I get to post early due to the long weekend! Hooray! Anyone who comments between now and 7:00pm CST on Friday, July 3 (except Jacob, Cheri, Prairie Princess, and Cousin Sarah, who are ineligible) is eligible to win a $15 Gift Card to Amazon.com! This week’s topic: What should we name our forthcoming baby boy? We think we have it, but it doesn’t hurt to keep our options open! Comment as much as you want about anything else, too! Multiple comments encouraged! I would really like to hear what everyone thinks about the songs and the list so far! Anything you like? Anything you can’t stand? Questions about anything? Tell your friends! The more comments the more fun everyone has! Also, if you like a song and want to hear more from that artist, I will post some extra songs when we announce the winner!
I just got the new Wilco album Wednesday. Five songs into it and it’s looking like the best one since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot? Great job! Wilco! Wilco! Wilco will love you baby!
This week’s list is a beast! They should will all be this good to the end.
070 – “Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed On The Roof Of The Chelsea Hotel, 1979” by Okkervil River. Last fall, Jessie, myself, sis-in-law Emily and her boyfriend Adrian, my cousin Aaron and his wife Amy, and my cousin Melissa and her boyfriend Travis all went to Omaha to see Okkervil River. I had a wish list of four songs that I wanted to hear them play. This is the only one (the other three are coming up later) that wasn’t played that night. The show was still unbelievable. This song is the story of Bruce Wayne Campbell, also known as Jobriath, who was a heavily promoted glam rock star in the 70’s that never really went anywhere. He died of AIDS, broke, in 1983. This song isn’t depressing, though. It’s a cool end to my 2008 Album Of The Year, The Stand Ins, I really like the when the vocal melody and the music sync up (“Let it di-i-i-i-ie…”, etc.) I also like the Spanish sounding horns and mandolin. There’s also just a bit of pedal steel guitar at the very end. Okkervil River sort of has a thing for dead quasi-celebrities: John Allyn Smith, Jobriath, Shannon Wilsey (don’t Google her name, please. She was an adult actress. I’ll explain later.) Warning: one ¡¡F-BOMBS!! More Okkervil River coming up.
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069 – “You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will.” by Bright Eyes. Bright Eyes is another band that my friend The Tyler Forret introduced me to, and I still remember the first time he played this album for me. We were driving to see our friend John in Marshalltown. This whole album, Lifted Or The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your Ear To The Ground, is really pretty strange. This song isn’t too unusual, but it is a little strange when you realize it’s a 23 year old one man band from Omaha, Nebraska singing the song. I love the end when you can’t tell whether he is saying, “You will.” or “Will you? (Explains the title and punctuation.) Probably the best Bright Eyes album. More Bright Eyes later.
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068 – “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” by Bob Dylan. I hope my in-laws can forgive me for only including one Bob Dylan song. I really like him, but he is another artist whose songs just sound better to me in album format. Obviously Bob Dylan is recognized as one of, if not the best, singer songwriters and lyricists of all time. The album this song appears on, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, is a collection of protest songs, songs about civil rights, songs about strange dreams, and songs like “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”. I can’t remember the first time I heard this song. Heck, I can’t even remember if I had heard it before or after I’d met Jessie (I was aware of Bob before her, but not really a fan). Sometime between then and now it has worked its way into my brain and made a place there for itself. There are some songs I would consider better: “Like A Rolling Stone”, “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” etc. But this song is my favorite of his. It’s sort of biting and sort of sarcastic. I won’t really recommend individual songs of Bob Dylan, but Highway 61 Revisited (his best), Blood On The Tracks, and Blonde On Blonde are required listening.
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067 – “Zürich Is Stained” by Pavement. Is it just me, or does everything in this song seem way out of tune? That’s actually why I like it so much. Slanted & Enchanted might actually be my least favorite Pavement album (which is not something you say if you are into indie rock music), it just doesn’t flow as well for me as the others do. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great songs on it (“In The Mouth Of A Desert”, “Here”, the classic “Summer Babe (Winter Version)”), but I listen to Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Wowee Zowee, Brighten The Corners, and maybe even Terror Twilight more than Slanted & Enchanted. Does that make me a bad person? Don’t answer that unless you are a Pavement fan. More soon.
