Look, I know that for the most part, if you're reading this blog you're either (a) someone who is actually pretty into music or (b) a close personal friend (hi, Kot! hi, Karl!). But as people who are pretty insane about music know, almost everyone else in this world is not as insane about it as we are. And this is fine. We don't have to force our relatives to accept our gifts of obsolete 7"s and obscure chillwave CDs when really all they wanted was a nice pair of wool socks for lounging around the house (do 95% of mothers really just want these?). ALSO, if you're reading this, you might be scrambling around trying to get in your last minute online orders before it gets too late for shipping.
Hence, I give you this list of awesome "other" things to get for people (which are, in many cases, also made by awesome people). Ready, go:
Heroes of Science
Because, like music, science is another thing some folks seem to get all nerdy and passionate about. I'm guessing someone you have to buy a gift for would be pretty overcome with ironic or non-ironic appreciation of an ornament featuring Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking or Jane Goodall. Collect 'em all to turn your tree into a genetically modified super tree that can calculate complicated physics equations before you can say, "yuletide."
HoS are made by my homies Sharon and Jon and were previously featured here.
Grammar Love Letterpress Cards
Grammar is yet another thing people tend to nerd out about hardcore. I added hardcore to the end of that sentence to avoid a dangling participle. As the child of a couple of people in the journalism business, we actually had a family car named Gerund, which is why I'm really looking forward to pairing some of these with some of my holiday gifts. The cards are beautiful, hilarious and made my friend Kot, to whom I am entrusting the serious deed of pressing my own wedding invitations. To whom. That's right. I said it.
Tunnel Vision
I feel like it's necessary for me to show a little hometown pride here. These mugs and cheese plates are made for New York/New Jersoids or vice versa, or vice versa TWICE EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. IN. BUMPER-to-BUMPER TRAFFIC! The only things I've ever seen that could make getting stuck in the tunnel fun.
Bacon Magnets and Mustache Pen
Fred Flare has set up the most relevant death match of this holiday season: Bacon vs. Mustache. What I'd like to do is call for world peace. Why can't hipsters and jokesters bond together and live in Baconstache harmony? Actually, that does sound pretty gross.
Daria: The Complete Animated Series DVD
Give the gift of 90s sarcasm with this set that everyone in the entire world was waiting for for years. A and I recently started rewatching some of these and they are so hilarious. This DVD set doesn't include all the original music, but you know you'll still be laughing til you cry when the Morgandorfer family eats poisonous berries that send them running around the woods in search of Jake's spirit animal or when Jane, Daria and Trent don't quite make it to Alternapalooza. Mystic Spiral!
In fact, today's song(s) are inspired by that very episode, where a cover of the original track plays in the background toward the end.
The most well-known version of the song was recorded in 1968 by The Turtles. It was written by Jim McGuinn and Gene Clark of The Byrds. It was original composed to be a much faster song, but a broken harmonium forced The Turtles to record it slow, which actually made it much more powerful.
The cover included in Daria is from 1997 by The Lightning Seeds, a UK band I really don't know much about. They added just a little bit of disaffected edge to the song, which really brought it to a different place. I like them both.
You Showed Me.mp3 (Turtles)
You Showed Me.mp3 (Lightening Seeds)
If you or someone you know thinks music is more than just OK, check out the OSS Holiday Shopping Guide for People Who Love Music.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment