Obviously I am just blatantly copying my fellow bloggers Billy, Del and Annie, all of whom have been producing excellent podcasts for, ooh, years, in Web 2.0 terms.
Be warned there's no talking on mine. This is because I wish to preserve my allure and mystique and not at all because I'm far too self-conscious to broadcast my voice wantonly about the IP-waves. But if I *was* talking on it, this stuff below is what I would be saying:
Howe Gelb - 'Paradise Here Abouts'. Alt.country's answer to Lou Reed goes all indie gospel blues with Canada's Voices of Praise gospel choir. Featuring Jeremy Gara from the Arcade Fire on drums, fact fans.
Betty Harris - 'Break In The Road'. Yer 1960s New Orleans funk is technically a bit too in-your-face and raunchy (ooh, how I hate that word) for me - I'm all uptight and British, for god's sake. But I make an exception for this, as it's very funky (and raunchy) indeed, and also makes admirable use of guitar feedback a good fifteen years before the Jesus and Mary Chain were even invented.
Husky Rescue - 'Poison'. Finland's finest doing a lovely loungey cover of Alice Cooper's paean to S&M. Try to ignore the 'black lace on sweat' line. Ewww.
Viva Voce - 'We Do Not Fuck Around'. Sinister vengeful piano ballad turns into massive, synth-driven swearfest. Single of the year, I reckon.
Tilly and the Wall - 'Bad Education'. Flamenco-flavoured noise-pop celebration of cross-dressing. With tap dancing for percussion. Brilliant.
Matson Jones - 'New York City Fuck Off'. The fifteen year-old in me can't help but like angry, spiky songs with lots of gratuitous swearing in them. The thirty-six year-old in me can't help but like the deployment of sophisticated string instruments (cello, double bass) in angry, spiky songs with lots of gratuitous swearing in them. Result: I really, really love this song.
Ike & Tina Turner - 'The Game Of Love'. Hmm, it all goes a bit sexy for a while here, as Tina informs Ike that she's just as capable of putting it about as he is. Which is immediately followed by...
Lovage - 'Stroker Ace'. It's an incredibly sexy trip-hop song about a cat. Need I say more?
Ladytron - 'International Dateline'. I hate their name, I loathe their artwork and I'm not the world's biggest fan of synthy music (despite any evidence to the contrary presented here). So why I love this is a bit of a mystery.
Her Space Holiday - 'My Girlfriend's Boyfriend'. Indie geeks like this for the looped violin sample. I like it for the line 'you can't make someone love you with a song'. Because we all know that's not true, and indeed if you were going to try to make someone love you with a song, you could do a lot worse than:
Barry Adamson - 'Come Hell or High Water'. Officially my favourite song of all time. It's cool, it's funny, it's sexy, and it has the lines:...and the silence is louder than an H-bombWhich makes me go a bit funny every time I hear it.
That explodes when I close my eyes
Sending shockwaves to the town you're from
In the hope that you'll stir and come alive
That's it then: 11 songs, all of them brilliant, and thus 43 minutes of your life well spent, even if I do say so myself.
Get it here!
26 comments:
Got it *there*!
At first I thought it said 'Qualcast'. Which made me think there are no pop songs about mowers. I have some (er, not strictly falling into either 'pop' or 'song') that sound like mowers, however.
Whales: Woo!
Nibus: Oo, make a mowercast!
Hurrah! I am taking it to the gym with me.
Interestingly, the file has uploaded as "The Swamp of Gloom and Despair" - was this intentional?
(Thank you for your kind words.)
Yes, Garageband just decided that was what it was called. And who am I to argue, even if it's really more of a Swamp of Sexy Happiness rather than gloom and despair.
I can do a gloom and despair podcast, though, no bother. And I probably will.
Brilliant, downloading as we speak. Bloody slowly, damn pipex and their lies.
That's my trip to work sorted. Sorry not to hear non-sequiteurs regarding Alan Turing dropped in amongst the musical gems, but you can't have everything. can you?
Brilliant!
