All conveniently put in one spot:
Xgau: Everything Rocks and Nothing Ever Dies
Oh my god poor Carly Simon I think I split a seam laughing at a decade of verbal abuse.
Doing a “Recommended If You Hate” or “Michael Scott Mix” for artists that are like, but not like, Neil Young. Using Pandora and thumbs-downing anything that comes up to see what happens.
My favorite description so far, during a song that I was at first like “uh, no, this isn’t at all what I was thinking”:
hard rock roots, a subtle use of vocal harmony, a vocal-centric aesthetic, minor key tonality and an unintelligible vocal delivery.
Huh.
[video]
I want to do a series of mixes called “X for People Who Don’t Like X” where X is the variable, not the band, since obviously X the band could appear on any number of these mixes. But for now I will say that will.i.am’s dumbass new album which is awesome is the perfect antidote to Daft Punk’s dumbass new album which is terrible. There should be a track on it (will.i.am’s) called Red by Foo.
I imagine this song as, I dunno, Barbra Streisand singing over a glossed-up “El Touchy” until the ABBA carnival B-side kicks in. I don’t hate it, I guess? But I definitely don’t like it.
Huh.
Between 2006 and 2010 I basically stopped making “special mixtapes for individuals” and just channeled all my energy into making the most Embarrassingly [Insert Year] Mixes Possible.
Listening to the one from 2007 now:
Dragonette - I Get Around
Miley Cyrus - See You Again
Skye Sweetnam - Music Is My Boyfriend
Snoop Dogg - Sensual Seduction (edited)
Chromeo - Bonafied Lovin’
Britney Spears - Heaven
Amy Diamond - Stay My Baby
Roisin Murphy - Overpowered (AKA “Robota Bot - You’re Dating My Daughter”)
CSS - Music Is My Hot Hot Sex (LOL iPod commercial)
Modest Mouse - Dashboard
Gogol Bordello - Supertheory of Supereverything
Janelle Monae - Violet Stars Happy Hunting!
will.i.am - Over
Ashlee Simpson - Outta My Head (Ay Ya Ya)
Feist - I Feel It All
Bat for Lashes - What’s a Girl to Do?
Siobahn Donaghy - Medivac
Justin Timberlake - What Goes Around…Comes Back Around
Black Eyed Peas / Dvorak - My Humps / New World Symphony (Galen Brown mix)
highlight/lowlight: Highlights/Lowlights -
For a long time, I ignored my condition. I pretended things were the same, that this inconvenience was illusory, maybe temporary, and continued to think of it, for the most part, as something that affected me occasionally, but only afflicted “other people.”
As I started to find myself in that…
If you’re interested, I’ve started a diabetes and anxiety blog — more generally about how psychological and physical conditions complement one another, for better and for worse.
Advice for young researchers -
If everyone likes your work, you can be certain that you haven’t done anything important. Conflict and pain go with the territory – that of changing how a profession thinks and furthering what we know about our world. The pressures on young researchers are to conform, to accept fashionable ways of analyzing problems, and above all to please senior professors and their own peers. Unfortunately this is bad for scientific progress. The main difference between world-class researchers and sound researchers is not intellect; it is energy, single-mindedness, more energy, and the ability to withstand what will sometimes feel like never-ending disappointment, tiredness and psychological pain. Tenacity is almost everything.
I wouldn’t want to be part of any club that thought I was OTM.
(Source: abbyjean)