What Becomes of All the Little Monsters Who Run Away From Home?

The Internet is, as we keep learning over and over again, so big that anything you can think of already exists on it.

For example, someone has already made two videos lipsynching Cookie Monster to Tom Waits songs, and here's the new one, Hell Broke Luce." (If salty language offends you, don't click. For that matter, if gravelly-voiced singers offend you, ditto.)

Oscar the Grouch would seem to be the natural Muppet soulmate for Waits, but there's clearly a strong case to be made for the CM here.

Things Tom Waits Has Taught Me

"Don't you know there ain't no Devil; that's just God when he's drunk."
 - "Heartattack & Vine"

"There's a lot of things in this world that you're gonna have no use for. And when you get blue, and you've lost all your dreams, there's nothin' like a campfire and a can of beans!"
 - "Lucky Day"

"The women all control the men with razors and with wrists."
 - "In the Colosseum"

"If you want money in your pocket and a top hat on your head, a hot meal on your table and a blanket on your bed, well, today is grey skies, tomorrow is tears. You'll have to wait 'til yesterday is here."
 - "Yesterday Is Here"

"All the good in the world you can put inside a thimble and still have room for you and me."
 - "Misery Is the River of the World"

 "So what's become of the little boys who run away from home? The world just keeps gettin' bigger, once you get out on your own."
  -  "On the Nickel"

"Uncle Biltmore and Uncle William made a million during World War Two. But they're tightwads, and they're cheapskates, and they'll never give a dime to you."
 - "Cemetary Polka"

"And all the rooms they smell like diesel and you take on the dreams of the ones who have slept here. ... And the girl behind the counter has a tattooed tear -- "One for every year he's away," she said. Such a crumbling beauty, ah there's nothing wrong with her that a hundred dollars won't fix."
 - "9th & Hennepin"

 "They're alive, they're awake while the rest of the world is asleep. Below the mine shaft roads it will all unfold. There's a world going on underground."
 - "Underground"



And, most importantly:

"Nothin' else matters in this whole wide world when you're in love with a Jersey girl."

Free Music I Like and Think You Will Too

NoiseTrade offers a lot of free music -- usually samplers or live EPs -- but occasionally there's a full album up there. Now is one of those times.

The entire debut album of Kate Tucker & the Sons of Sweden -- quiet, melodic depressing music, the kind I love -- is available, along with two tracks from their upcoming new album and two live cuts, all in a single package and all utterly without costs (unless you feel like tipping).

Need I repeat this is all free? All you need is an e-mail address, and it's yours. There's no deal better than that.

Josh Ritter, Live and Free

I've blogged about Josh Ritter -- a great modern singer/songwriter who both writes killer songs like "The Temptation of Adam," "Rattling Locks," "Harrisburg," and "Girl in the War" and leads a great rocking band to deliver those songs with grace, style, and pure heart-of-rock-and-roll power -- several times before. (He's also that guy who was on Letterman last night, if you need an immediately cultural reference.)

But I know I like to discover music by listening to it on my own terms -- I download a lot of free stuff so it comes up on my iPod and elsewhen, and so I'm not as interested in streaming music that I can't take and live with for a while. And maybe you're like me, too.

Well, now you can grab a big handful of really good Josh Ritter stuff -- the entire live album Live at the Iveagh Gardens -- which recorded a great show at a unique venue in Dublin, where Ritter has a strong, enthusiastic following. This is a double album, folks -- those of you as old as me will know what that means -- with well over an hour and a half of great live music by one of today's smartest and thoughtful artists. And you can get that for free!

But wait! That's not all! (Imagine this in your best smarmy-late-night-infomercial voice.)

The free version of Live at the Iveagh Gardens also includes two songs from his new album, The Beast in Its Tracks, including the lovely first single "Joy to You Baby."

It comes via NoiseTrade, so you know it's all legit. And it probably won't be there forever, so get it now.

In the Spirit of the Season

Hey! I just discovered that the Dollyrots' wonderfully snotty "Valentine's Day" is available, right now, for free on NoiseTrade!



Grab it and enjoy it.

And then, if you like it, I'd recommend their middle record, Because I'm Awesome, because it is -- particularly the title song and their cover of "Brand New Key."

Speaking of that, I had to tell The Wife that "Brand New Key" was entirely an extended metaphor for sex recently -- I thought everyone had gotten that memo by now.... 

Yo Momma

Since I've been too filled with ennui to write much about the books I've read recently, let me instead tell you about my favorite band of the moment. Say Hi -- originally Say Hi To Your Mom -- is one of those one-guy bands, in which a dude (it's usually a dude) does all of the instruments and vocals himself into an Tascam or a Mac in his room. In this case, the guy is Eric Elbogen, and Say Hi (To Your Mom) has released seven records over the past ten years.

It's somewhat droning music, rock-based songs that usually stick within a specific sonic range and form a solid hedge of sound, and I find his best songs sneak into your ear and stay there for a long time. The vocals tend to be buried a bit, so Elbogen's voice is another instrument rather than floating on top, and the lyrics are allusive and hermetic, usually circling around topics rather than saying things explicitly.

The song I'm currently obsessed with is "Hooplas Involving Circus Tricks," the closest Say Hi comes to the obligatory what-it's-like-on-tour song, from the 2004 Say Hi To Your Mom record Numbers & Mumbles:


The first Say Hi song I fell in love with is the odd love song "Maurine," from 2009's Oohs & Aahs, which might just be from the point of view of a ghost:


And the song I'm most fascinated with is "November Was White, December Was Grey," in which Elbogen's breathing punctuates the song, also from Oohs & Aahs:


You don't have to like 'em, but I do: so there.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...

To help you get into the festive mood of the season, NoiseTrade have made available one of the great Christmas albums -- Over's the Rhine's 2006 Snow Angels -- absolutely free.

Now, you can leave a tip -- I know I paid for that record when I got it a few years back, and it was well worth it -- but you don't have to; you can get it for absolutely nuttin', if you want.

And I do recommend you check it out -- if you're not sure, listen to "Darlin' (Christmas Is Coming)"  and "Here It Is" for the joyful side and "Snow Angel" and "All I Ever Get for Christmas Is Blue" for the other persuasion. It's a great record, it's perfectly apropos right now, and it's completely free.

Hey -- you can listen to all of the songs right in this here widget, without even clicking off to NoiseTrade. C'mon, I can't coddle you any more than that, can I?

Why I Am Not a Hollywood Mogul

Because I am befuddled that this song -- Fountains of Wayne's cover of the Kinks tune "Better Things" -- hasn't been used as the end-credits anthem of any movie yet.

I may have already made this point once, but it bears making again -- this song is perfectly crafted for such a use, and that lack is glaring. C'mon, Hollywood, get it together!

An Immediate Change of Mood

Now that I've brought you all down, let's change things up a bit.

My favorite Elizabeth Cook song -- and the one I heard first -- is this funny, funky ode to a '70s icon:

The Saddest Song I've Heard This Year

Elizabeth Cook's "Heroin Addict Sister," which is far more country than I usually listen to -- but it's old-fashioned country, the kind about heartbreak and family and hard times, not flag-waving and pickups and drinking with your bros.

So this is just in case your Saturday is a little too happy:

David Koresh Superstar

Right this very second, I'm listening to "I Am Koresh," from the excellent rock opera David Koresh Superstar by the indispensable UK band The Indelicates.

There's the cover, which gives you an idea of the puckish spirit behind it. And let's see if I can embed any of it, so you can hear it -- it's actually a real rock opera, and a very good one, about Koresh, the siege at Waco, and related matters. (The only serious criticism I could have is that the British accents make it all slightly surreal.)

This below Amazon widget should let you preview all of the songs on the record; you can also go to The Indelicates' Audio page for previews of several David Koresh Superstar songs and some others from their earlier records -- including "Savages," which is utterly wonderful:
Five stars. Hornswoggler says check it out.

Pointless Numbers

Poking through iTunes this afternoon, I found that I've got 4826 songs that I've never [1] listened to, totaling fourteen days and just short of 17 hours. (There's an entire Ring cycle in there, plus a lot of other classical music I was listening to a lot more a decade ago.)

Of course, that still leaves 18,822 songs I have listened to (up to a hundred times, in one case -- iTunes is lovely for someone as obsessed with utterly pointless metrics as I am), so I don't feel too bad.

The good thing about all of that, of course, is that I have no reason at all to get sick of any song or singer any time soon -- I have 847 songs (nearly two and a half days worth) just tagged "depressing."

No, there's no purpose to any of this -- I just like poking at the numbers and decided to share. Hope you're doing something equally as pleasant this fine Saturday.


[1] "Never," here, means "since late 2003, when I had to re-import the entire library after a disk crash." Still, nine years is a long time.

Today Needs Some Feedback and Fuzzy Guitars

I have no idea what this song is about, and I'm still listening to the rest of the album it's on -- not sure yet what I like and don't like.

This song, however -- it's "Infinity Guitars" by Sleigh Bells -- sounds like the fight song for that high school on the bad side of town you do not want to mess with, and I'm currently playing it at least once a day:

My Current Zen Koan

"Can't escape from yourself unless you don't run."

(From the Cloud Cult song "The Exploding People")

My Favorite Song on That Record Is....

I don't know if anyone else has this experience, but I find that the records I really like -- the ones that stick with me for months, and that I come back to years later -- are ones where I get into a couple of the songs to begin with, but then, after a while, start liking completely different songs better.

It's a sign of impressive depth, I suppose: that the songs that don't grab you immediately are still lurking in the background of your brain, ready to burble up when you're ready for them.

I mention this because I've been listening to Cloud Cult's 2010 record Light Chasers a lot recently -- incessantly in the car for a few days, and then I take a break, and go back to it for another few days -- with "recently" meaning about the last six months. And the song I love the most right now is "The Exploding People," which I recently discovered has a wonderful video. And, hey!, I've got a blog, so I might as well share that with you folks, right?

This Year's Playlist for Thing One's Birthday Trip

Every year since at least 2008, we've gone to Great Wolf Lodge -- this one, out in the Poconos near New York and Philly -- for Thing One's birthday, to swim and do family stuff for a couple of days in lieu of a big party with other kids. (Because what fourteen-year-olds -- and ten/eleven-year-olds before them -- really want is a big kid birthday party thrown for them by their parents!)

I've also created a playlist and burned it to a CD for each of those years, and I thought I'd been sharing some of those playlists (I also do 'em for the big summer trip to Hershey Park, and other occasions) here. This may not precisely be true, but, if I do it now, it can always start a tradition.

It also lets me play with Amazon widgets, which is always fun. And, this time around, only one of the songs on the "Great Wolf 2012" playlist -- "Blood Red Blood" by The Ettes, which should be at #3 of 23 on this one -- was unavailable for widgetizing. So here's most of what we were listening to in the car on the way back home earlier today:

There's Any Such Thing As Grieving

I've made no attempts to be topical here, so I don't feel a need to comment on specific news stories when they come around. (Editorial Explanations is my spot for politics, anyway, and even there the point is to illuminate the slant rather than the truth.)

But the story of that unlucky, murdered young man Trayvon Martin keeps coming up, and it keeps reminding me -- reminding all of us, I hope -- that we're not as post-racial and tolerant and balanced and upright as we like to think we are. Sure, it's never fair to extrapolate from one story, but this one is so reminiscent of so many other stories.

And what it keeps reminding me of, is this quintessentially sad song by Sinead O'Connor, about another dead black boy -- under completely different circumstances, of course, except for being pursued by men convinced that a black man couldn't possibly be as innocent as he actually was -- and how there's always another death to remind us that things don't really change: