Damon Albarn is one of those creative musical geniuses, yet not many outside of the music nerd contingent know who he is by name.
However, mention the animated Gorillaz, or the song "Feel Good Inc" and you may get an oh yeah! I know that song! response.
I've been listening to Gorillaz "Demon Days" quite a bit lately, and find these songs to be wonderfully catchy and lushly produced techno-pop without making me want to perform a labotamy with a plastic spork.
Albarn effectively created an "Archies" for today's generation. With the help of Jamie Hewlett of Tank Girl fame, numerous guest musicians and some great songs, he's put out no less than 5 cds worth of material, some fantastic videos (animated, of course!), and now there's a documentary being released of the making of the band (called "Bananaz")
What today's young Gorillaz fans may not realize is that Damon Albarn has been making music for 20 years, and was singer/songwriter for the band Blur who incidently also put out some amazing pop music in the 1990's.
I do, however, know more than a few Blur fans who are also big Gorillaz fans so I do know I'm not alone in my fawning fangirl behavior.
Here's the video for the song "Dare" from Demon Days.
and this... a gem from the 90's - Blur's "Parklife".
Official Gorillaz site
Gorillaz wikipedia entry
Monday, December 29, 2008
You've Got To Start Somewhere
I am a notorious procrastinator in both my personal and professional life.
I frequently find myself psychologically bound and gagged when faced with starting a new creative project because anything that feels like too much work hurls me backwards in time, channeling my inner 12-year-old. The one that would avoid practicing her piano assignments and instead opt for endless noodling which amounted to numerous unfinished songs and highly frustrated parents.
At any rate, I've wanted to start a blog to talk about music and for some strange reason I have been avoiding these first few paragraphs like I did my piano lessons all those years ago.
My 42-year-old self realizes that this is as productive as eating an extra helping of curry fries and wondering why my jeans fit tighter.
So here we go...
Some folks might say that I have rather appalling taste in music. My boyfriend thinks I'm narrow minded and cranky when it comes to what I will and will not listen to. Yet others find the fact that I enjoy both Cher as well as Frank Zappa to be kind of twisted and at the same time, cool.
On any given day you might find my Walkman loaded up with 70's-80's Top-40, 60's psychedelic or garage bands, soul or funk from the 60's to today, classic music icons like the Beatles, Who, or Kinks, eclectic retro-inspired contemporary bands like of Montreal or Fleet Foxes, swirly esoteric lovely music makers like the Cocteau Twins or the Innocence Mission, the bands we'll all still be talking about years from now like Radiohead and The Shins, classic folk artists, classic metal bands like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, great songwriters like Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, and Tori Amos, and my old standby of Progressive Rock.
What I don't listen to, for the most part, are the pop acts making music today, with very few exceptions (I do like Amy Winehouse quite a bit). I sometimes enjoy the rap and hiphop artists who have been around for a while, but for the most part the whole genre annoys me.
I have a great disdain for most contemporary male and female vocalists who seem more like the products that a record company packaged together than an artist with any shred of originality. Not to mention, the music seems incredibly overproduced and meant to create ear worms that could only be cured by a heavy dose of "Come Sail Away" or "Muskrat Love" - which is like trying to cure an addiction to heroin with Oxy. It's as if the entire singer/songwriter genre has been dipped in a layer of batter, deep fried, and covered in sweet goo so that it appeals to those with the attention span of a squirrel. The songcraft seems to have been lost along the way.
Anyway, I'm going to set a goal for myself here to write even just a few words each day about something that's played through on my Walkman, something I've seen on YouTube or on the telly, or something music-related that's stuck in my craw and I need to rant about.
I frequently find myself psychologically bound and gagged when faced with starting a new creative project because anything that feels like too much work hurls me backwards in time, channeling my inner 12-year-old. The one that would avoid practicing her piano assignments and instead opt for endless noodling which amounted to numerous unfinished songs and highly frustrated parents.
At any rate, I've wanted to start a blog to talk about music and for some strange reason I have been avoiding these first few paragraphs like I did my piano lessons all those years ago.
My 42-year-old self realizes that this is as productive as eating an extra helping of curry fries and wondering why my jeans fit tighter.
So here we go...
Some folks might say that I have rather appalling taste in music. My boyfriend thinks I'm narrow minded and cranky when it comes to what I will and will not listen to. Yet others find the fact that I enjoy both Cher as well as Frank Zappa to be kind of twisted and at the same time, cool.
On any given day you might find my Walkman loaded up with 70's-80's Top-40, 60's psychedelic or garage bands, soul or funk from the 60's to today, classic music icons like the Beatles, Who, or Kinks, eclectic retro-inspired contemporary bands like of Montreal or Fleet Foxes, swirly esoteric lovely music makers like the Cocteau Twins or the Innocence Mission, the bands we'll all still be talking about years from now like Radiohead and The Shins, classic folk artists, classic metal bands like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, great songwriters like Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, and Tori Amos, and my old standby of Progressive Rock.
What I don't listen to, for the most part, are the pop acts making music today, with very few exceptions (I do like Amy Winehouse quite a bit). I sometimes enjoy the rap and hiphop artists who have been around for a while, but for the most part the whole genre annoys me.
I have a great disdain for most contemporary male and female vocalists who seem more like the products that a record company packaged together than an artist with any shred of originality. Not to mention, the music seems incredibly overproduced and meant to create ear worms that could only be cured by a heavy dose of "Come Sail Away" or "Muskrat Love" - which is like trying to cure an addiction to heroin with Oxy. It's as if the entire singer/songwriter genre has been dipped in a layer of batter, deep fried, and covered in sweet goo so that it appeals to those with the attention span of a squirrel. The songcraft seems to have been lost along the way.
Anyway, I'm going to set a goal for myself here to write even just a few words each day about something that's played through on my Walkman, something I've seen on YouTube or on the telly, or something music-related that's stuck in my craw and I need to rant about.
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