Back from the East Coast

Things I Like about New England:
- Dunkin Donuts, Dunkin Donuts, Dunkin Donuts everywhere
- Red Sox on TV

Things I Don't Like about New England:
- Humidity
- Humidity

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This should entertain a lot of you...my current iPod top 10

10 Rainbows in the Dark - Tilly & the Wall
9 All Too Human - the Rakes
8 As Far As the Eye Can See - Radio 4
7 San Quentin (Live) - Johnny Cash
6 Dirt Off Your Shoulder - Jay-Z
5 Someday You Will Be Loved - Death Cab for Cutie
4 What Do I Get? - the Buzzcocks
3 Hips Don't Lie (Bamboo/World Cup 2006 Remix) - Shakira
2 Pull Shapes - the Pipettes
1 Bad Education - Tilly & the Wall

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Two new TIG reviews
Calexico - Garden Ruin
Talkdemonic - Beat Romantic
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Off to Massachusetts and the fun begins

Well, I think we can safely say SOTD is on an extended hiatus. Sorry, it happens sometimes, and that sometime is right now. Little too busy/panicked/running screaming through the halls to feel like I'm producing anything but meaningless root marm.

Anyway, I'm in Boston for a week, then back to Seattle, then off to Davis, then back to Seattle, then back to Davis (for good). La la la!

Entertain yourself with...

A new review: Radio 4 - Enemies Like This (Hey, it's even a not so good review)

And...

This gem I found going through some old packs of 1990 Upper Deck Baseball cards. Ah yes, proof yet again of the unending torment that is being a Red Sox fan (or possible just being the goat of the '86 World Series).

Catch you all later!

Another new review

Jeez, I need to get some inspiration these days...

Anyway, another new TIG review

Rainer Maria - Catastrophe Keeps Us Together

I'm a liar

Ok, so I lied ... I haven't been able to get on the SOTD track, mostly because I can't concentrate with too many other things to get done. Sorry!

Two review to bide the time:

Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock N' Roll
Turn-Ons - Parallels

Enjoy!

Ah yes, the lack of content

Well, some of you are probably wondering what happened to all the content. Sorry about that. Between things coming up here in the lab and Blogger being down/acting weird, things got a little sidetracked. So, I will start with new shuffles next week. I did have some good songs this week: "Thunderstruck" by AC/DC, "Tender Comrade" by Billy Bragg and "Only Love Will Break Your Heart" by Neil Young. Ah well. Next week will be better, I promise.

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My current iPod top 10

10 Where There's a Will There's a Whalebone by the Islands
9 Hip Hop (Live) by Dead Prez
8 Formed a Band by Art Brut
7 The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living by the Streets
6 Parade by Pretty Girls Make Graves
5 Four Freaks (Remix) by DJ Shadow
4 Black & Blue by Tilly & the Wall
3 Pull Shapes by the Pipettes
2 Crazy by Gnarls Barkley
1 Hope There's Someone by Antony & the Johnsons

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New review! Pretty Girls Make Graves - Elan Vital

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World Cup! Woo!
My prediction: US over Sweden in the finals; Brazil over Germany in the third place game!

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Shuffle of the Day 18 - "Disco 2000" by Pulp

It was refreshing this morning to get a song that I really, really love. I mean really love. I got handed a pre-release copy of Pulp's Different Class by Jorge Just when I was working as the WCFM whipping boy/internal music director (read "glorified librarian for CDs") and fell in love with it. It was like nothing I had heard before that point - most Britrock I was familiar with was either Manchester-scene dance such as Jesus Jones, Happy Mondays, Ned's Atomic Dustbin or the fruity post-Beatles mimicking of Blur (before they got real good) and Oasis. Here was an album that was dark, sinister, seductive, and fundamentally listenable and it blew me away. Jarvis Cocker's vocals were dripping with a raw magnetism that those other bands just lacked, and his class mentality made Pulp seem like a less nerdy Billy Bragg, the sort of European post-punk that needed to exist. "Disco 2000" is one of the classic pop songs on Different Class where Jarvis laments the fact that his one true love is married and has a kid but he still wants to meet up with her just to see how she's doing (see the 2006 version of this song, "Emily Kane" by Art Brut). There is something both innocent and, well, dirty to the whole song ... it's a brilliant piece of 20-somethings wishing for the simpler time of their youth. (Oh yes, and if you can find it, Nick Cave does a great over of "Disco 2000" as a B-side to Pulp's "Bad Cover Version" single.)

Shuffle of the Day 17 - "To Hell with Poverty" by Gang of Four

There are only so many reviews you can read that say Band X sounds like Gang of Four before you actually go out and want to hear Gang of Four. So, that's exactly what I did, and yes, many many many bands do sound like Gang of Four (Bloc Party, the Rapture, Radio 4 to name a few). A lot of the songs on their "best of" compilation are kind of hit or miss, but "To Hell with Poverty" seems to predict the arrival of dance rock (and even the sort of song titles we would expect from Mclusky). It is too bad these days that most music listeners really don't care to delve back in an artist's back catalog, let alone in their musical roots, but hey, sometimes it pays off like with Gang of Four. And yes, they indeed do sound like Gang of Four.

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My current iPod top 10. Dominated by Art Brut with a surprise late entry at #1.

10 Good Weekend by Art Brut
9 The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living by the Streets
8 Lucifer by Jay Z
7 Formed a Band by Art Brut
6 Emily Kane by Art Brut
5 Parade by Pretty Girls Make Graves
4 Black & Blue by Tilly & the Wall
3 Pull Shapes by the Pipettes
2 Crazy by Gnarls Barkley
1 Hope There's Someone by Antony & the Johnsons

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Shuffle of the Day 16 - "Using the Apostate Tyrant as His Tool" by the Kronos Quartet

If there is one achilles heel I have in music, its classical music. Honestly, I know so little about it that its not funny. My classical collection consists of this: (1) Holst's The Planets because John Williams stole so many of his scores from this work, it sounds like a movie score; (2) Mozart's Brandenburg Concertos because Douglas Adams ranted and raved about them in The Salmon of Doubt; (3) Longines Symphonette on 6 disc LP because its mentioned in They Might Be Giants' "Birdhouse in Your Soul" and; (4) the Kronos Quartet. I have a few by the Quartet, and I quite like them. I first found them thanks to my friend Jeff Bolas who played "Sing, Sing J. Edgar Hoover" on my old college radio station WCFM and through the Requiem for a Dream soundtrack done with Clint Mansell (formerly of Pop Will Eat Itself). I chanced upon their album of medieval/early music Lachrimae Antiquae at the local public library and quite enjoyed all the odd string arrangements they performed. And that's it. That's my knowledge of classical. It's sad, but what can I say? I grew up with rock and roll, and I someone once said (it was either about classical or opera) something to the effect of "if you weren't born loving classical music, you can't really ever learn to do more than appreciate it". So that's where I am.

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