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Today's entry is penned by one of my favorite writers, conceptual comedies, and sound architect(!), the man helming this beauty of a blog, the great Andrew Peterson.

For two weeks in the summer of 2003, I fancied myself a sailor in the dregs of modern American filmmaking. It was a dark and dank back alley of focus groups, surveys and an indomitable drive to the lowest common denominator. And yet, somehow, it got me believing in America again.

You see, there exists the common notion that major motion pictures are made by stiff collared, culture deaf businessmen, with dollar signs emblazoned on their sight dead eyeballs. They are the nameless, faceless messengers of the Studio. They are rich, cruel men, with ties to the pharmaceutical industry. This just isn't true. In fact, major motion pictures are made by you and me.

You and Me and Research Data Design (RDD).

RDD is a marketing and consumer research firm based in Portland, Oregon. They hired me that glorious summer to work from midnight to 6am, Monday through Friday, processing surveys. These surveys were filled out by thousands of individuals in hundreds of focus groups. In shopping malls, at free movie screenings, or in the privacy of their own homes, these people put their hearts and souls on paper. They made choices (roughly 10,000 choices) which were then organized into neat little columns by me, and sent back to the studio by RDD.

Together, we wrote, directed and produced Cheaper By The Dozen.

"So it goes in America," I thought, clutching my Styrofoam jacketed company coffee. I rubbed my eyes, looked at the ceiling, and tried to remember which label to put on comments about Heath Ledger.

Welcome to the New Democratic Republic of Cinema.

So, too, goes the constitutional creed of University of Chicago student Loren Jan Wilson's B.A. project: Pitchformula. Wilson's project combines a love for popular music reviews with a love for statistical analysis and computer databases.

"By writing software to statistically analyze the content of several thousand record reviews from the Pitchfork music website," writes Wilson, I generate a set of compositional guidelines based on the musical preferences expressed by the critics. I then use those guidelines to write and record a couple of original songs, discussing in detail the relationships between the songs and the data that I have collected."

Effectually, Wilson has made his own little Cheaper By the Dozen, albeit without Steve Martin.

Now, here's the rub. People are dumb. Right?

"Wrong."

The voice you've just heard is that of New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki,, recent author of the book The Wisdom of Crowdsan "endlessly fascinating book [that] explores a deceptively simple idealarge groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant."

Surowiecki finds that crowds are better at problem solving, innovation, decision-makingreally the entire spectrum of intellectual and creative thought processes.

Now, this is where the America part comes in. These large groups are what America is all about. Democracy in action. Each individual votes, and his or her vote is (sometimes) counted. The result is a compendium of choices, signed into being as law, for everyone to enjoy.

If you believe America is the greatest country in the world, then Mr. Wilson's formulas must truly be considered the Greatest Band of All Time. Not the songs. Not the Pitchfork reviewsafter all, there are only a handful of schlubs writing those things. No, no, I want theidea. Because, taken to its penultimate extrapolate, Wilson's idea is about making music based on the suggestions of infinitely many persons. Focus groups, surveys, and that inevitable lowest common denominatorall the trappings of greatness.

The New Democratic Republic of Music, and still no Steve Martin. Just you, and me and Pitchformula.

Now, let me get something straight. I hated Cheaper By The Dozen. I will never watch it again. I don't particularly love the songs Wilson composed with his formula. All I'm saying is that if you don't like this stuff, then you are a communist.

Here in America we have something called Democracy and another thing called Choice. These are the great tenants of our great and powerful nation, and only art fully including them can be considered truly American.

So, Pitchformula.com, I salute you. Patriot, soldier, great considerer. The masses have spoken, and you are, truly, The Greatest Band of All Time.

Ambient electronic music is a faceless, personality free music. It's meant to be that way. It's such a different way of expressing than rock'n'roll or rap. It's not about making a statement with words or even with music. It's sorta about not making a statement. The vibe that the music sets doesn't give you something to think about, instead, it gives you the opportunity to think. Instead of providing words to ponder or giving a specific topic, it just provides a setting for thought to happen. Ambient music, dude, it's a total tryp and allows a dude to go deeply deep.

Loscil (pronounced Low-sill or Lah-sill) is Scott Morgan, of Vancouver, BC, Canada. Scott also plays drums in the band, Destroyer(a very good band as well). He makes this very good amibent electronic music, though. Seems like he has for awhile. I don't know very much about it. I don't know. Seems sorta better to keep this kind of music more of a mystery. I don't know how he makes it, where he makes it, when he makes it, why he makes it. All I know is that he makes it and it takes me.

The facts are that he made some self released cds or soemthing, the dudes at Kranky heard it, they said we want to put out your music and now he has put out three cds on Kranky. End of story. Doesn't really seem like he tours. He will never be a big superstar. No huge fame. I'm sorry, I'm just sorta thinking about these things today: about fame, why people make music, and about messages presented by musicians.

Loscil's second album, Submers, is a beautiful dark record that I probably listened to more than any other record of the last five years. Submers theme is submarine and being underwater and you can hear it on the record with the echoing gurgling rhythms and beats. The synths wash over you like rushes of water and the beats are appropriately quiet and at times you don't even realize they are there. Submers has an intense claustrophobic feel to and it is one of the best records ever to close your eyes to.

First Narrows, Loscil's 3rd album, was just released a few months ago. It is the first Loscil to feature live instrumentation. It has more of a focus on melody and is much more of a spring/summer record compared to Submers deep winter vibe. The live instrumentation is not very obvious on some tracks as it has been deeply processed, but it is quite noticible on others. It's a gorgeous, soft, and lilting record and another step for Loscil.

Music is a special gift. It provides us with so many different ways to relax, or get pumped. It takes us to zones that we aren't normally able to get to. I'm especially thankful for Loscil because it gives me something more special than other music....myself. Whoa, did I just say that?? Any music that can music me say that must be The Greatest Band of All Time.

Man, the last couple of weeks have been effed. Steve's out of town right now, so I'm sorry if updates aren't so daily. I'd also like to formally apologize for the strict over-abundance of Y chromosomes present on GBoAT authorship thus far, an issue I would like to begin to correct starting today with our latest guest writer, Miss Marisa Meltzer. Enjoy.

Do you ever suspect that the universe is trying to tell you something? Maybe I'm more susceptible to this than most. Just the other night, I was taking a break from work, and as I turned on the TV, I wished more than anything that Wet Hot American Summer was on. And lo and behold, it was. And get this: towards the end of the movie, there's a shot of Janeane Garofalo's character at the climactic variety show and faint graffiti on the wall behind her spells out "MARISA". Clearly there was a message there.

Similarly, last winter I had a renewed love affair with "If You Leave" by Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark (OMD) after hearing it in store. I told a friend I had been obsessively listening to it all week. The next day he emailed me saying that he heard the song in its entirety on the radio. That night, on The OC, what song plays while Anna tearfully returns to Pittsburgh? "If You Leave". (It should be noted that it was a kind of weak cover of the song by Nada Surf, but still.) This time the message was clear: I was to remain hermitlike in my apartment for the duration of the winter, obsessively listening to OMD. I heeded the call.

I've always felt sort of proprietary about OMD. People ask me my favorite song (okay, no one actually asks about my favorite songs, but I wish someone would.) and I start waxing on about how "If You Leave" was my first favorite song. And yet despite all the fuzzy feelings I have for their music, OMD has never been a band I've known a lot about. I've never had a crush on one of its members. Until today, I couldn't name a single dude in the band. I've never been to one of their concerts.

So let's turn to the facts, shall we? OMD is four guys from Liverpool with delightfully British names: Paul Humphreys, Andy McCluskey, Martin Cooper, and Malcolm Holmes. Apparently, Liverpool in the lates seventies was the kind of city whose music scene revolved around one club, Eric's Club, which launched Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Echo and the Bunnymen. Humphreys and McCluskey were huge fans of GBoAT alum Neu and Kraftwerk and started making experimental electronic music in homage to their Teutonic heroes. They even called themselves VCLXI, after a valve diagram found on a Kraftwerk album. "Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark" was the title of a VCLXI song, and they somewhat confusingly used that song title as the name of a side project that was to feature catchier melodies, and OMD was born.

Tony Wilson, the Factory Records impresario, was duly impressed by their live shows and released their debut single, "Electricity" in late 1979. Their self-titled first album came out in 1980 and featured "Messages" and cemented what would be their trademark mix of melodic melancholia. Sure, I guess you could call their songs synth-pop, but I'm not sure that gives them enough credit. While all their songs sound undeniably like a product of the eighties, none of them sound dated. There was a quick succession of more hits ("Enola Gay", "Maid of Orleans") and albums with awesome titles (Architecture and Morality, Dazzle Ships). Martin was added to play keyboards and Malcolm to play drums.

All of this spirals toward their biggest hit, "If You Leave", which will always be known as That Song at the End of Pretty in Pink (it was written specifically for the movie). Beyond a generation's seemingly collective love for the John Hughes oeuvre (and its impeccable soundtracks), we all remember that song because it's just so damn good. It still gives me the shivers nearly two decades after I first heard it. There's something about the phrasing, there's an urgency threaded through the song--and all OMD songs--that never lets me down, no matter how many times I listen to it. In 1989, Humphreys, Cooper, and Holmes left the band, citing constant touring as the reason for the demise. Andy continued under the OMD moniker, but the era had ended.

If I had more time, I would tell you about how all of OMD's songs sound like the perfect soundtrack for a first kiss. Or how someone will play "Electricity" at a party (and they're getting plenty of play at parties, OMD seems to be encountering a bit of a hipster renaissance here on the east coast.) and it will make you sprint to the dance floor. Or how their song "Secrets" will make you sort of wistful because you're not English and you don't have bangs, both things seeming really important late one Tuesday night in March. Instead, I will say this: Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark is the Greatest Band of All Time.

BOO YO! The Greatest Band Of All Time is proud to present our first animated gif! This first animated gif is a beaut featuring digital representations of the three members of Figurine along with some floating hearts. This animated gif is the first, but I can solemnly promise you, it will not be the last.

Figurine, as a band, apparently, has never been photgraphed together, which is quite fishy since the members were high school friends. That just doesn't make sense, I have pictures of myself with my high school friends. I have some nice pictures from before prom wearing my cool alternative plaid tuxedo, which surprisingly still looks pretty awesome. I have pictures of us hamming it up, doing bad stuff, being cool dudes, your regular high school tom foolery. Well, Figurine didn't start as a band till all three members (Meredith Figurine, James Figurine, and David Figurine) were away at different colleges and they would get together on breaks from school and dream about being Depeche Mode. Couldn't they have taken some pictures then?!?!?! I understand that the project has mostly occurred over email and the internet with the three members of the group sending their parts and collaborating from their residences in LA, SF, and Cambridge.

I guess having no actual pictures of the band only digital representations makes sense with Figurine's vibe. Their albums focus on technology, the future, and the combining of those with human emotion and love. So, maybe there are pictures of the three members of Figurine but they have intentionally kept these pictures under wraps. These digital images of the members of Figurine first appeared on the album cover to their 1999 LP Transportation + Communication = Love, a great debut album showing a focus in their conceptual themes and a knack for writing great simple pop songs using really enjoyable male/female call and response style vocals mixed with slightly kitschy electronic backing with thin in the best way beats and well used noises like the sounds of a 28k modem and an Apple Computer turning on. With many stand out tracks Transportation + Communication = Love features more mixtape fodder than most band's whole careers.

