[I posted this earlier today, but then accidentally saved an earlier draft, which deleted this one. Thank heavens for the Google Reader, eh?]
I haven’t provided you with any mixtapes since October, which is crazy, but is also keeping with my annoyingly transient lifestyle. Not to bore you with the details, but since I quit my desk job last September, all my mp3s have been stored on an old computer that, whimsically, has no sound card and no internet access. And the other computer at my house doesn’t have a CD drive, and also for the past few months relations in my household have been, um, strained, so my internet access has been pretty spotty overall.
(And this mix took me hours to arrange and got deleted once… Is there anything stupider than Windows Media Player? I liked using iTunes a lot better but I’m at somebody else’s computer…)
But anyway, here’s a mix. As always, if you like the songs you should buy them, preferably in a real store while you still have the chance. This one’s kinda sixties-heavy, with an emphasis on the songs that I had on my soon-t0-be-ex roommate’s computer. The mix starts off slow and then gets a little psychedelic, before a big Ike and Tina finish and lovely denouement courtesy of Boston electronic genius Keith Fullerton Whitman.
No time to zip these, so you’ll have to click a lot to download them. Sorry about that, but expect regular mixtape-making to resume soon.
[Also, the photo has no relevance to anything; it just showed up in my RSS feed, I decided to make a bad hookers/hookahs pun, thought better of it, but still didn't have a visual for the top of the post. So I left it up there.]
Side A (zip)
1. Young Marble Giants, Final Day
2. Vistoso Bosses, Delirious
3. Porter Wagoner, How Close They Must Be
4. Kim Weston, You Can Do It
5. Wire, French Film Blurred
6. Terence Trent D’Arby, Wishing Well
7. Twinkle, Golden Lights
8. Teenage Fanclub, I Need Direction
9. The Velvelettes, A Bird In The Hand (Is Worth Two In The Bush)
10. Mando Diao, Dance With Somebody
Side B (zip)
11. Tintern Abbey, Vacuum Cleaner
12. United States of America, The American Metaphysical Circus
13. Gonul Yazar, Capkin Kiz
14. Tornadoes 66, No More You And Me
15. XTC, When You’re Near Me I Have Difficulty
16. Toya, I Do!!
17. Richard and Linda Thompson, I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight
18. Ike and Tina Turner, A Love Like Yours (Don’t Come Knockin’ Every Day)
19. Keith Fullerton Whitman, Stereo Music For Hi-Hat
Just a quick plug for those of you who might be new to the site. Every Sunday morning I do The Pop Chart, a weekly countdown of the world’s forty best pop songs, which you can listen to here. It’s a mix of American pop hits, hits from around the world, and songs that aren’t actually hits but ought to be. I’ve been on a break from the show since mid-December, and only six of this week’s top 40 are left over from my last countdown. (Exciting!)
It starts at 9:30 AM Eastern time, but if you miss it the whole show’s archived for all eternity. And if you’re a fan of music coming out of your computer speakers in general, you might be interested in the sixteen new shows that are debuting this week.
Filed under: hot
Or, you know, it’s shirtless pictures of Beau Breedlove. Who is not my type at all (not hairy enough and his smile’s kind too, um, femmy) though I can appreciate that he has a certain charm.
Filed under: lists, music | Tags: catatonia, cerys matthews, design of a decade, the year 2000
#6. Catatonia, She’s A Millionaire
Welsh quintet Catatonia started releasing EPs in 1993, but didn’t hit it big until they got topical with singles Mulder & Scully and Road Rage in 1998. And, you know, big is a relative term, I guess. In the grand scheme of Britpop, they weren’t Oasis and they weren’t Blur; they were on the B-list, alongside Longpigs and Dubstar, who kinda-sorta had one American hit and were then promptly forgotten, despite knowing fans rapturing about them. And unlike every other female-fronted Britpop group (bar Elastica and late-period Lush) they actually did briefly make it onto American airwaves.
2000′s Equally Blessed And Cursed, didn’t really cause much of a stir, though, mainly because all the oomph of Britpop faded when everybody went electronic and for whatever reason modern rock stations decided that Kula Shaker was less hip than Robbie Williams. Plus the record company did that thing they always do when there’s a girl singer and a boy band, sticking her in fishnets and centering her on the album cover. Does that ever make anybody happy?
Musically, Catatonia adapted just like everybody else; Londinium and Dazed Beautiful And Bruised were as sweeping as anything on 1997’s International Velvet, but tracks like Dead From The Waist Down and She’s A Millionaire added a more introspective tone, and some electronic bits, to the mix. She’s A Millionaire, never released as a single, is still one of my favorite songs by the Welsh quintet, and it was a telling introduction to this decade’s fixation on blondeness, name brands and featherweight socialites: “Her treasured chest was sunken, equally cursed and blessed/In her Versace dress, too eager to impress.” Despite a cooing baby, carnival interlude, and the phrase “DIY gynecology,” the song managed not to get too silly, or too heavy-handed.
Oddly, it’s by Coldplay, who didn’t take the obvious route for a song called Life In Technicolor II. I always forget that Chris Martin y su Conjunto actually have senses of humor, sometimes.
Filed under: movies
MSNBC is calling 13 Oscar nominations for Benjamin Button, but I have no idea how they know that since only the nominees for the big awards were announced. (I saw them on the Entertainment Tonight live feed that’s still happening even though the press conference ended twenty minutes ago.) No news sites–or, you know, oscar.com–have the list yet… I just wanted to find out whether or not Robyn Hitchcock might have gotten a Best Song nomination, but I guess I’ll have to wait until I’m at work.
Expect some lengthy writings about Brad Pitt soon, though not many of the other acting nominees (ie. Frank Langella and Philip Seymour Hoffman.) Last year’s Best Actors were a far hunkier bunch.
Anyway, I have to get ready for work now. Blah.
The Village Voice Pazz & Jop Critics’ Poll is up and, like most things chosen by committee, it’s not particuarly exciting. But the thing I like about the poll is that you can click on albums and song titles to see which critics chose them, and then you can see their full song and album lists, which could lead to some stuff you might not know about. Solange’s awesome T.O.N.Y., for instance, only made it onto two lists, but both Starrene Rhett’s and Reed FIscher’s feature enough stuff I like (Gang Gang Dance! Jazmine Sullivan!) to make me wonder about the stuff I don’t know (Pepi Ginsberg? Human Highway? Murs?)
Anyway, here’s how my favorite songs and albums ranked on the list, along with the number of critics that gave the shoutouts.
Albums:
1. The Kills, Midnight Boom (#124, 11)
2. Beach House, Devotion (#62, 15)
3. Portishead, Third (#3, 102)
4. Erykah Badu, New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) (#4, 80)
5. The Raveonettes, Lust Lust Lust (#76, 12)
6. Sam Phillips, Don’t Do Anything (#170, 6)
7. Lykke Li, Youth Novels (#81, 15)
8. The Magnetic Fields, Distortion (#49, 22)
9. Lil Mama, VYP: Voice of the Young People (#1118, 1–yeah, Jimmy Draper, whoever you are!)
10. Silje Nes, Ames Room (n/a, 0)
Singles:
1. The Kills, Last Day of Magic (#123, 5)
2. Santogold, I’m A Lady (#323, 2)
3. Portishead, The Rip (#162, 4)
4. The Magnetic Fields, Drive On Driver (n/a, 0)
5. Rihanna, Disturbia (#15, 21)
6. Danity Kane, Damaged (#139, 4)
7. Yelle, Je Veux Te Voir (#1024, 1)
8. Annie, I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me (#98, 6)
9. Karina Pasian, 16 @ War (n/a, 0)
10. Alphabeat, Boyfriend (Pete Hammond Remix) (#572, 1)
Filed under: Uncategorized
The Providence Journal‘s news blog just posted an article about how black people love hats.
What’s with Aretha Franklin’s hat? That pearl-gray hat with the big bow that she wore yesterday to sing at President Obama’s inauguration?
That’s how it starts. For Christ’s sake, Providence Journal, Seinfeld was over in 1998.
[photo via Joe.My.God, the place to go for up-to-the-minute Aretha hat news.]
I can’t say that I know anything about the politics of Portland, Oregon, or that I know anything about Mayor Sam Adams’ personal life, aside from the fact that he’s a total dreamboat and if I lived in that fine city I’d totally try my darnedest to get in his pants.
But the fact that he had sex with an eighteen-year old in 2005 is making some people call for Adams’ resignation. The reasons for this seem to be:
1. A 42-year old man banging an 18-year old man is distasteful to voters.
2. 18 is just one year away from 17, which in Oregon means law-breaking.
3. Mayor Adams lied about the relationship–and asked the boy, whimsically named Beau Breedlove, to lie about it too–partly so nobody would think he was a chickenhawk, probably, but also because the sex lives of unmarried gay men* aren’t really anybody’s damn business.
4. 18-year old males clearly have no minds or sex drives of their own, so Adams is clearly a predator.
5. OMG gay sex!!
My response to these arguments is:
1. Get over yourselves. Two hot men having sex is not a bad thing.
2. Breedlove hasn’t accused Adams of statuatory rape, so this is a non-issue. Close only count in horseshoes and hand-grenades, as they say.
3. Just because people aren’t monogamous church-goers in stable marriages does not mean they’re bad at their jobs. Unless they’re a marriage counselor, maybe, but even then probably not. And certainly not if they’re a mayor. A gay, unattached mayor. One with hot glasses and smoldering eyes and occasional graying stubble.
4. I don’t know if anyone has ever met a seventeen-year old boy before, but they are horny, horny people. But I doubt someone that high-ranking in the government of a large city would so fragrantly break a law that could endanger his political career. Also, again, this is a non-issue.
5. Hot, right?
(*I mean, I don’t think anybody’s sex life (assuming everything’s consensual) is anybody’s damn business unless someone feels like talking about it, but I know the rest of America’s not with me on that one.)
If your clients are into the slow jams, or if you just want something new to dance to in the shower, DJ Sober just posted a slinky mix over at Central Booking. It’s a little much, I think, for actual sex music–I know I’d get distracted and start laughing when Too Close came on–but it’s worth a listen anyway. Starting off, oddly, with Bag Lady, it goes on making stops at every locker in your junior high. By which I mean Jade, Mark Morrison, SWV and Zhane are all represented. Nice! (Although would it have been too much to ask for some Domino?)
And if that’s not enough for you, news also surfaced today that D’Angelo might be resurfacing soon with another album. Now if somebody could just get Sade into a studio there might be an all-out baby boom in 2K10.
