Ten, shuffled!

1. Sublime - What I Got (??)
2. Rush - Red Barchetta
3. Beatles - Taxman
4. Anita O'Day - 'S Wonderful / They Can't That Away From Me
5. 10 Ft Ganga Plant - Blues Dance
6. Spoon - Finer Feelings
7. Black Sabbath - Supernaut
8. Replacements - You Lose
9. Neil Young - I Am A Child (Massey Hall)
10. Apples In Stereo - Lucky Charm

That's kind of a mess.

Here's some Apples In Stereo.

Shuffle-up five! Highlight your favorite.

1. New Pornographers - Stacked Crooked
2. Replacements - Hootenanny
3. Beatles - Baby You're A Rich Man
4. Lilys - A Diana's Diana
5. The Radiohead - A Punch Up At A Wedding

That was pretty easy. Your turn!

Random ten, mark your favorite.

1. A Tribe Called Quest - The Hop
2. Matt Pond PA - Lily Two
3. PJ Harvey - The Last Living Rose
4. Steely Dan - Brooklyn
5. Madeleine Peyroux - Lonesome Road
6. Zed Leppelin - Dancing Days
7. Bill Evans - On Green Dolphin Street
8. Faces - Pool Hall Richard
9. Spoon - Laffitte Don't Fail Me Now
10. Tonya Donelly - Days Of Grace

Go!

On this cold and rainy Monday: random five!

1. Bramhs - Clarinet Quintet in Bm
2. Rolling Stones - I'm Alright
3. Sea And Cake - Hotel Tell
4. Death Cab.. - Styrofoam Plates
5. The Cure - Push
   

No links today, I'm already spending too much time in YouTube with The List. And no descriptions because I have a strict per-week limit on the number of things I'm allowed to say about music. But, you all should feel free to tell us why your selections are awesome/terrible!

Whatchoogot?

Let's see what existential horrors our music delivery devices have in store for us.

Plain old random ten!

1. Sea And Cake - Covers
2. Gillian Welch - White Freightliner Blues
3. Blue Sky Boys - Down On The Banks Of The Ohio
4. Neko Case - Blacklisted
5. Bears - Those Years
6. Wilco - Everlasting Everything
7. The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms
8. Flamin' Groovies - Please Please Girl
9. Heart - Tell It Like It Is
10. Pavement - Fight This Generation

All acceptable. Existential horror FAIL!

Random five six, describe.

1. REM - Get Up. No, I do not want to hear Stipe and Mills shrieking "Get Up! Get Up!", this early on a Monday. Maybe King Missle's cover would be better.
2. The Quintet - Wee. This is one of those jazz tunes where I can't identify a theme, or any kind of basic melody, so it just feels like four minutes of frantic soloing.
3. Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians - Hanging Out With Dad. From the B-sides & outtakes collection "A Bad Case Of History". It's a solid Egyptians' tune. Has all the necessary ingredients. Works pretty well. I can't find it on YouTube, so here's Acid Bird.
4. Polvo - Ox Scaplua. A quick instrumental from Con Crane Secret. Classic Polvo: some mid-east inflection, dual screaming guitars, pounding rhythm section. Good stuff, if it was Friday night.
5. Gillian Welch - One Little Song. A nice song from Soul Journey. It's about trying to come up with a song about something that hasn't already been sung about. About. Song.
6. Caribou - She's The One. In which Caribou sounds like mid-period Lilys, instead of early-period Pink Floyd. A nice bit of mellow psychedelia.

Go!

Another shitty Monday morning here in dreary shitty NC !

Shuffle-up five, describe them to us so that we may learn!

