Re: I question their blackness

1

Ack come on I am writing an article on this very subject and now I have to avoid this thread.


Posted by: Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:06 PM
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I think ironic racist items on black people and rhythm ought to be required to use the term "honky" or its variants.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:06 PM
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Maybe if they changed their name to The Arcade Fire Next Time?


Posted by: M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:06 PM
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If you define indie music as music made entirely by white people with no influence from black music, then indie music is very white indeed.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:07 PM
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The fact that Bonnie "Prince" Billy just covered R. Kelly sort of undermines the example involving Devendra Banhart at the end of the article.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:08 PM
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I seem to recall that Dragons of Zynth and, even more so, TV on the Radio has gotten some praise.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:09 PM
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That article is weird. Current indie rock has lots of electronic influences; plenty of rhythm and syncopation there.


Posted by: destroyer | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:09 PM
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Slol, read the article.


Posted by: FL | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:09 PM
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2: Honka please.


Posted by: M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:09 PM
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Slol just wants the racial higher ground because my pants are nicer.


Posted by: FL | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:10 PM
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Plus so much music history he neglects to mention. ESG? Bad Brains?


Posted by: Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:11 PM
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Jack Rose and his ilk, and even the horribly crap MV/EE/those other guys constellation presumably owe some debt to black folk musicians. Though I suppose that doesn't count with sf/j because only hip-hop and R&B exist for him.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:11 PM
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I liked that article, and I thought that the unstated implication that black artists' greater access to audiences ironically reveals the continuing ways that our society is segregated was really interesting.

I'm not convinced by his conclusion, though. Sampling is a lot of fun, and yeah there are economic disincentives to doing it, but I think there's a little bit of "those kids these days" to what he's saying about the decline of popular music.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:11 PM
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Slol, read the article.

I did! Where did he say "honky"?


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:11 PM
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Also the last review Frere-Jones did before that one was about Animal Collective, was it not? And I don't think rock critics are capable of writing a piece about them without using the word "tribal."


Posted by: destroyer | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:12 PM
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That article is weird. Current indie rock has lots of electronic influences; plenty of rhythm and syncopation there.

Sure, if you include bands with rhythm and syncopation as indie rock. But if you don't, then that isn't true.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:12 PM
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Indeed, Jack Rose has covered Blind Willie Johnson. The White Stripes occasionally like to indulge in a little bit of blooz, IIRC. (Not, I admit, terribly syncopated, but neither is "Death Letter Blues" itself, and I'm not sure that black = rhythmic is really an argument he'd want to make explicitly.)


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:12 PM
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Slol just wants the racial higher ground because my pants are nicer.

I'm going to start posting pictures of my trousers to the flickr group.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:13 PM
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For my money, the single best response is here. Short version: SFJ's point only works if you accept a weird, primitivist definition of what constitutes "black" music.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:13 PM
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A depressing factoid from the article:

Jackson's 1982 album "Thriller" is the second-biggest-selling record of all time (after "Eagles: Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975")


Posted by: M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:13 PM
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18: Whoo baby.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:14 PM
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I can sort of see part of what he's getting at. There's a certain kind of backbeat groove that's largely absent from guitar-driven indie/rock music. But if his complaint is basically that modern guitar bands aren't as influenced by funk and blues as they once were, it's not a particularly substantive one.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:14 PM
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Also, there are no more black French people than there were 200 years ago, unless your definition of French people includes black people who live in France.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:15 PM
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This blog entry has the response from a member of the arcade fire:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sashafrerejones/2007/10/thats-all-folks.html

along with this funny mp3:

http://thenewyorker.typepad.com/online__sashafrerejones/files/arcade_fire_key.mp3


Posted by: joeo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:16 PM
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14: slol, sorry, maybe i mistook what you were up to in 2. The "black music is, ceteris paribus, more syncopated" thought is from the Frere-Jones piece, not from me.


Posted by: FL | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:16 PM
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The "black music is, ceteris paribus, more syncopated" thought is from the Frere-Jones piece, not from me.

Right. So maybe I should have said, "earnestly racist."


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:17 PM
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18: Whoo baby.

I didn't say, "from behind."


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:18 PM
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The link in 19 suggests that my parenthetical in 17 might be wrong.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:18 PM
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I hope we can all agree that Can's "Halleluwah" is pretty awesome.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:19 PM
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I can sort of see part of what he's getting at. There's a certain kind of backbeat groove that's largely absent from guitar-driven indie/rock music.

I don't know what the words "backbeat" or "groove" mean, but I note that he doesn't mention Spoon in the article, or the Dismemberment Plan, or Minus the Bear, or the French Kicks, or any of the Spoon ripoff bands that you hear here and there. And that's all within the ever-shrinking niche of strictly guitar bands, not even ones who verge on being so-called dance or techno music, which is easier than ever to do these days. The whole thing is a bunch of tautologies, although it would be an informative read for a New Yorker reader who doesn't know anything about those kids and their music these days.

And one of his examples of a band using "jazz, punk and funk" all at the same time in the good old days is the Minutemen? I don't hear that at all.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:21 PM
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The link in 19 is annoying. I *like* that SFJ reviews pop R&B in the New Yorker; it's refreshing to have someone with egghead cred treat radio pop seriously. And I think he's right, dammit, in terms of *who the audience is*, that Feist is not a "black" artist even if (partly because) she's covering Nina Simone. He's dealing with popular, not absolute ("real") meanings of "black" and "white" music, and while there's definitely a place for pointing out that these associations (black = drums, rap; white = guitars, whiny boys) are awfully broad and overlook a lot of great stuff, there's also a place for recognizing that they do exist and talking about how they play out in popular--not just "popular with the eggheads"--music.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:22 PM
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27: All the better to check out your package with, my dear.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:23 PM
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19: Whoa that's long. And so is the article. I'm still working on reading it, but I'm pretty sure I've seen the core of it argued before by SF-J (perhaps on ILM?).

The gist of the best counterarguments that I've heard is that he's just ignoring everything that does pull heavily from black music. He talks about indie rock, but then discounts anything remotely differing from a raw stereotype of the jangly followers to REM and Pavement (hell, even Pixies had decent syncopation, and try listening to the drum solos in some of Tapes 'n Tapes without hearing some "black" influence) or super-earnest crescendo and ballad groups like The Decemberists and Arcade Fire. He even manages to ignore the big recent hype about super-white indie-rock bands like Vampire Weekend and Islands borrowing West African guitar patterns.

Fuckin' goalpost mover.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:24 PM
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32: I'd always figured you for an ass woman, not a package woman, B.


Posted by: M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:26 PM
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11: See, I think SFG (sort of like ESG! Only not, of course.) is almost getting at something. He could talk more fruitfully about audiences rather than musicians, and maybe talk a little bit about how audiences perceive/constitute themselves along race (and class) lines. I feel like this article is sort of blundering and stumbling around....he's correct that there's something to say about whiteness and indie rock, but what he says isn't it.

11, more specifically: but ESG and Bad Brains are always described as "the black No Wave group" and "the black whatever-BB-was, exactly"...their race is a big part of the narrative about them. It's precisely that they aren't (in the case of ESG) skinny white art students from depressed areas of the UK...It's like people so often qualify Samuel Delany as "the black gay science fiction writer"...he's awesome and all, but people (at least white people, or straight people) can't seem to refer to him without refering to his "Otherness".


Posted by: Frowner | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:27 PM
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And one of his examples of a band using "jazz, punk and funk" all at the same time in the good old days is the Minutemen?

Much better: The Stick Men. Or any no-wave band. The problem, I think, is that SF/J knows that he needs to give New Yorker readers what they want: namely, a steady assurance that they're racist and bad, but not too bad, and he'll show them how to become good, but not so good that he can't point out another delicious failing in another few weeks, and this leads him to make some implausible claims, because he has only one medium in which to accomplish this purpose, and that's writing about pop music that the NYer readers might sort of know about.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:28 PM
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And I think he's right, dammit, in terms of *who the audience is*, that Feist is not a "black" artist even if (partly because) she's covering Nina Simone.

But he's not talking about audiences, he's talking about musicians and borrowings and aspects of the music itself.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:30 PM
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(In the 60s, in terms of who the audience was, Mississippi John Hurt wasn't a "black" artist.)


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:30 PM
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31 would be true if he was complaining about the white music you hear on the mainstream radio, on which there really is a bizarre incongruity between the 75% that is pop and hip-hop music, and the 25% that is Green Day, Nickelback, and Shania Twain. But he isn't, he is complaining about the music that's popular with eggheads. And even on the mainstream radio, it was noted by SFJ himself (in a long review) that Fall Out Boy added all kinds of incongruous elements to their sound on their newest album in an effort to be as black-music-influenced as possible.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:30 PM
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40

Could it be that a whole lot of indie music is made by morose, bookish white guys who don't like to dance? Could that explain the non-"blackness" of the music?

(I owe this insight to my roommate.)


Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:31 PM
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33: you've seen it argued, just as ineptly, but much much more drunkenly, by me!

36: James Chance comes to mind.

I have been upset with S F/J since he admitted to liking Radiohead. Sellout!


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:33 PM
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36: Racist!


Posted by: M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:33 PM
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Could it be that a whole lot of indie music is made by morose, bookish white guys who don't like to dance?

If so, maybe I've found the genre of popular music that's right for me.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:34 PM
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And #5 gets it right as well. Things like that happen constantly, especially in the modern age when you don't have to put a song on an album to have it heard by people. Richard Thompson doing the Britney Spears song. Novi Split, an extremely white, extremely indie, Bright-Eyes-sounding band, covering "Crazy in Love" in what did not sound like an ironic fashion. You can tell that I think this was a total waste of space in which could have been written a much better article.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:34 PM
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Oh yeah M/tch that's what I need


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:34 PM
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Willis' cover of "Word Up" is spectacular, if very white.

Bright Eyes is so awful they make themselves cry.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:35 PM
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Huh, yeah, I think B is right with the general point that somewhere nearby there's an interesting point that SFJ isn't quite getting right.

I enjoyed the original article because I've been listening to the arcade fire a lot (trying to get the band to cover "no cars go" so we can all yell HEY! together) and thinking, hmm, I kind of like this but also I kind of don't, I wonder what bugs me about it, and I think the answer has something to do with what you can't do if you're arcade fire's rhythm section, namely, groove.


Posted by: FL | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:36 PM
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in which could have been written a much better article.

But for that they'd need a much better author.

I liked it better when Alex Ross, for all his own weird views on the subject, wrote about popular as well as relatively unpopular music (of a very constrained sort). At least he didn't come off so hectoring, pompous, and self-involved.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:36 PM
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Yes, but The Arcade Fire are excellent swimmers. But they totally can't dunk! And white bands drive like this, but black bands drive like this.


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:36 PM
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and self-involved.

Even—and here's the trick—when he was writing about himself.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:36 PM
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40: Eh, mythmaking. At least 'round here.


Posted by: Frowner | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:36 PM
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(trying to get the band to cover

Labs has a band? That isn't the local youth orchestra?


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:37 PM
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you've seen it argued, just as ineptly, but much much more drunkenly, by me!

Actually, I hadn't. But thanks! And what were the two videos linked in that post that broke in the meantime?


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:37 PM
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Could it be that a whole lot of indie music is made by morose, bookish white guys who don't like to dance? Could that explain the non-"blackness" of the music?

No, not really, not with the disco-revival that characterizes so much popular music. No one's much gazing at his shoes these days.


Posted by: Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:38 PM
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Uh, I think "Let the Music Play" by Shannon and "Hip Hop Don't Stop" by Man Parrish.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:38 PM
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Another good Can tune: Bring Me Coffee or Tea.

And Holger Czukay's albums with white-as-white-can-be David Sylvian are pretty good, too.

David Sylvian is so white, that when he has an album of his remixed, 50% or more of the remixers are Japanese.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:39 PM
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Have you heard Yeasayer? They are according to reliable polls the next big thing, and they are the worst, really the worst.


Posted by: Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:40 PM
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Those of you unfortunate enough not already to have encountered it may listen to Halleluwah now.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:40 PM
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Are people saying syncopation is primitive? Or James Brown?

Because it isn't. Rhythmically, Mozart = primitive, James Brown = sophisticated.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:41 PM
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34: I'm a give-slol-a-hard-time woman. It amuses me to be inappropriate around the well-mannered (who will, being well-mannered, let me get away with it) as much as it amuses me to be snooty around the down-with-the-gente types who refuse to own their own dinner jackets.

37, 38: I think that's part of his point--that "the audience" in terms of popular, highly commercially successful music, is still largely a white audience that deals in broad racial stereotypes about "whiteness" and "blackness." Or if not *his* point, part of *the* point.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:42 PM
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And that's why he has to traffick in such stereotypes as well! He's only reporting his own experience—as another member of the audience!

I have no use for SF/J.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:43 PM
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Bright Eyes is so awful they make themselves cry.

Bright Eye, on the other hand, provides ogged with his only respite from crying.

Or maybe not.


Posted by: M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:44 PM
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Of course you don't; you're a pedantic musical elitist anti-dancing white boy. I, however, being one of the gente, music-wise, love his stuff.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:44 PM
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No one is saying that, John.


Posted by: FL | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:44 PM
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I'd heard the name Sasha Frere-Jones previously, but if you'd asked me before this thread what he did (or even whether he was a he), I couldn't have even made an educated guess.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:45 PM
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63 to 61, obvs.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:46 PM
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I'm not an elitist.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:46 PM
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31: I *like* that SFJ reviews pop R&B in the New Yorker; it's refreshing to have someone with egghead cred treat radio pop seriously.

Tim needles him a bit in his response, but I don't get the impression that he objects to this on principle. (Mileage varies; I personally find that a lot of "an egghead will now reflect upon R. Kelly"-style criticism reminds me, and not in a good way, of Patrick Bateman's musical exegeses in American Psycho. But that's just me. I don't read SFJ that much as a rule.)

And I think he's right, dammit, in terms of *who the audience is*, that Feist is not a "black" artist even if (partly because) she's covering Nina Simone. He's dealing with popular, not absolute ("real") meanings of "black" and "white" music

Disagree; "popular" vs. "real" meanings just seems like an excuse to me. I see no reason to respect or treat seriously "popular" definitions of black music that don't reflect the realities of the actual music, who it has influenced and how. Indeed, having something interesting to say about the realities rather than the vague popular (mis)conceptions would seem to me to be one of the basic functions of the music critic.

And I'm not sure I understand the objection about who the audience is. Across the board, the "musical miscegenation" debate is about the transmission of "black" music to various kinds of largely-white audiences. Tim is simply pointing out that it's boneheaded to try to limit qualifying influences to blues and funk. AFAICS he's absolutely right.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:47 PM
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65: He's Borat, you dummy.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:47 PM
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67: Ben made a funny!


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:48 PM
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Both white music and black music nowadays has significantly lost a connection to blues music. And for different reasons. He doesn't mention at all that a lot of hip-hop nowadays has little connection to even James Brown or funk grooves because it's based around minimal electronic rhythms in which there's little or no bass, or music that is so incredibly repetitive (like not just a repetitive sample, but a track consisting of the same two seconds over and over, like on the Crank That Soldier Boy song that I don't know how to misspell properly) that a groove never develops. That seems like something that he should also diagnose as a problem, without being provocatively race-conscious. Go ahead, SFJ!


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:48 PM
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Soldier

Soulja.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:49 PM
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I believe "That" is also "Dat". "Boy" might be "Boi", I'm not sure.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:50 PM
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70: So did B. This is getting weird.


Posted by: FL | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:51 PM
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While we're defining whiteness and blackness here, how many people commenting in this thread are actually black?


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:54 PM
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One.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:55 PM
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So let me get this right ... the complaint is, that along with a string section, accordian, quebecois and haitian influences and multilayered precussion & vocals, the arcade fire isn't incorporating enough different musical styles because they haven't used funk beats or blues strucuters (more)?


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:55 PM
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75: 1. But apo totally knows a bunch of black people, I dated a girl from the deep south side for a while, and B is down with the whole rainbow of gente.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 12:56 PM
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But apo totally knows a bunch of black people

I don't just know black people.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:00 PM
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Yes, and on my facebook profile there is a picture of me playing music with a black guy. This gives me "street credibility," I believe is how they say.


Posted by: FL | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:04 PM
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it's boneheaded to try to limit qualifying influences to blues and funk.

In terms of historical fact, yes. In terms of popular racial labels? Blues and funk are "black" music, and guitar rock isn't. And yeah, I know that Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones owe a lot to the blues, but that's not how they are popularly perceived.

