channonyarrow

adellyna organised a mix cd exchange, in which I claimed the prompt of "awesome vocals".

I hope these vocals are awesome.

And I really don't know how like four songs wound up referencing Alice In Wonderland. I really, really don't know how that happened. Serendipity counts as direction, right?

Specs: All files either mp3 or m4a; uploaded to mediafire as a .zip. Total file size is about 184mb; 35 songs included. Covers and tracklisting under the jump!

( Outside An Aging Picture Show )

So it turns out that uploading at the college is blindingly fast.

Hence, I bring a playlist. A very long playlist. About fifty-six songs of long. I've linked them separately, since there is no possibility at all that no one has some of these songs, and because even breaking them into three or four files will still put total DL size at about 100 mb.

It all started back when I told jamethiel_bane that I would make a playlist of American artists in a less radio-popular genre, since - oddly - it turns out that she has never heard Gillian Welch, since she is, in fact, Australian. I felt that this was a lack that I could handle. However, over the course of putting the playlist together, it mutated and became not solely American, nor solely American bluegrass and folk. GO ME.

True purists will also note that this is the more glitzy side of bluegrass; I've left out huge categories of bluegrass artists (and even country artists like Doc Watson or William Elliot Whitmore) in favour of the artists that I sing along to, and however fine The Stony Mountain Boys' song "What's The Matter With The Mill?", "Tear My Stillhouse Down" makes me turn the volume WAY up.

And, sadly, about eight of these songs are already in my Mediafire, so clearly I've uploaded them before. WHOOPS.

Errata: All files are either mp3 or m4a. There are no m4ps, since I broke the DRM on the three tracks that were. If you need a converted version of an m4a file and cannot convert it yourself, let me know and I'll do it for you.

( Your ghost is gonna wear them rattlin' chains )

Okay, graeae assures me that this mix does not, in fact suck or flow weirdly, though I still look at it and go "I have no idea how that works." It's pretty flat tempo, once you're past the first song, and I normally prefer more of a sine-wave curve to my mixes.

In an ideal world, I would wait till April to post it, because it's definitely a celebration of grunge, and that would be the anniversary of both Layne Staley and Kurt Cobain's deaths, but it's also pretty much equally inspired by Lanegan, and by the idea "What would happen if I put alt-country, grunge, and world into one mix?"

Also, somehow I just now noticed that Nirvana never made it on the tracklist, and I am not quite sure why.

Music To Gas Cows To

Tracklist
1) Riots, A.R. Rahman
2) Suicide Is Painless, Keren Ann
3) River Of Deceit, Mad Season
4) Dollar Bill Blues, Townes Van Zandt
5) Colorblind, Counting Crows
6) Ghazal, Niyaz
7) Wooden Jesus, Temple of the Dog
8) Set The Fire To The Third Bar, Snow Patrol
9) Schooch Va Gado, Yulduz Usmanova
10) Chloe Dancer/Crown Of Thorns, Mother Love Bone
11) Pantaloon In Black, Oh Susanna
12) Wash, Pearl Jam
13) Gospel Plow, Screaming Trees
14) Come To Jesus, Mindy Smith
15) One Monkey, Gillian Welch
16) Carry Home, Mark Lanegan
17) Night Life In Europe (My Chemical Romance XTC Mix), Buddha Zen Trance
18) God's Children, The Gutter Twins
19) Darde Eshgh, O-Hum
20) Heaven Help Us, My Chemical Romance

.sitx, all extensions either mp3 or m4a, lalalalala.

The Phrase That Pays has 85 plays on my iTunes. I have no idea how many it has on my iPod now. A lot. I really like the song.

I find myself, at best, puzzled by the existence of a "Nashville" version, however. It is country-ish. Country-esque. It's kind of scary. But it was a lot scarier before I started writing this post and iTunes clicked over to the next track on The Academy Is...'s From The Carpet EP - which is actually a cover of Working Class Hero.

