This song just fits my mood to a T, and it probably should be alarming that in about a decade, it has never failed to do so. But without its cheerful bitchiness and holiday-spirit cynicism (helpfully every bit as catchy as the actual carols), I probably wouldn’t make it through the day without wanting to tear off my own head and eat it.

The Kinks – Father Christmas

PS: Merry Christmas, everyone! (belated by now, but still)

I thought maybe I would find the perfect “Year Zero” for rock & roll, but things are never that simple, are they? Rocket 88 was an early harbinger of the mid 50′s revolution in popular music. But unlike 1789 or 1917, the rock & roll revolution can’t be precisely dated. It happened somewhere between 1955 and 1956.

Before 1955, the vast majority of popular songs seemed to have been aimed at adults: the brave  folks who had lived through the Great Depression and then WWII. They probably just wanted some light, cheery music to soundtrack their newfound peace and prosperity in the suburbs. The pop music of the early ’50s reflected the antiseptic new housing layouts springing up all across the United States. The songs were pleasant, shiny, squeaky-clean, and innocent. And they could also be funny, in a Marx Brothers / Abbott & Costello / Vaudeville kind of way. Jazz was by far the raciest game in town… but the jazz that made its way to the charts was suitably neutered for the consumption of people who might have looked a bit like this:

You ended up with a lot of music like this:

1952 was pretty dead, popular music wise. I tried to extract a playlist of decent songs from the year, but very little stood out. Even ‘Jambalaya’ — a song from the dawn of my parents’ generation that I once heard Usha Uthup’s sister do a raucous rendition of — sounds tame.

This novelty song is pretty funny:

1953 was a step in the right direction. Check out this hilarious spoof of the Dragnet theme (which is also pretty catchy), George and the Dragonet:

This odd Italian song is quite sprightly:

Listening to all this in the jaded, hypersexual 21st century, the general vibe is romantic, upbeat, inoffensive, and  even a little adorable — it was the Mickey Mouse era of pop culture. The Baby Boomer generation was just about learning to walk, and this is what their mothers might have sung to them in 1953:

But the older siblings of the postwar boom babies were rapidly growing up, and a new category of person — the teenager — emerged as a discernible demographic for the first time in human history. In the not-too-distant past, able-bodied working class adolescents either began toiling in the fields or factories (if they were boys) or preparing for marriage (if they were girls). Suddenly there was a group of people — not quite kids and not quite grown-ups — who had pocket money, free time, and a restless desire to escape stodgy domestic tranquility. Never having experience the Wars or the Depression, their depressions were more about boredom and repression. The stage was set for the rock and roll explosion…

_______

Further Listening

Billboard Hits of 1952

Billboard Hits of 1953

Billboard Hits of 1954

Han’s selections from the early ’50s

~

I’ve always felt that placing a work of art in context helps you develop a new appreciation for it. Not everyone responds to the historical lens, but I’d like to work with it, perhaps incorporating other lenses and prisms along the way. So the plan is to go chronologically through the history of rock and pop since the 1950s, until such time as the branching genealogical tree gets too tangled to climb up (or is it down?). It will be hard to stick to a strict chronology, so I might jump back and forth a bit. Maybe movie posters, trailers and historical snippets will help set the ambience too.

Origins are always murky, so let’s start with what is “widely considered” the first rock and roll song. 1951′s ‘Rocket 88′ by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats — a band formed by Ike Turner (later infamous for being Tina Turner’s abusive husband).

It’s got several elements that soon came to define rock and roll. The rollicking pianos, the blues rhythm sans blues, and the lyrics celebrating the thrill of cruising in a beautiful, powerful American automobile. Chuck Berry would later transform these elements into sheer musical gold: his philosopher’s stone was the electric guitar. But we’ll come to that in a later.

One of the biggest hits of the era was Nat King Cole’s ‘Unforgettable’.

The top-selling album that year was by Thelonious Monk. But those were the days when most people bought singles on little 45 rpm records. The hits tended to be sweetly romantic, conservative, traditional. The occasional novelty song added some spice. But it was all very G-rated. In 1951 Disney’s Alice in Wonderland was one of the top grossing movies of the year. (I was pleasantly surprised to discover how well A Streetcar Named Desire fared that year. A very mature movie, even half a century later.)

