September Songs

School - Nirvana

School Spirit - Kanye

Teach Me Tonight - Joe Williams

Teach (How I Love My Teacher) - Louis Jordan

Hot For Teacher - Van Halen

Verb, That's What's Happening - Zachary Saunders

Stay In School - Sam and Dave

How Do You Get To Llama School? - Sifl and Olly

Teacher's Pet - Doris Day

The end of love

Leonard Cohen's song "Dance Me To The End Of Love" is a stunning piece of work. While I enjoy LC's version, I've been affected lately by Madeleine Peyroux's version...I think she does a bang-up job making you feel each lyric. If I were to do it over today, I might want her version of this song as the first dance at my wedding.

To me, it's a paean to all the best things about marriage and it's filled with little images and phrases that capture entire dimensions of being in a committed relationship. "Dance me through the panic" is nicely self-deprecating; "when the witnesses are gone" is funny; "like they do in Babylon" is sexy, as is the whole damn verse, albeit in an Old Testament kind of way (digression: perhaps all the Biblical references reinforce the timeless/poetic quality of the lyric); the beautiful, perfect word "asking" in the third verse; the acknowledgment of the torn threads in the last. And then the idea of "the end of love" itself...and what it means to dance towards it.

Madeleine's version of Dance Me To The End Of Love is here; Leonard intones it here.

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Le Jazz Hot

A possible successor to the much-missed Jazz Pour Tous: ShareJazzMusic. Too bad the Chris Connor download has expired...that's one of my favorite jazz vocal albums.

the random email from a co-worker

So, I just got emailed this track from a coworker, and the email simply said:

"Hey, what do you think of this track?"

so I will put the question to you, dear readers...

Shiny Toy Guns - Le Disko

I've got news for you

I found what sounds like a companion piece to "Chelsea Hotel No. 2"... with the keyboards it might have fit nicely on "Dear Heather". Enjoy.

MP3: Between Us

OK GO - On MP3

MP3: Here It Goes Again

And For Alex-

MP3: This Will Be Our Year (covered by OK GO)

OK Go - On Treadmills

Sorry, have to beat Jeff to the punch, but someone sent me the link to this great video by OK Go.




4,469,004 views on YouTube. and ten of those were me, thinking

"it's all of my best ideas while at the gym, realized by someone else."

Now someone please post the MP3. Thank you!

Interview: Gerd Leonhard of Sonific

"...Sonific is based on a fairly simple premise: to allows Web users to make music available directly from their own personal Web sites. At the heart of Sonific are 'SongSpots' - embedded Flash objects that can be inserted into any Web page users can then click on the graphic which will stream the track directly..."


full interview

That's the name of your song, dude?

There’s something funny and fucked up about actually liking a song called Ursula Major Ursula Minor. Seriously, if someone told me (like in songwriting class is college) that I had to write a song called Ursula Major Ursula Minor, I would have thought they were 1. Smoking the crack 2. Trying to make me fail or 3. Successfully making me feel extremely stupid. Yet, this song works somehow as a pop/rock song, does it not?

Ursula Major Ursula Minor by bleu, from their album "redhead"

I never would have posted this song, were it not for the name. It’s just so fricken’ odd, and very un-rock-n-roll.

The Invisible Hand Of Alex...

Is guiding me to post this.
New M. Ward everyone.
He's on tour.
Go see him.

MP3: Requiem

More Nostalgia

Live Records, 1977...
They were real big.
In fact "Frampton Comes Alive" was the biggest selling album of all time at that time. Bigger than the Beatles.
When I listen to Baby I Love Your Way I hear all the things that I love about 70's music- Fender Rhodes, major 7 chords, unironic mushy lyrics.

MP3: Baby I Love Your Way

A cooler record that I was very aware of but did not personally own a copy was Cheap Trick Live At Budakon. This was probably my introduction to the notion that there is a country called Japan. And they really liked Cheap Trick there. Obviously, Robin Zander really likes Fats Domino.

MP3: Ain't That A Shame

When I was about 10 my dad took my sister and me to a double bill of The Last Waltz and Rust Never Sleeps at the Dobie. That's about 6 grueling hours! But even though Neil came on second, I think both my sister and I liked Rust Never Sleeps a lot better. Maybe It was the Jawas as Stagehands.

MP3: Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)

Post-Ironic Prince

MP3: Take Me With U

The song begins with a strange arena-rock Tom Tom fill layered with tubular bell keyboard arpeggios...

I can't disguise the pounding of my heart
It beats so strong
It's in your eyes what can I say
They turn me on

Great strummy acoustic guitar part.
It almost sounds like coffee house music.
So sincere!

I don't care where we go
I don't care what we do
I don't care pretty baby
Just take me with u

Can you remember a time before Prince?
A time when eveyone spelled out "you"and "to"?

Come on and touch the place in me
That's calling out your name
We want each other oh so much
Why must we play this game?

Prince and Apollonia had a kind of caveman relationship. Yet there is a tenderness there...