Of course you have to keep in mind that my sense of the racial lines of popular music was formed in high school, where the popular Filipino kids listened to R&B and the white geeks listened to Yes, styled themselves as a supressed intellectual elite, and made fun of R&B.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:06 PM
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Someone, probably a black someone but I can't be sure (and I certainly don't want to stereotype), once busted a cap in my ass*. I believe that gives me more street cred' than Labs.

*That is, if my understanding of that phrase is correct.


Posted by: M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:09 PM
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Alex Ross has a new book out.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:09 PM
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M/tch M/lls has been shot?


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:10 PM
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82: What caliber?


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:10 PM
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81: Okay, but that's not even what SFJ is talking about, so now I'm confused.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:11 PM
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According to my Navajo cousin, back in the 60s the Navajo kids listened to Country & Western and the Hopi kids listened to Rock & Roll. At the mixed boarding schools, the kids would constantly fight over which station to tune the radio to.

Hopis also like reggae. They used to have reggae concerts out on the mesas. Maybe they still do.

Conclusion: Navajos are white and Hopis are black.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:11 PM
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maybe the Navajo's liked rock-steady instead.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:12 PM
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In terms of historical fact, yes. In terms of popular racial labels? Blues and funk are "black" music, and guitar rock isn't. And yeah, I know that Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones owe a lot to the blues, but that's not how they are popularly perceived.

WTF? Zep & the Stones, not perceived as owing a lot to the blues?


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:13 PM
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B is just still rankled by her Yes-liking boyfriend. This colors all her opinions.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:14 PM
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I just made delicious guacamole. To get back to avocados for a moment.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:15 PM
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From my ever so vague and mystery-novel derived sense of the opressor/oppressee relations between the two, that doesn't sound entirely insane.

You know what's weird? South Pacific reggae. At least in Samoa, they love it, but they get it really wrong somehow. I'm terribly unmusical, so I don't know what I was picking up about the difference between ordinary reggae and the South Pacific style, but there was something really off about the rhythm. Not unpleasant in itself, but making one shake one's head in a vaguely disturbed fashion.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:15 PM
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89: At a minimum, concede that B has put her finger on something. It used to be that all black music got coded "Blues" or "R&B," and not so with blues-influenced music from white bands. That might not have been true at the point GA came of age, though.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:15 PM
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Conclusion: Navajos are white drinkers and Hopis are black. trippers.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:16 PM
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I feel like none of this can really be resolved until Linus approaches the spotlight and tells us all the true meaning of blackness.


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:17 PM
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96

91: It's traditional to wait for a lull, AWB.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:17 PM
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Wait a second, "busting a cap in someone's ass" involves guns?


Posted by: M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:18 PM
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the true meaning of blackness

So tempting.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:18 PM
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97: Absolutely. Wtf did you think it meant?


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:19 PM
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It used to be that all black music got coded "Blues" or "R&B,"

Or .. jazz? When was this "used to be", anyway? What did these people do with reggae & associates, for instance, or, say, Malian music?


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:20 PM
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Wait a second, "busting a cap in someone's ass" involves guns?

M/tch M/lls: Totally not black.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:20 PM
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95: At the end of the little-known Charlie Brown Kwanzaa special?


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:21 PM
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See, I thought it meant when someone reads over your shoulder on the subway.

I guess your definition does make more sense . . . .


Posted by: M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:21 PM
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M/tch M/lls: Totally not black. absolutely no street cred


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:21 PM
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I guess your definition does make more sense . . . .

M/tch M/lls: Totally not black. absolutely no street cred now he's just trolling us


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:22 PM
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Busting chops, or busting caps!

I'm hardly a music geek, but I felt like the article could be summed up by 'Some contemporary music is boring, and it's because it's not black enough.' Which seemed a little off.


Posted by: Cala | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:23 PM
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86: As usually, I'm sort of taking the general topic of SFJ's article as a jumping-off point to talk about related things.

90: I had two of them, and one was Filipino. Not so much rankled as possibly overly reactive to my own stereotypes a particular kind of geeky priding-oneself-on-not-being-"cool" version of coolness.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:24 PM
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94: Yeah, that sounds about right.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:24 PM
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96: Avocados wait for no lull. When they're ripe, they're ripe.

Also, it wasn't a derailing. I need no advice about mine avocados.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:24 PM
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100: I'm pretty sure there were "Jazz" sections, but some of it definitely went in "R&B": I'm pretty sure that's where I found "Kind of Blue," for example. I'm positive there was no "World Music" section or the like. I don't know where you would have found the reggae (other than your soul, obv.). These would have been chain stores, not the Hornbyesque stores you no doubt frequent.


Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:25 PM
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103: I thought it meant when someone reads over your shoulder on the subway.

However, note that "reading over your shoulder on the subway" is urban slang for "running a train on your shorty."


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:25 PM
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can we also talk about this http://www.break.com/index/nyc-councilman-get-the-f-out.html


Posted by: yoyo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:25 PM
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the little-known Charlie Brown Kwanzaa special

It does exist, but I'm a little hesitant to link it.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:25 PM
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From my ever so vague and mystery-novel derived sense of the opressor/oppressee relations between the two, that doesn't sound entirely insane.

Which is the oppressor and which the oppressee depends on who you talk to, of course. There's a lot of mutual animosity, much of it largely symbolic. The switching the radio back and forth is a good example.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:26 PM
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109: I need no advice about mine avocados.

Famous last words.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:27 PM
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Are people saying syncopation is primitive? Or James Brown?

Because it isn't. Rhythmically, Mozart = primitive, James Brown = sophisticated.

The argument is not that the music is primitive.

The argument is that it makes you feel primitive, because it appeals to our primal, animal nature.

No one could possibly think this is a racist argument.



Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:29 PM
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100: Um, jazz is the music of bohemian eggheads of all colors, and isn't "popular" in the sense of "pop music." Reggae is popular in the US with stoner white hippies, and no one except you even knows what "Malian music" sounds like.

None of these statements are "facts"; they're all broadly true, in terms of popular perception, though.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:29 PM
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Though I would have found it interesting had SFJ just said, ever notice how square Arcade Fire and some other indie bands are? And I would have said, huh, that seems right.


Posted by: FL | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:30 PM
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no one except you even knows what "Malian music" sounds like

Dude, they play Ali Farka Toure in Starbucks.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:30 PM
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112: I love New York.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:31 PM
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119: Where no doubt customers go up to the baristas and say "who is this? It's awfully pretty."

Fuck, I own an Ali Farka Toure cd and until your comment, I wouldn't have said "he's Malian" if you'd held a gun to my head and demanding to know where the man was from.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:34 PM
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107: I'm sort of taking the general topic of SFJ's article as a jumping-off point to talk about related things.

Okay, well, it doesn't get more "black" in popular perception than gospel, and Feist's interpretation of Sealion is fundamentally a gospel track, so even if we were inclined to accept a "popular" definition of black music it would still be wrong to say that tune isn't very obviously in its debt.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:36 PM
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if you'd held a gun to my head

I will never pop a cap in your ass, B.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:36 PM
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121: And, anyway, that isn't authentic Malian music.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:37 PM
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Though I would have found it interesting had SFJ just said, ever notice how square Arcade Fire and some other indie bands are?

Arcade Fire are even, dare I say it, extremely earnest.

The band has released an EP called, and multiple versions of a song with the line, "us kids know", fer chrissakes.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:38 PM
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One of Young-Hae Chang's animations uses Nina Simone's "See-Line Woman" as its soundtrack. I love that song.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:39 PM
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And um, does "street cred" have anything to do with credit limit? Because I'm always getting these letters all the time about how mine is going up and up and I'm all like "that's right, bitches, give me my proper respect."

I'm pretty sure my plastic can bust a cap in Labs' plastics' ass.


Posted by: M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:39 PM
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122: Fair enough, but I don't think that single example means that the general associations he's saying exist are wrong, *as* associations.

123: Good to know. Then again, I didn't think white people did that sort of thing.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:40 PM
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What music is the guy in the middle dancing to?
http://www.intel-dump.com/


Posted by: Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:41 PM
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I will never pop a cap in your ass, B.

For my part, I promise not to read over your shoulder on the subway.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:41 PM
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Too lazy/busy to read the whole thread, but I assume SFJ wrote that piece as part of a theme he's been hitting for a while (Jessica Hopper too, I think), but as some people noted, he's confusing his premises with his conclusions. We cringe when Cocorosie talk about wanting to go to listen to hip-hop without the skeevy black people around not because indie music is soulless but because Cocorosie are the whitest people alive, whiter than Joanna Newsom raised to the Scout Niblett power. There's plenty of dance-y white indie music (Q and Not U and !!! are who I'm thinking of in particular), but if you just listen to freak-folk and twee-pop, then define that as what the white kids play, you are a) lame and b) even whiter than me, King Honky the Pale.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:42 PM
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The party ends with me getting pegged, doesn't it?


Posted by: FL | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:43 PM
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I love that song.

Ben doesn't have any actual black friends, but he likes some of Nina Simone's music, which is almost the same thing.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:43 PM
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I promise not to read over your shoulder on the subway.

Thank god, because I'd be so frightened I'd probably just press the book into your hands and then go write a blog post about being jacked on the subway to assuage my seething white guilt.

The party ends with me getting pegged, doesn't it?

Just like last time, baby.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:46 PM
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133: ?


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:48 PM
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129: Several of them are disturbingly ill-coordinated. Is this a special troop of some kind? I hope not, because I really enjoyed laughing at them.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:49 PM
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M/tch M/lls: Totally not black. absolutely no street cred

But surely I get some street cred for the subway incident? That dude was like totally all up behind and to the left of my grill, y'all.


Posted by: M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:50 PM
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This album by a white musician, reviewed in today's Dusted, is fantastic. "Songs for Pilots" and "Little Infinite Love Songs" especially.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:50 PM
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Be gentle, B.


Posted by: FL | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:53 PM
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Does liking the Magnetic Fields automatically make me a racist?


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:54 PM
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Being racist automatically makes you like the Magnetic Fields.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:55 PM
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139: Always, darling.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:56 PM
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135: I'm pretending that your comment was relevant to the thread as a whole in order to make fun of you.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:57 PM
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You people realize that SFJ has some awfully big shoes to fill? The position of pop music critic at the New Yorker was once filled by none other than Liz W/urtzel. Remarkably, she got that job after she had been fired from the Dallas Morning News for plagiarism--exhibit A in the "failing upward" brief against her.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 1:58 PM
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Black music is great, like Hootie and the Blowfish.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:02 PM
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But no one is greater than Heebie.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:03 PM
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Wait a second, "busting a cap in someone's ass" involves guns?

M/tch M/lls is Peter Sanderson


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:03 PM
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Liz W/urtzel!

Wasn't she the original "bitch"?


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:03 PM
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125: Hanging out with winn for a while at a festival gave me the impression some of this is for show (in both respects). Not that I actually know the guy or anything, but that was the impression.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:03 PM
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But no one is greater than Heebie.

One time. One time, someone was greater than me. But I was having an off day.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:04 PM
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Liz W/urtzel

Oh come on, we're googleproofing the names of nationally-recognized published authors now? The googleproofers have gone too far. I shout in defiance: Elizabeth Wurtzel, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Elizabeth Wurtzel.


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:04 PM
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My mom attended a Nina Simone concert and was really annoyed by how Simone was trying to appeal to the blacks in the audience (the vast majority of the audience) with stereotypes and insults about white people, so she left. This was at Duke University in 1969, so I suppose she should not have been expecting a tea party. But anyway, that's the only thing I know about Nina Simone except for having heard "Mississippi Goddamn" which struck me as an incredibly pretentious and non-danceable song.

Nina Simone: Not black.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:06 PM
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Elizabeth Wurtzel, Elizabeth Wurtzel, Elizabeth Wurtzel.

Oh my God. I don't know if we're going to get Beetlejuice, Hastur, Bloody Mary, the Candyman, or plain ol' Liz Wurtzel, but that's never a good idea.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:06 PM
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HBGB induces her own well ordering.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:07 PM
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"Sea Lion Woman" is not a Nina Simone song, you honkies. And remember back in the day when I went on about how earnest pop music is? By "earnest" I meant "white."


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:07 PM
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Andale, andale, mama, ia, ia, Cthulhu fhtagn


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:07 PM
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But anyway, that's the only thing I know about Nina Simone except for having heard "Mississippi Goddamn" which struck me as an incredibly pretentious and non-danceable song.

Do yourself a favor and listen to her doing "Black is the Color".


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:08 PM
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"Sea Lion Woman" is not a Nina Simone song, you honkies.

No, but she's performed it.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:08 PM
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"Sea Lion Woman" is not a Nina Simone song

But "See-Line Woman" is.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:08 PM
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157: or `lilac wine', especially that damn recording i've only heard once and can't find.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:09 PM
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And remember back in the day when I went on about how earnest pop music is? By "earnest" I meant "white."

Oh, shut it, you great big pansy of a fake Persian. You're the whitest Muslim on the planet.


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:10 PM
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What it is, Mr. Jones?


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:11 PM
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What it is, Mr. Jones?

Bob Dylan: incorrigibly white.


Posted by: strasmangelo jones | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:13 PM
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The googleproofers have gone too far

It's only a matter of time before google comes out with a fuzzy-logic feature that you will turn up google-proofed search results; it would be a fairly trivial technical exercise for them. Then M/tch is going to be in a world of hurt.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:15 PM
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remember back in the day when I went on about how earnest pop music is? By "earnest" I meant "white."

Says the man who likes Journey, for chrissakes.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:16 PM
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144: Knecht, the breadth and depth of your knowledge, both useful and utterly useless, continues to amaze me.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:22 PM
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I find that I never do enjoy the writing or analyses of Mr. Frere-Jones. I thought maybe the problem was New York Times editing (or self-editing), but it seems that it is not.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:32 PM
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His brother is a heck of a typographer, though.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:35 PM
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Who are some good music reviewers? People pretty uniformly trash any person or publication named. (I don't really understand the point of reviewing music, these days - one just needs suggestions without comment, and then the Hype Machine - but still, it might be nice.)


Posted by: destroyer | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:36 PM
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I like the reviews at Dusted.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:40 PM
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Who are some good music reviewers?

I really don't know. One thing the internet was much better for eight years ago than it is now is finding record reviews. Nowadays there are some good bloggers but they're all egotistical.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:40 PM
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166: Thanks, Po-Mo. High-calibre dilettantism is my most salient quality, for sure.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:42 PM
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169: Well, S/FJ is more known as a music pontificator than as a music reviewer, and I'd say that's his main problem.

I actually do find Pitchfork very useful, mostly because they cover such a volume of music and because their reviewer in a few genres have tastes that match my own fairly well. The key is to find reviewers who seem to know an area of music well and who tend to have certain code words or phrases that match your tastes (i.e. when it comes to Pitchfork reviews of semi-experimental stuff, and they describe foregrounded drums as "tribal" in an overall positive review, I will almost certainly enjoy that album).

Basically, if you can find patterns that point you toward good stuff more often than not, they're probably a good reviewer for you.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:43 PM
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People pretty uniformly trash any person or publication named.

That's a key rule of proper rock snobbery, of course.

Far as publications go, I used to be a regular reader of Q and CMJ. I have a pretty good local entertainment weekly as a source of record reviews. Blog aggregators have a curious scattering effect; I can often find good content because of them but don't always remember where specifically I found it. I generally like Stereogum, Pitchfork, Matthew Perpetua's Fluxblog, Palms Out Sounds, Grandgood... there's a lot of them. Hate the Onion A/V Club though.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:48 PM
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http://www.slate.com/id/2176187/ is a pretty good response to Frere-Jones.


Posted by: CG | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:48 PM
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One decent way to find out what's coming out that you might like is to find a store that will email its incoming arrivals, with blurbs or staff-penned reviews. Of course the blurbs can be deceptive and the reviews are calculated to make you want to buy (ie are also deceptive) but at least you'll have some idea what's out there.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:51 PM
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how square Arcade Fire and some other indie bands are?

I remember we had a discussion about syncopation and everyone called me white and I cried.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:56 PM
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everyone called me white and I cried into my cummerbund.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:57 PM
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176 is also true. My favorite indie music store around here puts little blurbs on the front of a lot of the CDs they carry, and their recommendations in some genres are pretty safe bets. They're especially good for some of the local bands that I'd never run into unless I lucked into them opening for someone I know.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 2:58 PM
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I cried into my cummerbund.

I need to get a flat-front cummerbund.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 3:00 PM
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There's a certain kind of backbeat groove that's largely absent from guitar-driven indie/rock music.

