The Beat Frequency - March 26, 2010

Hello again! Here's a recap of the songs of my life for this week.

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros' "40 Day Dream" is an incredible song. There's something about "bye bye, to the 'too good to be true' kind of love" being sung so jubilantly that makes my day.

A lot of these songs, well at least a couple, were nods to my road trip to Kenosha, WI with my dad over spring break. The Strokes' "Hard To Explain" and Cold War Kids' "Audience" were two that I had the pleasure of listening to on the radio. "Hard To Explain" was one I heard from http://www.rock889.com/ in Ohio and I wish I could give a shout out to that station in Ohio who played "Audience." I hadn't heard it before and it is a really good tune.

Oh, and my dad loves Bob Dylan. So when I needed to sleep and he needed some tunes, I basically put my Bob Dylan collection on my iPod on shuffle. I had no idea before, but my dad's favorite is "Subterranean Homesick Blues" so that was for him. I love roadtrips.

"Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" is a duet by Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty, two of my favorite singers of all-time, which I had recently rediscovered. "Baby you could never look me in the eye...."

Fanfarlo is quite good, and "Finish Line" is one of my favorite songs of theirs. I'm just going to link you to their lyrics page. It's that good.

Also, this was the evening where I was still trying to decide whether or not to attend the Jukebox The Ghost/Tally Hall concert at Sonar in Baltimore, after I missed the one the night before in DC. (I ended up going. It was a great decision.) Tally Hall closed the show and made the audience sit on the floor and turn to the back where they performed their encore with the light of living room lamps, closing with a cover of Biz Markie's "Just A Friend." Jukebox The Ghost played before them, and their song "Hold It In" was my favorite. Also, they did a cover of New Order's "Temptation" which was stellar. I love that song.

Also, I played "Soft As Chalk," which is my sister's favorite Joanna Newsom song off of Have One On Me.

Over spring break, SXSW was going on, and those torrents were stellar. Also over spring break, Alex Chilton died, and in his memory we played some Big Star, Box Tops, and "Alex Chilton" by The Replacements.

1	Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros	40 Day Dream
2	Stars	Your Ex-Lover Is Dead
3	The Strokes	Hard To Explain
4	Cold War Kids	Audience
5	Bob Dylan	Subterranean Homesick Blues
6	Dirty Projectors	Dark Eyes (Bob Dylan cover)
7	Stevie Nicks & Tom Petty	Stop Draggin' My Heart Around
8	She & Him	In The Sun
9	Fanfarlo	Finish Line
10	Yeasayer	O.N.E.
11	Neon Trees	Animal
12	Laura Veirs	July Flame
13	Jukebox The Ghost	Hold It In
14	The Magnetic Fields	No One Will Ever Love You
15	Fang Island	Daisy
16	Biz Markie	Just A Friend
17	Joanna Newsom	Soft As Chalk
18	Jonna Lee	My High
19	Antennas Up	Don't Wait Up
20	Timothy Nelson and the Infidels	Speak The Truth In Love
21	The Paint Movement	Faults
22	Big Star	September Gurls
23	Box Tops	The Letter
24	The Replacements	Alex Chilton

The Beat Frequency - March 12, 2010

Cake's "Love You Madly" is in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, one of the funniest films I've ever seen. I watched it again with my roommate before spring break happened.

Washington's "How To Tame Lions" is easily my favorite new track off of the SXSW torrents. You should listen to it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBSqgCZWavc. To get this, and a ton more songs from this year's SXSW festival, check out the following site here.

Band of Horses' "I Go To The Barn Because I Like The" gets the award for most incomplete song title and it was also on the season finale of Psych this past week. Broken Bell's "The High Road" is a new one from the collaboration between Danger Mouse and James Mercer from The Shins. We then played "Rules Don't Stop" by We Are Scientists, a new track from them, which is pretty catchy.

We also had a lot of fun with the record player playing "We've Got The Beat" by The Go-Go's for absolutely no other reason than playing with the record player.

PS22 doing "Lisztomania" was the best thing ever. Click here for the video. Be prepared to think it is the most adorable thing ever. I want the director's job. Continuing with our Phoenix theme we played "If I Ever Feel Better" which has some fantastic lyrics in it. Next we had Yael Naim (you might remember her from "New Soul" which was in a lot of Mac commercials) doing a cover of Britney Spears' "Toxic", which I guiltily love (both versions actually).

More music in there followed by the new song from OK Go, which has a sweet, sweet music video with a Rube Goldberg machine that took the team involved 4 months to make. It was worth it. Check out the video here. It's even cool to watch silently.

Also, I'd been on a binge of The Smiths this week, which was most of the reason for playing the She & Him cover of "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" (featured in (500) Days of Summer) and "How Soon Is Now?" earlier.

