Rock Lobster

Came through loud and clear upon waking this morning. One of the most epic songs of my early days. It cracks me up that someone on the YouTube message board for this video says:

"such an underrated song. i would of (sic!) never found this gem had it not been for family guy."

I mean, really? This comment instantly reminded Amber of when we saw a singer in a bar a couple years ago who played a cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah and admitted to the audience that he'd first heard it on the Shrek soundtrack (covered by Rufus Wainwright). I guess the youth have gotta learn about music somehow (i.e. opera music from Looney Tunes. Yes, I'm implicating myself.)

Artist: B-52's
Year: 1978
Rating: Pass the tanning butter!

Top Albums of the Aughts, Part Two

I give you Part Two of Jon Schwartz's Top 100 Albums of the last decade:

50. The Arcade Fire – Funeral
49. Sufjan Stevens – Come On Feel The Illinoise!
48. Radiohead – Amnesiac
47. The Essex Green – The Long Goodbye
46. Yo La Tengo – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
45. Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
44. Thom Yorke – The Eraser
43. Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
42. As Tall As Lions – You Can’t Take It With You
41. Death Cab for Cutie – Narrow Stairs
40. Albert Hammond, Jr. – Yours to Keep
39. The Impossible Shapes – Horus
38. Andrew Bird – Andrew Bird’s Mysterious Production of Eggs
37. The Magic Numbers – Those The Brokes
36. Beck – Sea Change
35. Other Lives – Other Lives
34. Foals – Antidotes
33. The Black Keys – Rubber Factory
32. Islands – Arm’s Way
31. Sigur Rós – ( )
30. Doves – Some Cities
29. Espers – Espers II
28. The Unicorns – Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone?
27. Sondre Lerche – Phantom Punch
26. The Decemberists – Picaresque
25. Sufjan Stevens – Seven Swans
24. The Impossible Shapes – We Like It Wild
23. The Decemberists – Castaways and Cutouts
22. Built to Spill – Ancient Melodies of the Future
21. The Postal Service – Give Up
20. The Bird and the Bee – The Bird and the Bee
19. Badly Drawn Boy – Hour of the Bewilderbeast
18. Death Cab for Cutie – Transatlanticism
17. The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
16. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
15. South – You Are Here
14. The Helio Sequence – Keep Your Eyes Ahead
13. Bell X1 – Flock
12. Andrew Bird – The Swimming Hour
11. Radiohead – In Rainbows

Jon has offered some commentary on his Top Ten Albums of the Aughts:

10. Espers – Espers, particularly on their 2004 debut album, have a timeless sound. At the time I discovered Espers my freshman year of college, I was very into 60’s rock. This album felt like it could have been a lost relic of the British Psychedelic Folk era. But while bands like Fairport Convention thrived on whimsical ballads, Espers found a niche 40 years later on the much darker side of folk. I’ve heard Espers described as “creepy” and “off-putting,” but when I hear this album I can’t help but be absorbed in its swirling, otherworldly melodies that wrap around the listener like a fleece blanket on a November night. All of the elements of a classic folk album are present: delicate acoustic guitar arpeggios, gentle male/female vocal harmonies, but this album portrays a darker world than the classics of the genre.

9. The Rural Alberta Advantage – Hometowns I only heard about this band a couple of weeks ago, in fact right in the middle of compiling this list. The fact that they shot all the way into my top ten speaks volumes about how absolutely addictive this band is. I dare you to listen to this album all the way through and not want to play it again right away. The songs are short and sweet. The arrangements are minimal and the theatrics basically nonexistent. It’s so easy to call this band the new Neutral Milk Hotel, but it just feels so true. The emotional depth in these songs is so immediately compelling, and the production so gritty and lo-fi. They just might be the next big thing. And by “big” I mean indie big, not MTV big.

8. Fleet Foxes – Fleet Foxes If Espers is a smoky attic lit by candlelight, then Fleet Foxes are a rustic cabin in the mountains. This album makes me think of standing on a mountain top looking out over a vast, green, hilly landscape. The harmonies on this album can be so thick, and the reverb so heavy, it feels like a bunch of people making music for the sheer joy of it, and whoever happens to pass by, they’d throw them an instrument and tell them to join in. That’s not to say this album is mindless fun—far from it. The harmonies are complex, and the song writing very compelling. It feels instantly classic and yet a breath of fresh air at the same time.

