So a while ago I promised a review of the recent Unexpect release, “Fables Of The Sleepless Empire“. I’ve decided to approach it track by track, doing my best to describe each song. As a short intro, I’d just like to add a few things. First off, the keyboardist, Exod, is no longer with the band, though he still contributed a great deal to the new album, and liner notes in the digipack state that he’s working on a solo project called “I Fury!” Second, the fantastic album that preceeded this one, “In A Flesh Aquarium” will be referenced a few times in relation to this new album, so if you haven’t heard that one, I highly recommend it. Also, naturally, a large part of this is just my interpretation of the album, and so my readings of the lyrics are by no means the be-all end-all of this incredibly rich work.

Ok, so to begin, “Unsolved Ideas Of A Distorted Guest” is a very striking opener for this album. It pretty much immediately shows the distance between this album and the last one, while still maintaining certain elements – for example, the intro to this song is a kind of slow rise into a very chaotic track, much the same as the intro to “Chromatic Chimera”, the first track of the previous album. Much like the rest of this album, this song shows that it has more in common with the final track of “In A Flesh Aquarium” than the rest of it – it feels more theatrical, like it’s being performed on a more grandiose scale perhaps. This is the biggest thing about this album I think, especially compared to the previous release from Unexpect – “In A Flesh Aquarium” felt like something that burrowed deep into your mind and started tearing it up, a frantic dialog of ideas and backfiring synapses. In “Fables” the songs feel like episodes of a sprawling cosmic epic, and the dialog has become one of worlds communicating in great battles, tragedies, and revolutions.

This brings us to “Words”, which to me feels like the most tragic song on the album. Not to say that it’s bad – it’s fantastic. In this song the general musical themes seem more dissonant though, and the lyrics speak to unpleasant reality that words never really communicate all that we want them to. While the song strikes me as somewhat bittersweet, it also practically garuntees a phoenix-like rise of transcedent ideas and emotion later in the album. Somewhat literally, actually, as we shall see on track 4, titled, “Mechanical Phoenix”.

The third track, titled “Orange Vigilantes” is, at least as my mind reads it, about mankind being overthrown by an army of mechanized pumpkins. The opening illustrates humanity existing in a robotic kind of dystopia, and goes on to paint a picture of the armies of mechanized pumpkins that will rise up in revolution to replace humanity as the dominant species on Earth. Or whatever planet this is – it’s somewhat difficult to tell, since the whole album has a kind of “galactic theatre” feel to it. This is one of my favourite songs on the album, and the one that was released as a preview to make me suddenly crave this album more than any musical release slated to come out in the near future. The music conveys perfectly the jazzy chaos and massive scope of the album, and in closing, the lyrics suggest that just as the orange vigilantes rose to power, so to will another race eventually surpass them in the same manner.

What comes next is the first of three tracks which, when listened to in sequence, compose what I believe to be one of the most sublime spaces in musical time ever recorded. First, “Mechanical Phoenix” describes the struggle between the need to create and the need to function and survive in a sometimes crushingly mundane society, all within the mind of the individual (perhaps “the artist”, though I wouldn’t presume to limit the message of this text). The music conveys all this with a collision of dissonance and electronic/mechanical sound, and incredible spaces of hypnotic 9-string bass, dreamlike keyboards and vocal performances, and downright mindblowing guitar and violin work. As the lyrics read,

“Empires rise, Empires fall

Structures collapse and lords are disgraced

But no power shall ever strip humanity

Of its creative capacity”

With a dreamlike sequence mimicing the opening of the song, “Mechanical Phoenix” leads into “The Quantum Symphony”. For me, this song embodies the epic scale that the emotions and ideas of this album seem to be conveyed on. Everything about it suggests whole galaxies and aeons of creation and conflict in my mind, from the awesome and deeply moving chorus to the deep layering of sounds and music along with generally mesmerizing melodies. As we progress through this 3-track space of musical time I was talking about earlier, it becomes more and more difficult for me to put it into words. In brief though, where “In A Flesh Aquarium” made me picture individuals in a psychic carnival, this song is a good example of how “Fables Of The Sleepless Empire” makes me picture wholes words colliding in an endless dreamscape. Oh, and the guitar solo in this song rules.

Completing this 3-track space that I keep praising is my favourite song on the album, to me a jaw-dropping monument to musical creation, titled “Unfed Pendulum”. My reading, simply, is that the mind is fed up – emotions and creativity have been left at the wayside as the body becomes an automation, and now it’s all leading to a revolution in the collective unconcious. The chorus is lucid and almost overwhelming, and leads into spaces of… I don’t even know how to describe it. Some kind of dancey rhythm all coordinated by bouncy guitar, which then lead into beautiful rides of the sublime on waves of violin, guitar, piano, drums, bass, vocals, everything coordinated in a rollercoaster for the soul. Unexpect is on full overdrive at this point, and if there’s only one song on this album that you listen to, I would recommend it be this one. Of course, I would recommend even more emphatically that you listen to the rest of it too! This album not only has some of the most “dancey” moments, and some of the most sweepingly precise moments, but also some of the most “metal” moments, at times echoing the stomping march of a robot invasion, and this is all without even mentioning the use of mechanical sounds at the intro and throughout the song, or the drifting spaces towards the end of the song, contrasted with more marching robot sensibilities. Absolutely amazing.

