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e_clareI've spent the evening going through some of the accumulated podcasts in my iTunes folder. Train rides to the city are, it turns out, just about the perfect length to fit an episode of Studio 360 or This American Life. I'm loving it: yesterday on the way home, I got to listen to Studio 360's crazy interview with crazy Courtney Love.
Anyway, it was really really good to hear some new music. My iPod is starting to get pretty stale, since I no longer have anyone else's music library to raid. (Even after leaving Silver Street, I still had all of my uncle's music in DC -- he got me hooked on Sufjan Stevens, among others.) All Songs Considered left me with two major things to think about:
1. The Be Good Tanyas covered "When Doves Cry"?! *boggles* I can't decide if this is brilliant or slightly appalling -- banjos plus Prince does not equal any sort of logic, to my mind -- but I think I might need to own it.
Y'all may have noticed that I'm mildly obsessed with cover songs, be they clever, awful, transcendent, or otherwise unique and different from the original material. Hanson's live cover of Radiohead's "Optimistic" remains one of my favorite covers ever, not because it deviates wildly from the original instrumentation or tempo -- in those respects, it's almost a carbon copy -- but because the spirit behind it is totally different. Hanson turns Thom Yorke's innocuous "ooh-ah-oo" vocals, which are merely filler between verses in the original, into a damn power pop chorus. The difference might not be very apparent on a studio recording, but on the live track, the audience goes wild at the "oohs" instead of the true chorus. This is endlessly amusing to me, and it also makes me love the Hanson version just a bit more than the Radiohead one. It's like living in a parallel universe where Radiohead is a pop supergroup with screaming teenybopper fans -- what's not fantastic about that?
Also from the podcast: Yusuf Islam, aka Cat Stevens, has a new album out. Said album sounds a lot like classic Cat Stevens, which is all well and good. However, it also includes a cover of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," originally recorded by the Animals in the '60s. Although I love most of his other covers -- "Here Comes My Baby" on the Rushmore soundtrack is a favorite -- this one doesn't work for me. First, the string arrangement kind of overpowers his vocals, in a disappointing way. The strings build up, and you're thinking "Oh, cool!" but then the vocals just don't live up to it. Plus, the lyrics hit a little too close to the singer's real life -- and this is probably just me being weird. When Britney Spears covered "My Prerogative" -- same thing. Apparently she needed to make a statement about her independence or whatever. But I like my artists to cover songs because they think the song rules, not because they can sing it like it was written just for them. That's when you write your own songs.
2. I need new music in my life -- and I desperately need to buy the new Beck album -- but there's really no room in my budget for it. So I went looking for Pandora (based on mentions from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eccentric_hat -- I think? -- among others). And Pandora might just be my new favorite thing. I made a "folkies" playlist, of the Be Good Tanyas and Old Crow Medicine Show variety, and a "kinda dance-y" playlist of mostly hip-hop stuff. There's so much music that I don't know about! Mostly it plays a bunch of people that I've never heard of -- which is awesome -- but sometimes, mysteriously, the Red Hot Chili Peppers pop up. And I'm equally happy.
On that note, I hope that you all have a lovely Thanksgiving. Dad's rosemary-stuffed turkey, mashed potatoes, and pie: the best damn day of the year.
She: "Can I just get some f*ing coffee? I feel like I'm gonna die." [exits]Anyway, the real point of this entry is that tonight, I was listening to All Songs Considered's fall preview podcast. By now, most of the albums have been released by now, but seeing as I stop listening to the radio beyond NPR news anytime I'm not driving regularly, it's almost all news to me.
Host: [whispers into mic] "I don't. know what. to do."
Anyway, it was really really good to hear some new music. My iPod is starting to get pretty stale, since I no longer have anyone else's music library to raid. (Even after leaving Silver Street, I still had all of my uncle's music in DC -- he got me hooked on Sufjan Stevens, among others.) All Songs Considered left me with two major things to think about:
1. The Be Good Tanyas covered "When Doves Cry"?! *boggles* I can't decide if this is brilliant or slightly appalling -- banjos plus Prince does not equal any sort of logic, to my mind -- but I think I might need to own it.
Y'all may have noticed that I'm mildly obsessed with cover songs, be they clever, awful, transcendent, or otherwise unique and different from the original material. Hanson's live cover of Radiohead's "Optimistic" remains one of my favorite covers ever, not because it deviates wildly from the original instrumentation or tempo -- in those respects, it's almost a carbon copy -- but because the spirit behind it is totally different. Hanson turns Thom Yorke's innocuous "ooh-ah-oo" vocals, which are merely filler between verses in the original, into a damn power pop chorus. The difference might not be very apparent on a studio recording, but on the live track, the audience goes wild at the "oohs" instead of the true chorus. This is endlessly amusing to me, and it also makes me love the Hanson version just a bit more than the Radiohead one. It's like living in a parallel universe where Radiohead is a pop supergroup with screaming teenybopper fans -- what's not fantastic about that?
Also from the podcast: Yusuf Islam, aka Cat Stevens, has a new album out. Said album sounds a lot like classic Cat Stevens, which is all well and good. However, it also includes a cover of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," originally recorded by the Animals in the '60s. Although I love most of his other covers -- "Here Comes My Baby" on the Rushmore soundtrack is a favorite -- this one doesn't work for me. First, the string arrangement kind of overpowers his vocals, in a disappointing way. The strings build up, and you're thinking "Oh, cool!" but then the vocals just don't live up to it. Plus, the lyrics hit a little too close to the singer's real life -- and this is probably just me being weird. When Britney Spears covered "My Prerogative" -- same thing. Apparently she needed to make a statement about her independence or whatever. But I like my artists to cover songs because they think the song rules, not because they can sing it like it was written just for them. That's when you write your own songs.
2. I need new music in my life -- and I desperately need to buy the new Beck album -- but there's really no room in my budget for it. So I went looking for Pandora (based on mentions from
eccentric_hat -- I think? -- among others). And Pandora might just be my new favorite thing. I made a "folkies" playlist, of the Be Good Tanyas and Old Crow Medicine Show variety, and a "kinda dance-y" playlist of mostly hip-hop stuff. There's so much music that I don't know about! Mostly it plays a bunch of people that I've never heard of -- which is awesome -- but sometimes, mysteriously, the Red Hot Chili Peppers pop up. And I'm equally happy. On that note, I hope that you all have a lovely Thanksgiving. Dad's rosemary-stuffed turkey, mashed potatoes, and pie: the best damn day of the year.
