Okay, let's try this again.
Once upon a time I decided this should be some sort of travelogue, but that requires one to actually travel, which requires one to have (a) time and (b) money, and I don't have much of the latter because I am soon to be without much of the former. Everyday I think about just hopping back on the train and poking around in New York or Boston for the day--I know enough of the latter to get around, I think, but New York is a mess in my head. And why does it take less than three hours to get from Baltimore to New York but ~five from New York to Boston (on the regional, because I do have to pay a little [$5! my poor wallet] for the Acela)? I was always under the impression that New York was relatively close to Boston but I guess it's sort of halfway. And that shows you how much I travel, and why this will not necessarily work.
In the meantime I've been kind of hooked on the Dismemberment Plan, which is unfortunate because they broke up three years ago. I guess it's taken almost that long for them to really grow on me; I'll be the first to admit that they're not for everyone. There's a certain amount of spasticness and discord and chaos present in almost every D-Plan song that can be jarring to the wrong ears. But the lyrics are irrepressibly clever and I'm really a sucker for anything danceable anyway.
That, and Travis is cute.
So in this post I present to you:
Five of My Favorite Dismemberment Plan Songs Which May or May Not Be In Any Particular Order and Also Maybe With Accompanying Commentary If I Feel Like It.
01. The Ice of Boston
Easily my favorite D-Plan song ever. Partly because of lyrics like:
But mostly because of this:Mainly because knowing about that would involve knowing some pathetic, ridiculous, and absolutely true things about myself that I’d rather not admit to right now.
Woke up at 3 A.M. with the radio on, that Gladys Knight and the Pips song on
About how she’d rather live in his world with him than live in her own world alone
And I lay there, head spinning, trying to fall asleep, and I thought to myself: “Oh, Gladys, girl, I love you but, OH! GET A LIFE!”
Brilliant. And hilarious.
02. The Face of the Earth
I don't know what it is that I like best about this one. I mean, clearly it's a great song. But it's somewhere
between the opening strains and the lyrics about little details like the "fingers hooked around my belt" and the idea of only knowing someone for a short time but grieving when they disappear. Or something like that, I guess. :D
Already this is getting all disorganized with the pictures and all but oh well, deal with it. (Please~!)
03. The City
All I ever say now is good-bye.
Just listen until you get to that line.
This is the hard part. I'm so skewing my Last.fm data. Okay, we'll go with
04. The Dismemberment Plan Gets Rich
Because it's frantic and fun to sing and fun, period.
Joe got caught on board a boat with seven tons of opium / in a Singapore harbor--color us embarassed!
05. Superpowers
The polar opposite of The Dismemberment Plan Gets Rich, both lyrically and in
I've got to stop now or I'll be here all night. You can hear mostly everything they've done at the website, if you can put up with the RealAudio.
Or you can do like Joel did and just find a torrent somewhere. :)
Anyway, other songs I love but can't be arsed to put up here:
Bra, The Things That Matter, The Love War, Do The Standing Still, One Too Many Blows to the Head, What Do You Want Me To Say?, The First Anniversary of Your Last Phone Call, A Life of Possibilities, Memory Machine, I Love A Magician, Time Bomb, Ellen and Ben, Gyroscope, Girl O'Clock (oh man, Girl O'Clock), Back and Forth, and Close to Me.
I think Maaya had the right idea with just doing text links. I feel like I made this with Homestead or something. And there's mostly accurate lyrics here, but you're on your own because I'm tired of updating now. :)
Next: Pinback or something.
I really like this. Not really jarring at all, I think. It's something you have to listen to, in order to fully appreciate it, because it won't pop out at most people... but not jarring. I'm pretty sensitive to first impressions and I would call it a sort of subdued. It's something that might fade into the background (if you blink you'll miss it). But I think that makes it all the better, for when you finally discover that what you're listening to is really great (I like things that have a sort of subtlety about how great they are). Thanks for the rec. I think I'll look around for more of this.
As for text links, I was being slightly obsessive compulsive. :) I just kinda wished Vox had an easier way to make a text version (or at least one line versions) of audio inserts (perhaps an even smaller version without the cover art or a way to insert a 'listen' button), without having to do it by 'hand'.
Posted by: maaya | 08/24/2006 at 09:45 AM
Well, I suppose jarring to people like my mother, who just flinched when I tried to play her "Academy Award" and "Bra"--if you're expecting something nice and melodic, you might not get what you're looking for (most of the time). :) Granted, they're not all like that--maybe I picked the wrong songs to introduce her to them. Glad you liked it, though! I'm just disappointed because I'll never get to see them in concert, and there really is nothing like the energy of a live performance, especially with energy like this.
And yeah, I understand. I guess the cover art isn't such a big deal if it's only one song you're posting, but once you get more than one in there it really throws everything off. Maybe it would have looked neater if I hadn't tried to stagger them, which actually was done with the intent of being orderly. Go figure. :)
Posted by: goldaline | 08/24/2006 at 10:46 AM
I'm also having a bit of a time trying to figure out nice looking layout options with the limited control we have over it. Keep in mind we can all write to their little feedback section and request things like "Insert text link to... [Media]"
If people are looking for albums I suppose they could find them without much trouble, but The Dismemberment Plan Gets Rich is infuriating me since iTunes stopped installing itself on 64-bit Windows a few releases ago so I can't listen to the song even if I download it with my account on someone else's computer. That's also preventing me from pre-ordering the new Bob Dylan album, but I may do that just for the chance to pre-order tickets to his next tour even if I can't listen to the music.
In any case, good shares! I queued up your recommended tracks and I'm enjoying the listen so far. I pushed Girl'O'Clock to the front of the queue seeing that it got a paranthetical, and this song is an "oh man" song indeed. I've been in faux-solitary for going on ten days now, and I'm clawing at the walls.
Posted by: BooDoo | 08/24/2006 at 02:20 PM
Okay, how the heck do you get the pics to show up on the audio links? My head hurts and I'm too lazy to figure it out myself. ;_;
Posted by: navi | 08/24/2006 at 08:46 PM
The pics show up if you attach a picture to your music in it's ID3v2
'tag'. I'm not sure how you would do it in something like iTunes, or
whatnot, but I tag all my music with Mp3tag
and they have an extended tag option for saving cover art. Conversely, in
Windows Media Player if you right click and go to it's 'Advanced Tag
Editor', you can also attach a picture there through the Picture tab. I usually just steal
cover art off of amazon or something. =/ (I'm sure there's an easier way to do this automatically...)
Posted by: maaya | 08/24/2006 at 09:12 PM
Boodoo: You can buy the songs on a friend's computer, then have itunes burn them to a CD, then you can just rip the songs off the CD, easy peasy.
Posted by: cbjetblack | 08/24/2006 at 09:27 PM
Yeah, I'm going to resort to the CD burning solution. I'm spoiled because Hymn used to unlock your own songs, but I guess Amanda's computer had iTunes 6.0 on it when I logged on, so now Hymn will never work for me again. :(
Posted by: BooDoo | 08/24/2006 at 09:32 PM