One thing we’ve failed to talk about are “seeding songs”. You know, the songs you put into Pandora and It’s Cool for the next couple of days. (Let’s get the Pandora seeding joke out of the way: “it doesn’t matter what your seed song is, the fourth song will be Jack Johnson”. There. Let us never make that joke again.)
Well, over the weekend, we went out with dear friends to a little place that had fairly unremarkable main courses but AMAZING cherry habanero ice cream with the chocolate espresso cake afterwards. (The first bite was cold… and you felt the heat in your mouth turning up. Absolutely wonderful.)
Anyway, we were enjoying sitting and talking and we noticed that the music mix going on in the background was absolutely amazing. They were jumping from Zero 7 to Massive Attack to Portishead… I was in Trip-Hop heaven. We asked the hostess if this was satellite radio and, if so, which station was it? She explained that, no, she usually just seeds the following song into Pandora and then allows the night to run where it will.
So… what are you listening to?
All Pandora stations left unmodified for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into “Best of Queen “.
So that’s what happened to my Django Reinhardt . . .
This occurs due to sabotage from rival service B, Rhapsody.
Love that first HBMS record. Automator was still on his s**t-hot-can-do-no-wrong run at that point.. Let’s just play that whole record.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrkAy_QvsAU&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Pandora has recently (or perhaps not so recently) added an “Add Variety” feature, wherein you can seed a station with multiple songs and ones that are not even necessarily related. Basically, it amounts to playing multiple stations without having to actively switch back and forth. If it was (and maybe it is, but it hasn’t presented that way in the few times I’ve played with it) capable of actually figuring out songs that are similar to both/all seeds, that would be pretty remarkable. But, still, it is an improvement if you are looking for more variety within a “single” station.
I’m not sure I ever understood the possibility that a Handsome Boy Modeling School track would show up here. Huzzah!
Best 60 dollars I ever spent. I wasn’t sorry for long.
Let me be perfectly clear:
If you there is a band out there that strikes you as being:
A) Awesome
B) unlikely to ever show up here
Please send an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail-dot-com and title it “guest Wednesday post” and write a couple of paragraphs about what the song means to you and a link to where we can all listen to it.
I will post it the first available Wednesday.
Jay,
My wording might have been poor. What I meant is that I did a double-take when I saw this posted here. Perhaps I meant that I wasn’t expecting it. Handsome Boy Modeling School’s reach is so incredible given how relatively underground the record was then and is now. It’s like one of those cult favorites that never quite made it, so it’ll always belong to the people that truly love it.
“I am a male model, NOT A MALE PROSTITUTE.”
Dude, I was not complaining.
I was begging.
And in case that came out wrong, let me say it this way:
Until Sunday, I had never heard of Handsome Boy Modeling School. I see that at least two of y’all in the thread knew about them.
I wish that I had been told about them years ago… but, you know, I didn’t really have a forum where people would share music with each other. I mean, I learned about Loveless because I was lucky and a friend told me about it, I learned about a handful of other albums because a music store person looked at me, squinted, and said something to the effect of “you’re ready for this”… but, really, I don’t have *THAT* many places to learn about these things.
I need to rely on my friends to do that.
If you have albums like this one that I don’t know about:
PLEASE WRITE ME AN EMAIL. I will share your post on the first available Wednesday.
Seriously. There is *SO MUCH AWESOME* out there. I have only heard of a little dinky bit of it, and am familiar with even less.
We’ve got to help each other out with this stuff.
Since Jaybird has allowed an opening for music geekiness (and bear in mind, I don’t know a ton about hip-hop, but this one I know):
Handsome Boy Modeling School is a collaborative project based on an episode of the Chris Elliot sitcom “Get A Life”, by The Automator (who produced a run of terrific and high-concept albums by Kool Keith and Del The Funky Homosapien in roughly the same period and worked with DJ Shadow as well), and Prince Paul, a equally creative producer (he’s probably best known for De La Soul’s “3 Feet High and Rising”, but he also made that Gravediggaz record with RZA, among many others. He also put on a great show when I saw him).
Inexplicably yet awesomely, HBMS also features Father Guido Sarducci.
The first album – guests and songs – is terrific.
There was a band called Bent from St. Charles, Mo. from the late 90’s that had a song called “Marigold” that I think was really cool. The band was in a wreck on I-70 on the way to a gig, and lost almost all their equipment, which was in a two-wheel trailer on the back of the van.
A bunch of us got together and did a benefit concert for them to help them replace their equipment. They never did really come back after that.
Crutch from KC and around the same time (later on Interscope) had a song called “Faith” from the 10-song demo and “The Way It Goes” from the 4-song demo that I always thought were terrific tunes.
Harpoon, a New Hampshire band, had a song called “Blue,” an acoustic tune, that was really kick-ass.
Just right off the top of my head.
I found this page for Bent, but no lyrics to it.
Bent here.
Doesn’t say it in the track listing, but they also did a cover of “Dream Police” on that one. Very, very good.
Most of it is crap, but I would say that there is about 3 outstanding songs there.
Built To Spill did a completely kickass cover of “Dream Police” on one of the times I caught them. They did that orchestral breakdown part and everything.
But the best was when, at another show of theirs, some wag yelled out “Freebird!” (as wags will do) and BtS played an absolutely phenomenal full cover of that – not off the cuff, they must have practiced it, knowing full well they’d get the chance to bust it out (there was a period there, where you just couldn’t go to a guitar band’s show and not have some joker yell “Freebird!”)
I also have a recording of them playing “Take the Money & Run”.
They are not afraid of the classic rock, is what I am saying.