By three in the afternoon today, I had:
:scored a goal and defended against several possible goals which helped win a soccer championship
:drank a solid portion of five? six? trophy-fulls of beer
:mildly pinked the skin of my arms and most likely my increasingly thinning hairtop area
:gone for a bike ride [ok, so it was just down the street, but after last week's squats and today's game and nightly habit of little sleep, that's a haul]
:got drunk from beer
proofPretty productive, especially for me and especially for a lazy Sunnyday. Fear not, friends of Ry: you'll be comforted to know the old Ryan returned after he sobered up and the rest of the day looked a little like this:
2.55-3pm: was literally on my out the door, schoolwork on shoulder, to meet a friend in the park when I received a message that she had to leave
3-5pm: spent way too much time remixing a song which was really unnecessary in the end
5-7pm: weekly blog catch-up and music downloads, and light online self-promotion
7-8pm: got a little hazy after 7pm, and all time began to blendblurshift into one big.... period
Wha? It's after 9? Oops. Going to study now. [edit: ........going now!]
In the meantime, these songs have kept me sane and perpetually drive my passion/love of/for/ music. Most for at least a few years, and the most recent for several months. No guilty pleasure here; no shame. Hopefully some or all are new to you and I'll have opened your mind, so that when you lose it later on, you can put these on and regain your sanity. Even if you think you know it, or think you don't like it, I beg you to try. The delete key allows for easy forgetting of a disliked song, but there's no key for plain and simple goodfeelingness through good music.
I don't ask much of you; read these words:
Toto - Africa
Last autumn I came to the conclusion that this is most likely my absolute favorite song of the 80s. It's awesome to remember hearing a song this old, around the time when it was popular, even after you realize what that entails.
Wheatus - A Little Respect
This is the killer cover of Erasure's also awesome tune. I think it first appeared on some teen movie in the 90s.
Roots Manuva - Movements
Roots Manuva is a British hip hop emcee, and this song is of the utmost and sublime chillage as far as hip hop goes [I even put it on one of my old chill/lounge mixtapes!]. My point: don't hate cause you see hip hop; hate only [and IF] after you listen and don't like. This record was one of the very first I bought when I got into the whole DJ gig. I didn't really know what it was, but the idea of British hip hop sounded really cool. Despite him speaking the same language [basically] a lot is lost in translation, cause like he rhyme wit mad slang.
Nine Inch Nails - All the Love in the World
No shit, this song does something indescribable to me every time I listen to it. It's one of the few songs I can do what my good buddy Paul does to every single song he likes-- put it on repeat, repeat, repeat, listening to e v e r y s i n g l e synthetic kick drum, wao wao of the bass, piano chord, strained vocal chord, e v e r y s i n g l e m o m e n t . Only difference between Paul and I is that I've yet to tire of it, two or three years on.
National - The Geese of Beverly Road
I only sorta know what the closing lines of this song mean [Come, come be my waitress tonight / serve me the sky with a big slice of lemon], but I love singing them over and over, and I often yearn for an emotional moment as an excuse to really shed everything and step into this song, with all of me. Even if it's not really applicable to whatever the hell my emotional moment is about.
Department of Eagles - No One Does it Like You
I think I may have posted this last year as part of my FaveSongs thread, but even if I did it probably expired. DoEagles have a new album coming out sometime soon, and it's already way overdue. Their first album was a little hard to sink into, because it was a little too all-over-the-place. If this song is a sign of their change, as it's like nothing else they've done as a band*, then I really don't want to wait any longer.
*I say that because lead crooner Daniel Rossen's solo cover of Jo Jo's "Too Little Too Late" is similar in its sheer vocal awesomeness; right-click d/l it here
I'll slap the bacon out your mouth, dance upon your sarnie....
.
2 comments:
Africa is probably my favorite song, ever. That maybe marks me as crazy? but at my going away/birthday soiree a few years back, I made the DJ play it about 4 times throughout the night... and everyone ended up agreeing with me.
Several times when I've DJ'd in the past, "Africa" was the second half of a closing one-two punch of what I always thought were perfect closing songs [the other being Ben Lee's fabulously downtempo rendition of Modest Mouse's "Float On"; go find it]. I don't think people realize how good a song it is until they hear it in the right setting, and the farther removed it is from their preconceptions, the better.
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