Admin Day

Someone gave me flowers for Administrative Professionals Day, which is cool and all,  but a far more apt gift would be to stop calling me "Gloria."

A Small Playlist (Qualia)

Alone – Colin Newman

            For the longest time, I thought this was a This Mortal Coil cover, but it turns out, they covered him.  There is a haunting beauty here, but I can’t ever listen to his song without thinking of the sewing machine scene in Silence of the Lambs. Shudder.

Alone in the Wind – Andrew WK

            So in a way it kind of makes sense that the PARTY PARTY PARTY guy is doing anime ballads, but… but… but… it’s the PARTY PARTY PARTY guy doing anime power ballads! PARTY! Wear your whites and go forth with the power of PARTY behind you.  Because: PARTY! Alone. In the wind.

Androgynous – The Replacements

            This one gets me on a number of levels – The Replacements are far and away one of my favorite bands, and up ‘til this song, they were pretty much a hard-drinking, guitar-driven dude drunk punk drunk garage band. Did I mention drunk? But Androgynous slides into your ears as this kind of jazzy-poppy piano standard; a little bit early Tom Waits with hints of Tin Pan Alley. A gritty punk band singing a tender song about gender blending may seem a little bit wrong – but oh no, it's so very very very much right.

Are ‘Friends’ Electric?/Down in the Park – Gary Numan

            Many of Numan’s songs explore the relationship between man and machine and hint at a lost, lonely, disconnected future. At the time, they were written off as post-apocalyptic new wave foolishness, but his imagery is very much coming true.  More eerie than qualia, but there is a very peculiar and intangible quality in the lyrics that puts me just a bit on edge whenever I hear it, but I also find it calming – the gentle piano melody echoed by massive synthesizers is hypnotic. I couldn’t decide which of these conveyed the beautiful loneliness best, so you get both.

Books About UFOs – Husker Du

            Another MN punk band going all piano-softy. Show me your soft white underbelly, Huskers, it's ok.

Boys Keep Swinging – Lorette Velvette

            And more gender blendery. The Bowie version of this song is totally tongue-in-cheekly homoerotic, but it takes a whole ‘nother turn when sung by Mizz Velvette.

The Cutter – Solex

            This song comes at you like a gale at sea - there are striking waves and no small hints at dread and doubt. This is a cold, cold, cold song, and it pretty much always ends up in the top 5 whenever someone asks about my favorite songs. I love the Echo and the Bunnymen original just as much, but Solex’s is much harder to come by so that’s the one that gets shared.

Dead Trumpets – Peter Astor

            This song smells like clove cigarettes and absinthe spilled upon leather ballet flats.

Don’t Let Her Go – The Mind Spiders

            When I first heard this song, I thought it was a really great lost recording from some near-forgotten ‘60s garage band. Evidently it’s not, it came out in ‘11. But in my head it totally is and always will be an oldie. Which isn’t much as far as janked perception goes; I just wanted an excuse to pop this song on here because it’s been in my head all day and it’s really damn good.

Double Silhouette – Mark Mallman

            The last time Mallman played in Seattle was a little bit magical – he was the recipient of my very first fan letter ever; I’d written it in a flurry that afternoon, and it sat in my pocket, getting ever more crumpled, until the end of the night when I’d finally chugged enough gin to give me the courage to hand it to him. 
[Sidenote: I’m not sure how he knew me, or why, but about an hour before the show he had friended me on facebook, which was a crazy surprise. I felt my phone vibrate, saw the notification and did some sort of jibbly internal back flip. Aieee! That was the final nail in the “gonna hand the letter over” coffin.] Anyway, after the set, I handed over the letter and we talked for about an hour at the bar. I excused myself to go home and get some sleep, but he chatted me via fb messenger until the wee hours. So I was all giddy. Supergiddy. That show was promoting his newest album, which seemed to be all about a very painful breakup, and it’s all introspective and sad, but I can’t help but just get all warm and fuzzy when I hear it.

Every Word Means No – Let’s Active

            Summers in the Midwest – hot, humid, dandelion fluff everywhere. Peeling the labels off beer bottles, all lime green eyeshadowed behind novelty sunglasses, this is summer.

