Day 6

(Note: I had to shorten the labels, I know how to spell things.)

Song 26: Immortal Technique - "Getaway"
Seeing Immortal Technique live was one of the most intimidating/intense hip-hop experiences I've witnessed. It was so angry and dark, and his between song banter amounted to depressing stories about the street. Not a fun show, really. This song is, by comparison, fairly optimistic. It's mostly a brag track, a mix of braggadocio and hip-hop hope. Side note, someone I know, though I can't remember who now, revealed to me that she loved Immortal Technique, and I was so surprised because the person wasn't into hip-hop at all. You think you know some people!

Song 27: Nirvana - "Where Did You Sleep Last Night"
I hadn't even heard the original version of this until a year or two ago. Popular opinion says this performance stole the show at Nirvana's unplugged performance, and it's not hard to see why. It touches on everything Nirvana was; bare, emotional, and was not; sparse, haunting, and hits both angles spot on. Probably the coolest song I listened to at age 12, besides maybe "Beat It."

Song 28: The Magnetic Fields - "Is This What They Used To Call Love?"
Stephen Merritt is my favorite gay songwriter today, assuming Kevin Barnes is really straight. This song, excepting the cute little bridge, is fairly depressing, especially with the beat poet upright bass that's going on.

(Skipping: Nirvana - "Polly." iTunes shuffle is pretty bad at shuffling.)

Song 29: Sunset Rubdown - "Stadiums and Shrines II"
I guess I'm about to work out, live on this blog, why I dislike Sunset Rubdown but really enjoy Wolf Parade! You know, this song isn't bad, but it just feels so much jammier than Wolf Parade. It's covered in a little too much reverb, and feels too far away to be affecting. I did think that "There's a kid in there/ and he's big, and dumb and kinda scared" was excellently delivered. This blog is winning me over on the music I already own.

Song 30: Eels - "Bride of Theme From Blinking Lights"
I ordinary wouldn't blog about a song that is less than 2 minutes long and is an instrumental, but Eels have made some of my favorite instrumentals throughout their career. This is right up there. It just feels so innocent and childlike, but maybe all soft songs with xylophones sound that way to me. This is a nice way to end this entry, anyway.

Day 5

Song 21: Yes - "Mood For A Day"
I can actually remember the first time I heard this song. I was either 12 or 13 and I was going to Six Flags Great America with my friend Dan and his two friends Jaron and Jon, and while I was listening to who knows what, Dan was really into classic rock. So the car trip, chauffeured by Dan's dad, was heavy on Zeppelin, Yes, Floyd, and a host of others. The genesis of that car trip later turned into a 4 disc mix Dan made that opened me up to a lot of older music I wouldn't have otherwise known where to begin with. It was also, I believe, the beginning of a list I made of "CDs to own." Pretty important song for me here guys! Also it is cool for the same reasons I wasn't a huge fan of the Nick Drake Song, with a cool Robin Hood feel to it. I need to learn some storytelling tips (Re: brevity) from Luke.

Song 22: Destroyer - "Your Blood"
I know Dan Bejar's voice is really hate it or love it, and this song sort of exemplifies why for me. I love the vocals in this song, but I understand how a nasally, overly verbose approach could make someone turn it off immediately. The line "They were all right / they were on fire" so quickly ups the ante for the subject in question. Sometimes feels like that sort of hyperbole happens a bit too often.

Song 23: Everclear - "Heroin Girl"
"I used to know a girl / she had two pierced nipples and a black tattoo." This, when you're 12-years-old, is the edgiest thing you've ever heard, and you are not prepared to meet a girl like that. It's debatable whether most guys at 22 would be prepared to know a girl like that. I'll admit to still thinking this is a fun song though. Everclear played some pretty boring rock on their last few albums but this song has a little edge going for it, even if the bluntness of the song dims the intensity of the repeated refrain "Just another overdose."

(Skipping: Califone "One". Nothing much to say there.)

Song 24: T. Rex - "Jeepster"
I've always felt like T. Rex was mostly a less interesting Bowie and "Jeepster" proves my point, I think. There's nothing really wrong with the song, but it never builds to anything more than a foot-tapping refrain and a few hand claps. It has the glam flourishes but lacks the intimacy of great Bowie.

Song 25: Amy Millan - "Baby I"
I never thought, based on her BSS output, that Amy Milan would be "the country one," but this works for me completely now. Other than Feist's The Reminder , maybe my favorite solo disc by the collective. "Sometimes I feel my only friend is a whiskey glass / you know it don't stop the time, but it helps it pass." True enough.

Day 4

Note: Before we get started on day 4, I just wanted to make sure that everyone is aware that the titles of the artist - "song" are all going to be links. They'll either be a last.fm page where there's an audio stream of the song or a youtube of a video or performance, just something to give people a chance to hear the song I'm sort of talking about.

Song 16: Nick Drake - "Sunday"
I don't have the stats to back this up, but there has to be more flute in this song than in all of the other songs in my library combined. It's like listening to Sir Robin of Locksley make some elevator music. Also the chorus reminds me of the chorus to David Bowie's "Kooks." Does anyone else hear this?

Song 17: Beck - "Missing"
I haven't heard this song in a long time, but it's sonically a little more interesting than I remembered. The lyrics still get bogged down in Beck's crooner Sea Change style, but the side-to-side panning of the percussion is a fun gimmick. Still, for a song that's nearly 5 minutes long, not a lot happens here.

Song 18: Incubus - "A Crow Left of the Murder"
If I recall, Crow was Incubus' political protest record, but that feels hard to glean from a casual listen. As an aside, I didn't find out until very recently that the word for a group of crows is a murder, so for the longest time I was under the impression that the title was just a bunch of hip posturing. I get it now, Incubus. I get it now.

Song 19: Emily Haines - "The Bank"
One of my favorite voices in my iTunes library! This song has a jazzy flourish to it with the brushed (or at least muted) drums, and an understated piano pushing it forward. Plus, Haines' voice has such a quiet flirtyness to it. Absolutely kills me.

Song 20: Weezer - "Simple Pages"
Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. I actually feel like "The Green Album" has aged remarkably well when you consider how truly awful the follow-ups have been, but it's still striking to me how lifeless this sounds. It's just power chords and Cuomo's mic with a chorus effect. I still think Matt Sharp's back-up vocals might be one of the biggest things that totally derailed this band.

Day 3

Song 11: The Slapsticks - "Johnny"
Growing up, I had a pretty small social circle, but each of my friends had pretty disparate musical tastes. One of my friends, Josh, was really into ska and pop punk like MxPx and, well, The Slapsticks. I remember distinctly one day borrowing about 30 or 40 of his cds and copying them for my collection. This was definitely one of them. Josh lives in Hong Kong now and I haven't seen him in years, and all of that is more interesting than this song, which might be the longest three and a half minute song I've ever heard.

Song 12: Pavement - "Box Elder"
Just last night when I was DJing, two girls who I didn't know, after hanging around for awhile, asked me to play some Pavement. I explained that I had lost my iPod earlier in the day so I was sort of out of luck, only able to DJ with the mix cds I brought to the bar, which included not a single Pavement song. They saved the day and gave me their iPod and I played "Cut Your Hair," but the point of this story is that it made me really happy to hear people request Pavement when my plan, prior to losing my iPod, was to play some that night. "Box Elder," I always thought of as a sort of boring song, but the sentiment that, "I've got to get the fuck out of this place" is pretty relatable.

Song 13: Editors - "All Sparks"
I know that this band sounds like Interpol without the funny lyrics, but this song is pretty great. The bass line has a nice slinky groove to it, and even though I hadn't heard it in awhile, I was able to guess that the song was called "All Sparks," just by listening to the lyrics (All sparks will burn out in the end. / All sparks will burn out.) which is always comforting to me. In a fun twist, this song's three and a half minute length feels half as long as that rough Slapsticks song above.

(Skipping: Stephen Malkmus - "Post-Paint Boy" for the same reason I skipped Modest Mouse yesterday)

Song 14: This Is Me Smiling - "Alive in the Chase"
This is actually an un-mastered version of this song that I received from my old roommate Jim (Did I mention how cool I am enough in this entry?), which makes This Is Me Smiling the first local entry onto the blog. I think this song stacks up nicely to the rest of the other 13 songs so far, too. It's a bit schizophrenic, jumping from a down-tempo verse to a piano-aided alternative rock chorus but it fits really well in a Ben Folds niche.

Song 15: The Wrens - "Behold Me"
There are a few good The Wrens stories in my head, but this isn't the time for them. Instead I'll just say that as much as I absolutely love the entire Secaucus and The Meadowlands albums, I have not come around on Silver the album or this track. The Pixies influence is too great of a shadow over the whole thing and the song itself isn't that distinguishable as a blistering punk rock number from countless other bands. I'm so glad they expanded their sound on the follow-ups. Of course, that's what a good band would do, and this is a very good band.

Day 2

Song 6: Broken Social Scene - "Cause=Time"
This is one of the first BSS songs I ever heard, and it is still one of my favorites. The vocals here always reminded me of a very subdued Chris Cornell, so immediately upon hearing it, I had a nice familiarity with the song in a way. The guitar freak outs that gradually work their way into the song and explode near the end are some of my favorite sounds.