7. Sigur Rós – Takk… Listening to Sigur Rós can be like your radio accidentally picking up signals from an alien planet. If you see them play live, you would see that they are indeed using human musical instruments, but it sometimes doesn’t sound like it. On their previous releases, it was often more about setting a mood than getting a point across. Over the years, though, the band has grown as songwriters and on Takk… Sigur Rós shows that they can write pop songs. It doesn’t exactly sound like your everyday radio pop, but on songs like “Hoppípolla” and “Sæglópur,” Sigur Rós showed they could be catchy while still being just as enigmatic as ever. The classic Sigur Rós melancholy is still here, but the band has definitely expanded their repertoire to include a more childlike playfulness on this album.

6. The Decemberists – Her Majesty the Decemberists The Decemberists are everything that’s great about indie-pop. They’re smart, they’re quirky, they’re catchy. Colin Meloy loves to throw $10 words around, and while you don’t always know what he’s talking about, you’re just thankful that he’ll never rhyme “love” with “above” or “heart” with “apart.” You can tell Meloy cares about crafting great songs. He declares every word as if it matters. The songs [move] from introspective (“Red Right Ankle”), to infectious (“Billy Liar”), to tongue-in-cheek dramatic (“Shanty for Arethusa”). Meloy and the gang have a knack for creating songs where the lyrics and music would be strong on their own, and yet don’t take anything away from one another when combined.

5. Wilco – Sky Blue Sky Wilco has seen it all. From bar band obscurity, to indie darlings, to critical sensation, and now they’re being sold in Starbucks and played in car commercials. After the irresistible indie-country hooks of Summerteeth, Wilco decided to take a turn for the weird on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which ended up being a battle with the record company to even release, and ultimately became one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the decade. So why isn’t Yankee Hotel Foxtrot #5 you might be asking? Well, because this is my list, and I absolutely adore Sky Blue Sky. It’s one of those albums that feels absolutely timeless. The songs are emotionally rich and catchy at the same time. The thing I love most about this album is that the songs feel alive, and not Frampton Comes Alive kind of alive. I mean it feels like they flow effortlessly from Wilco’s minds and instruments. Almost every song on the album takes an unexpected turn at some point, and it doesn’t feel as meandering as their 2004 album A Ghost is Born. It feels extremely succinct and yet unpredictable at the same time.

4. Radiohead – Hail to the Thief I have listened to this album more than any other album. Why was I so obsessed with it and why does it still continue to thrill me years later? Radiohead have always been pushing the envelope of what music is and can be. They’ve evolved from album to album unlike any other band I’ve ever heard. So after the out-there experimental soundscapes of the Kid A/Amnesiac era, old school fans were looking forward to Hail to the Thief as Radiohead’s return to rock. And they were disappointed. It’s true there are more guitars on Hail to the Thief than on Kid A or Amnesiac, but it doesn’t sound anything like OK Computer and that’s what a lot of people were hoping for. Hoping for a new Radiohead album to sound anything like an old one is like hoping for Haley Joel Osment to still be seeing dead people. If all of Radiohead’s preceding albums were them branching out and trying to find their place in the world, Hail to the Thief is them finding it.

3. As Tall As Lions – As Tall As Lions As Tall as Lions just rocks. It’s hard for me to describe what it is I like so much about this album, which is why I’m not a music critic. But you’re still reading this for some reason, so I guess I should give you something. I would describe them as bombastic arena rock meets sweet emotive vocals meets anthemic melodicism. The Mars Volta meets Jeff Buckley meets Radiohead. The vocals soar, the drums are crisp and punchy, the guitars knock you on your ass. But it’s not mindless butt-rock. This is big, over the top rock with heart…and soul. If you want to remind yourself what it is about music that you love in the first place, listen to this album.

2. Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s – The Dust of Retreat This album can be a little depressing. But it’s a sweet sort of depressing. A real gaze-at-the-stars-on-your-back kind of album. It a little country/folk/rock with a hefty dose of achingly melodic tunes. Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s (what a mouthful!) simply craft amazing, well written songs. Songs I love to sing along to. It’s hard to imagine that I will ever get tired of this album. Listening to it is like hanging out with a good friend. We’re gonna be friends for a while.

1. Radiohead – Kid A What is there left to say about Kid A? This album tops every other best-of-the-decade list out there. So I guess I agree with the critics about something. Kid A was possibly one of the most anticipated albums of all time. It had been three years since they released OK Computer, one of the best selling and most critically acclaimed albums of the 90’s. From the moment the electronic keyboard swooshes through your ears and directly into your brain, it’s apparent that Radiohead is up to something completely different. They brought electronica into the mainstream, and perhaps more importantly, brought electronica into rock. Kid A paints a picture of a desolate, cold world, where computers control humans. It’s the kind of album that only comes around once a generation, if you’re lucky. Kid A is most certainly the Dark Side of the Moon of my generation. It’s a front-to-back masterpiece without a single wasted note.

* * *

Thanks for the recommendations and insight, Jon! Truth is, I'm not nearly as voracious a music consumer, buyer, or downloader as you are, so the idea of coming up with such an extensive list to me is mind-bending. Thanks for putting it together!

I do have a few additions. Admittedly any list that you or I would create would be heavily, if not exclusively, biased toward the broad category of "indie/alternative." Neither of us mention huge pop, hip hop, country or other genre acts of the '00s, which certainly merit, and have merited plenty of attention elsewhere. Off the cuff, that list would probably include Outkast, Kanye West, and Dixie Chicks among countless others.

But as they say, "Write what you know," and so, I give you a very short short list of indie-ish albums I think Jon (and you all) should check out as representative of the best of the Aughts. In no particular order:

The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree and Tallahassee
Sunset Rubdown - Shut Up I Am Dreaming
Sloan - Never Hear the End of It
Sleater-Kinney - The Woods
New Pornographers - Electric Version

Honorable mention: The Magnetic Fields album 69 Love Songs was released in the 11th hour of 1999, and therefore can't technically be included in this list. But just as the Pixies' late-80s albums defined post-punk indie rock in the '90s, so did Magnetic Fields usher in the Aughts with Love Songs.

~~Fin~~

Top Albums of the Aughts, Part One

My resident musicologist, Jon Schwartz, has offered us a rare opportunity to view the contents of his head. Following in this two-part entry are the Top 100 Albums of the last decade according to Jon. Links will take you to a YouTube video of a representative or favorite song from the album. Jon graces us with some thoughts about a few select records. Then I'll chime in with a few albums I think Jon forgot.

Enjoy!

100. Sparklehorse – Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain
99. The Impossible Shapes – Tum
98. Grizzly Bear – Yellow House
97. Menomena – Friend and Foe
96. The Mars Volta – De-Loused in the Comatorium
95. Bell X1 – Blue Lights on the Runway
94. Loch Lomond – Paper the Walls
93. Cake – Comfort Eagle
92. The Bees – Sunshine Hit Me
91. Andrew Bird – Weather Systems
90. The Cranberries – Wake up and Smell the Coffee
89. Built to Spill – There is no Enemy
88. Unified Theory – Unified Theory
87. Kelley Stoltz – Circular Sounds
86. The Bees – Octopus
85. Andrew Bird – Armchair Apocrypha
84. Beulah – The Coast is Never Clear
83. The Black Keys – Attack & Release
82. Islands – Vapours
81. The Fiery Furnaces – Gallowsbird’s Bark
80. Fruit Bats – Spelled in Bones
79. The White Stripes – Elephant
78. Lovedrug – The Sucker Punch Show
77. Elliot Smith – Figure 8
76. Sondre Lerche – Duper Sessions
75. The Bird and the Bee – Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future
74. The Mumlers – Thickets & Stitches
73. Portishead – Third
72. The Essex Green – Cannibal Sea
71. Death Cab for Cutie – Plans
70. The Coral – The Invisible Invasion
69. South – With the Tides
68. The Impossible Shapes – Bless the Headless
67. Sondre Lerche – Faces Down
66. Elvis Perkins – Ash Wednesday
65. Greg Weeks – Awake Like Sleep
64. Doves – Lost Souls
63. The White Stripes – De Stijl
62. Glen Hansard – Once
61. Noah and the Whale – First Days of Spring
60. The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love
59. Telekinesis! – Telekinesis!
58. Espers – Espers III
57. Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s – Not Animal!
56. The Teeth – You’re My Lover Now
55. The Magic Numbers – The Magic Numbers
54. Greg Weeks – Blood is Trouble
53. Sondre Lerche – Two Way Monologue
52. Iron and Wine – Our Endless Numbered Days
51. The White Stripes – White Blood Cells

Love Theme from The Breakfast Club

When it popped into my head, I was wondering whether it actually had a title other than "Love Theme" but, in fact, no.

