Andrew Speaks/Types

I finally got around to buying Led Zeppelin IV today. I am now a proud owner of the entire series.

I was reading up on profanity today (don’t ask why…haha) and I cane across this article.

Music: Profanity, Addiction, Piracy

The part that struck me was the addiction paragraph. And I qutote:

“Another problem that is sometimes caused by people’s musical tastes is an addiction to music. Some people simply cannot get enough music. They walk around with headphones in their ears, they turn on the stereos in their rooms, they listen to the radio in their cars, and they go to concerts when available, rarely taking the time to give their ears a rest!

Not only can this cause physical problems (i.e. deafness or impaired hearing abilities), it can also cause other non-physical problems. Once we ‘Lose ourselves’ to the music, we have given up a part of what makes us humans. We are admitting that we are dependent on music, as we could be dependent on a drug. If a person is listening to music so much that he ‘loses himself’ to it, he has put himself in a weary situation indeed!

There is a certain amount of music that can be healthy for a person, and this amount differs for every person. But a common problem amongst the people of our modern American society is their inability to cope with silence. Some people even have silonophobia (”fear of silence”), and become tense when there is no ambient sound. Jesus himself knew the importance of silence: “he would withdraw to deserted placed to pray” (Luke 5:16). Without this respect and acceptance of silence, we cannot truly have some time to ourselves—to actually think things over and pray.”

I put these words in a text to speech and recorded my computer reading them. I think I’m going to make a long instrumental song and play the words over it, because of how increddibly ignorant and ironic it is. I might put it over a video I’m going to shoot as well. I really like this idea though, who knows what’ll come out of it.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antenna To Heaven

I actually haven’t listened to this all the way through yet (it’s 2 hours long), but I’m in the middle of the 4th track, and I think I’ve heard enough to say that it’s fantastic. Really moving music.

I love Green Day. For me, these guys are the best band to come out of the 90s, hands down. Catchy, simple, aggressive and fun. Plus they were one of the first rock bands I listened to. Nothing wrong with that.

I’m sure there’s a lot of people out there who have never actually given Green Day a good listen because you immediately dismissed it as emo teenage girl rock, but they’ve made a lot of good music. Most people will say that their best album is Dookie, and while I agree that it’s a great album, I’m going to have to disagree and say that their best work is Nimrod.

Nimrod is their only album that I think mixes the style up a lot throughout the entire thing. All the songs are enjoyable, and it’s the only record of theirs that I can listen to without skipping a song. Although I still like all of their albums, they all have a few clunker songs on them, except Nimrod, imo.

Pre-Dookie (1039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours & Kerplunk): Totally raw, recorded-in-their-basement punk rock.
Dookie: Probably their biggest album. Somewhat-poppy, catchy, and aggressive tunes about about growing up, getting stoned, masturbation, and being bored.
Insomniac: Their heaviest album. In-your-face punk rock from beginning to end, no slow songs needed.
Nimrod: Best album. Lots of experimentation with their sound in this one.
Warning: Kind of hit or miss. It has their poppiest songs on it (yes, moreso than American Idiot), but it also has a few of my favorites (”Blood, Sex & Booze”, “Fashion Victim”)
American Idiot: Their worst album. I’m sure everyone here has listened to it at least once because of all the hype. Though it’s still kind of fun, it’s over-commercialized and gave Green Day a bad name as being emo pop-machines.

Green Day is awesome.

I went to the greatest pawn shop ever today with my good buddy Dominick and I bought two awesome things at awesome prices.

2.99

5.99

Dominick bought The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time (Master Quest) for Gamecube for 5.99, cause he saw it first.

That is all.

I think that Hip-Hop might be my favorite genre at the moment. I have a pretty big wish list of CDs that I want to buy and listen to.

Madvilliany - MF Doom & Madvillan

Late Orchestration - KanYe West

6 Feet Deep - Gravediggaz

Stankonia - OutKast

Power In Numbers - Jurassic 5

Exit - K-OS

Falls Apart - The Roots

MM..Food? - MF Doom

Enter The Wu-Tang Clan (36 Chambers) - Wu-Tang Clan

None Shall Pass - Aesop Rock

I Wish - Skee-Lo

…and I just got NiggyTardust by Saul Williams. Great album, I highly recommend it.

