So, last night I caught part of VH-1's Some Number of Greatest Cover Tracks. I missed the end, so I don't know if they failed to acknowledge the proper winner or not. I had a look on teh internets, and found that the always-reliable retroCRUSH has a list of their own, which includes a few that I know in funny places and a lot that I don't, so it got me thinking, and I decided I ought to produce a list of my own.

I've decided to avoid noting more than one cover of the same song, since otherwise this list would consist of five covers each of two songs. I have also in some cases allowed cultural importance trump my personal preference.

10. The Boys of Summer, DJ Sammy covering Don Henley (The Ataris nearly take this one, though, because they included those nifty guitar seagulls)
9. Ol' 55, The Eagles covering Tom Waits
8. Blue, Sarah McLachlan covering Joni Mitchell
7. Because the Night, 10,000 Maniacs covering Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen
6. Layla, Eric Claption covering Derrek and the Dominoes (Yeah, I know, it's cheating. But still)
5. Love Me I'm A Liberal, Barenaked Ladies (ripping off Mojo Nixon) covering Phil Ochs
4. Along Comes Mary, The Bloodhound Gang covering The Association
3. When the Stars Go Blue The Corrs and Bono covering Ryan Adams
2. Hallelujah, Jeff Buckley covering Leonard Cohen
1. All Along the Watchtower, Jimmi Hendrix covering Bob Dylan

1. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes, Elvis Costello
2. When It's Over, Sugar Ray
3. Crash Into Me, Dave Matthews Band
4. Down Under, Men at Work
5. The Ballad of Chasey Lain, Bloodhound Gang
6. Bad Day, Daniel Powter
7. Hot In The City, Billy Idol
8. Layla, Derek and the Dominoes
9. When the Stars Go Blue, Tim McGraw
10. Everything You Want, Vertical Horizon

Lord have mercy how'd she even get them britches on?

1. The Bad Touch, The Bloodhound Gang
2. White Wedding, Billy Idol
3. Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now, Starship
4. Go Your Own Way, Fleetwood Mac
5. Down Under, Men at Work
6. The Ballad of Chasey Lain, The Bloodhound Gang
7. Everything You Want, Vertical Horizon
8. Layla, Eric Clapton
9. Angel Eyes, Jeff Healy Band
10. Glycerine, Bush

1. Sussudio, Phil Collins
2. Bad Day, Daniel Powter
3. Dead Ringer For Love, Cher & Meatloaf
4. White Wedding, Billy Idol
5. Hungry Like the Wolf, Duran Duran
6. Turn the Page, Metallica
7. Free Bird Lynyrd Skynyrd
8. D'yer Mak'erLynyrd Skynyrd
9.Down Under, Men at Work
10. Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show, Neil Diamond

Then Gandalf the Gray and Gandalf the White, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail's Black Knight, and Benito Musselini, and the Blue Meanie, and Cowboy Curtis and Jambi the Genie, Robocop, the Terminator, Captain Kirk, Darth Vader, Lo-pan, Superman, every single Power Ranger, Bill S. Preston and Theodore Logan, Spock, the Rock, Doc Ock, and Hulk Hogan, all came out of nowhere lightning fast and they kicked Chuck Norris in his cowboy ass.

Okay, so there's no karaoke tonight. Thus, you get your Random Ten early. But you also only get half of it.

1. One Headlight, The Wallflowers
2. Save Tonight, Eagle Eye Cherry
3. Glycerine, Bush
4. Down Under, Men at Work
5. When I Come Around, Greenday

So, normally I don't go in for the net.forward.memes, but my beloved thought this would be fun, and it was. Aside from the humiliation.

Here's how it works: Stick all the yummy digital music you have on shuffle, and repeatedly take the next song served to answer the following questions.

Obvious caveat applies: I haven't really updated my digital music collection in about five years. Damn you, RIAA.

