8.04.2006

Friday Random Ten: Now with Commentary!

I haven't done a Friday Random Ten in months! In order to celebrate my triumphant return to rock snobbery, I've decided that from now on (or at least as long as I feel like doing this) I'm going to list the songs and comment on their general coolness, how much I like a particular lyric, or regale you with stories of my debauched youth and the part that song plays in my fall from innocence.

This is either the best idea I've ever had, or by far the worst.

1. Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
I had this song for like five months before I ever really paid attention to it, and then one day it just clicked. I think I listened to it on repeat for days before I finally got it out of my system. Now, after having avoided it for a few months, I think I'm back on the wagon. Damn, what a great song.

2. Enrique Iglesias' Mole - Clem Snide
Oh, Eef Barzelay; you're like my dream friend. I want to drink expensive imported beers and smoke American Spirit cigarettes with you while we discuss the social significance of the facial deformities of minor pop acts with creepy fathers. And while I might gently reprimand you for incorrectly placing the apostrophe after the last 's' as if our Latin friend's surname were a plural rather than singular noun, it's only because I want you to be the best person you can be, Eef. I rebuke because I love.

3. Yuri G - PJ Harvey
Only Polly Jean can make a paean to a Cosmonaut sound like the sexiest lesbian anthem you've ever heard.

4. Sweet Lord in Heaven - Doughty
How did we miss this during the Songs About Heroin thread? Doughty reminds me of Ted on Queer as Folk--so much cooler when tweaked out than sober. This song is redeemed only because it introduces the phrase "Cobain Sarcoma" into the common (okay, my) parlance as a euphemism for heroin addiction.

5. Mushaboom - Feist
I tried so hard to hate this song. Knowing that Feist inspired the creepy and awful Sloan song The Other Man makes me want to avoid her no matter how cute she is. But all of my defenses are worn down the moment she makes "Old dirt road" last for about seventeen beats. And the video is so adorable I can't even stand it.

6. The Concept - Teenage Fanclub
I shared with Gaby and Kerri this weekend my theory that 14 is the important year in a girl's musical development; our future coolness hinges on our ability to seek out good music at this delicate age. On my 14th birthday I used my Harmony House (remember them?) gift certificates to purchase three CDs: Fugazi's Steady Diet of Nothing, My Bloody Valentine's Loveless and Bandwagonesque by Teenage Fanclub. If this was all you knew about me, you'd know enough.

7. Ballad of the Sin Eater - Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
Ted sings "And the French Foreign Legion / You know they did their best / But I never believed in T.E. Lawrence / So how the hell could I believe in Beau Geste, huh?" and Annamaria swoons. Every. Fucking. Time. I'm the most literate whore you'll ever know.

8. Bill Hicks - Hammell on Trial
I've heard exactly two Hammell on Trial songs (this and a cover of Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues), and I love them both so much I'm terrified to find anything else by this guy--what if they aren't as brilliant? Someone go download a bunch of his songs and allay my fears, would you?

9. This Years Girl - Elvis Costello
Early in his career, Elvis Costello was often accused of extreme misogyny, a charge that I find ridiculous when listening to something like This Years Girl (et tu, E.C.? Can no one use an apostrophe correctly?!) compared to most of the unfettered woman-hating that passes as Top 40 these days. That said, there is something rather disturbing about the relish with which he delivers the line "you want her broken with her mouth wide open." I figure within the year, Mr. MacManus was firmly within the clutches of the insipid Bebe Buell, so he's been punished for this song enough.

10. Think (Let Tomorrow Bee) - Sebadoh
This is the most agonizingly painful song EVER. When I was 19 and my first college boyfriend that I didn't even like that much broke up with me (He broke up with me! He was madly in love with me for two years before I finally deigned to go out with him, and he broke up with me!), I listened to this song on a nonstop loop for nearly a week before my friends finally staged an intervention. I think they were concerned that if the break up didn't drive me to suicide, the song surely would.

Your turn!

PS: In case you didn't notice, the FRT is also fully downloadable. Updated: links are gone. If there's a song that you really, really want, let me know and I might be nice enough to put it back.

Labels: FRT

annamaria at 7:46 AM

11 spoke

11 Comments

at Friday, August 04, 2006 9:59:00 AM  Kurt said...

amazing that ALL the "random" tunes are downloadable! welcome back to this part of your world (which i have appropriated on my site!). thanks for the links, you know that i will be checking them out! here's mine (several of which are also linked), but i have no time to comment on each song...
Goat - Phil Lesh & Friends
Ex-Cuties - Sure Juror
Eli, The Barrow Boy - The Decemberists
I Don't Know - Hank Williams III
Looks Like Rain - Grateful Dead (Springfield, MA 1973)
Iambic 9 Poetry - 3 Apples High
Crazy Dream - Los Lonely Boys
Over & Over Again (Lost and Found) - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Do Right Woman - Phil Lesh & Friends
Truckin' - Dwight Yoakum
can you see the influence of Annamaria?

 

at Friday, August 04, 2006 10:11:00 AM  annamaria said...

That's right, after all I'm such a huge Dwight Yoakum fan! :)

Funny (to me, at least) aside: My Republican Brother is a Dwight Yoakum fan, and my nieces, while they enjoy country music, are terrified of Dwight. They scream whenever they hear his songs and cower until it's over. For two teenaged girls raised in suburban Detroit, the twang is a terrible thing indeed.

 

at Friday, August 04, 2006 2:29:00 PM  Anonymous said...

Yoakam! Get it right! ;)

Also, why is the apostrophe in "Enrique Iglesias' Mole" wrong? That's where we would put it!

Anyway, here's my ten:

1: Thunderbirds Are Now! - We Win (Ha Ha)
2: The Thermals - An Ear For Baby
3: The Blow - Pile Of Gold
4: Destroyer - No Cease Fires! (Crimes Against The State Of Our Love, Baby)
5: Built To Spill - Liar
6: Josh Ritter - Monster Ballads
7: Mew - The Zookeeper's Boy
8: The Long Winters - Teaspoon
9: Regina Spektor - Fidelity
10: The Format - Time Bomb

 

at Friday, August 04, 2006 2:39:00 PM  annamaria said...

While it is comforting to know that you have so much in common with my dream friend Eef Barzelay, you both need to work on the grammar. S-apostrophe indicates the plural possessive (e.g., "I am parents' child.") For a singular noun, even one ending in 'S', the correct possessive form is apostrophe-S, (e.g. "Enrique Iglesias's Mole.") I know it looks stupid, but it's correct. Just because you're a Brit doesn't mean you get to go changing the rules all willy-nilly like. ;)

 

at Friday, August 04, 2006 3:13:00 PM  Anonymous said...

Transatlantic grammar war number 1,499,302! I still think we're right, and I've found something on the interwebs to back me up:

"Singular possessive
The possessive form of a singular noun is an apostrophe followed by the letter "s."

Kramer's hair
Daphne's patience
the car's engine

Words ending with s, z or x generally omit the "s."

Dr. Seuss' sense of humor."


..Or maybe we're both right? I like it when we're both right! ;)

 

at Friday, August 04, 2006 3:30:00 PM  annamaria said...

I frown upon the omission of the 's'. If you really loved me, you would do the same.

 

at Friday, August 04, 2006 4:29:00 PM  Anonymous said...

Haha! Okay! :)

 

at Saturday, August 05, 2006 12:41:00 PM  Kurt said...

that is the only Dwight(sorry about the spelling Rich) song I have and it is off of Deadicated, a CD which features artists from Suzanne Vega to Midnight Oil doing covers of Grateful Dead songs...

 

at Monday, August 07, 2006 11:07:00 AM  Anonymous said...

Actually, Rich is right. No use of additional esses necessary when there is already an esssssss sound at the end of the word.

Although, I think some style guides still have the double-s as acceptable, but it is typically frowned upon.

 

at Monday, August 07, 2006 11:10:00 AM  annamaria said...

Pfft. Rich is British, what does he know about the English language? ;)

 

at Monday, August 07, 2006 2:47:00 PM  Anonymous said...

"Actually, Rich is right. No use of additional esses necessary when there is already an esssssss sound at the end of the word.

Although, I think some style guides still have the double-s as acceptable, but it is typically frowned upon."


Eef? Is that you? ;)

 

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