Sordid, wretched, checkered lives.

(This post by Yosha.)

The new Decemberists album, Picaresque, is most enjoyable, especially if you've got a thing for songwriters who have turgid vocabularies, like Colin Meloy. For no goddamned good reason, I've compiled a list of every three-syllable word on the album. I have excluded words that are pronounced with three syllables despite not actually having three syllables, like "military" and "tramp". I think Meloy manages to fit five syllables into "air" at one point. Anyway. Here's the list.

palanquin
elephant
concubines
Infanta
pachyderm
canopied
passengered
duchess’s
baroness
barrenness
camelback
a-waving
betrothèd
innocence
parapets
multitude
coronets
melodies
folderol
chaparral
coronal
beginning
together
veranda
Miranda
marigolds
tamarac
candlewax
corduroy
commotion
deafening
emotion
relations
condescend
athletic
lemonade
capitol
photograph
horribly
government
National
greenery
documents
microfilm
tenement
telephone
Petrograd
suspicious
loyalties
bureaucrat
embassy
uniform
resurfaced
motorcar
natural
thirty-two
seventeen
company
solution
moderate
liberal
cannibal
wondering
powerlines
sensation
gadabout
palaver
contagious
runaways
colonnades
waterfront
enclosure
enfolding
mariners
survivors
carpeting
remember
histories
interweave
roustabout
debonair
consumptive
disappeared
magistrate
priory
overheard
exchanging
penitent
privateer
providence
a-drowning

Stay away from me, Johnson! I don't want no goddamn pinkeye!

We're back!

Not only is the station on the air after a brief outage, but I have finally rotated all the musical selections to newer, fresher offerings. Enjoy... I really have nothing else to say.

I've just been informed that sticky radio is off the air. It seems that live 365 suffered some kind of catastrophic hardware failure, and all the music I'd uploaded is gone.

Which is a good thing really, because now I will be forced to upload a NEW playlist. Not that much of it won't be stuff you heard months ago on earlier playlists, but hey, you'll like hearing it again. And much of it will be completely new to the station indeed. So... await further news!

Sorry I haven't updated the station in so long.

Sweating to get dry.

Last night, Kev gave me one of the greatest presents I've ever received. The pretext was National Teacher Appreciation Week, and the occasion was a Gomez concert.

Kev introduced me to Gomez not long after we first reconnected post-university, via the first mix CD he ever made me. The song was "Blue Moon Rising", which remains one of my favorites. Since then, my appreciation of their music has grown slowly and steadily the more I hear of it. But you know (as well you should, being a StickYradiO listener), I hear a lot of good music. Muchly thanks to Kev. I hear a lot of good music that I listen to in my car, and Gomez has always been just one of many really good bands filtering through my consciousness. Nothing particularly special.

Well.

But wait. Back up. The concert was at the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma, formerly the site of the Plaza Theater back in the 70s and 80s, when I was a wee nipper and it showed movies instead of stage shows. I used to go there every year to see Harold and Maude, my all-time favorite movie, with mom when I was a kid. Being there again after nearly a quarter of a century was rather mindbending; it's much smaller now than it was then, though I'm fairly certain that's only a matter of perspective.

Anyway. The opening act was That One Guy, who was awesome. Really, really freakin' good. I'd happily go see an entire show of his stuff. He plays a variety of bizarre homemade instruments, chiefly the Magic Pipe, which as near as I could make out was a twisted 15-foot length of metal pipe with a violin string and several electronic drum starts attached. There was also an electric boot, and something resembling a double-pronged heating element on a leather belt. He was quite the funkster. Kev opined, and I concurred, that he was well on the way to being the best opening act ever seen by, uh, us. I leaned over and shouted: "Gomez is gonna have to be pretty goddamned good to top this guy!"

And then Gomez came out.

And BLEW MY MIND.

I am not the sort of person who goes to shows often. It's one of the primary reasons why I am not hip. I like to listen to music in private, at a volume I have chosen, with the option of fast-forwarding or rewinding or pausing or replaying at any time. Live shows tend to be too loud, too hot, too long, too late, too crammed with strange sweaty bodies for me to ever truly enjoy myself. Standing up for two hours straight is not my idea of a good time.

Gomez was so good that for the first time in my life, none of that mattered. Nothing mattered. Nothing at all mattered in the least except for the music. I was totally present, completely enchanted, utterly mindblown by the sheer ROCK and FUCKING ROLL that was Gomez.

I was one tall dreadlocked white guy away from the stage, jumping and thrashing through clouds of pot smoke and gazing up at Ben Ottewell, who, speaking as a 100% heterosexual married man, is just about the sexiest guy I've ever seen in my life, and the serenely smiling Michael-Caine-meets-Mike-Mills visage of Tom Gray, galvanized like the victim of the sweetest electrocution ever into effortlessly rhythmic contortions of kinetic joy.

Dude. If Gomez ever comes anywhere near your town, sacrifice whatever you must to go see them. I ain't even kidding. I have never had an experience like this one, and if I'm able to nudge even one person in the direction of a Gomez show, then I'll die a happy man.

Finally!

Well, I have *finally* done a job on the station. Nothing is held over -- it's all new! (Or, uhh, well, recycled from older playlists. But who's paying THAT much attention, anyway?)

We are currently spinning hot fresh yummy tracks from Bright Eyes, Neil Young, Johnny Cash, Morphine, Green Day, Air, The Clouds, Ben Folds, Billy Bragg, Spoon, Archer Prewitt, Hem, Guided By Voices, The Soundtrack Of Our Lives, The Weakerthans, Beck, Clem Snide, Sam Phillips, Hayden, Andrew Bird, and ... ahhh, well, a shitload more!

And in celebration of her NEW ALBUM NEW ALBUM NEW ALBUM coming out in only 3 1/2 weeks, the featured artist this week is AIMEE MANN. We're playing a couple of your favorites plus a couple of brand new songs you may not have heard. Don't even think about not listening!