#(there are two albums and i like the older one better because of dave and phillipa but it doesn't have dust and ashes)

[pardonmydelays]

totally unrelated to anything ever but somebody from my country is selling the great comet cd and it doesn't really cost much and i think i want it

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

About Me: Favorite Albums

Music isn't something I talk much about here on my blog, mostly because I don't feel like I'm qualified enough to talk about these sorts of things. I know movies like the back of my hand, but I'm definitely not smart enough to dissect what makes music good beyond "I like how it sounds."

But hey, I'm trying to help you get to know me, so here are thirty albums I like the sound of from a variety of artists. My big rule is I have to like at least five songs on any given album for it to qualify. I've listed my top three from each here, so the other two I'll leave to your imaginations (except for my #1 favorite, for which you'll get all of my top 5).

Honorable mentions: Pinkerton - Weezer, Under the Covers, Vol. II - Ninja Sex Party, Montero - Lil Nas X, Poodle Hat - Weird Al, Bad Hair Day - Weird Al, Master of Puppets - Metallica, License to Ill - Beastie Boys, Thriller - Michael Jackson, Purple Rain - Prince, Teenage Dream - Katy Perry, and the so bad it’s good masterpiece Angelic 2 the Core - Corey Feldman. I also didn't include the soundtracks to stage musicals, but the 90s version of Cats and the 80s version of Starlight Express are also some of my favorites.

30. The Hazards of Love - The Decemberists

A tale of a tragic romance told in the form of a concept album, this would almost certainly make the list even if it didn't have some of the best villain songs I've ever heard.

Favorite Songs:

3. “Won’t Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga)”

2. “The Queen’s Rebuke/The Crossing”

1. “The Rake’s Song”

29. Youthanasia - Megadeth

Quite simply, a fantastic metal album. Not much more to say than that!

Favorite Songs:

3. “Youthanasia”

2. “A Tout le Monde”

1. “Family Tree”

28. In the Court of the Crimson King - King Crimson

Even if it was just the semi-title track that I loved, this album would probably make the list. It's prog rock perfection.

Favorite Songs:

3. "Moonchild"

2. "21st Century Schizoid Man"

1. "The Court of the Crimson King"

27. Saturday Night Fever - Various Artists

The Bee Gees obviously are the stars of the show on this soundtrack album, but it also has one of my favorite things: Disco remixes of classical music.

Favorite Songs:

3. “A Fifth of Beethoven”

2. “Night on Disco Mountain”

1. “Stayin’ Alive”

26. The Marshal Mathers LP 2 - Eminem

While the original album is a classic in its own right and nothing on this one is as immediately iconic as "The Real Slim Shady" or "Stan," I do think that this older, more mature Eminem reflecting back on his career and flexing his skills is overall the better package. This was a real comeback for him, after multiple less-than-impressive comebacks, and it is glorious.

Favorite Songs:

3. “Love Game”

2. “The Monster”

1. “So Far…”

25. McCartney II - Paul McCartney

This is what happens when you let a beloved rock star get really weird. It’s so experimental and quirky; only a Beatle could get this bizarre.

Favorite Songs:

3. “Frozen Jap”

2. “Coming Up”

1. “Temporary Secretary”

24. Painkiller - Judas Priest

One of those rare times where the songs on a metal album are actually, genuinely as fucking awesome as the album cover art.

Favorite Songs:

3. “Night Crawler”

2. “Painkiller”

1. “A Touch of Evil”

23. Songs for the Deaf - Queens of the Stone Age

With the assistance of Dave Grohl, Queens of the Stone Age really put their best foot forward for their breakout album. As hard as most of the tracks go, my absolute favorite is the eerier, slower hidden track about cannibalism.

Favorite Songs:

3. “You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire”

2. “First It Giveth”

1. “Mosquito Song”

22. Crash Twinsanity - Spiralmouth

The day I found out this entire soundtrack was a capella, my mind was blown. You mean to tell me this whole album is just mouth noises? It really does have the Crash vibe down.

Favorite Songs:

3. “Worm Chase”

2. “Rusty Walrus Chase”

1. “The Evil Twins”

21. Awesome Mix Vol. 2 - Various Artists

Every Guardians movie soundtrack is great, but out of the three it’s the second movie’s soundtrack that reigns supreme. It kicks off with ELO, scores the climactic final battle with Fleetwood Mac, and features a groovy disco remix of the Guardians theme music with vocals provided by David Hasselhoff over the credits. It’s all killer, no filler.

Favorite Songs:

3. “Guardians Inferno”

2. “Mr. Blue Sky”

1. “The Chain”

20. Mouth Dreams - Neil Cicierega

The way the songs flow into each other, the subtle jokes scattered throughout… Really, the only thing holding this back is some songs are just a bit too weak to justify bumping it above its predecessor.

Favorite Songs:

3. “Closerflies”

2. “Ribs”

1. “Fredhammer”

19. Mouth Moods - Neil Cicierega

From fantastic mashups that combine a dozen songs into one coherent whole to remixes that alter a single song and completely warp the premise to the point of absurdity, this is absolutely the highest point of the Mouth series.

Favorite Songs:

3. “Annoyed Grunt”

2. “Shit”

1. “Wow Wow”

18. Ten - Pearl Jam

Homelessness. Suicide. Incest. Murder. This might be one of the single darkest albums of the grunge era, and it firmly cemented Pearl Jam as a force to be reckoned with. Eddie Vedder’s unique vocals really are what makes these songs stand out from the crowd.

Favorite Songs:

3. “Alive”

2. “Jeremy”

1. “Even Flow”

17. The Symbol Remains - Blue Öyster Cult

You wouldn’t think a 70s rock band that loves singing about weird occult stuff could drop anything good five decades into their career, but BOC ain’t any old rock band. Only they could take a silly, memetic concept like the stereotypical “Florida Man” and turn it into a song that has enough weird and mystic vibes that it can easily sit alongside songs about aliens, eldritch horrors, vampires, and zombie Joan Crawford in their discography.

Favorite Songs:

3. “Tainted Blood”

2. “Florida Man”

1. “Box in My Head”

16. Impera - Ghost

One of Ghost's most solid albums to date. It has a few low points ("Twenties") but the highs are so high they easily eclipse those few lesser tracks.

Favorite Songs:

3. “Spillways”

2. “Hunter’s Moon”

1. “Call Me Little Sunshine”

15. The Presidents of the United States of America – The Presidents of the United States of America

I have very fond memories of listening to this in the car growing up. It’s such a charming piece of 90s rock, with the band foretelling their ultimate fate with the track “We Are Not Going To Make It.” Oh well, they manage to make it onto this list at least.

Favorite Songs:

3. “Kitty”

2. “Lump”

1. “Peaches”

14. Born This Way – Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga has fallen from the lofty heights she once stood upon, not quite being as massive as her heyday... But with an album that gets you this high, there's really nowhere to go but down. This album has a song for everyone, and for someone with taste as weird as my own, it had a load of great tracks.

Favorite Songs:

3. “Bad Kids”

2. “Bloody Mary”

1. “Judas”

13. In Utero - Nirvana

You can definitely tell that Nevermind was a more polished, commercial album when you listen to this one. The songs here are so much more raw than on their more famous album, with so much more bite to them. It can be a bit off-putting for sure, but this is definitely the short-lived band's best work (if not my favorite).

Favorite Songs:

3. “Dumb”

2. “Rape Me”

1. “Pennyroyal Tea”

12. Undertale Soundtrack – Toby Fox

Easily my favorite instrumental soundtrack of all time—and considering all the fantastic game soundtracks I’ve heard in my time, this is saying something. Every single track is a fantastic and fitting tune for wherever they’re used in-game, and even if my favorite track is the obvious pick, even I’ll admit that it’s not the best one (that would probably be #2).

Favorite Songs:

3. “Death By Glamour”

2. “Battle Against a True Hero”

1. “Megalovania”

11. Metal Gear Rising Soundtrack – Various artists

A game as insane and metal as Rising needs a soundtrack to match, and to say this one delivered is an understatement. Every song is one of the most badass things you will ever hear, with a good chunk of them elaborating on the motivations and personalities of the bosses. It says a lot that the weakest song is Blade Wolf's, and even that's just "okay" as opposed to "awful."

Favorite Songs:

3. “Red Sun”

2. “A Stranger I Remain”

1. “It Has to be This Way”

10. Seven Inches of Satanic Panic - Ghost

I don’t think this is better than their full albums, but I definitely think this is one of the best musical one-two punches I’ve ever heard. “Mary on a Cross” and “Kiss the Go-Goat” are two of Ghost’s finest songs, and this is where they came from

9. I Get Wet – Andrew W.K.

In the proud tradition of AC/DC, pretty much every song on this album sounds the same—and none of the songs rock any less for it. It’s a collection of awesomely stupid anthems about partying, hot girls, and NYC that goes harder than it has any need to.

Favorite Songs:

3. “Ready to Die”

2. “She is Beautiful”

1. “I Get Wet”

8. Running With Scissors – Weird Al

This was a big turning point in Al’s career—it’s when he debuted his new look, sans glasses and with his hair grown out—and for me at least it’s the album where I feel like he put all the lessons he learned over the 90s to good use. It’s true that there’s a few lines that haven’t aged well but the overall package is strong enough that it overshadows the blemishes. It has his strongest “movie recap” parody song, his best polka medley, and his funniest and most iconic epic-length song; how can it not make my top ten?

Favorite Songs:

3. “The Saga Begins”

2. “Polka Power!”

1. “Albuquerque”

7. Doolittle - Pixies

It’s genuinely tough picking between this and Surfer Rosa, but when it comes right down to it Doolittle is the one that has more tracks I like. I don’t think anything here is quite as good as “Where is My Mind?” from the latter album, but that album doesn’t have “Mr. Grieves” on it.

Favorite Songs:

3. “Here Comes Your Man”

2. “Wave of Mutilation”

1. “Monkey Gone to Heaven”

6. Invisible Touch - Genesis

I think Invisible Touch is Genesis’s undisputed masterpiece. It's an epic meditation on intangibility. At the same time, it deepens and enriches the meaning of the preceding three albums. Listen to the brilliant ensemble playing of Banks, Collins and Rutherford. You can practically hear every nuance of every instrument. In terms of lyrical craftsmanship, the sheer songwriting, this album hits a new peak of professionalism. Take the lyrics to “Land of Confusion.” In this song, Phil Collins addresses the problems of abusive political authority. “In Too Deep” is the most moving pop song of the 1980s, about monogamy and commitment. The song is extremely uplifting. Their lyrics are as positive and affirmative as anything I’ve heard in rock.

Favorite Songs:

3. “Domino”

2. “Land of Confusion”

1. “Invisible Touch”

5. Mandatory Fun – Weird Al

As of 2023 this is Al’s last album, and if he never makes another it’s hard to argue that he didn’t go out on top. The style parodies are some of his best ever, the polka medley is fantastic, and the parodies here are all leagues better than the songs they’re spoofing. “Foil” in particular is worth singling g out for being a hilarious subversion of the stereotypical food-related parodies Al was known for back in the day.

Favorite Songs:

3. “Foil”

2. “Handy”

1. “Jackson Park Express”

4. ABBA Gold - ABBA

Is it cheating to put a greatest hits compilation on this list? Well, since it's my list, the answer is no! An album like this is all bangers, no filler, every song I love in one place one after the other. The omission of “Tiger” is the only flaw.

3. Nevermind - Nirvana

It's pretty inarguable that this is a more polished and commercial grunge album than In Utero, but no matter what Kurt or the other band members say this is still one of the best albums ever made. My only gripe with it is that the song that gets the most attention, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," overshadows a lot of songs better than it. "In Bloom" is the best track in my opinion, with its lyrics abut fans with zero media literacy still very relevant even to this day.

Favorite Songs:

3. “Polly”

2. “Come as You Are”

1. “In Bloom”

2. The Number of the Beast – Iron Maiden

From the band with the greatest album covers of all time comes a metal album featuring the hard rock version of "Roxanne," an epic seven minute track, and the greatest song condemning the actions of colonizers. Oh, and the title track is pretty awesome too. Considering how lukewarm the first two albums are, this might be one of the greatest glow ups in metal history, going from a decent but not spectacular act to one of the greatest bands of all time.

Favorite Songs:

3. “22 Acacia Avenue”

2. “Hallowed be Thy Name”

1. “Run to the Hills”

1. Spirit Phone – Lemon Demon

Maybe I'm just a basic bitch for calling this my favorite album ever, but the fact of the matter is that this whole album is basically tailor made for my interests. Songs about conspiracy theories? Songs about urban legends like Gef and Polybius? Songs that make fun of Reaganomics? I genuinely could not imagine a better set of songs than this if I tried.

Favorite Songs:

5. “Reaganomics”

4. “Touch-Tone Telephone”

3. “When He Died”

2. “Sweet Bod”

1. “Cabinet Man”

[diorgirl444]

ahh im so excited for the gg matchups omg <3 i actually cannot wait - my latest obsession fr

my name is eva rose - eva's fine though lol - and i'm straight with she/her pronouns. i'm a sagittarius with a virgo moon and an enfp. (i think im an ambivert tho)

i'm 5''3 with auburn curly hair and a pretty petite hourglass figure. i have freckles pretty much all year round - but only on my cheeks and the tip of my nose. my eyes are blue but look green in certain lighting. ever since i was abt 5 or 6 ive always wanted to get a couple of tattoos but im not old enough yet 😭 i love the idea that your body can be art, and i think tattoos can express that so beautifully

i would describe myself as observant, fun, genuine, intuitive and witty. i like to get to know people & ask them questions, im pretty open personally. how much i talk changes massively depending on my mood although i do end up rambling about nothing once i get invested in the conversation lol.

im pretty ambitious which can sometimes cause severe burnout, but i hate pushing myself further than i can and i am learning to set good boundaries. i am a relatively anxious person, but im rlly getting better at managing that. i'm also a massive hopeless romantic and my love language is quality time - and sometimes physical touch.

my dream is to become a music journalist or to run a bookshop when i'm older, although i love psychology & history <33 i've been described as jo march & lizzie bennett & i agree, but i also think im a bit like meg tbh.

i feel most at home during autumn & during starry nights. i like adventures but at the end of the day i prefer being at home. i love art galleries, astronomy, late night conversations, biking and listening to music - i like the beatles, fleetwood mac, abba, lily allen, lana del rey, bowie.

my favourite things in the world are my cd collection & my family <3 (cd collection comes first ofc lol)

your perfect matchup is 𝐝𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐫𝐲𝐠𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐤𝐢 💌

𝐢 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐧 <𝟑

𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝟐 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐦𝐞𝐞𝐭 <𝟑

because stars hollow is such a small town the chances are you’d bump into dave pretty quickly but i think you wouldn’t properly speak to him till his band was  established.

in my mind you would write for the stars hollow news as their music journalist.. 

so when a new band, which goes by the name of Hep Alien, appears on the scene you know you have to go write an article on them.

what you don’t imagine happening is finding the love of your life there!!!

you invite all the band for coffee at luke’s to talk to them about the band and the minute dave sees you he’s smitten.

he thinks your ever so pretty with your curly auburn hair and sweet smile.

then you speak and he’s blown away because not only are you super pretty but also clever and love music.

your literally his dream girl ok???

(his friends notice this immediately and tease him for it after)

the interview goes super well and let’s be real you think he’s pretty cute too so you share contacts ya know just in case you need to talk again!!!

the pair of you spend the whole night on the phone chatting…

which makes it extra special when he turns up at your house next day with your favourite flowers and tickets to go see a gig in hartford together and could you really say anything but yes???

𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 <𝟑

i think you two are real creatives like your energies just bounce off one another perfectly.

dave is always writing songs about you to the point where if he released an album it would have to be called eva rose!!!

he remembers everything about you!!!

 be that the outfit you were wearing the day the pair of you met, your favourite book or even what lipstick shade matches your skin tone the best.

also you and lane; besties!!!!

your parents love him, he’s literally the perfect son in law.

your mom is already planning your wedding.

dave is also like constantly staring at you!!!

you’ll be like ���what!?!” and he’ll just be like “you are really pretty, you know that right…”

it always flusters you, to be honest though like he’s always flustering you by how perfect he is.

he definitely tries to teach you guitar, like you’ll be sitting in front of him both your arms wrapped around the guitar with him just constantly kissing your cheek!!!

i feel like you’d call him davey as well and he’s have a super cute nickname for you like angel.

his friends tease him about you but really they’re just happy that he’s found someone who loves him so much.

you two when your old enough definitely get tattoos together.

move along rory and dean because you two are the cutest possible stars hollow couple and i’m not taking criticism on that!!!

𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐚𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 <𝟑

hugs and kisses, flo <3

[donoteatwingsoutapussy]

On a similar note I find this the same with "cancel culture" like how awhile ago people were saying oh, gen z is trying to cancel Eminem!!!" Like no they're not, and this has been played up for a huge running gag in the newest Em album as well.

People don't get "cancelled" anymore, it was just a term people would use years ago to say we should correct someone's behavior/hold them accountable for their actions. But it got to a point were people would simply bring up old things from years ago about a creator to try and ruin them. Joji was a good example of this with people finding out about his old Filthy Frank persona.

People these days don't get cancelled, it's merely a shield to use against actually being held accountable for their actions. When I say this people always bring up Dave Chappelle, "but he literally got his specials taken off Netflix and had future ones cancelled" yes, because he said the T slur in on of them. That is clearly a bad look for someone who is not trans, yes he had a trans friend who was cool with the type of jokes he made and such. Does that excuse him saying it in public? No, not at all. Maybe the two said it together in their own time and they were both comfortable with it and that's fine because that's in private. He simply faced consequences from his actions and then used the shield of "cancel culture" to defend himself and get his platform back.

And in reality it is actually a pretty smart move to get your platform back when dealing with companies, but not people actually believe cancel culture is a genuine thing that's around and is gonna get them whenever they make a joke.

Whenever me and my friends are making jokes together and someone buts in and says "nah you're gonna get cancelled for that one *laughing emoji*" I want to physically crush their windpipe

And they always blame Gen Z for it as they're supposedly the youthful generation, simply because they've already given Gen Alpha the stereotype of being brain rotted imbecile children. And all it is in the end is another reason for the older generation to hate the younger generation and think better if themselves

watching gen z and millennials make fun of gen alpha has been torturous. "But they're actually stupid" 1. theyre middle schoolers 2. isn't that what older gens said about us? don't you remember being 11?

it truly is just "impulse reaction to cringe <- has not yet unlearned shame"

the cycle continues let me out of here

guys. guys I think we should kill cringe culture

[thisaintascenereviews]

Album(s) Of The Month: January 2024

Something I wanted to try this year is talking about what I would consider to be my album(s) of the month. These may be albums that are new, or they’re just albums I’ve been listening to, and I sort of wanted to start this series as a way to document what I’ve been listening to throughout the year. I may end up talking about albums that I already reviewed, or going back to albums that I haven’t listened to in awhile, but these are albums that I’ve been playing the most throughout the month and that summarize the month for me. These aren’t my favorites of the year, although oftentimes they may be, but these are just albums I’ve been playing a lot. I may want to do between one to five albums, and sometimes it may just be one, but I want to put a cap on it at five. This year, kind of like last year, I don’t want to overwhelm myself with music, so I’m only really listening to a handful of albums over any given week, including new releases. I don’t want to talk about everything I listen to, or listen to everything, but I still wanted to highlight a few things at the end of the month that I’ve been listening to a lot.

Lil Dicky - Penith

The first album of this year that I can say I really love, especially in the sense that it’s already my album of the year, and it’s surprisingly by rapper Lil Dicky, who put out his sophomore album, Penith. This is supposed to be the fictional album from the show Dave that be produces and stars in, which is about a fictionalized version of him, real name Dave Burd, and his career, and this album is composed of songs in the show (most of which were just snippets, so these are all full versions of songs). This album is a ton of fun, especially if you’re already a fan of his work, or the show, because the songs do make more sense in context, but I had a blast listening to this even without watching the show first. Even afterwards, I still love this album, and within in the context of the show, it’s even better. The album relies on a lot of Dicky’s usual shtick, but there are some insightful and emotional moments here, too, so there’s a nice variety of ideas and sounds.

Neck Deep - S/T

Neck Deep surprised me by putting out their best album, well, ever. This is my favorite Neck Deep record, and it’s telling that it’s a self-titled album. These pop-punk vets got their start more than a decade ago, and they were part of the up and coming pop-punk resurgence that happened in the early 2010s, but they’re part of the old guard now, and this album is a reinvention / return to their classic sound but with an older outlook, and in that respect, it works wonders.

Beartooth - The Surface

This month has been mainly spent revisiting a few albums from the past few years, including Beartooth’s latest, The Surface, from October of this past year. I really love that album, and it was in my top five of 2023, but it’s held up quite well. This was my favorite metalcore album of 2023, and of the last few years, really. I just love this album, and I wrote a whole piece recently about why this album holds up so well.

The Home Team - Slow Bloom

I also spent a lot of time this month listening to The Home Team’s newest album, Slow Bloom, much to the request of my buddy Jake, because we debuted a new series on here where we recommend each other albums and talk about them. I recommended the newest Bring Me The Horizon album, Post Human: Survival Horror, and we talked about those two albums, so instead of going on about how good those two albums are and what they mean for metalcore, go check out our piece on them.

[papeldetornasolcosmico]

"I love you so much that I could shit/hotter than a branding iron, colder than a witch's tit" 

"NAPS ARE SO INVALUABLE THAT'S ONE THING I'VE LEARNED AS I'VE GOTTEN OLDER"

That's Mike Patton, vocalist extraordinaire for punk supergroup Dead Cross, alt-metal legends Faith No More and bizarro-thrash wizards Mr. Bungle-plus way too many other bands and projects to lat. He's here to speak with Revolver about Dead Cross II, the appropriately titled second album from the band he's in with former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo, the Locust vocalist-bassist Justin Pearson and Retox guitarist Michael Crain.

But first? The sweet science of naps. "It helps if you have two French bulldogs like I do," he says. "They're almost like a sleeping pill. The snoring is insane, but as soon as I lay down with them, I have to set my alarm so I only nap for an hour. Otherwise, I'm out."

Four-legged sedatives aside, the pandemic years haven't been easy on Patton or his collaborators. In 2021, the singer cancelled Faith No More and Mr. Bungle tours citing mental health reasons-he's been in therapy and feeling better these days-but that wasn't all. When it came time to record Dead Cross Crain was diagnosed with cancer. Somehow, the guitarist pushed through and recorded his parts while receiving treatment. By the time the album was finished, original Dead Cross vocalist Gabe Serbian-Pearson's longtime friend and bandmate in the Locust-passed away suddenly.

"I don't think anybody saw that coming Patton says. " Gabe was someone I always wanted to work with Forget about vocals-he was a drummer for the ages. I had a soundtrack project I wanted to hire him for, but it didn't work out. It was like, "OK, we'll do it next time. But that next time never came. There's a lot of regret there. He was a fucking great guy."

In the wide-ranging interview that follows, Patton discusses soldiering through pandemic-era challenges, using music to confront "Trump nonsense, the similarities between being Faith No More and Dead Cross "replacement singer" and more.

THE MUSIC ON THE FIRST DEAD CROSS ALBUM WAS WRITTEN BEFORE YOU WERE INVOLVED. THIS TIME, IT WAS UNDERSTOOD THAT YOU WOULD BE TH VOCALIST BEFORE WORK EVEN BEGAN HOW DID THAT AFFECT THE PROCESS

MIKE PATTON : I don't know if it affected the way the music was approached, but it definitely affected my approach. Tit been a replacement singer another time with another band. (Laughs) That was Faith No More, and our first record took o

It was a great success. Then, once I dug my teeth into it on the second record and integrated better, that's when we found our collective voice. And I would say the same with this band. The first record was like. "Here's the music-gor That's to say it was a rush job, but this one was a lot move thoughtful and methodical.

And it took a lot longer for to the pandemic

THE PANDEMIC HAS AFFECTED EVERYONE, BUT HOW SPECIFICALLY DID AFFECT YOU GUYS?

Oh many levels, I can only start by saying that out guitar player had COVID, and then be got diagnosed with cancer. That was really tough But the trooper that he is-I'm talking about Michael Crain, -he pushed through it. He'd be going to treatments and then coming to the studio I wasn't there because I did my vocals in San Francisco, and they were recording in L.A. But the fact that he did that... I think you can hear every bit of pain frustration, anxiety and anguish He's one of the principal songwriters, so the fact that he pushed through that was totally amazing and inspiring.

WHEN YOU FOUND OUT ABOUT HIS DIAGNOSIS, WAS THERE ANY PART OF

YOU THAT THOUGHT, MAYBE WE SHOULDN'T BE DOING THIS NOW? Yeah, of course. I think we all said. "Your life is a little more important than this fucking second." But he was intent on doing it. It was his therapy is a way And it healed him-it really did. But he was very headstrong about it. He said. "I’m gonna do my best, and we're gonna get through this "And he did. Looking back on it, this is a couple years ago-it really made me think I had to step up my game. This guy has cancer and he's doing the record anyway. I wouldn't have I would've been like "See ya later!" I wouldn't have had the halls. So, it was inspirational and courageous and just kind of incredible. Hopefully you can hear that in the music

AND HE'S RECOVERED NOW? He's totally fucking cured. Somehow, maybe the music helped him. I don't know I'm not a doctor. But he looks great, and he sounds great. I think that made this second what it is

 AS YOU KNOW, ORIGINAL DEAD CROSS VOCALIST GABE SERBIAN RECENTLY PASSED. HAS THAT CAST A SHADOW OVER THIS RECORD AT ALL? It's absolutely awful. The record was done before we got the news, but I don't know. It's hard to really put into words. Me replacing him and him dying, and me replacing Chuck Mosley (in Faith No More] and him dying.. It's like, "What am I, the grim reaper?" It really made me think about myself in that way. It's awful. But ultimately neither had anything to do with me, I hope, but it's really hard, for sure. I made one record with Dead Cross and then Gabe's dead? What the fuck? I could not believe it.

LET'S TALK ABOUT FUN STUFF NOW. DEAD CROSS ITS OPENER, "LOVE WITH-OUT LOVE HAS ONE OF YOUR GREATEST LYRICS EVER I LOVE YOU SO MUCH THAT I COULD SHIT/HOTTER THAN A BRANDING IRON, COLDER THAN A WITCH'S TIT/LIKE BILLY JOEL, I’LL BE MOVING OUT”. - WHAT OR WHO INSPIRED THAT? (laughs) I don't know. It just came out. Maybe some past relationships, something like that. But honestly! It just sounded good. And it worked. It's funny that you say it's the best lyrics I ever wrote! [Laughs] It's basically about unrequited Love. You love somebody more than that person loves you. That's the bottom line of it. You put in a witch and a branding iron, and there you go.

BILLY JOEL ISN'T THE ONLY MUSICIAN YOU REFERENCE ON THE NEW ALBUM ON OTHER SONGS, YOU NAME-DROP VINCE NEIL FROM MOTLEY CRUE AND PIG CHAMPION FROM POISON IDEA. Wow, you caught that I also mention Mr.Chi Pig from SNFU, who died during the recording of the album

 THE VINCE NEIL REFERENCE IS FUNNY BECAUSE I'VE ALWAYS KIND OF CONSIDERED YOU THE ANTI-VINCE NEIL What did I say again? I forget. Wasn't I kind of making fun of him? Oh, yeah: "Like a Vince Neil who sings too many songs. Yeah, he fat, old-we all know where he's at now. I'm conscious of that, and I also fear that I may become that. [Laughs] So why not talk about it?

THERE'S A LINE IN THE SONG NIGHTCLUB CANARY WHERE YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT A WORLD WHERE EVERYTHING'S A REMAKE WAS THERE ANYTHING SPECIFIC THAT GOT YOU THINKING ALONG THOSE LINES? These was this old film noir that I saw that I can't remember the name of an old black-and-white film. In the movie, there was a singer doing old songs, and the club owner was like "She's just a nightclub canary" I thought that was a great title, and I never forgot it. It just means you're singing songs that are in the air already. You're not creating. You're just chirping Which is fine. I don't mind it. But somehow it fit with the song and I ran with it. We wanted to do a video for that song in a Sixties-style smoky nightclub with background singers and dancers--that Motown look-but I don't think we can afford it. [Laughs]

 TELL ME ABOUT “CHRISTIAN MISSILE CRISIS." That's a good one, and it's the only tune that I didn't write. Justin wrote that one. One of my objectives with this second was to involve him more as a singer, because that's a weapon. The first record is pretty much all me, so I told him and the band early on that I wanted to make this one a dual-vocal attack I wanted us to be trading vocals, à la Suicidal (Tendencies) or something like that. And Justin is very humble. He was like, "Are you sure? You're the singer" No, no-we're both singers. I knew this record would even crazier with us bouncing back and forth. So you hear a lot of that, especially on this song in particular

THE LYRICS SEEM TO ADDRESS GUN NUTS. Yeah That's JP's thing. He just send the lyrics, and I sang 'em [Laughs] But yeah, it seems like it's an anti-gun-crazy song.

 YOU ALSO WROTE SOME POLITICAL LYRICS ON THE FIRST DEAD CROSS ALBUM, WHICH IS NOT SOMETHING YOU USUALLY DO JUSTIN, ON THE ON THE OTHER HAND, IS NOT SHY ABOUT HIS POLITICS. DOES HE BRING THAT OUT IN YOU

I don't know-maybe. Maybe it's the times we're living in, with the pandemic and all the Trump nonsense. There's gotta be something to say about this-good, bad or indifferent. But you can't ignore it. Out of respect to my bandmates, who are way more political than I am, it felt like a good thing to do. I don't wanna be a part of any of it. But that song, "Christian Missile Crisis," and a lot of JP's views a strong And they're good. There's nothing to argue about with me-nothing. I had given me a right-wing song, I probably would've done it. [Laughs] I'm kiddin.

 YOU'RE TOTALLY UNIQUE IN THE HEAVY MUSIC WORLD-AND MAYBE EVE MUSIC IN GENERAL. YOU'VE WORKED WITH BANDS THAT VE SOLD MILLION OF ALBUMS AND HAD GRAMMY NOMINATIONS. YOU DO UNDERGROUND PUNK RECORDS, SOUNDTRACKS, SUPERGROUPS, ALL-VOCAL ALBUMS FOR JOHN ZORN'S LABEL-YOU'VE EVEN SUNG ENTIRE ALBUMS IN OTHER LANGUAGES WITH A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MUSICAL STYLE. I CAN'T THINK OF ANYONE ELSE WHO DOES ALL THAT. WHAT'S THE UNIFYING THEME FOR YOU

Good question. I haven't analyzed it. I do what feels good to me. It's based on sound and aesthetic. To me, all that stuff you mentioned fits together. This is the kind of stuff that I would listen to on a mixtape. So, in a weled way, I guess my career is fucked-up mixtape. I do what feels right and what sounds right. At the time I joined Dead Cross, I really needed to do that. Now I'm on to some other stuff. Maybe a wanderer. I don't know. I just wanna do justice to every recording or concert that I'm involved in. I wanna do it the right way. Hopefully in an authentic way. PICS BY: Becky DiGiglio

[katyobsesses]

Sam Evans and "Taylor Swift" (2006)

We all know that Sam Evans is the biggest Swiftie in the New Directions (what do you mean he never did a Taylor song?) so I thought I'd go through her entire discography and assign each song to a part of Sam Evans; be it a ship (canon or not), a part of his personality, or use the lyrics to make a plan for an AU of some sort (canon complicit or not) (which may or may not become a ficlet at some point in the future)

Feel free to use any of these as prompts for fanart/fanfic and let me know if you do!

Albums: Taylor Swift (2006) | Fearless (2008) | Speak Now (2010) | Red (2012) | 1989 (2014) | Reputation (2017) | Lover (2019) | Folklore (2020) | Evermore (2020) | Fearless tv vault songs (2021) | Red tv vault songs (2021) | ALL POSTS

Here's the first of Taylor's albums Taylor Swift (2006) to start our journey (lyrics linked)

"Taylor Swift" (2006)

Tim McGraw

AU Ficlet Idea:

Sam during the summer just before S2. He's hanging out with one of his best friends who he's known for a good chunk of his life who just got his license so they just drive around a lot through the backroads of their Tennessee town listening to Tim McGraw. During one of these drives Sam's friend comes out to him, and this sets Sam on his own journey of self discovery (and just because there's a line of "little black dress" maybe its both gender and sexuality based, so maybe, like enby!Sam or at least Sam playing with Gender norms). But just as they two get closer and have just confessed to each other Sam's Parents drop the news that they're moving to Ohio. Sam's devastated.

September saw a month of tears

Then it ends with Sam back in Tennessee a few years later - probably on his way back to Ohio from New York he decides to go through Tennessee for a few days, and drops a letter on his old friend's door step

And I'm back for the first time since then // I'm standin' on your street // And there's a letter left on your doorstep

OR you can make this a Blam AU, by pretending that the All Boys School Sam used to go to was Dalton, and just forgetting he's from Tennessee

Picture To Burn

My brain went Fabrevans on this one. The song from Quinn's perspective. Possibly an AU where they didn't break up because of Finn, but Sam still left during the Summer, possibly without even telling Quinn who's dealing with a lot of other things on top of that (realising she's a lesbian but not admitting it, her dad trying to win back her mom, her older sister having a baby and being reminded of beth) so she's very very angry... Skank!Quinn origin story vibes.

And if you're missing me // You'd better keep it to yourself // 'Cause coming back around here // Would be bad for your health...

Teardrops On My Guitar

Hevans from Sam's perspective about S5 Klaine.

Drew walks by me // Can he tell that I can't breathe? // And there he goes, so perfectly // The kind of flawless I wish I could be

A Place In This World

This one feels very much like maybe Sam trying to figure out his sexuality

I don't know what I want, so don't ask me // 'Cause I'm still trying to figure it out

Or even his whole Not-Sure-What-To-Do-In-Life arc in S5

Cold As You

Samtana, maybe, because of how cold and calculating she was with their relationship, and how quickly she dropped him when a new opportunity came around with Dave. Now, Sam probably wasn't in love with Santana or anything, but he's a big softy with a loving heart so he probably felt something for her. So her just dropping him for a new guy, as coldly as she did, would have hurt him a lot, more than she knew.

And now that I'm sitting here thinking it through // I've never been anywhere cold as you

The Outside

Sam not feeling like he fits in in NY, he feels like he's on the outside of everything and isn't used to that, he's used to being part of a team, used to knowing what he wants out of life, and he thought he did but apparently he doesn't. But also, he knows that maybe he would feel more at home in New York if his friends had noticed how outside of everything he felt, but they didn't notice.

You could've helped if you had wanted to // But no one notices until it's too late to do anything

Tied Together With A Smile

Sam and his struggle with his body, food, and obsession with dieting and exercise

Seems the only one who doesn't see your beauty // Is the face in the mirror looking back at you // You walk around here thinking you're not pretty // But that's not true 'cause I know you

He pretends he's fine to everyone because he has to be the hot one, the stereotypical Jock

...you don't tell anyone // That you might not be the golden one

and he hides it all behind his goofy smiles and sunshine demeaner, but actually he's coming undone at the seams

And you're tied together with a smile // But you're coming undone

Stay Beautiful

Samcedes.

Mercedes sings the verses about Sam.

Cory's eyes are like a jungle // He smiles, it's like the radio // He whispers songs into my window // In words that nobody knows

Sam sings the choruses about Mercedes

You're beautiful // Every little piece love // And don't you know // You're really gonna be someone

Honestly this could be from any time in their relationship, from pining at the start, to S3, to S5 and them breaking up. It's full of hope for the two of them to end up as endgame one day but even if they don't, for each of them to stay the amazing people they are and be happy.

And when you find everything you looked for // I hope your life leads you back to my front door

Should've Said No

Fabrevans. Sam to Quinn after she cheats on him. An AU where he realises that she cheated on him in Silly Love Songs and breaks up with her in Comeback by singing this song instead of trying to win her back by doing Bieber. the rest of the episode is obviously just more Taylor Swift songs, ending with Mean as the Anthem they plan to do for Regionals (obviously Sue ends up ruining that, maybe citing some Meta copyright reason as why they can't sing it)

And I should've been there in the back of your mind // I shouldn't be asking myself, "Why?" // You shouldn't be begging for forgiveness at my feet... // You should've said "No", baby, and you might still have me

Mary's Song (Oh My My My)

Could go back to that Hypothetical Childhood Best Friend from Tim McGraw!

Or a Childhood Friends to Lovers AU with some other ship. I'm going to go with Blam I think, for the AU that popped into my head.

So, I've decided in this AU Sam is FTM -

Well, I was sixteen when suddenly // I wasn't that little girl you used to see

- So basically Sam and Blaine grew up as kids, with their parents joking that they'd be a couple one day, Sam transitions, they get together. You're typical Childhood friends to Lovers trope but with added trans. Kind of like that comic that periodically circles around Tumblr.

Our Song

Samcedes. This is just so perfect for Samcedes from Prom to when Sam leaves for Kentucky. Mercedes POV.

Our song is the slamming screen door // Sneakin' out late, tapping on your window // When we're on the phone and you talk real slow // 'Cause it's late and your mama don't know // Our song is the way you laugh // The first date. "Man, I didn't kiss her, and I should have." // And when I got home ... 'fore I said, "Amen" // Asking God if he could play it again

I'm Only Me When I'm With You

Blam, because it's just so them. they both let each other be their nerdy selves together, and really it's the only time either of them are so nerdy. Also Some Much Pining which is just so blam

Well, you drive me crazy half the time // The other half I'm only tryna let you know that what I feel is true// And I'm only me when I'm with you

Invisible

This one is hard. I've jumped around a couple of Ideas but I'm really not sure. This could be Blam - Blaine's POV about Bram, Sam's POV about Klaine - or a Hevan's AU - Kurt about Samcedes, or Sam about Klaine again. Or maybe even a, idk, Sinn AU, or Suck, or Sartie, or a myriad of other ships where Sam pines after someone, or someone pines after Sam.

But I think I'm going to go with... Hevans AU. Kurt isn't at Dalton. this is from his POV about Sam dating Santana. idk guys this one was tricky!

A Perfectly Good Heart

Fabrevans or Samtana - which I think will be my go to for a lot of Taylor's break up songs to be honest. But since Sam was more into Quinn than Santana, I think I'll go with Fabrevans.

Maybe I should've seen the signs, should've read the writing on the wall // And realized by the distance in your eyes that I would be the one to fall // No matter what you say, I still can't believe // That you would walk away // It don't make sense to me...

[passivenovember]

Reach Out and Touch Faith.

Harringrove April, Day Sixteen : Nostalgia.

--

Steve knows he’s got a stick up his ass about the whole thing. 

Feels it wiggle around, amused, when he comes home early from work to find Dawn and Billy dancing around in their PJs to the opening chords of Personal Jesus. 

They don’t see him.

Too preoccupied with the music, Dave Gahan’s voice pushing through windows and bursting through walls until Billy’s hips are moving in a way Steve hasn’t seen them do in years. 

And Steve isn’t a betting man, but. 

He knows that if Billy turned and zeroed in, hips moving like that with Dawn headbanging to dark wave like some sort of hybrid, the perfect combination of the two of them, Steve would be unable to rain on their parade.

His first reaction is to unplug the stereo.

And it’s a crime. To cut the Gretsch short like that, right in the middle of such an iconic riff.

Billy turns, out of breath from doing the limbo under Dawn’s black feather boa. “Oh, here we go.” He says fondly.

Steve ignores him, strictly business. “What the hell are you doing to my living room?”

Dawn’s still going. Arms win milling as she hop-scotches her way across the room toward Steve, forehead slick with sweat. 

“I like that song!” She hollers. Right in his ear when she climbs into Steve’s arms like a twelve year old monkey. He sets her down immediately, trying to play it cool.

Dawn and Billy start jumping up and down together, obviously high on adrenaline and Steve feels like shit. For having to be the bad guy all the time. 

He sits gingerly on the couch. Tries to tack on his best let’s have a serious discussion face, even as Dawn and Billy continue humming the chorus together. 

Billy breaks away, pumping his arm. “How sick is that synth track, kiddo?”

“So sick.” Dawn says. She collapses onto the floor, exhausted. “I think I like that better than the one on Dangerous.”

Steve gapes. “That’s hardly appropriate.”

Billy scowls, indignant. “You’re the one who let Aunt Robin sneak in the first album we ever fu--”

"Bill.”

He shuts up, sighing. “Babe. You’re gonna be cool about this, right?”

“I’m cool!” Steve insists, leaning back on the couch. “I’m the coolest, ask anyone.”

Billy grins, cheeks flushing pink. “Really? ‘Cause you’re acting pretty uncool.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yup,” Billy teases. “Coming in and unplugging the stereo like that. Right in the middle of the riff, too.” Billy whistles low, shaking his head. “Gotta be one of the seven sins.”

“What, cutting a Depeche Mode song in half?” Steve deadpans. “I just would’ve preferred she start out with. Like. Speak and Spell. or something.” 

Dawn beams. “What’s that? Can we listen to that one next?”

Billy ignores her, honed in. “Dawn’s twelve now, that’s like. Practically a teenager.”

“Yeah, Dad.” She says smugly. “I’m practically a teenager.”

“Exactly.” Billy triumphs, pasting himself to Steve’s side. “And as a practically-almost-teenager, it’s about time she hears some good music.” 

“Hey, you said good music is whatever makes me feel something,” Dawn accuses, sitting bolt upright. “Good music makes your skin all tingly and your tummy do backflips and your heart--”

“I said real music makes you feel something. I never specified what makes it good.” Billy says smugly. “Everything you’ve heard before today is real music but it’s not good music.”

Steve lets Billy fuse their bodies together, wincing as his arm touches miles of sticky skin. 

Dawn shrugs her shoulders. 

Unbothered.

Unapologetic. 

“What you said before, kiddo, about your heart and your tummy. Does this record make you feel like that?” Steve wonders, and Dawn’s nodding her head before he’s even finished. 

He sighs. “Go get my cassette case, then. We’ve got some work to do.”

--

With her Walkman turned up as high as it will go, muttering along to the words as if in prayer, Dawn grows up before their eyes. 

Two new copies of Violator are purchased before the year is out. Once because it’s played so much the wheels fall off, and again because Joey steals the new one.

Billy gets a phone call from Max the day after it goes missing. “The World Wide Web is an evil, disgusting place.”

Billy snorts. “Pretty sure kids are calling it the Net these days, grandma. Keep up.”

“I don’t want to keep up.” She snaps. “Four years. A whole kindergarten age child ago I force Joey to sit down and listen to my cassettes--”

“Your cassettes?” Billy mumbles, alarmed. “No wonder the kid’s purging himself on Steve’s shit.”

“Oh fuck off. That’s where he heard them?”

Billy plays dumb. 

Max catches on instantly. “He’s been locked in his room, listening to Policy of Truth all day. I just don’t understand what’s so appealing about a bunch of sad boys--”

“Be nice.”

“Do you really think the kids are old enough to listen to that shit, man?” Max sounds like she’s coming apart at the edges. Scattered to the wind. “I mean. He left his room twice. Once to make a sandwich and again to borrow one of my skirts.”

Billy grins. “Ah. So he got his hands on some pictures of Martin Gore, that was fast--”

“He tore the thing to shreds, Billy.”

And Billy doesn’t get what the problem is, many of Joyce’s tattered Sunday skirts hanging in his closet even now. 

He shrugs. “’S more punk that way.”

“God. Name the kid after his freaky uncle and the kid will deliver.” Max retorts miserably. She takes a deep breath. “What the fuck am I gonna do?”

“Dunno. Remove the stick from your ass?”

“Ha-ha.” Max spits, but. It sounds like she’s smiling. “Speaking of sticks up asses. Did Steve have a cow?”

Billy shrugs again, wrapping the phone chord around his wrist. “Whole barn, more like. But I think I convinced him.”

“Of what? That the perversion of our youth is okay?”

“No, that the kids are getting older.” Billy says. He doesn’t get it, why he’s the only one in touch with reality. “Joey’s Fifteen, Dawn’ll be thirteen in a couple months. They’re not little kids anymore, Max, they’re teenagers.”

She sighs. “So we’re supposed to let them listen to whatever they want.”

“Within reason. Susan and Neil would’ve bought the barn at full price if we hadn’t snuck around.”

Max makes a noise. “I never listened to--”

“N.W.A?”

“Fuck you, they have an incredible social commentary on the issues faced by disenfranchised people in the--”

“Check mate.”

Max falls silent. And then, glumly, “I hate you for always being right.”

Billy leans against the wall, chuckling. “I’m your big brother. Comes with the territory.”

--

When they get Dawn’s birthday list, only one thing is circled in red. 

Joey and I want to see Depeche Mode live.

Steve wonders if he can make that happen.

[soundsof71]

Hey! Album: 'Fleetwood Mac' (1975) - Fleetwood Mac

Hey! Great to hear from you! You (and your previous blog) were my original inspiration for trying to raise my tumblr game to something intentionally curated, and more than that, personally creative. Sorry to have let you down. LOL

What a pleasure to talk about this one, though, an album I think is -- strangely enough -- one of the most underrated albums in the classic rock pantheon!

What’s that you say? An album with “Rhiannon” and “Landslide” underrated?!?! Well it’s true, seriously underrated, at least partly because those two stellar, nay, legendary songs are the first ones that most people think of. There's so much more! It's definitely my favorite Fleetwood Mac album!

My perspective is a little different than the standard rap that Fleetwood Mac didn't properly begin until those two California kids joined the band in 1975, because to me, they started taking off when their first American joined the band, Bob Welch in 1971 for Future Games, which I wrote about at some length here. 

(For the record, Future Games is my second favorite Fleetwood Mac album. Anyone who hasn't checked it out really needs to.)

I’ll leave it at that for now, except to observe that to most of my music nerd friends at the time, I was a latecomer to Fleetwood Mac the band, having completely missed their earlier, bluesier lineups. Indeed, the 1971 lineup was their 8th! And they'd come to #9 in 1972, before landing on lineup #10 in 1975.

They had a bunch of hits on the five albums in this 71-74 range (”Hypnotized” is one that still slays me) that I think hold up as among their best ever. While the album before Fleetwood Mac, Heroes Are Hard to Find didn’t have a hit single, it rose to #34 on the US charts, and got plenty of attention. 

My point is that Fleetwood Mac didn’t spring into existence out of nowhere in 1975. Nor was 1975 necessarily ground zero for the millions of people who bought the album Fleetwood Mac. It came out in the summer of ‘75, but took 15 months to hit #1 in the US! (It peaked at #11 in the UK.) This was a far bigger album in 1976 when all the singles came out, and the band was touring like crazy to support it.

They basically dragged the album to the top of the charts kicking and screaming by the end of THAT year with relentless touring, setting the stage for their true commercial breakthrough with Rumours in 1977, but artistically? I prefer everything about 1975′s Fleetwood Mac.

btw, the music nerds know that Fleetwood Mac was recorded at Sound City Studios, which makes all the difference in the telling of the tale. In 1974, the band had located to Los Angeles, and following the departure of Bob Welch in December, Mick Fleetwood went looking for both a recording studio and a guitarist. 

While getting to know producer Keith Olsen at Sound City (a studio legendary for its drum sound, among other things), Keith played Mick some tracks from an album he’d recorded here a couple of years earlier with a local guitarist and his girlfriend singer, both of whom were also songwriters.

Mick said, I’ll book the studio to record my next album, I’ll book you to produce, and I’ll hire the guitarist....who famously informed Mick that he and his girlfriend were a package deal. All of this happened because of Sound City Studios.

(Here's Mick recording this very album in this very studio.)

Your friend and mine Dave Grohl directed a FANTASTIC documentary about Sound City Studios, a kind of a dump to be honest, but where tons of phenomenal records were made, from After The Gold Rush to Caribou, Damn The Torpedoes, Nevermind, Rage Against The Machine, and most recently, Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher. Lots and lots of stories about the making of Fleetwood Mac in this movie, and much more. 

Here’s the trailer. The whole movie is available on YT, too! And Amazon Prime, and a bunch of other places. HIGHLY recommended!

So here we go taking directly about Fleetwood Mac.....

the first song from the album i heard: "Over My Head". This was the first single released in the US, remarkably, four months after the album was released! I dunno, did the label not want to sell any albums? Or did they just not get how catchy these tunes were? I have no idea.

