Monkey in the middle

I had a nice Christmas, played with my nephews, all was well, etc.

Sidenote: I am heading up to Minnesota tomorrow, and I will be in Brainerd for approximately 2 weeks. I will be spending most of my time with my friends and relaxing, and as such, there is a high likelihood that you will catch me at Zorbaz, especially this week. I also plan to go into school a couple times to see people once school starts up again. I don't really have a set itinerary, but I am looking forward to seeing some of you blogging folks, so I hope that will work out.

On with the post:
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A fun benefit of the time I have spent loading all of my old cds into my iPod is that I am rediscovering music that I love but have not listened to for a long time.

So I offer this brief report of a few songs that I am very happy to have re-found. These are a bit obscure because in some cases, the particular song might be the reason I own the album, and so I rarely pull out that particular album.

"The Size of a Cow" by The Wonder Stuff


The Wonder Stuff are a strange band from the 90's, and much of their music is serious and heady. Their song "The Size of A Cow," however, is not. The song opens with a silly little vaudeville-like piano, and then in kick the drums o' fun. Though "The Size of a Cow" contains meaningful ideas about wasted lives, the chorus indicates that the song does not aim to be taken too seriously:

Damn blast! Look at my past --
ripping up my feet over broken glass.
Oh wow! Look at me now!
I'm building up my problems to the size of a cow.

Silly. Fun. Upbeat. Four stars.


"Fat Man & Dancing Girl" by Suzanne Vega


Early in her career, Suzanne Vega was all about acoustic folk music. But in 1992 she released an amazing album called 99.9 Fahrenheit Degrees, and all was changed. The new album was full of synthesized beats, industrial clanging, tweets, twips, loud cymbals, and amazing songs. (I don't know what a twip is, but I'm sure this album has them.) "Fat Man & Dancing Girl" is hard to describe, but its overriding feature is its bubbly, mini-percolator beat and contrasting loud clanging chorus. I guess the lyrics are best described as circus-esque:

Fall in love with a bright idea
And the way a world is revealed to you
Fat man and dancing girl
And most of the show is concealed from view

Monkey in the middle
Keeps singing that tune
I don't want to hear it
Get rid of it soon

But the beat is everything. This song will forever remind me of my best friend from college, Kathy, because whenever this song came on in the car, we both did a little shoulder-bippy-dance-thing (that's right) that basically consisted of rapid-fire staccato shrugging. Good times, good times.


"Out to Get You" by James

James is most famous for their excellent song "Laid," which was covered for the opening credits of American Pie. But "Out to Get You" is a sublimely beautiful, superiorly sad, sedately mesmerizing song of loss, love, and paranoia. This is a song I love to sing along to -- loudly. The quiet opening bass line and acoustic guitar lead into Tim Booth's beautiful voice, pining away:

I'm so alone tonight,
my bed feels larger than when I was small.
Lost in memories, lost in all the sheets and old pillows.
I'm so alone tonight -- miss you more than I could let you know,
miss the outline of your back,
miss you breathing down my neck

The song crescendos up to the repeating paranoia of "Here they come again, here they come again, here they come again" and ends with the devastating introspection of a lost soul.

Glorious.

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Since I am leaving town tomorrow, I am going on a blogging hiatus. I may be checking comments and reading other blogs every once in a while, but I will not be posting again until I get back, which will be about the second week of January. Then the blogging will recommence, all afresh with new ideas.

So Happy New Year, and I will see some of you soon . . .