So here I go traipsing perilously into US Magazine territory, but bear with me, there’s good music herewith. AOL Spinner blog posted a slideshow the other day of the 20+ musicians that Winona Ryder has been romantically linked to over the years. Quite unfathomable — it reads like the most-played list on my iPod [er, no pun intended]. Amongst the mostly-vicious comments on the original post was this laughable one:
“She dated MICHAEL NESMITH? UGH. If you’re planning to date a Monkee, then choose Mickey Dolenz because at least he could sing. On the other hand, don’t choose ANY Monkee.”
Take these things with a grain of salt, sure, but as I clicked through the somewhat unbelievable slideshow of dudes, I said out loud, several times, “SHUT UP.” If it’s true, someone get this woman a Gatorade.
. . . and then I agreed with the person who sent this to me that said I should make a mix of all their music. Clearly.
This morning I hopped a plane to New York City for a long weekend visiting three of my best friends from the year I studied abroad in Florence, Italy. I am ridiculously excited.
After all those months of spending immense amounts of time together with these gals, seeing mind-boggling beauty and tentatively pushing our edges through hesitant Italian speaking, train rides all over Europe, lots of carbs and gelato and Michelangelo, and questionable Italian dance moves in sweaty clubs, we all went back to our respective lives across the country and the world. The four of us saw each other three years ago in Cleveland (and we rocked that town) but ever since then it’s been this b.s. “someday we have to get together!” nonsense. In fitting with my new efforts to seize the day while it’s here and fresh and beckoning, I sent out an email in August saying we had to make plans now, and amazingly — things started to really happen.
In my excitement, I’ve been working on this mix off and on for a month of songs written in, about, or for New York. It’s synced to my iPod for the travels today, and all ready to become your new favorite playlist for New York nights — or just thinking about all the fun you could have there.
Happiness is indeed a warm EP, so says reader Russell in his entry (one of 90) on my Ryan Adams contest to win the new EP Follow The Lights. I’ve randomly drawn 2 winners (I couldn’t possibly pick based on the “best” answer for this one) and contacted lucky readers Matt C. and Jon from Dance Hall Hips. Congrats guys, and I absolutely loved reading all the entries.
Wanna hear snippets of the two “new” songs on the Ryan Adams EP?
Now onto this “favorite EP” madness from the contest. Guess what, I made you a mix. These are lots of your suggestions, all songs that appeared on great EPs. One listen through this bad boy and you’ll see why I celebrate and love and adore the EP format.
For a full and robust appreciation of the impact these EPs have had in our own little corner of the music ocean, you gotta read the original comments from the readers who suggested them. And there were enough suggestions for a full second mix – sorry I couldn’t fit all of them on here. Maybe someday.
Britain in the mid-90s was a chaotic, creative, music-centric place to be. As Thatcher’s tenure as PM ended and a fresh start began under Tony Blair and the New Labour party, there was a simultaneous crackle and thrum of musical vibrancy that is explored in the 2003 documentary Live Forever (by filmmaker John Dower). On the surface it’s the story of the music, the “Britpop sound” and those who made it, but it also tries to get deeper underneath to look at the society at that moment and what fed this burgeoning supernova.
As a complete outsider to this specific moment in world history myself, but a fan of the music that ended up on my plate because of it, I thought it was fascinating to see one view of the context behind it. As Louise Wener from the band Sleeper says of those days, “There was a sense of a kind of excitement that something was changing — perhaps this music was foreshadowing something else.” The documentary undertakes the Herculean task of trying to examine the music through the social and political context of the mid-90s, teasing out its larger implications to the fabric of a generation. This is always tricky.
The story is mostly told through first person interviews from those who were there. You’ve got the big three represented in Oasis, Blur and Pulp, but also a number of other musicians and commentators. These conversations were illuminating and entertaining — not counting a few statements of general unfair snobbery related to my own culture, like “Americans have tremendous confidence, but not much talent,” and one remark that I obviously vehemently disagreed with regarding Seattle music of the time: “The only really decent group were Nirvana” (I said “Unh!” to myself and looked around at no one else sitting there with me, in indignation).
