Posts Tagged ‘fun’

The Popdose Podcast: Episode 1

This is something we’ve been talking about doing for a long time — in fact, we really thought we’d be debuting the Popdose Podcast over a year ago. It wasn’t until we were finally able to trick our friend Dave Lifton into shuttering his long-running and wildly popular Wings for Wheels series that our plans came together — with the technical savvy necessary to edit our nonsensical jabbering into pure audio entertainment, and a strong enough personality to keep the entire podcast from dissolving into a giggling fit of mom jokes, Dave was the crucial final ingredient we were waiting for all along.

So open up your pod, baby, and let us in — and remember, this is only our debut. Even television classics like According to Jim didn’t enjoy their finest moments until they’d had a little time to hit their stride, and you have no idea what we have in store for you during the coming months. (Note: neither do we.) Like what you hear? Hate it? Drop us a line in the comments and let us know. And now, without further ado…

The Popdose Podcast, Episode 1: Donkey Eatin’ a Pony (1:09:49, 64.9 MB), featuring Jeff Giles, Jason Hare, and Dave Lifton.
You can also subscribe to the podcast’s RSS feed.

Show Notes

0:00 Intro, including digressions into the end of Guiding Light, and Jason’s ass.

5:05 Jeff Giles discusses ASCAP and BMI demanding fees for 30-second samples on iTunes, plus, how Popdose may be affected.

18:53 Dave Lifton discusses hipsters ironically nostalgic for the ’80s, which leads to digressions into Lionel Richie, J-Stache, his taint and Richard Marx sniffing it, the Michael McDonald/Grizzly Bear collaboration, Jason Lytle covering Billy Joel, Daryl Hall’s expensive house, and Smokey Robinson & George Michael singing “Careless Whisper.”

38:20 Jason Hare credits Terje Fjelde’s awesome Popdose podcast contributions, then discusses Mariah Carey appearing on Oprah and covering Foreigner. Digressions continue into Mariah’s “All I Want for Christmas is You,” Journey, The Saw Lady, and Wing.

54:31 Popdose Endorsements (official title yet to be determined; offer your suggestions in the comments!): Jeff endorses fun. (song clip: “Benson Hedges”)

57:06 Popdose Endorsements: Dave endorses Robbie Fulks (song clip: “Papa Was A Steel-Headed Man”)

58:51 Popdose Endorsements: Jason endorses the Damnwells and Tragedy: An All-Metal Tribute to the Bee Gees (song clip: “Stayin’ Alive)

1:02:00 Outro: Jeff highlights his interview with Zach Curd of Desktop (song: “My Boo,” a Popdose exclusive track)

The Friday Mixtape: 9/18/09

Remember that mixtape from last week? One hundred Beatles covers? That thing was EPIC! It was freaking magnificent!

Yup… That was… really something.

Well, then.

Midnight Oil – Under The Overpass from Capricornia (2002)

fun. – Benson Hedges from Aim and Ignite (2009)

The 77s – The Treasure In You from More Miserable Than You’ll Ever Be (1990)

Roland Orzabal – Dandelion from Tomcats Screaming Outside (2001)

Porcupine Tree – Black Dahlia from The Incident (2009)

Velvet Crush – Hold Me Up from Teenage Symphonies to God (1994)

Elton John – Something About The Way You Look Tonight from The Big Picture (1997)

Gin Blossoms – Till I Hear It From You from Outside Looking In: The Best Of Gin Blossoms (1999)

Yngwie Malmsteen – I’m My Own Enemy from Fire & Ice (1992)

Toto – Drag Him To The Roof from Tambu (1996)

The Smithereens – Behind The Wall Of Sleep from Especially for You (1986)

Elvis Costello And The Imposters – American Gangster Time from Momofuku (2008)

The Balls Of France – Message From The Country from Lynne Me Your Ears: A Tribute to the Music of Jeff Lynne (2001)

The Simpsons – What Do I Think Of The Pie? from The Simpsons: Testify (2007)

CD Review: fun., “Aim and Ignite”

fun. - Aim and Ignitefun. is one of those bands that take all the music that they love, throw it in a blender, and pour the resulting mixture into an album. In this case, the album is called Aim and Ignite (Nettwerk), and while the whole is a bit less than the sum of its parts, it’s an interesting and unusual listen.

The band’s main strength is to be found in the songwriting. The production is another story. There’s nothing basic about this album, and Mies van der Rohe’s famous proclamation “Less is more” did not figure into this particular equation. There are strings galore, multilayered vocal harmonies throughout, horns, oboes, and accordions here and there, and even the appearance of a calliope on one track.

I’ve never been much of a Queen fan. There were a few songs that I like, but I always thought they sounded, well, goofy. fun., on the other hand, are obviously big Queen fans, and while modern recording technology (and basic good taste) has allowed them to improve on Queen’s cheesier sounds, it still sounds, to some extent, like Queen to me. It sounds cute. I don’t like cute. I don’t know, maybe I need to lighten up. The sounds of ELO and Jellyfish are among the blended ingredients too, but on “Walking the Dog,” fun. relies on the more current influence of Vampire Weekend. Then again, Vampire Weekend got it from Paul Simon, and he got it from musicians in South Africa, and they got it … (more…)

DVD Review: “Transformers Animated: Season Two”

Transformers Animated: Season 2 (Hasbro, 2009)
purchase this DVD (Amazon)

I’ve never really been a big Transformers fan, even back in my childhood. I’ve never understood the cultural fascination with them, or how said fascination has lasted so long. They’re robots who turn into cars…wow. And when that hideous live action abortion by Michael Bay stomped its way into movie theaters back in ‘07, based on its stupefying success, I figured maybe I was the one taking crazy pills. And so it was with some trepidation that I chose to review the Transformers Animated Season 2 DVD, which compiles all the episodes which recently aired on Cartoon Network.

I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised.

Not so much that now I’m going to buy stock in Hasbro, the company which produces the toy line which incestuously pairs itself in a 69 position with this series. But I have to say that for a kids’ show that pretty much does nothing but have giant robots fighting each other and doing a lot of property damage, it’s really a quaint bit of fun.

The absolutely best thing that Hasbro did when they reinvented this series (the origins of these characters and their arc are significantly different from the show which ran from 1984-1987) is that they detached it almost completely from Michael Bay’s film–the only true connection being that the heroic Autobots and their nemeses, the Decepticons, are both searching for fragments of the Allspark, the mysterious power source which gave life to all inhabitants of their distant home world, Cybertron. (more…)

No Concessions: Fun and Games

Management informs me that as of today we’re off until the new year. I can’t promise that I won’t sneak back into the building from time to time, but to tide you over I have a couple of movie-related diversions. Fun for the holidays — or more fun, anyway, than Reese Witherspoon in a Christmas movie.

I found this one at the Blog Cabins site. It’s a simple, or simple-seeming, alphabet game. What you do is match your favorite film to its letter in the alphabet, with a few provisos: Articles like “A” and “The” don’t count toward a title, and numbered titles correspond to the first letter of the number (1984 under “N,” for example). I don’t get hung up on series entries: If you prefer Return of the Jedi over Star Wars Episode IV: Return of the Jedi, fine by me, but maybe limit yourself to one entry in a series. (If Return of the Jedi is your favorite Stars Wars movie, you have more than just nomenclature problems.) And try to draw from your memory banks rather than a reference source, not that I can enforce it. To paraphrase Albert Brooks in the film I’ve decided to use for my “R” entry, “What can I do? Send you to movie jail?”

So here goes. It gets tougher with the letters that don’t yield a lot title-wise:

Aliens (1986)
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Chinatown (1974) (more…)