love and dancing

red is my favorite color. yes is my favorite answer. what was the question again?

click here to download love is the answer as one continuous mp3 (69:16)
click here to download love is the answer as a zipfile of eleven mp3 tracks

meet the new mix. same as the old mix - kinda, not really: it's an entirely re-recorded (except for the very opening bit, and also the intro bit tacked on before that) version of a mix i titled love is the dancer way back in april, now retitled simply love is the answer, with an extra 25% or so new material (including the whole last chunk), and with mostly snappier transitions using my new traktor>garageband method instead of my old actual live djing>garageband method.

not sure how much the fact that i made (remade) it entirely on february 13-15 affected my decision to make the "love" theme substantially more overt - it already had a kind of an uplifiting communal togetherness love vibe going on (i wanted to close with that ub40 all along so i'm glad i final got to include it) - but it's probably less than you'd think. though i suppose this one can be added to my lengthy history of valentine's day mixtapes (and that ain't all of them neither.)

(and it almost might have provided some excellent opportunities for cd packaging options: i was going to snag some post-v's day clearance-sale merchandise and make valentiny packages...however by the time i got to cvs they were already stocking the shelves with easter stuff, and the best i could've done was some generic red envelopes. so i decided to just make my own red envelopes, using a special new design i devised for cd packaging that takes the form of a heart. prototypes are go; i'll keep you posted on how mass-production turns out. (may go a little upscale. decent card-stock. letterpress tracklists?)

Title: Love is the Dancer (Soul Vs. Dancepop, Round 2)
Format: continuous DJ mix [79:15], currently available on CD-R (13 tracks) or mp3 (1 or 11)
Date: original 18 April 2007, revised 13-15 February 2008
Packaging (projected): red card-stock envelope/sleeve in heart-shaped fold-out design, with track titles letterpressed (?) or printed and pasted onto the back.

track list:
1. ross of love is the answer
2. ross of love your body
3. ross of love action (i believe in ross of love)
4. ross of love to love you baby
5. ross of love (stoned)
6. ross with love
7. (i'm gonna steal your) ross of love
8. too much ross of love
9. (loss of) ross of love will tear us apart
10. ross of love was made for two
11. ross of love the one you're with

[cd only bonus tracks:
12. sing our own song - ub40
13. i like love - r. kelly]

okay okay... here are the actual songs on the mix:

(collage of digital passion)
a joy - four tet
it's just begun - jimmy castor bunch
love is the answer - ram
the sound of violence - cassius
4 my people - missy elliott
jacques your body (make me sweat) - les rhythmes digitales
moist - schneider tm
rude - herbert
love action (i believe in love) - the human league
love to love you baby (junior jack mix) - viktor lazlo
fast and delirious - lindstrøm
everybody sings - supersystem
acceptable in the 80s - calvin harris
blackbelt - teddybears
moving truck - radioinactive & antimc
pucker up buttercup - jr. walker and the all-stars
lovestoned - justin timberlake
with love - hilary duff
dragonette - i get around (also a bit of the "midnight juggernaut" mix)
tiger tails - moonbotica
hijack - herbie mann
get physical - margaret berger
too much love - lcd soundsystem
sunshine of your love - spanky wilson
i want you - paris hilton
collarbone - fujiya & miyagi
chic cheer - chic
illegal gunshot - ragga twins
(lack of) love will tear us apart - the honeydrips
take control - amerie
i wanna be your lover - la bionda
i wanna be your lover - prince
love was made for two - data 80
100% pure love - crystal waters
remember love - nôze
love is the answer - cerrone
(love - simian mobile disco)
love the one you're with - the isley brothers

analysis:
there's no great concept at play here apart from the "love" meme, which mostly just relates to the song titles anyway - there's all kinds of love being represented here, which i like - it's just a dj/dance mix. hopefully not too clever for its own good - i really tried to make it, just, straightforwardly dance-friendly. but interesting. there ends up being a lot of genre-jumping, so the transitions aren't always the smoothest, but hopefully that's what keeps it exciting.