In 2001 Figurine displayed those digital faces again on the cover for the LP The Heartfelt. This second full length for Figurine shows the band leaving behind some of the kitsch from the great first album, but they don't leave behind the fun. The instrumentation is expanded a little bit with an occasional guitar and the electronics become a little more complex, atmospheric, and experimental. The Heartfelt is a growth, but this doesn't mean it is superior to Transportation + Communication = Love. The Heartfelt is probably equally as solid, but there is something to be said for the goofy focus of their debut.

One important thing I have not told you yet about Figurine is that "James Figurine," is actually Jimmy Tamborello of The Postal Service, Dntel, and Strictly Ballroom or at least it is that's what we are told, but without any actual photographs I guess we will never know. It is this humble reporters opinion that Figurine is the better of Tamborello's two band by mail (snail/e). Unfotunately, Figurine doesn't get a whole lot of attention, and I don't think they have ever toured as a band. They have released two great albums, a very good remix album (Reconfigurine), a couple of solid eps. Clearly, any band into animated gifs, love songs about e-mail and instant messaging have to be The Greatest Band Of All Time, even if they refuse to have a band photo.

"Silver Apples is an organic mechanism composed of the Simeon and the Taylor Drums. The Simeon presently consists of nine audio oscillators and eight-six manual controls, enabling Simeon to express his musical ideas. The lead and rhythm oscillators are played with the hands, elbows and knees and the bass oscillators are played with the feet. The Taylor Drums at this point include thirteen drums, five cymbals and other percussion instruments that Danny uses to develop his own mathematically pulsating systems, creating both rhythm and melody. As the two artists each create melody and rhythm, the resulting sounds interchange and grow to an electronic evocation."

so wrote barry bryant, an insurance actuarial/60s dropout that, despite better judgement, spent 1967-1970 as manager, mentor, and, most importantly, benefactor to Simeon Coxe and Danny Taylor (who, incidentally, looks a lot like Isabella Rossellini to me), the electronic anomaly known as Silver Apples. With an mountainous amassment of unruly, hand-soldered oscillators and an equally vast drum kit (actually, two drum sets side by side), the band recorded two of the most unprecedentedly transcendent records of the '60s, to an understandably indifferent audience.

their partnership began in early 1967 as members of a cover band called The Overland Stage Electric Band, the Silver Apples formed after the band's other three members abandoned ship as a result of Simeon's obnoxious "electronic evocations." Initially composing songs as a soundtrack to the poems of acquaintance Stanley Warren (and vice-versa), Silver Apples combined the drones of Simeon Coxe's Frankenstein monster, the unwieldy "Simeon", with Taylor's specially tuned drum kit, designed to assist Simeon with chord changes. Simple vocal melodies were then added to make things slightly more palatable. With the help of long time fan Bryant, the duo's throbbing, other-worldly sound somehow found its way onto KAPP Records, a label best known at the time for lounge piano performers. In the two years that followed the band was able to record both a self-titled record and a follow-up, Contact, before the label went belly-up.

With the help of followers like Spacemen 3 and Stereolab (not to mention talented rip-off artists like Clinic), Silver Apples have reaped the considerable benefit of the 90s' "lost classic" re-issue market, prompting the 1996 reformation of the band (Simeon and a new drummer), with expectedly mixed results. In 1998, Danny Taylor resurfaced with the tapes from third Silver Apples record, thought lost for nearly thirty years. Since then Simeon broke his neck, and...

wait.

this is about the Silver Apples being the Greatest Band of All Time, isn't it? So yeah, Silver Apples. Two awesome dudes that made the music that would inspire a good deal of the music that inspires me. Two dudes oscillating and driving and singing completely earnest songs about Velvet Caves and Gypsy Love. Two dudes who made super-literal, super-awesome sonic references ("Song about the radio? We should totally record radio signals!!!" "Song about the telephone? Telephone sounds!!!") throughout the bulk of their recorded catalogue. Two dudes who look a lot like Italian female movie stars. or, one dude. Anyway, Greatest Band of Blah, Blah, Blah.

The End.