Give it a Wurlitzer

John Sellers pointed to a post by Holy Taco about 14 Songs You Should Never Play in a Bar. The list is on target, and the writing is funny, but it's also funny thanks to ultra-cool nastiness: let's belittle everyone who can't bother to have our impeccable taste (not only don't they appreciate bands we like, and think the over-played is somehow singular and special, they look odd, too).

So I thought instead of doing that, I'd try to build the perfect bar juke box. Now, this isn't just a list of favorite songs, as it's about songs to drink too, and contrary to opinion I don't drink 24/7 so the two periods of time do not overlap (exactly). And it's about songs to enjoy in public--they need to make everyone happy whether they know the song or not. As this is a juke box, and a dream, I'm stocking a classic Wurlitzer that plays 45s. As this is my dream, I get to create 45s that didn't exist--my only rule is that the disc has 2 cuts by the same artist. I'm sure there's stuff I left off, as I sort of just got to 12 singles and stopped, and I also admit I avoided at least one semi-obvious choice when I skipped the Pogues. Irish music and tippling--c'mon, we can all do better than that, can't we?

Tom Waits
a: "Clap Hands"
b: "Innocent When You Dream"

The A gives you his patented herky jerky and some fine Marc Ribot, the B gives you a closing time sing-a-long.

Brian Eno
a: "King's Lead Hat"
b: "Fractal Zoom (Mary's Birthday Edit)"

I left off the Talking Heads and will regret it, but at least I got a tribute song to them in (check the anagram in the A title) plus the pulse of that song will get everyone's head bobbing. The B is pretty obscure, but it's the closest to a dance track my juke has. I dance obscurely, you see.

Lucinda Williams
a: "Passionate Kisses"
b: "Essence"

Lucinda helps us get a little sexy, a little dirty. Good things for a bar.

The Mekons
a: "Memphis, Egypt"
b: "Millionaire"

The A let's you below "Destroy your safe and happy lives" as you down a shot. The B gives you Sally Timms all insinuation, singing, "Champagne was never cheap, but I could always find someone to drink it for me."

Frank Sinatra
a: "I've Got You Under My Skin"
b: "One for My Baby"

The A is perhaps the best recording ever--when Nelson Riddle brings the band up, I swear it rocks. The B gives you something to play at a quarter to three.

Old 97's
a: "Jagged"
b: "Barrier Reef"

Two country inflected rockers, the A more serious, for when the drinking is still perched between darkness and light, the B for those funnier moments, and people will sing-a-long and think about sex after drinking, which is what you want them to do, admit it.

Fred Astaire
a: "I Love Louisa"
b: "Steppin' Out with My Baby"

We need some class on the box, and the A is probably better known for its refrain "More Beer!" Plus you get bonus Oscar Levant. How hip is that?

Yo La Tengo
a: "Sugarcube"
b: "Tom Courtenay"

At times you just need to rock and these songs pack more hooks than a bait shop.

Elvis Costello
a: "(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea"
b: "Almost Blue"

The A gets us a bit close to reggae and gives us something bitter to go with our bitters, the B is another closing time lament. (I really didn't spend that much time at 2 am in bars. Well, not in the past decade, at least.)

Amy Rigby
a: "All I Want"
b: "Time for Me to Come Down"

Criminally underrated Rigby makes songs of longing, and why else do those of us who can't sing drink?

X
a: "Sex and Dying in High Society"
b: "See How We Are"

Almost picked "The World's a Mess, It's in My Kiss" but with Ray Manzarek on it, that's like putting the Doors on my jukebox, and we can't have that. The A let's us be cynically self-aware as we punish the liver and brain, the B gives us a moment of political awareness and a beat to pound the bar.

Neko Case
a: "The Tigers Have Spoken"
b: "Letter from an Occupant"

The A gives us one of the best guitar figures of the past few years while the B--which I know is really a New Pornographers song, but can you imagine anyone else but Neko singing it?--is catchy pop, and there's a need to be caught in a bar.

Feel free to play along in the comments or turn these into a meme, if you dare. (Shoot, forgot the Replacements! How about a hidden bonus 45 with an a of "I Will Dare" and a b of "Bastards of Young.)

You Come for the Silliness, You'll Stay for Los Campesinos!

