A few weeks ago I raided my dresser and got rid of lots of old stuff that didn't fit. It's a mildly depressing thing that some of my absolute favorite t-shirts didn't fit anymore, (1) because it means I'm gaining more mass than I burn off and (2) because it means I had to part with some of the most character-defining articles of clothing I've ever worn. Before I dropped everything off at Goodwill, I took a few pictures of the most important shirts. Here they are.
Iowa Soccer Baseball Tee:
Not that significant of a shirt other than it was one of the first where I could tell Colleen really loved how I looked in it. I had never really noticed that before with any of my clothes, and I remember walking into youth group wearing this shirt (the first baseball tee I'd ever worn where the arms are a different color than the torso, makes your shoulders look huge) and seeing Colleen raise her eyebrows like "Hmm!" It was a special thing. On the other hand, one time I got called out on wearing this shirt and I started to talk about how I liked the Iowa men's soccer team. It's only club. So that was embarrassing.
Rhea Central Super Jacket's Tee:
This one was a bummer to dump. I found this scrunched tight in a rack of crappy old t-shirts at a thrift store in Dayton, Tennessee. It was a local thrift store, not a Goodwill or Salvation Army, so the opportunity to find cool vintage clothes is upped quite a bit. This is the only really great thing I found that day, and I didn't immediately think it was great but thought I'd get it since I hadn't found anything else. It fit perfectly and was super comfortable, enough to wear to run or to play frisbee in or go to youth group or hang out or whatever. Versatility can make a pretty good piece of clothing absolutely essential in a wardrobe. The shirt was plain white, with a weird dragonfly/insect/man on it with flitting wings and a pretty phallic stinger right between his legs. What I found funny is that he's saying "Feel the sting!" with gritted teeth and he's finger wagging at you. Framing the insect-man were the words Rhea Central Super Jackets. Pretty simple, but I ended up wearing that shirt possibly more than any other in my wardrobe over the course of the next four to five years. Yikes. It was getting pretty gross by the end. But there are loads of cool pictures from high school with me in this shirt. More on why that's important to me later.
The Benes #41 Cardinals Jersey Tee:
This was definitely the hardest to even think about parting with, so I didn't. This one is the only one I kept, tucked away in an obscure corner of my dresser. I'm not sure exactly why I got so attached to this shirt. I purchased it years and years ago at a thrift store with Luke; I think it was the Salvation Army in Marion. This was the first jersey t-shirt I'd ever found and I immediately fell in love with it. I was probably 15 years old, and the silliness and irony of a t-shirt made to look like a jersey suited the style I was looking for perfectly. I didn't know who Benes was, as I was a Cardinals fan in name only and not in
practice, but my oh my was I the biggest name-only Cardinal fan you'd ever meet. Around this same time I purchased my first Cardinals ball cap which was permanently attached to my head for the next few years. So just the mere fact that I had found a cheap Cardinals shirt endeared it to me. That it was a jersey tee made it a must-have. I wore this shirt probably not as much as the Rhea County tee, but this one was worn during some of the most indelible memories of my teenage years. Two of my absolutely favorite pictures of Colleen and me feature the Cardinals tee.
I love these pictures. These, and the Cardinals shirt, bring me back to the super fun first years of our relationship, and at an even more basic level, they bring me back to the fun years of being young. As uncomfortable, awkward, depressing, zitty, drama-filled, "whatever other miserable adjective you can think of" as teenage years are for everyone, they are so much fun. Those are the years you really begin to figure out who you are, what your identity is. You start learning how you relate to the opposite sex, what sorts of things you find funny, what things you really enjoy doing, what kinds of music you like to listen to. I really enjoyed my teenage years, and occasionally being reminded of them is fun.
The Cardinals shirt was with me through some of the most important days of those years, and I just didn't want to get rid of that one. So I kept it. It's odd, maybe this is just me trying to wax philisophical about getting a little older, our culture, or whatever, but I feel like my generation (and even less so the ones coming after us) have fewer and fewer relics or mementos from their childhood. I think we all have toys we played with or books we read, but it's so rare to actually still have the items that define our realities as young kids. Every time Colleen and I visit my family in Kansas City, I love looking through the bookshelf down in the basement that has the huge collection of completely random books that Mom and Dad had collected over the years. For some reason, those flimsy paperback books about Sesame Street characters still resonate with me and bring to me this overwhelming nostalgia. And I feel like the older I get, the less I have keepsakes like that. Fifty years from now, no grandparent is going to show their Facebook account to their grandkid and say "When I was your age this is what we spent our time on, look how many friends I've amassed over the years!" How lame is that? It's an old-fashioned ideal, but I want tangible items I can give my kids to touch and feel and smell and read and play with and wear.
So while it certainly doesn't fit anymore though, I am saving the Cardinals shirt for my kids. Who knows whether or not we'll raise Cardinals fans or if they will like dumb clothes like jersey shirts, but I would like it to be kept in a basement closet of some kind to be discovered by my child. It managed to catch the eye of a pretty young blonde girl a long time ago, who says it couldn't happen again?
NBC finally pulled it off. They got Colleen and me hooked on a reality music contest show. We first saw the ads for The Voice about a month and a half before the premiere, and usually when a show is overhyped I immediately write it off. A reality music contest judged/coached by Christina Aguilera, the girl-voiced Maroon 5 guy and a country singer, hosted by Carson Daly? Thankfully Carson managed to pull in the artist who released one of the Top Three Best Albums last year and who has the soul to match his wardrobe, Cee Lo Green. I'd seen Cee Lo do some featured spots on some rap albums prior to the Gnarls Barkley album "St. Elsewhere", but his name actually solidified in my brain after he and Danger Mouse released the single "Crazy" in 2006. I definitely wouldn't ever have expected him to do a reality music contest show so I figured this one was worth tuning in for.
Oh so right. The first two weeks were blind auditions, where the four coaches get to pick 8 singers for their team based only on their vocal performance. After the blind auditions, the coaches then have pairs of singers off their teams perform duets and then they decide which singer they keep on the team and which one gets booted off the show. After each team is whittled down to four people, then show will go live for I guess audience voting rounds? I'm not sure past that but for now, the show is riveting reality TV.
What is the draw here? I'm confused as to why I like the show but I think it has to do with a combination of good singers and good coaches. With American Idol, you have to sit through the first few shows of crappy auditions to finally get to the actual contestants. With The Voice, I'm not sure where they got the contestants, but most have had some kind of experience with singing, whether it's on broadway, releasing actual studio albums, back-up singers for famous singers, etc.
And the coaches! Cee Lo is obviously awesome, and it's so great to see him talk about music and singers and goof off with the other coaches. His outfits are outrageous. With Adam, I used to be a huge Maroon 5 fan (they've got pretty redundant to me the last few years but whatever), and he's got some pop music credibility so I'm fine with him. Christina has singer cred all over the music industry, so while I'm not a huge fan of her, I appreciate her being a coach as she's got some pretty impressive, albeit often gaudy, pipes. Then there is Blake Shelton. Started off not liking this guy because he's country, what is he going to have to offer? He won us over on the first episode. Not only is he a pretty funny dude, he might be the one coach who has the most legitimate pieces of advice for the contestants. So while I will never listen to his music, I definitely think he adds a lot to the show. And that's why, you don't judge*.
After the blind audition weeks, the coaches pick two singers off their individual teams and have them practice up (with the help of a celebrity coach aid) on the same song which they then perform as a duet, then the coach picks one to stay and one to go. I wasn't sure this change in the show's format was going to work but holy cow it definitely does. It immediately draws out some fierce competition having two singers singing the same song at the same time. I will say though, in terms of the coaches actually coaching their singers before going out into the battle round seems a little pointless. The coaches don't actually seem to offer much technical advice and their celebrity friends offer even less. The aids were Reba McEntire, Adam Blackstone, Sia, and Monica. I don't care much about any of them other than Adam Blackstone (producer on many great records, he's playing the sickest bass with ?uest and James Poyser right here), and he just wasn't featured much. They could be done with the celebrity cameos and it wouldn't hurt the show at all.
So the battle round went off like crazy, super fun to watch and listen and root for a certain team and singers within teams. The only thing I'm torn about is the finality of the coaches decisions. This was demonstrated better by Blake than anyone during the first battle round. He had two guys singing against each other, the country guy (Patrick) and the soulful guy (Tyler). Blake ended up going with (SPOILER ALERT) country boy Patrick, which was severely disappointing. As good of a voice as Patrick had, Tyler had pipes that blew his competitor out of the water. He was so much more entertaining to listen to, he had real range and emotion in his voice versus the one-note stylings of Patrick. The better singer was robbed. And there's no second chance, no comeback or anything. We're just left with a singer who is less entertaining than another one. Disappointing.
So the show rocks, and if you haven't seen it, it's still early enough on to catch up with it and keep watching. Good reality competition TV, which I think is hard to find.
I've been wanting to write about this for three months. Colleen and I finally gave our Christmas present to her family; the (nearly) comprehensive collection of their VHS home videos on DVD.
First, the how. Here's what you need:
Computer (I used my Mac)
VCR
Adapter with audio/video cable ports and USB ports (and included software for capturing video) (Elgato Video Capture Device for Mac users)
DVD burner
Blank DVDs
Video editing software (iMovie for Mac users)
DVD burning software (iDVD for Mac users)
Photoshop software
VHS tapes
In a nutshell, here's what we did. Recorded all the VHS tapes using the VCR and adapter software, loaded the raw video files into iMovie, edited all unwanted portions out, placed chapter markers on the files, grabbed still frames to use for menu screens and the DVD covers, transferred edited video files to iDVD, picked the specific menu template, formatted the menu and chapter selection screens so they would fit a normal television screen, loaded stills into the menus, double-double-checked everything and then burned the DVD. Time-intensive parts were capturing the raw footage from the tapes onto the computer and burning the actual DVDs because capturing the video required just starting a tape and letting it play the whole way through in real time and burning the DVDs took like 6 hours a piece. Thankfully they were time-intensive and not labor-intensive; I could get one started and go do homework or something. The labor-intensive part was the editing. The most frustrating part was making sure everything worked. The worst portion of this entire project was the afternoon I got a video down to the final edit and tried to burn it. For some reason, the software kept saying I wasn't putting in a recordable DVD in the drive when clearly I was putting in a recordable DVD. I couldn't find an answer anywhere, online, I called Best Buy, Staples, everybody's gave me the same answer, "Huh. Weird, it should be working." Thanks a lot everybody. So I ended up having Staples send in the drive and get me a replacement drive, which worked perfectly. But for that afternoon...yikes. I was not a pleasant person to be around. But for the most part, the editing went fairly smooth, the biggest hiccup was trying to find a version of iMovie that had a chapter marker functionality. For some insane reason, Apple removed that tool from the previous version of iMovie when they upgraded to the version I have on my Mac (iMovie '09). Thankfully, Colleen's Mac is still kicking four years in and that had the older version of iMovie so we used that. The only problem is that hers is wicked slow so the process was slowed down a bit, but we still managed to get it done.
The covers were easier; Colleen and I went to the UIowa Main Library and used Photoshop to create the covers. I found a free cover template online that I loaded into Photoshop and changed around to feature our chapter titles, DVD titles, and stills from each video. We also made the backgrounds of each a different pastel color so put together the set of eight DVDs looks awesome. We just had them printed at Copyworks after their graphic designers resized the file so it would print to fit an actual DVD case.
Now a bit of the why: this is very possibly the biggest gift I've ever given or been involved in. Not physically big but more in the emotional attachment Colleen and I have to it. I've given some gifts in the past to Colleen that I was excited about, but this one was different, because it was really a joint effort between the two of us. It connected me to her and her family in a way that I hadn't really expected. We spent many hours recording the raw video, figuring out chronological orders, adding clips together, editing out the many unwatchable, damaged parts of the VHS tape or random stuff like the 1988 Iowa/Iowa State basketball game Jim had preserved. In the past, when the girls would get out the old VHS tapes and watch them, I would usually watch and enjoy them to a certain extent, not as much as the girls but still laughing at seeing how they were when they were young. But working on this project connected me to this videos more deeply because the end result is ultimately ours. I wouldn't label us "creative" types, and I don't mean in the sense of being a unique personality (we are both pretty odd), but more in the sense of doing actual creating. We don't paint, never had many drawing skills, never been much for creative writing, and we both are very musical but we don't exactly create it. However, this project was an act of creation for the two of us. We took raw materials in an untouched form and turned them into something beautiful and creative. And finishing it up to give away is an emotional thing because it's like your baby.
What made this gift especially meaningful for me to give away is that it's exactly what I want to do with my career. At the core, librarianship is about getting information into the hands of people who want it and can't find it. It's about preservation of information and extending access to anyone who needs it. Colleen and I had a lot of raw information and a specific user set and we've connected the two beautifully. It was a very rewarding experience and I hope to do it again soon. The best part about it is that next time I do this type of a project, it will be so much more efficient because I've worked out 75% of the kinks and can visualize each piece of the process so much better than before. That being said, anybody who's interested in hiring me, I'll do a better job than Walgreens and for an insanely lower price. Just let me know. Seriously, I am itching to start another project.
But after all is said and done, can you really put a price on this?
edited to say: forgot to mention earlier that i am nearing my 100th blog, so when that happens i will update this mug just a bit. change fonts, maybe even a color or two. my buddy adam did it and it looks awesome and it will also look like i am copying him now. dang.
remember when i used to blog? the good ol' days.
since it's been over a month, here's some stuff that's happening as of late.
been listening to ben folds as much as i can. everything too, old/new/stuff with the five. smoke is still one of the most incredibly well-written songs i've ever heard. mulling over a possible Top 5 list of favorite songs. we'll see.
my bachelor party was thrown last night. super great time. might put up pictures recap the night a bit. i want to give a tip o' the cap to my best bud joel and the boys for putting on one hell of a party for me. thanks guys.
and along those lines, it is two weeks until i am married. in exactly two weeks time i will be shaking my tookus on the dance floor at my reception with my beautiful new bride and a bunch of our friends. i am super nervous but even more excited.
started reading a book now that my summer class finished and i've got a tad bit more free time. it's called a severe mercy by sheldon vanauken. it's a walk through of this guy's relationship with his wife and has a lot of letters from his good friend c.s. lewis. pretty good so far.
while making the slideshow for the wedding, i got a glimpse of how cool i was in high school. seeing all the cool clothes i wore made me want to try and reclaim a bit of that former glory so i went out and bought a cards cap. holler.
and that little raspberry on my hand is from the bachelor party. i was a 1st-time kayaker.
this is on the official website of a local bar called the hub. i am playing there tomorrow night with two local performers slash friends, eli and bruce. eli is in a band called the barefoot compadres and they've played together for awhile and they are awesome. lots of college-y type covers, but the good ones. no crash or banana pancakes here. stuff like oar, old crow medicine show, amos lee, etc. and bruce plays all over the place, here in cedar falls, cedar rapids, and last time we practiced he was telling me about a gig he had just done in des moines. he plays mainly solo but also duos with eli occasionally. and he sounds like chris cornell. it's incredible. actually both of them have killer voices, eli fronts barefoot compadres and sounds like a mix of everybody he sings, so when they sing together it's a great blend. awesome harmony.
so a few weeks ago eli and i are out with some friends and he asks if i want to come and jam with him and bruce the next day and the next day comes and we jam, bruce teaches us a new song that he wants to start playing and then they ask me to play with them for this gig. yikes. i feel like the little brother tagging along with a brother and his cool friend. these two guys play all the time around town and even in other towns, and when i play i'm usually sitting on my bed in front of my computer playing along with itunes, not in front of real people who are drinking real drinks and listening and watching me play. i'm mortified.
i think it'll be fun though. the two or three times the three of us have met and played our set we gel really well and sound pretty good if i can say that. we play a mix of the stuff the two of them play, folksy acoustic rock type of stuff. nothing flashbang but fun to sit and drink to and even more fun to stand and play. i'm looking forward to it. if at least just to get a real gig under my belt and not be so nervous next time. should be fun though. if you're around, come check it out. the hub, wednesday night around 9.
-jon
p.s. i had no input whatsoever into what was put onto the hub's website, especially concerning me. i actually have no idea who wrote that. just wanted to clear any doubt.
this is about 6 months overdue but here is the story of the last day of my trip to the united kingdom.
we flew into dublin about 5 or 6 in the evening as far as i can remember. looking out the window of the plane i remember thinking the irish weren't exaggerating about their country; it is green. everywhere. the country side was gorgeous. we got into the airport and through customs and tried to grab a bus into the downtown area to find our hostel. i'm sure we looked confused by the bus system and buying tickets because two separate irish guys asked us if they could help. they were both very helpful and super friendly and their accents were really thick. awesome. we took a double decker downtown and obviously we rode on the top, what a thrill.
riding from the airport to the city center (where our hostel was located) was really cool. the neighborhoods we drove through actually didn't feel much different than the states. we passed a gas station, a mall, restaurants. the biggest difference was that a lot of houses had crazy colored doors and all the restaurants were named "o'brien's" or "o'malley's" or "sheehan's" or "mccann's" or "kennedy's" or "quinn's" or some other obviously irish name.
we pulled into the city center and immediately saw this thing not really sure what the story is behind this thing, it's just a big pointy needle right in the middle of downtown. weird. but it's construction is pretty cool, it underwent shot peening so it reflects light in a really cool way; throughout the day it changes color from a dark steel to reflecting the colors of dusk.
the rest of downtown was a lot of hustle and bustle, mainly pedestrians walking around, shopping, errands, doing whatever. there was a lot of brick everywhere, especially on the streets. we walked around just taking everything in, and then eventually found our hostel. we checked in and got to our room, and yikes. it was a huge room with about 18 other people. there were only two extra beds open, on opposite sides of the room, so sean grabbed one and i grabbed the other. mine was one of the bottoms of a set of two bunks, and the other three were occupied by these three guys from northern england. they were rambunctious to say the least. they introduced themselves and right away offered me a beer. i declined, telling them i was waiting until i got dinner. they thought that was weird but were nice enough about it.
sean and i got what we needed out of our bags and headed out into town to do some real exploring. we walked across the river liffey and ended up finding trinity college, which, along with the university of dublin (they're like sister schools i think), make up the oldest university in ireland. the campus was incredibly beautiful. it was sunday night, so we probably saw like five people total on campus. the sun was setting as we walked around, and it really gave the whole place a gorgeous feel. the campus was old. everything felt super old, but not musty or stuffy. it was very old-fashioned; every building looked ancient. and then dusk really set in and this is what we saw. after walking around the campus for an hour or so, we walked on through the downtown city streets. by chance, we ran into the temple bar area of downtown, the area dublin is famous for. i really don't know why this is though. a guy who studied in spain with us had been to dublin for st. patrick's day, and he said that temple bar was the best and we had to visit it, and that he thought it was really famous because it was the first bar to be called a "bar". like the guy's name who started it was temple bar, like that was his first and last name. unfortunately, none of that is true. it's certainly not the first bar to be called a bar, and the name might've been derived from the temple family, who lived in the area in the 1600s, but certainly not from a guy who's name was temple bar.
the area was really exciting though. even on a sunday night, the streets were completely packed with pedestrians, partyers, street performers, etc. just so much hustle and bustle. here is a picture of the actual "temple bar". it was a really pretty building, actually all the buildings in dublin were pretty. but there was quite an air about this neighborhood; it felt so old but really vibrant. so many different kinds of people were out, mostly just street walkers, but also a fair amount of buskers and other street performers too. the whole neighborhood just felt really energetic. one of the weirdest performers we saw was this guy who was standing on a metal bucket. he was dressed like a crazy person, like a person literally crazy, and he had a chain around his neck attached to like a fake wicket close by. his clothes were all black and he looked really goth-like, and he just stood on his bucket with his head down, not moving or making any noise, but whenever a passer-by would come up to throw some change into his change bucket, he would freak out and growl like an animal like he was some kind of mutant or something. it was weird and gross. we also saw a lot of awesome buskers out playing guitar and stuff. pretty happening place.
so after walking around a bit, sean did want to go inside temple bar and check it out, so we pushed our way inside (it was outrageously packed in there) and found a little nook where we could drink in peace. sean ordered us two beers and we just drank and observed the crowd. we also got our picture taken by a friendly irish guy which was nice.
it was a cool bar, very hip and irish, but i'm not sure why it has such a prestigious reputation.
we finished our beers, pushed our way back out onto the street and decided to continue walking. we walked down the block and took a turn down a little alleyway when we saw a bunch of people standing at the end of it watching something cool. the crowd opened up onto this really big courtyard, and out of one corner we heard this great 40s and 50s music blaring out of a boombox, frank sinatra and the like, and there were about 9 or 10 couples dancing to it! they had lots of spectators and eventually a lot of people joined in. sean and i jumped on a ledge on the sidelines and watched everybody have a good time. here's a glimpse.
we talked and watched the dancing for about half an hour and then decided to keep walking. we ended up finding christ church cathedral. with all the commotion we had seen, evening had managed to settle without our noticing. so when we stumbled upon christ church cathedral, my goodness it was an impressive site. what a foreboding building. this picture is really a small fraction of what the building actually looked like, we didn't get a good far away picture so it was much bigger than this photo portrays. but we walked around the building, impressed and a little anxious (me anyway), and decided to call it a night. we walked on towards the river liffey, hit the riverfront and walked awhile until we came upon the ha'penny bridge. to be fair, we didn't really know any of these landmarks we were hitting, we just kept walking, always making sure we were heading back towards the spire. but this is the river liffey at night. the river was really pretty, as it is in this picture, but if you looked along the banks, it was actually pretty filthy. lots of trash and oily grime. but otherwise gorgeous.
