Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Volume 2, Number 27: The 2007 Soundtrack, Thus Far

(Note: I originally posted this entry in August or September of 2007 to my blog on Yahoo! GeoCities.)

In the fall of 2005, I attended my best friend's wedding, and he and his new wife distributed to all the guests a CD of all the songs they dedicated to each other and/or attached to certain memories. I thought that was so cool.

In fact, it inspired me to do something similar for the holidays: Create a "soundtrack" to the year 2005, featuring songs that I either tied to specific memories (e.g. "Beverly Hills" by Weezer due to financial problems I had been having at the time, "Big Time" by the Soundtracks of Our Lives because it was the theme song of WrestleMania XXI, or "The Hand That Feeds" by Nine Inch Nails because it's about the struggle of the Rank and File against the Powers That Be) or were simply my favorite songs of the year (e.g. "Rebellion (Lies)" by The Arcade Fire, or Paul Anka's superb cover of "Wonderwall"). I have given copies of my 2005 and 2006 soundtracks to my brothers and my mother, and have been compiling a soundtrack for this year as well.

It starts out with "Ladies and Gentlemen" by Saliva. It's another WrestleMania theme song, but even if it wasn't, this song gets in on its own merits--it just kicks ass.

I follow this with a track from my absolute favorite artist, In The Nursery, whom I have mentioned in this blog at least once. It's "Blueprint," the opening track of the CD they released in January, called "Era." You can get a little clip of the song here.

The third song on the CD would be "Dashboard" by Modest Mouse. When I first heard the song, it reminded me of an early-'80s New Wave band called The Cure (you know, the one whose lead singer, Robert Smith, went on to vanquish MechaStreisand when Leonard Maltin and Sidney Poitier could not do so). Really surreal lyrics, like you would find in New Wave songs ("Oh, the dashboard's melted, but we still have the radio").

Maroon5 follows with "Makes Me Wonder", a super-catchy pop tune with a fresh marriage of music lyrics (you know, the kind you'd hear in the '80s, before pop became overproduced and excessively formulaic). It'll probably be one of the top 5 songs in the end-of-the-year Billboard pop chart.

Then, from there, we go from pop to metal, with Ozzy Osbourne. "I Don't Wanna Stop," while using the tried-and-true Ozzy formula, shows that even after all the drugs, the Ozzmaster can still rock. This was the theme song for another WWE pay-per-view event.

Remember how The Arcade Fire got on the 2005 soundtrack? They will be the first artist to appear on two of my soundtracks, as they return for 2007. "Keep The Car Running" has a beat that reminds me of "On the Dark Side" by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, and I expect the song will someday be used in a NAPA or AutoZone commercial.

Nickelback is next with "If Everyone Cared," another excellent song that reminds me that I need to keep perspective on things and that I should be grateful to be alive in spite of all the sham and greed going on in the world.

Song #8 is another case of me falling asleep with the TV on, then waking up to a great song. One night, I was watching Pimp My Ride on MTV2 and fell asleep, and when I woke up, I was watching the excellent video for the catchy "Typical" by Mute Math. It so happens that the morning I woke up and heard this song was the morning of my 35th birthday.

Now, the next song, you won't see on MTV, hear on your favorite radio station, or even hear on some National Public Radio station while in Cleveland on a business trip. You can catch it on YouTube, though. It's from Hank Green, and he and his brother John started up a project in which they have resolved to communicate with each other by video only (no phone calls or letters) for a whole year (go to http://www.brotherhood2.com for more details). In Hank's July 18 video to John, he performs "Accio Deathly Hallows," a song he wrote about the wait for the final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I, too, have been reading the books since I saw the 2001 film of the first book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," and yes, I have now read all seven.

I have 10 songs thus far, and the 10th comes from industrial rock band KMFDM's new album. Superpower is the leadoff track to that album, "Tohuvabohu," and while the track is pretty much self-promotional, hey, they've earned that right. They've churned out a number of kickass songs over the years, like "Naive," "Go to Hell" and "Sex on the Flag" in the early '90s; "Juke Joint Jezebel" around 1995; and "Megalomaniac" (another self-promo) in 1997.

Well, that's all for now. With the year about 61% over, I figure I'll get several more songs to add to the CD before I start burning copies.

No comments:

Post a Comment