• How am I feeling today?
  • White Wedding, Billy Joel
• Will I get far in life?
  • Drops of Jupiter, Train
• How do my friends see me?
  • Wish You Were Here, Radiohead
• Where will I get married?
  • All along the watchtower, Michael Hedges
• What is my best friend's theme song?
  • The Remedy (I Won't Worry), Jason Mraz
• What is the story of my life?
  • The Prayer of St. Francis, Sarah McLachlan
• What is/was highschool like?
  • The Ballad of Ed's Shirt, Barenaked Ladies
• How can I get ahead in life?
  • Bittersweet symphony, Barenaked Ladies
• What is the best thing about me?
  • Peacekeeper, Fleetwood Mac
• How is today going to be?
  • Kiss Me, Sixpence None The Richer
• What is in store for this weekend?
  • When Doves Cry, Barenaked Ladies
• What song describes my parents?
  • Fastest Man on the planet, Barenaked Ladies
• What song describes my grandparents
  • Sleeping Satillite, Tasmin Archer
• How is my life going?
  • Come Back Tomorrow, Quiddity
• What song will they play at my funeral?
  • If I had a million dollars, Barenaked Ladies
• How does the world see me?
  • Morning Glory, Oaisis
• Will I have a happy life?
  • Black, Sarah McLachlan
• What do my friends really think of me?
  • Captive, Sarah McLachlan
• Do people secretly lust after me?
  • Silence, Sarah McLachlan
• What should I do with my life?
  • Leave Virginia Alone, Rod Stewart
• Will I ever have children?
  • i'm my own grandpa, Homer and Jethroe
• What is some good advice?
  • Simple Man, Lynyrd Skynyrd
• What is my signature dancing song?
  • You're No Good, Wild Orchid
• What do I think my current theme song is?
  • I ain't marching anymore, Phil Ochs
• What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
  • Lullabye, Shawn Mullins
• What type of men/women do you like?
  • When she loved me, Sarah McLachlan

Lying here in the dark, I hear a siren's wail. Sombeody's going to emergency, somebody's going to jail.

1. If You Leave, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark
2. Champagne Supernova, Oaisis
3. When I Come Around, Greenday
4. Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Greenday
5. Down Under, Men At Work
6. 100 Years, Five For Fighting
7. Love is All Around, Wet Wet Wet
8. If I Had $1,000,000, Barenaked Ladies
9. Glycerine, Bush

They say that I have the best ass below fourteenth street.

1. The Sound of Silence, Simon & Garfunkle
2. Bubbletoes, Jack Johnson
3. Mr. Brightside, The Killers
4. One Night In Bangkok, Murray Head
5. Dead Ringer For Love, Meatloaf & Cher
6. Angel Eyes, Jeff Healy Band
7. She's Like The Wind, Patrick Swayze
8. Another Day In Paradise, Phil Collins

One part the fuerher, one part the pope, it's the inevitable return, baby, of the great white dope

1. Sex and Candy, Marcy Playground
2. Hook, Blues Traveller
3. Angel Eyes, Jeff Healy Band
4. Calling All Angels, Train
5. Another Night, Real McCoy
6. Champagne Supernova, Oasis
7. Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits
8. If I had $1000000, Barenaked Ladies
9. Stop Dragging My Heart Around, Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty
10. Joy To The World, Three Dog Night

So, it's Monday I guess. Better late than never. I think you readers will understand by now that you take a backseat to the woman I love, who was in town for a glorious three-day weekend.

I Just Called To Say I Love You Stevie Wonder DK18-10
Crazy For This Girl Evan & Jaron MM374-12
Love Is All Around Wet Wet, Wet DK333-8
Time of your Life, The Green Day PH518-3
Sex and Candy Marcy Playground PH518-5
Brothers In Arms Dire Straits HC523-4
Glycerine Bush SC524-5
If You Leave Orchestral Manouevers In The Dark HC523-1
Wonderwall Oasis SC524-6
Love Is Williams & McKnight MM377-2

Wild World Cat Stevens SC250-3
I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight The Cutting Crew MM380-1
Remedy (I Won't Worry), The Jason Mraz THM356-17
Rock This Town The Stray Cats SC307-7
Bed Of Roses Jon Bon Jovi SC450-5
Cowboy Kid Rock SC429-5
Stacy's Mom Fountains Of Wayne SC480-6
Time of your Life, The Green Day PH518-3
Sex and Candy Marcy Playground PH518-5
Hook Blues Traveler SC519-11

You might have noticed a new feature down the sidebar, M&M Karaoke MySongs. See, I'm the webmaster of the website for the Karaoke show I frequent. Hey, Blogtimore readers, if you're ever in the neighborhood, come check it out. http://karaoke.trenchcoatsoft.com. Their entire collection of songs can be viewed on-line, and, thanks to a clever little feature I built into the site, every time you visit my page, you'll see a random assortment of ten songs from my own personal favorites list. It's the closest thing to a proper random ten you're liable to see around here, last week notwithstanding.

Anyway, you can check out my own personal list in its entirety at http://karaoke.trenchcoatsoft.com/mysongs.php?u=rraszews. If you decide to become a regular (or, for that matter, just like fooling around), you can make a list like this for yourself and avoid all that tedious looking things up in the printed songbook.

In the mean time, though, here's this week's ten:

1. The Boys of Summer, The Ataris
2. Cradle of Love, Billy Idol
3. Straw Hat and Dirty Old Hank, Barenaked Ladies
4. Angel Eyes, Jeff Healy Band
5. Making Love out of Nothing At All, Air Supply
6. Crazy for this girl, Evan and Jaron
7. Someday, Someway, Marshall Crenshaw
8. You're an Ocean, Fastball
9. In a Big Country, Big Country
10. Superman, Five for Fighting

See you next week.

Okay, so my gf came down this weekend. And while we did do some karaoke, I was really paying more attention to her than to keeping track of what I was singing. I mean, honestly, how can I be expected to keep notes when I'm enjoying the company of the woman I love? We had a pretty dandy weekend. Trivia. Dinner with friends. Frantic search for a misplaced grandmother. Dinner. Karaoke. Doctor Who marathon. Cooking. Dinner with some other friends. A hair more karaoke. Dog-sitting. In all, a weekend that would have been pretty pleasant on its own, elevated to nirvana because I got to share it with the woman I love.

So, the practical upshot is that I do not remember enough of what I sang to put together a ten list in my usual format, so I'm going to actually give you a random ten this week. I'm turning on my Rio Cali right now...

• 1.The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes, Elvis Costello
• 2.Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover, Sophie B. Hawkins
• 3.Dr. Who On Holiday, Dean Gray
• 4.Summertime, Bachelor Number One
• 5.There She Goes, Boo Radleys
• 6.Breathe Your Name, Sixpence None The Richer
• 7.Daffodil Lament, The Cranberries
• 8.Ball and Chain, Social Distortion
• 9.Cheerleader, Dierdra
• 10.The Trouble With Tracy, Barenaked Ladies

See you next week...

All of ther friends tell her she's so pretty... But she'd be a whole lot prettier if she'd smile once in a while

1. American Idiot, Greenday
2. Mr. Brightside, The Killers
3. The Downeaster Alexa, Billy Joel
4. Lullabye, Shawn Mullins
5. In The House of Stone and Light, Martin Page
6. Faith, George Michael
7. Hanging By A Moment, Lifehouse
8. Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Greenday
9. Ol' 55, The Eagles
10. Stuck in the Middle With You, Stealer's Wheel

So, it's a holiday. No random ten this week on account of that. But in its place, I'm going to offer something else.

At Karaoke last night, one of the regulars offered his own adaptation of a Christmas comedy classic, making up his own words to a well known song. I'll post more on that later, but in the mean time, here's a mutant version of a well-known non-Christmas song that I coposed for use at karaoke. There are some in-jokes which you won't get, though most of them you'll be able to deduce by having a look at the M&M Karaoke webpage.

The Devil Went Down To Dundalk
With apologies to the Charlie Daniels Band

The devil went down to Dundalk,
He was looking for some cash to win,
He was in a bind, fifty bucks behind,
So he saw a bar and went on in.

When he came across a bald man,
Playing at a karaoke spot,
So the devil grabbed the microphone
And said, "Let me tell you what:

"I bet you didn't know it,
But I'm a karaoke singer too,
And if you'd care to take a dare,
I'll make a bet with you:

"Now you sing pretty good karaoke boy,
But give the devil his due,
I'll bet you ninety-three Sound Choice CDs,
I think I'm better than you."

Now the man said, "My name's Joey,
And we might look like fools,
But I'll take your bet and you're gonna regret,
'Cause M&M Karaoke rules!"

Joey get your CDs out,
And raise a little heck,
'Cause hell's broke loose in Dundalk,
And the devil is on deck.
And if you win you'll get yourself
The best CDs around,
But if you lose, you're buying the next round...

The devil jumped up on the stage,
And he said, "I'll surely win,"
And fire flew from the monitor when he put his CD in
And he turned the volume too far up,
And it made an evil hiss,
Then he hit the "play" button,
And it sounded something like this:

Regrets, I've had a few,
But then again,
Too few to mention.
I did what I had to do,
And saw it through,
Without exemption...

