Scripted Failures

I love this band. You could call it a guilty pleasure, but I’m not guilty about it. It’s just one of a couple of Warped Tour bands that I just find overly catchy.

They just put up a new song from their upcoming album Life Is Not a Waiting Room on their MySpace page called “Family Tradition.”

The Color Mix

Prologue:

1. Red House Painters, “All Mixed Up”
2. Coldplay, “Yellow”
3. New Order, “Blue Monday”

Exposition:

4. Green Day, “Give Me Novacaine”
5. Tori Amos, “The Power of Orange Knickers”
6. U2, “Ultraviolet (Light my Way)”

Climax:

7. Azure Ray, “We Are Mice”
8. Umbrellas, “June, Summer, Rose”
9. Joy Electric, “The Burgundy Years”

Resolution:

10. The Goo Goo Dolls, “Black Balloon”
11. White Town, “Your Woman”
12. Felt, “Grey Streets”

Epilogue:

13. Death Cab for Cutie, “A Lack of Color”

Friday Mixes is a weekly feature that showcases a mix of songs from various genres that usually share some common theme.  If you have an idea for a theme, email us at feedback@scriptedfailures.com and maybe we’ll use it.

Okay, so now I’m truly going to destroy all my indie cred, but I can’t help it.  “Famous Last Words” is one of the most emotionally draining songs I’ve ever heard.  I know this record has been out for over a year, but who cares.  Sure, My Chemical Romance is way too over theatrical, but sometimes it works, and on this track it works like a charm.  The intro is sorta quiet, except for Gerard Way’s sneering vocals and those big guitar hits, before that nasty guitar riff comes in.  The verses are all brash and in your face with some nice guitar riffage, nothing too complex but perfect for the song.  The pre-chorus sweetens things up a little bit, and then comes the fucking huge chorus.  It’s huge I tell you.  “I am not afraid to keep on living. I am not afraid to walk this world alone.  Honey if you stay you’ll be forgiven.  Nothing you can say can stop me going home,” it goes.  Then after another round of verse, pre-chorus, and chorus, we get a huge Queen-ish build-up replete with big arena rock guitar solos, before it quiets down again.  Now all this is great in and of itself, but the real treat comes at the end of the song.  When the gut wrenching chords come in, things start building, the synths start to kick in full force, the lyrics build to their climax, and Gerard Way shoots up an octave to sing “I sleep all days, cause I see you lying next to me, with words I thought I’d never speak awake and unafraid”, that’s when the orgasm begins.  It reaches its totally satisfying conclusion when the vocal layers pile on the already huge musical canvas playing the aforementioned lyrics against the chorus lyrics.  The song fades out with these dueling layers in the forefront making you want to hit previous on your mp3 player to do it alllll over again.  I swear my heart breaks everytime i hear this song.  I don’t know why I resonate emotionally so much with this song, but I just do.  I think it’s the romanticism of those last lines.  Eventhough the kid has cancer he feels all right because the one he loves is lying beside him.  A hopeless romantic I admittedly am.

So once again this is old news, but I recently downloaded this album, so sue me.  This will be the first post of two that will probably destroy all of my indie cred, however Pitchfork likes to gush all over Mr. Z, so I might be safe.  When “The Black Album” came out and I finally got around to listening to it, I fell in love with it.  Hell, I’ll admit it, I love Jay-Z.  As everyone knows, after the album came out tons of remix albums came out including the infamous “Grey Album” which was a pairing of “The Black Album” with The Beatles “White Album”.  Somewhere recently, I’m sure it was on Pitchfork I saw some gushing over 9th Wonder’s remix of the album called “Black is Back”.  So I had to hear it.  Unfortunately, the version I downloaded had some annoying mp3 encoding errors, so I need a new copy, but this song was error free.  This is going to sound dumb, but this song came up on random while I playing Hexic, and I was immeadiately hooked.

This remix takes the bit of old school soul production that the original had and amps it up to the nth degree.  The original version was rather joyous, but this song takes that joyous to a whole new level.  This version is like a huge celebration, all in honor of how badass Jay-Z is.  Starting off with a gorgeous soul sample, instead of the Gladiator sample of the original, it just gets better from there.  If there’s one thing that I like about some of the current producers in rap these days, Kayne West and, apparently, 9th Wonder, is that they sample amazing old school soul songs.  It never fails that I end up researching and downloading the sampled song.  I haven’t done my research on this one, but it’s not far behind.  So, the soul sample loops itself throughout the whole song, which may sound repetitive on paper, but the sample is so rad it just doesn’t matter.  The beat is bangin’, and by the way that may be the only time you hear me say that phrase, and just adds to the celebratory feel of the song. The only thing I haven’t mentioned is Jay-Z’s rhymes which are top notch on this track.  He sounds so confident that I can’t help but believe every bit of bragging he spits out.  I just want to DJ a party and play this song, and get down in the crowd and dance with everyone!  That’s one of the main points of rap right, to get people to shake their ass?  Well this one definitely succeeds.

This is sort of “black market” album, considering it’s not an offically sanctioned remix album, so you won’t find it in stores, but if you go here you can you buy it. You might be able to find it cheaper somewhere else, but I’m not sure.  If I find it for cheaper I’ll let you know.  Hell, you might be able to find it on iTunes.  I’ll admit, I need to quit being a pirate and buy it.  It’s on my list, which is growing, yet decreasing at the same time as I finally buy albums I’ve loved for years.  You didn’t hear me say this, but find it and hear it at any cost, but if you must pirate it, at least support 9th Wonder and buy the damn thing if you dig it.  After all, piracy is wack, unless you’re stealing from Metallica, who deserve it for being pussies about Napster.