And ironically, the band didn't like the choice of "Over My Head" at all, ranking it dead-last in their own considerations of likely singles! I think that this is evidence that they were using heavy drugs much earlier than we thought. LOL

"Over My Head" peaked at #20 in the US, their highest to date by far, although, in some defense of the band's reservations, didn't chart at all in the UK. Saying that it rose to "only" 20 in the charts doesn't begin to describe how heavily it was played, though. A LOT.

do i own the album: Did then, Spotify now. The answer for most of the albums in this round of Asks. :-)

my favorite song: "Over My Head". Look, I admit that this is insane when Fleetwood Mac also includes "Landslide" and "Rhiannon." "Landslide" in particular is maybe one of the greatest songs anyone has ever written, and every single person reading this knows somebody named Rhiannon because of that song. (I've met two.) And hey, "Say You Love Me" was a MUCH bigger hit at the time too... but I'm tellin' ya, "Over My Head" fucks. 

It's the single version that fucks hardest, though, no doubt about it. I was disappointed when I finally bought the album that the version there fades in (NO! THIS IS WRONG) and has a wide mix that diffuses the impact. The radio version is so tight that it's practically mono, and it punches you right upside the head. 

One of my favorite things about listening to "Over My Head" in the past couple of weeks for this Ask is that it's Old School Fleetwood Mac. Chris on piano, Mick on drums, and John McVie with what might be the best bassline that anyone stroked out in 1975. My god, it's a fucking monster, and it just gets hotter as the song progresses. By the end, it's on fire, and you hear it so much better in this tight single mix.

The new guy adds a nice little solo on top of a nice rhythm lick, and he and Stevie add background vocals, but they're not front and center. "Over My Head" is really Christine McVie's showcase, although Fleetwood and Mac really shine too. This would have been a monster hit without the new kids, as indeed it pretty much was. You could say the same thing about "Say You Love Me", which is also all about Christine's songcraft, and a voice like no other, then or now.

Here's my edit of a lovely Mick Putland photo of Christine McVie from a couple of years earlier.

I guarantee that it's been way too long since you heard the in-your-face single version of "Over My Head". On Spotify, you can find it on the couple of Deluxe Editions of Fleetwood Mac (here's one), and it's also on the anthology, The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac, which I've embedded here. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw-lIt1ILzk

least favorite song: "I'm So Afraid." I'm so afraid not. LOL

a song I didn’t like at first, but now do: Hmm, I might put "Sugar Daddy" in that category, but honestly, the main thing I don't like about this song is the title. LOL But it's the 4th best Christine McVie song on an album where the best three of hers were all released as singles, so I guess it all works out.

a song I used to like, but now don’t: Anything by the new guy. I'm not going to go into detail here because what I love about this album, I still love. At the time, I dug two of his songs here (you can guess which two, surely), but I started to really despise this guy a few years later. Now, I can't listen to anything where he's prominent at all, on any Fleetwood Mac records.

Fortunately there are more than enough Christine and Stevie songs, and Mick and John's playing, plus all those earlier albums like Future Games, to keep Fleetwood Mac in the rock good pantheon. I'd have fired the new guy 30 years earlier than he was. 

favorite lyric:

Mirror in the sky

What is love?

Can the child within my heart rise above?

Can I sail through the changin' ocean tides?

Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Well, I've been afraid of changin'

'Cause I've built my life around you

But time makes you bolder

Even children get older

And I'm getting older too

Like I said, the two Stevie Nicks tracks on Fleetwood Mac deserve every bit of the love they've gotten over the years. You can also see with just a quick glance around my blog that she's one of my most-posted artists. Please don't take me repping Christine as any disrespect for Stevie!

Do I like "Landslide" a little more than I otherwise might because it's specifically about outgrowing the aforementioned new guy? Maybe.  Or do I like it a little less than I otherwise might because I can't hear it without thinking of him? Maybe that too.

overall rating out of 10: Then: 9.4. Now: 9. The new guy went 2-for-4 for my money at the time, and the two that he whiffed on are genuinely terrible...but as bad as those two clunkers were, the rest of the album seemed perfect to me. Certainly among my most-played mainstream rock records into the early 80s. I was perfectly fine skipping one song on each side.

Even though nowadays I can't stand any of the songs he sings lead on, you take those off, and you STILL have "Landslide", "Rhiannon", "Say You Love Me", "Over My Head", and "Warm Ways". No album with ALL THOSE on them gets less than an 8.5, right?

I'm adding a few tenths each for how tightly Fleetwood and Mac are locked into each other and these songs on rythm (easily the most underrated duo of the era, sez me), and Keith Olsen's immaculate production. The score of 9 is therefore objectively correct and mathematically unassailable. LOL

I'm going to end where I began, by talking about Christine McVie. Instead of listening to this first and foremost as an album with a couple of giant Stevie Nicks songs, listen again to Fleetwood Mac as Christine McVie really lighting things up. She deserves so much more credit for the band's success than she gets, and seriously, "Over My Head" fucks. 

Now looky here, @aluacrescente . I know that YOU have strong feelings about this record, so spill! And the rest of you, too! I don't intend to have the last word on the albums in any of these Asks! Just the first one. :-) So lemme know what YOU think!

PS. Apologies for any formatting weirdness! I started this on desktop, where I do all my writing, saved the first few paragraphs to come back to later, only to be told by tumblr that I'd stated this on the app (DID NOT) and could only edit there. Grrr. Not cool, @staff. I've spent another day just tweaking to make it somewhat readable and wondering how these people can be so bad at their jobs. LOL

My crackpot opinions and wobbly writing are my own of course, and I'm aware that they have a larger negative impact on readability than tumblr's incompetence by far. LOL

[lanottedellastrega]

Out of the Shadows

Metal Hammer, Summer 2015. Transcript behind the cut.

OUT OF THE SHADOWS Poised to release their third album, Ghost have returned from their unholy slumber to reveal how their conversion mission is progressing - and when their end times might come... Words: Chris Chantler. Pics: John McMurtrie

Surely this can't be right. Hammer is awaiting an audience with a Nameless Ghoul from the Swedish Devil-worshipping cult of Ghost, half-expecting to be blindfolded and ridden to the ruins of a deconsecrated church for a clandestine rendezvous with the masked and robed envoys of Satan. Yet we're in the executive lounge of a Kensington hotel, and there's an extremely polite, alarmingly youthful-looking short-haired man in a leather jacket being introduced as "the author of Ghost." Hammer experiences some cognitive dissonance, imagining that this is a hoax, that Ghost are slyly pretending to have human faces and interpersonal skills to divert attention from the true nature of their esoteric origins or seduce us into foul practices. The only visible clue to this young man's role as Ghost mouthpiece is the symmetrically matching pair of skull-and-crossbones patches on his leather sleeves. Yet when he starts talking about Ghost's third album, the majestic Meliora, it's clear this guy knows what he's talking about.

"The first album [2010's Opus Eponymous] was about the impending doom of a more old-school Biblical sort, where death and destruction will come in the form of locusts and dark fog: it was the coming of the Antichrist," he explains in soft, measured tones, choosing his words with care, maintaining near-constant eye contact. "The second album [2013's Infestissumam] was about the presence of the devil, taking place aesthetically in a 1700's milieu with a more Baroque theme. Whereas this album is the absence of God. It's a futuristic, pre-apocalyptic record. The cat is out of the house and the mice dance on the table. But at some point, the cat comes home..."

Meliora is a godless state, where Ghost's totemic frontman-cum-sigil Papa Emeritus wields power and terror with fearful impunity. And like his spiritual predecessor, Iron Maiden's Eddie, he's renewed with each new phase of band activity, so we're now on Papa III. His city bears more than a passing resemblance to the world we live in.

"Meliora is the metropolitan landscape in which this album takes place; a backdrop that looks like a big city with a lot of hopeful people living in fear of not succeeding," he explains candidly. "Many of the lyrics on this album deal with ambition. It's ridden with a certain degree of self-loathing. I really hate ambitious people - that's why I live in a place where there's not a whole lot of them."

Ghost may not have had any grand ambitions, but five years on from their debut demo, single and LP, some of their original concept has had to be compromised by unimagined levels of growth and demand. For example, talking openly and earnestly to the press in his street clothes, his face and voice undisguised (rumours suggest he's singer-songwriter Tobias Forge, but his real name is politely unconfirmed) is something the Ghoul never intended to do. But he admits that the success of the band thus far - and the enthusiastic patronage of superstar superfans such as James Hetfield, Phil Anselmo and Dave Grohl - has greatly surprised and humbled the men behind the masks.

"Contrary to popular belief, we did not know that we were gonna get that much heat," the Ghoul affirms. "It's fun to play high horse and say it's just a trick and we're fucking with everybody, which we obviously are not. We had no idea. When we were rehearsing our debut, we had a conversation with Rise Above and were contemplating whether to make 500 or 1,000 copies. And maybe we could do a show at Roadburn. It was very innocent - even though that's a word I've never used in terms of Ghost! We've had to grow with it, and we had a lot of catching up to do between the first and second albums. But aesthetically a lot of things we're planning on doing are things we had on paper to begin with."

Realizing something magickal was happening, Ghost made a concerted decision to spread their message of Satanic arch camp horror out of the underground, moving from cult indie label Rise Above to Spinefarm, an imprint of Universal, the world's biggest major. But from their first recordings, Ghost were a musically accessible, traditional, melodic pop-rock showbiz act with influences from some of the biggest bands of the past (Kiss, Abba, Blue Oyster Cult), a strong visual identity and a mischievously lurid theology; it was clear this band needed a level of production above the average low-key doom band.

"In order to present ourselves in the way that we intended, we needed a larger setting," agrees the Ghoul. "We want Papa's hat to not touch the ceiling. We want the band to look like we're performing a mass rather than in a punk squat. What we saw in our minds was something that looked and felt solemn and larger than life."

From their earliest pronouncements, Ghost were demanding the world's attention, and with "a lot of touring," they made sure they got it. But the question of how long they can hold it for is one that the Nameless Ghoul is acutely aware of.

"We have our figure. We have our concept. We can work with that. But we're just on our third record. Out of all our favorite bands, where were they on their third record? They sure weren't chickening out and doing the same safe shit. That's not how you make a third record; that's not how Master of Puppets or Number of the Beast got made. You have to build and be as bold as you can be, even though it feels a little scary. Because we know, we can fuck this up. Especially on the third record, when you're supposed to take a big step. Are we gonna go down to the basement again? You don't know how many chances you get. This might be our last one."

To make that all-important leap forward on a pivotal album, as Metallica or AC/DC can tell you, the secret often lies in the choice of producer. Although there's a great metallic crunch to the music on Meliora, and a psychedelic audacity, Swedish pop savvy is the band's trump card. To further that end, Ghost employed knob-twiddler Klas Ahlund, best known for his songwriting collaborations with Britney Spears, Kylie, Katy Perry and Madonna.

"We felt, 'Maybe we should work with someone who can really help us redefine what we're doing,'" the Ghoul reasons. "He was keen to find a rock band with their own material, and we were looking for a producer with more of a songwriting skill, so it was a good match. As much as we could drive a car on the energy of thinking we're the best band in the world - a very small car! - we knew there must be things we can do better. Every band with self-respect should work with someone who can really challenge what you're doing, and we did that with Klas. When you're on a major label with bigger expectations, you have the opportunity to get a yes or now from people you'd like to work with. But early on we realised, as much fun as it is to look at records we love and say, 'Let's get Mutt Lange!' or 'Let's get Bob Rock!' it felt like we should get our own man. Many of these big producers weren't big producers until they did that big record that we associate them with."

As they await the world's reaction to Meliora, Ghost have already amassed "the ground basics of what will become the next album." Nevertheless, for a band with such clear vision and attention to detail, it's tempting to wonder if they've planned an exit strategy.

"I had one vision two years ago and I have another vision now, and I may have another two years from now," muses the Ghoul. "We can catapult our concept around a few times, into different eras and spheres, but it has its time and place. I don't think anybody would enjoy having us around doing this forever; when there's nothing more to say, I hope we're sober enough to yank out the cord. We're not going to use Ghost for every musical dream we have. It's all fun and games to be in robes, but it's also lots of fun playing three-piece punk rock in your t-shirt."

However, with the musical development evident on Meliora, happily Ghost look set to continue expanding their sound and mythology. Have you joined the cult?

---

WHO IS PAPA III? Three things we know about our new, mysterious leader...

Papa Emeritus III is younger than his brother, Papa Emeritus II, by three months. Nameless Ghoul: "There are several Mamas. And one big, old, really, really bad Papa. That might give you an indication of what's gonna happen in the future. There's one shark in the water you haven't met yet..."

He controls his followers in Meliora. Nameless Ghoul: "Papa is the authoritative religious leader among his followers. He comes into the vacuum of the godless contemporary world and manipulates the people. We are, together with our fans, agreeing that you are here to worship us, and we are telling you what to do. And in this era, it's all taking place in the futuristic dystopian city of Meliora."

He was inspired by Sir Christopher Lee. Nameless Ghoul: "From Scaramanga to The Lord of the Rings, Sir Christopher Lee played a large role when it came to the concept of Papa. A scary, sophisticated, handsome older man who inflicted terror and arousal. I greatly admired him."

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 13/02/2021 (Digga D, AJ Tracey, Cardi B)

It’s not as big of a week as it is just a confusing one, so there’s no pre-amble. Olivia Rodrigo spends a fifth week at #1 with “drivers license” and let’s start REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Rundown

I started writing this a bit later than usual so I just want to rush through most of what’s here. The songs dropping out of the UK Top 75 are either debuts from not long ago like “Notorious” by Bugzy Malone featuring Chip and “Lo Vas A Olvidar” by Billie Eilish and ROSALÍA, or songs that have been here for a while, like “Monster”  by Shawn Mendes and Justin Bieber, “Holy” by Justin Bieber featuring Chance the Rapper and “Dynamite” by BTS. We even have some #1 hits dropping out of the Top 75 this week, like “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac, “WAP” by Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion and “Shallow” by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. In terms of fallers, we have, seemingly, some of the older Winter cuts being replaced, as we see “Sweet Melody” by Little Mix getting a harsh streaming cut down to #30,  “Whoopty” by CJ down to #33, “Levitating” by Dua Lipa and remixed by DaBaby down to #34 (although this could rebound given the album release), “you broke me first” by Tate McRae at #37, “SO DONE” by The Kid YAOI at #57, “All I Want” by Olivia Rodrigo at #61, “Looking for Me” by Diplo, Paul Woodford and Kareen Lomax at #62, “Train Wreck” by James Arthur at #63, “See Nobody” by Wes Nelson and Hardy Caprio at #64, “Take You Dancing” by Jason Derulo at #65, “Therefore I Am” by Billie Eilish at #68, “Before You Go” by Lewis Capaldi at #72 and “Golden” by Harry Styles at #73, as well as some more recent debuts, including the entirety of Fredo’s album impact from last week, as “Money Talks” with Dave is at #11, “Ready” with Summer Walker at #31 and “Burner on Deck” with Young Adz and the late Pop Smoke at #32. “Skin” by Sabrina Carpenter and “Apricots”  by Bicep aren’t faring that well either, at #51 and #56 respectively. When I said these songs are being replaced, I wasn’t overestimating anything as we have our new crop of hits seemingly all surging, as “Martin & Gina” by Polo G is at #54, “Be the One” by Rudimental, MORGAN, TIKE and Digga D is at #49, “Best Friend” by Saweetie featuring Doja Cat is at #42, “My Head & My Heart” by Ava Max is at #35, “Love Not War (The Tampa Beat)” by Jason Derulo and Nuka is at #27, “Heat Waves” by Glass Animals is at #24, “Your Love (9PM)” by ATB, Topic and A7S is at #23 (it’s honestly starting to grow on me), and “Blinding Lights” by the Weeknd is somehow back up to #20. Speaking of the top 20, we also have “Friday” by Riton, Nightcrawlers and Musafa & Hypeman dopamine re-editing itself up to #16, “Save Your Tears” also by the Weeknd at #15, and two new top 10 hits, both songs with basically the same chart run and genre. “Goosebumps” by Travis Scott, remixed by HVME, remixed by Travis Scott is at #10, becoming HVME’s first and Travis’ fourth top 10 hit here in Britain. We also have “The Business” by Tiesto grooving up to #7, becoming Tiesto’s fourth top 10 hit. I honestly feel bad for the still completely uncredited vocalist. We also have a third new top 10 entry but that’s a debut that we can discuss later. I should also note that “Roses” by SAINt JHN and remixed by Imanbek is back at #74, and a winning Eurovision song, “Arcade”, by Dutch singer Duncan Lawrence is also back at #39 off of the back of some TikTok traction. I think this is the most streamed Eurovision now – I’d watch out for this being a big hit. Welp, time to get into our really, and I mean REALLY, varied and weird crop of new arrivals, starting with...

