The video for new Shoes track “Time To Dance” is the sort of thing that was so obviously made to go viral that you have to admire it. Featuring Jake Gyllenhaal as a mass murderer who uses a fencing costume (among other things) to commit his murders, the eight-and-a-half minute clip–for an already repetitive three-minute and sixteen second song that basically plays twice–will surely be watched by many, many, many homosexual men Jake Gyllenhaal enthusiasts who would have never otherwise heard a track that’s rather aggressively blah. They were even nice enough to show him in a towel for about three seconds.

It’s worth one viewing, though, although don’t feel especially obligated to turn the volume up.

Earlier this week Pulp announced a show at Radio City Music Hall, and tickets went on sale at 10am, and when I checked at 9:59 tickets hadn’t gone on sale yet and when I tried to but two tickets at 10am they were sold out already and when I tried to get one ticket at 10:01am that was also sold out and then when I tried again at about 10:04 I got stuck in this endless loop of Ticketmaster wait time.

Argggggggggggh.

I haven’t been to a show, or tried to go to a show, in New York since MIA in 2007.  I am overdue!

The last time I had a chance to see Pulp, when they played Providence touring for Different Class, I was fifteen and trapped at a problem solving conference for nerds.  This was my chance!

Anyway.

Over on One Week One Band this week people are guest-posting about their favorite album closers…  The posts on Blur’s “Yuko and Hiro,” Fiona Apple’s “I Know,” and the Magnetic Fields’ “Take Ecstasy With Me” are all excellent.  I wrote something, too.  I was one of the few (the only?) person to choose an album-ending single and it’s one you’ve probably known forever, even if I didn’t know it myself until I was in my mid-twenties.

Actually, with the move I’ve got all my vinyl with me but none of my CDs, which is part of the reason why I didn’t end up writing about “Bar Italia” or “The Dancer” or “O Girlfriend” or “Constant Craving” or “Glory Box” or “Just Call Me Joe.”  Also, I considered “Jealousy,” but I’ve already written about the Pet Shop Boys there…

Amid all the year-end obituary roundups that have recently surfaced on the internet, one name I haven’t seen yet is that of Kathy Kirby, the British singer who died this May and who was, at one point, Britain’s highest-paid television star.

I suppose that shouldn’t really come as much of a surprise. Kirby never had any hits in the US, and her last British chart appearance was forty-five years ago. Still, her booming voice and her bizarre, sad personal life gave her quite a dedicated fanbase.

In 1954, at the age of sixteen, Kirby approached famed bandleader Burt Ambrose and asked him outright whether she could sing with his band that night. Hearing her powerful vocal chords he agreed, and that led to Kirby’s traveling the nightclub circuit with Ambrose for three years before she embarked on a solo career. He eventually became her manager and, later, her husband, despite the fact that he was forty-two years her senior.

Ambrose styled Kirby as a cross between Doris Day and Marilyn Monroe, all big blond curls and bright red lipgloss. (Her lipgloss was so poppin’, apparently, that a 2005 biography of the singer was actually called Secrets, Loves, and Lip Gloss.)

“Secret Love,” Kirby’s biggest hit, is a Doris Day number cranked up to eleven, as over-the-top as it is totally fabulous. It was also quite a sensation, with NME readers naming Kirby the Best British Female Vocalist of that year.

She had a second top ten hit, “Let Me Go, Lover,” but soon her rather outmoded stylings lost resonance with British audiences who preferred the more modern Dustys and Petulas and Lulus and Mariannes. Though Kirby herself wanted to sing fresher material, her husband–then close to seventy–refused to allow it. And once Kirby had a brief affair with game show host Bruce Forsyth, Ambrose stopped booking shows for her because he was afraid that she would leave him. “I think I could have played romantic leads or light comedy roles in movies,” she said in a rare 2009 interview, “but my silly affair with Bruce had inadvertently brought it all to an end. I could feel frustrated and bitter but in the end I just put it down to experience. What else could I do?”

Ambrose died in 1971, at which point Kirby realized that her finances had been badly mishandled. Four years later she was bankrupt and homeless, finding herself in court for skipping out on a hotel bill. Due to her homelessness, apparently, the court ordered her to a psychiatric hospital, at which point her life took another odd turn.

A fan named Laraine McKay began visiting Kirby in the hospital and the two grew close. Once Kirby was released the two began a lesbian affair, one which ended abruptly when McKay was arrested and imprisoned on fraud and forgery charges. Not too long after, Kirby was diagnosed with schizophrenia and, tired of being haunted by tabloid journalists, by her early forties had retired to a quiet life in West London.

She died on May 19 at the age of 72.

(read more about Kirby here)

I realized, at about 11:15 tonight, that I hadn’t really spoken today. Through an odd combination of events–my boyfriend being out of town, my work consisting of walking dogs and editing photos, my familial Christmas obligations being over for now–I just didn’t have anybody to talk to today, excepting the one girl I ordered a coffee from this afternoon.

I had no intentions of going to a bar tonight, but realizing that I hadn’t spoken yet made me worry slightly for my sanity. So I went to the E&O, just to say something to somebody.

The E&O is a divey bar, three blocks from my new apartment, that is simultaneously small and yet oddly cavernous. It’s located on a side street, which by Providence law means that it’s forced to close at midnight. And it is, for lack of a more meaningful term, our hipster bar. There are a lot of beards and a lot of plaid and a lot of people getting shots with PBRs. Which isn’t a value judgment; I’m pro-beard and pro-plaid and, if forced to choose, would take a PBR over a Narragansett any day. But you know what I mean. I played the game I usually play when I’m lonely at a bar–How Many People Here Would I Consider Doing It With Based On Sight Alone?–and there were nine, which is a lot.

While it’s generally a rock bar, Tuesdays at the E&O have become kind of a thing. A DJ plays a lot of poppy stuff from the late seventies through the early nineties, with the videos for each song projected onto the giant screen that occasionally dominates the space. His song choices are novel the first time you see him and slightly less so once you know his schtick. But that’s fine, whatever. Tonight I heard/saw “Love Come Down,” “Best Of My Love,” not one but two Billy Ocean songs, and “Head To Toe,” Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam’s number one single from the summer of 1987.

Of everything I saw in my forty-five minutes there, “Head To Toe” was the one song that really got heads bopping. Yeah, the one girl in the cheetah-print minidress was already singing meaningfully into her straw when “Get Outta My Dreams Get Into My Car” started. But “Head To Toe” really hit big with the crowd as a whole, most of whom were my age (I’m guessing) and most of whom (unlike me) probably hadn’t heard the song in quite a while.

The first single from Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam’s Spanish Fly album, “Head To Toe” hit number one right after my sixth birthday, which is more or less exactly the point when I clearly remember knowing all the songs, and the videos, that appeared on MTV and on our Top 40 station, 92 PRO-FM. (Honestly, though, I preferred “Lost In Emotion,” Spanish Fly‘s second single, the video for which is notable for featuring the single most hilarious condiment-specific product placement in music video history. Sorry, Gaga.)

This year I actually saw Lisa Lisa in concert, at the nostalgia-heavy Freestyle Rush, a package tour of artists (Stevie B! Expose! Brenda K Starr!) who could only really afford to make two stops: Springfield, Massachusetts, the city where freestyle never died; and Providence, where the mayor himself came out before the show to thank the audience for keeping the spirit of freestyle alive. He seemed genuinely tickled that Lisa Lisa was actually gracing our little burg, and that made me love him even more than I already do. (Our mayor is Dominican-American and forty, meaning that he was a teenaged boy when Ms. Velez hit it big, so it’s probably not that surprising that he was a fan.  But still.) The Freestyle Rush ended up being my favorite concert of the year, despite Stevie B’s child support arrest-related absence, although honestly that probably says less about the show and more about the bleak state of my concert-affording finances and the even bleaker state of live music in Providence.

But I digress. “Head To Toe” is a good song. A great song, probably. I was done with my drink and I stayed to hear the rest of it. But of course after a few minutes it ended and then the lights came up and then I wanted another drink. (Note to people with taste buds: the Sam Adams Saison is bad. Even if it’s only $3, don’t bother.)

The West Side of Providence being what it is, the clock striking twelve leaves two options on a Tuesday: a possibly quiet bar playing an iPod stocked with songs I’d know, or Metal Night.

Metal Night is loud, and the metal is not any kind of metal that I know or can speak about.* It could be from 1976 or it could have come out last week, and it could be by guys from down the street or it could be by the blackest, most famous band in the history of Scandinavia. I just don’t know. I hear no songs that I know and don’t know that I hear any songs that I actually want to know. And I kind of like it that way.

But that got me thinking about what it is about bars that I actually like. Because I went and had one beer and a fine time. But because of how bars on the West Side of Providence work, most of the people that were rocking out to Lisa Lisa showed up at Metal Night at the same time I did, and I wondered what their thoughts were.

I know people go to bars because people are social and they like drinking and sonic ambience is not necessarily at the top of their agenda. (See also: people that go to karaoke bars but who aren’t there to sing.) But for me, an occasionally lonely snob, I feel like there’s a different answer. For me the songs are important, which is why my go-to bars are the ones where you can hear Leonard Cohen and Boards of Canada and not, say, the gay bars, where there are just so many songs from the Glee cast that one can hear before one considers enrolling oneself in a hetero conversion camp.

But why do I go? The bar is open, which I guess it not a minor point. And also I was a little bit deprived socially. I could have just gone home and cracked a beer or made a cocktail and put on my own freestyle records. I mean I was doing that this afternoon, anyway. But I guess I like knowing that there’s a DJ in the room who is making conscious decisions about what’s getting played, and who knows things that I don’t know. Anyone with internet access at this point can thoughtlessly cobble together really awesome playlists, which is why I’m often overjoyed with things I hear at Whole Foods. But knowing that someone cares, and that it’s someone’s job to specifically make you care about what you’re hearing? That’s a really valuable thing, even if ultimately you don’t even really know what you heard.

[*As an aside, I just Googled the DJ's name, because I don't know him and don't want to be the one that's all like "DUDE what is this song?", and apparently we went to the same high school.  He was two years ahead of me.]

[semi-simulblogged on my Tumblr...]

I considered skipping out on a Favorite Songs of the Year list this year, just because of the moving and everything, but I’ve done it every year since I was twelve (at least) and decided not to stop now.  I listened to a lot less new music than usual this year, and honestly the state of pop was rather bleak for a while there.  (There was a minute this spring when Katy Perry, Avril Levigne and Ke$ha [above] actually had three of the best songs on the radio!)

I did manage to come up with 56 songs that I liked, though, and starting tomorrow morning I’ll be announcing them, eight per day.  [Spoiler: Ke$ha didn't make the final cut.]  I’m posting the songs on my Tumblr during the day, just because, and each night I’ll do a wrap-up here.  This page will be the master list, and will link to individual postings.  Probably this makes it all more complicated than it needs to be, but whatever.

1. Linnea Henriksson, “Väldigt kär/Obegripligt ensam”
2. Rihanna, “Man Down”
3. Lady Gaga, “Bloody Mary”
4. The Kills, “The Last Goodbye”
5. Lloyd feat. André 3000 and Lil Wayne, “Dedication To My Ex (Miss That)”
6. PJ Harvey, “The Words That Maketh Murder”
7. Baxter Dury, “Isabel”
8. Britney Spears, “I Wanna Go”

9. Lykke Li, “I Follow Rivers”
10. Selena Gomez and the Scene, “Love You Like A Love Song”
11. Adele, “Rolling In The Deep”
12. La Femme, “Sur La Planche”
13. Lena, “Taken By A Stranger”
14. Cobra Starship feat. Sabi, “You Make Me Feel…”
15. Shirubi Ikazuchi, “St. Cabah”
16. Gruff Rhys, “Sensations In The Dark”

17. Cults, “Abducted”
18. Beyonce, “End of Time”
19. Alexandra Stan, “Mr. Saxobeat”
20. Veronica Maggio, “Jag kommer”
21. Stylo G, “Call Mi A Yardie”
22. Coeur de Pirate, “Adieu”
23. Florence and the Machine, “What The Water Gave Me”
24. Jazmine Sullivan, “Drive By (Always On My Mind)”

25. Bjork, “Crystalline (Omar Souleyman Remix)”
26. Ladytron, “White Elephant”
27. Charlotte Gainsbourg, “Terrible Angels”
28. The Rapture, “How Deep Is Your Love?”
29. Dev, “In The Dark”
30. Lil Wayne, “Six Foot Seven Foot”
31. Dirty Beaches, “Lord Knows Best”
32. Emeli Sandé, “Heaven”

33. Warm Ghost, “Mariana”
34. Little Dragon, “Nightlight”
35. Mastodon, “Curl of the Burl”
36. Foo Fighters, “Rope”
37. My Tiger My Timing, “Endless Summer”
38. Little Boots, “Shake”
39. Enrique Iglesias, “Tonight (I’m Fuckin’ You)”
40. Tove Styrke, “Stalker In Your Speaker”

41. Erykah Badu, “Out My Mind Just In Time”
42. Austra, “Beat and the Pulse”
43. Battles feat. Gary Numan, “My Machines”
44. Jenny Silver, “Something In Your Eyes”
45. Martin Solveig feat. Dragonette, “Hello”
46. Guineafowl, “The Lie Is”
47. Roxette, “She’s Got Nothing On But The Radio”
48. Severina, “Brad Pitt”

49. Azealia Banks, “212″
50. Mondo Marcio, “Come Un Italiano”
51. Kelly Clarkson, “Mr. Know It All”
52. God Bows To Math, “Teenagers Is Lazy Journalism”
53. Keren Ann, “My Name Is Trouble”
54. Wale feat. Big Sean, “Slight Work”
55. Jelena Rozga, “Razmazena”
56. Inoj, “On”

To be honest, I wasn’t a huge Aaliyah fan until her final album came out.  Part of that is because her final album is really awesome, and part of it is that her earlier stuff came out when I was going through my high school indie snob period.  Sure, “Are You That Somebody” is one of the greatest songs ever, but it was really easy to write off when it came out due to its inclusion on the Dr. Doolittle soundtrack.

That last album, though, is really fabulous.  Released just a month before her untimely death, I first got it on a CD-R sent to me by a British man who couldn’t stop raving about it.

The fall of 2001 was a funny time for me:  trying to adjust to moving back in with my parents, starting classes at a commuter college that was basically high school pt. 2, doing my best to dodge footage of planes crashing into the World Trade Center, and writing rather a lot.  There are a few albums I associate very specifically with that period:  Bjork’s Vespertine, By Starlight by Helicopter Helicopter, Nirvana’s Nevermind (which I bought that September, on the 10th anniversary of its release), and Aaliyah.

Because I was a non-matriculating student and signed up for classes two days before they started, I had all these awkward breaks in the middle of the day.  Introductory Latin got out at 9:50 but Indian Literature In The Americas didn’t start until 2.  With little else to occupy myself with, I’d wander around the campus and the outlying neighborhood, clunky Discman in my pocket, and listen to “We Need A Resolution,” “Rock The Boat,” “More Than A Woman,” and even the slinky slow jams “I Care 4 U” and “Never No More.”

One of my favorite things about the album is that the ballads, usually the bane of any R&B album’s existence, are for the most part really good.  Really, really good.  Just as an example, here’s the super-intense dramafest “I Refuse”:

11 posts on the Pet Shop Boys since Monday and the big party tomorrow.  (Hopefully you are coming!)  The plan for Friday is to crash all day and/or catch up on Torchwood, which I’m already three episodes behind on.  (Although honestly I spent most of the first couple of episodes just wishing the Mekhi Phifer would go away, possibly to an acting school somewhere.)

In any event, posting will resume soon.

I’m guest blogging over at One Week One Band this week, talking about one of my all-time favorite duos, the Pet Shop Boys.  This morning I started with the history behind “West End – Sunglasses,” an early remix of their debut single, and between now and Friday I’ll be winding more or less chronologically through their catalog at the rate of two songs a day.  Which is hard, considering how very many great songs they’ve made since 1984.

Today is Victory Day (formerly Victory Over Japan Day), a celebration of nuclear annihilation against that is still a holiday in Rhode Island and only in Rhode Island.  It’s a pretty ghastly reason for a day off, although I guess a Monday off in August is not the worst thing in the world, but it got me thinking about Japanese culture and about the visibility of Japanese-Americans in popular culture.  It’s a subject I studied a lot in college but haven’t really thought about much lately.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I saw Cibo Matto play in Boston.  I wrote a little thing about it, then left it to rot in my Drafts folder, but I thought today would be as good a day as any to bring it out again:

The other day I went up to Boston to see the recently reuinted Cibo Matto, who I hadn’t even realized were back together until about 24 hours before the show began.

What’s remarkable for me about this particular concert is that it’s the first time I’ve seen the reunion of a band that I actually saw the first time around.  In August of 1999, I saw Cibo Matto touring for Stereo*Type A along with Sean Lennon at the Met Cafe in Providence.  It was one of my first concerts ever and I thought it was awesome.  (What’s also remarkable is that my boyfriend was there, too.  We wouldn’t meet until years later, though, and our memories of the show are vastly different:  I stood maybe two or three rows from the stage and remember the show as being quite crowded, while his view, from the bar, is that hardly anybody was there at all.  I suppose that’s what happens when you ask an excitable 18-year old and a less-excitable 28-year old to compare notes…)

Actually, I not-so-secretly really like reunion shows, and rarely see any bad ones.  The Go-Go’s in 2001, Mission of Burma in 2002, Throwing Muses in 2003… Those were all really great concerts.  In fact the only stinker I can think of was last year’s reunion of 70′s punk legends The Avengers, which was pretty awful for many, many reasons.

The Cibo Matto reunion, which took place at the mysteriously named Brighton Music Club in Allston (not Brighton) Massachusetts, was great.  The audience was really into the show, singing along and (thank god) not singing along with horrible Japanese accents, the way that one might when singing along with CIbo Matto.  “Pass the Volvic!” yelled one man at one point, five or six songs after “Sci-Fi Wasabi” was over.  “Moonchild” and “Birthday Cake” and “Blue Train” were all wonderful, of course, as was the newer material they’re planning to release in some form early next year.  I think, actually, that this show may have been better than when I saw them in ’99.  They talked more between songs this time, and the whole thing seemed a little more laid-back (in a good way).