It is not the worst cover of WCH I've ever heard, I'll give it that - that honour is reserved solely (as is a special place in hell) for Marilyn Manson's cover - but it is definitely...odd. I think that William does not get the wonder that is Working Class Hero, quite frankly; he sounds rather dismissive. Which is probably an interesting commentary on someone's sense of privilege, but the track that has such power when sung by Lennon and Lanegan kind of loses it here. I don't think this EP ever really needed to exist, though it pains me to say it.

On the other hand, this version of Down and Out is pretty cool, so that's in the whole thing's favour.

What has been heard can never be unheard.

Also, I amuse myself: when I tagged the icon, it looks like Beckett's laughing so I tagged it that way. A few days ago I finally saw the video, which does, indeed, feature the sign saying "Laughter". I rule.

Dear iTunes,

I am not sure whether to fear you or love you. The Genius feature is...entertaining. Several of the mixes you made looked good, several looked like they lacked creativity, it averaged out.

But...taking Darde Eshgh and making a playlist that includes Smells Like Teen Spirit, Hallelujah, California Dreamin' AND ...Baby One More Time is probably a bit much. Also, I am envious that I did not think of it myself; so far, it's working.

You scare me.

Love,
Me

I will not schedule my flight out to Philcon in such a way that I catch the Cobra Starship show in Pittsburgh, then fly or train or...something to Philly the next day.

Seriously, I'm not doing this.

I am also not scheduling in such a way as to catch the TAI... show in Buffalo on the 23rd. Really. I am not doing this, no matter how much I want to.

...who am I kidding. I'm totally gonna price flying into Pittsburgh. But I think NY is a bit much.

ALSO: Dear iTunes, seriously, plz to not play the songs by the group I am discussing when you are on random. You're sort of scaring me. As you usually do, to be honest.

ALSO ALSO: What the hell, have a link. This has gone from "unplayed" to "24 plays" in, like, two days. I listen to it on repeat.

It is not The Academy Is..., nor is is Cobra Starship. It is Jack Shit, from Rogue's Gallery: Boney Was A Warrior.

SAD STATISTIC: According to iTunes, which is wrong for a whole host of reasons, not least of all that I had two iPods and lost one, and also because Senuti can fuck up your play counts, this is the second-most-played song I have that is not MCR, TAI..., CS, Kill Hannah, or FOB. (Technically it is also behind Caleb Meyer, but it and Boney have the same number of plays, so that's only by virtue of alphabetic order.) The most played non-scene music I have is Darde Eshgh, by O-Hum. 52 plays on that one.

Most played? (Again, with the caveat that this statistic is so wildly wrong I can't even discuss it.) Honey, This Mirror Isn't Big Enough For The Both Of Us, 151 plays. SCARY.

I have about 2000 songs that show no plays on this computer. I'm going through those. Because I LIKE MAKING UP NUMBERS.

I also like "This Is Ivy League", which surprises me.

Edit to the Edit: I have just determined that it is not the Pittsburgh show I want to go to, it's the Sayreville show, which I think might have an unexpected outbreak of TAI.... I am going to be buying my ticket at the last minute again and it will cost a bajillion dollars. I hate myself.

I fully admit that I am something of a moron, technologically. However, this astounds me.

So, when I uploaded my iPod backwards to iTunes on the new computer, it brought with it a play count. Now, I have no idea where that comes from - does it come solely from what I've played on my iPod, or does it come from what I've played on the iPod plus my work iTunes, or does it come from outer space? - but it comes from SOMEWHERE. Fine.

It also comes from somewhere incomplete. Which is...sort of disturbing, as I just somehow scrobbled my iTunes to last.fm (I know HOW this happened, but it just sort of...DID happen) and now it's ranking things by this incomplete playlist statistic.

So my top eight artists are:
My Chemical Romance (2464 plays)
The Academy Is... (472)
Cobra Starship (271)
Kill Hannah (269)
Eddie Izzard (220)
Fall Out Boy (171)
Johnny Cash (130)
Animaniacs (99)

That's kind of embarrassing. And also, I like statistics to be accurate.

