The Year in Music, 2005

This post went up at the end of 2005. There's a lot of great music on here, though some songs have fallen out of the rotation and their play counts haven gone up very much in the past twenty-one months. It's sad how that happens.

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It's the time of year when I run out of material, which explains yesterday's list of libraries where you can find my book. I know, pretty lame.

I do have a few things on which I'm working, but I'm mostly concentrating my energies these days on my annual winter depression. This year's is going pretty well, and we're projecting that I should enter the bottommost level of despair during the first week of February.

So, here's another list, this one of the hundred most-played songs that were downloaded during 2005.

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Song Title:    Artist:    Play Count:    Date Added:

I Do Love You (Single)    Billy Stewart    168    1/17/05 11:20 AM

Blues Run the Game    Jackson C. Frank    166    2/6/05 9:40 PM

Tears All Over    A Girl Called Eddy    124    5/15/05 1:43 PM

Hope There's Someone    Antony & The Johnsons    115    12/29/05 6:31 PM

Tugboat    Galaxie 500    115    1/17/05 11:52 AM

Heartbeats    Jose Gonzalez    114    12/4/05 6:10 PM

Shout to the Top    The Style Council    108    6/28/05 10:09 PM

Passionate Kisses    Lucinda Williams    107    2/4/05 9:01 PM

Hey There Lonely Girl    Eddie Holman    99    1/17/05 11:20 AM

As You Turn to Go    The 6ths & Momus    94    9/4/05 5:56 PM

I Can't Make Me    Butterfly Boucher    93    1/23/05 12:54 PM

I Confess    The English Beat    87    3/6/05 2:19 PM

Isn't It a Pity    Galaxie 500    81    1/17/05 11:52 AM

I Haven't Got Anything Better to Do    Dee Dee Warwick    80    5/1/05 4:46 PM

Flowers    Galaxie 500    78    1/17/05 11:52 AM

If I Were a Carpenter    Tim Hardin    76    2/6/05 9:40 PM

Don't Leave Me This Way    Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes    71    4/10/05 5:01 PM

Dry the Rain    The Beta Band    65    9/4/05 5:56 PM

Casimir Pulaski Day    Sufjan Stevens    65    8/1/05 7:14 PM

Show and Tell    Al Wilson    64    10/8/05 6:17 PM

Before We Begin    Broadcast    64    5/1/05 4:46 PM

Let Go    Frou Frou    64    10/16/05 3:41 PM

Before Today    Everything But the Girl    62    2/11/05 8:12 PM

Devil's Broom    Joseph Arthur    62    6/7/05 11:02 PM

Save Me    Aimee Mann    60    6/7/05 8:46 PM

Say Hello    Deep Dish    60    9/25/05 4:27 PM

Tea and Sympathy    Janis Ian    60    4/10/05 5:01 PM

Come Undone    Duran Duran    58    1/16/05 9:14 PM

Cherry Chapstick    Yo La Tengo    55    2/5/05 9:38 PM

1 Thing    Amerie with Nujabes    52    6/28/05 12:20 PM

Light    Talvin Singh    48    11/6/05 6:56 PM

So. Central Rain    R.E.M.    46    1/16/05 9:14 PM

I Can See Clearly Now    Johnny Nash    45    2/7/05 2:44 PM

Fuck and Run    Liz Phair    44    11/20/05 3:46 PM

In the Deep    Bird York    42    10/1/05 3:15 PM

Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair    Burl Ives    41    7/27/05 10:17 PM

Make Love Fuck War    Moby & Public Enemy    41    6/29/05 1:53 AM

Till I Gain Control Again    Emmylou Harris    39    6/5/05 4:01 PM

You Get What You Give    New Radicals    39    4/17/05 2:19 PM

Baggage    Eva Cassidy    36    7/23/05 11:57 PM

Get Free    The Vines    36    8/9/05 8:17 PM

Black Is Black    Jimmy Ruffin    35    5/1/05 4:46 PM

Summer In Paris    DJ Cam    34    8/9/05 8:17 PM

You Make Me Feel Brand New    The Stylistics    31    10/8/05 6:17 PM

Song to the Siren    This Mortal Coil    31    10/8/05 6:17 PM

Always On My Mind    Willie Nelson    31    1/5/05 9:39 PM

Don't Wanna Know About Evil    Beth Orton & William Orbit    30    9/4/05 5:56 PM

