the musical fruit: movement #21.

the musical fruit: movement #21.
song: "zombie," the cranberries
fruit: cranberries

a lot of irish music makes me want to smash a fiddle, but ireland's produced its fair share of musicians over the years. u2 is definitely the biggest of them all, but there are a handful of other notable ones out there, from indie acts like my bloody valentine, ash or the divine comedy to older acts like thin lizzy & the pogues. people seem to enjoy snow patrol quite a bit. back in the 90s, there was the pope pic tearing shenanigans of sinead o'connor & there was the cranberries, who rose to prominence on the back of their 1993 single "linger," off their debut album, everybody else is doing it, so why can't we? it came out when i was a senior in high school & believe me, i got a lot of comedy mileage out of reworking the lyrics so it became a song about farts.

their follow up album, no need to argue, features the only song by the cranberries that i can actually stand--"zombie." it's a protest song & whereas most of their songs are totally wussy & the only thing cool about them is lead singer dolores o'riordan's accent, "zombie" is a total rocker. it starts off all slow like but builds into a rocking chorus where she's saying "zom-bay" over & over again & heavy guitars chug along. the video has a bunch of dirty kids in it, which is sort of cool. it all added up to the song reaching #1 on the billboard modern rock charts, which, for comparison, is a title currently held by muse. after a few more albums, o'riordan went solo, but come november 12th, the cranberries are back together & heading out on the road for their first full tour since 2002. they're in nyc the day after my bday, but it's totally sold out. looks like a lot of people still like the taste of the cranberries.

as a fruit, cranberries are pretty cool, but you usually have to do something to them before you eat them like mash them into a sauce or put them in a juice or dry them out or something. i found this box of dried cranberries on the wall next to me whilst waiting in line at the times sq walgreens, so i decided to go the dried route & wait until thanksgiving for the sauced kind. $1? hellz yeah. i can swing that. i'm not sure what's up with the box looking all trapezoid warped in the photo though. in real life, that box has a lot more right angles to it. when i opened the box, it sort of looked like i had a box full of red beetles, but they're moist & sweetened & actually pretty tasty, especially considering that they're the walgreens store brand.

i don't want to get bogged down in the details, but there are a lot of reasons to like cranberries. for starters, cranberry sauce rules. then there's the cool way that they're harvested. rather than just picking them off the vines, cranberry growers flood the cranberry beds & scoop up the fruit. in juice form, cranberries go well with pretty much any other fruit. they have antioxidants & whatnot, so if you're looking to beat a drug test, cranberry juice is your best friend. they're a huge thing in massachusetts, especially on cape cod, where the cape cod cranberry growers' association oversees over 300 cranberry growers. good stuff. in closing, this thanksgiving, i urge you to get totally sauced in honor of the cranberry.

the musical fruit: movement #20.

the musical fruit: movement #20.
song: "fireworks," animal collective
fruit: strawberries

if i was to name the one indie band who i've yet to see live but most long to see, it's animal collective. they're a band made up of four dudes (avey tare, panda bear, geologist & occasionally deakin) known for their psychedelically-happy songs & supposedly energetically trippy live shows. a typical song revolves around a repetitive beat that, once countless layers of instruments & vocals & sounds are added, becomes part of a bouncy anthem that you can't help but sing or shout along with. they tend to either go that route or just get all wacky psychedelic. they're originally from baltimore & even though (based on what i've seen on the wire) baltimore's pretty fucked up, with acts like them, ponytail & dan deacon, it produces some pretty solid indie acts.

for the last few years, my favorite animal collective song has been "fireworks," off of their 7th studio album, strawberry jam. the album itself is full their typical trippy stuff, but for me, it was the first time they came through with an album i found more appealing than annoying. "fireworks" appears midway through, right after the six & a half minute "for reverend green" & at almost seven minutes, is the longest song on the album. it doesn't feel long though, because it's always building & changing & bouncy. the lyrics are a bit nonsensical, but there are mentions of "eating with a good friend" & frightened babies pooing. you can't beat either of those things. if you like watching fireworks, you can't beat the video either. sparkly!

