Skip to main content

A little bit of this, a little bit of that

Whenever I receive an iTunes gift card as a present, I have this sense of relief. Meaning, I can get songs I love that I normally wouldn't purchase. Usually I have to really talk myself into buying something, even at $.99 cents a pop. Yup, I'm that stingy.

With my sister and brother-in-law giving me a $15 card for Christmas, I proceeded to purchase the following songs. And as much as I refuse to call these "guilty pleasures," they're definitely not songs in genres that I often listen to.

Queensryche, "Silent Lucidity" (video)
While Nirvana, Metallica and Pearl Jam dominated MTV's playlist in late 1991, this was a different kind of rock song that got equally heavy rotation. I can't say I pine for much Queensryche beyond this, but there's a reason why I play its intro on guitar whenever there's one in my hands.

Slipknot, "Before I Forget" (video)
Credit goes to Guitar Hero III for reminding me of this song. A little less intense compared to the band's other material, but it's just a great hooky song -- complete with double-bass drumming! Playing this song on Guitar Hero definitely makes for a more pleasant experience compared to playing Red Faction with Iowa on. Something just really creeps me out with shooting monsters and martians while hearing a line like "I wanna slit your throat and fuck the wound."

Santana featuring Michelle Branch, "Game of Love" (video)
My time working at Best Buy subjected me to numerous hearings of Santana's collaboration with Rob Thomas, "Smooth." It was an inescapable song that I wasn't fond of when I first heard it and that opinion didn't change the more I heard it. Now, Santana's follow-up album to Supernatural came with this collaboration with Michelle Branch -- a song I dug quite a bit and still dig. Essentially just two chords, but sometimes that's all you need.

R. Kelly featuring T.I. and T-Pain, "I'm a Flirt" (video)
Looking past R. Kelly's arrogance in the lyrics and T-Pain's voice heavily processed through a Vocoder, this song is pretty infectious. Once again, it's essentially two chords, but they work well with the beat.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Catherine Wheel

Originally posted: Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 Despite managing to release five proper albums, Catherine Wheel was one of those bands that always seemed to slip past the mainstream rock crowd. Yes, they got some nice airplay in their day, but people seem to have forgotten about them. You may hear “Black Metallic” or “Waydown” on a “classic alternative” show on Sirius or XM or maybe even on terrestrial radio, but that’s about it. For me, they were one of most consistent rock bands of the ’90s, meandering through shoegazer, hard rock, space rock and pop rock, all while eluding mainstream pigeonholing. Led by the smooth, warm pipes of vocalist/guitarist Rob Dickinson (cousin of Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson), Catherine Wheel featured Brian Futter on lead guitar, Dave Hawes on bass and Neil Sims on drums. They weren’t a pretty-boy guitar band, but they weren’t a scuzzy bunch of ragamuffins either. Though the band hailed from England, Catherine Wheel found itself more welcome on American air...
4 comments
Read more

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ben Folds and Ben Folds Five

Originally posted on Tuesday, April 11th, 2006 : For some, Ben Folds Five was merely a one hit wonder. For others, the trio was a life-changer. Myself, I’m one of the latter. Being formally introduced with the “Battle of Who Could Care Less” video on 120 Minutes , I was very intrigued to know more about this piano-bass-drums combo. Once I heard Whatever and Ever Amen , I was hooked. As a matter of fact, out of all of my favorite bands, Ben Folds Five is one of the few that I liked right away and I have held the same kind of admiration ever since. Their three proper albums (and one b-sides collection) are staples in my record collection and they may very well be (or soon be) staples in your collection too. For a band that was once described as “punk rock for sissies,” you may realize how effortlessly these guys walked between fun, semi-goofy pop songs and some really deep and powerful stuff too. It helps that they had it right from the beginning and kept maturing. Ben Folds Five (1995) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Politics Shmolitics

Yesterday, the more pleas I saw for people to go out and vote, the more uncomfortable I felt. Plenty of the blogs I hit up everyday said something along the lines of "Vote and if you don't, don't complain." Folks, this is why I find discussing politics so alienating. There are plenty of reasons why I don't discuss politics on here or in my everyday conversations. The biggest reason is because I don't have a lot of interest in politics in the first place. By what I've seen, heard and read for the last eight years, political debates are usually pissing contests. Judging by the views I've processed, it would be easy to think that we're all slowly going downhill either on the left, right or down the middle. Yet I don't think we're going totally downhill or totally uphill. Debating the direction we're going seems futile, especially when adults start screaming at each other like they're in grade school. To my ears, political debates are s...
11 comments
Read more