So it wound up that I am more or less DJ'ing my Aunt Dot's memorial party thing. The editorial decisions are awkward, probably because it's tough to judge the tenor of the thing before it happens. I should probably be prepared with several playlists. One of the few dictates I've gotten was that it should probably be kinda Sinatra-heavy, which, hey, is no problem for me. It's what I'd want.
I guess this post isn't about anything really. I'm just awake and listening to music, and I just felt like posting some songs I really like but have discarded as unsuitable for one reason or another. Mostly because they're depressing. But I like depressing songs. Or maybe because they're too solipsistic, being more about me than anything else.
Somehow, despite actually being the son of a preacher man, I've never been able to parley this fact into any action. Maybe I didn't try hard enough, or perhaps being the spawn of Christian schizophrenia isn't as sexy as it used to be. By the time I was dating, my dad's pulpit days were more or less post hoc, ergo propter hoc anyway.
Anyway, it's a waste of my time to post the Dusty Springfield version of this song because everyone has it, right? Right.
Hey folks! Remember me? Sorry I haven't been posting. Not that I've been busy, I'm the most indolent cat I know, I've just been acquiring music far faster than I can process it. I've been struggling to find time to listen and tag and sort everything with which I've been filling my hard drive. And the iTunes playlists for future mixtapes I've been compiling for everyone I know have spiraled out of control.
So, with all this, I haven't had much calm space to sit down to think of things to share. And I'm still kind of dazed by this month's haul, so yeah, no real revelations today either. Just some songs I've been digging, going by ABCs. Which I guess is enough. For now.
Also, I'm trying out MediaFire for file sharing. Let me know if it sucks.
I'm generally pretty content with my singleness. Dating is a drag, and inventing reasons to meet new people oozes desperation, and I've got a dog, so, you know. Normally I'm pretty okay with it. You know what makes me feel lonely, though? Grapefruit. Right now the grapefruits I'm getting from my fruit stand are, without hyperbole, some of the best, sweetest fruit I've ever had in my life, and I've been buying them in bushels. I usually have a couple a day. But it's the first one that gets me. Rolling out of bed and into the kitchen to halve a grapefruit for breakfast? It's such a two-person thing. I can certainly eat both halves, happily, that's not the point. When sectioning a grapefruit, you feel like you should be sectioning one half for yourself, one for someone else, bringing it back to bed before they get up. Bringing someone sweet grapefruit in bed is nice. I dunno. Maybe it's just that spring is in the air.
And of course soul music vibrates just the right heartstrings when you're feeling like Mr. Pitiful. Here's some soul tunes I've been digging heavily these past few weeks. The Aaron Neville tune especially.
Spent most of today doing my weekly (almost daily at this point) trawl through the good music blogs. Nothing much caught my ear until I heard this song:
Which, okay wow. Am I the last person to hear about this chick?
I generally can't be bothered to give a flying fuck about what's going on in soul/R&B, since almost all of it is garbage after, oh, 1980 or so. (Man, whatever happened to black music?) But this song hit me just the right way (and not just because of my St. Jerome's bender last night), so it figures its by a 23 year old white Jewish Brit.
She's like what if Macy Gray was actually good. And she also wins points with me for being a hot mess in the British tabloids, doing things like heckling Bono ("Shut up! I don't give a fuck!") at awards ceremonies.
Okay, she does over-embellish the melody sometimes, but pretty much everyone oversings like that nowadays, so I can let it slide. To her credit, she shows a little more restraint than her contemporaries.
I stayed up late last night making mix CDs for people, but when I woke up this morning I remembered that our UPS is out at work so I can't send anything for a few days. Decided to post some songs in the mean time. In the remotest hour of the night, my sleepy brain was just randomly picking a bunch of songs I'm really into, but now in the cold blue light of day I'm looking at my song selection and I seem to have chosen tunes in a peculiar spirit of romantic pessimism. Yeah, what. They're all awesome, so get on that.
Nothing much going on tonight. Get home from the gym, ate dinner, log on to the internet, and no one's really updated their livejournals tonight. Get with it, folks, I'm bored!
From Yusef Lateef's Live at Pep's album. I know almost no one on my friends list likes jazz, but, you know, get over it. The droning bass and drum vamp that starts the song just hypnotizes my brain with its sinister power, and then Lateef comes in with a...what the hell is that? An oboe? A stritch? And he's like an atomic eel. Killer.
I just sit here and click play over and over again. Addictive stuff. Evil, addictive stuff.
