The Juke of Earl: August 2006

Aug 26, 2006

The 40 8/19/06 - 8/25/06

Make Damn Sure / Taking Back Sunday (4 wks @ #1)

One Blood / The Game (3)

Here I Come / The Roots (20)
This is just a 30 second promo for the album featuring "Here I Come". There isn't a video for the song so this is as close as it gets for now. This could shape up to be one of the best albums of the year. Oh yeah, this is the biggest mover this week.

The Funeral / Band of Horses (2)

B of H slips a couple spots due to the hip hop takeover of the top 3. Maybe if Diplo remixed this track it might make it's way back up there...

Put your money where your mouth is / Jet (9)

Did someone ask for more cowbell?

Cheated Hearts / Yeah Yeah Yeahs (5)

The YYYs are still on fire with this, but I am itching for a new one. Check out their I tunes acoustic version of Sonic Youth's Diamond Sea. A fitting cover executed perfectly.

I Write Sins, not Tragedies / Panic! at the Disco (4)

Goin' Down / Yung Joc (8)

Knights of Cydonia / Muse(12)

Sexy Back / Justin Timberlake (6)

Your eyes are liars / Sound Team (13)

Leave Before the Lights Come On / Arctic Monkeys (15)

Miss Murder / AFI (7)

Black Swan / Thom Yorke (10)

Wolf like me / TV on the Radio (30)

I guess this is the first single from Return to Cookie Mountain which drops on 9/12. I am predicting that the modern-day art-rock masters will breakthrough with the new album.

Tell me Tell me / The Adored(11)

Sing it out / Hope of the States(14)

I will follow you into the dark / Death Cab For Cutie(17)

Original Fire / Audioslave(19)

Viscera Eyes / The Mars Volta(18)

The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven / The Black Angels(21)

Lloyd, I'm ready to be heartbroken / Camera Obscura(19)

Smash Your Head / Girl Talk(24)

Cut and paste. I did this stuff with a double deck tape recorder up in my bedroom when I was 15. I couldn't match production value with Girl Talk, but it's fun to play name that tune with all of this song's samples.

Touchdown Turnaround / hellogoodbye(35)

Signs of Life / Every Move a Picture(27)

Don't Wake Me Up / The Hush Sound(23)

Little razorblade / Pink Spiders(38)

I Gotta Feeling (Just Nineteen)/ Eagles of Death Metal (29)

Nausea / Beck NEW

One of the most versatile artists of our time returns in October with The Information. This is one of the new tracks on his myspace page (click the song title).

Lay Low / My Morning Jacket(26)

31 weeks on the chart. Longest run for any song this year. Probably for quite a while.

Ladylike / Storm and the Balls (31)

Save Room / John Legend NEW

Black Grease / The Black Angels NEW

Summer Shudder / AFI(22)

Phenomena / Yeah Yeah Yeahs(25)

Smiley Faces / Gnarls Barkley(40)

Crazy / Gnarls Barkley(34)

Liar (takes one to know one) / Taking Back Sunday NEW

In the morning / Razorlight (33)

And we all return to our roots / The Forecast NEW

A little more change on the 40 this week stylistically speaking. The number in parentheses after the title/artist is the song's position last week. New songs are in green with big red letters after them. That kind of drives that home doesn't it?

This is shaping up to be an exciting fall for music. New TV on the Radio, The Mars Volta, Beck, and The Roots should keep things interesting aurally for me. But there is a slew of other big name new releases coming in the next couple of months from Barenaked Ladies, John Mayer, Bob Dylan (Rolling Stone just gave it 5 stars), The Killers, Audioslave, Justin Timberlake, Beyonce, and Jessica Simpson.

I want to mention that Bruce Gary (drummer for the Knack) passed away this past week of lymphoma. The Knack's "Get The Knack" was one of the first albums I recall owning and air drumming along to. My Sharona is still a favorite of mine and was the first song I recall being truly obsessed about. I 'd play it over and over until I knew every lyric and drum beat. While The Knack is oft-regarded as a one hit wonder, there were several other great songs on that album and it's follow up, though none nearly as iconic as "My Sharona". Bruce and the other members of The Knack unkowingly laid the foundation for my lifelong obsession with music, music lists, song structures, and all the things that make me a music dork. I would have inevitably travelled the same path without them, but they got to me first and you always remember your first. RIP Bruce Gary.

