The week begins to breath but I don't skip songs

The hallowed middle of the week, Wednesday, has arrived. My calendar suggests that this week is finally going to catch its breath and ease into a brisk walk, which will be welcome right about now. Just enough wet in the air (or being flung up by car tires) to need a very occasional pass of the wiper blades on the way in. The weather remains damply clement, for winter.

There are times, on this now-regular morning experiment in shuffled music blogging, when I want to skip a tune that pops up, but don't. It's a compulsion to hear the thing through as if I were playing to a set of imposed rules. I could easily skip songs I don't like (or those I would be embarrassed to admit have a place on my iPod at all), but somehow that feels like cheating. It's odd, really, since this is something I do entirely for myself. On the drive home, which I don't record, I certainly feel free to skip tracks, and it isn't unusual for me to skip several tracks on a drive home. Maybe I'm moodier and less tolerant by the end of the day.

That said, if I were to allow myself to skip tracks on the morning commute this morning would probably have had two skips, out of four tunes.

Eugene Maslov is a fantastic jazz pianist and definitely one of the tracks I would not have skipped. I could easily have repeated this track. Every time Maslov pops up in a playlist I look to see who is making this wonderful noise. I have two of his albums and really could stand to have a few more. Very good stuff.

Puedo Escribir would have been the first skipped track. Usually, Sixpence None The Richer does pleasing popish music of the slightly-more-interesting-than-usual type. This cut, especially when played in a small noisy car, presents irritatingly high nasal vocals, driving but boring guitar chords, and a grating melody. It was a small serving of brussel sprouts on my plate, overcooked, that I politely ate in order to not offend the host this morning.

Bruce rescued me from that by following it up with My Beat, a delicious tune with a wonderful beat and swing to it. Like the Maslov tune, this one could have warranted seconds. The song was written shortly after Cockburn moved to Montreal and is a pretty litteral, if poetic, description of riding his bike around his new town. A couple of the versus:

Past the derelict mattress

and the overgrown pavement

over the tracks

and through the hole in the fence

Past graffiti-bright buildings

and the junkyard alarm bell

and the screaming police cars

and it's all present tense

It's my beat
In my new town

Past the drunk woman reeling

with her bag of provisions

Down through the tunnel

with the stink-fuming bus

On to the bike path

where it's something like freedom

and the wind in my earring whispers

Trust what you must

It's my beat
In my new town

In a sense, some aspects of this daily blog are like that tune, in that I capture a bit of my daily beat, by car rather than bike.

The last tune is another from the Astral Weeks album (second day in a row). While the lyrics on this tune are wonderfully poetic, the song itself is best enjoyed in a quiet room or with headphones on so you can listen to those amazing lyrics as Van Morrison barks and wails them. Even though I would have like to skip this one out of frustration at not being able to enjoy it sufficiently, I highly recommend taking the time to sit and listen to this piece when you the chance. The lyric starts off like this:

Little jimmy's gone way out of the back streets

Out of the window, into the falling rain,

And he's right on time, right on time.

That's why broken arrow waved his finger

Down the road so dark and narrow

In the evening just before the sunday sixbells chime

And way out on the highway

All the dogs are barkin' way down below

And you wander away from your hillside retreated view

Went to wanderin' nordhbridge way out on the railroad

Together all the tipping trucks will unload

All the scrapbooks built together stuck with glue

And I'll stand beside you, beside you

Like the Cockburn tune today, this one has a certain amount of descriptive wandering-about-town to it.

Today's full playlist:

• Eugene Maslov: Sweet Lana
• Sixpence None The Richer: Puedo Escribir
• Bruce Cockburn: My Beat
• Van Morrison: Beside You