my strawberries are much better looking than the ones on the front of the album. those ones are SMASHED & smashed BUT GOOD. mine were fresh & red & almost 100% bruise-free. to be honest, they looked so good i almost didn't want to eat them. so yeah, i like strawberries a lot, might even call them a top five fruit. they're not without their drawbacks though. for starters, unless you're picking them from your own personal strawberry patch, they ain't cheap. to make matters worse, a lot of the time, after you've shelled out your hard-earned cash for a basket of fresh, store-bought strawberries, the fuckers end up rotting before you have a chance to eat them all. you have to move quick with the strawberries.

if you get them while they're still nice & fresh, they're so friggin good. i sat there for an hour the other day with a big bowl of strawberries & one by one, grabbed them by the stems & went to town, tossing the lousy stems over my shoulder into the trash as i ate. i was totally in the zone. in the interest of full disclosure, i must note that like apples & pears, strawberries are actually a fruit imposter, a "false fruit" if you will, since the fruit doesn't come from ovaries. it's cool with me. i don't need ovaries to make my fruit taste better. speaking of ovaries, i could get into the slang connotations of the word strawberry, but i won't. n.w.a. & urban dictionary have already covered that territory just fine.

the musical fruit: movement #19.

the musical fruit: movement #19.
song: "spongebob squarepants theme song," painty the pirate & kids
fruit: pineapple

kids these days! give em a crazy, colorful cartoon & an overly happytastic theme song & you're golden. back in my day, we rocked out in front of the TV whilst the sesame street theme song filled us with carefree 70's joy...sunny days, sweepin the clouds away, etc. that was all we needed, really. these days, the kids are all TOTALLY AMP'D on sugar & soda & the interweb, so theme songs like that of sesame street just don't cut it anymore. they need MAXIMUM HAPPINESS in their theme songs.

in the ten years since the show's first episode aired, the "spongebob squarepants theme song" has become one of the most annoying & well-known tv theme songs in existence. kids love it almost as much as they love moon pies & electronic video games! sung by painty the pirate & a bunch of kids, it encourages kids to "drop on the deck & flop like a fish" because they're SO FRIGGIN EXCITED about spongebob. it makes sense. i mean, the dude's not only filled with joy, but he's absorbent, yellow, porous and lives in a pineapple under the sea! if you ask me, he has it pretty sweet. in case hearing the theme song every single time spongebob airs isn't enough for your kid, the track's available on spongebob's greatest hits. MAXIMUM HAPPINESS!

pineapples are tasty & tropical & perfect on the end of a toothpick. personally, i prefer eating them to living in them. if given the option, i wouldn't turn down the opportunity to live in one, but if it was under the sea, i'd probably have to pass. unless they threw in a free set of gills or one of those underwater helmets worn by spongebob's friend sandy cheeks, i just plain wouldn't be able to breathe properly, which would make it hard to fully enjoy my pineapple abode.

since actually purchasing a pineapple & cutting it up my damn self is way more of an undertaking than i'm willing to go through, i decided to take home this can of dole pineapple slices from my office. it'd been sitting around the office since some time last year, when we moved our offices from brooklyn to times sq & it came along. i'm not sure where it originally came from, but for the past year, it's been passed around, living on one desk after another for a few days before moving on to a new & exciting locale. when i cracked it open, i was fully expecting to find something nuclear inside. to my surprise, it was actually still fresh, so i took a few & baked them with chicken, took a few & ate them as a snack & took the rest & set it aside so that one day, i can build myself a pineapple home of my own...on land, of course.

the musical fruit: movement #18.

the musical fruit: movement #18.
song: "serpentine (i don't give a…pt. 2)," peaches
fruit: peach

when i first heard peaches' song "fuck the pain away," off of 2000's the teaches of peaches, her first album under the name peaches, i had no idea what to make of her. i still don't. i've never been all that into the electroclash club bangers she serves up, but i am intrigued by a woman singing the lyrics "fuck the pain away" repeatedly over dance beats. she's from toronto & was roommates with feist for a while. her persona is one of those "gender-bending" burlesque types, with an album called fatherfucker & songs like "diddle my skittle," "shake yer dix," "fuck or kill" & "boys wanna be her." even with my low tolerance for dance beats, i occasionally bop my head to her stylings.

