Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Extras

MM:AM #2: My Brother

My Brother 

by Bobby Burnside

I am the youngest of five children in my family, there are three girls and 12 years between my brother and I, yet we have always been very close. He introduced me to Star Wars, important books, and punk-rock. I realize that these things may seem silly and insignificant to some, but I have come to place heavy value upon them, as they helped form pillars of my personality. 

1-Jellyfish: Ignorance is Bliss

There was a time when my life consisted of eating hot lunch before recess and playing Super Nintendo as soon as I got home from school. I shared a room with my brother, and everything in the room was his, including a large collection of CDs and a stereo system that the seven year-old me found both as complicated as times tables, and literally out of my reach. The first CD my brother deliberately played for me was the Jellyfish song “Ignorance is Bliss.” I only cared about this song because the lyrics referred to Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, and King Koopa. I vividly remember laying on my top bunk, asking him to put in, “That Mario song.” I have never forgotten the purple spine of that album amongst the numerous other CDs in his collection.

2-blink-182: Dammit

One year for Christmas I got a transparent blue Sony boom-box, sadly I only owned one CD, Smashmouth's “Astrolounge.” I constantly asked my brother for CDs, one day he handed me “Dude Ranch.” I spent the next hour laying on my stomach in front of the boom-box doing three things in sequence: 1-Gushing over the guitar intro, 2-turning the volume knob down before the F word, and 3- pressing repeat.

3-blink-182: A New Hope

My brother programmed me to love Star Wars at a young age. So when he found out I was constantly pushing repeat on his CD he was upset, and not just because I was ruining it, but because I wasn’t listening to the song that he purchased the album for. Personally, I was never attracted to Princess Leia, but I knew what an “Alderaanian” was, and that “Mos Eisley” was on Tatooine.

4-Eve 6: Inside Out

My brother was driving me and two of my sisters to my oldest sister’s wedding in my families ’91 GMC Suburban when this song came on the radio. I sat alone on the last row of seats and wondered what the words meant. I learned the definition of “oblivion” that day, but I had to wait for the video game Goldeneye to come out before I ever understood what “rendezvous” meant. 

5-Jimmy Eat World: The Middle

I saw the music video of this song on MTV quite a few times before my brother burned the whole album for me, (It was the first burned album I ever had.) I remember singing what I thought were the words to the chorus of this song and air-guitaring the guitar solo alone in my room after my brother moved out. This album still holds up on my top five all-time list.

6-The Get Up Kids: Forgive and Forget

This was the first Get Up Kids song I ever heard. I sat next to my brother while he went through his digital music library choosing which songs to put on a mix for me, he played the first half of this song and I told him to put it on. I vividly remember this mix because he wrote the track listing in a spiral on the actual CD-R. For whatever reason I have always loved the lyrics “Let sleepers lie, bygones have all gone by.”

7.The New Amsterdams: Hover Near Fame

It was easy to love The New Amsterdams after I already loved The Get Up Kids. My brother saw The New Amsterdams at Kilby Court and bought a sticker for me, it was yellow and said “The New F****** Amsterdams,” I never found out what the “F” stood for as he had scribbled the rest of the word out with sharpie. In most cases the lyrics or vocal melody are what makes a song catchy to me, in the case of this song it is the perfect harmony of the drums, bass, and cadence of the lyrics.

8-Brand New: Sic Transit Gloria… Glory Fades

My friend Cliff bought “Deja Entendu” for me while we were at Circuit City together on my 15th birthday, I only liked the single, “The Quite Things That No One Ever Knows.” My brother found it in my room and seemed interested so I let him have it, after a while I wondered why he wanted it, so I had him burn me a copy. Listening again, knowing I missed something the first few times I heard “Sic Transit Gloria,” and followed the narrative not the music. In my mind I pictured a kid clothed in school uniform of red and blue being broken, although I didn’t like the image, I loved that a song created it.

9-Me First & The Gimme Gimmes: Where do Broken Hearts Go

I also received, “Take a Break” by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes for my 15th birthday, from my brother. I love the entire album, but I remember sitting in my room listening to the first song, ("Where do Broken Hearts Go",) and laughing. I loved that they made this Mo-Town hit into a punk-rock anthem, and they didn’t take themselves serious in the process. Spike’s vocals are both impressive and hilarious throwing in three, “Yeahs!” to end the song.

10-Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly: I-Spy

Just after my senior year of High School my brother had some side job that entailed a lot of free music. Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly was one of those free albums that I really enjoyed. Somehow the mixture of acoustic guitars, electronic drums, and sythesizers worked perfectly for this song. The imagery I always think of while listening to this song is playing Super Mario World, when you can obtain a yellow cape and fly over the entire level.

11-The Avett Brothers: Murder in the City

My brother sent me a YouTube link to this song a few years ago. I was pretty grossed out by the Avetts’ long beards and wife-beaters, but loved the song. I don’t know if our relationship as brothers matches with the lyrics in the song, but you can definitely feel the sincerity while they sing of their own relationship. The single greatest moment of the song is when they question which brother their parents love the most, I love how they harmonize their father’s words, “I love you and I’m proud of your both, in so many different ways.”

It’s funny to look over these songs and think about how I connect them with my brother, I’m afraid he would be a little disappointed as none of these songs are favorites of his, or even songs that he would connect with me. It's almost as if I showed up at a party as he was leaving, after briefly introducing me to a few guests he took off. Some guests became mere acquaintances who I'd see every so often, but others became close friends, my brother couldn't control my own reaction, he could only initiate it.

MM:AM #1:Take You Back

Take You Back

by Blake Olsen

Listening to music is the only thing in the world that resembles what it's like to fall in love. As we go through life we develop a relationship with music, and just like a human relationship there are moments when our love is intensified, fueled, exposed, and broadened. Discovering music is very much like your first kiss. There will always be the memory of the first time you experienced it and every subsequent thing from that moment falls under the initial connection. This is one of the purest and most exhilarating moments one can experience in life.

1-Phil Collins: In The Air Tonight

I was very young, about four or five years old, sitting in the car with my dad who was listening to this song. I remember watching him listen to it, seeing how it was completely in control of both of us. No matter where I am at in my life, no matter what my past is or my future holds, this song and that moment is a part of me forever.

2-Queen: Bohemian Rhapsody

My first encounter with this song was with my older cousin when we were kids, he put it on while he played Nintendo. This song came into my soul and left room for nothing else in the world. Even being nine or ten, I was captivated by the contrasting sounds and the intensity of both hope and hopelessness that are present. Only Queen can make you feel strong when you're sad and vulnerable when you are happy. That dichotomy is probably responsible for this being my single favorite song ever.

3-Red Hot Chili Peppers: By The Way

The first time I heard this song, I felt like I had seemingly heard this in another galaxy a trillion years ago, where it had been the expression of every feeling any 16 year-old kid had ever come in contact with in the known universe. I may have heard this song more than any other song I know, and I still have the same ephemeral feeling of magnitude come over me each time. It makes me feel very tiny and very insignificant in a very wonderful way.

4-Queens of the Stone Age: Go With The Flow

This song is like being blindside by a tsunami of sound and taken to a place on earth where color is inverted and space and time are magnified until everything seems very fast and very far apart. This song can both send souls to eternity and raise the dead. This was one of the first songs I ever felt like I had a generational claim to; as if this music was specifically for me, and the type of person I was.

5-Grouch & Eligh of the Living Legends: Remember Who You Are

I had never paid much attention to what hip-hop had to offer. Then one night, I was with a girl who I was convinced was the coolest person on the planet, she put this song on as she drove me home while the sun came up. I was one kind of person until that night, but sitting next to her, as the song played, the sun came up, and shined on a brand new version of me. That was one of the most powerful and important moments I have ever experienced with music. An entire wing of the musical universe was opened to me in a matter of minutes. That time, that person, that song, that feeling, changed me forever.

6-Pink Floyd: Time

I have always had a terrible weakness for nostalgia. I hate my birthday, it makes me sad. I hate New Years, it makes me feel like I'm losing something. This song is the only song I know that captures the feeling of realizing lost or wasted time. That pit in your stomach when you want to grab time, slow it down and milk every last second out of it, but knowing it’s beyond impossible, and accepting the unchangeable truth that time marches on, regardless of how we may try to hold it against its will. When I came to understand the philosophical ramifications of this song, it became something more than a song; it became a reminder of the fragility of life and the exception power music has in it.

7-Madvillain: ALL CAPS

MF DOOM is an artistic genius. Perhaps what I appreciate most of his music is the way he makes the music bigger than himself. So often in hip-hop MC's are too concerned with maximizing themselves, and this comes at the cost of diminishing overall sound. MF DOOM, or as he is called on this album, Madvillain, is a pure and almost holy vessel between what hip-hop should be, and what we hear. The first time I heard this song with its patched samples and bleak piano hook, I realized what hip-hop music should be, but almost never is. No song represents hip-hop more clearly than this track. "Just remember ALL CAPS when you spell the man name."

8-Cut Copy: Hearts On Fire

Having been the repeat recipient of a broken heart, I have come to cherish seminal moments I have with the opposite sex. The unexpected nature of these encounters along with the great and humbling moment of a connection with a person you hardly know is one of my very favorite things in the world. I could say the same for the way I found this song, walking alone on a beach in California on a hazy Thanksgiving morning. This song captures that fleeting, adrenaline rush of a moment of attraction that is ultimately the reason we're all here.

9-Kid Cudi: Sky Might Fall

I got into Cudi during the darkest, most depressing era of my life. While the sound of his music captures the darkness, his words work in contrast, with hope; something I was not always able to hang on to. Much of his work, and this song in particular is about letting go of that which we truly cannot control, and accepting who we are and why we matter. This song was in many ways the musical life support during those hard times, and now I draw great strength from listening to it and considering what it helped me through. I don't think there's an artist I feel more connected to personally than Cudi, even though I've never met him. His work is incredibly and powerfully intimate. 

10-Arcade Fire: Modern Man

As I've come into adulthood, I've always set out to become a person who is with the times. For better or worse, this is an endeavor that is mostly trial and error. Music, style, food, dating are all things that I fail at more than I succeed. However, when there is breakthrough, it is highly rewarding. This song, in four minutes and forty seconds, explains what it’s like to try and fail, and try and succeed. The lyrics in this song and the entire album have become a narrative to my existence as a person trying his best to become a better man, to progress and achieve, and not always succeeding.

11-The Killers: When You Were Young

The first time I heard this song, it scraped a part of my soul that I didn't even know was there, this song is a lyrical expression of pure nostalgia. Being a child and conceptualizing the world a certain way, growing up in a cruel world, and coming to know forgiveness and the power of moving forward, while remembering that the mistakes you make cause you be the person you are. This song reminds me of how beautiful life is.

12-The Mars Volta: Take The Veil Cerpin Taxt

I tried for years to understand the appeal of The Mars Volta. For years, it never really sounded like anything but noise and chaos. Until a particular time when I heard this song, the last song on their debut album, and I realized what The Mars Volta really were. Ironically, they are noise, and they are chaos. But they're orchestrated noise, and organized chaos. Somehow, in some way, they take traditional aspects of music and obliterate them, gut them and filet them into something completely different, and their finished product is this uber-graphic and unceasingly vivid version of reality that doesn't casually keep you interested, but chokes you within an inch of your life until you comprehend and concede to its purpose and will. This purpose and will is something very big and very haunting, and you don't really understand it all at once, but you can not deny the actuality of its presence. This song tore me apart and rearranged me a hundred times over until I became exactly what it needed me to be to properly appreciate the power of it.

These are just a handful reasons why I love music. The best part is that there are more songs, more moments like this out there waiting for all of us. Music is in you, it's in me, it can never die, and it can never be held down. It is the most powerful force in humanity. If you personally don't have songs like this for yourself, go out and find them. They're out there for you.