Ollie Byrd

new songs

2011-12-23T12:02:00.001-08:00

Ollie Byrd - Barrel O' Fun (Streaming is Free)

2011-03-20T21:52:00.001-07:00

Ollie Byrd is not a band. He’s not a plane either. He may or may not be superman. What I do know about Ollie Byrd is that he was the singer and bass player of a Seattle band called Yeek Yak Air Force before deciding he wanted to go the four-track singer songwriter route. That route took him to Brooklyn where he traded in his four-track for a computer, recorded some songs, joined the Stereotype Records collective, released the album Barrel O’Fun, and most importantly, asked me to be his Myspace friend. I accepted, then spent the rest of the night trying to scrounge up as much Ollie Byrd music as I could find via the many tubes of the internets. I suppose Myspace is good for something after all.

Arrives A Girl will grab you right away, as Byrd takes an ambient yet driving guitar riff and combines it with electronic drums and layered vocals bearing a striking sense of immediacy. The hook is in the stabbing and bending guitar notes as they alternate with an urgent chorus of Byrd’s many voices. It is in these many voices where you will first hear Byrd’s obvious influences, creating a familiar sound that is unrefined, expressive, and sometimes imperfect with no sense of restraint or shame.

Musically, Byrd excels at creating a full band sound by himself, embracing his influences while noticeably striving for something to call his own. The songs are broad, well structured, extremely animated, and sometimes adventurous. They progress, revert, and often explode delightfully at the end. This, combined with Byrd’s new-millennium yet down-home production style, result in songs that are raw, stirring, and unpredictable. The potential here is astounding.

A resonating, pounding rhythm propels Couple Skate as it’s bouncy intro gives way to a high hat heavy understated verse, Mascis-like growl and all, before reappearing for a screamer of a chorus. After the second verse however, the song bypasses the chorus in lieu of a bridge to a Zepplinesque layered guitar offensive which carries it home. Running is at its core a very simple song that also showcases Byrd’s guitar proficiency in both the noodle-ing melody and the mellow solos. You are treated to two songs in one, in an A Day In The Life sort of way, with an Irish ditty sandwiched between matching guitar solos. A simple beginning gives way to a musical escapade peaking with an infectious sing-a-long ending. Wendy takes a crisp, dissonant, acoustic guitar melody straight out of summer of love and morphs it into three distinct parts, each with their own catchy lyrics, before ending with Crazy Horse fury over repetitive one note strumming. It’s a mess and I love it.

Chaka Khan, shows Byrd is clearly sincere in his songwriting while trying not to take himself or each individual song too seriously. It sounds as if Kurt Cobain had fallen for a Jenny Lewis type instead of Courtney Love and gave birth to a tongue in cheek downtempo love ballad. It’s a beautifully crafted song, but the comedic random lyrics and “Chaka Khan” whispers make it a goofball classic. The boisterous sing-along Electricity continues the fun with quirky repetitive lyrics delivered like a choir of Shannon Hoons and climaxing in recurring screams of “Wake Up!”. In fact, most of Byrd’s songs have a certain sense of underlying, if not overt, merriment. My favorite, Prozac, blends a thumping dance beat, staccato guitar rhythm, and indecipherable harmonized vocals creating a drunken square dance that erupts at the end into an orgy of screaming and slapping. If this is what Prozac makes you feel like, I’m going to start taking it recreationally. I suggest you do the same.
- Jason Miller, thespacelab.tv

more ollie:

33 % of new album complete. :)

2011-02-13T17:30:00.000-08:00

50 Best Pop Songs of The DECADE!

2010-12-22T20:01:00.000-08:00

1) Johnny Cash - HURT

2) M.I.A. - PAPER PLANES

3) Jay-Z ft. Alicia Keys - EMPIRE STATE OF MIND

4) Eminem - STAN

5) Blink 182 - I MISS YOU

6) Gwen Stefani - HOLLABACK GIRL

7) Yeah Yeah Yeahs - MAPS

8) Outkast - MS. JACKSON

9) Macy Gray - I TRY

10)System of a Down - CHOP SUEY

11) Kanye West - Heartless
12) Santigold - L.E.S. Artistes
13) Jay Z ft. UGK - Big Pimpin
14) Natastha Bedingfield - These Words
15) Rihanna - Umbrella
16) No Doubt - Underneath it All
17) Outkast - Hey Ya
18) T.I. - Whatever You Like
19) Beyonce - Single Ladies
20) Outkast - So Fresh, So Clean
21) Kelis - Milkshake
22) Eminem - Mockingbird
23) 311 - Amber
24) No Doubt - Hey Baby
25) No Doubt - Hella Good
26) Eminem - Cleaning Out My Closet
27) Snoop Dogg - Drop It Like It's Hot
28) My Chemical Romance - Welcome to the Black Parade
29) Kanye West ft. Jamie Foxx - Gold Digger
30) D-12 - My Band
31) Kid Cudi - Day N' Nite
32) Interpol - Evil
33) Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc.
34) Lady GaGa - Paparazzi
35) Alicia Keys - No One
36) Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication
37) Arcade Fire - Wake Up
38) Tool - Schism
39) Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
40) Vanessa Carlton - A Thousand Miles
41) Modest Mouse - Float On
42) Ludacris - Move Bitch
43) Miley Cyrus - The Climb
44) Soulja Boy - Crank That
45) Avenged Sevenfold - Bat Country
46) Jimmy Eat World - The Middle
47) Natasha Bedingfield - Unwritten
48) Avril Lavigne - I'm With You
49) Missy Elliot - Get Ur Freak On
50) Sean Kingston - Beautiful Girls

