Finally getting back to practicing before this year’s Norwescon! The usual randomness, slower for the first hour, faster for the final half hour.
Tori Amos
Difficult Listening Hour 2021.05.08
Unrehearsed, seat-of-the-pants, let’s-see-what-happens mixing. You never know what might fall into one of these!
Sounds From the Lost Abbey 10
Back in February, I took up a challenge from one of my friends (prompted by the Gigs mix I posted) to create a mix based around songs that I’d have played at the Lost Abbey, during the mid- to late-1990s. To get a little help putting together the playlist, I put out a call for requests on Facebook, and ended up with something around 14 hours of possible songs, almost entirely pulled from requests by people who used to see me spin at the Lost Abbey.
Since 14 hours is far too long to do as a single mix, I’ve broken the requests up into multiple 80-ish-minute playlists. Here’s the tenth in the series!
Sounds From the Lost Abbey 07
Back in February, I took up a challenge from one of my friends (prompted by the Gigs mix I posted) to create a mix based around songs that I’d have played at the Lost Abbey, during the mid- to late-1990s. To get a little help putting together the playlist, I put out a call for requests on Facebook, and ended up with something around 14 hours of possible songs, almost entirely pulled from requests by people who used to see me spin at the Lost Abbey.
Since 14 hours is far too long to do as a single mix, I’ve broken the requests up into multiple 80-ish-minute playlists. Here’s the seventh of quite a few to come!
Sounds From the Lost Abbey 06
Back in February, I took up a challenge from one of my friends (prompted by the Gigs mix I posted) to create a mix based around songs that I’d have played at the Lost Abbey, during the mid- to late-1990s. To get a little help putting together the playlist, I put out a call for requests on Facebook, and ended up with something around 14 hours of possible songs, almost entirely pulled from requests by people who used to see me spin at the Lost Abbey.
Since 14 hours is far too long to do as a single mix, I’ve broken the requests up into multiple 80-ish-minute playlists. Here’s the sixth of quite a few to come!
Sounds From the Lost Abbey 02
Back in February, I took up a challenge from one of my friends (prompted by the Gigs mix I posted) to create a mix based around songs that I’d have played at the Lost Abbey, during the mid- to late-1990s. To get a little help putting together the playlist, I put out a call for requests on Facebook, and ended up with something around 14 hours of possible songs, almost entirely pulled from requests by people who used to see me spin at the Lost Abbey.
Since 14 hours is far too long to do as a single mix, I’ve broken the requests up into multiple 80-ish-minute playlists. Here’s the second of quite a few to come!
ToriMix v2
Number six in my old collection of mix sessions that I’m putting up for download and podcast. Another “theme” mix, this is a forty-five minute mix of Tori Amos dance remixes. As a fan of Tori and bouncing around on the dance floor, this one was probably bound to come out sooner or later during my DJ days.
Top Artists according to last.fm
From Adriaan:
last.fm has nice charting tools, mapping out your listening trends. From data collected over the past year, this list appears to show my top artists.
Here’s my top eleven (rather than ten, simply because these are also all the artists with more than 50 plays):
The only slight surprise is that Pink Floyd is that high in the list. Not that I’m not a fan, but I’m not a huge fan…I do, however, have a lot of PF in my collection (thanks to picking up a box set some time ago), so their songs percolate through the random playlists fairly regularly.
Another Music Meme: Cover Me
Another music meme, this one being started by Terrance: Cover Me.
Here it is. Do these three things, either in the comments on this post or in a post on your own blog that trackbacks to this post.
This one’s not easy, especially given the size of my music library. I’ll try, though…
List your three favorite cover versions of previously recorded songs.
- Tori Amos, Smells Like Teen Spirit, originally by Nirvana: I never knew how heartbreakingly beautiful this song could be until Tori did her cover. Almost an entirely different song.
- Creedence Clearwater Revival, I Heard It Through the Grapevine, originally by Marvin Gaye (?): A great 12-minute long jam on the classic Motown track.
- Bigod 20, Like A Prayer, originally by Madonna: American pop meets German industrial. While that’s hardly a new thing, this particular version stays at the top of my list in this particular little sub-sub-sub-genre.
(This is by no means a “final” or “definitive” list. Trying to pin down just three of all the ones that kept popping into my head was difficult enough, and I know that there are tons that I didn’t think of. I’ll be coming up with more and kicking myself for the next week. I’m already coming up with more possibilities — there are a ton of good covers of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, for instance, and I don’t think I’ve heard a bad version of The Temptations’ ‘Papa Was A Rolling Stone’, not to mention Tom Jones and the Art of Noise taking on Prince’s ‘Kiss’, or Sid Vicious ripping his way through ‘My Way’…argh!)
