I must reflect on the King of Pop.

I think it is hip to honor him, just as much as I would give praise to any of my favorite bands of the moment- Fleet Foxes, Passion Pit, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, etc.. You have to love his solo albums, like “Off the Wall” and “Thriller” in particular, which generated such incredibly catchy tunes, great dance music, forward thinking videos, and on and on. To this day, my favorite album of his is still “Off the Wall”. The album as a whole bursts with enjoyment, a celebration of life and dance. It encompasses incredibly catchy arrangements, with sophisticated production from Quincy Jones. There’s no mistaking of that quirky falsetto of a voice- lyrics sung with such heartfelt emotion…word had it that he was an absolute workaholic on the making of this record- Quincy would often say later that he was very much impressed with his work ethic paying attention to every little detail imaginable, down to correct vocal phrasing and nuances, brass arrangements, bass playing- that he was considered the illegitimate offspring of Brian Wilson.

Upon hearing the album on my way into work today, I feel regenerated and filled with immense gratitude for Michael Jackson, leaving us with such great treasures in his musical catalog.
I should also reflect at this moment that I have not listened to “Off the Wall” in its entirety in quite a few years. Too many to count if I want to be absolutely truthful. Well, not anymore. I can sing the praises of many an indie band and artist and wax poetic with the best of them at any given time…but I will also sing the praises of Michael Jackson and his music, and I don’t feel ashamed to admit one bit admitiing this.

Nothing really tops sophisticated, thoughtful, catchy pop. Nothing.
Thank you Micheal for your huge contributions to this genre.

Lets start off with: Nerd is the new black… If you have not realized this as of yet, you have been hiding under a rock and im going to throw said rock at your head.

If you go looking for I Fight Dragons, you will run into a large banner on their Myspace page showing the group of six wearing superhero t-shirts, and a top down scroller ( fixed shooter ) flash game where you are a knight shooting  (fighting) dragons. Once you are done playing with the video game you proceed down further to see who the heck these guys ( and girl ) are, as described by them:

They Fight Dragons [ ok i got that ], and they are the premiere, nay only  NES-Rock band. That is descriptive enough but still confusing. What the hell is an NES-Rock Band?

Well that’s easy enough to guess from listening to the music; They use NES sounds to create music. There is more to it than that though, these guys create music with game pads hooked up to a computer for on the fly sampling. That’s pretty incredible and über nerdy. The music in itself is rock pop-ish and very good, you don’t listen and think to yourself: “enough with the 8 bit sounds!” … absolutely not. I enjoyed listening to their debut EP, “Cool Is Just A Number” short but just enough.

Check them out at myspace.com/IFightDragons and twitter @IFightDragons