1. They’re in a commercial. You know I hate this, I really do. On rare occasions where it’s a song I don’t often get to hear, I’m momentarily too glad to have that chance to be too angry about it. More often, I am indignant and pissed off. This is one of those times. Yes means a lot to me (more on this later) and hearing their songs pimped for… I don’t know (ha! Take that! I don’t even know what you’re advertising!) just enrages me. All I know is, it’s “I’ve Seen All Good People” and they play it a lot during the baseball playoffs, along with that stupid Avis copy copy copy commercial.

2. I’ve switched away from box dot net to something far easier! It’s lala.com. Lala is a music “rental” site that allows you to hear any song once and after that, you can pay 10 cents to hear it any time. You can also buy mp3′s at good prices but I can already do that other places. They also allow you to “upload” your own music so the music you already have and the music you’ve paid 10 cents apiece for lives together. I put the quotey marks there because you needn’t actually upload, it just matches the song against what it already has on its servers and then allows you access.

They gave me 25 free songs and I have put together an awesome playlist. I won’t show it to you now but the point is, you can put widgets on your site even for songs you don’t own or rent, so no more need for box dot net which forced me to upload my own music and also let people swipe it if they were clever enough. You can imagine that that sort of bothered me; there are too many clever people out there.

The widget says you can only hear the song once, but it let me hear it again, so I’m not sure about that one. But bottom line: I don’t have to upload anything and there are no limits on total file size so bring on the ten minute songs!

3. I mentioned Yes means a lot to me and like most things, it’s because they remind me of my childhood. Sister2 was a giant Yes fan and I used to borrow all her LP records. Later, in a more jokey way, they remind me of my college experience because my roommate and I could agree on only two bands: the Beatles and Yes. By listening to my CD’s she became this hugh jass Yes fan (we even saw Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, and Howe together at Merriwether Post Pavilion) eclipsing anything I ever felt. Wowzah. We both liked to go to sleep to music and, sharing a room, let’s just say I ended up listening to Classic Yes so often that the opening track, “Heart of the Sunrise,” will put me to sleep faster than you can say Pavlov’s dog.

The other reason I listened to so much Yes in college was because I have this problem with studying; I find it hard to do to music but other noise distracts me. This may seem odd in light of the fact that I worked to music, I fall asleep to music, I run to music, and I generally walk around with an iPod glued to my eardrum. But those are events that only take half my attention and so I need music. Music is never background noise to me; it takes a bunch of my attention. So I like it on the subway or while doing a spreadsheet or falling asleep (so my thoughts don’t race away) but while studying I need my entire brain. Besides Classical (yes, I said Classical), the only music I can study to is Yes. It has long instrumental passages that meander away and let me think. I was reminded of this tonight while the middle-aged gay couple downstairs were celebrating the end of “Don’t Ask Don’t tell” by having a knock-down-drag-out fight while I was attempting a particularly dense reading about Instructional Design. Thank goodness for Tales From Topographic Oceans! They just don’t make double albums with one song per side like they used to. Except The Mars Volta.

So, this is all to say that it’s the perfect time for Yes. This is my favorite Yes song and always has been. It’s got lots of parts, which is typical of Yes songs, but it’s the pathos mixed with a calm sort of hope that I like best. And, as always, there is Jon Anderson, the greatest voice in pop music ever. Sorry, I will not debate this.

Take it away, Lala!

Napster:
Yes – And You And I

So, record labels and artist management, consider this your request letter.

Not since Kashmir…. oh, I really can’t get away with this. But seriously, Blancmange were such a genius band for combining Middle Eastern melodies with synth pop. Why are they not on the major download services?????

I don’t know why no songs from this band are available (they were my example about how to import cassettes into mp3′s, that’s how desperate I am) but this is my true favorite of theirs. It’s so gentle and pretty. This guy knew how to write a tune. And look like a butch gay woman.

I saved the best for last. This was a side project of Michael Hutchence of INXS and much more political than his stuff there. SO good. Why, label, why? I can’t be the only person who still remembers this song.

So there you have it. These would have been the iPod songs of the week… if only.

I like several songs like this, the two that come to mind are epic tracks made up of something like four songs, Yes’ “And You And I” and Matthew Sweet’s “Thunderstorm.” Speaking of the minutes dragging, both clock in at about ten minutes. Then there’s Elton John’s “Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” which is over eleven and it’s only two songs. I don’t know why artists do this, but I find it very cool.

Anyway, this is from Love and Rockets’ first album and I love the build of it, and how it flows from tight to loose and the space just expands. And there’s no need to wonder what exactly the singer is haunted by. For the record, it’s: your soul, your hair, your clothes, your eyes, your voice, your smile, and your mouth. The word that would best describe this feeling, why, that would be, haunted.

