Steven Harwell, American singer and musician (Smash Mouth)

I’m listening to Smash Mouth’s perennial classic, Astro Lounge on much nicer speakers than I ever had when I was twelve and really listened to it, and I just noticed that on the classic megahit “All Star,” there’s some pretty nice funky bass and drum rhythms going on. It’s pretty cool. You can hear it on the video if you’ve got some bass to work with. The drummer and bassist are really working well together in that sort of pop setting.

I was also driving around yesterday with Miley Cyrus’ “Party In The U.S.A.” playing on the radio, which is a current megahit that hopefully no one ever refers to as a classic megahit even with tongue in cheek. Anyway, I noticed that right around the beginning of the chorus there’s some weird synth or heavily modified guitar parts going on that are interesting. I can’t really identify chord progressions by ear or anything, but it sounds kind of unusual, and the tone is really out of place in that style of song, although they sneak it in well. Kind of like in the chorus of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” (pay attention to the “If you like it, then you should have put a ring on it” part), which is brought out fantastically in this adorable cover. Actually, they also did this (and by ‘they’ I’m referring to the producers who don’t care whose song they are producing) to Kelly Clarkson’s hit from a few years ago, “Behind These Hazel Eyes.” In the chorus of that one, the drums are way too aggressive and there’s far too much distortion for the style of the song. Especially the bridge: That “chugga chugga” guitar is right out of grunge, and that’s just a girl’s pop song. The last chorus has some drum fills that are particularly out of line. I guess it worked out though, because it was really popular for a while.

#155 – Smash Mouth – “Can’t Get Enough of You Baby” – (1999)

Astro Lounge was another “smash” (thank you) album from the 90s. This song is immense fun and proof that Smash Mouth, when not covering The Monkees, were an awesome band. It sucks that I chose to put at at no. 155, when it should have been about 100 higher. While watching the video, I realized, for the first time ever, that the 90s were actually kinda weird. Why did everyone like colorful wigs and colorful leather pants? This song was featured in the movie Can’t Hardly Wait, which I didn’t see, but would have, had I graduated from high school the year it came out. Another single from this album is the much less fun “Waste.”

Nagyon jó szám, fel tud vidítani…

And hang on – hang on – hang on!
Everybody just get on – get on – get on!
Get started and go on – go on – go on!
Everybody just hold on!

PS: Teljes dalszöveghez kattints ide:

Things are getting weird, things are getting tough
Nothing’s making sense but you keep on looking up
They tell you to be true, you’re trying every day
You keep it on the real, still you gotta find a way
To make your mama happy, to make your papa proud
You gotta turn it up but all you hear is turn it down

So gather round I’m here to say
You’ll never make everybody’s day
But while you’re around you might as well
Catch the tiger by his tail

And hang on hang on hang on
Everybody just
Get on get on get on get started
Just go on go on go on
Everybody just hang on

Sometimes I wanna cry and throw the towel in
They try to beat me down but I’ll take it on the chin
And everywhere I go the people are the same
They just wanna know that everything will be OK
Things are getting rough, turn it back around
You gotta turn it up when they tell you tone it down

Comme j’adore le mois d’Octobre, l’Halloween et les films d’horreur, j’ai décidé de faire le premier Horreur-o-thon des Bipolaires! En effet, j’écouterai un film de peur par jour jusqu’au 31, alors revenez lire mes critiques quotidiennes…si vous en avez le courage! MOUAHAHAHAAA!

————

Après avoir vu An American Werewolf In London, j’étais curieux de voir la suite, même si j’avais entendu plusieurs mauvais commentaires.  “Bah, ça va être divertissant pareil”, me dis-je.  En plus, une de mes amies l’avait dans sa collection, donc ça ne devait pas être si pire que ça (et si ça l’était, je l’aurais vu gratis au moins héhé!.)

Oh, boy.  J’étais siiii dans l’erreur.

