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Thursday, August 5

"The Figurehead" - The Cure
by
Max
on Thu 05 Aug 2010 12:27 PM PDT
 There's talk in Songfightland about possibly doing a Cure cover project. You know I'd be all over that if it happened. One difficult aspect of such an endeavor would be deciding what song to do. This is one of the frontrunners so far. I reckon most people would want to record some Happy Pop-Sensible Cure, like "Friday I'm In Love" and what not. I think Dreary Wrist-Slashing Cure should be represented as well. Hear "The Figurehead" on YouTube.Live performance
Friday, April 2

"how do i become clsoe to others?" - Cow Exchange
by
Max
on Fri 02 Apr 2010 11:43 AM PDT
 I've talked about the Cow Exchange (band moniker of Songfight member Plat) before. I still wish I had a better picture of him, although the one above has its own merits... In June of '06, Songfight had an "album-a-week" project, which is exactly what it sounds like. You make an album in a week's time. Simple. For this endeavor, Plat had a rather novel and clever concept - sign on to Yahoo Answers as "The Singing Answerman", and answer people's questions with new and original songs. He started churning out gems like "5 pounds in 3 days?", "What is phone sex?" and "At work, when its hot, my
sweat drips on hamburgers. Should I serve them anyway and not waste
food?", and eventually wound up with an amazing collection of tunes called ...Get a Stupid Answer. Seriously. With titles like those, Plat created one of the most brilliant and wholly superb projects Songfight has ever produced. So, I will feature one of those songs today, called "how do i become clsoe to others?" Yes, that's how the question was submitted, and Plat took this seemingly harmless typo and really ran with it, pronouncing it as "cull-soey" repeatedly. "Practice safe clsoeness!!" Genius. As a side note, earlier today I played a CD for the first time on my newly upgraded car audio deck, and it happened to be a physical copy of ...Get a Stupid Answer that I got from Plat at a Songfight show. I think that was as good a choice as any. Hear/download "how do i become clsoe to others?" from Plat's website.Hear the rest of ...Get a Stupid Answer.
Thursday, February 25

"Little Guns" - Oingo Boingo
by
Max
on Thu 25 Feb 2010 12:17 PM PST
 I've talked about this terrific Boingo tune before. I once performed it live with the Songfight band Octothorpe, but at the time the studio version didn't seem to exist anywhere. Since then, someone on U2be has created a video featuring little stop-motion animated plastic army men. Score! Now I can post it. And you can go hear it. Watch the aforementioned YouTube fanvid for "Little Guns."
Thursday, February 4

"Raging in the Plague Age" - Les Savy Fav/Sven Mullet
by
Max
on Thu 04 Feb 2010 12:17 PM PST
 Before this year's GoM, I had never heard of Les Savy Fav. Holy cow, this song rocks. As does the cover version done by Songfight's own Sven Mullet. Don't believe me? Click these links and be rocked. Hear "Raging in the Plague Age" on YouTube.Hear Sven Mullet's cover.
Wednesday, February 3

"Headache" - Frank Black/Billy's Little Trip
by
Max
on Wed 03 Feb 2010 12:36 PM PST
 It's Gift of Music time once again in Songfightland. Well, at least it was - I was out of the country when it was first revealed. It's kinda dying down now, but I'd be remiss if I failed to give it a nice fat plug here. You may remember when I featured a whole week of songs from last year's GoM. This year it will be more of a mini-theme, so today I am putting up this Frank Black song along with a new version done by Billy's Little Trip. I've talked about that guy in the past, so posting his entry shouldn't be a surprise. For the record, I covered the Dave Brubeck piece "Take Five" for this project, which I've discussed before. You can hear my version here. Oh, I also started to rework my sorted song logs that Internet Explorer recently fubared. They're at least up-to-date and readable, although a lot of the formatting has been removed, so they'll be rather plain looking for now. But my God, I didn't quite realize just how much IE had butchered them. For some ungodly reason it threw in a bunch of paragraph tags, and that made adding a new entry very difficult. I eventually decided to just take all of the formatting tags out, and I'll put the applicable ones back in at some point. Moral of the story: Don't use IE. Ever. Especially if you wanna do something bold and daring, like, you know, some random blog no one reads... Watch the video for "Headache" on YouTube.Hear BLT's cover.
Thursday, December 10

"Late for Babies" - Paco del Stinko
by
Max
on Thu 10 Dec 2009 11:58 AM PST
 Showing some Songfighter love today. I was going through some of the Paco del Stinko el Catalogo in the car this morning and thought I'd put one up. I've talked about him before, so my fondness for his recorded output is not surprising. This guy just makes some of the most, well, fun music on Songfight right now. In an age where it seems like every Intarweb musician is trying to be the next indie darling or the next artsy-fartsy coffee house folk hero or the next punk icon or the next metal god or the next whatever, I find Paco's irreverence and total absence of pretense refreshing. He's the next "guy who makes fun music that both defies any contemporary convention and makes for some good mindless headbobbing." Plus, his voice reminds me of Joe from the Dead Milkmen. Channeling DM is always a good thing, deliberately or otherwise. Visit the "Late for Babies" Songfight page. Ignore those voting results. None of those other schmucks who scored higher than Paco even post on Songfight anymore. Paco del Stinko website
Wednesday, September 30

"Where the Tarantula Lives" - Dead Milkmen
by
Max
on Wed 30 Sep 2009 12:10 PM PDT
 Earlier today on the Songfight forums, someone posted an original lyrical snippet containing a B.F. Skinner rhyme. I immediately thought of this Dead Milkmen song, which also has a rhyme involving B.F. Skinner. Of course, often when I put up a Dead Milkmen tune I will refer back to this post, which gives my general band spiel. That song, like this one, comes from Eat Your Paisley. Eating paisley? Please explain that concept to me. I mean, sure it involves some wordplay having to do with parsley, other than that, there must be some high concept here that's going over my feeble head. I guess I need an art student to clarify this. Wait, no, scratch that idea. Art students lose me the exact instant the word "dadaist" comes out of their mouths. Eh, forget it. It's just a cool Dead Milkmen song. This is a song blog after all. There's no cosmic wisdom here. Hear "Where the Tarantula Lives" on GrooveShark.
Sunday, August 23

"Fight the Sea" - Caravan Ray
by
Max
on Sun 23 Aug 2009 01:52 PM PDT
 And the iPod week ends with another Songfight entry. Remember the Total Request Coverfight? This was Caravan Ray's entry. The song was originally done by Heuristics Inc., who appears to have abandoned his song blog completely. That's my bass guitar sticking out in that picture. Just so you know. And that's Pat to the left. We played in his impromptu house band during a Santa Cruz show in 2006. He came all the way from Australia to do that show. He's insane like that. Hear/download "Fight the Sea."This is part of a week-long series on songs chosen at random by my iPod.
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Introduction
Some of my online cohorts at the Songfight community decided to create blogs to highlight songs they like. I am now doing it as well, because I am a total lemming.
Songfight is a weekly songwriting competition based on titles provided by the site's administrators. I post there under the handle "Albatross." Go check it out. It's a gas.
My Own Noise
Can't sing my way out of a wet paper bag, but I play a few instruments with varying degrees of proficiency. As such, sometimes I record my own music. You can hear it here.
Latest song: "Take Five" (Dave Brubeck Quartet cover)
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