Song 7: Modest Mouse - "Other People's Lives"
Another song that I cut my teeth-on when it came to getting into "cool," music, this serves as a good contrast to that Tool song I talked about yesterday. The drums in that Tool song drove me nuts while I listened to it, but I have always loved how Modest Mouse recorded their drums. This song is a nice example of it. Everything percussion-wise in this song just seems to roll along, each hit leading into the other, and the hi-hat crashes are so slow and quiet, it just sounds right for the song. Sorry about the rough youtube, that was all that was available.

Song 8: Frank Black - "Tight Black Rubber"
I don't have nearly the experience with this track, so it should be fun to blog about. I've enjoyed a good portion of Frank Black's solo work, and this song is at least fun. The bass sounds thick as a thief. The lyrics are sort of silly and the speak-singing doesn't work that well for the song itself, I don't think, but you could do worse probably.

Song 9: Devendra Banhart - "Tonada Yanomaminista"
I'm still not over how much this song sounds like it was recorded underwater. The sound is so far away and washed out it's like listening to Banhart from beyond the grave. I'm a fan of Banhart and of Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon the album this is off of, but I dislike this song quite a bit. It's not grating, it's not offensive, it's just hard to hear, damn it.

(Skipping: Modest Mouse - "Doin' The Cockroach". I would love to talk about this song but I just covered a Modest Mouse song so hopefully it'll come up again later.)

Song 10: The Libertines - "The Man Who Would Be King"
Each passing year I come around more on The Libertines, and I'm slowly getting to the point where I'm ready to say it's too bad that they'll probably never make another record. This song strikes me as pretty different from a good deal of their catalog - it's up-tempo, sure, but it doesn't have the sort of urgency that a song like "I Get Along," bursts with. That's not necessarily a bad thing, either. A little variety is nice, and this is a good song, although the jazz flourishes at the end are awfully confusing.

Day 1

Song 1: The Coral - "Spanish Main"
Perfect! The first song of 5,000 is a track by a band that I rarely, if ever, listen to. "Spanish Main" is off of The Coral's self-titled 2002 disc and I only know that thanks to trusty details built into iTunes. I'm very excited that this is how this project will begin! The song even functions as a nice intro song, bursting through some static while a steady guitar repetition make it seem like the track might actually be instrumental. It's not, but at just under two minutes, it was over almost as quick as it began.

Song 2: Bright Eyes - "Oh You Are The Roots That Sleep Beneath My Feet And Hold The Earth In Place"
I'm not sure what the general consensus is, but give me whiny, self-absorbed Connor Oberst any day over the boring political, psuedo-country artist. This is one of my favorite Bright Eyes songs from the former category. It is certainly whiny with lyrics like "So when I'm suffering through some awful drive, / you occasionally cross my mind." but I was 16 when this came out, which is the perfect age to hear a sweet sentiment like the titular chorus and apply it to every fantastic romance you've yet to have.

Song 3: Jon-Rae & The River - "Eastern Migration"
My good friend Luke turned me onto this band, and I remember for the longest time I couldn't get into it at all. I can't even remember why now, just that I was not having it in the least. Time certainly provided me some perspective here, because I'm enjoying listening to "Eastern Migration," as I blog on it. I know that a few lines earlier I just shit on Bright Eyes country-posing, but I really enjoy the modern country-fried blues of this song. It builds really well, too, from the somber Johnny Cash paint-by-numbers first half until it kicks into a full-on duet.

Song 4: !!! - "Must Be The Moon"
I was getting a little worried that the first five songs would all be pretty straightforward tracks. so this is a good change of pace. I've been a big fan of !!! since Louden Up Now but this might be one of my favorite songs from the follow-up. It's not too often you hear a song about how a guy was awful in bed. The beat is fun as it is, but I always found the speak-rapped story way more engaging than I should've. Even the chorus, You could blame it on the music
but it wouldn't be right / cause I've gotten lucky to some pretty bad tunes," makes me smile.

Song 5: Tool - "Forty Six & 2"
Ahaha oh wow. I guess now is as good a time as any to bring up this caveat. I have over 16,000 songs in my library. I can therefore skip a good portion of them and still get to 5,000 easily. I'll probably invoke the skip a lot if I've covered a lot of a band's tracks (I'm swimming in Modest Mouse and Pavement over here...) or if I have absolutely nothing to say about a song. I'll also make a note of what I skipped just to play fair. I'm not skipping this though, if only so I can better explain the rules of my game. Having said all that, I never understood Tool. I have Aenima, probably copied from a friend back in the day, and this song doesn't make me want to revisit it at all. The instrumentation on the verse of this song makes it feel like nothing is even happening until the chorus, where a guitar kicks up a little bit. Even turned up, the drums sound hollow. I remember Tool having a few songs I thought were fine, but I guess this isn't one of them.