Sunday Selector: NOT brought to you by Genius

I've not used Genius before - I hate the whole iTunes recommending stuff it thinks you ought to buy. But, one of my favourite bloggers uses it every Friday to generate a random playlist, and I thought that it might be a fun thing to try, to compare what Genius thinks about my record collection as opposed to what I'm listening to. Well, I'm trying to but it has to "gather information" about my library and has been doing so for several hours now. Gah!

Right, we're good to go. Genius, do your thing! Starting song: Stuck on Repeat, Little Boots. Oh, it turns out that Genius can't handle this song. Apparently it is limited to certain songs about which it can get information. How crap is that? I wouldn't mind, but I bought it from iTunes - if I bought it from another source, I could understand it, but I didn't. GAH.

So, anyway, this is suspended until I can actually get it to work. Also, a while ago I managed to wipe an awful lot of my iTunes library, accidentally, from my external hard drive. It finally showed up (I don't understand how, but there you go), and I am now painstakingly adding it back in. It means I cannot, alas, use the stupid old iTunes. In VERY BAD MOOD. That's also probably because TOH has gone away for five days, it's cold in the house, and I am working on what is supposed to be a day off.

Saturday Selector: Bopping Away Edition

This is not going to be a random rules selection, but the ten songs that I am bopping away to the most at the mo. Tomorrow I'm going to do a genius version to see what iTunes comes up with based on the same first song...

1) Stuck on Repeat by Little Boots.
2) London Girl by The Invisible (youtube vid here - honestly, check it out, this song is ridiculous)
3) Lovesick by Friendly Fires (plus basically that whole album).
4) William's Blood by Grace Jones (love the aeroplane remix too).
5) Cut By The Brakes by Grand National.
6) Get Fresh by Kid Sister. I really don't want to like this, but every time it comes on I love it.
7) Squeeze Me by Kraak & Smaak.
8) Get Down by Nas.
9) Two Doors Down by Mystery Jets (I know, I know, but still).
10) Magnets by Digitalism.

Desperation

There was an article in the NY Times about women in my neighbourhood and the huge barriers they face in controlling their reproductive health and how they attempt to access abortion, often resorting to self-induced methods that seriously endanger their health. It is sickening to think that communities like in my neighbourhood - social stigma around abortion, lack of resources and access to healthcare - are the kinds targeted by Crisis Pregnancy Centers and the like. I really recommend reading the article, and the thoughtful and incisive letters the newspaper published in response.

A Touch of Evil

Yesterday, Dick Cheney appeared on The News Hour on PBS to talk about his legacy.

I thought it would make me furious, livid, any synonym for irate you can conceive. I really wasn't sure I'd make it through it all. I listened to it via podcast today. I was hoping it would fire me up for my squash match. Yet it just made me want to cry. It was revolting. The nadir for me, at least, was the part in which he justified the torture, as defined by Susan Crawford, the official in charge of prosecutions at Guantánamo, in part because all the individual techniques were authorised. He couldn't know exactly how they were all being implemented, but they were authorised, so he's in the clear. Yes, they were, by a legally faulty and morally bankrupt memorandum that the Office of Legal Counsel wrote to justify torture. A memorandum that featured so many errors the subsequent head of OLC had to revoke it, something that almost never happens to OLC memos.

It didn't make me angry, just sick to my stomach.

Sunday Selector

This is what I'm now going to call my random rules posts. Those observant readers will gather that I plan to do this on Sundays, particularly when I am at work. Because I hate being at work on Sundays. But the same thing applies: ten songs at random from the Pod of i.

What this list cannot feature are the new bands with whom I am obsessed. I have started using myspace again because I can access these bands before the stuff is released, and it is fantastically useful. Not least because I read columsn raving about Lady Gaga and listened and didn't like it, whereas am still utterly obsessed after many listens to Little Boots (who I am going to see on Feb 6 which makes me very happy), The Invisible (how could I not love London Girl?) and Grand National (I really have been unable to stop listening and will be doing some purchasing tonight), plus an honourable mention to La Roux, whose site is slightly annoying but I like the tunes.

1. The Party - Justice. Not my favourite from the album, and the vocals really do remind me of a cross between Avenue D and Hustler by Simian Mobile Disco (also touring, cannot wait to see them in April). But I like the bassline when it gets started...
2. The Pills Won't Help You Know - The Chemical Brothers. Hmm, I'm not too keen on this or, indeed, this whole album. I have quite a few friends who really got into it, and loved it live, but I'm just not sure about it. Nothing they do can ever, for me, compete with Life is Sweet, which is one of my favourite songs ever, and the whole first and second albums, really. But it's still pretty good, and some of the songs from the previous album wormed their way into my heads so that I do really like them.
3. 21st Century Life - Sam Sparro. This was from an album from 2008 that I really did enjoy, seeing as it sort of covered the same territory as Multiply by Jamie Lidell and Jim was disappointing in its straight-up soul (even though I did quite like it). Nothing on the Sam Sparro stood up to the glories of Black and Gold, but it is definitely enjoyable.
   
4. Public Enemy - A Tribe Called Quest. This is from the first album, which is the one I've probably listened to the least. My big loves are Midnight Marauders and The Low-End Theory. But the Tribe is the Tribe, and I can basically listen to Q-Tip rap anything, such is my love for him. When people claim Lil Wayne is the greatest rapper alive it really does astound me when you have smarter, funnier and better ones in abundance.
5. The Update - The Beastie Boys. I really still like Ill Communication, although the first half really is superior to the second. Apparently they're releasing a special twentieth anniversary edition of Paul's Boutique, which means that it's a scarily long time that they've been making music. I think they really have lost it, but they produced a succession of albums - Paul's Boutique, Ill Communication and Hello, Nasty - that I love. Particularly once they dropped the homophobia and the general misogyny from the early stuff, although Girls is a genius song. Can't help but stomp around to it.
6. Tonight - Richard Hawley. I love, love, love this song. Cole's Corner, the album it's from, is utterly gorgeous from start to end, but this is one of three songs (the others being Coles Corner and The Ocean) that are truly special. The longing, misery and melancholy resonate throughout these songs and elevate them above anything else he's done. The hairs on my neck stand up every time I hear the guitar on this.
   
7. Bryn - Vampire Weekend. This album was so highly rated last year, and I do like it - it's good to play when you have people over, and I've heard it most at other people's houses. But I find I rarely listen to it on my own, which I think tells me something about how much I really like it.
8. Hometown Waltz - Rufus Wainwright. I love Rufus so, and this album, Want Two, is my favourite of his - the range of the music, and the sheer wondrousness of The Art Teacher and The Gay Messiah make it for me. His lyrics make me laugh and somehow infuse situations with humour, longing and wistfulness as well as sharp and harsh critiques, like this of Ontario.
   
9. Cigarettes and Coffee - Otis Redding. Who on earth doesn't love Otis? Seriously? The man is a genius, and this is glorious, like basically everything he ever did. The production is gorgeous, the emotion in his voice that isn't overwrought but just pitched right... sigh.
10. Jupiter (The Planet Suite) - Holst. During the last year of law school I started listening to classic music far more, as I found I am much more productive with that than pop music, and it was also a change from the electronic music (and MC Solaar) that I have been using to work to since I was 18. This is a result of that... Not my favourite at all, but not too intrusive.