That's the downbeat. Backbeat is rock.


Posted by: Michael Vanderwheel, B.A. | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 3:08 PM
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173: I read Pitchfork too, but more as a resource for learning band names and genres than the reviews themselves. I'd love to enjoy a review for its own sake (as I do with some movie reviewers), but there don't seem to be many people who do it well.

Perhaps this is the downside to the internet making music instantly available. Criticism is basically pointless except as pontification, and few people do that well.


Posted by: destroyer | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 3:14 PM
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Skipped most of this thread. This house listened to a Solomon Burke album 4 times today. Course, it was from 2002, so we are not hip, cool, or current.
Or tormented by pretensions and fashion.

29:Can's Halleluwah is indeed awesome, but I think I like Mother Sky better this month.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 4:03 PM
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re: 181

Nope. There's a type of backbeat groove that's common in pre-funk R&B and in most of the early 60s freakbeat and RnB-derived white rock, for example.

re: music criticism. I find a few of the British monthlies are pretty decent -- Word and Uncut are both OK. Paul Morley and John Harris are both consistently interesting, too. Even if I often disagree with them.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 4:20 PM
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This is an aside to most of the discussion of this article, but I think it's kind of illustrative:

I love how he just dismisses Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Like, "Oh, some people thought it was great, but they were wrong." I see. Thanks, Mr. Critic Guy.

I realize that's a big part of the rock snob schtick, and I'm not saying anyone's obliged to think any album is good, but I don't think that you get to assert something contrarian, and then actually use it as a basis for the rest of your argument. For instance: "Debbie Gibson was clearly a genius, which is what makes Britney Spears such an intriguing artist."


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 4:42 PM
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Look, I don't know if this is actually interesting or important, but if you encounter someone who refuses to read anything not written within the last 5 years, it is fair to consider them willfully ignorant.
Or whatever. I get a little of this feeling when reading academics:they deliberately avoid the classics in economic, thinking Smith, Ricardo, Marshall have nothing to offer them, being surpassed by modern geniuses like Mankiw and Kling.

It matters here, because I feel Ezra & MY are deliberately, willfully, obstinately musically illiterate.
With the massive body of musical genius easily available, 50% of what you listen to should be older than you are, and 25% older than a decade. It makes no sense, except a contemptible arrogance, to listen exclusively to current music, Feist is not massively better, does not prove musical progress, than Mahalia Jackson, Etta James, or Mavis Staples.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 4:50 PM
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"But I like Feist better than Etta James."

That's your problem, asshole, not Etta's.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 4:53 PM
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186 is completely wrong. In music, permanent revolution must be our praxis. We should live perpetually in the Year One and listen to nothing that was not released in the last twelve months. Old, unhip people should be permitted to listen to music over nine months old, but roundly mocked for it. It is obvious that liking any current artist entails this view.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:16 PM
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103, 152, and 161 have all made me laugh out loud.

The mp3 linked 24 is really fabulous. I think there's not a whiter thing the Arcade Fire could have done besides mix up their music next to the black people and favored-nation white miscegenators they stole from, and I think they knew it and god bless them.

SFJ's article was not quite right but he's driven his interlocutors to make very thoughtful explanations about what is going on in indie rock. The Slate piece is especially good. And he got me to download a bunch of Mariah Carey a few years ago, for which I am grateful.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:20 PM
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I never listen to anything until two to five years after it comes out. I used to have a friend who always had an ear out for the latest thing, and his heart was always being broken -- for example, by Roberta Flack and George Benson, each of whom went pop/R&B on him (in the limp contemporary sense of "R&B".)


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:22 PM
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186 dsregards just how difficult it is to discover old music. I've had a hard time getting into the Microphones, and Pitchfork called one of their albums the best of the year. But this was in, like, 2002, so they're off the radar.


Posted by: destroyer | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:22 PM
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Latter-day Roberta Flack is truly dreadful, which is too bad.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:24 PM
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I've been through this with my son. Regardless of your tastes, there's some music you like just because it belongs to your time and your set of friends. Some people that's the only music they like, but everone like some music like that.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:25 PM
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I've had a hard time getting into the Microphones, and Pitchfork called one of their albums the best of the year

This is not a coincidence.


Posted by: Matt F | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:26 PM
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Course, it was from 2002

That, however, is a fucking awesome Solomon Burke album.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:29 PM
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Bob, you should check out Bettye LaVette's latest album, if you haven't already.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:30 PM
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It makes no sense, except a contemptible arrogance, to listen exclusively to current music

I listen to alot of older music, but listening to current music makes a certain amount of sense if you like going to see concerts, or like the current styles of music.


Posted by: joeo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:31 PM
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It makes no sense, except a contemptible arrogance, to listen exclusively to current music

Maybe not exclusively, but there's value in being most familiar with the music of artists who are still active and touring. The old stuff is great, but it's exciting to listen to a lot of new, lesser known music, and to go see live shows in small clubs when the bands are on their way up. You can't do that with an artist who's been dead 40 years, great though their recordings may be.


Posted by: Matt F | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:31 PM
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In a way, Roberta Flack seems like the founder of that diva type R&B (Mariah Carey et al.) She had a great classical voice but sang jazz, sort of.

Stevie Wonder's mushiest stuff also was part of the mix. I remember hearing a song of his what had nothing but pretty clouds for a video, and thinking that the song was direted at a very specific kind of person who was not me.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:32 PM
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193 and 190 seem to contradict one another. If you always wait until your music withstands the test of a little time, you will never hear the tune that belongs to your own time. I pity a man who did not hear "Crazy in Love" in the summer of 2003; there is a shrivel in his soul.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:32 PM
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"My time" was about 1960-1972. I wasn't always up to date then, but if something lasted 2 years I would hear it.

Since then I've been pretty much out of time.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:34 PM
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I ran into a guy from around here a few years ago who had played on a bill with Buddy Holly. He's still playing about the same stuff, with a more countryish trend.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:35 PM
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After a moment's thought I don't really agree with 186 at all. There's great stuff in the past waiting for people, but your personal path to the music you love is much more important when it comes to popular music than the ticking off of canonical texts. The greatest hits of any old decade are better than the crap that's on the radio today, but there is no dislodging the emotional connection I have to the crappiest of hair metal balladeers from my preadolescence. I'm still getting into the oldies but goodies, but I wouldn't trade away a minute of "I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore" for all the Etta James in the world, without claiming for an instant that it's somehow better.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:37 PM
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I wouldn't trade away a minute of "I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore" for all the Etta James in the world

Nobody questions Wrongshore's whiteness.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:51 PM
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I wouldn't trade away a minute of "I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore" for all the Etta James in the world

Wrongshore is banned.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:53 PM
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I fucking love Technotronic.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:54 PM
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205: honesty is banned? Lame.

B only listens to the better sort of music, you understand.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 5:57 PM
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there is no dislodging the emotional connection I have to the crappiest of hair metal balladeers from my preadolescence

I remember I was driving through the Midlands of the UK the night before the historic 1997 election that brought Labour and Tony Blair to power. The polls were showing a Labour lead, but there was still some uncertainty, because the Tories had come from behind in the polls to win the previous election.

At that time, the Spice Girls were conquering the charts, and the radio broadcast I was listening to had asked both Blair and John Major what they thought of the Spice Girls.

Blair cleverly pivoted from the question at hand to some disquisition on how creative industries were part of the high-value-added future he envisioned for the UK economy. Major took the question at face value, and without coming out and saying he didn't like the Spice Girls, remarked that most people's musical taste is formed in adolescence and doesn't really evolve much after their 20s.

I remember thinking, "Labour is going to win this one in a landslide."


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:01 PM
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Technotronic and C&C Music Factory seem to be fighting over the exact same piece of real estate in my brain. Is that reasonable?


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:01 PM
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1) The point about concerts & bars has merit, although I am sure there are many venues in DC, and certainly NY/Boston, that play alternative live musics. The choice to see Arcade Fire or Jenny Lewis is a choice, and a decision to not go to a blues, jazz, folk bar or classical recital.

2) The age of the monopoly of AM Top-40 (or FM-Classic rock) setting the Zeitgeist is over. There are so many options, easily exercised, that if you listen to current popular it is because you seek it out, like every other genre. The comparison to reading contemporary lit-fic is apt. As opposed to fifty years ago, the NY Times Bestseller list & the Billboard top 40 are irrelevant to us all.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:03 PM
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207: It's not honesty, it's appalling idiocy. "I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore" objectively sucks, man.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:06 PM
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Nobody questions Wrongshore's whiteness.

It's well advertised. (Mix still available!)


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:07 PM
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B: still fighting her feelings.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:08 PM
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209: I would say so, yes.

210: bob you are being utterly insufferable in this thread. People listen to contemporary music because it speaks to contemporary concerns and is informed by all the history that came before. The way that art reacts to the times, and the times react to art, is one of the most fascinating things about art, unless you've given yourself over completely to sullen curmudgeonliness.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:09 PM
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211: You are ten years old, about to turn eleven. You have been at summer camp with your best friend and his cousin, an older girl who volunteered to kiss you in an evolved game of spin-the-bottle on a mountaintop campout. The three of you have left camp three days early, just as all the I'll-never-forget-yous have begun, because their grandmother has passed away and the three of you must go to her funeral. In the car, in the dark, the radio is playing that song. You are sitting next to her, wondering if she wants to kiss you again, ever.

That's pop music.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:10 PM
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It's not honesty, it's appalling idiocy. "I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore" objectively sucks, man

De gustibus non disputandum est, except when the issue is "I Can't Fight This Feeling" versus "At Last". There is only one correct answer to that question.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:10 PM
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211: I dare you to drop a random 10 in this thread. Everybody likes some music that sucks because it's important to them. Everybody has idiosyncratic responses to music. Do you not have any stupid songs that you love, and will defend to the death, even through the mockery and opprobium of internet nerds? Sad life, if not.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:11 PM
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After reading 215, I am prepared to concede the error of the hastily posted 216.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:12 PM
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215 is so awesome. Yay Wrongshore!


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:12 PM
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"I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore" objectively sucks, man.

Labs and I have discussed this.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:14 PM
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OK, folks. Pony up. What's the most appalling song you're not ashamed to say you love?

I'm going to go with The Hollie's "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother".


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:14 PM
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213: Earlier today I convinced Mr. B. that "You Need a Friend" is, in fact, insufferably schmalzy.

I'm sure I like some cruddy ass songs, but I wouldn't say that I'd value them over the entire corpus of someone who actually doesn't suck, man. If you like cruddy ass songs, the least you can do is be embarrassed about it.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:16 PM
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Cygnus X-1 by Rush.

Most of the ridiculous music I love I refuse to admit is bad.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:17 PM
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RUSH?!? God, no wonder you're defending Wrongshore.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:18 PM
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Anything by makeup era KISS.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:19 PM
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222: so wait, you think that people should be embarrassed about being who they are and liking what they like?


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:19 PM
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I'd love to play the "crappy songs I'm not ashamed of liking" game but I have to take PK to soccer and all the crappy songs I like I am, in fact, ashamed of. I'll have to think about this and get back to you.

I'm sure there are several, mind, and that I'm no better than any of you.

Except for that whole REO Speedwagon/Rush thing, which, well, that's just inexcusable.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:20 PM
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218, 219: Thank you.

Tweety, I'm very digging on the yea mix. And I gave the wha mix to my friend who deserves it.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:20 PM
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226: Noob.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:21 PM
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226: Yes, completely.

No, I think people should just be willing to concede where their own personal foibles are, well, foibles. And then of course we should all be nice about it.

It's the arrogant assertion that one's foibles are, in fact, perfectly justified (or don't exist) that's mockable.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:21 PM
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227: Weeeaaaak!


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:22 PM
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Since cars did not have tape, 8-track, or CD players in my youth I had to listen to Tony Orlando, Bobby Sherman, "The Ballad of the Green Beret" I will be damned if I listen to them now.

To me that defines "pop", and that inescapable mass media no longer exists. Current top-40 or top TV shows are not the same kind of phenomena they were during the 60s. Matt & Ezra do not get Arcade Fire on AM radio.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:23 PM
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231: Guilty as charged.

See? Easy!

TTFN, dahlinks!


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:23 PM
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If you like cruddy ass songs, the least you can do is be embarrassed about it.

Wev, man. What good would that do? Say it loud, I like cruddy-ass songs and I'm proud.

Here's a random ten to stick in your craw:

01. Jewlia Eisenberg - Trilectic - Adir Hu
02. Skygreen Leopards - One Thousand Bird Ceremony - Lost In The Shadow Arms Of Lust
03. Pierre Vervloesem - Rude - Experimental Dentition
04. Bill Frisell - East_West 2: East - Ron Carter
05. Yezda Urfa - Sacred Baboon - 3, Almost 4, 6, Yea
06. Francois Bayle - La Forme du Temps Est un Cercle - Cercles
07. Neung Phak (Mono Pause) - Neung Phak (Mono Pause) - Look Thong Joi
08. Belle & Sebastian - Push Barman To Open Old Wounds - Beautiful
09. Work - Slow Crimes - Flies
10. Buddy Guy - Sweet Tea - It's A Jungle Out There

Yezda Urfa is pretty ridiculous.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:23 PM
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230: I don't see anything arrogant in Wrongshore's assertion. He was honestly expressing his personal preference -- one he acquired for perfectly understandable reasons, which he has expressed -- and you're on a tear to bring him down a notch for it. Let the kid have his hair metal! She was a babe, that girl. He was young!

So not rock 'n roll, B.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:24 PM
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No, I think people should just be willing to concede where their own personal foibles are, well, foibles.

Calling for people to admit that foibles are foibles, and calling for them to be embarrassed over their foibles, are a mite different.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:24 PM
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"I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore" objectively sucks, man.

Somehow I agree with this, but would disagree intensely if the same thing was said about "Time For Me To Fly".

OK, folks. Pony up. What's the most appalling song you're not ashamed to say you love?

Now there's an invitation to all kinds of snobbery. I feel tempted to be the first person who says "Son of a Preacher Man" or something like that, in order to make people wonder exactly how high my standards are and what a wealth of musical taste I must have.

Or I could be the first person to say a great rap song, thus betraying that I think it goes without saying that no rap songs are worth taking seriously and I am being extremely open-minded.

And my honest answer to this a couple years ago was "Do You Know What It Takes" by Robyn, whom I now see with horror is being specifically championed by Pitchfork as actually possessing some merit that can be critically analyzed. So there's no way I can say that without sounding like a Pitchforkoid.

So I'll just say "Lips of an Angel". It does evoke a feeling I once had very accurately.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:24 PM
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What's the most appalling song you're not ashamed to say you love?

Leonard Nimoy's rendition of "If I Were a Carpenter" off the Spaced Out collection.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:25 PM
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I think with pop music especially over other art forms, it's important to validate the part of yourself that responds to things you find objectively bad, whatever that means. I would dig in a lot harder arguing that someone's beloved film or novel was somehow in bad faith than I would on a song.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:26 PM
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Do you not have any stupid songs that you love

I believe I have previously copped to liking Thompson Twins, "Hold Me Now"; Naked Eyes, "Always Something There to Remind Me"; and Howard Jones, "No-one is to Blame."

I believe that definitively dates me.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:26 PM
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And 215 wins the thread, BTW.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:26 PM
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I dare you to drop a random 10 in this thread.

Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys - San Antonio Rose
Buddy Rich - Buddy's Rock
George Jones - A Picture of Me (Without You)
Public Enemy - Black Is Back
Thelonius Monk - Decidedly
Freddie Martin and His Orchestra - Second Hungarian Rhapsody
Bootsy Collins - May the Force Be With You
White Stripes - I Think I Smell a Rat
Eddie Hazel - Unkut Funk
Sam Cooke - No One Can Take Your Place

That shuffle makes my library sound more retro than it really is.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:27 PM
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Actually, "Time for Me to Fly" would be a perfectly plausible answer to 221.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:27 PM
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But "Time For Me To Fly" isn't objectively cruddy. I think it has an honesty to it that "Lips of an Angel" doesn't have, and the words fit the music much better.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:29 PM
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Here, B, is a random 10, and to help you I have specifically marked the tracks that are not embarrassing, whatever you might say:

1. Lemma Demissew - Astawesalehu
2. Jewlia Eisenberg - Meister der Kultur - wow, what are the chances?
3. Vector Lovers - Kissed You By The Fountain
4. CSS - Patins
5. Juiceboxxx - Thunder Jam #3 - NOT EMBARRASSING
6. Instant Funk - I Got My Mind Made Up (You Can Get It Girl) - NOT EMBARRASSING
7. Eddie Kendricks - Day by Day - NOT EMBARRASSING
8. Daft Punk - Rollin' & Scratchin'
9. The Vast Majority - Oceans Apart - NOT EMBARRASSING
10. DJ Eddie Def - Bass Waxin'


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:30 PM
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Pretty much anything by Billy Joel.