The 1950s was the age of McCarthyism, so hard-left folkies like Pete Seeger found themselves playing it a little safe:

Rocket 88 might sound tame today, but amidst soppy songs like Johnnie Ray’s ‘Cry‘,  it must have jumped out of the radio. It may not seem like it now, but it was a harbinger of revolutionary times: music was becoming youthful, irreverent, and most importantly, fun.

~

Here’s a grooveshark playlist with a handful of hits from 1951, ending with ‘Rocket 88′. Here’s a bigger playlist: the Billboard Top 30 for that year.

1951 in film:

How's my handwriting?

I bought this VCD back in (pre-law) college, for the princely sum of 300 rupees. I didn’t have a computer of my own back then, so I took it to a friend’s hostel room one night and watched it on his computer with a bunch of other friends. None of the friends were drummers, but we were youngly innocent and stuck in a girl-free environment whence the idea of watching a hairy drummer on a flickering desktop monitor in a darkened room seemed like a good way to spend a Wednesday night. As the hour dragged on and Portnoy descended into the mathematical intricacies of counting odd time signatures (“It’s all numbers,” he says more than once on the video: “It’s all arithmetic”), it began to seem less of a good idea to most of them, and I’m happy to admit that I too failed to see the point of a lot of what he was saying. It didn’t help that at the time I didn’t own a double bass pedal and had never played anything approaching progressive rock music– except in my little mental fantasies where the objects of my crushes gazed admiringly from the wings as I played topless on a large concert stage, biceps and shoulder muscles rippling in the breeze. Crash, boom, bang, indeed.

I hardly ever watched the VCD again after that initial viewing, and it has spent most of its life ensconced in my large green CD holder, jockeying for space with numerous movies, old Friends DVDs and other concert and instructional videos.

Following a recent improvement in my double bass playing (from a base of zero) with some practice on my electronic kit, I’d been meaning to give this and a couple of other videos I have (“Double Bass Drumming” by Joe Franco and “Back to Basics” by Dave Weckl) another viewing, to see if they could help overcome the mental wall I face every time I try to play along to a progressive metal song. Classic rock is ridiculously easy for a drummer to play, with its 4/4 time, predictable song structure, and well-defined parts for each limb to play: Right foot on bass pedal, left foot on hi-hat pedal, right hand on hi-hat or ride cymbal, and left hand on snare. Sit down to play along to a progressive piece, however, and I don’t even know where to begin. How does he make that sound? Is that the pedal bass he’s syncopating, or a floor tom? How the heck does his left hand move from that drum to the hi-hat and back again so fast, and without smashing into his right arm in the middle?? Perhaps Portnoy had some answers.

After I was done cringing at the mid-90s Portnoy’s long curls (on his head) and short curls (on his chest), I realized I had apparently internalized a lot of Portnoy’s gyaan on double bass technique from my earlier viewings of the video. My double bass practice routines are essentially everything Portnoy covers in the first half of his video. But the second half was very illuminating: this time around I finally understood what Portnoy was trying to get across with all his talk of numbers and arithmetic. Perhaps surprisingly for a drummer, I’ve always thought counting time in music is a lot harder than it seems. What does it really mean to say that a sequence of 8 counts is made up of 8 quarter-notes (and rests)?

In one excellent example, Portnoy brings the point home by explaining what’s going in two 8/8 bars of a Dream Theater song. He plays along with Dream Theater’s bassist John Myung and then-keyboardist Derek Sherinian. Two bars of 8/8 time contain a total of 16 ‘beats’, where the beat has the time value of an eighth-note. (Hence the denominator ’8′ in the 8/8 time signature.) While Myung and Sherinian play the two bars of 8/8 time, Portnoy plays instead three bars of sequentially 7/8, 5/8, and 4/8 time. 8+8 is 16, and 7+5+4 is 16, so the total number of beats ‘played’ by each instrument remains 16. All three instruments begin and end the piece at the same time, having played the same number of beats (16). But two of the instruments play a sequence of 8 followed by another sequence of 8, while the drums play a sequence of 7, followed by a sequence of 5, followed by a sequence of 4.

