Outro's birthday mixtape #1

So here is my first mixtape to celebrate making it a year and in particular a prosperous early 2010 in which my expectations have been surpassed exceptionally. Thanks for everyone's support.

Most of the songs on this mix I could give 10 minute speeches on what they mean to me, I have stories behind literally every song here so if you want some great new music or understand the enigma that is Simon D. check it out-

Outroversion's Birthday Mixtape #1 (1950-2005)

The unicorns- I do it
Pinback- Loro
Third Eye Blind- Semi Charmed Life
Neutral Milk Hotel- King of the carrot flowers
Beatles- Tomorrow Never Knows, Blackbird
Eels- Guest List
Tom Petty- Last dance with mary jane
Bright Eyes- Easy/Lucky/Free, Goldmine
Paul Mccartney- Jet, Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey, Jenny Wren
Blur- Yuko and Hiro, Tender
Bic Runga- Dust
MC Lars- Signing Emo
Our Lady Peace- Innocent
Outkast- Prototype
Vanessa Carlton- Wreckage
All-Time Quarterback- Dinner at 8 in the suburbs
Beach Boys- I just wasn't made for these times
Interpol- Evil
Yellowcard- Ocean Avenue
Broken Social Scene- Anthems for a 17 year old girl
REM- Shiny Happy People
Modest Mouse- Fire it up, The good times are killing me
Laura Marling- My manic and I
Miles Davis- Little Blue Frog
Air France- Collapsing at your doorstep
Camera Obscura- I don't want to see u
CSS- Let's make love and listen DFA
Paramore- Misery Business
Optiganally Yours- Remo
Bloc Party- Banquet
Fall Out Boy- Golden, Thriller
Death Cab- Lowell, Ma, Debate Exposes Doubt, Kelly Huckerby
John Denver- Poems Prayers and Promises
Red Hot Chili Peppers- Power of Equality, Scar Tissue
The Smiths- How soon is now
The libertines- Ha ha wall, last post on the bugle, Time for heroes
Long Blondes- Seperated By Motorways
John Vanderslice- Continuation, Trance Manual

The Helio Sequence

It's been a couple of days but I wanted to leave the bright eyes blog up for a little bit cos let's fac it, it's epic.




The Helio Sequence

It's amazing that I haven't written about these guys at all. They're incredible. They've been around a while, I had them on my creative labs zen mp3 player when they were the size of small books and only held 30gigs, this was in 2003 and i've dipped in and out of them ever since which is a crime really as they deserve untold success.

Hailing from the seemingly bottomless pit of talent that is Portland, Oregon they're with sub-pop and broke through with "keep your eyes ahead". An album maybe not representative of the band's past sound due to Brandon Summers damaging his vocal chords and having to relearn how to sing. It's an amazing album but then so is love and distance, you should at the very least get them both.

To say these guys are talented would be to do a disservice but then to go into more detail would be to reel out an endless line of superlatives. The best way is probably to show you. They regularly play the beatles' tomorrow never knows live, this is a track the beatles didn't even play live. It's incredibly and shows mucianship that most bands these days could barely dream of grasping. Probably also bear in mind that the helio sequence are just two guys. And probably remember that the drum part and the tabbed guitar part were both reversed. Just watch eh-




Go ahead, you'll be leet for life.

The other two albums

We are the bands that you'll come to love soon (2009)

A weird mix of an album. It has the beatles, modest mouse, the kinks, ash and simon & Garfunkel on one cd. Thing is if you're not into many of these bands already this is a great download...

Tracklist:

01 the monkees - i'm a believer
02 the kinks - david watts
03 the wake - here comes everybody
04 the beatles - no reply
05 jonathan caws elwitt - come in the evening
06 television personalities - sooty's disco party
07 let's wrestle - my schedule
08 le days - blood red heart
09 oh sweet music! - oh, daniel
10 sunset rubdown - idiot heart
11 the bear quartet - portrait painter
12 ash - return of white rabbit
13 modest mouse - satellite skin
14 placebo - for what it's worth
15 hockey - learn to lose
16 moofish catfish - at the club
17 she wants revenge - i don't want to fall in love
18 one - the slaughterer's girl
19 le voyage dans la lune - geoffrey ingram
20 simon & garfunkel - sound of silence

Download link:
*Removed*

Shuffle Seven!

Shuffle time babies. You know the deal, shufflywufflies no skipps.

The Coral- Arabian Sand

I was listening to this song and I knew it reminded me of something, turns out it was chocolate rain! When people write songs about sandy places they try to make the music fit it, I'd imagine that the coral juice got the bass line and guitar to underscore it and then just put words from that semantic field to it. The coral wrote some great stuff, probably listen to that instead ;)

Lyrical highlight- "Can you dance with the lepers in the madman's house?"

Good question, dick.

The Attic Lights- God

These guys were supporting camera obscura when I saw them last week, they were loads of fun to watch, even better to drink to. Proper uplifting good time music. They're scottish but don't sound it so don't hold it against them yeah? Ya big racist.

Death Cab For Cutie (Live)- The face that launched 1000 shits (2003-10-31) Variety Playhouse Atlanta

Originally written by the revolutionary hydra, though i've never heard that version so if anyone has it send it my way and I will sploot, the lyrical themes of this track are incredibly well held together in an intricate tapestry revolving around musical creativity, the history of the black sea and greek mythology. It's really quite impressive and once again highlights ben's ability to pick a great little known track from an even littler known band like with the secret stars all those years ago. This track is from a full three years before the live shows stopped getting fun.

