an examination used to test the condition of the middle ear and mobility of the eardrum, and the conduction bones by creating variations of air pressure in the ear canal.
Basically, it sounded like a cool name for a blog intended to be primarily about music. We’d both had other blogs previously, but over beers it was decided that more damage could be done as a joint venture. And here we are.
We share a passion for the undiscovered and under-appreciated, and hope that you’ll be able to find something you love as well.
Also, if you're interested in advertising on Tympanogram, feel free to get in touch with us here.
Disclaimer
The music offered on this blog is for sampling purposes only. If you enjoy something you hear here, please go out and buy the music, see a show, or purchase some merchandise. Posted mp3s are available for a limited period of time only.
If there are any materials featured here that are your intellectual property, and you would prefer them removed, please notify us and we will be happy to oblige.
About the Author: Dave
I like music. I can't describe how I came to like the music I do, because I don't know how or why, I just do.
Many years ago, Napoleon's brother, my great-great-great-great-great-great Grandfather, came to America. He was asked his name on Ellis Island while being processed as an immigrant. Not understanding English, he was under the impression that he was being asked how he had arrived in the new land. So he turned around and pointed at the sea vessel and said, 'LaBarge.'
About the Author: Andy
I come by my music taste of my own free will. My friends listened to 2Pac, my parents to contemporary Christian and me? Sunny Day Real Estate. I can’t explain it.
“Music, true music, not just rock ’n’ roll, it chooses you. It lives in your car, or alone, listening to your headphones…” - Lester Bangs
Upcoming Western NY Concerts
NOTE: All concerts are in Rochester unless otherwise noted.
8/28: My Morning Jacket and The New Pornographers
9/2: The Black Keys (Buffalo)
9/3: Coheed and Cambria (Syracuse)
9/4: These Electric Lives and Mikey Jukebox
9/8: Chali 2na
9/10: Vampire Weekend and Beach House
9/16: Wavves (Buffalo)
9/16: Jesse Malin and The St. Marks Social
9/16-9/19: Rochester Indie Fest
9/19: of Montreal with Janelle Monae (Buffalo)
9/21: Holy Fuck (Buffalo)
9/22: Stars and Wild Nothing
9/25: Broken Social Scene and The Sea and Cake (Buffalo)
9/29: Bear In Heaven (Ithaca)
10/18: Dr. Dog and Here We Go Magic (Buffalo)
10/22: Tympanogram Presents (at Bug Jar) - TBA
10/28: Matt and Kim
11/14: Sarah Harmer
Alright, I really like this song a lot. I enjoy the feel of the song and the lyrics and just about all of it. I derive great enjoyment from listening to it.
I do not like this video.
I feel as if it cheapens the song somehow. Perhaps it’s gimmicky using a bunch of naked people. There is just a sizable dissonance between the video and song for me. It doesn’t get the emotion or basically anything right. I was initially, and remain, disappointed.
In case you haven’t seen it be forewarned, it is NSFW. Not in the slightest. So don’t watch it in front of your parents either. But here it is. Agree or disagree.
I’ve been rehashing all the albums I have amassed over the past 10 months or so for our impending Best of 2009 list, and so I’ve been back enjoying Andrew Bird. His January release, Noble Beast, is still excellent, not surprisingly. I’ve also been listening to the reworked versions that were released as a part of his Fitz and The Dizzyspells EP that was issued in May.
“Anonanimal” was my favorite off the album, so it’s not really a surprise that it’s simpler reworking – re-titled “See the Enemy” on the EP – is my favorite from the EP as well. The soaring strings of the original are replaced by plucked ones, the lyrics are slowed and reorganized. And you know, it sounds equally as fantastic.
Here’s a true story: I burned my mother a copy of Jamie Cullum’s debut album twentysomething after I bought it. She loved it (I knew she would. It’s kind of mom-rock.) Her penchant for his jazz piano covers made me question, however, whether I was slowly turning into my parents. It was a real nature/nurture kind of inner struggle. Then her dog ate the CD, and she never got herself another copy. So, I absolved myself of any further thought that my taste in music was compromised.
Besides, there are probably worse things to have your tastes morph into than semi-flaccid, jazzy reinterpretations of recent hits, aren’t there? (On a final note, I actually really liked his first album, despite my indications otherwise.)
This may be the last 1000 Minutes entry where I do not have a crying baby in the background as I attempt to write. I have no idea what effect my pending fatherhood will have on my contributions to the blog, but I intend to make it minimal. But the kid isn’t here yet so I have to keep having small heart attacks each time I receive a call from my wife.
