Dav and Dave's Fav's of 2008

Dav & Dave’s Favs of 2008

The year is rapidly coming to a close, and you’ve probably been seeing plenty of year-end lists that highlight the bests of 2008. While these lists are sometimes insightful, they’re too often biased and incomprehensive. So when we were asked to make a list of our favs of 2008, rather than give you a top ten list, we opted to offer you our perspective on some of our favorite things of this year.

Music Videos

2008 showed us some of the most creative, weird, and awesome music videos we’ve seen to date. Our favorite was “Black Mirror” by Arcade Fire. It’s interactive: you can toggle with the audio by pressing 1-6 on your keyboard. This video kept us entertained for hours. Check it out at rorrimkcalb.com. Interactive videos were a trend this year, too. One of the best new bands of 2008, MGMT, put out an interactive video game for their song “Electric Feel” that you can download for free at whoismgmt.com/efvideo. Two other crazy videos this year are Grizzly Bear’s “Knife” and Bjork’s “Wanderlust”, which both featured a technique that used a hybrid of live action and claymation footage.

Road Trips

You’ve been thinking about doing it for a while, but the right time just hasn’t come. Well we decided that the time was right this past Thanksgiving and rented a big cargo van. We filled it with couches, pillows, lots of snacks, bikes, and a full tank of gas and set out for Canada. We won’t bore you with our account of this stellar trip, but we will say that this has been the year for road trips. Between the two of us we’ve been to North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Ontario, Indiana, Oklahoma, Georgia, Florida and multiple tours throughout Illinois including a host of stays in Chicago. Gas prices are low, so now is the time to travel, when you’re young, adventurous, and willing and able to spend a lot of hours in a car.

Riding Bikes

If you’ve read many of our previous columns in the pap, you probably know we’re avid bike-riders and fixie enthusiasts. Being broke and not wanting to pay for gas, we were encouraged to adopt bicycling as a means of transportation as well as a hobby. We’ve discovered that bikes are simple machines that don’t require a ton of mechanical knowledge to work on, but we’ve also tried our hand experimenting with building and altering bikes. Most of all, we’ve enjoyed riding around Greenville and other places (see Dav’s article on Critical Mass) because it’s fun, even when it’s cold out.

Dav & Dave’s 2008 Playlist

We’ll leave you with a playlist of what we’ve been listening to this year. We’re not claiming that these are the best songs of 2008, but we liked them and our ears heard them quite a bit.

1. We Are Rockstars – Does it Offend You, Yeah?
2. Electric Feel – MGMT
3. Ragged Wood – Fleet Foxes
4. The River – Anathallo
5. The Ave – Blue Scholars
6. Flume – Bon Iver
7. No One Does It Like You – Department of Eagles
8. Fools – The Dodos
9. Run To Your Grave – The Mae Shi
10. The Hollows – WHY?
11. Set It Off – Girl Talk
12. Moses of the South – Colour Revolt
13. Sec Walkin’ – My Morning Jacket
14. Inni mer syngur vitleysingur – Sigur Ros
15. So He Won’t Break – The Black Keys