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The voice at your window means you are young

I nicked this one from

xterminal:

List 10 musical artists that you like. (Do this before reading the other questions.)

Only ten? All right, let's arbitrarily narrow the field . . .

1. My Favorite
2. PJ Harvey
3. The Dresden Dolls
4. Tom Waits
5. Jill Tracy
6. Lal Waterson
7. Kaizers Orchestra
8. Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer
9. Phil Ochs
10. The Klezmatics

(And now, the questions.)

What was the first song you ever heard by 6? "The Scarecrow," although I heard it performed by June Tabor. The first song I heard actually sung by Lal Waterson was "Her White Gown." Thanks to

nineweaving for both.

What is your favorite album of 8? Drum Hat Buddha, I think. It's the first album of theirs that I heard, and it may contain the highest percentage of songs I really love: "Ordinary Town," "Tillman County," "Disappearing Man," "236-6132," "I Go Like the Raven," "Merlin's Lament." If I was afraid to break or bleed / I would find someone much easier to need . . .

What is your favorite lyric that 5 has sung? From "Extraordinary" (found on both Quintessentially Unreal and Diabolical Streak): You're open to interpretation / Like the trapdoor underneath your tousled throne / And I'm engaged, and I'm enraged, and I'm enchanted / With this little bit of magic I've been shown . . .

How many times have you seen 4 live? Never. Does spotting a cameo in The Fisher King count for anything?

What's your favorite song of 7? Er . . . can I make this one multiple-choice? All from Ompa Til Du Dør: either "Kontroll På Kontinentet," "Død Manns Tango," "Dekk Bord," or "Mr. Kaizer, Hans Constanze Og Meg." Not that I dislike the rest of the album, or even what I've heard of Maestro and Evig Pint, but these are the four that most consistently get stuck in my head.

What is a good memory you have considering the music of 10? The first summer I discovered their music, between college and graduate school, when

strange_selkie and I bounced Yiddish translations back and forth between us.

Is there a song of 3 that makes you sad? "Boston." I've heard it performed live twice and I own two or three different bootlegs, and it always makes me choke up at the last verse: There is nothing in this world that we can count on / Even that we will wake up is an assumption / But I know for a fact that I loved someone / And for about a year we lived in Boston . . .

What is your favorite lyric that 2 has sung? All the lyrics for "To Bring You My Love." This was the first PJ Harvey I ever heard, and it transfixed me. The guitar line as patient and repetitive and relentless as though it's been walking with her forever, out of some vast distance, across some infinite plain; her voice as tired, ground down to obsession and electric distortion by all the miles and millennia, become as inhuman and unarguable, a fury of love. And I've traveled over dry earth and floods / Hell and high water to bring you my love / Climbed over mountains, traveled the sea / Cast down off Heaven, cast down on my knees / I've lain with the Devil, cursed God above / Forsaken Heaven to bring you my love . . . I played it over and over for days.

What is your favorite song by 9? To be honest? Probably "Love Me, I'm A Liberal" (which I heard first on In Concert) or "I Ain't A-Marchin' Anymore" (which I heard first on There and Now: Live in Vancouver). I'm boring.

How did you get into 3? I heard them live at the 2002 Ig Nobel Awards Ceremony and went home with "Good Day" on repeat in my head. I took out the trash today, and I'm on fire . . .

What was the first song you heard by 1? "Burning Hearts" (The Happiest Days of Our Lives). Courtesy of

lesser_celery, who pointed me in their direction in early 2004. We met first in cafés, and later in ruins . . .

What is your favorite song by 4? Well, that's an unanswerable question . . . Let's say either "Tango Till They're Sore" (Rain Dogs), "Innocent When You Dream" (Frank's Wild Years), or "Another Man's Vine" (Blood Money).

How many time have you seen 9 live? Given the year in which I was born, I don't think there's any way short of time travel I could ever have seen Phil Ochs live.

What is a good memory you have concerning 2? Sitting on the floor in Egbert's new house, with people talking Classics all around me, listening to "To Bring You My Love" for the first time.

Is there a song of 8 that makes you sad? Not exactly sad, but I find "Lancelot" (When I Go) cynical and bittersweet and fragile, and it comes to almost the same thing in the end. I ain't no untarnished Galahad / Down from Arcadia like a dream in your head / But, gentle lady, lend me the true heart I never had / And I'll bring you roses and bread / And we'll fashion gold out of lead / With all the illusions we shed . . .

What is your favorite song of 1? I suspect it's "Le Monster" (The Happiest Days of Our Lives), but there's decent competition from "17 Berlin" (Love at Absolute Zero) and "Cult Hero, Come Home" (Double Agent 2000). Who could dislike a song that contains a cameo appearance by the ghost of Sid Vicious?

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. . . and erev erev Pesach in Northampton there's Hassidic Reggae . . . that's right, Matisyahu . . . if anybody is brave enough to give it a try and is in the area that night, let me know :)

Matisyahu is, in fact, an excellent musician and a lot of fun to see in concert. I would recommend going to all and sundry.

Don't suppose you'd be in the area and interested in joining?

Not in the area, sadly. I would love to see him again, though.

I have only ever heard "King Without A Crown," which I do like. (I was driving one afternoon with my brotherand we were listening idly to this piece of reggae that had come on—I think this was before Matisyahu was quite as famous as he is now—and I suddenly realized that several Hebrew words had just gone past and another was coming up. I was very impressed. I hadn't realized that Chasidic reggae was even a genre.) Other pieces of his that you'd recommend?

Ah, I am a fan primarily because of how much I enjoyed the single concert I went to. Sadly, I am poor, and I don't own the second CD, Live at Stubbs. (The second CD is far better than the first CD, Shake the Dust, if the two versions of "King Without A Crown" are anything to go by. Presumably the third CD, Youth, is comparable to the second.)

"King Without A Crown" from Live at Stubbs is the only specific song I know well enough to recommend, unfortunately. It is available at amazon.com for free, though. *pimps*

"King Without A Crown" from Live at Stubbs is the only specific song I know well enough to recommend, unfortunately.

I think that's the version I have on my computer: at least, whatever I've got has crowd noises, so it's live from somewhere.

But thanks!

OK, that's just far too complex a quiz for me to even ATTEMPT.

But cool.

What is your favorite song by 4? Well, that's an unanswerable question . . . Let's say either "Tango Till They're Sore" (Rain Dogs), "Innocent When You Dream" (Frank's Wild Years), or "Another Man's Vine" (Blood Money).

What, no "Eggs and Saudage (in a Cadillac with Susan Michaelson)"?

I still use that "the coffee wasn't strong enough to defend itself" punchline in conversation every chance I get. heh.

No, but I am very fond of "The Piano Has Been Drinking."

. . . not me.

I have to try out some of these other artists you list. I love the lyrics you posted here, have to jot them down with the band name so I can remember. And yeah, I haven't been able to get "Good Day" out of my head, to the point it's making me crazy. I'd seen Brokeback Mountain with a friend over the weekend, and woke up that night at 1 a.m. with the brutal scene of ... wait, did you see it? I won't say ... with a brutal scene repeating itself over and over in my mind, and at the same time "Good Day" playing in my head. I didn't fall back to sleep until after five. And I still woke up with "Good Day" in my head.

I have to try out some of these other artists you list. I love the lyrics you posted here, have to jot them down with the band name so I can remember.

Which ones haven't you heard? I can try to make recommendations.

And I still woke up with "Good Day" in my head.

I have not yet seen Brokeback Mountain, but I can appreciate your dilemma. At least you can play the CD to exorcise it. I had to wait almost a year before The Dresden Dolls actually came out!

The only two I have are PJ Harvey and (now) The Dresden Dolls. I've heard Tom Waits and have thought of asking you for a recommendation before because I don't know enough to begin to choose. I don't think I've even heard of the others. I like those Jill Tracy lyrics you posted and the Dave Carter, Tracy Grammer lyric. But if you could recommend one out of all the above, which would you offer?

Ay-yi-yi. Let's hear it for the unanswerable question.

Tom Waits is magnificent. His first album was released in 1973 and his most recent (so far as I know) in 2004, so there's an immense amount of material from which to pick and try and see what you like. I only own three or four of his albums, of which Rain Dogs (1985) and Blood Money (2002) are my favorites right now. I was introduced to him by the film Smoke, which uses "Innocent When You Dream (Barroom Version)" as its credit music, and

lesser_celery sent me Rain Dogs sometime last year. He sounds . . . like himself, I suppose. The adjective "gravelly" is inadequate to describe his voice, which sometimes sounds like forty miles of bad road and sometimes like a falling-down-drunk Muppet and sometimes like a lullaby growl. His songs are murder ballads and American dreams and nightmares, blues and carnivals and seedy myths, and silent afternoons spent watching the sun set over the projects and the trains rattle by. And sometimes he's hilarious. I love his lyrics. I'm not sure I'd have been able to pick a favorite excerpt if he'd come up for that question. He has to be heard.

Jill Tracy has two albums so far, Quintessentially Unreal (1995) and Diabolical Streak (1999). The first of these is simply her on the piano and her voice, which is hushed and cigarette-smoky and full of secrets, like a femme fatale turned parlor magician; the second adds the accompaniment of the Malcontent Orchestra. Her songs are the soundtrack to Edward Gorey—shadowy and precise, full of inexplicable obsessions and strange characters and little intricate touches, and most of them are love songs, if you allow for a loose definition of "love." Very turn-of-the-century, gaslights and seances and slyly amused morbidity. I can't even remember how I found her in the first place, but she's provided epigraphs and inspiration for several stories now, and I'm only sorry I'm never on the West Coast: I don't think she ever performs on this edge of the continent. I like her a lot. I think you might, too.

Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer are no longer extant: the summer that I discovered them, he died of a heart attack. She still performs solo, however, and they left behind three incredible albums, When I Go (1998), Tanglewood Tree (2000), and Drum Hat Buddha (2001). They're mythic. I'm not sure there's another word. Their music is folk in the tradition of Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, but it's grounded intimately in folklore and mythology, American and everything in the kitchen sink. Arthuriana and the Midwest. Jesus and Tibetan raven goddesses dancing on piled skulls. Demon lovers and Native American prayers. Their lyrics sometimes fall over themselves with allusions and images and tips of the hat to songwriters to have come before, but it all holds together through some impossible trick of gravity, and they are the only people I've ever heard successfully use Sumerian in a folksong ("The Mountain"). His death both saddens and annoys me: I can't imagine but that they would have changed the landscape of folk music in this century.

I have to say, I'm not sure if Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer would be to your tastes, but I'm inclined to try you out on them for the sheer damn weird-and-wonderfulness of their music. If there aren't clips available at their website, let me know and I'll send you a few songs. And if they're not, there's always Jill Tracy and Tom Waits.

Well, and there is Flower of Avalon, which I am incapable of not seeing as their fourth album. And if you count that, I also think it's their best. :)

(I wandered in from fleurdelis28's journal)

(Hey.)

I wasn't counting Flower of Avalon, if only because it contains no Dave Carter vocals; although I believe the songwriting is nearly all his, so you have a point. But I do love most of its songs: "Shadows of Evangeline," "Hard to Make It," "Hey Ho," "Mother I Climbed," "Preston Miller," "Winter When He Goes," "Phantom Doll," and the ones I don't love, I certainly don't dislike.

Have you heard "The Verdant Mile"? That one's hers, so I've always been curious about it.

And unrelatedly, what on earth is your icon? It's a great image.

Yeah - the only non-Carter song on there is Laughlin Boy. Which is the one real misstep of the album, to my mind. (Actually, I'm not nearly as fond of Phantom Doll as you, but it's grown on me over time). It was, I think, intended to be heard as the closest thing we'd ever get to what would have been the fourth album. Also, Dave Carter had apparently said that he eventually did want Tracy Grammer to take over the lead vocals, and so it's arguable that all that was really missing was his backing vocals. Though my one real sorrow about the album, aside from the whole "Oh God, there's never going to be any more" sorrow, is that there's none of the depth of harmony that appears on the three proper DC&TG albums - nothing like "Kate and the Ghost of Lost Love," "Tanglewood Tree," or "Disappearing Man."

Verdant Mile is quite good - the title song is heartbreaking, if perhaps a hair clever (It's aggressively meta-textual). The remainder is cover songs, but they're interesting cover songs. I originally thought it was only worth it for two tracks, but I've now come to the conclusion that almost everything on it is very good and very worth listening to.

My icon is a picture of a race called Boggans from the roleplaying game Changeling: The Dreaming.

I liked "Phantom Doll" right from the beginning: it was so much unlike the Carter-and-Grammer sound I was used to, with its spooky jazz turns; a sort of modern danse macabre. "Mother I Climbed" and "Winter When He Goes" were the ones I took a little while to warm up to.

there's none of the depth of harmony that appears on the three proper DC&TG albums - nothing like "Kate and the Ghost of Lost Love," "Tanglewood Tree," or "Disappearing Man."

I love the overlapping vocals in "Kate and the Ghost of Lost Love" and "Tanglewood Tree." I've never been able to pick out all of the lyrics on "Tanglewood Tree" for that reason, of course, but I don't mind. It's a wonderful mesh of images and sound.

Verdant Mile is quite good - the title song is heartbreaking, if perhaps a hair clever (It's aggressively meta-textual).

I've seen the lyrics; that was one of the reasons I wanted to know whether it worked or not. Cool. I shall attempt once again to find a record store that sells the album . . .

My icon is a picture of a race called Boggans from the roleplaying game Changeling: The Dreaming.

Never heard of them, but: awesome eyebrows.

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