I Still Do - The Cranberries

One of the only bands of the 90s era that I got into.  This is one of my favorites of theirs.  A sublime song.  They have a lot of really good ones.  Breathy high female vocals will get me every time.

Warp Drive

I love stuff like this:

How NASA might build its very first warp drive

The comments are even wilder than the article.

2 possible Christmas sing-a-long gigs coming up

The departmental Christmas party and Ru-Jun's day care room (which I did last year).  For this I don't memorize lyrics.  I have them printed in a binder (and I want to make a few extra copies of the binder for the participants to use).
Here is my song list so far:
Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Frosty the Snowman
I Saw Three Ships
Holly Jolly Christmas
Blue Christmas
We Wish You a Merry Christmas
Jingle Bells
The 12 Days of Christmas
Silent Night
Deck the Halls
Rudolph, the Red Nose Reindeer
Silver and Gold
Silver Bells
Good King Wenceslas
Up on the Rooftop
Jolly Old Saint Nicholas

Save it For Later - The Beat (The English Beat)

From 1983. One of my first introductions to British alt pop.  I always loved this song.  It actually got some play on pop radio in the US (or else I would have missed it until college).  These guys were one of the rulers of college radio in the 80s.  And a great example (although not so much in this song) of ska merging with rock.
The jangling guitar riff and the raspy vocal.  Perfect.

Behind the Wheel - Depeche Mode

Another one of my favorites of theirs.  The video really got my attention.  The atmospherics and aesthetics.  Minimal.  Retro. Timeless in a lot of ways.

Stripped - Depeche Mode

[link] Listened to the 1986 album Black Celebration a lot during my early grad school years.  A great soundtrack to the isolation I was experiencing at the time.  This song is definitely the highlight.  It does a great job of building intensity and then sort of disassembles nicely at the end as well. Totally abstract. Total atmosphere.  Two keys to my personal aesthetics.

Girl Can't Help It - Journey

The musunderstanding and underappreciation of Journey, mostly by non-musicians, has led to them being widely considered merely an historical cliche. This song, from 1986, is one of the many examples of why they are great. Every part of the song is a hook, and the end part introduces yet another hook on top of it all. Steve Perry's towering vocals are masterful throughout, and perfectly complemented by the harmonies. These guys can play their instruments with the best in the business and the production, which takes hard rock and transforms it into accessible pop, is unparalleled.

We Ride Tonight - The Sherbs

[link] Rock radio in the late 70s and early 80s was really diverse.  A lot of really small-following bands had hits and got played.  A lot of these bands were great.  The Sherbs were one of these.

Talking in Your Sleep - The Romantics

From 1983. My first concert was these guys with Red Rider in 1984. I really like their tight, rhythm section driven pop/rock formula. This song has aged well.

Two current things

A. Dust Bowl - I like it a lot.  (I like most of the Ken Burns stuff, even though there are lots of cliches about his style by now).  I learned So Long It's Been Good to Know Yuh, last night.  Woody Guthrie was a really interesting guy.

B. PSY - Gangnam Style; like it, especially the original video.  Good beat; musically it's OK.  It seems fresh.  And it's about a very specific part of Seoul, which is interesting.  There are places in Taipei that something like this could happen with.  Extreme local culture, especially from East Asia, fascinates me...

Ana Ng - They Might Be Giants

From 1988.  I haven't fully embraced TMBG.  Their raw brilliance and genius, in all its prolific display, is undeniable.  Their music is sort of a world unto itself.  A world their devotees would seem to be able to lose themselves in.  One of the former members of Megachild knew all their music and gave me mp3s of most of it.  I've been sort of afraid to go through all of it, actually.  Kind of like how I fear getting into chess.  In order to truly get into it, one must really study it.  Or else it's not doing it right.  Or really unsatisfactory.  Or both.  Or something.

There's Only One Way to Rock - Sammy Hagar

[link] Sammy Hagar had some decent, if mindless (like the genre), in his solo career.  Don't hear much revisitation of this era of rock too much these days.  But it had lots of good moments.  Some of it ages pretty good.

ZZ Top - My Head's In Mississippi

It's hard not to like Zztop.  They're originals, have been doing it for a long time, and represent a direct line to a blues sound that gave birth to and has always underlain rock.  All of this ameliorates the Southern, back country patriarchal, misogynistic urges that their raw sound is also steeped in.
This song is one of their later hits and one of my favorites, although they do tend to repeat themselves in songwriting, playing, production, soloing, etc.

Alsatian Cousin - Morrissey

One of my favorites.  Very simple construction.  Really like what they did with it live.  This song cuts and drives.  Acid in a love=hate wound.

This Charming Man - The Smiths

Really one of the best pop songs of the 80s.  I could listen to Marr's guitar all day.  And for some reason, Morrissey's lilt never wears out on me either.

Red River Valley

My cover of the classic cowboy and folk song.  You can also see here why I'm not able to make a lot of recordings these days.

Getting Jiggy With It - Will Smith

[link] These were probably more or less throw away songs for Smith, but I like this one, Miami as well. I like him on screen as well. Smart, funny, just kind of the whole package.

I Can't Find My Baby - Lisa Stansfield

From 1989.  Another one of those pop songs that I have a thing for. 

Evolution in Pokemon

is actually metamphosis.  Ru-Jun is really really really into Pokemon for a while.  Which is cool; Shian-Ren and I liked to watch the early episodes when we were in grad school.  I'm not worried about the show's use of the term evolution right now.  Ru-Jun will learn the real meaning of evolution soon enough.  Right now we're having a lot of fun with Pokemon.

I'll Drink To You - Duke Jupiter

[link] Were big locally in Rochester in the 80s.  Fun song.  Chorus is a great hook. Co-genric with Huey Lewis, I would say.

King For A Day - Planet P Project

From 1983.  I really liked this song, which briefly got airplay on album rock stations.  It's all about the chord progression (gets quite repetitive though).

Don't Pay the Ferryman - Chris De Burgh

From 1983. This was played incessantly on rock (and maybe pop) radio. My friend Scott was obsessed with the song. Seems to have aged OK, not great.

Her Head's Revolving - The Three O'Clock

[link] One of my all time favorite bands.  No one sounded quite like them.  The high male vocal, the instrumentation, the songwriting.  Hooky and bright.  Takes me away to around 1990.  Another one of the bands my friend Dave K in Durham (and later in Madison) introduced me to.
This song has power.  Hard guitar work.  Interlaced keyboards.  Nice breaks.

Neal and Jack and Me - King Crimson

[link] In the late 80s, early 90s I was somewhat into the album Beat by King Crimson. Late stuff from them. I never really got around to investigating their earlier, apparently more influential material.

New established songs

Please Come To Boston
A Girl Like Jesus
Stickleback
Blue-footed Booby Blues

What to do with my music

If not for dad and husband responsibilities, I would have been out with my uke this past year singing folk songs with the OWS people.  In the future I'll have some more time.  I think I'm going to have to get out and start singing for the Earth.  Might be just me in a lawn chair along the state highway somewhere with a sign and my banjo.  But it's gotta be done.

Banjo set so far

Camptown Races
Country Roads
Walking the Floor Over You
On the Road Again
Frankie and Johnnie

Jolson

Weirdly fascinating. And the blackface thing. Apalling but has a huge long history of nuance, appropriation and counter-appopriation. Culture is complex.

Mandinka - Sinead O'Connor

[link] This whole album was a huge breath of fresh air in alternative rock when it came out in 1987-1988. Her voice, the rhythm tracks, the production on these songs were just amazing. Big influence on me in my college years, when I was starting to write songs.