New Order - "The Village"...

One of my first favourite New Order songs, it seems, with all the other great ones on 'Power, Corruption & Lies', no one ever mentions "The Village".  With its major key sequenced pattern, oblique lyrics (that I've come to think are about Ian Curtis), and melodic bass, it's classic New Order, bearing a strong resemblance to "Temptation", my other favourite song when I first started listening to them, and one of my favourite ever songs.






And some good live versions:







Strange lyrical additions but some nice guitar work at The Town & Country Club, London 1986:

Soul Asylum - "Cartoon"...

One of my favourite songs of all-time.  I LOVE Soul Asylum's "Cartoon".  Thinking a lot recently about all the great music I discovered in 1992, seeing this late at night as 120 Minute's 'Time Warp' section (though really only 4 years old).  And this was before we had driving licenses and had to rely on our parents to take us to the cool record stores scattered around the state.  I fell in love with this song the minute I heard it and anxiously awaited buying 'Hang Time', in my opinion their best album (other great songs including "Sometime To Return", "A Little Too Clean" and, well, Side 1 really).  I fondly remember Brian Ewing's dad taking us to Cutler's in New Haven and Bri insisting on getting it for me, as a present, but refering to it as a "prise" (short for "surprise", which it wasn't) for reasons known only to himself.  A few months later, Soul Asylum were to get huge with 'Grave Dancers Union'  but we were lucky enough to see them right before that happened, at Toad's Place with The Lemonheads (about to score big with "It's A Shame About Ray", an album we also fell in love with that summer, so this gig was really really exciting) and Walt Mink.

It's really hard to talk about songs that mean so much to you, isn't it?  But "Cartoon" always has meant quite a lot to me, perhaps best summed up in its lyric "Did it almost make you feel something's gotta happen soon?  Then you wake up feeling lost in your own room".  It's like life, really.   Hopeful melancholy, being stuck but still able to dream, never quite being completely down and out, or if you are, still going for it anyway. It possesses that quality sung in the lines of one of my other all-time favourite songs (also discovered around that time), "makes you wanna feel, makes you wanna try, makes you wanna blow the stars from the sky".

Catch-Up...

My computer was in for repairs the past few days.  As I'm trying to catch up with everything else, here's a few songs that have been on repeat lately:

The Four Tops - "I'll Turn To Stone"...

As Blogger's been down most of the day and I'm heading out the door, this'll be really quick.  A song I've always loved but have been particularly obsessed with lately.





And The Supremes version:

Songs of Importance...

When I think of songs that are truly Important, two immediately spring to mind.  The Smiths' "Rubber Ring" & The Replacements' "Left Of The Dial".  Songs about how important songs are themselves.




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Here's a demo of "Rubber Ring":






And two great live versions of "Left Of The Dial":

John Frusciante - "Moments Have You"...

To return to John Frusciante for a moment, this is a perfect little pop song:

The Beekeeper playlist...

As mentioned before, Steve Horry and my (first ever) comic, The Beekeeper, is up (you can download the PDF for free from the site).  I also made a Spotify playlist, each song corresponding loosely to a page.  Though, Pulp-like, we ask that you please do not listen to the playlists while reading the comic.  Steve is also going to post a playlist of what he was listening to whilst drawing The Beekeeper (I expect lots of Scott Walker ; ).

As Spotify is still missing lots of music (as a musician I hate that songwriters get a RIDICULOUSLY small royalty from it, but like the fact that you can now preview albums before you buy them), I was forced to make some substitutions, which I thought I'd post here, as they are ACE songs.  Though the songs I ended up using work very nicely as well.

For page 2, I had originally wanted Future Bible Heroes' "I'm A Vampire".  A song that just SCREAMS AWESOME, or rather throws a shout of AWESOME ventriloquist-like out over the dancefloor as its cool self lingers around the edges, watching the proceedings with a lustful glee in its eye.




And for page 5, the page beginning with The Apiarist's door, I thought Chainsaw Kittens' "Connie, I've Found The Door" would work perfectly: