Flashing Lights

FLASHING LIGHTS, KANYE WEST

(May 2008)

Summer pre-London: When you go to an SF Giants game, every Giants player has a theme song that plays when they step up to bat. In the 2008-2009 season, left fielder Fred Lewis' theme song was Kanye West's "Flashing Lights." The first time I heard it was during a Giants game, and I turned to Daniel, hearing Connie Mitchell's autotuned chants of "Flashing. Lights?", asking what song this was, and Daniel answered, "'Flashing Lights' by Kanye."

I've never been a big fan of Kanye West. I think that, despite being one of the most (if not the most) talented rapper of his generation, he's a big baby, always whining and crying about not getting this award or that kind of recognition or --

"Hold up, Cesar. I'm real happy for you and your blog, and I'mma let you finish. But Beyonce's got the best blog of all time. OF ALL TIME!!"

Um, fool, do I look like Taylor Swift? (Don't answer that.)

However, I do like his music, and "Flashing Lights" is my favorite Kanye song. For one thing, it's insanely, and I mean insanely, dramatic. It starts off with these filmic strings just crescendoing into this synth riff, with Connie Mitchell being all cracked-out: "Flashing. Lights?" Then, it's all about this relationship between these two extremely vain and narcissistic people who outbling each other until they die. Okay, that last part may not be true, but listening to the song, it sounds like that's what happened. The chorus that Dwele croons: "As you recall, you know I love to show off / But you didn't know I would take it this far!! / What do I know?" And it's like, what is that about? I like to think that the two of them kill each other with a massive blingy diamond chandelier, just like in "The War of the Roses." Otherwise, the song is so much drama without the payoff. I like the payoff. And so does Kanye, based on this song.

I used to love Nip/Tuck. In its prime (seasons 1 - 4, for those of you interested), the show was an addictive and awesomely graphic soap that had an amazing soundtrack. Like, possibly the best on TV. But after it went from a show about organ-harvesting rings and serial killers to a show about teenage vixens and teddy-bear enthusiasts, it still maintained that amazing soundtrack, and the trailer for Season 5.5 was set to "Flashing Lights," and it was an amazing trailer (go look it up on YouTube!), and I fell in love with the song all over again.

The reason for even starting this blog for me is that whenever I'm drunk at a party or whatever and a song I know really well comes on, I'll gasp loudly and be like "Omigod!! I remember the first time I heard this!" And the last time I can remember doing that was in London, when I went to Stacey's birthday party at the new house in Dollis Hill where she and Matt are living with other coursemates. I was already buzzing and then this song blasts on and I did my trademark gasp and statement.

The video for this is really cool, too, because Kanye is locked up in the trunk of a car and his girlfriend (to go with the operatic nature of the song) bashes him in the head with a golf club. Of course. And it's not that bad an image.

Oh, come on now, Cesar! I give you a shout-out in the song: "You know you can't Rome without Caesar!" Why you gonna play me like that?

Okay, you're right. I'm sorry, Kanye.

Bamboo Banga

BAMBOO BANGA, M.I.A.

(November 2007)

Stage managing at NCTC: I was stage managing the PSA-licious play "The Other Side of the Closet" at the New Conservatory Theatre Center in San Francisco, feeling pretty crap about myself. I had returned to San Francisco from LA, defeated, jobless, poor, and really not wanting to write. Eventually, I started feeling the bug again, but still unable/unwilling to write, so I did the next (best?) thing - I started stage managing. I started off at the Magic Theater as a production assistant, which meant me chauffeuring Marlo Thomas and Mark Rydell to and from their hotels, and somehow that led to me being a pretty in-demand stage manager. It was odd, and really I don't have the temperament for it, but I was oddly good at it.

"The Other Side of the Closet" was a traveling play - we went to different schools throughout the Bay Area with this really cheesy play about how horrible homophobia is (which it is, but then again, so is subjecting disaffected teenagers to really bad theatre), but one of the cool things about it besides meeting some cool people (?) was the soundtrack that Sara, the director, had chosen. In an attempt to make this play relevant to teenagers, she chose some really cutting-edge music for it, which I, as the stage manager, dealt with. One of the songs used was M.I.A.'s "Boyz," which is a truly odd but catchy song. The more I heard it (at least four times a week), the more I liked it, hence me downloading it. And, is my wont, I downloaded as many M.I.A. songs as I could.