in fact, this might as well be considered soul vs. dancepop, round 2 (the long-awaited rematch!), though it's a little closer to funk vs. electro-pop. electronic wins of course, but that's not the point - what's actually going on, by process of deduction, is disco discovery. you get yr funky-disco (herbie mann, chic), yr discoey-funk (jimmy castor), yr digital disco (moonbotica, herbert i guess), yr "french touch" filter-disco (cassius, nôze), yr "cosmic"/"space"/"beardo"-disco (lindstrøm), yr disco-punk (supersystem), yr disco indie-pop (fujiya+miyagi), yr disco-covering italo-disco (viktor lazlo), yr disco-sampling contempo-disco (paris hilton), yr latter-day "not disco" actual-disco (crystal waters) and finally yr straight-up no-holds-barred honest-to-god disco (cerrone)... and i didn't even really mean to do like that! and that's not even counting the sometimes-so-called "queen of disco" (m. berger, whose inclusion here is closer to electro.) then there's also some stuff that's not really disco at all, which was apparently acceptable in the '80s. whatever.

love_sick_minors@night

wow i'm up late. how did that happen? just been sittin here feeding cds onto my computer (upon insertion, iTunes reads, imports, and ejects. if it's working right), which are actually being loaded onto the drobo (thanks to iTunes 7 multiple-libraries functionality - check it out: hold down openapple as you open it); separating out dj-appropriate tracks into a folder labelled "trakx"; adding said trakx into my traktor "track collection"; and, for the moment, playing around with and selecting among those songs in preparation for a dj mix, which will actually be a reconstructed and probably substantially revised version of "love is the dancer" (draft version still on the sidebar for a limited time!) with a newly emphaticized "love" theme...just in tine for valentime's day! (i hope?) and for dj dominance.

but, there were some things i wanted to talk about here, and since there's no blogging allowed during the day (new rules), and seeing as i'm up...

no age: no bassist; no coherence; no joke. no philly show photos extant online.
(this is from new york 2/9 by bryan bruchman)

first: i went to see this band no age last night. something so odd and off about that band name, and the album title "weirdo rippers" (would say it's weirdo - too non-weird to be weird tho - but) that probably kind of suits their music: sort of almost normal seeming (normal words, at least) but not. oh whoa, i just just now got that it's a cross between no wave and new age. (the opposite of new wave maybe?) okay that actually makes a lot more sense. almost too much...pity. apparently it was the name of an all-instrumentals album on sst. ok.

i'd heard about 'em a bunch, feels like for a longer time than is actually possible (since they've been releasing record for less than a year at this point), somehow getting the (pretty much erroneous) sense that they'd been around for a long time and were somehow a big deal in the underground. also that i probably wouldn't like them, except that i heard enough vague yet sufficiently positive mentions that i jumped at the chance to catch them here in my hood, at the queen of sheba (yes, thank you m. rubin), for $5, in a just-announced, cancelled/rescheduled appearance (moved west due to sick liars - hypochondriacs?) got to say i'm impressed by the r5/badmaster communications hook-up: there was an impressive (skinny-white) turnout for an event just announced that day, including a sizable bunch of young'ns who were turned away at the bar door (you wouldn't expect a NO AGE show to be ALL AGES, wouldya, harhar?)

...and i continued to jump, quite a fair amount, during their set. surprised myself by being one of the most visibly enthusiastic crowd-members (though that probably shouldn't surprise me anymore - still, since when do i like punkrok?) they're...certainly punk, generally pretty rock (and whenever they are, it's rowk), but also other things (noise/xprmntl?) that i ought to like even less, but somehow it mostly works. simplicity is key - the songs are short and usually have only one or two identifiable ideas. reminded me of gbv a lot, though their singing is even less good (no i should say tuneful - no valu judgments.) maybe the thermals (no getting pysched on. no culture icons.) not actually as poppy as either of those, except for moments.

