Danger 2012

4:35pm-Alexander

do you like the band Phoenix?

4:36pm-Ben

yeah

i’ve been hearing them everywhere recently

i liked that one album

i haven’t heard anything else by them

4:36pm-Alexander

i got into them recently, thanks to pandora, yeah mostly that one album

they played here last week, but i missed it

neat story

4:37pm-Ben

i like the song fences a lot

and there’s about 2000 cool remixes of lisztomania or however you spell it

for da clubs

4:37pm-Alexander

i like girlfriend and those remixes too

and “if i feel better”

4:38pm-Ben

good album good album

4:38pm-Alexander

yep yep…

so is Santigold just a stage name for Nelly Furtado?

4:38pm-Ben

i dunno?

i’ve heard of both of those things

but i don’t really know what they are

4:38pm-Alexander

i kid i kid

i know they are different

but they sound the same

like leave and leaf

I’m listening to “Electric Feel” by MGMT radio

4:40pm-Ben

i love that song

4:40pm-Alexander

but self-consciously

my jeans are not nearly tight enough

4:40pm-Ben

hahaha

that is one of the 3 listenable songs on that album

in fact

4:40pm-Alexander

there are exactly 3

4:40pm-Ben

i was talking with someone the other day

4:40pm-Alexander

cool, i was too

4:40pm-Ben

about how the Phoenix album sounds like it ripped off Electric Feel in various ways in about 10 songs

but good, still fun ways

4:41pm-Alexander

haha, thats why i like it

Pandora agrees with you, btw

4:41pm-Ben

like how The Cars ripped themselves off over and over and over

4:41pm-Alexander

both go well with cammomile tea

yeah, but its ok to be derivative, if you’re derived from sweet tunes

4:41pm-Ben

yeah

i have no problem with blantantly ripping off the music of others

as long as you don’t make shitty music i don’t want to listen to

and even then

i just won’t listen to it

4:42pm-Alexander

yeah like

4:42pm-Ben

it’s my laid back approach to creative infringement

4:42pm-Alexander

owl city ripped off death cab

but death cab sucks

4:42pm-Ben

again

i’m aware of those two things

but they might be the same band

as far as i know

4:43pm-Alexander

so, its not that owl city is derivative

though they are

its that they suck

4:43pm-Ben

hahahaha

well it’s like

every indie band now

4:43pm-Alexander

god i know

4:43pm-Ben

is just remaking 80’s songs

that don’t play on 80’s

night

4:43pm-Alexander

even their original songs

4:43pm-Ben

but if you actually listen to the

4:43pm-Alexander

are 80s songs

4:43pm-Ben

you can’t tell what’s new and whats old

(like seriously, pandora plays songs for me all the time and i don’t know if they’re getting tricky and throwing in a new track the kids like, or if it’s just some 80s song i haven’t heard)

4:44pm-Alexander

Talking Heads might as well just rerelease their albums under a new name like “dance floor electric team”

4:44pm-Ben

hahahahaha

exactly

4:45pm-Alexander

this tea is reviving the F out of me

4:45pm-Ben

dropped dook yet?

that’s always my turning point

4:45pm-Alexander

yeah, that felt great

4:45pm-Ben

once i get that blackened, smelly log out

i’m like a new man

4:45pm-Alexander

but it took my last energy reserves

and i wanted to take a nap on the toilet

luckily

i did not

i like the sound of “kids” but i do not approve of the message

grow up, quit fading into the past

no one is really nostalgic for being a little kid

4:47pm-Ben

ugh

messages

4:47pm-Alexander

being a little kid is retarded

4:47pm-Ben

i make a conscience effort not to let the message of any song sink into my head

i only listen to melodies

which makes me a terrible person

but you know what?

