I've got my iPod on shuffle as usual, and the TV is blaring all kinds of wank (Canadian telly it turns out is just as crappy as our Yankee stuff) so I'm going to hit "next" on my iPod some 20 times, and every song that comes up, I'll mention it and something about it. I've got about 12,000 songs in my iPod and nothing on there I detest so everything is at least somewhat pre-screened, which makes keeping it on shuffle 90% of the time quite fun and exciting:
1. Stereophonics - Don't Let Me Down (from the I Am Sam Soundtrack)..... this is ok, I don't actually know what I think of this band, but covering something like this Lennon classic is pretty pointless, even if commissioned for a soundtrack for a big Hollywood picture - it'll always pale in comparison to the groovy oridge.
2. Are You Desirable? - Mike Figgis (from the Leaving Las Vegas Soundtrack)..... this is weird, to have two soundtrack songs come up in a row. I barely have any soundtrack music on my iPod. This is Figgis the film maker playing some walking bluesy bass and piano, with Nick Cage saying one line from the film. I was obsessed with this movie when it was out, and own it, and the soundtrack. Drinking oneself to death seems romantic when you're as goddamn nice and charming and all, as Nick Cage's character was in that flick
3. Skit - Rakim (The 18th Letter) .... just a clip of Rakim talking about rap making a come back in '97, not really a song. It's all good though, Rakim has an awesome voice... and a perfect shuffle segue now into...
4. Innocent When You Dream - Tom Waits (Frank's Wild Years) .... great great Tom Waits classic. Dreamy and sentimental as hell. This and Rain Dogs (along with Swordfishtrombones) were the best 3 Waits records, and came back to back to back. This is a must-include on any mix if someone wants to stick on any Tom Waits
5. That Great Love Sound - The Raveonettes (a mix my sister's friend Evan made for her).... my first time hearing this track, but I do like it. It's noisy and crashing, but pretty and melodic. Nice girl singer with a boy occasional backup singer in the background, production favors drums echoey and up front and vocals up quite high too, with guitars a steady distorted growl in the background. I dig Raveonettes, but this is my first time checkin em out proper. An ex of mine whose music tastes I really trusts dug them when they first came about.
6. Kickstand - Soundgarden (Superunknown).... I guess I have this record on my iPod because it's a famous record from the grunge rock era that I love. But I only love it because I love Nirvana, I didn't much like the other "grunge" bands, because none of them wrote good songs like Kurdt. They wrote ok songs, but basically they were all throw aways, where as Nirvana songs were pretty much all awesome or partially awesome. This I could take or leave
7. Dog Paddle - Modest Mouse (This Is a Long Drive For Someone With...)...... I got all of this band's stuff from my co-worker Steve Seck because my interest in them increased quite a bit once Jonny Marr joined the band fulltime recently. But the singer's yelpy, atonal yelp still turns me off a bit, as does the usual lack of strong melody. This song especially has no melody at all, but rather just a hystrionic drone. Luckily, this one, just like the previous selection, ended quickly enough
8. Heartbreak - KRS-One (I Got Next)..... I don't know why this came up - oh yeah, I just lifted it from my sister in SF. KRS-One is good, always was, but I never gave him much of a listen. Great rap without any of that macho homophobic misogynistic bullshit
9. Swap Meet - Nirvana (Bleach).... Before Kurt sold his soul to the devil to write killer Beatlesque hooks, still this is primo vintage "grunge" - great scream and repetitive sludge riff. What did Kris Noverselic describe his voice as? Boiling nails?
10. Harrowdown Hill - Thom Yorke (The Eraser).... I went off Radiohead a while before Thom Yorke's solo effort so I never gave it too much of a listen. But again, I think they stopped writing songs a while ago. There's tremendous atmosphere here and we love his voice - the electronic ghost in the machine music is cool and hip and credible, and he write some lovely phrases, but naked alone with an acoustic this song is only ok - though to be fair the more I listen to The Eraser the more it grows it on me. "We think the same things at the same time" melody line in this song is quite lovely
11. Lover's Rock - The Clash (London Calling) ..... this record is a classic as is every song on it. It wasn't until Joe Strummer died suddenly and unexpectedly, all too young, of a heart attack, did I realize his genius - or rather that he was a living legend. Or something. Like with Frank Sinatra or James Brown, I did realize it, but not with Strummer. Probably same with Lennon, because they both died way too young, you don't really sum up their legend until it's over. That said, this song is as clever and catchy and life-affirming as is everything on this fantastic album. Everybody should own London Calling
12. Benton Harbor Blues..... I don't know who this is but I like it. It comes from a mix a girl made for me recently. It sounds vaguely Hawaiian, with a girl singing vocals sporadically and in a detatched manner. I like the effect on her voice (sort of a slapback effect) and the soulful keyboard as the primary instrument.
13. Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 1 - The Flaming Lips (Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots)..... this is one of my favorite bands of all time, and this is as good a Flaming Lips a song as it gets. Deceptively simple, Wayne's voice flails over the top of his register as always, and something about the theme (otherworldly celebration of life) always moved the heck out of me. "Those evil natured robots, they're programmed to destroy us - she's gotta be strong to fight them, so she's taking lots of vitamins" has never sounded more meaningful and truthful
14. Death And Destruction - Weezer (Maladroit).... another one of my favorite bands of all time, this is from an era when they didn't make such great albums anymore, and now they've thankfully hung up their hats again, but this is still a fabulous little song - slowly groovy, with Rivers singing high in his register but not so high that he sounds spazzy, and the song has great builts and crescendos and resolutions. At their best, they did everything good that Built To Spill did, but with much more deft pop songcraft.
15. Us - Regina Spektor (Mary Ann Meets The Gravediggers)... I am a Russian immigrant. Regina is a Russian immigrant too, and I can hear her accent and it's funny to me, as is the fact that she looks like so many girls I've known growing up throughout my life that also came from Russia. But she's also wickedly talented, a really important large talent in the mold of Rickie Lee Jones and Bjork. She is a superb singer and songwriter and her songs are packed with atmosphere and punch, not least of all this song - a great place to start if you don't know Regina. She was a backup singer for the Strokes (huh?) and has that hipster element, but also a huge cabaret quality, a sort of female Rufus Wainwright. She's an original actually, what can I say? I'm a big fan of Regina's. Marie and then my sister turned me on to this artist
16. Wear You Out - TV On The Radio (Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes) - good old TV/Radio from my old neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Good stuff, but I'm not a massive fan. I got my sister into these guys and she loves them... however this is from their newest record, which I don't like as much as their debut. Bowie is a huge fan of these guys. They're good and cool and ok, but again this isn't much of a good song. Strip it down to just an acoustic and a singer, and really there's nothing. That's my quality control test for most songs, and put to that test, most songs aren't songs at all, just filler.
17. Autumn Leaves - Stan Getz (Sound of Jazz Vol. 11).... now here's a great great song. Timeless melody, like so many of those jazz standards. I love when time serves as a barometer for quality. Stan here plays through the head with his band and then starts blowing away almost immediately with some improv on that lovely sax of his. I got into Autumn Leave in college at UMass in African American Vocal Technique, my minor, and was soon covering it with my trash-rock band Nag Nag Nag, like I thought the Replacements would have done if they'd tackled this chestnut.
18. Chemo Limo - Regina Spektor (Mary Ann Meets The Gravediggers) ..... hello Regina. Shuffle is funny, 12,000 songs, and two from the same album come up only a few songs apart. There's her little Russian accent again - to me the epitome of nerdiness - but again the fantastic vocal delivery, almost like a jazz horn, but not grating or affected at all. She really reminds of Rickie Lee Jones, who I loved as a kid (that album Skeletons killed me) - I wonder if Regina likes her. This song has suddenly had a time signiature change that was really startling. She's a real showtunes diva, a profound songwriting talent, even if her material is not your bag. This song is just her voice and a piano, but it is an epic. And I haven't even paid attention to what she's singing about yet. But it's a tale and it's sad and densely packed.
19. Know - Nick Drake (Pink Moon)..... what can I say? Every time Nick Drake comes up on shuffle I feel blessed and sigh deeply. This is a prime example of a Nick Drake song being more a chant than a song (Chris Collingwood first pointed this out to me), and even though it's without a melodic hook, one of my key ingredients (scratch that, my one and only key ingredient) to a good song, this is just Nick Drake and his woody old acoustic guitar, and it passes the test with flying colors. His music is so spiritual it's hard to believe he took his own life. But then again he didn't mean to die - his overdose of anti-depressants was probably an accident. He wasn't trying to get higher, just less sad.
20. Teach The Children - Eric B and Rakim (Don't Sweat The Technique).... again two of the same artist in only 20 songs in a shuffle experiment with 12,000 songs. But this record is a classic, Rakim has a brilliant voice, and these rhymes are deep. This has a really dark mysterious groove and interesting lyrics about being fed propoganda as a young kid. One of the thinks I've always liked best about Rakim, and I like almost everything about him, is how nicely the vocal sits on the music and backbeat - whoever mixes his records is very talented.
