This Week in Pod doesn't want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard

Between my last post and this one, I have added a grand total of three CDs to my iPod. They are:

Various Artists - Mojo Magazine: Americana 2004
Various Artists - The Songs of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Various Artists - Scooby-Doo's Snack Tracks: The Ultimate Collection

I have a playlist programed to only play things that have been added in the past week, so currently I have a playlist that only contains the contents of those three discs.

It's an odd mix. The three of them are odd mixes to begin with, but mixing them together is particularly odd.

From what I've been able to tell, "Americana" is a term that started out in the early nineties as sort of an umbrella term for record stores that didn't want to have separate racks for "Blues" and "Country/Western." As it was presented as a holistic genre, contemporary artists began believing that it really was one, and we are left with things like Gomez. I am very strange about "Americana" because while I hate the genre as a concept, I tend to really like just about everything that gets coded with the term.

(I am a hoot in record and video stores when I am in a foul mood and start asking the manager to quantify the genres. I stopped going to Blockbuster because every time I went in I took issue with the fact that they had separate sections for "Action" and "Adventure." "If this 'Action' film turns out to be quite adventurous, can I get a refund?")

Boyce and Hart were a songwriting team/occasional band. History has caused them to be be best known for their stint writing for The Monkees, but a look at their resume shows that they had their fingers in a lot of the sixties. One thing that they didn't have their fingers in, I discover, was what was called "The Bosstown Sound," a bunch of bands from Boston that were marketed heavily in the mid-sixties as an American response to the "British Invasion" bands. (See, here's those arbitrary genres again.) I had presumed that Paul Revere and the Raiders was one of the Bosstown bands, because their first single was a Boyce/Hart tune and, well, the name and the whole Spirit of 76 outfit/getting their photos taken with muskets thing.

Turns out the guy's name was really Paul Revere, and he showed up at precisely the wrong time, or right time depending on how you want to look at it. The Boyce/Hart song was "I'm not Your Stepping Stone," later covered by The Monkees, and then The Sex Pistols. You could write a dissertation on the meaning and trajectory of that one song.

I'm certain I picked up the Scooby-Doo CD because it had the tracks from the first season that played in the background as our heroes were being chased back and forth across the screen. While televised animation of the late sixties and early seventies stunk to high heaven, the folks making it were blessed with a bunch of talent pumping out the bubblegum pop in the background. Also on the disk are two tracks from the era of Scooby Doo when every episode had a guest star, and the musically inclined guest stars would do a song. These two tracks are from Davy Jones, who was at the time recording with Boyce and Hart, and Jerry Reed, who would later become best known for acting in and performing the theme song to Smokey and the Bandit, in a genre that is now wrapped into "Americana." It all comes together quite nicely, doesn't it?

Most Played Song:

Thea Gilmore - "Bad Moon Rising"

I pick ten tracks at random:

Abra Moore - "Summer's Ending"
Paul McCartney - "Nod Your Head"
Kirsten Bråten Berg - "Bånsuller"
764-HERO - "You Were a Party"
Jimi Hendrix - "Love Love"
Cold 8 - "Club Hearts"
Lisa Loeb - "Furious Rose"
Brian Keane - "American Open"
Maire Brennan - "Peacemaker"
Matisyahu - "Close My Eyes"

For hard drive space (and my own sanity) I do have to delete the occasional album. This week I deleted:

Scooby-Doo's Snack Tracks: The Ultimate Collection

I had completely forgotten that I owned this CD:

Scooby-Doo's Snack Tracks: The Ultimate Collection

The last thing that I ripped:

Scooby-Doo's Snack Tracks: The Ultimate Collection

This Week in Pod Has Lost Track of the Time

I think I shall have to abandon all hope of turning into a feature that I do regularly, and just keep on chugging it out when I can.

Luckily, I've slowed down the process of ripping CDs to match the slowdown in posting about it.

There are two reasons for this: First, I've been busy. Second, I've been noticing that my hard drive has been filling up. Because my hard drive has been filling up, I'm going to have to start making a lot more choices about what to remove then I have been.

