A little light music for the end of the world

While on the way to a bloggers' get-together this afternoon, I was listening to All Things Considered on NPR and heard a mention of an event called All Tomorrow's Parties. Naturally my mind jumped right to the Velvet Underground song and the William Gibson novel, but I knew there was something else there, something I should have remembered, something I was forgetting. But what? And then, when they described it as "Alt-Rock Summer Camp," I knew: This was where My Bloody Valentine played! Would they mention them?

Mention them they did:

The weekend saw sets by numerous bands, including Mogwai, Meat Puppets and Lightning Bolt, as well as the first U.S. performance in 16 years by My Bloody Valentine, which closed the weekend in spectacular (and deafening) fashion.

"It was good that airfield-grade earplugs were handed out free, because My Bloody Valentine's set was the loudest music I've ever experienced. You didn't so much hear it as feel it. It was like getting a full-body deep-tissue massage with sound waves. Somehow the Stardust Ballroom didn't collapse under the assault."

I had the sublime pleasure of hearing bits of "Only Shallow" and "Soon" on my car radio. On NPR! As I've already posted the video for the former, here is the video for "Soon":



The get-together was quite nice, and I got to meet a few local bloggers I've never met before. Inevitably, among the discussions of politics, blogging, and athletic competitions, there was some discussion of the recent/long-coming economic meltdown. On the way home I was treated to the whole of President Bush's speech on the crisis. For the first three-quarters of it, as he announced an overview of what had happened and how we had gotten here, it was like listening to a school filmstrip presentation narrated by Andy Griffith - probably not the sort of effect a speech on a major financial disaster delivered by our first MBA President should have gone* had.

Both the discussions at the bar and the speech ands it the* and the post-speech on-air analysis emphasized the point that this disaster is incredibly, incredibly huge. Having already decided I would be posting the My Bloody Valentine video, I figured I may as well pick a few other videos to post.

Everclear, "Santa Monica"
A favorite of the band 3 Brix Shy.

We can live beside the ocean
leave the fire behind
swim out past the breakers
and watch the world die



U2, "Until the End of the World"
Not an end of the world song. A song from the point of view of one New Testament character, sung to another.

In the Garden I was playing the tart
I kissed your lips and broke your heart
and you
you were acting like it was the end of the world...



Here's a song by The Cure I've never heard before, called "The End of the World":



UPDATE, 9/25/08: Here's a song I was trying to remember yesterday but couldn't. Fortunately I was able to hum it well enough to be able to squeeze enough lyrics out of an older officemate to seed a Google search: "The End of the World" by Skeeter Davis:



I was really trying to find REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)", but the only official version I could find is non-embeddable. But I did find this version, which seems somewhat more appropriate at the moment:



So. Have a pleasant end of the world! See you tomorrow!


*More proof that I should not blog while tired.