SLOW NEWS DAY AT THE TRUTH

Shuffle Songs and Put Your Head Down

1. Old Battery - Guided By Voices

From the Devil Between My Toes album from the Box boxset. I bought it second-hand from this Hispanic looking guy at the Glebe Market sometime around two thousand something and two. It was still expensive. I think I might've waited three weeks before finally yeah okay I'll give you the fucking money dick. And later that night I saw him drinking it away at his local pub. Or I assume it was his local pub, since it was located at the indie suburb I assumed he was living in.

2. What Are We Coming Up To - Oil Can Harry

Really Guided By Voices again. Part of the Suitcase boxset I mail-ordered from their Fading Series Captain. Was still living in Glebe. When it hadn't come after two weeks got paranoid thinking someone had stolen the package because maybe the postman had left it outside the gate since the landlord was too cheapskate to let us have our own mailbox. Bastard.

3. You Can't Hurry Love - The Supremes

I also mail-ordered this. From a music site in Australia that's now closed down. Chaos music I think it was called. I had to borrow my friend Brendan's address for them to deliver it to. Then he had to send it to me who was in Byron Bay for a last holiday with my then girlfriend before I had to go back to Jakarta and she find a real guy. She was sweet and decided not to find a real guy after all and flew all the way to Jakarta to be together with me again but since then I've fucked up everything so I hope she finds a real real guy this time.

4. Bathtub - Snoop Dogg

When I first met my girlfriend I was a bit worried about her friends. They listened to this thing. But then we went for a weekend to a wet Batemans Bay and spent the whole time inside listening to this and Dre. Maybe they should've been worried about me.

5. Gray - You Am I

Man, why all this music from when I was wasting my time in Australia?

6. Watch Me Jumpstart - Guided By Voices

I have a lot of GBV. I am forever guided by invoices.

7. Absolutely Cuckoo - Magnetic Fields

Remember CDNOW? I streamed samples of the 69 Love Songs album from the site on the old computer in the backroom of my house next to the ironing board, not knowing anything about the band but having read in the descriptions that this album actually contains 69 love songs. I listened to I Don't Believe In the Sun and then entered my mom's credit card details. It's probably the only thing I remember from all the things I've bought using my mom's credit card.

8. Is It Really So Strange? - The Smiths

A song I always skip on my iPod. I ripped it from the Louder Than Bombs comp. I probably have another 34257 same versions of it from the 46572 comps The Smiths released in the '80s, when everyone was too busy hairspraying their ass hair to complain. Or notice.

9. Boxing - Ben Folds Five

I've never seen them live. Though I once got a free ticket to see them at my uni bar on the Underground tour. I let Henry, my best friend, carry it to the gig, thinking that the free ticket must have got a +1 attached to it and I hate asking ushers for +1 so let Henry do it. The ticket never had a +1. And Henry already got the inside of his wrist stamped. The bastard. (I just ripped this song on to my girlfriend's Creative Neeon Zen.)

10. Lily of the Valley - El Vez

Got into an El Vez phase right after my Elvis phase. The Elvis phase after the Morrissey phase. Going from Morrissey to Elvis after watching the Live in Dallas video and ah, so he got all his stage mannerisms (eg., the whipping of the mike cord) from Elvis's '68 Comeback special video! Then from Elvis to El Vez via Google searches on 'pompadours'. Bought the CD at a dag-y CD store in Brisbane, the man at the counter called me 'man' and had ass-parted long hair like Lee Dorrian from Cathedral. I went there the summer of 2003.

11. The Abandoned Hospital Ship - The Flaming Lips

I have no idea what this song sounds like. But I know it’s from their pre-Geffen compilation A Collection of Songs Representing Something Totally Stupid but Since Soft Bulletin is Such a Work of Genius I Can Now Release Anything from My Back Catalogue Even If It’s Just The Sound of Me Farting, I Just Have to Call It Something Like Yoshimi What A Stupid Name and stupid amateur indie historians will buy it no questions asked. Just like I did.

12. Meter - Ruang Hampa

The last song in the JKT:SKRG compilation. I don’t think I ever listened to it until one day I put my iPod on another shuffle and I thought I was hearing an unreleased Radiohead track from the OK Computer session. With better enunciation. But just as boring.

13. Dear Morris - Even

I like a band like Even. A trivia in rock history—in my history—but, maybe because it is a piece of trivia, with an indelible place in it. Like the battle for Surabaya (10 November 1945) in the history of mankind. Not a match for the Peloponnesian War, but fuck that suicide bomber who killed the English general was so cool.

14. Broken - Teenage Fanclub

One of the B-sides in the Ain’t That Enough single. The single came in two versions, each with different B-sides. I chose this one because it had a cover of Lou Reed’s Femme Fatale (which sucked, but how did I know, this was pre-Limewire). I hate this song, but Ain’t That Enough became a soundtrack for cold, sunset-y, summer evenings in my college room, a buddy love with H. who taught me the chords to the song (C-G-Am), a perfect life until I realized, no, it ain’t ever enough.
 
15. Stumbling Block - Ben Lee

Being Ben Lee is a stumbling block for Ben Lee’s career.

16. For a Second - Magic Dirt

What Are Rock Stars Doing Today was a great album, may be the only great album with a girl-singer who sings in an awful, exaggerated, Kuta-Australian accent. But I don’t remember this song was on it.

17. (Intro) - Sigur Ros

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18. True Love - Scavengers

“True love is beautiful, true love, everything’s cool.” Cool sentiment, totally untrue.

19. I Knew I'd Want You - The Byrds

Once a year, you’ll read a Byrds-revival article complaining why aren’t they more appreciated when Fifth Dimension foreshadowed Sgt. Peppers’ by a full five months. BECAUSE THEY WERE SECOND-RATE AND ARE ALREADY OVERRATED ANYWAY YOU STUPID MOJO-READING HACKS.

20. Mrs. Leroy Brown - Van Lear Rose

Bought the album because I saw the clip for Miss Being Mrs. in a hotel room somewhere. I must’ve felt lonely and sentimental. I miss being lonely.

21. Flat Tire - Eraserheads

I own five Eraserheads albums that my mother bought me on an Ophthalmology Conference trip to Manila. I don’t remember ever having listened to this song.

22. Atwa - System of A Down

Toxicity is one great slab of heaviness. Impossible to distinguish one song from another.

23. The Applecross Wing Commander - You Am I

There were times when I thought dressing like Koes Plus was cool. These times were sometime circa 1993. I was also smoking pot almost everyday then. To ease the acid flashbacks. Applecross is a suburb in Perth. Little Wing Commander impressions was a popular game among primary school kids in boring suburbs like Applecross. Tim Rogers, the lead singer of You Am I, grew up in Applecross. He is a boring cunt. You memorize band members’ names when you’re a boring indie cunt. (These last two sentences should've been (virtually) crossed out but this primitive Multiply word processor blah.) You know a lot of boring rock trivia like this when you’re a pothead.

24. It's Only Divine Right - The New Pornographers

A lesbian friend of mine once said that she’d buy a copy of Hustler if it had Neko Case in it. I would keep buying New Pornographers records as long as it has her in it.

25. All I Really Want to Do - The Byrds

One of their better songs. AND IT’S A(NOTHER) DYLAN COVER.