the de-facto highlight came during their final freak-out of their final song (short set, of course, no encore, but it was about exactly the right length), when their guitar somehow made its way through the crowd, and somehow ended up in my hands, and so i "played" it for a couple of minutes, though of course it was run through lots of delay and reverb and fx so it didn't really matter what i played, but you know, i did what i could. the funny part was i still had my coat in my arms underneath the guitar, as i was playing, which prevented me from actually holding it anything like correctly. and then i dropped my coat on the ground when i went up to give them the guitar back. they thanked me for jamming with them. and a couple of kids gave me shout-outs as i biked home.

i bought their cd. hey, i might was well at least buy one punk album a year right? (did i buy any last year? contemporary ones i mean? pop-punk, actually, does not count - fancy that) so far i don't enjoy it as much as i enjoyed the show, not nearly. understandably it's not as immediate - and i may be appreciative that it has more mellow noodly stuff, if i decide that that stuff is good. anyway not quite buying the #12 AotY, high-up track, p4k love - as i have, come around to on the tough alliance (also a punk-informed not-punk duo with a distinctly fresh/skewed perspective and some psychy/ambient leanings. except their pop pops a lot more.) but i'm still listening. mostly while i work on my headstand. can't decide whether "neck escaper" is an auspicious or ominous title for that purpose. probably also i'm not listening to it loud enough is the problem. or maybe i should be jamming along with it.

second: the list of sxsw showcasing artists came out last week. (btw i'm going again woohoo! in, as it happens, exactly one month from today/tomorrow.) it's looo ooo ooong. i went through and made the list of artists that i've heard of, or thought i had (gets surprisingly hard to remember when the list is that long; you realize how inevitably generic most band names become.) which was still loo oong. then i narrowed that down to acts i'm actually excited to hopefully see. which was still fairly lo ong but it felt quite disappointingly short, i guess because "excited" is a bit of a stretch for some of them. still, assuming all goes well, these are the folks i will try my darnedydarndarndest to get to see:

Aberfeldy (Edinburgh UK)
Annie (Bergen NORWAY)
Billy Bragg (London UK)
Lindstrom (Oslo NORWAY)
Pop Levi (Los Angeles CA)
Robyn (Stockholm SWEDEN) [yes, again, duh.]
The Tough Alliance (Gothenburg SWEDEN)
*Sally Shapiro (not on the list currently - somebody at her label told me today it's still unconfirmed but...assuming all goes well.)

and i would be pleased as punch to catch all or any of the following:

Bearsuit (Norwich UK)
Bella (Vancouver BC)
Black Moth Super Rainbow (Pittsburgh PA)
The Concretes (Stockholm SWEDEN)
Cut Copy (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)
Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip (London UK)
The Dollyrots (Los Angeles CA)
The Fashion (Copenhagen DENMARK)
Flosstradamus (Chicago IL) [yes!]
Jason Forrest (Berlin GERMANY)
Freezepop (Boston MA)
Fuck Buttons (Bristol UK) [based on hype, tourmates, and cute name]
Future Clouds & Radar (Austin TX) [still haven't heard but i think i'll like em anyway]
Jeff Hanson (St Paul MN)
Hanne Hukkelberg (Jar NORWAY) [sweet!]
Her Space Holiday (San Mateo CA) [finally?]
Jolie Holland (Brooklyn NY)
Juiceboxxx (Detroit MI)
Kaki King (New York NY)
Khan (Berlin GERMANY)
Jens Lekman (Gothenburg SWEDEN) [still]
Jeffrey Lewis (New York NY)
Lykke Li (Stockholm SWEDEN)
Mahjongg (Chicago IL) [indeed]
Make A Rising (Philadelphia PA) [my buddy's buddy's band]
Erin McKeown (Boston MA) [certainly]
MGMT (Brooklyn NY)
My Brightest Diamond (Brooklyn NY)
No Age (Los Angeles CA) [yes, again, duh]
Okkervil River (Austin TX)
The Raveonettes (New York NY)
R.E.M. (Athens GA) [?]
Retribution Gospel Choir (Duluth MN) [figger if i'm gonna be a low junkie]
The Russian Futurists (Toronto ON)
Shout Out Louds (Stockholm SWEDEN)
Simian Mobile Disco (London UK) [real band set this time?]
Sissy Wish (Bergen NORWAY)
Throw Me The Statue (Seattle WA) [my buddy's band!]
Vampire Weekend (New York NY) [hey why not? everybody's doin' it]
White Shoes & The Couples Company (Jakarta INDONESIA) [go tim sendra]
WHY? (Oakland CA)
Yo La Tengo (Hoboken NJ)

some other band names i noticed:

