Pogo Pogo Pogo

As I was doing my daily youtube scan hoping for a new good failblog, I happened upon this shining gem of a music artist. Pogo, from Perth Australia, cuts and splices sound clips he takes from childhood movies many of us were raised on such as Mary Poppins, Sleeping Beauty, and Alice in Wonderland creating a mellow electronic blend of sounds. I was immediately addicted and have been listening to his tunes over and over on my droid. Although I'm not a huge fan of electronic stuff, I really can't get enough of the chill music pogo creates. When I first started listening, I thought there were lyrics I was supposed to be understanding. Definitely not the case. Pogo basically just clips and puts in the notes regardless of what the person is really saying making it truly a musical montage. This first video, Bloom, is a smattering of clips from 4 or five different classic Disney films that I feel shows off well what this guy is capable of doing.

This second one completely stunned me. I had been raised in a very musically inclined family with a mother always telling us kids that anyone can produce a tone. Even when we talk, if we were to hold out a syllable, we could produce specific notes on a scale.  Pogo took that logic with this next song, by taking the first LOTR movie and finding pure tones in the character's dialogue and connecting them in such a way to produce quite the entertaining tune.

K, well, I would post more of his videos here just cause I really can't get enough of him but I'll let you find his other stuff yourself if you're interested in him. Other songs I recommend are Wishery (Snow White Clips and my personal favorite), UPular(Pixar's Up), and Expialadocious. Also, you can visit his site and blog at pogomix.net and download his music for a price you feel comfortable with( you literally can choose how much you wanna pay). Signing Off.

My Guilty Pleasure Music

Ooohkaaay, So it hasn’t been too long yet since my last post, right? So, I’ll cut straight to it. Yes folks, this is my guilty pleasure list. The songs that when other people are around, I pretend that I hate them stating they are too overplayed, too feminine or too “pop”py for a guy like me to be listening to. I don’t want them suspecting that in reality, when alone, I’ve spent hours singing these songs over and over and over thrashing my head while trying to hit all the high falsetto parts. I literally feed off these songs and feel that I have to listen to them at least once every other week in order for my soul to stay intact.

Song one, Game of Love. So as I was listening to this song to figure out just why I like this song so much, I was kind of at a lost for a sec. First, nope, not a Santana fan. I actually don’t like him at all. Sure, sure, he’s good on the guitar, but too much showy crap. Do I like the lyrics, no, not really. The only part that I can sing is “a little bit of this, a little bit of that, (jumbled mumbling right here cause I never remember the lyrics here), a little bit of this, a little bit of that.” So what is it about this song that has me singing an octave above middle C while trying to move my hips at an attempt to salsa? It’s those melodic Major Seventh Chords. If you don’t know what a major seventh chord is, go listen to Kiss Me on the playlist and listen to the second chord. I call this chord the “Love” Chord due to the fact that my heart feels like it just received a big dream kiss every time I hear one.  As a matter of fact, I think that’s why I like Put your Record on by Corrinne Bailey Rae too. I love girls and major 7^th chords. They make a great combo together.

I Miss You by Blink-182 takes me back to high school being stuck in a car with Sara Last and Juje Gifford on the way back from an AP Bio Lab. These girls were fighting over the fact of whether or not they were singing “head”, or “yed.” I don’t remember who was arguing which, but I’m going with the “Yed” on this one. As a matter of fact, I’m of the opinion that that’s why this song became so popular. Even though they’re American and they sing with American accents, turn one word British and you’ve got a smashing hit on your hands. Works for me, I’ll be singing this song till I’m no longer right in the yed to sing it.

If the songs Lovefool and Kiss Me were people, I would marry them on the spot. I used to freak out every time they came on the radio and when I was able to finally lay a hand on these songs, I would stay up late listening to these two songs back and forth, back and forth pretending my current crush was singing it to me. My fantasy usually went along the lines of me saving the girl with my secret karate/wizard skills I had been keeping secret, and then, so overcome with pure infatuation, love, and hormones, she would take me to her dilapidated tree house and sing me one of these two songs late into the night. And you wonder why these are my guilty pleasure songs.

Last and most recently, I LOVE PRETTY GIRL ROCK!!! Even better than the song, is the music video. Not really a Keri Hilson fan but I find her incredibly attractive when dressed up as one of The Supremes. I can honestly say (not without a lot of shame though) that I have watched this video over 40 times. And yes, I can almost do the dance she does on the third costume change, booty bumpin’ and all. If you wanna watch the music video, just click here.

Well, that wraps this up. I feel like I’ve kind of revealed a big piece of myself here. Feel free to comment below about your guilty pleasure songs, but if you dare make fun of mine, I’ll find you and make you listen to them so much that you won’t be able to get them out of your Yed!

Rock Music makes Mice Eat Each Other

Here's the playlist for the article. I love Vitamin String Quartet. Enjoy!

While my mom was cleaning up the kitchen and throwing things away, she came across this article from the magazine Men’s Health called “The Healing Power in You iPod” by Bill Stieg and cleverly gave it to me figuring that I could read it, then summarize it for her. The heart of the article explains that music we listen to has physical and psychological effects on us humans. Stieg  quotes a professor from the University of Miami as saying that, “We’re musical beings….It’s like we’re hardwired for music.”  That really doesn’t surprise me much.  If music didn’t have any effect on people, why would people listen to music in the first place? What WAS surprising though, were the actual, specific effects.  Some of them seem obvious after reading, but good stuff to know anyways.

Music, What We Used Before Coffee

First, Stieg said that playing music and especially playing an instrument in the morning helps wake us up quicker, due to the fact it get more neurons firing. That has always made pretty good sense to me considering that playing the guitar has been a part of my morning routine for a while. What I did find amusing about it though is that he said that playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band can fulfill this requirement.

Music on the Road

Second, he explains that there is Australian research that suggests that silence isn’t ideal for driving (or for riding wallabies) and that it’s best to have music that makes you feel good in order to increase “alertness, reaction time, and maintaining a safe speed.” On the flipside though, research has also shown that the faster paced the tempo is, the more speeding, light-running, and accidents take place. The perfect examples of this would be two of my college roommates, Jeff and Jeremy. With loud, quick thumping music going, these to return missionaries become some of the most menacing and aggressive drivers on the road.  Actually, Jeremy drives crazy regardless. But Jeff, yeah, that’s right, YOU Jeff, you terrify me. You drive like we’re in a car chase scene from the matrix. For you my friend, I think you need to give up on the blink-182 while driving and listen to some Groban. Please… For all our sakes.

A Song a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

Besides decreasing fatigue, nervousness and irritability, music has been shown to have several medical benefits as well, from increasing blood flow to people’s brains, to controlling pain in cancer patients. Stieg mentions a review in the American Journal of Public Health calling music "the most accessible and most researched medium of art and healing." So make sure you get a daily dose of an Apple and your favorite Weezer song, and you’re good to go.

So all in all I thought it was a pretty entertaining article. If you want to read the whole thing, it's right here. Oh yeah, before I forget, I did a little research on the web and found out some interesting tidbits of information. A sociology professor James Gundlach found higher rates of suicide among those who listen to country music. Granted, he does say it’s mainly older country music that’s always talking about divorce, beer, and losing dogs, but still, I know I contemplate killing myself every time I’m forced to listen country.  I’m not going to say much more than that, other than, I now have scientific proof that country music is crap. Here’s a link to the article if you’re curious or think I’m making this up. Read it and weep.

Also interesting was this article on rats. "A student named David Merrill devised an experiment to discover how music would affect the ability of mice to learn new things. Merrill had one group of mice listen to classical music 24 hours a day and another to heavy metal music. He then timed the mice as they ran through mazes to see if the music affected their speed of learning. Unfortunately, he had to cut the first experiment short because the heavy metal mice all killed one another. In a second experiment, mice that listened to Mozart for 10 hours a day dramatically improved their maze-solving abilities, while the heavy metal mice actually became worse at solving mazes than they had been at the beginning of the experiment.

Read more at Suite101: The Psychology of Music: Effects on Behavior, Intelligence, Learning, Pain and Health http://www.suite101.com/content/the-psychology-of-music-a45967#ixzz1B2r6VjfW"

That pretty much wraps this up. Feel free to comment below on how happy you were to hear country music’s connection to suicide or anything else you enjoyed from the above article. I’ve gotta go make Jeff a road trip mix right now.

The Elephant Six

So the way I understand it from Wikipedia, The Elephant Six is a recording company consisting primarily of six bands whose founders grew up together and then went and all started crazy cool bands. What a dream! The bands that make up the Elephant Six include, The Apples in Stereo, The Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel, Beulah, Elf Power, and Of Montreal.

Beulah and Of Montreal are definitely the better know bands of this super sextet and for good reason. To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of the other bands but since I love their logo so much I listen to them. "Id Engager" has so far become my favorite song by Of Montreal. Besides the line "Is that my conchord on the launcher?" the line "I don't want to be your man, I just wanna play with you" is by far my favorite part of this song. I love the image of a girl coming up and accusing him of playing with her heart only to be further hurt by him shamelessly admitting that yeah, I just wanna play with you. Hahahahaha, that's killer. Oh yeah, and if anyone can figure out what he means by "Ninjas prove it" let me know. I love ninjas.

 I do feel the Apples in Stereo and Neutral Milk Hotel have some fun songs too. "The King of Carrot Flowers pt.1" reminds me of my good friend Juje and her strange infatuation with Irish accents. Not that they're really singing  with Irish accents, but they do say their "R"s super strong.With a 60's rock sound in "Pine Away" by the Apples in Stereo takes me back to when I was 10 and couldn't get enough of the oldies station. 

So there you have it, the Elephant Six. The playlist above is just a small sampling of them. If you like what here go to GrooveShark.com

So that's what he listens to....

BAM! Where to start? K, So I guess there are multible reasons for creating this blog. Here they are:

1. As a lot of you know, I've been writing a blog on and off for the last year or so. It's been fun seeing people read my stuff but I'm really not inspired to write in it as much as one might prefer. While I still find my life hilarious, I'm too lazy to tell you all about it often enough for my satisfaction.

2.While Jared has been in Brazil, it's kind of become a small competition/hobby of ours to discover new music that the other person would like, which has been fun because our tastes are so similar. I'm always wanting to discuss music with him but find it kind of a pain in the butt to do so through facebook messages.

3. Anyone in my family could tell you that I'm kind of a freak when it comes to finding new music. Not just that, but to also knowing everything there is to know about a certain artist. Wiki just about anything that catches my ear.

4. I feel that there isn't enough people that listen to GOOD music. Yeah that's right. I'm hearing way too many songs by Kesha and Katy Perry and feel that the truly talented artists are being exposed enough.

5. I'm bored and more than slightly egotistical. I want more people thinking of me more often. I figured a second blog would help me do so.

So with all that being said, am I saying that I'll be better in writing in this blog than I was in the last one ? Hell no! Nope, I basically just want to have place where people can go and say, "Oh, so this is what Dan listens too." And "Wow, Dan has amazing taste in music." 0r "Man, I think I'm in love with that man Dan."