The Dunce Cap, Vol. 12: How do I make this not sound cheap? I wanna show you where I sleep. (mix via 8tracks)
1. “Barely Legal” – The Strokes
2. “Sex and Reruns” – Matt Duke
3. “Pretty Melody” – Butch Walker
4. “Nothing’severgonnastandinmyway (again)” – Wilco
5. “Summer” – Magic Kids
6. “Polaroid Thomas” – World History
7. “Sunny Day” – Adam Balbo
8. “Arms and Hearts” – The Hold Steady
9. “Never Mine” – Brilliant Colors
10. “Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard (A True Story)” – !!!
More music for your ears. It’s summer, and I’m glued to my tube for The Real Housewives of New York City finale (as if you couldn’t tell from my other posts), so I’m not leaving an extensive explanation of this mix. There are some of my favorite favorite tracks from some of my most beloved bands, and there are a few tracks I’ve just recently discovered. Listen to it while you’re TV tanning, no?
I’m embedding below Butch Walker‘s video for “Pretty Melody,” which is a kung-fu beauty. Check it out.
“Pretty Melody,” Butch Walker and the Black Widows
The Dunce Cap, Vol. 8: Hey you with the pretty face, welcome to the human race. A celebration. (mix via 8tracks)
1. “Summertime” – The Sundays
2. “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” – Vampire Weekend
3. “Promises” – The Morning Benders
4. “Lust for Life” – Girls
5. “Center of Attention” – Guster
6. “The Only Living Boy in New York” – Everything but the Girl
7. “Mrs. Jackson” – Marvelous 3
8. “Mr. Blue Sky” – Electric Light Orchestra
9. “25 or 6 to 4” – Chicago
10. “Stars are Blind” – Paris Hilton
Yeah, I threw you off with that last track, didn’t I? The truth is that I love “Stars are Blind.” It’s terrible and cheesy and breathless and over-produced, but it makes me want to belt it out. Frankly, so do all of these tunes. And, yet again, each reminds me of summertime, when the livin’ is easy. There are some classic rock throwbacks, even a really great Chicago track, despite my denunciation of all geographically named musical artists. There’s an Everything but the Girl cover of my favorite Simon & Garfunkel song and a Marvelous 3 (Butch Walker‘s old band) track that nearly brings me to tears.
And, due to my disappointment in Mayfest’s choice of a nighttime headliner for this year’s Dillo Day, I’ve included a good ol’ Guster track. Here’s to hoping CollegeACB was right about something. Guster and Regina Spektor may be able to salvage an otherwise lackluster line-up. Band-aids galore!
Pour yourself a glass of lemonade, find a comfy seat on the porch, pull out your favorite novel and take a breather. These songs will get you started, but feel free to explore. Peter Gabriel, too.
Tomorrow. Tonight, rather. Butch Walker. At House of Blues. Beyond thrilled. This will be my fourteenth (approximately) Butch Walker live show, and I’ve seen him through the various stages of his career, from Marvelous 3 to the Let’s Go Out Tonites to his stint with American Hi-Fi, and I cannot wait to take part in his newest endeavor with the Black Widows. To be frank, this whole blog endeavor could read as an endearing love letter to Walker.
In Nov. 2007, Butch’s Malibu home, which he was renting from bassist Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, was ravaged by a wildfire. The home, located in Southern California, is the namesake of his album “Sycamore Meadows,” so named for the street it was located on. All of his possessions, including the masters to every song he had ever recorded, were destroyed. He’s since experienced a rebirth musically, experimenting with glam-rock throwbacks, winding chord progression and homages to Uncle Tupelo‘s alt-country. The result is a gloriously catchy sound which fits perfectly into the growing retrospective which is Walker’s ever-burgeoning musical career.
I’m really thrilled for a night of legal debauchery with The Duckster & the only man I have ever proclaimed a “Rock God.” A video of Butch’s non-musical antics is below. He offered a variety of pre-order packages for his new album, “I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart,” and the result of a ludicrous (and likely joke) $25,000 package is this video, a collaboration with Panic at the Disco (sans exclamation point)’s Brendon Urie.
“House of Cards” – Butch Walker & the Black Widows
“The Beach Song” – Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin
“Straw Dog” – Something Corporate
“Nothing on You” – B.o.B.
“Electric Feel” – MGMT
“Lost in Yichang” – Hilotrons
Another Thursday, another mix!
As you all probably know, I’m a sucker for anything that can make my hips swing!, and I think this playlist is full of ’em. Not all of them are intentionally dance-a-billy, but they’ve got a great beat, and, hell, they make me wanna cha cha. The mix kicks off with two of my favorite throwbacks, Elton‘s classic “Bennie and the Jets” and The Turtles‘ “Elenore” (almost as good as “Happy Together*” and surely less sappy), and moves onto a slew of solid tracks from modern artists, including Phoenix, Butch Walker (playing H.O.B. Chicago Sunday!), SSLYBY, B.o.B. (who butchered “Build Me Up Buttercup” when he sampled it for his “Don’t Break My Heart“) and MGMT. And the Butch track, “House of Cards”? Total shades of The Cars. Digging the track and the new album.
