New music

Bought a couple of new CDs over the weekend: Anthology by Alien Ant Farm, and The Hour of Bewilderbeast by Badly Drawn Boy. (Neither of these was on my wishlist. I was very tempted to go for Virgin’s 5 CDs for £50 instead of their 2 for £22 price to catch some of the ones that are on my wish list, but I tried to be moderate.)

Bewilderbeast is brilliant album, just bursting with memorable tracks and beautiful melodies. Anthology wil probably take more time to work its charms on me. I love the two singles AAF have had out so far, Smooth Criminal and Movies, bot of which feature some amazing drumming by Mike Cosgrove, but the rest of the CD hasn’t jumped up and grabbed me by the throat just yet.

And then on Monday I also picked up Alanis Morissette’s new album, Under Rug Swept. The single Hands Clean is fantastic. It is one of the best tracks on the album, but there is plenty of other excellent material there. There are only two tracks that seem duff right now: That Particular Time and Utopia, both of which are slow numbers. The up-tempo tracks are all either immediately memorable, or are “growers”. Pretty good stuff!

Found it!

Found it!

For months now, Scott and I have been trying to figure out a song. It features on the trailer for the film Pay it Forward. We both heard it on that trailer, and thought: I know that song, and I like it. But who sings it, and what’s it called?

So started the search. We downloaded the movie trailer off the internet, and tried to identify the small snippet of lyrics that are sung. We got as far as “I feel like a…”, but the word after that was unrecognizable.

We searched the internet for these lyrics. We hunted movie web sites for any reference to the music used in the trailer, because it didn’t appear to be on the movie soundtrack. All we found were a couple of people who also seemed to be trying to track the song down. A few helpful people pointed out that the other song on the trailer was Wonderful by Everclear, but that wasn’t really of any use to us.

Then the song showed up as a snippet of background music in the MTV show Cribs (the episode featuring Robbie Williams. Scott emailed MTV, but they wrote back saying that they can’t answer specific questions regarding shows. Scott also wrote off to a DJ at Forth One, but they haven’t replied at all yet.

But when Scott & Ange were in Belfast the other week, they went to see the film Heartbreakers. And there was the song again, this time in yet another trailer, being shown before the film.

They came round this evening, partly so that we could watch the film Pay It Forward to see if the song was featured in the film, but hadn’t been included on the soundtrack. If it had been in the film anywhere, it would have shown up in the end credits. It wasn’t, and it didn’t.

However, we tried to track down the trailer Scott & Ange had seen in Belfast. Ange didn’t remember the name of the film , but she thought it had the word “beautiful” in it. A quick check on IMDB for a list of upcoming releases didn’t give us anything. A few more searches on Google, gave us the answer, though: Crazy/Beautiful, starring Kirsten Dunst.

We downloaded the trailer, and there it was! Our song, featured as the first chunk of music.

A short hop onto Amazon.com to see if they had the soundtrack. They did, but we didn’t recognize any of the names on the track listing. But as we read through the list of comments on the soundtrack, the following quote jumped out at us:

“The long-form movie trailer used three songs, beginning with Filter’s “Take a Picture” (which can be found on their album Title of Record) and then The Crystal Method’s “Keep Hope Alive” (available, among other places, on their debut album Vegas).”

Bingo!

The song is Take A Picture by Filter.

Scott and Ange had to leave, because it was getting late, but I’ve just downloaded it via Morpheus, and I’m listening to it right now. I like it. I suspect Scott will be buying the album tomorrow just to get hold of this one track.

The film (Pay it Forward), was okay until about the last ten minutes. That ending is just wrong. The film doesn’t lead up to it. It’s going off in a completely separate direction, sparking off threads that never get resolved, and then suddenly it runs into this dead end. Didn’t like that.

Yesterday evening’s Barenaked Ladies concert

Yesterday evening’s Barenaked Ladies concert was amazing

Support act: The Lilac Time (Stephen (formerly “TinTin”) Duffy). He started off playing a slow song on his own, with just an acoustic guitar. For the next one, Steve from the BNL joined him on backing vocals, then a few songs later, Jim, Kevin, and Tyler came on stage, too. Ed was the last to fall in, and they kicked the whole thing up a gear with an up-tempo version of Duffy’s 1985 hit “Kiss Me.” There was a break of about 25 minutes before the BNL came back on, all dressed in simple patterned shirts and black trousers.

Main Set:

  • Too Little Too late5
  • Alcohol4
  • Life, In a Nutshell2
  • Falling For The First Time5
  • In The Car4
  • Pinch Me5
  • The Old Apartment3
  • It’s All Been Done4
  • Light Up My Room4
  • Humour Of The Situation5
  • Tonight Is The Night I Fell Asleep At The Wheel5
  • Jane2
  • Off The Hook5
  • Medley: All the BNL songs ever! (Well, not really…only about fifteen of them, each one lasting only a few bars)
  • One Week4
  • Never Do Anything5
  • If I had $1,000,0001
  • Medley: Some recent hits by other artists in the BNL style, including “The Real Slim Shady”, “Clint Eastwood”, “I’m Like A Bird” (again, just a few bars of each)

Encore 1:

  • Shoe Box3
  • Brian Wilson1

Encore 2:

  • Call And Answer (with Stephen Duffy on backing vocals/guitar)4

Plus, of course, lots of little snippets of (semi-)improvised lunacy, such as “Steve’s Cock/It’s A Family Show (We’re Just A Messed Up Family)”, the Darth Vader version of Britney Spears‘ “Oops!…I Did It Again“, “34? 36? Do my Thighs Look Big In This?” and the “Canadian Blues”

The guys had an absolute blast on stage. You could see they were genuinely enjoying themselves. This is the first time I’ve seen them live, but it won’t be the last!



1: Gordon
2: Maybe You Should Drive
3: Born On A Pirate Ship
4: Stunt
5: Maroon