1st annual Songblague mixtape!

As promised, a year-end mix. Songblague is just about to hit the 200 post mark! And that's a mighty big pool to fish from. I must say I'm pretty surprised at how this one shaped itself out. But then, serendipity is part of the whole project. Thanks for listening so far. Hope you continue checking in. And I hope you dig this little sampler. I meant to make it one continuous track, but hey, I'm on vacation. And the Yahoo media player does a pretty good playlist function. Meanwhile, hope you all have a successful escape from the flaming wreckage of the 'aughts. Err, I mean, Happy New Year, citizens!

Inouk - Elected
Gang Gang Dance - House Jam
Alan Parsons Project - I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You
Three O'Clock - On My Own
Daryl Hall & Robert Fripp - Something In 4-4 Time
Peter Ivers - Gentle Jesus
Cheyenne - Come Back To Me
The Cure - Throw Your Foot
Lambchop - Ohio
20/20 - Giving It All
Savage - A Love Again
Miles Davis - Little Church
Passport - Rockport
The Ukrainians - Batyar
Skatebård - Data Italia
Run On - Anything You Say
The Crystals - He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)
Robyn Hitchcock - Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl
Robert Palmer - Johnny and Mary
Goldmund - In A Notebook
David Shire - End Title

Arrgh, indecision strikes. Even after things have been decided. I thought 21 tracks made a pretty tidy package. Blackjack. But a few others kept dancing around in my head. Since Songblague tends to work in week-size batches, here's a little 5-song companion mix. Like an EP. Or a sidecar. Or a short course of antibiotics.

The Kinks - People Take Pictures Of Each Other
George Duke - I Love You More
The March Violets - Turn To The Sky
The Notations - Make Me Twice The Man
Phil Manzanera - Frontera

My dad is one day better than Jesus

Humbug! Christmas is a prelude. For me, the real deal is 12/26—my dad's birthday. And this year is an actual milestone for him (hint: starts with 6, ends with 0). But since Songblague observes the Sabbath (or at least cherishes the nondenominational sacredness of the weekend), dad gets his song a day early. For those of you having Christmas cocktail parties, I'd say throw this one in the mix. It's bubbly!

Horace Silver - Song For My Father

Well, happy season, friends! Songblague is taking the rest of the year off. Lots of good stuff brewing in my head for 2010, so we'll be coming back strong on 1/4. Meanwhile, I'm starting to put together an end-of-year mix, which I'll post once it's fit for your excellent ears.

Christmas in New York

Ah, the Yuletide. Most years, I find myself with plans fallen through or neglected, spending Christmas day in the emptied-out city. Not having much use for the holiday itself, I tend to happily drift through town, enjoying the hush and exodus. It lasts just long enough to get into some good alone-time reflection before actual loneliness can set in.

This song came to my attention in a bar in Tel Aviv. Hey, why not? Having since heard Elliott Smith's original, I like this one much better. And I think it aptly suits my Christmas mind. Sure, it's maudlin, but it's pretty like cold air and tiny lights.

Madeleine Peyroux - Between The Bars

And, special for Christmas, a friendly note on appropriate holiday behavior. With love from Songblague.

Reverend J.M. Gates - Did You Spend Christmas in Jail

Collisions came as consequence

OK, time to get back to rocking. I don't know why I haven't heard more about these Glaswegians. They should be blasting from the stereos of reckless drivers everywhere. Start to finish, This Gift is sassy, catchy, and brash. And that's before you get to the singer, who's just a natural up in front. This song is probably the poppiest jam on the record. And it has become my go-to for when I pretend to be a running back cutting a path through overcrowded subway stations.

Sons & Daughters - Split Lips

Dappling

The snow is melting. The sun is out, which isn't stopping the cold from cracking my fingerskin. Time for some pulsing electronic warmth to hasten the thaw. It's probably no accident that seeing the (awesome) Bauhaus exhibit at MOMA has put me in a mood for this Berlin School masterpiece.

Manuel Göttsching titled the album New Age of Earth, and this leadoff track dances maybe a little too close to the piffle that "New Age" would come to signify in the '80s. Still, this stuff is miles away from California ponytails, even if its got similar hippie roots. I like the terrestrial era that Göttsching is envisioning—placid, sun-dappled melody and sequencers that manage to be robotic and benign. How do we get back to that future?