Aqualung- just for a moment

A twinkly piano track that could've been on a snow patrol album! I always get these guys mixed up with aqueduct, no idea why! I haven't heard enough of their stuff to really have an opinion but i know that i've listened to them a few times without generating one so that should give you an idea of quite how resounding their sound is.

Matt Pond PA- Winter One

An instrumental track, and a short one at that. I'm sorry but it's the nature of the shuffle!

The Libertines- The ha ha wall

"If you get tired, of hanging around. Pick up a guitar and spin a web of sound" The lyrics from Pete's time with the libertines were just flawless. I had a bit libertinegasm yesterday listening to pretty much everything they'd done, including that awful "day in the life" cover. Obviously the hope is they'll get back together but between the two amazing albums and the endless session tracks there's alot to go around.

The Rural Alberta Advantage- Sleep All day

This would be my dream, I try my best to do as it is. The lyrics are exactly about that, the reasons why you should sleep all day and give up on life. Obviously a bit of a melancholy track and soon goes into the reasons why indeed you shouldn't sleep all day. Fuck I think i took this song too literally. "If you try to hold on then i'll try to hold on you".

The Beatles- Wake up in the morning (From atop then apple rooftop, saville row)

Ah the rooftop concert, what an iconic way to end a band's career. As you probably know from let it be (the documovie) they had a proper jam up there for longer than people realise playing so many tracks and don't let me down many many times! This is an unreleased track by them and it really gives you a feeling that things weren't as bad as it really seemed between them. Even though they were :(

Red Hot Chili Peppers- Police Helicopter

I love pre-good-writing-chilis! Pretty much everything on "out in L.A" the slapdash "best of" album that was released before they'd even had anything that could be considered good enough to be called a hit! I love that album though it's brilliant and it's all this early stuff that, in retrospect you could see the behemoth that we know these days evolving from.

Beatles- Revolution 1 (Take 20)

Of course, it's no carnival of light but it is a brilliant insight into the white album sessions and also into the relationship between #1 and the avante-garde #9. From what I understand take 20 is a live take with layers of takes 18 and 19 upon it, apparently the white album is to be remastered and re-released next year and this is from that. There were only two copies of this and due to one of them being in Yoko Ono's possesion it's been suggested she released it to overshadow paul's carnival of light which is generally considered the holy grail of lost beatles tracks and, although this has been true for a decade, appears as imminent as ever.

Here's the track- Revolution- Take 20

Also this is supposedly part of carnival of light, might be, might not be.

Solo Careers

So some people leave bands or just do stuff on the side, either way whenever they do it people say it's not as good, here are a bunch of examples where they've gone on to rock it just as good or better than in their day job.

Paul Mccartney (of the uh... beatles)- Uncle/Albert Admiral Halsey

Postal Service (Ben gibbard of death cab)- Such great heights

Conor Oberst (of bright eyes) and the Mystic Valley Band- Gone gone from new york city

Jenny Lewis (of rilo kiley) and the watson twins- Rise up with Fists

Rob Crow (of pinback)- I hate you rob crow

The last shadow puppets (Alex turner of arctic monkeys)... (and i guess miles kane from... knowing alex turner i guess)- My mistakes were made for you

Across The Universe

(Blog from Summer 2007)

I saw this movie the day before I left canada with my best bud and it was the best movie I have ever seen, it was such an awesome day too everything went perfect from parking, line ups, position in theatre, acquiring mmind altering substances and a way of smoking them as we didn't have enough time to roll, that getting us in the perfect mindset for the movie, there being a burger king in the theatre to get quad stackers, being at exactly the right level of highness to enjoy the movie, the weather, not dying on the car ride back, everything was awesome but the music was incredible.

It is unique in the way that usually a soundtrack is selected to highlight pieces in a movie where this movie was written around the music and it worked perfectly.

Now I was brought up on the beatles so was wary of this movie and indeed it hasn't been released in the u.k so i got lucky but all the great pieces were perfectly executed and the lesser known numbers were really brought to another level, these are the ones that I shall be highlighting.

So I guess I met this fairly incredible girl a week before I saw this movie, I went to this the ensuing weekend and ended up with her that night and after she left the next day I couldn't stop hearing this song, I'd barely heard the beatles version, i'd heard the overcomplicated wings version but this hits it perfectly-

I've just seen a face

This was a really nice/pleasant lennon/mccartney number that also hit another level in the movie, sung by evan rachel wood who was exceptional in the movie along with T.V Carpio's rendition of i want to hold your hand it blows your mind as you would never expect to hear it sounding quite so beautiful

If I fell

This is a great part of the movie, played live and as a male and female duet, the female has a great gritty jazzy style, check out her version of helter skelter, and the guy look insanely like jimi hendrix and plays guitar in the same style

Oh Darling!

There were so many trippy parts in this movie but this particular song was intense for its imagery, listening to it you wonder why it wasn't so big as it is poignant but always played second fiddle to while my guitar...

Happiness is a warm gun

T.V Carpio's delivery of this song is incredible and unexpected, this was one of the beatles poppier numbers and she turns it into a remorseful, angst filled song about unrequited lesbian love, you probably have to see the movie to understand ;)

I want to hold your hand