Breathe    Telepopmusik    30    8/9/05 8:17 PM

Man in the Box    Alice In Chains    29    6/28/05 1:00 AM

Turn My Way    New Order    29    10/1/05 4:15 PM

Black is Black    Rugantino Band    28    7/5/05 7:26 PM

Shelter from the Storm    Bob Dylan    27    2/6/05 9:40 PM

Lips Like Sugar    Echo & The Bunnymen    26    6/22/05 12:27 AM

Inside and Out    Feist    26    6/28/05 10:09 PM

More Than This    Roxy Music    26    7/27/05 10:17 PM

Got Your Money    Ol' Dirty Bastard & Kelis    25    6/28/05 10:09 PM

Space Lullaby    Black Bombay    24    11/6/05 7:12 PM

Love Brought Me Back    DJ Rogers    24    5/8/05 12:23 AM

It Should Have Been You    Gwen Guthrie    24    5/20/05 5:28 PM

Maybe Tomorrow    Stereophonics    24    10/1/05 3:15 PM

The Time We Lost Our Way    Thievery Corporation & Loulou    24    9/25/05 4:27 PM

Make It with You    The Whispers    24    6/7/05 11:02 PM

C'Mere    Interpol    23    9/25/05 4:27 PM

If I Ever Feel Better    Phoenix    23    8/9/05 8:17 PM

Black Is Black    Pomelo    23    7/5/05 7:26 PM

Feel Like Makin' Love    D'Angelo    22    7/5/05 7:26 PM

A Lack of Color    Death Cab For Cutie    22    10/8/05 6:17 PM

Lowdown    Boz Scaggs    21    5/20/05 5:28 PM

Forever Young    Bob Dylan    20    6/19/05 8:52 PM

Everybody's Talkin'    Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes    20    5/22/05 3:06 PM

Too Young    Phoenix    20    10/16/05 3:35 PM

Heartbeat (Tahiti Lab Remix)    Tahiti 80    20    8/9/05 8:17 PM

Song to the Siren    Tim Buckley    20    10/8/05 6:17 PM

Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair    The Twilight Singers    20    12/10/05 7:08 PM

Eminence Front    The Who    20    5/8/05 12:23 AM

As Tears Go By    All Tomorrow's Party    19    10/8/05 6:17 PM

Strong Culture    Asian Dub Foundation    19    11/6/05 6:56 PM

Tugboat    British Sea Power    19    8/9/05 8:17 PM

Lotus Mix    Electric Lotus    19    11/6/05 6:56 PM

Needle in the Hay    Elliott Smith    19    10/8/05 6:17 PM

Gymnopedie No. 1     Erik Satie    19    11/23/05 6:07 PM

Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me    Gladys Knight & The Pips    19    10/8/05 6:17 PM

Last Tango In Paris    Gotan Project    19    8/9/05 8:17 PM

Hello It's Me    The Isley Brothers    19    5/22/05 3:06 PM

Solitary Man    Johnny Cash    19    7/6/05 12:54 PM

Such Great Heights    The Postal Service    19    9/24/05 2:57 PM

I Belong to You    The Rance Allen Group    19    5/8/05 12:23 AM

It's Too Late    Billy Paul    18    5/22/05 3:06 PM

Back in the Day    Erykah Badu    18    9/3/05 2:43 PM

Blues Run the Game    John Renbourn    18    10/8/05 6:17 PM

There She Goes    The La's    18    3/27/05 4:08 PM

Blue Monday    New Order    18    2/7/05 2:44 PM

Bizarre Love Triangle    New Order    18    4/10/05 5:01 PM

Here's Where the Story Ends    The Sundays    18    6/5/05 4:01 PM

Lovergirl    Teena Marie    18    5/15/05 1:43 PM

Better Things    Dar Williams    17    6/19/05 8:52 PM

Times Like These    Foo Fighters    17    6/5/05 4:01 PM

Don't Walk Away    Jade    17    2/11/05 8:12 PM

One In a Million You    Larry Graham    17    4/10/05 5:01 PM

Aeroplanes    Serge Gainsbourg    17    8/9/05 8:17 PM

Check Out the Sideburns

Great news: The sideburns came in nicely, which makes them my greatest accomplishment of the last few years. Bad News: Apparently, the Seattle Espresso Roma has closed down since the last time that I visited. I loved that place, and now it’s gone.

My publisher, Carnegie Mellon University Press, put out a press release a few days ago about my book and related stuff. Cool.

The picture they used for the press release brings back all kinds of memories. That picture was taken in the fall of 1997, after I had finished grad school, and I was still living in Seattle, though I moved away by June of the following year. I loved Seattle because it was Seattle, and I loved my apartment because I was a ten-minute walk from the University District, where I could go to drink coffee and to get some lunch. It was a great life, while it lasted.

So I saw this picture and I got all nostalgic for my former places and my former life, but for what was I most nostalgic? My killer-ass sideburns. Those are the kinds of sideburns, all the way to the jawline, that you can only grow in grad school, or in prison, probably. I think that I'm going to try to grow them back over the summer. It will be like a little project.

A Funny Bit on McSweeney's

Some of the bits on the Internet Tendency can be a bit obvious, or try to get by on easy, self-satisfied cleverness, but this one is funny because it’s true.

Here's the name that I'd give to a breakfast cereal: Cinnamon Eat the Bacon Instead; Either Way, You Die, with Bran

One Night To Be Confused

The play count on the below-mentioned song is now up to 218. And it turns out that the singer from The Knife is an okay singer because she's really lovely on Royksopp's "What Else Is There?"

5 December 2005

I bought a song off of iTunes yesterday, and in the first twenty-six hours that I've owned it, I’ve played it thirty-nine times. I don’t think that I’ll ever get tired of it.

How’d I find out about the song? I read a blog post about a commercial for a Bravia, a new Sony flat screen television, and that post mentioned how beautiful the commercial was. I watch the video, and it really is amazing; if it weren’t a commercial, it’d be a touching little music video, maybe even a work of art. And, as good as the visual aspects of the video are, the song is even better. Heartbreaking and delicate and pretty, but mostly heartbreaking. Just a guy and an acoustic guitar, and it’s heartbreaking.

So the song’s completely kicked my ass and I want to find out more about the song and its singer. On the website, there’s a link to a short interview with the singer, Jose Gonzalez. In the interview, he immediately states that his version is a cover of the original, which was written and recorded by The Knife for their album, Deep Cuts.

I figure that the original is also going to be great, so I decide to get them both from iTunes, but, after easily finding and then placing the Gonzalez version in my shopping cart, I can’t find The Knife’s version. I download the Gonzalez and start listening to it immediately, and then use alternative sources to find a copy of the original. Using these alternative sources, in a few minutes I find and download the original.

How to say this delicately? The Knife version wasn’t very good. It’s all synthy in that kind of obvious and tired way that a lot of songs are nowadays, and the lead singer, the female half of a Swedish sister and brother duo, doesn’t have a very strong voice. It’s a complete disappointment, and, honestly, I don’t see how Gonzalez found that there was a great song buried in the original.

I was reminded of a day that I spent in a marina at Moss Landing in March or April of 1995. I studied photography for a long time while I was in Fresno. By the time that I completed my first grad degree, I had taken more photography courses than poetry workshops, and the best part of my photography courses was the field studies. Each semester, we’d caravan out to a different location for four or five days and spend the daylight hours exposing film.

But back to Moss Landing. It was pouring rain and we were getting soaked and most of us kept our cameras inside of freezer bags, with only the front of the lens poking out. Toward the back of the marina, there was a section full of abandoned boats in various states of disrepair, and when, from a distance, I first saw that section I thought that I’d get some great compositions onto film. I was working with two cameras, one loaded with color film and the other with B&W, so I thought that I’d be working that area for a while.

