iTunes Shuffle 1/30/15

1. Beats Antique - "Beauty Beats"
2. Tori Amos - "Tear In Your Hand" (live Royce Hall Auditorium, Los Angeles, 4/25/05)
3. Bleeding Knees Club - "California Eyes" (live Daytrotter)
4. Balmorhea - "Candor"
5. Rodrigo Y Gabriela - "Diablo Rojo" (live in Japan)
6. Counting Crows - "If I Could Give All My Love (Richard Manuel Is Dead)"
7. Katy Perry - "Wide Awake"
8. PDF Format - "God Only Knows 64" (Beach Boys cover)
9. Dawn Landes - "Love" (Margo Guryan cover)
10. Arcade Fire - "Keep The Car Running"

Hummmmm!

Finally getting around to listening to Beats Antique, and wow. They describe themselves as the intersection between electronica and world beats music (Bonnaroo bait, basically) but they do it well. Tori's live track is welcome. Balmorhea, from Austin, are one of the coolest instrumental outfits around. The Mexican duo Rodrigo Y Gabriela is continually stunning. "Wide Awake" is an enormous guilty pleasure for me. It's just a fucking great pop song. The PDF Format track is a video game-style cover of the Beach Boys song. Sounds strange. Is. But it works QUITE well. Dawn Landes, ex-wife of Josh Ritter, doing the Margo Guryan song is pretty great. And "Keep The Car Running" is probably my favorite Arcade Fire song.

Etc.

Weird, great mix.

iTunes Shuffle 1/23/15

1. Amy LaVere - "Never Been Sadder"
2. Dirty Projectors - "Swing Lo Magellan"
3. The Dismemberment Plan - "The City"
4. Ed Roland and the Sweet Tea Project - "Devils 'n Darlins" (revised)
5. Fake Problems - "Gone Before Dawn"
6. Jacqueline Taïeb - "Le cœur au bout des doigts"
7. Eric Clapton - "San Francisco Bay Blues" (live Unplugged) (Jesse Fuller cover)
8. Craig Finn - "Honolulu Blues"
9. Allah-Las - "Busman's Holiday"
10. Nanci Griffith w/ Rodney Crowell - "I Still Miss Someone" (Johnny Cash cover)

Interesting mix. If Ed Roland and the Sweet Tea Project reminds you of Collective Soul, Google that. Lots of anthemic indie rock here. Dirty Projectors are always great, and the Fake Problems song is quite good as well.

The Jacqueline Taïeb tune is quite fun. French Tunisian music from the '60's. And I'm loving the Craig Finn song. And Nanci and Rodney at the end is awesome.

Let's go.

iTunes Shuffle 1/16/15

1. When Saints Go Machine feat. Coco O. - "Hos Mig Igen"
2. Matt Sweeney & Bonnie "Prince" Billy - "Must Be Blind"
3. Anvil - "On Fire"
4. Beirut - "My Night With The Prostitute From Marseille"
5. Susan Marshall - "In The Mood For Memphis"
6. Glass Vaults - "Forget Me Not"
7. Bear's Den - "Elysium"
8. Spirit Family Reunion - "I Am Following The Sound"
9. Lovelier Other - "Leave This Behind"
10. Pedro Moraes - "Marcela"

Here we go, starting with Danish electro-pop, one of those songs that I hear and go, "THIS has been hiding in my iTunes? Hell yes." From there it totally shifts gears with the beautiful country folk thing from Sweeney & Bonnie "Prince" Billy. And then Canadian metal!

Other highlights:

1. Beirut is and always will be one of my favorite bands. Zach Condon's breadth is really something.
2. Glass Vaults
3. The Bear's Den song is so fucking beautiful I could listen to it over and over again, at least four or five times. Seriously.
4. The last song, from Pedro Moraes, a Brazilian artist. Fantastic.

Let's go:

iTunes Shuffle 1/9/15

1. Minipop - "Someone To Love"
2. Young Jeezy ft. Rich Homie Quan - "No Pressure"
3. Rihanna - "Don't Stop The Music"
4. Alberta Cross - "Magnolia"
5. Garth Brooks - "Papa Loved Mama" (live)
6. Elvis Costello & The Attractions - "I Hope You're Happy Now" (acoustic)
7. Tori Amos - "Gold Dust"
8. Tiger Waves - "I Hope You'll Feel Alright"
9. Austra - "Lose It"
10. Abigail Washburn - "Chains"

Last week we were focused on singer/songwriters. This week it's back to crazy diversity.

Highlights:

Most of it. Awesome mix. Takes a bit of time to really get going (because Rihanna's Gloria Estefan thing is kind of a fish out of water, but whatever.) My favorites this week are Minipop, Tori, Tiger Waves and Abigail Washburn, and the Elvis Costello acoustic version is really special.

As always, the Garth Brooks song will not be appearing on the playlist because Garth Brooks doesn't like it when you listen to his music. You can download his entire catalogue at his website for $29.99 right now, so at least he's trying to internet.

iTunes Shuffle 1/2/15

1. David Berkeley - "The Well (Wait For The Rain)"
2. Vanessa Williams - "Save The Best For Last"
3. Rafter - "Mercy"
4. Danny Barnes - "Sleep"
5. David Wilcox - "Catch Me If I Try"
6. Daniel Melingo - "Montmartre de hoy"
7. Sufjan Stevens - "Casimir Pulaski Day"
8. Parenthetical Girls - "Evelyn McHale"
9. Evan Joseph Hurst - "Ruins" (demo)
10. Ane Brun - "These Days"

Well, here it is, the first mix of the year, and if the universe is trying to communicate with me through my iTunes (and why wouldn't it?), the message is clear. For several years now, while I've been working in other fields, I've been harboring a desire to make music, and I've been writing and singing and playing forever, but I just haven't gotten my shit together to make it happen. But I've recorded quite a few demos, and when the muse comes and I happen to be paying attention, I often capture those things in voice memos on my phone, all of which syncs to my iTunes. Never before in these mixes has one of my own songs come up. Until today. And never before have I put one of my own songs on the internet. Until today, I guess! And really, it's the right song to play the role of First.

"Ruins" is a song I wrote around this time of the year in late 2010/early 2011, inspired by a photograph of the ruins of a plantation house in Mississippi. One night or day, I don't remember which, I was looking at this photo and a story started to form, about a woman who lived in the house before it burned and the lost love she could never have and believed she would never recover from. She became the burned out ruins of the house in the song. Anyway, the song has changed a bit since this demo was recorded -- the bridge has morphed quite a bit -- but the bulk of the idea is there. One of these days, it will be a central piece of a record I'd like to make.

Remember, it's a demo. Not a finished song.



So, the rest of the mix features a lot of amazing singer/songwriters, which is kind of appropriate. There's a tango thrown in, as well. And Vanessa Williams.

Highlights among incredible songwriters:

1. David Berkeley (saw him open for Garrison Starr & was hooked)
2. Danny Barnes (incredible banjo-based artist -- I put the studio version of the song on this playlist, but the version on my shuffle was from his Daytrotter session and it's incredible. Why are you not a member of Daytrotter yet?)
3. David Wilcox (one of the best folk singers alive)
4. Sufjan Stevens (self-explanatory)
5. Ane Brun (Wow. And a really cool song to come after "Ruins" and close it.)

I want to write like they do. All those songs are worthy of listening to multiple times on repeat.