Saturday, November 25, 2006

Soothing the savage something

YouTube: very addictive.

Here's the latest way I've wasted far far too many minutes of my life that I will never get back:


So, I went looking for some Bruce Springsteen just for Mike Norton. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a studio version of one of my favorite Springsteen songs. However, I did find this pretty excellent acoustic version of the song, featuring Bruce dueting with Melissa Etheridge. Suffer through the annoying yak-yak at the start; the performance is worth it.

Bruce Springsteen & Melissa Etheridge Thunder Road



Then, having posted that, might as well toss up one of my favorites by Melissa --



Now we'll go WAAAAAAY back for one of my favorite bits of 60s pop fluff. There were several versions of the song with several different accompanying videos, but this one unfortunately is the only one I could find with the original song and decent sound quality. Just deal with the video.



One of my favorite 80s bands. Dig on the tune. Ignore the hair. No, seriously. Really ignore the hair. You could hurt yourself otherwise.



From "All You Zombies" to THE Zombies -- a song that's another blast from the past. Enjoy.



Am I a girlie-mon for liking this song a lot? Okay, I'll own it. But I really do like this song a lot.



Yeah, yeah. Shut up. You know you like it, too, you just won't admit it.



Here's a cool little thing I stumbled across -- not only a song I really like but in the setting I originally heard/saw it in.



Yeah, okay, I'm old.



Well, I'm not this old, but I like the song anyway.



And I can't close out without something from BOC. Unfortunately, YouTube's archives don't seem to include "ME-262" or "Perfect Water", but I did find two of my favorite other BOC tunes I'll happily share with you. First up, the Shooting Shark music video:



And I'll close out with "Veteran of the Psychic Wars", set to some weird animation from some frickin' anime show that Cartoon Network runs when they should be showing Justice League Unlimited, instead.

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:32 PM

    I just wanna say that this is not my fault. You all believe that, right?

    ReplyDelete
  2. SG: I couldn't blame you without feeling that some of it would splash back on me, too.

    H: Tastes are our own, of course, and these mix tapes are for ourselves even more than blog entries are.

    Actually, I enjoyed most of the cream filling in this post. It's the bookend items that don't go down well for me. If the Springsteen and Etheridge pair had been put at the end of the post then the BOC pieces would have put me into a sufficiently deep sleep (or similarly disassociated state) that when Bruce and Melissa attempted to take dental instruments to my inner ears I wouldn't have felt it. Well, not as acutely.

    The BOC material's inoffensive, but I'm simply lacking what I can only think of as many critical personal, historical associations to make it special to me. Listening to those two, well, I no longer feel guilty about having so many fond associations with Elton John's 1970s catalogue and even Phil Collins' era Genesis.

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  3. I like a lot of Elton John's stuff, too. As for Phil Collins, well, that's a case where I've lived and learned. But it's very plausible an Elton tune or two might turn up in a future YouTube mix of mine.

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  4. Anonymous9:52 AM

    Oooh - music videos. I just HAVE to comment on (almost) all of them.

    THUNDER ROAD
    Suffer through the annoying yak-yak at the start; the performance is worth it.

    Yes, it is. Thank you for posting this; I would never have heard it otherwise. Lovely.

    Now we'll go WAAAAAAY back for one of my favorite bits of 60s pop fluff.

    I WANT YOU BACK is a great pop song. The only problem I have with it is that I can't sing along.

    ALL YOU SOMBIES - HOOTERS
    Also one of my favourites, although I've never seen the video. Plus, I have no idea what the song is supposed to be about. There's obviously some kinda Jesus/Christian thing going on, but what is a 'zombie' supposed to be in that context? And then there's the hair - ouch.

    LINGER - THE CRANBERRIES
    Am I a girlie-mon for liking this song
    Yes. Or so I've been told, many times. I own the CD.

    TORN - NATALIE IMBRUGLIA
    Yeah, yeah. Shut up. You know you like it, too, you just won't admit it.

    Yes, I will. I'm a girlie-mon, remember?

    Here's a cool little thing I stumbled across -- not only a song I really like but in the setting I originally heard/saw it in.

    I think I remember seeing this too - who is it?

    RUNNING ON EMPTY - JACKSON BROWNE

    Yeah, okay, I'm old.

    What? I remember hearing this song on the radio too. Of course, I was like, 10 :)

    Haven't had time to listen to the BOC stuff yet.

    My own YouTube mix, were I to,god forbid, actually have a blog on which to put one together, would probably have a lot of XTC, Crowded House, and BNL on it. I'm a sucker for pop hooks and harmonies, and obvious Beatle influences get me every time.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous4:33 PM

    Oh, and on the off chance than anyone is actually still paying attention to this thread:

    www.pandora.com

    Very cool. Trust me.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Scott,

    I appreciate the lengthy comment. However, at the moment it completely baffles me how to format a response so you can see my responses to your responses to my initial text. So, I'm just going to say... whatever.

    I'm glad you enjoyed the THUNDER ROAD performance. It's good to know not all my friends are Springsteen philistines.

    >>I WANT YOU BACK is a great pop song. The only problem I have with it is that I can't sing along.

    Well, I can sing along to it, but it's certainly out of my natural key.

    >>ALL YOU SOMBIES - HOOTERS
    Also one of my favourites, although I've never seen the video. Plus, I have no idea what the song is supposed to be about. There's obviously some kinda Jesus/Christian thing going on, but what is a 'zombie' supposed to be in that context? And then there's the hair - ouch.

    Yeah, the lyrics to ALL YOU ZOMBIES are definitely weird, and I can't figure them out, either. Making it worse is that the title is obviously a Heinlein tribute. Anyway, I went looking for "And We Danced", a Hooters song I like better than "All You Zombies", but couldn't find it.

    >>I think I remember seeing this too - who is it?

    Michelle Branch. Seeing the song on BUFFY was one of the few good moments in the otherwise horrifying and appalling sixth season, and nearly drove me to buying a Michelle Branch CD. Ultimately I didn't, but it was a close thing. I had to remember how poorly it had worked out for me last time I did that, when a BUFFY episode drove me to buying a Sarah McLachlan CD just to get "Full of Grace".

    >>Haven't had time to listen to the BOC stuff yet.

    That's okay. Apparently, you'll find it soporific.

    >>My own YouTube mix, were I to,god forbid, actually have a blog on which to put one together, would probably have a lot of XTC, Crowded House, and BNL on it.

    I don't know anything about the first two. I should probably go looking for some BNL, though.

    >>I'm a sucker for pop hooks and harmonies, and obvious Beatle influences get me every time.

    I prefer not to think about Beatles influences. I assume they're out there, but I'll tend to lose respect for songs if I recognize such. Don't ask me why, but for some reason my associations with the Beatles are largely negative. Probably because I tend to mostly like their earlier product, and the latter era, drug-driven material is what saw the most airplay in my adolescence.

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  7. Anonymous5:22 PM

    I appreciate the lengthy comment.

    You're welcome. Anytime you post anything about music you're very likely to get several lengthy responses from me. Just so you know.


    Michelle Branch. Seeing the song on BUFFY was one of the few good moments in the otherwise horrifying and appalling sixth season, and nearly drove me to buying a Michelle Branch CD. Ultimately I didn't, but it was a close thing. I had to remember how poorly it had worked out for me last time I did that, when a BUFFY episode drove me to buying a Sarah McLachlan CD just to get "Full of Grace".

    Ah, yes, the sixth season of Buffy. Good times.
    Buying a Sarah McLachlan CD is always a close thing - I should know, I have like 3 of them. Her early stuff (SOLACE, in particular) is pretty good, and she did an "unplugged" version of FUMBLING TOWARDS ECSTASY called THE FREEDOM SESSIONS which I would also recommend, but anything else...blech.

    Yeah, the lyrics to ALL YOU ZOMBIES are definitely weird, and I can't figure them out, either. Making it worse is that the title is obviously a Heinlein tribute. Anyway, I went looking for "And We Danced", a Hooters song I like better than "All You Zombies", but couldn't find it.

    The verses are pretty straightforward summaries of stories from the Old Testament, and if that wasn't enough of a hint, that bit at the beginning of the video where the bald guy rubs water on head (clearly some kind of baptism symbol) seals the deal for me. I just don't get who the "zombies" are supposed to be in this context. Unless its a rather subversive reference to the whole resurrection thing.
    At one point I owned a cassette copy of this album, and I liked the whole thing.

    >>Haven't had time to listen to the BOC stuff yet.

    That's okay. Apparently, you'll find it soporific.


    I've had worse said about my taste in music.

    I don't know anything about the first two. I should probably go looking for some BNL, though.

    XTC is an english band that started out as a kind of punk/new wave band in the late '70s and morphed into a pop band by the '80s and '90s. Very catchy melodies, quirky, intelligent lyrics. BNL was clearly influenced by 80s XTC. They're a band I should have been listening to in the 80s when I was instead listening to crap like ah-ha.
    Crowded House is a Kiwi band very clearly inspired by the pre-hallucinogenic drug era Beatles, which is why I like them. DON'T DREAM IT'S OVER and SOMETHING SO STRONG got a fair amount of airplay in the late 80s. If I like a band, I tend to buy pretty much anything they turn out, which means I have a large number of BNL (7), CROWDED HOUSE (5) and XTC CDs (5) in my collection.

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