Secret Santa Mix - 2005

You'll see that, by the time it was over, it was past my naptime. Which speaks well for the scary yellow disc. Can't sleep, disc will eat me. So thank you.
Act 1
1. Hamell on Trial - Oughta Go Around
Cool high (nervous) energy country strumming vibe. I love songs that quote/reference lyrics and music from other songs. "Marshall stack for a necktie" and other mutations of lines from "Who Do Ya Love?" I think I wanna go around.

2. Mates of State - Gotta Get a Problem
Well, that's some pretty awful bass playing (I thought to myself.) Then I realized that somehow the S-XBS button was deployed on my cd player and the bass playing is actually just unimpressive. hey! this is in 3/4... or 6/8... or waltz time. Whatever you call it, it is very nice when a band can play (and write) in something other than four. Nice calliope lilt but man is that drummer thumping on 1 and 4 (or 1 and one again if they're in 3/4.) I have no idea what this song is about. I get the "one of us doesn't care" line but I don't know what one of them does care about.

3. Prefab Sprout - Faron
Another up-tempo country vibe and there's the travelin' banjo in the right ear. It may just be the accent but the vocals remind me of Squeeze and there's the harmonica in the distance. I've decided that this is a train song (no, not necessarily about trains.)

4. Matthew Sweet - Evangeline
Boy do I know the name "Matthew Sweet" but I can't think of what I've heard. The only "Evangeline" song that I do know is by Emmylou Harris (with The Band.) It's making the inflection of the "Evangeline" refrain sound really weird. Big Plus: I can easily understand all of the lyrics. Moderate minus: I can easily understand all of the lyrics. I'm not totally enthusiastic about them. That's quite a nice, professional, workman-like guitar solo in the left ear... and now the right ear. Coincedence? You decide.

5. The Last Poets - When the Revolution Comes
Boy do I love me them Last Poets. They make every other rap artist look as if they've been muzzled, co-opted and have sold out. "My mind, your mind, speak not of revolution until you are willing to eat rats to survive." That's it exactly... it puts the gangsta persona in its place and makes it look like the sad/pathetic posturing it is. "...give away the Apollo to the first person he sees wearing a blue dashiki." That is so hilarious. I would say something like, "I wish it were easier to find their stuff," only that wouldn't be true. I love their songs (I guess that's what you call them) but, while there are always a couple of phrases and rhthyms that lodge in my brain, this is not good-time, party on down, get up music. I think I like an average of 2.29 songs per album. (And that's after listening to all of 3-4 albums.) I much prefer to intellectually and politically "love" the Last Poets and hold that love up in the same way that I'd wear a medal to separate me from everyone else who've never heard of the Last Poets... when the revolution comes it will come with free cable installation.

6. Blood Meridian - Oh, Oh, Oh
Boy, the third straight song where the lyrics are intellible. Using the 'F'-word, especially with a flat emotional affect always makes me stumble. I'm not a prude, really. I just trip over lyrics with occasional curse-words... constant or not at all is what I'm programmed for.
[Also the third straight track reaction that I begin with "Boy." Which I just noticed. Boy do I need to broaden my game.]

7. Pavement - Box Elder
I like (have liked) the bass & vocals in the middle along with the drum set with a mild amount oops! more swearing. As I was saying: with drums slightly spread in the middle (left hand-L, right hand-R) with a guitar in either ear... but stuff is beginning to blend.

8. Josh Rouse - Comeback (Light Therapy)
"I miss my serotonin, my days are goin' nowhere fast" is a great, great line. So is the seroronin/foreign rhyme. Strings and horns, thank goodness. And xylophone... good for him.
[Sincere disclaimer: I like the earlier songs. Some of them I really like (I think) but I'm going to have to reprogram the track order and break 'em up a bit to do them justice.]

9. Elvis Costello - You’ll Never Be a Man
Ah.. Elvis. Have I mentioned how excited he once made me on SNL? Well I did. What a great lyricist and that's a really cool keyboard part. If I have one complaint with Mr. Costello (and I do) it's how often he ends a verse/line by hitting a note in his upper register, holds it (loudly) and then snakes his way down as he fades out. I love it when he writes at this tempo and that's a mighty fine line with "chemical shake" in it. The two toms, separated into each ear, scared me.

10. ABC - All of My Heart
I admit it. I was thinking Tears for Fears when I first heard this (a good thing.) Then when I was listening through with the track listing I thought XTC (also good.) I have a soft spot in my heart for this big open sound with the interlocked and alternating keyboard and string section parts. These guys (guy?) sound very familiar.
[I looked them up. They sound familiar because I used to know them. Their music, I mean, not them themselves. I don't remember this song but it's nice to know I still like them. Perhaps it's sad. I can't remember who introduced me to them but they were into early nostalgia... or it took them a half decade or so to figure out if they liked a band.]

11. Barenaked Ladies - Wonderful Christmastime
Well that keyboard prelude was weird and in a very BNL way. I love the ironic way that they pile awful upon awful to make something hilarious or wonderful or so awful that it's both. I love virtually all Christmas (and Hanukkah and Id and Solstice...) music but McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" makes me wish that Paul really were (was?) dead.
[I want it read into the record that I hate every single version of "The Little Drummer Boy." Even the Bing Crosby/David Bowie version.]
[Hate them.]
[All of them.]

