longfadinginstant: June 2008

Thursday, June 26, 2008

5/26/08

i used to associate boards of canada with unemployment late afternoon naps. as those days found their end, i didn't find myself in the mood for boards of canada anymore. luckily this track came up on shuffle while underground waiting for he subway and now i have a whole new context to enjoy the subtle menace they add the enivironment.

boards of canada "seeya later" (from the "hi scores" ep)

while spent suffer from being a little too much of their time to be given lost, or forgotten, "classic" status, that doesn't mean they didn't write and record two great albums. i just don't listen to them as much as i used to. actually, ever. still...

spent "excuse me while i drink myself to death" (from the album "songs of drinking and rebellion")

spent "ready, ok" (from "songs of drinking and rebellion")

-note: spent had 3 singer songwriters in the band. i never like the third guy's voice though, so, not putting any of his songs up.

you may leslie gore from that awful "it's my party, and i'll cry if i want to song". sadly that song turned out to be her legacy rather than this:

leslie gore "i don't want to be a loser"

and even though it soulds like it might have been produced by phil spector, it was actually quincy jones.

as prolific as will oldham was under his various palace monikers, he seems to be even more so as bonnie prince billie. so much so that i wonder how many of his fans are even aware of his earlier stuff. this was always my favorite palace song, and i alway associate it with the summer before my sr. year of college.

palace brothers "(end of) travelling" (originally released on the "mountain" ep)

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Monday, June 23, 2008

6/23/08

i got a ton of trojan records comps from a friend that i'm still going through. here's another good one:

the gaylettes "yester-me, yester-you, yesterday"

also finished going through my elvis albums over the weekend to see what gems i could find. elvis was pretty much ruined by the imitators, but you can't forget that he's the guy the beatles and led zeppelin looked up to.

elvis "fools fall in love"

lady sovereign had so much promise. the year her album came out (was it 2006?) it was my number one most anticipated album, but after hearing a few of the album tracks that hadn't already been released as singles, i didn't even bother to download it, let alone buy it. here's why i was so excited:

lady sovereign "feline mix" - recorded live on the air. it takes a few minutes to get into the body of it, so be patient.

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Thursday, June 19, 2008

6/19/08

i was looking for a song to go in a scene in the show i'm on and in the process got hooked on the badfinger song.

badfinger "where do we go from here"

also came across this great cover of fred neil's "everbody's talkin'" on a trojan records comp.

ernest ranglin "everbody's talkin'"

elvis presley's recording of blue moon may be the spookiest record ever made. i don't know how it hasn't ended up the theme for some legendary movie slasher. this is why i always wanted to music supervise on a horror movie. what lame ass movie executive decided that every scary movie had to feature rob zombie start to finish?

elvis "blue moon"

mud also does a great, more upbeat version that i'm sure you could fit nicely into the same film once you establish the creepiness of elvis'.

mud "blue moon"

lambchop "i'm a strager here" apparently the lyrics to this are from an old folk song, but the opening line has appeared in various forms, mostly as a blues opener, and altered as a line in dylan's "subterranean homesick blues". the opening line was actually what came to mind and made me want to post it.

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Tuesday, June 17, 2008

6/17/08

i tried to write a script once. this was the songs that opened it:

merle haggard "sing a sad song"

really the script was about just thinking about scenes to put to music. this song was next up:

sparklehorse "heart of darkness"

i drove home to visit my family over the weekend. I listened to the tinariwen album twice, once on the way up, and once on the way back. then i listened to it the next day on the subway home from work. i hate that i've succumbed to a "world music" act, but it's so good. i'll have to not listen to NPR twice as hard to make up for it. it is cool to hearing eastern music played on western instruments. they sound like they'd culturally be playing music based on the quarter tone scale but because of the instrumentation are using the semi tone scale. but i'm pretty ignorant when it comes to that stuff, so it's just a guess as to why it sounds both familiar and foreign.

tinariwen "nak assarhagh"

tinariwen "ahimana"

chet atkins "yesterday" - chet atkins has a whole album of beatles covers, called "pickin on the beatles".

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Friday, June 13, 2008

6/13/08

chris stamey and the dB's "(i thought) you wanted to know" - i came across this song by accident while downloading something else. don't know anything about chris stamey aside from being aware that there was once a band named the dB's.

camper van beethoven "tom's flower's 1500 valves" - one of my favorite camper songs.

i have favorite songs, and favorite albums, and favorite bands, but the music that means more to me than anything else is the music of maurice ravel. while driving across country on a move from california to delaware we stopped at a store and my dad picked up some classical music tapes for the trip. years later, back in california, i claimed the ravel tape as mine, and along with "appetite for destruction" (my official lawn mowing album) and a jazz mix my band instructor put together, it was the soundtrack of junior high and my freshman year of high school. really it's "daphnis et chloe suite no. 2" that i'd say is the best piece of music ever written, but it's broken up into 3 tracks and it would be a shame for anyone to hear it with two long pauses while the player loads the next track. so, here's "alborado del gracioso" and two versions of "pavane for a dead princess".

"alborado del gracioso"

"pavane for a dead princess" (symphonic)

"pavane for a dead princess" (solo piano) - the amazing thing about this performance is that it's actually ravel himself playing the piece, even though he'd never been in a recording studio. He did "record" some of his pieces onto a player piano reel. supposedly player piano technology of the time did allow for a piece to be reproduced exactly as it was originally performed. decades later they put a player piano in a studio and recorded ravel's performance, minus ravel.

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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Electric Light Orchestra / I Wanne Be The Guy

more so than any other band, electric light orchestra put out a greatest hits with ever every album. this means that actual greatest hits, or best of, you were thinking of buying is pointless. if i were you, i'd make sure to at least own "on the third day" through "time". that's 7 albums, minus their half of the "xanadu" soundtrack, which i haven't heard, so there may be 8. anyways, here's a sampler of the 7.

also, "el dorado" has one of the best alum covers ever:

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

and: over the weekend i came across this video labeled "the hardest video game ever" in the post. i'd never heard of the game, but watching the video, something about it seemed familiar. ooooh yeaahhh, that's what it's like trying to get a girl to go out with you. i've played this game before, even though i haven't.

"I want to be the guy" (the name of the game. very appropriate) - seems harmless at first, but at about 40 secs in...

it seems to be so impossibly difficult and frustrating that you wonder, why bother? yeah i know.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

6/5/08

jeff lynne is one of the all-time greats, and thanks to him we know what the beatles would have sounded like had they not broken up and kept on recording into the 80's (ELO actually put out one album in the 00s even). one of my goals is to upload a full electric light orchestra playlist, but that will have to be at least 30 just to cover the highlights. ELO is so good that they actually put excellent album in the 80s. how many bands that started in the early 70s can say that.

electric light orchestra "from the end of the world" from their 1981 album "time"

you wouldn't know it from looking at jeff's wardrobe, but this video was pre-miami vice

polvo "can i ride" when i think of 90s indie rock anthems, this one always makes the list

the minders "i've been wondering"

minbosses "castlevania" i prefer minibosses to the advantage when it comes to rock versions of video game themes.

bert jansch and john renbourn "bells" the guitar half of pentangle.

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longfadinginstant