Artist: Keith Forsey
Year: 1985
Rating: Lukewarm (but nostalgic)

Singin' In the Rain

Yes, my unconscious soundtrack can sometimes be rather predictable and dependent upon obvious environmental factors. This clip from the 1952 movie is so sweet though; it's hard to resist. And here's a link to one of the early recordings of the song from 1929.

Artist: Gene Kelly
Year: 1952
Year: (original) c. 1927, written by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown
Rating: Warm

We're Going to be Friends

White Stripes aficionados out there may groan that I've chosen the opening credits of Napoleon Dynamite to showcase this song. But truth is, this is how I first heard it, and I can't really think about it without a parade of tater tots and salisbury steaks running through my mind.

Artist: The White Stripes
Year: 2001
Rating: Warm

You May Be Right

I've always identified with this song, even though I never rode a motorcycle in the rain.

Artist: Billy Joel
Year: 1980
Rating: Hot!

Galileo

Awesome! Props to Emily and Amy for looking so dykey on the Tonight Show with Leno in 1992! They were my idols in those days. It gave me some goosebumps to see this clip. Haven't had Indigo Girls in my head yet, even though I mentioned them way back in the entry about my musical DNA when starting the blog. Artist: Indigo Girls Year: 1992 Rating: Luke Hot Note: Jackson Browne features in this clip, and also provided backing vocals, along with David Crosby, on the album version.

Infernal Gallop

My dear friend Buffy, whom I've known since the sixth grade, musical era of Thriller and Madonna's first album, has cracked the case of the mystery classical song rather brilliantly. From the rudimentary schematic of musical notes I offered in that entry, Buffy deduced, correctly, that the song was a 19th Century composition by Jacques Offenbach from his operetta Orpheus in the Underworld. I imagine many of us know it as a song that Bugs Bunny can-canned to. The part that was in my head starts at 1:28.

 

Here's the comment thread from my Facebook page in which the revelation was made: 

 
Lisa
What instrument(s) are playing? If you want to call and sing it in to my cell phone I might be able to figure it out :)

about an hour ago ·  

Buffy

I know exactly what song you're talking about (great description btw!). Now am checking my Looney Tunes dvd to hear the rest and figure out who/what it is....

44 minutes ago · 

Buffy

Hmmmmm... wasn't on the episode I thought it was on. Pretty sure it's all strings. Vivaldi maybe? I'll keep lookin'

34 minutes ago ·

 

Jon ahhh i know exactly what you're talking about too but i don't know what or who it is. you're definitely right about strings.

28 minutes ago ·
Buffy Phew! Found it: The composer is Jacques Levy Offenbach. The song is "Infernal Gallup" from the opera Orpheus in the Underworld

21 minutes ago ·

Jon

wow nice work.

17 minutes ago ·

Buffy

Thanks! Had to figure it out before it drove me crazy too! :) Now if I can only find a job that will pay me for my superb research skills... lol

15 minutes ago ·

Sooze Buffy - pure genius!! That's totally it! I'll post a follow up. Wow, y'all got it quicker than I thought you would. Any chance we could reproduce this conversation in the comments on the blog?

11 minutes ago ·

Buffy

Can't ya copy/paste it? ;)

Hmm...I can do that! Just another one of Buffy's brillllliant ideas! Thanks, Buff!
Artist: Jacques Offenbach
Year: 1858
Rating: Warm

Mystery Classical Song

I have a line from a classical composition in my head today. I have no idea what it is. Anyone have a guess? Apologies to all you music theory people out there, but it goes sort of like this:

DUN--dun--dun--dun (moderate tempo)
dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun (really fast)

In terms of how the notes relate to each other, it's like this:

DUN
dun
dun
dun

dun
dun        dun
dun dun                           dun
dun

The person who guesses right on this hackneyed description gets special mention in the blog! Leave comments with your ideas and/or links to YouTube videos!

Neighborhood #2 (Laïka), Redux

Last in my head on May 11, 2009.

Forever Man

Really surprised that this is the first Eric Clapton tune in my brain since starting this blog. So far no Cream, Derek and the Dominoes, Yardbirds, or Blind Faith either. I'm sure the Clapton floodgates are now open. Sometimes a great thing, and sometimes a meh thing.

