Bro, check out my fresh Diddy headphones

Listen… they even contribute about as much to the headphone market as P. Diddy does to music! That’s real attention to detail.

The ever useless Puff Daddy Puffy P. Diddy His Almighty Didd-ness Diddy, who believes that he is so important that the public should be forced to learn his name multiple times throughout his “career” (for lack of a better word), is releasing his own line of headphones. UGH. The sad thing is that he will make money and even garner praise from this venture. All it takes in order for this to happen is a set of cheap plastic phones that pump out so much bass that the listener can’t tell if his Zune’s playing Tupac, Biggie or Deep Blue Something (Note: This is how Lil’ Did claims to have ended the East Coast/West Coast rap war). El Didderino is known for slapping his name on everything from vodka, to clothing, to car rims. All of which I’m sure he has no vested interest in beyond expanding his fortune.

His in-ear version of the unnecessarily popular Beats by Dr. Dre headphones will cost around $150 of your hard-earned money and contribute to the further degradation of quality in music reproduction. But, hey, it’s a small price to pay to look cool. Since you will inevitably ignore my warnings and give this idiot your money, here is a link to more information. Notice how there are no actual specs included- not that anyone would bother reading them anyway. Oh, but there are pretty pictures!

If you happen to be one of the few who actually care about what your music sounds like, read on for some of my suggested alternatives (WARNING: none of these headphones include Sean John carrying cases)...

Most anticipated albums of 2010

This year was fairly uneventful in the world of new music, especially compared to the offerings of ’07 and ’08. But luckily for us music lovers, that means that those bands that released albums in the last two or three years are due for their next releases in the coming months. In anticipation of this I have compiled a list of albums that get my dick hard just thinking about their unexplored splendor. Enjoy.

Yeasayer - Odd Blood

Yeasayer’s All Hour Cymbals came out of nowhere in 2007, bending genres and becoming incredibly popular with those in the know. The tell tail sign that they’d really hit it big came when Entourage decided to use their track “Sunrise” in theclosing credits of one of their episodes. So after being thoroughly pimped by Vinny Chase and co. the band began its rise to mainstream success. They’ve worked the festival circuit hard over the past two years and are now ready to follow up their masterpiece debut. Odd Blood is scheduled for a February 9th release and its first single, “Ambling Alp”, was released in November. If this song is anything like the rest of the album then we are in for a face-melting, psychedelic treat, and the recently released album artwork definitely backs that claim.

Check out Ambling Alp’s fittingly trippy and NSFW (lots of naked people) music video:

Spoon - Transference

I can’t stop praising the awesome-ness of Spoon. They have taken up the torch that The Strokes dropped so abruptly in2006. Though, many people were not as impressed with 2007′s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga as I was. It may have been a slight departure from the sound of their masterpiece predecessor Gimme Fiction, but it still possessed the swagger and confidence present in the rest of Spoon’s catalog. They could put out an album that sounded like a combination of Jet and Maroon 5 and I’d still be first in line to buy their next one. This band can do no wrong. I highly recommend that you pick this album up on January 19th, and for the next few weeks until then, make yourself familiar with the rest of their output if you aren’t already. You won’t regret it.

The new single, “Written in Reverse”:

Top 10 best death scenes… ever

Classic movies are quoted daily, by people all over the world. Considering how mentally maladjusted myself and most of my friends are, we tend to quote from death scenes, or at least from movies that involve lots of killing. To celebrate our twisted idea of entertainment, here is my list of the top 10 coolest deaths and murders in movies.

1. The axe-murder of Paul Allen in American Psycho

“Try getting a reservation at Dorsia now, you fucking stupid bastard!”

2. Private Pyle’s murder/suicide from Full Metal Jacket

“I am. In a world. Of shit.”

Nobody appreciates quality these days

Sitting in my favorite chair, drinking a beer and listening to The Band’s Music from Big Pink on vinyl. Life couldn’t get any better than this (…maybe). It’s during times like these that I get to thinking about how rarely people sit back, relax, and enjoy the finer things in life. More specifically, people seem to have forgotten how to enjoy music correctly.

I’m sick of the stupid people all over the world today, running around with their 120 gig iPods that contain 2 gigs of [Insert shitty modern artist/group] and a ripped version of The Chronicles of Narnia. People don’t seem to care that they are listening to sub-standard music that is nowhere near how the artist intended for it to be heard. I honestly don’t give a shit if you’re listening to Jonas Brothers or fucking Taylor Swift or some other shitty music, that’s your choice I guess. What I care about is the quality of the music itself.