Don't care where we go
I don't care what we do
I don't care pretty baby
Just take me with u

I think what makes me love this song so much is that it is a duet.
And Prince's voice is clearly submarined to Apollonia's in this melodramatic bridge:

I don't care if we spend the night at your mansion
I don't care if we spend the night on the town
All I want is 2 spend the night together
All I want is 2 spend the night in your arms

The most unique thing about Prince, lyrically speaking, is his ability, no, insistence on saying the most ludicrous things in an earnest, "Isn't this the way everybody converses?" manner.
I only wanted 2 see U underneath the Purple Rain
U musta took a whole hour just 2 make up your face, baby
I said now, overcast days never turned me on

To be around u is so-oh right
you're sheer perfection (thank u)
Drive me crazy, drive me all night
Just don't break up the connection

The "thank u" call and response is completely with out irony.

I don't care where we go
I don't care what we do
I don't care pretty baby
Just take me with u

Apollonia rocks (and purrs) this final chorus!
Does anyone have any Apollonia 6 MP3s?
And wouldn't it be weird if it was really his voice, just electronically altered like he did with IF I Was Your Girlfriend?
Does he really need anyone else? His stubborn isolation (he has claimed to only listen to his own music) is what gives him his unironic edge.

Just take me with u
Oh wont u take me with u
Honey take me with u

This just happened

First off, I'd like to welcome Joel to our quartet of merriment. I'm inspired and somewhat threated by your first post. I feel, as the only female in this four-man band, that the extra pressure is on me.... musician, chick, writer, man about town. I'm suppossed to be all things to all Rahn Rahn! Can I hang? Can I begin to use vulgarity? Please? If only when expressing joy, or how hard something fucking rocks?

Secondly, You Send It is my new best friend. Dot mac, you can go to hell.

Third-est, I am really rocking it hard to the new Raconteurs record, especially this song:

The Level

during the guitar solo, between counts 2 and 3 check out what almost sounds like a bass clarinet on the first phrase.....

also, coming out of the solo, Jack White echos the main melody sung by the lead singer (who is nowhere near as exciting as Jack) and each vocalist is panned opposite the other. Done before you say? Doesn't matter, says me.

but for pure hard rocking hotness, you really can't beat this little sweet piece of action

Intimate Secretary

I won't begin to say I've listened to and adequately analyzed the lyrics - I, like Jeff, don't care as much for lyrics the way, um, others do. However, I do enjoy the simplicity of "I've got a rabbit who likes to shop" and "I've got a red Japanese tea pot." I also enjoy the coining of the word Khakistocracy.

my favorite moment in the song (and please, dear reader, turn it UP) occurs at 1:34 into the song. Then it happens again, with a new sound added at 2:15. listen closely and enjoy.

delish.

Watch me work

Hello everybody. I'm Joel, old friend of Jeff, brother-in-law of Alex, and crafter of pretentious comments on others' blogs. Thanks very much to the Ranh Ranh gatekeepers for allowing me in. A guest ought not greet his hosts empty handed, so accept this triple-helping of funk.

One Day features the uniting of some profound wonder powers--The Angelic Gospel Singers with the Dixie Hummingbirds. Yummy piano. Plus, make sure you listen through to the final chorus.

The Good Thing is my favorite song from my favorite band--tight rhythm section, distortion-less guitars, stoner fortune cookie lyrics, shamelessly white funkiness. And yes, Jeff, you can name your next band Stoner Fortune Cookie.

Bra (try explaining THAT google search to the wife) is from Cymande (pictured above), a group I discovered recently at Waterloo, although we've heard this song sampled, like, a gajillion times (Alex and I counted). These bruthas have some creative headgear and SERIOUS flares.

We Missed You Dearly RH!

Michael, Lisa, K-Rock, Alex, Sonnet, Jonny, Troy plus two half pints were here on Saturday.
Who was missing?
You and your Coconut, that's who!

This will have to do in the mean time:
MP3 Raymond Scott-Powerhouse

The name of the game is "Lightworks!"

1. click on this here link
2. scroll to the bottom of the page
3. click to listen to track four, called Lightworks
4. Freak Out.

My husband and I were driving through Santa Monica when this really trippy song came one. We couldn't figure out if it was a joke, an older song remixed, or what.

Then thankfully, my husband figured it out.

"...Most recently, Dee released his own solo album titled Donuts -- which he wrote and recorded while in and out of the hospital. The album, released to the public only three days before his passing, features a fantastic cover/remix of Raymond Scott's classic electronic tune, "Lightworks."

Turns out that Raymond Scott was an electronic music pioneer who worked closely with Robert Moog (of the synthesizer fame). And light works was a jingle for some kind of electronic board game in the 50s.

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf

R.I.P.

MP3: Morgen

MP3: Fruehling

Favorite New Song:

Mp3: I'll Believe In Anything

...by a very busy person named Spencer Krug --how you say-- "Sunset Rubdown". He is also in Wolf Parade and another super group project called Swan Lake.