365: IT TAKES TWO (COLLABORATIONS)

Well, in the words of the aforementioned Barry Manilow (see post 69), looks like we made it. 365 posts in 365 days, for what it’s worth. Cancer has not been cured, but we have finished something we started. For this post, we thought it might be nice to collaborate, and so we have. Thanks again to anyone who paid us the slightest attention. BUT WAIT !!! usefulmusic IS ALIVE !!! We’re just having a bit of a morph. Beginning next week we’ll be back, but different than ever before! Stay tuned!
So, goodbye it is then, for now. See you next week.
usefulmusic would also like to thank each other.
365: IT TAKES TWO (COLLABORATIONS)

1. The Only Ones featuring Pauline Murray – Fools
2. Madness featuring Ian Dury – Drip Fed Fred
3. Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds and Kylie Minogue – Where the Wild Roses Grow
4. Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell – Ain’t No Mountain High Enough
5. Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man – Mysteries
6. Time Zone featuring John Lydon and Afrika Bambaataa – World Destruction
7. Cornershop featuring Bubbley Kaur – Topknot
8. Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston – It Takes Two
30:04

9. Minuteflag — Fetch The Water
10. The Fucking Am — Doing Research For An Autobiography
11. Anthrax featuring Chuck D from Public Enemy — Bring The Noise
12. Dwight Yoakam with Buck Owens — Streets Of Bakersfield
13. Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder  — Ebony And Ivory
14. Queen & David Bowie — Under Pressure
15. A Tribe Called Quest featuring Leaders of the New School — Scenario
28:49

Total: 58:53

So Paul ended his half-hour with a poignant tribute to dual collaboration, and I ended mine with the greatest posse cut of all time. It takes a village to big-up oneself, you know. But wait, you might say, your total running time falls short of the 59-61 minute mark that you promised way back in who-knows-when! Well, as Marie Antoinette may or may not have said: “Always leave them wanting more.” Therefore (but conversely), we will be back next week, but with only a weekly post each (unless there is an internet clamor for us do more or to give up entirely). But wait, you might say, what will these subsequent posts be about?!? Well, interrobanger, you’ll just have to wait and see…

356: Television, Part 2

Television was also covered last March, but I’ve been watching so much football (and football) and Daily Show episodes and reruns of Adam-12 lately that I figured I’d let some artists chime in about the subject.

1. Count Basie — T.V. Time
2. Dinah Washington — T.V. Is The Thing This Year
3. Big Joe Turner — T.V. Momma
4. Bow Wow Wow — (I’m A) T.V. Savage
5. The Flying Lizards — TV
6. Japan — Television
7. Joe Jackson — T.V. Age
8. A Flock of Seagulls — Telecommunication
9. B52’s — Channel Z
10. Public Enemy — She Watch Channel Zero?!
11. Big Audio Dynamite — Get It All From My TV
12. Skunk Anansie — On My Hotel T.V.
13. Thingy — My Room Has A T.V.
14. Brazzaville — Xanax And 3 Hours Of T.V.
15. Atlas Sound — Friday Night We Took Acid And Laid On Matt’s Bedroom Floor Staring At His Ceiling Fan While His Parents Watched T.V. Downstairs

59:25

200: Good Sports

When I saw that list number 200 was coming up, I had a bit of a manufactured crisis in trying to decide what to do. I considered another numerical list, as I did with list number 100, but it’s been done and I don’t think there are that many songs mentioning the second hundred. I worked for a short time on a convoluted and mathematical “revisitation,” but it was too much for me. I thought that I could maybe list the 200th animal of the past month, but the tedium brought that idea crashing down. And then I thought “tedium…like the tedium of a sports lover’s mid-summer, when basketball and hockey playoffs have ended, baseball games hardly matter, and professional football of both types are only being practiced or exhibitioned; when Brits watch darts and Yanks watch Brits watching darts; when the public is so sports-starved that they actually rally behind the women’s national soccer team.” You know, that kind of tedium. So, to celebrate the commencement of the new sports year (football season!), I picked some of my favorite sports songs. Also, you three people that are still reading this are good sports.

1. The Zambonis — Here Comes The Zamboni
2. Camper Van Beethoven — Take The Skinheads Bowling
3. Bob Dylan — Hurricane
4. New Order — World In Motion
5. Suggs & Co. — Blue Day
6. Belle And Sebastian — I Don’t Want To Play Football
7. Meat Puppets — Touchdown King
8. Kurtis Blow — Basketball
9. Public Enemy — He Got Game
10. Cheech & Chong — Basketball Jones
11. Intruders — Love Is Like A Baseball Game
12. John Fogerty — Centerfield
13. Wavves — Baseball Cards
14. Ramones — Beat On The Brat
15. The Baseball Project — Ted Fucking Williams
16. Terry Cashman — Talkin’ Softball

59:37

132: Belief-ing

All this story telling is pushing me towards incredulousness. But I do believe, really I do. Also, “believe” is one of those words that looks really weird after you see it too many times. And did you notice how “lie” is hanging out right there in the middle of it? Coincidental?