Along with snippets of music videos, concerts, newsclips and articles, the interviews carry the bulk of the story. Damon Albarn seems to have grown up quite a bit, his segments were pensive and thoughtful, accompanied by his strumming on a ukulele. Jarvis Cocker had some fantastic stories of those years and I enjoyed hearing his articulate reflection (but really, whatever he says, I just love his voice – deliciously smarmy and all rich velvet molasses). Liam was a complete wanker for most of his bits –so secure in his obvious awesomeness, relentlessly turning questions back around on the filmmakers, giving evasive answers, sitting there with that haircut and those mirrored shades sounding like he’s got a mouthful of marbles– but Noel was hilarious and awesome. Example: Towards the end, Noel’s talking about how they were in a studio one day next door to the prepubescent dance-pop of S Club 7, and how he seriously thought they were “special needs kids” there for a tour of the studios and for the free food. Touche.
The film goes through the peak years of the Britpop sound, which were right smack in the middle of my high school years — a time when pretty much every single act coming out of Britain making pop/rock music was tagged part of “The Britpop Movement.” As surely as so-called “grunge bands” of ’90s Seattle shrugged away from the label, many of these Britpop bands weren’t thrilled with the simplistic categorization, but it did create a crackling excitement and level of buzz for their music that took them places they otherwise wouldn’t have gone just a decade prior.
So which Britain was it?
Is it the carefree abandonment of youth epitomized by Supergrass frolicking on the beach, singing lines like:
We are young, we run green, keep our teeth, nice and clean see our friends, see the sights, feel alright
We wake up, we go out, smoke a fag, put it out see our friends, see the sights, feel alright
But we are young, we get by, can’t go mad, ain’t got time Sleep around, if we like, but we’re alright
The disaffected uncertainty (yet faith in music) of The Verve in “This Is Music”?
I stand accused, just like you for being born without a silver spoon Stood at the top of a hill Over my town I was found
I’ve been on the shelf too long Sitting at home on my bed too long Got my things and now I’m gone How’s the world gonna take me?
. . . Well music is my life and loved by me I’m gonna move on the floor with my sweet young thing Down down down, down we go till I reach the bottom of my soul This is music
Blur’s cocky questioning of having it all in “Parklife”? The paranoia and ‘the sound of loneliness turned up to ten’ of Pulp’s “Fear”? The indomitable conviction that you and I are gonna live forever?
Listening to the variety of sounds coming out of Britain at the time –all classified by someone or another as Britpop– shows you a bit of how meaningless the term really was. In the film, an interviewer asks Jarvis Cocker of Pulp as he sits on his bed by an open window, curtain fluttering in the breeze, about how his song Common People was called by one reviewer, “the perfect encapsulation of the Britpop aesthetic.” Jarvis just shakes his head, sighs a little, and says, “Oh no.”
Regardless of what it all means (and really, who knows what it all means), this is good music, and the film is 86 minutes well spent.
I had a lot of fun putting this mix together after watching the documentary, combining songs I remember liking the first time around with new discoveries and recommendations from friends on that side of the Pond. According to the film, the Britpop sound inhabited a relatively ephemeral period of time, starting ’round 1992, hitting boiling point in April ’94 with the release of Blur’s Parklife, followed in August by Oasis’ Definitely Maybe. In a similar scene that echoes the film Hype!, bands were getting signed at the height of the frenzy after having played together for mere weeks, with only a handful of songs written.
Some say that the death of the era came with a resounding thud in August ’97 with the release of the cocaine haze manifesto Be Here Now by Oasis. Other say it ended more around the time that footballer Gareth Southgate missed a penalty kick in the Euro ’96 semifinals against Germany. Come on. Is an era that exact? Go ahead and argue either way, influences started before then and the sound carried on after, but I’ve tried to mostly focus my own little mix in the thick of things, from ’94-’97.
And as with any label, you can debate it til the cows come home who fits into the category or not, so some of these may not gel in your mind as Britpop. I lack the immediate expert knowledge in this area, being more of a “grunge rock” girl myself when this was all going down (I shudder at that term, see?!). Snag the whole zip, enjoy the flow for some perfect weekend listening. In general, these make me feel a jaunty sense of optimism — and maybe slightly disaffected, but such were the Nineties, right?
