Songfight Mix

I ran across Songfight the other day via Boing Boing. It's an online songwriting contest; several themes are posted and you have one week to write, perform, and upload a song for your chosen theme.

Some of the submissions are great. (Some aren't, or at least aren't to my taste.) I spent an hour or so sifting through the archives and picked out some favorites and made a mix. It's just a quick glance at what they have to offer, and there are probably more great tracks that I missed, but check it out. All MP3s are free downloads.

1. * Bite Size - Mellified Man
2. * Indier Than Thou - MC Frontalot
3. Shut Up And Sit Down - deshead
4. Sarah Vowell's Motto - Figure 8
5. Five Minutes - Josh Woodward
6. Shower Scene - Josh Woodward
7. Left/Right - Hobbes
8. I'm With Steve Now - Gyre (featuring Emma Lee)
9. We Are All Famous - Ants (Invisible)
10. The Truth About Aspartame - Consume
11. * Piece of My Heat - The Def Author
12. Massive Intelligence Failure - Southwest Statistic
13. The Truth About Aspartame - The BeWells
14. * Hollywood Fantasy - Loyalty Day
15. * Bonjour, Mon Amie - Josh Woodward
16. * Things To Do In New York - Fifteen Years
17. As Icons of My Youth Fall Silent - Forty Second Songs
18. Quentin Tarantino - Doctor Worm
19. I Thought I Loved You - Sven Mullet

The asterisks mark songs that are my particular favorites, but they're all pretty interesting. Track #2 is not actually from Songfight, but MC Frontalot has participated in the past and I thought it went well in the mix. Sue me.

Notice anything? Josh Woodward made the list three times. I was curious, so I checked him out. Turns out he's got a blog and he's local to me, relatively speaking. Findlay's about two hours away. I don't know if we'll make it over to see him at a live show, but perhaps we'll take a detour on one of our trips up to Michigan if the timing is right. He seems like an interesting guy... not many songwriters use grep to write songs.

The Bottle Let Me Down

I ran across this album in iTunes while searching for something else. It caught my attention first because of the title, and then the whole concept and the interesting glimpses available through the preview.

Check it out: The Bottle Let Me Down - Country Songs for Young Suckers. (At Amazon for those who aren't iTunes-enabled.) Nice play on words. Yes, it's a kid's album, and yes, it's got a country theme... but that's not a problem because you have an open mind, right? Besides, most of them are pretty mild and they're honest country songs; not that glitzy fake western stuff.

Figuring it was worth $10 just for kicks, I bought it. There are a few notable standouts in the album.

The musical:

• Sad and Dreamy, by Alejandro Escovedo - "I hit the big 1-0, I feel so old, candy just doesn't taste as good any more." Oh, life is so hard when you turn ten whole years old! The mournful tone reminds me of Nil Lara.
• Three Little Fishes, by Andy Hopkins & Jon Rauhouse - definitely a kid's song, but the refrain is catchy.
• Little Red Riding Hood, by Freakwater - surprisingly dark and sexy. "You're everything a big bad wolf could want." Rowr.
• Rubber Duckie, by Kelly Hogan - she's got a very sexy voice, on par with Stacy Kent, and this is a fun song which shows it off well.

And the silly:

• Godfrey, by Robbie Fulks - "Godfrey, the sickly unemployed amateur children's magician... he's got tricks you haven't seen." Whoa.
• I Am My Own Grandpa, by the Asylum Street Spankers - fast-paced familial silliness, served up in bluegrass.
• Funky Butt, by Devil in a Woodpile - "She got the funky butt, stinky butt... open up the window and let the funk go out." The laid-back New Orleans blues sound is actually pretty nice on the ears too.