tunequest

When I was in middle school, I became a big fan of the first few entries to the Mega Man series of games for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Game play was straight-forward. The stories were fairly one-dimensional Mega Man good; all others bad, but exciting. And each level, named for an element or mineral (Bubble Man, Heat Man, Air Man, etc), proved to be a uniquely constructed ...

Read the rest of this post.

In addition to their world-sized beats, The Chemical Brothers are generally known for their world class videos. I stumbled across this video to Star Guitar from the duo's 2002 release Come With Us while perusing the ol' Google Video/YouTube library this afternoon and was quickly fascinated. It was directed by noted film dude Michel Gondry, who's done some impressive work, including intriguing videos for Bjork, Beck, Radiohead and many other ...

Read the rest of this post.

From the archives: I wrote the original version of this article for a newspaper column about 5 years ago. So it reads more like a newspaper column and not so much like a the informal blogginess that's usually found around here. It's from the Records that time forgot series that I hope to revive in 2007. This version corrects a couple awkward sentences and updates the formatting, but remains ...

Read the rest of this post.

James Brown died of pneumonia on Christmas Day 2006 at the age of 73 in Atlanta Georgia. The obits are all over the net, but here's one from the AJC. Besides his musical legacy, he leaves behind one of the funniest, catchiest Simpsons' lines, for its out-of-character absurdity and earnest delivery. From the fifth season episode Bart's Inner Child, it's a heck of a catch-phrase:

Read the rest of this post.

A superb cover of Charlie Daniels' and his band Devil Went Down to Georgia. I'm not sure if the song itself was ever released, but a claymation Quicktime movie of it can be found on the data portion of Primus' 1999 Rhinoplasty, a collection of cover tunes in the band's trademark style. Fortunately for you, the fine denizens of YouTube have thoughtfully provided this video. Enjoy.

Read the rest of this post.

...here's the Ratatat remix of Shout Out Louds' The Comeback. I actually listened to it last weekend, but didn't hear anything half as interesting today, so consider it a retroactive song of the day. This mix illustrates perfectly what I love about Ratatat's remixing style. They're not content to just throw a house beat behind the song, or chop it up until it's unrecognizable. No, Mike and Evan take full ...

Read the rest of this post.

I'm usually opposed to orchestras attempting to play pop/rock music. Those things just never seems to turn out as well as one would expect. But this performace of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit by Western Branch Freshmen Orchestra is quite nice. As both an orchestra fan and Nirvana fan, I give it great kudos. The orchestra is based at Western Branch High School (home of the Western Branch Bruins) in ...

Read the rest of this post.

Hard to believe, I know, considering that Radiohead recently valted to the top of my last.fm profile and that the band has consistently been in the top 5 in my iTunes library in terms of number of songs, average ratings and total play counts. But it's true, I was late to the Radiohead party. For about five years after they band hit with Creep, I was unimpressed. At the time ...

Read the rest of this post.

Trans Am's brand of future-rock has been of constant interest since the day I first heard it in early 2002. I appreciate their hard-drive rhythms and computerized effects. In fact, before i knew any better, I thought the group was from Germany. Turns out they're actually from Washington, DC, which is why I also appreciate that they tackle political material in a way that's direct and clever, but ...

Read the rest of this post.