NEW ARRIVALS

#75 – “Roadtrip” – Dream and PmBata

Produced by Banrisk and Perish Beats

Okay, so this is a song by Minecraft YouTuber Dream, or at least that’s who I think he is. I think there was some kind of scandal related to him, and a couple people got involved and someone got doxed... listen, I don’t care. Not only is this song really not worthy of reviewing on the principle that unlike Wilbur Soot a couple weeks ago, Dream has never been a musician, which is clear from how involved no-name singer PmBata was in this, but I care for my private information not being made public so... What ridiculous excuse do I have to not review this? Okay, 1997 reggae-rock classic “Doin’ Time” by Sublime returns to #75 after Boris Johnson made a TikTok in the Houses of Parliament where he says “Pogchamp, Brexiteers, I just got tested for COVID-19” with the song in the background, and Joe Biden is on a Zoom call with him a few seconds later visibly annoyed because he prefers the New Radicals. Sure, let’s go with that. What was this entry about again?

#71 – “Goodbye” – Imanbek and Goodboys

Produced by Joris Mur, Imanbek and Goodboys

Everyone’s favourite Kazakh house producer Imanbek is finally back on the charts with his collaboration with British pop trio Goodboys, who you may know from their carbon-copy hits made with MEDUZA. After listening to that EP he made with Rita Ora, I’m slightly less impressed with Imanbek’s production, but that EP’s impact, if any, will be seen when the lead single featuring David Guetta and Gunna debuts low next week. Yes, seriously, all four on the same track. Anyway, this song, “Goodbye”, is actually pretty okay, with a generic deep house groove and fake hand-clap effectively saved by the Goodboys’ really intriguing vocal delivery and processing, which ends up in a Travis Scott-like Auto-Tune harmony that’s honestly pretty endearing right before the anti-climactic slap-house drop. The song’s lyrical content probably isn’t worth talking about, but it’s about a generic struggle with a break-up, and how hard it is for one of these good boys to say good bye. The build-up with the pre-chorus before the blue-balls second drop is kind of genius, and that’s probably my favourite part of the song outside of the abrupt vocaloid drop at the end. For what it’s worth, it takes more risks than most of these house-pop songs, most notably by having only a single verse in the middle of the song, and being really short, clocking in at less than two and a half minutes. It’s not as infectious as “Piece of Your Heart”, but this is fine. I’m glad it’s here if it’s going to give Imanbek another non-Rita Ora-assisted hit.

#60 – “Little Bit of Love” – Tom Grennan

Produced by Jamie Scott, LOSTBOY and Daniel Bryer

Tom Grennan is an English singer-songwriter who released their debut record in 2016 and was crowned by the BBC as the “Sound of 2017”, before dropping off the face of the Earth. He was brought to fame by a guest feature on a Chase & Status song that didn’t even do that well and now he’s back with the lead single from his upcoming sophomore effort, and his highest ever charting song. Well, is it any good? I mean, I like OneRepublic too. The rising strings here in the intro and chorus are pretty cool, and I’ll give it to Grennan for having an interesting voice but the odd level of grit in it does not fit well for this plastic production, which quickly devolves into vaguely danceable synth-mess that’s just not interesting. The content is mostly about unconditional love, particularly one that feels not particularly reciprocated, although some of the detail in the second verse feels like it’s going somewhere. I’ll admit, the chorus is catchy, but this mix puts way too much emphasis on a flawed vocal take from Grennan, which really detracts from the pathetic excuse for a bridge. I do enjoy how this feels like a flash-back to the mid-2010s, where happier, synth-based pop was this prominent, and I do love how the strings come back in the outro, but good production can’t do much to save a song that just feels under-cooked and definitely under-written. The OneRepublic comparison feels particularly fitting here too because their stuff tends to be just as stagnant, not to mention the lyrical riffs off of “Counting Stars”. I mean, when you start your first verse – in the first 10 or so seconds of the track – with the most recognisable part of a very recognisable song, I think Ryan Tedder deserves at least some royalties.

#58 – “Astronaut in the Ocean” – Masked Wolf

Produced by Tyron Hapi

Masked Wolf is an Australian singer and this song is actually from June 2019, just gaining enough traction, presumably off of TikTok, to debut on the charts this week. The song got a 2021 reissue and I assume a remix and, well... for God’s sake. The Kid LAROI should not have been an entry point for Australian trap, because outside of a second or two of distortion in the intro, this is far from unique. It has a guitar-based trap instrumental with dark 808s that even Gunna would pass up on, and an Auto-Tuned delivery from Masked Wolf, clearly trying too hard to replicate Drake in the intro and bridge, Kid Cudi in the chorus, G-Eazy in the first verse, Eminem AND Kendrick on the second verse, to the point where he even directly references Kendrick Lamar’s much better music. He suffers from the same problems as all of these artists combined, with lyrics that seem like they’re building up off of something interesting about depression before going into aimless flexing like a mid-tier Kid Cudi track, flows that sound as meandering and checked-out as Drake’s, the failed attempt at some kind of white-boy swagger that G-Eazy hasn’t pulled off successfully since 2016, the substance-less content hidden behind fast flows from Eminem and... oh, my God, this guy’s just like Australian Logic. I don’t like American Logic, why do we need this guy too? Yeah, this is bad, and there’s not much worth nitpicking in this mix or even the lyrics to even point out. I guess the worst bar is when he says he believes in G-O-D but not a T-H-O-T. So he’s a slut-shaming NF now? Jesus Christ, I’d take a full album from The Kid LAROI over this.

So the next two songs are ones I’ll actually need to somewhat lump together, as they are consecutive on the chart and both from the same album, and the same washed-up band.

#53 – “Waiting on a War” – Foo Fighters

Produced by Greg Kurstin

We have two songs from Dave Grohl and friends here from their latest album, Medicine at Midnight, technically three if we count the entire top 100, which means, yes, the UK just had a Foo Fighters album bomb. I’ll focus on the album as a whole with the next song because this is easily the worse track here and the worst track on the album purely out of how misguided it is. Dave Grohl wrote this song because he felt inspired by the current hell-scape of the political climate, reminding him of his own youth when he was surrounded by rising Cold War tensions. His young daughter asked him if there was going to be a war and naturally this song came out of it, reflecting on the fears he and his daughter have and that everyone deserves a future and a lifetime not taken away from them by conflict and fear. This is a good song idea but it absolutely does not work, and that’s partially down to the production. When I first heard this track on the album, I genuinely grimaced at the vocoder-mumble that Grohl takes on against the scratchy acoustic guitars. The whole point of the instrumentation is that it builds tension with rising strings, multi-tracked acoustics and eventually some electric guitars and powerful drums, yet because of how slow-paced the song is, it fails to mirror the rising tension of the prospect of there being a war. Instead, it’s a slog and its pay-off by the end feels unwarranted in the most boring way. Sure, the squeals of the guitars in the back of the mix sound good, but surely a song like this should not end like any of the Foo Fighters’ other pop-rock anthems, especially not as abruptly as it does. Wouldn’t you want a more subdued outro to comfort your daughter’s fears that at least right now, everything’s okay? That would make the most sense to me, but that’s thrown out of the window, with pathetic songwriting, with verses that play word association with the blandest of rhymes, seemingly irrelevant pop-song-generator filer and a chorus that is mind-numbingly repetitive but ultimately fails to build tension because of the content asking us to wait, constantly, even when it gets into its heavier rock tone. We’re supposed to wait for something that is only implied to never come, because there isn’t finality. Sure, that could work as a way of saying that Grohl is just as uncertain and scared as his daughter is about political conflict, but that would imply this song gives off any further emotion than the fact the Foo Fighters felt the need to cut a vaguely political track out of necessity. As a song, and as an album, Dave Grohl is utterly confused, and “Waiting on a War” is way too slow and non-specific to act as a protest song, as well as being way too on-the-nose for it to work as a ballad. Let’s talk about this next single.

#52 – “Making a Fire” – Foo Fighters

Produced by Greg Kurstin

What the hell is Greg Kurstin doing here? This is the first track on the album and is supposed to make some kind of gripping impact but is instead just a snoozefest. The choral female vocals sound bored, but at least it’s not as strained as the struggling Dave Grohl trying and failing to yelp over a stiff groove which has its momentum killed by drumming too slow and mixed too oddly to make this pre-chorus even coherent, not helped by Grohl’s butt-rock delivery and non-descript lyrics. There could be a guitar solo here, to make this track feel memorable, but no, it’s hidden under a pre-chorus with an extended gospel bridge that doesn’t build up effectively to a chorus that just comes crashing in and hence has no effect. Maybe I just can’t listen to arena  rock in a quarantine context, but I can’t even imagine this making much of a fuss in a packed stadium without desperately needing tweaks in the songwriting and especially the production, because this just sounds stunted. It’s telling that Grohl made his best tracks as the Foo Fighters on his own and those first two records, alongside a pretty decent 2014 comeback in the form of Sonic Highways, are still great. I’m not denying that Grohl can write a good song, or that the Food Figures can’t play, because they’re all talented guys. This is just one album in many that leaves me with the feeling that these guys just can’t do much more outside of their comfort zone than fail miserably. These songs won’t stick around, and thank God for that.

#50 – “Believe Me” – Navos

Produced by Tom Demac and Navos

Another week, another... okay, but we already had a generic pop-infused deep house track from a couple EDM randos, do we really need another? Okay, well, this one is even less interesting than Imanbek’s effort as it doesn’t even try for a verse, instead going for a deep house groove I’ve heard countless times before, drowned out by some square synths and, yes, you guessed it, 90s piano loops and an uncredited female vocalist repeating basically the same couple lines over and over. This is made for the clubs, but I feel like even regular club-goers would tire of this vocaloid drop and cloudy production two minutes in. There’s nothing worth discussing here, because this probably took as many minutes to make as it did to listen to. I have no idea why Navos debuts a song so high, but I’ve got to assume TikTok’s to blame. Apparently this guy makes tech house, where’d any of that skill or intrigue go here?

#21 – “Up” – Cardi B

Produced by Sean Island, DJ SwanQo and Yung Dza

Anyone else surprised at how such a big name gets production from people I’ve never heard of before? Not that it matters, it’s just odd. Anyways, this is Cardi’s new single, presumably from that ever-elusive second album, debuting around 20 spots lower than it will in the US, and it’s going for a more gangsta-rap content than the hyper-sexual “WAP”, but does she keep the same energy? Well, yes... in fact, after all the mediocrity, I’m glad to have a genuinely great song debut this week. This is a great, bass-heavy beat that gives a Memphis phonk feel in the dark keys as well as the hard-hitting 808s and spacey percs and sound effects that add some needed distortion, even if there’s going to be some brief clipping along the way. Cardi brings some necessary energy from the brilliant opening lyrics and continues with a fast-paced, chanting flow that accentuates some of her funnier lyrics with her charisma that she always brings to a trap track like this. I’d say that this is maybe too repetitive – with very little of the verses to speak of – or even somewhat derivative of her previous song, “Money”, but there’s a lot better lyrical content in this one, not to mention how well she complements a more straight-forward but still killer beat. Oh, yeah, and Cardi’s stacks are Shaq-height as she dismisses haters with an impressive level of swagger and confidence, that carries the refrain, but that’s not to say the lyrics aren’t really great in the verses. There’s genuinely funny and sexy wordplay here, especially in the second verse, and also some great liners: “hoes speakin’ cap-anese”, accusing her haters of having pink-eye and their breath smelling like “horse sex”. This is a short, probably underdeveloped song, but it’s the type of surreal, high-energy trap I kind of really love and I hope this sticks around further in the UK.

#19 – “Latest Trends” – A1 x J1

Produced by ShoBeatz

A1 x J1 are a British rap duo with no other songs. Yeah, something’s fishy here: this is their only song on Spotify that blew up from a 15-second clip on TikTok, and their Spotify bio is trying to decide whether they’re the next D-Block Europe or the Beatles, as well as really emphasising how the song grew “all organically”, even though they’re already signed to Universal... yeah, there’s nothing subtle here, so I won’t buy this TikTok fame schtick, but does it matter when the song is good? Well, not really, and honestly, I’m kind of into this guitar-based drill-R&B fusion in the beat, but it doesn’t really help the fact that J1’s Stormzy impression is janky and unconvincing, especially if he’s going to try for some shallow wordplay, and that A1’s Auto-Tuned croon is just boring, reminding me a lot of A Boogie wit da Hoodie, but with a less recognisable voice and delivery, even if the first verse contains a funny line about a woman making that ass clap “for the NHS”, although he totally took that from Swarmz anyway. Yeah, I’m not a fan of this fake attempt at an organic pop-drill crossover, but unfortunately, I can very much see this working, though I’d be happy if the British public will see through this dishonesty as soon as possible.

#5 – “Bringing it Back” – Digga D and AJ Tracey

Produced by TheElements and AoD

Now for a rap duo that makes more sense to debut this high and are actually, you know, separately successful rappers, therefore they debut in the top five, which is impressive. The whole concept of this song is that Digga D and AJ Tracey are using old flows, those that would be nostalgic to their deeper fan base, to spit bars on a new track called, fittingly “Bringing it Back”. The flow AJ Tracey brings back is from his overlong “Packages” freestyle, a five-minute track from 2016, that works more as a freestyle than it does as a song, where he uses a familiar UK drill flow to go off for a really long time, and, yes, it is pretty impressive but the flow becomes stale too quickly. Digga D uses his flow from his “Next Up?” freestyle from 2017, a similarly badly-mixed UK drill freestyle but with a much more palatable length. Digga D’s flow he uses in that track is arguably slicker but honestly one that I see used a lot in UK drill and by Digga D, so I’m not sure it’s not worth “bringing it back” when you could come up with a new, catchier flow. I’ll admit that “Bringing it Back”, however, is a pretty damn good song, with Digga D’s more technical and fluid flow allowing for a lot more intricate internal rhymes that sound really great over the triumphant, string-heavy drill beat, as he trades bars with AJ Tracey’s slower but more confident, laid-back flow, which allows him to spit some more specific, interesting bars, some of which really hit, like when he says he “locked up the food for the kids like Boris and then I let it go like Rashford”. Hey, I respect it, I haven’t heard a more clever way of intertwining political commentary with cocaine smuggling since Pusha T last released a record. The way AJ Tracey and Digga D play off of each other’s lines is really smooth, and especially how Digga D plays with the beat, as while his lyrics may be less interesting, they mash perfectly with the beat’s frantic fades in and out, especially in his last lines before the first chorus, where he asks for the track to literally be turned off... and it is. So, yeah, I’m pretty damn happy with this debuting so high off the energy alone, even if Digga D is going to pronounce “LOL” like a one-syllable word. I’d say this is actually a really good starting point for people who want to get into more UK drill because it has a lot of the grit and menace of the genre in a more accessible, catchy form, even if it may run a bit too long for my taste.

Conclusion

Wow, what a weird, weird week... and a lot of it was straight garbage. I’m giving Best of the Week to “Up” by Cardi B, with an Honourable Mention to Digga D and AJ Tracey for “Bringing it Back”, though Worst of the Week is pretty much a toss-up. I’ll give it to the Foo Fighters for “Waiting on a War”, with a Dishonourable Mention tied between “Astronaut in the Ocean” by Masked Wolf and “Believe Me” by Navos for just both being worthless. Anyways, here’s our top 10:

The UK Singles Chart is honestly kind of chaotic right now – even more so than usual – and I don’t see that changing. Even if I don’t like all of the songs, it’s at least compelling. Anyways, thank you for reading and you can follow me @cactusinthebank on Twitter if you want. I can’t really make any predictions for next week other than Taylor Swift re-recording her own music and I guess some impact from Rita Ora and Imanbek, or hopefully, slowthai. Regardless of what happens, I’ll see you next week!

[tsohl]

A bit of fun...

