Oh, this is good. I'm not a Peter Frampton fan, so that may be why this album has gone unnoticed by me for all these years (and given that this album is 30+ years old, apologies if this is old to you and no longer tickling of the funnybone).

Who signed off on this album title?



How lovely is that? That this could be an album title for the guy who wrote "Baby, I Love Your Way" is just mind-boggling. "I'm in you?" 2 Live Crew's "Me So Horny" sounds tame by comparison, at least so far as titles are concerned. Granted, the lyrical content of the song is completely G-rated, but still, there have to be better ways of putting such a sentiment.

This is, of course, what prompted Frank Zappa to record the first track on Sheik Yerbouti, "I Have Been In You."

The intro to the song from Baby Snakes:



And then the song itself:



I love that most of the latter half of this song is made up of "I'm goin' in you again" over and over again.

This has got to be the best song of 2007 and I am utterly at a loss as to why it slipped under my radar until just tonight. Also, don't listen to this anywhere where people might look at you askance if they were to hear content that would get a radio station slapped with an FCC fine. The video, while completely safe for work, is accompanied by lyrics that are anything but:



And yes, there's no Rick Astley hiding in here.

( Song title under the cut so as not to spoil the surprise. )

I had actually meant to post this yesterday, but sometimes imeem is wonky and it won't register all of the tracks I've uploaded for, like, 12-24 hours (the usual is about fifteen minutes once everything is uploaded). Those who have been here a while know that my favorite band in the world is XTC and that I truly believe, in my not-so humble opinion, that they were a better band than The Beatles. To wit, I figured it was about time to share one of my favorite albums of theirs, 1999's Apple Venus, Volume 1.

I will write more later today, but I wanted to post it up so I could listen and make sure everything is all right (for some strange reason, imeem has a hard time [maybe it's that I'm using Firefox] playing every track when I'm listening to a playlist on their website: it will play one track and then stop, and then if you want to listen to another one, you have to reload the page and select it—double-clicking before a reload does nothing). I will also likely later add a bonus track or two (on the "Easter Theatre" single Andy Partridge has a really interesting track about the way the song developed, which is both a fantastic story as well as a really cool look inside the brain of a talented musician—and since "Easter Theatre" is such a bang-up track [my favorite on the album], it's worth listening to. I may also include the ET demo, but I have to give it a listen to see if it's worth it).

All right. Time to do good on my threat to write more about this (here on the 27th of April). I wont bother with a cut, since this is probably off most of your friends pages by now and if it isn't, well, then you don't have very cluttered friends pages to begin with and surely you won't mind the longer post appearing somewhere down on the page.

Apple Venus¹ Volume 1 is the first of a two-album collection of songs penned while XTC was "on strike" from Virgin Records (the strike began after they released Nonsuch in 1992)—they were released from their contracts (which apparently forbade them from releasing any of their music outside of Virgin Records, thus the seven year dry spell) and struck some sort of settlement, but the settlement included some sort of gag order as the band have not been able to talk about the terms of the settlement or their previous contract, so this whole period is rather murky. The long and the short of it is that while from 1978 to 1992 XTC released 10 albums, in the seven years following, they released nothing (aside from Virgin putting out a few greatest hits collections), all the while writing songs and remaining a band.

( Ok, here's a cut. Biographical info on how I came to love XTC, as well as more about the evolution of the band. )

AV1, then, is 6-7 years of songs stored up after a good six-year, three-album series (Skylarking, Oranges and Lemon and Nonsuch) that saw them at the peak of their songwriting abilities. They had wanted initially to release a double album with one dis being the "orchoustic" music and the other being the "eclectric." There was some doubt as to the commercial viability of such a venture, however, so they released the first volume in 1999 and the second (Wasp Star) the following year.

The result is an album that revels in its studiosity. The whole thing starts off quietly, with a single droplet of water, echoing in stereo, triggering successive droplet-like layers of pizzicato strings, muted trumpets and vocal lines piling onto every else to eventually form a full cacophony of sound. Along with the gradual growth in sound comes Andy's characteristic wordplay—"I heard the dandelions roar in Piccadilly Circus"—as well as a pastoral image—of which he's also fond (the references to nature throughout the album, often evoking a paganistic sensibility, are abundant: "Easter Theatre," "Greenman" and "Harvest Festival" all drawn from the more verdant fields of Andy's imagination): a river of orchids pushing up through the concrete.

Having cleared its throat thoroughly in the move from silence to looped orchestra madness in the first song, XTC forges ahead with a strong album, highlighted by nearly every instrument in the orchestra carefully And lovingly deployed. Songs like "Easter Theatre" and "Harvest Festival" explode from the speakers in a sonic lushness that rivals the beauty of the images therein. And while it's clear that Andy Partridge is in debt to the Beach Boys and the Beatles, it's on songs like this where he clearly surpasses their greatest achievements.

This isn't to say that this is an orchestral clusterfuck: "I'd Like That," is pretty much a guitar-and-bass affair and uses for its percussion thigh-slaps—and it works beautifully—drums would have ruined the intimate feel of the song. Similarly, "Knights in Shining Karma" floats along gently with Brian Wilson harmonies atop a sea of layered fingerpicked guitars and hints everywhere of nearly every percussion instrument that isn't a drum. The bitter divorce song, "Your Dictionary" is (for the more bitter first half of the song) almost solidly acoustic guitar and nothing else. The album ebbs and flows and you're not assaulted Phil-Spector-Wall-of-Sound-style, even though some songs come close to that aesthetic.

Colin Moulding brings some nice material to the table as well: he plays the George Harrison to Andy's Lennon/McCartney, and his output is similarly strong across the board: both "Fruit Nut" and "Frivolous Tonight" are nice pieces of jaunty, jolly, rollicking pop music celebrating the mundaneness of domestic life.

The album isn't all sunshine and happiness: aside from "Your Dictionary," there are also two more mournful songs that help bring the album to a close: "I Can't Own Her" and "The Last Balloon" cover the pain of unrequited love and a dim view of our own ability to rise beyond our more violent instincts. Even so, though, both songs are beautifully written and the loving care given to them in the studio is evident toward the end of the album where Andy sings the final word and as it gradually fades out, a flugelhorn playing the same note is busy fading in—the effect being, unless you're listening very closely on very good equipment, that Andy's voice has morphed into a flugelhorn that then plays a sad little solo line.

Enough. I've yammered on for too long and it's not likely many will read this anyhow.

In the meantime eEnjoy.



(And fear not: I will likely be posting more XTC stuff in the coming months. It was a tossup right now between this and Skylarking, and I felt I just had more to write about for AV1 at the moment.)

ETA: The title for my post is from one of the two great Colin Moulding songs on the album, "Frivolous Tonight" (the other is "Fruit Nut"). What I didn't think of in selecting it (the runner-up was "What was best of all was the / Longing look you gave me" from "Harvest Festival") and only recognized when I looked at the date, was how fitting for a 4/20 entry this lyric is, since the next line is "Let's go to pot." I swear, this is not me being coy: I didn't even think of it until after I made the post.

---

1. There's a bit of a fun piece of trivia behind the name. First we have to go back to 1986's Skylarking and the song "Ballet for a Rainy Day," which opens with the lyrics "Orange and lemon / Raincoats roll and tumble / Together, just liked fruit tipped from a tray." According to Andy Partridge, it was a complete coincidence that the next album they released was titled Oranges and Lemons. Similarly, it was also a coincidence that this album has the lyric "I'm skating over thin ice, while some nonesuch net holds me aloft," and their next album was titled Nonsuch. This is the official story, at least, because as Andy tells it, somebody alerted him to this, which prompted him to lift the Apple Venus title deliberately from the lyrics of Nonsuch's "Then She Appeared": "Then she appeared / Apple Venus on a half-open shell." Well, it's fun trivia to me at least (since before I learned this, I thought it was all planned).

Pullman's first album, Turnstyles and Junkpiles, always does the trick for me at night:



Recorded live (mostly—I believe there were a few overdubs here and there) in four days, using only two mikes and a two-track recorder, this features a lot of folks from different groups (Bundy K. Brown of Directions in Music, Curtis Harvey of Rex, Chris Brokaw of Come, and Douglas McCombs of Tortoise and Eleventh Dream Day—as says the page on them at their label, Thrill Jockey, though I'm only familiar with Tortoise [and to a lesser extent Come], and this sounds *nothing* like either group), getting together playing a lot of different instruments with strings. Very soothing music.

Other albums that work to get me to fall asleep:

* Yo La Tengo's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
* Brian Eno's Music for Airports
* Enya's discography (don't judge me)

Morphine's Cure For Pain will always sound like the Painted Desert at night to me. This was one of those groups that Emmanuel got me into (the other notable ones being Soul Coughing, Phish and Portishead) and this album is good enough that I can recall where and when we were listening to it as we drove across the country back in 2002. I cannot listen to this and not see the silhouettes of cacti zipping by outside a car window.

I was prompted to post this album after seeing a live performance of the title song posted to Fark last night. A very good performance of it too: Mark Sandman is just dripping with sweat and you get some nice up-close shots of his trademark two-string slide bass. And I was initially tempted to just embed the video, but then I thought that wouldn't do Morphine justice. Like, so far as the world is concerned, Morphine was a one-hit wonder band, and "Cure for Pain" was that hit. Were I to post just the single, chances are you might like it (and maybe you even knew it), but that wouldn't create the potential for new Morphine fans, which would be sad.

