So my annual ritual for my birthday is a mix CD. Here's what I made:
1. Lana Del Rey “Blue Jeans”
2. Colin Stetson “Red Horse (Judges II)”
3. So So Radio “Disengaged (Live In Studio)”
4. Ha Ha Tonka “Lonely Fortunes (Mile Marker Session)”
5. Meat Puppets “Comin' Down”
6. Rocky Votolato “Red River”
7. The Spring Standards “The Hush”
8. Robert Randolph & The Family Band “back to the wall”
9. Alabama Shakes “I Found You”
10. The Sugarcubes “Hit”
11. Zola Jesus “Shivers”
12. Lana Del Rey “Video Games”
13. Johnny Cash “The Mercy Seat”
14. Ha Ha Tonka “No Great Harm”
15. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy “Ohio River Boat Song” (Greatest Palace Music version)
16. Sonic Youth “Pink Steam”
17. The Pharcyde “Passin Me By (Hot Chip Remix)”
18. The Tamlins feat. Alborosie “Baltimore (Alborosie Remix)”
19. Luomo “Tessio (Radio Edit)”
20. Zola Jesus “Run Me Out”
So that's what I'm feeling this week. That and Merle.
So, I'm all psyched to see Ha Ha Tonka have their First Ave mainroom debut tonight. But yesterday, I'm paging through the Onion and I see that So So Radio is playing at the Whole tonight, too. So it's like my favorite and second-favorite bands. I quick e-mail the lead singer of SSR to find out when they're playing. He said "About 9". HHT is opening for Robert Randolph and the doors open at 8pm, meaning they'll probably start at 9pm, too. Crud, I was hoping for a super night of: HHT show at First Ave, quick departure for the U of MN, and then SSR to cap it off.
Fitting that they'd play at the same time tonight, they're the only bands I care a lot about that like baseball. HHT are 3/4 big Cardinals fans (1/4 Royals fan). And SSR is at least 2/3 Brewers fans (the last third may be ambivalent). I had already committed myself to the HHT show.
Ha Ha Tonka will be opening for Robert Randolph and the Family Band at First Ave one week from today. I have a standing offer to buy anyone I know their first HHT ticket, but with a $20 cover, I hope I don't get a rush of takers.
I've now listened to a few of these Randolph albums, and I don't really them that much. Reminds me of my least favorite songs from Fishbone's Reality of My Surroundings and Give a Monkey a Brain...: generally those that Angelo Moore did not sing on. Without the Angelo-ey goodness surrounding the others' songs, I doubt I would have their songs a second listen. They do seem like they'd be a fun band to see live, particularly with someone to dance with. But preggers EAR won't be able to go.
Zola Jesus will be playing at the 7th Street Entry on Wednesday night. I missed her last time around. I should probably get to this show, before she has to play bigger venues.
It took me like two months, but I'm not really loving Colin Stetson's New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges. Probably time to buy it. It's been a hell of a week for me at work (I think my brain needs a dual-core processor), and this is hitting the spot. Especially the very song that was a featured WGOM video, "Red Horse". Thanks, Hitman!
With work, I haven't been listening to the videos as they come, but I keep them in my RSS feed and listen on the weekends.
First and unrelated, I had a backlog of the past few weeks' City Pages and Onions that I hadn't read. Before throwing them out on Tuesday morning, I quickly scanned through them and saw that on Monday night, Mad Professor played the 7th Street with Twilight Circus Dub Soundsystem opening. I'm quite bummed that I missed that. Twilight Circus (the Dutchman Ryan Moore, formerly of the Legendary Pink Dots) is responsible for what is probably my favorite Dub album, Horsie. If that's not my favorite dub album, then it must be Mad Professor's No Protection remix of Massive Attack. Dang, how often does a bill like that come around? How often does Twilight Circus come around at all?
There's been a lot of music talk this week already. Let's see if we can add to that, eh?
Possible topic: as we near the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, do you have any particular musical memories from that period of time? I know I was listening to Neotropic's La Prochaine Fois.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5gthgvtH0E
I had bought the CD the week before at Let It Be. The wordless, bleached out sounds felt like memory and loss at the time. Please keep any discussions well onto the safe side of the topic line.
So, with some Christmas money, I bought myself this massive set back in December. It finally shipped last week. (Apparently, they found more material and decided to expand it by four CDs, so it got pushed back half a year.) Delivery was attempted over the past two days while my wife was out of the house. It's coming tomorrow and she'll be home to receive it.
I got the links for the downloads in my email yesterday, but jumpin' January molasses is it slow! As I write this, I've been downloading the first disc, about 1GB, for about six hours. I wonder if their servers are being overloaded, but dang, I was planning on replacing 90% of the content on my iPod and listening to this all day tomorrow. I am going to stay up until I can download the first disc (24 minutes left), so I at least have something.
So that's what I'll be listening to for the next two months. What have you got to listen to today?
I'm out of town today (New Ulm), so I might not even check in.
Here's a song I've been overplaying in my headphones this week: "Video Games" by Lana Del Rey.