It’s worth noting that although some of these groups didn’t survive the end of the decade, many of them have gone on continue recording music that is just as good (and in may cases better) than their mid-Nineties output. Verve is reuniting and touring, Jarvis Cocker has a swanky euro-cool solo album out now, I rather liked Ocean Colour Scene’s last one, and Ash just rocked my world with their newest single. Media frenzy or no, the talent lasts.
It’s as James (the band from Manchester) said in the fantastic smack of their 1998 song “Destiny Calling”:
“So we may be gorgeous, so we may be famous — come back when we’re getting old.”
This morning was the Colorado Springs annual street breakfast, which sounds dodgy but means eating good food (“too early for flapjacks?”) while sitting on hay bales in the middle of the street downtown. No joke, I actually get up early for this. On this same day last year (always the day before summer officially begins) I posted up my Tanline summer mix, which kept me going all through the hot months. I’ve been working on this year’s mix pretty much since the chills of winter set in (and hung around) as a bit of wishful thinking and longing for these warm days.
Today’s high is supposed to be 89. I am so ready.
FUEL/FRIENDS SUMMER MIX 2007 “ALL I WANT IS AN UMBRELLA IN MY DRINK”
Ordinary – The Alternate Routes A sublime opening note to start the summer: “I’ve been wasting my days good and reckless and true . . .” Rock ‘N Me – Steve Miller Band I think their Greatest Hits (74-78) could be one of the finest summer albums ever. Flight of The Conchords theme song Addictive. Kokomo – Adam Green & Ben Kweller The ironic deadpan intonation, but still having fun, makes this a great cover of the Beach Boys classic. I will go to any of these places listed with Ben and Adam. Hardcore Days & Softcore Nights – Aqueduct What I wish for each of you. Plus, this beat makes me want to die of happiness. Assholes – The Damnwells Man alive, I love this song lately. Dezen’s velvety rasp perfectly anchors the steel guitar and makes it all flow together in a wonderful, warm, defiant anthem of youth. Also dig the backing vocals: “Don’t catch it! No, don’t catch it!“ Ice Cream Man – Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers Who doesn’t love the ice cream man? I need a missile pop; preferably barefoot. Wild Honey – U2 My favorite U2 song on a hot summer day, from those bright opening notes. I’ll swing through the trees with you, Bono. He’s On The Beach (b-side) – Lemonheads A fantastic b-side from the Big Gay Heart single, he’s in Australia and he’s on the beach, and there’s sunshine everywhere. Or so they tell me. (I Love The Sound Of) Breaking Glass – Nick Lowe I first heard this sitting on a picnic blanket drinking PBR in Wash Park and I instantly liked this shimmery, dramatic ’80s tune, which sounds so lighthearted even though it’s about smashing out windows and submission. If She Wants Me – Belle & Sebastian This song feels like the way everything sloooows down on a really hot day, all billowy and hazy, with really, really fey harmonies Beverly Hills – Weezer Then stomp things back up with Weezer at their Queen-est. Driving around in a crappy car, fashion sense a little whack – sounds like every summer when I was a teenager. 99% – Mooney Suzuki Kind of a grand ’70s rock sound to these guys with “ooo ooo oo”s and “naaa na na naaa”s galore. I Love The Summer Days – Marbles The other Schneider from Austin, this is Robert Schneider from Apples in Stereo with a song that sounds like Herman’s Hermits meets Cotton Mather. I was surprised to find out this was modern. Seven Days In The Sun – Feeder Worth it for that opening drum break which would be fantastic on the steering wheel; plus the song’s about vacations in Mallorca and other summery affairs. Firecracker (Music in High Places – Jamaica version) – Ryan Adams Ryan spends a few days down in Jamaica jammin’ with locals, Toots, and various Maytals and the result is a movie filled with these spontaneous street-jam sessions. Lyrics to epitomize summer (“everybody wants to go on forever, I just want to burn up hard and bright“). The Joker – Steve Miller Band A quarter if you can tell me what a pompatus is. I LOVE everything about singing along with this song (including vocalizing that guitar catcall after the love your peaches/shake your tree/lovey dovey lyric). Dance Tonight – Paul McCartney Summery, stompy, simple and lovely. Throw Your Arms Around Me (b-side version) – Neil Finn Pearl Jam’s covered this Hunters & Collectors song in concert and called it a “song that felt like summer.” I agree wholeheartedly, especially this live version by Neil Finn. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea – Neutral Milk Hotel I missed this album until recently somehow, and now I absolutely want to lay on my back listening to this and watch the clouds go past. Perfect.
