Music



I downloaded a new playlist from iTunes recently.  I was tired of everything on my iPod so it was time for some new tunes.  Because I almost never listen to the radio, it’s not that easy for me to find new songs; either I see something in print, or see a group on TV, or some acquaintance turns me on to a song or a band.  That’s what I thought I’d do here.  Maybe you’ll find something you like. 

           

This is the first new music I’ve downloaded in quite a while.  A few months ago I downloaded three playlists, but they were all classic songs from 1954 to 1998.  It’s fun to listen to music you liked a long time ago but haven’t heard in a while, but the fun doesn’t last long because even though you haven’t heard the songs in ages, years ago you heard them scores of times, so they get old faster than brand new songs that you’ve never heard before. 

           

Now, I keep a tentative playlist going in iTunes all the time.  When I hear about a new artist or song, I check them out.  If I find a song I like, I put it on the pending playlist.  When, over time, the playlist gets to be 25 or 30 songs long, I go through and cull it down to 18 or so, and put the overflow on a backup list.  Then, every so often I add new songs and/or play around with it, shifting some songs to the backup list and moving others forward to the main list, and changing the sequence.  Rarely, I’ll come up with a list that I like so much that I just have to download it right away.  But mostly, like this time, I’m not entirely sold on the list I have, but I’m so hungry for some new tunes that I don’t want to wait until I get it perfect and so I’ll just go ahead with it.  (Perfection doesn’t exist anyway.)

           

Making a list is tricky.  Some songs I like right away, but the more I listen, the less I like them.  Other songs are just the reverse: I’m not that crazy about them at first, but they grow on me.  Then of course there’s the mood factor.  Some songs I like when I’m in the mood for them, but in a different mood, not so much. Also, I get bored listening to the same artist, so I like to have variety in a playlist, different kinds of music by different artists, songs that take you to different places.  And yet, ideally, there should be some thematic cohesion, or some dramatic arcs, and the segues should be somewhat graceful.  It’s not easy to get all of this rolling, and some playlists obviously work better than others. 

           

So, bearing all this in mind, here’s the playlist I came up with:

           

1)  “F**k You” by Cee Lo Green –I first heard this on Colbert.  Cee Lo used to be in Gnarls Barkley, who had the hit “Crazy” back in 2006.  Despite the cheeky title, and the fact that it’s about lost love, this is not a mean-spirited song.  On the contrary, it’s humorous and playful. And it absolutely gets in your head.   

           

2)  “Grenade” by Bruno Mars – I first heard this on SNL.  It’s maybe a little schmaltzy, but hooky none the less. 

           

3)  “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz – See above, but more upbeat.

           

4)  “Hey, Soul Sister” by Train – I have three other Train songs (“Drops of Jupiter,” “Get to Me,” and “Meet Virginia,”) but none of them is as infectious as this one.  Like the previous song, it’s part of the ukulele craze. 

           

5)  “Kids” by MGMT –This bit of electronica doesn’t really fit here, but it didn’t fit anywhere.  I’ve blown warm and cool on it.  It was on a previous list and got bumped off, but then I heard it by accident a couple of times and the simple yet addictive melody line stuck with me.     

           

6)  “Heavy Cross” by Gossip – Gossip is an indie-punk band and this song rocks.

           

7)  “Never Say Never” by The Fray – Almost too sweet and tuneful.  It’s more in the same vein as “You Found Me,” “Over My Head,” and “How to Save a Life.”   

           

8)  “Little Pieces” by Gomez – Gomez is a British band that utilizes a banjo, among other things.  I’ve got a couple other songs of theirs (“See the World” and “How We Operate”) and I like “How We Operate” a little more than this one, but this is still pretty good. 

           

9)  “I And Love And You” by The Avett Brothers – This is the song I like least on the list, but I couldn’t decide on anything on the backup list that I definitely liked better, so it stayed. 

           

10)  “Lassoo” by The Duke Spirit – I have another song by this Brit band (“You Really Wake Up the Love in Me”) and it sounds much like this one, but I think I like this one slightly better.

           

11)  “I Miss You” by Extra Golden – This is a song in the Kenyan Benga tradition performed by two Americans and a Kenyan.  Extra Golden is reminiscent of Orchestra Baobab but without the horns; sunny and pleasant.    

           

12)  “Sleepy Wheels” by Big Light – Big Light is a spacey, psychedelic band from San Francisco.  The song is long and dreamy, quite different from both the prior songs.  Kind of like an evolution of Santo and Johnny’s “Sleepwalk,” mixed with The Velvet Underground.  If you like this one, try “Hard Knocks.”

           

13)  “Babylon” by David Gray – This song actually dates from the last century (1999), but I only discovered it recently, so it’s new to me, even though I already had his song “Fugitive” (2009). 

           

14)  “Stare into the Sun” by Grafitti6 – Saw an article on this Brit band on some news site.  Going by the name, as well as the song, they must be admirers of Maroon 5. 

           

15)  “Walking” by The Dodos – Another San Francisco band.  This is probably my second least favorite cut on the list, but it’s only half the length of the Avett Brothers song so you don’t get tired of it as quickly.  Like Gomez, they use a banjo. 

           

16)  “Wreck My Flow” by The Dirtbombs – A garage-punk band out of Detroit: down and dirty. 

           

17)  “Crawling in the Dark” by Hoobastank – Hoobastank’s other big hit was “The Reason,” back in 2004.  This song was on the bubble and got knocked off the list a couple times and then put back on, but the more I listen to it, the more I like it. 

Midterms

Not long after I returned from Italy the mid-term elections took place and I have to say I was a bit flabbergasted by the results.  Of course California bucked the trend, but what the hell is going on with the hinterlanders?  They had some sort of conniption.  Now, I get the anger over the Wall Street bailout.  The too-big-to-fail banks should have been bankrupted and broken up.  Their shareholders’ should have been hosed and their executives fired with no severance.  The Obama team was entirely too cozy with Wall Street and gave them too sweet a deal.  But does that justify a wholesale insurrection?  And do the voters actually believe the Repubs are less cozy with Wall Street?  To vote them in is like saying you’ve decided you don’t like rodents so you’re going to replace your gerbil with a rat. 

If, as some say, this debacle was engineered by blue-collar Democrats trying to “send a message,” I’m not sure what that message was.  Were they upset that Obama and the Dems hadn’t fixed the recession fast enough?  Or were they upset about the deficit?  You can be one or the other with consistency, but not both.  To be both is to complain that it’s too hot and too cold at the same time, because to get unemployment down would have required more spending, not less. 

Anyway, they may think they’ve sent some sort of message, but all they’ve really accomplished is to insure that the federal government will be relatively paralyzed for the next two years or, possibly worse, if the Hooverites they’ve voted in have their way and significant spending reductions are put in place, that the recession will take a second dip and unemployment will increase (and therefore revenue will decrease and deficit reduction will be minimal).   

One thing that’s clear is that this vote was not a carefully reasoned one, but an emotional outburst of pure pique.  Meanwhile, as we spin our wheels in backbiting and recrimination, China will continue to seize the future with steady, strategic, well-reasoned steps.  While the Tea Partiers frolic in their free-market fantasies, the Chinese brand of authoritarian state capitalism is laying the groundwork for its domination of the next century, or two, or three.  These wayward voters of ours may wake up one day to discover that the message they have actually sent is that democracy is not going to be the prevailing political paradigm of the future, because in its emotional turbulence it cannot compete with the sheer juggernaut efficiency of authoritarian capitalism.