Happy New Year, Interweb friends…Hopefully you won’t get stuck in line, traffic, waiting for a cab, or stranded in the middle of nowhere (if so, I’ve felt your pain many moons ago…)…Here’s hoping that tonight’s wide array of events & peeps & parties kicks of ‘08 in the right direction…
Mp3 - Rufus Wainwright - What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve
Once you start this list routine, it’s a slippery slope, I guess…After having over a week to process Kramer’s brain dump, I’m still left synthesizing loads of information & thinking about the year ahead…
So I took his more recent list task to heart..instead of posting my overall top/bottom 10s of 2007…I thought I’d relate it to quoteable quotes from friends this year & their corresponding tunes…I don’t want my advice post from a month back to reflect poorly on loads of good times & great talks that’ve gone down over the past year…
There were some gems…many that just can’t be shared here, unfortunately, but the ones that made the list are conveniently followed by Mp3s that’re apropos filler for any gym’s prodigal son/daughter workout playlist:
1) Creep: ‘Couldn’t help but notice that you’re reading the Economist, do you work in finance, business or, um, politics?’
Mp3-1: Wu-Tang Clan - C.R.E.A.M.
Mp3-2: Saigon - C’mon Baby (DJ Beware Remix)
2) Salesman: ‘It’s about 8 miles down a gravel road with a warm pie.’
Mp3-1: Oh No - Heavy
Mp3-2: Lady Soverign - Random
3) Anonym: ‘Stop getting so emotionally involved in all this crap.’
Mp3-1: Lykke Li - Little Bit
Mp3-2: Cool Kids - Pump Up The Volume (Flosstradamus Remix)
4) Kramer: ‘Don’t get me wrong, I love y’all Virgo girls, but y’all have piss poor taste…’
Mp3-1: Mark Ronson - Toxic Feat. Tiggers & ODB (Version Revisited)
Mp3-2: Ghostface Killah & Amy Winehouse - You Know I’m No Good
Mp3-3: MSTRKRFT - Work On You (Para one Remix)
5) Doug: ‘Sorry to hear about that, but your place’s in a great neighbourhood, good investment.’
Mp3-1: Ruth Copeland - Gimme Shelter (Rolling Stones Cover)
Mp3-3: Cadence Weapon - Real Estate
6) Amanda: ‘Isn’t FB one of the worst things to happen to our lives?’
Mp3-1: De La Soul - Ego Trippin’
Mp3-3: Deltron 3030 - Memory Loss
7) Mo: ‘You’ll land on your feet, you always figure it out.’
Mp3-1: Kid Sister - Control
Mp3-2: Spoon - Don’t You Evah (Diplo Remix)
Anonym: ‘You’ve somehow negotiated a weird little niche for yourself, huh?’
Mp3-1: J Dilla - Geek Down
9) Roberto x2: ‘My mom always said: inch by inch & life’s a cinch, yard by yard & life is hard’/'You gotta break that $#it down into manageable chunks.’
Mp3-1: Mos Def - My Umi Says (Zero 7 Remix)
Mp3-2: Jazzy Jeff Feat. J-Live - Break It Down
10) Anonym/Univ: ‘Don’t $#it where you eat.’ (tied w/ vintage Michel P ‘Can I ask you for a little favour?’)
Mp3-1: Bonde Do Role - Office Boy (CSS Remix)
Mp3-2: Dan Deacon - Snake Mistakes
Thanks to all the contributors & here’s to some late entry contenders in the dinner parties & pre-NYEve festivities in the days ahead…
Peace
meegs
hands down, best video for 07 - though i’m partial to the band…& the whole donnie darko aesthetic vibe…& nostalgic about bmx boys…so, well, i never promised a completely unbiased video evaluation or anything…:
back in TO Friday-sh - come over for some grub!
g’night & if you didn’t get a gift from me…rest assured that a donation has been made in your name to the Human Fund,
meegs
There’s already a Dan Rossen solo track posted this week (his cover of Jo Jo’s ‘too late’), but I can’t resist throwing up one more to wind down the year (especially since developing a pronounced soft spot for the original record after absorbing all the weird rhythms from ‘Rise Above’)…
‘07 brought an embarrassment of riches for sharing great covers - Dirty Projectors‘ jaw-droppingly good record is the stand-out top tenner full-length (honourable mention to The Hard Lessons‘ tribute to Shakey), but the pownce spam-victims know that I’ve been all-too enthusiastic about finding musical forays & random quirky reinterpretations…the Radiohead.tv stuff, Of Montreal’s OTT concert surprises, Arcade Fire blowing out vintage Gainsbourg & Bat for Lashes‘ sultry reworking of an 80s Boss hit…& they’ve all made the list in the .zip circulating, won’t spam pownce again, but will send to peeps that enjoy this level of nerdery…
2FLWAY will be hibernating for the next couple of days for the holiday season:
Here’s wishing safe travels & life-changing grievance airings in the interim…& one more cover for the road, a seasonal sad-bastard treat (Amanda’n'I were told that our fav wintery tunes sounded like ‘funeral music’, so this is apropos…)
peace
meegs
weird day. thought a lot about expectations - how experiencing higher caliber output pretty much vetos average efforts. not just in business, though today’s example was a blisteringly painful gong show of slick salesmanship gone awry.
i think of these trial runs/demos as dances
- & the geeky notes snapshot proves some pretty stylin’ moves were offered up last time - not obnoxious popped collars’n’shoulder brushing, but solid footwork w/ a gentlemanly offer to learn the new steps we wanted -
so today i flashed back to stiff prayers for a chaperone to swoop in wielding a balloon to de-creep a 12 year old in trackpants, or that part during ‘november rain’ when there’s this military-style drum crescendo before it goes all fast and you have absolutely no clue if you should keep dancing, but speed up, or break off & sheepishly hustle over to the girl side of the gymnasium. like i said, painful.
we chatted, we twittered, we mocked & FB status’ed the obfuscating prose spewing out of out that poor abused speaker phone. thank god for mute buttons and their intuitive electronic sister, the green=go, red=stop led lights.
if you can’t reasonably explain the hows & whats of your offering, then upon what level of trust are you starting your relationship?
this somehow looped in with roberto’s year-end summary in my warped little mind. 2007 was a massive geographic & paradigm shift for RB, and in under 500 words he succinctly sums up value changes, friend/social-life/partner attitudes & the messed up narcissistic cauldron that brewed up ritual tethering to social networks.
ah, to be succinct. i’ll add that to the resolution list after the annual #1 & #2 favs…
peace
meegs
Matt just sent his list from across the pond…& described this record as ’smile rock,’ & although I think that the hype-filled pop-loving London scene has warped his list-making sensibilities (jokes…)…he’s right on this one. I loved Shout Out Louds‘ first EP/’05 full-length & slept on their sophomore record this fall…shouldn’t've: 7.5 lovely minutes of Hard Rain from our Ill Wills
Another recommend that stands out after this massive annual information dump is Emma Pollock (ex-Delgados member for the twee geeks)’s Watch the Fireworks. Image Aimee Mann fronting the Bangles…in Glasgow. Blissful (& better than the Delgados songs I remember…): Here comes the heartbreak
Survived a second consecutive night in Yorkville (or as one gf calls it ‘yuckville’ & hereby I nominate this JPE zinger as its theme song) & oh! if you have one of those tv-things & aren’t caught in the xmas party spin cycle, Mark McKay’s extra-special-cranberry-sauced Xmas show airs on MTV Live tonight/tomorrow a.m. - it’ll be good (& thankfully hosted on his YouTube site after the broadcast)…
silent nights,
meegs
p.s./double oh! can i say for the umpteenth time that this is the most cathartic blog read on the interwebs ever? laugh out loud snarky goodness.
So that whole taking a vacation day didn’t quite work out. Enjoyed some QT in the ‘do’s teeny gym, but spent the better part of the a.m. at the passport office, with quasi-Canuck celebutantes & disgruntled tsking employees…
Why return back to HQ you ask? Foiled by my geeky love of social media monitoring’s shiny new apps & an opp to see who the NYC office has dancing with since the trip to AZ on election eve. So this customizable dashboard system is pretty much exactly what I asked Santa (or RichardAtDell…) for a couple of posts back after the last Third Tuesday. Wild. Will either enrich/warp-speed our searches/measurement/tracking/analysis or make me completely obsolete. You can tell it was a brilliant demo from my geeked out notes: 
Can’t wait to test drive this for clients & prospects…
Screw sugarplums (& salt stains - can’t get this kid’s song out of my head…) tonight we’ve got widgets dancing in our heads,
meegs
hokay -
realizing what a wintery mix this is…hopefully your computers’ll let you cobble this together in the order it was intended…as the randy/rufus doubleheader is priceless, imho…
15 - a foggy day (live, george gershwin) - rufus wainwright (rufus does judy at carnegie hall)
16 - mother of pearl (live) – nellie mckay (at mpr studios, 12-11-07)
17- our friends appear like the dawn - bodies of water (ears will pop and eyes will blink)
18 – charlyn, anglel of kensington - jason collett (here’s to being here)
19 - i don’t know what i can save you from (röyksopp remix) - kings of convenience (versus)
20 – chickens - junip feat. jose gonzales (rcrdlbl release)
21 – cristobal - devendra banhart (smokey rolls down thunder canyon)
22 - funny little frog (live) - belle & sebastian (at 9:30 club, washington, d.c., 3-5-06)
23 - and then you kissed me (live) – the cardigans (at kcrw studios, 5-24-04)
24 - all the night without love - elvis perkins in dearland (dearland session)
25 – dirty woman - bill patton (gets it on)
26 - white white - ivana xl (unreleased)
27 - dress sexy at my funeral - smog (dongs of sevotion)
28 – nightbirds (live) - ryan adams (at massey hall, toronto, on, 21-09-07)
29 - pale blue eyes (closet mix version) - the velvet underground (gold)
enjoy!…quarantine officially ended for holiday shopping, unfortunately transit delays prevented visiting the whippersnapper local photog show & snagging this much-anticipated EP…hopefully i won’t have to wait until xmas eve 2053 to get it…
peace
meegs
great feedback from the list emails’n'posts…loads of additions to the contenders list…shamefully forgot caribou, the format, elvis perkins, okkervil river, band of horses, arcade fire, beirut, the shins, the hard lessons & bill patton…
to repent for these oversight sins…& to fend off cabin fever after reading & enjoying the many multimedia sicktime gifts over the past couple of indoor days…
quarantine mix - part one (part two arrives tomorrow or soon, too much to .zip)
1 - heretics (live) - andrew bird (pri: live on fair game, 12-5-07)
2 - california stars - billy bragg & wilco (mermaid avenue)
3 - too little too late (jo jo cover) - daniel rossen (interwebs)
4 - down in the valley - the broken west (i can’t go on, i’ll go on)
5 - locked out (live) - crowded house (farewell to the world)
6 - san diego zoo (live) the magnetic fields (at cat’s cradle, carrboro, nc, 7-29-94)
7 - oxford comma - vampire weekend (blue cd-r)
8 - maps (live, yeah yeah yeahs cover) - arcade fire
9 – plea bargain - beat the devil (s/t)
10 - what i see - dirty projectors (rise above)
11 - i’ve been out walking (live, jackson browne cover) - st vincent (at museum of modern art, fort worth, tx, 10-19-07)
12 - what i’m looking for - brendan benson (alternative to love)
13 - maybe lately - miracle fortress (five roses)
14 - burn on - randy newman (sail away)
peace
meegs
Bore you with a bio under About. Blahg reincarnated & rising griffin-like from
ashes of blogspot. eAdvocacy bent ensues. Email with comments
-meghan@withoutayard.com
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