Track 2 - Boys and Girls by Pineapple Sue

These guys sure are giving Relient K a run for their money. Here, they give up deep social commentary on the state of the global community in favor of the more close-to-home observation that “boys and girls, they will never understand each other better.” We don’t know what that means. Pineapple Sue also seems to have come to the conclusion that their brilliant lyrics will be better served if they sing OVER their instruments rather than WITH. 

We’ve got a guest commentator with us today, Elras the Music Snob. He’ll be working with us occasionally to add his pretentiousness to our hilarity. Also, he’s gonna straight get you arrested.

Elras: You know, I kind of want to turn this off, then come back in a few years and listen to these guys when the singer’s balls have dropped. Sometimes I have trouble with girls too, but my first instinct isn’t to write a song about it, and even if I did it wouldn’t be a bad song, so I guess I’m ahead of him on all counts. And come on, just say ”more better.” You know that’s what he wanted to say, the lyricist just couldn’t make it scan. I’m going to be honest, this is the most boring thing including electric guitar that I’ve ever heard. You know how in the Middle Ages, the alchemists were trying to find the essence of a thing, the purest form of the thing, instantly recognizable as that thing, that thing and nothing else. That’s what this song is, the essence of derivative pop-punk. This could be a different song, and I wouldn’t notice. There’s no hook, no variation. It’s like a social experiment, an attempt to write the quintiseential pop punk song: “I don’t get girls. Here’s a three chord progression. Here’s another one. There’s your song!” It’s like a derivation of a derivation. If the Clash was straight whiskey, this would be a shitty fruity margarita that some guy tries to get you drunk on at a high school party. That song was just so terrible. I’m not usually into ornamental writing, but I want to track down whoever wrote these lyrics and forcibly tattoo a list of adverbs and adjectives on his chest. Yes, forcibly tattoo. That’s how I’m solving all my problems from now on.

Lily: Here’s how things are gonna go down ‘round here: I’m straight gonna get you arrested.

Carlyn: Lily’s a little confused. That was actually a song title on a rejected Category One album the other day.

Anyway, here’s what’s up: tumblr won’t let us upload more than one audio file per day, so we obviously won’t be doing that. Also, we don’t want to just post entire albums one track after another each day. Even we can’t handle entire albums at a time - and yes, we do listen to the music as we write about it, every song, on repeat if necessary. The sacrifices we make for you guys. (Carlyn: YOU try listening to a Conor Oberst reject CD all the way through, and then thank us.) So what we’ll do for each CD is post an “intro post” with the album art and a mini description of it, then each day post a randomized song from a $1CD that we’ve already introed. Don’t worry - we’ll tag all of them with the band and album name so they’ll be easy to find. (We’ve changed our theme enough to be sure the tags are working.) So that’s the plan. Get ready for an adventure in some cheap and awful and occasionally good music!

Also, we’re gonna straight get you arrested.

We decided to take a photo of the stack of $1 CDs we currently have in our library to document the starting point of this blog. (Right now it represents an investment of $7 plus change. We anticipate the collection growing very large.) What started as a “hey let’s snap a shot of the stack of CDs” turned into an impromptu photo shoot in our room. Here’s lovely Carlyn with the current $1 CD collection and a sweet feathered headband we bought on our most recent outing to The Bin and nearby establishments.

Our choices of CDs go into one of two categories:

Category One: Oh Man This Is Gonna Suck!

Usually it’s band and album names that attract us to the CDs that end up in this category. Things like “Magna Cum Louder” (an actual album name we found in The Bin) and, of course, “Epilepsy is Dancing” are sure to get our attention. Once we’ve pulled out a sufficiently intriguing album from The Bin, we examine the cover art, the track listings and the lyrics, if there is a lyric booklet provided. (There usually isn’t, though, because these tend to be self-produced, Recorded In Uncle’s Basement sorts of things. Unless you’re Taylor Hicks, and then you’re in the The Bin for totally different reasons.) We make a stack of the most outrageous ones and then pick ones that have potential. We don’t want just regular old suckage, like mediocre B-list pop or a clone of every second-tier punk band ever. We want the stuff that takes itself Really Really Seriously, or, alternatively, looks like the result of a drunken dare. We want stuff that defines itself as “Kung Folk” (Carlyn: I can’t believe we didn’t buy that one!) or has on its cover one white man and one black man, both wearing oversized sunglasses and baseball caps backwards, posing with arms crossed in front of a big truck (Lily: I can’t believe we didn’t buy that one!) Those are the Category One CDs that end up coming home with us.

Category Two: Oh Man This Actually Might Not Suck!

This is the same sort of strategy as Category One, although there is a little more emphasis on the visuals like album art and the inside booklet. What keeps us coming back to The Bin is the idea that we’ll end up like the Columbus of $1 CDs and find a beautiful new world of obscure music that was just waiting to be discovered by some open-minded listeners with a few extra dollars. When we find a band or an album title that sounds interesting, we see if the aesthetics of the album art match the sort of music we enjoy. We check to see whether the lyrics are overly whiny, navelgazing, pretentious, or cliche. We look at the instrumental credits to see if there are things like cowbells (actually listed in one CD), tooth-whistling, Nepalese Bell Chanting, etc. (If there are, the CD might get bumped up to Category One.) Usually we are disappointed by Category Two choices, but sometimes we are pleasantly and thrillingly surprised by a really good find. This has only happened once, but man was it worth it! Unfortunately, when we choose a CD based on Category Two principles, and it ends up being bad, it doesn’t typically end up being bad enough to qualify for Category One enjoyability. They’re mostly just mediocre knockoffs of music we actually like.