43 Songs About 43 Presidencies (Sacramento CA)
Fourcolorzack & Pretty Titty (Seattle WA)
Ringo Deathstarr (Austin TX)
Rock & Roll (Paris FRANCE)
SuperstarDJs (Austin TX)
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (Austin TX)
You, Me, And Everyone We Know (Washington DC)
Yves Klein Blue (Brisbane AUSTRALIA)
David Moore (Indianapolis IN)

okay time for some sleepy, so i can wake up later and work on mixy. which incidentally what should i call?:

ross of love will tear us apart
ross of love is like an itching in my heart
ross of love makes the world go 'round
ross of love is all you need
ross of love comes quickly
ross of love is a losing game
ross of love was made for two
ross of love is the drug
ross of love for sale
ross of love machine

do you want me to go on? i could go on... (anybody else feel a mixtape series comin' on...)

interestingly, out of the 11190 (and counting...) songs that are on my computer, only one of them is titled "love." and i've already used it on a mix, so it will not be on this one.

GirlPop SuperWeekendbeginning

Miley Megaplex and Robyn RSS: Carlsson and Cyrus mug for cameras in the bluescreen limelight

I was in SuperNYC, home of the just-crowned SuperGiant SuperBowlers, for the SuperEst pair of weekdays in recent memory, at least in terms of sibling-friendly girl-pop Event events: SuperMonday (formerly known as monday) and SuperTuesday (also known as SuperStalemate-day.)

In order of SuperAwesomeness and reverse chronology, ST was the day of Robyn's FIRST EVER U.S. PERFORMANCE, which was, yeah, wow, has already been written about on all those blogs that people actually read (that's just one but it links to all the others), and you can also watch videos of it there and here. It's a little weird to be so in sync with the blogosphere like this - basically they already said most of the things I would say: she's adorable and darling and immensely charismatic and funny and sexy and her voice is fantastic; the crowd was tremendously pumped up and giddy and cheered her every step and sang along with every word (Lillie and my sister and I were standing less than ten feet from the stage, roughly the third row back and center); and Robyn in return was clearly very genuinely touched by our enthusiasm (and seemingly pretty surprised by the extent of it), so the whole thing was basically a big 'ol love fest.

All of that you can glean from the videos and endless stream of photos (we were standing right next to the guy who took those, who turns out to be this idolator poll artist-category jokester) - I took some too, including pretty good footage of her getting down and freaky in the latter half of "Cobrastyle" (after this part), so maybe I'll post those, but maybe not b/c my camera pretty much sucks.

I dunno, if you haven't liked listening to her music (and you've at least tried), and if watching her dance and sing and vamp and giggle doesn't convince you that she's SuperSpecial, I guess you just don't get it, in which case I'm sorry for you but I don't wanna argue. I don't necessarily love her visual aesthetic these days, though the hardcore hairstyle is admittedly kinda cute - "pixie-ish" as people seem to be saying - in person. Her outfit was, as you'll have seen, nothing particularly outstanding, but she did make excellent use of her kind of odd two-shirt setup to emphasize her impressive ribcage-isolation dancing and to mime heartbeats (on "With Every...", but also, between-songs, to indicate the intensity of her fan-love and/or adrenaline.) Also, her skirt occasioned an amusingly non-rhyming lyric alteration to "Konichiwa Bitches" - like many of her songs (notably "you won't get with this you see..."), that one has lots of opportunities for demonstrative body-clutching show-and-tell.

Predictably, goofs like that song and her Prince and Teddybears covers were crowd-pleasers (and snagged most of the YouTube coverage), and of course I loved 'em too, though to me they're actually the least interesting aspect of her music (I still don't really get why "Konichiwa Bitches" has been the lead single in English-speaking lands, jokily literal viral video notwithstanding. It's just too tossed-off, too close to SuperFicial Fannypack territory to even work as a particularly good novelty hit, despite the inspired "Close to Me" rip.) The monstrous, vitriolic straight-up dance bangers ("Crash and Burn Girl," "Handle Me" - she said "nazi" forward in case you were wondering, lyrically paranoid "Who's That Girl") were also predictably huge and awesome, and though I still haven't quite warmed to the electro rework of "Bum Like You" (inspired by Bukowski, she said) it was still all good. And previous album highlight "Keep This Fire Burning" was an unexpected treat.

Of course the two (hyper)ballad(esque)--singles - the album's actual real hits - made appearances, and were stunningly gorgeous: "With Every Heartbeat" hitting hard even though she mostly sang it to a backing track (those heavenly mid-section strings mostly obscured by crowd noise but whatever), while "Be Mine!" (such a stupid/clever grammatical joke that title is!) was, now-famously, aired twice, once with guitar (!) and then, in the encore, just piano - I'd thought it was going to be "Eclipse" at first, the chorus progression being similar. But otherwise the quieter, sweeter side of her repertoire was mostly absent - no "Robotboy" (not even in its electro two-step reconstruction), much to Martha's dismay, none of the heartfelt closing trio (I'd been singing the heartbreaking "Eclipse" on my way to the venue, but a souled-out "Should Have Known" would have been great too.)

Of course, these are just petty gripes - I really, really can't say anything bad about the show; it didn't even feel especially short (and it almost was, at just shy of an hour include three-song encore.) The highest highlight, if there was one - and I wouldn't have expected this - may well have been the slyly minimal blip-blop reworking of her '97 smash "Show Me Love." (The screen's blurry and the audio's pretty awful, but You can at least get a sense of it here.) I was also surprised and impressed by how much of the audience seemed to be fans from a decade ago (when she first came to the U.S., but didn't actually perform - I believe is what she said) who were expecting to hear more of her old stuff.

Basically - the reason why I wasn't gonna blog too much about the show, and also why I've ended up doing it anyway - all the hoopla is beside the point. It's just her, yknow - like Marit and Devon and Cex and JoJo Richman and other performers who have absolutely and completely charmed me concert, the greatness of her music doesn't exactly necessarily entail the magnitude of her personal magnetism (it's still plenty great on its own), but seeing her in person does make you realize how much that charisma elevates and imbues her music - making it so seemingly irresistable that I'm at a loss to understand why all people aren't instantly won over by her, genre preferences notwithstanding.

[ETA: Just one more bit about Robyn, which oddly hasn't been the topic of much blog speculation lately: I think it's time to start speculating about Robyn's chances for actual crossover success here in the states. She's obviously got a lot of momentum going for her right now - it was more than palpable Tuesday night. She recently signed to Cherry Tree, the sub-label of Interscope which also boasts Feist, The Fratellis, The Feeling, Rooney, and The Pipettes, among others. Not sure how actually-successful those last couple have been 'round these parts, but at least the first gained some major notoriety in oh-seven. Seems the Cherry Tree folks have a knack for getting their artists hott licensing deals, at least in iPod spots - "Handle Me" would be a natural, no? In any case, if quirky Brits like Lily and Amy can make it (and now maybe the Knash?), seriously, what's to stop Robyn, who's already conquered the hearts of the UK without a homefield advantage, and who's already had major hits here, and is already reaching out to about five audiences at once via collabs with Snoop Dogg, Britney, etc. I mean, just saying.]

Speaking of Cex, opener Drop the Lime, whom none of the blogs seem to be mentioning, was distinctly reminiscent of that occasionally-missed Baltimorean badboy, particularly in his physical mannerisms and campy haughty-hotty performance style (they're also - former? - labelmates on Tigerbeat6.) He was admittedly an odd choice for this show, and I can't say the crowd was entirely with him, but I enjoyed his set considerably. He announced at the beginning that he'd be playing "bass music" - I guess you could call it that, but it was also more varied and inventive than that maybe suggests - hard-hitting breakbeats and fuzzed out bassy spasms, sure (which he was manipulating live via laptop, i think entirely, but using turntables and a fair amount of mixer EQ-tweaking), but with enough pop-eared flourishes to keep it interesting, and intermittently (every other song, maybe more), live, unexpectedly soulful vocals: too "scene-y" said my sis, and admittedly strained in a potentially obnoxious way, but still with an appealing R&B grit'n'growl.

