rachelmanija | Musical swag

I found some real prizes, plus replacements for some of my destroyed and lost CDs:

Tori Amos: Scarlet's Walk. I've only really loved her first two albums, but you never know...

Luka Bloom: Keeper of the Flame. Ditto. Covers, evidently.

Rosanne Cash: Rules of Travel.

The Chieftains: Bells of Dublin.

Bob Dylan: Greatest Hits.

Flogging Molly: Within a Mile of Home. Folk-rock.

Kander & Ebb: Cabaret with Lotte Lenya. I also have the new one with Alan Cummings.

The Pointer Sisters: Best of. I really love "Slow Hand" and "He's So Shy."

REM: New Adventures in Hi Fi. An underrated album with a number of lovely, melodic songs. Also Monster and Reveal (which I haven't heard yet.)

The Shirelles: Golden Hits. "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" just makes me happy. So does "Mama Said (There'd be Days Like This."

Sixteen Horsepower: Low Estate. No idea what this is like, but a friend who has similar tastes to mine was raving about the band.

Stephen Sondheim: Anyone Can Whistle; Follies. Woo-hoo, such finds! I just hope they didn't land in the used record shop because their owner died.

Stew: The Naked Dutch Painter: Interesting local artist-- his song "Bijou" from Guest Host is a tour de force.

Richard Thompson: Starring as Henry the Human Fly. I didn't even know this existed on CD. The genius Thompson's first solo album, folk-rock with weird, blackly comic lyrics, like "The Angels Took My Racehorse Away."

Suzanne Vega: Days of Open Hand; 99.9 FM. I thought I'd revisit these in case I liked them better now; also, I recall liking a couple songs on each, but not which ones, so I'll listen again and put the ones I like on the iPod.

The Waterboys: A Pagan Place; The Waterboys. Remastered with six additional songs per album, never before released, from the same period.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Date: 2004-10-31 12:11 am (UTC)

From:

vladimirsever.livejournal.com

no subject

So you bought all that in one fell sweep? Puts fear of God into me.

Rachel's musical taste: eclectic, veering towards good. Take a note, dr. Kafesjian.

Quality of Tori's later albums: eclectic, veering towards slightly-inspired music with highly-inspired lyrics. Take a note, dr. Gaiman.

Date: 2004-10-31 12:19 am (UTC)

mrissa.livejournal.com

I thought Scarlet's Walk was closer to what I wanted of Tori Amos albums than any since...err...the second one. Your mileage etc.

Date: 2004-10-31 01:57 am (UTC)

faithhopetricks.livejournal.com

I bought Scarlet's Walk, but shamefully haven't listened to it yet (boo). Was Under the Pink 2nd? I don't quite remember....(I am actually one of the few people I know who liked Strange Little Girls. Quite a bit.) She's got a new album coming out at any moment IIRC....I wonder if it will be as experimental....

Date: 2004-10-31 02:06 am (UTC)

Yes, Under the Pink, that's what.

I liked some of Strange Little Girls, but it seemed like a better concept than execution to me. Maybe if I knew more of the songs in their original...but the ones I liked best were the ones that were new to me, actually. I far prefer the Beatles' version of "Happiness is a Warm Gun."

Have you heard Tori's cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit"? I was muchly amused.

Date: 2004-10-31 02:41 am (UTC)

That's right cause the first one was um um um wossname. Self-titled? No....damn, had to look: Little Earthquakes.

The songs I liked best on Strange Little Girls were the ones where her cover really did make the song into something new and at the same time worked as pop -- "New Age," the title track, "Enjoy The Silence" maybe, the real standouts being "I'm Not In Love," "Time," and "Real Men" -- I thought "97' Bonnie & Clyde" was a great track, but not something I would necessarily want to listen to all the time. "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" was, yeah, pretty much a disaster. When our girl covers something, it either really, really works or it really, really doesn't. I do think the concepts behind her albums can sort of overwhelm the actual music sometimes -- and wrt Girls the press picked up on it, so it became a lot more about Girl Piano Rocker Covering Guy Songs than what the songs sounded like.

Heh, yeah, that version of Spirit was passed around in college when I was there, wayyy long ago. ((facepalm)) Yeah. Man. I personally think it paved the way for the Nirvana lounge covers CD myself....

Date: 2004-10-31 03:09 am (UTC)

I liked "I'm Not In Love" and the title track and "Real Men." I don't recall which the others are (T has them on a large, large playlist on his computer, so I don't always match title and song very well). And I definitely didn't want to hear "97 Bonnie and Clyde" as often as I've heard it. (He's getting the stuff into his playlist alphabetically, which means the Tori stuff has been in there a good while.)

columbina has an essay about art and what he likes and doesn't, and he talks a bit about concept art in it. To interesting effect. I am, however, feeling too cruddy to look it up just now.

Date: 2004-10-31 06:10 am (UTC)

(He's getting the stuff into his playlist alphabetically, which means the Tori stuff has been in there a good while.)

Oh, dear. Alphabetical playlists can be hard sledding.

columbina has an essay about art and what he likes and doesn't, and he talks a bit about concept art in it. To interesting effect. I am, however, feeling too cruddy to look it up just now.

I'll go a-fishin....did your shoulder recover any after the washer incident?

Date: 2004-10-31 01:53 am (UTC)

music! (in which I use far too many exclamation points)

I love a lot of those! I have Scarlet's Walk, but er, shamefully haven't listened to it yet. The Chieftains and Bob Dylan are always a good bet. And Flogging Molly! I love them. And New Adventures in Hi Fi's one of my favorite REM albums, too (although I didn't love Monster and didn't hear Reveal. The new release, tho, Around the Sun, is _excellent_). I second the recommendation for 16 Horsepower. And early Richard Thompson! man. I'd never really heard of him, except dimly associated with Fairport Conv., and then I heard Terry Gross interview him and he played "Oops (I Did It Again)" and I fell in love. And purchased 1,000K of Pop Music immediately. And I drool on the remastered Waterboys ("This Is The Sea" is one of my real "hope" songs). Nice pickings!

Date: 2004-10-31 09:09 pm (UTC)

rachelmanija.livejournal.com

Re: music! (in which I use far too many exclamation points)

I should explain that I have at least twelve of Bob Dylan's albums. The reason I bought a Best of collection was because one of its two CDs had pulled all the songs I like from some of his middle-late period albums which I mostly don't like.

You should listen to some of Richard Thompson's other albums. Try Shoot Out the Lights, Across a Crowded Room, or Mirror Blue, which has one of my favorite songs of his, one of the very few love songs in existence in which the lover is a real character rather than just an object of affection, "Beeswing.") Or anything of his, really.

It's good to hear that someone liked Around the Sun. I was really disillusioned by Up, which I didn't like at all.

Date: 2004-11-01 12:11 am (UTC)

Heh, I went through this total Bob Dylan period in college (mainly cause a friend of mine had nearly all of his albums, and I hung out with him a lot and heard them over and over again). The Best Of albums are really pretty good representations, I think. I do have Shoot Out the Lights, but I've only listened to it a couple of times. -- Around the Sun had some flat moments, butyeah, in comparison to Up or even Monster (which I liked a lot better than Up) it's really good -- well, good on its own, too, not just as a comparison to disappointing albums.