2005-01-30 - 7:28 p.m.

>Rufus Succumbs To A Questionnaire

These birds are smallish, but still within the normal range of sizes. The rather large stones are part of the breakwater near my apartment building.

Sanetwin suggested this to me.

1) What is the total number of music files on your computer?
753.

2) The last CD you bought is?
"Real Gone" - Tom Waits newest album, totally awesome and crazy.

3) What is the last song you listened to before this message?
"Honey Pie" by The Beatles, as I drove home from the grocery store. I've been rediscovering the White Album lately. I was obsessed with the Beatles as a youngster and then didn't listen to them at all for years. I really think that a lot of the songs on that album are amazing, I still know them all by heart.

4) 5 songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you?
(click on song name to listen to samples)

a) "Summertime Rolls" - Jane's Addiction. From their unmatched sophomore album "Nothing's Shocking." That was the quintessential summertime teenage heartburst song for me. It was also the first song I ever figured out by myself on guitar. It seemed to me in the blooming heart of teenage romance to be the ultimate image of utopia: an idyllic midsummer's dream -

"Me and my girlfriend
Don't wear no shoes
Her nose is painted pepper
Sunlight...
She loves me
I mean it's serious
As serious can be..."

b) "Caribou" - The Pixies. One of the songs from their amazing demo released as "Come on Pilgrim" in 1987, which was later tacked onto the end of their 1988 album "Surfer Rosa." The Pixies were the soundtrack of my youthful adventures. When I listened to songs like this one or "Vamos" or "Silver" or "Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons" or I could go on all day naming Pixies songs that I love, when I listened to them, I felt like the top of my head would blow off with the pent-up energy of it all.

"I live cement
I hate this street
Give dirt to me
I bite lament
This human form
Where I was born
I now repent
Caribou..."

c) "Tango 'Til They're Sore" - Tom Waits. Again, I could name a hundred Tom Waits songs that I love, but this one has always been among my favourites. It's just such a perfect song. Actually, "Rain Dogs" is a perfect album. Just amazing.

"Well you play that tarantella all the hounds will start to roar
The boys all go to hell and then the Cubans hit the floor
They drive along the pipeline, they tango 'til they're sore
They take apart their nightmares and they leave them by the door
Let me fall out of the window with confetti in my hair
Deal out Jacks or Better on a blanket by the stairs
I'll tell you all my secrets, but I lie about my past
And send me off to bed for evermore..."

d) "Let's Dance" - David Bowie. I think that I didn't like this song when I first heard it, but it has grown on me. David Bowie has so many amazing songs. This just gets me for some reason. I think it's that "serious moonlight."

"Let's sway
while color lights up your face
Let's sway
sway through the crowd to an empty space"

e) "Hallucinations" - Bud Powell. At his height between 1947 and 1951, Bud Powell is acknowledged as one of the giants of jazz piano. He was a bebop genius. I love this stuff. It's an instrumental, so no quote for this one. I really love this kind of jazz, never the same twice, peppered with bass and drum solos, the murmur of a smoky jazz club audible in the scratchy background of the recording.

5) Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
Um, I don't know. How about I just give three more meaningful songs?

f) "Moondance" - Van Morrison. I had this friend who I worked ridiculously long hours with for a year, just the two of us. This was his favourite song and we used to sing it together as we loaded and unloaded pig ear kilns. He was an unrecognized prodigy who could play anything he heard on the piano, without ever having had a lesson. He committed suicide in our workplace. I cleaned it up.

"And all the leaves on the trees are falling
To the sound of the breezes that blow
And I'm trying to please to the calling
Of your heart-strings that play soft and low"

g) "Man in the Long Black Coat" - Bob Dylan. I love folk songs about the devil coming to town in disguise. And this pushes the sub-genre to a higher level. Bob Dylan is an absolute genius as far as I am concerned.

"Crickets are chirpin', the water is high,
There's a soft cotton dress on the line hangin' dry,
Window wide open, African trees
Bent over backwards from a hurricane breeze.
Not a word of goodbye, not even a note,
She's gone with the man
In the long black coat."

h) "Gone Daddy Gone" - The Violent Femmes. This is another total nostalgic song for me. I love the unpolished quality of the Femmes.

"Beautiful girl
love the dress
high school smiles
oh yes
Beautiful girl
love the dress
where she is now I can only guess
Cause it's gone daddy gone
the love is gone..."