Friday, June 22, 2012

The style and sound of reunion

Let's talk about summer jams! In May of '96, When I went to blind date prom senior year of high school -- where I met AMR and Kevin for pretty much the first time -- we had a pre-meet and greet at someone's house. When I walked in, all the guys were gathered around the speakers with "Crossroads" on repeat. They sang along to every line.

This was before I was into hip hop and I had no idea what was going on. My friends sang along to stuff too but it was with Laserdisc and microphones. The songs that got a lot of run on our parents' karaoke machines were Disney hits and oldies like "Que Sera, Sera." Ace of Base was considered current. So, reciting Bone Thugs was a pretty foreign experience.

Back then I probably thought these kids were the height of cool. Now that I think about it, they were! Bone...bone...bone. Now tell me whatcha gonna do. When I try to explain to people that I wasn't into "regular music" until college, they scoff. But seriously, my CD six changer while studying for finals featured Meatloaf, 10,000 Maniacs Unplugged, Eric Clapton Unplugged, Jewel, and Yanni. Ad (your) nauseam.

Somewhere in the world there also exists a VHS copy of AMR and Mike doing a home video version of K-Ci & JoJo. I don't even know how they cut it but they had different scenes, costume changes, and "All My Life" tracked over the video. They were so ahead of their time.

I'm in the
process of making some playlists for next weekend's houseboat trip. The most integral part of any outing is music. AMR and I understand this. (Games is second, food is third.) I'm trying a new thing by creating multiple playlists but with fewer tracks each. Apparently The Magician -- whom we saw last weekend -- uses just ten tracks in his mixes. I will aspire to do the same.

The muse for each playlist has so far been my friend's email subject headings from this morning. This could either be super great or go terribly. So far she's given me:
  • "There is Hope for You"
  • "Apartment Options"
  • "A Different Perspective"
  • "Awful Scripts, Dirty Dancing and New Swimsuits"
My other goal is to have a mini-set for each task, such as "chopping vegetables" or "leaping off the roof and flipping into the water." (Last summer's dock playlist served me very well.) If only we could bring huge ass speakers for this houseboat. Luckily we will be prepared with all manner of cables and maybe batteries to power our stuff. Nobody better park their boats near us because I'd like to be blasting music at all times. I like my outdoors accompanied by a soundtrack.

And if you wanna hear a podcast episode about summer jams, it's right here via Grantland, Hollywood Prospectus Podcast: Summer Jam. I barely know any of the songs they're talking about -- it skews heavily toward current rap songs -- but they make some interesting points about what qualifies as a "summer jam."

As an extra, here is NPR's The Mix: The Songs Of The Summer, 1962-2012. They even offer it via Spotify so you really don't have any excuses for not listening. Personally, I think it's too early to call Icona Pop's track one of this year's summer jams. It's not everywhere enough. There was also a clear oversight for 2011 because they left out "Pumped Up Kicks" and threw in "Rolling In The Deep." We all love Adele but that shit is not a summer jam. Then again, "MMMBop" is holding down 1997 so really this is super compromised already.

No Hootie?

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