Subscribe with itunes

Copy the feed link and paste it into your aggregator:

treats you can hear

I'm interested in sequence, juxtaposition and musical continuity. That, and good stuff I just think I've not heard lately. I own none of this. Go buy what you like. If you don't want me sharing your stuff, just let me know, and I'll stop. mansfield.scott@gmail.com

Had Went

1. The Pretty Things "Come See Me"

2. Fucked Up "Ship of Fools" from David Comes to Life. 

3. Fugazi  "Do You Like Me" from Red Medicine

4. The Sonics "Psycho"

5. LCD Soundsystem "Losing My Edge"

6. David Bowie "It Ain't Easy" cover of the Ron Davies Original.

7. Sagittarius "My World Fell Down" from Present Tense

8. Willups Brighton/Bob Odenkirk "A Mouth Full of Sores" Mr. Show. The Chicago Band Nurse Novels covered this song here. Sorrow is the key that gets our tears out of eye jail.

9. U2 and Brian Eno "One Minute Warning" from Passengers Original Soundtrack

10. Grizzly Bear "Ready, Able" from Veckatimest. Each track from this album is a beautifully crafted thing, no filler. 

11. Simon and Garfunkle "The Only Living Boy in New York" from Bridge Over Troubled Waters

12. Andy Williams "Lonely Street" 

13 Robin Guthrie & Harold Budd "Twilight" from the soundtrack to Mysterious Skin

14. Gabriel Fauré  Requiem Op.48 - "In Paradisum"

Pony Up

00:00:00.000 Motorhead "Sister"

On first listen this song comes off lyrically as a cloddish proclamation of gutter love. The caveman riff reinforces this initial impression. I hear hints of the Stooges "No Fun"- a very positive association. But the talk of sisters and mothers gets weird. Coherence  emerges only when imagining the lyrics as spoken by an abusive husband/partner to his battered victim. 

Isolation, experts agree, is the central tool of abusers. 'Your sister? You don't need her, and you won't be seeing her from now on.' "I'll be your sister, I'll be your mother, baby". No sense in having outsiders confirming and encouraging her natural survival instinct...

"It's so lonely, hanging on the wire." He is describing her own loneliness to her. The meaning of the word 'hanging' is multivalent, shall we say. Now, when looking for rescue, she can only turn to him for company or comfort. 

The statement "If you need somebody, I'm your only friend" can only be read as a bone cold statement of complete and utter isolation.  A more efficient summing-up of this state of affairs is not possible within the concision restraints of lyrical songcraft. 

Enjoy!

Oh, and see Lemmy, if you want to.

00:02:42.000  Lupe Fiasco "All Black Everything (Produced By Wizzo Buchanan)"

The Phillip K. Dick of hiphop, maybe. Or not. 

00:06:10.000 Fred Wesley & The J.B.'s "Same Beat"

00:08:43.500 The Brat Productions "Boston Versus Blur" 

Puts a more properly morose backing to a fairly depressing lyric.

00:13:25.922 Broadcast "Illumination"

00:16:06.667 Bob Roberts "This World Turns"

From the eponymous movie. Fun fact: Tim Robbins and his brother did not release a soundtrack album out of concern that their music would be put to nonironic uses.

00:18:56.250 NIck Cave "John Finn's Wife"

00:24:02.583 The Walker Brothers "Another Tear Falls"

I'm bummed that the wrong Scott Walker is now super famous/infamous. 

00:26:25.500 Charlotte Gainsbourg "Le Chat Du Café Des Artistes"

Produced by Beck 

00:30:15.333 Radiohead "House of Cards"

Where Radiohead got their name.

Image: Tom Laughlin

"Albatross" The Besnard Lakes from "The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night"
"Hearts" Tim and Eric (featuring Aimee Mann)  from from "Awesome Record, Great Songs"
"Such a Small Love" Scott Walker  from Scott, 1967
"A Forest" Nouvelle Vague  from Bande à Part , 2006
"My Ghost" The Handsome Family  from Through the Trees 1998
"You and Me, Bess" Joanna Newsom
"Listening Wind"  Peter Gabriel From "Scratch My Back", Talking Heads cover
the Love Theme from Chinatown Jerry Goldsmith
"Fish Beach" Michael Nyman
"I Heard That Lonesome Whistle Blow" Apparat (Sascha Ring) from Cash Remixed
"Good Night" The Beatles from the White Album

Rain

Tom Petty "It's Rainin' Again"

The Screaming Trees "Cold Rain"

Ann Peebles "I Can't Stand the Rain"

Tom Waits "Rainbirds"
Every other one of his songs involves rain. This'll do.

Tones On Tail "Rain" (first half)  
I don't care for the rest of it, is all. 

Scott Walker "It's Raining Today"

Ulrich Schnauss "It's Raining Today"

Jon Hassell/Brian Eno "Delta Rain Dream"  
I love this transition. My favorite. 

The Beatles "Rain" does not appear on Revolver like you'd figure. 

Sad Annointing

00:02. Beck "Cellphone's Dead" Beck's a Scientologist again. L. Ron Hubbard was once a roommate of JPL founder Jack Parsons. Parsons was a rocket scientist and head of the Los Angeles chapter of the Ordo Templi Orientis. The O.T.O. was Aleistar Crowley's occult organization. The Hubbard/Parsons "relationship lasted until 1947, when Hubbard defrauded Parsons of a sum of money and ran off with Sarah Northrup"*, "Parson's aeronautically named witchy poo girlfriend. Hubbard used much of this money from Allied Enterprises to promulgate and publish his book Dianetics, which later evolved into and was superseded by Scientology"*. The story would make a good movie.

* from the Jack Parsons Wikipedia entry.

Aleistar Crowley, meanwhile, might be George W. Bush's grandfather.

To quote Spinal Tap's David St. Hubbins,
"I believe virtually everything I read, and I think that is what makes me more of a selective human, than someone who doesn't believe anything."

Now, who is Graham Parsons?

04:46 Missy Elliot "I Can't Stand the Rain"

08:02 Dinosaur Jr "Just Like Heaven"
cover of the Cure song. It ended abruptly, cut out mysteriously, remember?

10:46 Fergie "London Bridge"
There is the notion of "amateur culture" supposedly encouraged by and created through the Internet. There is also a strong reaction to it.
I'd like to point out the music of Fergie ("My Humps", that new sad song mentioning babies and blankets) is the stuff that the experts, not the amateurs are creating, so...
Fergie is the kind of quality, lasting celebrity who's going to be around for a long time. I like this song.

The shorty bus has a sub woofer.

13:56 Howlin' Wolf, Koko Taylor, "Wang Dang Doodle"

17:01 Louvin Brothers "Satan is Real"

19:46 Pavement "Range Life"

24:37 Neil Diamond "The Last Thing on My Mind"

28:10 Nat King Cole "Nature Boy"

30:43 Johnny Cash "If You Could Read My Mind"

34:51 Skip James "Devil Got My Woman"

40:01 Rolling Stones "The Last Time"

43:44 Pop Staples and the Staples Singers "This May Be The Last Time"
the alleged 'inspiration' for the Stones song.

46:10 Elvis Costello with Lucinda Williams "There's a Story in Your Voice"
I just love her drawl. What if she were secretly Australian?

49:48 Louis Armstrong "A Kiss to Build A Dream On"

54:12 Pavement "Stop Breathing"

58:38 My Bloody Valentine "From Here to Who Knows When"

63:41 The Verve "Bittersweet Symphony."
This song sampled an orchestral version of the Rolling Stones song -"The Last Time". One little bite, and there go the songwriting credits and perhaps the whole career. Perhaps this is the karmic reason for Keith Richard's deformed left index finger.

69:29 Andrew Oldham Orchestra "The Last Time"
the aforementioned song. Maybe that bite wasn't so small after all. I'd been looking for this for a while.

73:07 Yo La Tengo "I heard you looking"
This has been enshortened.

76:35 Roy Buchanan "Sweet Dreams"
I heard this first on the soundtrack to that last Scorsese movie "The Departed".