Finalement, ça aurait dû s’appeler An American Pie In Paris, parce qu’il y’avait beaucoup plus de points en commun avec l’interminable franchise pour ados qu’avec le précédent film d’horreur comique de John Landis.  En gros, 3 douchebags partent en voyage à travers Paris pour sauter en bungee de la Tour Eiffel et plein de conneries du genre.  Au sommet de la Tour, le douchebag principal (Douche McBag) sauve la vie d’une jeune femme qui allait sauter, tombant en amour avec.  Ce qu’il ne sait pas, c’est qu’elle est un loup-garou et qu’un culte de lycanthropes Parisiens ont pour habitude de dévorer les touristes américains.

Bref, l’humour gras ne fitte pas dans le film (pendant une date avec Douche McBag, Miss Loup-Garou remarque des condoms dans sa poche de chemise. Il lui dit que ce sont des gommes à mâcher Américaines, après quoi il en mâche un et fait une “balloune”…).  De plus, les effets spéciaux de loups-garous fait par ordi passent de “corrects” à “j’ai tu mis un jeu de N64 par erreur?”.  L’histoire ne va nulle part et les personnages sont pas attachants pour 5 cennes.  Rajoutez une soundtrack punk-ska à la SmashMouth et Blur et vous avez de la vraie crap-garou.

Note finale: 4/10

———

Meilleure citation:

Un chirurgien: “Did you see a girl? She’s stolen my heart.”

Douche McBag: “I know the feeling.”  Tellement quétaine.

Meilleure mort: Une conquête du perso principal se fait déchiqueter et on voit le résultat dans la photo ci-haut (son oeil explose quand elle siffle et plonge dans ses seins.  Ha ha.

Y’as-tu des tits?!: Bien sûr: Miss Loup-Garou réconforte McDouche en lui mettant les mains sur ses seins.  Gratuit vous dites?!

Saviez-vous que…: Thierry L’Hermitte a un cameo de littéralement 3 mots. (“Help!”, “Taxi!” et “Please!”)

Foto: Divulgação / Andressa Reze

O Festival acontece nos dias 27 e 28 de outubro, com cerca de 180 músicos, no Teatro dos Bancários, às 20h.

O FestBandas é organizado pelo Centro Musical Toque de Classe e este ano entregará o título de “Melhor Banda Autoral”. Cerca de 45 bandas formadas por alunos da escola participarão do evento. Apenas na categoria de banda autoral oito grupos estão inscritos.

O evento contará com a participação de músicos de todas as idades, entre 9 e 67 anos, e pela multiplicidade de estilos, com presença marcante de covers de bandas e artistas famosos como Michael Jackson, Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Madona, Smash Mouth, Gun´s Roses, Eric Clapton, Van Halen, Rush, Nirvana, Raul Seixas, John Lennon e Beach Boys, entre outros.

Anota aí!

FestBandas – Toque de Classe 2009, dias 27 e 28 de outubro, às 20h, no Teatro dos Bancários. Entrada: R$ 5,00 (meia).

Can we just talk for a moment about 1997?

Those were the days of the shitty-yet-awesome MamaKitt & TheGirlontheSwing apartment, of first jobs and first apartments after college, of “a lot of fun for a little city,”* of all-night Boggle tournaments and going to bars to hear our high school friend play in bands and scrambling for parking spots after grocery shopping trips that were somehow always hilarious and somehow never resulted in our buying the right food.

Those were also the days of Smash Mouth, Sugar Ray, Fastball, Spice Girls, and probably other compound-named pop bands on the radio. And OH HO HO did MK and I listen to the pop radio as we drove around our little city in her teensy VW or my grandfather’s Oldsmobile. I can’t hear any of those groups today without thinking of our two years together in Portland, and remembering how much we used to laugh — at each other, at others (oh so rude), at nothing at all. We had next to no money, oh but honey, didn’t we have fun.

I remember those two years with tremendous fondness, and I hope MK does too. I worry that she doesn’t — I’m not the easiest person to live with, or spend tons of time around, and more than once, in recent years, I’ve pronounced my affection for bygone times and found she remembers the episode in question a little less cheerfully. I know the days when we lived together in our little apartment in the little city probably weren’t all grand, but I honestly can’t remember a bad moment. I just remember laughing at our nutty neighbors, laughing ourselves silly in the supermarket aisle, laughing at each other’s car-dancing to Fastball and Smash Mouth and Sugar Ray.

