idle thoughts while a minidisc randomly plays:
1. "I Am Not" - Melissa Ferrick
It's odd how often we define ourselves by what we're not; how as a culture we really are who we choose our enemies to be. In some ways it makes me wonder if that limits our ability to see ourselves. If all I know is that I am not (fill in the blank), then what am I? I wonder how that relates to our continued dependancy on ironic self-detachment in our humor. Hmm.
2. "Der Weinershnitzel" - The Descendants
I really, really loved Pump Up the Volume as a kid.
3. "Am I Wrong" - Love Spit Love
Without question the best thing about Angus was George C. Scott's portrayal of the grandfather. And the best part of that, unsurprisingly, was his "Superman isn't brave" speech. I've always liked that idea that someone who can't feel can't be considered brave (kinda reminds me of the K's Choice song "Mr. Freeze" about being able to kill off one's emotions to get through something but it not really being worth it).
4. "The Bronze Beached Boys of Summer" - Pas/Cal
What fucking car commercial was this in? Anyone? Bueller?
5. "Spit It Out" - Slipknot
The thing that's always annoyed me about Slipknot was how the lead singer has such a great voice when he actually, y'know, sings but most of the time falls into doing the "consitpated cookie monster voice." Sure, it works for the style of music that they do, but I've always felt that doing so keeps them from being a better band (or, perhaps, simply one I'd enjoy more). But then I am the guy who once commented, "You know, Led Zeppelin could've been so much better with a stronger singer," so what the fuck do I know?
6. "Idiot Wind" - Bob Dylan
I've long been annoyed with the commonly accepted idea that great art can only be produced through suffering; that only the dark side of humanity (the pain, the anger, the sorrow, and whatnot) is really worth commenting on; that anything produced from a happy place is inherently less interesting than something produced from an unhappy place. And yet, I have to admit that Blood on the Tracks, which was Dylan working out his feelings about his then recent divorce for the world to see, is probably his best album. There are really no obvious clunkers on it, and it could've even been a stronger album had he included "Up to Me" on it, which eventually turned up on Biograph. Still, I don't think you can write a song about your ex with a line like "you're an idiot, babe, it's a wonder you can even breathe" unless you include yourself in it at the end, as he does "we are idiots, babe, it's a wonder we can even feed ourselves." Odd how ending a longterm relationship can sometimes feel like that.
7. "I Fought the Law" - ?
When I was growing up my mother always had the radio set to the oldies station, and I grew to love those old perfect pop songs. But it did have odd consequences. Like I grew up thinking "Light My Fire" was originally done by the Temptations, and I had no idea "I Fought the Law" was about a robbery. None.
8. "We're Not Gonna Take It" - Twisted Sister
Take this song, put some distortion on the guitars, and redub the vocal with some punk singer in the late 70s and this song probably becomes a classic of sorts. But because it was done by guys dressed up as women it's a joke. While it's often lamented that popular music is judged by the package it's presented in, I'd argue that music outside of the mainstream is judged similarly sometimes.
9. "You Shooke Me All Night Long" - The Arab Strap
I think I first saw Maximum Overdrive at one of my birthday's. One of those sleepover deals where we stayed up all night watching rented movies and continually reheating pizza that had long since gone cold. We watched Army of Darkness and cracked wise about how Ash had woken up in the old west; watched Phantasm II and wondered at just how long it'd take for a house to fill up with gas, could we make a quad-shotgun, and was Angus Scrimm the coolest movie villain we'd ever seen ("No, it's not!").
10. "President" - Dan Bern
I have this weird thing for story songs and especially story songs that follow some type of schedule. "President" follows the first two weeks of Dan Bern being president of the United States and all the changes he's make. To say that it's a timely song would be an understatement.
11. "Let's Go" - LiveonRelease
You can't imagine my shock when I found out that not only was there a full album by the girls who did "I'm Afraid of Britney Spears" but it was also pretty good. The band itself is merely competent; the real selling point is the vocalist who was classically trained (in opera, iirc). I'm just a sucker for a powerful voice, I guess.
12. "Sometime" - Lizzie West
During my first year of post-grad work TBS was showing five episodes of Dawson's Creek everyday. I got sucked in. I'd watched the first season in its initial run but had ejected after that (the first season, aside from a few extraneous episodes, was almost perfectly self-contained, was incredibly sweet and well written, and what I saw of subsequent seasons failed to build on the strengths of it). Mostly I was sucked in to watching five episodes of the show daily just so that I could catch the commercials that had this Lizzie West song on it that open with a line that sounded oddly like "I had a friend/he liked to taste me/and disregard the rest of me." I still don't know what the real line is.
13. "Older Chests" - Damien Rice
"and the western man's need to cry" is one of those types of lines that resonnates but I can't for the life of me describe why it does. I honestly can't remember the last time I cried, though crying to factor into my thesis. Hmm.
14. "Welcome Back, Kotter" - Squitgun
I suppose it says something about me that I get so much enjoyment from punk covers. And is it just me or was Mrs. Kotter really hot in a hey-it's-the-70s-so-whatever kinda way?
15. "Scotland the Brave" - The Kingstown Pipers
It probably says something even odder about me that I can't hear this song without picturing "Rowdy" Roddy Piper strutting to the ring with a sneer across his face.
16. "Ana Ng" - They Might Be Giants
Pop perfection. A long while ago I read a review about TMBG that essentially trashed them for "wasting" their talents on endless joke songs. Clearly the reviewer didn't understand either the appeal, or that there was actually something beneath those supposed jokes. Much like a Coen brothers film, a TMBG song has a deceptive humanity lurking beneath the surface, waiting to be found for those willing to look.
17. "I Saw My Youth Today" - Richard Shindell
The part of the refrain "is your mother well/kiss her once for me/and if she you ask you why/you could say just for no reason" kills me every time. I mean, we're talking my if I really think about it I get a little teary. I've got a great relationship with my mother, but I always feel like there's no way she'll ever understand how much I appreciate her. I suppose most people feel that way (well, those who don't have issues with their parents). I suppose it's not surprising that immediately after hearing this song the first time I took his advice.
18. "Maybe Just Once" - Nine Inch Nails
No matter how many times I try I can never understand what's being said in the sample in the middle. That irks me for some reason.
19. "I Won't Be Your Yoko Ono" - Dar Williams
I have a weakness for works that examine something from the opposite point of view. Like Beowulf from Grendel's point of view. There's something incredibly appealing about looking at the Ono situation from a perspecive sympathetic to her. Much like "The Ballad of Mary Magdalene" (in which Mary questions letting Jesus sacrifice himself as she was in love with him), it posits a situation where love is the most important thing. I like that.
20. "Don't Sleep on the Subway" - Petula Clark
In the summer of 2002, the Italian Girl and I were ending our failed experiment with monogamy. Which is a clinical way of saying we'd tried to exclusively date each other for a while and it hadn't worked out. At all. We'd entered a period where I was going over to her house, we wouldn't really talk, would sometimes have violent sex where it seemed we were trying to work out the problems by pounding in to each other, and I'd drive back home late at night listening to my music. For some reason "Don't Sleep on the Subway" was on the mix I was playing at the time. I'd drive back, hearing "don't sleep on the subway, darlin'/don't stand in the pourin' rain," while thinking about what we were going to do. We eventually ended the monogamy, but we've never quite been the same. Still good friends, but it lacks the easy intimacy we had before the Violnist and Mathematician moved away and the two of us were left to try to be what everyone thought we should be. And now "Don't Sleep on the Subway" is emotionally radioactive to me; everytime I play it I'm right back there, feeling the gut full of razors that was worrying about where do we go from here.
1. "I Am Not" - Melissa Ferrick
It's odd how often we define ourselves by what we're not; how as a culture we really are who we choose our enemies to be. In some ways it makes me wonder if that limits our ability to see ourselves. If all I know is that I am not (fill in the blank), then what am I? I wonder how that relates to our continued dependancy on ironic self-detachment in our humor. Hmm.
2. "Der Weinershnitzel" - The Descendants
I really, really loved Pump Up the Volume as a kid.
