“We Built this City” is a great song with a great hook by a band that had no right have such a terrific hit that late in its alcohol-sodden, drug-dulled career. “Corporate” (Blender’s comment) my butt. How anyone could call “We Built this City” a bad song while there is the whole catalog of Wilco to draw from is beyond me — not to mention every song by Tom Waite, Randy Newman, every rap and hip hop singer who ever lived, the entire “alternative” and grunge movement, Nine Inch Nails, Supergrass, “Peg O’ My Heart,” the theme songs from “Friends” and every other sitcom, the symphonic output of Anton Bruckner, fully three quarters of Bob Dylan’s work, one-quarter of Bruce Springsteen’s, every song on the Outkaast album except “Ai-Ya,” “Wipe Out,” every song by James Brown, two decades of jazz-rock fusion, everything by Joni Mitchell after and including the album “Blue,” “Symphonie Fantastique,” Sting, reggae, any song that’s used in a car commercial, anything involving Brian Wilson after “Good Vibrations,” anything on the Beatles “White Album” (except “Oh-Bla-Di” which the bozos at Blender are not hip enough to like), any song by John Lennon after meeting Yoko Ono, any song (it goes without saying) by Yoko Ono, anything by Paul McCartney or the Rolling Stones issued in the last 25 years (except for “My Brave Face”), fully three-quarters of Elvis Costello’s recorded ouvre, all contemporary classical music since Stravinsky, anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber, anything by Fabian, anything by Philip Glass, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” everything by Prince except “Raspberry Beret,” I could go on…
posted by Faze at 1:53 PM on April 23, 2004

Parts of it I do agree with, but a lot of it is excessive, especially the part that says every song by prince except raspberry beret – can’t agree with that. On the other hand the classical stuff and andrew lloyd webber – have no objections.
It’s a shame the article on blender the comment relates to no longer exists, even on waybackmachine but hopefully the general gist comes through.

If you want to have a go yourself here’s the steps/rules:

Step 1: Put your music player on shuffle.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 25 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing. See which of your friends can name the most songs.
Step 3: Strike out the songs when someone guesses both artist and track correctly.
Step 4: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING!
Step 5: If you like the game post your own.
Step 6: Tag 20 friends to guess

Here we go – sometimes i’ve been generous and given 2-3 lines if they’re short or for no reason at all. Other times (when i don’t feel like helping) i’ve stuck to just the first line:

1. You can force it but it will not come – Radiohead “Planet Telex”
2. From the coast of gold, across the seven seas – Iron Maiden “Wasted Years”
3. *song title* all in my brain – Jimi Hendrix Experience “Purple Haze”
4. I was driving on the freeway in the fast lane
5. *song title* Be my everything
6. This is a mantra for myself
7. Fall back take a look at me and you’ll see I’m for real
8. You hide behind barricades
9. Bite the bit, scream till you’re blue the face
10. Anytime but now, Anywhere but here
11. In the unlikely event that sarcasm is an unfitting dress
12. There are no monks in my band
13. My name is *song title* and I am here to unlock the secrets of your mind
14. If it’s a bad day you try to suffocate – Placebo “You don’t care about us”
15. Back and forth, I sway with the wind
16. Care not for the men who wonder
17. Take me in your arms…. come on
18. Sometimes I need to remember just to breathe
19. Fall, white, light fell
20. Funny how I find myself in love with you
21. A grand hope a rope
22. Come down to my house, stick a stone in your mouth
23. How can we make you understand
24. You were just a work of sperm
25. Bombers rip across the screen

So there you go – try and guess what they all are and i’ll strike them off as you get them
To give you a pointer, I would say the easiest (in terms of least obscure and/or easiest to guess from the lyric) are:
1,3,4,7,12,13,14,18,20,22,23

and that therefore leaves the following as the harder ones:
2,5,6,8,9,10,11,15,16,17,19,21,24

Though clearly it would depend on whether you know the artists/tracks that came up, i can tell you if i didn’t have the answers in front of me i wouldn’t get any of the harder ones apart from number 5 and possibly number 2.

I would add that it was made so much easier by having downloaded any lyrics i had a while back into itunes as you can see them on your iPod. It meant i only had to grab 4 or 5 CDs off the shelf to double check the lyric and googled 2 or 3 that didn’t have lyrics in the sleeve.

Good luck, and if you are struggling, check out an old version of my music collection. If there are still any outstanding in a few weeks i will probably reveal the answers then (if i remember).

As an addendum – although i’ve got my facebook setup to accept the RSS feed and the post appears as a note here, the updates will only happen here as it won’t update or allow edits once it’s been imported – sorry, didn’t realise that at the time! It’s much nicer here anyway.

It’s been ages since i posted this so thought i’d post the answers in case anyone was wondering

1. Radiohead – Planet Telex
2. Iron Maiden – Wasted Years
3. Jimi Hendrix – Purple Haze
4. Weird Al Yankovic – Everything You Know Is Wrong
5. Type-O-Negative – Be My Druidess
6. My Ruin – Diavolina
7. Avril Lavigne – Nobody’s Fool
8. Trivium – To The Rats
9. Napalm Death – Diatribes
10. Fugazi – Burning Too
11. At The Drive In – 300 MHz
12. Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Funky Monks
13. Goldie Looking Chain – Professor Doppleganger
14. Placebo – Without You I’m Nothing
15. Faith No More – Falling to Pieces
16. Alice in Chains – God Smack
17. Evoke – Arms of Loren
18. Linkin Park – Don’t Stay
19. Obituary – Back from the Dead
20. Talk Talk – It’s My Life
21. Kicks Joy Darkness – American Television
22. Garbage – Supervixen
23. The Libertines – Road to Ruin
24. Slayer – I Hate You
25. Low Fidelity Allstars – Nightmare Story

Link for those who want to view it on youtube.com

(in the next section i’ve completely copied the transcript of the interview into chunks in case the link isn’t available in the future and to highlight certain parts. DR is Dizzee Rascal, JP is Jeremy Paxman)

The highlights of the interview are:

• When asked if the UK could have a black president it went as follows:

JP: … could you see this happening in Britain?
DR: Yeah. In time.
JP: You’re rather positive!
DR: Yeah, man. Why not, man? There’s a first time for everything, isn’t there? …
if you believe you can achieve, innit?

Radio One have been mocking this final line but at the same time it almost is something the “yoof” of today could take to heart.

• When asked on political parties he acknowledged they existed but little else:

JP: Dizzee Rascal, do you believe in political parties in Britain?
DR: Yeah, they exist. I believe in ‘em … I don’t know if it makes a difference. But you know what I mean. It is what it is. Politicians … say what they say – you might get every now and again a genuine one, innit? But I think people, like, as a whole make the difference …

• When asked if he considered himself British, Paxman calls him “Mr Rascal”. Dizzee then comes out with a classic on who could run the country:

JP: Dizzee Rascal, Mr Rascal, do you feel yourself to be British?
DR: Of course I’m British, man! You know me! … what’s good. I think it don’t matter what colour you are, it matters what colour your heart is and your intentions. I think a black man, purple man, Martian man can run the country … as long as he does right by the people.

• And finally, Dizzee reckons he could run for PM and that Obama’s victory couldn’t of happened if he hadn’t embraced hip hop:

JP: Well why don’t you run for office?
DR: See, that’s a very good idea. I might have to do that one day. Dizzee Rascal for prime minister, yeah! Wassappenin’! Barack Obama embraced hip-hop, man. That’s the way he got through to kids. There was a more young vote ever. And it was through hip-hop!

- Plug the iPod into the power charger ONLY and not the computer
- Toggle the hold switch to on and then off
- Hold the MENU and Select (center) portion of the wheel down simultaneously for ten seconds.

It means you need to have a mains charger which you don’t get out of the box when you buy a new iPod
I was about to get the putty knife out and pull the battery out to reboot it, which am glad I didn’t have to do

1. Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Under the Bridge

The LA rock band released this song off their 1990 album Blood Sugar Sex Magik
It’s a fairly amicable ballad which fans of all ages can be found singing along to.
However, I suspect many do not realise that the lyrics are an introspective reflection on vocalist Anthony Kiedis’ drug addiction (in this case heroin)
The track has been covered several times, though perhaps the most well known in the UK is the one by girl band All Saints where in my opinion they murdered John Frusciante’s guitar line by taking the flow out of it cutting it with samples. They also didn’t include the final verse which is the verse that is most obvious in terms of it’s drug references.

2. Semisonic – Secret Smile

There is some debate about this song out there, but the general consensus I get about this pop ballad by another american rock band is that it’s about oral sex or at the very least has some form of sexual innuendo. Again it’s a very easy to listen to song which people of all ages listen to. Not an awful lot to say about it, but next time you hear it bear the lyrics in mind.

