Anamanaguchi

http://youtu.be/vc3JWo2iiGc Do you like Anamanaguchi? No? Well it’s not your blog.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before in this space, but I was not a frequent concert attendee prior to my undergraduate degree. It’s partly not living in a major hub in high school, part a disdain for live music that I have since lost, and part a sense of urgency as I feel myself aging. A concert is a weird beast, really. I’ve probably attended more in 2011 alone than most people get around to in their entire lives. Don’t get me wrong, live music is still a huge thing, but I wonder if the ubiquity of Youtube and easy, pervasive access to music has dulled people’s enthusiasm for blowing out their eardrums in large, sweaty groups of people. ...

I saw Anamanaguchi live for the first time in March and it was everything I could have hoped for on a night that was damn near a disaster. Min and I assembled in Baltimore in front of a tiny club we’d never seen before. Sonar isn’t that far from the harbor. It’s a tiny club about the size you’d expect a band like Anamanaguchi and its 8-Bit Alliance traveling partners would be able to draw. Small and intimate. Scarily intimate, actually. I calmed myself by remembering that it’s rare for people other than myself to show up on time for a rock show. ...

Anamanaguchi | A Take Away Show | Airbrushed from La Blogotheque on Vimeo. I love these guys so much.

Did you know that Anamanaguchi was handling the soundtrack to the upcoming PSN Scott Pilgrim vs. The World video game? Now you do. You might also be interested to know that they’ve posted the music to World 1-1. You can listen to it here. I don’t know how these guys do it, but this song is miles beyond their already fantastic Dawn Metropolis. Keep it up guys, this is gonna be a day 1 purchase for me. ...

It’s really been tough coming up with the music that has most resonated with me in the 2000s. Wanting to represent the entire decade is tough, since I don’t really find the music that I used to listen to before I went to college all that good. Once I had more money and exposure beyond the mainstream acts I was familiar with in high school, I feel my tastes really changed up some. This list is definitely not representative of the actual best bands of the decade, they’re just bands that had a strong effect on me and my musical development. ...

Kids are stupid. It’s really not their fault, how can they know anything about the important things in life without any real-life experience. Take my music-habits as a kid as a prime example. It’s not like I was listening to The Wiggles or anything so terrible, but among the real musical gems that I was listening to (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones) on Majic 102.7 (WMXJ) was some questionable material. Sure, Alvin & the Chipmunks singing country music (Urban Chipmunk, lovingly referred to as “a piece of shit” by Rolling Stone magazine), Bugs and Friends Sing the Beatles, and Kermit Unpigged may have featured music by legitimate artists or actual classics in their genres, but, did you notice that it’s all marketing trash? ...