First, I will probably have to get rid of the video that has filled up a few loose gigs. As my iPod is one of those video deelies, I've been taking the opportunities to download the free video content that iTunes has to offer. Most of these things I have yet too actually watch, but they are filling up about twelve gigabytes, so I suppose they ought to be jettisoned to make way for other things. For the curious these videos include:

1. The pilot episode of The Starter Wife. This is another in the current hip genre of shows about how interesting it is to see horrifically rich white assholes being made vaguely uncomfortable.
   
2. A Sesame Street Special about muppets with asthma. As someone who grew up as an asthmatic child, I do appreciate the attempt at informing the youth of the nation that if your classmate has fallen over and is unable to breathe, it is perhaps unkind to start tickling them. Unfortunately, I have yet to actually watch a moment of this. I think that in the back of my mind, I am saving it on my iPod for the moment when I suddenly collapse in front of a schoolyard, I can show the traumatized schoolchildren the episode while I dig through my manbag for my inhaler.
   
3. The first episode of Curl Girls. This is a reality show about a bunch of lesbians who like to surf. It is conceptually impervious to snark.
   
4. The first episode of Scott Baio is 45 ... and Single. Oh, let's just face it, if you put something up on iTunes for free, I'm going to download it.
   
5. The 15 minute short film which was meant to be a prequel to a film now in current release, but which seems to have attracted attention not for the merits of the short film itself, but rather the moment in it where a currently popular starlet takes her pants off. (I'm being rather circumspect, to foil the Google-bots) I have yet to see the actual film that this is a prequel to, so I think I cannot comment on the short as an independent work.

And we go forward:

Most Played Song:

The Pernice Brothers - "Somerville"

I pick ten tracks at random:

The Boomtown Rats - "Go Man Go"
Sinead Lohan - "Disillusioned"
The Gufs - "Give Back Yourself"
The Waifs - "Circles"
Steve Earle - "Nothing but a Child"
Kurt Wiell - "No 13: Mattes! Mattes!"
The Police - "Peanuts (live)"
Vic Chesnutt - "Girl's Say"
Yo-Yo Ma - "Franck: Sonata in A for Violin & Piano"
John Lennon - "Cold Turkey"

Hey! I got the Yo-Yo Ma the last time I did the random shuffle. That's weird.

For hard drive space (and my own sanity) I do have to delete the occasional album. This week I deleted:

Tiny Tim - Live in Chicago with the New Duncan Imperials

I had completely forgotten that I owned this CD:

"anything by The Cranberries" - I have two of them! I might have gambled that I had the CD with "Linger" on it, but I have two! Oh boy!

The last thing that I ripped:

Diamanda Galas and John Paul Jones - The Sporting Life

This Week in Pod

I did have this post ready to go a few days ago, but I haven't had the internet time that I thought I would.

+++++

An addendum to my previous discussion of covermount CDs.

One of the side effects of having a constant influx of covermounts is the occasional discovery that the CD that you (read: "I") went out and purchased for only one song was useless because the one song that you (read: "I") wanted was on a covermount CD that you (read: "I") just hadn't listened to yet.

For a little while, I've been considering picking up the new Feist CD, partly because I find that "1234" song amusing. This is the song that rocketed up the charts after it was featured in an iPod ad, which was running concurrently to the debut of the current iteration of the Amazon.com mp3 store, which caused the same song to be the first number one song on the service that was competing with the one that had been successfully advertising it.

You should understand that if that is something that makes me want to pick up a CD, I am in many ways utterly hopeless.

Luckily, in this case, I found that there was a CD still in the plastic envelope that was in a stack of things that I hadn't read yet. On the CD? "1234" by Feist!

I am in no way exonerated, but now I am no longer amused enough to purchase the CD simply for the one amusing song. I fear that Feist will amuse me with other songs, for I am a sucker.