I get out to the abandoned boats and try to set up a few shots, but I’m just not seeing very many possibilities for good compositions. I struggle for a while, but I end up thinking to myself that there’s nothing there. I did get one decent shot of the front half of a boat. The paint on the boat was chipped, there was a winch with a rusty chain wrapped around it, and the sky in the background was dark and cloudy. But that was all that I got.

We get back to Fresno, and then all of us are printing like mad. There are eight enlargers in the darkroom, and we all have our regular weekly two-hour blocks, but we’re in there every spare minute that we can get (I, personally, was spending twenty hours a week in there; I must have been the lightest Mexican ever.) and then bringing mounted final prints to class so that we can talk about them.

One of my classmates (it may have been Poppy or Woody or April [who was really good], but it’s been over a decade since I sat in that classroom, and I can't be sure exactly who it was anymore) starts bringing in lovely composition after lovely composition from the section of the marina that I thought didn’t contain too many good compositions. Where I had seen only disorder and wasted hours and wasted film, one of my classmates had, again and again, found beauty.

That’s what, in my mind, Gonzalez has done with his cover of The Knife’s Heartbeats. He’s found the heart of the song, it’s most essential and potentially beautiful aspects, and he’s used his craft and his art and his love of music to make a song that I’ve now played sixty-three times in twenty-eight hours.

I Could Have Done Without the Visual

Let me start by saying that both links are dead, so don't even try. It's been almost exactly a year now since the Yamagata got played on my rig, and twenty months since I heard the Journey song.

26 November 2005

I’m rolling from my Saturday gig to Madtown to have lunch with my big bro, listening to one of my Road Mix CDs, when Rachael Yamagata’s Worn Me Down starts blasting out of my speakers. (I’m going on the theory that hearing is overrated and that, one day, somebody will invent replacement eardrums; they’ll probably have them at Costco.) My buddy/former fellow Husky, ACWLP, turned me on to Yamagata a while ago, so I had purchased her CD, played the hell out of it, but then sort of lost track of Yamagata’s songs on my hard drive. Currently, I’ve got 6,800+ songs on my rig, with another fifty CDs waiting to be taken out of the boxes in which they came, so it’s easy for a song/songs/album/albums/artist/artists to get buried on my hard drive or on my Road Mix CDs or on my iPod; sometimes a song that I love the hell out of will come up on iTunes while I’m working, think to myself, God, I love this song; when’s the last time that I heard it? and when I check the Last Played date, I’ll see that it’s been over a year since the song got into the rotation.

The Yamagata is one of those songs about being in love with a person who’s in love with somebody else. She may be the rebound girl, or the one after that, but she’s definitely with a guy who is clearly preoccupied with his former beloved. The song’s sad because the female character is, well, she’s worn down. She loves this guy, and she’s tried everything to get this guy to stay with her in the here and now, but he can’t “stop thinking about her.” Included in the everything is the fact that she’s been “down on [her] knees,” doing “everything to please,” which is how you say oral sex in pop music, but it’s the like the sad sex you have when you and your beloved know that the relationship will never work or is breaking down or is broken down.

So I’m feeling Yamagata’s pain when her song is followed by Journey’s Separate Ways, a song that I've loved since high school. (Hey, bite me, Journey rules [And, no, I’m not being ironic; irony, as I've said again and again, is for cowards and losers and those who don’t trust in their own taste.].)

If Yamagata’s song is about loving a guy who loves another girl, then Separate Ways is about a guy who’s gotten dumped, but who still loves the girl who cut him loose. She’s moved on and is rolling with some other guy, but the dumpee hopes that the dumper will remember “how we touched and went our separate ways,” and will perhaps want the dumpee back. The dumpee “wish[es] [her] love,” which is the standard (and sometimes true) line that you say at the end, but what you really mean is “I love you so much and you’ve wrecked my life.” The dumpee knows that he’s in the past and now has to count on the new guy screwing up so that he’ll have a shot with his ex-special lady. A lot of us have been there, which, while it is mortally embarrassing (which is one of the reasons that we mostly keep this hope to [and sometimes from] ourselves), it also ties us to the long history of romantic suffering.

So, you hear the Yamagata and you think, “What a goddamn jerk. Here’s this girl who’s in love with you, and you're pining for some long-gone girl? Goddamn jerk,” but then you hear the Journey song and you think, “Okay, maybe you're not a jerk. You're just a guy who’s in love with a girl who dumped you. That happens all the time and it’s perfectly reasonable,” though reason hardly ever has anything to do with love. So then you end up feeling bad for everybody and you think, “Man, love is just messed up. Who the hell needs it?” but then you think some more and then you resignedly decide, “Everybody. Everybody needs it,” and you sort of laugh at how silly and bittersweet the whole thing is.

What, then, do these songs convey together? The same lesson that makes for so many great songs: that love is not accountable, that it’s not fair and it’s not kind, and that we need it like oxygen.

But then you have the involuntary and unfortunate image of Rachael Yamagata doing stuff of a sexual nature, if you know what I mean, to Steve Perry, who must be pretty beat to hell and pruney by now. I could have done without that particular image, though I’m pretty sure that you, yourself, are picturing exactly that same image right now. I’m terribly sorry.

Four Songs About Heartbreak

I bought my new car stereo because my old one started having a nervous breakdown and I was about to go on a road trip that I had been planning for months. I got a nice one (a car stereo, that is) and it has a feature for which I hadn't really been looking: it plays MP3s. Whatever; mostly I wanted a stereo through which I could eventually play a one-day-to-be-purchased iPod.

Like every other person in America, I had been burning mix CDs, but those CDs only held as many songs as a pre-recorded CD. But I soon discovered that if I burned the songs as MP3 files, then one CD could hold up to 120 songs. What did this mean? That I lost hours and hours of time sorting through the 6600+ songs on my rig looking for the best songs to listen to at an unreasonable volume while I was driving. I ended up with 591 songs that I dumped into a huge iTunes Playlist and then shuffled and burned onto five CDs.

Now, these weren’t all songs with high beats-per-minute counts, though they did make up a majority of the songs; I also put in some great sad songs because, man, sometimes you just need a sad song when you're driving. Maybe you're driving by a beautiful orange orchard, and it somehow makes you wistful. Maybe it’s late and you're the only car on a rarely used country road and it’s starting to rain and the melancholia that seems to follow you everywhere is making itself manifest.

Anyway, the songs were recorded in a random order, and then when I started playing the CDs in my stereo, I would use the stereo’s shuffle function. That’s a shuffle on top of a shuffle, if you can get your head around that. This meant that I never had a clue as to how the songs were actually ordered on the five CDs. In the past few weeks, though, for a change of pace, I’ve taken to playing the songs in the order that they were recorded.

So I’m driving from where I stay on the weekends back toward Madtown and I’m listening to one of my Road Mix CDs when I get four great songs in a row that are about four different types of heartbreak: Quiero Libertad, by The Gipsy Kings; Return of the Mack, by Mark Morrison; Wake Up, by The Arcade Fire, and Sweet Child o’ Mine, by Guns 'n Roses.

I first heard the Gipsy Kings when they came on Letterman in either '93 or '94, and what got me was the lead singer’s voice, because there’s pain there, an ocean of pain. Quiero Libertad is about a dude who wants liberty from his special lady, who doesn’t want to suffer any longer, who wants to live life, who wants to play like a child, who wants to be free like the wind. Yeah, this guy’s been worn out by this love of his that isn’t working out. We’ve all been there, and you believe that he has, too.

I first heard Mark Morrison’s Return of the Mack back in 1997, right around the time that I was finishing grad school (Huskies, can you feel me?), and I dug it and when everybody started acquiring music through alternative means (if you dig what I’m saying), this was one of the songs of which I made sure to get a hold.

Why’d this song stick in my memory? Well, first of all, it’s a great song to dance to at the clubs (even though, because I was so busy with grad school and trying to put together a future [boy, that “future thing sure didn’t go as planned], I have never actually heard that song in a club). The second reason though, is because it tells a great story.

First, though, we have to start with a little vocabulary. “What is a mack?” you may be asking. A mack is a young fellow who has great success in attracting the amorous attentions of various friendly ladies.

This former mack changed his ways to be with his special lady, but, ironically enough, his woman has lied to him and done “nasty things,” and any things that can be deemed to be nasty by a former mack must be quite nasty, indeed. Whatever you can imagine, triple it.

So now the former mack is going to go back to being a mack. The dude is hiding his pain behind this false bravado—yes, you hurt me, but there are a ton of ladies out there, and I’m going to have rigorous and pervy sex with as many of them as I can—and it’s so transparent. We know that the guy’s in pain because the first human sound we hear on this track is Morrison’s hitting a mournful, plaintive note, which is the sound that the soul makes when it’s in crisis.

Yeah, everybody’s into The Arcade Fire (but I was into them early). The thing is that they’re incredibly incredible. I’ve played the hell out of their songs because they make me so goddamn sad, but it’s a good sad. Wake Up is from Funeral, their first album, and the whole album, as you can tell from the title, is about longing and sadness and loss, and I’m all about longing and sadness loss.

Like the Morrison, the first human sound that you hear is series of long, sad notes, but in this case it’s a group of singers hitting the notes, not just one guy. This song, though, isn’t about troubles with your lady; this one’s about a kid who’s told not to cry at what I’m pretty sure is a funeral (it’s not really made that explicit, but it’s not that hard to figure out). Later on, that kid’s older and his heart’s been made “colder” by his having been told to tough it out and he sees that “it’s a lie.” The song is just full of great/borderline crushing lines:

hold your mistake up,
before they turn the summer into dust

our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up

we’re just a million little god’s causin’ rainstorms
turnin’ every good thing to rust

I guess we’ll just have to adjust

The first times that you hear the “rust” line, the lead singer’s voice is cracking (because the pain is painful and it’s beautiful and it’s killing him) and he’s shouting almost as much as he’s singing and you will get the shivers and you will find yourself shouting right along with him.

And then you think that it can’t possibly get any better, but here comes Guns 'n Roses. Yeah, Guns 'n Roses. Bite me, they rule. And nothing of theirs rules as much as Sweet Child o’ Mine.

Slash starts with the famous riff, Izzy starts tearing off some rocking (or rockin', if you will) power chords, Duff comes in on bass at the same time that Steven Adler starts working the cymbals before he lays down the beat on his snare and his toms and his kick drum. Axle Rose, like the singer in The Arcade Fire, goes right back to childhood, except that he gets there through the woman that he loves and his childhood seems to be more idyllic. But the childhood isn’t perfect, isn’t all “bright blue sk[ies]” because later on Rose remembers hiding from “the thunder and the rain,” and they aren’t literal, or aren’t just literal.

The woman in Sweet Child o’ Mine, like Dylan’s in Shelter From the Storm, offers safety and comfort, which sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Dylan’s song is much more complicated and goes off in many different directions, but Rose sticks with his central conceit of his lover as a giver of salvation and as a way to get back to a place and time where he felt better. Just that: better.

And then Rose hits us with one of the great existential questions: Where do we go? I don’t know, and neither does he, because he asks it a bunch of times and he never gets or gives an answer. So the song, in the end, is bittersweet, and maybe that’s all that one can hope for from one’s beloved: the bittersweet and the unanswerable and the loving and the wounded and the hopeful.

Baby, Better Come Back, Maybe Next Week

I’ve been on a phenomenal run, iTunes-wise. I’m in the midst of a three-week, twenty-six song winning streak where every song that I’ve downloaded has been a good one. Contained within those twenty-six songs is an incredible four-song set of really great songs that I downloaded one after the other. Why is that important? Because it just is, dude (if you're a true head, I know that you dig what I'm saying). Because it’s great when stuff like that happens, when you get four great songs that sound even greater together, because it’s a thrill when you hear them together for the first time as you're driving lonely country roads, taking the long way to wherever it is that you had to get.

The four songs: Show and Tell, by Al Wilson; Song to the Siren, by This Mortal Coil; You Make Me Feel Brand New, by The Stylistics; and Turn My Way, by New Order.

I’d never heard of Al Wilson before, or if I had, the name hadn't stuck. Really, somebody should have mentioned to him the idea of a stage name, but this song, man, this song…it’s about a guy who’s in love trying to get his lady to say if she loves him or not. He’s out there, exposed (he’s already told her how he feels and how much she means to him), but he’s going for it, even if she says that she’s not in love. Dig the lyrics:

Show and tell, just a game I play When I wanna say "I love you" Girl, so show me and tell me That you feel the same way, too Say you do, say you do, baby, baby, baby

Imagine those lyrics being sung by an aching/yearning voice and you're going to feel great but, at the same time, think about every single girl that you’ve ever loved, which is both good (because love's okay, mostly) and bad (because sometimes love is the opposite of okay).

The This Mortal Coil is a cover of a Tim Buckley song, but this version kicks ass all over the Buckley. I’d never listened to This Mortal Coil before though I knew of their existence (mostly because I’d once tried to figure out how many bands/movies/songs/novels/poems/you get the idea had been named after Hamlet’s famous soliloquy [you know, what dreams may come/When we have shuffled off this mortal coil; If I ever get a second poetry collection finished {unlikely} and get to a third {highly unlikely}, the third’s title will probably be The Heart-ache and the Thousand Natural Shocks]), and I had thought that it was a cool name for a band, but that was as much thought as I’d given to them. (If I ever start a band, by the way, it’s going to be called Paper Covers Rock just because it has the word rock in it.) Then, just this Sunday, and for no reason that I can recall, I had that phrase, “song to the siren,” stuck in my head, and while I was on iTunes I typed it into the Power Search feature and there was the This Mortal Coil version. I listened to the thirty-second excerpt, thought it sounded cool, downloaded it, and was blown away. The sound reminds me of My Bloody Valentine (one of my favorite bands) , but slowed down and sparser, more dreamy. Another reason to like this song: the album on which it can be found is named “It’ll End in Tears,” which has just become my new motto.

Damn, The Stylistics are great. I’d never given them a shot just because of their name. Yeah, I know that sounds shallow, but I’ve never been able to get with people or groups who self-label as cool or smart or, in this case, stylish. It seems crass and boastful and common to me. But then I’d found out that they sing Betcha By Golly Wow, a lovely song that I’d remembered hearing on the radio a few times when I was a kid and that had stuck in my memory. I’d never learned the title, or who sang it (Do you ever think about how many songs you’d love to find a copy of if you could only discover and/or remember the name or the singer? It’s sad, really, when you think about it.), but, once I did, I downloaded it. So then on Sunday I was checking the Essentials section of the iTunes Music Store and there was another song by The Stylistics, You Make Me Feel Brand New. It sounds hopeful and lovely (because there’s a you and there’s a new start with that you and there’s a world that is opening up), but also sad because it speaks of not only having to come through and survive the past (and all of the pain that you felt and all of the damage that you suffered), but also of having to try to fool yourself (and the person with whom you are in love) that the past can be forgotten or ignored, because. my sisters and brothers, we all know that it can’t.

The New Order song isn’t just New Order; Billy Corgan (of the Pumpkins), also sings on the track, so you’ve got one of the mopiest bands of the 80’s working with the lead singer of one of the mopiest bands of the 90’s. That’s not double the mopiness, it’s, like, mopiness to the third power, or something. New Order is all about longing and regret and missed opportunities and a sense that the world is too sad and so’s Corgan, and that shit speaks to me (because I’m all about longing and regret and missed opportunities and a sense that the world is too sad). Parts of this song speak to me as a writer who wishes that he had more time to read and write (who, in other words, wishes that he had a different life [but don’t most writers?]) with lyrics like Don't want to own a key/don't want to wash my car/Don't want to have to work like other people do/ I want it to be free/I want it to be true. And parts of this song speak to me as a person who thought that he had it all locked in but who, a little at a time, found out that he didn’t with lyrics like I saw the things I wanted to see/Became the man I wanted to be/But then somehow I lost my way/I've got to get back there today.

These four songs sound great and they sound really great together but they’re going to sound even greater when winter comes around, when it’s cold and gray and dusk comes early and you're driving way too fast and thinking about all that’s flown away from you.