we finally made it back to our hostel after crossing the river, and hit the hay relatively early, wanting to get up for church the next morning. sleep went well until our english roommates returned from their night out. man were they loud. yet it was interesting that even brits find late-night farting giggle-worthy.
sean and i woke up the next morning, showered, had breakfast provided at the hostel, then headed off into town to see some churches. our first stop was st. patrick's cathedral, one of the two prominent cathedral's in dublin. unfortunately, as it was under construction, the tower was surrounded by scaffolding so we couldn't really get a good picture representative of the true beauty that this place possessed. but it was still a gorgeous church. one sucky thing though, we had to pay to get in and look around. lame, it is a house of God, but no big deal. we got in and the place was like a museum. very suspiciously organized almost more like an actual museum than a church building. clearly loads of tourists frequent this place. on either side of the main sanctuary-like aisle there were exhibits of old relics and things from the church's history, lots of really interesting stuff. and the architecture of the place was astoundingly beautiful. gigantic stained-glass windows, elaborate wall frescoes, even the floor was ornately designed. the whole place was lovely. we wanted to do mass at christ church cathedral however, so we decided to head on over for that. one old irish codger at st. patrick's told us their mass was better, but we went against his advice and picked christ church.
seeing christ church the night before was a little haunting and creepy. seeing it late morning was far better. the church is just beautiful. i don't really have any pictures that do it any kind of justice. go check it out on wikipedia if you want. here's one of sean's though.
so we went in (for free) and sat down for mass. now sean is catholic, so he knew about mass and what you do and all that. i think i'd been to one or two other masses in my life before that, so i was a tiny bit intimidated by the immense amount of liturgy i encountered. but it was all so cool. it was sean's first mass in english in like 5 months too so that was cool. and the choir, whoo boy the choir was incredible. it was like 14 men and women who filled the cathedral with their voices so pitch-perfect and beautiful that i thought they were going to leave by flying back to heaven on their angel wings. turned out they just walked out like the the rest of us. the other great thing about the service was communion. obviously, growing up in church i've taken communion countless times, but this was way different. i probably shouldn't have taken communion not being catholic and all, but the priest said it was open which i take to mean any believer can take part, so i went for it. instead of passing a plate around like every evangelical church i'd ever been to, we all went up to the front. how it worked was there was a row where a certain number of people could kneel on this cushion type thing and put their hands out and the priest came along and put a wafer into their hand and they'd eat it. with the wine, a priest came along with a goblet of wine which he would hand to us and we'd take a sip and then he'd wipe it off with a towel and hand it to the next person. it was a very visceral experience; i'd never walked up and knelt to receive the communion from a man of the cloth. it was like i was actually kneeling before God or something, a very emotional and real thing. so cool.
after the service ended, we headed downstairs for some refreshments. the basement was a crypt-like place slash museum. they had some crazy old artifacts and the whole place just looked like a medieval prison. they even had gallows. so we walked around a bit until they started handing out refreshments and then we got a few cookies and some irish tea while we talked to an irishman about our trip and the rest of our day. we asked him a few questions about where to go and he recommended heading to howth, a little town outside of dublin on the coast. we thanked him and headed off to our next destination.
our next destination was the guinness storehouse. there was a second where we laughed at us drinking communion wine and then immediately going off to have a pint at the storehouse. this place was awesome but also a little disappointing. i was hoping we would see the real brewing of guinness beer, but instead the place was set up like a science center, you walk through this marked off paths and they had exhibits of old guinness family artifacts and signs, videos, and pictures that show how guinness beer is brewed, but we didn't see any real brewing going on. still though, the place was super sweet and i'd totally recommend going. one sweet artifact was the original lease that alec guinness signed for the property that the guinness storehouse is located on nowadays. the incredible thing is that the lease is for nine thousand years. yes. NINE THOUSAND YEARS. he really wanted to make sure he'd have that place locked down. the other awesome thing about the storehouse is that with your entry ticket you get a free pint of guinness beer up in this super sweet bar area called the gravity bar. this little bar area is just a circular room with windows on all sides, overlooking the city. gorgeous views and you get to enjoy a guinness. this was my first taste of this beer, and it was pretty sweet. i had always heard it was super heavy and really bad but as far as beer goes, it was strong but not horrible. i thought it was gonna have like a milkshake consistency and it wasn't nearly anything like that. it just had a really strong beer flavor, just a bigger kick in the mouth than a normal beer. but still good. look at how sweet our pints look too.
so sean and i downed our pints while we looked out over the city and then decided to head back down.
back out on the street we walked through the city back to our hostel, packed up our stuff, and signed out. luckily we were able to keep our packs in the lockers of the hostel so we didn't have to drag them around the countryside. we stopped by tesco's first to grab some lunch, i think i ended up with some cookies and chocolate milk, and then we headed off to the train station to grab a ride out to the coast.
the train ride out to howth was about half an hour or so. and gorgeous. as we sat and talked and watched the scenery go by, we saw small cathedral-looking churches, soccer fields, parks, i even saw a golf course. the suburbs were really pretty. and then as we got out into countryside, all we could see was green. after ten or fifteen minutes we finally spotted a beach-like area, and the ocean wasn't far off. we pulled into the train station at this little fishing town called howth and immediately started exploring.
talk about picturesque. this town was straight out of a thomas kincade painting. there was a port area with a bunch of fishing boats, like old-time type fishing boats. the port looked like it was the setting of a thousand piece puzzle. check it. there was a farmer's market type deal going on in the plaza/park area right next to the dock, people out walking dogs, one or two mildly posh restaurants and then a few smaller, cheaper looking pubs lining the road, just a very small-town feel all over. the beach was less sand and more rocks, and inland the landscape was at a much higher altitude than the coast was. we were sort of on a corner of the coast, at least the summit area we climbed around on wasn't just a straight coast line, it was really jagged and we hiked around on a corner-like part of the coast. jutting out from the coast was this really long concrete pier, and straight out from the pier off the coast was this really big green island with a little island right behind it. it was, without a doubt, the most beautiful coast i've ever seen.
since sean and i had no itinerary, we just decided to hike up the coast and see what we could find, so we started up the coast hill. it was really pretty; lots of houses we passed had really vibrant colored doors that are characteristic of ireland, and the landscape was just gorgeous. dark green, with patches of yellow from these flowering bushes. it was so pretty. the higher we got, the more the scenery blew us away.
it was so good to see green again, to get real fresh air from the country. that's one thing i didn't get a lot of in spain, lots of nature time. so much time was spent in the city that the few times we took trips out felt so good, and this was the best sojourn away from society that i went on the whole five months. the air was so cool, fresh, pristine. just crisp. the sound of waves on jagged rocks. seagulls talking. passing the occasional irish couple out walking and saying hi. it all just felt so good. i wouldn't say sean and i felt at home, but i felt more comfortable there than i had for a really long time. it felt so good to be there.
once we had gotten to the top of the hillside more or less, sean and i both just wanted to enjoy our few hours there. we walked slowly around the hillside, saying hi to passersby, climbing around in an old abandoned stone house, splitting up and enjoying the environment by ourselves, throwing rocks off into the ocean, finding a lighthouse, getting lost, finding our way back to the coastal part of town. it was so great to walk around and take everything in, hillside, the sea, the sunset, the people, the architecture. it was all so pleasant. and the whole time we walked sean had his little pack on and i was carrying our tesco bag. for some reason that will be a special memory in my head for a long time.
after the sun had set, we had gotten lost and subsequently found our way back into town, we stopped at a little seafood restaurant on the coast. it was a long john silver's type place, except everything was fresh. so fresh in fact, that they were out of most of their combo deals because their daily supply had run out. we got some genuine seaside fish and chips and ate them in the park area where the farmer's market was earlier in the day. it was awesome just hanging out with my friend, listening to the surf, watching people pass, eating our seafood. it was dark by this time so after we finished up our food we had about an hour left before the train headed back into dublin, so we stopped at the bar underneath the train station, the bloody stream, and ordered two straight jameson's on ice. jameson is a famous whiskey made in ireland and we thought it would cap our ireland experience. here are our two drinks.
man were they bad. whiskey on ice is a pretty rough drink. but it was a lot of fun to sit there in a pub, football on tv, irish people all around, drinking our whiskey.
our hour was up so we headed upstairs to wait for the dart to pull into the station. by this time it's about 11 pm and we are both exhausted, so we rested on the ride back to dublin and then headed back to our hostel to figure out how to get back to the airport for our early morning flight. there was a computer in the hostel lobby so we were able to kill a few hours there on the internet, writing emails to loved ones, checking the news, etc. we tried to decide whether it would be worth it to take a taxi back to the airport, cause the bus ride from the airport to downtown took about twenty or thirty minutes, and a taxi ride that long would cost us each around ten or fifteen euros. we toyed around with walking a ways and then just grabbing a taxi when we got tired. so we google mapped our route back to the airport, memorized the few turns we would have to take, grabbed our packs and headed off into the night. this was around 2 am.
and we walked. and walked. and kept walking. we saw so much city, and every time a car passed us, it was a taxi, and we always said to each other, "nah. let's keep walking." the city was really quiet, aside from the occasional taxi that passed us every ten minutes or so, you couldn't really hear a sound. and it was a night, so it was a little chilly, a little creepy, but good to walk and just digest the weekend with sean and sometimes we would just walk in silence and reflect on all the stuff we saw internally. it was a healthy walk. and it took us almost two and a half hours, but we made it all the way to the dublin international airport. that last half an hour was one of the hardest walking experiences of my life; i could barely lift my feet to keep going. i still can't believe we walked that entire way. here's our google map route. according to the map, we walked 7.0 miles. crazy. reaching the airport was such a relief.
we caught our plane back to santander, our bus back to oviedo, and that was our weekend to the united kingdom. without a doubt, it was the best weekend i spent on my whole trip. no serious mishaps, we saw loads of incredible things, saw some old friends and made some new ones, and got out of our day-to-day existence in oviedo. such a memorable trip for me. london was a place i've dreamed of for years, and it was just as i had expected it. and ireland held so much beauty that i hadn't really expected. i couldn't have asked for a more fulfilling weekend.
i'm sorry this is so late. the last few weeks have been decently busy and obviously this took me a long time to write. so here we go.
a few weekends ago my good friend sean and i visited the united kingdom. we left on thursday and returned on monday. without a doubt, it was the best weekend i've spent in europe. there are so many reasons why, but a huge one is just the fact that i'm very intrigued by london culture. english culture in general, but the idea of london is so romanticized in my head, probably thanks to hollywood or american pop culture's idea of it. it's idealized like paris is idealized. but i also am a big fan of some british tv/movies, and the music definitely. my favorite show business entertainer is english (that's gonna be a fun Top 5 list breakdown.), and i've learned a ton about english culture just from listening to his stand up, tv shows, podcasts, etc. i know a fair amount of english slang. i can understand their accents really well. i just love the culture, or at least the culture that was idealized in my head. little things, like the fact that i knew the garbage men are called "bin men" in london made me so excited to see london. and then dublin was just icing on the cake for me. and nothing disappointed me. so weird, i went with gigantic expectations and everything surpassed them. so many good memories. makes me wonder why the heck i decided to study in spain.