Streaming audio:

Napster:
Love and Rockets – Haunted, When The Minutes Drag

This post is actually a preface to a later one which I’ll write when I’m not utterly exhausted. I went back to Baltimore this weekend and had a great, if intense time. Someone asked recently on a forum about going back to your old house. Well, you might remember that I haven’t had an old house until recently so of course I haven’t. But this weekend I realize I do go back, and I did. That house is several houses and they’re all in Baltimore. In hindsight, though, I wonder if I would have burst into tears upon stepping off the train onto the platform at Penn Station there, had this particular song not been playing on my iPod. Probably, but maybe not in those sort of sobs that make people look at you. What? Have they never seen someone who was that happy to see Baltimore before?

Streaming audio:

Napster:
Sarah McLachlan – Vox

But this song was a balm to me, so soothing as to still make my troubles dim when I hear it. I’ve listened to it a lot this year. The “when I was a kid” part comes from the fact that I think some of the appeal to me stems from the sound of the song, which reminds me of the sort of music my older siblings were listening to in the mid-70′s. I was lucky enough to have the sort of childhood where being reminded of it makes me feel safe, secure, and worry-free. Listening to this makes me think of my sister driving me down a dirt road in Dutchess County to get late night ice cream at the Red Rooster. But even if that’s not what soft 70′s music represents for you, I think you’ll still find this song peaceful and mind-resting.

And if you don’t usually bother listening to the iPod Song of the Week because my taste is not your taste, give it a try, This one’s different.

Streaming audio:

Napster:
Fleet Foxes – Blue Ridge Mountains

Still reading? OK. When I was a kid, I wrote a song, lyrics only. I’m sure it was crappy, I was probably in 6th or 7th grade, but I really felt as a person who listened to at least thirty songs a day that I could do this. And so I did. I gave it to a friend of mine (I have no idea why) and her mother, who was a piano teacher, wanted to put it to music. It was going to be a lovely piano tune and so I said no. You see, it was all about the Rock ‘n Roll, man. Yeah!

I remembered this story this week when I was looking through the exciting database of scanned Billboard magazines on Google. I used to read this magazine every freaking week back in the day. Ironically, now that I’m at a label, I never do. Maybe I see all the same stuff on the Internet anyway. But in re-reading, I’ve come across lots of interesting things and, of course, there’s lots of looking back at the past through the present lens (CD’s will last forever! Music sales increase every year! The Internet will be our salvation!) and snickering,

I wonder what would happen if one day I was listening to the radio and I heard my awful 6th grade lyrics in some hit tune. How weird would that be? Of course, I don’t even remember the lyrics but work with me here. Because this did happen to someone and when I read about the lawsuit (in a 1995 issue) I sat bolt upright. Because this song, my favorite UB40 song ever, has the stupidest, most simplistic lyrics you could imagine. I felt no surprise at all knowing they were not written by someone who made a living writing songs. In fact, I always assumed UB40 had written them because, as we all know, UB40′s stock in trade is remaking other people’s songs, probably because their songwriting skills were on the level of this number.

So why did I love it? Well, of course there was the catchy melody and gentle reggae lilt, but really, when you’re 14 years old, lyrics like these just appeal to you:

You shoot me down in flames
You put me down a lot
I’m giving you my heart
Go on take it
Please be careful
Not to break it
Just remember it’s the only one I’ve got
It’s the only one I’ve got

Don’t break my heart
Don’t break my heart
Don’t break my heart

You make me laugh a lot
And buy me silly things
I’d rather be with you
Than anyone else
But if you make me mad
But if you make me mad
You’ll wish that you had not
You’ll wish that you had not

Don’t break my heart
Don’t break my heart
Don’t break my heart

Right. Yeats it is not. Actually, it was written by a secretary from Birmingham England named Deborah Banks who penned amateur poetry and had a friend who was looking for songs. So she wrote him a couple and he said, don’t worry, I’ll see you right if I ever end up doing anything with it. We now know how that went. Later, he sold it to UB40 for £10,000, which is about $16,000, and they had a massive worldwide hit with it in 1985. Now, I don’t know how she figured out that it was her song but I like to imagine that one day she was folding laundry or typing a memo and listening to the radio when something sounded familiar… The thing I do know is that she won her lawsuit by proving the song was hers (I wish, too, that I knew how she did this… notebooks? Diaries? Letters?) when the friend denied it. She was awarded damages and royalties and the song credits now lists her as a co-writer. Go Deborah Banks!

I always knew UB40 couldn’t write their own songs. Even the trite ones.

