random info you probably don't want to know about me, because i'm not famous.

lets face it. the onion a.v. club ain't gonna come knockin' anytime soon to ask me nicely if i will shuffle my ipod and then discuss it with them. who cares what i listen to? and further, who cares what i have to say about it? i understand.

but this is my dumb old blog, and i have my own frickin' a.v. club, and i got way bored tonight watching the fucking cardinals walk all over those cheatin' detroit tigers, so i decided to shuffle my ipod and write about it. it's a segment i made up myself and i'm gonna call it 'random rules'. naw, just kidding.

but seriously. if anyone else wants to get bored watching stupid baseball and shuffle their ipod, i'll print what you come up with. i don't know if the onion is gonna want it, though.

here goes.

bob marley-soon come(livey up yourself)
i don't know of any music that is consistently more feel-good. interesting that ol' bob was working from one of the greatest social conciousnesses of modern times. awareness feels good! (apparently...)

the polecats-john, i'm only dancing(bowie cover)
you might remember the polecats from that 'make a circuit with me' song they had in the 80's? yeah, you'd know it if you heard it. anyhow, this is a logical cover for them, but it doesn't really do much for me...this is one of my favorite bowie songs, and i'd rather hear him do it any day of the week.

john vanderslice-me and my 424(life and death of an american 4-tracker)
i love john vanderslice. an intriguing lyricist, and a wizard with the audio recording-type stuff, his songs are always full of great beats and riffs and crazy sounds and clever little phrases and whatnot. this is one of my first favorite jv songs...a love song to his 4-track, or perhaps a hate-song, or a not-so-love song to everything less reliable and less awesome than his 4-track. or a splendid combination of both. if all else fails, jv can always head to the basement with a box of fucking tdk's.

modest mouse-black cadillacs(good news for people who love bad news)
this is such a great album. i think it arrived just in time to soundtrack a particular sliver of my life pretty accurately- a little anger, a little fear, a little hope, and a lot of sarcasm rolled into a song cycle that felt like it would kick your ass if it met you in a dark alley under the wrong circumstances.

m. ward-rollercoaster(postwar)
this one is off his latest album, which i just got(thanks kels) and haven't really had a chance to listen to yet. the songs i have heard have led me to believe i should expect nothing less than the greatness of his previous outings...m. ward is one of those rare artists who is almost instantly a classic. maybe because his songs conjure a sense of having great history and his voice is so distiguished and defiant of chronology. his songs sound as if they are coming out of a really old radio that you've found buried in a shed somewhere, lost relics from decades past. yet completely new. i think i may have stolen that whole description from an article i read on him once, but i can't remember, so fuck it. i can always use the 'i don't recall' defense. works for everyone else.

sade-lover's rock(lover's rock)
sade has the power to create an atmosphere with her music, so it doesn't matter if you hear it while in line at the coffee place, taking a bath, lying on a beach in the tropics or driving the long island expressway with the love of your life in the passenger seat, it all seems exactly right and wonderfully sensual and relaxed and romantic.(all of the sade-song-hearing-scenarios above are ones i have actually experienced. they are not actors.)

so there it is. i even used every color in the visible spectrum to highlight the songs and artists. the onion doesn't do that. this is my a.v. club. mine.