If this seems like the numerical equivalent of semantics to you, that’s exactly what has always bothered me about counting time in music. What difference does it all make?

The difference, when you know what’s going on and count along accordingly, is staggering. Suddenly the drumming makes sense. Instead of being a seemingly random sequence with no apparent motivation for its complexity, the drum part is simply three smaller, carefully chosen drum parts fused into one. There’s no difference to the listener, but to the musician trying to reverse engineer the parts, it’s as revelatory as learning you’ve spent half an hour trying to start the wrong rented Kinetic in a parking lot in Goa. (True story there, btw– we had to call the guy who rented us the scooter for help. He landed up, looked at the bike we were trying to start, and said, “But that’s not my bike. My bike is that one over there. Whose bike is this you’re trying to start?”)

In case you’re wondering, it’s not normal for one instrument in a score to be playing to a different time signature than other instruments in the score. It probably requires great technical skill to play as well as great musical skill to compose. I’ve never played anything like it. I would never have thought of doing it. No wonder I couldn’t figure out how to play along! This is also a classic example of why the genre is called “progressive” music. It’s different, it’s complicated, and it’s brilliant.

Now it’s time to try and apply what I’ve learnt to my practice.

Two bars of awesome.

My short-term goal is to learn how to play the drum part of Dream Theater’s “Metropolis Part I” in one month. Luckily I have a great video to base myself on: the one below, which is one of the best covers I’ve ever seen and which really deserves a whole post in itself.

If I manage to learn the part well enough, I may post a video of me playing it here. Fingers, toes, and drumstix crossed, please.

[Cross-posted here.]

I don’t think the subject of this post is very popular with the other authors of this blog and, as a public figure, is never anything short of polarising. I’m well aware of her off-the-wall tendencies and rumoured occasional lapses into being a terrible person, and also of the (nutty) rumours that she killed He Who I’m Not Going To Name Here Because This Post Is About Her After All. I’m also aware that this is the woman who, at the age of 12, chose a poem by Sylvia Plath (“Daddy”) to read at an audition for The Mickey Mouse Club. She didn’t get picked, of course.

Courtney Love might not be a good role model or a good person, but honestly, does an artist’s personality always have to be a factor in whether you like their work or not? (Picasso, according to some accounts, behaved like an absolute shit to the women in his life- does that stop anyone from appreciating his art?) Some people claim to be scared by the fact that her early- and best, if you ask me- work frequently sounded so angry, but some of those same people were also fans of The Clash and the Sex Pistols. What’s so unique about Courtney Love’s anger, then? The fact that she’s female? It’s not as if Hole was the only band of that era to give centre stage to an angry woman with a raspy voice and a guitar, but I can’t help the feeling that maybe what scares many people when it comes to Courtney Love circa 1993 is the fact that many of the things she was pissed off about back then, were things a girl could be justifiably pissed off about even now.

Anyway, here are songs to listen to, from Hole’s second and best album, Live Through This, for anyone who is reading and hasn’t heard them before or paid attention (is anyone even reading this blog anymore?):

Hole- Doll Parts

Hole- Violet

South African rap/rave/all-out mad people whose songs I’m getting weirdly fond of, even though reason tells me I shouldn’t be. It’s so strongly 90s-reminiscent, especially of Aqua (which I loved when I was twelve- helps that Yo-landi Visser’s voice is as high-pitched as Lene Nystrøm’s). Add rap, and crazy visuals and I have a feeling I will be sick of this in about six weeks- but in the meantime, I love it.

Listen to more at their official site- it’s slightly hilarious, if a little sad, that they had to cancel a tour because (of all the reasons) a bandmate went missing.