Ashra - Sunrain

Snow

Sometimes winter hits you all at once. But I have enough heart for the season that I'm willing to walk a mile and a half in a blizzard at midnight. Here's some music that says everything about the impermanence of those footprints and the soft endlessness of the temporary landscape.

John Cage - In a Landscape

The Jesus, part 2

As promised, more on the weird intersection of love songs and paens to the Jesus. It's Christmastime! Unlike Wednesday's Al Green jam, this tune reads straight both ways, no ambiguity. Even the part about how "you saved my soul from a burning hell." Some ladies do that, right? In any event, soul is soul, whether you're saint, sinner, lover, or killer. And for those who want to believe in miracles, be awed by the note he hits at 3:30.

Rance Allen - I Belong To You

Interstellar Christmas party

I've got some more thoughts on Jesus, but they're going to have to wait till tomorrow. My work holiday party is tonight, which makes me think about the kind of party music I really want to hear. Like this fabbo library jam—mellow cosmic travels conjured as only a Frenchman in '82 could. Meanwhile, on Corporation Earth, I suspect Rihanna will rule the night. Nothing wrong with that, but we can have more utopian dreams.

Roland Bocquet - Amour 5-5

Good like my Jesus

Who doesn't love Al Green? And who hasn't clumsily tried to enlist his smooth pipes in the service of serenade? On the other hand, who thought it was a good idea to go full-on Gospel? Does getting burned by your girlfriend with hot grits really mean you have to become a pastor? I'm not sure I follow the logic. So it goes. But I think the '80s would've been a lot more tender if Al hadn't spent them in church.

I remember a couple years back, Other Music was really hot on The Belle Album. I gotta thank them for turning me on to it. It's his last secular album, and it's a weird negotiation of the sweet lovin' and the Jesus. I guess he's trying to figure out how to have it both ways, gettin' it on without gettin' on God's bad side. My advice would've been to keep grits out of the house.

Al Green - Loving You

I followed you

I'll admit it, I didn't think these guys would have the staying power. Then for a while, I thought of them as brunch rock, to borrow a friend's phrase. I got into YLT in the mid-'90s, so for a long time they lived in the same mental file cabinet as Pavement, Guided By Voices, etc, even though had had more charm and eclecticism than most of that stuff blasting out of dorm rooms back then.

But they just kept going, getting more assured at whatever they tried their hand at (their cover of Sun Ra's "Nuclear War" was particularly inspired.) Sometimes, they can get a little precious. Not in a fragile way, but rather in their tendency to be overly curatorial about their influences. But this one is just a good loud, pretty rocker fueled by sadness.

Have people started naming their kids Ira or Georgia yet?

Yo La Tengo - Today Is The Day

You won't get much older

I get a bad feeling about this song. Same way I do with Jim O'Rourke's entire Insignificance album, right down to the cover. Which isn't to say I don't enjoy it immensely. Just the opposite. It's all succulent a.m.-inspired pop, with enough twists and distortions to give it a weird perspective on its '70s roots. This track embodies that triumph. It kicks off like some cousin to Edie Brickell's "What I Am" and has the sort of texture and warmth you want to burrow into for the winter.

But O'Rourke's never one to let you have it easy. He's brilliant, but he doesn't give the sense that there's any pleasure in his art. And so music that seems like it should be enjoyed without guile begins to feel like a stalking horse, like he's trying to commit murder via sugar overdose. I've heard enough of his harsh, avant stuff to make me think that something really malevolent is going on underneath these cozy sounds. And that's before you even start to get into the nihilism in the lyrics. I hope he's gotten a little less full of contempt. Or at least I hope at least he's quit smoking by now.

Jim O'Rourke - Get a Room

100% soul power

Even if was just the rainy day strings and wrenching lyrics, this song would be a winner. It may be a bum-out, but it's definitely not stuck in the muck. The wah-wah is some sweet guitarness, but I wanna tip my hat to the stickman—that shuffle's just butter.

Gwen McCrae - 90% Of Me Is You

Aerobicizing behind the iron curtain

Should anyone be surprised that the Soviet government was sanctioning and distributing exercise music during the 1980s? What's weird is that it took until late 2008 for someone to dig up this treasure trove. Many thanks to the great Paul Durango for doing the world this important favor.

This track is a little out of character for the series, much of which sounds like a trade show demonstration for synthesizers and drum machines. This one feels like a Russian fusion band soundtracking a Smurfs episode. The real treat is the guitar spooge-out that kicks in at 1:10.

Sting was once concerned about whether the Russians loved their children too. Does this song settle the matter?

Arsenal - Festival

Why don't you be good for something

In the 1990s, I used to imagine Mark Eitzel and Mark Kozelek locked in an epic rivalry, a sort of King of the Downers version of Magic and Bird. Kozelek ran up the score on confessional despair, but Eitzel clearly had the edge on drinking himself to death. Put this one on next time you wake up wondering where the rest of you went.

American Music Club - Gratitude Walks

Yes, have another

Oh yes, it's time. For Yes. How about Yes getting all minimal. Huh? Yes. It took a strange marriage with the Buggles to get them there, but here it is. When will the proggers understand you can still get all fancy inside of 2 minutes if only you let out the hot air?

And what's with the lyrics? Modern, spare. What band is this again? I've heard that the song's about Gary Numan driving around in his car. This is what happens when Jon Anderson gets off the bus.

Yes - White Car

For those of you who don't consider Drama to be an actual Yes album, here's a sweet little jam tucked in between the epics of their classic period.

Yes - A Venture

Mad wasps

Leave it to Robyn Hitchcock to open his "hit" single with a monk-like chant and a buildup that dares the payoff to fall flat. He's leading with his chin, but comes back with a knockout—three minutes of vintage Hitchock jangle perfection, with lyrics as poignant as they are surreal. As always, you wonder if he's bullshitting. And as always, it doesn't matter.

Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians - Madonna of the Wasps

A better alarm clock

If yesterday's track was the woozy night song, this is one for wrangling your way out of dreams in the morning. You force your eyes open and glimpse the strange rain outside the window. You'd go back to bed, except for the foreboding sounds swirling around and coaxing you into the day.

Threadgill wins points for unusual ensemble assemblage, by jazz standards at least. You put together a band with electric guitar, alto sax, french horn, two tubas, and percussion, and you're bound to come up with something different.

Henry Threadgill - Too Much Sugar

The wolves are not hungry

So many Wolf bands out there, we were bound to get to two of them in one week. Los Lobos's parade has been marching for a good bunch of years by now. If anyone's paid their dues as a solid bar band, it's these fine Angelinos. That said, I find their craft a little on the boring side, except for the couple albums they cut with producer Mitchell Froom, who makes critically respected types like Elvis Costello and Richard Thompson sound weirder than they probably expected to. Usually, he gets slammed for the effort, but he nailed it with these guys.

This tune has a moodiness that feels old, but not attached to any actual time. It's psychedelic without a hint of bombast. Weird without straining. Pretty like a lavender moon, though I don't know about this Kiko character.

Los Lobos - Kiko and the Lavender Moon

Little brothers rock it out

You can't be Big Star, but you can be from Memphis and give the world your earnest rock and roll. And you can end up shattered and disappointed when your catchy as hell songs go unnoticed. And all you wanted was some fun out of life. Maybe you can be Big Star after all.

The Scruffs - You're No Fun

I let my hair down

From a meditation to a burst of troubled energy. Everyone loves Wolf Parade, and the band keeps giving reasons to justify that. Here's an early one. Spencer sounds desperate for something, like he's chasing you down the hall, shouting threats and pleas. The band thrashes along like their namesake.

Wolf Parade - Killing Armies

Man alone

Now here's someone who understands essentials. Insular, interior, one-man music is not the sole province of keyboard tappers. The bass is a simple pulse, but this quietly sturdy backbone opens the world wide. Every element on top is just the right sized presence. It may have been made in a room, but it feels as vast as the ocean.

Henri Texier - Amir

Boozy vibes - bachelor pad wallpaper

You watch enough Mad Men, you start to break down the wall between daylight and alcohol. Inevitably you get around to digging up your '50s Lounge compilations. The world goes soft focus. A part of me wants to have seen the days when the Third World looked more like a playland than a wasteland. The lucky American Space Age fantasy, sleazy and disease-free. Is it happy hour yet?

Abbreviated week at Songblague. Enjoy the holiday, jive turkeys. Back Monday.

Martin Denny - Swamp Fire

Slow vibes - contemplation

What if you woke up with the inescapable sense that you've been living the wrong life? Or that you've built up a world of familiarities in the hope that they would really belong to you? There's a special type of vertigo for that moment. This tune may do the Twin Peaks-ish noir jazz thing to the point of near-parody, but it's good for slowing things down long enough to get a true look at yourself.

Bohren & Der Club Of Gore - Karin

Mean machines

Sometimes the song of the day mirrors my state of mind and sometimes it's a way to get far away from it. This is the latter. In 1968, these guys probably thought they were making a pretty profound comment on the direction of humanity. Today it's hard to hear beyond the kitsch, though there's a pretty great, proto-Devo vibe happening. I like the pure resignation in the lyrics. The world is gonna defeat you and there's nothing your hair can do about it.

Lothar & the Hand People - Machines

Theme Week - Glam, no Bowie (5/5)

Before David Sylvian developed into one of the most overwrought voices in rock, there was Japan. And before they became a flagship New Romantic outfit, Japan carried the Glam banner into some very hostile, late-'70s territory. You can hear the transition happening. Marc Bolan was dead and Margaret Thatcher was in charge. But Japan still exuded some of that futuristic glamour. This song barrels forward with a pounding dread and maybe something more ominous. Fall in love with me or else.

Japan - Fall In Love With Me

Theme Week - Glam, no Bowie (4/5)

A fair amount of critical ink has been spilled about how Metro were robbed of their rightful adulation and how bad timing is a cruel saboteur. I say it's true. There's a rare and sleazy elegance to their debut that suggests the next day aftermath of Glam's excess and also points ahead to the more cynical New Wavers. This track, however, is a straight up rocker and features some of the best ah ah ah's I've heard in a long time. Like a roller coaster heading into the drop.

Metro - Mono Messiah

Theme Week - Glam, no Bowie (3/5)

Music aside, it's the fantastic escapism and the self-reinvention it implies that I like best about Glam. It doesn't really matter whether the flights are interstellar or just international. Which is maybe why I'm so fond of the stuff made by Americans copping absurd English accents. I'd guess their disco/new wave incarnation is how most people would know Sparks, who have been canny enough to hang around for nearly 40 years. I'm no expert on their vast catalog, but this track is a damn fun time.

Sparks - Happy Hunting Ground

Theme Week - Glam, no Bowie (2/5)

If T. Rex was a shooting star, Brett Smiley was the Challenger. His career may have burst into flames before he got out of the atmosphere, but as disasters go, at least this one was fabulous. Under different circumstances, this Brett would have ruled heaven and earth.

Brett Smiley - Space Ace

Theme Week - Glam, no Bowie (1/5)

When Songblague started, I had high hopes for putting together lots of weeklong narratives. Lamely, I've only gotten around to doing one so far (which I recommend you revisit sometime). I think it's high time for a new theme week. I think it's time for some glam this mid-November!

Great as they are, it's a shame that David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust albums have all but cornered the market on the genre. Anyone who saw Velvet Goldmine knows there's a whole lot of magic in the short-lived glam heyday, and I think Bowie did us a favor by refusing permission to use his songs in the movie.

Let's start in with a man who was king of the hill for a short while and surely had Bowie beat in the hair department. Mr. Marc Bolan comes crashing through the wall with this sexy, cosmic, menacing piece of rock & roll wonderment. Baby, you know who you are.

T. Rex - Chariot Choogle

Deeper into movies

I can't believe it took this long to get ahold of Holger Czukay's Movies album! Released around the time Can was grinding to a halt, the album sounds as fresh as the band's early-'70s heyday, though with that faux-reggae lilt they got into in the latter part of the decade.

Obviously, something was in the air in 1980, because Czukay was dealing in the same proto-sampling radio captures that Byrne/Eno were up to. Oh yeah, rap was getting born too. In this case, the music is wrapped around a Iranian radio snippet (that would be the Persian love, I presume). Miles away from the dark clouds above B&E's bush of ghosts, this tune cruises through some pleasantly soft dreamscapes. It's almost new age-y, which might be a turnoff if I weren't so damned charmed by it all. Hell, the whole record's pretty dynamite too.

Holger Czukay - Persian Love

Out on the town, armed with tambourines

I guess one Concrete band deserves another. This song gets it just right, with a visceral urgency that makes the title seem a little ironic. It may be the best thing to have on repeat as you get ready to go out—the music is all brilliant lights filling your eyes, lyrics sharpened to a deadly point. It could run you over if you stand in its way.