(the next 5 songs would have been by MC Solaar, Dire Straits, Steely Dan, Ween, and Ben Harper, and I'd have loved to babble about them all, but I've got three business meetings tomorrow, and still many beers to drink, and showers to take, and shaves to shave - and at some point I suppose I'll have to sleep. We'll try this again another time.)
1. Stereophonics - Don't Let Me Down (from the I Am Sam Soundtrack)..... this is ok, I don't actually know what I think of this band, but covering something like this Lennon classic is pretty pointless, even if commissioned for a soundtrack for a big Hollywood picture - it'll always pale in comparison to the groovy oridge.
2. Are You Desirable? - Mike Figgis (from the Leaving Las Vegas Soundtrack)..... this is weird, to have two soundtrack songs come up in a row. I barely have any soundtrack music on my iPod. This is Figgis the film maker playing some walking bluesy bass and piano, with Nick Cage saying one line from the film. I was obsessed with this movie when it was out, and own it, and the soundtrack. Drinking oneself to death seems romantic when you're as goddamn nice and charming and all, as Nick Cage's character was in that flick
3. Skit - Rakim (The 18th Letter) .... just a clip of Rakim talking about rap making a come back in '97, not really a song. It's all good though, Rakim has an awesome voice... and a perfect shuffle segue now into...
4. Innocent When You Dream - Tom Waits (Frank's Wild Years) .... great great Tom Waits classic. Dreamy and sentimental as hell. This and Rain Dogs (along with Swordfishtrombones) were the best 3 Waits records, and came back to back to back. This is a must-include on any mix if someone wants to stick on any Tom Waits
5. That Great Love Sound - The Raveonettes (a mix my sister's friend Evan made for her).... my first time hearing this track, but I do like it. It's noisy and crashing, but pretty and melodic. Nice girl singer with a boy occasional backup singer in the background, production favors drums echoey and up front and vocals up quite high too, with guitars a steady distorted growl in the background. I dig Raveonettes, but this is my first time checkin em out proper. An ex of mine whose music tastes I really trusts dug them when they first came about.
6. Kickstand - Soundgarden (Superunknown).... I guess I have this record on my iPod because it's a famous record from the grunge rock era that I love. But I only love it because I love Nirvana, I didn't much like the other "grunge" bands, because none of them wrote good songs like Kurdt. They wrote ok songs, but basically they were all throw aways, where as Nirvana songs were pretty much all awesome or partially awesome. This I could take or leave
7. Dog Paddle - Modest Mouse (This Is a Long Drive For Someone With...)...... I got all of this band's stuff from my co-worker Steve Seck because my interest in them increased quite a bit once Jonny Marr joined the band fulltime recently. But the singer's yelpy, atonal yelp still turns me off a bit, as does the usual lack of strong melody. This song especially has no melody at all, but rather just a hystrionic drone. Luckily, this one, just like the previous selection, ended quickly enough
8. Heartbreak - KRS-One (I Got Next)..... I don't know why this came up - oh yeah, I just lifted it from my sister in SF. KRS-One is good, always was, but I never gave him much of a listen. Great rap without any of that macho homophobic misogynistic bullshit
9. Swap Meet - Nirvana (Bleach).... Before Kurt sold his soul to the devil to write killer Beatlesque hooks, still this is primo vintage "grunge" - great scream and repetitive sludge riff. What did Kris Noverselic describe his voice as? Boiling nails?
10. Harrowdown Hill - Thom Yorke (The Eraser).... I went off Radiohead a while before Thom Yorke's solo effort so I never gave it too much of a listen. But again, I think they stopped writing songs a while ago. There's tremendous atmosphere here and we love his voice - the electronic ghost in the machine music is cool and hip and credible, and he write some lovely phrases, but naked alone with an acoustic this song is only ok - though to be fair the more I listen to The Eraser the more it grows it on me. "We think the same things at the same time" melody line in this song is quite lovely
11. Lover's Rock - The Clash (London Calling) ..... this record is a classic as is every song on it. It wasn't until Joe Strummer died suddenly and unexpectedly, all too young, of a heart attack, did I realize his genius - or rather that he was a living legend. Or something. Like with Frank Sinatra or James Brown, I did realize it, but not with Strummer. Probably same with Lennon, because they both died way too young, you don't really sum up their legend until it's over. That said, this song is as clever and catchy and life-affirming as is everything on this fantastic album. Everybody should own London Calling
12. Benton Harbor Blues..... I don't know who this is but I like it. It comes from a mix a girl made for me recently. It sounds vaguely Hawaiian, with a girl singing vocals sporadically and in a detatched manner. I like the effect on her voice (sort of a slapback effect) and the soulful keyboard as the primary instrument.
13. Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 1 - The Flaming Lips (Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots)..... this is one of my favorite bands of all time, and this is as good a Flaming Lips a song as it gets. Deceptively simple, Wayne's voice flails over the top of his register as always, and something about the theme (otherworldly celebration of life) always moved the heck out of me. "Those evil natured robots, they're programmed to destroy us - she's gotta be strong to fight them, so she's taking lots of vitamins" has never sounded more meaningful and truthful
14. Death And Destruction - Weezer (Maladroit).... another one of my favorite bands of all time, this is from an era when they didn't make such great albums anymore, and now they've thankfully hung up their hats again, but this is still a fabulous little song - slowly groovy, with Rivers singing high in his register but not so high that he sounds spazzy, and the song has great builts and crescendos and resolutions. At their best, they did everything good that Built To Spill did, but with much more deft pop songcraft.
15. Us - Regina Spektor (Mary Ann Meets The Gravediggers)... I am a Russian immigrant. Regina is a Russian immigrant too, and I can hear her accent and it's funny to me, as is the fact that she looks like so many girls I've known growing up throughout my life that also came from Russia. But she's also wickedly talented, a really important large talent in the mold of Rickie Lee Jones and Bjork. She is a superb singer and songwriter and her songs are packed with atmosphere and punch, not least of all this song - a great place to start if you don't know Regina. She was a backup singer for the Strokes (huh?) and has that hipster element, but also a huge cabaret quality, a sort of female Rufus Wainwright. She's an original actually, what can I say? I'm a big fan of Regina's. Marie and then my sister turned me on to this artist
16. Wear You Out - TV On The Radio (Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes) - good old TV/Radio from my old neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Good stuff, but I'm not a massive fan. I got my sister into these guys and she loves them... however this is from their newest record, which I don't like as much as their debut. Bowie is a huge fan of these guys. They're good and cool and ok, but again this isn't much of a good song. Strip it down to just an acoustic and a singer, and really there's nothing. That's my quality control test for most songs, and put to that test, most songs aren't songs at all, just filler.
17. Autumn Leaves - Stan Getz (Sound of Jazz Vol. 11).... now here's a great great song. Timeless melody, like so many of those jazz standards. I love when time serves as a barometer for quality. Stan here plays through the head with his band and then starts blowing away almost immediately with some improv on that lovely sax of his. I got into Autumn Leave in college at UMass in African American Vocal Technique, my minor, and was soon covering it with my trash-rock band Nag Nag Nag, like I thought the Replacements would have done if they'd tackled this chestnut.
18. Chemo Limo - Regina Spektor (Mary Ann Meets The Gravediggers) ..... hello Regina. Shuffle is funny, 12,000 songs, and two from the same album come up only a few songs apart. There's her little Russian accent again - to me the epitome of nerdiness - but again the fantastic vocal delivery, almost like a jazz horn, but not grating or affected at all. She really reminds of Rickie Lee Jones, who I loved as a kid (that album Skeletons killed me) - I wonder if Regina likes her. This song has suddenly had a time signiature change that was really startling. She's a real showtunes diva, a profound songwriting talent, even if her material is not your bag. This song is just her voice and a piano, but it is an epic. And I haven't even paid attention to what she's singing about yet. But it's a tale and it's sad and densely packed.
19. Know - Nick Drake (Pink Moon)..... what can I say? Every time Nick Drake comes up on shuffle I feel blessed and sigh deeply. This is a prime example of a Nick Drake song being more a chant than a song (Chris Collingwood first pointed this out to me), and even though it's without a melodic hook, one of my key ingredients (scratch that, my one and only key ingredient) to a good song, this is just Nick Drake and his woody old acoustic guitar, and it passes the test with flying colors. His music is so spiritual it's hard to believe he took his own life. But then again he didn't mean to die - his overdose of anti-depressants was probably an accident. He wasn't trying to get higher, just less sad.
20. Teach The Children - Eric B and Rakim (Don't Sweat The Technique).... again two of the same artist in only 20 songs in a shuffle experiment with 12,000 songs. But this record is a classic, Rakim has a brilliant voice, and these rhymes are deep. This has a really dark mysterious groove and interesting lyrics about being fed propoganda as a young kid. One of the thinks I've always liked best about Rakim, and I like almost everything about him, is how nicely the vocal sits on the music and backbeat - whoever mixes his records is very talented.
(the next 5 songs would have been by MC Solaar, Dire Straits, Steely Dan, Ween, and Ben Harper, and I'd have loved to babble about them all, but I've got three business meetings tomorrow, and still many beers to drink, and showers to take, and shaves to shave - and at some point I suppose I'll have to sleep. We'll try this again another time.)
posted by Same Suit Sam | 5:35 PM
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