I’m challenging myself to get through a whole shuffle of my music collection on my iPod without skipping. Then I write about what I heard each week.

Weekly summary:

* Songs listened to this week:  102
* Completed:  58%
* Number of double shots:  3 (Franz Ferdinand, Genesis, Sting)
* Percentage of songs that came up during running that were so totally not helpful in motivating my running: Oops…didn’t run this week, meant to take my usual post-race three days off, but somehow that turned into six!

The title of the post this week comes from “Where Does The Time Go?” by the Innocence Mission. Dave introduced me to them after we met in college and I think he first heard them on the only station that matters.

The Innocence Mission is not like anything else I listen to and I love them so much because the lyrics speak to me and remind me of my own Catholic school upbringing in a climate with changing seasons (Karen Peris writes lyrics about living with snow that make me feel like I am standing in it, even though it doesn’t really snow here). She is able to evoke so much using so few words. A skill I admire and don’t have.

Overt references to God and religion in music ordinarily turn me off, and many of their songs are colored by their faith, although only some songs are explicitly about God. For any other band this would be enough for me to say thanks, but no thanks. But there is a familiarity in the way Karen writes about this topic that feels comfortable to me. It was my experience too. As heartily as I’ve rejected religion, I don’t really have anything bad to say about my Catholic school experience…well, except this.

All this talk of my 13 years (14 if you count preschool) in Catholic school has lodged an awesomely lame Catholic hymn in my head. There were a bunch of these goodies in the late 70s/80s and our music teacher taught us many of them. When I get one of these songs in my head, watch out! I’ll be singing this all day.

“Let us build the city of God
May our tears be turned into dancing
For the Lord, our light and our love
Has turned the night into day.”

Sorry about that. I typed that out without checking it first, so I was pretty impressed with myself that I got the words right after more than 20 years when I finally did look it up so I could attribute the song lyrics to someone (Dan Schutte). What greatness could I achieve, if my brain weren’t cluttered with such things?

Back to the Innocence Mission…even if you didn’t share a similar upbringing (the members met while attending Catholic school), I dare you to listen to their music and tell me it doesn’t make you feel like they’ve wrapped a warm blanket around you and brought you some hot chocolate to warm up after coming inside from building a snow fort. Or maybe like you’ve spent an afternoon thumbing through your old family photo albums, the smell of the old paper that holds the pictures reminding you of the stories your Mom told you of the days the pictures were taken. Or is that just me?

I read that much of the Birds of My Neighborhood album was inspired by the years it took Karen and Don Peris to have children (they now have two children). “Where Does The Time Go” certainly seems to speak to that topic. But Karen has a gift for writing lyrics that can resonate in different ways.

The melancholy and hope this song weaves together remind me of the six-year long distance phase of my relationship with Dave. We spent the first half only a 90-minute drive apart, but when I moved to D.C. for the second half, knowing that he still had several years of school left and that both he and my family would be hundreds of miles away, I felt like I was driving off the face of the Earth (even more so when I crossed the Mason-Dixon line, which gave me chills quite frankly).

Those years seemed to stretch out forever, and I felt like I was waiting for my life to start a lot of the time. Birds of My Neighborhood came out the year that Dave finally finished school and moved here, and Karen provided the words for what it felt like to finally get what I had waited for so long:

“We will walk on a hill
Red hats and blue coats, and everything still.
Snow will cover until
We can’t tell the sky from the ground.
Where are the buildings, the old wounds of mine?
Did I ever once cry?

Waiting for you to arrive…
Where does the time go?…

Friends have moved away,
One tree has come down, another one flowers and sways.
Miri was lost for five days.
From upstate at school one friend writes,
Everything is changing while the day sky stays blue.
Changing around him, and me without you.

Waiting for you to arrive…
Where does the time go?…”

Video is here. Sorry I can’t embed it, I have been trying to be better about not highlighting songs You Tube won’t let me embed, but what can you do?

There weren’t too many other songs I felt like highlighting this week, and I’ve never spent so much space on one song before, so I’m only going to do one more.

* Band I’ve wanted to highlight, but was waiting for the song with the live You Tube video to come up:  Splashdown “Ironspy”

I first heard them on WBER, by this time I was listening over the internet since I didn’t live in Rochester anymore. So I missed them when they played the Lilac Festival and then their record company screwed them over and now they are no more and it makes me sad and pisses me off. We need more music that doesn’t suck.

Ooh, wait, one more:

* Song I’ll be saddest not to hear again until this is over:  Asobi Seksu “Thursday”

I’m challenging myself to get through a whole shuffle of my music collection on my iPod without skipping. Then I write about what I heard each week.

This week was all about running the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler on Sunday, which was yesterday. I’m still a little hung over from the race, so I guess I pushed myself hard enough. I barely remember the past week’s playlist songs, so this will be a (probably mercifully!) short playlist summary.

The title of this week’s post comes (again!) from King Missile. Every time I hear a King Missile song, I think “this just might be my favorite King Missile song.” Then I hear the next one and think, “huh…I forgot about this one, this just might be my favorite King Missile song.” I actually would have used “This is it, this is Mystical Shit” as the title this week, from “Title Track” from the album Mystical Shit, but then I heard “Gary & Melissa.” Plus, I’m about to write a post about running the Cherry Blossom, and oddly enough the Statue of Liberty plays a role.