1	MGMT	Flash Delirium
2	Cake	Love You Madly
3	Washington	How To Tame Lions
4	Family of the Year	Chugjug
5	Band of Horses	I Go To The Barn Because I Like The
6	Broken Bells	The High Road
7	We Are Scientists	Rules Don't Stop
8	Discovery	Slang Tang
9	The Smiths	How Soon Is Now?
10	Will Smith	Gettin' Jiggy Wit It
11	The Go-Go's	We've Got The Beat
12	Prince	Kiss
13	Of Montreal	We Were Born the Mutants Again with Leofling
14	Jarvis Cocker	Don't Let Him Waste Your Time
15	PS22 Chorus	Lisztomania (Phoenix cover)
16	Phoenix	If I Ever Feel Better
17	Yael Naim	Toxic (Britney Spears cover)
18	Fleet Foxes	Mykonos
19	TV on the Radio	DLZ
20	Madcon	Beggin'
21	Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton	Nothing and Nowhere
22	The Magnetic Fields	Nothing Matters When We're Dancing
23	Barenaked Ladies	I'll Be That Girl
24	Radiohead	High and Dry
25	Frou Frou	Psychobabble
26	No Doubt	Sunday Morning
27	OK Go	This Too Shall Pass
28	Bob Dylan	Mr. Tambourine Man
29	The Stone Roses	I Wanna Be Adored
30	She & Him	Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want (The Smiths cover)

The Beat Frequency - March 5, 2010

Hello readers! Another lovely post from your friend here at The Beat Frequency. Here's our playlist with explanations, if not vague ones, about why I played some of these songs on our radio show here at WMUC.

I was talking with a friend about staying hungry or ambitious, and "Hungry Like The Wolf" popped immediately into my mind. Also, this lovely Old Spice Commercial. No, not this one. (But it's good too.)

Also, another friend of mine requested "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)" which is a ridiculous Beatles tune, along with "Strawberry Fields Forever."

We played The Kissaway Trail because they are opening for The Temper Trap and Florence + The Machine at their show that I'm seeing in April. (WHICH I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT)

The Tom Waits and Townes Van Zandes tunes were covered by Norah Jones on an album I owned a long time ago. I needed to hear the originals.

Bob Dylan is awesome. Enough said.

Bruce's "Dancing In The Dark" was related to the hungry theme. Lyrical quote: "They say you gotta stay hungry. Hey baby, I'm just about starving tonight."

"Debaser" is a great song. Shouting the lyrics makes my day.

The Blow's "Parentheses" goes out to my sister on her 20th birthday, which was later the next week, because she showed it to me and I love it.

Billy Joel's "Vienna" goes out to anyone who has ever been overwhelmed with trying too hard. "Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true." Kills me every time.

"Ambitions" by Donkeyboy was a special request from my good friend who now lives in Norway. It was a good song too.

Spoon's "Is Love Forever?" was part of Transference, the album of theirs that I was reviewing for the station (and finally finished.) The review is here at the WMUC music blog.

"Next Year" by the Foo Fighters was the theme song to the television show Ed (2000-2004), where I first started listening to music as an integral part of television. Unfortunately, due to outrageous royalties, Ed may never come out on DVD, which makes me terribly sad. Bowling alley lawyer? Come on, that's classic television. Also, it had the Mac guy in it, and Michael Ian Black. (If you don't know that I like cheesy television by now, you don't know me very well.)

"Abel" by The National was played for the line "my mind is not right" which I had the pleasure to see screamed by the lead singer back in August at the Virgin Free Fest in Columbia, MD.

Rogue Wave's "Good Morning" now has a special place in my brain after I heard it on the drive back from a roadtrip to Wisconsin at around 3am in North Eastern Ohio (on the radio! I know, I was excited too). The great folks at Ohio's Alternation played it, along with a few more tunes I'll share on the March 26th show. Anyway, I couldn't place the song until I got home, but it felt pretty cool to have played it earlier.

And we closed out with a remix of the remix of the cover of "You Got The Love." Yeah, try to wrap your head around that.

1	Duran Duran	Hungry Like The Wolf
2	Led Zeppelin	Misty Mountain Hop
3	The Beatles	You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)
4	The Beatles	Strawberry Fields Forever
5	The Kissaway Trail	Beat Your Heartbeat
6	Thao Nyguen	Tallymarks
7	Tom Waits	The Long Way Home
8	Townes Van Zandt	Be Here To Love Me
9	Bob Dylan	Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
10	Bob Dylan	It Ain't Me
11	Massive Attack	Dissolved Girl
12	Air	Playground Love
13	Bruce Springsteen	Dancing In The Dark
14	David Bowie	Life on Mars?
15	Elliot Smith	Jealous Guy (John Lennon cover)
16	Pixies	Debaser
17	The Blow	Parentheses
18	Billy Joel	Vienna
19	The Proclaimers	Over and Done With
20	Built To Spill	Distopian Dream Girl
21	CSS	Cannonball (The Breeders cover)
22	Donkeyboy	Ambitions
23	Spoon	Is Love Forever?
24	Foo Fighters	Next Year
25	of Montreal	Cato As A Pun
26	Band of Horses	Our Swords
27	The National	Abel
28	Rogue Wave	Good Morning
29	Portishead	Sour Times
30	Florence + The Machine	You Got The Love (The Very Best Remix)