Blue Lives: Fire Diamond Edition

The Massive Attack album Blue Lines came up twice lately. With Neil for sure, and perhaps with our new friend MarguaX-Y-Z.



I was telling Margauz about music I listened to in high school, and told her and Neil both that a lot of so-called 'trip-hop' hasn't aged so well. Massive Attack, however, is just as great now as then: "Same As It Ever Was".

Blue Lines' cover (see above) reminds me of this:


which is called NFPA 704 (?), and more provocatively, a FIRE DIAMOND .

It sums up the dangers associated with any chemical, on a scale of 0-4 (0 = NBD, 4 = vewwy bad) : blue is health risk, red is flammability, yeller is instabilty/reactivity (think about it, they mean the same thing), and white, much like my blog readership, is 'special'.


Neil knows about Massive Attack because he is Irish. They are one of those bands, like Super Furry Animals, where you know them automatically if you are British, and probably don't know if you are an American, and still only maybe know even if you are an American Indie Nerd.
"Just as great" also includes another album, Mezzanine.

Maybe some other time I will tell you what I think about Mezzanine, which I like even more than the excellent Blue Lines.
But today is not that day. All I will say is this little creepy American Indie Nerd gem: 'it has really good production'.

ew
that's grosser than the bug picture, innit?

The song you are listening to is a cover, although for the longest time I took it to be the original. Still never heard the original (by William DeVaughn), although I now know it to be a cover. This knowledge comes to me courtesy of the American Indie Nerd band Yo La Tengo.
Download their live cover of "Be Thankful for What You've Got" here
Yo La Tengo do a lot of covers, because one of the nerds people in the band used to be a record clerk. So he knows a bit about old obscure business, you see.
All versions of the song say "Gangster Whitewalls", which I like.

Cure-Light

I went to the dentist today, for the first time ever.
Well, for the first cavity ever.



download Songs:Ohia- Two Blue Lights

It went well and went fast, except for one bit. The compound didn't set up in part of the filling, because the light that one uses to 'cure' the compound, to get it to set, wasn't strong enough.

I thought that she had a hair-dryer in my mouth, from the way it sounded, but, turns out, it was a BLUE LIGHT LASER, which she kept calling a cure-light.




After she figured out that her cure-light was jenky, she borrowed another. This is Penn's Dental School, and so they borrow stuff all the time.

So she used Two Blue Lights.


Songs:Ohia, despite the odd spelling and the odd punctuation, are very good. You know this already, from the above YouTube video. Basically the same people as Magnolia Electric Co.
Like Neil Young, if we need a little shorthand to get you to listen to more. A little more 'sad bastard music' than Ol' Neil, but, you know, he wants you to cry sometimes too.

Jose Feliciano- Zorba the Greek Geek

I recently happened upon a few records by Jose Feliciano. He's blind, and plays a mean guitar. Like, for real mean. He plays a number of covers (that's what crack instrumentalists do: think about old jazz heads), like the one above. He also used to live near S'Noble in Connecticut.

CONNEXIONS, right?!?!

Oh shit! It's 2:30, and I still haven't finished my syllabus. Lordy! You guys write the rest of this, will you? Thanks. I owe a blog entry dedication to anyone who adds anything to the comments section. Well, anything except for spam comments about hookahs (see here and here).

Racist!

For those of you (few) who still haven't downloaded the mixtapes I've deemed "Pirate Radio"

(dis one is 1)
(dat one is 2)

here is a little sample.



(here's a link to its youtube page...)
This is not the best song on there, but it still is very good (else it wouldn'a gone on the mix!, right?).
I put it up today because I said it might be racist.







You know, the Prof. Gates thing is dying down, Conrad and I disputing about it notwithstanding. Beer either calms or inflames. Seemingly, with Gates/Obama/Crowley, it calmed; with Conrad and I, it inflamed.

Hopefully, the song, along with this blog post, will reinvigorate the debate. Really get America discussing race.
Or, race-baiting will garner me a few more hitz.
I'd be really psyched either way.

Why (might) it be racist? Minstrel show type stuff. Guy goes to jungle, nearly gets cannibalized. Jungle chants, etc. You know, 'that sort'.