Music Shuffle Monday 07.26.10

Welcome to the 2:15 am insomniac edition of Music Shuffle Monday! Yeah, I can't sleep (which happens often the night before I have something major/exciting/important to do the next day - in this case, our first ultrasound at 11am today!) so I decided to go ahead post this, in hopes that staring at a computer screen will at least make my eyes tired enough to help me fall asleep...

1. "Ambulances" by Institute
Institute is basically Bush 2000, as it features Gavin Rossdale and other member of Bush, in the post Bush days (although they recently got back together and are putting a new album out and may possibly even tour again soon - yay!) as well as the infamous Josh Freese (of both A Perfect Circle and mid-2000's touring NiN). They only lasted 1 album though, during my early college days. While the lead single was Bulletproof Skin (featured in the movie Stealth) the rest of the album was pretty good - typical Gavin Rossdale stuff (although I like his band-related stuff better than his solo stuff). Apparently (according to Wiki) Gavin's wife, Ms. Gwen Stefani of No Doubt, is on this track as well, but it doesn't say how - I don't hear any female vocals on this one...

2. "November Rain" by Guns N Roses
This song will always remember of internet boyfriend, as he first played part of it over the phone and I had to go out and by the CD - I fell in love with the piano in this song, as well as the guitar, as internet boyfriend was/is quite the guitarist (he aimed to play as well as Eddie Van Halen and once played me some Van Halen riffs - it was REALLY good). This song is in 3 parts, or acts as some might say. I especially love the part at 2 minutes left of the song, with the piano and guitar and the haunting "don't think that you need somebody? don't you think that you need someone? everybody needs somebody - you're not the only one..." chant. Despite being just shy of 9 minutes, it really is a great, classic rock ballad!

3. "She's Like Heroin" by System of a Down
Off the album Hypnotize, the conclusion to the 2-disc set that was released in 2005, it's a pretty typical song for the album, as it has crazy rhymes that at first sound just stupid, silly or plain comical, but at 2nd glance, it's more of a social commentary. This was a really good 2-disc set and the marketing of it was clever, as it was in 2 parts released about 6 months apart. And I believe I'm mentioned it before, but the packaging... omg I LOVE the designer that came up with the packaging - my mind was blown by the way the 2 separate disc packaging combines into 1 2-disc set. You'd have to see it for yourself but I was just like "wow..." I couldn't get over it - I think I drove my boyfriend at the time nuts at how much I just couldn't get over the packaging when the 2nd disc came out, lol... What can I say, I did go to school for and work as a graphic artist! lol...

4. "Hush" by Deep Purple
While I also love the Kula Shaker faster paced version of this song, you still can't beat the original Deep Purple version. This is one of my favorite classic rock songs - while the lyrics are pretty simple and are repeated several times, the catchy "nah nah-nah nah nah-nah nah nah-nah nah..." is well, catchy!

5. "Boom Boom Pow" by The Black Eyed Peas
I got introduced to the Peas back in like 2003/2004 when their Elephunk CD came out (the first BEP album with Fergie if I recall) as one of the guys I worked with at my college newspaper brought in (when the one guy worked, our listening selection was mostly limited to either Dave Mathews Band or Pearl Jam, while the other guy that was in charge of our department played the same few CDs but they at least consisted of more than 2 bands so there was a little more variety). Anyways, that album grew on me, I got my own copy and I've casually listened to the Black Eyed Peas ever since (haven't bought another album though, I just get the singles I like that I hear on the radio or TV).