Wednesday, June 4, 2008

You May Be Blue (Day 60)

The Starlight Mints - "Zillion Eyes"
Os Mutantes - "A Minha Menina (My Girl)"
These guys just keep popping up on the playlist. (Look below, more Os Mutantes!) Truth is, in a random fit of iPod song-ripping I took a bunch of their albums from my wife's cousin. Besides the fact that said cousin lives in Portland and has pretty impeccable taste in music, I'd recently read an article about the over 40-year-old Brazillian pop band in which Devendra Banhart (yup, him again) described them as such: "
They didn’t sound like the Beatles, but they were innovative, masterful musicians the way the Beatles were, traversing styles from song to song or even from verse to verse, mixing psychedelia, African tribal modes, tango, ragas, Motown, even polka." I haven't really immersed myself in the catalog completely, but when the songs do pop up, I'm into it. This one in particular, I like a lot. It's from their 1968 eponymous album and it has a very 60s fuzzy guitar, pop sound and along with the Portuguese vocals I always think it would make a great kitschy song for a soundtrack. (In all honesty, at first I did think it was from one of the Wes Anderson soundtracks on the iPod.) One more Os Mutantes fun fact: the name of Beck's 1998 album Mutations (my personal favorite of his) is an homage to the group.
Mojave 3 - "Ghost Ship Waiting"
Yo La Tengo - "Song for Mahila"
The Wrens - "Crawling"
...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead - "Days Of Being Wild"
Vetiver - "You May Be Blue"
Talking Heads - "Happy Day"
Ryan Adams - "My Blue Manhattan"
Dan Zanes - "Sweet Rosyanne"
A Dan Zanes song calls for an update on what the kids are listening to. Only the 10-week old is not really listening to anything, and the 2-and-a-half-year-old has actually been off music of late. (Damn you, Caillou!) Although in the car recently I begged her to give "Daddy's music" another try and I eased her into it with a song off of Springsteen's We Shall Overcome: The Seeger
Sessions. The song was "Froggie Went a Courtin'" (another version of which is on Dan Zanes' Rocket Ship Beach, although there it goes by the title "King Kong Kitchie"). Clearly it was a perfect segue. When we got home she wouldn't let me turn off the car until the song was over! Perhaps it's time for a rock block of Pavement...
The Apples In Stereo - "My Pretend"
Rivers Cuomo - "Chess"
Os Mutantes - "Panis Et Circensis"
X - "Motel Room In My Bed"

And then I got to work.

Today's Stats
Total songs listened to: 14

Total minutes of music (approx.): 48
Song with the most previous plays: "You May Be Blue" - 16
Miscellaneous factoid about my trip to work today: While reading about the ridiculous amount of hype the Yankees' YES network heaped on yesterday's first start by Joba Chamberlain, I was reminded of another ridiculous (although sublimely humorous) moment in self-indulgent Yankee history. (BTW, Mets beat the Giants last night 9-6.)


6 comments:

comoprozac said...

Yes! Bombard her with Pavement. I approve.

Anonymous said...

Miscellaneous factoid about my parents' courtship: My father wooed my mother with his rendition of "Froggie Went a Courtin'" on acoustic guitar. It was the only song he knew how to play.

pcup said...

Word of caution: you try to push "your" music, and she rebels later on by despising it and embraching the hillary duff du jour. But perhaps that's too pessimistic. Maybe she doesn't grow to despise it, but nevertheless cannot embrace it and merely comes to view it as a sentimental reminder of her youth.

GE said...

I agree, Pcup. It is a dangerous game to push anything on your kids - - from rock to vegetables. You'll see, Comoprozac.

And Bonnie, love the miscellaneous factoid about your parents' courtship. Has your dad ever got around to expanding his repertoire?

Unknown said...

five hours of Dan Zane and friends on a rainy ride with a 2 year old is enough to make me listen to a Pavement bloc....

Anonymous said...

Sadly, no. But he did play the theme song to The Smurfs on clarinet (his preferred instrument) as part of an adult band in the '80s at our church's annual Strawberry Festival. Scary stuff.

Now there should be a picture of that on For Those Who Tried to Rock....