Here is the weekly playlist summary:

* Songs listened to this week:  93 (a couple of Police “In the Studio” radio show segments came up this week, which reduced the total number of tracks I could hear this week)

* Completed: 55%

* Number of double shots:  3 (The Police * 2, Paul McCartney)

* Percentage of songs that came up during running that were so totally not helpful in motivating my running:  It’s hard to remember which songs I heard the ONE time I bothered to run this week (I had to taper, right?!?). I think I had to run through Genesis “The Lady Lies” and also The Beatles “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in German, so not a super successful running mix.

* Random association: “The Lady Lies” reminds me of the book Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Hard to articulate why, except to say that the woman in the song is not what she seems, like Rebecca in the book and that during the ending sequence of the song, I can picture Rebecca’s ghost dancing around Manderley’s grounds. Creepy.

* Random memories

PM “Piece of Paradise”

I highlighted PM before but this is the song that I heard on the Canadian radio station I could hear from home and that made me get their tape. It is also the only song of theirs that I can find on You Tube, so here you go. This song takes me back to high school, particularly riding in the car with my two friends who were on the basketball team to and from their road games. We would all be half dead on the drive home, so I’d slip my walkman on and rock out (and maybe take a little nap) to PM, and maybe also Frozen Ghost. So cool.

* Fun song that everyone should know about: Blue Clocks Green “Hemingway”

I’m challenging myself to get through a whole shuffle of my music collection on my iPod without skipping. Then I write about what I heard each week.

The title of the post this week comes from Mew’s song “Chinaberry Tree.” Mew’s music is so pretty and evocative, I just want to travel to this song and be a tourist inside it for awhile.

Mew (Chinaberry Tree)

Mew’s song “Chinaberry Tree” off their album And The Glass Handed Kites. Please do NOT rip the audio.. buy this song on iTunes and support the group. Visit the Sony Music Entertainment UK website for more information on Mew. I OWN NOTHING IN THIS VIDEO.

Here is the weekly summary:

* Songs listened to this week:  136
* Completed:  44%
* Number of double shots:  2 (The Police, Genesis)

* Percentage of songs that came up during running that were so totally not helpful in motivating my running:  29%

The songs that came up during my Tuesday evening run were so great, including my favorite running motivation song ever:  Electric Six “Gay Bar.” I’m linking to a not-at-all official video for this song because it is so excellent, you have to check it out for at least a few seconds.

The Electric Six – Gay Bar

Detroit’s very own Electric Six! This version is banned in the U.S. and U.K. For some reason the president, and primeminister didn’t like this video.

* Best coincidence:  After finally mentioning the under-representation of Interpol songs in the shuffle thus far, four of their songs came up this week. It’s like the iPod knows, even though I’m sure it’s just my human brain looking for patterns.

* Guilty pleasure:  Olivia Newton-John and Cliff Richard “Suddenly”

Rude Cactus, one of my favorite bloggers, discussed guilty pleasures this week and when I commented, I was all like “You don’t know from guilty dude!” Now I feel a little bad, because who am I to say that his guilty pleasures aren’t guilty and that mine are more so. Guilty pleasures are personal. Anyway, with that said, at the risk of judging guilty pleasures again…THIS is a guilty pleasure. I’m fully aware of how cheesy this song is, but goddamn, I love it. Just watching the video when I grabbed the link for this post made me all tingly. I’m a sucker for songs that are fun to sing. Plus, that Cliff Richard is dreamy, no? And I adore Olivia Newton-John, have loved her ever since my Mom took me to see Grease when I was five years old. She epitomized cool to me, even before Sandy becomes a slut in the movie.

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* Best double shot of heart-satisfying musically-intelligent love songs:  James “Just Like Fred Astaire” and The Police “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”

I would totally have chosen “Just Like Fred Astaire” for my first dance wedding song if Dave and I had had a real wedding with those traditional bells and whistles. Oh yeah, and if the album had been released prior to our wedding.  I think it came out a few days later.

James – Just Like Fred Astaire (Later with Jools Holland 1999)

Live on Later with Jools Holland 1999

I could listen to “Every Little Thing” eight million times on repeat and never tire of it. Before the shuffle challenge, having one of the live bootleg versions come up on my iPod made me stop the shuffle and play the original. Just hearing the first soft cymbals at the beginning makes my heart leap with joy that I get to hear this song. I love how energetic it is, a love song you can dance to. I love the video too, the guys are just so adorable with their dancing around. During the Police reunion frenzy, I downloaded what are apparently some of Sting’s demos for the Ghost in the Machine album. This song is just brilliant even on the demo. They supposedly couldn’t record a better version in the studio, so Stewart just played his drums over the demo.

The Police – Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic

Music video by The Police performing Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic. (C) 1981 A&M Records Ltd.

* Random memories: The Beatles “Two of Us”

This song reminds me of high school. I planned on using the line “you and I have memories, longer than the road that stretches out ahead” as my senior yearbook quote but think I changed my mind to something dumb at the last minute. I can’t check this because somehow I have possession of my grade school yearbooks, but not the ones from high school. I just added that to the list of crap my Mom needs to bring down next week when she comes to visit for the NCAA tournament at Verizon Center.

