Friday Saturday Random 10: Shuffle vs. Genius............

Today's Friday Saturday (I said in my first post I'm a bad procrastinator) and it's time for another Random 10: Shuffle vs. Genius.

Starting Song: Is There A Switch For That - 1990s



Shuffle Playlist................................Genius Playlist
1. Is There A Switch For That -.............1. Is There A Switch For That -
.......1990s.................................................1990s
2. Jet Boy, Jet Girl - The Damned.........2. A Train Roars - The Horrors
3. London Girl - The Pogues.................3. Pump Up The Volume - Art Brut
4. Mensforth Hill - The Clash.....W.........4. This Month, Day 10 - CSS
5. Lady Stardust - David Bowie.............5. Black Magic - Jarvis Cocker
6. Help The Aged - W...........................6. Tight Fit - New Young Pony Club
.......Pulp (Peel Sessions)
7. Ob-la-di Ob-la-da - The Beatles.........7. The Wrath Of Marcie -
.................................................................The Go! Team
8. Racecar Driver - Girl In A Coma........8. Guilt By Association - Louis XIV
9. Ziggy Stardust - Seu Jorge................9. Scratch Your Name -
.................................................................Noisettes
10. First Night Back In London -.............10. The Bad Thing - Arctic Monkeys
..........The Clash

Track by track comparison after the jump.

Jet Boy, Jet Girl vs. A Train Roars: This one goes to shuffle. It's basically The Damned doing one of my favorite songs in the world (Jet Boy, Jet Girl/Ca Plane Pour Moi) against one of my least favorite Horror's songs. Definite no brainer.

London Girl vs. Pump Up The Volume: Shuffle wins again here. I'm planning a post about second albums and how bands can end up de-fanging them for a "more mature" sound. I think that's kind of what happened to Art Brut's second album. It still has really good, fun, dirty lyrics but it's so much less brash and the brashness is really what made me love them in the first place. Also, I'm happy my itunes picked a Pogues song from Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash because it went through a really long phase of only picking songs from Peace and Love which was really unfortunate.

Mensforth Hill vs. This Month, Day 10: I'm really surprised I found Mensforth Hill on Youtube. Again Shuffle has caused me to pick a non-Clash song over a Clash song. Last week it was because of a demo and this week it was because of one of the least listenable tracks on Sandinista! (which is my fave Clash album, but I'm not so into the 'other tracks played backwards' dubs). I think Even a second album CSS track could have won this one. This one goes to genius.

Lady Stardust vs. Black Magic: I think this is going to have to be a draw. I love both of these songs. A lot. Lady Stardust was my favorite Ziggy song for a long time (until the 'it was cold, and it rained...' part of Five Years totally won me over). Black Magic was probably the first song off of Jarvis' solo record that I liked. Most of the others had to grow on me. It's pretty much a perfect song, coincidentally about how hard it is to write a great song and how it's a kind of x-factor. So I can't choose...

Help The Aged (peel sessions) vs. Tight Fit: So I think it's pretty obvious that shuffle is going to win today. An amazing Pulp song played live at John Peel's birthday party is pretty hard to beat, especially when it's competition is a kind of mediocre New Young Pony Club song.

Ob-la-di Ob-la-da vs. The Wrath Of Marcie: I'm so indecisive today. I actually like both songs pretty much equally. The Beatles doing ska always has a special place in my heart and Wrath of Marcie is my favorite Go! Team song. I'm going to give this to shuffle though because genius picked a Go! team song last week and has a bad habit of always picking the same songs/songs by the same artist repeatedly. Maybe that's my fault for overlistening to stuff...but whatever...

Racecar Driver vs. Guilt By Association: I thought I was going to love Girl In A Coma's album because of how much I loved Clumsy Sky. It kind of left me cold though. I definitely need to listen to it more. It has potential but at the moment I prefer the catchier Louis XIV song so genius wins here.

Ziggy Stardust vs. Scratch Your Name: Shuffle wins again. Scratch Your Name isn't my favorite Noisettes songs. Sometimes their songs get kinda proggy, I guess is the word, like Bridge to Canada. I prefer their songs that are brighter and stripped down, like Don't Give Up, Sister Rosetta, and I Will Never Fall In Love Again. So this one's going to shuffle and Seu Jorge's gorgeous cover of Ziggy.

First Night Back In London vs. The Bad Thing: I think The Bad Thing is one of the AM's more forgettable/mediocre songs and First Night Back In London is one of my favorite weird, non-album Clash songs. It has great rhythm/syncopation and has dark, kind of noir-ish imagery and tone. Shuffle wins yet again.

This week shuffle takes it 6-2 so the overall score is tied up, Shuffle - 1, Genius - 1.

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England's West Coast

When I did a semester in London we got to go on a free weekend trip. I chose to go on the Cornwall one because it sounded fun, pretty, and beachy. It was and I loved it. We got to stay at a surf lodge-type place, see loads of gorgeous scenery, and visit the Eden Project. Here are some of the pics I took with a horrendously bad/old digital camera:

This is my current desktop (and has been for awhile) and was taken in St. Ives. I'd totally love to live there for a summer. It's full of hilly, windy streets, cute shops, and very friendly people.

This is another of St. Ives. It's such a beautiful place.




These two are actually scanned. I took them with my SLR and scanned them with my all-in-one printer/scanner/fax so that's where the weird horizontal lines are from. I love how tropical they look, even though they are anything but tropical. It's basically on somewhere on a stop between London and Newquay on a warm February day.





These last two are from inside the temperate biome at the Eden Project. The flowers are kind of overly photoshopped but I like the effect. I also like how it looks like a kind of alien landscape.

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R.I.P Bettie Page

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Similar Intros

Sometimes when I'm shuffling, a song starts to play and I think it's a different song because the intros are so similar. Two songs that I recently noticed have really similar intros are Oxford Comma by Vampire Weekend and Sleepwalk by Joe Strummer



I combined both MP3s into one with Audacity. I'm sure there are a bunch of other songs that start similarly, but these two go really well together. If I was more talented with MP3s I'd attempt to do a mash-up.

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Doppelgängland

Jarvis Cocker and Kanye West



Ok, so this is obviously, mostly, a joke. I just think it's funny that they both grew beards at around the same time. Like if one were to do a trend piece on beards and they were both in it it'd be kind of funny.

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Friday Random 10: Shuffle vs. Genius

Basically I'm going to do a regular shuffle random ten and compare it to the first ten tracks of a genius playlist using the first song from the shuffle playlist. Then I'll do a song by song comparison and decide which is better. Every week I'll give the score, shuffle vs. genius.

Stating song: Paris Is Burning - St. Vincent


Shuffle Playlist................................. Genius Playlist
1. Paris Is Burning - St. Vincent..............1. Paris Is Burning - St. Vincent
2. Brown Town - The Livingbrooks......W.2. I'm On Fire - Bat For Lashes
3. I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend -.......W....3. Knife - CSS
.........The Ramones
4. Streets of Paris - The Teenagers........4. Streets of Paris - The Teenagers
5. My Legendary Girlfriend - Pulp...........5. Birthday - The Bird And The Bee
6. Whiskey In The Jar - Pulp..................6. Arcade Precinct - The 1990s
7. Duck Soup - Drumbago's Orchestra....7. Formed A Band - Art Brut
8. Walking The Sidewalks - The Clash.....8. Grip Like A Vice - The Go! Team
9. Expansive Heart - Big Rig...................9. James Bonde - Bonde Do Role
10. Moon Over Asbury...........................10. B-A-B-Y - The Brunettes

Track by track comparison (with youtube links when available) after the jump.

Brown Town vs. I'm On Fire: Brown Town has the nostalgia factor of being by a local band I used to go see ALL the time. I'm On Fire is a really pretty cover that reworks a Springsteen song. I think I'm gonna call this one a draw.

I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend vs. Knife: I'm going to give this one to the Ramones. Knife, although a cover, is more like CSS's second album than their first, and that's not such a good thing.

Streets of Paris vs. Streets of Paris: This is a pretty obvious draw. Very unoriginal of itunes to put this on both playlists just because Paris is in the title.

My Legendary Girlfriend vs. Birthday: I'm gonna give this one to Pulp. My Legendary Girlfriend is one of my favorite from early pulp and the live version is kinda similar to the random techno song Jarvis ended his recent solo shows with. Birthday is alright, I got it as a Spinner free MP3 of the day but I rarely listen to it.

Whiskey In The Jar vs. Arcade Precinct: I'm giving this one to Arcade Precinct. I love the Pulp cover but shuffle gets points off for putting two Pulp songs in a row. Also, Arcade Precinct is an amazing song in its own right, the 1990s are great live and i love the end when it goes "and the ladies in the arcade, are drinking cherry kool aid".

Duck Soup vs. Formed A Band: Formed a Band wins, it's fun, kinda silly, and loud. Duck Soup is good but it's not one of my faves on the Trojan comp, it has less energy than most of the songs on it.

Walking The Sidewalks vs. Grip Like A Vice: Even though I like Wrath of Marcie better I'm gonna go with Grip Like A Vice. It's rare that I'd pick something over a Clash song, but Walking the Sidewalks isn't the best demo from the vanilla tapes, if it was the early version of Clampdown, Death Or Glory, or Koka Kola the Clash would've won.

Expansive Heart vs. James Bonde: Big Rig isn't my favorite post-Op Ivy solo project (Common Rider definitely is, even though I don't listen to it as much as I should Last Wave Rockers is probably one of my favorite albums). Bonde Do Role edges this one out.

Moon Over Asbury vs. B-A-B-Y: Moon Over Asbury wins here. It's a kind of spaghetti westernish tribute to New Jersey. Brunettes Against Bubblegum youth is pretty good but I think I thought I'd like it more than I do. For me, it doesn't stand up that well to repeated listens.

Genius wins this one 4-3, so as of this week it's Shuffle - 0, Genius - 1

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Doppelgängland

I basically should have started this blog a year ago. My first bunch of posts are probably going to be kinda dated. I have a bunch of blog ideas backlogged in my brain. This is going to be the innaugural Doppelgängland post, showcasing people who look a lot a like but are very different. The name comes from the Buffy episode where regular Willow meets vamp Willow.

Spider Webb from The Horrors (left) and Chad Rogers from that house selling show (right):

I've never watched the house selling show, I just watch a lot of Bravo and he's pretty inescapable in the promos. He was also mentioned on The Soup a few days ago, which reminded me how similar they look. I doubt though that, haircut aside, they're anything alike. I also doubt chad can do this.

Also Chad was initial evidence for my very wrong prediction that the bowl haircut was going to be big in America this year.

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Jarvis Cocker - Told You Twice Leftovers

Love this:

I was there and it was even more amazing live. I had this song stuck in my head from the first time I heard the chorus, before it showed up on Youtube, before the lyrics showed up on pulp wiki.

I don't really have any concerts planned for the near or distant future so I figured I'd go back to the not so distant past and talk about this song because I really love it. It's kind of beautiful in the sad is happy for deep people kind of way.

Jarvis' first solo album grew on me so I was happily surprised that I liked the new songs immediately. Typically I'm bored out of my mind when new songs are played live. This set was pretty much the only exception.

This song stuck out the most for me because it was slower than the other new ones, which is ironic because the reason I didn't like the first album instantaneously was because most of the songs were slow and I was still in the process of getting used to slower music with polished production. I'd always thought the opposite was ideal but obviously there's room for both, and both can be amazing.

The line that really stuck out for me also stuck out for the New York Times reviewer. "I wanna love you whilst we still have flesh upon our bones. Before we both become extinct." It's sad, yearning, beautiful, grotestque, evocative and disarmingly simple. Every time I listen to it, it gives me chills. I can't wait to hear how it sounds on the album.

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Seaport Shots

These are probably the most postcard-y pictures that I've taken. I took them for a photo-journalism class and the assignment was to show off composition so they're supposed to be a bit style over substance.
I started with the most postcard-y of all. I like this one because it manages to be vertical and horizontal at the same time.
This one kind of expresses how I feel about the seaport. It is touristy but, at the same time, between the bridge and the water and the old docked ships, it's kind of serene and nice.

Then this one's a bit gray and stormy and doesn't really give away the fact that these were all shot on the same day:

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Beginning Blogging

I decided that I'd start a blog the day after the election. My first idea for a blog name was 'Post-Grad Limbo', which is maybe a little more pretentious than what I ultimately went with. But there was already a blog with that name so I thesaurus-ed Limbo, which led me to uncertain, which led me to ambivalent.

I think ambivalent is a kind of perfect description of my current state. Also, post-grad was the wrong word because I'm not in any kind of post-graduate school. I've simply graduated. My ambivalence is what's keeping me from grad school.

Since weeks passed between when I intended to start writing and now, an even more fitting blog title might have included procrastination. Right now I should be doing something else, but I'm not, I'm writing this.

In future blog posts I want to write about pop culture type stuff, analyze TV and movies (my academic true love), reactions to books I'm reading, and Music* I'm listening to (my non-academic true love) and maybe post a bit about politics and analyze media coverage of politics. I'll probably also post any random thoughts I feel are blog worthy. Oh and I want to post some of my favorite pictures that I've taken too.

I could post some get-to-know-me-type facts but I think I'll hold off. I was just thinking about how I hate small talk; talking about what people do, how they know each other, etc. I'll try to avoid that and let the boring details come out in a more organic, and hopefully more interesting way.

Joe Strummer once said, "I think it's a sin to be boring." Keeping that in mind, I probably sinned a bit with this first entry. In the future I'll try to be as virtuous in that regard as possible.

*when editing, I noticed that I capitalized music by mistake but I decided that it was kind of Freudian so I'm keeping it

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