Searching

I should be finishing homework, but I can’t get this song out of my head. The song “Today” from Tom Scott and The California Dreamers: It was killing me, because I knew I had it somewhere amongst my collection. I started digging, looking up older albums, searching song titles, everything futile considering the fact that this needle wasn’t going to just appear in my stacks and stacks of Records, CD’s and Tapes. But just because something doesn’t work, I don’t stop trying in hopes it someday will.
I heard this song on the end of a Boondocks cartoon. It was the particular episode about Riley Freeman spraying graffiti around his neighborhood. At the very end of the episode, there is a police chase and that song played in the background. I love the scene, and the music choice was a perfect accent for creativity. So I watched the episode over and over. I put my ear up close to the speaker and made out these lyrics, “To be living for you is all I want to do”. It was clear, it was credible, and now I just had to find the song from whence it came from. Ha! This is easier said than done. Tons of sights claim they can find any song you want, even with the fewest possible lyrics. Bullshit. Every site I typed on came up with nothing. There was even one sight that claimed it could find the song just by tapping the rhythm onto the keyboard. I didn’t bother even trying. Finally though, I found the song. Thank the internet gods for lyricsfly. They produced the answer upon my first try. They earned a bookmark from me, certainly. Jefferson Airplane, from their second album, Surrealistic Pillow.I don’t really like this album, even though I stole it from my Father (before he gave me his collection, anyway) and I just don’t get the “five star” rating from AMG and the rank of #146 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums Ever, but whatever, it contained the song I was looking for, titled “Today”. The correct song, the wrong artist, though. I just had to find out who covered this song, and can you believe it? There is not a website solely dedicated to artist’s that have covered Jefferson Airplane songs. Come on, man. There is a site for ridding American currency of the dime, but not for what I needed. So I just kept typing things into Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and this goofy page came up. I should write to him and confirm his belief that the song is in fact, a Jefferson Airplane cover, but it did what I wanted, and now I have what I wanted. I just need you guys to go out and purchase me this album. It has “Today” by Tom Scott. I’ll burn you a copy when you do, okay? Thanks.

New Music for today, January 2nd, 2007

I had a little spending money left from the holidays and went out for a slight spurge at Second Spin in the hopes of knocking off music from my undying list of albums to own. I got three from my list and Second Spin have a buy three get one free sale goin’ on, so I purchased one for fun that isn’t on my list, but is certainly a very popular album at that. I only shelled out twenty-two dollars and 37 cents, so my guilt is slight and justified for buying anything when I still am unemployed. Here is what I bought:

Mountain Con- The MC Stands For Revolution. “What? You haven’t heard of this group, and you don’t own this album?” is what I would have been asking myself before today, and what I shall ask people after, forever now on. You certainly hear the Tom Rothrock influence over the whole album. It makes me want to go and purchase Tom’s album Resonator. I will, but for now, this Mountain Con album has already played twice in my car, and I even sat in the parking lot of Safeway until the end of track five, Cowboy Wasteland. I heard about this group from CMJ on their exclusive monthly compilation CD, but it wasn’t this album, and it was the song The Escape Artist, and I knew that I had found some sweet ear-cocaine, and that I needed more, and my addiction isn’t satisfied, so I’ll shut up about this album as I can certainly not give it justice, lest but these fellows have a new lifelong friend and fan. Go buy this album. I found it used for a $1.50.

Hot Chip- The Warning. After the sixth song, I didn’t shut off the album or start skipping through the rest of the album. It was refreshing, because this band is new, and has a positive sound waiting for them. If they avoid the production of Flood or The Matrix and lastly, Timbaland, they will do just fine. (I don’t dislike those producers, but I know that they can easily ruin what Hot Chip has going on, and those guys have a habit of randomly producing an album that they needn’t touch, i.e. Alive & Amplified.) Hot Chip could have condensed this album into a couple of EP’s, as it tends to drag with the ninth track, Arrest Yourself, but that is just an opinion of mine and can’t be supported by what a record label expects, or what the intent of the artists involved is. The Album Leaf’s latest release, Into the Blue Again is a perfect example. It should have been cut up into two EP’s instead of one long LP. I adore Seal Beach and Lifetime or More, and they are two finely concise EP’s that stand up very well, and are always a pleasant listen. But if these two should tour together, I would drag myself by my chin to hear them, definitely.

Marie Laforêt- Marie Laforêt. Wow! This was a find. I should have wet my pants in the store when I saw this. The 1995 re-release of this gem, is something I have been drooling for since I saw that crappy movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and heard her cover of Paint It Black in the background. I pressed pause at the end titles just to find this song, and had a hard time doing it because her title is Marie Doucer/Marie Colêre. I went to eBay and Twist & Shout but found squat, and really just limped it on my list; if only there to haunt and torment me. But I crushed that despair, and here it sits with pride, making a desire within me to make out with all women from France.

