Teatro Triste del Clown

Out of curiosity, I thought now would be a good time to review the Top 25 Most Played songs in my iTunes library. Will the “A” and “B” artists dominate, or are the songs that were tops back when I had the iPod Shuffle instead of my 80mb iPod still rule the day?

1. I Don’t Feel Like Dancing by The Scissors Sisters
2. Dashboard by Modest Mouse
3. Whippin’ Piccadilly by Gomez
4. The Luckiest Guy On The Lower East Side by Magnetic Fields
5. So Says I by The Shins
6. Zero by Smashing Pumpkins
7. Dissidents by Thomas Dolby
8. Your Cover’s Blown by Belle and Sebastian
9. Gouge Away by The Pixies
10. Suburban Homeboy by Sparks
11. Dr. Rock by Ween
12. She’s a Girl and I’m A Man by Lloyd Cole
13. Mavis of Maybelline Towers by The Loud Family and Anton Barbeau
14. The Blues are Still Blue by Belle and Sebastian
15. Somewhere Only We Know by Keene
16. One Man Wrecking Machine by Guster
17. The Body of an American by The Pogues
18. Ten Fingers by The Pursuit of Happiness
19. New Slang by The Shins
20. Fell In Love With a Girl by The White Stripes
21. My Life is Totally Boring Without You by Cracker
22. Draining the Pool for You by The Go-Betweens
23. Perfect Way by Scritti Politti
24. Ask by The Smiths
25. 12:51 by The Strokes

I confess, this has been driven mostly by random plays, and mostly from the days of my iPod Shuffle. The two Belle and Sebastian songs have been in the top 25 for over a year, though I suspect “Your Cover’s Blown” go a big boost when I was writing about that band. Tracks #1 and #4 were both songs my wife and I used during our wedding reception and, thus, they got a whole lot play last summer.

I’ll check back on this in a few months if anything has changed.

Official Video:

This is arguably as close to A-Capella metal that you’re ever likely to hear, if only because it features Faith No More and Mr. Bungle singer Michael Patton as one of the primary vocalists.

Fan Animation:

Bjork’s 2004 Medúlla album is another favorite. Basically, the album is made up almost entirely of sounds made by the human voice. Yes, there is a synthesizer here and there, but really she’s pretty consistent about creating everything with vocals.

This is of particular interest to me. As I may have mentioned, as a teenager, I used to record song parodies as “Chuck and Dave and the All Voice Band.” I was pretty much the only one who ever heard these songs.

The way I would record them is that I would sing one track into my crappy tape player and then I would play that tape from my stereo system while singing the next track into the crappy tape player. Using this method, I created a number of crappy six or seven track songs (though most tended to be two or three tracks because I found this tedious).

Todd Rundgren released an album called A Capella which was created entirely using his own voice in 1985. That was the sound I wanted to create, though the songs didn’t do too much for me. Later, I was exposed to The Bobs, a sort of punk a capella group, that also used their voices to create all their music. Brilliant stuff.

Anyhow, this album holds a special place in my heart and this track kicks it off in grand style.

Official Video:

I was not especially interested in this song from Bjork’s second major solo album, Post until my wife expressed interest in it. I downloaded it for her and, lo and behold, its a terrific song that I totally missed because the albums was put out during my musical dark ages.

Allow me to explain.

From 85 until about 93, I was a college radio DJ. First, at WRBC in Maine, then at KTUH in Hawai`i as a graduate student. I got to listen to everything. I also perfected the art of taping all my shows, which significantly increased the number of songs I had access to. Ah, forget Limewire and Napster! If you really want to pirate a bunch of music, be a college DJ.

The good news for the record industry is that when I really liked a song, I would usually buy the cassette or CD of the album that song was from. I quickly learned that the one song I liked was usually the only decent song on the album. Curse you, record companies! You suck ass!

Anyhow, from about ‘93 until I started getting more active with music on the Interweb - around ‘03 - I was only very rarely exposed to new and innovative music. Post came out in ‘95 and, while I was aware of Army of Me and Its Oh So Quiet because of their videos, I really wasn’t exposed to much of the album at all. Radio out here, in essence, bites.

So, thanks to my wife, I caught up on some the fine Bjork that I missed while suffering through AOR radio and mix tapes for ten years.