I can’t remember the last time I laughed like that. And while I don’t wish to be 23 and living in a shitty apartment with no money again, I do miss the sense of home and fun and family I felt in those days. So when I hear the poppy music from that era, I scoff outwardly at its ridiculousness but also feel it as a big, comforting hug.

*This used to be Portland’s singsongy tagline, but when I tried to insert a link to it I came up with next to nothing. Guess they’ve retired that line somewhere in the last dozen years.

I know y’all confused like what’s up with this picture, but there’s a simple explanation for it. The explanation is the phenomenon I like to call Weekend Alternate Musical Personality, also known as WAMP WAMP, what it do. This means that basically every other weekend, I listen to all the music that I don’t listen to during the week. I know it sounds weird, and it would sound even weirder if I listed all the random shit I listen to on the weekends, but for now, just take it as is and know that I’m gonna review a Smash Mouth CD. So there.

Astro Lounge Album Cover

The only other things I will say before I review this are that I’m on an extreme 90’s music binge and that I decided to review this only because it has one of my top 5 favorite songs of all time on it; but more on that later.

WHO’S THERE (7)

I guess this kind of ties in to the album cover (kinda?) since it has outer-space sound effects layered in over the background and there’s one line about “little green men”. While this song isn’t anything spectacular, I have the feeling that it’s gonna set the stylistic pace for the rest of the album, a fact that I’m fine with.

DIGGIN’ YOUR SCENE (7)

I love the funkyness of the drum loop here, but other than that this does little to distinguish itself from the previous song. I realize a lot of these songs are gonna sound pretty much exactly the same, since that’s the Smash Mouth formula, but for some reason these aren’t holding up to the standard set by the gems I know are coming later in this album.

I JUST WANNA SEE (DB)

Now I know why they stick to the same formula, cuz, I mean, if you stray from the formula and up with this…yikes

WASTE (DB)

The title is eerily prophetic.

ALL STAR (10+)

Say what you want. Seriously, say whatever you want, but that will just make you dumb since this is one of my top 5 favorite songs of all time. Easily. I could listen to this song every day for the rest of my life if I so chose. Great. Fuckin. Song.

Here’s a link to the incredibly awesome music video (since embedding is disabled) that was supposed to get attention for the movie Mystery Men, which supposedly sucked chode.

SATELLITE (8)

Even though this song is kinda weird, since it doesn’t know whether it wants to be a 90’s pop song, a samba, or a sci-fi movie, I actually am REALLY LIKING the style here. The random guitar solo also helps, since it shows that they can actually play pretty well as opposed to making massive pop charts.

RADIO (6)

Although the hybridization worked really well last song, their attempt here at being a pop/ska/punk band sounds just a bit awkward, making for a less entertaining song than Satellite. I mean, when you’re trying to rip power chords, harmonizing your background singers just sounds weird.

STONED (9)

I hate to do this, but moreso than being a great song, this song is just so 90’s style (and good 90’s style, not N’Sync style) that everyone went crazy over shit like this, and I feel obligated to give this a good score. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good song, but the fact that if you’re doing some serious 90’s reminiscing then you could pick a lot worse songs than this is what puts it over the hump.

THEN THE MORNING COMES (9)

Although not as good, this song likes a hybrid of my two favorite Smash Mouth songs (All Star and Mine As Well Be Walking On The Sun)…and I mean that in a good way.

ROAD MAN (DB)

OK shut the fuck up…its painstakingly obvious your white ass is not Jamaican.

FALLEN HORSES (6)

The following is going to piss off Beatles fans and fans of this song alike. Fuck it. Most Beatles fans look like this anyway

GET A JOB, ASSHOLE

so I don’t really care.

I feel like this (along with like 50% of the songs in the latter half of The Beatles catalogue that critics jerk it about) are about NOTHING. They say random shit either A) just to do it, B) because their brains are fried, or C) because they know fans will eat it up, and then people take lines that don’t symbolize jack and shit and say they hold the meaning of life. GOD THAT’S ANNOYING.