so anyway, here's how it all went down. we left for santander on the bus around 11:30 in the morning. this was great, cause it gave me time to get up, pack, eat breakfast, shower, all that stuff at a nice slow pace. we met at the bus station, hopped the bus and then spent the two hour ride talking in spanish and then in english. it was fun talking to sean in english for a change. he's the only person around here who actually has any desire to learn the language like me, so when we're together, even if we're around other americans, we speak in spanish together. but at one point one of us told the other a complex story in english, and we just stuck to english after that.
we got to the airport in santander and hung out for an hour or two until our flight left. while we were queueing up (queue = line in english, bit o' slang for you.), these three cute spanish kids in front of us were playing tag. they grabbed onto their dad's leg as base, and then they yelled "casa". so cute. this was my first time flying with the cheap company ryanair. hopefully it's my last. the company is so illlegit (it's sweet to spell that word with three L's.), they clearly don't use computers, as you can see from this photo. look closely, our names are written on the tickets in pen. how bogus is that? whatevs, they give cheap flights and you get what you pay for. the insides of the plane too are just hideous. bright yellow slash blue. a good mix for a college sports team maybe but not for the inside of a plane.
so we got on the plane, and i sat next to this sweet old english dude named terry in the emergency exit door row. the stewardess told us we could only sit in the emergency row if we spoke english in case of an actual emergency, and we told her we did, and then terry joked us that if we were from the states we didn't speak english. good one terr. but he was cool, he told us he was from newcastle and a few things to stay away from in london and dublin cause they were tourist traps (we ended up seeing them anyway). coolest thing about sitting next to him: as soon as our plane touched the ground, he said to me, "welcome to england." what a great way to start my visit.
we proceeded to meet the girls in the airport. sean was way excited to see them; he kept saying he hadn't gotten a real hug this whole semester. the two girls, hannah and caitlin, are studying in the university of hull (northern london) this semester, and sean knows them from uni. they are super fun girls, perfect london companions. they had been to the city like four or five times so they knew it really well. amazing. you have no idea how much that can affect a trip until you've been on one without a tour guide and/or someone who knows the city even a little. madrid sucked when i went because we just wandered, hoping to find something great. paris sucked until we met up with a frenchman. and london wouldn't have been nearly as great had we not had friends who knew it better than we did. the first thing we did was grab the train into town, about a half hour ride. super great, as we were coming into town i started seeing things that just matched up perfectly with london in my head. rows of identical brick houses with chimneys, a la the rooftop scene in mary poppins when bert describes the rooftops of london as a "endless jungle, just waitin' to be explored." and then the camera goes to this shot of the rooftop chimneys. another thing i noticed: garbage. the city, by no means, is a clean city. there was loads of litter everywhere. for some reason though, it didn't bother me at all. it didn't even gross me out. it just seemed to fit. so my first impression was exactly as i had hoped, dirty and reminiscent of mary poppins.
the first thing we did was visit king's cross. we took the tube, or the london underground, the metropolitan subway system. it was a normal metro system, just like paris has, or like we rode in valencia, or any major european city that doesn't use cars as their main form of transportation. i was mainly excited to ride it because i knew londoners call it "the tube", and that there is a recorded voice that plays almost every time you pull into a station; it says "mind the gap", referring to the small gap between the train and the platform that could be potentially dangerous for a person getting off the tube if they weren't careful. i knew about this little piece of london culture from the ricky gervais podcasts; his friend/writing partner/also extremely hilarious working partner stephen merchant tells this story about a funny t-shirt he saw on the tube, and they mention the whole "mind the gap" voice. i don't know why, i guess the fact that i knew a little extra about the culture made me more excited to experience it. and it was great. there is a lady voice that says "please mind the gap", but there is a far cooler man voice that says "mind the gap", and i was really excited when i heard the man voice for the first time. so we took the tube to king's cross train station, most famously depicted in the harry potter series. thanks to the popularity of the series, there is a little hole in the wall part of the station that houses platform 9 3/4, the platform that takes new students to hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry in the series. in the books, the platform is hidden by a wall through which you have to run. in the real king's cross, away from the main platform area, they have a sign that says platform 9 3/4 and half a luggage cart in the wall. awesome. check that picture out though. on my way to hogwarts.
our second stop on the tube was covent garden. on the train ride into town the four of us decided which musical we were going to see the next night. it was a toss-up between wicked and the lion king. as much as wicked would've been great, the lion king grabbed sean and me right away, and the girls were cool with it so we headed to the lyceum theater in covent garden, which is actually the original theater where the lion king had its london debut. the box office was closed so we headed across the street to snack time, a little food shop that sold food like gas stations do in the states. i got a cheeseburger, some doritos (cause they only have tex-mex flavor in spain. tex-mex? what even is that? a terrible flavor, that's what.), and a real cherry coke. they also had dr. pepper, the first we'd seen in four months, but i went with the cherry coke. i bought a cadbury creme egg as well. it was lovely (they use lovely in england like we use great/nice/pretty/etc. it can mean different things).
after that we decided to head to paul stanley's flat. paul stanley was our couch surfing host for the weekend. let me explain a bit about couch surfing. it's this community of world travelers that want to travel for cheap. you make a profile on this website and offer up your couch (or floor or spare room or whatever) to whoever is part of the community, and you can request to stay at other people's places too. and it's all free. it's meant to further the idea of a world traveling community; experiencing new things, seeing new places, meeting new people, and this is a great way to do it for a lot cheaper. people stay on other people's couches for free. i was a bit wary of it at first, i mean you stay in the home of a complete stranger? no thanks. but the website has legit safety measures: a references system, where you're more trustworthy as people reference you, and especially if people who are already well-referenced reference you. so kind of the good guys vouching for the new good guys, the more vouches you have the better off your profile is. so the girls suggested this to sean before our trip began and we made up a profile and found this guy who lived in london, paul stanley (two first names, you can't go wrong with a guy with two first names.), and we messaged him and he gave us the thumbs up. so thursday night after convent garden we headed to p.s.'s place. it was a bit weird at first, just cause for couch surfing newbies like us, we felt kind of bad just crashing this guy's small flat. but he was way cool. he hosts loads of travelers, sometimes every weekend. so the five of us just hung out and talked for awhile and watched the telly (=tv). it was cool, we watched jonathan ross, england's jay leno, with a legit londoner. a simple experience, but very cool and very memorable for me. we asked him things about london, stuff to go see, stuff like that. i did make a fool of myself at one point though. i once saw this cool interview with mark ronson, sweet london music producer, and he was talking about this song by lily allen called LDN and he said the song was really visual, when he heard it it sounded like "that road". i took it to mean there was a road called LDN, when in reality he was talking about portabello road, the road on which he was giving the interview. he also talks about the road having lots of cool record shops, being a hip shopping district type place so i was interested in seeing if we could find it. i asked paul about it, and he had no idea what i was talking about. turns out LDN is just an abbreviation for london. way to go jon. it's like going to new york and asking about the NYC district. good work.
so paul went to bed and the rest of us stayed up for a bit and just hung out. it was a really pleasant time. it was cool cause the girls were different than the girls we see a lot here. they just seemed more my type, closer to who i would be friends with back in the states. so it was a treat to spend time with them and sean. it was finally a group of friends who were more interested in spending quality time together and making fun memories than drinking and partying, etc. it was really good to experience that again; i've missed it so much since i've been here and to have a taste of good community again, even with people i've just met, was really good for my heart. so that was a lot of fun.
we woke up the next morning, got ready, and headed out to conquer the city. it was an absolutely magnificent day. i was decently nervous about london being rainy or dreary; nothing of the sort. it was perfect weather, a few clouds, mainly blue sky, a fair amount of sun, just the right temperature. i was perfect in a sweater. we headed off to covent garden to buy our tickets for later that evening, and then just started walking from lyceum theater. we were all pretty hungry so the girls suggested tesco. exciting for me. tesco is another weird piece of english culture that i was aware of, and it was so cool to actually experience it rather than just hear about it. tesco is just a grocery store, a bit like walgreens minus the other non-food items. we got our breakfast there: i got chips, a small sub, a big double chocolate chip muffin and a pint or so of milk. i was so excited about the milk when i saw it. i had completely forgotten that we were going to be outside of spain, and the possibility of me getting real milk was there. when i saw those beautiful pints of cold, white as snow milk, i flipped. and let me tell you, as soon as we got outside, i opened it up and took a big gulp. such a great moment in my life. the first gulp of milk i'd had in four months. so good.
so we walked and ate, taking in the feel of the city, the buildings, the atmosphere. it's got a really great flavor to it; the buildings look really old, but it's a completely different kind of old than spain has. it just felt so much more like home to me, like i recognized it or something. i'm not english. i'm american. but i'm also certainly not spanish so maybe the commonalities i had with england drew me to it more. we walked until we came onto trafalgar square, which houses the national gallery and also a huge statue surrounded by four big lion statues. it was a really cool looking courtyard area. we got our picture taken on the lion and walked on towards big ben. on the way we ran into a crowd of people taking pictures of the classic london royal guards. i don't even know what they were guarding; we hadn't gotten to buckingham palace yet. they were pretty legit though, it would've been unbearably hot in these uniforms but this guy didn't move at all, other than his eyes. i did tell him "you do good work" and thanks after our pictures were snapped. i got no reply.
we walked on down the street until we came upon big ben. ironically, it was smaller than i thought it was going to be. or maybe it was its location; i think we saw it from a different angle or street than from where it's famously pictured, and so it just seemed smaller or different or something. but its still a really impressive, cool-looking clock tower. it's part of the parliament building, which the whole is just impressive on its own. and we saw it right as it struck 12 noon, which made for some sweet pictures. also, the clock face is made up of roman numerals like normal, but the numeral 4 is actually IIII rather than IV. fun fact for you. here's another one. big ben is actually the name of the huge bell inside the clock tower, rather than the name of the tower itself, as most people call it, including myself until the girls told me otherwise. it was a cool thing to see.
just across the street sits westminster abbey. it's a really impressive building, just massive. it's nearly 1000 years old, which is pretty cool that it's sat there for so long. we didn't go inside cause it cost and there was a crazy long line, but we did go into the little church right next to it, st. margaret's. it's totally dwarfed by westminster, but it's still a fairly big building. those were both really cool architectural sites to visit.
we headed off towards buckingham palace next. it was not as huge as i had expected, but still really cool. it's weird, with most of the big sites we saw, most of them looked different in my head, i think cause a lot of pictures i've seen are aerial views or from some different angle. the palace was still really gorgeous. the flag was up which i guess means the queen was home. awesome. and the courtyard area outside of the palace gate was great. there is a big park in front of the palace, past the big open courtyard. it's really picturesque so we walked through there a bit and then found a place on the grass and sat and ate what snacks we had left. it was really relaxing, sitting on the grass in this english park outside of the royal palace, drinking milk, watching people walk, seeing parents play with toddlers. what a great time. plus i saw a family of hasidic jews, cool.
