They were all in love with dying

#954 - Pepper :: Butthole Surfers

“I don’t mind the sun sometimes,
the images it shows.
I can taste you on my lips,
and smell you in my clothes.
Cinnamon and sugary,
and softly spoken lies.
You never know just how you look,
through other people’s eyes.”

This song has always felt like two songs in one to me. The verses remind me of The Jim Carroll Band’s song ‘People Who Died’ - laundry list of people and tragedies, and the sound/style of it. And then the chorus kicks in, a bit of melodic poetry, and a change of mood/feeling from tragedy to a kind of beauty.

This song reminds me of the late 90’s, the writing I was doing then, the place I was somewhat stuck at in my life. It wasn’t exactly a happy time, not at all, but there was a electric kind of spark to what I was creating - I suppose the rough edges of days will do that to you - will bring out the art.

This was one of my favorite songs at the time, and I still love it - especially the chorus - and the line “you’ll never know just how you look through other people’s eyes.”

My heart is blue

#955 - Rock & Roll Queen :: The Subways

“You are the sun,
you are the only one.
You are so cool,
you are so rock and roll.”

This song seems designed for movies, for action scenes, for screaming at the top of your lungs, for driving fast in the middle of the night in the desert towards Las Vegas, for past 3am after hour clubs with dark hallways, and for really hot nights with some kind of lover.

It just feels like sex, drugs and rock-and-roll - cliches aside (or included) - all wrapped up in a song. And, I mean that as a damn good thing.

I’d also include this song in a list of best movie scenes utilizing music (in a non-musical movie) for the use of this song in RocknRolla…it is a brilliant blending of music and film…truly.

Give you some songs & sunshine

#956 - All In My Mind :: Love & Rockets

“So, just give me an hour,
I’ll show you how you feel.”

This song reminds me of a certain summer - the people I hung around with, the things we did, and the music that played. It was kohl black eyeliner, late nights turned to mornings at various parks around the valley, long boots and dark dance floors, and cherry sour kisses.

I still have a case full of mixed tapes from that summer. Sometimes I like to pull them out and look through them, read off the tracklists and remember what that time felt like. I need to get my hands on a cassette player again, one of these days, so I can give them a listen.

Though Earth, Moon, Sun is my all-time favorite Love and Rockets album, I do love Express quite a lot, and it is more memory-loaded for me.

This is one of the bands that I’ve never seen live that I really, really wish I had.

Liz Taylor is not his style

#957 - My Baby Just Cares For Me :: Nina Simone

“My baby don’t care who knows,
my baby just cares for me.”

In the middle of the night, or maybe it was closer to very early morning, I sat in a Las Vegas casino and discussed music with someone I’d just met. There was all this noise all around us, the clanging of change spitting out of slot machines, the jangly machines themselves, the buzz and hum of the clusters and crowds, and yet it seemed like it was only the two of us there, talking.

Somehow the discussion of love songs came up, and our ideas of what would make the perfect love song. This was the song he chose. He said the song felt like that kind of feeling you get when you first fall for someone, and how, for a moment, everything disappears, or matters less, except for that other person.

A day or two later we ran into each other again, and as we walked off together, he started humming this. It was one of those moments that seem insignificant, but later, on recollection, meant something.

I love when music becomes interwoven in a memory, and adds to the significance of a moment.

Call my baby lollipop

#958 - Lollipop :: The Chordettes

“Lollipop, lollipop.
Oh lolli, lolli, lolli.”

Anytime I hear this song I’m immediately transported to a much, much younger version of me, probably age five or six, singing-a-long with my Mom to this song. We are in our old light blue Oldsmobile, a glass bottle of Coke passed between us, being “sharing friends”.

For awhile, growing up, this was my nickname and my Mom would often say/sing “Oh lolli, lolli, lolli” to me.

Hearing it, anytime, makes me feel like a little girl again.

Its tangled up with me

#959 - Trouble :: Coldplay

"I never meant to cause you trouble."

I will preface this by saying that yes, I do like Coldplay. I like them enough that a few of their songs made this list. I will also say that I truly do not understand the overwhelming hatred of this band. So be it, though, I like them and I'm not one to apologize for what I like.

Parachutes, the album that this song comes from, came out the year I was married for the second time. It was also the year that I moved out of state for the first time. It was the year that I took risks and made big changes, which in hindsight were not my best choices, but as with much else in my life, I do not regret.

It was such a vivid time in my life though, and as always, music was right there with me, connecting the scenes, and singing-a-long with me. I remember the first time I heard this song as if it were yesterday.

I think it was one of the albums the two of us bought before we took off for Salt Lake City. I remember it playing in the basement of the house we were moving into, the room a clutter of boxes to unpack, and that sort of excitement and overwhelm that new starts are full of.

We were a new start then, too.

The song, listening now, it was very fitting for all of it.

At the edge of the ocean

#960 - Edge of the Ocean :: Ivy

"We can begin again.
Shed our skin, let the sun shine in."

I have a long-standing love affair with the ocean, one that is fully realized and requited, and that never falters even when I’ve drifted far away for spells, living farther away then I ever really care to be.

I’ve written stories set at the edge of the ocean. I’ve had my own stories right there on the sand. I’ve had my heart broken by the sea, and I’ve healed by its side, as well. I’ve fallen in love, fallen apart, and fallen into good and bad things, up and down the coast. Through it all, though, I do not regret a thing.

Like music, the ocean is one of my true loves forever.

I'm gonna chase the sky forever

#961 - Silver Stallion :: Cat Power

"I'm gonna find me a reckless man,
razor blades and dice in his eyes.
Just a touch of sadness in his fingers,
thunder and lightening in his thighs."

I have a musical crush on Chan Marshall's voice. It is a little bit rough, with a slight sting to it, like a shot of whiskey late at night at some anonymous dive bar. It is a bit sweet, with a sensual slur to it, like early morning kisses that start out tentative, but lead elsewhere eventually.

And this song? it is filled with stories just waiting to be written. it feels like a life ready to be lived, chomping at the bit, clanging a set of keys together impatiently waiting to go. It is heart-racing, skin-prickling, delicious moments that you will always remember, the kind of times you whisper to your best friend, or confess to the pages of a locked diary.

And when the hardest part is over we’ll be here

Really loving the new song, and looking forward to the release his solo album.

After watching this, and quite a few of The Killers videos, as well as seeing him live - I think I'd like to see him try his hand at acting in a film.

I know it is terribly cliche to have musician turn actor, and vice versa, but I think he has something.

Before you slip into unconsciousness

#962 - The Crystal Ship :: The Doors

“The days are bright,
and filled with pain,
enclose me in your gentle rain.”

When I was 19 I fell in love with Jim Morrison, and The Doors.

I’m pretty sure my Mom found it amusing, at the time, since she’d been such a huge fan of them herself, at about the same age, if not a wee bit younger.

I remember watching VHS tapes of The Doors live at the Hollywood Bowl, and a behind-the-scenes documentary, listening to their albums pretty much non-stop, and reading books of Jim’s poetry. Then the film came out a few years later, when I was 22, and I fell again.

Sometimes I think their music is just a little part of my bloodstream, passed through from my Mom, and her love of their music.

This has always been one of my favorites of their songs…I love it, and still do.

Dark hair thrown back in wild abandon

Sneak peek at something good...

Bubblegum :: Clinic

Clinic's new album is set to be released October 5, 2010. Bubblegum, same title as the sample track above, is said to be a "rewiring" of the Liverpool quartet's frenetic sound, as heard on the 2002 album Walking With Thee, and the 2008 album Do It.

Bubblegum (the album) is said to take a leap beyond the churning riffs and wired vocals to a more dreamlike side of the musical landscape, with the help of dulcimers, tack piano and strings.

Bubblegum (the song) reminds me of the well-read, and ear-marked pages, of a Summer read that you cannot seem to put down. Steamy in a slightly subtle way, indie without being full of its own self, and very sensual sounding. I listen, close my eyes, and can almost picture a Sofia Coppola helmed film flickering across a screen - an off-kilter love story, this song trilling softly in the background of a slightly awkward first time.

I definitely look forward to hearing more.

They're no fun at all

#963 - Here Come Cowboys :: The Psychedelic Furs

“It really gets to be a drag,
when all we really need is love.”

Every so often there is a song from my past that I’ve completely forgotten about. A song that slipped into the ether of put away albums, and never quite part of the quintessential era music.

I love The Psychedelic Furs for many different reasons, and for many of their albums and songs.

Some are so known, and in some ways so over-played, yet they are still some of my favorite songs (see Pretty In Pink, Love My Way, Heaven, Heartbreak Beat, Ghost In You).

And then, there are a few that perhaps were not so well-known, but still make my list of oh my stars I love that song.

There is an HD radio station that I listen to sometimes in my car, especially during long commutes, which plays nothing but “alternative 80’s music”. It was on this station, on a recent early morning listen, that this song came on and I was both taken aback, and delighted.

Mirror Moves may have been my most-played, and probably my favorite album of theirs, and one I’m now wanting to listen to, in its entirety. Love it.

I'm gonna say it again

#964 - You’re No Good (live) :: Linda Ronstadt

“I learned my lesson, it left a scar,
now I see how you really are.”

Another cover song that has made it on my list, this is the version that I know, and love (though the original is quite good, but more on the lines of a new discovery to me). Linda’s version is the one I have memories attached to, and remember singing-a-long to.

My Aunt had a collection of albums and 8-tracks that I would listen to whenever I’d visit, especially during the long visits I’d make to my Grandparents’ house (where she lived) over some of my childhood Summer vacations. I used to turn this song up and do the hairbrush as a microphone into the mirror performance - a lot.

I ended up with the sheet music sometime during one of those Summers, and learned to play it on my Grandmother’s organ, albeit a bit of a slowed-down version.

Years later, when I was nineteen, a boyfriend of mine told me I reminded me of a 70’s era Linda Ronstadt, and cited this song, and era of her look.

At the time Linda was better known for her soft/adult contemporary hits, her soundtrack song from the animated An American Tale, and her work with Aaron Neville, and laughed and shook their heads at the comparison.

But I knew this version of Linda, the one he meant, so I took it as a compliment. I remembered thinking she was “rockin”, strong, and pretty damn awesome.