And that one which goes "Will you still love me tomorrow?" which by rights I should hate and never be able to listen to because it was playing on a looped advert for weeks in a shop I worked in. But it somehow burnt itself into the "love it" part of my brain by accident.


Posted by: asilon | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:30 PM
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iTunes tells me that I listened to "Life on Mars?" by David Bowie eleven times yesterday.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:31 PM
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I dare you to drop a random 10 in this thread.

And we find that my current musical tastes are pretty embarrassing, too:

Kate - Ben Folds Five
I Wouldn't Believe Your Radio - Stereophonics
I'm the Man - Joe Jackson
The Way - Fastball
Everybody's Everything - Santana
Mighty Love - Todd Rundgren
Two of Us - Aimee Mann & Michael Penn
Girl - Beck
Praise You - Fatboy Slim
Gimme Shelter - The Rolling Stones


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:32 PM
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I've always had a soft spot for "Good King Wenceslas," even though I hear it eight hundred billion times a December in, e.g., malls. These things are inexplicable.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:32 PM
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But "Time For Me To Fly" isn't objectively cruddy

Just keep telling yourself that, Neddie [snicker, snicker].


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:32 PM
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Gimme Shelter - The Rolling Stones

An objectively great song.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:33 PM
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Good meta on 237, Ned.

Random 10:

Silent Systems, New Pornographers
Man Of God, Neil Diamond
If I Can't Have You, Yvonne Elliman (Saturday Night Fever)
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Neutral Milk Hotel
New Routine, Fountains of Wayne
Back That Ass Up, Weird Al Yankovich
Streets of Laredo, Johnny Cash
Don't Be Afraid Of Your Anger, Clem Snide
Straight Out the Jungle, Jungle Brothers
The Village Green Perservation Society, The Kinks

I redacted several songs off the Party Shuffle that were on my computer but I didn't recognize. I have a lot of songs I haven't played. Of those above, the Neutral Milk Hotel is probably my favorite, followed by the Kinks and Clem Snide.

The last one is a good tribute to whiteness.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:33 PM
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Kate - Ben Folds Five

ghgghghgggg


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:35 PM
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OOH! THE STORM IS THREAT'NING! MY VERY LIFE TODAY!

The VGPS is also a great song.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:35 PM
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Wow, that is pretty white, Wrongshore. You be you!


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:35 PM
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6. Instant Funk - I Got My Mind Made Up

I love Instant Funk.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:35 PM
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All my music is on my office computer, so I can't do a meaningful random ten. I'm sure it would be at least as cringeworthy as anyone else's, though.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:36 PM
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Jeez. I should really get one of Julie's CDs. And I should go to my high school reunion next year.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:36 PM
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What's the most appalling song you're not ashamed to say you love?

It's hard to say, since the most unappealing songs that I love are probably ones which would be too "arty" for most people and semi-appreciated by critics, while the absolute pop trash I love tends to have ironic and genuine charms...

Oh fuck it. Here's the answer.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:37 PM
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My iTunes library contains virtually no songs from any of the couple hundred albums I've actually bought, or any of my favorite bands; it's heavily skewed toward things I borrowed from the college radio station, things I downloaded from blogs, and things I got someone to buy from iTunes so that I could make a mix CD of things my mom would like.

So what it gave me was:
1) Ved Buens Ende - "Autumn Leaves"
2) The Slits - "Newtown"
3) Psapp - "Needle and Thread"
4) Junior Kimbrough - "All Night Long" (downloaded from this very blog, I swear it's a coincidence)
5) Neko Case - "South Tacoma Way"
6) Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich - "Hold Tight"
7) Chancellorpink - "Seventy Times Seven"
8) Silver Jews - "There Is A Place"
9) Meco - "Star Wars/Cantina Band Disco"
10) Arctic Monkeys - "The Bad Thing"

Hmmm, I detect a cluster of hipsterisms around the middle there.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:37 PM
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I keep hitting Refresh trying to get a cringeworthy Random Ten, but it turns out I have fucking awesome taste in music.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:37 PM
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I love "El Paso" by Marty Robbins and will sing along to every verse whenever I hear it.


Posted by: Tassled Loafered Leech | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:38 PM
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I keep hitting Refresh trying to get a cringeworthy Random Ten, but it turns out I have fucking awesome taste in music.

I know the feeling, man.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:38 PM
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Ooh! Ooh! I know! You know what crappy song I find totally irresistible despite being bludgeoned with it over and over for years? "Semi-Charmed Life".


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:39 PM
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Can't do a random 10 because I am a Luddite w/r/t digitized music; I have a CD collection, and that's it.

As it happens, I am listening Laura Pausini's Io Canto, which is pretty much lowest common denominator Italian pop music.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:41 PM
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I could also say "Salt Shaker" by the Ying Yang Twins, but since the goal is to be danceable and it succeeds, it isn't objectively bad then, is it?

So 259 gets it right.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:41 PM
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Ooh! Ooh! I know! You know what crappy song I find totally irresistible despite being bludgeoned with it over and over for years? "Semi-Charmed Life".

ME TOO. And it's definitely, totally crappy. It always makes me want to get really high, too.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:42 PM
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I generally don't fight that urge.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:44 PM
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Steve Morgen -Welcome to the Void
Willie Dixon - Hidden Charm
Stevie Wonder - Seems So Long
Renaissance - Sounds of the Sea
Doug Sahm - Your Friends
Gene Parsons - Monument
May Blitz - Dreaming
Loot - Baby Come Closer
The Litter - Here I Go Again
Colin Hare - Alice
Savoy Brown - Louisiana Blues

But mine is a subtler nostalgia, since 99% of what I listen to now, though from the time of my youth, was music I did not hear at the time. Never making the radio or widely distributed, it may be the equivalent of indie rock today. Tho if there is a Zeitgeist that can be said to contain the Seeds and Gram Parsons & Ash Ra Tempel, I suppose I wallow in the nostalgia for it.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:44 PM
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261, 263: ain't that the truth.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:44 PM
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It always makes me want to get really high, too

I can't listen to Traffic's "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" without scraping around in the secret drawer.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:45 PM
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"Semi-Charmed Life" is in that rare category of songs that I've heard so many times that if pressed to sing the lyrics without hearing the song, I could even sing the words that are indecipherable.

"And it seem to you like the close to the birth
Drop another line like a dodo with a curse
Come and like a freak show take the stage
We give in the game she play she play"

But it's not objectively bad either.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:45 PM
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Paging through I did manage to find a Charo track I'm somewhat embarrassed to own. Some of the more low-rent Kool Keith I have is also sort of obnoxious and unfortunate.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:46 PM
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BTW, I wish I had a way to market my ability to identify popular songs that are not going to have any lasting value at all and will be forgotten even by connoisseurs of bad songs, nostalgia, et al. - just totally forgotten. Here's one I got right, and here's another one. And these songs were EVERYWHERE in their time.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:48 PM
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274 - The first link was supposed to go here, not to the New York Review of Books.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:49 PM
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Random Ten:

Sympathy for the Devil - Rolling Stones
Evil - Ladytron
Teen Titans Theme - Puffy AmiYumi
Alala - CSS
Frank - Brendan McLeod (spoken word)
C.R.E.A.M. - Wu-Tang Clan
Up the River - Matthew Friedburger
Eternal Flame - Joan as Police Woman
My My - M.I.A.
It's Too Late - The Streets

Hey, speaking of Sifu's mixes, you know what's totally awesome on the Wha mix? It's all great -- "Hooker Leg" was my Halloween anthem -- but the "Meat Supply" track is truly beautiful. And the Yea mix was sweet, some fabulous afrobeat on there.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:49 PM
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Po-Mo's link is awesome, especially after the pained setup.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:50 PM
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I should admit, of course, that if you don't care for Magma, for instance, you will definitely find most of their output extremely ridiculous. But that is only because they have not won you over with their mighty might yet.

Zäin! Zäin! Zäin! Zäin! Zäin! Zäin! Ewëhn dëh Slakëhnzaïn!


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:50 PM
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But it's not objectively bad either.

Except for the part where the guy performing it can't actually sing. He can't not-sing as drastically as most of the indie rock I've been subjected to, but he still can't hit his freaking note half the time.

Submitted: that the difference between "black" music and "indie" white music lies squarely in relative church attendence.


Posted by: Lunar Rockette | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:51 PM
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Except for the part where the guy performing it can't actually sing. He can't not-sing as drastically as most of the indie rock I've been subjected to, but he still can't hit his freaking note half the time.

You know, this is the first time anyone in this thread has mentioned "singing ability" as a criterion for whether music is good or not.


Posted by: Cryptic | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:52 PM
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279: counterexample, sufjan stevens

actually I agree that there is some tone-deaf stuff going on, some of that is intentional, inhereted from punk.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:53 PM
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280: well, then Zeppelin would be right out, wouldn't it?


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:54 PM
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Personally, if you asked me whether someone is hitting his notes or not, I wouldn't have any idea. Even while listening to the song.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:55 PM
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275: In some cases the forgetting is a form of self-defense. Curse you for linking that damnable Jimmy Ray song.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:55 PM
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Well, we're talking about whether the song is "objectively" bad or not, right? Hitting or missing the note one is attempting to sing is as close to an "objective" judgement as you're going to come for pop music, using "pop" in the sense where it includes indie, country, R&B, etc.


Posted by: Lunar Rockette | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:56 PM
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282: Are you saying that Robert Plant can sing, but Zeppelin is still bad?


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:56 PM
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Hitting or missing the note one is attempting to sing is as close to an "objective" judgement as you're going to come for pop music, using "pop" in the sense where it includes indie, country, R&B, etc.

True if you remove the word "indie", that word denoting, if it denotes anything, a genre in which they do not attempt to hit their notes and therefore cannot be judged on their success or failure in doing so.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:57 PM
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276: dude we are so musical buddies now.

The whole album that "Meat Supply" is off of (Tourrorist by Porest) is just completely demented. Definitely recommended if you liked that one.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:58 PM
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286: I'm suggesting that Robert Plant sings every single song in the wrong key.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:58 PM
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285: Each subgroup has different rules about how well you need to hit the notes. The rules are relaxed for white men. Liz Phair was pretty revolutionary by singing with as little (narrowly defined) proficiency as Dylan or Lou Reed.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:58 PM
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281: Yeah, I know. It still sucks and is painful to listen to as music, especially when most of the indie stuff of punk descent is not even remotely political or even couched in the same kind of DIY spirit - there's nothing there except hipster ear-pain chicken.


Posted by: Lunar Rockette | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:59 PM
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285: problem with that is the `is attempting'. plenty of objectively good pop songs have dodgy tuning. It can even be a liability in the genre, e.g. neko case (who has excellent control) can fail into overly-technical recordings.


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 6:59 PM
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276: That Joan as Police Woman track is one of my recent favorites.

289 is news to me. Got an indicting example?


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:00 PM
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God whatserface with the harp that everybody loves couldn't sing her way out of a Twinkie Wrapper. Twee Crap and the Shrieking Horror, is more like it.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:00 PM
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291: well,yeah. done badly it sucks. Of course, that can be said of lots of stuff.

90% of everything is crap. Which includes `white' & `black' music, natch.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:00 PM
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293: just go listen to any Zeppelin right now. You'll see what I mean, and I'll have ruined it for you forever. You'll see.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:01 PM
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294: joanna newsom. well, at least that's what she's going for. I actually suspect she could shred a twinkie wrapper at 20 paces. I guess that's not the same thing


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:02 PM
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297: that's the one! Really puts the harp in harpy, she does.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:03 PM
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Submitted: that the difference between "black" music and "indie" white music lies squarely in relative church attendence.

Do you figure 50 Cent is National Baptist Convention, USA, or more Church of God in Christ?


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:03 PM
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I loathe Joanna Newsom. Not, obviously, that my opinion counts for much today.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:04 PM
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I'm listening to "What Is And What Should Never Be". Something seems off, but it could be that iTunes automatically downloaded a Dread Zeppelin album cover for the song.

Not ruined, anyhow.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:04 PM
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Whatsherface with the harp is also loathed by actual harpists who've had more training than like a few weeks of basic scales, which I take it on their authority is about the level of her "skillz".

Hipster ear-pain chicken.


Posted by: Lunar Rockette | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:04 PM
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292 is right. How do you know that the singer's attempting to hit that note and failing?


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:05 PM
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301: think to yourself "hm, is that note he's singing kind of flat?" at any given point in any track.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:06 PM
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Maybe Page is sharp?


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:07 PM
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299: Incidentally, according to KRS-One 50 Cent is the future of hip-hop.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:07 PM
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I think Newsom attended Mills. If that's the case, I would imagine her harp skills are not completely shabby. But then maybe she left early. I don't know. I kind of like Ys, though I loathed her before on the basis of a concert where I was the only one, seemingly, who didn't like her. (She was opening for the Incredible String Band, playing after the much, much, much better Josephine Foster.)


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:07 PM
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Ooo, yeah. Ah well. Back to Fountains of Wayne.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:07 PM
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Ya know, I think Tweety is right about this "you be you" thing. When I think about what's embarrassing about the music I like, it's because it's exactly the music someone like me *would* like. Why is that embarrassing? Because being someone like me is embarrassing, is why. Boy, is that messed up.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:09 PM
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I'm suggesting that Robert Plant sings every single song in the wrong key

Yeah? And what of it? Kandinsky painted the horse blue.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:10 PM
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I'm sure B. likes mostly really crappy songs, just not any of the crappy songs anyone else likes.

So wait, you think that people should be embarrassed about being who they are and liking what they like?

Yes. Maybe it's genetic, maybe it's a lifestyle choice, but regardless -- it's wrong and against God's law.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:12 PM
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297, meet 131.

My party shuffle 10:
1. "Gold Digger", Kayne West
2. "Roller Queen", Naked Raygun
3. "Stop the Record", Mr. Lif
4. "Spit-Bite", Jawbox
5. "Take the Picture Off", Rjd2
6. "Miss June '75", the Brian Jonestown Massacre
7. "Little Drummer Boy", Low (now seasonally appropriate! Only 55 shopping days to Christmas!)
8. "Breakin' the Law", the New Pornographers
9. "End of You", Sleater-Kinney
10. "Going to Cleveland", the Mountain Goats

I can try again to see if I can get some embarrassing heavy metal to come up. I listened to Isis's Oceanic and some Motorhead today. Also the Pipettes and "Johnny Are You Queer" about three times.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:13 PM
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309: A little guilt is good as a way of broadening your horizons. Left unchecked, I tend to buy pretty dorky, white male pop; every once in a while, I deliberately buy or steal something outside the box, and although my ten didn't show it, I actually have some good rare old soul and African funk and outside-my-box dance-pop that gets into heavy rotation.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:15 PM
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312: I love the Low Christmas album. Did any of you ever used to read The War Against Silence? I loved that guy.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:16 PM
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Another shuffle and a Bettye Swan song and Crime's "Baby You're So Repulsive" came up. I miss OiNK.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:17 PM
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Snark in 310 hereby retracted. More careful reading reveals that he and I are on the same side w/r/t Led Zep.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:17 PM
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262: Rosa's Cantina is a real place and it still exists. I've been told it's not a tourist trap either, to the point that some people are afraid to go there.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:17 PM
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You're a little quick on the snark trigger today, KR.

Am currently listening to Jorge Ben Jor's "Taj Mahal", which I downloaded after SFJ pointed out that it was the source of Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy". Great song.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:19 PM
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Yes. Maybe it's genetic, maybe it's a lifestyle choice, but regardless -- it's wrong and against God's law.

As Gaddis said of Thomas Eigen: "He starts out being quite a good fellow who has had bad luck, but as it went on he became very unpleasant, and finally by the end of the novel he was thoroughly unpleasant, thoroughly, because this is the way he developed in the novel. I gave up identifying with him, and started to hold him at arm's length. But I saw this really was who the man was; he was not just a man who had had bad luck, but his embittered state had turned him into a really, not anybody you'd want to know."


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:21 PM
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Splash -Can
Do you see my love -junior Walker and The All-Stars
Fever - Jingo
O Reino Encantado Do Amor -Jorge Ben
(I Believe In) Travellin' Light - Belle & Sebastian
Slide- Luna
I Want You Back -The Hoodoo Gurus
kylma massa -Pan sonic
Taj Mahal / Fio Maravilha / Pais Tropical- Jorge Ben
Day's -Kirsty McColl


Posted by: joeo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:21 PM
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Did any of you ever used to read The War Against Silence? I loved that guy.

I did! That's how I found out about Scott Walker.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:22 PM
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Am currently listening to joeo's iTunes, apparently.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:22 PM
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321: ... whom I confuse for Scott Miller of The Loud Family, which I got from TWAS.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:23 PM
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Music I like which not only isn't very good, but also against my personal principles and not even generational for me: Stevie Nicks on "Rumours".

Music I like that I think is good, but others often don't: Zep, as discussed here.

Music I like that I admit is probably not so good: The Doors; Disraeli Gears (Cream).


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:24 PM
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"Trampled Underfoot" is one of the best songs ever.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:25 PM
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Rosa's Cantina

Past the abandoned steel mills and brown rocky hills, a $12 cab ride outside of El Paso proper, Rosa's Cantina shared a dead strip of hot, paved road with a Laundromat, a Mexican restaurant, and a liquor store. Across the street, two railroad tracks and a stone wall were all that separated Rosa's from the brown and muddy Rio Grande and the undeveloped ruggedness of New Mexico beyond.
Rosa's Cantina itself looked hopelessly dilapidated, a crumbling stone façade with one no-frills white-and-red sign above the door. Coming inside out of the heat and sun, I couldn't see much at first in Rosa's, and all I could hear was the thrumming rattle of an old air conditioner. There was a TV on in the back of the room and some lights in the ceiling turned on really low, by which I could sketch out the red-felt pool table, the wraparound bar, and the 20 or so tables with red-and-white checkered plastic cloths.

Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:30 PM
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Zep sucks.

I just read 3/4 of the SFJ article. It's like reading restaurant reviews of someone who only likes food if it has ketchup on it. Every restaurant has the same problem: "needs more ketchup."


Posted by: | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:30 PM
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Zep-haters are always too cowardly to identify themselves.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:32 PM
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Music I like which not only isn't very good, but also against my personal principles and not even generational for me: Stevie Nicks on "Rumours".

I propose a general dispensation to like anything by Stevie Nicks: good, bad, doesn't matter, it's all OK to like. Especially "Edge of Seventeen". Emerson, you can go to sleep at peace with yourself.

You're a little quick on the snark trigger today, KR.

Hey, it was Led Fuckin' Zep we were talking about there. That got my back up worse than when I thought someone was going to start in on John Kenneth Galbraith the other day.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:34 PM
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Random 10 [best I could, I don't use iTunes so just randomized all tracks in foobar2000 and took the first 10].

Charles Rosen - Goldberg Variations: Variation 24
Frank Sinatra - Where or When
The Strokes - The Modern Age
Bobby Bland - Yolanda
Ian Dury and the Blockheads - There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards
Goldfrapp - Fly Me Away
Prince - Take Me With U
Nat King Cole Trio - Lament in Chords
Idel Biret - Chopin Prelude Op 28/15 'Raindrop'
Bobby Womack & Peace - Do It Right


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:35 PM
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Galbraith kind of phoned in his cover of "Nobody's Fault but Mine."


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:36 PM
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Stevie aged badly, I think, but she was the minx of minxes.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:36 PM
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Especially "Edge of Seventeen"

Oh man I love this song so much. I couldn't imagine finding that embarrassing.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:36 PM
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2 small blegs:

1. If anyone has favorite songs that they know live on eMusic, let me know and I will download them at your recommendation. I have the super cheapo 15/month plan, and whenever I look for stuff, it's not there.

2. I download far more music than I listen to, and it all just gets slopped into "Radio Wrongshore", a humming background mash that doesn't deliver me the beautiful surprises that having to hunt for songs used to. Anyone have a coping mechanism for this disease?


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:37 PM
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331: Yeah, but his duet of "We're Gonna Hold On" with Tammy Wynette will go down in country music history.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:37 PM
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She also wrote lyrics that made Arthur Lee, Bob Dylan, and Kurt Cobain seem linear left-brained types. Not good or interesting lyrics, just very non-linear lyrics.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:37 PM
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I am not a fan of post-Peter Green Fleetwood Mac but I have a friend who absolutely adores that line-up [with Buckingham and Nicks] and whose passion for them is kind of infectious.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:39 PM
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I really liked Mayall's Bluesbreakers but that's a whole different universe from Stevie Nicks. Just goes to show that The Drummer and The Bass Player, while necessary for a good band, seldom shape it.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:42 PM
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Question, probably for Tweety: In high school, a friend claimed that Wire had recorded a soundtrack for one of the Halloween soundtracks that John Carpenter had found too scary, supposedly saying, "it made my bowels churn." Have you ever heard anything like this? Am I right to think you like Wire?


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:47 PM
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Just goes to show that The Drummer and The Bass Player, while necessary for a good band, seldom shape it.

Tell that to the Bruford/Wetton lineup of King Crimson, bitch.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:47 PM
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Wire! Wire! Who does not like Wire?


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:48 PM
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Question, probably for Tweety: In high school, a friend claimed that Wire had recorded a soundtrack for one of the Halloween soundtracks that John Carpenter had found too scary, supposedly saying, "it made my bowels churn." Have you ever heard anything like this? Am I right to think you like Wire?

This *sounds* like Coil's Unreleased Theme for "Hellraiser", which has a similar-ish blurb on it.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:49 PM
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Speaking of wonderful alcoholics, McVie and Fleetwood were both kicked out of Mayall's band for drunkenness, way back in 1967. HThey were still drunks when Rumours was done. I didn't research the Wiki further.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:50 PM
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339: I have not heard of that, but it sounds awesome.

340: or James Brown, for fuck's sake.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:50 PM
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I have that Coil album somewhere, although I don't think I ever ripped it to MP3. Coil and the Hafler Trio are not so friendly with the party shuffle.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:51 PM
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Silent Systems, New Pornographers

Wrongshore, what's this from, and why don't I seem to have it?

Here's a random ten:

Feel Good Inc. (Album Crossfade) - Gorillaz
Let's Get It On - Marvin Gaye
You Turn Me On I'm A Radio - Joni Mitchell
It's Gotta Be You - Backstreet Boys
Damned Ladies - Rufus Wainwright
Pop - The Jabberwocks
Fell in Love With a Girl - The White Stripes
The Mustard - Buffy the Vampire Slayer Cast
Full Moon, Empty Heart - Belly
Fascination Street - The Cure
Shane - Liz Phair

Huh. Let's just pretend that fourth one never happened, shall we?


Posted by: mrh | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:51 PM
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Ha, Wire vs. Coil (and Halloween vs. Hellraiser). I did think the idea of Wire doing music for a John Carpenter movie was a touch surprising.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:51 PM
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I think 342 is right: The only group I've heard on disc whose records I've taken off because they made my bowels churn. - Clive Barker


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:51 PM
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"Seldom" certainly allows for King Crimson.

Until further notice I am willing to go on record as saying that King Crimson is perhaps the seldomest band ever.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:52 PM
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346: I joined the special New Pornographers club, and they sent it to me. Would you like it?


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:53 PM
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Wrongshore,

Here are some artists for which I vouch some of whose stuff is on emusic:

Bob Drake
4 Corners
Aki Peltonen
Assif Tsahar
Basil Kirchin (totally weird great stuff, read the review on dusted)
Don Cherry & Krzysztof Penderecki
Harry Taussig
Maher Shalal Hash Baz
Kampec Dolores
Nels Cline
Nels Cline, Andrea Parkins, Tom Rainey
Steuart Liebig
Spaceways, Inc.
The Mountain Goats
The Golden Palominos
Last Exit
Henry Kaiser (get "Nostalgia for Infinity").


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:53 PM
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James Brown is hardly seldom at all, but his various bands with the various rhythm sections were all extremely James Brownish.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:54 PM
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Party shuffle sends a Hovercraft/the Who/Jurassic 5 block. Could that be improved by Coil's "The Anal Staircase"? I turn to w-lfs-n for expert advice.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:54 PM
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I joined the special New Pornographers club, and they sent it to me. Would you like it?

If there's a somewhat masculine way to jump up and down while squealing like a girl, kindly imagine that I'm doing it.

My email is matt at unlikelywords.com. Eeeeee!


Posted by: mrh | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:56 PM
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Oi, it's weird pulling a random 10 out of a 12,000+ track library. So much that feels like sampling error. I finally had to force myself to close my eyes, skip forward a few times, and take the next ten tracks that iTunes random would pull up.

Mars - "Tunnel" (from No New York)
Soulja Boy - "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" (from souljaboytellem.com, I shit you not. That's the album name) (Take that, Cryptic Ned!)
Explosions in the Sky - "First Breath After Coma" (from The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place)
Mo-Dettes - "White Mice" (from Rough Trade: Post-Punk 01) (fucking awesome)
Nine Inch Nails - "Mr. Self Destruct" (from The Downward Spiral)
Datarock - "The Most Beautiful Girl" (from Datarock Datarock)
Radio 4 - "Caroline" (from Dance to the Underground EP)
RJD2 - "Kill 'Em All Remix" (from In Rare Form: Unreleased Instrumentals)
The Jimi Hendrix Experience - "I Don't Live Today" (from Are You Experienced?)
Queens of the Stone Age - "Do It Again" (from Songs for the Deaf)

Oddly unembarrassing and accessible. This list almost certainly overstates my taste.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:57 PM
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I should be writing an essay!

Coil's cover of Leonard Cohen's "Who By Fire" is very good, if you like that sort of thing.

Ahleuchatistas "If, Whenever" -> Forever Einstein "Curly, Get the Ladder!" works extremely well, though probably not for a party.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 7:57 PM
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You might be able to swing Coil - "The First Five Minutes After Death" -> The Who - "Baba O'Riley" if you fade things right.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:00 PM
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Sez Wikipedia: Hovercraft even opened for classic rockers The Who on a short series of stadium concerts in the U.S. Northwest in late 1996.

Party Shuffle is wise. (I only saw Hovercraft once, but they blew. my. mind. I know they played Terrastock Providence, but I didn't go for some reason.) Fans of Detroit space rock or somewhat experimental-y postrock stuff are advised to see what they can find in this sad post-OiNK world.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:01 PM
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You gotta keep rubbing it in, snark? Alas, poor OiNK, I knew him well.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:02 PM
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in this sad post-OiNK world

Tell me about it. I still weep into my pillow some nights.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:03 PM
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I can help you procrastinate, ben. I'm going on a 351-based spree. Any more specific track recs?


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:04 PM
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Stevie aged badly, I think, but she was the minx of minxes.

I don't think she's aged all that badly, especially given all the cocaine use. It's just that her look (all fey and gypsy-like) doesn't age especially well.


Posted by: Invisible Adjunct | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:08 PM
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If anyone other than Wrongshore wants to hear Coil's "Hellraiser Theme", pipe up.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:09 PM
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Any more specific track recs?

Get the whole album or FOAD.

363: Me, sir!


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:11 PM
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OK, folks. Pony up. What's the most appalling song you're not ashamed to say you love?

As someone said upthread, "The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys" is great. Let's see, also Steve Winwood's "Back in the HIgh Life" and "Higher Love"--really I like that whole album. Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love." "Safety Dance" is a favorite. So is the Joan Baez Christmas album Noel, dammit, even though Mr. B. can't stand it. Oh, and Carole King's "I Feel the Earth Move."

Random 10:
Lily Allen's "Everything's Just Wonderful"
Kim Nalley, "My Baby Just Cares for Me"
Sharon Jones, "Give me a Chance"
Al Green, "I Gotta Be More"
Abbey Lincoln, "I'm Not Supposed to know"
Diana Stabel, "My Funny Valentine"
Ben Watt, "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go"
"Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride" from Lilo and Stitch
The Beach Boys "Surfin Safari"
War, "Low Rider" (which I also completely love)


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:12 PM
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354: Keep jumping and squealing, mrh. I've sent a file, but my mail program is being fussy. buyearlygetnow.com has all the B-sides and stuff.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:12 PM
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363: Yes, please.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:13 PM
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Preferred email address, w-lfs-n?


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:14 PM
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363: Definitely.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:17 PM
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Just upload that business, sn-out.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:18 PM
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Is there a WASTE group (the filesharing app, not the w-lfs-n blog) or anything for Unfogged? I never got it working on my Mac, but maybe it's better now. I've just uploaded the one track, but I could put the EP on SendSpace or something.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:19 PM
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Aight, gimme a minute.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:19 PM
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Random Ten:

Free Man in Paris, Joni Mitchell, Court and Spark
Lady Day and John Coltrane, Gil Scott-Heron, (mix)
Caroline Says II, Lou Reed, Berlin
Oppenheimer, Old 97's, Fight Songs
Boogie On Reggae Woman, Stevie Wonder, Fulfillingness' First Finale
Need You Around, Smoking Popes, At Metro
Early To Bed, Morphine, Like Swimming
Maow Maow, The Puta-pons, Return to Zero
Kill Me in My Sleep, Chad VanGaalen, Infiniheart
The Childcatcher, Patrick Wolf, Lycanthropy

Why are we doing this? Humiliation?


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:20 PM
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Why are we doing this? Humiliation?

I find it's a good way to remind myself of bands I've forgotten about or haven't listened to in a while.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:21 PM
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SFJ wrote that piece as part of a theme he's been hitting for a while (Jessica Hopper too, I think)

*Shudder*

Wait, she doesn't comment here, does she? I've been dubious about Frere-Jones for awhile, but if he's making common cause with la Hopper, that only confirms my most dire suspicions.


Posted by: minneapolitan | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:23 PM
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I'm still pushing Miranda Lambert of the weird lyrics:

Toller and Casie broke up,
it ended pretty quietly,
we hear he was caught redhanded with her momma,
but that's just what they let us all believe.

("Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town" from "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend")


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:24 PM
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What's really humiliating is my "Top 25 Most Played" list. One of my exes assumed my "Most Played" would make good music during dinner. We were both horrified and I made him let me turn it off.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:24 PM
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377: list.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:25 PM
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Emphatically, no.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:25 PM
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Two of my top 25 most played are things I made. Now that is embarrassing.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:25 PM
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379: geez AWB why won't you ever share anything about yourself?


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:26 PM
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AWB is a poopyface.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:26 PM
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Everyone has their limits.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:26 PM
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Some of this is the result of wonkiness in the program tracking these things, some of it is the result of not turning that off when making mixes of planning radio shows, a process during which I listen to songs over and over again, especially the endings and beginnings:

25 MOST PLAYED SONGS
01. "Blue" Gene Tyranny - Out of the Blue - Next Time Might Be Your Time (11)
02. Greg Davis & Sebastan Roux - Paquet Surprise - Daybreak (11)
03. Dana Falconberry - Paper Sailboat - Paper Sailboat (10)
04. "Blue" Gene Tyranny - Out of the Blue - Leading a Double Life (10)
05. Sonore - No One Ever Works Alone - Blessed Assurance, Uninsured (10)
06. Cast King - Saw Mill Man - Saw Mill Man (10)
07. Meg Baird - Dear Companion - Waltze of the Tennis Players (9)
08. Cul de Sac - ECIM - Stranger at Coney Island (9)
09. Peeping Tom - Peeping Tom - Sucker (feat. Norah Jones) (8)
10. Magic City (Michael Chorney) - June Book - We're Living in the Space Age (8)
11. Jazzfinger - Slowed by the Grace of Water - New Identity Not Needed (8)
12. Zs - Arms - Nobody Wants To Be Had (8)
13. Feathers - Something's Wrong with Feathers - Tiny Lights (8)
14. Nurse With Wound & Aranos - Santoor Lena Bicycle - Two From Half's Be Cracked (8)
15. John Hollenbeck - No Images - No Images (8)
16. Okkervil River - The Stage Names - Plus Ones (7)
17. Blue Cranes - Lift Music! Flown Music! - Dear Howard (7)
18. Tammen_Harth_Dahlgren_Rosen - Expedition - Retained Notions of Speed and Purpose (7)
19. Alasdair Roberts - The Amber Gatherers - I Have A Charm (7)
20. Otomo Yoshihide NJQ - ONJQ Live - Eureka (7)
21. Decemberists - Picaresque - The Mariner's Revenge Song (7)
22. Sun City Girls - 330,003 Crossdressers From Beyond the Rig Veda - Cruel and Thin (7)
23. Krakatau - Volition - Little Big Horn (7)
24. Jewlia Eisenberg - Trilectic - The Moon and Asja (7)
25. Mark Dresser - Banquet - Loss of the Innocents (7)


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:27 PM
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Ah well. Must FOAD for the most part. Got all of "Actions" by Cherry & KP. Which Nels Cline would you recommend? On the sweeter side, perhaps.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:27 PM
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385 to 364.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:28 PM
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375: Far as I know, they're friends and he encouraged her to blog.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:29 PM
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On the sweeter side, perhaps.

