13 posts tagged “music”
Lady Tigra has been M.I.A for too long. Fans of The Cars That Go Boom rejoice! She's back, sans bunny, and in full bass effect. Here's her new video:
I have my tunes on shuffle and this song comes on. It catches me off guard. I catch my breath. I am instantly transported. I am a scrawny mosquito-bite-chested girl. I am laying in my bed, eyes puffy, and surrounded by crumpled Kleenex. I am hurt like I never knew the hurt could hurt. I am listening to this same song.
I experienced my first
stab of betrayal, I mean real, genuine, stomach-emptying,
vitriol-producing, bad poetry-inspiring, tear-jerking,
tissue-box-emptying betrayal, when I was 14. This song was my
recovery song, on repeat like a band-aid mantra until I nursed myself
back to functionality. The heinous feelings bubble up from the
past and reach the surface and, as I'm in a maudlin state today, they
take the shape of a tear that rises and spills from its duct like a
tilted forty to the homies who long ago bruised my heart. Thanks
for the memories.
I have always wanted to sing this song Karaoke. For my 24th birthday, sometime in the earlier half of the decade, I rehearsed my very own version of The Cure's Boys Don't Cry with all the Me's & I's converted to you's and vice versa. The idea was to overcome my karao-phobia and start my year balls to the wall. When I got to the Venue (the Mint on Market in SF) much to my chagrin they did not stock my song. It was a disappointing birthday to mark the beginning of a disappointing year. We left the bar and I don't remember the specifics of the rest of the evening. Several weeks later I ended up singing back-ups for my friend Kymmy's famous rendition of Proud Mary (the Tina version). Shortly thereafter, I was manning the mic myself without fear, doing everything from Beast of Burden to Lola to 18 & Life to Heart of Glass. I was hooked.
Now 5 years and several dozen karaoke bars later, I have yet to sing my altered version of my favorite Cure sing-along publicly and it's not for lack of trying. My hopes of singing this karaoke died and rising from from the ash of that dream was the desire to record my own version, a cover, of the song. For my birthday this year a couple of my friends got me a MIDI because I'd been messing around in garage band making a crap song here and there (I have the baddest-ass friends around..) and they are very supportive of my creative endeavos, as trifling as they may be (isn't that sweet).
Anyhow, my insomnia this evening has allowed me, in a very round about way, to perform this song publicly...
here goes nothing!...from me to you...the vocal stylings and musicianship of ALINA GATTI doing Boys Don't Cry..
P.s Pardon the airy vocal track....i have to sing directly into the mic built into the back of my desktop computer. If you want to mail me a mic...i'll accept.
Temporary note:
havng trouble with the song...will remedy the situation for your listening enjoyment.
Audio: What song do you listen to when you are sad?
Submitted by Nat.The true 'sad' song is imbued with a sense loss or resignation often intermingled with a bitter sweet nostalgia, an unrequited, unattainable desire, or a passion so blinding that it meets a tragic & inevitable end. The sad song may be my favorite kind of song. On the really grey days I like to draw a bath and listen to the saddest songs I can think of. The dolor echoing in the bathroom transforming the space into chamber of mourners in a Spanish village. My tears co-mingle with the salt of my sweat, the chlorine, fluoride, and rust from the tap water. Tonight finds me on the fence. If I do end up in the tub, I'll be listening to these songs:
Leonard Cohen: famous blue raincoat
Leonard Cohen: Chelsea Hotel No.2
The Cure: the funeral party
Antony & The Johnsons: river of sorrow
The dirty three: I really should have gone out last night
Magnetic fields: Don't look away
Johnny Cash: Hurt
Elliot smith: Between the bars
Kritin Hersh: Me & My Charms
Fugazi: I'm so tired
psychedelic furs: torch
Dire Straits: Romeo & Juliet
The mountain goats: no children
Neutral Milk Hotel: The Communist Daughter
Solomun Burke: fast train
Nina simone: Lilac wine
cat power: wild is the wind
patti smith: we three
prince: purple rain
the smiths: asleep
the smiths: please please please let me get what i want
the velveteen: penning the penultimate
"...Everything was vivid, as if it were in Technicolor, as if it were a dream."
Part Three: A Beacon
The dream turned fast into a nightmare when near the
tail end of 1993 I found myself living in a suburb of Buenos Aires and
attending an uptight all-girl Catholic school. I was fucking
miserable. My Spanish was passable but my vocabulary extended
only to that which I’d learned from my parents; in other words, I could
describe in colloquialisms about 15 years out-dated what I wanted for
dinner. I had never learned how to tell a joke, or even express
an abstraction in Spanish. The girls in my school flat out
ignored me until word got out that I was from the States at which point
I became something of a novelty item. Talking to boys was
useless. The personality that, I felt, had always been my biggest
asset came off as flat when mapped onto this other culture. It
wasn’t just my words that got lost in translation. I did.
All of me: gone.
In the States I had been a ‘foreigner’ but I never
truly felt like one the way I did in my own country. I understood
for the first time what it is to be an immigrant; I was a citizen of
nowhere, a stranger in all the places that should’ve been home.
So, like most 15 year olds do, I retreated into a kind of shell.
I spoke when spoken to, smiled when it was expected of me, and
pretended, for my parents’ sake, that I was perfectly
happy.
I lived about 5 blocks from a small record store
owned by a 36 year-old man-boy with an affinity for younger girls,
my-age girls to be exact. Eager for a friend, I was blind to his
advances. I would go into the shop and we would talk for
hours. He made me a mix tape and I accepted it with gratitude and
when he told me we should ‘go out’ I was flat out shocked.
Perhaps this is my selective memory kicking in but, though I listened
to that tape on repeat for months, I don’t really remember too much of
the music on it. That wasn’t even the point, I guess.
Before leaving Miami my friend, Joe, told me not to worry; that I would
find like-minded people anywhere I went. If anything, this tape
emblematized Joe’s words for me, it was a beacon, of sorts, that gave
me hope.
It was a couple of months before I started riding
the train into downtown Buenos Aires alone on the weekends to scope out
the record shops & bookstores. Listening to my walkman, head
resting on the window, seated across from the toothless breast-feeding
aboriginal woman and next to the grey man in his suit, I let go of the
anger I felt at being in this foreign place and found comfort at the
sides of my fellow passengers, all of us anonymous, strange, and
equally out of context next to the other.
Part 4 coming soon...
What song best describes your current mood?
Submitted by Section31.
I've been having a very 'freaky friday'....so my song today would DEFINITELY be "I'm So Confused" by Jonathan Richman..."I have to sigh now....huh"
I made the following playlist the other day and have been listening to it non-stop. Most of the songs are old stand-bys, some are a bit more obscure. Either way, take a listen & enjoy!
1. Wild Cat by Ratatat. My friend Sooky turned me on to these guys
recently. This track is off of their second full length, Classics.
Rar!
2. Reagan's Dead by The Prima Donnas. As I heard it, the guys in this Austin Band were Brittish ex-pats from Sussex then I heard that was just a ruse. Then I read that it was in fact real. Where does one turn for the truth these days? Alas! Sex, Drugs, & Discotheque, the bands only full length (that I know of) on peek-a-boo records; "Was this the last of the great, late-'80s keyboard records or first of the great, late-'90s, retro-'80s keyboard records? You decide." read the rest of their hilarious bio on their peek-a-boo page! This is one of my favorite albums of the last decade. I have put Headful of Pills on many a mix.
3. Mercy by Wire. I am crazy about this song! I love the ebb & flow of it; the way it rises and falls. This is from Chairs Missing released in 1978, the bands second album.
5. Crowds by Bauhaus. In the Flat Fields got crap reviews when it came out in 1980 but has managed to survive all these year as a staple and 'originator' (debatable) of its genre.
6. There's No Emotion by Pulp. Jarvis Cocker was around 15, when he formed Pulp (No, Connor Oberst wasn't the first of his kind, nor the most remarkable). Freaks, their 2nd full length released in 1987, didn't chart AT ALL but it's one of my favorites of theirs. The blase' tone of Cocker's voice is perfectly suited to sing lyrics like "In your heart there's no emotion and your soul, your soul just dried away. There's no love, no love left in your body; standing empty forever, and colder every day."
7. I'll Keep it With Mine by Nico (written by Bob Dylan). This song gets totally overshadowed by These Days. I love the sentiment in the song when she sings it. It's more of a plea than an offer. And sometimes when Dylan sings all you hear is Dylan and not the lovely song he's written.
8. The Death of Disco Dancer by The Smiths. I don't feel like I need to be talking over this track. I love Morrisey almost as much as he loves himself.
9. The Death of a Socialite by Pretty Things. First came Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys which splintered into The Rolling Stones which splintered into Pretty Things. I just like the idea of this song after The Smiths similarly titled track.
