Tuesday, February 28, 2006

no, i am a bird now























track 29 was "hope there's someone" off of i am a bird now from antony and the johnsons. how do you cultivate that kind of voice? i have this picture of antony in the studio running his finger up and down his throat like jim carrey in the karaoke scene from the cable guy. that's probably what it's like.

track 30

Monday, February 27, 2006

alright.


























track 27 was m. ward covering velvet underground's "pale blue eyes" at some show in europe. i would kill for a soundboard recording of that show. during the same set, ward also does a cool version of a yo la tengo song...i forget the title.

track 28 was antony and the johnsons' "fistfull of love" off of i am a bird now. spoken intro by the loo himself.

this next one probably won't be that hard to figure out...i'm going to post it by itself anyway, because it's really damn good. listen to it with headphones on if you can, and turn on all the lights in the house and sit in front of your blank tv screen to get the full effect. also, it's snowing.

track 29

Friday, February 24, 2006

there you go, hiding behind a smokescreen of bourgeois cliches.





















track 24 was jeff tweedy of wilco doing a live acoustic cover of the beatles' "yesterday" at chicago's lounge ax in 2001 (linked to the gus gus track "polyesterday." get it? do you really?). track 25 was the beatles themselves with "here comes the sun" off of their hands-down best album, abbey road. track 26 was m. ward's "here comes the sun again" off of transistor radio. Not only is the title similar to the beatles' song, but if you listen closely, ward works in a guitar phrase from "the original" at the end.

two more today, the first one's another gimme.

track 27
track 28

Thursday, February 23, 2006

damn.














had enough gus gus yet? sorry about that. i must have mixed up the file names. so, the link between tracks 22 and 23 was that they were the exact same song.

to make up for the retardedness i'll put three tracks up today. and i'll check the damned links this time.

track 24
track 25
track 26

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

down and out

belle







sebastian










gus gus







fan art taken from fanart-central
check out the artist's comments for the gus gus drawing.
"This is for the Disney contest on the forums.
I was going to do Iago but I saw a cermic bank of Gus Gus and I couldn't resist.

Medium: Micron pens, chalk pastels, lightly edited in Photoshop CS"
i wonder if he won.

track 22 was thievery corporation's remix of gus gus's "polyesterday."

track 23

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

no image today...I had planned on putting up a picture of an arab strap, but then i found out what it was (wikipedia, probably NSFW), and that just won't be happening.

arab strap is the link (cough) between tracks 20 and 21 (belle and sebastian, "dirty dream number two", off of the boy with the arab strap). druid and i listened to that live version of "billy jean" from belle and sebastian the other day. it's not very good, but just think...had i known about it earlier, we could have gone from michael jackson to belle and sebastian without all of this van halen nonsense. what would the world be like? actually, i would still probably go the van halen route. be warned, i am thinking very hard of ways to get some def leppard up here.

track 22

Friday, February 17, 2006


"dean artist"?














sorry about the late post, crazy day.

the last track was arab strap covering van halen's "why can't this be love." i actually kind of miss sammy hagar's "do-doo-do-doo" soloing.

track 21

Thursday, February 16, 2006

behold! the front bum!
























unicorn chaser

"your google image search for 'michael jackson camel toe' did not return any results."
i tried, druid. i didn't dare turn the safe search off.

so, besides the likely presence of "sweet male camel toes" (are the toes of the male camels different from those of the females?) tracks 18 and 19 (van halen's "dance the night away" off of van halen ii) share the masturbatory guitar antics of edward van halen. it's a sign of how much things have changed that there probably weren't many people who liked eddie any less for playing with michael jackson when "beat it" came out.

track 20

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

smoooov...













this actually wasn't a bad game

that line in track 17 ("slow jamz", kanye west featuring jamie foxx and twista off of college dropout) about michael jackson always struck me as funny. something about the way it's delivered; is it meant as an insult? or is kanye just stating the facts? anyway, that led to "beat it" off of thriller from my best friend i never met, michael jackson.

stick with me, we'll get back to music that it's okay to like pretty soon.
but not today.

track 19


Tuesday, February 14, 2006

don't hate. appreciate.















yep. track 16="diamonds from sierra leone" kanye west featuring jay-z off of late registration. co-produced by jon brion. it makes sense though...the first thing i thought when i heard "knock yourself out" (track 15) was "the guy who wrote this song should sample a classic james bond opener and put kanye west and jay-z on top." it was the next logical step.
thanks to druid for clarifying the evan dando business and for the maroon 5 request.

track 17
track 18

Monday, February 13, 2006

You want me to grab a dictionary?













from druid: "beulah -- the o.c. -- phantom planet -- evan dando -- jon brion"
i'm still trying to work out the evan dando bit, but this looks like a legitimate link. the one i had in mind was that both the beulah song and the phantom planet song were on the o.c. "enhanced" soundtrack, and then because jason shwartzman was phantom planet's drummer (i'm not sure if he actually drummed on "california"), i linked to a song from i heart huckabee's, "knock yourself out" by jon brion. starring shwartzman.

and now for something completely different...

track 16

Friday, February 10, 2006

am i blowing your mind?













gonna be a short one today, i'm at home, which means i have all of 28.8 killerbites per second at my disposal.

