Off The Record

Remember when people used to watch that show Lost? Unanswered Lost questions (5 min video). http://bit.ly/cJRc89

the weird scene in downtown austin today at the shooting of the new coen brothers film (True Grit). http://bit.ly/9bwnhn

29 thoughts on music (somewhere over utah)

On the flight from San Francisco back to Austin…. Didn’t know it was possible to go 608 mph on an airplane.  Guess so.  Somewhere over Utah, I decided to rank as many songs in itunes as I could possibly stand.  My ranking system is 

5 Stars    Exceptional
4 Stars    Put it in “heavy rotation”
3 Stars    Acceptable
2 Stars    Unlistenable in a “shuffle” context
1 Star      Unlistenable in any context.  Should be deleted.

This is what I saw for the first time:

1. Man, the She Came Through the Bathroom Window/ Golden Slumbers/ Carry That Weight/The End on Abbey Road is just amazing.  Usually I listen to that album all the way through and it has been lost to me how amazing those four songs are together.  

2. Daniel Lanois’s Acadie becomes unlistenable after track number 9.

3. Dialing In gets five stars.  Enough time has elapsed that this opinion should not sound narcissistic.  There’s just no way around it.  Five Stars.

4. I have this killer live version of Tryin’ To Throw Your Arms Around The World (U2) from the ZooTV tour.  I wish I could have gone to one of those shows.  That tour even made the song Even Better Than The Real Thing sound good (which is a pun on itself).

5. I have a lot less emotional volatility since the days of listening to the 10 minute live version of Counting Crows’s Round Here.  On that note a lot of Counting Crows live stuff is unlistenable.  Singer dude, post your journal on your band’s website if you want to share your feelings.  Just play the freaking songs.

6. Why don’t I like Smashing Pumpkins again?  Wait, didn’t I get these CD’s through BMG or Columbia House when I was in junior high?

7. Oh yeah, the last two-thirds of Adore is terrible (Smashing Pumpkins).  Possibly more self-indulgent than Counting Crows live.

8. Palo Alto (which happens to be just down the street from where I was today) is a really enjoyable obscure Radiohead song (see Airbag - How am I driving?).  Where have I heard this before?

9. I like the Balmorhea album.  But is it just the same song over and over?  Probably like listening to Phish (without the obvious drug abuse necessary to enjoy Phish).

10. Kite (U2) is a great song.  All That You Can’t Leave Behind remains one of my favorite albums (although I no longer listen to it exclusively).

That last parenthesis was literal, I’m now embarrassed to admit.

If I had a band and didn’t decide to name it Colonel Panic, I might name it Somewhere Over Utah.

On second thought Somewhere Over Utah is a little too chill for me.  I’m too intense for Somewhere Over Utah.

11. Someone needs to teach me a different guitar move than the intro to In a Little While (U2).

12. Fastball has an album without The Way on it?  Couldn’t they at least throw it on as a bonus track?  Fire Escape is actually a pretty good song.

Don’t you sort of wish Oasis actually played “We Are Everybody” (the song from Charlie’s band on the TV show Lost).

13. What motivated me to buy this Fastball album again?

14. I bought American Idiot (Green Day), and you know, I don’t think I’ve ever listened to it all the way through.  Not bad.  Didn’t it win some awards?  I don’t think it was good enough for awards.

15. There’s not too many better albums that start with the Letter “A” than Guns N’ Roses Appetite For Destruction.  What the hell happened to them?  Maybe that’s a bit of hyperbole.

16. I am very thankful for Andy Melvin’s Arms & Heart Abandoned cd.

17. One of the most curious song titles is Elbow’s “Presuming Ed (Rest Easy)”.  Hmmm.. 2 stars.  I listen to “Any Day Now” when I want to hear some Elbow.

18. I really enjoy the Volcano Demo from the Damien Rice B-Sides cd.  What happened to that guy?  I guess he went back to the farm in Tuscany (see wikipedia).

19. David Crowder’s A Collision is one of my favorite albums.  It’s a shame that iTunes sorts it by “C” (Collision) and not by “A”.  I guess rules are rules.

20. What’s a better Arcade Fire album, Funeral or Neon Bible? My vote would be for Funeral if it wasn’t for the repetitive and ambiguous song titles.  On second thought after a quick review, it’s Funeral by a long shot.

21. The Neon Bible record seems so dark and negative.  The singer’s from The Woodlands.  What does he have to complain about?  After all that negatively I need to listen to some Sufjan Stevens.

22. Sufjan Stevens’s John Wayne Gacy, Jr.  That’s better.  A song about a serial killer.

23. Listened to a Barenaked Ladies song that I got from Paste.  Maybe I should subscribe to Paste again.  This song isn’t very good, however.  Sound Of Your Voice.  I don’t like the sound of the singer’s voice.  It sounds like he is playing a joke on me or something.  Their music is better when they talk really fast, although I’ve been to too many volleyball games to listen to One Week anymore.  Volleyball warmups really drove that song into the ground (no pun intended).

24. Someone should sell an alarm clock with The Beastie Boys’s Electrify as the alarm.  That song gets me really excited.

25. What do you think will happen to Coldplay?  I checked out after Parachutes, but it turns out a few people still like them.  I guess it’s easy to crank out a different variation of the same soft rock album and get paid for it.

26. Dire Straits are awesome.

27. Did Embrace ever do anything after Out of Nothing?  Would it be called Back to Nothing?  Maybe they can get Chris Martin to write them another song, or they could become a Coldplay tribute band.  Everybody likes tribute bands.

28. I’ve regretted my Enya Shepherd Moons purchase ever since I made it.  I don’t know why I even specified the album.

29. There it is. The Way was on Now 1.

Note to self: when in the Philippines, stay away from coffee. http://ow.ly/1EvfW