The intro to this series has been pushed off the page, so a brief mention might be in order. I’m writing about five random songs from my collection on a daily-ish basis, and giving everybody a link to listen along. Here’s the intro to the series, and here’s the link to today’s songs.

Prefuse 73, “Tel Aviv’s Gravel Toothbrush”

Prefuse 73 is one of the names that Scott Herren records under, mixing up hip-hop influences with electronic music. He’s at his best when you’ve got stuttering bits and pieces of recognizable hip-hop running through, but broken up in strange ways. When he wanders too far from that into pure electronic stuff, he gets less interesting to me. This is a short piece from Extinguished, which is outtakes from his excellent One Word Extinguisher album. On the whole, you can see why he left this material off the main album, so this record is for completists only. Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives and One Word Extinguisher remain the pick of the litter for him.

I hope people are listening to all of the songs that I’m posting here, including the ones that I’m suggesting are not for me. They might be for you! They might suck! Only one way to find out. Speaking of, here’s today’s playlist. Listen to it all! Or don’t. I’m not your boss.

Richard Lloyd, “Connection”

Richard Lloyd was part of Television, who made one of the all-time great punk albums, Marquee Moon, but I haven’t really paid any attention to any of his solo career. This song comes from an outstanding compilation, Ork Records: New York, New York, which Numero Group recently reissued. It’s a document of the very early New York punk scene, and I cannot recommend it highly enough if you have an interest in that whole era.

Writing these up is a little strange. In the end, it’s a way for me to tour through my music, remember assorted bands, and write down some stories for myself. It all feels pretty self-indulgent, but then again, I’m not really inconveniencing anybody. I guess I’m having fun, so that’s good enough. Links to the music? Why of course!

Skeletonwitch, “My Skin Of Deceit”

Let me just say, “Skeletonwitch” seems like the kind of name somebody would cook up just to mock metal. And the cover art! Are there be-antlered undead things screaming? YOU KNOW THERE ARE! It all seems like a parody act. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell with metal, really.

I’ve updated the blogging software on this thing, and I’m even poking around with new themes. Look at me, I’m…well, not professional exactly. Wasting my time? Yeah, let’s go with that. As is now traditional here at Five Songs Inc., you can listen along with me, if that’s something you’re into. Great set of songs this time around!

NoMeansNo, “Machine”

NoMeansNo started as a hardcore band, but unlike most of their peers, hung around for a long time and managed to evolve as they went along. Songs started stretching out more, some jazz started creeping in, and more than a little overt artiness. They were driven by the rhythm section, brothers Rob and John Wright, who were relentlessly inventive. NoMeansNo made my second favorite hardcore album ever, Wrong (two Wrights made a Wrong!), and continued with a string of strong albums including the source of this song, Why Do They Call Me Mr. Happy. I’m not sure how much people know them outside of folks living on the west coast during the late 80s/early 90s, but it’s a shame, they should have a higher profile.

I’ll often leave shuffle running for a little while after doing one of these things, and sometimes I get these fantastic runs of songs and artists that would make for some great writeups. I have a lot to say about Operation Ivy! But, alas, that would be cheating. The way I’m doing things is that I decide I’m going to write about songs, and then start up the shuffle machine to see what I get from that moment forward. No retroactive choosing of shuffle runs for me! Luckily, there’s almost always something worth talking about. Listen along with me, won’t you?

It has been pointed out that I should probably have comments enabled on this blog. I’ll see what I can do about turning those on, although fiddling around with Ghost kind of makes me want to turn myself into a ghost. In the meantime, we soldier on! As always, you can listen along here.

Ugly Duckling, “Pay or Quit”

Ugly Duckling is a bit of an odd band, a proud throwback rap group that tries to recall a percieved golden age, with the result that they seem really disconnected from other rap acts. This ends up giving them a bit of a sui generis feel, which is dumb for a band that is explicitly trying to reference and revive the past of their musical genre. Well, whatever. Expect lots of loops, trading the mic back and forth, word-play focused rhymes, and a total lack of profanity. When the formula works, it can be pretty lively, bouncy fun. When it drags, it drags painfully.

It’s my birthday! Hooray! Let’s listen to some music (you can listen along here)!

Spawn of Possession, “Spiritual Deception”

Metal, as a broad genre, is one that I’ve always been perpetually coming to grips with. Despite having embraced plenty of other extreme genres - noise, hardcore, lots of experimental music of all forms - I had always held metal at arms’ length. I certainly listened to a few carefully selected bands, but I never really explored things fully. I mostly looked at many of the ridiculous trappings and endless subgenres, and kind of gave it a miss.

Let’s get started! I assume everybody has read the intro, because I posted it right below, but briefly: I’m going to listen to the five random songs from my collection, link them as best I can, and write about whatever comes to mind while I’m listening. You can listen to a playlist of the songs on YouTube.

Kid Koala, “Page 165: The Date”

Aaaand we’re off to an inauspicious start. This is a little atmospheric piece, which is an accompaniment to a graphic novel, Nufonia Must Die. He’s a turntablist and electronic artist, mostly, and towards the playful end of the spectrum. There’s not much to talk about with this song withouth the graphics, so instead, I’ll just talk about how Kid Koala is one of these infuriating people who is a talented artist in multiple media. In lieu of linking to this song, which doesn’t make any sense, I’ll instead just bring your attention to another of his songs, “Nerdball”, from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome:

Since nobody is reading this blog, I don’t think anybody is going to care if I branch out beyond just the game design things I’ve been posting (which nobody reads). So, today, I’m going to start a daily-ish series that will, if nothing else, provide more things for nobody to read. I’m pumped!

ConsimWorld is a gaming community that I’ve been part of for a really long time, long enough to meet several good friends. One of those good friends has a folder where we just discuss things. A frequent topic is music, and a frequent game is to list the last five songs that shuffling your music collection produces. I usually participate in that, and usually try and provide links to the songs as well as some commentary on them. I think the commentary is often mundane, is probably of interest only to me, and likely isn’t well-written. So, what am I going to do? I’m going to hoist it into visibility, where more people can be exposed to it. In the theoretical case where people actually read this, of course.