Let's Visit the 90s (Briefly)

I'm headed to the fair environs of Portland/Salem tomorrow (where stuff like this happens), but this post has nothing to do with that.

Why the 1990s, you ask? I have no idea; most of this music isn't even from the 1990s; I swear, the only 1990s thing that has happened to me lately is a certain presidential election and the growing probability that a certain party's presidential candidate (Barack the Vote!) will be taking office, with a mandate even. Other than that, I got nothin'.

Still, there is something grunge and/or Jtown and/or West Hall about this playlist. Firstly, the Foo Fighters' The Colour and the Shape album pretty much defined my freshman year of college (sexual frustration and existential angst I think would be apt descriptors for both); secondly, the backward-glancing lyrics, hooks, song titles, and even cover song choices of Dr. Dog(the most excellent band you've never yet heard of, in which case you have, in which case I apologize). Thirdly, the Beatles rock reminds me of dorm days with Cebs, circa 1998...plus, to keep harping on the Dr. Dog excellence, this is the stuff that Dr. Dog is most compared to, George Harrison/John Lennon Beatles' riffology.

Anyways, perhaps the 1990s are calling us, folks. Do you remember those days, of fiscal pragmatism at home and abroad? I mean, you were only 18. The best you were doing for eating out was comedy night at the campus dining center; if Jeff Buckley told you to drink "Lilac Wine" afterwards, you would do it. You were head over heals for one certain girl/boy who lived just one dorm over, and you made out with one certain girl at a one certain party, when you were both drunk, but they were never quite the same girl. There was the puke post.

Even if it is only in listening to The Raconteurs' and The Raveonettes' punky teenage play that you can remember it, even if it is only left to us by Loudon Wainwright's childlike glee, the 1990s are there for us. A Democrat in the White House. Apple pie, baseball, the poetry of Jill Osier. What more can we ask for?

So, again, Barack the Vote! Listen to this music while you do so! Go Rays!

Man, I way too drunk right now...damn dorm room bourbon nights...

Let's Visit the 1990s (Briefly)
1. Sleep Walk, Santo & Johnny
2. My Doorbell, The White Stripes
3. Everlong, Foo Fighters
4. A Long Time Ago, Dr. Dog
5. Don't Let Me Down, The Beatles
6. Find the River, Dr. Dog
7. Monty Got a Raw Deal, R.E.M.
8. The Swimming Song, Loudon Wainwright
9. Coconut Skins, Damien Rice
10. When Your Mind's Made Up, Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova
11. The Hill, Marketa Irglova
12. Lilac Wine, Jeff Buckley
13. Paranoia in B-flat Major, The Avett Brothers
14. If I Was Young, The Raveonettes
15. The Old Days, Dr. Dog
16. Old Enough, The Raconteurs
17. From a Motel 6, Yo La Tengo
18. On the Radio, Regina Spector

Notes:
A note on that top photo: it's from prom, I can't remember which one, and was damaged in a dorm room bourbon accident, I believe...also, Shouts to Noel Wien Library, Suzanne, Alisha, and Amy for pretty much everything that is on this mix. I thank you all...Santo & Johnny: a 50s beginning to a 90s mix...Jack White has a strange knack for catchy and upbeat songwriting when he wants to pop it up a little...seriously, check out Dr. Dog, every track you can get your hands on. I haven't heard a bad one yet, and "A Long Time Ago" is the catchiest rock song I've heard since perhaps Weezer's Blue Album...Quick story about this Beatles track: I got it off the Beatles 1967-1970 (Disc 2), which is one of the blue discs of the blue/red double-cd greatest hits package of theirs that is quite widespread. Anyways, I had been missing that that disc (having 3 of the 4) until last night, when Alisha gave it to me. It was the only disc of the four that she had!...excellent (certainly better than me) music blog/emporium Stereogum put together a "tribute" album to R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People. You can download the whole thing at their site, and I put the Dr. Dog version of "Find the River" here. It also made me revisit the original album...loving all of these songs a lot: Louden sounds like Townes Van Zandt to me here, I'm slightly in love with Marketa Irglova now (but not enough to get the little marks over the vowels, apparently)...some classic Buckley, and The Avett Brothers, who are at the heart of one of this librarian's favorite genres, Alt-Country...I kind of hate the Raveonettes, yet I have two full albums of their stuff. On each album there is exactly *one* song that I like...this Yo La Tengo sounds to me like the single point where there sound overlaps exactly with The Pixies...Regina Spector, because I really like Russian chicks.