Bam. Total knockout fashion show. Only question is, what tracks do I mix for such insane garments? Here goes:

For the Papparazzi theme -

1. Ironman mixed with Nativity in Black – Black Sabbath

2. Funky Town – Lipps Inc.

3. Judy in Disguise (with glasses) – John Fred and his playboy band

4. Track 12 – Punjabi MC

5. I Believe – Simian Mobile Disco

6. Bad Romance – Lady Gaga

7. Saali Khushi – Amit Trivedi on the Dev D soundtrack

8. Hand that feeds – Nine Inch Nails

9. Another way to die – Jack White and Alicia Keys

Then there was the surrealism theme -

1. Sunshine underground – Chemical Brothers

2. Inertia Creeps – Massive Attack

3. The Kronos Quartet theme from Requiem for a Dream

What a blast. Second place is good enough for us. Pansy NIFT people won with some total flat garments. But what a blast we had. The crowd went beserk when that clock opened on the ramp. The hands and hours are phospherescent and Vidula did the whole ticking thing too. Apparel Design at NID rules man. Wish I had better snaps. Will have the videos up sometime.

It’s pop, but a little “left-of-the-dial” as the muso types say. She has a weird, passionate voice that jumps around like a giddy sparrow, and her lyrics suggest darkness and depth. There’s a back story that’s pretty interesting as well — she really wanted to be in a manufactured pop band, but never made it. Then she started writing her own songs. She’s not super-hot or anything, but there’s something cute about her, and in her videos she looks like she’s really having fun… and that’s probably better than mere hotness.

If you don’t quite get these songs initially, don’t worry. I took a few listens, but now (all of three days later) I listen to these songs pretty much on repeat.

Firstly, folk sorceress Laura Marling is back with a new video, a new hairdo and a bigger sound. (I stole much of that line from the Guardian. Very apt.)

Secondly, Vampire Weekend is out with their second album, Contra. More Graceland-punk! It’s currently Billboard #1. Who says popular music has to suck?

You can sample it on grooveshark. The song “Cousins” also has a kick-ass video.

And thirdly, Midlake’s much-anticipated (by me at least!) second album is out. Well, technically it hasn’t been released yet, but you can grooveshark it. I haven’t decided if I dig it yet, but it’s growing on me. Their first album — a somber mix of Americana and melodic 70s soft-rock — is one of my all-time favourites now. Since August ’08 it has been permanently associated with the ghat road connecting Gudalur to Ooty. I listened to it on a KSRTC bus early one morning on my way home from Bangalore. It seemed to fit perfectly with the pre-dawn scenery of the upper Nilgiris.

I am unlikely to upload mp3s any more, but they’re easy enough to find. And for full albums just search for rapidshare links.

Here’s wishing everyone a musically satisfying year and decade!

It’s not exactly a common thing, finding singers who sound as good to me in their late thirties as they did in their early teens. Of course I must freely admit to bias in this case: Charlotte Gainsbourg is one of my favourite actor/singer hybrids (as I have said before, she is fantastic at both- try Jane Eyre for proof of the acting skills, since Antichrist sounds likely to make people queasy). And even if one were to contend that she sounds good because she gets cool collaborators (Serge Gainsbourg= Dad, we need a post on him sometime, Air= fans of Dad, collaborators with Charlotte later in her career), the fact still remains, she sounds amazing. IRM, her latest album (produced by Beck, whom I will always and forever associate with Loser) is no exception to the rule. It’s just that it’s even better than 5:55, less vague in spots, not quite as dreamy- and I strongly recommend listening to the track below, it’s one of the best things I’ve heard in a month and Charlotte’s combination of Brit accent,husk and whisper is as lovely as it ever was. I suspect it’ll probably be one of the best things I hear in 2010, too. 

Charlotte Gainsbourg feat. Beck- Heaven Can Wait

I don’t really give a shit about most music in its own right. Most of what I post on here is just things I have been listening to for long enough to know that I absolutely love them, and which I treat like the aural equivalent of a dog’s favourite old bone or chewy toy. And given that the song I’m posting about was first heard at Alexander McQueen’s last fashion show in October  and has since been featured on Gossip Girl, it really isn’t news to anyone. But then I am not the NME, so here goes.

I absolutely love Bad Romance. Lady Gaga songs and I have had a bit of a love-hate relationship over the last year and a bit- Just Dance and Beautiful Dirty Rich were fabulous, but Poker Face makes my ears bleed. I’ve always loved her rather distinctive, cyberwhorish getups though- it’s rare to see a female pop star who takes control of her image so effectively (except Madonna) and doesn’t sell sex in the same mindless formulaic way as every other insipid twit. And I can’t help a rather sneaky admiration for the fact that she insists on being addressed as ‘Gaga’, having managed to create a proper alter ego for herself- all this in her early twenties.