3. The La’s – There She Goes
Another drug reference in this song – again another apparently harmless pop song.
Like Under the Bridge, it’s about heroin:

There she goes
There she goes again
Pulsing through my veins
And I just can’t contain
This feeling that remains

“She” is the personification of heroin
It is, as with Secret Smile, debatable, but is largely thought to be about the drug

4. The Kinks – Lola

This one is not debatable at all and for years I had never thought about the lyrics for the song
But again, it’s a pop ballad with lyrics that are about subjects that you wouldn’t think about
Lola is about a ladyboy who comes onto the main character.
Verse 2 is probably the one that reveals this the most:

Well Im not the worlds most physical guy
But when she squeezed me tight she nearly broke my spine
Oh my lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola
Well Im not dumb but I cant understand
Why she walked like a woman and talked like a man
Oh my lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola

I don’t think I properly listened to the lyrics before, but I know what it’s about now whenever I hear the track.

5. The Police – Every Breath you take

Another song that people sing along to, dance to and even get married to
It’s actually quite a scary song as it’s about the break-up of Sting’s marriage and how after he broke up he metaphorically followed her everywhere she went

Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
Ill be watching you

I’ve also heard theories that it could be interpreted as a reference to the iron curtain and how the communist governments watched everything you did to make sure you didn’t step out of line.

Make of it what you will, but I wouldn’t rate it as a song to get married to

6. Lou Reed – Walk on the Wild Side

Finally, a song that I just didn’t realise how filthy the lyrics are. I think it was this verse that really made me jump:

Candy came from out on the island
In the backroom she was everybodys darling

But she never lost her head
Even when she was given head
She says, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
Said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
And the coloured girls go

Well, that concludes my lyrics post – feel free to comment if you have anything to add

Back to the iPod.
First and foremost, for those that don’t know I got the 80Gb Video iPod back in September 2006 while I was in New York. With the exchange rate it was stupidly cheap.

It makes going on holiday so much easier, because it had got to the point where I was taking 100 CDs with me which takes up a lot of space in hand luggage, and I always hated not having the covers with me to tell what tracks were.
An ipod fits in your pocket and holds my entire music collection which is amazing.
I’ve also started listening to albums I’d forgotten I owned and with smart playlists i can choose my favourites and with normal playlists i’ve created some good mixes of tracks which in the past I did with mix cds.
Overall it is truly brilliant and I can’t imagine being without it

On the downside, I’ve found I don’t listen to whole albums these days, as I am able to flick between tracks, listen to playlists or shuffle tracks
I do like the ratings ability, though I find that I don’t have time to rate all tracks, and my rating is inconsistent depending on the day.

I’ve found a glitch or two, there are features I find annoying, and there are features that I wish you could have

Glitches:
1.If you play a track through a playlist, then go into the list by album and select the same track it will restart the track from the beginning instead of selecting it
2. If you rate a track on the iPod and iTunes it will take the iTunes rating in preference to the iPod one next time you sync it – not really a glitch, but would be nice if you could choose.

Annoying features:
1. I have quite a few music videos i’ve transferred onto my iPod (i have about 120Gb on DVD which wouldn’t fit on the iPod, so have picked a select few). The music videos subsection of videos acts like a playlist in that if you go into an artist with more than one video, when it finishes it will move straight onto the next video. Compared with the movies section which will bring you straight back to the movie list
2. Podcasts: I like podcasts and have quite a few but find it difficult to listen to them because as soon as you finish playing an episode it takes you back to the main menu – stupid

Features I’d wish for:
1. Four buttons along the bottom of the screen. These would let you get additional info on the track being played. Currently the only info you can view on the iPod are Artist, Track, Album, Rating. What about all the others. You can browse by genre but can’t view the genre while playing.
2. If you are playing a track I’d like to be able to drop into a menu which would take you straight to the album you’re playing and play other tracks from that album or by that artist
3. Creating playlists – you can create on the go playlists which are good, but limited. Why restrict it to that when you can clearly create them from the iPod. Creating smart playlists from the iPod would be really useful.
4. The one i’d really like is the ability to create more sub sections to videos. You get Movies, Music Videos and Video Podcasts. I have been copying lots of videos from youtube and would like to sort them by category.
5. Similar to 4, a category section for video podcasts, I’m currently using the comments field and smart playlists to do this but it’s not ideal, as every time there’s a new file in a podcast you have to add the comments to this file.

I think that pretty much covers things, and I hope that apple will continue to upgrade their non-phone iPod with features in addition to their capacity increases.