Mea Culpa, Glen Hansard

So, remember that film Once, that everybody loved, that came out like a year ago? Yeah, sure you do; you loved it! After all, it was a good movie, with a lot of good things going on for it: good music, compelling love story, underdog vibe, Irish accents...hard not to like all of those things.

Unless you're me, that is. Being a self-avowed contrarian (purely for contrary's sake), I refused to see the film for about a year, despite Katy constantly repeating how good it was, despite her listening to the soundtrack in the shower every day for about 4 months, despite every single person I've ever met ooohing and aahing when I said I hadn't seen it yet. I don't like musicals, I said. I don't like romantic comedy.

Funny, though, that during my visit to Oregon, I finally did see the film with Amy, and fell in love with it, too. The music is good, not musical-like at all, really; the story is earnest and true, the love story not following the typical romantic narrative; and, let's be honest, Markéta Irglová is about the cutest thing in the world and made the film. (Does it freak anyone else out that she was born in 1988?)

Not only that, but Glen Hansard's work with The Frames is pretty good, too!

So, this is my apology to Glen, Markéta, and their cohorts. Everyone see Once, if you haven't already, and buy the soundtrack, if you haven't done that either.

Glen, Markéta, my bad.

Download:
"When Your Mind's Made Up," Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová

These Are My Keywords: Vampire Weekend, Cat Power, Jenny Lewis, New, mp3

Another week come and gone...I don't have too much to say more than that. I didn't even have it in mind to post a mix when I woke this morning, but I decided I wanted to put up something, so here are some good tunes I've added to my collection lately. If you're keeping tally at home, my collection is up to 7140 songs, which is 19.6 days of music, which is stored in 26.08 GB. Not really that much, compared to many people I know, actually. But that's from 1021 artists, or 1098 albums, which are much more interesting statistics to me. Wait...why am I telling you about statistics???

Truth told, I have been working on a new blog. It is in terribly rough condition right now, but that is because I cobbled it together from my small, but expanding, knowledge of CSS/PHP markup languages. I used the excellent and fun layout editor by Artisteer, too. Yes, I still have delusions of making money off my love of music. Insane? Probably. But worth a shot.

So, do you want to check out the *very rough* work thus far? Hmm, okay...check it out at:

www.poplibrarian.com

Anyways, all I've been thinking about this week is blogging, XHTML, keywords, traffic...and, oh yeah, music. So it seemed like I should share some of it with you all. Here we go:

These Are My Keywords
1. Legendary Anchor Ron Burgundy Welcomes You to His Album: Will Ferrell
2. Ottoman, Vampire Weekend
3. Beat (Health, Life, and Fire), Thao
4. The Next Messiah, Jenny Lewis
5. At Least That's What You Said, Wilco
6. Dark End of the Street (Live), Cat Power
7. Shelter, Ray LaMontagne
8. Fighter Girl, Mason Jennings
9. Soldier Boy, Mason Jennings
10. How Lucky We Are, Meiko
11. Heads Roll Off, Frightened Rabbit
12. Home, Great Northern
13. Bowie, Flight of the Conchords
14. Black Sand, Jenny Lewis
15. Everywhere, Vampire Weekend
16. Ron Burgundy's Sign-Off, Will Ferrell