we walked on through the park but it started to rain so we rocked the umbrellas (good thinking sean and me) when we heard a band playing. we followed the music and ended up seeing the royal band practicing for the queen's birthday. and it really started to rain too, these guys were hardcore. they marched in form, dressed in royal clothes, playing huge instruments, all in the rain. very cool.
after the rain stopped, we decided to walk on and took the huge street alongside the palace. it was really cool, there is a gorgeous park on the right and the huge palace wall on the right. look at how hardcore this wall looks.
they are not messing around. at the end of the street we walked into this nicely sized park area that had a big arch like the arc de triomph in paris but smaller, and there was this really sweet war memorial dedicated to the english and australian soldiers who have died in the line of duty together. a very cool memorial.
we took the tube to the tower of london and as soon as walked out it was right in front of us. check this out. so weird, walking up into daylight and seeing an ancient looking castle in the middle of a modern city. but it was very cool. we walked past the tower and directly in front of us was the tower bridge. it's a really impressive looking bridge, and it's got a great view overlooking the river thames. after we crossed the bridge, we walked along the riverbank for awhile, stopping to shop at a little market for a bit, and then we saw the infamous london bridge, which was super lame compared to tower bridge, and grabbed the tube again.
our next destination was camden market. this is a sweet huge street market. where we started, there was one long street lined with shops, and then we got into this back area which was just like a maze of alleys all lined with huts that sold all sorts of stuff. seriously, everything under the sun is sold at camden. clothes, hats, shoes, dvds, cds, records, jewelry, bric-a-brac, knick-knacks, and all other sorts of goods. it is a very eccentric place, with loads of freaks. normal people too, but man we saw tons of weirdos. all manner of dress, huge heeled boots, every shade of colored hair you could think of. it was crazy. for example, in one little hut/shop we stopped in (they had fedoras that we wanted to try on), look what we found in the back.
yup. that's weed. not even hidden or anything. it was a weird and awesome place. at one point we passed by this sweet record shop and sean/hannah/caitlin did me a huge favor and let me look around for like fifteen minutes. i ended up finding this sweet bootleg live stevie ray vaughan dvd, which i was pretty excited about.
around now we were getting really hungry, so we decided on some chinese food from one of the street vendors. it ended up being one of the best decisions we made on the whole trip. it was only 2 pounds, or 4 dollars, and it was the most filling meal i had the whole weekend. awesome. we ate in this little outdoor eating area right in the middle of the alley maze, and there were only a few seats that weren't wet from the rain the city had gotten earlier, so we ended up sharing with this awesome older english couple. they were probably in their 50s, and they were super cool. the guy's hair looked like a cross between the quaker oats man and benjamin franklin. but they were both really nice, and the woman said things like "oh you'll love the lion king, it's brilliant." i was so happy to hear a legitimate english lady use brilliant as an adjective.
our next stop was abbey road. the time was running low before we needed to be back at the lyceum theater for the lion king, but we decided to try and find abbey road since someone had told us it was pretty close to camden. we hopped a bus and rode it for awhile. i found it odd, all together we must've asked like 10 english people how to get to abbey road. i think one person knew where we wanted to get to, and how exactly to get there. i understand it's a huge tourist attraction so lots of londoners don't care about it, but come on, it's like the most famous album cover in history, have a bit of pride people. whatever, we rode the bus and caitlin asked the bus driver which stop would take us to abbey road. apparently he took this as "shout at the americans when we came to the stop." the bus was packed too, full of londoners, and when we finally came to the stop, the driver shouted out "stop for abbey road! abbey road right here!" yeah, we're foreign, thanks for telling everyone. we got off the bus and we were on abbey road. but nowhere near the famous crosswalk. not knowing exactly where to go, we headed off down the road, but in the wrong direction. sweet. after about ten minutes of walking, sean and hannah, God bless them, stopped another pedestrian and asked us how to get to the famous crosswalk cause our time was really starting to run out. we took off in the other direction at a very brisk walking pace, ended up grabbing a bus going down the road, ended up going too far, getting out, and walking BACK in the other direction. at one point we stopped a guy and before we even had any words out of our mouth, he told us two more blocks, if we were getting a picture of us walking across, the beatles started on the left hand side and walked across to the right. awesome. this guy knew exactly what we were after. so we finally found the crosswalk and the famous music studios where the beatles recorded abbey road and where loads of awesome musicians have recorded since, including pink floyd, radiohead, u2, kanye west, gnarls barkley, and john mayer. if we had a lot more time i would've tried to get into the studios somehow. but as it was, we had like thirty seconds to take our picture and find a tube station. so we signed the wall outside the studios (i signed mine with a little message to george harrison) and had a pedestrian take our picture walking across like the beatles. here is the result of our hour of searching.
it's not perfect, the angle is a bit off, but it's as good as anyone can get nowadays. notice i'm in george's spot. awesome.
so at this point, we're worn out from walking around, and we have like thirty minutes before the lion king starts. we were in serious trouble. we ended up running through the abbey road neighborhood to the nearest tube station, hopped on and got to the theater like five minutes before the show started. lucky us.
so we saw the lion king. i'm not even sure what to say about this. the lion king in london. an incredible experience. a highlight of the trip for me, and probably of my life too. i'd never been to a legit musical production put on by a real acting company in a real city, and it was such a cool thing. we had seats up in the balcony, but we could still see really well. it was so awesome to hear that first african cry that kicks off circle of life. the imagination that has been put into this show is absolutely amazing. it's based on the disney movie, and translating animals into actors has been done in such an inventive way. the actors on the stage not only play the main roles, but they play all the background animals and even the scenery. the way in which everything was done gave off such a feeling of life and energy. it felt like everything was in motion, every part of the theater and stage was a part of the natural world which was being portrayed. it was breath-taking. this video does a far better job of describing things visually and sonically than i can with words. make sure to pay attention to all the costumes. some of the coolest things i've ever seen in my life. right at 2:00 you can see how they did timon. awesome. but other than just him, the costume design in this show is just outstanding. the first pride rock scene where mufasa and sarabi have rafiki introduce baby simba to the pridelands was unforgettable. there are so many different animal costumes on stage; the whole place seems alive. so cool. ok now the video.
here is another killer video that showcases the originality of the whole show even better.
amazing. the music is so powerful too. i've seen the lion king movie loads of times, and i've never been moved like i was when i heard these characters sing. one of my first purchases back in the states will be the soundtrack. there was this song called he lives in you that was not in the original movie that was just staggering. mufasa sings it to simba in the first act and then later simba and rafiki sing it before simba goes back to the pridelands to reclaim them from scar. there was such an intense energy in the theater during the reprise of the song. so so good.
so the lion king was amazing. we didn't even know exactly what to do after such an superb experience so we decided to hit picadilly circus quick before heading back to p.s.'s place. picadilly circus was alright. it's one of the most famous tourist spots in london but i didn't really understand why. it's kind of like london's version of time square; there are some huge neon signs and lots of touristy shops. actually to be honest i don't even remember seeing a lot of shops. there were two souvenir shops that i remember and also a mcdonalds. nothing special. we decided to head back to make it an early night; the girls had to be up way early the next morning to catch a train to another english town. we grabbed the tube back to p.s.'s and got ready for bed. we put the movie independence day in as we were falling asleep slash talking. what a great movie. mainly because jeff goldblum was in it.
the next morning the girls woke up really early and got their stuff all packed up. it was so weird. i had met these girls less than two days before and i was really sad to see them go. maybe it was cause they were different americans than the same ones i've been interacting with for the last five months. or cause they made our london experience so great. probably just cause they were really fun girls. spending time with them and sean felt like being back home. it was so refreshing to be around kids my age who weren't preoccupied with where they were gonna get their alcohol or where the best bar would be to go. they were very mellow, go with the flow type girls who made the trip really fun, easy, and relaxing. so thank you to hannah and caitlin. you guys were great.
sean and i slept a bit longer after the girls left, then we got up and showered and talked to paul for awhile. whew that guy was a talker. sean finally interrupted him with the "we'd better get going" almost midsentence, but it was necessary or we might never have left. so sean and i started off into old london town with nothing but ourselves and our backpacks. no guides or anything. we took the tube to the train station that would take us to the luton airport and then we walked around the neighborhood since we had an hour or two to kill. we found tesco's and decided to grab some lunch there. i got a box of cereal (crunchy nut feast, excellent choice) and sean got carrots and a little sub and doritos. we ate our food in this nice little courtyard outside a real restaurant until it was time to grab our train.
our train to luton was a bit late and so we got to the airport with still a bit of time to spare. we got extremely lucky though. the closing time for our check-in desk for ryanair was 3:45; neither of us realized this until like 3:47 and sean went and asked the lady behind the desk what was up. she actually had to make a call to ask if she could check us in. ridiculous ryanair. so we got checked in and then went through security. unfortunately our gate was like an hour's walk away so we headed off in it's direction. again, we got way lucky because as we walked up to the gate we heard the last call go out for it; the second time we just barely missed our flight. yikes. and then we got on the plane and flew to ireland. more on that later.
5. timbaland timbaland got lucky. he beat out mark ronson for #5, almost solely because of his work with justin timberlake. let me get the things i don't like about him out of the way. first of all, he basically ushered in one of the worst eras of rap that (in my opinion) has existed since the very early days of rap, late 70s / early 80s. in the mid 90s, timbaland really took off as a producer, producing multiple albums for ginuwine and missy elliot, as well as work with aaliyah, destiny's child, jay-z, nas, and others. and most of this stuff was just not good. remember that song pony by ginuwine? there was a burping-type noise throughout the whole song for crying out loud. awful. here's what wikipedia has to say about the "timbaland sound":
"The track for "Pony," which Timbaland had created during the Swing Mob days, was characterized by a shifting, syncopated rhythm, similar to samba or drum and bass, which used snare and kick hits on typically non-accented beats in the measure. Stuttering high-hats typical of southern bass music accompanied the basic drum sounds, which were severely gated to create short, strong sounds that were unusual for hip-hop and R&B. This use of the "short snare" is in marked contrast to the "long snare" sound in New Wave music in the 1980s, which featured a heavily amplified, almost white noise snare drum put through reverberation. Accompanying the unusual rhythm were melody lines created by playing odd sound effects (vocal effects and cartoon slide whistles) through a sampling keyboard. Timbaland carried similar production and arrangements throughout the album. On many of the tracks, Timbaland can be heard either rapping or providing ad-libs, similar to what both Missy Elliott and Puff Daddy were doing at the time; Timbaland’s deep voice was usually vocoded to give it an electronic sound."