“Nothing on You,” B.o.B.’s track which was recently used in an ode to Betty White, is a cheerily sweet dedication to a one n’ only. The video, featured below, is wonderfully simplistic, and I especially love the shout-out to my fair city (and the poor, tornado-maimed Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel, where I had my senior prom). In a similar vein, I’ve definitely noticed a rebirth of the music video, an art form I have long appreciated. My family didn’t have cable as a kid, and I distinctly remember attempting to adjust the antenna to get a static-y music video station, and my earliest memories of music television were not of Carson Daly and MTV but of the edited version of Juvenile’s “Back That (Thang) Up.”
“Nothing On You” [The Adventures of Bobby Ray, 2010]
So check it out, and if you’re feeling a bit nostalgic, maybe even revisit “Bye Bye Bye,” one of my favorite music videos from youth. I’m thinking about making next week a “Best Music Videos” playlist, so keep an eye out for that.
As always, happy listening!
(*editor’s note: This video is so trippy. It’s astronauts in jumpsuits, 80s shoulder pads, psychedelia and general weirdness. Very amusing, definitely worth a watch, but bizarre.)
The Dunce Cap, Vol. 5: And when the flowers grow, just know you’re still in my heart.
(mix via 8tracks)
“Losing My Religion” – R.E.M.
“Mr. Jones” – Counting Crows
“Big Me” – Foo Fighters
“Faded” – soulDecision
“Why Don’t We Do it in the Road” – The Beatles
“Closet” – Pete Yorn
“Desperately Wanting” – Better Than Ezra
“Far Away From Close” – Butch Walker
“I Want to be Buried in Your Backyard” – Nightmare of You
“Everyday I Write the Book” – Elvis Costello + The Attractions
*Special bonus track for Foom!*
“Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” – Paula Cole
Hi kids, sorry this is so late. The Foom (a.k.a. Mother Keevan) was in Chicago for ΑΦ’s Mom’s Weekend, and I was a bit sidetracked from the usual posting. In lieu of a normal “what I’m listening to”-themed mix, I’ve opted for a trip down memory lane. My efficacy for musical knowledge comes from my mother, and, to celebrate both her visit and Mother’s Day, I’ve compiled this list of tracks – in chronological order! – of sing-a-longs from my youth, brought to you by the lady Foom.
The playlist begins with the heavy sounds of post-grunge R.E.M. and the lighter Counting Crows, followed by long hair, short ditty, late Nirvana/early Foo FightersDave Grohl and even the dirty, raucous pairing of soulDecision and The Beatles‘ “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road?” (the latter of which was a requisite Friday pick-me-up on local alternative station Z93/Dave-FM and thus the regular tune to my middle school mother-daughter carpools). There’s tracks I introduced to her, including the morosely sweet Nightmare of You single, and songs that tiptoe the line of exchange (anything Butch Walker, really). And, finally, I rounded off the smattering of songs with Paula Cole‘s “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?,” a track clearly better than her saccharine “Dawson’s Creek” theme song and one I’d all but forgotten until this morning.
For the album art, I chose a picture of Sophia and Dorothy from “The Golden Girls” to depict the quirky mother-daughter relationship I share with my own mom. She’s a special lady, that one, not too different from Estelle Getty‘s kooky Sophia, casually-unfurled acerbic tongue.
So, to the Foom, an ode to the woman who gave birth to me and to a wonderful weekend with that crazy ol’ woman.
Don’t forget to wish your mother(s) a happy day, and happy listening!
Today is my last day as a teenager. I am, in fact, 1.5 hours (30 minutes in home EST) from reaching my third decade of life. Excited? Definitely. And, for that, this week The Dunce Cap provides you with not one but two mixes.
This playlist is certainly a bit more focused and themed than most, and the tracks (particularly the last two) explore the juxtaposition between excitement and utter fear in reaching adulthood. I am the birthday girl!, and it’s certainly daunting to consider that, when prompted for my age, my response will now be a concise “TWENTY.”
So, in an ode to old(er) age and maturity and impending graduation, etc., I have compiled a list of songs about growing up happy. Really. It’s truly that simple. From the lightheartedness of Harlem Shakes to the enduring excellence of Patrick Stump (really), these are tracks of a moment, this moment, the moment of my 20th birthday. It’s been a whirlwind year of fisticuffs (only occasionally literally) and laughter, the charisma of a serial heartbreaker and realizing that I’m not, much to my chagrin, the same person I was when I was 16.
A toast to twenty, to a new year and the end of an era of youth. Terrifying, really. I suppose I’ll have to retire John Hughes and develop a deeper affinity for P.T. Anderson, and perhaps it’s about time I stop quoting J.K. Rowling and calling it art.
“Walk on the Wild Side” – Lou Reed & the Velvet Underground
“Blue Sky” – Hanson
“Bicycles” – The Maccabees
“Lump” – The Presidents of United States of America
“Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe” – Okkervil River
“Young Adult Friction” – The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
“I’m an Adult Now” – The Pursuit of Happiness
Happy listening.
(editor’s note) I have been told today is my “golden birthday,” as I am turning 20 on the 20th. This, I believe, calls for a super-special birthday celebration.
Give this mix many, many spins. Really catchy and sunny – mostly – and full of artists I adore.
This will be a new series I’ll try and update once a week (Thursdays seem like a solid day, so expect that for now). I’d definitely appreciate any and all comments on the tracks, etc.
coco keevan 