Official Video:

Researching Bjork in the last few days has made me want to add a pair of Bjork songs not currently in my library to my library - “Unravel” and “Isobel.” I’ll take care of that later today and they’ll bring up the rear of my Bjork exploration.

While Debut is frequently cited as Bjork’s best album, my taste runs much more towards Homogenic. Truthfully, though, there’s really not a dog in Bjork’s discography. She’s been a remarkably consistent producer of outstanding music for two decades now.

“All is Full of Love” is closer of the Homogenic album and one couldn’t ask for a more positive, uplifting finale. Bjork proves that playing arty techno doesn’t have to be a sterile, emotionless experience throughout this album, but this song leaves you with the belief that everything in the world is going to be all right after all.

So nice.

Official Video by Michael Gondry:

Bjork’s lyrics are frequently more poetic than logical, and I think that is a great thing. Sometimes, she creates absolute gems, like “I’m a fountain of blood in the shape of a girl.” I can’t really think of anything she’s written that I think is truly embarrassing.

This is especially awesome, considering that English is her second language. I often wonder if she originally creates the songs in Icelandic and then records English versions of them. Hey! Let’s see what Google says!

First stop is the Official Bjork Site which has more information on her than I can easily digest. Its one of the best artist sites I’ve run into during this project.

Next, a google search turns up this unsourced piece of information which suggests that she writes in Icelandic and then translates it into English. A grueling process, no doubt!

Wikipedia doesn’t turn up any specific suggestion that this particular song was ever performed in Icelandic. In fact, even searches for “Bjork sings in íslenska” don’t turn up anything useful

I am certain that Bjork must sing some of these songs in Islenska at some point, but can’t find evidence that she did. The Interweb has finally come up short! Or, perhaps, I should blame my search skills. No, its the Interweb’s fault.

Official Video by Michael Gondry:

This is probably my favorite song off of Homogenic, which puts it in the running for being my favorite Bjork song. I have a hard time pegging down favorites, so this is an unusualy thing.

Apparently, the song is dedicated to a friend of Bjork’s, Jóhanna Jóhannsdóttir, and to Iceland. I can’t be sure, but I think that that is Iceland in her heart at the end of the video.

The video itself is sort of fascinating. It seems like its just a collage of images of landscapes (from Iceland), but during the musical interlude in the middle of the song, we see the “skin” of Iceland peel back, revealing the lava flowing underneath. A reminder that, in a sense, only a few meters of cool dirt separates us from fire in many parts of the world.

Official Video, and another one to give Stephen Colbert nightmares:

Bjork’s 1997 Homogenic album was the one that got me excited about her again. The album is, in some ways, electronic, but has too many live instruments to truly be called techno.

“Hunter” is the first song on the album and, apparently, is about turning into a polar bear.

My roommate at the time was this dude, Matt. Nice guy. He was sort of more into Jethro Tull and having sex with Japanese girls who were sort of too young for him than into music. However, this was one album that he and I could agree on. I liked it because it it had an air of unpleasant foreboding. He liked it because it helped him seduce 18 year old Japanese girls.

Official Video:

Another song about mild mental illness, another wild video. This is also from Debut.

This is a song that I actually heard for the first time (well, knowingly heard) last week when I was adding some of Bjork’s songs into my library. I noticed that this song was pretty popular amongst Bjork fans and downloaded the fuck out of it.

Bjork has a bit of a reputation for being a bit of a nut sometimes. In fact, sometimes she seems to be “violent” without being especially “happy.”

Personally, I don’t really often feel bad for reporters who hound celebrities. If you make your living being a professional pest, you should expect to get swatted every now and again. Not necessarily saying its all right to attack them but, damn, I can understand the urge.

Official Video (and possible Stephen Colbert worst nightmare) by Michael Gondry:

This was the first single off of Debut, Bjork’s first post-Sugarcubes album. At the time, I didn’t like it all that much since it didn’t, as you might say, rock.

Indeed, Bjork was ahead of her time. Many songs on this album are experiments in techno five full years before it was mainstream enough for Madonna to make a techno album. Listening to it now in 2008, it sounds pretty fresh and current. Indeed, that is true of much of Bjork’s work. As of now, it does not yet sound dated.

The first time I saw a bear in the wild was in the Smokey Mountains in the late 70’s or early 80’s. It was a brown bear that was more concerned with raiding a trash can than just about anything else.