Top 13 Pop Songs of 2010

2010-12-20T16:49:00.000-08:00

1) Alicia Keys - Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart
2) Lady Gaga - Alejandro
3) Far East Movement - Like a G6
4) Drake - Over
5) Nicki Minaj - Your Love
6) Jason DeRulo - Whatcha Say
7) One Republic - All the Right Moves
8) B.O.B. featuring Haley Williams of Paramore - Airplanes
9) Soulja Boy - Pretty Boy Swag
10) Avenged Sevefold - Nightmare
11) Eminem ft. Lil Wayne - No Love
12) Cali Swag District - Teach Me How to Dougie
13) Mumford and Sons - Little Lion Man

2010 saw the rise of New Hip Hop courtesy of Lil Wayne, Drake, and Nicki Minaj. New Hip Hop is a big deal. Its got rap, rhythm, and flow - but it is also deeply imaginative and playful. The machismo of hip hop past is out - and imagination is in. To me that seems an important development in culture. I wish there was good rock music succeeding in pop, but there isn't. Avenged Sevenfold knows how to play instruments, and they are good students so they got a place. 2010 was the year of Young Money.

ollie's best and worst pop songs of 2009

2009-12-16T18:36:00.000-08:00

some of these may be from 2008, whoops..

Best Pop Songs of 2009

1. Jay Z ft. Alicia Keys - Empire State of Mind
2. Kid Cudi - Day N' Nite
3. Jay Z ft. Rihanna and Kanye West - Run this Town
4. Lily Allen - The Fear
5. Kanye West - Heartless
6. NE-YO - Closer
7. Alice in Chains - Check my Brain
8. Shakira - She Wolf
9. Katy Perry - Waking up in Vegas
10. The Veronicas - Untouched
11. Ting Tings - That's not My Name
12. Miley Cyrus - The Climb
13. Miley Cyrus - Party in the U.S.A.
14. T.I. featuring Justin Timberlake - Dead and Gone
15. Lady GaGa - Paparazzi
16. Linkin Park - New Divide
17. Kings of Leon - Use Somebody
18. Michael Franti / Spearhead - Say Hey (I Love You)

Worst Pop Songs of 2009

1. Muse - Uprising: did we really need another spirit in the sky?
2. 3OH!3 - Don't Trust Me: ugggh!
3. Black Eyed Peas - Meet Me Half Way: copying Cyndi Lauper's time after time verbatim in your pro tools session is about as lame as you can get!
4. Owl City - Fireflies: sounds cool... but the creative impulse is a bad copy of a bad copy.
5. Black Eyed Peas - I Got a Feeling: the lyrics and raps in this song are painfully decontextual... sounds like bad kareoke to mario brothers music.
6. Pink - Sober: does anyone really want to hear anything else about pinks hyper annoying personal life? the up high down low too slow chorus is straight out of the high five game.
7. Green Day - 21 Guns: all the young dudes carry the news.who sings that? mott the hoople?
8. Foo Fighters - Wheels: who really wanted to hear someone copy tom petty's learning to fly?
9. The Fray - Never say Never: these guys squeeze the last drop of juice out of the dead horse of radiohead... already sucked to the bone by coldplay et al.
10. Cobra Starship - Good Girls Go Bad: who let these guys out of the dance club?
11. Kelly Clarkson - Already Gone: did we really nead someone to copy Beyonce's copy of Rihanna's Umbrella?
12. U2 - Get on Your Boots: here, U2 sinks to a new low, and plagiarizes the already lame Escape Club's Wild Wild West.
13. All American Rejects - Gives You Hell: these guys put chumbuwumba's tubthumping in their protools session and copied it.
14. Jay Sean - Down
15. Pitbull - I Know You Want Me

Jimmy Carter and "The Race Card"

2009-09-16T07:56:00.000-07:00

This concept... "the race card" seems to me to be a joke.

Look at the recent events around Glenn Beck's 9/12 movement and the other "tea party protests" concocted by professional conservative lobbying firms.

It goes like this: Glenn Beck - who says on Fox News, "the president hates white people" or something like that - has been involved in a campaign in which the general gist is "Socialist/ Nazi/Fascist/Aliens are taking over OUR country and THEY must be stopped!!!!" He and others, mostly on Fox News, scream and moan and wail and evoke much emotionality.... Then they tout - as a path to salvation from alien invader/ controllers of the Goverment Takeover of our lives - these protests and tea parties (organized by life long professional conservative lobbying firms and promoted by Fox News) as the means of voicing their outrage toward the alien invasion.

People at the most recent rally (the 9/12 event)hold mass produced signs applauding the death Ted Kennedy, portraying the president as a voodoo witch doctor and adding the hitler mustache to his upper lip, and as the joker from Batman comics. And those are just he mass produced signs. The more authentically "grass roots" posters have comments about the president leading a secret takeover of the USA on behalf of Islam, comments about the president wanting to kill people's grandparents, and much more insane and disgusting forms of schizophrenic paranoia not worth mentioning.

Then, extremely cool headed, rational people... like Jimmy Carter.. simply state the obvious: Race is still very much a problem in this country, and many white people cannot accept that a black man is president.

Next, the people who support Glenn Beck and his pseudo "grass roots movement" accuse these staters of the obvious as "playing the race card."

How can you criticize this "race card critique" on rational grounds? Isn't it just a joke? A laughable escaping of flatulence? It's like after the levee breaks in New Orleans.... Somebody says "The rains from Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed the levee." And then Glenn Beck and his followers say.. "Oh that guys just playing the 'weather card'."