Music Music Music

[poorpete]

Thoughts on this week so far, free form:

Gipsy Kings - Best of Gipsy Kings
Like Gloria Estefan once said, I love to hear percussion! Some great songs in here, as well as a couple duds. Wish I listened to their debut too instead of the greatest hits.

Mozart - The Marriage of Figaro
Mozart fits so well with comic operas. I've listened to an album of it a few times and now going through a performance on youtube with english subtitles. Not sure yet how I'm going to pick a favorite, a lot here (3 hours!).

Eagles - Hotel California
Other than the 3 hits that start this off, not much to compliment yet

Santana - Abraxas
Love to hear percussion! This Santana guy is a great guitarist. The musicians keep up with him well, especially the organist, but the vocals are definitely the weak spot, IMO (sorry, organist!). And weak as in mearly good.

Metallica - Metallica
Hard time with this. Have not liked any song I haven't heard already. Don't like listening to it again, even though I promised the world that I'd try to listen 3+ times.

The Lonely Island - Turtleneck & Chain
Songs to giggle too. Really hits that Weird Al hotspot of funny or at least knowingly absurd. Tho their deconstructions of modern pop tropes, if you're not into modern pop, why'd you care? I need to put more funny on my list.

Lorde - Pure Heroine
She good. This "Royals" song is fab, who knew? Reminds me of the minimalist emo EDM of The Postal Service.

[poorpete]

Oh yay, oh no, Magnetic Field's 50 song memoir is streaming on NPR.org. Another 2.5 hour album to listen to...

http://www.npr.org/2017/03/06/518379457 ... ong-memoir

[poorpete]

Ok, my favorite after my first listen:

77: Life Ain't All Bad
https://www.npr.org/player/embed/518379457/518809971

So deliciously caustic.

[Phoebe]

Dipping into Pete's list now - and I'm so impressed with your progress and the selections!

28. Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
I never listened to all of this straight through and it's just wonderful. So sad that she is no longer with us making music. Obviously retro style but unique and still sounds totally new.

[poorpete]

Woo!

Kanye's debut "College Dropout" you can hear his superstarness emege. It's also nice to hear him a bit more down-to-earth. If only he cut out all the skits. Somebody, please defend skits on rap albums.

"School Spirit Skit 1" ... it's awful and it inspires dread to know there's another one coming.

[poorpete]

I ran/run in local music circles and the songwriters I know adore John Prine. Listening to his debut, it's hard not to love these Dylan-inspired tunes. DMDarcs didn't like this album but figured I would, he was right.

I assume illegal smile is weed, right?
Update: of course genius knows the answer: https://genius.com/John-prine-illegal-smile-lyrics

[Phoebe]

I can't defend the skits. But at least there are little interludes on some albums that are creative or artfully inserted. Thinking of e.g. Public Enemy. I should go relisten to one of theirs but I cannot leave the bed. I had a flu shot, so, totally ineffective... I'm like a residue left in the bed. There is no music.

[akiva]

Morbid feelings in an envelope
I'm only kidding
It's only a joke
Don't let him get too close
Don't let her get too close

[poorpete]

[poorpete]

GIF:


Theme Song to GIF:

[Phoebe]

My son Jim and I are having some problems because his old flame, Kesha, showed up again and this time he's in a much better position to understand what she's actually talking about (which isn't much, but it's not a conversation I care for the two of them to have). When my daughters were young they listened to a lot of classical music, blues, R&B, soul, 80's pop hits, and P-Funk, and they've emerged with reasonable musical tastes I can tolerate. My son was raised primarily on jazz, classical, and industrial/dance music and he has a love affair with Kesha, so, something is very wrong with this picture and I think it's pretty clear what that is. , in the hope that he would branch out into something more palatable or at least not NC-17. I wasn't playing the video. Then Chloe showed up in the room and shouted to me, "I CAN SEE HER STOMACH IN THIS HOODIE". Then Jim began shouting about his ex, Katy Perry (I managed to oust her very quickly, I'm proud to say), and how he had recently seen her with men somewhere. Turned out he was saying "MEMPHIS". He had seen her in Memphis, Egypt. W. T. F. I can only assume this means a video, which is supposed to be verboten material in this house and on these electronic devices. On the other hand, sometimes his magic ship takes him to a place like Memphis, and who knows what transpires then.

You would think in the midst of such antics I would be feeling very cheerful but for unknown physiological reasons I am not cheerful. I do not deal much with the depression, thankfully. I was sick, like with a virus, and it ruined many well-laid plans and for some reason that set me off my game. And then random other things happened, one of which was very good news as another family member came through an illness swimmingly, so again, you'd think a person might be cheerful. Instead, I have this recurring nightmare about being in some kind of Dairy Queen, trying to get out some hand sanitizer because there is some sort of sticky residue and not enough of those tiny, crap napkins, and then I go across the street to the beach and it's entirely made of small stones, and I gamely try to walk across them but the water is kind of murky and, with all the stones, no good for walking in the waves, of which there are hardly any. I awake and spend the day having a basic existential crisis about the uselessness of my lived presence on earth. As Peggy Lee might say, is that all there is to me? Really? The best I could do is to be a vaguely crappy mom wandering comfortably through life doing puzzles until, perhaps, some lingering bad end of days? I feel like there's still a chance to fix this shit, but how?

29. Ring Ring - ABBA - this is their debut album, which I don't think I've ever heard all the way through, and if listening to Agnetha sing TOTALLY CHEERFULLY about DISILLUSION doesn't cure whatever is ailing, probably nothing will.

[Phoebe]

Heathens back on radio and I love it and I don't care what none of y'all say. Also pleased they are playing HeavyDirtySoul as another single. Absolutely love it.

[poorpete]

[poorpete]

On the other hand, Sarah Jarosz is a paradox of choice, where everything is pretty ace, hard to pick one song to hold closest.

[akiva]

Did you ever the concrete stares of every day?
The lunatic, the hypocrite they're all lost in the fray
Can't you see their lives are just like yours?

[poorpete]

Green light challenge

Symbolism check: moving forward after a relationship, moving forward musically

Symbolism check: life is a highway and she seems to want to ride it all night long

Symbolism: Can we have sex, yet?

Symbolism: Can we have sex, yet?

Symbolism: Can we have sex, yet?

[Phoebe]

Tool - Vicarious

Which is amusing in context because no, the answer is always no. And you would be astonished how many people appear to want to have sex with me despite my old grey fat decrepitude. I'm serious that it makes me uncomfortable. In my workplace alone there are a half-dozen people who have made their proposition quite clear, not just for me but apparently they're willing to include my husband in the matter if that makes it easier. I think this is the weirdest s*** ever. And I'm pretty certain that if people knew me and or my husband better, they wouldn't want to have sex with us either. There's this couple we know that apparently would like to make this happen, and I'm not, like, even a toucher. I don't even want somebody to touch me in a friendly way, much less in a friendlier way. And that's kind of how I feel about this Tool song, which I am blasting right now in front of a church. I have no vicarious desires, either for sex, death, or destruction; sorry Maynard, that's just you speaking for yourself.

[Phoebe]

30. Bon Jovi - Slippery When Wet
I can't really account for this adequately except to say that I had been listening to in the car numerous times through no fault of my own. I began to realize that it was not in fact a song about the travails of living the touring Rockstar life, as I had always assumed. Indeed it was a song about the full depths of existential despair, in which we cannot sleep and ultimately lose touch with the other people we futilely endeavor to encounter. It's all the same: we are guilty whether we live or die. We struggle with the burden to live ethically despite lacking a rulebook, we waste away day by day, but the good news is, we are fucking Cowboys. Sometimes we drink to excess, but then, sometimes when you're alone, all you do is think. Everyone is fundamentally a cold-faced stranger as we struggle forth alone down our diverging and converging paths. This got me wondering about the possible hidden theological potential in songs like Livin' on a Prayer and the hilariously named but surprisingly and immediately profound Social Disease. Is Love a cure, a prescription? No, it's an incurable infection. I was not disappointed.

[Phoebe]

If I chronicled the weird things that transpire in a single day here, nobody would think it non fiction. We would have a whole chapter called something like allergens: I'm not making this up. Anyway, back to Prong, Snap Your Fingers, because it was on the radio earlier and now stuck in my mind.

[poorpete]

We're at Day 87, and I'm keeping up my listening, but not my thoughts/haikus.

Really digging Solange's album, which I expected to be Beyonce-ish but was surprisingly Erykah Badu-ish. I didn't expect to go all-in on modern R&B, but dammit, from what I've listened to, it's the most exciting modern music out there right now.