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mood music
If we've learned one thing in the past year,
it's that the price of music is mostly arbitrary. Still,
unwrapping a glistening present under the tree only to find
a CD full of Napster-heisted songs your cousin snatched
online isn't very satisfying. The prices listed below are
the approximate suggested retail for the listed discs. Actual
store prices vary.
SOME FINE LOCAL MUSIC RETAILERS:
Everyday Music
1313 W Burnside St., 274-0961
1931 NE Sandy Blvd., 274-1700
3290 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., 350-0907
Ozone Records
1036 W Burnside St., 227-1975
Jackpot Records
3736 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 239-7561
Music Millennium
3158 E Burnside St., 231-8926
801 NW 23rd Ave., 248-0163
Whip It Good
Flogging Molly: Swagger (Side One Dummy,
$15)
Ah, the advent of the Holiday Season, and you know what
that means: It's time to get hammered sideways on Guinness
and break bottles in the street. If you want to have a staid,
polite and socially awkward Yuletide party, ignore this
advice. If, on the other hand, you would love to see your
Xmas gathering devolve into a booze-fueled, two-fisted ceili,
grab this Ireland-by-way-of-L.A. band's roaring disc, produced
by punk-rock icon Steve Albini. Shotgunning drums, an army
of traditional Irish instruments revving at full speed and
the hoarse, sea-wearied vocals of piratical Dubliner Dave
Kind will awaken whatever Celtic fire might lurk within
you. This goes double for Lutherans.
If You Can't Cry at Christmas, When Can You Cry?
The Pogues: If I Should Fall from Grace with God
(Island, $15)
Yes, this album has serious party muscle. The old drunk
saviors of Irish punk were probably at their best on this
Steve Lilliwhite-produced classic from '88, and more than
one track will send fists clenching pints high. However,
there is one and only one reason to include this album on
your holiday list: "Fairy Tale of New York," a devastating
duet that pairs Kirsty MacColl with Pogues sloshoid Shane
MacGowan. Trading barbed and tragic lines like existential
white-elephant gifts, the two singers spiel a tale of bleary
Big Apple yule. Drunk-tank revelations, illusory horse-track
redemption, the NYPD choir and Sinatra ghost through this
novel-rich tale of depravity and lost love. Words to sing
along to: "You scumbag, you maggot/ You cheap lousy faggot/
Merry Christmas your arse/ I pray God it's our last."
God Bless Us, Every One (We're Drunk)
Various: English Village Carols (Smithsonian
Folkways, $13)
Field recordings are always good in theory--after all,
where better to capture music than in its natural setting?
However, actually listening to the work of noble ethnomusic
scholars and intrepid producers often feels more like an
academic exercise than full-on party time. This collection
of barside revelers singing Christmas traditionals in pubs
around Leeds is an exception to Folkways' usual self-seriousness.
In these merry songs, usually sung either a cappella en
masse or with a lone piano accompaniment, you can hear the
booze working on the good cheer of the singers. Glasses
clink, members of the choir fall happily off-key, and a
glorious good time is had by all.
Do Androids Dream of Mulled Wine?
The Sensualists/Various Artists: Adaptations (Audio
Dregs; new release, price not available at press time--check
www.audiodregs.com)
In one of the most intense expressions of the mutual love
fest that Portland's music scene often spawns, a gang of
local DJ types lavishes the remix treatment on the Sensualists.
It may seem a little weird for a local band that's not exactly
torching the pop charts to receive such a luxe going-over,
but then, this is Portland, where rocking locally
is taken seriously. The Sensualists' dream-addled dance
pop twists like psychoactive Silly Putty in the hands of
electro-Wunderkinder like E*Rock, Zac Love and Emperor
Penguin. The hot original tempos, for the most part, mellow
out into chill meditations; pop it in to lend the ragged
end of the night a particularly local smoothness.
I'll Have a Molotov Cocktail, Shaken Not Stirred
The Nation of Ulysses: The Embassy Tapes
(Dischord, $10)
The party band of choice (if you were a nerdy punk-rock
clothes horse in the early '90s, that is) speaks from beyond
the grave with a clutch of songs found on old cassettes
deep in the Dischord Records vaults. The chaotic, suit-sporting
D.C. band set the pace for the American hipsterati with
their knowingly ironic left-wing politics, toxic guitar
and occasional forays into pre-Cocktail Nation lounge jazz.
I just know you've already got copies of their two seminal
albums, 13-Point Program to Destroy America and Plays
Pretty for Baby, in your 100-disc changer right now.
Add this!
"I Don't Think This Sort of Music Is Very Appropriate,
Do You?"
David Allen Coe: 18 X-Rated Hits (DAC; available--legally,
that is--only through www.officialdavidallencoe.com,
$50)
OK, so the outlaw country legend isn't actually selling
this under his own name. Nor will he deign to play these
songs on stage. Indeed, while Oregon's glorious free-speech
laws would likely protect these ultra-filthy gutter-country
classics--the usual murder, incest, infidelity and foulness
are just the beginning--it's probably wise to leave them
on this anthology. The overpriced official version, not
sold in stores, is Coe's effort to fight rampant piracy
of these sought-after songs. Whether your copy's legal or
not, these foul-mouthed statements of the long-haired Southern
rebel's evil id will drive any unwanted squares or prudes
away from any gathering.
Funky Christmas! Huh! Funky Hanukkah! Huh! Funky Kwanzaa!
Yeah!
James Brown: Live at the Apollo, 1962 (Uni/Mercury,
$11)
Possibly the greatest live album of all time, this torrential
joint is what you want to rock when the punch starts putting
folks asleep. At the height of his sex-god genius, J.B.
lit up black music's ultimate shrine with his fusion of
Southern passion and Northern grit. His record company initially
balked at releasing this rough-and-ready bad boy, so Brown
put it together himself and was rewarded with a straight
shot to No. 2 on the mainstream pop charts. His savage pummeling
of his early R&B catalog sends the Apollo's crowd into
a loud rapture, lending a you-are-there immediacy to this
record that all live discs strive for but few attain. Back
in the '60s, radio stations used to play this album start-to-finish,
and it's not hard to see why.
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