Let's Play Some Beirut, Brosef!

No, that's not exactly what I meant. I was thinking more along the lines of this little scamp.

The indie wunderkid we see here was born Zach Condon, although he's most recently recorded under the band name, Beirut. The other night I was watching IFC and I caught a short segment with Zach explaining how he wanted this whole album (Beirut's debut Gulag Orkestar) to sound drunk, like a meltdown. Seeing as I like nothing more than drunken meltdowns, I thought to check the album out, and it's nothing short of awesome. There's definitely a Neutral Milk Hotel vibe, but is that ever a bad thing? Besides, the two bands do have the common link of Jeremy Barnes, who pounded skins for both. If you stop focusing on the NMH similarities though, you can hear so many other sounds in this stuff. There's moments where you have an irish thing going on, and there's a big gypsy undercurrent, but then all of sudden there's these little Mariachi bursts, and the whole time it's apparent that this guy loves his Magnetic Fields. As well we all should. I could go on forever about this guy, but you listening to his songs is going to do a hell of a lot more than me rambling about them.

"Postcards from Italy" by Beirut
"Scenic World" by Beirut
"The Canals of our City" by Beirut

Also!
Kerrang! magazine put out a list of the 50 greatest punk albums of all time, and it's complete ass. First of all, they included Bad Brains Rock For Light over their self titled effort, even though a number of the tracks off of Rock for Light are just redone versions of songs on Bad Brains.

"Pay to Cum" by Bad Brains
"Banned in D.C." by Bad Brains

Then there's the fact that not one but TWO(!) Green Day albums made the list and they weren't even Kerplunk! or 1,039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours. While Dookie was the first CD I ever owned (my dad bought it for me when I was in the fourth grade), it is not the second greatest punk album of all time. I don't even want to talk about the fact that Nimrod clocked in at number 47, that album shouldn't be on a list of "Every Punk Album Ever" let alone a list of the best ones. Seriously man, "Time of your Life" was on that album. If something was played at more than 500 middle and high school graduations it should be disqualified from a list like this. They even had the gall to rank albums by the Stiff Little Fingers and the Buzzcocks below Dookie. Ridiculous.

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"Alternative Ulster" by the Stiff Little Fingers
"What do I get" by the Buzzcocks
"Suspect Device" by the Stiff Little Fingers
"I Don't Mind" by the Buzzcocks

Then there's the fact that they put Never Mind the Bollocks... at number 1, but arguing that is a losing fight. I feel like I'm Will Ferrell in Zoolander when no one else realizes that Ben Stiller only has one look. Why doesn't anyone in the punk community stand up and admit that the Sex Pistols fucking suck??? God damn they were assembled by a manager with a specific goal of an image, for chrissakes they're the fucking Monkees. Except I like the Monkees better.

"Daydream Believer" by the Monkees

I could go on forever here (Putting not that punk albums on by Nirvana and Sublime when both had output with much stronger punk influence, same goes for Blink 182) but I'm gonna stop before I have a fucking brain aneurysm.

End transmission.

Brief foray outside of music, then back.

So, I don't know how much of a splash this made in headlines outside of the Tri-State area, but a small airplane crashed into an apartment building yesterday and in the ensuing media frenzy I found myself once again full of contempt for the media at large, the country, and humanity as a whole. As far as I know now, the only casualties were the two folks in the plane, yet radio news felt the need to inflate and deflate that number over the course of the day, sometimes it was two, sometimes there were four, I heard six at one point. As the reporting progressed, it became an opportunity to talk about all the things we've learned since September 11 and how much more prepared we are now for a terrorist attack on the city. Everyone was so quick to jump up and pat NORAD on the back for their quick response to the situation, after they sent fighter jets out over several American cities. If NORAD is so on top of their game, why was an aircraft allowed to get that close to the Manhattan skyline in the first place? It doesn't matter that it was a small personal aircraft, the incident still shows that the city is completely vulnerable. Does anyone realize how easy it is to get ahold of a Cesna? A lot easier than sneaking more than a dozen hijackers onto commercial flights, I'll tell you that. So just because one of the Yankees was flying the plane, we get to pat NORAD on the back. That plane could've just as easily been packed full to the motherfucking brim with explosives. But it wasn't, so pats on the back all around. You didn't do SHIT NORAD, you were just lucky.

whatever.

On a much more positive note, I was watching the King of Queens today and Patton Oswalt went to a shoe store with Jerry Stiller. Stiller went for some docksiders, Oswalt asked the attendant for a pair of Clarks Wallabees.

Also, I heard a fairly new Pipettes track, the B-side to the "Judy" single. For the record, I like Judy a lot better than this song. I mean, it's a fine song, but sometimes Lovey songs just make me sad and they say the word love in this song more often than I say the word "wack". And man, that's a lot.

"The Burning Ambition of Early Diuretics" by the Pipettes

I guess if anyone pays attention to that download link they're gonna notice that it's to Pitchfork. After two years of not going there, I caved again once I set myself up with a google reader.

Speaking of mp3 links stolen from other websites, I really really like the camera obscura song that was posted on stereogum today.

"If Looks Could Kill" by Camera Obscura

And if my contempt for Lady Sovereign hasn't grown enough lately, I saw today that she's covered a Sex Pistols song. I hate the Sex Pistols so much. She did cover "Pretty Vacant", which isn't the worst song in the world (that would be "Anarchy in the UK"), but it's still not going to win her any points with this guy.