Safe As Milk

Subterranean wasn’t on last week. I’m not sure why. I was concerned it had been cancelled because MTV2 has gone through an image shift and it’s not for the better. MTV2 now has a ridiculous 2-headed dog as a logo and it sits, not transparently, in the bottom right corner of every video. The old animated logo is gone but this dog thing is so bad that I almost wish it were back. The other change they made was with the band/song/label iformation. It’s not the white text that has intorduced every video for the last 25 years it’s now 3 solid bars of color that totally obscure the video image with the words in the bars. It’s obnoxious as hell. No me gusta.

This week I tried to link to the band sites and then to the video if I could find it. Let me know if you run across any dead links, or if you know of a better place that’s hosting a video from this week’s show.

The Music were the guests this week. Funny bit, Jim Shearer was asking them about recording their newest album, From the North, in Atlanta and whether they had gotten krunk (that’s the Wikipedia entry for kirunk, well worth a click) while they were there. They, apparently, had not.

LCD Soundsystem - “Daft Punk is Playing At My House” - (Of course, the horrible, horrible bars of color said that this was The Postal Service’s We Will Become Sillhouettes) There is a very clever graphic equalizer theme to the video. It’s pretty simple dance-beat with distorted synths. I like it fine. Ethan would not dig this, the dude keeps repeating the song title. A lot.

Phoenix - “Run, Run, Run” - I liked this one a few weeks ago. It still looks way better than that “Everything Is Everything” video. The band spinning around, only this time the effects are much better and more colorful. I still skipped the last bit of it.

The Doves - “Black and White Town” - Yikes! That’s not very nice at all. Pre-teen angst, complete with vandalism, fighting, and what appears to be 2 girls kissing. I’ve been listeneing to the new album, it’s good, and this song didn’t sound cheery anyway but with the video it sounds absolutely desperate. Hmmm.

Interpol - “Evil” - Oh man! Here it is again. Here’s a link to a place to see it (it’s not a very good copy, I’ll try to find a better host of it). The puppet in this thing is just unbelieveable. Seriously. And of course, this an excellent song. Interpol has really grown on me.

The Good Life - “Lovers need Lawyers” - Here’s a new one. This is a not a pretty dude that’s singing. It ends a lot better than it starts, with a nice repeated bit. I don’t think I’m going to sit through this again.

Pinback - “AFK” - This one took me a couple of passes before I would sit all the way through it. I haven’t listened to Pinback since their first album and even then it was only for a little while. This song definitely has a solid hook with enough changes in the arrangement to keep me interested. This is one I sit through every time.

The Music - “Breakin’” - A really sharp hook gets busted by the riffs they’re trying to shove in. It’s still damn catchy. This will probably be a big song here in the States this Summer. It’s got a strong “top down on the convertible speeding down the highway” vibe to it.

Tegan and Sara - “Speak Slow” - Too bad Michelle went to bed already, she would be into this one. Their Pat Banatar haircuts are a bit much but the beat is strong and the guitars keep it bouncing right a long. And it’s 1000-times better than that last weird-ass crap they tried to call a video. If they can give me one more good song I might be tempted to buy their album. That would be something.

Death From Above 1979 - “Romantic Rights” - Lite Brite!. It’s like Chromeo, excpet instead of being influenced by Minneapolis-circa 1983 the overriding influence is maybe Slayer? It’s just 2 guys, a bass player and a drummer. There are other sounds, but not from anything that might be described as a musical instrument.

I was crawling through the archives over at kottke, and I ran into this post of his from May of 1999:

“Is this a weblog? I don’t think it is. It’s more of a diary/jotpad for my thoughts. Sometimes I include links, sometimes not. If I don’t link, how can this be a weblog?

Maybe it is a weblog, but I’d hate to be accused of following the trend of the moment. Why don’t we just call it a list of Jason’s ideas & commentary and leave it at that, OK?”

“…trend of the moment.” I like that line, and it’s almost 6 years old! It’s weird to think that Jason Kottke has had a blog since before they were blogs. From when they were being called Weblogs, and even then the definition wasn’t really set. Kottke was, and still is, a site that I look to for what a blog should be. I like the combination of links and commentary with an occasional dip into the day-to-day detail of another person’s life. It’s what I think we’re working towards here at Safe As Milk, only with more pictures.

Terrific Walt Mossberg article about who a Mac isn’t best for.

“as I have noted in the past, switching to the Mac has downsides, and it isn’t the best course for some groups of Windows users. So here’s a brief guide to which types of users might find switching inadvisable.”

Believe it or not, those people exist.

KIDDING! geez, people get a little crazy about this Mac/PC stuff. Mossberg is right. The switch isn’t for everyone. It was the right move for me though, so I am happy to talk up the Mac to anyone who wants to listen.

I don’t get into the Mozilla themes but this one made me laugh.

Monkey Steals Peach.

[copped this from Airbag Industries]

I watched 10 minutes of the Oscars last night. I thought Chris Rock was pretty funny.

Tim Robbins did not:

Here is every panel of Calvin and Hobbes ever printed.

Get in and poke around before they’re gone.

Man, this was a great, great comic strip.

[I found the link at ForeverGeek, an everyday surf stop]

***Edit at 5:44pm to add: It’s gone. Sorry if you missed it. It was cool.

Some guy has posted screenshots from the whole of Star Wars Episode 3. Obviously there are MASSIVE SPOILERS if you follow that link so don’t go if you don’t want to know.

Here are two very cool, spoiler-free images.

This is another reason the internets are cool.

Paperback Believer is a very, very clever mashup of The Monkees “I’m a Believer” with the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer”.

There’s a video but it’s only okay. Good idea, though.

[Torr again]

This is why bands and artists still need to make videos. I had no idea who Saul Williams was until I saw his video for “List of Demands (Reparations)” on Subterranean a couple of weeks ago. Now I am an official fan. Thanks to a certain “special someone” I happened across a copy of the whole album this weekend. I’ve given it a couple of spins and I am glad to tout it for you here on the Internets.

I would call this ‘conscious hip-hop’ (think KRS-One). It really reminds me of some of the rap music floating around in the early-to-mid 90’s which was about the “upliftment of The Black”. It’s very serious and at times angry (think Zack de le Rocha, who appears on this album), but the purity of the message combines with the power of Williams’ delivery and the sparse, almost broken beats to create something damn impressive. I am neither black nor from Brooklyn but I am definitely feeling what this cat is laying down. He’s a poet.

This album is full of highlights but I will steer you toward:

“List of Demands (Reparations)”- This is the video that first hooked me. The song is cool in it’s own right but it really explodes off the screen when you watch the video.

and

“African Student Movement” - This one really shows how much he can do with just a beat. It’s hot.