miko2

I gave up on my idea of making a playlist of guys who really sound like girls. There's only two I could come up with, Jeff Hanson and Joel Thibodeau of Death Vessel. Oh, I found a lot of artists that people say sing like girls, but they don't. Guys singing falsetto sound like guys singing falsetto, pretty much. It doeesn't matter if it's the Bee Gees or the singer in Placebo or Justin Hawkins of The Darkness or Justin Timberlake or some 11-year old hearthrob pop star -- they might sing high, but they only sound like female singers if you aren't paying attention. Whereas Jeff and Joel have voices that can be described as sopranos.

Anyway, I lent some music to amoveodivus, and I was trying to describe what kind of a voice Joanna Newsom has. I probably overdid it a bit, but she has a voice that some people can't listen to. I'd forgotten that Sky is a huge fan of Tom Waits. Weird voices don't bother him at all -- in fact he usually likes them.

So... I decided to make a playlist of "Great Voices". As in, singers I like that many people might claim have no singing voice (or at least, a very odd voice). ^_^ Here's some of what I put on my list:

Joanna Newsom - -Sawdust and Diamonds
Joanna Newsom -- Sprout and Bean
Tom Waits -- Chocolate Jesus
Tom Waits -- Rain Dogs
Bob Dylan - Isis
Bob Dylan -- As I Went Out One Morning
The Boomtown Rats - I Don't Like Mondays
The Boomtown Rats (Bob Geldof) - Wind Chill Factor Minus Zero
Bjork - Bachelorette
The Pogues (Sean MacGowan) - The Sunny Side of the Street
Patti Smith - Ghost Dance
Blind Willie Johnson -- Motherless Children Have A Hard Time
Neil Young - Heart of Gold
Mike Ness (of Social Distortion) - Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
Marianna Faithful - Hold On, Hold On

(Good, but not half as awesome as Neko Case's original version). But Neko has an amazing voice.

Last week they kept talking about rain coming, but it didn't seem to come very much. Sunday I got up and the sun was shining through the windows, and I laughed because I figured it would be a nice day. I planned to work on my computer a bit and then go for my morning walk. An hour and a half later it was raining pretty heavily. So much for that idea.

So I walked on Saturday, and Monday, and Tuesday. Today was nice. That's 3 days out of 4, that's considered a victory in my book. I'm trying to walk nearly every day but it often falls short, sometimes 4 days a week, sometimes only 3. That's not really enough, it should be 5 or 6.

Anyway, they say it's going to get increasingly cloudy and rainy as we head towards the weekend. Just what they were saying last week.

For a long time I've had this particular song mix in my head, without enough songs to fill it out. I do that kind of thing a lot I guess. This one was the "songs played in one style of music about a different style/genre of music". The prime examples that I had were I Want To Sing That Rock 'n' Roll by Gillian Welch, which is an old-timey country tune about rock 'n' roll, and also a popular tune from the 1960's that I can't remember the name of at the moment (probably I Love Rock Music or something), which a happy lounge/jazz kind of tune about how wonderful rock 'n' roll is. I know there's blues songs about rock 'n' roll, and probably rock songs about the blues, maybe country songs about rock or rock songs about country or something, a few other things like that. On the oddball novelty weird cd Sacred Cows by the Swirling Eddies, there was a song called I Love Rap Music which was done in a cheesy lounge singer style. Maybe I could find something similar on Pat Boone's rock 'n' roll cd.

I came up with a few more song ideas for this list this last week. After downloading and listening to Popmuzik by M, I realized that it probably qualifies -- a song about pop music that really isn't pop music itself. I mean, it wound up being a big pop hit but it's more a novelty electronica tune, not standard pop fare. In the beginning of the song the singer says "get up!" and then "get down!" which makes it sound like it's supposed to be some kind of dance/disco/funk song, but of course it's completely dispassionate and impersonaly and ironic in the same way that Devo usually was, or Gary Numan, or even to a certain extent Rick Ocasek and the Cars.

This made me think of two songs simultaneously, Elevator Musik by the Ressurection Band, which is a heavy metal bashing of Muzak, and Dig That Groove Baby by the Toy Dolls, which is a punk song about being funky, and very likely the most un-funky song about funk music in history. Both songs would fit well on my proposed mix. ^_^ Probably "Bulky Rhythm" by the Bobs, about polka dancing, would work too.

I'm not sure what else.

In a seperate development, listening to Yummy Yummy Yummy made me want to do another "Bubble Gum" rock mix. True Bubblegum music such as Sugar Sugar by the Archies and The Rapper by -- well, who can even remember the names of all of these bands, they were mostly studio creations and not actual bands at all -- was generally despised and looked down upon as fake music, not serious, etc. Despite this, it kind of distilled a lot of what the early Beatles and British pop bands, Motown, and the girl groups of the 50's and early 60's were all about, and it was hugely influenctial on a lot of new wave and even punk bands of the 70's and beyond -- such as Blondie, The Cars, and even the Ramones. I can understand why the 1910 Fruitgum Company is seen as a cheesy studio creation, but I really like a good power pop / bubblegum pop song played by a real band such as Denis from Blondie's second cd Plastic Letters. So, the basic idea would be to try and assemble a cd of some of the best examples of that kind of rock. I think I've probably made such mixes before, but I want to do it again.