I had really hoped that line from the Beatles would still ring true years later, but sadly, save for a couple of exceptions, I have lost touch with so many friends over the years, not just from high school. Often it was my fault, but sometimes it was just a drifting that happens when you can’t choose to live nearby to everyone you love after you grow up. Sucks.

Beatles- two of us

A performace of the song two of us…. it’s a real gem!

* Song/video to celebrate the week that Dave’s bass pedals finally arrived:  Genesis “Abacab”

Dave helpfully forwarded me the link to this video so that I could see the bass pedals at the beginning (at the 4 second mark). You see, Dave needed bass pedals. Now he has bass pedals. Every day is like Christmas around here!

Genesis – Abacab (Three Sides Live) HQ

Genesis Three Sides Live Video Captured from laserdisc

I’m challenging myself to get through a whole shuffle of my music collection on my iPod without skipping. Then I write about what I heard each week.

I really enjoyed the memoir writing exercise that yielded my last post (which might be obvious as a big chunk of these playlist posts are about the memories certain songs can stir up), and I plan to keep checking out the TRDC’s weekly memoir challenge and will almost certainly write more. However, I might need a break from these misty watercolor memories. Between these memoir post challenges and the 7 or so straight hours I worked on my photo digitization project last Sunday (I plan to write more about this task later), I’m kind of memory-ed out.

I’ve been told that I have an excellent memory, and maybe I do, but I think it’s also frustratingly fickle. While I can (and did!) recount my first kiss encounter from twenty years ago in close to real time with fairly accurate quoted dialogue, a lot of the last 15 years of my life are a blur. I kept a diary off and on through college and wrote pretty religiously during the first couple years of college. I think writing things down helped to crystallize those memories so that I remember them so vividly today. So I keep writing here partially for that reason.

Writing of memories, the title of this post comes from The La’s ‘Looking Glass.’ This was one of the first CDs I ever bought, during my freshman year of college in 1991. Some artists like to quit at their peak, and The La’s certainly did just that, they only produced this one album. I have never tired of it and I think it’s sad they never released anything else. Their front man, Lee Mavers, apparently didn’t handle the attention that came with success well and he apparently also wasn’t happy with this album. The video I’m linking to had one “dislike” and one of the commenters said it must have come from Lee Mavers, which made me laugh out loud.

Before I went to Brussels for my study abroad semester, Dave asked me to tape this CD for him. ‘Looking Glass’ is the last song on the CD and it’s about 7 minutes long. I left the room while it was taping and when I came back, I found that the CD was skipping on the very last part of this song. Since the song was almost over I just stopped the recording and taped a little apology for the skipping at the end. Dave later told me that he would listen to that while I was away so he could hear my voice.

The La’s – Looking Glass

Looking Glass recorded at Town & Country Club, London, UK 26/5/89.

Here is the weekly summary:

* Songs listened to this week:  126
* Completed:  39%
* Number of double shots:  5 (The Beatles * 2, The Police * 2, Genesis)

* Percentage of songs that came up during running that were so totally not helpful in motivating my running:  57%, plus the set of songs I heard were all double shots, including two particularly slow and unhelpful Genesis songs (‘Silver Rainbow’ and ‘You Might Recall’) and a live version of The Police’s ‘Wrapped Around Your Finger’ from the reunion tour that was so slow I thought I’d fall asleep in mid-run. They slowed a lot of the songs down for the reunion tour, and they might have been even a touch slower on this night, since it was their dress rehearsal show for a few thousand lucky fan club members the night before the tour officially kicked off in Vancouver. I was so happy to finally get the chance to see them that I just was able to enjoy this show live (especially given the front row seats I had scored!), but it’s hard to listen to the bootlegs now, especially from this rehearsal night.

So this was probably the first time I re-heard this version. I didn’t know it was possible to play music so slowly without losing momentum and having to stop. Since I was running at the time, it reminded me of how to deal with hills. If you slow down to take a hill, it’s easy to lose steam and just come to a stand still half way up. You can take shorter strides, but you have to keep up the same cadence or you won’t make it to the top. So fine, change the key, but Jesus this song wasn’t all that fast to begin with, just play it at normal tempo. Bitch/moan, repeat…

The Police:Wrapped Around Your Finger

Live in Vancouver:Rehearsal:May 27, 2007

* Fun song that everyone should know about:  Colorblind James Experience ‘Considering A Move To Memphis’ (“it worked for Elvis Presley, why can’t it work for me?”)

The Late Colorblind James at the Grassroots Festival 1996

The late, legendary, Colorblind James Experience plays “Considering a Move to Memphis”, at the Grassroots Festival in Trumansburg, N.Y.

* Noticeably underplayed artist thus far: Interpol

I was on a pretty big Interpol kick after seeing them in November and although I’m 39% through this shuffle, I’ve only heard 22% of the Interpol songs on my iPod. I should have calculated that last week because the discrepancy would have been more impressive. Two Interpol songs came up this week, which was the first time that’s happened. One was ‘Slow Hands,’ which is one of Dave’s favorite songs of theirs. He really likes Interpol and introduced me to them. He suggested this song to me as he thought it was happier than their usual angst. I listened to it and could tell what he meant (“You make me want to pick up a guitar, and celebrate the myriad ways that I love you”) but it still didn’t seem so happy to me. Apparently he hadn’t really noticed the line “Can’t you see what you’ve done to my heart, and soul…this is a wasteland now.” So sweet!

Interpol – Slow Hands Live

Interpol Slow Hands Live. All rights belong to Interpol and associates. Our respect to this great band.

* Songs I most wanted to skip:  Ween ‘Mourning Glory’ It’s basically five whole minutes of feedback and noise. Thanks guys, brilliant!

* Best Dave mix song:  Panurge ‘Mixed Cavalry‘

* Guilty pleasure:  Aldo Nova ‘Fantasy’ Sweet Jesus I am old.

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visit my AOR store: www.aormaniacs.gemm.com

* Random thoughts:

Peter Gabriel ‘Blood of Eden’

The ‘Us’ album came out right around the time Dave and I got together and this song is the one that continues to stick with me. It’s just stunning, music and lyrics.

“At my request, you take me in
In that tenderness, I am floating away
No certainty, nothing to rely on
Holding still for a moment
What a moment this is
Oh for a moment of forgetting, a moment of bliss”

Peter Gabriel & Sinead O’Connor – Blood Of Eden

god i hate this song, bleh “Blood Of Eden” I caught sight of my reflection I caught it in the window I saw the darkness in my heart I saw the signs of my undoing They had been there from the start And the darkness still has work to do

I’m challenging myself to get through a whole shuffle of my music collection on my iPod without skipping. Then I write about what I heard each week.

Not a super exciting week in the shuffle, not as much to highlight this week.

The title of the post comes from: Ladytron ‘Destroy Everything You Touch’ This song came out around the time that we bought our new house before selling our townhouse. Here’s a tip–don’t do that. Between anxiously waiting for someone to buy our townhouse (while paying two mortgages) and some serious work-related stress, this song helped the anger bubble up in a safe way.

Ladytron – Destroy Everything You Touch

Ladytron – Destroy Everything You Touch

Here is the weekly summary:

* Songs listened to this week:  98 (there was a 20 minute or so segment of an old radio show “Off the Record” featuring the Police this week so that didn’t help the numbers)
* Completed:  34%
* Number of double shots: 3 (The Beatles, The Police * 2)
* Number of triple shots:  The Police (2 were ‘Roxanne’, the original and one live)

The live version was a bootleg from the reunion tour’s stop in Cleveland, which I attended with my brother (seemed fitting to see a show with him, since I would have seen the Buffalo Synchronicity show with him, if our Mom had let us go). I usually skip the reunion tour bootlegs, because they are a little hard for me to listen to. Don’t get me wrong, I am so grateful that they did the tour and finally gave me a chance to see them live (since my only other chance was evilly and cruelly denied me by my mother, have I mentioned that?!?). But some of the song “Stingifications” bothered me (songs were slower, Sting was doing a lot of scat type vocalizing/mumbling, both of which annoyed me). So I’m not sure I ever heard this ”Roxanne’ bootleg before.

On the bootleg, Sting’s voice sounds rough. I totally give him props for going for it though (I don’t mind key changes to save an aging voice, but I do respect someone, like Geddy Lee, for example, who just goes for it anyway). Anyway, about 1:30 in, after a couple of lines where his voice cracked, Sting seems to mutter “I can’t even sing this one,” and lets the audience sing for a second. This is strange, because I was THERE at that concert and don’t remember the voice cracking or the comment. I found Sting’s comment so charming on the bootleg that it actually made me feel a little bad for complaining about his performance on the tour (I actually started arguments about this on the Police online forums during the tour, I’m so skilled at connecting with people!).

Since I had no memory of this singing difficulty or comment from the concert, I did a search on You Tube to clarify. Luckily I found a short video that actually contains the right part of the performance. The voice breaks are harder to hear on this video, so maybe the bootleg was produced in a way that made the vocals more clear. Sting’s comment comes around 0:39, and in the video is harder to make out and since he walks away from his mic, almost looks like he was just encouraging audience participation. What do you think?

The Police – Roxanne Clip – Cleveland 7.16.07

a short clip from the police concert we attended

* Percentage of songs that came up during running that were so totally not helpful in motivating my running:  17% (great running selections this week, it was a miracle!)

* Song I forgot to mention last week: The Police ‘Spirits in the Material World’

Dave’s guitar teacher runs what he calls “Jam Class” for his students to live out their rock star fantasies. They even played a show at a local bar in December (check out Dave in the background–he’s behind the singer some of the time–in this video, also check out the charming lyrical addition towards the end: “Rendition… Guantanamo… Waterboarding… Done Dirt Cheap!”). Apparently they are working on new songs for another show in May and one of the new selections this go ’round is ‘Spirits.’ So I’m…concerned. I just can’t imagine this going well. The guitar teacher plays drums for his students’ “band,” and he does a wonderful job, but he is a guitarist and this is the Police we’re talking about. Stewart’s drumming is…uh, well, it’s hard, no???

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* Number of songs that I’m so totally deleting: Apollo 440 ‘High on Your Own Supply’ This song is awful. I’d never gotten through it before and now I understand that I wasn’t missing anything. Why must I always rip an entire CD?