Artist: Eric Clapton
Year: 1985
Rating: Lukewarm

Upside Down

Had an intricate, apocalyptic dream last night about getting caught in massive tidal waves and ending up on a boat with the last remaining humans. Woke up with "Upside down you turn me" in my head. If only the apocalypse could be choreographed to disco diva music...

Artist: Diana Ross
Year: 1980
Rating: Hot!

Chun King Jingle

Woke up in the middle of the night with the '80s Chun King Chinese food jingle in my head:

Try Chun King for a beautiful body/Try Chun King for a beautiful taste.

For those who don't remember the Chun King line of food products, it was basically a can of veggies, meat, and sauce that comprised a Chinese dish such as chow mein or egg foo young (the food was "Oriental" and "exotic," as indicated in the marketing; note that the company was started by an Italian-American entrepreneur).

We always got their packaged crispy noodles when I was a kid. I remember the veggies as mainly consisting of mung bean sprouts and soggy, thinly-sliced celery. Sadly, I can't find the song anywhere online.

Artist: Unknown
Year: '70s or '80s (?)
Rating: n/a

Yesterday Once More

Oh, my god, Karen's voice is just so divine - her delivery is joyous and melancholy in perfect proportions. I so wish her life had been tilted more toward the joy, though.

Artist: Carpenters
Year: 1973
Rating: Luke Hot

Self-Loathing Queer

What the fuck? You're a fag*,
Everybody knows that you're totally nelly!
What a queen! And you're not foolin' no one, not this time
You self-loathing queer.

Infectious, irreverent, and incredulous! This tune about a gay boy's tirade at seeing a compatriot engaged in hetero-hand-holding at the grocery store has been circling through my mental soundtrack for days and days, to the point that Amber has asked me to stop whistling it. It's a great track from Chicago's dearly departed grungy post-punk act Three Dollar Bill, founded by Jane Danger and Chris Piss, and active in the queer music scene in the late '90s and early Aughts. Nope, I've never spent time in Chi-town. But I happen to know Mr. Piss. Yes, that's his real name.**

I'm not certain, but this may be the first time I've blogged about an artist I know personally. Does it merit a new tag, I wonder...? And what would I call this tag?

Artist: Three Dollar Bill
Year: 1998
Rating: Luke Hot

Notes:
*I love that you can hear Chris's Upper Midwest accent when he says "fag." It almost rhymes with "keg" rather than "bag." It's one of my favorite regional accents in the States.
**No, it's not his real name.

2009 Review

As if blogging about the first song that pops into my head every day isn't myopic, anal, and geeky enough, now you get an entry with line graphs and pie charts documenting the statistics of 2009. So now, with minimal preamble, I present to you the Eras, the Ratings, the Genres, the Artists, and the Whatnot of The Songs in My Head, 2009.

Vital Stats:
Starting date: February 8, 2009
First song blogged: Truckin' by the Grateful Dead.
Number of Entries: 292
Oldest songs: Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, 1787, and Chopin's Marche Funèbre, 1837, referred to in two entries.
Newest song: Several from 2008.

So, the charts are fairly self-explanatory, but that doesn't mean I won't do some 'splaining. (Click on any chart to see a larger version.) This first one shows us the spread of eras (mostly by decade) of the songs that popped into my head in 2009. It's no surprise, really, that songs of the '70s and '80s dominated my unconscious musical landscape, and that, in general, songs released closer to or overlapping my actual lifetime make up the vast majority of the songs that float into my head.


This next chart documents the ratings I've given the songs in my head in 2009. At the outset of the project, I was very curious about the ratio of songs I love versus songs I hate that randomly come to mind. I'm pleased to report that I was at least warm to if not downright in love with most songs in my head last year! Now, let's take a moment to acknowledge that The Songs in My Head is not an attempt to document *every* song that enters my conscious thoughts (I have a life, okay?) but a project aimed at documenting the first song, and maybe the first couple songs, that come to mind each day upon waking. So for all we know, the ratio of ALL songs that float into my brain may be skewed more toward the cold end. Nevertheless, I think the sample here is significant.


This pie graph represents the top 15 genres that have graced my cranial airwaves in 2009. Again, no surprise here that commercial pop, indie, and classic rock are the dominant genres that come to mind.


If you examine the genre chart closely, you'll notice that there are a lot of categories that fit together or have significant enough overlap that we might combine them to get a simpler picture. So, for the sake of argument, let's say "Indie/Alternative" would encompass punk, post-punk, new wave, synth-pop, and power pop; "Rock" would include classic and standard rock, singer-songwriter, folk, folk-rock, mellow gold, country-rock, prog, roots rock, and hard rock; and "Pop" would refer to all commercial, contemporary, and traditional poppy tunes. In that case, "Indie/Alt," with 178 entries, would just slightly edge out "Rock" at 172, and both would beat out "Pop," 124, for the most recurring in my head. All these statistics are subject to intense scientific scrutiny, naturally.

What follows from the top genres in my head in Aught Nine is the more specific: the musical artists that floated around the grey matter. While twelve out of almost three hundred entries doesn't count as domination, the noble Sloan, four indie rocking lads from Toronto, by way of Nova Scotia, have maintained the lead in crafting the songs that stick in my head most often. What's tragic is that most of my readership has probably never heard them. Magnetic Fields follow Sloan at nine entries so far, and some obscure band calling themselves "The Beatles" are close behind. I included all artists with at least 4 entries a piece, and have discluded the scores of other artists lodged in my brain last year, seeing as how pies can only accommodate so many slices.

The list of top artists all and all makes a whole lot of sense to me, given the internal chemistry of music I know and love combined with music that has enjoyed incessant radio play in my lifetime. Special props to Genesis for being responsible for one of the most annoying songs in my repertoire of earworms, a song that mercifully, has seemed to be less in my head since the start of this blog.

The final chart is sort of a "kitchen sink" of tags that aren't exactly genres, but are interesting enough to me that I like to keep track of 'em. In the tags index, they are listed with genre and referred to as "whatnot."

So, some Whatnot categories are pretty straightforward: lyrics quoted in an entry, songs on which women artists perform, entries about cover versions, songs from TV shows or movies, you get the drift. Some of these categories might need a bit of clarification, so below, please find...

The Glossary to the More Arcane Categories within the "Whatnot" Tag:

Personal History - entries in which I share intimate anecdotes about myself.

Meta - in which a post is self-referential in some way to the blog itself. The entry you're currently reading is a fine example of a post that would be (and will indeed be) labeled with the Meta tag. In fact, the very Glossary you are reading is a further example of meta within meta. It is not, as Dave Eggers might concur, an example of "irony" but of self-indulgent anality, really. The term "meta," when used in the context of the internetwebs, comes from the term "meta tag," an element within html that provides data about the data in a web page. The word "meta" is from the Greek for "beyond" or "with" or "self" and indicates a concept abstracted from and/or complementing another concept. So all this to say, we now know that in 2009, 16 out of 292 blog entries contain self-referential commentary that you may or may not have any interest in whatsoever.

U.S. Bicentennial - posts about songs released in 1976, the 200th anniversary year of our fair nation, and the fourth year of the author's life (the "author" being me). Songs released during this time period, impressionable age as it was for me, tend to engender a special emotional resonance, no matter how schmaltzy, and the era was indeed schmaltzy.

Vicissitudes of Love - in which I wax philosophic about the song as it relates to the push-me-pull-you dilemma we know as le dance de l'amour.

Earworms - apparently someone somewhere has given a name to songs that get stuck in your head. The earworm nomenclature occurred at some point in history before I began blogging about the subject. You can read about them in the blog and elsewhere.

Ren Faire Aesthetic - I have a minor obsession with the overlap in the proverbial Venn diagram between a. those with a fascination with the Medieval through Renaissance periods and b. those who rock or those who listen to rock, particularly of the classic and prog variety. In the form of a question: what confluence of cultural influences produced an album cover like the one to your right?

Songs in my dreams - It is a happy, but thus far, rare, occurrence when a song features in a dream and I get to blog about it.


Thanks, everybody! I hope you'll keep reading, rocking, and Venning with me in 2010!

Peace and Love,
Sooze


~Fin~

Magic Dance

The "Magic Dance" from the Muppety fantasy film Labyrinth was officially the first song to pop into my head in 2010.

Happy New Year, everybody!

Artist: David Bowie
Year: 1986
Rating: Lukewarm (It's a pretty annoying earworm, all told)

Note: I regret to say that I've never actually seen Labyrinth. I know, I know. It's on the queue now.