Their list:

1. Des’ree – Life
2. Snap – Rhythm is a Dancer
3. Razorlight – Somewhere Else
4. ABC – That Was Then But This is Now
5. U2 – Elevation
6. Toto – Africa
7. Oasis – Champagne Supernova
8. Duran Duran – Is There Something I Should Know?
9. Human League – The Lebanon
10. Black Sabbath – War Pigs

My List:

1. Des’ree ‘Life’ (toast/ghost/most rhyme)
2. Europe ‘The Final Countdown’ (heading to venus verse)
3. Crowded House ‘Weather with you’ (always take the weather…)
4. Elton John ‘Your Song’ (2nd verse)
5. Lyte Funkie Ones ‘Summer Girls’ (hits/sick/fitch rhyme)
6. Feeder ‘Buck Rogers’ (he’s got a brand new car/cider from a lemon)
7. Feeder ‘Just the way I’m feeling’ (10 feet below the ground)
8. Everclear ‘I will buy you a new life’ (I will buy you a new garden/car – shiny & new)
9. Depeche Mode ‘Everything Counts’ (career/korea/insincere rhyme)
10. The Beautiful South ‘Don’t Marry Her’ (Your love light shines like cardboard)

I’m sure there are probably better (ie worse) ones, but unless I actually get round to creating the site we may never know

I haven’t been posting much on the blog of late because I’ve been spending an unhealthy time on facebook

Before I get into it, you must remember what my music collection is like – quite varied. Also remember that some things on my ipod aren’t in that list because they’re on strange compilation cds, i’ve bought them online or i’ve copied them (just don’t tell the RIAA)

So, onto the soundtrack (plus the instructions so you can try it at home)

IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?
So, here’s how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool..

Opening Credits:
“Far From Here” – The Levellers
Interesting, didn’t know I had that, not a huge fan of them, but I can cope with that

Waking Up:
“Mine” – Sepultura
You can’t beat a bit of Brazillian death metal in the morning!

First Day At School:
“Slip Inside This House” – Primal Scream
Not the track I’d go for in that album, but I like the track, didn’t know it was called that. Quite upbeat, and I quite enjoyed my primary school from what I remember

Falling In Love:
“The Only One” – Skin
Kinda appropriate, again a track I don’t know very well – think it was on a metal hammer cover cd

Breaking Up:
“The Sky Is Broken” – Moby
I hadn’t listened to Moby in ages and again kinda appropriate
Think I’ll have to re-rip the track cos it’s very crackly (unless it’s supposed to sound like that!)

Prom:
“How Many Times Must My Heart Be Broken” – French Car and the Bulimic Wizards
I doubt many will know this track/artist (unless you’re from the French Car/Serafin clan). Can’t say I’ve actually been to a Prom, so can’t draw any parallels

Life’s Ok:
“Still D.R.E.” – Dr Dre
A a feelgood track – like it for the section, but wouldn’t normally pick it

Mental Breakdown:
“The Boy with the Bubble Gum” – Tom McRae
You can’t get much more of a contrast than singer songwriter Tom McRae – so i think it works

Driving:
“Evolution” – Ram Trilogy
A bit of synthesiser Drum n Bass sounds good to me

Flashback:
“Ed-Ucation” – Dr Dre
What’s with the Dr Dre – I don’t even like him that much. Such foul language in this track.

Getting Back Together:
“If Tomorrow Never Comes” – The Controllers
From the title it doesn’t really work – but listening to it, you could imagine it in the scene. It’s a golden oldie.

Birth of Child:
“Minnesoter” – The Dandy Warhols
I think the lyrics say enough

I saw my baby dance a latin
Number with her shirt off
Man her skins soft
But in a mood shed rather
If I jerked off.

If I found my way to minnesoter

Not sure what to make of it

Wedding Scene:
“Souljacker Part 1″ – The Eels
Would prob have worked better for the driving scene

Final Battle:
“Storm: Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven / Gathering Storm / “Welcome To Barco Am/Pm…” / Cancer Towers On Holy Road Hi-Way” – Godspeed You Black Emperor
Now that is definitely wrong – could never have a battle scene with Prog Rock as background music – it just doesn’t work. It’d be the longest final battle ever and the build up would never satisfy anyone.
The song also has a very long title to go with it

Death Scene:
“Mad Cat” – Roni Size vs Reprsentz
Some more Drum n Bass – could work

Funeral Scene:
“No” – Soulfly
Haha – that’d be funny – nobody wants me to go Death Metal styley

End Credits:
“Kotton Krown” – Sonic Youth
Could work as ending credits, not convinced though

Don’t think I’d have chosen many of those, but with 6000+ songs to choose from, the fact that any of them worked is pretty remarkable, and at least there wasn’t anything I was embarrassed at owning (though Dr Dre comes pretty close).
Gonna make a playlist out of it for novelty value

I don’t share Paravonian’s hatred of Pachelbel to the same extent (since i’ve never been a ‘cello player!) but what he demonstrates in a witty the way is how many songs are using the same chords as found in a piece written 300 years ago. But it’s not just Pachelbel – no, it doesn’t stop there; so many pieces of music use chords from or are based on classical music
While this suggests that there is an almost lazyness in being more creative, it also shows how formulaic pop/punk/folk/rock music is. Even Bob Marley is featured in the video, which surprised me the most.

