Wild Sage - Original Cover!

I've got a little time on my hands lately, so I'm noodling around with more songs. Here is my faithful rendition of "Wild Sage" by the Mountain Goats, from their album Get Lonely.

Last blogged on November 23, 2011.



Artist: Sooze
Written by: John Darnielle
Year: 2014, (2006, original)
Rating: Hot!

Last Time in Love

I had a conversation with an old friend about love the other day. She had relayed a piece of advice her mom had given her, which went something like, "Finding people to fall in love with is easy; finding the person you can live with is much harder." This song has such a lovely, romantic quality to it that I can't deny, even as a poly person, that when you find "the one," you've fallen in love for the "last time." There is an undeniable beauty and a loss in that process, recognizing you'll never have those fireworks, that blissful limerent feeling, with anyone else again. I'm grateful, in my life, that I give myself permission to fall in love, in lust, when my animus moves me, and when it moves in my chosen partners. I don't have to sacrifice that newness. But the allure of exclusivity, of belonging to someone wholly, is indeed a powerful one. I also don't deny myself the opportunities, when they arise, of digging down deep and doing the work of intimacy. If love were just the easy fire of limerence, well, it wouldn't be love, now would it?

Artist: Sloan
Year: 2006
Rating: Luke Hot

Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts

Been whistling this song all day. I was itching to hear some Spencer Krug, so I played the video for friends a few days ago. It's been stuck since. A lovely, brilliant earworm if there ever was one.

Artist: Wolf Parade
Year: 2005
Rating: Hot!

Fading into Obscurity

Probably the last post for 2011, making it an even 100 for the year. A self-aware song about a welter-weight pop star rapidly becoming a has-been. One of my all-time faves from Sloan, the boys still topping the charts in my head.

Artist: Sloan
Year: 2006
Rating: Hot!

Wild Sage

And when somebody asks if I'm okay
I don't know what to say
And along the highway
From cast-off innumerable seeds
Wild sage growing in the weeds.

One of my very favorite songs. Makes me cry almost every time I hear it. It names a lifelong conundrum of mine: am I okay, or am I not okay? Usually, the answer is both, simultaneously, just like wild sage growing in the weeds. But how should I answer the question today?

Artist: The Mountain Goats
Year: 2006
Rating: Hot!

White Winter Hymnal

This live performance just brought tears to my eyes. I've never even understood what the song is about, but the imagery is so arresting, and the harmonies so emotionally evocative. Here are a few suggestions as to the song's meaning.

Artist: Fleet Foxes
Year: 2008
Rating: Hot!

Sax Rohmer 1, Redux

Last in my head on June 13, 2011.

The lyric resounding in my head this morning:

Every moment leads toward its own sad end...yeah.

Artist: The Mountain Goats
Year: 2008
Rating: Hot!

August Wrap-Up

I've had a lot of songs in my head over the last few weeks, but haven't had time or sufficient mental focus to post them. A quick inventory of the backlog for August follows, with notes where I'm moved to write them:

Stacy's Mom by Fountains of Wayne arrived on my brain after hearing a review of the band's new album on NPR's Fresh Air. Aside from the inanity of this 2003 radio hit (a band's gotta have one to make the collective radar) I kind of dig them, and it occurs to me that this band is totally the American version of Sloan (not that that would mean anything to more than, like, two people reading this blog). Sadly, Sloan has no analogous annoying radio hit of their own (in the States).

David Duchovny by Bree Sharp (A rerun, last blogged on 8/31/09).

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, popularized by the Platters, came to me in a most ethereal way, a familiar tune I couldn't identify until looking up the fragments of lyrics I woke with one day. It seemed significant to me when I learned that the song originally appeared in an operetta called Roberta, which was my mom's name. When a lovely flame dies/Smoke gets in your eyes. The synchronistic throat lump supplied by the song's lyric shouldn't be lost on anyone reading who knows me. My mom died last year of complications of lung cancer. Smoke, indeed, gets in my eyes.

Stop Draggin' My Heart Around by Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty. Pretty typical sooze-fare, nothing noteworthy about this one.

Give Me Back My Man by the B-52s. I'm relating to Kate Pierson's plaintive wail, I'll give you fish/I'll give you candy/I'll give you everything I have in my hand!