This song has a sad motif, true, but that’s not why it made me cry. It’s because when I heard it, I immediately flashed back to sitting in the car with my Mom on the way to school. See, I went to private Yeshiva high school in a nearby town and there was no bus, so you had to carpool or, more usually, my Mom would drive me there and pick me up. And she wasn’t one of those, “it’s my car and I’m driving so I’ll listen to what I want” people (coughDadcough), So we usually listened to WLIR and occasionally my mother would comment on the music. She did like some of it but she hated this song. That’s because she loved the opera it came from and it irritated her to no end to have it distorted, set to a beat, and have this other stuff around it. The opera spoke for itself and needed no accompaniment. It was one of the only times I ever remember her making me change the station.

And she was right, you know. Later, I bought the opera (it’s the only opera CD I own) and it’s so beautiful. I’m obviously not the only person to say this, but the faith of this woman waiting futiley for the person she loves is so vast and painful. I still love the Malcolm McLaren version, though. I probably wouldn’t if I’d loved the opera first, but maybe not. As a person who loves The Clash’s “Straight To Hell,” it was hard at first for me to like MIA’s “Paper Planes.” But I eventually did.

Still, being reminded of a conversation you had with your mother years and years ago that you had nearly forgotten is a great Mother’s Day present. And that crying was the good kind. I hope you had a good Mother’s Day, wherever your mother is.

The sexy video seems somewhat unrelated to the subject matter, but enjoy!

Even though I haven’t listened to this album in about fifteen years, lines from the songs still float through my head sometimes, that’s how sticky they are. I sometimes forget they’re even from this CD, except I listened to it today and, well, now I remember where those lines originated. It’s a lot like all the Beatlesque power pop I love so much like Jellyfish and Matthew Sweet and Crowded House. I have no idea why I let it sit so long. Now that I have it on my iPod where it belongs, I can tell you that it still makes me want to sing out loud. I may even have done so, but, as you recall, I hate my neighbors, so it’s OK.

Enjoy via this dated YouTube video and feel free to write to SonyBMG about getting this on iTunes and other download services.

In the meantime, enjoy these here, because half the CD’s I found aren’t available for download.

These first two are both from Interscope, which my first boss left to join. She offered to take me with her but I didn’t go. Months later I was out of a job. But I did get these CD’s.

Weird wild stuff from a friend of Trent Reznor’s.

“You’re as funny as a bank.” Why don’t I use this line more often?

Remember when all songs used to sound like this? Good times.

And later when they used to sound like this? That is, girls? Because it’s hard for a guy to get away with a song called Tiny Meat.

That was from Ruby. I’ll be your DJ because Yahoo doesn’t have BIG GIANT LABELS like YouTube. But this was a better version.

Well, I hope you liked those all enough to spend $14.95 on the copies I’ll be selling later.

Oh, I kid! Maybe.

My Mom was a Jewish educator, as I’ve stated many times here, and she liked to wear a giant button on her coat at this time of year that embarrassed me beyond the limits of teenage humiliation. It said, “Be happy! It’s Adar!” in Hebrew and English. Oh Mom! When I was in college, my grandma died during that month and after that, it was terribly hard for my Mom to be happy then but she wore the big green button anyway. Sometimes commandments are hard. After she died, we found that my Mom had like ten of these buttons. Ha! I kept one but, you know, I don’t actually walk down the street with the thing on my coat.

To veer off slightly, there’s this guy who has a Facebook group of which I’m a member where he does this “blast from the 80′s Alternative scene” every day. I found it because the guy who lived across the hall from me in college freshman year joined and I saw it in my feed. I asked him where he’d found this group and he said, “oh, I was remembering how great Depeche Mode were and thought it would be cool to hear some old songs.” Oh yes, cool, I said, they sure were great. I neglected to tell him that I’ve been listening to them every day since we lived there on the fourth floor. Some of us never move on!

Anyway, the song of the day a few days ago was by a group that I really, truly had not thought of in maybe fifteen years. And I have the CD! Like the description by the uploader on YouTube video, I actually wore out the cassette, I played it so much. Thus the CD. I think this actually may have been my favorite album of 1990. Now it’s kind of dated, unlike my favorite album of 1989, Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine, which still sounds glorious and modern to this day. And yes, I know Violator came out in 1989. Stiff competition.

But the real reason I chose a song from this album today is that it’s called Happiness. And it really does lift your spirits, as it’s dancey and upbeat. The song chosen by the Facebook guy was the big single from the album, Hello, which is a kind of list of people, only catchy. You can see the video for that here if you’d like to jog your memory. But my favorite song on the album was this one. It was calm, mellow, and jazzy but yet upbeat and uplifting. I just put it on my iPod this week. That should help me be happy! It’s Adar!

Streaming music:

Napster:
The Beloved – The Sun Rising