#142 - tracks & snacks.

will you look at that! if you're reading this, that means that you've made it through 2009. congrats. i knew you could do it! well, not you, phil. frankly, your immortality is SHOCKING...but everyone else...i knew you could do it! since we're done with the living hell that was 2009 & already a week or so into 2010, i figured it was high time that i got on with putting together my year-end best of lists. at the end of 2008, i recapped my top ten albums, snacks & drinks of the year. this year, i'm going to keep in the same realm & offer up my top ten TRACKS & SNACKS OF 2009!

just like last year, since my main music obsession these days is mostly in the field of indie rock, all ten tracks on the list are by indie rockers. there are a ton of tracks that i could have included here, but we only have room for ten, folks. the first songs to get cut were those from other years, from miles benjamin anthony robinson's "buriedfed" to o.d.b.'s "got your money" to final fantasy's "this lamb sells condos."

from this year, there are a few honorable mentions. there's peaches' "serpentine" & morrissey's "something is squeezing my skull." in the hip hop world, there's the cool kids' "broadcasting live," vinnie scullo's "eyehearthiphop" & kid cudi's "pursuit of happiness" (with MGMT & ratatat). the last track to get cut from the list was animal collective's "my girls," which i listened to extensively for the first two months of the year before i just got plain sick of it & it fell out of favor. regardless, it still makes me happy when i hear it. so yeah...lots of good music this year. grab a snack & a drink, pull up a chair & let's get to my top ten tracks!

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the musical fruit: movement #6.

the musical fruit: movement #6.
song: "criminal," fiona apple
fruit: ginger gold apple



remember fiona apple? had that song "criminal" back in '97? was on mtv a bunch? looks like a calvin klein model? dated paul thomas anderson for a while? people always fixate on how depressed/heroin chic she is? yeah, that fiona apple. she hasn't released an album in almost four years, but back in '97, after releasing her first album (tidal) & making some noise with her first single ("shadowboxer"), she released a second single ("sleep to dream") & bam! out came "criminal." this was back when i still watched mtv. i remember seeing the video for "criminal" & being all "whoa. that chick's dark." the video's directed by mark romanek, who's directed a ton of videos, including ones for NIN's "closer" & johnny cash's cover of NIN's "hurt," so the dude totally knows dark.

once "criminal" started getting some heavy mtv airplay, apple's career really took off. the song became her first top 40 hit, the video took home an mtv award for best cinematography, tidal ended up going triple-platinum & eventually, she won a grammy for the song (best female rock vocal performance). all that from a song with lyrics like "i've been a bad bad girl" & "i've done wrong and i want to suffer for my sins" by a woman who blatantly bashed the music industry while accepting her '97 mtv award for "sleep to dream" (best new artist) by saying, "this world is bullshit & you shouldn't model your life on what you think that we think is cool & what we're wearing and what we're saying." the music industry eventually got their revenge, as they waited a full two years after her next album was finished to release it & she hasn't released anything since other than a comedy song with zack galfanakis & a cover of "why try to change me now?" by the late cy coleman. the lyrics to the latter are way too fitting.

this past afternoon at work, just before i was about to dial into an engrossing weekly conference call, i hurried off to the kitchen, grabbed a plate & the only sharp knife in the office & hurried back to my desk to pass the time on the call with slices of the lovely ginger gold apple you see above. the ginger gold's one of the first apples to be harvested (usually in august), so there are tons of them around right now. virginia friggin' loves them. back in 2007, the state legislature actually proposed a bill to make it the official state fruit. it was eventually tabled & therefore never even made it to a vote, but i suppose it's the thought that counts. valiant effort, kris & toddy!

i can see where they were headed with the whole state fruit thing. i mean, it's a damn tasty apple. i'd been sort of turned off from apples for a while because for the longest time, especially when i was growing up, other than an occasional granny smith, it was all red apple city for shawn. the problem with that? red apples have that slightly mealy consistency & it sort of skeeves me out. after years of enduring them, i finally realized that i just didn't like mealy red apples & decided to exercise my adult authority & forgo them indefinitely. in contrast, the ginger gold doesn't have that mealiness to it. plus, since it's a yellow apple, it's not as sweet as the red varieties, which is actually more appealing to me, believe it or not. anyway, the conference call definitely flew by thanks to the ginger gold. well...at least the five minutes it took me to wolf it down did.