10 August 2012

Pump up Jamz



Not sure if the above will work for you, but in the event that it doesn't, you can open this link in a different tab and that will give you the scoop. 

Joined a new gym. Old gym was great until they converted the yoga studio into a barre studio. That is good for membership because barre is all the rage right now. I told them to suck it because I'm there for quality yoga and the yoga instruction has been in steady decline for about a year. Anyway, I joined a crossfit gym and it's good. Tough workouts. And I don't have to wear a shirt, which is nice.

One area where the crossfit gym is really falling down is the music. They got the stereo working but there's not much consistency in the pump up jamz. I find a wide range of pump-up jamz acceptable: rock, punk, techno, hard house, hard trance and rap all have something to offer your PUJ playlist. You know what doesn't work? Country music. I can't name a single pump-up country song and you can't either. It just doesn't work. I understand you can't please everybody but if you're playing country songs and I'm trying to lift weights then you're just making it tougher.

Here's a fun bootleg pump-up jam that claims to be 'progressive house', which I guess means that it's a hard trance track with a vocal in it. No idea. There's a lot of overlap with these things. The song is kind of confused in that it:
- Starts out with a catchy vocal (~ 50 secs)
- Hints at the superbly catchy bass line for a build (1:30)
- Goes into a nice bit of song proper with the bass line (1:45)
- Motors along for a while successfully with the vocal (1:45-3:40)
- Suddenly throws in a full on, straight up, trance-style super-synth Rank-1-Airwave-cribbed breakdown @ 3:45. Which, for the record, is very well executed.
- Then the bass drops again (4:28) and IT IS FUCKING ON until 5:30 when you better be queuing up something else because the outro is short. 

Even though this song is kind of all over the place the individual elements are so good that it doesn't matter. Turn it up and you'll see what I mean.

Not sure I'm going to bring this to Crossfit Balboa. They're not ready. Play this song on half volume during a warmup and it'll fall flat. Play it when you're in the middle of a tough workout (or a big night out) and it'll melt your face off.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think this is the first and thus far only musical selection of yours I can't go along with.

b

Anonymous said...

link please. other one is broken.