"Bamboo Banga" is perhaps my favorite of the M.I.A. canon. The opening track to her second album "Kala," "Bamboo Banga" is like this crazy house song mixed in with this neo-hip hop vibe. I could definitely imagine dancing to it at a house party, and based on a video I saw of M.I.A. performing it at a concert, the fans love it. She was decked out in this pre-Lady GaGa space armor outfit, shaking her British ass all around the stage while the audience went bananas. It was a pretty cool image - in theory, I could have been there, since it was taken at an impromptu concert she held in San Francisco a few months prior. I didn't go because I couldn't find anyone to go with me - it was at Popscene at 33 Ritch, and the only person I knew of at the time who would have gone with me was Zarah, but she was busy that night. Unbeknown to me, my friend Michael was there and told me all about it a few weeks later. Alas.

I've always wondered why she never released it as a single - I think it's more radio-friendly than "Boyz," which was the lead single, or the follow-up, "Jimmy." I saw a cool video on YouTube of Fanny Pak, this dance group I was into from America's Best Dance Crew, performing this awesome routine to it.

Later on that summer, Daniel and my dad were at a Giants game, and I went to pick them up. I had burned "Bamboo Banga" on a mix-CD and was blasting it from Casey when I stopped on Berry Street to pick them up. Because my dad has this thing where no one can drive if he's around, I got out and sat in the passenger seat while he drove, and once we were on our way, he heard the song and was like "What the hell is this?" I laughed at his incredulity and told him that it was a song I really liked. He told me to turn it off because it was hurting his head, and I proceeded to ask him and Daniel how the game was.

The Promise

THE PROMISE, GIRLS ALOUD

(December 2008)

Christmas in London: "The Promise" by British girl group Girls Aloud is playing everywhere. It's the Christmas #1, hence it's always on BBC Radio1. It's playing in Harrod's when Daniel (who's visiting me since I can't go back to the States for the holiday) and I visit. It's playing at the Pizza Hut near Piccadilly Circus. It's playing on TV. It's playing at HMV. It's playing on New Year's Eve on Embankment by various BBC Radio1 DJs. It's everywhere, and slowly but surely, sinking its way into my brain.

I had become aware of Girls Aloud's existence in the months before moving to London, when I was trying (and failing, in hindsight) to absorb as much about the UK and London that I could. This meant reading endless travel books on London and watching "Skins" on BBC America. Somehow, I came upon a clip from a now-defunct (I think) show called "Generation XCess," which was a sort of 20/20 on teenage behaviors, and the clip focused on an amateur northern rugby team from Cheshire that indulged in, like, a thousand pints of beer a night, lots of bar-diving, and quite a bit of homoerotic behavior. At one point, they're all dancing in a pub to Girls Aloud's "Something Kinda Ooohh," and with all these macho guys singing along to this poppy girl song, I was like "What?" and decided I needed to know who this was. Hence, discovering Girls Aloud.

When I got to London, a week or so into my stay, I was watching TV with my housemate Stacey when the video for "The Promise" popped up (being the first time I heard it). I asked who was the group singing this '60's-soul-influenced pop song, and Stacey told me it was Girls Aloud and went with introducing me to the members, sorta: "That's the hot one (Cheryl), she's the one with a proper ledge of a voice (Nadine), she lives in Camden (Sarah), she likes to smoke pot (Kimberley), and that's the rubbish one no one cares about (Nicola)."

It's a great song, I think. It has a great backing, with these horns and awesome strings, which led a lot of music critics at the time to accuse writers Brian Higgins and Xenomania of jumping on the Amy Winehouse/Duffy/Joss Stone Brit-soul-girl thing, but I disagree with that assessment because, while on a superficial level, you can agree with that, but if you really listen to it, "The Promise" is not at all a traditional pop song in its structure: there's the catchy chorus, for sure, but each verse is constructed differently, to show off each of the girls singing, something a girl group in the States would never ever do (Destiny's Child, I'm looking at you). The first verse, which mimes the opening horns, is sung by all five of the girls, then chorus, then a verse with a new melody sung by Cheryl and Sarah, then chorus, then another verse by Sarah with a whole new melody, then another new melody by Nadine and Nicola, then chorus, then bridge (?) by Kimberley... it's a bit of a mess of a song, yet it completely works and you don't think about it when you listen to it. Because it's still an amazing song.