And then there was a song snippet that entered my consciousness somewhere between dream state and waking that was a bit peculiar. At first, I thought it was the theme from the film Ordinary People, but when I looked for the music for the film on YouTube and heard Pachelbel's Canon in D major I had to probe a different area of my memory banks. Then it just hit me: this is the theme from The Incredible Hulk TV show, which I'm sure I hadn't seen in more than 25 years. The memory is indeed mysterious, and I wonder how I was able to make the leap between a classical composition from the 17th Century and a spare piano riff from 70's TV. The song may bear some similarity to the melancholy musical themes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I'm currently re-watching.

Song: Stacy's Mom
Artist: Fountains of Wayne
Year: 2003
Rating: Lukewarm

Song: David Duchovny
Artist: Bree Sharp
Year: 1999
Rating: Luke Hot

Song: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Artist: The Platters
Year: 1958 (originally recorded by Gertrude Niesen for the Operetta Roberta in 1933)
Rating: Warm

Song: Stop Draggin' My Heart Around
Artist: Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty
Year: 1981
Rating: Luke Hot

Song: Give Me Back My Man
Artist: The B-52s
Year: 1980
Rating: Hot!

Song: The Lonely Man Theme (from The Incredible Hulk television series)
Artist: Joe Harnell
Year: 1977
Rating: n/a

The Ballad of the Sin Eater

You didn't think they could hate you now, did you?
Ah, but they hate you, they hate you 'cause you're guilty

One of my favorite songs. It's hard to avoid clichés while rocking out about imperialism, but Ted hits the mark every time.

Artist: Ted Leo & the Pharmacists
Year: 2003
Rating: Hot!

Sax Rohmer 1

I am coming home to you
with my own blood in my mouth
and I am coming home to you
if it's the last thing that I do.

Artist: The Mountain Goats
Year: 2008
Rating: Hot!

The Middle

Damn catchy song. My mental jukebox is focused squarely on my emotional wranglings of late. I suspect it's true that everything (everything) will be all right, (ultimately). But it's indeed taking some time.

Artist: Jimmy Eat World
Year: 2002
Rating: Warm

Note: Wow, this video is douchey.

Clocks

I don't usually mention songs that come into my head only because I've freshly heard them; that immediate mental link seems too obvious to me. But the version I heard of Coldplay's big hit "Clocks" the other day was a unique one: I heard it in a Chinese restaurant; it was a Musak version played on wood flute. There are several instrumental covers of the song on YouTube, but I can't find the precise one.

Artist: Coldplay (Musak version: unknown)
Year: 2002
Rating: warm

Witch's Wand

Been nine months since my last Sloan entry. Still, somewhat surprisingly, the top band in my head. I have one of my favorite Canadians to thank for that.

Artist: Sloan
Year: 2008
Rating: Luke Hot

Modern Man

Makes me feel like...

Artist: Arcade Fire
Year: 2010
Rating: Luke Hot

Crazy

I admit that this is a "good" song, and it's catchy as hell, but when it was at its commercial peak, it was ubiquitous, and it drove me fucking craaaaazy. Now, it remains a most pernicious earworm.

Artist: Gnarls Barkley
Year: 2006
Rating: Cold

Tzena Tzena Tzena

No idea why this Israeli folk song was in my head this morning. Its melody is most familiar to me, because it was repurposed as the Camp Shalom alma mater that I sang on an almost daily basis every summer of my life from age five til my early twenties. The above version is by the Wellingtons from 1964.

The most popular version of the song was the Weavers' spin, in which the simple Hebrew lyrics (encouraging the girls to go find a good army man) were replaced by English words with an entirely different narrative (about dancing and celebrating in the city square). The web search for this song yields some surprisingly wonderful results, including an Arlo Guthrie rendition in which he riffs, in signature trickster style, on the "Gaelic" language in the song, and even a cover of the Weaver's version by trashpop icon Mink Stole and L.A. drag queen Vicky Boofont! Enjoy 'em.

Artists: The Wellingtons, 1964; The Weavers, 1950; Arlo Guthrie, c. 1978; Mink Stole/Vicky Boofont, 2005.
Written by: Issachar Miron, c. 1941; English lyrics by Gordon Jenkins
Rating: Warm

My Alcoholic Friends

So glad these freaks have come into my life!

Artist: The Dresden Dolls
Year: 2006
Rating: Luke Hot

No You Girls

A testament to catchy, this song's in my head already, even though I only heard it for the first time a few weeks ago on the radio, and then once more on a friend's mp3 mix (the mind reels at the change in technology; where here I thought I'd gotten used to "CD mixes," we're now onto the next new thing). It's a cute but pernicious song reinscribing the gender norms that girls can't know how boys feel, and boys couldn't care less how girls feel. I like FF, but I'm giving this one a "meh" rating. Artist: Franz Ferdinand Year: 2009 Rating: Lukewarm Note: I think this is the "newest" song to appear in my head thus far.

Heavy Metal Drummer

I sincerely miss those heavy metal bands I used to go see on the landing in the summer She fell in love with the drummer She fell in love with the drummer She fell in love Artist: Wilco Year: 2002
Rating: Luke Hot

The Top 50 Albums of 2010 (So Far)

Hi there, Cats n Dawgs!

Time for another guest blog entry from our resident musicologist, Jon Schwartz, whose tweetage you can find here. Since the year is half over already, Jon has compiled for us what he feels to be the 50 best albums released so far. I will note that he submitted this list to me like a month ago, and if he did it today, it might be quite different. Also, he'd no doubt include Arcade Fire's latest, The Suburbs (though I really can't speak for him, I just kinda did. Mea culpa, JS.) So now, WoFA, The Songs In My Head proudly presents Jon Schwartz's Top 50 Albums of 2010 (So Far).

The Top 10:

1. Broken Bells - Broken Bells
I fell in love with this album before I found out it’s a collaboration between super-producer DJ Danger Mouse and The Shins frontman James Mercer. The album is immediately addictive. Songs are catchy without sounding forced. The production is crisp without sounding over-produced. This is Synthy-Indie-Rock at its finest.

2. Minus The Bear - OMNI
OMNI is a journey. Each track flows effortlessly into the next. Some may find this album too slick sounding. It is a little over-produced, but I just think it works so well with this particular album. Minus the Bear have released the best album of their decade-long careers.

3. Dr. Dog - Shame, Shame
Dr. Dog is one of those bands that sound like they have genuine fun making music. Their brand of Jangly-Indie-Rock makes me think Wilco meets Cake meets The Teeth meets The Impossible Shapes. Shame, Shame is a group of well crafted, catchy, fun songs delivered with confidence and exuberance.

4. Efterklang - Magic Chair

5. Beach House - Teen Dream

6. The Black Keys - Brothers

7. Tame Impala - Innerspeaker

8. Band Of Horses - Infinite Arms

9. Apples in Stereo - Travellers in Space and Time

10. Field Music - Field Music (Measure)

The Rest:

11. The Radio Dept. - Clinging To A Scheme
12. Ok Go - Of The Blue Color Of The Sky
13. Spoon - Transference
14. Wolf Parade - Expo 86
15. Foals - Total Life Forever
16. Blitzen Trapper - Destroyer Of The Void
17. Jónsi - Go
18. Fang Island - Fang Island
19. Frightened Rabbit - The Winter of Mixed Drinks
20. Seabear - We Built a Fire
21. The Morning Benders - Big Echo
22. Tokyo Police Club - Champ
23. Midlake - The Courage Of Others
24. Caribou - Swim
25. Menomena - Mines
26. Massive Attack - Heliogland
27. Ratatat - LP4
28. Yeasayer - Odd Blood
29. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today
30. Plants and Animals - La La Land
31. The Drums - The Drums
32. Harlem - Hippies
33. Ruby Suns - Fight Softly
34. The Dead Weather - Sea Of Cowards
35. The Gaslight Anthem - American Slang
36. Avi Buffalo – Avi Buffalo
37. Jon Spencer - Amsterdam Throwdown, King Street Showdown!
38. The Tallest Man On Earth - The Wild Hunt
39. Neon Trees - Habits
40. Jagga Jazzist - One-Armed Bandit
41. MGMT - Congratulations
42. Eels - End Times
43. Delphic - Acolyte
44. Benni Hemm Hemm - Retaliate
45. Paper Tongues - Paper Tongues
46. The Album Leaf - A Chorus of Storytellers
47. LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening
48. Hot Hot Heat – Future Breeds
49. Liars - Sisterworld
50. The Hot Rats - Turn Ons

Did you like that? I hope so. Thanks so much, Jon, for putting this together for us. Sorry I ran out of juice to link each band and album, but I figure you readers can google it yourself. Rumor has it that Jon is also working on a Top Solo Albums of All Time list and that The Songs in My Head might have exclusive publishing rights. Or maybe Jon should start his own freaking blog, because he's a thoughtful music reviewer, great writer, and he's got stuff to say. Whadduyouthink?

xo
Sooze