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sabotabby ([personal profile] sabotabby) wrote2008-11-29 02:25 pm
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Saturday's music meme

Via [livejournal.com profile] the_red_shoes:

Put your media player on shuffle, and write down the first line of the first twenty songs. Post the poem that results. The first line of the twenty-first is the title.

I did it twice: once on total random, once on the uber-depressing playlist I've been listening to lately. I think the first is probably more interesting; the second is more thematically cohesive.



What was sent to the soldier’s wife

It’s four in the morning
Canada oh Canada I never been your son
No one to talk with
Show me a prison, show me a jail

You took the best years of my life
Dead is the drunkest that you can get
As soon as you’re born, they make you feel small
Moving near the edge at night

In the nineteen hundred and seventies
Now you caught me off guard
I’m under your spell
Let’s make love tonight

So basically a lot of people ask me how life was then
Outside another yellow moon has punched a hole in the nighttime
Come all you young rebels
Broken glass everywhere

Leonard Cohen, “Famous Blue Raincoat”
A Silver Mt. Zion, “Teddy Roosevelt’s Guns”
Phil Ochs, “There But For Fortune”
Sex Pistols, “Schools Are Prisons”
Rheostatics, “Dead Is the Drunkest You Can Get”
Green Day (shut up), “Working Class Hero”
Julee Cruise, “The World Spins”
The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, “Satanic Reverses”
Madvillain, “Operation Lifesaver”
Tara & Giles, “Wish I Could Stay”
Queen of Japan, “Sexual Healing” (why do I have this?)
K’Naan, “My Old Home”
Tom Waits, “Downtown Train”
Black 47, “Patriot Game”
Grandmaster Flash, “The Message” (I am old)
P.J. Harvey, “Ballad of the Soldier’s Wife”



Still Night, Nothing For Miles

Davenports and kettle drums
Death smiles as we paint decay
This was a stormy ending
What will you do when the war is over?

Lay me down the long white line
On the lam from the law
Here on these cliffs of Dover
Even through the darkest phase

Unforgettable, that’s what you are
Many men have loved the bell you fasten to the rein
Send a heartbeat to the void that cries through you
They put angels in the electric chair

One million died to make this sound
And yes I believe in what we had
Why be sweet, why be careful, why be kind?
Entangled in your arms

You may tire of me
If you want a lover
Take me home, you silly boy
Came in from a rainy Thursday


Tom Waits, “Soldier’s Things”
Snark, “Streetlight Apocalypse”
A Silver Mt. Zion, “Mountains Made of Steam”
Billy Bragg, "Tender Comrade"
Sisters of Mercy, “Heartland”
Decemberists, “The Bagman’s Gambit”
Decemberists, “We Both Go Down Together”
k.d. lang, “Constant Craving”
Nat King Cole, “Unforgettable”
Leonard Cohen, “Take This Longing”
Smashing Pumpkins, “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning” (I’m embarrassed)
A Silver Mt. Zion, “God Bless Our Dead Marines”
A Silver Mt. Zion, “1,000,000 Died To Make This Sound”
Sisters of Mercy, “Some Kind of Stranger”
Tom Waits, “Everything Goes to Hell”
Snark, “If Romance is Roses and Candlelight”
Death Cab for Cutie, “Brothers On a Hotel Bed”
Leonard Cohen, “I’m Your Man”
Holly Cole, “Take Me Home”
Duran Duran, “Ordinary World”
Sisters of Mercy, “Driven Like the Snow”

[identity profile] lokilokust.livejournal.com 2008-11-29 07:33 pm (UTC)(link)
ha! the first 58 songs that came up have no lyrics.

[identity profile] bike4fish.livejournal.com 2008-11-29 10:03 pm (UTC)(link)
Some of us have no randomizing media players. Whatever shall we do?

When I last had a similar challenge...

[identity profile] caprinus.livejournal.com 2008-12-01 08:36 pm (UTC)(link)
http://bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com/529737.html?thread=8771145#t8771145

OK, take all your LPs and throw them in a pile on the floor, jump on them, and choose 20 of the largish fragments. The songs on those pieces are your answers. Now, go find the questions ...

Trouble, I could only do it once! But then I glued the wrong pieces back together, creating some novel mash-ups.

my ipod is trying to make me like slightly less of a geek than I am

[identity profile] mistersmearcase.livejournal.com 2008-11-29 10:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Wake Up

I want a little sugar in my bowl.
Give your hand to the Indian.
Let the winds of the seven seas blow my good ship where they please.
It was so very long ago.

Cocaine, cocaine
Royal lady, at your feet
You say there's always gonna be this thing between us, days are filled with dreams
Water, walking on water.

Like an imprisoned fly, the little heart beats its wings.
Los han visto por ahí
The sea, the soil of Provence--what has stricken them from your heart?
It's amazing also how quickly evolution works sometimes.

Bright ray of hope and pleasure
Free and easy, that's my style
There's a saying old, says that love is blind
O azure skies, o sweet native air.

[ok that's plenty. Nina Simone, Soledad Bravo, some showtune Barbara Cook sing by god knows whom, Clem Snide song I had never listened to, Townes van Zandt, Donizetti: Roberto Devereux, Lucinda Williams, PJ Harvey who I totally do not listen to, Madama Butterfly, Shakira, La Traviata, Laurie Anderson, Rossini: Semiramide, Harold Arlen or whoever wrote "Any place I hang my hat", Gershwin, Aida, Arcade Fire]






[identity profile] faithhopetricks.livejournal.com 2008-11-29 10:40 pm (UTC)(link)
Aww I love that you did this! it cheers me up.

marry and reproduce! (my favourite gag shot in the film)

[identity profile] faithhopetricks.livejournal.com 2008-11-29 11:31 pm (UTC)(link)
ISN'T THAT AWESOME.

THAT JUST ACTUALLY MADE ME SMILE, WHICH, GIVEN TODAY, IS NO MEAN FEAT

THIS IS YOUR GOD

[identity profile] faithhopetricks.livejournal.com 2008-11-29 11:47 pm (UTC)(link)
AWW!

GHOULISH ALIEN-PALIN SPREADING SMILES INTERNATIONALLY
NOW _THAT_ WOULD BE AN SNL SKIT TO REMEMBER

Off Topic

[identity profile] rohmie.livejournal.com 2008-11-30 03:24 am (UTC)(link)
Have you been watching Sara Benincasa's Sarah Palin impressions?

You might like this Thanksgiving message:

Re: Off Topic

[identity profile] rohmie.livejournal.com 2008-11-30 03:26 am (UTC)(link)
Wait. I guess that wasn't off topic after all.

[identity profile] marnanel.livejournal.com 2008-12-03 04:08 pm (UTC)(link)
So let's get this right. At 4am at some point in the 1970s the Canadian government (after taking the best years of your life) is going to lock you up in solitary confinement near the edge. However, Canada unexpectedly catches you off guard and, caught under its spell, you proposition it. A lot of people understandably ask you about that night and you tell them that broken glass got everywhere.

Sounds like a reasonable story to me.