In Bad Romance, Lady Gaga  manages to tick every one of my boxes. She appeals to my fuckoff side (does anything she wears look like it’d be worn by someone who gives a shit about what other people think? No). She appeals to my pop tart side (insanely, insanely catchy). She appeals, in a MASSIVE way, to my fash-hag side (Alexander McQueen SS10 massive clumpy 1 foot high armadillo shoes! She walks in them!).  And the video is beyond awesome. It is the reason I’m not posting an mp3 for this post, since it’s better if you watch rather than just listen. And I  bet everyone’s done plenty of listening already.

It boggles the mind, it does.

My mind, at least.

And many others’.

PS

This just goes to prove that whatever you may think of his tone, James LaBrie actually does sing very well– he’s powerful and accurate. (In the studio, at least.)

PPS

Original voice clip:

It’s pretty chilly in Boston now, and I picked some music for the walk that was appropriately autumnal. I listened to Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Noah and the Whale, Wooden Shjips, and The Big Pink. All highly recommended.

Here is a sampling of their wares, in the form of an imeem playlist. Let me know if it works fine. You’ll need to sign up I think, but it’s completely free. (lala is also pretty good, but you can only listen to each song once for free.)

It’s amazing how the music in your earphones colours the scene you’re walking through. (It’s a neat analogy for the way our consciousness filters all experience.) It’s as if you find yourself in a movie, with the soundtrack clueing you in on what sort of movie it is. A dog running around in a park could make you feel vertiginous nostalgia or envigorating excitement, depending on the backing track. Elvis Perkins’s ’123 Goodbye’ sounds to me like a song at the very end of a tragic-yet-uplifting American film. You know the movie is almost over. Someone’s driving off in a car, glancing into the rear view mirror. There’s a lump in your throat perhaps. You wish it could have ended differently. Nevertheless, it’s an end, and it’s time to say goodbye. Soon the credits will start rolling.

~

I’ve been listening to vast quantities of The Incredible String Band these days [listen!]. They’re a Scottish psychedelic folk band from the 60s. They capture hippie idealism, spirituality and humour perfectly. I love them, but it’s entirely possible that you’ll hate them. They’re fruity. (For instance: they have a song sung from the perspective of a flower. It goes “turn your quivering nose in my direction”.) They mix Indian and Middle Eastern music with English and Scottish folk, and American country and blues. I find myself increasingly drawn to their lyrics. They’re mystical and poetic. I’ll leave you with some quotes:

The Hedgehog’s Song

Oh, you know all the words, and you sung all the notes,
But you never quite learned the song, she sang.
I can tell by the sadness in your eyes,
That you never quite learned the song.

The Water Song

Water water see the water flow
Glancing dancing see the water flow
O wizard of changes water water water
Dark or silvery mother of life
Water water holy mystery heavens daughter

God made a song when the world was new
Waters laughter sings it is true
O, wizard of changes, teach me the lesson of flowing.

Maya

The great man, the great man, historians his memory
Artists his senses, thinkers his brain
Labourers his growth
Explorers his limbs
And soldiers his death each second
And mystics his rebirth each second
Businessmen his nervous system
No-hustle men his stomach
Astrologers his balance
Lovers his loins
His skin it is all patchy
But soon will reach one glowing hue
God is his soul
Infinity his goal
The mystery his source
And civilization he leaves behind
Opinions are his fingernails

Maya Maya
All this world is but a play
Be thou the joyful player

These songs can be found here.

]]> http://zonuts.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/two-little-playlists/feed/ 0 Han string http://zonuts.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/keep-the-faith/ http://zonuts.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/keep-the-faith/#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:01:36 +0000 N http://zonuts.wordpress.com/?p=665 ]]> This is a bit of a cheat post, given that I posted about Paloma Faith ages ago on Nonsense on Stilettos (here), but she finally has an album out – for a month now, and it’s every bit as good as it should be. Though it’s not as bonkers as some of her awesome stage costumes, the songs are more than well worth a listen- I do rather adore her slightly throwback style of singing- to borrow an apt and very cool turn of phrase, it puts me in mind of having the auditory version of cream poured, very slowly, into my ears.
Paloma Faith – Stone Cold Sober

Paloma Faith- New York

EDIT: Turns out I gave in two links pointing to the same song..sorry, and it’s fixed now!

