All U People - Jon Auer - Private Sides - 2003

This song is probably Auer's best song on this odd split EP, with three songs each from both of the primary songwriters for The Posies...as I've previously discussed, the two of them were just not the same without each other...and put on the same EP together this mutual deficiencies. Auer misses Stringfellow's bitter cynacism and clever word play, while Stringfellow in turn misses Auer's rock instrumentation.

Incidentally, has there ever been another case of a songwriting partnership in which the more bitter is also the more musically mellow?

Also, this song is almost ruined by the odd, dated and lame Austin Powers ref at the beginning. I don't understand why he'd do that.

All Tomorrow's Parties - The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground and Nico - 1967

I know there is probably a roving gang of East Village Rock Snobs that will hunt me down and kill me for this, but...this song bores the ever-living shit out of me.

All Those Expectations - Peter, Bjorn, and John - Falling Out - 2005

Speaking of expectations...I nearly wrote this blog post last night, in which case you would have gotten a lengthy screed involving me giving a viking blood eagle to the children of the head of the MTA. I would have summoned dark gods to devour his soul and the furies to chase him through all eternity, but my lady friend came over and calmed me down. Now I'll settle for forcing him to watch endless episodes of Mama's Family and eating nothing but brussel sprouts and matza.

Anyway, after a single drink (no really, just one) with my co-workers I headed to the Q train...at 742 on a Monday evening...hardly late...the sun was still out for christ sake! I waited on the platform for a Q train for 45 minutes, before I finally went and berated the poor attendant in the booth. She called Dekalb Station, who told her to call City Hall, who then sent her back to Dekalb Station. Apparently, no one had any clue where the Q trains were. She then informed me that the heat was causing mechanical problems on several lines.

Two things:

A - How the fuck do you lose an entire train line? The Q isn't even that long, sure it goes out to Brighton Beach, but it stops at 57th St...where did all those trains go on a Monday evening?

B - HEAT!!!!????!!?!?!?!?!? That's your fucking excuse!?! Heat? Really? Word? That's what you got? 102 years of MTA service and you fucktards haven't figured out how to make your shit work on a hot day?

Honestly, despite my grumpy demeanor, I'm a pretty laid back guy, BUT, and this is a Michael Moore sized but, nothing infuriates me more than the incompetence of the MTA. The steal my life, a little bit at a time...and I can be as angry as I want to be about it and it will not affect them in the slightest. The fact that I eventually stormed out and took a cab in no way impacted the MTA...they can continue to be awful with no regard to their customers. Makes me go batshit feral.

Anyway, this PB&J being mellow, which I like far less than PB&J when they rock.

All Things Ordinary - The Anniversary - Designing a Nervous Breakdown - 2000

You know, today was supposed to be a quiet peaceful Monday. Several of my co-workers were out, and after the sweltering weekend we had here in NYC it seemed like a decent way to break in the working week. Sit in the free AC. Pay some bills. Work on this blog...but no, that's just not the way things went down. I've had two reports to put together in a matter of minutes, rather than hours, and that's not even counting the report that was due last week that slipped through the cracks. Sigh.

Anyway, you don't care about that...

The Anniversary was one of those bands I got into in the musically confusing turn of the millenia. At the time they (along with other embarrasing "emo" precursers like The Get Up Kids) seemed like the logical progression of Superchunk. Their hook-filled pop melodies couched in punkish instrumentation seemed an obvious debt to Chapel Hill's favorite sons, but on further inspection, these kids always lacked the spikey attitude of Chunk. Still I keep a couple of songs around for those hooks. I do have a sweet tooth somewhere back there...

All The Young Dudes - Mott The Hoople - All The Young Dudes - 1972

I have little patience with Boomer nostalgia (unless we're talking about the former Cincinnati Bengels Quarterback, but that's another story). I've spent my entire life being beaten over the head with the fact that nothing I ever do will be as revolutionary as what they did in the 60's, no movement in film will be as groundbreaking as the French New Wave and their American acolytes in the 1970's, and no music will ever be as revelatory as The Beatles, Stones, etc (and I like both the Beatles and the Stones)...

Given that fact I have some trepidation claiming anything is "The Greatest xxx Ever!"...but I must say that this Bowie penned gem does contain one of the best opening lines ever with "Well, Billy rapped all night about his suicide/how he'd kick it in the head when he's 25" With it's mournful guitar intro and Ian Hunter's too-many-cigarettes vocals it immediately grabs your attention. Its pitch perfect harmonies keep the vibe going, and like with so many things with Bowie, the lyrics seem to prescient, prefiguring the resentment later generations would have with Boomers and their "Revolution Stuff".

Honestly just a great song.

And on final word on Boomer nostalgia...Hilary can bite me!

All The Wine - The National - Alligator - 2005

Okay, so Facebook exists for only one purpose...so that I can sit at work and look at pictures of hot chicks but claim that I am not viewing porn if asked. That is why it is extremely annoying when I see an attractive woman in one of my friends' pictures and click on her name only to find out that she has set her profile to private.

Ladies if you are uncomfortable with the notion of your pictures being used by a thirty something guy as mildly sexual entertainment, then please get off the internet. If life has taught you nothing else, it should have taught you by now that the internet is a vehicle to bring pornography to the masses. Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Like most of the songs on Alligator, this one seems like a warm up for a better version that would appear on Boxer.

All The Umbrellas In London - The Magnetic Fields - Get Lost - 1995

This is one of the few Magnetic Fields songs that I can still stand to listen to (the still durable Charm of the Highway Strip excluded). Even when I loved TMF, Get Lost was always something of a dud of an album...except this song. Stephen Merritt actually manages to find an appropriate setting for his melencholia and the right melody to go with it.

All The Trees Of The Field Will Clap Their Hands - Sufjan Stevens - Seven Swans - 2004

Sufjan and his banjo sing about Jesus.

I'm profoundly ambivalent about Sufjan...well, ambivalent might not be the right word...let's go with conflicted. On one hand he's a great number of things I hate: precious, kinda fey, way too mellow, "spiritual"...but then on the other hand he can write one hell of a melody. Even this song with it's banjo's, it's biblical allusions, and it's relentless twee-ness is still almost insufferably catchy...and the guy does know how to keep his cloying tendancies enough at bay that they don't overwhelm...usually.