One More! One More! Old/New Music I Rocked To In 2006, Something Like 50 of Them.
2006 was basically a year I used to catch up on things I should have listened to a long time ago. A few things were new/new, but not enough for their own list. Other things were partial new/old, meaning I finally got around to listening to an album I had downloaded months before. Here are some of those things, in some sort of order:1. Alan Lomax recordings - Southern Journey series, Vols. 1-13 - All of my favorite albums of the year. I went through this awesome folk phase last summer, culminating in these recordings from 50 years ago: Volumes 9 & 10 / 11 & 12 blew me away, the former with hours of shape-note singing, the latter with the Georgia Sea Island singers. I wish the contemporary worship scene would ingest this somehow, giving it untold strength and power, and less Coldplay riffs. Get these albums at any cost.
2. Rachel's - systems/layers - Oi, this is good stuff. Mostly modern classical, quasi-orchestral stuff, with sort of a post-rock-ish and something-I-can't-quite-put-my-finger-on vibe. Whatever it's called, it's real pretty.
3. Danielson - Ships - Boom yeah! Danielson sails fast, Danielson sails sure!
4. Sufjan Stevens - Songs for Christmas - The CDs that broke my 5-month downloading fast. Gooodness gracious that man/boy can write, sing and play.
5. Damien Jurado - Where Shall You Take Me? - An album I missed when it came out, my friend Portia burnt me a copy before I saw him in Chicago. It may be his best since Rehearsals for Departure. If not, it's still damn good.
6. Vaughan Williams - Riders to the Sea / Fantasia on Greensleeves - Basically I love this guy, dead though he may be.
7. Jackie Wilson - Reet Petite: The Very Best of Jackie Wilson - Ditto. Only more like wild love.
8. Eric B. & Rakim - Paid In Full - Rakim, now RAKIM, pretty much lives in awesometown 24/7.
9. Yann Tiersen - Basically alot: La Valse des Monstres / Rue Des Cascades / Le Phare / L' Absente / Tout Est Calme / Les Retrouvailles / Black Session - One of my binges this year, downloading all the Yann Tiersen I could get my hands on. Unfortunately, I had burned none of it to CD before my computer died. But so many good listens while I had it.
10. Buddy & Julie Miller - Love Snuck Up - I like country music sometimes. Buddy Miller is why.
11. The Stanley Brothers - Angel Band: The Classic Mercury Recordings / The Complete Columbia Recordings - The Stanley Brothers are why, too.
12. Over the Rhine - Snow Angels - More Christmas goodies from OtR. This time with less depression.
13. Snowglobe - Our Land Brains - Oh mans, Manserly, I want to be a Elephant 6er.
14. The Apples in Stereo - Fun Trick Noisemaker - Me, too.
15. Clem Snide - Your Favorite Music - I had a little Clem Snide ep that I've been listening to for a couple of years now, but I didn't go out of my way to hear anything else from them until this year. I badly-loved Your Favorite Music for weeks beginning with my trip to Montana last April. Good frontier music.
16. King Geedorah - Take Me To Your Leader - Quirky rap. Hot rap. This deserves a cartoon special.
17. The Concretes - The Concretes in Color - Summer pop done real good. Been awaiting May 07 since September 06.
18. Mi and L'au - Mi and L'au - Jake downloaded this and good thing, too, because basically it was the best album for listens after 2:00am for all summer long. Where are they from? I forget. Somewhere better than America, though.
19. Danger Mouse and Jemini - Ghetto Pop Life - Catching up on an album I had had for a couple years now, but didn't sit down with head phones until last spring. Spring is nice. So is this.
20. Half-Handed Cloud - Thy Is A Word & Feet Need Lamps - Discovered while searching for the new Danielson album, I think. Maybe not. But this one-man band is pretty much the best one-man band I know, sir.
21. DAT Politics - Wow Twist - Good pick, Paco. Thanks for getting the words out of your mouth.
22. Amadou et Mariam - Tje ni mousso - Africa, my Africa! Amadou & Mariam make me want to run and jump very high. And love animals real bad, too.