(click to enlarge)

It’s compilation time again! What fun. I was thinking of doing a sort of 2000s indie rock primer. However, the term “indie” is somewhat vague. I know it means music on independent record labels, but I think some of the bands that started out indie have bagged major label contracts. So I’m calling this mixtape “Noughtpop”. It’s pop and/or rock from the decade that will soon be behind us (!). Even the term “pop” is vague. These artists haven’t made much of an impression on the Billboard charts (though they tend to do a little better in the UK). So Noughtpop is not pop. But it has what music journos like to call “pop sensibilities”. I guess that means it’s catchy, with the possibility of choruses and/or dance-y beats. And maybe, as icing on the cake, intelligent and/or strange lyrics.

In college I became a classic rock type. I liked some music from after 1979, but in general I assumed that rock had died before I was born. (Top 40 Pop died in the early 90s.) I liked Nirvana, but rarely chose to listen to them on my own. In 2003 I started listening to Radiohead, and realized that modern music could be challenging, intense, and different. (I love Oasis, but they’re not the most original songwriters in the world, are they?) Those days hardly anyone had a computer, and downloading music was a mystery. I asked our very own Kaustubh to procure Radiohead’s The Bends for me. He duly did so. On the CD he gave me there was another album called Elephant, by a band called the White Stripes. I fell in love with the album almost immediately. Insta-classic. There was no doubt about it — new music could kick ass. “Seven Nation Army” became an unofficial Yearbook Room anthem. Meanwhile I started to go to internet cafes to check out the new music scene. Hard to remember exactly when all this happened, or in what order. I know that I first saw the “Mr Brightside” video in a Satyam Infoway in Indra Vihar. The sound quality was bad, so it didn’t leave much of an impression. (Tommy mentioned it later… by 2005 I was a Killers fan.)

I discovered Franz Ferdinand the old-fashioned way: through MTV. Nikhil Chinnappa hosted a show that presented new music. He said “Take Me Out” was the next big thing. And it was. Wow. What a song. What a video. It took me ages to finally get a copy of the song. (I asked my cousin in Kottayam to download it. He used Kazaa or Limewire — does anyone use that sort of thing anymore?) MTV introduced me to the Vines too (the lead singer’s crazy performance style grabbed me before the songs did). Muse happened around then too (I got a friend in Australia to get Origin of Symmetry for me)…but I’ve left them out of this compilation. (They don’t sit well alongside other bands. Don’t you think?)

Soundcheck 42 played a Strokes song in 2002. Not sure which one. They really knew their music, but at the time I just wanted to hear CCR and the Rolling Stones. I heard “Last Nite” in 2004, and quickly became obsessed with it. I downloaded it at home on a crappy dial-up connection. It took two hours. At the time, I didn’t get their other songs. In 2006, near the end of my IIT stint, I got into their 3rd album First Impressions of Earth. The Strokes are now an all-time favourite band. To use a corny phrase, they helped me through a difficult (or at least hazy) period of my life.

IIT was where my musical landscape really exploded. In the first year I was blown away by their ftp networks, and filled in various blanks in my rock history chronology. (Got into the Sex Pistols and the Clash around then.) That’s when I came upon the Libertines. Someone happened to have the I Get Along EP on their server. Fantastic. “Don’t Look Back Into the Sun” is one of my favourite songs. Sadly, I discovered the band just as they were splitting up. The UK media were quite obsessed with the antics of Pete Doherty. I’m told Pete & Carl were inspired to start a band after seeing a Strokes gig. The explosion on indie bands in the UK is generally attributed to the impact of the Libertines.

In 2005 I got my own computer, and quickly discovered music blogs. I cobbled together Franz Ferdinand’s debut album from mp3s found here and there. There were so many great (and not-so-great) bands. Youtube happened and Arctic Monkeys happened. (Not sure which came first.) I got caught up in the Arctic Monkeys hype — I downloaded every single demo and live performance I could find, months before the album came out. It was fun.

By 2006 my music collection didn’t look like a classic rock type’s any more. I didn’t even have the Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin discographies (gasp!). And then I moved to Boston. A few days after arriving, I picked up a free alt weekly and found out that the Strokes were playing in a few weeks. I immediately bought a ticket. I went alone (I didn’t know anyone yet) but it was awesome. Great way to enter the world of live contemporary music. (So much better than watching old fogeys fleece baby boomers.)

As it turned out, my music taste wasn’t so off-beat after all. Several of my new friends had similar tastes. So I had company for all subsequent concerts. Arctic Monkeys! Klaxons! Late of the Pier! CSS! I even had the pleasure of getting my American friends into new bands, notably MGMT and Yeasayer (both of whom I’ve seen live twice). When it comes to music I have the zeal of a missionary. I love it when someone comes back to me and says they really liked one of my recommendations.

And to think that I once worried that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy music as intensely as I had in college! If anything, my love of music has widened and deepened since then.

Eight years ago I could probably name all the albums I had heard completely. It’s been quite a decade.

~

So here’s the mix. You’ll find that the term “indie” or “noughtpop” doesn’t really convey any essential stylistic elements. It may just be an attitude. I’ve arranged the tracks chronologically (even though my discoveries occurred out of order). If you look at the progression through time, you might detect a move from the minimalism of the early ’00s New Garage Revival (the Strokes, the White Stripes, the Vines) through the mid ’00s rediscovery of synths, and into the free-for-all psychedelic kitch of the decade’s end. I’ve tried to pick the best or most iconic song by each act. I know I’ve left out a few, and we could argue over which songs/artists should have been included/excluded. This collection is predictable if you already like this sort of music. But the aim is to provide some context for people who have not yet dived in. (A few people have specifically asked for something like this.) So if you’re wondering where to start with noughties music, here are my suggestions:

Noughtpop

2001

The Strokes — Last Night

2002

The Vines — Get Free
Interpol — NYC

2003

The Libertines — Don’t Look Back Into the Sun
Yeah Yeah Yeahs — Maps
The White Stripes — Seven Nation Army
The Fiery Furnaces — We Got Back the Plague

2004

The Killers — Mr Brightsde
The Arcade Fire — Rebellion (Lies)
Franz Ferdinand — Take Me Out
Regina Spektor — Us

2005

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club — Ain’t No Easy Way
Arctic Monkeys — Fake Tales of San Francisco
Animal Collective — Grass
Tapes ‘n’ Tapes — Insistor
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! — The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth
Wolf Parade — This Hearts On Fire

2006

CSS — Let’s Make Love (And Listen to Death From Above)
Hot Chip — Over & Over
Beirut — Scenic World

2007

Klaxons — From Atlantis to Interzone
MGMT — Time to Pretend
Yeasayer — Wait for the Summer

2008

Vampire Weekend — Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
Late of the Pier — The Bears Are Coming

Noughtpop

Bang a Gong, Get it on, get it on. Arise, awake, get out of your house and into the street. Marc Bolan gave to music a fine contradiction. Here was a guy who looked like he rocked out since kindergarten, but he sings these songs about white swans and dancing since he was twelve. The band is called T-Rex and they are so ferocious that at one point of time they had no drummer. Just a guy on bongos. But the man’s got rhythm, and he has got that quiet voice that whispers in your ear. It tells you to wear hard soled shoes and clickety-clack them on the pavement. I used to dance to Bolan all the time. Then I saw Billy Elliot. What a movie. Cosmic Dancer, playing to a little kid jumping on the bed with a wallpaper of fading sunflowers in the background. Bolan, jumping, shorts and Van Gogh. These are some of my favourite things, never mind the dog bites and bee stings.

Now the two are inexorably tied to each other. I cannot sing a song without picturing the movie. But, for once, that is perfectly allright. Cosmic Dancer is a song with the line “I was dancing since I was aaah”. That’s Marc Bolan for you, he couldn’t think of something, so wrote aaah. But it fits and we all dance when we are aaah.

Bang a Gong was after he split with Steve Took, yes Steve Peregrine Took, so it has a lot more instruments. It was just the two of them before hand.

Be careful when you dance to I love to boogie. There have been incidents of smashed crockery and furniture in our hostel because of the song.