4:47pm-Alexander

i let “freshman girls” permeate my consciousness

4:47pm-Ben

people that write lyrics are idiots

4:47pm-Alexander

you write lyrics

4:47pm-Ben

yeah

well

you’ve heard em

let those sink in

4:48pm-Alexander

that sounds dangerous

4:48pm-Ben

exactly

i think i just picture some singer

4:48pm-Alexander

i like songs where the message is “fuck it, lets have some fun”

4:48pm-Ben

sitting there writing lyrics

thinking he’s changing the world

with a message lke

4:48pm-Alexander

i can easiy get on board with that

4:48pm-Ben

“hey bros, love is neat”

“this chick is like, hard to get along with, but i like her anyways”

4:49pm-Alexander

John Mayer is furious with you right now

4:49pm-Ben

yeah

i can get on board with songs about hedonism too

but

4:49pm-Alexander

he’ll calm down after he masturbates

4:49pm-Ben

only if the music makes me want to hedon

4:49pm-Alexander

yeah

i like R&B songs too, because I can also get behind a message of getting behind someone

4:50pm-Ben

hahaha yeah

but see what i mean

those are messageless songs

they’re like

“party your face off”

or “do this chick”

4:50pm-Alexander

yeah

4:50pm-Ben

and there’s a lot of good music

where people try to send you a message

and i’m just like

man, fuck your message

i just want your sweet poppy melodies

4:51pm-Alexander

i know its a dumb gimmick, but i like music with downer/sarcastic lyrics set to a fun/dancy/catchy beat

4:51pm-Ben

Nirvana would love me

4:51pm-Alexander

expectations inverted!

ooh, here’s another Phoenix song, “1901”

4:51pm-Ben

BUT

there is a caveat

lyrics add a layer to the song

4:51pm-Alexander

i dont know what the message is, but the song makes me want to ride a bike shirtless with some beer and makeout

4:51pm-Ben

so i don’t want to sit and listen to the instrumentals of all these songs

the words are part of the music

just not the meaning

and

4:52pm-Alexander

yeah, its just an instrument

4:52pm-Ben

if the words are too lame

i can’t listen to it

4:52pm-Alexander

yeah, fucking plain white ts

rhyming words with themselves

4:52pm-Ben

for instance

http://www.plyrics.com/lyrics/bayside/lovelesswrists.html

made worse by the fact they suck

awful people

in an awful band

with lyrics so emo

i’m annoyed they were ever written

BUT

somehow

they fucking write poppy ass songs

maybe not this one

but i can’t listen to them

in fact

i would love to beat the shit out of the band members

4:53pm-Alexander

haha, that is AWFUL

4:53pm-Ben

and have them write a song about it

4:53pm-Alexander

it reads like a parody

or a papa roach song

4:53pm-Ben

because they’re just so lame

hahaha yeah

4:54pm-Alexander

so we’re agreed

it doesnt matter if your material is derivative

or your message is meaningless

if your beat is fun and your words dont get in the way

its a good song

Fuck

we are the reason backstreet boys exist

4:57pm-Ben

it’s a necessary evil situation

we’re also the reason The Cars exist

or David Bowie for the most part

4:57pm-Alexander

deal

4:57pm-Ben

or pretty much anybody besides like Bob Dylan

who’s music is fucking boring

save for like 2 songs

4:57pm-Alexander

fuck that guy anyway

4:57pm-Ben

which are only good high

and like

what’s not good high?

4:58pm-Alexander

getting arrested

4:59pm-Ben

fair enough

From today’s David Brooks column in the NYT:

“When you look from today back to 1945, you are looking into a different cultural epoch, across a sort of narcissism line. Humility, the sense that nobody is that different from anybody else, was a large part of the culture then.”

Yeah, it was nice the way people in the ’40s thought nobody was different from anybody else, and everybody could go to whatever school they wanted to, or drink from whatever fountain they wanted to. Good times!

The moral of the column is: back then we were modest and focused on humanity as a whole, whereas now we are selfish, or at least self-promoting and self-indulgent, even though back in the WWII era we actually had more to crow about.

Oh. And his examples of those humble 1940s people: Cary Grant, Bing Crosby, Dwight Eisenhower

Our modern selfish culture-destroyers: Muhammad Ali, Kanye West, “football players”

…