Notes:
Thanks to Amanda&Jon for the hilarious soundtrack to Anchorman...speaking of soundtracks, "Ottoman" is a new song from VW on the one for Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist...this may turn out to be my favorite song off Thao's great We Brave Bee Stings And All album...Jenny Lewis is amazing. Seriously, who were the last artists to pull of the epic song so well: Guns'n'Roses? Queen?...Jenny gets a little rock lineup protection from Wilco, in the same way Manny used to protect David Ortiz (for the baseball fans out there)...OKAY, STOP and LISTEN to this Cat Power live cover of Aretha Franklin's "Dark End of the Street." Now, if that didn't stop you cold in your tracks, 1) watch this video (it's the first one) of that song being officially recorded in the studio, and 2)realize that darling Chan will be releasing an EP with the track December 9th. Wow, it will be so exciting to listen to a nice, cleanly produced version of this song..."Shelter" by Ray L. is one of darling Amy's favorites...this duo of Mason Jennings songs remind me of my friend Alisha and her husband David, who is serving overseas in Iraq. Both of them kick ass...love the adorability (is that a word?) of this Meiko song..."Heads Roll Off" from Frightened Rabbit has great lyrics and a better video...honestly, I'm not totally sold on this Great Northern song. What do you guys think?...ah, Flight of the Conchords and Will Ferrell, what a combo for one mix!...pretty sure I'll have given away this entire Jenny Lewis album by Christmas...I'm not crazy about this cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Everywhere" from VW, but you should probably have it...oh poor, poor, Ron Burgundy.

See, I Told You

Winter begins in Fairbanks, Alaska, with a couple inches of September snow.

Miles to Go

I don't know about where you are, but here in Fairbanks, the change of season is in full swing...from summer directly into winter, it would seem, as our autumn here lasts only about a month. We had our first hard frost this week, and all the birch trees are now swept clean of their leaves; outside everything is golden, and ripe-seeming; a blanket of white will soon put all of that ripeness to rest, like plums stored in an ice box (W.C. Williams, anyone?). Change comes to us again...

It is amazing, to me, how often the subject of change comes up on this blog, in these mixes. I guess it truly is the one constant in our lives, but there's also no doubt that 2008 has been a crazy, topsy-turvy year. Kevin & Rowan are in Italy, Amanda is in Utah, Beechcraft is for sale, and--TMI alert--I'm about 6 true loves away from where I started the year. (If anything convinces me of the constancy of change, it is the changeability of my own stupid heart.) And now winter is coming at us. And then it'll be spring again. Round and round we go on wacky Planet Earth.

And all I really know about Merry-Go-Rounds is they usually have music, so here we are. The title of this one comes from Robert Frost, who knew more about winter than I ever will:

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it's queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there's some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Miles to Go
1. Part One, Band of Horses
2. Too Much Space, Lisa Germano
3. White Winter Hymnal, Fleet Foxes
4. Mykonos, Fleet Foxes
5. Godspeed, Jenny Lewis
6. Black Cab, Jens Lekman
7. Lights Out, Santogold
8. Father to a Sister of Thought, Pavement
9. I Hate It When That Happens to Me, John Prine
10. I'm Your Man, Leonard Cohen
11. Acid Tongue, Jenny Lewis
12. Don't Think About Me, Earlimart
13. The Ice Is Getting Thinner, Death Cab for Cutie
14. The Lake, Antony
15. Endless Song of Happiness, Yael Naim
16. Nothing Is True, Earlimart
17. Sing It Again, Beck

Notes:
Band of Horses is a band of winter, if ever there was one...ditto for Lisa Germano. Check the beautiful album cover...Fleet Foxes are a band to watch, if you haven't picked up on them already. Alex saw them live, opening for Wilco, and he was impressed. They remind me of My Morning Jacket a lot...the new Jenny Lewis is the bomb! See my post about it...Jens Lekman is so good, such a unique and earnest artist. I love him and you should too, if you don't already...Thanks to Suzanne for the rest of the sweet Santogold album!...this Pavement song puts me in a reflective mood, perfect for winter...this is from Prine's newest album, Fair & Square. He put it out after battling cancer, and you can sense the weariness in his fighter's voice...here's L. Cohen to lighten our introspection...I went with two of the slower songs from Acid Tongue, but there are some great straight-ahead rockers on the album, too...I'll never get over Earlimart's Mentor Tormentor, one of my absolute all-time favorite albums...I just finally got hold of Death Cab's Narrow Stairs. Another solid album...thanks to Sarah for both this Antony & Yael Naim. Beauty from Antony, per usual, and doesn't this Yael Naim sound a bit like "Gloria in Excelsis Deo"/"Angels We Have Heard on High"?...some more Earlimart and then some classic Beck to bring it home.

Financial Meltdown, Pt. II

Only one thing left to do...