Cover the Earth

[vovat]

obsessical did this survey on MySpace, and I thought it seemed pretty cool. I love talking about the music I listen to (just in case you hadn't noticed). I'm doing it on LJ, though, as is my wont. A lot of questions are missing, so I'm going to fill them in myself.


1. What are you listening to right now?
Amy Rigby - Time For Me To Come Down

2. What song makes you sad?
Laura Cantrell - Early Years

3. What is the most annoying song in the world?
Hmm, that's a tough question. There are a lot of songs that annoy me, but none of them come to mind just now. Some of those late nineties songs that my senior year roommate used to play are serious contenders, though. You know, like Lou Bega's "Mambo Number 5," or that LFO thing about Chinese food making the guy sick.

4. Your all time favorite band?
They Might Be Giants

5. Your newly discovered band is?
Rilo Kiley

6. Best female voice?
Neko Case and Laura Cantrell

7. Best male voice?
Andy Partridge

8. Music type you find yourself listening to most?
I guess I'd have to say "nerd rock," even though it's not a term I like much.

9. What do you listen to, to hype you up?
I don't usually listen to music to hype me up, but just about anything fun and fast would work. Maybe "Michigan," by John Linnell?

10. What do you listen to when you want to calm down?
Just about anything familiar. Familiar music comforts me.

11. Last gig/concert you went to?
The Minus 5

12. Band you find yourself listening to the most right now?
Well, I've mostly been listening to music randomly as of late, which means TMBG and XTC tend to show up a lot, since they're the bands I have the most stuff by. Otherwise, I listened to quite a bit of the Minus 5 before the show, and I've been putting on Rasputina at bethje's house.

13. Most hated band?
I don't know about MOST hated, but bands of the Creed/Nickelback variety strike me as having absolutely no redeeming value.

14. Song that makes you think?
"T.H.I.N.K.", by the Fastbacks. Okay, not really. I think I might steal Ren's answer: "songs by They Might Be Giants. Because you wonder what the crap half of them are about."

15. Band that you think the world should love as much as you do?
The Young Fresh Fellows

16. Coolest music video?
As of late, I've discovered Frank Black's "Headache" video, and the Ditty Bops' "Wishful Thinking." Both of those are great. TMBG's "The Guitar" also comes close. I really haven't seen that many videos by bands I don't know really well, having not had access to MTV in my youth.

17. What's your favorite overall album?
XTC - Skylarking

18. What do you play/would you play in the bedroom to spice things up?
I can't really think of anything.

19. Can you play a musical instrument?
No. I've tried to learn guitar and harmonica, but never really got anywhere.

20. Ever been in a mosh pit?
No, and I hope I never will be.

21. Are you in a band?
No way.

22. Ever written any songs?
Not really, although jazzsammich did expand a verse of lyrics that I once wrote into a song. I guess that technically makes me a co-writer.

23. Ever dated a musician?
Nah.

24. What's the best opening song for an album?
Hmm...I thought up this question, and I'm not sure what I'd answer. Frank Black's "Blast Off" comes to mind, though.

25. What's the best closing song for an album?
XTC - Train Running Low On Soul Coal

26. What's the first album you ever owned?
Possibly Abbey Road. I can't quite remember. My first CD was "Weird Al" Yankovic's Greatest Hits Volume 2.

27. What's the most recent album you acquired?
Rilo Kiley - More Adventurous

28. Do you wish yourself that you were a musician?
Yes. I wish I could be one without having to practice.

29. Best chick band you know of?
I don't know. I think all of the female musicians I like are either solo artists or in bands that also include guys.

30. What genre of music do you like least?
Does angsty white boy stuff count as a genre?

31. Last song that you heard on the radio/cd...etc...?
I can't remember.

32. What do you think of Classical music?
Well, "classical" is a pretty big genre that I think a lot of people dismiss. Overall, though, I'd say I respect it much more than I actually listen to it.

33. What do you think of Country music?
Like just about any genre, it has its great stuff and its crap. I do listen to a fair amount of music that falls under the country umbrella, though. I think one great thing about country is that it often uses instruments like steel guitars, banjos, and mandolins, which are really cool.

34. What do you think of Death metal?
I honestly can't say I'm particularly familiar with the genre.

35. Last BIG band that you saw live?
How big is big? I saw TMBG back in January, and I suppose they're relatively big. (No "well, they MIGHT be big" jokes, please.) The biggest artist I've ever seen live was Elton John.

36. Are you a groupie?
Nope. Are there really any groupies around anymore? I'm sure there are some, but the groupie thing seems to me to have been part of the "free love" era, back before STD's were invented. :P

37. Do you listen to music in foreign languages?
Not much of it. I'm usually too lyric-oriented to enjoy stuff in languages I don't know.

38. What famous musician would you like to fuck?
I don't know. I'm not really into the celebrity crush thing. I guess I'll say Neko Case. She's pretty sexy.

39. Worst concert moment?
When someone sprayed Mace at David Lowery at a Camper Van Beethoven show

40. Funny concert moment?
There have been a lot of these, so I'm just going to go with the recent one of Scott McCaughey asking whether P. Diddy actually has a job.

41. Sad concert moment?
I can't recall ever being sad at a concert. Taking a hint from Ren, though, I'll mention the time I wanted to get an autograph from Danny Weinkauf but didn't have a marker, which was disappointing.

42. Best local act you can think of?
I don't pay any attention to local bands. Do I even know any of them? Actually, I think the Dead Milkmen were from my general area, but I don't know much of their music.

43. If you were a musical instrument what would you be?
Something rusty and out-of-tune

44. Do you listen to the radio?
Not often. I'll usually listen to KYW (the local news station) for a little while when I'm driving, and sometimes other stations as well.

45. Do you watch music TV?
Only when Beth stops on it when she's flipping channels.

46. Do you follow the music charts, like the top 40?
Not at all. Not only do I not care, but there are so many charts these days as to make the whole thing practically meaningless anyway. "This song was number five on the college alt-country Americana folk rap chart!"

47. Have you met any famous musicians?
I've very nervous around anyone famous (or just about anyone NON-famous, for that matter), so my "meetings" rarely amount to much. That said, I've interacted at least slightly with Jian Ghomeshi, all four members of Da Vinci's Notebook, Frank Black, Erin McKeown, Neko Case, Carolyn Mark, David Lowery, Victor Krummenacher, Jonathan Segel, John Flansburgh, John Linnell, Corn Mo, Danny Weinkauf (in the ill-fated exchange I mentioned back in number 41), Scott McCaughey, and Peter Buck. Oh, and Dave Matheson once brushed against me and said, "Excuse me."

48. Are any of your friends/family/etc. musicians?
My uncle once drummed for Bruce Hornsby.

49. Song that best describes your feelings right now?
I'm never good at this sort of question.

50. Song that describes your life?
This is the same sort of question, and I'm still not good at it. I guess XTC's "Leisure" could apply to much of my recent life, although maybe it'll have to change to Andy Partridge's "Work" soon.

51. Do you know the names of all the band members that you listen to?
If I've been into a band long enough, I usually pick this sort of thing up. There are some bands I listen to where I don't yet know the members' names, though.

52. Does a musician's physical attractiveness play a role in the music that you listen to?
Actually, it's usually the other way 'round for me.

53. What famous musician do you want to marry?
None of them.

54. Favourite movie sound track?
O Brother, Where Art Thou?

55. Any musician pet peeves?
I'm not entirely sure what this question is asking.

56. What do your parents listen to?
My mom used to always listen to the smooth jazz station on the radio. My dad would listen to WXPN. I don't know what either of them listen to nowadays, really.

57. What are you listening to right NOW?
XTC - Shaving Brush Boogie

58. Do you wear band etc T-shirts?
Yes.

59. What do you think of people who do?
I can't say I have a general opinion of such people.

60. What music sub-culture do you feel like you belong to?
None of them. I'm too culturally oblivious to belong to a subculture.

61. What song is stuck in your head right now?
Rasputina - Rats

62. Do you sing in the shower?
Not so much anymore. I have in the past.

63. If so, what? If not, why not?
When I was first getting into XTC, I sang their songs in the shower pretty often.

64. Would you rather marry a musician or be one yourself?
Be one myself, I guess.

65. Would you ever be in a band with someone you're dating/married to?
Yeah, I think I would. I don't THINK it would turn into a John and Yoko situation.

66. How important is your partners taste in music to you?
I think it's important that there's SOME overlap. And I wouldn't have ever met Beth if we hadn't both been TMBG fans.

67. Hanson moves in next door to you, do you go introduce yourself, or do you arrange to beat them up?
Neither. One would require my being more sociable than I am, and the other more violent. I probably would tell everybody I know that Hanson lives next door to me, though. I don't have anything against them, really.

68. Sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll, you dig?
I'm not so keen on the middle one.

69. Do you cook to music?
No. I don't cook much anyway, and when I do, there's no convenient music player close by.

70. Do you sing in the toilet?
Um...no.


Incidentally, on the subject of MySpace, I noticed at the mall that Hot Topic is now selling shirts with messages like, "You looked better on MySpace." I have to wonder who would actually buy a shirt like that, but there are probably people who would.

And speaking of music, I guess it's about time for my weekly post on music-related issues (as opposed to all those other posts on music-related issues, which don't count {g}). Today's topic is "songs I would like to cover if I were a musician." Obviously this is totally hypothetical, yet it's still something I consider fairly often.

One song I'd love to be able to perform is TMBG's "When It Rains It Snows." I'm not totally sure why that one. It just seems like it would be fun. Maybe because it's a waltz? I don't know. The other TMBG song I'd want to play would be "Half A Boy" (AKA "The Writing's On The Wall"), an old Dial-A-Song that I first heard on that Power of Dial-A-Song thing (which is to say it was an ordinal-number-that-God-alone-can-fathom copy of something recorded over the phone in the first place) and thought was really cool. It actually surfaced again with Clock Radio, in a version that was of much higher quality, but was slower and dreamier than the original. If I were to record the song, I'd probably want to expand on the country-ish sound of the DAS version.

Speaking of country-ish sounds, I've always had the idea that the Smiths' "This Charming Man" would sound cool if done country-style. I'm not sure exactly why. Has this been done by anyone before?

A few other additions to my list:

• XTC's "Helicopter," which is just so much fun to sing.
  
• A YFF song, but I'm not sure which one. Actually, I was thinking about this earlier today, and then the song "Thirsty" came up randomly. I think that would be a fun song to do, as would "Hang Out Right."
  
• An early Posies song. Maybe "Under Easy"?
  
• Some video game music. I know this has become all the rage nowadays, but there's no reason I wouldn't want to jump on that bandwagon, is there?
  
• Oz-related songs. I'd be interested in setting King Rinkitink's songs to music, if I knew anything about writing music. I do get tunes in my head when I read the lyrics. (Hmm, this is the second time I've mentioned Rinkitink today.)
  

I think the important thing with cover songs is that you have to do something different with them, or what's the point? Because of that, if the arrangement of a song is the most important part, it would be pretty futile to attempt a cover, wouldn't it?

Meh, this whole exercise was pretty pointless. Maybe if I stopped devoting so much brainpower to hypothetical exercises like that, I'd get something accomplished. But what fun would that be?

And I was able to call DAS tonight, which was cool. It must have been about two years since the last time I heard an actual song on there.