Welcome to Ronsonville: The Blog

Hey there. How ya doing. Relaxed? Need a refill? That's great....

Thanks for coming by -- there's a lot to check out around here and hopefully the posts will start becoming a little more frequent. My suggestion is that if you're a fan of Daniel Powter and that "Bad Day" song, you start at the beginning...

The beard article that's reffed here in a couple of places can be found here.

But lemme know what you think and thanks for stoppin' by...

Anti-Artist of the Week, 4/27

Daniel Powter

So you had a bad day, hm? I have too, a lot of 'em, but I never wrote a crappy pop song about it. At first I was encouraged to learn that the number one selling song on iTunes was not some shlocky, humps-related nonsense. Then, after being forced to hear this overearnest, mediocre, instant adult contemporary classic 1,100 times, I realized there was something far more sinister at play. Like "Everybody Hurts" and "Don't Worry, Be Happy" before it, the song is so annoyingly generic and universal, that it loses any personal impact it could possibly have.

Are people seriously thinking "Whoa, he's singing about bad days. I'VE had a bad day. How did he get into my head!? Time to purchase!" Please, someone explain this to me. Also, will someone else please yank that dumb hat off his head? Double thanks.

Next week, I promise to be fawning over someone I actually like again. Promise!

Meeting sketches 1

I have a tendancy to doodle/draw during meetings. Crude, but occasionally interesting, I have no public outlet for this skill, so I've decided to post the more bizarre/less embarrassing ones here. Here's a modest tribute to Tom Cruise (and the new TomKat baby) via some tangent I was on a few weeks ago:


It says so little, and yet, so much.

Random Artist of the Week, 4/20

Tom Vek

I just bought Tom Vek's first CD (We Have Sound) used this week. I had heard C-C (You Set The Fire In Me) a few times in random places, and finally the song got stuck in my head. I went straight to my local record store (Shake It) and picked it up like some sort of zombie. Nonetheless, the CD is great. A mix of LCD Soundsystem, Beck and the Talking Heads (if that's possible), but also very original. As most of his reviews point out, this guy's got great potential. I beg of you to check it out.

Key song(s): The one-two punch of "C-C " and "I Ain't Saying My Goodbyes." These songs make up for any shortcomings on "We Have Sound." "The Lower The Sun" is a highlight too...

Web site: www.tomvek.tv/

Random Artist of the Week, 4/13

I've decided in order to keep up on this blog, I should start having regular features. This week I'm starting a "Random Artist of the Week." You'll quickly understand the reason for this name.

Quick shout out to my sister Angie who celebrates a big birthday today. Happy Birthday, Ang!

And now, this week's Random Artist...

Fatlip

I first got into Fatlip through watching the Spike Jonze documentary "What's Up, Fatlip?" which was basically Spike talking to Fatlip between takes for the video shoot for the song of the same name. A few years (try 5) passed and finally I heard that the long-awaited Fatlip album "The Loneliest Punk" came out on CD in 2005. It turns out the CD is worth the wait, a lot of it is a perfect breakdown of the mind of an artist who can't create art. Great stuff...

Key song: It still doesn't get better than "What's Up, Fatlip?" Though "Writer's Block" is good too...

Key lyric: “"I'm sort of like a dweeb, but that don't sell / I've never been shot or been to jail / But I'm beginning to wish I had been / Just to put it down in a pad with a pen," Writer's Block

Web site: www.myspace.com/fatlipmusic

Forever drawing monkeys

Here's part of one of the projects I've been working on recently. A kinda weird and very inside joke t-shirt for my dad and his friends involving monkeys. It took a loooong time to put it all together (the final project features 8 monkeys doing various things), but once I finally got used to the idea, it came together pretty quickly. So, enjoy this sneak peak, and if you see a group of people in California wearing matching monkey shirts, that's probably something I did...exciting, eh?

An Open Letter to...

...indie rock bands with “wolf” in their name (i.e., Wolf Parade, Wolf Eyes Wolfmother, AIDS Wolf, etc.):

I'm not going to buy your CDs or listen to your music. Pick a new word. Thanks for understanding!

Your friend,
Ronson

Ronson Slagle: Trendsetter?

So, shortly after my beard column was posted online, I find this story in the New York Times. That's right, folks -- Ralph Lauren models now have big, bushy red beards. So hot!

Belated Internet appearances...

Aside from this blog (which I swear I'll tell people about soon), I've also done a little writing lately that has sneaked it's way to the web for tens to see. This would be a column I wrote a few weeks ago about the difficulty of beard living. It fared pretty well, although a few people seemed not to get the joke.

