Music I have listened to the last couple of days

Wherein I am more likely to skip over REM than Enya


iPod playlist set to random while I was at work and this is what happened.

• Hold On Tight, Alabama Shakes 5 Stars
• Pray No More, Momma Stud (I'm a sucker for a horn section)
• Stop, Sam Brown 5 Stars
• Can't Get There from Here, REM skipped
• World Class Fad, Paul Westerberg
• Mbaka Aka, Mahlathini 5 Stars
• Good Fortune, PJ Harvey
• Dream On, Prudence Johnson, syncopated ska-like bass with a bitchin accordian solo 5 Stars
• I Own America, Pt. 1, Slick Rick (great rapper OR greatest rapper?)
• Alley-Oop, Hollywood Argyles skipped
• Night Fever, Bee Gees
• Wheels, Lone Justice
• Flying Cowboys, Rickie Lee Jones
• The Bare Necessities, Louis Armstrong
• Beautiful Girl, Robyn Hitchcock 5 Stars
• Ghost Train, Marc Cohn skipped
• What you want me to do, Leon Redbone
• Big Blue Sea, Bob Schneider 5 Stars
• Joy, PJ Harvey
• I Will Keep, Paul Cebar and the Milwaukeeans
• Baby. It's YOu, PETTY BOOKA
• Two Loves, Peter Wolf
• Uncle F***a, South Park
• Dream in Colour, Rick Springfield skipped
• The Boy in the Bubble, Paul Simon skipped
• Death of Butterfly (Tu Tu Piccolo), Malcolm McLaren
• Satisfied, Laura Love
• Zodiac, Laura Berkner
• Dialog Box, David Byrne
• Shpadoinkle Day (Solo), Cannibal: The Musical 5 Stars
• Jesse James, THE Pogues
• Wakko's America, Animaniacs
• I've Done Everything, Rick Springfield skipped
• Night Train, The Scofflaws (excellent sax and trombone song)
• I'm in love with a girl named Spike, Skankin' Pickle (loud and fast, yeah)
• Air, Ben Folds Five skipped
• Dirty Back Road, The B-52s skipped
• Gloria, U2 skipped
• Munjana, Archie Roach skipped
• Little Girl Blue, Linda Ronstadt skipped
• High Cumberland Jubilee, Jimmy Buffet skipped
• Watch the City Sail Away, Mr. Gnome
• Adrift, Jack Johnson skipped
• Praying Hands, DEVO
• Big Party, Barbara & the Browns
• African Friend, Jimmy Buffet skipped
• Sharks Can't Sleep, Tracy Bonham
• Knockin' Em Back, Paul Westerberg
• Early Warnings, Love Is All 5 Stars
• One Shot, John Wesley harding
• Gunslinging Bird, Chuck D and others from Weird Nightmares: Meditations on Mingus 5 Stars
• White Flags of Winter Chimneys, Wendy and Lisa
• Belleville Rendez-Vous, Triplets of Belleville soundtrack 5 stars
• Man on the Moon, REM skipped
• Neuvo Y Vivo, El Arranque
• Dancing Lessons, Sinead O'Connor 5 stars
• So Misunderstood, Jesse Johnson
• Anywhere Is, Enya
• Let It Rain, OK Go
• As Hard As It Is, Fine Young Cannibals
• Crazy Love, Van Morrison
• Nighty Night to Brother, Steve Kramer (featuring Haley Bonar) 5 stars
• Guilty, The Muffs
• Just Friends, Amy Winehouse skipped
• After the Lights Go On, Urban Guerillas
• White Trash Wife, Exene Cervenka
• Cultural Value, Deep Schrott
• Angel, Kirsty MacColl
• I Gotta Connect, Mojo Nixon
• Somebody Got Murdered, The Clash
• Love Shack, B-52s
• Three is a Magic Number, Mike Doughty
• Moonlight and Shadow, Diane Schuur
• Finest Worksong, REM skipped
• Bone, Dayroom
• I'm the Man, Joe Jackson
• Racing, Windmill

This is what it sounds like when vegetarians eat meat

Wherein Dig if you will a dinner of you and I engaged in a mixed combo 2 meat plate with BBQ beans and chunky mayonnaise potato salad


The Guardian's Music Weekly traveled to SXSW for the latest podcast. Overall, a nice report. My favorite bit was this exchange with Chairlift's Caroline Polachek about eating BBQ.

Rebecca Nicholson.: And any kind of cocktail, BBQ tips that we should be aware of?

Caroline Polachek: Oh man. We went to a place yesterday, kind of off the strip called Ruby's. I thought it was Rudy's until we showed up. I'm a vegetarian and I broke vegetarianism for Ruby's. Yeah.

Rebecca Nicholson.: What did you have?

Caroline Polachek: I had a brisket plate, which was absolutely divine. The meat was kind of like, it's almost blackened on the outside, so you get these different layers of taste. There's like the crunchy outer core, then there's the fat, which is almost like the sauce that comes built into the meat. And then the inside which was really sweet and smokey.

Oh man. I could tell you about this meal for like 10 minutes. It was so good. [said with a wistfully lustful tone in her voice -- bill.]

Rebecca Nicholson.: Was it worth breaking your vegetarianism for?

Caroline Polachek: It was. It was actually at a BBQ shack that I broke vegetarianism for like 2 years, awhile ago. But now I'm back on it.

Rebecca Nicholson.: This place is lethal. Totally lethal.

Caroline Polachek: Mostly to cows.

I love this review

Wherein I want to see a movie based on Peter Bradshaw's gluten-fueled nightmares


John Carter is one of those films that is so stultifying, so oppressive and so mysteriously and interminably long that I felt as if someone had dragged me into the kitchen of my local Greggs, and was baking my head into the centre of a colossal cube of white bread. As the film went on, the loaf around my skull grew to the size of a basketball, and then a coffee table, and then an Audi. The boring and badly acted sci-fi mashup continued inexorably, and the bready blandness pressed into my nostrils, eardrums, eye sockets and mouth. I wanted to cry for help, but in bread no one can hear you scream. Finally, I clawed the doughy, gooey, tasteless mass desperately away from my mouth and screeched: "Jesus, I'm watching a pointless film about a 1860s American civil war action hero on Mars, which the inhabitants apparently call Barsoom. I can't breathe."

I liked a lot of movies in 1992

Wherein this discussion at ALOTT5MA about Malcolm X points out that 1992 had many good films


Picking from the list below, if I had to choose 5 to watch right now:

1. Passion Fish
   
2. Shakes the Clown
   
3. Strictly Ballroom
   
4. Sneakers
   
5. The Muppet Christmas Carol

Random order (picked from wiki:

Unforgiven
The Crying Game
The Player
Chaplin
Malcolm X
Passion Fish
Glengarry Glen Ross
Mr Saturday Night
My Cousin Vinny
Aladdin
Batman Returns
Toys
Basic Instinct
Wayne's World
Bob Roberts
The Cutting Edge
Deep Cover
El Mariachi
Forever Young
Hero
Honeymoon in Vegas
A League of Their Own
Leap of Faith
Like Water for Chocolate
Mr. Baseball
The Muppet Christmas Carol
Orlando
Reservoir Dogs
A River Runs Through It
Shakes the Clown
Sneakers
Strictly Ballroom
Thunderheart
The Waterdance
White Men Can't Jump
Trespass

1977 movies I'd rather watch than Star Wars

Wherein the * notes movies I saw in 1977 and liked better than Star
Wars then

• *Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  
• *Smokey and the Bandit
  
• The Goodbye Girl
  
• *The Rescuers
  
• The Deep (or at least the wet parts with Jacqueline Bisset)
  
• Annie Hall
  
• The Gauntlet
  
• The Turning Point
  
• *Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo
  
• Slapshot
  
• *The Hobbit
  
• Jabberwocky
  
• Kentucky Fried Movie
  
• Semi-Tough
  
• *Sorcerer (this was the best movie of 1977)

Wanted to add Gray Lady Down but it was out in 1978, not 1977. I saw that one twice.

One Phish Red Phish

Wherein the new album from my Marxist Dr. Seuss tribute jam band

1. Engels is Faithful 100%
   
   
2. How the proletariat stole the bourgeoisie's ambitions by bribing them with gifts on Christmas
   
   
3. A Maoist is a person, no matter how small
   
   
4. [Name]* is king of the mud Song should be updated with whomever is president
   
   
5. The 500 hats of Lumpen Proletariat
   
   
6. Squat on Trot
   
   
7. Rainbow Fish is my hero
   
   
8. The 5000 Fingers of dead bankers
   
   
9. Lenin 1 Lenin 2
   
   
10. Would you like your capitalist poached or broiled?
    
    
11. There's a Bolshevik  in My Pocket
    
    
12. And to think that I saw it on Nevsky Prospekt street