MGMT's Oracular Spectacular is a Must Buy or Download

[Randy Lahey]

You guys have to listen to this album. I've been waiting all decade for somebody to put out an album this good. Go out there right now and buy it or download it. This is all I've been listening to for the last 5 days. Here's a couple songs that are up on youtube and a link to the album on amazon.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XVnRzEjpUmE

http://youtube.com/watch?v=SQF8ep-OJLs

http://www.amazon.com/Oracular-Spectacular...1763&sr=8-2

[Estranged Reality]

They originally put it out free on their website.

It's definitely one of my fav's from this year.

Edited March 13, 2008 by Estranged Reality

[FunkyMonk]

It certainly gets my tick of approval.

[pain cake]

I actually did compile a "top 10 of 00's" with this as my #2, it's a bit of a conformity but Is This It had to be #1, cause you gotta admit it is the seminal album of the decade.

But yeah if these guys get some recognition, they're going straight to the top, Australia would just eat Electric Feel up.

[Randy Lahey]

I bought "Is This It" the day it came out, which was September 11th, 2001. It's a good album but I think Oracular Spectacular is better. I also put Outkast's "Speakerboxx/The Love Below" and The Chilli Pepper's "By The Way" ahead of "Is This It".

Edited March 13, 2008 by Randy Lahey

[darkstar_legend]

i don't know why but the album gives me the deja vu's.

and i know it's all a matter of taste and subjectivity but this is hardly album of the decade.

still good though.

[carsonskitz]

electric feel's great

[lawrence]

you basicly need drugs to enjoy this stuff,

the start of time to pretend sounds like chitty chitty bang bang, great lyrics in the first verse though

Edited March 16, 2008 by lawrence

[Estranged Reality]

We have this as an in-store play where I work, which is quite awesome because usually we have shitty "safe" music - but last month we got this, Radiohead, Robert Plant, and some other good ones.

Anyway, two people came back and complained that it was irritating and the second person made us contact a manager to shut the music off. I work at a book store and the music is barely loud at all. I have to wonder what these people do when they go into stores like Abercrombie or Hot Topic or whatever where the music is ten times louder and ten times more annoying. It really pissed me off.

We had on a Pavarotti CD then, and some woman points to it on the shelf and says, "Is this what's playing? This is good. Much better than what was on last week - I almost left the store last week because the music was so annoying."

[KBear]

Man, I can't believe a customer actually makes you turn off the music. I deal with the public in my job and after you deal with enough of them you start fucking hating them all. Some people need to get over themselves.

Anyways, MGMT seem pretty cool. I kinda dig this stuff.

[Estranged Reality]

Man, I can't believe a customer actually makes you turn off the music. I deal with the public in my job and after you deal with enough of them you start fucking hating them all. Some people need to get over themselves.

Anyways, MGMT seem pretty cool. I kinda dig this stuff.

I've come to loathe the mindset of the area I live in. It's a small, conservative area. I'm used to big cities where people understand the little things, such as: you don't go into a public store, where you are going of your OWN FREE WILL, and throw a fit because - and I quote - the music is "too loud to concentrate." We're not a fucking library, we're a bookstore. If you need to read - BUY THE BOOK. It was a fucking Saturday night at 10 p.m. and the store was busy and people were there to socialize, and this asshole assumes just because he's doing a thesis using unpurchased books at the back of the store and can't concentrate, EVERYONE feels the same as he does?

I love the people who come in, buy coffee, sit for hours reading books, ruin the books (either crease them or spill coffee on them), then leave without paying for them. We can't sell "used" books so I'd say 1/4 of what is sent back to the distributors are "used" copies read by customers who sit on their fat asses all day.

This is the type of mindset that causes people in other areas of the world to stereotype Americans as fat, lazy, self-centered, etc. I'm not someone who supports generalizations, but after working where I've worked, patterns do form and I have seen this first-hand and it makes me really ashamed to be an American. Some of the people that shop there are incredibly ignorant (or arrogant). They take out magazines, leave them all sitting around at the end of the night and expect us to clean them all up. We aren't a clean up crew. Maybe it's just me, and the crazy morals that were instilled in me, but if you're responsible for making a mess, you clean it up. You don't assume it's someone else's job to do so. We're book sellers, not daycare service for kids that are left to roam around the store and not a janitor who comes in at night to magically put everything away. We have to spend an hour - sometimes more - every night cleaning up the messes customers leave behind.

I like the people who come up and say this: "I'm looking for a book. I can't remember what the title is. I don't know who wrote it. I'm not sure what it's about, but I was listening to NPR this week at 3 in the morning, and they were talking about it, and they said it's for sale at your store. Ring a bell?" (This is an exact conversation I've had uncountable number of times, sometimes about books, sometimes about CDs.) One time this woman told me there was this song used on a radio program she listens to. She said the song was about a mountain, but she didn't know the name of the song or the artist or anything, but was wondering if I could search for songs about mountains and find it.

I don't mind that they do this so much as they they are upset when we don't know what they're talking about. A customer said this once, and I said I wasn't really sure what he was talking about because we sell many books, and his response was: "What, don't you read any of the books here??" I said, "Sir, we have over 500,000 books here, and ads play all over the country for new books released every week." Then he said, "Well, you guys should know what the hell you're advertising. It's really an inconvenience for customers to drive all the way out here to find something and have you people not know what it is." Keep in mind he didn't have a plot description, an author, a title, or any relevant information on the book. Basically he just knew: it was a book, and it was advertised at 3 in the morning on a radio station I don't listen to.