Love Is A Mix Tape just absolutely knocked my socks off. I devoured this book in one long weekend in San Diego and enjoyed every single page, heartily. On the surface this is a true story about mix tapes, digging out the shoeboxes full of them and looking back at a life spent seeing the world in a series of 45-minute vignettes (then, of course, you flip the tape over). Rob Sheffield has penned an honest yet wildly entertaining book, one that also managed to affect me more deeply than any book I’ve read in recent memory, all woven throughout with a genuine and bleeding love for music. It’s electric.
The meta-theme of the book is simple, and has been told a thousand times in all our great epic tales and poems: great, rich love and deep, hard loss. But this one comes with a soundtrack all around and sewn into his relationship and marriage to Renee, a girl who he says was “in the middle of everything, living her big, messy, epic life, and none of us who loved her will ever catch up with her.” Rob loved Renee, and chronicles that here beautifully from their first meeting to her sudden death at 31.
Parts of the book are evisceratingly intimate. I felt almost too close to his darkest and most intense moments, and because I knew so much of the music that he ties in so effortlessly with all of his memories I almost felt like I had a personal stake that kept stabbing at me. I thought I was just getting into this because, duh, it’s about mix tapes, but I ended up thinking about what kind of areas of us need to be loved in order for us to be fully happy, fully whole.
Even if you don’t like reading about other people’s love stories, you should still 100% read this book. If you are a music nerd (I mean, you’re here) then theirs is the kind of relationship that maybe someday, somewhere, we all dream about finding. Renee was his muse, but his passion (and hers) is thoroughly and unabashedly music. He writes of their relationship, “We had nothing in common, except we both loved music. It was the first connection we had, and we depended on it to keep us together. We did a lot of work to meet in the middle. Music brought us together.” Can that work? They were both music writers and radio DJs, they fell in love hard and married young. They made lots and lots of fabulous mix tapes, and each chapter begins with a reprinted tracklist from one cassette from that era in their lives.
And please, tell me this. How could I do anything but love a man who starts chapter 14 with: “Every time I have a crush on a woman, I have the same fantasy: I imagine the two of us as a synth-pop duo.” He goes on to elaborate on how she is in the front (“tossing her hair, a saucy little firecracker”), stealing the show and he is hidden in the back behind his Roland JP8000 keyboard, “lavishing all my computer blue love on her.” He even lists all the best band names he’s come up with for their synth-pop duo: Metropolitan Floors, Indulgence, Angela Dust.
And you should hear him wax poetic about mix tapes: be still my heart. Rob writes, “There are all kinds of mix tapes. There is always a reason to make one.” (Yes. There is.)
He gives his examples: The Party Tape I Want You We’re Doing It? Awesome! You Like Music, I Like Music, I Can Tell We’re Going To Be Friends You Broke My Heart And Made Me Cry and Here Are Twenty or Thirty Songs About It The Road Trip Good Songs From Bad Albums I Never Want To Play Again
. . . and many more. “There are millions of songs in the world,” he writes, “and millions of ways to connect them into mixes. Making the connections is part of the fun of being a fan.” The book starts with Sheffield pulling out a box of old tapes and all throughout the book –from his childhood school dance recollections, to the first mixes he can remember making for Renee, to the ones that accompanied him in the dark days and months following her death– the mix tapes and the songs are as much characters in this story as the actual people are.