Of course, the Morphine story is a sad one. They were a unique band, with a sound that Sandman coined as "low rock": he sings baritone and the instrumentation was a sparse trio of two-string slide bass, drums and bari sax. I know that doesn't sound like it would work, or that it wouldn't be enough. But believe me, it did and it was (this is helped, of course, by some pretty good production work to fill things out by doubling the sax or bringing in a tenor sax on top of it). They were critical darlings, but never broke into the mainstream and Mark Sandman collapsed on stage in 1999, dying of a heart attack).

The music is ... man, it's hard to describe. It's dark and brooding, but at the same time isn't depressing. I think this is why listening to it in the desert at night is a good image for it: it's a sort of dark and sparse music that you can appreciate without being in a bad mood (and it certainly won't put you in a bad mood: behind the sometimes sad lyrics, there's often a glimmer of hope: "Someday there'll be a cure for pain / That's the day I throw my drugs away"). And of course, not all of it is as brooding: "Mary Won't You Call My Name" and "Buena" are fairly upbeat (this isn't quite the right word for it ... uptempo?) songs. They also do laid-back well, too (cf. "Sheila," or "I'm Free Now" or "Candy"). One of the best moments on the album is actually the least characteristic of the band: in "In Spite of Me," we get Sandman singing on top of a chorus of mandolins for a very haunting and sad song, which, even though it's sonically nothing the rest of the album, doesn't feel out of place. This is music for the nighttime, for when you're not ready to quite chill out and go to bed (for which I recommend Yo La Tengo's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out). I don't know how much more I can say about it. It's cool, it's interesting, it's Morphine, man. (I think one of the reasons I like them is that they have a sound that is unique to them: nobody else does what they do).

Standout tracks: "I'm Free Now," "Candy," "In Spite of Me," "Cure for Pain."

Enjoy.

Here's something fun to listen to. Below is a playlist that consists of eleven Modest Mouse songs followed by the Sun Kil Moon album on which they are covered (Tiny Cities). This is a playlist I've been meaning to make for a long time, just because I haven't listened to the originals and the covers back to back. One of the things I really like about Tiny Cities is how much Mark Kozelek makes Isaac Brock's songs his own: like, for all intents and purposes, he's composed his own music and set the lyrics from Modest Mouse songs to them. Yet I'm curious to see if, musically, he's taking any cues from the originals and incorporating them into his covers (the obvious one to me is "The Ocean Breathes Salty," but given that it's off one of their later [and therefore more melodic] albums, this isn't surprising).

I had several choices when assembling the playlist: pair the songs up in the order they appear on TC or keep them separate (as well as choosing whether to put MM or SKM first). I opted to put the originals first and follow them with the covers. This is pretty much because the disparity in sound between the originals and covers it so great that if I paired them up, you'd get musically seasick going from the angular, rough-shod and at times dissonant music of Modest Mouse and Brock's yelping vocals to the sedate, airy fingerpicking of Sun Kil Moon and Mark Kozelek's actual singing. So if you want to compare song-by-song, you'll have to do this manually (sorry—but the inconvenience felt like a lesser evil than the weird back-and forth nature of a playlist that was arranged by song). The cool thing about the covers is that they let you appreciate Brock's talent as a lyricist even if you don't necessarily dig the Modest Mouse aesthetic (and I get it: like Tom Waits, MM is not for everyone), so I'd urge you to at least listen to the SKM album even if you can't stand MM. It's also for this reason that I put SKM after MM—so that if you're somebody who doesn't like MM, you're not going to get jolted by the sudden burst of energy once the SKM album ends.

Anyhow, enjoy.

I know there are a lot of people out there having a rough time right now, so I figured I'd assemble something I'd been meaning to assemble for a long time: My List of Songs That Ought to Be Listened to at 11. Or at least a mild variation of that list.

So, there are certain songs for which I always turn up the volume in the car: this contains a lot of them. What I thought about, though, in assembling this playlist, is that the songs that I do this for are songs that just make me feel better when I listen to them (or if I'm alone in the car, when I sing along to them). So some of them (like The Streets) may not be things that I turn up when they come on, but they're all pretty much songs that make me happier having listened to them, increased volume or no.



I'll post this now. I need to eat dinner. Once that's done, I'll put something behind a cut about each of the songs. In the meantime, enjoy.

