“The Letter,” by Eva Cassidy, from Time After Time, released 2000.
Eva Cassidy’s story is somewhat interesting and sad. She mostly did live performances, I think, in the DC area, and was super shy about it. After her death of melanoma in 1996, her few albums didn’t get much recognition until 2000, when someone one some public radio show played a song of hers and all of a sudden everything exploded with airplay and media coverage everywhere and new recordings being released. My mom heard her on NPR when that was happening and became instantly obsessed. I guess I have had the album(s) since then.
This song is a cover originally (I think) recorded by the Box Tops; watch to their version here. I like the original, but most of the aspects I like — like the guitar part, especially the tiny little riff right at the beginning, and the faster tempo — aren’t in this cover, which has also got that guitar style that rubs me the wrong way somehow (just too 1990s, maybe). On the other hand, her voice is clearly amazing.
I think I might like the cover better if I didn’t know the original. I don’t dislike this cover, but it’s just not really my style.
Verdict: I’ll keep it around, as it is definitely more than listenable, and I have family members with whom I share very little by way of musical taste, so when I find something we overlap on, I tend to hang on to it.
Current play count: 4.
Current Smart Playlist length: 2583. How? Did I get a new album or something?? Unclear.
Poor Little Critter On The Road was one of the first albums of the genre that is now alt-country. Interestingly — to me at least — the members are also most of the punk band X; I am told it opened a lot of punk rockers’ minds to the idea and aesthetic of country and country-esque music.
So I can’t explain why I never listened to the album. It seems just a tad too rockabilly for me, maybe, but on the other hand, their name! (Also the singer, Exene Cervenko, used to be married to Viggo Mortensen!) I do know why I never listened to this song, and that is because I thought it was a cover of the B-52s’ “Love Shack” — you know the one. I cannot stand that song. When this popped up this morning I was filled with dread and visions of having to abandon the project on the third day. I figured a country version of the B-52s song would just be worse than the original. BUT! It is NOT a cover of the B-52s’ song! It’s got nothing in common but the title! Hooray!
General notes: Awesome.
Verdict: Awesome.
Current play count: 5*.
Current Smart Playlist length: 2956.
* But, I still get the B-52s song stuck in my head just at the thought of the words “love” and “shack,” so I expect this number will increase as I have to listen to this enough times for it to replace the awful song.
“Presidents and Magistrates,” by Sufjan Stevens, from Michigan (Outtakes), 2003.
Originally released as a few free demo-ish mp3s on his website, which is when I got them. I have the vague idea that it was prompted by John Allison, but I can’t verify that.
General notes: what the hell was I thinking, not listening to this earlier? This song is exactly like tons of other things I already like — Elliott Smith in particular, I guess, but it’s also reminiscent of the Beatles and to some extent the Fleet Foxes maybe? Anyway, stupid wasted time.
Verdict: I will obtain the actual album as soon as possible.
Current play count: 6.
Current Smart Playlist length: 2597.*
* Yes, I went down by two songs since yesterday — there was this one of course, but then I realized my “no podcasts” rule in the playlist missed one thing by American Public Media that wasn’t listed as a podcast, so I had to specifically exclude that one too.
“Wrath of my Madness,” by Queen Latifah, from her first album, All Hail the Queen, 1989. Apparently this song was the single.
Previous play count: 0. *
Purchased by me at some point at least two years ago, in one of my MUST ACQUIRE NEW GENRES phases, or possibly on an evening of bourbon and that Cover Girl commercial she’s in, which always makes me start ranting about how bad-ass she is, despite the fact that I had never listened to her music. So anyway, now I have this album.
And yeah, she’s totally bad-ass.
The scene is mine, ’cause I took it
I took it for the money and I took it for the fun
Don’t step up in my face, you don’t want to feel the taste
Don’t try and play me out ’cause I am not the one
Brothers on my bra strap, sisters clocking my sound, why?
Because they wanna be down with the
Queen L A T I F A H in command
I supply the concept for you to understand
…
Come on, you know the time, just be thankful for the rhyme
And get up on the wrath of my madness
I don’t know much about rap/hip-hop, so I don’t know how this compares to other songs of the genre, but I love listening to her owning her strength and her un-”lady-like” emotions. In this song, being admired and desired are active things; all the dudes want her but it’s because she lets them. There’s no passivity and no malegaze in this world.
This isn’t something I could listen to every day, but it’s certainly a catchy melody and a catchy idea and suits a certain mood/mindset for me. I’ll keep it.
Current play count: 4.
Current Smart Playlist length: 2589.
* Not quite true. I know I listened to it at least once while running and once at work, right after I got it.
I set up an iTunes smart playlist on my iPod to include everything with a play count of less than 4 (since it can’t do equal or less than). I was all ready to go, OK let’s play a song! And I opened up the playlist and it was FULL of Beatles songs. Like, all of them. Which, clearly, I have listened to all of those AT LEAST dozens of times. So — time to troubleshoot.
I think the issue is that this iPod is relatively new to me, and apparently iPod play count and iTunes play count don’t sync up. And, some of the song files are quite old, including lots from college (which was back in the days of Napster). So although the files made it from mp3 player to mp3 player as I upgraded, the additional metadata like play count did not.
