Haven't I Seen This Somewhere Else?

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (three and a half stars total; see "my movie review guide" to the right) didn't look good when I first saw the trailer. I wasn't familiar with the children's book it's based on. I couldn't see Bill Hader (Adventureland, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian) as a leading man and I hadn't been impressed by Anna Faris in her leading roles (Smiley Face, The House Bunny). The character designs looked to be ripped off of the Muppets. I couldn't tell if it was about another child prodigy (Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Meet the Robinsons) or if it was another tired disaster spoof (Chicken Little, Horton Hears a Who!). Then the critics loved it and my coworkers who saw it loved it and my wife read the book in the bookstore and liked it. Today my wife got a free copy in the mail through her blog. She gets packages everyday but it's usually stuff I wouldn't buy on my own so I don't feel like we're saving any money. I won't go as far as saying that I would've bought Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, but it's definitely worth a rental. It turns out there's nothing else like it, not even the book on which it's based. At its core, it's the age-old story of a son trying to make his father proud, but it also has a romance that doesn't feel tacked on or cliché. The obese mayor and the machine with a mind of its own might remind you of WALL-E, but my only real complaint would be all the psychadelic coloring/shading. This motion picture is more about the motion than the pictures anyway. Watch the main character bounce from object to object inside the spaghetti tornado (or in the Jell-O castle for that matter). My two-year-old son enjoyed naming the different kinds of food as they rained down from the sky. Last but not least, listen for the nerdy dialogue. I'm glad we own the movie because I think I missed some one-liners.

Thankfully Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs isn't one of them, but have you ever noticed that computer animated movies are released around the same time in thematic pairs?

1. Insects - Antz versus A Bug's Life (both 1998)
2. Underwater - Finding Nemo (2003) versus Shark Tale (2004)
3. Fairy tales - Shrek 2 (2004) versus Hoodwinked! (2005) and Happily N'Ever After (2006)
4. Man versus beast - Open Season versus Over the Hedge versus The Wild (all 2006)
5. Penguins - Happy Feet (2006) versus Surf's Up (2007)
6. Rodents - Flushed Away (2006) versus Ratatouille (2007) versus The Tale of Despereaux (2008)
7. Post-apocalyptic worlds - Battle for Terra (2007) versus Delgo (2008) or WALL-E (2008) versus Tim Burton's 9 (2009)
8. Rockets - Fly Me to the Moon versus Space Chimps (both 2008)
9. Secret agents - Bolt (2008) versus G-Force (2009)
10. Supervillains - Despicable Me versus MegaMind/Oobermind (both 2010)

My How I've Let Go

My brother recently asked me to send him "my best pictures" of myself and my family for a gift he was putting together for our mom. I'd completely forgotten about the above picture and I couldn't believe that was me just five and a half years ago. The picture below is me as I am now, complete with cookie addiction and hair growth in new and interesting places.

The Fifth CD of Christmas

In my "Easy Listening/New Age/World" post (11/08), I wrote how my dad first got into Mannheim Steamroller with A Fresh Aire VI (1986). I know he'd always been a fan of the song "Classical Gas," but I'm not sure if he owned the Mannheim Steamroller version on an album of the same name (1987). Then there was A Fresh Aire Christmas (1988), the sophomore release in a series of Christmas-themed albums which celebrated their 25th Anniversary with a "best of" double-disc set this year. A few years after the release of Yellowstone: The Music of Nature (1989), my family went to Yellowstone and I'm sure the CD would have been featured prominently in all the gift shops. I'm not sure which year I got into Mannheim Steamroller, but based on the way it kept intersecting with my life, it was probably inevitable. I think my dad liked the folk side of it. For me, it was all about the synthesizers. "Carol of the Bells" was like the "Axel F" of Christmas songs. It exposed me for the first time to the concept that Christmas songs could "rock," (not that it was a rock song - in fact it would be a decade or more before I heard an actual metal version of a Christmas song) yet at the same time, it was easy listening. Paradox seems to be the goal of Mannheim Steamroller, as it's always sounded both "old" and "new" and acted both silly and serious at the same time, kind of like most people around Christmastime.

