The Foo Fighters Greatest Hits

Under the incredible pressure of Brad bugging me, I've buckled and decided to contribute creatively to this blog once again.

An album that as recently caught my attention is The Foo Fighter's new Greatest Hits, recently mauled by Brad, who apparently judges records solely their its artwork. Being a huge Foos fan, I quickly snatched this album up, played it over and over again and finally got sick of it and dropped it for my new Tom Petty Greatest Hits. This was not due to my short attention span as much as swiftness with which I realized how sick I was of their over played now almost generic hits. This isnt a reflection of Dave Grohl's musical skill, but, quite frankly, theres only so many times you can listen to "Best Of You" before you get really bored with it.

Whille still worth the money, the album isnt really anything special.

6/10 Stars
Highlights: New track "Word Forward", Acoustic "Everlong", DVD of music videos

Nickelback Trivia

Coming up to one month ago a nice guy by the name of Kevin posted a video featuring all the Wikipedia vandalism of Nickelback’s page on CollegeHumor.com, which you can view here (WARNING: Video contains foul language, homophobia, racial slurs, and Nickelback music). Well, at about 17 seconds into the video there is a list of ‘Nickelback Trivia’, which the video says goes on for a while. While, the first few proved entertaining enough to inspire me to put on my investigative reporter hat and drudge my way through the Wikipedia page history for Nickelback. This actually proved to be a relatively easy task as the video shows the date (June 16, 2006) that the page was vandalised. Having found it and read it, I think that there a good handful of decent ‘facts’ and since it is obvious that the author put a fair amount of time and effort into writing this list, it should not be lost forever.This list actually reminds me a lot of the Chuck Norris meme, but not quite as funny. So below is the full list of facts. All 42 of them.

Nickelback facts:

- Historians used to agree the Crusades were the most prolonged suffering in human history, until Nickel back released a second single.

- The vacuum created by Nickleback's sucking has more force than a black hole.

- The war in Iraq is the result of Nickelback

- Nickelback is so bad they retroactively caused the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and JFK

- Chad and Mike Kroeger's parents had no children who lived

- In order to make Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle seem to suck less they included Nickelback on the soundtrack

- Nickleback has only ever written the music to one song, they keep changing the lyrics to it

- Prolonged exposure to Nickelback's music has been known to cause unintentional mullet growth

- Though God promised never to end the world with a flood again if he were to solely because of the existence of Nickleback could you blame him?

- In the southern hemisphere Nickleback's suck rotates counter clockwise

- The popularity of Nickelback is a conspiracy by the Bush administration in order to have someone worse than themselves in the spotlight

- Congress has recently passed legislation that the word Nickelback will now replace the word atrocity in the English language

- The United Nations has now adopted the universal word for toilet to be Nickleback, in other words if you visit a foreign country and need a bathroom you will be able to ask, regardless of the native language, where is a Nickelback.

- Nickelback, and everyone thought Limp Bizkit was as bad as it got.

- Korn will now be putting a disclaimer label on all of their CD's, it will read: "At least we are not Nickelback" The rest of the record industry is thinking about doing the same, in order to stimulate the Nickelback induced slump of CD sales

- Downloading a Nickelback song is considered downloading a computer virus

- Downloading Nickelback songs takes twice as long as regular ones because you are fighting against the suck

- Doctors are considering changing the name of haemorrhoids to Nickelback

- Chad Kroger once did a duet with the fat guy from Saliva, proving that he could suck on his own as well as with the band

- Should Nickelback perish in a plane crash, choke on their own vomit, experience a drug overdose of one or all members the collective music press has decided that it should be treated as a reason to celebrate, Don McLean has a comeback song on deck for just such an event the chorus will go "The day the suck died"

- Broken vacuums can be fixed simply by playing Nickelback to them

- Evolution is now being debated by our culture because Nickleback has actually caused it to De-evolve

- Nickelback tried out to be the soundtrack for hell, but even the Devil felt it caused to much suffering

- A Harvard Study showed after 5 minutes of exposure to Nickelback an average person loses 5 IQ points and feels compelled to move into a mobile home

