#342: Walk in the Park

Kyle came to Walla Walla! On his first night though, I didn't force him to cook. Instead, we ate delicious Walla Walla burritos from La Monarca (I'm crying a little realizing I can't eat these anymore) and hung out in the Manhole listening to Beach House - wild night, as always.

#341: White Sky

Basically I'm just trying to get all of Contra on my 365. Actually, I don't have to try, because it was on EVERY DAY in the Manhole 2.0.

In case you were wondering, it's currently in version 3.0, available exclusively in Portland.

#340: Strange Man

My brother gave me this song something like two years ago. Dorothy Love Coates is pretty much the definition of badass. For a gospel singer, at least.

#339: Rapid Roy (The Stock Car Boy)

I really have no idea what to tell you on this one. Apparently I was listening to Jim Croce. Since it was a Tuesday, I can also confidently say that I watched Glee. And a weird heist movie (Sexy Beast) staring Ben Kingsley which made me have nightmares about men in bunny suits. You would too:

#338: Pick it Up, Lay it in the Cut

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings were on the Colbert Report! Amazing! I have been majorly obsessed ever since Pandora sent their awesome funk my way. Sadly I only have a few songs, and I am about 72% sure I meant to replace this with a song from their new album, which they played on the show, but I still haven't bought the new album. So you're going to have to settle for this song from Dap-Dappin'.

#337: Mish Mash Soul

Most likely a day of ANTM marathons, Gatorade, and procrastination. I was looking for mashups in my iTunes and ended up listening to this song, which was not at all what I was looking for but it is a great soul song! So there's that. I got it from Pandora a few years ago while perusing my Marc Broussard station.

#336: Any Way You Want It (Syntax Error Remix)

DONNER PARTY 2010. It was a smashing success. I baked red velvet cupcakes which we (sort of) assembled into the shape of a man, as well as sugar cookies in the shape of various body parts (including the head of a baby!), and of course we had the requisite blood punch and dehydrated skin. We also had twinkies labeled "severed manhoods." A very impressive number of people dressed up, too! We had beer pong outside, dancing and quarters inside, and something obscene like 50 people in our tiny apartment.

I made the rookie sorority girl mistake of not eating dinner because I ate a huge lunch at 4:30, and had the pleasure of spending 20 minutes of each hour of the night in the bathroom. Truly terrible. I thought I was done with that part of life... oh well. Sometimes we all have to relive freshman year, I guess.

Cobbay found TONS of amazing mashups which were definitely the highlight of the dancing (which I did a LOT of). This is a Journey remix and it's increeeedible. Cobbay found it on bootiemashup.com which has tons of mixes, but you can also check out Rhythm Scholar's site for more goodness.

#335: Norway

Ok, so. It has been more than a month, but school is over (like, COMPLETELY over) and now I have all the free time in the world to blog. WOO HOO! And so begins my epic attempt to catch back up.

Let's see. April 23rd. Day before the Donner Party. I know I bought an awesome Kdub t-shirt designed by Sam and listened to some truly terrible student bands, but that's about all I've got. We probably put on Beach House and hung out at home. Very exciting. But really. Have you listened to Beach House yet? THEY'RE INCREDIBLE.

#334: River Deep, Mountain High

And this is why my 365 is so great! Because "Tik Tok" is sandwiched by Vampire Weekend and a soul classic. This was also from our soul listening assignment, and I had honestly never listened to the entire thing. Tina Turner, you are seriously awesome.

Ok... back to homework now, I swear. Good to see you again for a bit though, dear blog of mine.

#333: Tik Tok

Oh my. Have you seen the video of Ke$ha (what kind of name is that, really) performing "Tik Tok" on Saturday Night Live? It is maybe the most hilarious thing I have ever watched. First of all, there's the ridiculously dramatic introduction, in which we definitively learn (in case we didn't already know) that Ke$ha cannot sing. Then there's the abundance of American flags... I'm sure you think there was a super hip point to that, Ke$ha, but you were wrong. Were they ironic (I "love" America... :/ )? Do you love America, and that is why you brush your teeth with a bottle of Jack? How is this in any way related to partying or to THE ASTRONAUT COSTUMES EVERYONE IS WEARING? Then of course we must discuss the dancing. Or severe lack thereof. Um... what are those astronauts doing, exactly? It looks like they are at some sort of hoedown but their upper bodies are frozen in robot position. And then they do exactly ONE move of the robot and return to Ke$ha's overarching theme of her career: THROWING YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR. And we can't ignore the awesomely dramatic "Did anyone ever stop to think maybe we are the aliens?" Again, I have to ask, what does this have to with your song about partying all night?

