Monday, September 8, 2008

Coupla Easy Things (Day 119)

The Walkmen - "The Rat"
The Clash - "I Fought The Law"
O'Death - "Ground Stump"
The Arcade Fire - "Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)"
Dixie Chicks - "So Hard"
The Roots - "I Can't Help It"
The Kinks - "Sitting By The Riverside"
I think a song off of The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society also played last week, and both then and now I made a mental note of how nicely these tunes have aged. I think a large part of it has to do with the popularity of folkie, pastoral music right now. I mean Fleet Foxes (of which I can, seriously, not get enough) are sorting of doing the same thing thematically on their debut as the Kinks 1968 album which was conceived as an homage to British hamlet life. Today, anything goes, but you can imagine in 1968 that this record would have been met with a lot of blank stares. The other big Brit bands were putting out songs like "Jumpin' Jack Flash," "Hey Jude" and "Magic Bus," while Ray Davies was singing about the bucolic landscape in "Animal Farm" or singing about just sitting by the riverside, literally, in this song. Man, I said it before, and I'll say it again: The Kinks are so damn underrated. And, just because, here's some guy playing the song on the ukulele.



Joe Strummer And The Mescaleros - "Mega Bottle Ride"
Pixies - "Isla De Encanta" (live)
Gnarls Barkley - "Storm Coming"
Rivers Cuomo - "Ooh"
Son Volt - "Driving The View"
Coleman Hawkins - "You Met Miss Jones"
Bishop Allen - "Coupla Easy Things"

And then I got to work.

Today's Stats
Total songs listened to: 14
Total minutes of music (approx.): 47
Song with the most previous plays: "Coupla Easy Things" - 9
How I Rate Today's Playlist (1-10): 7
Miscellaneous factoid about my trip to work today: Forgot to grab my NY Times from the front stoop this morning. Desperate for reading material, I found an old copy of Cook's Illustrated in my bag. This worked out quite well, because now I know how to improve herbed roast chicken. Let me just say the secret of total flavor infusion lies in three simple steps: butterfly, press and score.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fair enough, but they weren't quite alone in their Back-to-the-Shire impulses. There was also a little band called JETHRO TULL.

And Fairport Convention.

sarah said...

The Kinks are always, always good.
I still haven't heard Fleet Foxes, so I'm going to make listening to them part of my evening plans. (Reading, listening to something nice. It's going to be a lovely evening.)
Mmm, herbed roast chicken. If you try it, let us know how it goes, and if butterfly-press-score really is the answer to everything :)

GE said...

Here come the Tull-heads...


I'll be interested to hear what you think of Fleet Foxes, Sarah.