A Sense of Doubt blog post #3660 - A Mix - Stealing it Back - About Intolerance, Ignorance, and Stupidity - Music Monday for 2502.24

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3660 - A Mix - Stealing it Back - About Intolerance, Ignorance, and Stupidity - Music Monday for 2502.24

DAD: 180 days since you went away...

I am rather under the weather, both IRL as it's cold and rainy and as a metaphor for illness. Luckily, I had this one mostly written and ready to publish.

This mix went through some substantial edits.

I listened to Radiohead on repeat after the 2024 election, mostly Hail to the Thief, but also others, especially In Rainbows, which has jumped up in my esteem to maybe be THIRD over even The Bends and after Kid A (my number one) and Hail to the Thief (my number two).

After putting together the first three tracks, I did not know where to go next, and so I created a "remainders" playlist.

Stealing Remainders

Fifteen tracks just didn't fit, first fifteen in that playlist, and then I added six more based on You Tube's recommendations.

I have been playing this mix since November, trying to find the right sequence and the right tracks. A couple still feel like they stick out a little, but then sometimes I like that jarring effect. I tried to group tracks by theme or types of artists.

Often these mixes are a clearinghouse for tracks in my FAVORITES, and this one is no different. But as I worked on it, I think I sequenced it in a meaningful way. I like the variety of voices and styles. Ending on "Freedom" by Beyonce and its recent use in Harris' political campaign was intentional, obviously.

I humbly assert that this may be one of my top ten best mixes ever.

To prove that point, it may be time for another mix round-up soon to go with these:

Monday, January 2, 2023

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2876 - Music Mixes Since 2019 and reprint of Top Twenty Music Mixes from 1908.19 - Music Monday for 2301.02

I have now started another mix that is Radiohead-centric and will give it the same vetting process of playing, adjusting, and considering for weeks or months until I am ready to post it here. Those who subscribe to my YOUTUBE channel will see the mix evolve, as I usually make them public. It's called "Brush the Cobwebs of the Sky," which is a line from the first song, "Sail to the Moon," which is also off Hail to the Thief.

Meanwhile, until that was one is ready, enjoy this one.

Thanks for tuning in.

A Mix - Stealing it Back - About Intolerance, Ignorance, and Stupidity

TRACK LIST: A Mix - Stealing it Back - About Intolerance, Ignorance, and Stupidity

[1] Radiohead - Nude

[2] David Sylvian - Les Fleurs Du Mal

[3] Radiohead - How to Disappear Completely

[4] David Bowie - The Hearts Filthy Lesson (Official Music Video) [HD Upgrade]

[5] Radiohead - Reckoner (By Clement Picon)

[6] Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Long Dark Night

[7] Radiohead - Everything in its Right Place (HD)

[8] Paul Weller - One Tear (Instrumental)

[9] Saddest Song Ever, Barber's Adagio, Theme from Platoon, Andrzej Kucybała conductor

[10] Radiohead - Weird Fishes - by Tobias Stretch

[11] Goat Girl - words fell out (Official Video)

[12] Paris Paloma - labour [Official Video]

[13] Ani DiFranco - Play God - (Official Music Video)

[14] Feist - Hiding Out In The Open (Official Music Video)

[15] Tori Amos - Crucify (Official Music Video)

[16] Radiohead - Faust Arp

[17] PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

[18] SEVDALIZA - ALIBI FT. PABLLO VITTAR & YSEULT (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)

[19] Travis Scott - STOP TRYING TO BE GOD

[20] David Gilmour - Dark and Velvet Nights (Official Lyrics Video)

[21] Martha Sin Del - I want to die alone but you won’t let me

[22] Billie Marten - This Is How We Move

[23] Kate Pierson - Evil Love (Official Music Video)

[24] Kim Deal - Coast (Official Audio)

[25] Ani DiFranco - You Forgot to Speak (Official Audio)

[26] Goat Girl - Sad Cowboy (Official Music Video)

[27] SEVDALIZA - RIDE OR DIE PT. 2 FT. TOKISCHA & VILLANO ANTILLANO (LYRIC VIDEO)

