The Lists

Inspired by an e-mail from Raj that asked "what's on your mix tape right now?", I've been e-mailing my friends Raj and Soman on a fairly regular basis, sending them my lists of songs-currently-playing i.e. what I'm listening to in my room, whether on CD, vinyl, or MP3. Because music reflects something about my current state of mind. (For those of you wondering why there isn't as much house music here, keep in mind that this is stuff I listen to while doing work, and it is fairly distracting to want to get up and dance.) Here's the lists, plus some commentary on the songs, or general thoughts on music.

 

27 Sept 2000: It All Begins

29 Sept 2000: Melancholy Baby

3 Oct 2000: Best of Wuss Rock

10 Oct 2000: Songs I Learnt From the Silver Screen

11 Oct 2000: Mr Sng Regrets; or Songs I Learnt From the Boob Tube

14 Oct 2000: Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone

15 Oct 2000: Top 10 Songs About Telling Somone You're in Love With Her

22 Oct 2000: In the Aftermath of a Soppy Movie Binge

22 Oct 2000: Childhood Ditties

25 Oct 2000: Class of 1996

26 Nov 2000: One Hit Wonders

7 Jan 2001: What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

18 Jan 2001: Build Me Up Buttercup

19 Jan 2001: First In, Last Out

18 Feb 2001: Hooray For Hollywood! Da-da-da-da-da-Hollywood!

 

27 Sept 2000

i dont actually make a mix tape since it would probably be way too long for just one tape. but i keep a constant list. this month i'm really into 70s soul and brazilian stuff, plus i'm in a lot of mood swings.

the two groups i'm really listening to a lot of this month are nuyorican soul and the roots. and i'm starting a trainspotters website where people list where songs get samples from.

29 Sept 2000

new list of songs i'm listening to just because i change about every 3 days.... (well, okay a lot of stuff rolls over, but you know, with 600 CDs and 27 hours of MP3 on my hard drive alone i feel i need to keep turnover fast)

melancholy, baby, eh? i'm a bundle of emotions.

3 Oct 2000

what would make your "best of wuss rock" compilation? (wuss rock being a simpsons reference.) i'm thinking of making one, if only because 80s wuss rock always reminds me of childhood. here's my list of naff AOR songs i secretly like (which is the criterion that excludes air supply or hall and oates):

10 Oct 2000

... here's my list of favourite songs as introduced to me by soundtracks. not comprehensive, but fairly long:

i know, it's not a very exciting list of movies i got the songs from. my favourite soundtrack at the moment is the saturday night fever one, but as my parents sang or played virtually every song of that soundtrack to me in my youth, i can't say i was really 'introduced' to those songs. same applies to the graduate soundtrack, although that truly is an amazing work of art. and the "i heard it before" part applies to "california dreaming" off the chungking express soundtrack or "a town called malice" off the high fidelity soundtrack or "happy together" off the happy together soundtrack. or, in another language, "tian mi mi" off the comrades almost a love story soundtrack.

it's a fine line... it's hard for me not to recognise a song, so it's got to be a song that's pleasantly surprising. either that or i have to have watched the movie early in my youth, which is the case with 'sweet caroline'.

the buena vista social club songs don't really count, i think. and i'm excluding songs that were released so early as singles you already knew them when you watched the show. and i'm excluding TV soundtracks, so no Melrose Place soundtrack, which has such a good range of songs i'm stunned, including Aimee Mann's "that's just what you are". I'm also excluding "Earth Angel" since i vaguely remember first hearing it on the throwaway TV movie of the same name, not on the Back to the Future soundtrack.

11 Oct 2000

i forgot these in my original list:

and i'm wondering whether "also sprach zarathustra" from 2001 counts. the thing is i've probably heard more music and seen less movies than you so like i said it's hard to get "introduced" to a song via a movie, especially since my movie taste tends towards the mainstream artsy or silly romantic comedies. aimee mann's 'one' is sort of an iffy one using that criterion, since it's a cover of a song i knew before. same with fiona apple's 'across the universe', but that's a great choice, i'd forgotten about it.

i'm more interested actually in songs that are old ones (the kinks one on rushmore is gorgeous) that are reinvigorated or given a new context by a movie, rather than new soundtrack songs, although 'baby did a bad thing' is great. [the use of 'unchained melody' in Ghost doesn't quite make the cut, however. neither does 'rolling with the homies' in Clueless, although it's quite funny there.]

an interesting thing to note (and i've said it before) is that the version of Mrs Robinson in the Graduate the movie has Simon and Garfunkel singing lyrics not on the album.

