From his eye spring fireflies: 8/24 show

Among the songs on todays show was a three-song tribute set to Ernie:

First came "The Gal from Joe's" by Nina Simone, an old recording that I have always interpreted to be about death: "She's leaving, and folks are feeling so low | They're grieving, and they're consoling poor Joe [...] She's traveling down that long last road" (lyrics from memory; may be a little wrong). It has a perky sound, yet it's still moving.

The second song was "Requiescat", by Duncan Sheik, a more recent song that takes an opposite approach to the theme: the lyrics tell their story much less clearly, and more obliquely, and yet the theme is more clearly stated ("requiescat" meaning "may (s)he rest"; neither song directly mentions death). Duncan Sheik's song is soft and sad, but a good deal less heartrending than the Oscar Wilde poem of the same name.

I wrapped up with Holly Cole's version of "I Can See Clearly Now", which is not about death at all. It's a nice, hopeful song, and a good way to raise people out of the funk of the previous two songs. More importantly, I bought the album this is from, Don't Smoke in Bed, in the fall of 1990, just a few months before we got Ernie — I wanted a song to remind me of that year.

I got a call during the set from a listener calling to express his sympathy, and then to tell me how when his cats died (three, all at about the same time), they had them taxidermied. I was trying to think of a polite way to say I wouldn't be doing that, not least because Ernie was already cremated, but I didn't have to — I couldn't get a word in edgewise. So it was an odd call, but I appreciated it, or at least the spirit in which it was made.

I got a lot of calls this show; I don't know why there are more some days than others. One was an enthusiastic "Tony! Where have you been?" (Because I've been alternating weeks this summer.) It was a caller whose voice I know, and I wanted to ask him his name, but I had to get off the phone and id my songs, so I didn't. He requested Jens Lekman, an artist I like but don't know well, so I was happy to play the request.

Another called asked for something pretty obscure: David Bowie's "Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Sola," which is an Italian version of "A Space Oddity." I know in high school my sister had a copy of this on vinyl, on the aptly-named compilation Rare; it's probably still in Providence, unless I've got it here. In any event, we didn't have it in the studio, so I played another selection by Bowie.

Finally, I got a request to break a rule: play an artist that I had already played. And normally I really wouldn't have done it, but the guy was sick in bed, and it was They Might Be Giants, who I'd played at about 6:15am, when a lot of people were still asleep. Sure, it was only about an hour and a half earlier, but still I relented. Apparently I'm a sucker. It did help that the song he requested was short — about 10 seconds. The album Apollo 18 has about 20 short, short tracks near the end, ranging from 5 to 30 seconds long; I played about 10 in succession, and it was probably just over a minute total. Which was fun.

*: new stuff
(r): requests

Artist	Song	Album	Label
Siouxsie and the Banshees	The Killing Jar	The Best of Siouxsie and the Banshees	Polydor UK
Sponsors In and Out of Love	Yellow Pills: Prefill	The Numero Group
*Datarock	Fa-Fa-Fa	Datarock Datarock	Nettwerk
*They Might Be Giants	The Mesopotamians	The Else	Idlewild
Laurie Anderson	Poison	Talk Normal: Anthology	Rhino
The M's	Plan of the Man	Future Women	Polyvinyl
*Dirty Projectors	Gimme Gimme Gimme	Rise Above	Dead Oceans
The Magnetic Fields	Kiss Me Like You Mean It	69 Love Songs Vol. 2	Merge
Zerostars	Fearless	The Good Can't Escape	Self-released (www.zerostars.com)
*Billy Harvey	Kaleidoscope Gun	Bearsick	Gold Recordings
*Justice	D.A.N.C.E.	†	Ed Banger/Vice
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult	Do You Wanna Get Funky with Me	Gay, Black, and Married	Ryko
The Go! Team	Bottle Rocket	Thunder Lightning Strike	Memphis Industries
Ghislain Poirier	Breakupdown	Mic Diplomat feat DJ Collage	Chocolate Industries
XTC	Ballet for a Rainy Day	Skylarking	Geffen
Leonard Cohen	So Long, Marianne	The Best of Leonard Cohen	CBS
Edith Frost	It's a Game	It's a Game	Drag City
*Ulrich Schnauss	Shine	Goodbye	Domino
*DJ 2Tall Presents Dudley Perkins and Georgia Anne Muldrow	A Tall	Beautiful Mindz	Eclectic Breaks/Amalgam Digital
(r)Jens Lekman	Pocketful of Money	Oh You're So Silent Jens	Secretly Canadian
The Specials	Ghost Town (12" version)	The Singles Collection
*Frisbie	I Speak Your Mind	New Debut	Appendix
(r)David Bowie	Sons of the Silent Age	Heroes	Virgin
*Caribou	Melody Day	Andorra	Domino
Konrad	Canyon Blue	First Disguised as Last	Radical Turf
*Coltrane Motion	Twenty-Seven	Songs about Music	Data Was Lost
(r)They Might Be Giants	Fingertips + various unnamed short tracks	Apollo 18	Elektra
Camper Van Beethoven	Take the Skinheads Bowling	Reissue Sampler	spinART
X-Ray Spex	Oh Bondage Up Yours	Germ-Free Adolescents	Caroline
The Noisettes	Don't Give Up	What's the Time Mr. Wolf	Universal/Motown
*The Gore Gore Girls	Fox in a Box	Get the Gore	Bloodshot
Nina Simone	The Gal from Joe's	My Baby Just Cares for Me	Duchesse
Duncan Sheik	Requiescat	Phantom Moon	Nonesuch
Holly Cole Trio	I Can See Clearly Now	Don't Smoke in Bed	Manhattan
Rufus Wainwright	Sanssouci	Release the Stars	Geffen
Kaspar Hauser	Glass Case Full of Dead, Stuffed Birds	Quixotic/Taxidermy	Backwardmasking
*Patrick Cleandemin	Days without Rain	Baby Comes Home	Ba Da Bing
*Office	Suburban Perfume	A Night at the Ritz	Scratchie/Newline
*Against Me!	New Wave	New Wave	Sire
Dick Brave and the Backbeats	Walk This Way	Dick This CD
Stereo Total	Ta Voix au Téléphone	Paris-Berlin	Kill Rock Stars
Las Malas Amistades	Hay Zombies en la Playa	Jardín Interior	Psych-O-Path
Morrissey	The Last of the International Playboys	World of Morrissey	EMI

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 2:39 PM