This Is My Jam (what's yours?)

Flatlander · 01-11-12 19:45:15

Howdy y'all,

I joined IFM about a month ago and have been trying to think of a clever way to connect with and give back to this cool, sexy little community you have here. Music has always been a big part of my sex-life and my life in general. Heck, the first time I ever made out with someone was while watching the film High Fidelity on a friend's sofa. She thought I had a lot in common with John Cusack's record-obsessed main character (which, if you've seen the flick, is not exactly a flattering comparison... but, sadly, fairly accurate

(And yes, we did end up going up to her bedroom afterwards... but I'm getting side-tracked here.)

Earlier this year, some friends got me hooked on this music-sharing site called This Is My Jam. The basic gist of it is that, once a week or so, you choose a song as your "jam" and then follow other people's picks, creating an ever-shifting playlist of new music. So last night I created a new This Is My Jam profile inspired by you all, which you can find here: http://www.thisismyjam.com/flatlander

I'll be posting my weekly picks in this thread, often with shout-outs to other members of the IFM community. I've noticed from the music section on Artists' Bios that IFM folks have generally wonderful taste in music, and I've stumbled onto some great tunes that way (for instance, I've been listening to a lot of Atmosphere lately, after discovering them via Viva's bio). So if you'd like to create your own profile on TIMJ and play along, please do! (it's free)

Cheers!

Flatlander · 01-11-12 19:58:29

Oh! Almost forgot, re my first jam:
This is "Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts" by the Canadian band Wolf Parade. It was Halloween last night here in the States, so this track seemed topical. As a bonus, it's one of my favorite songs of all-time.

Plus, posting it on this board re-contextualizes the lyrics in a way that kind of cracks me up. "I'm got a hand, so I've got a fist, so I've got a plan, it's the best that I can do...." Sorry if I just ruined the song forever for you...

I'm a little iffy on Wolf Parade in general. Sometimes I find their jangly guitars and uneven vocals irritating, other times it's exactly the kind of thing I want to hear. So this album (and its follow-up, At Mount Zoomer) make only occasional passes through my usual rotation.

Flatlander · 01-11-12 20:01:47

Oooh, and I see that you had a long-running "currently listening to" thread on this board:
http://forum.ifeelmyself.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=143

I'll be flipping through that with great interest.

jane_e · 01-11-12 20:43:31

Flatlander wrote:

She thought I had a lot in common with John Cusack's record-obsessed main character (which, if you've seen the flick, is not exactly a flattering comparison... but, sadly, fairly accurate

John Cusack is perhaps my favourite movie star type person of all time. Seriously, all time. I'm pretty sure I loved his character in High Fidelity.

That aside...

The jam site it super cool. Bonus points for posting a link to a Canadian band! I am totally a one song a day...week...month kinda girl. I will get hooked on a song and play it over and over and over and over until I can't tell if the music is in my headphones or in my head.

Flatlander · 01-11-12 22:44:30

jane_e wrote:

John Cusack is perhaps my favourite movie star type person of all time. Seriously, all time.

Yeah, me too. One Crazy Summer is another Cusack movie that's near and dear to my heart (and yes, I realize that's not exactly the pinnacle of the John Cusack filmography, but it's so goofy, and sooooo an artifact of its place and time, and I love it).

jane_e wrote:

That aside...
The jam site it super cool. Bonus points for posting a link to a Canadian band! I am totally a one song a day...week...month kinda girl. I will get hooked on a song and play it over and over and over and over until I can't tell if the music is in my headphones or in my head.

So, did you make an account?

I'd love to hear what you're into. Not nearly enough good Canadian musicians make their way over to this side of the border.

blissed · 01-11-12 22:59:15

There must be more than one Justine Bieber I like him on Ellen and that he always gets the 25 year old women in his videos. He reminds me of Davy Jones, I'm discovering a lot of stuff from the Monkees lately written by people who went on to produce music in their own right. When you discover good old songs you've never heard it's like it's a new song. Here's the latest called Forget that girl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn7AodQdJZQ

Flatlander thisismyjam sounds like a good idea. The 7 year old browser on my old backup computer can't handle the site, so I'll have to look at it when my computer comes back from repair.

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Last edited by blissed (03-11-12 10:46:25)

viva · 02-11-12 01:03:58

I remember the scene in High Fidelity at the end when Rob wraps his arms around Laura from behind while they're watching the band. to me, it is like the archetype of being held from behind or something. for some reason, it's just stuck. Maybe it's their proportions - he is supposed to be sort of a skinny dude but his arms look so big crossed in front of her chest, her shoulders half the breadth of his. So yeah that's what I took from the movie, that image.