3. "Am I Wrong" - Love Spit Love
Without question the best thing about Angus was George C. Scott's portrayal of the grandfather. And the best part of that, unsurprisingly, was his "Superman isn't brave" speech. I've always liked that idea that someone who can't feel can't be considered brave (kinda reminds me of the K's Choice song "Mr. Freeze" about being able to kill off one's emotions to get through something but it not really being worth it).
4. "The Bronze Beached Boys of Summer" - Pas/Cal
What fucking car commercial was this in? Anyone? Bueller?
5. "Spit It Out" - Slipknot
The thing that's always annoyed me about Slipknot was how the lead singer has such a great voice when he actually, y'know, sings but most of the time falls into doing the "consitpated cookie monster voice." Sure, it works for the style of music that they do, but I've always felt that doing so keeps them from being a better band (or, perhaps, simply one I'd enjoy more). But then I am the guy who once commented, "You know, Led Zeppelin could've been so much better with a stronger singer," so what the fuck do I know?
6. "Idiot Wind" - Bob Dylan
I've long been annoyed with the commonly accepted idea that great art can only be produced through suffering; that only the dark side of humanity (the pain, the anger, the sorrow, and whatnot) is really worth commenting on; that anything produced from a happy place is inherently less interesting than something produced from an unhappy place. And yet, I have to admit that Blood on the Tracks, which was Dylan working out his feelings about his then recent divorce for the world to see, is probably his best album. There are really no obvious clunkers on it, and it could've even been a stronger album had he included "Up to Me" on it, which eventually turned up on Biograph. Still, I don't think you can write a song about your ex with a line like "you're an idiot, babe, it's a wonder you can even breathe" unless you include yourself in it at the end, as he does "we are idiots, babe, it's a wonder we can even feed ourselves." Odd how ending a longterm relationship can sometimes feel like that.
7. "I Fought the Law" - ?
When I was growing up my mother always had the radio set to the oldies station, and I grew to love those old perfect pop songs. But it did have odd consequences. Like I grew up thinking "Light My Fire" was originally done by the Temptations, and I had no idea "I Fought the Law" was about a robbery. None.
8. "We're Not Gonna Take It" - Twisted Sister
Take this song, put some distortion on the guitars, and redub the vocal with some punk singer in the late 70s and this song probably becomes a classic of sorts. But because it was done by guys dressed up as women it's a joke. While it's often lamented that popular music is judged by the package it's presented in, I'd argue that music outside of the mainstream is judged similarly sometimes.
9. "You Shooke Me All Night Long" - The Arab Strap
I think I first saw Maximum Overdrive at one of my birthday's. One of those sleepover deals where we stayed up all night watching rented movies and continually reheating pizza that had long since gone cold. We watched Army of Darkness and cracked wise about how Ash had woken up in the old west; watched Phantasm II and wondered at just how long it'd take for a house to fill up with gas, could we make a quad-shotgun, and was Angus Scrimm the coolest movie villain we'd ever seen ("No, it's not!").
10. "President" - Dan Bern
I have this weird thing for story songs and especially story songs that follow some type of schedule. "President" follows the first two weeks of Dan Bern being president of the United States and all the changes he's make. To say that it's a timely song would be an understatement.
11. "Let's Go" - LiveonRelease
You can't imagine my shock when I found out that not only was there a full album by the girls who did "I'm Afraid of Britney Spears" but it was also pretty good. The band itself is merely competent; the real selling point is the vocalist who was classically trained (in opera, iirc). I'm just a sucker for a powerful voice, I guess.
12. "Sometime" - Lizzie West
During my first year of post-grad work TBS was showing five episodes of Dawson's Creek everyday. I got sucked in. I'd watched the first season in its initial run but had ejected after that (the first season, aside from a few extraneous episodes, was almost perfectly self-contained, was incredibly sweet and well written, and what I saw of subsequent seasons failed to build on the strengths of it). Mostly I was sucked in to watching five episodes of the show daily just so that I could catch the commercials that had this Lizzie West song on it that open with a line that sounded oddly like "I had a friend/he liked to taste me/and disregard the rest of me." I still don't know what the real line is.
