Good Things Week: Music!

I'm trying to focus on things that are good, happy, positive, loveable, totally not-melancholy. So this week is All Good Things week. Except "all good things" must end, they say, so it's just plain "good things" week.

First up: Music!

I was talking recently about how I haven't had a song stick this summer, nothing to constitute The Song of Summer 2006. That's okay by me, kind of, because the official songs of summer tend to be kind of craptastic. ("My Lumps," did you say?) But that's okay, because I've been listening to a lot of superfantastico old stuff. Rock it!

Most of the summer, I've been playing Uncle Tupelo's "No Depression" album on endless repeat. I'm blown away by that album. It's so rock and so well written and so old-soul, and knowing that it was written by some bored, sweaty kids in southern Illinois who had nothing much else to look forward to...mmm. So good I want to buy copies for everybody I can think of who might not have heard it and leave it silently on their doorsteps in the middle of the night. Maybe I will. I could probably qualify for SuperSaver shipping.

But what else?
I stopped by G&Bs and picked up some records on my last trip through Decatur. I went expecting to pick up one thing, and left with three other things, and all of them were kind of "what the hell, take a chance" albums. And I LOVE them.

The Animals, "Animal Tracks"
I always like the Animals--except for "House of the Rising Sun," which makes my brain hurt--but I'd never even heard of this album. Which is a shame, because it is scrumptious. Mostly covers, and kind of all over the place; the first track reminds me of Scotty and the Ligonnaires, then it goes awesome all over Ray Charles's Hallelujah I love Her So, and gets kind of Fountains of Wayne by track 7. It's very joyful and soulful and fun.

The Shirelles, "The 21 Greatest Hits"
The other Shirelles Greatest Hits album at G&Bs only had 11 hits; so I figure this one must be extra hitty. I don't think I'd enjoy this one nearly as much if I hadn't read Amelier's copy of the awesome women-in-rock book "She's a Rebel." They're so young and lovelorn! So harmonic! So being used by white guys to propogate a manufactured image!

The Deathray Davies, "The Day of the Ray"
I don't know why I never bought their albums before, considering how much I love some of the bands they've played with. Yeah, Violents, I'm looking at you. And the Old 97s. Probably because I'm an idiot, because this album is the bee's knees.

Add to these three gems the CDs I got on the cheap at Amoeba, and I'm having a swell musical summer. Speaking of the Amoeba CDs, S-to-the-A...

There's this weird little woman who lives in the building in my backyard. I don't know if she has a job, and she doesn't seem to have a car. She's maybe in her fifties and is small and kind of very plain-spun, sort of like Carrie from the movie "Carrie" would be if she hadn't combusted before she reached middle age. She does not smile. She does, however, take a chair out into the yard, position it directly across from my front door, and read books. All the time. She never reclines, or slumps around in her chair, or tosses a casual "hey-how-ya-doing" when somebody comes out of the building. She'll just sit there straight up and down with her book in her lap, nad if you come out she might look up at you without changing expression at all, as if you might be a squirrel that she noticed in the yard. Then she goes back to reading.

Anyway. Yesterday I saw her go out of her building and around to my yard with a book. I was cleaning and had just put on the Violent Femmes album I bought out in S.F. I forgot how much cussin' there is on that album! The windows are open, and the VF are tossing out "motherfucking" this and "fuck" that. When the album finished I left my house, and she wasn't sitting by the yard anymore. Now I'm kind of worried that the weird gnome lady in the apartment building in my backyard thinks I'm a satanist or something.

I was going to write a bit about the GOOD THING that is live music, and how I finally saw some at the Decatur Celebration, and how there are fun shows coming up, but it's late and I'm hungry, and I'm going to go home now. So tell me instead:
What are YOU listening to?