Music Diary: Wednesday

8:47 am: On the way to work, My Morning Jacket. I've been in a My Morning Jacket mood for a few days. "Golden" had come up on shuffle on Friday and set my mood aright amidst a shitty day, so I've been listening to MMJ on and off ever since. I have a playlist of all my favorite songs by the band so I can avoid trainwrecks like "Highly Suspicious" or the song from Z about kittens on fire. Of their five albums (and two EPs), 45 songs made it to this playlist. On my bus ride to work: "Dondonte," "Just Because I Do," "Look at You," "Picture of You," "Knot Comes Loose." Right toward the end of the bus ride a hip hop video comes on the Transit TV, competing with my iPod. I don't know who the woman in the video is but she wears a lot of wigs.

My Morning Jacket: Knot Comes Loose

9:09 am: In my office, the Jacket jams continue while catch up on email and a few small editing projects, through about 10:45 am before I finally get tired of it.

11:45 am: I scroll through my iPod looking for nothing in particular and land on Cass McCombs, Catacombs. I get through about three songs before I'm interrupted. And so begins a tsunami of a day that keeps me running around all afternoon, never to return to the iPod.

Cass McCombs: Dreams Come True Girl

7:03 pm: Home from work, put Cooper to bed, said goodnight to my brilliant wife who is off for an evening work shift. I have the night to myself. I settle into the computer and start with catching up on a few blog posts / mp3s I'd bookmarked in the last couple of days:

The Sea and Cake: "Up on the North Shore"
Phil Ochs: "Gas Station Woman" and "One Way Ticket Home" [via The Rising Storm]
The Antlers: "Parentheses"
Gang Gang Dance: "Mindkiller"
Rome Pays Off (new band from the guys who formerly went by the name Rothko): Song 2 [via]

8:00 pm: I download The Terminal Symphony, Rene Hell's latest album, which I'd been meaning to do for a week or two. I play it straight through and it's beautiful.

Rene Hell: Juliard Op. 66

8:38 pm: When the album is over my iTunes just starts going alphabetically down the list—only I'm inside smart playlist that is comprised only of songs added to the library since the beginning of April, so it plays the Sea and Cake tune again and then goes down a string of songs from the country playlists I'd downloaded on Monday, ending with "Northeast Texas Woman" by Willis Alan Ramsey. The song makes me imagine Cleveland, the character from The Family Guy, fronting a country band.

9:01 pm: I play the Rene Hell album again. When it's over, I play it again.

10:13 pm: I listen to the Willis Alan Ramsey song again to remind myself whether or not I want to include it as an mp3 in this blog post. Once the Cleveland comparison occurs to me, its presence becomes inevitable.