Aug 19, 2006

The 40 8/12 - 8/18

Aug 11, 2006

The 40 8/5 - 8/11

Make Damn Sure / Taking Back Sunday

The Funeral / Band of Horses

Cheated Hearts / Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Another week on top for Taking Back Sunday, another week I smell like teen spirit. Melancholy is quickly approaching the top in the form of Band of Horses though.

New this week at 30 is Jet's Put your money where your mouth is. Sounds a bit different than their last album, but time will tell if they progress past their derivative-based rock and roll. Local heroes Storm and the Balls are the other new entry at 34 with Ladylike. I can only find this on their myspace page (in both PG and R rated versions - how considerate). I stream this at least once a day.

I am very glad to see Storm doing so well on Rock Star right now. She goes out each week and delivers one of the top two or three perfomances. Hard to say if she will win, but if not, she is getting much more publicity for her band and that is a beautiful thing.

The only other major movement comes from The Game who flies from 37 last week to 9 this week. I gots me some love for the dude with the teardrop tat.

In the real world, Fergie has found her way to Billboard's #1 with London Bridge. That is a no-brainer. I called that one a few weeks ago...someone needs to call Gwen Stefani and tell her that her Hollaback Girl got hijacked. I am still waiting for Justin Timberlake's Sexyback to fly into Billboard's top 10. Hurry up and release the song on I Tunes already. I would much rather see an ex Mousketeer on top than a Kids Incorporated alumni. But that is me.

Aug 7, 2006

Year of the (Arctic) Monkey

This week saw a little movement at the top, most significantly Taking Back Sunday seeing the top spot. Further down the chart, it looked like the last gasp for the Arctic Monkeys this year (A Certain Romance was just about to fall off, ending this year's domination of the 40 by the Brit stars) but then they release a new single.

Leave Before the Lights Come On is not on any album, but is just being released on its own with a few B sides as well on Aug. 14. I saw AM do this one live last June and it sounds like it could have been on their debut, but here it is, a new single and an extension to their longevity on the chart this year.

Not a week has gone by this year that at least two Arctic Monkey track wasn't lurking somewhere in the 40. Leave before... is actually the 7th song to find its way into my heavy rotation. This is their track record (no pun intended at all) since the year started.

Title / Peak / Total weeks on 40

I Bet U Look Good on the Dance Floor / 9 / 13 (this year), 25(overall)
When the Sun Goes Down / 2 / 30
Fake Tales of San Francisco / 1 (10 wks) / 28
From the ritz to the rubble / 3 / 22
A Certain Romance / 4 / 17 (currently on chart)
Who The Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys? / 6 / 14

AM have definitely logged some serious ear time and if they keep releasing EPs and one-off singles I can only oblige them to listen more. England went nuts over them, but we here in the states tend for our "alternative" to veer more towards Fall Out Boy, Panic at the Disco, and All American Rejects than a bunch of kids from the UK banging out their version of garage rock. They did get a little play with I Bet U Look Good on the Dance Floor and it was a modern rock hit so to speak, but they certainly aren't getting love from MTV. Just keep making your music boys. I, for one, will be more than happy to buy it and see you in concert.

Aug 5, 2006

The 40 7/29 - 8/4

Make Damn Sure / Taking Back Sunday

Cheated Hearts / Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Miss Murder / AFI

Aug 1, 2006

Happy Birthday MTV

You know you're getting old when...

Today is MTV's 25th birthday. Wow! Saying that statement out loud makes me realize just how fast life flies by. It doesn't seem that long ago I was watching a rash of new wave bands (and their new wave haircuts) parade about on my 13" tv. Now 25 years later, I chuckle at the imitable images many of that genre's bands purveyed to a generation of viewers looking to stand out from the crowd. What can't be laughed at though is the immense influence MTV has had on the musical tastes and culture of a nation.

I was the impressionable age of 12 when I saw Donna Summer's She Works Hard for the Money. It was the first video I recall ever seeing on MTV (we didn't get cable until '83). I still recall watching the dancing ladies in the street, marvelling at the concept of music and image complimenting each other so well. That's what I say now about it; at the time it was more along the lines of "Why is that waitress dancing in the street?" All I really knew was that from that point forward, I wanted my MTV.

