learning silence to better speak

Random Rules - Scot's ipod

Taking a cue from The Onion's AV club, I will, on Wednesdays, play and comment on the first 5 random songs that come up on my ipod. So there.

Kate Bush - "Love and Anger"
I had a roommate in college who loved Kate Bush. LOVED her. He had great taste in music and was, in almost all other respects, a singularly unpleasant person. He was into 4AD bands with beautiful woman singers singing unintelligibly in high, ethereal voices. I was glad that he got me into Kate Bush, though, as it turns out that any entheogenic trips that seem to be going awry can be mellowed by Ms. Bush and her lovely, lovely voice.

The Cardigans - "Heartbreaker"
Don't have much to say on this one, except that these guys were really great, and then put out a couple of really not-good albums. This album, though, was terrific, "First Band on the Moon". It's what happens when really talented musicians who would rather make depressing music try to make ironic pop and end up just making pop. Pop is not ironic! Behold the power of pop!

Immortal Technique - "Peruvian Cocaine"
Interesting in that it uses multiple rappers to create an almost linear narrative through monolouges of the cycle of drugs from picking and smuggling to sales. A great song, but sometimes he comes off a little polemical to me. I appreciate strident militancy, but I feel like he leaves out other points of view...

Dolly Parton - "Stairway to Heaven"
Another great moment in Dolly's re-positioning herself for the ironic hipster audience. Bluegrass meets Zepplin, and I'm shallow enough to think this is pretty f-ing cool. I saw Dolly at Radio City music hall, and saw more drag queens in the audience than I have ever seen in my life. It was like a convention!

Pearl Jam - "Low Light"
This points up one of the problems with my iPod "system" (if such a beast could be said to exist). I like listening to albums, and try to put whole albums on my Pod in an effort to expose myself to tracks I wouldn't normally check out, but when I'm walking around with the sucker on "shuffle" it comes up with songs that I really don't want to hear. Like this forgettable little gem from "Yield". Ah well.

And so we end, not with a bang, but a whimper.

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Also, if you have a moment, go check out Author John Crowley's Blog at http://crowleycrow.livejournal.com/. He is one of the greatest authors in English working right now, and he has a livejournal. That is just so *cute*!

posted by Scott @ 12:56 PM