Dystopian Dance Party

Tag: david bowie

  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: Memorial Day, 2016-2017

    Well, here we are: for the second consecutive year, we’re turning Memorial Day weekend into a time of remembrance for the many great artists we lost since last May. But because this is still Dystopian Dance Party, and we’re constitutionally incapable of being reverent for more than a few minutes at a time, please be aware that the resulting podcast is about 70% wake, 30% roast (well, maybe 60/40). Just believe us when we tell you it’s all coming from a place of love. Hopefully, while everyone good continues to die and leave us trapped on this smoldering husk of a planet, we can at least entertain you (and ourselves) with our impressions of “The Force M.D.’s Meet the Fat Boys”… R.I.P. to Trisco Pearson. Show notes below.

    (more…)

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download

  • Dystopian New Year’s Party Podcast: Our Favorite Songs of 2016

    So we’re a few days late, but better late than never, right? Here, finally, is our annual New Year’s Party podcast, in which we summarize our favorite songs of the last year as we make way for the new one. It’s a little less self-indulgent than the first one from 2015–by which I mean that it’s only two and a half hours, instead of two hours and 45 minutes. But we actually used real microphones this time, so at least you can hear what we’re saying! Check it out for the good music and eggnog-and-Hennessy-fueled rants; and then check out our extended Spotify and TIDAL playlists for more songs we didn’t have time to talk about, including tracks by A$AP Ferg and Future, A$AP Mob featuring Juicy J, Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne, Trinidad James featuring Mystikal and Lil Dicky, Nite-Funk, JEFF the Brotherhood, Frank Ocean, Mac Miller and Anderson .Paak, D.R.A.M. with Erykah Badu, 6LACK, the Weeknd and Daft Punk, and the Rolling Stones. So here’s to the one thing that made 2016 tolerable–the music–and maybe, just maybe, a 2017 that won’t suck literal ass.

    (more…)

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download

  • Dystopian Video Game Party Podcast: 25 Years of Super Nintendo

    This week marks the 25th anniversary of the North American release of our favorite video game console, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System; so here we are again to share our fuzzy, occasionally embarrassing childhood memories about the games we played when we could have been bettering ourselves or going outside. As usual, check below for notes on music played and things referenced. And play some SNES games, fer Chrissakes! I, for one, think I might fire up EarthBound tonight.

    (more…)

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download

  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: Memorial Day, 2015-2016

    With every passing week, 2016 feels more and more like a never-ending, real-life Grammy Awards tribute montage. We couldn’t even go the six days between recording and posting the podcast without losing another pop music icon: this time, Marshall Jones of the Ohio Players, word of whose death regrettably reached us only after we had finished editing. Clearly, this is a trying time to be a music fan. And, as I’ve found myself saying more than a few times in the past several months, the sheer volume of notable musicians’ deaths starts to feel overwhelming to a small site like ours. I’m not a full-time obituary writer, so even many worthy artists who passed away have inevitably gone unmemorialized.

    That’s why, in the spirit of the real Memorial Day holiday, we’re taking the time to commemorate those the music world has lost since last May. Unfortunately, this will almost certainly be a recurring feature: the cruel realities of the human lifespan, combined with the generational ebb and flow of American popular music, means that things are only going to get worse in the coming years. And sadly, even this tribute isn’t truly exhaustive–even aside from the aforementioned omission of Marshall Jones, we’re only really talking about musicians of whom we have some miniscule level of knowledge, so plenty of important people are still going unmourned (at least by us).  But we did our best, and we at least tried to do everyone justice. Here’s hoping we get a break, at least for a couple more weeks.

    (more…)

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download

  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: Prince, 1958-2016

    If it wasn’t official before, it is now: 2016 is a terrible year for musical icons. Callie and I were blindsided by the news of Prince‘s untimely death last Thursday; it hit us even harder than the news of David Bowie‘s passing back in January (and that, as you might recall, hit us pretty damn hard). It’s difficult to overstate just how much Prince means to both of us. He’s easily our favorite solo artist in all of pop music; check our frequently used tags on Dystopian Dance Party, and you’ll see that he’s the most talked-about topic by some distance. All of which fails to adequately capture the feelings we have for his body of work, and the sense of loss we feel now that he’s gone.

    Unlike with Bowie, we weren’t actually planning on podcasting about Prince this month–but we had to, if only so we could talk through all the emotions we’ve both been feeling for the last week. The podcast we originally recorded earlier in the month, on Nintendo‘s Legend of Zelda series, will be posted eventually, when it all feels a little less meaningless. But for now, dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life…

    (more…)

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download

  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: The Gospel According to Rock ‘n’ Roll

    In American popular music, there’s always been a fine line between the sacred and the secular. On this episode of the Dystopian Dance Party podcast, we talk about a few of the songs for which that line is finer than most: nominally “secular” songs with the lyrical and/or stylistic underpinnings of gospel music. Just in time for Easter weekend!

    As always, show notes are below, along with a Spotify playlist for those of you who want to hear the songs without our standard jibber-jabber.

    (more…)

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download

  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: David Bowie, 1947-2016

    Last week, we decided that our next podcast would be devoted to one of our mutual favorite artists, David Bowie, in celebration of his 69th birthday and the release of his 25th studio album, ★: sort of a more personal companion piece to the career-spanning Bowie guide we published that Friday. We didn’t expect to be recording an elegy.

    Early Monday morning, however, we got the sad news that Bowie was no longer with us. That news irrevocably changed the tone of our tribute, which we recorded on Tuesday night. But it isn’t all solemn mourning (though one of us does cry at one point–no spoilers which one). Instead, the following is a personal reflection on the many ways in which pop music–that tawdry, cheap, commercial entertainment–can shape, and even irrevocably change our lives, through the prism of an entertainer who did just that for both us. We hope you enjoy it!

    (more…)

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download

  • Dystopian New Year’s Party Podcast: Our Favorite Songs of 2015

    Well, here we are, at the cusp of the New Year: that sacred time when bloggers from all over congregate for one last chance to opine about the pop culture year that was. And we’re no exception–even though, as we note in the introduction, we’re barely up for the task, having spent most of 2015 listening to the same Ying Yang Twins records we’d been listening to since 2005. But what is pop-culture blogging, anyway, if not the chance to exercise one’s self-appointed, mostly illusory authority on an unwilling and mostly uncaring audience?

    I originally wanted this inaugural year-in-review podcast to include multiple forms of media, but quite frankly we’re even worse at keeping up with film, television, et. al. than we are at keeping up with music; and besides, seeing as music is 90% of what we write about on Dystopian Dance Party, it kind of makes more sense this way. So here, without further ado, are our favorite songs of 2015. Settle in, because this one’s gonna be even longer and more self-indulgent than usual!

    (more…)

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download