Music

Music is a big part of me: Over the years, I’ve sung in choirs, played the violin (never terribly well) and can plunk tunes out on most other instruments, DJ’d alternative/goth/industrial/ebm/electronica clubs, and collected a whole lot of music.

Gallimaufry 5

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The weekly music meme: ten songs at random from my music collection, plus assorted rambling.

  • The Shamen, ‘Phorever People (Shamen Dub)’, off of Phorever People: The Shamen were one of the early-90’s techno groups that I liked a lot. Not quite as good as Utah Saints, but definitely further towards the top of the heap than many other acts, able to produce entire albums that were listenable, rather than just the odd single here or there. This is a fairly trancy ‘dub’ mix (no vocals) of one of their singles that didn’t quite break as big on the scene. Sounds like something that’d make a good background piece for the soundtrack of a tech-heavy film.

  • The Prodigy, ‘Diesel Power (Snake Break)’, off of The Fat Mixes: I’m pretty sure that The Fat Mixes isn’t an official album — at least, I’ve never found any official word about it. I downloaded it a long time ago, when I was first exploring the world of Napster (back when the world of Napster was worth exploring). It’s a collection of various remixes of tracks off of The Fat of the Land, some mediocre and some that are very impressive. The one downside is that as I’ve never found a real copy of it, all I have are mid-bitrate .mp3s that don’t sound nearly as good as I wish they did.

  • Sunscreem, ‘Love U More (A Version)’, off of Love U More: One of my favorite songs of all time. Bright, bouncy, and happy (tempered with some occasionally somewhat disturbing lyrics), saying that no matter what happens, “you know you could never make me love you more.” This one never fails to put a smile on my face when I hear it. While this version’s off of the single, it’s nearly (if not entirely) identical to the version on their album O3 — the various remixes on the single were rather boring.

  • Tag Team, ‘Whoomp! (There It Is)‘, off of DJ Bass Mix: Aaah, the joys of having been a DJ…and a DJ who every so often had to cater to popular tastes, even when they weren’t exactly up my alley. Still, as far as 90’s one-hit-wonder hip-hop songs go, this one really isn’t that bad. Best, though, was ending up with an acapella version, which allowed me to run the vocals on top of My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult‘s’A Girl Doesn’t Get Killed By A Make-Believe Lover (‘Cuz It’s Hot)‘ — and that worked a lot better than it really should have.

  • The Art of Noise, ‘Dragnet ’88’, off of Best of the Art of Noise: Experimental art-techno group The Art of Noise’s take on the Dragnet theme, done for the 1988 movie starring Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd. I have no memory of whether or not the movie is any good, but I really like Art of Noise, and the samples they’ve sprinkled throughout the song are fun (“You’ve got a lot of repressed feelings, don’t you Friday? Must be what keeps your hair up.”)

  • Mickey Hart and Planet Drum, ‘Indoscrub’, off of Supralingua: Planet Drum is ex-Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart‘s world music project, focusing primarily on various forms of ~~sitar~~ drumming and percussion. Good percussion has a tendency to catch my ear, so I picked this one up on a whim one day when I ran across it browsing at random. Good stuff, though it all sounds similar enough that I’d be hard pressed to tell one track from another by ear.

  • Bedhead, ‘Crushing‘, off of WhatFunLifeWas: A long time ago, I came across a review of this album on the ‘net that was so well-written and so complimentary of the album that I went out and picked it up based solely on the strength of that review. Lucklily, I wasn’t disappointed in the least — while it’s not my normal style of music (strictly guitar, bass, and drums, rather than the electronic-heavy music I tend to gravitate towards), it actually often reminds me of a lot of ambient music: lots of flowing themes, vocals that don’t overpower and often blend right in with the instruments, and very relaxing. A little hard to describe, but highly recommended.

  • VNV Nation, ‘Arclight’, off of Empires: Due to my DJing in Anchorage taking me away from the goth/industrial music that got me started and into more standard dance/techno/pop stuff, I ended up losing track of what was going on in the goth/industrial world for a good few years. Because of this, I’ve only recently been coming across artists that I’m finding I like a lot: Beborn Beton, Covenant, Wumpscut, Velvet Acid Christ…and VNV Nation. Time after time, I’d hear a song at The Vogue, ask the DJ what it was, and it would be VNV Nation. Eventually, I picked up two of their albums (Empires and Futureperfect), and they’re both excellent. This is very much where my tastes lie these days (and as I’m still working on discovering much of this stuff, recommendations are always appreciated!).

  • Pigface, ‘Lost Track’, off of Preaching to the Perverted: The Best of Pigface: I’ve mentioned before that Pigface is one of my favorite groups. This is a short, but very fun little track, one of the many “B-sides” on their recent “Best of” compilation two-disc album. Not much more than percussion here, just a couple minutes of heavy drumming with some odd little electronic bleeps and bloops to spice it up a bit. Sounds like the beginning of a work in progress that never made it much further than what it is.

  • Liam Howlett, ‘Section 7‘, off of Prodigy Presents the Dirtchamber Sessions, Vol. 1: Technically, the stores list this as a Prodigy album — which, since The Prodigy basically is Liam Howlett, isn’t strictly wrong — but as this album is all mixwork and no strictly original compositions, I keep it filed under Liam’s name. It’s an incredible disc, too, letting Liam show off both his DJ skills and his insanely comprehensive record collection, both of which he does handily. This track alone samples LL Cool J, Digital Underground, Uptown, and Cold Cut, and most of the other tracks on the album sample two to three times as many individual cuts over the course of each mix. Good stuff.

And this week’s bonus track…

iTunes “Sir Psycho Sexy” by Red Hot Chili Peppers from the album Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991, 8:16).

Gallimaufry 4

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Same deal: ten songs at random…

  • Amii Stewart, ‘Knock on Wood’, off of the Hot Tracks 15th Anniversary Collection: Gotta love the 80’s, and it’s fairly obvious that I do, given how many 80’s-era one-hit-wonders pop up in these lists. Another promotional dj-only remix from Hot Tracks. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any appropriate links on the iTMS.

  • Eurythmics, ‘I Need A Man‘, off of Eurythmics Greatest Hits: I’m a big Eurythmics fan, but this is one of my all-time favorites of their songs. I’m not quite sure if I’d definitively call it my favorite, but it’s definitely in the top three (along with Love Is A Stranger and Missionary Man).

  • Front 242, ‘Headhunter (Xingu Hill)’, off of Headhunter 2000: Headhunter 2000 is a two-disc collection of remixes of the classic Front 242 track. Some of the mixes are really good — this one, while not unlistenable, isn’t one of my favorites. It strips away too much of the melody, leaving little more than a series of distorted bleeps and bloops over chopped up samples of the original vocal track.

  • Random, ‘Rock Me’, off of Technorave 3: Technomania: I’ve got to admit, I’ve still got a fondness for early-90’s techno — back when techno was techno, and it hadn’t split up into the many different styles of electronic dance music that collectively fall under the ‘electronica’ label these days. Very simple and very repetitive, but somehow much of this stuff still works quite well for me (though, admittely, this one goes on a bit longer than it really needs to).

  • Lo-Fidelity Allstars feat. Pigeonhed, ‘Battle Flag (Radio Edit)’, off of How to Operate With A Blown Mind: The Lo-Fidelity Allstars team up with Pigeonhed to udpate Pigeonhed’s single. This is one of my all-time favorite dance tracks — and, in an unusual situation, is one of the few songs where I like the radio edit better than the album edit. Where the album track says “motherfucker”, the radio edit, rather than backmasking or just dropping the volume levels of the vocals for that word, electronically stretches out the first letter of the next word in the song. It makes for a really cool effect, and a radio edit that for once doesn’t sound emasculated when compared to the unedited album track.

  • L.A. Style, ‘L.A. Style Theme’, off of L.A. Style: More early-90’s techno. L.A. Style’s one big hit was James Brown Is Dead (which at one point could be found on nearly every single techno compilation ever), though they did have a couple more minor hits with Baloony and I’m Raving. I’ve got a very fond place in my heart for this album, as James Brown Is Dead is actually the first real techno track I can remember hearing, and it started getting me into the techno rave scene.

  • Marmion, ‘Schöneberg (John Acquaviva)‘, off of The Sound of Superstition Vol. 5: Modern European techno from the Superstition label. I picked this compilation up solely because I’ve found over the years that for some reason, Europe (especially Germany) seems to be the only region where “old-school” techno is still in vogue, and much of their electronic music still has strong roots in the early-90’s techno styles. This track isn’t anything special, but isn’t bad background, either.

  • ‘I Love Cats’: I have no idea who does this or where it came from. I do know that it’s sick, wrong, and very funny. Lyrics and download are available on this post from last March.

  • Sonia Dada, ‘Paradise‘, off of Sonia Dada: I first heard Sonia Dada on one of Seattle’s local rock stations, 103.7 The Mountain, where they were giving ‘You Don’t Treat Me No Good‘ heavy play. I really enjoyed that song, so went searching out some more of Sonia Dada’s work. This is a band I really need to pick up some albums by, rather than just the few tracks I have downloaded so far — musically they’re definitely good, but it’s the strong singing and harmonies that really catch my ear.

  • Jason Webley, ‘Pilgrim II (Live)’, off of The Halloween Special 2001: Regular readers will know that I’m a big fan of local Seattle artist Jason Webley. This is a live recording from his 2001 ‘Deathday’ show of a song which became ‘Counterpart‘ on the album Counterpoint. While Jason hasn’t officialy released any live albums, he doesn’t seem to mind the distribution of the bootlegs that have been recorded so far — you can find the ones I’ve collected so far ~~on my server here~~.

And this week’s bonus track:

iTunes “Haunted When the Minutes Drag” by Collide from the album Vortex (2004, 7:43).

This is Ponderous

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This is ponderous, man. Really ponderous.

I had this dream the other night. I went to work one day, and nobody remembered who I was. So, I decided to take the day off. On my way out, I run into my boss, and he says, “Hey…you look familiar.”

I said, “Thanks — people say that a lot in these dreams.”

Then the horns kicked in.

And my shoes started to squeak.

Then all of a sudden, I’m standing on a beach in some tropical part of the world. And there’s this sign that says, “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” It sort of screamed out at me. Then I remembered — I’ve been here in other dreams. But usually there’s a water polo game, and a girl who could talk with her eyes. And she’d say, “Can you see what I’m saying?”

Then the horns kicked in.

And my shoes started to squeak.

Before I knew it, I was walking near a lake, when the phone rings. And the operator speaks to me in a language I don’t understand.

“Boom bappa-chugga makko-nahwo sing kow, ding kabba-lawa wally gumbo ching pow, heddy gabba-looah kabbah chennesing tee, oom mamma-chugga mannawon is now three.”

Then the horns kicked in.

And my shoes started to squeak.

Before long, I was coming up on this really weird part of my dream. You know — the part where I know how to tap dance, but I can only do it while wearing golf shoes?

Now I’m back on the beach, walking with this girl who talks with her eyes. This time she says, “I think you see what I’m saying.”

Then, just before I woke up, it started to rain, and I’m suddenly on the phone.

“Boom bappa-chugga makko-nahwo sing kow, ding kabba-lawa wally gumbo ching pow, heddy gabba-looah kabbah chennesing tee, oom mamma-chugga mannawon is now three.”

(The girl, who could talk with her eyes.)

(“Can you see, what I’m saying?”)

(“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”)

This is ponderous, man.

Really ponderous.

— 2Nu, ‘This is Ponderous‘

I love this song. Too bad it’s so hard to find these days. I was lucky enough to track down a copy on some filesharing network or another some time back. Since Amazon’s got the single (used, but hey), I think I need to go spend a few dollars…

iTunes “This is Ponderous” by 2Nu from the album Ponderous (1991, 3:39).

Gallimaufry 3

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Third verse, same as the first…

Ten random tracks from my iTunes library:

  • Violent Femmes, ‘Fat‘, off of 3: The Femmes are a long-time favorite of mine, and ‘Fat’ is one of my favorite tracks off of this album. Very tongue-in-cheek, it’s a rather bouncy little lament about a man hoping a girl will gain a little weight. “‘Cause if you got really fat, fat, fat, / You just might want to see me come back, / I hope / you got / fat.”

  • Hole, ‘Drown Soda’, off of Tank Girl: I have to admit, I’ve never been much of a fan of Hole. They’re not really bad, but most of what I’ve heard from them just doesn’t grab my ear (though I will say that I do like ‘Malibu‘). This track pretty much follows the formula: droning guitars and Courtney Love screeching.

  • Romeo Void, ‘Never Say Never (Hot Tracks)’, off of The Edge Level 1: I’m such an 80’s child sometime. Not necessarily the best 80’s one hit wonder out there, but it’s definitely a fun one — “I might like you better if we slept together, / never say never!” This is a remix off of one of the DJ-only promo CDs I got through the Hot Tracks service.

  • Leftfield, ‘Storm 3000‘, off of Leftism: I first heard of Leftfield through the single ‘Open Up‘, with John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols) guesting on vocals. That one track was enough to get me to pick up the full album, and I wasn’t disappointed. While this isn’t one of the strongest tracks on the album, it’s not bad filler, and works quite well as background music.

  • Concrete Blonde, ‘Darkening of the Light‘, off of Bloodletting: This is such, such, such a good album. Most people if they know it at all will only know of it through ‘Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)‘, but there’s not a single bad track on this disc. I’ve been lucky enough to see Concrete Blonde live a few times since I moved to Seattle, and they’re firmly cemented in their place as one of my favorite bands. Besides, Jhonette’s voice is just so good….

  • Sarah McLachlan, ‘I Will Not Forget You‘, off of Solace: Not one of Sarah’s more well-known tracks, and probably for good reason. Not bad, but nothing to make it stand out, either, very much standard Sarah McLachlan. Of course, she’s an artist whose standard pieces are still very worth listening to, so that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

  • Children of No Return, ‘White Horses’, off of German Mystic Sound Sampler Vol. IV: This song isn’t great, but I love the series it’s from. I’ve got four of the GMSS discs — I picked the first two up while I was in Germany in 1991, and got the second two off of a friend who found them online and then decided that he didn’t like them as much as I would. Great stuff, as far as I’m concerned, with a lot of German industrial and gothic music that’s nearly impossible to find in the states. Amusingly, some of the artists on these albums (like Das Ich, Girls Under Glass and Project Pitchfork) have since gained popularity in the goth/industrial scene here in the States…but I was listening to them first! :)

  • Tori Amos, ‘Professional Widow‘, off of Professional Widow: The original mix of ‘Professional Widow’, from the single of the same name. Here Tori’s somewhere in her middle stage, between songs with lyrics that make sense and songs that still sound incredibly good but are so obtuse as to be nearly nonsensical. Doesn’t mean I don’t like listening to her stuff at all, but there are times I really am clueless as to what she’s talking about.

  • Front 242, ‘Rhythm of Time (Messengers of Neptune)’, off of Mut\@age Mix\@age: A trancy remix of one of Front 242’s earlier tracks, very Orb-ish. In fact, now that I check, the mix was done by the Orb, imagine that. Front 242’s long been one of my favorite industrial groups, and this remix album is worth picking up — not all of it’s really danceable, but it’s a strong collection of mixes that can be pretty difficult to track down otherwise.

  • Jane’s Addiction, ‘So What!’, off of So What!: Jane’s Addiction’s later stuff never really got me as much as Nothing’s Shocking, Ritual de lo Habitual and their self-titled live album did, but ‘So What!’ isn’t too bad. The remixes on this single are rather forgettable, though. Not much else to say, really…not bad for Jane’s Addiction, but not their best, either.

All in all, not a bad set of songs this week. And now, the weekly bonus track:

iTunes “Dream On” by Chemical Brothers, The from the album Surrender (1999, 6:46).

13 Free Songs from iTunes

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Have an iPod? Want some free music from iTunes?

iPod, meet iTunes.

  1. Back up any data on your iPod you don’t want to lose.
  2. Use the iPod Updater application (usually in /Applications/Utilities/iPod Software Updater, or it can be downloaded from Apple) to do a ‘restore’ on the iPod, resetting it to factory defaults.
  3. Launch iTunes.

And that’s all there is to it — upon launch, iTunes will flip over to the iTMS and offer you thirteen free songs. Here’s what you get:

  1. Blow It Out – Features
  2. All At Sea – Jamie Cullum
  3. Sunshine to the Rain – Miri Ben-Ari
  4. Lonely – Akon
  5. Golden Touch – Razorlight
  6. Every Time You Go Away – Brian McKnight
  7. Bigtime – The Soundtrack of Our Lives
  8. Laura – Scissor Sisters
  9. She Said – Brie Larson
  10. Just Anotha Shorty – O’Ryan
  11. Sleeping With the Lights On – Teitur
  12. Reach Out, I’ll Be There – Michael McDonald
  13. TKO – Le Tigre

No idea on how long this offer is good for, whether the selections might change at some point, or whether you’ll like the selections enough to make it worth your time. I figured, hey, free music, why not?

(via Accelerate Your Macintosh!)

iTunes “Laura” by Scissor Sisters from the album iTunes New Music Sampler (Universal Motown Edition) (2004, 3:38).

Visual Halo

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As long as I did manage to come up with working recordable DVDs, I decided to finally follow through with a project I’d had in mind for a while now. Sometime last year I found a repository of videos from Nine Inch Nails, including the uncensored version of “Closer” and the infamous Broken short film. Most of the videos have been available on VHS for a while now, but the DVD version hasn’t been released yet, so I decided to play with iDVD.

I’ve not really poked around with either iDVD or iMovie in the past, as I don’t have any sort of video input other than my iSight. Home movies aren’t exactly something I’m playing with at the moment, in other words. Still, it was really easy to put this project together: opened iDVD, chose an appropriate background theme, tossed in the videos, added background music from iTunes for the different menus, and burn. Nice and easy, and now I’ve got my own DVD of Nine Inch Nails videos — and even when they are officially released on DVD, I’d lay good money down that the collection won’t include the Broken short film, so I’ve got that, too.

Visual Halo main menu

iTunes “Closer to God” by Nine Inch Nails from the album Closer to God (1994, 5:05).

Gallimaufry 2

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Same as before, ten songs that iTunes chooses at random:

  • Naughty by Nature, ‘Every Day All Day‘, off of Naughty by Nature: One of the weaker tracks off of what’s overall a very good 80’s hip-hop album. I’ve never been a huge hip-hop fan, but generally when I am, it’s 80’s era stuff, and most of Naughty by Nature’s stuff was a lot of fun.

  • Rent Cast, ‘Tune Up #3’, off of Rent: One of the brief inter-song mini pieces from the Broadway musical. Works well in context, but these short bits are rather odd when mixed in with everything else in my collection.

  • Rent Cast, ‘Today 4 U’, off of Rent: Another odd coincidence with random selections. Angel’s introduction song, Rent’s single foray into a pseudo-techno piece. Again, one that works well in context, but it doesn’t really stand well on its own (it’s somewhat annoying on its own, to tell the truth).

  • Linda Perry and Grace Slick, ‘Knock Me Out’, off of The Crow: City of Angels: A slower, somewhat atmospheric song. Not bad background music in a mix, but it doesn’t really stand out to me one way or another. Of course, the movie it comes from is pretty hideous (sad to say, I’ve seen all of the Crow films to date, and the first one is by far the only one worth paying attention to).

  • James Horner, London Symphony Orchestra, Mel Gibson & Sophie Marceau, ‘Not Every Man Really Lives‘, off of More Music from Braveheart: A little bit of dialogue from the movie leading into some of James Horner’s wonderful soundtrack. Every time I hear some of the music from Braveheart it makes me want to give the movie another watch.

  • Nine Inch Nails, ‘Down In It (Shred)’, off of Down In It: One of the remixes of Trent’s early singles. At this stage, he hadn’t become nearly as experimental as he did later on, so there’s really very little to tell the various mixes of Down In It apart from one another. Still, not a bad little song in itself (even if he has openly admitted that he was essentially ripping off Skinny Puppy‘s’Dig It‘ when he did this track).

  • Eddy Grant, ‘Electric Avenue (Hot Tracks)’, off of The Edge Level 2: A DJ-exclusive remix from the Hot Tracks remix service, this is from one of their 80’s retro discs. “We gonna walk down to Electric Avenue, and then we’ll take it higher….”

  • The Weavers, ‘Goodnight, Irene‘, off of The Best of the Decca Years: I got this album mainly because of Wimoweh, and then figured I’d see what all else they’d done. It falls right in line with much of the music I heard growing up in my dad’s collection, and I ended up knowing a lot more of these songs than I expected at first.

  • The Remains, ‘Why Do I Cry‘, off of Rock: The Train Kept A Rollin’: A 1966 pop-rock track from another of the discs in the Sony Soundtrack for a Century series that I’ve been working on collecting. Not a bad track, but not really a standout track, either.

  • Nine Inch Nails, ‘La Mer‘, off of The Fragile: This is the album that got me to stop obsessing over anything Trent Reznor did. After quite a few years of talk about how different his next album was going to be, and hearing his remix work with artists like Puff Daddy and the Family, instead of anything new or groundbreaking we got an album comprised mostly of tracks that sounded like all the instrumentals off all his prior albums. I was unimpressed, and as such, have only listened to the album a few times.

Not quite as interesting a selection as I got last week. Maybe we’ll do better next time…

And now, the ‘bonus track’:

iTunes “Case #12” by 29 Died from the album Sworn (1995, 1:29).

Legend

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Years ago, my brother and I found a cassette tape on the floor of the family van. Neither of us knew where it came from or who had left it there (as it wasn’t either of ours), but neither of us are generally likely to refuse free music, so into our collection it went.

Upon first glance, it didn’t seem all that special — Bob Marley and the Wailers ‘Legend’ album. When we tossed it in the stereo and started listening to it, though, it turned out that we were in for a bit of a treat. It turned out that rather being the “normal” Legend album, this tape instead had early 80s-era dance remixes of all of the songs. We were confused: it was all the same tracks in the same order as any other Legend tape, but versions we’d never heard before. Since Kevin is more of a reggae fan than I am, and I’m more of a dance music fan than he is, I ended up with the tape.

Over the next few months, every so often I’d try to track down where the tape came from, all to no avail. None of our friends remembered leaving it in the car, or even hearing it in the first place. Since it was an official factory-produced tape, I took it down to Mammoth Music (the single best locally-run music store in Anchorage) and had them punch the catalog number printed on the shell into their system, and they came up blank — no record of that particular version of the album existing at all.

Over time, unfortunately, the tape died, and I eventually resigned myself to its remaining a mystery.

Then, one day a couple years ago, one of the ladies I was working in at the Microsoft print shop came in with a new two-disc deluxe edition of Legend that she’d just picked up. We listened to disc one, she popped in disc two…and I damn near blew a gasket when the long-lost beats of the mysterious remixes came out of the stereo. I don’t have the liner notes available to me now, so I don’t remember all the details, but it turns out that all the remixes had been done between 1980 and 1984, and had been out of print for years before the deluxe edition was released onto CD.

That deluxe edition is now available on iTunes, complete with every one of the remixes I spent so much time enjoying after they appeared in my car. If you think you can handle the admittedly somewhat odd experience of 80’s dance mixes of Bob Marley reggae tunes, I’d definitely recommend giving it a listen — my personal favorite of all the tracks is the remix of Buffalo Soldier.

iTunes “Buffalo Soldier (Remix)” by Marley, Bob and the Wailers from the album Legend: Deluxe Edition (1984, 5:25).

Gallimaufry

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Terrance resurrects an old meme as a weekly thing. He titled it Friday Ten, but posted it on a Wednesday, so I’m not sure where things are going to go from here, time-wise, and so have decided that ‘gallimaufry‘ will make a good title (the definition works, and it’s a fun word). In any case, it can be entertaining to do, so let’s see what we get…

The rules are simple: put your entire music playlist on random, and post the first ten songs your music player comes up with.

  • The Postal Service, ‘Nothing Better‘, off of Give Up: Rick had me make a copy of this album to see what I thought. I’m still not entirely sure if I’d buy it, but it’s not bad — a very 80’s-synth-pop-ish feel to the songs. Catches my ear, but hasn’t yet snagged my wallet.

  • Pigface, ‘Hips, Tits, Lips, Power’, off of Fook: Pigface is one of my personal favorites, an industrial ‘supergroup’ with an ever-changing lineup. HTLP is definitely one of their better tracks, but it’s the live versions that really stand out.

  • Simple Minds, ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’, off of The Breakfast Club Soundtrack: Okay, yeah, I’m a child of the 80’s — not only is this one of my favorite songs from that era, but often it’s all I can do not to pump my fist in the air like the character does at the end of the film as this song kicks in just before the credits roll.

  • Scott McKenzie, ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair)‘, off of Pop Music: The Golden Era 1951-1975: The Sony Soundtrack to a Century collection has an incredible set of songs spread across twenty-some discs, covering literally a century of recorded music. I’ve got most of the sets that make up the full collection, and will track the last few down eventually.

  • Tori Amos, ‘Yes, Anastasia‘, off of Under the Pink: Much as I like Tori’s work, her more recent albums have just been getting weirder and weirder lyrically. This is from back when you could still figure out what she was talking about on most of her songs. ;)

  • Delerium with Sarah McLachlan, ‘Silence (Sanctuary Mix)’, off of Plastic Compilation Vol. II: The Plastic Compilation series of samplers are some of the best collections of modern electronica I’ve found in recent years. This track (in its various remixes) was quite a hit on the dancefloors a few years back.

  • Fischerspooner, ‘Emerge (DFA Remix)‘, off of iTMS Exclusive EP: I first heard of Fischerspooner when The Vogue got a bunch of free sampler CDs that included Emerge, which was one of the more requested tracks at the club for a while. Admittedly, though, this is a rather bland remix.

  • Bytet, ‘Anything‘, off of Split Single: Bytet is Robert Geiger’s dark electronica project from Anchorage. I saw him perform on quite a few occasions, and I used to chat with Robert every so often when I ran into him around town. I was very pleasantly surprised to find out that he’s on the iTMS, even if I had to link to different mix of the song that popped up on my playlist. Going to have to drop him an e-mail later on and say hi.

  • Mojave 3, ‘Mercy‘, off of Dr. Martens: Shoe Pie: The Dr. Martens shoe company used to put CD samplers in with their shoes from time to time. Shoe Pie is one of two of the samplers that I have, though I picked it up used rather than with a pair of shoes. The song…well, I can’t really say it grabs me.

  • Tori Amos, ‘Past the Mission‘, off of Under the Pink: Now, that’s just funny. 15,189 songs in my collection, and iTunes randomly grabs two songs off of the same album. This one happens to feature Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails doing backup vocals — singing, even, rather than screaming!

Not a bad little list, that.

And now, a ‘bonus’ eleventh track (consider it a not-really-hidden track), thanks to the usual iTunes blurb I toss on posts when I’m posting from home…
iTunes “Higher Than the Sun” by Primal Scream from the album Just Say Anything (1991, 3:37).