Art House Animation Versus "The Man" of Animation

Fantastic Mr. Fox (four stars total; see "my movie review guide" to the right) A few years ago at Comic-Con, Quentin Tarantino did a Q & A panel with Robert Rodriguez and someone asked him when he was going to do a family film like Rodriguez. Mr. Fox (2009) could've been that film, except that wasn't directed by Tarantino. It's a Wes Anderson film, but it has Tarantino's flare for dialogue ("cussing") and overall the soundtrack isn't as Anderson-y this time around (less Cat Stevens, more Beach Boys). The best description I can think of is a cross between Chicken Run (2000), Napoleon Dynamite (2004), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), West Side Story (1961), and platform video games (for this last one, see the burrowing and chase scenes). I didn't like the look of the skinny Kermit the Frog arms and legs but I loved the eating scenes, the lightning paintings and the binomial nomenclature (i.e. Latin animal names). My biggest complaint with book to film adaptations is usually that they add to while taking away. It's okay to add to without taking away (because the book was really short) or vice versa (because the book was really long), but I hate it when filmmakers swap their own scenes for those in the book. Wes Anderson did pull a swap with a visiting fox cousin all his own, but I agree with his choice to do some character development with an only child over cluttering his meticulous background scenery with a big fox family. Having Mrs. Fox get knocked up and making the apple cider alchoholic were also Anderson-isms but they didn't make for some black comedy that wasn't already there. I was shocked by Mr. Fox's tail getting shot off but that's actually straight out of the book.

The Princess and the Frog (four and a half stars total) is the movie that The Haunted Mansion (2003) could've and should've been (Disney's Villains franchise might've included a bayou character years ago). It's got a pair of slimy main characters up against inbred Cajun poachers and a Voodoo witch doctor with a Gomez Addams moustache. It's far more Christmas than Halloween though, what with the star in the sky and the message about family being the most important thing. There's another message about hard work, but after the Princess character's dream almost comes true in the first ten minutes of the movie, it calls into question the "glass ceiling" and the difference between blue collar and white collar work. What I got out of the movie is that there always were and always will be good white southerners and bad white southerners and you can't necessarily spot them by their clothes or houses. I can't believe that Disney makes fun of its own princess image, not just with the main character's name but especially with her stereotypically Disney princess of a blonde, childhood friend. It was so refreshing to see both "daddy's girls" stay friends through the end - no jealousy, no backbiting, no fighting over a guy. It was so refreshing to see hand-drawn animation again - especially the sparkes and psychadelic parts that paid homage to some painter (maybe Toulouse-Lautrec?). It was so refreshing to hear different styles of music - blues, Dixieland jazz, gospel and zydeco. I followed up on my movie screening with some red beans and rice from Popeye's. It sure beat Ne-Yo's song over the end credits.

Disney's Non-Nuclear Families

In college I wanted to submit a political cartoon to the school newspaper showing Disney studio execs sitting around a boardroom table trying to decide which parent to do without in an upcoming movie. I assumed that most people would recognize the large percentage of Disney movies which feature single parent families and orphans (70%). After watching The Princess and the Frog, my wife asked me why that's the case. All I could think to say was "cheap ploy for sympathy." Can you think of any other reasons? As you read over the following list, don't forget about the single parents and orphans in Disney live-action like Pete's Dragon (1977) and Enchanted (2007) or Tim Burton's stop-motion James and the Giant Peach (1996) or Pixar's Finding Nemo (2003) and Up (2009).

Disney animated theatrical releases featuring children
raised by single parents and/or various solitary role models:

1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - yes, the title character
1940 Pinocchio - yes, the title character
1940 Fantasia - none
1941 Dumbo - yes, the title character
1942 Bambi - yes, the title character
1950 Cinderella - yes, the title character
1951 Alice in Wonderland - none
1953 Peter Pan - none
1955 Lady and the Tramp - none
1959 Sleeping Beauty - none
1961 101 Dalmations - none

(next there was a switch to mostly orphans):

1963 The Sword in the Stone - yes, Arthur
1967 The Jungle Book - yes, Mowgli
1970 The Aristocats - yes, Marie, Toulouse and Berlioz
1973 Robin Hood - yes, Maid Marian
1977 The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh - yes, Roo
1977 The Rescuers - yes, Penny
1981 The Fox and the Hound - yes, Tod
1985 The Black Cauldron - yes, Taran
1986 The Great Mouse Detective - yes, Olivia
1988 Oliver & Company - yes, everyone

(then there was a return to single parent families):

1989 The Little Mermaid - yes, Ariel
1990 The Rescuers Down Under - yes, Cody
1991 Beauty and the Beast - yes, Belle
1992 Aladdin - yes, Jasmine
1994 The Lion King - none
1995 Pocahontas - yes, the title character
1996 The Hunchback of Notre Dame - yes, Quasimodo
1997 Hercules - none
1998 Mulan - yes, the title character
1999 Tarzan - yes, the title character and Jane
2000 Fantasia 2000 - none

(recent blurring of traditional families due to natural habitat, government agents, cross-species transformations, time travel and celebrity lifestyle):

2000 Dinosaur - yes, Aladar
2000 The Emperor's New Groove - none
2001 Atlantis: The Lost Empire - none
2002 Lilo & Stitch - yes, the sisters
2002 Treasure Planet - yes, Jim
2003 Brother Bear - yes, Koda
2004 Home on the Range - none
2005 Chicken Little - yes, the title character
2007 Meet the Robinsons - yes, Lewis
2008 Bolt - yes, Penny
2009 The Princess and the Frog - none, you can rest easy because Princess and Prince Naveen both have a mom AND a dad

The Fourth CD of Christmas

This one is dedicated to those who think Christmas songs only go back 100 years. Anyone who understands the true meaning of Christmas knows that the holiday is 2009 years old, but most Christmas compilations only feature songs written within the last 200 years. James Galway's Christmas Carol (1986) remedies that by including excerpts from Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio (1734) and "Ave Maria," which is based on a melody that Bach composed for The Well-Tempered Clavier (1722). Dates that old make new releases out of "Frosty the Snowman" (1950) and its predecessor "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (1939). The closest that James Galway comes to those is with "I Wonder As I Wander" (1933). He also includes "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," which is probably older than Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843) and the only other familiar carol, "Greensleeves," is older than the Declaration of Independence.

The Third CD of Christmas

If I were filthy rich, there are many things that I've said I would do: buy my grandparents' cabin and live like a hermit; visit all 50 states, stopping at every national park; build a lavish home theater and organize a film festival; fund a community skate park; curate an antique music box museum. That last one's not actually true. I've never said it before but now that I have, why not? A library of golden age comic books would only be of interest to English speakers but music is universal, especially instrumental music. In the case of an unlikely but possible post-apocalyptic future without electricity, music boxes would be invaluable to music lovers without any natural musical talent. I love music boxes. The Porter Co. (surprisingly available on iTunes) Music Box Christmas, as revealed in my 12/25/08 post, was the album my parents played first thing on Christmas mornings while we opened presents. Not that I think opening presents is the essence of Christmas, but this album IS the essence of Christmas for me. It evokes a baby being born in a manger. It twinkles like starlight and almost brings me to tears. All music boxes have a somewhat melancholy sound, no matter how joyous the songs they play. Considering that my absolute favorite musical instrument is the steel drum and one of my top five things in this world is listening to church bells in the distance, it should come as no surprise that I love the sweet, simple, haunting sound of music boxes. This album straddles the line between reinterpreting Christmas classics in a new and different format and remaining faithful to the original melodies (check out the unique intro on "Greensleeves"). It also has a nice, even balance between contemporary, pop standards and traditional, religious carols. For more on the man behind this, my absolute favorite Christmas CD, click to enlarge the liner notes below:

The Second CD of Christmas

Call me a Philistine. Call me fuddy duddy. Worse yet, call me a hopeless addict, but I'll be the first to admit, I'm an Enya CD collector. In my 10/23/08 post, I mentioned that I consider a fad to be anything involving upwards of 20 million people and since Enya has had over 30 million sales in the U.S. alone, she could be considered trendy, but I'm not ashamed. You may see multiple albums pictured on this post, but "the second CD of Christmas" is really just Shepherd Moons, winner of the first of Enya's four Grammy Awards for "Best New Age Album." It doesn't have Christmas in the title like some of her later work, but it was released early one November and my dad must have bought it shortly thereafter, because I remember him playing it throughout the holidays and almost till spring. The opening and title track encapsulates the season of winter more than any other song I know. The second track, "Caribbean Blue," doesn't transport me to a tropical paradise - instead, it brings to my mind the hustle and bustle of gift shopping, or of Santa's elves speedily building toys. The third track, "How Can I Keep From Singing?" sounds like midnight Mass because of the echo and organ. The tribal fourth track isn't very Christmasy, neither the popular single, "Book of Days," nor the last track with bagpipes. But I still like them all. My two favorite tracks on the album (and the most Christmasy) are "Angeles" and "Marble Halls" (which reminds my granddad of his childhood).

