Well, Raymond passed me the music meme baton… I’ve been asked to address the following topics, related to my musical interests:

• Total Volume of Music
• Last CD I Bought
• Song Playing Right Now
• Five Songs I Listen to a Lot or That Mean a Lot to Me
• Five People to Whom I’m Passing the Baton

So here goes!

Total Volume of Music
Okay… I have no more tapes or LPs because a few years ago, I converted them to electronic media, and I haven’t looked back. As for CDs, physical CDs, I had a little over 1250 when I got married, and my wife had somewhere on order of 350–so that puts us at about 1600… I’m not going to go back and count them all, sorry! 🙂 (As an aside, we’re over 350 DVDs now, too.) I still buy CDs occasionally, but I also get a lot of music electronically (I love iTunes) and all but a hundred or so CDs (which I’m working on) have been converted to electronic format. I just did a quick check and we have about 2000 electronic albums total.

Last CD I Bought
Hmmm… The last CD I bought was Louis XIV The Best Little Secrets Are Kept. The last CD my wife bought was Tegan & Sara So Jealous which I currently have in heavy rotation.

Song Playing Right Now
Tegan & Sara “I Know I Know I Know”

Five Songs I Listen to a Lot or That Mean a Lot to Me
Damn, this is a tough one… I don’t know if I can come up with five specific songs… how about five albums and I will nominate a song from each album? That sounds fair, don’t you think?

The Queen is Dead – The Smiths
I am 33 years old. Anyone my age who grew up in the skater/punk/alternative scene and didn’t listen to the Smiths… well, c’mon, fess up. Johnny Marr’s ambling, layered guitar tracks and Morrissey’s self-conscious, pity inducing voice are the soundtrack of my youth. I think most of their stuff still holds up as brilliant pop song/teen angst anthems today, but I will never be able to listen to the Smiths without thinking about high school. It’s nearly impossible for me to pick one Smith’s track–it was hard enough to pick one album! But if you pressed me, I think I would say, “There is a Light That Never Goes Out” which just captures my mindset at the time pretty well.

Under Towers – Arson Garden
If the Smiths embodied my high-school experience, Arson Garden is college. They are the best band to never make it that I know. From the moment I first saw them at a show in my dorm, to the last time I saw them play at Rhinos (the local all-ages club) Arson Garden is my college band. I will always remember jumping up and down, singing along to “Lash” at Second Story.

Still Feel Gone – Uncle Tupelo
I don’t link Uncle Tupelo with any particular time frame in my life… but this album is really inspired. There’s something about the desperation but resignation in all of their music which just really gets to me. Yes, they are the band that gave birth to indie powerhouse, Wilco, but I think the old Uncle Tupelo stuff stacks up against anything Wilco (or Son Volt) has done since. “True to Life” is a pretty apt track.

Exit the Dragon – Urge Overkill
When my friend Kate first recommended this album, I popped it in the CD player and promptly hated it. Funny how some of my favorite albums started out that way. I swear, I said to myself, what the hell is this crap?! And then I shelved it for a good four months. Then, one day, “Honesty Files” popped into my head, and I pulled the album back out… this time, I was smitten. It’s rock-and-roll. The sheer audacity and ego of Urge Overkill are fantastic, and this is one of my favorite albums.

Welcome to the Beautiful South – The Beautiful South
It all started with the Housemartins, who I just adored. It was fun pop, with an occasional edge and some clever lyrics. Then, the Housemartins disbanded, and P.D. Heaton formed the Beautiful South. If you thought I was a cynic, you should listen to some of his lyrics… when they are set against the pure pop and melodic vocals, it’s just a fantastic mix: catchy, utterly singable songs about murder, domestic violence, lies, bad relationships, thievery, drunkenness and debauchery. I like just about every song on every one of their albums, but on Welcome to… there’s “Song for Whoever” and “You Keep It All In”.

That was really hard. And if I had to do that again in another 3 hours, I’d probably pick different albums and different artists. I mean, I didn’t include and Beatles, but god knows Magical Mystery Tour and Rubber Soul should be in there… no Elvis Costello, but damn, that would be so hard to narrow down to one album. Or Pop Will Eat Itself… I mean, my blog is called Preaching to the Perverted and my tag line is “Wise Up Suckers!”
There were a lot of very close runner’s up… including The Beastie Boys, Belly, Bjork, Kate Bush, Cake, Nick Cave, Ornette Coleman, Dag Nasty, Disposable Heros of Hiphoprisy, Thomas Dolby, Dragon Ash, East of Eden, The Fall, Peter Gabriel, Game Theory, Goldfinger, The Housemartins, Husker Du,Interpol, Los Lobos, Aimee Mann, Modest Mouse, New Order, Oingo Boingo, Op Ivy, The Pixies, Primus, REM, Radiohead, Soul Coughing, Supergrass, Talking Heads, They Might Be Giants, Toy Dolls, Veruca Salt, Voice of the Beehive, Ween, Weezer, Lucinda Williams, Wire, X, and XTC.
And there will probably be countless more!
Five People to Whom I’m Passing the Baton
This was also tough to come up with… but I chose these people because 1) they blog regularly and 2) I’m interested in seeing what they have to say. So, tag! You’re it!
Kate
Ken
BEB
Ambivalent Imbroglio
In Limine