Blink-182 was one of the first bands that I listened to that I still listen to today. I’ve been listening to them for probably a little over 4 years, but I haven’t listened to them for a good long time, with the exception of their live album, which is phenomenal. When I got into Blink at first, my mom was really strict about what I listened to because I was young and just getting into the music scene, so I was forced to buy edited versions of all my Blink albums.

Today, I downloaded torrents of the explicit versions of Enema Of The State, Take Off Your Pants And Jacket, and their self titled one. Unfortunately, they don’t hold up as well as I had hoped. There’s a few really songs on each album that are really good, but I’m not a big fan of the fart and penis jokes that inhabit a good portion of Enema and Take Off. I was a little dissapointed.

Fortunately, the self titled album is still great. This is Blink-182 going out on top, before splitting up and forming two vastly inferior bands. Every song, except for a few (Go, All Of This, and Easy Target) are really really good. I recommend this album to anyone who tried Blink before this album and disliked them.

Another thing to listen is The Mark, Tom, And Travis Show, their live album. Really good, really hilarious, pretty long concert, which is good. So, those are two great albums by a pretty good punk band. Check ‘em out.

I’ve stated multiple times that The Mars Volta is my favorite band. But sometimes, when I’m listening to Daft Punk or Queens Of The Stone Age, and sometimes Kanye West, when I ask myself if The Mars Volta is really my favorite band. I don’t listen to them that much. Because when I do listen to them, I listen to them not for the awesome factor of them, I listen to them for the cinematic factor of their music. The way that you can just fall into their music, and you’re completely consumed by it.

So I don’t listen to them daily. I have to take a long time to listen to The Mars Volta. Whole albums (very long albums) and entire live jams and things like that. So, it’s hard to see how I like them more, when I go back and forth between listening to Daft Punk and QOTSA on my iPod all day.

But then I listen to this.

Then I remember that this is the best thing I’ve ever heard. This album is why The Mars Volta is my favorite band of all time. It’s a pure 1 hour and 31 minute trip of pure amazement. I love everything about this album. It definitely takes a certain kind of mindset to listen to it. I don’t even know where to start. I guess with the title and tracklist.

FRANCES THE MUTE
by THE MARS VOLTA

1. Frances The Mute - 14:40
2. Cygnus…Vismund Cygnus - 13:02
3. The Widow - 5:51
4. L’Via L’Viaquez - 12:22
5. Miranda, That Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore - 13:10
6. Cassandra Gemini - 32:32

Total time - 1:31:33

Of course, that isn’t the official tracklist. It’s just the real one. This is the tracklist that the record label didn’t want The mars Volta to put out. Originally, it was supposed to be like this, and be a double disc album. But then, the record label pulled the first song off the CD, and made it a 12 track single disc album, with the last song, “Cassandra Gemini” cut into 8 tracks, and the opening song completely removed. But my tracklist is the way that the band intended it to be, and this is the way that I listen to it. And the way that you should listen to it. Because you should listen to it.

You’ve probably heard the story, but if you haven’t, this is the story of how the album’s concept came about.

Jeremy Ward, a previous member of The Mars Volta, used to work as a repo man. Once, he repossessed a car, and under one of the seats he found a diary containing a log of a man’s search for his biological family. While reading, he began to notice similarities between the life of himself and the author. When he got to the end, the story of the man’s adventures was not finished. So, probably alongside much heroin use, he started to write in it himself. He was in the process of finishing the diary at the time of his death, by heroin overdose.

When the band got ahold of this diary, they were shocked by the story inside. Frances The Mute is the story of the man from the diary. They changed the names of the people, and shrouded the lyrics in greek mythology, and recorded an album. Myself and my friend Ben have spent a good two years picking apart the album line by line, and have finally reached the conclusion of the story. What I’m about to share with you is only a brief synopsis of the album’s story, but I encourage you to listen for yourself and try and see what we’re getting at.

Frances The Mute is the story of Vismund Cygnus, who was a child who was conceived from rape, and then aborted, but was aborted to late in his development, and lived. He was put up for adoption and never knew his parents. After twenty five years of living a normal life, he leaves his own family to search for his parents. But instead of open armed mom and dad, he finds himself wrapped up in a tangled web of murder, lies, blackmail, and rape. All that underneath the brilliant musicianship of The Mars Volta, backed by a full orchestra and some of the most beautiful and insane music I have ever heard, equals the greatest album I have ever heard, Frances The Mute.