1. Hank Williams - Half As Much. Takes me about .3 seconds to identify this one as a Hank song. It's simply impossible for the sound of that steel guitar in the intro to come from anyone else on my iPod. Good song, too. Sadly, the original isn't on YouTube anywhere, though there are dozens and dozens of covers - the link is to an Emmylou Harris cover.
2. Replacements - Seen Your Video. I always like songs that go for a verse or two before the vocals come in. In this case, the vocals only last for one chorus. I find it surprising that the Replacements would have done it, though. It seems like a bit of a high-minded concept.
3. Husker Du - Makes No Sense At All. I'm not a huge Husker Du fan, but I like this one.
4. Andrew Bird - Dissent. One of his experimental things from Useless Creatures. It's some atmospheric loops with a meandering lead over top - all violins, I believe. Not essential.
5. Sonic Youth - Blink. From their B-sides and outtakes collection, "The Destroyed Room". A quiet, acoustic-based number, with Kim whispering over the top, and some transient bass noises in the background. It's an interesting change from the standard "Kim" song. I approve. Link goes to the "100%" video, which features a very young skateboarding Jason Lee ("My Name Is Earl", etc.).

Now you do it!

Whew. Monday.

Let's do an old-school random ten:

1. NiN - The Only Time
2. Zep - Trampled Under Foot
3. Andrew Bird - Carrion Suite
4. Wilco - Please Be Patient With Me
5. The Doors - Texas Radio And The Big Beat
6. Lightnin' Hopkins - Sometimes She Will
7. Yo La Tengo - Barnaby, Hardly Working
8. Wye Oak - If Children Were Wishes
9. Pavement - Fin
10. Jimi Hendrix - Stone Free

What you got?

Blah. Stupid shitty Mondays.

Random five. Describe.

1. Pogues - Planxty Noel Hill. Not what I want first thing Monday AM. It's the same four bars of frantic fiddling repeated over and over with odd little gaps every few reps. Is it over? No! It was just catching your attention. Here it goes again! Maybe I should hold off on doing this till a better mood finds me...
2. Allman Bros - Stand Back. A standard Allman Bros song. Not bad, but they have better songs.
3. Wilco - Panthers. An old one, but it's the kind of slow, mellow, ambitionless song that Wilco defaults to, these days.
4. Broken Social Scene - Superconnected. Link is to a very nice, mostly-acoustic, live-in-a-record store performance. In the studio version, the guitars seem to slip into a Sea And Cake song ("Parasol"), at the very end. In the live version, it's clear that singer/guitarist Kevin Drew is playing something very close to "Parasol" the whole way through. Nice song, either way. Is that a bass clarinet? Groovy. I also like the Belly song of the same name.
5. Colorblind James Experience - Wedding At Cana. Based on the same template as a lot of CBJE's other early songs; a couple of bars of catchy melody, a couple bars of deadpan vocals, repeat. This one is a bit long, and the lyrics to this aren't as awesome as those on some of its peers. But, I like it anyway.

Your turn!

Special short-week edition!

Shuffle-up four songs, describe them, and then rank them.

1. Labradford - El Lago. Labradford was one of the "post-rock" bands: mostly instrumental, 'ambient', a bit more like Tortoise than Godspeed You! Black Emperor. This is from their 95 release "A Stable Reference", which is my favorite of their records. This particular song is simple repetitive bass and guitar lines over droning keyboards, all of it building in volume and intensity for five and a half minutes.
2. The Sea And Cake - All The Photos. Also a "post-rock" band, but by comparison to Labradford, The Sea And Cake sound like a pop group. Verse/chorus/verse? Melodies? Drums? Vocals? Hand-claps?! This is like top-40 stuff.
3. The Cure - Out Of Mind. One of the "Disintegration" B-sides. Not a bad song, but the keyboards and phased guitar are way too loud in the mix. It's all a bit of a mess, sonically.
4. Van Halen - Secrets. A mellow tune from "Diver Down". It's got a quick tempo, but Eddie's guitar sound is unusually clean and his playing is laid-back and jazzy; the rest of the band is likewise subdued, but not quite as daring as Eddie (would have been nice if Alex mixed things up a little on the drums rather than simply playing simply). Definitely not a standard VH rocker, and it's interesting to hear this more introspective side. Wish they would've taken it a bit further.

For ranking let's go with : 1, 2, 4, 3.