Enya's follow-up to Shepherd Moons was the Oíche Chiún (Silent Night) single. My dad immediately snatched that up too but I waited a few years and then bought The Christmas EP. They have different cover art but both feature the songs "Oíche Chiún" and "'s Fagaim Mo Bhaile" (very Christmasy). The reason I waited to buy the EP was that it had more songs than the single, but those songs turned out to be recycled from the albums Watermark and The Celts. Now I'm missing the song "Oriel Window" (more Christmasy), which is on the single but not on the EP, and I prefer that to the song "As Baile" (less Christmasy), which is on the EP but not on the single. I'm also missing the Target exclusive, Sounds of the Season: The Enya Holiday Collection (known as the Christmas Secrets EP in Canada). It starts with "Oíche Chiún" (which seems to be on everything including the charity compilation, A Very Special Christmas), but adds a couple new interpretations of the Christmas classics, "Adeste Fideles (Oh Come All Ye Faithful)" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." Both of those versions are so-so, but the fourth track, "Christmas Secrets" is a must-have and I don't have it (the cheapest solution may be to buy the import-only Amarantine: Special Christmas Edition, an album I already own the original version of).

In my 11/11/08 post, I noted that both Enya and Mannheim Steamroller had come out with Christmas-themed albums on the same day. And Winter Came... was Enya's release that day and if you take away the song I discussed in that post, "Trains and Winter Rains," along with the rockin' "My! My! Time Flies!" (which just happen to be the first two tracks on this year's Very Best of Enya CD/DVD) what you're left with is like a new version of Shepherd Moons. The title track on And Winter Came... encapsulates the season almost as well as the title track on Shepherd Moons. The second track, "Journey of the Angels" takes me back to "Angeles" and "Last Time By Moonlight" is like the new "Marble Halls." The third track, "White Is in the Winter Night," is the new gift shopping/elf toymaking addition. The fourth track, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" is the new midnight Mass carol. I'm hardly the first person to suggest that Enya's albums all sound the same and I won't be the last that honestly doesn't care. Ireland's other, bigger, musical export to the world, U2, also cranks out albums which all sound the same to me and I'm fine with that as well (I like their "Christmas Baby Please Come Home" on the aforementioned charity compilation, A Very Special Christmas). There are lots of excessive and redundant holiday traditions and I'll take them all, thank you much.

The First CD of Christmas

There are lot of Christmas movies and animated TV specials with songs and instrumental scores that I like: White Christmas (1954), Babes in Toyland (1961), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), The Small One (1978) and Gremlins (1984). I only own one Christmas movie soundtrack on CD and that's Home Alone (1990). I didn't own a CD player when the movie came out, but when I started buying CDs, it was one of my firsts. It's not just a Christmas thing either. Every year at Thanksgiving, my mom's whole side of the family would get together and my uncle would offer to take all my cousins and me to the movies but it never happened. To this day, I've only ever been to the theater on Thanksgiving once, when all my aunts and uncles together took us to Home Alone. I think of that every Thanksgiving as it's one of the happiest memories of my life, plus I saw the trailer for Edward Scissorhands (another somewhat Christmas movie with a great soundtrack). I learned to comb my hair and put on deodorant from the aftershave screaming scene so you know the movie's ingrained in my daily routine. Speaking of the aftershave scenes, without the lip-synching one I might never have been exposed to Mel Tormé, and I personally think he's better than Bing Crosby OR Frank Sinatra. Unfortunately for the time being I don't own any of his Christmas albums. I just rewatched the DVD with the director's commentary and I learned that John Williams wasn't the first choice for composer on Home Alone. The director wanted Bruce Broughton, who coincidentally did lots of other holiday-themed soundtracks, including The Thanksgiving Promise (1986) and Miracle on 34th Street (1994). Nobody thought John Williams would do a "kiddie" movie, but then he followed this one up with Hook (1991). That leads me to my final point. What's so great about Home Alone is that John Williams didn't treat it like a "kiddie" movie and neither did the rest of the cast or crew. Director Chris Columbus even claims that he was inspired by Charles Dickens in Great Expectations (1860) and Oliver Twist (1837), which are both dark stories about kids in over their heads. This reminds me of an IMDb comment I read recently, by Lou Pine from Dublin, about the movie Parents (1989):