The last track of the new Nels Cline Singers album is pretty great. I can't remember if they have it or what it's called.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:29 PM
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I made him let me

That's an interesting locution, AWB.


Posted by: Invisible Adjunct | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:29 PM
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Huh, my top 25 most played is pretty much my favorite songs from 12-18 months ago. I guess the newer stuff hasn't gotten quite as much heavy play.


Posted by: mrh | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:30 PM
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I post a song I made for you nice people! "Sex Pro Jet Arp" yes is #9 on most-play-list.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:34 PM
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389: It was that kind of relationship. He wanted the appearance of control, but didn't know what to do with it when he got it.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:35 PM
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No Basta Rezar, Los Guaraguao (97 - I left it on all day)
I Feel So Good, Richard Thompson (46)
Bang, Bang, Nancy Sinatra (44)
If You Fall, Azure Ray (43)
Comeback (Light Therapy), Josh Rouse (41)
Sea of Heat, The negro Problem (41)
How Good it Could Be, The 88 (41)
Aguas De Marco, Jobim (40)
Paint It Black, Fennesz (40)
Waters of March, Byrne & Monte (38)
Herbert Missing, Fennesz (36)
Screenwriter's Blues, Soul Coughing (34)
No More Love Songs, Lloyd Cole (33)
Clean Needle, Franklin Bruno (32)
Long Distance Call, Phoenix (32)
When The Stars Go Blue, Ryan Adams (32)
Baby, Jennifer Nash (31)
Stuck In The Middle, Mika (30)
Naked Man, Randy Newman (30)
Every Breath You Take, Rita Lee (30)
Whenever I Fall, Crowded House (28)
Big Girl [You Are Beautiful], Mika (28)
Beautiful, Carole King (27)
Exercise, Clem Snide (27)
(Manifest), Weakerthans (26)
made in hong kong, Fennesz (26)
Love Has No Pride, Jane Monheit (26)
Patsy Cline, Jenny Toomey (26)
Pledge of Allegiance, Louis XIV (25)
Autumn, Mia Doi Todd (25)
Rollerskate, Call and Response, (24)
Landslide Baby, Beulah (23)
You're The Top, Cole Porter (23)
Everybody Knows (Except You), The Divine Comedy (23)
Beautiful Right Now, Franklin Bruno (23)

I think the Fennesz was another one where I left a loop on for a long time.

BTW am really enjoying Nostalgia for Infinity.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:37 PM
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Coil fans, prepare to be bowel-churned.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:38 PM
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I've been thinking of not-good-for-dinner music:

White Light, White heat, Velvet Underground
Bartok, 5th String Quartet, first movement
Inna Gadda da Vida
Thank you for letting me be mice elf, Sly Stone
No tolerance for silence, Pat Metheny
Teen Angel / Tell Laura I Love Her / Patches / Dead Man's Curve .... (dead teenage medley)
Penderecki, St. Like Passion


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:39 PM
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I am glad you like the Kaiser, Wrongshore.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:40 PM
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I once had several covers of Inna Gadda da Vida. One was by some death metal band. It was hilarious.

Oh, another song I am not ashamed of loving is "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." I used to have lots of different covers of that, too.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:43 PM
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Oh, 88 Lines About 44 Women. That's a song I like that for all I know is shit, but I don't care.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:44 PM
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I am not ashamed of loving "A Sailor's Life".


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:44 PM
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"Songs to Prevent Digestion" might be a fun theme for a playlist. I have so many to choose from!


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:45 PM
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388: "Squirrel of God", Draw Breath.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:45 PM
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398: The Nails were a brilliant band.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:48 PM
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Teen Angel / Tell Laura I Love Her / Patches / Dead Man's Curve .... (dead teenage medley)

To which I would add Last Kiss.

One of my sisters loved the teen tragedy genre. They were from before our day, but we had them on K-tel records.


Posted by: Invisible Adjunct | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:48 PM
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Oh, here's another embarrassing one I shouldn't apologize for (but I am a little ashamed of): that Musicbox Dancer thing that was all the rage when I was in like 6th grade or whatever.

Also, dammit, I like Enya.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:50 PM
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401: I knew you could puzzle it out.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:51 PM
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No matter how many times I hear it, I always love this song.

(NSFW, haters)


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:51 PM
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My Top 25 is entirely songs from the 3 mixes I've posted here, but I've only had this computer for about six months.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:52 PM
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Oh, and Paul Simon's Graceland.

I suppose the embarrassing common ground in my musical tastes is that they're totally NPRish. Oh well. I keep telling you people I'm more conservative than you think I am.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:53 PM
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Also, dammit, I like Enya.

Ahahahahahahahaha!


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:53 PM
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Also, dammit, I like Enya.

Not that there's anything wrong with your liking Enya, but I think her stuff sounds like elevator music for mystics.


Posted by: Invisible Adjunct | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:54 PM
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I've been thinking of not-good-for-dinner music:

"Elves", by the Fall.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:55 PM
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I thought it's the dad in Patches who dies. No?


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:55 PM
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409, 410: Completely.

See? I like her stuff, but I am not going to outrageously claim that I'd take it over Etta James.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:55 PM
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Nah, the girl dies in Patches.

B: NPR on steroids.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 8:59 PM
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If I never hear Enya again the rest of my life it will be way too many times. Unfortunately, it's on in my house with some regularity. And not just Enya, but her goddamned sister Moya, too.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:00 PM
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You have to admit it would be a lot more entertaining if NPR were juicing a bit.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:01 PM
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Again with the juicer. It's like an obsession with you.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:01 PM
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Of course it is. Do you know how cheap oranges are here? And how easy it would be to plant a tree and grow my own?


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:02 PM
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418: you could run Koi through that bad boy too, y'know.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:03 PM
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No, I'm putting those on ice and sending them to Heebie.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:05 PM
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I've been thinking of not-good-for-dinner music:

Keiji Haino, Black Blues (Violent Version)


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:05 PM
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And how easy it would be to plant a tree and grow my own?

Also, an avocado tree.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:05 PM
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Mouse juice!


Posted by: Bave Dee | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:08 PM
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422: You know, in all honesty, the avocado tree's more trouble than it's worth. I can only eat so many avocados, and the ones in grocery stores are just fine. I'd much rather have citrus and figs.

Plus citrus trees smell lovely.

423: BAD MAN.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:11 PM
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406: so sad, yet so awesome.

417: You have to admit there are some pretty compelling juicers out there.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:11 PM
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not-good-for-dinner music


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:12 PM
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I can only eat so many avocados

This is only true for me if you take "so" to mean "infinitely." On the other hand, I lived in a place with an Avocado tree and it mostly meant we had a lot of possums prowling around our backyard stealing the fruit. Not that possums aren't good eating, obviously.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:12 PM
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Slack, see 394 if you missed it.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:13 PM
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INFINITE AVOCADOS


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:14 PM
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You know, in all honesty, the avocado tree's more trouble than it's worth. I can only eat so many avocados

Let PK sell them. We lived right behind our elementary school. They'd use the field for soccer games and such on the weekends. My older sister used to load up a wagon with avocados and sell them in the front yard.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:15 PM
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I know, I don't deserve the avocado tree. I really should figure out how to package and mail them to all of you.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:16 PM
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408: What kind of an insane person would be ashamed to like Graceland? Someone who knows too many holier-than-thou types who imagine themselves above really well-written songs that openly borrow from another style/culture.

Actually, I think Paul Simon in general is in the category of No One Will Admit How Good He Really Is. Which is really, really good.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:17 PM
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Especially avocado-fed possums?


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:17 PM
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430: Every fucking kid in the neighborhood sells avocados.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:17 PM
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I'm glad I capitalized Avocado, like it's a capital city or a saint. "It's a long road to Avocado, pilgrims, but only in struggle might you prove yourselves guac a molé -- warriors of the dip."


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:17 PM
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I made and ate my delicious guacamole today, and then had some vegan tapas with a friend, which also contained avocado, so I am ashamed to admit that, for the first time in my life, I consumed more than one avocado in a day. I thought of Jackmormon the whole time.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:17 PM
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428: As it happens, my bowels are churning at this very moment. Cheers.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:17 PM
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Also bad dining music unless you like to chew HARDCORE!


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:18 PM
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You know what kind of tree is bullshit? Mango. Fuckers drop all at once and rot overnight. Like living in the midst of a compost heap.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:18 PM
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309, 333, and 365 are all completely true.

Ten right now, as I read blogs:
1) Balkan Beat Box, "Habibi Min Zaman"
2) Paul Shaffer featuring Dion, Carole King and the Fresh Prince, "When the Radio is On"
3) The Pop Group, "The Boys From Brazil"
4) Decemberists, "O Valencia"
5) Section 25, "Prepare To Live"
6) Cibo Matto, "Artichoke"
7) Blackalicious, "Purest Love"
8) Zincs, "Lost Solid Colors"
9) Vampire Weekend, "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa"
10) Blackalicious, "Brain Washers"

I've never used the shuffle function before. Works pretty well, especially for artists who start to sound nightmarish if you have to hear five songs in a row.
However, I predict that I will be frequently befuddled by its inability to generate a random number.

It's Too Late - The Streets
You Turn Me On I'm A Radio - Joni Mitchell

Now those are some good songs.

Need You Around, Smoking Popes, At Metro

I remember that band!


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:19 PM
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I am ashamed

Like, what? More proof that you're an entirely different species than me. Every additional avocado I consume per day increases my strength, ala Popeye.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:19 PM
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432: The problem is every white affluent overeducated liberal in America likes that album. Also the Buena Vista Social Club album. And has limited their exploration of non-American music pretty much to the stuff that falls in their laps via NPR.

Just like me!


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:19 PM
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442: cf. everything Atrios (who, really, I love! Duncan, don't forsake me!) links to.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:20 PM
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Every fucking kid in the neighborhood sells avocados.

Go for a niche market like persimmons. The Asians love them.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:20 PM
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2) Paul Shaffer featuring Dion, Carole King and the Fresh Prince, "When the Radio is On"

Holy shit.

I...

Ned, what the hell?


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:21 PM
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439: Ah, but the fresh mangoes would be worth it. Plus you could put them all in bags and give them to your neighbors and the other moms at school, and everyone would love you.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:21 PM
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I really like Steve Miller's Fly like an Eagle. Not for dinner: Steve Albini's latest band, Shellac. Alternately, Shostakovich's SQ #8. Neither suitable for kids.


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:21 PM
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441: I am, as you might assume, infinitely strong, but I make for a bored superhero, with nothing on which to exercise my hideous strength.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:21 PM
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445: Tweety, you are not confirming Ned's taste in music! MEAN.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:22 PM
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Infinite avocado strength, assemble! C'mon, assemble! Oh, fuck it all. What's up on unfogged?


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:23 PM
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449: I'm just trying to understand. I'm willing to go there with him, I'm just deeply, deeply confused.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:23 PM
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I've been thinking of not-good-for-dinner music

The Pop Group.
Primus.
Solefald.
Brutal Truth.

Also, 432 gets it right.

The problem is every white affluent overeducated liberal in America likes that album. Also the Buena Vista Social Club album. And has limited their exploration of non-American music pretty much to the stuff that falls in their laps via NPR.

Gotta start somewhere.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:24 PM
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447 reminds me of another shameful song I'm not ashamed to like: Eddie Rabbit! "I Love a Rainy Night." Such a great driving song.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:25 PM
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Alternately, Shostakovich's SQ #8. Neither suitable for kids.

How is this not suitable for kids? It's great.

Bad dinner music: Istvan Marta, "Doom. A Sigh.".


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:25 PM
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Holy shit.

I...

Ned, what the hell?

I'd say 3 and 6 more than make up for it. Plus who doesn't more-or-less like Blackalicious?


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:25 PM
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Infinite avocado strength, assemble!

Word.


Posted by: gswift | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:26 PM
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Sifu, you obviously don't read the same mp3 blogs I do.

Sadly, jefitoblog.com disappeared suddenly, so you can't get to the other downloads in this post.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:26 PM
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Seriously, Miranda Lambert is the shit. I'll continue my lonely crusafe without you motherfuckers. At least I convinced GSwift, though only because Lambert packs heat and writes songs about blowing people away.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:29 PM
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No one gets hurt in a crusafe, but the message is sent. It's the Quaker version of a crusade, sort of like writing letters to the editor.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:30 PM
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457: I love this:

Metal Beach", the Brian Wilson cowrite, is a mentally ill blend of seemingly every A-list musician who happened to be in the 213 area code when it was recorded. Swear to God. Check it out:

Guitars: Dick Dale, Joe Satriani, Joe Walsh
Saxophone: "Teenage" Steve Douglas
Hi-hat cymbal: Mick Fleetwood
Percussion: Brian Wilson

Not to mention the spoken intro from Eugene Landy. Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaathefuck.

Exactly.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:31 PM
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John, there's no need for you to conduct a crusafe on behalf of a person who has had two #1 country albums, a grammy nomination, a CMA award, and incredible good looks. Follow the examples of w-lfs-n and mcmanus and bring us something new.

BTW: the so-called "Shuffle" function has brought me ANOTHER Blackalicious song. 18 out of 1277 songs in my library are by Blackalicious, in case you were wondering. And that's 3 of the last 8 songs. I'm about to give up on "Shuffle" already.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:32 PM
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459 is awesome.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:32 PM
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Oh, right, the italics tags thing. Whoops.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:32 PM
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"Metal Beach" is actually an instrumental. The spoken intro consists of the words "Metal.....beach."

I'm surprised that Amazon has so many copies of the album for sale used, and yet none of them cost less than a dollar. You'd think it would be either rare or utterly worthless.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:33 PM
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1277 songs in my library

That's cute.

Really, I'm not a snob. Or obnoxious.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:34 PM
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I'm just trying to help you people. I suspect that no one would like "Zero tolerance for silence".


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:34 PM
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Looking back, I sort of agree with Shaffer. This album isn't perfect, or even a work of art, but it's fun, in a glossy late '80s way -- and in spots, it's even sort of incredible. Take, for instance, the leadoff track and first single, "When the Radio Is On" (download), which features lead vocals from The Shafe, rapping from the Fresh Prince, and background vocals from Dion and Carole King. What. The. Fuck.

I completely agree with the final sentiment in this quote.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:34 PM
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Do y'all know Probe is Turning-On the People? It's really hideously designed, but I've come across some remarkably cool stuff there.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:35 PM
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1$ is as close as you can get to "utterly worthless". If someone's selling at that price probably they make all their money on the mailing fee, because Amazon takes a chunk.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:35 PM
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One more note on the album in question...never before have I seen the phrase "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" and been utterly shocked by the apparent existence of such customers.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:36 PM
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Thanks #268. Now if only it was a blog!


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:37 PM
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1$ is as close as you can get to "utterly worthless".

O RLY?


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:38 PM
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I have no idea what's going on with those. Presumably they mail them for less than $2.98 and pay a very low fee to Amazon, perhaps by some special arrangement. ABEBooks charges $1 minimum per unit, and I don't know what Amazon's minimum is, but they squeeze you harder than ABE on stuff $5 or over.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:46 PM
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461: Seriously, Ned, I don't think many people here listen to country, because they don't like it, and I was saying that I like this particular album.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:48 PM
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474: Why don't you think so?


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:50 PM
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474: my god I can't get away from the country fans on this blog. I bet if Randy Moss and Miramda Lambert had a baby, (he|she)'d sing a lovely, longing song about pulling that last, lonesome touchdown in over two or three hardscrabble cornerbacks. And then execute.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:50 PM
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By the way, being able to get the album in 472 for a mere $0.01 is a bit of a bargain, I think. Whereas $1.35 is way too much for the Paul Shaffer album.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:52 PM
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I don't hear it spoken of much. Classic country, sure.

On the face of it, Ned's post seemed to say "Oh, everybody knows about her", but I don't think that's true here. I think that the message was "Don't talk to us about popular country musicians. we don't listen to them".

