more music!

I think's possibly been over a year since I've posted anything about music to this blog. Which is insane, because I started it to write about music I listen to, and I certainly still listen, constantly. Probably more now that I have that looooong train ride to sit and enjoy an album.

Here's the mix that I listened to this morning. I've FINALLY got one device that does phone calls and plays music... and it's not an iphone. It's a blackberry flip, and in a week or so I'll write a review of it- I'm still figuring a few things out. I originally wrote about my desire for this kind of gadget in March 2005. Hello progress, nice to see you three and a half years later.

So gadget snark aside, this could almost be a St Patricks day mix. I've been a bit heavier than usual into the Celtic punk/folk thing since our trip to the virginia beach irish festival 4 weeks ago.

1. Phoenix Park - The Tossers
   A new album to me, which was stupid because they're a wonderful band and it's been out since forever. I love the beautiful melody. I want to wake up to this song every morning


2. Smokin' Bowl - The Real McKenzies
   Two summers ago, walking down 8th ave in NYC, realizing that I was going to leave the company I'd moved to the east coast to work for- I played this song over and over and over and over several more times. It's definitely a song to realize that you need to follow your own path and deal with life. It's also got a fantastic hook in it.


3. Rise Above - Black Flag
   see above comment, sans the hook


4. A Rainy Night In Soho - The Pogues
   Rum, Sodomy and the Lash... is, I don't know... perfect. I adore this album. I know this is considered an "important" album, but I have such a deep personal connection with it. Walking in the evening, listening to this- I love most of the songs on here too much.


5. Upstarts and Broken Hearts - Drop Kick Murphys
   One of my favorite songs ever


6. Blue Period - Smithereens
   amazing use of strings. I listen to this one over and over and over.


7. Galway Girl - Town Pants
   they played this at the festival, and wow- the hook from this one got stuck in my head for a few days

navy blue

This evening I stumbled over an old blog post I'd written about remembering what Dissolved Girl sounds like. It made me pause for a moment and think about my color memory vs my sound memory. I stopped at MJ Trim this morning to pick up a ribbon to match some green and blue material, and I've got the ribbon I picked out next to me. I haven't yet laid it next to the fabric it will go with, but I don't need to. For whatever reason, I can picture colors of things I've seen perfectly in my head, and when I looked at ribbons this morning I could see the exact olive and navy shades that I needed to match. Compared to my memory of songs, which are little soft, too loose, memories that unravel rather than get crisper when I dive in closer. Anyway. I like my color memory, but I wouldn't mind having a better memory for songs. When I read a lot of what I've written about music, I talk about what I see when I hear it and describe it in terms of spaces it suggests. I have a one track visual mind sometimes.

Lullaby of London

I haven't posted about music in a long time, and certainly not the long essays I used to write. One part of that is that I've been too busy to track down new music much these days, and I'm now cut off from Amazon's great music editors.

One piece of music that I've recently fallen for, though, is "Lullaby of London" by the Pogues. It's probably about as old as I am these days but it's a beautiful song. When I first moved to NYC, I was working in Times Square, but moved down to Chelsea at the end of last summer. Midtown and Times Square are quite literally the canyons of NYC while Chelsea and the West Village area are not so tall. One bitterly cold day this winter, I set out up 7th Ave to walk to Penn Station, with the Pogues playing on my ipod. As I walked up 7th, wrapped and bundled in a coat and scarf to my eyes and still shivering, I sort of fell into this song. As I kept walking, the huge towers of Midtown started looming over me, making the wind sharper and colder and darker. It all fit together, the appearance of the gray bleakness near Penn Station, the cold, this incredibly beautiful song. Whenever I have to walk up 7th Ave, even now in the warm spring, I try to play it at least once, as it's so tied to this one area for me.