First! Friday Random One

Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons. You will find it is to the soul what a water bath is to the body. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

In the feminist blogosphere, it is a tradition to do a Friday Random Ten, where you user your iPod (or whatever) and listen to and list 10 random songs. I first came across this tradition through Lauren at Feministe, but she isn't sure who started the trend.

Regardless, as I said in my first post I tend to think badly of shorter forms of things. I like the long, drawn out thought. This also means I tend to prefer albums to individual songs. When I'm on the youtube, I watch videos for songs, not albums, because that's what's given to me. And you can find some great shit there. (And also elsewhere.)

But I prefer the album as an art form. I like the ups and downs and just the feeling of completeness that comes with a great album. I like the juxtapositions and analogies and everything. A well-done mix-tape¹ can also be a work of art, but I usually stick to original albums.

So this is the start of a new tradition here. Each week² I will start up my music player (set to random and shuffle by album) and listen to one album. I'll put up some sort of review here. I think the review will depend on which album it is, whether it's one I know by heart or one I hadn't listened to before. The latter will be a good opportunity to clean my collection out of some junk. I also envision speaking about lyrics a lot, given the format of the site.

So the first in the series is . . . Stop Making Sense: Special New Edition by the Talking Heads.

Interesting beginning. I got turned on to this album from an ex-girlfriend. We watched the film it was based on, which was pretty amazing. This was during a period where she was determined to watch all the classic rock movies³ (Stop Making Sense, The Wall, Tommy, etc.). I'm not sure where she ended up in that quest.

Anyway, the film is great. The whole thing is full of such great energy and feeling. I'm not the Talking Heads' biggest fan, but there's something in the film that makes it eminently appealing. A little crazy, but undeniably awesome. This special edition of the CD from the film includes extra songs that were in the film but not on the original CD.

Starts off with Psycho Killer, the Talking Heads' song I have the most history with. I first learned the song at the summer camp I went to as a kid⁴. We song a lot of songs together, and many of them were rock/pop/etc. songs before I really knew what popular music (or any music, really) was. So I loved this song before I understood it or had any context for it (other than the long-haired cook who rocked it to bits).

Then comes Heaven, which I like, and a few songs which have energy, but don't stay with me. Burning Down The House and Life During Wartime follow, and if you don't want to get up and jump around, then I don't know what to say to you. I don't know if I can keep up the one-by-one conceit (which was my original plan for every Friday Random One). We'll end it here.

I will say it took me a while to get what Once In A Lifetime was about (I think the same ex explained it to me), but I always liked it. And Take Me To The River might be my favorite track and I just found out it was by Al Green. I'll have to look into it⁵.

I don't have much to say about this album's lyrics. It didn't strike me as one of the most important parts. I'm not saying it's not well written, just that the lyrics don't leave me with pictures beyond their inclusion in the songs.

So, I'd recommend this album to just about anyone, and probably the movie as well. We'll leave with the opening scene in the film (Psycho Killer):