When the devil finished, Joey said:
"Well you're pretty good old son,"
But get down of the stage right now,
And I'll show you how it's done:

Fire on the mountain,
Run boys run,
Devil's in Dundalk having fun
Chicken in the breadpan,
Picking out dough.
Granny does your dog bite?
No, child, no.

Well Joey hung his head,
In disbelief that he'd been hurt.
And we knew something was fishy,
When we saw the devil's shirt.
We saw the network logo,
And we knew he wasn't fakin'.
Now we know who the devil is:
He's freaking Clay Aiken!

Fire on the mountain,
Run boys run,
Devil's in Dundalk having fun,
Good thing Joe didn't bet his car,
Now we know how Clay became a star...

Happy holidays.

Put on my blue suede shoes and I boarded the plane,
Touched down in the land of the delta blues
In the middle of the pouring rain

1. Pink Houses, John Mellencamp
2. Another Postcard, Barenaked Ladies
3. Run Around, Blues Traveller
4. Slide, Goo Goo Dolls
5. Walking In Memphis, Lonestar
6. Karma Chameleon, Culture Club
7. Life is a Highway, Tom Cochrain
8. Steal My Sunshine, LEN (with my sister)
9. We Didn't Start the Fire, Billy Joel (ditto)

Number ten is a little different:

10. (Music)House of the Rising Sun, The Animals
(Lyrics)O Little Town of Bethlehem Traditional

A little while ago, I posted about Dean Gray's American Edit. Some time later, as we knew it would be, the album was banned. Well, today is Dean Gray Tuesday, when protestors are making the album available once again. As protests go, this one seems peaceful, well-organized, and isn't shutting down any major local streets, just as the framers intended.




But the reason I post is less to lend more attention to the event (as it will be nearly over by the time I post this) and more to call attention to the link you'll find in tasty image form to the right of this paragraph. I noted in my original post that one of the American Edit songs mixed Holiday with The TImelords' Doctorin' The TARDIS. In honor of this song and the subsequent banning, Matt Arnold did the graphic which graces the top of this article (click on it for the original context). And it's from him that I found the link behind the other graphic. Someone's made a music video of Doctor Who On Holiday. It's a little rough around the edges, but cute. And based on the fact that the car used in the "Dalek" parts appears to be the same car as on the cover of my copy of Doctorin' The TARDIS, I'm guessing that the footage used is -- despite the production values -- from the original Timelords video (which, apparantly, exists).

Anyway, enjoy it while it lasts. And Happy Gray Tuesday.

1. Father and Son, Cat Stevens
2. Sunday Bloody Sunday, U2
3. Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Greenday
4. I'm Still Here (Jim's Theme), Johnny Reznick
5. Fall Down, Toad The Wet Sprocket
6. Walk of Life, Dire Straits
7. Ol' Red, Blake Shelton
8. Save Tonight, Eagle Eye Cherry
9. Cradle of Love, Billy Idol
10. I Don't Want To Be, Gavin Degraw

For those who might be interested in joining us in these little outings, there's now a web page for the karaoke host with the most, and as I'm the webmaster, I get to promote it. Check out http://karaoke.trenchcoatsoft.com for showtimes and info (and pictures of us, so you know what you're getting into).

Previously, on A Mind Occasionally Voyaging...

Dean Gray's American Edit was a great little free release that mixed some Greenday songs with some non-Greenday songs.

Today, BoingBoing reports that the music industry has killed American Edit.

Okay. I kinda saw this coming. But it still hurts. The creative force behind American Edit wasn't making money at someone else's expense. He wasn't hurting sales of anyone else's product. No one was hurt. No one was deprived of anything. But the music industry disapproved. So this art must go.

Somewhere along the line, we lost track of things. The entire justification of copyright and patent law in the United States is, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts," (Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution). I can't even remember the last time I heard of copyright law being used that way. And this case points out that what it's become isn't even "To ensure that the maker of something extracts the maximum possible money from it." Today, intellectual "property" law exists for one reason and one reason only: to suppress the creation of new art. The idea today is that you stake out a claim on an area of the noosphere and put a fence around it, stopping anyone else from using it. It's a notion that might make sense for resources that are exclusive (like land), but makes zero sense for an inexhaustible resource like thought. Could you imagine someone buying up all the air, and then denying it to anyone who couldn't pay (or, for that matter, denying it to people who could pay, but who the owner wanted dead for whatever reason)?

The whole point of copyright, in the beginning, was to ensure the existence of a creative commons -- that common pool of background thoughts and ideas which inspire new creation. Look at the patent. The point of the patent is not to stop other people from using your idea -- there's a much better way to do that. Guess what: the formula for Coca Cola isn't patented. The exclusivity that a patent grants is not its purpose: it's the reward. The decade head-start you get on your competitors is your payment for not keeping your invention a secret. The whole idea of a patent is that the government effectively "buys off" an inventor to release the full details of his new invention to the public by selling him a temporary monopoly.

And likewise, the whole point of copyright was to make it possible for an artist to make a living at art without the patronage system. See, back in the day, the way artists got paid was that they were hired by rich people to make some art. You didn't need copyright laws, because there was no money in copying existing art: the market for portraits of the Duke of Florence is pretty well exclusive to, well, the Duke of Florence himself. The idea behind copyright, again, was to ensure a creative commoms. It meant that, as an artist, I didn't have to wait for a commission to paint a painting. I could paint whatever I liked, and if the Duke happened to like it, he'd have to buy it from me, instead of hiring some other guy to make a copy of it (Of course, the money was probably better with a patron anyway, so long as you only intended to work when there was an interested patron nearby). With copyright, I could paint things that were not of immediate value to someone specific, and still make a living at it. Hence, more paintings get made, and everybody wins. And there's the key phrase: more paintings get made.

Copyright doesn't do that any more. In fact, what copyright does now is institutionalize a kind of "uberpatronage". Under the old system, the most a patron could do is not hire you. Now, the patron (read: the music industry) can go out and stop you from creating new stuff. We used to have a creative commons, and it used to get bigger as each artist added new material. It used to be about making the noosphere bigger. Now, it's about putting up walls and saying "this part of human experience belongs to us, and no one is allowed to expand it."

But read the BoingBoing article. It says most of the same things without the incoherence brought on by my annoyance.

For what it's worth, there are some folks who plan to protest the disappearance of American Edit by posting the albumb on-line en masse. I'm not participating, since I don't believe my disapproval of the system gives me license to break the law (Of course, not being a lawyer, I'm not actually sure this would even be illegal). But this certainly seems like as good a time as any to share your concerns over intellectual property laws with your local lawmaker.

By the way, if this article inspires you in some way, and you come up with your own thoughts using this as a starting point and want to print them somewhere.... As far as I'm concerned, that's a win for both of us. Go to it.

Mommy's all right; Daddy's all right; They just seem a little weird...

1. Somebody Told Me, The Killers
2. The Lion Sleeps Tonight, The Tokens
3. She's Like the Wind, Patrick Swayze
4. Hungry Like the Wolf, Duran Duran
5. Bubbletoes, Jack Johnson
6. That'll Be The Day, Buddy Holly
7. Surrender, Cheap Trick

8-10 have been omitted in light of the length of last week's list.

[3 points -- but only because my Jackie Paper identification skills netted us some extra points at trivia this week]

Hereabouts, Boingboing -- probably the fastest way to find cool stuff on the internet -- brought my attention to, surprise of surprises, a cool thing on the internet.

Dean Gray's American Edit. It's an album of remixes of the songs of Greenday's latest album with an assortment of other songs which could only have been chosen by a random number generator. If you found "Eminenya" (A medley of The Real Slimshady and -- I am not making this up -- Orrinoco Flow) halfway as amusing as I did, you'll want to give this one a look.

One thing I've always liked about Greenday is that all their songs sound different. I mean, seriously, it's not all that easy to accept that Good Riddance, When I come around, American Idiot and Boulevard of Broken Dreams are all by the same group. Contrast that with some other groups. Heck, I think most of Ace of Base's songs are pretty good, but if you play the album from one end to the other, unless you're paying close attention, you won't even notice that you've heard more than one song. And Dave Matthews, seminal though he was to my experience of music during my college years, is even worse. But Greenday's stuff all sounds different. And now they sound even more different (Though it's a little scary how well Boulevard of Broken Dreams mixes with Oaisis's What's the Story Morning Glory).

As the Boingboing link points out, there's even a Doctor Who remix. But what they don't point out is a bit of wonderful recursion (recursive (adj.): see recursive). The song isn't being mixed with the theme from Doctor Who. It's being mixed with Doctorin' The TARDIS, an 80s single by "The Timelords" (which was originally released on the gimmick of gimmicks, a square CD), which is itself an experiment of the very same sort, mixing the Doctor Who theme with Gary Glitter's Rock and Roll Part 1. It's a remix of a remix.

Dr. Who On Holiday is a pretty good song, but of the ones I've listened to so far, I think my own favorite is Boulevard of Broken Songs. But check it out, see what you like.

One last bit of metaness in this whole project. One of the best known -- in addition to being my personal favorite -- songs on the original album is Boulevard of Broken Dreams. It takes its name from a pretty famous painting of the same name, which shows Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, and Marilyn Monroe in a diner with no doors. Boulevard of Broken Dreams is a medly of sorts itself. It's a parody of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks.

Updated 11/25: D'oh. I incorrectly identified the Oaisis song used in Boulevard of Broken Songs as What's the Story Morning Glory. It is, in fact, Wonderwall. I apologize for all the pain and suffering caused by my lack of research. My Bad.

You wear those shoes and I will wear that dress

Please excuse any typographical errors. My girlfriend is visiting this weekend, and her head is on my lap. For obvious reasons, I am easily distract... Where was I?

1. Sunny Came Home, Shawn Colvin
2. Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, Wham
3. Georgia, Carolyn Dawn Johnson
4. Accidentally in Love, Counting Crows
5. Breathe, Faith Hill
6. Summer Nights, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John
7. Hooked on a Feeling, BJ Thomas
8. Alone, Heart
9. Kiss Me, Sixpence None the Richer
10. White Wedding, Billy Idol
11. That's What Love Can Do, Boy Krazy
12. Somewhere Out There, Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram
13. Hallelujah, Rufus Wainright
14. Mr. Brightside, The Killers
15. Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Greenday
16. Stacy's Mom, Fountains of Wayne
17. Falling for the First Time, Barenaked Ladies
18. Breathless, The Corrs

And now, AMOV presents the Random Ten FAQ (Check out the [read more] for the answers)

Q. Hey, that's eighteen. That's not ten! What gives?
Q. Hey, isn't it traditional to do a Random Ten on Fridays, not Sundays?
Q. Hey! These aren't random at all! You're supposed to put the first ten songs produced by shuffle on your iPod. If you're not cool enough to have an iPod, you're not allowed to play!
Q. Hey, you keep listing the same songs. How lame is that?

A. It's my damned blog and I'll do as I damned well please.

Till next time...

Okay, so the rotation at karaoke was long this week, and I only got to sing a very few songs, and they've all appeared on this list too many times recently. So instead of the usual ten, I'm going to depart from the normal format and present you with ten links to the Random Tens of other people of whose taste in music I approve. It's a Random Ten by Ten.

1. Slacktivist. Brothers In Arms is probably my favorite song these days.
2. snooble dot com. Sunday Bloody Sunday is a song of which I approve with great vigour.
3. Thistles For Breakfast. Okay. Bob's Random Ten this week turned up both Fall Down, which is one of my Karaoke songs, and The Theme From Knight Rider, thus qualifying his list as excellent.
4. Rox Populi. Brian Wilson is an old favorite of mine, but what puts this one on my list is Bathwater, which is my sister's favorite song to sing at Karaoke.
5. Blatherskite , mostly for Don't Fear The Reaper, but Bush as Dictator is funny enough to merit a mention.
6. Super! Geek's 27 because In The Car has been stuck in my head for days. Also, any song about Metroid is okay in my book.
7. Stitching For Sanity for That's Just What You Are, which I would totally sing at karaoke if I were a chyk and they had it (And based on what happened last week, that first one is not really a dealbreaker). The inclusion of Jeremy causes this one to make the list instead of the most recent edition.
8. Randon Ravings For including U2's cover of All Along The Watchtower which is my non-current favorite song. The U2 cover is probably my third favorite version at the moment (my favorite is sure to appear in a regular ten in the future).
9. A Likely Story! Back in may, randomly produced not only American Idiot, The Middle and Brian Wilson, but also my favorite Karaoke Host's regular song, Wherever You Will Go, not to mention a song by Toad The Wet Sprocket.
10. B12 Partners Solipsism They got I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles), they got What I like about you, they got I got you (I feel good), but most of all, they've got Ice Cream. And I've got my ten.