"There is an aspect to childhood that is too often (and in the case of Hollywood almost always) forgotten and that is the dark side. The world for a child does not always appear as a bright, shining place of wonder and joy; more often than not the world is strange, forbidding and completely out of our control. That appearance is not deceptive; what is deceptive is the web of fictions we build up over time to help us deal with this. For me part of the thrill of horror (real horror, not simply the slash and stack variety), is the remembrance of that childhood chill, the memory of what Lovecraft termed cosmic horror and Freud called the Uncanny. Regardless of who those people are, parents as the symbol of unimpeachable, unquestioned authority whom we have to trust regardless of their real motives, are a potent representation of this chaotic universe, a universe that could crush us at any moment if it wanted to, but which we're stuck with."

What I Listened to in 2009, Part VI

If there are discrepancies between the following list and the playable widget to the right, it is because the iLike site didn't have all the songs I wanted and I carried "Kings and Queens" by 30 Seconds to Mars and "Slow Poison" by The Bravery over from my "Top 10 Songs of 2009" playlist. On a somewhat related note, there are a couple things that, while available on iTunes, I'd prefer to own factory copies of with original packaging. If anyone is considering a Christmas present for me, may I recommend either the 20th anniversary deluxe edition Bleach by Nirvana or Warp Records' three 20th anniversary compilations, Chosen, Recreated and Unheard.

1. "Baby Boomer" - Monsters of Folk; as close as I come to country

2. "Ça plane pour moi" - Nouvelle Vague; my favorite cover '80s cover band does a reggae version as opposed to their usual bossa nova

3. "Diary (feat. Marsha Ambrosius)" - Wale; never thought I'd hear rap over the Amelie movie score

4. "Feel It All Around" - Washed Out; we're barely to winter but next summer's best slow jam is already here

5. "Groove Me" - King Floyd; somehow I missing this on my "R&B/Soul BBQ" playlist

6. "Hearing Damage" - Thom Yorke; at first I wanted to ignore the New Moon soundtrack but then I heard about the Lykke Li contribution and this one from the lead singer of Radiohead

7. "High Flyin'" - Nick Colionne; I heard this on my boss' smooth jazz radio station, which I'm normally against, but sometimes they do something of slight interest

8. "Honey" - Bobby Goldsboro; made me want to get better on the guitar, just so I can play this to my wife's chagrin

9. "I Beg Your Pardon" - Kon Kan; an absolute forgotten synthpop gem (for fans of Information Society)

10. "Look Into the Heart Now" - Clark; this is acieeeeeeed!

11. "Love Will Come" - Maps; like a lost new wave 12" remix, but brand new

12. "A Man Without Love" - Englebert Humperdinck; from the Tony Soprano singing movie, Romance & Cigarettes

13. "Mrs. Cold" - Kings of Convenience come up with the best album titles, like Declaration of Dependence and Quiet Is the New Loud

14. "Party in the U.S.A." - Miley Cyrus; so there I am, watching a boxing match with a bunch of border patrol agents (friends of a friend), and this comes on and "I put my hands up" - not really, but one of the guys with kids was able to tell me who was singing

15. "Quarantined" - Atlas Sound; lead singer of Deerhunter

16. "There's a Kind of Hush" - Herman's Hermits; my most recent drive-in intermission music rediscovery

17. "This Is Home" - Bad Lieutenant; lead singer of New Order doing what sounds a missing track from the new Echo & the Bunnymen album (which could've benefitted from this)

18. "This Is It" - Kenny Loggins; no, not the song from the Michael Jackson documentary, but it almost sounds like it could be in some places

19. "Your Love" - The Outfield; '80s one-hit wonder

20. "11th Dimension" - Julian Casablancas; lead singer of The Strokes gets all Andrew W.K.