Anyway. I felt I should find out what all the kewl kidz are up to these days, so I have a last.fm. Yay me? Someday, I may even know how it works.

1. Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter (if you want one.)
2. List (and upload, if you feel like it) 5 songs that start with that letter.
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions

sparkfrost gave me C. According to my ITunes, I have 5191 songs, though this is inaccurate as I've grabbed some of the bandombigbang fanmixes and not uploaded all of them, but I apparently have, and let me just state that I am aware of my propensity for hyperbole, so I'll round down a bit, approximately a billion songs that start with C. These are five.

1. Crazy Angel, Kill Hannah. I don't see a lot of love for Kill Hannah on my flist, so I assume no one's heard of them. This track has a guest vocal by Poe, however she's capitalising that these days, and I adore her. But seriously, people - Kill Hannah. Kill-Fucking-Hannah. I got into them for a really, really dumb reason, so we'll say it was a really awesome reason and focus on the fact that I saw them live at Bumbershoot, and it was pretty awesome. Also, everyone else was standing in line to see Panic (!) at the Disco at the time, so win-win.

2. Crown of Creation, Jefferson Airplane. I grew up listening to a lot of really awesome stuff, and Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow (the one with Somebody To Love and White Rabbit on it) was the first LP I "borrowed" from him. I still have that, actually. So when I upgraded to CDs, I got the Best Of, and I like it actually more than I thought I would - you know, when you like one or two songs, you don't have a guarantee you'll like the band (as I found out with Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares 2 U album) and there are a lot of very enjoyable songs on the Best of album. I could pretty much post the whole thing, actually, and support all of it.

3. Crown of Thorns, Motherlovebone. Dude, it's fucking Motherlovebone. By the time grunge hit it big, Andrew Wood was already dead, but you might as well have considered that about half of the grunge scene had no intention of forgetting him. Half of Motherlovebone went on to form Pearl Jam (who I personally detest) and Soundgarden and Pearl Jam (then known as Mookie Blaylock, if you want some trivia) formed Temple of the Dog as a tribute album to Wood. And I can never really stress the impact of grunge on me, partly because I am now old and can't remember what it was like to be fifteen and listening to music, particularly music made here, but partly because it was that. fucking. huge. For some reason, this song keeps turning up as Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns, but I like my Chloe Dancer and my Crown of Thorns separate, so we're rolling with it.

4. Caleb Meyer, Gillian Welch. I really like her voice. Alaska is really big on bluegrass music - the sort of music you can play at a festival and have everyone go because you can sing along, as someone explained, and my brother was the person who played Gillian Welch for me. I've been pretty much in love with her voice, along with Alison Krauss's and Mindy Smith's, ever since - I think that that bluegrass/alt-country style really encourages the voice of the singer to carry the song. Which is not to say that I don't like the music, but it's a far more vocal style than I ever figured it would be, and this track in particular is a pretty up-tempo song that I like to listen to on "up" times.

5. Circle the Fringes, The Gutter Twins. I love anything Mark Lanegan ever feels like doing, really, all the way from Screaming Trees to now. When I tell people that I saw Johnny Cash on the American Recordings tour in the mid-nineties, Mark Lanegan takes equal precedence, frankly, and Johnny Cash fucking rocked. So, uh, Mark Lanegan's newest project, apparently, is this one. And for what it's worth, I have Screaming Trees, a bunch of his solo stuff, Mad Season, Soulsavers, his stuff with Isobel Campbell, and this. So. Big Mark Lanegan fan. And on top of that, I like Lanegan's sort of weird ambient spirituality and religious themes. (I know everyone is COMPLETELY SURPRISED right there.)

Out of a billion, I narrowed it down to five. Go me!

Probably the weirdest music I listen to is not Tajiki rap, nor Jewish rap, nor Azerbaijani folk, nor Chinese opera. Not Indonesian gamelan, Orissan, Tuvan covers of Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida, Soul Coughing, Ceza, Pink, Mindy Smith, Dolly Parton, or Lead Belly. It is not Yann Perreau, Royal City, Flook, Eminem, Information Society, John Conlee, Jefferson Airplane, or Wumpscut.

