Monday, March 28, 2011

Monday brought out the banal lyrics

Monday. Again. It seems like it was just Monday a couple of days ago, too.  The forecast has us stuck in a loop of cloudy-with-rain weather.  If this weekend is any indication, it will be cloudy, then pour down rain like there is no tomorrow, followed by a short-but-glorious sun break, then clouds, then.... repeat.

Regardless, even a wet and grey Monday brings a new week and a (somewhat) fresh start. The campus is still on break this week, so it will be quiet across campus.  We should also hear, this week, what the House thinks the state budget ought to look like.  Then we wait for the Senate budget to roll in, and then begins the reconciliation between those and the Governor's budget to see where we finally end up.

Today's music was comprised of a short, but wide-ranging, playlist.  Short, meaning only four tunes.  Wide-ranging in that it covered rock, soul/hip-hop, and country-folk.  The Living Sisters were the latter, with an annoying tune that features beautiful harmonizing and parochial lyrics.  With shades of the last scene in the Wizard of Ox, they sing about not ever letting the sun go down without being in their own home town. A sure-fire recipe for xenophobia and insular thinking.

My Mourning Jacket, usually good for both vocals and lyrics, sang an equally nonsensical bit of lyric this morning (though great musicianship on the tune):

A kitten on fire, a baby in a blender
Both sound as sweet as a night of surrender
I know it ain't easy but you do what you can
If your livin' gets wheezy, you can follow this plan

and...

A good shower head and my right hand
The two best lovers that I ever had
Now if you find you agree with what I just said
You'd better find a new love and let 'em into your head

OK, it's clearly not a morning for good lyrics/poetry, certainly not on that note!

Fountains of Wayne, a group that you can almost always count on for clever lyrics, gave up an unusually banal bit of lyric.  The only exception this morning was the Ben-Ari tune Sunshine to the Rain. Even here I can't tell if it's rich and powerful street poetry or just stretching for a rhyme.  Both, in different place, I suspect.  At least those lyrics gave me something to think about on the way in.

In other music-related news, my iTunes library went AWOL last night. The library is there, all the songs are still listed, but over half of them can no longer be found.  I also note that the remote drive the library is stored on has been renamed (?!?).  I have tried restoring from a recent back-up, but get the same result.  I don't know what to make of it at this point.  I have the library backed up, but am clearly going to have to spend more time figuring out how to restore it.  Then comes the bit of trying to figure out what happened to cause this issue in the first place. Of course, this happened Sunday evening, rather than Friday, when I would have had the weekend to work on it.  Grrrrr.....!

Today's full playlist:

 - Fountains Of Wayne: You're Just Never Satisfied
 - Miri Ben-Ari: Sunshine to the Rain
 - My Morning Jacket: Into the Woods
 - The Living Sisters: Don't Let the Sun Go Down

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