Making a List (and checking it twice)

At Oh Fair New Mexico, Karen talks about Rosanne Cash’s The List (an NMK recommended CD BTW — see right sidebar). Anyway, she and a BFF decided to make some music lists of their own. Go read Karen’s post, but here is my favorite part:

Her idea for sorting the songs is by category. Her first volume is “Songs You Wanna Dance To.”

There will be a “Songs You Wanna Drink Beer and Cry To.”

There will probably be a “Songs You Wanna Get Frisky To.”

And then, perhaps just a, “If You’re Gonna Be My Kid, You’d Better Know These Songs” CD as well.

The earthly Pandora

Two excerpts from an article in The New York Times on Pandora’s financial arrival.

Pandora’s 48 million users tune in an average 11.6 hours a month. That could increase as Pandora strikes deals with the makers of cars, televisions and stereos that could one day, Pandora hopes, make it as ubiquitous as AM/FM radio.

Its library now has 700,000 songs, each categorized by an employee based on 400 musical attributes, like whether the voice is breathy, like Charlotte Gainsbourg, or gravelly like Tom Waits. Listeners pick a song or musician they like, and Pandora serves up songs with similar qualities — Charlotte Gainsbourg to Feist to Viva Voce to Belle and Sebastian.

You can also select on the basis of a song or genre or classical composer. It’s free; ad supported.

Alas, Pandora is not among the internet services on my new Sony TV.

‘This Too Shall Pass’

Found at dooce.

In any civilized nation this would be a holiday

Miles Davis began recording Kind of Blue on this date in 1959.

Crazy Heart

Great soundtrack album. Check out especially the Jeff Bridges songs and the theme, “The Weary Kind.” The latter is nominated for the best song Oscar.

Colin Farrell’s “Gone, Gone, Gone” isn’t bad either.

And Bridges’s “Hold On You” is terrific.

Most downloaded iTunes songs

Someone bought the 10 billionth download on iTunes today and won a $10,000 gift card.

Here’s iTunes’ 20 Most-Downloaded songs of all time:

More Kate McGarrigle

From a tribute by Hendrik Hertzberg for The New Yorker:

The voices and songs of Kate and her older sister, Anna, have been a consistently gratifying part of my life for thirty-five years, beginning with the appearance of their first album. Every one of the dozen songs on that 1975 recording is a thing of beauty and intelligence, and several of them—“Kiss and Say Goodbye,” “Heart Like a Wheel,” “Go, Leave,” “My Town,” and (especially perhaps) “Talk to Me of Mendocino”—were as emotionally acute as anything I have ever heard. They still are, and since then hardly a week has gone by without my listening to their music.

Kate McGarrigle

A nice tribute Kate McGarrigle who died yesterday from cancer (sarcoma). She’s the mother of Rufus and Martha Wainwright. Kate McGarrigle was 63.

The descriptors “Canadian icon” and “national treasure” are often used as lazy shorthand to refer to those artists who’ve made some sort of impact on our country’s music scene. But Kate McGarrigle was one of the awe-inspiring few who truly deserved those epithets — and then some.

Moi, j’me promene sur Ste Catherine
J’profite d’la chaleur du métro
J’ne regarde pas dans les vitrines
Quand il fait trente en d’ssous d’zero.

Me, I walk along St. Catherine [street]
Getting the warmth from the Metro
I don’t look in shop windows
When it’s 30 below zero.

“Complainte pour Ste. Catherine” (1977)

Video of Kate McGarrigle, with Rufus and Elvis Costello a year ago.

Surely one of the great live albums

Johnny Cash performed his historic concert at Folsom Prison on this date in 1968.

I hear the train a comin’
It’s rollin’ ’round the bend,
And I ain’t seen the sunshine,
Since, I don’t know when,
I’m stuck in Folsom Prison,
And time keeps draggin’ on,
But that train keeps a-rollin’,
On down to San Antone.

[The song itself was originally recorded at Sun in 1956.]

The Decade's 50 Most Important Recordings

From the All Songs Considered Blog:

Over the past few months, contributors to NPR Music have been combing their collections, reading listener nominations and putting together a list of the Decade’s 50 Most Important Recordings. Not our favorites, but the music that made an impact.

Here’s the full alphabetical list:

John Adams: On The Transmigration Of Souls
Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion
Arcade Fire: Funeral
The Bad Plus: These Are The Vistas
Beyonce: Dangerously In Love
Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago
Bright Eyes: I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
Burial: Untrue
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: S/T
Kelly Clarkson: Breakaway
Coldplay: A Rush Of Blood To The Head
Danger Mouse: The Grey Album
Death Cab For Cutie: Transatlanticism
The Decemberists: The Crane Wife
Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP
The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
Osvaldo Golijov: La Pasion Segun San Marcos (Saint Mark’s Passion)
Green Day: American Idiot
Iron And Wine: Our Endless Numbered Days
Jay-Z: The Blueprint
Norah Jones: Come Away With Me
Juanes: Fijate Bien
LCD Soundsystem: Sound Of Silver
Lil’ Wayne: Tha Carter III
Little Brother: The Listening
Yo-Yo Ma: Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet
Mastodon: Leviathan
M.I.A.: Kala
Jason Moran: Black Stars
OutKast: Stankonia
Brad Paisley: 5th Gear
Panda Bear: Person Pitch
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss: Raising Sand
The Postal Service: Give Up
Radiohead: In Rainbows
Radiohead: Kid A
Shakira: Fijacion Oral, Vol. 1
Sigur Ros: ( )
Britney Spears: In The Zone
Sufjan Stevens: Illinois
The Strokes: Is This It
The Swell Season: Once Soundtrack
Ali Farka Toure & Toumani Diabate: In The Heart of the Moon
TV On The Radio: Return To Cookie Mountain
Various: Garden State Soundtrack
Various: O Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack
Kanye West: The College Dropout
The White Stripes: White Blood Cells
Wilco: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Amy Winehouse: Back To Black

And here is where you can read about each.

Sinatra (and more)

Amazon has a 20 track MP3 album of Sinatra classics for $5.

Classic Sinatra – His Great Performances 1953-1960

Pretty hard to beat for $5.

And there are more than 799 other albums for $5.

Good stuff, too. Remarkable really. All genres.

Amazon MP3 downloads are 256 kbps and DRM-free (that means the file is unrestricted). You may choose MP4 (Mac) or WMV (Windows).

I did it

Seventeen days ago I told how I had made a playlist of all my Christmas music (468 tracks). The list was designed so that once a song was played, it dropped off. Sometimes while I was blogging, sometimes while I was reading, sometimes while just listening, the playlist dwindled down, like a musical Advent calendar.

It’s on the next-to-last song right now, “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby. Really, the best-selling Christmas song ever.

[To be fair, there were two copies of "White Christmas" by Crosby among the 468 tracks, so the odds were a little less. The very last song was something I'd never heard of or care to hear again, a new-age kind of composition.]

O Tannenbaum

From the best Christmas album ever, Vince Guaraldi, A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Tim McGraw Ropes Decade’s Most Played Single

[T]he most-played song on any [radio] station from Jan. 1, 2000, to Dec. 17, 2009, was Tim McGraw’s “Something Like That,” released in 1999. It received 487,343 spins, beating out the most popular song on Top 40 radio, Usher’s “Yeah!,” from 2004, by a fair margin. “Yeah!,” featuring Ludacris and Lil Jon, has been spun 416,267 times.

ArtsBeat Blog has the top song in each genre.

I’m pretty sure I’ve heard the Eagles’ “Take It Easy” on the radio 487,343 times.

12 videos of Christmas

Feel good redux post of the day

Crank it up.

Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown … no, wait

Christmas in Santa Fe

I have been enjoying tunes from the CD Christmas in Santa Fe by Ruben Romero and Robert Notkoff.

Spanish guitarist Romero and violinist Notkoff provide the perfect Christmas fireside mood.

Most Popular Songs of the Decade

The most popular songs of the decade (2000-09) across all genres, ranked by radio airplay audience impressions…sales data…and streaming activity…

1. We Belong Together, Mariah Carey
2. Yeah, Usher Featuring Lil Jon & Ludacris
3. Low, Flo Rida Featuring T-Pain
4. How You Remind Me, Nickelback
5. I Gotta Feeling, The Black Eyed Peas
6. No One, Alicia Keys
7. Boom Boom Pow, The Black Eyed Peas
8. Let Me Love You, Mario
9. Gold Digger, Kanye West Featuring Jamie Foxx
10. Apologize, Timbaland Featuring OneRepublic

The top album was No Strings Attached, ‘N Sync.

Billboard has the Top 100s.

Best line of the day

“And yet, it’s better to be a one-hit wonder than say, a lifelong failure. Most creative people I know would cut off a finger to have the word ‘hit’ associated with their names — even a single time.”

Mary Elizabeth Williams writing about The one-hit wonder of the decade.

Billboard selected Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day.” Click to learn about the runners-up and more.

Shoes

SinPantalones is having a Shoe-In. Go contribute your shoe-related song.

Imagine

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no posessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

John Lennon

Lennon was killed 29 years ago tonight.

What would Wolfgang think?

A phrase I never dreamed I’d see: The Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra.

Here’s the story.

There’s a video.

Best line of the day, so far

“[Mick] Jagger was preposterous and admirable, as always: these days, he always seems like he’s filming a workout tape.”

Ben Freeman reviewing the HBO broadcast of the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert.

“Fergie, who had started at the back of the stage, on a riser, in a sinuous Kali-like pose, ended up in a cock-and-hen mating dance with Jagger, which wouldn’t have been a problem except for the fact that it flew in the face of context, decency, and history.”

Apparently, according to Freeman, they messed up “Gimme Shelter,” surely a capital offense. Go read his commentary; rock music criticism at its very finest.

The Grand Ole Opry

… began broadcasting on this date in 1925.

Soon after going on the air, National Life hired one of the nation’s most popular announcers, George D. Hay, as WSM’s first program director. Hay, a former Memphis newspaper reporter who’d most recently started a barn dance show on Chicago radio powerhouse WLS, joined the station’s staff a month after it went on the air. At 8 p.m. on November 28, 1925, Hay pronounced himself “The Solemn Old Judge” (though he was actually only 30 years old) and launched, along with championship fiddler, Uncle Jimmy Thompson, what would become the WSM Barn Dance.

Hay’s weekly broadcasts continued and proved enormously popular, and he renamed the show the Grand Ole Opry in 1927. Crowds soon clogged hallways as they gathered to observe the performers, prompting the National Life company to build an acoustically designed auditorium capable of holding 500 fans. When WSM radio increased broadcasting power to 50,000 watts in 1932, most of the United States and parts of Canada could tune into the Opry on Saturday nights, broadening the show’s outreach.

Grand Ole Opry: Introduction