Music Monday - Foo Fighters

So, it's post-election, and all is well. So some say, anyway. I'm grateful to my wife for posting something she read about how we need to step up and support our president. Whether a supporter of Obama or not, he's our president; that's who we have chosen. Let's all get behind him and give him the support President Bush didn't receive, both from his opposing party and his own, particularly during his second term. I am a supporter of President Bush. Does he speak eloquently, as some presidents have? Not always. Does he have a strong spirit in the face of adversity? Absolutely.

Likewise, I fully support Barack Obama. I don't get as involved as I probably should politically, so I don't know Obama's background, aside from what the jaded media has told me. The media wants me to focus on history being made. Instead, I plan to focus on Barack being our 44th president, deserving of the same respect and admiration that all our presidents deserve. I look to the future with hope for a stronger, smarter, greater America.

So why the political ramble when my post is a musical commentary? Well, I'm quite curious to see what messages are going to come through popular music over the next four to eight years. There seems to be a whole lot of artists who do an awful lot of criticizing, but few providing suggestions. It comes back to the old saying, "Don't judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes." Can any of us honestly say we understand what the president goes through? Only 43 people in history can relate. So let's see where the music of the next decade will take us. I hope it can lift us, not tear down. Vocalize your feelings. That's what makes this country great. But do it respectfully.

Alright, enough. I really want to post about music here, since it is Music Monday. Last time around I spoke of Paul Gilbert. This time it's another of my top three favorites, the Foo Fighters. There are some bands that no matter which direction they go musically, I'm going with them. The Foo Fighters are just such a band for me. They are both feet on the line straight up the middle of what I like. From their hard driving rock anthems to their slow and mellow ballads, it just strikes the right chord with me. I really like stark dynamic shifts, when done properly, and these guys really hit this nail on the head.

Take for example their latest release, "Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace". The second track, Let It Die, is a great number that starts with a nice quiet guitar. This builds through the verse and fills out to the bridge, picking up instruments and momentum as it goes. But when the first chorus hits, it's like a shot in the arm. Full on wall of sound; my poor stereo isn't made to handle it. I have to balance everything to suck as much life from my tape-adapter-to-iPod setup as I can, to crank it as loud as possible, without distorting the sound too much. Fantastic.

I think one of the things I love so much about the Foo Fighters is their ability to write richly textured rock with strong melodies and harmonies, thought-provoking lyrics, a dose of class, with a wicked punch. As my "Songs I Wish I Had Written" indicates, Everlong is probably my all time favorite song. Hard to tie it down to a single top song, but boy is that song an emotional one for me. It's an adrenaline rush with a vision. That song more than any other makes me want to perform on stage (a big one), something I'll likely never do, but sure wish I could. No matter how many times I've listened to that song, it never gets old. Some songs are like that.

Other noteworthy works from the Foo Fighters: "One By One", which I believe to be their heaviest album to date; "Skin and Bones", in either DVD or CD form, showcases the Foo Fighters live with several other band members, playing a much more orchestrated sounding set; "In Your Honor", a double-disc offering which has a disc of heavy tunes and a disc of mellow tunes (including a duet with Norah Jones called Virginia Moon); any B-Sides you can find, because they seem to do great covers pretty much every time out.

If you like well-crafted, powerful, melodic hard rock, the Foo Fighters have something for you. But they are mature enough to dish out some mellow tunes to keep it interesting. If you haven't given them a fair chance, it's time you do. My recommendations for first time listeners, start with "The Colour and the Shape". It's dated based on it's release date, but I believe it to be the most listenable Foos album particularly for new listeners. Next, I'd probably go to their latest, "Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace", which I'd say is the most well rounded musically of all their albums. From there, if you like what you've heard, pick and choose. "There Is Nothing Left to Lose", their third showcases the band as a three-piece, before they hooked up with Chris Shifflet (guitar) and has moments raw and unbridled such as the opening cut, Stacked Actors, but moves to the commercialism of Learn to Fly, one of their most well-known songs.

Learn to Fly brings up another point I haven't made. As with Paul Gilbert, the Foo Fighters are not afraid to let humor into their music. However, it's not usually as blatant as it is with Gilbert. Lyrically, there's some humor in some of their songs, but most of the time it comes out in their attitudes. Their videos often show this, and Learn to Fly is a great example (it features Dave Grohl in at least five roles, I'm trying to think if there are more, and Taylor Hawkins and Nate Mendel in at least a three roles each also). If you're a fan of Led Zeppelin, or have ever even heard Stairway to Heaven, search for Foo Fighters Stairway to Heaven on YouTube. They performed as a two-piece (yes, just two, Dave and Taylor) and it's one of the funniest, yet impressive, performances I've seen in a long time.

Well, it's getting late, my wife is telling me I need to hang it up for tonight. Hope this has been useful for someone.

I've Been Tagged

So my wife tagged me, it's taken a bit to post this because it's about six quirks. Well, I consider myself pretty quirky, but for some reason, I'm having trouble figuring out which six things are quirks, instead of which things just make me weird :)

1. I always lock the doors to my car. You might say that's not so weird. Well, it is when it's summer and all your windows are down, but you lock the doors, and ask others to do so as well. It's a habit I'm glad I'm in, though, even if it comes across as odd.
2. I'm a Mac user. In most things in my life, I'm all about low cost mainstream. But for some reason, the feel of a single button on my mouse (yes, I'm an old school Mac user), Quartz on my screen, and BSD under the hood make it worth the "price" of admission. I'm a Windows user too, but only because most of corporate America is blind and seems to think less money up front is better than less money over time. I'm still computing on my 9-year-old G4 AGP ("Sawtooth") tower at home (though I did just upgrade the hard drive and RAM a month ago), and my PowerBook is now four-and-a-half years old.
3. I like nearly all my food au naturel. I don't do salad dressing, butter hardly anything, like my veggies steamed or raw, etc. It's a healthier lifestyle, though my caloric intake negates most, if not all that. Still working on controlling the intake.
4. I'm extremely particular when it comes to color schemes, specifically with websites. I'll see two completely unrelated things together, and think how I like those colors together and want to find a use for that color scheme on a website. It could be a magazine page laying on some packaging on my desk, or a box next to a shirt. Sometimes it just starts with one really cool color, and I have to find the "match" for it. Somehow this obsession doesn't translate to my fashion sense, however.
5. Odd numbers. No evens for me. If I have a choice between two numbers and one's odd, one's even, the odd will win. This one is interesting to me, because it's changed over the course of my life. I used to be nothing but evens, now I'm all about the odds.
6. My music collection. Okay, I have a very large music collection (CDs particularly) and I'm very specific when it comes to my collection. Everything is alphabetized by artist, in the case of artist names, it's last name then first. Within the artist, albums are organized by release date, not title. As a result, my iTunes library is also extremely organized, and EVERYTHING has the proper tags. It drives me crazy to see some people's collection of MP3s where the only way to tell what the song is is by looking at the name of the file. I'm also quite opinionated when it comes to music, as any of my family and friends (or at least they used to be until I hounded them about some musical topic incessantly) will tell you. The positive aspect of that, though, is that I'm quite well-rounded in my musical taste, and know a fair amount of history about many of the artists I follow.

So I started writing this post a long time ago, not sure why I never bothered to finish it, except because I had a hard time coming up with six quirks. I asked people around me and one told me that being a Mac user isn't quirky. However, since it's taken me so long to write this post and I had a tough enough time coming up with these six things, I'm going to leave it alone, and move on with my bloggable life.