The Green Album

I was looking at the latest posts from my favorite blog, Open Culture, and came across something worth sharing.

Today marks the official release of The Green Album, a new compilation featuring contemporary rock and indie artists covering classic Muppets songs. OK Go, Weezer, Andrew Bird, and My Morning Jacket, they all contribute to the album. And, thanks to the good people at NPR, you can stream the complete album online for the remainder of the week.

Meanwhile, if you want to indulge in some more Muppet nostalgia, don’t miss the Muppet rendition of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy

Food for Thought

What music matters to you?

Fahrenheit 1112

Album: I Wanna Be With You

Artist: Mandy Moore

Year Released: 2000

Did I really graduate that year? Were the kids at that time so impressionable that they would consider this a quality purchase? Before you rip a corner off of my man card, hear this. This is my wife's album. I don't even recall Mandy Moore from the year 2000.

So far I have found no redeeming quality to this album. If you are making an album in the style of Ms. Spears, you have to follow through to make it memorable. I would probably remember this atrocity if Mandy hadn't played the sweet girl card. Shave your head, get married in Vegas to a guy you knew for a day, go to rehab a few times, let the paparazzi take a picture of your c-section scar sans undies. Then, maybe then, I would have an inkling of interest in this album.

In the book "Fahrenheit 451", America has become a hedonistic anti-intellectual society. Reading or possessing books is punishable, at minimum, by a stint in the loony bin while your books are burned. Shakespeare's works, the Bible, Homer, Whitman, if it had any redeeming quality it was up in flames. Fahrenheit 451, the point at which books burn. Did Ray Bradbury have a time machine? How could he have foreseen in 1951 what would be going on in 2000? Only a anti-intellectual society would have this called this album music. So call me a fireman, and go to the loony bin while I burn your Mandy Moore cd.

Fahrenheit 1112, the point at which cd's burn.

Two Stepping Through the Day

Album: Crash

Artist: Dave Matthews Band

Year Released: 1996

To start the project I decided to begin with an album that you can't go wrong with. Crash is one of my personal favorites, a nostalgic flashback with every song. I am pretty sure any guy in the late 90's used "Crash into Me" in a mix tape for a certain girl, but my personal fave is "Two Step". I am pretty sure I am going to play it between periods all day today, and try not to let any part of my body move to the beat of the song. The ebb and flow of the album is awesome. One minute I am hearing a song from a lame dance 13 years ago, the next I am bouncing to "Too Much", than collecting my composure with "#41". I am so glad I bought this album again after my cd’s got stolen. It reminds me why I took the long way home and sat in my suburban for a few minutes in the high school parking lot. Sometimes you need to finish a song, hear in order what the artist wanted you experience. (Hence the project.) You don’t have to be a DMB fan to enjoy this album. All you need is 69 minutes and enough comfort to let the hippie inside come out and groove.

Drive in ,drive out I'm leaving.

My Musical Background

I figured you should know from the beginning that I am NOT a musical person. I like to listen to it, maybe find the meaning of a song, screw up the words when I sing it in the car, and on the rarest of occasions find the guitar tab to a song that is not so hard and butcher it. (My wife LOVES that part.) I have never had musical training. Unless you count band in the 7th, 8th and 9th grades. Needless to say the french horn was not instrumental(word play!) in the development of my musical interests.

I am, however, very susceptible to peer pressure. So what ever was playing in my friends cars, in the dance hall, or at the bar ended up in my possession. Thanks to Napster and high speed internet I had a cornucopia of bad mixes, half assed collections of genres, and for some reason, 3 cd's called "Old School Rap".

One day that all went away. Call it a blessing in disguise, petty theft, or sheer ignorance, but my entire cd collection was stolen out of my open garage. Gone. All of it. Dr. Dre, Eminem, Pete Yorn, Garth Brooks, The Beatles. I was devastated. Looking back on it I am glad it happened. Who needs 7 live Dave Matthews Band albums. I mean come on, does the set list ever change? "All Along The Watchtower' is classic, but after a while you have to end your show with something different.

Which brings me to today. After building a small collection of my own and melding it with my wife's,we are left with an odd collection of discs from different stages of our lives; college (pre break up, break up, getting back together), intro to adulthood, no way I just got married, holy crap I am a dad, and the current stage, holy crap I have 2 kids. I can't begin to think of how this project will go or what I will write about, but I am excited. I am familiar with my music, but my wife's is a different story. Hopefully she didn't have an Aqua phase. I can just see the looks on people faces when I am blasting "Barbie Girl" at 7:30 in the morning.

Here's to a good trip.