An Interview from village magazine. 2005

A model life

Monaghan-born Caitriona Balfe was recruited shaking a charity box outside a Dublin shopping centre. Now she is Ireland's most successful international model. Based in New York and the darling of some of the world's top designers, she talks to Ailbhe Jordan

It’s just after five on a Tuesday evening in Soho. Streams of harassed-looking people scurry in both directions along Spring Street, seeking escape from the mayhem of midweek Manhattan in the form of the nearest taxi or subway station.

Nobody but me seems to notice a tall, thin young woman leaning against the wall of a grey building. We have never met in person and a curtain of long, tousled brown hair obscures her face as she flicks through a notebook, but it’s definitely her.

Since Derek Daniels of Assets Modelling agency spotted her six years ago collecting money for charity outside the Swan Shopping Centre in Rathmines, Caitriona Balfe has quietly strutted her way to the upper echelons of the fashion industry.

Nineteen years old and intent on becoming an actress at the time, Balfe modelled part-time in Dublin for a year until a visiting scout from Ford Modelling agency asked her to work for them in Paris. She decided to take a year out from her drama course at the Dublin Institute of Technology to pursue the opportunity.

In her six years as a model, Balfe has strutted down the catwalk for every big name from Gucci to Marc Jacobs. Vogue are big fans too; the fashion bible has put her on the cover of its US, French, German, Spanish and Italian editions.

After Paris, Balfe moved to Milan, where she became the darling of Dolce & Gabanna, who still hire her to work exclusively at their spring and autumn shows. Three years ago, she moved to New York to work for US based Elite Modelling agency. One of her first castings was for Cuban-American designer Narciso Rodriguez, who was so impressed, he made her his muse.

Balfe is, without a doubt, the most successful international model Ireland has produced.

On this evening she looks up and smiles, revealing a heart-shaped face, with sharp, pixie-like features and bright blue eyes. Wearing not a scrap of makeup, she looks younger than her 26 years. Her complexion is pale, clear and spattered with light brown freckles.

She is around 5ft 10”, but seems smaller because of her narrow, thin frame. Dressed in a loose, taupe-colored top, skinny blue jeans that are not as tight as they should be and red flats, she personifies that casual glamour look to which all the downtown hipsters aspire.

She suggests we go to Balthazar, a French Bistro beloved of New York models and celebrities.

As we walk, she assumes a posture so elegant and so straight it looks as though she is leaning backwards slightly.

Balfe’s family comes from Tyvadet, a small town in Co Monaghan. Her accent is neutral from years of living abroad, but every now and then, the Monaghan dialect peeps through – when she says “cool”, for instance, which she says a lot.

Weekend reservations at Balthazar are nearly impossible to make if one is not famous and has not booked at least a couple of weeks in advance.

“Go on ahead,” she says, holding the door open. The hostess directs us to a small table at the window. Balfe glides into her booth without pushing the table out first. “I’m going to have some cake,” she says, lowering her voice.“I got my wisdom teeth out on Friday, so I’ve basically been eating soup all weekend,” she adds quickly, touching her jaws with both hands.

“I was supposed to go to LA today, but I cancelled that because my face was still a bit swollen.”

Conversations between any two people renting in New York City inevitably turn to apartments and – more importantly – locations. Balfe lives in Greenpoint, a trendy Polish neighbourhood in Brooklyn. “I was about three years in the city but I love Brooklyn,” she says.

“It’s just really cute. It’s kind of European, like most of the streets are all mom and pop stores, there’s not one McDonalds. They’ve got all cute little vegetable stores, there’s a meat market and a fish market.”

She pauses to take a sip of coffee.

“We’ve got the ground floor of a building. Its got like a back garden and a basement, which is really cool. My boyfriend has his studio in the basement.”

The boyfriend she refers to is Dave Milone, a guitarist with the band Radio4, who are releasing a new album in New York this week.

“I’ve been with him for three years, he’s from New Jersey,” she says rolling her eyes as New Yorkers often do at the mention of their neighbouring and, in their opinion, less cosmopolitan state.

“It’s a bit of a cliché, I know, a model and a rocker. It’s good though.”

At 26, Balfe has said she considers herself to be one of the “grannies” of the modeling industry.

“Of my five really close friends whom I started with, there’s only one whose still modeling,” she says.

“The rest have gone off to college or have real jobs. I still feel like I’m at college,” she says, stirring her coffee and putting the spoon down on the saucer with a loud clink.

“When I see some of these younger girls who are starting at 17 or so, it’s like being at school, you know. You’ve a bunch of girls who are like, teenagers and of course everyone’s like: ‘is she doing better than me?’ and all that. I was a little bit older when I started, I was 19 and I never really experienced that. I mean, you’re always going to come across a bitch but there’s nothing you can really do about that. I’m getting older now and it does feel weird when you come across someone who tries to intimidate you in that really high school way. It’s like: ‘why am I feeling insecure because of this?’ And it’s funny, because it’s all based on weight, it’s like: ‘you put on a few pounds,’ or something stupid.”

At this point the desserts arrive.

“I feel like the girls are getting very skinny again,” she says, following the movement of the plate with her eyes as the waitress places it in front of her.

“When I started it was like, a lot of the Brazilian girls were around, it was all about being voluptuous and I think in the last couple of seasons there’s been a lot of really, really skinny girls again. I mean, you can tell when somebody doesn’t eat, you can tell by the big rings under their eyes or when they’re kind of quiet, they’re whole personality is kind of...” she slouches down and drops her tongue out in a display of lifelessness.

She picks up her spoon and digs it into the cake, then turns the plate around and spears the scoop of vanilla ice-cream that is perched on top.

“I’ve always been thin, you know?” she says, while her mouth is full.

“My aunts and uncles will be like, ‘oh do you eat?’ but I’ve always been lucky that I can. I eat more than Dave. I go through very, very sporadic, once-in-a-blue-moon fits of going running and stuff, but I’m so lazy. When shows are coming up I just do some exercises at home and maybe not have so much chocolate cake the week before. A few more salads, that kind of thing.”

Next week, Balfe expects to be working in LA for a couple of days, from where she will fly to Miami for a photo shoot, before returning to New York on Sunday to do a shoot for Spanish Vogue.

“It sounds glamorous, it’s not though, it really isn’t,” she says, holding another spoonful of cake up to her lips.

“I am moving towards retirement now – from this,” she continues. “Every year I’m asked and I’m like, ‘oh another year or two.’ But, if I’m still doing this at the end of the next two years, somebody shoot me, please. I mean, it’s really good and it allows me to live a good life. I’m building a house in Monaghan, I can do stuff like that. I can set myself up for the future and stuff. But being an actress was the thing that I always wanted to do. Before I ever started modelling.”

Balfe has not yet found her perfect role, but played a convincing seductress in 2002 when she modelled for lingerie company Victoria’s Secret during their catwalk show, an annual TV spectacle that that has propelled models like Gisele Bundchen and Heidi Klum to international fame.

“Oh God, my poor Da,” she groans, cradling her head in her hands.

“I think it was the Sun or the Mirror back home had this headline: ‘Garda’s daughter goes und-y-cover.’ I wondered what I was doing in there, this pasty little Irish girl amongst all these Brazilian goddesses. I’d gotten a spray tan and they put full body make-up on me but I was 10 times whiter than anyone there. It took very little clothes and quite a lot of champagne to get through that one.”

She shakes her head, smiling at the memory. “Its funny you know? Normally when I’m out, I don’t really dress up. It’s amazing how people will absolutely not even notice you until they hear the word ‘model,’ and then they’re like: ‘Oh.’ And I’m like: ‘what?’ Two seconds ago, I was nothing, you know?”

[maxisthenewalex]

Edward Van Halen

In the past two weeks, I have consumed a lot of media about Eddie the man and Van Halen the band. His death surprised me, and I would like to take a few words here and recognize that he did touch my life in positive ways. Fans say that a lot when someone passes, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

I was 10 years old when their album 1984 came out. You couldn’t avoid the video for “Jump” if you watched MTV. And I watched MTV. I didn’t really go into their back catalog until I was older. Of Dave or Sammy, I was firmly in the Sammy camp. I bought cassettes of the late 80s/early 90s albums. I also later bought The Best of Both Worlds greatest hits double CD. Good stuff.

Eddie had the most charming smile, and when I think of him, he’s the shirtless, smiling guitarist, shredding like it’s easy. The best make it look easy simply from being the best and having put in the work. 

Much has been and will be said about Eddie’s guitar virtuosity. When I was growing up, one of the things I appreciated about Eddie was that he wasn’t just a guitar player. Those killer keyboard and piano lines? Eddie. The song “Right Now” with the excellent piano licks? Eddie. “Right Now” became overplayed, but I still want to learn it. I have a piano a few feet away from me. Maybe I will.

When I found out he was an immigrant (aka, real Dutch), that made me like him more. That he still spoke Dutch? Even better. His birthday was the day before Mozart. Associated cool.

But looking back at his body of work, I have this to say about Eddie. He wrote great songs and he played them well. 

It’s a simple compliment, but I think it’s important to state because other than “Eruption” which told the world he was here, his playing and solos were all for the good of the song. He never sounded like he was doing the musical version of a wank. So many guitarists do, especially ones who were inspired by him. It’s like the saw his technical proficiency, but never learned the musicality to go along with it.

So, Eddie... thanks for the music. Thanks for the smiles. I hope your family has some comfort they can hold dear.

[tiesandtea]

Brett Anderson and Mat Osman from influential ’90s indie outfit Suede are back with a new album and a new film to match

By Dave Calhoun, TimeOut. Posted on Friday, November 6, 2015.

It’s one of the defining images of the ’90s British music scene: Suede’s Brett Anderson swinging his mic and slapping his arse as he tore through unifying glam-rock hits like ‘Animal Nitrate’ and ‘Trash’. Along with his old school friend Mat Osman, Anderson founded Suede as a London student in the late ’80s. When Britpop exploded, the four-piece became the smarter, darker, more ambiguous face of the scene. Five albums later, they called it a day in 2003. 

But Suede have been back since 2010, touring and lately recording. ‘Night Thoughts’ follows ‘Bloodsports’ as the second album of Suede 2.0. A brooding, expansive and playfully eccentric record, it nods to the experimentation and orchestral sound of their 1994 album ‘Dog Man Star’, the last to feature guitarist Bernard Butler.

Suede will be performing the album over two nights in London at the Roundhouse, also premiering a new film made to accompany the album. We met Brett and Mat, both 48, near their homes in west London.

You were up against Kanye West as Saturday night headliners at Glastonbury earlier this year. How was that?

Mat: ‘We loved it. We were only there for about three hours.’ Brett: ‘It’s a bit hit and miss for us, Glastonbury. We’ve done some crap ones. We did the main stage below REM about 15 years ago, in daylight, and it was terrible. I think we’re a much better live band now than we were even back in our heyday. We’re on a different level.’ Mat: ‘We’re also a bit less precious about not playing to our own audience. In the early days we spent a lot of time playing to people who were rabidly obsessive. So it could be strange to go to a festival and it not immediately go off.’ Brett: ‘We’ve got some resilience to that now. We were so used to adoring crowds in smaller venues, it became this little cult. I love playing live now. When we first started I used to be all about writing stuff and the studio, but bizarrely enough as I’ve got older, I actually enjoy the physicality of playing live.’ But anyone who’s seen you play live, especially in the early days, always remembers you going for it hell for leather, swinging the mic lead, slapping your arse…

Brett: ‘That wasn’t what it was about for me. It was about coming up with the magic in the studio.’ Mat: ‘I still think that’s the measure of the band for me, the albums you leave behind.’ Brett: ‘Of course it is. The live performance is transitory, isn’t it? It’s a beautiful thing. It’s life-affirming – and all that nonsense.’ Mat: ‘It’s the sex to a record’s love, you know what I mean? It’s the brief moment as opposed to a lifetime.’

‘London is this poisonous, brutal place, but there’s so much love here as well’

Last year a ‘Mastermind’ contestant picked Suede as their specialist subject. Were you watching?

Mat: ‘I was. I think he did better than all of us in the band.’ Brett: ‘What? I got them all right.’ Mat: ‘There was that hard question about who shot the photo of the two people kissing on our first album cover.’ Brett: ‘I knew that one.’ Your lyrics are full of images of the city. Does London still inspire you?

Brett: ‘I wrote a line about 25 years ago in a song called “He’s Dead”, and it’s “all the love and poison of London” and it’s one of my favourite lines. It still resonates with me. London is this poisonous, brutal place, but there’s so much love here as well. There’s so much inspiration, you can feel the power pulsing through its veins and I love that.’

Did the city feel brutal when you were fighting to get noticed as a student band in the late ’80s and early ’90s?

Brett: ‘We spent three years playing in the toilets of London, in places like the Amersham Arms and the Camden Falcon. Regularly there’d be more people on stage than in the audience. It was a very brutal way to start out. For some reason we stuck at it. Seriously, it wouldn’t have happened if we’d been less arrogant, or more sensible…’ Mat: ‘Or less talented, that’s the other possibility!’ Brett, you’ve said you always believed you were writing big Whitney Houston-style pop belters when you were writing early songs like ‘Animal Nitrate’ and ‘The Wild Ones’. Do you still feel like that?

Brett: ‘Yes. Less so with this new album. But I’ve always thought Suede’s music was quite poppy. The whole indie ghetto thing, especially in the ’90s, I thought it was limiting. Pop music is incredibly powerful, even in its most crass form. If you sit in the back of a cab and listen to Magic FM and all those sloppy, sentimental songs, they’re beautiful songs. Because they’re performed by cheesy artists, they’re considered naff. But they still have emotional resonance.’

‘We’re high art kitchen sink!

Your new album ‘Night Thoughts’ is more experimental than your last, your comeback album ‘Bloodsports’ (2013). Did you have less to prove?

Brett: ‘We definitely felt like we could do things that we wouldn’t have done with “Bloodsports”. That was very much about re-establishing the brand of the band, horrible as it sounds. There are echoes of “Dog Man Star”, which is our most loved record. But it’s a different record to “Dog Man Star”, it’s a lot harder to pin down.’ The filmmaker Roger Sargent has made a full-length film to accompany the album. How did that come about?

Brett: ‘We wanted to make one long film instead of making videos. Partly to reinforce the idea that the album was designed to be listened to as an album rather than a collection of songs. I sent Roger vague ideas about the themes of the album. Lots of it is about family stuff. Kids and parenthood.’ Do you have kids?

Brett: ‘I do.’ Are they old enough to listen to your music?

Brett: ‘Yeah, I’ve got a stepson who’s 11 and a little boy who’s three and has started to play the drums. We often play “Anarchy in the UK” together.’ So you don’t buy that line about the pram in the hallway killing creativity? Brett: ‘I just don’t believe that. I find there’s friction within the most comfortable relationship, and good writing is about documenting friction, documenting tension, for me. Or good Suede writing. And there’s always friction to find.’ Are you film fans?

Mat: ‘I think Brett’s probably the biggest film lover in the band. When we were planning the film for “Night Thoughts”, we all went to Roger with lists of films we liked.’ Brett: ‘Lots of arty stuff. Lots of Bergman. Things like that.’ Mat: ‘Lots of kitchen-sink drama.’ Brett: ‘Yeah, ’60s stuff. I think the combination of the two is where we meet. We’re high art kitchen sink!’

[5tornhomos]

Always Your Advocate - Chapter 2

Story Summary:  After five years of being in one of the most successful boy bands in the world, Harry Styles is about to embark on his solo career. While at Columbia, he meets Bethany Russo, who’s just been assigned to work with him.  As much as she wants to remain professional, she just can’t keep away from him.

Chapter Summary: Harry and Beth spend the night at a bar, getting to know each other.

Word Count: 3.3k

A/N: Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! I think this chapter is a lot more fun than the first one so I would love if anyone gave it a read! Another thanks to @harryeatmyass​​ for helping me with this chapter!

You can also read it on AO3 or Wattpad!

If you missed chapter 1, you can read it here!

From the moment she spoke with Harry, Beth started to overthink everything. Overthinking was one of her specialties. Unfortunately, it was one of the downsides of her ability to plan and research everything. She was constantly thinking of a million different scenarios, trying to figure out what might happen, or what could go wrong.  What was Harry trying to accomplish? Was he trying to flirt with her? Was he just looking for a one-night stand? Or was he just a nice guy, trying to make a friend? She wondered if it would be considered unprofessional for her to be going out with one of her clients. Could she be reprimanded, or even fired, for doing something with Harry? As she tried to settle herself down, she realized that nothing happened yet. All she had agreed to was having a drink with Harry. That didn’t have to mean anything. It was harmless, right? Maybe this was just what she needed. Maybe she needed to go out for a drink and loosen up a little bit.

