One summer in high school, I worked at a library. This was back when libraries were just starting to move from card catalogs to online databases, and part of my job was entering the information from each card into the computer. The Luddite in me hated the loss of those card catalogs — I worried that in our transition from paper to computers, we would miss out on those serendipitous moments of flipping through the cards searching for a subject only to get sidetracked by something else along the way.
I shouldn't have worried. The Internets are here for me when I need my serendipity fix.
By now, most of us have seen Hurra Torpedo's beyond-brilliant kitchen-appliance-and-guitar interpretation of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart." Last month, when someone forwarded me that link for the hundredth time, I finally did a Google search to see if the band had a website. They do, and the site includes links to their other bands as well, including Black Debbath and Thulsa Doom.
Thulsa Doom is my Favorite Band Ever this week. I wish that I had an IROC-Z Camaro equipped with a stereo worth far more than the car itself, so I could park it behind the 7-11 and give this band the listening party they deserve. "Need the Air" is one those just-perfect songs that knocks me down every time I hear it. On first listen, I was sure that I'd heard it before, a long long time ago, back when I was still in diapers and FM radio was a wild frontier where the DJs played whatever they felt like. There's an expansiveness to it that I rarely hear in pop music — there are strings and pedal steel guitar and vocal harmonies and black metal influences, all tied up in a melody big enough to hold everything together without ever crossing into bombast. The first time around, I was too busy hanging out with the art teacher and listening to the Smiths to appreciate the stoner boys' Kyuss and Black Sabbath. What was I thinking? Thank you, Norwegians, for giving me a second chance to rock out.
Hurra Torpedo's interpretation of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart."
I always check MetaFilter in the morning as I have my first cup of tea, just to get a feeling of what's going on in the larger world. MeFi Music went live a few weeks ago, and I've become addicted. It's a place where MetaFilter members can upload their own work and share them with the greater community. At first, it made me want to outlaw Cakewalk — probably 80% of MeFi Music is the product of people making music alone in their bedrooms. But hidden away among the disasters are little gems. One reader uploaded a scratchy old recording of his grandfather singing a long-forgotten Appalachian folk song. The Harvey Girls covered a Bee-Gees song about a mining disaster. And there's lots and lots of what optimists call outsider music. "Can someone please explain to me," someone asks of an ear-shredding reinterpretation of "Jingle Bell Rock," "how this piece differs from having your cochlea extracted with a rusty fish hook?" The reply? "This way you don't have to dig out your tacklebox."
Stumbling blindly upon good things is my favorite way to find new music, and for now, it's hard not to. Thanks, Internet!
cliff commented, on August 19, 2006 at 12:58 a.m.:
oh my god, oh my god, oh my god