Friday Playlist: Competent Drumwork

There's a certain something about people who broke big out of Michigan. Think of Iggy & the Stooges, Barry Gordy, Madonna, Ted Nugent, Thomas Edison, Funkadelic, Michael Moore, Jack Kevorkian, the White Panthers and the MC5. Few states can compete with that.

Add Flint's Grand Funk Railroad to that list. Given this is a Youtube clip, the bass won't be rattling any bongs, but it's remarkable nonetheless. Given this is 10 minutes long it's a playlist of one. If you make it through the whole thing, you'll agree that's more than enough. It starts paying off about halfway through.

[ When this post gets translated into a Facebook note, what will happen to the Flash embed? You might need to click over to Junk Nexus to see it. ]

Shallow thoughts re: Decemberists show Oct 8, 2009

The sound was great. This was my first indoor rock show without earplugs in probably 17 years. No (tobacco) smoke, no tinnitus, and back home by 11 PM. Pleasant!

The 50+ crowd was out in force, as were kids with glasses. Chicago Police were on hand and there were no arrests.

I did not expect them to play the whole new album "Dark Side of the Moon"-style.
I am dense.

You may remember all the Neutral Milk Hotel comparisons this band used to get. I've seen NMH (twice!) and the Decemberists put on a much, much better show than NMH.

You may remember all the Jethro Tull comparisons this band still gets. I haven't seen Tull (ever!) and I didn't think about Tull at all during this show. I still hear some Tull in "The Crane Wife" though.

This is only my 4th visit to the Riviera, and it's always an Event: Sonic Youth/Royal Trux 1992, Kraftwerk 1998 (first Chicago show since the early 80s), Wilco 2008 (final night of their play-everything 5 night stand). Kraftwerk still may be my favorite of the 4, but it's close now.

Friday Playlist: JOURNEY

The theme for the Shermerville 3rd/4th grade girls soccer team names this fall is rock bands. We got Journey. Though I have no Journey records, I am familiar enough with their music to know their Greatest Hits album from the late 80s is kind of weak. This playlist is, if nothing else, less weak.

Picking a song to start the playlist was tough, since most Journey songs sound like they would make good 2nd songs. So I punted and went with one that the band themselves chose as a leadoff on one of their albums. Check out that last sentence: football and baseball allusions, but no soccer ones. The final song was easy to pick, because it's obligatory, but you have to listen to a long prog/jazz instrumental named after a comet before you get to it.

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/JOURNEY/16343591

Friday Playlist: NEU!

The truth about most of these "Friday Playlists" is I don't usually play them on Fridays when I post them. I usually find it hard to work while listening to music with vocals. This week's playlist is the (nearly) all-instrumental 1972 debut album from everybody's 2nd or 3rd favorite "krautrock" band, NEU! I actually listened to it this afternoon.

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/NEU_/15254892

Friday Playlist: 15 "Random" Songs

Bernie tagged me on Facebook with one of those post-your-first-15-songs-on-shuffle notes. Here's my contribution, as a Grooveshark playlist. The instructions said no cheating, but I skipped songs that are on my iPod but aren't on Grooveshark. I could upload them, but I'm not putting in that much effort today. You can think this is a milder, digital equivalent of 78 snobs who seek out rare records just so they can smash them (meaning nobody else can have them, making their own copies that much more valuable) but you'd be wrong. So this is something like the first 20 or so, whittled down to the 15 I could find.

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/15_Random_Songs/13155714

Friday Playlist: Droning, shapeless indifference

I was listening to my dehumidifier and realized it sounds sort of like Lou Reed's most hated and misunderstood album, "Metal Machine Music". I have this one on 8 track, and this is supposedly its ideal format (that might be a joke, but MMM itself might be a joke). You're stuck with a streaming mp3 approximation from Grooveshark:

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/Lou_Reed_Metal_Machine_Music/12104555

Friday Playlist: Foxsploitation

Given it's Pitchfork Fest weekend, this week's playlist is related to last year's Pitchfork sensation Fleet Foxes. You know Fleet Foxes, right? I found their CD at Target so it's not like they're some obscure band.

One of the Fleet Foxes, Robin Pecknold, played a solo show last weekend in Seattle, and because it's 2009 somebody put it on the Internet almost immediately afterward.

Aside from a few FF songs, he threw renditions of songs by the Magnetic Fields, Fleetwood Mac (one from the Peter Green era, another from Rumours), Nilsson, and Neutral Milk Hotel into his set. For the older folks out there, that's the modern-day equivalent of a band covering the Velvet Underground, the 1910 Fruitgum Company, and The Gay Bob Dylan or something.

It's free, and (apparently) authorized:

http://www.soundonthesound.com/2009/07/13/getting-drunk-for-the-kids-with-robin-pecknold/

Friday Playlist: Do You Wanna Massage?