See you next week.

Maybe some of my visitors from one of the Baltimore-area aggregators (see badges) can fill me in on what's up in the city this week. Karaoke attendence was much lighter than usual. Where was everyone?

Since it was such a slow night, two nights in a row, I got a little reckless and sang some songs totally inappropriate for my person. I also sang some songs that weren't but that's neither here nor there. Here's the list...

1. Alone, Heart
2. Tonight and the Rest of my Life, Nina Gordon
3. There She Goes, Sixpence None the Richer (Which is originally a male vocal, but that wasn't available)
4. Smooth, Santana featuring Rob Thomas
5. Another Night, Real McCoy
6. You Belong to Me, The Duprees
7. My Best Friend's Girl, The Cars
8. Mr. Brightside, The Killers
9. Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Green Day
10. Reason to Believe, Rod Stewart

Incidentally, I have decided that the original version of "There She Goes" is the optimal Meet Cute song.

Lying here in the darkness, you hear the sirens wail: sombeody's going to emergency, somebody's going to jail.

Well, severe back pain prevented me from attending Karaoke Friday, but I managed to get out tonight, and here's what I sang:

1. Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Greenday
2. Mr. Brightside, The Killers
3. Power of Love, Huey Lewis and the News
4. If I had $1,000,000, Barenaked Ladies
5. Turn the Page, Metallica

Now, next week's list will probably be conspicuous in its absence, since I will be forsaking Karaoke in favor of going to visit the woman who sets my life to music. So, rather than stiffing you guys for two out of three weeks, I'm going to super-size this week's list with the contents of the CD I am mixing right now for a couple of friends, on the occasion of my having remembered that they asked me if I could provide them with a copy of a particular song a few weeks ago. (For [4 points], guess which one it was. The rest are just there because I hate to not fill a disc to something near capacity). So...

6.. The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes, Elvis Costello
7. Tonight and the Rest of my Life, Nina Gordon
8. Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits
9. New York Minute, The Eagles
10. Behind Blue Eyes, Limp Bizkit
11. Somebody Told Me, The Killers
12. Hallelujah, Jeff Buckley
13. Feed The Tree, Belly
14. Maria, Blondie
15. Get Out of This House, Shawn Colvin
16. Only In My Dreams, Debbie Gibson
17. Save Tonight, Eagle Eye Cherry
18. Take Me Home Tonight, Eddie Money
19. Bittersweet Symphony, The Verve
20. Live Anyway, Quiddity

I like big spiders and I cannot lie. [3 points]

And in case you didn't get the joke in the title:

Partial Karaoke Lineup (omitting some recent duplicates):
01. Scar Tissue, Red Hot Chili Peppers
02. She's Like the Wind, Patrick Swayze
03. I don't want to be, Gavin Degraw
04. Nowhere Man, The Beatles
05. It Had To Be You, Harry Connick jr.
06. Paycheck Woman, Cletus T. Judd

In lieu of repeating the same entries I've been making for the past several weeks, this week's list will be padded with "Songs no one knows the proper name of". (Random schmandom)

07. The Bad Touch, Bloodhound Gang
010. Bring Me To Life, Evanescence
011. Indian Reservation, Paul Revere and the Raiders
012. The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down, Cliff Friend and Dave Franklin [and 4 points]

Random X will be on vacation next week (or, perhaps, truly random for once), since Karaoke is on vacation. I will instead be taking my sweetheart to the Maryland Renaissance Festival. Mmm.... turkey legs...

And even though I know how very far apart we are, it helps to think we might be wishing on the same bright star.

So, Karaoke, as it turns out, is way less fun when your girlfriend isn't there. But she knows I miss her, and now the rest of you do too.

1. Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Greenday
2. Superman, Five for Fighting
3. Hot in the City, Billy Idol
4. Somebody Told Me, The Killers
5. Don't Dream It's Over, Crowded House
6. Accidentally In Love, Counting Crows
7. The Boys of Summer, The Ataris

Plus three songs I have to learn:
8. Mr. Brightside, The Killers
9. I Don't Want To Be, Gavin Degraw
10. Wake Me Up When September Ends, Greenday

Spent an amazing, wonderful weekend with my beloved. As a result, this week's posts are going to be late, since I am several kinds of tired and sore and happy. Sadly, she had a cold, and therefore wasn't able to sing so much as she'd like, but she did manage to get a couple in. Also, this week's list guest stars my sister, who accompanied us to karaoke Saturday night. I'm not going to tell you who sang what, because I'm a bit of a rogue like that.

