Dance like there's nobody watching
Sep. 16th, 2005 01:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaIt's Friday! It's about three o'clock! It's time to Boogie At Your Desk!
Friday afternoons need a little something. I think they need a Top Tune. Something to make you shuffle in your seat and, if possible, Boogie At Your Desk. I'll be endeavouring to fill this gap some Fridays this year.
I'm not claiming that any track provided to enable At-Desk Boogying is one of the world's best or most profound pieces of music. It will, however, be a tune which makes me smile, and which has at some stage made me surreptitiously Boogie At My Desk.
Desks are not compulsory, of course. Feel free to boogie through your office, in your bedroom, round your lab, across your classroom, on the train - wherever you find yourself on a Friday afternoon.
If you like the track, go out and buy the album it belongs to - I'll try and recommend a suitable CD to purchase for any BAYD track.
This link will expire at some point in the future.
Today you were invited to Boogie At Your Desk to:
Barenaked Ladies - New Kid (On The Block)
(Or if you don't want to download a file with an mp3 suffix, click here for a zipped version.)
For a long time, the only Barenaked Ladies songs I really knew were If I had $1000000 and One Week. For some reason, this led me to consider them as something of a "joke" band, along with the likes of They Might Be Giants.
Some time later, when I'd bought Gordon and nearly played it to death, I realised that that was actually one of their strengths: they appear frivolous and daft.
Now, while there's nothing wrong with a bit of frivolity and daftness (in fact, in general I encourage it) it can give music a very short shelf life. While I don't dispute that Weird Al Yankovic is a talented guy, I've very rarely found anything of his that I'd want to listen to more than a couple of times.
The Bareneked Ladies do indeed write songs with silly lyrics, which they sometimes sing in silly voices. But, hidden in among them, are bits of surprising musical interest, often so brief that it's easy to miss them. On Gordon, there's the snippet of a Housemartins song slid[**] neatly into Hello City, the pseudo military drums on The Flag, the one-bar-only tempo-change to indicate a "dance remix" in Box Set. And, of course, the references to NKOTB songs in New Kid (On The Block). In amongst the strange choices of subject and the excruciating rhymes, there's a fair old amount of cleverness going on.
If you've never heard Gordon, get out there and buy it. No, it doesn't have One Week on it, but that just means you should also buy the album Stunt at a later date. Incidentally, I got their new album Everything To Everyone earlier in the year, but haven't formed much of an opinion on it yet. If anyone has, let's hear it.
[*] And incidentally, please don't crucify me, any Weird Al fans out there. I've not heard masses of his stuff, so maybe all I said above is actually true of him too.
[**] I can't help feeling that the word I want there is slidden. You know, like hide, hid, hidden.
Friday afternoons need a little something. I think they need a Top Tune. Something to make you shuffle in your seat and, if possible, Boogie At Your Desk. I'll be endeavouring to fill this gap some Fridays this year.
I'm not claiming that any track provided to enable At-Desk Boogying is one of the world's best or most profound pieces of music. It will, however, be a tune which makes me smile, and which has at some stage made me surreptitiously Boogie At My Desk.
Desks are not compulsory, of course. Feel free to boogie through your office, in your bedroom, round your lab, across your classroom, on the train - wherever you find yourself on a Friday afternoon.
If you like the track, go out and buy the album it belongs to - I'll try and recommend a suitable CD to purchase for any BAYD track.
This link will expire at some point in the future.
Today you were invited to Boogie At Your Desk to:
Barenaked Ladies - New Kid (On The Block)
(Or if you don't want to download a file with an mp3 suffix, click here for a zipped version.)
For a long time, the only Barenaked Ladies songs I really knew were If I had $1000000 and One Week. For some reason, this led me to consider them as something of a "joke" band, along with the likes of They Might Be Giants.
Some time later, when I'd bought Gordon and nearly played it to death, I realised that that was actually one of their strengths: they appear frivolous and daft.
Now, while there's nothing wrong with a bit of frivolity and daftness (in fact, in general I encourage it) it can give music a very short shelf life. While I don't dispute that Weird Al Yankovic is a talented guy, I've very rarely found anything of his that I'd want to listen to more than a couple of times.
The Bareneked Ladies do indeed write songs with silly lyrics, which they sometimes sing in silly voices. But, hidden in among them, are bits of surprising musical interest, often so brief that it's easy to miss them. On Gordon, there's the snippet of a Housemartins song slid[**] neatly into Hello City, the pseudo military drums on The Flag, the one-bar-only tempo-change to indicate a "dance remix" in Box Set. And, of course, the references to NKOTB songs in New Kid (On The Block). In amongst the strange choices of subject and the excruciating rhymes, there's a fair old amount of cleverness going on.
If you've never heard Gordon, get out there and buy it. No, it doesn't have One Week on it, but that just means you should also buy the album Stunt at a later date. Incidentally, I got their new album Everything To Everyone earlier in the year, but haven't formed much of an opinion on it yet. If anyone has, let's hear it.
[*] And incidentally, please don't crucify me, any Weird Al fans out there. I've not heard masses of his stuff, so maybe all I said above is actually true of him too.
[**] I can't help feeling that the word I want there is slidden. You know, like hide, hid, hidden.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 03:03 pm (UTC)Though the same surely can't be said of They Might Be Giants ?
I think "Flood" is probably both in my top 10 most played CDs and the top 10 of CDs I've most frequently had played in my presence (by people I don't live with).
no subject
Date: 2005-09-19 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 04:22 pm (UTC)Off to listen and boogie now!
no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-19 07:10 pm (UTC)