Another Pointless Post

Instead of saving Bulgaria, I spend most of my time these days obsessing over my music collection. Let me tell you, my taste in music is legendary and does make me cooler than you.

I cruise a lot of the MP3 blogs on the net, which has allowed me to stay in touch with the American hipster underground, of which I am not the king, but possibly a duke or a baron.

So since no one else has a problem opinionating about everything and everyone online, I thought that occassioinally I'd list a few songs that came up on my Itunes party shuffle during my morning preparations (i.e. my vigorous toilette) for school, and briefly comment on them. This idea was ripped off from the random rules feature at the Onion A.V. Club site, I don't have a .mac account so I can't post the MP3s, and I'm doing this more or less so I don't have to discuss chronic health problems with the ladies hanging out in the учителска стая this morning. I refer you again to the title above.

1. "Crystal" Husker Du (from the "Candy Apple Grey" album).
This album sucks. I bought it back in the day because I was the owner of the Rolling Stone Album Guide, wherein it is written that Candy Apple Grey is Husker Du's best album. Whatever. Rolling Stone reviewers, from my experience, smoke crack. They gave "Wowee Zowee" 2 and a half stars, if memory serves. The production on "CAG" is tinny, the songs are weak, and the Grant Hart songs blow the Bob Mould songs out of the water. That being said, "Crystal" is one of the better songs because Bob does a lot of random, spontaneous screaming. Does anyone know how to type umlauts on a mac?

2. "Tabla in Suburbia" Sonic Youth (from the "suBurbia" soundtrack)
Steve Shelley is one of the best drummers in the world, and this little snippet of something is not really Sonic Youth per se: just Steve's drumming mixed to the front with some guitar stuff going on the background. This is the only SY I can think of that has bongos on it. As for the album itself, eh. Cultural detreius from the 90's, like the movie, and not aging very well in our new millenium.

3. "Eat Y'self Fitter" the Fall (from the "Totally Wired" compilation)
The Fall is one of those bands whose bad songs are still pretty good. You have to kind of buy into Mark E. Smith's aesthetic, which is so weird that you are either taken with it or at the very least find it amusing. The music on this song is dumb and plodding, like a lot of Fall songs, but its so tossed off as to have a charm to it. And MES knows how to pick his rhythm section so as to make the most elementary songs sound propulsive. Lovably eccentric, its too bad the Fall doesn't play their old stuff anymore live.

4. "A Pistol For Paddy Garcia" The Pogues (from "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash")
It seems that there are a few things that make good albums great:
1. The occasional instrumental to cleanse the pallette
2. Swapping of vocal duties between members of the band
3. Variety in song tempos
"Rum, Sodomy and the Lash" has all of these things. This song has a Mexico by way of Irish folk music thing going on that's pretty cool, and perhaps would be something that your parents might enjoy. Until, that is, they hear the way Shane McGowan punks up the other folk songs on the album.

5. "Like A Rolling Stone (Live)" Bob Dylan (from "Bob Dylan: MTV Unplugged")
I have two other versions of this song in my Itunes - the original studio version off of "Highway 61 Revisited" and from the infamous live performance at the Royal Albert Hall. The "Unplugged" version is my favorite. Bob's voice is pretty ragged on this album, but a couple of the choruses it rises up to keen "How does it feeeeeeelll??". Incredibly, it's one of the most emotional performances I've heard him give, but of course I might be fooled by the slick production and the great organ parts.