The Sounds Inside My Mind

Here are my 90 eMusic downloads for December 2007.

Stereogum has a great thread going about the greatest fictional musicians. One of the comment made me laugh out loud; it’s in reference to a single line comment of “Jesse and the Rippers.”

I had to Google who the hell Jesse and the Rippers are. You’re a homo for knowing that.

What makes this extra funny for me is that I know exactly who Jesse and the Rippers are, and though that was a funny suggestion, but it’s that comment I posted above that really takes the cake.  Comedy gold.

Here are my latest eMusic downloads!

David Dye interviewing Britt Daniel of the band Spoon, discussing AM radio: “You’d get the Singing Nuns—you know the Singing Nuns? They did a French song, Dominique.”

Interviewee Britt Daniel, sounding bored and confused: “Uh huh.”

Dye again, sounding excited: “It doesn’t matter. You should go look it up. Awful song. Catchy as hell. It’d drive you crazy.”

Daniel, still bored: “Uh huh.”

I’m glad someone with vast musical knowledge and influence like David Dye uses his great opportunity to talk with one of the best and brightest musicians today about something as important and influential as the Singing Nun.

Hear the entire Spoon concert and subsequent interview at All Songs Considered.

A related note: I once found the Singing Nun’s record at a Goodwill. I snatched that great piece of vinyl right up and gave it to my friend Jeff, the biggest Singing Nun fan I know.

Did you here that Nickel Creek are soon to be no more?  With them disbanding and Led Zeppelin reuniting, it looks like the good guys are winning.  If you haven’t guessed, I don’t like Nickel Creek.  I think their so-called bluegrass is water-down poseur music.  As I snidely told a friend once: “Nickel Creek is to bluegrass what Pat Boone is to rock and roll.”  Ha ha, I’m a jerk.

When I first heard about WCLZ being released from Citadel Communications, I wasn’t too concerned. Over the past few years (ever since I moved to Portland), I’ve been listening to the station less and less. It seemed to me they were playing more of the Jamie Cullum/John Mayer brand of watered down rock and pop and less of the music that I enjoy. Plus I could now listen to WMPG any time I wanted, so WCLZ went from the default setting on my radio to a second (or third or fourth) string back-up.

The one thing on WCLZ that remained consistently strong was Greetings From Area Code 207. Last night was the last episode of the local music show on CLZ, and I’m very upset that I missed it. At least the show will go on, as it has been picked up by WBLM.

But that was yesterday. Today is a different story. According to the comments on the CLZ blog, today was the change over to the new owners. After reading this, I tuned in to CLZ, and the change was obvious. The Rolling Stones? On CLZ? That doesn’t add up. There is no way they can be considered AAA. Yet the very next song was an Indigo Girls tune, a CLZ staple. But the on air staff is different. Earlier today I saw Rock Bergeron’s name on the website; he’s a DJ on WMPG. Now there’s some guy named Rick Johnson; I have no idea who he is. So I’m not exactly sure what is going on with the new owners. They’re still using the “Different By Design” slogan, and as I type this, they are playing an Acoustic Coffee Break, another mainstay from the Citadel days. I hope they don’t start mixing classic rock into the playlist. We have too much classic rock in Portland as it is.

I guess the point of this post is for me to say even though I didn’t listen to CLZ that much anymore, and Nissa and I would constantly make fun of the DJs, I still appreciated the place it held in Portland’s radio scene. And now it seems that the CLZ that I knew and (perhaps still) loved may be no more. Oh well. Another reason for me to go get satellite radio.

A silver lining: I discovered through this blog post that because of the new ownership taking control of WCLZ, the simulcast on WCYI is no more. That station is currently playing a blues format. Quite interesting.

Also, the Senate will soon be voting on a bill that would expand the number of low power FM stations in the country (link via WFMU). I know that a number of groups were vying for the one station allocated to the Portland market. If the Senate does the good thing and passes the bill, maybe there will be a few more independent spots on our radio dials in the coming years.

As you may have heard, the file-trading site Oink was shut down last week; a great disappointment to music lovers/snobs everywhere. But what you may not have heard is the news that hits a little closer to home: prolific local tagger ‘Onik’ has been sentenced to two years in prison for his widespread vandalism. I understand graffiti as art (the other day I was stopped at the train tracks at the Congress and St. John streets intersection, and some of the graffiti painted on the train was quite beautiful; I wished that the train was stopped somewhere so I could photograph it), but just writing your name all over town on people’s windows and doors is silly. What does that accomplish? Were his myspace friends that impressed?

In other news: how ’bout them Sox?

I’ve been a subscriber to eMusic since July of 2003.  Goodness, it’s been a long time.  I feel like my musical tastes have really changed.  Actaully, I should clarify; they have expanded, not changed.  I listen to a lot more indie rock than I would ever think of doing back in July of ’03, but I still countthe Rev. Gary Davis (the first artist I ever downloaded from eMusic) amoung the musicians I really enjoy.  Anyway, here’s the list of 90 tracks I downloaded for the month of October.  Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.