Diario

One song for each year I've been alive. Not necessarily the best or favorite song, just whatever I want to talk about when that year comes up. First part is here.

1977: When I was in junior high, Rush was my favorite band. I even had a Rush belt buckle which I thought was cool. Songs like Cygnus X-1 fell right in line with my love for science fiction, and I liked the mathy, complicated progressions. Later, as punk and punk-influenced music grew to dominate my taste, I dismissed Rush as hopelessly pretentious and mired in prog cliches. They embody so much of what I dislike about prog, but they are undeniably great at what they do, even if what they do is something I don't particularly enjoy anymore. Does that make any sense?

Just as an aside, rockers of the late 70s were weirdly fascinated with spaceships. Besides this song, there's Out Of The Blue, and all of Boston's albums, and Jefferson Starship. Spaceships are best reserved for funk.

…

Going down
Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want
Can't Shape Up
This Is How It Feels
The Funeral Party
Death of a Party
Was It Something I Said
Best Days
Grey Day
Oily Water
Dead

Coming back up
Not Dark Yet
Workingman's Blues #2
Rock'n'Roll Suicide
Yesterday's Men
Torch
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
You Just Haven't Earned It Yet, Baby

Open (music player of your choice) and put your playlist on shuffle. Say the name of

each bolded question out loud and press play. Use the name of the song as your

answer to the question. See what you come up with.

How does the world see me?
Song: The Bottom Line
Artist: Depeche Mode
Comments: Uh, I'm blindly following the crowd.

Will I have a happy life?
Song: Summersong
Artist: The Decemberists
Comments: Yes, god yes.

What do my friends really think of me?
Song: Dead
Artist: They Might Be Giants
Comments: I'm as boring as a corpse.

Do people secretly lust after me?
Song: The Satisfied Mind
Artist: Devo
Comments: Obviously yes.

How can I make myself happy?
Song: Castles in Spain
Artist: Ulysses
Comments: I guess I have to pack up and move to Spain.

What should I do with my life?
Song: Fool In The Rain
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Comments: It doesn't matter. I'll be sad either way.

Why should life be full of so much pain?
…

* They Might Be Giants - Dead
* Irma Thomas - There Must Be A Better World Somewhere
* Kathy McCarty - Going Down
* Bob Dylan - Tryin' to Get to Heaven
* Shawn Colvin - This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)
* Bruce Springsteen - I'm On Fire
* Hayseed Dixie - Heaven's on Fire
* Elvis Costello - This Is Hell
* R.E.M. - Burning Hell
* Spinal Tap - Hell Hole
* Shelby Lynne - Gotta Get Back
* The Traveling Wilburys - Cool Dry Place
* The Bobs - Sitting in Limbo
* Chris Isaak - Waiting for My Lucky Day
* The Mighty Clouds Of Joy - Saved
* Tom Waits - Little Trip to Heaven (On the Wings of Your Love)
* Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven
* Warren Zevon - Knockin' on Heaven's Door
* Talking Heads - Heaven
* the dukhs - Heaven's My Home

I'm going to try a real full-playlist scramble lyrics quiz this time, not just my favourite songs, even if it means I have to Google most of the lyrics instead of being able to remember most of them. I'm also going to be a little meaner with the artist connections--I'll include one of the "most similar" artists in the list as well. So just because an artist is listed in the connections doesn't mean they have a song on the quiz. There is also one artist that turns up twice. All right? Let's go.

1.
Got an email from you today with a poem that you wrote
I was touched because you felt it, 'cause I nearly let you go
If I Saw You In A Movie

2.
I never know what to say to you
But if tears were words and pigs could fly...

3.
This is the land of my sunset
This is my tipsy turvy sky
Keeps My Body Warm

4.
The love that you give, the words that you say to me
Cuts like a knife

5.
I will never say the word procrastinate again
…

Went to the Amanda Palmer solo show this past monday. A very nice night overall. Amanda played for about two hours. Great opening sets by Elizabeth & The Catapult and Boston Typewriter Orchestra.

At one point Brian (the other half of The Dresden Dolls) came out dressed in a white dress along with a grocery bag on his head and Amanda and Brian proceeded to sing They Might Be Giants's song Dead. Along with Amanda's Elliot Smith cover and a song from ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead's new album it made for a fulfilling night of music.

Well, I've now gone through my entire "Favourites" playlist, all 865 of them, and marked them all as "Loved" tracks in last.fm, so anyone who wants to listen to my Loved Tracks Radio can now do so. Of course, that's probably less than half of my actual loved tracks, but it's all the ones I have on MP3 right now.

Also, I was thinking that while I did my A-Z of favourite bands/artists and favourite albums a while back, I never did my A-Z of favourite tracks. Here it is, more or less:

A: Ana Ng
B: Birdhouse in Your Soul
C: Cohabitants
D: Dead
E: Eden Alley
F: Faded Flowers
G: Golden Boy
H: Halo
I: If It Makes You Happy
J: Joey's Camel
K: King of Birds
L: Lucky Ball and Chain
M: Mean To Me
N: New Day For You
O: The Old Apartment
P: Pinch Me
Q: Que Te Quiero
R: Remember a Day
S: Shout
T: Through The Barricades
U: Until the End of the World
V: Virginia Woolf
W: The Way
X: Xanadu
Y: Young Thing, Wild Dreams (Rock Me)
Z: Zoe

Back on my old Blogspot blog, when I was still using that, I was trying to do a countdown of my favourite songs. At the time it was 750, and now it's closer to 1000. By "favourite songs", I'm referring to an ever-growing batch of tapes that I've made of songs that I like. I listen to them, and sing along to them, on my drives to and from work, so I get to know them fairly well. Among my favourites, of course, there are some that I like better than others, but it's a lot of work to try to produce something like an ordered list. Instead, I'm going to try to do them by artist, or in semi-random clusters when there's only one song I like by an artist. There's also always more songs that I'm sure will become favourites later on, that I just haven't noticed yet.

I'm not particularly good at describing music in words(as the quote says, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture"), so I'll probably spend as much time just rambling about my particular history with the artists…