, Imogen Heap and Funkmaster Flex ) – more on their label/band history here. Needless to say I feel distant, barely connected to the Maine music scene, and my former hometown heroes.

The band slowly dissolves, some members staying, some members going. The show at Cornell I mentioned above, that was during this time. Side projects spring up, a final farewell show is announced (which I do not attend) and Rustic is done.

Now the offshoot bands (Rocktopus/As Fast As, Paranoid Social Club to name the two big ones) are alright, but definitely not the same. I listen to my old Rustic albums, but I stop paying attention.

* * *

So Rustic Overtones aren’t exactly new to the office. I’ve been blasting Viva Nueva and Rooms By The Hour since I started working here, and have taught Casey and Chip some songs to jam on. Then something weird happens. Casey comes in to work one day with a newspaper advertisement for the Farewell Show (check it out here, with the note). He had unearthed it, pre-framed, from the local Salvo. Symbolic?

A few days later I read that Rustic is getting together to play a show, and release an album they’ve been working on. I order it from the old music store in Portland that I spent half my summer nights in. And the new album is glorious. Almost all of the songs are tunes that Rustic had perfected when they were still going strong. But in my headphones they sound even tighter, raw, and full of energy. I blast it for a week straight over the office speakers until I force myself to put the headphones back on again.

And that was about 8 or 9 months ago. Rustic has been rocking shows across New England since then, and I’m finally going to get another chance to see, hear, and share something that I thought was lost. My sister (who was childhood buddies with the bassist’s sister) sent me a great little article from our old paper, which instantly brought back the waves of nostalgia that inspired this post. So if you’re in Ithaca, or less than three hours away by car, you’ll see us at the show. You’ll probably leave singing your new favorite song. And if we’re lucky, there will be more albums, and shows, for years and years to come.

*the Reason 3.0 Icon (aka, dock killer) before I touched it up*

I’ve been using (and loving) Reason since the fall of 2003 for various audio purposes. A few film scores and even part of a super album came out of this program on my old snow iMac and later a 12″ PowerBook. But I couldn’t stand the dull, flat icon uglifying my dock any longer, not with other rad icons down there like Motion or Quicktime, err Transmit, or Pastor. Surely I couldn’t have a client glance at this giant iMac and see the standard Reason icon wedged between Final Cut Studio and Creative Suite. No way.
Now, to be fair to Propellerhead I have yet to use Reason 4.0 so I’m not sure if they updated the icon. But, if they didn’t, I present my temporary solution:

Not that I’m even a huge fan of this glossy, 3D phase that Apple and Microsoft are into right now, but it fits right in, and that is OKay by me. For now.

So once again, the BEFORE and AFTER:

*before*

*after*

Here is the ZIP file that has the goodies. We’d appreciate a link back to us if you want to make the file available for download. And if you’ve redesigned any icons or have an even better Reason replacement, I’d love to see it! Leave a comment and don’ t be a stranger.

Back to making sweet tunes with Reason…

A friend recently posed an intriguing bit of Beatles trivia to a group of us. We were gathered to watch Julie Taymor’s, Across the Universe, an excellent collection of Beatles classics tied into a compelling (if a little contrived) story of love, war, drama, and of course, music! Here is the trivia question:

What of the plethora of Beatles’ songs start out with the exact words in their title, and in addition, start exclusively with vocals?

I posed this question around the office and we all perused our iTunes stash for Beatles songs we had collected over the years, familiar and obscure, some of which we are playing in our currently assembled office band. My search led me to listen to many Beatles songs I had barely heard, and up into the attic of my Aunt’s house to find some of my cousin’s classic Beatles CDs she had first acquired in high school. Here are the results.

Six songs that fit the criteria are ones that everyone has heard, and are as follows:

Can’t Buy Me Love
Hey Jude
If I Fell
Paperback Writer
The Long and Winding Road
You’re Gonna Lose that Girl

Three are less familiar, but still worthy of the prize:

I’m A Loser
Mr. Moonlight
Step Inside Love

In addition two songs start with the vocals and the music simultaneously, and I was not able to discern which came first, so I am going to exclude them from the final answer, but here they are:

Hey Jude
Cry Baby Cry

But…don’t take my word for it! Check out your Beatles songs and keep in mind, my collection is not 100% complete so I might have missed a few. Any Beatles fans care to confirm or deny my list of songs??

Casey dropped a beat that made Ringo look like…well, himself.