Sometimes your music just won’t let you sleep. You need to sleep but you can’t stop listening and you think “okay, next bad song…” and that bad song never comes because you had friends over and when you have company of course bad songs aren’t acceptable, so what you have on right now is a mix called “Just Great Shit” that won’t let you leave. Fifty eight songs that you’d smuggle onto a desert island somehow even if they said you could only have ten. You lay there on the salon settee and spin from tequila and maybe the boat’s spinning on the anchor but it can’t be doing it quite that fast – first one way in a 360 and then the other way a 360 as Muse’s “Stockholm Syndrome” hits its changes and curves of guitar oblivion and then straightens out with White Stripes “Just Don’t Know What to Do” – a song that clings tenuously to JGS status but is still up there and short enough that you just can’t … quite … see yourself getting up to go to bed. You are paralyzed by contentedness.
P.M. Dawn’s “Looking Through Patient Eyes” (live) – hip-hop bordering on just beautiful lyricism that is almost spiritual: I left reality early / due to the lack of love, y’all.Built to Spill’s “Cortez the Killer” with its amazing, consistent and slow but brilliant drumming – fifteen minutes of guitar and cacophony that tells the story of the man who, in Built to Spill terms “came dancing across the water with his stallions and guns” (though I prefer the original Neil Young’s more assonant and comfortable “galleons and guns”).It’s a make-out mix, a drunk mix, a just feel groovy mix and everything else that matters in a collection of best songs, though Cake’s cover of the Sesame Street “Mahna Mahna” can suddenly and hilariously interrupt what may have been some excellent and serious kissing because you have to – both of you – stop to giggle at the monsters.Wilco’s “At Least That’s What You Said” for more guitar excellence in just the right ascension, from its a-cappella opening to the machine-gun battle with the drums, piano as mediator. Into Massive Attack’s “Protection” that stops the boat’s spinning and sets it down in a quiet, still anchorage and surrounds it in a mist of warm, dry fog: I’ll stand in front of you / take the force of the blow / protection. / I’m a boy and you’re a girl / but you know you can lean on me / and I don’t have no fear / I’ll take on any man here / who says that’s not the way it should be.Into “Oi Va Voi Feat. Ben Hassan” – the first of several Buddha Bar rhythmic and world-esque beats with something about Charlie Chan but just sounds cool. John Legend’s “Save Room” though you can’t really be sure how the song first entered your life; who planted it there and why. De-Phazz Feat. Pat Appleton in another Buddha Bar loungey thing that wouldn’t have been out of place at the “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” party and urges us to “check the scene outside of Medellin.”More Wilco because it’s all random and let’s face it, Wilco deserves several spots in any top-60 (or so) list (4, for mine), this time with “Impossible Germany.” Yo La Tengo sings a perky little ditty called “My Little Corner of the World” and the tequila or maybe something someone slipped into the tequila carries you up and onto some sort of agave rainbow and sets you down in a pot of happiness. Femi Kuti sings “Do Your Best,” another Buddha Bar selection in there for its melodic touchstone that won’t leave your head until the next one enters, and it enters right away with King Britt Pres. Oba Funke’s amazing “Uzoamaka”: Free to… free to… free to… free to… free to… free to… free to….Steve Earle comes next with a live version of “Copperhead Road” and by now you’re realizing that fifty-eight songs will take about five hours and there’s no way to get to sleep because a bad song won’t come, so you turn the music down just a bit – enough to allow it to invade or maybe even create your drunken dreams – and shuffle off to bed.LCD Soundsystem’s “Someone Great” with its 80’s psychedelic backbeat and stereophonic scratching creates arcs of light - your eyeballs tracking the sound behind your closed lids. Texas’ “Say What You Want” you can never get enough of and makes you miss her through everything, first hearing the song on BBC’s Radio One while falling in love. You held hands and walked through Oxford, to the cheese shop with its massive wheels and the quiet square speckled with sunlight and tree-leaf-shade, restaurants all around and not a bit of plastic furniture in sight. Cut Chemist kills the romance when his “What’s The Altitude (Feat. Hymnal)” tells the story of a quick and easy seduction and evening / morning. She gave me head...phones / said 'Have you heard this sound?'. Mahala Rai Banda vs. Shantel “Mahalageasca” is like a vision of Melaque mariachi-fest last St. Patrick’s Day mixed with a beat that just makes you bounce your head idiotically but totally uncontrollably, at the mercy of its rum-pums. The Roots’ “The Seed (2.0) feat. Cody Chestnutt” a great song that doesn’t go to great lengths to hide its purpose: the guy is anxious to create more copies of himself, to procreate and create a legacy – something to leave behind.Rescued by the romance again with Counting Crows’ “Long December,” a song that means more to you than almost any other, ever, with a line that stuns and has become the centerpiece for so many thoughts, entire essays, even: The smell of hospitals in winter / and the feeling that it’s all a lot of oysters, but no pearls / all at once you look across a crowded room to see the way that light attaches to a girl.“Mundian To Bach Ke” by Panjabi MC – another Buddha Bar song, this one Arabic and beat-worthy to the degree that an understanding of Arabic is completely unnecessary. You’ll shimmy and your shoulders will rock back and forth. If you’re standing up you’ll stomp your foot at the important places once you figure it all out. Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know (live)” – a song that just is, with little to say now but room for memories. Daft Punk’s “Robot Rock” gets its own paragraph because it’s just fucking awesome, and let’s face it: if it had to share a paragraph it would totally annihilate the other unfortunate song(s).… especially if that next song happened to be Neutral Milk Hotel’s “The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1” with its sinking into your soul and stuff like that. Somewhere in your dream, then, John Turturro licks his bowling ball as Jesús in “The Big Lebowski,” and as The Gypsy Kings start their version of “Hotel California” he slides and releases, following through for spin, watches his strike and shimmies and glides, rumbas back to the scorer’s table. Fiona Apple’s “Across the Universe” is next, and plays a never-ending cycle of awesomeness as the song evokes the amazing movie “Pleasantville,” and “Pleasantville” in turn evokes “Across the Universe.” More Buddha Bar with Howard Maple’s “Springtime” and James Brown funks you up with “Mind Power” and his crucial and critical time, the pruh-nunce-ee-a-tion and the realization, and frankly, just what it is and what it is. And again, not to put too fine a point on it: what it is and what it is.Sufjan Stevens’ “Chicago” resonates with I made a lot of mistakes / I made a lot of mistakes / I made a lot of mistakes / I made a lot of mistakes / I made a lot of mistakes but forgives with all things grow. Bright Eyes’ “You Will. You? Will, You? Will.” More LCD Soundsystem: “Get Innocuous.” Matisyahu despite the middling quality of his Hasidic reggae and the self-righteousness like only a crazy God-maniac can deliver, “King Without a Crown” is still pretty cool – probably more for its catchy guitar riff but I’m not sure because my brain has a switch that turns words off when people get God-preachy and can only hear those words somewhere behind the rhythms. Still more LCD Soundsystem (shuffle-magic) with “New York I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down.” Tomatito rocks the acoustic guitar with incredible background handclapping like you’ve never heard before in “Mi Nina Rosa Alba” from the “Vengo” soundtrack. Groove Armada’s “Superstylin’” was a girlfriend’s ring tone for a while, when I was messing around with iPhone ring tones. She never said anything, but I could tell she didn’t like that it was “Superstylin’” and not something more like romantic or something. I thought it was rather complimentary. “Rose Rouge” by St. Germain you’d think would be another Buddha Bar pick, but no; I’d found it way before I found Buddha Bar. Oakenfold’s “Starry-Eyed Surprise” since way before it was a Volkswagen commercial. Wilco’s “Either Way” for its unabashed hopefulness. “Gypsy Woman 2006” by Sami Dee & Freddy Jones vs. Crystal Waters for some reason – not quite sure – maybe it’s the fake stadium full of screaming fans. Built To Spill’s “Car” and yes you can see I’m getting a little bored with this – it’s not at all that these songs are less awesome or I have less to say about them. And Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” is just incredible. Try listening to it at anchor sometime, with nobody else in the world around or even awake and ten billion stars visible in the sky. Again contrasted beautifully by Sean Paul’s “Temperature” which is about as spiritual and romantic as a bean burrito. James Brown’s “The Payback.” “Santa Maria (Del Buen Ayre)” I first heard on a friend’s MySpace page and had to track it down. Though I’m not a huge Beatles fan, I’m a fan of Beatles covers. The second one on my list (the first was Fiona Apple, of course) is PM Dawn’s “Norwegian Wood.” Sandi Thom’s “I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers in Her Hair).” Steve Earle’s “Galway Girl” ‘cause her hair was black and her eyes were blue. What’s a fella to do? Elvis Costello’s “Little Palaces” but let’s face it, I’ve probably lost at least one valuable TacoTraveler reader because I only have one Elvis Costello song on this list. Carl Cox’ “Ain’t It Funky Now” for boogyin’ down. Coltrane’s “Blue Train” for occasional sulking and Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.” Pavement’s “Cut Your Hair.” Radiohead’s “Idioteque.” “Arabian Song (Da Ghetto Fuckiro Club)” by Jayti Ravin - another cool Buddha Bar song, of course.There’s “Antichrist Television Blues” by Arcade Fire - a hold-over from the “Superstylin’” girlfriend that’s probably destined for the JGS archive soon as I’m getting tired of it, and let's face it, Arcade Fire, you're just not that interesting. “She’s A Jar” by Wilco. And the last song on the Just Great Shit list is one of my favorites, and one with just an incredible story if you really listen to it: “Casimir Pulaski Day” by Sufjan Stevens.TT
