Shooflypie

I've recently found myself listening to albums that came out 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 years ago. Here are some thoughts... The Broken West/I Can't Go On I'll Go On (2007) - "Down in the Valley" hooked me the first time I heard it streaming on KEXP. At the time, the band was still called The Brokedown, but that would soon change to due copyright issues; that's okay, I like The Broken West as a name better anyway. To get back to "Down in the Valley," what grabbed me were the ringing guitars, layered harmonies, and the organ that weaved in and out. And the lyrics, of course - "I had my feelings like the Dutchman has his gold/Deep in the canyon by the river that runs cold." Speaking of The Dutchman's Gold , that was the name of the EP that I learned had already been out and used my eMusic credits to grab it. "Down in the Valley" was the lead-off track, but there were six other great power pop songs and I was both in love and even...

Here I am at another anniversary-type number for the Sunday Shuffle. Hard to believe I've gotten up this high and that I've been doing this for over a decade. I've also been thinking I might get to here and then discontinue the shuffle, but now that I'm here...I at least want to hit 500, so I'll hang in for another year or so. I know a blog is such an old-fashioned thing at this point, but I am about to turn 46...you can draw your own conclusions. To celebrate, I am not only going to run for 20 songs today, but I've also changed the theme of my blog. I'd had the previous theme for a very long time and it felt like time for a change. It's currently a rainy early spring day (and I'm on spring break), so listening to some music and doing some reading sounds like the right thing to do. As always on these anniversary episodes, here's the history of the Sunday Shuffle... #1 - 8/27/06 #50 - 8/19/07 #100 - 7/27/08 #150 - 9/9/09 #200 - 10/17/10 ...

This week's shuffle is dedicated to the late, great Chuck Berry. 1. Minotaur/Cracker (6) - last played on 6/5/16 2. The First Song/Band of Horses (7) - last played on 6/4/16 3. Don't Tell Your Eyes/Joseph Arthur (6) - last played on 5/24/15 4. Honey Combed/Tweedy (6) - last played on 2/8/16 5. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere/Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs (3) - last played on 12/18/16 6. Imbecile Rages/Of Montreal (12) - last played on 9/19/14 7. Like a Real Smoothie/The Soft Boys (3) - last played on 11/1/11 8. Heart On A String/Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit (9) - last played on 6/10/12 9. You'll Have to Go Sideways/The Soft Boys (10) - last played on 4/4/15 10. Some People Get Away/I Love Math (9) - last played on 1/17/16

I'm going to do a bit of a "spring forward" edition this morning, which means I'm going to skip over the first song that pops up and start with the second. I think I'll keep doing that throughout, so you get all the even numbered songs, #2 - #20. Why not? 2. Bechamel/Pernice Brothers (16) - last played on 5/15/15 4. Red Hill Mining Town/U2 (5) - last played on 3/13/16 6. Late-Century Dream/Superchunk (18) - last played on 11/18/15 8. Your Weather/Dinosaur Jr. (19) - last played on 8/3/16 10. Centre For Holy Wars/The New Pornographers (2) - last played on 1/27/15 12. Girls and Boys (Pet Shop Boys 12" Remix)/Blur (3) - last played on 2/28/16 14. Hard To Find/The National (25) - last played on 2/12/17 16. Metal School/Spoon (17) - last played on 1/20/17 18. I'm in Love (With Arthur Dove)/Portastatic (8) - last played on 7/29/16 20. Simple X/Andrew Bird (4) - last played on 5/1/16

The Shins have a new album, Heartworms , coming out this Friday. Surprisingly, it is only their 5th album (the first one, Oh, Inverted World , came out in 2001). While doing an artist-oriented Sunday Shuffle is nothing new for me, the process today will be very different. I have their 4 albums on CD and have never ripped them to my iTunes. So, I'm going to use a random number generator to select from the 42 songs, with "Caring Is Creepy" being #1 and "Port of Morrow" being #42. There won't be any play counts, because I have no idea other than I've listened to these discs many, many times, particularly Chutes Too Narrow and Wincing The Night Away . Hopefully, the distribution is good, but we'll see once we get to today's ten... 1. Pink Bullets - from Chutes Too Narrow 2. Young Pilgrims - from Chutes Too Narrow 3. The Celibate Life - from Oh, Inverted World 4. Phantom Limb - from Wincing The Night Away 5. So Says I - from Chutes Too Narrow ...