peaches put out her fifth album, i feel cream, back in may. it opens with "serpentine (i don't give a…pt. 2)," which is my jam on the album. it's got a deep bass beat & her rapping about her beard, moustache & mullets & how sexy she is. in the chorus, she sings "i don't give a fuck if you're calling me. i don't give a fuck if you're mauling me. i don't give a fuck if you fall for me. i don't give a fuck if you're following me. serpentine serpentine. never straight line serpentine." it sets the tone for the rest of the album, which is forty plus minutes of her typical hot dance beats & sexually-tinged lyrics. stuff like "peach'll reach around, wrestle you to the ground & take you to regina. big trouble in little man-gina." um, yeah. whatever you say, peaches. just don't peg me when i'm not looking, ok?

peaches, like pears, are one of those fruits that i'm most used to eating sliced & out of a can full of syrup. it's the way i consumed them for pretty much all of my childhood. once i moved out & moved beyond canned fruits, i sort of left the peach behind. usually, if i have the choice, i get a nectarine instead. they're just better & not as fleshy. yesterday, when i went out & actually decided to pick up a peach for breakfast for the first time in a long time, i thought to myself that since it has that fuzzy, fleshy, slightly-thick skin, there must be some special way to peel the peach to get the maximum amount of fruit out of it. all i had to do was search the internet to find out what that special way was.

that's when i came across this video, which, when i watched it, had a commercial before it for cotton, featuring a song by zooey deschanel. it's the fabric of her life. mmm. zooey. cotton. her life. once the commercial ends, there's a video with some other jonathon stewart, where he demonstrates how to peel a peach. you blanch the peach (put it in boiling water for 45 seconds, drop it in a bowl of ice water to stop it from cooking) & peel it. shazzam! that's too much work for me though. he also suggested a microwave technique, but i try to not microwave my fruit. it just seems weird. in the end, i just sliced it up & peeled it as i went. it was peachy, but i'm still convinced that nectarines are the peachier fruit. sorry, peach. you're just not as sweet.

the musical fruit: movement #17.

the musical fruit: movement #17.
song: "alison's starting to happen," lemonheads
fruit: lemon

back in the early nineties, the best candy-themed band to come out of boston was the lemonheads, fronted by evan dando. since i enjoyed the original song, i liked their biggest hit, their cover of simon & garfunkel's "mrs. robinson," the first thousand times i heard it. i heard a few songs off the album but never picked up it's a shame about ray (which it was added to after its popularity as a single). for some STRANGE reason, i pegged evan dando as whiney & mopey, that time's john mayer & i didn't really want anything to do with him. plus, i was just coming out of my gangsta rap phase around the time the album came out, so it wasn't really in my wheelhouse. even without my support, it ended up being their biggest album, going gold.

i finally gave it its first full listen last night with rhino's 2008 collector's edition of the album & it's a lot more rocking than i always assumed it was. the eighth son on the album (out of thirteen), "alison's starting to happen," falls into the category of "songs i've heard before" & now that i've heard the whole thing, i can definitively say that it's my favorite song off it. the song's a bouncy, two-minute rocker named for bassist nic dalton's girlfriend at the time. the lyrics near the end of the song are all "alison's getting her tit pierced. alison's getting a mohawk." i initially heard it when it came out (& i was in high school) and remember thinking "whoa, that chick's one of those punk rock girls that the dead milkmen sing about." good times. speaking of good times, the youtube has some footage of the lemonheads playing the song before enormous crowds at the 1994 glastonbury festival. the lyric quality's shite, but the song still rocks.

ok. i don't know why my camera decided to make me so damn red in that picture above. no amount of photoshop trickery seemed to fix it. i'm not that red. you have no reason to worry about my blood pressure or anything. i wasn't wasted either. my camera just decided to hate me at the time. not even the tremendous acidity from that first bite into the lemon could make my skin turn that red. to be honest, i'm actually more of a shade of green. my white skin color aside, that first bite was definitely the pulpiest/most acidic thing i've done this year. i was going to go all the way & eat the whole lemon (y'know, for love of the blog & all), but that first bite quickly slashed & burned my resolve into a million little pieces.

...so don't call me a trooper, because i'm not. i managed to finish off about half the lemon, but didn't even bother with the second half. as it was, downing half a lemon gave me a little case of the heartburn...& that, boys & girls, is why we usually squeeze lemons onto things or mix them with other things, tasty things like sugar. instead of finishing it, i just let it dry out on my kitchen counter overnight, which is sort of a shame, because i could have at least used the juice from the other half to write messages in secret code to my friends, secret messages like this one: MEET ME AT TREE HOUSE. 2PM. see you there!