New Wave Mix

So after picking up the new B-52's cd I was in kind of a new wave mood yesterday. Actually part of that was when I had one of their songs selected, iTunes does that thing where it says "people who bought this also bought this and this..." and it was a list of some of the most popular new wave bands of the late 1970's and early-to-mid 1980's, so I threw some of them onto my iPod, and then switched some stuff around later. I was trying to figure out what would be the best starter list for a good new wave playlist, working from the idea that you pick some of the biggest new wave acts and pick one of their best songs. So here goes:

The B-52's Obviously their early classic is Rock Lobster and their finest hour was the Cosmic Thing cd, so you could easily go with the above song, or Love Shack, or Roam. I also like Tell It Like It T-I-Is quite a bit as well.

Talking Heads Their early hit was the cover of Take Me To The River. Their biggest hit was probably Burning Down the House. But probably their finest hour was the movie Stop Making Sense, so you could easily pick anything from that soundtrack. I happen to like their version of Girlfriend is Better from that cd; I also like And She Was quite a bit.

Blondie One of my favorite groups from way back when. Probably their biggest hit was Heart of Glass or Call Me, or maybe even The Tide is High, but for me the quintessential Blondie tune is probably One Way or Another. I also like Dreaming quite a bit, so I went with that one. I'm not sure what their finest hour was -- they had a long string of hits over the course of several albums.

The Cars Their early hits were Just What I Needed and Let's Go, but hands down their finest hour was the whole Hearbeat City cd. You could pick almost any song from that -- I'm pretty sure You Might Think was their biggest hit ever -- but I have a particular fondness for Hello Again.

Devo Their big hit -- and no doubt their finest hour as well -- was Whip It. But I prefer Freedom of Choice, which was also a classic song of theirs.

Oingo Boingo It's also easy to place this band's finest hour -- Dead Man's Party, from which they had several hits, including Weird Science. The title track wasn't actually one of the big hits from the cd, but it's had a lot of staying power since then and it's my favorite song of theirs.

The Go Go's I like them a lot, but it's kind of hard to decide what their best song or finest hour actually was. Most people would probably pick one of their early hits, Our Lips Are Sealed or Vacation. I really like their reunion cd from a few years ago, God Bless the Go Go's, so I picked Sonic Superslide, even though most people have never listened to that cd. Also apparently I don't own their first cd still (Beauty and the Beat). O_o (Also, three of the four cds I own aren't ripped to my computer yet -- Vacation, Talk Show, and Return to the Valley of the Go Go's.

The Police Synchronicity (I'm spelling that wrong) would almost certainly be their finest hour (after which they broke up), but you could pick any number of songs of theirs. I discovered last night that I only two of their cds, and this isn't one of them. I should fix that. Also, none of them were on my hard drive so I haven't picked a song to put on my iPod yet.

Duran Duran Hard to pick their best song or finest hour; they had a lot of hits spread out over several cds. But they definitely deserve to be mentioned here too. I have their greatest hits cd but I forgot to add them to my iPod playlist last night.

All of that would form a nice starter list for a new wave collection. You could fill it out with lesser-known bands, personal favorites, and one-hit wonders, or bands that were big that I've forgotten to mention.

(no subject)

( Norwescon Mix Track Listings )

The weather outside is frightening...

Seriously. This is about the weirdest April I think I've ever seen. It was sunny all day in Auburn, and even though I heard it was raining or even snowing elsewhere, I saw no reason based on weather in my area to not think that warmer (and saner) weather was on the way.

My car wasn't done until almost 5:00 PM, so I got to sit around in the Brewer Chrysler lobby for a while. They said my old clutch was cracked. They also said that my front brakes were thin and I should probably replace them the next time I get an oil change. Oh joy. They did not say anything about replacing my seat belts, and I can not for the life of my think of why they would have, but I swear they're different than before, and they look new. I liked the way the old ones were made better.

After a quick shopping stop I got home about 5:30 and decided that I wanted to watch The Incredibles. I'd finished watching the collection of Pixar movie shorts the night before, and that included the JackJack short, and I realized I hadn't watched The Incredibles in a long while. That, and I was just in the mood to rewatch several of the Pixar movies.

Anyway, that took me to 7:30 PM, at which point I briefly considered not exercising for the evening since the evening was nearly gone, but then I told myself that I wasn't going to be lazy and I got dressed, put on my iPod headphones, and stepped outside. The first thing I noticed was that it was still light out, meaning I didn't have to hit the exercise room -- I could walk around the apartments a couple of times, at least. The second thing I noticed, as I walked down the sidewalk, was the sensation of something hitting my head. Rain? It didn't look like it was raining, but there were clouds in the sky. Perhaps it was about to start?

I checked the car windshields. Yep, there were raindrops. As I headed to the exercise center rain started falling -- except that it was bouncing off the sidewalk. Hail? Yes, it seemed to be hail.

There were three people in the exercise room, so I decided to walk around the apartment complex anyway. After all, it was only a little hail.

Fourty steps later I zipped up my fleece pullover. It was starting to hail pretty good.

Two minutes later hail the size of small peas started pounding down. They hurt.

A minute later everything was covered in white. A minute later it looked as if it had been snowing for an hour.

By the time I got back to my apartment, I decided that a ten minute walk in stinging hail was going to be my exercise for the evening. I did 30 situps inside as well, and that was it.

Tomorrow is April. Maybe then we'll get some sane weather.

(no subject)

( Today's Song: Cet Enfer au Paradis by Dark Sanctuary )