Songs One-Hundred Twenty-One to Twenty-Four

Time to play catch-up again. It's been a busy week, and now it's time for a clean-the-house and build-a-big-toy weekend. The aforementioned big toy has been sitting in the garage for two weeks in three gi-normous boxes that were dropped off by a real life huge Yellow semi. The very nice guy who dropped them off told me he built one in an afternoon, but he was also able to execute a three point turn in my cul de sac while driving a truck the size of my house--to my applause, so his results may not be typical. On another front, I got invited this week to speak at a conference later this summer based on a to-be-published article, which was nice. And, I've given up my briefcase lust and traded it in for phone lust. Searching the web for the best price on an unlocked razr phone provides a nice break from writing memos and cutting budgets. Kind of offers a cool techno blue light at the end of the tunnel. Now, onto the music . . .

Song 121: The Dears, "Lost in the Plot." Starts out kind of techno then the instrumentation gets fairly familiar. The lead singer seems to be the surrogate-carried son of Morissey and Robert Smith. The band is from Canada, but on their website, they've trademarked their name, which seems a very unCanada thing to do. The song itself doesn't really hold together; it seems to be several different songs stuck together with homemade paste.

Song 122: Oasis, "Lyla." Okay, I'll admit up front that, though I only own one Oasis album, I just adore this band. Why? Let me turn to the band's website: "Noel is writing songs about queuing too long for a pint of milk and Liam is a whirlwind of inspiration and wondrous bullshit." Yay! I caught part of a recent concert on some HD station the other night, and it was grandly dysfuntional. This is a recent song, and it's standard Oasis and pretty good. I know they're having a resurgence in the UK, and this song makes me understand why. It's updated their sound a little, but the sneer of the disaffected and drunk remains. Ocassionally, when I'm away from home, my husband has called and left me random Noel or Liam quotes on my phonemail. Just another reason why I adore him, too.

Song 123: Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris, "Beyond My Wildest Dreams." I read about this album in EW, and thought I'd give a song a try. (Note, the link is to a story about the album.) It really isn't nearly as good as it should be. The musical track is formulaic, and neither one is pushing any envelops vocally. Why get together to do something this mediocre? I guess this is kind of a Traveling Wilburys for the duet set. Disappointing.

Song 124: The Raconteurs, "Steady as She Goes." This is the free iTunes download this week. I love the White Stripes, all the anger, artifice and studied oddness. Jack White is part of this post-super group. The Raconteurs share the artifice (check out the website) but move musically in a slightly different direction. The song is acoustic yet dense and shares a lot of the White Stripes' production qualities. The most notable difference is the percussion (duh!) and a bit of mandolin-ness. The vocal harmonizing is nice, too; plus, this track catches Mr. White chuckling a bit. And, it's free!!

241 to go.

Songs One-Hundred Nineteen and Twenty

We took the kids to an ol' timey festival today, complete with churned butter, homemade biscuits, wagon rides, and fiddlin' and circle dancin'. We even threaded the needle! Great fun for all. But, this has left me behind on several home and work projects, so after blogging, I got to kick it in gear. I did manage to do some planting, edging, cleaning, and laundry yesterday--plus we went to the park and I snuck across the street during nap time to check out the new houses on the parade of homes (if only to reassure myself that our home value is going up, up, up). I had to drive to a small neighboring town yesterday morning for a work event and found a cool farmer's stand on the way back, so Sunday dinner will be roast eggplant soup with a caprese salad starter and berries and cream for dessert. As RR would say, yummo! Now, onto the tunes. Here's a fun one for 119, the Mad Caddies' "All American Badass." Cursing and an accordian--how can you go wrong? It reminds me of the polka fests of my youth about halfway through a day of drinking at the beer tent by everyone's parents. All dancing and singing until a beer gets bumped or a look gets thrown, then church fair or no church fair, it starts a flyin'. Who knew there was music for this? Another fun tune for 120, Amerie's "1 Thing." First, apparentely Beyonce never sued, so this can be seen as an homage (take that Opal Mehta-girl). Otherwise, this is essentially "Crazy in Love" sans Jay-Z. It's as danceable as they come, plus I swear she says "gooble, gooble, gooble" throughout which doesn't happen in a song every day. Very beach in the summer heat.

245 to go.