Reviews – Page 21

(Previous “What I’ve Been Listening To”s: 1, 2)

Songs I’ve been listening to on repeat in the past few months (in no particular order)…

Icarus by Bastille: From their Flaws single-album release, Icarus is an upbeat, peppy song that contrasts with what the lyrics are about which gives it this weird quality. Sadly their Laura Palmer EP isn’t as good.
Where Is My Mind by Yoav ft Emily Browning: From the movie OST for Sucker Punch.
Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson: Did you know Scarlett Johansson sings??? In a collaboration album titled Break Up with Pete Yorn, Scarlet Johansson provides backing vocals is pretty good at it. A live performance of Blackie’s Dead seems to show Johansson so uncomfortable with the whole gig business. 😀 Look at her hands and the way she acts on stage – “I have arms??? And legs??? Well…what am I supposed to do with them???”
19-2000 (Soulchild remix) by Gorillaz: Tenth year anniversary of the Gorillaz! If you aren’t a fan of this band yet, this remix should get you hooked! (My other recommendation is Clint Eastwood.)
deadmau5: The Mickey Mouse hat wearing DJ has been around for a while, 2011 has been a breakout year him. Love the album 4×4=12. Check out Bad Selection. Bonus – this promo gig deadmau5 did for Nokia Lumia’s launch.
Shuffle by Bombay Bicycle Club: I love the human bicycle they form in this music video!
Heart Skips A Beat by Olly Murs ft Rizzle Kicks: I am slightly ashamed to admit liking this one. 😐
Mutemath: Normally I prefer studio albums to live recordings. I make an exception for Typical…
…and Linkin Park‘s performance of New Divide at Moscow’s Red Square. You seriously have NO IDEA how many times I have replayed this video! In fact, the whole Red Square LP gig was EPIC! Watch every single video of it – fancam or ripped from TV telecast – that you can find on YouTube.
What The Water Gave Me by Florence + The Machine: Florence Welch has such an ethereal voice and her band has been among my favourites for a while now.
Real Steel soundtrack: Three songs from the film Real Steel have been stuck with me: Make Some Noise (Put ‘Em Up) by The Crystal Method ft Yelawolf; Here’s A Little Something For Ya by Beastie Boys; Give It A Go by Timbaland ft Veronica. PS – I fucking loved the film! PPS – Also check out Yelawolf.
Ingrid Michaelson: Listen to her album Be OK. Also, eponymous song.
AWOLNATION: I have a feeling AWOLNATION is going to blow big within the next couple of years. Very hit-or-miss at the moment. For some reason their single Sail is particularly popular even though I don’t find it appealing; the same goes for their 2011 album Megalithic Symphonies. What I do less-than-three is this one single MF. Fucken. Love. It. This is one song I pump up to full volume, hearing damage be damned!
Bill Withers: Bill Withers Live at Carnegie Hall is the kind of album gapless MP3 playback was invented for. If I had to take a pick, I’d chose Grandma’s Hands or I Can’t Write Left-Handed. A classic. Fine, it was recorded in 1973, “jazz is not cool”, the guy gives a political lecture at the start of the song…just give it a go, please?
Entire Sinners Never Sleep album by You Me At Six.
The Vaccines: Their first album titled What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? released in 2011. It’s kinda astonishing how quickly they shot to popularity in such a short span of time. Check out Wetsuit and Post Break-Up Sex. (Bonus – At one point in the Wetsuit music video below, you can see “Maurice” / Richard Ayoyade from The IT Crowd crowd-surfing at a concert!)
Can’t Find My Way Home by Blind Faith: I first heard a 2010 remaster of this song on the TV show Fresh Meat. Sadly, Blind Faith’s other songs are not worth listening as it was a Jesus-music band. (Psst – Eric Clapton was in it.) Disturbing album art cover, too.
Second To None by Styles of Beyond ft Mike Shinoda: Pump your volume waaaaay up!
Safari Disco Club by Yelle: Overcomes my hate of French-speaking people. You’ll notice the final scene is a clever way of showing where the album cover comes from.
The xx: Another hot new indie band. This may be a clichéd choice but if I had to choose one I’d go for Crystalised. Whole album, yada yada.
The Dharohar Project: A collaboration between Laura Marling, Mumford & Sons, and traditional Rajasthani musicians. The first two themselves are themselves on my favourites list, but with this fusion music album – even though just a couple a songs – is heavenly! Try out Mehendi Rachi.
Way Away by Yellowcard
Autotunage by Limp Bizkit: Yeah, yeah, I know everyone knows Limp Bizkit. Just shut the fuck up and go listen to their 2011 album Gold Cobra if you haven’t already. The standout song is Autotunage, which you cannot fully appreciate without listening to the prologue in the preceding song Loser. Other favourites from the album: Douche Bag, Gold Cobra…
This Is The Life by Two Door Cinema Club: Album Tourist History is somewhat hit/miss.
Little Bad Girl by David Guetta ft Taio Cruz & Ludacris: True story – I used to think the ‘little bad girl‘ referred to in the song is Taio Cruz. :s
Charlene Soraia‘s cover of Wherever You Will Go by The Calling.
LA Mer by Nine Inch Nails: Hey, Linkin Park and Nine Inch Nails – two artists you can always expect to find on my repeat lists. 😀

