Showing posts with label Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

July 2019 MAME Playlist/Post: A Review, and the Last of Its Kind

This has multiple interpretations, but I have only one...
Hola, and welcome to what I think will be the last post of its kind in over-arching MAME project. Due to the simple fact that the way I was posting ate up too much of my time, I’m going back to writing band/artist-specific posts – and this time with the emphasis on the artist. For the record, those will come out as I get them done, and that’s something that depends quite a bit on the artist and my relationship to them.

That’s another thought for another day, and this post is about the old/former model I’ve been using for these posts/playlists. I actually wrote five (5) of them this month (holy shit, I had time?), and they’re all decent. Moreover, they include links to…I think over 150 songs, and by almost as many artists. (I kid, I kid; the people I really like get up to a half-dozen songs, while some others get two, three or four.) I’ll post the 50-song playlist I created from that collection of songs to Spotify – and, if you like the balance of that selection, and have Spotify, my handle is snackyd.

That’s all I have to say for this post. And, for anyone who’s curious, Wild Flag will be the next band I review. For what it’s worth, I bought that one, but don’t think I ever cared for it that much, so it shouldn’t take too long for that post to go up.

That’s all the editorial content. In the event you haven’t read (or listened to) any of the earlier playlists, links to the playlists/posts are down below, identified to the artists/free festivals I reviewed for each week in July 2019. Here goes:

Yo La Tengo, A Subtly Addicting Band (yes, I’m totally cheating, but they’re fucking amazing!)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, A Thing for B-Sides

Celebrating PDX Pop Now!

Gaytheism, and PDX Pop Now! 2019

X, Punk Rock for the Heartland

That’s it for this piece of Middle Age Music Express’ history. I hope the next phase goes better. And produces more coherent posts. I’m groping toward a useful future. Join me!

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Crash-Course, No. 3, ft. Yeah Yeah Yeahs: A Thing for B-Sides

Aw. L'il scamps. (Like circa 2000.)
“Karen is great because I just believe her when she sings, which is very, very important.”
- Brian (“Danger Mouse”) Burton

Given how much just about anyone to whom I’ve mentioned Yeah Yeah Yeahs refracts the band through the person of Karen O (aka, Karen Lee Orzolek), I’m equal parts surprised and happy that they never wound up as Karen O & Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The marketing arm can’t win ‘em all.

While I had the same personal entry into Yeah Yeah Yeahs as everyone else – e.g., “Maps” (purposely excluded from the playlist) – how many of those same people would have missed that song entirely unless they bought Rock Band 2 (spending all that time in the 2000s being a dad meant not getting out much)? When it comes to band like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, that apparently meant missing one hell of a live set. An interview that came out around the time Karen O was touring to support Crush Songs (2014) – something she referred to as a collection of demos – contrasted that person with the Karen O most fans know:

“…not what I was expecting after three years of watching her screech across stages in wrecked Chuck Taylors and tattered mini-skirts, pumping sweat and posturing with a devilish grin of smeared lipstick, her glittery eye shadow smudged and on the move across her face.”

A later Q&A with The Guardian makes that sound like what happened after she slowed down (fwiw, that’s the best source/history I found for Karen O or Yeah Yeah Yeahs).

Yeah Yeah Yeahs (“YYY”) have as many members as words in their name, and the other two are Nick Zinner (guitar/keys, and an impressive history with collaboration) and Brian Chase (drums, but also (possibly) the biggest musical chops of the bunch). The band formed in New York in 2000, by way of Oberlin and Bard Colleges. Zinner and Karen O found Chase after their original drummer backed out, and after they “decided to ‘shake things up a bit’ by forming a ‘trashy, punky, grimy’ band modeled after the art student, avant-punk bands Karen O was exposed to at Oberlin.”