Well sheeit, if I knew that so many people were coming over to see me and peep the Vampire Weekend demos, I would’ve cleaned up a little more around here. Ya know, some fancy animated GIFs, better karaoke performances, cOoL vIdEoS, vacuumed a little, etc.
A couple of thoughts on the prank/social experiment yesterday:
1) I knew Vampire Weekend was popular, but holy shit, I had several thousand visitors within a couple of hours. I have ambivalent feelings about this. On the one hand, the exposure of The Decibel Tolls to a new, wide audience was great. On the other, it’s disheartening that a lot of better bands and artists don’t receive those nice perks of the massive hype machine that the Vamps were able to produce. Sad on the inside. But whatever, that’s how the world works, right? I forget who said it, but I always enjoyed the quote “morality is the way the world should be and economics is the way the world actually is.”
2) The Vamp crowd is decidedly a younger crowd, yet seems more mature than many of the people I encounter through other stunts this blog has produced. The responses I received yesterday all showcased people with a pretty good sense of humor. Whereas the fake Billy Corgan Twitter yields a lot of flame mail from the Pumpkinheads, an older crowd, I received a lot of good responses in the comments and my inbox that made me say “touché.” Thanks for being good sports, ya’ll.
Now, some people were curious about what exactly the tracks really were. Here’s the revelation:
“Tube Socks and Trust Funds” – Oh… oh, you thought it was the Vamps at first, but then realized… fuck, it’s “Gumboots” from Paul Simon’s Graceland. FML.
“Cape Cod Shuffle” – This is Captain & Tenille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together” (a staple of the Keep Louisville Smooth DJ set). This was included because, I think, if Vampire Weekend increased their coolness by 400-500%, they would probably come pretty close to the good Captain and his shipmate Toni Tenille.
“Just a J Crew Holiday” – This is my friend Mark Evans with an old project of his called Lesbian Peanut Butter (I caught that reference, Mark). They wrote original music as well, but this track is their riverboat folk cover of KoRn’s “Blind.” When discussing KoRn, do you have to type in toggle case? Is that AP style? Anyway, thanks again, Mark. That song rules!
“Hello to You, Africa!!” – Nope, not Merzbow. It’s Kites, from his 2006 album Peace Trials, which is probably my favorite power electronics noise album. The composition of this song represents my feelings that the Vamps probably don’t really care that much about Africa. Since there was some interest in this record, I’ve included additional MP3s below for your consideration. If you dig it, you can grip that album over at Load.
“Country Club Blues” – this is ol’ Kenny Bloggins doing a one-take a capella karaoke of Collective Soul’s 1994 smash hit “Shine,” with a little spread chorus and reverb added for effect.
MP3 :::
Kites – Dirt
Kites – Flag Torn Apart