I like that because that is how I see music, and exactly precisely how important it is to me. I’d never heard anyone articulate it as well as he does, with such gentle grace and razor-sharp humor. It made me feel a little less oddball and a little more deeply appreciative for the gift of the music that’s gotten me through it all.
Since each of us have our own completely sovereign and self-focused memories surrounding our favorite bands and favorite songs (the unique feelings, smells, companions, activities associated with them), there is something that I just find so ebullient about “seeing” all these bands and songs through the unique rubric of their lives.
Take this amazing passage about their first Pavement concert (summer 1991):
The night of the show, the floor was abuzz with anticipation. None of us in the crowd knew what Pavement looked like, or even who was in the band. They put out mysterious seven-inch singles without any band info or photos, just credits for instruments like “guitar slug,” “psued-piano gritt-gitt,” “keybored,” “chime scheme,” and “last crash simbiosis.” We assumed that they were manly and jaded, that they would stare at the floor and make abstract boy noise. That would be a good night out.
Royal Trux went on a few hours late, which I’m sure had nothing to do with buying drugs in Richmond. They were great, like a scuzz-rock Katrina and the Waves. The peroxide girl in the football jersey jumped around and screamed while the boy with the scary home-cut bangs played his guitar and tried to stay out of her way. She threw a cymbal at him. We wanted to take them home for a bath, a hot meal, and a blood change.
But Pavement was nothing at all like we pictured them. They were a bunch of foxy dudes, and they were into it. As soon as they hit the stage, you could hear all the girls in the crowd ovulate in unison. There were five or six of them up there, some banging on guitars, some just clapping their hands or singing along. They did not stare at the floor. They were there to make some noise and have some fun. They had fuzz and feedback and unironically beautiful sha-la-la melodies. The bassist looked just like Renee’s high school boyfriend. Stephen Malkmus leaned into the mike, furrowed his brows, and sang lyrics like, “I only really want you for your rock and roll” or “When I fuck you once it’s never enough / When I fuck you two times it’s always too much.” The songs were all either fast or sad, because all songs should either be fast or sad. Some of the fast ones were sad, too.
Afterward, we staggered to the parking lot in total silence. When we got to the car, Renee spoke up in a mournful voice: “I don’t think The Feelies are ever gonna be good enough again.”
Our friend Joe in New York sent us a tape, a third-generation dub of the Pavement album Slanted and Enchanted. Renee and I decided this was our favorite tape of all time. The guitars were all boyish ache and shiver. The vocals were funny bad poetry sung through a Burger World drive-through mike. The melodies were full of surfer-boy serenity, dreaming through a haze of tape hiss and mysterious amp noise. This was the greatest band ever, obviously. And they didn’t live twenty years ago, or ten years ago, or even five years ago. They were right now. They were ours.
I think about those days, and I think about a motto etched onto the sleeve of one of those Pavement singles: I AM MADE OF BLUE SKY AND HARD ROCK AND I WILL LIVE THIS WAY FOREVER.
————————————————————–
I know this is getting long (who cares) but that part made me seriously consider getting that tattooed down my side in tiny script, I am made of blue sky and hard rock. Then this next part, well, it made me believe. Again. In things I stopped believing in.
Renee and I spent a lot of time that fall driving in her Chrysler, the kind of mile wide ride southern daddies like their girls to drive around in. She would look out the window and say, “It’s sunny, let’s go driving” — and then we’d actually do it. She loved to hit the highway and would say things like, “Let’s open ‘er up.” Or we would just drive aimlessly in the Blue Ridge mountains. She loved to take sharp corners, something her grandpa had taught her back in West Virginia. He could steer with just one index finger on the wheel. I would start to feel a little dizzy as the roads started to twist at funny angles, but Renee would just accelerate and cackle, “We’re shittin’ in tall cotton now!”
We would always sing along to the radio. I was eager to be her full-time Pip, but I had a lot to learn about harmony. Whenever we tried “California Dreamin’,” I could never remember whether I was the Mamas or the Papas. I had never sung duets before. She did her best to whip me into shape.
“They could never be!”
“What she was!”
“Was!”
“Was!”
“To!”