As she walked home, the thoughts continued to race in her head. She hopped on the subway to get to her apartment in Brooklyn. When she arrived home, she saw her phone was buzzing with a phone call from an unknown number.

“Hello Bethany,” it was Harry,” I just wanted to give you a quick call to see what time you’d like to go out tonight. Does 8 work?”

Not many people called her Bethany, but she didn’t mind if Harry did. She liked the way it sounded when he said it. Even though she had just been overthinking everything, she immediately became calmer once she heard his voice. There was something comforting about him.

“WHO is this?” she asked jokingly as if his voice and accent weren’t distinct enough.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Do you give your phone number to a lot of British men?”

“Wait. You’re British? I didn’t know that. This changes everything.”

“So, does that mean that you don’t want to meet me tonight?”

“No. Absolutely not. 8 is perfect.”

“Great. I’ll pick you up. Just text me your address,” he said.

“I’m all the way in Brooklyn, you don’t have to come here to pick me up. I can meet you somewhere,” she told him.

“What kind of gentleman would I be if I didn’t pick up a lady for a date?” he asked.

A date? This is a date…She tried not to panic. Just because it was a “date” didn’t mean that anything serious had to happen between the two of them. Again, she tried to reassure herself that they were just going out for a drink. She just needed to relax and enjoy herself.

Beth looked through her closet, debating on what she should wear. Harry already saw her in a professional-looking dress, so she wanted to go with something more casual. Since they would be spending a casual night at a bar, it’s not like she had to dress fancy anyway. After looking through just about every item in her closet, Beth finally decided on wearing her dark wash ripped jeans, along with a simple black top. She paired that with a leather jacket and her favorite combat boots.

Despite her initial protests, Harry insisted on picking Beth up for their date. He rang the bell outside her brownstone apartment building. As expected, he was right on time. Beth was ready, as she was right near the door, patiently awaiting his arrival. Before he arrived, she was pacing back and forth as the thoughts ran through her head. She immediately smiled when she saw him. All of her stress went away. He was wearing jeans and a baggy green hoodie, but somehow, he made it look stylish, yet effortless. When Harry got to the door, he noticed that she started looking around him, as if there was someone behind him.

“Were you expecting someone else?” he joked.

“No… of course not. But I just thought that you might have security with you. Isn’t it dangerous for you to be out by yourself?” she asked.

“I don’t take security with me everywhere. I still like to have the freedom to go out on my own. Besides, I’m not alone. I have you to protect me,” he said with a smirk.

“Oh, sure. I’d be a great bodyguard. I’m very intimidating, all 5’5” of me. I’d scare off everyone,” she said, as they both laughed.

“So, tell me, Bethany. Where would you like to go tonight? You’re the local, I’m sure you know all the good places to go.”

“Do you want to go somewhere that nobody will bother you?”

“That sounds perfect.”

“It’s only a few blocks away if you’re okay with walking.”

“Lead the way,” Harry told her.

Beth decided to take Harry to her favorite dive bar. She knew the owner, so she’d easily be able to get a table, even on a busy Friday night. But the main reason she wanted to take Harry to this bar is that the majority of the people there were men over the age of 30. That wasn’t exactly Harry’s core demographic, so she thought it would be perfect. Nobody would be bothering Harry, and they could sit down and get to know each other. Beth wanted to get to know the REAL Harry, not just the version that she had researched online.

As Beth led Harry into the bar, she was greeted by Dave, the owner.

“Beth! Good to see you again. It’s been a little while. What can I do for you?” Dave asked.

“Can we get a table in the back?” Beth asked.

“Of course. Anything for my favorite customer,” Dave said, as he grabbed two menus and headed towards the back of the bar.

“You know, last time I saw you here, you were with that other guy,” Dave started to say.

“We don’t have to talk about him,” Beth interrupted, with an awkward laugh.

Beth had been to this bar more times then she could count. It was there for her during some of the best and worst times in the past few years. Somewhere she could go when she needed to relax and unwind. Luckily, she knew that they had a table in the back corner where she and Harry could stay hidden from the rest of the world. As she expected, Harry walked through the bar, and nobody gave him a second look. The guys were too focused on the baseball game playing on the TV. They weren’t paying attention to anything else around them.

“So, who’s this other guy?” Harry said as they sat in their booth, across from each other.

“It’s a long story… I should probably have a drink before I get into it…”

“Ok fine. Let’s order first. What’s good here?” Harry asked.

“They have the best burgers. You’ll love it,” she told Harry.

“Seems very American.”

“I usually drink it with a Guinness. Do you like Guinness?” she asked.

“I’m British, not Irish.”

“Oh, that’s right. Maybe we should’ve signed Niall then. Maybe he would’ve been a better date. He was always my favorite member of One Direction anyway,” she teased him.

“Ok, the first thing you should know about me. I do NOT appreciate being compared to my fellow bandmates,” he joked.

“I’m sorry, Harold. I won’t compare you to anyone.”

“OK SECOND THING. My name is not Harold.”

“Ok, I knew that. I did my research.”

“Oh, did you? So, you must know everything there is to know about me then? That seems a little unfair. I don’t know much about you, other than the fact that you like Guinness and cheeseburgers. And Niall apparently.”

“You know I was kidding. Of course, you’re my favorite. How could you not be?”

As they both smiled at each other, Dave returned to their table.

“What can I get for you guys?” Dave asked.

“I’ll have my usual burger and a pint of Guinness, please,” Beth said.

“I’ll have whatever she’s having,” Harry said.

“Great, I’ll get right on that,” Dave said, as he left to put our orders in. Just a few minutes later, he returned with their order.

“So, where were we?” Harry asked.

“You were getting jealous because I said Niall was my favorite,” she joked, as they both laughed.  

“All jokes aside, I don’t want you to know the researched version of me. I want you to form your own opinion of me. Even if you end up hating me. At least that’s your own opinion,” Harry told her.

“Ok, I’m sorry. But if it helps, I talked to people that worked with you in the band. Nobody had a bad word to say about you.”

“You must have not talked to the right people.”

“So, you’re not a pleasant, funny, down to earth guy?”

“That doesn’t sound like me at all. You must have me confused with someone else.”

“Well, I guess I have to find out for myself then.”

“I still feel like you know so much about me, and I don’t know anything about you. I didn’t get to research you before Ron introduced me this morning,” Harry said.

Harry felt like she had the advantage. She knew so much about him, and he barely knew anything about her.

“Speaking of Ron, how do you think he and the other executives would feel about me seeing you? I’m worried about them finding out. They might think it’s unprofessional since I’m supposed to be working for you…” she admitted

“You could just say that it was a business meeting. Say that we talked about my album.”

“I guess I could do that.”

“Ask me about my album.”

“How’s your album going?”

“Great. Thanks for asking. See? We talked about business. Now can you tell me more about you?” Harry asked.

“What do you want to know?” she asked.

“Tell me about your family.”

“Oh, that’s a good story.”

“Sorry, was that too soon to ask such a personal question?”

“No… no. that’s okay.  I don’t mind talking about it. I was adopted by a lesbian couple. So, I have two moms, which was fun. I also have an adopted brother, Andrew, who’s three years older than me. I was born in Brooklyn, but we moved a few times. We lived in Staten Island, Queens, and Long Island for a little while. My parents still live out on Long Island. My brother lives in Manhattan now, with his girlfriend. He’s a doctor, actually. Just finished his residency. Sorry, that was a lot. Am I talking too much?” she worried.

“NO, no, of course not. I could listen to you talk all day. So, are you close with your family?” Harry asked.

“Definitely. I talk to my parents almost every day. I go out there for dinner quite often, at least once a month. My brother is always so busy, so I don’t talk with him as much as I would like. But we’re all very close. What about you? What’s your family like?”

“Well, my parents divorced when I was seven, which was a bit hard on me and my sister, Gemma. But then my mom married our stepdad, Robin. I’m still close with my family but I don’t get to see them often because I travel so much,” Harry explained.

“Speaking of traveling, how much longer are you in New York for?” she asked.

Beth was beginning to realize that she didn’t have an unlimited amount of time with him. Eventually, he would have to go back home. They would have to go back to their normal lives.

“I have a full day here tomorrow. Then I have my flight home Sunday afternoon.”

“Do you have any plans for tomorrow?” she asked him. Her confidence was growing with the added liquor in her system.

“Not yet. But I’d love to spend the day with you if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I would love to. Is there anything in particular you would like to do?”

“Not really. I’ll leave it up to you. I trust you.”

Beth didn’t really care what they would be doing. All she knew was that she wanted to spend more time with him.

“I can show you around the city. I’m sure I can find some fun things for us to do.”  

“I would love that. So, how do you like living in Brooklyn?” he asked.

Beth guessed he had probably played a show or two in Brooklyn, but maybe he didn’t remember much about it. It was another place that he probably didn’t get to explore. It wasn’t usually a place that many tourists come to anyway, as most visitors usually stick to Manhattan.

“I love Brooklyn. It’s close enough to the city, so it’s easy to commute to work. And I love all the little shops and restaurants around here. But I do miss being in a house, though. If I ever move out of an apartment, I’d love to have a yard where I could garden and grow my own fruits and vegetables to cook with.”

“Oh, you cook?”

“Well, I’m no Ina Garten, but I try.”

“Tell me your favorite dish to make.”

“I love pasta so it would either have to be Spaghetti Bolognese or carbonara. My family is Italian, so it’s the kind of food I grew up on.”

“If I’m lucky, maybe you’ll make it for me one day.”

“I would love to make you dinner,” she smiled.

As the night went on, they continued to drink and get to know each other. The alcohol was helping both of them relax and take some of the pressure off. They were both enjoying learning more about each other.

“So, let’s go back to all this research you did on me. What exactly did all this research entail?” Harry asked.

“Well, other than talking to some people that knew you, I watched a lot of videos. But that didn’t help. It doesn’t matter if I watched a thousand of your interviews, because you never actually answer the questions anyway,” she laughed.

“I just don’t like random people knowing too many details about my personal life,” Harry explained.

“No, I get it. That’s fair. You do get asked some weird questions. But I’m just saying… watching your interviews doesn’t exactly mean that I know much about you.”

“Did you listen to any of our music or watch any of our music videos?” he asked.

“Of course! I watched every video. I listened to every song.”

“I’m not sure if I believe you.”

“You want to test me?”

“What’s your least favorite music video?” he asked.

“Why wouldn’t you ask about my favorite video?” she questioned.

“Because I want to know that you can be critical to me. I need that. Especially if we’re going to be working together. This is never going to work if we can’t be honest with each other,” he told her.

“Ok fine…” she had to think for a moment. “I guess it would have to be…Steal my Girl? It was just so odd to me. It seemed like you guys took every idea you ever had and smashed it into one video. Or you reached a level of fame that they gave you anything you asked for. Can we get a monkey? Sure. Can we get sumo wrestlers? Sure. Can we get Danny DeVito to be in it for absolutely no reason? Sure.”

“You didn’t have to be THAT honest.”

“I’m sorry…If it’s any help, I like the song itself,” she told him.

“Ok fine. What’s your least favorite song?”

“Oh… uhhh… What is it called? I kept skipping it…” she tried to remember, so she took out her phone and looked through some of their songs to jog her memory. “Oh, Something Great. That’s it.”

“I WROTE THAT ONE.”

“I… I mean… the lyrics are fine. I guess? I’m sorry. This feels mean. I don’t like this,” she said. She was starting to worry that she was hurting his feelings.

“No, no. It’s okay. I asked for your opinion. I appreciate the honesty. And I’ve heard much worse said about me. But it’s nice to know that you don’t like a song I wrote, and you’ll be working with me,” he joked.

“Technically I don’t have to like the music, I just have to promote it,” she joked.

“Oh, thanks, that’s very comforting,” he said, sarcastically.

“I don’t want to be mean to you. Why don’t you say something mean about me to make it even?” she offered.

“What mean things could I possibly have to say about you?”

“Well, maybe once you learn more about me, you’ll come up with something. But for now, I have a secret to tell you, Harry.”

“What is it? You can tell me.”

“I’ve never seen the Notebook,” she admitted.

Harry got up from the booth as if he was going to leave. “That’s it. That was the last straw. Of everything you’ve said, that was the most offensive,” he teased.

“No… I’m sorry… Please don’t go.”

The two of them stayed in the corner of that bar until the last call. Neither of them had realized that they had been talking until 2 AM. It didn’t feel like they had been talking for 6 hours, because the time flew by so quickly as they learned more about each other. And luckily, they had gotten through the night without anyone bothering Harry. When Dave brought over their check, they both instinctively reached for it.

“I brought you here. Let me take care of it,” Beth offered.

“Nope. Absolutely not. I will not accept that. I was the one who asked you out,” Harry said.

“But what about this being a business meeting? What kind of person would I be if I didn’t pay for the client’s meal?” she tried to say, knowing that it was a bit of a stretch.

“What kind of gentleman would I be if I allowed the lady to pay for the meal?” he responded.

After their back and forth, Beth gave in. By the end of the night, they were both slightly tipsy. Like the proper gentleman that he is, Harry walked Bethany back to her apartment. To keep each other steady, they held on to one another as they made the short walk back to her apartment. Beth wished that the walk would’ve been longer so that he didn’t have to leave so quickly.

“Well, I had a lovely time with you tonight. Thank you for showing me a little part of Brooklyn,” Harry said.

“I had a great time too. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

The two had barely finished their first date, and they were already looking forward to their second one. They just couldn’t get enough of each other. They never wanted the night to end.

The two of them were almost on top of each other. Beth was so close to Harry that she could feel his breath. She could smell the warm and spicy aroma of his cologne. As she looked into his eyes, any stress than she initially had was now evaporated. At that moment, she felt completely comfortable with him. He was right in front of her face as if he was contemplating kissing her.

“I look forward to it. Goodnight Bethany,” he said, as he leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on her forehead.

“Goodnight, Harry,” she said, unable to contain her smile. It wasn’t an intense kiss, but it left her wanting more.

Harry watched her unlock the door to her apartment, making sure that she got in okay.  She considered inviting him inside, but she knew where that would lead. Knowing that she was a little tipsy, she had to deny her urges. If she was going to sleep with Harry Styles, she wanted to remember every single detail.  But she felt comfort knowing that they were going to spend the next day together.

[sightsoundrhythm]

JUSTIN BROWN

Justin Brown is a drummer and composer from Oakland, California. His journey so far has seen him play with a multitude of artists including Thundercat, Herbie Hancock, Flying Lotus, Esperanza Spalding, Kenny Garrett and, most recently, touring in Europe with bassist Ben Williams.

Always tasteful in his approach and execution, Justin's style is progressive and virtuosic yet extremely musical. He began playing drums at a young age and later graduated to playing in clubs by his early teens, before studying at the Manhattan School of Music.

Justin has recently returned to California after being a longtime resident of New York City, where he had initially moved as a student before becoming an active participant in the city's eclectic music scene. In 2018 he released his first album as a bandleader under the name Nyeusi which gained high accolades from both the New York Times and NPR's Simon Rentner. The album sits at the intersection of jazz fusion and hip-hop, managing to sound both vintage and incredibly modern at the same time. It features a selection of luminary musicians from the New York jazz scene including Jason Lindner (★) and Fabian Almazan and is available to download here

NYEUSI by Justin Brown

SIGHT/SOUND/RHYTHM spoke with Justin before a show in Vienna, Austria to talk about his musical background and upbringing, connecting the line between some of his many collaborations, and submitting to the music.

You just moved back to California after 13 years in New York. What prompted that move for you?

Well, two things. The main thing was family. My mother is getting older, plus I also have a fifteen year old nephew and I really want to be more involved in his life.

There's no place like New York as far as the music scene, which is what drew me there, but it was just the day to day living that I tapped out on. Just the thought of getting on the train and dealing with all of those energies in a compact space... I just needed a bit more balance, for my own sanity.

So those were the main reasons, but I also have a ton of friends in LA, too, that were pulling me there.

L.A. is the type of place where you can't really beat the quality of living. I might be spending the same amount as far as rent goes but I have more time and I'm able to balance out my day a little bit more. Plus the sun is always out so it's easier on the body and brain.