I praise all that is music, therefore it kills me to hear good music degraded by crappy sound quality. I collect vinyl records for this specific purpose. I can already hear everyone whining about how it’s crackly and outdated. SHUT THE FUCK UP. If you take care of vinyl, it sounds more pristine than any CD or MP3 ever will. (And it’s so much more fulfilling than downloading an artist’s entire discography from The Pirate Bay)

The fact is, vinyl is the closest thing to listening to the master tapes of an album in the studio. It’s analog, so it is continuous sound and not staggered samples of the original song (i.e. mp3 or wav files, see graph below). The smaller the file, the less samples per-second, leading to degraded sound quality and a more “empty” sound. This push for more music in a smaller space is causing the music to lose its dynamic and the subtle nuances that are only audible on the original LPs. Vinyl actually goes beyond the boundaries of human hearing, so what you can’t hear you can feel. (Check here for a good and simple explanation about the whole sound quality thing)

It doesn’t take a whole lot of money to begin collecting vinyl and experiencing the beauty of music the way it is supposed to be heard. People think you need to be a millionaire to be an audiophile, but that is because of B.S. like this being on the market. In reality, all you need is a quality set-up comprised of vintage equipment, like this and this, that will set you back little more than the cost of an iPod touch.

But I think one of the best parts of collecting vinyl is the album art. There’s nothing cooler than laying down, listening to a record and zoning out staring at the album artwork. Try doing that with your faggy 2″ x 2″ iPod screen Steve Jobs.

I guess I should stop complaining though, cause it looks like people are starting to catch on.

What the fuck is going on!?

So today I finally got a chance to check out the new Chris Cornell album Scream, and that is exactly what it made me want to do, in horror. My fucking God, what has gotten into the world of music these days? I can only compare it to if Britney Spears took a shit in Seal’s mouth who then gave Moby head, who ejaculated all over a fucking CD. This is what the end result would be.

Is this really the man who fronted such amazing, genre defining bands as Temple of the Dog and Soundgarden? (Leaving Audioslave out, out of respect to RATM). It scares me that people are calling this progressive. This is not fucking progressive. This is one washed up hard rock singer, who clearly couldn’t hack it in the late 2000′s where the genre is dominated by no talent hacks, and a big name hip-hop producer that doesn’t even make his own beats, teaming up to fuck the last bit of life out of the art that used to be called music.

I can only pray that this doesn’t catch on and become the new Limp Bizkit-esque, rap-rock hit of the new millennium. Hopefully, the fact that he only had the stones to smash a piece of shit $300 Epiphone Les Paul on the cover of the album means he isn’t committed to this new direction and he will not only never make anything like it again, but also wipe every existing copy of this album from the face of the earth. Fuck, I need a drink.

Good Cornell:

Bad Cornell:

I fear that I am ordinary, just like everyone

What words can be said time and time again
And still retain the elegance of their maiden voyage from the lips of mankind?
Can I speak what has already been spoken with the profundity of innovation?
I cannot find these words anywhere.

Is it the case that creativity and innovation have been swapped for interpretation and restatement?

In that vein, has all been said? Can one look forward, or must we rely on past thoughts?
…Because, life may progress, but the core of society, morality, virtue and religion remain stagnant.

Maybe, we have said so much that only the few lucky souls that have been endowed with foresight and genius can create…

These are the things that plague my mind and make me question life’s purpose. I wonder if we were put here to say these great words, or discover these profound truths… because if so, one thing we have discovered is that all things come to an end. And when we reach the inevitable end of the profound and innovative, what then will our purpose be?

Rock and roll is here to stay

“Rock and Roll is here to stay”. When Neil Young said that 30 years ago, I don’t think he knew how right he was. Oregon natives, Blitzen Trapper, have been the living embodiment of the Canadian rock legends words since their formation in 2000; relentlessly playing their folksy, bluesy, country-esque rock throughout the underground circuit. Unlike most classic rock revival acts of the past decade, Blitzen Trapper decides not to ignore the past 25 years of music, but rather to incorporate influences from bands like Pavement, Neutral Milk Hotel and Crooked Fingers into their love of vinyl era rock and roll.

There must be something in the water in the state of Oregon, which the band shares with indie rock god Stephen Malkmus (of Pavement fame) and his Jicks. It is clear that they are drinking from the same well these days. Malkmus’ post-Pavement albums and especially his latest, Dragonfly, tend towards a classic rock feel as well. It seems that Oregon has become indie rock’s answer to Omaha.

Furr is B.T.’s Sub Pop debut, but it is not a radical departure from their prior album. The band is in what could be the greatest stage of their career, having released a minor hit with their last album, Wild Mountain Nation, and its title track. They have finally found the right formula and now they can focus on tweaking and honing their sound and work towards creating something epic. Furr is a snapshot of a band on the cusp of their swan song.

Songs like the title track, a song about a boy being raised by wolves, employ Zevon-esque storytelling, admittedly with a little less wit than the late genius, but the influence is there. The clear highlight of the album is “Black River Killer”, the peak of their storytelling to date. With it’s rambling feel, like a lost track by The Band, it drags the listener along on a journey with a great hook to boot.

Blitzen Trapper is my pick for the next big thing, and we should be hearing a lot more from them very soon. Hopefully they can give that extra bit on their next album and finally paint their masterpiece.

This makes me laugh

Keeping an open mind

Yo La Tengo

I used to make fun of this band, I lumped them in with the indie, coffee shop, hipsters that I hate so much. But I guess it is good to keep an open mind sometimes… so I checked them out the other night and fell in love with this album

It reminds me of being a kid and driving with my family at night.

Moral of the story, fuck hipsters but don’t assume they like something just because it’s foreign or unknown… sometimes it’s just good.

Ahhh religion…