13. "Older Chests" - Damien Rice
"and the western man's need to cry" is one of those types of lines that resonnates but I can't for the life of me describe why it does. I honestly can't remember the last time I cried, though crying to factor into my thesis. Hmm.
14. "Welcome Back, Kotter" - Squitgun
I suppose it says something about me that I get so much enjoyment from punk covers. And is it just me or was Mrs. Kotter really hot in a hey-it's-the-70s-so-whatever kinda way?
15. "Scotland the Brave" - The Kingstown Pipers
It probably says something even odder about me that I can't hear this song without picturing "Rowdy" Roddy Piper strutting to the ring with a sneer across his face.
16. "Ana Ng" - They Might Be Giants
Pop perfection. A long while ago I read a review about TMBG that essentially trashed them for "wasting" their talents on endless joke songs. Clearly the reviewer didn't understand either the appeal, or that there was actually something beneath those supposed jokes. Much like a Coen brothers film, a TMBG song has a deceptive humanity lurking beneath the surface, waiting to be found for those willing to look.
17. "I Saw My Youth Today" - Richard Shindell
The part of the refrain "is your mother well/kiss her once for me/and if she you ask you why/you could say just for no reason" kills me every time. I mean, we're talking my if I really think about it I get a little teary. I've got a great relationship with my mother, but I always feel like there's no way she'll ever understand how much I appreciate her. I suppose most people feel that way (well, those who don't have issues with their parents). I suppose it's not surprising that immediately after hearing this song the first time I took his advice.
18. "Maybe Just Once" - Nine Inch Nails
No matter how many times I try I can never understand what's being said in the sample in the middle. That irks me for some reason.
19. "I Won't Be Your Yoko Ono" - Dar Williams
I have a weakness for works that examine something from the opposite point of view. Like Beowulf from Grendel's point of view. There's something incredibly appealing about looking at the Ono situation from a perspecive sympathetic to her. Much like "The Ballad of Mary Magdalene" (in which Mary questions letting Jesus sacrifice himself as she was in love with him), it posits a situation where love is the most important thing. I like that.
20. "Don't Sleep on the Subway" - Petula Clark
In the summer of 2002, the Italian Girl and I were ending our failed experiment with monogamy. Which is a clinical way of saying we'd tried to exclusively date each other for a while and it hadn't worked out. At all. We'd entered a period where I was going over to her house, we wouldn't really talk, would sometimes have violent sex where it seemed we were trying to work out the problems by pounding in to each other, and I'd drive back home late at night listening to my music. For some reason "Don't Sleep on the Subway" was on the mix I was playing at the time. I'd drive back, hearing "don't sleep on the subway, darlin'/don't stand in the pourin' rain," while thinking about what we were going to do. We eventually ended the monogamy, but we've never quite been the same. Still good friends, but it lacks the easy intimacy we had before the Violnist and Mathematician moved away and the two of us were left to try to be what everyone thought we should be. And now "Don't Sleep on the Subway" is emotionally radioactive to me; everytime I play it I'm right back there, feeling the gut full of razors that was worrying about where do we go from here.
VIEW 13 of 13 COMMENTS
Chewie will, in all probability, be used for a random trade-in, or sold to someone foolhardy enough to think they can fix 'im up. We won't get much for the old boy, I'm sure, but somethin's better than nothin'.
I love older films. Especially older film noir. Like cheeses, I like my noir aged.
kid you are an amazing being
with much said from a lot of seeing;
through fragmented thoughts, cleaved
i siezed, adumbration of your cleverness;
my avarice thoughts of you baracade my true emotion,
so i will confine until ripe to acquit;
still you dont infatuate but infect blindsides,
with your sullen words and sullen eyes;
you should follow the portamento you play,
to appreciate every possibility;
its nice to know your no superhuman,
that someone of your integrity can be consumed
by love and its possessor,
that we all have something that can break down our walls,
like the next.
....im rusty....... and rambunctious
[Edited on Jun 20, 2004 5:49PM]