Friday Music Day

FMD: The Best Laid Plans

49 Comments

I had some plans to put together a couple discussion topics - and hopefully I'll get to them at some point (recognizing that I'm covering both Christmas and New Year's... discussion might not be exactly happening on those days)(Can I get added for another month's rotation at the back end of the schedule?). But my kid puked all over the house last night, so I was addressing other things than planning this post. So I'm just gonna shoot from the gut and spew some words in this space so there's something going up for y'all to hurl your random 10 at.

Anyway, for today, how about we talk "non-standard" Christmas songs. I had a couple more to mention, but for now I'll just nominate this one as one everyone should add to their regular Christmas listening:

httpv://youtu.be/1wS-k66MKgs

What holiday songs do you know that others should be adding?

Also, drop your lists!

49 thoughts on “FMD: The Best Laid Plans”

  1. 1. Bottle Rockets “Stuck in a Rut” The Brooklyn Side
    2. Modest Mussorgsky* “IX. La Cabana sur la Pattes de Poule - Baba Yag´ (Die Hütte Auf Hühnerfüßen)” Bilder Einer Ausstellung
    3. Sturgill Simpson “Life of Sin” Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
    4. Jan St. Werner “Cervo” Miscontinuum Album
    5. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy “Lovin' You Is Fun”* Barely Regal

        a. Common Raven “Calls” (Cornell Essential Set)
    6. Current 93 “All the Pretty Little Horsies”* All the Pretty Little Horses (The Inmost Light)
    7. The Field* “No. No...” Cupid's Head
    8. Current 93 “Black Flowers, Please” Birdsong in the Empire
    9. Ryoji Ikeda “Counterpoint” Dataphonics
    T. Black Dice “Smiling Off (Luomo Remix)” Smiling Off
    E. Trembling Bells & Bonnie 'Prince' Billy “Feast of Stephen” New Year's Eve's the Loneliest night of the Year

    *Notes:
    2. Gorchakov Orchestration, Performed by the Krakow Radio-Symphony directed by Karl Anton Rickenbacher. "The Hut on Fowl's Legs" from Pictures at an Exhibition. This recording has the movements of the piece interrupted by readings from Sir Peter Ustinov (not between every movement though). I do not have those "Text" tracks on my iPod, nor do I remember what they sounded like.

    5. Easton Corbin cover

    6. Yes, the track's title has "Horsies", but the album title is just "Horses". The album also has a true title track, which is the same traditional song but with Nick Cave singing instead of David Tibet whispering.

    7. Where the heck is the new album by the Field? He's had one come out every odd-numbered year since 2007. But not this year (...yet?).

  2. Nontraditional Christmas song? How about one with "Traditional" lyrics?
    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYG-fCQP8AI

  3. 01. “Cuscuspin” – Kairon; IRSE! – the Defect in that one is bleach / We're hunting wolverines
    02. “Bird Feathers” – Charlie Parker – The Essence Of Charlie Parker
    03. “Daydreaming” – Middle Brother – Middle Brother
    04. “I Love Every Little Thing About You” – Stevie Wonder – Music Of My Mind
    05. “Twenty Cell Revolt” – Menomena – I Am The Fun Blame Monster!
    06. “Exotica” – Throbbing Gristle – 20 Jazz Funk Greats
    07. “West” – Lucy Michelle And The Velvet Lapelles – Heat
    08. “Let Him Roll” – Guy Clark – Old No. 1
    09. “Chunky Piano” – The Plastics Revolution – The Plastics Revolution
    10. “Knife Chase” – Tom Waits – Blood Money

    One of my stranger mixes.

  4. Wednesday night someone mentioned hearing this one for the very first time -- I hadn't heard it for ages, but I knew exactly which song they were talking about.
    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-hWZGIWe_U

  5. * Man Overboard - Puscifer - Conditions of My Parole**
    * Radiation - Yvette - Process
    * Deja Vu - Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones
    * Take, Take, Take - The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan
    * Vaporize - Roomrunner - Ideal Cities
    * Continuous Thunder - Japandroids - Celebration Rock
    * Intension - Tool - 10,000 Days
    * Running on Nothing - Fucked Up - David Comes to Life
    * Crown on the Ground - Sleigh Bells - Treats ***
    * Don't Apply Compression Gently - Courtney Barnett - The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas

    **Bought the new Puscifer album and I'm very underwhelmed so far. These albums tend to grow on me though, so I'm not giving up yet.

