Reasonable April Mothership Shambles (April 15th - 19th)

Hello and welcome to Work Tunes.

It's a comparatively chilly Saturday in Perth today and over in Melbourne it's just gone half time at the MCG  in the Melbourne V West Coast match. All I can say about West Coast's game so far is WTF! So let's get on with the music.  

First up, courtesy of NPR, I have a 10 track sampler of new music for April. Also new are the latest from Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Dawes. Some Australian flavour this week too, from punk pioneers The Saints, indie rock heroes Jebediah and unofficial poet laureate, Paul Kelly. Speaking of Punks, I've got a Greatest Hits from John Lydon's PIL. Thanks to Amazon's amazing new retrospectively active AutoRip feature on vinyl (and some creative getting around a geotardation) I have the digital version of one half of my Led Zep Mothership vinyl. Finally, in the Hip Hop corner, jazzy consciousness from De La Soul and gangsta swagger from the King of New York, Jay-Z.

Check it out:

• VA - NPR April Sampler
• Jebediah - Of Someday Shambles
• De La Soul - Buhloone Mind State
• Dawes - Stories Don't End
• Paul Kelly - Ways & Means
• Led Zeppelin - Mothership (LP 1 & LP 2)
• Saints - Know Your Product
• Jay-Z - Reasonable Doubt
• Public Image Ltd - The Greatest Hits, So Far
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Mosquito

Top Five Artists Last Week

1. Beach Fossils
2. Counting Crows
3. Ryan Adams
4. Elvis Costello
5. Gram Parsons

Song of the Week : Kacey Musgraves - Follow Your Arrow

First up, let me apologise up front for the total cheese of this week's choice. However, I found myself in a situation where it has been the ear worm every single day of the week so far and I thought I'd share the love :)

This is Kacey Musgraves – Follow Your Arrow from an album called Same Trailer, Different Park. That should clue you in to how whitebread and country this girl is. I hadn't heard of her until NPR streamed her album and I thought I'd give it a listen for giggles. Most of it is a Dixie Chicks bluegrass hybrid and pretty bland overall. But this one song, as cheesy as it is, won't let go of my eardrums. 

I suppose I like the sentiment, I quite like her voice and the melody is very catchy. It’s also a little bit of an insight into some contemporary issues for grrrrls, I suppose. See what you think, but don't blame me if it takes hold of your brain too - in the way that annoying jingles can do.

Toodle Pip

Thanks for stopping by. With any luck you'll find some new music this week that changes your life - or just some annoying song you can't get out of your head. It's all good. 

Hasala malakim.

Sail the Dirty Mystic Highway (May 28th - June 1st)

Hello and welcome to Work Tunes.


Terrible week this time around tunesters. Lots of hard graft at work and the likely loss of the family pet. But you get by. Music always helps. And here's what I have.


I've slipped in a few Australian classics from AC/DC, Cold Chisel and The Saints. I'll probably have a few more next week. For my Hip Hop fix I've got LL and Plug One and Two of De La Soul. The latest LP from Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band is here, as is a classic from Randy Newman. For a bit of a Soul hit, who better than Sam Cooke and Mavis Staples. Finally, as always a bit of twang from Drive By Truckers.


Check it out:

• Mavis Staples - We'll Never Turn Back
• Conor Oberst and Mystic Valley - One Of My Kind
• AC/DC - Highway To Hell
• Plug One and Plug Two - First Serve
• LL Cool J - Icon
• Cold Chisel - Circus Animals
• Drive By Truckers - Dirty South
• Sam Cooke - The Man and His Music
• Randy Newman - Sail Away
• The Saints - (I'm) Stranded

Top Five Artists Last Week

1. Beastie Boys
2. Melissa Etheridge
3. The National
4. Elvis Costello
5. Bob Evans

Song of the Week : Bob Dylan - Things Have Changed

This week I have had a number of songs following me around, which makes it impossible to choose just one. So instead I'll celebrate the 71st birthday of Mr Robert Zimmerman, known to his mates as just plain Bob Dylan. The song I chose is the Academy Award Winning song from Wonder Boys - Things Have Changed.


Apart from being a solid rocking blues song, this track perfectly suited not just the main character of Wonder Boys (who was a disgruntled author with writer's block) but also His Bobness himself. Once upon a time the voice of a generation, the white people's sounding block for the Civil Rights movement, the poster boy for the radical Left; Bob grew up a bit jaded and a little more laid back. We should have seen it coming though, he signposted it in My Back Pages: "But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."


Things Have Changed reminds me that we all shift our priorities constantly. Some of the things that seem at some point to mean everything to us, that get us fired up, can wind up seeming trivial at best. Certain things are always going to be worth caring about, but so much of the baggage we carry around could just be jettisoned. Bob's refrain "I used to care, but things have changed" is genius in that it could mean he just doesn't care anymore or that the things around have changed so much, it's hard to know what to care about. 


Happy birthday to Bob, the "savage gift on a wayward bus" Dylan.

So Long

Not much more to say this week. I'll be happy when it's over and I get to try again next week, only this time without the terrible hassles and the grief. 


Thanks for stopping by. Hasala malakim.