Don't ask Why 2K, just celebrate. With Los Campesinos! (Why am I always so slow to learn about the coolest things!?) If the last 15 seconds of this first video doesn't make you think rock still rocks (and it left desperate-to-want-to-believe me close to tears of joy, really), the whole second half of the second video will be sure to make you laugh.

F Is My Favorite Letter as You Know

No time for much, sorry. So in the meantime enjoy my Kathleen Edwards obsession. First there's her video for "Cheapest Key" from the new album. You'll want to go back to school, guys.



And here's a live version of Kathleen and Colin Cripps first telling a story and then nailing "Six O'Clock News":

We Used to Blog about Girls Who Played Guitars

Sometimes we need cliches back. It's a shame that I can't say, "Kathleen Edwards rocked Saturday night at her Sings Like Hell concert at the Lobero," and have that mean anything anymore. But it does and she did. Leading a crack four piece band including her husband, guitarist Colin Cripps, she went for the jugular on every song, to the point where she pulled back about 2/3 of the way through, sent her band off-stage, and said something to the effect of, "I'm going to do a couple of songs acoustic--I think we're blowing you out a bit." Of course, she brought two band members back after one solo song.

But I'm not complaining. She tends to get lumped in with the folk-country-rock women like Lucinda Williams, but like Williams, she has a love for texture, for guitar, for a nifty riff. And that voice of hers, with its wonderful weariness that carries the dusks of many roads, whether she's actually lived them or just got there through her brilliantly detailed writing. This is a woman who named the second song of her first CD "One More Song the Radio Won't Like," who opened this show with the cut "Mercury," and its first line, "Want to go get high," which was a perfect invitation to the evening, as it turned out. That's exactly what she ended up doing for the audience, particularly as you just don't get to see a woman lead a rock band enough. You can't beat tough chicks who play guitars. Especially if they look a bit like Cate Blanchett.

That didn't mean the evening was one straight grind of guitar, though. That acoustic number was a lovely version of "Scared at Night," a song for her dad that's up there with Billy Bragg's "Tank Park Salute," and she nodded to obvious influence and fellow Canadian Neil Young with a fine cover of "Only Love Can Break Your Heart."

Then for an encore, she took out her violin again (turns out that was her childhood instrument) and dueted with husband Cripps on an intro over some sinuous bass that to these ears seem to be another Young classic, "Cortez the Killer," and to get truly musically geeky, sort of like that live Matthew Sweet version from the bonus CD of Girlfriend. But it's actually her song "Goodnight, California," the close of her fine new CD Asking for Flowers, one of the rise and fall, build and release numbers, and it certainly capped the night in a grand manner. Which, of course, she knocked away with more rock, as she ripped through the I'll-win-you-back-tune "Back to Me," singing it with such conviction no one could doubt she's got moves she hasn't used.

Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't say "Six O'Clock" news has to be one of the best songs of the past 10 years. Especially all gut-sied up live.

Friday Flashback Non-Random 27

The meme the other day got me to thinking. I stopped that as quickly as possible. But I did realize that to figure out what I was doing 10 years ago, or __ years ago, I could probably dig up computer files, and more importantly, mixed tapes. So I went digging, and here's a blast from 1991 (not that the songs were all of that vintage, as you'll see). This is sort of all-over, which makes me like it all the more, a tiny present from 17 years ago.

Hearts Are Treacherous/Struggle for Pleasure

A
Wim Mertens "Struggle for Pleasure"
Tom Verlaine "The Scientist Writes a Letter"
Elvis Costello "Georgie and Her Rival"
Pere Ubu "Playback"
Sundays All Over the World "Open Air"
Kate Bush "Be Kind to My Mistakes"
Medium Medium "Hungry So Angry"
Brian Eno/John Cale "Been There Done That"
Feelies "Doin' It Again"
Marshall Crenshaw "Don't Disappear Now"
Spanic Boys "London Town"
Pixies "Winterlong"
John Hiatt "She Loves the Jerk"

B
Richard Thompson "I Feel So Good"
Joan Armatrading "Words"
Any Trouble "As Lovers Do"
Lloyd Cole "No Blue Skies"
Joy Division "Atmosphere"
Fiat Lux "Photography"
Devo "Beautiful World"
Bill Nelson "Giving It All Away"
Marc Ribot "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
Lou Reed "Legendary Hearts"
Replacements "Sadly Beautiful"
John Wesley Harding "The Rent"
The Chills "Sweet Times"
Bob Mould "Sunspots"

Friday Random Ten

Rockpile "Teacher Teacher" Seconds of Pleasure
California Guitar Trio "Prelude Circulation" Invitation
The Fratellis "Got My Nuts from a Hippy" Costello Music
Guided by Voices "Run Wild" Isolation Drills
Tom Waits "Hang Down Your Head" Rain Dogs
Sebadoh "Worst Thing" Harmacy
Lucinda Williams "Learning How to Live" West
Amy Rigby "Stop Showing up in My Dreams" The Sugar Tree
Rain Tree Crow "Cries and Whispers" Rain Tree Crow
Bill Nelson "Spinnin' Around" Blue Moons and Laughing Guitars

bonus
Freedy Johnston "I Can Hear the Laughs" This Perfect World

It starts off well and never totally bombs out but rarely reaches the same pop height. But it does follow David Sylvian and Co. with Bill Nelson, which is sort of clever, and gets in an Ingmar Bergman reference in, too.

Ear of the Pig

INOTBB has to offer up a huge thanks to Ahab from IIRTZ for his musical care package of 9 CDs (see there is music I don't own) including Sparklehorse, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Lee Hazlewood, Johnny Dowd, Damien Jurado, and a Richard Buckner I didn't have. The internets are a very very kind place.

And while I'm thanking people for music I have to say thanks to Cattie for the mixed CD that introduced me to what the cool 17-year-olds are listening to. Once again, there's so much I don't know. Have a great time in Norway, Cattie!

I Remember Mama Cassette

As I've written before, I still do the mixed tape thing and still love listening to them because I'm a self-involved you know what like that. So since I've been enjoying this blast from 1999 past in the car the last few days (I don't drive that much), I thought I'd post it here, especially because it has one of my mostest favoritest titles I've ever come up with....

Lazy as a River, Veronica as a Lake

side A

Pavement "Major Leagues"
Luna "Sweet Child o' Mine"
Mekons "Now We Have the Bomb"
Jack Logan "Melancholy Girl"
Magnetic Fields "All My Little Words"
Howe Gelb "Propulsion"
Wilco "Via Chicago"
Brian Eno "Dead Finks Don't Talk"
Imperial Teen "Crucible"
Jad Fair and Yo La Tengo "Embarrassed Teen Accidentally Uses Valuable Rare Postage Stamp"
PJ Harvey "Angelene"
Ana Egge "Fairest of Them All"

side B

Built to Spill "Time Trap"
Buzzcocks "Walking Distance"
Guided by Voices "Surgical Focus"
Cadallaca "Winter Storm '98"
Liz Phair "Perfect World"
Freedy Johnston "While I Wait for You"
Steve Earle "My Old Friend the Blues"
Pretenders & Emmylou Harris "She"
Julie Miller "A Kiss on the Lips"
Paul Westerberg "Lookin' Out Forever"
Pixies "Gigantic"
Los Lobos "Oh Yeah"

It sets a mood, moves through phases of soft to loud, includes some of my favorite cuts of all-time (by Magnetic Fields, Wilco, Pixies), includes cuts I forget about but then am very happy to hear again (by Pavement, Jack Logan, Liz Phair), includes one surprisingly good cover (not much G 'n' R in my collection). And then there's that title, did I mention the title?

Sis Team Chapel

Women rarely get to be warts and all. We tend to like them air-brushed, innocent, perfect or pretending to be. That's just one reason Friday night's concert at the Presidio Chapel (and let's ignore the irony of all the weight Catholicism has dumped on the feminine for a moment) was so refreshing. For all three artists--Angela Correa, Devon Sproule, and Victoria Williams--were brilliantly talented, but they also made lots of funny faces, stop-started performances, battled capos, acted goofy, sung sad but true.

Victoria Williams is so full of winning whimsy and warmth it almost doesn't matter she can sing such cool songs. She made it clear her stand-up bassist was new to the band, only knew a small selection of songs, then repeatedly played songs not part of his repertoire. (He followed along quite well, nonetheless.) Her voice is a slippery singsong that gives some folks fits if pretty is all they want in their singers, but if you like emotive playfulness, Vic is your woman. In a 50 minute set she managed to perform tunes from all her albums, all the way back to 1987's Happy Come Home, including "Happy" itself, a minute-long ditty about a woman everyone thinks is crazy because she's outside shouting "Happy!" all the time when it just turns out to be the name of her dog. That's Williams' worldview in a nutshell, one where it'd be insane not to be crazy, not to have a dog, not to shout happy every so often. We could shout it even more if she came to town more frequently.

