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There’s this site on the internet called YTMND (named after “You’re the man now, dog!”, a line Sean Connery shouts in one of his films that suddenly became an overnight internet sensation, looping continuously over a picture of Sean Connery, which you can view here) on which people can make simple sites in the vein of the original YTMND—you loop an animated gif, put some audio to it, and BAM! you have a YTMND. Even I made one back in 2007 (set to The Pirate Ship Quintet, who I’ve unfortunately not covered here).

Years ago on YTMND some asshole posted images taken from a video of a cat being set on fire and set it to a song from the videogame Doom. Users who rated this YTMND five stars found their own YTMND pages under attack (being “down-voted”) because people who were outraged over the animal cruelty saw fit to punish such assholes. One of these assholes suggested that he only five-rated the cat-burning YTMND because of the ‘ironic’ usage of Doom music. In response one of the users said something to the effect of: “Not even DOOM music justifies burning a cat.”

Shortly thereafter several people created YTMND pages with the abbreviation “NEDM” on it and one used a loop from Coburn’s We Interrupt This Program (JCA Remix) (which isn’t the version I’m playing here, nor is it on the two-track EP I link to above) as a good example of “not doom music”, I suppose. (You can read a more detailed account of the NEDM origins on the YTMND wiki, and see a YTMND explaining how this song came to be involved in the NEDM fad right here.)

I, myself, have enjoyed the NEDM fad—it manifested itself in funny ways across YTMND, with seemingly completely unrelated YTMNDs suddenly ending with a giant cat head and the recognizable loop from this song blasting at you (very Rick Roll indeed). On the upside, I’ve always thought the loop kicked ass and only now, years later, have I added it to my regular collection. I think this is one of the coolest dance/rave riffs I’ve ever heard, so I’m sharing it with you.

There’s your internet history lesson for the day.

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I don’t often cover the kind of thing they play on KROQ here in Los Angeles—my KROQ days were also my methamphetamine days and my high school days, and as such are far behind me and thankfully so—but That Noise was brought to my attention and their cover of Kings of Leon’s Sex on Fire improves upon the somewhat clumsy original in a multitude of ways.

Mostly they do this by stripping a lot of the ‘rock’ out of the song and replacing it with a vibe I’d compare most closely to HEALTH’s Die Slow and various other yesteryear Nine Inch Nails dance remixes, soaking the whole song in a pensive late night post-clubbing vibe. Unlike the original, That Noise’s version actually seems deserving of the ridiculous title phrase: the song now oozes slow burning sex appeal.

I do think it’s weird that newcomers That Noise are covering a Kings of Leon song that’s barely a year old, but when it’s done in such a way that it improves upon the original so thoroughly (and I say this as someone who has listened to the Kings of Leon original way more times than I’d like to admit) that I can’t really complain. Besides, it wasn’t that many years ago (well, like, forty, maybe) that immediately covering an artist’s popular song in order to piggyback your way into the charts on it was a common occurrence. If it’s working for That Noise, good for them, especially because this cover rocks.

I’ve already written about how Electric Six is a spectacle that must be experienced live, and their concert on the 11th at the Key Club merely reinforced that fact.

Though many of the theatrics from their last tour (capes, consistent ‘dance’ routines from Dick Valentine, and his hilarious between song banter) were oddly absent, Electric Six did nothing less than dazzle the rowdy, drunk, and entirely white crowd. I only mention how white the crowd was because it’s something unusual to see at a concert, especially in the heart of LA. I scanned the crowd and out of the pretty large number of people there (I’d guess but I’d be off, so let’s just say it was more than 60 people) there were only maybe three non-whites. I can’t draw any conclusions from this—except that maybe that the ‘disco’ in E6’s ‘disco rock’ alienates everyone except the whitest most geekiest of people.

On the upside the entire crowd was into them, dancing from the very beginning, shouting out “GO!” during Down at McDonaldz, and generally behaving like a bunch of asshats. Two guys standing up against the stage were singing every word and doing hand motions for almost every lyric—most of this seemed to be made up on their own, or derived from previous concerts (like the Improper Dancing arm movement that is somewhat scary) but their fandom was fully of their own creation. They were as entertaining to watch as the band itself.

I don’t really know what to say about Electric Six except that they are awesome and their awesomeness doesn’t come across on their albums at all. This is a sad thing, because they are really quite stupendous and definitely know how to get a floor full of (white) people moving. Best of all, after the crowd didn’t disperse at all after the first three song encore, they came back out (after a lot of technical troubles stemming from the sound guy at the Key Club getting up and leaving after the first encore) and played another five songs. You can’t really argue with a band that does that.