'god only knows' is among my favorite choices of songs used in soundtracks, but which i'd heard before i saw the movie. same applies to chris isaak's 'wicked game' (on 'wild at heart', no?), U2's "all i want is you" and Lisa Loeb's "stay" (off reality bites), and stevie wonder's "i believe" is great great great great great. i've become quite the wonder convert (a wonder boy?), i think i'd been avoiding him because of the mental associations with 'i just called to say i love you' but listening to 'my cherie amour', 'another star', and 'isn't she lovely' along with 'i believe', i'm just really moved. (there also exist art garfunkel and sergio mendes versions of 'i believe'; the mendes is fairly cheesy but the garfunkel one is cool.)

so besides "Earth Angel", here's songs I was introduced to via TV:

that's part of the incentive of watching closed captioning: good closed captioners tell you the names of songs playing.

14 Oct 2000

15 Oct 2000

top 10 songs that involve some sort of revelation that a person is interested in another and wants some sort of response back:

top 3 love-for-a-person-from-a-distance songs:

 best song about mixed signals: paul westerberg, "dyslexic heart"

22 Oct 2000

22 Oct, Redux

ooh. cute guy, stuck in the middle of nowhere, delivering a baby... Dr T and the Women is really Doc Hollywood!!

john waters has this great quote on "mom and dad", a 1940s film, calling it one of the most subversive films ever because in the 1940s the only way to show female nudity in a movie was to show a live birth, so they did... and according to waters men would go to the cinema just to see the nude woman, ignoring the fact that a baby was coming out of her.

you didn't fall for coldplay's "yellow"? that's interesting, i thought that would have appealed to you. Kid A was the first Brit album in 3 years to top both the US and UK album charts, apparently that's some sort of record for non-trans-Atlantic exchanges. i think, to make generalisations, british rock at the moment tends towards more irony and more folksy sounds (hence blur think of "song 2" as their american sound). and i honestly think the simple fact that the jam (and perhaps the kinks) were so influential may have something to do with this divergence.

i love the choices you gave, by the way. "me and my arrow"... if i had equipment i'd sample the bassline, you're right.

oh, i forgot one song on my list: sophie b. hawkins, "damn i wish i was your lover"... i'll ignore the non-use of the subjunctive in the title since the song just drips sex and longing, two things i think about all the time.

and if we're talking about country i like: k.d. lang's "Absolute Torch and Twang" album is great, as is Shelby Lynne's "I Am Shelby Lynne". but the most recent 'country' song i've heard is Parton and Rogers doing Islands in the Stream...

here's another list that's interesting to me: i have memories of my dad or mum singing these songs to me as a child. i've been trying to see if it's influenced my own personal taste. i think my knowledge of 50s, 60s, and 70s music has gone far beyond theirs though. and they find it really funny that i'm into stuff that even they think of as 'oldies'... andy williams, tony bennett, dean martin etc.

 

yo no soy marinero (or something like that),

daryl

25 Oct 2000

the last few songs being a sort of nostalgia for 1995 and 1996, my only two years of pre-college coed education.

i was pondering the brit-question so i thought of the bands i listened to in my teenage days. then i realised in the early 1990s these were what i listened to: nirvana, pearl jam, REM, the gin blossoms, a whole raft of seattle bands, the breeders, and green day. (although arguably green day does have a brit-inspired sound, as high fidelity cleverly points out. i can't believe they got to talk about stiff little fingers in the movie!!) the brit thing only came later, with oasis, suede, pulp, blur, and elastica. hmm. maybe there's a raw indie sound music that i'm attracted to in rock.

you know what i want to make a documentary about? there was this movement in the north of england in the 70s called the northern soul movement, where people would gather in clubs and do the usual club stuff - dance, pop pills, drink etc. etc. but the interesting part is the music they played... they were interested in motown songs or songs that sounded like that, but not just regular motown, they wanted songs that were obscure. so they valourised hard-to-find songs (dean parrish's "i'm on my way")... everyone who was ever part of the whole movement obsesses about it - paul weller of the jam writes about it as the last gasp of the mod movement - but because it was so far from london, then as now the epicentre of the music scene in the UK, it was never really noticed. oral histories exist, as do a few books, but it's never been on film.

7 Jan 2001

The list, for the moment, a combination of torch songs, 60s pop, Motown, and Britrock, plus some others:

18 Jan 2001

incidentally, while i dislike the austin powers movies, i think mike myers has a sharp ear for music of a particular time period, well either that or his liverpudlian mum thought him how to choose the music. the austin powers soundtracks are good at marking the songs that are v. much britain in the 60s...

 

plus covers i like:

19 Jan 2001

best (or at least interesting) original versions of songs that people tend to forget are cover versions:

 

 

18 Feb 2001

Some thoughts on soundtracks.