Read the original "Culling The Herd" post here. Album titles link to the iTunes store.
Chumbawamba, "Tubthumping" - 5 stars. Dig it.
When I was in college, there were few songs that we would listen to at every single party. Sometimes one of us would come up with some hand motions or something to match the lyrics. The Tubes:
- "Talk" ('talk talk talk' motion with your hands)
- "2" (two fingers)
- "Ya" (pointing at the person you were standing with)
- "Later" (thumbs over the shoulder).
We never got to the point of buying four crappy matching jackets and doing an entire routine to a Four Tops song, as Alan and his gang did (God no, those guys were total dorks), but there were a few songs like that.
So my ex-wife and are out with her super-cool brother, and this song comes on at the bar. Jason:
- "I get knocked down" (thumbs down, bouncing through the lyric)
- "But I get up again" (thumbs up, still bouncing)
- "They're never gonna keep me down" (palms down, arms waving in the universal 'field goal is no good' motion).
Proving that drinking leads to total dorkiness, no matter how cool you start out. Funny total dorkiness.
So the song. It's still a fantastic song that I love hearing on a run. And it's still a terrible, terrible album cover.
It's also the source of this, which makes me smile every time I see it.
Go ahead and don't smile at that.
City and Colour, "Fragile Bird" - 4 stars. Dig it.
Man, I'm continually surprised by some of this stuff. Again, I had low expectations for this one, and I have no idea why that is...and it's nothing really special or surprising, just a simple rock song with a hook. I like it.
Cigar Store Indians, "el Baile de la Cobra" - 5 stars. Dig it.
I'm sure I'm going to screw up this story, but the way I remember it, my two readers Jim and Paula were in Los Angeles a long time ago, and one night they went out to a club to see these guys. They came back, raving about how great they were. "I'm sorry, who?" I asked. "The Cigar Store Indians," they said, "they're a really great rockabilly band." "Hmph," I said, as I am wont to do, "what a stupid name." "No really, Matt - here's a CD we burned. Listen to it."
And holy crap. As usual (well mostly usual), they were right. What an unbelievably great record. Not a single dud in the bunch. Not one.
I've gone through a couple of computers over the years, and a couple of times I've had to re-create my music library. On the last go-round, this was the first CD I ripped to iTunes. I have no idea if that means anything - okay, I'm sure it means nothing at all - but it's a data point. For, you know, something.