Middle act Devon Sproule looks like a heroine from a Buster Keaton movie (think Our Hospitality), a wisp of a woman in a slip of a dress with short hair done up with flowers. Her songs, many of late from her period pitching musical woo to land her husband (fellow singer-songwriter Paul Curreri), tell tales so artfully you almost wonder if part of her pose is tongue-in-cheek, but she's probably just being who she is--a smart Southerner (Virginia), a bit wise, a bit wise-ass, as when she broke for a solo by saying, "Take it Sproule!" Indeed, she can pick, making fine lines out of her electric Gibson with a pick-up as old as her father, or so she said. Her music, folk-based but with a knowledge of jazz that keeps leading it from the country to some odder city bars or something, is lit by the joy of moonshine. Why yes, both kinds.

Opener Angela Correa has an angel's voice but a stage presence too self-deprecating by half. It didn't help that she had to go back stage before playing a tune to re-tune; she also admitted she hadn't played out for awhile so was rusty--you wanted to suggest she hire a guitarist and just handle the vocals herself. In general, though, it's best not to make faces when you screw up--it's amazing what you can get away with if you just plough through like all is well. (Rumor has it you can even avoid impeachment as president, but that's another kind of review, isn't it?)

Overall, it was an evening of warmth and women getting to be the multifarious things they are, no matter what we (yes, mostly us men) want. Credit goes to Brett Leigh Dicks for producing the evening, and here's hoping that the talk about Presidio Chapel concerts becoming a series isn't just talk.

She Comes Down to Santa Barbara to Tell Us Everything Is Fine

Back 12 years ago for a really cool zine called Fond Affexxions (you have to miss print, you really do) I wrote a review about Victoria Williams' still-crowning triumph Loose which said this:

Acquired taste she is, but given this is by-far her best album (number three), getting turned on by Loose is like finally getting beluga at the Russian Tea Room after years of supermarket jars that only hinted at the wonderment of caviar. Wonderment is the key word, by the way: She comes off as a scat-singing Glenda the Good Witch, and that's all part of her charm. Williams helps make Van Dyke Parks' Amerikitsch make sense--the arrangements are as all-over as her voice. What else could they be, given it's her personality that holds together her mix of country, folk, gospel, pop, jazz, rock. And that personality is fighting her multiple sclerosis, the death of a best friend, the death of her dog. With all the ugliness, so much to bemoan, she sings about love--lots--and makes you believe it. I never thought I would call a record uplifting without falling out of my chair laughing at myself. Instead, I can only sit here and smile.

Seems those of us in Santa Barbara can sit in the chapel at the Presidio and smile this Friday, for Victoria Williams will be heading up a show with Devon Sproule and Angela Correa. Tickets are available at the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation office, located on the Presidio, or by calling: (805) 965 0093. You won't want to miss this terrific, intimate night.

Friday Random Ten

Pere Ubu "Drinking Wine Spodyody" Datapanik in the Year Zero: 1978-1979
Sufjan Stevens "The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts" Come on Feel the Illinoise!
The Master Musicians of Jajouka "A Habibi Quajee T'Allel Allaiya" Apocalypse Across the Sky
Dinosaur Jr. "I Misunderstood" Beat the Retreat: Songs of Richard Thompson
Louis Armstrong "Blue Again" Ken Burns Jazz Collection: Louis Armstrong
Arturo Sandoval "Blues for Diz" For Love or Country
Marshall Crenshaw "Starting Tomorrow" Life's Too Short
Brian Eno & Jah Wobble "Marine Radio" Spinner
John Cale "Things" HoboSapiens
The Magnetic Fields "I Thought You Were My Boyfriend" I

bonus
Alison Krauss & Union Station "Daylight" New Favorite

In case you were wondering, J Mascis does misunderstand Richard Thompson, bludgeoning a great song and coming up with easily the worst cut on an otherwise fine covers collection. And while I've spent lots of time hyping my guitar heroes Robert Quine and Marc Ribot, I have to admit I'm a complete sucker for Jerry Douglas's dobro, too.

