In Search of N.E.R.D

So if you've listened to hip-hop in the last 10 years at all, you know who Pharrell Williams is. He's one half of The Neptunes and one third of N.E.R.D. He, by himself and along with The Neptunes and N.E.R.D has created some of the best rock/electro/indie rock music you've never heard. Fact: Pharrell Williams is one of the most successful hip-hop/pop producers of our time. Fact: Pharrell Williams has yet to have a successful solo release, however The Neptunes did make buzz with 2003's The Neptunes Presents...The Clones, and all three N.E.R.D records have been certified gold. Still N.E.R.D manages to remain under the radar.

The Neptunes is a production/writing team. N.E.R.D is a band. N.E.R.D is Pharrell Williams, Chad Hugo (also the other half of The Neptunes), and Shay Hayley.

The record I'm recommending to you today is the first release from N.E.R.D, In Search Of.... It's a favorite of mine. I put this record on repeat every few months, as I have since 2001 when it came out. The instrumentation is brilliant. The lyrics range from funny, sad, painful, inappropriate to just down right ridiculous. It's one of those special, rare records you can listen to all the way through. It's mood altering due to the lyrical range but in a good way.

Some stand-outs are "Tape You" (which is every girls nightmare), Am I High (which is about Pharrell having an affair with a woman who was with another woman), and my absolute favorites "Truth or Dare" and "Bobby James".

Nerd - Rockstar
by mutsu_onikage

Coming Soon To An Ipod Near You!!!

So everyone's favorite people Tegan & Sara are gearing up for an October release of their, yet to be titled (well to us), highly anticipated 6th studio record. Fans are resting easy after Sara Quin reassured fans that it's going to be the type of record that "Tegan & Sara fans would like" recently at a Seattle show. Of course because I'm complicated like this, I sort of took this as a warning. What did that statement mean? Does that mean that no risks were taken? That this will sound like So Jealous? I mean I have no big complaints either way....I just don't like when artists get so comfortable with what they've done they're are no longer motivated to try something new.

I quickly got over my fears when I thought about "Floorplan" and "Are You Ten Years Ago?" from The Con. I thought about how different those songs were from "We Didn't Do It", Walking With A Ghost" and "You Wouldn't Like Me" from So Jealous. Furthermore how both records were drastically different from the first three!

So I came to the conclusion that, as usual, Sara Quin was just fucking with us!

Other favorites of mine in the studio are AFI and Uh Huh Her, looking foward to new material from them. Rachael Cantu, somehow still unsigned(after having her music played in Private Practice and opening for B.B King & Pat Benatar!) , is releasing a new record soon, date yet to be announced.

Intercooler

So how does my computer/ipod/hard drives get full? Well it's my pattern. Discover a band, research the band, check out each member's other or previous bands. Chances are if you like what someone is doing now, you'll like what they were doing then. This has been the outcome for me anyway. And An Horse is no exception. Kate and Damon both were in successful bands before forming An Horse. Kate's band was called Iron On, more on them when I find out more. Damon's was called Intercooler (clever). I immediately fell in love with these guys. So much so that I'm kinda sad they're not together, in spite of my love for An Horse.

I strongly suggest you check out Intercooler's discography, I did! And they were pretty damn good! Here's some stuff to get you started:

My personal favorite!:

Internet Compensation

I'm not going to go on a long rant about lesbians/bisexuals not being represented in the media, mainly because I strongly feel Sarah Warn has taken care of that. But I do feel like lesbians are the dirty little secret of the media. Only being able to show ourselves through the world of "www dot". Like we're well hidden. We're not on Gossip Girl, 90210, or Private Practice, o no! We're not obvious, we're tucked away. We have to be scoped out manually through laptops, desktops and iphones. We have to be searched. We have to be downloaded. We have to be written in shows created by us and for us. We don't stream in the mainstream, we stream over the web in streaming video.

It's a small world but at least it's ours. We've claimed it, and Afterellen is our kingdom, with more lesbian media in one place than probably any other website has "straight" media. I mean props to AE right, have you checked the "video" section? But it's sad because straight people aren't going to look for us there or on any other website, which is why we're not seen in the media cause everything about us apparently remains foreign to them.

So now what? We just have to remain content with cyber visibility? Perhaps, here are some of my favorites:

B.J. Fletcher: Private Eye - Season Two, Episode 10
by bjfletcherprivateeye

FEED Season Two, Episode Two from Heroine Films on Vimeo.

Screamo: Let It OUT!!!

Growing up on RnB and Soul/Neo-Soul did have some effect on the way in which I receive music. When I fell in love with Rock music my freshman year I leaned towards the bands which had lead singers I considered to have powerful/soulful voices. This lead me to a lot of Nickelback (seriously don't get why everyone hates them all of a sudden), Chris Cornell, Silverchair, Extreme....long long list. Like most I eventually fell head over heels in love with Linkin Park. Didn't take much to realize that Chester Bennington had his own way of expressing himself through screams of pain and anger. I got it, I understood it. But I still would relate screaming to Metal or Punk. I thought there's no way I could tolerate that through a whole track, record, concert whatever the case may be.

Only recently, in the last 4 years, have I come to appreciate what is commonly referred to as "screamo" music. It started when I basically just got into heavier music that consisted of "screamo" from time to time. I adapted a "taking the good with the bad" attitude about it at first, cause heavy rock doesn't consist solely of screaming and yelling, only on the most angry and painful tracks.

