Songs I Couldn't Stop Listening To: 2011

As this year comes to an end, it's time to get all reflect-y. One of the major things that I punctuate my life with is music. I can listen to certain albums or songs and they remind me specifically of certain times in my life, or even of particular life events. There were times when I'd listen to alt country for a while, hard core punk, folk for maybe a week, industrial, and towards to end of the year my musical cravings have gotten kind of metal-ish. Here are the songs I couldn't stop listening to in 2011:

Smooth Tutors

I was talking to my ex-boyfriend/best male friend, Zack, today.  He mentioned that the band he plays guitar and handsomely wears glasses for, Smooth Tutors, has some live videos on youtube.com. 

Smooth Tutors are from Pittsburgh.  Check them out, or go to one of their shows if you are in the area! 

Any info to add, Zack? Just let me know and I'll edit this entry and repost.

*These vids are really short.

Songs for a Rainy Day

So... it's been raining all weekend, and now supposedly it's going to be raining this whole week until Sunday (according to weather.com).  I like rain, but this is a bit much. I feel like going home and watching Goonies and eating kettle corn instead of doing anything else, really.  Anyhow, on rainy days a person needs songs that suit the mood.  So here are some.


Eyes without a face? More like head without a body! And a flame for a crotch (for the first few seconds of the video)...BWAH HA HAAA . Sorry, I haven't been out much lately.



"Fade Into You" is one of my favorite songs of all time, regardless of weather.



This song reminds me of summer, or rather the end of summer as a teenager when the guys from school who I had a crushes on always had crushes on the party girls instead of the responsible, "straight" girls like me.



Every time I hear this song it reminds me of Pittsburgh's college radio stations and rainy sidewalks.



I love the Elephant Man/Joseph Merrick, so naturally, I would like a song by one of my favorite bands that was about him. In the movie when he says "Sometimes I think my head is so big because it is so full of dreams" it makes me tear up.



I guess the keyboards kind of sound like how I imagine raindrops would sound if they could sing.



I very often "sit in my little room working on something good" when it rains. In fact, this could be my rainy day, sitting in my room theme song.

Super-Happy Song Day

...and because yesterday was super-angsty song day, today I'm gathering songs that instantly lift the spirits.



This song reminds me of studying for humanities courses in college and of smoking clove cigarettes with my best friends.




When this song first came out, I was only ten years old and didn't really understand what "touching yourself" meant. I thought the singer just liked some guy so much it made her touch her own face and mess up her hair when she thought about him. Now that I'm older I understand exactly what she is singing about.




This song is strange. It's a beautiful song that gives me goosebumps. It's really sweet and makes me smile, but I also feel some kind of lingering sadness or desperation behind the lyrics.




Lyrically, this is probably one of the funniest songs ever.




This song has amazing sound and transports me to another place. I think it makes a perfect song for a long drive. And besides, the lead singer's vampire-as-pirate get-up is awesome enough to warrant some kind of recognition.




I used to want to live inside that ice cream truck.




This song is perfect. It makes me wish someone would write a song like this about me someday. And the video with the clouds and her sitting at the bar in that beautiful blue dress is romantic as well.




See, goths can be happy too. This was one of my favorite songs in high school.




I don't care what anyone says--I love this song, and will sing it non-sarcastically and non-ironically in mixed company.

Super-Angsty Song Day

On certain days this song is the soundtrack of my life. Especially the lyrics: "In my life, why do I give valuable time to people who don't care if I live or die?"




Is it wrong of me to find the phrase: "Damn your eyes!" unintentionally hilarious?






Yes! I feel his pain and annoyance with people who want to study "common people" as if we are curiousities.








There are times when I blare this song at full volume. Because I really wanna hear about how he doesn't want to hear it...because, yeah, I don't wanna hear it either.

Headbanger's Ball: My Version

This past week, all I've been listening to is metal/hair metal/thrash/death rock/80s metal, so I figured it was time to put up some favorite songs/videos. 

Side note: Oh, how I miss Headbangers' Ball.  Anytime I lived somewhere that had cable, I prioritized that show above all else.




And here are some music videos that I would play if I was somehow magically put in charge of Headbangers' Ball, and if that awesome show still existed:

Arch Enemy - Music - More Music Videos

And I just had to add this one, mainly for the hilarious WTF factor.



Devil horns, and have a nice day.

Musical Guests on The Young Ones

This entry is dedicated to my college friends, especially Emily, with whom I watched this show.  I also loved the musical guests on it, and thought: I should make a blog entry where people can find all the music videos/musical guests that were on the show.






















I can't find the video clip of this song from the "Summer Holiday" Young Ones episode, but here is John Otway performing "Body Talk".  I remember this song being painful to listen to, and the character Vyvyan saying: "I'll bloody well make his body talk in a minute."




And here's Cliff Richard and The Young Ones singing "Living Doll."



Finally, here's the Young Ones theme song:

Favorite Music Since the Year 2000

Sometimes when looking through my CDs, I realize that hardly any of the albums I own were released after the year 2000.  I'm not sure if it's because I was going to college around that time and didn't have enough money to buy CDs...or because I started liking Pittsburgh local bands more than anything I could buy in a store...or because I stopped getting music magazines...or because now the CD player in my car is broken, so I use an MP3 player.  Eh, it's probably a combination of those factors.

Either way, because I'm delusional, I have an imaginary friend inside my head who cares about my opinion and asks: "But Ricki, don't you like any music that came out past the year 2000, and don't you want to post on your blog about it?"  And my answer to that is: yes.  Here are some videos:

Top Ten Favorite Cover Songs

I can’t say that cover songs are my favorite things in the world—most of them are sacrilege because of how embarrassingly bad they are.  Most of the cover songs I hear sound stolen and recrafted for the purposes of getting more mass appeal, rather than being respectfully covered.  However, there are some good cover songs out there. 

When working on independent music projects (and when I was in a band) I’ve often been tempted to cover certain songs because I felt like the lyrics spoke to me, or that the song really embodied a part of my life in a very personal and touching way.  So I can definitely understand why a band would cover another band’s song.  I think a good cover song tackles the difficult task of sounding like it still belongs to the original artist, but also to the artist who is covering the song.

Here is a list of my top ten favorite cover songs:

“The Blood” covered by Fahrenheit 451 (originally by The Cure)

“I Wanna Be Your Dog” (banjo version) covered by Uncle Tupelo (originally by The Stooges)

“In Every Dream Home a Heartache” covered by Jared Louche and the Aliens (originally by Roxy Music)

“Hurt” covered by Johnny Cash (originally by Nine Inch Nails)

“Baby Doll” covered by Laether Strip (originally by Soft Cell)

“I’ll Come Running” covered by The Murder City Devils (originally by Neil Diamond)

“Age of Consent” covered by Grant-Lee Phillips (originally by New Order)

“Fear of Trains” covered by Love, Execution Style (originally by The Magnetic Fields)

“The Choke” covered by Element (originally by Skinny Puppy)

“A Hit” covered by Sebadoh (originally by Smog)

"Age of Consent" by New Order

"Age of Consent" covered by Grant-Lee Phillips

Note: I had a really hard time finding the music videos I wanted to display on this blog for both the original and cover songs.  I really want to show the Roxy Music video for "In Every Dream Home a Heartache", even though the cover version of this song performed live by Jared Louche isn't downloading properly from youtube.  Despite being anal and only wanting to display videos for original-cover pairs, I love the original version of this song so much, I just have to post it, even without its accompanying cover song...

My Love Affair with Industrial Music

Today I'd like to travel back in time--back to the Saturday nights of my life in the mid-to-late 1990s.  During this time I was in high school, listened to industrial and goth music, wore stripey tights, and hung out with guys who had reverse mohawks, as well as people who had nervous ticks and played Magic: The Card Game.  Every month I'd look forward to getting my free Wax Trax, Projekt, and Cleopatra Records catalogs in the mail.

On Saturday nights I stayed up until the sun rose, drinking powdered "international" instant coffee, and listening to music until my headphones made my ears feel like they were full of itchy water.  One of my favorite things to listen to was "The Mutant Dance Party"--a radio show featuring electronic and industrial music hosted by Zoltar on 99.1WHFS.  I discovered a lot of cool bands from that radio show, but I also had my all-time favorites as well.

Here we go back in time...woooooo...............................

Time machine image from colemanzone.com

Hooray!!!......I think we have arrived.  Strap on your irrelevant welding goggles now.

And because they are freaking hilarious, I have to include these next videos, which are industrial genre parodies titled "League of Extraordinary Industrial Retards".: