June 08, 2004

• The jammy crescendos in Filmore Jive by Pavement, that song kills me everytime... love it.
• "Shpongle - StarShpongled Banner" when the fiddle comes in. Oh, my, god...
• Mournful steel guitar mini-solo at the very end of "Unsatisfied" by the Replacemats... It is the hi-fi equivalent of a man being taken off life support and his pulse falling....
• Criminally perfect key change in 2nd refrain switching over tp spoke-sung (with extra glottal crunchiness!) off "1000 Umbrellas" on "Skylarking' by XTC, the greatest band ever now fading into obscurity due to bad mgmt. and stagefright...
• The synth-horns double-time glissandos in "Mad World" by TFF, notably missing from "Darko's" lovely adagio remake...
• When Veronica, no doubt pushed to the edge by copious servings of cornstarch cut with baby laxative, unwittingly gets her only solo, shouting out "I could make life so sweeeet!" at the bridge of "Sugar Sugar". Hospitalized "for exhaustion" just days after the session, she laid low for several years, only now returning to the spotlight as a co-host of TLC's "What Not To Wear".
• MY NAME IS SUE! HOW DO YOU DO? NOW YOU'RE GONNA DIE! Yeeahh.
• Oh, and "Alice's Restaurant" where Arlo comes to a jangling guitar climax and says, "Have you ever been arrested?" And Bjork in "Oh So Quiet" at the exact moment she stops whispering and starts shouting the words for the first time.
• Frank Sinatra's version of "Luck Be A Lady" just as the horns kick in. It just *swings*. And Republica's "Ready To Go" when the hard, pulsing drums/guitars kick in. And "Bootzilla" when Bootsy begins his wild, delightful, eerie "Yabba dabba..." And for non-singing music: the opening notes of "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly."
• I am so ashamed that I don
• also I'm glad that Biz made the list.
• And Bjork in "Oh So Quiet" at the exact moment she stops whispering and starts shouting the words for the first time. Absolutely! I've probably heard that song a hundred times by now but I still have to stop what I'm doing and yell along with Bjork when she starts belting.
• Phil Collins? Phil Fucking Collins at number one?!? Jeebus. Anyway. That sudden, silent pause in "Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)", before he starts singing again. And the pause in "Hate To Say I Told You So" (the one where they freeze and hold the poses for, like, thirty seconds when they play it live). And the pause in "Animal Nitrate". I'm not sure what it says about me that my favourite bits of music are the bits where there isn't any music. (Aside from that - the trumpets coming in in "Judy and the Dream of Horses"... "LEONARD BERNSTEIN!!!"... the bass-and-sighing intro to "Time Of The Season"... the bit in "Virginia Plain" where it sounds like Manzanera's beating his guitar to death with a sealion... )
• The bit in Explosions in the Sky's The Only Moment We Were Alone when everything drops out except for one mournful guitar, repeating a simple figure, then dropping out, then coming back in, a shade more hopeful this time, before WHAM! everything explodes into bulldozers and flowers and smiles. And, of course, the CHUG-CHUG in Creep.
• 1. Television, pretty much the entire Marquee Moon album. Lean, ringing guitars intertwined with a nimble, driving rhythm section that I swear is two halves of the same personality playing both instruments, and the lyrics acting as instrument #5. Everything is clean, clean, clean, nothing is out of place, but it's so multi-dimensional that I hear something different every time. 2. Sweet: "Foxy OOOON the RUUUUUUN!" Gotta sing every time. 3. The transition between the non-vocal and vocal sections of "Theme From Shaft." And yeah, gotta sing along with that one too. "Shut your mouth!" And about a billion others... I second Flashboy's "Phil Fucking Collins at number one" disbelief/disgust.
• That bit in Sigur Ros' "Vi
• Another Led Zep bit : The drum intro to "When the Levee Breaks". You know, the one the Beastie Boys sampled. The string bass on Front 242's "Circling Overland" and the ratcheting noise-over-apache-break-inspired drums from Front Line Assembly's Mindphaser. Yeah. We got us a theme for the next cd swap, I betcha.
• When the fading melancholy guitar plucks on Modest Mouse's "Trailor Trash" crescendo up into a guitar solo that will make people stop you on the street and ask what you're listening to (in a good way) The oft overlooked harmony on "Black Star" by Radiohead. When Mos Def hijacks the chorus into his verse of "Thieves in the Night" by Blackstar. And (this one's for BlaiseBF) the drum beat almost at the end of Godspeed You Black Emperor's "sleep". That it's twenty or so minutes into the song only makes it that much sweeter.
• Okay, the drums on "In the Air Tonight" beat "MY NAME IS SUE! HOW DO YOU DO?" What. The. Fuck. I've got two from John Lee Hooker: First, "Dimples", when he stops singing, the drums start rolling, the guitars kick in, and it is well with my soul. Second, his duet with Bonnie Raitt on "I'm in the Mood," when they start playing off one another, building the sexual tension, oh good gravy.... Story has it that on the studio tapes you can hear Bonnie Raitt say "I need a towel" after that cut. And for those who lift the Goblet of Rock, may I suggest the guitar solo Hendrix's "Red House."
• Dude. Tenacious D. That part in "Tribute", if I'm playing it while I'm driving, well, it gets kind of like "Bohemian Rhapsody" in Wayne's World. The devil horns go up, the moshing begins followed by the howling, and people in other cars stare and carefully avoid me. I can't help it. It's just that rockin'. Besides, the critter digs it.
• What? No Slim Whitman?
• Jeff Beck's guitar riff in the Yardbirds' "Over Under Sideways Down"
• Act 2 scene 1 of "Turandot"-- the "Nissan Dorma" aria where the Prince sings about a town full of sleepless whispers...