In the utility room of 43 Clarendon Court, which is where I lived with Matt and Stacey in Golders Green, we had a poster of "You Can't Mess With the Zohan" that we got at the Freshers Fair during our first week at Central that we dubbed "The Pissed Poster," meaning that anytime that any of the three of us were drunk (which was often), we would scribble a drunken message on the poster. At one point in early January, after Daniel had gone back to the States and Central had started up again for the spring term, I had gotten drunk at the pub (which meant drinking, like, a beer or two) and had "The Promise" stuck in my head, so I decided to scribble the lyrics of the chorus on the poster: "You're gonna make me, make me love you! Nothing at all that I cannot do! The promise I made, promise I made, starting to fade, starting to fade!" Matt and Stacey were thoroughly amused by this.

The Thrill

THE THRILL, WIZ KHALIFA

(December 2009)

First Christmas back in the States since London: Daniel had gone to a Wiz Khalifa concert a few weeks prior at school in Penn State. He was really excited about it, but old man that I am, I was all, "Who's Wiz What's his Face?" My brother, obviously annoyed at my lack of knowledge of the underground rap scene, was like, "Uhh... only the best rapper to come out of Pittsburgh, duh." Well. I filed this information under the "Stuff That I'll Never Think About Again" folder in my brain. Daniel loved the concert and was raving about it and told me that I should download some of his stuff because I would love it.

Now, here's my thing on rap. I love it, but being the old man and future guy with kids who hates what his kids listen to and only listens to the "oldies" station on the radio (which will, undoubtedly, be full of '90s tunes), I only like older rap. Like, '80's and '90's stuff mostly - Ice Cube, 2Pac, some Biggie, etc. - and why? Because the music in the background is good - either a good sample or a great original synth riff. None of this stupid and, frankly, boring Little Wayne generic beats shit. So, mostly, I tend to turn away from any contemporary rap simply because a) it's completely boring to listen to, and b) they don't talk about anything other than "getting money" or "bling" or whatever it is that these kids value nowadays. So, a new underground rapper? I was not interested in listening, especially after having given local rap group Tha Crew a listen (I ironically love their song "Jello," but emphasis on the word "ironically"), but my brother insisted that I would like him.

Christmas was my first time back in the States after being in London for school, and there were a lot of things that I had to do, and one of them was to download "The Thrill." I decided to give in. Daniel brought his friend Ja'Mere with him, and with Daniel trying to be a good host and show him around, but since I have a license, I was the chauffeur. Which was fine. I loved driving around with my brother, remembering what the city I was born in looked like at night in December. But, this meant something else: mix-CDs, the new millennium version of the mix-tape. However, I couldn't just put stuff that I liked because Daniel would not have that, so I decided to include "The Thrill" as the opening track. And, boy, was it worth it.

I totally dug the song. It had a great sample, as so many great rap songs do (it was a difficult sample to place, but after much research (read: typing it in on Google), I found that it was an Empire of the Sun sample), a good, relaxed beat, and the lyrics, while nothing political or socially conscious, were still about partying and having fun without being obnoxious and totally superficial. Daniel was impressed that I had listened to one of his recommendations.

When I got back to London, I suddenly heard "The Thrill" everywhere. And not the original Empire of the Sun song. I heard it twice when I was working at the Canal Cafe Theatre, in the pub area. I heard someone playing it at the locker room at Primark. I heard it at a house party. It was crazy that this song which was underground American rap would get so much play in the United Kingdom.

In My Place

IN MY PLACE, COLDPLAY

(February 2003)

Sophomore year at UCLA: I had been aware of Coldplay's existence, mostly when the summer before going to college when MTV did this A-Z of things to come this summer special, and Y was for "Yellow," which was Coldplay's first single. But I had tuned out their other singles from the first album, mostly based on my massive dislike for "Yellow," and wasn't even aware that they had a second album out. But, during winter quarter of sophomore year, I was wandering down the hallway from my room at the end to the elevator on the opposite end when I head this song blasting from my RA's room. Mary, my RA (who also had a very, very unfortunate surname), had a habit of blasting "A Rush of Blood to the Head" from her room in the early evenings, and I walked over to her room next to the elevator to pop my head in. In hindsight, I think I had this fascination with Mary, and it wasn't a crush at all - she's not my type, and there was a latent snobbery in her demeanor that was a real turn-off - but I think it may have been this need to know that my RA was as cool as Justin, my freshman year RA, was, and I don't know if Mary was. I mean, she was nice, I'm not saying she was a bitch, but she wasn't as cool as I wanted her to be. But I kept wanting it, wanting it, and that's why I kept bothering her, especially to nitpick her musical choices.

