I'm a fool to do your dirty work

Hey all. Let's blog it!

I'm not going to mince words today. I'm a hired gun. Adam brought Wardo, t.j. and me in so that he could sit back on his laurels, while we do his dirty work. Well, I'm done. All of Adam's friends took time out of their day to recommend some truly great stuff to him. He skimmed over the stuff, cracked a few boner jokes and moved on to the next schlub. It would be an injustice to Adam's friends if anyone other than Adam took care of their requests. They [read: WE] didn't recommend shit to Mike Ward. What do we care what he has to say on the matter?

So: fresh start for me. I'm cutting off ties with the old lists. I am a rogue blogger now. I might talk about my own Recommends or I might call on you to tell me personally about some stuff that you think I might enjoy.

Anyhow, I guess I should tell you how Adam and I first met. It must have been, what, 5 years ago? Adam had taken to hanging out down by the train yards. He had just quit his teaching position at Goucher and really needed something to which he could relate. He went to the yards looking for trains, but he found me instead. Its funny how things work out.




Alright, today's recommend came via email. These are the easiest kinds of recommends. Sometimes someone will just email me an mp3 thinking that I would like it. I take the next 2 to 6 minutes (anything longer and I'll definitely not like it) and form my opinion on the song. They're not always corkers, but I do enjoy figuring out what it is about the song that would make someone assume that I would like it.

Recently, I was emailed this Sibylle Baier song called "Tonight." Have a listen:




Ms. Baier recorded this song along with an album's worth of material in early 1970s Germany. Similar to the tale of my travels, she decided to give up her aspirations of being a songwriter/actress and moved to America to raise a family. Listening to "Tonight," you can certainly already hear her desire to have nothing more than just a real nice home life.

Some 30 years later, her son [the weird Tarzan baby looking kid above] compiled the recordings and gave them out to friends and families. Eventually, the recordings ended up in J Mascis' hands and the Orange Twin label soonthereafter released them.

Don't be fooled by the somber mood of the recording. I hear it as being a significantly happy/content song. The singer arrives home totally broken apart after [among seemingly some other stuff] possibly wrecking her car. She finds "him" sitting at the kitchen table ready, willing and able to listen to let her cry out all the sorrows that she bears. Its also possible that he wants her to sing her troubles to him, which is extra great. Who wouldn't want to come home to that?

This is my most favorite lyric of the last [insert undefinable length of time]:

There he unforeseen sat in the kitchen buttering himself a bread

At the risk of sounding like I don't appreciate "unforeseen sat" enough, I must say that "a bread" is just so super fantastic. I can't vouch for how well Ms. Baier knows or knew English, but its tiny things like "a bread" that make me regret having English as my primary language. Songwriters take plenty of liberties when trying to make words fit correctly, but I can almost guarantee that if I were writing this song, I would have said "some bread" instead. And that's why I admire this song. Pure delight.

I would consider that line to be Exhibit A in determining why this song might be appropriate to send to me. Exhibits B through D would be that its a lady singer, its about a domestic situation and the song came fairly close to never being available for mass consumption.

For all those, this song gets an A-.

Namaste!