10. Things I Miss by My Bloody Valentine. From Ecstasy & Wine, not their greatest album (LOVELESS) but still worthy. This song is pure sweetness! It's also nice to see Kevin Shields out & about again thanks in part to the success of Sofia Coppola's films and his original songs for those. He was laying low for quite a stint playing, discreetly, with J-Mascis & the Fog (the Fog including Mike Watt of Minutemen fame) and other such projects.
11. I Was Never Young by Of Montreal. These guys are from Athens, Georgia (birthplace of REM and a first rate college town). I randomly visited Athens for the duration of the first week of the millennium and I loved it. I then saw these guys play at a teeny tiny venue in Tucson, Arizona when I moved there a few months later. They had Crayola Crayon art all over the stage. It was a great show! This song is off of their 2005 release The Sunlandic Twins.
12. No Guilt by The Waitresses. In this song the narrator aims to prove that she's moved on after a break up by cataloging all of the terribly mundane tasks that she has accomplished since the split, 'really everythings fine..everythings great." The Waitresses are famous for all the wrong songs....Square Pegs, anyone? Sarah Jessica Parker pre-sex. Ah, forget it, you guys are too young! ( I just like saying that...)
13. Capital (It Fails Us Now) by Gang of Four. Gang of Four has such brilliant lyrics. This song, in particular, stands out to me...oddly enough the lyrics to this song have been 'removed' from many/most lyrics databases. It's creeping me out! Have a spotty credit line? Well, then this song is for YOU!
14. Floods by Flin Flon. I don't even know how I came across this band but it was shortly after 9/11. The Country was in mourning and I was in that awful state after a bad break up. This album kind of marks that period for me. The songs aren't terribly deep, which was a welcomed respite for me from the tension that was permeating all aspects of my life. The album was released in 1998, it's called Boo-Boo..and that's exactly what it band-aided on me...my heart boo-boo..
...and I think the lyric 'you're like my f-stop setting. over exposed' is really pretty great!
15. Where Eagles Dare by The Misfits. "I aint no goddamn son of a bitch!" NEED I SAY MORE!
16. Plan 9 Channel 7 by The Damned. I've had chats with folks who credit the birth of Goth Rock to this song. Personally, I'm not in that camp. Machine Gun Etiquette is widely hailed as their best album and with THAT statement I do agree.
17. We Love You by The Psychedelic Furs. I don't know about you but I grew up on John Hughes movies. When Pretty in Pink came out I didn't even have boobs but OH how I wanted to go to prom! The point is, that movie put this band on my radar. By 1986, these guys had been on the scene nearly a decade (masquerading early on as the Europeans and RKO). We Love You appeared on their Self Titled Debut. And I thought it would make a nice closer because it so effortlessly encapsulates the vices & vicissitudes of the vox populi; the glorious voice of the masses.
Thanks for listening. I hope you've enjoyed this cause' it took a long ass time. If you have these songs in your library, go ahead, make the playlist for yourself and listen to the living daylights out of it. Learn the songs like you're practicing for your Bar-Mitzvah or, if you already know & love them as I do, brush the dust off em; make them shiny and new. Oh and If somebody knows of a better way to post this sort of thing, please, fill me in on the deets!
Part Two: Moving back
As early as November of my freshman year, my middle school friends and I drifted apart like cloud formations on a windy day, fast and without remorse. Something had broken between us. Soon I met Shannon, a sophomore, and we quickly became inseparable. We were an unexpected pair. I had just come out of my middle school cheerleading uniform; she liked photography and pissing off her parents. Our friendship worked though; her best friend had just moved to Virginia and I had recently ‘outgrown’ mine. Her parents were super strict Christians and she would ‘run away’ nearly every weekend to seek refuge in the home of my lenient and liberal parents.
Together we joined the water polo team and befriended a handful of seniors & upper classman. A junior by the name of Melissa Mcgonagle made a mixtape. A copy landed in Shannon’s hands and, from her, a copy came to me. The mix was called “Classic Rock” it was an absolute musical hodge-podge and something of a misnomer, as on it was everything from Blondie & John Lennon to Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth & The Ramones. Shortly after my first listen of this mix my life changed when my parents informed me we would be moving back to Argentina at the end of the school year.
With what I believed was nothing to lose I took to skipping school, walk-man in tote, blasting this tape on my way to the beach or wherever. After this everything was different. I was different. This tape marked a rebirth. First steps were replaced by first loves. I went to my first rave, surfed my first wave, first joint; all of it. I started sporting all-stars instead of Keds, scouring thrift stores racks instead of visiting the Wet Seal at the mall. Everything was new. Everything was vivid, as if it were in Technicolor, as if it were a dream.
Part 3 coming soon....
