Random five six, describe.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!
Polydactyl edition?
Bird: too many notes.
Nat King Cole – Say It Isn’t So
Irving Berlin, not Hall and Oates. This is what standards are for: an interesting framework, but primarily a vehicle for the skills of the vocalist and arranger.
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Workin’ For MCA
Skynyrd really does rock. But I haven’t been in the mood for this style of rocking for, oh, a couple decades.
Laurie Anderson – The Mailman’s Nightmare
Can’t find a link; it’s just a spoken word piece of a mailman with a strong New England accent describing a weird dream he had where everybody has a huge head. I wonder if this makes more sense in context.
Nat King Cole – Ramblin’ Rose
The backup singers, the twangy guitar, this has that “Sing along with Mitch” sort of feel — including Nat’s “one more time everybody now!” Not the greatest song, but it is pretty catchy.
Uakti – The Hexagrams (Danca dos Hexagramas)
Okay, lemme explain. This avant-garde Brazillian band did a whole suite for percussion and wind inspired by the I Ching, built around the hexagrams, which are made up of six lines, each line either whole or broken. That’s 64 (2^6) permutations. In this piece, each hexagram gets six beats: if a line is solid, they play a quarter note, and if it’s broken, they play two eighth notes. Kind of a Morse code vibe.
So the underpinning is pretty analytical and one could get caught up in just listening to the pattern, if one was so inclined. (My wife thinks that inclination is nuts.) But you can also ignore the pitter patter of weird percussion and just listen to the new-agey atmosphere, which stands on its own. If you’re into that sort of thing.
Beethoven – Violin Sonata #2, I. Allegro Vivace (Itzhak Perlman & Vladimir Ashkenazy)
As with his cello sonatas, Beethoven wrote his violin sonatas more like duets, with the piano taking on equal importance instead of serving as mere accompaniment. I suspect this is because he himself was a pianist and he didn’t care to hide in the wings while somebody else got the applause.
Cool, an RH track I don’t know! My shuffle tonight has 50% Soft Boys in it.
Homer, “I Kissed a Beatle” — silly, pleasant, not something I will remember in half an hour.
The Soft Boys, “The Asking Tree” (The Day They Ate Brick). Not my favorite Soft Boys track or even in the running; but it is also the title of a fantastic lyrics database.
Leonard Cohen, “Master Song”. Love love love
The Soft Boys, “Leave Me Alone” (Underwater Moonlight sessions) This is more like it. Sullen and repetitive but without the dreary plodding quality of “The Asking Tree”.
Parliament, “Chocolate City” (chocolating up the otherwise vanilla shuffle)
The Soft Boys, “Look Into Your Mirror” (The Day They Ate Brick) This sounds more like a RH and the Egyptians song, which I am all in favor of.
bonus track.
Ah, lovely Polvo. I sang in children’s choir with their bass player (a long, long time ago, obviously).
My shuffle yields:
Wu Lyf, “Cave Song” – Fuzzed out, dissonant indie pop with a Modest Mouse feel.
Scott H. Biram, “Victory Song” – One-man-band blues howling with skittering slide guitar and echoing vocals.
Chuck Ragan, “Come Around” – Gravelly-voiced singer from post-punk act Hot Water Music doing acoustic alt-country with guitar and fiddle.
Jay Rock, “Boomerang” – Sex rap with minimalist beeps and boops in the background; weak track from a pretty good album.
Lauderdale, “The Grant” – Guitar-driven Americana-rock from Muscle Shoals, similar to Drive-By Truckers or Lucero.
Trombone Shorty, “Big 12” – Funky mid-tempo New Orleans jazz with alternating sax/trombone solos.