DEFEAT YOU (8)

Much better. At least this is sonically pleasing, since they return to their patented formula. Upbeat and driving bass, simple drum line, a little guitar thrown over the top just for the hell of it, singing that sounds literally the same on every song, and keyboard as a supplement every couple bars or so. You realize I could have just written this for pretty much every song right? See, I’m putting an effort in.

COME ON COME ON (8)

You already know this song, since it was a gigantic hit. For the record, though, it sounds better now than it did when it first came out, mainly due to the pauses and the drum breakdowns, even though the chorus makes no fucking sense at all.

HOME (6)

Thanks to the keyboard in the opening bars, this sounds the most hip hop-influenced of the album, but, being a hip hop site I have to break it to you that it doesn’t do an effective job of it. This sounds like a pop version of Sublime, but nowhere near as good. You know what I’d rather do than listen to this song? Watch Captain Planet beat Hitler.

CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF YOU BABY(8)

Yet another mega-smash hit. You know how much money they must have made off of this album? Forget album sales, they probably made millions off of the commercials and movies all these songs were put in. Now, I realize I’m not getting that in depth into the description of this song, but that’s because I’m preoccupied with watching this:

Should I buy this?

Well, this album is not without its misfires, but 10 out of the 14 songs range from above average to great, so I would give this a buy, especially if you’re into days of 90’s reminiscing like I am.

What do you do during your 90’s reminiscing?

Listen to Smash Mouth, play Crazy Bones while trading Pogs and watching Legends Of The Hidden Temple

Favorite Team?

Silver. Fuckin. Snakes.

iraila hastearekin batera jende guztia urduri jartzen da. oporretatik bueltako lehenengo egunetan aurpegi serioak agertzen dira, ezinegonak gure artean, dena konplikatzen saiatzen gara bakoitzak bereari eutsiz, ez dugu lankideen lana errazten norberak bere ipurdia salbu edukiz gero, eta hori ez digu unibertsitateak irakasten, bakoitzak bizi izandakoak baino, gure izaera izango denak.
udako bi hilabeteak eskolan sartu eta jarraian ahazten ditu jendeak, oporrak ain urruti ikusten dira!! baina atzo bukatu bazaizkizun!! ez dakigu daukaguna aprobetxaten, momentu bakoitzari zukua atera eta alderik hoberena ikusten. lotsagarria da, baina askotan hobeto da oporretan ere ez bagina joango!! zertarako?? gero oporren osteko depresioak guztioi irrifarra ezkutatzeko?? birus hori dabil gaurkoan gure eskolatik bueltan, espero dut behintzat ni ez kutsatzea eta urtea hasi dugun bezela jarraitzea: irrifar batez eta zuri muxu emateko desiatzen.

smash mouthen why cant we be friends, elkarrekin dantzan egiteko eta bukatzen denean abestiaren izenburuak dioenari buruz pentsateko… muxu bat!!

DOWNLOAD

Oh the 90s

The term “guilty pleasure” is thrown around willy-nilly these days. Left and right, everywhere I look, everyone’s got a guilty pleasure top something list. See, the expression itself implies that we should feel guilty about liking something that is considered lame, or uncool. But why? There are always a ton of people out there in the world that have similar preferences and when it comes to music, one man’s guilty pleasure is another man’s favorite artist/album/song! Still, we go out of our way to disassociate ourselves from the supposed “bad apples” while at the same time brandishing our lexicon of bands that carry respect in our social circles; all the while, we’re  secretly blasting Robbie Williams in our earbuds. Why do we do this to ourselves?

Because, our friends suck.

I’m just kidding. Your friends might suck but mine don’t. But the idea is hopefully clear enough. Our collective self esteem is so low were dying to have our preferences rated highly so we can feel better about ourselves. It’s like middle school…forever. So really you have one of two options: A) Pander to the world by bending and folding at its every whim; B) Grow some balls and happily share your love of “bad” music.

At the end of the day is it really so wrong to admit to yourself that it’s okay if people know you like this music?