And onwards:


Most Played Song

Helen Love - "Debbie Loves Joey"

I pick ten tracks at random:

The Hope Blister - "Sweet Unknown"
Tom Jones - "Sunny Afternoon (with Space)"
Jimmy Cliff - "Samba Reggae"
Yo Yo Ma - "Franck: Sonata in A for Violin and Piano"
The Beastie Boys - "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun"
Alphaville - "Ascension Day"
David Sylvian - "God Man"
The Pretenders - "Bless You"
The Pogues - "Fiesta"
The Police - "Can't Stand Losing You (Live)"

For hard drive space (and my own sanity) I do have to delete the occasional album. This week I deleted:

Ant and Dec - We're on the Ball (2002 England World Cup Team Theme Song)

[Yes. I purchased this because I was amused by it. As I was saying...]

I had completely forgotten that I owned this CD:

Mike McGear - McGear

The last thing that I ripped:

Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

This Fortnight in Pod

This week (okay, two) I've been concerning myself with covermount CDs - the free CDs that come with magazines and newspapers and whatnot.

I am a sucker for the things.

Right now I am about a third of the way through the CD binder of CMJ covermounts that I have accumulated. It's a monthly magazine and I've had a subscription since 1997. That should tell you about how many of the damn things that I'm loading in. I stopped paying for a subscription in 2002, but am still getting a copy every month. That should tell you something about how organized they are.

It is sort of astonishing to go through a forced march of these CDs - to remember how many artists I discovered when I listened to the latest issue (and how many songs I liked and completely lost track of.) All of the CDs I have by The Nields and The Coral and Gomez and The Streets can have their blame placed directly on CMJ magazine.

Anyway - on to the regular stuff:

Most Played Song

Al Stewart - "Katherine of Oregon"

The first line of the song is "When I am even more old than I am now" and goes on from there. It psychs me up as I walk to work.

I pick ten tracks at random

The Boomtown Rats - "Sleep (Finger's Lullaby)"
Minibar - "It is What it is"
Lambchop - "Something's Going On (and On) [alternative version]
Britten - "Serenade for Tenor Horn & Strings, Op 31"
Wall of Voodoo - "Living in the Red"
Playmates - "Days After Tomorrow"
Alanis Morissette - "Utopia"
Oasis - "(Untitled)" - [one of those forty second tracks from What's the Story (Morning Glory)]
Vasen - "Tomten Kammer"
Coldplay - "Yellow (Live at Glastonbury)"

For hard drive space (and my own sanity) I do have to delete the occasional album. This week I deleted:

Cartoon Sound Effects - Volume One

I had completely forgotten that I owned this CD:

Black Tape for A Black Girl - Remnants of a Deeper Purity

The last thing that I ripped:

CMJ Covermount CD - Issue #097 (October 2001)

This Week in Pod

For a while now, I've been thinking of attempting to post regularly on what it is that I am listening to.

I recently (well, a number of months ago now) gave in and got myself an iPod. What I have been doing in the time since is loading every CD I own into the iPod.

I have a lot of CDs. I have now loaded the first two of the nine crates (That's right. Crates.) of CDs that I have accumulated since the mid-eighties into the thing.

Most played Song

"River Runs Dry" by The Cosmic Rough Riders

This makes sense as the reason it was played so often was my wanting to make sense of the lyrics.

The first stanza goes:

I don't care if the river runs dry
I don't care if the river runs dry
I don't care if the river runs dry
I'm gonna love you till the day I die

Which is fine. Then the rest goes like this:

I don't care if the river it flows
With the blood of dead fishes
To the ocean it goes
To the fisherman's graveyard
The fishermen's friends
Chew the eyes from their sockets
In a vicious revenge

It is a lovely song nevertheless.

I pick ten tracks at random:

Tears for Fears - "Cold"
Robbie Williams - "Let Me Entertain You"
Dexy's Midnight Runners - "Old"
Alison Moyet - "And I Know"
Geoffrey Burgon - "Robin Hood Suite"
Michael Nesmith - "Keep On"
Broken Social Scene - "Ibi Dreams of Pavement"
Arcade Fire - "The Well and the Lighthouse"
Fiona Apple - "Pale September"
The Byrds - "So You Want to be a Rock and Roll Star?"

For hard drive space (and my own sanity) I do have to delete the occasional album. This week I deleted:

Yoko Ono - Onobox

I had completely forgotten that I owned this CD:

The Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique

The last thing that I ripped:

Original Soundtrack - The Harder They Come