“To!”
“To!”
“No, no, damn it! I’m Oates!”
“I thought I was Oates.”
“You started as Hall. You have to stay Hall.”
We never resolved that dispute. We both always wanted to be Oates. Believe me, you don’t want to hear the fights we had over England Dan and John Ford Coley.
Have you ever been in a car with a southern girl blasting through South Carolina when Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Call Me The Breeze” comes on the radio? Sunday afternoon, sun out, windows down, nowhere to hurry back to? I never had. I was twenty-three. Renee turned up the radio and began screaming along. Renee was driving. She always preferred driving, since she said I drove like an old Irish lady. I thought to myself, Well, I have wasted my whole life up to this moment. Any other car I’ve ever been in was just to get me here, any road I’ve ever been on was just to get me here. Any other passenger seat I’ve ever sat on, I was just riding here. I barely recognized this girl sitting next to me, screaming along to the piano solo.
I thought, There is nowhere else in the universe I would rather be at this moment. I could count the places I would not rather be. I’ve always wanted to see New Zealand, but I’d still rather be here. The majestic ruins of Machu Picchu? I’d rather be here. A hillside in Cuenca, Spain, sipping coffee and watching leaves fall? Not even close. There is nowhere else I could imagine wanting to be besides here in this car, with this girl, on this road, listening to this song. If she breaks my heart, no matter what hell she puts me through, I can say it was worth it, just because of right now. Out the window is a blur and all I can really hear is this girl’s hair flapping in the wind, and maybe if we drive fast enough the universe will lose track of us and forget to stick us somewhere else.
LOVE IS A MIX TAPE – MIX TAPE
I am heading home from San Diego this weekend so I’ll leave you guys with this, and I’ll be listening to it too. New stuff, some old friends — all these songs are assembled from the mixtape liner notes that pepper the book. Thanks to Rob for opening the vaults.
As Wednesday creeps into the edges of your consciousness, it’s my pleasure to again pair with two of Philly’s finest — Bruce from Some Velvet Blog & Duke from The Late Greats — for a tag team Valentine’s Day bacchanalia. There are millions and trillions of love songs out there, ranging from the sublime to the silly, from the nostalgic to the nasty. We each arbitrarily picked out ten that we liked for this holiday of cupids and red roses, and we’re putting it up 2 days early to give you Romeos (and Juliets) a chance to maybe use some of these for that mix CD to win the heart of your true love, or for some background music, or whatever Wednesday brings for you (even if that something is a date with Ben, Jerry, and The Notebook).
Pucker up.
Cupid – Otis Redding Hands down my favorite rendition of one of the most perfect love songs, even topping the smoothness of Sam Cooke. Otis somehow rounds up a whole boatload of soul and anguished longing into his version (with his trademark groans) and thumps up the backbeat to make this a love song you can also shake your hips to.
Catch The Wind – Donovan A fantastically sweet little forgotten ballad from ’60s troubadour Donovan –who here sounds like a less-gravelly Dylan– with lyrics like, “In the chilly hours and minutes of uncertainty I want to be in the warm hold of your loving mind. To feel you all around me, and to take your hand along the sand . . . ” Okay, so it’s a little cheesy (what love song isn’t) but it comes off as unassuming and perfectly sentimental — plus it has a wistful harmonica bit at the end.
Grow Old With Me (John Lennon cover) – Postal Service Ahh, it’s the sentiment that’s been embroidered across a thousand pillows, framed under glass, and written in loopy script on countless greeting cards: “Grow old with me, the best is yet to be.” Lennon’s words here take on the shimmery electronic sheen of The Postal Service in a incandescent cover that kind of makes me feel like I am at a junior high dance. In a good way.
Love You Madly – Cake Here’s a bit more deadpan (and, frankly, quite funny) examination of longterm love and elevated expectations, from whence comes the title of this post: “I don’t want to doubt you, know everything about you, I don’t want to sit across the table from you wishing I could run.” Who doesn’t want love and excitement every single day? Ahh, Cake.