Remind me to do this:

I want to record a song that starts out with like 2 minutes of party music. Like the music that you hear in Abercrombie and Hollister and stores like that, where it’s just a heavy beat and a rhythmic chord progression played on a loop. There’ll be sound effects of people talking and laughing throughout the whole thing. Like a party. And about halfway through that, way back in the background, a descending bass note will get louder and louder until it starts to sound very uneasy, and then get a little scary almost. Then, all sound effects stop, chord progression stops, beat stops. And all of a sudden, guitars go crazy, drums go crazy, sound effects off the wall, very frantic sounding, for a very short time until the end.

Eh?

I thought I loved Incubus before. But today, I got one of the items from my wish list. (But didn’t buy it, my awesome friend Kathy burned it and gave it to me)

This is incredible. It’s like hearing At The Drive-In, falling in love with THAT band, and then hearing The Mars Volta, and realizing that the band that you used to love is vastly inferior to what they had the ability to be. “S.C.I.E.N.C.E.” is a completely different Incubus than the one that I thought I knew. If you are only familiar with post-”Make Yourself” Incubus, let me fill you in.

Originally, Incubus planned to be a nu-metal band, and compete for popularity with the likes of other hard-rocking contenders such as KoRn, Rage Against The Machine, and early Red Hot Chili Peppers. But they developed their own style along the way, and became the sounds of this album. It’s basically nu-metal mixed with hip hop mixed with funk, mixed with hard rock. It’s VERY heavy, I was really surprised.

I’m mad at myself for not picking this up sooner. All Incubus fans who haven’t already, get this!

I’ve only been a Nine Inch Nails fan for about a year now, but I must say, I’m falling fast. Trent Reznor is one of my favorite musicians, and I love all the Nails albums that I own. But I need more.

Luckily, now is the best time to be a Nine Inch Nails fan. Now that Trent has broken free from the shackles of lable-dom in a very Radiohead-ish manner, he’s dishing out music like crazy. And not just any music.

“…this one’s on me.”

Free music. Yes, even though “Ghosts Volume 1″ before it was a great deal (9 songs for free, and the rest for 5 dollars) the new album, “The Slip” is even better. The price tag? $0.00! Now, I’m all for buying music. But I’m going to take advantage of this when I have the chance. I haven’t listened to this yet, (downloading now) but I thought I’d get the word out for anyone who hasn’t heard.

www.nin.com

I rented an upright bass today. Over the summer, I’m going to take lessons from my sister’s violin teacher and my old elementary music teacher. Once I’m good enough, I’ll play in my sister’s little-kid orchestra until I can play on my own. Then I might have to buy one or something. Can’t rent it forever.

Right now I’m trying to finger out Smells Like Teen Spirit for it.

I actually got turned on to the idea of upright bass by a really great punk band from down under called The Living End. Their bass player, Scott Owen, plays an upright. And he plays in a very unconventional way. He doesn’t play with a bow, and he doesn’t play the root note of what the guitar playing, he does his own thing. Gives the song a groove. Bass was pretty boring to me until I heard of these guys.

I’m really excited to learn how to play this awesome instrument. Maybe one day I can work some Bass action into my Andrew In Latin stuff, which has been bass-less thusfar, save for Genusus. I think.

I’ve been having Torrent trouble lately.

Usually, I don’t download albums. I buy albums because I want to support musicians, and because I like to have a hard copy of the album in case my computer ever goes berserk or my files get lost. But, when there’s an album that I don’t really care about, but would like to listen to to see what it’s like (Bjork’s “Post” comes to mind), I’ll torrent it. Or, if I want to download a particular SNL skit and put it on my iPod. I’ll torrent it.

And usually, I use uTorrent. But all of a sudden, it just stopped downloading. I dunno if my computer blocked it or something, but it just became useless overnight. Downloads nothing. So I uninstalled it, and got BitComet. That worked ONCE. But then it quit on me. After that I tried Azerus. I just hated the interface and the way everything was laid out. So I uninstalled that. And now I have the original, BitTorrent. It’s working. But everything is

super

slow.

I’ve been downloading an album, and I’m 27% done, and the estimated time says I have 4 and a half hours to go.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME.

Theres a new song on the Andrew In Latin myspace that I recorded this morning, about 2 hours ago. I’m pretty proud of it. It’s called “Gunslingin’” and you should check it out.

I’m still trying to find out how to upload music to the blog post itself. Hopefully that’ll happen in the near future.

