Breakfast Music

Mmm... breakfast. Delicious, right? But you might ask yourself, what's a good breakfast without some ridiculous music to get yourself going while you eat? That's right, it's nothing without some ridiculous music to get yourself going while you eat. And that's why I'm going to give you this quick guide to breakfast music:

Pink Floyd gives us a decent concept to start with, Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast. A time-honored classic, this song gets major points for actually being breakfast-themed. However, for some listeners the sounds of breakfast are too strange and disturbing to actually allow them to keep their breakfast down. Thus, we don't like marmalade, and shall continue our search.

An energetic morning starts with an energetic track. Kellogg's took this idea to heart when they selected Do Your Thing by Basement Jaxx as the music for their Special K commercial last year. But spend enough breakfasts with that in the background, and you'll easily go insane, thinking it's mocking you for eating your breakfast, "Do your thing" implying that you're just off in your own little world. We are not special, so the search moves forward yet again.

For the forward-thinking man, breakfast songs ought to be about eating, and have only a loose connection to it. Skindred has the perfect track for cleaning your plate: for a speedy breakfast and a happy stomach, look no further than Nobody. Crank it up loud, pull out all the stops and shovel that food down your throat! With this song to pump you up for it, you won't leave a single crumb on your plate.

Daft Punk: Discovery

Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter are the amazing musicians behind Daft Punk's robot masks. They are the incredible talent that drives crowds all over the world, moves clubbers deep inside the discotheque, yet makes music so awesome and so accessible that it's had plentiful radio airplay alongside mainstream pop, even in the USA.

Daft Punk's mix of 70's funk, edgy house beats, and simple yet driving lyrics is not only a very unique sound; it also has so much strong emotion and raw, grooving energy that I easily declare Daft Punk to be my favorite artist of all time.

I want to convert any nonbelievers, and introduce anybody who doesn't even know the name Daft Punk. To start us off, I'm going to be tackling the whole album Discovery, one track at a time. Last month, I posted about Kanye West's Stronger, which uses a track off of Discovery as its basis. If you liked Stronger, take a look at the original, get the album, and immerse yourself in the rest of the tracks on what may well become your favorite album ever.

I haven't been posting much lately, but rest assured that I'll actually get through this album. It's damn hard to convey exactly how awesome each track is, and to do each one justice in a simple blog post with just a short sample of the song, but I'm on a mission from God here so I'll be bringing you the gospel of Daft Punk. Enjoy.

How to Bother Nearby Drivers

When you go driving in your car, do you ever find yourself wondering, "What can I do to bother everybody who passes me?" Me too! So I've come up with a perfect solution that works every time.

One thing you can do to be obnoxious is to be an aggressive driver. But nobody really wants to be an aggressive driver, which means we have to find a different way to achieve this. And what better way to turn someone into an involuntarily aggressive driver than with loud, angry music? Bonus points for listening to music that offends others' ears, both with lyrics and volume (more bonus points for giant subwoofers)!

So, to help you all get in touch with that angry driver inside you, I present this playlist of intoxicatingly malicious music. Enjoy it while you can, which is until your car insurance starts costing more.

Drive Happy

1. Du Hast - Rammstein
This is a delicious song, it is full of anger and Deutsch. It gets started about 15 seconds in, which is just long enough for you to pull out of the driveway. You still might have to drive a little aggressively to get on the road before it starts, though.

2. Dragula (Si Non Oscillas, Noli Tintinnare Mix) - Rob Zombie
Don't be fooled by the foreign-looking text in the title, this little number is really American-Made Music to Strip by. That's the title of the album, anyway. The lyrics don't necessarily make sense, but there's lots of anger: it's a perfect addition to this mix.

3. I Love My Sex - Benny Benassi
And who doesn't? No, not a trick question: old people don't love your sex, instead it will bother them as you whiz by. Some fast, edgy electro, this track is certain to get your car and your heart going faster. Plus, more than enough bass to bother everyone around.

4. Faster Kill Pussycat - Paul Oakenfold feat. Brittany Murphy
Some more sexually-oriented music for your driving pleasure. Similar sound, slightly more sophisticated in taste. Might make you think you have lucky eyes, causing egotism and road rage.

