11/2/2005 - Fight Test
Song: Fight Test
Artist: The Flaming Lips
Why this song is the current jam: I didn’t know a damn thing about the Flaming Lips really until I saw a song of theirs on the iTunes celebrity playlist of Michelle Branch or someone random like that. I liked the song so much that I downloaded the whole album, “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” (legally I might add!) and was blown away by the musicianship of it. The album reminds me a lot of old Prince stuff in the way that they take sounds so starkly electronic and processed that they are almost cartoonish and they are able to make real, palpable, melodic, music that has some heart. This has always been one of the biggest parts of Prince’s genius I think, this sorta cyborg creation of something warm and alive out of cold electronic components and this song along with the whole album does the same thing beautifully. They jacked the melody from Cat Stevens’s also beautiful song, “Father and Son”. But they made something new out of it, so I forgive them. That is my basic policy on sampling/stealing music/melodies etc; if you can recontextualize it somehow that is worthwhile, then you are off the hook. I am sure the Flaming Lips are sighing with relief to have my approval, but hey the song sounds great. Plus, really this song is about learning to be a man and finding yourself face to face with things you can’t avoid and may sometimes even have to fight, a conventional sort of wisdom that seems to ring a lot more true in the context of these lyrics and this music. I seems to me that to grow up maybe one really does need to learn that there isn’t necessarily “a virtue in always being cool.” Whether you are thinking of cool as too cool for school or cool as in playing it cool, or perhaps most pertinently to this song, as in keeping your cool. This whole album asks really interesting questions and has great ideas and music all throughout it. Seriously read the bio on these guys, it is interesting as hell even if you don’t dig their music, and they seem to me eminently digable.
Artist: The Flaming Lips
Why this song is the current jam: I didn’t know a damn thing about the Flaming Lips really until I saw a song of theirs on the iTunes celebrity playlist of Michelle Branch or someone random like that. I liked the song so much that I downloaded the whole album, “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” (legally I might add!) and was blown away by the musicianship of it. The album reminds me a lot of old Prince stuff in the way that they take sounds so starkly electronic and processed that they are almost cartoonish and they are able to make real, palpable, melodic, music that has some heart. This has always been one of the biggest parts of Prince’s genius I think, this sorta cyborg creation of something warm and alive out of cold electronic components and this song along with the whole album does the same thing beautifully. They jacked the melody from Cat Stevens’s also beautiful song, “Father and Son”. But they made something new out of it, so I forgive them. That is my basic policy on sampling/stealing music/melodies etc; if you can recontextualize it somehow that is worthwhile, then you are off the hook. I am sure the Flaming Lips are sighing with relief to have my approval, but hey the song sounds great. Plus, really this song is about learning to be a man and finding yourself face to face with things you can’t avoid and may sometimes even have to fight, a conventional sort of wisdom that seems to ring a lot more true in the context of these lyrics and this music. I seems to me that to grow up maybe one really does need to learn that there isn’t necessarily “a virtue in always being cool.” Whether you are thinking of cool as too cool for school or cool as in playing it cool, or perhaps most pertinently to this song, as in keeping your cool. This whole album asks really interesting questions and has great ideas and music all throughout it. Seriously read the bio on these guys, it is interesting as hell even if you don’t dig their music, and they seem to me eminently digable.
posted by Peetski at 1:28 AM
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