February 2009
34 posts
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Watch#319: the decemberists - the tain (2005)
wouldn’t it be great if the decemberists could stop writing cute little corduroy ditties caked in pacific northwest adorableness? every time they sing their apology song (“i’m really sorry steven/ but your bicycle’s been stolen/ i was watching it for you/ ‘til you came back in the fall/ guess i didn’t do such a good job...
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Watch#318: mariah carey ft. ol’ dirty bastard - fantasy (remix) (1995)
brian eno produced the talking heads, whose bassist and drummer formed the tom tom club, whose genius of love was sampled by mariah carey for fantasy, which was remixed with guest rapping by ol’ dirty bastard, who the same year released shimmy shimmy ya, which proves that brian eno and the refrain “hey, baby, i...
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Watch#316: t.rex - new york city (1975)
a few million dollars of the national bailout should be spent on bringing t.rex’s marc bolan back to life, putting his purple blouse back on, teasing his hair back into its full floral glory, and getting him to do his jiving jazz hands move on top of city hall for one week. then everyone would be okay! a good boogie mind poem, which is what t.rex’s...
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Watch#313: pulp - common people (1995)
common people is the best british pop song of a decade that had oasis’ wonderwall, the verve’s bittersweet symphony, fatboy slim’s praise you, blur’s song 2, radiohead’s creep, and, ahem, the spice girls’ wannabe. but the song, which, if it were a breakfast food, would be buttered chocolate-chip pancakes swallowed down with...
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Watch#312: 3rd bass - brooklyn-queens (1989)
not that brutal international financial catastrophes are good things, but wouldn’t it be nice if these sour times reversed a bit of brooklyn gentrification? all i want is to spend one afternoon in a borough that looks something like this 3rd bass video: funny hats, big jackets, bad accents, and rappers sharing non-rhyming non-sequiturs like,...
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Watch#310: the small faces - itchycoo park (1967)
sometimes i sit and stare at pictures of ringo starr making funny faces, and i wonder what with a little help from my friends and octopus’ garden would have sounded like if they had been recorded for rubber soul. really that’s how i spend my time. anyway i’ve been thinking about it and i think the small faces’ itchycoo park is...
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Watch#309: sufjan stevens - jacksonville (2006)
as a 2009 valentine’s day present to myself, i’ve decided to rekindle that special feeling with nine albums i used to love. these records and i once really adored each other—we’d take walks, we’d sleep together—but then we drifted apart.
1. sufjan stevens - illinois: sufjan’s super-duper whimsical cuteness...
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Watch#307: bob marley & the wailers - stir it up (1973, old grey whistle test)
bob marley would be happy to know that a firm called hilco consumer capital, which is co-owned by the goldman sachs and the famously evil cerberus capital management (which co-owns chrysler) and a giant retail liquidation firm called hilco, now owns half of his likeness and trademarks. bob marley, according to the wall...
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Watch#306: johnny cash - on a monday (i got stripes) (1959)
johnny cash and jokes about bowtied bassists who chew too much bubble gum go together like the dwight d. eisenhower administration and hoedowns at town hall.
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Watch#304: willie nelson, emmylou harris, and daniel lanois - my own peculiar way (1998, dir. wim wenders)
one day ron rosenbaum or someone good will write an entire book on what happens when emmylou harris sings duets. here you have willie nelson’s gray-haired voice, full of bark and bird’s nests and topsoil, but then she drops in and his song turns into a botanical garden. it’s...
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Watch#303: boogie down producitons (k.r.s. one) - my philosophy (1988)
k.r.s. one is the only man alive wondrous enough to rhyme hamburger with self-murder—or watermelon with drug-selling.
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Watch#301: the beatles - all you need is love (1967, our world live telecast)
last week nick sylvester wrote about what makes animal collective’s merriweather post pavillion so good, though he was really writing about someone else’s takedown of the album and what made it so bad, but actually he was really writing about getting swept away by beautiful things and trying to fathom how that...
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Watch#300: the beatles - you really got a hold on me (1969)
gee golly, this is the super goovy music video extravaganza’s 300th music video— although this and lots of the other 299 haven’t quite been music videos, really just videos of music. bona fide music videos can be great too (remember when aerosmith’s joe perry stepped out of the way of a moving train at just the right...
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