31st January 2013: [The Devil and] Daniel Johnston

I was given this album when I went for the screening for The Devil and Daniel Johnston.

Here's the review I wrote at the time:

A critic from an important paper was saying at the screening, "they make films about everyone these days. Have you ever heard of this guy?"
For those as enlightened as him, Daniel Johnston is a Texan singer/songwriter/ artist with a lisp and a tendency for manic depression. He was born in 1961 into a Christian family but started seeing Satan everywhere after he took acid in the mid-eighties. He's perhaps not the genius the documentary makes him out to be, but he's certainly very creative (check out www.hihowareyou.com). Johnston's one priority all his life is to be a creative artist; he has goofed about since the age of ten, concretising the dreams he had as a befuddled teenager. He has the courage - or some kind of childlike innocence - to do so. The soundtrack is excellent and the documentary is sincere, containing extracts of his voice and film recordings. Go see it if you can, but definitely listen to his music.

I just changed some of it because the initial draft contained this silly sentence: "The documentary is moving, thought-provoking and eye-opening."

30th January 2013: Au Revoir Simone

Fun facts.
1. The name of the band is from Peewee. The band are not French. 2. I saw them live in Paris courtesy of my sister. 3. Au revoir simone is made up of beautiful girls and three keyboards. 4. They sang on Air's Voyage Dans La Lune (I blogged that playlist a few days ago). 5. I really like to listen to this.

29th January 2013: Oldies Mixes (2)

This is another mix that Grooveshark radio helped me with. I promise tomorrow I'll stop it with the cheesey sixties stuff.

28th January 2013: Fleetwood Mac

There was no escaping this. I'm not sorry. The playlist is the whole of the Rumours album, then an album called "Shrine 69".

27th January 2013: Oldies Mixes

The Grooveshark radio basically algorithm-ed this together last summer.



Here's another - and a lot more flawed - "oldies mix" that was helped by the Grooveshark radio. It's got some really excellent tracks on it though - but I recommend switching past a song more quickly than you might have done had I not written something.

26th January 2013 : Modest Mouse, 2004.

This album has a funny place in my mind because I paid for it in my first year at University (2005), when I was naive and also didn't own a computer.

25th January 2013: Malagasy music

So that's everything to do with traditional Malagasy music on Grooveshark.

Here's a recording I made on an iPhone in Madagascar:

24th January 2013: Le Voyage dans La Lune - Air

I interviewed Air when this album came out, so I feel a special desire to blog the playlist.





The music was, you'll be please to know, the soundtrack for this film:

23rd January 2013 : Three Kraftwerk albums

22nd January 2013: The Complete Beach House Playlist

21st January 2013: Graceland and some Velvet Underground

I'm 25 today, so, hey, caution to the - yep, well, two playlists today, of generic, everyone-likes-this music, but like I said, it's my birthday, so, huh, I can do what I like, and it's my little playlist blog so, huh, I can - yeh. And I know it's all super well known, but whatever, probably less known that Bach.

20th January 2013: Songsters (Leadbelly and pals)

19th January 2012 : Funk Brothers Naked Instrumentals

18th January 2013 : Ivor Cutler

I bought a harmonium for £1 thanks to this guy.

17th January 2013 : Instrument soundtrack, Fugazi

16th January 2013 : Nyman's Greenaway soundtracks

15th January 2013 : a Bach playlist based on suggestions by the kidnapped girl in Fowles' Collector

14th January 2013 : Hanggai

Wikipedia: "The term “Hanggai” itself is a Mongolian word referring to an idealized natural landscape of sprawling grasslands, mountains, rivers, trees, and blue skies."

13th January 2013 : Rocksteady Moods

There was a library in Liège, a dead-ish town in Belgium, that is one of the best libraries I have ever been to. I'd pick up random CDs and Rocksteady Moods was one of them. I fell in love with this song:

but sadly did not find it on Grooveshark.
Here is a Rocksteady playlist, that is especially good in summer, but January will do.
Also, I went to Rocksteady Eddie's again today, so it's appropriate.

12th January 2013 : Philip Glass

I remember being shocked by how manipulative and magical the music in the Hours was. But I definitely did not know who Philip Glass was when I saw that in English class in 2005.

I'd like to say my first encounter with Philip Glass went like this: I was in Florence in 2007 and went for a walk. There was a free concert on the main square. I sat and listened and thought up the whole plot for a short film (that ended up being not so good). But the real man was there. The first time I heard Philip Glass, I also saw him play (with out glasses (ha ha?), from a distance, and also presumably not the first time).

The first 3 tracks on the playlist were, according to sources mentioned on wikipedia, inspired by an Eno/Bowie album.

I'll shut up. Here's your damn playlist for today.

a cheeky post that only has one song

and that mainly serves to mention my other blog : ascanaday.blogspot.co.uk which has been going for much longer than this one.




I'll just add that Keren Ann is Israeli but is on a French label. She was in Lady and Bird. Hell, ok, here's another song (with lyrics from the Mash theme tune) and then another song (with lyrics by the Velvet Underground), ok and then the rest of the whole damn album.



That was really cheeky of that post.

11th January 2013 : French 60's female singers

Poupées de Cire was written by Gainsbourg - as were a lot of France Gall's songs.I might do a France Gall only playlist later in the year. Hardy wrote her own songs (she always calls them her "texts" in a very professional way). Sheila's Bang Bang is better than the English version. There, I said it.




I also recommend the Youtube hole of Françoise Hardy playing in London, to hilarious but hypnotic effect:

1. Creepy but cute child in front of the camera


2. In English and really weird place to stand


3. Free advertising


4. And for some reason this one can't be embedded, but have a look for Trafalgar Square in 1965, Hardy in her PJs on the back of a cart and some funky pronunciation.

There are many more of the Hardy Piccadilly videos online.

10th January 2013 : Guo Brothers, music of China

9th January 2013 : Chopin - Evgeny Kissin, the legendary 1984 Moscow Concert

8th January 2013: a gradual wake up

I wore this playlist out because I listened to it every morning for three months. It works as a wake up album. Especially for summer mornings. It is wonderfully fine-tuned and eclectic. I have myself to thank, I guess, so here we are: thank-you, thanks.

7th January 2013 : Lots of Nick Drake

6th January 2013 : Rodriguez

I recently watched Searching for Sugarman, a film that came out about this guy Rodriguez. The whole story is so unbelievably unbelievable that I still wonder if the living Rodriguez isn't some crazy guy who thinks he's Rodriguez. So the story is: he was a failure in the early seventies - except in South Africa where he became a legend and everyone thought he was dead. Turns out he's alive and is very level-headed.
And the other odd thing is that I've definitely heard Crucify your mind plenty of times before I saw the documentary, but I don't have any idea where. The whole story is very perplexing.

5th January 2013 : a classic 90's rap playlist

If you only listen to one playlist on this blog, make it this one.
This is a wonderful playlist based on an audio cassette forgotten at my house by a babysitter. I know most of the songs off by heart, especially The Funky Col Medina - I don't need any prompts for that having written out the entire song on my red biology file when I was at school.

4th January 2013 : Cake, Eels and Belle and Sebastian

I like to call this a "nineties playlist" but feel that that is too misleading when you consider everyone else who was around then (East 17, to cite one among many), and that some of songs came out after the year 2000 (the Belle and Sebastian ones). I like to cook savoury food to this playlist.

3rd January 2013 : energetic late for work/ get up music

2nd January 2013 : Glenn Kotche, Mobile

I found out about this guy thanks to Boil the Frog , a website where you can go from A to B in music, and I think I went from Beethoven to Bowie or something and it was logical for the poor machine to go via this guy. But so much for discovery: turns out I already knew about Glenn Kotche as I'd heard him in his more mainstream act, Wilco. Anyhow, I liked his solo stuff so I found what I could on Grooveshark.

1st January 2013 : 50's and 60's rock n roll boogie