i don't know what most of that means. what i do know is that until recently, i was reluctant to be happy about a timbaland-produced tune because i immediately thought of missy elliot's get ur freak on. remember that song? so bad. all these weird middle eastern sounds and odd beats and rhythms that didn't seem smooth to me. i equated timbaland with missy elliot and that whole type of sound. which i didn't like at all. lately though, he's been redeeming himself over and over again. i'll get to that.
another thing i don't like about timbaland; he's too hit or miss for me. when he hits, he really hits, but when he misses, his tunes just fall so flat. take most of the stuff off his latest album timbaland presents: shock value. i just went through the track list and counted off the songs i think aren't bad: 6ish of 17. but those 5 or 6 are just ridiculously good. again, i'll get to it.
ok now the good. lately, within the last few years, timbaland has been winning me back. thinking about it, it's almost completely by the work he's done with justin timberlake. the tracks he produced off justified were great (especially (oh no) what you got and cry me a river), and then he was the executive producer of my 2nd favorite album of 2006, the near-perfect futuresex/lovesound. this album not only realized justin's full potential as an artist, but also introduced me to timbaland's genius as a producer. there is so much good stuff on this album. to do a truly complete overview of timbaland would be to do a complete album review of futuresex/lovesounds. i think like the neptunes were so responsible for justified, timbaland was responsible for futuresex/lovesounds. but in lieu of doing an entire album review, i'll just mention one of the best examples of the producing quality. lovestoned/i think she knows interlude is one of my favorite songs on the album, and tim's producing really shines throughout, but starting at 3:43 in the tune, his production quality gets sky high. listen closely to how many parts are layered here, and how well they all blend and flow. what i hear: 1. the beat, a mixture of: a. drum machine b. justin beatboxing drum noises 2. justin beatboxing record scratching noises 3. the guitar from the previous "let me put my funk on the guitar on this one" part of the song (2:37). 4. the bass, matching the easy to hear melody line. 5. the violins playing the easy to hear melody line.
and all this stuff sounds so good. and as this passage continues, some parts start dropping out, new parts start jumping in, and it all just sounds beautiful. i've never heard such gorgeous, subtle beatboxing as justin's work is here. and then at 4:38, the song just takes on completely new life. and from there on, it just soars higher and higher. this is what pop music should sound like. love it.
so for me, futuresex/lovesounds definitely solidified timbaland as one of the reigning producers right now. but tim didn't stop there. he released timbaland presents: shock value, an album that illustrates the value of how important a featuring artist can be for a tune. i've still got a little beef with this album because it's SO hit or miss for me. as i wrote earlier, 6 (or so) out of the 17 songs i think don't suck. most of the rest just kind of blow. legitimately, i haven't given the rest of the songs much of a listen because the 5 that hit home are totally off the wall. mainly because of: (1) good beats, (2) good featured artists. his beats are of the utmost importance, but you can tell from who guests that they can make or break a tune as well. guests that make this album worth listening to: justin timberlake, one republic, elton john. granted, jt is on one track that sucks (let's be honest. he's good, i mean really really good, but missy elliot is on the track, and she is equally as bad, if not more bad than he is good.), the other one he's on is one of the best dance tracks i've heard. one of the best feelings related to music i've ever had involved playing this song on at a mediocre dance party immediately turning it into a crazy fun dance party. other than the fact that justin is on this song (and he doesn't have much of a part anyway), the reason this song is great is this beat. it starts with timbaland saying "alright" and then the hook starting, and when it hits you can really tell this is a super fun song. check it:
how can you not at least bob your head to that? it's just too much fun not to move your body to it. this is the type of thing that timbaland's good at. good, catchy hooks. this is part of the weird thing about timbaland. he makes incredibly catchy, fun hooks, but there are great songs that he's in where he does hardly anything. perfect example, the tune ayo technology by 50 cent. just to get it out of the way, i am in no way a fan of 50 cent. the reason this song is so good is because timbaland produced it and justin sings on it. 50's verses suck. but other than the producing tim has like two lines in the song. this comes back to the whole featured artists thing. other than his producing, i'm not really a huge fan of timbaland. to me, he's not much of a noteworthy rapper, he doesn't sing, he doesn't really do anything when he's featured on a tune. listen to this:
tim's so great cause he shines when he produces. and hearing his evolution as a producer, i think he's only getting better. and thinking about getting better than tunes like ayo technology and albums like futuresex/lovesounds gets me really excited for where timbaland's gonna go.
4. just blaze just blaze is a tough entry for me because he has loads and loads of production credits of which i know nothing. he has been working for almost a decade, and i know probably 1% of all the producing he's done. that being said, i'll give you the lowdown on that 1%. it's incredible. just blaze has produced some of the best beats in hip-hop history (killer alliteration), among which are some of my favorites.
here's the problem with this entry. i know so little about just blaze, and i've been playing catch-up the last few days, listening to interviews, watching videos, reading his blog. the part of just blaze that is NOT one of jay-z's best producers is not a part that i've known for a long time. this part of just blaze's artistry is very new to me, and i haven't had much of a chance to absorb it, digest it, and interpret it or analyze it. so half of that 1% will be my brand new opinions, and the other half will be thoughts on his work that i do know.
let's start with the stuff i'm new too. just blaze has been around for a decade or so, producing for loads of artists. i don't really know much of that music. other stuff i've learned; i don't really like how he interviews. i hate to say this, but he doesn't seem like he can talk about music very well. like, he doesn't seem to be the most articulate on the subject of music. but at the same time you can tell he knows what he's doing, what he's talking about. and oh man can he put a beat together. check how great this video is.
how awesome is that? he lays it all down just like that. he starts with one little thing, a great horn sample from another track, and within ten minutes has a killer beat that makes me want to drive windows-down. that's skill. i love that he makes the MPC 4000 his own instrument. and he obviously knows what he's doing. the way he hits those keys, he plays it with flavor, like a guitarist or pianist or drummer have their own little playing quirks, just blaze has his own way of playing the MPC. love that. i would like to own one of those and learn how to play it. unfortunately, the cheapest one i've found is like 700 dollars. that's too much guacamole for me. birthday present idea?
i really like how he djs. i would love to see him live. this are great:
sort of like the musical equivalent of israel and palestine signing a peace treaty. not that rap and blues don't mix, way the opposite actually. it's just that it doesn't happen very often. this kind of musical juxtapostion is so rare. but that's what i like about these videos, these two guys aren't polished in these sessions. it's a lanky white blues player and a tennis ball green sneakers-wearing hip-hop producer who just decided to try something way different. just blaze throws down some beats, mixing them on the spot, while john mayer throws down some electric guitar over them. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. i like how both musicians seem a bit out of their element, and there are times when it doesn't flow so smoothly. there are times when jm doesn't seem to know exactly what to play with the guitar, so he waits a bit. just blaze sometimes scratches when he doesn't need to. there's so much experimentation in these sessions. i like the idea of one of music's best rap producers sampling 80s adult soft rock and one of music's best electric guitarists playing along. and obviously i love it when they hit on something great, like the hall & oates sample...
...and the curtis mayfield sample.
so great. check them both out. i wish john mayer did more stuff like this, and more hip-hop producers in general did more stuff like this.
so that's basically most of what i've learned about just blaze in the last few days. the other half of the 1% i'm aware of is his work with jay-z. since jay's the dynasty...roc la familia album, the two have had a great working relationship, out of which has come real hip-hop perfection. there is almost nothing better than jay rhyming over a just blaze beat. i can think of one thing better, but that's better left for another entry. it's weird, having done a bit of research for this, i've realized that just blaze actually hasn't done loads of songs i'm absolutely in love with for jay. i think the reason he is so high on this list is that he produced possibly my 3rd or 2nd favorite jay song, and his overall style of beat-making is way awesome. along with one of my other favorite producers, he almost single-handedly ended the 'timbaland sound' of the late 90s with his work on jay's the blueprint. this album is oustanding, and just blaze produces some killer beats on this. namely girls, girls, girls, u don't know, and song cry. in these songs, he samples old school funk and soul artists, the most notable of which is bobby byrd, long-time james brown sideman. this style of sampling old funk, soul, and r&b tunes for current hip-hop beats changed the rap game for the next few years and thank goodness is still a prominent producing style today, and just blaze was one of the forerunners of this comeback.
what i like about just blaze's sampling style is his subtlety. a lot of time it's hard to hear the samples he uses; they aren't in your face. for december 4th off the black album, i've listened to the sample he uses, the chi-lites that's how long, and it's near impossible to place it. but that tune is one of my favorite jay tunes. the way the beat hits is just off the wall. the other example of how good just blaze is at what he does:
how incredible is that tune? let's break it down. 1. jay's rhymes. 2. the ooo ooo melody sung by the girls. 3. the keys playing the melody. 4. a laid back drum beat. 5. THE BASS. then the break-it-down: 6. some free and easy horns in the background
i just can't get over how good the bass is in this tune. the way it nails the harmonies, completely playing off the melody of all the other tracks. man so great. and are you kidding me? a total of 6 tracks? i'm sure there's more but even listening hard, that's all i could really hear. it's completely nuts to me how bare this track is and how good it sounds. but that's just blaze. he's got a subtle style, and he samples the coolest stuff to make the coolest beats. so good.
3. ?uestlove
before you continue, start this song and then read on while you listen.
?uestlove, pronounced "quest-love", is a whole different case as far as producers go. i've done my best to keep other non-producing influences out of this list (for example, not letting the fact that jay-z is an incredible rapper and rhymes over some of just blaze's sickest lines influence blaze's spot on my list, i.e. letting only the production value of an individual producer decide their place on the list), but i can't really do that with ?uestlove. the biggest reason? honestly, i don't know enough of the music he's produced well enough to break it down. the one album that i know thoroughly is d'angelo's voodoo, and i'm not gonna write much about it because i'm saving that breakdown for another post. so here we go. ?uest is a musical anomaly to me. as far as the hip-hop scene goes, he is ubiquitous among a certain set of artists. he is part of numerous musical collectives, each incredible in their own right. he's worked with such an incredible variety of artists, inside and outside of hip-hop. he's the founder of okayplayer, an incredibly awesome online musical community for artists and fans alike. while i wouldn't call him the founding father of neo-soul, maybe the founding father's son? better yet, the founding father's brother. or something like that. doing research for this one entry has led me to nearly 100 (no joke) multiple tabs up in firefox. i'm talking wikipedia pages, interviews, videos, album reviews, etc. and every single one of them is directly related to ?uestlove or can easily be traced back to him. there are so many facets to his musicality and his personality that it's hard to know where to begin. let's start with the music.
namely, neo-soul music. he does loads of work outside of this specific genre, but since he basically spearheaded the neo-soul movement in the late '90s to early '00s, i'll start here. he is, along with d'angelo, james poyser, and j dilla, one of the founding members of the soulquarians, one of the best musical collectives of this generation. ?uest, d'angelo, poyser, and j dilla (to boil their talents down to one fundamental faculty each, drummer, singer, keyboardist, DJ, respectively.) started this collective and with the addition of multiple other members, have gone on to produce some of the best, and most critically acclaimed albums, of the last fifteen years. the main bulk of the soulquarian members are pictured: in the back from left to right, talib kweli, mos def, james poyser, erykah badu, ?uestlove, d'angelo, q-tip, and bilal, and then common is kneeling* on the left and j dilla kneeling on the right. such an incredible group of artists. i think this is such a cool concept; loads of extremely talented musicians and artists drawn together by the same musical vision, yet all coming with different aspects of it in mind. how great is that; that this many different artists with distinct tastes and talents can come together and share a united musical goal.
but back to the neo-soul movement. while not completely responsible for it, you can feel ?uestlove's presence all over the neo-soul movement at the turn of the century. he's involved in SO much of it. before i go any further, i'll let ?uestlove actually break down the term "neo-soul".