Thank you for this - I have been marking mediocre coursework all day and your podcast made it all seem much better, even on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Thanks W. and chatterbox. I too listened to it on my mega-walk through Hammersmith, Kensington, Notting Hill and Shepherd's Bush this morning, and it kept me trundling along at a brisk pace, pausing only to notice that Waterstone's Notting Hill Gate's 'local author of the month' is toffee-nosed posho Tom Parker-Bowles. Bleurgh.
Patroclus, what does Quinquireme mean? Enquiring (and uneducated minds) want to know.
A quinquireme (or, more correctly, quinquereme) was an ancient Greek ship with five tiers of oars. A quadrireme is the same, only with four tiers of oars. And thence down to trireme, bireme and - apparently - unireme.
It doesn't have any particular significance to me, other than that it's my favourite word.
Songs with swearing - brilliant.
Shame I can't listen.
ah, i see.
my favorite word is 'dipthong,' followed closely by 'Molybdenum.'
Liked them all but loved the flamenco one, the cat one and the one with cellos especially.
Downloaded and installed for on way to work listening. From the listing it promises to be a treat.
Awesome podcast! Now I have a bunch of new albums I must buy. I like it all best, but maybe especially Husky Rescue and Matson Jones. Oh and Ladytron. Oh and Barry Adamson. Oh and...
Thank you Valerie. They are indeed all ace. If I was going to recommend an album from this lot, it would probably be Husky Rescue's 'Country Falls', which is just lovely. Or Howe Gelb's 'Sno Angel Like You', which is totally outstanding from start to finish. Or indeed Barry Adamson's 'As Above, So Below', because Barry Adamson is a god amongst men.
Um, you'll probably find slightly more insightful reviews on Pitchfork.
Only downside is the m4a (mp4) format :( I only have mp3 so have to convert it to audio CD for in-car listening. Even dbPowerAmp, which converts just about anything, doesn't seem to convert mp4 direct to mp3
I know, Llewtrah, it's rubbish, isn't it? I use iTunes, so everything is in m4a format, and I can't work out how to turn it back into mp3.
There goes all my cred as a) someone who knows anything about technology, b) someone who knows anything about music, and c) someone who knows anything about the wibbly world of 'social media'.
It's probably also about time that I confessed that James actually made the podcast for me, as I couldn't work out how to edit all the songs together in Audacity (extra shame for me as Annie Slaminsky told me it was dead easy).
Doh.
Billy suggested Xilisoft to me and that worked. It must be a fairly recent program as I downloaded lots of conversion routines during Xmas last year while I was bored and none handled mp4. It sometimes crashes in the middle of long files, but usually converts on the next attempt (so don't check the "delete original file" box!)
The iTunes copy protection format has now been cracked allowing music to be moved to different platforms for playing. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6083110.stm
I downloaded Free Mp3 Wma Converter after reading numerous reviews and converted it to mp3 format and am now playing it as I type this. Brilliant Patroclus. Thank you!
My pleasure! I have another one in the making even now...got to get them out of my system before I return to the Land Of No Broadband on Wednesday.
The cover of "Poison" cracked me up (so "yay!" for putting that on there), not because it is intrinsically funny, but because I'm an Alice Cooper fan and apt to sing snatches of his songs. It's funny how his rock songs can be turned into ballads (same happened with "Only Women Bleed").
I just-well technically a week ago- came back from Iceland where I saw Tilly and the Wall as part of the Airwaves festival and they cheered me up no end.
Downloaded it ages ago, but have only just got around to listening.* Excellent stuff. Will definitely have to add Matson Jones and Lovage to my Pandora station, and trawl the usual sources for cheap CDs. That Her Space Holiday track's growing on me too.
*was waiting 'til I could face an hour or few of technological faffery, incompetently trying to convert m4a to mp3.
Ah, that would make sense OPC, since you once said you had a thing about violins in pop music. Well, you probably didn't say 'pop music', but it was something along those lines.
Glad you like it anyway. I'm working on another one, but I'm finding it terribly difficult.
Hm, might go and have another go of Pandora now.
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