Vampire Tunes

It surely is a good time to be a vampire these days. With the massive success of the Twilight series and True Blood, not to mention Cirque Du Freak and of course my favorite, The Vampire Diaries. While Twilight may receive all the credit for kicking off the vampire craze, The Vampire Diaries actually pre-dates the Twilight series by over a decade and I'm proud to say I read The Vampire Diaries before I devoured Twilight (and let's make no mistake here, I am a huge Twilight fan, with allegiances to Team Edward).

Anyway, The Vampire Diaries has now inspired a TV show, and last week's episode featured a couple great songs by some artists that should be familiar to those of you who regularly follow this blog. The first song, "Lies" is by Pablo Sebastian, he of Malbec fame. Pablo's familiar silky smooth vocals are still here, but this song is a little more rock/pop, a little less hip hop or electronic than Malbec. The song plays as Bonnie and Elena discuss Damon in the car. Unfortunately YouTube disabled embedding for these clips, but if you click below it will open a new window for you watch in.

Pablo Sebastian on MySpace

Great Northern's "Houses" also pops up in this episode as it continues to show that it may be one of the best songs to use in TV shows or movies ever. Having already played a feature role in 90210 earlier this year and just recently in One Tree Hill, "Houses" is used more as background ambience at the Mystic Grill as Jenna and Alaric talk, and then Damon and Stefan play darts.

Great Northern on MySpace

Malbec On Drop Dead Diva

As a rule, I generally stay away from watching shows or movies on Lifetime. I'm not my mother or my aunt yet, and just the thought of all the other people watching makes me want to turn the channel off. However, at the insistence of my friend Maya, I've checked out a couple episodes of Drop Dead Diva. While I've had to have her catch me up on things that are going on in the show, I think it's a solid show that seems has a good combination of comedy, fantasy, and drama, never making one aspect of the show dominate the others. However, what sealed the deal to at least make me tune in for a few more episodes was that they ended the most recent episode with the song "Free" by Malbec, just as Fred decides he has to leave. Both lyrically and musically, the song fits the ending as if it was written specifically for the scene.

For those of you who don't know, Malbec is one of my favorite under-the-radar groups that followers of this blog should be familiar with. Their seamless mix of hip hop, electronica, and original pop is good for any mood, any time of day, any place. In fact, I like them so much that I will be making the hour-plus drive out to Olympia to see them on November 8. Fellow Washingtonians, you should go, too.

Malbec on MySpace

iPhone, Meet Your Competition

So I have been dying to get a new phone. If you could see mine it looks like something from the stone ages - it's this goofy flip phone that makes me wish I still had the old black-and-white Nokia that everyone had in middle school. So I've been researching new phones, and I finally came across the Satio by Sony Ericsson, which should be released within the next few months.

Not only was I super excited about the phone, but as I watched the info video (shown below), I fell in LOVE with the song that was playing. After some creative Googling, I found out that they are a hip hop duo called Rootbeer, and this song is called "Under Control." I often find hip-hop to be unnecessarily abrasive, but I can't stop smiling when listen to this song. From the swelling organ, to to the silky smooth vocals, this song really just put me in a better mood, and it is a song that could easily fit in on a playlist next to MGMT. Their take on hip-hop is definitely much more akin to that of Malbec than, say Lil' Wayne. In fact, I enjoyed the music so much I visited their MySpace page and found out that they will be playing a show on the 21st at Chop Suey, so now you know where I'll be next Tuesday. Click on the image below to watch the Sony Satio info video.

Rootbeer on MySpace

Pop Culture Song of the Week

I had a hard time deciding on the last "Pop Culture Song of the Week," because I don't really watch the show that it was on (Life), and had to be alerted about it by some of my friends that know how much I love Earlimart. After catching up on some programs I recorded last week, I discovered that there was another favorite song of mine used in last week's Making the Band episode. The song I'm talking about is "Consider It Done," by a band called Malbec, who are the beautiful group of people in matching blue outfits in the picture above.

They really used the song in an appropriate, emotional scene from the episode, and the dreamy guitars and keyboards work together to make a really soothing background. You can check out the episode here (The song starts at about 30 mins, 15 seconds in, but I recommend watching this whole show if you've never seen it before!). If you want to hear the whole song, I found a streaming version of it that you can play below. Ooh just some last-second advice, don't go to the website that's listed in this video, because it's just somebody trying to sell some money-making scheme :-(