List three songs you’d like to hear cover versions of, and the artists you like to hear perform them.
- Ain’t Goin’ Down ’til the Sun Comes Up, originally by Garth Brooks, re-done by Ministry with Les Claypool of Primus on vocals
I know we’re supposed to come up with three here, but this particular dream has been in my head for so long that it’s the only one I ever seem to come up with. Take a fun fast country song, re-do it with Ministry’s trademark high-speed distortion-heavy guitar work, and throw Les doing his best country bumpkin patter over the top of it. I’d pay good money for this to become a reality.
List three songs you would like to cover, if you could. (Assume you would have the musical abilities to do it well.)
- The Pet Shop Boys, It’s a Sin: One of my all-time favorite 80’s tracks, and at times, one that has seemed all too fitting in my life.
- Indigo Swing, How Lucky Can One Guy Be?: Great swing, and this is one of my favorite tracks off of an album that I have a hard time picking single favorites from.
- Queen, Dreamer’s Ball: Queen just kicking back and having fun with a silly little ditty. The live acoustic version of this is particularly good.
(Again, hardly a definitive list. One of these days I’ll actually get suckered into Karaoke, and then we’ll see what I can actually come up with…)
“Stagger” by Underworld from the album Second Toughest in the Infants (1996, 7:37).
Not Gallimaufry
Since I’ve kind of slacked off on my ‘Gallimaufry’ meme posts over the past few weeks, here’s a music meme from Don to play with.
How many songs?
15,293 songs, 69.10 GB, 51 days 11 hours 46 minutes 42 seconds total playing time.
Sorted by song title, the first and last songs:
- ? (Fragezeichen), by Nena, off of 99 Luftballoons
- Zyklon B, by Leaether Strip, off of Penetrate the Satanic Citizen
Sorted by artist, the first and last songs:
- Is It You (Scintillating), by :Wumpscut:, off of Born Again
- Green Crumble, by μ-ziq, off of In Pine Effect
Sorted by album, the first and last songs:
- A Girl Doesn’t Get Killed By A Make Believe Lover…’Cuz It’s Hot, by My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, off of ‘Cuz It’s Hot
- Shake Your Lovemaker, by The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, off of Zoot Suit Riot
Top 10 most-played songs (Most-played song at No. 1):
- Listen, by the Kleptones, off of A Night at the Hip-Hopera
- Precession, by the Kleptones, off of A Night at the Hip-Hopera
- Break, by the Kleptones, off of A Night at the Hip-Hopera
- See, by the Kleptones, off of A Night at the Hip-Hopera
- Live, by the Kleptones, off of A Night at the Hip-Hopera
- Bite, by the Kleptones, off of A Night at the Hip-Hopera
- Jazz, by the Kleptones, off of A Night at the Hip-Hopera
- Play, by the Kleptones, off of A Night at the Hip-Hopera
- Ridicule, by the Kleptones, off of A Night at the Hip-Hopera
- Plan, by the Kleptones, off of A Night at the Hip-Hopera
(Um…yeah. I’ve been listening to this a lot recently.)
Last 10 recently played songs (Most recently played at No. 1):
- This is a Collective (12″), by Consolidated, off of Dysfunctional Relationship
- The Day the World Went Away, by Nine Inch Nails, off of The Day the World Went Away
- Somebody Gotta Do It (Remix), by Ice-T, off of Just Say Yes
- Erased, Over, Out, by Nine Inch Nails, off of Further Down the Spiral
- Phantom of the Opera (’94 Club), by Harajuku, off of Phantom of the Opera
- We Care A Lot, by Faith No More, off of Never Mind the Mainstream
- It’s A Miracle, by Roger Waters, off of Amused to Death
- China, by Tori Amos, off of Little Earthquakes
- Sexcrime (Ninteen Eighty-Four), by The Eurythmics, off of 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother)
- Brian Wilson’s Dreams, by The Who Boys, off of Tales of Townshend and Wilson
Find “sex”; how many songs?
- Global (title, artist, album) search: 188 songs
- Song title search: 83 songs
Find “death”; how many songs?
- Global search: 150 songs
- Song title search: 54 songs
Find “love”; how many songs?
- Global search: 830 songs
- Song title search: 557 songs
Find “peace”; how many songs?
- Global search: 75 songs
- Song title search: 30 songs
”To Strong (Cosmic)“ by Ultimate from the album Tripnotized Vol. 3 (1996, 6:33).