* Best Dave mix song:  Sprites ‘I Love You, You Retard’

Dave was right on with this selection, about male doofiness. He’s a genius, but can’t remember a phone number.

play#Sprites:I+Love+You%2C+You+Retard:6984533:s40074998.10751186.18887949.0.2.39%2Cstd_f867347e109345cbbb0aa0f0eb989583

* Random memories:

Nine Inch Nails ‘Legend of Zelda’ I wish that the video were more than just the audio. Hearing the Zelda music takes me right back to my Mom’s living room where I sat on the floor playing Zelda for hours, until my ass went numb. “Downward thrust!” We also enjoyed referring to the process of the fairy replenishing Link’s hearts as “wanking.”

Nine Inch Nails-plays the legend of zelda theme

nine inch nails plays the legend main theme

Dead Can Dance ‘American Dreaming’

WBER played this a lot during my first year of grad school. I remember hearing it all the time when I drove back and forth to school, contemplating life (which went something like: “what the hell am I doing?”). I fell into this program. I didn’t know what to do with my life and one of my professors recommended me for this program. I applied mostly because it seemed like I had no other option. My school offered a 3-2 program where you could finish your undergraduate degree in 3 years and then the Master’s the last 2. My course of study to that point had not been the most wise, from a career building stand point, so this Master’s seemed like the thing to do. The first year I felt in over my head (I had always imagined my senior year being filled with courses like “Underwater Basketweaving” and creative scheduling to maximize days off, but instead I was taking challenging courses five days a week, starting each day at 8:30am, with abundant homework) and not sure at all that I wanted to finish. This song matched the feeling I had at the time of being adrift. The first line is my favorite, though I interpret “the promised land” in my own way.

“I need my conscience to keep watch over me
To protect me from myself
So I can wear honesty like a crown on my head when I walk into the promised land”

For me, this is about my own personal sense of honor.

Then there’s:

“We’ve been too long american dreaming
I think we’ve all lost the way
Forlorn somnambulistic maniacal in the dark”

I definitely had the sense I was sleepwalking through my life trying to get through grad school, I fought with myself over whether to quit several times over the first two semesters. When I successfully finished the first of the two years, I knew I just had to buckle down and finish. The early days of my career were spent living apart from Dave, who was still finishing his graduate degree. While I have many happy memories of those years and the new friends I made, I felt like my life was on hold waiting for Dave to arrive. I thought the day would never come, but somehow it’s been over 11 years since Dave moved here and it flashed by so quickly it’s frightening. I don’t want to sleepwalk through life, that’s partially why I started writing here, just to document things, to be more conscious of how I spend my time (for instance, having to basically re-write this post when WordPress decided to not save most of my last edits before publishing!).

Dead Can Dance – American Dreaming

from the album “Toward The Within”

I’m challenging myself to get through a whole shuffle of my music collection on my iPod without skipping. Then I write about what I heard each week.

I have been playing the game Collapse on my iPod while listening to the shuffle on my commute. Perhaps it’s cheating, because it allows me extra entertainment during songs I would ordinarily skip, but I have grown attached to playing it, particularly in ‘Quest’ mode. I finished the entire quest this week. I was unreasonably depressed by this. I will miss Collapse Quest.

Choosing a post title was a tough call this week. I would have selected “Let Me Tell You ‘Bout The Fucking Bitch,” but the best You Tube link was of Ween playing the song (‘Common Bitch’) live and Gene doesn’t say this beginning line. Bummer. But here’s the video anyway, I like how they are celebrating Women’s Day, so sweet of them to remember.

Ween – At The Cats Cradle – Common Bitch

Ween 1992 Playing Common Bitch “I heard it’s womans day?” So brown it’s black.

The title this week is from King Missile’s ‘Cheesecake Truck.’ Maybe I should get a job driving a cupcake delivery truck?

Cheesecake Truck — King Missile (Dog-Fly Religion)

King Missile (Dog-Fly Religion) performing the song “Cheesecake Truck” live at (le) Poisson Rouge, NYC on March 18, 2010. John S. Hall, Dogbowl aka Stephen Tunney, John Kruth, Dave Dreiwitz, Billy Ficca. Special guest Justin Kantor on cello. Filmed by Sophie Tunney

Here is the weekly summary:

* Songs listened to this week:  178
* Completed:  31%
* Number of double shots:  9 (The Police, Genesis * 2, The Beatles * 3, The Innocence Mission, Simon & Garfunkel, Sting)
* Number of quadruple (!) shots:  1 (The Police, including two live ‘Message in a Bottles’ (‘Messages in a Bottle???’)

* Percentage of songs that came up during running that were so totally not helpful in motivating my running:  45% (not bad, but there was another Enya song, I wish that would stop!)