(Disclaimer: this is poorly written.)

Vampire Weekend’s appearance at the VFW Hall in Lomita was the last night of their All California Tour. Not sure why, but they were appearing at a variety of interesting locations, the most interesting of which was this one… a veteran’s affairs hall, complete with bingo charts up on the walls and 70’s decor. The stage itself looked like the cover of The National’s Boxer, to give you a general idea of the vibe.

(As a little side note, I don’t know who the opening act was [it wasn't Avi Buffalo, I am pretty sure] but they were god awful. They looked like a nice bunch of extremely homosexual chaps [and one lady] but the sound that came out of their synthesizers and, to much more horrible degree, their vocalist was ear splitting, headache inducing, and aside from the verses in one song, completely unlistenable.)

The crowd was more obnoxious than usual, being that it was composed evenly of hipsters from every age range (from the 50’s into the tweens)—who hardly moved around at all except to cheer when they started to play A-Punk or to shout “Walcott!!” like a bunch of douchers—complete with this Asian woman who kept posing over and over again for her smitten white guy boyfriend—and only ever in the typical ‘throw your arms in the air and cock your head to the side’ woo-girl pose, lacking only the stupid cowboy hat—before the show, and then during the show started screaming at her companion as loud as possible, and at one point was making indescribable wailing sounds somewhat in time with the music (after the song she shouted, “SORRY I DIDN’T KNOW YOU COULD HEAR ME” at her guy, though everyone in the whole place could hear her). I can’t really fault a girl for being drunk (and I’m merely assuming she’s drunk to give her the benefit of doubt), and I really can’t fault her for being stupid (woo-girls are bred to be stupid, you see, it is in their genes it is) but I can fault her boyfriend for not telling her to shut the fuck up. If you’re that guy and you’re reading this: Fuck you, as the guy who brought her you have the responsibility of telling her to be quiet and risk not getting laid for the benefit of all of us.

I’ll cut this really short because there isn’t much to say…

Vampire Weekend live is no different then Vampire Weekend on the album. I knew this before, because I saw them play a couple songs for Kimmey Jimmel [sic] back when A-Punk was being played everywhere, all the time, on everything, and they were impeccably clean musicians who play their songs exactly as they sound on the record. There’s nothing special or exciting—unless you find that your stereo won’t play their album loud enough and you want to hear it blasted at you at high volumes from 30-40 feet away. Ezra Koenig tries really hard to be cute or clever up on stage between songs but mostly he just comes across as slightly douchey—which you can’t fault him for that because, well, Vampire Weekend is kind of douchey music.

As far as what the new material from Contra was like, none of it was as catchy as any of the stuff off their self-titled. I don’t want to get too ahead of myself, since I haven’t sat down and listened to the album over and over again until I love all of it just by default, but my prediction for Contra is… sophomore slump. Horchata, which becomes mostly just annoying by the third time you hear Ezra croon “I looked psychotic in a balaclava” (if anyone said that to my face I would probably spit on them), is probably the catchiest Contra song they played. The rest I couldn’t remember even if I tried really hard.

Overall the show left me underwhelmed, but not disappointed. I knew what to expect (Vampire Weekend playing Vampire Weekend songs) and perhaps it’s a symptom of my fandom—which is based on the fact that their first album is magnificent for the most part and probably absolutely impossible to live up to. By the sound of what I heard in Lomita on Saturday night my assumption here is correct… Contra isn’t going to be very good, but if you like it I’m sure you’ll enjoy Vampire Weekend’s live shows. Just don’t expect anything special from them.

Part of me wonders how you don’t get bored playing the exact same songs the exact same ways for over two years. From the look on the synth/keyboard player’s face—which was dull and emotionless for the whole set in the same way a stroke victims face is—I’d say they’re pretty bored. I was pretty bored, too.

As a little experiment today I’ve put up a Twitter contest. The gist is that the first person to recommend me an album I really love (to the point that I have no choice but to write about how great it is) gets a $5 gift card from Lala. The contest is through Twitter only. Submissions are open until Nov 12th 11:59 PM (PST). For more info please see the contest rules page.

Thanks, and good luck!