Prog to Krautrock to Power Pop

Ever since I saw Jack Black write it on the chalkboard in School of Rock (2003), I've been familiar with the musical term "progressive rock." I inferred that it was from the '70s and harder than The Carpenters but different from heavy metal. Then last month I read about a series of collaborations between Matthew Sweet and Bangles singer Susanna Hoffs called Under the Covers, with versions of their favorite songs from the '70s. The reviews for that exposed me to the term "power pop," which I had heard before to describe Weezer, but this time I learned that it was also a reaction against "prog rock" - still just as hard but much shorter and more melodic. (Think Cheap Trick, which I recently got back into, but by way of The Beach Boys, The Byrds and The Who.) Next I looked up the proper definition of "prog" and it turned out to be a natural progression from the psychadelic rock I got into last year. It was inevitable that a 17min. song like "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," complete with an organ solo that resembles "God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman" and tribal drums would be followed up by longer rock songs, more virtuoso solos and exotic influences. Seeing as how I don't especially like the organ and I can't stand opera rock, it should come as no surprise that I was never destined to be a fan of prog. I'm just glad to finally have a name to apply to artists I've always despised (Pink Floyd, Rush and Styx) and my research hasn't been a complete waste (hence the 18 songs listed below, which fit nicely on an 80min. CD).

My Picks for Prog (epic rock leaning toward classical, electronic and/or world music)
1. "Tuesday Afternoon" (1967) - The Moody Blues; strings and a flute solo
2. "Hocus Pocus" (1971) - Focus; yodeling and a whistling solo
3. "Carry On Wayward Son" (1976) - Kansas; crazy organ
4. "Los Endos" (1976) - Genesis; instrumental track
5. "Time Again" (1982) - Asia; lead singer from King Crimson, drummer from Emerson, Lake & Palmer, guitarist from Yes and keyboardist from The Buggles ("Video Killed the Radio Star")

6. "Top of the World" (1988) - Jon Anderson; falsetto vocals from the lead singer of Yes; check these lyrics for a taste of some serious prog:

"Watching like a tiger
Mystic like a unicorn
Water, see the great whale
Skyward, are you listening?
Do shine, it's a gift you're reaching
Day to day, you touch me
Like a vision, we fly to the sky
For the very first time"

7. "Virus" (1997) - Brand X; jazz fusion "jam" band that eventually replaced ex-Genesis drummer Phil Collins with ex-Gong drummer Pierre Moerlen

My Picks for Krautrock (basically ambient, noise and post-rock from before those terms were coined)
8. "Ultima Thule" (1971) - Tangerine Dream; Krautrock meets "sympho-rock" (the original name for prog) then later leads to synth pop
9. "I'm So Green" (1972) - Can; like "It's Your Thing" covered by Beck; other tracks from the same album have covered by Sonic Youth, sampled by Kanye West and generally touted by Pavement
10. "Giggy Smile" (1974) - Faust; blues with a bit of a surf sound and a saxophone solo

My Picks for Power Pop (otherwise known as that stuff they play in movies)
11. "Go All the Way" (1972) - Rasberries; initially banned in the U.K. for its suggestive lyrics; used in the movie, Almost Famous
12. "My Sharona" (1979) - The Knack; from the Reality Bites soundtrack
13. "I've Done Everything for You" (1981) - Rick Springfield; featuring Van Halen singer, Sammy Hagar
14. "A Million Miles Away" (1983) - The Plimsouls; from the Valley Girl movie soundtrack
15. "There She Goes" (1990) - The La's; from the So I Married an Axe Murderer soundtrack
16. "Waiting for Somebody" (1992) - Paul Westerberg; lead singer of The Replacements; composed and performed the score for the movie, Singles
17. "Til I Hear It from You" (1995) - Gin Blossoms; from the Empire Records soundtrack
18. "Not Where It's At" (1997) - Del Amitri; standing in for The Lemonheads, R.E.M. and all the other '90s power pop bands that aren't included here (though they're probably more similar in sound to Toad the Wet Sprocket or The Wallflowers)