So it is almost the weekend, and I am doing the Random Ten on time again [!!!] because I remembered how to put headphones in my ears while I’m working. Towleroad reported yesterday that Conor Oberst, aka Bright Eyes, along with a group of fellow Nebraska musicians, has written a letter to the Omaha city council condemning the effort by some in that body to block a nondiscrimination ordinance that would make Omaha a more friendly, progressive place for LGBT people to live and thrive. As we all know, cities that attract artists and LGBT people tend to be the most successful cities on a lot of fronts. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read your Richard Florida.

So, in considering what to start the Random Ten with, why not Bright Eyes? I am and always have been a shameless Bright Eyes fan boy, and if you have never heard “First Day Of My Life,” and moreover, if you have never seen the video, get ready for warm fuzzies. So we will watch that, we will have a moment and reflect, then we will hit shuffle on the old iTunes, see where we are ten songs later, listen to some more music, etc. More videos after the jump! PS, I totally stole the picture of Conor that Towleroad used, because oh, he is so cute.

Also, before we get to the shuffle, here is a video of otters holding hands. It’s topical, I promise.

1. Rage Against The Machine – “Clear The Lane”
2. Willie Nelson & Kid Rock – “Last Stand In Open Country”
3. Siouxsie and the Banshees – “Switch”
4. Chris Isaak – “Baby Did A Bad, Bad Thing”
5. Ray Charles – “Come Back Baby”
6. Lightspeed Champion – “Tell Me What It’s Worth”
7. Local Natives – “Cubism Dream”
8. David Wilcox – “How Did You Find Me Here”
9. Red Hot Chili Peppers – “The Righteous & The Wicked”
10. Lightspeed Champion – “Dry Lips”

Oh, the David Wilcox song. Wow. Haven’t listened to it in years. One of my favorites.

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It’s music time! The ones we’re starting with are just a few songs I’ve been listening to a lot this week. They’re all hitting one spot or another for me. First off, Jay Reatard, who sadly left us way too early last year, with his amazing song “There Is No Sun.” Then, well, I’m having a Tool kind of week, for whatever that’s worth. So the second song is “The Grudge.” Then finally Robert Pollard [frontman for Guided by Voices], with a great little song called “Subspace Biographies.” The lyrics in the second half just make me grin, for my own reasons:

I am quail and quasar – I picked you up on radar – I do my job each day – Empties crushed and filed away — And there is nothing worse than – An undetermined person – Can I abuse you please – In my subspace biographies?

So there we go.  We start with those, then we hit shuffle on the old iTunes, post the first ten songs that comes up, and then it’s the weekend.  GO!

1. The White Stripes – “Little Ghost”
2. Grizzly Bear – “Foreground”
3. Sarah Vaughan – “Star Dust”
4. Chess In Concert: Live from Royal Albert Hall – “One Night In Bangkok” [Adam Pascal and Company]
5. Bright Eyes & Neva Dinova – “Happy Accident”
6. Roxette – “I Love the Sound of Crashing Guitars”
7. Nina Simone – “Another Spring”
8. Chopin: Prelude, Op. 28, No. 1 in C-Sharp Minor [performed by Alicia de Larrocha]
9. Ben Taylor – “America”
10. Stone Temple Pilots – “Big Bang Baby”

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Here’s your round-up: There was an atrocious election, as Americans went to the polls and loudly shouted, “We are confused and angry about being confused and angry, and also, we have the collective memories of goldfish! USA! USA! USA!” There are a few silver linings though. The end.

Or, as The Onion puts it:

Dismayed by the fact that over the past 24 months they have not experienced the immediate short-term personal gain they had hoped for, Americans went to the polls Tuesday and, for the 112th consecutive time, elected the candidates they deserve.

Some other things happened, we are sure, so scroll and click on things if you’re not caught up yet. Done? Okay, good.

Remember, if you’re in Philadelphia tomorrow, Truth Wins Out will be Lifting Its Luggage in protest at the NARTH convention.  A good time will be had by all.

For music this week, I’m starting with an old classic from the Pretenders.  Just ’cause.  Chrissie Hynde rocks my face.  And the way the second verse of “I’ll Stand By You” suddenly modulates down from D Major into C Major, and then back into D for the chorus, is nothing short of brilliant, as sonic painting goes. So, Pretenders, shuffle, first ten songs that come up at random, more videos after the jump, The End.

1. The Dandy Warhols – “I Am Sound”
2. Robert Shaw Festival Singers, cond. by Robert Shaw – “I Will Arise”
3. The Killers – “On Top”
4. Culture Club – “Karma Chameleon”
5. Jason Mraz – “The Dynamo of Volition”
6. Bright Eyes – “You Will. You?Will. You? Will. You?Will.”
7. The Antlers – “Sylvia”
8. Bonnie Raitt – “Feeling of Falling”
9. Beyoncé – “Disappear”
10. Les Miserables – Original Broadway Cast Recording – “Look Down”

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This one could also be known as the “wherein iTunes betrays my guilty pleasures, twice” edition, but we’ll get to that in a second. Oh, so embarrassing.

The song I chose to start off this week is “Pancake” by Tori Amos. It’s sort of appropriate to the events of the week, as the Catholic front group NOM runs around crying “victim!” on a hate tour they are perpetuating against gay and lesbian families. Just a little while ago, NOM tweeted a picture of a little girl smiling with a woman who is presumably her mother, with the caption, “This is why we do what we do.” Yeah, right, Gallagher. It’s for the kids. Meanwhile, you and Brian continue to pledge your undying allegiance to a church and a worldview which is best known these days for child rape. But in a way, their caption is honest, because their only hope (and it’s a pie in the sky sort of hope) is that they can brainwash enough children into becoming hateful little brats who fundamentally don’t understand the nature of this free nation we call “America.”

In the song, “pancake” refers to the Eucharist, and it only shows up at the end, in the voice of a priest who attempts to cut off all the very honest observations the woman is making about the church. “I ordered you a pancake.” In other words, shut your mouth and eat this, woman. The charges she’s making against the church are familiar:

Seems like you and your tribe
decided you’d rewrite the law
Segregate the mind
From Body From Soul

You give me yours
I’ll give you mine
cause I can look your God
right in the eye
You give me yours
I’ll give you mine
You used to look my God
right in the eye

I believe in defending
in what we once
stood for
It seems in vogue
to be a closet
misogynist homophobe

Yes, it does.

This version of “Pancake” includes the song’s “lost verse,” which is also oh-so-poignant:

You tear through them fields of cotton
the impressionable ones
I believed in you once,
so did she, she was so young

You turn the man against the land
You turn the woman against her own
You are power, you are ambition
You like ‘em blonde

On Monday, we broke the story of yet another “ex-gay” charlatan who basically uses his platform as a “counselor” to convince young guys to get naked for him, in a perverse attempt to sate his own repressed sexual desires. These stories are awful and shocking, but they’re nothing new. When the JONAH scandal broke and I wrote about it on Wonkette, one of the funniest people on the internet said to me, “You will never want for material.” Show me a mind-numbing, soul-killing patriarchal system, and you can bet you’re going to find lots of live boys and dirty secrets in the wings, waiting for THEIR stories to be told. Oh, and you better bet your sweet ass we’re going to continue to tell them.

Here’s “Pancake.” After that, more videos and evidence of the fact that, in my iTunes library, alongside thousands and thousands of amazing records, are some really, really freaking embarrassing things that, you know, I sort of like, sometimes, when I’m in that mood, SHUT UP.

You could have spared her, oh but no. Messiahs need people dying in their name…

1. New Order – “Regret”
2. How to Dress Well – “Tramodolhydroclorid”
3. Bright Eyes – “Endless Entertainment”
4. 10,000 Maniacs – “Dust Bowl”
5. Joseph Arthur – “Black Lexus”
6. Monsters of Folk – “Man Named Truth”
7. George Michael – “Freedom 90″
8. Garth Brooks & Trisha Yearwood – “In Another’s Eyes”
9. Air Supply – “I Can Wait Forever”
10. Katie Herzig – “Forevermore”

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I was thrilled to see Brandi Carlile live for the first time the other night, and if we’re Facebook friends, you know I’ve been posting her songs all week long. I’m kind of on a kick.

One of the coolest moments in the show was when, in this room with a capacity of 1,500 or so, Brandi and her band played this song, “Dying Day,” completely unplugged, without even a mic. Her voice is powerful enough to fill the room even without it. It was easily one of the top five shows I’ve ever been to, and that’s saying a lot. So we’ll base the shuffle off of “Dying Day.” If you watch the video, you can see footage of her performing the song unplugged like she did for us.

If I may, let me also plug the opener, Katie Herzig, who impressed the hell out of us, to the point that I bought her CDs at the show, which I very, very rarely do. She’s on tour all over the place until the end of the year, with Ben Taylor, Mat Kearney, and of course, Brandi Carlile. I’ll throw one of her videos in with the others in the random ten, after the jump.

And, shuffle! Leave yours in the comments, or talk about music, or talk about Justin Bieber (mutually exclusive topics, of course), or whatever else. Open thread.

1. Frou Frou – “Old Piano”
2. Joni Mitchell – “Love or Money”
3. Bright Eyes – “Let’s Not Shit Ourselves (To Love And Be Loved)”
4. Prince – “Let’s Go Crazy”
5. Tori Amos – “Abnormally Attracted To Sin”
6. Josh Ritter – “You’ve Got The Moon”
7. Sufjan Stevens – “Movement VI – Isorhythmic Night Dance with Interchanges”
8. Wilco – “One Wing”
9. Ra Ra Riot – “Dying Is Fine”
10. Beirut – “The Penalty”

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