Have fun.

From the soundtrack of Billy Elliot -

T.Rex – Cosmic Dancer [mp3]

T.Rex – Bang a Gong (Get it On) [mp3]

T.Rex – I Love to Boogie – [mp3]

_______________________________________________

Françoise Hardy – Comment te dire adieu

Françoise Hardy (on the bike up there) was someone I discovered via a fashion magazine, following which I went on an mp3 hunt- and found that, quite at odds with the cigar-raspy alto I’d expected,  her voice is actually on the softer side of the spectrum..

______________________________

The other Cool French Girl of this post is actually half Brit, and one of those rather rare things- a singer and actress who is really good at being both (most recent evidence: 5:55 and The Science of Sleep, plus a Best Actress award at Cannes for Antichrist this year).

Charlotte Gainsbourg- Elastique

It’s one of her very early songs, and I rather like the breathiness of her voice- it’s a bit like her mother’s but more natural, somehow.

And here is the video for Elastique…she looks like such a kid here..

Michael Jackson- Beat It

Easily, IMO, his best song ever.

___________________________

And now for a bit of gangster (never gangsta…it makes all the difference)

Michael Jackson- Smooth Criminal

This may seem like an odd niche for Zonuts to be dipping into, but I blame a recent bout of Asterix-reading for the fact that it just won’t get out of my head. And I recommend looking up a translation of the lyrics, they are not only beautiful, but also somewhat…bloody (no offence to any French people who find this- I just mean there are literal references to blood and slit throats, is all)

____________________

Édith Piaf- La Marseillaise

My favourite version, not only because it’s Piaf, but because of the sheer joy she seems to take in singing it. I’m not sure when this was recorded, but if I didn’t know better, I’d have said it was sometime during the WWII occupation of France. If you download/listen to nothing else in this post, don’t pass this one up- unless you have it, of course.

____________________

Serge Gainsbourg- Aux armes et cætera (reggae spin on the national anthem, that earned him a few death threats once it was out)

I’m not massively fond of this, partly because I first heard it when I was in the grip of an ‘I-hate-reggae’ mood, but it deserves better than to be heard under such circumstances.

____________________

Cassandre Berger- La Marseillaise (from the film La Môme a.k.a. La Vie en Rose, lip-synched by Pauline Burlet, the child actress in the clip. By all accounts, it’s a real-life incident…the life being that of Édith Piaf)

La Marseillaise (Casablanca). Probably my favourite scene.

K and C

This post is going to seem a bit old-chestnutty (we already have an Oasis post in the archives), and the pic probably seems befuddling. But the two chumps in it have been my best friends in this place for the better part of the last five years, and it seemed a tiny bit appropriate to dedicate a post to them, for the following reasons:

a) I only started talking to them because a friend told me they were Oasis fans, which, four years ago, in a sea of people whose favourite bands were all called Angelic [something] or Demonic [something]- Bangalorean metal fans, honestly- was really rare. In fact, if it hadn’t been for that little piece of information, we would never have bothered to revise our initial impressions of each other (mine of them : insufferable yuppie and insufferable brat respectively. Theirs of me: rude bitch). Not that we were wrong – K and C were practically Tweedledum and Tweedledee back in the day, and yours truly was a complete misanthrope- but..

b) C -the one on the right- has a birthday today. He’ll make fun of me if he finds out about this post, but happy birthday anyway, C.

_____________________

Oasis- Acquiesce

Included here for no other reason than the fact that I love hearing Noel and Liam on the same song, and K and C once used ‘agree’ and ‘Oasis’ as clues to guess this in a round of What’s The Good Word.

______________________

Oasis- Columbia

Definitely Maybe is one of the very few albums I actually own, and screw whether NME/ the Guardian commentators think it’s cool or not, it’s amazing. And this is perfect for times when I want my brain fried.

 _____________________

Oasis- Digsy’s Diner

Underrated, silly, awesome fun. Though the mention of lasagne does make me feel like running off to a place where I can get some.

____________________

Oasis- All Around The World

Insanely long. Maybe too long, really, like most of Be Here Now. But, like K said many years ago, the line “you’re lost at sea, well, I hope that you drown“, it lives…