In the heat, we meme like lovers

Yeah, yeah.  The brain is off.  I have a Picture Envy that I've been working on for days now that is just eating my brain.  Sorry. Complete lie.  Work is eating my brain.  Here's a Lileks-approved meme.  Memes are like the blog version of the clip show.  Here's my "remember when the writers guild wasn't on strike" moment:

Total Size of Music Files on PC:
18.04 GB.  (238 hours, 28 minutes, 8 seconds)

And it's all Burt Bacharach.  (Okay, I do have two albums by Bacharach on here.  I've no shame in that.  The shame, as you'll see, comes later.)

Last CD Purchased:
I bought a bunch.  I claimed, when I was given XM Radio for my birthday, that I wouldn't buy many CD's, but this is clearly not the case.  All XM Radio has done is refined my music purchases. 

1. Hans Zimmer, Gladiator - I really have a thing for Lisa Gerrard's voice, and this album, along with the soundtrack for Black Hawk Down (probably my favorite soundtrack) really showcases her voice. 
2. Craig Gordon, Layer Cake - Another soundtrack, this one to a poorly-hyped, excellent little British crime drama.  More Lisa Gerrard, plus The Cult's She Sells Sanctuary, Starsailor's Four on the Floor, and XTC's Making Plans for Nigel. 
3. David Bowie, Hunky Dory - It has Is There Life on Mars? on it, which is just a kick-a** seventies pre-glam piece. 
4. Peter Gabriel, The Long Walk Home: Music from The Rabbit-Proof Fence - which became a lot of the instrumentation to his underrated album Up. 
5. Mary Gaulthier, Mercy Now - A great roots rock sound, akin to Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. 
6. Clem Snide, End of Love - I get such a kick out of the voice of this band's lead singer.  Somewhere in between country and Jonathan Richman (although not so twee). Joan Jett of Arc remains one of my favorite funny songs. 
7. They Might Be Giants, Dial-A-Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants - Okay, this is pure nostalgia.  This is me at fourteen riding my mountain bike to the local fields to hit baseballs or at seventeen driving out to The Inkwell, the dilapidated all-night coffee house to have bad coffee and fries with friends. 

Five Songs That I Listen To A Lot or That Mean A Lot To Me

1. Bruce Springsteen, Dry Lightning - I don't live on the Plains in a white farmhouse with a bad screen door but that song feels like a vision into the home I've created in my mind. 
2. Thomas Newman, The Shawshank Redemption, So Was Red/End Theme - This is really two separate tracks on the album, but they flow into each other perfectly.  The songs are the ones used in the scenes in Shawshank that begin when Red (Morgan Freeman) is parolled and end with him reuniting with Andy (Tim Robbins) in Mexico.  Lilting strings and piano arpeggios (yes, politician, I said arpeggios) that evoke Britten before the crashing wave of a crescendo that I used to listen to before every exam in law school.  It helped keep me inspired.  Nowadays, it's just wistful warmth. 
3. Whiskeytown, Factory Girl - Recently, someone asked if I was having a bad day because I was thinking of old relationships, and my best answer to that question is "not really."   I manage to drag myself into ruminations like that on many an occasion.  This song, without any effort, makes me think of someone I chased after for about a year to no avail.  We all do dumb things. It's just that I like to torture myself with it afterwards.  Here.  You can play along:
   
   So, the factory girl she listens
   For the sound of her daddy’s engine
   Till the work bell sounds and she leaves town
   
   Oh, the summer’s here are hot
   All she seems to do is work and sleep
   And wish that she was still with you
   
   Chorus:
   
   Now you don’t know where she is
   Lying in her mother’s bed
   Or who she’s sleeping with.
   
   Oh, the kids will laugh at her
   Cause she seems so sweet and pure
   Oh, I took this shift because of her.
   
   Oh, I’ve never said a word
   I once smiled and looked at her
   Till the shift-boss said ’get back to work.’
   
   Chorus:
   Now you don’t know where she is
   Or who’s bed she’s sleepin’ in
   Or what man she’s sleeping with
4. Gillian Welch, I Dream a Highway - This is a fourteen minute long song by the utterly fantastic folk/rock/country singer who did many of the vocals for Oh Brother Where Art Thou?.  I usually find myself listening to it on a Friday after a long week of work, sitting in my bedroom with a cool beer.  It's a good song to just let wash over you as you decompress. 
5. Sun Kil Moon, Carry Me Ohio - this is the only one I'll link to, because this is the one you need to purchase.  Now.  Amazing, underrated, underplayed stuff, the album - Ghosts of the Great Highway - is perfect driving music, especially on stormy summer nights.  This song and the first, Glenn Tipton, are probably the most powerful on the album.  Both deal with nostalgia, although Glenn Tipton has a sinister revelation at the end.  Carry Me Ohio's lyrics aren't published, but are pretty easy to make out, and deal with a man driving while thinking about the wife/lover that he left.  (Yeah, I know.  There's a theme going on here, but it's unintentional.  It just seems that heartbreak-oriented songs are better written than songs about, say, puppies.  That doesn't mean I'm an incredible sulk or anything.  Particularly not if you give me a puppy.  Preferably a schnauzer or bulldog.)  Plus, for some reason, the guitar riffs in this song remind me of late-seventies/early-eighties "sincere" rock.  You know, like Kansas and Blue Oyster Cult.

Oh the shame in admitting that I like them. 

Comments

[Tokyo Redhed]

Hey I'm beginning to get worried about you, you are becoming like me... get in touch.