1. Hooked on a Feeling, BJ Thomas
2. You Were Meant For Me, Jewel
3. Steal My Sunshine, LEN
4. Accidentally In Love, Counting Crows
5. Me and Bobby McGee, Janis Joplin
6. Brown Eyed Girl, Van Morrison
7. American Idiot, Greenday
8. One, U2
9. Bathwater, No Doubt
10. White Bird, It's a Beautiful Day

Will ya hose me down with holy water, if I get too hot?

Me:
1. Falling for the first time, Barenaked Ladies
2. Hallelujah, Rufus Wainwright
3. Bed of Roses, Bon Jovi
4. One Headlight, The Wallflowers
5. Friday I'm in love, The Cure

My Girlfriend (Man, do I love saying that)
1. No Mistakes, Patty Smyth
2. Borderline, Madonna
3. The Warrior, Scandal
4. The Shoop Shoop Song, Cher

Us:
1. I'd do anything for love (But I won't do that), Meatloaf

The first song we ever danced to was What a Wonderful World. Wish I had a better song for that memory, but today I can really get behind the sentiment of it.

You're an angel in a see-through dress.

From Tonight's Karaoke Lineup:
1. If I had $1,000,000, Barenaked Ladies
2. Dancing With Myself, Billy Idol
3. Peacekeeper, Fleetwood Mac
4. Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen
5. Touch of Gray, Greatful Dead

To make the list come out to ten:
6. Second Best, Barenaked Ladies
7. Heart of Gold, Neil Young
8. More Than This, 10,000 Maniacs
9. Kiss Me, Sixpence None the Richer
10. There She Goes, The Las

Went to a Labor Day Party today at the home of some Friends From Karaoke. A wonderful time was had by all. Good food, public nudity (Don't get all excited. I'm the youngest of my karaoke friends by about a decade), free booze, and Karaoke. So, as part of my "start blogging more often" kick, I've decided to start relating what songs I sang each time I go karaoking expect these lists to be short, dull, redundant, and redundant. All the same, here you go...

With one exception, none of these songs were chosen by myself: I gave the list of songs I know to the masters of ceremonies, and they chose what I'd sing next.
1. I'm Still Here (Jim's Theme), Johnny Reznik
2. Alcohol, Barenaked Ladies
3. 867-5309/Jenny, Tommy Tutone
4. Somewhere Over The Rainbow, Judy Garland
5. Hallelujah, Rufus Wainwright

(Lest anyone think I don't know this, (a) The Jeff Buckley cover of Hallelujah is way better, but it's not available for karaoke, and (b) Rufus is covering a Leonard Cohen song)

So I came across this as I was wandering the web, and it seems to be an example of a phenomenon (But then, what isn't? I'm reminded of a conversation of several years ago wherein someone described one of the early bloggers as "a phenomenon". He was promptly told "I'd hardly say this counts as a phenomenon! It's just some guy's thoughts. Look up "phenomenon" you twit!" His point, of course, was that "phenomenon" should mean something far more spectacular. Of course, if you did look up "phenomenon", you'd discover that it actually does not mean that at all). I'm a little (okay, a lot) amazed by the choices of songs in this random ten, and in the others surrounding it. See, I'm not nearly as hepcat cool swinging indie with great love of obscure music as a lot of people, but my tastes are far from mainstream. And yet I know a lot of these, and rather like them, especially the Elvis Costello song which donated the epigram and which, until now, I believed I was the only person in the world who remembered.

So anyway, it got me thinking. As well you know, I'm always the first to jump on the bandwagon two years late. I don't know how long I can keep it up (but hey, I've been on time with Inappropriate Thoughts for a whole month now), but for the time being, here they are, a Random Ten...

1. Fable, Robert Miles
2. Tonight and the Rest of My Life, Nina Gordon (Prettiest Song Ever)
3. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Gordon Lightfoot
4. Mona Lisa, Shawn Colvin
5. Joey, Concrete Blonde
6. In The House of Stone and Light, Martin Page
7. Knightrider 2000, Jan Hammer
8. Across the Universe, Rufus Wainwright
9. After the Rain, Nelson
10. Never Been to Spain, Three Dog Night