Waiting for Gouda

Okay, so here’s the deal. Dan ZP passed along the rules. The rules say:

“List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.”

Trouble is, I don’t know seven people with blogs. (That’s how you know that I’m not a real blogger. Please, don’t tell anyone.) But I’ll list my songs, anyhow. And I’ll even link to samples, if you care to hear snippets. Now, that’s not in the rules, but hey, I go beyond the call, my friends… that’s just how I roll.

1. Andrew Bird - Opposite Day - Could have picked any of 20 Bird songs… can’t get enough lately, but chose this one due to the fact that it kicks right off with a weird Kafka-esque reference… he is quite surprised to discover “I had not become a cephalapod, I still had legs and arms.”

2. Aesop Rock - The Harbor is Yours - A rap ditty about pirates and mermaids. Funny as hell. Not the actual hell, of course, which I hear can be a bit of a downer… but the amorphous hell that can be invoked as the epitome of any adjective. You know what I mean.

3. Glen Hansard - Say It To Me Now - From the Once soundtrack… this song is so musically spare, but so full of powerful, raw vocals… I find it rather mesmerizing.

4. Modest Mouse - Parting of the Sensory - The first half is an excoriation of some incompetent fool, but at about the 3:30 mark, it all changes, and you get a little catchy, clap-along lesson in the conservation of matter. In the sense that your body will rot in the ground someday.

5. Bright Eyes - Waste of Paint - I don’t know if Bright Eyes counts as a guilty pleasure or not. I suspect that he does in many circles. But I’ve really been into weird lyrics lately, and this kid delivers. This song makes me smile, oddly, because it reminds me a lot of when I was about 20 years old and a big mopey idiot who hated myself and everyone else.

6. My Chemical Romance - This Is How I Disappear - They call this band “emo”. This is a word that I literally do not understand what it means. It gets applied to a lot of different sounds, and I just don’t get it. Maybe I’m too old. But anyway, this song sounds a lot like Queensryche in the Operation:Mindcrime era which I was heavy into a long time ago. And if you know what I’m talking about, then you’re kind of old too. If not, you’re too old. Or not old enough. Or just not a dork.

7. Decemberists - Crane Wife #3 - Don’t have any idea what this is all about. But I dig it.

So, like I said, I don’t know many bloggers, but here are a couple people I do know that also played along:

Zapruder Point, Stacey Early

I suppose if you are reading this, and don’t have a blog, you could write your songs on a postcard and mail them to me. Or you could just Add a Comment to this blog. Come on, it’s fun!