* Number of new to me songs:  1 (Mew ‘Hawaii Dream’)

* Weirdest coincidence:  Phil Collins ‘Long Long Way To Go’

As the essentially useless Dr. Baker once said on Little House on the Prairie, “the mind is a complicated instrument.” Just last week, I tried to recount how Genesis came to be one of my favorite bands and I actually had a little trouble. This Phil Collins song came up this week and I’d kind of forgotten about it. You see, Sting sings on it. I was obsessed with all things Police-related and at this time, there was no new Police music to be had. Phil’s ‘No Jacket Required’ album came out in January of 1985, prior to ‘Invisible Touch.’ Sting and Phil Collins played ‘Long Long Way To Go’ together at Live Aid in July 1985. I watched Live Aid. Now I’m wondering if that is the Genesis connection. I had ‘No Jacket Required,’ and I probably had it because Sting sang on this song. Maybe then I was more receptive to Phil’s 1986 work with Genesis? My memory is like swiss cheese, so who knows?

Phil Collins & Sting – Long Long Way To Go (Live Aid 1985)

Wembley Stadium, London, 13/07/1985

* Best guilty pleasure double shot of cheese:  Frozen Ghost ‘Echo a Miracle’ followed by Genesis ‘One Eyed Hound’

Even though it is super dated, I can’t help but still like the cheesily anthemic ‘Echo a Miracle.’ “We’re all refugees, seeking sanctuary, from each others’ point of view…” Don’t I know!

‘One Eyed Hound’ is from Genesis’ first album. Phil wasn’t even the drummer yet. They were still school boys. Even though their producer was trying to make them sound like the Bee Gees, for some reason I think this is their most charming Peter Gabriel-era album. I think Tony is singing backing vocals on this song, and that charms me to no end. At the Genesis concert Dave and I went to on their last reunion tour, I called out for them to play ‘One Eyed Hound,’ but unfortunately they didn’t listen to me.

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* Song I could’ve sworn I’d heard already:  The Beatles ‘Across the Universe’ (yep, this was the one from Past Masters, and I heard the Let It Be version earlier in the shuffle)

* Song that is entirely too long:  Led Zeppelin ‘The Lemon Song’

Let’s face it, I really only have this song because of the squeeze my lemon part, and it takes way too long to get there and now that I’m an adult, it’s just not that titillating anymore.

* Song that the internet ruined for me:  The Beatles ‘Paperback Writer’

Recently I came across something on the internet saying that the backing vocal harmonies on this song were “Frère Jacques.” I hadn’t ever noticed this before, but now that it’s been pointed out to me, it is all I can hear.

* Some random memories:

Kitchens of Distinction ‘Drive That Fast’

The first outing I ever went on with Dave, before we were dating, was to see Kitchens of Distinction at the Horizontal Boogie Bar in Rochester on September 22, 1992. Dave arranged it and four of us went. I already liked Dave but I had no idea what, if anything, was going on between Dave and this other girl who came with us. Before the show started, she got all pissed that he walked off somewhere (think to the bar) without telling her and was venting to me about how rude he was. I acted appropriately sympathetic, but was smiling on the inside.

Kitchens of Distinction – Drive That Fast

Promo for the single Kitchens of Distinction’s video for the new song ‘Japan to Jupiter’ is online now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHCIhpdVoac Pre-order the 2013 release ‘Folly’ from: http://www.3loopmusic.com/kitchens-of-distinction-folly/

James ‘Five-O’

I got the James ‘Laid’ CD right around the time I left for my college study abroad semester in Brussels. Much of the CD was appropriately brooding given how sad I was about being away from Dave for four months. Also appropriate for the burning anger I was experiencing over Dave telling me he needed space right before I left. Man, I guess a person REALLY needs space if they feel the need to tell you that right before you are about to give them four months worth of across the ocean-size space, eh? Or perhaps I was so suffocating that he was concerned 3600 miles would be an insufficient amount of space? I can hold a grudge a long time. Hi Sweetie!!!

Anyway, this song is particularly brooding and brings me back to that time when I was preparing to leave and feeling sick to my stomach about it. “If it lasts forever, hope I’m the first to die.” This period was one of the last times I worried about the lasting forever part. Now I just worry about the dying part.

Sting ‘Fragile’

A special song, in that I have two poignant memories this song brings to mind–one at a very low point, and one happy.

When my Mom finally got up the nerve to leave my Dad, we tried to keep it a secret until our moving day for fear of what he might do if he found out. But somehow he found out the day before the move. He did not react well, and while he had ranted and raved and threatened us in drunken stupors for years, this particular situation did not feel safe. We packed some emergency things and fled to my grandmother’s. I remember being so upset, I kept trying to pack more and more of my things, because I was convinced that Dad would destroy anything I left behind. I was always listening to my walkman during this period to try to drown out what was going on around me. On the car ride over to Gram’s, I still had my music on and ‘Fragile’ was the song that was playing. Unfortunately, I will always associate that song with the fear and sadness of that night.

Shortly after arriving at Rochester for my freshman year of college, I learned that Sting would be playing a concert nearby. It took me awhile to warm up to people and to feel like I belonged at school, but a bunch of people were going to the show and I went too. We were way in back on the lawn and we could hardly hear anything, so towards the end of the concert, some of us tried to sneak closer to the stage. Sting closed with ‘Fragile,’ and my new friend Ron danced with me. I remember feeling the pain of the old memory of the song melting away. Now when I hear the song I am reminded of the negative memory first, and then I remember dancing at the concert. Then I smile.

I’m challenging myself to get through a whole shuffle of my music collection on my iPod without skipping. Then I write about what I heard each week.

