Friday, April 03, 2009

Stuck Between Stations

From yesterday's comments: I AM SO A CUTE ZOMBIE MONKEY!! I WILL DANCE FOR YOU!!



Andrea Mitchell is no substitute for Rachel Maddow.  WTF, seriously?  Greenspan's wife?  What weasel made that call?  Come back, Rachel!



New Music 'baggery:  I'm going to listen to full random until a song comes up that trips the Zombie Trigger, then click the little 'Genius' dealio that selects a batch of songs related to the first song.  So, not full random automatic, but maybe a bit more consistent...

But I don't want Brando, AG and Jennifer to make fun of me anymore....I just hope I can beat Brando to the Friday Music Punch.

I welcome, of course, ridicule from Pinko and Snag.  And My Heart Will Go On if MenD shows; his comments are accepted With Arms Wide Open.  

No Creed.

1.  Black River - The Sheila Divine.  Sadly defunct Boston band.  Anthemic post-punk sound reminiscent of Cactus World News or maybe early U2, when they were good.

2.  Riff Raff - Mark Kozelek.  AC/DC covers.  No really.  They make the transition to dark  introspective folk surprisingly well.

3.  Walls In Time - Bob Mould.  From the recent District Line.  Husker Du, Sugar, Bob Mould, it's all Bob; it's all good.  Solid post-punk mode, although maybe straining his voice a bit trying to reduce the Minneapolis Beller.  More akin to Workbook than Warehouse.  But seeing him at Shank Hall on this tour prompts me to ask:  Is there a more thankless job than playing keyboards with Bob Mould?

4.  Rebirth Of The Cool - The Afghan Whigs.

5.  Message to The Boys - The Replacements.  lesser b-side.  O what the hell, weak Placemats is still pretty damn good.

6.  Confetti - The Lemonheads.  This doesn't really sound quite as good as it used to.

7.  Six Months In A Leaky Boat - Ted Leo & The Pharmacists.  Cover of an old Split Enz song.  We used to listen to Split Enz all the time.  This is a punky little cover, that really resurrects the old song.

8.  Cure For Pain - Morphine.  Saw them at a festival before anyone knew who they were.  There were like 100 people watching on an early side stage.  It was great.

9.  Hum - The Sheila Divine.  See, this is what I kinda like about the Genius dealio.  Once you pick the kickoff song, it tends to revisit that artist, just a bit.  So if you feeling kinda Mekons, it will serve up a few extra Mekes songs in the mix, but not enough to get tiresome.  This one is especially good.  I bet there wasn't a VH1 special about these guys though.

10.  Belong - REM.  A live song from '91.  I'm kind of a completist when it comes to REM; especially nice when iTunes has a bucket full of EPs with little gems like this.  Hell, I even like some of the recent stuff; Around the Sun is an excellent song.

I've seen the band twice; once at Alpine Valley, on the Green tour.  It was the last time I said I'd ever go there; it's just too big.  They had a screen, but we were still way back on the hill, which had been scooped flatter to allow for 40,000 people.  But the first time was on the Life's Rich Pageant tour; at the Oriental Theater in Milwaukee, a little movie palace.  Camper Van Beethoven opened up.  Now THAT was a show.  I am Superman, indeed.

11.  The First Time - U2.  From Zooropa, which I really liked, it was more unpredictable than the prior disc.  Haven't heard anything from the new one yet, but the snippet being played on the ads really seemed to suck.  Have to hear much better stuff from someone I trust more than Rolling Stone before I risk this one.  "U2 has been a revenant for at least three albums now"  seen on a local blog a while back.

12.  Kyoto Song - The Cure.  What an album this was.  Successful marriage of the goth prototype to a poppy sensibility.  This song was more akin to something off Pronography though.

13.  Love Is Stronger Than Death - The The.  What happened to Matt Johnson?  He had Johnny Marr playing with him for a while.  

There, a baker's dozen.  Let's go get some drinks.

7 comments:

  1. Don't show me your monkey.

    Your uncute (non 8 day cut) monkey. :)

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  2. I haven't played around with the Genius -- Chuckles wouldn't return my advances (Hey-o!)

    Seriously, though, I turned it off because it was taking up valuable information space (show us your bitrates!). This is kind of cool and I may have to rip, er, borrow this concept.

    New U2 is a tough nut for me to crack. "Get Your Boots On" (the single) would be fine if Bono wasn't so annoying on it. But he is. However, there's at least one really great song, "Moment of Surrender," that I really like.

    That Mark Kozelek AC/DC album is freaking amazing. To turn something like "Love at First Feel" into a heartwarming song takes talent.

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  3. You had to go and make me do it.

    I give you a chimera. Treasure it.

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  4. Love the The The. I also love saying "the The The".

    I believe "Mind Bomb" was the first CD Zombie McDonald lent me. Next, it was a slippery slope of Pixies, Replacements, Pogues...that sort of thing. I was never quite the same after that.

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  5. There is my blog boyfriend: Z-Unit!!!

    He might agree with me that we have to wonder about your ability to rate music when you list anything off of Zooropa.

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  6. Another Awesome list. Belong is one of my favorite REM songs. Those creatures jumped the barricades... It's so cinematic and that slick bass...

    I'm going to see Bob Mould soon. You should come to Coachella if you're not already.

    The First Time rocks. Wasn't All That You Can't Leave Behind kind of good? And Atomic Bomb had some good moments, I thought. It's not classic U2, but they weren't classic U2 for more than two records and a live album.

    But I kinda don't know what I'm talking about most of the time.

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  7. AG, anything with The Man IN Black on it gets a nod from me.

    On U2, I never really warmed up to AYCLB, although I really dig "Vertigo"

    Jack, you seeing Mould solo or with a band? Seen him both ways, liked both. Can't afford Coachella or much of anything this year, not yet.

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