I think I’ve got it figured out. The posting jones was greatly diminished when I got that anger thing largely dissipated a few years back. Perhaps I just need to schedule a regular time in the evenings - say, between beer 3 and 4 - to post whatever inanity was shiny enough to get my attention that day. We’ll attempt yet another restart - not unlike those who attempt to stop smoking on a quasi-regular basis - by whorishly and shamelessly imitating a widely used blog space filler.

This particular(ly) strained plot contrivance was precipitated by my first use of the iTunes shuffle feature today, which was itself precipitated (yes, there’s been a lot of rain here in Tejas lately) by my typical incapability of actually choosing what I want to hear from the 70 GB or so of music I’ve got stored for a - you guessed it - rainy day.

So here’s my initial attempt to prove how much more retro-hip and obscure I am than thou.

  • “About Her” - Malcolm McLaren - Kill Bill 2 OST - A slowed and slightly fuzzified remake of the Zombies’ (aka Rod Argent’s) “She’s Not There” as performed by the man who gave John Lydon well more than his requisite 15 minutes (or at least as performed by whomever Malcolm was trying to make the next John Lydon).
  • “So Sad About Me” - Cowboy Mouth - All You Need Is Live - I ordered 5 of their albums the morning after I first encountered them at the Galveston version of Mardi Gras, at which I also first saw the Blue Oyster Cult live. I can’t think of many other newly discovered bands that categorize themselves as rock and/or roll that I’ve enjoyed as much in the last decade.
  • “Since I Met You” - Junior Brown - Live in Sarasota, FL, 2000 - A fine sounding boot of a little-known Texas treasure, with this track featuring his wife - a former guitar student of his who really impressed Prof. Brown.
  • “Evonce (alt. take)” - Thelonious Monk - Complete Blue Note Recordings - Monk. Aaaaah.
  • “All the Things You Are” - Connie Evingson - Some Cats Know - An obscure Minnesota-based jazz singer every bit as good as several others whose fame generally well exceeds their talent. Her version of this chestnut is as enjoyable as I’ve heard, and I’ve heard a few.
  • “Undercover of the Night” - Rolling Stones - Undercover - The title tune from a fairly obscure album, at least for these lads. I’m not much of a fan of their albums after this, maintaining that the Keith Richards X-Pensive Winos albums are the best Stones albums in the last 20 years.
  • “Pedal Point Blues” - Charles Mingus - Mingus Ah Um - One of the lesser tunes from my favorite Mingus album. This - like much of the Mingus output - is evocative of the business of the big city.
  • “Sultans of Swing” - Dire Straits - Coming as it did in the midst of the cacophony of beeps, chirps and buzzes characterizing the early 80s new wave period, this was - well - music to my ears. I remember mistaking it for the next Men at Work single. Or was it the other way around?
  • “When the Spell is Broken” - Richard Thompson - Live 3/7/91 - A solo Thompson boot, wherein he yet again proves the over-ranked pretender status of most others in the singer-songwriter genre.
  • “At the Crossroads” - Sir Douglas Quintet - An early piece from Texas giant Doug Sahm. My first experience of Sahm was when I bought a vinyl album of his back in the late 1970s, mainly (solely) because Dylan guested. This is in my Sahm top five.

This will get even more obscure when I get a 500GB disc to hang off this thing and fill it will my krautrock, jazz and African music collections. As for the shuffle thing, I’m hooked. It saves my thinking juices for more important things like being really clever on a blog.