Out the Other

Purify the colors, purify my mind

Arcade Fire - "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" (from Funeral)

(photo via)

Playlist - February 1 - LOST!

LOST LOST LOST LOST LOST LOST LOST it's LOST DAY!!!!  I am SO useless today.  If you're as useless as I am, go ahead and check out last night's show, in which I celebrated tonight's premiere of season six of LOST by playing the Lost Season Six Mix I posted yesterday in its entirety, mixed with tunes that appeared on the show and bits of the score.  Do it up:

Stream the February 1 edition of Out the Other

And here comes the playlist. Also, a huuuuuuge THANK YOU to everyone who tuned in, called, tweeted, or just stayed up late with Out the Other.  I totally appreciate you guys moving to the new, later timeslot with me.  I'm so appreciative I'm giving you bonus mp3s!

1.  "Mama" Cass Elliott - Make Your Own Kind of Music (Mama's Big Ones) (mp3)
2.  Michael Giacchino - The Eyeland (Lost Season One OST)
3.  Michael Giacchino - Main Title (Lost Season One OST)
4.  The Features - Still Lost (Some Kind of Salvation)
5.  Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
6.  Andrew Bird - Fiery Crash (Armchair Apocrypha)
7.  Otis Redding - These Arms of Mine (The Very Best of Otis Redding) (mp3)
8.  Michael Giacchino - Locke'd Out Again (Lost Season One OST) (mp3)
9.  The Whitest Boy Alive - Island (Rules)
10.  Ben Folds Five - Kate (Whatever & Ever Amen)
11.  Tony Orlando and Dawn - Candida (Candida) (mp3)
12.  Howlies - Smoke (Trippin' With Howlies)
13.  Michael Giacchino - Hollywood and Vines (Lost Season One OST)
14.  Ryan Adams - I See Monsters (Love Is Hell)
15.  Novi Split - Doctor (Pink In the Sink)
16.  Soul Coughing - So Far I Have Not Found the Science (El Oso)
17.  The Boy Least Likely To - Faith (George Michael cover) (Faith)
18.  Michael Giacchino - Juliet Is Lost (Lost Season Three OST)
19.  Petula Clark - Downtown (Downtown) (mp3)
20.  Grizzly Bear - While You Wait For the Others (Veckatimest)
21.  Patsy Cline - Leavin' On Your Mind (The Patsy Cline Story) (mp3)
22.  Blitzen Trapper - Black Rock (Black River Killer)
23.  Three Dog Night - Shambala (Cyan) (mp3)
24.  Generationals - Angry Charlie (Con Law)
25.  Iko - Numbers (I Am Zero)
26.  Michael Giacchino - There's No Place Like Home (Lost Season Four OST)
27.  Willie Nelson - Are You Sure (Crazy: The Demo Sessions) (mp3)
28.  The Gerbils - Penny Waits (Are You Sleepy?)
29.  John Vanderslice - Time Travel Is Lonely (Time Travel Is Lonely)
30.  Chin Up Chin Up - Get Me Off This Fucking Island (We Should Never Have Lived Like We Were Skyscrapers)
31.  Phoenix - Lost and Found (It's Never Been Like That)
32.  Michael Giacchino - Oceanic 815 (Lost Season One OST) (mp3)

LOST Season Six Mix

Tomorrow marks the premiere of the sixth and final season of my favorite television show, LOST.  Over the past month, I've been re-watching the entire series to prep myself for its (hopefully) grand conclusion, and I've been so excited I can barely stop to breathe.  I'm serious - there has never been a TV show that has gripped me so tightly, occupied so many square inches of my brain, and kept me on the absolute tippiest part of my toes, about to fall straight off my seat.  CAN'T WAIT UNTIL TOMORROW.

To celebrate the premiere, the final season, and one of the best shows to ever appear on a television screen, I present Out the Other's LOST Season Six Mix.

[ download .zip ]

1.  The Features - Still Lost
2.  Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (mp3)
3.  Andrew Bird - Fiery Crash
4.  The Whitest Boy Alive - Island
5.  Ben Folds Five - Kate (mp3)
6.  Howlies - Smoke
7.  Ryan Adams - I See Monsters (mp3)
8.  Novisplit - Doctor
9.  Soul Coughing - So Far I Have Not Found the Science  (mp3)
10.  The Boy Least Likely To - Faith (George Michael cover)
11.  Grizzly Bear - While You Wait For the Others (mp3)
12.  Blitzen Trapper - Black Rock
13.  Generationals - Angry Charlie
14.  Iko - Numbers
15.  The Gerbils - Penny Waits
16.  John Vanderslice with Spoon - Time Travel Is Lonely (mp3)
17.  Chin Up Chin Up - Get Me Off This Fucking Island (mp3)
18.  Phoenix - Lost and Found (mp3)

(thanks to yewknee for the awesome artwork!)

Playlist - January 18

Last week's show is still up for your listening pleasure in case you haven't gotten around to checking it out yet, so go ahead:

Stream the January 18 edition of Out the Other

Not only was Spoon's Transference the featured album of the week, I also got a chance to spin a nice handful of new and upcoming releases, plus a ton of the bands that were featured at last week's Mercy Lounge anniversary celebration.  Here's the playlist so you can follow along at home:

1.  Spoon - I Saw the Light (Transference)
2.  Vampire Weekend - Giving Up the Gun (Contra)
3.  Vampire Weekend - Taxi Cab (Contra)
4.  OK Go - All Is Not Lost (Of the Blue Colour of the Sky)
5.  Rogue Wave - Good Morning (Permalight)
6.  Fleetwood Mac - Second Hand News (Rumors)
7.  Spoon - Is Love Forever? (Transference)
8.  Plants and Animals - Tom Cruz (La La Land)
9.  Midlake - Young Bride (The Trials of Van Occupanther)
10.  Howlies - Angeline (Trippin' With Howlies)
11.  Apollo Up! - Guilty Fever (Walking Papers)
12.  Meemaw - Blue In the Blacklight (Glass Elevator)
13.  The Non-Commissioned Officers - No Means No (Make-Out With Violence OST)
14.  Tallest Trees - Learn (unreleased)
15.  The Ruby Suns - Cranberry (Fight Softly)
16.  Spoon - Who Makes Your Money (Transference)
17.  The Besnard Lakes - Albatross (The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night)
18.  Eels - End Times (End Times)
19.  Surfer Blood - Harmonix (Astro Coast)
20.  Surfer Blood - Fast Jabroni (Astro Coast)
21.  Of Montreal - Penelope (Coquelicot Asleep In the Poppies)
22.  Fleetwood Mac - Tusk (Tusk)
23.  Spoon - The Mystery Zone (Transference)

Terry Reid - River

Now on my.... oh, seventh spin of the day through Terry Reid's 1973 forgotten gem River, I think it's safe to say that I love this record. 

Ever since I started bringing guest DJs onto the show - and they started bringing their extensive record collections onto the show - I've been growing more and more interested in the great and personally uncharted expanses of the musical past.  I had a respectably musical upbringing, but the Donny Hathaways and the Harry Nilssons and the Emitt Rhodes-es of the world all eluded me until recent years (what did I say yesterday about door-opening influences?), and being introduced to a few of them in a basement on-air studio over dusty-smelling sleeves and shiny new turntables has made me want to meet all of their friends.

Last week, Paige at Flux-Rad shared a link to the DK Presents list of "The 20 Most Overlooked Albums Of All-Time."  "Ooh," I thought. "Seems like a lovely way to spend the day." So I did.  And while I didn't make it through all twenty, I stopped for a very good reason - I got stuck on River.

It was the back story that caught my attention - promising young singer is tapped by Jimmy Page to be the lead vocalist of a new band, The New Yardbirds, but said promising young singer is in the midst of his own career pursuits, and has committed to touring with the Rolling Stones, so he turns down the offer.  He recommends another promising young singer, Robert Plant, instead - and you can figure out the rest.  Sadly, you can't read a thing about Terry Reid without hearing about the fact that he turned down the opportunity to be in Led Zepplin, and who he is became Who He Wasn't - capital letters across the board.  He became a trivia fact, a footnote, and everyone forgot about what he actually did, which at the very least includes releasing a brilliant album in 1973.

The only record Reid recorded for Atlantic, River is best described in a PopMatters review written at the time of its re-release in 2003.  It's worth hopping over there to read in its entirety, but the part that stuck out to me was the description of the album's spontaneity - it does, in fact sound "as if Reid was making up the songs on the spot." The sense of improvisation, the vocal risks, the warmth and organic feel of the production (until I read that review, I hadn't noticed the two coughs left in the album opener "Dean"), the blend of folk and blues with more world-ly sounds of samba and bossa nova (on my first run through I thought it sounded an awful lot like Stevie Wonder) - it falls on your ears like an old friend, and there's a very good reason it's the only thing I've listened to today.  It's the kind of album you expect your music-loving buddy to place reverently on the turntable before sitting down next to you on the couch and saying, "shhhhhhh - you have to listen to this."

Listen I will.  For the rest of this afternoon, at the very least.

"Avenue"
"River"

Amazon has River on 180g vinyl, though you can also grab the CD or mp3s.

I'm a tumbler!

 

Talking Heads - "Born Under Punches" (from Remain In Light)

(photo via)

Spoon - Transference

If you trace the trajectory of your taste, map the peaks and valleys and the meandering path of interest, you'll find that what you listen to and what you love is the sum of its tributaries - all the introductions and obsessions and adorations of others. That is, if you're me. I believe this is true of everyone in some way, but because of my particular blend of enthusiasm and malleability, I can trace all these branches to their sources, and attribute this chunk of my record collection to that boy with the pretty eyes, and this fleeting flirtation with whatever genre to the badass best friend I had for a week in college, and this square centimeter of my heart devoted solely to one specific song to the boy who formerly occupied that space.

In the end, they all just opened doors and no one is responsible for what came through but me, because music has always been mine, and I'm not the kind of girl to delete a band from my playlist because I went to their show with a boy who later broke my heart.  But it's curious, really, like watching a chemical reaction and remembering all the specific ingredients that made those flames such a vivid shade of blue.  And it's also the reason that the things I come to by myself - the things I fall in love with on my own, without initiation or guidance - become the things I absolutely love the most.

It happened first with Toad the Wet Sprocket - they were the first band I came to independently, without my parents or my sister to guide me.  They were the first band that I loved alone, and I loved them fiercely and selfishly because of that, and even after they faded the way old favorites do, it was enough to bring me to tears years later when I saw them in college, and enough to bring me to "you changed my life" speechlessness years even later when I drunkenly shook Glen Phillips' hand in the half-empty Basement.

It happened again a few weeks into my first year of college, when I did my first truly independent thing after moving to Boston and went to see Gomez by myself at the Paradise Rock Club.

And it happened a third time a year after moving to Nashville, still sans show-going friends in 2004, when I ventured to 12th and Porter alone to see an Austin band I was vaguely familiar with called Spoon.  I bought two of their albums at the merch table that night, but what I really went home with was a new favorite band.  And they were that much shinier and exciting because they had the glow of personal discovery.

Today Spoon releases their seventh studio album, Transference, which is their third new release since I've counted them amongst my favorites.  Any review I could possibly offer wouldn't be a review at all, so you're getting this instead.  Suffice it to say I don't think they're a favorite that will fade any time soon.

"Who Makes Your Money"
"I Saw the Light"