Act II
12. Dan Bern - Jerusalem
This sounds like Bob Dylan from another, simpler dimension. Simpler and funnier. That olive line just kills me. A Bulgarian friend's father once went to Greece and came back with stories of olives the size of plums. Well, one story about plum-sized olives. It was short so you didn't mind how many times he told it. Which was a lot.

13. Adam Again - Stone
How is this not Michael Stipe? This would be mediocre REM. Which speaks rather well for the song... although I know it takes the shine off the compliment. It really is a compliment. I like (liked) it. Just not as much as most REM. There I go (went) again.
[As soon as I started down the path above I had to go the rest of the way just for the sake of being funny.]

14. They Might Be Giants - Museum of Idiots
Hurrah! TMBG! and from their horn arrangement period. I like the instrumentation because it forced them into more convential song arrangements... which still end up being a little odd. It might be the lyrics but I really think that the music made me think of the Richard Thompson song "Dimming of the Day." Neat.
[Actually, it might have been the Bonnie Raiit version... but I've heard both live and they may be fused. Or maybe I didn't hear them at all.]

15. Lou Reed - Dirty Blvd.
This is terrific. I love the image sketches of Lou Reed's lyrics. It is so impressive that he (and Peter Gabriel) can be such horrible singers even as they map out vocals that make you fill in the melody for yourself. And he's been with Laurie Anderson which is like a bazillion bonus points.
[There's gotta be a better way to explain Lou Reed's vocal abilities.]
[You know, I wasn't always an idiot. When I first heard it I recognized this song almost immediately. With the track listing in front of me and my tired eyes I read the title as "Dirty Blue." I was so psyched to hear a new Lou Reed song.]
[Idiot. I should be in a museum.]
[Ha. Ha.]

16. Mercury Rev - Goddess on a Hiway
As a Heather Nova admirer I like Mercury Rev. Good song except some male understudy was filling in for Nova. We can always use more female artists.

17. Magnapop - Favorite Writer
Oh good! female artist. We can always use more of them. Who's the idiot now? I'm hoping it's not me. I do not like the thought of a car crash.
[When I was much younger and just beginning to listen to the Beatles I thought, in spite of the legible title, that the lyrics to "Paperback Writer" included "take the back right turn."]
[Maybe I've always been an idiot.]

18. Love - She Comes in Colors
At first I thought that this was a cover of a Rolling Stones song. Now I don't know what I think. I love the mixing. It sounds like the old old days where there would be both mono and stereo mixes for an album and the engineers felt they had to "take advantage" of the stereo capabilities. When was this recorded? The name of that keyboard has just dropped out of my brain. But I really like how the sound blows up when it comes in. And then implodes when it leaves. And the flute doubling. And the timbre of the vocals.

19. Decemberists - Song for Myla Goldberg
I thought that this was the intro to Primal Scream's "Rocks." But slowed down. By the sixth bar not so much. So this is what the Decemberists sound like. What the heck are these lyrics? "Sticky shins"?.. making "sticky shoes." I used to play football and I can still feel bumps on my shinbone(s) from old injuries, bruises, etc. This sounds very painful. "Finiculi, finicula"?

20. Richard and Linda Thompson - I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
I am now looking like not so much the idiot for my mention of Richard Thompson above. What is it with Richard Thompson and tubas? He has written one of the great bipolar songs of all time, "Wall of Death." I have (had?) a cover version by REM (who sound remarkable like Adam Again.) I never realized what a fabulous guitarist Richard Thompson was (is.) I like this song. I don't think that I dislike any Richard Thompson song... the worst it ever gets is disappointment that the song wasn't better.
[How many double negatives can I use?]

21. Mark Heard - Hammers and Nails
Does anyone remember Nuclear Valdez. As I remember they were heavily influenced by '80s U2. At least they were promoted as "the next U2." This sounds like a Nuclear Valdez influenced track to me. I wish the saxophone (synthed?) choir was louder ala "My Old School." I must like this song even more than I think because it's over four minutes long and this is all I've written.
[Speaking of weird inflections I will never get used to the conversation use of the phrase "old school." I can't stop thinking of Steely Dan.]

22. The Jam - Down at the Tube Station at Midnight
Idiot time again: I thought I knew what The Jam sounded like and it... wasn't this. I sorta like the heartbeat kinda thing in the left ear but it makes me notice the high hat mostly in the left which was annoying. The overdubbed high hat in the right channel is not helping matters. Unless it is "Yellow Submarine" I can't think of any studio-made representational location sounds. There's tube effects at the start. Nice bass (or bassist. Or both.) Oh man is that tom work moving from left ear to the right in combination with the sound effects getting my goat. This is petty and I know it. I must be tired. And the effects are back... oh no! and so is the band.
[End of the line.]

Very nice, thank you. I am going to have to break up the order of the first handful of tracks but very nice indeed. And the Bogart touch was spectacular.