Sick Of Myself – Matthew Sweet An absolutely flawless, crunchy, irresistible power pop love song that is in my top 5 most days. I could listen to this ad infinitum: “‘Cuz I’m sick of myself when I look at you, something is beautiful and true in a world that’s ugly and a lie . . .” Just hearing it brings a huge smile to my face.
Easier – Glen Phillips Glen from Toad The Wet Sprocket has been playing with his fellow Sprockets since high school, and he’s been with his wife Laurel almost as long. This song was a pleasant surprise to me for its honesty, maturity, and warmth. It is a sentimental love song that’s a celebration of getting those gray hairs alongside someone you’ve known for that long — as he says, “I want to get almost too familiar, but still notice the way that you walk.”
When U Love Somebody – Fruit Bats To me, this simple and lighthearted song sounds the way that flustered/pounding heart/new love feels. In this song, singer Eric Johnson is so overwhelmed with his hand resting on the knee of his love interest on the bus that he can’t do much else other than forget to breathe and repeat the same lines over again. But we love it. Fruit Bats have a quirky and handclappy good-feeling sound that is perfect for a new relationship.
Fresh Feeling – Eels In addition to a beat that I adore and a fascinating cello loop, this song is a celebration of someone who makes you see things with new eyes. E shows with lyrics like “Birds singing a song, old paint is peeling, this is that fresh, that fresh feeling” why he is one of the best songwriters out there today, even in his stark simplicity. It doesn’t take a lot of flowery words to get right to the essence of what you mean.
Tidal Wave – David Gray Sweet son of a beesting, this is one of the grandest, purest, achingly beautiful love songs of the last decade (or more). It’s deceptively simple in its impressionistic couplets, but flawless. “Ever since your fingertips, ever since your eyes. Talking with the light on, bluer skies,” or “Coming over Waterloo, dreaming of your hands. Want to run away now, foreign lands.” Somehow Gray captures all the addictive longing of love, as well as the fear that you’ll somehow mess it up, and that the bird will fly. Two minutes and twenty seconds of perfection.
Let My Love Open The Door (Pete Townshend cover) – M. Ward M. Ward turns this ’80s synth rocker-ballad into a good-natured amble through a sunny field, maybe with a banjo on your back and one of those drums you can walk and tap along to. It’s got a balmy and expansive air to it — sweet and wonderful.
BONUS TRACK (Meaning I absolutely could not narrow it down to just ten): Valentine – The Replacements
You guys selected some wonderful songs for my Lucinda Williams CD giveaway contest, which asked for tunes that you like to listen to out on the open road.
I’ve scouted out the songs I didn’t have, listened to every one you listed, and compiled my favorites into a double-disc driving mix. I had a hard time narrowing it down onto two discs – thank you to everyone who suggested something.
There were several that I thought I wouldn’t like but did — your suggestions combine for an unstoppable mix with a distinctly “dusty pick-up truck” feel, apropos for a long roadtrip. Giving in to the seduction of the great West, some of this stuff is quite a bit more twangy than anything else you’re ever likely to hear on this site, but the mood grabbed me and I went with it. And it works for the occasion.
FUEL FOR THE OPEN ROAD . . . pop this baby in, each set fits onto a CD. Literally makes my fingers twitch towards the car keys.
Life On A Chain – Pete Yorn Another Travelin’ Song – Bright Eyes On The Hood – Matt Mays and El Torpedo Life Is A Highway – Tom Cochrane Fill Me Up – Shawn Colvin Drown – Son Volt Let It Ride – Ryan Adams Misty Mountain Hop – Led Zeppelin Monster Ballads – Josh Ritter Beautiful Disaster – Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers Indiana Wants Me – R Dean Taylor Right in Time – Lucinda Williams Train To Jackson – Jeffrey Foucault The Golden Age – Beck Where There’s A Road – Robbie Fulks Learning To Fly – Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Wiser Time – The Black Crowes Born To Run – Bruce Springsteen
Where The Streets Have No Name – U2 Blue Canoe – Blue Mountain Around The Bend – Creedence Clearwater Revival Highway 101 – Social Distortion My Winding Wheel – Ryan Adams Long Vermont Roads – Magnetic Fields I Want To Be Your Driver (Chuck Berry cover) – Nic Armstrong Counterclockwise – Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers Finest Worksong – R.E.M. Golden – My Morning Jacket Revelator – Gillian Welch Since I’ve Been Loving You – Led Zeppelin Gone Wanderin’ – Jackie Greene Picture Book – The Kinks Paris, Texas – Ry Cooder Going Back To Georgia – Nanci Griffith & Adam Duritz Walking In Memphis – Marc Cohn Pink Moon – Nick Drake Midway Park – Whiskeytown Rearviewmirror – Pearl Jam
Yeah, last one on there is all me. Best driving song ever, in my book. And I threw in a few other old friends into the mix from my archives.