What are the things that you've valued the most by being between New York and L.A.? Does one feel like a better fit than the other?

That's a good question. Well, I've mainly valued the music. Being in New York I feel like I developed faster, just because it's 24/7 and a lot of the guys that I looked up to and wanted to be around were in New York. By being there I found out who I was and what I actually wanted to do. Also, I always wanted to be involved in more than one thing and New York was the place for me to do that. Whether I wanted to play gospel music, or jazz, or hip hop, it was all happening in that space. I feel like New York made me a little stronger.

L.A. has a beautiful music scene. It's a little more close knit because you have a lot of people who are from there and who grow up with each other. It's almost like these little pockets of families who grow up with this musical journey.

It feels as though it's a little more open now, especially with a lot of the younger dudes, where you get into playing more jazz and experimental music. Although it is still a part of it, it's just not as studio focused. On the flip side of that, L.A. is teaching me a lot about the studio because it's sort of the mecca for that. I'm learning lots about mics and EQs.

I do feel like the two places are still connected. I used to say that if you wanted to become a hardcore musician then you move to New York, and if you wanted to have more stability then you'd move to L.A., but it's changing, mainly because of the younger generation and having access to the internet.

What was your experience like growing up as a kid?

Well, being in the Bay Area, there was a vast amount of artistry, from Tower of Power, to Sly and the Family Stone, from the Black Panther movement to the Hawkins Family. It was really cool to be in an environment where art was prominent.

I was fortunate to go to Berkeley High School where I met Thomas Pridgen and a lot of other amazing musicians. Even though it was a public school, the school band was really good and it had this stature for being one of the best in the country. That school was just a bunch of creatives.

I was there with Daveed Diggs, who was in Hamilton, as well as Chinaka Hodges. There were a bunch of different creatives there and that was really cool to be around. There were also outreach programs like the Young Musician's Program, which is a summer school at the University of California, Berkeley for kids under eighteen and they're basically teaching you at a college level. From being there, and being around the people that I grew up with, I knew what I wanted to pursue. I knew as a kid that I had a talent but I didn't start to exude in it until after I left the Bay Area.

I was very active in music, plus my mother is also a gospel musician, so I was learning a lot. I was fortunate enough to have good parents who helped me to cultivate my craft and I'm very thankful for having been in that environment. I had opportunities to play small gigs. I really commend my mother because from the ages of thirteen to fifteen, she used to let me play at late night clubs and she'd come pick me up at two in the morning. I'm very fortunate that she allowed me to have that outlet.

That's some good parenting.

Yeah! She's a musician as well so she saw an opportunity for me to go in a direction that she didn't really go in. She would go out on tour but it was a struggle because she wanted to be at home with the family. Whenever I wanted to practice or hang out with musicians or go to shows, she was always there to take me. At a young age I got to see a lot of guys playing who would be coming through the Bay Area, like Dennis Chambers and Brian Blade.

You've been friends with Thomas Pridgen for a long time.

Yeah, we grew up together. I met Thomas when I was 8, and I think he was 9. I actually just talked to him earlier. To this day he's like my brother. I'm fortunate enough to have grown up with a guy like that, especially with playing drums.

Were you learning from each other?

Man, he was at such a high level that I was learning from him, for sure. He had access to a lot of the guys that we were watching and he was exposed to the instrument at a very young age. I think the most that I gained from Thomas was how to find yourself through the instrument and how to really dedicate yourself to the craft. We used to cut high school together to go shed the whole day. We'd meet up at school, go to his house to play drums, and then go back to school for band. (laughs)

I also met Ronald Bruner through Thomas. I remember that Thomas would call Ronald and they would play drums over the phone! Those two are my brothers for sure.

Is Ronald still playing with Kamasi Washington?

Yeah, he is. I'm not sure what Thomas is doing right now but he does everything. I know that he was playing with Residente and before that Trash Talk. He's playing a lot in the bay area and he's always super active. I got to see him play with The Mars Volta and that was unreal.

Yeah. All of the drummers who have passed through that band have been phenomenal.

Yeah! Jon Theodore, Deantoni Parks, Thomas, Dave Elitch. All special dudes, for sure.

When you left the Bay Area, did you go straight to New York?

Not right away. I ended up auditioning for the Dave Brubeck Institute, which is at the University of Pacific, in Stockton, California. So I studied there for two years before moving to New York, which was actually a smart move because when I look back on myself at eighteen, I wouldn't have been ready for New York, as a human and as a musician.

It was cool to still be somewhat closer to home and to still be able to take the time to really figure it out. Eric Moore also lived in Stockton, California so I became really good buddies with him. He was my shed partner and we played drums every single day. Being there allowed me to really focus in on the instrument and that's where it hit me that I wanted to do this.

I learned that in order to be good you had to put in the time and the work. So that put me in a really good space and it became a habit of me just trying to get better.

Was it after studying in California that you went to the Julliard School for Music in New York?

I auditioned for the New School and Julliard, where I ended up getting a full scholarship. Once I saw the curriculum though I realised that it wasn't for me. Their curriculum was something that I had already been through, with all of my studies at high school and also at the Brubeck Institute.

I actually dropped out on the first day of school. I woke up and just thought, 'I can't do this'. I didn't even go to class, I went straight to the Dean and told him that it wasn't for me.

At the time there were so many musicians that I looked up to, from Steve Coleman to Yosvany Terry to Josh Roseman... I mean, Steve Coleman had a workshop every Monday at the Jazz Gallery and I used to go there and study. Then it was really about playing and learning what that experience was like, so I dropped out of school. It was the best thing for me because I was just ready to play.

That was a smart move.

Yeah. I mean, sometimes I look back on it and it probably would've been easy to go back to school and to get a degree and get my masters but I wasn't in that headspace. I was ready to play and I was on a mission to try to get better. So I dropped out of Julliard and spent one year in New York working. I got a day job at Guitar Centre just so I could survive. After six months I thought, 'if I'm really going to do this, I just have to fall face first'. I had to be involved in anything and everything that I could, from a restaurant gig to a jazz gig. I knew it was going to be really hard but I had to do it.

After that first year there I ended up going back to school. I went to the Manhattan School for Music and that's when I met other cool musicians and started to build a name for myself. While I was in school I got the call play with Kenny Garrett and after that I started touring.

After leaving Julliard and taking a year to work, do you feel like you benefitted from not fully going down the academic route at that point?

Absolutely. It felt like a better move for me to do that.  

I still consider myself to be a jazz musician, and in New York you still have the masters there who are the great practitioners of this music. I was going to shows and sitting right up under the drums and watching everyone from Brian Blade to Billy Hart, and I even got see Max Roach when he was still around. So it was about going to check out the masters, asking them questions and really learning about the culture.

If I was doing a hip hop gig, I was going to the hip hop clubs and asking Rich Medina what albums to check out. CBGBs was still around, so I got to and see what that was like and to experience that. So it was about learning the culture of each music and I feel like that's something that they aren't going to teach you in school. It's something you have to find for yourself.

What would you like to see implemented in music education that wasn't present when you were studying, or that you feel is just absent?

That's a really good question. I think allowing more students the opportunity to check out the masters. They need to be bringing in people who have the real experience and not just a teacher who went to school, learned the methods and then says, 'here's how to be a jazz musician'. That's not the way to do it.

Colleges bring in master musicians but it's only a minuscule part of the thing. It'd be great to be able to call someone like Billy Hart and to take students to them, to see the show. Also, it's an economic game. Berkley and the Manhattan School for Music have the money to do it but I think it's really about grabbing a hold of the experience. You're not going to really grow unless you're out there doing it. You can be taught a bunch of theory but to be in the moment and playing is where it's at.

You've collaborated with a multitude of different artists including Flying Lotus, Thundercat and Esperanza Spalding, How have you found it adapting to all of those different situations?

It's all about connecting the line. They're all unique individuals but they're also very like-minded. They're vessels submitting to this music and they're all willing to grow. I feel like the more music you go and check out, the easier it is to connect the dots and be able to adapt.

I learned that I would play differently in certain situations, whether I was playing with Esperanza Spalding or Thundercat, but it was really all about submitting to the music and setting a foundation to make things feel good. It's all music and I just want to be able to bring out the characteristics of what the artist is trying to say. At the end of the day it's about having the mindset that it's really not about me. It's about a bigger picture and to be a vessel in a way that gives someone hope or inspiration throughout their daily life.  

The physical aspect between the people I play with can also be different. Once I started playing with Thundercat, I knew that I could play in that style but I knew that I didn't have the physical capability and stamina to do it. So I had to go back to the drawing board in some ways. I even went to Thomas (Pridgen) and asked him, 'how do you not get tired playing these gigs?' He told me that not only do you have to play like that in your practice but you have to take care of yourself by getting proper sleep, drinking a lot of water and stretching. Over time it became easier.

I had a regimen within my practice where I would work on independence and groove, but then it just became about playing and getting my body in the flow. It takes a lot of patience to understand what works and how your body reacts to certain things, like when you play from fast to slow. Trying to relax the mind and body within that. It really comes down to submitting to it.

So it's mainly been the physical changes between gigs that I've had to adapt to more than the musical ones. I guess there are stylistic things which are different. I mean, with Esperanza it'll be sort of samba and bossanova, but with Thundercat it's more backbeat rock. Essentially it's about grooving, making the music feel good and always being open to learning. I try not to be single-minded in music, because the more things you're able to expose yourself to, the greater the musical language is that you can draw from. It's about always being 100% in it. Always checking out music and going to shows. Always talking about music, and just being a musical nerd. The more experience you get the more natural it becomes.

You played with Herbie Hancock. What was it like getting that call?

Bro. That was crazy. Playing with Herbie was a surreal experience. He's been a major influence on me throughout my musical journey so it was a dream come true.

I think it was Terrence Martin that recommended me. I got the call and did the rehearsal... I rarely get nervous but I was starstruck. I couldn't believe it was happening. For the first few days of the tour, it took me a little while to get over the hump. Like, 'oh, man, I'm on an airplane with Herbie Hancock! I'm eating with Herbie Hancock!' (laughs) On the third or forth day he walked up to me and said, 'Yo, Justin! You've been killing it these last few days!' And it just kind of took a load off me, because he was cool and he was feeling what I was doing.

I got to ask him a bunch of questions about Miles (Davis) and Tony (Williams). He actually told me that Tony played with John Coltrane, which was mind boggling to me.

What period would this have been in?

This would have been in the '60s. Herbie was really good friends with Tony, so I asked him: 'Man, did Tony ever play with Coltrane?' and he said that, yes, he did. There was a week at Birdland where something had happened with Elvin (Jones), where I think he might have got arrested, I believe. So Coltrane asked Tony to play that whole week. I asked Herbie, 'Are there any recordings of it?' and he said, “Yeah. I believe his wife has the recordings.” So it was documented.

Herbie never heard the recordings but he saw Tony afterwards and he said that Coltrane was the reason why Tony switched to playing with bigger sticks. Coltrane had so much stamina from playing as much as he did that Tony wanted to get on that same level. This was in the '60s, so already early on he was trying to get more energy and more power after playing with Coltrane. So that was a really cool moment that he shared with me.

Herbie's full spectrum, on a musical level and on a human level. He's extremely open and is very technically minded. We were all sitting at the dinner table one night and we're taking pictures on our phones. Herbie walks up and says, “you guys want to see something? You ever seen a 3D camera phone?” A company called Red made the first 3D camera phone and they sent him the first one. He was like, “yeah, they sent me the aluminium one. I asked for the titanium one, so that'll be waiting for me when I get back!” He's always been that guy. When Sony first started making CDs, they called him. When Midi was first starting to be used, he was one of the first guys to know about it. So it was just really cool to be in that space. I got to chat to him everyday.

He's not going back but he's moving forward into the beyond. I'll definitely cherish that moment [of playing with him] for the rest of my life. I knew going into it that I had be humble; to be thankful and learn as much as I could from Herbie. It definitely made me a better musician and a better human, just from that one month on the road with him. Just seeing how focused he is... it was unreal.

What have been some of the milestones in your playing that have pushed you creatively?

Meeting Herbie was definitely a milestone for me. Anytime I get to talk to one of the masters, I feel like that makes me a stronger human and a stronger musician. It makes me more confident in what I want to achieve. Playing with Kenny Garrett... as well as being able to play with my peers, you know. It's really cool to just be able to grow together.

The day I heard Caravan by Art Blakey when I was ten years old blew my mind. Just hearing how he played the drums and how much authority he had over the instrument was one of those moments where I thought, 'oh, so that's how you do it!'

For me it's about adapting to the energy of the room and being open in that sense as to how I can inspire someone. It goes back to submitting to the music. All of the practice, as well as checking out videos and seeing drummers live definitely helps, but I also want to be a musician that is completely in the moment. I don't ever want to go onto the bandstand thinking that I know what's going to happen. I want to have a mindset that is ready to expect the unexpected and to always play what is called for in the music. You have to be able to open yourself up to what's going to come out naturally and not try to force anything to come out.

All of those things have made me a better musician.

What's something that you've been paying attention to recently that's been inspiring you, either musically or non-musicially?

Well, I'm not really political but I am paying more attention to issues in the world, because as a black man, I feel like I have no choice, you know? I have no choice but to find a way to dumb down the bullshit. So I'm trying to pay more attention to what's going on in the world; to try and inspire someone to get through, because these are tough times.

I've been given a gift... in church you learn at a very young age that it's not about the accolades or being seen, it's about being a spiritual vessel, to give back and to give praise to the most high.

I guess musically I'm really paying a lot of attention to the drum community and seeing how social media is having an affect on it. I saw the transition with my generation, so it's a little harder for me to go all in and just post things up all of the time. I don't want to over expose myself, but I also just want to be a positive example for someone and to inspire the next generation of younger players, to show them that it's possible. I'm also paying more attention to my health, because with the older I get and the more I'm touring, my health is key to staying strong.

You put out the Nyeusi record a little while ago. Are planning on doing anything more with that project?

I'm still trying to figure it out. I am starting to hear the music and I am starting to get the inspiration to do another album, but I'm not sure if I'm going to call it Nyeusi, because I'm in a different space. With where my life is moving, and all the things I draw inspiration from, there might be a different message.

I wanted Nyeusi to be a theme of who I am more than anything. Even though it's my music it's still not about me whatsoever, and I wanted room for all the other musicians to speak in that project. I mean, I might do a Nyeusi II, just because it was well received and people gravitated towards it, which gave me the push to keep going.

It took a lot of energy and a lot of time to put that album out, and once it was out I didn't really do much touring. There was another side that I had to learn about which was how to be an artist and to present the music. Now, I'm more in a head space of wanting to play and wanting to get the music out live and create more content. So it's very loose and in the air, but I will say that for 2020 I'll be doing more shows with Nyeusi and I'm going to have more live content out, so that's where I'm at with it.

Any European dates for 2020?

Yeah, in the fall, and maybe even later on, and then just doing some shows in New York and L.A..

If you could give three albums to a drummer, which would you choose and why?

This is really difficult. Man.

Ok, I would say:

James Brown – Funky Drummer, or The Payback. Why James Brown? Because that's where hip-hop is coming out of, with backbeats and breakbeats. So it can provide a good foundation for someone wanting to become a hip-hop drummer and to have an understanding of the language. Not just James Brown but soul and funk music.

Miles Davis – Kind of Blue. Just because that's a quintessential record for jazz. You can hear where it's coming from and where it's going.

Stevie Wonder – Songs in the Key of Life. He's an amazing songwriter and he plays every instrument. Being a drummer, you can get so caught up in the drums that you lose sight of what the message is, and Stevie Wonder is a beautiful storyteller. The music is killing but there's also a message which makes you want to investigate the lyrics. You get a sense of purpose and what music is actually meant for; what your role is as a drummer, too.

What are some of the things that are currently challenging you, either as a musician or just on a human level?

On a human level, learning to love and respect everyone for who they are and what they do. To never knock another person's path. To always be encouraging and spread love, if you will.

As a player, and this is going to sound crazy, but playing louder and faster. (laughs)

I mean, that's a really hard thing for me so I'm really trying to develop and get my phrases and musical statements to be a lot stronger, so that it becomes a part of a language and not just a lick or a fill. So I really want to keep developing and getting better as a person.

Good answer. Thanks for taking the time to sit down and do this.

Man, no problem! Thanks for asking!

Interview & live photo by Dave Jones.