For once in my life, I'm out of things to say. Except: there's been a new issue of Wowee Zowee, the Sordid Sentinels Edition, with a(n absurd) total of 50 tracks--the last 32 of which are b-sides, outtakes, and live tracks. Yeah, that makes this album less all-over-the-place.

1. 'Song Against Sex,' Neutral Milk Hotel
2. 'A Forest,' Okkervil River
3. 'Interlude,' MK Ultra
4. 'Paris 2004,' Peter Bjorn and John
5. 'Five Easy Places,' Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
6. 'Half a Canyon,' Pavement
7. 'Erroneous Escape Into Eric Eckles,' Of Montreal
8. 'Cold Brains,' Beck
9. 'Future & Folly,' Blitzen Trapper
10. 'Pearls on a String,' Ryan Adams

Oh, I'll also say this about the latest Ryan Adams album: "Pearls on a String" is one of the three or four really good songs on it (which of course is what we've come to expect, right?).

So my title really has to do with the 11th song (and I recognize, thus, the misnomer of "FRT," but you'll forgive me, since I originally posted this as an unordered list and didn't realize I had exceeded ten songs)--which, in fact, both thematizes and dramatizes my title.

1. 'Insistor,' Tapes 'n Tapes

2. 'Daughters Of The Soho Riots,' The National
3. 'The Official Ironmen Rally Song,' Guided by Voices
4. 'Halloweenhead,' Ryan Adams
5. 'The Past Is A Grotesque Animal,' Of Montreal
6. 'High And Dry,' Radiohead
7. 'Rainfall,' The Apples in Stereo
8. 'Protein and Poison,' Maritime
9. 'Window,' Doug Martsch
10. 'Time to Go,' John Vanderslice
11. 'You Were Right,' Built to Spill

Originally, I wanted to say I'm especially curious about this phenomenon. That is, on SongMeanings.net, we really see democracy at work in interpretation. After awhile, posters do flesh out all the references Martsch makes in "You Were Right." But of course, no one's really studying such a site for evidence of meaning, at least not in a meta-interpretive way. Surely, there are all kinds of reasons for ignoring such data, reasons it might be interesting to think about (e.g., most songs "interpreted" here aren't that difficult to understand, so that the acumen of the scholars who congregate here isn't quite, er, rarified, and hence, the discourse isn't all that sophisticated). But I'm not gonna do that.

Though I did overhear an extended conversation about Zeppelin today--and about "Rock and Roll" in particular--I have none on my iPod. Instead:

1. 'I Summon You,' Spoon
2. 'Unsuffer Me,' Lucinda Williams
3. 'April 8th,' Neutral Milk Hotel
4. 'Don't Forget Where U Came From,' Dead Prez
5. 'The World Stops Turning,' Ted Leo/Pharmacists
6. 'Motor Away,' Guided by Voices
7. '8 Million Stories,' A Tribe Called Quest
8. 'Crazy,' Willie Nelson
9. 'Winter Must Be Cold,' The Apples in Stereo
10. 'Back to Black,' Amy Winehouse

That's right: It's damn hot, but Penguins? Live in Texas? Yes indeed! Of course, that's the nominal, not the verbal use of "live." Or: live with a long i. If it's still not clear, see the link for song 5. But in any case, on this triple-digit-temperature day in Austin, I heard the following songs -- 3, 5, and 10 of which are quintessentially Texan.

1. 'Blue Chicago Moon,' Songs: Ohia
2. 'Black Swan,' Thom Yorke [See bonus below]
3. 'The Pilgrim: Chapter 33,' Kris Kristofferson
4. 'Twilight,' Elliott Smith
5. 'Penguins,' Lyle Lovett
6. 'Lipstick Vogue,' Elvis Costello [Not the best song off EC's best album.]
7. 'John Henry,' Bruce Springsteen [Perhaps the best song of a really good album.]
8. 'Promising Light,' Iron & Wine

So you know how I know my iPod is an adaptive piece of AI? My friend Doug introduced me to Richard Buckner recently, and I've been listening to two of Buckner's albums like non-stop. So when I actually shuffled my entire library this morning, here (no lie) are the first 10 songs I got:

1. 'Raze,' Richard Buckner
2. 'On The Road To Find Out,' Cat Stevens
3. 'Old Familiar Steam,' Old 97's
4. 'Beautiful Despair,' Rodney Crowell
5. 'Time Has Told Me,' Kelly Willis
6. 'Miss Amanda Jones,' Rolling Stones
7. 'In The Morning of the Magicians,' The Flaming Lips
8. 'I Will Be There When You Die,' My Morning Jacket
9. 'Pull,' Richard Buckner

Just back in town (from here
), and I really need to quit avoiding writing by reading -- as well as by writing shit like this -- but anyway... The first two songs seemed to indicate a thematic structure, and though things changed, I was already in the middle of thinking about the difficulty of starting/resuming running in the summer in Austin, Texas. Lots to discourage you (such as today's 100 degree heat).

Anyway:

1. 'Running to Stand Still,' U2
2. 'They Won't Let Me Run,' John Vanderslice
3. 'Jacqueline,' Franz Ferdinand
4. 'First Date,' Blink-182
5. 'Peach, Plum, Pear,' Joanna Newsom
6. 'Enemy Fire,' Ryan Adams
7. 'Peoria Lunchbox Blues,' Songs: Ohia

Okay, by song two, my iPod had settled into a groove, serving up some of Texas's finest alt-country ("whatever that is"), but by song six, things had just turned blue, like way blue.

1. 'The Great Leap Forwards,' Billy Bragg
2. 'Horseshoe Lounge,' Slaid Cleaves (okay, I know Slaid grew up in Maine, but he lives in South Austin now, and I'm guessing few Mainers seem as authentically Texan as Slaid does. But here's a question: when's he gonna put out another album of Broke Down caliber again?)
3. 'Transcendental Blues,' Steve Earle
4. 'Still Learning How to Fly,' Rodney Crowell
5. 'Go to Sleep Alone,' Jimmie Dale Gilmore
6. 'Give a Man a Home,' Ben Harper
7. 'Fake Plastic Trees,' Radiohead
8. 'Have You Forgotten,' Red House Painters

Well, the repetition continues: at least the Ben Harper repetition is new--and interesting. I mean, in some sense these two songs express precisely the same sentiments, but they do so for diametrically opposed purposes. Clever iPod.

1. 'The Great Communicator,' Ted Leo/Pharmacists
2. 'Friends Forever,' Old 97's
3. 'I Wish I Was The Moon,' Neko Case
4. 'She Smiled Sweetly,' The Rolling Stones
5. 'Everything,' Ben Harper
6. 'Walk Away,' Ben Harper
7. 'That Teenage Feeling,' Neko Case
8. 'Broken Breads,' New Pornographers
9. 'King of All the World,' Old 97's
10. 'Ashes of American Flags,' Wilco (Still remember the day this incredible album came out because I vividly remember hearing this story.)

The not entirely random part of this is that I started with song 1 intentionally. I totally love this new Dixie Chicks album.

1. 'The Long Way Around,' Dixie Chicks
2. 'Dear Sarah Shu,' John Vanderslice
3. 'Mary of the Wild Moor,' Johnny Cash
4. 'Big Brown Eyes,' Old 97's
5. 'C'mere,' Interpol
6. 'Time,' Tom Waits
7. 'Angela,' John Vanderslice (seriously)
8. 'Somedays I See the Point,' Billy Bragg
9. 'Losing Hope,' Jack Johnson
10. 'Goodbye Is All We Have,' Alison Krauss

Okay, another trip to Houston (for my brother's graduation tomorrow) and while I had a little something to distract me, it didn't require attention past the 6th inning (arguably, the 4th). So I listened to the following:

1. ''27 Break,' Joseph Crespino [click this link, seriously; it's a gift--one you need.]
2. 'Speed Trials,' Elliott Smith
3. 'World Inside The World,' Rhett Miller [I mentioned last week that I have a ton of Old 97's on my iPod; if you count the Rhett Miller variants, I have even more.]
4. 'Delia's Gone,' Johnny Cash
5. 'Sweet Nothing Seranade,' Ben Harper
6. 'I'm Satisfied,' John Hurt
7. 'Anyone Can Play Guitar,' Radiohead
8. 'Jagged,' Old 97's [See, I told you]
9. 'Kind of Perfect,' Kacy Crowley [beautiful, beautiful song; and since Amazon treats the album like it sort of doesn't exist, here's the iTunes link]