After “Unfed Pendulum” there is a brief “intermission” of sorts titled “In The Mind Of The Last Whale”. No lyrics here, but it’s interesting to note that this is one moment where the album mirrors its predecessor. Both albums have somewhat ambient tracks marking about the 2 thirds-mark of the release, and both feature great use of electronic sound and chaotic editing of the more “natural” sounds used such as traditional instruments (piano in this case) and vocal additions.

Then comes “Silence This Parasite” – this is another song which reminds me of the last track of the previous album, which in some sense is like a preview of things to come. Like the clip hidden after the credits-sequence in some films that hints of what will happen in the next installment of a series, “Psychic Jugglers” from “In A Flesh Aquarium” gave us a test of the “bigger” sound that would permeate the next album from Unexpect. “Silence This Parasite” is in some ways the most “violent” song on the album to my ear – the instruments all seem to be locked in duels with eachother, while the vocals scream at eachother in turn, some sounds spinning out of their duels to join with others in similar conflicts, then breaking off again and reforming their respective fights.  It all pulls together to detail the destruction of a great tyrant, slowly pulled down by chaos and revolution as reach fails to consider grasp – something that Unexpect never seems to have a problem with.

The conclusion of the album, while consisting of three tracks, is actually one piece titled “Until Yet A Few More Deaths Do Us Part” – a trilogy about an undead marriage. This is another case of the new album mirroring the previous one, as the previous album also finished with a trilogy, structured much the same way – beginning with a somewhat more calm song with only Lelindel singing, then leading into a much larger and chaotic song. There are two differences between this album’s closing trilogy and that of the last one – first, that this trilogy ends with a song which serves as much more of an epilogue to the trilogy, certainly much shorter than one might expect if comparing this trilogy to the one in the last album. The second difference seems most unfortunate to me – that there is no song after the trilogy, which in the case of “In A Flesh Aquarium” there was “Psychic Jugglers”, which I earlier described as the “things to come” preview for “Fables”. Naturally, it’s very possible that Psychic Jugglers was never planned as the preview for the next release, but it would still be nice to see a similar situation at the end of this new album, so that I could hold onto it as a kind of musical prophecy that would keep me waiting with near-religious anticipation for the next release – which, honestly, I’ll probably do anyways.

In closing, I can’t commend Unexpect enough on this album. To say it was worth the 5-year wait is a grave understatement. I can only hope that we hear more from this incredible group for many years to come.

So, about five years ago I had a favourite band. They were called Unexpect. I went to every show they put on in Ottawa from the day I heard about them, listened to their 2006 album “In A Flesh Aquarium” pretty much every day for 2 years, and still many more times after those 2 years. I took every opportunity to hang out with band members at the shows, bought t-shirts, bought their first CD (self-released, to my astonishment), and when I was in a jam to get an interview for my high school co-op program, I did it with Syriak, one of their 3(!) vocalists (also one of their 2 guitarists). And then…

Nothing. The last show I went to (perhaps as long as a year and a half ago), I was told how their album was pretty much ready to go, but there had been some kind of falling out with their label (The End Records, a label which started out with incredible promise, but then shifted their eyes towards less extreme avant garde music). To be honest, over the following year, I kind of lost hope. But then they released a new track, called Orange Vigilantes, which was about an army of mechanized pumpkins revolting against humanity. And I thought, “maybe this will be worth the wait.” I even preordered the new album.

The album, “Fables Of The Sleepless Empire”, dropped today. Since I preordered, I even got a free digital copy with lyrics and art via email. Since midnight, I have listened to it four times. To say that it was worth the wait is a terrible understatement.

But this should all be put in a review, which hopefully I will be posting in the near future. In the meantime, YOU can listen to it for yourself, streaming at http://unexpect.bandcamp.com/album/fables-of-the-sleepless-empire!

The album doesn’t even have a proper distributor yet, as the band has had to self-release this album much like their debut. If you like the album, help them out! I cannot stress enough how worthwhile this would be – just to get the lyrics in your hands.

Well, this is it guys. This is the be-all end-all of Tom Lando sexy times songs. It’s not that there aren’t more songs on my sexy times playlist. I have many, many more. The thing is… well, those of you that checked out any of these articles (and for those who haven’t, now you’ll know) will know that there was a large dose of Mindless Self Indulgence in the sexy times playlist that spawned this column. There was even a track by Capsule, my favourite band. So now we have Money Shot by Mustard Pimp ft. Jimmy Urine. Mustard Pimp’s music happens to sound a lot like something Capsule might make (that’s a really high compliment coming from me). Jimmy Urine is none other than the lead singer for Mindless Self Indulgence. It’s a match made in heaven (or sexy, sexy hell). Here we have a combination of some of my favourite musical elements in one song, and with lyrical content which… well, it’s just the ultimate Tom Lando sexy time song. Above is the music video, which uses a shortened version of the song, and below is the full version. Would you have sex to this song? I would. Over and over and over. Point made. Meditate on it. Good night everyone.

I hath returned with a new extreme sandwich! This one had a lot more planning put into it – I decided to make it for a specific event, and I got a friend with much greater cooking experience than I to help me with it. To start with, it was…a day or two after St. Patrick’s Day. Some friends were throwing a sort of belated St. Patrick’s Day party which was officially named “The Green Party”. I had considered making some of my Great White Machetes, but someone pointed out that it would be more appropriate to supply something green. As such, I seized the opportunity to create a new extreme sandwich, this time with the following requirements – something green, something with potato, and an Irish alcohol.

I also decided to go about making these sandwiches with the help of a friend who lived nearby and was also attending the party, Nina Paciocco, who actually studied cooking and works as a pastry chef, which is significantly more experience than I can claim to have in the field of culinary arts. And, for the record, she did pretty much all the work – at the party, people would ask me if I made it. Every time I said yes, Nina would suddenly be there to hear it before I could explain her assistance, and every time I said that she did all the work…well, she wasn’t there, but if she HAD been I would’ve seemed like less of a douchebag! Anyways, apart from doing all the work while I came up with whatever recipe alterations came to mind, she also provided the crucial element of the spinach spread which we used on the bread for this particular sandwich.

So for the key ingredients, we needed something green – that one was easy for me, because I love jalapeños. Funny thing is, we didn’t even need the jalapeños, because the spinach in Nina’s spinach spread would’ve covered the green requirement anyways. But again, I love me some jalapeños. For the potato part, I considered a number of things before Nina suggested potato bread, which also gave us a direction to go in for the actual ends of the sandwich. Then out of all the Irish alcohol options I chose Guinness, because I figured it would be the simplest to cook with and would give us a wide array of options.

With those elements figured out, we just had to figure out the rest of the ingredients – most importantly, the meat! We quickly decided that the best thing to do with the Guinness would be to stir fry strip beef in it, along with some jalapeño and garlic. And of course, we added bacon! The spinach spread was actually prepared beforehand because we were using leftovers, but when we got to the actual cooking process, we did the beef stir fry while at the same time cooking the bacon in the oven. Once that was done, we cut the potato bread into a whole bunch of sandwiches, applied the spinach spread, added diced jalapeño to the sandwiches directly, and then added the bacon and beef – simple as that!

For the spinach spread, here’s the recipe Nina sent me:

1. Preheat oven to 425F
2. Heat 2 tbs olive oil with 1 med. onion and 2-3 cloves of garlic (both diced)
3. Add 2lbs spinch and cook down (should wilt completely)
4. Add 1 can artichoke hearts (drain and chopped)
5. Tranfer to a colander and let some of the excess liquid drain out
6. Meanwhile, melt 6 oz cream cheese into 1/2 cup milk with 3 dashes of worcester sauce and 3 dashes of hot sauce (more if you’re not serving it to pussies)
7. Add the spinich mix back in and 1/4 cup mozzarella (shredded) and salt and pepper
8. Transfer to a shallow baking dish and put 1/2 cup more mozzarella on top
9. Bake till golden and bubbly (about 20-30 min)

And to summarize…

• Potato bread (however much you need, really)
• Spinach spread on the top end.
• Strip beef, stir fried with one diced jalapeño, garlic, and Guinness. (This part smells fucking awesome.)
• BACON!
• One diced jalapeño added directly to the sandwich.

I guess the way to do it is make the spinach spread first, cook the bacon in the oven while you stir fry the beef, cut the bread, apply the spread, dice the jalapeño and apply it, and then apply the MEAT! Enjoy your Irish Fire Axe!

Alright guys, today’s entry into this series will be the first of several “double shots” – that is, two songs by the same artist. And who is this illustrious artist that I could manage to squeeze out two musings about regarding both music AND sex? Well, it’s Mindless Self Indulgence of course! Let’s dig in, shall we?

5. Faggot by Mindless Self Indulgence

I’ve been really hesitant to write this part of “Make Love The Tom Lando Way”, because I knew that I would HAVE to cover this song, but at the same time… well, I’m not sure I have the time, nor the authority, to write the “faggot manifesto”. It’s funny actually – I happily use the word to describe myself sometimes. To me the word embodies the very same deviance, sexuality, and… I suppose you could say “edge” that Mindless Self Indulgence’s music in general represents to me. What I find strange is how much flak I end up taking for using the word, even if it’s exclusively to describe myself. I mean, people seem to be all about taking words back these days, like those keychains that let people know you’re a “bitch”. Actually, I think Kids In The Hall even covered this before. It’s not like I’m unfamiliar with the negative uses of the word – it accompanied enough threats and sometimes attacks for me back in high school. But as far as I can tell, the whole process of taking a word back is about making that word lose its power. I’m not really one for objective definitions, but I will say that to me, the word faggot doesn’t hold strictly negative connotations with me. If you subscribe to a brand of sexual expression similar to my own manic stylings, maybe you’d like to adopt it too! I certainly wouldn’t hold it against you.

So now that we’re past that…there’s not much left to say, I suppose. It’s Mindless Self Indulgence, and it holds a special place in my heart, because to me it represents something I would like to represent myself. Same goes for most of MSI’s material, really.

6. Evening Wear by Mindless Self Indulgence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GArQ-SpNtI8

For some reason this song really reminds me of the time I spent in Iceland (probably because I listened to the album so many times while I was there), and I must admit, it’s… distracting. My trip to Iceland wasn’t particularly sexy, which is unfortunate, because if it had been, I’d have a whole story to tell here. Lost opportunities, I tell ya.

It’s also hard for me to write about this song because it’s one of those songs that I’ve listened to so many times that it’s difficult to keep focused on long enough to pick up individual qualities that might be found within. I’ll do my best though. This song is from “if”, which I believe is still MSI’s most recent studio album. This album is…different. Not just different from the majority of music produced these days, because I could say that about every MSI release, but different from other MSI albums because it seems less scatter-brained than the others, perhaps even more…lucid? That seems like a good word for it.

The specifics of the song speak to me for the usual reasons – there’s something about the kind of self-loathing found in lyrics like “I dress myself in fucking lies” that really appeals to me. By the end of the song we get to “dress down until I disappear”, and I really like that too. So this comes back to the question that spawned these articles in the first place, which is, “what does THAT say about me?” To be honest, I’m not to clear on this one. Analyzing it, I’d say that while I like that self-loathing element I referenced earlier, but I wouldn’t say I’m a particularly self-loathing person. Rather, I think for me, I like this song and the ideas contained within it because it comes off as a way of weaponizing the negative aspects of myself. Like I say, I’m not sure I’ve got too much self-loathing per se, but I’m certainly aware that I’m not the smoothest fucker around. Taking the things I don’t like about myself but can’t really help (among these, I might say that I “dress myself in fucking lies”) and mixing them in with the things I do like about myself and try to reinforce, well, I suppose that’s the formula to create the whole of my personality. The sexual element is especially clear in the song with the metaphor of evening wear, make-up, and the process of dressing oneself up for a sexual encounter, but if you want to examine how this applies to me specifically, I think the final idea is that all the dressing up just builds me to the point where I dissolve away – “dress down until I disappear.” However, the line after that is “but I won’t do it alone.” And to me, that whole process describes a certain kind of sex. To me, it’s like a one-night-stand where both parties go out with the express intention of having one, looking to pick up or get picked up, and all the rituals that lead up to the main event, all the dressing up and presentation, until you finally get to the moment where you dress down… and then it’s over. “Dress down until I disappear, but I won’t do it alone.” I think when I say it like this, with all the analysis and whatnot, it sounds a bit heavy, and kind of depressing, but the reality of it entails exactly that kind of edgy sexuality that I’m attracted to, that Mindless Self Indulgence so often makes me think of. Get out there, party, rock out, fuck, do whatever however, and most importantly, do it for you. The rituals of it are all just part of the fun – that’s what this song represents to me, with the bittersweet moments identified just as clearly as the fun ones.

Normally I put a little survey at the bottom of each entry here, but honestly, nobody is answering it. Hopefully this entry was at least interesting – I think it’s a little more introspective than I’m actually feeling these days, and would be more suited to a blog, but I think that’s just the nature of this series. If you really enjoy it anyways, or if you have anything else to say, leave a comment! I’d love to hear your feedback on these articles.

I had been asked to come to Wendy’s for 10AM. I wasn’t entirely sure as to why… I knew it had something to do with the application I had put in several months ago, but I wasn’t sure if I was looking at an interview, training, or what. This was kind of a trivial thing for me – I already have a job. On the other hand, said job gives me about one shift per month, so the idea of getting one wherein I actually made some money was kind of appealing. The other questionable aspect of working at Wendy’s was that, having worked at KFC for three years, I wasn’t exactly excited to work in fast food again. All this aside, I decided what the hell, and set out for whatever this meeting would be about.

