hold your head up, you silly girl
snagged from
seedyapartment.
List the Top 25 from your Overall Artists list.
1. Guster
2. Rilo Kiley
3. Dario Marianelli (The Pride and Prejudice 05 soundtrack)
4. Motion City Soundtrack
5. Tegan and Sara
6. Mike Doughty
7. The Shins
7. Original Cast Recording (oops. Wicked, actually.)
9. The Beatles
10. Cake
11. matchbox 20
12. Elastica
13. Jimmy Eat World
14. Green Day
15. Hot Hot Heat
16. Mae
17. Alexz Johnson
18. The Postal Service
19. Regina Spektor
20. Dressy Bessy
21. Jeremiah Freed
22. Jack Johnson
23. Barenaked Ladies
24. The Ditty Bops
25. The Dresden Dolls
What was the first song you ever heard by 6? (Mike Doughty)
Looking At The World From the Bottom of A Well, off of the Grey's soundtrack. I heard I Hear The Bells shortly after, and I fell madly in love.
What is your favourite album by 2? (Rilo Kiley)
More Adventurous, I guess, in large part because of The Absence of God, the song the title comes from. It's a close call between that and The Execution of All Things.
What is your favourite lyric that 1 has sung? (Guster)
*flails* I want to be where I've never been before / I want to be there and then I'll understand / know I'm right and do it right, could I get to be like that / I'll know what I don't know with nothing more to gain. From Two Points for Honesty. Ask me again later and you'll get a different answer.
How many times have you seen 11 live? (matchbox 20)
Once, and they were good, but we actually had seats, and had to sit in them, which I don't like. And that brought down the show.
What is your favorite song by 7? (The Shins)
Know Your Onion!, which is also the first song of theirs I ever heard, off the Gilmore Girls soundtrack.
What is a good memory you have involving 20? (Dressy Bessy)
The first time I listened to their album (self titled) was at work, where I controlled the music. So I put the cd on, and listened to it all day, and by the end, I knew all the songs.
Is there a song by 3 that makes you sad? (Dario Marianelli)
I'm sure there is, because he writes scores for movies, etc. But P&P is a happy movie, meaning there aren't really any sad songs. So no, I guess.
What is your favorite lyric that 14 has sung? (Green Day)
she's a rebel / she's a saint / she's the salt of the earth / and she's dangerous. from She's a Rebel. Most likely to get stuck in my head.
What is your favorite song by 19? (Regina Spektor)
On The Radio. Though I go through phases where I love different songs, that's one I always go back to.
How did you first get into 22? (Jack Johnson)
I knew his stuff, but I didn't really start listening to him until my junior year of high school. One of the kids in my art class brought in Brushfire Fairytales, and we listened to it every single day of class. We went through a full on relationship, Jack and I - infatuation, love, the end of the honeymoon period, estrangement, bitterness, and now fond memories.
What was the first song you heard by 21? (Jeremiah Freed)
Again, which remains my favorite song by them, and their best. Local bands for the win!
What is your favorite song by 4? (Motion City Soundtrack)
It's a toss up between The Future Freaks Me Out and Hold Me Down. Or maybe Capital H or When You're Around.
What is a good memory you have involving 13? (Jimmy Eat World)
An ex of mine used to be obsessed with them, and he's a large part of why I began listening to their older stuff. (I, shamefully enough, was introduced to them by The Middle on the radio.)
Is there a song by 23 that makes you sad? (Barenaked Ladies)
Call and Answer is what comes to mind. It's sadder than their usual stuff, I don't know about actually sad.
What is your favorite album of 15? (Hot Hot Heat)
Elevator, their second.
What is your favorite lyric that 9 has sung? (The Beatles)
blackbird singing in the dead of night / take these broken wings and learn to fly / all your life / you were only waiting for this moment to arise. It makes me happy inside.
How many times have you seen 5 live? (Tegan and Sara)
Not once. I'd love to, but the closest they're coming is NYC, and I don't think I can pull that off. I'll grab them next time they make it to Boston.
What is your favorite album by 12? (Elastica)
I'm really only familiar with their self title album, but I love that one.
What is a good memory you have involving 25? (The Dresden Dolls)
The local radio station started playing Coin-Operated Boy shortly after I stopped listening to them. My brother, who listens to, give or take, NONE of the same music as me, told me I had to listen to this band, because I would love them. And I do. Right on, Dunc.
What was the first song you heard by 18? (The Postal Service)
Such Great Heights, I think, but I got the album very shortly thereafter, so I listened to all of their stuff at pretty much the same time.
What is your favorite song by 17? (Alexz Johnson)
All of her music that I have comes from her show, Instant Star (on which she plays a musician, believe it or not), and my favorite song is the very first one they put out, 24 Hours. White Lines is a distant second.
What is your favorite album by 24? (The Ditty Bops)
The only album I have is their self-titled one, but I love it.
How many of your top 25 have you seen live?
Guster - twice!
Jeremiah Freed - twice!
matchbox 20
Hot Hot Heat
So, not many.
What, no questions about Mae? I have such a good story about them!
So: How did you first get into 16? (Mae)
I had a long-running mock argument during high school with a friend over who listened to better music. At one point he was appalled that I wasn't already listening to Mae, so he burnt me a copy of Destination: Beautiful, and left it in my car. And then refused to talk to me until I listened to it, and could give him a report. And the boy was right - it's one of my favorite albums as a whole, because I like every song on it. That doesn't happen often, not even with some of my favorite artists.
If you ask nicely, I could be talked into uploading anything mentioned above.
I went out to run errands today, and managed to get rid of three books, but returned with eight. Such is my life. (That said! I got some cool ones: The American Way of Birth, by Jessica Mitford, known mostly for her other book, The American Way of Death, which I loved; Perfect: The Inside Story of Baseball's Sixteen Perfect Games; The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman, which I have heard wonderful things about - it's the story of a young Hmong girl diagnosed with epilepsy and the conflict between her parents and doctors. I also am waiting on an inter-library loan of A. Bartlett Giamatti's A Great and Glorious Game, because he wrote some of the best baseball writing I have ever encountered.)
I'm so excited about Perfect. First of all, the book came out in 2002, meaning the subtitle is wrong, and there have been 17 perfect games, which just means it won't discuss Randy Johnson's 2004 perfect game, but that's okay. There are few things cooler in sports than a perfect game. The name says it right up front - for nine innings, for 27 batters, the pitcher is perfect. There really isn't an equivalent in most sports - gymnasts can get a perfect 10, as can ice skaters, but I'm blanking on anything else. And there really isn't an equivalent in popular professional sports. A soccer or football team might keep the other team from scoring, but that's not unheard of. In basketball you have Wilt's 100 points or Kobe's 81. (People who actually watch other sports - am I wrong? Is there an equivalent?)
But there isn't that one statistic that all pitchers dream of. There isn't another individual achievement in a team sport that matches the mystique of the perfect game. And they're rare; clearly, if there have only been 17 in the history of baseball. That averages to one every eight years. As Wikipedia so nicely put it, "In sum, a perfect game occurs once in about every 11,000 major league contests. For comparison, more people have orbited the moon than have pitched a Major League Baseball perfect game. No pitcher has ever thrown more than one."
Guys, the Red Sox pitchers and catchers report to spring training in 16 days, 16 hours, and 28 minutes (according to the countdown clock on redsox.com). 16 DAYS! I'll try to control myself, but there might be a lot of ALL CAPS and MY BOYS and YOUK and OHMANMIKELOWELL coming up. And through October. (knockknockknock) Which leads me to ask: if I ever get my stuff together and put together a bit of a Red Sox primer (a little of the history, a little of why the various Sox make me go all EEEE, a lot of pictures of boys in uniforms), would anyone be interested? Do you want to know who and what I'm talking about? Or are you just planning on ignoring my Sox flailing?
eta: html is smarter than me.