andrew_jorgensen

As charged by chickenfeet2003:

Reply and I’ll give you a letter. You have to find five songs that start with that letter and post them to your journal.

"Keep Me In Your Heart For A While," Warren Zevon
"Killing Floor," Howlin' Wolf
"King Of Rock," Run-D.M.C.
"Kirsten Is A Fuckmachine," Tiger Tunes
"Kung Fu," Curtis Mayfield

Five songs starting with the letter K. (Megaupload.com)

In passing, hermionesviolin mentions Songs Inspired By Literature, by "Artists For Literacy." This reminds me that I had once thought that if I got nothing else out of the Lit Hum syllabus, at least it ought to be good for a mix tape. However, after Led Zeppelin's "Achilles' Last Stand," "Tales Of Brave Ulysses" by Cream, and Tom Lehrer's "Oedipus Rex," the idea sort of petered out.

(As a preemptive strike in my defense, I'd like to point out that I merely used the site that came up first in my Google search on "lit hum syllabus.")

The JibJab/Woody Guthrie copyright battle deepens: the Electronic Freedom Foundation provides sonic evidence that Guthrie himself may have ripped off the Carter Family. Jesse Walker then points out that the Carter Family claimed ownership of a number of traditional folksongs.

I'm waiting for someone to rework "The Lemon Song," and for the Led Zeppelin legal team to go on record that they've never heard of Howlin' Wolf or Robert Johnson. And I'm reminded, for some reason, of the bit of Douglas Adams's where the editors of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy copy their entry for "The Universe" off the back of a cereal box and then send the book back through a time warp and successfully sue the cereal company for copyright infringement.

Yesterday's Observer Music Monthly attempted a list of the 100 greatest British rock albums which compounded the usual problems of album-centered rock criticism (black artists are penalized for working in single-oriented genres) with the usual problems of British rock (there aren't enough black artists to penalize). My argument that Are You Experienced, recorded in London with a band that was 66.7% English, should count as a British album (in fact as the best British album) fell on deaf ears, since I never actually expressed it to anyone. In any case, I figured that there would be four albums that, due as much to their history of critical acclaim as any inherent quality, had to fall into the top ten: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Exile On Main Street, Never Mind The Bollocks, and London Calling. London Calling placed third, Sgt. Pepper's sixth, and Exile eighth. Never Mind The Bollocks, on the other hand, was placed way down at number fourteen, below even Metal Box by Public Image Ltd.

This reminds me that there used to be a joke commonly made on ignorant young pop music fans in the seventies and even into the eighties: "You mean Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?" This jibe could be transferred into the eighties and nineties with "You mean John Lydon was in a band before PiL?" and into the nineties and today with "You mean Dave Grohl was in a band before Foo Fighters?" It seems to me that we need to prepare for the future, and the obvious thing is for Chuck D. to form an ambitious, poppy, somewhat sterile supergroup so we old-timers who remember It Takes A Nation Of Millions can rib the younguns.

Comfort food is making me uncomfortable. I rationalized the economy of my P. F. Chang's trip with the idea that I could stretch out my order of Kung Pao Chicken and Spicy Eggplant over several meals, and then proceeded to eat the entire thing.

It is my understanding that there exist, along with comfort food, comfort magazines, so I bought a couple. I got the new WIRED, for reasons that may later become apparent, and, inspired by the example of hermionesviolin, the current Rolling Stone. This is the Rolling Stone which contains its list of the 500 "Greatest Albums Ever Made." Hmmm. It seems like just six years ago that they were prying my money from my fingers for their list of the 200 "Greatest Albums Ever Made." I'm not buying another issue until they come out with the 10,000 greatest. Take that, exponential progression!

Perhaps because I've had the earlier list as a subconscious influence since 1997, I own a higher percentage (54 out of 200, compared to 87 of 500) of what was then the "definitive library of the best albums ever made). My suspicion is that the earlier list was actually superior (and thus, my tastes are actually superior). It was chosen by a smaller panel with more of an eye towards history, and thus contains selections by Ruth Brown and LaVern Baker. On the other hand, the later list has a lot more jazz on it (a surprising amount of which I own -- not that I listen to it -- not that the panelists listen to it either). The earlier list also has the advantage of being arranged chronologically instead of in some supposed order of quality, which prevents us from being consumed with inanities such as "Hotel California is only number thirty-seven? Damn it, that's a top thirty-five album in my book!" It also provides the benefit of disguising the Beatles fetishization by slotting the copious amounts of their records into their proper slot -- the 1960s -- rather than into nearly half of the top ten.

Anyway, what follows is the list of the albums from the new list which I own. Most of these I have on CD, some I bought back when I was primarily a casette consumer and have not updated since I got my first CD player in 1990 (make of that what you will), and a couple I only have because I ripped my girlfriend's CDs onto my MP3 player. I have not included tapes I made of CDs my high school friends had, mostly as a discriminatory measure designed to keep Pink Floyd off the list. I was a bit confused with how to count some of the anthologies: for example, I do not actually own Sly & the Family Stone's Greatest Hits, but I own Anthology, which contains all of Greatest Hits plus tracks off of there's a riot goin' on and Fresh. However, I have not checked whether or not the anthologies of Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Howlin' Wolf and others correspond to what I have in any way.

( 87/500 )

I suppose one could compare the above to the full list, then cross-reference with my preferences stated both in my user info and my response to shadowkat67's meme and come up with a reasonable approximation of an Amazon Wish List. And with the holidays just around the corner. Of course, on any list of the 500 things I need most, 413 albums have to come pretty low.

I've been begatten, or begot, or something. Thanks, Masq! It only took a little grovelling . . . I grovel so well.

I'm not quite sure what this will turn out to be: it may turn out that LiveJournal is not the place for someone who deals with as much writer's block as I do. This may turn out more bloggish than LJ; most of my online reading is in the blogosphere rather than in LiveJournals. Someone once commented that blogs tend to be a male domain while LJ tends to be dominated by women. Of course, someone else tried to make a sociobiological point about this: men "hunt" links, while women "gather" together into communities. Of course, there are plenty of female bloggers (though I only have one bookmarked; my favorites folder is as disturbingly sexually segregated as my CD collection). There are probably lots of male LJers too -- I just don't know any. (In any case, I reject simplistic notions of sociobiology, such as the straw man [my straw is pretty sexually segregated too] I set up a few sentences above. Yes, I strongly oppose the caricatures of arguments I draw myself!)

I should talk about "Touched," being somewhat known as someone who talks about Buffy (the Rosicrucians cited me! take that Ded!), but I have yet to figure out the cut-tag, so no spoilers yet. All in all though, I was pretty underwhelmed. "Underwhelmed" has been my Buffy-theme since "Smashed." Over on ATPo there's a kerfluffle over whether Angel or Spike is Buffy's true love. (I'm considering reviving my saga of the Sha'i-Pir Wars.) At this point, the only relationship I really want to see Buffy indulge in is with a large bottle of Prozac.

After reading about it in The Major Lift, The Minor Fall, I had to go out and get the Oxford American Annual Southern Music Issue. I already have the Swamp Dogg (but you don't, and you should), but I didn't have Little Milton's version of "Grits Ain't Groceries," which rocks righteous! Plus, the Blind Boys of Alabama! Esther Phillips! R.L. Burnside! A bunch of people I've never heard of! A whole bunch of great blues, rockabilly, soul, gospel and hillbilly at that point where they all come together and genre (color?) doesn't mean a damn. The Marilyn Monroe/Jane Russell track from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes seems a bit out of place, but what do you want to bet rahael loves it?

In other music news, cjl demands that we all go buy the new reissue of Live At Leeds. I (for once in my life) am showing sales resistance. I've already bought the damn thing twice: first, in its original six-track configuration (which the AMG claims runs for 19:14 -- if they're correct it may be the shortest major album ever released); second, in its 1995 18-track configuration. I just don't see much reason to buy it a third time; I don't even like The Who that much anymore, and I think endlessly mutating permutations of Live at Leeds may be part of the reason.

Anyway, welcome to my nightmare. Hope you enjoy it!