Hey, guess what? I listened to my iPod this week. And I didn’t skip songs. And this isn’t getting old at all! Sigh.

The title of this post comes from Meat Beat Manifesto’s ‘Pot Sounds’ and I wish that the line had been true this week, as I was a walking distraction every day. “Mindstream’ also came up this week. Both of these songs are from a tape (I know!) that fueled many a make-out session in college. “Peace…Love”

Meat Beat Manifesto – Pot Sounds / Mindstream (with lyrics)

http://www.discogs.com/Meat-Beat-Manifesto-Satyricon/master/19243

This week I realized that I don’t have any Steppenwolf on my iPod and that made me sad. Must rectify that soon.

Here is the weekly summary:

* Songs listened to this week:  116
* Completed:  24%
* Number of double shots:  4 (The police * 4 (3 live, too many bootlegs!), The Beatles

* Percentage of songs that came up during running that were so totally not helpful in motivating my running:  20% (I only ran on the treadmill once this week, but the songs that came up that day were pretty good).

Songs of note:

Ween’s ‘Flies on My Dick’ came up this week and I can’t say I would have listened to it if not for the challenge. Interestingly, what I couldn’t get out of my head the whole time was how much one of the two voices sounded like Eric the Midget from the Howard Stern show. I’ll never be able to listen to this song the same way again.

Even though I had no desire to see the movie and in fact, didn’t see it in theaters, then DVR’ed it and still didn’t watch it (it was one of the casualties of a full DVR during this year’s Australian Open), I got caught up in the pre-“Snakes on a Plane” fever. I remember sending people phone messages from Samuel L. Jackson in character. ‘Fuck You Snakes’ came up this week and it is so great that I left no stone unturned trying to figure out where I had gotten it so that I could share it. Don’t say I’m not committed to my blogging craft. Jeremy Tague, I don’t know who you are, but thank you for ‘Fuck You Snakes.’

Body Count/Ice-T ‘Body Count’ As a long time fan of Law and Order Special Victims Unit, I sometimes forget about Ice-T’s Body Count. This gem of a song was on the same Sire Records compilation as Merlin’s ‘Feel the Fury.’  “Don’t you hear the guns, you stupid, dumb, dick suckin’, bum politicians?”

Body Count: “On With The Body Count”

Body Count is in the Mother F@ckin House!! Live from The Key Club, it’s the legendary Body Count featuring the OG himself… Ice-T! Go to www.30MinutesofBlack.com for more great music & rare concert footage!!!

* Number of new to me songs:  1 (Mew ‘Introducing Palace Players’)

* Number of songs that I’m so totally deleting:  1

Animal Logic ‘Another Place’ Never liked this song, would even fast forward it in my cassette tape days. Jackson Browne sings on this, which does nothing for me.

* Most wanted to skip:  Hooverphonic ‘Neon (Hidden Track)’ would prefer that it stay hidden. Also, did you know I had ‘Highwayman’ by Johnny Cash et al on my iPod? I’m not sure I did! I groaned audibly when it came on. Might have gone a little overboard with the Johnny Cash CD ripping in my post “Walk the Line” movie enthusiasm. Once I got over my initial dread, the song actually grew on me. But I don’t know that it will live through the planned post-shuffle challenge purging of the iPod.

* Song I’ll be saddest not to hear again until this is over:  The Ocean Blue ‘Sublime’ This song is one of the main reasons I bothered to dig up my missing Ocean Blue CDs and rip them after week 1 of the shuffle challenge. Yes, hearing this song was so sublime.

The Ocean Blue – Sublime (Video)

© 2005 WMG Sublime (Video)

* Weirdest coincidence:  Deerhoof ‘Satan‘ My nickname from college is Satan, so Dave put this on a mix for me. I call this song the meow song, as it sounds to me like the singer is saying meow over and over. Dave loves Deerhoof and went to see them in concert on Monday night. I couldn’t make myself go with him. I don’t like them that much. I thought it was weird that this song came up the next day.

* Song that made me smile the most:  Ween’s ‘The Stallion, Pt. 2’ (and oh yes, there are parts 1 and 3 as well) actually had me fighting off laughter on my evening commute one night. People must have thought I was crazy. But no, “I am the Stallion…man.” I’m not sure why it took them so long to feel they’d made their point…you know, about being the Stallion…man.

* Only Komeda song I like:  Last week I heard what I mistakenly thought was the only Komeda song I like. This week the other Komeda song I like came up. Here is ‘Binario’.

Komeda – Binario

From “What Makes it Go?” Yes, you are right, I do not hold the copyrights to this song. But all I want is to give this magnificent band some exposure. If you think this video should be removed, there is something wrong in your head. It’s free advertising, you jackass.

* Police song with cursing: ‘Someone To Talk To’ “Now that she’s gone I know she was great, but I fucked it up and now it’s too late.” I put this song on the “Fuck Mix” tape I made years ago, filled with great songs that include the word fuck.

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* Several random memories this week:  The Wedding Present ‘Brassneck’ and Simon & Garfunkel ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’

Actually, most of the songs that come up make me think of something related to when I first heard it or when I listened to it most frequently. Strong associations abound in my music collection. Just trying to pull out a few key songs each week to keep it simple.

The Wedding Present’s Bizarro was the first tape that Dave ever lent me, in the very early stage of our relationship. The excitement I felt to be sharing in something he really liked when I liked him so much allowed me to suffer through, but in all honesty, I didn’t like the music much. Just sounded like noise to me. I’m a singing snob and I didn’t find the singing all that skillful. And there was that little matter of all the songs sounding the same. There are even two versions (which I couldn’t distinguish from each other) of Brassneck on the album! I teased Dave about them only having one song (Brassneck) all the time. Later, I came to find out that I wasn’t the only one who thought that. The band themselves used “all the songs sound the same” as a tag line and put it on swag they were selling. Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate the Wedding Present more. We saw them play Bizarro in its entirety (and some bonus songs beforehand too) last year and it was a great show. I’d love to have a bootleg of that show, since it sounded better than the CD sounds.

A friend of mine from high school loved the song Bridge Over Troubled Water. She asked me to tape it for her and I don’t remember if she suggested this or if I was being a smart ass, but I made her a tape filled up with nothing but this song over and over. I still have trouble listening to this song because I overdid it so much back then. A biography of Simon & Garfunkel that I read during college includes a sad story about this song as it related to the breakdown of their partnership and friendship. A post that I’ve been working on and has been sitting saved in draft status for months mentions this story and relays my own creative partnership story, but I just can’t seem to tie the pieces together and finish the post in a way that satisfies me. Plus, the other half of my creative partnership seems to have subscribed to this blog recently (hi Flash!) and that ratchets up the pressure to make the post something worth reading.

* Genesis song that seems to be the best segue so far for explaining my thoughts about the group:  ‘The Cinema Show’

The original version from Selling England By the Pound came up this week. This song was relatively easy to listen to, because I’ve heard Phil Collins singing it live. I taped a live version off the radio and listened to it over and over again while doing my Youth for Understanding summer in the Netherlands in 1989. So I can handle the original version, but I prefer the live version with Phil singing (here’s part of it, can’t find the full thing in one video).

RARE!! Genesis Live in Japan 1978 The Cinema Show Part Two

RARE!! Genesis – 1978 Kosei Nenkin Hall, Osaka, Japan November 30th 1978 The Cinema Show Part Two

I’m relatively young to be a Genesis fan, given that they formed several years before I was even born. As a teeny bopper, I suppose I should have been taken with New Kids on the Block or some such. But I fell hard for the Police (as is evident in my previous playlist posts) and their absence after about 1984 made me sad. What little Genesis I knew to that point (stuff like ‘No Reply At All’ and ‘That’s All’) I thought was pleasant enough. When the album ‘Invisible Touch’ was released, I was in 8th grade. I now know that die-hard fans of the classic Genesis line up (like Dave) find this album insufferable, but I was 13 years old and my family had fairly recently hooked up cable. Say what you will, but the video for ‘Invisible Touch’ charmed the socks off me. The song is super catchy, better than a lot of the shit being released at the time, and the band seemed fun and self-deprecating. Most importantly, Tony Banks, the keyboard player, was adorable and I developed quite a crush on him.

Almost as if it were for the express purpose of filling me in on the nearly two decades worth of back catalog I had missed by being so ridiculously young, MTV became Genesis central. Their documentary “Genesis: From the Beginning” and their behind the scenes of the Invisible Touch tour (I still have both taped on VHS) both introduced me to the fact that Genesis had existed long before I had and cemented my love of the band, their music, and particularly Tony. During one of the interviews, Tony’s talking about a song called ‘The Brazilian’ and how it’s closer to the kinds of music on his solo albums (during which time I remember thinking, “you have solo albums?!?”). He cheekily says “So if you like the Brazilian, go buy my solo albums,” and then with a huge grin laughingly says “which no one does!” Oh my God, so adorable.

Like I had done with the Police a few years earlier, I started excitedly procuring Genesis’ catalog going backwards from Invisible Touch. My older brother already had some of their more recent stuff, and I devoured and loved everything I heard. I think I had to acquire everything prior to Abacab. Everything was still cassette tape, but then my brother used his Taco Bell money to buy a fancy new stereo system (which I think he still has!) for his room and he let me use it if he wasn’t around. The first CD I ever owned (and the last until I finally got my own CD player in college) was the live double album ‘Seconds Out.’ After going back through the Genesis catalog and liking everything through ‘A Trick of the Tail,’ I finally hit the proverbial (garden, ha!) wall. I skipped ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.’ Not sure why, I think it was just too frightening to start the non-Phil Collins as leader singer era with a double album. I never did buy it. Dave had it and I eventually ripped his copy of it (which I still haven’t listened to start to finish). I did get ‘Selling England by the Pound’, ‘Foxtrot’, ‘Nursery Cryme’, and ‘Trespass’ on tape. However, my mind was just not open to Genesis with Peter Gabriel singing. Strange really, because I have no problem with Peter Gabriel. I like a lot of his solo music. And I love Genesis. I just don’t like them together. The songs don’t seem to be the problem either since I like the songs of that era that I’ve heard Phil sing. Apparently a music journalist said after Phil took over singing duties that Phil sounded more like Peter Gabriel than Peter Gabriel did. I think I know what he meant.