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066 – “I Know It’s Over” by The Smiths. For my money, there is only one American band that mattered in the destitute musical wasteland that was the 1980’s, and that was Pixies (eh, maybe R.E.M. to a much lesser degree). Same goes for The Smiths in England. I haven’t gotten around to listening to much more of their work other than The Queen Is Dead, but this album is one classic song after another. “I Know It’s Over” is my favorite. Whenever I see somebody write about this album, they never mention this song for some reason. Jessie and I listened to this a lot right around the time we got married (but it was only just beginning, not over, for us). This is all The Smiths you’re going to hear on my list. Still a good band. Lead singer Morrissey is a character.
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065 – “California One/Youth And Beauty Brigade” by The Decemberists. Like the “/” in the title implies, this is two songs blended into one. It starts off with nice sounding acoustic guitar in drop-D tuning (I think – correct me if I’m wrong anyone who can tell). I always like the way drop-D sounds with acoustic guitar. Neil Young has a few songs with it. “Follow Me Around”, an excellent song by Radiohead I have been hoping would show up on an album for about 10 years has it. It makes a cool sounding buzz when the low string gets strummed. This song also has some pedal steel guitar in it. I love that The Decemberists use that instrument so frequently. Only one more Decemberists “song” (you’ll see) left.
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064 – “Harness Your Hopes” by Pavement. Two Pavement songs in a week? Lucky you! This is a joke song, but I still love it. If you ever meet Stephen Malkmus in a dark alley and you need to solve the riddle asked in this song to save your parents’ lives, the answer is “enslavement”. Do people consider “ass” a swear word? Whether you do or don’t, the word “ass” or rather, “asses” is definitely in this song. Enjoy!
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063 – “Space Oddity” by David Bowie. This is the song that brought David Bowie to the spotlight. None of you reading this probably know him, but I always think of a fellow called Austin Goodrich when I hear this song. When I was a junior in high school, I took an environmental science class. One day we went to a field south of Adel to look at where water would run at different spots in the field, but all old Austin Goodrich wanted to do was walk back and forth in the field singing, “This is ground control to Major Tom!” at the top of his lungs while pumping his fists considerably. On one of the later trips, Austin Goodrich confided to us that he was a member of Canadian band Rush’s fan club.
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062 – “Say It Ain’t So” by Weezer. Has anyone heard any new Weezer jams lately? They stink. Weezer, aka “The Blue Album” is the best, though. Every song on it is all killer, no filler. Weezer’s first two albums were awesome, the next two were okay, and everything after is no. Coincidence that they started the decline after Matt Sharp left? I think not. I listened to this a lot when I was in college (I think that’s true for a lot of people) When we saw Weezer in concert, Rivers Cuomo said, “Give me a new axe, my man. It’s time to shred” to one of the roadies (before this song, I think?). This is the last Weezer song on the list.
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061 – “I’m Only Sleeping” by The Beatles. I got Revolver for my sixteenth birthday. I asked for it because I liked the songs “Eleanor Rigby” and “Yellow Submarine”, the only ones I had heard off of Revolver up to that point. At the time, I only listened to songs I knew when I got a new CD, so I skipped to “Eleanor Rigby” (Track 2) when I first put the disc in. Before I had a chance to skip to Track 6 (“Yellow Submarine”) I heard “I’m Only Sleeping”. I liked it quite a bit right away. That same day was the powderpuff football game (it was homecoming week) and we had a bonfire at a senior’s house for the whole school to attend. I drove my car out to this place listening to the song a few times in a row. Later that night, I was walking through the crowd of people to find the girl I was taking to the homecoming dance (I was excited for the dance because I was sweet on this girl and she agreed to go with me) and I came up on her sitting talking to a senior and he had his arm around her. She spent the rest of the evening with this dude, and they started “going out”. This was on my birthday. Not around the time of my birthday. On my birthday. I still took her to the dance three days later, but she ended up dancing with him most of the night. It’s not all sad, though. Three and a half years later I met the love of my life and I still get to listen to that song whenever I want to. I think there are more Beatles songs coming…
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for me to use these final weeks of pregnancy to see if it helps. 
