The next stop will be…

From the days when Michael Jackson was crazy in a good way. Wanna waste a couple of hours? Check out MTV’s video archive, the commercials are excessive but the content is worth it. Takes you back to when MTV played videos and wasn’t just a reality show wasteland.

The little acoustic guitar jangle that starts at 00:46 sends a chill up my spine. And I like it.

I stopped posting the songs that were in my head upon waking because they invariably became songs that I’d heard the day before once I started noticing them. It was like Schrödinger’s cat applied to music which says that the mere act of observing an experiment changes its state. Morning songs used to be totally random in the sense that I had no idea why they popped into my head until I started tracking them then they became just memories from the day before.

I decided to post today’s Morning Song because it was a return to form. I haven’t heard this song in forever and I wasn’t even quite sure what it was when I woke up. Just a little loop playing in my head that required a bit of investigation to determine who’s work it was. The lyric, track, and video are below. I leave it to you to ponder why it was in my head this morning cause I sure don’t know why it was there.

Pretty sirens don’t go flat
It’s not supposed to happen like that
Not like that
Not like that

We’ve got to keep our little click clicking at 130 BPM
It’s not too slow

Suffer for Fashion by Of Montreal
It’s from their very excellent album Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer.

The way I like it is the way it is
I got mine don’t worry about his

That little song fragment popped into my head last night. Thankfully it only took me a few seconds to place it. The line is from Sex Machine by James Brown but it’s not his version that was in my head. It was the avant-garde cover by The Flying Lizards introduced to me by my favorite cuz’n back in the 80’s. I haven’t listened to it in forever but I was pretty sure I had it in my iTunes library somewhere so I went digging and sure enough found it and guess what, it still rules.

Well I get up at seven, yeah
And I go to work at nine

I’m pretty sure that’s the lyric that spurred my next iTunes search. It’s from a song by Rush called Working Man off their eponymous debut album. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in my library so I had to placate my desire to hear it by listening to one of their excellent albums from the early 80’s, Moving Pictures. Not the same but damn good nonetheless. Rock on!

Four songs that would make a good start for a work related mix tape. Can you think of any others?

Working Man by Rush (obviously)
Matthew and Son by Cat Stevens
A Well Respected Man by The Kinks
Blue Collar Man (Long Nights) by Styx

I had to move all my media (photos, music, etc) off my old PC prior to installing Linux on it otherwise it would have been erased. I copied it all onto an external hard drive that I’ve connected to my Macbook. I know that’s not terribly earth shattering but hang on cause I’m getting to the good part.

The PC has been neglected since I bought the Macbook in November of last year. Even more so since the move, it was two months before I even hooked it up. It wasn’t a big deal because I can do everything I need to on the Macbook. What do I need to do? Surf the internet, download and play music, and upload my digital photos. However, I’d done those things a lot on my PC prior to the neglect.

I therefore had an abundance of media to move, specifically over 70GB of music which translates to 12,000+ songs from over 1,300 artists. That brings me to the point of this post, the rediscovery of my old digital music collection. It’s like finding a long lost friend. My Macbook has all the music I’ve downloaded over the past year, which is predominantly current stuff, but now I get to listen to albums that I haven’t heard in forever and it’s awesome!

Here’s a sample:

Devo – Freedom of Choice
That album still totally kicks @ss!

My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult – Cuz It’s Hot
Ahh, Numbers was a wonderful place during my formative years.

Metallica – Metallica
Possibly the best rock album of the 90’s.

Brian Eno – Vocal Box (Disc 1)
Arty glam rock that influenced pretty much every band I listened to in the 80’s.

Pixies – Surfer Rosa
Their finest, period. BTW, the new Black Francis is excellent.

The KLF – White Room
Sound the klaxon and get out the glow sticks.

Johnny Cash – The Essential (Disc 1)
The Rock Island Line is a mighty good road. Indeed!

There’s no itch harder to scratch than a brain itch. It’s a little piece of information that hides in your memory driving your conscious mind crazy. Doesn’t matter what it is, could be a certain word that you can’t think of, the name of a character actress you recognize from another movie, the name of that band from Athens, GA, some type of cheese you had in France, or even the name of a shoe store specializing in comfortable shoes for women. The point is, you know the information is somewhere in your mind but you can’t find it and so it itches. Bad.

My brain started itching shortly after waking up this morning. It was six little guitar notes. They were subconsciously looping through my brain and I had no idea what the tune was but I knew that I knew it. It was double itchy because it would play subconsciously then I’d notice it and consciously replay it trying to figure out what the h*ll it was. In a word, torture. I had to scratch that itch but my options were limited.

First I tried the brute force method, consciously playing the guitar riff over and over in my head wishing it would shake something loose. Sometimes this works. I was hoping for just a bit more of the tune so I could place it but the riff just mocked me with its mystery. Not only did it not give anything up but occasionally it would subconsciously play just to remind me of the itch.

The only other method that has any hope of scratching a brain itch is what I like to call the “Don’t pick at it!” approach. This involves distracting your conscious mind with almost anything else while your mental peripheral vision has a crack at it. This method, if it works, results in the “Aha!” moment that we’re all familiar with thereby scratching the itch. Now your brain can go back to more important matters like, “I wonder if my Metrocard has any money on it?”

My “Aha!” moment arrived while I was on the train coming back from Sunset Park this afternoon. I suddenly knew the riff was from a song by Grandaddy. It didn’t totally scratch the itch but it gave me the clue I needed to put that bad boy to rest. Cut to me on the couch with my Macbook playing Grandaddy songs in iTunes. A few song samples later and I had it, the riff was from Collective Dreamwish of Upperclass Elegance off the Under the Western Freeway album. I could almost hear my brain purring.

By the way, my Metrocard does have money on it and that shoe store specializing in comfortable shoes for women? It’s Aerosoles, never mind how I know.

My MP3 player is to my commute what water is to a fish. It’s a balm, or a salve if you will, to my sanity. I’d find it very difficult to negotiate the NYC subway system on a daily basis without it. But it doesn’t end there, if my MP3 player is water to a fish then my earphones would have to be the gills.

Here’s a brief summary of my commute. I walk, ride a train, walk some more, another train, walk again, take the next train, and then a little more walking. Oh and I forgot to mention that there are several staircases and a moving sidewalk that works about as often as Haley’s comet visits the Earth as well. There’s no part of this trip that’s even remotely quiet. Crowded subway platforms are noisy, trains are very noisy both inside and out, and traffic above ground is also noisy. New Yorkers being fond of their car horns and such. (more…)