Zenformation Playlist 3/31/06: SXSW Datamining, Rare Punk Songs, and Grad School Research as Party Music

1. Black Cadillac [MP3] - Rosanne Cash, Black Cadillac (Capitol, 2006)
Off Cash's latest release - a fresh departure from her normal fare. She's lost her father, step-mother, and mother in the last few years, watched the family's life become a movie. On this disc, the woman made famous by covering her father's classic "Tennessee Flattop Box" finally breaks liberates herself from the shadows of her kinfolk and the run-of-the-mill country sound. Cash was a featured artist at this year's South By Southwest Music Festival.

2. Cherry Red [MP3] - Yuppie Pricks, Broker's Banquet (Alt. Tentacles, 2005)
Also featured at SXSW this year in Austin. Can ya tell where I'm datamining legal MP3s this morning? I just love the GNR Paradise City sample/skit at the beginning. And the line Baby, How about you blow me in the back of my corporate jet?

3. Service and Repair [MP3] - Calexico, The Hot Rail (Quarterstick, 2000)
Not to brag, but I burned this song to a mix CD for a guy recently who was looking for mood music for a surprise dinner he'd been planning for his girlfriend. Must've been a good choice, because the guy walked around with that "I Got Laid" grin for about a week and bought me lunch twice. My wine selection - a Castoro Cellars' 2004 Tempranillo - was also a hit as well. I don't even like wine.

I may not be able to read body language very well in my own life (I've had too many exes describe me as the most dense guy on the planet in this area), but I do know how to stack the deck in other people's favor.

4. Turning Japanese - The Vapors, The Best of... (EMI comp., 2003)
Songs about excessive masterbation are funny. Especially from the early Reagan Years.

5. Frenzy - Roach Motel, Barricaded Suspects (Toxic Shock comp., 1983)
I've spent portions of the last decade trying to track down the illusive CD re-issue of this classic 1980s punk compilation. I found it buried in - GASP! - the emo section of Aardvark Music in Paso Robles, Calif., last year.

6. Slow Down Gandhi [MP3] - Sage Francis/Cold Archives Experiment, (Remixed 2005)
Somebody e-mailed me this morning and told me they preferred my version to the original from A Healthy Distrust [Epitaph, 2005]. Part of my grad school research was apparently a hit at a party here in Oxford!

The "Cold Archives Experiment" started as, well, an actual graduate school experiment. The tracks are tied to a research project that tested Open Source audio software for archival sound-recording digitization use. I occassionally remix tunes to keep my digitization/production skills intact, but I'm no Danger Mouse.