The Mental Jukebox-- Wednesday 12.12.7

My apologies to all four of you who read this for the late post.

Gemini Dream-- The Moody Blues
Windowsill-- Arcade Fire
Breakfast in America-- Supertramp
Major Tom (Coming Home)-- Peter Schilling
At A Medium Pace-- Adam Sandler
Los Angeles-- X
Whatever, Wherever-- Shakira

And I know I fucked up the title of that Shakira song and you'll just have to forgive me for not caring a whit. It's Shakira. The presence of her music in my head is unwelcome and proof that my brain wants to kill me.

Something To Fall Back On-- Todd Rundgren
Human-- Human League
Eat The Rich-- Aerosmith
Sweet Leaf-- Black Sabbath
Who Are The Brain Police?-- Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention


Punk used to mean something. In my poor little head, it still does.

The new guy.

You can call me George. I'll be filling space here while Jeff is off picking new vinyl siding colors.

Three things about me which are important to note:

1. My own mental musical library is not quite as frighteningly vast as Jeff's, although sometimes it is just frightening. But I'll try to entertain.
2. I am blessed with a job where I have music playing constantly - mostly even music of my own choosing - so my selections represent the few dead spaces in between, and before and after, my 9-6.
   
3. I am also not much of a note-taker on the weekends, so I'll begin with selections from last Friday:

My Baby's Gone - Two Gallants

Woke up with this one, which was the last thing I'd heard the night before. I'd also listened to this cd 3 times the previous day. It's the closer from TG's self-titled album from this year, which is one of my favorite things right now, and I highly recommend it.

Thriller - Michael Jackson

The mention of the 25th anniversary (!) of this album stuck the classic title track in my head all day. It popped up several times at random, from the shower (and I do NOT like to think about Michael Jackson in the shower) throughout the day. I even did a brief zombie dance during a discussion of the "occult influences" that got poor M.J. kicked out of the Watchtower.

Jump Jump - Kris Kross

Here's a strange one. Hadn't really thought of this song in years . Remember Kris Kross? The two kid rappers whose gimmick was (aside from being kid rappers) wearing their clothes backward? Of course you do. Anyway, whatever 7-9 a.m.-not-really-news show I had on in the background was doing a piece on double-dutch, and had a brief sample of this song as the music bed. This was running while I was getting dressed in the next room, and I don't know if my subconscious took over or what, but I put my t-shirt on backward. Luckily I caught it right away, but what I didn't catch for another two hours, is that I had also donned my boxers backward, something I don't recall ever having done before. I kept them that way for the rest of the day, despite the discomfort of an unfortunately-placed fly button, in honor of this truly terrible kid-rapper duo. Who knew what kind of power that song holds?

Everybody Knows - Leonard Cohen
Shock the Monkey - Peter Gabriel
Simple-X - Andrew Bird
Swing Town - Steve Miller

I blame Purdy for this one. It randomly popped into his head at work and, knowing my deep-seeded hatred for Steve Miller - particularly this song - he passed it along to me.

Even Flow - Pearl Jam
Scythian Empires - Andrew Bird


I wasn't allowed to own Thriller when it came out; my mom found Michael to be obscene and I think my dad thought listening to him would make me gay. I was five, and I probably had no business owning it anyway, but I was fascinated with this freaky-ass video when I saw it at cooler, MTV-having friends' houses.

The video is still a heck of a lot of fun.