But I had an additional objective in mind! After the thing at Wendy’s, I would stop by the nearest grocery store and assemble the ingredients required to make CANDIED BACON! I had already tasted the magnificent treat before, but I don’t have much of a history as far as cooking goes, so this would be my first time actually MAKING the delicacy. I went and picked up a can of real maple syrup (by far the most expensive thing on the list), a bag of brown sugar (to be honest, I might have already had this somewhere in my house, but I wasn’t going to take that chance), and a pack of bacon.

When I got home, I put the bacon in the oven, mixed the brown sugar and maple syrup, took the bacon out, glazed the bacon with the sweet brown sauce, put the bacon back in, and after repeating the last three steps until I was out of sauce. I let the bacon cook for another 10 minutes before finally turning off the oven and laying my strips of candied bacon out on a plate so I could snack on them throughout the next little while.

Once I was down to two strips, though, I found that I wasn’t quite satisfied. I guess I was, at that point, craving a bit more of a meal – preferably one that I could get these last two strips of bacon involved in. I decided the best method for this would be to make a sandwich, so I discussed ideas for said sandwich with Gill. The first step I came up with was to wrap the candied bacon in 3 slices of lunchmeat style ham and then shred cheddar cheese over it, which would be melted all together. I also decided to add a crumble of crushed up Cool Ranch Doritos to the cheese, making it all melt into a kind of crunchy nacho topping atop pig wrapped in candy wrapped in pig. For the ends of the sandwich, naturally some kind of spread was in order. Gill and I had initially decided on peanut butter, but I later discovered that the peanut butter was missing, which is actually pretty unusual. Regardless, I went through the various condiments in my kitchen and finally decided (clearing the idea with Gill first) to use a spread of cream cheese. I am so glad I did this, because it was amazing.

Next time I make this, I’m gonna to make 2 changes. Namely, I will be putting it on a bagel (lightly toasted) instead of bread, and I will be adding Fireball Whiskey to the sauce with which I candy the bacon.

>So to summarize, here is the makeup of the sandwich which I dubbed “The Great White Machete” (it’s pretty white). I’m including an alcoholic and non-alcoholic variation.

• 2 Slices of White Bread OR 1 White Bagel (Lightly Toasted)
• Cream Cheese Spread on Both Ends
• Candied Bacon (Bacon glazed with a mix of maple syrup and brown sugar) ALCOHOLIC VERSION: Add Fireball Whiskey to Bacon glaze
• 3 Slices of Lunchmeat Style Sliced Ham, Wrapped Around the Candied Bacon
• Cheddar Cheese Shredded on top of the Ham Wraps
• Cool Ranch Doritos Crumble Mixed With the Shredded Cheese

Put the candied bacon wrapped in ham on a plate, shred the cheese onto it, crush the doritos over it, and then put the plate in the microwave and nuke it for 33 seconds. Spread the cream cheese on the bread or bagel, then take everything on the plate and put it between the two ends of the sandwich. Enjoy your Great White Machete!

Alright, so thus far I’ve only recieved one result for the survey, which isn’t much to go on. Granted, nobody has started following me on grooveshark, so I can only assume nobody knows anything about the playlist beyond the first two songs.

In other news, it was just Valentine’s day, so I guess it’s as good a time as any to get the ball rolling – and we’ve got two pretty big ones today! So let’s get right into it, shall we?

3. JUMPER by Capsule

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaAWEAHxhQ4

Alright, now, this one isn’t exclusively a sexual song to me, but it is very important to me and I felt it had to be on the list nevertheless. And any night where I hook up can go from good to ecstatic merely by hearing this song at some point before, during, or after the hook up in question. This is a song that I always include on playlists when I’m picking music for a party, and it never disappoints. I think most people have at least one song that makes them want to get up and dance, and for me, this is that song. And I don’t think I’m alone here – when I put this song on, it usually turns up the energy level of any party by quite a bit.

Further, this is a song that just plain makes me feel good. The lyrics, while few, just never fail to put me in a light state of mind.

“Anger, stress and secrets they won’t break you, wake up, feel just like you’re feeling nothing, freely speed up, running, stepping, jumping, jumper.”

In a sense, this is less a song of the purely sexual variety, but more a kind of song that can totally fill me with romantic notions, and I feel that there will at least be a few songs getting onto this list on that merit. Hell, maybe the message here is, “they aren’t ALL mindless hook up songs.” Which I really wish I could consult the survery for thoughts on, but uh… ahem… well, I won’t get into that again.

4. Make Me Cum by Mindless Self Indulgence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP3EuQEBIM0

Ok, this one is HUGE. To start with, it’s the first Mindless Self Indulgence track on this playlist, but believe me, it is certainly not the last. In the first entry of this series, I said these were songs that get me hot, horny, or which I feel would actually be perfect to have sex to. Make Me Cum by Mindless Self Indulgence fits all of those descriptions. This is, in many ways, the ultimate Tom Lando sex song. Of course, as will be shown over the course of the playlist, Mindless Self Indulgence is the quintessential Tom Lando sex band, so this song is obviously of huge importance in the musical pantheon of this playlist. This is the song I listen to in the shower on a day when I plan to set out and get laid, and this is the song I listen to in the shower after getting laid. This is the alpha and omega of Tom Lando’s sexy times.

There’s a lot to be said about this song too. For example, I think that a lot of songs I’ve chosen for this playlist follow a rule of having strong basslines and beats. I think this is just sort of a primal thing, a default association with sex. Probably something to do with vibrations. Whatever the case, this song, and many others that I’ve chosen by Mindless Self Indulgence, totally goes against that rule. I think that this actually communicates a larger inconsistency between my views on “sexual music” and the general understanding of such. There’s something about the erratic insanity of Mindless Self Indulgence’s music that strikes a nerve with me that probably doesn’t awaken the same feelings in other people. I know that Mindless Self Indulgence is a pretty sexual band, and a lot of people see it as such, but there’s something explicitly deviant in even their sound which resonates strongly with me. This comes through in “Make Me Cum” as much as any of their other songs – the pacing is wild and varied, the beat is frenetic, and the use of instruments, be they rhythm, bass, or higher electronic sounds, is unpredictable. Again, the style in addition to the meaning I take from it is of a decidedly deviant nature.

The lyrics offer a lot to be explored. I mean, the fundamentals of it are the exact kind of eccentric self-absorbed mania you might expect – it is “mindless self indulgence” after all. Particularly, there’s something that I always notice about the chorus. The words to the chorus are:

“I’m the one who makes me so happy, and I wanna be all just for myself.”

The lyrics are sung twice, but the second time it always goes from sounding like “I wanna be all just for myself” to sounding like “maybe I’ll just fuck myself.” I get the impression this is intentional, but either way, the song remains more or less the same. The song is really summed up with the line “I’m the one who makes me cum.” To put it in another man’s words, “Hey, don’t knock masturbation. It’s sex with someone I love.”

Like most Mindless Self Indulgence songs, this track runs the gamut of human emotion, going from “I’m the one I want to sleep with” to “I’m the one who hates me so much.” But sometimes this is how I feel. In fact, coming out of a one night stand, this is a pretty common unspoken thought for me; namely, I went into sex with someone else, got the sexual gratification I was in it for, and then I came out of it, and what do I have? Well, I have me. You end up being both sides of the exchange, at least in your own mind. It sounds obvious, but it’s a pretty major meditation on the nature of the one night stand if you ask me. I’m not saying that it’s not hollow or meaningless. Hell, I’ve been talking about what it is this whole time – mindless self indulgence. I just think that if you have the right mentality for it, it’s not such a bad thing. That mentality is pretty much perfectly expressed in this song. It’s about you and your orgasm (or, as it is for the subject, ME and MY orgasm) and if you’ve got that and you’re still unhappy, then you weren’t going about things the right way, were you? It might seem like I’m trying to push meaningless sex in favour of proper commited relationships, but that’s not really what I’m trying to do here. I really want to make the observation that both have their place, and while they get confused all the time, if you’re dissatisfied with one, maybe you should consider the other. But that’s all a lot of introspection best left to individuals.

So back to the more self-absorbed aspects of this piece, what does, say, the huge amount of Mindless Self Indulgence in this playlist say about me? Well, even beyond what it says about my taste in music (I love this band), I’m also pretty fond of the actual activity of mindless self indulgence. I’m quite fond of art for arts sake, and there’s very little that I can’t consider art in it’s own right. I guess for me the point is, do what you’re doing. If you get sick of what you’re doing, do something else. Obviously I’m as guilty of over analyzing things as anyone – hell, that’s why we have this column in the first place! But while I am capable of being romantic, I’ve generally come to separate my sex from my romance, and so far it suits me fine. Naturally, given this distinction I’ve established, this playlist caters more to my sexual side than my romantic side.

But what about you guys? My survey still stands!

1. Would you have sex to the music in this playlist?

2. If so, would you have sex with a commited long-term partner to this music, or with a one-night stand? Or both? Or neither? If neither, explain under what circumstances you would have sex to the music in this playlist.

Hope you enjoy the music, the musings, and I most certainly hope that all you readers are enjoying the sex, regardless of how you have it!

Before I begin this thing, I’ve got some instructions. First, if you don’t have a Grooveshark account, get one! Honestly, it’s way faster than downloading all your music, and it allows you to subscribe to friends with similar tastes so that you can see their new discoveries and you can check them out. This leads me to my next instruction: if you have any interest in what I’m writing here, subscribe to tlando on Grooveshark! That way you can check out the playlist that I’ll be referencing throughout this article, and also check out not only whatever I’m listening to, but also all my other playlists! Seriously, I make a lot of them. Now, on with the show…

Gill is always telling me that I should write more for The Back Row. To be honest, I am kind of sorry I don’t contribute more to the site, and even its sister site, The Velvet Rope. I mean, sure, I am on two podcasts, but the fact that I watch a fair amount of pornography and haven’t written more than a couple articles on the The Velvet Rope is just laziness on my part. So I’ve considered a lot of things I could write about from time to time, but haven’t actually written about any of them. Part of it is that my own preferred style of writing is probably better suited to blogging than it is to this particular website. That said, the Tom Lando… thing has gotten pretty big. Particularly on this site! I’m honestly really surprised by the resoundingly positive response to “The Tom Lando Files” and for all those fans of the Tom Lando thing who are reading this, I’d like to tell you how flattered I am. Hopefully I’ll keep producing stuff that you like.

So with this kind of support for the Tom Lando thing, I figure it’s a bit easier for me to get self indulgent crap put up on the site! Of course, I personally don’t want to break the proper rhythms and themes of the site, so I’m not about to start using it as my new blogspace. But then I saw an opportunity. A while back I made a post which followed up on the newfound success of “The Tom Lando Files”, advertising my Grooveshark account and the series of playlists I was putting up on said website. Fast forward to the time of this writing, and I have (among many others) a new playlist, simply titled “Tom Lando’s Sexy Times”. Now, most of my playlists are simply what I feel are the best tracks pulled from the discographies of certain artists. This one, however, is a change of pace – “Tom Lando’s Sexy Times” is a playlist of, as you may have guessed, songs which I associate strongly with sex. Songs that get me hot, horny, or which I feel would actually be perfect to have sex to!

After thinking about it a while though, I realized that this playlist perhaps… said certain things about me. In fact, it suggested things that even I felt were questionable, let alone other people. What does all this “Mindless Self Indulgence” on my sexy playlist say about my own personal sexual neurosis? Hell, just the style of music probably communicates some deeply personal issues to begin with. This presented a cool prospect to me. I had often considered writing some kind of musical criticism for The Back Row, but often either felt that I didn’t have enough to say about any given album, or felt that it would be silly to review albums and music that came out ages before I wrote about them. But if I were to analyze this particular playlist, I could not only talk about music I was into, but also talk about sex, which people seem to be into.

And thus we have “Make Love The Tom Lando Way”, an ongoing examination of songs that I, Tom Lando, find sexy in one way or another. Also, I get to reference that book by Bruce Campbell, so it’s a win/win! So I hope you enjoy this exciting exploration of things both musical and sexual. Just some opening notes for curious readers – I’m a practicing bisexual, single, not particularly sexually active lately, enjoy pornography, am not accutely aware of any major fetishes which I can lay claim to, and am a bottom in homosexual relationships, but a top in heterosexual relationships. Oh, and I dig trannies. Anyways, I’m sure we’ll go through all of this along the way. Let’s get it on!

1. Black Beatles (a mashup by Loo & Placido, featuring The Beatles, Ludacris, The Black Eyed Peas, Kelis, and honestly I think even more than that)

Alright, as the position of first song on the playlist might suggest, this was the first song I thought of when I began creating “Tom Lando’s Sexy Times”. In fact, this way have been one of the songs, if not THE song, which inspired me to create this playlist in the first place. So the questions is, why?

Well, carefully examining any mashup is a matter made complicated by the many songs that are… well, mashed-up to create the final product. So to begin with, there’s the first thing we hear, the instrumental track of the song, which is taken from The Black Eyed Peas’ “Let’s Get It Started”, which I understand was originally titled “Let’s Get Retarded”, but was then re-titled to make it suitable for radio play… You see? This is already so complicated! Look at all the punctuation in that last sentence! That’s not sexy! Anyways, say what you will about The Black Eyed Peas (like how they are fucking awful and their constant radio play ensured many painful hours of musical assault when I worked at KFC), but this song is pretty good, at least on the instrumental level. It even works really well in “Hot Tub Time Machine”, if you’ve seen that. Anyways, again, a good song with a really solid bassline.

Then comes what really sells the song for me – The Beatles! The first handful of lyrics are the opening to “Girl” by The Beatles, which are awesome (see “Across The Universe” for good exploitation of this awesome opening bit), and then they immediately run into ANOTHER Beatles song, “Run For Your Life”.

It is here that I would like to touch on what will almost certainly be a recurring element of “Make Love The Tom Lando Way” and that is – does my associating these songs with sex suggest that I might be a serial killer-in-waiting? In this particular instance, let’s look at the specific lyrics used in this song:

“Well I’d rather see you dead, little girl
Than to be with another man
You better keep your head, little girl
Or I won’t know where I am”

Then:

“Well you know that I’m a wicked guy
And I was born with a jealous mind
And I can’t spend my whole life
Trying just to make you toe the line”

And later:

“Let this be a sermon
I mean everything I’ve said
Baby, I’m determined
And I’d rather see you dead”

Among others… Now, I’m not trying to judge the lyrics of The Beatles here. Hell, way more explicit lyrics are present in the songs of the playlist. But that’s what I’m saying – What does it say about me that implicitly or explicitly violent lyrics keep appearing in the songs I associate with sex? Now is probably not the time to explore this, as we’re only one song in, but I guarantee it’ll come up again.

So, moving along, we have several more verses, mostly from hip hop artists I’m not nearly as familiar with. I know that the first rap verse is by Ludacris, and they’re super sexualized (A Ludacris song with suggestive lyrics? GASP!) so that makes sense right? Good music with a strong beat and bassline, highly sexual lyrics, and also some singing which is good but also… kind of in the vein of something a creepy psycho-sexual murderer might say? The second rap verse is by a guy who seems, judging by his lyrics, to have foot fetish; not really my thing, but whatever, those lyrics are of a sexual variety as well. Then there’s some more stuff mixed in which I not only can’t identify the origin of, but can’t really figure out the meaning of either.

Overall a track which I might even describe as “bumpin'”, whatever that means. So why did it come first? Well, I think what happened was that I was listening to it on a playlist at some point, put on some porn in another window, but found that the music kind of matched the themes of the porn, which got me thinking about how there are some songs which I feel “fit” with a sexualized context, at least way more than other songs do. Thus I got the idea for this playlist, which I eventually created, and then started looking back on and analyzing… and here we are.

2. Could You Be Love Gamed? (a mashup by DJ BC featuring Lady Gaga and Bob Marley)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X1-549m-eQ

So, when making this this playlist, since I started with a mashup my mind immediately wandered to another mashup. Since most of the mashups I know are made with a lot of club music, which seems to lend itself to sexual themes and appropriately driving rhythms, there were quite a lot to choose from. I did, however, manage to pick out a particular track. A few notes for this one: First, this song uses the lyrics from Lady Gaga’s “Love Game” (Not THAT Love Game), which is notoriously sexual, to the point where I’m still amazed it got radio play. That said, Cee-Lo’s “Fuck You” got tonnes of radio exposure, so maybe my expectations of radio censorship are behind the times. Whatever the case, it’s interesting that one of the most explicitly lines in the song, “I wanna take a ride on your disco stick,” is not even present in this mashup! I’ve considered that the connection to the original version, and my knowledge of said version, is influencing my choice of this track, but then I look at the lyrics that DO make the cut, and it’s not like the rest of the song is relatively tame.

The music is some very well remixed instrumental backing from a Bob Marley song. I remember back in high school, like Grade 10 or something, my friend Eric did some kind of exchange program which involved a French dude named Basille living with him for a while, and then Eric had to live with Basille in some French mountain village or some shit. Anyways, Basille was a crazy stoner (actually, Eric even reported that he saw Basille doing ether when he was in France), and one time a cop showed up at Eric’s place while Basille was on mushrooms… ahh, good times! Anyways, what I’m getting to is one time Basille had sex with a model in the guest room of Eric’s house while listening to Bob Marley. Obviously, being in Grade 10, this was kind of a thing to us. What a feat! Anyways, I wonder if this has subconciously put the idea in my head that Bob Marley is good music for having sex. I have no idea. In fact, overall I would disagree. But this brings me to another consideration that I feel is bound to come up again throughout the examination of this playlist.

See, when I think about it, maybe Bob Marley IS good music to have sex to – for NORMAL people. What does that mean? Well, when I imagine the sex I would have while this playlist is playing… it’s not “normal” sex per se. Like, I don’t imagine two people in a healthy relationship having sex to this music. It is in this that it occurs to me that this playlist entails a certain type of sex, perhaps a kind of sex reserved for one night stands and other such flings.

This is where YOU, the reader, come in. I have a survey of sorts for anyone who listens to this playlist. I’ll be asking these two questions at the end of all articles in this series. They are:

1. Would you have sex to the music in this playlist?
2. If so, would you have sex with a commited long-term partner to this music, or with a one-night stand? Or both? Or neither? If neither, explain under what circumstances you would have sex to the music in this playlist.

And as I said, these questions come AT THE END of each of these articles, and thus I will leave things at that for now. Hopefully when I write the next chapter in this series, I will have some responses regarding the survey!

Oh, Stan Lee. Every now and then you do something that makes me shake my head. But unlike the drumming and panning that this idea is getting from the beer belly hockey fans on both sides of the border (of which I consider myself one, thank you…

So in my quest to find something good to read I came across this gem of a site that allowed me to read upwards of a couple of hundred books in the space of about five minutes. Improve your literary IQ and check out this awesome site…