I'm preparing a new chronological post, but until then I'm updating with my current obsession, Del Shannon.
Shannon was an early 60s pop singer/songwriter, generally discarded as a mere sub-Beatles teen idol. But his songs generally have a weird, distressed undercurrent of abandonment and loneliness ("Misery") that floats them far above the usual teen-idol fare. Or with songs like "Hats Off to Larry", which is about Del cheering for the guy who broke his ex-girlfriend's heart--and, awesomely enough, Del wants his ex to know that even though her new man has thoroughly broken her, he (i.e. Del) still wants her back. Lesson: don't ever leave me.
He had a few big hits in the mid-60s ("Runaway"), but his tendency towards lyrical heartbreak eventually became full-blown clinical depression and he was ultimately a drunk and a suicide. He's also one of the few male singers to make falsetto sound cool. Check him out.
Stupid weather! Everyone keeps telling me how un-Christmasy it feels because of how gamn hot it is, which is mostly true. But seriously cold fronts, Christmas is like ten minutes from now. If I don't start feeling the season soon, it'll be over already. Where's the Weather Wizard when you really need him?
Carla Thomas - Gee Whiz, It's Christmas Run D.M.C. - Christmas in Hollis Clarence Carter - Back Door Santa (from which "Christmas in Hollis" derives its distinctive sample) The Youngsters - Christmas in Jail
(someone actually used a livejournal "nudge" on me; I guess that means I need to get my ass back in gear)
Premiere of "Sam 'n' Henry", a radio program in which the two white performers portrayed two black characters. Most shows revolved around trying to score some pocket dough during the Depression. It was the first major radio appearance of actors Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, who later created a similar but much more popular radio show: Amos 'n' Andy.
Ireland initiates its Committee on Evil Literature, mostly to censor advertisements and crime reporting in newspapers.
Martial law in England declared after workers stage a general strike.
Successful military coups in Poland and Portugal (which actually has two separate coups). Poland gets a president (then a PM), Portugal a dictator.
born: Hugh Hefner, Chuck Berry, Don Rickles, Fidel Castro, John motherfucking Coltrane
It took me forever to figure out that Rapidshare wasn't broken, it had just moved to a new address, and in my time off from fordmadoxmp3 I've started to think it's a bit of a hassle, having a separate livejournal? Maybe I'll just start posting music in my regular livejournal instead. I dunno.
Anyway, now that I've sorted Rapidshare out I've a backlog of punk rock I've been meaning to post. I'd better get to it. Just so you know: my interest in punk largely stops around '81 or '82, when it started tacking away from rock n' roll and towards heavy metal. The most recent selection here is the Dictators song, from 1981 (oops, and the Tokyo Electron song, which I always forget is from 2004!)
1. The Dictators - Next Big Thing 2. The Neat - Hormones in Action (in My Heart) 3. Tokyo Electron - Make Me Bleed 4. Boyfriends - I Don't Want Nobody (I Want You) 5. Gobblinz - Women in Love 6. A.D.'s - Living Downtown 7. Fast Cars - The Kids Just Wanna Dance 8. Glaxo Babies - Christine Keeler 9. The Moderns - When the Time Comes 10. The Buzzcocks - I Don't Mind
One: yeah, I've not posted in a while. But I'm done slacking off, so expect a bunch of stuff this weekend.
Two: oh my god. Did Beyoncé actually make a song that isn't totally hideous? Did Beyoncé actually make a catchy song? I don't know what to say. It sure looks like it. I'm real hooked on this song right now:
Genius/morons/wannabe Nietzschean supermen Leopold & Loeb kill a 14-year-old kid for fun, to commit the 'perfect crime.' They are both caught and sentenced to prison. Loeb is seen here confessing to Leopold that he hopes Brit director Alfred Hitchcock makes a movie about it all one day.
Lenin dies. Stalin begins purging rivals.
Hitler begins work on Mein Kampf.
J. Edgar Hoover becomes head of FBI.
NYC: First Thanksgiving day parade held.
Chinese mobster Gee Jon becomes the first man in the country to be executed by lethal gas. As it turns out, the original idea behind gas execution was that prisoners would have a vent in their cells and the cyanide would be pumped in as they slept. When this proved impractical, a dedicated gas chamber was constructed in Carson City, Nevada. They tested it on bedbugs first, then kittens and a stray dog. It worked fine on Gee Jon too.
born: Lee Marvin, Don Knotts, Jimmy Carter, Ed Wood, Rod Serling
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