Music Diary Project: Week One

(Individual entries posted at Tumblr ) 

Music Diary Project 2012, Day One: 

I said I wasn’t going to do Cher. I lied. I really hadn’t planned on including any incidental music, but hearing this 25-year-old song blaring from someone’s car speakers this afternoon in a library parking lot, I mean, I had to. It’s so unexpected. I honestly, unironically, love Cher, even 80s, Bagel Boy-era Cher, so I love that there’s someone out there unafraid to look uncool, playing a desperately uncool song, in public. 

Music Diary 2012, Day Two: Shaking off the flotsam of my early thirties 

For whatever reason, I’ve been listening to a lot of the music I loved in my late twenties/early thirties: New Pornographers, The Weakerthans, Ryan Adams, plus The Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique since hearing about Adam Yauch’s death, and the new Rufus Wainwright record. Jury’s still out on the latter, which is disappointing as I really wanted to like it. Some of the songs read like disjointed diary entries, though I’d like to know the story behind Rashida. 

Music Diary Project, Day Three: Acid Tongue & Androgyny 

Jenny Lewis’s Acid Tongue and Rilo Kiley’s Portions for Foxes The former I’d completely forgotten I owned. Jenny Lewis is undervalued as a songwriter among my male music geek friends. Her voice, sure. Her looks, absolutely, but no one really talks about her words. And she’s such a smart lyricist — sometimes with a hint of meanness. Which I like, a lot. 

The Replacements’ “Androgynous” The Replacements are the only band for whom I’ve managed an unhealthy obsession for more than two decades. I keep wanting to find fault with this song, given it addresses the topic of gender expression, but it’s written by and sung from the point-of-view of a straight, cis guy. The “something meets girl/something meets boy” part is pretty problematic. Even with that, there’s a still a genuineness lurking beneath the surface. 

Music Diary Project 2012, Day Four: Fall Out Of The Window With Confetti In My Hair

Tom Waits - “Tango Till They’re Sore” A long time ago Gina Arnold about the Replacements: ”It was like being captured midair in a swan dive off a cliff. The landing might be a disaster — in fact it was sure to be. But those moments while you were flying, suspended in that beauty with the sea still such a long way down, it was pure, pure bliss.” Tom Waits songs are a lot like that, this one especially — that bliss before the crash sort of feeling. 

Barbra Streisand - “Woman in Love” I maybe don’t have the greatest musical acumen, but I always hear this song in Britney’s “Oops I did it again.” Tell me I’m not crazy. 

Via YouTube, a bunch of Ewa Podles videos Full disclosure: I’m not all that knowledgeable about opera, but she has the most amazingly deep, resonant contralto I’ve heard. She can even easily hit notes in the baritone rage. I hate when any female singer with a voice that isn’t light and trebly is labeled a “contralto.” Most of them aren’t. Yeah, pop singers really don’t have vocal types the way classical ones do, but still… this is what a contralto sounds like.

Music Diary Project 2012, Day Five: Mixtape


You know you're old when you refer to a collection of songs in any medium a mix "tape." Technically this is a mix CD I got in an online trade years ago, but people don't really don't do those anymore either. This one is mostly indie or rock acts from the early 00s -- the Hives, Ben Folds... with some classic thrown in for good measure (Elvis Costello, B-52s). It's almost embarrassing in its averageness, but I've made many of the same mixes for other people, and am in no place to complain.