S/FJ

IPOD? OR IGOD?

Today, the iPod is like Live At The Apollo, no mistakes allowed:

1. "Songs About Rain" by Gary Allan. Why did nobody tell me about this song before? (And how did this song get into my iPod? What folder was this in?)

2. "Boys On The Radio" by Hole. Avoids some juicy chances to rhyme with the word "rain."

3. "A Number of Names" by Sharevari. Why does electroclash exist? The genre's entire 15 minutes was done in six by Paul Lesley and Sterling Jones in 1981.

4. "Because I Can" by Katy Rose.

5. "Falling" by Kate Rusby.

6. "Shadow of a Doubt" by Sonic Youth. (The Kate to Kim transition was heart-stopping.)

7. "Raja Vocative" by The Mountain Goats. Verse to keep:

"A bird you would've liked brought the sky down,
but it was useless to see it without you around.
And in the unstoppable camera of my mind's eye,
I saw you and some foreign guy."

8. "Youth Alcoholic" by Fox and Wolf. So maybe electroclash needed to happen. Briefly.

9. "Hey Joni" by Sonic Youth. Lee's utopia was a big part of my 1988. I was an "intern" at Blast First Records on Mott Street. I was given the "job" as a favor to a mutual friend who was my boss at Food Restaurant in Soho. Her friends, Anne Lehmann and Pat Naylor, tried to show me how to make cappuccino (I could not), asked me to file clippings (I could) and let me have free Head of David records. I got to meet Big Stick and the Lunachicks. The only pay I ever received was an advance cassette copy of Daydream Nation. It was the only free music I'd ever gotten, aside from the Bad Brains' ROIR tape I'd won in 1982 from WNYU. (It strikes me that gift cassettes are somewhat over-represented in my super duper top 10.) The cassette was the only advance copy of anything I'd ever seen. It was stuck in my Walkman for a month. (I mean a month and I almost mean stuck.) I walked through downtown Manhattan, wishing I lived there, loving both New York and some fucked-up idea of my now-ending childhood, with some flotsam about England and Brian Eno thrown in for sentimental measure. In my mind, Sonic Youth, New York and I were in the middle of a big, communal, throw-your-hat-like-Mary-Tyler-Moore kinda love affair. (The feelings were somewhat more directional, in fact.)

10. "Shimmy Shimmy Ya" by Ol' Dirty Bastard. I never thought this song would sound sad. Is there a less sad-acting song? A strike against the Scents School of Critique and Haberdashery. Cement is soft as a baby's tush.

11. "I Wanna Be Rich" by Calloway.

12. "Donald and Lydia" by John Prine.

Don't tell me this little white box has no consciousness.

Posted by Sasha at March 25, 2004 03:53 PM | TrackBack