5. You'll Be Under My Wheels - The Prodigy
Great sentiments here for driving! How can you not drive aggressively if you're contemplating running people over? The lyrics are, "I rock," and, "I roll," so your in-car egotism is further bolstered.

6. Spitfire - The Prodigy
Downshift when you really shouldn't, and you might get your car to spit fire: aggressive driving becomes more obnoxious when it's actually stupid! The Prodigy makes good driving songs that make you feel bamfy, and are best played loud. Spitfire is no exception.

7. Gunner Down - Leslie Spitzer, Brad Cross
Yes, this comes from the Descent II soundtrack. Some industrial electronic stuff with lots of overdriven guitars, this helps you think of killing robots, and other vehicles on the roadway are basically robots. At the same time, it's a delightful segue into the next couple of songs, which are angry metal.

8. 2 x 4 - Metallica
When driving aggressively, it may help some to envision beating people in the face with a two-by-four. This is the original stuff that made our elders say we youngsters are all going to hell. Try singing along, and giving people angry looks as you say, "Make my day."

9. Last - Nine Inch Nails
Angry music, with lyrics about sex and instant gratification. Screaming people, electric guitars with lots of distortion, and a regular 4/4 kick for much of the song: anger, check. It also takes a subtle lyric from 2 x 4 and shares a riff with Gunner Down, so I had to put it in here.

10. Techno Industry - Johann Langlie
(Also from Descent II) Industrial doesn't get much more industrial than this. It's a helpful song when you want to envision the other cars being rent and twisted in your wake.

11. Crawl - Brian Luzietti
This here's a slow, brooding... crawling song. But when it's through, you'll have pent-up anger, which is the best kind for bothering people on the road. You need to hate people without reason, and this song will help you do that. More importantly, it prepares you to release the anger with a stomp on the gas pedal during the next song.

12. Bidibodi Bidibu - Bubbles
Remember in Super Troopers, wenn die Deutschen go schpeeding by in der Porsche, blasting der German technomusik? This is de song zey are blasting, ja. In the world of driving out of control to loud music, the slogan is, "Crazy German techno: there is no substitute."


Don't forget to crank the volume, especially at stoplights. Have fun with your new hobby!

Remember, kids: illegal things are illegal. This means you need to stay under the speed limit, stop at any official red things, and not discharge firearms from within a moving vehicle.

Gateway Drugs

Kanye West
Stronger

You know what's tragic? Ask someone if they like Daft Punk and you might find out. The problem is certainly not that you'd get a no, it's that they probably don't even hardly recognize the name. If you're one of those people, then this post is for you.

But don't let me get too far into why Daft Punk is freaking awesome just yet, let's start far away and close in on the good stuff. That's not to say our Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper du jour isn't good stuff...

That's right, you've all heard it, most of you liked it, and a few of you undoubtedly were compelled to dance to it: Stronger by Kanye West. It's a song with a good beat, reasonable lyrics when compared to other hippity-hop (Soulja Boy is such a tragedy... please do not superman your hoes), and most importantly heavy sampling of Daft Punk's song, Harder Better Faster Stronger.

So if Stronger got you dancing, it stands to reason that with a title four times as long, Harder Better Faster Stronger would get you on the floor and out the roof. Here's a piece of the original. Clearly a song carrying different emotions, relying almost entirely on musical merit rather than lyrical.

Now, to mention Harder Better Faster Stronger and not mention that it samples another song itself might be a little mean. Cola Bottle Baby, by Edwin Birdsong, is the origin of some background that you mainly hear at the beginning. Daft Punk just did what Kanye later did to their song: they used a part of Cola Bottle Baby and remixed it into their own stuff to make it sound awesome.

I'm going to be writing about Daft Punk a lot in the next couple of weeks, and so I might have to reference the following video a few more times. It's just some examples of Daft Punk songs and clips of the songs whence the main samples came, and since Daft Punk does a lot of sampling of various songs made since the advent of synthesizers in funk, there's a lot of samples to speak of.