t.w.i.m.: 9/13-9/19

Full Albums:

• The Beastie Boys, Paul’s Boutique¹
• Gorillaz, Demon Days
• Joe Bonamassa, The Ballad of John Henry²
• Kanye West, The College Dropout³
• Mike Posner, 31 Minutes to Takeoff…
• Taking Back Sunday, Where You Want to Be
• The-Dream, Love King (Deluxe Edition)⁴
• Warren Zevon, Genius: The Best of Warren Zevon⁵

Random Songs of Excellence:

• Mos Def, “Brooklyn”⁶
• Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth, “Soul Brother #1” and “Can’t Front on Me”⁷
• The-Dream, “Fancy”
• The XX, “Heart Skipped a Beat”

Songs of the Week:

• The Motherfucking Police, “Bring On The Night”⁸
• Van Halen, “(Oh) Pretty Woman” and “Dancing in the Street” ⁹

Reviews:

1. “Off the Grid” came up on shuffle and I started looking through my Beastie Boys collection only to realize that my playcount on this album was 0 for every song. I transferred all my songs to an external hard drive like two or three months ago because my music collection was more than twice my original hard drive space; a 0 playcount on Paul’s Boutique is inexcusable. It’s too good.

2. Too many great guitar riffs. Too. Many.

3. If you haven’t caught the theme yet, I listened to good music this week.

4. “Shorty priceless.”

5. One of my favorite quotes from all of college is: “Good art reveals something new each time you see it.” And that’s what this album is. Except I can’t see it, I can hear something great every time I listen. Indeed sir, a little old lady got mutilated late last night^A.

6. A rap song that starts with an interpolation of a Red Hot Chili Peppers song? Count me in. This three part suite peaks in the middle, but it’s still pretty great. Plus, I like how he talks about where I used to live^B.

7. These songs come from one of the best albums ever invented and I will probably listen to it again soon because it’s great.

8. I can’t find the words to tell you how great this song is. I can tell you that it embodied my life for this past week, though.

9. I got to work one day and a Van Halen song had come up on shuffle, I think it might have been “Secrets” or something, but it reminded me, “Oh yeah. They do some other songs that will make retail less terrible.”

A. There’s too much excellent alliteration, rhyming and assonance going on in that sentence for me to even start writing about it. You should just listen to it and bask in Warren’s greatness.

B. But I am still glad I no longer live in Crown Heights.

Comments:

I talked with one of my best friends recently. He asked why I haven’t been blogging much and I explained that I do a lot of writing for other people these days. Sure, some of those places aren’t, how do you say it, “paying” right now, but I still do it because I’m making my resume fucking awesome. And furthermore, I do some of my best writing inebriated. And guess what I didn’t have from last Sunday until Friday? If you guessed alcoholic beverages, you were correct and you should give yourself a pat on the back. And then tell your female friends biting guys on the back so hard they have bite marks is not sexy. But I’ll probably hit on her anyway because I like boobs. These are the mistakes I make.

Now I think I have Carpal Tunnel.