where was the list

So it is MAD cliche to make a year end list, that is why we didn't have one. OK, so thats not true at all. Come December, the Green Hornet asked if I would write it and we discussed it a good amount...then I just never did it. Good sign of how I go about my schooling right? Well, it could still come. Better late than never, right? But until then here is just a normal post.




Holiday Song - The Pixies

I had loved the 4 main Pixies albums for years, and for some reason never got into the highly regarded EP Come on Pilgrim, and still haven't. But recently I am really enjoying the song from the EP "Holiday Song". Joey Santiago's riff in the beginning is one of his best. Distorted guitar surf rock with freak show lyrics in both delivry and content has never sounded better.



The Holiday Song - James Mercer of the Shins

I won't lie though, the reason I really heard about this song was this very nice acoustic version from James Mercer of the Shins. Is it cool to like the Shins? Who knows, but it is definitely uncool to not like them. (Sorry, there is a minute long outro of talking because this was live on some radio show. Honestly, I've never even listened to it so I don't even know what show it is.)

Livingston Taylor

So as I've alluded to, I've been pretty ill over the past two weeks, so I haven't really been up to much. So then when my mom offered me an extra ticket to go see Livingston Taylor (yes, James' little brother) in the early evening last night, I was down. I've been a fan of Livingston's for a while, but to be honest, it wasn't a show I would've gone out of my way to check out. I'm so glad I did. The man just took the stage by himself, switching back and forth every so often between the piano and his guitar, and it was incredibly captivating. It really made me miss all the folk music shows I used to get dragged to as a child. At one point, Taylor started telling a story about his desire to add guitar to the olympics, he then started picking on this great bluegrass tip, and began impersonating two announcers doing commentary over his performance. It was hysterical, and while he was talking and joking around, his fingers were flying on the neck. The show was in a fairly small town hall and our seats were right in the second row, so there was a very intimate conversational feel to the whole show. I really wanted to share some of his songs with you, but when I went looking for my old CD book, I realized that it's been in my friend's car for the past three weeks. So we're going to have to make do with this live track. It's poorly recorded, but you can still hear his great fingerpicking.

"Falling in Love With You" by Livingston Taylor

On the subject of live music, I also happened to catch the Pixies on WLIW last night. I have a weird relationship with this band's music. I like it. I like some of it a lot. It's just one of those things, where I don't find myself going "Oh hey, I wanna listen to the Pixies" very often. Performing live, it was a totally different story. They were able to put so much more energy into the songs, it was really great. Plus an overweight, unattractive frontman renews my hope that I'm going to be the savior of rock and roll in the near future.

"Gigantic" by the Pixies

They rocked "Gigantic" in a particularly hard fashion.

"Velouria" by the Pixies

I had an idea once that I was going to see if I could spend a whole weekend listening only to songs that were titled with girls' names. So I gathered together a ton of such titled songs, and even though I never actually went through with the "experiment", I did end up finding a bunch of new songs that I liked. This is one of them.