druid nailed it. the beulah song references magnetic fields' 69 love songs ever so briefly, ("some guy wrote 69").
i really don't like the next track very much, so i'm going to put two up.

track 14
track 15

Thursday, February 09, 2006

does this sound like a musical robot?















druid's answer for yesterday's track: "caps." i'm assuming he meant capital cities, and since that is a valid link between "fire in cairo," from the cure, and "washington d.c" from magnetic fields, druid has now earned the title of wizard of rhythmic enchantment.

the link that i actually had in mind was that the titles of both songs are spelled out within the song. here's a tip for aspiring song writers: pick your favorite color, city, or ex-girlfriend and "sing-spell."

my anonymous source in the marines (matt) left me a message yesterday about "songbird," (info) a new open-source media player that the government is working hard to suppress (not really). i've just now installed it, and i'm pretty much in love. it's already skinned like the stefanka skin i was using for winamp, or the black japan skin for firefox. it's got a way nice feature that lets you grab all of the mp3s off of a webpage at once.
for instance, copy the url for this blog into the address bar and then hit the "subscribe" button at the bottom, and every day songbird will automatically download the tracks i post.
it's still beta, but it looks like it's gonna kick itunes', windows media player's, and even winamp's bloated corporate asses.

track 13

Wednesday, February 08, 2006


curiosa and curiosa












boys probably do cry...daily

druid, true to his name, posted the cryptic and inscrutable message, "warm weather?" in response to yesterday's post (track 10=interpol's "direction", track 11=the cure "fire in cairo"). the link that i had identified was that the double opened for interpol on their last u.s. tour, and interpol (along with a lot of other bands) opened for fat bob and the cures on their last tour. but "warm weather?" eh? judges?

track 12

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

bingo!
















track 9 was "blanket on a beach," by the double off of the album palm fronds. linked to track 8 by the beach. who would you rather go to the beach with; brian wilson, or the double? based on "blanket on the beach" i have to think that if you went with the double, the sea would get all grey and foamy and erupt something terrible and somebody would drown. then again, if you went with brian wilson there's always the chance that carnie would show up, (was anyone ever more appropriately named, btw?).
the double it is!

since that was kind of a weak connection i'll put two up today. for added fun, the link between tracks 9, 10, and 11 will be the same. what diversion!

track 10
track 11

Monday, February 06, 2006

hundred-hand slap



















could this be the little honda the beach boys had in mind?

okay, 15 interpretation points to anonymous (andrew) for making a good case for why singing about cars was the connection between yo la tengo's "little honda" (track 7) and brian wilson's "good vibrations" (track 8), (i think it's as likely that both songs were about women...gears=bases, wink, wink). sadly, as the actual connection is that they are both beach boys songs, no pop-culture awareness points will be awarded.



track 6 and 7 are both yo la tengo, just in case anybody missed that one.

remember when you heard that brian wilson had stopped laying on the couch and eating chocolate sauce off of his own body and that he was going to finish smile? remember how strange and interesting it was when you listened to it for the first time? remember how you never listened to it again?

track 9

Friday, February 03, 2006

que rico!












track 6 was "hedwig's lament/exquisite corpse," instrumentation by yo la tengo, vocals by the jedi witch, yoko ono. linked to track 5 by the presence of both on the "wig in a box" charity album.
does anybody else want to give jonathan cameron mitchell credit for foreseeing, if not actually intitiating, the pixies reunion?

we'll put two more up today, the first one's kind of a gimme.

track 7
track 8


p.s. thanks to jo for the link

Thursday, February 02, 2006

do you have another 'pinion?








yes, david lovering is also a magicia-sorry, illusionist



so first was the yeah yeah yeahs with "y-control." i started with that one because my son dylan likes it. the yyys share a guitarist, Nick Zinner, with tv on the radio who did track 2, "staring at the sun," and track 3, "mr. grieves." "mr.grieves" was written by mr. frank black francis, who got together with two pale boys (whoever they are) to "cover" his own song, "where is my mind," track 4. track 5 was another ex-current-pixie, kim deal, making pretty on a song from the film hedwig and the angry inch, "wicked little town."

track 6

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

six degrees of bacon...hold the bacon



the idea for this blog has its roots in a little game my wife and i play with the songs we choose to wake up to. each song has some link to the song that precedes it. for instance, last week she started with "everything in its right place" by radiohead, (the song tom cruise wakes up to in vanilla sky). i countered with "i got you babe," the song bill murray wakes to in groundhog day. after that was "just like honey," jesus and mary chain, from lost in translation, another bill murray movie. and so on.

all of the songs above are linked by movies, but that won't necessarily be the case for the songs i post here. They could be linked by a person, some musical characteristic, or some stupid pun. hopefully it'll become obvious how it works as time progresses.

while i am myself partial to indie rock/pop, i expect that the process of connecting songs will take us into diverse, strange lands...like rick dee territory. i promise to do my damnedest to keep modern country-pop out of the mix.

i plan on doing at least a track every weekday, maybe two if the connection is very obvious. for this inaugural post, i'll include five tracks to get things rolling. i'll post the track information and connections tomorrow. let's do the listen!

note: i've renamed the files so that the downloading act won't automatically ruin the "surprise." the tags are still intact though, so be aware that your media player will probably display track information.


track 1
track 2
track 3
track 4
track 5
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