This Week’s Top 12: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, And Justin Has The Blues
In this week’s top 12: A song that was thought to be lost to the demise of the VHS era, Justin Timberlake pouring out his heart, televised baseball signaling the possible thawing of the northeast, and Nick: The Twitter.
1. Finding the video for Juniper’s “Making Gerard Smile” on YouTube after years of wanting to hear it just one more time.
I know that the whole celestial-jukebox thing will eventually result in every music fan who’s ever had an itch to hear a song in their life feeling like a rat trapped in a laboratory maze that’s run out of pellets and saddled by an emptiness in her life that’s not really explicable but still pretty painful, but you guys, this is a song that I first heard 10 (maybe 11!) years ago during a viewing of the VHS-distributed indiepop compilation Munch Part 2, and I fell in love with it instantly then. (The drum fill on the chorus gets me every time.) But I was too much of an idiot to get my shit together and order the 7-inch it was on, and it was lost to time. I searched for it every so often, but came up empty until earlier this week, when I was researching the Dum Dum Girls and found out someone put this very out-of-print (hell, out of format!) compilation on YouTube in its entirety. Fans of the Magnetic Fields, La Buena Vida, or any of the Best New Musicable groups Pitchfork’s on about these days should take heed.
2. Patrick Stump taking people to sonics school. If his screed helps even one person stop being a sputtering idiot on the Internet for like five minutes, we all will have won.
3. Janeane Garofalo live, and on 24. Freaking awesome. If I say any more I’ll sound like a fangirl.
4. Justin Timberlake’s “Better Not Together.” It’s a ballad that’s kind of slight, but the good, completely earmwormy kind of slight.
5. Being exposed to the Jimi Hendrix tribute Stone Free during a late lunch on a snowy day. Sure, some of it is crazy not good—I am never going to like the Pretenders, no matter how you try to convince me—but PM Dawn’s “You Got Me Floatin'” sounded great over the bar’s sound system, and Belly’s cover of “Are You Experienced” is, as expected, dreamy and lovely.
6. Bruce at the Super Bowl, crotch-shot and all. I think we’ve all written enough about this to realize why.
7. Neither of these guys being on the second Hollywood Week episode of American Idol:
Unfortunately, that was about the only part of said episode that was any good at all.
8. Lil Wayne proving to the world that people who bowl regularly are more relaxed than their counterparts. Just look at that smile, will you?
9. Naps. They really don’t get enough respect from music bloggers, but in my world, they are Best New Everything every single time I get to take one.
10. “Nick Cave” on Twitter. “Looking for a new nurse. Must be willing to change name to Anita and know how to make a fine cup of hot cocoa.”
11. Live baseball is back on TV! The MLB Network is showing the Caribbean Series all this week! And pitchers and catchers report next Saturday!
12. Moneyball: The Movie. It’s kind of a good news / bad news thing, because it means that Steven Soderbergh is pushing back the Cleopatra musical scored with Guided By Voices songs for at least a year, but… Brad Pitt as Billy Beane?? Seriously.
