Betrayal. Love lost. Murder. Sweet sorrow. Haunted voices speaking from beyond the grave… This song (recorded by the great, great Johnson Mountain Boys) has it all.

No, brother, I’ll never grow better
‘Tis useless to tell me so now
My broken heart is only awaiting
For a resting place under the snow
I was thinking last night, dear brother
How […]

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Interview with Ryan Oelke and Vince Horn, the Buddhist Geeks. Thanks guys! Great talking with you. Love your show.

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Satta Massagana
The Abyssinians
So beautiful. Such harmonies. So ridiculously laid back. National anthem of reggae, some say.
I hear that the non-English sounding lyrics (Satta Massagana Ahamlai, for example) are Hebrew. But I speak Hebrew and I don’t understand these words. But what do I know. Jah Rastafari.
08-satta-massagana.mp3

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I usually don’t play music when I write–too distracting. With one exception. When I want to get serious, I put this on repeat and listen to it over and over. I don’t know why but for me it’s perfect–perfect tempo, perfectly spacious. Love.
From the “Diva” soundtrack from about 20 yrs ago.
sentimental-walk.mp3

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Please watch this.

If you liked this article, please bookmark it on del.icio.us or vote for it on Digg. I’d appreciate it.

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This is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.
Upside Down: What Really Killed the Music Business
In 2000 I said to a friend, “the music industry is dead. It’s just a carcass that hasn’t been drug away yet. Little things feeding off the remains but soon it’ll just be dust.” Not a pretty […]

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Mother Earth
Memphis Slim
I was working as a bartender at Antone’s: Austin’s Home of the Blues when blue piano player and shouter Memphis Slim came to play, which was a big deal for blues fans—it was his first stateside gig since he had expatriated himself to Paris in the 60s. And his gig fell on my […]

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Dancing in the Dark
Bruce Springsteen
dancing-in-the-dark.mp3
I was sitting outside the Tam O’Shanter Lounge in my cab, waiting for last call to see who might stumble out too drunk to drive. Cabbie was one of my first post-high school jobs and the best career alternative I could think of at the time. It was late August, about […]

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Blue Skies
The Allman Brothers
blue-skies.mp3
My boyfriend and I were lying on the floor listening to music, smoking pot, waiting for the pizza delivery guy. I think I was about 18 years old. He wanted me to listen to “Blue Skies” by the Allman Brothers. Sure, I thought. Whatever. I like music. He cued it up and […]

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Yesterday, Duncan and I were talking about what qualified a song as melancholy. Melancholy is not quite sadness. It seems to also include an element of longing, even of sweetness. As an enneagram 4, I feel eminently qualified to compose a melancholy playlist. (For more about the enneagram–and my obsessive interest in it, click here.) […]

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