It is, instead, James Taylor.

Gorilla? One of my favourite albums ever. But the reason I call this weird is not because until this year I'd seen James Taylor live more than anyone else (now he's merely tied with MCR) nor because I actually like his music, but because it's not organically my choice.

It is instead my mother's choice. I'm sure I listened to James Taylor a WHOLE LOT when I was a fetus. Gorilla came out in '75 (this fact courtesy of KMTT's Nine At Nine) and I was born in '76. I grew up listening to James Taylor, Johnny Cash, and Shel Silverstein, and I went happily with all of these choices. That makes James Taylor the part of the fugue that has no internal logic - I didn't actively choose his music, but I love it when I hear it. Mexico on the radio this morning vastly improved an already-shitty day.

And I never think to exploit this. I don't own any of his albums on CD or mp3, I never think to PLAY his albums that I do have, and I definitely DON'T seek him out to listen to. But listening to Gorilla takes me to an awesomely happy place, and most of that mid-seventies Martha's Vineyard vintage mellow would make me want to kebab babies and eat them for lunch.

But not James Taylor. I love him completely unironically, and he is absolutely the weirdest music I listen to and love, and I'm all right with that. And when I find Mexico or Fire And Rain or Sweet Baby James on the radio, I'll stop and listen and feel much, much calmer.

Also, today I am having a hard time not bragging about how awesome I am because I know someone awesome. Either I am awesome because I am awesome or I'm not and it doesn't matter who I know and I'm pretty sure my motive is just "neener neener I know someone you don't."

So.

Garrison Keillor at Town Hall on Monday the 8th, 7:30

OR

She Wants Revenge, Kenna, and someone else at the Showbox on Monday the 8th, 8:00.

These are the decisions my life is made of.

Before someone, like spamcola, comes along and threatens to kill me for not automatically picking She Wants Revenge etc, I will point out that a) I already have the ticket for Garrison Keillor, and b) I haven't really liked their new album. It's fine and all, but it would be finer if it wasn't the same as She Wants Revenge, which got a little long on the "my love life is TOTALLY SCREWED UP", or to put it in LOLspeak, "my fucked up love life, let me show you it."

I really liked Garbage's first album because it was zany and crazy and made of cake and awesome and I loved it, but when 2.0 rolled out, it didn't sound different ENOUGH for me to like it. I didn't want them to change their style completely, but I did want them to evolve on their own path, not release an album that totally sounded like the second disc of a two-disc set, composed at the same time. And having heard This Is Forever, I feel like I'm in the same time warp. Same songs, different disc. Also, you have to do something really special for me to like an album that starts with an instrumental track. I don't know why that is, but the only albums I like that start that way (out of, I'm sure, the millions that are released that way *rolls eyes*) are Bob Mould's Workbook and MCR's I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, but I didn't get Bullets as the start of a new obsession*. The track on This Is Forever just sounds like it SHOULD have vocals, given that it lasts forever and doesn't seem complete in itself. I kind of diss on Kill Hannah's Until There's Nothing Left Of Us for the Life In The Arctic instrumental track, even though I like the album overall. It has to sound right, and unusual, not just "we played the same ten-second loop for a minute and a half and forgot to track vocals!"

But...Kenna. Mmm, Kenna.

So it's sort of tempting to give the ticket for Garrison Keillor to my dad, who wasn't sure what shift he was working and couldn't be sure he could go and now doesn't have one because they're sold out and go to the other show, but at the same time, it's sort of not. I know I'll like Garrison Keillor, I don't know that I'll like She Wants Revenge, and all in all, I have some deciding to do, pretty goddamn promptly.

If my dad HAD a ticket, I'd do both and just go late to the Showbox, but...he doesn't.


* I also don't particularly like Romance, the track in question. But I do love typing out the full name of the album.