I’m a huge fan of the Colbert Report, and this week as part of his Doritos Spicy Sweet Pennsylvania Primary Coverage: “The Land Of Brotherly Crunch” week-long event, he had a band called The Roots play twice on the Report. Normally, he never has a musical guest. But he makes exceptions every now and then, and this exception was necessary.

They played his opening theme (awesome as well), but the best part of the show was their song at the end. They played The Star Spangled Banner instrumental, and it was amazing. Watch this video, and make sure you see the end.

So I looked them up and I found out that usually, their a hip-hop group. They changed their line-up around a bit to do this. I listened to some of their hip-hop stuff, and its pretty freaking good. I bought, “Dynamite!” and “Spark” off of iTunes, and I think that I’m gonna buy one of their albums. It also turns out that they’re playing in a city near me next month.

Thinkin’ about it.

It’s one of my life-goals to start a band that plays other people’s rock covers of rap songs. A rock cover of a rap song is exactly that. It’s different depending on the band, but most bands make the song faster and more beat-heavy than the original, and sometimes even change the harmony, only leaving the original words. Some bands that have done it are:

Bowling For Soup - London Bridge
Sum 41 - Get Back
Incubus - Still Not A Player
The Automatic - Gold Digger
The Racontuers - Crazy
Travis Morrison - What’s Your Fantasy
The Gourds - Gin And Juice
Zolof The Rock And Roll Destroyer - Ridin’ Dirty
The Vines - Miss Jackson
Lorene Drive - Hey Ya!
Just Surrender - SexyBack
Ben Kweller - Ice Ice Baby
Editors - Feel Good Inc.

Some of these songs would be interesting to do, especially the Incubus and The Vines ones. My old band, Slur, played Ridin’ Dirty by Zolof to end our shows, it was a lot of fun. Which is where I go the idea of a rock rap cover band. I already have someone who agreed to play bass if the need ever arose, and I would do the singing parts of the songs and the guitar. So I’m lacking another guitar, a drummer, and rappers. I would probably want a keyboard player, too. I would actually like to have a different rapper for each song that still has actual rap in it. To mix it up a bit, you know?

I would name my band Optimus Rhyme, and it would rule the world.

So yeah, over the weekend, my youth group’s praise band (which I call Wingolias, even though we have no name) performed about 4 times in 3 days, and it was pretty killer. We played “I Am A Friend Of God,” but we really made it our own, and added in a 2nd guitar part and a really cool outro. We Played “Holiness (Take My Life),” and I don’t know if the original is like this or not, but ours was a Reggae song, and it ruled. Also, we played “Breathe,” which was a very chill song, with my favorite effect in it…sweep echo! You gotta love sweep echo. It’s just the best.

Another song we did was “Enough,” and the band as a whole simultaneously screwed it up, but I probably did the worst. I was supposed to be doing these very subtle phaser notes in the background of the song, but then went overboard and it was too loud and fast and…yeah. It didn’t go so swell. Other song’s we did that were just kind of average were “Hallelujah (Your Love Is Amazing),” and…another one that I can’t think of right now.

There was also a song that wasn’t ready to be played yet. It’s called “Agnus Dei,” and it’s easily my favorite song of the bunch that we know. It’s probably one of the only praise and worship songs that has a good intro, and the intro really makes the song. Try and find it online if you can. Good song.

Also, our youth leader, Dan, wrote a song called “Fork In The Road,” that was going to be our theme song, back when the band was going to be called “The Electric Fork Band.” We put all the music of it together over the weekend, and that’s another song that I really like, and that I’m excited about. I was expecting playing in a praise band to be pretty boring, but I actually like it a lot.

I love this album.

A band that I’ve been really into lately is The Ebb And Flow. I saw someone request a download of it on a forum that I visit, and I like the title of their album, so I listened to some 30 second clips on iTunes. I liked what I heard, so when I got an iTunes card over Easter weekend, I had nothing else on my list but this, and downloaded it.

The band that I think The Ebb And Flow most remind me of is The Doors. One of their singers (I’ll get to that later) sounds a lot like Jim Morrison, and they have a lot of organ-ish sounding keyboards that live in the background of their music, and give it kind of a constant “flow”, pardon the pun. Their guitar sound has a real southern/folk vibe to it, which are both genres that I like.

They also have two singers, and they do about the same amount of work. One is a guy, and the other is a girl. Surprisingly, I like listening to the girl singer just as much as I do the other, which is strange because I usually don’t like to listen to bands with female vocalists, with a few exceptions. She sounds like she has a British accent, but I’m not sure where the band is from.

