Music Sweet Music
June 12, 2009
I have been working on the ol’ ipod playlist recently, and have finally got close enough to capacity that I will have to cut a song for each song I want to add. I was able to delay this for a while by clearing out a couple of Schumann pieces which totalled nearly an hour of music. Other items on the chopping block were “Be Like That” by 3 Doors Down, which is a decent little song, I guess, but happened to come up in the shuffle when I was looking to cut something. Another casualty was “A Little Bit More” by Doctor Hook & the Medicine Show. It has become evident that this is one of those “Jekyll and Hyde” bands – I love the wacky and subversive stuff they did with Shel Silverstein, and tend to dislike the schmaltzy pop-country sound that lead to all their subsequent chart success. This one was just offbeat enough to survive previous cuts, but eventually the bar got raised too high.
Now the exciting part: new additions!
A couple of albums by Irish bands made the cut, including To the Faithful Departed, which is the last of the Cranberries albums I unearthed a while back. What’s not to like about the Cranberries? I even love to say the name of their lead singer, Dolores O’Riordan. That’s a moniker that could go in the hall of fame for “Most Irish Names”. Anyhow, I also tossed on Drift, the excellent debut album from The Devlins, whom I saw in concert back in my teens – they were opening for someone – I want to say Tori Amos, though that seems like a strange pairing for some reason. I liked their sound and bought Drift and the single “Waiting” off their second album – it’s one of the only cd singles I own, and if I could just find it I would add it to the playlist as well.
I also added the soundtrack to Collateral. This is another one of those surprisingly good movie soundtracks with an unlikely mix of songs ranging from techno (Paul Oakenfold’s “Ready Steady Go”) to jazz (Miles Davis doing “Spanish Key”) to hip hop (The Roots) to Tejano/Latin-inflected rock (“Guero Canelo” by Calexico) and features a handful of memorable instrumental pieces from the film’s score as well. Ultimately, I think I may be more fond of the soundtrack than the movie itself…
