Sloth

So I finally got through my big rip-all-my-CDs-to-mp3 project I started quite some time ago. You know how you never really know how much stuff you have because you look at it all day long and it just turns into one large pile in your head? Like when you look at your bookshelves*, you don’t consciously think “Oh, there’s my one hundred and fifty-seven books!” or whatever – they just get mentally lumped together as books in your head, right?

What I’m trying to say is that I thought I had about two hundred CDs. Turns out I have about, um, seven hundred. Whoops. In case you’re wondering how much music that is, I believe it’s officially called a shitload. I’m going to have to start using the Dewey Decimal system or something.

What does this translate into, mp3 wise? Just over 10 000 songs, in about 65GB of space. According to my MediaMonkey player, which I use because it has the word “monkey” in it, it breaks down to 649 artists, 770 albums, for a total of 643 hours of music. Top artist (as in highest number of tracks): Tom Waits, followed by The Fall, Pavement and Tori Amos. What a surprise!

So I thought I’d celebrate with another Random Rules, this one taken from the entire collection. What ten songs will pop up out of the ten thousand? Let’s find out!

1) Erasure – “Chains Of Love” - Hmmmmm, I guess my media player thinks I’m gay, too. You know I never really got into any of the other Erasure records as much as this one (The Innocents, which also had the phenomenal “Give A Little Respect”), maybe because Vince Clarke’s songwriting seemed to peak perfectly with this record. This may not be the gayest record I own, but it’s gotta be fucking close. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

2) Louis Prima – “Jump, Jive and Wail” – I am Italian, therefore I have Louis Prima records. Although technically I think this is one of Shorty’s CDs, one of the swinging jazz comps that Rhino put out back in the 90s when it looked like swing might get popular again for a split pop culture second. “A woman is a woman, but a man ain’t nuthin but a male.” Truer words never spoken.

3) Crowded House – “Weather With You” – Another Shorty pick, although God knows I love Crowded House. And this is one of those patented bittersweet, minor key pop songs that Neil Finn can apparently write blindfolded. I can only assume the lyric “Every where you go, you always take the weather with you” is like some sort of New Zealand pithy saying, like “don’t take any wooden nickels”, but I haven’t got a clue what it means. Like all great pop songs, it doesn’t really matter what it means, as the song evokes a mood separate from any lyrics.

4) Sonic Youth – “Paper Cup Exit” - You know how some bands are like old friends? Like you sort of fall out of touch on a regular basis, but you know that when you see them again you’ll just pick up from where you’ve left off? Sonic Youth is like that. I stopped listening sometime around A Thousand Leaves, but starting with Murray Street I got back in touch with them – this is the album after, Sonic Nurse, which is shorter and punkier compared to Murray Street’s lengthy Television-isms. And just like an old friend, they’re maybe a bit slower and older, but there’s plenty there to make you remember why you’re friends to begin with.

5) Pavement – “Grounded” - Exquisite track from the criminally overlooked Wowee Zowee album. The song starts off with a nice chiming guitar line worthy of Pavement’s idols, R.E.M, and then settles into that mid-tempo stoner groove that was Pavement’s default state. This makes me sad, not because of the song, but because it reminds me of a time when a band like Pavement could attain even a modicum of popularity, as opposed to today’s blighted pop-punk/grunge lite/alt rock wasteland. But that’s a rant for another time.

6) Minor Threat – “No Reason” - Ah, Minor Threat. The one band that all punk rockers in the 80s agreed on. This is one of their later songs, so it’s longer than twelve seconds, has more than four chords, and a microscopic solo. The beginning bass line rips The Damned ripping The Stooges, and the whole thing thrashes along quite nicely. Not, perhaps, an essential track, but proof that Minor Threat never made a wrong step in their short career.

7) The Modern Lovers – “Pablo Picasso” - One of my all-time favourite songs, no joke. Written by the incomparable Johnathan Richman while he was deep in the grips of the early Velvet Underground records – The Monkeys to the Velvet’s Beatles, if you will. Well, that’s not quite fair. But the Lou Reed fixation is pretty hard to ignore on “Pablo” – the slow-as-fuck Bo Diddley beat, the off-kilter guitar “solo”, the john Cale-esque piano. Of course, if you’re going to rip off anybody, you could do worse than the Velvets. But what makes it great is, unlike Lou’s distaste with the world, “Pablo” is charmingly self-depreciating, because Johnathan can’t pick up girls without being called an asshole not like (one assumes) Pablo Picasso. And hence the sarcastic singer-songwriter branch of indie rock was born.

8) The Flaming Lips – “Free Radicals” - From the live concert movie UFOs At The Zoo. The Lips are one of those bands that manages to sound way, way better live than they do on record, even though their records are great. Clearly, they live for the live performance, and this – a lurching guitar stomper with some nicely barbed lyrics – is a perfect example. What doesn’t play so hot on record comes alive for The Lips in concert. Best moment of the song: after comparing the subject of the song to Donald Trump, Wayne Coyne parenthetically exclaims “And you don’t want that, motherfuckers.”

9) The Louvin Brothers – “Leaning On The Everlasting Arms” – Another Shorty pick. She’s been on this old-school country kick, and the Louvin’s are as old-school as it gets. They were awesome because they’d record all these songs about God and whatnot, and then the ol’ devil whiskey would get a hold of them and they’d go out and raise hell for a bit, and then come back and record a bunch of regretful musical apologies. Sort of like a bluegrass Lindsay Lohan. Musically, it’s totally awesome in that pickin’ and grinnin’, nasal-harmony way. Makes you realize how much soul country lost since the rise of New Country. (Shorty would like to add that this also happens to be the song that Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish both sing and the same time unbeknownst to each other near the end of Night Of The Hunter, which by definition makes it the creepiest song ever recorded.)

10) The Wedding Present – “You Should Always Keep In Touch With Your Friends” – From the stellar singles comp Tommy, which collected non-album tracks the Weddoes did from 1985-1987. The Wedding Present, aka The World’s Fastest Pop Band, perfected a kind of trebly, quick-strummed, fast-paced guitar pop, held together by David Wedge’s endless tales of love gone wrong. All the Wedding Present songs from this period sound like they’re basically trying to rewrite the Velvet’s “What Goes On”, except fifteen times as fast. Country music for punk rockers, I guess.

* OK, I mean comic book shelves.