Lebensraum For Earworms

The Internets tell me to listen to That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy by the Twilight Sad. So I do.

And it is good.

Of my own accord I listen to Go Tell The Women by Nick Cave and Grinderman. We are scientists, we are. It is good.

(By accident I discover the soundtrack of I’m Not There. Cat Power sings Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, Mason Jennings does The Times They Are A-Changin’. Jeff Tweedy sings a Simple Twist Of Fate.)

After a while, the earworms are fighting it out in the brain for room to breathe.

Her Name Is What It Means

Dug up the Sabbath and Zeppelin again, and I do mean dug up; I had to go all the way back to CD #12 for this. In doing so, I’ve also brought along a little Weezer and some early Stone Temple Pilots. The connection seems obscure, until you realize that this really has to do with me last listening to all this in the early 00s as one big playlist and not with any tortuous chains of musical descent as such. Basically, I’m having a flashback to my own playlist from 2003 or thereabouts, which was itself a flashback to the same playlist, more or less, from 1998 or thereabouts.

My first encounter with STP was probably Tiny Music, around ‘96, so I must have worked backwards to get at Purple.

And on that note, a weird, disjointed live performance of Big Empty featuring a writhing Scott Weiland being stoned out of his gourd.

Read Me The Riot Act

I’ve got Elvis Costello stuck in my head, which is curious, because I haven’t listened to this particular song in a while. At least, I don’t think so. After your playlist grows beyond a certain size, it begins to contain its own internal neighbourhoods, its own nooks and crannies. Who knows what lurks in the dark depths, etc. It’s trivial enough to check, but one must allow some small mysteries to persist in one’s life.

Also, it’s strange that a song stuck in your head can actually override what you’re listening to: in this case, Interpol and Kenickie. I can recognize ‘em, but they’re not registering at all through the internal din of the One True Elvis. The all-curing Internets do have a machine for cancelling out earworms, but I fear that the cure may be worse than the disease. (After all, I do like Elvis Costello.)

I Know How It Feels To Be Your Age

The Long Blondes, singing Once And Never Again and Giddy Stratospheres… in an elevator.

Leonine, II

This is something of a followup to my previous “Ted Leo singing cover songs” post, and it’s pretty old news now so everyone’s probably already seen it, but I’m sitting around being bummed out and this always cheers me up. Ted Leo, covering Since You’ve Been Gone and Maps.

Leonine

Ted Leo sings Dancing In The Dark. Courtney Cox not included.

Something More Productive, Like Roscoe

Ladies and dudes, Roscoe by Midlake. I’ve been stuck on this song for months.