Silent days and nights

Image: Joe Carey

Things will probably be sleepy around here for the rest of the week. I still need to put together my 2006 lists (songs and albums) and write 10,000 word essays for each. (That last bit is a joke.) But expect something come Monday.

In the meantime, kindly wander over and download the latest holiday-themed Contrast Podcast. I contributed for the first time in eons. My intro sounds rather phlegmatic; I was tired when I recorded it. But the song by Dressy Bessy, "All the Right Reasons," is adorable! (And I only just realized that in the outro they're singing "dreidel, dreidel," making it a very rare Christmas + Hanukkah song.) It was either that or Martha Wainwright's "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year," which to my ears sounds so sad and somber and intimate (as with many Wainwright family compositions, it's part conversation with kin), like something Patsy Cline might have sung with a tiny, bite-your-lip smile. So I thought I'd keep it closer to home where it wouldn't get lost amid the tinsel and twinkling lights.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year - Martha Wainwright

For further diversion...

Locust St. has wrapped up its century series with a spark and a sizzle and a bang. (Songs from the 80s, 90s and 00s are still posted for download.)

At Crickets, Chicago Reader writer Miles Raymer makes some smart observations about the near futility of trying to listen long and think deep about music these days :

Like, what if patience was the new hotness, and then everyone cool suddenly started ignoring all the chatter--the blogs and the worrying that all of the dudes at the rock club are going to harshly judge your shirt--and just totally got into listening to records? The Internet has cranked the volume and rate of things that you must hear, judge, file, and get over to such an extreme that obsessive indie dorks now actually have to forget more music in a year than they even heard in a whole year before MySpace happened. I would wager that there are entire extinct subspecies of German techno that no one on earth remembers happening.

Oh, and A CONTEST. Sort of. If you can name the source of the image (what it is from) Jon used in his post on Monday, email shakeyourfist@gmail.com and we'll send you a CD. Either The Walkmen's Pussy Cats, because we have like four copies (it's actually pretty good), or a holiday mix of my making. The first person to answer correctly wins.