On this particular day, "In My Place" was playing, with its oddly catchy guitar riff, and I really wanted to know what it was. So, I asked and I was told. Then she started asking where I was from and told me that I had a major New York vibe, which I still to this day don't understand since I've never been to New York. I asked what she meant by that, and she blathered on about something about being sophisticated or something. When I told her that I was in fact from San Francisco, she said that she didn't get that at all. Apparently, San Francisco is void of sophistication. All this while listening to Chris Martin wail about being lost.

Gimme Little Sign

GIMME LITTLE SIGN, BRENTON WOOD

(circa 1992)

I'm actually shocked that I don't remember the exact first time I heard this song. I'm guesstimating 1992, mostly because that's the earliest time I can remember listening to 98.1 KISS-FM, which is San Francisco's Old School R&B station (though, lately, there's been a lot more modern R&B stuff and, while Beyonce is arguably the biggest force in mainstream R&B today, there's only so many times you can listen to "Single Ladies" or "Irreplaceable" without going crazy), and pretty much the station that raised me musically. The station, like any other, has several songs that are mainstays and always are on rotation, and while KISS-FM's favorite is Betty Wright's "Tonight Is the Night," this Brenton Wood song is also one of them.

All I know is that I'm not such a fan of this song. I have it because every Memorial Day weekend, KISS-FM has their countdown of the Top 500 Old School songs of all time, and when I was a junior or something at UCLA, I downloaded all of them (or, at least to 200 or something) off of Limewire and proceeded to burn them on to CDs, and "Gimme Little Sign" was one of them. I don't know why I don't like it... I mean, I know all the words (not that that means anything) and it is comforting in a nostalgic reminds-me-of-home-oddly kind of way, but the composition is weird, to me. The doo-wop intro, the psychedelic organ during the bridge... it's a weird mix-match of styles that I just don't necessarily respond to, even though not having this song in my repertoire is worse than not having it at all. But I still tend to skip it when I listen to it in my Zune.

True story, however: Daniel loooooooves this song. He refers to it as one of his jams. He was interning at KISS-FM last summer with the promotions department when he went to help them out with a concert, where one Brenton Wood, ancient soulster of Shreveport that he is, was performing. It sounded like an amazing concert, even with "Gimme Little Sign" as part of the set, with Wood performing alongside War, Tierra, and Trinere (frankly, I was unexcited about her... either that, or uninformed of her existence - Daniel refers to her as a poor man's Debby Deb). But the festivities were disrupted when a group of stoned cholos decided to start stabbing each other. It was in the middle of War's set. Daniel was thoroughly pissed. I never asked if Brenton Wood ended up performing.

Steal My Sunshine

STEAL MY SUNSHINE, LEN

(September 1999)

Junior year of high school: I was listening to my favorite radio station, which remained Z95.7 throughout high school, and this song pops on. I'm pretty sure I heard this song on the bus, which is where I heard a lot of songs for the first time. I've always been behind in everything, but particularly technological stuff, so I didn't have a Discman, just a plain old Walkman, which was permanently stuck on Z95.7. I can still sing their variety of signature jingles, which is dorky, I know, but then again, I was just reminded that the nature of this very blog is inherently nerdy, so who am I to fight it? As a freshman, I listened to Wild 94.9, specifically the rambunctious Doghouse in the morning, but I got over them pretty quickly, not to mention the fact that I really wasn't into the hip hop they were playing (as with so much music, though, I wasn't into it then but I love that shit now). I read about The Z in the school newspaper (why there was nothing else newsworthy that day? I don't know), but the article was talking about this brand-new station blah blah blah, and lo and behold, I became a big fan. Ultimately, The Z was the most unoffensive radio station in San Francisco at the time - it played general Top 40, cleaned-up versions of mainstream hip hop (I remember when Juvenile's "Back That Ass Up" was changed to "Back That Thang Up" on most radio stations, but The Z went one step further, changing it to "Back That Back Up"... what the hell?), and subtly helping the gay agenda by playing old 90s gay dance songs, like "Finally" and "What Is Love?" making sure that plenty of high school boys got in touch with that queen inside them.