A couple years ago I went to see a band called Times New Viking. They were good, but what left the biggest impression on me that night was a song (I thought was) called "Do You Wanna Massage" by one of the openers, a local band I had never heard of before called the Mannequin Men. It took almost 2 years but you can finally legally purchase "Massage" on Flameshovel Records. Or you can download it for free as part of their Daytrotter session recorded 2 days ago:

http://www.daytrotter.com/dt/mannequin-men-anthems-for-the-sunken-kids-and-their-soggy-spirits-concert/20030723-3738074.html

Belated Friday Playlist: Merrimac Floyd Fireworks (A Suggestion)

Last night we went all the way up to Merrimac, Wisconsin to see their excellent July 3rd fireworks. We're already talking about doing it again for 2010 (that rhymes; get used to it). One minor issue I had was the soundtrack: all Pink Floyd (with one AC/DC song during the finale). Isn't it strange they chose to play no American music during the Independence Day fireworks? I'll note their pre-fireworks soundtrack included American music from Michael Jackson, the Grateful Dead, Bert & Ernie, and Francis Scott Key.

Here's my suggestion for an all Pink Floyd fireworks soundtrack that I would like to see, not repeating any of the songs the Merrimac folks used last night. For those wondering, the finale would be during "Sheep" and they would play "Echoes" (possibly twice) for everyone sitting in their idling cars, waiting in line to get back on the road.

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/Merrimac_Floyd_Fireworks_A_Suggestion_/9539330

Friday Playlist: Too Much Perspective

June 25, 2009 is the day many of us will remember as the day a visionary musical oddball died: Sky Sunlight Saxon of The Seeds.

For more detail, I'll point you to Nels Cline's piece about his experiences with Sky Saxon.

Grooveshark doesn't have a lot of Sky's music, but there was enough to assemble a playlist with more than enough for most (and really, all 15 minutes of "Up in Her Room" is more than enough for anybody).

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/Too_Much_Perspective/9344323

Friday Playlist: ...For the Whole World to See

The continued supply of newly unearthed, long-lost and/or forgotten music gives old people like me less incentive to keep up with anything new. Thanks (I guess), Drag City records for reissuing (or maybe just "issuing") this lost mid-70s album from 3 Detroit brothers who called themselves "Death" (why so negative, young African-American brothers from mid-70s Detroit?).

If you don't feel up to listening to the whole album, just go with the last song, "Politicians in my Eyes".

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/Death_For_the_Whole_World_to_See/8036889

Friday Playlist: Antique Homes and Plastic Cones

Pavement was (probably by design) an eccentric band. How eccentric? Their "classic lineup" of Malkmus, Kannberg, Ibold, Nastanovich and Young never even recorded an album.

They did record though. Piecing together tracks from an EP, B-sides and Peel sessions, this is what Pavement's missing album number one-and-a-half circa 1992/1993 might have been.

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/Antique_Homes_and_Plastic_Cones/8865288

I think "Relight the Burnt Match (and Stick a Flag on it)" would make a better title, but Grooveshark does not give users a way to rename playlists, other than recreating them under a different name. In Computerese, that's "there is no mv, only cp and rm."

Friday Playlist: The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

Enjoy David Shire's excellent soundtrack to the original Taking of Pelham One-Two-Three before its inevitably disappointing remake comes out next month.

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/Pelham_1_2_3/8757334

Friday Playlist: Ca Plane Pour Vous

This one is annoying and NSFW, not just lyrically, but also because it may simply prevent you from working. Your boss (should you have one) is planning on letting you out early today anyway with the holiday weekend and all, so it's cool.

The rarely asked question "how many different versions of Jet Boy Jet Girl/Ca Plane Pour Moi can I find?" has an answer, and it is "several".

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/Ca_Plane_Pour_Vous/8623109

Friday Playlist: Look out baby, there's a plane incoming!

The Move "were among the most popular British bands to not find any success in the US" (ref: Ricky P. Deya). It's not strictly true; the band did find considerable success, but they had to change their name to ELO and ease visionary freak Roy Wood out of the band. This set in motion (oh!) events that would lead to the upsetting 1981 release "Hooked On Classics".

This playlist is roughly in reverse chronological order, beginning with the cowbell-enhanced B-side of their final single, and ending with the A-side of their 2nd. Like you care. The important thing is that while there are many Move compilations, this playlist is better if only because it covers their whole career (the band switched labels so their "best ofs" tend to be incomplete). It also isn't called something like "Great Move!" either.

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/Look_out_baby_there_s_a_plane_incoming/8485736

Friday Playlist: Naturally Stoned

Too smooth for FM, and too freaky for AM. I would recommend listening to this one during a sunny afternoon bike ride, but you might get too blissed out and run someone over.

Friday Playlist: Smooth, Pitted & Lumpy

(or DW's future "On Hold" soundtrack)

I've tagged the ladies of DW (on f@ceb00k) hoping one of them will consider using this playlist of AM radio hits from 1982 as the "on hold" music for their phone system.



http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/Smooth_Pitted_and_Lumpy_AM_1982/8105023

Friday Playlist: "Disco Sucks"

Ron throws a faded jean jacket over a fading Loop T-shirt as he leaves his bedroom in the basement of his parents' house.

It's July, 1980, and Ron is 20 years old, so thanks to Jimmy Carter, he's got to go to the post office to register for selective service.

Ron drives a 1969 Dodge Dart, has a wispy mustache, and will soon have an associate's degree in HVAC Technology.

He starts the car and this mix he made back in high school is playing on the tape deck.

"Disco Sucks"



http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/Disco_Sucks/8055220

I had enough of my psoriasis

Paula Allen-Meares

Jessica never guessed

Oprah

The Lady