It's not like I'm a missionary for contemporary commercial country music. I just like this one artist.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:53 PM
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The problem is every white affluent overeducated liberal in America likes that album.

If there's one thing that I cannot accept, it's this kind of aesthetic Stalinism. I know that you like it, but that's not the point. The point is that you think that, somehow, that's embarrassing. Because, you know, a lot of other people also like it. And that's crap. Beethoven's Ninth, Fallingwater, and Great Gatsby: everyone likes them because they're really fucking good. Some people genuinely dislike them, de gustibus and whatever, but the only reason to pretend not to like them is the most tedious kind of snobbery.

I would also add that every white affluent overeducated liberal in America also likes James Brown, but no one is ever embarrassed to cite him in their library. Why not? Hmmmm...


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:53 PM
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I would also add that every white affluent overeducated liberal in America also likes James Brown, but no one is ever embarrassed to cite him in their library. Why not? Hmmmm...

REVERSE RACISM


Posted by: OPINIONATED GRANDMA | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:54 PM
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Whereas $1.35 is way too much for the Paul Shaffer album.

Anti-Semite.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:54 PM
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Sifu is just pissed because I don't give a shit about the stupid Patriots, just Randy Moss.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:54 PM
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482: no I am so happy to have you 1/48th on my side, John. Together we will conquer all vicariously.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:56 PM
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How would the Raiders have done last season with Moss as both player and head coach?


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:56 PM
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On the face of it, Ned's post seemed to say "Oh, everybody knows about her", but I don't think that's true here.

It's ok, John. You're not just fighting a strawman here: I hate country music.


Posted by: Po-Mo Polymath | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:56 PM
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484: the Raiders have a head coach?!?! Weird.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:57 PM
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As I've said, you can't be a superstar without a backup team of no-talent people who have been taught to play their roles correctly. I'm egalitarian that way. That's how my momma raised me.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:58 PM
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Oh, and Ned, on Shuffle: assuming you actually mean iTunes, there's a setting for more and less random; but to make it unlikely that you'll hear Blackalicious thrice in 8 songs you actually have to tweak it to make it less truly random and more "random."

Aren't you a scientist-type? Don't you know about how people's perception of randomness is actually really rigid and organized - as if Blackalicious should play every 18/1277 songs? Randomness includes clustering. It's how we all got here; I find it kind of touching, in a way.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:58 PM
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480: Thanks, OG.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 9:59 PM
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488: What made me suspicious is that earlier in the day I also had the Silver Jews twice out of three songs. And I only have five Silver Jews songs.

It appears that I had "Shuffle" set to halfway between "Most likely" and "Less likely". It's now at minimum likelihood.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:00 PM
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I think that it's Philadelphia that needs the coach.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:00 PM
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I actually love the seeming intentionality of true randomness. Chaos is my buddy; chaos knows how I feel.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:01 PM
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491: Now that his sons are finally in jail maybe he can stop being distracted and get back to coaching.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:02 PM
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chaos knows how I feel.

Your mood swings on a double-jointed pendulum.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:02 PM
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Random fifteen, from somewhere in the stone age:

1. Get Back, Beatles
2. Vito's Ordination Song, Sufjan Stevens
3. I Know No Pardon, Vetiver
4. Lost, Old & in the Way
5. Dance With No Shoes, Peter Rowan
6. I'll Be Your River, Cyndi Lauper
7. Sugaree, Dead
8. A Child is Coming, Kantner & Slick
9. The Other Night Blues, BB King
10. Maiden of the Cancer Moon, Quicksilver
11. Lonely Sinking Feeling, Cowboy Junkies
12. Blue Bayou, Linda Ronstadt
13. Come on in my Kitchen, Clapton
14. Dust Bowl, Natalie Merchant
15. Nelly Was A Lady, Alvin Youngblood Hart

There's plenty of embarrassing stuff on the 'pod, but none of these.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:03 PM
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494: my mood changes like the distal curve of a Lorenz attractor with an iterating seed. My mood is a Julia set with C equaling some constant times the probability of a gluon being crated at an arbitrary point in space! My mood is the relationship of the predicted state of a turbulent flow at t + 1 to that flow's actual state!


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:05 PM
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492: The Times had one of their annoying culture or whatever pieces about people who think their iPods' random setting is attuned to their souls. Thing is, it's a legit warm-fuzzy - we're hard-wired to get a kick out of our favorite driving song coming on just as we hit the highway for a road trip (to the veldt...) - but the article was not written well enough to handle the subject creditably. Instead it was a dumb blend of skeptical and credulous.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:07 PM
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I can't help but enjoy almost any song Jimmy Eat World puts out. Top that, fools.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:08 PM
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497: it is neat, though. I prefer to revel in my ability to find patterns where there are none.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:09 PM
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495: Hippy!


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:09 PM
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479: Bah. The Great Gatsby sucks, and the problem with overeducated white liberals liking Graceland is that it's all, "ooh, listen to these charming rhythms by authentic Africans!" It's not the popularity per se; it's the fact that the popularity carries with it a certain self-congratulatory note for being so broadminded and multicultural that one appreciates this music that everyone else and their dog appreciates.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:10 PM
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Bah. The Great Gatsby sucks

Fie on you, prole! That book is lovely.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:11 PM
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My mood is like a trillion monkeys typing on a trillion typewriters during the lifetime of a trillion universes to produce the phrase "To be or not to be".

Not at all like Tweety's unstable mood. Kolmogorov-inevitable, in fact.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:13 PM
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478: I don't hear it spoken of much. Classic country, sure.

Well, I think non-Nashville country has a pretty evident following. Hence all the pro- and anti-Neko Case debate; it's the same basic milieu as Boxharp, Calexico, Corb Lund, Giant Sand, Nathan, The Be Good Tanyas, Oh Susanna, The Handsome Family, Patty Griffin, Tarnation, Hank Williams III etc etc etc. I'd be surprised if at least some of those names didn't ring bells up and down the length of the Mineshaft.

Since Nashville country is more or less a wasteland, that's kind of a different story. Come to think of it, you're probably right that Miranda Lambert wouldn't have many willing partisans here. (Can't say she impresses me very much, for instance.) But I think Nashville has its moments too, albeit most of its interesting talent seems to be variously long in the tooth these days (Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle).


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:13 PM
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501: That and that he's a baby boomer. And therefore innately annoying as hell.

502: I just can't deal with it. I know why I'm supposed to like it, but it just irritates me on every level.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:13 PM
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I totally loved Graceland. My friend and I got our pictures taken outside the gates, and went on the audio tour, and the whole nine yards. That's the best house I've ever seen.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:14 PM
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500 -- Was it Linda? Or Stephen Foster that's outed me?

It just came around to a Pikuni straight dance. I don't speak the language, but have always loved the Plains sound. I'd upload and link, if I knew how to do it.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:14 PM
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B. still dreams of that house and that marriage, whereas the message of Gatsby is that Daisy et al suck.

But then, hillbillies from Bakersfield.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:14 PM
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My mood is like you take the whole wave spectrum and put a nice rosy hue on it.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:15 PM
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It's not the popularity per se; it's the fact that the popularity carries with it a certain self-congratulatory note for being so broadminded and multicultural that one appreciates this music that everyone else and their dog appreciates.

There really aren't that many people of the kind that you're criticizing here.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:15 PM
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510: And, as per usual, dear Ned, *I wasn't criticizing anyone here.*

I was, in fact, criticizing *myself*. Jesus. Pour yourself a drink already.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:16 PM
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There really aren't that many people of the kind that you're criticizing here.

Speak for yourself. I find it quaint and charming to try on the whims of the common man for my musical dalliances. I call it "slummin'" which is slang for "slumming".


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:17 PM
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You don't actually think those things about yourself, though.

Just give people the benefit of the doubt about liking something. Pretending to like something in order to fit in with the crowd, now that's something that should be mocked.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:17 PM
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509: and then it collapses, supplicative, upon the stage, and rises up, confused and poorly descriptive, as a Category!

God that Noh theater is so austere and whatever.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:18 PM
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it's all, "ooh, listen to these charming rhythms by authentic Africans!"

It is? It's not when you listen to it, is it?

Also, Po-Mo: I hate you for hating classic country.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:18 PM
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B, have you heard the Ladysmith Black Mombazo "cover" of The Lion Sleeps Tonight -- it's really more like the original -- Mbube?


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:18 PM
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I keep it real by liking new country.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:19 PM
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507: Quicksilver, Kantner, Cowboy Junkies, Clapton. Hode the weed, the word is out.

504: It's OK to say, "I don't like her much", but I what I understood was that no one her listened to that kind of music. Which I knew, but I was saying I liked her stuff.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:19 PM
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I don't much like much country, but I fucking love Ghost Riders in the Sky; where does that leave me?


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:20 PM
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I like future country. None of you would understand.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:20 PM
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I like this song, for instance, because Willie Nelson doesn't sound very happy at all.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:21 PM
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On emusic, Rachid Taha (Rai-french pop fusion) and Conjunto Bernal are pretty good. What else-- Seu Jorge, Curumin, UNKLE, Culture, Townes van Zandt, Clifton Chenier, if any fondness for blues, just browse the Arhoolie label.

The Coil is nice, thanks!


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:22 PM
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It's OK to say, "I don't like her much", but I what I understood was that no one her listened to that kind of music. Which I knew, but I was saying I liked her stuff.

That's a valid thing to do then.

I listen to the country station now and then. I instantly change the channel as soon as a slow song comes on. Slow country songs bad, fast country songs often good.

It kind of creeps me out how they all have exactly the same instrumentation which overlaps not at all with other forms of music, though. And where do they all learn to sing like that?


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:22 PM
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Ned: likes Paul Simon, refuses to like Miranda Lambert after Googling her. verdict: Nazi.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:22 PM
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I like future country. None of you would understand.

Ha! That's my joke about the song "I was country, when country wasn't cool." I like to believe she's singing from the POV of the future, someday when country is cool.

I guess that makes you future-mainstream.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:22 PM
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For the first time ever, B is saying something that is not crazy. She is noting that there is a certain amount of this vibe to be observed in "world music" fandom. I think few people who have been exposed to any significant portion of "world music" fandom would really dispute this point.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:22 PM
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The Coil is nice, thanks!

Nice? Nice? I'm so telling Coil you said that.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:23 PM
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I have found through empirical research that the modern country song "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off" is popular with the laydeez. This continues to baffle me.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:24 PM
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I'm not getting dragged into B's meta-critique of the millions of people with the stupid taste to like a really good album.

Instead, I'll just note that I would have bet money that the response to Gatsby would be "Gatsby sux," and that I wanted a less impeachable example, and gave up trying to come up with one. For some bizarre reason, Shakespeare escaped my grasp. (I think I was restricting myself to the last 200 years, for some reason, and most of the lit I like in the last 200 years is oft-disliked. Not that it's obscure - Moby Dick, Dostoevsky, WCWilliams - but that it would be poor examples of stuff "everyone likes.")


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:25 PM
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That's the best house I've ever seen.

I was surprised at how small the actual house is. I guess I was expecting the Playboy Mansion or something, but it's just a decent-sized big house.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:25 PM
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526: But "fandom" actually refers to people who have done a whole lot of investigation into the genre and know a lot about it, patronizing as they may be. Whereas the archetypal Graceland listener cited here is someone who "has limited their exploration of non-American music pretty much to the stuff that falls in their laps via NPR."


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:25 PM
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And where do they all learn to sing like that?

Scottish borderlands. Read your Albion's Seed.

519 -- I have a couple of live versions of Ghost Riders by Mission Mountain Wood Band, either of which is likely to induce embarrassing behavior in public.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:26 PM
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That song is popular with me. It makes me laugh. But I will not watch country music videos because afterwars I detest songs and singers I used to like.

In my head they're directed like indie films, with angles askew and great timing and finding poignancy in the mundane and blah blah blah.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:27 PM
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526 is correct. B is our new overlord. This is why I enjoy Konono No. 1 and other demented-ass distorto-afrobeat. Enjoy that, Chardo-latte-nay sipping NPRoids!


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:27 PM
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533 to 528.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:27 PM
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I love country music, but most country music radio is a wasteland.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:28 PM
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It's just a decent-sized big house.

Did they like a special warehouse off to the side for the 100,000-calories-a-day diet supplies?


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:28 PM
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I was surprised at how small the actual house is.

Yeah, it's really not that outrageous. I just love the time-travelling to 1977. Everything preserved perfectly. Oh look, gold webbing covering the mirrored wall, and the ceiling is carpeted.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:29 PM
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I should correct 534, but won't.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:29 PM
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537: I'm sure they liked a warehouse. Who doesn't?


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:30 PM
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You don't actually think those things about yourself, though.

You're right, I'm only participating in the "music I'm ashamed of liking" thing in order to implicitly make fun of all of you. As usual. In fact, I really am a walking stereotype, a bot programmed by combining digital scans of "Fatal Attraction," the Demi Moore lines from "A Few Good Men," Meryl Streep's character in "The Devil Wears Prada", and the entire script of "Disclosure."


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:31 PM
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I like future country.

I like Cowboy Troy.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:32 PM
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541: you can't handle the stop harrassing my Armani boiled bunny legs!


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:32 PM
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Gee, what could I have been thinking when I said it seemed like people around here liked to pick pointless fights with each other?


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:32 PM
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I think few people who have been exposed to any significant portion of "world music" fandom would really dispute this point.

Probably not. Part of me thinks it's a really bizarre/annoying position because Graceland isn't especially "world music" - I mean, if you like "Me & Julio Down by the Schoolyard," you'll like Graceland. Yes, Ladysmith is very African, and it was more new-sounding when it came out, but only a complete asshole would pat himself on the back for liking "You Can Call Me Al."

Oh, and I'd forgotten B's annoying anti-Boomerism. Like, I got over that when I was 22. They're just a huge cohort of people born over 18 years - it's not a big deal.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:33 PM
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516: I have, and I really like it.

It is? It's not when you listen to it, is it?

Again, Benjamin, I was, in fact, saying that I suspect that is a very large part of why I like it, and I know it's a large part of why I am ashamed of liking it. See 541 for more illumination.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:34 PM
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Fuck off, teo.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:34 PM
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That song is popular with me. It makes me laugh. But I will not watch country music videos because afterwars I detest songs and singers I used to like.

I agree entirely. The cover-ish band I play with does that song, and I thought it was written playfully. But the video ruined it for me.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:34 PM
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Who would win in a fight, B or Paul Simon?


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:35 PM
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I'd forgotten B's annoying anti-Boomerism. Like, I got over that when I was 22.

Congratulations, JRoth. You are a better man than I.

Also, thanks, Slack, for giving me the benefit of the doubt.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:35 PM
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542: What. The. Fuck.

?


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:35 PM
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547 is uncalled for.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:36 PM
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549 is a trick question, btw, because I didn't say whom they'd be fighting.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:37 PM
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549: Paul Simon is incredibly tiny. Like, 4'9"? It'd be close, iif B didn't just kill him right off the bat.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:37 PM
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I like Bubba Sparxxx.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:37 PM
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540: I just imagine a fork lift running over to the warehouse three times a day to get a pallet of breakfast, lunch, or dinner.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:38 PM
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518: Oh, I love the Cowboy Junkies. Do they count as country now?


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:38 PM
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554 "iif" s/b "iff"


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:38 PM
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557: No.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:38 PM
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Actually, to make sure that my subconscious isn't secretly enjoying cultural colonialism, I only listen to the music of My People - Anglo-German-Irish who've been in the States for over 100 but less than 125 years. Anything else is just preening self-congratulation.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:39 PM
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I like Bubba Sparxxx.

Me too!

542: What. The. Fuck.

Maybe you'd prefer the dance mix, Tweets.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:39 PM
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547 is uncalled for.

Indeed it is, but it does nicely illustrate that b isn't the only person here whose tone I find uncongenial.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:40 PM
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"Hick Chick" blows on every conceivable level and is about 1/8000 as danceable as this.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:41 PM
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What if 547 read as follows?

"Fuck off, teo. :-D"


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:42 PM
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561: I certainly do. Hick house (banjo house?) has been a longtime obsession of mine. Wish I had my own banjo house track handy.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:43 PM
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Ben may have missed it, but 547 was just a joking belligerent response to teo's 544. If it were earlier, it might have been (slightly) cleverer.

It would never have looked like 546.