The book was where I got the music, strangely enough. He's always making these top lists and describing songs in such a way that I just had to listen, I remember filling a little notebook with those songs, the ones I couldn't resist finding out what they sounded like, and going to the library to find them on youtube. hehe.

Flatlander · 03-11-12 08:27:47

Yeah, I do that with notebooks too. Often I'll be listening to my local college station and something will catch my ear, and if I don't have time to hit the Google just that second I'll flip to the back page of whatever notebook I happen to have open and jot down a scrap of lyrics so that I can find it later. Before long that entire back page is this tangled scrawl of tentative, half-remembered lyrics. Then you *do* finally look them up and then they explode into their own little universes of new music, you know? It's pretty great.

Flatlander · 03-11-12 09:10:04

blissed wrote:

I'm discovering a lot of stuff from the Monkees lately written by people who went on to produce music in their own right. When you discover good old songs you've never heard it's like it's a new song. Here's the latest called Forget that girl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn7AodQdJZQ

Hah! That video is so incredible. That hair! Those hijinks! (The part where he tosses his belle's jacket in the puddle is a nice gag.) And when is the last time you've seen two people so in love that they just have to spin around hand in hand in the middle of the quad?

After I clicked through to this song though ("As We Go Along") I totally get where you're coming from, blissed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=RMeoYi3fw-A

That is so unlike anything I'd stereotypically expect from the Monkees. It sounds almost like a proto-grunge song, like something you'd find on the back of a Blind Melon or Jane's Addiction album. (Compare, for instance, to "Change" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=974ePdYMz4Q or "Jane Says" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcXjqUI8GQ . Not exactly the same, but still part of the same continuum, right?)

blissed wrote:

Flatliner thisismyjam sounds like a good idea. The 7 year old browser on my old backup computer can't handle the site, so I'll have to look at it when my computer comes back from repair.

Yeah, one of my only complaints with the site is that their most recent redesign is really Flash-intensive, which can cause the music to skip if you've got a lot of stuff going on in the background. No bueno, but I've learned to live with it.

Flatlander · 03-11-12 09:13:10

Oh, and it's Flatlander not Flatliner, mate. Don't jinx me.

blissed · 03-11-12 11:01:39

Ha ha sorry, edited and fixed The Monkees are my favourite band at the moment. I think with youtube all music is contemporary. If you release new music it has to compete with everything else that's been made right on the same platform. I like Bob's 1964 rendition at the Newport folk festival too. http://www.timsah.com/Bob-Dylan-Mr-Tamb … TMQrP81n27

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Last edited by blissed (05-11-12 01:17:38)

Flatlander · 07-11-12 22:54:05

Hi all,

This week's jam is dedicated to the unique and inspiring jane_e. The song is "Scattered Leaves", by Vancouver alt-country band The Be Good Tanyas.

http://www.thisismyjam.com/flatlander

On her bio, Jane says her musical preference is "Anything with a guitar, a girl, and a reference to a book. Or involving an accordion." Well, no lit reference or accordions on this one, but maybe two out of three ain't half bad when the guitars are being played by the exceptional Frazey Ford and the other fine Canadians in her band. *grin*

This is a cover of a song by JT Lindsay of the even-more-obscure, Chicago-based folk band JT & the Clouds. If y'all like this track, I encourage you to seek out their version too; it's great.

Happy Autumn! (or, I suppose, happy Spring to you Australians)

Last edited by Flatlander (07-11-12 23:06:25)

viva · 07-11-12 23:54:16

I love this project, Flatlander, keep it up! (also flatland is an awesome book)

jane_e · 08-11-12 14:12:34

Flatlander wrote:

This week's jam is dedicated to the unique and inspiring jane_e. The song is "Scattered Leaves", by Vancouver alt-country band The Be Good Tanyas.
http://www.thisismyjam.com/flatlander

Interestingly the accordions in question are the one mentioned in Light Enough To Travel by the aforementioned Be Goods and the one played by Wendy McNeill in Such a Common Bird.

So awesome. Thanks Flatlander.

* edited to remove an embarrassing amount of excitement. There were OMG's and exclamation marks. This revision is for the best.