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Let me save you some time: This is Fanfarlo’s only good song. They have other songs, but most of them suck, and the other one that doesn’t (The Walls Are Coming Down) sounds so much like it’s trying so hard to be Beirut that it sucks by default. The album generally suffers from this, which should be obvious on Arcade Fire aping I’m A Pilot. I’m sure before you even got to this word you already thought, “This sounds like Arcade Fire…”

This is really the only song that does. The rest of the album sounds like it’s trapped in some twilight realm between Arcade Fire and Beirut (and some people say Clap Your Hands Say Yeah but I’ve managed to avoid that band since their first largely unlistenable album) where all the fun, energy, and everything unique and interesting about those bands has been bizarrely sucked into the abyss never to be seen again. So easy, it is, to stop paying attention to Fanfarlo’s Reservoir, that I… uh… well I don’t even have anything to say about it. It is bland, and uninspired.

However, I’m A Pilot is a ridiculously awesome song. Thanks for that, Fanfarlo, but not really because it’s only so good because you’re trying so hard to be Arcade Fire.

I remarked to my buddy that I was worried that YACHT would, in some way, suck live. Why, he asked me, do you think that? I told him that it just seemed like there was a lot that could go wrong: the chick could be an awful singer live; they could be like MGMT and just be completely unable to pull off their album sound in a live setting; somehow they could fail to get the crowd hyped up… The worries were mostly silly, but they were there, and while we walked the UCSD campus I mulled over them.

When we walked into The Loft (which is so hip and modern looking it almost seems satirical) we walked right past YACHT themselves, Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans, who were sharing a chair next to the merch table (which was loaded with interesting things, mainly a tiny little book exploring the YACHT philosophy or something or another that I wish I bought and a mixtape for $5 which I also wish I had bought). I gawked for a second at the musicians (they’re so pretty and mysterious!), then went and had a cigarette.

Though the opening act was just a guy with a laptop and a microphone, who danced to his music while singing the vocals, I didn’t expect YACHT to be the same, but they were, except that there were two microphones and two people on stage and one of them was a woman who was nicer to look at than the guy. They had banners on stage saying various YACHT philosophy things, but aside from that the game was pretty much the same. Oh, and their mic cables were way longer.

Part way through opener Ring The Bell (which has since become my favorite YACHT song so you can listen to it right now

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if you so choose, of course) the entire sound system died and we were left with Jona (in a white suit kinda like a geeky Southern Baptist preacher) and Claire standing on stage holding their microphones, obviously a metaphor for their dicks. Jona took this opportunity to show us an elaborate slideshow showing us where they have recently flown from (New York) and are going to (China!) along with a zoom in on their apartment in Portland, complete with Street View and posted address. Jona explained, “It’s only fair that since we came to your city to see you, you can come to our city to see us. Go ahead, take a picture of the address.”

Once the sound system got back up and running they played I’m in Love With a Ripper which also killed the sound system. (Jona shouted, “What kind of college is this! How much do you guys pay for this sound system!” and at the end his voice cracked, and Claire suitably mocked him when she made her voice crack the next time she said something.)

From that point onward the show went on without a hitch, Jona and Claire dancing in their weird but no less interesting and generally always fresh kind of way (lots of jerky movements and dropping down and popping up) and singing the songs. During Summer Song they came down into the audience and a guy in a flannel shirt went dance crazy all over Claire, followed her back up onto stage, and proceeded to dance like a maniac. Some fat girl who should have been trying to hold as still as possible to prevent her from jiggling all over the place just by standing, was wiggling her shit all over the stage—until she tripped on a speaker and nearly ate shit. (A feat she avoided later when she almost fell on me walking away from the stage.) The whole thing was highly entertaining.

There was a discussion about Jona and Claire’s fathers when the question and answer session was interrupted by a shouted, “Who is your daddy and what does he do?” (we were an audience of college kids after all) that Jona decided to take seriously (either that or Jona and Claire are really unfamiliar with Schwarzenegger’s seminal work). There was dancing (none of it by me, though I moved my hips a little bit), the bass made my hair vibrate, and they played a song I’d never heard that went something like “Blow your brains out, do the Kurt Cobain, do the Kurt Cobain” which was pretty much the best thing I’ve ever heard and after I publish this I’m going to go find it and rock the fuck out in this library.

Really they just seemed like two kids (though Jona is 28) having a good time, dancing on stage and singing some good songs. (I’m really envious that this Jona guy gets to fly all over the world with his girlfriend and perform on stage for people and all he needs to do it is a laptop and two microphones, talk about living the fucking dream!) I was disappointed that they never, say, brought a real live guitar or any sort of instrument (not even a harmonica) into the fray, but more than that I enjoy that I got to hear their music, studio quality and flawlessly performed, through a big sound system, with live vocals (and that’s all that really matters anyway). It sounded good, I was entertained, I’d definitely go see YACHT again (and drive to San Diego to do it if I have to!), but damn I wish I had bought their merch.