- Nickelback's songs are so generic that when played backwards they sound exactly the same

- When Chad sings "Oh God I. . .I" it is not written in the music, it is because he is in pain from making his own music

- When questioned whether or not they would rather have their their sentences commuted yet be forced to listen to one Nickleback song per day 95% of death row inmates chose the needle (The other 5% had been executed before the question was asked)

- Republicans and Democrats, the right and the left, now finally have an issue they can come together on, Nickelback sucks

- The Iraqi insurgency doesn't necessarily want America out of Iraq, they just don't want us to make it safe for Nickelback to play there

- A prosecutor once suggested Nickelback music as a punishment for murder, the judge called it cruel and unusual and threw the case out

- A disclaimer was sent out by Nickelback's record label urging radio to avoid playing more than one song by Nickelback per hour, saying prolonged exposure did nothing to a person physically but made listeners wish it did so that the music would end sooner

- America wants to close the border with Canada, only to keep Nickelback out

- Canada, by comparison, is always given as an example of how good America could be, they created Nickleback. I think we will stick with poor healthcare and a hyperactive media, just for the prevention of another Nickelback

- Is it just me or does Nickelback's fifteen minutes of fame seem to be dragging on and on and on. . .

- When their fifteen minutes are up and they are playing the grandstand at the local fair won't it be a new low in carnival entertainment?

- Nickleback's "Behind the Music" will be studied for ages by physicists and astronomers to see how such an incredible vacuum was created

- Nickelback makes people miss the cold war, the threat of looming Armageddon seems necessary in a world where their music gets airplay

- If Nickelback is ever rushed to the emergency room the doctor treating will have an ethical dilemma like no other, does one treat someone who's life will continue to cause the suffering of countless others?

-The Chinese still practice communism only to control the free speech of Nickelback

- Nickelback must be segregated from the other CD's in the sales bins, any CD stored close to a Nickelback CD will immediately begin to suck

- A recent survey showed that even the deaf know that Nickelback sucks

- Chad Kroger is considered mentally challenged in 6 countries based solely on appearance

To help show your hatred of Nickelback then you can join this group here.
Or if, conversely, you love Nickelback, you can join this group here, and help them reach their goal. Only 68,931 people to go. Good luck!

Déjà Entendu

No, this is not about Brand New or their 2003 album that shares this post’s name. It is about Owl City (aka Adam Young) and the awful feeling of déjà entendu (French for already heard) felt while listening to his surprise No.1 hit, ‘Fireflies’. I came across this guy a wee while ago, but the negative press revolving around him and his second album Ocean Eyes quickly repelled me. However, recently I have overheard people talking about how good Owl City is at school, (although someone was referring to it as “Owl Town”) so I thought I may as well check out his song ‘Fireflies’, which was the crux of all the conversations being held, and, I presume, is the catalyst for this sudden explosion in his popularity.

So, curious, I Googled my way to his MySpace page and played the top song - ‘Fireflies’. I instantly received the same I feeling I still get whenever I hear Ke$ha’s awful new song ‘Tik Tok’ (whose opening 30-something seconds sound almost exactly the same as Uffie’s contribution to my least favourite Justice song ever - ‘Ttthhheee Pppaaarrrtttyy’), the feeling of déjà entendu.

The Postal Service’s Give Up, which to this date remains the only album from Ben Gibbard’s highly successful team-up with Jimmy Tamborello. It is a perfect piece of synthpop, and is a testament to both Gibbard’s wispy vocals and Tamborello’s musical production skills. But of course, you already knew that. Hell, anyone with even the slightest inclination towards music knew that. So why does Mr. Young think that it is acceptable to plagiarise their sound so blatantly it puts Hone Harawira to shame. This isn’t influenced by The Postal Service. This is Postal Service on a really bad day. Yet, sadly, this song is Number 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100, which can probably be attributed to ignorance or apathy, or both.

So you can hear for yourself that I am not kidding when this song completely steals the Postal Service’s style, below it is featured next to Postal Service’s most famous song, ‘Such Great Heights’. Enjoy: