Monthly Poll: Radiohead - Kid A

So I want to focus a little more on these Alternative Album Grammy Winners that I'm playing for bonus songs on the Countdown. So I think, on the first Monday of every month, I'm going to do a little retrospective poll related to the album from the proceeding month.

August's album was Radiohead's Kid A.

Please answer the following questions in the comments section. (If you don't have an answer, feel free to skip the question)

1. What is your favorite track on Kid A

Everything in Its Right Place

Kid A

National Anthem

How to Disappear Completely

Treefingers

Optimistic

In Limbo

Idioteque

Morning Bell

Motion Picture Soundtrack

Untitled (hidden track)

2. What is your favorite Radiohead album?

3. Which do you feel should have won the Grammy, if not Kid A:

• Fiona Apple When the Pawn...
• The Cure Bloodflowers
• Beck Midnite Vultures
• Paul McCartney Liverpool Sound Collage

New Countdown: Merry Christmas Eve Eve!

If I knew someone named Eve, she might write that I forgot a comma and also that I don't know what day it is. But I don't and I didn't and I do!

Yikes. It's late, but I'll be posting this ON TIME, dammit :)

NOTE: At the beginning of the episode, I say that it's Episode 133. Which is wrong. I just didn't do the crucial "save as" step in my podcast creation process. And I didn't realize that until I tried to export the podcast as an mp3 and was told that the mp3 already existed. Sigh. I wish this was only a "tonight I'm tired" problem, but it's more of a "it's been a busy week" problem.

I'm very excited to record the Year End countdown (#3!) this week and that will go up next Sunday! Surprises abound.

Countdown #134

***Featuring***
Atlas Genius
AWOLNATION
The Black Keys
The Cure
Imagine Dragons
Jimmy Eat World
The Lumineers
Mumford & Sons
Muse
Of Monsters and Men
Passion Pit
Youngblood Hawke

Creepy Love (A Poem and Two Songs)

A reading of this poem came up on my iPod this evening. It goes from "almost uncomfortably intimate" to "maybe I should call a cop..." but the intimacy never leaves. Some of the imagery is pretty horrifying, but also pretty great. I feel good about these three works being in the same post.

Lovesong
by Ted Hughes

He loved her and she loved him.
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment's brink and into nothing
Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin's attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other's face

This is also called "Lovesong":
The Cure - Lovesong from Disintegration (buy) (or on MP3)

But this poem feels a bit more like:
Alkaline Trio - Nose Over Tail from Goddamnit! (buy) (or on MP3)

Maybe I Should Change the Name of the Countdown to "Holding Steady"

Kind of like how on the Contrast Podcast, I feel like I should change the name of my blog to "Without Any Further Ado" because I say it so much! My wife even gives me grief when she hears me recoding an intro and then I start thinking about it and then i can't HELP but say it. Am I making ANY sense?! :)

Countdown #49

***Featuring***
The Black Keys
Cage the Elephant
The Cure
Foo Fighters
Foster the People
Linkin Park
Middle Class Rut
Mumford & Sons
Rise Against
Young the Giant