help!/pick some songs for me to play at open mics in pullman

an open request to my fans (and to-be fans, hopefully):

i want to try to start playing some open mics and short shows around pullman and moscow because i haven't played or written music in six months and i'm about to lose my freaking mind as a result.

that said, i've never actually played less than 10 songs or so at a show and so i don't know how to best concentrate entertainment awesomeness into a 15 minute time slot.  that's where you come in.  i just posted ten of what i think are my most "popular" (if there is such a thing) of my songs on my reverbnation page.  three of them have two different versions posted, for variety's sake.  if you have the time and interest, i'd really appreciate it if you took a listen to the songs and let me know which three or four you think are the best for potential open-mic-ing.

i'm going to mirror this post on my blog and on facebook, so you can reply at either of those places or i guess just email me.

songs can be heard at:

www.reverbnation.com/benbunting or just search for "lazy blazers" on facebook and listen there.

there are probably ways to get to the songs from my blog and my facebook page, if you're especially enterprising.

of course, if you aren't at all interested in this or don't have the time to listen, that's cool too.  i'm just sending this out to as many people as possible to maximize feedback.  so if this is all the further you go, thanks just as much for coming this far.

best,
ben

tweedy/adams massacre

as a side project whilst reading and grading and doing my normal insane amounts of work, i've been working on collecting 128kbps mp3s of every studio track (official albums, unofficial albums, unreleased sessions, singles, b-sides, etc.) of wilco and wilco-related stuff and ryan adams and ryan adams-related stuff into on place on my hard drive. i'm short a few tracks and sessions for each band, but not many (i'm a little music-nerd proud of that). so here's how things stand right now:

3.48gb of RA

3.27gb of wilco

1545 tracks total

81 hours, 45 minutes, and 24 seconds of music total

i'm currently listening to a lot of good new stuff (avett bros., monsters of folk, and stuff), but it's nice to be able to put 81 hours of my favorite two bands on shuffle whenever i want.

also, this (sadly) doesn't include any live stuff not officially released...and of course i have about 250 shows (500 hours?) of RA and 50 shows (100 hours?)...

god, i'm a nerd. but it's funny.

btw, my current favorites of all 1545 tracks are the california and rescue blues 7" vinyls from RA.

EDIT: i feel like i should clarify that i had pretty much all of these tracks somewhere already, it was just a matter of gathering them into one place. i didn't specifically find each and every track painstakingly over the last week or two...

more people chastising us about the environment (good), and radiohead sings about the apocalypse

just saw the trailer for the new-ish quasi-documentary "age of stupid". not that anything like this would ever grace a movie screen in eastern washington, but i definitely want to see it in some other way ASAP.

and since this wouldn't be my blog without a music video tie-in, here's thom yorke performing "reckoner" at the international premiere of the film:

this song seems to come up a lot in connection with apocalypses (?)...check out the fan-made video for the studio version of the song (which i know i've posted before; watch it anyway):

theologians

since i'm on a kick lately of posting lyrics and song videos, i wanted to pass this one along. one of my favorite wilco songs, off of one of the best albums of the 2000s, yankee hotel foxtrot be damned :)

theologians

Theologians
They don't know nothing
About my soul
About my soul

I'm an ocean
An abyss in motion
Slow motion
Slow motion

Illitterati lumen fidei
God is with us everyday
That illiterate light
Is with us every night

Theologians
That don't know nothing
About my soul
Oh they don't know

They thin my heart with little things
And my life with change
Oh in so many ways
I find more missing every day

Theologians

I'm going away
Where you will look for me
Where I'm going you cannot come

No one's ever gonna take my life from me
I lay it down
A ghost is born
A ghost is born
A ghost is born

I'm an ocean
I'm all emotion
I'm a cherry ghost
Cherry ghost

Hey I'm a cherry ghost
A cherry ghost

mason sings about the environment

this is a great song...he played it at the knitting factory last year, but it's unreleased officially. i was happy to find a lot of good quality videos of it on youtube.

bought the new album today. i only listened once, so i'm hesitant to write a review yet. but i like it so far.

EDIT: here are the lyrics to the song, courtesy of birdwingsbeat.com:

Dam the rivers and damn ourselves

Clearcuttin’, watch another tree fall

The situation is bigger than us

But the solutions are all temporary

Ice age information age

Distracted, living life on the phone

We try to live in the present now

But the future won’t leave us alone

It keeps coming

Don’t let the world go black

I am the man with a choice at hand

Stuck in traffic on the streets of the Earth

We are the mind running out of time

With the power to decide what it’s worth

God help us

This is the heart trying to make a new start

Choosing love in the shadow of doubt

In trouble as the bubble fills with rubble

Digging in is the only way out

Keep digging in

Don’t let the world go black

Keep singing

Oh is this the last hour of life

One more chance to make it right

Darkness is close at hand

Help us to understand

Volcano in the town of Chatham

Hot ash raining from the sky

Earthquake in the Golden State

Everybody’s asking why

I’ll tell you

The story changes but the author remains

Mother Earth’s gonna do what she will

On top of a spinning top

Still acting like we’re standing still

Start spinning

Don’t let the world go black

Keep singing

Oh is this the last hour of life

One more chance to make it right

Darkness is close at hand

Help us to understand

Don’t let the world go black