Oh, I used to be disgusted
And now I try to be amused
But since their wings have got rusted
You know, the angels wanna wear my red shoes
But when they told me ’bout their side of the bargain
That’s when I knew that I could not refuse
And I won’t get any older, ’cause the angels wanna wear my red shoes

Oh, oh, I was watching while you’re dancing away
Our love got fractured in the echo and sway
How come everybody wants to be your friend?
You know that it still hurts me just to say it

Oh, I know that she’s disgusted (Oh, why’s that?)
‘Cause she’s feeling so abused (Oh, that’s too bad)
She gets tired of the lust (Oh, I’m so sad)
But it’s so hard to refuse
Can you say that I’m too old
When the angels have stolen my red shoes?

Oh, I said, “I’m so happy I could die”
She said, “Drop dead,” then left with another guy
That’s what you get if you go chasing after vengeance
Ever since you got me punctured, this has been my sentence

(REPEAT FIRST VERSE)
Oh, I won’t get any older, now the angels wanna wear my red shoes
Red shoes, the angels wanna wear my red shoes
Red shoes, the angels wanna wear my red shoes

Take it away Elvis:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYZpOuych-I

One of my favorites.

Ahem.  Anyway.  So!  I’ve always been somewhat of an evangelist – but not in the religious sense (although I did go through a phase that could be said to approximate that O.o).  I’ve always been maybe a little too motivated (at least internally) about sharing the music & books that I enjoy with others.   Not so much TV & movies – I just don’t care enough.  But music and books… those are two things I’m way into.

I’m sure some of it is born of the standard loner desire to have others to actually enjoy your interests with – people you can shoot the shit with about your favorite bands or books and know they won’t be out in the cold.  But, there’s at least a touch of genuine altruism in there.  If I really enjoy something, I want to share that in the hopes that it will make someone’s day the way it made mine.

NOW.  I couldn’t tell you what the exact breakdown is between the two, but I’d wager it’s pretty close to 50/50. If you’ve known me long I’ve probably tried to turn you on to some band or another, or maybe even a book.  The funny thing is, for all the time invested, I don’t think I’ve succeeded much.  I’ve had the most headway with music I guess, but I can only think of one or two instances where someone has read a book on my recommendation.  I’m not sure that says anything about me so much as I tend to hang out with people with very different reading tastes than myself.  Which does get lonely I admit, moreso than differing tastes in music.

So maybe that’s why I still blog about books and music (and anything I can’t find someone to yak about with really)?  Talking to the air beats talking to nothing, or so I’ve heard.

In light of all this, I decided to make a nice, compressed list of things that I enjoy recommending to folks, just in case anyone ever happens to be open to that kind of thing.  Not complete of course, but a nice cross-section.

Some of these are my “favorite” things to one degree or another, others are just things that I enjoy talking about, or think deserve more exposure.

Books:

The Illuminatus Trilogy – The only book(s) I still re-read every 18 months or so.   Probably too weird for most people.  If you like weirdness, drugs, sex and a little violence and more weirdness…

The Dune series, particularly if you can make it through to my favorites  – books 4-6: God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, and Chapterhouse Dune.  Most sci-fi fans read Dune, but for some reason they stop there.  This baffles me as Dune, really, is not even the strongest book of the series (for me).  It’s the most simple, direct and “sci-fi-ish” though, so maybe that’s what does it.  After that, shit just goes off the rails in a way that a lot of casual sci-fi fans might miss, or be pushed back by.

Atlas Shrugged & The Fountainhead – The closest thing to classics I will touch.  No, I don’t agree completely with Rand’s Objectivism, but I still find the books enjoyable reading and great conversational fodder (when I’ve recently read them, I forget things FAST).

Night’s Dawn trilogy – Absolutely brilliant “hard” sci-fi.  The best written in the last 20 years (ie about the bounds of my sci-fi reading lifetime) IMHO.  Just, just brilliant really.  Lot’s of pages, lots of text, so you’ve got to have a love of the long works to enjoy this but man is it worth it.  I’ve re-read these a few times as well.  I’ve bought the entire series maybe 3 times as I’ve moved and lost (then re-found) older copies and even given the entire series to a friend once.  He has not yet read it.  Some “science” hero he is  ;p.

Mistborn trilogy – One of the best new fantasy series that I’ve had the pleasure of stumbling across.  A far cry from the simplistic lands of Tolkien this series asks a couple of interesting questions: What if the bad guy (Sauron analogue) won?  What if the bad guy winning wasn’t the worst that could have happened?

Serious fantasy fans already have their minds made up about the Wheel of Time series and the Song of Fire and Ice.  I say both are must reads, but the latter may appeal more to non fantasy fans.

Bands:

Starflyer 59 – The old stuff at least, I can’t really get behind the last 3 or 4 albums.  If you’re reading this post you probably know me (?sadly? in 6 years of blogging I haven’t picked up any non friend/family readers), so you’ve probably heard of and heard these guys.   I’m just putting them here (and at the top) for the sake of completion and history – them being the first band that made me want to share music with others and all.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=csPEitRRfuM

Gaslight Anthem – Awesome (but with room to grow) modern rock and roll.  I’ve extolled their virtues on a number of blog posts, so if you haven’t checked them out by now (at least to decide that you don’t like them),  you probably don’t think very highly of my opinion, at minimum.

Airborne Toxic Event -  Another band I’ve pushed a bit on this blog.  A little like the National in genre/sound, but a bit more energetic.

The Crush & Death on Wednesday – two long defunct bands, both of which I really loved and tried to share with others.  The Crush is alt/punk/rock in the grand Twin Cities tradition and DoW is rockabilly/rock/punk a la nothing quite like it at the time.  Both bands that I think had enough commercial appeal to blow up (but never did), and enough chops and genuine flavor to appeal to the rest.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzZwHbxWV28

Elvis Costello – the early stuff mostly. Hard to try and describe a guy who’s worn so damn many shirts.  His first 4 albums are where most of it is at, although there are many, many later tracks that I love as well – I just don’t find the complete albums as enjoyable to listen to.  Here’s a video of one of my favorite EC classics.  The video is from the year I was born…. which is crazy.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j7JFP6ZOCI

Joe Christmas – another favorite dead band of mine that never really got any kind of recognition. Sadly, the singer’s later bands well, sucked.

Hum – Yep, another dead band.   Post shoegazer droney wall of distortiony awesomesauce.  Albums 3 & 4 should be on any alt music aficionado’s shelf (or iPod) IMHO.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTl8HcvYRqg

Morphine – What is it with dead bands?  Well, not many had a dude playing 2 saxs at once and another on two string slide bass.  Don’t let that scare you off though :).  The saxophonist (?) is only playing one in the vid below, sorry.  Ahh, found one, second vid has the double sax action.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=985JGeGq_tc

www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6naQ195c_k

The National – NOT a dead band!   A band a certain Science Hero turned me on to that is chock full of awesome nuggets.  Not even sure what to call the sound other than some flavor of indie.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhA9ARZ6pjk

Tiger Army – Pyschobilly!  Like, faster rockabilly basically.  Except they’ve got a groovy little goth theme going on with songs about beautiful death and violence and the like.  Here’s one of their mellower songs:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=–NyHw8rQ3I

TV on the Radio – Another not dead band.  One of the pinnacles of alt/indie “rock” at the moment I think, quality and creativeness wise.   Past Arcade Fire imho, by quite a bit.  Not that there’s any reason to compare the two BUT I keep hearing references (still) to AF as “it”.  TVotR is also “it”.  QUITE.

Here’s an older one of theirs:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHrTOQ18yzU

Let’s call that enough for this post.  Hopefully this was interesting to someone.  If you’ve got the time, and you haven’t already formed an opinion about a given band, at least check out the various song videos.  Good for background noise if nothing else.

I think that’s a silly crazy thing to say, but that’s just me. I hadn’t even heard of half the MoF – not that I’m uber musically educated, but at the time the Wilburys came out, pretty much everyone had heard of all of them.  Except Jeff Lynne.  I still don’t get him.  I’ve heard a couple cool ELO songs since then but… it still doesn’t make sense (his producer cred maybe?).  So, anyway, as a thought exercise  I thought it would be fun to try and come up with some modern day equivalents.

SO. Wilburys, 1988.

• Bob Dylan: Fucking Bob Dylan.  Making music for 26 years at that point.  Folksy.  Lots of cred pretty much everywhere.  Musical chameleon?
• George Harrison: A fucking Beatle.  One that wasn’t Ringo (he doesn’t smoke it no more).  Also in the industry for 25-26 years at that point.
• Roy Orbison: One of the best pop singers of his era, had a truly remarkable (to me) voice. ~28 years in the business.
• Jeff Lynne: 17 years in the industry (I didn’t realize ELO had that many albums.  Then again, you could fill the internet with things I don’t know about ELO).  Strong producing cred.  Not very well known publicly???.
• Tom Petty: The baby of the group at only 12 years in the industry.  6-7 strong albums under his belt.  Southern rocker.

So what are we looking at for Wilburys 2009?

Re-using Dylan would be too easy. How about this Tom Waits guy?  I actually don’t know much about him at all (I guess I should be embarrassed…).  He fits the genre I think, but it’s hard to touch Dylan’s cred (ok, impossible?), but about 10 years too early.

Ah hah!  Let’s go with Elvis Costello!  He’s most definitely a musical chameleon, has cred up the ass, and came into the scene a bit later than Waits, putting him a bit closer to the age mark.

Now we need the ex-member of a gimongous supergroup to end all supergroups.   Wait, that’s the Beatles, and there was only one of them.  Was there a band with that kind of magic in the early 80s/late 70s that is still relevant today?  Urk.  Drawing a blank here.  Instead I’m going to go with Springsteen, because I think any rock supergroup of this generation would just have to have him.  He is something of a phenomenon too – not like the Beatles, but definitely something.  He can fill something of the Dylan/folksy role too.

A 70s/80s vocal giant.  That’s still alive (sorry Marvin :( ).  Jen suggests Prince.  I’m not familiar enough with his work outside the singles to judge the extent of his vocals, but seems like a solid suggestion.   He’s got the star power.  Not to mention those guitar chops!   Other suggestions?

I don’ t know much about producers… how about Brian Eno?  I hear the cool kids like him.  Might be a bit too old.  I need some serious help on this one folks.  Ideas?

I’m thinking Eddy Vedder for the “young guy”.  Not too many bands from the early 90s are still with us, and Pearl Jam’s 18 years (18?  Holy fuck!  I’m old!) puts them a little past Petty’s 12 in 1988…but is there someone of Vedder’s talent level and public familiarity still with us from 1997?