Perhaps the master of “borrowing” music and passing it off as his own was Andrew Lloyd Webber – much of his compositions comes from operas by the Italian composer Giacomo Puccini. Recently I’ve seen nearly all of Puccini’s work performed and the similarities are uncanny to the point where in La Fanciulla del West not only is the tune al most identical to Phantom of the Opera’s Music of the Night but it even has a line that translates roughly as “music of the night”.

Having said that, the estate of Puccini sued Lloyd Webber and he settled out of court, so he didn’t completely get away with it (he just brushed it under the carpet as best he could). On the other hand, much of the musical Cats comes straight out of one of Puccini’s other operas Turandot (which contains the aria Nessum Dorma comes for those interested).

But, not content with that, modern “artists” take recently composed pieces and then take “samples” from them and use them in their own songs without any necessity to put credit on the new song to the artist they sampled from. The best resource for finding out some of this information is thebreaks.com though wikipedia’s List of Samples can be more uptodate at times as it’s a dynamic wiki whereas the breaks is apparently updated via email by the owner periodically (a sample I sent about a year ago hasn’t been added, so it’s that uptodate). I didn’t know about cratekings.com until now, but it’s another resource

Sampling is one of the biggest grey areas in the law, and like chord progressions it is often difficult to successfully sue another artist over. What tends to happen is artists will talk to the record label owning the track in advance and agree a license to use it. This license can vary from a lump sum to a percentage of the royalties. The problem is how much is a sample? And that is where the legal jungle starts…
My favourite one that nearly went to court was Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice, which sample’s David Bowie & Queen’s Under Pressure, apparently with the exception of a grace note
eg:

The grace note is a small note that adjoins a full-sized note, It is usually depicted as a small eighth note with a slash through its flag and stem

Vanilla Ice chose to pay Queen & David Bowie a fee to ensure there was no lawsuit

The artist who has had most songs sampled is more than likely James Brown but the most sampled drum beat is less well known, and by a band called the Winstons with an interesting tale. I’ll let Youtube tell the story:

YouTube Link to the Amen Break video

At the opposite end of the spectrum we get the artists who can’t seem to write a song without having a sample loop. The one I always mention is Fatboy Slim a.k.a. Norman Cook. The story goes that he used to live above a 2nd hand discount record shop and used to pick up whatever was going cheap hence the obscurity of some of the tracks he samples – some of them the only thing that’s known is the track name even on thebeatz.com

Don’t get me wrong though, I’m not against sampling, I just feel that the artist who is sampled doesn’t get the recognition they deserve, as when a sample is used it is often repeated and/or becomes the most important part of the song – if it wasn’t, they’d get away with it

I’m also increasingly frustrated with the sameness of music being produced and lack of originality

I started doing it manually track by track using gracenote as a resource, but I soon realised the laboriousness of this and thought someone else must’ve had the same problem and sure enough, there’s a database called MusicBrainz which has a mac client called iEatBrainz which tries to match the tracks in
your iTunes Music library against the MusicBrainz database. You can choose whether to add songs to a list to be matched or simply to match the whole library.

It was pretty helpful, but because of my music tastes a lot of the tracks are not in the database, but being opensource the whole library is contributed by the community. Putting my opensource hat on, I thought I would see whether I could contribute to this database and indeed this is encouraged through the database’s app Picard. They offer Windows and Linux/Unix downloads. Thinking this is an opensource project, I thought maybe the Linux/Unix version might work on OSX either through compilation or emulation which should’ve been a good assumption until I got to the app’s install instructions:

MusicBrainz Picard Install Instructions
—————————————————

OS Support:

Linux: Works.
Windows: Works.
Mac: Has many horrible bugs due to wxWindows.

Even if you can get it to work the installation requires about 8 different 3rd party installations before you can even try at getting it working

It was not to be – but if/when a working version of the ap comes out for OSX I will try and do my bit for this database as I think it’s a really useful idea which can only get better with an increasing archive.