The Bouncing Souls have a run of shows after Christmas called Home for the Holidays (I believe they got the practice from the Mighty Mighty Bosstones). For three (this year FOUR!) days they play a different set list every night and have different opening acts. And then there are afterparties with even more bands. It's pretty much heaven.
This year they're having a setlist contest. They'll be picking four. I don't know that anyone 'round here knows the Souls well enough to relate to the following, but here is mine:
• Here We Go
• I Like Your Mom
• The Freaks, Nerds, And Romantics
• The Gold Song
____________________
• Late Bloomer
• So Jersey
• I Think That The World (actually wanted Mental Bits, but its not an option )
• Joe Lies (When He Cries)
____________________
• Private Radio
• Night Train
• That Song
• Kid
• Cracked
• Serenity
• Ghosts On The Boardwalk
• Sing Along Forever
____________________
• Better Things (The Kinks)
• Hybrid Moments (Misfits) (unless it is night four, then this is where you put • Born To Lose (Johnny Cash))
• Fight To Live
• K8 Is Great
• True Believers
This has been so mad fun I don't even care if I win. I went with a big loud opener, a few slower ones to catch their breath, a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, and then some wham-bam in the end.
I'm pretty pleased with it.
I'm thinking about picking up a couple of Christmas cds this year, Tori Amos's Midwinter Graces and Sting's If on a Winter's Night. Has anyone else listened to these and thinks they're worth it?
I'm curious about Sting's too. I've listened to the samples, and I can't decide if it's weird or just cool. I do like a lot of his choices, like "The Cherry Tree Carol".
I can't decide if it's weird or just cool.
You Know, I Used To Be Kind Of Cool Once
I gave up on Tori Amos since The Beekeeper, but From the Choirgirl Hotel is maybe one of the best albums I ever had the chance of listen to ("pleasure" is inapplicable in this case). "Playboy Mommy" still hurts me like nothing else can. And of course I bought tickets to her show in Israel, even when it was after my big crush on her (musically), 3 seconds after they were available. Such is the nature of love.
Sometime, about 4 computer formatting ago, I had every last song of hers.
Then I got distracted by Greg Dulli. Still there, AIFG.
The Beatles: 1000 Years Later [link]
Sweet! I have scored "I Hate Christmas" by Oscar the Grouch, "Santafly" by Martin Mull (think "Superfly"), and "Kung Fu Christmas" by National Lampoon (spot on 70s soul parody).
Thank you WFMU!
Sweet! Here's the link: [link]
Some music theory / science stuff for your Monday: The Biology of Music: Why we like what we like
...
A tone is a sound, like a note before it gets a specific name, and a scale is a collection of tones grouped in ascending or descending order. We are able to hear a huge number of tones and, theoretically, there's billions of ways to group them, but humans tend to focus on a very small number of scales, usually made up of either five or seven tones. The same scales are used over and over, throughout most of Western music and much of human music as a whole, said Dale Purves, Ph.D., professor of neurobiology at Duke University and director of the Duke-NUS Neuroscience Program in Singapore. In fact, even styles of music that sound completely different--say classical Chinese music vs. Western folk music--use the same scale, he said. They just use it differently.
So why are we so drawn to certain tones and certain groups of tones? Purves' team thinks they have an answer--an explanation that links what humans like with who they are, biologically.
The key, Purves said, lies in our evolutionary history.
....