Go here if you don’t know what this whole thing is about.
This song is older than I am, yet I have always had a great affinity for it. I don’t have any particular affinity for Elvis Costello and this is the only song he participates in that I have on my computer. I don’t recall when I first heard it and don’t attach it to any memory. But it has easily earned its rightful place in my 1K by being a great song, despite my having very little to say about it.
Those that know me will advise you I used to be into really hard rock music when I was younger (but only if you were to ask them a very specific question about it I suppose). The Deftones were at the center of this phase, but my tastes expanded around them to not such great music from not so great bands. Luckily for my wife, at this point in my life the Deftones are really the only band whose music I still enjoy that could be lumped into a hard rock classification. I believe that is because they write deeper lyrics, have vastly more melodic and richer music, and in general were vastly superior musicians to the majority of the groups they may have been associated or toured with. Chino Moreno’s lyrics don’t bash you over the head with a lack of subtlety and in fact do quite the opposite. Purposefully obtuse a majority of the time, he also has a tendency – perhaps proclivity is a better word – to writing songs about driving. Escape to the mystery of the unknown is surely a common theme throughout the creative world, but it certainly is no worse for the wear in the Deftones’ hands. This is amongst my top one or two favorite Deftones songs and I love everything about it and never see myself sickening of it.
I can’t seem to get all the way into Citizen Cope. It’s really nothing he’s done. I have 4 songs of his, 2 from his first album and two from The Clarence Greenwood Recordings, and I enjoy all four. But for some reason they’re not enough to give me the push to purchase anything else.
Does everyone have artists that fill that niche for them? I suppose that’s the state of music as a whole. We’re conditioned to view artists in terms of singles, heard in thirty-second clips overtop of a commercial to shill cars. And while that might make fame easier to attain, it also makes it far more fleeting. So, either way, my apologies to Mr. Greenwood since he seems like he’s a talented individual, but his talent isn’t personally compelling.
Color me skeptical when anything from Verizon Wireless is being hailed as an iPhone killer. How many previous phones have held this mantle? Most phones coming from the tightwads at Verizon Wireless are sure to get good reception, but their mantra has always been to have complete control over their equipment. In the past the company went so far as to streamline all non-pda phones’ operating systems to make them uniform. I used to work for VZW and know the control they like to have over everything, so I am doubtful that the new phone will be quite the hit they expect and offer everything they are promising in this commercial. I’m even more doubtful it will all be at a high level, especially since it’s coming from Motorola, and even dent sales of the iPhone. I will admit that I am a little out of touch with the industry because once I left Verizon Wireless I no longer had any interest in cell phones other than leaving their service to get an iPhone. So I don’t know all the specifics about the phone but hey, it’s still VZ-dubs. But anyways, I dig the song they are using in the commercial, so maybe enjoy that instead of getting the phone.
Wordless songs seem to be the domain of post-rock, and the bands that inhabit that particular genre seem to all be as verbose as possible when they title songs. Maybe it’s meant to be ironic in some way that a song with no words for the entire seven minutes has a 15-word title.
Explosions in the Sky seem to be the ringleaders of the whole wordless post-rock show, soundtracking TV shows that are popular with the affluent demographic. And while their album sales certainly can’t have been hurt by that fact, I wonder how many of those affluent types purchased Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever didn’t even make it through the entire album before shelving it.
This is my all-time favorite Explosions in the Sky song. It was my first actual exposure to the band; they played it first on their Austin City Limits set, and when they reached that minute-thirty-nine mark, my jaw hit the floor. If you haven’t heard it, yours might just do the same.
This is a remix I’ve had bouncing around since the beginning of March after “1901” was literally posted on that many blogs, including ours. This particular remix is not as upbeat as the original track, but it’s equally as compelling. Build’s take on the track is darker, understated, and does away with the pop elements of Phoenix’s version. When played in succession, it shows just how versatile the track really is – which is undoubtedly why it’s one of the most remixed tracks of 2009. (Is there another that comes close? Empire of the Sun’s “Walking on a Dream?” Maybe.)
Looking around the interwebs for info about the remixing artist, I discovered that the moniker “Build” has been retired in favor of much the much less hipster sounding “Shadows of Thunder” as of last week. There are no tracks posted for Shadows of Thunder, but I kind of hope that it’s exclusively 80’s hair metal remixes. Or maybe it’s the musical equivalent of this guy’s art. Time will tell, I suppose.
If only my enjoyment of the band matched my enjoyment of the short story that led to the band’s moniker, this would have been a match made in heaven (if you believe in that sort of thing). The DH Lawrence-inspired foursome may no longer make music together, but this particular song of theirs gives me a sense of comfort.
“Tomorrow” is melodic and straightforward, and is making this gorgeous fall afternoon a little bit nicer.
I’m feeling somewhat introspective this morning, so I’m getting into a couple of tracks that are pretty intensely personal. If you have no idea why they’re numbered and what the Time Remaining means, take a second to catch up on my personal take on The Project here. Once you’re up to speed, lets get reflective:
71. Ryan Adams – So Alive (mp3) from Rock N Roll (3:58) [Time Remaining: 660:16]
If you don’t already know the story behind the release of Rock N Roll, allow me to give you a brief rundown. It was recorded in its entirety in two weeks as an appeasement to Ryan Adams’ label after their disappointment with the tracks that would become Love Is Hell. The album has its detractors and its devoted following – as do all of Ryan Adams’ albums. Consider me firmly on the devoted follower side, although I’m not as firmly entrenched as others.
“So Alive” is the centerpiece of the album, to be sure. The music is upbeat, the lyrics are much more dynamic than Ryan’s general melancholy, and listening to it feels to me like spinning in circles. It’s a song that quite literally forces me to digest it for periods of time. Listening to it once requires at least another 5 listens to take it all in properly. Writing about it required a cool dozen spins to obtain a proper handle on suitable words. This is a song that makes me want to write about music because – even having listened to it innumerable times since its release, I’m still so taken aback by how truly incredible it is.
I bought the debut from We Are Scientists on a whim after being intrigued by the serrated rock of their first single – “Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt.” The album became a bit of an obsession for me, and it dominated the soundtrack of quite a few nights of drinking that summer. (My pal Ryan moved across the country about 3 years ago now, and he said that to this day he’s unable to listen to the album without missing that summer.)
We Are Scientists didn’t take themselves particularly seriously, and their debut made it seem as though they were just intent on having a good time with their music, and that’s subsequently all I’ve ever enjoyed it for. It was great for driving, better for pre-gaming and ideal for drinking games – particularly 99 around our place. This song is still tops on my drinking playlists.
I’ve been rehashing all the albums I have amassed over the past 10 months or so for our impending Best of 2009 list, and so I’ve been back enjoying Andrew Bird. His January release, 
, is still excellent, not surprisingly. I’ve also been listening to the reworked versions that were released as a part of his 
EP that was issued in May.
Here’s a true story: I burned my mother a copy of Jamie Cullum’s debut album 
after I bought it. She loved it (I knew she would. It’s kind of mom-rock.) Her penchant for his jazz piano covers made me question, however, whether I was slowly turning into my parents. It was a real nature/nurture kind of inner struggle. Then her dog ate the CD, and she never got herself another copy. So, I absolved myself of any further thought that my taste in music was compromised.
This may be the last 1000 Minutes entry where I do not have a crying baby in the background as I attempt to write. I have no idea what effect my pending fatherhood will have on my contributions to the blog, but I intend to make it minimal. But the kid isn’t here yet so I have to keep having small heart attacks each time I receive a call from my wife. 
(3:32) [Time Remaining: 722:00]
(5:08) [Time Remaining: 716:52]
I can’t seem to get all the way into Citizen Cope. It’s really nothing he’s done. I have 4 songs of his, 2 from his first album and two from 
, and I enjoy all four. But for some reason they’re not enough to give me the push to purchase anything else.
Wordless songs seem to be the domain of post-rock, and the bands that inhabit that particular genre seem to all be as verbose as possible when they title songs. Maybe it’s meant to be ironic in some way that a song with no words for the entire seven minutes has a 15-word title.
This is a remix I’ve had bouncing around since the beginning of March after “1901” was literally posted on that many blogs, including ours. This particular remix is not as upbeat as the original track, but it’s equally as compelling. Build’s take on the track is darker, understated, and does away with the pop elements of Phoenix’s version. When played in succession, it shows just how versatile the track really is – which is undoubtedly why it’s one of the most remixed tracks of 2009. (Is there another that comes close? Empire of the Sun’s “Walking on a Dream?” Maybe.)
If only my enjoyment of the band matched my enjoyment of the short story that led to the band’s moniker, this would have been a match made in heaven (if you believe in that sort of thing). The 
I’m feeling somewhat introspective this morning, so I’m getting into a couple of tracks that are pretty intensely personal. If you have no idea why they’re numbered and what the Time Remaining means, take a second to catch up on my personal take on 
(3:58) [Time Remaining: 660:16]
(3:44) [Time Remaining: 656:32]