More locals making good!

I open up my latest issue of Paste Magazine (of which you can probably tell I'm a fan of) and who is in there, big as a minute, but Orlando's own Band Marino. Holy crud!!

Paste Magazine Digital Version, July 2008

If you go to the digital version of the magazine (which is a pretty cool feature they have!), turn to page 20 to see what I'm talking about. Of course, it's a cutesy little feature about how an employee of the magazine also has the surname of Marino, and a very short interview with frontman Nathan Bond. Which I suppose is somewhat appropriate because Bond is not very tall, either. Heh, heh.

Anyway. The third layer of irony is added, when the writer asks Bond about the Dolphins. I thought, oh, the interviewer knows the band is from Florida and thus asks about them Dolphins. I didn't realize the meta-name-incidence until I visualized my school's media specialist, whose last name is also Marino, wearing her Marino Dophins jersey. She does this because a) people in South Florida, where I am, love the Dolphins. And b) because her name is also Marino.

So is the Paste writer's, and so is the band. From Orlando. Who play in West Palm fairly regularly and who the Orlando hometown crowds go crazy nuts for. A friend of mine calls them "Brand Marino" because they've become such a machine.

Well, they've made it into Paste, so they are off for great things. Hooray for homegrown Florida music!

www.myspace.com/bandmarino

Current Top Ten Most Played Songs on iTunes

1. "Days" The Kinks (42 plays since October)
2. "New Amsterdam" Elvis Costello (37 plays since October - currently playing on repeat again!)
3. "No Children" The Mountains Goats (36 plays - let's assume that they're all since October)
4. "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" The Smiths (31 plays)
5. "You Glued My Broken Heart" Mumpsy (26 plays - most recently added)
6. "Yeah! Oh Yeah!" Magnetic Fields (24 plays)
7. "High" The Cure (23 plays)
8. "If Looks Could Kill" Camera Obscura (21 plays)
9. "Song for Myla Goldberg" The Decemberists (21 plays)
10. "You've Got the Body and I've Got the Brains" lo-fi is sci-fi (21 plays)

You all need to hear more work of the "brains" behind lo-fi is sci-fi, who now only goes by his legal name, my good friend Chris Zabriskie.

myspace.com/chriszabriskie

Myspace is not the greatest invention in the world, nor do I use it, but it makes it a LOT easier for all musicians (local, legendary, classical, non-legitimate, etc.) to upload things and post a lot of music. And when you're a musician, that is how you get heard.

This list of the top ten is still obviously influenced by relatively recent, less happy times in my life, but I think it's pretty representative. Is it wrong that I will put certain songs on repeat just to get them on this list?

Sometimes I think that my taste in music is fairly insular, focusing on mainly 80s songwriters and current "indie rock" bands, but I believe I have a very broad spectrum of musical tastes. There are just certain things that I enjoy repeatedly. My overall favorite band is Sonic Youth, but I have only listened to that 20 minute version of "The Diamond Sea" once. I think it to be an absolutely stunning work, but it's one of those things better enjoyed sparsely - it's a special occasion sort of thing. I also received a vinyl copy of my love Erik Satie's Vexations on vinyl, ordered from somewhere in Europe, for my birthday last year. I have not yet listened to it. Granted, repetition is the essence of the piece, but it has just not been the right time to listen to it as of yet.

"New Amsterdam" by Elvis Costello (currently at no. 2 on the list), however? I can listen to it on repeat for hours. So much so that in the course of writing this blog entry, I think Mr. Costello has overtaken the Kinks for my most played song on iTunes.

About having limited tastes in music, as well? The fellow who most recently edited the New Grove Dictionary of Popular Music (which I look forward to one day pouring over for hours and hours) is a very interesting quandary. My friend Kate, a former musicology grad student, and I looked up this editor fellow (whose name I can't remember now) to find out his academic background. There was no Wikipedia article on him oddly enough, and all we could find on Google was an article he had written for either Spin or Blender Magazine about the 100 Best Albums of All Time. And we couldn't believe it. At the top of the list were three Beatles records, but shortly following that was The Smiths, which I don't take great issue with, but following that, we had several Oasis albums on there. Yes, the BritPops of the 90s were heavily represented on the list - nearly every Oasis album, Blur, Pulp - and it was obvious that this list had no objectivity to it at all. It was just stuff he loved, with no real rhyme or reason. Like most "best of" music lists written by caucasian fans of mostly rock and pop music, there was a strategic smattering of hip-hop and jazz, but it was about as far from a comprehensive and meritorious list as I've ever seen. The folks at Rolling Stone, the masters of awful and contrived "Best Of" lists, tried harder in many of their past efforts. I would say there is much more merit to the list Paste Magazine came up with a few years ago of the Top 100 Living Songwriters, and yet this guy with his adoration of English late 20th century songwriters gets to edit the Grove Dictionary of Popular Music.

Seriously. Enough of this current rant. I'm listening the crud out of the songs listed above.

And currently? Charles Mingus, "Bounce." For my smattering of jazz for the evening.

When Worlds Collide

The most fun is when your old life and your new life collide. Last night I got to introduce one of my favorite bands from my much-beloved hometown of Orlando to my new friends in South Florida.

Everyone, and I do mean everyone, should check out the band Mumpsy. Comprised of very talented Orlando musicians, with amazing songwriter/frontman Jeff Ilgenfritz at the center. Mumpsy used to be the name that Jeff would use as a solo acoustic performer, just him, a guitar, and his harmonicas. He is an incredible songwriter, whose songs fit just about seamlessly into the canon of undeniably catchy and beautifully profound sixties pop of the Beatles or the Kinks.

In the past couple of years, Mumpsy has grown into a full-fledged band, and only gotten better with time. Many of my good friends in Orlando have helped Jeff and company work on these projects, and Mumpsy is taking off for the strastosphere with their new album Cat & Canary. This year, they have been recognized by CMJ and will appear on a future CMJ compliation. Their new album will have a national release this summer and they will be touring throughout the country in the latter half of the year.

The best part? Jeff is one of the nicest guys you could ever hope to meet. I got to play tambourine for the last song they played at Respectable Street in downtown West Palm Beach last night, and he met a few of my new friends, or Mumpsy converts, as I like to call them.

It is a wonderful thing to see such talented and hard-working local boys do so darn well! What are you waiting for?! Click these links!

www.myspace.com/mumpsy

www.post-records.com

Proof that Orlando has more to offer the wide world of music than just the Backstreet Boys and Matchbox 20!