When I heard "Steal My Sunshine," I was thoroughly annoyed. I wanted to tell Marc Costanzo to clear his fucking throat. I didn't understand what the hell the song was talking about. "My sticky paws were making straws out of big fat slurpy treats"? Like, was Sharon singing about giving a guy an epic hand job? What did that have to do with sunshine being stolen or millions of miles of fun? I didn't really care for the Andrea True Connection sample. And that video? God. Obnoxious. It's so indicative of 1999, I think, looking back on it now. The weird not-fashions, the plasticity of the whole thing. Oddly enough, looking back on my old issues of Rolling Stone that I have saved from that time, there was a sort of anime-esque plastic gloss over everything, that and bright poppy colors. Seriously. Go watch Christina Aguilera's "Come on Over, Baby" video and it's like that was 1999 in a nutshell.

I didn't hear "Steal My Sunshine" for years. Years, literally, until, I want to say that my brother Daniel had this song on his Zune, and we were trading songs from our respective Zunes, and he sent this to me. "Didn't this shit come out when you were in high school?" Why, yes, and since I was in a major nostalgia kick for turn-of-the-millennium music, I listened to it and loved it. I think it's because there are two spoken interludes before each verse that were cut from the radio single edit, and these conversations (between Marc and some other guy in the band) basically confirm that they were high as kites when they wrote this song. The first conversation is spoken in code about how one of them wants to smoke out and is asking the other if he's holding ("So what do you want to do?" "Well, do you like buttertarts?"). It's either that, or a proposition for gay sex in the bushes, but I seriously doubt that. The high explanation makes the verses make complete sense, and totally adds to the carefree summer feel the song has.

I don't know if I love it now strictly for the nostalgia of it, but I know that I just think it's a lot of fun now. Do you like buttertarts?

Next Lifetime

NEXT LIFETIME, ERYKAH BADU

(March 1997)

Eighth grade: I was doing a history project about the Civil War. I remember that we were doing a video, and we were filming a debate of sorts, and I was playing a Southern plantation owner, I think. We were filming at Rochelle's house, on the other side of Geneva, past Epiphany, on a Friday afternoon. Those of us that were there (I only recall myself, Rochelle (since it was her house), and Christabel being there, but there may have been more) were getting along and had decided that it was time to end the day's filming. Rochelle turned on MTV in her living room as I waited for my dad to pick me up (though I have the sneaking suspicion that my aunt picked me up, but who knows).

There were a variety of late-90s R&B videos playing, and while I think that Dru Hill's "In My Bed" with its then-risque lesbian twist at the end (scandalous for a thirteen-year-old pubescent boy like myself) played at some point, I distinctly remember Erykah Badu's "Next Lifetime" video playing. It was the first time I heard the song, but the video really made an impression on me. I remember mostly the last part of the video, when Erykah and her love object are reborn in "Motherland 20whatever," and they're in this neon tribal makeup and see each other. It's a trippy image, and in a weird way, I haven't watched that video much since then to maintain that feeling of weirdness and wonder that I had when I first saw it.

I really got into the song - and Erykah Badu in general - when I was in my neosoul phase my senior year of high school. There's a really haunting note progression in the background that you don't really notice until you listen to the song cranked super-loud on your headphones on a silent bus trip at 6:30 in the morning, and that progression, which ends on a minor note, embedded itself in my psyche for years, and I didn't really realize it until this past year when I was living in London. I was at work at the horrible shitstorm known as Primark, and I had a habit of playing songs in my head on loop to prevent me from doing something drastic, like shooting somebody or falling asleep, and suddenly that note progression just popped into my head. And I didn't know where the fuck it came from, and it was driving me crazy and I didn't know where it was from until I got home (I was living with Nick at the time) and as I took my shoes off and was about to turn on my laptop to search for the song, it suddenly hit me what it was, and I felt so much better.

There is a really disconcerting line, however. The song is about the woman refusing to cheat on her current partner with this new guy that she knows she has feelings for, and saying that with any luck, they can reincarnate and have a relationship in another lifetime. It's a beautiful notion, filled with beautiful imagery, such as "Maybe we'll be butterflies" and such, but the line that freaks me out is "I know I'm a lot of woman, but not enough to divide the pie." I understand the point, but I just have this image of Erykah Badu's punany served on a silver platter and sliced up like an apple pie. That's kind of a gross image to spoil an otherwise lovely song.

I Hear The Bells

I HEAR THE BELLS, MIKE DOUGHTY

(August 2005)

The summer after I graduated from UCLA: I was living with my best friend Scott in this amazingly beautiful apartment that neither of us could afford in West LA, a blue eighteen unit complex on Rochester. I was kinda unemployed - I was still working at the UCLA Store, but since I had already graduated, I only had until December to work there. And I was absolutely obsessed with Veronica Mars.

Sadly (or not, depending on how you look at it), that show has become a defining theme of that pot-scented, mindless, money-draining, post-college year. I mean, really, Scott and I would get high and wander the backstreets in our neighborhood, and I marveled at the neon lights glowing from these other apartment buildings, and I felt like I was in the seedy world of that show, and I loved it. I also even tried replicating that in my bedroom - I bought a string of blue Christmas lights at the Target on Washington near Sony Studios in Culver City and hung them up in my room to have on while I slept. (The truth is, that plan never fully came to fruition: I only hung about half of the lights, the other half remaining in a clump near my bed - it probably was a combination of my trademark laziness (the entire year that we lived there, I don't think I ever fully unpacked) and the pot, which made me even lazier... the irony is that I wanted that cool blue light in my room so that I could have it on while getting high and listening to electropop on my virus-and-gnome-infested computer). And part of my entire wanting to live inside the world of Veronica Mars meant downloading the soundtrack album and listening to it non-stop.

"I Hear the Bells" is track 2. When I downloaded it and listened to it, I didn't remember hearing it on the show by that point, but I enjoyed it. It didn't make its debut on the show until close to the end of the second season, during Veronica and Logan's "epic" conversation during the alterna-prom (in a theme reminiscent with that TV season, Veronica Mars shared a lot of music with Grey's Anatomy, and "I Hear the Bells" made its debut on that show in the middle of season 2 when George has his first solo surgery while stuck in an elevator with a dying patient... the song didn't have as much impact in that scene).

I really dug Doughty's raspy voice, and for some reason, there were lines that spoke to me and will forever encapsulate that time period: "I'm seeking girls in sales and marketing / Let's go make out up in the balcony." While I was unemployed for a majority of that year, that didn't mean that I wasn't actively looking for work. I was bounced around from temp agency to temp agency, and the one I had the longest relationship with was Apple One, and their office was in Torrance, which was a long ways away from West LA. I mean, in terms of miles, it's not necessarily far, but try driving down the 405 in the middle of the day. Yeah, hours. Hours! Anyway, as an entry-level applicant, I only really had retail or admin experience (like everyone else in the world), so I figured that if I wanted to admin anywhere, it had to be someplace interesting where I wouldn't want to stab myself or go jerk off in the bathroom out of boredom. So, I said on all my applications and resume that I wanted a job in sales or marketing. What a random pairing to be mentioned in this song I was listening to a lot of. The making out line, well... I always want to make out with someone, and having graduated college with my first major relationship under my belt (no pun intended), well, I wanted to continue on that road.

The most vivid memory I have of the song is listening to it in Casey (my wonderful car) while driving back from another failed appointment at Apple One in Torrance. It was around 2:30 in the afternoon, hence heavy traffic on the 405 North. The weather was weird: it was kinda cloudy and dark, definitely about to rain (which, I don't recall if it actually did). I was stressed out, probably smoking a cigarette since I'd learned at that time that smoking actually calmed down my LA-acquired road rage, and I remember listening to the song, stuck on the freeway, closer to Torrance than not (I hadn't gotten to the airport yet), and feeling a bit calmer. For whatever reason, I listened to the song on loop a few times, definitely chilling me out, preparing me for another night of staying in, getting high, watching TV, and hoping that my life would start the next day.