6 posts tagged “momus”

We're planning a cabaret party for November.  I bought some software that can minimize the vocals on an MP3 -- sometimes.  It worked pretty well for one of my fave Momus songs, The Penis Song.  There are a few more tracks in the linked collection. 

What fun!

(Brooke started it!)
[also: omitted are the tracks with song title in the first line; or, y'know, no lyrics]

1. Your eyes are flat, the city's hot
2. O Africa and orient bring gifts
3. City's breakin' down on a camel's back
4. Headlights cross my bedroom wall, I don't want to sleep
5. Slow it down some, No split clown bum
6. It's coming up
7. I lost my leg like I lost my way
8. Je suis conducteur de taxi (Je vais te claquer)
9. I need a gun to keep myself from harm
10. Got off the plane to the country sound

11. The string to his head, the boss makes it nod
12. Summer don't know me no more, he got mad tiresome
13. I like you and I'd like you to like me to like you
14. He put his fist through the window and his foot through the door
15. Once upon a time at the foot of a great mountain, there was a town where the people known as happy folk lived
16. Why should I stop loving you a hundred years from now?
17. If you knew how I long for you now that you're gone
18. You locked me in the bathroom long ago, you bloody bastard
19. He has come to bring you things that make you happy
20. Porcupine razor

21. The man from the north enters the tube
22. Even though I met you only recently, I find myself falling in love with you
23. Now the clock is striking one, so we might as well begin it
24. I've seen you laugh at nothing at all
25. I insert my [censored noun] into your welcoming [omit] and ease it slowly down the whole length of your [unfit]
26. Bakatono bakemono henna ojisan, gamushara sekuhara henna ojisan
27. One memory is one too much
28. True, I'd give my right arm to keep you safe from harm
29. I am a theme park
30. Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome, once gave a lecture he entitled, "Everything I Know."

31. Orominya, woha chigralla
32. Beendet ist mein sommer, mein winter hier anfängt
33. I wish I had an orchestra behind me to show you how I feel
34. I wandered in these big blue shoes till we had nothing left to lose
35. I'm in love with Witold Gombrowicz, that sombre Polish man
36. The tragedy is, the audience is getting bored
37. He is my lord, he is my savior
38. So you quote love unquote me, well stranger things have come to be
39. Feels like December, but it's May
40. The house of the dead becomes more and more real to me

41. All the lovers I've had I seem to mislay
42. Let the camera linger on your perfect skin
43. Oh, when the veil of dreams has lifted and the fairy tales have all been told
44. Are you out of love with me?
45. You told me you loved me
46. There's trouble up at Cowbell Barn
47. We suffer everyday, what is it for?
48. And there was you, too gold, too blue
49. Seagull Screaming Kiss Her
50. Tell me I'm allowed to play the Fender Jaguar like the Velvet Underground

There are mostly Momus, Gorillaz, and Stephin Merritt.  No surprise there.  Anne Laplatine tracks should be in there, too (both with and without Momus), but I'm just not sure what the first lines of those songs are.  This just goes to show that I rarely shuffle through my whole library -- I'm rather choosy about my music.

This doesn't begin to cover the range of music I listen to.  Oh well.  That's computer-generated stats for you!

What are your top 5 CDs/albums of 2006? 
Submitted by eliz. s.

Ocky Milk by Momus makes me very happy.  It's rather subtle, pretty, a bit catchy, and mostly calming, except for the songs that get me incredibly excited (I Refuse to Die & Frilly Military).

My Flame Burns Blue by Elvis Costello is beautiful and energetic and generally loverly.  It helps that I saw him in concert with the SF Symphony earlier this year.  It was quite a moving show.

Idlewild by OutKast I'm split on.  All the music is good, but I don't want to listen to all of it.  I prefer the peppier tunes (Morris Brown, Mighty O, Buggface, Makes No Sense At All) over the bleaker stuff (Hollywood Divorce, Call the Law).  It's great fun, but I still haven't seen the film.

The Tragic Treasury by The Gothic Archies is a dark kind of fun.  As with other Stephin Merritt music, even when the subject matter is depressing, the music and lyrics are either catchy or beautiful.  Except that one about Nero, but that's an artistic thing. 

Takako Minekawa -- even though she hasn't released anything in years -- I've been listening to quite a bit lately.  Her music always puts me in a good mood -- sometimes peppy, sometimes mellow -- it's pretty and blippy and boppy and so cute! 

