incidentals and accidentals

czupcaks:

Moebius, Contramio.

about-today:

Built To Spill, Car

lizistwentythree: And since it’s basically been BTS week around my house, here’s one that I keep coming back to.

Man, why don’t those guys do songs like this anymore?

newspeedwayboogie:

Big Star - The Ballad of El Goodo

One of NSB favorite songs ever, from the most excellent Keep An Eye On The Sky box set

Ive been built up and trusted
Broke down and busted
But they’ll get theirs and well get ours
Just if we can, just hold on

rendit:

adayum:

Big Black - Bad Penny

Jens Lekman: You Can Call Me Al

bmichael:

Casiotone For The Painfully Alone - Graceland

I’ve been trying to get into Paul Simon’s Graceland—but I cannot. It’s the cheesy-to-my-ears bass. It sounds SO CHEAP and SHITTY that I cannot I just cannot listen to the album. I can’t. I feel like there’s something wrong with me, but I can’t listen to a lot of 80s music because of this sound. Do you know what I mean?

Casiotone’s take, however, sounds like expansive fields of golden Tennessee corn worked by bourbon-besotted, dirtpoor workers. And a slight, slightly dirty uplift.

Suddenly this morning my “Graceland” post, which I did for postpunk about a month back, is being reblogged again, thus far by bmichael, johnny-mnemonic, and renurenu—all of whom hate the song. It’s hard to argue with slams on the production of Graceland the album (the fretless bass, the echo on the drums that was such a common trick in the 80s), and I can certainly see how someone would identify Simon as a symbol of post-60s egotism/ennui, or the comfortable stagnation that generation achieved which 80s punk reacted against. But, well, that all washes right off for me both as a fan of Paul Simon and as someone for whom Graceland has taken on layer upon layer of memories and associations. So, oh well, other people don’t like this song. No biggie.

But bmichael pointed out this version of the song, by Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, which he finds to be superior. He says “At least the Casiotone version lets the beauty of the lyrics shine with its apocalyptic-yet-minimal instrumentation and speak-singing.” Now, I certainly can’t say that the Casiotone version is superior, but there is some truth to what bmichael says about the lyrics. Jens Lekman does a cover of “You Can Call Me Al” in which he removes the chorus and only sings the verses in a simple guitar/voice composition. When I saw him do it live a year or so back he said he did this precisely because he loved the lyrics so much but felt that they were lost amid the goofy chorus, the horns and fretless bass, the 80s production, the infamous video starring Chevy Chase. Again, I’ll still take the original, but Lekman’s version is pretty wonderful too, for the same reasons this Casiotone version, on some level, succeeds: everything has been stripped away so that the heart of the song is all that remains.

thekeri:

youveescaped:

Pixies - Here Comes Your Man

Here’s a great Monday morning song. Time to get up and start the week.

(Not counting that I’m sick and, in fact, am not going to get up and start the week.)

grimmertown:

Karen Dalton “Something On Your Mind” (from In My Own Time 1971)

bmichael:

Animal Collective - For Reverend Green
(watchingtheplanets)

So I kind of intimated earlier this week that I go nuts sometimes when I’m running. To psych myself up. Anyway. This is ‘my song.’ I can’t see why it’s not hailed universally as the greatest thing ever. It is. “For Reverend Green” literally makes me see stars and little shiny black spots. Maybe it triggers an epileptic fit in me. I don’t know why, but it fucks up all my shit.

I actually find all of Strawberry Jam to be a great workout album.

dontforgetthecoffee:

jakeoliver:

Paul Simon - Gumboots

So you know which line to listen out for:
Believing I had supernatural powers I slammed into a brick wall

 Hey senorita, that’s astute…

Why don’t we get together and call ourselves an institute?