Nihil sub sole novum - 2/29 show

Leap day!

One of the fun things about having an iPod shuffle is that in presenting random music, you're attention is drawn to songs you might not have have noticed otherwise. I can't say that the first track from Bobby Conn's 2007 album King for a Day would have caught my ear. Listening to the album as a whole, you're much likelier to notice the more single-like songs, like "Anybody" or "Love Let Me Down". However, heard out of context (and with the intimacy of headphones), "Vanitas" is a thrilling, nearly operatic torrent of rock. The lyrics are in Latin and taken from Ecclesiastes; need I say more? "Nihil sub sole novum": "Nothing is new under the sun". I've been wanting to play this song for a while, but wasn't sure how to fit it into the show. My solution? Make it the opening tune. (It's also a long song, which is useful for a day in which I got to the station a little later than I like, since I had to shovel snow again.)

So how do you follow a song like "Vanitas"? Not an easy question. I don't want to inflict too much sturm und drang on my listeners at 6am. What I needed was to carry forward some of that drama, while at the same time dialing it down a bit and introducing just a little more pop sound. Solution? Morrissey... specifically, his most fabulously over-the-top piece of drama, "November Spawned a Monster".

Rounding out the set, something from the new Magnetic Fields album. The silliness of the lyrics, over the heaviness of the feedback-laden style of the new album (Distortion), combined with Stephin Merritt lugubrious baritone... I think it was the perfect ending to the set.

I played a couple of tracks off vinyl today, as well. Years ago, while shopping at a local records store (Reckless, most likely), I ran across a record from 1984 by a man named Robert Görl, with the amusingly tacky name of A Night Full of Tension. What caught my eye was the little hand-written sticker on the front: "featuring additional vocals by Annie Lennox". Sold! I haven't listened to the whole album in a while; I remember it as dark technopop and largely forgettable. (Now that I've written that I'll have to give it another listen; maybe I'm wrong?) In any event, I did remember one song that's particularly good: "Darling Don't Leave Me". Annie Lennox is well-featured in this one &151; sort of a featured-backing-vocal, like Helen Terry in Culture Club — and the song has that edgy, off-kilter quality that made early Eurythmics so great.

The other track played off vinyl is my favorite by The Flying Lizards. They are almost exclusively known for their cover of the song "Money" (a song that was used between news items during todays "Democracy Now", which followed my show), but there's much more to their work than that. Their self-title album begins with their aggressively shrill version of Kurt Weill's "Mandalay Song", almost daring you to turn off the stereo. Perseverance is rewarded with track two, the lovely "Herstory". The song has a slow sexy groove, with sardonic lyrics about sexism. The accented singspiel of Money and the nasal shrillness of "Mandalay Song" are replaced with earnest and soft female vocals intoning "You can still make money by singing sweet songs of love", complimented by spoken cockney men's voices repeating "I own you | You don't own me | You are my territory". This song made it onto many mix tapes I made in college.

I almost lost that record, actually. I found it in a record store in Montreal; it's not an easy album to find. I lent it to my friend Mark so that he could get a copy made for himself on CD (a trick that needed very specialized equipment at the time, which I could now do at home if I had the time). I left it with him in Providence for a while, and I think we both forgot about it. Then Mark moved, I think, and decided to unload most of his possessions before doing it. Before selling (or throwing out, I forget which) his records, he let a friend go through them and pull out anything he wanted. When I heard about this, I thought, oh hell, he still had my Flying Lizards album. Hell. So I met this friend of Mark's (someone I didn't yet know), probably at Fellini's Pizzeria on Wickenden in Providence where we all hung out that summer, and it turned out that yes, he had pulled The Flying Lizards. He saw it and knew it was something rare and worth having, and he kept it — and then, when he found out it was mine, he gave it back to me. It's been many years since then, and I still feel thankful (even if I rarely listen to the album). I think his name was Damian. Thanks, Damian.

*: new stuff
(r): requests

artist	song	album	label
Bobby Conn	Vanitas	King for a Day	Thrill Jockey
Morrissey	November Spawned a Monster	Bona Drag	Sire/Reprise
*The Magnetic Fields	Zombie Boy	Distortion	Nonesuch
*Bon Iver	Skinny Love	For Emma, Forever Ago	Jagjaguwar
(r)Volt	Testbild	Volt	In the Red
Romeo Void	Talk Dirty to Me	Warm, in Your Coat	Columbia/Legacy
Patrick Wolf	The Magic Position	The Magic Position	Tomlab
*No Kids	For Halloween	Come into My House	Tomlab
*Vashti Bunyan	Coldest Night of the Year	Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind	Dicristina
Toms	Sun	Yellow Pills: Prefill	Numero Group
*British Sea Power	A Trip Out	Do You Like Rock Music?	Rough Trade
The Returnables	Teenage Imposters	The Returnables	Dirt Nap
Papas Fritas	I Believe in Fate	Buildings and Grounds	Minty Fresh
The Polyphonic Spree	Section 22 [Running Away]	The Fragile Army	TVT
Robert Görl feat. Annie Lennox	Darling Don't Leve Me	A Night Full of Tension	Mute Records
The Whitsundays	Already Gone	The Whitsundays	Friendly Fire
*The Way It Is	Fell in Love with a Carbomber	Be Still My Beating	Bull Independence
Camille	Baby Carni Bird	Le Fil	EMI
Amy Winehouse	Back to Black	Back to Black	Island
The Flying Lizards	Herstory	The Flying Lizards	Polygram
*Cat Power	Aretha, Sing One for Me	Jukebox	Matador
(r)Johnny Cash	Orange Blossom Special	Live at Fulsom Prison	Columbia
*Liam Finn	Energy Spent	I'll Be Lightening	Yep Roc
(r)The Books	An Animated Description of Mr. Maps	Lost and Safe	Tomlab
*Burial	Etched Headplate	Untrue	Hyperdub
The Eternals	This Mix Is So Bizarre	Heavy International	Aesthetics
Billy Bragg	Never Had No One Ever	The Smiths Is Dead	Les Editions Indépendents/Les Inrockuptibles
Bettye LaVette	Sleep to Dream	My Own Hell to Raise	Anti-/Epitaph
Yazbek	Son of a Gun	Damascus
Ushuaia Rocks!	Pink Moon	Un Fro Infierno
*Mahjongg	Tell the Police the Truth	Kontpab	K
Pansy Division	Luv Luv Luv	The Essential Pansy Division	Alternative Tentacles
*Sons & Daughters	Chains	This Gift	Domino
Emotional Rescue	Nostalgia	Emotional Rescue	Think Tank Records
*The Helio Sequence	Lately	Keep Your Eyes Ahead	Sub Pop
*Valet	Fire	Naked Acid	Kranky
(r)The Anniversary	Shu Shabat	Designing a Nervous Breakdown	Vagrant
The Aerovons	Say Georgia	Resurrection	RPM
*Kelley Stoltz	To Speak to the Girl	Circular Sounds	Sub Pop
Josephine Baker and the Supposed	Who Will Feel Bitter at the Day's End?	All the Leaves Are Gone	Locust
REM	Superman	Life's Rich Pageant	I.R.S.
I'm from Barcelona	We're from Barcelona	Let Me Introduce My Friends	Mute

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 10:18 AM