I don’t just like the songs that this band does, I like this band. I like the way their songs are constructed, I like the way their music progresses, I like all the vocals, I like all of their melodies, I really like the lyrics, and the music itself is extremely entertaining. I can’t stop praising this album enough, and it really deserves some credit. I’m pretty picky wen it comes to what I will listen to, and I’m having a hard time finding any flaws here.

Anyways, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about. I have a pretty bad way of explaining things, especially music that someone hasn’t heard before. So please, do yourself a favor and find this album somewhere, listen for yourself.

A favorite band of mine, Okkervil River, just put out a new album, for free. They’re a folk rock band, and most of their stuff is pretty chill. The new one is an acoustic album of covers, but most of the songs are songs that no ones heard of, so you wouldn’t really guess.

This band does acoustic songs really well, though, and I’ve been listening to this album all morning. So far, I’m digging it. It’s called “Golden Opporitunities Mixtape,” and you can go to their website (www. okkervilriver. com) and there’s a download link on the front page.

So, those of you who like music, free things, and acoustic guitars, should head on over and download that stuff.

I consider myself a pretty big Daft Punk fan. Not a huge Daft Punk fan, but I have all their albums and I really like them. I finished my collection this Christmas when I got Homework, their debut (and most critically-acclaimed) album. I had high hopes, and for the most part, this album lived up to them, but there’s parts that really rub me the wrong way. I’m going to give a song-by-song review of Homework in this blog, so here’s the tracklist:

1. “Daftendirekt” – 2:44
2. “WDPK 83.7 FM” - 0:28
3. “Revolution 909″ – 5:26
4. “Da Funk” – 5:28
5. “Phœnix” – 4:55
6. “Fresh” – 4:03
7. “Around The World” – 7:07
8. “Rollin’ & Scratchin’” – 7:26
9. “Teachers” – 2:52
10. “High Fidelity” – 6:00
11. “Rock’n Roll” – 7:32
12. “Oh Yeah” – 2:00
13. “Burnin’” – 6:53
14. “Indo Silver Club” – 4:32
15. “Alive” – 5:15
16. “Funk Ad” – 0:50

The album starts off with “Daftendirekt,” a play on words from the phrase “Live And Direct,” and it fits. Daftendirekt was recorded live, and it was the intro song to a Daft Punk concert, and very suiting as being the intro song here. I have no idea what he’s saying there, but it’s a good loop. Very good intro to the record.

“WDPK 83.7 FM” is nothing more than a looped sample, but it segueways Daftendirekt very nicely into “Revolution 909.” On its own, I probably wouldn’t like this. But I’m a person that always listens to albums all the way through, so this is a really good transition. I have to give Daft Punk props for giving their songs really great names. They try and put their name in normal things. All radio station call numbers have to start with W. So they just took 3 recognizable letters from “Daft Punk” and put them after a W to make their own radio station. Genius.

The next song is “Revolution 909″ and I really like this song, mostly because of the concept. The song “Revolution 9″ by The Beatles was a huge collage of sound with subliminal messages in it, and the phrase “Paul is dead” being repeated during a recording of people talking. In this song, there’s a lot of noise that comes before the music of this song, and someone yells “suicide” tying in this song to Revolution 9. I like Daft Punk’s references to things. The music of this song is kind of repetitive, but it’s not overly repetitive and has a good sound to it.

“Da Funk,” the next song, uses the title as an excuse to put their name in the titles of songs again. They could’ve said “The Funk,” but isntead they said “Da Funk,” which is what you get if you take the T and the P out of “Daft Punk.” Subtle, but cool. The music in this song is some of the best on the album.

“Phoenix” is kind of a lull. The music is good, and it’s a good song to be playing in the background while you’re working or something, but not a song that I would just put on and jam to.

The next track, “Fresh,” is a lot like Phoenix, but Fresh is very soothing. There’s a sample of the tide coming in and out during the whole thing and the song is very ambient sounding. This is something I would listen to when I want to be relaxed. Not a good standalone song, but good in the context of the album after the rush of Da Funk and Phoenix.

“Around The World” is probably the best song on the album. It’s definitely the most “songful” song on the album. This is one of the sonly songs that I heard BEFORE I got Homework, and I’ve loved it ever since. Really really good song. Very trance-like, just like Fresh before it. The thing that Homework really excels at is making a good flow throughout the album. All the songs seem to be in the “right” order. It’s very fluid.