Anyway the point is, I found this video extremely hilarious and spent all day showing it to people and doing the lovably awkward astronaut dance in public with Cobbay. Yaner and I also had a pretty great dance party at home to Ke$ha and Lady GaGa. Except somehow, one was massively superior to the other. Because Lady GaGa may not be writing any symphonies, but that doesn't mean she's stupid.

#332: Horchata

As per usual, Franzia put on Contra in the afternoon and we were positively enveloped in their awesomeness. I love the manhole. Moving out is going to be such a sad day.

#331: The Midnight Hour

I forced myself back into the library on Monday night, accompanied by my lovable sidekicks, Franzia and Cobbay. I was listening to our listening assignment on the beginnings of soul music, and found myself on youtube for the next hour or so watching videos of Jackie Wilson. That dude is a performer, let me tell you. If I put as much energy into my homework as he puts into one song, I'd probably graduate with honors rather than with glee at having somehow pulled it off. I know I don't say it much, but I LOVE SOUL MUSIC.

#330: Our Lady of the Underground

I was supposed to be in Seattle hanging out with my AWESOME brother this weekend, but I told myself I had to stay home and be productive, since I had spent two straight weeks avoiding work and was officially in way over my head. Of course, as anyone could have predicted, I was way less productive than I should have been. I spent most of Sunday sleeping in way too late and then being amorphous on the couch with my roomies, listening to excellent music like this folk opera!

#329: Drumming Song

Hoo boy. Not sure about this... but I mean, I'm always listening to Florence + the Machine. Probably with Football.

#328: Tear It Up

I spent much of the next day complaining about my lack of sleep to everyone around me (even though I had heartily slept through class because of my sudden late night dedication to my thesis) and then telling them about all the great Queen songs I had found in the middle of the night. Great stuff. This one would be much more recognizable as a Queen song on the radio - Freddie killing the vocals, heavy beat (and clapping!), and killer guitar lines cutting through everything else.

#327: See What A Fool I've Been

Is there anything Queen doesn't make better? I stayed up approximately all night working on my thesis to the soundtrack of nothing but Queen. It was excellent. Also, I discovered several gems which are not in my regular rotation of Queen songs. Like this sexy little ditty from Queen II.

#326: Eye of the Tiger

So, one time, senioritis had me by the throat. It was seriously running my life, and there was nothing my professors or my conscious could do to remedy the situation. Luckily, there was something Survivor could do about it. And so, I listened to "Eye of the Tiger" on repeat for a solid 10 minutes (ok fine, twenty) while walking to the library and sitting down to work. Because there's really no other way to sit down to two weeks of ignored work that feels completely insurmountable than with the most inspirational music you can think of. It's too bad I can't use "The Final Countdown" for this purpose anymore - Arrested Development has completely re-appropriated that song.

#325: Hello, I Love You

OMG GLEE. Glee returned in all of its glory, and Finn sang the Doors. It was a pretty boring cover, but I am pretty obsessed with this song anyway. I quite often want to text the chorus to people for no reason. Other than the fact that I love them, of course.

#324: You've Got Growing Up to Do

And here goes a whole lot of trying to make up the reasons I chose these songs... man this blog would have been a great idea if I had actually kept it up.

Yaner gave me this song, and it is excellent. It probably just came up on shuffle while I was futilely attempting to do work. I don't know what else happened except that I was majorly overwhelmed by school, as usual.

#323: American Pie

Sunday I went on my first river trip! My beginning kayaking class went to a part of the Snake river outside Asotin, WA and spent a few excellent hours learning to navigate eddies and rapids. It was extremely nerve-racking and at times exhausting (even though our leaders were visibly bored by the Class II water) and THE BEST THING EVER. I want to kayak forever. Except that I am still majorly scared of it.

On the way back, during one of the few hours in the trip in which we actually had radio reception (when we didn't, the radio would just scan straight through the entire FM frequency over and over. It was eerie), we caught some Don McLean. I was half-asleep in the very back of our minivan, staring out at the rolling fields in the sun, and for some reason, it was a very perfect moment.

#322: You've Lost that Lovin' Feelin'

Listening to the Righteous Brothers... Ron Witcosky must have been in town. That he was. My parents brought me pastries at work, then we all went out to lunch with Claire's parents and later that day went out to dinner at Whoopemup, the extraordinary soul food restaurant inexplicably located in Waitsburg. Yes, the town with a population under 1500 in extremely rural eastern Washington has an amazing soul food restaurant. Who knew.