Saying "neo-soul" means you don't have to say "post-'70s smooth jazz over breakbeats" or something equally unwieldy.
perfect. post-'70s smooth jazz over breakbeats. to me that basically defines d'angelo's brown sugar and voodoo, erykah badu's baduizm and mama's gun, among other albums. it's a gorgeous, tranquil, flowing, musical sound. there is no fluff in neo-soul; it's not a fence-riding genre. most people either love it or don't care for it. i feel like as far as music goes, it's far too in-depth to feel mediocre or indifferent about. it's so intense. the soulquarians were at the head of this movement, and ?uest was at the head of the soulquarians. this group was so intertwined; when one member released an album, it usually consisted of production, musicianship, beats, guest spots, etc., from the other members. there isn't a single album released around this time period from one of these artists that doesn't have another member involved in some capacity. such a cool thing. they were all so connected; for example, the ridiculously great song chicken grease, off voodoo, was originally intended for common's like water for chocolate and d'angelo finally convinced common to give it to him. wise decision com. eventually, the group expired, as did the movement, when this happened:
Somehow we all forgot that we needed each other. All the sudden it became about 'This person sounds like me.' That type of thing. Then the isolation set in.
it's weird to think about a group, that isn't officially a group, unofficially disbanding. a lot of the members still work together, so i don't think the dissolution of the soulquarians was necessarily a negative thing. talib and kweli went on to form black star, ?uestlove and james poyser still produce albums together, and everyone else still guests on everyone else's albums. it's just less of a collective unit now than before.
so that's a bit about the fundamental sound of ?uestlove, and what came as a result of that sound. i'll come back to it in a bit, but first i have to touch on something else fundamentally important to ?uest's career.
the roots are a rap group that have been together over fifteen years, with their first studio LP dropping in '93. ?uestlove is the drummer, and along with the group's MC, black thought, is the most well-known member of the ensemble. the problem is that i'm just not a very big fan of them. aside from the song the seed (2.0), i haven't really fallen in love with anything they've ever released. it's great hip-hop, but i think it's just not melodic enough for me to really get into musically. that being said, they are one of the few rap outfits who record their music live rather than put together a few drum beats in a computer. that's why they're noteworthy to me. ?uestlove actually plays the drums you hear on their records; their keyboardist actually plays the keys, etc. i've never seen them live but they're on my list of bands to see. they've performed as the backing band for such artists as jay-z (including jay's unplugged album for mtv, his 10-year anniversary reasonable doubt concert, and in part of his fade to black show.), and basically every band (minus the fugees and jill scott) that performed for dave chappelle's block party, among others. they're respected among their musical peers, but i just don't like their albums all that much. it's straight forward hip-hop, and it's not all that fun to listen to, and i think that's where i get snagged. they write political, socially conscious lyrics, but it just never grabs me. it's weird that the maybe the biggest part of ?uest's musical work is the part i like the least.
but this is where ?uestlove gets interesting to me. i'm not a huge fan of his band, so where do i go from there? i could randomly pick a hip-hop artist that i like and ?uest will have some connection to them. here are a few great albums from the soulquarian members that ?uestlove has been directly involved with.
first off, erykah badu's mama's gun. i'd call erykah as close to a female d'angelo as you can get. she's got a very smooth style, and this whole album just oozes soul. laid-back grooves, intelligent, pro-love, pro-peace, anti-racism lyrics, and a voice that at times sounds weird and at other times recalls billie holliday is just a teaser of what this album has to offer. it's not a windows-down record though. i have a feeling it's gonna sit with me for a long time, and every now and then i'll give it another listen and learn to appreciate it in new ways.
secondly, common's electric circus. if erykah's the female d'angelo, common could be labeled the hip-hop d'angelo. he goes for the whole nine yards on this album, in some places it works and fewer places it doesn't. but it's still great. such a weird, eclectic mix of progressive rap and rock and jazz and soul. although not a perfect album, ?uestlove does his part with some great beats and producing. even though it's not always perfect, it always sounds good as far as production goes. as much as common is not really a car-thumper type artist, this album is his furthest away from that idea of radio-friendly rap. but i still think it's cool.
finally, voodoo, by d'angelo. this album is so good it's on my Top 5 list, so i'm not gonna say too much about it here. comparing other artists to d'angelo is a bit naive because these artists are all phenomenal in their own right and have their own talents, but as far as neo-soul as a genre goes, everything comes back to d'angelo for me, and specifically to this album. it's just too good to not know. it's taken me four full years to appreciate it as much as i do now, and that love will only continue to grow as years go by. for its genre, its artist, its sound, its songs, it's as perfect of an album as i've ever heard. and that's all i can say about it right now. here's a taste of the genius of d'angelo and ?uest.
the important thing about these albums is that they're all phenomenal, they all embody the neo-soul genre (especially voodoo), and they're all connected to ?uest. he laid down the drum tracks for mama's gun, and while not credited as producer, obviously had a hand in the production along with credited producers james poyser and j dilla. for the other two, ?uest is credited as executive producer or co-producer. he was intimately involved with the creation and development of these two musical ideas. as far as ?uest's production style, i would rather let the albums speak for themselves than to try and break it down.
moving on a bit. one reason i love the sounds of ?uestlove's albums is that he comes from such a unique musical background. he has lived music literally his whole life. when he was a kid, his dad was in a doo-wop group and his parents didn't believe in babysitters so ?uest basically grew up on the road, touring with his family. he started playing the drums at age two and by age seven he was performing on stage. he grew up surrounded by music; the unique musical tastes of both his parents (including pop, soul, funk, etc.) was what he lived and breathed. as far as musicians in today's music business go, he is one of the most knowledgeable dudes out there. it's crazy to read interviews and hear him talk about music. with every single interview i read, i learn about a new artist or new album that i really want to get a hold of. example: in an interview with online magazine independent weekly, which by the way is possibly the best interview i've read with ?uest, so much in-depth talk of the roots, the soulquarians, music, hip-hop culture, politics, it's great. but anyway, in this interview ?uest mentions a collection of songs put together by alan lomax. here's what he says about it.
"Yeah, he built his whole empire, going around down South and sliding a few hundred to prison guards to let him record chain gangs. But the music was amazing. They're on iTunes right now. The compilation is called The Land Where Blues Began. There's a song called "Early in the Morning." Dude who actually wrote it was named Prisoner No. 22. If anything, that song is a precursor to funk music, especially because of the particular way that they had shovels or something—don't know if they were digging graves or ditches or whatever—but they were banging with a heavy emphasis on the two and the four. The beat was reminiscent of an early version of "We Will Rock You." You could have easily slid a breakbeat behind that and rocked it today, but it was made in the '30s.
maybe if i mentioned alan lomax to my grandparents they would know who he was. but that's about it. but ?uest knows him, and knows the music he's collected. he knows the plot line of music since the turn of the century. he knows how trends happen and where they go and how they get there, he knows how genres are separated and how they relate, he knows intensely intimate things about the history of music. it's incredible to read and learn so much just by him talking about things he's into. and all this gets infused into his own brand of music. i respect that so much; a person that is so unbound by social or cultural norms and restraints that they are wide open to whatever influence and let it show in just the right way through their creativity.
this eclectic knowledge of music makes him one of the most interesting interviewees on the music scene. i learn more about music from one interview with ?uest than i can from multiple interviews from so many of today's leading pop/hip-hop/rock/whatever stars. and this multifaceted grasp of the last 100 years of music directly contributes to what i think might be one of the coolest parts of his career, record spinning. that's right, aside from being one of music's most respected drummers and having many soon-to-be classic albums under his production belt, ?uestlove moonlights as a DJ. i honestly don't think he could get any cooler after this. there is a night club in philadelphia called fluid which hosts a saturday night dance party called tasty treats. ?uestlove is one of two DJs for this party. it is a dream of mine to go visit philadelphia, if for no other reason than to visit this specific club and this specific party, just to see ?uest rock the turntables. a long time ago, i was reading gq magazine during a slow day at the gas station, and i read one of the coolest interviews ever by ?uest. he talked a lot about his DJ gig at this club, and he said that his DJ set at the club was for meant for the wallflys; the shy people who loved music but didn't often dance. you could go to this place, the lights were low and there was just music, and loads of people dancing. and that was it. it was a party with the sole purpose of providing a comfortable atmosphere for people who wanted to enjoy some great music but were always a bit shy about it. he also mentioned different records that he liked to play, and it was as far away from the typical club dance music. he talked about experimenting and putting on johnny cash records to see how they would hit, and putting on crazy things like that. sounds awesome. and check out the tasty treats flyer. how cool is that. pictures of all the different artists they play. take a close look at that flyer. there is such a broad range of artists pictured. i will go to philadelphia one day and dance at this party. this is a video of ?uestlove DJing at some gig a little over a year ago. love how he transitions between james brown and michael jackson. great stuff.
speaking of philadelphia, that leads into another great part of ?uestlove's career. philadelphia is ?uest's home town and the city's musical and cultural heritage is where he got a lot of his own musical upbringing. enter the philadelphia experiment, a progressive/modern jazz album featuring ?uestlove on drums, "avant-garde pianist" uri caine on keys, and jazz bassist christian mcbride, who attended high school with ?uest. they recorded this album one weekend; just three musicians from different musical backgrounds combining their sounds to see what would result. the album is full of really fun, groovy pieces: great example, grover, the tune that opened up this entry. there's no vocals on the album, just killer jazz. another dimension of ?uestlove's skill. this guy does it all.
seeing how this is a Top 5 Producers list, i need to get back to ?uest's production. one project he produced recently was with the musical collective "the yessirs", consisting of ?uest, james poyser, their engineer Crazy Steve, and others i'm unaware of. let's backtrack a bit: pharrell williams released his debut solo album in my mind in '06, and it never really took off. which is weird, cause listening to it now, i actually like it a lot. while not as good to me as the n.e.r.d. album fly or die or some of the neptunes/pharrell's other work, it still sounds like a fun pharrell record. fastforward to '07; pharrell got in contact with ?uestlove and james poyser and they decided to redo the album under the moniker "the yessirs". not a complete redo, just reworking the actual musical tunes themselves. words stay the same, music changes a lot. the finished product was called out of my mind and it was never released officially by a record company but it leaked somehow online and it's available for download. i've listened to the whole thing two or three times; i haven't had enough time or dug deep enough to really compare the two albums, but here is my initial reaction. pharrell's original is much more polished, MUCH more glossy. it sounds like a neptunes-produced album of pop music. which i like. the yessirs version is almost like a record full of the demo versions. they seem a lot more stripped-down, with a lot of new instrumentals. but i really do like it. the biggest thing i've noticed is that ?uest's drumming really propels the whole thing forward. and it's cool to hear how they've rethought the tunes a bit. here's a video of james poyser on keys and adam blackstone (producer for jill scott) on bass re-recording take if off (dim the lights). ?uestlove behind the camera. this really doesn't have much to do with ?uest at all, but the bass is laid out in such a way that i had to post it. check it out.
how great is that bass. there is so much groove in it. it's obvious here that ?uestlove surrounds himself with truly great musicians and not just fluff artists. and out of my mind is cool, definitely worth a listen.
i seem to have backed myself in a corner with this ?uestlove entry. doing research for this entry i've come to the realization that i really don't know much of the stuff that ?uestlove himself has explicitly produced. it seems like everything i've talked about so far hasn't actually been produced by ?uestlove himself, except for like two or three things. whatever. i'm way too far to turn back now. so finally, the last album that ?uestlove has produced that i know very little about....al green's lay it down. granted, the reason i don't know anything about this is that it hasn't been released yet. but come may 27th, al and ?uest are coming out with possibly the best soul album to hit human beings since the late '70s. holler. add in corinne bailey rae, john legend, anthony hamilton, and the dap-king horns, and you've got a top-notch work of art. if you click this, scroll down the page, you can stream clips of the duets al green sings with corinne bailey rae and john legend. the corinne track absolutely kills me. if this is any indication of the quality of rest of the album, it will be outstanding. can't wait to hear what happens when ?uest gets together with a legend.
so there you have it. ?uestlove in a nutshell? not even close. but it's the best that i can do for now. give me a few years and a few of the actual albums he's produced, and i'll be able to write a better entry concentrating solely on his production. but i love ?uest, he's far too good to leave off this list. for a billion reasons, many of which you now know.
kneeling, or almost falling over, or pretending he is catwoman. you decide.
2. quincy jones quincy comes in at #2 because of three ingenious works of art: off the wall, thriller, and bad. i guess to be completely accurate this entry should be quincy jones and michael jackson both, seeing as though they co-produced each of these albums. i am just now getting into bad, but off the wall and thriller are two of the best albums ever recorded that i know well. thriller to me is the quintessential definition of perfect pop music. let's dig a bit deeper into these three albums and what makes them special.
first off, off the wall. while not as strong overall as thriller, Q/MJ are on the right track. while there are a few mediocre tracks and one awful one (she's out of my life i think has the lowest playcount of any mj tune i have*), there are some ridiculously good stand out tracks. what's great is that even the mediocre tracks make phenom dance tracks. this whole record is full of catchy hooks and fun melodies. and i'm not sure what it is about this songwriting team, but there are loads of songs off these three albums that have the perfect walking rhythm. rock with you is the best walking track on this record; it's perfect for a walk at night.
it's also my favorite track on the album. one of the smoothest, sexiest tunes i've ever heard. such a sparse collection of sounds, but just the right instruments are used and to such great effect. everything is in its right place on this song. a simple little guitar riff, sexy spacey synthy sounds, great string arrangements, just the tiniest bit of horns, bass that doesn't take over but supports the whole tune from underneath everything else, and the beat? it's weird, it's so subtle it's like you forget there's even a beat driving this song. phenomenal production. perfect for a packed dance floor and some black lights. plus, what's better than a dance track about dancing? get a load of this video too. look at that ridiculous outfit young michael is wearing. whatever, still a great song.
so the sparsity really makes the standout tracks on this album. but really the whole thing is worth two, or three, or ten listens. the best thing is that this is only the first of the trio of Q/MJ collabs. three years later, they released thriller, generally considered the best selling album of all time. some estimates are around the 100 million mark. think about that for a second. 100 million albums sold. unbelievable. but for good reason; there isn't a dull moment on this entire record. the only thing that might take the momentum down a smidge is the girl is mine, but even that track is still a really great one. everything else is as perfect as pop music gets. danceable, catchy, exciting songs.
prime example: p.y.t. (pretty young thing). first off, the title is an acronym; how could this song go wrong? all i really have to say about this track is this: BASS LINE. i've never been able to figure out how to play guitar with this track because there aren't really chords to hear and pick out, just an outrageous bass line and awesome sounds floating in and around and on top of the bass. excellent use of robot voice in the break-it-down too. but what a cool tune, driven completely by bass that again, like rock with you, is so subtle you don't even realize that it's really the bass you're bobbing your head to. obviously the rest of the arrangement is outstanding; the rhythm guitar all throughout, synth chords during the verses, the killer synth riffs during the chorus, the high energy beat following the bass line around the song, and the sweet djembe percussion complementing the drums. there are few songs in the world that better fit with the word "pop" than this one. so great.
is it even worth talking about the rest of thriller? i could write the same sentence for every song: "this tune is another outrageously good tune called ____, produced by quincy and mike." the whole album is great. i'll save more tune breakdowns for a full album review or something.
finally, we end this brief Q/MJ overview with bad. this was the last album that the two collaborated on, which i guess is a good thing. who knows what would've come out of more recording sessions between the two superproducers, but because you can just barely start to see the first signs of mike getting further and further away from thriller-quality work, it's best that this is where they split. stop while you're ahead. i'm not very well acquainted with this record, i only just heard the whole thing in its entirety in the last month, so i'm getting to know it as i'm writing this. first off, it doesn't top thriller; that's near impossible. however, it does pick up the pieces after thriller completely blew the roof off where pop music was in '82, and does a decent job at keeping up with thriller. there is 1 bad song, 1 horrible ballad, and all the rest of the songs are all real killers or way close. there have been a couple songs that have really caught my ear, namely smooth criminal. this song is ridiculous. i can barely hear a chord progression that makes any sense whatsoever, but i know one has to be there cause the song rules. plus the break-it-down? hawt. there is some outrageous synth work in the break-it-down. and it's possibly the only MJ song that i can sing somewhat in my own vocal range, so that's another reason i like it. check it out. break-it-down starts at 2:40 and then brings that hot fire at 2:48. so awesome.
can't get enough of that break-it-down. this album has some of the most high energy moments out of all three of these albums. ironically enough, as i was writing that last sentence, the way you make me feel came on. terrible track, i have no idea how it made it onto the album. but songs like smooth criminal and bad are bursting with energy, and leave me alone features some ridiculously good harmonizing chorus vocals, and even dirty diana, although its tempo is way slow, boasts some furious guitar. this album is awesome.
so there we have it. #2 goes to quincy jones/michael jackson. there's just something really special about these albums. this music has an energy unlike anything that i've never heard captured on tape. it's so vibrant, so lively, so fun. there's a zest in this music that's almost palpable. and it's so smooth, so sleek, so glossy. perfectly-produced pop music. it's just too good.
* false. i believe the way you make me feel now holds that title.
1. kanye west here we are. the louis vuitton don coming in at #1. kanye's my #1 just because of his producing style and the wealth of quality music he's produced. i'm gonna do my best to keep his rapping career separated from his producing career here, cause that's a whole 'nother can of worms.
kanye comes in at #1 because of his whole production style. he has one of the most completely unique approaches to music production and beat making in our music culture. it always hits me right where it needs to. it's so complex that i can't even break it down as well as i'd like, but the biggest part of it involves sampling. and sampling like no one else does. kanye finds the coolest old artists and the coolest old songs to sample, and rethinks them in such a way that it keeps the soul of the original and makes it fresh and relevant and awesome. here are just a few examples:
heart of the city (ain't no love) the best song off jay-z's classic album the blueprint. kanye takes a great bobby "blue" bland track and reworks it into possibly the best jay tune in existence. he speeds the sample up and changes the key and ends up with about the most soulful jay-z track there is. incredible. so this and the other kanye's produced tracks off the blueprint were kind of the world's first real exposure to the "kanye sound", i.e. his use of samples. from then on, kanye released hit single after hit single. he also honed this sampling sound on his debut album the college dropout. this was such a new sound in rap, an eclectic mix of pop and hip-hop with the most inventive use of samples rap had heard in a long time. just a few artists kanye samples on this album: aretha franklin, marvin gaye, luther vandross, bette midler....what? yeah, bette midler. how crazy is that. and he pulls it off left and right. this album is too good.
with his sophomore release late registration, kanye only pushed his sound and his sampling further. this album was coproduced by kanye and jon brion (who composed such movie soundtracks as eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and punch-drunk love, among many others.), and it's chock full of outrageous samples that kanye uses in the best possible way. here are just a few artists he samples: shirley bassey, otis redding, curtis mayfield, ray charles, among others. and he added a killer element to his sound, synth. there is so much great synth on this album; it's really the driving element to this new phase of kanye's sound.
so kanye added a very cool electronic aspect to his sound with late reg, and then dropped graduation two years later. i'm not really sure how to classify this album, if there even is a classification that would really fit it. i guess it's a good mix between his first two albums, lots of elements of both albums are present here. and the samples are off the wall here too: daft punk, steely dan, michael jackson, elton john, etc. awesome. here is one of the greatest uses of one of the greatest songs of all time, p.y.t.:
ok you might be wondering how this is a sample? go back and listen to both one more time, paying extremely close attention to the chorus of p.y.t. and the main riff of good life. the entire foundation of good life is the chorus of p.y.t., just slowed waaaaaaay down. i remember the first time i realized that, i flipped out. kanye's a genius. he takes one an amazing song and makes another amazing song. so great.
aside from his own work and his work with jay-z, 'ye's also produced loads of hit singles and outstanding albums, for everyone from beyonce to rhymefest to common to john legend to alicia keys to mariah carey. loads of stuff. and so much of it is good. he's got the most addictive sound: so often loud, full, energetic, happy. such good summer music. his tunes are just the best hip-hop tunes i've ever heard, they hit me in just the right place, and they make me feel so full of life. he's great; if you don't know him, go buy his albums. and here's one of the main reasons he's my #1:
incredible. the synth...it's all about the synth. possibly my favorite hip-hop tune of all time. it's in the running anyway.
so that's my list. congrats to kanye. but honestly, i would say the Top 3 are interchangeable. it all depends on what song is shooting through the old earbuds on what day. as everyone knows, different moods call for different songs, and that almost guarantees that no Top 5 list is completely set in stone. for me, the last month or two, i would've put kanye at 3, ?uest at 2, and quincy and mike at #1. the only reason kanye made it to #1 is cause i remember what it's like when i'm in a kanye phase, and it's just the best. it feels like summer. and speaking of, i've got a good feeling kanye, quincy, and ?uest's new al green album will be in constant rotation in my car this summer. can't wait.
