Prentiss Riddle: Music

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Wishing You Were Weird

For over ten years now we've been doing a mix tape or compilation CD for inclusion with our Christmas cards, and the 2002 edition is out. A few of the recipients are appreciative, but mostly we do it because it's so fun to have a time capsule of how our tastes have changed over the years.

This year's title is in reference to a famous Austin bumper sticker. If you're a friend, family member or regular discussion participant in this blog (hint, hint) who we've somehow neglected to foist this thing off on, drop me your snail-mail address and I'll send you a copy. And if you've already got it and are wondering "What the hell?!", here are the extended liner notes.

Wishing You Were Weird Stuff we've been listening to in 2002
 
The Meat Purveyors  1  Hey Little Sister
Consider this a reply to the "Cowboy's Sweetheart" below
Patsy Montana  2  Cowboy's Sweetheart*
The Gourds  3  My Name is Jorge
"I sold me an apple to Wm. S. Burroughs/He shot up his dope, his winesap, his girl"
The Sunshine Boys  4  What's the Matter With Deep Ellum*
Dallas's toughest strip is too slow for this hombre
The Horsies  5  Noam Chomsky
An Austin nerdbeat tribute to the patron saint of pinko conspiracy theory
Grupo Fantasma  6  Tejanita
The Austin-Monterrey cumbia axis at work
Moreno Veloso + 2  7  Assim
Caetano Veloso's son has his daddy's voice
Mychael Danna  8  Baraat**
Studio re-creation of an Indian brass band, sounding a bit klezmer if you ask me
They Might Be Giants  9  Older
"Entropy/Is crawling all over me"
The Meat Purveyors  10  Thinking About Drinking
The Tune Wranglers  11  El Rancho Grande*
Texas swing in ranch-hand Spanglish, with a bit of racist Orientalism at the end
Trio Mocotó  12  Águas de Março
I had no idea that anyone could play the cuica as a melody instrument!
Erik Hokkanen  13  Mosquito's Blues
The bumblebee has nothing on this mosquito
Abhijeet & Anuradha Shriram  14  Chunari Chunari**
All Indians secretly wish they were Punjabi, at least on their wedding day
The Skatalites  15  Confucius
Another classic ska tune from the inventors of the genre
They Might Be Giants  16  Robot Parade
From their children's CD No! -- but how does it differ from their grown-up albums?
Oranj Symphonette  17  Baby Elephant Gunn
Dave Brubeck's son and friends do a transgenic treatment of two Mancini tunes
The Ramones  18  Blitzkrieg Bop
Chosen not as a nod to Joey Ramone but to the Jimmy Neutron soundtrack
David Nadien  19  Gavotte (F.J. Gossec, composer)
One of the more memorable songs from the Suzuki violin book
Bob Wills  20  Roly Poly
What would they have said about a daughter who ate like that?
Hot Club of Cowtown  21  You Can't Break My Heart
Western Swing musicians now grow up in conservatories, not on ranches
Norah Jones  22  Cold Cold Heart
Ravi Shankar's love child strikes again
Moreno Veloso + 2  23  I'm Wishing
Brazilian soul revives an old Disney tune
Fink  24  Autobahn
Punkgrass meets Kraftwerk
Señor Coconut  25  Homecomputer (Merengue)
Kraftwerk again, this time a la Sudamérica
Le Tigre  26  Get Off the Internet
Something tells me these riot grrls wouldn't approve of my blog

* From the Proper Records box set "Doughboys, Playboys and Cowboys"
**From the "Monsoon Wedding" soundtrack
music 2003.01.05 link