Well, from no songs yesterday to a record-breaking 24 today. What gives? I actually went to the gym this morning. I'm surprised I could even find the place considering I haven't been since well before the birth of my son (4 months). It's not close and I usually run there which takes about 10-12 minutes. Now, anyone with an iPod knows it's perfectly suited for working out. (I can still remember attempting to run with a Discman and telling myself that incessant skipping was really just part of the music...) And work out music is generally something a little upbeat, that fires you up and keeps you motivated. (I'm strangely partial to Modest Mouse during workouts. You?) But it was still morning and I wanted to keep with the spirit of the blog, so I shuffled. Ouch. Running to "Hey Jude" is not exactly like hearing the theme from Rocky and feeling like Sylvester Stallone training in Siberia to fight Ivan Drago. What, you have a different motivating movie image?
The Arcade Fire - "Black Mirror"
Oakley Hall - "Spanish Fandango"
Tom Waits - "Walking Spanish"
Again, conventional workout music it is not, but I was actually just starting to do some bicep curls and kinda digging this song off the great Tom Waits album Rain Dogs. It's a stomp with the classic Wait's sandpaper and marble delivery and interesting lyrics to boot. "Take off your watch, your rings and all // Even Jesus wanted just a little more time // He's walking Spanish down the hall." What does it mean? I assumed it was akin to "dead man walking," but Wikipedia was unhelpful. It turns out another blogger already did the dirty work. According to rockrobster23, "walking Spanish" means:
"Being forcibly carried from a place by one’s collar and belt, with one’s tiptoes scrabbling at the floor, so that the Spanish walker is being forced to go somewhere he doesn’t want to go. The expression derives from being made to walk the plank on a pirate ship."Rockrobster23, then goes on to explain the meaning of the song in pretty good detail. Thanks, buddy, I should think about outsourcing these posts... Still, the more I thought about "Walking Spanish down the hall," the more familiar the phrase sounded to me. A bit more Googling, jogged my memory. The expression was also used in the book Then We Came To The End, by Joshua Ferris. This novel, about Chicago copywriters being laid off after the 90s dot-com boom ended, got heaps of praise when it came out last year. I read it and actually thought it was pretty good. In the book (which is cleverly written in the first person plural, as in "We did not like not knowing something"), the employees of the ad firm use "walking Spanish down the hall" to mean shit-canned. And Ferris even name-checks the Tom Waits song. Here's the excerpt -- mostly because I figured out recently how to make a screen grab. (Don't sue me Joshua. This is fair usage, right?)
Funny story about this book: My wife (or as she's drolly named herself ipodwidow) was reading it on the subway last year when a guy sitting next to her asked, "What do you think of the book?" I think she said it was okay, nothing too glowing. He then got off the train and it wasn't until she glanced at the book jacket that she realized...it was the author! Well, that's her story and she's sticking to it.The Beastie Boys - "The Gala Event"
Kings Of Leon - "Taper Jean Girl" (live)
Flight of the Conchords - "Think About It, Think Think About It" (live)
Nurse & Soldier - "What You Wanted"
Weezer - "Miss Sweeney"
Dixie Chicks - "Lullaby"
Hey, how did this get here! Okay, I like the Dixie Chicks. Seriously, they are real musicians and if I played you this song and told you it was by critical darling Kathleen Edwards, you'd believe me. And I wouldn't look like a total loser.
Coleman Hawkins - "I Never Had A Chance"
The Flying Burrito Brothers - "Here Tonight"
Mew - "Louisa Louisa"
Nirvana - "Return Of The Rat"
Wilco - "Should've Been In Love"
Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - "Stove By A Whale"
Outkast - "Toilet Tisha"
Dinosaur Jr. - "Keeblin'"
Beck - "Profanity Prayers"
Sondre Lerche - "(You Knocked Me) On My Feet"
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova - "Leave"
Grizzly Bear - "Sorry For The Delay"
Colin Meloy - "Dracula's Daughter" (live)
Beck - "Static"
And then I got to work.
Today's Stats
Total songs listened to: 24
Total minutes of music (approx.): 102
Song with the most previous plays: "Think About It, Think Think About It," "Keeblin'" (tie) - 7
How I Rate Today's Playlist (1-10): 6
Miscellaneous factoid about my trip to work today: I bought a calamari hero at Catene's Deli in Brooklyn for lunch. Oh my, that's a good sandwich.
5 comments:
Workout music? I like mid-late period Guided By Voices to get me rockin'. If it's first thing in the morning, then I prefer the good old Grateful Dead. Nothing like a 20-minute "China>Rider" to make the time go.
The Dixie Chicks are great. Nothing to be ashamed of. Unless, of course, you're a Republican.
Glad to hear the iPod is working.
What a dilemma: Keep posting on the blog, and ipodwidow doesn't think you need a new iPod. However, if you take a couple more days off...
Early Modest Mouse does it for me as well. I also like to set Sonic Youth on shuffle. The Arcade Fire have been a favorite workout group of mine for a while, but my favorite stuff to workout to is actually Sufjan Stevens. I can't explain why. It just is.
This was a weird playlist, but the Tom Waits info is really interesting.
I really actually enjoyed "Then We Came to the End."
I thought the use of first person singular was clever, like you said. It really allowed the reader to become more than just a passive participant in the experience.
You began your workout with "Hey Jude"? Wow. Your dedication is stunnning- I probably would have just given up. My favorite running song is "A Quick One While He's Away." Hey, it's good for a whole mile! After that, I do like Modest Mouse (punchy!), a little punk rock (the only time I listen to Minor Threat and the Dead Kennedys) and the usual stuff, minus the Belle & Sebastian sorts.
I finished "Then We Came To the End" a couple of weeks ago (I'm behind the rest of the world, I know), and so the "Walking Spanish" made me smile. The book? It was a solid okay.
It's okay to use triple n's at 3am, by the way. All the kids are doing it :)
Yawn.
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