I got it and what followed was a lifetime of education and influence that far surpasses any teacher I ever had in school. I learned about the plight of third world poverty through the channels coverage of Live-Aid. I was exposed to a reality just 850 miles south of me through the early videos of Dr. Dre and NWA. Through the "little video channel that could", I also discovered my first real celebrity crush, VJ Martha Quinn. This proved to be gateway to a string of MTV crushes to follow. There was Kari, Jenny, and of course Daria.

Innocently innocuous female fixations aside, MTV taught me the importance of diversity. I hadn't been introduced to the concept of recess when Bowie brought androgyny to music. I did, however, discover the notion of sexual ambiguity through Culture Club's video for Do You Really Want to Hurt Me. The first time Boy George danced onto the screen, any idea I had of what constituted gender had been forever altered. MTV was providing a medium, not only for entertainment, but also for discovery of the unknown both visually and musically.

While I can credit MTV instilling within me a strong acceptance and appreciation of the uniqueness of humans, I also thank them for leading me down a path of musical diversity that continues to this very day. Though mainly focusing on new wave bands at first, MTV eventually gave life (or at least validity and social acceptance) to the then largely subterranean genres of rap, metal, and "alternative" music. Watching shows like Yo! MTV Raps, Headbanger's Ball, and 120 minutes provided me with a wider arsenal of music to appreciate and in turn cultivated my love for that which resides outside of the normal flow of popular music.

Time brings change and as MTV got older, it strayed away from showing videos in favor of actual shows. Remote Control, Beavis and Butthead, The State, and Liquid Television still reside among my favorite shows of all time from any network. As the nineties progressed, it became increasingly obvious that MTV had traded the medium that provided the channel's iconic status for structured programming.

As the channel had done with the way America saw music, it also revolutionized what America watched on TV. With the premiere in 1991 of The Real World, MTV brought the "reality show" to the masses, planting the seeds for how a culture would watch television. I even admit the only programming I'm watching this summer consists exclusively of reality-based shows. What once was thought of as a phase has become a staple in television-viewing culture and MTV is largely responsible for it, just as they are for the glut of shows that followed their lead (Night Tracks, Friday Night Videos, and Night Flight to name a few.)

Enough about the shows. The most important part of music television was the videos and their contributions to popular culture. Videos themselves progressed from simple performance-based clips into mini-epics directed by a group of rogue auteurs who utilized the medium to its potential. Russel Mulcahy directed the first video ever shown on MTV, The Buggles' Video Killed The Radio Star, but was more famously known for his work with Duran Duran. Duran Duran arguably benefited the most of any band with the advent of music videos. Mulcahy's work with D-squared included Rio and Hungry Like The Wolf. Both of these vids were conceptual in presentation and immersed the viewer in a cinematic world, a feat rarely achieved if ever, with music videos. Michael Jackson (in his brilliant pre-Neverland days) embraced the cinematic ideology with Beat It, Billie Jean, and ultimately with what many call the best video ever, Thriller, enabling him a level of fame only previously matched by Elvis and The Beatles.

It is through videos that MTV created icons and destroyed barriers. My youth is forever scarred (in the most excellent of ways) with the images of Madonna writhing around in a wedding dress singing about being "Like a Virgin"; the Beastie Boys introducing themselves to the world as party crashers willing to "Fight For Your Right"; Aerosmith and Run-DMC literally and figuratively breaking down the walls in Walk This Way; Axl Rose stepping off the bus from anonymity into the jungle, Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg bringing the hood to the world, and Kurt Cobain and Nirvana starting a rock revolution with one little song and video. I can't imagine my life without these iconic moments. I can't imagine my past 20-odd years without MTV.

Through all the musical trends and myriad fashion statements, through the launching of a thousand careers and the entry of unplugged into a nation's venacular, MTV looks pretty good for 25. The channel remains young in terms of demographics and programming choices. It is clearly more a calculated investment than innocent visionary now and it has paid off for them as the channel has spun off VH1, MTV2, and various international versions of MTV. I have a strong affinity for its younger days, but the same could be said for my own life at times. My adolescence will be forever known as my MTV years. Life was much simpler, music seemed more adventurous, and the world seemed an okay place as long as there was a VJ on the tube.

Happy Birthday MTV. Now start playing videos again....

Links:

First 62 videos shown on MTV
MTV shows
VJs
MTV ID 1
MTV ID2
MTV ID3
MTV ID4
MTV ID5
MTV ID6
MTV ID7
MTV ID8
MTV ID9
MTV ID10