The idea that you could ever feel guilty about songs that make your cochleae smile is ludicrous. Why should I feel bad about liking the infectious pop sounds of Natalie Imbruglia or Hall & Oates? Why should I stifle my instinctual dancing movements every time I hear the Bee Gees or Vitamin C. You should feel like a dick for judging me. Seriously, take the first step and admit that you might like Peter Frampton, or actually listen to Matchbox 20 songs when they come on the radio (i dont but its okay i wont judge you).

You don’t have to like or even tolerate all music.

I simply suggest that you reevaluate the reasons why you don’t tell anyone that you love singing the theme song from the Bodyguard in falsetto. Be proud. Share your quirky music tastes with your friends the next time you see them. Hug them. But dont be too weird about it.

…So in the most long winded way possible, and with too much fanfare, here’s the first of many entries into what I like to call…my non-guilty guilty pleasures…I’ll work on the name.

NGGP: Fush Yu Mang

Let me set the scene for you:

It’s 1997 and an unfortunately overweight elementary student is wearing a Poppin’ Fresh t-shirt, wholly unaware of the irony of his situation. His best bud (based on the number of video game systems in the household) buys a new hit record in compact disc format..yay! This replaces his need for the album on cassette and in a charitable fashion he passes on a rectangular box of happiness to me the fat kid. As it turns out, this album was Fush Yu Mang by none other than Smash Mouth. Cue John Williams score.

For those who don’t remember, Smash Mouth is the band that had that song All-Star featured prominently in Mystery Men and Shrek. But really, that song was from their second album Astro Lounge, not nearly as good as their debut release Fush Yu Mang. Featuring a cover that has a station wagon flying through space past a purple planet with a passenger flicking us off. If you dont get it, you don’t get it.

Clearly everyone knows the superhit from the album – Walking on the Sun. Mmm pure 1997 happiness. The rest of the album is nothing like that song. Literally nothing like it. If you purchased Sugar Ray’s debut album Floored expecting a ton of hits rivaling their title track Fly, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. But regardless, this cd was like candy for an elementary student with no access to music other than what was on the radio. So sit back and enjoy the sweet sounds of my favorite tracks from this album. The Fonz, Let’s Rock, Beer Goggles, and a cover of War’s Why can’t we be friends.

The question really is…do I still listen to this music? Who knows?

Billy Zane knows

This is for people who want to watch music videos.

I give to you: 

Top 5 “no one would want this for their ‘jam’ songs”

Michael Bolton- “Can I touch you there?”

Yes this is a real song. This song sounds wrong… not just the innuendo of the title- but the very inapropriate pan flute. And may I add the fedora does nothing for Mr. Bolton, nor does splashing about in a river make anything about this song better.

Jewel- “Hands”

Okay this song would be like the weirdest song for a girl at a club to scream “this is my jam”… unless she really likes hands. And what club would play this???

Green Day – “21 Guns”

For all the reasons stressed in my previous post about Green Day. This is the whiniest song ever. And the answer to the following analogy

BLINK 182: ADAM’S SONG 

Mandy Moore- In my Pocket

This song is here for the obvious reasons. Mandy’s lame. And this song is about pennies!!! Secretly this is Isabel’s favorite song, an interesting fact.

And finally anything by Smash Mouth. If it were 9 years ago sure. But don’t try to get me into hearing ’All Star’ now that I am 23 years old, because no it doesn’t rock. And yes, all I think about when I see it is “Mystery Men.”

President Obama may become the most traveled president in history. For a variety of reasons, I do not know what the president hopes to accomplish during his world tour. For some reason, however, every time I see the president skipping down Air Force 1’s steps to set foot in another foreign country, the song “Why Can’t We Be Friend’s” pops into my mind. “War” originally recorded the song. Thirty years later Smash Mouth recorded an updated version. The following link will take you to the Smash Mouth version on YouTube. Why can’t we be friends?

Why can’t we be friends?
Why can’t we be friends?
Why can’t we be friends?
Why can’t we be friends?

I’d kinda like to be the President
so I can show you how your money’s spent

Complete Lyrics