[28] The Psychedelic Furs - Heartbreak Beat (Official Video)

[29] The Judybats - Being Simple (Video)

[30] Jfarrari - The Unknowing (Lyric Video)

[31] The Lightning Seeds - Pure (Official Video)

[32] Pixies - Monkey Gone to Heaven [1989]

[33] Radiohead - All I Need | From The Basement

[34] Chelsea Wolfe - Whispers In The Echo Chamber (Official Music Video)

[35] Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Wild God

[36] Beyoncé - Freedom

8 + 28 = 36

Always remember 8/28/24

Day after our arrival out west in 2017

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2502.24 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3525 days ago & DAD = 180 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3557 - DOOM!!

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3557 - DOOM!!

When Walt Simonson took over Thor in 1983 -- a run that lasts through 1987 -- he started to build to a big climax. The fiery demon Surtur is seen forging a sword that will be called twilight, pounding the hot metal on an anvil with each blow producing the sound effect: DOOM! The sound effect mirrored the DOOM Surtur spelled for Asgard and everything: and apocalypse in Norse lore known as Ragnarok.

Obviously, when Trump won the election to become the 47th president of the United States, this story and this foreshadowing of the end of all things sprung to my mind.

I fear that we who are not in bed with or cravenly supporting this lunatic that the American public have elected are DOOMED.

Democracy, rule of law, decency, common sense, acceptance (or at least tolerance of) diverse perspectives and values are all at risk.

Not to mention the very lives of LBGTQIA+ people, undocumented immigrants, and journalists who have vocally opposed Trumpism and the MAGA cult.

It's a time that is actually scarier than Ragnarok.

I would rather be obliterated in a fire ball of death and destruction.

Two good Twitter messages below.

Thanks for tuning in.

MEANINGFUL TWITTER MESSAGE

So, you want me to believe that you voted for a racist, rapist, convicted felon, business fraud who incited a deadly attack on our Capitol after losing the last election because of the price of eggs?
That you voted for the orange-dipped dude who ran with a different VP because…

— Jo (@JoJoFromJerz) November 9, 2024

So, you want me to believe that you voted for a racist, rapist, convicted felon, business fraud who incited a deadly attack on our Capitol after losing the last election because of the price of eggs? That you voted for the orange-dipped dude who ran with a different VP because the last one was nearly hanged for not breaking democracy, because you’ve been getting fewer hours at your job these days? You want me to believe that you voted for someone who nearly every economist in the world has said will grow our debt (which he did by the third largest amount ever the last time), increase our costs, raise inflation and destroy our GDP because a burger and fries at Five Guys is more expensive than it used to be? You want me to believe that you voted for the drink bleach guy who golfed while thousands of Americans were dying a day because you had it so much better then, when you were stockpiling toilet paper, than you do now? You want me to believe that you voted for the guy who had 4 years to pass an infrastructure bill and didn’t, the guy who promised Mexico would pay for the wall when they didn’t, the guy who promised to bring manufacturing back, lower the cost of prescription drugs and end the opioid crisis but didn’t, because you preferred his “policies”? You want me to believe you voted for the “grab em by the pussy” guy who wants to destroy the Department of Education and to repeal the ACA despite the fact that he has nothing more than “concepts of a plan” to replace it, the guy who will roll back environmental protections, strip women and minorities of more rights, the guy who will hand Ukraine to Putin and Gaza to Netanyahu, the guy who has said he will be a “dictator on day one”, because you’re worried about losing your gas stove? I’m sorry, but I don’t believe any of that, and frankly, I’m not sure you believe it either. Because the truth is that your vote wasn’t about any of that. You voted for the traitorous embodiment of the 7 deadly sins because when it came to casting your ballot for a Black woman, you just couldn’t do it. And because you like getting away with being your worst self. And because life is a whole lot easier to stomach when all that has gone wrong for you, is someone else’s fault. Let’s be honest here, that is what it was. So when the price of eggs is $18, and your Latino neighbors have been deported or moved to some f’d up “camp” to pick the strawberries none of you will pick, and your miscarrying wife has to contend with sepsis before she’s allowed to have an abortion, and your autistic child is unable to get the early intervention they desperately need, please remember what it really was that you voted for. Because I promise you the rest of us will never, ever forget.

ANOTHER

Make it make sense. pic.twitter.com/LJ9Prx7nrt

— Jon Cooper 🇺🇸 (@joncoopertweets) November 11, 2024

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2411.13 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3421 days ago & DAD = 077 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3555 - Hail to the Thief- RADIOHEAD - Music Monday for 2411.11

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3555 - Hail to the Thief- RADIOHEAD - Music Monday for 2411.11

I have been listening to Radiohead's Hail to the Thief for 20 years.

21 to be precise.

After last week's election debacle, I turned to Radiohead, starting with Kid A and then turning to this album. I posted about "How to Disappear Completely" last week:

Thursday, November 7, 2024

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3551 - "This isn't Happening" - "How to Disappear Completely" - Radiohead

Though Kid A is my favorite Radiohead album, Hail to the Thief is a very, very close second.

I must confess that I was not crazy in love with In Rainbows (2007), The King of Limbs (2011), and A Moon Shaped Pool (2016) when I first heard them. But in the week since the November Fifth, now known as the Eve of Our Life in Hell, I am falling in love with them. They're really great!

Had Hail to the Thief  come out when I was in college, I would have poured over the lyrics and memorized the whole thing, but adulting is harder. Though I have been listening to Hail to the Thief  since its release, I never much even looked at the songs and the titles let alone the lyrics. And yet, in so many listens, surely over 100 and maybe approaching 200, much of the lyrical content has soaked in.

I share a link near the bottom for ALL THE LYRICS, and I share the song that Thom Yorke felt was the "most protest." "The Gloaming" ("Softly Open Our Mouths in the Cold") was almost the title of the album until Yorke heard protests to Bush's election as president as "Hail to the Thief."

"The Gloaming" is an electronic song with "mechanical" rhythms that Jonny Greenwood built from tape loops.^[3] Greenwood described it as "very old school electronica: no computers, just analogue synths, tape machines, and sellotape".^[9] Yorke said it was "the most explicit protest song on the record", with lyrics about the rise of fascism and "intolerance and bigotry and fear, and all the things that keep a population down".^[20] 

I love all the sources for the lyrics: Orwell, Dante's Inferno, fairy tales and folklore, and 1970s children's TV. Brilliant.

I also love the alternate song titles that harkens back to Victorian playbills for music halls and the "Moralistic" songs featured there.

Reading over the WIKIPEDIA page for the album, Radiohead later disliked the album for a variety of reasons, but I don't agree with them.

Without really paying much attention to the lyrics or even the song titles, the album has an urgency, a tension, high anxiety that was present in previous Radiohead work but reaches an apex here.

This album and the others released since have helped me through this week in our new LIFE IN HELL.

Maybe it can help you, too.

Thanks for tuning in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail_to_the_Thief

"The Gloaming" ("Softly Open Our Mouths in the Cold")

Song by Radiohead

Genie let out the bottle

It is now the witching hour

Genie let out the bottle

It is now the witching hour

Murderers you're murderers

We are not the same as you

Genie let out the bottle

Funny ha ha funny how

When the walls bend

When the walls bend

With your breathing

With your breathing

When the walls bend

When the walls bend

With your breathing

With your breathing

With your breathing

They will suck you down

To the other side

They will suck you down

To the other side

They will suck you down

To the other side

They will suck you down

To the other side

To the shadows blue and red

Shadows blue and red

Your alarm bells

Your alarm bells

Shadows blue and red

Shadows blue and red

Your alarm bells

Your alarm bells

They should be ringing

They should be ringing

They should be ringing

They should be ringing

They should be ringing

They should be ringing

They should be ringing

They should be ringing

They should be ringing

They should be ringing

They should be ringing

They should be ringing

This is the gloaming

Radiohead - Hail To the Thief (Full Album HQ)

1. "2 + 2 = 5" ("The Lukewarm.") 3:19

2. "Sit Down. Stand Up." ("Snakes & Ladders.") 4:19

3. "Sail to the Moon." ("Brush the Cobwebs Out of the Sky.") 4:18

4. "Backdrifts." ("Honeymoon Is Over.") 5:22

5. "Go to Sleep." ("Little Man Being Erased.") 3:21

6. "Where I End and You Begin." ("The Sky Is Falling In.") 4:29

7. "We Suck Young Blood." ("Your Time Is Up.") 4:56

8. "The Gloaming." ("Softly Open Our Mouths in the Cold.") 3:32

9. "There There." ("The Boney King of Nowhere.") 5:25

10. "I Will." ("No Man's Land.") 1:59

11. "A Punchup at a Wedding." ("No No No No No No No No.") 4:57

12. "Myxomatosis." ("Judge, Jury & Executioner.") 3:52

13. "Scatterbrain." ("As Dead as Leaves.") 3:21

14. "A Wolf at the Door." ("It Girl. Rag Doll.")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail_to_the_Thief

Lyrics and themes

[edit]

Yorke's lyrics were influenced by what he called "the general sense of ignorance and intolerance and panic and stupidity" following the 2000 election of the US president George W. Bush.^[20] He took words and phrases from discourse around the unfolding war on terror, which he described as Orwellian euphemisms, and used them in the lyrics and artwork.^[2] Yorke said the "emotional context of those words had been taken away" and that he was "stealing it back".^[2] Though Yorke denied any intent to make a political statement,^[2] he said: "I desperately tried not to write anything political, anything expressing the deep, profound terror I'm living with day to day. But it's just fucking there, and eventually you have to give it up and let it happen."^[23]

Yorke, a new father, adopted a strategy of "distilling" the political themes into "childlike simplicity".^[20] He took phrases from fairy tales and folklore such as the tale of Chicken Little,^[4] and from children's literature and television he shared with his son, such as the 1970s TV series Bagpuss.^[3] Parenthood made Yorke concerned about the condition of the world and how it could affect future generations.^[24] Greenwood said Yorke's lyrics embraced sarcasm, wit and ambiguity,^[25] and expressed "confusion and escape, like 'I'm going to stay at home and look after the people I care about, buy a month's supply of food'."^[19]

Yorke also took phrases from Dante's Inferno, the subject of his partner Rachel Owen's PhD thesis.^[26] Several songs, such as "2 + 2 = 5", "Sit Down Stand Up", and "Sail to the Moon", reference Christian ideas of heaven and hell, a first for Radiohead's music.^[27] Other songs reference science fiction, horror and fantasy, such as the wolves and vampires of "A Wolf at the Door" and "We Suck Young Blood", the reference to the slogan "two plus two equals five" in the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the allusion to the giant of Gulliver's Travels in "Go to Sleep".^[28]

The phrase "hail to the thief" was used by protesters during the controversy surrounding the 2000 US presidential election.

Radiohead struggled to choose a title.^[3] They considered using The Gloaming (meaning "twilight" or "dusk"), but this was rejected as too poetic^[29] and "doomy"^[2] and so became the album's subtitle.^[30] They also considered the titles Little Man Being Erased, The Boney King of Nowhere and Snakes and Ladders, which became the alternative titles for "Go to Sleep", "There There" and "Sit Down. Stand Up".^[4][12] The use of alternative titles was inspired by Victorian playbills showcasing moralistic songs played in music halls.^[25]

The phrase "hail to the thief" was used by anti-Bush protesters as a play on "Hail to the Chief", the American presidential anthem.^[31] Yorke described hearing the phrase for the first time as a "formative moment".^[2] Radiohead chose the title partly in reference to Bush,^[32] but also in response to "the rise of doublethink and general intolerance and madness ... like individuals were totally out of control of the situation ... a manifestation of something not really human".^[3] The title also references the leak of an unfinished version of the album before its release.^[25] Yorke worried that it would be misconstrued solely as reference to the US election, but his bandmates felt it "conjured up all the nonsense and absurdity and jubilation of the times".^[2]

ALL LYRICS to Hail to the Thief

https://thomthomthom.com/discography/hailtothethief_lyrics.html

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2411.11 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3419 days ago & DAD = 075 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.