Commute Shuffle

Long commute home last night. It took me an hour and a half to get from Point A to Point B. Falling asleep on various trains and busses. My music kept me company. Here is the iPod shuffle. The fun thing about listing Shuffle tracks is that there is no hiding from your own music collection. It’s like that funny anecdote in Tina Fey’s Bossypants about a photo shoot she did early on and they asked her if she wanted to play her own music during the shoot. Not thinking about what this would mean, she said, “Sure”, thinking it would make her feel comfortable to hear her own familiar tunes coming out of her iPod. To her horror, one of the songs that came up was “We’d Like to Thank You, Herbert Hoover”. Hilarious. But that’s the fun of it.

“National Express” – The Divine Comedy. Boy, was I into this guy in a big big way for a while. He’s so creative, with a great big campy voice.

“Maddest Kind of Love” – Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. I was really into all of those swing bands in the mid-90s. Bought as much as I could. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy is a lot of fun.

“Unanswered Prayers” – Garth Brooks. Ouch. I was there, when Brooks did his huge concert in Central Park. It was insane. I couldn’t get anyone to go with me, and the damn thing was free! There were thousands and thousands of people there. It was a great concert, but the capper was when Brooks ushered onto the stage his “greatest inspiration”, and freakin’ Don McLean walked out. He performed “American Pie”. To say that Don McLean makes me think of my entire life is an understatement. When I was in kindergarten, on Show ‘n Tell day, when other kids brought in their gerbils and their Barbies, I instead recited the entirety of “American Pie”. I wonder what the response was to a tiny girl chirping out:

Did you write the book of love
And do you have faith in God above
If the Bible tells you so?
Now do you believe in rock and roll?
Can music save your mortal soul?
And can you teach me how to dance real slow?

“Make Me Know It” – Elvis. Nice, campy song, recorded in 1960, with great backup from the Jordanaires. I love the message of the song, too, which is basically: “You like me? Put up or shut up, baby.” It’s blatant. Manipulative.

“Rich Girl” – Everclear’s cover of the Hall & Oates song. Allison and I just watched a wonderful documentary called “The Other F Word”, about these rocking punk-rock guys who now are all fathers, and how fatherhood has changed them. Lead singer Art Alexakis, a guy I love, is one of the guys interviewed. I have very strong feelings about Everclear. It’s all wrapped up with 2009, and that bad bad year I had. I could only listen to Everclear during those bad months of June to October. I’ve always loved Everclear, but – sadly – when I hear them now, I always think about how sad I was in 2009. It’s a Pavlovian response.

“I’ll Fly Away” – Alison Krause & Gillian Welch. From the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack. These two ladies always make me think of my dad. He loved both of them.

“Didn’t I” – k.d. lang. This is really the only album of hers I’ve ever owned. I love every song on it. She’s got some killer pipes.

“Wartime Prayers” – Paul Simon. An emotional song.

“To Make You Feel My Love” – Garth Brooks. Out of all the songs on my iPod, Garth Brooks shows up twice in one random shuffle. This song is actually almost too much for me to bear. Adele does an incredible version of it too. You really just need to sing it. Don’t do anything more to it. Don’t add. The song is enough. Powerful piece of work.

“Lovin’ Time” – Pat McCurdy. He’s a friend of mine. We go way back. He wrote a duet for us to perform. It’s on one of his albums. The guitar part in “Lovin’ Time” is just so beautiful and complex, and really shows how damn good he is.

“Popular” – Kristen Chenoweth. From Wicked. I’ve never seen this show. But I love the music!

“I’ve Just Begun Having My Fun” – Britney Spears. Oh, Britney, I hope that’s not true!! This song does rock. Funny orchestration, little violin jabs. Classic Britney. Silly, catchy.

“Skinny Love” – Bon Iver. Peter Giles, the actor who played Jack in the workshop of my script in Los Angeles last summer, turned me on to Bon Iver.

“Jump” – Madonna. Go, Madge. Not always crazy about her stuff, but I love this whole album.

“Trouble For Me” – Britney Spears. Look out, it’s a Brit-Brit cluster!

“6’1” – Liz Phair. The opening track of her phenomenal groundbreaking Exile in Guyville, the album where I thought, the first time I listened to it, “How did Liz Phair get a hold of my journals?”

“Do You Want to Know a Secret” – The Beatles. Beautiful!

“Mother” – The Police. This album took over the WORLD. We all discussed it, feverishly, in high school, studying the lyrics, listening to it over and over.

“Hello Goodbye” – The Beatles. Perfection.

“Catch a Shooting Star” – Hellogoodbye. I love these guys!

“Mystery” – Indigo Girls. Well. I certainly need to be in the mood for them. I don’t care for them when they get rockin’ – I’m in it for the ballads. But they can crack me open like a walnut, and sometimes I just don’t feel like being cracked open. This is a good song.

“Steamroller Blues” – James Taylor. The live version, which is superior to the studio recording. This song scared me as a child because I didn’t understand the concept of a “metaphor”. I just kept imagining people literally crushed to flatness beneath a steamroller and I didn’t understand why James Taylor, the nice unthreatening guy in overalls on the album cover, would be threatening to “roll all over you”.

“Keep the Customer Satisfied” – Simon & Garfunkel. One of my favorites in their entire canon.

“Tomorrow Night” – Elvis Presley. One of those songs where the echo on his voice is so strong that it literally sounds like he’s at the bottom of a well.

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” – The Beatles. Never get enough of this song.

“Crying Time” – Ray Charles. Aching pain, with those swelling strings in the background. Lovely.

“On My Own” – good old Lea Michele from Glee singing one of the biggest hits from Les Miserables.

“Take Me I’m Yours” – Squeeze. Woah. College.

“Never Give All the Heart” – The Chieftains, with Brenda Fricker reciting the Yeats poem, and Anúna singing a choral arrangement of it. This is powerful shite.

“Come Alive” – The Foo Fighters. I’d buy a track of them singing Happy Birthday.

“Swing Down Sweet Chariot” – Elvis Presley. I’ve written about his performing of this number in Trouble With Girls.

“True Love” – Elvis Presley. Written by Cole Porter. Absolutely beautiful performance, and I love how his voice blends with the quartet behind him. His voice is not pushed too far forward. There are also times when he sings two-part harmony with one of the Jordanaires, something rare for him. Just beautiful.

“Ghost” – Indigo Girls. ONe of those songs I actually can never listen to. It’s too personal.

“Somebody” – Scala & Kolacny Brothers. I’m a tiny bit obsessed with this all-female choir from Belgium. Incredible arrangements, full and eerie sound.

“Big Tall Man” – Liz Phair. I love this lady.

“Bad Romance” – the cast of Glee. I have every song those kids ever recorded. It should be no surprise that I am a huge Glee supporter.

“Feet Don’t Fall” – Bleu. He’s another one I associate with 2009, a year when I was very lost and listening to the same songs over and over again. Bleu helped me get through that rough year. This guy is an incredible songwriter, and an even better singer. What a voice. He writes sheer and perfect pop songs. Hasn’t hit it huge though. But make no mistake: these are HITS. He is incapable of writing a bad or boring song.

“Good People” – Jack Johnson. I like this song. It’s cute.

“Help Me” – Pat McCurdy again. I was wondering when you would show up again, my friend. I always know you’re out there. I know you’re reading. i SEE YOU OUT THERE.

“Beelzeboss (The Final Showdown)” – Tenacious D. RIDICULOUS. ENTERTAINING.

“Purple Rain” – Prince. It is impossible for me to hear this song and not think of high school dances, which always seemed to end with this long slow song, always a bummer if you had no one to dance and make out with. Because the song is LONG. So those of us without dates would hear “Purple Rain” and be like, “Okay, dance is over, let’s call our parents to come pick us up … let’s get OUT of here.”

“Bionic” – Christina Aguilera. I’m a big Christina fan, but … she shouldn’t worry about Lady Gaga and try to compete. No need, Christina. You’ve got it all, you’ve got the best pipes in the business. Just keep at it. So, yeah, I don’t like this song. Her voice is put through some computerized transformer, whatever, and … please don’t do that to yourself when you have the voice you do!!

“Too Much Monkey Business” – Elvis Presley at his silliest. He can barely get through the number. There’s one alternate take where he is literally hysterical throughout most of the number. I can sense his hysteria with every grunt and sex-noise he makes. Great guitar.

“Strange Thing Mystifying” – big fight between Judas and Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar

“Razor” – The Foo Fighters. Beautiful haunting guitar. Love this song.

“Could I Fall in Love” – Elvis Presley. From Double Trouble. Yes, this was the movie where he is forced to sing “Old MacDonald”, which is an outrage. I realize my tastes are simple, but I really like him here. He’s gentle, easy, and sweet. He was probably deeply depressed as he was recording it, but that’s not my problem.

“Runaway” – Del Shannon. While it is difficult to say “such and such is my favorite song of all time”, I’m gonna have to go with this one. Every time it comes up on Shuffle, I get a charge of excitement, ie: “Oh goody, I get to listen to this again!!” This, after hearing the song literally thousands of time during my lifetime. Pretty amazing, that’s a good song.