Anyway, enjoy! And comment if you like. I tended to prefer a "no feedback" policy on my Web site, but I don't think that was necessarily a good move. I like hearing about what works and what doesn't. For example, meandering posts like this one? Probably don't work...

Top 20 of 2005

As a kickoff to this site, I thought I'd give some exciting info that I usually would put on my Web site, just to let you know I mean business. So that info will be my Top CDs for 2005, which I've heard through various online rumors, the blogosphere has been clamoring for:

1 Sufjan Stevens • Illinois
No shock here. I've already slobbered over this CD in various places and very publicly in CiN Weekly, where my recommendation could've gotten you a dollar off the disc! (Sorry this was, like, two months ago now).

2 Kanye West • Late Registration
Seems like I'm always onto new things, but I still go back and listen to this one every once in awhile. These top 2 discs held my attention the longest in 2005...

3 LCD Soundsystem • LCD Soundsystem
My personal favorite dance record of the year.

4 The Decemberists • Picaresque
I couldn't get enough of this CD in mid-2005, saw them live and was very impressed. I went back and picked up the previous Decemberists discs based on how well I liked this one and I was not disappointed...

5 Stephen Malkmus • Face the Music
There were so many good CDs in 2005 that I felt didn't get the kudos they deserved. This one, Low's The Great Destroyer, Edan's Beauty and the Beat and Ladytron's Witching Hour, just to name a few. I honestly think this is S.M.'s best work since Pavement split...

6 The White Stripes • Get Behind Me Satan
I loved this CD. I saw it as a smack in the face to all the mainstream media that supported them through the Elephant phase of their career, but I'm probably being a little dramatic. I liked it better than Elephant, which seems a little overrated to me in retrospect. No one knew what to make of it. Spin gave it a B- or something when it came out, but by the end of the year, it made their "Best of '05" list. Any band that can pull that off is all right in my book...

7 Common • Be
Check out "The Corner," that's all I can say. Perfect combination of soul and hip-hop. Plus, if you can add John Mayer to a song and not get me annoyed, that's a pretty impressive feat.

8 Sleater-Kinney • The Woods
When I first got this CD, I have to admit, I was a little scared of it. Stripped away were the pop sounds of their previous 2 CDs (All Hands On The Bad One and One Beat). This was completely hard rock. Once I made it through a couple of times though, I couldn't stop listening to it...

9 Spoon • Gimme Fiction
Spoon changed their sound a bit with this CD and I think they're all the better for it. I can't tell you how many people were surprised (that would be "good surprised") when I played "I Turn My Camera On" and told them it was Spoon. I think bands that stick around for awhile these days realize reinvention is key (see S-K above too)...

10 Dangerdoom • The Mouse and The Mask
This is the other disc I recommended for CiN Weekly, largely because it's the polar opposite of the serious and, at times, depressing tone of Illinois. The CD is fun, upbeat and funny (albeit in a weird way). It terms of rankings, it always seems that things that move you always beat out things that make you laugh, but I definitely listened to it as much as I listened to Illinois. This is the disc that made me realize MF Doom is a genius...

And the rest...
12 Edan • Beauty and the Beat
13 Low • The Great Destroyer
14 Gorillaz • Demon Days
15 Ladytron • Witching Hour
16 Franz Ferdinand • You Could Have It So Much Better
17 Annie • Anniemal
18 Beck • Guero
19 The Go! Team • Thunder! Lightning! Strike!
20 The Cloud Room • The Cloud Room*

*The 20 spot is always hard for me. It seems like I have 19 CDs that I really like every year and then about 20 others that are good to decent. I selected The Cloud Room based largely on the single (Hey Now Now) and their apparent ability to have crafted an entire album around it. After reading a recent article about how the album came about (and how this may be the last we hear of the Cloud Room), I chose it over good albums by Death Cab, Queens of the Stone Age, Bloc Party, M.I.A., Maxïmo Park and Broken Social Scene...so that explains that.

So there you have it! Wasn't that fun? That's all for my music snobbery today...if you made it this far, thanks for reading!

What The World Needs Now...

...is another blog.

Don't you think?

Consider this a rarely-updated companion piece to my highly-successful, rarely-updated Web site, Ronsonville.com. Much like my site did/does, this blog will focus on my random music and art interests as well as an assortment weird crap.

It'll also be much easier to update, which accomodates my other hobby: Being lazy.

So, let's get started! Um, maybe tomorrow. I'm tired...