“Rollin’ & Scratchin’” is one of the two worst songs on the album. I can listen to Homework all the way through, but when I get to Rollin’ & Scratchin’, I almost turn it off. The song is very annoying and displeasing to the ear. It’s creative on how it only uses one note for very long periods of time with no variations, and proves that you CAN make a one note song. But Queens Of The Stone Age already made an amazing one-chord song “You’ve Got A Killer Scene There, Man…” and it really kicks the crud out of this song. I really do not like this song. The end.

“Teachers,” has a very Discovery-esque vocal loop going on in the background, and that’s what makes the song worthwhile for me. The song is Daft Punk paying homage to their inspiration and it consists of naming off DJ’s that got them into the house music scene. Like I said, the background vocals make this song good. When those aren’t going on, it’s a little annoying.

The next song on the record is “High Fidelity.” This is one of the highlights of the album for me because it uses the non-lyrical vocal loop style that was expanded on in Daft Punk’s next album, Discovery. This is a very creative and catchy song.

Next: “Rock & Roll.” This song matches the annoyingness of Rollin’ & Scratchin’. The entire song almost is this strange vinyl scratch noise that sounds like two balloons being rubbed together over and over. This song hurts my ears.

“Oh Yeah” is a song that lives up to it’s name. Almost all the lyrics are “oh yeah.” This is kind of a throwaway song. I don’t think it add anything to the CD, and it’s not a good standalone song either. This is kind of an “in between” song, where you can’t tell if it’s a good song or a bad song. It’s leaning more towards the bad song side, though.

“Burnin’” is an awesome party song. The bassline in this song is really great, it makes the song good for me. Enough said.

“Indo Silver Club” is very dancy, but not really fast enough to be danced to. This song is alright. This is kind of like a dancier, not as catchy version of Burnin’.

“Alive” is the album’s real closer. It’s mostly a collage of percussion and synth. In my opinion, Daft Punk aren’t good at closing albums. They always have really good beginnings, but they always lose steam at the end. This song just proves that point even further. Discovery had a bad ending, and the next album, Human After All, had an awful ending. This one is worse than Discovery’s ending, but not as bad as Human After All.

The technical album closer is “Funk Ad,” or as some like to call it, “knuF aD.” This “song” is just about a minute of Da Funk, played backwards, and it actually doesn’t sound bad. A fun ending, even if it wasn’t really an ending, just more of a last word.

After listening to Homework a lot, I think that it’s almost as good as Daft Punk’s second album, Discovery. It’s pretty close, but Homework has too much filler, where as Discovery is good (almost) all the way through. This is really what Daft Punk is all about though. Discovery is their “weird” album, really.

Score:
3 out of 4 or 7.2 out of 10

I go to my “job” tomorrow, to allow the public to engorge themselves and increase the average weight of America as the snack guy. When you think about it, it’s depressing. I try not to. Instead, I think about what I’ll be buying this year with my income. My first year that I ran the concession stand I bought my current acoustic guitar, and the next year I used the money on a Wii. This year, Christmas was good to me. At first I was at a loss for what to use the money for, but I eventually got some ideas.

One idea was to buy and Xbox 360, which is something I haven’t wanted until recently when I played Bioshock and Rock Band. Then, I looked at the amount of money it costs. $350. Last year I made almost $350. And thinking about all the small things that I want to buy that I didn’t get for christmas, and I knew that if I bought a 360, then I wouldn’t get a chance to buy anything else.

So now my plan is to buy a lot of little things. Games, music, equiptment, things like that. I’ve been working on a list of things that I want to buy but I haven’t counted up the amount of money it will cost so a lot of it might have to come off. Here’s all the CD’s that I’m planning on buying.

Mirrored by Battles
Apollo 18 by They Might Be Giants
Think Tank by Blur
Emergency & I by The Dismemberment Plan
In/Casino/Out by At The Drive-In
Led Zeppelin IV by Led Zeppelin
The Moon And Antarctica by Modest Mouse
S.C.I.E.N.C.E. by Incubus
The Love Below/Speakerboxxx by Outkast
The College Dropout by KanYe West
Roll On by The Living End
Renegades by Rage Against The Machine

Hopefully these will be a reality pretty soon. I’ll probably have to order a lot offline because music stores don’t stock things like The Dismemberment Plan and The Living End. I hate ordering offline though. You have to pay more, you have to wait longer, and you have to fill in a bunch of stuff, and you have to get mom and dad mad by asking for the credit card. I’d much rather buy things in FYE or somewhere.

+: Teeth Are Strange Things

I noticed while brushing my teeth today that teeth are odd. Today is the first day of my life when I’ve ever touched my teeth and said “wow, these feel like little rocks or something” instead of thinking “wow, these feel like my teeth.” Like they feel separate from myself. I don’t know what I’m saying. Good night.

Right now my main annoyance is lazy people. Myself being a person who enjoys a good “doing nothing” from time to time, I may sound a little hypocritical towards myself saying this, but right now I’m just noticing that people are lazier than they should be allowed to be. I’m kind of lazy myself. I’m pretty lazy myself. But, I draw the line when my dad tells me to plug his computer in while sitting right next to the plug. That’s ridiculous.

On another note, I’m back from Travis’ house and I plan on going to bed at about 9 tonight to catch up on my Z’s after going to bed at about 11 for the last week or two. So this should be the last short blog for a while.

But, as an added bonus of reading this blog, here is a link to my music mySpace! Viola! I kind of gave this out yesterday but I never said that I had a few more songs up there. Regardless, go to my music mySpace and check it out.

Today was a fun day, because today is the day that me and my friend Travis made our own recording studio in a very small bathroom and actually wrote and recorded some decent songs.

The first song was all me, and it was called “Witch Doctor.” Technically, this song wasn’t recorded in Washroom Studios because I wasn’t exactly in the bathroom when I recorded it, but it was before we had the idea. But still, I wrote and recorded the song all sitting in one place, holding a guitar, having a keyboard in front of me, and a laptop to the side. (And relatively close to the bathroom) The song has a exotic sounding piano part going on in the background that’s all focused around one chord with some variations here and there, then some conga-esque drums kick in to give the song some rhythm. The solos that are over this background part are flute, keyboard-clav, and wah-wah guitar. (Everything but the guitar was made from the keyboard) It was only like a minute and a half, maybe two minutes, but it was fun to make and fun to play. Though I probably couldn’t play it again if I tried. These are always spur of the moment type of things.

Then, Travis came up with the “let’s make a recording studio in the bathroom” idea, so we got excited. The next song was supposed to be an all-Travis song, but we ended up collabo-ing because he needed some help and I wanted in on it. We decided to call the song “Faucetto” because of the environment we we’re in and because of some of the instruments we used. First, we made a drum loop and played that for about a minute and recorded it. This probably wasn’t a good idea because it was hard to work with anything else after recording the drums first. (In my opinion, you should record drums WHILE recording the main instrument, like I did with “Witch Doctor.” I recorded the piano and the drums at the same time.) Travis wanted to put some weird vocals like I did with my ambient Ben-collabo song (you’ll hear about this later), “Distended Tendencies.” So we were trying to make the wierdest vocal effects ever and found some amazing effects on his pedal board that made his beat-boxing sound like a nuclear bomb. It was awesome, so we ran with it. We ended up using tongue clicks over the drums and it sounded like a mad dripping faucet or something. We used the same effects on a running faucet in Travis’ bathtub to increase the effect; it sounded amazing. The coolest thing we recorded, though, was when Travis put effects on the microphone and rubbed the mic against his jeans and it sounded like a turntable scratch. Awesome. The, one thing remained: actual music. The first half of the song was all piano over all those effects that I told you about. Then, after all the effects ended, there was a keyboard rhythm part that went on for a bit by itself, and then guitar and drums kicked in and made a great coda to end the song with. Pretty sweet.

You can listen to “Witch Doctor” and “Faucetto” at my myspace music page, along with some old songs I made called “Real Grace,” “Retrogressive,” and a remake of a The Mars Volta song, which was once called “Cicatriz E.S.P.,” that I renamed as my own to “Cicatrix. Check them all out here:

http://www.myspace.com/andrewinlatin

Good night.

P.S.: I just watched Cloverfield again, and I stand by my score of 3.8 out of 4. Awesome movie.

Today was the second real practice of my church’s praise band, I think it’s going really good. Our drummer and bass player have both only been playing their instruments for about a week, but they can both play pretty well already. So promising. I’m really stoked for finished products of our songs. I have some videos of us playing today, I might put them up, I might not, I’ll have to think about it.

But anyways. Today is sunday and tomorrow is MLK day, so I won’t be going to school until tuesday. But this is a special week because my parents are on vacation. So today and tomorrow I’m at my granny’s house just chilling and surfin’ the net and playing guitar and stuff. Then on tuesday I’m going to school and going home with my best friend Travis and staying with him until thursday and I’m dropping all my stuff off at his house tomorrow.  Stuff = guitar, laptop, camera, etc. And we’re gonna jam and learn some two-man songs. Maybe try and get some kind of music project going. I dunno. I’ll let you know what turns out.

I had a conversation today with someone about Limewire and illegal music downloads, and I don’t think he got my point. Edmonds (the guy I was talking to) said that all the music on his mp3 player was downloaded illegally. I have probably about a hundred or so single songs that I’ve downloaded from sites like dogpile.com and sonicx.com, but the thing is, for songs like that, I either am in two situations.

1: I’m downloading a single from an artist I’ve never heard before so I can see if I would enjoy their album, or

2: I only like one song by an artist and I don’t want to pay the price of 9.99 for just that song. And don’t even get me started on iTunes. 99 cents for about 2-4 minutes of music is ridiculous. And iTunes won’t even let you download songs that are any longer than that without buying the album, that’s greedy too.

But back to the point, yes, I will download single songs from time to time. There are plenty of songs I have on my iPod that have been downloaded illegally, like “The Answers” by Lemon Sun. Great song, but I don’t think I like their style of music enough to buy 9 dollars worth of their music. Money’s tight, you know?

But there’’s always those band, you know? Those bands who you love everything they put out and you just WANT to support them and pay for their albums so you can have the full experience of listening to their music. Your favorite bands.  The bands that no matter how expensive CDs became, you’d still buy their stuff. Good examples of bands like this to me are:

The Mars Volta
Queens Of The Stone Age
Green Day
Incubus
Motion City Soundtrack
Gorillaz
The White Stripes
Wolfmother
Arctic Monkeys

And many more. But bands like that to me make CDs that I have to have the full package to fully enjoy. (Well, with the exception of Gorillaz, because I buy their albums digitally. A digital band goes hand in hand with digital albums.) I want bands like this to continue making music and to succeed, so I buy their stuff. Bands you really love you shouldn’t pirate.

Everyone within the sound of my typing, go Google, then download and play the free game AudioSurf. I haven’t played it myself yet because I’m in the middle of installing it while I type this, but from what I’ve read and seen, this looks wicked. You’re in like an F-Zero type ship, and you’re driving non-stop through an obstacle course type road, and you can put your own music as the soundtrack to the game. Depending on the beat and rhythm of the music, the obstacle course is different and harder. I really don’t know much else, but I’m really excited to play this. Check it out.

I wonder if the 32 minute track “Cassandra Gemini” by The Mars Volta is fair game? We’ll see soon enough.

Okay, I said “Queens For The Stone Age” at the beginning. I realize this, and I hate myself for saying it. But they’re probably my second favorite band ever, so don’t worry ’bout it. Also, there we’re lots of subtitles and things that we’re explaining things through the song, but youTube has terrible quality and made them fuzzy looking to where you can’t read them.

Last night, my friend Ben, his friend Seb, and I had a listening party for the band The Mars Volta, and we listened to almost all of their discography. Trying to describe The Mars Volta is really pointless and won’t convince anyone about their sound, so I’m not going to try. So, here’s my plug: listen to The Mars Volta.Anyway, back to the listening party. What we did was we all got into a group conversation in MSN messenger, then made identical playlists, and started them all at the same time, and listened all the way through, discussing throughout. Now, this playlist was massive. If you want to know how massive, check this out. 

 So that’s our playlist. 37 tracks, 4 hours, 52 minutes, and 1 second long. We started at 9:30 PM on 03/01/08, and ended roughly at 2:22 AM on 04/01/08. Epic. Very epic. But now I’ve promised myself not to listen to any more Volta until 01/29/08, the day their new album gets released, to get myself stoked for it. I just hope I can make it…Remember how I said this party was with me, Ben, and Seb? Well, Seb is in a band himself, called Fallen Justice, and they’re in Ontario, and he convinced me to put a plug to them in this blog too. Here’s their youTube video of them covering Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” Take it away, boys.One more goody for you. Here’s a track off of The Mars Volta’s upcoming album, The Bedlam In Goliath. The sound quality leaves much to be desired because this is a rip of a music video, but it still really kicks butt. The song is called “Goliath.” Enjoy.