23. Sam Cooke - Night Beat - My favorite soul singer lights it up -- on a studio album!
24. Frank Sinatra - In the Wee Small Hours - I'm taking back Frank Sinatra.
25. Common - One Day It'll All Make Sense - Good for Chicago driving. Another album lost in the computer crash of aught-six.
26. The Clutters - The Clutters - Some rock and roll band I came across. With farfisa hooks.
27. Public Enemy - Yo! Bum Rush the Show / Fear of a Black Planet - Chuck D drops bombs like a fierce sumbitch.
28. The Breeders - Pod - Way better than Bossanova. Frank Black should be ashamed.
29. Elizabeth Cotten - Freight Train And Other North Carolina Folk Songs - Part of the folk and blues phase I mentioned. Miss Cotten plays meaner than your mom.
30. The Beatles - Please Please Me to A Hard Day's Night - Speaking of moms, my mom used to have all these on vinyl. She saw them live in 1964. I'm very jealous.
31. Method Man - Tical - My first forray outside of 36 Chambers. Bad-love it.
32. Suburban Kids With Biblical Names Â- #3 - Cutesy, indie pop for the kids who were 7 when Belle & Sebastian dropped Tigermilk. Still, surprisingly yummy.
33. Charles Aznavour - Sus Mas Grandes Exitos - In the Yann Tiersen binge, I came across some more Frenchies, like this guy. Would be sexier were I female.
34. Giacomo Puccini - La Boheme - Trying to learn to like opera. Puccini makes it easier.
35. Quasi - When the Going Gets Dark - These guys have been around forever and now I just hear them for the first time and now I just like them for the first time. And forever. Like Over the Rhine, but with knives.
36. Defiance, OH - The Great Depression - Socialist, possibly anarchist, Woody Guthrie inspired folk-punk. Much better than Toledo, OH, as well.
37. Alan Lomax recordings - Southern Journey series, Vols. 1-13 - I'm not kidding. Go get these songs, right now, dammit!
posted by jonny @ 10:57 AM
3 Comments:
Yes the lists don't stop! I was afraid it was all finished!
I love shapenote singing! Do you really have all 13 Volumes? Did you download all of them? That is heroic. Some other good good things here. King Geedorah is incredible. I also would like to suggest MF Grimm (Now GM Grimm)(GM means Grand Master, not meaning general manager), MF Doom's occasional pal, and now beef.
Check this story. First of all dude was gunned down on the streets, which left him blind, deaf, and paralyised from the waste down. Doctors said no, but hip-hop said yes, and he recoverd his sight and hearing, but still does it in a wheel chair. He recorded some small stuff but nothing big. Then in 2000 he was sentanced to life in prison for drugs and other stuff, paid 100,000 dollars for a 24 hour bail, and recorded the album "The Downfall of Ibliys: A Ghetto Opera" in those 24 hours, before going back to jail.
And if the story wasn't sweet already, Downfall is an awesome masterpiece. you should get it. It's very doomy and good.
(postscript to that album: Dude studied law in prison and got his sentance down from life to just three years. He's out now and has released a few more ablums that I don't have yet. Last year he released Hip-hops first triple album! and I heard it was actually good. I am still trying to get it. He's got a comic book autobiography coming out this year. There are also rumors that Grimm wrote most of the lyrics for Dr. Dre's The Chronic)
That dude sounds like Little Brizzle. Except not old or sent from Hell by Satan but then tried to become a Christian, but became a vampire first. Otherwise, totally the same.
Great list Jonny. Seriously, I laud your fierce ability to have brought all 13 volumes of the Lomax recordings into your life and ears. Praises to you.
yes, yes bbz! it took me four or five weeks on soulseek, but i did manage to find all 13 volumes of the series, plus a couple volumes of the world folk series, too. and if i ever have the chance to download tunes again, i'll have to check out Downfall and this triple-album you speak of.
come one, america, more lists i say!
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