Shook It Like to Make It Break

Saturday night I got to coin the phrase "you come for the Gillian Welch and David Rawlings but you stay for the Bright Eyes" after a concert featuring said artists at the Arlington--which Connor Oberst insisting on calling "your Mexican villa"--here in Santa Barbara. Yes, a band named Oakley Hall opened the bill, but mostly they just proved there's a greater difference between tasteful and tasty than a tiny clutch of letters. OK, they also proved something much more personal, namely that I know Amy even better than I think. While the group's female lead singer Rachel Cox (they do the male-female vocal thing, but it's an in-unison approach, not a sneak up and attack like John Doe and Exene, or a heavenly harmony like Welch and Rawlings, for that matter) awkwardly shimmied about on one song I thought, "Amy's going to think she's goofy," and sure enough, post-show she said more or less that about Cox's dancing without any prompting. So while Oakley Hall was so-so musically, they did help make my marriage stronger. (They can even use that line on their website, if they want, if they can keep it from crashing my IE like it did a bit ago--watch trying to download those songs!)

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, on the other hand, were spectacular. It's easy to want to joke that it sounded as if they performed some new songs but it's hard to tell as they sounded like their old songs that sound like someone else's old songs--they aspire to a timless music that erases any concerns about whether Berklee-educated musicians can play the Appalachia way. And hell and brimstone rained from the thesaurus and musical clocks slid slow and the songs ran into songs and echoed like lost tunes and archaic words like revelator rang and rhymed and they even saved emancipator for a whole ‘nother cut (which they ddin't perform Saturday). Gillian Welch and David Rawlings’ hominy in the harmony soothes me, like a 78 of a dream of the country of the country, like James Agee with an arch-top Epiphone and sweetly clipped pipes. That a pretty preoccupied pre-twenty-year-old in front of us couldn't bother to raise her head from her text-messaging (and I am jealous my thumbs aren't that dexterous) only means you have to grow into some things, like death and country music. Both will be there when she's ready; both'll be there if she's never ready.

For a still twentysomething, Connor Oberst has a sense of the mortal coil, too, as befits someone who opens a show with "Clairaudients (Kill or Be Killed)" the opening track of his new CD Cassadaga. No matter his musings, which are at turns philosophical, poetic, political, borderline prolix, at least live he brings the musical oomph to power through, what with a mini-six-piece orchestra of strings and horns, another guitarist (who also played pedal steel), a bassist, a keyboardist/trumpet player, a drummer, and a percussionist/drummer, many of whom joined along in vocals, for that seems important to the Bright Eyes world view--we shall all sing together, or we shall all be silent and screwed separately. Certainly no one could claim he didn't get his money's worth, as the songs got clever fuller treatments compared to their recorded versions, everyone was fun to watch in their white outfit variations (although the violin player with the big hair needs to dump the hairband that makes him look like John McEnroe), and the backstage projections made me feel it was Bright Eyes and the Exploding Plastic Inevitable at times.

For his encores Oberst brought Welch and Rawlings back out and they ran through a perfect culmination of a live music event, making recorded music by both of them many times better. First just the trio performed Oberst's "Lua," which suddenly seemed full and lovely and not the puny-ish thing it is on I'm Wide Awake It's Morning when it's just Oberst alone (more proof that singing together really is a good thing--and it was clear they rehearsed, and as an audience-member, I appreciate that effort). Then most of the band came out and they made Welch's "Look at Miss Ohio" the stomper it always should have been with that great chorus line "she says I want to do right but not right now" really getting underlined with a couple drummers pounding it out. Finally, everyone kicked into "Road to Joy," in which Oberst gives the Bright Eyeball to Beethoven and the finger to anyone who gets in his way; needless to say, ending a concert with the lines: "I could have been a famous singer/If I had someone else's voice./But failure's always sounded better,/let's fuck it up boys, make some noise" leading into an all-out, feedback-fueled freak-out is a kind of statement. It's also a total blast as a way to head on out into a night.

Friday Random Ten

Victoria Williams "Lift Him Up" Swing the Statue
Radiohead "The National Anthem" I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings
Pixies "Ed Is Dead" Surfer Rosa & Come on Pilgrim
The Pooh Sticks "Indiepop Ain't Noise Pollution" Multiple Orgasm
Matthew Sweet "Born in Sin" The Ugly Truth CD-5
Marc Ribot "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" The Soul of a Man
Pavement "Major Leagues" Terror Twilight
Simon & Garfunkel "Anji" Sounds of Silence
Matthew Sweet "Heaven and Earth" Blue Sky on Mars
3Ds "Outer Space" Hellzapoppin

bonus
Laura Love "Can't Understand" Octoroon

It's like iTunes is challenging me some weeks--did you know you owned this? (The Simon & Garfunkel is Amy's, btw.) Still, it's always good to be surprised by a Multiple Orgasm. And that's the only good, actually pretty great, song on that 3Ds album. Plus the Victoria Williams to Laura Love cycle makes some sense I've never thought of before.

Friday Random Ten

Penguin Cafe Orchestra "Cage Dead" (Version 2) Concert Program
Fred Astaire "Steppin' Out with My Baby" Steppin' Out: Astaire Sings
The Mekons "Machine" Retreat from Memphis
Sufjan Stevens "Out of Egypt, Into the Great Laugh of Mankind, And I Shake the Dirt from My Sandals as I Run" Come on Feel the Illnoise!
Michael Tilson-Thomas & the Orchestra of St. Luke "Contredanse No. 2" Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 "Eroica"
Liz Phair "What Makes You Happy" Whitechocolatespaceegg
Billy Bragg & Wilco "Christ for President" Mermaid Avenue
Orchestra Baobab "El Son Te Llama" Specialists in All Styles
Richard Hell "Going Going Gone" R.I.P.

bonus
Jack Logan "Opposite Direction" Bulk

Yet another week with lesser cuts from greater artists (Mekons, Stevens, Phair, Logan), but there's Robert Quine behind Richard Hell's poorly recorded whine, one of the best world music CDs of the past 10 years with Orchestra Baobab, and the inimitable Fred Astaire.

Friday Random Ten

Randy Newman "William Brown" Guilty: 30 Years of Randy Newman
Laurie Anderson "Night in Baghdad" Bright Red Tightrope
David Byrne "Civilization" Grown Backwards
John Cale "Mr. Wilson" The Island Years
Son Volt "Ten Second News" Trace
Janet Bean & the Concertina Wire "Spout of Sprite" Dragging Wonder Lake
Chavez "New Room" Ride the Fader
Brian Eno & John Cale "Spinning Away" Wrong Way Up
Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 "..." Mother of All Saints
Of Montreal "A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger" Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

bonus
The Heath Brothers "A Harmonic Future" The Heath Brothers: Jazz Family

As usual, all over the map, even if we get a few contiguous towns along the way. I've always been a sucker for that rhythm guitar in the Eno/Cale song.

Music Is the Universal Language till You Play It on the Google Translator

Someone in Spain used the Google translator to view INOTBB, and one of the gems of that page produced the following mixed tape.

cara una
Mella Lowe, “va tan”
Los reemplazos, “no pueden esperar apenas”
Paja de Syd, la “muchacha más resistente en el mundo”
Pooh palillos, “gente joven”
Duendecillos, “empuje para el fuego”
Ese perro, “Minneapolis”
Fuentes de Wayne, “Denise”
Construido para derramarse, “cucharón grande”
Puede ser que sean gigantes, “Birdhouse en tu alma”
El choque, “tren en inútil”
Lucinda Williams, “besos apasionados”
Amy Rigby, “todos lo que deseo”
Elvis Costello, “(los ángeles desean usar mi) zapatos rojos”

cara dos
Formar Crenshaw, “yo hará cualquier cosa”
Flamin Groovies, “sacudare una cierta acción”
Tommy Keene, “lugares se van que”
Dramarama, “trabajo para el alimento”
La Tengo de Yo, “Tom Courtenay”
Buzzcocks, “caído siempre en amor?”
Ryan Adams, “nuclear”
Viejo 97's “Rollerskate flaco”
XTC, “alcalde de Simpleton”
Campos magnéticos, “100.000 luciérnagas”
Estrella grande, “septiembre Gurls”
Ben Vaughn, “Shingaling con mí”
Dulce de Matthew, “somos iguales”

Matthew Sweet turns out to be delicious, Syd Straw gets truly funny, and for some reason Yo La Tengo gets translated into Spanish as some Mets outfielders crash into each other. Oh, and notice that Buzzcocks in any other language are still Buzzcocks.

Friday Random Ten

The Buzzcocks "Harmony in My Head" Singles Going Steady
Steve Earle & the Del McCoury Band "Long, Lonesome Highway Blues" The Mountain
Moe Tucker "Danny Boy" Dogs Under Stress
Matthew Sweet "Behind the Smile" Life on Mars
Tom Waits "Dog Treat" Orphans: Bastards
Matthew Sweet "Good Friend" Girlfriend (bonus CD)
Louis Prima & Keely Smith "That Old Black Magic" Jackpot! The Las Vegas Story
Pizzicato Five "[something in Japanese]" Happy End of the World
The Replacements "Anywhere's Better than Here" Don't Tell a Soul
Buena Vista Social Club "Chan Chan" Buena Vista Social Club

bonus
Richard Thompson "A Solitary Life" Front Parlour Ballads

Yes, it's that "Danny Boy." You really don't need to hear it. Not really one 10 out of 10 song this week, despite lots of fine artists. A selection of small horizons, as RT might have it. (Oh, and it's not THE version of "Girlfriend" but a demo, hence not a 10/10.)

That's Advertainment

Doing all they can to confirm all suspicions they were really a bunch of Tories, you can now hear The Jam's "Start!" as the music selling you a Bose speaker system for your Cadillac.

Thwacked in the Head by a 44

I've explained before that I still make mixed tapes. No, not playlists--mixed tapes. Those funny plastic things with stuff spooled inside. Sure, random is fun, but why not have a bit of control over things now and again? I especially like to make birthday tapes, so here's this year's, a bit more mellow than I would want to say is a reflection of me. At least I'm better off than last year, when it took me until July to make the birthday tape.

I Don't Care if Forever Never Comes

side A

Andrew Bird "Heretics"
New Pornographers "The Bleeding Hearts Show"
Portastatic "You Blanks"
Mott the Hoople "All the Young Dudes"
Drive-By Truckers "Gravity's Gone"
The Hold Steady "Hot Soft Light"
The Pooh Sticks "On Tape"
The Futureheads "Favours for Favours"
Gothic Archies "How Do You Slow This Thing Down?"
Dean and Britta "Words You Used to Say"
Lloyd Cole and the Commotions "Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken?"
Camera Obscura "Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken"

side B

Of Montreal "A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger"
Beck "Strange Apparition"
Yo La Tengo "The Weakest Part"
T Bone Burnett "Trap Door"
Guster "The Captain"
Neko Case "That Teenage Feeling"
Lucinda Williams "Mama You Sweet"
Handsome Family "After We Shot the Grizzly"
Lambchop "Crackers"
Eric Bachmann "Little Bird"
Peter Blegvad "Swim"
The Decemberists "The Crane Wife 3"

Force Fed by Love

So for my birthday Amy gave me that Multiple Orgasm I've been wanting for years.

Sorry, forgot the italics there--meant Multiple Orgasm by the Pooh Sticks, one of the sadly little known (the story of my musical taste, the story of my life) bands of the late 80s early 90s when people thought music sucked but that's just because they didn't know what to listen to. I've had the album on tape (which is fitting, as one of the disc's best cuts praises the joys of having rare music "On Tape") for years (thanks, Layne, if you're out there), but now I can blast it on CD and not worry that each time I listen I wear some of the fun away.

I almost had to stay in the car and listen to the whole punk-pop thing before coming into work, and even then did so humming the terribly catchy "Sex Head," hoping I didn't blurt out any of the sing-along chorus while in my cube.

As the All Music Guide claims:

The Pooh Sticks were rock's most inside joke, a monumental yet affectionate prank on the very mythology of pop music itself. Cloaked behind ridiculously-overblown marketing schemes, made-up histories and cartoon-character images, the Welsh group punctured the industry's myriad excesses, freely pilfering from the entirety of pop's past by shoplifting titles, lyrics and melodies at will; wrapping their barbs in cotton-candy sing-a-longs, their subversions worked on many levels -- postmodern cultural criticism, retro-irony, slavish imitation, and power-pop manna among them -- to forge an identity as high-concept as it was low-brow.

Gee, that last comment sounds like some project someone else might be up to. (Look up. No, the other up. I mean the one on the computer screen.)