Heard anything particularly interesting recently? Hit me up in the comments section.

Most people of my generation would be aware of Bill Gates and why he is so popular – perhaps less so these days after he has stepped back from the limelight – only vaguely. He is that Scrooge-McDuck-ian level rich guy, isn’t he? Within the tech community there is a lot of hate for Bill Gates and Microsoft, especially among free/open source software supporters. You only have to peek in my archives to see I was cut of the same cloth.

Yet, it struck me that I hardly know anything about Gates as a person. From my tech quizzing days I know of what he wrote in his books The Road Ahead and Business @ The Speed of Thought – without ever having read the books; I know about his temper tantrum; stories about speeding violations and dates that went downhill. I have seen countless documentaries about him and the tech industry, not counting the ‘faction’ film Pirates of The Silicon Valley.

So when I came across an old copy of Gary Rivlin’s The Plot to Get Bill Gates: An Irreverent Investigation of the World’s Richest Man…and the People Who Hate Him at a book sale, I pounced upon the bargain. The book, published in 1999, is refreshingly free of the retrospective analysis post-dot-com-crash; celebrating The World as Brave and New. Rather than focussing on just a single individual as biographies do, Rivlin turns the spotlight instead on Bill Gates’ larger-than-life contemporaries Scott McNealy, Larry Ellison, and Steve Jobs too. What he excels in portraying is how these men and Gates fed off each other in obsessing “cutting off a competitor’s air supply” and making “supergreat” products.

Rivlin, for sure, is a technology-beat journalist who may not understand the intricacies of software development but to his credit – beyond the perfunctory introductions to any technical topic – he politely steps aside and lets people who do understand express their opinion. This approach might appear biased to you, depending on whose Kool-Aid you have drunk; ultimately though you have to admit that he does a good job of balancing stories from highly polarised camps. Those who demonize Bill Gates will cry out that this book borders on trying hard to restrain itself from fawning over him – but then I think it’s a carefully calculated result arising out how people envied and hated Gates (and still do). In that sense, the tone of the book mirrors reality a lot.

The amount of research put into the book clearly shows. I have heard many wildly unbelievable tales over the years – so has Gary Rivlin, of course, and he tackles this by chasing down the ‘original’ source of each apocryphal story, often with results that tend to indicate that they were manufactured. Again, Rivlin shows great restraint in hardly ever calling anyone a liar outright, preferring to let the reader draw his own conclusions based on the evidence presented.

Over the years, I personally have come to admire and respect him a lot more, moving away from Stallman-esque rhetoric. He is prominent philanthropist and whatever he may have done in the past, he is doing so much more for disadvantaged people in developing countries. I am saddened these days, thus, when I came across the same ad hominem attacks against him (again, especially in the FOSS community) that should have gone out of fashion a decade ago. The Plot to Get Bill Gates reveals the flaws in his character, but so does it also trace the journey of an incredibly intelligent person who matured over the ages. By comparing his contemporaries with him, it highlights how they probably wouldn’t have acted much differently, had they been in Gates’ position instead.

To the many people who know me from my school tech quizzing days: I highly recommend this as a read. You may no longer be actively involved in tech quizzing but I am sure you still cherish reading old trivia. Here’s a book that you guys will undoubtedly like. And – for the whipper-snappers still in the school tech quizzing circuit in Delhi – who knows whether reading the book will help you crack a crucial 10-pointer when you need it most at an event (hint hint Code Wars hint).