1. Beyond Belief — Elvis Costello & The Attractions
2. I Believe In You — Dusty Springfield
3. Don’t You Believe A Word — Sloan
4. I Believe — R.E.M.
5. I Can’t Believe — Toots & The Maytals
6. I Believe — Desmond Dekker
7. Don’t Believe a Word — The Free Association
8. Believe In Me — Todd Rundgren
9. Can’t Believe It’s True — Rory Gallagher
10. Would You Believe? — Roxy Music
11. I Believe — My Bloody Valentine
12. I Don’t Believe You — The Magnetic Fields
13. Believe — Blancmange
14. Keep On Believing — Iggy Pop
15. Don’t Believe the Hype — Public Enemy
16. I Believe — Buzzcocks
60:37

127: EYES WIDE SHUT

So it was 10:02p.m. and I was getting ready to post, and a bloody good one it was too. But then I thought, what ever happened to spontaneity ? As you know, I fell in to difficult times a couple of years ago but was fortunate enough to have a couple of friends who were willing to take me in for a month or two. In fact, they are such good friends that I still live with them two years later. Most of my belongings inhabit a Mechanicsville storage space, and I keep only the bare essentials about me , including my entire c.d. collection. Space being an issue, they exist in boxes, two deep, in my bedroom. There are  eight of them. So I’ve decided to close my eyes, grab a c.d. from each level of every box, and pick a track. Here we go then……

127: EYES WIDE SHUT

1. Townes Van Zandt – Pancho and Lefty
2. House of Freaks – 4o Years
3. The Coral – Goodbye
4. Paul Weller – Country
5. Harry Nilsson – Everybody’s Talkin’
6. T. Rex – Jeepster
7. Madonna – Papa Don’t Preach
8. Queens of the Stone Age – Feel Good Hit of The Summer
9. Public Enemy – You’re Gonna Get Yours
10. Prefab Sprout – Goodbye Lucille #1
11. New Order – Krafty
12. Van Morrison – T.B. Sheets
13. Patrik Fitzgerald – Backstreet boys
14. Love – Live and Let Live

59:38

38: Curses! (The F Word)

I have absolutely nothing profound to write about today’s topic. The songs speak for themselves, I would say, and quite demonstratively at that. Fuck it…

1. F The CC                                              Steve Earle
2. Bad Motherfuckin’ Bitch                 The Quadrajets
3. Slack Motherfucker                          Superchunk
4. Fuckin’ With My Head                    Bl’ast!
5. Nazi Punks Fuck Off                         Dead Kennedys
6. Fuckin With My Head (Mountain Dew Rock)       Beck
7. The Man Don’t Give A Fuck            Super Furry Animals
8. Fuck Or Kill                                        Peaches
9. Dreams Are Free Motherfucker!   Minutemen
10. How Fucking Romantic                 The Magnetic Fields
11. Fuck And Run                                   Liz Phair
12. Fuckoff Is Not the Only Thing You Have to Show    Cansei de Ser Sexy
13. Hey Fuck You                                   Beastie Boys
14. Make Love Fuck War                      Moby and Public Enemy
15. Fuck You                                            Cee-Lo Green
16. Fuck You                                            Lily Allen
17. Fuck Her Gently                               Tenacious D
18. My Shit’s Fucked Up                      Warren Zevon
19. Fuck Tha Police                               NWA

59:57

35: POLITICS

I have encountered many people over the years who feel quite strongly that there is no place in pop for music of a political nature. The reasoning is always the same; It doesn’t change anything, they insist. I have always found this rather odd. Elvis Costello once wrote a lovely little song entitled ‘Hoover Factory’. It conveyed his affection for an art deco building in Perivale, West London, home to a company specialising in the manufacturing of vacuum cleaners. The songs release changed absolutely nothing about its subject matter. The factory remained ‘five miles out of London on the Western Avenue’, its structure did not magically morph into a stunning example of Byzantine architecture.No one, of course, regarded this as a failing of the song. So why would one seek to censor ‘politics’ as a subject matter for song simply because their existence does not automatically right society’s wrongs ? My feeling is these people once did believe in such possibilities for music, and now feel somewhat let down, betrayed even, perhaps by a hippy dream unfulfilled, or maybe by punk’s passion and idealism dissipated and co-opted. Surely, though, it is unfair to hold a particular type of music responsible for one’s own naive and completely unreasonable expectations. Did they really think the existence of a piece of recorded music could singlehandedly topple oppressive tyrannies (“the new Clash record came out yesterday. Have you heard it ?” “Yes, and so have the contras. They surrendered this morning.”)

The power and potential of popular music to affect personal and cultural change is a conversation for another time, but the notion of a lyrical no – go zone ? Preposterous and pointless.

It is true, of course, that many ‘political’ songs are dour, self important, sanctimonious disasters. Those are the bad ones. Here are some good ones.

35: POLITICS

1. Robert Wyatt – Shipbuilding
2. Gil Scott – Heron – Winter in America
3. The Specials – Ghost Town (Extended Version)
4. Phil Ochs – Outside of a small Circle of Friends
5. Heaven 17 – (We don’t need this) Fascist Groove Thang
6. Randy Newman – Political Science
7. Fela and Afrika 70 – Zombie
8. Michael Franti and Spearhead – Oh My God
9. Fine Young Cannibals – Blue
10. Public Enemy – Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos
11. The Sons of The Pioneers – Old Man Atom
12. John Lennon – Gimme Some Truth

59:00