( All right. Here's me yammering on about the music I like, in the order in which it's played, written as I listen. )

One of my favorite bands (and albums, since the band only released an eponymous debut and then broke up) is Lincoln. I even remember the day I bought the album (well, not the date but the circumstances—I've got several thousand albums in my collection, so a lot of them get mixed up as to where and when I purchased them—and that's a pretty strong testimony from me as to how much I like an album, since I can't do that for many albums). And given that it's eponymous, it can be hard to find info about, since the president, city and car are all much more popular hits google-wise. Even the other Lincoln in my music collection (They Might Be Giants's wonderfully awesome second album) is easier to get info on.

I actually came to Lincoln through TMBG. Rumor has it that Jamie Lincoln Kitman, TMBG's manager, is fond of doing things that have to do with his middle name. I don't know if that's true or not, but it certainly sounds cool. Anyhow, the relationship Lincoln has to TMBG is two-fold: in 1997 (and maybe 1998 too) Lincoln was the opening band for TMBG and then when they broke up, Dan Miller (guitar) and Danny Weinkauf (bass) of Lincoln went on to become more-or-less permanent members of They Might Be Giants (TMBG having spent much of the early-to-mid nineties with a rotating cast of musicians in their backing band [running through several pretty cool bassists, too: Tony Maimone (Pere Ubu) and Graham Maby (Joe Jackson)].

I had heard, back in 1997, that this band Lincoln was opening for They Might Be Giants and I was in Border's one day that year and saw their album  displayed fairly prominently in one of their listening stations (and it stood out too, as you no doubt can tell)—now that I think about it, it's likely that it was put there by an fellow TMBG fan employee. Anyhow, I popped the headphones on and starting listening to song after song, and after a few knew I would be happy with the album. I was not disappointed, and I'm still not.

I'm at pains to describe the sound. I *suppose* it's power pop, but I'm really no good with those labels. Chris Temple's voice is like very few others. Thinking about it now (and having seen somebody else make this comparison), I suppose he sounds a little like Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie), but not quite as whiny. The music, on the whole, is more upbeat than DCFC, too. Man. I'm really wracking my brain for a good way to describe the sound, but am not hitting on anything solid. I suppose it's power-pop with a hint of alt-country (maybe? in some of the instrumentation? maybe just folksy?). Hard to pigeonhole these guys (which is probably one of the reasons I like them so much), but suffice it to say that if you are a familiar with They Might Be Giants in a nontrivial way, you'll understand why they'd be a good opening act.

Moodwise, a lot of it is poppy but with the sort of melancholy hiding just around the corner that you get with, say, Pet Sounds: things may be good now, but you know that the shit may hit the fan tomorrow. While some of the songs are a bit more upbeat (watching kids play basketball, driving, building a house), others are a bit more dire (leaving town, dealing with addiction, breaking up, loneliness, insecurity in a relationship, repressed emotions). The lyrics are alternately childish and grown-up, and there's a tone to Chris Temple's voice that underscores the innocence of some of them. Some of my favorite lines are from "Wish You Were Dead": the song starts off with a collage of schoolyard taunts—"You think you're so funny / I know you are but what am I? / Liar, liar, dress on fire / Go stick a needle in your eye"—and the chorus, though simple, gets the feelings of immediate post-break-up exactly right: "Even though I diss you / I still want to kiss you / I love you and I miss you / And I wish that you were dead." I have no idea where this blurb comes from, but I've used it before: "Lincoln proves to be the most enjoyable trip you'll ever take to the depths of human suffering." Quite true.

I actually got to know Chris Temple a number of years ago (though I haven't spoken with him for a few years at least), when he contacted me after reading a review I'd written about the album (and I just realized that this makes me one degree of separation away from TMBG, thus only two from Ira Glass, Sarah Vowell, et al. Sweet.). At that time, he had been doing some side work with his childhood friend John Wozniak of Marcy Playground (he cowrote "Death of a Cheerleader" on MP3) and recorded the song "My Best Friend Plank" (no, it's not a RickRoll) for the cartoon Ed, Edd, and Eddy, but hadn't been up to much else (I think he owned a landscaping business at the time). He's a really sweet guy, and he kinda got chewed up and spat out by the music industry for no really good reason (as you'll see if you listen). As I've been researching and writing this up, though, things may be looking up. Bootsy Spankins, P.I. is friends with Chris and he has contributed violin work to "Last Day of War" on BSPI's album (you can hear it on the Myspace page linked above). The latest news I've seen is that he's working on a solo album and will be recording (if he hasn't already) some songs that V2 records may be interested in. So, fingers crossed.

Here's the album (sadly out of print, but purchasable on the cheap at Amazon):



I had this album in my car for most of a year, I think. And I'm listening to it for the second time tonight. It's really, really good, and the more you like it, the sadder you'll be that it's the only album they put out. Still, for a debut and finale all in one, it's pretty solid. Standout tracks: well, all of them. My favorite is the last one, "Smashing," which feels almost like an imagist poem and is a nostalgic and haunting song that begs a second listen ... and then a third.

Oh, and for some extra indie cred, Jon Brion contributed to the album (guitar and keyboards, if I remember right). If that isn't convincing enough to give it a listen, I don't know what is.

So, I was rewatching an old Lost episode tonight where Sawyer (who thinks Jin is lying about setting fire to Michael's raft) asks him "You going to lecture us about lying, Betty?" What I found (since I've been reading the Lostpedia entries for each old episode as I watch them [I've only seen the old seasons once and am curious to rewatch them now that the beans have kinda begun to be spilled about the island, DHARMA, the Others, etc. and I want to see if there's anything I missed or things that make more sense now]) is that this is a quick reference to the show Liar's Club which often featured Betty White.

I followed the link provided to the page for Liar's Club on Wikipedia and saw that there was a disambiguation link up at the top of the article to take me to the entry on the *band* Liar's Club (which is how I first encountered the phrase) and held my breath hoping that it was the band I fell in love with back in the early nineties and not the shitty band who exist somewhere around Seattle who are using the name and are *nothing* like the first LC. And, lo, it was indeed about the first Liar's Club: a pop band from Tacoma who take after Squeeze and XTC (this other band that I wound up seeing about four years ago because I hoped against all hope that the original Liar's Club had reformed, just made loud ugly music and I walked out of the bar after the first few songs).

I discovered Liar's Club at precisely the wrong time, too. I bought their latest album, Drop Dead when I was in ninth grade only to discover that the conceit for it was that they had all died (the liner notes included band members being killed by 1) a toaster in the tub, 2) an errant lawn dart, 3) falling from the Space Needle and 4) what I can only assume was a bizarre gardening accident [no doubt much like John "Stumpy" Pepys]) and that they had broken up after playing a final show at Dmitriou's Jazz Alley where they joked about seeing everybody later and releasing their album "unless, you know, we happen to die tomorrow or something," right before the album was released. So, sadly, I never got the chance to see them live. I would have loved to, since they played brilliant pop music.

This was back in 1994, mind you, in the Pacific Northwest. Grunge was still a force to be reckoned with, even though Kurt Cobain had killed himself back in the spring of that year—it was clearly on its way out, but its effects were still present in a lot of music being made. Much of the local stuff was still loud and angsty and bands like Alice in Chains and Soundgarden were still going strong. In terms of what I was getting exposed to in Tacoma, most of the bands were either rap, punk, hardcore or ska (and hell, I was even in bands for every one of those genres save punk). Aside from the several ska bands around, most of the music wasn't terribly melody driven (or if it was, like for the ska bands, it wasn't terribly complex). The lessons of people like Brian Wilson and Harry Nilsson were being ignored and I, an angry young teen, was of course none the wiser.

I loved Liar's Club when I heard them because they so firmly broke the mold for PNW music in the early nineties: they were almost defiantly poppy. While they certainly weren't afraid of the distortion pedals for their guitars, their chord progressions were complex and they were using chords that I couldn't just power-chord along with on my own guitar (to say nothing of their unabashed use of synthesizers, which opened up potential for melodies most definitely unplayable by my amateurish hands). Beyond that, they had great harmonies in their vocals and used word play in their lyrics, all while churning out catchy-as-hell melodies. I had spent a lot of junior high trying to like the loud music that my friends listened to: Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Dead Kennedys, Screeching Weasel ... that sort of thing (and I still think most of that is all right every once in a while, though I can't really listen to industrial music much anymore, as it's just too dark for me—though I appreciate Al Jourgensen's sense of humor more than I appreciate Trent Reznor's) and I was just tired of listening to stuff that was aggressive all the time. I had just started to build up my They Might Be Giants collection, but that felt like it existed in its own world, apart from regular music. Liar's Club was important for me in recognizing that music could be thoughtful and fun and could have lyrics you could understand without referring to the liner notes. Most of all, they taught me that "pop" (which I had previously associated with the pabulum on Top-40 stations) wasn't a dirty word and that there was a whole lot more good music out there that was catchy *and* smart.

So, anyhow, I was thinking about this tonight and decided (since it's *long* out of print) to upload Drop Dead in its entirety to imeem for those who are curious (hoping, of course, that none of the members of Liar's Club mind this if they ever come across it).



Stand-out tracks: "Cinnamon Smiles," "Where Are You Going, Holly Golightly?,"Good News > Babysbreath" (not a real segue between the two, but it feels that way), "Girl From Heaven," "Uncharted Territory," and "Marigolds and Coffee Spins." Really, though, most of the album is fairly solid. For those who recall, this is one of the CDs stolen from my car. It's the one I miss the most. Enjoy.

This is too awesome. The New POrnographers issued a challenge to their fans to cover one of their songs in the style of Michael McDonald. The link will take you to a page with both the winning entry and its original version. Brilliantly done.

This seemed apropos for today. From my favorite thing to use Leap Year as a plot device:



[For those who haven't seen The Pirates of Penzance (Poor wandering ones! Though ye have surely strayed, Take heart of grace, Your steps retrace, and watch some effing G&S), this is the set-up: Ruth (the woman above) was Frederic's nursemaid and his father told her to apprentice him to a pilot when he was a young boy. Being hard of hearing, she thought she was to apprentice him to a pirate. When she figures out what she's done, she's too ashamed to go back to her former employer, so she becomes "a piratical maid-of-all-work" and Frederic is indentured to be a pirate until he reaches his 21st birthday. At this point in the operetta, Frederic has been released from his duties and fallen in love with Mabel, one of Major General Stanley's daughters. The pirates, earlier, had wanted to take the rest of his daughters for themselves, but MGS lies to them, telling them he's an orphan, playing on their sympathies (the pirates are all orphans as well and the lie works on them: they leave his daughters alone). Frederic, in this act, is about to atone for his life as a pirate by heading up a group of policemen to arrest the pirates when the Pirate King and Ruth come back and alert him to the wording of the contract of his indenture. Being a "slave of duty," Frederic is honor-bound not only to join back up with the pirates, but also tell them that MGS lied to them about his being an orphan. Hilarity ensues. Seriously, if you don't know much G&S, do something about that. Recommended (aside from the above): The Mikado, Ruddigore, Iolanthe, H.M.S. Pinafore and The Gondoliers.]

Maine!

Early reports are looking good. On CNN they're reporting that with 11% of the votes in, Obama is leading 51% to Clinton's 48%. Numbers may be slow coming in since they too seem to have been overwhelmed with the turnout (and if these caucuses are like other caucuses so far, that means that people are turning out in large part for Obama).

Talking Points Memo has some promising news and I found some more particulars here.

Turn Maine Blue may be one of the best resources for the time being, as they're listing the cities and towns that each candidate has won, Obama (as yet) winning in the vast majority.

In the meantime, a song.



ETA: And just after I posted, the numbers jumped precipitously. With 44% of the votes in, Obama leads Clinton 57.3% to 41.8%.

First, the title of my post is drawn from The Who Sell Out. One of the first concept albums, it is set up like a radio broadcast, complete with messages from the radio station and advertisements sprinkled throughout the song. "More music, more music, more music, more music" is sung right between the "advertisement" for Heinz Baked Beans and the song "Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand."

Next here is a playlist with all of the songs from yesterday's meme. Some of them are very obscure (notably Tudor Lodge, The Advertising Jingles and Live Wire) but I was curious if anyone knew of them.

Enjoy.

Since I'm a meme-whore.

GUESS THE SONG MEME (ganked from uberconfused)
Step 1. Put your playlist on random.
Step 2. Post the first line from the first 25 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing. (You can skip songs that are instrumental.)
Step 3. Strike out the songs when someone guesses correctly.

1) Where do we go from here now that all other children are growin' up? "Games People Play" by The Alan Parsons Project. One point to fountaingirl.
2) To all the girls that awake to escape in the morning
3) I can't be called, begged or bought if you want to be my Johnny on the spot
4) I was walkin'. I was just walkin' by myself caught in the night, trapped by a neon light.
5) It seems, it seems there's nothin' that you couldn't do if there's a drink inside of you.
6) It's dawned on me again I can't balance in betweens
7) Do you gotta be a queen all your life?
8) Walking slowly through a forest, falling autumn colored leaves
9) My little sister's in the front seat with an ice cream cone
10) The light begin to bleed, begin to breathe, begin to speak.
11) You're sailing softly through the sun in a broken stone age dawn. "Strange Magic" by Electric Light Orchestra. Two points to fountaingirl.
12) Found someone who can comfort me, but there are always exceptions
13) Let's talk about a criminal procedure, throw out the idea of illegal seizure
14) She set your goldfish free and now she's sighing "Twisting" by They Might Be Giants. One point to max_ambiguity.
15) Traffic in the city turns my head around. No, no, no, no, no.
16) I like the sound of breaking glass, 'cause it's too loud.
17) Once she loved a boy. But he did not love her. "This Is Not" by Blonde redhead. One point to opiateslopes.
18) I keep forgettin' we're not in love anymore "I Keep Forgettin'" by Michael McDonald. One point to archaeologydork.
19) We met at Tia's [?] place, suspended by her face, I asked a boy to inquire where she would be tonight
20) All I want to do is to get back to you
21) I know what you're doing to me, boy. You move so fast like a psychopathic color TV
22) I know you're in the sun. I know you're close to everyone. At times it's like you don't have a hold on me.
23) I would have given you all of my heart, but there's someone who's torn it apart. "The First Cut Is the Deepest" by Cat Stevens. One point to Tiffany.
24) 'Cos this world swallows souls. And when the blues unfold, it gets cold, silence burns holes.
25) You took me down into the valley. I didn't know you were so deep.

This should be interesting. I'm pretty sure I know which song will get guessed first.

Edit: Bonus points to anyone who can identify the album from which this entry's title is derived. Here's a hint: I have to ask for the album because it appears between two songs and is not really a part of either song. And, no, it's not terribly obscure (unlike some of the music above, though I did mostly try to stay away from things that would be completely unknowable).

Oh man. Check this out (i.e., the video for Hall and Oates's "She's Gone"):



This has got to be one of my favorite music videos now. It's as bizarre and underproduced as "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is bizarre and overproduced. I can't tell what I like best: the throwing the Monopoly money half-heartedly at the guy in the devil suit whenever they sing "I'd pay the devil to replace her," Oates's penguin-like suit (and check out those heels!) and his "guitar solo", Oates's beard, Hall's (un?)intentional resemblance to David Bowie, that they sometimes lip-sync and sometimes don't, or that weird thing hanging over the back of Hall's chair. More music videos need to be made like this.

Or like this one which Kanye West had Zach Galifianakis and Will Oldham (a.k.a. Bonnie "Prince" Billy) make as an alternate video for his song "Can't Tell Me Nothing"



Favorite part of this one: Zach gesturing to a field full of cows as he lip-syncs "How do you stay faithful in a room full of hos?"

"Awesome" was, of course, eponymous. And the opening acts, Jose Bold and The Half Brothers (between them comprising 4/7 of "Awesome") were excellent as well. Between The Half Brothers and "Awesome" there were four cover songs (two apiece and in this order) and they all involved a banjo:



Sweet.

I don't go to nearly enough shows.

Seeing "Awesome", and if you're not familiar with one of the finest new bands in the PNW, visit their myspace (linked above) and listen to their song "Telephone." It's one of my favorite songs of last year.

Ganked from castaly

1. Put your iTunes/music player on Shuffle
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER WHAT [ed. I don't like the all-caps insistence of this line, but a meme's a meme]

( Tracks and my comments on them below. )

And now for the fun part (which you can enjoy w/o even reading any of the above): a playlist made up of those very songs. Whee! Relive my evening!

He's big in Japan, he's big in Japan ...

I've mentioned this to owl_of_minerva, but figure it's worth mentioning to LJ-land at large, since I now have a video. Friday night, after Conan played a rousing game of "Let's See How Long I Can Spin My Wedding Ring," he unexpectedly launched into a pretty decent rockabilly version of "Blue Moon of Kentucky" (a wise move, and one I hope he does more, given that The Max Weinberg 7 is the best and tightest of the late night bands):



And I know the writers' strike is bad and all, but I've gotta say that this writerless version of Late Night with Conan O'Brien has me tuning in again. I used to watch it more regularly years ago, but have stopped as the show started to feel stagnant. I think the late night show format (monologue, host dicking around, first guest, perhaps more dicking around, second guest, musical guest/comedian) is particularly susceptible to falling into a routine and for a while I appreciated Conan because he didn't seem to be falling into that groove: he had lots of skits and would often do strange things with his guests. But as I've tuned in over the past few years, I've seen less and less of that (and maybe I'm just not tuning in at the right moments), it has seemed more controlled and less absurdist and risk-taking. Even his monologues tend to be the same thing: commentary on current events and a bit too much self-effacing humor.

But the past two shows I've caught have been great. Much more like the earlier years of the show where they were being more experimental, as they've been forced to be as creative with as little as they can. My hope is that this can revitalize the show somewhat and that he can bound through this year into his replacing Jay Leno next year at full force and make The Tonight Show as good as Carson made it (or some rough approximation thereof, because there's really no replacing Carson).

And for bonus awesome, check out under the cut for a great bit from the first night back:( Youah crystal bawl ain't so crystal cleah, Ahchie. )

This will give you some indication as to how much I privilege music to lyrics when I listen to a song. I've had Stephen Malkmus's first solo album (as well as the two singles from it) since 2001 or 2002, but it was probably only in 2007 that I realized that the song "Jenny and the Ess-Dog" was about Jenny's relationship with a 31-year old guy who calls himself "The S-Dog (Sean, if you wish)" and not about some actual dog (even though a dog [named Trey] shows up in the song). Lyrics just totally float by me at least half of the time.

Anyhow, it's a great song and as good as some of his stuff in Pavement.

Patient complains of sharp, stabbing pains in her feet, akin to walking on broken glass.

As could be expected of my recent behavior, I have gone and made myself a pretty decent birthday playlist at imeem (24 very good songs, followed by three I just couldn't resist).



Dinner tonight at Rover's with the family. My third time there and I expect it to be every bit as mind-blowing as the first.

Oh, and Happy Boxing Day, goyim.

Apparently one can create playlists on imeem. This post is mostly to test the functionality of such a playlist embedded in an LJ post. For this test, I have chosen one of my favorite post-rock [whatever post-rock even means, but they're always classified as such] bands, The Sea and Cake. "The Argument" (in this playlist, along with a bunch of other great songs) is perhaps my favorite song of theirs, and would probably make a Top 100 list of my own personal favorite songs, if I were to ever knuckle down and write such a list. Listening to the song now, I think I may like them because they're overwhelmingly smooth.



This isn't my playlist, but rather one I found there. Still, there are plenty of great TSaC songs here, including "Jacking the Ball" their cover of David Bowie's "Sound and Vision," "The Biz," "Station in the Valley," "The Colony Room," "Middlenight," and "The Transaction." Definitely a band worth listening to if you haven't already and are in need of music to which you might chill out. (Yeah, yeah, I know—but I'm already pretty anal about ending sentences in prepositions [I even have reached the point where I don't even do it when I speak] and "chill out to" was just too much ... this was a compromise, as I initially had written "music to which out you might chill". Consider yourselves lucky.)

Anyhow, enjoy.

ETA: for opiateslopes:

Merry Christmas, goyim. And a merry birthday eve to me.



One of the few Christmas songs I can stand, likely because it's XTC (but also because it's catchy and abounding in secularity [and could you expect anything less from the guy who three years later would pen "Dear God"?]). It's always weird when I hear this song in public during the holidays. XTC were never a fairly popular group, especially not past the mid-80s, and the best I can usually hope for in hearing them is to tune in to a radio station doing some 80s flashback show and hope to hear songs like "Senses Working Overtime" or "Generals and Majors." So to be eating at a Red Robin or shopping at a Bed Bath and Beyond and to hear XTC is a surreal thing indeed. I figure it must be some Muzak Christmas music package or something. Whatever. If it has the potential to draw more people into the awesome genius of Andy Partridge, I'm all for it.

In the spirit of paganistic songs with Christiany titles, following is my first upload to imeem, probably one of the most beautiful XTC songs I know:



Why Partridge/Moulding isn't as popular and lauded a combination as Lennon/McCarthy, I'll never know.

I knew I'd be dangerous with this thing. While looking online last night for various music, I found the following track, which Mike Doughty himself has posted, from his upcoming album Golden Delicious. All signs point to awesome:



He's still great with words and catchy melodies and this track echoes back to a little of the trip-hoppiness that characterized his work with Soul Coughing, which is cool (and perhaps indicative of this album being a bit of a synthesis of the SC-Mike Doughty and the singer/songwriter-Mike Doughty). His first¹ album, Haughty Melodic², is fantastic (honestly, one of my favorite records of 2005) and if you like it, the work he did before it (see fn. 1) is worth seeking out. And to attempt convincing you that Mike Doughty is worth your time, under the cut will be a selection of his best stuff. (Because, really, would you expect anything less from me?)

( Stand in the light, stand in the light, stand in the light. )

---

1. Technically not his first solo album. He wrote and recorded Skittish in 1996 or so, while he was still with Soul Coughing, it was rejected by whatever record company he was with and it got leaked to the Internet several years later. When he had cleaned himself up and started playing small venue solo shows, he was surprised to find people in the audience singing along to songs that had never been released. He then started selling Skittish on CD-Rs in plain white paperboard sleeves at shows (and through his website). He also released a live concert, Smofe and Smang, through his website as well as the Rockity Roll EP. Haughty Melodic is, therefore, his first solo album on a record label.

2. The eagle-eyed among you may have noted that "Haughty Melodic" is an anagram of "Michael Doughty." Or maybe not.

Ok, this should work. And assuming it does, you will all likely have more music on your friends lists than you already do.

This is currently one of my favorite Mountain Goats songs. As is this next one (an edit to see if I can post these from LJ or if I have to post from imeem, since that's the way I got the first one to work).