Post 1: On trashy pop, and why it’s great.

   So when I first visualized this blog, one of the first things that popped into my head was talking about Arcade Fire. I love them, I love talking about them, and the second I decided to make a blog dedicated to talking about music, it immediately became evident that the first post was obviously going to be about two of my all-time favorite albums, Neon Bible and The Suburbs. So I started writing that, and found out that while I do indeed love talking about them, I am surprisingly terrible at shutting up, and it looks like that particular piece is going to end up being three or four times longer than I was originally planning. As a side effect it just might not be done tonight. Since I want to do both albums side by side, but I also want to do them justice, I decided to put that project on the shelf for a bit, and start this blog off right by talking about stupid top 40 pop songs, and how great they are.

   I have kind of a love-hate relationship with pop music; on the one hand, listening to it makes me feel like my IQ is dropping at a steady rate of four points per minute. On the other hand, I think everyone reading this, whether they admit it or not, still loves Dancing Queen at least a little bit. You can’t not love Dancing Queen at least a little bit, that’s the whole point. It’s designed from the ground up to be as or more infectious than Ebola. And so, I wanted to list off a couple of the more delightful strains I've been listening to lately. As a side note, most of the bubblegum pop I’ll be talking about is fairly old stuff, because I’m in the middle of a thirty-year binge on 80’s one hit wonders. I’d apologize, but everyone needs to listen to more Culture Club.

   Speaking of, go listen to Karma Chameleon. I've got the link right here; you have no reason not to click. Unless you have a fear of Boy George and/or metrosexuality in 1870’s riverboat reenactments, in which case maybe you want to avoid watching the video (I will say that there’s nothing wrong with having a healthy dose of caution when it comes to looking directly at Boy George. I suspect that he strikes a slightly uncomfortable note in the psyche of all living people).  BE THAT AS IT MAY, Karma Chameleon is one of my favorite pieces of 80’s memorabilia. I have a soft spot for harmonicas that sneak their way into genres other than country, bluegrass and folk, and Karma Chameleon has one of the more balling hooks in that very narrow category.

   You know what else has a great harmonica line? Hook by Blues Traveler. I guess technically it falls more into alt-folk than straight pop, but it’s simultaneously on of my favorite examples and indictments of pop lyricism, and it also references Anne Boleyn. You cannot ask for more. Also, on the subject of delightful pop culture indictments check out Rococo by Arcade Fire. I promised myself I wouldn't be listing any of their songs until my mega-article, but I’m also a pathological liar, and it’s great.

   Moving right along, I would like to remind everyone that Lady Gaga still exists, and whether or not you like her music, Poker Face and Telephone are pretty much perfect pop songs. I've got nothing else to add, really. Some people like her, some people hate her… Telephone is catchy.

   In case it wasn't obvious, I’m still trying to figure out a viable format for this blog, and I've still got a couple more songs I wanted to talk about, so for now I’m just going to shove them down here and talk a little bit about why they’re great. I'm going to experiment with different formats over the next few articles until I find something that I think works well, but in the meantime listen to these other songs, 

Just can’t Get Enough-Depeche Mode

   Man, this might just be my favorite piano riff of all time. I have an unhealthy love for early electronic, and Depeche Mode are the godfathers of basically everything that’s been played on a moog synthesizer. Fun bonus: a while ago, I found a mashup of Just can’t get enough and Paparazzi. It’s right here. Haters to the left.

Super Trouper-Abba

   I will never pretend to understand why Swedish people have such a mastery over the art of making fluffy pop songs, but they do. It’s actually kind of weird realizing how well Abba’s stuff has aged; for being so deeply and distinctly rooted in 70’s and disco, it still has a very current sound. However, the same cannot be said of their videos. In all seriousness, they're pretty dang terrible. Naturally, I've linked the video versions in case anyone reading this wants to punish themselves.

Last of all, this is a song that as friend sent me, and I have no idea when, if ever, I'll be writing a post that it fits in with, but I love it and want to share it with the world. It's a reggae cover of Country Roads, and if listening to it doesn't fill a void in your heart that you never realized existed, then I've got bad news for you: you just failed the Turing test, and can be definitively considered non-human. On the plus side, isn't it amazing how far technology has come?

Post 0: Welcome One and All (Except for that One Guy)!

   Hi there! Welcome to Cool Older Cousin, a new blog I’m creating to talk about music, partly because I like music, but mostly because I like talking… a lot. This isn't exactly going to be a music review blog; it’s mostly going to be me talking about different music that I like. So unless I specifically say otherwise, any songs that I mention on here are songs that I like and listen to, and therefore, by extension, you should too.

   When I was growing up, I listened to a lot of music, but it was mostly stuff on the radio. I have nothing in particular against radio, and I still like a lot of the stuff that I heard back then, but a diet made of classic rock and top nineties love ballads (I will never forgive Celine Dion for My Heart Will go on) does not make for a solid musical education. The music that I really ended up caring about came from older siblings and cousins, who would arrive at home with beaten up mix tapes that they had created by holding a personal recorder up to a radio, thereby creating some of the most lo-fi recordings I have ever heard, bar none. They were pretty much the coolest things I could even imagine when I was seven. I have vivid memories of hearing snatches of Monty Python, Metallica, Abba, and whatever else my elders were fancying that week, interspersed with pops and crackles (and occasional muffled shouts when people forgot to turn off the recorder once the song ended).

   As I grew up, the mix tapes became more polished and eclectic, but it was always exciting to find new music every time someone came to visit. A couple of years after that I discovered the internet and stopped communicating with people in the real world, but I still love finding out what the people whose musicals tastes I’ve pilfered over the years are listening to currently, and I guess the point of this blog is to pass that feeling along to other people: The chance to find strange, cool music that you haven’t heard or that you forgot about, all from the soothing location of your own monitor.

   So yeah, welcome to my music-talking-about blog! I’m planning on posting something every Friday night starting on March first, so anyone reading this can expect to be regularly edified to my musings. As a side note, anyone who read my last blog might be wondering if I’m going to be saying funny things here. At this point, I don’t know! I started I’m not Longwinded mostly because I wanted to write stupid and funny things where people could read them, and I think I succeeded fairly well at it (especially in the former area), but I made Cool Older Cousin mostly because I like music, and I wanted to create a place where I could about it a bunch at a relatively captive audience.  I’d like to think that some of the posts will be funny, but mostly they will be long navel gazing diatribes about just what a great song Hey Ya is (it’s so great, by the way. If you think otherwise, you are simply and incontrovertibly wrong). Are you excited? I AM EXCITED.

  LET'S BE EXCITED TOGETHER, FRIEND.