When I first heard about people getting upset over a Beatles remix album, I thought, Sillies! There's nothing wrong with remixes.  'Course, I assumed the remix was something akin to Danger Mouse's White Album/Black Album mixes, which are completely wonderful.  I wondered a bit about who they'd gotten to do the mixing, but didn't really think any more of it.

Then Momus blogged about it.  Now I know that the remaining Beatles and George Martin remixed the whole Beatles catalogue into one mash up album.  This just makes me sad.  At least those 'new' Beatles CDs that came out last decade were rare tracks from the original Beatles recorded while they were all still together and creating art.  If some random DJ or producer had put this together, I may have given it a listen.  But that it's being released as an Official New Beatles Album is pretty discouraging.  It's just so hacky.  This sort of project is really just an exercise in editing and mixing.  It isn't a proper Album.  And certainly not one by The Beatles, no matter what Paul says. 

Pop culture continues to eat away at itself, ad infinitum.  For a brief moment, my brain entertains the thought of a new dark age to wipe out a majority of recorded culture.  But that would be sadder, I think.  It would certainly be nice if this stuff wasn't locked so firmly in permanent copyright.  (I know it's not literally permanent, yet, but don't think TPTB aren't trying.)  The Beatles are really the folk music of our era.  Have you ever done a Beatles sing-along?  It's amazing!  Even if most of the crowd only knows the chorus, it sounds beautiful.  And everyone knows the chorus to at least one Beatles song.  They gave us all that to share with each other.  Most people, even if Rock N Roll isn't to their taste, can agree on the massive cultural impact of The Beatles.  Now they're just following the trend of re-hashing The Beatles, just like everyone else does.  puke!

I like to imagine that if John were alive today, he'd at the very least be in a more Bowie-type career stage than this.  But I like to think that it'd be more like: John Lennon : The Beatles :: Terry Gilliam : Monty Python.  Most of the remaining Pythons have nice, safe, comfy careers.  I totally empathize with that.  I have a nice, safe, mostly boring job right now, myself.  It pays the bills AND I can play online for hours.  But Gilliam continues to try new things.  Even when he tries to fit the studio system, that's kind of new for him.  And he innovates and is a vital part of contemporary cinema and he's awesome.  Could you imagine him wanting to remix one of his wonderful, classic-Gilliam movies?  The very thought feels criminal!

Anyways, Momus also mentions "that today's digital soup makes everything infinitely fluid, plunging us into 'the mire of options'".  That's something else I've learned stifles creativity--a blank page, the freedom to do anything.  Art is about something.  Anything.  And part of the art is usually the constraints of the situation--a 2D canvas, 2 track recording, censorship, needing to prove to that jerk that you can do something better than what he did.  Context is part of art, and removing all of those Beatles tracks from their original context and throwing them around willy-nilly in hopes of churning out a hit record removes the art and leaves only process.

I couldn't get Frilly Military out of my head, but there's a video for it on YouTube, so that's nice.  Then I started searching for other catchy songs so it'd leave. 

Such a long weekend, and it's only Sunday morning.

Friday evening
The new Momus album, Ocky Milk, arrived.  I had just enough time to load it into iTunes and change into a skirt before my roommates and I went to dinner at the fab Golden Era.  Oh, those steamed vegi buns!  Yum! 

Danielle and I went to Friday Night Blues.  They had a great live band this week.  Danielle did pretty darn well for it being her first go at blues dancing.  Trixie showed up a lil late due to St. Louis winning the World Series.  Go somebody else's home team!

I wore Halloween colors.  There were some people in actual costumes.  Elwood from the Blues Brothers and Wonder Woman were the most memorable.  It was a good night.  I didn't even hurt myself!

Saturday
Breakfast at the Lucky Penny with Justin on our way to the Lemony Snicket / Gothic Archies performance down the Peninsula.  We didn't get lost driving there or anything!  We got seats in the fourth row, on the Stephin Merritt side of the stage. 

Daniel Handler and Stephin Merritt were, of course, incredibly entertaining.  They even played one of my favorite songs from the Snicket CD, Shipwrecked.  Everyone had a great time, says I.

Afterwards, we went to Shaw's, which is a candy & ice cream shop.  You can smell the mass amounts of sugar before you even open the door!  I got yum yum yummy pumpkin ice cream.  They have generous portions, too.

Then we went to the Haight to get accessories for Justin's costume, Disco Stu.  It was insanely busy, as expected.  We got a parking spot on Haight, though, and considering how crazy busy it was, the shopping trip was fairly painless. 

I'll post about the costume party when I get the photos from Kevin.  I didn't bother using my camera at the museum.