Sorry to rant.

Edited March 17, 2008 by Estranged Reality

[pain cake]

Sorry to rant.

Not at all, I'm usually detered from long posts but that was quite entertaining. Nothing gets my blood hotter than ignorant, inconsiderate people; I'm having some issues now with those types so I love a good yarn about people we love to hate

[Randy Lahey]

Hey ER, do you ever just pretend you know what book these people are talking about and sell them something different?

[Estranged Reality]

Sorry to rant.

Not at all, I'm usually detered from long posts but that was quite entertaining. Nothing gets my blood hotter than ignorant, inconsiderate people; I'm having some issues now with those types so I love a good yarn about people we love to hate

Glad you enjoyed it. If you're interested I could give another essay on the stalkers I've had since working there. I mean, this is going to be really long, so hopefully you won't be too bored, but there's a lot of shit that's happened and maybe you'll enjoy hearing about it.

At work, we all talk about how weird the customers are. And they are really weird. For example - we have people come in and masturbate in the bathrooms and leave behind soiled Penthouse/Playboy magazines, which we have to clean up. (And by "clean up," I mean leave for the janitors in the morning! ) I mean, it's the fucking Internet age - why come to a public store and do that shit? Disgusting. I do unfortunately have to shelve porno magazines that aren't found in the bathroom (sometimes people stuff them in, like, the Pets section or something because they're too embarrassed to put them away), and it makes me lose a bit of faith in humanity every time.

We also have people with severe mental disorders who are regulars there. I don't know if the crazy bus makes its rounds past the store, but the influx of mentally ill people is shocking. I've had a proposition from a creepy guy telling me I should be in movies and how he wanted to "film" me. That's TOTALLY not a weird thing to say to someone you don't know. He gave me his business card once. I went home, typed in his name. One of the first things that came up, besides his official website, was that he had been arrested for sexually molesting underage boys (13 - 15) at an old business he used to run where he was a fitness instructor. The guy still comes in once in a while, usually on weekends, and I ignore him now. I just hope some other poor guy doesn't fall for his bullshit.

But the WEIRDEST thing that has EVER happened to me involved a scabby old guy who would come in and order CDs maybe once or twice a month. He had been a customer for a few years, always known as a bit of a weirdo, he always wore the same clothes and looked like he had never bathed and had weird legions all over his skin that people always commented on. He looked like a homeless guy, basically. He gathered personal info about me from other employees while I was on vacation, and when I returned he brought me an expensive gift as a "late birthday present." And it wasn't a traditional gift either - it was an old record in a pizza box with writing all over it. The manager saw this happening and intervened on my behalf. He told the creep not to ever bring me anything again. So of course a week later he tried to bring me something else, I think it was a CD of bagpipe music, which another manager told him not to give me. And then one night I was working with this girl, and I went on my break, and as I'm back in the break room she calls back and tells me that the creepiest thing ever has just happened to her. I thought she was joking at first but her voice was all shaky. She starts to explain that this wacko customer has come in to the department again looking for me. The creepy thing is that he referred to me as his "nephew," and when she asked him why he was calling me his nephew his response was: "Well, I like him more than my real nephew." He then proceeded to tell her increasingly strange things that she said didn't even make sense, such as that he wants to go on hikes with me and talk about the Bible; he cares about me more than anyone else in the world; he wants me to come live with him; he has "recommendations" in case my father needs references (to this day I'm not sure what the hell that means); he wants me to have Thanksgiving dinner with him.

He told her all this, then left. A week later he comes in as I'm working. I immediately call a manager but the manager on duty didn't know who he was and I didn't want to stand there in front of him and start explaining. He pretends as if nothing is out of usual and asks me for help finding a CD. I walk over to the section to grab a copy as the manager's standing there at the counter watching, and I don't realize that this stalker has walked up right behind me. As I'm reaching for the CD, I feel this hand start rubbing my back and he whispers something into my ear in the creepiest voice possible.

I flipped out on him and told him not to ever touch me. He stares at me in shock and says: "What, that's not OK?" I don't know what I expected him to say, but certainly not that. I kind of flipped out for a while and had my little rant against him, and luckily the store wasn't busy so only a few customers were watching. Then he got kicked out of the store by the manager (who as I've said witnessed the entire thing) and he tried to come back twice more and order CDs before finally giving up. I haven't seen him since and hope I never run into him ever again.

It was *the weirdest* and creepiest thing that has ever happened to me. I didn't even know the guy, and he clearly had been fantasizing for hours on end about me. The Bible stuff, Thanksgiving dinner, hikes, the whole nephew thing? Just really fucking strange.

BTW Randy, I'm sorry I kind of got your thread off topic. I should start a new thread about weird retail experiences. To get back on topic a bit I'll say that I heard MGMT puts on a pretty awesome live show. Someone I know went to see them play and said they were a bit sloppy but still pretty cool.

Edited March 17, 2008 by Estranged Reality

[pain cake]

^ Haha oh man you have honestly THE WORST job I've ever heard, they should offer compensation for the shit you gotta go through