[Yes, avoiding work again... 11 days until my thesis is due]

#321: You are the Sunshine of My Life

Friday morning, I sang my little heart out in the shower, much to the chagrin of the three other people at home at the time. I sang nothing but soul classics. Mostly duets. It was fabulous. Other happenings of Friday: my parents arrived in Walla Walla and took me out to a fabulous dinner at Saffron!

Ok, time to return to math... I promise to put up this week sometime very soon.

#320: Try Me

Another remnant of the glorious weekend - clearly this week was very boring, as I was mostly listening to things from the weekend and things that were new to me a month ago. I was definitely not working very hard, I can tell you. Not that I didn't have work to be doing. I DID.

Anyway. In case you STILL haven't noticed, Marc Broussard is my one true love.

Update

Just so you know, I do have 365 songs for all of the still-missing days, and I will continue to update in bursts like tonight whenever I am avoiding my thesis (so... all the time).

Also, if your Google Reader is like mine, the Quicktime files don't show up! There aren't songs for all of the entries, but just so you know, if you're reading this on an RSS reader and haven't seen any audio files, they do exist on the actual site. If you're interested.

One more also: Football recorded another EP, and if you're interested in hearing it, click here to download 5 new songs by him.

Finally, sorry that I have completely forgotten about the supposed purpose of this blog - talking about music - in order to talk about myself. But talking about myself is fun. I'm going to do some more of it right now.

FIRST THE GOOD THINGS! I practically have my roll in kayaking - I get up every time, I'm just doing it wrong. Also, I made the most chocolatey cupcakes EVER today, and mopped our revolting floor, and made guacamole. All in all, a successful afternoon, considering the morning, and now the evening, have been wildly unproductive.

Then the bad things. Primitive Pythagorean triangles are sort of busting my balls this week. Not actually, but I'm just so not motivated to work that having to do anything at all feels ridiculously insurmountable. ALSO, when you have a weekend like I just had, regular life is decidedly monochrome in comparison. Six weeks (and a bit) til freedom and a glorious reunion. That's not that bad, right?

I need this shirt. -->
It's only about every 5th word that comes out of my mouth anyway.

ALSO - I should probably invest in a thesaurus.

#319: Howl

Surprise, surprise - more Florence + the Machine. Did you know that Walla Walla tourism's slogan is "Surprise, surprise"? I'm not sure that they can appropriate that to be just for Walla Walla... but ok. I'll take it, "town so nice they named it twice." Clearly originality is not in your blood.

#318: Way Down Hadestown

SO. Cobbay found this awesome folk opera, Football stole it from him, and on Tuesday I didn't have class until noon and so I woke up at 11 to Football playing this craaazy music in the living room (that is, the tiny common space directly outside my bedroom). Um, it's amazing. -ly weird.

#317: Where'd You Go?

Jamie Lidell. I am seriously obsessed with you. Let's hang out.

I put this song on over the weekend, and then of course ravenously replayed my recently played songs in order to hold on to the glorious sensation of the weekend for as long as possible.

#316: Hang On Little Tomato

Pink Martini is already all over my 365 - but somehow I missed "Hang On Little Tomato!" I have a "morning" playlist which is just happy songs like this one, and this morning I slapped it on the speakers while making breakfast. I didn't really need musical assurance that everything was AMAZING, but it was great nonetheless.

Then I spent the rest of the day being a waste of space, watching ANTM, and moaning about the weekend being over. Great stuff.

In addition: any ideas on genres for this song? It's not really jazz or world, which are two common genres I use for Pink Martini.

#315: Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding

In the middle of an epic drive through the wheatfields of Milton-Freewater and Walla Walla (apparently they don't mark state lines on meandering gravel roads through fields?), EJ serenaded BS and I with this kick ass piano line. It was a very fitting soundtrack for driving away from hail and into the hills.

#314: The Wind Cries Mary

GREATEST DAY OF ALL TIME! BS came to Whitman! I think that the moment he and Franzia hugged in greeting was my favorite 2 seconds of 2010.

We got some live serenading by Franzia and JJ, which was endlessly embarrassing and hilariously great. They played sexy tunes, like this one, directly outside my bedroom.

The manhole also threw a great party, which we haven't done in quite some time. It was a great, great day all around. On terribly sad evenings like tonight, holed up in the basement of the library in my death cubicle (facing a corner), I just dream of this weekend coming back to me... it was so glorious.

#313: Sixteen Tons

Thursday was marked pretty heavily by History Rock & Roll - we watched footage of horrible things from the Civil Rights movement, and it was on my mind all day. Watching people get beaten and hosed for literally NO reason is very depressing. We also listened to some excellent folk music, though! "Sixteen Tons" is from our folk roots of rock & roll listening assignment, but it also happens to be an Arbor staple. So I already knew all of the words. I love Arbor.