I started to hear this differently over time. I think at first it came of as obnoxious to me. I thought "why ruin a good song with all that?". I find that so funny now cause I LOVE it now! Cause I get it. It is a way to express an emotion. As far as our voices are concerned the height in which we can express an emotion IS by screaming or yelling. I'm sure you've all had enough arguments to know this is true. So since I need every aspect of human life in my music, well I eventually came around to this concept. So I wanted to share some of my favorite bands and songs that turned things around for me.

O btw that's Brody Dalle, lead singer of The Distillers pictured above, I think I just wanted to look at her while I typed.

Flyleaf - I'm so sick
by WaReZ_CarTmaN

Aisha Tyler: LMAO, Indeed I Am

Today's discussion: Longevity.

What does it take to successfully work in Hollywood for over ten years?

Well if I'm going to use Aisha Tyler as an example...yeah I am cause this post is about her, I would say: Determination, persistence, intelligence, toothbrush, clean underwear.....o shit...wrong list...

People in the Twitterverse know that I'm a huge fan of this woman. However neither them or this woman, know why exactly.

I was an awkward kid. I didn't have many real friends. Not many things made me laugh (in a non-fake way), then I turned it to Talk Soup one day. And there she was, Aisha Tyler, and she never left! After that, I saw her everywhere! It's like she was a part my life after that. I would be watching a movie or TV show and she would pop up, and I would be taken back to that horrible day she turned around for me when I discovered her on Talk Soup.

She doesn't know me, but I relate to her in many ways. Most ways I weren't aware of until I watched her video/intro to her comedy special on Comedy Central, "Nowassitall". Other than not having any ass, I also CONSTANTLY took shit for "talking like a white girl", whatever the fuck that means. And unlike Tyler who was the tallest person on the playground, I was and still am, the shortest, so I've had some height issues as well.

Ok all the mushy shit aside. She's fucking cool as hell dude! I often feel out of place being the only black person I know in real life that listens to rock music. She listens to Eagles of Death Metal and shit like that, she's my fucking idol (MAYBE second to Carrie Brownstein, that's pretty damn good!)! She's brilliant! She graduated from Dartmouth which isn't surprising if you saw her win Celebrity Jeopardy. And she's SUCH a dork (don't tell her I said that)! No really she uses words like "neato" and is obsessed with video games, specifically Halo.

She's written a short film, and a book. She's just awesome dude. She's super nice and very down to earth and obviously here to stay! I strongly suggest you follow on Twitter http://twitter.com/aishatyler and if you wanna see some funny check out her Myspace http://myspace.com/aishatyler

And YES YES OMG YES ok she is "the black chick from Friends" ...she's so much more! lol

The Thermals: Culture Icons

"Hardly art, hardly starving. Hardly art, hardly garbage!"

And with that, I fell in love with The Thermals! The lyrics, from "No Culture Icons" of the band's debut LP More Parts Per Million, struck me as a direct dig at mainstream music. Not all mainstream music is bad, just because someone is on a major label, doesn't mean they aren't capable of making important music. It's just that over the last 15 years, that has been rare. Old school mainstream meant Bruce Springstein, The Who, The Police, Phil Collins...I could go on. New school mainstream is Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Fall Out Boy, selling Pepsi, Target and Burger King commercials. Do you see? New school mainstream music is all about marketing: "This song is great...now what can we sell with it?". And THAT my friends is why punk bands exist, just to keep everyone focused. Which is why when Hummer offered The Thermals $50,000 to use one of their songs in a commercial, The Thermals basically gave them the finger. Now had Honda offered them 20,000 bucks for a Hybrid commercial, perhaps they would've considered that. Cause that's another horrible thing, it's not bad enough that music has just become a marketing strategy, it's being used to sell the most unnecessary and unhealthy things! How about a Black Eyed Peas song on a life insurance commercial? Just saying....

*sigh* This is actually a post about The Thermals....lemme refocus here...:

The Thermals, yet ANOTHER gift from Portland formed in 2002. Then they took off at indie speed! You ready? Ok, so they gave their demo to Ben Gibbard who gave it to Sub Pop Records, who IMMEDIATELY signed them and had the record mixed by Chris Walla! The record, More Parts Per Million, was released in March 2003. Then they lost a guitar player, gave the guitar to lead singer Hutch Harris and became a trio and recorded and released their second record Fuckin' A, in 2004. For some reason drummers are slippery, and The Thermals were no exception, flying through drummer after drummer. Good thing bassist Kathy Foster is also a drummer and recorded ALL drums for the band's last two records. Maybe even the last three, it's confusing apparently The Thermals have an unreleased LP called We Sleep In a Holy Bed, why unreleased? I have no idea, I'll get back to you on that one! At least we have The Body, The Blood, The Machine and Now We Can See to distract us from any "lost" or unreleased goodness we may wonder about.

What's great about The Thermals is their music is actually really simple. The arrangement in the songs are so simple and yet the lyrics are so powerful and sometimes that creates some complexity in the way you respond to it. When the music is overpowered by the lyrics it makes you pay attention to the words, whether you want to or not, then you have to deal with how that makes you feel.

Now I don't talk about many punk bands because I've only just discovered punk music. I had a preconceived idea of punk music being loud, screamo with no rhythm. I'm finding this to be very untrue! So starting with The Thermals, I'll be blogging about punk bands I now love.