I've been rumbled! If you look at my YouTube profile, you can often see the playlists for upcoming days, because I'll write some of these ahead of time. It's the only way to make sure I reliably have stuff on the weekend, for instance. I figure, hey, it's not like these things are timely. WHAT ABOUT THAT CURRENT EVENT I TOTALLY KNOW ABOUT, HUH?
Run the Jewels, "MEOWRLY (BOOTS Remix)"
Run the Jewels are, after Kendrick Lamar, my favorite rap artists working today. All three of their proper albums (and, in fact, Killer Mike's R.A.P. Music which was more or less Run the Jewels 0) are amazing. Meow the Jewels is not, however, on that list of proper albums.
In case anybody hasn't heard the story: Run the Jewels posted a list of joke luxury items that people could buy at the time of an album release, poking fun at Kickstarter campaigns. One of them, listed for $40,000, was that RtJ would make a remix album using nothing but cat noises. The internet being what it is, some fans whipped up a crowdfunding campaign and came up with the money. Being good sports, RtJ went ahead with it, giving the money to charity and even enlisting some top talent to help them make it.
Alas, the album isn't really any good. While the high concept is amusing, the reality is that it's just dreary. By far, the most amusing thing associated with it is El-P auditioning cats.
TV/TV$, "Give Me TV Or Give Me Death"
Punk band out of California, which I probably bought due to some offhand mention in Maximum Rocknroll or the like. Apparently MRR still exists! Who knew? Anyway, it's, um, very punk? I know nothing about the band and there's basically nothing on them on the internet.
TonyAll, "Special To Me"
It's a little confusing, but let's untangle this. The Descendents (previously, previously) were mostly Milo Aukerman and Bill Stevenson, along with a couple of other people on guitar and bass. Those people rotated, but the first bassist was Tony Lombardo. When Milo Aukerman left the band, the remaining three people recruited a new singer (Dave Smalley of Dag Nasty) and kept going under the name All. The confusing bit is that All was also the name of the last Descendents album.
Anyway, All kept playing, changing their singer every couple of albums. Eventually, Tony Lombardo wanted to do an album, and he got back together with his old friends to record it, under the name TonyAll, which put out one album. OK, how is the album? Not really very good. It's all basically just pretty simple pop songs, not that much of a spark.
Booker T. and the MGs, "Rinky Dink"
More sunny instrumental soul from Booker T. and the MGs, highlighted by that little figure at the end of the first couple verses.
Ron Sexsmith, "Don't Ask Why"
I picked up this album (Blue Boy) after reading a couple good reviews, and I found it pretty forgettable. Sexsmith has had a very long career, doing the singer/songwriter thing, but I don't really have much more insight than that.
Sometimes, YouTube's search capability is really frustrating. Search for 'Ron Sexsmith "Don't Ask Why"', and you won't actually get the video I linked, even though that's the name of the video! I had to add in the album name, and still scroll through the results. Annoying.