Here are my four randomly-selected winners of that contest, literally drawn from a hat (okay, bowl) by my charming husband, who loved having all that power:
Congrats to the 4 winners! Please email me your address and I’ll mail out your copy of the re-released Car Wheels On A Gravel Road once we thaw out here. Y’all should be proud of the mix you guys assembled. Let’s all try not to get a speeding ticket.
I was finally subjected to my first live performance of the season of “Feliz Navidad,” which ne’er fails to make me want to gouge my eardrums out with a knitting needle. I also was at a fancy office Christmas party on Friday night and the soul cover band kept throwing in trombone lines from Joy To The World and Sleigh Ride, etc etc etc.
It brought to my attention the fact that this post is long overdue. I’ve got a pretty sizeable collection of “Christmas Music That Won’t Drive You To Drink Unless You Want To” — which just got a shot in the arm this year thanks to a rockin’ 3-CD compilation I received from Philly friend Brian (yay Brian!).
There’s a lot of schmaltzy crap out there this season, kids. Stay safe. Here’s a haven of good stuff for your seasonal mixmastery:
That helps to slightly ease the sting of briefly having — and then cruelly LOSING — the vinyl Christmas With Elvis record last night at a houseparty with a white elephant gift exchange.
It was mine. I was so excited. But now the doe-eyed Elvis (with those dewy lips, good heavens) is gone from my Christmas celebration, stolen by another gal, sending me home with a plastic candy cane full of little bottles of flavored Stoli instead.
I don’t know how it is possible to have more fun than one can experience while roller skating, as I did last night with all my gals to kick off my birthday festivities with mad style. Although we were clearly and by far the oldest people actually circling the rink, we had more fun than we’ve had since the early teen years (or whenever it was we last tied on a pair of roller skates).
The only way that it could have potentially been *any* better would be if I could have been the DJ for the blessed event (instead of the Justin Timberlake-Eiffel 65 “Blue”-Ciara mix).
I think we can all agree that these songs are much better roller-skating music:
HEATHER’S ROLLER SKATING MIX EP:
“Brand New Key” – Melanie
(love, love, love this song in the summer)
If you haven’t been skating in years (and if you still remember how), I highly recommend going again. There’s still all the same things you remember (the speed skating contests, the girl-taller-than-the-boy handholding, the weird older guy who skate-dances really fast in and out between people and wears hardcore wrist guards and sweatbands), even if you’ve aged a little bit. The rink remains the same.
Name: Heather Browne Location: Colorado, originally by way of California Giving context to the torrent since 2005.
"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."
—Nick Hornby, Songbook
"Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel." —Hunter S. Thompson
Mp3s are for sampling purposes, kinda like when they give you the cheese cube at Costco, knowing that you'll often go home with having bought the whole 7 lb. spiced Brie log. They are left up for a limited time. If you LIKE the music, go and support these artists, buy their schwag, go to their concerts, purchase their CDs/records and tell all your friends. Rock on.
So here I go traipsing perilously into US Magazine territory, but bear with me, there’s good music herewith. AOL Spinner blog posted a slideshow the other day of the 20+ musicians that Winona Ryder has been romantically linked to over the years. Quite unfathomable — it reads like the most-played list on my iPod [er, no pun intended]. Amongst the mostly-vicious comments on the original post was this laughable one:
FUEL/FRIENDS SUMMER MIX 2007
Name: Heather Browne
