It’s about time I made and shared a monthly mix of songs that call out to me in some way. Instead of going the illegal route and handing out a downloadable mp3 playlist, I figured I’d capture the collection on video where possible.

I know… I’m 2 months behind. But this is truly my April playlist sitting in iTunes, with May and June trailing right after it. Most of the songs here reflect my personal composure for the month. Sometimes the lyrics just hit the focal point, other times it’s the nostalgia of the track, and still other times when a segment of words sets a spark on my mind. Instead of going through the intimate details of my personal life, maybe you can interpret why these songs qualify as my monthly life soundtrack (though sometimes there may be no reason). And maybe you’ll find these fitting for a chapter in your music diary.

Named “Predicting April” because it definitely set the tone for things to come. I do not claim to be a psychic or a prophet though.

I could not get this out of my head. Only snippets though. I’m a big fan of the album this comes off of: Through Being Cool.

“Good Times.” The Rolling Stones pull this one off well. I really enjoy their rendition of a basic happy number. A good sister song to this might be “And the Healing has Begun” by Van Morrison for its optimistic qualities.

Wilco when they stuck to their alt.country style. Gotta love the “wBah Bah Bah.”

My playlist has Andy Kaufman singing “Carolina in the Morning.” He’s doing the Tony Clifton act with the Las Vegas lounge singing style somewhat akin to Al Jolson. It’s the rhythm of the words that definitely jumps at me. The accent has to be there for the rhyme to be right (nothing could be finah than to be in Carolina).

The Jesus & Mary Chain with “Head On.” This pumps me up! It was great for a drive home.

“Little Mascara” is a song of many I could belt out a lung to. Not the best video though (It’s the only one on youtube). It’s a fan covering the ‘Mats and exposing all of his facial muscles without any second thought of how crazed he looks. If there was an original online, I’d link to that instead. But you have to admire the charisma of the guy, and dare I say it might have a ounce more passion than the Replacements’ studio production. To be fair, Westerberg handles it well in the bootlegs I’ve heard, thought not as gritty.

Poor songs not cool enough to have videos:

Paul Westerberg - “Fugitive Kind.” [Listen] I didn’t care much for this song when I first heard it, but it keeps up with the profound language in his other songs. I especially like the melody when he sings “Is this where I belong?” and the words “Ain’t got time for your to grab your stuff, what’s flowing through our veins is good enough.”

Yo La Tengo - “Moby Octopod” [Sample] Nice bassline and cool drony voices; overall shoegazing dreamy quality about it.

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Stereo is one of my favorite dual albums, with its counterpart Mono, all of which comes from mastermind Paul Westerberg. I’ve come to realize that I get attached to music that has sentimental appeal, and even more so when it can hit the gut on a personal level as though the lyrics are being drawn straight from your soul.

Glenn Case tried to put his skills to the test by playing the entire Stereo record by his lonesome. You have access to the entire digital album (just mp3s) with no nickels or pennies attached. The cover effort is definitely tolerable. A song or two might not have the flare that Paul puts in, but it proves they are well-written songs. Paul pretty much did things on his own with this double-disc and the raw output makes you feel better than anything else that could be raw (I can’t rock too hard with raw vegetables or raw wounds).

So take your downloads and run. Or just sit back and soak up the noise. There is much more you can do with it, but you need to start somewhere. That’s what I did; I started to truly listen to music. I found some powerful things on my journey. I am now building my own highways and hopefully you can see where I’ve been, you can take the same path, or you can bathe in the personal history of humankind.

Wordpress updates are often needed for security fixes and the most recent additions (v2.5) to usability are pretty nice. The negative end of things is correcting plugin bugs, confirming database integrity, and revising my custom-developed theme. Luckily I don’t have a heavy load of intricate sites that all need updating, but even the few that I oversee need to be tweaked for a smooth ride across the interverse. I’m still looking around for plugin alternatives, minor error corrections, and an eased mind.

I’ve already put a few enhancing tools in their place. I even got over the terrible native tagging system and managed to ditch UltimateTagWarrior without losing my favorite goodies.

And here’s where I’m heading:

• Replace AJAX commenting plugin
  -replacement no longer necessary
• Look into Database errors stemming from table wp_post2cat
  SELECT cat_ID AS ID, MAX(post_modified) AS last_mod FROM `wp_posts` p LEFT JOIN `wp_post2cat` pc ON p.ID = pc.post_id LEFT JOIN `wp_categories` c ON pc.category_id = c.cat_ID WHERE post_status = 'publish' GROUP BY cat_ID
  -SOLVED! It was an outdated sitemap generator.
• Find alternative or fix for secondary blog theme features.
• Believe I can fly

Just about everything is where it should be. I guess updates aren’t bad at all.

The yearly festival known as SXSW offers the universe at large the ability to download a slew of free mp3s in the form of a torrent. This year as well as most are full of indie noises and some of the more popular acts like Bloc Party and other recognizables. Some random stranger decided to consolidate a page that had all previous torrents including the most recent one since 2005. The goodness can be enjoyed in this direction. Everybody has their own taste, so get ready to delete a handful of tunes if you have any selective likeness for music. I like weeding through for gems so this is a treasure hunt for me. The torrents should take a while to download, so just let utorrent sit around until you can open your present and unwrap your music in ears.

Any of the new musicians with a guitar that consider themselves folk artists might not have ever listened to music from real old folks. I have nothing against the newer, acoustically pretty sound that is called folk today, but I figured I’d bring things into better view to see where folk music comes from- everywhere and everywhen. I am no purist but I like the dawn of recorded sound and the culture that it documented. It’s a school for the recreational song lover; it’s a leisure education of musical entertainment.

Back when folk was revived in the 50s and 60s, there existed a man named Harry Smith who compiled a set of 78s for an album on Folkways Records. Almost anybody who was anybody had heard the songs or at least a few. The compilation became sort of a bible of folks songs that would spread the folk scene. I have not heard the whole collection, but I am aware of a good handful of the tunage.

In fact, seven ancient tracks are available on the Internet Archive for your mp3 needs. Wikipedia has the recordings on the bottom of the entry of the anthology.

Continue your collection with Lead Belly, Mississippi John Hurt, Henry Thomas, and the list continues.

Archivist Jim Blackwood has done an excellent job pulling off a quality matrix recording of Calexico, the indie/mariachi/alt. country rock band straight outta Tucson. The results can be downloaded for free at the always legal archive.org. The band has a few unique qualities, and their output is probably a preferred taste. I enjoy a handful of what I heard in the bootleg, especially the covers toward the end (*Falling Rain). Remind me to pick up Link Wray’s album.