Fatboy Slim- You’ve Come a Long Way Baby. Yeah, I didn’t own this album till’ now. I avoid hype and forget that it doesn’t always involve poor taste. But it is all right, now, Ma; I’m only listening...to what I have missed. The cover photo puts my collection to shame, but music listening shouldn’t be a contest, and I am proud that I own a partial amount of Norman’s collection. I do, in fact, own the song Take Yo' Praise by Camille Yarbrough that Mr. Cooke sampled on Praise You and are glad to own this track along with this whole album. The Rockafeller Skank video fills me with the want of a dune buggy.

"Hell is other people"- Jean-Paul Sartre

I was shocked to see, er actually, to read about his death. Isn’t death a time to reflect, yes? Well, not even The Methuselah Enzyme will help a once ally of ours out, no. And now that rock music is popular for funerals, I wonder what is going to be played at his. And since I know squat of Middle Eastern music, I find it better to relay what I want played at my wake:

“Cold Rain” by the Screaming Trees. “Everywhere I have to go is so very far away” For some reason, unbeknownst to me, that line is steadfast, with a mantra-like persistence in my mind. I don’t particularly like the rain, so the title means diddly, but it is a mood setter, and a proper song to a (hopefully) somber situation.

“Dry the Rain” by the Beta Band. Duh! Who doesn’t want this played at their funeral/cremation/wake/whatever? “Choking on the vitamin tablet the doctor gave in the hope of saving me” What fun lyrics about a haunting scene. Kind of a sad start to a song that finishes with a wonderfully positive ending “it’ll be alright” and what I thought was simply I’ll Be Alright, but is actually “I will be your light”. I like my verse better, and if I were haunting the drunken wake by appearing under a beer-stained shroud, I would make sure to emphasize my mistaken lyrics during the chorus. Problem fixed, problem solved.

“Slug Song” by The Clean. “Don’t ever go and rearrange your mind, don’t ever change” This is a quick song, but a driving one at that. You can hear David Kilgour singing with an earnest, if necessary need for approval from, and to which this song is about. It reminds me of Joe Strummers’ take on (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais. That conviction of assured strength in the vocals makes the song better than if anybody else in the entire world, ever, were to attempt the slightest degree of this tonal perfection.

“Cosmic Rays” by Helium. This song name checks Saint Christopher and says, “I really don't care about this song”. That confidence alone is something worth striving for, even in death.

“Isolation” by Joy Division. “This is my one consolation, this is my one lucky prize” from the live version on Still. I just think it would be interesting if people started dancing to this sad, sad song. It wouldn’t happen, but I won’t be there to not witness it, huh?

“Teardrop” by Massive Attack. “Gentle impulsion, Shakes me, makes me lighter” I will weep from no matter where, always when this song is played. Christ, even the YouTube cover versions here and here just put my ears in a shameful orgy of not taking up guitar playing and dating a woman who can sing so well. Even before I die, this song rocks my little world. It is a good song for sex, for death, for graduations, for cruising to any destination, for eating toast, for watching TV with the sound turned low, and for writing a blog for this song started my list and randomly played on shuffle. (I'm looking over my shoulder right now for a ghost, but there are only a bunch of books.) This is what song writers should listen to before they write anything new. It would humble Mozart, guaranteed.

And by now, my friends and relatives would be piss-drunk and ready to go. I’ll bet half wouldn’t have sat through more than the first song anyway. To be tasteless, I would tack on Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” after a seventeen minute silence just for a last laugh.

How to silence my cousin.

So, I was giving my cousin a ride to 7-11 for some badly needed ice that our family Xmas required. On our journey, my iPod played a song by Young Marble Giants, “Man Amplifier”.
“Who is this?” asked my cousin. I looked at her with an inappropriate astonished look.
“It’s the Young Marble Giants,” I said shaking my head to further my bewildered belief that she didn't know who in the hell the Young Marble Giants are. My cousin is about three years younger than I, not much distance between us, but I always forget that I know too, too much about music and I went on a long rant about the group. After I finished spewing information and finally took in a breath, I felt ashamed. I don’t know what good it does me to know this much about any musical group, and I don’t know why I am inclined to tell people what I know. This is what I told her, roughly…

“The Young Marble Giants are one of the coolest bands (I call every band I know a lot about--One of the Coolest Bands--because it sounds energetic and therefore makes what I have to say more compelling. Julian Cope suffers this bit of misinformation also, as indicated in his book, Krautrock Sampler, when he calls every album, The Greatest Album. People do it all the time. I’m a person.) of all time. They released just one album that has influenced so many people and so many, many bands. Are you serious, you haven’t heard of them? Shit… you know who Courtney Love is, right? Her band, Hole covered their song "Salad Days" and do you know who Beat Happening is? No, are you kidding? You know who Kurt Cobain is? Yeah? Well he has a tattoo on his right arm of the K records shield logo, and Calvin Johnson is the lead singer of Beat Happening and the founder of K records and Stuart Moxham, the guitarist and songwriter of Young Marble Giants, produced some songs on Beat Happening’s last album, You Turn Me On, before he went on to animate Who Framed Roger Rabbit. You didn’t know all that?”

My cousin didn’t say anything. I copied her silence.