And I knew that "I'd forgotten B's annoying anti-Boomerism. Like, I got over that when I was 22." was obnoxious. But Christ, so is judging an artist by his birthdate. Especially an artist you like listening to.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:43 PM
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"Hick Chick" blows on every conceivable level

That's what makes it so awesome.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:43 PM
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568

Teo, we do like to talk this way. Sometimes it's playful and sometimes we're genuinely annoyed or even angry, but a lot of us like to be able to do this stuff. I have about three sites where I am scrupulously polite when I comment, but two of them are places where I don't feel completely comfortable.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:44 PM
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Actually, B, I take it all back - if teo is lumping us together as uncongenial, it seems that we should get along.

Or something. Hmm.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:45 PM
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Jroth is the lumpengrumpenfuhrer.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:46 PM
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571

Comity on hating Toby Keith?


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:47 PM
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Actually, B, I take it all back - if teo is lumping us together as uncongenial, it seems that we should get along.

Just because Mitt Romney thinks every Muslim is allied against him doesn't make it so. The enemy of your enemy may be your enemy.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:47 PM
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568: I understand that, and I'm not trying to get you to stop. I don't know what I am trying to do, though.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:47 PM
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574

I feel like a bad person for saying this, but the bot described in 541 would actually be sort of hot.

545: Part of me thinks it's a really bizarre/annoying position because Graceland isn't especially "world music"

Well, sure it is. It's not a recording of the Baka pygmies or anything, but the greater part of it is distinctly coloured by South African music and/or themes and/or influences.

This of course is a wonderful thing. But there's nothing vile or unfair in acknowledging that some of the people attracted to it will be annoying douches. Such is life.

552: I get the feeling 547 was meant humorously. I was going to say "back off, Teo, I will cut you" but now it seems sort of redundant.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:47 PM
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I don't know why I'm even reading this thread. I don't know a thing about music.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:48 PM
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576

The woman who sits in the cube next to mine at work is obsessed with Toby Keith.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:48 PM
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574: you can cut him if you want.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:49 PM
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534: I'm sure that *you* and people who *actually seek out interesting music* like stuff because it's actually good. My point was that most people, including myself, are too fucking lazy to do that but very happy to buy and listen to stuff that falls in their laps, while congratulating themselves for their new discovery. Don't you remember how that album was reviewed?

And you don't think there's not an awfully smug kind of affluent liberalism in the "world music" category, which does an awful lot of condescending celebrating of "authentic" acoustic music. Because, you know, those people from Other Cultures are so genuine, blah blah. Of *course* there are a lot of people who love music who aren't like that. But there are an awful lot of people who love music less than they love their self-image as One Who Listens to This Particular Kind of Music.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:49 PM
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575: Because it;s the current thread.

Did you see "My Name Is Earl" tonight?

Maybe the site would go in a positive direction if you were one of the posters, taking the place of one of the five who never post anything.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:50 PM
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577: Wait, what?


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:50 PM
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574: DS, B is more than "sorta hot". She's hot with the heat of ten thousand suns, and also wholesome, because of her honky bloodlines.

Also, she wasn't speaking ironically. She really is a bot.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:50 PM
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Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill in Vegas is pretty fun on a Saturday night.

You people think I lie about this stuff all the time, don't you?


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:51 PM
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576: Did you put a boot up her ass? I hear it's the American way.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:51 PM
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584

Maybe the site would go in a positive direction if you were one of the posters, taking the place of one of the five who never post anything.

Given that I never post anything at my own blog, probably not.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:51 PM
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580: metaphorically, man, good lord!


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:51 PM
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I secretly like a bunch of Toby Keith songs. Not the red-white-and-blue we'll put a boot in your ass song. But I like the song "Who's that man living my life?" and the song "I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then." I think he does heartbroken really well.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:51 PM
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581: B is hotbot?

It's certainly the shock of the day to find out that hotbot.com not only exists but is a copyright of Lycos, which also still exists.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:52 PM
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I think people get pissy about graceland either because they are annoyed at the warped idea that paul simon invented `world music' or because you have this reedy little nothing voice sitting in front of a strong choir and getting in the way.

It's not a bad album though, and both pre- and post- paul simon L.B.M shows they could use the orchestration help if they want to do pop. Paul Simon knew what he was doing there.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:53 PM
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Did you put a boot up her ass?

You know, they didn't cover that in the sexual harassment video we all watched when we were hired, but I bet it probably still violates it in spirit somehow.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:53 PM
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585: I know. I was, y'know, playing along. Have I ruined any chance I had to participate in witty banter in the future? I was afraid of that.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:54 PM
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589: make it a cowboy boot.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:54 PM
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578 continued: And the reason I'm being both pissy and defensive is because, in fact, I am *not* someone who seeks music out and I rather suspect that my musical tastes are not completely free of that particular version of condescending liberal racism. Hence, you see, the whole "ashamed" part of "music I'm ashamed of liking" thing.

And I'm supposed to be the uncharitable one around here.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:54 PM
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580: It's okay, Teo, I'm not going to cut you. Way too long a drive down to New Mexico, for one thing.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:54 PM
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590: it's okay, delicate little flower. No, no, it's okay. Shhhh.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:55 PM
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I like "You Ain't Much Fun Since I Quit Drinking". Just looked to see who did it and was surprised to see that it was Toby Keith.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:55 PM
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580: But B., foreigners are way more interesting and sexy and musical than you rednecks, and their food is better too. That's just fact. Also, you're a yuppy anyway.

I love foreigners, especially very poor foreigners! And they love me!


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:55 PM
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In Soviet Russia, ass puts boot up you.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:56 PM
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581: Thanks. I think.

people get pissy about graceland either because they are annoyed at the warped idea that paul simon invented `world music'

Yes, thank you.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:56 PM
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And when Toby just won't cut it, there's always Haggard and Coe. He stops talking and starts playing at about the 3:00 mark.


Posted by: Jake | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:56 PM
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592: B., is this just your way of begging for a spanking?


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:57 PM
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So, did anyone see My Name Is Earl tonight?


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:57 PM
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602

I indulge my patronizing colonialism by listening to metal music from Eastern Europe. This is a good song.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:57 PM
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I consider rednecks a kind of foreigner, and I'm enlightened enough to herald in this new strange-talker.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:59 PM
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604

But B., foreigners are way more interesting and sexy and musical than you rednecks

Dwight Yoakam?

Also, you're a yuppy anyway.

Who just cited Dwight Yoakam. Now do you see what I mean about my musical tastes being suspect?


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 10:59 PM
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605

Down with the gente? Try Eastern European mariachi!


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:00 PM
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606

Dwight Yoakum has been transferred out of country music.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:00 PM
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600: If you want me to be insulting, John, that's a prety good attempt.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:00 PM
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608

Dwight Yoakam is very NPR-friendly. Why, he's practically James McMurtry.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:00 PM
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But B., foreigners are way more interesting and sexy and musical than you rednecks

You're talking about the Cowboy Junkies, aren't you.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:00 PM
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605: Mariachi is based on German polka crap to start with. So surely Eastern European mariachi is just one of those circle of life things.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:01 PM
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611

Hey, there's nothing suspect about Dwight Yoakham.

581: She's hot with the heat of ten thousand suns, and also wholesome, because of her honky bloodlines.

Not for the first time, it occurs to me that potential blackmailers could make a lot of money by excavating out-of-context quotes from the Mineshaft.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:01 PM
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612

607: QED.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:02 PM
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613

Dwight Yoakum has been transferred out of country music.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:03 PM
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614

I was putting on a show for Teo, B.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:03 PM
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615

Hence the misspelling, John?


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:04 PM
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616

I also like George Strait a LOT.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:04 PM
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617

He knows I love to proofread.


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:05 PM
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618

Hey, the cover-ish band plays this Dwight Yoakam song, too. Clearly, we should play UnfoggeDCon while you guys argue about exactly how much each song sucks.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:05 PM
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619

German polka crap?!


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:05 PM
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611: I have often thought that one of the things I like about the Mineshaft is how incredibly much it depends on context. Also, how incredibly horrifying some of my comments here could be if they were ever maliciously interpreted.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:05 PM
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621

It's okay, but it's no Speak.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:05 PM
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622

621->602.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:06 PM
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623

614: Thank god.
619: YES DAMMIT.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:07 PM
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624

if they were ever maliciously interpreted

Um, B? I hate to be the first to tell you this, but malicious interpretation is sort of, erm, quintessential to... nevermind.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:07 PM
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I love those exotic Canadian Cowboy Junkies. They're very family-values, five brothers and a lovely sister who keeps getting married to guys who somehow don't last too long.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:07 PM
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626

618 - I love that song too. Aw Suki Suki!


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:07 PM
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627

Už Jsme Doma


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:08 PM
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628

Actually, thinking about it, there are big chunks of music that I intentionally semi-ignore essentially because I don't want to be a musical voyeur, or cultural colonialist, or whatever phrase is relevant. Most of the stuff I don't listen to I'm pretty sure I don't much like (I'm looking at you, electronica), but some of it seems OK, but it just doesn't seem to be who I am. I'm not interested in working to like music that doesn't seem to belong to me. Ironically, this includes stuff like Arcade Fire which is culturally really close to me, but that I have no actual connection to. Whereas, if I have an entré (?) to the music, I'll happily listen to something much less me (like punk, which I never listened to until I was 30).

Point being that, from the other side, I see what B is getting at. Huh.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:08 PM
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629

624: Shush, you.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:09 PM
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630

626: I'll be sure to let you know when we play el estado de Tejas.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:09 PM
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631

Already we are home! Už Jsme Doma is playing here on Saturday—but Ivá Bittová is playing on the same day, elsewhere!

What am I going to do?


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:10 PM
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632

Point being that, from the other side, I see what B is getting at. Huh.

Comity!


Posted by: teofilo | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:10 PM
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633

(I'm looking at you, electronica)

Ha, ha, sux2bu. Signed, The Future.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:10 PM
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634

here where?


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:10 PM
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635

OMG I am such an orientalizing bastard. It is actually just Iva Bittová.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:11 PM
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636

630: okie-dokie, but I don't think I know that song.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:11 PM
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lw: here in san francisco, at the hemlock. They've been on tour across the states, I don't know where else they've yet to play.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:11 PM
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Damn, apparently 448 was true. I just felt my guns, and, despite it being ages since I did any proper organized lifting, my biceps are rock-hard. How did this occur? All I do these days is teach and drink.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:11 PM
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631: The haček was invented by Jan Hus, who was later burned at the stake.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:13 PM
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633: That was just for you, Tweety.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:13 PM
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641

You know what I love about John? The way that it's never clear if his random factoids are for real or just complete fabrications.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:14 PM
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642

640: hugs and kisses, dinosaur.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:14 PM
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The haček was invented by Jan Hus

You mean the butterfly save?

Hockey jokes are probably the least likely thing to work here, aren't they?


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:14 PM
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641: 37.2384 % are fabrications


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:15 PM
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645

95% of them are real. I like that kind of shit.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:15 PM
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646

643: but to stay on topic, you can claim to love `sudbury saturday night'


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:16 PM
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647

hugs and kisses, dinosaur.

I've transfered my entire iTunes library to shellac, so I can still listen to it on my trusty Victrola when the authorities take my CDs and computer away.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:16 PM
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636: It sounds a lot like all our songs and the cover songs we play, played together all in a row.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:16 PM
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See, the 95% gives me credibility, whereas the 5% is when I cash in. One of the laws of life, from back on the veldt. Without credibility, you can't cash in. If you don't cash in, credibility is wasted effort. This is called costly signalling.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:17 PM
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650

The annoying thing about Don Cherry the hockey jerk is that he make it very difficult to research Don Cherry the musician.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:18 PM
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649: Way more costly than it needs to be, you poor gullible academic-type man. You can get credibility by being right half the time or less; it's simply a matter of chosing which things you're going to be right about and which you're going to bluff on.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:21 PM
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652

That's why Emerson died out in the veldt.

Well, that, and the no-relationship policy.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:22 PM
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653

Credibility is for losers. The well-born and institutionally powerful need none. I'm just relying on my credibility to crawl up from the muck.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:24 PM
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654

it's simply a matter of chosing which things you're going to be right about and which you're going to bluff on.

Ah, but for a socially maladroit polymath like Emerson, being right 95% of the time is easier than picking and choosing which 48% of the time to be right.

Holy fuck, look at the time. Good night, later time zone people.


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:26 PM
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653: I want to make some comeback about PT Barnum or something, but I suspect you're completely right. Thanks for just stomping on my insecurities even more.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:26 PM
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I suppose that for the sake of my self-respect I should confess to being less than 95% accurate. But no, I'm too honest to do that.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:26 PM
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657

656: You and me both.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:28 PM
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658

The ancient Zep hating way back at 327 was me. James Brown also sucks. The only good music produced by Western civilization since Gregorian chant was an album called Graceland, by Paul Simon. Has anyone here heard of it?


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:39 PM
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659

Walt wins.


Posted by: bitchphd | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:46 PM
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660

He does? Not buying it.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 11- 1-07 11:58 PM
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661

He does.


Posted by: DS | Link to this comment | 11- 2-07 12:36 AM
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662

It's okay, Teo, I'm not going to cut you.

No need. He's already cut. Or so he claims, anyway.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 2-07 6:36 AM
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663

In that sense, most of us are Jews.

In a deeper sense, everyone's cut, of course. Even women. Even virago bots.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 2-07 6:42 AM
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664

"Safety Dance" is a favorite.

I used to work with one of the former members of Men Without Hats. Very funny and cool guy. The most important life lesson I learned from him is this: As a pop musician getting radio airplay, even if you are kind of a dopey looking Jewish guy, and even if you belong to a one-hit wonder band, you can experience enough anonymous groupie sex to last for a lifetime.


Posted by: Knecht Ruprecht | Link to this comment | 11- 2-07 6:43 AM
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re: 664

If you're just a guy playing in a band in a pub, you still get women coming after you. Those dorky blokes learning instruments to get 'chicks'? Totally making the right choice.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 11- 2-07 6:53 AM
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666

Any discussion that touches on "Halleluwah" must also consider the Happy Mondays version.


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 11- 2-07 8:01 AM
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667

665: you don't even have to play a `proper' gig in a pub. Even pick up bands at parties work.


Posted by: soup biscuit | Link to this comment | 11- 2-07 8:11 AM
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668

Even The Bass Player can score.

It helps if your band draws the right age crowd, though. My son's band tends to get yuppies age 30-45, either married or looking for a respectable mate.

His new band will be more attuned to his own actual tastes.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 2-07 8:20 AM
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669

Asilon, way back in 246: 'Will you still love me tomorrow' is a great, great song. Love that song. Love it.


Posted by: Blume | Link to this comment | 11- 2-07 8:46 AM
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669: In the most recent case, the answer is "No, you'll have shot me". Spector is quite a guy. He seems to have tuned into the Ur-fantasies of generic teens better than anyone, possibly because he was completely ruled by them. People mostly talk about his multitracking and other production innovations, but his lyrics really touched the sensitive places. "To know, know, know him is to love, love, love him". Motown, in comparison, is quite sane and realistic.

But it's still OK to like those songs..... laydeez.


Posted by: John Emerson | Link to this comment | 11- 2-07 8:56 AM
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671

I'm sorry I missed the interesting discussion on this thread.

Nina Simone's version of "See-line woman" is great, Roberta Flack's Quiet Fire is quite good. If anyone has links to mp3 of early Roberta Flack, please post them. I was recommending her to parsimon a couple of months ago, but couldn't find anything.

I mostly agree with Bob in 186, I think that in genres that you're interested in it's worth listening to enough of the history of that genre to have a sense of how it arrived where it did.

The greatest hits of any old decade are better than the crap that's on the radio today . . .

I wince at that a little bit, because a bunch of what I listen to could be described as "greatest hits of previous decades" and if that were all I listened to it would be clearly missing something. On the other hand, I am fond of people that are masters of the pop song, and part of what is satisfying about listening to the pop canon is that you can learn a lot from it.

Do you not have any stupid songs that you love, and will defend to the death

This should be it's own thread. How stupid does a song have to be to qualify? "Box Set" by the Barenaked Ladies? "Here Come The Martian Martians" by Jonathan Richman. "

I'm sure I can think of more embarrassing examples, but I'm blocking them at the moment. The Bangles?

Music I like that I admit is probably not so good: ... Disraeli Gears (Cream).

Completely wrong. Disraeli Gears is good. It has no emotional or intellectual heft, but it's still great music.

I pity a man who did not hear "Crazy in Love" in the summer of 2003; there is a shrivel in his soul.

That would be me. While I have no regrets these music threads make me realize that my tastes don't relate to any generational or cultural group that I am part of it and I wonder what it would be like to have that experience.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 11- 2-07 8:58 PM
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