Happy Old Year 2008

Here’s what’s on the annual mixed cd of the stuff I dug the most in any one year. If you’d like one and didn’t get one, let me know. I’m sure I meant to give you one.

1. Lone saxaphone player and guitar maker - from Tony Schwart’s Music in the Streets
I found the Music in the Streets filediving on soulseek. Turns out Mr Schwartz does a lot of this stuff. Check out this WNYC show by him.  He was a groundbreaking sound-recordist and was also responsible for the Daisy commercial. He died, coincidentally, in 2008 (August). It’s crazy what you find.

2. Kick Out the Jams – MC5 – from the soundtrack to The Future is Unwritten, the great Joe Strummer documentary that came out last year.

3. Hip Hop – Dead Prez (live) – The version from the Dave Chappelle’s Block Party soundtrack, with backup from the Roots and others. I love it.

4. Street Festivals: Italian Street Festival Jazz Group, Part 1 - from Tony Schwart’s Music in the Streets

5. Hockey Monkey – James Kochalka Superstar (sometimes credited to The Zambonis). Kcohalka’s also one of my favourite comics artists.

6. Hey John – Blossom Dearie. Who was also as cute as her singing voice. Thanks to Tracey for introducing her to me.

7. Beyond the Sea – Bobby Darin.  This is the only record I have that was my dad’s, and I never listened to it til last year. A great album – That’s All.

8. Sam - Yellowjacket Avenger. From my favourite album this year, Double Nature. I’ve written about Geoffrey Pye’s music here a fair bit. There’s another tune from Double Nature coming up later in this cd.

9. Bob Dylan’s 49th Beard – Wilco. There’s not much to say. I like this song a lot, and this band a lot, in a weird but powerful way: I’m never loyal to them – I’m always ready to not care about them – but what they’re doing and what I’m feeling like hearing lines up a lot.

10. Rose Marie – Slim Whitman. Read the post, view the Kaufman, dig it.

11. Anyone Else But You – Michael Cera and Ellen Page. I don’t want to hear about this movie again for like ten years, because we have talked way too much about it this year. But it was great, and the soundtrack was too. Hmm. I’m noticing a lot of movies on this mix – weird.

12. Ain’t That Peculiar – Marvin Gaye. Believe it or not, I found this tune in the soundtrack to American Splendor.  I didn’t even notice this pattern til now. Movies.

13. The End of Love – Clem Snide. First time I heard this was driving on Vancouver Island with Marjan. We were pulling weeds on this organic farm around some blueberry bushes, this was on my ipod. It was a great trip. One of my best vacations. Did I tell you the story of meeting Hitchhike Mike?

14. Parades, Part 1: Voice of a Young Girl - from Tony Schwart’s Music in the Streets

15. Dead Man in My Bed – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. From Nocturama.

16. Blues Basket – artist unknown. From the Cambodian Cassette Archives, by Sublime Frequencies, which we’ve already discussed on this here blorg. Turns out I forgot to put this one on, somehow! The numbering is off from here on in! Fuck! Well, anyway, you still deserve to hear it if you haven’t. Click here for an anonymous Cambodian masterpiece called Don’t Let My Girlfriend Tickle Me. Read the post about it and the label here.

16. Close to Me (the Staring at the Sea version) by The Cure. Driving back from Ryan’s wedding last summer, Jason put this on and declared it the best song of all time. A couple months later Marjan played it again and said she’d thought about it and she agreed. I trust both their tastes. I’ve been listening to it, trying to see what’s so great about it, and it really does reveal itself in repeated listenings. There’s a lot going on in there – multiple vocal tracks doing very interesting things. The depth of the sound field they’ve got and the myriad ways they’ve found to fill the space are impressive. I took for granted because I’ve known it for so long, which happens. Friends rule because they widen your perspective.

This song may be listed as 16 on your CD player, but in your booklet it will be listed as 17. D’oh!

17. The Special Fate – Yellowjacket Avenger. Another from Double Nature. Also known as “18″.

18, or 19. This Land is Your Land – Pete Seeger on Sesame Street. For the last four years I had this job above the big Goodwill for Toronto. I could nip into there every day at lunch and quickly rifle through the records. I found a lot of great stuff there. I found, for example, this righteous song there. I miss that job. I love the banjo playing.

19, 20 – whatever. This is the last song on the CD, and it is called Tomorrow Never Knows and it is by Hideki. This is from his Revolvah, a full-album-cover of the Beatles’ Revolver – which sounds like a crazy idea, but he’s got it so well thought out and gets to the soul of each song that it works very well. Read more about Hideki at the link – he’s an interesting cat.

Happy New Year.

-mister zero