My Alphabetical iPod Diary (Day 1)
So I guess I don’t update a lot. Sue me. I’m busy. It’s true. In the four or so months since I became a professional writer (I get paid very little dollars to write for my local newspaper full time) I have become a terrible, negligent amateur writer. I apologize profusely, dear reader.
But, and that’s a big but, all that has changed. 2008 is a new year, with new music, new words to write and….a new iPod. Lucky me, eh?
I’m probably going to bale on the “A New Song For A New Week” feature because I don’t always want to apply 500 words to one song. I am, however, quite happy to apply 500 words to 50 songs. So that’s what I’m doing. I’ve loaded up the iPod and I’m listening to all of my songs in alphabetical order. Then I will write (either very briefly or very extensively) on each track I hear. I’ll do as many tracks as I want per day, some days it might be 20, other days it may only be one song. But it will be consistent.
That doesn’t mean my other favorite little pieces won’t be showing up. In fact, this little iPod experiment will merely appear when I can’t think of anything better to write. I have some other pieces already written (Overrated/Underrated, V&B Hall of Fame plus another big ass one that I am in the process of writing) and I will post them on the site when I see fit. In the interim, prepare for the self-indulgence that is My Alphabetical iPod Diary.
“A.T.H.F. (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)” by Danger Doom (from The Mouse & The Mask)
The Mouse & The Mask is one of those minor, yet completely enjoyable albums that you tend to forget about until the moment you start randomly listening to music for your little-read music blog. I’m not crazy about Danger Mouse and I’ve cooled to MF Doom in recent years, but Danger Doom was a nice, albeit slight, little project. The Aqua Teen tie-in is pretty funny, especially when Carl Brutananadilewski asks, “Where’s the keyboards and the tambourine and the guitar? You know, the stuff that white people like. Something bad ass, I don’t know, like REO Speedwagon or something.” MF Doom delivers some nice lines, but he gets outdone by Master Shake.
“’A’ Bomb In Wardour Street” by The Jam (from All Mod Cons)
My knowledge of the Jam is super limited. I know they have that one album with the famous picture on the cover and I know a couple of their more popular songs. That’s it. All Mod Cons is a fairly highly regarded album that my wife has been hoarding around for the last few years. She stands by it, but to me it sounds like fairly straightforward late-70’s pub rock. “Wardour” is a spunky little number that really rides the cowbell and improves with each listen. I’d compare it to early Clash, except more fully fleshed out. The little guitar chicka-chicka at the 1:16 mark points to Andy Gill’s work with Gang of Four and it’s one of many guitar-related highlights on the track. Also, handclaps!
“ABC” by The Jackson 5 (from The Best of Jackson 5: The Millennium Collection)
This is the only Millennium Collection comp that I own, and it totally goes against my “greatest hits albums are for housewives and little girls” motto, but it’s friggin’ hard to find a proper album by these guys that is earlier than 1974 (the ones where Michael and Marlon let their afros get all wavy). “ABC,” along with its predecessor and near doppelganger “I Want You Back,” is, of course, an undeniable classic, full of feel good moments and goose bump group sings. The song clocks in at a pop song perfect three minutes and contains 20 minutes worth of hooks: the fuzzy, walking guitar line; the funky, percussive breakdown with Michael as the authoritative soul man and even Jackie’s scratchy background yelps. It takes a certain kind of genius to release a perfect, universally adored pop song. The Jackson 5 released no less than two of them.
Shake it, shake it, baby now!
“Abdulmajid” by David Bowie (from Heroes)
When my wife, Lara, and I were in the early stages of dating (and if I’m not mistaken, I think it may have been during our first phone conversation), she told me that she was a big David Bowie fan. I replied that I was “more of a David Byrne guy myself.” She recommended that I pursue Bowie’s work and I quickly ran to the nearest used vinyl shop and purchased a bunch of his stuff. I really took to his earlier, glam stuff like Hunky Dorey and Ziggy Stardust. I still haven’t really delved wholeheartedly into Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy, so this track, a bonus instrumental cut from a 1999 reissue, is fairly new to me. It’s fine, some definite krautrockian overtones, but it’s just a mood piece, and after a song like “ABC” I’m in no mood for Bowie’s cryptic little instrumental.
“Abigail, Belle of Kilronan” by The Magnetic Fields (from 69 Love Songs, Vol. 2)
The second disc of 69 Love Songs is widely considered the worst, but it also contains the album’s single best track (“Papa Was A Rodeo”) so it holds a certain. “Abigail” is a woozy, minimalist little ballad (what Magnetic Fields song isn’t?). It’s no standout on the entirety of the monster album, but when isolated on my iPod it fares much better. Stephin Merritt’s bored, detached bass vocals are, of course, the main attraction. The nice thing about this iPod diary thing is that it will highlight a bunch of tracks a rarely listen to. “Abigail” is track 22 of 23 on a disc that I rarely listen to, and it was quite a pleasant surprise to rediscover.
“Abracadabra” by Judee Sill (from Judee Sill)
No, not the Steve Miller Band song, although their greatest hits album (yes, another greatest hits that I actually own) should be thrown on my iPod pronto. This is a short, lovely, albeit slightly maudlin, song from one of the great, unheralded folk singers of the 70s. Judee Sill kicks Joni Mitchell’s ass, in my opinion, but this isn’t a great place to start. Sill’s lovely southern-drawl-by-way-of-the-midwest voice is here, but this song is exceptionally minor. Better songs are to come.
“Abraham” by Sufjan Stevens (from Seven Swans)
One of Seven Swans’ most lovely pieces and one of the most overtly spiritual songs on an overtly spiritual album. A lot of the songs on Seven Swans cover the same intimate, soft-spoken terrain, and to hear them all bunched together they start to bleed into each other, but on its own “Abraham” is effective. I quite like the combination of the guitar walk-down with Stevens’ lonely melody. It’s quite affecting.
“Abram” by Jose Gonzales (from In Our Nature)
All you in-the-ear bedroom folk freaks (not freak folk, though) need to get on the Jose Gonzales train, stat. After his brilliant and lovely cover of the Knife (“Heartbeeps”), Gonzales has released a couple of really fantastic records. His 2007 album, In Our Nature, is especially immediate and haunting. It’s funny and just a little bit ironic that “Abram,” a track that takes some shots at religion (“Even though you mean well (well, most of the time) / You made a delusion and created lie in our minds”), follows Sufjan Stevens’ “Abraham,” a song that refuses to hide its spiritual themes. Also, they sound like practically the same song. The sonic similarities and lyrical dichotomies are interesting, if nothing else.
“Absent Mind” by Mission of Burma (from ONoffOn)
A blistering, shouty, atonal blast from these punk fogies (listen to the guy hacking up a lung in the background and try to tell me these boys ain’t old). OnoffON, is of course Mission of Burma’s big return-from-a-20-year hiatus album and one would assume that most “reunion” albums would be a horrid, cash-grabbing one off, but Mission of Burma continue to tear skulls like they did in their “Acadamy Fight Song” heyday. “Absent Mind’s” careening guitar squalls shriek while the band speeds and slows their tempo and the song finally peters out; sweaty, exhausted, pissed off, jubilant.
“Absentminded Melody” by The Joel Plaskett Emergency (from LaDeDa)
The touching, beautiful album opener to Plaskett’s otherwise mediocre LaDeDa, an album that hey wrote and recorded within the span of one Arizona road trip. The album falters left and right, but this opener (and one or two other tracks on the album), packs a sweet, slightly melancholy punch. It’s certain diamond in the rough on one of Plaskett’s lesser albums.