Rock and Roll pt.2: a list of sorts
I like the idea of a end-of-the-year list of pop music. As traditional to me as other parts of the holidays. This despite never being a list person. Lists are one step short of finished writing. They have their place, I suppose. Thinking about the year I realized I had done a lot of lazy listening over this last year. Part of this certainly was having my iPod stolen back in early May. I bought fewer songs and did not listen to the radio with quite the same acquisitional spirit as I might have otherwise. My method for this list is the same as last year. I keep a notepad by my desk at work. I have to hear it to like it I have to like it to write it down. What radio stations I listen to influence this process greatly. I listen mainly to non commercial stations. I listened to less college radio the past year than I used to (at least undergraduate CR) despite what the New York Times would have In a Digital World, College Radio Perseveres - NYTimes.com. Some things that I thought were new, were only new to me. So I expand my list to include the conception: newly experienced in '08.
An example of this is the band Parts and Labor they did have a record out this year, but the song I recall first catching my ear was "Fractured Sky" off '07's Mapmaker, then later "Nowhere Nigh". At any rate I already knew I like all those noisy poppy Brooklyn bands. More egregious is having never heard of Esrevnoc until this year. I love this band. Unfortunately their big year was 1999 and I don't think they've been together since 2001. All that's left is a handful of videos on that pop culture echo YouTube. This first is the song I heard on the radio (Bijn Bijn?), but I also warmed up quickly to Bee Charmer, Glasses better than mine, and Sweet Strawberry Toast. At times I hear a trace of this in Deerhoof material.
On bands that are still together (a popular category) my estimation of Times New Viking went up this year. I like the new material and it prompted me to favorable comparisons with Pink Reason, thee Oh Sees and the Sic Alps. There was also a new band Meth Teeth I wrote down a couple of times for a song called "Failures selected by God". There's no fi like low-fi. One record I listened to consistently and completely this year was Thao Nguyen's (and the Get down stay down band's) lp we Brave bee stings and All. I heard something from that ("Beat...") on the radio just once. Brought some things down off of iTunes I was quite taken with. I later found my niece Nicole had the cd too. My friend Tran who shares a degree of winn-someness (bad word-play alert) with Thao, did not like the record. "She has a little girl's voice," she commented. I think she's just jealous. Another understated band I liked this year was Black Forest of Opium. As well I continued to like everything off that last Dengue Fever record Venus on Earth. Not only "Tiger phone card", but "Women in the shoes", "Seeing hands" and "Monsoon of perfume". I heard a song I thought was by a band the Wilderness that I like from Baltimore turned out to be a band called Lord Bird Dog, "Gift of Song in the Lions Den", instead. I think they played last summers WhartScape. Another band I heard toward the end of the year and liked was the Crystal Stilts. A bit of relevance to me here - their record is released on Slumberland records which was was originally a College Park Maryland label many years ago and run (still run) by a friend Mike Shulman. Mike was in Black Tambourine, and also a Dj at WMUC. I think I read that Crystal Stilts play out with the Vivian Girls another good new band (thank you mr. Darger). I see I also wrote down the Raveonettes several times for the lovely song "Aly walk with me". This is off their Lust Lust Lust lp. They spell that out 3x so you know they mean it . Apart from this main list is Roky Erikson, For some reason I was hearing a lot of Roky Erikson this year and it all sounded good. He had a biopic
You're Gonna Miss Me (2005) out a year or so ago, maybe people just got around to seeing it now. If I mention Roky, I ought to mention Fred Cole whose new band Pierced Arrows had a great old school psych record out this year. I also want to call attention to a song that goes back ten years or so, but I only nailed down who did it this year. The Silos and their cover of the Modern Lovers "I'm Straight" from the lp Susan Across the Ocean.
A second adjunct: a small segue group I sometimes play on my now entirely imaginary iPod. First
Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) by Sly and the Family Stone, then Go Bang - not the absurdist play
Go-Bang - but rather the
Dinosaur L (not Dinosaur Jr.) song "Go Bang", Following that
Basement Jaxx, with "Bingo Bango". Finally the
LCD Soundsystem song,
All My Friends.
11:36:12 PM  ;;
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