The Concretes - You Can't Hurry Love

They say goodbye

Something about November throws a shot of old time angst down my throat. It's not real angst, just some very close sensory approximations and a desire to hear songs that unabashedly tug on the threads. The feeling pleases me, though I'm not sure why. Someone put this on a mix tape for me in late 1991, more than half my life ago. There's a thought to make one a little angsty.

Concrete Blonde - Tomorrow, Wendy

Wild visions at first light

OK, I admit I'm much more jetlagged than I thought yesterday. Or maybe actually getting some sleep was the worst thing for me. My brain isn't so much taking in sensory information as getting bits of data smeared all across it. Here's a song for such a state. I'm not usually the biggest Karen O fan, but, like the movie it soundtracks, this little tune captures the feral dreamlife of the mind when it goes away for a while.

Karen O and The Kids - Rumpus

Back in session

Home at last. And not nearly as jetlagged as I expected, though I suspect my brain has been scrambled in more subtle ways. Lots of travel impressions to parse. First that comes to mind is the absence of live music. Sad to say, we failed to find anything resembling a band playing any place we passed through. The car stereo was ruled by Arab pop stations and opera, which was surprisingly appropriate for driving through the maze of Jerusalem streets.

I got this tune into my head shortly before we headed out. And it stayed there for the entirety of our travels. If all you knew about Robert Palmer was "Addicted to Love" and his harem of blank-faced video models, you'd probably never get around to hearing this gem. A real shame that would be. This one's just, uh, addictive. I love how the subdued vox cut against the beat and hook. Dude plays it distant and moody, in the vaguely imperial English gentleman expat role he enacted quite convincingly before stumbling into MTV stardom.

Maybe that distance is what resonated with me over the last two weeks. It was fascinating to be surrounded by Jews at levels of society not commonly seen in America (gas station attendants, beach bums, soldiers, etc). And yet, I felt little sense of belonging to the citizenry, certainly no sense of being in a land that was particularly "holy." Most of the time, and in just about every place, I felt overwhelmed by the weight of history - say a town built by Jews, captured by Romans, repurposed by waves of Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, now dressed up for tourists. Then there's the crippling debate over who gets to claim spiritual dibs, which, happily, most folks in Tel Aviv would rather ignore in favor of playing matkot on the Mediterranean shore.

Anyway, dig the song. And if you think it needs some more hip cred, note that it's Chris Frantz keeping it nice and tasteful on the traps.

Robert Palmer - Johnny and Mary

Taking leave

There's music that reminds me how inadequate words are. Or at least irrelevant. Or at least fail thoroughly in my exhausted, totally-vacation-ready state of mind and nervous system.

This song is just beyond. Beyond the words I can find and the material conditions of my overextended time. I'm digging it because it perfectly suits the visions of a desert I'll soon be cruising through. And because its construction seems so magical that I can't feel any association with its components, and so it is a true escape.

Fennesz is good like that. All Music Guide talks about haunting melodies and washes of granular noise, and I guess that's a pretty good approximation. But there are always colors without names, and numbers hiding between numbers, and sounds that will not be organized into language.

Peace out, friends. Songblague will be back on 11/9.

Fennesz - Rivers of Sand

Aww man, I can't leave things all heavy and serious. Life is a dream. Here's the first thing that comes up when you type "vacation" into Google images. Alright!

Power pop on draught

There are plenty of rock dudes you'd love to go out drinking with. Bob Dylan. Thin Lizzy. Tom Waits + whoever he would've brought along in 1978. I'd even add Belle & Sebastian, because you know those little Glaswegians could probably drink you under the table and smash your smug face if you even mumbled the word "twee."

Then there's Artful Dodger, in whose sweaty company I'm sure you would've had a rollicking, all-American time throwing back cans of crappy beer and enjoying the most indistinct burgers in Wisconsin. Even if you were in Virginia. The boys are long gone and forgotten, but you can conjure the magic with their utterly addictive masterpiece.

Artful Dodger - Wayside

Decadence Europa

From the sublime to the profane. Giorgio Moroder does it without even a word spoken. He's got it all smoke machine disco like. Then the cop show guitars blast in, and you know you're in the presence of divine grace. You could probably catch an STD just listening to this.

Munich Machine - Space Warrior

Pärt apart

From art-damaged Judaica to modern minimalist sacred music. Guess the train of thought got derailed. I actually had this playing on the subway the other day. Rainy, a littled dazed, Saturday afternoon. Just the thing. Give this a minute to get going and it will fill you up with a glow.

Arvo Pärt - Cantus In Memory Of Benjamin Britten

Diasporovisation

Every time I try to think about the music I'll be hearing in Israel, I end up putting on something made by Jews in America. This track goes back to the fertile downtown improv scene of a few years back, now scattered around the city, and probably several others. A diaspora by any other name.

Roy Nathanson & Anthony Coleman - Ija Mia

Hot ticket

OK, I really need a vacation. Right. Now.

Cristina - Ticket To The Tropics

Move with the movement

I'm all heart for the Gabester. Albums 3 and 4 especially, and I feel it most when he's been off the stereo for so long that memory does its monument-building magic. Which is understandable; he's got his name on several seminal records of my early listening years.

Then I go and listen again and hear all the problems in execution that obscure the brilliant ideas. So I end up having to enjoy him almost academically, because I can hear what he's aiming for (say, modern isolation and paranoia), and it's obvious that the art is more in the process than the product.

Here's a good example. The ingredients are awesome, and so is the groove, but there's something so stiflingly early-'80s about the production. Maybe it was deliberate; given that the song's all about getting off on the crush of population density. I don't know if I'm necessarily in tune with that on my morning commute, but the energy does seem to make the train kick it up a notch.

Peter Gabriel - I Have The Touch

Øye vay

Autumn sounds remain the order of the day. Maybe it's because I've gotten to see so little of the autumn daylight lately that I've got to feel it by proxy. This one's funky and minimal. Up close and personal. Feels like it should soundtrack slow dancing in the living room. Or a slow evening walk in someone else's city. Too bad the song's all about possessiveness and jealousy. Hit me, Erlend!

The Whitest Boy Alive - Gravity

Mars on life

Time for some '90s digital warmth. I'm talking about the friendly, textural stuff, not the hamfisted fin-de-siècle aggro junk people used to writhe around to so goofily. I put on Autoditacker the other day because a) it was starting to feel autumny and b) I have good memories of washing dishes to it. Now I have good memories of cutting vegetables to it. And it still feels like a comfy sweater of sound in the crisp air of early autumn.

Mouse On Mars - Juju

There is no pilot

I am amazed and grateful that someone actually took me up on my crazy request! So now I've got vocoders running all through my brain. Which first took me me here. Which then took me to Big Science proper. Which reminded me how much I love this opening track—the funk almost surgically removed from the saxophone riff, the lyrical dread transmuted into playful, detached bemusement.

I am totally with Mrs. Lou Reed on planes going down as an archetypal site for the absurdity of modern life. But more than that—and call me a Luddite—but I still can't find my way to seeing air travel as something normal, however much the everydayness of it creates the impression of normality. Feels like a human offense worse than oil rigs or power plants. And yet so bureaucratic that it's almost entirely without style. So when it goes wrong, you may as well accent the ridiculousness of everyone involved. And with that, T-minus 2 weeks to liftoff.

Laurie Anderson - From The Air

I am older than ever before

Songblague quietly hit the 6-month mark last month. Cool, cool. But my birthday is tomorrow, and I'll ask you to indulge me a moment to make this space a little self-serving on that occasion.

It's not much of a milestone...cough...32, and I've been too busy to plan anything social. Instead, I'd like to celebrate it with a track from my band's forthcoming album, which I am very very very excited about. We're looking at a Halloween time release, so look out for it. This track is one of my favorites. It's about the textile workers' strike at the Lowell Mill way back in the American day, and it features the excellent voice of our friend Ali Hammer. Enjoy the sweet harmony and my attempt at appropriating the Purdie Shuffle. Cheers!

The Deedle Deedle Dees - Do The Turn Out

Let me jump and shout, alright!

Brilliant power pop doesn't need much by way of commentary. Which is good, because my synapses are quite fried. And not even from drugs. These guys sound pretty hopped up though. They're practically tearing through the tape. OK, enough out of me.

20/20 - Giving It All

Yacht rock strutters' ball

Steely Dan, Toto, and Chicago went out for a night on the town and ended up in a tangle of squalid love. Several months later, this little baby was spotted floating down the river. It's best to not ask questions. But if you've set your yacht upon the oily seas and want to keep the dancing going, it couldn't hurt to have this tune playing on deck. Maybe segue into it from this.

Larsen/Feiten Band - Make It