Yesterday I tried to upgrade my WordPress installation, but something went awry with it and I ended up very briefly with a fresh WordPress install, complete with the “Hello, world!” post, and insta-comment-spam-in-Russian that apparently comes with any new WP install. Anyway, crisis averted when I realized my host, DreamHost, backs everything up to domain.com.old when upgrading, so I just renamed domain.com to domain.com.fail, and then renamed domain.com.old to regular ol’ domain.com, and all was well in the world. Phew.
I apparently forgot to mention that I actually finished Infinite Summer, on schedule and everything. I was way ahead until about two weeks out and then I realized how close to the end I was, and I panicked, and I couldn’t read anymore because 1) I wasn’t ready to be done, and 2) I was carrying around a FREAKING HUGE BOOK and I was so close to the end that I might finish on the bus, so I wanted to bring a second book, but I already had a HUGE book, and I didn’t want two books … so ultimately I just left Infinite Jest lying around at home with like 60 pages left to go, for like two weeks.
Then I finished it, but I didn’t get closure of course … I think I will read it again soon.
Then both G. and I decided to read Dracula with the Inf Sum folks. We did not keep up, though I thought I might power through tonight and finish it by the deadline. But, we found MST3K streaming on Netflix so we’re zoning out and doing that instead, as we had a busy busy day preparing for the slaughter of 150 chickens, which we hope will happen next weekend.
And then the chickens. OMG. So — one hundred fifty chickens is too many to do all at once. We will never do that many all at once ever again. Ugh. Many folks are coming over to help us process, so I am preparing the house and the slaughter site etc for everyone to come. I have a bit of a thing about a clean house — I never have one, but I feel like to have one makes one a worthy person, so when folks are coming over I have big freakouts — so in addition to the stress of OH HEY WE ARE KILLING 150 CHICKENS, there is OH HEY MY SELF-WORTH IS RIDING ON A CLEAN HOUSE. Fun times.
And then the turkeys, who have been a pleasure to raise until they started flying, even after we clipped their wings quite close. Even that was just kind of funny, until one of them went over the fence to the neighbor yard, where the neighbor dogs promptly got hold of her — no fault of theirs; they are dogs after all, and she was a big ol’ prey — and wounded her pretty bad. They didn’t kill her, but we had to. The rest of the turkeys are slightly confused, but are more affected by the fact that they now have an 8-foot fence around their area, to keep them in, finally.
And then there is the Dark Days Challenge which we as a farm have just signed up for. The challenge is, between Nov 15 and March 31, make one meal per week be as sustainable/organic/local/ethical as possible, and blog it. Please join us! Most of the fun is seeing what everyone else is eating, and getting ideas.
And last but not least, on the eve of Na*Mo, my sister and I are going to share a project for the month. Last November she posted one happy thing each day, and I took and posted a photo each day (and omg I just noticed the photos are all messed up — will go fix). This November we will each listen to one song per day that has an iTunes play count of 3 or fewer. We will listen to it at least as many times as it takes to get it off the smart playlist, so it doesn’t come up again. Then we will post about the song, including where we got it, why we didn’t listen to it before, and what we think of it now that we have listened to it.
Fun? We’ll see. She is calling it “Month of Undiscovered Music” so I guess that makes it NaMoUnMu*? Or “MUM” is easier to type I guess.
* YES it is national because I am in Washington state and she is in DC. Those are two places across the country from each other and therefore the project has a national scope. Yes.
Trying to figure out how to get out of the house for cheap, since we are pretty broke, I heard rumors of a two-for-one all-you-can-eat buffet at the local casino, so we checked it out. You have to get a card or something but the nice cashier at the buffet said she wasn’t worried about it as long as we sign up next time. So it was $15 for both of us plus $3.25 for our microbrew (Red Hook) beers — cheap! But full of many carbohydrates. I had mashed potatoes, which were DELICIOUS, and also roasted potatoes, and mac and cheese, and fried catfish; G. had a pork loin slice, and mashed potatoes, and mac and cheese, and a slice of pizza. It was all very … beige.
Ruby’s head is on my leg and I daren’t move her because I am afraid to disturb her wounds. She tangled with either a raccoon or some sort of farm equipment at 3 o’clock this morning. We had all gotten up to check on some noises we all heard, and found three of our five ducks had not made it to the coop when the coop went to bed. We put ‘em to bed and headed back inside. Ruby was limping a bit on our way back into the house, and when we got back into the light I noticed her face was bloody. On further inspection she had a flapper above her eye, not deep but with a skin flap, and some other undefined owies below her eye that she wouldn’t let me look at or put Neosporin on.
So — to the vet this morning. They looked at it and said “ow!” and kept her there all day until they had a chance to “sedate her a little” and fix her up. Her poor eyebrow is shaved now, and glued (?) back together, and under her eye still has some ointment where she can’t reach with her tongue. They think it was “a critter” since there were apparently puncture wounds, plus maybe “a collision while chasing a critter” because of the above-eye flapper. Hooray for the eye socket, though; her eye itself is fine. She gets antibiotics and pain pills and we get to figure out what to do about the raccoon situation that presumably led to this. G. proposes electric fence around the property. We’ll see.
“Hi, welcome, where are you visiting from? Oh wow, Colorado. It must be tourist season. You know, there’s a lot of history on Bainbridge Island; I don’t know why they don’t publicize it more. The ferry you rode on was featured in Gray’s Anatomy! And the Professor from Gilligan’s Island retired here! And Elizabeth Mitchell, the blonde-haired lady from Lost, bought a house here like three years ago!”
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