Last edited by jane_e (08-11-12 14:25:33)

Flatlander · 11-11-12 02:47:30

jane_e wrote:

Interestingly the accordions in question are the one mentioned in Light Enough To Travel by the aforementioned Be Goods and the one played by Wendy McNeill in Such a Common Bird.
So awesome. Thanks Flatlander.

OMG! :-D Glad I hit so close to the mark.

I have a real soft-spot for the accordion too. I'd never heard Wendy McNeill before, and I'm now taking a very pleasant tour through her Youtube presence. Good find!

Actually the first song that jumped to mind was something by the Polish band Vladimirska-- whose music is chock-a-block with both books *and* accordions-- but figured it might've been a little too esoteric: http://vimeo.com/44316592

Last edited by Flatlander (11-11-12 02:48:27)

Flatlander · 11-11-12 03:03:51

viva wrote:

I love this project, Flatlander, keep it up! (also flatland is an awesome book)

Thanks!

And eff yeah, Flatland. I was closely considering using that little pentagon-shaped map from the cover as my user icon here...

... but decided I wanted to use an actual self-portrait instead, however tiny. You ladies are brave enough to show so much of yourselves; it seems only fair.

viva · 12-11-12 06:35:57

That pentagon would make an awesome tattoo!

Flatlander · 14-11-12 22:51:38

Hi all,

This week's jam is "Our House" by Graham Nash, as performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. I'll dedicate this one to blissed, who seems to be on a late-60s California rock & folk-revival kick lately. Blissed, I haven't had the time to stray far from my little thread on this board, but when I do I see your contributions all over the forum, so thanks for keeping conversations going.

http://www.thisismyjam.com/flatlander

If you don't know the backstory: Nash wrote this song for and about Joni Mitchell. She and Nash had a brief romance in the late 60s, living together in a little house in Laurel Canyon outside LA. Mitchell wrote her album 'Ladies of the Canyon' during the same period, and her song "Willy" is about Nash (written as kind of a book-end towards the sad end of their relationship).

Joni&Graham571.jpg

I love how in in the late 60s recorded music in the U.S. seemed like one giant scene, where everybody knew everybody, collaborated with everybody. I supposed that's multiplied x100 now on the 'net, where collaboration & connections abound, but it still seems extraordinary, like those little, simple, ordinary connections between people were the seeds of it all.

blissed · 15-11-12 22:50:28

Thanks Flatlander nice tune too. This is my favourite Joni Mitchell http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm39YkGrHp8

Ooh I forgot she wrote this one, I love this too! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9HMQDlt … re=related

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Last edited by blissed (15-11-12 23:02:37)

Flatlander · 01-12-12 12:08:49

Skipped a week because of the holiday-- it was Thanksgiving last week here in the States, which is always this huuuge clusterfuck of rush-work, travel & commerce. I decided to take a pass on the whole deal this year and visited some friends up in BC instead. (Thanksgiving falls on a different weekend in Canada, so it was business as usual up there.)

Onward! This week's jam is "Paradise Circus" by Massive Attack.

http://thisismyjam.com/flatlander

The song I actually reached for first was "Angel" but it's starting to sound sooo played-out when I put it on now. Then I remembered this provocative, utterly Not-Safe-for-MTV video that they put together for the track-- which featured an interview with early erotic film star Georgina Spelvin (now in her 70s) intercut with sex scenes from her movies-- and well, that seemed about perfect. Plus I love the off-kilter beat and Hope Sandoval's great vocals in the track itself. But seriously, go watch that official video on Youtube; it's amazing.

I'll send this one out to AnnaBelleLee, who listed Massive Attack as her fave band and (oh by the way) helped create some of the most intensely erotic sessions I've ever seen on this site, or really anywhere, especially the pair that she filmed with charlotte_v ("stripped" and "Reunion"). Would be way cool to see her return to IFM again someday, though I'll always appreciate her stellar contributions to the site.

And since it's TMI Friday-- and at the risk of severely dating myself-- I'll also mention that Mezzanine was the album that my first serious g.f. put on the first time that I had sex, turned up loud to mask any incriminating noises. Although, really, loud is the only appropriate volume at which to play a Massive Attack album anyway.

See ya next week.

Flatlander · 01-12-12 12:24:35

Oh hey! I just noticed that AnnaBelleLee had a new vid just a few months ago, back in March. Nice. I'd thought it'd been over a year since her last one.

blissed · 01-12-12 22:19:22

The paradise circus video was great.

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#1 01-11-12 19:45:15

This Is My Jam (what's yours?)

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