Sunday, June 13, 2010

Five Random Songs

I have a new phone, since I managed to break mine literally in half yesterday. Although it was the second-cheapest in the store ($10 with a new contract), it has several cool features I don't know how to use, including a camera and the ability to import ring tones from my own music library. I will have to find a ten-year-old to help me figure this out. In the meantime, five random songs from the music library I do know how to manage.

1. "The Angel," Bruce Springsteen. First song on the second side of Springsteen's first album, Greetings from Asbury Park. If you woke me up in the middle of the night, I could probably recite that album's track list in order. Digital music lets us skip from track to track, but vinyl albums gave us 30-minute music suites that were a format of their own, and I miss them.

2. "Weaving Song," Phelan Sheppard. An instrumental track that feels like floating on water. It uses a wordless human voice as one of the instruments, a ghostly lilt. "Phelan Sheppard" is not one person but the last names of the two musicians, Keiron Phelan and David Sheppard. I don't know who the woman's voice belongs to. This track comes from Into the Dark, a CD compiled by John Connolly as a companion to his novel The Unquiet.

3. "The Bunting Song," The Good, the Bad and the Queen. More mood music, buzzy electronic melancholia that ends with a feeling of storm clouds brewing. This CD, released in 2007, is so much my kind of music that I actually got it as a gift from more than one person.

4. "Hold My Life," The Replacements. This album, Tim, was one of those records that changed my life, putting all my baffled adolescent rage and frustration into jangly power-pop. We're all a little older now, but I hope I never outgrow The Replacements.

5. "Wide Eyes," Local Natives. A relatively recent acquisition, I think this track came off an alternative music sampler I downloaded for free somewhere. I like it particularly for the percussion tracks, a flurry of drums and sticks and other beat-making instruments I can't name.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

For a ring tone, grab the second verse of Too Much Joy's "You Will":

Have you been faxed at the beach?
You will -- and you will not be scared
Have you felt our awesome reach?
You will -- and you will not be scared




-- Ed

JIM LAMB said...

Swing by Mechanicsville on your next trip down. Henry and Matthew will program your phone for you and show you how to use it. They are smarter than any 10 year old.

Unknown said...

I had that phone for 2 weeks until I got rid of it as I couldn't get a signal in St. Agatha. There is software you can download that will enable it to download pictures to you computer via USB