A Sweet Unrest

Contrast Podcast- Threats and Promises

Promise me you'll listen to this week's episode of the Contrast Podcast. Or else.

Contrast Podcast- Monkeys and Apes

This week the Contrast Podcast goes ape. I cannot wait to hear what everyone came up with for this one. Listen or download here.

I am new to the podcast and positively astonished at the amount of music my compadres have on their computers. Eiron mentioned that he has over three hours of music about cherries and over two hundred versions of House of the Rising Sun. My hero The Vinyl Villain has over 12,000 songs on his iPod alone.

These kinds of remarks make me wonder if we aren't a bit behind the times here at A Sweet Unrest World Headquarters, where every CP submission involves drifting from room to room to peek into all the little nooks where the CDs live, plus at least two trips to the garage to look through the archives. Perhaps a more aggressive digitization policy is in order.

So if you have time to comment and don't mind getting technical, I'd love to know how you have your music stored- what size hard drive, how you get the vinyl and bootleg concert cassettes into the shiny machine- that kind of thing.

Cherries

This post was inspired by equal parts MJRC, who reminded me how much I love cherries, and Nat, who reminded me how much I love the John Mellencamp song Cherry Bomb.

I haven't taken many pictures this week but I had to snap these. We've had a lot of fires around here and the air is smoky so the light is strange. I haven't written much about The Prelude because Wordsworth and I are still slogging it out in the Alps. I was happy to get to this part because I've actually been hiking and camping around Mont Blanc and Chamonix, so now I feel like Wordsworth and I have a little something in common. In fact, it was while coming down from Mont Blanc that I discovered I have a touch of le vertige. I had to have my hand held all the way down but that wasn't so bad. I made it. The night sky there was incredibly beautiful- I'd never seen stars like that, and I haven't since. I would go outside my tent in the middle of the night and stare up at them even though it was cold. Wordsworth seems to have been less impressed but I'll write about that a bit later as I'm still puzzling it out. In the meantime, I will try to entertain. Once a showgirl, always a showgirl.

So, cherry songs! I started thinking about cherry songs and other than Cherry Bomb I thought of Warrant's Cherry Pie, which requires no elaboration, and also Cherry Tulips by Headlights, which I was on the fence about at first. But I like it, though not as much as I like Market Girl. Both are on their MySpace.

Any other cherry songs? What am I missing?

Even though it was not a warm a day today, I lay out on a blanket in the garden for a bit, eating the cherries and remembering so clearly what it felt like to be seventeen. I do still, truly, believe that holding hands means something, and that dancing means everything. Maybe more now than ever.

Sweet Thing

I wanted to highlight some of my favorite performances for Black Music Month but we can all see how far that's gotten (and if you haven't checked in for a bit, that would be nowhere). But I can make it all right with one song. This is originally a Chaka and Rufus tune, and that version is fantastic. It's the one I grew up with and would have been perfectly happy with all my life- if I hadn't ever heard this one by Mary J. Blige. The reason I like this one more is the intensity, the raw and ragged desperation in her voice that never lets up. I mean, that opening lyric puts everything on the line, right up front- 'I will love you anyway, even if you cannot stay... ' The vibe in the Chaka & Rufus version goes back and forth from desperation to laid-back funk. In Mary's version, the tension builds and builds, and I think it takes over in the second half of the song, from the 'you are my heat, you are my fire...' When Mary belts out that 'love me now or I'll go crazy' right there, you fear it may already be too late. I love the Chaka and Rufus, but Mary makes me break out in a cold sweat. Every time.

Some of her stuff can be too over the top for me but on this one, I think she gets it just right. It's from her first album, What's The 411, which I can't really recommend like I can her second, My Life, but I do have a soft spot for it. It's a little rough around the edges, not nearly as slick as her others. It's available everywhere.

Sweet Thing

Contrast Podcast- Babies

This week's Contrast Podcast is all about babies. Finally, some good parenting tips! Download or listen right here.

The Vinyl Villain

Just a quick note to wish my blogging hero, The Vinyl Villain, a very happy birthday. I can't recommend his 45 at 45 series highly enough. To me it represents what is best about music blogging. Not only does he have fantastic taste in music and lots of rare goodies, but he tells a great, heartfelt story about each track and it is really a joy to read. And the song he has at number one will not disappoint anyone either!!

Contrast Podcast- Pop The Question

This week's Contrast Podcast is made up entirely of songs whose titles are questions. You can download the episode or listen to it from the website by clicking right here. Why wait?

Contrast Podcast- Mysteries and Conspiracies

I am really looking forward to this week's episode of the Contrast Podcast on Mysteries and Conspiracies. This one was the hardest for me so far in terms of picking a song because there were a lot of different ways to interpret the theme and so many good songs to choose from! It should make for great listening.

I picked a song called Something Shines from Chris Whitley's album Rocket House this time around. It seemed mysterious. I was lucky enough to see Chris Whitley perform live many, many times, and the show I saw around the release of Rocket House was one of my absolute favorites because he had a DJ in tow along with the band. Here's a clip of him performing the song I contributed to the podcast.

Black Music Month

So, June is Black Music Month and I wanted to say a few words about it since- even though I am whiter than a J. Crew catalog- much of what I listen to is black music or heavily influenced by black music. I was exposed to many different kinds of music growing up, but most of the records we had in the house were blues, soul or jazz- my mother's records. Now, my mother grew up living the life of Gidget and it never occurred to me to ask her how a surfer girl from SoCal wound up listening to this stuff. I might have to do a little investigative reporting the next time I talk to her.

Anyway, in celebration of all this great music I'd like to highlight a few of my favorite artists over the course of the month. First up is this live performance of Scenario by A Tribe Called Quest. This is incredible footage because Busta Rhymes is on the original track and here it's actually Tribe and Leaders of the New School performing together- so Busta does his part. He adds an inimitable lunatic energy to the proceedings.

They all look so young!! This song is on The Low End Theory, one of my all-time favorite albums in any genre. Seriously. You should buy it.

I'm also changing my sidebar for this month to reflect some of my favorite records by black artists, plus a few artists very influenced by black music. I'd love to hear some of your favorites too.

FSJ

Poetry is sometimes found in surprising places. One of my gurus- one I haven't talked about yet on this blog- has a new one posted. I'm talking about Fake Steve Jobs. Click here to read his poetic thoughts on the passing of Bo Diddley. Maybe not his absolute best work but I'm sure he has a lot going on. If you're new to Fake Steve, be sure to check out his classic Eric Schmidt's Serenity Prayer.

Namaste', FSJ. I honor the place where your poetic impulses and my goofy yet twisted sense of humor are one.