Sweetpea’s Garden

My officemate has been out sick all week, which means I am up to my eyeballs in work. The upside, though, is I’ve been able to listen to music all day while I’m working. I thought I’d celebrate this by sharing a random ten for today. Feel free to add yours in the comments.

1. Airliner, R.E.M.
2. Every Little Thing She Does is Magic, The Police
3. Fiesta, The Pogues
4. Glory Days, Bruce Springsteen
5. I Like Chinese, Monty Python
6. Orange Crush, R.E.M.
7. Goodnight Elisabeth, Counting Crows
8. Under the Pines, Jonathan Coulton
9. Section 31 (Overblow Your Nest), The Polyphonic Spree
10. Re: Your Brains, Jonathan Coulton

It’s been quite a while — since before Christmas, if memory serves — since I last did a random ten list. (Here’s the orginal random ten post with the rules, in case you want a refresher on how this particular meme works.)

I decided to do one today with only music I’ve acquired since the start of 2008. Some of it is recent (as in released yesterday, in the case of the R.E.M. album) and others (such as Jonathan Coulton) have been around a while, but are new to me. My laptop at work does seem to be missing my first purchase of the year, the soundtrack to Juno, but since that’s what led me to Kimya Dawson, it’s sort of represented anyway.

Without further ado, here’s what’s new in my iTunes. As always, have at it in the comments with lists of your own, if you’re so inclined.

1. Glass - Ingrid Michaelson, Girls and Boys
2. Underground - Kimya Dawson, Remember That I Love You
3. Selcha - Yael Naïm, Yael Naïm
4. Shop Vac - Jonathan Coulton - Thing a Week 1 *
5. Change is Hard - She & Him - Volume One
6. Highway - Ingrid Michaelson, Girls and Boys
7. Horse to Water - R.E.M. - Accelerate
8. Just as Long as Me - - Jonathan Coulton - Thing a Week 3 *
9. December Baby - Ingrid Michaelson, Girls and Boys
10. Mr. Richards - R.E.M. - Accelerate

* Thing a Week is actually a podcast available through iTunes, wherein Jonathan Coulton released one of his songs (free of charge) each week of 2006. You can download all the episodes, convert to AAC and voila! Instant album.

I realize it has only been a few weeks since I put the weekly Wednesday Random Ten on hiatus, but as promised then, I am back with a list drawn from my extensive holiday music collection. Yes, I do in actual fact have a lot of it — mostly Christmas, but a random Hanukkah track here and there, because it’s just not December without the dreidl song.

Given that I spent quite a few years working holidays at the mall, I’ve been told that it’s strange that I love Christmas music as much as I do. To that I say: I served a lot of beer when I worked at a bar and I still like to drink (which surprises no one) so familiarity does not necessarily breed contempt. And besides, the bulk of my retail experience was at Victoria’s Secret back in the days when it was still thematically, ahem, Victorian, so I listened to a lot of orchestral holiday music — not the pop/country/50s-retro mish-mash that makes up most of my collection.

And I am just a big cornball softie. What else can I say?

1. Santa Baby — Eartha Kitt
2. Here Comes Santa Claus — Gene Autry
3. Away in a Manger — Johnny Cash
4. Welcome Christmas (from How the Grinch Stole Christmas) — MGM Studio Orchestra with Boris Karloff
5. Winter Wonderland — Frank Sinatra
6. Hark the Herald Angels Sing — Unknown Non-Annoying Holiday Chorus (I mostly dislike choral music, but the CD this came from is not bad. I have no idea who it is, though.)
7. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas — The Pretenders
8. Merry Christmas, Baby — Bruce Springsteen
9. Please Come Home for Christmas — The Eagles
10. O, Holy Night — Harry Connick, Jr.
11. I Pray on Christmas — Blind Boys of Alabama
12. Silent Night/Joy to the World — Gene Autry
13. Happy Xmas (War is Over) — John Lennon & Yoko Ono

OK, I went a little over ten. I was trying to get to a Hanukkah song, but the iPhone is not working with me. They are in there, I promise. Maybe it just knows that yesterday was the last night of Hanukkah, so the songs are officially out of date.