Gimme Danger – Iggy Pop
              I’ve written about this song before, so I’ll just copy/paste from an old blog – “Thanks to the magic of the rewind button, I can watch Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Ewan Macgregor make out for hours.  In the context of Velvet Goldmine, it’s not just a kiss  – it’s the truth behind the pageantry. It’s the foundation that supports all their other artifice; it’s the realization that to succumb to an emotion that potentially compromising you have got to be just a little bit naive. And daring. And devoted.”

           

I Live 4 the U That Lives In My Mind – Tulip Sweet and her Trail of Tears

            When fantasy and reality are at odds, choose the one that suits you best.

I Need A Girl – Sean Na Na

            This song is such a celebration of everything that is wrong with needy man-children, but all twisted up in there is also recognition and possibly maybe even a celebration of all the roles women are expected to take in relationships and in life, for better or for worse.  Sort of the exact opposite of Joe Jackon’s “It’s Different for Girls.” I’m pretty much sure that I’ve fit into all of those molds at one time or another.

I Wanna Be Black Sometimes – Dylan Hicks

            This is one of those sentiments that most people can’t really let themselves say out loud.  Gender blending is still a bit risque, bit there are songs about it, and Pulp’s Common People is a great song about financial grass is always greenery, but the race card is still oh so taboo. Musically, I Wanna is the farthest thing from the object of desire – the melody silkily smoothed out on a vintage organ bears no resemblance to anything put out by Tupac or Biggie Smalls. Nope. This is the absolute whitest of songs.

Keep Searchin’ (We’ll Follow the Sun) – Del Shannon

             This song peeks through the static of late night AM radio roadtrips. It's both the vast expanse of northern lights and the shining beacon of a roadside Shell station.

(Lord, It’s Hard To Be Happy When You’re Not) Using the Metric System – Atom and his Package

             While l love the brainiac badassery and killer keyboard riffage, I have to admit that my head simply does not wrap itself around the metric system.  At all. My right thumb is 2.5 inches long, how many kiloliters is that? Yardsticks are not pathetic!

The Man With the Harmonica  - Apollo 440 remix

            Not so much an update of a iconic western soundtrack, this piece makes me think of dark back alleys and the secret joy lurking within them. Stepping gingerly over the remnants of broken Bud Light bottles, the hot air of night beating down on you, and dawn oh so very far away.

Night of the Pedestrian – Chicks on Speed

            I’m afraid of cars. I’m afraid of driving. I love the movie Crash. I love Fahrenheit 451. This song is sexy.

The Return of Kind Ropes – The Nihiti

            Basically, my brain’s soundtrack to rope bondage. Which, musically, is not dissonant, but bondagely is. It’s a bit of control I fear giving up, but also kind of sort of crave it so. It’s a violence that can be performed kindly and gently, and that is a beautiful thing.

Sister Havana – Urge Overkill
            Urge Overkill is pretty much everything I love about early ‘70s glam rock gone wrong – hipster cocaine excess without humility, depravity without deprivation. I have the feeling that UO has always been a simultaneous ironic parody and wholehearted tribute to overblown arena rock, and for one hot minute in the 90s, we all rode their coattails out of the alternative college radio quagmire. And then fell right back into it.

Stacked Crooked  - The New Pornographers

            This songs needs to be screamed out at the top of one’s lungs while driving north on gravel roads at 110 per.  This song should be a defining teenage anthem, sung while giving the finger to your mom. This song needs to wear tight leather pants and no bra.
But it’s just so… soft and cuddly.

Waiting for the Cheerleaders to Get Drunk – The Feeling of Love

            It’s bored, it’s impatient, it’s urgent, it’s kinda rapey… and it’s pretty much a play-by-play retelling of all the high school parties ever. The pressure behind this song is palpable – it’s the soundtrack to letterman jacketed boys urgently waiting for the Boone’s Farm Tickle Pink to take hold. The beat of this one, though, the driving bassline especially, pushes it way into the ZOMGSEXXAY side, because I like songs that sound like this. Hnnnng.

We Love You – The Rolling Stones

            I grew up in a Beatles household. In my family, The Beatles were the origin and the definition of rock and roll. But… I preferred The Stones, The Kinks, and The Who. It’s one of those things that should not be a big deal, but really, deep down, it was one of the first ways I truly disappointed my parents.  How dare I?! This may have been the first inkling that I wasn’t of the family, that I was indeed plucked from a box of howler monkeys.