    *** Listened to the new Sleigh Bells song.

  6. Years of my mom playing the Mannheim Steamroller Christmas albums on repeat from October to January has ruined basically any holiday spirit I have. I like exactly one Christmas song*.

    * Likely because it sounds like the early Raveonettes albums, and the Raveonettes are low key one of the best bands of the '00s.

    1. I was gifted a Mannheim Steamroller Christmas album. I do not enjoy it, but sometimes play it ironically.
      The Low Christmas mini-album is pretty good; some of its songs would go well with that Raveonettes song.

    2. This one will probably be added to my repertoire. I have yet to hear a Raveonettes song I don't like (admittedly, I've only heard like 4).

  7. I don't know if it's non-traditional*, but I love "Fairytale of New York."

    *I was delighted that it was part of A Very Murray Christmas.

      1. It was sort of a throwback to the old Christmas specials with a loose story that mostly serves as an excuse for the all-star cast to sing. There were some hits and some misses, but overall it wasn't a terrible way to spend an hour.

        That said, the duet Murray did with Jenny Lewis was pretty creepy ("Baby It's Cold Outside")

  8. I know he gets lots of hate around here, but probably my favorite non-trad one is "Christmas All Over Again"

    That said, from last year, I started going through Sufjan Stevens' (first five) xmas albums. Lots of good stuff there, traditional and otherwise. For example:

    1. Linds got the second Sufjan Christmas collection (Silver and Gold, basically six through ten) for me for Christmas a few years ago, and immediately regretted it, because now I play it during Christmas season. It's quite good.

          1. I don't see how I could possibly go wrong with something that both hj and nibs like and you dislike. 😉

            1. I'm always perplexed at the fact that I don't like Sufjan. It always seems like it should be up my alley, but... never is.

              1. It always seems like it should be up my alley, but... never is.

                insert courtney barnett joke here.

    3. This Aimee Mann tune explores the darker side of the holidays.

      I was thinking I could clean up for Christmas
      And then, baby, I'm through
      Four more weeks that couldn't make any difference
      Except maybe to you

      httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2Uu5eBlfjM
      (And the lead guitar rules the yule!)

        1. She also pursued acting, appearing in “Portlandia” before taking on the narrator’s role in last year’s Paul Thomas Anderson movie “Inherent Vice.”

          Huh?

                1. Have you heard of that guy, Alton John?
                  He wrote a magnificent song.
                  It was called “Sprocket Man,”
                  and t’was quite a good jam—
                  the bicyclists all sang along.

  11. 1. Where Did You Sleep Last Night -- Sonny Knight & The Lakers -- Do It Live
    2. You Just Can't Tell -- Boston Spaceships -- Let It Beard
    3. What May Seem Like Love -- Whiskeytown -- Faithless Street
    4. Yours To Keep -- Guided By Voices -- Bee Thousand
    5. Sunken Treasure -- Wilco -- Being There
    6. You and Your Sister -- Chris Bell -- I Am the Cosmos
    7. Strings Of Nashville -- Pavement -- Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
    8. 'Round Midnight -- Thelonious Monk -- Genius Of Modern Music
    9. Righteously -- Lucinda Williams -- World Without Tears
    10. Prophets Of Rage -- Public Enemy -- It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back

    B1. Something And Nothing -- The Wedding Present -- George Best
    B2. Smallpox Champion -- Fugazi -- In On The Kill Taker

      2. Just about any song from The National will do that for me. Their music is dreary, rainy day with brown liquor music for me.

            1. In that case, I guess I know what to listen to today while drinking green tea and working . . .

              FTFDK

  12. As long as we're still talking about music on a Monday, I'd like to share this article: Can We Escape the Diabolical Clichés of Coldplay?

    Musically, "A Head Full of Dreams” is cool and gleaming, an iteration of the kind of majestic soft rock that Coldplay has been reliably making for the last fifteen years. And yet, listening to the lyrics of “A Head Full of Dreams,” it is impossible not to develop deeply unkind thoughts regarding the aesthetic value of a line like “Everything you want’s a dream away!”

    1. I guess I fall into the Jamison camp (without having read the quoted essay, based only on the selected quote):

      In her essay “In Defense of Saccharin(e),” Leslie Jamison writes, “Bad movies and bad writing and easy clichés still manage to make us feel things toward each other. Part of me is disgusted by this. Part of me celebrates it.”

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