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Discoveries: Plastic Bertrand
Even though this year hasn't been the strongest for new music, in my opinion, there have been at least two or three memorable albums that would make my top 10 in any year (except maybe 1991, but that's a story for another day). Perhaps saying I was depressed about this year was an overstatement, considering that every year has its good and bad. When I combine my favorite released in the last 12 months with the older music discovered in 2005, I really can't complain.
One of my recent finds was Belgian punk satirist Plastic Bertrand, aka Roger Jouret. How I came upon Plastic Bertrand is a rather random story. It happened the day after Twitch blew my mind at Don Hill's. This was my first Optimo/Twitch experience and it more than matched up to the praise I've heard from Rajeev. Twitch's genre blender style not only made me dance, it inspired me to deepen my musical knowledge.
I spent the next day reading bios on artists like Arthur Russell, Skatt Brothers, as well as a number of late `70s/early `80s new wave acts including Plastic Bertrand. Then on Amazon I found a clip of "Ca Plane Pour Moi", Plastic Bertrand's hit song from 1977. I was instantly hooked by the song's outrageous mix of doo-wop and punk. All Music pointed me to PB's 1978 debut album, also titled Ca Plane Pour Moi (which roughly translates as All's Well For Me). The song and the album have quickly become a real favorite of mine this year.
The Belgian Pop & Rock Archives has an excellent write-up on Plastic Bertrand. It includes this quote from Rolling Stone magazine's David Fricke: "'ca Plane pour Moi' is truly great dumbness--Bertrand singing verbose, seemingly nonsensical French lyrics over a classic three-chord Ramones roar with Spectorish saxes and a winning falsetto 'oooh-weee-oooh' on the chorus." Not only does Fricke love it, but Rolling Stone named the song as one of the top 100 rock songs.
Exploring Pandor
A friend introduced me to Pandora yesterday. Pandora is the music player built upon the Music Genome Project. It's a free service currently, although there is a paid subscription option which doesn't do much right now other than remove ads.
If you're not familiar with the Music Genome Project, it is a music analysis venture organized by Tim Westergren in 2000. The goal of the project is to "capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level," Mr. Westergren states. Since its inception, the project has reviewed 10,000 songs and classified each using a set of attributes, called Genes. Pandora uses these Genes to link similar songs together, creating streaming stations that "explore that part of the music universe."
The first station I created was based on Nick Drake. Starting with Drake's "River Man", Pandora played for me:
Hmmm...only four songs in and Nick Drake is playing again? Maybe Pandora has no Belle & Sebastian in their library. To mix it up, I added Leonard Cohen, Scott Walker, and Nick Cave. Pandora's first song was "Coming Back to You" by Leonard Cohen, followed by: