7:00 am: Driving to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl flea market, we listen to our favorite radio show, Chuck Cecil's The Swingin' Years—a show that has been on the air in one place or another for the last fifty-five years. Anyone who lives in L.A. and isn't listening to this show every Saturday and Sunday morning (on 88.1), you're missing out.
8:52am: Sitting at the Rose Bowl food court feeding Coop yogurt while my brilliant wife scopes more booths, there's a DJ playing smooth soul jams.
9:30 am: Driving home. I put on Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam. We make it two songs before agreeing that it's too harsh for our moods right now, so we pull out Clinging to a Scheme again—an album that has become a go-to for long drives and other forms of downtime. We're home by track 7 or so.
- Animal Collective: Unsolved Mysteries
11:00 am: Once again listening to all the country music I downloaded in the last week. I'm slowly rating every song and condensing the playlist down to my very favorites, which while eventually be part of a bigger playlist on the blog toward the end of the month.
1:30 pm: Hanging at the house with family, I put on the Top Rated playlist and treat it like a radio. Here's what it played:
- The Zombies: I Want You Back
- Elvis Costello: Oliver's Army
- U.S. Maple: Go to Braises
- Talking Heads: First Week/Last Week…Carefree
- Don Ho: The Windward Side
- Busy Signals: Birds on High
- The Walker Brothers: Make it Easy On Yourself
- Nina Simone: Spring is Here
2:10 pm: We pause it and go on a family trip to the bookstore, then the park. At the bookstore, swear to god, they're playing the John Williams score to Star Wars.
4:23 pm: Back at home, unease:
- Beach House: Heart of Chamber
- Tammy Wynette: Stand By Your Man
- Dungen: Panda
- Fleet Foxes: Oliver James
- Merle Haggard: Sing a Sad Song
- The Pernice Brothers: Chicken Wire
- Belle & Sebastian: For the Price of a Cup of Tea
4:50 pm: My wife leaves to go attend a reading. I'm pointed via Twitter to the bandcamp page for a person/group/entity called Pye Corner Audio, who have a new album called Black Mill Tapes vol. 2. At first I think it's some old, obscure thing—a peer of Raymond Scott or some such—that's been newly unearthed; but the more the record goes on the more apparent it is that this is something made in 2011. Not that it matters, it's pretty good.
5:55 pm: Via tumblr, someone has provided a link to a 1967 album by Gal Costa and Caetano Veloso, which predates both their solo debuts and is basically a samba record, a la my favorite Elis & Tom. It's pretty great. Coop and I listen to it while he has a little post-bath playtime/wind-down.
- Caetano Veloso & Gal Costa: Um Dia
6:53 pm: Coop asleep and wife not yet home, I put on Zuckerzeit. While I'm listening I make a new playlist that gathers all the krautrock in my collection that skews electronic. I sort it by year so I can perhaps trace the evolution of the sound. Doing so, however, only underlines what's still missing from my collection (earlier Cluster albums, to start; and post-Autobahn Kraftwerk).
7:45 pm: I'm about to start in on Musik von Harmonia—though I probably shouldn't keep playing these two albums back-to-back; I'll never be able to remember which is which—but when my wife returns I switch it to the Caetano & Gal album, because I know she'll dig it. We listen to it as we make dinner, then settle in for some Amazing Race. Happy Sunday.
Comments