Somewhere between Cex and Jamie Lidell, then - perhaps triangulated with some particularly poppy dubstep/grime producer - but more dancey than either - and just possibly more melodic too in his song-inclined moments (the vocals were mixed a little too quiet for them to really dominate, and I wish I could have heard his sincere-seeming, even sentimental lyrics better, but there seemed to be some serious hooks in there.) Definitely interested to check out his recordings. And the SuperSuave, head-to-ankle black formal wear plus white shoes look was pretty killer.

One final note - the brand-new Highline Ballroom was a very nice place indeed, but what absolutely clinched it as a fantastic venue was the fact that, rather than turning on the lights and ushering us out after the show, like pretty much every concert I've ever been to, the red-haired lady DJ kept right on spinning and a good half of the crowd stuck around to dance, to gleefully glitchily remixes of "Glamorous," "Umbrella," "D.A.N.C.E." (still not too overplayed for NYC? wow!), that 'use your love tonight' song (whose recent ubiquity continues to befuddle me, especially as I can never remember who it's by [The Outfield?], though that factoid-dense wiki-stub graf offers some clues), a thankfully un-mixed "Piece of Me," and an inspired live (pretty sure) mash-up of "Miura" and "When Doves Cry." ok.

MEANWHILE.........nothing much was happening in the primary results. big whoop. BUT, on SuperMonday, whilst my hunny and her bro were watching possibly-already-legendary writerless talk-show throwdown tussle at the Daily Show taping, me and my sis went to the probably-definitely-already-legendary, record-breaking, ridiculously-championed, even impressively-reviewed Digital THREE-D spectacular that is Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert. The movie, that is.

Oh man, it was SuperGood! I mean, I'm not going to pretend that it would absolutely appeal to everyone, as I do/will w/r/t Robyn. But, like...it is actually good, no joke. And you might like it even if you think you wouldn't. It's got a lot to offer - top-notch, grade-A examples of all of the following:

1. Bubblegum-catchy but still hard-rocking power-pop (and the occasional countryish ballad)
2. Sweet, wholesome, charismatic young women (Miley's got a tiny bit of rebellion in her persona, sure - this is rock'n'roll after all - but neither as herself nor [much less] as Hannah Montana is she particularly sexualized - refreshingly and not a little surprisingly) and men (the Jonas brothers, who show up for a couple songs in the middle to compete goodnaturedly [along with Miley, naturally] for the hearts of the girls in the crowd, which is to say effectively everybody in the crowd)
3. Actually well-conceived concert filmmaking
4. Flashy, high-tech audio-visual spectacles that actually seem fresh and innovative (at least if you haven't seen the small handful of digital 3D films that have been released - the stuff's pretty impressive), and are only partially reliant on gimmickry
5. Mass cultural phenomena

If any of those things sound appealing, you would almost certainly find something to enjoy here. I like them all, roughly in that order, and so does my sister - at least, she likes the first two, which are the most important part - and it's great to have at least somebody who'll come with me to revel in them - driving to NYC all the way from Rochester no less. Maybe if I'd given out more copies of the three-volume (and counting) Ladies Love girl-pop mix series (of which she's been the sole consistent recipient) I would have a few more converts... but I'm not quite sure. (If you're interested let me know... I might just custom-tailor you a copy.)

There's lots more to be said about Miley/Hannah - who, by the way has just jumped up to #17 on the billboard hot 100 with her "underground" smash "See You Again" - but I'm not up to saying it right now. If you're at all interested, I highly recommend the movie, even given its admittedly outrageous ticket price (on the upside, it's a rare opportunity to see a movie in New York City that's not any more expensive than it would be anywhere else in the country.) It was supposed to close its limited one-week run tonight, but unsurprisingly I guess it has been extended. So we shall see.